Chapter Text
The first visit with the therapist is hard. You like talking about yourself when it’s your current hyperfixation but talking about your feelings is harder because you just have so damn many of them and they push and shove and jostle for position, all jagged, sharp edges and mean, angry voices.
“Is there ever a time your brain is quiet?” The therapist is very kind, an older Korean woman who speaks fluent English with a British accent that reminds you of the handful of times you’ve heard Jisung speak English. She doesn’t mean this question to be scary, you can tell by her gentle expression, but it is. You curl your legs up under you, feeling gauche as you try not to put your shoes on her couch. You pick at the peeling cuticle of your right thumb, your eyes focused on a plant across the room. She’s waiting you out. Dammit.
“I can do it before I sleep, sometimes, if I daydream a little, tell myself a story in my head.” The cuticle peels away. You start bleeding a little which you try to staunch with a tissue you grab from the box next to the couch. She still says nothing. The blood keeps dribbling out. “When I’m reading, too, I can get so deep I don’t even hear people talking to me.” You push harder at the tiny wound on your finger, relishing the sharp sting. “Sex. Not with someone else but sometimes with myself I can just be...my thoughts sort of…” You jerk a shoulder, peek up at the therapist to find her nodding, her expression still placid. She starts to open her mouth and you say, fast, “Dancing. I can do it when I dance.”
“Let’s go back to the sex, or the part where you say you can’t shut off your mind with someone else. What happens with someone else?”
What do you want from me? I need to sleep, I have class early tomorrow. No, stop it, if I want to f*ck I’ll tell you. sh*t, no, I’ve never had this problem with anyone else, gotta be your fault, maybe it’s how your tit* are just so f*cking big or your ass jiggles. What do you mean, we could watch p*rn together, why? Ugh, no, just stop, gross. Leave the lights off, f*ck.
“Where did you just go?”
You blink and scrub your hands over your face. “I...I’ve only had sex with two people.” You hate how small your voice sounds, how weak and pathetic and apologetic. How behind your knees is suddenly sweaty and your stomach hurts.
“Ah,” she says and writes something down on her pad. You want to whimper but then you think about Felix’s teasing grab of your ass, Hyunjin holding your hand, Changbin’s sweet kisses, Jeongin’s arms around you, Seungmin making room for you on his desk, Jisung’s silly memes and Minho’s cat gifs, and Chan growling,
“So pretty. You’re so pretty and wet, all for me, aren’t you, look at that, so good, you want it, yeah, baby? You sure you can take it again? So f*cking good for me, so perfect, god you feel so f*cking good, are so good to me, just want to be inside you all night, yeah, you want that, too, huh, my sweet, good, sexy girl?”
You drop your feet to the floor and sit up straighter, wrap your arms around yourself. “My first and only boyfriend was an asshole.”
“Tell me about him.”
So you do, in words that rise and fall, in frantic haste and slow, careful sentences, but you tell her everything: The casual cruelty wrapped in helping you better yourself. The disdain for your interests and your hobbies. The mansplaining. His lack of interest in sex unless he initiated, unless he wanted it, and then sometimes not even able to get it up and blaming you for it. You even, for the first time out loud admit that he hurt you, sometimes during sex because foreplay was kissing and that’s it, and sometimes with his hands tight on your upper arms, pushing you into the wall, slamming doors, slamming drawers, one time a bottle of perfume you bought yourself flung against the wall, shattering into a million pieces like your heart.
She just listens. She takes notes. She doesn’t interrupt. When your words peter out into great, gulping sobs, your body curled forward over your lap, your face buried in your hands, she asks,
“Is it okay to touch you?”
You can’t answer verbally but you nod. She comes and sits down next to you, lays her hand on your back. When your sobs slow to hiccoughs and heaving breaths through your mouth because your nose is useless, she offers you tissues with her other hand. You mop at your face as she says, “I hear you telling me you know the way he treated you was wrong, a him problem instead of a you problem. I also hear you telling me you don’t know why you stayed, why you cared, why you let him do those things to you. Am I right so far?”
You manage a nod. That is the crux of it. You blow your nose and crumple the tissues in your fist.
“Good. Those are absolutely the best questions to start with. I’m going to give you a homework assignment which, I know, I know, you’re already inundated with homework, mid-terms coming up, but this one is easy. You ready?”
Another nod. You’re startled when she leaves her hand on your back as you sit up, slowly. She pats you, lightly, twice. “Before we see each other next week, I want you to write down five things you like about yourself.” At your disbelieving laugh, she chuckles and pats you again before she gets up to move back to her chair. “I know, seems silly and stupid and weird. Some of the things we’ll do together will definitely be that way. Try this one and we’ll talk about it next week, okay?”
“Okay.”
When you stop at the receptionist in the luxurious and peaceful outer office to settle the bill and make your next appointment, you find weekly appointments made for you for the rest of the spring semester and the bill for all of them already paid. The receptionist smiles at you, hands you a reminder card for your next appointment. “Kim-Nim has already handled everything for you.”
