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namfinessed · 3 years

Text

a lil bad - m.yg.

genre: fluff, angst (11.3k) e2l

summary: you hate min yoongi the most so how the fuck do you end up in his tattoo shop? (fools!universe)

masterlist series masterlist

you don’t know how it happens in every single party, but you always end up next to yoongi, grumbling and complaining but still with him beside you and even after several incidents of pouring drinks on each other and pretending it was a mistake, or just plain insulting each other right to your faces, or ruining dates for the other by fake flirting, you always end up next to him.

you never really understood your hatred for min yoongi, but it’s always been there, whenever you see him, you always either leave the room to not be around him at all or you start bickering with him until the day ends, it’s usually always the latter, he knows just how to rile you up, he knows just what to say to piss you right off, and you always give in to his stupid arguments.

and apparently, even right now, with all your friends dancing and enjoying themselves, you stand in the corner while idly mixing your drink slowly, and it takes everything in you to not roll your eyes when yoongi catches your eye across the room and starts his making his way over to you.

“what are you doing here, doll?” he asks, hands in pockets, his ever-present smirk settled nicely on his face, the nickname that falls from his mouth makes you roll your eyes, he’s been calling you that forever, no matter how many times you’ve complained and hit him for it.

you notice his tattoos peeking from the collar of his leather jacket which mirrors the one on your body. it is hard to not do a full head to toe scan when yoongi manages to look this good even as he’s half drunk.

you hate him but you’re not blind, you know that he is attractive and he knows it too, he knows it all too well.

“none of your goddamn business, min yoongi, get back to your friends.” your bitter reply is no surprise to him and that becomes evident with how he laughs at you and pulls himself up on the table you were resting on, looking down at you with pure amusement dancing in his eyes.

“they’re shit drunk, and i don’t want to deal with anyone vomiting all over me” he shrugs as he takes another swig and you turn to look at his friends who were falling over each other and laughing for no reason at all.

somewhere in you, you know that he’s lying, he wouldn’t mind if his friends vomit over him, he wouldn’t care even when he’s going to be the one who will drive them home after this and make sure that they’re safe but yoongi doesn’t need to know that you know about him.

“such a good friend” you dryly muse and walk away from him, only for him to jump off the table and follow you, you stop in your steps and he does too, making you grit your teeth and look at him with an evident glare in your eyes.

“what do you think you’re doing?”

“none of your goddamn business, doll.”

yeah, you hate him. you take back every nice thought you’ve ever had about him.

he gives you an innocent smile and it takes everything in you to not strangle him. you swiftly turn the other way and speed walk till you’re outside the house, taking a deep breathe now that you’re free from the obnoxious people and music. just when you stretch your legs out to settle there for a bit, you see someone barging their way out, almost hitting your arm, you turn to curse them out just to see jimin come out from the same way, following the previous person.

you only know jimin because he works in namjoon’s bakery, and he’s in one of your classes, you’re friendly enough to greet each other but that’s it, so when you see him fighting with the person who barged out first, and the fight showing no signs of calming down, you roll your eyes at how stupid they sound, why can’t they just kiss already? you can literally feel the sexual tension in the air and they seem to be in absolute denial about it, but deciding that it was best to leave them alone, you unwillingly tip toe your way back into the house.

the party is still raging and loud and you can’t really distinguish who is who anymore, so you just push your way through the crowd, murmuring excuse me’s and curses to people who push you, only to find yourself in the living room where all your friends are gathered. they immediately perk up at your entrance, drunk smiles gleaming even in the darkness and you hate to admit that you sense some mischief in the air.

“i was looking for you, come here, sit down” jennie smiles as soon as she sees you and pats the seat next to her, you hesitantly sit and warily eye the bottle in the middle of the circle you’re sat at.

“what’s going on here?”

“we’re playing spin the bottle because we literally have nothing left to do” jisoo complains from opposite to you and you throw your head back with a groan, at the corner of your eye, you see yoongi walk in with his own friends and you don’t even want to look up again.

“how bored are you guys?” you complain but get comfortable in your seat anyway, it’s not like you were any less bored than they were.

“just say you’re too much of a wimp to play and leave already.” yoongi’s voice is crystal clear even with the loud music and everyone starts ooh’ing at his sentence, all of them were already used to your endless bickering and they always act like they know something you both don’t, you never cared enough to ask them anyway. you rolled your eyes before setting them on him with a bored expression.

“you’re still standing min yoongi, so who’s the real wimp here?” and now, everyone’s ooh’ing at you, he looks up at you with the same smirk that always annoys you and cocks an eyebrow before sitting directly in front of you, then pins you with only challenge clear in his eyes.

“okay, so the rules are pretty simple.” you look away from him and focus on listening to chaeyoung as she explains what exactly are the set rules.

“so when we spin the bottle, the people at the ends of the bottle either kiss each other or one of them gets to give a dare to the other, and the other cannot refuse” jisoo smiles at you as she plays with the bottle in her hand and you know what’s going on in her little head, she’s always been convinced that you have a crush on yoongi but you were close to vomiting on her when she told you that, she hasn’t backed down though and if you know her, she’s probably thinking this is some magical way to get you to kiss yoongi but you would jump into a well before that happens.

“the only person i want to kiss in this room is you” yoongi wears a wide, confident grin as he points to the random girl he’s been talking up since the beginning of the party and you watch with raised eyebrows as she blushes and buries her face into his shoulder.

poor girl, you wince to yourself.

and yoongi’s drinking up the affection, cooing at her and wrapping his arm around her shoulder, not letting her go even as the bottle spins speedily and lands on taehyung and some girl you’ve seen around the campus, you have never really looked at her but she does seem a little out of place in the party, and you make a note to yourself to talk to her later, you hate that feeling of being isolated and you wouldn’t want her to feel that way.

everyone watches them with excited and curious eyes, taehyung has a huge smile on his face as he wiggles his eyebrows at the girl who looks like she wants to run away, but then taehyung reaches over and whispers something into her ear and everyone erupts into cheers when he reaches for his hoodie on the floor and drops it on their heads, the hoodie comes off to reveal one flushed face and taehyung who is positively beaming. though the kiss is over, at least you assume it is over, everyone’s gaze lingers on the quiet girl who all but is biting on her lip and averting her gaze to the floor.

“stop making her uncomfortable and spin the bottle already” you say plainly as you leaned back on your hands, you could tell she wanted anything but attention, she just had a stiff posture and this was clearly new for her, so you decided to help her out. she flashed you a quick grateful look and you gently smile at her.

and the bottle kept spinning, most opted for the kisses, and each time someone would kiss, the entire room would be chaos, with people whooping and waving their hands, you bury your head into your hands each time that happens because you can’t believe most of these people are well in their 20’s and are still this excited over seeing their peers kiss but you enjoy the energy in the air, it’s familiar and being around your friends is something you’re always grateful for.

“wait wait yoongi didn’t spin the bottle” lisa points out along with chaeyoung and they both have happy smirks on their faces as everyone nods in agreement, soon cheering him on to spin it already and yoongi surrenders with raised hands.

the bottle spins and you hold your breath because you would do anything to not be at the other end of it.

you exhale in relief when it lands on who yoongi wanted it to land on, the girl who’s been around him all night, he just looks at her with a smile and she leans forward with sparkling eyes, and you look away just when the sound of smacking lips fills the air, immediately everyone starts shouting and that’s when you understand that maybe the kiss wasn’t innocent at all, you almost do a double take when you hear a silent moan in midst of all the chaos, looking back when the shouts die down to see the girls with pink cheeks and yoongi who had a proud smile on his face.

and you don’t know why, but at that moment, your annoyance for him touches the roof.

maybe because he was oozing confidence always?

maybe because it sounded like he was an incredible kisser?

maybe because he’s got someone blushing right next to him with just a kiss?

you don’t know and frankly you also don’t understand why you stand up from the circle right then, everyone’s eyes lands on you and you shift on your feet, you hate attention, and you particularly hate yoongi who immediately looks at you standing.

“i just need a refill, i will be back, you guys play” you gesture towards the kitchen and leave the living room with fast steps, you only let out a breath of relief once you’re in the kinda empty kitchen, it still has like 10 people but not one of them gives a fuck about you, which is exactly what you need.

you spot the tequila bottles but they are empty, making you groan out loud in frustration and you want to throw a chair into the window, because how the fuck do these people drink so fast? last time you were here, there were 10 huge, full bottles and they’re just gone now.

“fucking great” you mumble and squeeze your eyes shut as you lean back on the counter.

you don’t even want to go back to the circle and see yoongi’s face or the girl that he’s with who seems to blush about everything like who’s going to tell her that yoongi will probably drop her in a week?

you stomp your way back to the living room, and sit down with a huff, not looking at anyone, just letting the game continue around you and zoning out until someone asks you something.

your eyes don’t leave the bottle in the middle of the circle, staring as it spins and claims its victims, and you only snap out of your thoughts when jennie nudges you, you are a little startled when she pushes the bottle into your hand with a small smile.

“it’s your turn, spin it” she gently instructs, and you almost just want to cuddle her and go to sleep because she’s always been so nice to you and maybe it’s because you’re half-drunk and you’re mildly irritated by everything, but you feel so grateful to her soft voice.

but her words also make you pause, it’s your turn after god knows how many turns and you want to skip it, there’s no one in this room that you want to kiss.

“see, i told you, she’s a wimp” you glare up at yoongi as he stares you down, and with a grumble, you snatch the bottle from jennie’s hands and give it one rough spin. you silently pray that it lands on anyone but yoongi.

your heart almost pauses when it seems to slow down near yoongi, but then it tilts right at the last second, you feel lighter as you look up to see jisoo at the other end of the bottle, who has a cheeky smile on her face, you lean back with your won smile because you could just kiss her, it’s no big deal.

“so, kiss?” you raise your eyebrows at her and she narrows her eyes at you playfully, looking you up and down and you giggle at her fake horny expression.

“as much as i love kissing, i have a dare for you.” you eye her cautiously as she says this, why isn’t she just opting for the kiss?

“i’m not stripping down naked if that’s what you’re going to say” you deadpan, to lighten the tension in the room and everyone laughs, taking swigs of their drinks and someone yells party pooper.

“why can’t we just kiss and get it over with?” you whined when she stayed silent and jisoo shook her head happily as everyone’s ears and eyes focused on what would leave jisoo’s mouth, she smirks a little at their enthusiasm and your slightly scared expression.

“the dare is” she pauses for dramatics and you throw the bottle cap at her making her jump and giggle.

“okay okay, the dare is, you have to get a tattoo in yoongi’s shop by yoongi, he gets to choose which one too.”

she did not.

“i’m sorry, did i hear you right?” you leaned forward with a cocked eyebrow because jisoo wouldn’t do this to you.

right?

“i’ll go easy with the needle on you, doll” yoongi chuckles from his spot.

“shut the fuck up, min yoongi” you snarl at him and fix your gaze on jisoo again as she shrugs with a delighted smile on her face.

“hey, i could just kick you out from my store, you know that right?” you ignore his words with a roll of your tongue against your cheek and run a hand through your hair, this is far from how you wanted your night to go.

“are you going to back off from a dare, y/n?” chaeyoung raises her eyebrows at you and it feels like thye’ve definitely planned this shit from the start but the mocking in her tone doesn’t allow you to say no.

“fucking hell, i’ll do it.” you give in because again, you are never one to back off from a challenge. even if you’re really scared of needles, you can do this.

“who said i’m doing it for you?” he questions with narrowed eyes and everyone in the room breaks into scattered giggles.

“i’ll give you a month y/n, convince him and get it done.” jisoo says, triumph clear in her face and tone as she calmly hands the bottle to its next victim.

again, this isn’t how you wanted your night to go.

convincing yoongi, as it turns out, was the hardest thing you have ever tried to do, and you take history in college.

not only is he insanely stubborn, but it also feels like he seriously gets off from pissing you off every single time, because the minute you start to get somewhere with convincing him, he would say something stupid, you would curse him out and you’re back to square one with your mission.

it’s been a week since the party and you’ve got no progress on him.

“okay, i can do this, it’s just stupid yoongi” you encourage yourself lightly by tapping your shoulders in butterfly position, because there’s nothing else that calms you down from the inevitability of having to talk to him.

you’re not sure why you are doing so much for a dare, but it feels like this is the chance to prove to your friends that the only feelings you have for yoongi is hatred, you cannot have them thinking you like him when even the thought of him annoys you to the core.

but you’re still here, with a bag of tempura shrimp and fried rice because apparently that’s his favorite food, and as the old saying goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

now, if you were reached his heart, you would probably rip it out but you’re doing what you can to get the dare over with. you ring the bell and stand back, but nothing prepares you for the sight in front of you.

a girl in just a t-shirt, most probably yoongi’s, who’s definitely not his girlfriend.

didn’t they say the girl at the party became his girlfriend afterwards?

well, at least the girl looks just as surprised as you do, and she even starts getting teary eyed and that’s when you realized what this looks like, you brought him food, pretty early in the morning, you’re dressed up well because you just like to look good, and she could be assuming that she just slept with a taken man.

“doll, is that you?” yoongi’s voice comes from behind her and you grit your teeth in annoyance at his presence.

wait, where the fuck is his shirt?

you immediately avert your gaze from his bare skin and look at the girl in front of you who’s trembling, why the fuck did he call you doll with her right beside him?

“look, i know what this looks like but i’m not his girlfriend, i honestly hate him the most out of everyone i know, so you two are still fine, and gosh just wipe those tears please, i hate making people cry” you mumble the last part as the girl sniffles and nod while wiping the tears off her cheek, yoongi coos behind her and gives her a small kiss to the top of her head which makes her grin again.

he has a girlfriend, what is he doing?

you try so hard to hide the deep scowl on your face as you watch the sickeningly sweet exchange in front of you and tap your feet impatiently as you wait for them to finish.

“come in” yoongi says simply and disappears down the hallway with the girl, and you step in sheepishly, you look around the apartment and it’s surprisingly cleaner than you thought it would be, not knowing what to do with both of them gone, you enter the kitchen and plop down on a stool.

“i’ll call you later okay” you hear yoongi whisper and you slam your head on the table in front of you because that is a very sad attempt at a whisper, his whisper is loud as fuck, and it travels all the way to you, and you’re not a liar, his voice sounds hot, it’s husky, low and if someone whispers to you like that, you know that you will melt into a puddle.

you also hear the loud smack of a kiss and it takes everything in you to keep your ass planted on the stool and not run away from here.

the girl appears near the doorway of the kitchen and gives you a bright and happy wave, you wave back at her because as much as her tears surprised you, she still seemed friendly.

“so, what’s in that bag?” yoongi walks into the kitchen, thankfully with a shirt on, and you place the bag on the counter, not saying anything and letting him look through by himself.

“tempura shrimp and fried rice, are you trying to get me to ask you out?” yoongi chuckled as he pulled out the boxes and you frown at his statement.

“don’t flatter yourself” you mumble and pick your phone up to scroll as he sits down to eat, you notice him place a plate in front of you and look up in confusion.

“go on, serve yourself, i’m not doing that for you.” he gestures to the boxes with a wave of his hand.

“this is for you, more precisely for the tattoo.”

“i know doll, just eat the food.” if you aren’t wrong, you can hear some disappointment in his voice and he doesn’t even look at you as he says that, so you just shrug and take a box to fill half your plate with the food and continue to glance at him weirdly from time to time.

this feels strangely domestic, there is nothing but silence as you two eat but for once, you don’t want to strangle him to death, he doesn’t say shit to piss you off either, and the silence is comfortable, you thought it would be awkward to be in his apartment but you don’t feel that way at all.

“i’m still not doing your tattoo” yoongi says and the door shuts in your face as you stand outside his apartment with mouth agape and slumped shoulders.

then why was he being all nice just 10 minutes ago?

you kick the door with your foot and huff out in frustration because you really cannot think of anything else that could convince him.

what are you going to do now?

what could you possibly do now?

wait a minute.

his girlfriend.

“jisoo, are you sure that the girl from the party is still his girlfriend?” you almost yell into the phone to try and make your voice heard even with the loud traffic beside you and jisoo winces from the sound.

“yes, i’m sure, she was bragging about it in class today” you can hear how annoyed jisoo sounds though the phone and bingo!

you know just how to get yoongi to do your tattoo.

you get drowned in your own assignments the following week and don’t bother to look for yoongi, and honestly, you forget about the dare until your dear friends remind you at lunch when you were just trying to peacefully eat your food.

and you don’t even see yoongi around the campus anymore, he doesn’t even show up to the one class you have in common, but his attendance is obviously taken care of because of his friends who work in student council, you’re not going to lie, you are jealous of that, you would kill to miss some classes and still have your attendance intact.

“hey seokjin, wait up!” you spot yoongi’s friend down the hallway and you don’t really care that you literally look like a homeless person with your hoodie and loose shorts, you didn’t run all the way across campus to care about how you look, you need to know where the fuck min yoongi is so you can blackmail him and just finish the dare.

“hello y/n” he faintly smiles while sipping his coffee, how does he still look good when he’s tired though? if it weren’t for the fact that he was taken, you would definitely try to get with him but your chance is over. you feel a little self-conscious with your less than appropriate outfit and his polished look, but that shouldn’t be your concern right now.

“where is yoongi? he hasn’t been coming to classes.”

“why do you want to know? don’t you hate him?” he narrows his eyes at you and you slump a little, how many people knew of the fact that you hate each other? it’s not like you can blame them, you both fight in full parties, word is bound to travel.

“i do, i just have something to ask him.”

“is it really important?” he fixes you with a more serious look and you almost feel nervous before clearing your throat and nodding fiercely.

“yes, it is.”

“he’s been hanging out at our friend’s music studio for a while now, you can find him there, i’ll text you the address” and with that, jin blends into the crowd of people around you while you stay frozen.

what does yoongi do in a music studio? you wonder silently with your head tilted as you walk to your next class.

maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought you did.

the music studio wasn’t too far away your campus, and you could walk there even with your heavy backpack, you huff once you reach the run-down building, staring at it with curiosity filled in your eyes.

you definitely didn’t know anything about yoongi and music, sure you knew that he was a phenomenal piano player and also that he was very shy about it, you’ve only ever seen him play once and it was only because he was pretty drunk then.

you look around to try and find the room that jin told you about, brushing past several strange looking men but they are the least of your worries, you have dealt with idiots all the time at the bar and in parties, you will beat someone up if they mess with you.

“doll, what the fuck are you doing here?” you hear his irritated voice and silently heave out in relief because you immediately feel safer than you did just a minute ago.

“i should be asking you that.” you look at him with raised eyebrows and watch as he runs a hand across his face exasperatedly, only to march over to you, grabbing your wrist and dragging you with him.

if it were any other man dragging you around like this, you would break their wrist but this was yoongi, you trust yoongi, and as much as you hate him, you know yoongi would never hurt you.

he pushes the two of you into a room and closes the door behind him, you immediately snatch your wrist from his grip and rub at the spot he gripped too hard.

“okay, you didn’t have to do that.” you mumble while massaging your sore wrist.

“what are you doing here?” he doesn’t hesitate to jump right into it.

and you want to bring up his girlfriend but he looks pretty annoyed, you’re not sure if this is the time to push his buttons even more.

“i just, i was around but the real question is, what are you doing in a music studio?” you throw the question back to him and quickly scan the room you’re in right now, there’s a sound system, a keyboard, some speakers lying around and other equipment you know nothing about.

“i don’t have to tell you that” he deadpans and you retaliate a little, your posture faltering at his firm tone because while yoongi has always been rude to you, there’s a certain coldness to his voice right now that you just don’t recognize.

“you’re right, you don’t.” he really doesn’t. and now, everything you’ve done looks stupid to you, like taking food to his home and meeting some random girl, chasing seokjin on campus even when you don’t have any familiarity with him just to find about yoongi and even refusing to back down from a dare that you could just deny.

you don’t think you’re doing this for the dare anymore.

yoongi sighs when he sees your rigid posture and head hung low because damn it, he feels bad for being mean to you and he never feels bad about being mean to you, being mean to you just comes naturally to him but you just look so small right now, the air of pride and arrogance that you usually carry isn’t around you anymore and yoongi doesn’t know what to do.

“how did you find out?” he asks finally, taking a seat near the equipment and you don’t want to tattle on jin but you have no choice.

“just asked around.” you still tried to cover up jin’s name and yoongi raises his eyebrows at you like he doesn’t believe you.

“fine, seokjin told me” you squeeze out and you just hope that jin isn’t the type to hold grudges.

“you really went all the way to jin to ask about me?” jin is across campus from you, which explains why you don’t know him all that well but you did find out where jin is, just to ask him about yoongi.

but yoongi doesn’t need to know about that.

“don’t think too much about it, i had a class on that way.” you stubbornly lie through your teeth.

“no, you don’t” yoongi spins around in his chair to gather some notes in front of him.

“what?”

“you don’t have a class that way y/n, we both know that.” how the fuck does he know that?

“why didn’t you just ask me? or come to my apartment? you’ve already been there and i truly don’t understand why you went all the way to jin to ask about me.” yoongi’s words are softer, a lot less cold than before, and a lot more like the yoongi you know. which causes the return of your unfaltering confidence.

“i don’t know your number, and i didn’t want to intrude on you in your apartment again.” you answer honestly.

“but you think it’s okay to intrude on me in my studio?” the mocking in his tone doesn’t go past you and for a second, you don’t know what to say but if you’re talented in anything, it has to be the fact that you’re insanely good at changing subjects.

“speaking of the studio, what are you even doing in this studio? don’t you have a tattoo shop to take care of?” you huff and sit down on a nearby stool. you know that you’ve done a wonderful job at changing the topic because yoongi stills in his seat, not a sign of movement from him.

“or you know, just don’t tell me i guess” you add with a petty tone which has him sighing once again and turning in his seat.

“you’re really pushing the limit here, doll.” it sounds like he’s warning you but you have never been one to give a shit about his warnings.

besides, you always thought you knew yoongi, like really know him and as it turns out, you know nothing at all which has you craving to know everything.

“haven’t i always done that?” you flutter your eyelashes at him dramatically which draws a small smile on his face, it’s a rare smile, you’ve only ever seen him smile like that with his friends or when he’s flustered.

interesting.

“fine, i will tell you” you immediately jump in your place, leaning forward to listen with the utmost attention, eyes wide open and lips pursed because you can’t believe mysterious man of the campus (he gave that title to himself last year) is finally opening up to you.

“you can’t tell anyone else, you have to promise me that” the seriousness in his voice tells you he’s definitely not joking around anymore and you aren’t going to do that either, so you sit up straight and nod obediently.

“my tattoo shop, to put in one way, was a rushed decision doll, i don’t know why i thought it would be a good idea but i thought as long as it brought in money for me, i don’t have to worry about anything else but i was wrong. i was so wrong.” admitting his mistake to you, his enemy basically, takes a lot of courage and you can’t help but feel a little touched that he shared it with you. and that he’s willing to share more.

“the income was great, but it isn’t where my heart is at, you know? even the course in college right now, i don’t feel anything towards it but music, ah music makes me feel everything i’ve ever wanted to feel.” yoongi doesn’t know why he feels so comfortable telling you all this when all your previous conversations have been catty comments to each other but when he looks at you listening to him sincerely, he feels like he can tell you anything.

“you probably know that i play the piano?” you nod enthusiastically, finally it was something you knew about him.

“yeah i do, you’re good even when you’re drunk.” you beam at him and he laughs at the stupid grin on your face.

he feels like he’s the teacher here and you’re the teacher’s pet.

but he knows if he says that out loud, you will probably kick him in the leg. and yoongi hates bruises so he shoves that happy thought to the back of his head, he will laugh about it to himself later.

“i’ve been writing songs forever now doll, and i’m finally getting somewhere with it, i’m going to hand over the tattoo shop to my sister and jungkook who are more passionate about it than i will ever be.”

he looks regretful almost, like he started something he couldn’t finish but you see yoongi in a new light now, writing songs, producing music, it isn’t child’s play, you know that a lot goes into putting your emotions into words and you admire yoongi for how honest he was with you even if he didn’t have to be.

“and focus on music full-time?” you ask gently and he nods.

“that is the plan, yes.”

so, this could be why he shut the door on your face even after the tempura prawns and fried rice, he’s going to stop working at the shop soon.

“isn’t jungkook that guy who is friends with jimin?” you distinctly remember jungkook’s name from somewhere but you can’t remember where you’ve seen him.

“yeah, they work at namjoon’s bakery together.” yoongi provides you your answer easily and you snap your fingers, you saw jungkook when you went to get a muffin from namjoon, he told you he would give you a discount and you couldn’t say no to that.

“that’s where i saw him, i remember now.”

yoongi stays silent, drumming his fingers against his leg and thinking by himself, he looked insanely attractive even with that stressed look on his face, he’s even wearing torn jeans today for heavens’ sake and you feel a little hot, you pick at your collar to try and cool your warming body down.

you can’t let him know the effect he has on you.

“you don’t have to worry about me telling anyone, i won’t. your secret’s safe with me” you smile at him and he gives you a grateful look before rubbing his palms on his legs, he doesn’t know what to say anymore and he feels weird just leaving himself completely vulnerable to you but yoongi trusts you, he might hate you but he still trusts you to not be that cruel.

“so, what did you come here for?” he asks, leaning back on his chair and you freeze.

how are you going to tell him that you came all the way here just to blackmail him after he’s told you his passion-filled story?

“it’s nothing important, don’t even worry about it” you wave your hand dismissively with a nervous chuckle leaving your lips and like always, yoongi doesn’t believe you.

“it must have been pretty important if you ran to jin to ask him where i am” he points out and you hate that he’s right.

“it is not important at all.” you lamely respond and yoongi cocks his eyebrow before leaning over and grabbing your stool and pulling him towards you, so that you’re face-to-face with each other.

your heart literally stops beating when his eyes meet yours, his are filled with steely determination and you’re sure that your eyes have wimp written all over them, just what yoongi always called you and it doesn’t help that you can’t think with his breath fanning over your face in hot flashes.

“i-i told you, it’s not important” you whine lightly and yoongi has an easy grin on his face because of your stutter.

“just say it, doll.” the command in his tone is really something you can’t ignore, because not only does it make you shiver, but it also puts you on autopilot to do what he asks.

“i know that the girl that you were with, in your apartment the other day, isn’t your girlfriend” you breath out and your heart returns to its pace when yoongi lets your stool go with a frown.

“girlfriend?”

“your girlfriend is the one from the party so i’m saying that i know you’re cheating on her with that other girl.” you don’t know why you keep talking but you do, you wish you would shut up already because yoongi finally isn’t that much of a mystery anymore and blackmailing him will just put his walls up again, but you don’t shut up.

“what are you trying to do, y/n?” with the lack of his usual nickname, the sentence seems colder, just like the tone he used when you first walked in.

and that’s when you know that any and all progress you’ve made with him is gone in the dust, you think might as well just destroy it all while you’re at it.

“i will keep my mouth shut near your girlfriend if you just finish my tattoo” you have never felt more stupid in your life, because you’re doing all this while you’re fully conscious, at least when you’re drunk, you have an excuse.

“so, you would tell on me if i didn’t do that tattoo for you?” you feel even more like an idiot when he puts it that way but you remind yourself pathetically that you hate him, and you don’t care what he thinks of you, so you nod a simple yes.

“wow doll, you play a nice game, huh?” he chuckles darkly as he throws his head back and you know that while his words might be funny, his tone and expression are anything but.

you shouldn’t feel guilty about this but you do, there’s this sinking feeling in your chest that whatever you’re doing right now, is not worth it.

just when you open your mouth to take back the words you’ve said and apologize and reassure him that you see him with more respect now, that his story and secret will forever be safe with you, that you admire his passion, you don’t get the chance to when yoongi shuts you up with his.

“fine, i’ll do your stupid tattoo, now get out of my studio.” your heart sinks at his blunt words and he says them while not looking at you at all, you know that you deserve it though which is why you shamefully nod and turns towards the door, leaving him alone in his studio again.

the next few days are a blur, and you’re back at some stupid party.

you needed to forget.

but as much as you tried to push yoongi away from your thoughts, there’s this nagging feeling that claws at you, you don’t understand why you feel as guilty as you do, but it doesn’t go away, it increased each time he saw you in campus and turned his head away like you were nothing to him.

and you hate that you’re nothing to him, you were at least an enemy before but now, he disregards you so easily.

why do you want to be something to him?

you aren’t stupid enough to bring up the tattoo though, you just figured you would give him the chance to tell you or just not get it at all, you are not going to run your mouth again.

“oh, jin’s here, did you hear about his girlfriend? i heard she’s trouble” you hear someone mumble next to you, and you immediately look up to see yoongi with jin and some other friends you don’t recognize, he doesn’t see you though and you want to hide away, you don’t want to see him just yet.

you duck your head low, clutching your red solo cup in your hand and moving away from his line of sight, the only place you know that is safe from everyone in this party is the balcony upstairs so you inform your friends that you’re going to get some air and leave.

as soon as you open the door, you welcome the fresh air that greets you, the night is especially cold and windy but you love it, you just tug your leather jacket closer and lean your body on the railing as you think back on everything that’s been happening.

why did you open your mouth in the studio?

why did you go to the studio at all?

why are you so desperate to prove your friends wrong?

maybe your friends were right? that can’t be though, you don’t like yoongi that way. or at least, you don’t know if you do.

you bite your lip once you feel tears of frustration pooling in your eyes because you brought this on yourself and you don’t even understand why you are so mad about this like yoongi used to mean nothing to you or did you just think he meant nothing to you?

you really want to call off the dare because at this point, it’s gotten too far.

“it’s freezing here, come back in.” you stiffen at the sound of yoongi and don’t even turn around, you just wish he goes away because of how you’re ignoring him. you hear steps and you almost sigh in relief, thinking that he left but when the steps keep getting louder, you turn around confusedly only to see yoongi walking towards you. he reaches where you stand as you hold your breath and he just looks at you while you look away with flushed cheeks.

“this isn’t the time to be stubborn doll, just come in.” he lightly scolds you and you huff out in frustration.

“why don’t you go in?” you snap, finally looking at him and almost instantly shrink back down because you’re really in no position to give him an attitude. yoongi clenches his jaw, trying hard to mask his annoyance because he doesn’t understand why he can’t get his feet to just move and leave you alone like you clearly want him to.

“i told you i will do the damn tattoo, why are you still being a bitch?” his words are like a harsh slap to your face, does he really think you’re still going on about the tattoo?

“this isn’t about the fucking tattoo, yoongi!” you yell at him, throwing your hands in the air and running a hand though your hair, almost pulling too harshly at the roots.

“then what is it about?” he crosses his arms over his chest, taking more steps towards you and looks at you sternly, and you don’t know what to tell him.

“you won’t understand” you shake your head pathetically, now even more confused with the close proximity you two shared but yoongi doesn’t move, he stays right where he is, so close to you that you feel dizzy.

“you don’t know that” he fires back and up close, you can see his frown getting deeper. the tension in the air is high and both of you are breathing heavier than necessary and your eyes stay glued on each other, if you moved a little more, you would be fully leaning on him and even from your position, you can feel his body heat.

“i used to think you meant nothing to me and all you’ll ever be is someone who will drive my nail to the wall, but turns out, i was fucking wrong about that, i was wrong and i can’t stand being nothing to you and you definitely don’t mean nothing to me anymore, and i don’t even know why i’m telling you all of this when you obviously don’t give a shit.” you hold your gaze as you try to put your emotions into words, it’s a mess but you feel lighter, things are ruined anyway and all you want to do right now is pull him close to you and just hold him all night even as you’re yelling at him, as fucked up as that sounds.

“do you really want to know what’s going on?” your voice is reduced to a mumble as your eyes shift from his eyes and move towards his lips, his gaze travels with yours and his eyes land on your lips too, and before he could let another breath out, you pull his collar to you and tilt your head to meet his lips.

yoongi responds immediately, his hands snaking around your waist to squeeze your hips and pulling you closer till your chest met his, as your fingers tangle themselves in his hair, tugging lightly, just enough to make him groan lowly, and the sound sends a shiver down your body.

neither of you pull apart for air, just letting yourself getting lost in him, in the taste of him that you’ve been unknowingly chasing for so long, and every touch he leaves on your body feels like a trail of fire that burns bright.

kissing yoongi was probably the best thing you’ll ever experience in your life.

and you’re scared to pull away because you know that nothing will ever be the same again, you just want to stay in this moment for as long as you can, forever if you can, avoid reality for as long as you can.

but of course, not all of your wishes come true.

you eventually push lightly at his chest to gasp for air, fingers curling around his shirt, you don’t want to let go and he leans his forehead on yours, breathing heavily as well, his eyes are tender as they watch you catch your breath, his hands leave your hips and gingerly reach out to tuck your hair back into place, all while his eyes never leaves yours and everything feels so intimate and delicate, like it’s just you and him in this night, every sound, anyone else are all white noise.

“yoongi” you mutter as you slip your fingers away from his hair and he shakes his head, taking your hand in his and holding it to the side of his face.

“please don’t say anything” there is pleading in his tone, a wish that you owe him for all the times you’ve fucked up so you do as he says, you let him caress your hands as his forehead never leaves yours, but he isn’t looking at you anymore, you don’t complain though because this way, you can look at him all you want and he will never know.

but after a while of just letting the wind embrace you two, you decide that you can’t live in this feeling forever, especially when everything feels so confusing and neither of you have a clue about what is going on, the only thing you know is that you’re in each other’s arms and that’s it, that’s all you know.

and that’s not enough.

“yoongi, your girlfriend” you whisper painfully, your heart is caught in your throat when his fingers pause on your skin, slowly retracting back to himself and he leans away from you, hands still loosely gripping your fingers, you already miss his warmth enveloping you. but you can’t be selfish, it’s no longer only both of your hearts that are involved.

“we can’t do this.” you pull yourself away from him and wipe the corners of your eyes that almost leak your tears, yoongi doesn’t say anything, but his silence is his surrender to the situation, you take his silence to be his agreement with you, that this isn’t okay.

taking his silence and compliance as your answer, you leave before your heart breaks even more than it already has.

you walk around like a breathing shell around the campus, regretting nothing and everything at the same time.

you don’t regret kissing yoongi, you don’t think you ever will but you regret how it happened, you regret the situation you put the two of you in.

but he kissed you back, that’s what confuses you the most, you fully expected him to tear away from you and curse at you while wiping his lips but he didn’t, he kissed you back, like actually pulled you closer till you couldn’t feel anything but him.

you want to ask him why he did that, but you can’t. you can’t look at him without feeling complete humiliation because you might have just been another girl for yoongi, another girl for him to cheat on his girlfriend with and you feel…worthless.

and you also broke girl code, something you firmly believed in, or at least used to believe in, you want to talk to his girlfriend and tell her so that she won’t be constantly lied to but you also don’t want to get involved with yoongi again.

you push your books away with a groan and throw your pen on the desk you’re sat on; you can’t concentrate for shit and you really just want to disappear for a few days. when your phone dings, you almost throw it out the window because you told your friends that you needed space after they saw you looking dull at the party and you aren’t in the mood to party and forget even if that sounds lovely.

you grab your phone with a frown and squint at it when the bright light blinds you for a second, you curse yourself and reduce the brightness to see a message from an unknown number.

from: xxxxxxx

tomorrow, 9 in the morning, get the tattoo done or forget about it.

you just stare at the screen for a few minutes, it’s definitely him, even through the text messages, you know that it’s him, and he’s offering to do the tattoo? even after everything?

it isn’t right to go for it but you’ve got a dare to finish, right?

genius lab ended up being so far away from your apartment, that by the time you got to the front of it, you were heaving like a pregnant women, and you heavily grasp the handle of the shop, pulling it open with all the strength you have left. you stumble in to see a pretty empty shop, it is a working day so that isn’t a surprise, you wipe the sweat off your forehead as you look around for yoongi.

what are you even going to say?

‘hello, the kiss was great and i still feel weak from it but let’s forget that happened because that basically was just you cheating on your girlfriend?’

that doesn’t sound right.

“y/n, right?” you look up to see a younger, handsome man at the counter.

“jungkook?” he smiles and nods his head, extending his hand towards you, you shake it with a smile of your own and you really shouldn’t be smiling, considering your situation but jungkook has a very infectious aura, very bright and filled with joy.

you like him already.

“yoongi hyung is in the back room, he told me to tell you to go there” he gestures towards the other end of the room and you want to turn and run away from here, because as far as you can tell, the back rooms are private places meaning it’s just going to be you and yoongi.

your original plan was to look at other customers as you get yours done but how can you look at anything in a room if yoongi was going to be the only person in there?

“is that so? then i’ll get going in there, good luck here jungkook” you give him a nervous smile and he beams at you with a nod, eyes shining and you coo at how adorable he looks before you take a deep breath to calm yourself and slowly walk towards the room.

you’re only here for the tattoo and nothing else, you won’t talk with yoongi at all or even look at him, just let him do the tattoo and leave.

there you go, perfect plan.

you push against the door with your hip, peeking in to see yoongi with his back to you and you take a quick step back, clutching your hand on your racing heart, you haven’t even seen him fully but you’re not sure if you can stop yourself from lunging at him.

“are you just going to stand there, doll?” just as you’re about to tip-toe your way out of the tattoo shop and hopefully move to a remote island where you don’t have to worry about anyone, yoongi calls you out, with his back still to you.

how did he even know that you were there?

you clear your throat a little and step into the room, the walls are white and there’s a few boards filled with drawings here and there, and then there is yoongi who apparently has decided to wreck you by wearing torn jeans and a black hoodie.

the outfit isn’t special by any means but you already feel weak in the knees.

you decide to walk over to him with your knees still wobbly and your breath shakier than it was and look over his shoulder to see him working on a tattoo design, probably yours, you lean over to see it properly and gasp at the delicate baby’s breath drawing, your favorite flower.

