Black Swan (Kim Namjoon x reader)

Chapter 21

Namjoon felt uneasy all day. It was already late in the afternoon and you should have been back from your lesson with Soobin already. You were usually very punctual about leaving and coming back home on time. He cursed at himself for not offering to pick you up, but you wouldn't have agreed anyway. You rarely ask for his help nowadays. He felt like there was an invisible wedge between the two of you. But this was his own doing, letting you do your own thing as you should be. He had no reason to keep you all to himself. The nerve grew as the sun dipped behind the valley but it was also when Soobin's house car appeared on the horizon. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and headed out to greet you by the gate.

"Sorry for being late," you said. "I asked to stop by the market to grab some meat for a stew." He noticed the bags in your hand and offered to get them. "It's okay, I got it," you cheered and headed back inside. He stood by the gate a little bit longer and watched you disappear from behind the door. You had no reason to need him, it was only for protection, as it should be. Still, he heart was wavering for some unknown reason.

Inside the kitchen, you had already started on dinner. The pot was boiling as you cleaned and sliced the meat. "Do you need any help?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so," you hummed. "Seokjin showed me a really simple recipe the other day." Namjoon recalled, of course. He watched bitterly from the living room while the two of you chatted away. He tapped his foot impatiently. The knife cutting through vegetables and meat. He groaned, pushing himself up from the chair. He moved to your side, grabbing a knife from the draw and a carrot. "What are you doing?"

"I'm helping," he grunted. "You can ask for my help, you know."

"I know," you smiled. "But you've helped me enough already. I should do some things for myself."

"There's not a quota on how much I can help you. And it's not like I help you because I expect you to return the favors. That's not how it is, Y/N."

"I see," you nodded. "That's very different from how I've been living my life. There's give and take. In middle school, I would bake cookies so that these girls would play with me. They all loved it. Then they asked me to make a whole lot and of course, I did. I later found out they took my cookies to a sleepover and didn't invite me. In retrospect, my fake parents might not have let me go to the sleepover in the first place, but I wished they still would have thought about me other than my cookies."

"Humans are disappointing, aren't they?"

You laughed, "Well, I'm sure the werewolves can be jerks too. It's not exclusive to just humans."

"I promise we're not like that, we care about you. It's not about what you have to offer us."

"Thank you, I know. But I also know that you have lives outside of me. I don't want my presence to interfere with whatever you had going on before. Your lives might have been a lot easier if you hadn't met me."

"That may be true," he played along. "I would go to school, go back to Etherio for my show, maybe portal to Malta for vacation, and repeat. That sounds like a fulfilling life to me."

"Sorry I ruined your plan."

"You pabo, it was sarcasm. My life before was so boring," he whined. "Now I have to watch my back for the Queen for a chance to take her down. It's kinda thrilling, in a weird sadistic way."

"Aren't you scared?"

"I'm not scared of anything," he shrugged a confident smile on his face. You spent dinner listing off random phobias and he dismissed every single one of them. Maybe something about magic makes the user immune to fear. But you for sure knew you were still afraid of spiders and bugs. He went off to bed soon after, he was exhausted from worrying and waiting all afternoon. You stayed up just a bit longer to finish the last chapter of your book. Another hour went by before it was over. You shuffled to bed, the slippers sliding against the wooden floor.

Before you got to your room, you heard a muffled sound coming from behind Namjoon's bedroom door. You waited, the sound came again. Pressing your ear against the door, the muffled crying got louder. You stood out in the hallway, debating if you should wake him up or not. When the sound didn't stop, you couldn't help yourself from entering. Namjoon laid flat in his bed with the blanket up to his chest. He was weeping while he slept. You crouched down by his side and carefully wiped his tears away. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I won't do it again. Please don't hurt me."

"It's okay," you replied. "No one will hurt you here. I'll keep you safe."

"Can you stay with me?"

"Of course." Namjoon slowly opened his eyes. He showed off a soft smile when he saw you. He pushed the blanket off and scooted over to make room. Hesitantly, you laid beside him with a foot of space between you two. "Are you okay?"

"I lied when I said I wasn't afraid of anything," he hummed. "I'm scared of my parents, of disappointing them, of disappointing others."

"Did they hurt you?"

"No more than other parents disciplining their kids. Anytime I got a B on a test, they wouldn't look at me or say anything. They groomed me to be afraid of failing. So I always try to outdo myself now, to go out of my way to be perfect in the eyes of others. I started performing magic for others as a way to redeem myself. Like that's the only form of validation I have. I don't know how to just be myself anymore."

"Well, if it helps, I don't think you're perfect."

"Jeez, thanks," he said. You could feel him rolling his eyes.

"I mean that in a good way, it means you still have room to grow. If you're perfect already, what's the point of living? And I think who you really are is the person that's happiest when he's not performing or putting on an act in front of others."

Namjoon stared at his ceiling. He thought about letting Jungkook paint it a while back, maybe a constellation. "I'm that way with you."

Even in the dark, you saw yourself blushing. "Really?"

He nodded, "Yeah, so you can't take that ring off."

"Well, I definitely tried," you chuckled.

"It's enchanted by my grandfather. Once I put it on someone, it can be taken off unless I die. The same goes with my ring, I can only take it off if you die."

"Till death do us part? Literally?"

"My grandpa was a romantic. But he and grandmother had the most beautiful love I've ever seen. I want something like it."

A heavy wave crashed into your heart. Your hand was numb. "Then shouldn't you have waited to give this ring to someone else?"

In his answer, he grabbed your hand and pulled it to his chest. "It's yours now. And I'm at my happiest."