Your smile is ridiculously dazed when you step out into the surprisingly warm and bright spring sunshine. Your phone buzzes in your purse.
SexySeungmin: All done? I see you standing there. Come here, I’m down the block on your right.
You look up and see him, looking much hotter than anyone should look loitering at the curb. You realize with a start he’s got his hair brushed back from his forehead and jesus, why is that so damn hot? You’re like a Victorian man who sees ankle for the first time, bark bark, woof woof. You giggle. Your insides feel like they’re fizzing and melting and reforming.
🔥GirlJazzy: Call me your pretty baby.
SexySeungmin: What? Why? And I said come here.
You start walking, eyes darting from your phone to the sidewalk and back as you type. The fizzing spreads out to your fingertips and toes at his bossy tone, even in text.
🔥GirlJazzy: I mean, if you’re going to treat me like a sugar baby, I should at least get the pet name I want.
“Sugar baby? Because I paid for your therapy?”
You tilt up toward him as you step right into his personal space, dropping your phone back into your purse. He tilts his head down to you, an inquiring, uncertain look on his gorgeous as f*ck face. The fizzing turns to liquid heat, your whole system lighting up like fireworks. “If not your sugar baby, then your submissive?”
Seungmin tries not to choke on his own tongue. He knows his ears and part of his neck have probably turned bright red because they burn. He was afraid, from the tone he couldn’t read in your texts, that he might have overstepped. Now, though, he’s not so sure. Something about the way you’re looking up at him, a little innocently, a little coquettishly, a little hopefully, even though your eyes are red and swollen from what looks like tears, shoots straight to his protective instincts and his dick. Experimenting, he leans forward over you, using his superior height in an effort to make you feel small and sheltered, letting you know he has you, he cares about you, he won’t let you fall. You yearn toward him which makes him swallow, hard. He lifts a hand, meaning to cup your face, and instead finds himself curling his long fingers around the base of your throat. When your eyes darken and you gasp, he nearly groans aloud in the middle of the quiet, posh street, and is f*cking thankful his jeans are loose. He’s harder than he was yesterday when Hyunjin sent those damn pictures. He clears his throat, murmurs into your ear, wonders if he’s hallucinating, “My pretty baby, letting me take care of everything like a good girl.”
“Definitely your pretty baby, Seungmin,” you breathe out, pressing just a little into his hand, rewarded by the shaky exhale he makes, by the way his hand tightens so, so briefly before he steps back, by the little half-smirk on his wide, appealing mouth, by the way his hands are trembling a little as he rubs them together.
“You ready to go to dinner?” He sounds a little strangled, huskier than normal. The fireworks in your body have subsided into a warm, sweet, banked glow. You slide your hand through the elbow he offers you.
In the restaurant, Seungmin sits beside you instead of across from you. He keeps his arm over the back of your chair. He orders for both of you after you discuss the menu in quiet tones. He feeds you bites from his bowl and his plate. Halfway through the meal, he whispers into your ear, “My pretty baby.”
You shiver. He chuckles, warm and low, his fingertips brushing the side of your neck.
After dinner, he takes you on a stroll through a nearby park, holding your hand. He doesn’t say much and you don’t say much, just enjoying as dusk slips into early evening, pausing to pet a friendly dog that snuffles around your shoes, laughing as a toddler wearing only one shoe and giggling goes running up the path away from a frazzled father holding the other.
“Do you have a lot of homework to do?” he asks as you’re waiting on the train to take you back to the university, your bodies aligned from shoulder to hip, your arm around his waist, his over your shoulder.
“Not really. Studying for mid-terms, I guess, and one program to finish but it’s a group project so have to wait for the others to check my work. You?”
He hums out a negative. “Studying, like you said, and I have to make some edits to a paper I got back. Nothing too exciting.” You feel him brush a kiss across the crown of your head and pull you just a little closer. “Want to go to the library together?”
“Sure.”
You study for nearly three hours, sitting across from each other in the low lamps of the library. Occasionally, he nudges your foot with his under the table. Sometimes, you tap the top of his hand with your pen. When he asks if you’ll check his edits to his paper, you realize you’ve been in love with him since last semester when he stole your notes and drew a quick cartoon sketch of a dog on them. On the third day of class.
“Seungmin?”
“Hmmm?” he asks, not looking up from his notes. When the silence stretches, he reaches out blindly but unerringly for your hand, squeezing it in his. It makes you feel small in the very best way, his hand so much bigger than yours, his fingers long and slender. “What do you need?”
“Nothing. I just...thank you. For being you. For being here for me. For taking care of me when I don’t always take care of myself.” You don’t see his startled, wide-eyed glance, your eyes already back on his laptop, but you hear him sigh, feel him release your hand to circle your wrist in his fingers, thumbing your pulse. Hear him say, gently,
“Anytime.”
