A/N: Ok, I'm soo soo sorry for the really long wait! The other request will be up soon (really this time). Thank you so much for waiting and for being patient as I struggled through writer's block. If you unsubscribed, I understand, really. :( But just to let you know, this fic is up and running and I'm ready for new requests! :)

In which an overcoat and an expensive house starts everything.

Request by: gmellyexo97  

  There was a boy here.

  We didn't see each other much throughout the tour because he kept wandering off into different rooms and I always lingered a little bit longer. One couldn't help noticing, though, the only person from your generation in the entire building. Everywhere I looked, white hair and wrinkled hands and gravelly voices filled the house. The old-people smell was incredible.

  And he, with his gray overcoat and neatly combed black hair, couldn't have looked more out of place. How old was he, even? Sixteen? Seventeen?

  "The plumbing is in excellent condition," the real estate agent was saying, a football-player-built man in a suit with seams that were threatening to break, "and all the water systems are top-notch. The windows are easy to open, the fireplace can be with the flick of a switch, everything is built to be of easy access."

  The guy was sugar-coating it. This house was tiny, and there was wallpaper. Wallpaper. Not to mention the peeling paint on the garage door and the dark crusty stuff in the corners.

  "Any questions?" he asked.

  The room remained silent. The boy from earlier re-appeared in the doorway, looking like he'd already made his decision.

  There was a price on the house.

  And it was a price I definitely couldn't pay.

  Half an hour after the tour had ended, everyone had left except me, overcoat boy, the real estate agent, and the elderly couple who owned this house and now wished to move into a retirement home. They were badgering me with so many reasons to buy the house that I couldn't open my mouth to decline or negotiate their price. The real estate agent had a desperate glint in his eyes, and the elderly couple looked at me like I was wearing booty shorts and a crop top instead of a sweater and jeans.

  "Well?" They asked in unison, drilling holes through my skull with their gazes.

  I opened my mouth, about to begin my apology speech, when an insane idea popped into my head. It would be incredibly embarrassing if it failed - but it was worth a try. I needed this house. It was the cheapest one in the campus area.

  "Just excuse me a moment," I said breathlessly before escaping into the hallway.

  Overcoat boy was standing there, observing a painting mounted on the wall, his silhouette all soft corners and sharp lines.

  "Do you want to buy this house?" I blurted out.

  His gaze swiveled lazily to meet mine. "Hm?"

  "Do you want to buy this house?"

  "Well..." he pretended to consider, so he would look cautious, unapproachable. "Yeah..."

  "The price, I can't afford it, but I really need it... so I was wondering... we don't even need to see each other much anyways, we just..." Chopped-up sentences fought their way out of my mouth, my breath catching in my throat so my words sounded more like hiccups than meaningful syllables. I was beyond embarrassed, but at this point I started going numb.

  "Sure."

  "What?"

  "I said sure."

  And the deal was sealed.

  It didn't take very long for us to settle into a routine.

  As promised, we avoided each other as much as possible considering we lived together and split the rent. Exchanges were reduced to 'Hey, do you know where-' and 'I'm gonna go out for a while, probably be back in-'. We went to different schools, studied different things, and had different interests and places we hung out with our friends at. He would usually wake up an hour or so after midnight to complete his homework after spending the final hours of the previous day out, and somehow managed to go through the entire monstrous pile of papers usually sitting on his desk before I, woken by his not-so-discreet shuffling, knocked on his door and reminded him groggily to get some sleep. On the other hand, I usually visited a cafe before school and stayed at the library after school at the table in the corner that was always empty until I was finished my homework. I never told him when I would get home - I honestly couldn't tell, having a horrible sense of time - and he never asked. The only times I saw him were in the early hours of the morning, when we argued over whose turn it was to shower first as there was conveniently only one bathroom in the house, and late at night, when, if we happened to be in the house at the same time, we would eat an awkward and silence-filled dinner together with our eyes glued to our phone screens or abstractly wandering around the kitchen. During weekends, he often disappeared from mid-morning to near midnight, which I didn't mind so much, as he always got back at the hour promised and spared me from unnecessary worrying. He was also decent enough to stay at home for the holidays although I was pretty sure he had better things to do than spend a day with possibly the most boring person on Earth.

