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#unintentional in that they might not have thought 'oh this is literally abuse' while writing it. but it super is
snowdrop-yoongi · 17 days
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my favorite thing about baek hyun-woo's portrayal is that he isn't even a loser. he's an incredibly cool and competent lawyer who also happens to act like a loser
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What You Deserve pt.2 (M)
Pairing: Jimin x Reader (side plots ft. Jungkook and Taehyung)
Genre: Fluff, angst, Smut, crack
Warnings: Mentions of emotional abuse, semi-public sex, cum eating, oral (m & f), creampie, thigh riding, light hair-pulling, cringey, cheesy fluff that makes me want to set myself on fire
Word Count: 37k
(A/N): Jesus Christ this took so long to write 🥵 Originally I wasn’t going to make a second one but seeing as so many people wanted another one, here we are! Btw, Hani is based off of one of my friends and some of the crazy shit she says are actual quotes... so yeah
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"Wait what?! You guys are dating... like dating dating? And you didn't tell me?!" Hani exclaims in the middle of the shopping mall you were walking through.
"Can you shut the hell up, please? Not everyone needs to know my business." You huff.
"Uh, yes they do! This is revolutionary!" She throws her hands in the air dramatically.
"What would be ‘revolutionary’ is if you and Tae started dating too." You smirk, causing her face to go red.
"Ahaha, yeah, how about no?"
"Be honest with me Han, like 100% real right now, sister to sister." She nods. "Are you and Tae fucking?" She gasps loudly, causing a few heads to turn in your direction.
"WHAT?! You heathen, you goon, you cRoOK!! How could you accuse me of such... VULGAR ACTS!” A fake look of offense splays across her face as she throws a hand over her heart, and for a second you consider apologizing. You don’t get the chance to do so, however. “-But yeah, we're fucking." She admits easily with a shrug, catching you off guard. A drama queen at her finest.
"Since when?" Your eyes practically bulge out of their sockets as you turn your head to her.
"Since we went clubbing that one night. But I did do him a few favors before that." She mentions casually. This was not new information for you, you had your suspicions, but you didn't know she would admit it so fast.
"Then why the hell won't you guys just date each other? And why have you been hiding this from us?!" You move closer to her as an attempt to keep your voice down. You were in public after all.
"Okay listen, I'm allergic to commitment, you know this. And I'm pretty sure Tae doesn't want a relationship with me. We're fine being friends with benefits because at least we're still just friends; free to go out with whomever we want with no strings attached." She says nonchalantly and you frown.
"So you're telling me that if he brought home another girl, you wouldn't be jealous?"
"I'd like to think that I'd be completely fine with it. That's a part of our unspoken rules and regulations. No jealousy." **When is this bitch gonna stop lying to herself? You think as you shake your head at her. "But back to you and Jimin! How did this happen? I mean, I knew he had a major crush on you but I never guessed you would be into him.”
“That’s because I kinda wasn’t... until I was.” You’d been ignoring all the signs he was giving you: the especially caring gestures that you just passed off as general kindness, the pure joy and fondness in his eyes every time you spent time together, his bashful and shy side that only appeared when you two were alone, the jealousy he tried to hide whenever you would tell him you were spending time with your boyfriend. You remember one time in specific when you announced in a passing comment that you wouldn’t be free over the weekend because you’d be holed up with your boyfriend, and Jimin barely said a word to you after your brief mention, not even going out with the rest of your friends when they continued to make plans without you. In retrospect, he was probably sulking at home and keeping his distance, something he does only when he’s trying to control his anger to prevent himself from lashing out on others. But you had your head too far up your ex’s ass then to notice.
“Spill the tea. Now.”
You tell Hani about everything that happened after they left his house that night, save for the inappropriate details that she still pried you for. It had been a little over a week since then and you were happy to report that things are going great. You initially thought things would be awkward, but it turned out to feel like the most natural and normal thing in the world for you. He took you out on a date the day after and you stayed at his house again to cuddle and watch movies. Actually, not much had changed from when you were friends to now, except for the fact that you could be more intimate with him— something you really should start taking advantage of. And what made it even better was that you didn't have your stupid ex to yell at you for spending time with him.
"That’s cute and all, but how is he in bed?" Hani pushes, nudging your arm as she leans in closer to you. "I've always been curious about that since he seems like such a soft person."
"Oh my god, best I ever had." You give her a sly look for emphasis and she raises her eyebrows at you.
"Really? Is he a dom? Cuz I think he has the potential to be, but also I see him as maybe being a soft sub." You had piqued her interest and there was no going back, so now you were about to tell her what Jimin was like in bed. While you walked in the middle of a semi-crowded mall. And you didn't even care who heard. Had you no decency?
"He's not overly dominant, though he did take the lead, but he's very sensual. Eye contact, neck kisses, body worship: everything. But I've only had sex with him once, so I haven't unlocked all his secrets yet. It's only been a week for god sakes." Hani nods along attentively as you speak.
"And his..." She motions down to her crotch suggestively and you get the message pretty quickly.
"A lot bigger than you'd expect."
"It's big?! Huh, who would’ve thought."
"What's big?" Jimin's voice comes from behind you and you turn quickly to find him and Taehyung walking up to you.
"Your ego." You reply naturally, blushing when he gives you a peck on the lips when he gets to you, unable to stop himself. You’re still not used to that yet.
"For good reasons though." He says.
"And what might those reasons be?" You quirk up an eyebrow as he loosely wraps an arm around your waist.
"I have many, but the biggest one is that I'm dating my best friend and perhaps the greatest girl in the world. No offense Hani." Jimin smiles at you and you swear your face feels like it’s about to explode into flames. He’s so mushy, you can hardly stand it.
"None taken." She replies.
"You guys are so gross," Taehyung comments, sparkles in his eyes. "I fucking love it. Do you know how long I've waited for this? Jimin's been in love with you forever."
"I never told you that?" Jimin turns to Taehyung quizzically.
"All you ever do is talk about her to me and Kookie like we don't know her already. You’re not the most subtle person in the world, it was kinda obvious. I don't know how she didn't notice." He shakes his head.
"I'm amazed honestly. WAIT, I want pictures." Hani whips out her phone and starts snapping pictures of you from various angles. You try to hide your face and detach yourself from him while groaning protests. Jimin poses like it's a photo shoot as bystanders roll their eyes at you, and Taehyung pretends not to know who any of you are.
"Send those to me. I'm going to make it my lock screen." Jimin says when she finishes and you groan out loud. Yeah, you were going to be that couple. The ones that you hated and would otherwise yell at for being sappy all the time. The ones that have matching lock and home screens of each other.  He was turning you into a monster and it had barely been a full week.
"Cute. Sure I'll send them, right after I send them to Jungkook. He's not going to believe his eyes when he sees these." She laughs, typing furiously on her screen.
"Well he can see it with his own eyes when we hang out this weekend." Jimin inserts, earning confused looks from Tae and Hani.
“We’re hanging out this weekend?”
"Remember we planned that trip to the amusement park a while back? That's happening this weekend." He reminds them and they both let out a collective “Oh”.
"You're still coming right? We can go as couples, like a triple date!" You say excitedly.
"You and Hani can go as a couple and Jungkook can bring his new love interest." Jimin suggests. Hani narrows her eyes at him menacingly.
"We are not a couple." She corrects, but Taehyung seems hung up on something else.
"Jungkook has a love interest? Who?" He asks.
"The girl he took home after the club. Apparently he's been "getting to know her" and wants to use this as an icebreaker date." Jimin explains.
"Eh, I'll give it a week." You shrug.
"What do you mean?" They ask.
"I mean, I'll give their "relationship" a week before things break off. When has Jungkook ever kept a girl around for more than 2 weeks?" They all stop and think about it. "It's not that he doesn't want a girlfriend, it's just that he always manages to do something stupid to screw it up. It's like he's trying too hard to be a fuck boy but it's all unintentional. It's sad, really." You shake your head.
"I remember the good ole days when Kookie was afraid of girls." Taehyung laughs.
"Yeah, we were probably the first females he's ever befriended or had an actual conversation with." Hani nudges you and you laugh along.
"He was so cute though! So innocent and pure. Now he's corrupted." You sigh, jutting out your bottom lip.
"Wonder how that happened." Hani deadpans and you both look toward Taehyung and Jimin, but mostly Taehyung.
"Why are you looking at meee?! I have done nothing wrong." He defends.
"You're just a bad influence. Even when you're not trying to be, you still are. That's just how you are." You shrug.
"Like that time you bet that you would kiss 5 girls in one day. And you actually kissed 10. Within 2 hours." Hani recalls.
"With a face like this, it really wasn't that hard." He... defends? Brags? It's hard to tell with him sometimes.
"That's not the point! You're just not a good role model." Hani stares at him as you all recall the incident. Literally no one even asked him to do that. That was the day that earned him the title of "man whore" and he didn't seem the least bit bothered by it.
"But we've learned to accept and love that part of your personality." Jimin comes in quickly before Taehyung can get offended or start exposing other people. It was a habit of his to bring others down with him when he felt wronged or cheated and usually that person was Jimin.
"Hey, lets go in here, I need a new outfit and bathing suit for this weekend." Hani says as she drags you by the hand into a clothing store nearby. Jimin and Taehyung follow you both as you immediately head to the swimwear section.
"Don't you already have a bunch of swimsuits at home?" Jimin asks as you search the racks for something decent.
"Yes, but you've seen me in all of them already. A girl knows never to wear the same thing twice. Especially when she's trying to impress someone." You mumble the last part and he furrows his eyebrows in confusion.
"Why not? Why don't you just wear the blue and white one with the gold straps? That one's my favorite." You don't question how he remembers exactly what your wardrobe looks like, but you're touched by the fact that he remembered enough to have a favorite.
"It's my favorite too, which is exactly why I'm not wearing it to the amusement park where it can get dirty or ruined." You've had a few bad experiences with amusement parks and ripped clothing. The water parks were especially bad. High pressured water shooting you down a plastic tube has proven to be disastrous to bikinis for girls everywhere. You were planning on going with a safer option. "I don't want you to see what I pick out before we get to the park so go away. I'll find you when we're done." You smile at him and he sighs, walking over to where Tae and Hani are standing.
"We might be a little while so you might as well go over there and find something for yourself while you wait." Jimin walks over to find Hani sending Taehyung away too and they both take her suggestion and head over to the men's section.
"Hey Han, what do you think about this?" You ask, holding up a one piece bathing suit connected down the middle of the front and back, leaving your sides exposed. It was cute and they had various colors for it in your size so naturally it caught your eye.
"Cute, but no." She says flatly and you frown. "It'll give you weird tan lines." She brings up and you nod, immediately placing it back on the rack. "What about this?" She pulls up a bikini that looks like it belonged in a magazine and not intended for actual use and you raise your eyebrows at her.
"How do you manage to find the sluttiest clothing EVERYWHERE we go?" You scoff.
"What do you mean? This isn't slutty." She mumbles, looking at the flimsy material from multiple angles.
"It's almost all lace!"
"Yes, almost. Not all of it." She smiles and you sigh.
"Do you really think that will survive the water park? I've seen better bikinis get torn to shreds." You were specifically recalling one incident where you had taken a trip with Hani and Jimin and she decided to go down the super slide. Let's just say the thin material didn't take too kindly to the harsh twists and turns and rushing water, leaving Hani with one boob exposed and the other side hanging on by a thread, literally. Not to mention the wedgie. You had to run over and cover her so she could stand up out of the water and get her clothes, opting to wear a sports bra the rest of the day to avoid any more wardrobe malfunctions. Clearly she hadn't learned her lesson.
"Oh, I don't plan on actually getting in the water. I just got my hair done." She says with a flip of her hair.
"Don't be lame. The water park is half the fun! And don't think I'm missing out on it just to stay with you and watch you flirt shamelessly with innocent bystanders." You whine with a pout.
"Whatever." She rolls her eyes but you notice that she puts the outfit back and pulls out a more modest one. You find something a bit more protective, a one piece that has less intricate designs, and then move on to find a shirt and a pair of shorts. The outfit you chose wasn't anything special, but it felt natural, like it was from your own closet, and when you tried it on it felt even better. The clothes you chose made you feel like you could conquer the world, made it seem like you were in charge of your life and could take whatever you wanted, and you knew you were probably being over dramatic, but for some reason you were extra confident and you couldn't wait to show it off to your boyfriend.
Jimin and Taehyung were perusing through the men's section for anything decent to wear. Jimin was looking at some shorts since he mostly only owned ripped jeans and it was supposed to be obnoxiously hot this weekend, and Taehyung was browsing the flannels and beanies, really pushing for that boyfriend look.
"I like this beanie, do you like this beanie?" Tae asks Jimin as he throws it over his fluffy hair.
"You know who likes those hats? Hani." Jimin smiles and Taehyung sighs defeatedly and puts it back down. "Why won't you date her?" He asks in a hushed voice, glancing in her direction from across the store.
"I.. I don't know. It's complicated." Tae mumbles, getting a stern look from his friend.
"Then uncomplicate it and explain it to me." Jimin pushes, causing Taehyung to groan and roll his eyes.
"I like her, I do, but..."
"But?" Jimin leans closer in anticipation.
"I don't think she wants to date me. She hates relationships and commitment, so why the hell would I think she wants that with me?" He turns back to a rack of shirts and mindlessly shuffles through them. He seems really down about this.
"Well you guys seem pretty close now."
"We're slightly more "friendly" than just friends but I'm no closer to being with her than I was before. And I don't even know what she thinks about me other than the fact that she likes my dick." Taehyung sighs as he turns helplessly to his friend. Jimin's never seen him like this and it makes him want to help.
"Maybe you can make some progress with her this weekend. It might help if you said more than just dirty jokes around her." He suggests, but before the taller man can reply, another voice addresses them.
"Finding everything okay here, gentlemen?" A petite young woman walks up to them with a bright smile on her face. She shamelessly looks both of them up and down and they observe as the twinkle in her eye shines brighter.
"Yeah, we're fine." Taehyung answers and he can see how the bass in his voice makes her shiver.
"May I make a few suggestions?" She offers and before they can refuse her, she continues. "I think this shirt and these shorts would look really nice on you." She picks out an outfit expertly and holds it up to Jimin, checking to see his size. He takes the clothes and looks at them, and as much as he wants to completely dismiss her, he has to admit that her sense of style is quite good. That's probably why she works here. "Do you mind if I do some measurements?" She turns to Tae.
"I'm personally not a math person, but if you want to go around measuring things, go for it. It's not my store." He shrugs and she just laughs, rosy lips curving flirtatiously.
"No silly, I meant can I measure you." She clarifies and he makes a sound of realization, causing Jimin to face palm. After half heartedly agreeing, Taehyung allows her to pull out her tape measurer and wrap it around various lengths of his body. It was a pretty uncomfortable situation for him, but he doesn't stop her.
"Hani, let's test those ‘unspoken rules’ of yours." You say to her as she chooses her last top. She walks over to where you are and you point across the store. "Are you telling me that you aren't jealous that that girl is flirting with Taehyung?"
She looks at where you are pointing and for a moment, you see something flare up in her eyes before simmering back down. She watches the woman wrap a tape measurer snug around his hips and compliment his body figure, something that Hani has seen first hand and doesn't appreciate the way this lady is drooling over it.
"I'm not jealous." She says with a purse of her lips, but not a minute later she's calling Taehyung over.
Upon hearing his name being called, Taehyung unwraps himself from the lady and quickly begins walking away, leaving Jimin to thank the woman for her "help" before rushing to follow.
"Are you guys ready to go yet?" Taehyung scratches the back of his neck, still holding onto the beanie he was looking at earlier. As you check out, you catch the dirty look Hani gives the sales woman as she continues to drool over an uncomfortable looking Taehyung.
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There's an urgent knock on your door and you pull it open to find a distressed Jungkook standing in your doorway. He enters without invitation and you shut the door behind him, furrowing your eyebrows in concern.
"Kookie, it's 10:30pm, why are you at my house when I'm literally going to see you tomorrow morning?" You grumble, taking a seat next to him on your couch. He doesn't seem bothered by your unkempt appearance, having seen you in your pajamas multiple times.
"I need to talk to you." He says, nibbling on his lip anxiously.
"Again, why couldn't this wait until the morning? We already have to get up at the ass crack of dawn to meet up."
"I-I'm kind of freaking out." He turns to meet your gaze and you stare blankly at him, waiting for him to elaborate. "The girl I'm taking to the amusement park is amazing and I don't know what to do."
"What do you mean?"
"Her name is Jieun and not only is she gorgeous, but she's talented too!"
"Wow Kookie, that's great! I don't see the problem here." You watch as a deep frown settles onto his face, his teeth returning to chew at his bottom lip.
"I guess I'm worried about keeping her." He responds after a few seconds of silence. "You know I have trouble keeping girls. I always manage to fuck it up somehow and I never know what I did wrong so I can't fix myself and stop it from happening the next time. But I really want things to go well with her. I want her to like me."
You look at him sympathetically and pat his knee. "I'm sure things will work out, you're a great guy. Just take it one day at a time, there's no need to rush anything. Focus on having fun tomorrow and go from there, use it as a stepping stone to help you get to your end goal." You tell him and he nods.
"How did you and Jimin start dating? Like, how did you break that friendship barrier?" He asks, looking up at you with puppy dog eyes. It was almost like a kid asking his parents how they met, expectantly looking forward to the love story that connected their hearts.
"Well," You half laugh. "It definitely wasn't intentional. After we went clubbing that one night, I stayed over at his house and he confessed to me when he thought I was sleeping."
"But you weren't?" You shake your head. “Ohhh sneaky.” He snickers, earning a hit on the shoulder.
"It wasn’t on purpose! Anyway, I told him that I felt the same way and now we're dating." You shrug.
“Yeah, I could totally see you two together. That man is head over heels for you.” Jungkook laughs, to which you blush and look away. Could everyone else really see it but you? “Ugh, I wanna date someone so badly. Jieun is such girlfriend material and it kills me.”
“Okay, slow down. I don't think you should ask her to be your girlfriend just yet. It's different because me and Jimin have known each other for years and you've only known each other for a week, right?" He nods. "Take it slow, get to know her more, tell her about yourself, don't do anything too crazy."
"I don't even know how to act around women; it's not like anyone's ever formally taught me how to talk to ladies." He sighs.
"First things first, forget everything you've ever seen Taehyung do around women. He doesn't know the first thing about relationships and he's too immature to even start a real one with Hani." You point out sharply.
"What's going on between them anyway? Are they fucking?" This sparks Jungkook's interest just a bit and he seems more eager to gossip about his friends than to talk about his own problems.
"That’s not for me to tell. Don’t change the subject!" You scold with a point of your finger. "Second thing: just be yourself. We're going to an amusement park so you should be focused on having fun instead of being stressed out over how to impress her. This is a great place for a first real date because what better way to bond is there than sharing multiple near death experiences together?" You smile. Roller coasters are terrifying, but you've read online somewhere that fear boosts attraction in couples, so this should work like a charm.
"I don't even know if she likes roller coasters." Jungkook thinks out loud for a moment.
"Even if she doesn't, there's plenty of stuff to do there, I'm sure you won't be riding rides the entire time. You have to think more positively." You give him a reassuring look and he relaxes a bit. "Lastly, don't try too hard. Girls like effort, but usually we don't want anything too extravagant. Big gestures are sweet and all but it's the little things that we pay attention to, like if you let her win in a game, or offer to hold something for her, opening a door, pulling out a chair, things like that. Maybe you can try to win her something at one of the booths there? I'm sure she'd appreciate that."
"Okay, I'll try." Kookie says after letting your information soak in for a minute. "Thanks for the help (Y/n), I knew you'd have some advice for me." He gives you a cute bunny smile and you just want to pinch his cheeks.
"I've had a pretty shitty boyfriend for the past two years so I'm surprised you thought I'd have any real advice to give, but I'm glad I could help." You stand as he walks to the front door. "And Kook," He turns to look at you. "Relax. She's just a human, talk to her casually like you talk to me."
He nods and gives you a hug, leaving you to get ready for your day tomorrow. You were really excited to see this Jieun person, preparing to see if she really lived up to Jungkook's hype and was worth his affection. But he's had pretty good taste in women in the past so you didn't doubt him.
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"What's the hold up? We were supposed to leave half an hour ago!" Hani shouts into Taehyung's house; you, her and Jieun waiting by the front door for the three boys to come out.
"We can't take them anywhere." You mumble, rolling your eyes as you check the time on your phone. You all were supposed to meet up at your house but Taehyung texted in the group chat that he "needed help with something important" so everyone just decided to meet at his house. Jungkook had picked Jieun up earlier, but since then he hasn't even said anything more than a greeting to her, which concerned you. He and Jimin told you three to wait outside while they helped Taehyung and you've never seen Jungkook look more relieved to get away from someone in your life.
"I can't do this." Taehyung says to Jimin as he enters his room.
"Me neither, go without us." Jungkook chimes in, taking a seat on the bed.
"What the hell are you talking about? Why not?" Jimin squeaks, looking between the two of them in shock.
"Jieun looks so good today and she smells so nice and I can't even look at her without blushing so obviously this isn't gonna work out." Jungkook speaks quickly, rubbing his face in stress.
"I don't want Hani to think this is a date. She keeps insisting that we're not dating, but if we all split up today it's definitely gonna seem like a date and then she'll freak out about it! And then she'll start stress flirting with other guys and I do not want to be caught in that situation." Taehyung groans, sitting beside the youngest.
"First of all, you're both going because I am NOT going to be stuck at an amusement park alone with three girls like I’m some sort of pimp, so get up and get dressed Tae." Jimin pulls Taehyung by the arm until he's standing then pushes him over to his closet. "Kookie, you've already seen each other naked so I don't know why you're acting shy now. This isn't even a real date so suck it up and have fun. This isn't supposed to be this stressful!"
The other two boys don't say anything after that and just look at each other, moving slowly into action as Taehyung pulls clothes from his wardrobe. He goes for a boyfriend look, a plaid shirt over a deep cut black tee, his signature loose fitting pants, and of course he pulls on his new tan beanie and a necklace to top it off. It takes him forever to choose his shoes, even with the help of his friends, and even longer for him to check himself out in the mirror, debating whether or not he looks good enough to go. By the end of it Jimin is emotionally exhausted, his voice already cracking from yelling at Taehyung for so long and for a second he thought your genders had switched. Weren't you and Hani supposed to be the ones that take forever to get ready?
Meanwhile, the two of you had a chance to catch up with Jieun outside.
"So, you're Jieun?" Hani asks after yelling into the house for what seemed like the tenth time. The girl only nods. She looks to be around Jungkook's age, maybe a year older than him but definitely at least a year younger than you. "Nice to meet you again, I'm Hani."
"And I'm (Y/n)." You introduced yourself and she bows at you both in greeting.
"I remember you guys from the club. You seem like a fun group." She comments, looking into the open door as if expecting the boys to walk out at any moment.
"We try.” Hani says with a flip of her hair. Jieun was just as Jungkook said she was. She was absolutely gorgeous, her dark hair, bright eyes, and vibrant smile making her very attractive. Talking to you now, you realize that she is very modest, although not at all shy and rather confident, and is very passionate about many things. You and Hani asked her about herself and learned that she was quite athletic. She danced on a recreational dance team and worked at a studio with children. Aside from that she engaged in many sports and did just about anything that required physical activity. Jieun also mentioned that she sang as a hobby and occasionally wrote songs because she had a dream of becoming an idol, which amazed both you and Hani. She seemed perfect for him.
“Why is she so perfect? Why can’t we be like her?” Hani whines to you when Jieun excuses herself to use Taehyung’s bathroom, both of you feeling terribly inferior to her.
“If I didn’t already have a boyfriend I would totally be jealous.” You say, thinking about how much attention she probably gets on a regular basis. From your short conversation, you found that she was actually a chill person. Polite and sensible. A stark contrast to when you first met, when her tongue was shoved halfway down Jungkook’s throat, but you’ll excuse her behavior because she was probably drunk and everyone seemed to be making risky decisions that night, including you. You were happy for your friend for finding someone as good as her and now you could see why he was so nervous for today.
“He picked a good one.” Your best friend comments, nodding in approval. “I’m surprised she’s into him, considering how much of a dork he is.”
“Hey! Don’t talk about my son like that! He’s just troubled.”
“No, he’s troubling. For a moment I thought there wasn’t any hope for him. That he would just repel women forever, like that time he wore too much cologne and women literally ran away from him because he smelled so bad. I’m proud he’s making progress.” Hani sighs.
“Maybe he just needs advice from the right people to get his act together.” You shrug.
A few years back you started calling Kookie “Baby Kook” and claimed him as your son as a joke since you always ended up protecting him, but somehow the name stuck and now you feel a certain attachment to him, an obligation. Like last night when he appeared at your doorstep. You contemplated telling Hani about that before Jieun came back, but then she’s looking at the door behind you.
“Oh my God, are you guys finally ready?” She groans when the three boys walk out together, two of the three looking weary and one looking mildly irritated.
“Where’s Jieun?” Jungkook notices the absence of her presence immediately and thinks the worst, wondering if she had left while he was inside because they took too long, but much to his relief, she walks out behind them, enthusiastic as ever.
“I’m here, let’s hit the road!” Clearly she’s a morning person, but the rest of you are not.
Filing into Jimin’s car, there is a bit of a skirmish for the seats. You want to sit up front with your boyfriend, but Jungkook pushes past you when you reach the door and attempts to take your place, but you push back.
“Hey! I called shotgun, I want to keep my boyfriend company.” Butterflies flutter in your belly at your use of the word, making you smile. Just on the inside, though, because on the outside you’re straining to fight off the younger man.
“Well, I want to sit in front today.” Jungkook retorts, continuing to strong-arm you out of the way so you can’t enter. The others look at the two of you as they take their own seats, Taehyung offering for Hani to sit on his lap but getting flatly rejected.
“Why? What’s the matter with sitting in the back?” You stop fighting against him to look him in the eye, crossing your arms and giving him a disgruntled frown. It takes a moment for him to answer, glancing at his date and then back at you. He leans in closer and speaks as quietly as he can.
“I can’t sit back there with her, I’ll die.” His eyes are wide and fearful as he looks at you pleadingly, hoping you’ll have mercy on him.
“You’re supposed to be on a date with her, why would you just leave her back there alone?” You look at him incredulously, wondering if he was serious or not.
“I’m not ready to be that close to her yet; please, just on the way there?” He begs, searching your eyes. Jimin yells something about leaving the two of you if you didn’t get in the car and Jungkook raises his eyebrows at you.
“Fine, but now you’re in charge of directions. If we get lost I’m kicking your ass.” You finally relent, sighing and moving to the back, squishing into the other passengers until Hani finally takes up Taehyung’s offer and sits on his lap.
You politely change seats with Jieun and take the middle seat so that she can have the window and won’t be as squished and she gives you a grateful smile, staring out of the window as you embark on your hour and a half long journey. About 5 minutes into the car ride half of you are asleep, your head leaning on Hani, whose body is leaned completely back on Taehyung as he rests his forehead on the window. Jieun expected the ride to be full of conversation and questions, but when she sees that is not the case, she allows herself to take a nap too. And it wasn’t like Jungkook was going to talk to her anyway.
Jimin looks over at Kookie at a stop light, the younger boy reading directions from his phone. Jimin pushes his lips into a tight line, knowing exactly why he fought you for the front seat.
“What are you doing?” He asks abruptly but quietly. Jungkook looks up with wide eyes.
“What do you mean? I’m reading you directions.” Kookie states as if he doesn’t understand the question.
“Why didn’t you sit back there?” Jimin speaks even softer now, motioning with his head. “With your date?”
“Oh, um, (Y/n) is smaller than me so I thought it made more sense for her to sit in the back instead. Since there’s so many people...” He lies unsteadily, sensing the glare on his older friend’s face. Jimin knows it’s a lie, but since he’s too nice to expose innocent Kook in front of Jiuen, who is most likely not fully asleep, he doesn’t say anything. But later, when he’s sure everyone’s out cold, he addresses Jungkook.
“You know, you’re going to actually have to interact with Jieun in order for this to be considered a date, right?” Jimin comments, looking in his rear view mirror to observe all of your sleeping faces. His eyes linger on you for a moment and his lips curl into a tiny smile before he pulls his gaze away to look at the road again.
