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jeonqkooks · 2 years

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our beloved summer | jjk (03)

You made a vow to hate Jeon Jungkook ever since he packed up and left you without a single explanation, but when he shows up at your door after years of radio silence, it turns out that maybe your resolve isn’t as strong as you thought.

pairing: producer!jungkook x songwriter!reader

genre/warnings: exes au, fluff, angst, eventual smut, swearing, obs3 is kinda oc centric 🤔, a mention of death but like a hypothetical death??, mentions of being *emotionally* haunted, taehyung almost dies 😭, someone so hot and cocky and petty that you might die, oh and tswift references because obviously

rating: PG-13

word count: 7.8k

note: asdfghjkl it’s been a hot minute guys. this was supposed to be longer but i decided last minute that some bits would probably work better in obs4, so no jimin and hobi today 🤥

vote for the revenge 🍆 😈 here before obs4!

series masterpost / playlist ; moodboards ; taglist

— as always, i’d appreciate any thoughts or comments you may have, and please drop a like and/or reblog if you enjoy reading ♡

But I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs The smell of smoke would hang around this long 'Cause I knew everything when I was young

Cardigan - Taylor Swift

Sometimes, you cry in your sleep.

When you were a kid, aged four or five, you often had nightmares about going to kindergarten. It was all very dramatic. You would wake up with tears and snot running down your face, wailing like someone was taking your candy, calling for your mother until you made sure that you were in fact at home, instead of locked away in the absolute hell that was preschool.

As you got older, you started having nightmares about a wider variety of things, but it was usually about someone passing away – your mother, to be specific – and your body would always shake itself awake as the imaginary devastation wreaked its havoc, taunted you, toying with the idea of losing a person you loved. You used to think your brain was a special kind of fucked up.

Regardless, you noticed a pattern in how your subconscious worked. Instead of monsters and demons and every horrifying urban legend mentioned on Creepypasta, it would plague you with your greatest fears and your own worst memories. You tend to burst at the seams just like that, tortured by your own damn mind.

When you opened your eyes this morning, a tear immediately rolled down your cheek onto the pillow, and a hollow, stricken feeling greeted you good morning as it settled in your ribcage, making a home next to your heart. You felt it seep into every vein and every pore before you were even fully awake.

Though this time, it wasn’t a dream about someone dying. Quite the opposite, actually. In fact, it was a nice moment that your brain chose to replay in your head as you slept, though the memory seems to have slipped your mind now that you’re trying to escape the sudden anguish in your chest.

You can’t recall what it was, but you remember the feeling. You remember that it was nice. A nice and happy memory, with Jungkook.

You don’t know why your subconscious has to agonize you like this. Every time it forces you to remember Jungkook and who he was, it adds another invisible scar that only you can see. Fantasy keeps making you relive him, and reality keeps ripping him away from you.

You aren’t an emotional person, or you didn’t use to be anyway. You think – no, scratch that, you know – that it must be the result of your mother’s emotional unavailability throughout your whole childhood. Whenever you tripped and fell, or accidentally burned your tongue on a hot drink, or got teased by the neighbor kids, your first resort is to cry because that’s what children do. They get hurt, and they cry. But then your crying would cease after a few minutes, because your mother would scold you into stopping. She conditioned vulnerability out of you since you were a kid.

Even as you’ve grown up and learned to distance yourself from her, to separate her wants from yours, to be your own person instead of someone that your mother was trying to revive her long lost dreams through, you still hear her words sometimes. You can’t be anyone if you’re weak.

You can’t say that it’s entirely her fault. That’s the generational difference between the two of you, and the hypocritical standards to which the world operated in her time are really to blame. In a way, she was just a victim, a byproduct of that hypocrisy. But she tried to pass that onto you, and for some reason, you can’t let go of the fact that she did manage to instill in you some of her aversion for vulnerability.

By the time that you met Jungkook, you had already been away from your mother for a while. You weren’t estranged, but you weren’t on the best terms that a mother and her daughter should be on. You started to be independent from her halfway through high school and gradually, because she stopped being the person who gave you the clothes off your back and put food on your table, you took away the right she thought she had to rule over every aspect of your life.

And despite that disdain for vulnerability that you at a young age had no choice but to internalize, you became the one to decide what to feel, and how to feel it. You decided that maybe being emotional wasn’t the worst thing after all. It’s normal to cry when you’re sad, or in pain, or when you’re neither but you just simply need to let out a good cry.

You reckon that’s where it came from – your need to be in charge, to be in control of everything. If you’re the one in the driver’s seat, then other people have less power to hurt you.

