Jungkook’s Ending Pose ALSKASKAS I’M SCREAMING

Vestiges | jjk (m)

He built a life without you — success, power, everything you once dreamed of. You spent six years pretending you didn't destroy him. One night is all it takes to tear the silence open again.

 jungkook x reader | exes to lovers 

warnings: second chance romance, heavy angst, explicit language and sexual content, emotional manipulation, slight depiction of addiction struggles, toxic relationships, trauma themes, mature emotional content.

wc: 15k

author’s note: I didn’t mean for this story to hurt as much as it does. But heartbreak feels a lot like mourning — and sometimes, writing is just another way to grieve what you lost. Feedback is always welcomed. 

It takes you longer than it should to get dressed, longer than it should to run a comb through your hair, longer than it should to fasten the thin, trembling clasp of the necklace around your throat — because everything inside you feels reluctant, slow, half-stuck in a memory you wish you could forget but know you never will, no matter how many years or cities or mistakes you stack between yourself and that boy who once promised you the world with his trembling hands and reckless heart.

The mirror doesn’t help; it only shows you a stranger, one with hollows under her eyes and a dress that doesn’t quite fit the way it used to, an almost-pretty woman wearing borrowed pearls and borrowed courage, trying to pretend that she hadn’t spent the last hour sitting on the edge of her bed staring at nothing, wondering if the version of you he remembers — if he remembers at all — would even recognize what’s left.

The room smells faintly of turpentine and old paint, the corner where your canvases lean still cluttered with yesterday’s half-finished dreams, and when you reach for your phone, the screen lights up with a message from Minho, simple and sweet and unbearably distant: Call me when you’re free. Love you.You don’t answer. You can’t. You wonder if that makes you cruel or simply too tired to pretend tonight.

Your fingers fumble with the cheap clasp at your wrist — a borrowed bracelet too — and in that one careless moment, memory slices through the present like a blade: Jungkook, twenty-one, grinning boyishly as he caught your hand outside the university library, threading a handmade beaded bracelet over your knuckles with such earnest pride that you had laughed, embarrassed, your cheeks warm, the world so soft around you it felt unreal.

"Now you have to marry me someday," he had teased, and you had rolled your eyes, but you hadn’t said no.

You blink hard, banishing him from the glass, watching the woman who stares back at you set her jaw a little harder, fix her earrings a little faster, breathe a little shallower — because you can’t afford to cry over ghosts, not tonight.

The group chat blinks awake: Sora: “Can’t wait to see everyone tonight 🖤 love you guys.”

The words should be comforting. Instead, they twist inside your chest like a dull knife, because you know her love is real, but you also know that weddings are for the blessed, and you — you are only here because Sora never chose sides when everyone else did.

You wonder if Taehyung will even look at you, wonder if the cold shoulder he gave you six years ago will stretch into tonight’s vows and toasts and forced smiles. You wonder if seeing him beside Sora will feel like a betrayal or just another quiet ache to add to the pile you stopped counting long ago.

But it’s not Taehyung who makes your palms sweat, your ribs tighten like a vise around your lungs. It’s him.

You haven’t seen him since the day everything broke, since the night your voice cracked on the phone and he didn’t pick up, since the day you stopped being someone’s future and became a cautionary tale instead.

Jungkook might have buried that reckless smile you once loved beneath all the sharp suits and colder women; or maybe success never touched the part of him that burned for you. Maybe hatred is all that’s left now, a slow, steady fire smoldering out of sight — or maybe you’re nothing more than a scar he learned to live around.

Either way, standing in front of him tonight will feel like pressing your hand against an old wound, desperate to prove it's healed when you already know it hasn't.

The taxi honks outside — a short, impatient sound that feels impossibly loud in the quiet dusk — and you stand because there’s nothing else to do, grabbing your small purse, slipping your trembling fingers into cheap heels, locking the door behind you with a finality that feels too heavy for such an ordinary sound.

The city beyond your window is a watercolor blur of neon and shadows. Each streetlight you pass feels like a countdown, leading you closer to the moment you'll have to face him again. Not the boy who promised you forever with handmade bracelets, but the man he's become – all sharp edges and success stories, probably with a model on his arm and victory in his smile.

The driver barely glances at you when you climb in, muttering the address with a voice that barely feels like your own, and as the car pulls into traffic, the low murmur of the radio fills the silence between your heartbeat and your fear, a love song from another decade humming like a ghost you can’t quite outrun.

Outside the window, the world blurs into a thousand small, careless lights — neon signs flickering above half-empty restaurants, the gold smudge of streetlamps bending against the slick black of the road — and you realize, distantly, that you don’t even remember when this city stopped feeling like home and started feeling like exile.

Your hands twist the strap of your purse tighter in your lap, knuckles aching from the pressure, and you wonder — not for the first time — if tonight will shatter you, or if you have already been living inside the ruins for so long that you won't even feel it when the final pieces fall.

The venue creeps into view before you’re ready, a soft, golden glow spilling out onto the cracked sidewalks like an invitation you should have never accepted, the kind of place built for promises and photographs and futures you don't belong to anymore.

The car stops with a jolt that rattles up your spine, and you pay the driver with fumbling fingers, stepping out into the cool night air that smells like jasmine and distant rain, clutching your purse to your chest like it might somehow shield you from what’s coming.

You hear the music first — faint, lilting strains of a string quartet filtering through the open doors — and then the laughter, bright and careless, the kind of laughter that used to be yours once, when the world was smaller, safer, sweeter.

Somewhere inside, Sora is probably floating down the aisle in a dress spun from dreams, her hands steady, her smile untouched by the kind of ghosts that still cling to your skin.

Taehyung must be standing there too, pride pressed into his spine, betrayal still thick in his chest like old smoke.

And Jungkook — though you can barely force yourself to think it — is breathing the same air as you for the first time in six years, close enough to touch and a thousand lifetimes away.

You press your hand harder against your ribs, feel the panic fluttering there like a trapped bird, and when you finally force your legs to move, to step toward the door, it feels like walking into the mouth of something hungry and merciless, something that has been waiting for you all this time.

"Please," you whisper to whatever god still listens to lost causes, "let me survive this night."

The lobby is bright and soft and aching with gold, and familiar faces blur past you — old friends you barely recognize, old friends who barely recognize you — and you keep your head down, keep moving, telling yourself it will be fine, it will be fine, it will be fine, until the lie thickens and clots somewhere at the back of your throat.

You are halfway to the main hall when you hear your name, soft and almost startled, and when you turn, Sora is there — radiant, trembling, beautiful in her wedding dress, her eyes shining with something between relief and apology.

She rushes toward you before you can move, gathering you into a hug that knocks the breath from your lungs, and for a moment you let yourself fall into it, let yourself believe in the warmth of her arms, the truth of her loyalty, the small, fragile spaces where you are still loved.

"You came," she breathes against your hair, pulling back to look at you with a smile that wobbles at the corners. "God, I was so scared you wouldn’t."

"I wouldn’t miss it," you manage, and your voice sounds almost real, almost steady.

Behind her, the world shifts — guests milling about, waiters balancing trays, the glittering haze of champagne — and then, through the blur of light and sound, you feel it, before you even see him.

A weight against your skin. A gravity pulling your gaze without mercy. You lift your eyes — and there he is.

Jungkook.

Standing across the room, half-turned toward you, a glass in his hand, a black suit cut sharp against the broad frame of his shoulders, his hair dark and slightly mussed like he'd run his hand through it one too many times.

He looks different now — older, harder around the edges, devastating in a way that feels less like beauty and more like a warning.

The noise around you dulls, falling away like heavy snow, until it’s just him and you and the space between your bodies that aches like a phantom limb.

His eyes — the ones you once memorized better than your own reflection — find you across the golden crowd, and for a breathless second, there’s nothing: no recognition, no anger, no tenderness, just a flicker of something vast and unreachable that knocks the air from your lungs.

Then, just as quickly, he looks away — leaving you suspended in the terrible silence where strangers live, where memories rot, where love once existed and now nothing remains.

The air inside the hall feels heavier now, thick with perfume and champagne and the kind of brittle laughter that stretches too wide over old wounds, and you realize as you stand there, clutching the small wrapped box to your chest, that your fingers have gone almost numb.

You try not to look for him again — you try, you swear you try — but your eyes betray you anyway, sliding across the glittering room until they find him near the bar, a dark figure half-turned away, laughing low at something someone says, and for a moment it stings more than it should, the way he looks — older, sharper, all clean lines and heavy shadows, the easy beauty of boyhood burned away into something colder, something harder, something you could cut yourself on if you dared get too close.

He doesn’t belong to you anymore — maybe he never really did — and yet some foolish, broken part of you aches anyway, aches in the marrow of your bones where even time cannot reach, where memory still reigns.

It hadn’t always been like this — hadn’t he once leaned against a chipped kitchen counter in the dead of night, grinning, offering you the last slice of cheap pizza like it was a crown, like you were something holy worth starving for? Hadn’t he once promised you — reckless, breathless — that he would fight every single battle for you, even the ones you didn’t see coming?

You had believed him. God, you had believed him so much it made you foolish.

Your throat tightens as you move forward, your heels silent on the polished floors, the soft music wrapping around you like a noose, and somewhere in the back of your mind the memories start to bleed — his parents’ disapproval, sharp and sterile in their polished dining room; the thin-lipped smiles, the cruel little glances they thought you wouldn’t notice; the way Jungkook had slammed down their checkbook one night and said he’d make it without them, because loving you mattered more than money, more than power, more than blood.

He meant every word — you never doubted that — but standing here six years later, wrapped in a borrowed dress and trembling under the weight of everything you lost, it’s hard not to wonder if they were right all along. You were the disaster they warned him about, the mistake they tried to tear from his hands, and maybe — if you’d loved him less selfishly — you would have let him go before you ruined everything he could have been.

You press the thought down, hard, like smothering a fire with bare hands, and you fix your eyes on the only safe thing left — Sora, radiant and teary-eyed in her wedding dress, laughing softly at something Taehyung mutters in her ear.

It should be enough to anchor you. It isn’t.

You force your feet to move, weaving carefully through the crowd, dodging the familiar faces, the flashes of recognition, the stares that linger a little too long.

You see him again — just for a second — Jungkook leaning casually against the far wall, speaking to someone in a low voice, his profile sharp under the warm golden lights. It hits you harder than it should, the way he holds himself now — heavier somehow, not in body but in gravity, in presence — the easy recklessness of boyhood hardened into something colder, something that doesn’t bow for anyone.

Sora had mentioned it once, in a hurried, breathless phone call you almost didn’t answer: how Jungkook had started a tech company straight out of university, how he had built it from nothing, refusing every offer of help from his family even when it would have made things easier, how now he stood at the helm of one of the fastest-rising startups in the country — a CEO at twenty-seven, sharp and brilliant and terrifyingly untouchable.

You never asked for the details — you didn’t need them. It was already clear enough: he had survived without you, built a life where you were nothing but a forgotten name.

The shame settles heavier against your ribs as you clutch the small wrapped gift tighter, pressing forward toward Sora and Taehyung where they stand near the main table, a little island of perfection in a sea of strangers. 

You reach them just as they turn toward you, and for a brief, foolish moment you let yourself hope — just for tonight, just for Sora — that you can pretend the past is not clawing up the back of your throat.

Sora’s face brightens when she sees you, her hands fluttering excitedly to her mouth as if she might cry, and you feel the first crack in your armor when she pulls you into a hug so fierce it knocks the air from your lungs.

"You made it," she whispers, voice thick with emotion, and you smile — a broken thing, but a smile nonetheless — as you hand her the small gift wrapped in trembling paper.

