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Summary: After deciding to keep their distance from each other, Seokjin and Nari meet at a wedding. Amidst tents and fairy lights, Nari gets a reality check and Seokjin says something he's not sure he means.
Pairing: Seokjin x OC
Genre: Best friends; angst
Word count: 8.5 K
Rating: 18+
Warnings: language, alcohol
A/N: Less action, more introspection. A ton of angst. Set a little over a month after On Call.
Tagging: @bbl32 @quarter-life-crisis2 @dreaming-with-happiness @meirkive @faearchives @margopinkerton @kflixnet (italics could not be tagged; drop a message if you want to be added)
Listen to: “shiver” by coldplay
seokjin masterlist | main masterlist
Pristine. Everything is pristine. The freshly mown grass that’s no longer damp, the thin white sheets of the tent that make it seem like it’s floating, the accents of green in the linens and place settings - everything is, as planned, perfect. The guests milling about look lovely as well; everyone is in pastels and florals with flowers and corsages, looking very light and summery.
Seokjin surveys the scenery critically, mentally ticking items off in his mind. Everything seems like it’s mostly turned out the way his brother and the bride wanted it to - except for one thing. When Seokjin spots it, making its way through the wedding lawn in a floaty dress, delicate heels and a duffel bag, all he focuses on is trying not to laugh.
Nari catches his eye from ten feet away and her face breaks out into a tentative smile. Seokjin returns it and starts walking towards her, meeting her halfway by one of the tables.
“Wow,” she says, looking around before her gaze lands back onto him. “Everything looks beautiful. Including you,” she adds playfully, tugging lightly on his collar. “Very dapper.”
“Thanks. You look…” Pretty. Beautiful. Lovely. “... nervous.”
Her smile fades slightly and she exhales. “Is it that obvious?” she asks anxiously.
“I mean, you seem a little winded,” he amends, brushing a wayward strand of hair off her shoulder. “Do you want to sit down? Maybe have some water or something? What’s with the bag?”
“Oh, that -” Nari heaves it on one of the chairs. “I had to leave straight from the hospital. Got changed on the train.” She smoothes the leaf green dress self-consciously. “I didn’t know if I’d make it in time and I didn’t want to hold everything up…”
“Don’t worry about it. You look great,” he tells her honestly. Her smile of relief makes his stomach unexpectedly flip and Seokjin winces, hoping that this won’t be the rest of the evening. “I’m glad you came, Nari.”
She nods, and the pause after it is enough to tell him she understands what he means. “Of course I did. I’ve known your family for a long time. And besides,” she adds, her voice suddenly drier, “apparently I have a job to do.”
“Ah, yes.” Seokjin claps his hands and nods, stopping a waiter passing by them and taking two mimosas. Handing one to Nari, he gestures to her dress. “Ready to be the ultimate bridesmaid of the year?” He snickers when she rolls her eyes and takes a large gulp of the drink.
“Wow, I needed that. Are you sure Hyorin couldn’t find someone else to fill in?” she whines. “I feel really out of place in a dress this fancy.”
“Nari, you look amazing. Don’t worry about -”
“It’s not just the dress. It’s the whole carrying of the flowers and the walking down the aisle…” She sighs dramatically. “I can single-handedly ruin this wedding without meaning to.”
Seokjin frowns, bewildered. “How?”
Nari gives him a look. “Uh, hello? I’m a very clumsy person,” she informs him.
“Always a great quality in a surgeon.”
She slaps his shoulder lightly, ignoring his snicker. “Not in the OR. When I’m at work, I have great dexterity, balance and fantastic hand-eye coordination,” she says icily. “But when I have to be pretty and choreographed? It’s going to be a disaster.”
“If it helps,” says Seokjin gently, “I don’t think anyone’s going to be looking at you.”
“One can only hope,” she mutters, adjusting the breezy folds of her dress again. “What if I do trip, though? I’m not used to wearing heels.”
“That’s why you feel so much taller!” he exclaims, clicking his tongue at his own stupidity. He holds her shoulder with one hand and takes a step closer to her, the top of her head brushing his forehead. A flowery scent - lilies or something - hits him suddenly and settles somewhere in his abdomen, knocking into every nerve ending on the way.
“Come on, don’t make me feel more ridiculous than I already do,” she admonishes him, stepping back and downing the rest of her drink at once. She seems too nervous to feel awkward, and Seokjin tries to gather himself.
“Look, you’re overthinking this,” he tells her, silently handing her the rest of his drink that she takes gratefully. “It’s a few steps down the aisle, stand, cry, walk back. That’s it.”
“Cry?”
“Yeah. But, like, in a pretty way.”
“Got it. I should probably write this down,” she says wryly, as a gentle breeze blows her hair back.
“I can count you in,” he offers. “I’ll already be up there next to hyung - just watch me, step on my count. You’ll be fine.”
“How is counting going to help?”
“Counting always helps. I am an idol and I dance for a living, so I know these things now,” he says loftily, smiling when she finally, finally laughs. The faint pink spots on her cheeks are suddenly visible and she looks beautiful.
“What would I do without you to count me in?”
“I know, right?”
Nari’s phone pings then and she fishes in the side pocket of her duffel bag. “Imagine life with pockets, right?” she jokes, swiping through the screen. “Okay, Hyorin says I have to go get my hair and make-up done next to the bridal suite.” She exhales deeply. “It’s getting real.”
“Top floor of the hotel,” supplies Seokjin preemptively. “Dude, what are you so nervous for?” he asks, spotting a cousin over her shoulder and waving absently. “You’re a surgeon. You cut bodies open. How is this more stressful than that?”
“That’s different,” she tells him, now having finished the rest of Seokjin’s drink as well. “I’m not a surgeon right now; I’m a bridesmaid. I’m on the other side of the door now,” she adds.
Seokjin pauses. “What’s that now?”
“It’s just something we say at the hospital,” she mutters, waving a hand. When he frowns deeper, she sighs. “When we’re in the OR, we’re surgeons. The patient isn’t a person; it’s a human body that we need to fix. Everything is dictated by logic and science. But when we go out the OR door,” she explains, “we have to talk to the family, talk to the physio, to the lab - sometimes the pathologist. So we’re not surgeons anymore.”
“Right…”
“And then when we go out the hospital doors, we go back to our personal lives, to our families, our friends - we’re not doctors anymore. We’re people,” she finishes.
“You’re on the other side of the door,” repeats Seokjin.
“Exactly. Everything’s different on the other side.” Nari tilts her head, apparently satisfied that he’s understood her convoluted metaphor.