But not Jungkook. Never Jungkook.

It applies to everyone else, but you don’t suppose Jungkook has ever played by your rules.

Being with him was easy. You were surprised how little effort it took to let him in because you were once convinced that there was no chance you would ever be able to stand him. Loving him made breathing seem hard.

In your relationship with Jungkook, there was nothing to decide. You didn’t have to choose to be happy; he just made you happy. As long as you were with him, every house was a home. Until he pulled the rug and you reverted to being that little kid again, on the ground with bloodied knees. He was the calm, and he was the storm.

You had no say in him leaving you, and you had no say in how his swift exit from your life would affect you. For the longest time, there was just a lot of heartache that demanded to be felt.

In the first few months after it happened, you were practically debilitated by the sadness. Taehyung still remembers it all too well. You spent your weekend evenings drowning your sorrows by knocking back drink after drink until you couldn’t remember who you were trying to forget. You could barely even function, and it was fucking pathetic. It was the most helpless you had ever felt.

It wasn’t until Taehyung and Jimin took away your most effective distraction that you started choosing again. If your mother made you choose to feel, then Jungkook made you do the opposite. He taught you that maybe your mother wasn’t so wrong after all. Maybe she’d been hurt before. Maybe she was only keeping you from having to experience it. Maybe this was how she loved you.

You took it one day at a time. Baby steps. Because the only way to condition your heart to not love Jungkook, was to convince yourself that you hated him. You forced yourself to internalize it until you believed it.

You hated him.

And it worked, because he wasn’t there to tell your heart otherwise. Choosing not to love Jungkook is choosing to love yourself.

But in your dreams, in your sleep, however, it’s another story. The difference between feeling when you’re awake, sober, and feeling when you’re asleep, is the control. When your lines of defense are down, all hell breaks loose.

Your subconscious is a strange place. If the hurt was a house, then you’d be its most treasured occupant. But this house is haunted. You walk through the halls every day, and down the stairs, and into rooms that are filled with memories of you and him. The walls echo I love you, the curtains rustle with whispers of I miss you, but every night, when you settle into a bed that is only warm on one side, you feel the distinct absence of an I’m sorry.

Jungkook didn’t even say sorry to you, not when it mattered the most.

Funny enough, right across the street is the healing, but you’ve never really been able to get close to it. With every step you take, the distance seems to stretch longer and longer, until you’re just running in place trying to get to the other side. Eventually, you get tired of trying, and even though the hurt is a hellscape purely designed to make you suffer, you think you would rather go back to that house than be stuck in the hollow limbo in the middle of nowhere, looking at a better future just within reach but never really getting there. It’s cold in the void, and it’s warmer in the hurt because there, at least it’s familiar.

Sometimes, you’d stand in the bedroom, wrapped in a blanket of your own insecurities and regrets, and look out the window. The floorboards beneath your unsteady feet creak with the voices of everybody who has left you, everybody who was taken from you, everybody who deemed you unworthy of their love and time.

You’d stand there and see a glimpse of yourself in a better world, where you’re a little less lonely, a little less hollow, a little less of a shadow of your former self. You could see yourself be happy, even.

You know that it’s there. It’s all about making the active decision to move forward. But the brighter future that awaits you just ahead is one without Jungkook, and… you’ve never been sure if you really want that.

It takes some more effort than usual to breathe, and to sit up, and to get out of bed, and to start your day like everything is fine and like you aren’t knee deep in one of your unwanted sad girl hours. It’s unwanted because you didn’t choose this. You’ve been actively choosing to not be sad about Jungkook for so long that you almost forgot there was a time where you had no choice but to be sad about him.

He only came back into your life recently, and he hasn’t done anything – not really – and yet, he’s already threatening to undo what you’ve taught yourself and all the progress you’ve made.

You don’t know if he kept his promise of leaving first thing in the morning since you aren’t exactly an early riser, but he did leave before you woke up. And when you paddle out into the kitchen, for some reason you feel like you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t.

You’re surprised to see Taehyung there, looking at you awkwardly and holding a bag of pastries in his hands. On the kitchen counter next to him is a plate of toasts and scrambled eggs with a side of kimchi. An odd combo but it’s your odd combo. There’s some steam that’s still rising from the food.

Taehyung nods toward the counter and sets his croissants on the dining table. He addresses an elephant in the room but not the elephant in the room.

“I got your favorites, but it looks like you already have your breakfast.”

“Oh, uh…” You purse your lips and swallow, recognizing that Taehyung didn’t buy food to bring over and then made you some more food. You’re hungry, but you don’t feel like you can stomach anything right now. “You can have that… I’ll take what you got me.”

