Y/N

" Jungkook..." I whimpered, burying myself deeper into his chest, sobbing into his warmth. My arms wrapped tightly around him, needing him, needing something solid, something that wouldn't slip away like everything else.

But his arms didn't wrap around me.

I could feel it, his stillness. his stiffness. My breath shuddered as I pulled back just enough to look. His arms hung stiff at his sides, his fists clenched so tightly they trembled, knuckles were unpigmented. Like he was forcing himself not to hold me back. Not to give in.

"Y/N..." he finally spoke, and his voice was rough and strained, like it hurt to say my name.

"You need to dry off," he said, so softly it almost broke me. "Come on, Sunflower... you will get sick."

But I didn't move.

And neither did he.

It was like we were both standing on the edge of something we couldn't name, something delicate, dangerous, and already too close to tripping and falling.

I didn't let go.

Even though his arms never came around me... I held on. Because for a moment, I wanted to believe he was mine to cling to.

But then I felt it, his whole body taut, locked up like he was bracing for impact. His fists were still clenched at his sides, they were shaking, like holding back had become a physical burden. His jaw was tight. His breathing was uneven.

He didn't push me away.

But he wasn't letting himself hold me either.

It hurt more than if he had.

"Jungkook..." I whispered again. My fingers clutched the fabric of his soaked tank top. "Please...just please.."

His eyes closed slowly, rainwater still dripped from his lashes. He didn't look at me.

"Don't," his voice was hoarse. Not harsh. Just broken. "If I hold you right now, Y/N... I won't let go."

I froze.

His words weren't cold. They weren't distant. They were longing and still he didn't wrap his arms around me.

"Go change. Please," he added, softer this time. "Dry off. You need to take care of yourself."

I wanted to scream. Cry. Beg him to stop being so gentle while keeping me at arm's length. I wanted to beg him to embrace me in his arms. But something in me knew, he wasn't doing this to hurt me. He was doing it to protect me. From him. From whatever storm he was holding back inside.

So I stepped away. Inch by painful inch.

And as soon as my arms slipped from around him, his shoulders shuddered like his soul was ripped out of his body.

But when I looked up again, his back was already turned.

He didn't say another word as I stepped back, my arms empty and cold now. But before the silence could settle too deeply between us, Jungkook moved.

Still not looking at me, he walked to my closet with a familiarity that didn't feel intrusive, just quietly protective. He opened the door carefully and shifted through the hangers until he found something soft, something loose. One of my sleep shirts, long enough to fall just above my knees and a pants.

Then he pulled a towel from the shelf, folding it once over his arm like he was afraid of handing it too roughly.

He turned toward me slowly. His eyes didn't lift to meet mine. It was glued to the floor and it didn't drift higher to look at me lustfully. His voice was quiet. Steady. Almost too gentle.

"Here," he offered the clothes and towel. "You need to get out of those wet things. You are shivering."

I nodded, my throat knotted. When I reached for the clothes, his fingers brushed mine, but he pulled back quickly, almost like he regretted the contact. Not because he didn't want it. Because he did.

"I am turning around," he said softly. Then he turned, and faced the wall. His hands slipped into his pockets, head lowered like he was focusing on the floor just to give me space. It hit me harder than any hug would have.

That he respected me so much, even when I was soaked and shaking and clinging to him like a lifeline. That he was fighting every part of himself just to be decent. Gentle. Safe.

"Let me know when you are done," he added, voice a little strained. I stared at his back, the way it rose and fell with every slow, deliberate breath. He stood still, but I could feel the war in his silence.

I stood there for a moment, and held the towel and dry shirt to my chest, staring at his back. He didn't move. Not even when I let out a shaky breath and peeled the soaked hoodie from my skin. The air felt cold and heavy, but not half as heavy as my heart. My fingers trembled as I dried off, as I slipped the fresh shirt over my head.

And the whole time... he stayed exactly where he was. Silent. Still. Respectful. But I could feel him, like gravity. He stood a feet away from me, holding the silence and storm like it was sacred.

"Jungkook..." I whispered, not even sure why I said it. But his name on my lips feels like paradise.

He didn't answer. But his posture shifted just slightly, like my voice reached straight through his soul. "You don't have to turn around," I said softly, fastened the hem of the shirt with nervous fingers. "I just... I want you to know I feel safe. With you."

He let out a slow breath. Still, he didn't face me. "I am not scared of you," I added. "I am scared of what you are holding back."

A pause.

"So am I." He whispered gently. That single sentence settled into the room like thunder after lightning, quiet but devastating. I stood there fully changed now, but I didn't move toward him. I just watched his back, the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his fists were curled again in his pockets. He was fighting something I couldn't see. Maybe himself. Maybe the guilt. Maybe the need to reach for me when he promised himself he wouldn't.