“I-I know that.” Jungkook stutters, looking back as well to stare at his date. Although she was fast asleep, her hair and makeup was still perfect and her lips were parted in the most beautiful way, and Jungkook couldn’t control the blush on his face. “I just need to relax a bit more. I’ll be better when we get to the park, I promise.” He mutters, more so to himself than Jimin.
“I believe in you. She seemed really excited to hang out with you this morning, I doubt there’s much you can do to ruin that.” Jimin smiles.
“I mean...” There were thousands of ways this day could be ruined, and they all seemed very possible, some even seeming likely to happen, and the anxiety was eating Kookie alive.
“Stop worrying so much. As long as you actually talk to her and spend time together, this day will be a success.” The older reassures.
“Please don’t leave me alone with her.” Jungkook begs, but Jimin only laughs.
“You’ll be fine, it’s not like she’s gonna bite your head off or anything.” The worry left in Jungkook’s eyes makes Jimin sigh, taking pity on his cute friend. “We’ll all meet up a lot throughout the day, you won’t be alone with her the whole time.” He sighs, to the delight of the boy in the passengers seat. He really was Baby Kook.
Despite the clusters of traffic, the ride to the park is smooth and straight forward, your group arriving in less time than expected. When the car is parked, Jimin wakes up the other passengers, letting you all know that you’ve reached your destination. Everyone files out of the car, stretching your cramped limbs and retrieving the bags from the trunk, prepared for a day of fun. Already the sun is blazing, not even fully up in the sky yet, but still beaming down on you.
“Sun screen is the most important thing to remember on days like this.” Hani lectures the group, assuming the mother role. “I don’t want anyone coming up to me later complaining about sunburn. I’ll probably just laugh in your face and give you a hard pat on the back,” She says, looking directly at Taehyung to show him how serious she was. He just scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, preferring not to relive the last incident. “So, let’s take preventative measures and protect ourselves.”
You all turn to Jungkook, who was assigned the duty of bringing the sunblock, but instead he just looks back at you with wide and innocent eyes. He makes eye contact with you and you raise your eyebrows expectedly, causing confusion and slight panic to cross his face. “Wait, was I supposed to bring the sunscreen?”
A collective disappointed groan sounds among your friends and you can see Kookie’s face reddening, feeling horrible about his slip up. He was so focused on Jieun that he forgot his duties.
“It’s okay, I have some.” The fair skinned girl standing next to him smiles, dropping her bag to the ground to pull out 2 bottles of sunscreen. “I always keep it with me since I burn so easily.”
Jungkook’s eyes light up with hope as his date passes around the spray, already saving his ass and they hadn’t even gotten into the park yet. He was thankful for her, more-so than he was embarrassed, and he made a mental note to make it up to her.
“Great, we can apply now and then reapply when we go to the water park.” Hani instructs, grabbing one of the bottles.
A bottle is handed to you and you offer to spray Jimin, prompting him to take off his shirt and bare his toned upper body to you, a sight which you drink in greedily with a smirk. When you begin spraying, he jumps at the coldness on his already heated skin.
“Fuck, that’s cold.” He hisses, body flinching and contorting as you continue to spray his exposed skin. You laugh at his expense, targeting his sensitive parts such as his back and neck, enjoying the way he squirms. “Yah! That’s enough.” He shouts, snatching the can from you.
“You can never be too careful...” You muse, apologetically rubbing your hands over him to spread the lotion and make sure you haven’t missed any spots. The touch of your warm hands against him makes Jimin shiver as he watches you feel him up shamelessly, so he decides to turn the tables and spray your exposed stomach unexpectedly, causing you to scream.
Taehyung and Hani are engaged in similar shenanigans, the female trying to wrestle the bottle from the tall boy. He suggests she “strip down a little more” so he doesn’t miss any spots, but of course she refuses and tries to grab the spray can from him, to which he dodges and insists that he isn’t done applying sunscreen on her yet.
Once Jimin finishes with you, he hands Jungkook a bottle so he can help Jieun. She wore her swimsuit under her normal clothes, so she takes off her shirt and shorts so she can get total coverage. Jungkook swallows hard as she basically gives him an unintentional strip tease, revealing her thin athletic body and muscles that hide beneath her pale skin. It’s like she was made for him. He has to stop himself from drooling when she’s done, arms outstretched and ready to be sprayed. The four of his friends watch with amusement as he shyly applies the sunblock, trying too hard not to stare at any one spot and finish as quickly as possible.
“I’m just gonna say it: Jieun, you’re fucking hot.” Hani breaks the silence, smiling at the way the younger girl blushes a little. You all laugh and shake your heads at her, noticing how much shakier Jungkook becomes. “What? Everyone was thinking it.” She shrugs.
While getting sprayed, Jungkook looks for something to talk about, feeling incredibly awkward and uneasy from the silence. Everyone was already ready to go into the park so you were just waiting on him. Glancing at Jimin as he locks his car, he speaks.
“You should name your car ‘Jimin’.” He comments spontaneously, causing said boy to look up at him.
“Why would I do that?”
“Don’t fucking say it.” You groan under your breath, obviously being ignored.
“So you can park Jimin.” Kookie replies simply, laughing at his own joke while only Taehyung and Jieun giggle in response. You weren’t sure if she was just giving him a pity laugh or if she actually found it funny, but you know Taehyung did. You, Jimin, and Hani just roll your eyes at them.
“You’ve made that joke before and it still isn’t funny or clever.” Jimin sighs, walking back over to your side. But Taehyung keeps running with it.
“No, (Y/n) should name her car ‘Jimin’.” He says with a dirty smile. You give him a blank look and anticipate his next words, hoping he doesn’t say what you think he’s about to say. “So she can ride Jimin.” He announces the punchline proudly.
Immediately you turn on your heel, walking off in the direction of the park entrance followed closely by Hani and Jimin who leave the other three to chase after you.
“Hey, where are you going?” Taehyung laughs as he jogs to catch up. Hani sneezes loudly.
“Bless you!” You all reply in unison and she waves you off.
“Ugh, allergies.” She says rubbing her nose.
“Yeah, she’s allergic to stupidity and it’s just oozing from you right now.” You tell Taehyung with a motion of your hand, receiving a cackle from Hani, who continues to rub at her nose as you keep walking toward the gate.
After security checks, you all finally enter the park, taking in the scenery. A worker at the front hands you all maps and offers to take your picture by the large fountain, to which you agree. Of course it takes a few times to get a good picture, someone was always fighting or blinking and in one of the pictures all of you are running from a bee, but eventually one came out right. When the worker walks away, your group just stands there, a bit disoriented in such a big setting.
“Where do we want to go first?” You ask, looking over Tae’s shoulder at the map he’s holding.
“Everyone’s riding rollercoasters, right?” He asks, looking up at your friends. Everyone nods so he points to the nearest ride on the map. “We should go here first, this one doesn’t seem too bad so it can be like a warmup for the more serious rides at the back of the park.”
Without further discussion, you set off for the wooden ride to the right of where you were standing, nervous jitters fluttering in your stomach. Jimin grabs your hand as you walk and you thread your fingers with his without hesitation. Hand holding was so rare with your ex, it felt weird to do it in public. But Jimin has always liked to hold your hand, it’s just never been in a romantic way before. You like this new experience.
Reaching the ride, you see how big it actually is. The drops are massive and the sound the carts make as they zoom past at surprising speeds makes your heart race. There are aggressive twists and turns that are sure to give you a thrill, and you become more and more excited at the thought of it.
“This is the warmup?” Hani looks like she’s going to vomit. She’d get on anything if you could convince her to get in line, but if she stared at it for too long she would chicken out. Sure, she acts tough on a regular basis, but everyone has their weaknesses. Jimin is similar to her. He loves roller coasters when he’s riding them, but he doesn’t like to look at them too much beforehand because then he would get scared. Knowing this, you usher everyone into the queue before anyone can say otherwise.
“Don’t worry too much about this one, the only thing intimidating about it is the speed.” Jungkook explains like a seasoned amusement park connoisseur, noting how Jieun gives him an impressed glance. “As long as you don’t swallow any bugs, you should be fine.”
You can feel Jimin’s hand becoming clammy as you near the front of the line. The plus side of coming to the park so early in the morning is that the lines are shorter because there’s less people, but he felt as though that was working against him because everything was happening all too fast. You squeeze his hand reassuringly, smiling at him to calm his nerves.
“I love rollercoasters.” Jieun quips, practically bouncing with excitement and skipping down the rows. “It gives you such a rush; the high speeds, the wind in your face, not to mention the view of the park..” She sighs longingly, momentarily stuck in her thoughts. “If you aren’t awake by now, this’ll definitely do the trick.”
You reach the front of the line faster than expected; Kookie was right, this ride was quick, either that or it’s just really short. You bunch into carts of two, you and Jimin sitting in the middle of the train, Hani and Tae seated behind you, and, as expected, the daredevils Jieun and Jungkook sitting in the very first car.
“You can hold onto me if you’re scared.” You hear Taehyung say to Hani, the two linking arms to brace themselves.
Glancing at your boyfriend, you teasingly repeat the same thing. “You can hold onto me if you’re scared.” You purposely lower your voice a little to mock Tae’s own and the four of you laugh, although Jimin grabs your hand again, holding on tight. A worker comes around and checks your safety devices, signaling to the other staff to start the ride. It makes a slow ascension up the first hill, every loud click beneath you rattling your nerves and making you bubble with anticipation. Jimin breathes heavily beside you, trying to focus on the view of the park that Jieun mentioned before, but you could see the distress on his face.
“You okay up there, Jiminnie?” Taehyung calls. You can tell he’s enjoying this already. “(Y/n), he hasn’t passed out already has he?” He teases as you creep closer to the top.
“Shut up, Tae.” Jimin protests weakly. “This isn’t even that bad.” As he finishes his statement, the ride reaches the summit and stops, holding you in suspense as Kookie’s car hangs partway down the slope. Jimin sees this and gulps, knowing what lies ahead in just a quick moment.
“Are you sure about that?” As soon as the last word leaves Taehyung’s mouth, the ride releases and you all plummet down the tall drop, deafening screams coming from everyone involved. You scream and laugh as the cars take you through turns and drops, the high speeds pushing back your hair and making your eyes water. Jimin never stops yelling, horror in his voice the entire time as he squeezes the life out of your hand, but it only serves to make you laugh harder and by the end of it you’re struggling to catch your breath. Hani’s shrill screams come from behind you, her voice resembling a whistle more than anything, and they harmonize with Taehyung’s more joyful shouts and ‘woos’. As the ride slows down to a stop at the terminal, Jimin’s body relaxes then seemingly liquifies, making your eyes widen as he slumps in his seat.
“I survived,” He murmurs, looking over at your smiling face. “I thought I was going to die.”
“Congratulations, Minnie, you made it through the warm up.” You laugh patting him on the head gently after combing through his unruly hair with your fingers. The workers unlock the safety devices and everyone stands up, retrieving their bags from the platform and walking down the exit ramp. You all wobble slightly, still disoriented from the fast ride.
“Daebak!” Jieun and Jungkook shout in unison, both talking a million miles an hour and laughing at each other’s banter in a language that only they could understand, from the sounds of it.
“Oh God, my life flashed before my eyes at least 3 times during that ride.” Hani huffs, out of breath and throat already sore.
“I’ve never heard you scream like that, are you sure you weren’t blowing a whistle?” You ask, causing everyone to giggle.
“I don’t remember most of that ride, I think I blacked out after the first drop.” Running a hand over her face, she wipes tears from the corners of her eyes while you do the same, except yours are from laughter and hers are from anguish.
“Guys the pictures are up!” Taehyung points, directing your line of sight to the screens in front of you that display the many different facial expressions of your friends. The group erupts into laughter after just one glance, Jimin falling into you and leaning against your smaller frame as he goes weak with laughter. His small hand covers his mouth as he lets out his distinctive high pitch giggles, and you have to take a moment to stop and notice him. Fuck, why didn’t you ever pay attention to him before? He’s absolutely adorable. He stumbles around and nearly crumbles to his knees in glee as Jungkook points out everyone’s faces, other groups of people crowding around the monitors to get a look at themselves too.
“Look at Hani, she looks like her eyes are about to pop out of her head! I’ve never seen her eyes get that wide before!” Jungkook howls as she practically wheezes beside him. She’s doubled over with one hand on Taehyung’s shoulder for support, and even through his laughter he tenses up at her touch, cheeks reddening just the tiniest bit.
“Jimin and (Y/n) look like the drama masks,” Jieun comments, pointing to your expression of pure joy and excitement next to Jimin’s face of unconcealed terror and regret. “Why does it look like he’s about to cry?” She can barely get out the sentence through her snickering, wiping away her own tears.
Your attention returns to your boyfriend, who is barely holding himself up from the ground. His eyes are almost entirely shut from how hard they’re smiling and his fluffy hair bounces with every shake of his body, quiet squeaks all he can manage to release.  The light reflects off of his round cheeks and he seems to glow, his happiness contagious and making everyone around smile unconsciously. You wish you could get a picture of this face instead. Even when you’ve all calmed down and Taehyung is buying the picture (presumably for future blackmail purposes), Jimin just can’t seem to get it together and you practically have to drag him out of the way.
“Come on, let’s get in line for the next ride before the adrenaline wears off!” Jieun shouts, grabbing Kookie’s hand and sprinting off in the direction of the tallest ride, both of them apparently forgetting that they’re with a group. And apparently Jungkook has also forgotten his shyness around her. You let them go, though, since this was technically a date and it seemed like they had broken the ice and moved past their initial awkwardness of being alone together. The remaining 4 of you walk in that direction too, before realizing where they were going and stopping in your tracks.
“Woah, wait!” Hani stops abruptly, eyes scanning the height of the rollercoaster. It’s a simple ride really; nothing more than a steep incline and a straight death drop that leads into a few twists and turns. But when you see how fast the ride accelerates to go up the hill and come back down again, a collective chill crawls up each of your spines. “They’re going on that?! Oh hell no! Do you know what this means?” She asks, looking around at your confused faces. Taehyung shakes his head in reply. “I can’t be friends with them anymore.” She announces resolutely, much to your surprise.
“Why not?” Jimin asks, eyebrows raised in mild amusement.
“Because people who would willingly go on something like that clearly do not value their own lives, which means they surely do not value mine.” She turns on her heel and presses past you, walking in the other direction and not waiting for you to follow. “Let’s find something else to ride.”
Usually people knock out the big rides first, leaving all of the smaller attractions for later when their energy starts to deplete and they can take the time to calm themselves down, so when Hani leads you all to a small indoor ride, there’s virtually no one inside. It’s themed after some cartoon you heard of when you were a kid and the interior of the building is colored with neon and fluorescent paint that glows in the black lighting. As you wind through the long pathways and different rooms, it becomes apparent that this must be a very popular attraction because the queue seems never ending. Taehyung’s laughter seems to echo through the empty rooms as he skips ahead, stopping at every interactive object like a child, playing in the funhouse mirrors, watching the short clips of the cartoon that appear on the screens, pointing out how everyone’s clothing glows in the dark whenever you pass under a black light.
“Walk!” Hani hisses, pushing him from behind when he stops in the middle of a narrow pathway, the sounds of the ride finally coming into earshot. “This rollercoaster better be worth the trouble of us walking for so long.” She sighs, keeping her hands firmly on Taehyung’s back as she pushes him along. He seems to enjoy it, purposely slowing down so she runs into the back of him, pressing harder against him to urge his body forward, and he knows she doesn’t mind the way he’s messing with her, he can hear the smile in her voice every time she yells at him.
Shuffling slowly behind them, Jimin silently pulls your arm, holding you back so he can hold you firmly to his body, hands on your waist and eyes smiling down at you. Your eyes are wide as you look at him, about to ask him what he’s doing, but then he swoops down and claims your mouth in your first kiss of the day. It’s not rushed or needy, it’s the kind of slow, relaxed kiss that makes your heart pound against your chest and blood rush to your cheeks. Your back meets the wall and he pins you there with one hand leaning beside your head for support, the other still locked onto your hip. The kiss is a welcomed surprise and you can’t help the way your knees get weak just from his touch. Despite being cuddled up with Jimin almost everyday this week, you still can’t get over the fact that he wants you this way, that he’s yours. He’s told you many times that now that you’re together he won’t hold himself back anymore when it comes to you, but you didn’t expect him to mean it like this. Though, you can’t say that you don’t enjoy the affection.
“Excuse me,” Hani clears her throat loud enough to catch your attention and when you pull away, you find both of them staring at you two in shock. “This is neither the time nor place for that. Seriously guys, there are cameras everywhere. Have some decency.” Taehyung shakes his head along with her words in fake disapproval, clicking his tongue when you shyly pull away from each other to walk up to where they are.
“C’mon lovebirds, we’re almost at the front!” He leads the way around a few more corners until you’re finally at the front of the queue, the line only consisting of a single couple boarding one of the carts. You take your seat next to Jimin and the carts exit the station in two’s, leaving you alone with him as you enter the dark tunnel. The ride is all indoors so it’s pitch black for a few seconds before you ride through another room with vibrant flashing lights that highlight the scenery around the track.
“I don’t think I got to properly say good morning to you.” Jimin’s eyes are focused on you already when you turn to him, whimsical music playing around you to accompany the action happening around you that you aren’t paying attention to.
“Is that what that was about back there?” You point with your thumb, raising an eyebrow.
“No, I just felt like kissing you,” He shrugs, “but this morning was busy and I didn’t get a lot of time to talk to you, so I’m saying it now. Good morning, gorgeous.”
“Ew, you’re so cheesy.” You nudge him with your shoulder playfully, barely noticing that your cart was ascending a small incline.
“I told you, I’m gonna say it everyday just to remind you. I have to make up for all that lost time.” You know he’s referring to the time you wasted with your ex, all those wasted days of not being appreciated or acknowledged. Neither of you have talked about him since then, but he’s always there, hanging in between the lines, and Jimin is always trying to prove what a trash man he was to you by overcompensating. Or maybe he’s just always this tooth rottingly sweet, you still haven’t figured it out yet.
“You don’t have to...” You mumble.
“I know. I want to. Plus, I don’t think I can stop myself.” Just as the two of you start to giggle, you reach a drop and your car speeds down the hill, flashing lights passing you at every turn. You go through a few more dips, spinning around and even going backwards at one point, following animated characters and a storyline that you haven’t been paying attention to. Somehow during the ride, you managed to scoot closer to each other, your sides touching and your hands wrapped around his arm, not in fear, but out of pure joy. This ride isn’t nearly as scary as the last, it moves slower and the drops are shorter and more gradual, so you and Jimin enjoy it equally, laughing throughout the entire experience all the way until it reaches its end at the same place it began. His cheers and laughter of amusement echo in your mind as you come to a stop, finally untangling yourself from him.
Taehyung and Hani are just getting out ahead of you, laughing to themselves and stumbling onto the platform. You take note of Taehyung’s manners as he extends a hand out to Hani as she steps out of the car after him, and you see her hesitation to take it before she grabs hold, pulling it away quickly after she regains her balance.
“That was fun, we should go on more rides like this.” Jimin comments when all of you walk outside, squinting in the bright daytime light.
“Why? Because it’s dark and no one can see you making out in there?” Taehyung replies with a sassy purse of his lips. Hani snorts beside him.
“No, because it’s a kiddy ride and it doesn’t make him scream like a baby.” You tease, causing an uproar of laughter from your friends.
“Okay, ouch. What is it, ‘gang up on Jimin’ day or something?” He pouts, though he can’t stay mad at you for long and ends up smiling along with everyone else as you walk towards the next attraction.
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“We have a winner!” A few spectators clap as Jieun grins triumphantly, accepting a small stuffed monkey from the merchant as he proclaims that she is the fastest racer.
After knocking out all of the most exciting rollercoasters, Jungkook and his date have made it to the back of the park in record time. Instead of moving on to the smaller rides, they agreed to try out some of the games, mostly because Jungkook wouldn’t stop bragging about how easy some of them seemed.
“I thought you said you were bad at carnival games?” He points out as they begin to walk away.
“Yeah, but we were just shooting water at a target. It wasn’t that hard.” He watches as she offers her prize to one of the children they played against, the youngest one whose face was scrunched in disappointment. The little girl looks at her and nearly snatches the monkey away before sheepishly muttering a thanks upon her parents request, but Jieun only laughs.
“That was nice of you.” Nicer than he would have been.
“Eh, the monkey was kinda ugly anyway.” The brightness of Jieun’s smile makes Kookie blush slightly as he laughs along, allowing her to pull him through the crowds of people amongst the other stations. “You aren’t purposely letting me win these games, are you? That’s the third time I’ve beaten you.”
“What, you don’t like winning?” He quirks up the corner of his mouth and she shakes her head.
“Not like that.”
“Fine, then I won’t show you any mercy next time.” He promises, to which she accepts with a nod and a competitive sparkle in her eye. The truth is, Jungkook hasn’t been letting her win, she’s been beating him fair and square this whole day, but he didn’t  want her to know that because he’s been talking trash about his skills since they got here. They approach a station that is unoccupied, the merchant beaconing them over as soon as she sees that it has caught their eye.
“You two look pretty cute, first date?” She questions as they approach and Jieun is the only one who can respond. “Aw, that’s adorable. Hey man, if you wanna impress her, you should show her your skills. You look like the athletic type.” The woman challenges Jungkook, and he isn’t one to back down from a challenge.
“Let me win you something.” There’s this cockiness in his voice that makes his date giggle, his shoulders seemingly swelling with pride and arrogance as he stands in front of the counter. It’s basketball, something Jungkook isn’t too bad at, and he’s confident that he’ll be able to win this game.
“You don’t have to do this for me.” Jieun reasons, tempted to tell him that the game is probably rigged anyway, but Jungkook doesn’t look like he’d care all that much.
“Don’t worry, I got this.” Famous last words.
“$3 for 5 balls. All you have to do is make it in the hoop 3 times and you win.” Seems easy enough. He hands over the money and the basketballs line up in front of him, cheesy arcade music starting up when the worker presses a button. A bell sounds as a cue for him to start and he grabs a ball immediately, missing the sigh coming from the girl behind him.
He makes the first shot easily, the second goes in with a loop around the rim, and his pride is through the figurative roof. But on the third shot, the hoop begins to move side to side. He is surprised when his ball misses its mark and as he stares, trying to get his timing right, the speed of the moving basket increases.
“Two more chances left!” The worker announces. But his luck wanes and the forth ball bounces off the rim. “Only one ball left! Really follow that hoop, c’mon. It’s all about focus.” She coaches, much to Jungkook’s annoyance because he really was trying, but his final shot misses entirely and the game stops with a buzzer noise and defeated sound effects. “Oh! How unfortunate. Do you wanna try again? You still gotta win your girl that prize— looks like she really wants one.”
With a heavy sigh, Jungkook turns to Jieun and stares at her in thought. She’s just standing there looking impartial to all of the giant superhero plushies lining the station, but he really wants to prove to her that he can do it. He needs to win her this game. In reality, she’s about to open her mouth and tell him that she doesn’t want him to waste his money on something she doesn’t even want, but before the words can leave her, he’s handing in another $3 and preparing to take his first shot. The second time around doesn’t go as well and he’s already down to 1 ball when the hoop starts moving, his last chance bouncing off the edge again. Watching this really is painful and Jieun finally decides that she needs to put an end to this.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to win me anything, let’s just move on.”
“No, I can do it,” He tries to reason, reaching into his pocket for more money, but she grabs his wrist and gives him those big pleading eyes and he melts. “Fine.”
“Why don’t you let her try? She looks like she can play. I’ll even change the price to $1 just for her.” The saleswoman suggests, playing with one of the basketballs. She watches as their eyes meet and she can see that they truly think about it before Jungkook decides that he would like to see her try— probably just so he can prove to himself that the game is actually hard and it’s not just him— so he hands the woman another dollar. “Awesome! Let’s see what ya got.”
“Wish me luck!” Jieun says as she picks up a ball, but it soon becomes apparent that she doesn’t need it because she’s knocking out the baskets like it’s her job. Jungkook stands silently beside her, mouth open comically as he witnesses her aim and shoot with the ease of a pro player, making the third basket with a flashy swoosh and two balls to spare. The world around him erupts into noise as Jieun, the saleswoman, and a group of random bystanders who were watching them play begin to cheer and shout praise.
“That was amazing!” The merchant announces, and he only just realizes that she’s been using a microphone this entire time. It’s loud. “Did you see that last shot? The ball didn’t even touch the rim! I wish I had an instant replay of that!”
“Omg, I can’t believe I did that!” She gasps, covering her mouth in shock and joy. She looks just as dumbfounded as Jungkook and he can’t find it in himself to be upset with her.
“You looked so cool! Maybe you should be a basketball player instead of a dancer.” Sure, his ego definitely took a blow, but he felt an odd sense of pride at her accomplishment. Even though she wasn’t “his girl” per se, he still felt like he could claim her, and amidst the celebration, it kinda felt like his win too.
“I haven’t seen anyone win this game since I started working here,” The worker admits. “You’ve got skills. Pick your prize.” She motions to the wall of plushies and Jieun pauses in thought, glancing over at her date.
“Which one do you like?” She inquires.
“Oh, n-no this is your prize. You pick.” Jungkook hates the way he stutters at her sudden attention.
“Like I said, I don’t want one. Hm, I’m thinking you look more like a Hulk guy?” She’s studying him up and down and he can feel himself heating up the longer she looks.
“Actually, I like Iron Man.” He says, scratching the back of his neck. She simply nods and points to the biggest one, and the woman happily retrieves it, waving them away with well wishes on their first date. As they walk, Jieun hands the Iron Man figure over to Jungkook and he pouts.
“You know, I would have won if you’d let me try one more time.” He grumbles, looking back at his recent failure. She finds it cute.
“Yeah, I’m sure you would have.” She reassures and nothing in her voice makes him think she is mocking him. “But be grateful I won you that anyway. That thing is half as big as me!” She giggles, a slight triumphant glow on her cheeks as they make their way through the park.
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Sometime after your third ride together, Hani and Taehyung separated from you and Jimin to do their own thing. Hani claimed that her heart couldn’t take any more rollercoasters for the moment and Taehyung graciously accepted this by agreeing to go on the smaller attractions with her. Kiddy rides, really: the large swing ride, the one that looks like an octopus, the pirate ship, etc. Taehyung had suggested they go on the Claw, but that looked a little too intense for Hani because of how high it goes, so they skipped that one. Finally, they make it to Hani’s absolute favorite ride, the Teacups, and she pulls him all the way to the line.
“The Teacups is your favorite ride?” He questions with a laugh, bracing himself for the hit he receives on his shoulder.
“Shut up, you still request kids menus to draw on when we go out to eat. I don’t wanna hear it.” She crosses her arms over her chest, but Taehyung finds it adorable.
“I wasn’t attacking you, I just think it’s interesting.” It is interesting, how someone who acts so menacing can be such a baby on the inside.
“What’s with that?” She asks suddenly, facial expression turning skeptical as she looks him up and down.
“What’s with what?”
“You haven’t picked on me all day, why are you being so nice?”
“Well, you haven’t flirted with any random guys all day so I guess today is strange for everyone.” There really isn’t anything Taehyung can think to say to her question, so he deflects. There’s not a chance in hell that he would ever say that he’s trying to be nicer to her so she likes him more and will consider dating him— if he says that, he’s sure she would run away screaming.
“That’s only because no one has flirted with me yet and I’m not going to throw myself around like a thirsty hoe. But it’ll happen, just wait.” Hani pushes hair away from her face in that sassy way and Taehyung can’t resist snorting in laughter.
“That doesn’t seem conceited at all.” He mumbles sarcastically as they step up in the line.
“Oh fuck off, Man Whore. You’re one to talk.” A few parents look back at her but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Hani, there are literally children everywhere around here, watch your mouth.” Tae scolds, but she only rolls her eyes and turns away, apparently forgetting about her earlier question of his behavior, much to his relief.
As they near the front of the line, they spot Jungkook and Jieun passing by, but the pair is walking too fast for either of them to catch their attention. Jungkook seems to be hugging something red and yellow, but he disappears before Taehyung can make out what it is.
“Jungkook and Jieun just walked past,” He states as he leans against the railing.
