Work Text:
Re: 11.15.22
Like most things do, it had gotten easier with time.
The whirlwind pulse of our life separated us as much as it joined, after all. We had more practice than most in the delicate dance of going away and then coming home and then going away again. Especially lately. And regardless of where either one of us had gone or who we were with or what we had done, the best part of the whole business was always the return.
Racing to welcome him at the door after he had been dropped off at the studio. His embrace, then his kiss after days or even weeks of being left wanting. Those hours of chaste, simple touches to remember the sensation of his skin on my skin on his skin. Both of us squeezing at the seams of our shared life, always double-checking the cracks and crevices to be sure that nothing had seeped out and away from us in the interim.
And when something had, as things often do when you’re apart, we were swift with the patchwork.
“Jimin. You’re hovering again,” he whined.
I probably was doing just that, but I still rolled my eyes at the accusation. “I am not, Gguk.”
“You are.”
“No…”
“Yes.”
“Gguk, how can I be hovering from way over here, huh?” I insisted, pulling myself to sit cross-legged against our headboard. “What I’m doing is making sure you actually pack well this time.”
A mop of shaggy, unkempt curls briefly emerged from the depths of our closet. “Hey! I’m an excellent packer, thank you very much.”
“Jungkook, last week you literally forgot at least five things and were calling me all like Hyungie, please can you express mail my whatever the fuck like every other day you were gone.”
“I was not!” And he did some sort of laugh-groan thing around the words. “Even ARMY knows I would just buy a replacement.”
“Yeah, well ARMY doesn’t know anything about how particular you can really get with your shit,” I returned, smoothing one hand over a few of the expertly folded shirts lining one side of Jungkook’s suitcase. “Let’s just take your favorite night cream, for example. The one that they only sell in that one store in Tokyo and that I stopped using for that exact reason, right? Meanwhile you fell in love with it because the smell reminds you of me even though it’s hard as shit to acquire, and you actually had me overnight your tube from here like two months ago.”
A handful of balled up socks pelted the bedsheets seconds before Jungkook stepped again from the closet, rolling his eyes. “That was one time, Minie.”
“Okay, so, what about the time you forgot to pack your running shoes?” I pressed, snatching a few sock balls from the far side of the bed and tucking them neatly into place next to the shirts. “Remember I had to bring them with me when I followed you and the guys to the States after Eomma’s birthday three weeks ago, right?”
“Running shoes are different,” he whined. “They take forever to wear in, you know that. I couldn’t have just bought new running shoes.”
“Then what about last weekend when you—”
“Jiminie.”
He flopped down into my lap heavy with exasperation, and I chuckled, combed my fingers through his hair.
“Yes, baby?”
“Why are you torturing me like this?”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m trying to pack,” he huffed, rolling to one side, his feet dangling from the bed, one arm bent at the elbow to prop his head up. “You’re distracting me.”
“Mhm. You forgot your favorite razor last week too,” I continued.
“Babe!”
His pout was begging to be held, and before I could even register my hand moving, I was cradling his chin in one hand, tracing the lines of his mouth with my eyes.
“Just promise me you’ll at least remember the razor this time.”
Releasing a defeated scoff into the sheets, Jungkook rolled his eyes once more. “And if I do, will that get you out of my hair with this?”
“Hm. Probably not.”
“Then why in the hell—”
“But it might get you a kiss.”
He looked up from his despair at my pestering with bright eyes, a raised eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeap.”
“Where at?”
“Lips only, Mister International Playboy,” I laughed. “We don’t have time for the red carpet tonight.”
“But, babe—”
“Ggu, you can take your time kissing wherever and whatever else you like when you get back,” I said, delighted by the excitement in his eyes. “Let that be some incentive for you to make it a quick trip, hm?”
“Babe, I need absolutely no incentive where you are concerned though.”
“Oh, yeah?” I chuckled, raising an eyebrow of my own. “Where’s my kiss then, huh?”
He blinked a few times, like an absolute cutie, trying to clear away some of the fog my words had whipped up in his brain. “Oh, right. Uh…Remind me what was I supposed to promise not to forget again?”
My giggles softening, I tickled a bit at the nape of his neck. “Your razor, bunny.”
“Ah!” And his head fell back over his shoulders with another one of those laughing sort of groans. “Okay, come on, Minie. I won’t forget that! Not again anyway. I mean, don’t you want me to promise about something I really might leave behind? Cause I’ve literally already—”
Lifting a hand to his lips, I stopped his tirade before it could gather more steam. “No promise, no kiss, Ggukie. Those are the rules.”
His eyes were resigned but even more endeared when he looked back at me. Then, slowly, and without once taking his eyes off my own, he kissed the tips of my three fingers hovering there at his lips, grinning like the Cheshire cat from Alice and Wonderland, and whispered “I promise, Minie,” into whatever space remained between us.