“i didn’t draw it, my sister did” he mumbles as continues tracing it carefully.

“your sister is talented” you say honestly and he hums in agreement.

okay, so you two are going to act like yesterday didn’t happen, you can definitely go along with that.

“stop loitering doll, just sit down on the chair” he can’t focus when you’re walking around him with big, curious eyes and a small smile dancing on your lips, and he feels bad when you sigh in disappointment and silently walk to the big chair in the middle of the room.

but he can’t do anything about it, he expected you to be your usual self and fire back at him but you didn’t and he doesn’t have a good feeling about that.

he heads over to the chair with the tattoo design ready in his hands, he instructs you to lay down and makes sure you’re fully comfortable and his side keeps pressing against your body as he leans over to prepare things for the tattoo and it takes everything in you to not kiss him again. so, you keep yourself busy, fiddling with the hem of your shirt.

“you’re going to have to look at me if we’re doing this, y/n” he says and you lift your gaze to see him looking at you with a face you can’t read or decipher but you hold his stare as he circles around you to flicker some lights on you.

“where do you want the tattoo?” he asks, pushing his sleeves up, to reveal scatters of small tattoos all over his arms and you gulp at the visible veins on his hands.

“i get to choose?” you raise your eyebrows and he shrugs.

“well, it’s your body doll, i think it was cruel enough to make you do this, so yes, you do.”

you do know where you want to get it, you always thought that if ever, one day, you decide to be brave and get a tattoo, there’s one spot you’ve wanted it to be but you’re not sure if yoongi will be okay with it.

do you really want to push your luck here?

“are you sure you’re comfortable with anywhere?” you decided to ask him and he frowns at you like there’s an obvious answer.

“yes, that’s my job.”

“right” you purse your lips and nod as he looks at you expectantly.

“i want it on the side on my waist” you whisper and yoongi drops his head with a chuckle.

“doll, do you want to kill me?” and your face heats up at his tone and at the way he looks up with a smirk, nodding while putting on his gloves.

“then you will have it on the side of your waist, you have to push your shirt up by a lot, like right under your bra and hold it there, understood?” you do a double take at his straightforward tone, like talking about your bra is totally normal but you just bob your head hastily and agree to whatever he’s saying, trying to not make a big deal out of it but you’re sure that your red face is a dead giveaway.

“okay, lay on your side” he places his hand on your shoulder and gently pushes you back on the reclined seat, and you huff deeply because it’s only now dawning on you that you’re getting a tattoo done by yoongi, it’s going to be on your waist and you feel stupid for not just going for your arm. you stiffen under him and watch with wide eyes as he places the needles on the table, those look painful and you’re genuinely terrified now.

“scared of needles?” you nod numbly to his question, squeezing your eyes shut and trying to get rid of the image of those needles.

“it’s whatever, it’s fine” you breath out but your body definitely gives you away, your hands are shaking and you’re sure that you feel dizzy.

“doll, take it easy, it’s going to be over in no time and just remember to breath properly during it” when he gets no response from you, and your eyes are still closed, he realizes how scared you are.

“you want me to distract you?”

“please.” you mumble and he wordlessly lifts your shirt for you because you don’t look like you’re going to move but he keeps his eyes on your face while he does that, carefully tucking your shirt under your arm to keep it from moving away and if you weren’t as scared as were right now, you would have noticed the goosebumps that rise everywhere his touch reaches.

he gently holds your shirt in place and places the drawing on your skin, putting it flat and rubbing it slowly so that it would transfer well, and you feel weirdly hot, he’s just doing his job but you really want to just grab him and take him right there.

“okay, i will draw over this and then we will get to the actual tattoo” you actually shiver a little when you feel one of his hands tracing the design and the other slightly pulling on your skin so that it stays taut and you don’t know why the fuck you agreed to this because you’re clearly suffering here.

“what do you think of weird food combinations?” he suddenly asks once he’s done with the tracing.

“some are alright, i guess” you answer and then you hear the sound of the drilling needle causing you to let out a low whine and bury your face into the seat you’re lying on.

you should have stayed home, even the sound is freaking you out.

“which ones, according to you, are acceptable?”

“i don’t think mint chocolate is as bad as people make it out to be.” he scoffs at your response, making you frown.

“what is your problem?” you snap at him and yoongi smiles because you’re finally talking to him like you always do, he would recognize that tone of yours anywhere.

“mint chocolate is horrible, doll, i thought you had taste.” he clicks his tongue at you and you immediately go on a rant about how mint chocolate is too hated of a flavor and that at the end of the day, it’s just food and everyone has different tastes.

somewhere in the middle of your rant, yoongi looks at you fondly, you’re always so passionate about everything, even the simplest things, you make it sound and feel like how music affects him, and just as you’re almost done with your rant, he presses the needle on your skin making you yelp and you would’ve jumped and ended up scarring your skin if it weren’t for his hands holding you down.

this hurts this hurts this hurts.

it’s all you can think of as he slowly moves the needle around, looking at you every once in a while to check if you’re okay.

“i never got to tell you this but i think you following your passion with music is really cool and i really respect you for that, i hope you know that i will always support you on it.” you breath out quickly and if you weren’t here, yoongi would’ve cried because he appreciates your words so much, he pats your head in thanks, mumbling how grateful he is and it’s delicate, just like your first kiss.

it doesn’t last long though.

“you know, a food combination i like is french fries and vanilla ice cream.” your mouth drops open at his words, that sounds nasty as hell.

“why are you looking at me like that?” he laughs at your scrunched up face.

“what the fuck do you mean by french fries and vanilla ice cream?” you practically growled at him while looking at him with pointed eyes, can this tattoo be done anytime soon?

“don’t say shit when you haven’t tried it.” he smirks at your annoyed expression and you just glare at him.

“i don’t have to try that monstrosity to know that it tastes like trash.” you snap at him with raised eyebrows and just when he is about to reiterate with another comment, you unconsciously move, you hear him tut and hold you back down with a strong grip.

“sit still doll, or i might just drive this needle into your nerves and leave you paralyzed for life.” you know his warning doesn’t mean shit but you stay silent and stop moving anyways.

wait, you haven’t felt pain for the past five minutes, and you realize it’s because yoongi distracted you, he could’ve just done his job and leave you to suffer alone but he didn’t, and your heart swells a little.

that was sweet of him.

“how did you know that i like baby’s breath?” yoongi pauses with the needle but then continues like nothing happened at all.

“asked around” he casually replies and you roll your eyes, of course he would say that.

“yoongi, we need to talk about what happened in the party” you nervously but finally address the elephant in the room, biting your lip once the pain increases again.

“when i have a needle in my hand, really?” he looks up with an exasperated expression and you nod.

“with a needle in your hand, yes.”

“doll, all i’ve got to say is, i don’t know why you think i have a girlfriend” he laughs a little as he continues moving the needle against your skin.

wait what?

“what?”

“wait a second, your tattoo is almost over” you let him finish up while you are lost in your own thoughts, you are once again confused about everything and you don’t even feel the pain anymore, he places a patch over the tattoo after you get a look of it and you have to admit, he might not have passion in this but he’s surely talented.

he helps you sit up slowly, holding both of your hands firmly and pulling you forward till your legs almost wrapped themselves against his waist, he doesn’t let go of your hands though.

“i don’t have a girlfriend, and the only reason i let you go that night was because you didn’t look like yourself, i didn’t want to take advantage of you when you were that emotionally vulnerable, i don’t think i’ve ever seen you that dull.” he speaks sincerely and you know that he’s honest but you’ve still got so many questions.

“so, what about the girl from the previous party? the one where we played spin the bottle?”

“she wasn’t my girlfriend, i didn’t even sleep with her that night.” he shook his head as he said it and you narrow your eyes at him.

“well, she doesn’t know that because she’s bragging to everyone that you’re her boyfriend” you poke a finger at his chest accusingly and he chuckles.

“let her, i know who’s i want to be and it’s not her” your cheeks flush when he looks at you pointedly as he says that, you clear your throat and sit up straighter, taking this new information gracefully and doing a little happy dance in your heart, you wrap your arms around his neck and plays with the ends of his hair as he can’t help but grin at you.

“what about at the studio? you got so mad” you mumble sadly because you still remember how heartbroken you were that day and yoongi sighs, patting your cheek and rubbing his thumbs in circles on them.

“well, girlfriend or not, i didn’t like that you blackmailed me, doll. i had just opened up to you and you hit me with that so yeah, i was mad but i’m not anymore, okay? i know how stupid you can be sometimes” he adds the last part teasingly and you immediately gasp, pulling away from him and hitting his chest though a huge smile blooms on your face. yoongi laughs happily as you continue to try to hit him as he dodges.

eventually he gets tired of moving away from you, so he grabs your hands in his and pulls you closer till your lips meet his, your wrists stay captured in his hands as you kiss him back with every bit of your nerves ignited with a fresh need, you pull away from him with a small giggle while he wears a dopey grin.

“i hate you so much” you mumble against his lips with a huge grin, but like any other time, you don’t have a scowl on your face nor do you mean those words at all, he hums in agreement, pecking you one more time and cupping your face in his hands.

“trust me doll, i hate you so much more” he coos at you and you laugh at him because you know he doesn’t mean it either, you know that the word hate is just a replacement for love when it comes to the two of you, the way his eyes sparkle at you with a newfound joy tells you enough, and your laugh only gleefully extends once he starts peppering kisses all over your face as you try to swat him away.

so yes, you hate yoongi a lot, you hate min yoongi the most.

to: jisoo

the dare’s done, you can get off my ass about it! and guess who has a boyfriend now? 😉

388 notes · View notes

gukyi · 4 years

Text

midas | jjk

summary: jeon jungkook was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and the power to turn whatever he wants into pure gold. you were born with healing and invisibility powers but without a cent to your name. so when you’re plucked off of the streets for pickpocketing and assigned to be his minder as punishment, you realize you’re going to have to overcome a lot more than class differences if either of you are going to get what you want.

{enemies to lovers!au, ceo!au, magical realism!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, angst word count: 32k (my hand slipped) warnings: alcohol consumption (brief), mentions of bruising and injuries, characters being emotionally constipated and afraid of commitment, your usual guyi e2l lineup a/n: finally!! oh god this fic took forever to write and just kept getting longer and longer. remember when i overestimated the wc by saying 25k-30k? yikes. anyway, i hope you all enjoy this monster! nothing says gukyi like a jk e2l fic, am i right?

The best time to be on the streets is just past noon on weekdays and eleven o’clock on Sunday mornings. When every working professional is out on their lunch break or weekend brunch, basking in the nice weather by choosing to fill up every outdoor dining area available to them. When they plop their bags, their purses and totes, on the chairs opposite them or onto the pavement beside them, thinking that the plastic fence that guards them will be enough to deter pickpockets and thieves.

Unluckily for them, they usually fail to consider the prospect of someone invisible swooping in to steal the bills from their wallets, a nondescript force reaching into their purse as they stare down at their phones while they eat, forkfuls of to-go salads and pasta dishes stuffed into their mouths.

Pickpocketing is a skill that the most desperate learn and the shameless master. Normally, people work in teams, one person to distract and the other to fish for the wallet, grabbing the cash and credit cards before tossing it onto the sidewalk and disappearing without a trace. If you wanted to be especially good at it, you would have to be able to complete the entire thing in less than thirty seconds, in the time it takes for people to switch trains in the subway stations.

But when you work alone, you don’t get that luxury.

But you suppose that the higher powers above, whatever they may be, are relatively benevolent, because in exchange for your prickly personality, you were blessed with the gift of being invisible.

Unfortunately, that’s something that you don’t need magic to feel.

The truth is that it’s always been easy to ignore a girl who has no family, no friends, and no money. Living isn’t the hard part, living with purpose is. Nobody wants to pay any attention to someone who has nothing, literally nothing, to offer in return. At least, nobody interesting.

The only times when you ever feel truly at peace are when you’re sleeping, and when you’re walking down the streets of the city, letting the rest of the world pass you by without sparing you a second glance. You’ve never been one desperate to stick out, to make an impression. Never been someone that people stop to do a double take at when they walk past you. Strange as it sounds, you love the feeling of being insignificant. It is, in a way, liberating.

So far today you’ve hauled eighty dollars and a subway card from the wallet of some poor tourist standing outside of a bakery looking at a map the size of Jupiter. Some people you feel particularly bad about robbing, but a bald man with dad sunglasses and a fanny pack isn’t one of them. Besides, being pickpocketed is a classic tourist experience. You’re actually doing him a favor. Something to check off of his bucket list.

You stow away the money and the card into your pocket, bills folded neatly into your raggedy jeans, rips and holes lining the fabric not for fashion, but from wear alone. You’ll make a mental note to buy yourself a croissant or something later. A treat to reward yourself for all of the hard work you’re putting in today. You’ll be able to pay off your phone bill for the next month with this money.

When the lunch breaks are over, you’ll probably retire to your bed and wallow in self-pity for a little before returning for the dinner rush. Having no life is a constant job, and you don’t even get any legally-mandated breaks to keep you going. Every moment you aren’t on the streets is another moment you aren’t making any money. It’s sort of like being a salesman, which, if you think about it, is just a legal way to rob people. When have salespeople ever sold something of real value?

With the eighty dollars on your mind, you start to scope out nice bakeries on your route, coffee shop signs and pastries on display in the window, looking for a nice place to settle down and buy yourself something sweet. Seeing as you live off of Campbell’s soups and bread from dollar stores, anything is an upgrade.

You walk a couple more blocks before stumbling upon one of those picture-perfect bakeries, with pristinely decorated cupcakes and cakes lining the window display. You can tell that this place is good because there’s a line out the door and a little seating area that is packed to the brim. However, you are currently invisible, which doesn’t accommodate purchasing goods particularly well, but you make a mental note to return to the bakery a little later when people can actually see you. As if you’d ever turn right here, in front of all of these people.

While you’re here, you decide to snoop around the line and the outdoor seating area to see if anybody strikes your fancy. Everyone standing either has their bag on their shoulder or their wallets gripped tightly between their fingers, so that’s off the table. But, there is one woman wearing a massive wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses as she chows down on a pink strawberry cupcake, her Louis Vuitton tote bag sitting a good two inches away from her, possibly even out of her periphery.

Bullseye.

There’s never a need to be stealthy when you’re already invisible, so you trot over, eyeing the woman to make sure that she can’t see anything in front of her. She doesn’t seem to be paying any attention, so you quickly reach down into her bag, a close watch on her gaze, hand fishing around amongst the receipts and the lipsticks and hand sanitizer until you feel her leather wallet. Nimble fingers fumble with the zipper until the tips come into contact with the crisp dollar bills, which you quickly nick and stuff into your pocket, bounding off without a trace.

Halfway down the block, you surreptitiously glance at your haul—two hundred dollars!

That’ll be enough to last you and your phone bill for the next three months, at least.

You’re so busy mentally applauding yourself for your pickpocketing skills that you don’t notice someone standing right in front of you. At least, you don’t notice until you crash into them, the surprise forcing you to turn.

You sputter out an apology, hoping that whoever it is you’ve nearly run over isn’t observant enough to notice that the currently-visible thing they bumped into was previously invisible, and that’s when you notice exactly who it is that you’ve collided with.

It’s the woman from the bakery, Louis Vuitton bag and everything. And she’s staring you down like there’s no tomorrow, arms crossed over her middle-aged chest as she sends daggers at you. Oh, you’re so fucked.

“Sorry?” You say unhelpfully, already knowing the direction of this conversation. This woman wouldn’t be sending you a death glare if she didn’t already know who you are. They definitely did this just to trap you, set you up like a mouse and a cheese trap.

“Don’t play stupid, Y/N,” she orders. “You must already know why I’m here.”

“I was hoping you’d let me off the hook?” You say guiltily, her hand already wrapping tightly around your wrists as she handcuffs you, sharp metal pressing against your wrists. One wriggle and you know that there’s no magicking yourself out of these. They think of everything, they do.

“Tell that to the courts,” she snaps, effectively shutting you up as she drags you away, money digging a hole in your pocket as you begin to envision yourself six feet under. You’re as good as dead, caught red-handed.

Well, life was good while it lasted. At least you might never have to have Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup anymore.

There’s no such thing as an attorney in the Realm. No such thing as a fair trial (even if they say there is), no such thing as defense and prosecution. No grand juries, no crowds, no sketch artist. Just a judge with a stick up his ass and a punishment to be delivered. You’re either guilty or a liar.

And you’re rather good at being both.

“The charge is as follows,” says the burly man at the head of the makeshift courtroom, reading off of a piece of parchment like it’s 1433 and the printing press hasn’t been invented yet. “Burglary, possession of illegally-gained goods, and petty theft.” Because charging you for burglary alone wasn’t enough, apparently. You have a sneaking suspicion that they invented the other two charges just so they could have more to punish you for. “Does the defendant have anything they wish to say?”

“Don’t you guys have anything better to do with your lives?” You ask with a dramatic sigh, having already resigned yourself to your fate. “Like, you could be playing golf round after golf round instead of sitting here, charging an orphan girl with no money.”

“This is my job,” says the burly man. Clearly he has never done anything fun in his entire life.

“Also, stealing is my only crime, right? So do you really need to punish me like I’ve murdered someone?”

“You burglarized a Realm Leader,” he deadpans. As if Realm Leaders really wear wide-brimmed hats, sunglasses, and carry around a three-thousand dollar Louis Vuitton bag on their days off.

“You set me up,” you accuse. Might as well go out swinging. “What if I charge you for lying, huh? How will you be punished?”

“Anything else?”

“Fuck you,” you spit.

The burly man sighs, thinks about the potential verdict for approximately two seconds, and says, “The court finds the defendant guilty of all three charges. Sentencing will now be arranged.”

Big whoop. You could sniff out your ’guilty’ verdict from three miles away, knowing that the Realm takes plenty of pride in charging its constituents for whatever crime that they can invent. You slouch back in your chair as the judge and his heartless buddies discuss your punishment. You suppose that being jailed might not be too bad—you’d always have meals and a place to sleep, even if you would have to give up magic in return. And community service would also be alright. You’d be fine with cleaning up the expressway that runs through the city, though knowing the Realm, they’d probably put you up to some stupidly dangerous magical task. And at this point, death seems rather inviting, and would solve everybody’s problems because they wouldn’t have to deal with you and you wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.

The judge coughs, summoning the bare minimum of your attention. “The court has reached a sentencing decision for the convicted. We are offering you two options, of which you may choose one.”

Right, like you’d willingly volunteer for both punishments.

“You may either be sentenced to serve time in the Realm Penitentiary for six months with the possibility of parole after four, or conduct supervised community service until the task at hand has been completed. Please select which option you would like.”

It’s like asking you to choose between being given one hundred dollars or having to pay one hundred dollars. What does the Realm think people will pick? Do they really think anyone in their right mind would choose to be jailed, forbidden to use their magic, and then let the Realm trick them into thinking parole is really an option, over some measly community service?

“Community service,” you say gruffly.

“Excellent,” the judge says, writing something with a quill and ink because apparently, ballpoint pens are too complicated. “Your community service will be supervised by a Realm Leader with visionary powers, so you will not need to meet with them in order to discuss your progress, nor will they watch you in person.” And they said that crystal balls aren’t real.

“What do I have to do?” You ask. Knowing them, it’ll probably be something like scrubbing all of the toilets in the Penitentiary, or going deep into the Amazonian forest to collect some magical sap or fighting off a magical beast. Something that could serve as a death sentence, or at least be extremely unpleasant, in the hopes that it’ll get you off of their backs.

“The court will be assigning you as a minder to correct the ways of another mage,” the judge states.

A minder?

So, your community service is that you have to be a glorified magickal babysitter?

Well. It could be worse.

“Alright, fine,” you say, though it’s not like you have a choice one way or another. Where was your minder? Why weren’t you assigned one, instead of just being hauled off by an undercover Realm leader to be sentenced for the same crime three times over? “Who will I be assigned to?”

The judge looks down at the parchment in front of him through his tiny old man glasses, and says, “Jeon Jungkook.”

Huh?

Jeon Jungkook lives on the top floor of an apartment complex the size of the Empire State Building and worth more than your entire life. There are ceiling-to-floor windows that span the entire perimeter of the penthouse, a whole security team in the lobby vetting every single person that walks through the automatic glass doors, and an elevator with a touch-screen instead of buttons. It sickens you, the fact that some people can live like this. The fact that some people have known only this world as their entire life, and have not once glanced the other way.

Getting to Jeon Jungkook’s front door isn’t the hard part. The Realm gave you succinct instructions and permission to use your powers whenever necessary throughout the whole thing, two things more than you thought they would. It’s easy to slide by the big buff security guards when they can’t see you. Easy to turn in the comfort and privacy of the elevator, easy to figure out which door is his when he’s the only person who lives on the top floor.

The hard part is getting there without feeling like you’re way in over your head. Getting Jeon Jungkook to stop abusing his powers will be no easy feat. He’s rich, powerful, and spits on people like you, people who are not either of those things. Not to mention the fact that if he really wanted to, he could just turn you to gold and set you up in his penthouse like a statue, frozen in time.

For once, the only thing that makes you feel a little bit better is the Realm. They’ve handed you a strict order that neither you nor he can magic your way out of, lined with stipulations and regulations and requirements that both of you will follow or so help you God. If Jeon Jungkook doesn’t comply, he, his company, and his reputation are done for.

So at least there’s that.

Jeon Jungkook’s front door is made of a deep mahogany brown and about thirteen feet tall, towering over you just to serve as a reminder that he can pretty much afford to buy out the entire city if necessary. You feel like an ant in comparison, an insignificant little thing, no money, no power, no nothing.

A fluorescent doorbell light flashes beside the door frame.

The sound echoes throughout the hallway you’re standing in, a classic ding-dong noise that reverberates across the walls.

“Coming!” A voice from inside calls. Is Jungkook expecting someone?

You quickly make any last minute efforts to look as presentable as possible—well, as presentable as someone who lives in a dilapidated, abandoned house at the edge of the city can be—before the door opens.

For someone who’s got money to burn, Jeon Jungkook sure as hell doesn’t look like it. He’s wearing an oversized button down that hangs loose by his thighs, ripped jeans, and a pair of charcoal grey socks, like he got home from work five hours ago and decided to change into whatever feels most comfortable.

“Oh, good, I called and they said that you would be another twenty minutes,” Jungkook says, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Let me go grab my wallet, you can just set the pizza down on the counter.”

“Uh, I’m not—”

Jungkook rushes off down one of the fifteen different hallways that branch off of the main living room, leaving you stranded as you wander into his massive abode. Windows line the walls, giving you a perfect view of the city below you, twinkling lights of skyscrapers as people slowly leave their offices and return home. His kitchen alone is double the size of where you live. How can one person possibly take up all of this space? Doesn’t it ever get lonely?

You wait awkwardly besides the counter, which is pizza-less, until Jungkook returns, a shiny black wallet between his fingers as he fumbles for some cash. And normally, you have zero qualms stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (aka, yourself), but seeing as he thinks you’re providing a service, you have the compassion to feel at least a little bit bad.

Jungkook stops when he notices the bare countertop. “Uh,” he begins with a frown, “where’s the pizza?”

“I’m not the pizza delivery guy,” you explain hesitantly. You don’t suppose Jungkook would have opened the door otherwise.

“Then where is the pizza delivery guy?” He asks, like you somehow know.

“I don’t know,” you tell him. Was an interrogation supposed to be a part of this?

“Who are you?”

“I’m Y/N,” you say, hesitant to touch anything except the floor for fear that you will either dirty or break something and then spend the rest of your life trying to pay back the damages. “I’m your minder.”

“What?” Jungkook scrunches up his nose in disgust. “I never asked for a minder.”

“Well, you’ve been assigned one anyway,” you say with a frown. To be fair, it’s not like you expected this to be easy.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jungkook dismisses, already making his way to the door to shoo you off into the night, like he probably does with all of his problems. “I don’t need a minder. I’m fine.”

You look over his shoulder, noticing the flecks of golden accents that line his house, the golden teapots on shelves, picture frames hung up on the wall. Even the rods that hold up the massive satin curtains are gold. There isn’t so much gold to be garish and kitschy, like a teenager who can’t control what he touches, but enough to assert that he’s either wealthy or gifted, or in his case: both.

“That really sucks, because I’m still your minder,” you tell him, refusing to budge. Jungkook can’t possibly imagine he’ll somehow be able to get out of this. Not when the law is working against him.

“Says who?” Jungkook spits back.

“The Realm,” you tell him rudely, manifesting the agreement the Realm had given you to force Jungkook into accepting. The parchment is laid out on the countertop, curling up at the edges, black ink written neatly on top of it. He glares at it suspiciously, as if he’s suspected that you forged it. When you make no efforts to explain yourself further, he takes a hesitant step forward, eyes narrowing in on the parchment sitting in front of the both of you. In pitch black ink, loopy calligraphy, it says this:

As recommended and required by the Realm, its leaders, and its government, the recipient, Jeon Jungkook is to be assigned a minder, whose duty is to watch over him, regulate his use of magic, and work towards decreasing his magical activity.

This minder is being assigned as a result of misuse of magic by the recipient, either by abuse or from the intent to inflict harm upon mages or non-magic users. The Realm decrees that all mages who disobey the laws that govern society either be reformed or punished.

This minder must ensure that the recipient makes progress towards decreasing his magical activity by indefinitely accompanying and supervising him for every hour of the day. This minder’s term will expire once they have achieved their goal of decreasing the recipient’s use of magic and ensuring that abuse of it does not reoccur.

Should the recipient disobey this proclamation in any form, including vandalism, ignorance, or rejection, he will be brought to court and sentenced to jail accordingly.

Jungkook seems to read the parchment for about five seconds before crumpling it up in his hands and tossing it into the trash bin by the edge of the counter.

“Absolutely not,” he scoffs. “I do not need a minder. I don’t know what The Realm told you but I have no problem with my powers and your services are not required. There was probably some sort of mistake.”

As if. The paper says his name. Jungkook’s almost as bad at violating the rules of the Realm as you are.

“Uh—” you begin again, but Jungkook is already shooing you out of his penthouse, flicking you away like an animal that’s gotten too close. You find yourself backing up furiously in a desperate attempt to not be trampled by him and his oversized button-down and intimidating death glare, until you’re a foot out of his apartment.

“Maybe you can go bother someone else instead,” he suggests unhelpfully, before slamming the door in your face.

You stand there for a few more seconds, face to face with the dark mahogany wood. The bright side is that, even if Jungkook only read the first paragraph of the decree and then tossed it into his recycling bin, there’s no escaping the Realm. You have half a mind to just bugger off and let him face the consequences of his own actions. You can picture it in your head: Realm officers barging into his place of work and arresting him on the spot for consciously disregarding an order of the Realm. That might satiate you for a while.

Resigning yourself to the fact that if you knock on Jungkook’s door and politely suggest that he pull the parchment out from the trash and read the whole thing will probably not go down particularly well, you turn, letting your body vanish before you, before making your way back to the elevator. The pizza delivery guy arrives just as you reach it, letting you easily slide past him as he goes to make Jungkook’s day a little better by being an expected guest rather than an unwarranted visitor.

Jungkook may not have agreed to this today (not that he has a choice in the matter), but there’s always tomorrow.

Passing by the security, who spare no second glance at the fact that the automatic glass doors have just opened seemingly by themselves, you turn left when you reach the sidewalk and head home.

Home is a janky abandoned house at the very edge of the city, where the buildings meet train tracks and old highways, graffiti decorating every open surface within a five-mile radius. It’s not so much a house as it is a shack, old and rickety and forgotten. You think that the locals and the nons believe the place is haunted, since no one ever comes within one hundred feet of the entrance, the broken glass in the windows and big red spray-painted X on the door deterring most folks.

People who invite you into their houses and say, “it’s not much, but it’s home,” are such liars. For as long as you have lived here, this place has never felt like home. You never come back from a long day and think, ah, home sweet home. You will never dream of wasting away within these walls. That’s a death sentence.

You enter through the back door, ducking your head low to avoid hitting it on the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling by a wire or two. You’re not electrically-proficient enough to know how to fix it yourself so it’s less of a fire hazard, and you don’t have nearly enough money to call anyone to come repair it, so there it stays. It still works, though, and you use it in a pinch when you can’t see where you’re stepping.

There’s a small pile of folded clothing on the floor by the mattress, the remnants of a past life that feels more like an alternate universe than it does part of your history. The fridge doesn’t work, nor do most of the utilities, but the little stack of Campbell’s soup cans on the countertop is reliable and unchanging. As is the fact that you will probably never get out of this dump, so long as you shall live.

When you were little, you used to dream of living in a big castle, and wanting for nothing. You would have people to cook for you, clean for you, dress you, bathe you, entertain you. All of these stories about being a little princess, doted on and loved by all, innocent and pure and beautiful. All of these stories about finding Prince Charming, meeting the love of your life as waltzes into your life on a gorgeous white horse, getting married, having kids, and growing old together. You dreamed of a perfect life, a perfect love, where you never have to worry about anything, where no one is ever mean or rude, no government to dictate what you do.

It’s no wonder all of those stories were simply fairy tales.

It makes you even angrier when you think about Jeon Jungkook. He’s lived a life as close to perfection as possible, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a silver platter placed in front of him. He’s grown up with people adoring him, telling him he can do no wrong, rewarding him with a brand new toy when he gets in trouble, teaching him that his powers are for himself first and for other people next to you. Not much is fair in the world, but especially not the fact that he was bestowed with the gift of being able to turn whatever he wishes into gold.

He is everybody’s Prince Charming: wealthy, handsome, powerful. Too bad you aren’t a princess anymore.

Strangely enough, even after a long day, you aren’t feeling at all hungry. The scent of the pizza Jungkook had ordered to his door was enough to satisfy you, a warm feeling settling in the pit of your stomach. Normally, this late at night, you might even be daring (or sleep-deprived) enough to break into one of your precious ramen packs, but instead you collapse onto the mattress, heavy heart willing you fast asleep, the light flickering above your head.

The next day you are faced with a choice: leave Jungkook alone and let him deal with the repercussions of his actions on his own (much to your delight), or go back and continue pestering him until he agrees to having a minder (much to your chagrin).

A new parchment has manifested itself on the counter, words copied from the one Jungkook threw out before your eyes. It shimmers, almost as if there’s a golden halo that surrounds it, another trick that the Realm has up its sleeve. You have a feeling that this one won’t be as easily ripped, crumpled up to be tossed into the nearest trash bin. It terrifies you—how closely they watch. You suppose that it was only a matter of time before they caught you.

Quite frankly, you’re shocked it took them this long to realize you were a serial pickpocketer in the first place.

As much as you’d love to see Jungkook get arrested and tried for defying the rules of the Realm, see his face plastered all over the newspapers and tabloids with stupid headlines like JEON JUNGKOOK: CRIMINAL? and ARRESTED FOR HAVING TOO MUCH MONEY?, and count it as a personal win, letting that happen would mean that you would have failed to do your court-ordered community service, which is a one-way ticket to prison.

So even if Jeon Jungkook was the grouchiest, greediest, cockiest person in the entire world (which, judging by what you know about him, he probably is), and even though you would happily let his career and reputation plummet, you don’t have a choice. The two of you will either go down together or not at all.

Resigning yourself to the fact that you will have to be within close proximity to Jeon Jungkook for the foreseeable future, you rally yourself out of bed, tugging on what you deem to be your nicest clothes and splashing your face clean. The rags you have on are probably worth a cent of what Jungkook wears on a daily basis, crisp suits and silver watches and golden earrings. He could spit on you and that would increase your net worth. But surprisingly enough, there is something empowering about the fact that Jeon Jungkook will no longer be able to ignore the plight of those in a lower class than him. Not when he, a person who has everything, will be forced to reckon with you, someone who has nothing.

It’s easy to find your way to Jungkook’s place of employment. It’s this enormous skyscraper with his name in a golden serif font above the entryway, marking the entire building as his own. It isn’t garish and ugly, per se, but it definitely makes a statement. This, combined with the cool, chic design of his penthouse apartment, redeems him a little. At least he has taste for someone with money to burn like fireworks.

There are two massive security guards and a whole squad of receptionists standing guard inside the building’s lobby, dressed pristinely and narrowing their eyes at anybody who dares enter. You wait across the street for a few minutes, loitering outside of a coffee shop and trying to avoid having people bump into you, watching. The only people that seem to be worthy of entering are wearing suits and dresses that cost more than what your abandoned house could sell for on the market after being restored, nodding their hellos to the security guards and receptionists as they press the elevator buttons and disappear into the building. You and your thrifted blouse would be laughed out in an instant.

Lucky for you, you happen to have a rather foolproof method of getting yourself through those doors, and it mostly involves the fact that nobody can even see you.

You rush across the road at the next green light and wait until you see someone heading in, the grand glass doors automatically opening when they register someone’s presence. It’s easy to slip in undetected, and you hang around in the lobby, secretly judging every single person that walks in after you. You could, quite honestly, spend all day in here, watching the receptionists tap away at their keyboards with robotic efficiency, answering calls left and right and fielding all sorts of questions from folks entering. It’s a world you have never dared step into, a world filled with wealth and power and class hierarchy, with Jeon Jungkook sitting on a pile of money at the very top of the pyramid.

Some of the people that work in this building will never in their entire lifetime get the chance to speak with him. They will come in, day after day, working for someone who they have no personal relationship to, someone that they will never be afforded the chance to meet.

Those people are, in your opinion, dodging a bullet.

If only your life was as kind to you.

A nervous young man walks in, clearly more out-of-place than anyone else. He seems to have barely bypassed security, flashing some sort of pass that lets him through the doors, but if a breeze came blowing through the lobby, he’d topple right over. He stumbles towards the receptionist desk, all of whom have phones to their ears as they furiously type on their keyboards. One woman holds up a hand, making him freeze in place. If he grinds his teeth any more they’ll all fall out before he even gets a chance to speak.

It’s another two minutes before the lady puts the phone down and says, “How can I help you?”

“I’m—I’m, uh—I’m here for a meeting,” the man fumbles out. You’re embarrassed for him.

“With who?” The woman asks, peering over the glasses resting on her pointy nose. She begins to look over the list of people who have meetings. It must be a rather extensive list.

“Mr—Mr. Jeon, ma’am,” the man sputters.

She looks doubtful. “Your name?”

“K-Kim…” he begins, staring down at his feet, “Kim Taehyung.”

“And your business with Mr. Jeon is?”

“I’m—uh, well, I’m a photographer for… for an article being written about him by F-Forbes,” he explains rather helplessly. He must have superb photography skills to make up for his extreme nervousness. You’ll be surprised if he makes it all the way to Jeon Jungkook’s office without wetting his pants out of fear.

The lady hums to herself, looking suspicious until she finds the man’s name on her list. “Mr. Jeon’s office is on the top floor. Make two lefts and then a right. You will have to wait to be called.”

“Thank you v-very much.” He scurries towards the elevator, and you strike while the iron is hot.

Rushing over, you manage to squeeze into the elevator right before the doors close, waiting patiently in the corner as the man tries to calm himself down, doing some sort of breathing exercise. Well, he’s got plenty of time to put his nerves aside, seeing as this building has seventy floors and Jeon Jungkook is apparently at the very top of them all. You feel bad for him, in a way. Jeon Jungkook was rude and unapologetically uncouth when you spoke to him, even if an aura of professionalism and extremely good social skills surrounds him at all times, and you don’t cower in fear at the sight of him.

There’s no telling what he’ll be like when Taehyung walks into his office.

One tense elevator ride later, the both of you arrive at the seventy-fifth floor, the silver doors opening to reveal a busy office space filled with people near the very top of the building’s pyramid. People like his secretary and accountants and managers, people who come into direct contact with Jeon Jungkook every day from nine to five. In a way, you pity these people for having to deal with him, but it’s not like you’ll be any different.

Taehyung rushes out and you make sure to follow before the elevator doors crush you, following the receptionist’s instructions. Two lefts and a right.

Jungkook’s office, much like his apartment, is not hard to miss. His name is written on a plaque on the door, and a guard stands outside with a clipboard, regulating everybody who passes in and out of the room. The walls that surround him are glass but he keeps the blinds drawn permanently, so that no one has the pleasure of seeing his face while they work tirelessly to impress him. Taehyung gives his name to the man, who checks him off on the paper on his clipboard before entering the room.

“Sir, your 12:30 is here,” the guard says.

Taehyung looks about ready to pass out.

“Let them in,” Jungkook’s voice bellows in response. The man nods to Taehyung, who trembles where he stands, twiddling his thumbs like there’s no tomorrow. He shuffles in awkwardly and the door shuts behind him. Luckily, the walls are sound-proof.

The thirty minutes of waiting is agony. You have nothing to do but rehearse in your head how this next conversation is going to go down, the scroll burning a hole in your back pocket. If Jungkook was displeased at best to see you in his apartment, you can only imagine the horror on his face when he sees you’ve infiltrated his workplace as well. Especially since you don’t have even a fraction of the money and power needed to enter the building on more professional terms.

The good news is that, no matter what Jungkook says, no matter how many times he kicks you out of his penthouse and his skyscraper, he has no choice but to accept the deal, regardless of how long it will take for him to realize this. You never thought you’d ever be relying on the Realm to carry you through a predicament, and nor did you ever think you’d be doing their bidding, and yet, here you are.

The door opens at one o’clock on the dot.

“Th-thank you so much for your time again, Mr. Jeon,” Taehyung says, bowing profusely as he heads out. “I really appreciate it, you—you won’t regret it, I promise, thank you again!” You quickly rush towards the door, even making to hold it slightly open for Taehyung as he heaps his thanks on top of Jungkook. In the split second it takes for Taehyung to let the door go and for it to shut, you slip inside.

