(Y/N) POV:

It's hard pretending I'm fine when it's clear to me that I'm not. Clear to anyone who really sees.

There's a noticeable gentleness with the way the company employees interact with me today; maybe it has something to do with the way that I'd walked in with my shoulders drooping. Or maybe with the way the pile of tissues keep growing when I burst into tears when I dwell on last night again- the moments of quiet just causing the hurt and pain to well up and overflow- a wound that once again gapes.

And it doesn't help that the eyes that linger on me are sympathetic, wary and hesitant to push further- the creative department team not pushing and challenging and examining every fine detail with their usual fierce passion- it's muted slightly.

It's as if everyone is tiptoeing on eggshells- scared for that perhaps inevitable moment when their feet land heavily and crush them- or perhaps aptly; when the bottled up emotions explode.

And it's after another round of tears that soak miserably and quickly through a wad of tissues that my editor finally snaps.

She slams the clipboard she's holding of the tasks yet to be completed onto the glass table and huffs.

"That's the fifth time I've caught you crying now. Do I need to go over and deal with this myself? Or call Jaebum?" She says, voice firm and brooking no argument.

My eyes stare wetly at my miserable reflection and sniffle.

"No-one, I'm just being super emotional." I say but then she clicks her tongue.

"What happened to add to the god-awful day you already had yesterday?" She asks, empathy in her voice.

And the question makes the memories of last night flash back up- and so does the image of the untouched doughnut box I had seen lying morosely on the fridge shelf.

Kookie hadn't eaten any. It feels like a silent but blatant gesture of his hurt- that he didn't want anything I bought him.
And the thought stabs deeper than I thought- wedging itself like a knife buried to the hilt.

I had hoped that his anger hadn't been so much that he would've not eaten- it just added to the jumbled mess of emotions that were sitting heavily at the bottom of my heart.

The bond felt like a leaden dead weight too- clouded with my emotions and a mix that I couldn't decipher where they were coming from.

My editor sets down a bottle of chocolate milk down, smiling sadly at me.

"Cheer up, I'm sure everything will work out.  Your soulmates would do anything for you." She consoles me, and it brings me little hope- but I clutch desperately at it nonetheless.

I hope she's right. I hope it with everything that I am.

KOOK POV:

The guilt gnaws at me even more from the moment she stepped out the door, becomes the only thing occupying my mind until I can't even focus on the chores I've been trying to get done. It's only when a sharp pain blossoms along my palm that I pull my hand out of the sink, red blood blooming as it wells up and stains my hand. I eye the knife I'd accidentally grabbed too hard with disdain- as if it's personally attacked me. But the sting in my hand doesn't even begin to compare to the aching gaping hole in my heart.

I glance at the afternoon sun and turn off the water, scooping my palm up to go run under cold water in the bathroom. Jin hyung enters just as I'm turning the tap off and incidentally catches me with my right hand cradled towards my chest.

Alarm flares in his eyes and he hurries forward, pushing me down to sit on the edge of the bathtub as he gets the first-aid kit out from under the sink and tends to the cut, dabbing antiseptic on it. His hands are gentle and eyes caring and soft and it's not the pain in my hand but the weary grief of my soul that makes me burst into tears for yet another time today.

But this time there's someone there to catch me as I fall, arms scooping me close and I cry into hyung's shirt, feeling his soft hand rubbing up and down my back as I let the tears fall. Great, hiccupping gasps as I burrow into the warmth of his chest. I cry until my throat aches and my eyes are sore, I cry until my heart feels drained but even then there's this throbbing pain.

I messed up so, so bad.

So bad that I couldn't look at the doughnuts sitting on the fridge shelf without tearing up again, so bad that I couldn't even think of eating them.

It hurts. But it feels like nothing will go down my throat until I've made it better. Breakfast had sat wasted on my plate; my eyes glued onto (Y/N) as she steadfastly ignored me.

It hurt even though I knew I deserved it.

And I think it was the longing in my heart that made me think I had imagined the small glance as she'd left; but the pain and hurt had been unmissable until she'd pushed those feelings aside.

