Ex-things - Tumblr Posts
You are allowed to be angry at someone who hurt you. Even if they are upset you’re angry at them. Even if they didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s okay to be angry, and even if they struggle to cope with it, their ability to cope is not on you. It’s their responsibility.
Your feelings are valid and allowed.
(I think this goes without saying, but I want to be clear that there is a difference between feeling angry at someone and expressing that in a healthy way vs doing something harmful in anger.)
Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, cutting contact with someone feels terrible.
You might feel guilty over what they're experiencing. You might miss them, and be grieving the loss of that relationship (which is still valid by the way, even if you chose to end it.) Sometimes it's that you feel lonely without that person. Or you're missing something in your life.
Often, the people we cut out did add something to our lives, even if the negative outweighed the positive. Maybe they were the person you sent funny cat memes to without second thought, and now you have to adjust to not having that anymore. You see those cat memes, and feel the instinctive urge to send it and have to catch yourself. And now, you just scroll on. Maybe they were the person that you messaged each week when that specific show aired and you knew they were watching it too. Maybe you don't even want to watch that show anymore because it hurts.
This is a reminder that even if it feels terrible, there's a reason you did it. And it's worth it. It might take a long time to feel like it's worth it, but eventually it will. It isn't always easy to leave someone. I think in most cases, it's actually really hard, even if you know it's best for you. Stay strong in your decision. You made it for a reason.
@ahundredtimesover hello hello, thank you so much for reading and leaving your review, i’ve always been a big fan of your page and whenever you read my work, i feel a burst of pride and joy, so thank you again for being so thoughtful with your reviews, they always make my days and weeks, i’m more than excited to read to your future works🩷
ex-things - m.yg.
genre: angst (after breakup!) (4.8k)
summary: over the years, everything you've owned has belonged to yoongi and everything yoongi's owned has belonged to you but when you break up, everything is your's and everything is his but none of it belongs to the two of you anymore and both of you can't stand it.
masterlist
-
“scarf,” you say as soon as yoongi appears at the door, you fail to hide your smile when he throws his head back in exasperation and throws the door open.
you push past him and enter his apartment which looked…exactly the same.
but then again, you did just break up some ten minutes ago so, of course, it would be the same.
you don’t know why you expected the universe to shift just because your heart was broken.
and as you throw back the cushions on his sofa, push the things on his coffee table, look under the sofa and table, and walk past him to check the coat rack and then the kitchen, you feel his piercing gaze following your every step.
you knew where it was.
it was in your bedroom.
or well, his bedroom now.
“can you hurry the fuck up?” he groans and in that second, you eye the black plastic cover filled with two or three soju bottles sitting on his kitchen counter.
you swallow and yell back, “can you just let me look for my scarf in peace?”
another groan.
a stomp on the floor.
“fuck, i’ll mail it to you,” yoongi makes his way into the kitchen with loud steps and you arch your eyebrow at him, then look towards the green bottles shining on his counter, he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and spits out, “i was going to drink today before anything ever happened, don’t feel too special.”
“really?” you muse, clinking them against each other, and in the next second, yoongi’s hand is wrapped around your wrist and he’s pulling you, gently, towards the door.
“i’ll send it when i find it,” he murmurs as he pushes your coat, your car keys, and your phone into your hands, and you don’t say anything for a while.
you clutch your belongings and stand by the door until you notice how yoongi's eyes are bloodshot, their usual sharpness dulled by exhaustion. his shoulders rounded with an invisible weight, and you feel guilty for leaving.
“a-are you okay?” you ask, it feels stupid to ask because you know, you were the same as him.
he laughs bitterly and throws you a glare, you notice how his hands tremble beside his body, and you look away to save him and yourself from the pain of asking again.
“i just broke up with my girlfriend of three years, so yeah, i’m doing fantastic,” he breathes out, you wonder if it pains him like it’s paining you to hear his words, “now, can you leave?” yoongi gestures towards the door again.
you sigh, “wait a minute,” and enter your his home again.