“Finally,” Jungkook huffs out to himself, hand rubbing against his forehead. He’s not wearing a suit like you had expected, rather, a silken button-down shirt and tailored slacks. He doesn’t even have a tie.

Well, you suppose that being your own boss has its perks.

Jungkook’s stomach growls. “Fuck, I’m hungry.” He presses a button on the phone in his office. “I’m taking my hour lunch break now,” Jungkook informs the person on the other end. “Put all of my meetings on hold until two o’clock and not a moment earlier.”

He hangs up the phone and runs his hands through his hair, neatly straightened and styled. You hate to admit it, but there’s no wonder the man has captured the hearts of people all over the city. He’s rather good looking, the flecks of gold scattered around his office complementing his swirling brown eyes, making them look like caramel instead of cocoa. You have a hunch that, in the eyes of the general public, unattractive people instantly become good-looking the moment that they acquire wealth, power, fame, or all three, but Jeon Jungkook doesn’t need any of those things for people to think he’s beautiful. To him, they’re just bonuses.

He turns around for a moment to look for something, probably to fish his phone out of the pocket of his jacket, and you turn. Nothing says hello like magically manifesting yourself in his office.

“Jesus fu—!” Jungkook practically jumps out of his skin when he sees you. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’m your minder,” you explain again.

“I told you I don’t need a goddamn minder,” Jungkook spits out, turning around again just so he doesn’t have to see your face. “Get out.”

“Sorry, no can do,” you say, rocking back and forth on your feet. “Realm’s orders.”

“Fuck the Realm,” Jungkook says. “I don’t need a minder. Your services are unnecessary. Now get out, before I call security.”

You purse your lips. “You may want to think twice about that.” With a flourish, you whip out the scroll, a golden yellow glow still surrounding the parchment, handing it to Jungkook like a Christmas cracker. He snatches it out of your hand and unfurls it. “You should probably read the whole thing this time. It won’t rip like the last one.”

Jungkook glares at the paper like it’s ruined his life—which, judging by his attitude, it probably has—as he scans over the words, scowl worsening with every second that passes.

“You shouldn’t frown like that, it’s not a good look on you,” you chide. At least Jungkook knows that there’s no bribing his way out of this one.

“I told you I don’t need a minder,” he says again like it hasn’t already been made abundantly clear.

“Well, I didn’t want to be assigned to you, but unfortunately, it looks like neither of us are going to get what we want,” you retort. “It’s this or prison, Jeon. You pick.”

“Why the fuck were you assigned to me, then?” Jungkook asks, rounding on you. “What are your powers?”

“Healing and invisibility,” you spit out. Not nearly as glamorous or lucrative as his own, but they come with their own benefits. For example, the ability to infiltrate high-level, upper class places of employment. “Maybe they thought I’d make a good babysitter since those are two skills often used with children,” you tell him pointedly.

“I don’t need a minder,” Jungkook repeats for the umpteenth time. “I don’t misuse my magic or abuse my powers.”

“Uh,” you point out, an eyebrow raised skeptically, “I think I’d like to beg to differ.” There’s more gold in this room than miners probably found in San Francisco in the nineteenth century. The fact that nons haven’t noticed the abundance of it in his office is outrageous to you. How else do they think he and his family built up this empire?

“Please,” Jungkook says with a frown. “As if we don’t all use our powers for our own benefit. Huh? What did you do that was so terrible that you had to be assigned as my minder?”

“I pickpocket,” you explain economically. No point in sugar-coating it. Jungkook has probably already figured out you don’t come from nearly as much money as he does. “And I got caught.”

“Sucks,” Jungkook comments callously.

“Sucks for you, too,” you fire back. “You got caught as well. Agree to the terms or go to jail, Jeon Jungkook. I don’t care. But don’t say I didn’t try to help.”

You stand there in silence for a few more seconds, letting your words dissipate into the air, sinking into the ground. Jeon Jungkook seems to have this furious battle within himself, brows furrowing as he rubs at his chin, pacing back and forth behind his desk. He knows he doesn’t have a choice. He goes to jail and his reputation is soiled. The Realm repossesses all that he has made of himself and he must start from scratch under their ruthlessly watchful eye. There will be no recovery. Only survival.

Or, he deals with you for a couple of months until the Realm is satisfied with the both of you, and you both go on your merry way, never having to see each other again.

You know what you’d pick if you were in his shoes.

“Fine,” Jungkook spits out, pointing an accusing finger your way. “But you are to be invisible whenever we are in public, and that includes here.”

“Done. But you have to decrease your turning otherwise we’ll be stuck with each other forever,” you negotiate. “I’ll also have to come and live with you. Can you handle that, or are you too ashamed to have someone else inside your home?”

Jungkook scoffs. “I live in a penthouse the size of a museum. Pick whatever bedroom you fucking want. I doubt we’ll even see each other.” At least there’s one upside to having to stay with him in his massive residence.

“Fine,” you spit out, just for good measure.

“Fine,” he counters back. Like anything about this conversation, this agreement, this goddamn life you have to live, is fine.

Yeah, right.

Jungkook’s penthouse is much more magnificent when you are more than two steps in the door. From where you had stood before, barely just past the door frame as he crumpled the parchment in his hand and tossed it into the trash bin, you hadn’t been able to see it in half its glory, let alone in full. When you can stand in the center of it all, eyes darting from the hallways and archways and spiral staircases leading to a rooftop pool or gym or both, it is overwhelming. Suffocating.

His living room alone is larger than anything you have ever lived in, anything you have ever had the pleasure of calling your own. The ceiling is sky high and completely glass, streaks of sun shooting down and casting its rays on his chic furniture, deep hardwood floors. You’re so busy looking up that you nearly trip on a white rug laid out on the floor.

“There are four bedrooms down that hallway and two down that one,” Jungkook says gruffly, flinging his keys into a bowl resting on a shelf and shrugging off his jacket, letting it hang over his forearm. How could one person possibly take up all of this space?

“Where do you sleep?” You ask.

“That’s none of your business,” Jungkook says with a frown.

“There’s no point in not telling me,” you remind him helpfully, “there’s only so many places you can be.”

Jungkook sighs. “It’s upstairs. But you can just sleep in any of the empty ones down here.”

“Thanks,” you deadpan.

“Is that all you brought?” Jungkook asks with a raised eyebrow, looking at the backpack hanging loose off your shoulder. The zipper’s broken, so the outer flap is in a constant state of being folded over, but it works.

“What, did you expect a moving truck?” You retort.

“Ugh, forget I asked,” Jungkook says, shrugging his shoulders as he turns away from you. He begins to point around the room. “There should be some ready meals in the fridge if you’re hungry. TV’s always set to the news, but feel free to change it. Volume shouldn’t ever be over forty. Books are alphabetized by the author’s last name. No parties, though I don’t imagine you frequent those.”

You can’t tell if that’s a jab or just him being observant, but either way, it’s true. You don’t even have any friends.

“Fine, anything else?”

“Every bedroom has an ensuite bathroom,” Jungkook informs you. “So use that one. Don’t come into my bedroom. There’s more than enough space here for the both of us to go without seeing each other, so let’s keep it that way.”

“Aw, you mean I’m not allowed to wake up to your handsome face and infectious attitude every day?” You pout sarcastically, making Jungkook scrunch up his nose and frown. “Don’t forget that the only way you’re gonna get me out of here is if you listen to the Realm and follow my rules.”

“Yeah, which are?”

“You’re not allowed to turn at all when I’m around, whether or not you can physically see me. Every time you do is a strike. Three strikes—because I’m generous and forgiving—and I’ll report you to the Realm. The whole point of me being here is to make you stop using your powers all of the time.”

“It’s not like I’m doing any harm to people,” Jungkook defends. “You steal, what’s your excuse?”

“You use your power to add onto your already-enormous bank account,” you point out crudely. “I use mine to survive. It’s different.” Jungkook isn’t convinced. “But it doesn’t matter anyway, because I got caught and so did you and now we both have to deal with the consequences.”

He huffs to himself.

“So do we have a deal?” You ask, glaring up at him, unrelenting. Jungkook’s chocolate brown eyes flicker as the gold around his house reflects off of his irises, like he’s trying desperately to find a way to get himself out of this before it’s too late.

What he doesn’t realize is that the very first moment he ever turned something to gold, the very first time the object began to shimmer and spark, he was already too far gone.

You suppose that in a way, so were you.

“Fine,” Jungkook gruffs out, a veiny hand held out towards you. It’s stiff and cold, much in the same way that his penthouse is, that he is. This is not an agreement birthed from choice. It came from necessity, out of self-preservation. He is doing this to protect his reputation. You are doing it to protect your freedom. If all goes well, after a couple of months the two of you will never have to cross paths again. Oh, doesn’t that sound lovely? “Deal?”

You grab his hand in your own, squeezing tightly. There is no going back from this.

“Deal.”

On the bright side, being a minder has finally given you something to do instead of stalking the streets and wasting away on your mattress on the floor. Granted, office life isn’t that much more entertaining, but at least you don’t have to be out in the summer heat anymore.

As per your side of the deal, you remain invisible whenever Jungkook is out in public, which, quite frankly, is less frequently than you had originally anticipated. His entire life seems to go back and forth from home to work then work to home, an endless cycle, a Newton’s cradle on repeat. Maybe that’s why he’s such a prickly asshole—he doesn’t ever make time for things he enjoys.

You thought he would at least have business dinners or fundraising events or company galas to attend. Isn’t that what most CEOs do? Flaunt their wealth to other wealthy people? Jungkook has so much money that he could easily entertain himself by one-upping all of his fellow CEO friends at every event he goes to, flashing the Rolex watch on his wrist or the fancy Italian shoes he always wears.

But no. He wakes up, gets dressed, eats a meal from the ready-made ones wrapped in foil in his fridge, and goes to work. When he comes home, he takes off his suit jacket and shoes, eats dinner, and lounges around his penthouse. Works out sometimes, maybe watches a movie.

Being rich always seemed to be a lot more fun than what Jungkook makes it out to be. Maybe it’s because everything in modern media is completely fake and wholly unrealistic. Or maybe he’s just purposefully making his life boring because you’re here now.

But even if the only two places Jungkook ever goes are work and home, his personality doesn’t seem to change no matter what location he’s at. All of his employees are simultaneously frightened of him and desperate to please him, lowering their heads when he passes by their cubicle but placing finished report files and completed tasks at the edges of their desks for him to glance over as he does. You follow him like a wearied assistant (of which he actually has three, and you are just the annoying invisible one) and he acts like you aren’t even there. When Jungkook returns home with you carelessly traipsing in after him, turning visible the moment he closes the door, he shrugs off his outerwear and goes back to doing his very favorite thing in the whole world: pretending you don’t exist.

At least that hasn’t changed since you moved in.

The bright side is that Jungkook hasn’t turned at all since you’ve shown up. Not in his penthouse and not at work, though he is usually far too busy dealing with real-world issues to dwell on whether or not he’s got enough gold to his name. The answer is that he does, but he doesn’t give a shit about that. Too much is apparently never enough.

Even if you are invisible, being in an office setting is somewhat unsettling to you. From a people-watching perspective, you love it, because you get an entire building of people to observe and judge, but from a personal perspective, it’s just another reminder of a life that you are not meant to live.

All of these people in their ties and pencil skirts and uncomfortable leather shoes, fighting to beat each other out for the next promotion and desperate to please their absolutely unpleasable boss. A nine-to-five job, day in and day out. A fat check in their bank account every month. These are things that are both undesirable and unattainable to you. A glimpse into their lives doesn’t spur you to pursue a career path like theirs, it tells you that no matter what, you won’t ever be able to do what they do.

“Sir, here are the finished analysis reports on the Lee Corporation joint stockholdings,” a proud young man says, plopping it down on Jungkook’s desk as you watch on in silence. The not-speaking part has been rather difficult, but you do get to whisper annoying things into Jungkook’s ear whenever nobody’s around.

“They are completed?” Jungkook asks without even looking up at the man, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did I not ask for them to be completed by Friday?”

The man goes white in the face.

“Uh—” he begins, immediately losing all confidence he had when he entered Jungkook’s office. “Well, I—”

“I don’t appreciate belated work,” Jungkook spits out. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The man nods and scurries out of the office before Jungkook can say anything else. He doesn’t even seem to care.

“Wow, couldn’t even say a ’thank you’?” You chide. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”

“Late work is unacceptable,” Jungkook says. You’re lucky that his blinds are always drawn, or everyone would see him talking to apparently nobody. “There are no exceptions.”

“He was a day late,” you point out.

“Three, if you include weekends.”

“That doesn’t make a difference; he wouldn’t have been able to turn them in over the weekend,” you tell him.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Jungkook orders sternly. He looks angry, but also foolish, because even though he can judge where you’re standing from the sound of your voice, he still can’t meet your eyes. He’s staring holes into the succulent plant on the shelf to your right.

“I’m not,” you defend, annoyed. “I’m telling you how to be a nice person.”

“I don’t need lessons on that, either.” Jungkook frowns. “He turned in work late and was reprimanded. It’s not any different than what happens in school.”

“But you didn’t even thank him for his time or for showing up to your office, or for the fact that he did the work!” You cry out.

“What should I be thanking him for? For making the thirty-feet trip from his desk to my office? For turning in work that he was obligated to do late?” Jungkook challenges. “He had to do those. He wasn’t doing me any favors.”

“Except he was, because if he didn’t do that work, then you would’ve had to do it,” you remind him. “Everybody here is doing work because you aren’t able to do all of it yourself. And that’s not your fault—there are only twenty-four hours in a day and you are only one person. But you should be thanking them for their contributions. Even when they turn in something a little late. It’ll do wonders for other people.”

“Are you implying that people don’t like working here?” It’s like he wants to keep this fight going.

You sigh, loud enough for him to hear despite being a good few steps away from him. “I’m saying that everybody out there—” you say, opening the blinds that cover the walls ever so slightly, just enough for him to see out into the sea of people that sit outside, “—everybody wants so desperately for you to like them. Or at least outwardly display that you don’t hate them. And if you just said please and thank you every now and then, people wouldn’t be so afraid of you.”

Jungkook opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. Instead, he shuts it like a trap and sits back down. He probably doesn’t really appreciate the fact that you’re directing him on how he controls his office on top of how he uses his magic. But it’s the truth, and he had to hear it one way or another.

“I didn’t ask for suggestions on how to run this office,” he spits out. “Next time I think advice like this is warranted, I’ll ask.” Which will be never.

“I’m here whether you like it or not,” you stand your ground. Jungkook gets to put up with you no matter what! “So I’ll tell you whatever I feel is necessary.”

Jungkook scowls.

“Don’t frown, it ruins your pretty face,” you tease. You walk a couple of steps and lean over to stretch his lips into a smile. He stiffens up, clearly having lost a sense of humor alongside his patience. “That’s better, don’t you think?”

“I can’t wait to get rid of you,” he bites.

“You’ll have to get rid of that attitude, first,” you counter. “Or neither of us are going anywhere.” Entitlement and greed go hand in hand. There’s no way you’ll be able to get Jungkook to stop turning everything around him into gold without giving his personality a makeover as well. Somewhere in there is a decent human being.

You just aren’t sure if you’ll ever be able to find him.

The time spent at home is less eventful. Besides you, Jungkook has no one to shout at and be rude to, and in any case, he, for the most part, avoids you entirely. Which is understandable but totally counterproductive, because if you never interact, neither of you will ever get what you want.

Still, there is plenty to keep yourself busy inside of his penthouse. He’s subscribed to every streaming service under the sun and has a movie theater-esque surround sound system lining the walls. He has more books than some small town libraries. His internet is stupidly fast. Even if this setup is temporary, you sure as hell aren’t going to waste a second of it.

It is sort of weird to eat food with golden forks and knives, though. You always think you’re going to crack your teeth on your utensils.

You and Jungkook aren’t on speaking terms right now because an hour ago you caught him turning a vase in his office gold, the metal slowly wrapping around the base of the pot like pixie dust, sparkling and shimmering as the clay was overlaid with a deep, lustrous yellow. It increased the value of the vase tenfold and sent the both of you flying back to square one.

“Jungkook, what the hell?” You had shouted, storming into the room as Jungkook’s face turned beet red. “Just because I’m not sitting in the room with you doesn’t give you a free pass to do whatever you want.”

“It was just one pot!” Jungkook had defended himself. “I’m not even going to sell it or anything, it just looks nice. The room needed something extra.”

“I’ve upheld my side of the agreement, what’s so difficult about upholding yours?”

“Oh yeah, like telling me how to do my job even though you have no experience in business whatsoever?” He had challenged. “I don’t think I agreed to that part of the deal.”

“Strike one, Jeon Jungkook,” you had spat out at him. “Otherwise there’s no way in hell you’re ever going to get rid of me.”

Granted, the vase did look much better in gold than it did when it was made of clay, a glazed design of ferns and vines wrapping around the base. But even if Jungkook does have a particularly good eye for interior design, it doesn’t give him a free pass to turn things just to match his chic aesthetic. How many other things has he turned when you weren’t around to shout at him? You’ll have to go through his entire house every day, taking stock of every single item inside of it, making sure that nothing has inexplicably turned to gold.

Defeated, you had returned back to the main living room, flopping around like a beached whale on the leather. Jungkook always has the television set to the news, so you put it on in the background as you count the minutes until you’re finally free. Judging from what’s happened so far, you think you’ll be here forever.

There’s a knock on the door. You don’t recall Jungkook answering any buzzes to his home, but maybe he’s just ordered a pizza or something and it’s here. It’s nearly dinnertime, anyway.

You wait a few seconds to see if Jungkook’s going to make any attempts at answering the door himself. When the knock repeats itself and Jungkook still doesn’t appear, you hop off of the couch to get it yourself. You’re hungry, and pizza sounds delicious right now. A massive upgrade from Campbell’s soups.

When you open the door however, there is no pizza delivery guy behind the door. Instead, there is an extremely well-dressed couple who are smiling happily at you, albeit a little surprised to see you on the other side of the door.

“Hello?” You ask, polite but confused.

“Hello!” The man says happily, chortling to himself. “Who might you be?” One good look at the two of them tells you that they’re Jungkook’s parents. His dad has the same nose, and his mom has the same big, bright eyes. They would kick you to the curb if they knew who you were.

“I’m Y/N,” you explain unhelpfully.

“Well, Y/N, do you mind letting us inside? The air conditioning out in this hallway has always been too strong,” his dad asks. You nod awkwardly and step to the side, letting the two of them in. “Ah, looks the same as always. You must give Jungkookie that interior designer’s number, alright? He could do something much nicer with the place,” he tells his wife, who nods in agreement. She passes by the bowl that Jungkook always throws his keys into when he returns home and presses a finger to it, letting gold wrap around the edges until it’s transformed into the metal.

“Jungkook!” You shout down the hallway, desperately hoping that he isn’t going to leave you alone with his parents.

“What?” He shouts back.

“We have visitors!” You call.

Jungkook’s parents are already picking out all of the things about Jungkook’s living room layout that they would change, turning picture frames here and decorative sculptures there gold, careless and without reason. You’re standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, trying your best to look as unsurprised and as normal as possible. Luckily, you haven’t been interrogated yet, but there’s no telling what will happen if Jungkook doesn’t show up yet.

Two minutes later, Jungkook comes strolling down the hallway, clearly uninterested, but his eyes practically bulge out of his head when he sees who’s come to say hello.

“M-Mom! Dad!” He sputters out, terrified. “What—what are you doing here?” He asks, looking at you nervously. You shrug unhelpfully. All you did was answer the door.

“Came to pay our wonderful son a visit, of course!” His father says, guffawing loudly. He reaches an arm out and pulls Jungkook into a crushing hug. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, I mean—” Jungkook begins, speechless. “I wasn’t expecting you at all, you know.”

“I know!” His mother cries happily. “But you know that families must always stick together.”

“Yeah…” he trails off. “Listen, it’s really nice to see the both of you, but I’m kind of busy at the moment—”

“We should stay for dinner!” His mother suggests, a lightbulb going off above her head. “We haven’t seen you in so long—we have so much to catch up on! What do you say, honey?”

Jungkook’s father looks peachy keen. “Sounds like a great idea! And you can introduce us to Y/N too, hmm?”

“Okay…” Jungkook says. He turns to you and you’ve never seen him so caught off guard. With his big, wide eyes, he’s a deer in headlights. “Just, uh, give us a second, would you? Thanks.”

That’s the only warning you’re given before Jungkook is pulling you down the hallway and into the nearest bedroom, slamming the door shut behind the both of you. The sound of the wood hitting the frame makes you jump as Jungkook furrows his brows and turns to face you directly.

“Alright, here’s the deal,” he says, looking you dead in the eyes as you stare up at him, unimpressed. “My parents can’t know that I’ve been assigned a minder. They just can’t. They’ve trusted me to run this business and to be in control of my life and I don’t even want to think about what they’ll do if they find out why you’re really here.”

“Okay, so?” You say with a frown. “I’ll turn invisible. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“But they’ve already seen you, you opened the goddamn door,” Jungkook says with a sigh, clearly exasperated. He rubs his forehead before his hand makes its way through his hair, brushing through the long, dark strands.

“Well, sorry for not wanting to leave whoever was outside hanging,” you retort.

“No, it’s fine, whatever,” Jungkook says. He paces around the room slightly, eyes glossing over the still life painting hung up on the wall and the door to the walk-in closet. He pauses in front of it for a moment, thinking, before he rounds on you. “Can I trust you to pretend to be my girlfriend for just one night while they’re here?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Please? They seem to already be under the impression that we’re dating anyway, and I don’t want to have to think of a different explanation for you,” Jungkook pleads. He’s desperate.

“Let me get this straight: you want me, your minder, to fake being your girlfriend for your parents?” You ask, punctuating every word. This is worse than actually being his minder.

Jungkook nods. “Just while they’re here. And then we can go back to avoiding each other. Please?”

And for once, when you see Jeon Jungkook’s stupidly beautiful face, you don’t feel angry, or resentful, or envious. You feel… sympathy. It’s easy being rich and powerful, even easier when you don’t even need to work for your money, but parents are parents, no matter how much gold is in your pocket.

Besides, it’s not like you rejecting him will have much of an effect on the grand scheme of things, anyway. You do, and then Jungkook has to spend an awkward night with his parents and you won’t accomplish anything.

“Fine,” you say, begrudgingly so. “But only for tonight.”

“Oh God, thank you,” Jungkook says, and he actually means it. He dashes into the walk-in closet and pulls out a summery day dress, all flowy and floral, coming down to right above your knees. “Here, put this on. You know I don’t give a shit about what you wear but my parents will.”

“Why do you have this?” You ask, holding the hanger in your hand. One touch of the fabric and you can already feel the craftsmanship, the material sturdy and soft.

“An old hookup or something, probably.” Jungkook shrugs, nonchalant.

You decide not to question whether or not you are about to wear something that Jungkook has had sex with someone in and head into the closet to change. From inside, you can hear Jungkook pacing back and forth in the bedroom, no doubt trying to come up with a believable story as to why you’ve suddenly appeared in his life and where you had come from.

When you emerge, Jungkook stops dead in his tracks. This dress is easily the most expensive (and clean) thing you’ve ever put on your body, draping seamlessly along your hips and smoothing over all of the parts of your body you’ve never been too fond of. The sensation is pleasant but uncomfortable, as you have always vastly preferred your own clothes to other people’s, but wearing this at least doesn’t make you feel like you live in an abandoned house on the edge of town.

“Wow,” Jungkook says dumbly, looking at you with his lips parted like a fish, mouth agape. He scratches at the nape of his neck and coughs. “You look kinda good.”

“How thoughtful of you to say,” you chide, basking in the feeling of finally catching Jungkook off guard.

“Hopefully my parents won’t be here too long,” Jungkook says as he opens the door, letting you exit first. “Normally, they stick around just long enough to tell me about all of the things in my life that I’m currently doing wrong or should improve upon, and then they leave.”

“Fun.” It doesn’t sound very fun at all.

“At least this time they won’t be grilling me about a girlfriend,” Jungkook says, offering you a grateful smile as you return to the main living space, where Jungkook’s parents are in the middle of turning some of the decorative trinkets on his shelves gold. “Sorry,” he begins, catching his parents’ attention. “We were just talking. Y/N had to change.”

“She looks lovely in that dress, did you buy it for her?” His mother asks. You send a small smile of thanks.

“Yes, of course,” Jungkook lies. You think not knowing the origins of this dress is best for both you and him. He shuffles the both of you into the kitchen, an awkward hand on the small of your back. If you were a third party watching the two of you, you could sniff out the fake gestures and affection from a mile away. No two people in love are this stiff around each other.

His parents wait in the living space, blissfully ignorant, as the two of you fumble around in the kitchen in a last-minute attempt to scrounge up something resembling an acceptable meal. You, admittedly, do not use a kitchen fairly often, and stick to pouring the four of you some wine as Jungkook fishes through his fridge and cabinets. He eventually decides on heating up a pre-made pasta dish, filled with all sorts of vegetables you couldn’t name even if you tried. It smells good, at least.

For someone who seems to rely entirely on a personal chef to do most of his cooking, Jungkook knows his way around the kitchen fairly well, bouncing from one end to the other as if he’s running on a mental timer. Granted, he isn’t actually cooking anything, but compared to you, he may as well be a top chef at a five-star restaurant. Ten minutes later and he’s got a mouth-watering spaghetti dish, topped with vegetables and what looks to be an herb garnish, a side salad, and four glasses of wine that you so expertly poured.

Unfortunately, with his parents around, you and Jungkook don’t get to go through your usual meal ritual of sitting as far away from each other as physically possible and not talking whatsoever, sitting down next to each other in his fancy suede dining chairs as his parents take the two seats opposite you. Jungkook’s dining table only seats six, despite the sheer size of his actual dining room, and quite frankly, you have never seen him actually use it for what it’s meant for: dining.

“Delicious, did you make this?” His father asks, already reaching over to serve himself some.

“Y/N helped.” No you didn’t.

The serving utensils then move to Jungkook’s mother, who does not turn them into gold, instead opting for a baby tomato, which she places in her drink to serve as some sort of extremely niche ice cube. You can’t imagine how good that will taste. Jungkook’s father laughs at his mother, who is obviously proud of herself. Jungkook forces himself to chuckle ever so slightly, and you crack a very helpless smile. It doesn’t really take a genius to figure out where Jungkook got his turning habits from.

“So, Y/N,” Jungkook’s father begins, catching you right as you shove an entire forkful of pasta into your mouth, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk getting ready for the winter, “how long have you known our son?”

“Uh, a couple of—”

“A couple of months,” Jungkook interrupts, speaking louder than usual. “We met at the Park Gala that they hosted, do you remember?”

You kick Jungkook’s shin under the table, making him wince.

“Ah, yes.” His mother nods in recollection. “Unfortunately we were on that cruise through France, so we couldn’t make it. A shame, we would have loved to meet you then. Are you a friend of the Parks?”

“An associate,” Jungkook explains as vaguely as possible. “Y/N works in law.”

“Ah, law,” Jungkook’s father says romantically, twirling his fork around in the air. “The conscience of business.”

“Yeah,” you say, forcing out a small laugh. The less you say, the better. Though it is ironic that you now apparently work in law, considering your favorite activity is breaking it. You suppose that nobody knows the law better than its criminals.

“Where are you from, Y/N? Do we know your parents?” This is starting to sound less like a dinner conversation and more like an interrogation.

“Y/N actually built herself up,” Jungkook covers for you. Lord knows revealing your true background would send both of his parents storming out of the building. “She doesn’t like to talk about her parents very much.”

That’s one way of putting it.

“Ah, what a shame,” his mother tuts, shaking her head. “We’d love to meet them.”

“Yeah…” you agree distantly, making a mental note to give Jungkook a good shove when this is all over. Well, two can play at this game. “Jungkook is teaching me a lot about how you guys run your business.” You add pointedly, earning a leg kick in return. “It’s very interesting to see from a law perspective.” More like from a human perspective.

“Oh, you must be very impressed,” his father says proudly, adjusting the collar of his shirt. “We’ve all worked extremely hard to get where we are.” Because turning things to gold at the press of a finger is truly such a taxing job.

“I’m certainly surprised,” you say back, sending a patient but stiff smile their way. They return the favor easily. Maybe you’re more like these people than you thought. “It’s a big change from what I’m used to.” Jungkook smacks his leg against yours, and you retaliate not a moment afterwards.

“I’m sure,” his mother says, voice sickly sweet. “But you’ll be able to adjust in no time. It’s definitely a level up, is it not?”

Jungkook looks like a lost child in a grocery store aisle, eyes wide as they flit back and forth between you and his parents, hurling thinly-veiled insults at each other like it’s nobody’s business.

“It’s different,” you respond.

“Well, I’m sure that Jungkook is doing all that he can to accommodate you,” his father says. “Sometimes the people he chooses to date are… not ideal for this sort of lifestyle. We hope that you are able to adjust quickly. We understand that this is a lot.”

“I certainly hope that I’m a good match, then,” you finish, because something inside of you can’t bear to let Jungkook’s stuffy, elitist parents get the last word.

The rest of the meal is rather silent, save for a few mindless comments about how poorly Jungkook’s decorated his dining room. You and Jungkook have been warring underneath the dinner table all evening, your shins undoubtedly sporting bruises, because apparently everything the two of you are saying to his parents is wrong. Jungkook’s parents either don’t know or don’t care, because they don’t say anything about the tension that settled over the table like a cloud of fog, thick and potent.

When everyone’s finished eating, Jungkook’s parents head straight to the door, determining that their contributions to his evening and his penthouse are enough—for now. Who knows if or when they’ll return. You and Jungkook have no choice but to see them off, rounding out the night just as you started: fake, empty smiles.

“It was lovely to meet you, Y/N,” his mother tells you, hand clutching her purse. “I hope that we may see each other again sometime soon.”

“Yes, I am looking forward to it,” you say with glee, knowing that the chances of you never having to speak to her again are well in your favor.

“Nice work, son,” his father says, a heavy hand on Jungkook’s shoulder. “Just let us know if you ever need anything.”

“Will do,” Jungkook promises distantly. You can tell that Jungkook doesn’t ask his father for advice too often.

You bid your goodbyes and Jungkook shuts the door behind them, and it’s almost as the atmosphere immediately begins to clear, the air conditioning cycling out the tension, like a breath of fresh air.

“Ugh, thank God that’s over,” you huff out, already itching to get out of this dress and back into your own clothes. It was gorgeous at first, but now it’s just an ugly reminder.

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Jungkook says.

“’Wasn’t that bad’?” You repeat. It’s as if the words went in through Jungkook’s one ear and right out the other. “Are you serious? It was unbearable. Your parents were judging me from the moment I opened the door. No wonder you’ve never had a lasting girlfriend. I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to deal with that.”

“Excuse me?” Jungkook says, rounding on you as fire burns in his eyes. “What do you mean, ’that’?”

“I mean that I don’t know how on Earth people just accept the fact that in other people’s eyes, they’ll never be good enough?” You tell him like it’s obvious, because it is. This sort of life has been so ingrained into Jungkook’s head that he doesn’t even recognize it as unwelcoming and stifling. “I couldn’t stand being your girlfriend. Your parents are judgy and rude, and you all act like people who don’t come from as much money and power as you have no business sitting where you sit.”

“So your best approach was to shade and insult my parents in return?” He combats. “I would hate to be your boyfriend. My parents get more aggressive when people fight them, but you shove me under the table when I try to get you to back down? Just so you can have the final word to two people you’ll probably never see again?”

“The fact that anyone has dated you astounds me,” you tell him.

“The fact that nobody’s dated you doesn’t astound me,” Jungkook spits back.

You frown, embers flaring in your boiling blood. What, did Jungkook think you were going to enjoy yourself tonight? By pretending to be some sort of ditzy, desperate-to-please girlfriend? “You’re welcome for doing you a favor and not just straight up telling your parents you’ve been assigned a minder because you can’t handle your own powers. Don’t expect me to do it again.”

“I’m not planning on it,” Jungkook mumbles to himself, just loud enough for you to hear.

“Fine.”

You and Jungkook march down opposite hallways, desperate for this night to be over. You tear off the dress and let it sit at the foot of the bed, taunting you.

There is no way in hell you are ever leaving this place.

The time spent at work is allocated half towards following Jungkook around like an invisible puppy with a personal vendetta against him, making sure that he doesn’t turn, and half towards wishing that something actually interesting will happen. Jungkook runs so tight a ship that nobody ever seems to want to do anything fun or exciting, no doughnuts, no inside jokes, no pranks. Just an endless cycle of trying desperately to please the unpleasable.

Admittedly, nowadays, you don’t really mind being here as much as you used to, when you would mentally criticize every person that walked through the glass doors to Jungkook’s office, hands filled with stacks of paper and manila folders, plopped onto Jungkook’s desk one by one. Jungkook’s started to keep extra food up in his office, the mini-fridge by his bookshelves constantly filled with takeaway salads and fruit. Apples are a definite no-go because they’re too loud, and you can only ever risk eating salads when nobody’s around to hear you pop the plastic top off of the container, but other than that, it’s nice.

Jungkook has pretty good taste in food, too, which is an added bonus. Though anything is a leg up from what you normally eat.

And even though you’ve begun to start roaming around, exploring the nooks and crannies that line the clean-cut layout, your favorite place to be is Jungkook’s office. He’s got these magnificent floor-to-ceiling glass windows, with a view directly over the biggest park in the city, thousands of feet up in the air. From up here, it almost feels as though you’re looking down at a different world, a different universe. It’s difficult to imagine that everyone down there, every ant-sized person walking along the sidewalk or resting on a park bench or ordering from a food stand, has lives of their own.

Especially when they are but specks of dust in yours.

Jungkook looks at this view forty hours a week. You wonder if he ever gets sick of it.

The door to Jungkook’s office creaks open as you’re staring out of the windows, watching as the clouds pass overhead. They look like little white dogs, like cotton candy, like angel wings.

“Mr. Jeon?”

The owner of the voice is the same man you berated Jungkook for shouting at a few weeks ago, the one who had turned in an analysis report a day late. He seems just as frightened of Jungkook now as he did back then, and it makes you wonder if any of Jungkook’s employees aren’t afraid of him.

“Here’s the completed budget report for the Lee Corporation for last fiscal year,” the man says, reaching a trembling hand out to lay a manila folder on Jungkook’s desk. Jungkook only looks up once he sees it out of his periphery, hand pausing mid-write, pen still hovering over the papers on his desk.

He meets the man’s eyes, and when he does, he cracks a small smile, this sort of barely-there grin, lips curling upwards ever so slightly. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

It’s as if the man has won the lottery. He thanks Jungkook quickly before bouncing out of the room, steps much lighter, like a weight has been lifted off of his shoulders. You watch as he leaves the room, a smile etching itself onto your face. It’s rather incredible what a simple ‘thank you’ can do to people.

You don’t say anything to Jungkook, instead just turning back around to gaze out of the window. There’s an entire city below your feet, one that bustles around like bees in a hive, everyone with a place to be and things to do. There is this strange but comforting feeling of insignificance, one where you feel as though you could disappear and nobody would notice a thing. The rest of the world can and will move on without you. But that doesn’t mean that your life means nothing. It means that your life can be whatever you want to make of it, because in the grand scheme of things, nobody else will know what you have done.

History is like that, too. You must be remarkable to be remembered. But that doesn’t mean the unremarkable people were forgotten. They touched lives, too.

Staring out the window as the clouds swim over the sun, a light grey shadow casting itself over the park, you feel at peace.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

You jump at the voice, Jungkook’s presence next to you having gone totally unnoticed. You didn’t even hear him get up from his chair.

“How did you know I was here?” You ask.

“I could sense it," Jungkook says with a grin, making you raise an eyebrow. You’re invisible. “I’m kidding, I saw you come over here a bunch last week when you first got into my office and I figured you’d probably still be here.”

“You figured correctly,” you tell him.

“You know, I don’t spend enough time looking out these windows,” Jungkook admits, and you aren’t sure if it’s to you or himself. “I’m always staring at my computer or writing something at my desk with my head down. I’ve got the best view in the whole city and sometimes, I don’t even remember what it looks like.”

“You work hard,” you tell him, because that’s something that is undeniable about who he is and what he does. “But you deserve to give yourself a break, every now and then.”

“For lunch breaks, the first thing I do is get out of my office. I spend all day in there and when it’s finally time for me to put work on pause, I rush out of the room like it’s on fire,” Jungkook comments. “Maybe I should stay up here every once in a while instead.”

“It’s not like I’ll be going anywhere,” you joke.

“You can, you know,” Jungkook tells you. “You don’t have to stay up here all day.”

“I know,” you say. “But I don’t really mind it. I like being here. It’s calming, in a way.” In a way that you can’t explain. Like you’re stuck in freeze frame while everyone else moves around you. Like you’re watching a movie about everybody’s lives but your own. Like you’re a spectator in your own body. “Plus, the view is gorgeous.”

“It is,” Jungkook agrees.

You stand there in silence for a few more moments, the only sounds filling the room your inhales and exhales, soft and slow, your hearts beating in time. Jungkook is more than a foot away from you but here, in his office, looking out over the world, he has never felt closer.

“Thank you,” you whisper, letting the words hang in the air in front of you.

“For what?” Jungkook asks.

“For listening to me.”

You feel Jungkook turn to you, and when you dare to look up at him, you meet his hazy brown eyes, warm and sparkly. He looks like a goddamn celebrity, like a magazine cover come to life, crisp shirt collars and fancy Italian shoes, glossy brown hair and perfect skin. He smiles at you, this homey sort of thing that makes you feel like summer is running through your veins, like the rays of the sun are pressing against your skin.