He nods and doesn’t say anything else. He maneuvers around the familiar space of your kitchen to get some orange juice from the fridge. Taehyung offers to make you a cup of tea even though it’s your apartment, but you decline and choose to munch on the croissants dryly.

The atmosphere is off at your dining table.

Yours and Taehyung’s love language is food. It’s sad how you can’t even share this nice thing with him today.

Taehyung takes a hesitant bite of the eggs, as if he’s scared that you’ll jump over the table to take back your plate. It’s just breakfast.

Neither of you says anything about who spent the night on your couch just out in the living room, nor about who made the food that Taehyung is eating.

To anyone else, there probably isn’t even something to talk about. You provided someone shelter and they made you some food as a gesture of appreciation. And maybe that really is the case with this. You gave Jungkook a place to stay so he wouldn’t risk his life in the heavy rain and in return, he scrambled some eggs and toasted some bread for you.

You’re overthinking it. There’s no deeper layer of meaning here.

You’re half present and half somewhere far away. Words slip from your mouth as you converse with Taehyung but you don’t know what the conversation is even about. One of those times where you’re talking but not really saying anything.

“So…” Taehyung trails off unsuredly. You chuckle, knowing what he’s trying to do. It’s warmer in your chest, where your heart soars with affection for Kim Taehyung. You love him so much, you love him wholeheartedly. You cannot even begin to fathom what life would be like without him.

You’re grateful that your friend doesn’t press for information; he must sense from the way you’re idly picking at the flakes of your croissant that you would talk about it in your own time. You take the reins that he’s handing you, letting you steer the conversation in whichever way you want to.

“You went off about private jets last night. What was that all about?”

“Celebrities these days, man,” he grumbles, sounding exaggeratingly aggravated. “Did you know that Kylie Jenner takes flights on her jet for less than 20 minutes? Twenty whole minutes? I mean, what the fuck is up with that? Complete disregard for the environment.”

With a scoff, you pretend to be annoyed. “I knew you weren’t listening to me. I told you about her 3-minute flight last month, you ass.”

He leans back, still chewing, and thinks, though after approximately fifteen seconds, he announces with no remorse, “Yeah, I don’t really listen when you tell me celebrity gossip.”

You gasp and chuck a croissant flake in his direction. It doesn’t make it very far, and lands on the eggs instead.

“Then why are you suddenly so invested? How do you even know who Kylie Jenner is now, and how she uses her jets?”

“Hey! I know who Kylie Jenner is!” He seems offended, but then adds in a smaller voice, “Sort of.” Classic Taehyung, always living under a rock. “The point is, my sister kept sending me articles about it and I thought, “Huh. Private jets. The environment. Billionaires. Celebrities.” We– well, you, aren’t that far removed from that. You’re working with one of them right now.”

You give him a look.

“What?” Taehyung shrugs. “Jin must have his own jet too, right?”

You don’t know. It isn’t a topic that would casually come up in conversation, nor does he go around bragging about it. But you wouldn’t be surprised if he does own a jet, though. The amount of zeroes decorating his very Googleable net worth makes you woozy if you think about it too much.

You shrug. “I don’t know, maybe?”

“I bet he does,” Taehyung says, leaning forward on his elbows as if he’s got some insider scoop you aren’t privy to. “And I bet you won’t remember this conversation when Jin offers to fly you to award shows on his jet.”

Maybe there’s some truth about speaking things into existence and the universe conspiring to make it happen. Manifesting and all that. The law of attraction and whatnot. Speak positive things into existence and you shall receive positive outcomes. Think negative thoughts and you will attract the shittiest things the cosmos has ever birthed.

You aren’t really a believer in this, but you’d rather not take your chances. Not if everyone and their mother are screaming about the universe and its infinite possibilities all the time.

You suppose that’s why you haven’t really talked to Taehyung lately when it comes to your Jungkook predicament, not since he reentered your life oh so gracefully. Talking about it makes it seem like a bigger deal than you want it to be. Talking about your feelings makes it harder to ignore that they’re there.

Jungkook certainly isn’t making things easier for you. You thought that he was getting too buddy-buddy before, but if last Saturday proved anything, he definitely has room to crank it up a few notches. It’s fair, because he did spend the night, and if this was a romcom, the two of you would have successfully sailed past the ice breaking point. This would be the part of the movie where the characters grow closer, and where the romance blooms.

But this is not a movie and Jungkook doesn’t seem to fucking remember that he’s the person that broke your heart.