When I finally raise my head, hyung is smiling sadly and there's this pulse of empathy coming out from him, brushing against me- not wiping away the hurt and making it vanish, but letting me know he understood.

I stand up shakily and he doesn't hold me back and tell me to stay, he relinquishes his hold.

"Go on Kook-ah, make it right." He whispers, and I leave him in the bathroom after I press a grateful kiss to his cheek, legs rushing to bring me to my phone, bandaged hand protesting slightly as I furiously tap at my phone trying to call her.

It rings constantly but she doesn't pick up.

Ringing again and again in a way that is painfully reminiscent of last night when she hadn't answered and it sends stabbing pains of fear shooting through my body.

"Please please please...." I mutter desperately into the phone, not realising it's been connected.

"What is it Jungkook?" she says wearily on the other end, voice thick as if she's been crying.

The thought that she's hurting with none of us to comfort her sits uneasily in me. Her voice is also shaky.

"(Y/N), I want to, need to talk to you." I plead into the phone.

There's a hitched breath, a wavery gasp.

"Why would you want to talk to me?" she asks, voice broken and sad.

"Because it hurts so bad knowing I've hurt you. And I need to make things right." I say into the phone, voice coming out between sharp gasps as the beginnings of panic kicks in. Thoughts that I've messed up so badly, thoughts that there's no redemption, no hope making my breath come out in sharp panicky breaths, each breath coming out with even more difficulty than the last.

My heart feels like it's thudding uncontrollably in my chest, frantically trying to escape, my hand trembles by my side whilst the other desperately clutched onto the phone like it's a lifeline, the only thing keeping me afloat and stopping me from being submerged and drown by the overwhelming sense that I've lost control.

And then her voice comes through, softer- sweet as it's always been and pulls me out of the waters completely.

(Y/N) POV:

I bolt upright from my chair, heart in my mouth as I hear Kookie begin to panic on the other end, breaths sharp and uneven, small whimpers leaving his throat after he utters those words. 

I had just been about to reply that I was coming home, that we should talk it out, that I needed him just as much as he needed me; no perhaps more when this had happened.

I need him to calm down, I don't even know if there's anyone near him, if anyone can even get to him in time to help him through the beginnings of a panic attack- before it progresses into something worse.

"Kookie, Koo I need you to listen to me. Baby focus on my voice, listen to me. Kookie listen please." I plead into the phone, eyes stinging as I hear his trembling breaths of air.

"Kookie focus on my voice. Just my voice. Can you hear me?" I ask gently.

"Y-yes." He stutters.

"Good boy, I need you to continue focusing on my voice and just follow along with what I'm asking. Can you do that for me baby?" I ask again and when he replies with a yes, I guide him into breathing deeply, in for four out for four, ears straining to hear his breaths to even out slowly. It's a long few minutes and when he does finally calm down slightly, I continue to speak to him- all whilst grabbing my keys and hurrying down the stairs- seeing the wait for the lift had prompted me to rush down another way.

"Good boy baby now think of something that makes you happy, safe. Focus on the details about it, what specifically is it that makes you feel that way my love?" I ask.

"My safe place...is you. You make me feel warm and happy and fuzzy." He confides in a slightly hoarse voice, still tinged with dregs of panic.

My heart thuds wildly in my chest, soul aching to rush to him and hold him close- previous hurt forgotten in the raw honesty of his answer. With the way he'd become scared when I didn't respond immediately.

Some part of me whispers maliciously, blaming me for the panic attack that crawled up on Kookie so suddenly. That I made him feel like that.

But even as I drive home, I'm worrying inside- hurting and desperate to get to him.

Through the speaker Kookie continues to speak to me, whispering details about what it is that makes me his happy place.

And I don't know whether to gush and melt into a puddle or let the ache in me build further.

All the small details and observations he's made makes me wonder how I'd ever considered his words last night as anything more than anger and hurt in the moment. Why I'd ever felt like he didn't want me.

And when I get home, I rush out the car and dart up the stairs as quickly as I can and when I see Kookie supported by Jinnie oppa, phone still tightly clutched between whitened hands, I rush to him and barrel into his lap, as much as my bump allows me to.