  He never mentioned visiting his family. I didn't even want to think about mine.

  It was one of those crazy fluke days, when we were both at home and with nothing to do, that he was opening the blinds to let the morning sunlight in and I was frying eggs at the stove. He was whistling a tune, the melody distantly familiar like a song you've heard once but never learnt the name of. I decided it would be a safe time to ask.

  "Jungkook..." That was his name, although I'd never dropped 'overcoat boy' since the day I'd first seen him. It didn't help that, as it was mildly cold outside, he wore that exact same overcoat quite often.

  "Yeah?" The whistling paused for the moment, as he prepared himself - or so I imagined - for anything his opposite-gender rooming buddy had to say on a peaceful October morning.

  "Why do you spend the holidays here? With me?" Far from my intention, the questions came out desperate and faintly cliche, like a love-struck heroine forcing her lover to find reasons for his feelings towards her. "I mean, don't you have better things to do? Friends, family... You never visit or talk about your family."

  The blind-pulling thing dropped, with a clatter, back against the windowpane. Although my back was turned to him, I could imagine a cold indignation seeping into the usual warmth of his eyes. Even the conjured-up image of it chilled me to the bone. I decided to keep my back to him.

  "I don't have family," he said simply, curtly, resuming his task of opening the blinds with a little less enthusiasm. He didn't resume whistling.

  Even with his obvious and skilled attempt at concealing all trace of emotion in those four words, I could hear the faintest hint of loneliness buried deep within his voice.

  Despite being the perfect formula for a tension-filled, guilt-riddled day, that 'conversation' sparked meagre attempts from both sides at crafting a friendship afterwards. We discovered a similar love for hip hop, a like for drawing (although mine was more of a passion) and contradicting opinions, the latter of which sparked many intense debates over slowly cooling food and a creaking kitchen table.

  Jungkook was nice to be around, funny and helpful and considerate. No wonder he had so many friends for him to disappear with.

  "Corn."

  "What?"

  "Corn. Yumi means corn in Chinese."

  "It does not!"

  "It does. Look it up."

  "..."

  "See? I told you."

  Although I always pretended I hated Jungkook's nickname for me, I secretly relished the first link we'd made together as friends.

  Another thing in common - our love for sci-fi movies.

  I was curled up on the couch after an exhausting day, wrapped in a cocoon of warm fuzzy blankets with a bowl of popcorn in my lap, the scenes of the newest futurisic fantasy flickering on the screen, when Jungkook arrived earlier than planned for the first time since I met him.

  His keys jingled as he dumped them in the small china bowl placed on a table in the front foyer, and a dual klomp signalled his boots coming off. As the living room was out of sight from the main entrance, the only sign of my presence was the carefully crafted sound effects emerging from the TV's speaker system. I turned my momentarily divided attention back to the action happening on the screen before me, stuffing another handful of popcorn into my mouth.

  "Hey." His voice was hushed, as if he was in a movie theatre instead of his own living room. Well, half his own. "Mind if I join?"

  "No, not at all." I shifted to the side a bit, pulling an edge of the sizeable blanket so it was more than enough to cover two people. Taking the invitation, Jungkook clambered over the back of the moth-eaten couch and slipped into the welcoming warmth of worn wool beside me. Pressed up agaisnt his side, I could feel all the metal bling he was currently sporting. Had he spent the entire evening at a club?

  Numerous clinks sounded as, one by one, the gear came off until the simple black T-shirt and jeans he'd been wearing underneath all that metal became fully visible. He looked good. And he was probably freezing to death, despite the coccoon of warmth he'd just entered. I turned back to the movie, trying to ignore the coldness of his arm, how he was shivering slightly beside me.