Not once has he addressed the elephant in the room, which you suppose isn’t something you can complain about. You don’t want him to bring it up either, the fact that you once knew him better than anyone in the world, and he knew you. You all know how that story ended.

Actually, you don’t. You just know that it ended.

“Good morning,” a voice greets from beside you. You register who it is even before you turn around, and you register that as of right now, you’re the only ones standing here, waiting for the elevator.

“Morning,” you say, though your voice is considerably less enthusiastic. Jungkook doesn’t seem to mind though. He smiles, and the curl of his lips looks almost as inviting as the coffee you’re holding in your hand. The beverage is full and warm against your fingers. You’ve yet to take a sip, and you tell yourself that the weariness fogging up your brain is the reason why you think his expression is just a little bit endearing, and why your heart rate picks up just a couple beats because of it.

The elevator dings. When Jungkook steps in, you hesitate.

“You coming?” he asks, slightly confused.

You wait for a beat, your grip tightening on the paper cup, like you’d be able to summon someone else to waltz in there right this second just so you wouldn’t be alone with him. On a Monday morning at that. Life is truly testing you.

And because life is testing you, no one shows up to rescue you. If you concentrate hard enough, maybe Taehyung will magically materialize out of thin air…

You suck it up and step in though, because you don’t want to look like a weirdo in front of your ex, and whoever might be watching the security cameras.

The doors close, trapping you in this metal death box and its commercial background jingle.

“How was the rest of your weekend?” Jungkook asks. Small talk – it’s one of the things you dislike the most. And coming from him of all people?

“It was fine,” you say curtly, but you know he’ll keep prodding.

And he does. “What did you do on Sunday?”

“Y’know, just catching up on sleep, catching up on some TV shows…”

Jungkook frowns, and he’s glad that you aren’t looking at him to see it. That night, you were kind to him. You managed to have a good conversation or two. You made him dinner and you let him sleep over. Granted, you might have only done it out of politeness and not genuine hospitality. You could’ve let him go when he was packing up to leave, but you didn’t. You were kinder to him than he ever expected you to be when this project forced you two together again, and he knows that he’s in no position to hope for anything else.

But here he is anyway, asking for more.

In the time that he takes to think of what else to say to you, to goad you into actually speaking to him, the elevator has already reached your floor. You step out without a word, and Jungkook sinks just a little bit.

But he carries on. He follows you to where the studio is, though he deliberately keeps himself a few paces behind you to not crowd the space you’re silently asking from him. It’s barely 9:30 in the morning; he can see that you’re tired, and you haven’t had your coffee, and the last thing you need is probably Jungkook trying to push it when he has the option not to.

He watches you open the door and promptly stop. Seokjin and Namjoon are already there, animatedly conversing with someone whose back faces you. Seokjin’s manager and an unfamiliar older woman stand in the back of the room, engaged in their own chat, though theirs seems much calmer and formal than the three men in the center.

Jungkook watches your brows slightly furrow in confusion. The gears in your head turn until everything clicks. Your eyes light up immediately.

“Oh my God…” You almost drop the latte in your hand once you realize who it is, and why Namjoon is fawning over him like a teenager. The mysterious man is the second most famous person in the room just after Seokjin. You rush forward, your entire body buzzing with so much excitement that it makes all traces of fatigue evaporate. “Yoongi!”

Everybody in the room turns to the sound of your shrill voice as you squeal loudly, grinning from ear to ear to see your friend again after so long. It’s been, what, almost half a year now?

“Hey, kiddo,” Yoongi greets you, his voice even and cool though he’s sporting the same bright smile as you are. His hair is longer than the last time you saw him. He looks even more handsome than you remember. “Long time no see. How’s my favorite poet doing?”

Jungkook quietly makes his way past the two of you to drop his stuff on the table in the back before he shuffles to the circle of conversation, opting to stand next to Yoongi. He gives Seokjin and Namjoon a small smile and a nod in greeting, and watches on as the scene before them unfolds. You seemed too tired to even give him two sentences in the elevator, but you definitely don’t look anything like it now.

“When did you get back? Why didn’t you tell me?” You punch Yoongi playfully in the arm, and he pretends to clutch the point of contact as if he’s been severely wounded, just like how you used to joke around together in the studio. You roll your eyes, and he shoots you a wink in return.

“Relax, I just got back a few days ago. I wanted it to be a surprise for you. You should’ve seen the look on your face. It was so worth it,” Yoongi admits, still smiling. He takes the coffee cup from your hand and unceremoniously knocks it against the chest of the person on his left – Jungkook. A firm Hold this, like he was merely passing it to a personal assistant. “Are you at least gonna give me a hug, little one?”

