How To Be A Hoe

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"Mom?"

You knew your mother was probably still at work, and was going to be until a couple of hours later into the day, but you couldn't help but want to talk to her. It had been almost a week since you'd last spoken to her—courtesy of Taehyung—and you wondered if she had been worried. Or if you were being dramatic.

"I wish I could've called and talked to you," you said, sniffling. The tears had long dried, but your nose still felt blocked, and there was a tightness in the skin around your eyes. Your chest felt lighter now, too, as if someone had cut something out of it. A strange sort of peace. "But I know you're busy. I hate leaving messages, but I guess this is better, because after I'm done, I can delete this."

The back of your shirt was soaked through with sweat, but it was easier to breathe now. It almost felt as if nothing bad had ever happened, and you were calm enough to detach your mind from your body and try to make sense of what had gone wrong with it.

"I think I should have listened to Jimin when he'd told me to look after myself," you said. "He's mostly very dumb, but he can be very smart sometimes. It's uncanny. Anyway, I think I was stressed over an assignment and he had told me to leave it alone... I think I get what he was talking about now. I think I know what's wrong with me."

You hung your head, swinging your legs back and forth childishly. The park was mostly empty, except for a couple of evening-time joggers, but they didn't seem to care. Suddenly conscious, you pulled at the hem of your shirt and moved to the middle of the bench.

"I know I should have told you this earlier, but Jimin and I were in this sort of...agreement," you said, then scrunched up your nose. "You know what? I'm probably going to delete this message. Anyway, we were in this agreement, but now that I come to think of it, he never did ask for my help. Maybe he realized I was bad at this stuff, or maybe he had actually just come up with the arrangement to be friendly. I don't know. It sounds kind of dumb now that I actually come to think of it.

"He always tried to push me into things I thought I wasn't comfortable with. I hated it at first, because I'd thought that coming to Seoul would help me be actually..." Your attention was now fully focused on what you were saying, but the words came out in the way vomit would. There was no control. "I wanted to be independent. I wanted all the things I used to think everybody had, but I lost sense of being somewhere along the way."

The telephone line seemed to crackle. Where did it all go wrong?

"I'm just spitting dumb crap now," you muttered, more to yourself than to the phone, though maybe that could be said for whatever you had said during the past few minutes. Squinting into the distance, you brought your free hand up, making an invisible line in the sky with your finger. "If I arrange everything according to a timeline, maybe I'll be able to point out where exactly my life went to shit." You took a deep breath. Breathing was easier now.

"Maybe the day I found proof of Taehyung cheating. Maybe ignorance really is bliss." The sun was fading now, making the sky look a bruised sort of violet. "Maybe when Jungkook told me about playboys. The day I talked to Lee. The day I first realized my attraction towards Jimin might not be just sexual." Your voice broke halfway through. "Maybe it was the day I came here. Maybe I should never have come."

Maybe I was better off alone. "I tried too hard, and now it's too late..." When you closed your eyes, you could still see the angry sky. "I'm sick, mom," you whispered. "I want to go home."

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Just go home.

Jimin still could barely see past the red haze, fingers curling in and out as he paced the inside of the elevator like a caged lion.

His attempts at looking for the dark-haired boy had proved fruitful only after a long search, and now he could see stars in the night sky. Jimin wasn't sure why he had chosen to come back to the apartment so late. He knew the most important thing at that moment was you, and how you were holding up, but all he had thought of was Taehyung. Probably because he was subconsciously avoiding you. Instead of looking for the solution, he had looked for the problem instead.

It was scary sometimes, how in touch he was with his emotions.

I should have been there. I should have been there for her.

He rocked back on his heels, tightening his jaw as his hand hesitated at the handle. He didn't know what he would see when he entered, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

There was a reason he'd put off coming back home until this time in the night; searching for you everywhere until he was sure the you couldn't be anywhere but at home.

Jimin pursed his lips, hastily pushing the door open before he could change his mind. The interior was dark, the only source of illumination the faint moonlight coming from the window, curtains fluttering with the breeze.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness as the door closed behind him, before he spotted the lone figure sitting on the couch.

Relief flooded through him. She's safe.

He stepped in closer, hovering over you, hesitant, not knowing whether you hated him at this point. He had failed you.

"Y/N?" Jimin's voice was faint, unsure.

As if in a trance, you looked up, and his breath caught in his throat. You didn't look sad—not in the red-eyed, haggard-faced way most people did, but you looked empty. Jimin wasn't a big fan of horror movies, but he'd been roped in by his friends a few times to sit through two hours of screaming and watching people rise from their graves, and you looked uncannily like the undead.

This time, though, he didn't scream. He just stood there, watched you get up, and willed his heart not to hurt so much.

"Jimin..." You leaned closer to him, eyes slightly hooded, dark. Jimin's heart drummed loudly against his chest, breathing shallow as he looked down at you, your warm hands on his chest. He was frozen, his heart aching, and he didn't deserve you but he wanted you.

He wanted you.

The realization hit him like a jump scare, and left him reeling with the force of it. Here you were, ruined and numb and cut through with words and lost touches—mourning the loss of a lover, a home—and he, like the selfish, materialistic, fuckboy he was, wanted you.

Jimin touched the hollow of your cheek with hesitant fingers, wondering if you were real or just a spectre. His fingers met damp skin, warm under the cover like fresh bread.

And then you reached up and kissed him.