Abortion tw, just fwi. Please don't read if uncomfortable!

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“Mmm, I’m gonna look so good.” A smug, sassy little voice pulled me out of my slumber.

My closed eyelids burned red as I struggled to stay asleep, but the sunlight scorched its way into my dreams. That, and Sakura wouldn’t shut up.

“Gonna look hella yyyy.” She sang, then hummed to herself. I registered the faint sound of scissors cutting fabric. “Hope Jimin doesn’t mind I cut up his shirt.”

I sat bolt upright in bed and stared at her, causing her to shriek and drop the scissors.

“Holy mothering !” Sakura panted, her hand pressed against her chest. “God, Jimin, you look like a freaking zombie or something. Like a dead pharaoh rising from his sarcophagus.”

I rubbed my eyes, crust falling from the edges. Disgusting.

“Don’t cut up my clothes.” I mumbled. “I wear those. Cut up your own clothes.”

Sakura beamed at me and held up a faded t-shirt. “I made a crop top.”

I watched as she took off her pajama shirt (also a shirt of mine) and donned the newly-made crop top. The hem was surprisingly well-cut, no ragged edges or loose threads hanging off of it.

“Don’t I look good?” She did a little pirouette, showing off to me.

Maya had given me that shirt when we first started dating. We’d had our first kiss after she helped me put it on, her hands “accidentally” wandering around my chest. It had been my first kiss, and not just with her.

Maya had been my first everything.

“Why do you look like that? Are you mad? Or do I look awful and you’re trying to think of something nice to say?” Sakura gnawed on her bottom lip, looking severely put out.

“You look great.” I smiled wistfully. “Really beautiful. Hella y.”

The part that she had cut off had had a small stain on it. I’d got it one summer at a pool party with Maya. She’d started referring to it as my lucky shirt after I told her she was my first kiss. Said it was the shirt I’d really get lucky in. I wore it a lot that summer, hoping she’d take the hint and take it off of me one night. She’d been hinting at it at that pool party, while we were sitting down at a table eating barbecued chicken, her foot wandering along the inside of my thigh. I’d dropped the chicken in my lap when she touched a particularly sensitive spot.

My lucky shirt had stained, but Maya had helped me take it off.

She’d taken my ity that night, too.

“Are you mad?” Sakura fiddled with the hem of the shirt. “Sorry. Was this shirt special or something? It just looked really worn and there was a stain. I mean, I’ve never seen you wear it or anything, so I thought it would be fine? Sorry, Jimin. I can…I can stitch it back together? I’m really good at sewing.”

She babbled on and on, clearly anxious. Her eyes flicked from my narrowed eyes to the way my hands clenched the sheets. I heaved a sigh.

“No one’s that good at sewing, Sakura.” I pushed a hand through my hair. “And it’s fine. It’s just a shirt.”

It wasn’t just a shirt. I’d lived in that shirt after Maya and I had broken up. She used to sleep in it when we were younger, calling herself my lucky charm. When she left me, she laid it out on the bed with a little note attached.

“Keep this and remember that I loved you once.”

I pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to block out the memories. It didn’t work and I remembered how I’d clutched that shirt to my chest, sobbing into it when I realized that Maya had left, had taken all of her things except our memories. Every single ing photo album, every present she ever got me, the engagement ring I knew she’d found in my bathroom cabinet.

She’d left everything, but she knew the shirt would get me.

Maya had taken everything she needed to live, but she’d left me with her ghost.

“Did Maya give you this shirt?” Sakura asked, holding the scraps in her hands. She stared down at them, her voice flat and monotone.

“Yes.” I answered shortly, struggling to control the waver in my own voice.

Sakura’s eyes flicked to mine for the briefest of moments, her cat eyes narrowed in understanding.

“I have a shirt like this, too.” She the fabric, talking more to herself than me. “I used to wear it to sleep every time I slept at Jin’s. He got it at a concert we went to when we were teenagers.”

“Where is it now?” I asked, not really caring. I wanted her to take off the shirt so I could cradle it in my arms and whisper apologies to it. I knew my thoughts were unreasonable, but that shirt was my relationship with Maya. And now it was ruined.