Yoongi opens his arms, awaiting your embrace which you give him after half a minute of pretending to consider it. Your arms go around his middle while his own wrap around your shoulders. He’s warm, and his scent is comforting. You’ve missed your connection with Yoongi, and the friendship he’s given you. You’ve missed him.

The thing that makes your relationship with Yoongi different from your relationship with Taehyung, or Jimin, or anyone else, is the context through which your friendship bloomed.

You met him when you were starting to come into your own as a writer, when you were developing your voice and style. Working with him gave you your big break, and you’d be lying if you said he didn’t play an important role in helping you find your identity in this sphere of life. Yoongi understands you in ways that Taehyung and Jimin never could because they don’t know what it’s like to do what you do, no more than you could understand what it’s like to be a museum curator or a dancer. And Yoongi understands you in ways that Jungkook would have if he had been there.

When you pull away from the hug, Jungkook is quick to thrust the coffee back into your hand. You mutter a small Thanks without even meeting his eyes. Yoongi ruffles your hair affectionately, and it makes you shuffle away in faux annoyance, even though you’re laughing.

“Before you so rudely interrupted us, I was introducing myself,” Yoongi chides, shaking his head in your direction like a disappointed teacher. He turns to his left then, a smug grin on his face as he looks Jungkook over. “If he’s Namjoon, then you must be the famous Jungkook? What a pleasure to finally put a face to the name.”

The confusion flashing in Jungkook’s eyes has you stiffening slightly as you watch their interaction. You were so delighted by Yoongi’s surprise appearance that you forgot he’s one of the three people in the room who knows about your history with Jungkook.

The younger man straightens his posture and extends a hand in Yoongi’s direction, his expression blank and his voice flat as he says, “Yeah, that’s me. I’m very much looking forward to working with you, Yoongi.”

“Oh please,” the rapper laughs, taking the offered hand and shaking it vigorously. It’s too much, almost comical. He knows exactly what he’s doing and you want to dig a hole to crawl into because this is not what you expected at all. “Call me Mr. Min.”

Seokjin and Namjoon break into chuckles alongside Yoongi, but you only purse your lips. Jungkook doesn’t seem to find anything humorous either, because his hand stops as he stares at Yoongi, and you don’t have to stand between them to feel trapped in the middle.

“Oh come on, it’s a joke. Lighten up, buddy,” Yoongi finally says. That grin is still on his face, and his tone is almost patronizing. “Jeez, this guy must be fun at parties.”

Jungkook’s eyes flicker to you for a second, his tongue poking into his cheek. You can tell that he’s annoyed. You’re not sure if Seokjin and Namjoon notice it, but even if they do, you doubt that they would think much of it.

Someone that you recognize as Yoongi’s manager says to Jungkook in a calm voice, “You’ll have to excuse him. Yoongi takes some getting used to.”

In the end, Jungkook forces out a laugh to ease the tension, so you all can move on.

Before you can slither away to your own corner of the room to put down your bag and coffee, Yoongi pulls you back to his side with an arm resting comfortably around your shoulders. You give him a warning glare that you know he understands, but he just shrugs against your body. Underneath that smug and phlegmatic exterior, Yoongi seems almost protective, and it’s almost unsettling.

“So fellas,” he says confidently to the room, “what’s the first order of business?”

“What business?” You frown. “You have one feature, and we’re not finished writing yet.”

Seokjin steps in to address whatever it is that’s making Yoongi look like he could be the king of the world. “Actually,” he starts, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about today.”

The second surprise of the day is Min Yoongi calling himself the Jack Antonoff to Kim Seokjin’s Taylor Swift. The second surprise is Agust D being a much more prominent part of the album than just a simple feature. The second surprise is Yoongi practically begging Seokjin for a job much below his pay grade just because he heard your name and Jungkook’s in the same sentence. The man actually dove right into this after his tour ended, without even a moment to catch his breath, just because he’s petty. And it’s weird because your situation doesn’t even concern him.

That’s another thing that you and Yoongi have in common: You’re both petty.

When Seokjin first announced the news, you were practically vibrating. Yoongi as a producer? Get the fuck out. The other artistic pea in your creative pod? You were already overjoyed when you thought you would only be getting him for a feature, but for him to actually hop on board as producer and you get the chance to make another album with him? You’re elated, because the man is brilliant.

But then the excitement died down when the realization set in…

“Yoongi.”

“Y/N.”

“Yoongi!”

“Y/N!”