“Mhm. So if someone dropped dead at this wedding, you’re not going to go over and help?”
“Trust me, Kimbap,” she says, picking the duffel bag up. “If someone’s already dead when they drop, there’s nothing I can do to help.” With that comforting thought, she pats his shoulder and starts walking past him to the hotel building. “Wait.”
“Top floor.”
“No, I know.” Nari bites her lip, looking just a bit embarrassed. “No one’s going to be looking at me, right? You promise?”
Seokjin is hit, once again, by the same urge to laugh. But he holds himself together and shakes his head, hoping to keep the collective anxiety of the wedding at a minimum. “Absolutely. I promise.”
—
To no surprise of his, Seokjin breaks his promise the moment he gets the chance.
Maybe it’s the hair and make-up, maybe it’s the fact that once she’s made it down the aisle without incident, her face is calm and relaxed. Or maybe it’s the fact that after over a month of deliberate distance, something has finally forced both of them under the same roof with nowhere to run or hide. It’s just good to see her again.
Nari seems to be concentrating on Seongjook’s speech, smiling occasionally. She’s the tallest of the bridesmaids, standing right at the end, loose curls falling down her collarbone as she laughs politely at a joke. It’s a gimbap joke; he waits for her to catch his gaze and grins when she does.
She frowns slightly, suppressing a smile. Did you write that joke?
He shakes his head an infinitesimal amount, silently scoffing. No way. My puns aren’t that subtle.
Nari rolls her eyes and looks away, but Seokjin doesn’t. It’s so good to see her again.
“Congratulations,” he says after a while, coming up behind her at the bar. “You did it.”
Nari turns immediately and her face relaxes with relief. “All thanks to you, of course. What will you have?”
“Oh, nothing for me, thanks.”
“Really?” She frowns, taking in his appearance. “You look a little… frazzled. No, your hair is fine, Kimbap,” she adds, rolling her eyes when he immediately goes to check. “I’m talking about your expression.”
“Oh.” Seokjin’s shoulders slump slightly. “The caterer screwed up. Two extra chicken dishes in place of vegetarian ones and the dessert seems to have been switched with another order.” He shakes his head forlornly.
“Damn.” Nari is quiet for a moment. “What is it?”
He frowns. “I just told you. Not enough vegetarian orders and the -”
“No, I meant, what’s the new dessert?” she interrupts patiently.
“Oh. It’s crème brûlée.”
“I like crème brûlée.”
Seokjin scoffs. “It’s overrated.” When Nari gasps from next to him, he rolls his eyes. “Fine, I like it, too. But Hyorin doesn’t, and that’s what matters.”
“Maybe she won’t mind,” suggests Nari. “I just met her - for a bride on her wedding day, she seemed pretty laidback.” When all Seokjin does is drop his head on the bar and groan, she frowns curiously. “Were you in charge of desserts or something?”
“No, I wasn’t in charge of anything,” he replies, lifting his head up heavily. “We’ve been touring for half the year and travelling for something or the other. My own brother’s wedding and I showed up in the last two weeks,” he laments. “The least I could do was promise that I would take care of today. You know what? Maybe I will have that drink.”
Nari pats him awkwardly on the shoulder and requests two shots of soju. “Cheers, Kimbap, to what will still be a great wedding despite the dessert disaster. The dess-aster,” she adds, clinking her glass with his and grinning when he snorts.
They down a shot each; Nari’s insides feel like they might melt and she emerges from a coughing fit to see Seokjin wiping his eyes.
“Thanks for that.” He nods. “You did good, too. You know what I remembered when I saw you standing up there in that dress?”
Something races in Nari’s chest. “Um, no. What?” she asks, pretending to be busy stirring her drink.
“You remember back in high school when we all did that play?” Seokjin begins, and she doesn’t know if she’s imagining his eyes softer than before. “Snow White?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember how you really wanted to be Snow White? You said you finally felt pretty enough to be a princess,” he adds knowingly.
“Oh, God, I really said that?” she asks, cringing slightly. “Wow, I was lame.”
“No, it was cute. You were always pretty enough to be a princess,” he says casually.
Nari’s cheeks grow warm and she hopes it’s the drink. “Anyway. You were saying?”
“Yeah, uh… so remember when you were planning to audition for the lead but then the casting got posted on the notice board anyway? And when you searched for your name, you saw you were -”
“A tree?” Nari’s jaw drops. “That’s what I remind you of today? Because I’m wearing a green dress and these - stupid - heels?”
Seokjin guffaws, although whether it’s at the memory or her reaction, Nari doesn’t know. She stares at him coldly until he finally catches his breath.
“They only gave me that silly part because I was tall,” she mutters, feeling her mood sour. She finishes the rest of her drink and gestures for another.
“You were waving your arms in the air and everything,” he remembers fondly, pinching her cheeks affectionately.
Nari swats his hand away. “I hate you.”
“My point is, you killed that role,” he informs her, “so you should have a little more confidence in yourself.”
She squints. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Seokjin taps the bar. “I should go. Maybe if my brother gets Hyorin drunk enough, she won’t care about the desserts.”
“You’re a great best man.” Nari’s attention is diverted when the bartender places a drink in front of her. Picking it up, she frowns. “Uh, I asked for a white wine, not a… is this a Negroni?”
The bartender gestures to the end of the bar. “That gentleman over there sent you a drink.”
She peers around Seokjin while he turns around to see a young man, maybe slightly younger than them, smiling awkwardly and raising his glass.
Nari waves back, a little belatedly. “Isn’t it an open bar?” she mutters. The bartender simply shrugs and nods, a little too knowingly for her liking.
Meanwhile, Seokjin is still staring and doesn’t turn back around until she taps him on the shoulder. “It is an open bar,” he answers uselessly. “Oh, I was just - I was just trying to figure out if he’s from our side or the bride’s side. He doesn’t seem familiar. Do you know him?”
Seokjin sounds strange, but it’s lost in favour of the dread settling in Nari’s stomach. “No, I don’t. But I don’t need to.” She scans the crowd and locks eyes with exactly who she was looking for, her suspicions confirmed when the person immediately averts her eyes and turns away. “I know my mother.”
Realisation dawns on Seokjin’s face and he lets out a bark of a laugh, even though Nari herself can find nothing amusing about the situation. “Well, this was bound to happen, wasn’t it?” he exclaims wryly, sounding remarkably less worried than before.
“Why is she doing this?” Nari mutters, suppressing a groan and taking an absent sip of her drink. “She’d gotten so good over the last few months, telling me to work and get enough sleep and stuff. What - she sees one wedding dress and suddenly gets worried about my single arse?”
