Abandoned Fic Fragments pt. 1

[lachrymosy]

Remember when people used to post fragments of fics they'd abandoned? I was just randomly looking at some of those old posts and I thought, this was such a fun thing, and I've got a lot of abandoned fics. I never used to do posts like this because I maintained that I had abandoned those fics for a reason, that reason being that they were not very good. But now it's 2026 and I have way less time for fic writing and it's kind of fun to look back on, so I will do some posts with abandoned fic fragments from years past :)

For the sake of organization, this will be the Suzy + Got7 fic fragments edition.

Jay B-centric... noir AU? Jessica Jones AU? Not sure. From 2018.


Veteran found dead in Lake District

A 27-year-old man was found dead in his apartment late Monday night, the fourth murder in a recent wave targeting war veterans.

Police were dispatched to the Lake District apartment complex following a noise complaint from neighbors. When the police arrived, the victim was already dead, according to Deputy Director Ok.

Neighbors who knew the victim insisted that his death gave credence to the recent wave of rumors that veterans were being murdered for the “abilties” they acquired during the war. One neighbor asserted that the victim “could walk through walls, float up and down the stairs, real freaky stuff.” Similar reports have been filed by acquaintances of the other victims, though the police maintain the murders have a more mundane and ordinary motive, and that the rumors are merely tall tales.

“We are confident in our detective’s ability to solve this case,” said Deputy Director Ok in a press conference Tuesday morning. “We ask that the public share any relevant information with us, excluding baseless and sensational rumors.”

This story is ongoing.




The rain, when it came, poured down in icy sheets for days on end, flooding the gutters with leaves and trash and shunting the city’s activities into narrow back allies and windowless back rooms. Jaebum was not so fortunate as to be shuttered up inside and out of the rain, as his brother—by adoption, not blood, though who was asking these days—was expecting him at their father’s downtown offices on the hour. Jaebum hated to be late, but he ducked into a stairwell anyway, and in the dim light filtering through the clouds and smog, he lit a cigarette and pulled a newspaper out of his coat.

Another murder made for four in less than two months. The killer was fast, purposeful, and smart. Tough luck for the populace. Jaebum knew the detective on the case well; Park Sungjin would have found a stupid killer before they’d had the chance to skewer more than one victim. That was how he’d described the murders: skewerings, more or less. The pictures showed odd markings on the victim’s head, chest, and wrists that looked like blood had been drawn through a needle, but larger, and with horrible bruising. Jaebum had seen many gruesome and unusual things in his life, but never anything like that.

He replaced the newspaper in his coat and took one last drag of the cigarette. Nasty business. Sungjin had called last week to ask Jaebum to poke around, but he had yet to find the stomach for it. Sooner or later he’d turn up the names of the victims, with or without asking Sungjin directly, and chances were he’d know some or all of them—personally. As a war vet himself, Jaebum didn’t much like the idea of drawing the attention of a murderer singling out young veterans. All of the victims so far were thirty or younger, like Jaebum.

He stamped the cigarette under his boot and dashed back out into the rain.

Port Priad was slowly stirring to life as the clock ticked closer to noon, when the wires would announce the final nominations for the city mayor election. Park Jinyoung, Jr., would almost certainly be on the list, and it was with an odd swelling of pride that Jaebum ducked into the underground and caught sight of Jinyoung’s handsome face on a poster. A new man for a new city, the tagline read. Vote Park for Port Priad!

If Jinyoung were really elected, he could surely turn the city around. In all the world, Port Priad’s reputation landed it at the bottom of anyone’s travel destination wishlist. People came to Port Priad to fuck, get rich, and die, though not necessarily in that order. Good people straining to make an honest living in Port Priad would lose their scruples or die young, as Port Priad took its taxes in souls, and tax evasion was about the only crime likely to land anyone in jail.

Jaebum had the unfortunate distinction of being a Port Priad local, born in the northeastern slums to an unnamed mother and an unknown father. Sometimes he wondered if the shit fortune he received in life was just the result of being born in a shit city, praying to shit gods who got off on misery. Not that it mattered much, because Jaebum wasn’t inclined to wish for a twist of fate to make his life into something else. He’d received one twist of fate in his favor, the day Park Jinyoung, Jr. saw him playing ball beneath an overpass and asked his driver to stop. Jaebum didn’t figure he had any right to ask for more than that.

He hurried down the stairs, dodging beggars prostrated in the corners, and wove his way through the tunnels. Shops lined the halls, filled with hawkers and barely-concealed pornography shops and fortune tellers tucked into the gaps, their flashy signs promising a peek into the unknown. Jaebum ignored all of these, his hands fisted in his pockets, and finally emerged in the subway station, where he dropped a token into the turnstile and hurried again down the next set of stairs. If he didn’t make it downtown in time, he wouldn’t hear the news until Jinyoung filled him in, and he’d barely be able to conceal his disappointment that Jaebum had missed something important—again.

Port Priad earned its nickname due to the strange convergence of the shape of the mountains surrounding it, the air currents formed by the bay that made it a port, and a bit of unexplained mystical oddity, all of which made it impossible to use the radio. Hence a city under a cloud of static, and the necessity of technology that ran by wire. Jaebum kept his head low, and shoved his way into the subway car.

The train rattled through the tunnels. Though the city above ground had yet to awaken, passengers filled the subway car from door to door. Jaebum pushed his way through the bodies, trying not to get too close, until he reached the connection between two cars and stood in its shifting gap. Here, he could breathe a little. He leaned his head back against the wall and took several deep breaths, trying to settle his nerves. What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette—or better yet, a drink. Jinyoung would kill him, but it would be so good.

It was as he contemplated the pros and cons of making a pit stop at a bar that his eyes drifted over to the next car and he spotted the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

This was not an exaggeration. She sat perched in one of the seats, arms and legs pressed together in a vain attempt to avoid the grime buildup on the metal. She was like a lily floating in a puddle of muck, so pristinely beautiful it took Jaebum’s breath right out of his lungs. He stood there, staring and not breathing, and then she looked at him. An electric charge shivered all the way to his bones.

And then a different chill rushed over him. He heard it before he saw anything—distant screeching and a low howling wind somewhere in the tunnel.

A flash. Then the explosion.

In a split second, everything fell apart. Jaebum threw himself into the next car just as metal screeched and crashed behind him, but he pushed off too hard, and hit a metal bar in the center of the aisle with his shoulder. The force of it threw him to the floor, where he blinked hard, trying to focus his eyes on something through the smoke and flames. People screamed in the distance, their voices muffled and indistinct. Jaebum pulled himself up against the metal bar and frantically searched for an exit.

