Gravity
Yuzukookies
Summary: No matter what you did to get away from him, no matter how far you ran, you were always drawn back to him, the center of your universe: Kim Taehyung.
Y/N and Taehyung are in love, but not with each other. Y/N is forced to watch her childhood friend/crush fall deeper in love with a girl with whom she can never compete. It tests their friendship and Y/N isn't sure how much she can take before her heart breaks for good.
If she stays, she'll only hurt herself, but if she goes, she knows she'll never escape his grasp on her heart
I suck at summaries, but please read if you like <(＿ ＿)>
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You stared out at the river, watching the gentle waves crest before vanishing back into the dark depths. The surface of the water undulated softly and glimmered beneath the afternoon sun. Picturesque, yet cold in the middle of dreary autumn, you can't deny that the scene was beautiful. It felt like home.
It seemed like ages since you’d been able to just stand by the Han River and feel the breeze wash over your skin. Ages since you'd taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of Seoul. Ages since you'd had that feeling of being home. You took a deep breath, bringing the scent of the river and the city air into your lungs. After a few moments, you let it out, your stress and tension leaving your body along with it.
Finally, you were home, and you could relax. No more long-distance calls to your brothers, no more unfamiliar streets, no more wishing you were right here with a hot coffee in your hands.
And no more worries, because you were home, and you were okay.
That was the best part: After all the shit you had gone through and the years it had taken to recover, you were finally okay. Life was good.
You raised your cardboard coffee cup in a small salute to your home city – as if thanking it for waiting for you – before bringing it to your lips.
As you took a sip, a hand suddenly touched your shoulder. "Y/N?"
You jumped in surprise at the deep voice, and, being the clumsy dope you were, your coffee tumbled out of your hand at the harsh movement. With a wet, depressing thud, it spilled all over the sidewalk, sinking into the cracks.
Great!
Jimin bought you that coffee as a gift – a gift which is now completely ruined. You spun on your heel, ready to confront whoever spilled your beloved coffee.
A man stood behind you, dressed in a nice suit and pea coat. The hand that was not resting on your shoulder clutched a briefcase. He had nicely styled hair and was exceptionally handsome, staring at you with wide eyes from behind his round glasses. You tilted your head questioningly, about to ask if you know him.
Then, your eyes found the three moles – lip, nose, and eye ...
T-Taehyung ...
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Laying back on your bedsheets, you held your phone just inches above your face. Saturday mornings have always been reserved for being lazy, and you took it to a whole new level, fuzzy socks, oversized sweatshirt and all. Lounging on your bed, you looked like a heap of laundry someone forgot to fold, the fact that you hadn't moved for two straight hours adding to the illusion. Seokjin had twice tried to get you up, but you had remained strong and stubborn and floppy as a fish.
He had eventually given up and passed on his mission to your younger brother, Jeongguk. Too bad for him, Jeongguk was just as dedicated to lazy Saturdays as you, so he now laid at the foot of your bed, the glow of his own phone radiating off his face.
With a sigh, you swiped your thumb up your screen, watching your twitter feed pass by with cloudy, unfocused eyes. It had been a while since you'd stopped caring about what appears on the feed; just selcas from classmates you hardly knew, taken at parties you weren't invited to. No, you weren't bitter about it – you were too wrapped up in your social anxiety to care that much. You weren't even sure how you had followed so many people on social media, considering you hardly talked to anyone at all.
You were the weird one at school – the foreigner. After being adopted at a young age, you had spent most of your life in Seoul, but that did not stop people from secluding you and assuming you couldn't speak their language. Even being Jeon Jeongguk and Seokjin's – the most popular and handsome boys in middle school and high school – couldn't save your social life, and so you remained the outcast.
Not that you minded – popularity is overrated anyway. You preferred the life of a loner, concerned with only the people you loved the most. Trusting new people was too big a risk.
Your thumb stopped suddenly on a picture you realized you'd been unconsciously looking for. The silver-haired boy in the selca smiled at the camera, arm wrapped around a pretty girl and those beautiful eyes twinkling.