“Seems like it,” he chortles. “Are you going to talk to him? You should at least thank him for the drink.”
“Don’t you have some catering crisis to attend to?”
“I bet I’m looking forward to it more than you are to your crisis.”
“Fuck me.” Nari shakes her head and hops off the stool. “May as well get this over with.” Forcing a smile on her face, she hops off the stool, adjusting her dress. “Wish me luck.”
“Go snag yourself a husband, champ.”
Whacking him on the shoulder and ignoring his exaggerated gasp, she makes her way over. When she turns around to look at him one last time, he winks at her. His confident stance, his elbow resting on the bar, his jet black hair catching the light; for a moment, Nari wishes she were walking in the opposite direction.
“Nari, right?”
She stops abruptly when the sender of the drink appears before her. “Yeah, um, thanks for the drink…” She raises her eyebrows.
“Oh, Seokmin.”
Close enough.
—
Seokmin, as it turns out, is quite alright. He’s polite and nice, works as a stockbroker (Nari can almost picture Seokjin going “Score!” with a straight face) and seems good at holding his liquor. That being said, he’s not the best at holding conversation.
Fifteen minutes and a Negroni later, Nari stomps over to the tables. The music is upbeat and lively, and the sky is beginning to set.
“Mother.”
Dressed in finery and holding a cocktail with immense precision, Nari’s mother turns to her. “Oh, Nari!” she exclaims with exaggerated surprise. “How good to see you!”
“Don’t,” she warns, looking around for a chair to slouch in. “Who is -”
“Oh, this is Jaehyun,” she interrupts, her gaze shifting to someone behind Nari. On cue, a deep voice sounds in her ear, making her jump.
“Hi,” he says, towering over her.
“Um -” An uncommon occurrence for Nari, feeling this short, she digresses. “How - who -”
“Jaehyun. Our mothers know each other from pottery class,” he explains.
“Our -” Nari looks around, murderous, but her mother has disappeared. She turns to Jaehyun, who looks like he’s just walked off a runway, with his hair achieving a wet look hers could never, and his shirt unbuttoned to somewhere near his diaphragm.
He frowns. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” she says automatically. “I’m sorry - how can I help you?”
It’s her Hail Mary question; most men her mother sends her way are easily startled by it and stutter an excuse. But not Jaehyun, apparently.
“I was hoping to buy you a drink,” he answers smoothly.
She stares. “Isn’t it an open bar?” she asks for the second time today.
He chuckles. “True. Maybe I can bring you a free one now and actually buy you one tomorrow? Or whenever you’re free,” he adds, smiling good-naturedly.
Nari nods absently, for he’s so, so very tall. “Let’s start with the free one now, I think,” she suggests. “And we’ll see how it goes.”
Jaehyun is less boring than Seokmin, she decides. He works as a manager in Conde Nast and his stories about his work are fun. He seems incredibly impressed with Nari’s career as a doctor and lightly touches her hand when she brings up how much death she sees at work. His segue out of the conversation is commendable as well, and she gives him the spiel about being on the other side of the door.
“That’s so healthy,” he remarks, and Nari warms up to him slightly. The breeze makes his hair blow elegantly and she sips the wine he got her, observing it. “Great evening, huh?” He fishes around in his pocket and retrieves something. “Would you care for a - oh. I’m guessing you don’t smoke?”
Nari squints. “I don’t,” she says after a moment. “Did my story about the pneumothorax patient give it away?”
Jaehyun laughs weakly. “Do you… do you mind if I…?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Ten minutes later, Nari is back inside the tent, having abandoned Jaehyun to smoke peacefully with a few others to whom he’d lent a lighter. The secondhand smoke is bad enough, but Nari has simply had it with the impromptu blind dates. She grabs a champagne flute from a passing waiter and guzzles it down rapidly, her gaze darting around for her mother.
By the time she does spot her mother, it’s to see her talking to yet another young man. The alarm bells go off in her head immediately and she spins around on the spot, ready to be anywhere but here.
Seokjin, she thinks, and stumbles over to the bar to get a better view of the tent. Her phone is still in her duffel bag in the make-up suite next to the bridal one, the unfortunate reality of a dress with no pockets, so she looks around while trying to stay out of her mother’s sight and finally hears his worried exclamations before she even sees him.
Nari finds him behind the stage. “Kimbap!” she cries, realising a moment later that she’s interrupted a heated conversation. “Oh - sorry. I’ll just be -” She points vaguely and steps away, but Seokjin frowns and follows her anyway.
“Just get him on the phone for me,” he instructs the man he was speaking to, before turning to Nari. “Nari? What - are you drunk?”
“Not really.” She sighs and leans against a pole wrapped in satin. “Can we talk?”
“Uh, now’s not a good time,” he says uneasily, checking his phone. “Too much is going wrong at the same time. The car’s broken down and apparently one of the cheques hasn’t cleared -” He breaks off. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” she answers at once. “My mother is driving me crazy.”
Seokjin frowns and checks his phone. “Alright, I have, like… five minutes,” he says almost apologetically.
“That works.” Before he can change his mind, she steers him outside near the entrance. “Need some fresh air like you wouldn’t believe,” she informs him, running a hand through her hair. When the cool breeze hits her face, she’s suddenly aware of how hot her skin is.
“What’s wrong?”
She turns. “What?”
He raises his eyebrows. “What’s wrong?” he asks urgently. “You said you needed to talk?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s just my mom,” she says dismissively, rolling her eyes. “Setting me up with guys like she’s finding them on a conveyor belt. And they’re all the fucking same,” she adds scathingly, “with their jobs and their can I buy you a drinks and their smoking.” She shudders. “Fucking nightmare.”
Seokjin is quiet for a moment. “What’s wrong with them?”
Nari frowns, not sure she’s heard him correctly. “What do you mean? Were you not listening?”
“No, I was. You said they were talking about their jobs and offering to buy you drinks.” He slips his hands into his pockets, his face unmoving. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I mean, they -” Nari breaks off, wondering if she’s too drunk to understand him. “What do you mean? They’re going along with it, aren’t they? With their moms setting them up and shit?”
“So are you,” he replies calmly.
“Not by choice,” she shoots back.
“Maybe it wasn’t their choice either.”
Something’s wrong. Nari suddenly feels as though she’s speaking over a chasm in between them. “Well… then they didn’t have to do it, did they?”
“Maybe they did,” he reasons, voice still calm but an odd stillness in his eyes. “And in their defense, they aren’t whining to their friends about it.”
Nari feels like she’s just been slapped. “Excuse me?”