You huff out a breath and groan internally. He has never been shy to show that he enjoys teasing you. Every time he gets a reaction out of you, he would coo like you were a baby and call you adorable.

Yoongi leans back as he watches you pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration. The two of you are sitting in the booth that he always requests, in the back of his favorite restaurant. You managed to pry him away from the studio earlier, telling the guys that you’d love to grab lunch with him to catch up.

It wasn’t a lie; you do want to sit down with your friend and listen to everything that has transpired in his life since the last time you saw each other. But he’s been here for a few hours and he has already made your job so much more difficult by being a passive aggressive dickhead to Jungkook. You can’t focus on making a good album for Seokjin if you have to run interference on Yoongi and Jungkook all day.

“What was that this morning?” You cross your arms as you stare at him.

“What was what?” Yoongi tilts his head innocently.

“You know what, Min. All the nicknames, the cocky attitude. Treating Jungkook like he’s your secretary. You made him get coffee for you!”

He scoffs and reaches forward for his glass of water. “Come on, that was funny. I thought you’d enjoy that.”

“Well, I didn’t. It’s exhausting enough to be around him all the time. I don’t want to have to babysit you too.”

You see where he’s coming from, you really do. If your friend had an ex who flipped their entire world upside down, you certainly wouldn’t be the friendliest gal toward that person either. You appreciate Yoongi looking out for you, but he has to understand that this is your place of work, and while you and him are friends, you still live in different worlds. You aren’t a world-renowned, jetsetting heartthrob like him and Seokjin; you can’t afford to screw up opportunities because you know they don’t grow on trees.

Yoongi softens when he sees the look on your face, but he stands by his actions. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” he murmurs across the table, “but can’t Jungkook handle a few jabs here and there? The guy deserves it. If you could listen to yourself when you told me everything that went down between the two of you–”

“I was drunk,” you interject, as if that counterpoint would ever hold up. Drunk words are sober thoughts, or whatever it is that people say.

“Being drunk was the only reason why you were honest with me,” Yoongi says with a low chuckle.

“It’s…” you sigh, “it’s not even about whether he deserves it or not. I just don’t want everyone at work to know my business.”

A waitress comes over to your table with your orders then. Your eyes follow her movements as she sets the plates down, while Yoongi’s eyes follow you. When she’s finished, you thank her with a smile, and Yoongi compromises.

He rubs his palms and clasps them together. “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll put him through the wringer, but I’ll keep your name out of it. No one will know about your history. Let Jungkook think I’m just an asshole, I don’t care.”

It’s not ideal, because you would rather have Yoongi act like he doesn’t know anything at all. Like he’s just as clueless as Seokjin and Namjoon and like to him, you and Jungkook have never been more than a pair of coworkers. But this is the most that Yoongi would settle for because he’s annoying like that sometimes.

“Fine,” you agree with great reluctance. You pick up a fork and point it in his direction. “Since you’re an asshole, you’re paying for lunch.”

He swats your fork away, laughing. “It’s cute that you thought I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard you and Jungkook went to college together, right? Were you close?”

Were you close?

This is a normal thing to ask. Anyone would ask this if they knew two people who had a prior history with each other. When you found out that Yoongi ran in the same circles as Seokjin, you asked him if they were close too.

But when the question came from Seokjin much later that afternoon, while the four of you were just sitting around, enjoying a much needed break after three nonstop hours of testing Seokjin’s acoustics and an instrumental demo that Jungkook worked on last week.

You don’t even know how Seokjin got to that question from you mindlessly recalling the strenuous process of learning music theory in college, but nevertheless, here you are, put on the spot.

It’s a simple yes-no question, though saying no would prompt even more queries, and saying yes would… well, what would saying yes mean?

Seokjin and Namjoon are looking at you. Jungkook is looking at you. You’re glad that Yoongi left after he dropped you off. If he were here, he would be awaiting your answer too.

There’s a lot you wish you could let out. You swallow thickly, but the words just won’t go down.

You want to say… Yes, we were close. We were close in the same way that the name of someone’s first love can be inscribed on their heart and never fade away. If you could hold my beating heart in your hands, and if you had a key to open it, I think you would find his initials there. The letters might be messily scribbled, might be crossed out by harsh lines of ink and rewritten again in a different font, but they’re still there, and they will always be there.

Yes, we were close. He knew me inside and out, better than the back of his own hand. He knew me like we came from the same star, destined to find one another before we were even us.

Yes, we were close. He was the person I loved the most, my favorite person in the whole entire world. I think, and I hope, that I was someone he loved too…

Despite the words lodged in your throat, you aren’t in a position to voice any of it. So you push them down — a conscious and routine decision — and shove them into your box of memories again.