A huff left your pouted lips. Last night another hang-out was ditched so Taehyung could attend another party. What else is new?
Taehyung had disappointed you countless times and he could be an annoying party hound, but he was also your childhood friend, one of the only people in your life who completely understood you. When you were first adopted by the Jeons, you were already five years old and struggled to learn the language and cultural differences of your new home. Preschool was hard, but not even being able to make conversation was even harder. Taehyung didn't care. The boy with ears too big for his face and a missing tooth liked you even if you couldn't understand a word each other said.
Ten years later and everything had changed. From the moment your childhood friend stepped foot onto your high school campus, he was doomed to be popular. There were hundreds of handsome boys in Seoul, including Seokjin and his friend Namjoon, but Taehyung was a special kind of handsome: Smooth, tan skin, silky black hair falling so perfectly over his face, and who could overlook his adorable freckles. He was so pretty that Seokjin would sometimes hit you to stop your staring, then berate you because he's the handsome one. You couldn't help it, though – how could anyone ignore that face?! Even with all his newfound popularity, Taehyung remained grounded, still opting to hang out with you and your friends, rather than partying with his new friends.
For a while, at least.
At the end of your first year of high school, you started noticing changes in him, and they weren't all for the better. During the break, he spent less time with you. He often told you he was sick, so he couldn't come to your movie nights, only for you to see Twitter posts about a huge party, girls, and boys you had never seen before hanging off of Taehyung's arms and shoulders in the accompanying selcas. Sometimes, when you and your brothers had plans to go shopping or do homework together, he would say he was busy. The next day, you would hear all the people from the pictures talking to him about the party.
He had been confronted about the lies and flakiness, he'd just flash a puppy dog look your way and you'd crack like an egg. You cursed yourself for being so weak to his chocolate eyes and that stupid mole hiding just beneath his eyelashes.
"Did you see Eunji's post?" Jeongguk asked with a disappointed shake of his head.
You frowned at Taehyung's fluffy, silver hair in the pictures posted on some girl's – Eunji, apparently – account. Thin, beautiful girls decorated all of the space around him, dainty hands resting on his chest, shoulders, and a few curled around his waist. How you wanted to slap every single one of those fake nails away from Taehyung's glowing skin. Call you selfish, but you couldn't help but feel jealous of the girls who were allowed to touch him in such a way, while you were stuck at home, watching him through a screen.
Yes, you were the cliché girl who had a crush on your best friend; But who could blame you?
The further down your feed you scroll, the deeper your frown grew. He looked so happy without you. His face was bright, and you knew that his personality was what lit up the faces of everyone else in that room. Stupid, beautiful Taehyung ...
"What the hell is he thinking?" Jeongguk sighed disapprovingly. It was no surprise to anyone that Taehyung's new lifestyle didn't sit well with Jeongguk. The younger boy was too much like you; Uncomfortable around crowds of people, content to spend every Friday night in bed watching k-dramas, and, of course, lazing around all weekend.
At least someone was happy spending time with you.
"What do you mean?" you asked softly, voice scratchy after not being used for a few hours. You couldn't see anything wrong with the pictures so far besides for the clingy females.
"Did you see the picture with Mijoo?"
You frowned, your eyebrows creasing in confusion as you scrolled through the pictures with more scrutinizing eyes. You saw it in a picture near the very end, where Taehyung had a girl in her lap that you recognized as Han Mijoo from your shared class with Taehyung. He was laughing while she made a kissy-face at the camera, another classmate behind them holding a bottle of booze in her hand.
Really? Underaged drinking? That'sillegal!
"That boy's going to get himself in biiig trouble someday," Jeongguk huffed. You couldn't agree more, although it made your heart feel heavy in your chest.
"I'll talk to him about it later," your tiny voice barely escaped your tight throat. "I'm sure he didn't know what was going on behind him."
Jeongguk chuckled dryly. "Really? You think he's that oblivious?"
You didn't want to admit it, but ... no. Maybe the Taehyung from a few years ago had been out of tune with the world around him, but he had changed so dramatically that you weren't sure anymore.