Seokjin shrugs, hands still in his pockets. “Am I wrong? Or is there something else you’re not telling me? Because all I ever hear you complain about is that you’re going to be alone forever because your whole life is at the hospital, but when you actually get a chance to change that? You don’t even try - and for some reason, I have to listen to you bitch about it.”
“What - what are you talking about?” She can hear her voice shake now, but whether it’s the inebriation or the cold or the shock of Seokjin speaking to her with such disdain, she can’t tell. “I don’t always complain about it - and I’m not - I’m not asking you to -”
“God, Nari, this is my brother’s wedding,” he interrupts, sounding frustrated now. “I’m dealing with arrangements gone wrong and arguing with the hotel manager - and you dragged me away from that to whine about how too many men are chasing after you? Are you serious right now?”
“How is that -”
But Seokjin interrupts her again, his irritated expression throwing Nari for a loop. He looks like a stranger.
“I can’t do it anymore, Nari, okay? If you want to actually be with someone - like, truly be with someone - you have to actually get off your arse and do something about it, alright? All these guys actually seem okay. And if they aren’t, then tell your mom to stop. I mean, I don’t know what it is you’re looking for or if even you know what that is, but I’m - I’m getting a little sick of it. It’s exhausting having to deal with your problems all the time.” He shakes his head. “I have so much else to deal with tonight, Nari. I really don’t have time for this.”
The lump in her throat seems to have appeared out of nowhere and it takes her by surprise, so she says nothing when he sighs, when he pinches the bridge of his nose like he wants to say something else, and when he apparently thinks better of it and brushes past her to go inside.
Nari doesn’t move, however, the shame and guilt and bewilderment welling up inside her at the thought of Seokjin being this annoyed with her. It takes a lot for Seokjin to lash out; she knows because it’s never happened before, not with her.
She wonders if everything he’s said is true and her cheeks burn with embarrassment. How long has he been feeling this way? A year? Longer than that? Suddenly, she cringes at every memory of calling or texting him in their adulthood, squatting in his house, eating his food and sleeping in his bed, all the while unknowing if he really wanted her to be there or not.
What about everything else? A small voice brings forth what she hopes hasn’t played a part in this sudden twist of events. But, no. Seokjin wouldn’t lie about that. He wouldn’t touch her under false pretences, she tells herself. They were adults and their slips in judgement probably had less to do with this and more to do with the fact that… she doesn’t know. Lowered inhibitions? Stress? She doesn’t want her mind to go beyond that.
Nari swallows a dry sob and immediately shakes her head, wiping a stray tear of shock that seems to have escaped, and slowly turns to walk back inside but stops. Seokjin will be in there, and she’s not sure she’s ready to face him right now. She sits on the low ledge and drops her head into her hands, wondering where she went wrong.
His face haunts her, cold and sickened. I’m getting sick of it. She slips off her heels and sighs softly when her soles touch the cool grass. She’s not used to walking in these; the last time she’d worn them to an event this formal, she’d taken them off and walked back barefoot. Alongside her, Seokjin had taken off his shoes as well, claiming he didn’t like being the only one wearing shoes.
It’s like being the only person drinking, he’d said.
“Fuck,” she whispers, her stomach churning painfully.
“Sorry,” says a voice behind her.
Startled, Nari turns around, her heart in her mouth. For a wild moment, she imagines Seokjin is back. But it’s not him, not even close. “Oh,” she utters, unable to hide her disappointment. “Wait, I know you. Summer camp?”
“Close,” he says, moving closer to her but not sitting down. “Our families were on a group vacation once. We played football together.”
“Right.” She remembers now, vaguely. “You can sit,” she says after a moment, noting how he’s awkwardly hovering. He, thankfully, does not seem to have a drink with him. “Did, uh… did my mother send you?”
He looks vaguely confused. “Send me… where?”
Unlikely, but technically possible. “It’s nothing. I’m Nari, by the way.”
“Jinho.”
The silence is loud and awkward, and Nari makes no move to change it.
“So… do you still play football?”
“No,” she answers. “I’m a doctor.”
“Wow. Impressive. You were a good player, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You and your friend - Seokjin, I think? He was the best man today.”
Nope, I’m out. Something feels close to snapping inside Nari and it takes all her strength not to take it out on a complete stranger.
“I’m - I’m really sorry,” she stutters, hating how her voice trembles, “but I really have to go inside. I need to - I need to find my mom.”
“Oh, okay. No worries. Do you want me to -”
But Nari is already halfway inside, hopping from one foot to another to slip her heels back on before gathering the floaty material of her dress and entering the tented area. She spots the person she’s looking for instantly - and this time, they’re both alone.
“Nari, you look… pale,” says her mother, vague concern spreading across her face. A moment later, she procures a plate of sushi and places it in front of her. “Eat.”
“I’m fine, mother,” mutters Nari listlessly, dropping into the chair beside her. Despite her protests, she picks up a piece and pops it into her mouth.
Her mother’s face brightens considerably. “Are you having a good time?”
Nari gives her a look. “How could I not, when you pass me around from guy to guy like we’re window shopping at a mall?”
“Nari!” Her mother admonishes her. “How uncouth. And besides, they’re all very nice young men.”
“Really? The first one told me that while he thought being a doctor was valuable, he still preferred his partners to have less demanding jobs so there isn’t any unnecessary competition at home. It’s like he was interviewing me,” she adds in disgust.
“Oh.” Her mother grimaces. “Well. That one’s a bad apple then. What about the others?”
“Mom, what does it matter? Why can’t we have one social event where we just act normal?” she asks, shoving another piece of sushi into her mouth.
“We are normal. I just know you don’t have the time, honey,” she explains calmly, brushing back her daughter’s hair. “I don’t want you to wake up alone one morning and have regrets.”
“I won’t,” says Nari, more firmly than she’d intended. “God, I was so happy that you’d stopped this. I thought you’d finally come around to the fact that my life is worthwhile just the way it is.”
“Of course I think your life is worthwhile,” says her mother, now sounding a bit offended. “And I stopped because…” She trails off, looking slightly uncomfortable now.
“Because what?”
“Well…” She sighs and tilts her head. “I thought you were seeing someone. And I was so happy for you, honey.”
That catches Nari off-guard. “Why would you think that? Did you hear it from Seokjin’s mom or something? Because she’s probably mistaken if she thinks -”
“No, no, she didn’t tell me anything,” interrupts her mother. “I thought you were seeing Seokjin.”
There’s a moment of extremely confused silence.
