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❝𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞, 𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞?❞

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓: 5k

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: Strong language, explicit sexual content, heavy angst and tension, themes of unrequited love, FWB arrangement, themes of casual sex and promiscuity, fingering, g-spot orgasm, oral sex, mutual casual hook-ups, drinking and bad decisions, miscommunication, belated realisations, confessions, themes of insecurities and self-love, references to mental health and instability, strong adult themes throughout.

𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍: Part 6/7 of Unrequited, 2022 rewrite. See Part I for story description.

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: Self-insert, female reader x Lee Know | Self-insert, female reader x Hyunjin

𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐍𝐀𝐕: Part I | Contents List | Unmatched

𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓: © May 2022 by jl-micasea

Over the years, you’ve heard people talk of how love and relationships are such a fine thing.

Of how love – even when it’s unreciprocated – gives people purpose and allows them to flourish into better beings, more noble and selfless than they ever hoped to be.

If you could speak to those people now, you’d tell them they’re dead fucking wrong. You’d tell them they don’t know a damn thing, because your experience with love has been vastly different.

All you know of it is the pain it brings.

The way it throws you from pillar to post, minute by minute, dunking you in the deep end of emotions without a float. Love has been needlessly cruel to you, you feel, because it snuck into your system and infected you without warning, thrumming desperately for the one person it shouldn’t have.

Love has strung you up and hung you out to dry, left you a wreck of who you once were.

And yet – you’ve never felt more alive.

Between the mess of emotion wrought on you through Minho’s kiss and the piteous wallowing that followed, every nerve in your body has been jolted to attention. The memory of his warmth, his taste and touch replays like a broken VHS tape in your mind, providing reminder after unwanted reminder that his kiss was everything you ever needed. You dare to imagine what it might be like to be kissed by him like that every day – would the passion wane, or hold up as time passed?

You’ll never find out, you know.

And so, in true, sad singleton fashion, a fresh bottle of wine and bubbling hot bath are the only things that stand a chance of salvaging you now.

Sinking into the scalding, lavender scented water, you puff through the bubbles that gather on your chest, watching the white scattering flit away. Reaching mindlessly for your wine glass, you hitch up only high enough to take a decent sip, missing several drops that trickle down your chin and humming around the dry sweet liquid.

The peace is nice, you decide. Needed.

And it lasts all of several minutes before your anxiety starts recalling memory after listless memory, a veritable PowerPoint presentation titled; ‘all the reasons we love Lee Minho but can never tell him’.

Amber hued images of long, summer night drives in his decrepit, beaten-up Plymouth. The thrill of ditching class and the solitude of the road, the hazy buzz of Minho’s last joint in the air. Whitesnake croaks through the static radio, Minho cranks it up and taps the wheel in tandem with the drums. He sings, smiles, nudges you to sing right along with him, loser, and you weren’t ever able to back down from that invitation. He’s at peace. You’re right at home with him. Off-pitch and out of tune, your voices carry over the dusty breeze that flutters in through the open car windows, accompanies the stuttering hum of the old engine. The setting sun on your skin warms you through, highlights Minho’s hair a shade of off-caramel. He’s so handsome – he knows it, too. Always has.

It’s one of a hundred memories that tell the story of how you fell in love with him, so hard and so fast you suppose you never really stood a chance.

One of a hundred memories that makes you weep quietly, as you realise how broken things have become.

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