The woman. Her face appeared in the haze, like a beacon, and he stumbled over to her.

“Are you okay?” He shouted. She nodded back, her whole body trembling so hard Jaebum couldn’t tell if she was shaking or if the train was shaking them.

Another distant screech. A pop. Jaebum flung himself over the woman.

This explosion threw the whole car sideways, into the tunnel wall. Jaebum clung to the plastic seat, his fingers white, and held himself and the woman tight against the seats as the car rolled, shuddered, and tilted into the wall. Then it groaned and rocked back, slamming down onto the train tracks with such force that Jaebum bounced hard against the window, cracking the still-intact glass against his head. The woman grabbed onto him, anchoring him with her weight.

He leaned back to look at her, see if she was okay. Her luminous eyes widened, and her lips parted to form words he couldn’t hear.

“You’re all right!” he shouted.

Then something crashed into his back, and the world went black.


---

JJPzy noir AU. From 2019. Another version of the fic above.

Jaebum first sees the woman on the tiny screen of his door monitor. In grainy black-and-white, she looks like an actress out of an old silent film, her mouth opening and closing in dialogue no one will ever hear. He considers leaving her like that, and thus freeing himself from whatever obligation he’d have to her in what will inevitably become a disappointing tragedy, but instead he reaches up and presses the speaker button.

“Im and Park Private Investigators, can I help you?”

She steps back as if startled, blinking slowly into the camera. “I was told I could come here to speak with Im Jaebum?”

She ends each statement with an uncertain uptick, like she’s asking a question. He presses the button to unlock the ground floor door and turns off the camera, pushing open his apartment door and then drifting back through the hall while sipping on the can of beer he just opened. He’s made it until eleven in the morning to start drinking. Jinyoung would be so proud.

A minute later, the woman appears like a ghost in the doorway, hovering just in his peripheral vision. He can feel her eyes on him, her gaze crawling over his skin, begging an unasked question, and he finally gives in and meets her eyes. “You can leave your shoes at the door,” he says, his voice sounding mechanical and distant. “Slippers are in the cabinet.”

She loses a few inches as she slips off her cream-colored high heels and fishes for a pair of slippers. He takes the opportunity to observe her, noting a few things in succession: she is rich, or good at faking it. Everything from her clothes to her skin looks expensive. She is quiet, almost silent, moving with a delicate femininity that seems practiced. And she is beautiful. The kind of woman people don’t know how to talk to, as badly as they may want to.

When she looks up, he has already turned his gaze elsewhere and begun moving back in the apartment to the large desk in the front room. The place is mostly bare tile floor and painted white walls; when he found it, Jinyoung called it “ghastly,” but Jaebum called it “cheap.”

“I didn’t realize your office would be in your house,” the woman says softly, her pink lips parted as she steps into the room.

“Other way around: my house is in my office. It makes life simple.” He sits down heavily into his desk chair and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the drawer. “Smoke?”

To his surprise, she takes one, and pulls a lighter out of her purse. He’s quiet for a moment, giving her time to light up and take a deep inhale, the tremor of her hands made more obvious by the cigarette between her fingers.

“So you need a P.I.”

She looks up. “Yes,” she says. “My husband is missing.”

It’s a common story. Even as beautiful as this woman is, he’s known of men who cheat on wives more beautiful. Stability and responsibility can be stifling. “His name?”

“Lee Junho.”

“Your name?”

“Bae Suji.”

He writes down this information carefully and takes a glance up at her face. He recognizes these names—chaebol businessman, wife from a no-name family somewhere outside of Seoul. Their wedding had made the tabloids. She exhales smoke, dark shapes curling from her mouth and dissipating into the air.

“Last time you saw him?”

“A week ago, leaving for work. He said he was taking an overnight trip, only he never came back.”

Could be murder or extortion. More likely, he got held up with his mistress and decided to make a run for it.

He goes through a few more standard questions, then gives her the detailed invoice for his services, watching for any sign of sticker shock. But she merely nods and pulls out her wallet, which has enough inside for the initial deposit in cash. The woman came prepared.

Suzy. He almost snaps his fingers when it comes to him. She’s recorded a song or two, he’s certain of it. He could go out on the street and buy a CD with her face on it right now. Something folksy and old-fashioned, harkening back to an earlier era. Something Jinyoung would listen to. That explains how a poor girl from the countryside met Lee Junho in the first place, anyway. A hefty tip and he’d be dining with the beautiful woman from the “A Flower in Bloom” song. Usually, though, that particular story doesn’t end in marriage.

He’s careful not to let his recognition show on his face. She wouldn’t come to him unless she was desperate, out of options and people she can trust.

“Were you having any problems in your relationship?” He’s careful to keep his voice neutral and monotone.

He watches her shrug, eyes oddly vacant. “I spent several months in the hospital earlier this year,” she says. “Since then, we haven’t been—” She stops abruptly, as if suddenly aware of what she was about to confess.

“Intimate?” Jaebum supplies.

“That’s a word for it, I suppose.”

The mistress theory gains more support by the second. Judging by the way Suzy can’t quit fiddling with the strap on her purse, she knows it, too. He wonders what sort of hospital visit it was, but it’s not crucial information at this point, and he doesn’t want to push too much until that cash is in his safe and the contract signed.

“Mr. Im,” she says, leaning forward and putting her hand on the desk, “I’m desperate. I need to find my husband. You’ve probably seen in the news about those men who were murdered—I just need to find him, so he doesn’t end up like them. Please.”

Jaebum looks up at her. The murders she referenced were recent and grisly, the victims all ex-military, with very little other information released. Jaebum had even taken out his friend Sungjin to the pub in hopes of getting him tipsy enough to get some details, but unlike usual, Sungjin was tight-lipped on this one. As ex-military himself, Jaebum had special interest in finding out why these men were being murdered.

“You think your husband was mixed up in all that?”

Suzy bites down on her lip and looks down, bashful, before her eyes flick up to his again. “Well, you see—Ok Taecyeon is our friend, and he’s missing, isn’t he?”

Jaebum maintains a neutral expression and breaks the pen he’s holding beneath the desk. “Ok Taecyeon is a controversial person.”

“I’ve seen him,” she says, her eyes growing wide. “Fly, I mean.”

Jaebum can feel ink leaking over his fingers, black and blood-like. “Military tricks, [title]. Smoke and mirrors.”