Then he kissed my lips.
For the first time.
For the billionth time.
I dissolved into the feeling, the emotion, the words, drew it all deep into the shelter of my chest like the surety it was, and let myself get lost for as long as it all was meant to last.
For years, any time only one of our suitcases was rolled from the closet there was always a certain sort of ache that flared up within me. These days, it tended to be balanced with an even greater gratitude for Jungkook’s patience, for his willingness to go through the rituals we had long ago realized I needed and say it over and over and over in all the myriad of ways.
I’ll remember, Min. I promise, Min.
Because we both knew this wasn’t about how forgetful he was or wasn’t or about whatever meaningless accessory he would or wouldn’t remember this time.
This was about the part that was always hardest for me. About my having to reconcile with the fact that he was going away. When it always felt so much like he had only just come back.
I swallowed hard around the echoey sensation of his tongue against my lips once we had parted and dragged my thumb through the barely-there stubble starting around his chin. “Hey. Um, l-let me shave for you, hm? Do…Do we have time for that?”
“Uh, yeah?” He nodded, glancing down briefly at his watch as he pressed a second, more chaste kiss into my palm. “Yeah, I think so…I’ll have to get the razor out of my bag though. Like I was trying to tell you, I’ve already packed it.”
~
Jungkook’s skin had always been more sensitive than mine, hyper prone to flare-ups of dryness or acne, so, in addition to his favorite razor, he pulled out about five different creams from his luggage and placed them on the countertop in our bathroom. I had him sit on the toilet, then ran to get a stool from one of the hall closets so I could sit across and be level with his face.
His eyes were tired.
I saw it much better than I had from the bedroom thanks to the powerful backlight in our bathroom mirror, and I kissed at the tops of his cheek bones, once beneath each eye.
He closed them as I began applying the first cream, a smile pulling at the edges of his lips. “Now it will be your fault if I forget any of this stuff here after you’re finished,” he sassed.
I rolled my eyes. “Just be still, will you? Or do you want this oily stuff going up your nose?”
He shut up with a snort, and I followed suit in short order, content with being close enough to brush knees for just a while longer. I massaged this and then that into his skin, studied each emotion as it flickered across a brow or twitch of his lips. There was guilt for the plans we had made, regret for saying yes to work like we always did, worry at having to leave, at maybe even wanting to leave. I studied it all, catalogued, again, the shape of his mouth, the cleft in his chin, the pinch in his brow. I watched him watch my eyes, both of us chest-deep in committing it all to memory.
If our life was a rambunctious child, then our love was the delicate vase the child couldn’t help but knock into while running about.
It had fallen to the floor in near shatters many times.
And every time Jungkook and I both had wept over the destruction, cursing life for caring so little, indeed, for its absolute and blatant indifference towards something so precious to us.
But any good relationship was riddled with patchwork. Salve painted over dozens and dozens of little holes and cracks, bigger scars and chipped off bits that had to be painstakingly attended to for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the whole. Meanwhile the resulting hodgepodge mosaic of duct tape and superglue could be even more beautiful than what had been started with if the patching process was intentional. Even if some of the critical bits that made it all worthwhile—things like trust and respect and honesty and open communication—had spilled out in the chaos, more could always be put back in.
That was perhaps the most important part. The key to making it all that much stronger, that much better able to withstand future blows.
And while I was loathe to admit it most days, we likely wouldn’t have had a chance to patch up much of anything if our life hadn’t been so riddled with here and there and everywhere all the time. Because it was, our love had experienced countless collisions, far more than its fair share. And where we could—we always could—we mended. We healed. We grew. Piecemeal rather than by design, trusting more and more in the writing on the wall, in the accumulated wealth of past mistakes.
It made things easier.
“Do you want me to do anything special over here?” I asked, halfway through with his shave and scratching a bit at his sideburns. “I can go get the plug-in or—”
“Ah, no need, babe.” And his eyes crinkled as he swallowed back a yawn. “I…I like them as they are usually. Besides I don’t know what the stylists have in mind yet.”
“Ah, okay,” I sighed, tilting his chin a bit to the left and hoping he couldn’t hear the disappointment I could feel in my voice. A few seconds of knowing silence though told me he maybe had heard it, and I pulled back just in time to catch the smirk starting in his eyes. “What? Did I nick you or something?”
He lifted an amused eyebrow. “No, no. It’s just that, uh, for someone who knows me as well as you do, that was a very professional question, Minie. I mean…my sideburns? Really?”
My face warmed a bit, and I looked away to draw the razor up one side of his chin. “Yeah, well it’s, um…it’s always best to ask, isn’t it? Never do something halfway and all that…”
“Ah. Sure, sure. Makes sense. Especially if you’re just trying to drag this out so you can keep your hands on me as long as possible.”