"I'm sorry Koo, I'm so, so sorry. I love you so, so much." I whisper into his skin, tears splashing against his collarbones even as his arms come just as desperately around me and hold me close.

"I'm sorry. I said things that hurt all of us, hurt you. I love you. I just want you safe. Please don't hate me, I couldn't live with that." He whispers, voice cracking with emotion.

My hands cradle the back of his head, fingers carding through the strands that lie on the nape of his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin and allowing my worry to slowly abate and vanish until all that I feel is the warmth of our love.

"I promise I didn't want you hurt. I was such a fool. It hurt not knowing where you were, but I took it out unfairly." He continues to whisper against me, tears soaking the sleeve of my shirt even as he nestles closer, as if this level of closeness isn't enough.

I just hold him, allowing our tears to wash away the guilt and hurt in our hearts- until our eyes are sore but our souls are light. Until forgiveness and love becomes the balm soothing over the hurt we'd unintentionally inflicted onto each other.

I hold him until our hearts that had been paper-like become firmed and strong again, beating with only love and need for each other.

At some point Jinnie oppa had left because when we part, smiling tearily at each other- he's nowhere to be seen. But that night he readily opens his arms for the two of us as we crawl into his bed.

"Come here my babies." He says, and we need no more prompting as we crawl under the covers and rest our heads on his chest- eyes still staring at each other, fingers lying intertwined on Jinnie oppa's sternum.

I feel a soft kiss being pressed onto my head, see one pressed onto Kookie's head- and there's this soft glow of contentedness around us. 

I smile as I see Kookie's red-rimmed eyes crinkle as he shoots me a smile, as he leans over oppa's chest to press a sweet kiss to my mouth- a kiss that tastes like the sugary sweetness of the doughnuts I'd fed him, of the ones he'd sighed as he relinquished to his hyungs, scooping me onto his lap as compensation.

The kiss is long, slow, and soulful. The kiss is an apology and a gift. An end of something sad and the beginning of something even stronger.

We're always learning and growing together, and as we lie there- our souls lie intertwined too, so closely and intimately and enwrapped in each other- unwilling to part, and one.

And just as Kookie's other hand trails down the side of my body and comes to rest on my stomach, there's a small shift, a nudge of our baby. And the bunny-like innocent grin that tears across his face makes it worth it.

Because it's all I ever wanted and more. I had them and our baby growing inside me.

That's all I needed to be happy.

(AHHHH! I DIDN'T EXPECT KOOKIE TO BECOME PANICKY BUT IT GOT WRITTEN THAT WAY AND PEOPLE OF THE MIGHTY PROTECT (Y/N) SQUAD- LET US LET THEM CUDDLE IN PEACE, FORGIVE KOOK WITH ALL YOUR HEARTS AND GUSH AT THEIR LOVE. HOW WAS IT? LET ME KNOW! PERSONALLY- I'M HAPPY WITH THE WAY IT GOT RESOLVED, NOTHING LIKE A GOOD OLD CRY TO BRING EMOTIONS OUT AND PREVIOUS HURTS TO BE FORGIVEN. OOF! PREGNANCY IS STRESSFUL AND I'M ONLY WRITING ABOUT IT! I HOPE THE DESCRIPTION OF THE PANIC ATTACK DIDN'T TRIGGER ANY OF YOU- IF IT DID, I AM INCREDIBLY SORRY. AND I HOPE I DIDN'T UNDERMINE IT IN ANYWAY. STAY SAFE, STAY HAPPY, STAY SMILING LOVES! AND FOR THE 450K READS...YOU GUYS ARE A BLESSING I'M NOT SURE I DESERVE. LOVE YOU ALL!)

QUESTION....ONE OF YOUR MOST ENJOYABLE MOMENTS AT SCHOOL?

Mine was...me and my friends were helping out at Parents' Evening and School event for welcoming prospective students and rather than doing car-parking on a cold wintery evening- we played hide and seek across the school! And in the dark it was amazing! Though I'm not sure my maths teacher appreciated getting a scare when I was hiding near the carpark- and I also got caught by her husband who was waiting for her too! I don't think he likes me. 🤣🤣

Borahae! 💜💜💜

PurpleQueenie <3