“I saw. This day seems to be going well for them, I’m glad he finally grew some balls.” Hani smirks, still gazing in their direction.
“I’d say this day is going pretty well for us, too.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, Taehyung regrets them. Hani turns to face him with an odd look on her face, not really disgust, but rather skepticism.
“Yeah, but they’re on a date.”
“Couldn’t you say that this is sorta like a date, too? Not exactly a romantic one, but it’s still a date.” He’s making it worse for himself, he knows it, but he just can’t stop the words from coming. And so he digs the grave deeper.
“It’s not a date.” She shuts that idea down quickly, but there is an ease to her words. Almost like she doesn’t know that she’s hurting him.
“Why are you so touchy about that word?” He tries to laugh it off.
“It just... bugs me. I haven’t been on a date in, like, a year. I don’t do dates.”
“And why is that?” Taehyung is genuinely curious to know. She probably assumes that he’s like her, that he doesn’t date or have interests that go further than finding a quick fuck, but that’s not true at all. He’s just never had the best luck with women— and he is mostly to blame for that.
“When it’s a date people expect things from you. There’s an etiquette that society has deemed acceptable, especially for women, and I’ve never really been into all of that. I’m not a dainty lady and I hate when people do things that I didn’t ask for. Guys just seem to be too overbearing for me on dates: picking up tabs, trying too hard to be polite, scrutinizing my every detail and flaw. And on top of that, we’re supposed to do cute couples stuff like kiss and hold hands and shit. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“Not all dates have to be like that. They can be casual like this.” So she isn’t into the “nice guy” act. Taehyung should probably dial it down a little bit then.
“Yes, but this still isn’t a date. We aren’t a couple.” She insists, leaning against the railing across from him.
“You don’t need to be a couple to go on a date. That’s what the date is for. Jungkook and Jieun aren’t a couple yet, but this is a date for them.” He tries to keep his voice stable and calm. Why is he so adamant about proving this point?
“But it’s different with them because they actually want to become a couple. And they act like one too.”
The gates open and the two of them enter the attraction, Hani booking it for one of the teacups toward the back. She sits down and waits for Taehyung to close the gate and take a seat across from her before her hands are on the wheel in the center, itching to start the ride. She begins spinning their teacup before the ride starts like all the other kids around them, and Tae places his hands on the wheel to help.
“I think we’re acting like a couple, too. We’re doing everything together and having a good time.” He offers, pulling her attention away from her giggling that he finds to be contagious.
“I agree, we are having a good time,” She smiles. “But really, that’s it, isn’t it? I find you attractive, you find me attractive, we fucked a couple of times, but that doesn’t make us a couple. There aren’t any real feelings involved and we’re still free to do whatever we want. None of that mushy couples crap like Jimin is sucking (Y/n) into. I’d say we’re fuck buddies, at most.”
It feels like a dagger has sliced through Taehyung���s heart at her words, each one adding a deeper and deeper wound, and all he can do is sit there quietly as the attraction begins to move and ponder her words. He turns the wheel with her, their cup spinning almost at top speed, and he watches as Hani fights to stay upright against physics, laughing and trying to look at all the other moving vehicles around them. He thinks then, how can someone so beautiful say something so cruel to him? But he knows her well. Hani is the type of person who hides her feelings by saying the exact opposite of what she wants, never explicitly telling anyone what she desires, then waiting for them to figure it out. He can only hope that this is one of those times. The more he thinks about her words, the less he pays attention to the present world, and before he knows it, Taehyung has stopped turning the wheel and is staring blankly at her joyous expression.
“If that’s all we are, then why do I feel this way? Why does it feel like my heart will fly right out of my chest whenever we interact? I wish I could let you see how I feel for once because maybe you’d feel differently. I know you feel something too. Why is this so hard for me? Why is it so hard for you to accept me?”
“Hey, why’d you stop spinning? I need help here!” Taehyung knows she can’t hear him over the loud music and wind rushing past their ears. His voice was nothing more than aimless murmuring, but it felt good to say it out loud. A part of him is curious about what would happen if she did hear him, but it’s probably better if she doesn’t.
“Sorry.” He apologizes, their cup accelerating when he joins her turning once again. She thinks he’s apologizing about the ride, the thought of him apologizing for his feelings for her never crossing her unbothered mind. He thinks she doesn’t notice how hard he’s trying to be happy, the thought of her heart aching with disappointment and fear never crossing his puzzled mind. He doesn’t know that she’s afraid of the feelings she already has for him.
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“It’s 12:30 bitches, where are you?” You speak out loud as you type into your group chat. Jimin fans himself beside you, sitting on a bench near the entrance to the water park, staring down at the park map.
“Why do the rides here look scarier than the roller coasters?” He frowns. You lean your cheek on his shoulder to look at the map and shrug.
“I bet they’re not even that bad in person. I can’t wait to get in the water.” This heat is something else, and as the temperatures keep climbing, you want nothing more than to dive into the nearest pool and float away. “Maybe we should stop by the Lazy River first just to get wet before going on the slides?”
“It’s so hot that I might just stay there all-“
“What’s up, losers,” Hani interrupts, sliding right into the place next to Jimin and squishing him between your bodies. Taehyung stands in front of you all.
“Wait, come here, Tae.” You pull his arm and he moves toward you with one eyebrow raised as you shift him until his body blocks the sun from your face. “Ah, don’t move.” Letting go of his arm, you enjoy his shade and close your eyes. He scoffs but stays put.
“We still waiting for Kookie?” Jimin asks, handing the map off to Hani.
“He said they’re almost here in the group chat. I wouldn’t be surprised if they finished the whole park already— did you see how fast they were walking?” She answers, shading her eyes with the flimsy paper.
Taehyung chuckles, looking around the area. If they were on their way, they would probably be here soon. “They better hurry up because I’m so fucking hot I feel like I’m about to die.”
“Do you know how disrespectful it would be to die right in front of me? Go die over there.” You send him away, but as soon as he moves you whine from the loss of shade. “Wait, no, come back!”
“I’m gonna buy a water bottle, you guys want anything?” Tae asks and the three of you shake your heads, watching as he walks away toward a small cart where a lady is selling drinks and ice cream. As he approaches, the lady straightens and fixes her hair, flashing him her best smile and batting her lashes. Both you and Jimin look over at Hani, who is watching the entire exchange, and you can practically feel the fumes coming off of her.
“We made it!” Jungkook announces, stepping up beside the bench with Jieun in tow. “Where’s Taehyung?” You all point and the pair follow your eyes to where the young lady is leaning into her cooler of drinks very seductively in front of a somewhat indifferent Taehyung. He isn’t showing much of a reaction, but you notice his fidgeting, either from anxiety or impatience. When he hands over the cash, the woman brushes his fingers intentionally and all of your jaws drop at her blatant flirting.
“I know he’s not my boyfriend, but he’s not her boyfriend either, so she needs to hop off his dick before we have to fight.” Hani is trying her hardest to contain herself, she really is, but the way that that woman is flirting with Taehyung is triggering something inside her that looks pretty damn close to jealousy.
“You okay there, Han?” You ask from the other side of the bench, keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get up and snatch that girl by her bangs.
“Oh yeah, I’m perfectly fine.” She says through gritted teeth.
“Remember what you said about it being okay if he ever decided to take someone else home?” You remind her, smirking when she crosses her arms.
“Absolutely.”
“How are you feeling about that now?”
“I said what I said. I said what I meant and I meant what I said.”
“I thought you didn’t like hyung like that?” Jungkook asks, confused.
“They’re fucking.” It comes out so easily that you don’t even realize that it was supposed to be a secret until Hani yells out your name in betrayal, causing you to suck in your lips. But it’s out there now.
“And I oop-“ Jieun feels like she shouldn’t be here for this, but things are starting to get interesting and she can’t bring herself to leave.
“You and Tae?!” Jungkook whisper shouts at her as if Taehyung would be able to hear him from all the way over there where the woman is still flirting with him.
“We fucked once.” She holds up a finger for emphasis, but you give her a look of disbelief and she purses her lips. “Okay, maybe it was a few more times than that.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!” You pout, turning away from her.
“Yeah, what the fuck is that about? I thought we were close!” Jungkook steps forward, clearly hurt that he’s been left out.
“Jimin doesn’t look that surprised.” Jieun points out, drawing everyone’s attention to your boyfriend, who sits there nonchalantly as he listens to you argue.
“Oh I already knew all of this. Of course Taehyung couldn’t shut up about it.”
“See, Hani? Even Tae told Jimin! What kind of bestie are you?” You fake cry, pulling the most hurt face you can muster, throwing a hand over your face just to guilt her, and Jungkook tags along.
“I’m sorry, okay? But let’s not forget the fact that you waited a whole week to tell us that you and Jimin are dating.” She brings up, shutting your whole argument down. She’s right about that, and you almost feel bad about it, but since she also kept a secret, it kinda cancels out.
“So are you guys like... a thing?” Jieun asks.
“No, we are not a thing, we’re just friends. He doesn’t like me like that.” Composing herself, Hani relaxes back into the seat, but she still can’t pull her eyes away from Tae walking away and the lady eyeing him up and down. You don’t bring up how it seems like she’s implying that there would be a relationship if he did like her that way, but you’re sure everyone else noticed.
“Really? It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself of that more than anything.” Jimin snickers, earning a razor edged glare from her.
“Watch it, pretty boy, before I shove this map up your ass.” She hisses, sending Jimin recoiling into you. “Let’s just go into this stupid park so I don’t have to watch him flirt with anymore ugly tramps.”
Just as she stands up, Taehyung reaches you, oblivious to her obvious jealousy. “Are we ready to go?”
“Yup! To the changing rooms!” You point and everyone follows Hani as she leads the way toward the changing rooms, the group of you renting out a locker to place all of your valuables in.
“Jungkook, what the hell is that?” Jimin questions, finally noticing the giant stuffed Iron Man that he’s been holding.
“Aw, did you win Jieun a prize?” You ask, looking between their faces, but Jungkook only looks down sheepishly.
“Actually, she won this for me.” He answers shyly, cheeks pinking up at your faces.
“Yeah, turns out he’s terrible at carnival games.” She smiles, nudging his shoulder playfully.
“Wow, Kookie. And after all that shit you were talking yesterday.” Taehyung laughs, the rest of you joining in on the teasing.
“I get it, I’m dumb. Can we please move on?” He whines, hiding his embarrassed bunny smile behind the doll.
“For the record, he did make some great attempts to impress me. I think he still has a chance with me.” At this, Jungkook uncovers his face, grinning down at her. “All will be forgiven as long as you share a funnel cake with me at some point today. I really want one.” She groans, mouth already watering. He agrees enthusiastically. You feel pride swell in your chest, your baby is growing up.
“That thing is not going to fit in the locker.” It’s Hani that breaks the moment, looking back and forth between the doll and the small locker size. “Guess I have to stay out of the water and watch it so it doesn’t get stolen. Damn, it’s too bad.” She shakes her head in faux disappointment and you immediately shut her down.
“No, nope, you’re getting in the water, we’ve been over this. C’mon let’s get dressed.” You nag as you pull her away.
In the changing room, you and Hani put on your swimsuits, showing them off and praising each other, as best friends do. Jieun already had on her swimsuit so she stayed out by the lockers, so it was just the two of you getting ready. While standing in the mirror to tie up your hair, you spot a familiar face in the background and your eyes go wide, elbow nudging into Hani's side a bit harder than you intended.
"Ow, what the-" You shoot her a look and she quiets down.
"That's her." You whisper, eyes staring down a woman through the mirror, glancing away after your friend sees who you were looking at.
"His side hoe? Candy the Stripper?" She whispers, eyes now locked on the unassuming lady.
"Yes, now stop staring." You say, so she looks away and continues struggling with her hair.
"She's not even that pretty." Hani scoffs. "Should we go over there and say something?"
"No! I don't want to ever have to interact with her or that asshole ever again." You roll your eyes, preparing to leave as soon as possible. "Come on, just leave your hair down, it's gonna get messy anyway." Hani stops to look at you with attitude, running her fingers through the long ropes of her hair.
"The goal is to not look like Medusa by the end of today, this monstrosity needs to be contained." She was right. Sometimes it seemed like her hair had a mind of its own and did whatever it wanted, so you let her take her time pushing it back into a loose ponytail, offering Candy a few quick glances before grabbing your things and walking out.
"I'm heading back to Jimin. We'll be out there waiting." You say, not looking back to see if Candy was looking. Honestly you felt like you looked way better than her. Your body was better, your personality was better, and you were rocking your outfit. This was your moment to shine.
Walking out of the changing room felt like you were walking down a runway. Maybe it was just the clothes you were wearing but something felt different. You felt good, sexy even, and all you wanted to do was put yourself on display for everyone to see the new and improved version of you. Things seemed to move in slow motion as Jimin turned his head and saw you walking— no, striding toward him in the middle of the busy walkway. From the way your hips swayed, to the swing of your hair, to the slight attitude you put into every movement especially when you put on your sunglasses, you looked like a freshly opened box of sunshine, radiating confidence and beauty for the world to see. But then you caught sight of that sickeningly greasy grin from behind your boyfriend and just like that the box was slammed shut, sealed with chains, and shoved into a bedroom closet.
You almost stopped dead in your tracks when you saw his face, the face that you wished you would never have to look at again, the face that made you sick to your stomach just thinking about it. You were glad your shades were partially covering your expression because you were sure you looked mortified. But it was as if he could sense your discomfort and his smile grew when he noticed the effect he had on you. He always did that. Smiled when you would crawl back into your shell and turn into a passive being. It was like he fed off of your anxiety and it somehow made him bigger, or at least feel bigger, and it was instances like this that gave him the opportunity to walk all over you. Your perception of him is now strongly skewed since you broke up with him. In only a week’s time, you have been treated better by Jimin than your ex ever did in the two years you were together and you quickly realized just how much he had abused you. Not physically, but emotionally. He abused his power over you because he knew you wouldn't do a damn thing about it. Told you not to get too confident because "you could always look better". One time he even yelled at you in public for "dressing like a slut" when your skirt was an inch too short, which is ironic considering the woman he ended up with. But all of the little things like that crushed your self esteem and you had turned into a timid girl around him without even noticing it.
You were never like that with Jimin. Even when you were still just friends, you were a completely different person. It wasn't just that you were comfortable around him, but somehow you knew he would never pass judgment on you and that you always had a listening ear, shoulder to cry on, and a ball of happiness to brighten your days. It was good to know that he stayed consistent with that as a boyfriend.
Chopping your steps, you shift your eyes back to the man who actually loves you and scurry toward him, nearly tripping over your own feet. Your head and shoulders had dropped without you realizing it, but Jimin noticed. He was watching you the whole time.
"What's wrong?" He asks, analyzing your face. He could see the small frown you tried to conceal and the nervous way you wiped your clammy hands against your leg.
"Nothing's wrong. What do you mean?" You respond, trying to sound convincing and failing.
"You look like you've just seen a ghost." He chuckles. You laugh along halfheartedly, but don't reply. As far as you were concerned, your ex was dead to you, so Jimin was not completely wrong. It felt as if you **had seen a ghost. A ghost from your not so distant past.
“Uh, where did the others go?” Changing the subject, you shift the attention away from yourself.
“Still over by the lockers. They wanted to lounge by the wave pool, but I think we should eat lunch first.” As he speaks, you try to pay attention, but your eyes keep flicking behind him nervously. Quite honestly, you weren’t sure whether or not you wanted to know if your ex was still staring at you, but curiosity gets the better of you.
“Oh, okay.” You respond absently.
“Unless you don’t feel like eating now? I know they always say not to eat before you swim...”
“Uh huh.”
“But it’s up to you. What do you want to do?” You don’t notice how he rambles on, eyes bouncing around your body as he tries to control himself. You look so damn good and you don’t even know it, and all he can think about doing is pulling you aside somewhere to show you just how hot he thinks you are. Shit, he better stop before he makes himself hard.
“Huh?” You’re a little startled, only now snapping out of your worrying, and he looks at you expectantly. “Let’s just walk around first and see what’s here. I think I might want to go on some rides before eating.”
“Okay, let’s go tell the others.” You follow as he leads you back toward the lockers where Hani is putting away the rest of her things and Jungkook is avoiding Jieun’s eyes at all costs as she stands in her bikini, spraying herself with sunblock.
“Put the hat in the locker!” Hani groans at Taehyung, but he just shakes his head like a little kid.
“No, it looks good on me.” He pouts.
“Yeah, but we’re at a water park. Take it off.”
“You said you liked it.” Oh, so that’s why he’s being like this. Jimin can only sigh. He thinks that stupid beanie is his good luck charm simply because Hani thinks it looks nice on him.
“Tae, don’t be like this.” You reach over and snatch the hat from his head, throwing it into the locker so Hani can finally close it. Jungkook looks over at you gratefully, moving away from his date to stand beside you so he can breathe a little easier.
“We’re about to head over to the wave pool, you coming?” He inquires.
“Actually, we’re going to go on some slides first. We’ll catch up with you later.” Jimin answers, receiving a nod from the group.
“Okay, we’ll try to save you some seats.” Jungkook assures with a wave as you and Jimin turn to leave. Your eyes scan the area while you walk and Jimin catches on to the odd expression adorning your face, sliding his hand into yours and making you jump a little.
“You okay?” He’s concerned and that’s the last thing you need him to be. “What’s with that look?”
“What look?”
“That look you get when you’re overthinking something. You had that same look on your face when we woke up the morning after the club last week.” Heat blooms across your face at the memory, how you tried to act as if everything was normal and cool while getting dressed, but ended up freaking out internally and staring off into space during breakfast. You were worrying about how your friends might feel about your relationship and how things might change between you and Jimin, but of course he was there to dispel all of your worries with kisses and a cute date.
“I’m just thinking.” Brushing off his concern, you mentally scold yourself. This day wasn’t about your ex, seeing him isn’t the end of the world, you should be paying more attention to having fun with your current boyfriend, who wants nothing more than to adore you and make you feel comfortable. Stop giving him things to stress about.
“Would you like to share what you’re thinking?” He asks carefully.
“Nope, it’s not anything important.” Walking a little faster, you squeeze his hand. “Let’s get on this ride, I’ll race you to the bottom!”
It always amazes you how spending time with Jimin can change your mood so easily. He had the ability to erase every doubt and anxiety out of your mind with a simple smile or laugh, and it’s always been like that with him, but now you finally understand the love behind each of his actions toward you. Plus, now he can shamelessly check you out and touch you whenever he wants because you’re officially his. It seems like every time you climbed up the stairs to get to the top of one of those water slides, he made sure you were in front of him just so he could stare at, grab, or smack your ass at any point and time. And each time you would squeal and laugh, shooting him a look when he’d act like it wasn’t him. The two of you breeze through half of the water park before you know it, skin and hair soaked but drying quickly in the heat and sun. Jimin keeps you close and all times, wanting to make sure all the guys who stopped to stare knew you were his.
“Are you hungry, babe?” You ask Jimin, tugging on his arm a little as you pass a food court.
“Starving.” He exaggerates, making you giggle. After you make a stop by the lockers, which you had apparently made it back around to, he returns. “You go order, I’ll find us seats.” He hands you a wad of money from his pocket and sends you off, knowing you already know what to get him since he always orders the same thing anytime you go out somewhere. He watches as you walk away, swaying your hips just a little extra because you can feel him watching, and you smirk to yourself as you imagine the cute blush on his cheeks.
Once in line, you look past the row of heads in front of you toward the menu, deciding what you want to order. The line gets longer behind you, but you pay no attention as you wait for the person at the front to finish, who is apparently ordering every item on the fucking menu, you assume. But then a nauseating stench hits you, one that smells of hair gel and too much cologne and you know who it is before he even starts to speak, already standing too close to you.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.” The man behind you speaks with a hint of amusement in his voice and you shudder, turning slightly to look at him from the corner of your eye. Unsurprisingly, you see that it is indeed your ex who has snuck up behind you. After getting no response, he continues. “This can’t be a coincidence; are you following me? Wow, (y/n), I never thought you’d go as far as stalking me while I’m on a date- I mean that’s a bit much, even for you.” You let out a heavy sigh, knowing that if you keep quiet eventually he’ll stop talking or leave, but also knowing how comfortable he is with having one sided conversations since he never gives anyone a chance to respond to him. “And I was just thinking about you yesterday too, wondering how you’ve been holding up without me... figured you were probably somewhere sulking or crying to your friends, but this? This is just sad. Showing up to spy on me during my date? I didn’t think you were that lonely. I bet you came here alone, didn’t you?”
He keeps talking and you take a step forward as the line moves up, clenching your fists tightly and looking toward the tables, seeing that Jimin had found an empty one and was patiently waiting for you. You hoped he didn’t look up and see your ex talking to you because if he did, you were sure he would storm over and punch his face in for even having the gall to talk to you, and you didn’t have the time or money to bail Jimin out of jail.
“And did you wear that slutty outfit in hopes of winning me back, cuz it’s not gonna work. You can show off all the skin you want, it’s not gonna make you any more attractive.” His malicious words sting a little bit, your rage building up with every word that came out of his sour mouth and all you wanted to do was curse him out in front of everyone. But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. You think, feeling like Hamlet, caught in a web of misfortune and inconvenience. You settle for turning around calmly, speaking to him in an even and firm voice as not to draw attention to yourself.
“Did you come here just to harass me?” You ask, mustering the straightest face you can hold.
“I’m not harassing you, you’re the one that followed me here to spy on me.” The smug look on his face tells you that all he wants is a reaction from you, your acknowledgment of him giving him exactly what he craved: attention.
“Okay wow,” You scoff. “Don’t flatter yourself. I will never be that desperate, especially not for you. And what makes you think I want you back?” You’re insulted that he even has the audacity to think that about you, much less to say it out loud.
“Well considering how poorly you treated me and my girlfriend last time we saw each other, and how you ruined all of my stuff by throwing it out on your lawn, I figured you wanted to apologize.” Girlfriend. Just the thought of him calling her that makes you sick because, at the time of the incident, you were supposed to be filling that role. It takes everything in you not to yell at him and slap him across the face, your blood boiling at this point.
“Don’t you dare try to play the victim. I caught you cheating. You cheated on me, not the other way around, so don’t even try to act like I’m the bad guy here.” You hiss, speaking lowly and shooting daggers at him with your eyes. You don’t even bother to address all the stuff he said about you before, you don’t care about what he thinks of you anymore, but you would not accept him pretending as if you did something wrong. Jimin spent too much time assuring you of your innocence for him to come and fuck it all up.
Before he can retort, you finally reach the front of the line, addressing the worker with a smile and beginning your order. You can feel him standing behind you, scrutinizing your every movement: the nervous way you rock back and forth on your toes slightly as you recite your order, the way your fingers tap at the counter distractedly while the cashier calculates your change, the politeness in your voice when you thank her and take your large tray of food, skirting past him without giving him a second glance before heading toward the crowded tables. You were always the same and he supposed you shouldn’t change that much in 2 weeks, but there was something different about you. And he only noticed it when he saw you sit at the table with Jimin, smiling and giving each other heart eyes. You were... happy. And confident. And possibly even in love. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Lunch passes quickly, your overpriced food tasting below average yet fully satisfying your hunger, and soon you and Jimin are on your way back to your friends, deciding that now is the perfect time to sit and relax on the beach chairs. There are seemingly hundreds of chairs lined up, clustered together in front of the wave pool where children and adults splash around and play, and there is no way that you’d be able to find where your friends are.
“I think I can see Jungkook in the water over there,” Jimin points, grabbing your hand to lead you into the shallow end of the giant pool. “He’s all the way over in the deep end. Wait here, I’ll go get him.” He announces to you before wading deeper into the crowded waters, avoiding careless children too wrapped up in their games and moving a little too far from their parents. Your eyes are on his bare back as he walks, muscles flexing with every step as he makes his way, and you follow him until he’s chest deep before you look away.
Sitting down on the sloped bank of the pool, you watch the people around you enjoying their day in the sun and think about how this day could have been perfect. How it would have been a perfect date with your perfect boyfriend if That Bastard hadn’t shown up and tried to talk to you. Actually, it still is the perfect date, you’re the only one ruining it. Jimin probably doesn’t even know your ex is here, the thought of him never crossing his mind, but your mind is plagued with images of him and the harsh words he spoke to you back there. You don’t want Jimin to have a bad time because of your mood, but as you’re left alone, it’s starting to become harder and harder for you to fight these negative emotions. You were pretty quiet while you were eating, you wonder if he noticed. If he caught the way you would zone out occasionally and miss his words. Jimin was right earlier, you are overthinking, you always do, and if he tried hard enough, he would probably be able to figure out what exactly you were thinking about. Maybe he’s already figured it out, maybe he saw your ex and has been trying extra hard to cheer you up and show you a good time and you were just being stupid and stubborn by not making an effort to be happier. Once again, you’re screwing up. Just like how you screwed up your relationship and how you ignored all of Jimin’s efforts to show his love for you over the years.
A splash of water hits you straight in the face, jolting you out of your stupor and you’re dragged back into reality by the water that drips down into your ear. “Oops! I’m sorry Miss.” A young girl apologizes, turning back to her brother to yell at him and chase him around. You wave them off, tilting and shaking your head until you can hear from your right ear again.
God, you hate your mind. How did you dig yourself into this self-depreciating hole again? All of the insecurities Jimin has been working so hard to erase have come back so easily after one 5 minute conversation with the narcissistic asshole that cheated on you, and now you’re back to square one. Of course, he’s only had a week to change your mentality, but you were making a lot of progress and you’re throwing it all in the trash right now. You need to pull yourself out of this one this time, it’s not fair to Jimin if you don’t. Plus, you’re in the middle of a water park where you are supposed to be having fun, this is no place for sadness or guilt. Pull yourself together. The only person that thinks you’re a fuck up is you; your boyfriend absolutely adores you and cares about you and that’s all that matters, so you owe it to him to show him that same attention.
Speaking of, here he comes now, and damn does he look fine. Emerging from the water like some sort of god, Jimin makes his way toward you, Jungkook following closely behind, but your eyes don’t even see him. Droplets of moisture slide down your boyfriend’s hard chest and abs, glistening in the light beautifully. Your mouth gets dry and starts to water all at the same time when you take in how he looks when he sweeps the hair off his forehead, bicep bulging at the subtle movement in the most delicious way. His thighs pop from underneath his trunks, golden skin pulled tight over the strong cords of muscle that are built from exercise, and you can feel your pussy clench. Anything you were thinking about prior to seeing him is long gone from your brain and you can barely function until he’s standing right in front of you, looking angelic with the sunlight beaming behind his head. Your savior. The only one who can snatch you from your thoughts. You forget everything you were feeling insecure about moments before.
“C’mon, let’s head over to the seats.” You blink at Jimin when he speaks, only half registering that he’s talking to you. You don’t even notice that the waves have started up again, the increasing tide nearly knocking you over as you continue to sit and stare. He reaches a hand down to you and you take it, allowing him to pull you up from the water with a laugh.
“When did you get so sexy?” You manage to mumble, still ogling him as you follow Jungkook into the maze of lounge chairs.
He blushes, caught off guard by your sudden compliment. “I’ve been shirtless this entire time, why are you only noticing this now?” Cockiness: the ultimate cover up for shyness. You mirror his grin.
“Oh I’ve noticed, Jiminnie. I just keep noticing every time I look at you. You literally make me breathless.” To this he has nothing to say, looking away from you so you don’t see the bashful smile splitting his cheeks. He could say the same about you, but that would go on forever.
“Hey, there you are!” Hani exclaims, jumping up from where she was reclining to run up to your side. “Come with me, I want shaved ice.” Before you know it, you’re being dragged away before you even have a chance to put your things down. The boys look on in confusion.
“What was that about?” Jimin asks Taehyung, who looks utterly unbothered from where he sits. But as soon as he removes his sunglasses, his two friends can see the furrow in his dark eyebrows.
The concession stand isn’t far away, close enough that you can see where the seats are from where you stand in line. Hani stares straight ahead, instructing you to do the same and you listen, not looking at her when you speak. “So what the hell was that?”
“I don’t know what’s up with Taehyung today,” She blurts, causing you to glance at her, but she quickly reprimands you. “But he’s been acting really weird lately.”
“How so?”