Just like my relationship with Maya, ironically enough.

“I left it at Jin’s.” Sakura replied. “Because I left Jin.”

I laughed bitterly. “You still love him, sweetheart. Don’t pretend.”

She met my gaze, eyebrow raised. “I never pretended otherwise.”

I bristled, immediately on the defensive at the implication in her words. “I love you.” I insisted in a hoarse, indignant voice.

“You look like you wanna murder me for ruining your ex-girlfriend’s shirt.” She pointed out.

“Would you want me to wear Jin’s shirt?” I asked angrily, throwing the blankets off and scooching up the bed so our bodies were inches apart. I placed one hand around her exposed waist while the other tugged on the hem of my destroyed shirt.

“No. But I didn’t keep that shirt, Jimin.” She ran her fingers through my hair and I hissed, drawing away from her.

I glared up at her, feeling irrationally angry. I didn’t understand my own feelings about a shirt. It was just a shirt, just a shirt. I was over Maya; I loved Sakura.

But I hated that she wore Maya’s shirt. That was Maya’s, and would always be Maya’s. Not Sakura’s fashionable little crop top, but Maya’s nightgown when she stayed in my bed.

When she was my home.

“You don’t love me.” Sakura trailed her fingers down my face to my chin, forcing me to keep my gaze on her. “You’re still waiting for her to come back.”

I made an irritated noise of dissent, the sound coming from the back of my throat.

“You are, Jimin.” Sakura insisted. “She’s not coming back. She’s married and she’s having a baby.”

I tightened my grip on her waist and she let out a small sound of surprise and let go of my chin. Resting my head against her stomach, I made a whispered confession.

“That’s supposed to be my baby.”

Sakura didn’t say anything for a minute. “Because you wanted to marry her?” She asked, confused. “Jimin, you have to let that go. She married someone else. It’s supposed to be his baby.” She gently played with my hair in her hands, trying to soothe the sting of her words.

I nuzzled my face against her stomach, the warmth of her skin and the worn fabric of Maya’s shirt rubbing against me. “She had an abortion before she left me.”

Sakura breathed out noticeably, a gentle whoosh that stirred the ends of my hair. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” I encircled my arms around her body, blinking rapidly as I felt hot tears gathering behind my eyes. “It was mine.”

“You sure? She cheated on you, right? It could have been his.” I wondered if she was trying to comfort me. She was terrifically ty at it.

“She wanted to get pregnant with him. She wouldn’t have had an abortion.” I whispered, closing my eyes against the memories. Finding a positive pregnancy test in our bathroom trash, as well as a pamphlet from Planned Parenthood. I wasn’t against abortion.

I just wanted to be a father.

Next to the trash, I’d found my mother’s engagement ring, opened and discarded on the floor. Maya had known I was going to propose.

She never told me she was pregnant, but I had guessed by her missed period and general sense of anxiety. We’d had pregnancy scares in the past, neither of us too fond of using protection. I was young and stupid and very hopelessly in love. I wanted a family, wanted Maya to have my baby. I didn’t mind not using protection and she always said she hadn’t, either.

She’d never been pregnant before.

I knew she’d been cheating on me. She didn’t try to hide it after a while, but we still slept together. I couldn’t let her go, and I think was her way of throwing a bone to me. Keeping me around until she was sure it would work out with her new man. At the time, I thought she still loved me. Still wanted to sleep with me. Why would she stay when she could have left at any time, if she didn’t love me?

I’d come home from the bakery one day, back when I was first getting it together. I’d been working long hours and Maya and I hardly ever saw each other. I wanted to plan a special night for just the two of us, in hopes of reviving our romance, so I came back early, phone pressed against my ear as I tried to call her. She didn’t pick up, so I left a cheerful voicemail asking her to call me back and that I had a surprise. Jack whined when he saw me, but I ignored him and made a beeline for the bathroom, feeling like my bladder would explode.

I was throwing away a paper towel when I saw the pregnancy test in the trash. A little pink plus sign that made my heart leap with hope. I knew she used protection with her lover because I saw the condoms in her purse one day. We never used them, but I checked her purse regularly to see them steadily decreasing in number.