Even as the flush spread further down my chest, I swatted at his upper arm. “Ah, you brat. So, what if I am, huh? And can you be still? Just for thirty more seconds energizer bunny?”
He bit his lower lip on another smile, looking for all the world like a kid who just gobbled down the last cookie and chased it with half a can of whipped cream.
God, I was going to miss him.
“Alright.” I patted at his cheeks with a damp towel after another minute or two. “Tell me how it feels to you?”
His fingertips skittered down either side of his face as it split into a brilliant grin. “Perfect, babe.”
I nodded, letting my fingers chase after his own with a final, thin layer of moisturizer. And if I did fiddle a bit longer than necessary around the scar on his cheek, the faint, olive moles on his chin, he made no move to pull away.
Only when there was truly nothing more I could do did I drop my hands into my lap, sighing as I met the knowing look in his eyes.
“You didn’t need a shave that badly really.”
He grinned, his hands curling around my waist to form a warm cradle at my lower back. “You don’t say?”
I shook my head once and then kissed him twice because once was never enough. And I lingered long enough for it to translate.
thankyouthankyouthankyou
“Alright, babe.” He was smiling, suddenly but smoothly pulling me off the stool and into his lap as he spoke. “You think you can leave me alone now so I can finish packing in peace?”
I melted down into his chest like ice in summer, digging my nails into the front of his hoodie. “Gguk-ah, you haven’t even said thank you yet.”
He scoffed, the sound low and close in my ear. “Thank you, huh?”
“Yes. Don’t be rude.”
“Mm…”
He hummed into my shoulder, the tip of his nose tracing a warm path up the side of my neck until he was nuzzling at my chin, peppering it with feathery kisses. And from one second to the other, contentment washed over me the way it only ever did when I could seep drip-by-drip into his embrace.
My eyes closed.
“I thought you…you wanted me to leave.”
Did I sound as breathless as I felt?
“Hm…And I thought you wanted me to thank you.”
We were so close. Somehow and always so close again. Only inches. Centimeters. His chest slotting into the shape of mine. His fingertips teasing at the hem of my shirt, tracing long, slow strokes along the tattoo splayed along my side. And it was nothing really, nothing I hadn’t already experienced ten thousand times before, but what I wouldn’t give to spend the rest of our lives right here, in this exact moment.
When the dissolution happened, it was as slow as it was instant: tension trickling its way up his spine one vertebrae at a time, the way I squeezed at his shoulders as if to hold it off, his chest expanding with fuller, longer, expectant breaths, the groan in my throat when I felt him start to pull away.
“Oh, Jiminie.”
“Don’t…Don’t say it. I’m okay, really.”
He swallowed around something hard, and I buried my nose into his shoulder, falling in love all over again with his smell, the fresh bite of aftershave wafting down from his neck to saturate the whole of his upper torso.
I felt his lips along my neck as he spoke. “Minie, you know. I never want you to leave me.”
“I know.”
“I never want to leave you either, you know that too, right? I…I want you close enough to hold just like this, always.”
“I know, baby.”
And because I could hear the layers of guilt and empathy and shame cracking their way through his tone, I looked up to meet his gaze, my hands again cradling his face. “Gguk, listen to me. I understand. You don’t have to explain.”
“But, Jimin, I…Part of me feels really bad about all this. I mean, I was just gone. This isn’t fair to you, and I want…We need to acknowledge that, right?”
“We have. We talked about it some already, and we’ll be able to talk more when you get back. For now, it’s really okay. Work is a priority, and with…with everything going on, we have to take every opportunity that comes our way. I get that. And even more than that, I want you to have every opportunity in the world to be successful. You don’t have to say or explain anything else.”
“But our trip—”
“Can easily be rescheduled.”
“Easily?”
“Yes,” I insisted, staring down the skepticism in his eyes. “I’ve already looked at a few dates. Sunjae-hyung told me you had already held the last three weeks of January for a trip home, right?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“So, I’ll just move things around, and we’ll try to schedule it for then.”
“But your promotions will be—”
“Jungkook, I love you, okay? I love you so much, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t talk about this right now.” The words sent flecks of worry off dancing within his eyes, and I smoothed at the softness of his cheeks with my thumbs, nodding firmly at his doubt. “Baby, you have to go. You’re gonna do amazing while you’re gone, and I’m so fucking proud of you, you hear me?”
(For the record, even easier was never easy. Not when it came to saying goodbye. Not to him. Not to me.)
“I hear you, babe.”
He exhaled the words into the space between us, still too tentative for my liking, and I pressed my hands into his chest.
“Gguk-ah, look at me. I’ve always been proud of you. Even more that I get to call you mine, and you know that.”