The first months of his change had been weird months that made you confused and a little dizzy. He never stopped growing more and more handsome and popular and confident, but you'd always felt miserable in his shadow. Ever since you were little, it had always been Taehyung, your brothers and you, and now, he had so many new friends who didn't seem to want anything to do with you. The girls with which he associated himself would glare at you whenever you approached him; you had heard more than a couple of nasty words thrown your way. When you walked by, you sometimes heard their scornful "Pig", "Foreigner", and "Whale" thrown around. You knew your foreign blood had made you taller and broader than the small Korean girls that surround Taehyung, and your thighs and stomach were a bit on the softer side – it was a sore spot and hearing it sneered at you from between glossy lips felt like getting kicked in the gut.
You'd kept everything hidden, though, because he was enjoying himself and he still called you his best friend. No matter how much he hung out with his new crowd or canceled your plans, you were still his best friend.
That was until the attention he gained started taking priority over you – the rejections more frequent and your texts completely ignored - sometimes not even read. You tried to overlook the pain and fake a smile, Seokjin following suit in order to keep you happy, but Jeongguk was not shy to make his offense obvious, and he wasn't afraid to confront Taehyung when it became too much.
Eventually, the boys butted heads in an explosive argument that left everyone in tears and Seokjin having to keep the younger boys from ripping out each other's throats. Seeing them so angry and fighting with each other disturbed all of you, but it did fix the fractured relationship somehow. After a round of apologies, more tears and Jeongguk doing his best to escape a group-hug, Taehyung became more like himself again and the five of you continued hanging out like before. Not to mention, the two of you became almost inseparable once more.
Which meant, no more knocking.
With just a short shout of your name, Taehyung suddenly barged into your bedroom. His loud voice made you jump and nearly throw your phone across the room, disturbing Jeongguk when you kicked his shoulder. He only had time for a brief protest before the taller boy leaped onto your bed and snuggled up next to you, that dumb boxy smile on his lips. You missed that smile in the months he had avoided you. Now, the final year of your high school life was about to start, and your friendship had been going strong for months now.
"Who let you in?" you asked, pretending to be annoyed.
"Auntie did," he answered cheekily.
Jeongguk groaned from the foot of the bed. Only when you looked down at him did you notice that Taehyung's foot was resting on his face. He shoved the older boy's leg away with an angry grunt. "Watch it, Hyung!" he whined.
Taehyung threw him a smile that looked more like a wince. "Sorry, Gguk. Didn't see you there."
"Trust me, I know," the younger rolled his eyes, grabbing his phone and leaving the room with a quiet grumble that sounded suspiciously like: "We all know you only ever see Y/N ..."
Your cheeks flared red. Taehyung used the free space to stretch out his long legs, letting out a loud, sleepy groan.
"What are you doing here?" you asked. You made an effort to refocus on your Twitter feed, but it was obvious your mind is everywhere else at the moment – particularly trained on where Taehyung's arm was wrapped around your waist. Maybe it was weird that this didn't embarrass you, but the two of you had been cuddling since you were children. You were closer than siblings, so there was nothing strange about this. Even your crush on him couldn't make the position any less comfortable.
Said crush didn't answer for a while but cuddled closer into your side. "I was bored and lonely," he finally sighed into your hair, where his nose was buried. You made a noise of protest and wiggled away from him, but he only held you tighter.
Taehyung turned to you with a face that was so bright, you wondered if you should have shielded your eyes. His smile itself was blinding. "I wanted to tell you something before school starts."
An internal groan rattled your mind and forced you to roll your eyes. You were starting the new school year tomorrow morning; you and Taehyung in your fourth and last year of high school and Jeongguk in his second. The past few months had been full of nights spent with best friends and hanging out all day just doing nothing, wasting the break away.
In your opinion, it wasn't long enough.
Your obvious hatred of returning made Taehyung chuckle. "Ah, come on – it's not that bad."
"Are you kidding?" you gave him a look of playful disgust. "Don't you remember how Hyo Seonsaeng-nim humiliated you in front of the class just for being three minutes late?"