“Of course,” he tells you.

Jungkook is a lot of things. He’s unabashedly gorgeous and outrageously wealthy. He walks around like he owns everything that he touches. His house is clean and chic and minimalist, almost like nobody lives there at all. He’s determined and a workaholic, and hates admitting when he’s wrong.

But maybe, just maybe, in the white afternoon light of his office, the rest of the world underneath his feet, standing next to you as the two of you stare out in a city you call your own, he’s not that bad.

Being alone in Jungkook’s penthouse is, to put it lightly, absolutely terrifying.

It’s hard to believe that Jungkook--and maybe a girlfriend for a brief period--has occupied this entire space on his own, no one else to talk to, no one else to spend time with, no one to occupy his massive couches or fill up the chairs in his dining room.

You’ve always wondered why rich people buy the biggest houses. Sure, it’s because they’re rich, and because they can afford it, but it’s impossible for one person, or even two, to make the entire place feel like their own. You leave countless rooms untouched, meant for guests that you never have and parties that you never host. It’s like you’ve moved into half of a house, a quarter of a mansion. What’s the point of having so much space if you don’t ever have anyone to fill it up?

Normally you wouldn’t leave Jungkook’s side, following him around the city whenever he has errands to run or needs to dash back to work to pick up something he had forgotten. But Jungkook hasn’t been turning anything lately, even when you sleep in four hours later than he does, even when he stays up into the early hours of the morning while you pass out before it’s midnight. It’s like he’s somehow lost the will for his magic entirely, like it’s vanished from his body.

Well, you’re not complaining. That just means you’re one step closer to finishing your sentence.

Jungkook’s penthouse feels bigger when he’s not around. Even though you hardly ever see each other while you’re at home, the mere knowledge of his presence makes you feel like you’re not alone. Makes you feel like there is someone else in this little corner of the world.

Everything in here has always looked untouched. Like it doesn’t belong to anybody, like a house listing come to life. His marble counters are always empty, his cabinets always closed and organized. His books are always alphabetized and the stack of art books on his coffee table has never been touched. All of the bedrooms look like they belong in a hotel. The bathrooms look like they belong in a museum.

Jungkook’s house has never felt like a home but then again, neither has yours.

Still, if you had to choose between living in your abandoned shack at the edge of town or living in an enormous penthouse in the center of the city, you would never look back at that old, dilapidated building. The difference between you and Jungkook is that Jungkook chooses to live in this tragically empty place.

You don’t think you’ll ever be able to understand Jungkook’s life. Not just the technicalities of the company he runs, the economics and business that he has spent his whole life mastering, but also the way he sees the world in terms of money and power, how everything has some sort of value, even people. Even you. His biggest concern has always been himself. How much money he has matters, how many investments his company owns matters, how the public views him matters. He has spent so long crafting this perfect image of himself that he’s willing to spend as much money as necessary to maintain it.

Jungkook doesn’t even look at the total on the card reader when he purchases things. He simply tugs his silver card out of a sleek black wallet and swipes, crumpling the receipt up in his hand before shoving it into the pocket of his jeans. He comes back home to a gigantic penthouse with a gym and his pool and more bedrooms than he can count on both hands, to a personal chef in his kitchen making him five-star meals to last him the rest of the week.

Money is never on his mind, but it is always on yours.

When will you get enough to pay off your phone bill, will you ever be able to afford a repairman to fix the broken, exposed lightbulb above the back door, how many Campbell’s soups can you buy and still have enough funds to last you until the next day? What if, God forbid, the city comes knocking on your door and either evicts you or orders you to pay up for the three years you’ve been living in that house, rent-free? What will you do then?

Life is by no means easy for either of you, but Jeon Jungkook has never had to want for anything. If it isn’t handed to him, he works for it himself. If he can’t buy it, he’ll just make more money. If he doesn’t already own it, what’s stopping him?

People dream of having Jungkook’s life. People fear having yours.

Alone in Jungkook’s apartment, the differences between the two of you have never been clearer.

Your greatest fear is the fact that, in the past few weeks you have spent here, you are already becoming used to it. You are dreading going back to where you were before, stealing money from people off of the streets and living in a house in such disrepair that local nons think that it’s haunted. You fear that you will never want to leave.

It’s such a terrifying feeling, isn’t it? Becoming attached to something. Feeling as though your life will be worse without it. Knowing that your life will be worse without it.

There are parts of you that make you wish that life wasn’t so unfair.

The living room is three times the size of the dining room but you hate eating there, sitting at an empty table with no one to talk to but suede chairs, reminding you that you don’t even have any friends to invite anyway. At least in the living room you can sit on the couch and watch television and pretend that you have at least some semblance of a life.

You pick at a pre-made salad that has too much lettuce and not enough everything else—Jungkook needs a new chef, you decide, plucking out all of the croutons and slices of cheddar cheese, when the front door swings open, slamming against the wall adjacent to it as Jungkook storms inside.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?” You exclaim, eyes practically bulging out of your head as you jump off of the couch. Even from here, you can see the dark bruising around Jungkook’s eye, purple and blue, the busted up knuckles clenched around the bag he’s carrying. There’s even a small streak of blood on his upper left cheek, already beginning to scab.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” he says, wiping away the blood on his lip with the back of his hand.

“No, you’re not,” you tell him, rushing up to meet him in the middle of the foyer, standing in front of him as you look up at his face with wide eyes. He waits there patiently, avoiding your gaze, steely eyes looking elsewhere, as you reach up to hold his head in your hands, tilting it from side to side. “What happened to you?”

“Some dudes jumped me in the parking lot on the way back,” Jungkook says casually. You’d almost believe he didn’t feel anything if he doesn’t wince when you press a gentle fingertip along the bruise on his jawline. He meets your frightened expression and smirks wickedly, something glinting in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I got ‘em good.”

“Are you alright?” You ask him, even though it’s obvious he’s not. “You aren’t seriously injured or anything, are you?”

“Don’t worry about it, Y/N,” Jungkook says with a sigh, even as he obeys your movements and moves his body pliantly to the feeling of your hands pressing against his skin. Most of the visible damage seems to be to his face and hands, and quite frankly, you’re not exactly sure if you want to see what’s underneath his dress shirt. “I’m strong. I work out and eat healthy and everything. I’ll be better in no time.”

“No, are you kidding?” You say, reaching out to grab his hand without a second thought, pulling him towards the nearest bathroom. “You can’t just leave it like this. Here, let me heal you.”

“I don’t need you to patch me up or anything,” Jungkook resists, frowning as you sit him down on the edge of the bathtub and begin to fish through his bathroom cabinets. “First aid isn’t in that one.”

“No, you idiot,” you chide him. “I’m not gonna patch you up. Aren’t you forgetting that I’m a healer?”

“So what are you gonna do, then?”

You finally find the first aid kit and pull it out, revealing rolls of gauze and bottles of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant. There’s even a couple of rows of Ibuprofen. “Well, you should be patched up anyway,” you decide, turning back to look at Jungkook’s face as he waits obediently on the edge of the tub. “But I can heal you faster than what time and medicine can do on their own.”

“You don’t have to,” Jungkook says softly.

“Please, of course I do,” you reply instantly. You’re not gonna let Jungkook walk around like that. “We can’t have your pretty face all messed up, now can we?”

Jungkook cracks a small smile but it’s obvious that the simple gesture alone pains him, making him wince slightly as his lips turn upwards. You wet a face cloth with cold water and press it against Jungkook’s bruises, looking intently at his features as you move the cloth around, letting the cold water draw out the heat that sizzles beneath his skin. Jungkook watches you the whole time, his eyes never leaving yours, even as your brows furrow in concentration, determined to fix Jungkook back up so he’s brand new. Slowly, the bruises begin to fade, going from an angry violet to a light lavender, and then to a pink that could almost be mistaken for a heavy blush.

It feels weird, knowing that he’s right there. Knowing that he’s watching you, eyes following yours as they scan his face. His clean-cut jawline is a little swollen, perfect skin angry and marked, but his eyes are still the same. Still wide and bright, like a young child, like a baby deer learning to walk for the first time. They look almost caramel in the yellow light of the bathroom, flecks of gold to mirror the accents in the room.

There’s something about them that makes you not want to turn away.

When the bruises have faded, leaving only petal pink remnants along his skin, you move onto the small cut along his cheek. It’s rough and jagged, like the skin had been torn right through, a nick from a fingernail or a knuckle. It’s not long, but it is somewhat deep. You imagine it might scar permanently.

Kneeling down in front of him, you pull out some rubbing alcohol and a cotton pad, dabbing a gentle amount onto the round before moving closer, holding his head in your hand as you reach out.

“This might sting,” you say, like he doesn’t already know.

“That’s alright,” Jungkook tells you. “Fix me up, doctor.”

At his cue, you softly press the cotton pad against the scab, rubbing away at it until it comes off cleanly, leaving only fresh, exposed skin behind. For wounds like these, a cloth won’t do. Your mother used to tell you that healing didn’t come from your hands, it came from your heart. That even if your fingertips had the magic, it was your heart that had the power to wield it.

Slowly, you rest your palm against his cheek, rubbing your thumb along the cut. Jungkook blinks, big eyes shimmering, as you do so, and you feel trapped in his gaze. Like you couldn’t turn away even if you tried. Like you almost wouldn’t want to. His skin is baby soft, perfect, a far cry from the calloused pads of your fingertips, worn from so many days and nights out on the streets.

There is magic in your fingertips, surely, but there is something different in your heart. Something that you don’t think you have the words to explain.

The cut seals up instantly, the skin patching over itself until nothing is left but a mark, a little scar that will stay there forever. And yet, you stay there, locked in his magnetic pull, like tearing away will hurt you rather than him. The cut is healed, and his bruises are fading, and there is no reason to stay like this.

And yet.

“There,” you whisper, watching the words appear between the two of you, lingering like ghosts. “All better.”

Jungkook grins. It doesn’t hurt him, but something in you feels a sharp jolt, an ache. Like a spark in the pit of your belly. Like magic in your veins.

Jungkook has been tearing his hair out over this one manila folder in front of him for the past twenty minutes. Every ten seconds he writes something down before scribbling it out, the ink bleeding through the paper to the next one. He flips through the files relentlessly, carelessly, until they’re all out of order and splayed all over his desk. He’s instructed the guard outside not to let anyone in, even if it’s some sort of emergency.

You’ve seen Jungkook at work a lot, but you’ve never seen him like this. Even his anguished sighs are difficult to listen to.

Creeping over to the wall that overlooks the rest of the office, Venetian blinds shielding the both of you from view, you crack open a slat, peeking out at everyone else. None of them pay any attention to Jungkook’s office, too busy worrying about the next report they have to complete and all of the office meetings they have to attend, so you take it as a good opportunity to turn visible. Just for a little bit.

“You alright?” You ask, nearly making Jungkook fall out of his seat at the sound of your voice.

“What?” He asks, surprised. “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”

“What’s the matter?” You ask, because you’ve never seen Jungkook as stressed out as he is now. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to organize this new collective to monitor our investing habits so we can assess where investments need to be divvied up into in order for clients to find us worth of their own investments as opposed to other companies,” Jungkook explains, though he sounds positively exhausted while doing so, like the very mention of what he’s slaving over is enough to send him over the edge. “But no one can agree on how we can use this information to promote this company to our clients and the public. People invest in both of us either way.”

“You want people to invest more money in your company, don’t you?” You ask with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, yeah.”

“How much money does this company give to small businesses? To nonprofits and charity?”

Jungkook frowns, scrunching up his nose as he thinks. He clicks around on his computer for a few seconds before saying, “About five percent.”

“And your investments are public, correct?”

“Yes.” Jungkook nods.

“You should be giving way more than five percent of this company’s investments to small, local businesses and charity,” you tell Jungkook, already worming your way behind his desk to look at what he’s looking at. You point to the numbers on his screen, single-digit percentages, some even less than one, being sent to local businesses, nonprofits, and charities. “Look at this. Ninety-five of your investments go right into stocks. If you invested more money into nonprofits and local businesses, people would see you taking the time to help boost the local economy and the organizations that serve it for free. Then, those businesses would invest in you in return, and clients would see that you’re investing in noble causes and give you more money as a thanks, which can then be funnelled back to small businesses and nonprofits.”

It’s a rather roundabout sort of proposal and you’re almost positive that it has no real footing anywhere in real economics and finance, but it makes sense to you. If you had money to invest in major companies, you would choose the ones that invest in the things that will benefit you, like local businesses and nonprofits. If you saw that the companies you were giving money to were simply giving it away to the stock market, you’d pull your money out.

You know that the stock market is nothing but the world’s biggest economic gamble, but that doesn’t mean that you have to gamble with it. Companies that stand for what you stand for are much more appealing than companies with a bigger investment bank behind them.

You turn to Jungkook, who is squinting at his computer screen as he fumbles around with the numbers, flicking from Excel sheet to Excel sheet, bouncing back and forth between the information online and the files on top of his desk.

“Is that stupid?” You ask, breaking the silence. It’s not as if people know you for your groundbreaking economic policies.

Jungkook spares one more glance over all of his files, and turns up to look at you. “No,” he tells you with a shake of his head. “It’s not.”

“Really?” You’re actually impressed with yourself.

“Yeah,” Jungkook agrees happily. “You’re right—I’d want to know that my investments were going to a company with good morals that lifts up local businesses. It would encourage me to invest more, too.”

“It’s not a very sound economic theory…” You admit. Jungkook’s probably seasoned in how investments and the stock markets work, charts upon charts of client behavior that shapes the way he organizes his company. And you? You don’t have enough money to even buy food some days.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jungkook assures you. “Theory is total bullshit anyway, because nobody can predict what will happen with the economy. But human nature has always been reliably good. People like to know that their money is going to a good cause.”

“So, it helps?” You ask with a smile.

Jungkook nods. “It does. It’s actually a great idea, Y/N. You might have a future in business.”

You scoff. “Me? I don’t know the first thing about this stuff.”

Jungkook shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t need to. You’re a good person who thinks about everyone, Y/N. That’s why you’d be good at business. Because your clients can trust you, and you’ll actually put your money where your mouth is.”

“I guess,” you say unhelpfully. Just because you think about others doesn’t make you especially remarkable. It makes you human. Isn’t that how everyone’s supposed to be? “I just don’t think about clients and money like you do. Money’s always been really valuable to me, since I’ve never had much of it, but you guys see it as expendable. I need to know where my money goes, I don’t want to see it just vanish into the hands of someone else.” Jungkook’s nodding along, eyes looking intently at your own, like he’s committing the words you say to his memory. “I just think that people and companies with tons of money have a duty to give back to those who are less fortunate. That’s all.”

“That’s noble of you,” Jungkook says.

“It’s just common sense,” you explain. “Why wouldn’t you want to do something like that?”

Jungkook heaves a sigh, a long, winded sort of one, like there’s a whole conversation behind it that he wishes he could have with you. But instead, he just shakes his head, a fond smile lacing its way across his features. He chuckles to himself. “Maybe you aren’t cut out for business after all, Y/N,” he tells you softly. “You have too big a heart.”

And maybe that’s true. Maybe you’re too kind, too generous, to ever make it in business. To succeed without losing every penny to your name.

But if that’s the case, then where does Jungkook stand?

When Jungkook stays at work late, the two of you eat dinner together.

There’s just something so demoralizing about coming back to an empty house, letting the hollow sound of the door slamming shut echo throughout the room, and then marching off in different directions to spend the rest of the night alone. When it’s dark, and late, and you’re starving, it’s all you can do not to beg Jungkook to eat with you. Even if in silence.

By the time you get home, your stomach is just about ready to consume the art books sitting in a neat stack at the top right corner of the coffee table. You begin to clear off some space for the both of you to eat as Jungkook heads towards the refrigerator, when not three seconds after, you hear him swear, “Oh, shit.”

“What’s the matter?” You call out.

“We’re out of premade meals!” Jungkook shouts back. What? You could have sworn there were at least two full tupperwares still available. Actually, maybe you had eaten them for lunch…

“Really?” You get up from the coffee table and make your way into the kitchen, where Jungkook is standing in front of a refrigerator with the entire middle section wiped clean, empty shelves mocking the both of you as you glare at them. “Oh, wow. Really.”

“I didn’t know we ate that much,” Jungkook comments, shocked at the sight before him.

“What are we gonna do?” You ask. You’re hungry.

“What do you mean?” Jungkook says with a laugh. He kneels down and begins to pull vegetables from the drawers, plucking different bottles from inside the fridge door and plastic cartons from the top shelves, the ones that you never dare touch. “We’ll cook something, obviously.”

“Can’t we just order takeout?”

“You don’t wanna cook something with me?” Jungkook asks, eyes wide and pouty. You shake your head guiltily. Is ordering a pizza really so much to ask? Jungkook narrows his eyes at you suspiciously, a grin pulling at his lips, before he nods knowingly. “Oh, I get it.”

“Get what?” You challenge.

“You don’t know how to cook.”

“What? I know how to cook!” You cry out, aghast. True, your past meals have mostly involved warming food up in the microwave, but that counts, in your book. Jungkook frowns in disbelief. “I know how to use a microwave.”

Jungkook tosses his head back and laughs, this warm, hearty sound filling up the kitchen, before he starts placing all of the containers and bottles and vegetables he pulled out from the fridge onto the counter. “Okay, we’re going to make something together.”

“Seriously?” You say, borderline whining. “Can’t you just do it?”

“No,” Jungkook rolls his eyes, “because you have to help me. Kitchen’s orders.”

“You’re the kitchen!”

“Exactly,” Jungkook says, smiling to himself. He pulls out some more ingredients from the cabinets, hands deftly reaching for the exact ones he wants, until you have a collection of food, seasonings, and sauces on the countertop, and an apparent recipe to be made.

“What are we making?” You ask, looking down at everything on the counter. All of these things can’t go into one dish… can they?

“An old family recipe,” Jungkook says. “Kimchi jjigae. It’s kimchi stew.”

“Is it easy?”

Jungkook grins something wicked, something devilish. “It’s fun.”

He sets out to put a pot on the stove, turning the gas on, bouncing back and forth between the stovetop and the counter as you stand there like a floundering fish, waiting for him to either give you an instruction or do everything himself.

“Can you cut the green onions?” Jungkook asks as he adds water and what looks to be tiny little fish to the pot, reaching behind his back to gesture wildly at the ingredients sitting on the marble.

“Which are those?” You scan the countertop. Your familiarity with food and recipes extends about as far as anything non-perishable that comes in a tin can. Never in your life have you seen so much laid out in front of you, all meant to go into the same meal.

The metal lid clinks as Jungkook covers the pot to boil, turning around to join you at the counter, where you wait awkwardly in front of an unused chopping board, no knife in sight.

“These,” he says, reaching over you to pull up several stalks of something that looks similar to the wild onions that grow in your backyard. He fishes through the drawers before he pulls out a kitchen knife, gently placing it in your hand as he moves around to grab all of the other ingredients he needs for the boiling water on the stovetop.

Hesitantly, you line up the onions and begin to chop, carefully sawing through each one until it comes cleanly off of the stalk. It’s awfully time-consuming, especially since Jungkook seems to have already made the stock base in the time it’s taken you to cut one. Nevertheless, you persist, because Jungkook wants these to go in the pot, and you refuse to be seen as incompetent in the kitchen, especially when Jungkook seems to be rather proficient when it comes to cooking despite the fact that a chef makes the majority of his meals for him.

Old family recipes die hard, you suppose.

Jungkook turns around to check on you and grab a small red container of what looks to be some sort of spicy pepper paste. When he sees you carefully slicing through each onion stalk, he laughs.

“Hey, what are you laughing at?” You say, pouting. You don’t think you’re doing a terrible job, even if you are a bit slow.

“You,” Jungkook says with a grin, not even bothering to think of something else to say instead. “Here, let me show you.”

He comes to stand behind you, his torso pressing against your back, as he reaches his arms around you, hands gently resting atop your own. There is something in the way his breath hits your skin, tickles the part right behind your ear that’s always been sensitive, how he leans down to look over your shoulder. The rise and fall of his chest against you. Something strange and foreign and calming, like when you tense up right before you fall asleep.

Frozen, you watch with nervous eyes as he holds your hand in his own, grasping onto the knife. He stacks a few onion stalks next to each other on top of the cutting board and slowly begins to cut—thin, quick slices until he develops a rhythm, an imaginary beat to the drumming of his heart, to the pounding of your own.

The seconds seem to drag on for eternity, as if every cut through the vegetable is done in slow-motion, like time has slowed down just for the two of you. His breath tickles your skin, hot and tingly and filled with fire, lighting sparks everywhere it touches. You think that, if you concentrate hard enough, you can hear the way his heart thumps like a bass drum, ringing in your ears. Or maybe that’s just you.

When four green onion stalks have been cut down to their very tips, suddenly the world speeds up, like the breaths that have slowly been leaving your lips come out all at once, like your heart picks up time to a universal metronome, desperate to realign itself once more.

“There,” Jungkook murmurs from behind you. The words are soft and distant, almost like someone else had uttered them. “All done.”

You blame the tears welling in your eyes on the onions.

Thirty minutes and an overwhelming amount of slicing different ingredients later, there is a boiling pot of kimchi stew on the stove, steaming up the inside of the glass lid that Jungkook has placed on top to keep it warm. He’s big on optimizing the time spent in the kitchen, cleaning up everything before you eat, stuffing all of the used plates and bowls and knives into the sink as they come, wrapping up the vegetables in the thin plastic bags that they came in and putting them back into the fridge. Jungkook says it’s because he doesn’t like having to clean the kitchen up after he’s eaten. You think it’s because he thinks you’ll run off and leave him to do all the work.

You, admittedly, don’t make your own meals very often (or at all), but you can see the appeal. There’s something different about food that you make yourself, food that you turned from ingredients to a meal. Something rewarding.

Or maybe it’s just because Jungkook did most of the cooking, and he’s got this inexplicable magic touch.

“Good, right?” He asks when you’re finished, the both of you heading back to the kitchen to wash up the last of your dishes.

“It was okay,” you tease, even though your empty bowl says otherwise. There’s not a drop of soup, a scrap of food left inside of it, just an orange ring around the inside from the kimchi color.

“Okay, Miss ‘Okay’,” Jungkook says, placing his bowl gently into the sink. “Hand me your thing, I’ll finish washing up.”

“You sure?” You ask. You feel like you’ve contributed absolutely nothing to the making of this dish. Not cooking it, not putting away the ingredients or washing the pot, nothing. The least you could do is clean up a couple of your bowls. Or put them in the dishwasher.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Jungkook says, hand already latching onto it. “Takes two minutes.”

“Okay,” you tell him, watching the bowls fill with soap as his big hands scrub away the remnants of a very delicious meal.

You linger in the kitchen. Despite not really having anything else to do, you don’t want to go back to your room, or curl away in some corner of the apartment where Jungkook can’t find you. You’re finally spending time together. Isn’t that what you wanted?

“It was pretty good,” you add on belatedly, when Jungkook is just drying his hands on the dish towel. There’s a precarious stack of dishes, utensils, and pots on the drying rack, like adding one more chopstick will send the whole thing tumbling down, but Jungkook isn’t worried about it at all. Even though he likes cleaning stuff up, he doesn’t like putting it away.

“Aha!” Jungkook shouts, pointing at you accusingly. “I knew you would like it.”

“You’re a good chef,” you tell him. Maybe kimchi jjigae is the only thing he’s good at making, but rather be a master of one than a jack of all trades but master of none. Though, you have to admit that Jungkook is a master of several trades, none of which you think you could ever do. “You should cook more.”

“I wish,” Jungkook says with a sigh. The two of you have retired to the leather couch, the conversation drifting away from the kitchen and towards the sofas. When he collapses on the cushions, he relaxes, like the feeling is sucking out all of the tension in his body. “Every time I get back from work, I’m so drained and exhausted. I just want to go to sleep.”

“You weren’t tired tonight,” you point out.

“No,” Jungkook says. The words are distant and faintly register in his mind, almost like the realization has just dawned on him for the first time, “I wasn’t.”

“Is there something else you wanna do?” You ask, not feeling particularly lethargic either. Normally, you’d spend the rest of the night raiding the rest of Jungkook’s amenities, watching old shows on his television or taking a bath until your body looks like a raisin. Something you can do by yourself, something that you’d want to do by yourself to make up for the fact that Jungkook doesn’t ever want to do anything with you. Watching him at work is getting less boring, because you’re actually starting to interact, but at home, you go right back to square one. Or, you did. “Watch a movie, or anything?”

“Nah, I’m alright,” Jungkook shakes his head, scrunching up his nose. You watch him as he chews the inside of his cheek, finger tracing over the scar that’s been left from that night, the night you patched him up. You’re a healer, but some things are meant to leave marks. You almost think that Jungkook is going to up and leave, heave himself off of the floor and spend the rest of the night alone in his bedroom, but then, he turns to you and he asks, “How often do you heal people?”

“I haven’t in a while,” you admit. Not because the opportunity has never presented itself, but you never had anyone to heal. “I used to when I was a kid, a lot. You know, scraped knees and paper cuts.”

“What about you?” Jungkook asks. “Do you have to heal yourself as well?”

“No,” you explain, “healers’ bodies heal by themselves.” It’s why, whenever you get back to your shack after crashing into a tree on the sidewalk that you hadn’t spotted, or stubbed your toe on the leg of a table, or pulled a muscle from stretching too far, you let yourself rest, and your body does the work for you. “But healing isn’t… it isn’t something I do very often. I turn invisible much more.”

“I can tell,” Jungkook muses. “But you’ve been invisible around me so much that it feels like I can still see you.”

“That’s because I’m always in your office when I’m invisible,” you point out. Jungkook knows you’re there because you wouldn’t be anywhere else. Where would you even go, when the whole point is to watch him? “In a place like this, there is no way you would be able to find me.”

“You wanna bet?”

“You know what, yes, I do,” you say, because Jungkook can’t possibly think his human-snuffing skills are as good as yours. Especially when the only person he’s trying to find is invisible. “You think you’re such a hotshot, hmm? Try and find me, then.”

“First floor only,” Jungkook rules. “And, when I do, I get to turn something.”

“Fine,” you agree, only because you know that that’s not going to happen. “One thing. That’s strike two, though.”

“You won’t tell,” Jungkook chides, eyes narrowed.

“Will I?”

“Twenty seconds!” Jungkook says, already beginning to count down. “Nineteen, eighteen—!”

You turn invisible at once, not wasting a second, scurrying off down one of the hallways. There are plenty of places to hide in Jungkook’s house, from the walk-in closets in every bedroom to the one-foot-tall gap underneath every bed. But you won’t go for one of those, because Jungkook expects you to. He’s going to hunt around his entire house, looking in all of the nooks and crannies, the armoires and cabinets and cubbyholes, because he thinks that that’s where you’ll be hiding. But the truth is that there is no way that Jungkook will be able to find you when he can’t see you, because he doesn’t know what he’ll be looking for.

So, you pick the second-to-last bedroom down the hall, and you wait. You’d sit down on the mattress, but Jungkook easily be able to spot a dip in the comforter, so you stand, right next to the door, holding your breath. If Jungkook really does think he can sense your presence, or whatever psychic nonsense he’s on about, then he should have no problem finding you.

You hear Jungkook’s voice echoing down the hallway, a sickly sweet singsong as he walks into every room.

“Y/N…” He calls out, like a ghost in a horror movie. “Where are you?”

From your angle, you can peer down the corridor, watch as he trickles in and out of each room after five minutes, no doubt searching through every one with both of his arms out, desperate to crash into you. Good thing you’re standing, otherwise Jungkook might accidentally elbow you. Slowly, he makes his way out of the room right before yours, casually walking towards you. You suck in a quick breath, holding yourself perfectly still.

“Are you here?” Jungkook flips his head around the doorframe, a foot away from where you’re standing. He isn’t looking right at you, thank God, otherwise you think you might just burst into laughter. “Hmm, I think you are.”

He begins to walk around the room, one hand tracing over the quilted pattern on the comforter, the other reaching out, grabbing fistfuls of air. He looks like someone’s blocked his vision, wandering around aimlessly as he tries to find something to cling onto. You bite your lip, refusing to laugh and give yourself away as he makes his way into the bathroom, singing your name like a chant, a curse to be laid upon you. When he obviously has no luck, he returns to the bedroom, eyes narrowed, as if that will better help his vision.

You don’t think you’ve ever held your breath for this long, lungs about to burst, but you can’t let Jungkook find you. There’s more than just your powers on the line, and his reward. There’s your pride, and his massive ego that you refuse to stroke. The fact that he looks absolutely ridiculous is also doing nothing to aid you, but giving yourself up would be a metaphorical death sentence.

Jungkook has one foot out of the door, already heading towards the last bedroom in the hallway, when you crack. You sputter out a half-breath, this miniscule exhale, and he stops in his tracks, turning around. You freeze up, hoping that maybe Jungkook will just think it was a trick of his own ears.

“Y/N?” He taunts. He looks around the room again, trying to see if the wind is blowing a different way, if there is something different. He almost doesn’t notice you.

Almost.

You turn in shock when Jungkook reaches a hand out, his fingers pinching at your lower torso, shrieking as you practically topple over, Jungkook’s arms the only things that prevent you from diving head first onto the floor. He encases you in his hold as you sink to the floor in defeat, laughing as he follows you, one arm holding your waist as the other wraps around your back. He chuckles to himself while you curl up in shame, desperate not to meet your eyes. Your skin sizzles where his fingers had touched it, like oil in a pan after it’s been taken off of the stove, like the remnants of a flame, embers left to burn into ashes. It feels like your body is on fire.

“Found you,” Jungkook teases, but it’s soft and sweet and fond. “I told you, I just know.”

“You just heard me breathe,” you defend yourself, because the former is impossible to accept.

“Whatever you want to say to make yourself feel better.” He grins, cheeky and prideful, making you shove his head away with the palm of your hand.

“Fine, whatever,” you say, resigning yourself to the fact that you lost this round. “What do you want to turn? The bed frame? The door knob? That really ugly pot in the living room?”

“Hey, that pot isn’t ugly,” Jungkook exclaims. You frown at him. “Okay, it’s only a little bit ugly.”

“For someone with so much money, you sure don’t have the best taste,” you tell him, even though everything else in his house reads expensive like nothing else. That pot is just weirdly out-of-place. “Maybe the gold will make it look better.”

“What’s this?” Jungkook asks, reaching a hand out from behind you to toy at the bracelet on your wrist, this silver chain with a couple of charms dangling from it. It’s rusted beyond belief, from rain, from humidity, from wear, but you refuse to take it off, even when it loses what’s left of its shimmer, even when the silver fades to a scratchy red iron.

“An old bracelet,” you say, fingers instinctively making to play with it, rubbing away at the metal. “From my mom.”

“You wear it every day,” Jungkook notices.

“I never take it off,” you say.

“It’s pretty,” Jungkook tells you, and you know that he isn’t just saying that. That he means it, despite its abysmal condition. The years have not been kind to it, but then again, they haven’t been very kind to you either. “It must be really special.”

“It is.” You shuffle the bracelet around so that all five of the charms are in view. “She would buy a new charm every year for my birthday.”

“I like this one,” Jungkook says, pointing to the milk carton charm. “It’s cute.”

“Yeah…” you trail off. The bracelet isn’t much, but it’s all you have left of a childhood that you had been robbed of. You had to grow up too fast, that you know, but at least this bracelet reminds you that you are never too old for your memories.

“Can I turn it?” Jungkook asks. It’s as if you can see the words leave his lips, resting in front of you, waiting for your response.

You turn around to face him, eyes wide. Your hand goes to rest atop the bracelet protectively, the idea of letting someone else touch it almost unfathomable.

“You can say no,” Jungkook quickly stammers out, face beet red. “It was just—you wear it so much, and it looks like the silver is fading, so I was thinking maybe the gold would… fix it up a bit, or something. Make it look new again. Ignore me, you don’t have to say yes, it was just a suggestion.”

Your fingers drop into your lap as you look at him, expression softening. Here, in this unused guest bedroom, Jungkook looks nervous, lost, stumbling over his own words like he isn’t sure of himself anymore. He looks away from you, eyes already beginning to scan the room for something else to turn instead, doubtful you would even agree to such a wild request. It is your bracelet, after all. Why would he do something like that for you?

“You want to?” You ask him, hopeful and wishing.

Jungkook nods, a smile tugging at his lips. “I do.”

“Then you can,” you say, holding out your wrist to him, the charms dangling over your laps. “Please.”

Jungkook’s shocked that you even said yes, but he scrambles to twist you around, moving your bodies so you aren’t pressed against each other like two peas squished inside of a pod. In this new position, you’re facing each other, staring right at each other as Jungkook reaches out a tentative hand, delicate fingers padding against your wrist. He breathes, and so do you, because you’ve gotten so used to the way this bracelet has looked, so familiar with every rust and crack and dent, knowing that it has remained unchanged for years.

But this isn’t a change. It’s a rebirth. It’s something different, something fresh, something to remind you that not all is lost. That old memories can become new once more.

Slowly, as Jungkook presses soft fingertips against the metal, sparks fly. A golden sheen wraps around the bracelet, inch by inch, leaving behind this unmistakeable shimmer, glinting in the sunlight. You can’t tear your eyes away, watching the magic unfold in real time, the silver vanishing before you. The gold consumes it, erasing all of the rust, the wear and tear, until it looks brand new.

Your mother would have loved it.

“Is that strike two?” Jungkook asks, a cherry red blush decorating his cheeks.

“Thank you,” you breathe out, not caring if it’s strike two or strike two hundred. Your fingers press against the metal, smooth and shiny, the bumpy texture gone. It must be worth thousands, now. But to you, it is priceless. “It’s beautiful.”

Jungkook nods, and you can distantly feel the weight of his gaze on you.

“I know,” he says.

You can’t sleep.

You’ve slept better here than you have for the past three years of your life. At this point, sleeping on cement would be more comfortable than your bed back at your own house, but here, the soft, plush mattress takes away all of the exhaustion that manifests itself in you throughout the day. Not to mention the fact that for the first time in over a decade, you finally have a normal routine, an internal clock to direct your body, rather than the other way around. There is something soothing in knowing exactly what the next day will bring. Something that doesn’t keep you up with worry.

But tonight, you are wide awake.

The golden bracelet on your wrist clinks against itself as you sit up, rubbing at the gunk that’s collected in your eyes. You’ve been keenly aware of its existence on your wrist much more in the past several days, ever since Jungkook turned it from its previous faded silver, fingers instinctively toying with it whenever there’s nothing on your mind—and even when there is.

What you fear most is the fact that you feel as though you are relying on Jungkook to be there more and more, counting on the fact that you know he will be by your side no matter where you are, no matter what you do. You are relying on him to be there, on his house to be there, shaping the way that you run your life based on the belief that at the end of the day, he will be asleep under the same roof as you.

You pull yourself out of bed. Maybe a night spent alone will remind you of the days where you would watch the moon move across the sky, sitting underneath trees and counting the stars that you can see. Remind you that no matter what, the moon will always be there for you, too. Remind you that this, all of it, is temporary.

You know that you aren’t allowed to go up to the second floor of Jungkook’s apartment, and that you’ve never been solely because Jungkook requested that you stay downstairs, a promise you have kept throughout the weeks. But there must be some appeal to the rooftop, you think, because Jungkook never comes downstairs whenever he’s having a restless night. Besides, it’s not as if you have any plans to go into his bedroom.

Softly, you creep upstairs, hand dragging along the golden rail, feet leaving creases in the carpet. The top of the stairs opens up into a general hallway, a dark wooden door undoubtedly leading towards his bedroom, while the walls on the other side turn to glass, leading towards the pool. You tiptoe down the hallway, making sure to avoid making too much noise by Jungkook’s bedroom door, passing by the gym that Jungkook must use all of the time, whenever he’s not around to bother you. The glass door at the end of the hallway must exit out to the pool, so you twist the doorknob and push it open, the cool summer atmosphere hitting you like a breath of fresh air.

All of the lights are on outside, this soft white that reflects off of the metal railing and the pool water, crashing in waves against the tiled edges. You think it’s just for show, like how people leave their Christmas lights on twenty-four hours a day, visible through their windows, but then you round the corner and see him.

Jungkook sits along the edge of the water, legs swishing around in the pool, as he looks up at the sky. The summer breeze blows through his hair, messy and loose, the way it looks right when he gets out of the shower, before he puts any product into it. Whatever he’s playing with in his hand glints in the lights, that distinctive yellow glow. It must be a coin or something, something small, something to keep his fingers occupied.

“Are we considering that strike three?”

He whips around when he hears your voice, hears the way the pool water carries it across to him.

“I thought you promised never to come up here,” he muses back.

“Then I guess maybe both of us can be forgiven,” you suggest.

You amble over to him, crouching down to dip your feet in as well. You seat yourself along the edge of the pool beside him as the water sloshes around, the sensation sending shivers down your spine despite the humidity in the air.

“Can’t sleep?”

Jungkook shakes his head. “My body’s tired but my mind isn’t.”

“What’s that?” You ask, pointing at the coin in his hand. It isn’t a form of currency that you recognize, certainly nothing used here.

“A family heirloom,” Jungkook tells you, holding it out for you to see. It’s covered in a thin layer of cold but you think that you can make out some sort of crest, an emblem or insignia above the coat of arms. “Apparently it had been stolen from someone of royalty or high status back in the day. My family turned it into gold and made it ten times more valuable.”

“Oh, but I pickpocket a few people and suddenly I get sentenced by the Realm to be a minder, I see how it is,” you joke, rolling your eyes. Your eyes glaze over the crest, tracing the lines of a lion, a spear, a shield. It must mean something to someone, but to you and Jungkook, it could be anything.