Her cheeks grow pink. The effect is, naturally, very flattering. She leans back in her chair.

“Very well,” she says. “Nevertheless, he’s missing, and he’s a friend of my husband’s. It’s a connection worth looking into.”

Jaebum doesn’t point out that he doesn’t need her advice for his job. “Does your husband have these—inhuman abilities, as well?” He speaks carefully.

She snorts. “Of course not.”

“Good.” He snaps his notebook closed, and takes it in his hands beneath the desk, using it to conceal his ink-covered hand as he stands up. “I’ll get to work on your case and be in touch, [title.]”

“Thank you.” She stands up, looking anything but grateful as she smiles at him. “I look forward to your good news.”

He walks her to the door, watching as she slips her high heels back on and adjusts to her taller height. The last thing he sees of her before she disappears into the elevator is her pale face in profile, caught in the light spilling through the hallway window. She looks cold, changing expressions like a mask dancer. He closes the door.


---

JJ Project meandering Post-Apocalypse AU. From 2018.


The pick-up truck cuts two faint lines through the snow blanketing the road. Behind the truck stretches a short trail, covered over in minutes by flakes caught up in the swirling wind. In front of the truck, the horizon melts away into an indistinguishable dome of white, as if to remind Jinyoung that the destination he holds in his mind is only a fantasy.

Next to him, Jaebum taps his fingers against the steering wheel, humming some song he must have heard long ago, or something he made up. He taps in rhythm with the speed of the car, adjusting for the moments when the car swivels across slick ice and Jinyoung’s heart leaps into his throat.

“Where are we going?” Jinyoung asks.

If Jaebum hears him, he doesn’t answer. He just keeps driving, glaring down the road, guided by some distant star Jinyoung has never been able to see.



In the aqua blue dusk, Jinyoung gathers up his last dregs of courage and forces himself to speak.

“It’s getting cold.”

It’s the first thing he’s said in hours. Maybe days? He can’t remember, now. Jaebum stirs in the seat next to him, knocking his knuckles against the car window in a staccato rhythm.

“Hmm,” he says.

His eyes are on the parking lot in front of them, a wide space with odd shadows from the defunct light poles standing around it. They’ll see scavengers coming, at least early enough to snipe off one or two.

Jinyoung glances over at Jaebum again. His eyes droop, half-closed. When was the last time he slept? Jinyoung can’t remember this, either. Too often when Jaebum says you sleep, I’ll keep watch he just acquiesces because it’s so much easier than fighting. He should argue, though. The dark circles under Jaebum’s eyes remind him that he should argue.

He swallows. His tongue feels dry and swollen in his mouth.

“Do you have a plan?” he asks.

Jaebum doesn’t answer.

Winter lurks around the corner. Last winter, they waited out the cold in Busan, but they can’t go back there now. Winter before that they were holed up in Seoul—or was that three winters ago? Four?

“Hyung,” Jinyoung tries again, resolving not to give up, not without a fight. “I think we have to ditch the car.”

This stirs something within Jaebum, and he finally looks over at Jinyoung, fear in the uptick of his eyebrows.

“The car?”

“We spend too much time looking for gas,” Jinyoung says. “It’s a liability issue.”

He drags the words up out of the past, a phrase he heard his parents say once upon a time. Maybe.

Jaebum lapses into silence again. Jinyoung tries to dig up some memory of Jaebum when they were young, sitting at their school desks, pulling pranks and walking home after school. It feels like someone else’s life, something he saw on television a long time ago.

“Jinyoung,” Jaebum says.

Jinyoung looks over. Jaebum is washed in dusk light, his eyes dark and wide.

“What if I don’t have a plan?”




Jinyoung has been following Jaebum for so long, he can’t remember when he wasn’t. Jaebum found him, however many years ago, locked in the bathroom of his old house with a kitchen knife and a useless stash of instant ramen. We have to get out of here, Jaebum said. They’re all dead. You and me are alive. We have to move.

They haven’t stopped moving.

It’s always Jaebum who knows what to do. Somehow, he can guess when the place they slept one night will be overrun with scavengers the next. He can stumble into a ransacked building and find the box of food and supplies hidden in the rafters. He can navigate his way through burned-out city streets based on nothing but memory. He always shoots first: no questions, no answers, just stay alive. Jinyoung follows. Any argument he might take up is demolished by the sudden appearance of violence and chaos: scavengers who would take them, government outfits who would arrest them, the onslaught of nature. And then there’s Jaebum, pulling Jinyoung to his feet. Keep moving, he always says. I’ve got you. You’re with me.

The car grows cold.

Jinyoung watches Jaebum until Jaebum reaches over and touches his shoulder. “Go to sleep,” Jaebum says. “I’ll keep watch.”

Now he should argue. But he isn’t ready yet. Something is changing. Jinyoung takes this moment and holds it, this one last shining moment of security, as he drifts to sleep.




He wakes to a windshield white with frost and an empty seat beside him. His heart starts, stumbles over itself. He has to remain calm—he fumbles over himself looking for his gun and grasps it with stiff hands, then jimmies the door open and falls out. Everything is silent, covered over with a thin blanket of snow. He searches, heart pounding.

Jaebum sits on top of the hood, smoking a cigarette.

Jinyoung breathes.

“Morning,” Jinyoung says. His voice does not betray him.

Jaebum takes a long drag on the cigarette and then throws it into the snow, where it glows orange, then fades to ash.

“You’re right,” Jaebum says. “We have to ditch the car.”




They salvage every useful part, per Jaebum’s instructions. Anything they might trade or bargain with. The plastic carton of gasoline will be a burden, but it’s worth more than gold. With gasoline, you can bargain for your own life. Jinyoung thinks about this, as he straps it to Jaebum’s back. A heavy insurance policy.

They trash what’s left of the car. Better not to equip scavengers roaming across the country with another vehicle. Jinyoung still feels like he’s losing a friend, as they pummel the car to a warped version of its former self. He’s lost enough people to know he’d rather have this grief than see the car used against him.

Before they leave, Jaebum puts a hand on the car. “You were good to us,” he says, his breath fogging in the air.

They stand there. Jaebum looks at the car. Jinyoung looks at Jaebum. The sky is a cold gray dome above them.

“Let’s move,” Jaebum says.




The safest places are those that don’t look like anything. Places your eyes just roam over. But they should also protect you from rain and provide some sort of insulation against the cold.

They walk along the side of the road, in the drainage ditch, looking for places no one will notice.