“He was being super nice to me earlier and we actually had, like, a real conversation for once.”
“About?”
“About the word ‘date’. I told him I didn’t like that word and he tried to convince me that this is a date.”
“Oh?”
“But that’s not what’s weird. He’s been really clingy and lowkey possessive of me and it’s starting to freak me out.” You hum in thought and she continues. “Like a few minutes ago, when we were trying to find more beach chairs, because originally we could only get 3 that were next to each other, and I went over to this group of guys sitting next to us and finessed them into moving. Then Taehyung had the nerve to look all butthurt and upset like I did something wrong.” You can tell by the way her voice gets higher in pitch that she’s upset.
“Well, were you flirting with them?” You’re well aware of her definition of “finesse” and it usually involves using her body and charm to get what she wants. And it works almost every time.
“No! ...I mean, I can see how it would look like I was flirting from his point of view.” She scratches her cheek and you sigh.
/////
“What happened?” Jimin asks Taehyung, sitting on the recliner next to him after placing down his towel.
“Hani has no respect for me,” He starts, pouting and turning his body away from where you and her are standing.
“I don’t think Hani respects any of us.” Jungkook states, closing his mouth when Taehyung shoots him a glare.
“What did she do?” Jimin presses, glancing up at you two in the distance.
“We were trying to get seats for you guys when she sees these 3 dudes sitting next to us. She goes ‘I’ll ask them to move so we can have 6 seats together’ and I nod, thinking she’ll just politely ask them to sit somewhere else, but the next thing I know is she’s over there bending over and showing off her tits and ass and flipping her hair and those guys are loving it. I swear, I think one of them was actually drooling. Five minutes later, she comes back like nothing happened and says that we can have the seats.”
“So, you’re upset that she used her body to get what she wants?” Jimin questions with a raised brow. As if she doesn’t do that all the time.
“No, I’m upset that she... well... yeah.” Thinking about it, that’s exactly what’s gotten Tae’s panties in a bundle.
“Hyung, she does that to you all the time.” Jungkook points out, snickering at the look of despair on his friend’s face.
“This is different.” He can’t quite put it into words, but this time her antics struck a nerve in him. Tae can’t really explain because they weren’t there, they didn’t see it like he did.
“Why? Because it wasn’t directed at you this time?” Now Jimin is also chuckling, patting his friend on the shoulder as he weakly tries to defend himself.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Jungkook mocks, imitating Tae’s deep voice. “‘I’m Taehyung and Hani’s only allowed to show off for me because we’re fucking and she’s mine now. Her ass belongs to me and nobody else.’” He laughs loudly, Jimin joining in when Tae frantically turns to make sure you and Hani aren’t heading back yet. He doesn’t even question how Jungkook knows about the two of them.
“Shut up! Both of you!” He hisses.
/////
“Maybe he just doesn’t like you flirting with other men.” You reason to her, almost at the front of the line. “Probably because he likes you.” You wiggle your eyebrows at her and she turns her head from you, accidentally looking back toward your friends and making eye contact with the very man she’s trying to avoid. They both look away quickly.
“It’s not my fault if they flirt with me first. I will not apologize for being Fine As Fuck™, sorry not sorry.” Crossing her arms, she steps up in line ahead of you.
“I’m just saying that you don’t always have to flirt back.”
“Whatever. What do you know, you didn’t even notice Jimin had been flirting with you for 5 years.” She rolls her eyes and you choose not to take offense to that.
“Yeah, but once I finally realized, I actually did something about it and that’s why we’re dating today. I know you’re ‘allergic to commitment’ or whatever, but he likes you. And if you like him back then you need to grow some balls and speak up if you want anything more to happen between you two. Lord knows he’s terrible at taking hints. And apparently you are too.” You side eye her. She ponders your words for a few silent seconds before it’s her turn at the register and she orders her beloved shaved ice. She stays silent when you order too, getting an ice cream cone that’s probably too big for you, and you both head over to the flavor station where she can add her favorite flavored syrups until, finally, she breaks the silence.
“Since when did you get so wise?” She sounds a little spiteful, but you just shrug.
“Seems like I’m good at giving everyone advice but myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just,” You let out a deep huff, causing her to look at you. “I saw He Who Must Not Be Named here, right after we saw Candy.”
“That Bastard-!”
“Listen!” You whine, cutting her off. “He approached me when I was getting lunch and tried to talk to me.”
“What did he say?” Now the two of you are standing in front of the station, blocking anyone who needs to use the machine, but no one seems to need it so you stay in your position.
“Some bullshit about how I’m spying on him and his whore while they’re on a date. I really don’t feel like repeating it,”
“Understandable.”
“But he really got into my head. Jimin didn’t see him, thankfully, but I felt really bad and insecure and all this shit that made me realize that I’m still not fully over the break up. Of course I’m over him, but this whole thing still feels so fresh and I kept trying to ignore it and distract myself with Jimin, but I’m still so broken. I think... I don’t know.” Bowing your head, you try to control your emotions. Saying this out loud felt worse than you thought it would. You probably sound so pathetic right now.
“Honey, no one expects you to be healed yet. It’s been, what, two weeks? Break ups take time and no amount of friends or perfect new boyfriends is going to change that. We can certainly help to make the healing go faster, but it’ll take time. And maybe these feelings will never go away, but you’ll get stronger and learn to deal with them. It’s way too soon to see him again, I can’t believe he even had the guts to come up to you. Actually, where is he? I need to have a word with him.”
“Don’t. I don’t want anyone interacting with him, he’s not worth it.” A small inkling of you really wants to see Hani beat the shit out of him and his new girl, but you have to be more mature than that.
“Fine, but just say the word and I’ll be there to kick his ass any time, any place.” She smiles, and you thank her fondly. “Anything for my main bitch.” Hani may be salty, loud, and obnoxious most of the time, but there are a few select moments where she can be really sweet. Her loyalty is unmatched by anyone you’ve met and that’s why you’re proud to call her your best friend. She’s had your back since Day 1 and you know that’s not going to change for a very long time. The tender moment is cut short, however, by some douchebag bumping her out of the way to get to the machine you’re both blocking.
/////
“I don’t think you have the right to be angry with her, hyung. She’s not your girlfriend or anything.” Jungkook takes a seat now too, sipping from Taehyung’s water bottle, which he snatches back from his hands.
“Don’t you have a date to entertain or something? Why are you over here with us?” Realization hits Kookie as he remembers that he left Jieun alone in the water, and he gets up in a hurry to rush back to her, hoping she doesn’t think he’s a dick for leaving her.
“He’s right.” Tae scoffs at Jimin, sliding his sunglasses back over his eyes. “I’m not here to tell you that it’s wrong for you to feel that way, but until you actually tell her that you want more, she’s free to do whatever she wants. And so are you.” Both men turn their heads to Hani just in time to see some guy bump into her while she’s flavoring her ice. She looks at him, irritated, but he smiles regardless, bowing his head in apology. They watch as he sparks up conversation, ignoring her raised eyebrows and tight lip to lean in closer to her.
“I know that, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think the flirting will ever stop, regardless of what I do.” Tae slumps.
/////
“That’s not what I meant.” The mystery guy chuckles nervously, clearly intimidated by Hani’s attitude, but obviously not enough to stop talking to her.
“It doesn’t matter what you meant, that’s what you said. Besides, you were already being rude by interrupting our very heartfelt conversation and you’re still being rude because you seem to think it’s okay to start a new one in the middle of ours.” Her pretty eyes bore into his and he’s left speechless for a moment, trying to recover the smooth ease he had a few sentences ago.
He looks to you seemingly for some sort of help but you just take a lick of your ice cream and look him up and down with a judgey raise of your brow. “That was pretty rude of you.”
“Then I apologize, it was my fault-“
“It absolutely was.” Hani cuts him off and his mouth is left hanging.
“I just wanted to know what you two beautiful girls are doing over here all by yourselves.” His toothy grin is back, though he doesn’t pull it off nearly as well as Jimin does, and both of you roll your eyes at his cheesy pick up line.
“We’re not interested.” Hani begins to walk away and you follow at her heels.
“And who says we’re alone?” Looking over your shoulder, you see that he’s taken a few steps toward you, but stops when you glare at him.
“Wait, I didn’t catch your name.” He calls to Hani, to which she replies:
“I didn’t throw it.” Without even glancing back at him. Then she turns and smirks at you triumphantly. “See, I didn’t flirt back. I’m making progress already.”
Back over with the boys, you finally get the chance to sit and relax, offering to share your ice cream with Jimin because it truly is huge, and he gladly accepts. He bites it like a serial killer, but you decide to let it go this one time because it feels nice sitting next to him and just being with him like this. Hani’s reassurance has instilled new confidence in you and you realize that you don’t have to pretend that everything is normal again. Jimin understands that you’re still hurt, he knows he isn’t the Magic Cure to everything, but he’s doing his best to be there for you and keep you happy and okay for now. That’s all he can do, that’s the only thing that’s in his control, and now that you know your role, it’s easier to see his intentions. All he wants is to be happy with you and show you that you’re loved. He isn’t trying to be a replacement or what your previous boyfriend should have been. He’s just being himself and doing what he’s always done best: be there for you.
Jimin isn’t sure how well he’s been doing at this whole boyfriend thing, but you seem to be okay. Something is definitely going on with you today, but he won’t press you if you don’t want to talk about it. Plus, he knows that if you don’t tell him, you’ll most likely confide in Hani, and he’s fine with that. You seem to be doing better than before, more at ease, comfortable, and as you share licks of ice cream, he can’t help but stare at you and get lost in his emotions. He doesn’t understand how someone had this, had you, and let all of it go to ruin so carelessly. God, you’re so beautiful it kills him. The way your eyes sparkle whenever you look up at him, cheeks curling in laughter when he gets a brain freeze. Even the way you swat at tiny bugs that surround your face is cute, your little frustrated huffs making him chuckle. But his eyes are locked on one thing in particular and he can’t seem to focus on anything else: your mouth. It should be illegal for you to look this good, glossy lips parting so you can lick your way up the dripping cone, the action almost seeming erotic when you do it while making eye contact with him. That sinful tongue of yours peeking out to lick away white, creamy goodness that sticks to your chin and the corners of your mouth, leaving them slightly wet and shiny. It reminds him of something else, something he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about since your first time together last week, and the imagery is driving him nuts.
“You’re so perfect.” He comments randomly, making you raise your brows at him.
“I’m not.” Pushing hair away from your face, you look down bashfully. He lifts your chin with one finger in the most cliche way, but in all honesty, if you weren’t already sitting your knees would have gone weak.
“Okay, nobody’s perfect, but you’re about as close as it gets. You’re perfect to me.” You can feel yourself blushing, face hotter than the metal of the lounger you’re sitting on, but you’re starting to get used to feeling that way around Jimin. The increased heart rate, flushed face, butterflies, those are all symptoms of being around him and you’re sure they won’t be going away any time soon.
“Where is this coming from?” You ask, smiling as his face nears unnoticeably.
“I told you, I’m going to say it every time I think it just so you know how often I’m thinking about you. So you better get used to taking compliments.” Before you can say anything, your lips collide in a sweet kiss, not deep or hurried, but careful and loving.
“Look at them, it’s like they’re in a fucking movie.” Hani chides playfully at Jimin’s first compliment to a still disgruntled Taehyung. He doesn’t say anything to her but looks at you two, envious of what you have. Yet his heart still bursts with joy that his best friends have found love. This could be us but you playing, he thinks. “Are you still mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you.” He says simply, returning to his laid back position and shutting his eyes.
“You’re also not a good liar.” She’s too tired to play along, this is becoming painful. “If you’re still in your feelings about me ‘flirting’ with those guys earlier, I’m sorry. I was just trying to get these seats, I didn’t know it would make you feel that way.” Was she apologizing? Hani never apologizes, at least not sincerely. He wants to see where this goes.
“I don’t care about who you flirt with, you’re a grown woman, do what you want.”
“And I’m sorry about the guy at the concession stand. I know you saw. I didn’t flirt back.”
“It’s not about the flirting, Hani-“
“And I’m sorry about what I said earlier, on the Teacups.” This makes Tae stop, looking up at her over his sunglasses before realizing that he probably looks silly and taking them off. “I know what I said sounded harsh, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I said we would never be more than fuck buddies but... I don’t know that. And I don’t know how you feel. Really, I don’t even know how I feel!” She lets out a humorless laugh, shifting her eyes away from him. “I’m... I’m just... such a fucking idiot sometimes. The truth is, I panicked when you said all that stuff about being a couple. I- I got scared because it made me **feel something and I didn’t know what to do with that so I got all defensive and... I’m sorry. We can be whatever you want us to be. I need to stop jumping to conclusions and making decisions for the both of us, it’s not fair to you. So, we can be whatever.”
Tae doesn’t respond, just looks at her looking at him, blinking wordlessly. He isn’t too sure what he should say or what she was expecting to hear from him. Should he forgive her? Leave her on edge a little? He doesn’t know what to do, so he just nods.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Hani blanches, and for probably the first time ever, Taehyung sees her show a little shame and humility. She’s a person that lives unapologetically with zero regrets and here he is turning her cheeks pink and making her mouth drop open like a fish. “The fuck is ‘okay’ supposed to mean?” But her words don’t hold the usual spice in them, it’s genuine and soft, vulnerable.
“I believe ‘okay’ is a word generally used to show acknowledgement for what someone has just said,” She narrows her eyes at him and he grins. “It means that I’ll take what you said to heart and think about it.”
Before she can reply, you gasp loudly and stand up, streaks of translucent white sliding down your chest between your boobs as Jimin sits there flush faced and dumbfounded. The ice cream (yes it’s ice cream, get your mind out of the gutter) had dropped out of its container and landed straight on your chest while you and Jimin were making out, leaving him sitting there with an empty cone in his hand and a spatter of frozen dairy on your chair. The coldness sends chills down your spine and you shiver, hands up and ready to do something, but there’s really nothing you can do at this point.
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom to clean up.” You stutter out, avoiding the amused and questioning looks from the people around you. Taehyung stands up too, leaving Hani with words right on the tip of her tongue.
“I have to go to the restroom too, I’ll walk you there.” And then the two of you are gone, Jimin and Hani staring at your backs as you disappear into the crowd. As you walk, he turns to you, smirking cockily. “Your timing could not have been better.”
“What?” The initial shock is gone but you’re still uncomfortable, keeping up your fast walking pace.
“I don’t know what you said to her earlier, but Hani just apologized to me and I think she was expecting me to confess my feelings to her or something. Then I just stood up and left.” He’s laughing now, almost like he’s lost his sanity, and you don’t know what to say to that. Thankfully, he doesn’t wait for your reply. “I feel invincible right now, like I can do anything! You should have seen her face, I don’t think anyone’s ever left her hanging like that, especially on the rare occasions when she shows emotion. Now she knows how I feel all the time.” It almost feels like justice to Taehyung, the way he’s flipped the tables on her like that. He’s the one being sought after now, not the other way around, and she has to sit there and guess what he’s thinking until he decides to open up and tell her. It’s a game of wit, control, and finally it’s his turn to deal the cards and give her a taste of her own medicine. When he glances over at you, you hear his snort. “You know that looks like cum, right?” He points with one of his long fingers, and you answer him with a glare and a slap at his hand, ignoring his comment.
“I’m happy for you. Just don’t drag it out for too long, or else she’s gonna give up on you and start hating you.” You’ve seen her do it before.
“I won’t.” He sighs as you reach the separate restrooms. He does plan on basking in the mini victory while he can, however.
In the bathroom, you try to collect yourself. Your mind is still reeling, not from the ice cream incident, but from that kiss. You’ve never kissed in public before and now that you’re thinking back on how you probably looked, it’s embarrassing. But it didn’t feel wrong. Everything about it felt right, like his lips were made for you. You wonder how long he’ll keep the complimenting thing going, you’re not complaining, but you imagine that he’ll stop at some point. You don’t want him to stop. You don’t want it to ever stop because it makes you feel good, special, important, loved. It’s amazing how much the little things matter in a relationship, things you never needed or wanted before suddenly become something you thrive off of and you can’t pull yourself back from the high. Jimin calling you perfect, you never thought you needed to hear that until now. And it was sincere, everything in his body language showed you that, and that kiss made you feel more than a little loved. It also made you a lot horny, and now you have to deal with that familiar throbbing between your legs, only this time it calls for Jimin and nobody else.
Fixing your appearance, you take a few deep breaths in the mirror. How can one man make you forget yourself so quickly with just a touch of his fingertips? Jimin has so much power over you in the best way possible and you’ve only been together for a week. But his power is not like the kind your ex gained and abused, no, Jimin earned his by treating you like a human being and loving you with his heart, and you’re certain he would never use that against you. With high hopes, you walk out of the bathroom, only to run into the same metaphorical brick wall that’s been holding you back all this time.
“I saw you with your new little girlfriend and the three stooges over there.” A voice approaches you, causing an immediate headache to form behind your eyes. Something tells you to keep walking and ignore him, but your body freezes against your will and allows him to near you.
“I already know how you feel about my friends, I’m not stupid. But obviously I’m not that smart either because I was dumb enough to date you in the first place.” You mumble out. “And what makes Jimin my ‘little girlfriend’ and not a man? Does he need to act like a dick all the time like you to gain your approval?” The scowl on your lips only deepens when you see his smirk.
“He doesn’t need my approval, he’s just a rebound anyway. I always knew you were quick with the guys...” He drawls. The degrading insults are right on his tongue and he doesn’t even need to directly say them for you to know what he’s implying, to know what he thinks of you.
“So you get to move on immediately after our breakup with no remorse, but when I move on to someone who actually loves me, I’m the slut? Yeah, that makes a whole lot of fucking sense.” You roll your eyes, fed up with this conversation and wishing he would just walk away already.
“I’m not the bad guy here, I found someone better than you; did you expect me to hold myself back just to appease you?”
“No, I found someone better than you; you downgraded from me to whatever the hell that is.” You say, eyes pointing directly behind him and he knows exactly who you’re looking at— the short woman still too intimidated by your last encounter to approach any closer. Your level of sass shocks him for a moment and you know you’ve caught him. Looks like you’ve finally realized you don’t have to take his shit anymore. While he is still speechless, you decide to continue. “And if you weren’t the ‘bad guy’ here you would have taken the shorter, less complicated route and broken up with me long before you started seeing another woman. But you decided to take the most painful way around things and cheat, then lie about it, only to break up with me when you got caught and acted like it was your plan all along!”
He opens his mouth to say something, possibly to defend himself or insult you more, but a third voice cuts in before he can respond.
“Excuse me, ma’am, sir,” A park security guard interrupts, walking to stand right next to you two. He’s not super strong or tall or anything, but he has a uniform and you can tell it makes him feel big. He puffs out his chest a bit as he speaks. “I’m going to have to ask you to keep your arguing and profanity down to a minimum, this is a family friendly environment.”
You make eye contact with him and you must be giving him a death glare because he instantly shrivels up at the sight of it. The guard clears his throat, wishing both of you a good day before thanking you and walking away awkwardly, leaving you to continue your conversation.
“Please stop approaching me, it’s to the point where you look like the stalker here, not me. And I’m gonna repeat this old childhood phrase because apparently you don’t know it: if you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your mouth shut.” With this, you turn your back on him and walk back to where your friends are. He reaches out for you, but you’re quick enough to evade his hand. If he would have touched you, you were sure you would have lost it and punched him in the jaw, but luckily his hand misses and you are able to walk away peacefully. You look up to see a concerned Taehyung who watched the entire scene unfold.
“Do I need to go over there and fuck him up?” He asks in his sweet baritone voice once you reach him.
“No. Why does everyone want to fight him?” You sigh.
“Because he deserves it.” Taehyung shrugs, throwing an arm over your shoulders, and you lean your head into his side as he walks you back over.
“What happened?” Upon seeing the look on your face, Jimin gets up and moves toward you, not taking no for an answer when you try to wave him off.
“She saw-“
“Don’t say his name.” You snap, and Taehyung rolls his eyes.
“She saw That Bastard over there and he felt the need to come up and say something to her. It looked like she handled him pretty well but I was watching to make sure nothing else went down.” Passing you off like a baby, Taehyung hands you to Jimin who pulls you into his arms to cuddle you tight.
“I’m fine, really. It’s not that big of a deal.” You muffle into his chest, cheek pressed against his bare skin.
“That’s it. Where’s Jungkook? We’re going over there to rough him up a bit for talking to our girl like that.” Hani stands up too and now you feel like you’re surrounded, so you push Jimin away gently just so you can breathe.
“Guys stop. Leave it alone. This doesn’t have anything to do with you guys, it’s something that I can handle on my own.” That’s a damn lie and they know it, it shows on their faces.
“But you don’t have to.” Hani stresses, looking straight into your eyes. “We’re your support system, let us help.”
“The best thing you guys can do for me is to help me forget about him. I don’t want this day to become more about him than it is about us having fun together. Can we just pretend that never happened and move on?” With sympathetic stares, everyone nods and let’s it go. The day progresses as if nothing is wrong, you all finish the rest of the slides at the water park before deciding to get dressed once again and head back to the regular park to experience the remaining few rollercoasters.
Jungkook and Jieun have long disappeared from your group, it is their first date after all, so you completely understand that they want to do their own thing for a while. Eventually, Jimin makes the point that you are also on one of your first dates as he pulls you away from Taehyung and Hani, who barely realize as they’re absorbed in their own conversation. From what you heard, Taehyung is finally enlightening her about his feelings, though probably not confessing to her directly, and you wonder if today is the start of something new for them. They’re talk must have went well because you later see them strolling around together, Hani tapping out from the rollercoasters for the rest of the afternoon and instead focusing her energy on winning prizes at the game counters.
You and Jimin just walk for a while, taking in the beautiful scenery around you. He’s watching you, you can feel it, but you try your best to ignore it. Now that he knows what has been bothering you all day, Jimin feels a little guilty. As your boyfriend, he should have done something about your ex, told him to leave you alone and never talk to you ever again or something. But he is more concerned about your feelings more than anything. Gloom has consumed the rest of your energy and you seem almost sluggish now, dragging your feet and staring off into space. He feels responsible in a way and tries to make up for it by actively looking around for anything that may upset you so that he can protect you, but he gets the sense that you’re doing the same, even if it’s not intentional. The two of you get on a few more rides, Jimin even suggesting it despite you knowing how terrified he was of them, but nothing he does seems to lift your spirits.
“Can we just... sit?” You ask him quietly, leading him over to a bench on the side. The oppressive heat swirls around you, but you don’t seem to mind it anymore, refusing his offer of a cold water bottle. So you two just sit in silence and people-watch, observing the hyper kids, disciplining parents, goofy teenagers and their friends, happy couples. Happy couples. Gut feelings are the worst, especially if you don’t know what to expect or why you’re even feeling that way. Jimin’s gut is telling him that trouble is coming. He studies you as your eyes bounce couple to couple, old to young, clingy to awkward. Then your expression changes to one of disbelief and he follows your line of sight until they land on a sickeningly familiar pair. He has never seen your ex’s new fling, but he can tell by the way his arm is coiled around her that she must be Candy. He frowns, watching That Bastard pause with a venomous smirk to make eye contact with you before diving in and devouring her mouth. It’s obscene and unnecessary and 100% a power move just to get under your skin— and it works. Before he can even inhale to say anything, you’re on your feet and bolting away, leaving Jimin in your dust as he scrabbles to grab his bag and chase after you.
You always thought it was so stupid in movies when girls would run away from things that upset them, stumbling through suddenly dense crowds to get away, blinded by their distress and gushing tears. You never understood it— until now as you push people out of the way so that you can get through, sensing their hard stares searing into your back as you run as fast as you can. Of course, you don’t even know where you’re going, searching for anywhere that will allow you to shed your tears in peace and process it all, but privacy is scarce in a place like this and you most certainly don’t have a clue where to find it. Jimin’s voice calls desperately behind you in an effort to get you to stop or at least slow down. He’s faster, but surprisingly less agile in the skill of dodging people, and his frustration grows with every group of people he gets stuck behind as he watches you distance yourself from him. Miraculously, you find an unoccupied family restroom that locks from the inside, and as soon as you reach it, you shut and lock the door behind you to keep out the outside world so that you can finally break down and crumble to the floor.
The room is spacious and astonishingly clean, probably rarely used because of its placement in the park. You don’t know where you’ve run off to, but Jimin doesn’t recognize this part of the park when he looks around, standing outside the locked door, trying to catch his breath. You weren’t running from him, no, but now that you think about it, maybe you were.
“Baby, please open the door.” He pleads.
Maybe you didn’t want him to see you like this, crying hysterically over the fucker that cheated and dumped you two weeks ago. Maybe you didn’t want him to see this side of you. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve cried in front of him, the two of you have been through a lot over the years, but there’s something about this situation that makes it different. He can hear you sobbing on the other side of the door, voice bouncing off the walls of the room and echoing in his ears even from the outside, and you know he knows you’re crying. But you can’t let him see it for himself. There’s a difference between him knowing you’re a mess and actually witnessing it. Something that makes it realer for you. Showing your vulnerability for a man that never loved you, who mentally and emotionally abused you, it makes you feel stupid. And weak. And the worst part is that he’s the reason why you think of yourself this way.
“(Y/n). I’m here for you- I want to be here for you. I know you’re distraught, you have every right to be, just let me comfort you.” Jimin’s gentle voice is slightly muffled through the heavy door. With head and hands pressed to its surface, he hopes you can hear him.
“I don’t want you to see me like this.” Your response comes after another minute or two of sniffling, frantically trying to calm yourself down enough to speak to him.
“I don’t care about what you look like right now, I just want to see you.”
“No, I mean I don’t want you to see me crying because of him.” He’s silent for a moment before you hear his sigh. Imagining the disappointment on his face. “Did you see him?”
“Yes, I saw him. Babe, it doesn’t matter to me that you’re crying about him. The only thing that matters is that you’re okay. It is my job as your boyfriend and best friend— as someone who loves you deeply— to make sure that you’re alright and to comfort and reassure you. That’s always been my top priority and that’s never going to change. So if you need to cry, I’ll be there with tissues. If you need a hug, I’ll be there with open arms and forehead kisses. If you want to hit something, I’ll be your punching bag. But I can’t help you from the outside like this, I never could. Please let me in this time. Don’t shut me out.”
As soon as he finishes speaking, another wave of emotion hits you and drags you under. And this time it’s because of his words. Jimin has always been there for you, and you’ve always been there to push him away. Your stubbornness to open up to him on various occasions has built up a virtually indestructible wall between the two of you, one that you reconstruct every time you feel the slightest bit sensitive. He tries every way he can think of to reach you on the inside of it: go around the wall, jump over it, break through it, but your forces are impenetrable when you want them to be. And now you’ve even created a physical barrier for him to get through. What is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? Sitting here thinking about it, you realize that you’ve been hurting Jimin all along. He’s right outside that door, waiting to give you his love and unconditional support and here you are, alone, focused on yourself and the actions of another man. If this relationship is going to work out, you need to learn how to let him into your head and be there for you. He can’t read minds.
When the door finally unlocks, you snatch Jimin in with you before locking it again, back still facing him. Your name slips from his lips and you relent, turning to look at him, and his heart shatters in its cage at the sight of you looking so broken. Immediately, he pulls you into his arms— or were you the one to fling yourself at him?— and your cheek connects with his firm chest. The only time you’ve cried over your recent breakup (that he knows of) is the day that it happened. He remembers when you showed up at his house hiding your tearstained cheeks and puffy, red eyes behind a bag of comfort food and a fake smile as you watched him play video games, avoiding his questions. At that time, all he wanted to do was engulf you in his arms and never let you go, but that’s not what you wanted; you were too stubborn to admit your emotions, using distractions to keep your mind off things so you can overcome your feelings alone. Except, you were never really overcoming them, you were pushing them off to the side, and they kept piling up until the weight of them became too much and they tumbled over, slamming down into you from the slightest push.
Jimin lets you cry for a while, stroking your hair and back, shushing you and whispering sweet nothings to make you feel better, but it was clear that you would need more than this. He could tell that you were still trying to calm yourself down, taking deep, ragged breaths only to burst into another wave of sobs, each one more intense than the last. You’re mind is a whirlwind of torment: thoughts of your ex trying so hard to disturb you, how you’ve been distancing yourself from Jimin, and the fact that you’re not over this whole thing yet and how much you want the pain to be over already. Everything is just pouring out of you right now and you don’t know how to stop it.