"For you," you manage, your voice smaller than you remember it being.

Sora presses the box to her chest like it's precious, like you are precious, and for a moment the noise of the party dulls into something almost kind.

But then Taehyung steps forward, his expression carved from something colder than marble, and the weight of him — of everything you once trusted — hits you square in the ribs.

You brace for it instinctively, the way a body remembers impact even after the bruises have faded. He smiles — wide, charming, empty — and leans in slightly, his voice low and sweet enough to rot your teeth.

"I’m surprised," he says, his words like silk over a blade. "That you had the nerve to come, knowing he'd be here."

The sentence slices you cleanly down the middle, and for a moment all you can do is blink at him, your hands limp at your sides, your breath sticking somewhere between your heart and your throat.

Sora’s eyes widen in horror, but she says nothing, and Taehyung only straightens his jacket with an easy grace, as if he hadn't just peeled the skin from your chest in front of half the wedding party.

You don’t even flinch — not really. Maybe you expected it, or maybe, somewhere deep down, you’ve always believed he earned the right to hate you.

Taehyung hadn’t just been Jungkook’s best friend. He had carried Jungkook’s heartbreak like it was his own, had stitched the bleeding pieces of him back together when you weren’t there to do it. Of course he would still bear the wound like a badge of honor, would still sharpen it against your skin whenever you dared step back into their world.

You swallow down the rising sting of tears, swallow down the shame that floods your gut like dirty water, and somehow — somehow — you manage to stay standing.

You wonder if he’s right — if you should have stayed away, if you’ve become nothing more than the ghost they all wish they could finally forget.

The air outside is cooler than you expected, crisp against your overheated skin, and for a moment you just stand there on the terrace, clutching the banister with both hands like it might anchor you to something solid, something real. Inside, the wedding hums on — champagne glasses clinking, laughter blooming like overripe fruit — but out here, under the weak glow of fairy lights strung across the courtyard, it feels like another world entirely.

You press your fingers against your temples, willing your heart to slow, willing your body to forget how it trembles from the inside out.

Footsteps sound behind you — soft, lazy, unhurried — and you already know, without looking, who they belong to.

The air always shifts differently when he’s near.

Still, when you finally turn, the breath catches sharp in your throat, as if your body wasn't prepared for the sight of him after all.

Jungkook stands a few paces away, his black suit rumpled just enough to look careless rather than messy, the knot of his tie loosened at his throat. One hand is shoved deep into his pocket, the other holding a half-empty glass that tilts dangerously in his loose grip, and for a moment you can't decide if he looks more like a fallen prince or a soldier long after the war has ended.

He lifts the glass slightly, a mock-toast, his mouth curling into something that might have once been a smile if it hadn’t turned bitter somewhere along the way.

"Well," he says, voice low and rough like gravel. "If it isn’t the ghost herself."

You flinch before you can stop yourself, the words scraping raw against old wounds, but you force your spine straight, force your lips into something that might pass for calm.

"Hi, Jungkook," you manage, the name strange and sacred on your tongue after so many years of silence.

For a beat, he just looks at you — and it cuts deeper than anything he could have said.

Because for a second — just a second — you see it flicker there, the ghost of another boy entirely, the one who used to trace your skin like it was a prayer, who used to kiss you like it hurt him to stop. Gentleness pools in his dark eyes, unguarded and aching, and it guts you with how badly you want to reach for it.

But just as quickly as it came, he shutters it away, his mouth hardening into a line you barely recognize.

"So," he says, voice lighter now, mocking almost. "How’s life?"

You swallow, wishing the earth would swallow you first.

"It’s..." you fumble, your mind blanking under the weight of his gaze. "It’s good. Busy. Art shows, part-time jobs... the usual."

He nods once, a jerk of his chin, his glass tipping slightly in his grip. You notice the way his fingers tremble faintly around the glass stem, how his pupils are blown too wide for the soft light — little things that tighten the pit of your stomach before you can reason why.

"And you?" you ask, your voice steadier than you feel. "You’re... doing well?"

He huffs out a laugh — not cruel, not kind either — and sets the glass down on the stone ledge beside him, missing it slightly before correcting the movement with a small curse under his breath.

"You know everything already," he mutters, and there's something brittle under the words, something breaking. "CEO. Big company. Fancy suits. Bullshit meetings."

You flinch again — not at the words, but at the hollowness behind them.

And because some masochistic part of you can’t help it, you whisper, "Are you... okay?"

For a moment, he goes very still. Then his mouth twists, slow and sharp, and he laughs — a low, broken sound that makes the fairy lights above you seem suddenly, unbearably cruel.

"Am I okay?" he repeats, tasting the words like they’re poison. "God, you really don’t get it, do you?"

You open your mouth, close it again.

"You should have done me a mercy back then," he says, voice dropping lower, softer, deadlier. "You should have just confessed. You should have just told me you didn’t love me anymore."

"I—" You don’t even know what you’re trying to say. The guilt surges so thick it almost drowns you.

He chuckles again — the sound rougher, edged with something manic, and when he speaks next his voice is shaking slightly, like the words cost him more than he can afford to give.

"I thought," he says, looking past you into the night, "that I thought if I became enough — if I built something so big it touched the sky — you’d love me again or regret betraying me."

The weight of it hits you harder than any accusation.

"Jungkook," you whisper, stepping toward him without even realizing it, "please... don't."

But he moves faster. His hand closes around your arm — not painfully, but firm, desperate — and the touch burns through the thin fabric of your sleeve like wildfire.

"Don’t what?" he demands, voice rough. "Don’t say it? Don’t feel it?"

You stare up at him, heart beating so hard you think it might break through your ribs, and for a moment neither of you breathes.

Something in him falters; the fight drains from his body, and his grip loosens. You tear yourself free, stumbling backward as if the air itself turned against you. Without thinking, without looking back, you turn and flee — pushing the door open, slipping back into the too-bright, too-loud reception, the noise crashing over you in waves.

You don’t stop until you find the bathroom, collapsing against the cool tile, gasping for air that won’t come.

And when your shaking fingers brush against the marble counter — smooth and cold and smelling faintly of expensive soap — a memory surges up so violently it knocks the breath from your lungs:

Six years ago.

The walls of Jungkook’s tiny off-campus apartment seemed to shrink around you, the air too thick with the leftover taste of the night you couldn’t forget, no matter how tightly you crossed your arms or how fiercely you jutted out your chin to hide the hurt leaking through your bones.

You were pacing, barefoot on the worn carpet, your dress wrinkled from hours of sitting stiffly at a dinner table where every glance, every polite smile, every icy comment had felt like a slap delivered with a silver fork.

"You didn’t hear the way your mother said it," you muttered, arms wrapping tighter around yourself, your voice wobbling even as you tried to sound defiant, bratty, anything but the small, shaking thing you felt like inside. "The way she asked if I needed help... pronouncing the wine list."

Jungkook sighed heavily behind you, the sound rough, frustrated, loving all at once, and when you dared glance back at him, he was scrubbing a hand through his messy hair, his white dress shirt rumpled, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the very picture of someone who wanted to punch something but was too busy loving you to bother.

"I told them to back off," he said, stepping closer, voice low, tight. "I told them you’re it for me. What else do you want me to do, baby?"

The word burned into you — baby — the way it always did, softening your anger just enough to make room for the real thing: the sadness.

"It’s not just about you standing up for me," you said, your voice small now, your throat raw from holding too much back for too long. "It’s your family, Jungkook. They’re supposed to... I don’t know... accept me. If they don’t — if they think I’m just some poor girl you’ll grow out of — maybe I don’t belong there at all."

Your hands twisted together in front of you, trying to tie yourself into a knot too small for pain to find, and you hated how broken you sounded, how much you still cared even after everything.

For a heartbeat, Jungkook just stared at you — something fierce and wounded flashing through his eyes — and then he crossed the room in three strides, his hands gripping your arms, pulling you against his chest with a force that knocked the air from your lungs.

"If they can’t love you," he said, his voice a growl against your hair, "then they’re not my family anymore."

You froze — heart thudding painfully — but he only hugged you tighter, burying his face in the curve of your neck, like he could physically shield you from everything that had ever hurt you.

"I already have a family," he whispered, voice cracking slightly. "It’s you. It’s always been you."

And something inside you — some fragile, terrified thing — cracked wide open and poured itself into his arms, because even though the world outside these walls was sharp and cruel, even though you could feel the future trying to tear you apart already, in that moment, he was enough. He was everything.

You barely had time to catch your breath before his lips brushed your neck — a featherlight touch that sent shivers chasing down your spine — and then he was kissing lower, onto your shoulder, the strap of your dress slipping down your arm under the insistence of his mouth.

Your body betrayed you instantly, leaning back into him, your pulse pounding wild and helpless beneath your skin.

"You’re mine," he murmured, each word punctuated with a kiss that burned hotter, lower, softer."No one else matters.I love you so much it scares me sometimes."

His hands slid down your sides — warm, steady, reverent — and when you arched instinctively into him, you felt it: the hard, urgent line of his arousal pressing into the small of your back, undeniable, desperate.

"I love you too," you breathed, tilting your head to the side to give him more skin, more access, more of everything he wanted.

He groaned softly at your words, the sound vibrating against your neck, and his hands moved faster now, not rough, but hungrier, slipping under the hem of your dress, mapping the familiar landscape of your body like a man tracing the borders of a country he already owns but never tires of conquering.

"You’re so beautiful," he whispered, voice thick, broken, worshipful. "You’re everything."

And standing there — half undressed, half unraveled, completely loved — you believed him.

You believed that love could be enough.

Jungkook’s hands are everywhere — frantic, reverent — as he lifts you easily into his arms, carrying you to the bed like you weigh nothing, like you’re something sacred he’s afraid he’ll break if he isn’t careful, and when he lays you down, the mattress dipping under your back, his gaze devours you with a hunger so raw it leaves you trembling before he’s even touched you properly.

He leans over you, bracing himself on one arm, the other already tugging at the hem of your dress with impatient fingers, and you raise your arms without thinking, letting him peel it off you inch by inch, baring you to the soft glow of the city lights filtering through the window.His shirt follows quickly — buttons popping loose under his fumbling hands, sleeves yanked off — and then he’s kneeling above you, bare-chested, flushed, beautiful, the muscles of his arms flexing as he tosses his shirt aside and drops back over you, capturing your mouth in a kiss that steals every thought you ever had.

You moan against his lips as he grinds down into you, the hard line of his cock pressing hot and heavy through the thin barrier of your underwear, his jeans rough against your bare thighs.The friction is maddening — too much and not enough — and you arch against him instinctively, your hands clutching at his back, dragging your nails down the ridges of muscle as he rolls his hips again, harder this time, swallowing the broken gasp you let out into his mouth.

"Fuck," he growls against your lips, grinding into you again, the air between you electric, desperate, filthy. "You’re gonna make me come like this if you keep moving like that, princess."

You giggle breathlessly, dizzy with the heat coiling low in your belly, and nip at his bottom lip, making him groan again, deeper, rougher, before he pulls back just enough to trail his mouth down your jaw, your throat, the hollow between your collarbones.

He takes his time there, kissing, licking, sucking soft bruises into your skin, before moving lower, capturing one nipple between his lips and sucking hard enough to make you cry out, your back arching off the bed as his hand kneads the other breast greedily.

"You’re so fucking perfect," he murmurs against your skin, his voice wrecked with devotion and hunger, and you whimper, threading your fingers into his hair, tugging when he sucks harder, the sensation shooting straight between your legs.