“what now?” he throws his hands in the air and stomps after you.
he watches you grab the scarf from under his bed, he turns his eyes away when he sees your hands shaking while holding it, “did you know where it was?” yoongi breathes out, his face and voice in disbelief.
you don’t say anything again.
and when you leave, he pours himself glass over glass to forget the trembling of your jaw and how you paced around the apartment while knowing exactly where you kept the scarf.
he laughs again, the sound is strange, rough, and just wrong without your laugh chiming with him.
he pours himself a glass again.
-
it’s been a week.
“hi,” you say as yoongi walks into his house, he jumps a little, clutching his chest as his eyes widen to look for you.
you raise a hand to wiggle your fingers at him as a ‘hello, hi, ex-boyfriend, you’re back at your home and so am i!’ and yoongi blinks.
“what the fuck are you doing here?”
“oh, i was loo-“
“wait wait, how did you even get in?” yoongi frantically marched to his front door and twisted the knob to check for any damages and you roll your eyes.
“i found your key under the potted plant. speaking of which, do you want to get robbed or something, why would you even put it there?” you throw your hands in the air as you sip tea, grimacing as the strange, bitter taste of yoongi’s favorite green tea spreads in your mouth.
“first of all, stop drinking my tea, you don’t even like it” you put the cup down with a sheepish smile and fold your hands on the table.
“and second of all, i didn’t think i had to worry about any ex-girlfriends breaking in, my bad,” yoongi complains loudly and you press your palms to your ears, shaking your head, “i’m not even here to see you, i’m here for…well, i’m here for,” you struggle to finish the sentence.
and yoongi glares at you.
“what is it?” as he moves his head to pin his glare on you, his soft, freshly straightened hair moves with him.
“straightener!” you say loudly, clapping your hands, and yoongi’s eyebrows narrow again, “you’re going to get wrinkles, yoongi.” you point at his eyebrows but he doesn’t let up, you’re sure that his eyebrows furrowed deeper.
“okay! i’ll be on my way once i get that,” you wander off into his bedroom and yoongi throws his head back in exasperation.
your straightener is easy to find because well, it’s not yours, it’s his and it’s just sitting on his vanity but yoongi doesn’t bat an eye at that.
he only watches you move around his home with his arms crossed on his chest and an unreadable satisfaction on his face.
and when you leave, you can’t help but notice that for all his annoyance, he never tells you to not come back, and he never tells you to find everything you own and leave at once.
with that knowledge, you leave his home with the biggest grin on your face.
-
“you need to get out before my booty call gets here,” you happily eat your ice cream on the kitchen counter as yoongi walks into your home as if he owned it.
did you mention that he was the one to bring you ice cream?
your favorite too, one scoop of hazelnut and one scoop of brownie.
“ha ha, very funny, you should start thinking of a career in stand-up” he responds with a roll of his eyes and you giggle even more, sliding down to catch up with his pace around your home.
“what are you here for?”
“t-shirt, you know the one you stole,” yoongi shrugs and glares again, walking right into your room and you follow with hands closed behind your back, “which one?” you muse as you remember all the (10) t-shirts you’ve stolen from him.
he looks back as he nears the closet, eyes narrowing at you, “how many do you have?”
“how many can you remember that i have?”
yoongi groaned in sheer frustration and you crawled on your bed, watching him pick apart your closet, and glaring at you whenever he found one of his t-shirts in there.
for a moment, it was amusing.
it was the funniest thing to watch yoongi get annoyed, you always enjoyed it.
but in the next moment, when he was around his fifth t-shirt, you felt this ache slowly develop in your chest and spread across your throat and then your mouth, then it was everywhere.
it was this dull throbbing that you couldn’t shake and your eyes dropped to fiddle with your fingers instead of looking at him, collecting his belongings from your home.
because, just two weeks ago, it had been your t-shirts too, hadn’t they? and it wasn’t just your home then, it was yours and his, wasn’t it? sure, you had separate apartments but it never felt like that, it felt like you had two homes and both homes belonged to both of you.