“Hey,” He starts softly into your hair. “What’s going through that pretty head of yours?” He wants to say something helpful, but first, he needs to know exactly what you’re upset about. He doesn’t want to assume.
When you manage to peel your face away from his body, you discover that his shirt is soaked with your tears. You apologize weakly, running a hand over the material, but he shakes his head at you. He’s staring down at you expectantly, awaiting your explanation, but you can’t look him in the eyes knowing you look so crazy right now, makeup smeared and ruined, eyes swollen and bloodshot, lip trembling, nose dripping. He reaches over to give you something to wipe your face with other than his shirt and you thank him before attempting to speak.
“What does he have against me? Why does he want to see me suffer so badly?” And you’re crying again, this time into the saturated paper towel pressed to your face. But you try to continue. “Even when we dated, he always tried to hurt me. Convince me that I would never do better than him, that I should be honored that he chose me. I feel so dumb because I’m only just realizing that he sucked me into his little game; that he only wants to break me, and he won’t even stop now that we’re not together anymore! You all told me he was a piece of shit. I should have listened. And I’m starting to accept those past mistakes, but seeing him kiss her-“ You fight to hold back your cries. “It felt like a slap in the face. That was him telling me that I meant absolutely nothing, that he didn’t care about me or my feelings and that he wanted me to see how fucking happy he is with his new whore, without me. I just don’t understand why anyone would do something like that! I want him out of my life!”
“You’re not going to like this, but I have to say it.” Jimin starts, making you look up into his eyes finally. “(Y/n), the only reason he’s still in your life is because you’re keeping him there. He may be physically away from you, but he’s still controlling you in a way. He controls how you think, what you wear, even how much fun you have while you’re doing things that have nothing to do with him. It’s almost like you’re waiting for him to come back and say something to you, comment on the way you’re living your life, and all of that means that you still care significantly about what he thinks about you— about us— when he probably never cared about your thoughts and emotions to begin with, even while you were dating.” Your eyebrows knit together and you shut your eyes, trying to control your breathing. “I know that hurts, it’s supposed to, but you needed to hear it. I love that you care so deeply about people, you have the biggest heart out of anyone I know. But I almost wish you didn’t because then this wouldn’t be so hard on you.”
“I can’t not care about him, I spent 2 years caring and worrying about him. I think I just want to see something, anything, that shows me that he had any feelings for me at all. And he’s doing everything in his power to show me that I was nothing to him.” Jimin wipes away your slowing tears with his hand, grabbing another paper towel.
“But I think that’s just it. You did mean something to him, he wouldn’t have stayed with you for that long if you didn’t, but now he’s overcompensating to hide the fact that he regrets his mistake and is just as upset as you are. I’m sure he hasn’t paid any attention to Candy ever since he saw you earlier today. If you were unimportant and she meant anything to him, don’t you think he would have spent his time with her instead of following us and plotting how to get a reaction out of you? He’s just using her. To get to you. We know he’s manipulative, you know that, so you can’t let him keep controlling you like this. You have to let him go.”
“I’m trying.” More tears fall down your face, but he’s quick to catch them.
“I know you are. And I’m aware that it’ll take time, but I’ll be here for you every step of the way. I just want you to be happy.”
“I am happy. I’m happy with you. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been! Please don’t think that this means I love you any less.” Your arms wrap around his body again, pulling him close to feel his heartbeat. “He thinks you’re just a rebound, that I’m just dating you to spite him. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m not going to lie, I have thought about the possibility that I’m just a rebound...” His body tenses slightly and you can’t believe your ears. “I know I’m not, but I also knew that you would need time to recover from this. Maybe we were too quick to jump into this relationship-“
“Jimin, I would never do something like that, especially not to you. I love you and I want to be with you, and that has **nothing to do with him.” Suddenly you’re stoic, tears dried and eyes alight with flames at the thought that he would even think that. You were completely unaware that he felt this way, that your obsession with your ex’s obsession with you was making him feel insecure and unsure of your feelings for him. And you suppose that’s all on you.
“Good.” He can’t help the smile that lifts his lips, the corner of yours lifting a bit too. “Sometimes I’m selfish and I want you all to myself. I know this isn’t about me or my feelings because you still need time to heal, but sometimes I get jealous when you think about him while you’re with me.” A cute pout forms on his lips and his aegyo is unmatched. “Like earlier when you kept zoning out. I knew you were thinking about him, but I wanted so badly for you to be daydreaming of me. Because I’m always thinking about you.” Pulling you closer, your hips connect so that your bodies are flush against each other, faces an inch apart.
“But I do think of you, you’ve been running through my mind nonstop for the past week.” Your hand climbs up to brush his cheek, tracing the soft flesh as you look into each other’s eyes.
“Well, you’ve been running through my mind since the day I met you. You must be exhausted.” A playful scoff leaves you when he says this, a genuine smile lifting your cheeks.
“Terrible joke.” The mood breaks and you’re both caught in a fit of giggles, bodies still pressed together.
Jimin can only think about how beautiful you look right now, even after you’ve been crying, and he takes this time to admire you. You think you’re weak for breaking down over your ex, but Jimin thinks you’re incredibly strong for having the guts to move on from a person like him and make the effort to live a normal life again after everything you’ve been through instead of locking yourself in your home and moping all day. He recalls that time his ex-girlfriend broke up with him and he didn’t leave his house for several days in a row until you came and forced him to get up. You’d said that the best revenge he could get on his ex is to resume his life like nothing happened and to move on. And that’s what he did. Of course, it was much easier for him to do this when the woman that he truly loved all along was right with him every step of the way. He was really thankful that you were there for him and he’s even more thankful that he gets to be here for you to return the favor.
Before you both realize it, you’re leaning in, laughter having died down until all that remains is genuine longing and trust in your eyes. The first kiss lands softly on your lips, tentative and sweet before he pulls back to look for your reaction. But all you do is wrap your hands around his neck and pull him down for something deeper, surprising him with the force you use as you part his lips with yours, nibbling his bottom lip and encouraging sounds from both of you. The temperature in the room seems to spike higher as you continue to make out, and the sudden urge to rip each other’s clothes off starts to consume you. His hips roll into yours slowly, his semi erect length pressing into your stomach and pulling a moan from you when you break the kiss for air. Biting your lips, you drop your hands down to his bulge, palming him through his pants and pressing kisses to his chest.
“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.” Jimin says, although his fingers press against your waist when you undo his button and zipper. “I don’t want you to think that you have to do anything for me.”
You appreciate his concern, always the gentleman, but at this point the fire in the pit of your stomach from earlier has reignited just from being alone with him and you can’t think of anything you’d rather be doing than this. “That’s nice and all, but I’ve been dying to do this since we got here this morning. I’ve been wet ever since I saw you walking around at the water park.” You say as you push his shorts down just enough so that you can pull him out.
“I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that was horny while we were there.” He finally relaxes when you sink down to your knees, licking your lips when you are eye level with his dick. “But I need to hear you say it first, just to make sure. Tell me that you want this.” He stares down at you expectantly as you adjust your position, looking up at him with sparkling eyes.
“I want this,” You say, placing kisses along his hips as you speak, running a hand up his stomach to move his shirt out of the way. “I want your lips... I want your cock... I want your cum...” Finally reaching his tip, you give it a small lick before moaning. “I want you.” And then you’re leaning forward to take his entire length into your mouth, still only half hard so he fits easily. A loud hiss of surprise leaves his lips, followed by an unfiltered groan of pleasure when he feels how wet and hot your mouth is around him. One hand falls to the top of your head, tangling in your hair as you begin to bob up and down on him.
“You can have me, baby, I’m all yours.” Jimin can’t take his eyes off of you, the sight of his cock stuffed down your throat enough to hypnotize him. He’s pictured this thousands of times, yet somehow this still surpasses every one of his expectations. Your smooth lips slide easily up his shaft, tightening as you suckle on his tip, running your tongue all around the head. Precum leaks onto your taste buds and you groan, pussy throbbing with desire when you feel him rapidly stiffening inside you, his weight heavy on your jaw. You take him in all the way a few more times to wet his flesh with your thick saliva and he watches with glazed eyes as it dribbles down your chin while your hands twist expertly along him.
“You’re getting hard so fast. Like what you see?” You tease, earning yourself a little tug on your hair, but to Jimin’s surprise, you moan in response. Before he can say anything, you reconnect your lips to his head, bobbing shallowly along the sensitive area as both your hands squeeze and jerk the rest of his now completely erected cock. His breath hitches and his abs contract, already glistening with the sheen of sweat.
“Ah, fuck,” He throws his head back when you suck harder, eyes still peering up at him beautifully. “This is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. You’re amazing at this, baby girl.” The breathless quality of his praise makes you hum, cheeks heating up at the view you have of him from this angle. He looks like a classical piece of artwork, sculpted and chiseled everywhere that counts, his plump lips wet from the amount of times he’s licked them as his dark eyes fall on you. His stare makes your knees wobble beneath you, already damp panties now gushing with wetness at the way his fingers caress your scalp gently in appreciation. You use your tongue to eagerly lap at his sopping slit, tasting more of his salty flavor as he finally lets loose an honest moan that you can feel through your mouth. “Can you take more of me, baby?”
He moves his hips a bit, sliding just a little further down your tongue and you smile up at him through your eyes, humming an answer before removing one, then both of your hands and letting him penetrate your throat when you press forward until your nose tickles his base. Another loud groan rips from his chest, reverberating against the hard walls and ringing in your head. His fingers grip your hair tight and you have to squeeze your eyes and legs shut at the bolt of pleasure and pain that travels through you, satisfaction written all over you despite the dampness of your eyes. You deep throat him a few more times, relaxing your jaw and focusing on breathing through your nose so that you don’t gag around his thick girth, but the moment his hips jerk, your muscles tighten again and you lose your rhythm, producing an obscene gagging noise as your throat closes around him. His hand in your hair offers the slightest bit of resistance when you pull back, and upon looking up at his face, you find pure, unadulterated bliss on his features, teeth sinking into his lower lip to hold back the slew of sounds on the tip of his tongue. Jimin wants so desperately to look at the wonders you’re working below his waist, but he feels like if he looks down at you he’ll lose his load right there and that’s not how he wants this to end. Especially not when he noticed the way that one of your free hands snuck down into your shorts not long ago.
“Good?” You ask when you see that he still hasn’t opened his eyes yet. You’re still trying to catch shaky breaths, swallowing hard to regain use of your throat and Jimin is still standing there looking shell shocked. As soon as he opens his eyes to reassure you, you go down on him again, this time intentionally making yourself choke once his tip enters your throat. Holding yourself there for a few seconds, you listen to the ragged breaths and small whimpers Jimin makes above you, thighs and fingers trembling ever so slightly in restraint.
“Holy s-shit, (Y/n), just like that,” He curses, trying his hardest to keep his eyes open. “That’s my good girl, taking this cock so well. You look so pretty choking on my cock.” You had already witnessed his dirty talk the first time you fucked, yet you’re still surprised by the filthy words he produces so easily. You wonder if you’ll get to see another side of him today. He strokes your cheek with one hand, loving how he can feel himself sliding in and out through the thin layer of your hollowed skin. He takes in your gorgeous face as you continue to take him deeply, using one hand to stroke what you can’t fit, and he thinks he’ll go insane. Your glittering eyes brim with fresh tears, this time not from sadness or anger, but from the effort you put into making him feel good. Your cheeks are splashed with color both from the heat and from your actions, and sweat beads at your forehead as you work tirelessly on him.
You’ve slowed to a steady pace, sensually licking up and down his cock while making intense eye contact with him, just like you had done with your ice cream earlier. He’s getting close now, you can tell by the subtle throbbing that starts at his base, and you work on making yourself look as visually pleasing as possible. He’s watching you like a hawk as you pull your mouth off of him, gazing at him innocently as you lick up and down his veins, teasing the frenulum and circling around the tip. You allow more spit to drip onto him, everything now soaking, and the sight makes him dizzy with arousal, but when you remove your hand from your panties and use it to play with his balls, that’s when he draws the line. Your fingers are sticky and wet on his spit slicked sac and he feels he’s reached his breaking point, so he yanks you away from him by the hair and pulls you up before you can even blink.
He doesn’t want to cum like this, he needs to be inside you.
Smashing his lips against yours, Jimin backs you into the nearest wall so he can push his body against yours, wanting to feel all of you. By the time he pulls away, you’re gasping for air, taking in large puffs as he kisses his way down your jaw, your neck, down to the collar of your shirt. And then it’s gone. He has it up and over your head in no time flat along with your bra, tossing them aside onto the counter. Once you’re exposed, he dives in to kiss around your chest, licking everywhere but the erected peaks that practically tingle for his attention.
“Jimin, please.” You moan, eyes shut as you rest your weight against the wall. He plants pecks and love bites all along your skin, sure to leave them in covered areas, and you hiss at the sting of his teeth, whining when he uses his tongue to soothe over them. Your fingers card through his hair, pushing it away from his face gently as you try to be patient about the call of your nipples and the drip between your thighs, but you don’t have to wait long because soon he’s licking over the buds hungrily, sucking one of them into his mouth and pinching at the other with unforgiving fingers. “Ah!”
The thigh he has pressed between your legs catches you by surprise when your hips roll into it unintentionally. Toes curling in your shoes, you jolt at the sensation, throwing your head back to crash into the wall. He looks up at you in shock and concern when he hears the noise and you both stare at each other for a second before breaking out into cute giggles, his hand reaching up to rub the back of your head.
“Be careful, silly.” He grins, offering a quick peck to your lips before slipping back into that dominant, lust driven mask he wore just moments ago. “Grind on my leg, baby.” The duality is shocking. His words stir something within you, though, and you immediately comply, rubbing against him experimentally. To help you, he quickly removes your shorts, leaving just your drenched panties as a barrier against his clothed thigh. And then he’s back to sucking your other breast with enthusiasm. The feeling of his hard muscles rubbing on your clit is more than relieving, and you practically melt into a nice rhythm that has you moaning instantly. “Fuck, you’re so wet I can feel you soaking through my pants.”
“S-Sorry.” You apologize quietly, cheeks burning when you realize that it’ll probably leave a stain, but Jimin doesn’t care.
“I want you so badly, baby girl.” He groans, hands on your ass to help you move on his thigh. Your breathing picks up, chest rising and falling right in front of his face as he places more marks between the valley of your breasts. Circling your hips, you can only focus on the empties inside of you, wishing it was filled with his thick, hot cock that rests only a few inches from you, twitching with the need to be touched. The thought sends heat throughout your body and you speed up your movements, gripping onto Jimin’s shoulders when you feel your high approaching. He flexes his muscle and your eyes roll to the back of your head from the new sensation, and suddenly you’re moaning his name desperately, bucking into him a few more times before you finally reach your peak, both of you groaning into each other’s necks. You cling to him, legs shaky and body weak, but your pussy still aches and pulses for the cock that he has pushed against your upper thigh.
“Watching you cum never gets old,” He sighs, playing back the moment in his mind until you snap him out of it.
“Jimin, fuck me.” You whisper, balling up his shirt in your fists. Ever since your first time together last week, you’ve been dying to experience him again. You’d never tell him this, but you’ve masturbated to memories of that night almost everyday this week, and you can’t wait to make new ones. You think you’ve fallen in love with his dick.
Grunting in agreement, Jimin grabs hold of the back of your thighs, lifting you effortlessly to pin you against the wall with his body weight. His lips meet yours hastily as his hands move to grip your ass, fingers slipping beneath the crotch of your panties to play with your slit before pulling the material to the side and finally exposing you. He wishes he could see what you look like below him, shiny and swollen with arousal, pussy silently pleading for him to enter you.
“Such a needy little pussy you have, baby girl.” His eyes drop to watch as he easily inserts two fingers into you. “Always wanting more, huh? Cumming on my thigh wasn’t enough, you need to be filled with something before you can be satisfied, is that it?”
“Yes,” You gasp when a third finger stretches you, thrusting quickly until you’re completely relaxed, ready to take more. Jimin leans in to kiss your neck, just barely holding himself back from sucking dark marks there for everyone to see. He wants to mark you, claim you as his, show you off and remind you that you’re his now and that he’ll never let you go or do anything to hurt you.
“All you have to do is ask, baby, I’ll be more than happy to please you.” Mumbling into your neck, he skims his tongue higher and nibbles on the lobe of your ear, loving how you shut your eyes and roll your head in delirious need.
“Babe,” You whine in disappointment when he removes his fingers from you, grinding into his hips for some type of friction as you watch him lick his fingers clean while holding heated eye contact with you. He raises an eyebrow, waiting for you to speak. “Jimin, will you please fuck me?”
“You want this cock?” He asks, sending pleasant chills down your spine as his breath tickles your ear, one of his hands positioning his tip to barely brush the outside of your weeping folds. He makes a noise when he feels a long string of your juices drip out of you to kiss his head, the cool liquid making him twitch against you. You whimper then nod, his nose skimming the side of your face delicately. “Then beg for it.”
“Beg for it?”
“Beg for it.” He confirms with a wicked grin, watching the way your eyes search his in doubt. He’s serious, you realize, and that only makes it hotter. You’ll do anything he asks at this point, all if it means that his dick ends up inside you at the end of it.
“Baby, please, I need you inside me. Show me I’m yours, take me against this wall and make me forget about everything but your cock.” Saying these words while looking him in the eyes affects you more than you thought it would and you’re surprised just how into dirty talking you are. He’s starting to bring out another side of you that you didn’t know existed.
“Keep talking.” He rasps, his soft tip finally beginning to push inside. The stretch isn’t as bad as last time, but you’re far from used to it, lacing your hands in his hair and pressing your forehead to his to endure the slight burn.
“God, you’re so big,” Your mouth hangs open, gaping at the way he manages to rub all of your sensitive spots with his shallow strokes, still pushing himself in deeper. “I’ve dreamt about you every single day since that night— how you touched me, how you kissed me, how you made me feel so loved even as you fucked me into your mattress.” It’s hard to breathe when he’s stealing your breath away like this, staring into your soul with his chocolate eyes and reaching for your cervix with his cock. “Fuck, why did we wait so long to do this again?”
Jimin grunts, lowering you the rest of the way down his shaft. Your eyes roll to the back of your head when he’s fully sheathed inside, your legs tight around his waist to keep him close. “You’re everything to me,” He replies, kissing your lips slowly and delivering soft circles of his hips so you can feel him moving inside you. “I didn’t want you to think that I was only after sex from you. You’re so much more than that.” His lips feel cool in the now stifling room, tongue soothing against yours.
“I never thought that about you, Jimin. And I want you to know that that’s not what I’m after either.” You smile. “But right now, I really need you to destroy me.” Wiggling your hips as much as you can between him and the wall, you urge him move. With one more kiss, he slips back into his dominant persona, squeezing your ass hard in his hands, cold rings pressing against your skin as he pulls out of you, relishing in the sound of your slick before slamming into you with enough force to jolt you up the wall. You can’t even breathe with the first thrust, but the succession of thrusts that follows pulls heavy gasps and moans from your lips.
His hips settle into a rhythmic beat, slapping against the back of your thighs and ass as he readjusts so that his arms are hooked beneath your knees. He groans when he’s allowed the slightest bit deeper, pushing you tight to the wall to make sure you don’t move as he plows into you. The pain of your bare shoulder blades digging into the hard concrete goes practically unnoticed, you’re on cloud nine. The ache you’ve been feeling, the void left inside you that just so happens to be in the shape of his dick, the need to be closer to him: it’s all being relieved right now. Feeling him drag against your insides and hold your body close to his is damn near euphoric, you practically feel high.
“I missed this pussy,” Jimin’s teeth finally give in and nip at your shoulder and collarbone. The thought of warning him against it briefly crosses your mind in the one second between thrusts, but as soon as he’s back in— deliciously deep— you drop all complains. “So warm and soaking for me. I can feel how it sucks me back in, so greedy, baby girl.” You hear the smirk in his voice, shaking slightly with the power of his movements. It’s loud in here, every little sound bouncing off the surfaces of the room and magnifying. Every slap of his hips, every ragged breath, all of the whimpers and moans leaving your throat. It’s not hard to hear the sounds Jimin makes for you, how he sucks in through his teeth and groans quietly, trying to control himself solely for the purpose of not cumming too soon. People outside can probably hear it too, but right now, it’s only you and him in your own little world. “Fuck, you feel like heaven.”
He pulls you away from the wall so that he’s standing on his own, your arms instinctively tightening around his neck until your chest is flush with his. The hands placed on your ass slide higher onto your thighs as he starts to bounce you, up and down, up and down, gliding effortlessly along his pole.
“S-Shit,” You whine, a mixture of lust and fear coursing through you at the height you’re getting. Jimin carries you like you weigh nothing, his delectable biceps looking solid as ever as he repeatedly lifts you into the air and drops you down to impale yourself on him. From this angle he can see the sweat dripping off of you, face contorted in ultimate pleasure from the depth he’s getting, tip kissing your cervix in a different angle each time. Your breasts bounce harshly in front of him looking jiggly  and soft and he holds his mouth open, hoping one will land there for him to suck. This is definitely one of his fantasies— not fucking you in a family restroom— but him having you like this, fully suspended in the air and scratching at his shoulders in delight. He’s only seen this in porn, all of the girls looking like twigs in comparison to the bulky men that carry them, and he didn’t think he could do it. But the adrenaline and testosterone flowing through his veins right now is enough to convince him to do anything— even fuck you in a public space and make you moan in a room that may or may not be soundproof to the outside world. But he couldn’t care less about that now when you feel so good around him.
He grunts through gritted teeth, going hard and deep and neglecting the fast pace he set earlier. Your soft walls steal every thought from Jimin’s brain as his fluid hips snap into you on every down stroke and you can’t help but cry out.
God, it feels like he’s in your guts, rearranging your organs with the tip of his cock and carving out a home for himself. “Keep going,” You thought going this deep would be painful, but now that you’re here, it’s never felt better. This was exactly what you’ve been craving since last time, wanting him to fill you up in every sense and leave you breathless. You feel like your pussy just might swallow him up, his balls smacking against your ass with every collision, and it’s so good that you don’t notice the bright red lines you leave on his nape and back. “I think I-“
He looks up to find your eyes rolling back again, eyebrows knit and lips parted. “Like this, baby?” He keeps up the steady pace, head thrown back to peer up at you when he feels your walls begin to flutter.
“Yes, like that,” You nearly whisper, feet flexing at his sides where your legs flop helplessly. No more words can escape you, only loud whines of what he assumes is his name, and before you know it, your orgasm is suddenly crashing down on you, locking up all of your muscles as Jimin continues to bounce you languidly, moaning his own praise into the skin of your chest.
As you come down, he moves you to the counter of the sink, your ass meeting the cool marble, but you’re too fucked out to have a reaction. Having slipped out in transition, Jimin stands there and strokes himself as he watches your hazy eyes refocus on him. He’s not as close as he was before, but he has a feeling he won’t have trouble getting back to that point once he’s back inside your sopping heat.
“Mm, I wish I could take a picture of you right now.” His voice is almost a growl, his unoccupied hand lifting your thigh to pull you to the edge. “You look so fucked out; but I’m not done with you yet, baby. Can you take it?” He stares at you with genuine eyes, rubbing himself on your sensitive clit. It throbs under him and you jerk your hips, taking a deep breath to compose yourself.
“I can always take it for you.” Batting your lashes at him, you bite your lip and hope he doesn’t question you further. You were starting to feel empty again. Thankfully, he doesn’t and plunges in without further hesitation, moaning out your name and digging his fingers into your hip.
“That’s my good girl.” He grins when you clench at his praise. With your legs spread as wide as they can go, you lean back on one arm, keeping one hand latched to the back of his neck for support. You can feel yourself leaking onto the counter top where your ass is perched on the edge, making a mess as it covers his balls and the inside of your thighs, further soiling your panties that remain pushed out of the way of your opening. He’s rough with you, speeding up with every flex of his powerful hips and gripping desperately onto your waist to prevent you from slipping away. His eyes are focused between your legs and you follow the pink of his tongue with your eyes when it swipes against his lips, nearly salivating from the view. “Look,” He growls, grabbing the back of your neck to angle your head down to where you are connected. “I want you to watch how I split your pussy open, see how well you take me as I stretch you out. I could look at this all day, fuck.” He slows down, only for a few strokes, mesmerized by how shiny you make his member and how your lips open wide to accommodate him. “You’re so beautiful.”
You see what he sees, but pay more attention to his appearance. The thighs beneath him bulge with defined muscle, skin now glistening with the sweat that builds on both of your bodies in this humid room. His prominent v-line and hipbones look so enticing that you crave to kiss at them and leave marks on his milky skin. He doesn’t pull out very far, but every glimpse you get of his cock seems to affect you. God, you could worship his cock for hours if he’d let you. Maybe you’ll ask one day. It’s fat and veiny and a deep red color due to the blood that’s built up there from being hard for so long. On its surface gathers a creamy mixture of your cum and wetness, collecting at his base and sticking to the fine hairs of his pubic bone. You can hear the way he sucks in air as he watches himself glide through your folds with ease, a tense pressure sitting in his balls as he gallops toward his release.
“Baby,” You sigh, pulling him down to your lips to swallow the sounds in his throat. “Are you going to cum soon?” You ask between pecks, both of you struggling to breathe as you grind your hips into his to help him when he starts to falter. Forehead pressed to yours, he nods and squeezes his eyes shut, the clench of his jaw defining the strain on his face. You can’t help kissing him again, moaning when he tangles a hand in your hair and tugs lightly.
“Where do you want me to cum?” Jimin slows down a little, rolling his hips sensually instead of the brutal thrusting from before so he can make sure he hears you properly.
“Cum in me.” You state, leaning back on both hands and arching into him.
“You sure?” The surprise on his face is so pure, although the way he bites his lip at your confirmation is anything but. The groan that grazes your ears as he wraps his arms around you makes you shudder and clench. No one has ever cum inside you before, not even your ex, despite you being on the pill. He liked to cum on your face and chest and leave it to dry— quite degrading in your opinion— but he said it looked good on you so you’d let him do it. You never let him cum inside you no matter how many times he begged, it just never felt right, but now that Jimin is in his place, you want it more than ever. You want him to know that you are truly his. That he can have every single inch of you.
A succession of moans fall from Jimin’s lips, each one louder than the last, and fuck, if that isn’t the hottest thing you’ve ever heard, you don’t know what is. He keeps up with the grinding, muscles clenching and tightening as he nears his end, hips becoming less fluid as he rubs himself between your velvety walls, eyes squinting to stay open as he looks in your eyes. You nod at him, sucking on your lips to quiet your own whimpering so you can hear him better. Taking his hand, you bring it to one of your breasts, encouraging him to squeeze it in his palm, and that seems to be what finishes him, his fingers digging into the soft flesh when you feel him pulse inside you.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck,” Jimin groans, dropping his head to your chest and struggling with himself to keep his hips moving to milk out his release. You move your own hips to his benefit, relishing in the hisses and uncontrollable moans that fly from him as he spills his love into you, the thick white substance leaking out alongside his shaft every time he withdraws from your warmth. It feels nice, satisfying. You never thought feeling him this way would make you feel so... complete. His tip rests inside you as he catches his breath, panting between the valley of your breasts and kneading at your hips with his gentle fingers. Your hands run through his sweaty hair, pushing it from his face and cradling his head to you, and you hope he can hear how hard your heart is beating, how full it feels. When he’s collected himself enough to move, he pulls away to smile brightly at you. “That was...”
“Incredible.” You finish for him, pulling him in for a deep kiss that quite literally steals your breath away. He pulls away, panting, and finally allows his softened length to slip out of you, though he’s not completely flaccid yet. His cum dribbles out of you despite your best efforts to keep it in and the uncomfortable feeling causes your face to scrunch up.
“Damn, that’s sexy.” Jimin’s eyes scan the mess dripping from your lower lips and it’s almost embarrassing, but the way he groans and drops to his knees in front of you quickly dispels your shyness. “Can I clean you up, baby?” He asks, all doe-eyed and cute, thumbs on either side of your entrance spreading you apart. He isn’t about to do what you think he is, is he? He can’t be serious. But the want in his expression tells you that he is.