"Tell me who you belong to," he says, lifting his head to look at you, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide with lust and something deeper, something almost frantic.

"You," you pant, grinding up into him shamelessly, needing more, needing everything. "Always you."

"Good girl," he rasps, the praise making you clench around nothing, making you whine.

And then he’s kissing down your stomach, dragging your panties down with his teeth, leaving them forgotten at the foot of the bed, and when he settles between your thighs, his hands spreading you open for him, you think you might die from how much you want him.

"So fucking pretty," he murmurs, almost to himself, before he licks a slow, devastating stripe up your center, making your hips jerk, your hands fly to his hair, anchoring yourself to him as he groans against you, like he’s the one losing control.

He works you with his mouth until you’re writhing, gasping, begging — filthy, broken sounds spilling from your lips as he sucks your clit between his lips, fingers slipping inside you, curling just right, making your vision white out at the edges.

"Jungkook— fuck — please," you sob, grinding helplessly against his mouth, chasing the high building so fast it terrifies you.

"What do you need, baby?" he murmurs, teasing you with his breath, his fingers still thrusting slow and deep inside you. "Tell me. Wanna hear you beg for it."

"You," you gasp, shameless, lost. "Need you inside me. Need you now."

He groans again, desperate, wrecked, and kisses your inner thigh before pulling away, climbing back over you, his jeans shoved down just far enough to free his cock, flushed and leaking at the tip.

"You drive me fucking insane," he mutters against your mouth, grinding into your soaked core, making you both moan.

You wrap your legs around his waist, heels digging into his back, trying to pull him closer, deeper, needing to feel him, needing to be filled.

"Beg for it," he demands again, teasing your entrance with the thick head of his cock, just barely pushing inside before pulling back, making you whimper.

"Please, Jungkook," you cry, breathless, broken, desperate. "Need you — need you to fuck me — please —"

That’s all it takes.

With a growl torn from his chest, he pushes into you in one slow, devastating stroke, stretching you, filling you, making you gasp, making him curse under his breath.

"Fuck, baby," he grits out, bracing himself on one elbow while the other hand lifts your leg higher, changing the angle, pushing deeper, hitting places inside you that make you sob. "So tight, so good — always so good for me."

You clutch at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin, and he starts to move, thrusting slow at first, deep and deliberate, like he’s trying to carve himself into you, like he wants to live there.

"You feel so fucking good," he groans, voice shaking. "Like you were made for me."

"Yours," you gasp, clenching around him, loving the way his eyes darken, loving the way he loses control when you say it. "Always yours."

He thrusts harder, deeper, the bed creaking beneath you, the sound of skin against skin obscene, beautiful, necessary.

But then — he flips you, rolling you easily until you’re straddling him, his cock still buried deep inside you, his hands gripping your hips, guiding you as you start to move.

"Fuck, yes," he groans, head falling back against the pillows, eyes locked on you like you’re something holy. "Ride me, baby. Let me see you."

You move — slowly at first, grinding down, rolling your hips — and his hands slide up to cup your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples, making you whimper, making you move faster.

"You’re so beautiful," he says, voice wrecked, worshipful. "So fucking beautiful like this — my princess — my fucking queen."

You preen under the praise, loving the way he looks at you, loving the way his mouth falls open in a silent moan every time you clench around him just right, loving the way he can’t even think straight when you’re on top of him.

You ride him harder, faster, rolling your hips the way you know drives him crazy, loving the way his breath stutters in his chest every time you slam down onto him, loving the way his hands clutch your hips like he’s holding onto something sacred he doesn’t want to lose.

"Look at you," Jungkook groans, voice so low and rough it makes you clench around him without meaning to, "riding my cock like you were fucking made for it."

You whimper, heat flashing through your veins at his words, and grind down harder, faster, setting a brutal pace that makes the bed creak beneath you, the headboard thudding faintly against the wall with every desperate movement.

"You like this?" you gasp out, nails dragging down his chest, watching the way his abs tighten under your touch, watching the way his eyes darken impossibly. "You like me using you like this, Kook?"

"Fuck, baby," he curses, his hands sliding up to cup your breasts again, squeezing them greedily as he thrusts up into you, matching your rhythm. "I fucking love it — love watching you fuck yourself on my cock — love how messy you get for me — how wet you are, fuck, you're dripping all over me —"

You moan at his words, at the filth of them, at the way he says it like he worships you, and the pleasure inside you coils tighter, tighter, unbearable.

"You drive me insane," he pants, bucking up harder, dragging guttural sounds from deep inside your chest."You ride me so good, baby — fuck — gonna make me come just from watching you —"

"You’re so big," you whimper, losing yourself completely, grinding down harder, faster, chasing your own high with no shame now, loving the way he watches you like you’re something holy and obscene all at once. "Feel you so deep — filling me up — love it, Jungkook — love you —"

"Say it again," he begs, his voice wrecked, desperate, lost to you. "Say you love me."

"I love you," you gasp, nearly sobbing with it, pressing your palms flat against his heaving chest to steady yourself. "Love you, love your cock, love everything about you —"

"Fuck, that's it," he groans, hips pistoning up into you, chasing your pleasure with frantic, punishing thrusts. "Take it — take everything, baby — it’s all yours —"

You feel the orgasm building, spiraling out of control, and with a shaking hand you grab his wrist, dragging his fingers to your clit, needing more, needing him.

"Touch me," you gasp, voice breaking. "Please, Jungkook, need you — need you to make me come —"

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t tease — just rubs tight, messy circles against your swollen clit with the rough pads of his fingers, fucking into you harder, faster, his mouth open on a gasp as he watches you fall apart above him.

"Come for me," he groans, wrecked, begging. "Show me how good I make you feel — want you to fall apart on my cock — fuck, baby, please —"

And you do — you shatter with a cry, back arching, nails raking down his chest as you come hard, clenching around him, waves of pleasure crashing through you so violently your vision goes white at the edges.

Before the last waves of your orgasm even finish crashing through you, Jungkook’s hands are gripping your hips, flipping you effortlessly onto your back, knocking the breath from your lungs with the sheer force of him, the sheer need — and then he’s pushing into you again, deep and hard and desperate, a raw groan tearing from his throat as he buries himself to the hilt inside your trembling body.

He doesn’t give you time to recover, doesn’t give you a second to breathe — just fucks into you in long, dragging strokes, slow enough to make you feel every thick inch of him, deep enough to make you cry out again, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, holding him there, locking him to you like you’ll never let him go.

"You’re mine," he gasps against your mouth, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath hot and ragged and tasting like desperation and devotion."Always fucking mine. No one else gets you — no one else ever fucking will —"

"Yours," you sob, clinging to his back, your nails raking down the slick muscles there, leaving red trails he’ll feel tomorrow, proof that you were here, that you belonged to him in every filthy, holy way.

"You feel so good," he pants, thrusting harder now, the rhythm messy and beautiful, skin slapping against skin, the room filled with the obscene, perfect sound of your bodies coming together. "So fucking good around me — fuck, baby, you were made for this — made to take me — made to be mine —"

You whimper, lost to him, to the brutal tenderness of it, the way he looks at you like you’re breaking him apart and putting him back together at the same time.

"Want you to come inside," you gasp, dragging your nails up his arms, feeling him shudder under your touch. "Want to feel you — want you to fill me up, Jungkook — please —"

He groans like the sound is being ripped from somewhere deep inside him, thrusting deeper, faster, his hips snapping against yours in wild, desperate movements that have you seeing stars.

"Gonna fill you up," he grits out, voice wrecked, forehead slipping to your shoulder, his mouth hot and desperate against your skin."Gonna fucking come so deep you’ll feel me for days — fuck, baby, can’t hold it — can’t —"

You tighten your legs around him, dragging him impossibly closer, and he loses it — with a hoarse, broken cry of your name, he thrusts deep one final time and spills inside you, his whole body shuddering violently against yours, cock pulsing as he fills you up just like he promised.

He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t move at all.

He collapses on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the mattress, his cock still buried deep inside your soaking, fluttering walls, his body trembling from the force of it, from the emotion choking both of you.

His breath comes in ragged, desperate bursts against your throat, each exhale brushing hot and trembling over your sweat-slicked skin, and you can feel the way he’s still fighting for control even though it’s already shattered, the way his whole body trembles against you, the way his heart hammers so violently inside his chest you can feel it pounding against your own.

When he finally lifts his head — slow, heavy, reluctant — his hair falls into his eyes, messy and damp from sweat, and you barely recognize the expression on his face, so raw and wrecked and open that it feels like a sin to look at him and a greater sin to look away.

His eyes are glassy, undone, burning with a kind of desperate devotion that punches the air straight out of your lungs, and you realize too late that he’s not just holding your body — he’s holding everything he has left.

You barely manage to blink back the sting of tears before he’s reaching for you again, finding your hands where they lay limp and boneless against the mattress, threading his fingers through yours with a fierce, almost frantic tenderness, squeezing tightly, like if he lets go even for a second, you’ll slip through his fingers like smoke.

He keeps your hands pinned above your head, locked against the pillow, and when he leans down to kiss you, it’s not the desperate, sloppy thing you expect — it’s slow, reverent, aching, his mouth moving against yours like a promise he’s too afraid to say aloud.

The kiss deepens slowly, messily, lazy and languid, tongues tangling, teeth scraping, lips dragging — a thousand whispered apologies and confessions bleeding between the spaces where your mouths meet and part and meet again.

Every tiny shift of his hips still buried inside you makes you whimper into the kiss — makes him groan low in his throat, the sound vibrating through his whole body — because even now, even after he’s given you everything, he’s still not satisfied, still not ready to be apart from you, still thrusting shallowly inside you, tiny desperate movements like he’s trying to fuse you together permanently.

His nose brushes yours, clumsy and sweet, and he lets out a choked, breathless laugh against your mouth, pure emotion bleeding out of him in every ragged exhale.

"Can't... can't let you go," he mumbles against your lips, voice shaking with the weight of it, with how much he means it."You're mine, baby. Always mine. Always, always —"

You squeeze his fingers tighter, pressing your forehead against his, your heart splitting wide open inside your chest, because you can feel it too — the way you still belong to each other, stitched together by something reckless and terrifying and beautiful that no amount of distance or time or heartbreak could ever fully tear apart.

And as he rocks into you again, slow and tender, just to stay connected, just to keep you in his arms a little longer, you kiss him back with everything you have, everything you are, everything you’ll never be able to say.

You don’t know when it happens — maybe in the soft press of his forehead against yours, maybe in the trembling way his hands refuse to let go of yours, maybe in the way your bodies are still joined so completely it feels like one breath between you — but something inside you shifts, something warm and bright and terrifyingly fragile blooming deep in your chest, and for a moment you think you might actually break from how much you love him.

You think about how unfair life has been in so many ways — how you weren’t born into a family with silver-lined houses and gilded bloodlines, how you’ve spent so much of your life feeling like you were always standing on the outside looking in — but none of it seems to matter anymore, not when fate, or luck, or some reckless, merciful god saw fit to gift you with the only treasure that ever really mattered.

Jungkook.

You think, with a fierceness that leaves you trembling, that maybe you weren’t born into riches, but you were still the luckiest person in the world, because somehow, against every odd, you were loved by someone like him — someone who fought the whole world just to keep holding your hand.

You think about the past three years — about finding your way to each other through crowded lecture halls and late-night coffee runs and countless small moments stitched together into something so much bigger than either of you could have imagined — and you realize you’ve never been as happy as you are right now, wrapped up in him, in his messy devotion, in the future you were stupid enough to believe was already written in your favor.