  About twenty minutes later and halfway through a mind-meltingly boring talking scene, Jungkook's hand pressed up against my side was still icy cold despite the fact that the rest of his body - that was touching my side, of course - had been warmed up already. Not only was it uncomfortable, it made me feel bad for him.

  Three quarters of the way through the seemingly endless talk scene (and the characters had yet to reveal any important information whatsoever), I took his hand in mine and rubbed it to create a friction that would warm up his hand. Grabbing the other one that was dangling limply at his side, I created a shell out of my palms around his fingers and blew hot air onto his hands.

  "Better?" I asked softly, looking up to find - alarmingly - his eyes just a few inches away from mine, looking at me intensely.

  "Yeah." His voice was gentle and low, and there was this weird staticky sound to it. Like an old radio. It was soothing to listen to.

  I forgot about the movie.

  "Listen," I blurted out suddenly, suprising myself more than I surprised him, "I'm sorry about... you know, that time I asked you about your family... I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

  "It's okay," Jungkook said, his smile tilted and sad. "I was just caught off guard, is all. I just... what I said is true, about me not having a family. I guess I'm still not so comfortable talking about it yet."

  Ah, how I could relate.

  "I don't have a family either," I said, lowering my head and directing my gaze at his perfect collarbones. I didn't know why I was telling him this. But I couldn't stop myself. "Or rather, I'm not considered family anymore."

  " parents?" He asked sympathetically.

  "Its a long story." I turned back to the movie. Turns out I was wrong. The boring talk scene I'd completely ignored actually had retained some important information.

  Or maybe it was because of Jungkook's hands still clasped between mine, his steady breathing, that I had no clue what was going on.

  It was Valentine's Day when I finally told him the 'long story' of my disowning.

  Like the good guy he was, he hadn't pestered me at all about it, but I could still see the question burning in his eyes everytime I accidentally met his gaze. Our conversations became slightly awkward and strained, like we both knew the other was keeping secrets (which wasn't quite true - I was the only one keeping secrets), and the times we would look each other in the eyes grew sparser and shorter in length, the tension crackling between us until someone looked away. I started noticing things. He liked wearing dark colors, although it had more to do with fitting in than being angsty. Yes, my suspicions of his club-visiting were true, but he only went there to dance. He liked singing. Boiled eggs triggered his gag reflex. He thought trees were the most amazing things in the universe. He was contemplating rap lessons. He could beatbox, a little bit.

  And he was beautiful.

  The day I'd noticed, I'd instantaneously felt like an idiot. Jungkook was perfect - smooth black hair, high cheekbones. Large, feminine eyes. High-bridged nose. Fair complexion. It was ridiculous, how long it had taken me to notice, and how awkward I suddenly became around him. Like attractivness was a contagious disease and the only way to prevent myself from getting infected was to make as little physical contact as possible.

  Again: It was Valentine's Day. I'd decided to risk the safety of the kitchen to bake a few Valentine's Day cookies. If today was like any other holiday that I'd celebrated in this house, Jungkook would abandon his prosperous social life to spend a day holed in a wallpaper-covered house with a random girl he just happened to split the rent with. Almost everything was storebought, due to my lack of baking skill - pink icing, tiny red and silver candy balls, cookie mix - but there was still a high chance this kitchen would come out of the experiment scathed. Jungkook was always the one who cooked - on the evenings he spent here, anyways, and when he was off to a club I would usually heat up some canned macaroni or whatever. I'd originally planned for this entire ordeal to be a surprise - breakfast in bed, essentially - but the amount of noise I was making eventually led to the clomping of sleepy footsteps down the stairs.

  "Are you seriously trying to bake?" His bathrobe pressed against my back, and I prayed silently that he was wearing something underneath. "Good luck with that."

  I scoffed, "thanks," and went back to the impending disaster sitting on the counter before me.

  It didn't go half as bad as I'd thought it would.

  As I checked the cookies - rising like the instructions said they would, for once - for the third time, my heart feeling fuzzy and accomplished, Jungkook cleared his throat at the dining table behind me.

  I swiveled to meet his hesitant face. "Yeah?"