“S-sure.” You aren’t sure exactly what you’re agreeing to, but he makes it a point to show you, diving tongue first into your slick lips, licking up everything that covers the inside and outside of you. Your walls throb at the sight and feeling of him slurping up the mess between your legs, making sure not an inch of you goes untouched by his tongue until you’re licked clean, his gaze never leaving yours. When he’s done, he leans back to show you the ungodly mixture of cum (both yours and his), arousal, and saliva in his mouth before swallowing it all down. You may have just discovered a new kink of yours.
“There,” The handsome man in front of you rises from his knees to stand before you. “All clean.” You can’t help kissing him again, wrapping your limbs around him in hopes of staying in this moment forever. Comfortably in his arms and still feeling the rush of endorphins that your previous activities provoked. It is with great reluctance that he pulls away from you.
Neither of you know what to say in this moment. The room is quiet again and your surroundings begin to return as you try to relax, taking it all in. Clothes are scattered all over the counter and floor, you’re in a public family restroom at an amusement park, and you and your boyfriend stand here naked in the center of it. Not to mention, this room is sweltering. Beads of sweat trail down the sides of your face and you wipe them away, noticing the discomfort of your now sticky spot on the sink counter.
“Wanna get out of here?” You ask, both of you giggling as Jimin helps you to your feet, gathering your clothes and handing them to you so you can get dressed. You’ve almost forgotten the whole reason you locked yourself in here in the first place. Almost. But it doesn’t really bother you that much anymore. You stop Jimin with his hand on the door, pulling him into one more tight hug. “Thank you, Jimin, for everything. I love you a lot, don’t forget that.”
His hands meet your cheeks and he pulls your lips to his for a gentle kiss, reluctant to pull away. “I love you, too. And I’ll always be here for you.” He stares into your eyes for another deep moment before moving back to the door.
You meet up with Taehyung and Hani as you make your way back to where the rides are, and they look you up and down, at first in concern, and then in disbelief.
“You seem to be in a significantly better mood.” Hani comments with a knowing look on her face. Usually you were able to keep your cool around her and not let on to more than you want her to know, but your reddening ears give you away when you think back to your recent encounter. You can practically feel where her eyes are glued to the colored faint marks at the base of your neck. Jimin’s arm pulls you into his side proudly, making some comment about being an amazing boyfriend and being able to take care of your “needs” which makes Taehyung chuckle, and then the four of you are off to look for Jungkook and his date in preparation to leave.
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“Should we try to find the others?” Jieun inquires adjusting the straps of her bag on her shoulders. Having just finished the last rollercoaster of the park, the adorable pair had just completed all of the main attractions for the day and were almost back around to the front of the park where most of the souvenir shops and restaurants were located. It’s late afternoon, the sun beginning it’s descent toward the horizon, temperature cooling off just the slightest bit.
“We could do that...” Jungkook hesitates and avoids his date’s eyes. “Or we could keep walking around by ourselves? I like spending time alone with you.” The boy rubs the back of his head bashfully, showing off a bunny smile that Jieun can’t resist. He can’t tell what she’s thinking— and he hates making assumptions— but her responding grin is enough reassurance for him to boldly take her hand in his and squeeze.
“I like spending time with you too, Jungkook. I like you.” Her eyes disappear behind a blush, but she doesn’t look away from him, instead reaching up on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek to then watch it blossom into a spread of red all over his face and neck. He’s as red as a tomato yet oh-so-satisfied.
“How about we get that funnel cake? I’m buying.” They share a huge serving of the treat, powdered sugar sticking their fingers together but enjoyed nonetheless, and Jieun couldn’t be happier. “After meeting my only requirement, I officially declare you as redeemed. I will completely forget about that whole carnival prize ordeal, but there’s one more condition. One more thing I want before I can do that.” Jungkook gives a fake exasperated sigh, tilting his head cutely.
“And what would that be?” His dark hair hangs in front of his eyes, jawline sharp and inviting.
“I want you to...” She leans close to him, eyes deadly serious, and anxiety builds in the pit of his stomach, “kiss me.”
“Pardon?” He isn’t sure he heard her right, but when she cocks her head coyly, an arrogant smirk finds his lips before he’s leaning in to steal hers. The kiss is quicker than she’d like, but there’s a knowing look in Jungkook’s eyes that tells her that he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s teasing. Almost as if to say “there’s more where that came from’ along with promises that will be fulfilled behind closed doors. She just shakes her head at him, getting up to throw away their trash and pulling him up by his hand, intertwining their fingers as they stroll around.
Walking into one of the gift shops, they begin to look at clothing and accessories printed with cartoon characters and the theme park logo, something to take home as a memory of the occasion. Well, aside from the giant Iron-Man plushie they had left with Hani and Taehyung. Just as they make their way over to the hats and fanny packs section, Jungkook catches sight of something that makes his blood boil. Yes, something—the monster of a person that hurt you and your precious heart, to be more specific. His sharp inhale catches Jieun’s attention and she questions him, concerned gaze skimming the store as Kookie explains through his teeth.
“That’s the asshole that cheated on (Y/n). What the fuck is he doing here?” His eye are like knives as they point toward the unsuspecting man, who has the nerve to look happy and carefree. He doesn’t know if you’ve seen him or not, but he has the strong urge to protect you and get a little revenge in your name.
“It looks like he’s with someone.” She points, face scrunching at the greasy looking woman.
“I should go over there.”
“What? No! I don’t think it’s a good idea to pick fights with your friend’s ex.” Jieun, the voice of reason, whispers, looking alarmed.
“I’m not going to fight him, just mess with him a bit. Pulling pranks on people is my specialty.”
“What are you going to do to him?” She’s less concerned now and more intrigued by his confidence.
“Watch.” Jungkook sets his hat low on his face, walking with his head down and heading straight toward the couple that shamelessly flirts in front of the shelf containing ceramic mugs. They take up the entire space of the small aisle, so no one can really pass though, but Jungkook squeezes his way between them roughly, grunting an ‘excuse me’ all while intentionally shoving the man back and out of the way. Your ex stumbles, arms and elbows flailing about to catch his balance and knocking over a total of 5 mugs onto the cement floor. They crash down around him, the entire shelf he leans on threatening to go down with them, but he catches it with his hands and readjusts it, looking down in horror as shards of porcelain scatter around his feet. A worker shouts “You break it, you buy it!” from across the store at him, and that’s when he looks up to hiss at his offender.
“The fuck is your problem?!” He steps up to Jungkook aggressively, as if he would even have the balls to fight someone, and throws a few more curses his way. But all color drains from his face when he meets eyes with your little Baby Kook, who isn’t really so little, round eyes glaring right in his face. They’re about the same height, but your ex looks like a twig standing next to the broad and muscular Jungkook. He’s always been intimidated by Kookie, steering clear of him when you were still together and even confessing to you that he’s afraid of the fact that the younger man can probably break him in half with his bare hands and crush his head between his thighs. It was funny at the time, but that fear is very real and very present as the two stand toe to toe.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you standing there.” A cocky smirk plays on Jungkook’s lips and it makes your ex seethe, though he’s too afraid to show it. He tries the tough act still, though.
“You little shit, you better pay for all of the stuff you broke.” He steps closer over the crunching of shattered pieces but the younger man doesn’t flinch.
“Yikes... I would, but I’m not the one who broke them. Plus, I only have five dollars. Want it?” He flashes the bill quickly and reaches into the man’s pocket, depositing both the bill and an expensive looking ring he grabbed earlier, hidden in the palm of his hand. The ring falls in.
“Get your hands out of my pants!” He shoves at Kookie’s solid chest, pushing himself back a few inches and stumbling at his surprising sturdiness. Dignity lost in front of the prying eyes of everyone in the store, he sucks his teeth and growls. “I don’t want it.”
“No? Your loss.” Jungkook is still holding onto the bill between his fingers, pocketing it quickly before he can change his mind. He fakes an innocent look as he leans in to the man’s ear, eyeing the woman that stands shocked behind him. Your ex flinches, startled by the proximity and probably anticipating a hard punch in the gut. “I’m not going to hit you,” Jungkook chuckles, enjoying the way the man twitches uncomfortably. “I’m just trying to help you out. But hey, isn’t it illegal to hire prostitutes? Especially here, of all places.”
Gritting his teeth, That Bastard pushes him away successfully this time, spitting curses about disrespecting his girlfriend as Kookie turns his back and casually walks away, just in time for a worker to approach the cursing man and force him to pay for all of the cracked and shattered mugs surrounding him. Jungkook heads back to Jieun, laughing, and takes her hand, guiding her to the front of the store where he taps an attendant stocking toys on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, I saw that man over there steal something.” Pointing to the disgruntled man who digs in his wallet as the cashier rings him up. “You should search him, I think it was a ring.” The worker sighs and makes a call through his walkie talkie for security, thanking them before making his way over to the register. Both of them make their exit, laughing to themselves all the way out of the store until they reach their group of friends, who happen to be standing just outside.
“We saw the whole thing,” Taehyung starts excitedly. “Dude, that was awesome!” They high five and continue laughing, eyes still on the man in question.
“He looked like he was going to shit his pants when he recognized you. I wish I could have got that on camera.” Hani nods, clicking her tongue at the missed opportunity.
“Hani.” Jimin frowns.
“What? He deserves it.” They both look to you, who is conflicted with emotions. You didn’t want any of them to confront him for you, but this was different. This was harmless. And you’re certain your name didn’t come up at all while they were interacting.
“What did you do?” You finally ask, a little curious about what actually happened. Just then, security guides your ex to the entrance, walking him through the door sensors to check Jungkook’s accusations. He looks confident that it won’t go off, but that look is wiped clean off his face when the alarm sounds and the guards grab hold of his arms and push him toward the back of the store for an official search. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” Now you’re a lot curious, but you’re also smiling uncontrollably.
“Eh,” Jungkook shrugs. “I slipped a ring into his pocket. They’ll probably find it but at least he’ll get a pat down. Oh, and I also accused him of hiring a prostitute in front of his new girl just to piss him off.” He chuckles. A new kind of happiness swells in your chest at that. It isn’t much, but it almost feels like justice was served. You like to imagine that he is being fined and questioned by police because of what he did to you instead of for the petty shoplifting he unknowingly committed. And what’s even better is the scowl you catch on Candy’s face when she glances up and finds you watching the ordeal, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms before storming off to follow her man. You hope to never see them again, to leave with the impression and image of them being dragged away by security as your last memory of their terrible faces. It will always be seared into your brain, like retribution for a cardinal sin, and you’re feeling better already.
“Thanks, Kookie. That just made my day.” You’re beaming as Jimin reclaims your hand, offering a proud pat to Jungkook’s shoulder.
“I say we celebrate with some dinner!” He grins to your group, leading everyone to a restaurant a few stores down, where you all enjoy deliciously overpriced park food and talk about your day. Everyone seems to have had an amazing time. Jungkook and Jieun are cuddled up on their end of the booth, sharing bites of food and giving each other The Look. The same look they had that night when they walked out of the club together. Taehyung and Hani seem infinitely less awkward, apparently having resolved some of their issues while you and Jimin were working out your own in the family restroom. And you finally felt like you were back to yourself while being surrounded by all of your friends. Jimin kept an eye on you, but saw no evidence of your previous sadness— just joy and relief— and for that he’s thankful, whether or not he is the reason for it.
As the last activity of the day, you all decide to shop for souvenirs (at a different store from the one your ex was in), and everyone picks out their favorite gifts. Taehyung watches as you and Jimin and Jungkook and Jieun mull over various objects at the front of the store, chatting and laughing with each other as you browse. He’s a little deeper in the store following Hani as she looks over the clothing lining walls and racks, enjoying watching her shop more than doing any real shopping himself. As he looks at her, he remembers their conversation from earlier— when they were left alone to work out their issues while you and Jimin disappeared to work out your own.
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“After much debate, I have decided to officially forgive you.” He announces to Hani as they walk through the crowded carnival area. There are many more people here now than there was a few hours ago, most people having finished riding the rollercoasters and hoping to win a nice prize before heading home. Neither of them intended to actually play any of the games, agreeing that it was a waste of money and ultimately a scam, but the area was nice and the highly populated walkway was the perfect place to have a private conversation.
Hani gives him a look of disbelief from the corner of her eye with pursed lips before deciding to humor him. “O’ Great and Merciful Taehyung, I thank you deeply! What ever would I have done without your forgiveness?” She acts out dramatically, throwing her hands over her heart and swaying side to side. They laugh for a bit, the mood still light when he straightens up and his face becomes serious again.
“I’m sorry that I acted that way at the water park, it was really uncalled for. I was-“ He hesitates, voice a little deeper, “I was jealous.” That’s enough to stop Hani in her tracks. He sure seemed like he was jealous in the moment, but she didn’t think he actually would be. Because why would her fuck buddy be jealous of her using her ASSets to get what she wants— something that she always does? But that’s not even the part that really surprises her as he goes on. “I don’t think I can be fuck buddies with you anymore. I want more. I want more with you, and I only recently noticed. We started fucking in the first place because we both kept talking all that shit about how good we are in bed and it just happened out of curiosity and sexual tension. Then I realized that I actually felt something when we were together— and at first I thought it was just the bomb ass sex— but then the feeling didn’t go away after we were done fucking. I still felt that way when we’re just doing regular shit like hanging out. I felt it when you came to my job just to bother me because you were bored early this week. I thought my heart was going to explode because it was beating so fast. Something about knowing you came there just to spend time with me, even if it was just to pass the time, it made me so... happy. I couldn’t focus, you were so distracting.” She looks away, concealing a smile. “And I feel it now even when we’re on a fake triple date with our friends, walking aimlessly around this giant park and talking about the simplest things...” He trails off, trying to find the words to finish his speech and Hani trying to process it all. They start walking again after a few beats of silence, albeit very slowly, until he speaks up again. “I don’t know, I’m not good with words.”
This seems like a concluding statement, Taehyung suddenly getting shy as he scratches behind his ear. His head drops as they walk, not sure what to make of her silence, but he’s not even sure he wants to hear what she has to say. And when she opens her mouth finally, he prepares himself to be rejected.
“I was jealous of you too today.”
“What? When?” That’s a surprise that neither of them expected her to admit.
They walk past a booth containing large superhero plushies just like the one Jungkook and Jieun earned, the woman running the game pointing at them and waving them over. They ignore her as they keep walking, passing faces blending into the background. Hani sighs.
“When you were buying water when we first got to the water park. That lady was eye-fucking you the whole time, ready to risk it all for you at that concession stand.” She rolls her eyes, trying not to get angry again as she remembers the way that woman was trying her hardest to show off for him. “(Y/n) even called me out on it, I was 5 seconds away from knocking that bitch to the ground.” At this, Taehyung cracks a smile. He would never say it, but he’d love to see Hani fight someone for him. “Anyway, I guess that means that I... probably... feel... something...” It sounded like she was a foreigner trying to figure out the proper way to form a coherent sentence, unsure if the words she was producing were correct or not. He looks at her expectantly, raising his eyebrows and causing her to pull out the last few words of her statement painfully. “...similar to you.”
“You feel the same way?” He lights up, turning his whole body to her.
“Something. Similar.” She corrects strictly, though that does nothing to stop the goofy celebratory wiggle he does. “You know I haven’t been in a real relationship in a long time so I’m a little rusty at this. Don’t expect me to change so suddenly for you.” He pouts. “But, I’ll give you a fair chance and we’ll see where it goes from there.”
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“This is so ugly that it’s kinda cute.” Hani laughs, showing him the brightly colored shirt she’s pulled from the rack. Not her usual style, but she could probably find a way to make it work. She’s been looking through the ugliest t-shirts and sweaters for the past five minutes and it’s getting to the point where it would be ridiculous for her not to buy one.
“Hey, about what we talked about earlier,” Taehyung starts suddenly, trying to be as casual as possible while leaning against a clothing rack, stumbling when the wheels begin to move beneath his weight.
“What about it?” She doesn’t even bat an eye at his clumsiness.
“Does that mean you’ll go out with me now? It was a little unclear for me.” Gnawing on his lower lip, he gives her a hard stare as she mulls over his words briefly.
“Absolutely not.” Her tone is cold and brisk, barely lifting her eyes to glance at him. His face and heart drop, scrambling to come up with words.
“Wh- I thought that’s what we-“
“Nothing about what we talked about had anything to do with me going out with you. I mean, why would it? You haven’t even asked me out on a date yet.” Oh. Her eyes linger on his for a split second, looking away just before his boxy smile reappears. “If we’re going to be anything more than friends, I need you to know this: I don’t do subtleties and indirect hints. If you want something, ask for it directly. I never sugar coat my words and I don’t expect you to either. So, if you want me to go out with you, ask.”
Taehyung steps closer, grin still playing on his lips as he seems to hover over her frame with his tall stature. She’s still flicking through rows of hangers absentmindedly as if they’re not in the middle of a conversation, and only stops upon his call.
“Hani,” He coos sweetly, blush coming to his cheeks. Hani thinks she’s the inexperienced one here, but it’s also be a while since Tae has asked anyone out himself. Usually women tend to throw themselves at him and use him for his dick— which has never bothered him before— but rarely has he ever gone on a date with the intentions of actually dating someone seriously. And if he had, the girls are most likely the ones who asked him out. Hani turns to him, batting her eyelashes innocently. Such an actress.
“Yes, Taehyungie?”
“Would you like to go on a date with me? I’m aware dates really aren’t your thing, but I think you’d quite enjoy this one.” He puts on a knightly voice for her, puffing out his chest like a suitor in court trying to win the heart of a princess. She tosses her hair around her shoulders, fluttering her eyelashes a few more times as though flustered before giving him a flattering smile.
“No.” His mouth drops open in disbelief, face morphing into a fake cry when she laughs and responds with her real answer. “I’m kidding! Yes, I’d love to go on a date with you.”
“No, you hurt my feelings.” He turns away from her like a child, breaking into a smile when she wraps her arms around his midsection and presses her check to his back in apology.
“I said yes, Taehyung, did you hear? There’s no way you didn’t hear with those big dumbo ears of yours,”
“Hey!” This isn’t the first time she’s teased him about his ears, but he pretends to be offended, trying to shake her off of him.
“Yes, I’ll go on a date with you.” She repeats, lifting to her toes to speak loudly into one ear, catching the attention of a few others in the store.
“You WHAT?!” You’re stomping over before either of them have the chance to respond, eyes wide and mouth open, Jimin trailing closely behind, pulled by the hand you squeeze in yours.
“Way to go buddy.” Jimin mouths as he gives a thumbs up to his best friend, ignoring Hani’s glare.
“Yes, you heard correctly. Hani agreed to go on a real date with me.” The two of you clap as Tae bows and blows kisses to the imaginary crowd, relishing in the glory.
“Don’t make me regret it.” Hani is embarrassed by the attention, not used to being the one with relationship news, and she separates herself from the situation as quickly as possible, grumbling something before picking a shirt and walking to the front of the store to pay.
Your group is loud on your way out of the park, shouting about all the highlights of the day, Jungkook proclaiming how he “knew” Tae and Hani would end up together— even though Hani swears that it’s just one date and it doesn’t truly mean anything. The ride back home is calmer and you sit up front with Jimin, Jungkook taking his spot in the back next to Jieun like he promised, and you feel a little bit better about everything.
Though that lingering discomfort in your heart is still there, you’re no longer sad or upset about the events of today. If anything, you think they did more good than harm in regards to your interactions with your ex. The only time you’d really paid attention to how much of an asshole he is was when you broke up with him in front of Candy, but the harsh words he spoke to you today were more than enough evidence for you to dispel any doubts that maybe, by some unholy power, he wasn’t as bad as you’d made him out to be in your head. You keep replaying Jimin’s words about how valuable you were to your ex, and the truth about why he was trying so hard to fuck with your mind today. And now you understand. It’s really quite simple actually. He had a good thing, you, and he let you go. So now you’re moving on to bigger and better things in your life and he can’t do shit about it. Period. He can’t get to you anymore because you have the amazing friends that keep you afloat and his angel of a boyfriend that continues to prove his indispensable worth to you, and you know you’re going to be okay. You no longer wish any harm to your ex and his whore of a girlfriend (oops), but you think pretty soon you’ll be able to close this chapter of your life and start a new one; one where your friends are all in happy, healthy relationships and live happily ever after— at least for now. But that’s good enough for you.
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ecto-american · 5 years
Text
I think Ember’s entire self would have fit really well as being a deceased Kpop idol. Not just in terms of who she is as a character and it giving her more depth and personality that already matches her canon, but also give great social commentary on how toxic the music industry, especially Korea's, can be.
More detail explaining this under the cut.
Firstly a disclaimer: I was an absolute Kpop weeb in my high school years. I knew all the bands and dances and stuff, and thus I was somewhat exposed to the culture of Kpop. Since then, I kind of have gone back and done some researched and watched documentaries and the like (because I am a big sociology nerd), but I'm not that deeply invested in Kpop anymore. But this is a thought I've had for a long time, ever since I first began to hear some of the problems surrounding Kpop idols and such.
I also want to point out that I am not saying that Ember within canon is a deceased Kpop star. She clearly isn't, and I'm not trying to make a case as to why she is given canon evidence. I'm writing this because I really like this interpretation a lot better than what canon gave us. In my own personal headcanons and worldbuilding and rewrite fanfiction, Ember is a deceased Kpop star.
We got that squared away? Coolio. Let's start.
Now that “preface” or whatever is out of the way, I really want to begin this by giving some background on Korean pop, specifically the industry and the culture surrounding it, for those who don't know. This is going to give some much needed and important context behind what I'm about to say about Ember. I will also be providing as many sources as I can to this section, but a lot of this is really easy to find on google as well.
In Korea, to be a pop star: you basically have to be perfect. In your dance, music, appearance, your entire image is now basically the property of your manager. Plastic surgery is a massive deal in South Korea, and it's partly due to this.
When you get your contact, you basically have to go through a bootcamp, which involves: Limited contact with family and friends, dropping any romantic relationships or behaviors that would be deemed unwholesome (many companies even go as far as forbidding relationships so that fans can better “see” themselves as being with the idol, which increases sales), brutal training schedules and everything you do is so heavily monitored by your bosses. This has lead to many Kpop idols (especially women) to be dangerously underweight or to have eating disorders, 15 hour training days day after day, being fired for being in a relationship outside of their company's approval/against contract. It's caused literal deaths and mental breakdowns.
Of course, America has the eating disorder problem too, and long work days. But please take in mind: management in Korea actively pushes for these eating disorders and are almost applauded publicly for keeping their stars thin, while in America, it becomes an absolute scandal. And yes, America has long work days too, but in comparison to Korea, American musicians basically only release a single or two in a year, and an album about every three years or so. On average. Kpop groups are pressured to release one or two albums every year on top of regular singles. If you youtube Korean pop shows, there's so many examples of stars collapsing on stage due to exhaustion and hunger. And most of the time, they're forced to get back up and continue, compared to America where they're normally “hey show over”. There are some Americans who will go through with it, but it's normally stars who are determined to finish in spite. It's not a push by your boss to finish or be fired and blacklisted from the industry.
Kpop idols are often broke as fuck, so there’s not even that as compensations. Many literally don't get most of the proceeds from their music. Their contracts are often compared to being slave contracts by stars. One Kpop star even said that she and her group had to split one meal whenever they were on tour because they were in such poverty. Oh, a rising group, right? NO. It was one of the biggest fucking Kpop girl groups of the time, Stellar! But even if they were a brand spanking new group, what the fuck.
And why don't they leave? Because they wanna be famous and make music. It’s just that unfortunately, it’s a very saturated industry because the agencies literally just crank out so many idol groups every single year, thus leading to absolutely brutal competition. People are regularly rotated out and replaced within groups. Idol groups are regularly formed or disbanded There's lots of weekly programs and music competitions to see who's the best of the best. You're constantly ranked. You're constantly fighting for the top spot. Lots of Kpop idols have to really fight to get their name remembered or known. The best of the best get reknown internationally.
Okay I'm done with the background now, lol. But you get the jist! The Kpop industry is fucking brutal and needs a good social change. Though now that I've laid out a lot of this, you can kind of get the sense as to where I'm going with this.
Based on every appearance Ember has in the show, we can deduce two things: She hates adults and wants to be remembered.
What are two major problems within Kpop industries? Adults controlling these really young adults (normally freshly 18) trying to break into the industry that's hard to make a truly lasting impression on, that's trying to be remembered.
Ember, if we take her canonical song and the background information provided by interviews, is meant to have died in a fire after being stood up. But I think that she would much better fit as a character who died from the intense social, physical and mental pressures of being a Kpop star. Perhaps a Kpop star that was left forgotten in the crowd of idols, whether it's dying in an accident or suicide.
It’s just me, but I really personally don’t like the canon that she died in a fire because of a boy. It’s just really weak imo, and idk. I don’t like backstories based around a romantic interest like that, especially when it’s so bland. Ember is a fucking dead musician and rock star within canon, and that’s the best you can come up with? She died in a damn fire after a boy stood her up? No mentions that she was into music or something?
Of course, she likely wasn’t famous she died. She likely rose to fame post her death, but that’s still just really? Kind of a headscratcher in a sense? Ember deserves more. The given backstory of her death is literally so? Random imo? Given who she is in death? Unless her entire thing is about how she changed so much in death for a guy, which is kinda Hmm for me. But that’s most of canon lmao.
I feel like this Kpop idol angle would have been a much stronger backstory potential for her. It could paint her as this really hardworking idol, this incredibly talented musician and vocalist who just couldn't make the cut. Maybe she got fired for loving another idol. Perhaps she just wasn't up to the brutal industry standards of being a Kpop idol. It’s a backstory that clearly incorporates her musical talents within her life, and kind of gives her death more of an impact, that gives her more character depth. Whether she’s a perfectionist because of this or has such strong self esteem issues due to the pressures she experienced in life. All of this motivating her to work solely towards her goal, or making her realize that she just really wants to have a more relaxed life and do things like date freely and enjoy the peace and privacy she now likely can have.
Ember's powers would fit really well with this Kpop backstory too She can hypnotize people. Besides Kpop kind of literally hypnotizing a lot of people, it could be shown as a legitimate skill of hers, or something she gained in death as she hoped that she could truly charm an audience into remembering her. She wants to be remembered within canon. No matter the cost or sacrifice. The same kind of sacrifice and price many Kpop idols are forced to make and pay.
It gives her stronger motivations other than just being famous for the sake of being famous or to possibly get that one boy’s attention (? It really depends on your personal take). She wants to be famous to prove herself to a company that worked her to literal death or that basically rejected her, or as a personal dream finally achieved. She now has the power to destroy the adults that likely exploited her as slave labor that maybe made her die in poverty or after being another abuse victim.
To me, it’d help pack a better emotional punch and reasoning as to why she does what she does. Fame has much more meaning to her, it’s personal, losing it again would devastate her. At the end of Fanning the Flames, can you imagine how hysterical she might be if the entire sequence was an unintentional repeat of the events that lead her to her death? Why she’s so specifically disgruntled against adults other than the typical “teenage rebellion” to the point of turning them into slaves in Pirate Radio (which is? fucking wack considering how much better it’d be to use something else). Turning them into slaves just like they would have done to her for years, especially since it’s on exercise equipment. It’d bring personal satisfaction to possibly watch them run or bike or work out until they literally collapse like she might have done before. Then forced back on and continue. Hell, you can even explain as to why she kept her relationship with Skulker an apparent secret: she’s used to have to hiding a boyfriend or risk losing everything.
I would have loved to see her being used as a good social commentary on that industry specifically, but also as a hot take for the abuse that just happens in general too much within the music (and many other fame based industries).
If we're going by canon show airing date, Ember would have popped up right around the time Kpop was really making it's mark on American culture. America got really into Kpop in the mid-2000s and, as you can tell by BTS's popularity, is still going really strong. There's even an entire Wikipedia page about it, the Korean Wave. Whether you want to “modernize” DP or keep it in it's canon air date roots, this would still be a relevant possibility no matter where you personally like DP to fall on the IRL timeline.
While many Kpop stars are in groups, given her possible circumstances, she likely broke off to be a solo artist. If you've ever seen Kpop idol fashion, they're also very colorful! Very fashionable and interesting, and it'd be really cool to see more of that kind of fashion for her. The dances are very good too, well choreographed, and it'd just lead to really interesting possibilities as to how she looks and behaves on her stage.