The hope died in my chest when I saw the Planned Parenthood pamphlet. A phone number and appointment information were scribbled on the back, dated the day before. I rooted around some more and found a little box marked with the name of a drug I knew ended an early term pregnancy.

I threw up in the bathtub, unable to turn my head to the toilet where I knew she had flushed the vestiges of a little zygote down. Abortion wasn’t pretty. My sister had had one before she met my brother-in-law and I had been there to help her through it. I had been the one to flush it down the toilet, the one to pat her back and make her some tea as she cried.

I wasn’t against it, but I knew it hurt some women. Not all women, probably not Maya, but some. It had hurt my sister.

It had hurt me to see the little pink plus sign and then the little blue pill packet that ended it all.

It was almost like Maya wanted me to see it. Wanted me to fully understand her rejection of everything I had ever wanted with her. Discarded engagement ring, discarded offspring.

Discarded me.

She took everything she needed to live her new life, but left me with the ghost of her old one.

I walked into our bedroom, now just mine, Jack pressing his hand against my palm while I used the other one to brush away my tears. She’d taken her clothes, her shoes, even our spare bedsheets. I hated her for that. Taking our sheets to sleep with someone else.

But she’d left that shirt with that note.

“Keep this and remember that I loved you once.”

I kept it, and now I couldn’t stop remembering.

After the first week following our breakup, when I literally never took that shirt off, I washed myself and washed that shirt. I tucked it away in the middle drawer of my dresser, Maya’s drawer, and took it out once a year. The day that Maya left me, I’d take out that shirt and wear it and turn my mother’s engagement ring over in my hands, wondering what my life would have been like if things had turned out differently.

I knew it was unhealthy, but I’d always been a brooding person.

I just wanted a family.

“Jimin?” Sakura’s tentative, sympathetic voice dragged me back to the present. “I’m sorry about your shirt.”

I could tell from her tone that she wanted to say she felt sorry about everything else, too.

“It looks better this way.” I said hoarsely, tears scratching the back of my throat. “You look adorable.”

“I can take it off and put it back. Keep all the little scraps together, too, if you want.”

“I don’t want you to.” I kissed her navel. “I want you to keep it. Maybe hang it up in your closet next to my other shirts. It needs some new memories.”

“I wouldn’t feel right - ” She began, but I cut her off.

“Just keep it.” I whispered. “Please.”

“Okay.” Sakura assented quietly, running her fingers through my hair.

We stayed like that for a while, her hands in my hair and my arms wrapped around her. I felt safe and unburdened, finally. I’d never told anyone about that, not even my sister. I never even confronted Maya about it, but we both knew I’d known.

Seeing her again had been such a shock. Pregnant and married and still happy that I carried a torch for her.

.

She was a , but I’d have taken her back that instant. Would have married her and raised that baby as my own.

I had gone into the kitchen and cried after she’d left. Cried because she had that life with someone else, cried because I still wanted that life with her.

Cried because she’d ended the life I had with her.

And then I’d seen Sakura, cute little Sa with her fishnets and her nose ring and her masses of black curly hair.

Cute little Sa who was in love with her requited love with her childhood sweetheart, who didn’t love me back, who was utterly foolish for not being with Jin.

“Sakura.” I said softly, pressing one last kiss against her skin.

“Hmm?” She met my eyes as I tilted my head up at her.

“You should be with Jin.” I pressed my thumbs into the dimples on her lower back, casting my gaze down as she struggled not to roll her eyes.

“Jimin, no.”

“Yeah.” I insisted, tucking my hands into the back pockets of her jean shorts. “You love him and he loves you. So what if he wants to take over the family business? He wants to marry you. Wants to have kids with you. So what if it’s not exactly like you planned? It could still be good. You don’t know what will happen.”

“Don’t you love me?” She asked wryly. “Who tells the girl they love to go to someone else?”

“I do love you.” I whispered, cocking my head to one side and look up at her. “And I want you to be happy. And I don’t think you’ll be happy with someone besides Jin.”