You had friends — good ones.Taehyung with his bright, mischievous smile; Sora with her endless, unconditional love; Sungwon and so many others who filled your days with laughter and reckless plans — but when it came down to it, when the world blurred at the edges, it was always only him.

You needed only Jungkook, and he needed only you.

Even when you fought — and God, you fought — you always knew it was temporary, just a storm passing between two people too stubborn and too desperate to ever really let go.It was never about the two of you. It was always about the others — about the judgment of his parents, about the sharp words whispered behind closed doors — and even then, Jungkook had made it clear where he stood.

He cut them off without hesitation — the gold, the promises, the blood-ties that once weighed him down like anchors.

He built a life with you instead, stubborn and scrappy and achingly beautiful, guided by nothing but your trembling hands and his reckless heart — and somehow, against everything, it had been enough.

You believed in it with a desperation that left no room for doubt: that love like this could survive the world outside your window, that he would catch you when you fell, fight for you when you bled, hold on even when everything else told him to let go.

You were the luckiest girl in the world — and lying there beneath him, your fingers locked together like a prayer you hadn't realized you'd been whispering for years, you truly believed that nothing could ever tear you apart.

Because back then, you still believed forever could be real. Back then, you still believed love like this was enough to save you both.

You believed that nights like this could hold back the tide of everything waiting to destroy you. And that Jungkook — your Jungkook — would be the one thing in this world that never broke.

The next morning, sunlight bleeds soft and golden through the thin curtains, spilling across tangled sheets and discarded clothes and the two of you, still wrapped together, still skin to skin, still smelling of sweat and sex and something sweeter, something that feels suspiciously like forever.

You wake first — blinking slowly, drowsily, your body aching in the most delicious ways — and for a long, perfect moment, you just lay there, staring at him, at the boy who somehow managed to crawl inside your chest and build a home there without you ever realizing it was happening.

Jungkook is sprawled on his back, one arm flung carelessly over his head, his other hand still loosely tangled in the sheet that barely covers either of you, and your heart squeezes painfully at the sight of him — messy hair, flushed cheeks, kiss-bruised lips parted in sleep, a faint crease between his brows like he’s still dreaming about you even now.

You can’t help yourself.

Your fingers move without permission, tracing the hard lines of his chest, the muscles shifting slightly under your touch, warm and firm and familiar, and you take your time — outlining the ridges of his abs, the curve of his waist, the faint dusting of hair that disappears below the sheet — memorizing him, hoarding him, because some part of you already knows you’ll never love anyone like this again.

He stirs under your touch, a low, sleepy groan rumbling deep in his chest, and before you can even think about pulling away, his hand is shooting out, grabbing your wrist and dragging you down for a kiss — lazy, messy, desperate in the way only mornings can make kisses desperate.

You giggle against his mouth, breaking the kiss just enough to tease, "Morning, sleepyhead."

"Morning, trouble," he mumbles, voice still thick with sleep, eyes barely open but his mouth already chasing yours again, already greedy for more.

You shift slightly — intending only to reposition yourself — but when you move, you can feel it: the hard, heavy press of his morning erection against your thigh, hot and insistent and utterly unignorable.

You smirk against his lips, pulling back just enough to glance down, and then back up at him with a teasing sparkle in your eyes.

"Someone’s awake," you whisper, sliding your hand slowly, wickedly, down his chest, your nails grazing lightly over his abs, watching with smug satisfaction as his whole body tenses under your touch.

"You’re evil," Jungkook groans, head tipping back against the pillow, the muscles in his neck flexing beautifully as he tries and fails to control himself."Pure fucking evil."

You laugh, delighted, and throw one leg over his hips, straddling him easily, feeling the thick, twitching heat of him pressing against your bare core through the thin layer of the sheet.

"Am I?" you ask, feigning innocence as you grind down ever so slightly, making him curse under his breath, making his hands fly to your hips like he can’t help it. "I thought you liked me like this."

"Like you?" he rasps, his voice cracking deliciously. "Baby, I fucking worship you."

The words burn through you, leaving you flushed and reckless, and you lean down, bracing your hands on his chest, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses across his skin — above his heart, across the slope of his pecs, down the tight ridges of his stomach — while he fists the sheets, his muscles trembling under your tongue.

"You’re killing me," he groans, head thrashing slightly against the pillow as you kiss lower, lower, lower still.

"Good," you whisper against his hipbone, laughing softly when he growls in frustration.

And then — slow, deliberate, teasing — you trace your lips along the length of him, the heavy weight of his cock throbbing against your mouth, so big and thick and perfect you almost moan at the taste of him, the sheer heat of him.

"Fuck," Jungkook hisses, his hands flying to your hair, not to force you down but to anchor himself, to keep from losing his mind completely.

You lick him lazily, dragging your tongue from base to tip, savoring the way he twitches against your mouth, savoring the broken sounds falling from his lips, savoring the way his thighs tremble under your palms.

"You’re so big, baby," you murmur against him, your voice sweet and filthy all at once. "So hard for me. You want me that bad?"

"Always," he gasps, his hands tightening in your hair. "Fuck, baby, you’re so good — driving me fucking insane —"

You giggle breathlessly and press teasing kisses all over his length along the thick vein pulsing along the underside, nipping playfully at the swollen head, loving the way his hips jerk up off the bed like he can’t help it, like he needs you too much to stay still.

"Please," he groans, utterly wrecked now, his voice shaking, desperate. "Please, baby, please suck me — need your mouth so bad — fuck, need to feel you —"

You finally take pity on him — finally wrap your lips around the flushed, leaking tip — and the sound he makes is nothing short of obscene, a strangled moan that punches straight into your core.

You suck slowly at first, teasing, swirling your tongue around the sensitive head, hollowing your cheeks to create a suction that has him cursing, babbling, begging.

"God, you’re so fucking good," he pants, hips thrusting shallowly up into your mouth."Look at you — look so pretty with my cock in your mouth — fuck, baby, you’re made for this — made to suck me off —"

You moan around him, the vibrations making him curse even louder, and then you take him deeper, swallowing inch by inch until he hits the back of your throat, until he’s gasping your name like a prayer, until his hands are trembling in your hair.

You bob your head faster, working him with your mouth and your hand, feeling him grow even harder, even heavier against your tongue, until you know he’s close — until you feel his thighs tensing, his breath catching, his hands fisting desperately in your hair.

"Baby — fuck — gonna come —" he warns, his voice raw, frantic.

You suck harder, faster, moaning around him, and with a broken, hoarse cry, Jungkook falls apart, spilling hot and salty down your throat, his body jerking helplessly, his mouth falling open in a silent, beautiful scream.

You swallow everything, licking him clean, savoring the taste of him, savoring the way he collapses back against the bed like he’s been hollowed out, like you’ve stolen every thought he ever had except for you.

And when you finally lift your head, wiping the corner of your mouth with the back of your hand, he’s staring at you like he’s never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

Like you hung the fucking stars just for him.

You crawl back up his body slowly, languidly, savoring every inch of warm, trembling skin under your palms, and when you finally reach him, when you finally meet his mouth again, he kisses you like he’s starving, like he’ll never get enough, like he’s still drunk on everything you just gave him and desperate for more.

It’s a messy, perfect kiss — mouths open, teeth clashing, tongues tangling, gasps and laughter bleeding into each other until neither of you knows where you end and he begins — and when you finally break apart, panting against each other’s lips, Jungkook rests his forehead against yours, his eyes still closed like he’s trying to savor the weight of you pressed so completely against him.

For a moment, neither of you speaks — just breathing each other in, suspended there, floating somewhere that isn’t entirely the world and isn’t entirely a dream either — and when he does finally find his voice, it’s rough, low, laced with something too big for either of you to name.

"I know," he murmurs, brushing his nose against yours, "that we live in a bubble."

You blink, lazy and drowsy and sated, but he just smiles — that soft, crooked smile he only ever gives you when it’s late and the world feels far away.

"I know," he says again, threading his fingers into your hair, cradling the back of your head like something precious. "That out there—" He jerks his chin vaguely toward the window, toward the city waking up beyond the glass. "—the world is still waiting for us. Still expecting things from us. Still trying to pull us apart."

You frown at that, nuzzling into his hand like a kitten, pouting without meaning to, your voice soft and bratty and unbearably adorable when you mumble, "I don't want the world."

He chuckles, the sound low and full of something aching and infinite, and pulls you tighter against him, like he can shield you from everything with the sheer force of his body alone.

"You," he whispers, pressing a kiss to your forehead, your nose, your mouth, each one softer than the last, "are my whole world."

And when he kisses you again — slow, deep, endless — you realize it’s true.

In this little bubble made of tangled sheets and whispered promises and reckless hope, there is no city, no parents, no expectations, no fear.

present time

The fluorescent lights above the bathroom mirror buzz faintly, a cruel, ugly sound in the soft, gilded hush of the wedding venue, and for a long, dizzying moment, you just stand there — your palms flat against the cold marble counter, your chest heaving like you’ve run a marathon you didn’t realize you’d started until it was too late.

Your reflection stares back at you, wild-eyed and red-rimmed, mascara smudged in soft gray shadows beneath lashes that flutter helplessly against the tears you can’t seem to stop.

You try. God, you try. You dab at your eyes with trembling fingers, blotting the damage, smoothing your hair, painting a brittle, empty smile onto your mouth — the kind of smile that fools no one and saves nothing, but maybe buys you just enough time to get the hell out of here before the weight of the past buries you alive.

Your heart still races from the memory, from the aftershocks of his hands on your skin, his mouth on your mouth, his voice breathing love into the hollow places you hadn’t even realized existed until he filled them.

You stand there, willing yourself to move, whispering that the past can’t touch you anymore, that you’ve outgrown this kind of pain — that you have to be stronger than you feel.

But grief — true grief — has no sense of time, no mercy for logic or willpower; it doesn't politely fade into the background like an old scar — it waits, it sleeps under your skin, and then one careless thought, one familiar smell, one remembered kiss, and it awakens ravenous, dragging you back under as easily as if you had never crawled out at all.

You draw a shuddering breath, taste salt and bitterness on your tongue, and turn away from the mirror before you can shatter completely.

The wedding hall is a kaleidoscope of color and noise as you step back into it — laughter and music and champagne glasses clinking together like tiny, mocking bells — and for a moment the world tilts under your feet, the sheer vibrancy of it so at odds with the funeral you feel unfolding in your own chest.

Someone calls your name — a polite, curious lilt — and you manage a weak smile, nodding vaguely at a group of guests you barely recognize.

"Leaving so soon?" a woman asks, genuine surprise softening her features.

You mutter something about a headache, about early work tomorrow, about anything that isn’t I’m drowning and if I stay here another second I will die where I stand.

You make it halfway across the floor before you feel it — that unmistakable pull, that gravity that never stopped tying you to him even after everything tore apart.

You look up, helpless against the instinct, and there he is — Jungkook, across the room, frozen mid-conversation, his dark eyes locked onto yours like he can feel you slipping through his fingers all over again.

For just a moment, it’s there — the worry, the confusion, the stunned, aching tenderness he still hasn’t managed to bury.

But beneath it, something harsher stirs — raw and unrecognizable, dark enough to steal the breath from your lungs.

It flickers at the edge of him — in the slight tremble of his hand as he sets his drink down too fast, in the faint glassiness in his gaze that has nothing to do with champagne and everything to do with exhaustion, with habits he can’t seem to outrun.

He looks... thinner, somehow. Sharper around the edges. Like the success sewn into the cut of his expensive suit is holding together a body that's burning itself out from the inside.