I dunno man, I just feel like this is a really cool take. My personal take tbh, and I just think more people should think about deceased Kpop idol Ember.
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daresplaining · 7 years
Note
What are your thoughts on Ward Meachum in Marvel's Iron Fist? & also... Is he not coming back for The Defenders?
    We were pleasantly surprised by Ward! We mentioned in our analysis/review that there are two Iron Fist characters we’ve always loved to hate, because they are giant screw-ups with little-to-no redeeming qualities. Those characters are Davos and Ward… both of whom were developed to be wonderfully, shockingly sympathetic and compelling in the show. (Davos actually made one of us cry!) We’re not gonna pretend Harold’s “last words” to Ward didn’t make us do this:
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    But we still enjoyed– and even sometimes rooted for– this version of his character.
    To address your second question first, before going into more detail: No, Ward has not yet been confirmed to appear in The Defenders. The only Iron Fist characters we currently know we can count on seeing are Danny, Colleen, Jeryn Hogarth, Madame Gao, and almost definitely Bakuto. However, that doesn’t mean he won’t show up. Since the initial round of character announcements went out before Iron Fist aired, they may have decided to not include Ward because some people wouldn’t have known who he was. (Plus, it would have spoiled his survival– which was uncertain, to say the least.) We’re guessing Joy and Davos won’t reappear until Iron Fist Season 2, since they’re away somewhere plotting their revenge… but Ward, as Danny’s business partner, has a chance.      
    (That said, Foggy didn’t show up in Iron Fist despite his new partnership with Jeryn, so it’s not a guarantee. We wonder if the next Defenders trailer will focus on the secondary characters, since there are so many, and the first was so main protagonist-heavy– in which case, we might get a definite answer sometime soon.)
    In the tradition of (almost) all of the Marvel Netflix antagonists, the Iron Fist writing team did their absolute best to add a level of human complexity to Ward, and to build upon the character presented by the source material. In this case, they didn’t have much to work with. Comics Ward is pretty much a one-note villain: Harold Meachum’s scumbag brother who schemes and connives and tries to look cool in front of actual, competent villains, before finally getting himself killed by the Super Skrull.
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Ward: “…Now you know he’s dead, and your pretty little reunion plans are all just smoke in the wind. I wouldn’t worry too much though, Misty love. It won’t be long before you and the Rand brat are reunited– at least, if you believe in any sort of afterlife.”
Namor, the Sub-Mariner vol. 1 #18 by John Byrne and Glynis Oliver     
    Really, MCU Ward had nowhere to go but up, and a lot of smart writing decisions went into making this version of the character a bit more nuanced.
    One major factor we think worked really well was the removal of his power– in several different capacities. By de-aging him and generationally shifting him from Harold’s brother and Joy’s uncle to Harold’s son, he loses the inherent sense of authority that comes with older characters, and automatically seems more vulnerable and fallible in the face of anyone older than he is. The show also goes out of its way to emphasize this. In at least one of our trailer analyses, we talked about the costuming and styling choices used to make Danny look youthful, both calling back to his young age (nineteen) in his introductory comics appearances, and visually invoking his naivete upon returning to New York. But both Joy and Ward are also infantilized– not visually in this case, but by their abusively overbearing father, whose inherent power is magnified by his violence, his self-assured manipulation of everyone around him, and the fact that he is literally magically enhanced to be undefeatable. Harold clings to images of his children when they were young, and treats them as such– and Ward’s continued insistence that he is “not a child” only makes him seem more childlike. Harold is not just a parent, he is a Parent– and all of his interactions with Ward emphasize the immense power differential between them.  
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    With this lack of power comes a sense of danger– which makes Harold a key secret weapon in the show’s blisteringly awesome pacing and unrelenting narrative tension. By making Harold this powerful and this frightening, you are instantly concerned for the safety of everyone around him. And 90% of the time, the person who’s around him is Ward, who– what’s worse– is sometimes accompanied by people who don’t know that Harold is dangerous. It’s easy to feel sorry for Ward when he is forced to again and again to allow himself and others into the company of someone who could– and given the right whim, would– kill without a second thought.
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    Another factor in this powerlessness– and possibly the aspect of MCU Ward that we enjoy the most– is the continual shower of trauma and chaos dumped on him, and the fact that he is emotionally unequipped to handle it. One result of this is that he often serves the role of everyman/audience stand-in, reacting to the strangeness and horror around him with a genuineness that makes him relatable. While Danny lives and breathes strangeness, and both Colleen and Joy are quite resilient and good at adapting, Ward simply cannot deal with it (and he is forced to deal with oh, so much). And that’s a fun character trait (…for us, anyway. Not so much for him).  
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    Of course, the darker side of this element of Ward’s character is the isolation it creates for him. Because of the looming Hand threat and his father’s abuse, Ward must handle all of his trauma entirely on his own, all while being forced to present a healthy, sane appearance to the rest of the world. He is unable to either confide in or explain himself to Joy– the one person who really cares about him and who he still has the capacity to care about in return– and he isn’t even allowed to run away and leave it all behind. This is the ultimate manifestation of his powerlessness– his inability to live his own life, or to do anything to escape the horrors constantly being inflicted on him by his father. One of our favorite Ward scenes is in episode 7, when he is forced to dump the bodies of the Hand mooks that Harold has killed and mutilated. It’s a flavor of psychological horror that we were not at all expecting out of Iron Fist– amped up by lingering shots of Ward maneuvering the bodies into his car, and focusing on his desperate struggle to somehow cope with what he’s doing.    
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    It’s a scene that emphasizes how utterly, horrifically out of his depth he is, and helps justifies his breakdown and (first) patricide later in the episode.
    However, we’re also grateful that while Ward is a sympathetic character due to all of the pain heaped on him by the narrative, he’s still not a great guy. Making him completely likable would have felt like a cop-out, and we were relieved that they didn’t take that route. Yes, we are given many reasons to understand why he might be a little bit unfriendly and mean in general, but there are still scenes where the viewer genuinely hates him. This tends to come through in his interactions with Danny. While Ward is generally able to keep his anger and frustration inside, with the help of the occasional drug and some… therapeutic embezzling, he is quick to use the newly-returned Danny as a scapegoat and outlet for all of his aggression. Motives aside, this version of Ward maintains a level of nastiness inherent to his character, and his verbal and emotional abuse are extra sources of pain within Danny’s already traumatic story arc.
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    For this reason, we have our doubts about the future of the Danny/Ward corporate partnership– because the only time Ward actually seems to give a damn about Danny is when he realizes they need to team up to take down Harold. Danny is eager to make friends and quick to forgive, but Ward is one of those dangerous people who only sees Danny as a means to an end.
    At the same time, this all presents an interesting rearranging of Ward’s status as an antagonist. Whereas in the comics he’s a genuine villain, going after Danny because he’s a jerk who places himself in the service of more powerful jerks, in the show he fits into the most basic definition of an antagonist: someone who happens to be working at cross-purposes with the protagonist. Ward’s main goal isn’t to “get” Danny. We don’t think they ever would have become best friends, and clearly, Ward was a jerk long before his father first died, but circumstances are the main culprit here. He and Danny just happen to bump into each other at a time and place where they will be nothing but detrimental to each other. Danny is an unintentional threat to Ward’s delicately balanced life. His presence disrupts things at Rand, plays with Joy’s head, stirs up trouble with the Hand, and makes Harold extra active and extra crazy– all of which comes back to hit Ward in the face. And thus, while Danny wants nothing more than to find a family, reconnect with people who he thought cared about him, and try to rebuild his life, Ward reacts by rejecting him, treating him like garbage, and repeatedly trying to kill him.  
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    This is one factor that we consider to be a weak part of Ward’s characterization. Despite his horror at his father’s homicidal behavior, and his claim in episode 2 that he doesn’t “do that kind of thing”, he literally spends the first two episodes trying to murder Danny– even when Harold tells him not to! This, his snap decision to shove Danny out the window at the end of episode 3, and his two successful attempts to kill Harold, suggest that he’s not quite as squeamish about this sort of thing as he pretends to be… and we wish that had received more development.    
    Overall, though, we think the writing team did a great job with Ward– turning him into a compelling and complex character with a gripping story arc. We loved his relationship with Joy, we appreciated the balance of likable/unlikeable that they managed to strike with him, and we were delighted that in the end, he got the honor of killing Harold once and for all.
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    We were not expecting him to survive this season, but since he did, we’re interested to see where he’ll go from here!
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Text
The Reading Canary: Chaos Sucking
by Robinson L
Sunday, 29 March 2015
Robinson L tears into the second and third books of Patrick Ness' "Chaos Walking" trilogy
Uh-oh! This is in the Axis of Awful...~
Patrick Ness began the Chaos Walking trilogy with The Knife of Never Letting Go, which our esteemed editor reviewed here. I can't be bothered to give a synopsis, so please read the review if you need filling in on the particulars of New World, the characters, Noise, etc.
I don't have much to add to Kyra's assessment of Knife, except that the phonetic spelling coupled with the first person narration really, really bugged me.
Anyway, Ness followed up Knife with book two, The Ask and the Answer, and rounded out the trilogy with book three, Monsters of Men. Since my primary issues with the two books are very different, I'm going to structure my analysis differently for each one. I'm also going to spoil the hell out of both of them, but I won't claim to do anywhere near as good a job of spoiling them as Patrick Ness did by writing the blasted things.
The Ask and the Answer
At the end of
The Knife of Never Letting Go
, Todd and Viola arrived in Haven only to find it taken over by Mayor Prentiss. The Mayor arranges for Viola to receive treatment at a local medical facility, but hides her location from Todd, making further contact with her contingent upon Todd's cooperation. Todd reluctantly goes to work for the Mayor, at first to assure Viola's safety, but as time goes on he begins to identify more and more with the role, even as the things he does grow more and more horrific.
After a brief convalescence, Viola escapes Haven (by now renamed New Prentisstown) and joins the Answer, a partisan group led by the head healer, Mistress Coyle. Though repulsed by the Answer's terrorist bombings in Haven/New Prentisstown, Viola throws her lot in with them to resist the Mayor's tyranny.
There's actually a lot of promise to this book, and Ness works that potential to a certain amount of success. This is simultaneously the book's biggest strength and its ultimate downfall. First off, let's look at what Ness is doing right before we examine how and where it all goes wrong.
Themes and Style
(Warning: The following section contains possibly triggering content in brief discussions of domestic violence, violence against women, and political terror)
It has happened throughout history: peoples who go to war tend to become mirror images of their enemy[1]
The tendency of two sides in an armed conflict to grow increasingly similar in the atrocities they commit against each other is one of the major themes Patrick Ness explores in
The Ask and the Answer
. Every attack by the Answer provokes Mayor Prentiss to implement another crackdown and increasingly draconian methods of social control … which in turn provokes the Answer to even greater acts of terrorism.
The other major theme Ness tackles in this book is corruption, how good people become party to political oppression, torture, murder, even wholesale massacres. By throwing in with Mayor Prentiss, Todd quickly finds himself on a very slippery slope, with each barely excusable but apparently necessary infraction leading to another, slightly less conscionable one. By the end of the novel, Todd has put a group of the local sentient species (Spackle) to work in a concentration camp, branded them with metal bands, branded the human women left in Haven/New Prentisstown as potential allies of the Answer, and helped torture women suspected—on no real evidence—of collaborating with the Answer
[2]
. He hates his job at every step of the process, but he's just about able to convince himself of the necessity of each step, helped along by classic apologist rhetoric courtesy of the Mayor, such as “Surely truly loyal women would be happy to make such small sacrifices to protect law and order” (I paraphrase, but that's the gist of his argument).
Judith L. Herman, author of
Trauma and Recovery
, makes the point that in cases of both domestic abuse and political kidnappings, perpetrators employ intermittent acts of kindness and “gifts” as part of the process of breaking their victims. Ness neatly illustrates this principle early on, with the Mayor using just such an application of strategic mercy to gain first Todd's cooperation, and then the people of Haven's.
The narrative in this book is split between Todd and Viola—fortunately, Viola's narration can actually spell, which significantly cuts down on the reading problem I encountered in the previous book. Even Todd's portions have gone down from literally painful to just occasionally irritating, either because Ness has eased off on the “creative” spelling or just because I've grown desensitized to it.
So to sum up: the book has good, well-observed discourse which deals with important contemporary issues, and even the spelling has upgraded to “tolerable.” And I couldn't effing stand it.
Presentation
My first major problem with
The Ask and the Answer
is that Ness employs all the grace and subtlety of an industrial sledgehammer in putting his points across. By page 100, even a functionally brain dead reader will understand how the Mayor is shaping Haven/New Prentisstown into a police state and shaping Todd into a model enforcer, how Mistress Coyle is just as bad as Mayor Prentiss, and how each atrocity by the one provokes a bigger atrocity by the other. Ness has made all his points crystal clear, but he takes the following 415 pages to beat them even further into the reader's skull, just to make sure. I can appreciate the points he's making, and under other circumstances would applaud him for making them, but I resent being bludgeoned by them.
My second major problem is that the themes Ness is playing with pretty much necessitate his main characters (especially Todd) acting absolutely horrible for 90% of the book—and spending most of the remaining 10% passive victims of forces beyond their control. As a reader, I can just about understand Todd's actions, but I still find them incredibly alienating. Perhaps there are authors who can write a good person who spends the majority of the story doing exactly what the reader desperately wants them not to do and still have it be engaging and not off-putting—if so, Patrick Ness is not among their number.
Part of the issue, I suspect, is that I came into the novel expecting an action adventure story with a dystopian setting, like Scott Westerfeld's
Uglies
or Suzanne Collins'
Hunger Games
. The latter two work as action adventure stories by carefully balancing out the dystopia's horror: even
The Hunger Games
at its grimdarkest, understands there are some places it must not go, so it doesn't. Ness dives recklessly into that dystopian horror, but still insists on retaining the action adventure elements: good wins over evil, the heroes emerge scarred but not permanently damaged, and no matter how badly they behave they never cross the
Moral Event Horizon
. The two styles clash horribly, and if there was any hope of Ness pulling off the “Todd becomes police state enforcer” scenario, making the series also an action adventure story drives the last nail into its coffin.
I'd probably have given up on the book early on, but the last damnable thing about Ness is that he's so masterful when it comes to tension that one can't stop reading—in that highly manipulative, almost drug-addicted mindset: “I don't want to keep doing this but it's so hard to make myself stop.” As it was, I frequently had to take a break from reading to cuss out Ness for feeding me this dreck.
The book has other problems. Early on, Ness introduces
two
young women who manage to feel like essentially the same character despite taking diametrically opposed reactions to Viola's arrival (one becomes instant Best Friends Forever while the other despises Viola and only helps her out of principle) and serve the exact same function in the story: get fridged in order to prompt Viola to action. Is it any less skeevy when a female character is fridged to further another female character's story instead of a male's? Somehow I doubt it.
At the climax of the novel, Mayor Prentiss also kills his son Davy, because Ness was worried he might be getting too subtle. Davy, of course, was in the middle of an awakening process and had almost become human, and his murder, along with sending the melodrama up to eleven (yet again), cut short a potentially interesting and enjoyable character arc. Looking at it that way, I suppose Davy had to go before he brought up the novel's enjoyment factor.
Davy's death is arguably the emotional high point of the book, but here Ness' “creative” spelling comes back to bite him in the arse. We have Todd the narrator standing over Davy's body, listening with tears in his eyes to the other's dying confession, and casually mentions hearing an “explozhun” in the distance. At that point, any pathos Ness had managed to achieve evaporated in a puff of abject silliness, and the whole scene instantaneously degenerated into unintentional hilarity. I'm given to understand, the technical term for this is “bathos,” or, if you're a fan of TV Tropes, “Narm.”
Final Thoughts
As one last method of annoying me, Ness spends the bulk of the book having Viola and Todd questioning each other's motivations for working for a despot and throwing in with terrorists respectively, and questioning each other's loyalty into the bargain. This ties into the theme of enemies in wartime becoming mirror images—with each side treating the other's atrocities as unforgivably monstrous while excusing its own atrocities as regrettably necessary. And it is equally alienating.
It also bears the distinction of playing to the cliché romance trope of misunderstandings cropping up between the lovers to cast doubt on their respective commitment. In other words: insufferable from two directions at once.
Nothing could make up for the excruciating alienation of the first 450+ pages, but I have to admit the ending, where Todd and Viola reconcile, agree to save each other like they always do, and proceed to lay a righteous smackdown on the Mayor is both sweet and greatly satisfying. Not good enough to be cathartic, but probably the best Ness could realistically have managed at that point.
In terms of sheer unreadability,
The Ask and the Answer
is the worst book of the trilogy, though it does have hands-down the best climax. It's probably the worst book in most other ways, too, but its awfulness is spread out over a space of 515 pages. There's no one moment where the reader stops, and—after double- and triple-checking to make sure that yes, they really did read something that abominably wrongheaded—says, “You know, I was with you more or less up to this point, but this part right here ruins it all.” For that, we shall have to look elsewhere …
Monsters of Men
In the final installment of the trilogy, Todd releases Mayor Prentiss to fight off a vicious attack by the Spackle. Meanwhile, a scout ship containing Viola's friends Simone and Bradley arrives on New World to prepare the way for the colony ships. Todd and Viola forge a reluctant alliance between the Mayor, Mistress Coyle, and the two scouts to protect the humans from the Spackle, and eventually secure peace. Naturally, this proves a difficult task, and divisions among the three groups constantly threaten to ruin the whole process.
What I Liked
I found
Monsters of Men
exponentially less excruciating than
The Knife of Never Letting Go
and
The Ask and the Answer
. There is some amount of the protagonists (especially Todd) doing bad/incompetent stuff when they should know better, but unlike in the previous book there's a lot of other things going on, most of which aren't nearly so alienating.
I scored this from the library on audio, obliterating any concerns over spelling, although I did catch the guy narrating for Todd's pronunciation of “reckernize” a couple times. Listening to the audiobook may also have helped with the difficult bits, as they went by quicker and with less active participation on my part.
The three narrators all do a terrific job. Nick Podehl (Todd) took a little while to grow on me, probably because he does such a swell job of nailing down Todd's voice, and spelling aside, Todd's narrative voice is definitely an acquired taste. He does a fantastic Mayor Prentiss, though. I'd always imagined Prentiss speaking with an affably evil, faintly patronizing tone; Podehl's Prentiss is straight-forward and conversational, which arguably works even better.
Angel Dawe (Viola), apart from narrating like a pro, has a thoroughly lovely voice. The pleasure of listening to her is only marred towards the middle, when Viola develops an infection, and her dialogue is interrupted with constant fits of coughing.
Rounding out the cast is MacLeod Andrews narrating for the Return, a Spackle whom Todd saved in the previous book, and the only survivor of the Mayor's massacre. Andrews plays his role well, adopting a faintly unworldly voice which conveys the character's alien nature quite well.
For the last installment in a series with such a propensity for mowing down supporting characters,
Monsters of Men
actually has a fairly low body count among the characters we're supposed to sympathize with, and many of the most likable supporting characters do, in fact, survive. Moreover, I can think of three specific scenes where I was sure Ness was setting up to kill off Bradley, Lee, and Angharad respectively, and in the end none of those things happened. I find it kind of nice when an author can fake me out that way.
The last compliment I'm going to hand out is for the world-building. The Spackle are still a bit more human than the sci-fi hardliner in me would prefer, but Ness does a fabulous job of fleshing out their society. For instance, they refer to themselves collectively as the Land, and their leader is the Sky. This confused me at first, trying to differentiate between people and geographic markers, but then the Sky refers to the time of the first war, when “we were a different Land under a different Sky”—which is beautifully poetic if you ask me.
What I Disliked
You remember what I said about a surprisingly low bodycount? Well of course, Ness had to balance that out somehow, and being Ness, his solution naturally rates approximately 80 MegaBrooks on the
predictability scale
. No points for guessing that the only semi-reasonable authority figure in this book dies, only to be replaced by one of our young protagonists.
And while Ness aptly demonstrates how warfare is always the product of some combination of misunderstanding, misinformation, prejudice, paranoia, and demagoguery, sometimes he seems to be saying that it can still be necessary. Many people will agree with Ness on this point, but I don't and it bugs me. A lot. If warfare is predicated on lies and behavior which is the height of iniquity in all other circumstances—then surely there are other ways to find solutions to the issues warfare is supposed to resolve.
Then there's all the bollocks about leaders and followers. As might be expected from the villain of the piece, Mayor Prentiss has a very elitist view of human nature, insisting that most human beings deep down really want to be led—people like himself and Todd and Viola and a few others are the exceptions, the ones born to lead instead of follow. This is how he's able to control large groups of men through their Noise, and how Todd occasionally does the same to one or two at a time. Even after he's semi-reformed, Mayor Prentiss still believes a benevolent dictator who shapes the people's will through their Noise is the best kind of leader.
The problem is that the text bears him out on this point. With a rare handful of exceptions, the people of New World really do behave like sheep, unquestioningly throwing their support behind one charismatic leader or another. The only amount of independent thinking they ever display is deciding which charismatic leader to align with. In short, they behave
exactly
like the born followers the Mayor describes. Sure, controlling them through Noise is bad, but controlling them through demagoguery is only bad if it's evil people like the Mayor and Mistress Coyle doing it.
Speaking of the Mayor, though, Ness actually does something very interesting with him during the middle third of the book. With the help of the scouts—Simone and Bradley—Todd and Viola force the Mayor to help them try to make peace with the Spackle. Nobody trusts him, of course, and Mistress Coyle vehemently insists that he must be up to something.
But Mayor Prentiss really does seem to be helping out and genuinely seeking peace. After a while he starts talking of having been “redeemed.”
[3]
Todd doubts this, and a couple times tells the Mayor flat-out “yer not redeemable,” but with a little less conviction each time. It gets to the point where Todd chooses to save the Mayor's life over Simone's.
There comes a time when the main characters have got all their problems pretty much sorted out. They've made peace with the Spackle, with the fate of Mayor Prentiss being the only major sticking point; the political situation among the humans has died down—Prentiss is still around, but the colonists will be able to deal with him when they arrive in a few weeks; Viola has recovered, Todd has a new father figure; all-in-all, things are looking up.
The interesting thing would be to stop there; Ness has things approximately where he wants them anyway, and sorting out the remaining loose ends will entail some tough decisions with no easy answers. It leaves us with the question of the Mayor, the terrible ghoul built up over the course of the first two books, now redeemed like Darth Vader, and inconveniently alive following his redemption, unlike Darth Vader. What is his place in society now? What manner of punishment will the Spackle and human communities impose upon him for his atrocities? How much punishment
should
they impose? How will he reconcile those atrocities with his own conscience?
Well yes, Ness
could
do that. Or he could have Mayor Prentiss yell out “Surprise! I really was evil along! And now I'm going to restart the war and try to get every single human being on this planet killed off in glorious battle! Muahahahahahahaha!” and have Todd and Viola et al. reply “Ahhh! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” and proceed to stop him, though only after a dully predictable climax involving a forest fire, a flood, and retreading territory Ness has already covered amply over the course of the book. Which is precisely what he does.
As a humanist, I reject the notion that any human being is beyond redemption, so I admit I'm biased. But that objection aside, having the Mayor prove a villain in the end is exponentially less interesting from a narrative perspective. The previous two books built up Mayor Prentiss as horrifyingly powerful and completely devoid of redeeming virtues. Fair enough, I could name a couple billion such villains from literature, and Ness does a better job than many of making his villain believable and threatening. Such characters exist to be righteously killed off in one fashion or another, and they're deliberately kept unsympathetic so the reader can cheer unreservedly when they get their fatal comeuppance.
However, when an author deliberately raises the question “is this villain redeemable?” there are only two ways things can go. Option #1 “No,” tells the reader absolutely nothing, does nothing to enhance the story, and goes nowhere. It's the worst kind of lampshade hanging: drawing attention to a stock trope while simultaneously playing that trope by the numbers and completely failing to do anything new or interesting with it. Option #2: “Yes,” on the other hand, leads immediately to the question “What then?” This opens up a vast field of questions and possibilities to explore, as illustrated above.
So, of course, Ness goes for Option #1. He does throw me a halfhearted bone by having the Mayor magnanimously commit suicide to spare Todd from murdering him. I'll admit that's better than nothing, but it still comes directly after the Mayor's own acknowledgment that he's “not redeemable,” and,
as our esteemed editor has pointed out
, having a character make amends immediately before nobly sacrificing their life is a lot easier than having them live with the consequences. In short, it's a cop-out.
The big climactic conflagration set off by the Mayor's return to form is tediously predictable. The Spackle turn against the humans again, but their leader comes around just in the nick of time to stop hostilities from flaring up again. Both Spackle and human characters have to relearn the lessons they spent the last four hundred effing pages learning in the first place.
[4]
Todd, Viola, and the other named characters run around putting out fires. Lots of characters whom we neither know nor care about die in the ensuing fire and flood, and Haven gets destroyed and it makes no difference. Todd and the Mayor have a showdown that—apart from taking place on a beach instead of Haven city hall—is a recycle of their battle at the end of
The Ask and the Answer
, bringing nothing new to the table.
For decades, action-adventure readers have been conditioned to expect a big, apocalyptic climax and final clash of good and evil, and to have a villain who's thoroughly evil, although the option of one last altruistic gesture immediately before they die has grown increasingly popular in the last ten or twenty years. It would've made for a much more original story to have the surprise twist be that the plot ends at the point where the characters had things mostly worked out anyway, with no big catastrophes or confrontations, leaving Todd and Viola et al. with the thorny question of what to do with a reformed but still troublesome Mayor Prentiss. And yes, that is counter-factual criticism but frankly, I'm beyond caring.
All this was irritating, but it was hardly unexpected. Indeed, as I've just explained, it would've been surprising if Ness
hadn't
thrown all that stuff in, cheap and annoying as it was. Unfortunately, there's more. Much more.
Minority Warrior
The following section covers aspects of the book which gave me pause. While they don't offend me personally, I suspect they might offend others—notably those who don't share my privilege—and I feel it behooves me to give fair warning.
Many people have objected to the fact that, in Ness' universe, human men have Noise but human women do not. Towards the end of
Monsters of Men
one character says that women probably do have Noise, and they have to figure out how to access it. At no point does Ness ever explain why Noise manifests so radically differently in women as opposed to men, and one is forced to assume it must be because women and men are so fundamentally different as to be practically two separate species. Which, um, they aren't.
When Bradley begins manifesting Noise, it quickly transpires that, big surprise, he has the hots for Simone, who for whatever reason isn't interested. Lee also has a hopeless crush on Viola, as if you hadn't figured that out long since. Ness uses their conditions to explore unrequited love, just as he's previously used the Noise to explore frustrated erotic desire.
The thing is, the only characters depicted as experiencing unrequited love are male. The only characters depicted as experiencing erotic desire are male. Viola desires Todd emotionally, and he reciprocates, and I think there's a brief allusion to Todd thinking about her sexually, but no hint that Viola might have such thoughts for herself.
It smells faintly of Nice Guy Syndrome, as does Viola's conversation with Simone, encouraging the other woman to give Bradley a chance because “he's a good man.” Maybe I'm paranoid or getting off on playing More Feminist Than Thou or both, but I think it may be telling that Ness has Viola appeal to Simone in terms of a rational assessment of his good character, rather than his desirability as a boyfriend or lover.
And getting back to that low body count among the sympathetic characters, arguably the most prominent sympathetic character to die in the book is Simone herself. Simone is the leader of the two-person scouting party; strong and competent and resourceful and pretty damn cool. And the thing is, once both she and Mistress Coyle are dead, the only female character of any importance to the story is Viola. Next runner up is Todd's
horse
for heaven's sake. Contrast this with the six prominent, sympathetic male characters who also survive to the end. Bit of a gap, there.
I've also seen Ness criticized for failing to consider homosexuality in the earlier books. In
Monsters of Men
, two of the most prominent sympathetic characters had same-sex Love Interests—both of whom were fridged earlier in the series, so I'm not sure Ness is scoring many points there, either.