and now, you only had one.
you had wrapped your arms around his back when he was in your room two weeks ago, he was here now but you couldn’t even touch a hair on his head without feeling like you’ve crossed a line.
your head was starting to collect the ache and make a home for it so you ask, “are you almost done?”
you didn’t mean to ask him that, you actually very, very badly wanted yoongi never to leave so you could believe again, ‘i have two homes, i have two toothbrushes, two mugs, two keys, two doors, and two of everything’ but yoongi pauses, he collects the t-shirts he found and nods, “yeah, i’m done.”
when he walks out of your room, the ache finally takes over your head and you follow him with dazed eyes and stumbling feet.
at the door, yoongi stops, he turns around with concern brimming in his eyes and that is enough for your hands to shake again, “you good?”
“i just broke up with my boyfriend of three years, so yeah, i’m doing fantastic,” you deepen your voice to mimic his and yoongi shakes his head with a small laugh, “you better be okay,” he says at the end, and his voice is so soft, it feels like cotton pressed into your cheeks.
and you nod because if yoongi says you have to be okay, you’ll find a way to be okay.
but when he leaves, you are back to having just one home, with one toothbrush in the bathroom, one mug in the kitchen, one set of keys in your purse, one door, and one of everything else.
and you’re sorry to yoongi.
because you don’t know if you can be okay.
-
a couple days passed again.
you had an angry yoongi pacing in front of you as you watched.
“you’re being ridiculous,” yoongi shoves a hand through his hair, glaring at you as you sit with arms across your chest and refusing to look at him.
“i’m not,” you huff out and he rolls his eyes.
he did that a lot.
he did that a lot with you.
“i didn’t steal your plushie, are you fucking kidding me?” yoongi whines and walks away into the kitchen to pour himself a drink.
you follow him and right at the doorway, you don’t enter, you just watch his even more sunken eyes and even more rounded shoulders with conflicted eyes.
a part of you wanted to hug him.
a part of you wouldn’t mind killing him.
a part of you wanted to kiss his shoulders to lift them.
a part of you wanted to leave a red mark on his face.
but all parts of you, you couldn’t trust or believe.
these past few days, you couldn’t trust or believe anything actually.
yoongi senses your eyes on him, he knows how you look at him and how you seem to show so much with just a gaze but he holds strong.
you were broken up.
you shouldn’t be here.
hell, he’s not sure if he should be here or not either.
but he betrays himself over and over again, he lets you into his house and you let him into yours, and he feels ridiculous every time he closes your door, he’s not sure what you feel when you close his.
“i threw it away,” he shrugs his shoulders, eye muscles tensing oddly, he’s not sure if you notice or not.
“what?” your whisper is so quiet, yoongi wouldn’t have known you were speaking if he didn’t see your lips moving.
“i threw it, okay? there was no use of it being around here anymore, so i fucking threw it away,” he didn’t mean for his voice to be loud, and he didn’t mean for his words to hurt but maybe he did, maybe he wanted to hurt you.
but he loves you?
but he’s also okay with hurting you.
to an extent.
yoongi had never understood why he couldn’t love properly, why his love for others and himself had to hold a touch of pain, a touch of misery, but it was always out of his control.
it had been different with you.
for a while, that is.
but he was back to his roots now, pain and misery and love and affection held his hands and danced around him.
and he had to dance with them too.
“i threw it,” he repeated, but your plushie was tucked into his pillows, into his sleep, and into his days and nights.
it was stained with salty tears now, it was stained with the ice cream he ate after he left your home, and he didn’t want you to see it.
for a moment, you both didn’t even twitch in the wrong direction, yoongi watched the dark liquid in his cup with growing intensity and you waited for him to tell you that your plushie was safe.