And even though I ached for his arms around me, even though every part of me longed to close the distance, I didn't force him.

He exhaled which sounded like a surrender.

"Do you know how hard it is," he said "to stand here and not touch you?"

My breath caught.

He still didn't turn around. He stared at the floor like it was safer than looking at me. Like eye contact would be too much. "Not because I don't want to," he continued, his voice dipped lower. "But because I want to so badly it scares the hell out of me." His hands came out of his pockets. He brushed the hair at back of his neck like the words weighed too much on his shoulders.

"You looked at me back there, when you were holding me and I almost broke, Y/N." My name in his voice wasn't just a name. It was a confession. "Do you know what it's like to want something so much you are afraid you will ruin it the second you reach for it?" He turned his head slightly, just enough that I could see the side of his face, his eyelid carried a unshed tears. "I don't want to be one more person who hurts you."

My heart contorted painfully in my chest.

He wasn't staying away because he didn't care. He was staying away because he cared too much.

I wanted to say something, anything, but the words sat like rocks in my throat. So I just whispered the only truth I could offer in that moment. "You are not hurting me, Jungkook. You are the only thing keeping me from falling apart." His lips parted. A breath. A blink. And for a moment, I thought he might turn fully, step toward me, close the space.

But he didn't.

He just stood there, holding himself together in the only way he knew how. I stood still for a heartbeat.

Then another.

And then, like gravity finally pulled me forward .I stepped toward him. One quiet footfall at a time, across the creaking wooden floor. I didn't rush it. I didn't call his name. I just moved, slowly, like if I was too sudden, he might disappear.

He didn't move.

But I saw it, the way his shoulders stiffened at the sound of my footsteps. The way his breath shuddered. He knew I was coming closer, and still he didn't turn. So I closed the last bit of space between us and stopped just behind him. The warmth of his body radiated into mine, even though we weren't touching. My hands twitched at my sides, wanting to reach for him but afraid of what it might mean.

I swallowed hard

"You don't have to hold yourself back from me," I whispered to his back. "Not if it's hurting you more than it's protecting me."

Still, he didn't turn.

His fists were clenched again.

"Jungkook," I said a little softer now. "Please don't make me beg you to let yourself feel something. Please.."

Tranquility and then his shoulders fell. Like all the tension he had been carrying finally dropped from his frame.

And slowly... slowly... he turned.

His eyes met mine. And they were wrecked. They were glistening with things he hadn't said, trembling with all the emotion he had fought so hard to bury. He looked like he had been holding his breath for days. "I don't know how to be close without ruining it," he confessed. "But God, Y/N... I want to try."

Tears blurred my vision. So I did the only thing that made sense. I stepped forward and gently pressed my forehead to his chest. And this time, he didn't hold back. His arms came around me with a force that felt like coming home. We stayed like that , wrapped in each other, unmoving, for what felt like forever.

His heartbeat had slowed now, but his hands... his hands didnt stopped trembling. Not violently. Just enough that I could feel it. Like something inside him was still fighting to stay hidden.I pulled back slightly, just enough to see his face.

"Jungkook?"

His eyes switched to mine, soft but distant, like he was still somewhere far away. Somewhere painful. "There's something I need to tell you," he said quietly. My breath cracked. "Okay," I whispered. "Whatever it is... I can take it." He gave a ruptured kind of smile, like he didn't believe that, but wanted to.

"You ever feel like you have lived your whole life walking through a hallway of locked doors?" his eyes drifted away from mine.

I blinked. "What do you mean?" He didn't answer right away. Instead, he stepped back slightly. "I have done things," he said finally. "Things that I wasn't supposed to question. I was told it was necessary. That I had no choice." My pulse quickened.

"Jungkook, what are you talking about?" He laughed under his breath. It was low. "You know how some people are born into stories they didn't ask for? And even if they try to run, somehow... the story pulls them back in."

I furrowed my brows. "You are not making sense." He turned to face me. "I' am trying," he said softly. "I just... I don't know how to tell you what I am without making you look at me differently." My chest contorted. "I won't," I whispered. "I couldn't." He looked down at his hands, his fingers flexed open, and then curled into fists again. "There are things on these hands," He whispered, "that don't wash off. No matter how many times I try. No matter how many storms I walk through with you."

I stared at him. My heart raced. I could feel he was telling me something important, something close to the bone. But the pieces didn't fit.

"I don't understand..." I whispered. He shook his head slowly. "It's okay. Maybe you are not supposed to. Not yet."

A long silence settled between us. I stepped closer, and bristled my hand with his. "Whatever it is... I am not leaving." His eyes lifted to meet mine again, full of something like fear and awe and grief all tangled together. "That's what scares me the most," he whispered.