Text Bomb
Getting back to the climax, the Mayor throws himself into the sea and dies, and Todd and Viola share a joyful embrace on the shore, knowing that whatever happens now, everything is going to be okay. And then the Return shows up and semi-accidentally kills Todd.
Excuse me, my melodrameter just overheated again.
Okay, that's better. My first thought on reading this was that it had to be the single most gratuitous bit of sensationalism Ness has ever written, and keep in mind this is
Patrick Ness
we're talking about.
Then he launched into a tortuously drawn out
[5]
scene between Viola and the Return. Like the rest of the series, it's all overblown and takes five times longer than it ought to in a mishandled attempt to enhance tension. But for all that, there's some decent character development for both Viola and the Return, and it does serve to underline many of the trilogy's themes. It even manages to tie in Todd's murder of a helpless Spackle fisher in
Knife
—the Return absorbed Todd's guilt for that act through his Noise, and now he bears a similar guilt for a similar murder.
Not that any of this was strictly necessary. Ness had already explored those themes quite satisfactorily, and Viola's and the Return's character development basically amounted to relearning lessons they'd already learned. The sequence added nothing new, but it did sharpen the recycled material.
Yes, it was inane and drawn-out and dumbed-down and more melodramatic than Russell T Davies on steroids, acid, and meth all at the same time, but coming out of the sequence I grudgingly admitted that it was more than just Patrick Ness indulging in yet more cheap sensationalism.
… And then he pulled a J. K. Rowling. Turns out, Todd's alive.
What the f***?
What the f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***?
Over on my livejournal, I coined the term “Text Bomb” to denote a development so unexpected and so ridiculous or awful or both that the reader's brain initially rejects it as impossible. In those terms, Todd's resurrection at the end of
Monsters of Men
is a Thermonuclear grade Text Bomb.
Mere words cannot describe the head-banging inanity of this move, but I'm damn well going to make them try.
I believe a number of people found Harry's resurrection in
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
a cheap cop-out, but in my view, Todd's is much, much worse. My reason is that Rowling had long since squandered any thematic coherence she might once have had. Harry's death and resurrection are equally meaningless because there are no themes to
Deathly Hallows
, just Stuff Happening.
Whereas Patrick Ness knows how to carry a theme. Sure, he's hamfisted and his repertoire consists almost entirely of cheap tricks, but as Dan pointed out somewhere in the
Girl Books for Girls series
(I believe it was Part Four) the thing about cheap tricks is that they do work. It's the crassest, basest way to say what you have to say, but it gets the job done.
Harry's return in
Deathly Hallows
has no thematic consequences—it's just Rowling wanking. Todd's return in
Monsters of Men
goes back and nukes all the thematic and character development Ness poured into the preceding scene. The whole thing—the emotional high point of the book, and probably the series—instantly implodes when the linchpin which gave it its driving force (Todd's death) is pulled away. In that one moment, the entire trilogy lapses into farce.
Admittedly, Ness puts together a pretty good excuse for why Todd seemed dead without actually dying, but this does nothing to address the thematic mess Todd's return leaves in its wake. If Ness really felt he needed to include all that development for Viola and the Return he should have had the guts to give his scenario the conclusion it demanded and have Todd stay dead. If he truly couldn't bear to kill off his protagonist, then, as I've already pointed out, it would've been perfectly plausible from a thematic perspective to cut the action off after the Mayor's defeat and not raised the prospect of killing his protagonist in the first place.
Ness chose neither option; he went ahead and wrecked his own discourse instead.
The Canary Says
The Ask and the Answer
is an excruciating read, constantly alienating the reader and dragging out its points
ad nauseam
.
Monsters of Men
is enjoyable if occasionally irritating, but its ending—when compared to the quality of the rest of the book—is one of the worst affronts to good literature ever published.
Maybe I'm being too harsh with Ness. He's obviously trying to be sophisticated and engage with some pretty complex ideas. In my view he sabotages himself by his heavy reliance on repetition and on sensationalism and grandstanding, but perhaps I give him too little credit. I found
The Ask and the Answer
just shy of unreadable, but people who are less bothered by protagonists doing wrong will probably have an easier time of it. And while the conclusion to
Monsters of Men
is a narrative travesty, people without my peculiar sensibilities may find it highly enjoyable despite its technical failings. If I really liked Todd rather than feeling mostly indifferent towards him, I'd probably cheer his resurrection even though it undermines everything Ness was trying to say.
Maybe I'm being too harsh with Ness, but I don't care.
I'm not here to be fair, I'm here to be judgmental
, and these books got right up my nose. My advice: stay away.
[1]
Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea
, by Mark Kurlansky.
[2]
The Mayor's method of interrogation is essentially waterboarding, and it is unambiguously treated and referred to as torture.
[3]
Granted, he attributes this to Todd's influence as if he were some sort of secular effing Messiah, which I didn't much appreciate.
[4]
Having to learn the same lesson over and over again is realistic, and I expect it's possible to depict this process in narrative fiction without being incredibly fecking annoying, but the task is beyond Patrick Ness' abilities.
[5]
What did you expect? Short and to the point?Themes:
Reading Canary
,
Books
,
Sci-fi / Fantasy
,
Young Adult / Children
~
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https://ronanwills.wordpress.com/
at 19:51 on 2015-03-30I was initially kind of surprised to see this in the axis of awful, but then I read your actual post and thought back to my own experiences with the books and it's perhaps not that surprising.
I read The Knife of Never Letting Go more than six years ago, loved it and ran out to buy the other two. But I found The Ask and The Answer's relentless pacing and breathless prose so exhausting I felt like I had to take a break before tackling Monsters of Men.
That break kept getting longer and longer, and now the book is sitting on a shelf in my room, unread. Now that I know where the story ultimately goes, I'm kind of glad I didn't bother.
I'm willing to bet that if I went back and reread the first two books I'd probably be far less taken with them- it's been long enough that my tastes have changed significantly, and at the time I was young enough that "it turns out that both sides are just as bad as each other" still felt interesting and somewhat revelatory. When the same theme comes up in fiction now (the example that comes to mind immediately is Bioshock Infinite) I find it trite and not at all useful or worth saying.
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https://thatcharacterdies.wordpress.com/
at 01:07 on 2015-04-02On the subject of making a story about how both sides are committing terrible acts without making your protagonists monsters or completely passive- I think perhaps the best way is the noir approach. In other words, have your protagonist be basically decent, but caught up in the world of powers far beyond them, and thus unable to enact more than a little change. A good example of this would be John le Carre- take The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Lemas is more or less trying to be an okay person, but his attempts can't compare to the ruthlessness of the powers he's caught between. Of course, there's a reason le Carre tends to have downbeat endings, and noirs tend to be bittersweet or downers.
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https://francessmithsite.wordpress.com/
at 21:53 on 2016-02-19
Is it any less skeevy when a female character is fridged to further another female character's story instead of a male's? Somehow I doubt it.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I can see what you're getting at, but I don't think it's useful or even possible for a work of fiction to treat every character as equally valuable, for want of a better word, and everyone's story as equally important. Any attempt to try is likely to result in a shapeless, bloated mess. You have to decide whose story it is, and then you have to render everyone whose story it isn't subordinate to the person whose story it is.
To take the example that you've given, it sounds like the two young women are introduced solely for the purpose of getting killed later on in order to motivate Viola. And, to be honest, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If he had introduced them, developed them over several volumes, brought you to care about them and then killed them off in a perfunctory manner like poor Lian Harper then that would be something to complain about, to be sure, but I've always felt the real problem with fridging was not that it kills women but that in doing so it disrespects both the characters, the care and attention that other artists have put into them, and the love that they have inspired in the fans. None of which applies when the victim is a redshirt, and all of which conversely can apply when the character dies in a thematically valid conclusion to their character arc (looking at you, Adrian Tchaikovsky).
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Robinson L
at 22:30 on 2016-02-19Okay, good point about the difference between killing off an established, long-running character to motivate another character as opposed to killing off a walk-on. (I may be misremembering here, but I thought I heard somewhere that the original Woman in a Refrigerator was always intended to die to motivate her boyfriend - the Green Lantern - to do something or other, but was still given a good whack of development so that the reader would feel her loss along with him.)
I'm not entirely convinced, but no counter-arguments immediately spring to mind. If somebody else wants to take up the argument, I may or may not agree with them, but I'll let the point stand for now.
I mean, it can also be skeevy if a) female guest and walk-on characters are frequently stuffed in the fridge to motivate the main characters, or b) the tone of the piece gives the implication that this death is especially tragic or heinous because the victim is female, but these aren't always the case.
That said, introducing a character, and developing them just enough to make the reader mildly invested in them as such, and then killing them off to motivate a main character is often a cheap-shot. In this case, from what I remember, there were plenty of other potential motivations for Viola to take the actions she takes. (Another case in point:
The Night of the Doctor
.)
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How to Change a Fuqboi (Hoseok)
Word Count: 3,912
Loosely inspired by the song “Fuqboi” by Hey Violet and “Not My Type at All” by Jacob Whitesides
Rated M (language and like REALLY REALLY suggestive sh!t yo 😂)
Tumblr media
How To Change A Fuqboi
Volume 1: Happenstance (Jungkook) Volume 2: For-Getting His Attention (Jimin) Volume 3: Bonding and Binding (Taehyung) Volume 4: One and Done (Yoongi) Volume 5: Unintentional Liar (Seokjin) Volume 6: To Be Loved (Namjoon) Volume 7: Checklist (Hoseok)
✩✩✩♔✩✩✩
Step 1) Pay attention to first impressions*
After a little…thinking time, I have decided to write this last volume in sight of the fact that there is something we failed to discuss earlier.
In the words of the great poet William Shakespeare, “Some are born as a fuckboy, some achieve fuckboy-hood, and some have fuckboy-hood thrust upon them.” Okay, yes, I changed it a LITTLE. But that’s beside the point. In this volume, we will be addressing the third version, those that have “fuckboy-hood thrust upon them” which I will henceforth reference as a “convert.” Often times, these are guys who have experienced emotional trauma in a romantic relationship, but instead of working toward a healing resolution, they will compensate by seeking comfort in… something else.
Jung Hoseok, a name that anyone- nay, EVERYONE in the Middle Earth dormitory has heard.
Jung Hoseok, the dancer, the straight A student, the part time waiter in the university’s only sit-down restaurant.
Jung Hoseok, the most notorious fuckboy on campus.
See, rumor has it, he keeps this list, a LITERAL list. It has no title and no explanation, but neither is ever really necessary. It only consists of names…about three hundred of them, though the general consensus stands that slightly more than half are crossed out. And let’s just say it’s not because he’s handing out party invitations.
So obviously, when you moved into your Middle Earth apartment, having transferred over from another university, within the first two days you knew who he was and that you should stay the hell away from him at all costs.
You want NOTHING to do with Jung Hoseok.
It’s not that he’s trouble, because let’s face it, you are NO stranger that word in any sense, but rather your avoidance of him has everything to do with how you first met and what he said to you. Or maybe what he didn’t say.
The empty carton of cigarettes stares back at you with a vengeance, the last one poised between your fingers.
By now, one would think you’d learn to keep a reserve, but NO. You let your vices eat you alive and then cyclically get angry when you neglect them out of laziness. You shrug, skillfully flicking on your lighter before letting the tip of the flame kiss the edge of the cigarette.
Fine. Whatever. Learn nothing, that’s okay too.
Taking a thoughtful drag, shifting your position at the base of the tree, you pull out this quarter’s class schedule and the campus map to look them over one last time instead of watching students pass between small dormitory buildings, meeting neighbors, greeting friends.
As you have or desire neither, you devote your attention to the paper, pretending to be thoroughly interested in wherever the hell “Science Lecture Hall B” is located- especially as some boy decides that out of ALL the decorative trees to sit under, he’ll be occupying the space under YOURS.
“You know this is a smoke free campus, right?” he deposits his book bag beside the trunk, looking at you like you just killed a man.
You arch an eyebrow, unsure whether to be irritated or curious, “You know I don’t actually care, right?”
“Great, because I don’t either,” he laughs at his own bad joke, taking a seat and stretching out his legs. You’ve got to admit (or I’ll force you to), he’s a little attractive with his bright smile, tanned skin, lean frame, and dark, feathery hair- but oh GOD is that a choker?
“Fantastic,” you smirk before taking a long drag and blowing the smoke right into his face, hating the burning, but loving the coughing fit your new companion bends into.
“Was that…really necessary?” he bats at the air, action so (possibly unintentionally) comical that it makes you laugh. The boy seems to take this as the go-ahead to continue, “You got a name?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?” you’re more amused than anything at this point, ego being stroked fervently by his insistence on finding everything you say hilarious. You want to believe your interactions are reluctant, but the smile on your face as you tell him your name says otherwise.
He extends his hand for a shake and you’re one hundred percent ready to accept the greeting until he says, “I’m Hoseok. Jung Hoseok.”
“Oh.”
You immediately retract, having skimmed the skin of his palm, watching him now with a look of disgust. His smile falls.
“Did I do something wrong?”
You stand, shoving your schedule into your bag so haphazardly that it audibly crumples, “Don’t think I haven’t heard your name before. I know what you are.”
“What I am…?”
You decide to not grace him with an answer, opting instead to walk away. But the persistent boy follows.
“Wait, what do you mean? I don’t understand.”
If your roommate hadn’t warned you about him, you might think Hoseok is actually upset by your leaving, rather than simply pining for attention. If your name is on that notorious list of his, you want absolutely nothing to do with him- a thought that I encourage enthusiastically.
You drop the cigarette, stomping on the smoldering end until satisfied, words gruff, “You don’t NEED to understand. Now, unless you have a pack of smokes that you want to share, we’re done here.”
*Elaboration: first impressions are not always correct and should not be used to judge the ENTIRETY of a person, but rather your impression of them should based in what they do to maintain a good image or repair a bad one.
Step 2) Keep an open mind**
By now, we’ve learned changing people is close to impossible and best case scenario, the only person you CAN change is yourself. Still- humor me for a second, we might consider the possibility that he’s not an ENTIRELY bad guy.
We’ve gone over the importance of compromise (see Volume 3) and have learned why baby steps are vital (see Volume 2). To help a converted fuckboy heal, first you must have a grasp on these two lessons. Then, apply the concept of “standing your ground” (see Volume 1) and slowly but surely, coming from a place of love, offer kindness, resources, and most importantly, a safety net.
A balmy breeze filters through the open window above you, cracked to ward off the stubborn smell of body odor that seems to linger in every corner of every dorm room you’ve inhabited, the kind that persists no matter how much Lysol or Febreze you use.
You keep telling yourself that someday, you’ll get used to it and won’t have to fight the urge to put on one of those medieval bird masks that shove posies up your nose.
And while you have not purchased said mask, someday still has yet to come.
Your thumb leisurely drags across the surface of your phone screen as your eyes fervently follow the words. Your muscles tighten in anticipation of the climax. Your fingers ball into a fist around a handful of sheets.
“THAT’S IT?” you whisper, frustrated, rolling over to bury your face in your pillow. “What the hell! Is she a lesbian or NOT? WHY doesn’t it say explicitly?”
You lift your face to look at the last qualification of the fourth step of the 5th Volume of your favorite satire, How to Change a Fuqboi. The ambiguity killed you, but I’m sure you ALSO understood that this was kind of the point and supposed to be part of the series’s charm.
Scrolling all the way back up to the top of the post, you decide that yes, you have time to finish Volume 6 before class starts as well- maybe even get a peek at the first step of Volume 7.
“Oh, back in a retail store are we?” you mumble to your phone screen, recalling the several other stories that abused this setting. “Are you just running out of ideas? Oh well, I think the change of pace is nice.”
Change of pace my left ass cheek.
“What I don’t understand is why you always assume we don’t listen,” you roll your eyes as you move on to Volume 7, skimming through the first step. “And what is this ‘protagonist doesn’t give a shit’ thing? How is she supposed to change Hoseok ‘with love’ or ‘compassion’ if she doesn’t interact with him?”
I just thought I’d shake up the characters a bit. There’s no need to scold me…
“Well,” you stand, pocketing your phone after glancing at the vague words of the second step of the 7th Volume, “That’s enough of you yelling at ME.”
Are you seriously challenging me right now? I’m the narrator, you can’t do that.
“Hell yeah I am. Just watch. I’ll show you who’s ‘not listening.’”
You exit the dorm, a bounce in your step and a smile on your face. Ah, but don’t forget, little bird, you have class in ten minutes.
“Well shit.”
Two hours and a surprisingly interesting lecture later, you weave your way through the Middle Earth apartments, searching for that head of dark, feathery hair.
Jung Hoseok had never approached you in the two years you’d gone to the school, meaning you probably weren’t on his list. This… is a little bit of a setback, namely because you’d have to spontaneously generate sexual interest, something you’re not all too familiar with, but you’ve never been one to give up easily.
You hear his bubbly laugh first, gaze honing in on the notorious fuckboy who appears to be all sunshine and smiles.
His companion seems the complete opposite, a pretty girl in a “sweatpants, oversized flannel, ‘I’d bite off your dick during a blowjob if you say the wrong thing’” kind of way. She takes a long drag on her cigarette, completely ignoring Hoseok as they walk.
“I can do this,” you assure yourself quietly, much to my amusement. “Just be brave and stand your ground. HOSEOK!”
Even at a distance, you can see him stiffen with surprise, looking around with confusion written on his expression. The girl takes this opportunity to disappear.
“Hoseok!” you call again, trotting forward until you stand at a respectable distance to introduce yourself.
The boy greets you with an ounce of skepticism, obviously unsure why you, a complete stranger, are randomly approaching him.
See, from the first volume, each pair has met by HAPPENSTANCE… at least as far as we know. Never have any of the protagonists first approached the fuckboy. By doing this, you’re asserting self-confidence and dominance, something that is often a turn off for them.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” you give his hand a firm shake.
I’m telling you, confidence is NOT the way to-
“All good things I hope,” he laughs, running his fingers through his hair.
“Definitely. My friend was right. You ARE one of the cutest waiters on campus.”
Hoseok, now probably in familiar territory, visibly relaxes, “One of the cutest? Please, sweetheart, I’m THE cutest.”
There’s a gravitational, toxic sort of positivity in his presence, one that I’m sure every girl on his literal “to do” list has fallen for.
Anyway, you two sound like freshmen, flirting like that. He’s never going to-
“I’m assuming you’ve been to the restaurant then?”
You shift the weight of your books to your other arm, tugging at a strand of your hair shyly but not breaking eye contact, “Sadly, no. I’m very indecisive so going ANYWHERE I haven’t eaten before is… a little bit intimidating.”
Okay, I see what you’re doing. You’re giving him the option to offer to eat there and take charge of what to order. You’re playing up to his masculinity by letting him “be an expert” on the subject. Learning how to seduce fuckboys is NOT part of this series and I seriously doubt that you’ll hit all the marks necessary to-
“What? You haven’t?” his tone suggests that this is the single most astonishing thing he’s ever heard. “Well good thing I’ve got some free time then. You MUST let me treat you to lunch. It’s only the right thing to do.”
This is a trap. He’s trying to manipulate you to get you to spend more time with him by… wait. Never mind. YOU’RE the one who WANTS this to happen.
Whatever.
“Actually, I have class in a few minutes,” you bite your lip coyly, fibbing, playing hard to get. “But why don’t I give you my number and we could meet up sometime tonight?”
Hoseok sighs, pouting, but hands you his phone, “That’s too bad, I’m going to be working.”
“Then I’ll see you there and you can… recommend something,” you wink, earning a knowing smirk from him.
“Sounds good. I look forward to our little date.”
You say nothing else, turning on heel and shifting the weight of your books again as you stride away like you own the place.
Seriously, I can’t believe you just did that.
Do you even KNOW the trouble you’ve probably just gotten yourself into?
You go back to your dorm after turning a few unnecessary corners, making sure Hoseok isn’t following and as soon as the door closes, you plop down on your bed, opening the Tumblr app, skipping down to step three of Volume 7. You whisper, “Baby steps and compromise, huh? I can do that.”
**Clarification: By open mind, I STILL don’t mean “be a doormat.” Continue to stand your ground, just refrain from being judgmental.
Step 3) Remember a little thing called “follow through”
Because we are simply reverting and not converting, this process will be both easier and more difficult. It is typically in a convert’s original nature to be emotionally responsive and caring, so getting him to return to this is less demanding than teaching it from scratch. However, it might start opening up some old scars.
By now, we’ve also learned the significance of persistence (see Volume 4), the ability to discern between types of situations (see Volume 5), and more importantly, being able to see which fuckboys are worth changing (see Volume 6).
It is good to note that each case will be a little bit different, but some are more incompatible with change than others.
“Well, well, well! I didn’t think you’d actually show up,” Hoseok trots over with a thousand watt smile aimed directly at you, a lethal weapon.
“How could I not?” you giggle, picking up the menu, “We had a date after all.”
“Touché.” he laughs lightly, easily, “So, can I start you off with something to drink?”
You let him call the shots, ordering what he suggests without hesitance or an ounce of shame. You also make sure to eat slowly, meaning you’re still around when he goes on break, which he “conveniently” decides to spend with you.
However, YOU “conveniently” make yourself scarce just before his shift ends.
This playing around, TOYING with him, continues for a week, teases of interactions with genuine laughter and flirtatious glances in their wake. Nothing serious happens as you barely touch him beyond a purposeful brush of the hand or arm, a lingering touch on shoulders or knees…but then you happen to bump into him on a Friday night.
It’s pleasantly warm, a breeze caressing your cheeks, sending strands of your hair tickling across your skin. The lights around campus are just beginning to turn on, bathing the pathways in soft white.
You’re on your way back from the campus’s only pizza place- because let’s be real, the only date you’ve got is with Netflix- when you see the familiar dark head of feathery hair. You’re about to let the opportunity pass, tired of keeping up this “sexually confident” facade, but then he calls your name and it’s not like you can IGNORE him.
OH WAIT YOU TOTALLY CAN. But you don’t.
Hoseok nods goodbye to the girl who was entrapped in their conversation before he bounds over, “So, where are you going this late at night? Pretty girls shouldn’t be walking alone.”
This is where I MUST remind you of the checklist. Y’know, the one he keeps with all the names of the girls he wants to FUCK. That one?
“Look, Hoseok,” you sigh, pushing a few stray strands of hair out of your eyes, resting the pizza box against your hip. “You’re a funny, great guy and I love talking to you, but I had an exam today and I’m a little stressed out.”
Yes, good decision.
“Well let me help you… destress?” he quirks an eyebrow, lifting his hands, palms up in a suspended shrug. “You said it yourself, sweetheart. I’m funny. Humor lightens the mood, relaxes people.”
You let out an indecisive hum, biting your lip to bide your time. I’m sure you’re contemplating how much effort you actually want to put into proving me wrong, but-
“Okay, you have a point.”
ARE YOU KIDDING? Can you at least stop interrupting m-?
“Just Netflix, no chilling,” you warn teasingly.
Now you’re just being petty.
Hoseok gently takes the pizza box from you, “Why don’t you let ME do the heavy lifting? You just focus on leading the way.”
The two of you settle down on the bed in your room, comfortably lounging side by side as you start up your laptop and scroll through the list of recommended movies. I’d warn you that he was watching with a smirk the whole time, but I doubt you’d care.
Eventually, you agree on a comedy, but when you offer him a slice of pizza, you do the worst thing possible and bridge the gap to allow for interaction.
“So this ‘no chilling’ policy,” Hoseok asks before taking a bite, chewing to allow for a suspenseful, pregnant pause, “Does this mean no cuddling? Because, at least for me, that’s like a staple for movies.”
“Alright, I’ll allow it,” you shrug, scooting over until your arm is pressed against his, computer swaying haphazardly in your lap. “But hands to yourself.”
He gasps, placing his free hand over his heart, “I’m shocked you’d think so lowly of me.”
It takes all of twenty minutes for to you find yourself straddling Hoseok’s waist, his back pressed against the wall, his hands roaming between your shoulder blades.
Your lips mold to his and though he’s silently asked for entry twice, you’ve denied his tongue access. This will be on your terms, of course.
Your fingers travel up his shirt, skirting under the cloth easily and ghosting the firm muscles of his abdomen. Hoseok’s skin is peculiarly soft and you trace your hands across his chest, palms devouring every inch until you press and lightly drag your nails down the contours of his ribs.
He groans and you take the opportunity to slide your tongue past the seam of his lips. I bet you want him taste like something nice, mint maybe, but it’s likely both of you can’t get past the pizza.
Oh, sorry, am I ruining the moment? I’ll just… be over here. Keep doing your thing.
Breathless.
Hoseok’s fingers begin to wander, exploring under the loose fitting fabric of your shirt until he’s able to lift it off of your frame. You take the opportunity to return the favor, bearing his toned chest.
Both of you pause for a moment, kiss broken, searching the other’s expression for something, but you only find a playful glint in his eyes and a reassuring smile.
I wonder what he saw in you.
Your attention continues the downward motion, tracing his neck, caressing his chest, dropping down to the trail of fine hair that starts at his bellybutton and disappears into his jeans. Before he can follow your gaze, you grind your hips against his.
“Fuck,” is all he whispers- an eloquent response- a laugh lacing his undertones.
You hush him with a quick nip on his bottom lip, reminding him that your housemates are only a wall away. He nods, running his hands up your thighs. You grind down on him again.
Likely in an attempt to keep himself quiet, Hoseok attaches his lips to your neck, grazing his teeth and tongue along the soft skin under your jaw. His fingers find the straps of your bra, tugging them down before deftly unhooking the back clasp with a single snap.
And this noise, this small insignificant sound, causes you to stiffen.
Abruptly leaning forward, pulling him flush against you and wrapping your arms around him, you keep the cloth of your bra pressed to your chest, a barrier only held up by the embrace.
Hoseok immediately stops, concern in his tone, “You okay?”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, burying your nose in the crook of his neck. “My last boyfriend didn’t… I can’t… I’m sorry. Just- not yet.”
What? Now you’re going to let him play the hero? Stroke his ego a bit more?
Hoseok carefully snaps the hooks of your bra back into place before wrapping his arms around you comfortingly, “No sweetheart, don’t worry. I understand.”
“You do?”
He does.
“Yeah,” he nods, “I… well something happened to me too.”
***Define: FOLLOW THROUGH (noun)- The continuing of an action or task to its conclusion
Step 4) …?
“Alright what are we watching today?” Hoseok hops onto your bed, setting down the pizza box to clap his hands.
“You pick, I think I might just nap.”
“Sweetheart, you promised you’d stay up this time,” he whines humorously, pushing out his lower lip. “Did you lie to me?”
“Never,” you admonish, joining him on the mattress to lean your back against the wall, “I’m just really tired.”
“You’re always really tired.”
You laugh. “I know.”
It had been five weeks since that little escapade in your dorm room, but for some reason, it did nothing to hinder your “friendship” with Hoseok. In fact, Friday night “Netflix sans chill” had become a weekly occurrence. Neither of you attempted to resume the…promiscuous activities.
I’ll admit, I’m a little impressed. BUT JUST A LITTLE AND YOU CAN’T QUOTE ME ON THAT OKAY?
You fall asleep halfway through the movie with your head on Hoseok’s shoulder, but he doesn’t wake you until half past midnight, and it’s only because he needs to head home. With a sleepy hug goodbye and a few more jokes for the road, you assure him that you WILL, in fact, be stopping by his dorm room tomorrow to help him study for that calculus test coming up (even though he probably doesn’t need it).
You close the door, a smile playing on your lips, voice quiet as you say, “He’s changing, y’know.”
Right. Changing. You didn’t even read the last step.
All you’ve done is befriend him and bond over heartbreak that, quite frankly, MIGHT NOT HAVE EVEN HAPPENED TO YOU. At this point, I don’t whether or not you lied to him. AND I’M THE NARRATOR.
“Wasn’t that a Volume Five thing?”
Yes, but does reader want to see the exact same trope played out a SECOND ti-?
“What’s this?” you interrupt my thoroughly delightful and inspiring rant, walking over to the wastebasket at the foot of your bed.
You’d emptied it yesterday and you hadn’t thrown anything away before Hoseok arrived. But now a crumpled piece of paper sits, harmless, at the bottom.
Obviously, Hoseok threw it away and you don’t want to pry, but from what you CAN see, it looks like some sort of list.
✩✩✩♔✩✩✩
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