“I like being with you.” Sakura replied. She sat down in my lap and I skimmed my hands up and down her back.

“You love Jin, sweetheart. Why are you trying to stop yourself?”

“He doesn’t love me.” She rested her forehead against my shoulder, sighing softly. “Jimin, I don’t want to talk about this. I know you’re sad and , but you don’t need to be self-sacrificial right now. I don’t want to be with Jin.”

“Yes, he does and yes, you do.” I maneuvered so she was laid out on the bed underneath me. I hovered above her, taking in the sight of her black curls splayed across my pillowcase, a confused expression on her adorable face. She entwined her fingers in my hair, shirt riding up to expose her black lace bra.

“Tell me why you love me.” She whispered, her bright brown eyes staring up into mine.

“Because you helped me feel warmth again.” I whispered back, blinking as the sunlight filtered through the blinds. “Because you’re so ing bright and beautiful and sometimes you just blind me. My little sunny Sa waking me up in the morning with your smile and your sassy remarks. ‘Cause you sing in the shower and you like my cake and you wanna watch movies and eat cold pizza with me. Because you made this sad little apartment feel like a home again.”

“Any girl could have done that.” She murmured, but a faint pink blush spread across her cheeks.

“Mm-mm.” I disagreed in a hum. “You were the only girl that I wanted to give cake to and comfort after a breakup. You think you’re the only one who’s broken up in my bakery? Or the only girl who scattered cherry blossoms across my floor? You think I’d have gone on a fake date with any pretty girl with black curls?”

“Yeah.” Sakura laughed, dark eyes crinkling. “You hopeless romantic. Any girl could have been your sunshine.”

“Yeah, but it’s just you.” I whispered, staring down at her, trying to import the seriousness of my words. “It’s just you, Sakura.”

She kissed me then, finally, after a whole night of waiting. She kissed me with a soft, tender passion and I felt all thoughts of her reunion with Jin leave my mind.

“I love you.” I panted as we broke away, faces flushed and breath short. “I love you, Sakura.”

She kissed me once more, a gentle, fleeting press of her lips against mine. “I believe you.” She whispered, settling back on her elbows, staring at me levelly, cat eyes unblinking.

“I love you.” I murmured again, touching our foreheads together as I tried to drink in as much of her gaze as I could. I never wanted to exist outside of this moment. This hazy sunrise confession, this dark-eyed acceptance of love.

Sakura pulled me down to her to meet me in a soft, slow, sweet kiss. One hand rested in my hair while the other wandered down to the waistband of my pajama pants, tugging them down. I reached towards the nightstand for a , knowing she was off her birth control at the moment, but she placed her hand on my arm, a meaningful look in her eyes.

“We don’t need one.” She gazed at me steadily, allowing the implication of her words to set in.

“But, Jin - ” I started to say, thoroughly taken aback.

“We don’t need one.” Sakura repeated, a small smile on her face.

“But…” I shook my head, trying to organize my thoughts. “What? Sa, don’t do this because you feel sorry for me.”

“I want this, Jimin. I want you.”

“You can have me, and we can still use protection.” I pointed out, reaching for a again. Still, I couldn’t help the warmth from spreading through me at her words.

“But we don’t have to.” She said softly. Her fingers tapped against my face, tracing the stubble on my cheek. “Jimin…”

“Hmm?” I glanced up at her, ripping the wrapper open with my teeth.

“I don’t want to go back to Jin, you know. I wouldn’t be here with you if I wanted to go back to Jin.” She took the packet out of my teeth and placed it on the bed next to us.

“But I thought you were using me to get over Jin.” I reminded her, confused. Wasn’t that the premise of our whole relationship?

“The first time, sure. But not this time. I wouldn’t want to try again with you if I didn’t want to make us work.” Her smile made me wonder if she was laughing at me on the inside.

“You…you want to try again with me? You want to make this work?”

“Yes.” Sakura said quietly. “I do.”

I kissed her then and she started to undress me, giggling a little in the back of . I took off her shorts, but left Maya’s shirt on her.

It was Sakura’s shirt, now.

The lay forgotten as she sighed out my name, arms circled around my neck.