“You - you thought I was dating Seokjin?” In light of everything that’s just happened, it seems like a horribly cruel joke. “God, mom… there’s no way that…” She swallows, replaying his harsh words in her head again. “There’s just no way,” she mutters, shaking her head.
“I - are you sure?”
Nari’s head snaps up. “What? Am I sure I wasn’t dating him? Yeah, pretty sure, mom. Why would you even think that?”
“Well, because you were always talking about him,” replies her mother, now sounding more like her usual self. “And you would tell me how he picked you up or how you were at his house and he was making you dinner. He helped get your car fixed,” she reminds her.
“Yeah, but… mom, that’s because we’re friends,” says Nari weakly, her heart sinking, for another part of Seokjin’s outburst has suddenly come to mind - I don’t know what it is you’re looking for - but she can’t bring herself to deconstruct it right now. “There’s nothing else there. Believe me.”
Her mother says nothing more, and Nari wonders if she’s picked up on her tone. It’s pointless, she thinks, because there’s nothing like being paraded around by your mother for dates, combined with an unforeseen reality check from your best friend, to bring forth an ill-timed realisation - and answer to his question.
“I’m sorry, honey.” Her mother’s apology, equally unexpected, brings Nari out of her thoughts. All of a sudden, she feels guilty.
“No, mom. You - it’s not your fault.” Her gaze falls to her lap. “You were just trying to help.”
“Yeah… but I didn’t realise those men would make you this unhappy.”
“It’s not them, mom,” she confesses, hating it when Seokjin is right. “They’re all fine. Not perfect, but okay. They’re just not…” Here, she trails off - not because she doesn’t know the word, but because it’s right there on the tip of her tongue. The answer is so easy but even the mention of it is enough to make her start crying and if she starts crying in front of her mother, there’s no stopping it.
They don’t speak about it anymore the rest of the night. Nari sits with her mother through the toasts and the dances, too nauseous to eat but not wanting to sit empty-handed, so she keeps a steady supply of champagne coming to her table. The entire time, she simply hopes she doesn’t run into Seokjin again, for while she has no idea if his problems have been solved, it’s not something she wants to risk right now.
She needn’t worry, however; Seokjin is bustling around at the family table for the most part, and on the face of it, the wedding seems to have made it through perfectly. Hyorin looks tired but still radiant, while her husband just looks as though he’s accomplished something incredible. Seokjin… she tries not to look at him as he poses with the family for pictures, looking more handsome than ever. He doesn’t even seem to remember their incident; he laughs and converses easily with the people around him, and not once does he look in Nari’s direction.
When the night finally comes to an end, Nari follows her mother with haste. The bride, the groom and their families stand near the exit, seeing their guests off. Seokjin is there, too, naturally, and he greets her mother and father, who had been with his friends for most of the wedding. Nari says goodbye to everyone but hangs back here, not knowing what she might say if she’s face-to-face with him - or worse, what he might say.
There’s a moment, a fraction of a second before they’re about to leave, when she catches his eye. His smile fades slightly and Nari feels an invisible force pushing her to talk to him. This is Seokjin, says a voice, slurring a bit. Nothing is so bad that you can’t talk to Seokjin.
But the next moment, his face from earlier swims back into view and her face burns with humiliation. She averts her gaze instantly and shuffles behind her parents as they leave the wedding, trying to ignore the sickening feeling that she’s forgetting something.
The feeling doesn’t go away, not when she reaches her parents’ house, not when she drags herself to the kitchen to hydrate before she passes out, not when she falls into bed with her leafy green bridesmaid’s dress still on, drunk and alone.
—
The next morning, Nari wakes with a jerk, her head pounding and the immediate continuation of the feeling that she’s definitely forgetting something.
She forgot to change; that much is apparent when she stumbles into her bathroom to see her dress still on, hair still partially pinned but dishevelled. Even her make-up is still on, smudged and messy. Groaning, she begins wiping it off, hoping this horrid feeling will go away before she has to take the train back to Seoul today.
Her parents aren’t in their room, but morning walks are part of their routine. Nari makes her way slowly down the stairs when the first wave of nausea hits and she hurries to the guest bathroom, only to throw up what feels like a week’s worth of champagne. The doctor in her knows she needs to eat, but there’s nothing that seems less appealing than that at the moment. At the moment, water and fresh air is about all she can stomach right now.
Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, she peers out the window and sighs in relief to see a cloudy sky. Still in the stupid dress from last night, Nari opens the front door and warily takes in a breath of cool air, only to come face-to-face with Seokjin.
For a moment she thinks she might be hallucinating and hopes she won’t hurl right here on her parents’ front porch. Seokjin looks far better than her; his skin glows and hair is as thick and lush as ever, a frown on his forehead as he stops at the bottom of the steps. Behind him, his Range Rover stands parked on the street.
“Whoa, are you okay?” The concern in his voice is the same as Before, but it feels so much harder to hear. “You look… are you hungover?”
Nari doesn’t open her mouth, too afraid she might throw up again. She nods jerkily and gulps another mouthful of water, her gaze falling to the ground. She doesn’t want to think about what a mess she looks like; her chest is already beginning to hurt again.
As though he can tell, Seokjin’s expression fades slowly from confusion to guilt. “Nari -” He swallows and climbs another couple of steps, still keeping his distance. “I tried to call you. Last night, I did. But I can understand that you didn’t - you didn’t want to talk. And I don’t blame you,” he adds hastily. “I was - I was such a jerk and I’m really -”
“Wait, what did you say?” Her voice is hoarse, but something he’s said has just made sense. It’s right there, just out of reach.
“Um… I was a jerk?”
“Before that.”
“I know you probably didn’t want to talk to me and I know -”
“No,” she interrupts, frowning deeply. She replays his words in her head, trying to concentrate through the hangover as much as she can, before it clicks and she gasps. “Oh, my God. I forgot my phone!”
“You - “
“Holy shit!” The feeling of forgetting something has now been replaced with full-blown panic. “My - my phone! It’s still in my duffel bag, at the hotel! And my - and my wallet and all my IDs and - oh, God, my pager!” Her heart starts racing now and she barely feels Seokjin’s hand wrap around her own and gently steer the water bottle towards her mouth.
“Calm down,” he says, but she can barely hear him. Clumsily taking another sip of water, she shakes her head.
“All my stuff is in there,” she says anxiously, and she finally meets his gaze. “I have to get it back. I - I have a train in a few hours.”
“We’ll get it,” he assures her calmly. “Come on, I’ll drive you.” Fishing his keys out of his pocket, he’s halfway down the porch before his words can be processed. When she doesn’t move, he stops and turns. “What’s wrong?”