You scratch the back of your neck as you look at Jungkook and he looks at you, eyes conveying something you’re not willing to understand. In the end, you settle for a response that doesn’t really answer Seokjin’s question. But even if your words don’t clear anything up, your hesitation ought to have given something away.

It’s the opposite of what you told Jungkook when he showed up at your door for the first time in five years.

“We were… friends.”

When Taehyung comes home from work the next day, he almost fucking dies.

It’s a regular evening. On the drive home, he thought about the leftover pasta waiting for him in the fridge because he was absolutely starving. He thought about which documentary he was going to watch while he ate his dinner. He thought about telling you that his sister got an acceptance letter from her dream college. You’ve always loved her, and he knows you would be over the moon to share her joy as if she was your own family.

Yeah, just a regular Tuesday evening.

Until he opens the door to his apartment and screams loud enough to alarm the entire building.

“What the fuck!” His keys clatter to the floor as the man clutches his chest in an attempt to calm his heart. Laughter bounces off Taehyung’s walls, in total contrast to his heavy breaths from almost going into cardiac arrest.

“Hi, bud,” you manage to say through tears from your place on the couch in his living room, where you’ve been waiting for the past hour and a half in complete silence and darkness. Your ears hurt from him almost taking out your hearing and your eyes have to adjust to the sudden brightness in the room when Taehyung switched on the lights, but it was so worth the laugh. You wish you could’ve captured his face on camera.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Your friend grumbles as he hangs up his jacket and picks up his keys to throw in the ceramic bowl by the small entryway.

“I texted you to come over but you never replied.”

Taehyung fishes his phone from the pocket of his slacks and throws it in your direction, which you clumsily catch. “My phone died.”

“Where’s the powerbank I got you for your birthday?”

He walks over to plop down next to you on the couch. The cushions dip under his weight, and you scootch over to make more room for him.

“I left it at home.”

You slap a hand over his pec, your face unimpressed. “There’s no point in getting you anything.”

“Don’t do that,” he bemoans, rubbing the spot on his chest that you just hit. “My heart is still racing. You scared the fucking shit out of me.”

You reach over to pat his soft hair as an apology before you tip your head back in another fit of giggles. “Sorry! But in my defense, you know I do shit like this. This is not the first time you’ve gone through this.”

“Whatever,” Taehyung mutters. “Why did you need me to come over? I was looking forward to a relaxing night all by myself.”

You shuffle closer until your head can rest on his shoulder. “I have gossip.”

“Celebrity gossip?”

“My gossip.”

“Gossip?” He raises an eyebrow as he glances down at you. “Or gossip?”

You take some seconds to decipher which category the Yoongi news would fit into, and which category the revelation that Namjoon dropped in your lap earlier today would fit into. “Both,” you conclude.

“Namjoon told you that Jungkook lied?”

“He didn’t know that Jungkook lied. I pieced it together.”

“Hmm.”

Your fingers curl around the steaming mug of tea that Taehyung made for each of you. You bring the ceramic close to your face to breathe in the soothing scent of jasmine rising from the beverage.

Taehyung takes a sip of his drink before he asks, “And how do you feel about that?”

You don’t answer right away, though you knew this question was inevitable. How do you feel about it? The fact that Namjoon didn’t actually have a family emergency when he dropped Jungkook at your apartment when the three of you were supposed to brainstorm together. The fact that when they pulled up in front of your building, Jungkook told Namjoon that he could go home if he wanted to, that Jungkook didn’t want to make him work on a day off. The fact that despite Namjoon saying it was completely fine, Jungkook practically insisted that he go home.

When Namjoon told you about it a few hours ago, your first thought was to tell Taehyung. It wasn’t Namjoon’s intention, of course. He didn’t know. He was asking you about some of the edits to the lyrics made in his absence, and it just came out.

You deliberately waited until you could sit down and talk to your best friend to sort through your thoughts because if you did it alone, you would surely spiral. Because this isn’t Taehyung’s first Jungkook-related rodeo with you; he knows how to handle you in times like these.

“I think this is fucking me up again,” you say honestly. Taehyung is the only person that you’ve admitted any of this to; the only person that you can admit any of this to. “I just want to do my job. Jungkook shouldn’t be allowed to maintain any kind of relationship with me outside of work! But all of a sudden he’s spending the night and asking me about my love life. It’s been years. Why is he still affecting me? Why am I still here?”

Here. Between the past and the future. The limbo parallel to the present.