“fine,” you sniffled, grabbing your coat and stomping to the door and yoongi followed, he tried not to but his feet walked ahead of his mind.
at the door, you angrily shoved your feet into your sneakers and pushed your hair out of your face, as if to prove that you weren’t crying, that you weren’t affected and anyone else would believe you.
but yoongi knows you.
and he knows your red nose and cheeks can only mean one thing.
before you close his door, you say, “you’re a horrible person, yoongi.”
he thinks he knows what you feel when you close his door now.
hatred.
-
you swore to yourself that that would be the last time you turn up at his place, but you had genuinely forgotten something there and needed it this time, so you swallowed your pride and rang his doorbell.
you don’t greet him when he opens the door and yoongi feels like he could fall to his knees when you shove a bag with his favorite ice cream, matcha, and coffee (he’s a caffeine guy, he runs on it), into his hands and yoongi knows he’s forgiven.
“i forgot my trousers here,” you mumble afterward and head straight into his closet to dig through for the work trousers that you cannot live without.
yoongi doesn’t dare to utter a word, he looks through his closet beside you and apologizes when his skin touches yours in any little way.
you can’t believe there was a time when you would touch him as if his body was yours too and he would touch you the same. but his apologies just dug the truth deeper into your skin, which was that you didn’t belong to him, and he didn’t belong to you.
so, you nod, you bear your cheeks heating up and thighs going weak, and just look through his neatly organized piles of clothes too.
he used to organize your stuff too, he used to section them, fold them, and keep them neatly by his clothes.
that’s how you find your trousers, crisp folds, and fresh-smelling, right beside his work clothes.
and your heart squeezes as you pull it out.
the folds loosen, the trousers limp in your hands, and that small change in its structure, makes you think of yoongi and everything that fell apart with him.
when you leave that day, you pause at the door and whisper, “you’re not horrible, yoongi, but maybe i am, maybe i ruined everything, but please don’t hate me.”
before he can catch you and wipe your tears and tell you that you were right last time, he was the horrible one, he was the one who texted late, who came home late, who missed birthdays, but you were already running away and he was left with a lit cigarette burning his throat.
-
“i swear, it was here,” yoongi shifts the things around your closet, head buried deep in shelves and racks of clothes and shoes, you stand at the doorway with your arms crossed against your chest, trying not to roll your eyes.
“and you have a million other headphones, so i don’t understand why you would need to find this one,” you step into the room and lazily move things around to try and find it too, yoongi scoffs from a few feet away, “it was special to me,” he says and turns his back to you again.
“why?”
“my grandfather gave it to me,” yoongi huffs, and his hands stay busy.
but.
“your grandfather died when you were five,” there was no way his grandpa gave it to him and you know you’ve caught him.
he could’ve at least tried harder with his lies.
it was strange, seeing him here, standing in your bedroom, surrounded by things that no longer belonged to both of you.
you don’t think you’ll ever get over that feeling of loss.
the moisturizer you would’ve shared with him.
the cheap wig that he would wear to make you laugh.
the razor that you would hide to annoy him.
they only belonged to you now.
though you don’t bring up his grandfather to drive him away, you only say it because it was hard for you to understand why he was here, looking for headphones that he could buy tens of pairs of.
he pauses, you wait for him to say something else, or lie about a friend who didn’t exist who gave it to him, lie about his dad giving it to him.
but yoongi doesn’t say anything.
he keeps looking.
you refused to keep anything that touched you in the last three years.
well, except for some things.
“yoongi,” you call out, pointing towards the unopened box in your closet and he turns his head that way, quickly walking over to it and flipping it upside down.
the photo album that carried your first anniversary.
the promise ring that he gave you on your second anniversary.
the matching couple t-shirt which he cringed at but wore whenever he could.
the.
the.
the.
so many the’s and so many first’s and second’s of things that you kept, though ‘kept’ was the wrong word, you treasured these things, you loved them.
and all of them fell on the floor with noise that shook your ears and chest, not because of the volume but because it was like you were pouring your heart in front of him.
but you loved them in the past, you liked to think that you did and you were in the present now, watching yoongi eye the things you gathered without his knowledge.
and all of it was only yours now.