It twists inside you, sharp and familiar, because you recognize that look — the hollow stretch of someone slipping out of their own skin, the weight of a world too heavy to carry sober, the slow erosion of time when surviving becomes the only thing left. Even after everything — after the betrayal, after the years — your heart still aches for him without permission, as natural and inevitable as breathing.

The years sharpened him: the expensive suit, the calculated ease — but none of it masks the way he carries his grief like a splinter buried too deep to remove. And somehow, with a clarity that feels like a blade to your ribs, you understand: no matter how high he climbed, no matter how much he built, some part of him never moved forward either.

Something inside him still folded back to you. He takes a step forward, almost involuntary, like he doesn't realize he's doing it — but it’s enough. It’s too much. You break the gaze like it burns, shove your way through the crowd, nearly tripping in your haste to reach the door.

The evening air slaps your face, cool and sharp, as you stumble outside, waving frantically for the first taxi that slows down, ignoring the concerned calls of a few lingering guests.

You hear the heavy thud of footsteps behind you — faster now, urgent — and you don't have to turn around to know it's him.

You keep your eyes down, refusing to look and to hope. You dive into the taxi, slam the door, choke out your address to the driver with a voice you barely recognize as your own.

The car pulls away, and you catch a final, fleeting glimpse of him through the window — Jungkook standing alone on the curb, hands clenching uselessly at his sides, his face carved into an expression that looks far too much like grief to belong to someone who supposedly moved on.

A vicious thought flickers through you — wondering if he feels the same hollow ache, if the hatred ever faded, or if somewhere deep down he never stopped loving you.

The city blurs past — streetlights smearing into liquid gold, shop windows flashing by like tiny, glittering ghosts — and you press your forehead against the cool glass, your breath fogging a small circle into the world you can no longer reach.

The thing about loss is that everyone tells you it gets easier. That time smooths out the jagged edges, that grief dulls like an old knife, that someday you’ll wake up and it won’t hurt to remember. But the truth — the ugly, merciless truth — is that time doesn’t move forward at all.

It folds, bends you back into the shape of your own broken heart, trapping you inside memories you thought you had outlived, making you relive every kiss, every fight, every promise you failed to keep as if it’s happening right now, as if it will always be happening, as if you will never truly escape the moment you realized forever wasn't a promise after all — it was just another kind of lie.

The taxi carries you deeper into the night, but part of you never moves at all — still trapped six years ago, clinging to the boy who held you through every storm, still bleeding in the ruins of everything you couldn’t save — and maybe, you realize, some pieces of you always will be.

***

The apartment smells like burnt coffee and wet paint when you stumble through the door, still half-frozen from the chill outside, your thin jacket doing little to protect you from the colder, heavier things clinging to your skin.

Minho is slouched on the battered couch, a sketchpad balanced on his knees, his pencil tapping absently against the paper in a restless rhythm, and he looks up at you with surprise when he hears the door click shut.

"Back so soon?" he asks, blinking like he’s not sure if you’re real or just a ghost wandering in from the street.

You shrug, forcing a small smile that feels brittle and wrong on your face. "It was boring without you," you lie, peeling off your shoes, your jacket, your skin, your heart.

He smiles — small, touched — and you hate yourself a little for the way you can’t feel anything when you look at him.

Because it isn’t the wedding you fled from.

It wasn’t the guests or the champagne or the polite conversations that drove you out like a storm looking for somewhere to crash.

Jungkook, standing across the room like a living wound you couldn't stop bleeding from, his eyes carving you open in places you thought had long since scarred over.

How predictably stupid it was to think that six years of silence — six years of precision avoidance, of carefully stepping around mutual friends and blocked numbers and old memories — could survive a single collision without splintering into a thousand sharp-edged regrets.

You told yourself — foolishly, naively — that you could be normal tonight, that you could smile and toast and laugh at old jokes without shattering, that you could pretend you hadn’t once built a whole life inside his arms only to lose it all in a breath.

You laugh under your breath — a dry, humorless thing — as you drift toward the bathroom, mumbling something about needing a shower before he can ask any more questions.

The hot water scalds your skin, but it does nothing to burn him out of you. You press your forehead to the cool tile, water pouring down your back like tears you refuse to shed where anyone might hear, and you find yourself whispering silent, stupid prayers to a world that stopped listening to you a long time ago.

You beg the water, the walls, the hollow silence — anything — to take it away, to stop the endless aching, to grant you even a moment’s relief. But grief doesn’t listen.

It isn’t a wound that scabs over, or a fever that breaks; it is a parasite, patient and merciless, sinking its teeth into your ribs, your spine, your lungs, gnawing through every part of you until you forget there was ever a time you were whole.

When you finally step out, you feel no cleaner than before, just wetter, colder, heavier.

You towel your hair half-heartedly, throw on a worn sweater and sweatpants, and emerge from the bathroom with the blank, practiced face of someone who knows how to act normal when the world expects it.

Minho doesn’t seem to notice the cracks you’re bleeding from. He tosses his pencil onto the coffee table and sighs heavily, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair.

"Club canceled the gig again," he mutters, frustration curling under his words like smoke. "Said they’re cutting back on live performances."

You offer him a tired, sympathetic noise — something noncommittal — as you collapse into the chair across from him, feeling the exhaustion settle deep into your bones like a second skeleton.

"I should probably find another part-time job," you say absently, staring at the water stain on the ceiling, feeling the weight of the future pressing down like a hand around your throat.

Minho hums, toeing off his sneakers with a grunt. "Maybe we’re just idiots," he says after a moment, not cruel, just tired. "Thinking we could survive as artists in a world like this."

A faint, broken smile tugs at your mouth — because isn’t that the cruelest joke of all? Not the falling apart, but the fact that, for one bright, reckless moment, you believed you could win.

"Maybe," you whisper, voice almost lost to the hum of the cheap refrigerator rattling in the kitchen.

He tilts his head, studying you with a quiet frown. "Since when did you stop believing?"

You only sit there, silent, because there’s nothing left inside you that knows how to answer. Because the truth is — you stopped believing the night Jungkook walked away.

Not because Minho isn’t good enough, not because you don’t love your art anymore — but because something inside you shattered that night, something vital, something sacred.

But because when Jungkook accused you, when he looked at you like you were something dirty, something cheap, something less — it broke more than your heart.

It shattered more than your heart — it stripped you of the faith you once had in yourself, the belief that you were someone capable of being loyal. 

And no matter how many paintings you hung on cold gallery walls, no matter how many late shifts you survived or coffees you poured or exhibitions you faked your way through, you never really found her again — the girl who believed she deserved to be loved without shame.

You glance at Minho, who has already gone back to sketching, his pencil moving in soft, furious strokes across the page, and you feel a pang of guilt so sharp it almost doubles you over.

He is good, and he is kind — steady in ways that should have made you feel safe, in ways that deserve something better than the hollowed-out version of you still clawing through the wreckage.

Minho deserves someone whole. Not this —  a girl still haunted by a boy she couldn't bury, still stitched together with threads too thin to hold under real weight.

You press your palms against your thighs, biting the inside of your cheek to keep the tears at bay, and the thought slips in, unwelcome but familiar — that maybe grief is not something you outlive, but something you learn to carry, heavier with every passing year.

If some loves do not die cleanly, if they rot instead — festering quietly inside you, hollowing out everything they once touched — then maybe that decay is the only thing you have left to claim as yours.

___________________________________________________________________________

Time doesn’t heal wounds so much as it teaches you how to live around them — teaches you how to carry them in the quiet spaces between conversations, how to fold them neatly into your chest where no one else can see, how to laugh and nod and keep moving even when the old pain still howls beneath your skin.

You learn that grief becomes a kind of muscle memory — a reflex, a twitch just beneath the surface — and eventually you stop noticing the way you flinch when the world presses too hard against the places you are still bleeding.

You learn to live with it, folding the weight into your bones until it feels almost natural. You master the art of pretending — smiling, nodding, breathing like you're whole — and you almost convince yourself it's enough, until something sharp and familiar tears the stitches open all over again.

It’s been a week since the wedding.

A week of avoiding every thought that bears his face, every memory that tastes like blood in the back of your throat. A week of moving through your days on autopilot, smiling when expected, speaking when required, dying quietly in the spaces between.

When Sora’s message pings onto your phone, you almost don’t answer.

Sora:"Hey love, can you meet me at Primrose Café today? Need help planning honeymoon stuff! 🤍"

You hesitate — thumb hovering over the screen — but guilt sinks its teeth into your ribs and drags you under.

You owe her — more than silence, more than your fear, more than the cowardice clawing up your throat. So you tell yourself it’s fine, that he won’t be there, that it’s just coffee, simple, harmless, easy — but the lie tastes bitter even before you swallow it.

The café bells chime softly as you push the door open, the warm smell of roasted beans and vanilla flooding your senses — and for a brief, stupid moment, you allow yourself to relax, to believe that maybe today will be easy.

And then you see him. Jungkook is already seated at a corner table, his hands folded stiffly around a coffee cup he isn’t drinking from, his eyes dark and unreadable under the soft light.

The world tilts. Your stomach drops through the floor.

You freeze, every muscle locking tight, every instinct screaming at you to turn around, to run — but then you see Sora, waving you over with that bright, frantic smile she only uses when she knows she’s asking for forgiveness before the crime has even been committed.

You move because standing still feels worse — because running has never really saved you, only delayed the inevitable.

You slide into the seat across from him, feeling like a lamb being led to slaughter, feeling the air thicken around you, feeling the familiar prickle of his gaze skating over your skin like a brand you can’t scrub off.

Sora clears her throat awkwardly, twisting a napkin between her fingers.

"I know this is... a lot," she says, voice too loud, too brittle. "But I just— I love you both. And with me and Tae... with everything changing... I just want us to be able to be around each other without... without it being like this."

You don’t look at him, keeping your eyes on Sora, on the way her hands shake slightly while she bites her lip like she’s scared you’ll hate her for this.

You could never. She’s the only reason you still have anyone at all.

"I’m not asking you to be friends," she rushes on, voice cracking slightly. "Just— just civil. For me. For family events. Holidays. Birthdays. I don’t want to have to choose between the two people who mattered most to me for so long."

The weight of it all presses down harder.

You nod because it’s the only thing you can do without breaking apart in public.

Sora’s face softens, relief flooding her features, and she reaches across the table to squeeze your hand briefly before rising to her feet.

"I’m gonna give you two a moment," she says, and before you can protest — before you can even breathe — she’s gone, leaving you alone in the heavy, aching silence of too many unsaid things.

You feel his gaze on you — steady, sharp, unbearable — and for a long moment, you can’t bring yourself to look up.

But eventually, inevitably, you do.

And the moment your eyes meet his, the past hits you like a tidal wave — dragging you back to the night everything shattered, the night you learned that some betrayals don't bleed out cleanly but rot inside you for years.

The night everything you believed in burned to ash in his hands — the same night you lost him, and somewhere along the way, yourself too.

Six years ago

The night air was thick and heavy, the kind of suffocating stillness that clings to your skin, and you had been sitting alone in your small apartment, half-listening to the hum of the old refrigerator, your sketchpad abandoned at your feet, your thoughts drifting somewhere soft and slow, like maybe — finally — you could start piecing yourself back together after the stupid little fight you had with him a week ago.

You weren’t expecting anything.

Which is why the furious, violent banging at your door made you jump so hard you nearly toppled off the couch, your heart slamming against your ribs as a thousand terrible possibilities flashed through your mind — none of them preparing you for the sight waiting on the other side.

Jungkook.