“Hey, but being my minder hasn’t been terrible, has it?” Jungkook asks, mockingly offended. His lips curl down into a pout as he looks at you, a hand on his heart like it’s been punctured by your words.

“It’s…” You begin. You suppose that it hasn’t been terrible. In the beginning, it was positively nightmarish, left you feeling like there was no way you would ever complete your sentence. Now, there’s this weird, hidden part of you that doesn’t want to leave. The part of you that has become attached to this world, this lifestyle. The part of you that relies on there being another person in your life to be with. “It’s not that bad.”

“You know what, I’ll take it.” Jungkook grins. “Even though I know you secretly love me.”

You give Jungkook a shove, pushing him on his side. “You wish.”

He laughs, pulling himself back up off of the cement, knocking his shoulder into yours. “I know that we both kind of didn’t have a choice in any of this,” he tells you, looking up at the stars, watching their faint light, twinkling from millions of light years away. “But I think I really needed you here.”

“Oh, now he admits he needs a minder,” you say sarcastically, flinging your arms out in front of you.

Jungkook chuckles. “I didn’t realize I turned so much until you forced me to stop cold turkey.”

You nod. The truth is, you can’t blame Jungkook for his turning habits. You can’t blame him for living the way that he lives, when it’s the only thing he’s ever known. When the two most important adults in his life turn like wildfire, when they taught him everything he knows. But Jungkook is his own person, now, not a product of his parents, anymore. He has his own choices to make. He can become whoever he wants to be.

He has become someone he wants to be.

Jungkook’s magic habits aren’t any fault of his own as much as yours aren’t, either. They were born out of ignorance, out of necessity. Out of the fact that neither of you have ever known a world where you didn’t have powers, where you didn’t feel as though you needed to use them. You couldn’t imagine not having your magic. You know that Jungkook feels the same.

“Why did you?” It’s as if the words don’t even belong to you. Like someone else has spoken them—the moon, the sky, the stars.

Jungkook purses his lips, and sighs. “It was all I had ever known.”

Jungkook grew up drunk on his powers. You wonder if he’s sobered up now.

(You wonder if you had anything to do with it.)

“When I was little, my parents gave me that whole ‘you’re different, and that makes you special’ talk. They told me that my powers were valuable. A gift. And that people with gifts like mine must never waste them. That if we had been given this magic, we ought to use it, right? So that’s what I did. God, every day I would turn a new toy gold, and then I would get another one to replace it, and I would turn that one gold, too. My parents probably sold that to our banks, another hundred thousand dollars into their pockets,” Jungkook says, forcing out a laugh at the memory. The thought is rather endearing, when you think about it. Little Jungkook turning a stuffed bear gold, crying when it isn’t soft and fuzzy anymore.

“And my parents encouraged me. They told me that I was doing the right thing, that I wasn’t letting my gift go to waste. You saw them that evening that they came over. They were turning things gold left and right. Things that I had wanted to stay their natural material. Like that bowl for my keys. Do you know how easily gold is scratched?” He exclaims, gesturing frantically in front of him. “I purposefully kept that as the clay it was made out of. And now it’s gold.”

“A modern day crisis,” you joke.

“I guess…” Jungkook begins, but the words trail off and he pauses, almost like nothing he says will be correct. “I guess I just never knew the difference between not wanting my magic to be in vain, and not wanting to ever stop using it. Like you. You only heal when you need to. And even then, you don’t treat it like this precious gift. You treat it like something you owe to others.”

“That’s because without other people to heal, my power is useless,” you explain. Being able to heal others has no direct benefit for you. It doesn’t make you stronger, or faster, or better. It is a gift that is meant to be shared. “It’s different.”

“Every time I turn something, I feel like shit afterwards,” Jungkook admits to you. “Like I’ve turned so many things, that I don’t have the right to do it anymore. Like I’ve exhausted my magic.”

“You feel guilty,” you explain to him, resting a hand on top of his own, his fingers losing their grip on the coin he’s been tossing between them. “And that’s okay,” you tell him, meeting his eyes with your own. “Your parents are right—what you have, this power that you possess, it is a gift. It has made your life better in a way that nothing else could. But your fear of letting it go to waste, of not truly appreciating it for what it is, is a two-way street.”

Jungkook blinks at you, petal pink lips parted ever so slightly.

“Wasting a gift by never using it is the same as wasting it by overusing it, because it loses its specialness. When you turn things now, it doesn’t feel amazing or blessed or exciting, because it’s lost the ability to feel like that for you. It’s almost second-nature, at this point,” you say.

“Then what do I do?” He asks, feeling helpless. “How do I make it feel special again?”

You squeeze his hand in your own, making him look up at you, the pool water reflected in his big brown eyes, like a warm chocolate ocean. “You only use it on things that make you feel like a better person.” Things that make Jungkook feel special, as opposed to things that make his magic feel special. “Not just things that will put more money in your bank account, or things that will make your house decor nicer. Things that you really, truly care about.”

Jungkook’s eyes glance downward at something, but he nods. He breathes out this exhale, this heavy sort of breath, like he’s trying to reteach himself the things that make him tick. Things like alphabetized books, and homemade kimchi stew.

“Gifts like that only come once in a lifetime,” you say. “Remarkable things don’t happen to us all the time.” You know this, because it’s true. Because you’ve lived it.

Because in another life, in another universe, there is a you who can’t turn invisible, can’t heal people, and there is a Jungkook, too, one who can’t turn whatever he pleases into gold. And they would live their whole lives not knowing what it would be like to have these powers, to ease their way of life. And they would never meet each other, either. Too busy trapped on opposite sides of the world, too busy to worry about anybody but themselves.

“So we have to learn to treasure them.” It feels as though you’re drowning in him. Like you’re floundering, barely staying afloat. “We have to make sure that they always feel special to us.”

You curl your hand around his own, lacing your fingers together as your palms rest against each other’s. You watch as his gaze drifts down to where your hands are interlocked, a bridge between the two of you, a lifeline that connects the two lives you had lived without each other in them.

“Do you understand?” You ask. You can see the words as they appear, watch as they linger in between the two of you, hot summer breaths on a cool summer night.

He squeezes your hands together, and he smiles, warm and round and real. He looks at you, and he is there, he is sitting by your side. And he is beautiful and extraordinary and remarkable. And he says, “I’m starting to.”

You wake up the next morning to find a shimmering piece of parchment sitting on the dresser in your bedroom.

As declared by the Realm, its leaders, and its government, it reads,

The recipient, Y/N, has successfully completed her sentence of community service as mandated by the courts. She no longer needs to serve as the minder to Jeon Jungkook, and may return to her former residence.

Though the sentence has been carried out, The Realm, its leaders, and its government, reserves the right to re-charge the recipient for the crimes for which she had been originally tried should she commit them again. Should this instance occur, the option for community service will not be available.

We thank you for your service.

Oh.

Already?

It feels like you just started. Like it was only yesterday that you stormed up to the front door of Jungkook’s penthouse, watched as he crumpled up the parchment and tossed it into the bin. Like it was only yesterday you reappeared at his office, this time with a declaration that won’t be so easily destroyed.

You wonder why this one is all sparkly as well.

You don’t know exactly what prompted the end of your sentence, what duties you had somehow fulfilled to earn you your freedom. What is the Realm searching for? What data are they using to determine whether or not you have met your goal? It certainly couldn’t have just been the fact that Jungkook hasn’t turned in a while. Not turning is not the same as not wanting to turn.

So what changed?

You stare down at the parchment, each word leaving you more confused than the word before it.

It isn’t over already, is it?

Knowing that you are now free to return back to your own house means that your worst fear has been realized. You don’t want to.

You want to stay here, in Jungkook’s massive penthouse, relishing in the glory and wealth that comes alongside it. You want his chef to make pre-made meals for you and the extra kimchi stew he keeps in the fridge. You want Jungkook’s five thousand different streaming services and enough books to last you several lifetimes. You want the sense of normalcy that staying here has given you, the regular routine that you have so effortlessly fallen into. You want the late-night pool chats and rounds of hide-and-seek.

Why would you want to give up all that you have?

“You want fried or poached eggs?” Jungkook knocks on your closed bedroom door, tapping softly with his knuckles, already awake and ready to make breakfast.

“Either,” you tell him, glaring down at the parchment with furrowed brows. You’re too afraid to touch it, too afraid to even look at it any closer. Because that will make it real.

“Alright,” Jungkook calls. “It’ll be ready in ten! Got freshly-squeezed orange juice too!” You can hear his footsteps as he heads back down the corridor, the thump, thump, thump of his fuzzy slippers against the hardwood floor.

“Coming,” you say weakly, too focused on the glowing paper on the dresser.

Just because you can go back to your house doesn’t mean you have to. Just because you can go back to your old life, doesn’t mean you have to.

You grab the paper and stuff it in an old tote bag, covering it with old clothes, memories of the former world you lived in. Not anymore.

After all, isn’t this the life you’ve always dreamed of?

Kimchi stew is, as it stands, delicious, but it can’t be the only thing that the two of you ever cook together.

Jungkook does all of the grocery shopping, mostly because the both of you know that if you went out to the store with a list of ingredients, you would be lost for days searching for them. So when he returns home with three tote bags filled with ingredients, your mouth already starts to water.

“What are we making today, chef?” You ask, bounding into the kitchen as Jungkook begins to unpack.

“Another Korean recipe,” Jungkook says happily, pulling out a bright yellow pack of thin grey noodles. “Japchae!”

“Sounds delicious,” you say, though at this point he could make you microwave mac-and-cheese and you’d snarf it down like nothing else.

“You bet it is.” Jungkook grins, slowly dumping out the rest of the contents of the bags. They are filled to the brim with vegetables and seasonings, peppers and zucchini and everything in between, the makings of a colorful little homemade dish.

Jungkook seems to be making more time to actually cook things these days, fishing through the cabinets regularly to see what meals he can make with all of the ingredients in his kitchen. The chef only comes once every two weeks now, and usually brings with him any groceries that Jungkook has personally requested. He’ll ask you what you think of a new recipe that he wants to try, showing you the guide on his laptop screen, writing down whatever he needs to buy from the store.

And you thought that the chef’s meals were appetizing.

“Have you ever thought of meal-prepping?” You ask as Jungkook sets the noodles in a pot of boiling water, turning the heat on high.

“Why?” Jungkook says.

“I don’t know,” you tell him, washing the red pepper underneath the faucet, cutting board and knife ready and waiting on the counter. “So you don’t have to go through the process of cutting everything up and sauteing it, or whatever.”

Jungkook turns around, shakes his head. “No. Half the fun of cooking is making it.”

“But you could save yourself a lot of time when you come back from work,” you point out. Jungkook’s always so exhausted by the time he walks through the front door, keys scratching the golden bowl on the table on the way in.

“But then we wouldn’t get to cook together,” he says like it’s obvious, like it’s the thing that he thinks about the most when he comes back home. The two of you, filling up his kitchen, leaving oil stains on the countertops and burnt vegetables at the bottom of the pans. The scent of spices, of onions, of sizzling vegetables wafting through the air.

Another person to fill up this barren house.

You never eat in the dining room, because two people still isn’t enough to make that room feel like it’s full, like there are people that regularly use it. But now, there are grease stains on the leather of Jungkook’s couch, and a little bit of ketchup on the rug that he doesn’t know about, reminders that just because Jungkook’s house is big doesn’t mean it has to be empty as well.

“I’m a horrible chef,” you say, because you’re not quite sure what else to tell him. Up until a few weeks ago, you had never cut up an onion in your life. Things in the kitchen that take Jungkook five minutes to do take you twenty. You certainly aren’t any help, not when Jungkook has to pause whatever he’s doing to teach you something that you should already know. So what’s the appeal?

“You’re not that bad,” Jungkook assures you gently. “You just need to do it more.”

“Oh, so is that your mission? You don’t meal-prep because you want me to learn how to make my own food?” You ask, rounding on him.

“You got me.” He grins guiltily, pinching the part of your waist where he knows you’re the most ticklish, making you laugh as you turn invisible for a moment, a sort of gut reaction whenever you’re sensitive. “And because I like cooking with you.”

“Can’t imagine why,” you say with a roll of your eyes. “It must be my infectious personality, right?”

“That, and teaching you how to cook stuff is fun.” Jungkook smiles, reaching out as he begins to chop vegetables beside you. Standing here, in the middle of his kitchen, you wonder if this is how life is supposed to be. Someone you can cook with, someone you can eat with. Someone who will teach you the things that you don’t know, who will help you master the things that you do. Someone who doesn’t care where you came from, only that you’re here now, that you are right beside him.

Homemade meals make your insides warm and fuzzy, but having someone to spend the night with makes your heart feel comforted. Makes it feel like it’s been wrapped in a blanket, cradled in someone’s hands.

“What happens when I learn everything?” You ask. “What will you do then?”

Eventually, this routine must come to an end. Eventually, there will be nothing left for him to teach you, nothing left for you to learn. You know that your days are numbered, that there is only so much time that the two of you can spend together. What will happen when you reach the last day? When there will be no tomorrow for you to rely on?

Jungkook must know that you can’t stay here forever, even if the two of you try to keep it that way. But he doesn’t miss a beat when he says, “Then, I’ll find something new to teach you.”

This arrangement has always been temporary.

But for a moment, just a moment, an echo in time, he makes you believe otherwise.

There’s a golden glint on your chest of drawers when you walk into the room, the glare flashing in your eyes as the sun hits it.

You, admittedly, don’t go into your room very often, usually only to do the thing that bedrooms, at their most basic level, were meant to do: sleep. But Jungkook retired early to his room tonight, citing some ridiculous reason like he hadn’t worked out enough this week, and everything in the house suddenly becomes less inviting whenever he’s not around.

When you step closer, you can see it. See the thin chain that rests on the dresser, the key that hangs from it, a similar size to the charms on your bracelet. The gold is faded, shine erased, leaving behind this gentle matte texture, smooth but worn. It’s much more vintage than the sorts of things you would find in jewelry stores today—bright, sparkly necklaces and shiny, lustrous rings. It was made to look old, to look worn. It probably is.

There’s a little note next to the necklace, a torn piece of paper from a notepad, the edges rough and uneven.

To Y/N,

Found this in my mother’s old jewelry that she always leaves here when she decides it’s not her style anymore. Didn’t really think of anybody else that would make good use of it like you. I think it’ll match your bracelet well! I hope you like it.

Jungkook

You smile as you read the words, take in this meaningful little gesture that Jungkook has done for you. The bracelet from your mother has always been your most prized possession, but with its new golden makeover, it reminds you that you don’t always have to look to your past to be happy. That what you have, right here, right now, is enough. Now, your mother’s charm bracelet has a matching partner.

Standing in front of the mirror, you put the necklace on, fingers craning to attach the clasp to the chain, metal slipping from your grip. After a bit of a battle, you finally manage to connect the two ends, letting the key hang low past your collarbones, the gold resting gently against your skin. It doesn’t match your bracelet perfectly, but the two aren’t so much a matching set as they are a pair, two pieces that are meant to complement each other rather than complete.

You seriously doubt that Jungkook’s already asleep.

Sneaking up the stairs to the second story, you see that the door to Jungkook’s bedroom is wide open, revealing a little glimpse into the room he spends so much time in. It’s dark, empty, a signal that Jungkook is elsewhere on this floor. You don’t spend too much effort peering into Jungkook’s bedroom, not when it feels like you’re invading his space, his privacy. He’s already given up so much of his home for you. He deserves to keep his bedroom his own.

He’s not in the gym, you determine as you pass by, which means that there really is only one other place he could be found.

You push open the door to the rooftop, rounding the corner to the deck to find Jungkook doing laps in the pool, wearing nothing but his swimming trunks. The water sloshes around his body as he swims back and forth, kicking up splashes as he goes. You watch for a few moments as he works out, not wanting to interrupt him he burns away the calories in his body. This is the closest you’ve ever come to seeing Jungkook undressed, but you don’t really mind. At least he’s got shorts on.

When he stops, he stands up in the pool, sopping wet hands running through sopping wet hair, strands that frame the sides of his face, make his hair look longer than it actually is. He wipes away the water on his face, blinking the chlorine from his eyes, when he spots you.

“What are you doing up here?” He asks, not even caring to fight away the grin that has laced itself on his features.

“Came to say thank you,” you tell him, fingers toying with the key around your neck. “You didn’t have to do that for me.”

“I wanted to,” Jungkook says honestly. “Besides, my mother was never going to come back to get it, so I figured that it should go to someone who will actually wear it.”

“It’s beautiful,” you say, slowly sitting down along the edge of the pool, letting your legs dip into the water. Jungkook makes his way over to you, water splashing at his torso as he walks through the pool to stand before you. “Was it always gold?”

“It was, yes,” Jungkook says with a nod. “My mom liked to turn a lot of things, but she preferred her jewelry to be naturally gold. That’s why it’s pretty faded.”

“It looks nicer this way,” you say. “Shiny gold looks cheap.”

“Spend a couple of months in a mansion and suddenly you think gold looks cheap?” Jungkook jokes. “I think I’m rubbing off on you.”

“Can’t help that I’ve got an eye for nice things,” you tease, looking Jungkook up and down just to be dramatic. You have to admit that he’s got a rather attractive figure, fit, built, toned. You would be lying to yourself if you said that you weren’t eyeing him at least a little bit.

Jungkook pretends that he isn’t paying attention to the fact that you are blatantly ogling his body and laughs. “You swim?”

“I learned when I was little,” you tell him. “But I haven’t done it in a long time.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Jungkook says with a disapproving shake of his head.

“What? I like being dry,” you say, hands on your hips as you defend yourself. Besides, when you were little, swimming always meant showering afterwards, which sucked because then you had to waste water just to clean yourself of other water. Your mother always said that being able to swim would carry you far in life, would be an invaluable skill. You haven’t swum since she died.

“But, you wouldn’t mind if I… oh, never mind,” Jungkook dismisses, being purposefully vague just to capture your attention.

“What?” You demand.

“If I…” Jungkook begins, leaning back down in the pool until all but his head is submerged. He floats towards you, paddling until he’s right beneath your feet. “Did this—?”

Without a second of warning, Jungkook’s wet hands are grabbing onto your ankle, pulling you and your fully-clothed-self into the water with a splash, making you shriek as you feel your skin freeze up at the cold temperature. Luckily, it’s shallow enough here that you can stand rather easily, but now you’re soaked from head to toe, sopping fabric sticking to your figure.

You come up from beneath the water, positively accosted, hands wiping across your face as you clear your eyes so that they can narrow in on your target. “Okay, that was uncalled for,” you say, splashing Jungkook furiously, even as the two of you fight off the laughter that is bubbling up from your throats.

“Oh, but it’s such a nice night for swimming,” Jungkook grins devilishly, that cheeky sort of look reserved for when he knows he’s being a nuisance.

“Maybe for you!” You say, punctuating every word with a splash. Jungkook takes them all in good fun, accepting his punishment for pulling you into the pool. “I’ve been betrayed.”

“Admit it,” Jungkook coaxes, “you love me.”

You refuse.

When the rage has died down and the water begins to feel less like an icy death trap and more like a pleasant dip, you and Jungkook paddle around each other, swimming in circles like two fish in a school. Looking up, it is a nice night, clear skies as a crescent moon hangs above your heads. There are seldom any stars in the middle of the city, but the especially bright ones still shine, flickers of white in an otherwise deep blue ocean. You wonder how many times Jungkook has come out here, spent the night underneath the sky when he cannot sleep away the hours in bed.

You wonder how many times you missed the opportunity to spend the night with him.

“I sort of wish that we could stay like this forever, don’t you?” Jungkook asks, the two of you floating on top of the water like light against the sea.

There’s a lot of things in your life that you wish would never change. This is just another bullet point added to the list.

“Yeah,” you breathe out, because out there somewhere is a timer, counting down the moments until you have to say goodbye. “I do.”

“You didn’t have to do this, you know,” you say, looking at Jungkook.

He sits across from you in the booth, face lit up in a warm yellow from the rustic exposed light bulb above your heads, this soft, homey glow to his features, sharp jawline but rounded cheeks. He’s cleaned up well, in a different way than how he gets ready for work, when he has to make sure his collars are crisp and his hair is sleek and straight. Here, his dark brown hair is bouncy, loose, like he had blown it out after jumping out of the shower and then immediately ran his hand through it a couple of times to mess it up. He wears a plain button down, nothing fancy or chic, no tie, no suit jacket. The beauty of how he looks is that it’s so simple, so timeless, like he doesn’t need to put any effort into how he looks because he is just naturally perfect. Like the cover of a magazine. Like a sculpture come to life.

“I wanted to,” Jungkook says happily, fork twirling around the pasta in the dish in front of him. “We can’t just eat premade meals and leftover Korean food forever.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t complain if we did…” You reason, because you’ve been better fed in the few months you’ve lived with Jungkook than in the years you have spent on your own. Not to mention the fact that everything Jungkook makes tastes eons better than the meals the professional chef whips up, for some odd reason. “But you’re right, a night out is fun.”

“Sometimes food tastes better when you don’t make it yourself,” Jungkook points out, motioning to the dishes before you, these high-class servings of fish and pasta and vegetables that look like they belong on a cooking show rather than on the table in front of you. You and Jungkook may have mastered (or at least… gotten better at) cooking, but presentation is a whole other battlefield. Besides, it’s all going to the same place, so why bother?

“Mmm,” you murmur in agreement, savoring the flavor of the meal in front of you. A year ago you wouldn’t have dared step foot in a restaurant like this one, would have probably gotten kicked out after you walked through the door, so being here feels like a real treat. One that you think you could definitely get used to.

“Thanks, by the way,” Jungkook pipes up, as if suddenly remembering something.

“For what?”

“For your idea about the investment management,” Jungkook says, sending the both of you back to that day in his office, where Jungkook was on the verge of flipping his desk over because he couldn’t figure out a solution.

“Oh, is it working out?” You ask, curious to know if your suggestion is truly paying off or if you just had too much faith in the goodness of humanity.

“It is.” Jungkook nods happily. He seems very proud of himself. “It was slow going at first, because a lot of clients were starting to wonder why we weren’t investing in other stocks that would guarantee us a higher payout, but then they saw where the money was going. We aren’t bigger than our rival companies, but this levelled the playing field.”

“I’m glad,” you say, because it’s one thing for Jungkook to tell you you had a good idea, and it’s another for him to actually implement it. “That makes me happy to hear.”

“You’re not as bad at business or economics as you think you are, Y/N,” Jungkook informs you, waving around a nonchalant hand. “All they are is an in-depth study of human nature. Some economists assume that everyone in the world is selfish and cares only about themselves, but you’re different. You see the good in everyone, you believe that people can be honest, and selfless, and giving.”

Like Jungkook.

Like Jungkook, who has given up his home, his work, his life just to deal with another person hovering around him. Who gifts you gorgeous pieces of jewelry and takes you out to fancy meals, who lets you screw up a recipe in the kitchen and obligingly eats peppers that have been charred beyond recognition. Who is so much more honest, so much more selfless, so much more giving, than you could ever be, sticking around because to not do so would cost you your freedom, because you would rather stay here than be anywhere else.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when you’re gone,” Jungkook says, cracking this weak, terrible smile. He shakes his head as if to banish the thought from his mind, to exist only in this very moment, choosing to ignore both the past and the future. “I think I’m starting to rely on you being there.”

“Yeah,” you say softly, distantly. Something weighs heavy on your chest, pressing your heart down, slowing its temperate rhythm. The truth is that your heart stopped a long time ago, it stopped when you realized that there’s more to Jungkook that you want to know, when you realized that you can’t bear to imagine a life different than the one that the two of you share, no matter how temporary it is. But this weight, this burden on you, it serves as nothing but a reminder that without Jungkook, your heart cannot count in time. “Me too.”

You return home with plastic tupperwares in your hands, leftovers from the enormous meal that the two of you couldn’t have finished even if you tried. Jungkook takes the container from your hands as you excuse yourself to the bathroom, desperate to wash away the thoughts that rest heavy in your heart, cleanse yourself of the lies you can’t seem to stop telling. There’s this naive part of you that thinks, when you wash off the makeup, change back into your raggedy old clothes, all of the secrets you carry with you will vanish as well.

You know you’ll have to come clean eventually. Eventually, Jungkook will get suspicious as to why you’ve hung around so long even though he is no longer turning. He’ll begin to wonder why you haven’t dashed out of the penthouse you once used to disparage, desperate to return to your old life, where you didn’t have to know him the way that you do now. When you didn’t feel like there was something else trapping you here.

When all is said and done, though, it feels like here is where you were always meant to end up.

You head back out into the living room, ready to settle down and wrap up the night by watching a movie or something, when you see Jungkook standing by the couch, your old tote bag sitting on the cushions from a laundry trip earlier today, a shimmering piece of parchment in his hands.

“Jungkook—”

“How long?” He asks, voice cracking. He’s clenching the paper so hard that his knuckles are turning white, like he can’t believe the words that he’s reading. “How long have you been free to go?”

“Listen, I can explain—”

“A week? A month? When were you going to tell me?” He pleads. When you can’t even muster up the dignity to look at him, he shouts. “When?”

“A month,” you tell him weakly, desperately.

“A month? You’ve been staying here for a month when you didn’t even need to?” He asks, and he isn’t angry, or furious, or full of rage. He looks helpless, like there is no longer light behind his eyes, twinkles in his irises. Like he’s in pain, like he’s hurt. Exposed, his walls broken down and nothing left to repair them. “When were you going to tell me? Were you ever going to say anything?”

“Yes, Jungkook, but I—”

“All this time,” he says, more to himself than to you, like he can’t believe how foolish he’s been. “All this time you’ve been using me? Using my money?”

“No, Jungkook, it’s not like that.” You are desperate, desperate to salvage what you can from this broken arrangement, desperate to start anew.

“Then what is it like?” He demands. “If you weren’t using me for my house, or my money, or my personal chef, then what is it? What did you want from me that you couldn’t get on your own?”

You stop. Why did you stay? Normalcy? Opportunity? Company? All things that you never dreamed of having in a million years. And while being with Jungkook did provide you with all three, none of them feel quite right.

“I don’t know, I just—” You begin, scrambling for the right words and feeling like nothing you say will be correct. “I didn’t want to go back just yet.” It’s a pitiful excuse.

“So you just decided to stay? To play along with me, with all of the things that I was doing with you, for you?” Jungkook shakes where he stands in front of you, blindsided. “Let me teach you how to cook and give you expensive jewelry and take you out to fancy dinners? Just for fun?”

“I never asked for you to do those things for me,” you remind him firmly. It’s not like you were scrounging for money from his pockets, selling insignificant gold sculptures on the black market to buff up your empty bank account. “You wanted to.”

“Because I thought we had something special, Y/N,” Jungkook admits helplessly, collapsing back on the couch. “I did those things because I felt it, Y/N. What you were talking about, that night at the pool, where you saw me sitting at the edge of the water. I felt it. With you,” he begs, hopeless and anguished. “I didn’t understand what it meant to make the magic feel special again until I did it for you. I turned your bracelet and it made me feel like I had something to give to others.”

“You know that that’s not what I meant,” you say, shaking your head. “I was talking about your gift, not us.”

“Aren’t they all the same, though? Magic? Powers? Love? Don’t they all make us feel like we have something special beneath our fingertips?” He asks, to you, to himself, to the moon and the stars, searching for an answer that none of you can give him.

“Love? You don’t mean that,” you say, refusing to admit it. You have no explanation as to why Jungkook did the things he did, just as much as you don’t have an explanation as to why you did the things you did. They just happened.

“I thought we had something,” Jungkook admits sadly, unable to even bring his head up to look at you, at the tears that are welling in your eyes, the ones you refuse to let fall. “And I thought the reason that you wanted to do all of those things with me was because you felt it, too.”

“Jungkook, you know that—”

“What?” He erupts. “What do I know? I know that you’ve been using me all of this time, that you did those things with me because you were getting freebies out of it. I know that I was foolish and—and stupid to think that maybe it was because you were falling in love with me just like I was falling in love with you.”

“Jungkook…” You reach out a trembling hand, wanting to feel the warmth of his body once more, the weight of his head in your palm.

“Don’t,” he says, swatting it away and standing up. “I get it, Y/N. I was stupid and I thought that we had something, when we don’t.” He turns back to look at you, and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to get the image out of your head, the sight of him, broken and beaten and empty, a shell of the beautiful, vibrant man you had become so attached to. “There’s nothing left for you here. Your services are no longer required.”

He disappears down the hallway, leaving you with nothing but a tote bag, a necklace, and a bracelet left for you to remember him.

When you step into your house for the first time in months, it feels even less inviting than it normally does. Which is, as far as you’re concerned, rather impressive, considering you’ve always dreaded coming back regardless of what happened throughout the day.

But now, you can name no place you would rather not be than in this graffiti-laden house, a dangling light bulb above the back entrance and dirt and dust all along the walls. You’ve never had time to fix up this place and make it look even the slightest bit presentable, never had the money to paint over the walls and get rid of the big red X on the front door. Day in and day out, this would just be a place where you could sleep, a mattress on the floor and Campbell’s soups on the cracked kitchen counters. The first thing you’d do every morning is get out. The last thing you’d want to do every night is come back.

No place has felt like home in a long time. Not since your mother died, when you lost how her smile would light up a room, how she would spin you in circles and kiss your forehead when you got scared that you were going too fast. You had almost forgotten what it meant to have a home, to have a place that felt sacred, like coming home to a warm hug and a steaming cup of tea. To have a place that you didn’t dread returning to, a place that you could gladly waste away in.

The bracelet that dangles from your wrist is the closest thing that you have left to the feeling of home, of comfort and warmth and solace, of something that makes you feel truly happy. But now, the bracelet has been tinted with the memories of another, of the only other person you can think of that has brought you that same feeling of joy, of these rose-stained memories that rest deep within your heart’s attic. They have always been there, hidden, buried beneath the bad, but when there is nothing left they surface. To remind you of what good life can bring you.

To remind you of the magic inside you.

You hate living here. And for a time, you hated living with Jungkook, too. Hated how extravagant his house was, hated how he refused to even speak to you. How there were so many unused rooms, so many empty spaces. But what changed, there, and what hasn’t changed, here, is how people, and not things, are what fill up rooms.

Living with Jungkook made you feel like coming back after a long day was worth it. Planted the knowledge inside you that you would always have him there, could always rely on another’s presence within the apartment. He’s only one person, but he fills up the room like nothing else, lights it up like New Year’s Eve. He’s funny, and witty, and gorgeous. He’s caring and honest and cheeky, just cocky enough for it to be charming as opposed to egotistical. He cooks like nothing else and spends his sleepless nights beneath the stars, looking at the same moon and sky as everyone else.

You don’t hate living here because it’s shit. You hate living here because it’s lonely.

There was a space in your heart that you didn’t even realize was empty. It had been overtaken by the part of you determined to make it to the next day, determined to stick it to the Realm, to its leaders, to all of the people that look down on you because you aren’t made of money.

But when you left Jungkook’s house, you realized that that space had slowly been filled up with him. That over time, bit by bit, moment by moment, Jungkook returned what you had lost, revived what you thought had long been dead.

The truth is that you wanted to stay with Jungkook because you couldn’t stomach the thought of being alone again. Of being forced to fend for yourself, forced to come home to an empty house with no one to waste away the night with. Of being forced to live like every day is a threat rather than a gift.

Jungkook has magic in his fingertips and his heart. It was only a matter of time before it spread to you as well.

Being hurt by someone you love feels like an arrow to the chest. Like a puncture wound, deep and piercing, but too painful to even want to pull it out, patch up the hole. You had already experienced it once. You didn’t have any plans on experiencing it again.

But losing the opportunity to love someone feels like an ache throughout your whole body, this crippling sort of pain that spreads through your bloodstream, setting every organ it passes on fire. It feels like there is something tearing you apart from the inside out, like every piece of you is slowly crumbling.

Jungkook’s biggest mistake wasn't falling in love with you. It was thinking that you were still falling in love with him, when the truth is, you had already fallen. It was letting you leave when both of you wanted nothing more than for you to stay.

Loving someone is a gamble. It’s a risk, a toe in the water, a spark from your fingers.

But not loving someone? That is magic, wasted.

Who knew twenty dollars could get you one large pizza and extra garlic rolls? Certainly not you.

The smell wafts through the hallway to Jungkook’s apartment, filling it with the scent of warm, fresh bread, of a hot meal waiting to be devoured. If you don’t knock soon, the pizza will go cold and you’ll probably eat all of it before you can even say hello to him. You have more food in your hands now than you have the past week you’ve been back at your old place.

You ring the doorbell.

“Coming!” Jungkook shouts. Oh, is he expecting someone?

Ten seconds later the door opens to reveal someone you hardly even recognize. Gone are the soft loose strands of hair and oversized button down shirts. Jungkook opens the door still wearing his suit jacket, tie tight around his neck, like he hasn’t bothered to change since he got home from work over two hours ago. His hair is sleek and straight, a little shorter than you last remember it. He looks the way he did when you first met him, this rigid, workaholic guy that doesn’t care about anybody except himself. He looks like he’s done nothing but work for a week. Not even sleep.

“Hi,” you begin, a short, quick intake of breath. “Did you order a pizza?”

“No.” Jungkook shakes his head, already starting to close the door. “I think you have the wrong apartment.”

“Wait, Jungkook, please? I need to talk to you,” you plead, a hand going out to stop him from shutting you out completely. All that you can see through the crack of space between the door and its frame are his piercing brown eyes, absolutely unreadable. He doesn’t budge. “Also, did you just get back from work? You must be starving. And as it so happens, I have an entire large pizza that I won’t be able to finish all by myself.”

Jungkook budges a little bit.

“Please?”

“Fine,” he says reluctantly, opening the door. “I hope you aren’t planning on staying here too long, this time.”

The words are biting cold, send angry shivers down your spine.

“Just enough for you to hear me out,” you say, placing the pizza box on the coffee table as Jungkook rummages through his kitchen for plates. He eventually manifests two paper ones—you didn’t even know he had those!—and returns, taking a seat on the carpet as he inhales the cheesy, greasy scent.

Your stomach grumbles, but you can’t eat just yet. First, you have to explain yourself.

“What did you want to talk about?” Jungkook asks, cold and distant, the same way he spoke to all of his employees before you encouraged him to do otherwise. “If it’s about my company, we can compensate you as necessary for your contribution. It won’t be much, though.”

“No, no, it’s not about that,” you say with a shake of your head. “It’s about us.”

“What ‘us’ is there to talk about?” He asks economically.

“The ‘us’ that I left behind that day,” you say softly, a gentle reminder. “The ‘us’ I should have realized existed before I let the door shut behind me.”

“If you’re just here to tell me that you’re sorry for not loving me back, don’t,” Jungkook says bitterly. “I don’t expect you to love me back or anything. You can’t change how you feel about people.”

“You still love me?” You ask, a spark, a flash, a ray of light.

Jungkook grumbles. “Yes. It doesn’t go away that easily.”

“You aren’t stupid, or foolish, or idiotic for thinking that I was falling in love with you at the same time that you were falling in love with me,” you tell him, the words light and airy, like weights plucked off of your chest, like butterflies released from a jar. “You were stupid for thinking that I wasn’t already in love with you.”

Jungkook’s head jerks up, eyes blinking wildly. You can see the way that they glisten, with hope, with tears, with desperation. With the possibility that not all is lost.

That old memories can become new once more.

“You were right,” you muse, more to yourself than to anyone else. Even Jungkook. “Magic, powers, love, they’re all the same thing. They are meant to be treasured. Cherished. Protected. They are meant to make us feel special.” You breathe, reaching out next to you, an open hand for Jungkook to take. “But most importantly, they are meant to be shared.”

A small smile. A lip half-turned up, this gentle little grin.

“I stayed because I wanted to keep sharing my life with you, Jeon Jungkook,” you tell him honestly, because it’s real and it’s true. Because, at this point, you can imagine nothing else. “And I’m here again because I can’t stand living without you anymore. I never want to stop sharing my life with you.”

“You make me feel like my heart is made of magic,” Jungkook admits, finally, finally, finally. “You make me want to use it just for you.”

“You don’t need to,” you say, pressing yourself into him, letting your lips hover above his own. He reaches a hand out, lets it rest on your waist, waiting desperately for you to close the last inch between the two of you. “You’re already made of it.”

With that, you close the gap, pressing your lips against his, the soft sweet cherry taste of his lip balm filling up your senses, leaving you gasping for air. It’s just a kiss, just a press of lips, this simple gesture, but it takes your breath away nevertheless. It makes you feel like magic swirls inside of you, like your heart is sparking, catching fire, sending it sizzling through your veins. Jungkook has taught you what it means for a house to become a home. You have taught him that magic is only special if he has someone to share it with.

It’s hard to think about the lessons you would have never learned without the other.

It’s hard to think about how different life would be, had you never even met.

Jungkook kisses you and it feels like you’re finally whole. It feels like what has been missing in your life has returned. What you have kept locked up, in the dusty, cobwebbed corners of your heart, in the spaces between your bones, has finally been remembered.

Jungkook takes your old memories and turns them new. He is the only thing you ever want to remember.

“I love you,” he whispers, watching as the words sink into your skin, leaving embers in their wake. “You are my most precious gift.”

“You are my home, Jeon Jungkook,” you murmur. “I love you, too.”

Pizza is good and all, but nothing beats homemade kimchi stew.

You made it all by yourself for the first time last night to celebrate Jungkook donating over a million dollars to various different animal rescues and human rights organizations, taking the kindness that he has been given and paying it forward. Besides, he can make money at the touch of a finger whenever he wants, so he might as well, right?