  "I've been, uh, meaning to ask, but..." he scratched the back of his neck, all the teasing confidence seeping from his posture and leaving him slumped. "Sorry if this is prying, but, uh, what did you mean when you said you were disowned?"

  There it was.

  Swallowing back the knot of tears building in my throat, I leaned onto the counter and took a deep breath. Despite my not-antisocial amount of friends, I'd never really told anyone why exactly my parents refused to acknowledge my existence. I just didn't find it necessary, and it honestly never came up. And when I felt it coming into our conversation, I pushed the topic to another subject in my form of running away.

  But now, I was cornered, trapped. I couldn't run away anymore.

  "There was a guy," I began quietly, as if someone would overhear, "and he was amazing. Two years older, tall, kind, good-looking, you know?"

  "Oh," Jungkook said, already understanding. But I chose to continue. I couldn't stop here.

  "He was my first everything. My first love, first kiss, first boyfriend, first..." I cleared my throat, pushing the shame and humiliation away. "First time. He fooled me, Jungkook, into believing everything he said. He used me as a pretty little thing hanging off of his every word and gesture to show off to his friends. When he dumped me, I was so weak... I found a club. I started drinking, Jungkook, at the age of sixteen. I deceived my parents, my friends, everyone, and threw myself into drugs and alcohol and cigarettes. It wasn't about getting over him anymore. I was falling into this endless pit of self-destruction, and I was too drunk and stoned and high to find a way out. Then the police raided the club I was at, checked everyone's ID. When they found out I was underage, they arrested me. My parents never came. It was my aunt, my cancer-riddled aunt, who came to get me a week later."

  "Cancer got the best of her?" He asked quietly.

  I nodded. "She fought for one year, and in the end she still managed to leave some money for me... and here I am." I chuckled weakly. "Scholarship student. Unbelievable, huh?"

  Silence tore the minutes apart as Jungkook thought about what I'd just told him. Surprisingly, I felt no emotion, not even a sense of relief as the second hand ticked lazily around the clock. Leaning back against the counter, I scanned Jungkook's flawless silhouette.

  "He's not your first kiss."

  I recoiled at the sudden outburst, taken aback by his forwardness. "What?"

  "He's not your first kiss." Standing up with a screech of chair legs against floor, Jungkook closed the distance between us in two easy strides until he was standing half a foot away from me. "He can't be. Something, someone that horrible... you deserve better."

  I laughed. "Do I? I'm not sure."

  "Don't say that. You do." He grabbed my wrists, gripping hard but not hard enough to cause pain. His eyes were swirling with an idea that settled into hard resolve, flickering over my face, pausing pointedly at my lips. "Can I prove it to you?" he whispered.

  In that moment, I realized something.

  Yes.

  Then the smell of burning cookies wafted into my nose and I broke away from the moment, leaving a thousand what-ifs standing there with his hunched figure.

  He would hug me, and I would find myself enjoying it. He never tried to kiss me again.

  I think it was sometime in July when I found him and almost lost him again.

  Being the kind person that he was, Jungkook decided to buy the both of us bubble tea from the cafe near our neighborhood. We sat on a bench in the park right behind my college, and talked quietly while enjoying our beverages.

  I'll never know whether it was the sunlight, or the rustling leaves, or the children's laughter. Or maybe it was the sweetness of the bubble tea seeping into my brain. Or maybe it was just him, there, enjoying the peaceful morning with me. Or maybe it was the prospect of us.

  Whatever it was, that morning I told him I loved him and proceeded to run away.

  I sprinted, a thousand thoughts clouding my head, straight back home, where I hastily unlocked the front door, slipped inside, kicked off my shoes and clambered up the stairs where I hid in my bedroom and cowered, fearing the time he would get home and chiding myself for fleeing like a coward.

  About a half hour later, when I was starting to get worried because Jungkook still hadn't come home, the doorbell rang.

  I ran down the stairs and opened the door, expecting it to be some sort of door-to-door advertiser or something. Jungkook and I both had our own set of house keys, and the spare one was somewhere you would never find unless you knew where to look.