They pass a gas station, oddly pristine. Jinyoung holds his breath until they pass it.

They pass an exit for a town. They keep walking.

They pass a shopping center, billboards rising high on the skyline.

They pass a tumble-down shack.

“Are you hungry?”

Jaebum turns around and walks backwards. How long have they been walking, now? Jinyoung has lost track. The sun is hidden behind gray clouds.

“I’m fine.”

“Keep your strength up,” Jaebum says. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a bag of jerky, handing it to Jinyoung.

“Then let me carry the gas.”

“I’m fine.”

“Jaebum.”

He falters a little. His exhaustion shows in the slump of his shoulders, the gaunt hollow of his cheeks. If Jinyoung could carry him on his back, he would. But where would they go? What would they do? He’s never been the one making these decisions. It’s always been Jaebum.

“Okay,” Jaebum says. He takes the gasoline off his back and hands it to Jinyoung. They stand still for a minute in the cold, chewing on the jerky and drinking water from a canteen. This isn’t a life.




Jaebum spots an old power station, useless now. A small door in a concrete tower. When they break open the rusted padlock, the room inside is wide enough for several people to lie down or stand up. Jinyoung tries to stifle the swell of hope in his chest.

“Just for tonight,” Jaebum says. “Maybe tomorrow, if it’s safe.”

“Okay,” Jinyoung agrees.

Jaebum stands at the door, looking out into the expanse of countryside around them. Nothing but trees for miles. He is a dark silhouette against the blue sky. Jinyoung traces this into his memory. He may need this one day, something to keep himself alive with.

“You have to sleep,” Jinyoung says. “Let me keep watch.”

Jaebum turns slowly, like something out of a dream. He looks at Jinyoung and frowns.

“Okay,” he says.

Something is changing.




In the night, every sound sets Jinyoung on edge. The click-click-click of a rat running across the concrete. The hum of a car on the distant road. The call of owls back and forth to one another. He remembers all the myths and legends and ghost stories, things he scoffed at as a child. They all seem terribly possible, now, and he wonders if it was the ancient people who were right about everything and the modern people who were fools.

Jaebum stirs in his sleep, muttering under his breath. The sounds don’t come to form words except for once, omma wake up, and later, let’s move Jinyoung. Jinyoung holds his breath, but Jaebum falls quiet again. He can’t remember the last time Jaebum slept for such a long stretch of time. When he should wake him for them to switch, he doesn’t.

He stays awake until dawn is a thin pink line on the horizon, and then he steps outside, bracing himself in the cold. He thinks of all the things they must do to stay alive. They don’t have enough food to stay here all winter—probably not for more than a week, even if they can hunt something in the woods. They should find a farm or a commune, one of the pipe dreams Sungjin was always going on about. Maybe he found it. Maybe they can, too.

“You didn’t wake me up.”

Jinyoung jumps and turns. Jaebum stands in the doorway, frowning at him, his hair mussed from sleep. They should both shave their heads, soon. Easier that way. Jinyoung adds it to the list of things they must do.

“You needed the rest,” Jinyoung says with a shrug.

Jaebum comes to stand beside him. They stand there, breathing. Jaebum turns to him and rests his head against Jinyoung’s shoulder. They both lean into the warmth.

“We can’t stay here,” Jaebum says.

Jinyoung doesn’t say anything. Safety is such a scarce resource. He can’t think about leaving.

“One more night,” Jaebum says.




They loiter most of the day. Jaebum traps a rabbit. They cook it and eat it. Jinyoung sleeps in the afternoon, and wakes to find Jaebum’s coat spread over him, and Jaebum himself shivering outside. It’s the kind of thing that makes him angry, but he doesn’t say it. Instead he puts the coat over Jaebum’s shoulders and sits beside him until Jaebum’s lips aren’t blue and his eyes seem to be focused again.




Dusk arrives. “You sleep,” Jaebum instructs.

“You have to wake me up,” Jinyoung says.

Jaebum just nods, and takes up his post at the door, staring out at the falling snow.



“Wake up!”

Jinyoung jolts awake. He fumbles frantically for his gun or a knife, arms in every direction.

Jaebum grasps his shoulder. His face is a faint outline above Jinyoung, but he’s not looking at him. He’s looking out the door.

“Someone’s here,” Jaebum hisses.

Jinyoung finds his gun and his glasses and gets onto his feet. They creep forward, one foot in front of the next. Jaebum holds up a hand.

Jinyoung can hear it now, the sound of someone breathing outside, too loud and clumsy. A scavenger, most likely. Jinyoung tries to empty his mind and do what must be done.

Jaebum lifts his hand again. They move forward, quietly, slipping out the door and into the night. Jinyoung trains his ear onto the sounds, somewhere off to the left.

Jaebum flips on the flashlight, catching the intruder in a beam of white light.

“Don’t shoot!”

The intruder holds up his hands and falls to his knees, eyes on the ground. Jinyoung catches his breath.

“He’s just a kid,” he whispers in Jaebum’s ears.

The intruder is skinny and trembling. By the flashlight, Jinyoung can make out a large black eye and various scratches on the kid’s face, but no tattoos or other markings that would identify him with one of the scavenger clans.

“Could be a trap,” Jaebum mutters.

“I’m not a trap!” the intruder protests. Jinyoung picks up the lilt of an accent. The kid looks up at them. “I didn’t know anyone was here. I swear.”

“So if we let you go,” Jaebum says, “You’re not going to come back and steal our supplies? Or kill us?”

The kid looks up at them, eyes wide with terror.

“It’s just—” the kid manages to squeak out— “my brother, okay, he got hurt and—I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t—”

Jinyoung lowers his gun. “He’s just a kid,” he says again.

“Seems like an act,” Jaebum mutters.

Tears slip down the kid’s nose. “Just let me go back to him,” the kid says. “I swear I won’t take your stuff. I swear.”

Jaebum heaves a sigh and lowers his gun. “Your brother—will he still be alive in the morning?”

The kid looks up. “I think—I think so.”

“Then we’ll go with you then,” Jaebum says. He glances back at Jinyoung, his expression unreadable.

“Come on,” Jinyoung says. He steps forward and pulls the kid to his feet, half-expecting the kid to stab him or signal an ambush. But nothing happens except that the kid stumbles, catching his balance against Jinyoung. He’s all bones, bundled in shabby clothes, with matted hair and shoes held together by duct tape and plastic bags. Jaebum pats him down and other than a handgun and a pocket knife, he’s got nothing. This still might be a trap, but even so, Jinyoung can’t help the sudden rush of anger and anguish that overwhelms him. What kind of a life is this?