You also don’t accompany Jungkook at his work anymore, because you’ve gotten enough of a taste of office life and have declared it not your ideal profession, but the nice thing about that is getting the whole house to yourself while he’s gone. Not that you want to do very much without him, but napping in different bedrooms is always exciting.

You never realized how good love makes you feel. How it lifts you up from the inside out, brightens up every day no matter how dull it is to begin with. You had forgotten. What love can do to a person.

Jungkook always comes home and tells you about how happy his employees make him whenever they’re happy. Good feelings like joy, like laughter, like love, they are contagious. It’s a wonder that neither you nor Jungkook figured that out before you met each other.

Well, you suppose that there’s a first for everything.

Jungkook comes home and you can hear the door slam, even from where you’re hiding. You listen as he stops at the door, picks up the note that you left for him.

Loser washes the dishes! ♡

You hear his keys clink in the bowl, metal on metal. He pauses for a moment, for dramatic effect.

And then he shouts,

“You’re on!”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

#jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #jungkook scenario #bts imagine #jungkook imagine #bts au #jungkook au #w: midas #FINALLYYYY #this fic gave me a hernia!

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citrinesparkles · 3 years

Text

cat.

jason todd, eventually x gender neutral reader. 1,388 words. notes: this is part one of i don't even know how many and i cannot believe how wildly out of hand this got. this was a 500 word idea and it's gonna be at least three parts someone help (thanks to @angelz-dust for being so patient with me and encouraging on this!!! would never have made it out of the drafts without you <3) warnings: danger to kids, mention of a couple arguing, animal illness (spoiler alert: it'll be fine i Promise), a little (lot) different than my usual edit: part two here!

"let me be perfectly clear: if you even think about showing back up here, i will know, and i will make your life a living hell until i finally put you out of your misery. understood?"

"yes! yeah man i get it. understood."

"then i'd get going, if i were you." the man scrambled to his feet and bolted off across the playground, leaving jason to shout after him. "and warn any buddies you might have, too!"

he picked up the discarded knife and pocketed it. he then turned around slowly, hands visibly empty in a careful attempt not to scare the two kids behind him- well, careful not to make it worse, anyway. they, understandably, seemed a little shaken already.

"are you both alright?" he asked softly, slouching just a little to seem as harmless as possible.

probably would have been easier if they hadn't just watched him threaten someone.

the older kid- probably fifteen, if jason had to place a bet- nodded silently before glancing back at the little girl he was still hovering in front of protectively, who was just... staring.

she couldn't have been older than six.

"jazz?" the boy asked, voice tight. "are you hurt?"

he was ignored. "are you superman?"

the question, innocent and earnest and a little timid, made jason laugh. "not quite, kiddo."

she tilted her head like a curious puppy, furrowing her brow. "why are you wearing a jacket?"

jason glanced up at the boy, who seemed comforted by her mini interrogation. good.

talking was a good sign, too, so jason crouched down to meet her at eye level.

"because it gets cold out here!" he said, raising his hands up with a small wiggle of his fingers. "gloves, too."

"well, duh," jazz said with a giggle- a win, jason thought. "no fingerprints."

he nodded. "also helpful."

"and the hat to hide your face!" she said proudly, stepping forward a little to point at his helmet.

"wow, you've got the whole thing figured out, huh?"

"mhm! my friend ricky loves batman and his friends. he talks about batman and nightwing and spoiler and robin and red robin and red hood and batgirl all the time! they hide their faces like you, ricky thinks it's because of bad guys."

"they're kinda cool, huh?"

"nightwing's my favorite," she said firmly, as though it was something she had considered at great length and was fully prepared to defend.

"not red hood?" jason smacked a hand to his chest in mock hurt, shifting back dramatically. "i'm crushed, truly."

"no, ricky says red hood used to be an alien, but then got bored and now he annoys batman for fun instead. that sounds mean."

...well, okay, maybe he did annoy the big guy for fun a little. "that's an interesting theory, all right."

"ricky's got all kinds of theories. he thinks batman's a robot-" jason snorted- "and that nightwing was like pinochle."

"you mean pinocchio," the boy corrected quietly. "pinochle's what gramma plays."

"pinocchio!" she exlaimed, with a "ch" sound in the middle that made jason smile. "a doll that got turned human. that's how he does all the flips and stuff, he's got magic."

"hm, ricky seems like an interesting guy," jason said thoughtfully, making a big show of rubbing the chin of his helmet. "what do y-"

he was cut off by a loud, insistent meow, and jazz gasping even louder before taking off to the bushes.

"w- hey, don't rush off like that!" he said, shooting up off the ground as the boy sighed.

"there's this cat that she's been taking care of," he explained quietly. "the thing's got attitude for days but i think it's sick or something. jasmine's been bringing it little bits of tuna and chicken, but it's not like we can get it to a vet."

jason hummed. "why do you think it's sick?"

"it's thin, with its eyes all watery and sunk."

"might just be malnourished," he muttered.

"she's been trying to find it a home, y'know."

there was a wink-wink-nudge-nudge quality to the kid's voice that did not go unnoticed.

on one hand, it was good to hear something other than fear from him, but on the other... "what part of the tactical armor makes you think i'm an option?"

"the part where you just stuck around to check on us instead of running after that guy."

okay. maybe the quiet thing hadn't been so bad. the cocky 'amateur psychologist' thing was a little grating.

"you the real red hood?" the kid asked suddenly, shaking jason from his internal grumbling.

"what do you think?"

"i think you just saved our lives, and i wanna know who i'm thanking."

jason turned to him with a flourish. "red hood, baby saver extraordinaire. at your service."

"baby- dude, i'm seventeen!"

okay, so he would have lost his bet. "noted. still a baby, trust me."

"what are you under there, twenty something? whatever, grandpa."

jason chuckled, turning back to watch jasmine pet a small cat under one of the yellow lights littering the park. "you did well, looking out for her with that guy. you got a name?"

he scoffed. "would've been better if i'd kicked him between the legs right when he opened his mouth, instead of letting him get started on the whole 'what're you kids doing out so late?' bit," he muttered darkly, pausing for a moment before answering. "my name's jordan."

"well, jordan, what are you guys doing out so late?"

"mom works nights, and the neighbors were fighting. it was loud enough to wake jazz up, and it wasn't the kind of thing she needed to hear. i figured a trip to see her cat would be less awful than hearing them call each other things i wouldn't even call my friends." the breeze picked up, rustling the trees and catching on jason's jacket. "and then the asshole with the knife decided to make a bad night worse."

"is jazz your sister?"

"yeah, she's a good kid," jordan said, fond and warm. "sorry about the whole ricky thing, though. he's obsessed with those vigilante conspiracy videos and tells her all about them at school."

"no, no, it's fine. i can't wait to tell wing about his new origin story, he'll love that."

jasmine suddenly came bounding back towards them, grabbing their hands and yanking them to follow her. "c'mon, you need to meet cat!"

"you call it cat?"

jordan bristled subtly. "is there a problem with that, red?"

"no, no, it's an appropriate name. just making sure." jason waved his spare hand at his head. "helmet makes me hear things sometimes."

jordan opened his mouth, but his sister plowed right over whatever he was going to say, pulling on jason's hand again. "cat, meet... what's your name?"

"red hood."

"you can't be red hood!" she whirled around, indignantly putting her hands on her hips. "there's already a red hood in gotham. besides, you're not even wearing a hood, so it doesn't fit anyway."

jason turned his head to jordan, who was smiling- a good sign, but probably a bad omen for whatever he was about to say. "she's right, man. it's not a hood."

"tough crowd," jason muttered. "uh... then you can call me, uh-"

"bucket!" jasmine suggested happily, tapping his helmet. "because this looks like a bucket."

if there was one thing vigilantism had taught him, it was that sometimes you actually do need to pick your battles. this...

this was not worth fighting.

"sure, fine, whatever. hi, cat, i'm red bucket." he turned away from the kids- both of whom looked entirely too happy about the whole 'bucket' thing, he thought- and crouched down to finally look at the cat.

it did look a little sick, actually.

it was gray, and thin, and-

and now it was headbutting his knee like it was trying to push him over.

"cat likes you!" jazz cheered.

"sure does," jordan said pointedly. "isn't that interesting?"

jason opened his mouth, but his snarky comment died in his throat when the cat settled down right in front of him and blinked slowly up at him with a sweet tilt to its head.

...shit.

just- shit.

he sighed, standing up and looking back to jordan and his stupid, entirely-too-pleased-with-himself grin. "so, jazz," jason grumbled reluctantly, "where does cat live?"

#citrine writes #i promise i have a plan #jason todd #dc #imagines #dc imagine #dc imagines #jason todd x y/n #jason todd x you #jason todd imagine #jason todd x reader #sigh.

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that-was-anticlimactic · 3 years

Text

reki with tourette’s headcanons

[ID: it’s reki from sk8 the infinity wearing a yellow sweatshirt with his hands on his hips. he’s wearing a red bracelet on his right wrist and he’s smiling. behind him is a touette’s syndrome awareness flag. end ID.]

so. @zukkaclawthorne got me hooked on reki with ts and now imma post headcanons i wrote oops

okay so first—that little skateboard he plays with??? stim toy, actually.

he likes the sound the wheels make—that whirrrrrr sound. it makes his arms flappy :)

he also finds the rolling motion soothing and relaxing and it always calms him down—it takes his mind to a happy place

he rocks back and forth and shakes his legs a lot. that also contributed to why he was terrible at skateboarding the first few times he tried—because his body would be like “time to rock back and forth!” and it would mess him up

neck twitches for days :)

no but for real—neck twitching is one of his worst tics because sometimes—if he’s in a bad mood or if he’s sad or anxious—it gets harsh and violent and really strains his neck.

so, langa gives him neck / upper back neck massages to help with the pain

he went through this phase for a couple of months where whenever his neck would twitch, he would snap his fingers two times.

he has a lot of hand tics which can be stressful when he makes skateboards because sometimes he’ll be in the groove and then suddenly he’ll mess something up

speaking of messing things up, he has a tendency to dig the bottom of his palm into his forehead whenever he feels like he does something stupid—he doesn’t even realize it until someone points it out.

he feels like even more of a failure of a skater because of his tics because they can hold him back and make the course more dangerous.

if his blinking tic resurfaces, sometimes the blinking gets so intense that he literally cannot see for anywhere between five seconds and a minute depending on how bad it is. that is how he got some of his worst scars.

or sometimes he’ll make a really aggressive hand motion and it throws him off balance on the skateboard due to the intensity

anyways back to hand tics: he points a lot and does symbols like the “rock on” sign or certain numbers (for some reason, the most common number for reki to throw up is four—though sometimes he throws up whatever number he hears) he also grunts a lot as a tic so he sounds angry even when he is’t.

sometimes, his hand tics really hurt and his hands become shaky and his fingers start to feel the way his heart feels when he’s anxious. langa helps in different ways—he holds reki’s hand, he gives him something to fidget with to try to distract him (sometimes it’s his own fingers—he’ll just set them in reki’s palm and be like “let me carry some of the pain”—no, reki didn’t totally cry when he said that what)

sometimes, reki sticks pencils in his ears. his teachers have been trying to stop it since he was young, but he always did it anyways—he couldn’t help it.

his hair is also long enough for him to chew on. yes, he chews on the tips of his hair because i say so. sometimes, to stop him from doing that (and from swallowing his own hair), langa will try to make him laugh so it falls out of his mouth and then he’ll scoot close and tuck the hair behind reki’s ears… once they start dating, he kisses him too. but also that’s one reason why he wears the headband—to try to keep his hair out of his face so he doesn’t chew on it.

reki’s favorite form of stimming (other than his skateboard toy, that is) is stress balls. he’s got a couple of stress balls in his room or backpack—even one with string attached so he can carry it around his wrist. he just really likes the texture of them.

after his second race against adam, cherry and joe were so proud of him and also impressed and worried dads that they bought reki a big stress ball, like, the size of a stuffed animal. it was a blue cat. he uses it all the time.

speaking of fricking adam, we all know he would so use reki’s tics against him during a race. like, when he grabbed his wrist and “danced” with him, he would mock reki’s tics or say creepy things about how his verbal tics are music and his motor tics are him dancing along and it makes him so uncomfortable and like even more shaken

oh and adam purposely does things to trigger his tics, like when i mentioned that number tic??? yeah, adam will purposefully say numbers to make reki do the hand gestures

one time, reki wanted to tell langa that he loved him but got nervous so he signed it in sign language instead. but, since reki’s tics are occasionally hand gestures, langa thought that it was just a tic and mentally was like “i wish that was for me…” and reki is like “i wish he knew it was real…” and joe, cherry, shadow, and miya are all facepalming and groaning at their obliviousness

reki prefers taking hand written notes to electronic notes because he draws / doodles to stim and he can’t really doodle well on a laptop. so, he’ll doodle in class all of the time

sometimes, his pictures / notes turn out pretty bad / illegible depending on how bad his tics are, but that doesn’t phase reki. it used to when he was younger, but it doesn’t bother him at all anymore. in fact, he thinks it adds personality

during class, he’ll draw pictures for langa and slid them on his desk. they’re usually really random things like the teacher or the back of someone’s head or squiggly lines or whatever he sees outside. more often than not, it’s abstract art. langa loves these drawings and he keeps them all on his desk in his room.

reki also started drawing pictures for the rest of the sk8 crew and gives it to them during races. when he gave everyone their first doodle, he was like “i’m not the best artist ever and sometimes my tics mess up the doodle, but i thought of you while i drew it so i want you to have it”

(shadow didn’t shed a couple of unwilling dad tears when he got home that night what)

anyways, they all keep them. every single one. miya puts them in their school binder so they don’t feel as alone / isolated at school.

although shadow and miya give reki a lot of crap / teasing about not being as good as everyone else, the second they hear anyone comment about “the weird red head that makes noises” and comments on his ts in a negative way, oh, they will stop you.

sometimes, reki whispers words he hears under his breath as a tic (echolalia, baby~) and when he overhears people saying stuff about “that redhead that always follows snow around” or about him not being good enough or how he’s an idiot to face adam, he ends up muttering that too. and it’s not a one and done kind of thing—like. he does it for days. it makes him so upset (and i already hc him, with depression so it just makes it worse)

having tics while having injuries is not a good combination—especially if it’s with a broken arm. the crew made sure to keep an eye of reki’s comfort / pain level after adam broke his arm and literally tried to kill him in their final race. joe let reki squeeze his hand whenever he felt the urge to tic and cherry would ask him how much pain he was in after he ticced and depending on how bad it would be, would make joe or shadow fetch a heating pad or an icepack for reki.

joe also taught reki about the magical thing called physical therapy tape and helped him put it on his shoulders, neck, and back one time. it was his idea to use the tape on reki’s fingers when he was injured to make him feel better (because it literally makes my fingers feel better)

also langa kisses each of reki’s fingers and knuckles, slowly and tenderly, soft so he doesn’t hurt him or trigger a tic. a way of showing that he loves him not despite his tics, but even with his tics and that he loves him and his tics.

cherry isn’t always the best at showing he cares, so he’ll wear a ts ribbon sometimes in a way to show support (and it makes reki beam)

shadow once gave reki a flower shaped stress ball because there were “extra at work” (not true—he went looking for one)

miya didn’t really know much about ts at first and asked why reki made those noises and made weird movements all the time and langa explained so then that night when miya got home, they did research on ts so they could understand it better. later, they told reki that whenever they called him a slime, they meant it purely about skateboarding and it had nothing to do with his tics—even that his tics didn’t make him less of a skater

all his life, reki had been the different one: the one no one wanted on the team because sometimes his tics messed him up, the one who was asked to leave classes during tests because his tics were too distracting and made him take the test in the hall, when sometimes he’d get too overwhelmed by how close people were in the halls or at races and would have panic attacks, how he rocked in his chair and adjusted his position seventeen times an hour and sat on his feet while the other kids didn’t, how he shook his legs more aggressively than others, how he couldn’t skate as well as everyone else because of his tics and because he wasn’t good enough

which is probably part of the depression that weighs on his shoulders

the first time reki had a panic attack during a race due to closeness and overstimulating noises (and this is the first one after the sk8 crew happened) langa was racing and wasn’t there to help, so shadow kind of panicked and like picked him up under the armpits and carried him away from the crowd since reki could barely process anything other than panic and the sound and feeling of static and they sat in shadow’s car for the rest of the race and once he felt better, he gave shadow a huge hug and shadow returned it.

one time it happened and cherry was nearby and he saw the signs before it got bad (remembered from the previous time / his own experiences) and helped talk reki down before it got bad (he has a soothing voice)

usually, though, when / if it happens (because reki usually feels safe there), langa is the one who helps

but it got so much worse after skating against adam the first time because he no longer felt safe and suddenly everyone cheering adam’s name even after witnessing what he did to reki was too much but langa was racing adam so langa wasn’t there and this time it was joe who kneeled in front of him and started talking just loud enough for reki to hear and he was like “you’re safe—we won’t let anyone hurt you. we won’t let him hurt langa. you’re safe. i’m here and so is cherry and shadow and miya and langa will be waiting for you at the end of the race…”

it happens again at the next race he goes to—and this time it’s miya who notices and they tug on langa’s sleeve and is like “i think you need to take reki somewhere else” and langa does :)

okay i’ll end on a positive ts note or two—langa asks reki to add the ts ribbon to the design on his skateboard

shadow finds chewelry at the store one day when he’s shopping and buys it for reki (and gets a matching one for langa!)

once reki came back after his mental health break, the first thing joe said to him was, and this is nonnegotiable “reki! i missed you and your tics!”

miya once overheard reki muttering to himself about his annoying tics were, so they intervened and was like “your tics aren’t annoying. they’re you and anyone who think s they’re annoying is an idiot”

and for the first time in his life, reki doesn’t feel alone and isolated and so different from everyone (at least, he’s working on that last one) and he’s finally found a group of people who want him on their team and a boyfriend who always supports him and makes him feel less isolated, tics and all <3

i uhh I have a lot of feelings,,,

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 3 years

Note

raven-san, can we please have a wedding crashing where jade needs to marry this girl from another crime family to consolidate power and become the next head of the leech mob :)) but floyd's like I'M BORED and annoyed that his brother's being snatched up by a random chick, so he asks basketball bros, and azul, to help save jade?

This one is super long, so I added some extra sections and placed the rest of the wedding crashing below the cut!

***Spoilers for Jamil and Floyd’s Unique Magic!!***

"I object to this wedding...!"

Pre-Wedding Jitters

A call comes for the twins in the dead of night, without warning. It’s their parents with exciting news: they’re naming Jade as the next Don Leech. The catch? The Leech mob’s in the middle of a merger with the Worm mob, and he’ll have to marry Don Worm’s daughter to secure the deal.

Jade, ever the dutiful son, is honored by his future title and calmly agrees to the arrangement. On the other hand, Floyd’s annoyed by the idea, and can’t keep quiet about his irritation. He calls out to his twin in the darkness.

“... Ne, Jade.”

“Ee, Floyd?”

“Are you really okay with going through with this? You’re just gonna do what they said? Even though you don’t know the Worms at all? Even if you’ve never met that girl before?”

“It is a request coming directly from father and mother. How could I refuse them? And, furthermore... If I do not undertake this task, then it would fall to you, the next choice to inherit the title of Don Leech. I cannot allow that to come to pass--fufu. You do so enjoy your freedom, yes?”

“... Jade, you’re so dumb sometimes. What’ll happen to your freedom, then? Will you get so busy with being the big boss and being married... that you won’t have time to play anymore?”

“... Perhaps. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

That thought doesn’t sit well with Floyd--not at all.

“I trust that you will make your own fun of the situation,” Jade reassures him. “You always do.”

As the weeks pass, Floyd sees less and less of Jade around, since he has to prepare for the wedding. Jade reassures him that he’s doing just fine, but Floyd can see right through his lies. He can tell that Jade’s more frazzled than usual--there’s a lingering to his words, and a longing in his eyes, savoring every last bit of autonomy he has before his fate is forever sealed.

Floyd hates it. He hates being lied to by his own brother, and he hates feeling powerless to stop the wedding. Floyd’s so angry that he develops this murderous aura in the weeks leading up to the wedding, which makes everyone around him shy away.

One day, he gets sick of being in the water--it’s a reminder of the wedding to come--so Floyd plays basketball on land to vent. He ends up chomping down so hard that he deflates a ball, then dunks another basketball so hard, he breaks the net.

He sprawls out on the ground and angrily shouts at the sky. His basketball bonks him on the head... and that’s when an idea hits him: maybe he can’t stop the wedding alone, but no one said he couldn’t phone some friends.

Assembling the Dream Team

Floyd first dials up Azul, who agrees to help after some whining and signing a contract agreeing to pay Azul handsomely for his services (... although truthfully, the octopus does want to help Jade, but doesn't immediately agree to do it because of his pride as a businessman).

Floyd also calls his old basketball buddies for help! Jamil and Ace are much more adamant than Azul, but Floyd strongarms them into pitching in. ("Umihebi-kun, Kani-chan, if you don't help me rescue Jade, I'll get suuuper mad, you know? I don't think you'll like me when I get mad. Moray eels are strong hunters, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem for me to track you guys down and give you a good squeeze~" "OKAY, OKAY, WE'LL DO IT!!")

Together, the four boys meet up to scheme of a way to disrupt the wedding without jeopardizing the Leech mob's future. Floyd actively leads the discussion, allowing his hidden genius to come to the surface.

Ace doesn’t contribute much to the strategy (laid out by Azul), but he does keep the spirit up with some jokes. Meanwhile, Jamil provides snacks for them when they work late into the night (though he keeps passing semi-glares to Azul whenever the octopus compliments him or tries to be friendly).

In preparation for the crashing, Azul brews some potions to give Jamil and Ace so they can take on temporary merforms. After all, the wedding will be underwater, in the Coral Sea, and they’ll need tail fins.

The date of destiny draws ever closer... and Floyd's never been so excited to cause chaos in his whole life.

The Crashing - Team Azul & Jamil

They split into two pairs on the day of the wedding—Azul and Jamil, and Floyd and Ace. Floyd uses his position as the future son-in-law to Don Worm to arrange a meeting between himself and the don... except Azul and Jamil will show up instead.

Don Worm shows up to the meeting in his finest clothes (which is very little, given that he’s a merman), sounding a bit annoyed the sudden summoning. “Make this quick, I’ve got to go see my baby girl’s big day... Wait. You fellas aren’t the F. Leech boy.”

“No, we aren’t, sir. We are his representatives... Proxies, if you will,” Azul insists, giving his warmest and most welcoming smile. He uses a tentacle to tug on Jamil’s tail, forcing him to smile too. “You see, there is an important business matter we needed to discuss with you on behalf of Floyd.”

“Hoh? And what would that be?”

“I believe my business associate would be better off explaining the matter than myself.” Azul gestures to Jamil, who has his head down.

“Oi, what’s with you? Don’t you know who I am, boy? It’s rude to not look your elders in the eye when they are speaking to you!! Show me the respect I deserve, from one professional to another!!”

“My apologies, sir.” Jamil looks up, locking eyes with the mob boss. “... Is this better?”

“Yes, that’s...”

“Snake Whisper.”

Don Worm suddenly goes glassy-eyed and slack-jawed. Azul claps at the sight, showering his partner with compliments. “As expected of the talented Jamil-san! Even one look from you can bring a mafia lord to his downfall. Truly, your Unique Magic is most impressive!”

“Save your flattery for later.”

Azul’s lips curl into a smirk as he whips out a golden contract from his briefcase and offers it to the don. “Now then, if you wouldn’t mind, sir... sign on the dotted line.”

The Crashing - Team Floyd & Ace

Ace and Floyd rush to the wedding venue, their tails cutting through the water like knives as they swim at a breakneck pace. Ace can barely keep up with Floyd, who surges far ahead.

“H-Hey, should we really be barging in like this?! Don’t mob families have weapons and other dangerous stuff? Is there a backdoor we can take instead? Hello?! Floyd-senpai, are you listening to me?!” (He isn’t.)

The open, underwater comes into view, and Floyd barrels in without any hesitation, tearing right through some decorations and knocking over the wedding cake with his tail. A loud CRASH! echoes through the waters, drawing eyes to him.

Jade stares at his brother from the altar—wide eyed, but a mirthful smile on his lips. Floyd waves to him, and then to his mom and dad in the crowd of guests. “Hiii, Jade! I’m here to pick you up now.”

The Worm girl starts sobbing, wailing something about how her special day’s been ruined, and where is her papa to put an end to this? At her signal, security guards, and some of the rougher looking guests—Worm family associates—lunge at Floyd, claws and teeth out. A few of them have produced wands, and what seem to be guns—loaded with harpoons.

“Bind the Heart!” Objects and stray magic go flying in all directions, hitting both people and wedding decorations. Cloth tears, columns crumble—but it’s one man against many, and he can only bind so many hearts before the blot starts to stack.

Ace makes it just in time, sending their foes and their weapons hurtling through the water with a blast of wind. “This is why I said to be careful, dammit! Your Unique Magic’s such a crapshoot—don’t just use it whenever, or you’ll be sushi!!!”

“Ahahahah! Kani-chan’s being all heroic today! That’s so cute. Don’t worry, I can play my part, too...!!”

Using his tail, Floyd hooks around a drifting merman and chucks him straight into another. They collide with a CRACK!—but Floyd barely registers it. He’s already bolting off, grabbing heads and smashing them together, slicing through others like a knife through butter.

There’s a crazed, frenzied look to him, gleeful laughter cutting through the waters and mixing with the Worm bride’s screeching. I forgot how scary Floyd-senpai can be, Ace realizes. (Jade and Floyd’s parents are cheering for him from their seats.)

Jade looks quite proud of his brother, even laughing along to the brutal slaughterfest. His bride stares at him incredulously. “Stop that brute! He’s ruining MY special day!!”

“No,” Jade replies calmly. “I don’t think I will. This is far too amusing to let it end so soon.”

She lets out a frustrated scream and launches herself at her groom, hands going for his throat. The Worm girl is slammed back with a strong hit to her gut, courtesy of Jade’s tail.

She flies back, slamming into a column—and feels a tail wrapping around her and squeezing tight. Constricting her to the point where it was difficult to breathe. A livid mermaid glares down at her, teeth bared in a snarl.

“No one lays a hand on my children,” Mama Leech declares. “No one.”

From the corner of her eye, the Worm girl can see that Jade has cast off his bow tie and flitted over to Floyd, embracing happily in a battlefield adorned with red ribbons trailing through the water. Her vision is abruptly blocked off by a broad-shouldered merman wearing a grimace.

“Now then, what shall we do with this one?” Papa Leech wonders aloud—though from his tone of voice, he has nothing good in store.

The Aftermath

“You’re all fish bait when daddy hears about this...!” the Worm girl warns, her words raspy. “Th-The merger won’t go through...! There’ll be war between the Leeches and the Worms...!”

A loud throat clearing comes from behind. “Fortunately, that won’t be happening.”

Azul and Jamil make their appearance, the octopus merman smugly showcasing a contract. “Ashengrotto—Azul Ashengrotto, legal and business extraordinaire at your service, Don Leech and Lady Leech.”

Papa Leech grunts. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“This?” Azul’s smirk widens. “Why, it’s a prenuptial stating that, in the case that an act of violence is enacted by the bride toward the groom, the marriage is considered null and void... and the bride’s family assets are to be claimed by the groom. Signed by Don Worm himself.”

“Wh-What?! Impossible!! How did you get daddy to sign such a stupid deal?!”

“Oh,” Jamil says nonchalantly, “we have our ways.”

“So... Uh, Jade-senpai’s still gonna be the next Don Leech?! And he’s gonna be in charge of an even bigger and richer family... How is that any better than the situation before?! You’re just giving him more resources for committing crimes!”

At that moment, two hands come down on Ace’s shoulders, causing him to freeze up.

“Kani-chaaaaan! Everyone!! Thanks so much for your help~”

“Yes, you have my sincerest thanks, Ace-san, Jamil-san... Azul.”

“It is my pleasure to assist such VIP clients. Ah, but there remains the matter of my promised payment—” (Jamil and Ace internally groan at Azul’s words.)

“Payment?” Don Leech scoffs. “After the ballsy operation you boys pulled off today... I’m more inclined to give you job offers instead of a one time sum. How do you lads feel about being hired as the Leech family’s personal lawyer, interrogator, and... well, whatever the heart one is good at.”

“My, my! Such a generous and lucrative offer—“

“There is no way I’m accepting that, especially if that means working with Azul.”

“Oi, I’ll have you know I’m good at lots of stuff!! I’m the one that saved Floyd’s tail fins, is no one gonna acknowledge that?!”

“You did amazing, sweetie!!” Mama Leech chirps—her tail grip tightening until the Worm girl passes out. Ace leaps back in fright. “As a reward, why don’t you let me give you a hug?”

“S-STAY BACK!!”

“Ahahahah! Everyone’s getting along so well, Jade. Isn’t this fun? You wouldn’t be able to enjoy this if you had gone to get hitched.”

“Fufufu. You are correct, Floyd. How sad it would have been if I were to miss out on touching moments such as this. From the bottom of my heart... I thank you for thinking of me, and for rushing to my aid. I could not have asked for a better brother.”

... What Floyd doesn’t know is that this was all according to keikaku Jade’s own machinations. He would never take the order to marry lying down—but he couldn’t outright defy it without immediate consequences, either.

Thank the Great Seven Jade has reliable puppets friends to help him out of a pinch. I’ll be certain to put the additional funds we have gained to good use... Perhaps to start a little mushroom farm.

#Floyd Leech #Jade Leech #Azul Ashengrotto #Ace Trappola #Jamil Viper #twst #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #wedding crashing #spoilers

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maliby · 4 years

Text

Ride ~ jjk (m)

↬ Pairing: Jungkook x Fem. Reader ↬ Story Genre: stripper!au, SMUT, PWP ↬ Warnings: explicit language, explicit sex scenes ↬ Word count: 5.2K ↬ Summary: It all started with Jungkook inviting you for his new performance tonight. It all ended with you and Jungkook fucking like rabbits in the back room.

A/N: THIS is what Jeon Jungkook makes me do. I was in the middle of writing a new chapter for When the Night Comes and I just could stop my urges to destroy him in that fucking outfit. Anyways....hope all my fellow hoes enjoy <3

P.S.- If you want that extra umph in the strip scene, please listen to the song “Usher - Trading Places”, I promise you it’s double worth it ;)

You looked at the text message Jungkook had sent you as you were on your Uber to ‘The G Spot’. A wicked grin spread on your face as you felt your excitement grow with the thought of his performance.

You first met Jungkook when you were out drowning your sorrows in vodka. Your boyfriend of five years had dumped you because you spent too much time at your new job and you ended up spending the night in Jungkook’s bed.

That night he told you he was a male performer of some sorts that went by the stage name ‘Rider’ at the famous ‘G Spot’ club. He’d do some sexy performances on stage (most of the time they were themed) but, some times, he’d also work as a gigolo. Clients would pay to take him to one of the back rooms and, if he was interested in the client and/or the money they were offering, he’d have sex with them. Since then, you’d become a pretty regular customer of the club and Jungkook.

“We’re here miss,” the Uber driver mentioned, interrupting your thoughts.

“Thank you.” You left the car and looked up at the big purple neon sign saying ‘The G Spot’. You took out your purse to retrieve your membership card and walked right in, immediately showing it to the bouncer that then confirmed your identity.

“Y/N!” The familiar voice of the owner Maria greeted you as soon as you entered. “Rider mentioned you’d be popping by,” she smirked.

“Hi, honey!” You gave her a quick hug and followed her to the bar, watching her start working on your usual vodka cranberry. “Sugar told me he had a very special performance and wanted me to watch.”

“And you couldn’t miss it,” she teased as she slid you the glass with your drink.

“Well, you’ve seen him,” you took a sip and hummed, signalling that you liked the taste of the drink.

“Oh, believe me, if I wasn’t his boss I’d definitely give him something to ride if you know what I mean,” you choked at her confession, sharing a good laugh with her.

“Right sweety, you better go sit, the show’s about to start.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to lose my spot. When is he coming on?”

“First Black Magic is gonna take the stage and Rider will be right after him,” Maria told you as she cleaned the balcony of the bar.

The news came as a surprise to you. Usually, Jungkook would close the show since he was one of, if not the best, performers in the club. The news was especially weird since he said he had a new routine and normally when that happened he would always close the show.

“He’s second?!” The look of surprise on your face probably came as no surprise to Maria. In fact, you were sure it didn’t due to her expression of understanding.

“Yeah, I don’t know why either. He begged me to be second and usually, I’m really particular about the show but since it was him I accepted. That and V Jay and RoMeo have a special number prepared for tonight, so I let them be last.”

“Weird…” You both stood in silence for a few seconds before you remembered you had to go get your seat before someone else did. “Well, I’m gonna take a sit.” You pointed to the chairs and booths and gave her a small smile.

“Go, go, honey. Enjoy the show!” She waved you goodbye before she turned to get a customer’s order.

You sat down right at the front - as Jungkook had instructed - and waited for a few minutes while you sipped on your drink.

About ten minutes later the show started. You had watched Black Magic perform before and even though he wasn’t as good as the other guys (seeing that he was quite new to this) he still managed to get you all hot and bothered.

Tonight he was doing his ‘Anaconda’ performance. He walked in dressed as a zookeeper with a fake anaconda on his shoulders and once his Anaconda remix commenced playing he started to slide the fake snake all over his body. Then he began to undress, revealing his delicious oily chocolate abs and climbed off the stage making his way to you. He put the fake snake around your neck and pulled you towards him so your face was right in his abs.

“Lick,” he ordered in a low raspy voice, getting you all hot and bothered.

You obliged.

You licked him from the hem of his shorts up to his pecks, the crowd around you going wild. He tasted coconutty, and you were pretty sure he had spread coconut oil on his body before the show.

After making the rounds to a few more girls Black Magic went back on stage and that’s when he took his shorts off, standing in just his g-string and showing off the outline of the ‘Anaconda’ between his legs.

Soon, he started humping everything on stage, simulating sex in such an erotic way that had all the people in the audience in a complete trance.

He was good. You had to give him that, but he was not Rider. Rider could completely destroy you just with his eyes. Just those feral looks he gave were more than enough to make you hump the fucking chair.

You completely spaced out thinking about Rider and when you came back to it everyone was clapping, making you realize that Black Magic had finished his performance. When your eyes focused on the performer he was already leaving the stage, taking his money and clothes with him.

You called for the waiter and pointed to your empty glass, signalling him that you’d like another vodka cranberry - you needed to feel the buzz of the alcohol if you ever were planning on surviving Rider’s performance tonight.

The drink came and you immediately drank half of it, feeling the build-up of anticipation. You didn’t know why but you were starting to get nervous, your leg bouncing up and down. You decided you’d go check Instagram as you waited, but as soon as you opened the app the lights turned down and focused on one spot on the curtains.

“Ladies and gentleman, are you ready to have the ride of your life?” You chuckled at the announcer’s silly pun. The audience around you rilled up, already deciphering from his pun who was coming up next. Rider sure was a fan favourite.

“Then I want to hear you scream loud and clear for Rideeeeer!”

The crowd went wild, but not as wild as your beating heart. Something about this performance was telling you you were about to be in for a crazy ride and when the song “Trading Places” by Usher started playing you knew you were absolutely right.

When Rider opened up the curtain and came onto the stage your jaw dropped. He was wearing a loose leopard print shirt that had a ‘v-cut’ so low you could see part of his defined chest and abs. On top of that, he was wearing a loose flowy red robe with black details that matched the colour of his pants, the latter ones though, being so tight you could see every little detail of his meaty thighs. His hair was loosely sleeked back, a stray piece of hair dangling right in front of his killer eyes.

“Fuck,” you muttered as you took in the view.

Rider was handsome, there was never any doubt in that, but this fucking outfit? You were damn sure every single pussy in this place was wet just by staring at him.

Hey, I know what you’ used to We gon’ do something different tonight

Rider started walking to the centre of the stage as if he was a tiger ready to pounce. The lethal look on his eyes made you think of all the times he looked at you like that, like he was about to fucking devour you - which he did.

Now we gonna do this thing a lil' different tonight You gon' come over and pick me up in your ride

He spread his legs almost in a squat position, emphasizing his thick thighs, and ran his hand from his chest all the way down to his crotch. He grabbed his crotch and looked straight at the audience, making a ‘come here’ sign with his other hand - the crowd went wild.

After this, he gave a little twirl and slid half of his dark red robe off (letting it stay in the middle of his arms) and started body rolling. Your throat got dry, making you swallow your own saliva.

Nobody body rolled like him. He was so fluid and sharp at the same time. The combination of his sinful body movements and his facial expressions being the added bonus. You could swear he could make anyone want him - you sure did.

Then everything stopped for you. He looked you right in the eyes and, at that same instant, you felt a wave of arousal slid past your folds and straight to your panties.

He smirked.

He knew the power he had over you. He knew he had you wrapped around his finger and all he had to do was to say when and where.

Then, he started to seductively walk towards the stairs - he was coming down to the audience.

He kept looking straight at you as he made his way down the stairs and you felt your heartbeat rise - he was coming in your direction.

You started to smile like an idiot until he walked right past you and went to the table right next to yours. The group of five friends on a bachelorette party went ecstatic (as you would) while you on the other hand felt nothing but annoyance. He was toying with you. Teasing was Rider’s favourite game, a game which he would often play with you and it drove you absolutely mad.

He made his way to the bride and practically straddled her, taking in her hands and making her feel his defined abs as he body rolled.

I'm always on the top tonight I'm on the bottom Cause we trading places When I can’t take no more, tell me you ain't stopping 'Cause we trading places

You shouldn’t be jealous, this was his job and you two had by no means a serious relationship but you hated the way he was toying with you. You also hated that your jealousy was exactly what he wanted.