He stiffened as my hands touch his.

"Jungkook..."

"You don't understand," he said, pain laced in every word. "I can't touch you. I can't even think about touching you. Because if I do, if I let myself, I would never forgive myself for the way it would look. For what it would make me."

My chest hurt. I didn't know what he was talking about entirely, but I could feel it was tearing him apart." I don't think you're a monster," I whispered. He turned his head, just enough for me to see the heartbreak in his eyes." That's only because you don't know what I have done. And because you are too young to see what I am fighting right now just to stay decent."

After the silence settled, he didn't try to explain more. He just slowly pulled a chair from the corner of the room and sat down across from me. Not too close. But close enough to watch the door. "I will stay here tonight," he said quietly, leaned forward, his forearms rested across his knees. "Just to make sure she doesn't come near you."

His eyes had already seen too much. He knew what kind of house this was. He had known from the beginning. "You don't have to..."

"I want to." His voice was firm. "Just sleep, sunflower. I will be right here."

But when I moved to lie down, a shiver ran through me. My toes were still cold. My fingers were numb from the storm earlier. I hadn't realized how deep the chill had sunk in until I curled up on the mattress and couldn't stop trembling.

He noticed.

Without saying anything, he rose from the chair and walked over, carefully, like he was approaching something fragile. He sat on the edge of the bed near my feet, and didn't touch me at first, just watching.

"May I?" he gestured gently.

I nodded. Too grateful to breathe.

He reached for my feet, rubbed them slowly through the fabric of my pajama pants. His hands were warm, rough in the way only someone who has lived too hard too young can be, but his touch was gentle. So gentle. Then he moved up to my arms, rubbed slow circles over the sleeves, trying to pull warmth back into me. It wasn't just the temperature. It was comfort. Shelter. Care.

No one had ever touched me like that.

Not to take.

Not to demand.

Just to help me feel human again.

My eyes stung with unshed tears, and I looked at him, his brows slightly furrowed in focus, his jaw set like he was doing something sacred. And then my eyes caught something, his right arm. I wasn't even trying to look. But the moment I saw it, the world just froze around me.

My breath caught in my chest.

A single design inked into his skin.

Familiar.

So painfully familiar, I forgot how to breathe.

I blinked, once. Twice. My heart raced.

Because it wasn't just any tattoo.

It was mine.

The exact pattern I had drawn on his scar five years ago. On that night. That night when he told me about Ian, with his swollen eyes from crying, voice cracked from holding everything in for too long. That night when he sat in front of me, ruptured and I, this trembling girl who didn't know how to fix boys made of wounds, had picked up a pen and drew instead. I had drawn over the ugly stitched scar on his arm. A shape. A meaning.

And now it was there. Forever.

I inclined closer, my voice came out a whisper strangled with disbelief." You... you got a tattoo of it?"

He didn't flinch. He didn't even look at it.

He just nodded once.

"Why?" I asked. My throat blazed. "Why would you keep that? Why ink something a kid drew on your arm that night..that night?"

His eyes lifted to mine. And in that moment, I saw all of it. Everything he never said. Everything he buried behind silence and stitched wounds and guilt that didn't belong to him but stayed anyway. "Because it was the first time someone didn't try to erase my pain," he trembled. "You didn't try to fix me. You didn't flinch. You just... stayed. And gave it a name. A shape. A meaning. You didn't know what you were doing, but you gave me something that night I never thought I deserved."

I stared at him, my hands shook.

He looked away.

"I didn't get it because it was beautiful," he whispered. "I got it because that was the night I wanted to live."

Tears filled my eyes so fast it hurt to blink.

I reached out, slowly, like I was about to touch something holy and pressed my fingers gently to the ink. The lines were sharp now, but I still remembered the way they looked in blue pen, shaky on his skin.

"You didn't tell me," I said softly . He let out a breath, but it sounded more like a confession. "I didn't think I deserved to."

"But you came back, Even after all these years. With this... still here." I gulped down a thick air. He nodded, and his voice wobbled ."I never left you, Y/N. Not really."

My fingers trembled slightly as they hovered above the ink. It was the same exact pattern I had drawn on him five years ago, with the swirls and twisted lines meant to mirror pain and healing colliding. But this time, it was permanent. Burned into his skin like memory.

Silence stretched between us.

Heavy. Raw. Beautiful.

I swallowed hard. "You kept it all this time?"

His eyes softened. "I kept everything you gave me, Y/N. Even the things you don't remember giving."

My hand hovered above his skin. Trembled.