Sure, maybe it’s for the better that Jungkook doesn’t bring it up. You would rather that this stay between the two of you (and, cue a heavy sigh, Yoongi). You know Seokjin and Namjoon are decent people, and their opinion of you wouldn’t change if they knew about this, but you would rather your place of work be drama-free.

So yes, maybe it is better this way. But it would be best if Jungkook treats you like a mere coworker. If he acts like you simply don’t exist outside of the studio. If he could stop making your already messed up heart even more confused. All of that would be better than whatever the fuck he’s doing now.

Asking about your love life. Being attentive. Smiling around you. Bringing you the drink you once loved. Lying so he would get you alone!

It doesn’t even matter if he wants a blank slate, because he can’t undo the damage he caused just by batting his eyelashes at you and pretending like everything is fine and dandy.

Maybe Jungkook hasn’t said anything because he himself would rather forget all about it too. You could understand this to a certain extent, because no one wants to be reminded that they’ve hurt others. But he did cause you pain. He did hurt you. The scars that your soul bears are proof of that.

To not say anything at all and have the nerve to act like he cares about you. It’s… cowardly. He’s still continuing to hurt you by doing this. You always thought you deserve better than this.

“Because you keep saying that you hate Jungkook, but you don’t,” Taehyung says. He’s right, you know he’s right. This lie might have been your lifeline before, might have worked once upon a time but Jungkook is here to call your bluff now. “Because you didn’t get any closure.”

Sometimes you forget that Taehyung can be quite the relationship guru despite never having gone through a serious relationship himself. There’s something wistful about him whenever you two have a serious talk like this that makes you wonder if his heart has ever experienced the same kind of sorrow that yours did, and if he just never told you about it.

You pout, despite the gravity of his words and the tension that weighs heavy on you. “I should hate him.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung agrees with a chuckle and a sip of tea, “you probably should.”

“I can’t just throw myself into work this time,” you think out loud. It isn’t lost on you that the thing you’ve been using to cope, to distract yourself, is the same thing that has led you back to square one.

The scented candle that you lit and put on the coffee table is burning out. You watch the small flame flicker wildly around the charred wick, like it’s holding onto its final moments of life before time inevitably runs out. You feel oddly sad just looking at it struggling to keep its light, until it finally dies in a tiny whirl of smoke.

“Maybe I should start dating again.” You mean this as a joke, because god knows the last time you tried getting out there again, you were left with a memory so mortifying that sometimes when you reminisce on the experience, you still shudder with embarrassment.

It was the first time that you had gone out clubbing in a while, with a few girls from your internship, and with the intention of capping the night off with a handsome stranger who would make you feel things you hadn’t for some time. Courtesy of lame dating advice you found online.

A few shots in, and through the haze of smoke and booze and busy bodies illuminated by an array of colorful lights, you did manage to find the someone that you were hoping for — tall, handsome, oozing so much charisma that it should’ve been a huge red flag. But you weren’t looking for a big sparkly diamond on your ring finger or a tropical honeymoon somewhere with crystal clear waters. You were just looking for someone.

It went surprisingly well, until it didn’t. Until you started sobbing on the dancefloor of a crowded club, in front of a man who looked at you like you were crazy and like he couldn’t wait to make you someone else’s problem then. Until you had to call Taehyung to come pick you up at 3 in the morning when the entire world was dead asleep. All because the stranger had asked Your place or mine? and a sobering thought washed over you, a sharp reminder that home was not somewhere you could return to anymore.

You knew it then, and you know it now, that even though your world once revolved around Jungkook, it doesn’t always have to be. There is life after him. There is still a you after him.

“You would really consider that?” Taehyung asks.

“I mean, I kinda have to at some point. I don’t want to die alone.”

“You’re not going to die alone. You have me.”

You chuckle tiredly. “No, you’ll find someone who is as big of an art geek as you are, and you’ll have lots of babies and grow old together. And I’ll be the kooky lady with 13 dogs who comes around every once in a while to give your children candy.”

Taehyung sets down his empty mug before settling into a comfortable position on the couch, his back against the cushions and his feet propped on the glass surface of the table in front of you. He reaches across the couch to hold your hand. He skirts around the part about the future love of his life.

“13? That’s a specific number,” he comments.

“I like Taylor Swift.”

You both laugh lightly at the reference. Days of badgering him about one of the greatest songwriters of our generation have finally paid off.

Silence envelopes the room for a moment as you both wander off in your own bubble of thought. Until Taehyung knocks his knee against yours and you both fall back into reality again.

“Did Jimin text you about the grand opening on Friday?”

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