But not the Jungkook you knew — not the boy who used to kiss you until the world melted away, not the boy who used to call you his princess like it was a sacred word.

This Jungkook looked like something broken loose from a storm — wild eyes, chest heaving, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, with his rage, with his grief.

"Who is he?" he choked out the moment you opened the door, his voice raw, splintered at the edges."Tell me who the fuck he is, Y/N."

You blinked at him, confused, terrified, stepping back instinctively as he stormed past you into the apartment, his presence filling the small space with something frantic and electric and wrong.

"Jungkook, what are you talking about?" you asked, your voice shaking, your hands reaching out to him without thinking — but he jerked away like your touch burned him.

"Don't fucking lie to me!" he shouted, his voice cracking, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding himself together."I saw it! I fucking saw it — you and him — you telling him you loved him like I meant nothing!"

The words didn't make sense.

They slammed against your brain but refused to stick, refused to arrange themselves into anything real, anything you could understand.

"I— I don't—" you stammered, tears already welling up because the look on his face — God, the look — was worse than anger, worse than hatred.

It was betrayal, heartbreak — and somehow, impossibly, you had been the one to put it there, even if you didn’t understand how.

"You're protecting him," he spat, eyes glinting wet under the cheap ceiling light. "You love him that much, huh? You love him so much you'd throw everything away?"

"No!" you cried, stepping closer, desperate, frantic. "Jungkook, I swear to you — I don’t even know what you’re talking about!"

But whether he didn't listen or simply couldn't anymore, it made no difference — the part of him that once trusted you was already too broken to reach and had already shattered beyond repair.

He shook his head, laughing hollowly, wiping his mouth like he was trying to scrub the taste of you from his skin, and then he was gone — slamming the door so hard behind him that the walls shook, that your bones rattled inside you.

You stood there for a long time after, staring at the door, at the emptiness he left behind, feeling something inside you collapse so completely it left nothing but ashes in its wake.

You called, you texted, you sat up all night watching your phone flicker to life and die again, over and over, until even the light felt like a knife against your eyes — and still, he never answered.

And somewhere in the pit of your stomach, you understood that this wasn’t a fight you could fix with an apology or a kiss or a whispered promise under the covers.

This was something bigger and fatal. Days passed — long, gray, aching.

When he finally agreed to meet, it wasn’t at your apartment. It was somewhere neutral, somewhere cold — a small, empty parking lot behind a coffee shop you used to visit when you were too broke for anything but each other's company.

You spotted him leaning against his car, arms folded tight across his chest, jaw clenched so hard you could see the tension vibrating through him even from yards away. You approached cautiously, heart hammering against your ribs, clutching your jacket tighter around yourself like it could shield you from whatever was about to happen.

He didn’t speak at first — just unlocked his phone with shaking fingers and shoved it toward you, and you saw the images, the videos, spilling across the screen like a slow, relentless gutting.

You — in a too-short dress you didn’t remember wearing — laughing too loudly, leaning too close to a stranger, kissing someone whose face you couldn't place, slurring out words you didn't recognize as your own — "I don't care about anything. I love you. I love you."

You stared at the screen, horror blooming in your chest so fast and so hard you thought you might be sick.

"I—" you stammered, throat closing, hands trembling so badly you almost dropped the phone."I don't— I didn't—"

But you couldn't say it with certainty. You remembered going out that night after your fight, remembered the sharp, desperate need to forget how much it hurt when he raised his voice, when he walked away. You remembered drinking too much, laughing too hard.

But after that, your memory dissolves — slipping into darkness, into empty spaces where something should have been, leaving you grasping at shadows that will never take shape.

"Say something," Jungkook rasped, his voice barely more than a breath now."Fucking say something, Y/N."

You lifted your eyes to him, saw the devastation there, saw the way he was barely holding himself upright — and you realized, with bone-deep certainty, that you had destroyed him.

You had destroyed everything beautiful you had built together — every late-night secret, every whispered promise, every desperate, trembling hope — crushed under the weight of one stupid, reckless night you could barely even remember.

"It’s not real," you whispered, the words tasting like ash on your tongue."It can’t be real."

But doubt had already sunk its teeth into you, gnawing at every fragile truth you thought you knew, until even the ground beneath your feet felt like it was crumbling away.

"I need you," you whispered again, broken, desperate, hating yourself for even daring to ask when you were the reason he was bleeding out in front of you."I need you, Jungkook. Please. Now more than never."

For a heartbeat, something soft and familiar cracked through his face — something that looked almost like the boy who once loved you without fear — but it withered too fast, collapsing into bitterness, into fury, into a sadness so sharp it barely looked human.

"You needed someone to pay your bills," he snarled, stepping back like he couldn't stand the sight of you. "You needed someone to lift you out of your shit life, and I was dumb enough to think you actually loved me."

The words sliced clean through you, sharper than any knife.

"I never—" you tried to say, but your voice cracked, the tears spilling over now, unstoppable, humiliating.

He laughed — a hollow, broken sound — and wiped his mouth again like he could still taste your betrayal.

"You played me," he said. "You played me, and I fucking let you."

And then he was gone again — turning away, walking off into the night — leaving you standing there under the flickering streetlights, broken, abandoned, a ghost of the girl you used to be.

Present time

The silence between you stretches so taut it feels like it might snap and slice both of you open, and when you finally blink, the café shifts back into focus — cold coffee on the table, the faint scratch of chairs against wood, the distant hum of conversations you can't quite catch.

Jungkook is still sitting there, watching you with an expression that isn’t hatred, not exactly, but something worse — something exhausted, something hollowed-out, something like a man still bleeding from wounds that never truly closed.

You straighten in your seat, fingers tangling awkwardly in the hem of your sweater, your mouth dry, your heart thudding against your ribs like a battered bird desperate to escape.

He’s the one who breaks the silence first.

"You still painting?" he asks, voice low and rough, like it scrapes his throat just to speak to you.

You nod, barely, afraid if you use your voice it might crack apart.

"And still working those shitty jobs?" he adds, the corner of his mouth curling into something bitter, something that was never his real smile.

"Yeah," you whisper, and it sounds so small you almost hate yourself for it.

He doesn’t respond at first — just looks at you, and for a moment you think he might say something else, something sharp or cruel — but his gaze drops to his hands instead, to the way they tremble slightly as he grips the paper cup, knuckles whitening.

Your throat tightens.

You notice it then — the way the shadows cling too tightly under his eyes, the way his skin looks drawn and dry, the way his body seems almost too light in the chair like he's been losing something important slowly and no one cared enough to notice.

Without thinking, without weighing the danger, you lean in slightly, voice breaking through the shield you’ve built around yourself.

"Are you okay?"

The words are soft, tentative — a whisper stretched thin with guilt and fear — and for a second, just a second, something flickers behind his eyes, something startled and hurt and unbearably familiar.

But it’s gone as quickly as it came.

Jungkook huffs a short, bitter laugh, shaking his head as he leans back in his chair, eyes narrowing not with malice but with a tired kind of disbelief.

"You don’t get to ask me that anymore," he says, and the way he says it — low and tired and irrevocably sad — stings worse than any shout could have.

You drop your gaze, staring at the table between you, counting the little scratches and coffee stains like maybe if you focus hard enough they’ll tell you what to say, how to breathe, how to survive this.

For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of both of you breathing, struggling under the weight of everything that’s never been said. And then — so low you almost don’t catch it — he murmurs:

"It’s funny, isn’t it?"

You look up, and there’s something broken and almost wistful in the curve of his mouth, something too raw to be a smile.

"So many years," he says, voice rough, thick with the kind of grief that doesn’t dull, "and it still fucking hurts."

You swallow hard, your throat burning, your hands curling into fists in your lap just to keep from reaching for him.

"Me too," you whisper, the truth of it carving fresh wounds into your lungs.

He turns his gaze on you then, sharp and cutting, and the tenderness in his features vanishes like smoke.

"Then why don’t you just confess it already?" he snaps, and for once it doesn’t sound cruel — just desperate, like he’s begging you to make sense of the senseless wreckage you both live inside.

Your chest caves inward.

"I didn’t cheat," you say, the words trembling between your lips, and you hate the way your voice shakes, hate the way the tears well up without permission, blurring the world around you.

His jaw tightens, his whole body going rigid.

"Don’t," he says, voice low and strict, the command so familiar it punches straight through your ribs. "Don't you dare cry. You don’t get to cry. You did this to me."

And maybe you would have obeyed and swallowed the tears like broken glass and let them shred you from the inside. But the truth rises before you can stop it, ugly and shaking and alive.

"I was pregnant."

The words tear themselves from your mouth, leaving you gasping, weightless in their aftermath, as the world around you collapses into a silence so complete it hums inside your skull — your heartbeat thundering in your ears, your eyes locking helplessly onto Jungkook as he goes rigid across from you, his body stiffening, his face freezing, until he looks less like a man and more like something carved from stone.

You stay frozen too, trapped in the wreckage of the moment, breathless, unmoored — suspended in that terrible space where time folds in on itself, where every grief you thought you had buried, every memory you thought you had survived, comes roaring back to life with a vengeance.

Across the table, Jungkook stares — not with anger, not even with disbelief, but with the hollow, shell-shocked emptiness of someone standing at the edge of their own undoing, with no ground left to stand on.

.

part 2

your feedback means the world to me. 🖤

boy meets evil | jjk

boyfriend!jk x girlfriend!reader ft Demok (your cat)

a/n: the link was broken so i'm just reposting it.

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Jungkook knows he’s in deep shit.

The loud buzzing from the hairdryer will surely wake you up. You have been working, standing on your feet for hours long and Jungkook knows that, he fucking knows that! Which is why he is so scared right now.

You are his sweetheart, always so bubbly and is so patient. Especially with him. As far as he is aware you never make any face or scold him for shouting when he is playing games with Taehyung. Or when he woke up at the goddamn hour of the night because he craved your cookies. He accidentally knocked over the glass cup, shattering it on the floor, you just hum comfortingly at him, rubbing his back up and down with eyes closed before bringing the broom to help him.

Jungkook tends to feel bad easily, he thinks you come up to him first before helping clean up his mess. He loves you so much for putting up with him.

You always said, “I can never get mad at you, baby. Except if you messed up with my other baby, Demok.” you don’t play when you say this, with that glint in your eyes. Demok is your cat. If Jungkook is your baby, Demok is the firstborn. He is pretty old for his cat age and he has been with you for so long. Jungkook wasn’t even in the picture yet.

You were living with Demok as long as you can remember. Demok is a ragamuffin cat, heavy fur on his chest, plump legs, the cutest thing ever only if he doesn’t hate Jungkook so much. He is super grumpy (well to Jungkook) and very possessive! Jungkook remembers fucking you into your mattress for the fisrt time and Demok almost bend his dick in half because that cat showed up out of nowhere and started hissing at him. Jungkook still shudders at that memory.

If he got home earlier than you, there’s awkward air in the house as Demok stares at him like he is a felony. Jungkook tried cooing, or clicking and making whatever sounds that are supposed to attract the cat. He even pleads to Demok, begging him to eat before you’re home. Jungkook finds himself groaning all the time and he whines about Demok hating him to you. You always shrug and say “he’s always like that,” or, “he’s a grandpa, it’s normal.”

Lies! Demok is the most docile and and a furry purring machine every damn time he’s on your lap. Whenever you're home after your shift at the hospital, Demok will instantly jump at the door and start making those cute noises and just circling your legs. Making you giggle beautifully (at least your voice soothes him) while Jungkook is clenching his spoon as he stress eating peanut butter straight out of the jar.