He pursed his lips. "Yeah but forcing me to admit that I was spending time with a lady behind the school was hardly humiliation – in fact, just after class ended, So Daeun approached me for a little tryst of our own. Ended up getting me a girlfriend." He waggled his eyebrows.
He avoided more explicit words as to not gross you out, but you still didn't like to hear about his flings with girls, no matter how he dressed up his sentences. "Ew," you said bluntly, making him wince.
"Sorry."
With a shake of your head and a wave of your hand, you dismissed the awkward air. "Don't worry about it – just don't butt-call me in the middle of a date again, and we're cool."
You couldn't help but grin at the embarrassed blush that painted his cheeks and the way the little creases near his mouth appeared when he smiled. His twinkling eyes met yours again. "How many times do I have to apologize for that?!"
"As many times as I had to hear your date go 'TaeTae ~'," you whined, your voice like a little child (a perfect imitation of his air-headed date for the night). Your smug grin made him cringe.
"Please, don't do that," he groaned. "It doesn't suit you at all."
Yeah, that stung a little bit. You know you weren't exactly as cute as the other girls in your class due to your slightly larger build but you didn't like hearing that from him of all people. At least Seokjin thought you were cute, but he'd probably call an ostrich doing its business cute.
You forced the feeling down and slapped his shoulder. "Yah, don't be mean!"
He giggled, rolling away from your reach. "Don't hit me! Just listen to what I have to say, woman!" Stifling the laugh in your throat, you agreed to stay silent and let the poor boy finally speak. A wide smile split his face in two. "I met someone over the summer, Y/N," he whispered excitedly as if it were a secret no one was allowed to know.
You resisted the urge to roll your eyes.
Time and time again, Taehyung had come bounding over to you, claiming to have met "the one". He would gush and wax romantic over the new girl, unknowingly tearing holes through your heart in the meantime, before the two of them ultimately broke up before the end of the month. You had seen the cycle repeat dozens of times, so you knew how to prepare yourself and shut down your emotions for the coming weeks.
Instead of showing your initial disappointment, you faked a surprised face and gasped in excitement. "Where did you meet her? What's her name?"
"Lee Sangmi," he sighed, stars gleaming in his warm, brown eyes. For a fleeting moment, you wondered if he would ever see stars while thinking of you. You jumped when he grabbed at his chest and winced. "Ah! Just the thought of her makes my heart ache!"
Most people would find it odd how you patiently listened to your crush talk about his own, but your dynamic had always been an odd one; especially since the two of you reconciled. He fawned over pretty girls and you kept your feelings silent, always ready to pick up his pieces when he needed you.
"Have you asked her out?" you wondered, even though you already knew the answer.
"Excuse me? Who do you think you're talking to?"
The incredulous look he threw your way made you laugh. "Sorry," you snorted, gently patting his cheek. "I forgot how fast my boy works."
You kept your hand against his face for a moment longer than you probably should have, but the warm, soft skin beneath your fingers felt so nice. The moment reminded you of petting a puppy in a pet shop – it would make you happy and felt so right, but you know it would never be yours.
It was a known fact that Taehyung always went for the prettiest and most popular girls, not acne-prone recluses like you. You may have been friends since your bed-wetting days, but Taehyung had never once shown any romantic inclinations towards you; cuddling didn't count since it was such a natural thing for him.
"Why is your hand so warm?"
You flinched and yanked your hand back and against your chest, his sonorous voice waking you from your thoughts. A hot blush rose to your cheeks. "Uh, I was on my phone for a lot longer than I thought," you shrugged, hoping the room was dim enough to hide your rosy face.
He smiled and continued talking about his date with Sangmi until there came a loud banging at your door.
"Kim Taehyung!" Seokjin called out from the other side. "Get out of my sister's bed before I come in there and make you! And the both of you wash up for supper!"
Taehyung groaned as he got up, muttering grumpily at having to walk again. You, on the other hand, thanked God that you wouldn't need to keep that stupid, fake smile any longer.