Nari bites her lip, for this - this - is exactly the issue. It’s exhausting having to deal with your problems all the time. She gives him a small shake of her head. “I’ll call a cab. You - you don’t have to drive me.”
Seokjin holds her gaze for a moment. “Yeah, I kind of do.” The heaviness in his voice makes it clear that he’s not referring to her current predicament. “Come on, you don’t have your phone. How are you going to call a cab?”
The mention of the landline dies in her throat. She hadn’t realised it before, but it feels equally exhausting going to him with all her problems. Or maybe it feels that way now that she knows how he feels. The guilt is transparent on his face and in his words, but the shame is still raw in her and she takes a step back.
He doesn’t miss it. “Nari, you’ll miss your train.”
After a moment, she nods. “Let me, um…” She awkwardly fingers the folds of her dress. “I need to change…”
“I’ll wait.”
Not wanting to prolong this any more, she nods silently and goes back inside, hurriedly changing into the first thing she finds. Even Seokjin can’t help but raise his eyebrows at her outfit.
“Shut up,” she mutters, climbing into the shotgun seat. “I don’t have a lot of clothes here.”
“Still. It’s a pretty fancy hotel for a Hello Kitty t-shirt and sweats.”
“I’ll be out of there before anyone can even see me,” she tells him as the car starts, trying to ignore how hideous she probably looks in comparison to him. “I just need my stuff. I’m waiting for an update on a patient…” She sighs and runs a hand over her face, feeling disgusting. “God, I need a shower.”
“Are you going back to the hospital today? After you reach?” he asks.
“Yeah, I think so. I’ll take the night shift, probably,” she says, hoping the hangover will have subsided by then.
“Make sure you -” Seokjin starts to say but then breaks off, glancing at her briefly before looking back out at the road. They don’t say anything else until they pull up at the hotel and head inside. The gardens look remarkably different from last night, with none of the floaty tents and pretty lights. They pass by the spot where they’d had their spat last night, neither of them acknowledging it, until they reach the lobby.
“I’ll check the lost and found,” he tells her, but she goes with him. The concierge tells her to go up to the concerned suite where the bag still is, apparently.
“One of our staff here will escort you,” she says, gesturing to a tall bellboy with a key card in his hand.
“Great, thank you. And… thanks,” she says to Seokjin. Before he can do more than nod, she turns and follows the bellboys to the suite, where she dives for the bag when it’s handed to her.
“Please check that all your belongings are intact,” he advises her, before stepping out of the room and shutting the door.
Nari nods and begins unpacking right there, emptying her bag on the freshly made bed. Everything seems to be in one piece; there’s nothing on her pager and no update on her patient. Sighing, she unlocks her phone for any other notifications, only to see four missed calls from Seokjin and several messages.
Her thumb hovers over the screen, suddenly anxious. This is Seokjin, says the voice again, annoyingly persistent. She clicks on the messages, only to see apology after apology, words that normally would have needed nothing more than an I’m sorry, too, but don’t be an arse again, Kimbap.
Just then, the door opens and Seokjin walks in.
“The bellboy let me in,” he says, slowing down when he sees her stuff. “I’m guessing you have everything?”
“Yeah.” Nari nods, hearing the automatic change in her tone now that she’s read all the texts he’d sent last night. Despite the reality check, she’s glad that he at least seemed to have been as troubled about fighting as she was. “Thanks again.”
He waves a hand before taking a hesitant step towards her and eventually sitting next to her on the bed. He smells of fresh soap and laundry detergent. “Look, Nari, I’m -”
“Seokjin -”
“- really sorry about last night,” he continues. “I didn’t mean any of that, okay? I was just frustrated with everything going wrong and having to run behind a bunch of people to fix it when all I really wanted was to chill and drink and have fun with you. Like at Hyuna’s wedding.”
Nari says nothing. Hyuna, their older neighbour, had gotten married five years ago and both of them had had to squeeze out a precious few hours from their schedules to make it. It was completely worth it, though, meeting all their friends after years but ending the night with each other, carrying their shoes in their hands and drinking until dawn on the swing set in Seokjin’s parents’ front yard. Everything had been much less complicated back then, she thinks.
“I guess I took all of that out on you and that was not okay. I was…” Seokjin exhales, “... way out of line with what I said to you. “I’m so sorry, Nari. I felt so terrible last night, you have no idea. I thought about saying goodbye when you were leaving but you left so fast and I was so ashamed…” He trails off, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. “When you didn’t respond to my messages, I really thought I’d messed up for good. I’m sorry, Nari,” he repeats, gently bumping her shoulder. “Forgive me?”
Her heart skips a beat at the contact. Sounds about right. All his texts were a variation of this, each one sounding more genuine than the next. They’re also very Seokjin, all sounding as though he’s been up all night, ruminating on his unfortunate slip of tongue.
“Seokjin, it’s okay. You were right, about everything,” she murmurs, feeling embarrassed all over again. “The moment I leave the hospital I become this super needy person and I - I guess you’re the only person I don’t feel self-conscious being that needy around.”
“When you’re on the other side of the door?” he asks after a moment.
Nari cracks a smile after what feels like ages. “Exactly. You remembered.”
“Of course I did. And… that’s not true,” he says, just like she knew he would. “You’re my best friend; of course you can be needy with me. It’s kind of cute sometimes.”
But she shakes her head at that. “Maybe it was cute when we were younger,” she says, standing up and starting to re-pack her things, “but now that I’m almost thirty, it’s… it’s kind of sad.” Part of her hopes he’ll refute her again, but he simply sighs.
“You were right, Seokjin,” she repeats after a minute. “About - about the other stuff, too. It sounds like a nightmare but I’m - I’m going to do the whole… taking risks thing,” she says unconvincingly. “I can’t keep bitching about it for the rest of my life. Because at this rate, it’ll be me at forty-five, still alone, with turtles for pets and complaining to you over email while you’re trying to live your life with your wife and kids.” She shakes her head in disgust.
Seokjin squints. “Gets really busy in that head, huh?”
Nari gives him a look but says nothing more, zipping her bag but leaving one outfit out. “I’m going to change,” she informs him.
“Now?”
“Yeah, I’m not going to reach Seoul wearing this atrocity.” Shutting the bathroom door behind her, she strips and begins changing, her limbs suddenly feeling heavier than before. Her stomach rumbles and she realises she can’t remember the last time she ate anything, save for those two pieces of sushi last night.
“Hey, Nari?” Seokjin’s voice is clear and soothing from the other side of the door.
“Yeah?”
He pauses. “You know you can still call, right? Even if I’m living my life with my kids or whatever?”