“when did you keep this here?” he asks, and you immediately know he’s asking about the simple diamond ring that everyone thought was your engagement ring.
but it was just a promise ring.
and you removed it when, “that day you didn’t come for my birthday,” you mumbled, picking up the things and putting them back where they belonged.
buried inside a box.
shoved into a closet.
but before, you pull out his headphones from the box and hang it over your head for him to take.
when he takes it, his fingers touch the smallest part of your palm and your eyes gather tears as if rivers were breaking a dam in them.
yoongi stands without saying a word for a long time but then he walks to the door, “you’re not going to close your door?”
you’re not coming to see me off?
you get up unwillingly and walk to the door without sneaking another glance at him and drop the ring into his palm, “bye, yoongi.”
his hands tighten around the band of platinum.
both of you look at the dangly, worn-out wires of his headphones that hang from his other hand.
you had given them to him for your first anniversary.
not his dead grandpa or dad or friend.
it was you.
and both of you refused to acknowledge that fact.
and when yoongi finally leaves, he leaves behind a space in the air that waits for him to come back and take his place again, in your life, in your home, in your space.
but he doesn’t turn back.
and you close the door, letting the space remain.
-
a few days went by again.
neither of you showed up at each other’s doors anymore.
neither of you had anything left to collect.
neither of you had anything that belonged to the other.
and it was strange, the quiet, the loneliness that crept on your back and it always hit at the most unexpected of times.
when you poured your cereal in the morning, you realized you were holding the box that you had bought while grocery shopping with yoongi, it was your favorite time of the month, the one time you could really feel that he was your person.
but the box was empty by the end of your breakfast and you kept it back in the cabinet.
when you arranged your clothes, you saw your messy folding and fell back on the pile of clothes that still needed folding.
how yoongi did this every day, you had no clue.
but as you lay in pieces of cotton, linens, satins, sequins, and many more materials that hugged and pinched you, you couldn’t help but think that surely, yoongi wouldn’t leave you like this, there has to be something of his that you still own.
there has to be something.
so, you got up and with renewed desperate energy, you started searching.
you pulled upon every desk, every closet door, every nook and cranny, you searched with shaking hands and watery eyes.
“there has to be something, there has to be,” you whispered to yourself, your voice choking as things fall over from the tall walls, they fall on your feet, and your toes, and a sharp pain hits you every single time, but you push through.
because.
there has to be something.
you can’t end it like this.
you and yoongi cannot end like this.
anyone else can.
but not you, not him and you.
and the closets you look through stay ajar, the desks you’ve emptied stay tipped over, and everything you own is on the floor.
but there is none of yoongi in any of it.
so, you sink.
you sink to your knees, sobbing and flipping over items as you reach them.
because goddamit, there has to be something.
when the bell first rings, you don’t register it, you are way too intent on the clutter in front of you.
but then it rings.
and rings.
and rings, again and again.
relentless.
and you push yourself up, hoping it’s no one you know because you don’t think you can explain the tears on your face.
but when you open the door, your mouth goes dry and you know you don’t have to explain anything.
because across from you, is a red-eyed yoongi and he’s carrying a box.
“can i come in?” is all he asks, his voice barely a whisper and you’re already opening the door and pulling him in.
but once he’s in your home, in your space again, the familiar soft and sharp scent of him, the sight of him, it was too much. you couldn’t breathe. your eyes never leave him, every breath he took, every shift of his fingers, every fall of his chest, all of it was dancing in your eyes and for the love of god, you couldn’t look away.
he sets the box down and stands there with his hands opening and closing around nothing, and you want to grab them, you want to spread them across your cheeks and feel his warmth, which was sometimes cold too but you didn’t mind, you never minded with yoongi.
but instead, you curl your hands behind your back and stop yourself because it still wasn’t right.
“i don’t have anything of yours,” you start, voice already breaking, “anymore,” you finish with hands tightening so hard around each other that you could feel the bruises blooming on their surface.