The ink stretched over the muscle of his forearm, sharp lines softened by time and warmth. The design curled down from the bend of his elbow, winding in delicate, broken curves until it morphed into a fierce dragon's face near his wrist. Its tail spiraled once and twice, then looped into a coil right over his knuckles, like it was gripping his fist, caging the very violence he tried to conceal.

"I remember every line,"I whispered. And then, I touched it. I pressed my finger tips over it firmly.

His breath caught.

Not loud. Not sharp. Just a small, sharp pull in his chest, as if even after all this time, he wasn't ready for how much he would still feel me. I dragged my fingers slowly along the dragon's jaw, tracing the place where pen once bled across healing scar tissue. I moved down, along the curve that hugged the shape of his wrist, my fingertip pressed that delicate line of ink.

I glanced up at him.

His eyes weren't on the tattoo. They were on me.

He watched every place I touched. He was breathing through it like it hurt to feel again, but he wouldn't stop it for the world.

"It's beautiful," I murmured.

"It's yours, sunflower." he replied without any hesitation. "You gave it to me. When I didn't deserve anything." And though he didn't touch me, I could feel the war happening inside him. Like the memory of my fingertips on his skin was more dangerous than anything he had ever faced.

Because I didn't to hurt him. I was touching him gently. Out of the blue his breath grew shallow. His hand twitched, not to reach for me, but to hold himself back. My fingers were still rested lightly on the dragon's tail near his fist, and I felt it, the way his whole body tensed under my touch. His eyes dropped to the spot where my fingers met his skin.

Then he inclined back. Slowly .Not violently, but like it physically hurt to do it. "Y/N," His voice was soft. "Don't."

I froze. The warmth of his arm still lingered in my fingers. He didn't look wrathful but wrecked. "I am sorry," I whispered and inclined back too.He shook his head instantly.

"Don't be. It is not you. It is me. I just.." he rubbed a hand down his face and exhaled hard. "I can't trust myself right now. Not when you look at me like that. Not when you touch me like you still see something good in me. You are fourteen. And I am a graveyard of bad decisions pretending to be something human when I am near you."

My chest ached. He wasn't afraid of me. He was afraid of losing the one thing between us that still felt pure. "I am not gonna mess this up, I would rather hurt myself than do anything to make you feel unsafe. Or confused. Or like I took something from you you weren't ready to give."

I lingered there. But from the realization of just how much he protected me. Even from himself. Even from a moment as simple as my fingers on his skin.

"You didn't do anything wrong," I said. He gave me a tight, broken smile "I will come back tonight. And every night. But if I ever feel like I am crossing a line, you have to push me away. Promise me that."

I nodded. But deep inside. I didn't know how I ever could.

As I settled under the blanket, finally warm enough to stop shaking, he sat down and intersected his arms across his chest. "Get some rest," he murmured. " I have got you."

And he did.

Even as he slowly dozed off in the chair, his head dipped forward, arms crossed tight like he was trying to stay alert, he didn't let himself fully sleep. Like part of him was still on watch. Stood between me and everything cruel.

Later.

The next day in the morning, my mom asked me how I survived that horrifying night in the cold rain, how I got inside when she had locked the front door from the outside.

I looked her straight in the eye and said,

"I climbed through the window."

It was a lie.But I had to protect him. Because if she ever found out that my Jungkook was with me, that he held me through the storm, that he kept me warm when no one else would, she would do something cruel. And I couldn't let that happen.

He came back into my life after five years, just like that. No warning. No knock. Just the sound of my window creaking open and the quiet warmth of him standing there again like he never really left.

Like a phantom with warm hands and a heartbeat I used to sleep beside.

I didn't fight for freedom anymore. Not from my mother's screaming or my father's silence. Not from the way this house chewed through everything soft inside me. Because when Jungkook came back, he became the only place I wanted to be.

And I let him in.

Every night.

He never came empty handed. Sometimes with strawberries tucked in his hoodie pocket. Other nights, it was a single sunflower, bright, too big for my hand. And sometimes, I would have one waiting for him. A little crushed, plucked from a garden I wasn't allowed to touch, but held behind my back with a shy smile, because it felt like giving something back. And I will crush them in my tiny hands fearing the petals might prick his hand.

Every night with him was a softness I didn't know I was allowed to have. He would sit in the same chair by my bed. He never laid beside me. Never crossed that line. But somehow, just his presence made the whole world feel a little less sharp.

He stayed silent when I cried without knowing why. He tucked blankets around me like I was something fragile. And in those hours before morning, when the rest of the house still slept, he gave me the version of life I thought only existed in dreams.

I didn't ask how he kept finding sunflowers.

He didn't ask why I kept waiting.

But we both knew, in a million unspoken ways, that this was the only part of the world that felt right.

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