They put the kid in the tower, where they have a clear view of both him and the door. He lets them tie up his hands without any protest, his head falling back against the wall and eyes fluttering closed.

“What’s your name?” Jaebum asks, securing the tape around his hands.

“Bambam,” he answers, his voice hoarse with exhaustion.

“You’re not from here?”

He shakes his head. “Brought my mom to Seoul for treatment,” Bambam says. “Never got back home.”

Then his head slumps forward. He’s fast asleep. Jinyoung looks at Jaebum, who frowns at the kid, then glances back.

“What should we do?” he asks.

Jinyoung wants to say, you’re the one who should decide. But he doesn’t, maybe because Jaebum keeps looking at the kid the way he looks at the stray kittens he always manages to find when they’re in a bad way and shouldn’t stop for anything. Like everything in him wants to become their protector and provider. Trouble is, kittens can take care of themselves. Kids, maybe not.

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Jinyoung says finally.

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

“I know.” Jinyoung pulls off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “What do you want me to say?”

When he opens his eyes again, Jaebum is staring at the kid, his shoulders curved forward like he’s carrying the weight of the world.

“I don’t know,” Jaebum says.




In the morning, Jaebum is asleep when the kid wakes up. Jinyoung holds up a finger to his lips, gesturing over at Jaebum asleep under Jinyoung’s coat, and he gives the kid a long drink of water and half a protein bar and some of the traditional Chinese medicine they’d swiped from a drugstore a year or two ago, nestled at the bottom of their bags for when they fear they might go to sleep and not wake up.

The kid lets Jinyoung feed him, hunger evident in his eyes. But he is patient, watching Jinyoung’s every move, whispering “Thank you” after each step.

“Are you going to kill me?” the kid asks.

Jinyoung stops repacking the supplies and looks back. “If you want.”

Bambam shakes his head fiercely. “I’ve got someone to keep alive.” He looks at Jinyoung with wide and luminous eyes. “He’s been keeping me alive all this time—you know?”

Jinyoung’s eyes snap to Jaebum without thinking. He shivers in the cold.

“Yeah,” Jinyoung says. “I know.”




When Jaebum wakes up, they pack everything onto their backs and put the kid in front of them and start walking. Jinyoung glances back only once, ignoring the stab of pain in his chest. One more home, one more goodbye. He should be used to this by now.

Bambam walks in front, leading them down an unknown path. Then Jaebum, his eyes trained for an attack. Then Jinyoung, listening for an ambush. But the world is quiet.

They travel into the forest. Bambam navigates through seemingly identical thickets with a sure-footed confidence, never once changing course.

“You live here?” Jaebum asks.

Bambam glances back at him. “You think they’re going to let foreigners join a clan?” His eyebrows lift, as though he’s making a joke. Jinyoung notices a scar in his eyebrow and wonders what the kid has suffered all these years.

After some time, they emerge in a clearing. In the center stands a small building with a rotting roof but solid concrete walls. Two smaller buildings stand on either side, each with padlocks on the doors.

“Department of Forestry,” Jaebum reads from the sign. He glances at Jinyoung. “You think they’ll come looking for this?”

Bambam shakes his head. “Been here since last winter and I’ve never seen anyone. The only reason I ever leave the forest is if there’s an emergency.”

His expression suddenly changes, and he darts forward and kicks open the door to the big building. Jaebum and Jinyoung move forward as Bambam disappears inside. Jaebum looks back, once, and Jinyoung just nods. He doesn’t think this is where they’re going to die.

They step inside. Light filters in through the cracks in the ceiling, and once Jinyoung’s eyes adjust, he can make out Bambam at the far end, struggling to move something with his hands still bound together. After another moment, Jinyoung realizes it’s another person, lying on a sleeping bag.

They move forward and stand over Bambam and the other boy. The one on the floor has a long thin face and his eyes are closed and his arm juts out in an odd direction. Bambam looks up at them, helpless.

Jaebum takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, and hands Jinyoung his gun.




Jinyoung cuts the tape off Bambam’s wrists while Jaebum sets the other boy’s broken arm.

“He’s not my real brother,” Bambam explains. “He was here for studying abroad and he didn’t leave before the quarantine.”

“That happened to a lot of people.”

“Yeah,” Bambam says. He looks over again, wincing when the boy cries out in pain. “He’s been taking care of me since I was this tall.” He holds up a hand somewhere below his own shoulders. Jinyoung smiles, in spite of himself.

“He’ll be all right,” Jinyoung says. He puts a hand on Bambam’s shoulder.

Neither of them says anything else. It only takes one misstep, one infection, one bite of the wrong plant, and you’ve lost the only person you’ve got in the whole world. But Jinyoung really thinks he’ll be all right, judging by the set of Jaebum’s jaw as he fixes up a sling. He’s too determined for the boy to be on his deathbed. Jaebum has a dangerous determination to try to keep people alive.

“What about you?” Bambam asks.

Jinyoung slumps back against the wall. “Both me and Jaebum are immune,” he explains. “I guess you guys are, too?”

He waits for Bambam to nod.

“Our families weren’t,” Jinyoung says. He pushes a hand back through his hair. Sometimes he gets scared that he’ll forget, but the really scary thing is how much he remembers. It feels like just one more week of this hell, and then he’ll finally get to go back home.




They stay for a week, setting traps for small animals and repairing the roof so the snow won’t fall in. The first week seeps into another week, and soon it has been two weeks with a meal every day and water from a creek and a solid night’s sleep more often than not. Jinyoung instinctively trusts Bambam—he’s a bit flighty, like a small bird, but honest and kind.

After the first week, color returns to the other boy’s cheeks and he begins explaining their little hideout, supervising the repairs and directing them to the best places in the woods for hunting. His name is Mark and although he doesn’t say much, Jinyoung finds that what he does say gives him a dangerous bit of hope that grows and grows every day.

One morning he finds Jaebum sitting in front of the main building in a patch of sun, frowning at a worn-out copy of Peter Pan.

“Are we staying?” Jinyoung asks.

Jaebum lowers the book and looks up. He blinks, his eyes drifting from Jinyoung’s face to the woods, and then back.

“It’s dangerous,” Jinyoung says, “staying in one place like this.”

Jaebum looks at him with too many years of exhaustion written in his eyes.

“We can’t keep running forever,” he says.