He nodded and then I nodded, savoring the steady pulse of his heartbeat beneath my fingertips.
Missing it already.
“All you need to do now is do well, hm? And then hurry back.”
He chuckled, a sweet deep sound, that squeezed him a bit further into the cradle of our embrace. “I will, Minie,” he promised. Then softer: “I…I couldn’t do any of this without you.”
“And you’ll never have to,” I returned, echoing his tone. “I’ll be right there beside you, hm? In spirit, cheering you on, with Bammie next to me as I watch every second from the living room. You can call me anytime, before and after, yeah? You’re going to be amazing.”
His laughter was even fuller at mention of Bam, and he nodded again into my shoulder.
I tangled the fingers of one hand in his hair.
“So…now that all that’s out of the way…have you, uh, given the little cutie his dinner yet?” I asked after a few moments.
His voice was fond and amused. “No, not yet.”
“Okay.” And my hands lingered for half a second more at his neck, tracing the cut of his chin. “I’ll go do that then. You can finish packing without me, so long as you don’t forget anything, alright?”
Again, he was laughing, mouthing tender kisses at my collarbones, at the softness behind my ear. “I won’t forget anything, babe.”
I’ll remember, Min.
~
After I left the bedroom, I spent about half an hour tending to Bam.
Together, we got some fresh air on a short, brisk walk around our building and, on our way back into the lobby, I saw the car roll into the garage.
Such was our life.
“Gguk, hyungs are downstairs waiting,” I shouted in the general direction of the hallway when I had returned inside, toeing off my shoes.
His suitcase was already by the door.
The sight of it got Bam whining.
“Hey, hey. Come here, buddy.”
I coaxed Bam onto the couch and snuggled down into his warmth when he curled up at my side.
“Good boy, Bammie. We won’t tell your appa, yeah?”
He huffed into the leather, eyelids already drooping again, and I was reaching for the remote, aiming for Netflix, when my phone rang.
“Hey, Appa.”
“Ah, Jimin-ah.” My father’s voice was full on the other end of the line. “How are you? Jungkook’s still leaving today, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. Passing a hand through the unkemptness of my hair, I glanced in the direction of the hallway. “The car just arrived, so he should be heading down soon.”
“And how long will he be gone?”
“About a week,” I answered with a sigh. “He’ll be back next week for one or two days and then gone again for another event, but back again before we send off Jin-hyung.”
“Ah. I see,” he said, his tone concerned as I watched Jungkook emerge from the hall and set to rifling through our kitchen cabinets. “No rest for the weary, huh?”
“Not right now…”
“Hm. Well, you be sure to tell my future son-in-law that I expect him to rest and eat well while he’s away, yes?”
Unable to resist the gentle smile that broke on my face at those words, I clicked the speaker button on my phone and pointed it in the direction of our kitchen. “Ey, Appa? He can hear you now. Say it again?”
“Ah. Jungkook-ah?”
Surprised to suddenly hear my appa’s voice, Jungkook looked up with bright, wide eyes. “Oh, yes? Abeonim?”
“Yes, it’s me. I was just telling Jimin-ah that I expect my future son-in-law to rest and eat well while he’s away, hm?”
Jungkook flushed and then he was beaming, glowing with the same pride that I always felt so acutely when I looked at him and remembered he was mine. Every cell alight. Every atom within me vibrating in raucous approval.
“Ah. I-I will, Abeonim!” he announced, bowing deeply over whatever quick snack he had been preparing. “Thank you!”
I chuckled. “You’ve made him blush, Appa.”
“Ey. Jungkook-ssi has been ours as long as he’s been yours, hm? He’s been good to you when that’s all Eomma and I ever wanted, and we’re grateful. We want him to be well for your sake as much as for his own, you know? I’m not ashamed to say it.”
“Aw, Appa. Stop now. You’re making it worse,” I laughed, gushing at the way Jungkook’s shoulders had curled inwards with embarrassment.
“Alright, well, I just wanted to check-in on you two,” my appa was saying as I removed him from speaker. “Call me some this week, son. I know you’ll be missing him, and we can talk, yes?”
“That would be great, Appa.”
“And Jimin-ah?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you forget to take care of yourself while he’s away. Remember that he needs to come back to you being well too, you know?”
As if Jungkook had heard the words, he looked up at me once again with tender agreement, a sort of silent plea, swimming there in the deep of his eyes. And suddenly it felt all the more like assurance. Because there would, indeed, always be something to return to. A moment beyond this departure and the next in which we could be us, together, again.
I smiled at him across the short distance between our couch and the kitchen island, across the building ache, committed as I always had been to whatever might be needed from me to layaway for us that sort of future.
Our forever.
“I’ll remember, Appa.”
~