Nari smiles, feeling a bit endeared. “Gotcha.”
“Good.”
As she pulls on her clothes, there’s something else, another viable option that suddenly becomes visible.
Well, that’s a lie. It’s not sudden. It’s sudden in the context of the last twenty-four hours, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s something that’s occurred to her more than once. But there’s no way she can bring it up, for once she does and it’s out there in the universe, the chances of it ending well are far too risky.
This is Seokjin, says the voice again. If she can’t say this to him, who will she ever be able to say this to?
“Seokjin?”
“Yeah?”
It’s now or never.
“Um… in the spirit of not wanting to die alone and taking risks and all that,” she begins slowly, pressing her back to the door and trying to regulate her heartbeat, “I thought I should ask.”
“Yeah?”
She has no idea what his face looks like and it feels like the biggest blind spot in the world. Her hands feel clammy and she wishes she hadn’t started this thread of conversation at all.
“Nari?”
“Yeah, um…” She shakes her head. She has to know, or it’s going to eat her alive. “Do - do you maybe have feelings… for me?”
The silence on the other side of the door is stifling.
“Seokjin?” She realises now that this is the longest she’s probably ever gone without calling him Kimbap.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he says immediately. “I… Nari, are you asking me if I have feelings for you?”
The confusion in his voice makes her cringe. “Um… yeah. Given recent events, I thought it was a valid possibility.”
He’s quiet for a moment. A muffled sound makes it clear that he’s probably leaning against the door as well. “Nari… I’m not supposed to have feelings for you.”
Something jolts in her stomach. “That’s not an answer.”
“Even - even if I did… it would be… complicated,” he says after a moment. “I shouldn’t have feelings for you,” he repeats.
“But if you did?” she asks, her heart in her throat now. “Hypothetically?”
“If I did…” The pause that follows is heartbreakingly long. “... I wouldn’t do anything about it. We’re not supposed to have feelings for each other,” he says yet again, his voice cracking on the last word.
It’s done, then. The leap was taken and apart from the crushing sensation in her chest, Nari has survived. She resists the urge to scream into her t-shirt; if she’d just kept her mouth shut, this door would never have been opened. It was bad enough that she was the needy friend whose messes he needed to keep cleaning up - why would he ever want to convert that into anything more?
She needs to go back to Seoul, back to her life, back to a city big enough that she can avoid him without much effort. Taking a deep breath and picturing her Chief of Surgery’s stoic and unrelenting face in front of her, she slows her heart down as much as she can before turning around and opening the door.
“God, I hope I don’t miss the train,” she chirps, hurrying over to her bag and hastily repacking her old clothes. “We still get Ubers here, right?”
“I can drive you -”
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” she says, forcing a brief smile as she fumbles with the Uber app and strides out of the room. “I’m sure you’re busy.”
“No…” His tone hasn’t quite caught up to hers yet and she hopes he’ll hurry up before she breaks in front of him. “I have to go pick up some stuff for my brother anyway and the station’s on the way. Let me drop you.”
Nari swallows before turning to him and nodding wordlessly, calculating the number of minutes she’ll have to continue being in his presence as the elevator reaches the lobby.
“Car’s out front,” he says, just as they pass the hotel coffee shop. “Have you eaten anything today? You should probably -”
“I’m good. I’ll pick something up at the station. Don’t want to be late.”
Seokjin falls silent but nods, and they wait in silence as the valet brings the car in front of the hotel. Nari hurries to the shotgun seat without a word, already fumbling in the side pocket of her bag for her charger. Outside, Seokjin is speaking to the valet while she plugs in her phone. As she deposits the adapter back into the bag, she catches a flash of something else that makes her blood run cold.
The drivers’ door opens almost a minute later. “Okay, I know you said you didn’t want breakfast,” says Seokjin, sliding into the seat and turning on the car, as Nari hastily shoves the box of tampons in the bag and zips it up, “but you can’t go completely hungry.” He drops a chocolate covered protein bar on her lap. “In case your train is early or whatever.”
Or it's late. Nari can’t bring herself to fight him right now so she nods mutely and takes the snack, even though eating feels like the last thing she wants to do. As the car starts moving and the radio softly comes alive, she steals a glance at him, her heart hammering.
This is Seokjin, the voice says again. For the first time ever, it doesn’t help.
—
Thank you for reading. Don't forget to drop a review :)
Summary: Lia hates leaving things unfinished - something Jungkook knows a thing or two about.
Pairing: Jungkook x OC
Genre: Fluff, angst (but not the kind you think)
Rating: 18+
Word Count: 5.4 K
Warnings: language, tattoos and needles, a lot of ambiguity
A/N: Writing for the OG couple after a long while. Highly recommended reading (or re-reading) The Fifth Part 1 and 2, or at least Part 2 for sure. Contains a lot of references to the past. Takes place post-military enlistment, a few months after Honey.
Tagging: @bbl32 @ggukkieland @bangtannoonalvg @pb-n-juju @juciu @jeoncookie-bts @quarter-life-crisis2 @dreaming-with-happiness @meirkive @kflixnet (italics cannot be tagged. If you want to be added to the taglist, drop a comment or ask)
Listen to: "suspicious minds" by elvis presley
jungkook masterlist | main masterlist
It’s only seven am, but Lia’s focus has already been stolen.
Clutching a cup of hot coffee and dressed in nothing but Jungkook’s t-shirt, she leans against the kitchen doorway of his new apartment, pensively surveying the last remaining boxes that need to be unpacked. They aren’t too big; all the major work was done yesterday, including unwrapping, decorating and cleaning up. The three cartons left in the corner of the living room, one of them marked Fragile, can’t take too much time or effort.
But Lia can’t handle things left unfinished.
Draining her cup, she places it on the kitchen mantle and retrieves a pair of scissors, getting to work. The first box is living room utilities; a key holder, fridge magnets, a few chargers. She moves them all to their correct locations, trying to make as little noise as possible so as to not wake Jungkook.
A lot of the heavy lifting yesterday had been done by him; even though he’d seemed to enjoy it, he’d been exhausted by the end of the night. As determined as he’d still been, by the end Lia could tell his energy was declining, especially as his hints to get her to move in with him began becoming less and less subtle.
She’s rummaging through the second box, filled mostly with other knick knacks, when Jungkook emerges from the bedroom, squinting sleepily and pulling on a t-shirt.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, voice thick with sleep. He clears his throat.
“It’s no problem,” she replies absently, glancing up at him. “There’s coffee in the machine.”