They are, surely, lulled into a false sense of security. But the third week turns into a fourth, and not one trespasser comes through their bit of the woods. Jinyoung cuts open the padlock on one of the smaller buildings and opens it to find a whole shed full of tools and, in the back, a small generator.

Mark gapes when he shows him. “Never knew about this,” he says.

“We’ve got so much here,” Jinyoung says, running a finger along a dusty shelf. “We could even build a heater, with all this. But we’re missing a couple parts.”

Mark gives him an odd look. “I know a guy.”




They all four agree that Jinyoung and Bambam will go find “the guy,” because their trust is still fragile, and neither pair is willing to leave all their supplies with the other two, lest they return and find everything gone and their little compound burned to the ground. From the looks on everyone’s faces, they’ve all suffered this kind of betrayal before.

A light snow dusts the ground when they prepare to leave. Jaebum stalks out of the main building and over to where Jinyoung is taping up his coat.

“You’ll come back,” Jaebum says, not quite meeting Jinyoung’s eyes.

“I’ll come back.”

Jaebum nods once. Then he steps forward and wraps his arms over Jinyoung’s shoulders, pulling him close. It feels too much like a goodbye. Jinyoung swallows hard.

“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice hoarse.

Jaebum nods again, then drifts away, a dark figure in the snow.



---


jjpzy step-siblings au triangle that I have no recollection of writing? From 2019.

Suzy may not be the smartest person in the world, but she’s not dumb. Even she knows that something shifts, irrevocably, when Jinyoung’s mom marries Mr. Im.

She’s at the wedding when she first notices. Half the attendees at the wedding are staring at her openly and whispering Jinyoung’s girlfriend is gorgeous in tones that carry across the room. He’s got his hand on her leg under the table, inching upward under the hem of her dress. But his movement freezes, fingers stiff against her thigh, and when she glances at him, he’s staring across the room at his new stepbrother.

“I hate him,” Jinyoung says, his eyes never wavering and his hand still frozen. “He’s the worst. Actually the worst.”

Suzy considers her next words carefully. Jinyoung is still staring with an intensity that does read as hatred, but there’s an undercurrent that gives her pause.

“It’s just a new situation,” she says softly. She puts her hand on his under the table. “Try not to overthink it.”

“But I have to share a bedroom with him,” Jinyoung spits, finally tearing his eyes away to stare at Suzy in disbelief.

Suzy licks her lips. “Do you want to take a smoke break?” she asks, not wanting to listen to another half-hour tirade about Im Jaebum.

“We don’t smoke,” Jinyoung says, blinking at her.

“Jinyoung.”

“Oh.”

At this point in time, at least she still has some weapons against Jaebum.





Suzy knows Jinyoung better than just about anyone else. They were each other’s first kiss, back in middle school. She figured he was bisexual before he ever said as much to her. She knows that where life seems pretty straightforward to her, Jinyoung will find a convoluted way to twist himself into anxious knots before finally making the decision she predicted he was going to make all along.

She knew Jinyoung liked her before he ever asked her out, too, but she made him work for it. She was dating Junho at that time, before he graduated, and no girl in her right mind would dump a senior for someone her own age. What an unnecessary loss of status.

But Jinyoung was determined, and Junho was away, and eventually she agreed to date him.

So she’s not going to lose Jinyoung to some kid from another school whose only advantage over her is constant proximity and the taboo of a pseudo-family relationship.





And here she was all this time, thinking her biggest threat was just Wonpil.





It gets worse. Jinyoung spends their dates complaining about Jaebum, describing their fights to Suzy down to the most minute, painfully boring detail. His memory should be applauded; Suzy is quite sure no one else can recite verbatim a fight that stretched across two hours (about socks, as if it couldn’t get any stupider) (What does it matter if Jaebum puts his socks in the closet instead of the dresser, is what Suzy wants to know; Jinyoung doesn’t even hear her ask the question) but what might have been a talent is turning out to be a curse. He’s obsessive. And he shows his cards without even realizing it.

“Did you know,” Jinyoung asks one day as he’s driving her home from school, “That he was a delinquent at his old school? That’s why they made him transfer here. He totally could have finished school there except that everyone saw his true colors.”

Suzy sighs. “How was he a delinquent?”

Jinyoung doesn’t even notice her monotone. “The usual. Parties, ditching class. But the big thing is that he stole a motorcycle.”

Suzy actually feels a little interested. “He did?”

“Yes. He insists it was a coincidence that the principal bought the same kind of motorcycle as him and he didn’t even notice he was taking the wrong one. But he knew. You don’t pull a stunt like that unless you think you’re some kind of sexy badass criminal who can get away with anything.”

Suzy ignores the clear admission that Jaebum’s delinquency was probably founded on an accident, in favor of zeroing in on the word sexy. She’s not sure Jinyoung even heard himself use it, but there it is, revealing what she’s suspected he was thinking all along.




A few days later, she’s stretched out on Jinyoung’s bed while he goes to grab some snacks when Jaebum walks into the room. He sees her, freezes, blinks. A muscle twitches in his jaw.

And just like that, Suzy has a new strategy.

“Sorry,” Jaebum says stiffly. “I can leave.”

“You can stay,” Suzy says quickly, sitting up and running her hand back through her hair as she does so, shaking the curls in the process. “It’s your room too.”

Jaebum stares at her hair and then gives one curt nod and walks over to his desk. She watches him move—the broad lines of his shoulders and narrow waist—and she really can’t blame Jinyoung for slowly going crazy in this room.

But getting it, and surrendering to it, are two different things, so Suzy gets up off the bed and walks over to where Jaebum sits staring at his computer. He’s got some kind of music program up. She leans in, close enough for her hair to fall onto his arm and her perfume to tickle his nose.

“Whatcha working on?” She asks.

“Music.”

“Can I hear it?”

“Not done yet.”

“Too bad.” She turns so she can lean against his desk, carefully angling herself so that his peripheral vision will be filled with her long legs. Thank goodness it’s shorts season. “The only musicians at our school are weird. Band nerds.”

“Are you saying I’m not weird?”

He finally looks up at her. She gives him a slow, even smile.

“I don’t know yet.”

She’s safely returned to Jinyoung’s bed by the time he returns. He scowls at Jaebum’s back and then hisses “let’s go somewhere else” at Suzy.

She turns to look as she leaves the room. Sure enough, Jaebum is looking back at her.



---


Jrzy canonverse attempt. From 2024.