Fucking Jeon Jungkook.

The bride’s screams got even louder as Rider got off of her and spread her legs. He supported himself on the chair’s arms and started to simulate sex with her, thrusting his hips towards her crotch.

Gon' get it, get it get it, get it get it, Gon' get it, get it get it, get it get it, Gon' get it, get it get it, get it get it.

Then, Rider got off from her and turned around, looking straight at you. Your heart jumped once more. He made his way towards you and this time he stopped right in front of you with a devious smile on his face. He straddled you, just like he did the girl before you and grabbed your hand, only this time he pulled his leopard shirt from underneath his pants and placed your hand on his bare skin.

You had felt up his abs a million times before, but the action never failed to make you all hot and bothered. His abs were a perfect six-pack, like a chocolate bar ready to be eaten up. You remember all the times you played with his abs as he has your fingers running up through each of his individual muscles.

One, two, three, four, five and six.

He then runs your hand lower so you could palm his hard cock.

You knew the dancers would pump up their dicks backstage so it would look extra big on stage and cause a better reaction, but by the way he was looking at you and biting his lip you couldn’t help but feel like he was horny because of you, and not some pump.

Then, he let’s go of your hand and rips his shirt wide open, now exposing all of his glossy defined muscles.

“Fuck.”

He removed his red robe and gave it a little twirl so the garment would become like a long scarf. He then softly ran the robe from your belly, straight between your cleavage and up your neck. The tingling sensation was so soft and arousing that you instantly felt your nipples perk up and the ache between your legs grow bigger, making you rub yourself on the chair.

He threw the robe onto the stage and got even closer to you, his covered crotch just centimetres away. Then, out of nowhere, and as a contrast to the soft movement of the robe, he grabs you by your hair and sharply hip thrusts to the sound of the music towards your mouth, simulating oral sex.

Gon' get it, get it get it, get it get it, Gon' get it, get it get it, get it get it, Gon' get it, get it get it, get it get it,

When you feel like you are ready to risk it all and suck him right there in front of everyone he lets go of your hair and turns around to go back on the stage. You let go of the breath you now realized were holding. This man was truly testing all your limits.

He got to stage and discarded his ruined leopard print shirt, now only having the form-fitting red pants on. He turns to the audience and mouths the line from the song: “Where you want me?”

The guitar starts playing and Usher starts moaning, and that’s when it all goes to shit. Rider does his signature move where he does a handstand and slowly comes down in a wave and starts fucking the floor.

Oh oh Oh oh You baby Give it to me baby Oh oh Oh oh

You cross your legs and can’t help but squeeze tight to alleviate the ache in your dripping core. The crowd was going wild, the screams getting louder but to you, it felt like you couldn’t even hear them; it felt like only you and Rider were there, and that he was showing off just for you.

The way in which his thrusts become more powerful, the way his veins on his muscular arms pop out, the way he imitates the moans at the same time as the vocalist’s were driving you insane and you were one step closer to just sneak your hand between your legs and play with yourself, not even caring about where you were.

After presumably making the floor pregnant, Rider changes positions and lays on his back. This time, instead of fucking the floor, he places his hands on an imaginary person on top of him and fucks the air instead, just as the song says:

You get on top tonight I'm on the bottom Cause we trading places When I can’t take no more, you say you ain't stopping 'Cause we trading places

As the instruments in the song start to quite down (signalling the ending of the song), Rider gets up and faces the audience with the most sinful grin. He teasingly pops the button of his pants and slides down the zipper, his bulgy dick expanding immediately under his white underwear. Then, he slides his hand under his underwear and shamelessly palms himself. If he wasn’t a professional who had all his angles studied, there was no way he could conceal his cock from the audience with just one hand, but he knew exactly what he was doing and you cursed him for it.

The song was about to end and you were curious about the big finish. Whatever it was, you were damn sure it would leave you gasping for air.

Sure enough, you were right.

Just as the instrumental hits its last notes, Rider gives one last teasing smirk and as he takes his dick out of its confinement the lights go out leaving, quite literally, everyone in the dark.

“Fuck,” you cursed at the show you just witnessed and the erotic sensations it brought in you.

This was why he wanted you to come so badly? To fucking tease you? That motherfucker. There was no way you could just sit there and watch. There was no fucking way you could just sit there and go back to your normal life - and you wouldn’t.

Downing the last of your drink you grabbed your purse and made your way to the owner Maria who was currently behind the bar.

When you requested the back room with Rider to Maria you were surprised to find out it had already been booked in your name - the owner smugly telling you that Rider had booked it for you.

You were pissed. Not in a bad way, but still fucking pissed.

You couldn’t help but pace around as you waited for Rider in the back room - sipping on a glass of champagne that came with the package. Your mind was racing, thinking about how he had invited you here, teased you beyond belief and booked you the back room alone with him without telling you. He knew you were going to cave, he knew you’d want a taste and it drove you fucking mad that he could manipulate you like that.

The sound of the door opening made you snap your head in its direction.

The first thing you notice is his exposed torso, Rider only wearing the red pants and robe from the performance earlier. The second was the fucking smug look on his face.

“Hey baby, did you enjoy the show?” He asked in a velvety voice after he closed the door and made his way to you to give you a kiss - you dodged. If he kissed you now, it would be game over for you, and you needed to make him suffer just like he did you.

“What the fuck was that?” You poked his chest with an accusatory finger, but he was so strong that he didn’t move.

“Just my new routine.” He pretended that he didn’t know what you were talking about, but the look on his face told a whole different story.

“Just your new routine?” You scoffed before you continued. “You tell me to come and sit in the first row. Then, you come in dressing like that,” you look down at his outfit to show what you were talking about but immediately regret it once you notice the tent in his tight pants. “You tease me like there’s no tomorrow and then you book this fucking room for me?”

“Don’t be silly Y/N, I just wanted to show you, as one of my best clients, my brand new act.” He took a brief pause before he continued again, this time in a slightly different tone, “And if I recall correctly, you weren’t the only one I teased.”

He tried to sound breezy but you saw right through his act. If he wanted to play then that was what he was going to get.

“Is that so?” You asked in a knowing tone, him just humming in response. “Well then, if I recall correctly, you weren’t the only one who teased me. Maybe I should go book a room with Black Magic instead.”

His whole expression changed. The playfulness in him was now completely gone, only a dark jealous look remaining.

He took several steps forward cornering you into a wall, excitement pooling down between your legs. “Don’t you fucking dare talk about another man.”

Any other day and you’d completely sub for him, a look from him being enough to have you on your knees but today...today you were feeling like you wanted to put up a fight. “Or what?”

He moved in closer to your ear to whisper: “Or I’ll use your pretty little pussy like my personal cum dumpster and leave you here with a creamy cunt that didn’t get the chance to orgasm.”

You tried to remain calm but your erratic breathing gave you away, making him chuckle. “You’d like that?”

When his hand touched your knee you couldn’t help but feel startled, his touch at this point turning you on beyond belief.

“You would. My little slut.” You couldn’t see his smirk, because his face was now buried in your neck, but you could definitely hear it in his voice.

“I can just imagine you fingering your creamy pussy just to get off,” his hand starts travelling up your exposed thigh and starts playing with the hem of your skirt, making you go wild. “If I close my eyes I can already see my cum overflowing and running down your perfect little asshole.” His other hand grabbed your right breast and started massaging it over your shirt, making you release a tiny little moan.

What was happening to you? He was winning. You couldn’t let him win. You had to do something now.

With the inner strength you didn’t even know you had in yourself you took a deep breath and pushed him away, your senses immediately clearing as you no longer felt his intoxicating smell so close.

He was shocked, and his shock only gave you that more strength.

“I think you’ll find that it’s actually the opposite Jungkook.” Usually, while you were with him in the club you would never call him by his real name, but this time you felt like it gave the moment a more serious tone, and you definitely wanted him to take you seriously.

“You think you’re some big shot?” You scoffed and made your way towards him, this time you being the one who backs him up against the big red leather sofa with the big red neon sign that said “Sex” just above it. You gave him one little push and he fell back, you towering over him for a change.

“You are here for me to use. I pay you, so…” you lower yourself down and sit right on top of his bulge, your skirt hoisting up. “...I’m gonna fuck you until my pussy gets its fill and then I’m gonna leave you with a hard red leaky cock that’s aching to be milked dry.”

Jungkook’s expression didn’t falter, but he didn’t say anything either, giving you the courage to continue.

You pressed your core even harder on his cock and started grinding, a tiny hiss leaving both your mouths. “I can just imagine your frustrated face, fisting your cock as you imagine it’s my cunt. Going at it so hard and fast that your lungs can barely keep up. Parting your pretty little lips to moan my name…”

Jungkook bucked his hips upwards to feel you even better, the sensation driving you absolutely mad.

You looked into each other’s eyes, tension building as you felt each other up. Your hands ran down his exposed chest as his squeezed your ass. You couldn’t help but look at his lips, those sinful lips that had made you feel extraordinary sensations so many times before - he chuckled.

“You’re cute when you try to be a dom.” He grabbed your chin and forced you to look straight into his dark lustful eyes, “are you going to fucking kiss me or do I have to beg for it?”

Feeling affected that he described your actions as “cute” you harshly slapped his hand away and grabbed him by his hair, pulling him forward so his lips could crash into yours.

The kiss was erratic. Hungry. Animalistic. Needy. Everything.

You slid his robe down his muscular biceps exposing his protruding veins and sexy tattoos and as soon as he was finished discarding the garment to the middle of the room he grabbed your white shirt by the cleavage and ripped it right open throwing the destroyed shirt to the place where his robe was.

“That shirt was expensive,” you say between breaths as he frees your mouth to kiss you down your neck.

“Fuck the shirt, I want you.” He bit a piece of skin on your chest and tugged on it with his teeth as he slid the straps of your bra down, your skin forming tiny little bumps from the sensation of his fingers running through it.

“Rider…” you moaned as his mouth got closer and closer to your breasts, your hips grinding on him harder.

“Call me Jungkook.”

“Jungkook…” you moaned as he moved your bra down, the rough seam bumping against your sensitive nipples. His lips immediately claimed one of your hardened peeks, the other one being left at the mercy of his tattooed fingers.

You picked up your pace and started dry humping like a madwoman, your orgasm getting closer and closer.

“I’m gonna cum.” Your announcement made Jungkook toy with your nipples harder, twisting and pulling until you were cumming undone, his name coming out of your mouth like a mantra.

Not having any time to breathe, Jungkook picked you up and threw you to the couch, the feeling of the leather on your bare hot skin making you slightly uncomfortable. Before you even had time to ask him what he was doing, he was pulling your panties down and diving in straight to your core, your legs closing in on his head due to the sensitivity.

“Jungkook, I wanna suck your cock…” you whined as he inserted one of his middle fingers inside of you.

“Sorry love, no sucking today. I just want to be buried inside of you.” He started to suck on your clit and after working his finger in for a little bit he added another. You could tell he was in a rush to fuck you and that turned you on even more.

He curled up his fingers inside you making you moan even louder and you thanked your lucky stars the room was soundproof. You were so wet that you could hear it perfectly clear, a sound so lewd that made your whole temperature rise.

Very soon you were feeling your orgasm building once more and, this time, you could tell it was stronger than the other. “Fuck baby, give me more…”

Like a soldier taking orders, he promptly added a third finger and at that moment you knew you weren’t gonna last much longer. In fact, all it took was 10 more seconds of him finger-fucking you while flicking your clit with his tongue and you were spiralling down in pleasure once more, this time on his mouth. “Jungkook...”

You lied there with your eyes closed for what felt like an eternity - the need to catch your breath and calm your heart way too big - but when you finally opened them, Jungkook was standing next to you all naked slowly pumping his cock.

“Sssss...Y/N, don’t fucking look at me like that or I’m gonna bust-”

Feeling your dom persona getting back into action, you got up and threw him down on the black fluffy rug - its fluffy texture being much more pleasant than the leather of the couch. You placed your legs on both sides of him and crouched down. His dick was so hard it was standing straight up, almost like it was waiting for you to sink down on it. So, not being able to resist it any longer, you simply grabbed it and sat right on top of him.

“Fuck, such a fucking tight cunt for me-” You shut him up by putting your hand on his mouth and started riding him like you were at a fucking rodeo.

You were feeling drunk on sex. His cock was hitting you on all the right places (like it always did), his hands were grabbing your hips so hard you were sure they were gonna leave a mark and the sight of his bulging muscles glistening with sweat was driving you into absolute madness.

You were fucking at a mad speed, even you didn’t know where all that strength had come from, but if someone saw you right now they’d probably think you had taken some drugs. Eventually, though, your body started to grow tired and Jungkook noticed that, so he let go of your hips and pulled you onto him. Your head nuzzled on his neck and he started to fucking drill you up.

“Oh shit, shit, shit…” You moaned into his neck, a mix of his cologne and sweat hitting your nostrils.

“Fuck, I’m not gonna last long baby.”

Hearing his confession you snaked your arm between your bodies and frantically rubbed your clit so you could cum at the same time. The work on your abused clit didn’t last long though, making you cum on his deliciously hard cock, “oh Jungkook.”

“Fuck, Y/N.” The clenching of your pussy eventually tipped him over the edge, him spilling his warm seed inside of you.

After a while of you two panting on the rug, Jungkook got up to pick a couple of tissues so he could clean you up, leaving you alone on the floor.

“Fuck me…” you said in a surprising sense at what had just happened as he kneeled between your legs.

“Again?” He looked up at you with a teasing smirk and proceeded to collect his cum with the tissues.

“You know what I mean,” you laughed, the mood feeling light.

Once you got up to put your discarded clothes back on you remembered what Jungkook had done to your shirt and turned to him with your hands on your hips. “How am I supposed to get out of here with no shirt Mr Jeon Jungkook?”

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he apologized as he put his tight pants back on. “I brought a shirt under my hoodie today, I can lend it to you. Might not go with your outfit though…” He teased as he looked at your pencil skirt.

“I’ll take it,” you smiled at him and waited as he went to his dressing room to pick his shirt up.

Once he returned not only did he bring you his shirt, but a stack of bills leaving you completely stunned. “Here you go,” he said as he handed you the shirt and completely ignored the money.

“Thank you,” you put on his shirt since you were starting to feel kind of cold and looked at him with a questioning look. “Are you paying me for my services or…?”

He looked confused for a second before he followed your gaze to the money on his hands and laughed. “Oh no, this is hum... for the back room.”

“Jungkook, you don’t have to. I’m the client and I used your services, I should pay.”

“Yeah but...don’t look at tonight like a service. I invited you, I teased you...it’s on me tonight,” he tried to place the money on your hands but you hesitated, eventually grabbing it and giving him a shy smile.

What this meant for the two of you you didn’t know, but you sure were excited to find out.

#ksmutclub #jungkook #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook #jeon jungkook smut #bts #bts smut #kpop #kpop smut #jungkook fanfic #jungkook fanfiction #jungkook x reader #jungkook scenario #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts fic #jungkook fic #jeongguk #jeongguk smut

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theblackrivergame · 3 years

Text

Hey everyone! Today is my beloved @nyehilismwriting ‘s birthday! So I fleshed out a snippet request she made very jokingly one day for her, and she said I could share it with everyone! ^_^

(it’s a post-game-content Vanator wedding snippet, in case you’re curious hehe)(also please go and wish her a happy birthday!)

Most of it is under the cut cos it’s a bit long!

--------

The door at the end of the corridor in front of you is not particularly substantial. It is, however, extremely well-guarded. You’re in one of the former Wolven Empire’s fancier hotels, which at least means that dotted along the length of the cream wood-panelled walls are various urns and statues that you can hide behind. That won’t help you get inside, unfortunately, but it’s a start.

There’s a quiet, almost inaudible whistle from behind you as Enarra also sidles into the alcove that’s currently sheltering you.

“I think she’s gone,” he whispers, and you nod gravely.

If you’re going to get in there, you’re going to have to time this perfectly. You meet his gaze for a few moments, tense but ready. He knows the stakes here. You trust him to keep you safe.

“I’ll watch your back,” he says, clasping your hand in one of his firmly for a second. “Go!”

You don’t need any further encouragement. You set off down the hall as fast as you can feasibly go without your armour clanking; it’s annoying that you’re stuck wearing this overly formal outfit, but you suppose it’s better than having no protection in case things go wrong.

No sign of the guard coming back yet. That’s good.

Once you get within ten metres of the door, you give up on the stealthy approach and break into a dash for the last few steps. You can’t wait anymore! It’s already been too long!

The second your hand touches the doorknob, however, you feel yourself lifted off the ground from behind, a powerful arm wrapping around your waist and hoisting you into the air.

“Come on, Luminita!” you whine, legs flailing helplessly as she carries you away from the door and dumps you back some ways into the corridor. “This is ridiculous!”

“I can’t believe you thought you could fool me,” she snorts, ignoring your pleas. “After all this time, you think I don’t know what you smell like?”

You fold your arms across your chest, sulking. “I had to do something!”

She pauses for a second, giving you something that approximates a fond, if toothy, smile, and then leans around you, calling out to Enarra. “I can smell you, too!”

“That’s a weird thing to just say to people, Damaschin!” he calls back, from his alcove. “I hope you know that!”

She just shrugs, her feet firmly planted on the ground, making it clear that she’s not going to let you past.

Suddenly, you hear Vanator clear his throat behind her, though it’s muffled somewhat by the fact that he’s behind the door still. “Is everything all right out there?”

As Luminita is distracted, you slip by her and dart over to try and open the door – but it doesn’t work. It’s locked, presumably from the inside.

“Come on, let me in,” you plead. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? This sucks!”

“It’s bad luck for people to see each other on their wedding day before the ceremony,” he replies through the door, but you can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s a little less convinced by this explanation than he was when he and Luminita first brought it up.

Excellent! That means you can wear him down…

“Please, Vanator?” you entreat him, and then grin as you hear him sighing in response.

Luminita, however, also seems to have noticed him wavering, and appears beside you again, growling. “If you even touch that door handle I will eat you both! Neither of you needs any more bad luck!”

“You Wolven are so weird,” Enarra says from somewhere behind you, clanking his way along the corridor.

Luminita gives him an unamused look, though she doesn’t seem offended – probably she’s just generally disappointed in him for going along with your scheme. “Shouldn’t you two be leaving to head to the church?”

“That’s why we’re here,” you tell her, reluctantly letting go of the door. “I wanted to see him before we left.”

There’s a soft thud sound from inside the room that you think might be Vanator hitting his fist against the inside of the door – or maybe his forehead, it’s hard to tell.

“Do not open that door!” Luminita tells him, firmly, and he sighs again.

“I won’t,” he says eventually, though you’re glad he at least sounds like he’s suffering as much as you are. “I’ll see you at the church… it won’t be too much longer.”

“I just need you to know that I hate this,” you tell him, sullenly, and he laughs.

“So do I.”

With that, you direct one more largely toothless glare in Luminita’s direction and turn to leave, though it still really sucks. You don’t think there’s a single Wolven custom you’ve come across that does anything other than make things harder for you.

--------

There were three separate assassination attempts for you to foil on your way to the church, so despite leaving first, you and Enarra ended up arriving somewhat late. You then had to spend about five minutes outside the church trying to get all of the masonry dust off your armour and fixing your hair, extremely glad that you’d all at least known this would be a possibility beforehand.

By the time you get inside, everyone else is already there; it’s a relatively small crowd (for security reasons), so you can pick out your friends among the group fairly easily. Ia is there in the front row, wearing what looks like about half a suit, and Dassine, who looks as regal as anyone you’ve ever seen in her new High Judicar armour, is one row back alongside Annos and a very confused-seeming Omilitís.

Kebisa, who is officiating, is dressed in a gorgeous purple gown and silver ceremonial cape, while Luminita has changed into a sharply-cut scarlet dress uniform, but your eyes inevitably get drawn towards Vanator and become stuck there.

He’s still dressed mostly in black (of course), but you actually don’t think you’ve seen this particular tailored coat that he’s wearing before. The edges on it are so crisp that you wonder if maybe he had it pressed using magic somehow – it feels very at odds with your “the blood probably isn’t too visible against my dark outfit” armoured visage.

He doesn’t seem to mind, though… in fact that’s mostly why you can’t seem to look away from him. He’s just… staring at you. You think that maybe seeing you walk into the church has made the weight of the whole thing you’re both about to do really hit him, and then while you’re thinking that it seems to hit you as well, and suddenly you’re both just staring at each other, dumbstruck.

Enarra elbows you in the midriff sharply, bringing you back to reality. The look on Ia’s face tells you that neither you nor Vanator will probably ever live this down, so you keep your eyes fixed firmly on the altar and just concentrate on walking.

By the time you’ve reached the altar, he’s still staring at you – he’s making that unbearably soft expression he always makes when he has a thousand things he wants to say but can’t find the words. You take a deep breath, wondering if you’re going to make it any decent amount of time into the ceremony before making a fool of yourself again, and nod at Kebisa, who is standing between the two of you looking like she has to try very hard to maintain a stately demeanour and not just hug you both.

She’s just opened her mouth to speak when suddenly Luminita punches Vanator.

It’s not hard, at least not by Luminita’s standards, but it’s enough to knock him forward and send him stumbling into you. There’s a bunch of titters from the crowd; you exchange a look with him as you help him up wondering whether this is another Wolven wedding tradition, but he seems just as surprised as you, and in some amount of pain as well.

“Oh, are we skipping to the objections part already?” Ia interjects before anyone can ask what’s going on, standing up from their seat and pulling something out of their waistcoat pocket that looks like a list. “Because if that’s the case, I’d like to-”

“Shut up!” you hiss at them, desperately trying to keep the whole thing from getting further off the rails.

Your only reward for your efforts is a dramatic smirk; behind them, Annos bursts out laughing.

“What was that for?” Vanator demands, turning to Luminita, who looks affronted by his question.

“You said to punch you if you looked like you were about to start crying!”

“I didn’t mean in the face!” he counters, still cradling his jaw.

Kebisa covers her face with her hands in an unsuccessful attempt to muffle her giggling.

“Gods,” Enarra groans, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. “Can we just get this over with? This dress armour is killing me.”

It’s at this point in the proceedings that the doors into the church are blown off by an explosion.

It doesn’t stop the wedding, of course – your vows are shouted over the cacophony of the ensuing gunfight, and the signing of the marriage register an hour later once everything has calmed down is a suitably dignified moment spoiled only slightly by the fact that Luminita is covered in blood (not hers) and her dress uniform has been shredded into ribbons. All in all, it’s one of the less exciting afternoons that you and Vanator have spent together.

It’s everything you had expected it to be, and yet somehow also more.

#long post #the black river if #RO: vanator #RO: luminita damaschin #RO: ia #RO: annos #RO: kebisa malindile #RO: dassine ult sidi #love them all :chinhands: happy birthday freya!!! <3 #blood mention

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angelictaehyun · 4 years

Text

PAIRING: richboy!kang taehyun x fem!reader

SYNOPSIS: He’s been a pain in your ass since you began working at the club. He’s arrogant and insanely wealthy, and you’re struggling to simply pay tuition. Needless to say, it’s not quite the match made in heaven… or so it seems.

WC. 11,200+

GENRE: rich kid au, country club au, e2l au, crack, fluff

WARNINGS: mild language, illegal activity, y/n’s an actual dumbass, and taehyun’s kind of a dick lol

You repeatedly tapped your pen against your sticky, worn checkbook, awaiting a response from the refined, old lady sitting comfortably under a patio umbrella. You, on the other hand, felt the scorching heat of the summer sun against your back, making you sweat uncontrollably—you could only hope you didn’t resemble a drenched pig. The woman eyed you, a bit too judgmentally for your liking, before pointing her perfectly manicured nail at the menu in her hand, “I want this pasta, but make it gluten-free. Throw in another iced tea, too… extra lemon, of course!”

You winced at her shrill voice.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, all of our pasta is made from flour,” you explained patiently. Her right eye twitched. You were an obstacle in her way of getting what she desired, she was angry. Lovely. However, above all, she was confused, “Just tell the chef to make it without flour, let him know it’s a special request. I don’t see the issue.”

“Ma’am, I’m telling you… there’s no way to make it without flour, we just don’t have the type of noodle you want in house.”

She drummed her hand on the table, absolutely fuming. She glanced at you like you kicked a puppy, it was absolutely infuriating. She grasped for nothing as her brain formulated any response, “This is outrageous! I want to speak with a manager. Now!”

You sighed, “Gladly.”

It was astounding, truly, the lack of self-awareness and consideration some people had... or, didn’t have. You wished, so badly, to tell them off, but you desperately needed the cash. After all, college wouldn’t pay for itself and the bills piling on your coffee table wouldn’t just magically disappear. You swiftly turned around and trudged away, scanning the vast garden for your manager, Yeonjun, but unsurprisingly, he was nowhere to be found. You’d known him long enough to assume he was hiding in the manager’s office, his poor attempt to flee from the overbearing, entitled crowd. How he scammed his way into a managerial position, a position of authority… that was beyond you.

You were halfway across the floor, pushing past another server when you felt an intense stare land on you. You halted in place, knowing exactly who the gaze belonged to. You glanced at the table stationed in the far corner of the garden, instantly meeting his piercing stare. He eyed you shamelessly, a signature habit of his, before throwing you a smug grin. You weren’t going to kid yourself, he wore the smirk well.

Too bad he was a pompous ass.

Kang Taehyun. You hated saying his name, it humanized him and he was anything but human. Rather, he was an evil, irritating demon spawn simply disguising himself as human. And the cherry on top? He was the absolute bane of your existence.

There was a hint of mischief in his eyes and something else you couldn’t quite pinpoint, but you didn’t necessarily want to. He opened his mouth to call you over, but much to your dismay, decided against it and instead rose from his seat to saunter over to you. You tried fleeing the scene the millisecond he stood up, but the elderly lady directly in front of you shuffled quite slowly, blocking your exit and trapping you in place. You tapped your foot impatiently as he approached you.

“You look… sweaty,” he observed, chuckling at your less-than-appealing state. Truth be told, though he didn’t like admitting it to himself, he thought you looked beautiful.

“Taehy—” he forcibly cut you off by landing his slender finger on your lips. You ignored the spark you felt from the small contact. He let his gaze travel to your Cupid’s bow momentarily, a part of him wanting to kiss your frown away.

“Ah, not Taehyun,” he reminded you smoothly. You considered biting his finger off, but you prided yourself on your outstanding professionalism. Granted, it significantly dwindled every time you spoke to him.

“Gosh, I’m so sorry,” you mumbled monotonously. “Mr. Kang… if you don’t remove your hand from my mouth, I will shove a menu so far up your ass, you’ll choke,” you snapped, a pretty smile adorning your face.

“Oh, Y/N. Your customer service and approachable personality never fail to amaze me,” he stated, drawing his finger away from you. He continued despite the growing, fiery rage in your eyes, “I’d like another fork, mine’s a bit dirty.”

“That’s your problem. I’m not your waitress, I have my own customers to deal with, so if you don’t mind…”

He completely disregarded your subtle plea for him to leave. “For your information, I’d much rather prefer you as a server and not him,” he admitted, throwing a spare glance at his server—Hyunjin, if you were guessing from the blond hair.

“That’s too bad…” you trailed as you mustered up the fakest sympathetic pout you could. You continued, “Anyways, I really hate to cut this short, but I’d better get going. I’m sure you’ll survive with your fork. You probably won’t get tetanus, but fingers crossed.”

“Yeah, best of luck with Cinderella’s stepmom,” he mumbled, gesturing to your awaiting customer. He flashed you a confident wink before whirling around and returning to his seat. You scoffed, your lips tilting downward into an ugly grimace. The snapping sound from a couple of feet away brought you out of your disgusted daze. The lady you had spoken to was repeatedly snapping her fingers in an attempt to grab your attention. You were met with an expectant gaze when you directed your focus back on her. She was poised, her spine in perfect posture and hands folded properly across her lap; her body language exhibited no sign of emotion until you reached her watchful glare, clearly telling you to hurry along. You inhaled sharply before plastering on a fake smile. You resumed your hunt for Yeonjun, but once again, you felt the weight of a cocky stare land on your back.

He was challenging you, silently. You knew it. Unfortunately for him, you had no interest in playing his silly, childish game, so you clenched your jaw and walked away.

· ──────────────────── ·

As odd as it was, you and your best friend had a favorite bench. It sat a block from the country club and in the middle of a hidden, rugged park, but it was your safe space; it’d been your favorite place since you both found it in fourth grade. After every grueling shift, Kai would meet you on the bench with dinner. The food was almost always inedible, but you weren’t there for his cooking, rather his company. He was already perched on the bench, kicking at a pebble beneath his feet. He heard you approach but kept his focus on the fascinating rock.

“God, took you long enough, I’ve been here forever. I started to think you ditched me for one of those rich boys,” he complained. When you didn’t retort with a snarky comeback like you normally would’ve, he turned from his spot and glanced at your disheveled figure, immediately letting out an obnoxious laugh.

You looked like shit.

Your hair was a disaster, the wisps of hair framing your face no longer considered stylish, but rather unkempt and as Kai liked to put it, “homeless-like.” Not only did you look bad, you felt unclean. The sweat behind your knees was quickly becoming uncomfortably sticky and your mascara was rubbing off, making you look like a rabid raccoon.

Despite all that, you were happy to see Kai, his bubbly personality never failed to cheer you up—but you’d never let him be privy to that.

You shot him the nastiest glare you could muster, but that proved difficult considering the little energy you had left.

“Aw, Y/N…”

“I’m going to quit, I swear to God. If I have to hear one more soccer mom complain about her salmon being too fishy, I’m going to have to start perfecting my mugshot pose,” you grumbled through clenched teeth. He made a noise of disagreement, “Let’s not throw your ass in jail just yet. Orange makes you look like a traffic cone.”

You shot him an indignant glare, “Thanks.”

“That’s what I’m here for. Anyways, I made us some hamburgers and managed to grab some extra soda cans before leaving home. So bone app the teeth or whatever.”

You snorted. He always brightened your mood, just a simple sentence could lift your sad spirit. You had to give it to him, the burger looked pretty appetizing… but you’d learned that with his cooking, much like anything else, appearances can be quite deceiving. Despite this, you inhaled your burger, ignoring the fact that the meat was undercooked and the mayonnaise was likely expired. You paid no attention to the fact that your soda was lukewarm and flat—you sipped on it regardless. Your mind was elsewhere, easily drowning out whatever Kai was ranting about.

“... I know you probably had a bad day ‘cause of your boy,” he observed quietly.

You snapped your focus back, “My boy?”

“Yeah, your boy. The one you think is a self-righteous prick, but secretly think is really hot. Hm, what was it… Terry? Tyler? Taeyong?... Oh, I got it. Trash can.”

You scoffed, “Taehyun, most certainly, is not my boy. I can’t stand him. His head is so far up his flat ass, I’m surprised he’s still breathing.”

Kai nodded in feigned understanding. He tilted an eyebrow quizzically before opening his mouth, but you beat him to it.

“And I don’t think he’s cute!”

“... And I’m Beyoncé.”

You didn’t respond, too tired to argue with him. Instead, you let out a small noise of disagreement before resting your head on his broad shoulder, contently sipping on your warm soda. He knew how tired you were; everyday he watched you wear yourself down to practically nothing, it hurt him. He leaned his head against your own, placing a hand atop your thigh and squeezing reassuringly. You allowed yourself to relax, breathing in the humid, summer air. You stayed like that until he let out a small laugh.

“Let’s rob him,” Kai suddenly suggested. He was joking, obviously, but you still perked at the idea. You turned to face him expectantly, straw loosely hanging from your mouth. He visibly retracted, “Jeez, Y/N, I was kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“… I’m not robbing someone.” He threw you a cautious glare before aggressively taking a large bite of his burger and chugging his flat soda. You were losing your mind, he was sure of it. You poked curiously, “So I’m assuming your stance on graffitiing is the same.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line before letting out an exasperated sigh, “Obviously.”

You turned away, sulking, and he couldn’t help but snicker. You were his best friend and had been since second grade, but if he said he didn’t think you were a dumbass, he'd be lying.

“Come on, it’s time to get you home, you have an early shift tomorrow,” he reminded suddenly, mouth still full. You smacked his arm, disgusted by his lack of basic manners. He opened his mouth to showcase all his unchewed food.

You gagged.

“You’re disgusting!” you screeched, shuffling away from him. He chased after you, catching you almost immediately. His long legs made it easy. He effortlessly tossed you over his shoulder, ignoring your squirming, and carried you to his car, “Hush, I know you love me.”

“Gross. Never.”

He slapped the back of your calf and you squeaked, “Kai! Put me down! Now!”

“No, not until you say it. Make it believable, too.”

He wasn’t joking, you knew that. Eleven years of friendship and he was still as shameless as the day you met him. More so, if anything. Yes, his eight-year-old self was quite the charmer. You grumbled monotonously, “Kai, what can I say… you’re the light of my life, my hero, my best friend. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Probably die. I love you, I guess.”

“Too sarcastic, but it’ll do,” he conceded. He set you down and held in a laugh. Your hair looked even worse than before. He slung an arm around your shoulder, “Okay, get in the car. Hurry. I’d rather not listen to you complain about your lack of beauty sleep… again.”

· ──────────────────── ·

You mindlessly typed in a complicated order as Yeonjun watched your gaze drift over to the garden.

“You’ve pressed that button so much, the console’s probably broken. Cool it,” he reprimanded gently. Your attention snapped back to the screen which was littered with incorrect orders.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what has me so distracted today,” you mumbled sheepishly. He chuckled and gave you a comforting nudge on the shoulder, “I think I know exactly why.”

Your gaze followed his and instantly landed on Taehyun. As much as you hated to admit, he looked good. Great, even. It looked like he’d just walked out of a rager, especially with his tie undone and shirt untucked, which he pulled off beautifully. His hair was slightly disheveled and you suddenly had the strongest urge to run a hand through it.

Your eyes widened at the sudden thought and you aggressively shoved it to the back of your mind. “I don’t like him!”

“I never said you did.” he argued, suppressing a mirthful grin. Yeonjun reminded you of Kai, especially with his insistence on your attraction to Taehyun, or as you believed, lack thereof. He continued, “Just a reminder, though. The line between love and hate is so, so thin.”

Rather than responding and saying something that would surely get you fired, you huffed and turned your focus back on the order, unaware of your aggressive punching on the console’s screen. You were already having a rough day, but everyday spent at the country club was considered less-than-stellar. Yeonjun gave you a reassuring smile before sulking off to deal with another whiny, overbearing customer. You unconsciously let your gaze travel back over to Taehyun and was instantly met with a genuine smile, just not one directed to you. He laughed at a joke, oblivious to your longing and thank God, if he caught you staring, you’d never hear the end of it. His smile was just so pretty, you couldn’t help but feel giddy. Sure, you hated him—that’s what you told yourself—but you could appreciate a handsome face. As if on cue, Taehyun turned in your general direction and you quickly scrambled out of sight. As you turned, Hyunjin scrambled by you, the heavy tray resting on his shoulder nearly beheading you. His long, wavy blond hair, which was in a nice, neat half-ponytail at the beginning of his shift, was now splaying in every direction—he was beyond stressed. If the messy hair wasn’t enough, his hooded eyes were getting darker. You approached him as he grabbed a checkbook, “Hyun, you look like a mess.”

“Hey, Y/N! Yeah, I just have a lot of floor to cover, and they’re all extra demanding today,” he explained, short of breath. He groaned as he watched another set of people sit in his section and continued, “God, please cover me. I’ll owe you one. I’m already overwhelmed with my current table number.”

You laughed understandingly, “Of course.”

“You’re the best, it’s table thirty.” He squinted to get a good look, “Oh! I know that customer, he’s a great tipper. You should be just fine.”

You shifted your attention to the table in question, immediately deflating as you saw Taehyun sitting with a friend. You turned around to protest, but Hyunjin was already gone.

You internally screamed before trudging over to his table, gathering all of your dignity... kissing his arrogant ass wasn’t necessarily on your agenda for today. When Taehyun saw you approach his table, he did little to hide his pleased smirk. You undid your balled fist.

“Hi. My name is Y/N, I’ll be your server today,” you monotonously stated, an unenthusiastic but convincing smile plastering your face. To any other guest, it would’ve been believable, but Taehyun knew better; your server persona didn’t fool him.

“Y/N. What a pretty name,” his friend observed, a bit too flirtatiously for your liking. Taehyun noticed too, judging from the way he narrowed his eyes and tongued his cheek. And also the way he obviously kicked his friend’s leg under the table. You mustered a sweet smile, hoping to mask your disgust, “Thank you! That’s so… nice. Anyway, what would you like to drink? We got in a new Italian wine, just delivered today.”

“That’s alright, just water.”

“Water.”

Cheap. Especially for a pair of chaebol children.

“Alright! I’ll be back momentarily,” you informed, smile dropping the instant you turned away. As you trailed back to the kitchen, you heard Taehyun give his friend a hushed reprimanding making you smirk. You passed Yeonjun, noticing he looked as if he was about to lose his sanity. You gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder—for someone so young, he managed well. Of course, he used his handsome face and charm as often as possible; his attractiveness and charisma was dangerous. He managed to grasp the attention of everyone and it aided him greatly. You pressed quizzically, “Jun, you don’t seem good.”

“Says you. You’re lover boy’s server. What a shocking, juicy turn of events. I’m on my toes,” he teased impishly. You stared at him vacantly. Yeonjun continued to poke fun, enjoying the lack of response you gave as you procrastinated to avoid returning to Taehyun’s table, but sadly, there was only so long it could take to fill a glass with water. Yeonjun pouted sympathetically, “Good luck.”