Did anyone remember that Demok the fluffiest cat, with his brown greyish chest. His fur is so thick. Definitely because of his breed and sometimes Jungkook catches him grooming himself, licking at his fur and it takes forever to dry. Jungkook always found it hilarious as Demok struts down the hallway with wet patches on his body. The thick fur! The reason why Jungkook is screaming internally right now.

“Stay still Demok, please!” He whispers yelling at the cat. Jungkook is anxiously rubbing Demok with the towel he grabbed out of nowhere because he was shocked while his other hand is holding the hairdryer. To sums up, the whole scene is ridiculous. Jungkook in his black boxer, with his hair all over the place, if you have a bird, the bird would think his hair as their nest.

His eyes are a little puffy but wide in shock because it’s three in the morning, he is still holding his pee, because he is currently fussing over a very wet Demok! Yeah! Jungkook didn’t know Demok is sleeping in the sink, so imagine his surprise when he walked into the bathroom, about to wash his hands before he pee -because he always done it like that- his eyes closed and the he didn’t even bother to switch on the light for the bathroom he knows like the back of his hand.

So he turns on the faucet only for it to splash on Demok's chunky body, the cat can’t even flinched because he was asleep!

“I’m sorry, dude. Just sush,” Jungkook is trying his best to grab a hold of the cat. He doesn’t want Demok and his wet body waking up to you. Oh but Jungkook knows how Demok will make him pay for it. Immediately he kicks the bathroom door close after he turns on the light, scrambling to calm Demok as Jungkook can hear his low rumbled meow, indicating that he is annoyed. His hand grabbing the nearest towel and his other hand plugging the hair drier. The clatter sounds of your skincare falls all over the counter. Making he winced, praying you’re not awake.

Too late,

“What happened, Kook,” your voice makes him widen his already big eyes. Oh no, he thought. You knocked on the bathroom door softly. Seeing the frantic moving shadow on the bottom of the door. “Kook? You okay,” you sound more alert now. Jungkook on the other side of the door is begging Demok to not make a sound. Yea, like Demok will listen to him, or be affected by the puppy frowning look on Jungkook’s face so he meow. It was a short meow but Jungkook swears he can see Demok smirks. Maybe his brain is still foggy from the sleep but Demok is a coy beast.

“Demok?” You asked. Now your hand is on the door handle. It's not locked. Pushing it open, you take a look at the whole mess. Wet Demok in the sink, Jungkook and the hairdryer. You burst out laughing.

"Boys, what the fuck?” Wiping the tear on the corner of your eyes, hunched over because Jungkook looks like he had committed the biggest crime while Demok is holding his head high but his wet neck makes him look silly.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Jungkook pouted. Unlike Demok, you will forever be affected by his pout. “I didn't know Demok was sleeping in the sink,” he adds. Still looking guilty.

“Aww, it’s okay. He’s fine. Let’s dry him up,” you chuckles.

Jungkook squeals, oh he lets out a pitched squeal at your reaction. He was pretty sure he’d be sleeping on the couch a few minutes ago. But now here you are rubbing the towel softly on Demok’s fluffy chest. You truly are his sweetheart.

That next day, Jungkook got home earlier as usual and he was carrying groceries. Somewhere Demok might be napping and Jungkook didn’t look for him yet before his meal time. He rushed back to the car because he cannot make it on one trip today because he bought shoe racks. So he went to get it, but Jungkook didn’t know, the little furry beast was hiding in the shadows as Jungkook zoomed out the door.

That furry beast strutted his best catwalk on the kitchen counter.

Let’s just say, a few seconds later, Jungkook comes back to a spilled milk on the floor, some boxes of flour or cereal or whatever are already torn and his celery and broccoli are scattered on the counter.

The culprit? He’s licking his paw like a good boy he is.

My Masterlist

None of the fics in the lists belongs to me. All of these fics are by some amazing, talented, and creative writers. Go check them out and read their other stories. Also like, reblog, and comment there ❤️❤️

Favourite Fic ♡︎♡︎

Yet it's only Jungkook. I will add other members gradually.

~~••~~

Jeon Jungkook

➪ One Shots/Drabbles

➪ Series/Two Shots

CHERRY ᴼᴺᴱ

In which she returns after seven years with a gun and hatred in her heart, while he's ready to cross every line to make her remember why she once called him 'love'.

au/genre : mafia heir!Jungkook x mafia heir!oc, mafia rivals, childhood lovers, mafia au

warning : explicit violence, lots of blood, angst, manipulation, possessive behavior, toxic mafia parents, trauma, lies, depression, psychopathy, slaughter and blood, murder, eventual smut, mafia.

rating : mature

This work is purely fiction and has no relation to real life people mentioned. Please take it in the fiction sense and enjoy the Rollercoaster.

© All the rights of this work belong to arxims. This cannot be modified, republished or translated without my permission or acknowledgement

word count : 2.4 k

masterlist

❝ They say the most ruthless monsters were once human, and the deepest sorrows were once happiness. ❞

"Don't let them take me away, Jungkook..." Her hands slipped from his as they pulled her away, tearing them apart.

"Please, Jungkook!"

Jungkook woke with a gasp, choking for air as realization flooded his mind. It was a nightmare. The same nightmare, for the nth time. He blinked twice, his eyes adjusting to his room. Sweat coated his body, creating a sheen layer on his uncovered chest.

The nightstand clock read 3:47. The room was dark and lifeless, bleak like his existence. Pushing away the tangled blankets from his legs, he stumbled to the bathroom. Tonight's sleep was gone. No matter how much he tried to drift off again, it wouldn't come. Only he knew how much whiskey he had to down to fall asleep. It had become a chore now.

Morning rays illuminated the grey curtains as hours flew by. A soft knock rose from the door, followed by Sooah's voice. "Jungkook? Are you up?" It was around 7:30, the usual time to wake up. This had been their cycle ever since she came to the mansion as Hyungwoo's wife, as Jungkook's sister-in-law. She knew he was awake, that he never slept properly.

"Come in," his voice came out hoarse, as if he'd been screaming for hours. Maybe he had been in his sleep, and she'd probably heard him in the middle of the night. But he never bothered locking the door. Locking the door felt too suffocating, and even the four walls of his room never felt like home.

The door opened slowly as Sooah stepped in. Her deep black hair was swept into a messy bun, and she wore simple pajamas. Jungkook hadn't bothered to put on a shirt. She'd seen him in worse states.

"Good morning," she chimed, trying to lighten the mood as she entered. He didn't reply, remaining seated on the edge of the bed. She padded across the room, collecting the discarded shirt he'd thrown mindlessly the night before. Her eyes softened at the exhaustion written on his face. But she knew better than to ask. In fact, she knew almost nothing about the reason behind his pain—just bits and pieces. Nobody told her. The whole Jeon family believed that her name was better left buried and unwhispered, except for Jungkook.

"Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes. Don't skip it, okay?" She patted his head carefully. She knew how vulnerable he was during these hours, and in some parallel universe, maybe he would've been her son. She treated him like one—better than his own mother did.

Hyungwoo was already in his full black suit when Sooah reached the dining table. Given her nature, she was a curious one, restless until she knew things. But she'd kept that in check for four years of her life in the Jeon Mansion. Jungkook's nightmares were getting worse day by day, and she could only watch rather than help. She knew nothing about the main character of Jungkook's past that was buried seven years ago, except for one name: Cherry.

"It's getting worse," she said as she took a chair beside him, pouring coffee for herself as Hyungwoo sipped his. "I know, jagi," his words might have felt cold to others, but only Sooah could see the worry in his eyes for his little brother.

Hyungwoo was the only person who genuinely cared for Jungkook in this household. She sometimes imagined what it must have been like for Jungkook to grow up as the youngest heir here—with a father who only cared about his mafia empire, a mother who valued his father's power, reputation, and riches over her sons, and a brother who had made it his mission to please his father, even if it meant slaughtering both his brothers. Yes, Sungmin, the second heir, would do it if it meant pleasing Mr. Jeon.

But beyond all that, someone might have been the salvation Jungkook needed. An escape from all the expectations on his shoulders, from the name Jeon. And she knew that salvation wasn't her husband, but the girl behind that name. Cherry. The one he lost.

"Is Cherry still alive?" Sooah asked impulsively, immediately realizing the weight of the question and regretting letting it slip.

"We agreed not to talk about it," Hyungwoo's eyes were now on her.

"I know, but... I want to know. It's been four years, and I've kept my silence. Don't you think it's time for me to know? I'm also part of the Jeon family now. Don't you think so?" Her left hand found its way into his free hand, tangling her fingers with his, her eyes silently pleading.

"Tell me. Maybe I can help Jungkook. You know he's more open with me than any of you." It was the truth that Sooah knew. She was the only one who had attempted to crack the concrete wall Jungkook built around himself. Over these four years, even Hyungwoo had noticed Jungkook being more at ease around Sooah. Less miserable.

A sigh fell from his lips, a sign of defeat. Part defeat, part... sadness.

"She's gone."

Suddenly, the vast hall felt too small for Sooah. Too eerily silent as the weight of those heavy words sank in. Gone.

But Hyungwoo seemed to think she deserved to know more. "Her name was Minsun. Youngest daughter of Kim Ilsung." The name sent a shiver down Sooah's spine. The emperor of the Kim mafia family. Jeon's born rivals. So Cherry... Minsun was a Kim mafia heir.

"I thought he only had two heirs," she said as things slowly started to become clear.

"There were three, until... It was a car accident, according to our sources. Her car exploded on impact, with her in it." Hyungwoo's voice carried genuine empathy—perhaps for Minsun, or perhaps for his own little brother.

"She was his everything."

Sooah knew better than to press further as she watched Hyungwoo's fingers trace the rim of his coffee mug. The whole room suddenly felt suffocating.

Movement at the doorway of the dining hall made both of them turn their heads, breaking the maddening silence. Jungkook cleared his throat as he took a seat far from them. He poured himself a mug of coffee, clad in his impeccable suit. But the dark circles single-handedly shattered the composed façade he was trying to maintain. Sooah showed no reaction to the truth she'd learned minutes ago and went to the kitchen, leaving both brothers in the silence of the dining hall.

"We found him," Hyungwoo broke the silence, prompting Jungkook to raise his head. An eyebrow arched on his face, indicating him to continue. Their men had been investigating the Kims' hotel business outside Seoul and in foreign countries, which led to a suspect possibly trading information to the Kims—information that included strategies of the Jeon empire itself.

"Our suspicions were true. He is working for Ilsung. Marco, a member of the group looking after their business in Venice." Venice, the place where Minsun had allegedly died. He hated the sound of it and the bitter taste it spread on his tongue. But he was more suspicious of the connection between Venice and the Belluccis, Ilsung's Italian allies for a decade now. This had strengthened his belief that Ilsung and the Belluccis had hidden Minsun somewhere, despite all his failed attempts at finding her.

Sooah had returned from the kitchen with breakfast, serving both of them a plate of pancakes before leaving to the kitchen again. Hyungwoo noticed the way Jungkook was looking into a far-away void, gripping the fork until it nearly bent. "He's in our custody now. I want you to interrogate him." Jungkook's attention snapped back to his brother. Hyungwoo knew exactly what kind of information Jungkook wanted from Marco. With a swift motion, Jungkook stood up, leaving the dining area. The chair almost toppled in his haste. But Hyungwoo knew holding him back would only create chaos.

"Where did he go?" Sooah stopped beside the empty chair, syrup bottle in hand.