Three in the morning, looking at herself in the mirror of the hotel bathroom. Suzy has a zit forming under the skin of her chin; her doctor said it was hormonal acne and wrote her a prescription to take along with her antidepressant and anxiety medication and the pain medication from the last surgery she got on her epicanthal folds. She’d quit the antidepressant that week and nearly landed in the hospital, which was “a real nightmare” for her publicist and nearly required Suzy to cancel her spread with Elle Korea, though she’d rallied and gone to the shoot anyway. She never told her parents. Some things were better left unsaid.

Three in the morning with only the light over the shower turned on, leaving her reflection indistinct and unfamiliar. This isn’t really where she expected to be right now, a four hour drive from Seoul in the best hotel which still falls short of some of Seoul’s mid-tier ones. She should be happy. She’s supposed to be happy. But sometimes it seems like happiness is an obligation. She performs it as she does many things, and goes home alone.

Three in the morning and Jinyoung opens the door to the bathroom, rubbing sleep out of his eye with his thumb. A shadow of stubble has spread along his jaw. He’s dressed now, a T-shirt and boxers, yet somehow he still seems ironed and made-up.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, making eye contact with her reflection.

Suzy turns and leans back against the sink. “Nothing,” she says so smoothly it almost sounds rehearsed. Maybe it is. Most of what she says sounds like she’s reading from a script, right down to the yes, oh god yes she’d moaned in his ear a couple of hours ago.

He purses his lips and levels a look at her. “It’s three in the morning,” he says, sounding annoyed or concerned or both. Sometimes she reads annoyance into others’ concern, because people really hate to be inconvenienced by her audacity to have feelings. Over the years she’s learned to fold up her feelings and tuck them away into drawers.

“I’m,” she ventures, trying to find a lie that sounds plausible. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He considers her for a moment, his eyes cool and assessing. In so many ways he is exactly the same as when they met. In others he seems like a stranger, their shared memories fading to insignificance. He’s not in love with her anymore. She’s sure of that.

He reaches out a hand, running his fingertips along her arm. She’s dressed in a T-shirt of his she’d found in his suitcase, having left all her own things in her room, and she wasn’t going to sleep in a one million Won dress anymore than she was going to go back to her room. A vain sort of hope led her to stay—she’s always been a bit stupid. It’s like her main trait.

Another step brings him right in front of her. Carefully, like he’s handling glass or maybe a knife, he slides his arms around her shoulders and pulls her close, so that her head comes to rest against his shoulder. Pressed together, she can feel the rise and fall of his chest against hers.

“You know,” he says in a low murmur, “We’re not on camera. You don’t have to pretend.”

With a hacking cough, Suzy begins to cry. Even as she starts she’s thinking about how terrible this will look with all the snot and the inevitable splotchy face and bloodshot eyes. In the morning the makeup artist will scold her for not taking better care of herself and wonder aloud how they’ll make her look the way Bae Suzy is supposed to look on camera.

“Hey, hey,” Jinyoung says, stepping back and cupping her face. “God, Suzy, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she manages. “Everything.”




At a certain point, in Suzy’s experience, one can be regarded as so pretty that she ceases to exist in others’ minds as a real, flesh-and-blood human with feelings, perspective, libido, etc. That threshold seems to be different for different people; for instance, the producer in front of her now has seemingly forgotten she’s standing beside him, instead addressing every thought to her manager, as though he wants her manager to convey this information to her later. “It’s not personal,” he says, leaning in like he’s telling a secret, and giving Suzy a better view of the bald patch forming on the crown of his head. “The director just feels she’s holding back.”

Suzy’s manager, the ever-diplomatic [name], glances her way. “She doesn’t exactly have a lot of lines.”

“But she’s going to be central to the promo,” the producer continues, now glancing behind him toward the camera crew’s set up. The three of them are standing inside a tent; outside, it’s snowing lightly. “She and Park Jinyoung—it’s great casting! So we just need a bit more sparkle.”

This time he seems to remember she’s there, and nudges her with his elbow, grinning at her in a way that comes across more as condescending than salacious. Though he’d probably try something, if given the opportunity. There’s a clumsiness to his manner that strikes her as dangerous. He laughs too much at things that aren’t funny.

But Suzy knows her place, so she smiles and pretends to laugh until he walks away.

Across the tent, Jinyoung is looking at her. When she catches his eye, he looks away.



---

Jrzy, cast in the same drama AU. From 2024.

It’s three in the afternoon, eight hours into a fourteen hour shoot, and Suzy is thinking about having sex with Park Jinyoung.

Not—ugh, just the thought makes her want to barf—not the 52-year-old producer-singer-songwriter and her former boss Park Jinyoung. Her chingu Park Jinyoung. Although the connection between them was forged and solidified by the first, forever linking them with the iconic J-Y-P whisper, she still wishes that the younger’s name didn’t elicit thoughts of the older. When they were dating her friends used to warn, be careful who you tell that you’re dating ‘Park Jinyoung,’ that’s how rumors get started. So if she thinks about it too long, she always comes around to how easily people would believe she’d fuck a man old enough to be her father, and how many other hopeful starlets do have that story—it’s just so many levels of bad that she prefers not to dwell on it.

Anyway. It’s three in the afternoon and about a billion degrees in the tent where she’s waiting to film her next scene, and in spite of all her efforts not to, she’s thinking about sex with her chingu Jinyoung. Who is currently filming a sickeningly cute scene with a ‘00-liner newbie actress who’d asked Jinyoung to sign a GOT7 album after the first table read, at which Suzy and Jinyoung had greeted each other cooly like the professional colleagues they are. If you’d only been able to observe the cast up to now, you wouldn’t have ever guessed just how vividly Suzy was imagining getting into his pants—no, that would have been assigned to sweet Cho Eunyoung. As it turned out, Cho Eunyoung has an equally sweet girlfriend who is also her hair stylist—though Suzy is unclear in which order the two different roles had come to be—and Suzy is the one plotting how to seduce Jinyoung, so really, you can’t take people totally at face value. At least not in this industry.

The main obstacle to her scheme is that she and Jinyoung haven’t properly spoken in ten years. The last real, honest conversation they had was after the last time they had sex (number five in total, if you’re counting, which Suzy is, unfortunately) in a hotel on her last JYP Nation tour. They’d both said a number of mean things, though neither really managed to hit the other where it hurt, so they’d simply never spoken again. That is, until three weeks ago when they arrived at the table read and their new drama’s producer said “Ah, perfect, our Choi siblings are here!”