“i know,” he takes a sharp inhale of breath and looks away from you and you want to beg him to look at you.
for a second, it’s just you reliving every second you weren’t with him and it’s him looking at your apartment that was void of anything personal, anything that called it a home.
“i want all of it back,” he sniffs, looking at you finally, you want to take it back, you aren’t sure how you survived three years of his eyes only on you and you squeeze your door handle, “all of what?” you whisper, and he sniffs again, “your stuff, all of it, your stupid scarf, your straightener, everything, i want all of it back, in my place, in our place, where it belongs.” he says it so quietly, so earnestly and each word has you pulling your skin tighter.
“your plushie is in this, i never threw it away but i’m taking it back, my t-shirts and headphones are in this, i’m leaving them here,” he bends over the box and starts picking things apart, and each thing he pulls out, fills you with relief.
but.
“but that isn’t right, yoongi,” you try to defend, “we aren’t together anymore,” you hate the words as they surface out of you and yoongi shakes his head.
“but is this right?” he lifts his hands from the box, his jaw trembling again and you instinctively smooth your hand over it and yoongi pushes his face into your hands.
“is it right, both of us miserable?” he whispers and the world bottoms out from underneath you, suddenly gravity is nothing and you’re both floating towards each other.
“but i hurt you,” you grip his headphones and this time, his tears fall the same as yours do, “i hurt you too.” he places a hand on your knees and that cold warmth, that bare touch leaves you open.
“but i’m done, i don’t want to hurt you anymore,” yoongi begs, he shakes his head as he says it as if he can’t believe there was a time that he had hurt you but you’re the same, you can’t believe that you hurt him once.
“before you came here, i was looking for something, anything that was yours so i could come back,” you sniffed loudly, your voice falling and lifting and yoongi listens with eyes that have always looked at you, “but i didn’t find anything, yoongi and it killed me.” your voice fully gives up as you bury your face into your hands and immediately, you feel his arms pulling you into his chest and his hands running down your hair.
“you don’t have to do that anymore, i’m back see,” he tips your face towards him and his smile is so soft, so real that it makes you smile too, “i’m not going anywhere.” he assures you with a kiss on the top of your head and your watery eyes dry out.
“me too, i don’t want this anymore, i want us, i want two of everything, i want you and i want everything,” you utter back to him, the weight of the words floating between you too.
“and you have it, you have everything again, the ring is in there too but that is for whenever you’re ready.” he kisses you again and you snuggle into his embrace, feeling like you’ve lost centuries of holding him, the thought of the ring swells your chest into a balloon that could snap, “that will take time, but thank you,” you whisper, kissing where his shoulders met his neck.
“like i said, whenever you’re ready but it will always belong to you.” yoongi whispers back and you smile in pure delight, nodding along to his words.
“we were stupid for thinking that we could stay apart,” you laugh hesitantly into his chest, the idea of the two of you trying to be separate was ridiculous to you and yoongi laughs with you, which makes you melt into his body, because it was ridiculous, you were two parts of a whole, two houses in a home, two mugs in a kitchen, two keys in your purse, two toothbrushes in one bathroom and two of everything else that you could think of.
and that was how it should’ve been, that was how it was always meant to be.
somewhere in the night, yoongi crawls up your sheets and your plushie is between the two of you and you make fun of him for acting as if he threw it away, he rolls his eyes and shushes you with a kiss.
“by the way, that straightener is yours, not mine,” you whisper and he is aghast, “i fucking knew it,” he yells and sits up, and immediately starts to complain “you know how stupid i’ve been looking with hair that looks just like holly’s!”
and you remind him, playfully this time, that what was yours was his, and what was his was yours and he falls on the bed, grumbling under his breath and complaining until the sun comes up.
and it feels right, everything that belonged to you and him back in their place, back in their homes and yoongi, back in your life, your home, and your space.
just as it should be, just as it was meant to be.