"Marco..tch tch tch tch." Sungmin's voice echoed through the basement as he circled the bound man, studying the bloodied cloth stuffed in his captive's mouth. "Why endure such pain when death comes so easily?" He lifted a crooked blade from the metal table, turning it to catch the dim light. Behind him, two Jeon men stood silently, though their assistance would prove unnecessary.

"Anyway, you'll die," Sungmin continued, his English colored by a slight Korean accent. "Why not make it quick?" Marco trembled, muffled sobs escaping around the gag. "Imagine the agony—" Sungmin raised the blade to eye level "—when I twist this like a key in its lock." Before the last word left his lips, he drove the blade into Marco's thigh.

Blood bloomed across fabric as Sungmin rotated the blade with surgical precision. Marco's screams overwhelmed the wet sounds of tearing flesh and dripping crimson.

The basement door crashed open. Jungkook materialized from the shadows, his tall frame illuminated by the harsh overhead lights. Though his expression remained controlled, barely contained rage blazed in his eyes.

"Well, if it isn't our resident brooder," Sungmin called out, mockery lacing his cheerful tone. These past seven years had nourished his ego, believing himself to be their father's greatest hope. Before Minsun's death, Jungkook had commanded that spotlight—the heir their father expected to rule with ruthless efficiency. Now he spent his days drowning in whiskey and despair.

Sungmin understood the monster Minsun's death had forged. He relished using Jungkook as his unwitting weapon in his climb to power. Each slaughter Jungkook committed cleared Sungmin's path further—what served as Sungmin's calculated game became Jungkook's escape.

Yet Sungmin couldn't mask his contempt for what his brother had become. All this weakness, this pathetic descent—for a girl. A girl from enemy territory.

Jungkook moved past Sungmin's barbs without acknowledgment. His focus locked onto Marco's bloodied form. In two fluid strides, he stood before the chair. His tattooed fingers wrapped around Marco's bruised throat as his other hand ripped away the gag. Marco sputtered, gasping for air.

"You can't just interrupt my interrogation." Sungmin yanked Jungkook's hand from Marco's neck. Hyungwoo materialized at the periphery of the scene.

"Sungmin, stand down," Hyungwoo's measured voice cut through the tension.

A bitter laugh escaped Sungmin's lips. "How convenient. We're interrogating him about the Kim-Bellucci alliance, not about your precious dead girl.”

Jungkook's breath came in sharp bursts, his fists clenching at his sides. "You know that's a sensitive topic," Hyungwoo warned, but Jungkook's gaze had already dropped to the floor, his knuckles white with restraint.

"Sensitive?" Sungmin scoffed. "If he wanted information, he would've gotten it himself instead of wallowing in misery."

"Enough, Sungmin!" Hyungwoo's voice carried an edge of steel.

"Too bad you were spending your precious time mourning a whore—"

The word hadn't fully left Sungmin's mouth before Jungkook's fist connected with his jaw. Blood sprayed across pristine suit fabric. Hyungwoo lunged for Jungkook as the two guards seized Sungmin. Despite their grip, Sungmin thrashed like a caged animal. "How dare you?"

He wrenched free, straightening his jacket before stalking toward Jungkook, still restrained by Hyungwoo. Sungmin jabbed a finger into his brother's chest. "Don't you dare tarnish the Jeon name again. I'll kill you myself—and your blood on my hands would be a blessing."

"Let's see who falls first," Jungkook's voice came low and deadly. He tore away from Hyungwoo's grasp and stormed out. The shattering of ceramic punctuated his exit.

Cigarette smoke curled into the night air as Jungkook exhaled, watching blood trickle from his split knuckles. A half-empty whiskey bottle sat accusingly at his feet. Behind him, a spider web of cracks decorated the dark marble wall—evidence that punching it had done little to contain his fury.

The hair on his neck rose with a familiar sensation. "Oh... you're here," he murmured without turning from the moon-bathed sky, his grip tightening on the balcony railing.

Two soft footsteps, and she was beside him. She leaned against the railing, facing him, but he couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze. "Cherry..." She had grown older, taller, more refined. Curves graced her figure, her features more elegant than girlish. Black hair kissed her shoulders, and only her bangs—sweeping across her forehead—held echoes of her younger self.

He had spent countless hours imagining how Minsun would look after seven years. How different everything might be if he had just... held on tighter. The thoughts consumed him until they became his reality. His salvation, conjured by his fractured mind.

Her delicate fingers found his cheek. "Why all this rage?" Her voice carried the sweetness he craved, soft as though he were made of glass. In her presence, his carefully constructed walls crumbled.

With her, he wasn't a Jeon heir. He was simply himself—the man who belonged to her. His façade of strength dissolved, a tear escaping before he could stop it. She never judged his weakness. Even this illusion showed him more kindness than any living soul.

Finally, he met her gaze—those deep brown eyes exactly as memory painted them. Her face had matured into something more beautiful than recollection could capture. No longer a teenage girl, but a woman. The woman he'd spent years reconstructing in his mind.

"You're early today," he attempted a chuckle, but it emerged as a sob. "You don't usually appear until the bottle's empty."

"You're drinking again," she tilted her head, studying him with gentle reproach.

"What else am I supposed to do when I'm losing my fucking sanity?" His voice cracked on the last word, eyes searching her face desperately.

She moved closer until her hand covered his on the railing, that familiar warmth seeping into his veins. "You look lost, love." He closed his eyes as she did, allowing her presence to wash over him like a healing balm.

"Lost doesn't define it. I'm losing my mind."

When his eyes opened, her face hovered inches from his own. "Do you think this is living, Jungkook?" The question pierced straight through his chest.

"I let you down in every possible way," he confessed, the words raw and bleeding. "I've wasted seven years drowning in self-pity. I don't know what to do anymore."

"The Jungkook I knew doesn't give up so easily."

"The Jungkook you knew died the day he lost you."

Her response came swift and sharp: "But you don't have to stay dead anymore." The words carried a weight he couldn't quite grasp, a meaning that danced just beyond his understanding.

"What do you mean?" He turned his head, but she had vanished—leaving only the bitter companionship of whiskey and cigarette smoke under the moonlit sky.

a/n : I know nothing much happened in this chapter. Sorry if it fell out flat. Just the world building. 😭

taglist : @haru-jiminn

happy birthday namjoon!

leader, rapper, namjoooning, dimples. there’s so many ways to show who he is as a person.as an idol he’s down-to-earth, kind, and thoughtful.as kim namjoon, he’s a nature lover and can be shy.no matter what you are thinking about, he’s forever our boy who is an amazing person.i purple you!

Lovely! It was such a lovely fic. Agh the characters, their relationship with one another are just on point. There crazy banters and funny personalities are so gracefully highlighted. A very well - written fic. It's like a full movie. Amazing <3

Quarter Life Crisis

pairing: jungkook x reader

genre/warning: slow burn friends to lovers!au, friend zoning, being dense AF, swearing & sarcastic bantering, a smidge of angst, explicit implications of smut

word count: 25k 

A/N: guys. i’ve never written something this long and in depth before and i honestly don’t know how to feel about it. but i do know i have a newfound respect for fic writers. i poured so much time and effort into this, and can only imagine what other writers go through so please remember to show your fave writers love for all their hard work! 

In the movies, the recently graduated, mid-twenties protagonist sets off on the journey of life and seems to immediately land a fantastic job, find a stellar unit in an even more luxurious apartment complex, gets a fancy car with a name that’s impossible to pronounce, is in a long term relationship from college and is going to receive a proposal within the next few months (but doesn’t know it yet), and basically, has life all figured out. If movies are going to portray young adult life like that, then that’s ideally what your twenties should be like, right? Being young, educated, ready to take on the world, further discovering yourself and finding true love.

This, however, is not what you imagined your mid-twenties to be like.

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Oh God, who is cutting onions beside me? 😭😭🤧. This is short but written so well. All the emotions have been captured here so beautifully. I love everyone in this fic 😭. Some tears slipped unknowingly from my eyes after reading the final line.

filed under: it’s emo hours

notes: i’m sorry in advance but ya girls an angst hoe 

your daughter, you quickly learn, is her father’s carbon copy. maybe that’s why she loves you so much.

yoongi doesn’t know how you do it, because maya’s at that age where she can sense something is wrong without being able to place it, let alone express it. it’s such a tricky age to manoeuvre but if anyone were to navigate through so seamlessly, it’s you. that’s what worries him.

“i can take her while you’re at your appointment,” yoongi says, not really an offer but a statement. he’s taking her like it or not and he’s going to buy her copious amounts of ice cream one way or another.

you smile at him, a thank you and i love you in one, and it’s moments like that with your hair undone and the house quiet that yoongi thinks his love for you will suffocate him. he watches you twirl your fingers through maya’s hair while she sleeps on your lap. “it’s okay, i cancelled last night. i wanna stay home with you two tomorrow.”

yoongi does that thing where his mouth thins into a line and his cheeks dimple unhappily. “___.”

“mm?”

as much as he revels in that faint cheekiness, remnants of who you used to be, he forces the words out. “no skipping. you promised me you’d go to every session.”

a sigh. “i know.”

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A fallen bookmark on a Thursday afternoon

Pairing: Jungkook | Reader Genre: ANGST, Fluff and soft Smut Word Count: 19k

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"You fell in love with a romantic, so let me romance you" ahhh this line gave me butterflies. Why these things always happen in fiction and not in real life :((

pretty hallucinations (jjk)

summary: Drunk words are sober thoughts, and now Jungkook knows all of yours — even the ones about him. And you know what they say, once a secret’s out, it’s hard to take it back.

word count- 3.9k 

pairing- best friend!Jungkook x Reader

rating- PG 15

genre- f2l, idiots in love, fluff, slight angst, slight crack

warnings- reader is wasted, jungkook is a softie, SO MUCH PINING, mention of bondage and spreader bars lmfao

a.n- a birthday fic to celebrate my favourite bunny! happy birthday jk! this fic came to me after I read a scene in ten trends to seduce your best friend that had me cackling. read that book if you enjoyed this, that ones a real f2l slow burn hehe

special s/o to @daechwitatamic for beta reading, helping with the summary, and leaving the most hilarious comments on my doc haha I will cherish them forever💕

As always feedback appreciated, a reblog and a like goes a far way. Send me an ask! 💌

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The room was spinning. A kaleidoscope of colours twirling in the air and you couldn’t help the bitterness rising through you. This used to be your favourite place, a library you had created after years of collecting your favourite words. Systematically organized, it seemed now that a hurricane had passed through.

Well, after ten drinks, you were nothing less than a hurricane. Books with their once perfect spines laid dog-eared and haphazard. You couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find the perfect words for the moment. There was always supposed to be something for every emotion in your collection.

Some may think losing yourself in fictional words was cowardice, but to you it was a reprieve. Reality was boring. In the real world you were just a nerdy overgrown virgin who would never confess your feelings to a man — to the man. In reality, you would always be the girl who talked big about sex and hid behind bravado instead of ever opening yourself up to the vulnerability that came with it. The real you was a phony.

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It is so cute. My stomach is full of butterflies !! Ahhh 💜

Sunday Morning

Every Sunday, Jeongguk went to the laundry room. The space was empty, a peace he could only find in the early hours of the day, but the quietude didn’t last long when his heart beat a little faster at the sight of you. 

▸ PAIRING: Jeon Jeongguk x Reader

▸ RATING & GENRE: PG-15 / GA ; Fluff, College AU

▸ WORD COUNT: 6,895 words

▸ A/N: A soft, unadulterated tribute to Jeongguk’s obsession with laundry. Story is told in snippets of mornings over weeks in a semester. Jeongguk is a music major and all his covers are linked so please enjoy ♥︎

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