Suzy had signed onto the drama before Jinyoung was cast. If she’d known that he’d be cast as her twin brother, she might have backed out. But as it was neither had known until the other had signed, and they’d then entered into what was (at least on her side) an extremely stupid game of chicken—but she certainly wasn’t going to cede this ground to Park Jinyoung, not after he’d said, you’re so determined to prove you’re better than the rest of us that you’ll avoid doing anything we do just make your point, so what are you going to do when I start getting cast for the same projects as you? Backing out would have meant losing a decade-old argument, and there was nothing Jinyoung liked more than to be proven right. Suzy couldn’t back out. Not under those conditions.

Unfortunately, she’s now burdened with the very real acting concern of whether people are going to think her character wants to fuck her brother.

“Ten minutes,” one of the PAs tells her then.

Suzy shakes herself and watches Jinyoung in her peripheral vision as he walks from set over to his manager on location with him, a very pretty woman in her late thirties. Jinyoung has—or had—a thing for nunas, something a drunk Junho had forced her to hear about at a bar after a JYP Nation concert. He likes how easy it is to impress older women, Junho had teased while Jinyoung flushed red, and not from the alcohol. Later, when Jinyoung was still naked and Suzy was trying to get her dress on the right way around, she’d spat out, well I’m not your nuna, and I sure as hell wasn’t impressed. He probably hasn’t forgiven her for that one yet.

She hasn’t yet figured out whether he’s sleeping with his manager, but she’s been watching carefully for his tells. She can’t imagine he’s changed that much in the last ten years. He was always a bit of a flirt, even when they were trainees and he looked like an overgrown koala. No—he was cute then, who is she kidding. She’d been utterly in love until three months after his debut when the company finally caught wind of it and suggested she break things off, using a tone which told her she really didn’t have a choice. She was his senior, they said. She should be the one to take responsibility.

As she’s watching, Jinyoung looks up. A whole set between them, and he looks directly at her. His gaze jolts through her and she jumps so hard she spills water all over her pants.

“Oh,” exclaims the wardrobe manager beside her, then just as quickly presses her mouth into a straight line, probably to stop herself from scolding Suzy for ruining the continuity. The wardrobe manager goes in search of a hair dryer, waving off the apologies Suzy calls after her.

Suzy ventures to glance over to where Jinyoung was standing, but he’s already gone.

They’re on location for the next two weeks at a big house in the countryside. Suzy and Jinyoung are playing obnoxious but wealthy twins in a drama that will quite likely do well, as the cast is so stacked Suzy is only sixth on the call sheet, so there’s a heavy amount of pressure on the whole shoot. (Jinyoung is eighth on the call sheet, something she noted because he would too.) After Suzy was cast, her manager had sighed, “I’m not sure you’re up to this level of material,” so. She has a lot to prove. And not just to Park Jinyoung.

The wardrobe manager gets her pants dry and Suzy walks over to her mark just as Jinyoung returns to set. He’s had a costume change: his shirt sleeves are rolled to the elbow, his hair mussed, his jacket draped over his shoulder. As soon as she sees him she’s hit with a combination memory-and-fantasy, real life knowledge of how it would feel to stick her tongue in his mouth combined with the image of straddling him in the pool house out back.

His eyebrow arches up as he comes to stand beside her.

“You okay?” he asks, one single question reverberating through her. He’s spoken formally in every other conversation they’ve had, but now he speaks informally and under his breath. This does little to calm her down.

“I’m fine,” she whispers back, determined to make it true.

Just because she can’t stop thinking about it, doesn’t mean she’s going to sleep with him. That’s in the past, and this is now. And now—

She takes hold of his arm and tries to think sisterly thoughts as the director calls action.



---

Jrzy, aimless word sketch. From 2025.

The water scalds her fingers at first. She wasn’t paying attention like she should have been, her thoughts drifting toward the low murmur in her living room instead of the task right in front of her. Her mouth curves downward at the corners as she reaches for the dish soap. Squeezes a line over the chopsticks in her opposite hand—four, two sets. Washes them with her bare hands, feeling the sediment of food along the metal.

“You okay?”

“What?”

Jinyoung still looks like he did when they were seventeen. Except for the creases around his eyes and the tension of muscles in his back, shoulders, he might still be the same or she might have slid into the past when she wasn’t paying attention. He has those creases now, leaning his hip against her kitchen counter as she rinses the soap from the chopsticks.

“You yelped.”

“Did I?”

He grins, and imitates her. She hadn’t realized she’d made a noise.

“The water was too hot,” she says. “Who were you on the phone with?”

She knows the answer, or suspects. She drops the chopsticks into the cup in her dish-drying rack with a clatter. She never does dishes here. Usually, the housecleaner comes and removes all evidence of Suzy’s incompetence before she is forced to reckon with it.

“My mom,” says Jinyoung.

“How is she?”

“She’s good,” he answers. “But she went to the doctor and she has something, I forgot.”

Jinyoung’s mother encouraged him to break up with Suzy with they were seventeen. Suzy slides her thumbnail between two bottom teeth to dislodge a remnant of rice. How does she know his mother told him to break up with her? She can’t remember learning that, only knowing it. Perhaps it isn’t true, but a conjecture fossilized into memory.

“Hypertension,” he amends. “I think she’s fine actually, but she’s been wanting me to visit for a while and my sisters are supposed to be over tomorrow too so—anyway, I think I’ll go.”

When they were seventeen, Suzy met Jinyoung’s sisters a handful of times. It was a test more terrifying than any trainee evaluations. One of them, the more glamorous of the two, had shown her how to apply concealer so it didn’t cake under her eyes. Suzy thinks of her now every time she walks out the door with dark under-eye circles, twin marks of her work schedule that no injections can seem to fix, and applies concealer in the car.

“That will be nice,” Suzy says. Jinyoung picks up the emptied takeout containers stacked on her countertop and gestures to the sink, taking her space in front of it when she vacates it. He begins to rinse the remaining rice and oil. Suzy wonders absently if her housecleaner does this, too.

Jinyoung hasn’t told his mother that they’re seeing each other. Another conjecture, Suzy supposes, but it seems to be true.

“Is your hand okay?” Jinyoung asks.

She looks down. Her skin is flushed where the water burned it. The mark will fade soon, though, and she will forget.

Jinyoung reaches for her hand, takes it. Runs the pads of his fingers over the burn.




---
I'll have to make a separate post of the marauders au that I wrote like four different versions of lol.