  But it wasn't a crisply dressed, well-groomed, clear-eyed person with a handful of pamphlets that was waiting when I opened the door. Instead, a stereotypical judgmental middle-aged couple dressed in matching brown tweed overcoats eyed me ungratefully. The woman wore too much makeup without covering up any of her harsh, rude lines. The man had a salt-and-pepper buzzcut and hands that looked like a blood-coated belt was something they were used to holding.

  "Hi, how can I help you?" I asked pleasantly, my tone rising half an octave to my polite talking-to-strangers voice.

  Ignoring me, the man turned to his wife. "You told me he lived here," he said calmly. "Why is she answering the door?"

  The woman eyed me up and down, lip curling in disgust. Self-consciousness suddenly urged me to pat down my hair, but I pushed away the thought and tried to maintain my dignity. "He's got a girlfriend now, doesn't he? Rebelling against his parents."

  An awkward silence passed between us, me mulling over what to say next and the couple probably juding me even further, when Jungkook finally came back with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. My heart suddenly started working overtime.

  "Hi, who..." he trailed off when the couple turned to look at him. Within the depths of his eyes I could see numerous emotions battling for dominance, for the chance to be voiced. "You. What are you doing here?"

  "Son," the man - Jungkook's dad, I suddenly realized with cold dread seeping into my chest - said placidly, stepping back a bit as if his son was a contagious disease, "you should be thanking your mother right now."

  "For what? Ruining my life?" he asked coldly. I gulped in fear. I'd never seen Jungkook this angry.

  "Ungrateful boy!" the woman snapped. "We had an entire future planned out for you, and what do you do? You go to that singing school! We tried to negotiate, but you wouldn't cooperate. Who can blame us for not wanting you anymore?"

  "You treated me like an object!" he spat. "The only times you were actually there was to force another plan down my throat! You didn't even care about what I wanted to do with my life!"

  "Now, boy, don't be melodramatic-" the woman tried to say, before Jungkook interrupted her.

  "Says you," he hissed. "Always claiming he cheated on you when you disappear every night, crying like the helpless little you are-"

  A slap, cold and clear-cut, rang in my ears.

  "You wicked boy," his mother said disgustedly. "Be grateful that we're coming back for you. Leave her. There are better girls back home."

  No.

  "No," Jungkook said quietly, pushing through his parents until he was standing right in front of me. "I'm not leaving her. I might have agreed before, but not now." He turned so his back was to me, as if he was shielding me from his parents. Something warm and gooey seeped into my heart.

  "You will come with us!" his father thundered, taking a step closer before Jungkook slammed the door shut and hastily locked it.

  We stood still for about a minute while I let his anger deflate.

  "Jungkook?"

  "Is it true?" he asked quietly, his entire frame seeming to collapse. "About you loving me?"

  "Yes," I said without second thought.

  He turned around slowly, his dark eyes sparkling. "Yumi," he said softly, taking my hand and curving it around the bouquet I'd forgotten he had up until now. The smell of flowers wafted into my nose. "I'm sorry about them."

  "It's okay." I looked down at my shoes. "But you would rather stay here with me than go with them? I mean, you could try to convince-"

  "Convince my parents to let me do what I want?" he scoffed. "As far as they're concerned, I have to be the exact replica of my father. I would much rather stay here with you. Besides..." he trailed off.

  "Besides?" I was about to ask before he kissed me.

  He tasted like gray overcoats and late night reminders to get some sleep, like shared popcorn and sci-fi movies. Like nicknames and faintly familiar tunes, like bright October mornings and heated debates. Like the wallpaper and the peeling-paint garage door and the dark crusty stuff in the corners of the house that brought us together, the house that watched as I realized I didn't need him to say he loved me back.

  Because the answer was right there in that kiss, in his parents walking away angrily, in the bouquet in my hand, in everything we were and could be now.

  He pulled away to rest his mouth on my forehead. "Besides," he murmured into my hair, "did you really think I would leave you?"