You didn’t need luck. No. To spend a precious hour or more, waiting on a privileged, disgustingly wealthy teenage boy, specifically Kang Taehyun, you needed patience, self-control, and temper management. You reminded yourself of just that as you approached him, placing his water near his plate, “Gentlemen, are you ready to order?”

You jotted down his friend’s order, ignoring the growing complexity as he piled on request after request, no sign of stopping. “... And I need it lukewarm. Not room temperature, but lukewarm.”

You diligently suppressed the eye roll that nearly bubbled up. Honestly, you’d dealt with far worse, Taehyun’s friend didn’t even scratch the surface.

You had to wonder though, did people like this ever feel shame?

You faced the cocky redhead, “And for you… Mr. Kang?”

You cringed. He didn’t miss the nearly imperceptible flash of disgust that crossed your expression. He grinned, “Just the lasagna. While you’re at it, I’d like another glass of water.”

“You already have a full glass,” you seethed, glancing at the glass you had just set down. He enjoyed this: testing you, pushing you, slowly dwindling your sanity until you snapped. He wanted to get a reaction from you, anything other than the bored, disinterested expression you gave him every single day. He smiled innocently, “What can I say… I like staying hydrated.”

His amusement was irritating. Unsurprisingly, his torment was based on the stupid, outdated notion that a boy has to show interest by picking on his crush, but you weren’t privy to his inner thought process. You suppressed another eye roll as you turned to grab a pitcher from Hyunjin, the boy sprinting behind you with a full tray. You felt bad for him, at least, until you remembered he pawned Taehyun’s table onto you and your pity became short lived. You filled an empty glass, increasingly aware of Taehyun’s piercing stare. Your emotionless expression would’ve given him no indication as to how nervous you felt if it weren’t for the slight blush that painted your face.

He smirked victoriously. You hated it.

A breath of relief escaped you as his attention turned to his friend. He leaned back in his seat and lifted a hand to rest behind his head, accidentally smacking the pitcher, causing you to spill the cold water onto his lap. He flinched at the sudden icy contact.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” you gasped, fishing a stray napkin from your apron. Normally, he would’ve brushed it off, considering it was his fault, but he felt pressured under the expectant gaze of his snobbish peer. Plus, he gained the reaction he wanted from you... something other than disgust. He feigned offense as he dramatically pushed his seat back and stood up, easily towering over you, “Next time, try not sucking at your job!”

He immediately regretted his outburst but he showed no sign of remorse, not when he had a reputation to uphold. God forbid, he could actually be a considerate person.

More importantly, though, he pushed too far this time and there wasn’t much turning back. You winced at his tone, withering back from his harsh statement, though you quickly replaced your hurt with unadulterated rage. Your blood boiled as your vision went red, steam practically fuming from your ears. Your pained expression broke his heart and he nearly dropped his act, but before he could do or process anything, his silk shirt was sticking uncomfortably to his body as ice water seeped through. His slacks were drenched and his designer loafers were completely ruined. He didn’t pay much attention to that, though... not when you were an inch from his face, holding an empty water pitcher over his head.

“I quit,” you lowly hissed. You firmly shoved the pitcher into his hand and scoffed as he stumbled back from the force. All eyes were on you as you stalked off, hastily tossing your apron into the nearest trash can. Yeonjun gave you a quick nod, his subtle way of telling you he was proud.

He’d get your resignation letter another day.

Taehyun helplessly called after you but it was useless. You were too far gone to care.

· ──────────────────── ·

You slammed your car door shut, absolutely fuming. You blankly stared at the frog keychain hanging from your rearview mirror. Normally, you would’ve smiled at the small figurine, but in the moment, you wanted to punt it into another timezone. It’s cheeriness pissed you off to no end. You quickly fished your phone out to dial Kai’s number, the line ringing thrice before he picked up, groaning, “I’m trying to sleep.”

His voice seemed muffled, likely from the thirty plushies he insisted on sleeping with.

“It’s dinner time.”

“It’s called a nap, genius.”

“Alright, well, I just quit my job… and I might have dumped a pitcher of water onto Taehyun’s stupid, privileged ass.”

The line fell silent. You wouldn’t have been surprised had he hung up on you—your tendency to act impulsively drove him up the wall and he was nearing his limit. You patiently awaited his response, likely a reprimanding scold.

“Y/N, what the fuck.”

“He had it coming, I swear,” you promised. In detail, you explained your biased side of the story, ignoring the obvious judgement emanating from the opposite line. The minute you finished, you spotted Taehyun’s panicked figure run into the full parking lot, frantically searching for you; you ducked behind your steering wheel, praying he didn’t see you. You squeaked, cutting off Kai’s tangent, “Oh my God! Oh my God! He followed me!”

He sighed. “If you dumped ice water on me, I’d be chasing after you too.”

You peeked curiously from your spot, seeing he had yet to find you. The cogs in your mind churned slowly, mixing in with your rage, “What if we graffitied his house?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’m serious, I want to do it! He can’t just get away with humiliating me in front of the entire club, waitstaff, and my manager. And graffitiing isn’t illegal… ish.”

You could practically picture his narrowed gaze, “It’s definitely, most certainly, illegal. Sunshine, I understand your anger, hell, I’d be outraged, but revenge isn’t always the answer. And graffiti isn’t the most… sound idea.”

You crossed your arms defensively, “It’s a genius idea.”

“It really isn’t.”

“I’m going to do it, regardless of if it’s a good idea or not. You’re either in or out.”

Once more, the line fell quiet. His mind churned, concluding there wasn’t a chance in hell you’d follow through—you were simply too chicken. He laughed, “Fine. I’m in.”

“Great! Find his address, I’ll be over soon.”

You hung up and regained your composure. Taehyun spotted your car as you buckled in your seatbelt, making direct eye contact with your enraged figure. You were surprised, he didn’t seem angry, rather regretful. Almost apologetic.

But you didn’t care.

You sped off the lot without sparing him a final glance.

· ──────────────────── ·

“Have faith in me! Finding his address isn’t going to be hard. You know, I’m a tech whiz, it runs in the family.”

You snickered, “Beomgyu getting accepted into the computer science program at his university doesn’t mean you got the tech gene. You’re the worst with technology, you can’t even remember your laptop login half the time.”

He eyed you challengingly, before cracking his knuckles and typing furiously. Only a single minute had passed before he was yelling, “Jackpot! I found it!”

You were thrown for a loop. He was quite technologically inept, he couldn’t even open a browser without some trouble, let alone find an address. You stared at him quizzically, a smidge of doubt crossing your mind. He deflated, avoiding your hard gaze, “Okay… maybe, just maybe, I called Gyu before you arrived and had him help.”

You snorted. “Yeah, that tracks.”

You sighed and tossed yourself back on his plush bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered on his ceiling. You laughed quietly, you remembered putting them up there—it was really only a year ago. See, Kai had this whole star-sticker-related schtick or as he liked to put it, “Inability to have them as a child which subsequently caused emotional damage.”

You had just returned from a grueling shift and you were exhausted, weak, and insanely pissed—reason being Taehyun, of course.

It was always Taehyun.

In a frivolous attempt to cheer you up, Kai suggested pasting the stickers onto his ceiling. Honestly, it was more stressful than fun. He constantly wobbled around the bed, nearly dropping you several times as you sat perched on his broad shoulders and stuck them up. It kept you busy though, and thus, kept your mind off of Taehyun.

It was funny, honestly. For someone that swore they hated him, you sure thought about him a lot. He took residence in your mind and you felt like the landlord trying to evict him.

Even at that moment, you couldn’t stop thinking about him. Of course, you were in denial. You told yourself it was natural to be thinking about him; after all, you were going to destroy his property. There was absolutely no other reason as to why he ran free in your mind… none at all.

Kai knew you were overthinking. It wasn’t hard to tell, especially since your forehead usually tended to crease in the ugliest manner when you did. He tried reeling you out of your daze, “So, we’re going to commit a crime.”

“Yep.”

“... There’s no turning back.”

“I know. I’m not going to chicken out.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, of course you’d chicken out. You always did. He didn’t see any harm in indulging you with your idiotic plan, so he found the address. No harm, no foul. Right?

· ──────────────────── ·

You anxiously picked at the leather seating beneath you, nearly tearing a hole in the worn fabric.

“Yo, cool it. Jihyo is already pretty fucked up,” Kai warned. Oh, Jihyo. You still couldn’t believe he named his old, rickety car—let alone after his ex. His car looked as if it had a mile left in it before it ultimately broke down, but you had to put some blind trust in Jihyo. After all, she was your getaway car if everything went south. You’d been sitting in Kai’s passenger seat for half an hour, coming up with nearly every excuse not to proceed with the crime.

“We really don’t have to do this. Not to mention, I don’t want to do this,” he grumbled.

“Then why are you here?”

Imagine his surprise when you showed up at his door, decked out in all-black, stealthy gear, hope and adrenaline coursing through your body. He truly believed you would’ve backed down by now, and a small part of him hoped you still would, but the odds weren’t looking in his favor.

“I’m not letting you go to jail! I can’t get through the school year without you, especially now that Jihyo—human Jihyo—is starting to spread her stupid, little personal agenda against me. Like, yeah, I broke up with you and that’s rough, but maybe next time, try not being manipulative… or a cheater,” he rambled. You flashed him a sympathetic smile; he said he was over it but you knew better. You patted his arm comfortingly and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, a flustered, shy smile replacing his pout.

“Guess what? I think I know exactly what’ll make you feel better,” you whispered sweetly.

His smile instantly turned down into an exasperated frown, “Mhm, let me guess… robbing the rich boy you have a crush on.”

“I don’t have a crush on him! Why would I like him? He yelled at me in front of the entire club! And we’re not robbing him, we’re simply… graffitiing his house. Tastefully.

“So you admit, you had a crush on him.”

“No! I’m just saying!”

He pointedly rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the castle-like house across the street, not wanting to have that conversation with you. He mumbled something that sounded an awful lot like idiot but you let it slide, instead choosing to focus on the task at hand.

“Okay, so the gate code is probably something stupid like his birthday, his mom is probably sentimental like that,” you mumbled to yourself. You tapped your foot anxiously as you tried to formulate a coherent plan. You slowly continued, “The only problem is the crazy amount of security cameras around his house. Like, who needs that many cameras? People are dying.”

“God, I hate you,” Kai grumbled.

You ignored him, “There has to be a blind spot, somewhere a camera won’t cover. Hm…” you studied the perimeter, searching for that camera-free sweet spot. At that moment, you found a tiny patch of grass, hidden under a massive oak tree.

Bingo.

You shook Kai’s arm aggressively, “Look! Right there, that’s the spot. That tree has to cover the camera.”

He rested his head against the steering wheel, “Let’s get this over with.”

As you both climbed out of his car, you couldn’t help but feel a bit out of place. The street was littered with fancy, expensive cars while Jihyo looked like she belonged in the dump, making you even angrier. Kai crept over to the sidewalk, insisting on creeping in the shadows like a vigilante. You, on the other hand, struggled to carry your duffel bag full of equipment, constantly getting slowed down by the exceptional weight. That was your fault though, you packed it full of necessary, outstandingly heavy equipment (necessary being a loose term). Alongside the many cans of paint sat a bag of Goldfish, three juice boxes (because Kai is a massive baby), a faulty navigation system, a not-at-all threatening ski mask, and a broken hammer.

You didn’t remember packing that hammer.

You settled in front of Taehyun’s gate, hoping your birthday theory was correct. Of course, simply because it was you and your luck was awful, it wasn’t. You began pressing random keys, hoping something would work but it was fruitless. Nothing worked, not even the basic combinations. You huffed, “I guess we’re going to have to climb our way in.”

You mentally prepared yourself as Kai sent a couple of prayers out for good measure. He eyed your duffel bag curiously before opening it, instantly met with a multitude of spray paint in all shades. He narrowed his eyes and scoffed, “Jesus, Y/N! Where the hell did you get all this shit?”

“... Craigslist.”

“Bullshit, you were kicked off Craigslist years ago.”

You winced, insulted by his easy remark—he knew how sensitive you were about that. You kicked a pebble sheepishly, mumbling softly, “Fine, I bought the paint from Soobin…”

His eyes widened comically as his heart practically ripped out of his chest, “Soobin?! Choi Soobin?! You can’t be serious. No, there’s no way you bought from the school drug dealer! He’s a criminal! He probably tried to toss in some of that devil’s lettuce with your purchase, huh? Or worse… crack!”

You rolled your eyes and tossed your head back, he was always so dramatic. “Kai, he’s not a criminal. He’ll occasionally sell an edible or two, but that’s it! He didn’t try to sell me anything. Actually, he gave me a pretty good deal on this stuff.”

“Lovely, a modern-day businessman,” he grumbled sarcastically.

“Whatever, just help me climb the wall,” you huffed, zipping up your bag before tossing it over the blockade. Hesitantly, he got on one knee, muttering something you couldn’t quite hear—not that you wanted to anyways. You delicately stood on his knee as he pushed on your thighs in an attempt to boost you over.

Honestly, you struggled. Your weak muscles did little to aid in your quest, but Kai’s strength helped.

“God, take your sweet time, it’s not like your flat, piece of plywood ass is dangling in front of my face or anything. I’m about to throw up,” he gagged.

You scoffed, “Yeah, yeah, complain all you want but this is the most action you’ll ever see.”

“... I won’t hesitate to drop you on your face.”

However, before he could follow on his threat, you managed to hoist yourself over the brick wall. You offered a hand to Kai but instead of accepting, he eyed it mockingly, knowing you weren’t strong enough to lift him. He stretched his legs before taking a step back, giving him a running start, and surprising you both when he successfully lifted himself.

You placed your hand over his mouth, “Shh.. whisper. We’re in enemy territory now.”

He licked your palm, nearly making you screech, “Gross!”

He childishly stuck his tongue out. You shook your head and began scrounging the duffel bag for the perfect paint color. Of course, you wanted to create a masterpiece worthy of Kang Taehyun... you even considered tagging it. Kai silently sat on the grass, aimlessly picking at the freshly-cut blades as he watched you happily paint.

You were pleased to say that in the half an hour you’d been painting, nothing had gone awry... yet.

“The fuck is that supposed to be?” he questioned curiously, leaning closer to inspect the vulgar work.

“Taehyun,” you said easily.

“Really? ‘Cause it looks like a dick.”

“It’s called symbolism, Kai.” You stepped back to admire your work as if it were hung in the Louvre whilst Kai scrunched his nose, clearly offended by the unpleasant art.

“You know, it’s funny how you have the biggest crush on this dic—” Before he could further elaborate, he was interrupted by an awfully familiar voice.

“What the hell are you doing on my front lawn?”

You cringed. You’d been caught red-handed.

Kai turned slowly, surrendering with his hands up. You, however, kept your back turned, considering just going to hell with it and continuing your tasteful artwork. He glanced at you anxiously, silently pleading for you to put down the paint can.

Only because Kai looked a second away from fainting, you huffed and turned around, mimicking his pose, the only difference being the bored expression plastered on your face.

Taehyun stood in front of you, his arms crossed and irritation painted all over his body language, but as much as he tried to hide it, there was a glint of amusement behind his eyes. You hated how his obnoxious, stop sign hair managed to look amazing under the glow of the moonlight—it was beyond irritating. Arguably, his entire being was irritating. You held his gaze, silently challenging his presence. Kai, on the other hand, was sweating profusely and dramatically hyperventilating. He clutched onto your shoulder, failing to catch an actual breath, “Oh my God! I feel like my heart is pumping out lukewarm sewer water.”

He placed his hands on his knees as he hunched over and continued, “Please, Taehyun. Please, don’t hit me with your Lamborghini. I’m begging you.”

Taehyung blankly stared at the younger, completely forgetting he was even there. You rubbed your temple and hissed, “Will you shut the fuck up? You’re making this worse.”

“I don’t want to go to jail! My face is too pretty for jail, they’d murder me on sight for being the most gorgeous boy they’ve ever seen. God, please don’t call the cops… I’ll do anything,” Kai shamelessly begged. You were so close to punting him into the Pacific Ocean. Taehyun’s annoyingly gorgeous lips twisted into a smug grin as he directed his attention back on you, “Hm, and what about you, Princess? I don’t see you begging.”

You scoffed, “I’d rather eat Kai’s shoe.”

He simply hummed, “That’s too bad. You know, I have a family friend who’s a cop… I’ll convince him to go easy on you in jail.”

“The wealthy wielding control over the justice system… how unexpected.”

“Oh my God! Y/N’s kidding, she’ll do anything,” Kai blurted quickly, shooting you a death glare. Taehyun’s eyebrow lifted curiously, a satisfied smirk settling comfortably, “Is that true?”

“What the hell do you want?” you questioned hesitantly.

“A date.”

You briefly considered his words before shoving Kai forward, “Yeah, go nuts. He’s all yours.”

“... With you.”

You threw your head back and let out an inappropriate, hearty laugh. Even Kai let out a small snicker before replacing it with a fake cough, but Taehyun didn’t seem amused. He watched you expectantly, awaiting an answer.

“So this is the only way Kang Taehyun can score a date… by blackmailing them. You know, that actually makes sense,” you theorized to no one in particular. You simmered in silence for a short moment before Kai cleared his throat, hinting at his obvious discomfort. Taehyun was enjoying this, you just knew it.

That broken hammer never looked better...

“Fine,” you conceded. You glared at him, biting your tongue to prevent you from going off on his pompous ass. Taehyun’s eyes lit up with hope.

Kai let out a breath of relief before mumbling an apology and dragging you off the lawn. His grip on you tightened as you turned around one last time to shoot daggers at Taehyun. He stood comfortably in the middle of his manicured lawn, the porch lights behind him highlighting his pleased smirk, yet all you saw was red.

· ──────────────────── ·

Kai splayed across your bed, mindlessly picking at a random throw pillow while you spritzed a hint of perfume on your forearm. His gaze trailed over your figure curiously, “You’re quite dressed up for someone who’d rather sleep in a dumpster than go on this date.”

“Well I’m not about to walk into high society wearing a stained sweatshirt and joggers.”

He snorted, “Right, that’s the only reason.” You smoothed your shirt and gave yourself a once over, feeling quite confident in your choice of clothing. Kai wasn’t blind, he thought you looked nice, but he’d let pigs fly before he told you that. He continued, “You don’t look… that ugly.”

You rolled your eyes, knowing that was the closest you’d ever get to a compliment from him, “Thanks.”

“Do you know where he’s taking you?”

“Nope.”

If you were being honest, you didn’t care where he took you; you didn’t set any conscious expectations.

“Oh! Before I forget…” Kai smirked as he dug around his backpack. He tossed you a small, blue bottle of mouthwash. He winked cheekily, “You never know… mayhaps you’ll kiss him.”

You nearly threw up, “I most certainly will not be kissing anyone tonight, especially not his pretentious ass. Besides, you know about my rule.”

He groaned. He definitely knew about your rule, it was all you talked about after getting dumped by your last ex. After your last failed relationship (or four) you created a no-kiss policy for your first three dates. You wanted to make sure your kisses weren’t in vain, and honestly, it was fun just watching them work for it.

“The rule is dumb,” he reminded.

“... You’re dumb.”

You were busy dodging a pillow when your doorbell rang, signaling Taehyun’s arrival. You were shocked he didn’t just notify his presence by honking his horn—for a pompous ass such as himself, you wouldn’t have been surprised.

“It’s time,” you mumbled somberly.

“He isn’t the Grim Reaper. This is a date, it’s supposed to be a happy thing!” he tried encouraging sweetly as you stalked down the staircase, but to no avail, your mood didn’t lighten in the slightest.

You aggressively swung open your front door, nearly knocking Kai unconscious. Taehyun dressed simple but pleasant; his expensive, black sweater was expertly tucked into a nice set of slacks and the Cartier bracelet that adorned his wrist, perfectly accentuated his veins. His bright, red hair was styled messily and his cheeks were flushed, beautifully highlighting his angled nose and sharp jawline. Your mouth gaped, just slightly, as you drank him in—while he was always attractive, this specific look had you stunned. He held a single rose against his chest and it only made him look more ethereal, if that was even possible. When you looked up, you instantly noted the hint of panic in his eyes, which made you feel at ease.

“Taehyun,” you blankly addressed.

“Y/N! You look amazing, so beautiful…” he trailed as he handed you the rose. You grabbed it and immediately shoved it into Kai’s chest.

“Let’s get this over with,” you grumbled, pushing past him and harshly hitting his shoulder.

“... Right.”

“Hey, try not to murder him, I can’t afford bail. I make minimum wage,” Kai reminded, flashing Taehyun a sympathetic smile as the older trailed closely behind you. You were about to open his car door when he came rushing by, insisting on opening it for you. In return, you sent him a nasty glare, “I’m capable of opening my own door.”

“I’m just trying to be a gentleman.”

“A gentleman doesn’t go off on someone in the middle of a public space,” you reminded.”

He sighed. A mere five minutes into the date and he already felt defeated. He wished he could form a proper apology, but it would be futile—you’d just shut him down. So he decided to express his apology in the form of something he knew you’d accept; needless to say, he had a trick or two up his Gucci sleeve.

You kept your gaze focused on anything but him. Your arms were folded across your chest, the evident frown on your face doing very little to hide your irritation. Despite that, he still thought you looked beautiful… granted, every single time he spoke to you, you wore a frown so this wasn’t new to him.

“You look so pretty,” he complimented as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“I know.”

Of course he deserved every ounce of your cold, unwelcoming demeanor, but it still hurt. He was flushed but you didn’t notice since you made an obvious effort to scoot as far away from him as possible, practically pressing yourself up against the car door. However, the painful silence quickly overwhelmed you, so you hesitantly threw him a bone, “Where are you taking me?”

“It’s a surprise but I know you’ll like it. It’s my way of apologizing.”

“This better be a hell of an apology.”

“I promise you it is.”

You noticed his sincerity. His usual cockiness was replaced with shyness and a twinge of guilt, and you found it endearing. You stayed quiet for the remainder of the car ride, only a small sound of confusion as he pulled into a half-empty parking lot of a local carnival. A young employee approached the car and gave Taehyun a permitting nod, making you suspicious. He drove past the entrance gate and straight into a private space, parking next to a dinky, old ice cream truck. The space was close to a nearby forest, a bit too secluded for your taste.

“So you’re going to kill me,” you observed, scanning the dark environment around you.

He rolled his eyes. “No.”

“That’s what a murderer would say,” you mumbled.

You were so stubborn, he knew that, yet he still let out an exasperated sigh. He frowned and climbed out of his car, shuffling to your side, only to find you were already halfway out. You didn’t say anything, choosing to send another hard glare his way instead.

He headed in the direction of the carnival—not the forest—and gestured you to follow him. You trailed behind, ignoring the damp mud that stuck to the bottom of your cheap shoes. You felt a bit overdressed, but when you glanced at Taehyun, you felt better. However, the more you thought about it, his outfit likely cost more than your college tuition, putting a slight dent in your ego. You focused your attention on the glowing moon instead of him, and when he turned to look at you, he was in awe. You seemed peaceful, or at least, not as pissed.

It was nice.

He led you down to the middle of the fair where you saw a crowd gathered around a massive dunk tank. He seemed antsy, constantly shifting his weight and picked at the hem of his costly shirt. He momentarily abandoned your side and walked to the dunk tank operator, speaking briefly before grabbing a bucket filled of unknown stuff.

When he walked back, you stared curiously at the bucket which was full of heavy baseballs. “This is my apology.”

Vague.

As if he read your mind, he gently placed his hand on your shoulder and turned you to face the tank, pointing directly at the chair above the pool. “I’m going to be sitting on that chair. Your job is to throw them,” he gestured over to the bullseye, “at the target, until I’m submerged.”

You couldn’t suppress your smile. He was right, this was an apology you’d accept, an apology in the form of embarrassment. Smart boy.

He didn’t necessarily look forward to ruining his cashmere sweater, but he would’ve done anything to make it up to you, and your bright smile told him he was on the right path. You let out a light laugh, picking up a baseball and tossing it carelessly.

He spared you a final glance before shuffling off to his fate. He seemed to garner a lot of attention, the crowd had grown significantly larger since you first arrived. You held the ball in your hand as he climbed onto the chair—you were arguably a little too excited to send him into the cold, cold water. He seemed shaky, but you didn’t care. You threw the ball with no hesitation.

Strike one. You missed by a long shot.

He suppressed a laugh. You shook your body, ridding yourself of any anxiousness before trying once more.

Strike two. You were closer. Barely.

You had an unlimited amount of attempts, but the longer you failed, the more embarrassed you felt. He now seemed comfortable... prideful, even. Your face was flushed red from humiliation, but you tried to keep it from affecting you as you threw once more, this time, significantly more aggressive.

Strike three. This was outright shameful.

“C’mon, you can do better than that…” he baited. He couldn’t help but tease, it didn’t matter that you were on a date. The crowd let out a collective laugh. You scoffed indignantly, cracking your neck and back, your stare darkening. You were about to hit the winning shot, he knew it. He loosened his grip on the chair and leaned forward.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed.

The longing, heartfelt expression in his eyes had you flustered. You nodded understandingly, reeling in his genuine apology, and flashing him a sympathetic, sincere smile before throwing the baseball straight at the bullseye, sending him (and his expensive outfit) straight into the tank.

You pumped a fist in the air as the crowd cheered. He emerged from the stale water, completely drenched. He shook hair away from his eyes before climbing from the tank and into a changing room, but not before finding your figure in the crowd. You wore a gentle, soft smile; for the first time, you looked at him with something other than hatred.

It gave him hope.

After changing, he appeared by your side as the crowd slowly dispersed, dressed a lot more comfortably. He changed into a pair of fitted (and designer, you just knew it) joggers and a clean, simple sweatshirt, pulled together with a silver chain hanging from his neck. He went from runway to streetwear yet he managed to look absolutely fantastic and it irked you. He seemed expectant yet nervous, constantly shifting his feet and biting his bottom lip. He needed reassurance and suddenly, you weren’t hesitant to provide it.

After a minute of painful silence, you conceded. “I forgive you.”

A deep sigh of relief escaped him. He’d practically been holding his breath since that day and all of a sudden, this weight had been lifted off his chest. A wave of solace washed over him, “Thank god. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if that didn’t work.”

You giggled softly. He short-circuited for a mere second; being the cause of your melodious laugh had him speechless. It was all new to him. Your laugh was so sweet, soft, and a drastic contrast from the person he was used to. He yearned to hear it again.

You peered up at him without saying a word.

He coughed awkwardly. “Right, uh, that didn’t take long at all. Let’s get you home, this was a waste of your time, I’m so sorry,” he rambled, turning in the direction of his car. You tilted your head questioningly. The night was still young and you had no interest in going back home. You were pleasantly surprised, all it took was a simple apology for your hidden, buried feelings to surface, though you knew how hard it was for him to apologize. Maybe that’s why you were so easy to forgive. You reached for his sleeve and gently tugged him back, “You asked me out on a date, so let’s do it.”

Going on an actual date was the last thing he expected. His plan for the night was to pick you up, try his best not to offend you more than he already had, and get dunked into some dirty, stale water. Of course he couldn’t refuse, seeing as his heart nearly soared from his chest. He nodded eagerly, “Y-yeah! Yeah! Okay, let’s have a date. Okay, uh, this is a carnival, right? I have to win you a plushie then, that’s just basic, carnival date knowledge. That’s the rule.”

You snorted. “Can’t break the rules then.”

He led you on over to the strength machine, eager to showcase his brawn—he hoped to impress you. His boyish mentality made you laugh, as endearing as it was, you couldn’t help but find it primitive and a bit childish. Nonetheless, you indulged him. He fished change from his wallet and you couldn’t help but notice the shiny, heavy, black card sitting comfortable in his wallet’s compartment; you suppressed an instinctual eye roll. He held the massive hammer in hand, attempting to hide the fact that it slightly weighed him down, despite his muscular build. He flashed you a confident wink before raining the hammer down on the target, sending the marker less than halfway up the pole. You coughed in an attempt to hide your laughter, you didn’t want to embarrass him, he’d already been dunked into a tank of mucky water.

He stood dumbfounded, “Okay, this is rigged.”

“Mhm, right.”

“Fine, hotshot. Give it a whirl then,” he challenged. You raised an eyebrow cockily, yanking the hammer from his hand. It was simple, all you had to do was send the marker higher than his. You smugly grinned before trying your luck, the marker barely rising an inch.

He slapped his knee and cackled. You were offended.

“This is rigged,” you mumbled.

“S’ok, love. There’s plenty of other stuff to do that isn’t rigged,” he encouraged, throwing a side eye at the gamer operator who simply shrugged in return. He slung an arm around your shoulder, choosing not to dwell on the way his heartbeat sped, “Let’s go get you a prize.”

· ──────────────────── ·

For him to win you a singular prize, it took a game of whack-a-mole, a shared slice of pizza, a tuft of cotton candy, a vigorous pep talk, and sprinkle of beginner’s luck. It was a cheap, funky-looking ring, but you wore it with the utmost pride.

You both talked excessively, really getting to know each other, and with each new detail, he fell harder. Your shy smile, adorable laugh, witty sense of humor… they were all just a bonus. Normally, you weren’t one to fall, if at all, but you found yourself going against your instinct and doing just that. In hindsight, though, it’d been a long time coming. He was hesitant to initiate any sort of skinship, considering you’d forgiven him an hour prior, but you proved opposite after you mindlessly reached for his hand the second you spotted your favorite ride.

“The spinning teacup! That’s a must!” You both felt the spark from the contact, it was unmistakable, but you both chose not to say anything. He let you drag him over, despite his aversion to the particular ride; he just couldn’t say no.

“Fine, but promise me you won’t spin fast.”

“Pinky promise.”

As the cup turned, albeit at snail pace, he admired the light wind that flowed delicately through your hair. You had a certain aura, he couldn’t help but notice. It was enchanting. The moonlight kissed your skin beautifully, it had him watching in infatuated awe.

“You’re staring.”

“Pssh, I’m not staring.” You eyed him and he crinkled his nose, “Fine, I was staring. I can’t help it, you’re beautiful.”

He didn’t know where the sudden confidence came from, perhaps it was just the motion sickness, but he didn’t regret it. You turned away from him, clearly flustered, and it made him smile. The ride ended quicker than he expected, but it was a welcomed relief, considering his well-being. The second he stepped from the cup, he fell to the floor.

“I barely spun the cup! It turned, like, a mile an hour!”

“I’m sensitive! I get sick easily.” He lifted himself off the ground, just slightly, continuing with a corny joke. “Look at me on the floor, I guess some might say… I fell for you.”

You snorted, not at the cheesy line, but the aggressive finger-gun that accompanied it. He tried to wink but failed, immediately hunching over from the queasy feeling in his stomach, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”

He made an ugly, inhuman noise.

“Jesus Christ. Are you okay?”

“No, it’s fine, I’m great. I just think it’s my time to go.”

He reminded you a lot of Kai—both of them had an affinity for being overly dramatic.

You rubbed his back soothingly. He felt so embarrassed, but the feeling was overshadowed by the sickly feeling. You continued caressing, making sure to glare at anyone that dared judge him. You crouched down until you were eye level and brushed his hair from his forehead, giving him a small smile. At that moment, he could’ve sworn you were an angel of some sort. He felt better instantly.

“I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine,” he insisted, waving his hand carelessly, telling you not to worry.

“Let’s just head home. I’ll have Kai pick us up, he’ll definitely do it.” You paused, crinkling your forehead in thought, “Scratch that, he just got his license and ran over a cone yesterday.”

He stood up slowly, waving his hand once more. “In the recipe for a perfect carnival date, the ferris wheel is a must.”

You didn’t like where he was going with that.

“You’re going to hurl if we go on that. For real, this time.”

He rested his hand atop his heart. “I won’t! I swear.”

“I don’t know...”

He laced his hand with your own and pulled you to the carnival’s main attraction. He fiddled with the ring on your finger, proudly glancing at it every once in a while.

Just your luck, a slightly younger couple was paired with you on the ferris wheel. The ride operator shoved the four of you into the cramped, tiny compartment, ignoring the silent plea Taehyun sent her way. The other couple sat hesitantly with a noticeable distance between them, awkwardly shifting every now and then. The young men—one blond, one with raven black hair—stayed quiet and you couldn’t help but think they were also on their first date. They often glanced at each other but didn’t talk and Taehyun had to hide his amusement. All four of you simmered in uncomfortable silence for a good portion of the ride.

Taehyun unconsciously threw an arm around your shoulder and pulled you close as you laid your head on his shoulder. It was a subtle display of affection that made you blush, but he didn’t notice. Out of the corner of his eyes, Taehyun watched the blond boy copy his movement, just significantly clumsier—the poor boy accidentally smacked his boyfriend square on the nose. It took a lot for Taehyun (and you) to suppress an amused laugh.

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry,” whispered the blond. His boyfriend let out a small, nervous laugh, “It’s okay.”

The black-haired boy gently rubbed his nose before reaching for his boyfriend’s hand—a simple compromise. The blond avoided eye contact with you and Taehyun, choosing to shift his gaze to the carnival below. The black-haired boy spoke first, “We’re kind of… new to dating.”

The blond cringed, still looking at the fair, before nodding in agreement. You giggled at the obvious tension, quickly comforting, “It’s cute! You two seem like an adorable couple.”

The couple smiled fondly at each other. The blond squeezed his boyfriend’s hand reassuringly and it made you smile. They seemed so in love, you were swooning. The remainder of the ride was silent and the couple chose to get off the ride after the first go-around. The blond meekly nodded his head in Taehyun’s direction and your boy gently returned the gesture with a shy, caring smile.

As soon as they were out of earshot, you both broke into a fit of laughter, “Oh my God! He was totally copying you, that’s adorable!”

Taehyun gushed, “They both were so flustered! Too cute.”

You both spent the next go-around giggling, conversing about nothing, and sharing sweet, longing gazes. The carnival beneath you slowly began shutting down, each area turning their lighting off one by one. You kept your hand laced with his and while you glanced down the dying fair, he lovingly gazed at you.

“I guess that’s our cue to leave.” You gestured below. He trained his gaze to the lack of vivid lighting around the carnival and sighed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

He squeezed your hand tighter. You didn’t want to part from him so soon and he shared your exact sentiment.

· ──────────────────── ·

As Taehyun pulled into your driveway, you instantly spotted Kai’s silhouette lurking in your bedroom window.

“Jesus Christ,” you grumbled.

Kai had spent his night waiting for you to come home, eager to hear your nightmarish tale. He planned to head to his house and simply wait for your inevitable call, but when he left to grab takeout, he found himself straying back to your house. Your mother must’ve let him in, granted he was also gifted a key and he used it regularly. Your mind suddenly short-circuited by the feeling of Taehyun’s hand atop your own. If you noticed his tremble and clamminess, you didn’t mention it.

He cleared his throat, “Let me walk you to your door.”

You sheepishly nodded, anxious to speak. If yesterday, someone had told you you would be this shy at the end of the night, you would’ve laughed in their face. He rushed to open your door and you let him, much to his surprise, without any snarky remark. The short distance to your front door didn’t stop him from holding your hand, leaving you a giggly, flustered mess.

You could practically feel Kai’s smirk.

Taehyun stood awkwardly, frequently shifting his weight, while you nervously picked at your fingernail, both waiting for the other to break the silence. He took the first leap of faith, “I had a great time tonight, I hope you did too.”

You were too focused on his calloused thumb tracing soothing circles along the back of your hand, making you lose your train of thought, “Yeah! Yes! So fun!”

You winced at your overly enthusiastic response. The luminous light, hanging haphazardly above you did little to hide your anxiousness. He chuckled softly, glad he wasn’t the only nervous one, “That’s good to hear.”

“I’m sorry you nearly threw up.” You both cringed at the recent memory. He squeezed your hand reassuringly, “Don’t worry. Weirdly, that’s not the worst thing to happen to me on a date.”

You tilted your head curiously, you wished to hear his story. Frankly, you found yourself wishing to hear everything about him, but before anything, you needed to get some stuff off your own chest. “I’m also sorry about other stuff. I have more to apologize than you, even before the incident, I was always so abrasive and mean, and I want to apologize for that. And, I, uh, also kind of broke into your house… so obviously I’m sorry about that too. Not to mention, I thin—”

He placed his hand on your cheek and caressed softly, making you quiet. “It’s water under the bridge.”

You shyly smiled, looking away from his adoring gaze. He tried mustering up a cheesy line but he found himself losing focus, his eyes constantly straying to your lips; he couldn’t help it, he really wanted to kiss you. He sucked in a deep breath, gathering the courage to just do it, even though he knew you’d likely reject his advance. After all, it was just the first date and you only forgave him three hours ago.

Not to mention, Kai stole your phone to get Taehyun’s number just to inform him of your strict no-kiss policy.

He hesitantly brushed your hair behind your ear before leaning in slowly, his plush, attractive lips easily tempting you. Unfortunately for him, you kept to your rule. You splayed your hand across his chest before pushing him back gently, “Nice try, Romeo.”

He wasn’t surprised, it was a long shot anyways. He’d just regret it if he didn’t try. He nodded understandingly before leaning in once more, this time to place a gentle kiss to your forehead. You couldn’t hide the obvious blush that dusted your cheeks, making him grin. Maybe you weren’t as tough as you liked to seem.

He felt hopeful.

“So for our next date, I was thinking mini golf,” he said enthusiastically. His eyes sparkled with excitement; he seemed thrilled, you couldn’t help but giggle, “Easy there tiger, I don’t recall ever saying anything about a second date.”

He leaned in to plant a kiss on your cheek, pulling away only slightly to whisper, “I think I’ll be getting another date.”

He was right. He was definitely getting another date… and maybe, just maybe, you’d break your no-kiss rule.

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