The sound of his feet padding into the kitchen fades away slightly as she continues unpacking. The second box has only the dregs of a bachelor’s past in it, including a remote that seems to belong to nothing and a half-empty box of condoms. Deciding to let Jungkook deal with it, she reaches for the last box just as he joins her on the floor.
“Okay, I don’t know where to place these,” she tells him, gesturing to the carefully bubble-wrapped photo frames. “I mean, I can try, but -” She scans the entertainment unit around the television, noting space for at least eight or ten frames. “This seems like something you should decide.”
“You can, too,” he offers, picking out a frame and unwrapping it. “Half the pictures are of you,” he points out, flashing her a toothy grin.
“They’re with me, not of me,” she corrects him, even as she takes the frame from him and admires the picture. It’s of them seated on the edge of a go-kart, in racing overalls and with breathless grins. “This was a fun day.”
“Yeah. The cars were faster than I expected.” Jungkook is quiet for a moment before placing the picture down and tilting his head towards the box. “How many are there in total? I’m not even sure all of them will fit.”
“Sure they will.” Lia drags the box closer and they begin unwrapping the pictures one by one, the memories making them chuckle occasionally. Despite the fact that a large number of them don’t include her, it’s strangely endearing to view glimpses of Jungkook’s youth, his friends and his success.
“This one should go right in the middle,” he decides, holding up a framed picture of the day he’d taken Lia home to meet his parents for the first time. Jungkook had dragged her to the centre of the group, his parents on either side of them, and his brother behind them right after he’d set the timer on the camera.
“It’s cute,” she agrees, “but shouldn’t you put this one up there, too?” she asks, holding up a picture of him with his group members. “Wasn’t this your first award?”
“Oh, yeah…”
“There’s probably space for both.”
“What about this one, though? This was in Wembley…”
They continue debating between what must be at least fifteen frames, eventually standing up to start arranging them on the shelf.
“Wait, you want to do them all now?” he asks a bit incredulously, eyes wide.
“It’s not that many, Kook,” she tells him, patting his shoulder encouragingly. “We’ve unpacked everything else - do you really want just one box to lie around in the living room?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Really.”
“Let me say that differently: I don’t mind.”
Lia struggles to suppress a smile at his cheeky response and picks up another handful of frames from the box, moving to the shelf. “You got me. I don’t like loose ends. Now can we do this? Come on, you’ve always said you wanted one of these in your living room,” she reminds him. “You finally have it.”
Jungkook sighs dramatically but joins her, for she’s not wrong, and picks up a picture of himself and Namjoon at the United Nations. “Okay, let’s see…” Filled with concentration, he scours the shelf and finally picks a spot near the top. “There,” he says, carefully placing it at an angle and turning around with a flourish. “Okay, what’s next?”
She chuckles and hands him a picture of BTS on stage, and they get back to work. Eight more carefully arranged pictures later, both of them stand back to admire their handiwork.
Lia nudges his side gently. “It looks good, don’t you think?”
“It does… but I’d imagined a lot more pictures, to be honest.” He looks down at her inquiringly. “We have more, right?”
“At least ten,” she assures him. “Any particular events you want to put up? People or birthdays or anything…?” She rummages through the box and retrieves a few more frames, moving to arrange them on the sofa so they can both look at them.
“This one for sure,” says Jungkook after a moment, pointing at a picture of himself and a couple of his band members. “It was after Coachella - such a fun night. This one, with you in Incheon,” he adds, like it’s obvious. “This one, backstage.”
“Was it a special concert?”
“No, but I think I look good in it,” he admits sheepishly. “Or is that too conceited? You know what, forget I said -”
“I agree, completely,” she interrupts him seriously, swiping the picture up from under his nose and placing it next to a frame of Jungkook with Seokjin. She pauses at the sight of her boyfriend in the first one, looking dapper in a suit at the engagement party she’d attended as his date. In the second, Jungkook’s hair is thick and lush, falling onto his forehead with ease, his face shiny and alight with post-concert adrenaline. “Looks good, no?”
Jungkook grins. “If you insist. What about those?”
Lia takes stock of the remaining. “This one is nice… oh, this one is, too - but it might become repetitive… why do you have so many pictures with Namjoon? Okay, wait - this one, for sure. Oh - and this group picture.” She hands half of them to Jungkook and starts arranging the rest.
“Perfect.”
At his proclamation, both of them step back again to survey their progress. “Looks great, babe. We can get rid of the box and finally clear -” She breaks off when she sees a few frames still in the box. “Wait, what about these?”
“No more space.”
Lia frowns. “Huh,” she utters softly, tucking her hair behind her ears and reaching for the pictures. One is of Jungkook and Bang PD, but there’s already another one of them on the shelf, so she lets it go. The second is a slightly unfocused one of him at dinner with a few friends, while the third is the group picture she’d handed to him a couple of minutes ago.
She holds it up to show him. “You’re not putting this up?”
“What?” He glances at the picture and shakes his head. “No… it’s really crowded and you can’t see anyone in it. Besides, it’s not even a special event,” he adds.
She looks back down at it. It’s clearly taken at someone’s house - and at a party, judging by the attire. There are definitely a lot of people, but crowded might be a bit of an overstatement. There are about ten or twelve people at most, some sitting on a sofa and the rest standing behind it, almost everyone clutching glasses with varying levels of drink and smiling into the camera.
Even through the motionless image, the air of mild intoxication and friendship and fun is palpable. Almost all the members of BTS are in the picture, but the rest are a mixture of unfamiliar boys and girls, most of whom Lia doesn’t think she’s ever met. Jungkook is towards the side of the sofa, looking younger than she’s ever known him, with his friend Mingyu on one side and a girl on the other, perched on the arm of the couch.
Lia’s gaze lingers on Jungkook; this picture is pre-military, clearly, before the group went on hiatus to enlist. His eyes are shining, his hair thick and long, the lip ring glinting in the dim light. She spots various members of BTS; Jimin’s infectious smile, Namjoon’s dimple, Taehyung’s arrogantly handsome expression. All the other pictures with the group members on the shelf are at events - tours, shoots, engagements, the White House. This one is the most candid - the only candid one.
She bites her lip; she knows reuniting for a comeback wasn’t the cakewalk Jungkook tried to pass it off as. From the snippets she’s picked up from him and the way her marketing team at Hybe has been working on it since before she and Jungkook even met, it’s been clear that the members have been approaching it with different states of mind - and it’s no surprise that Jungkook might be struggling with it the most.
She watches him saunter into the kitchen and duck behind the fridge door. She’d never wanted to push him, especially about a part of his life she didn’t really know, but maybe that wasn’t the right way to go about it.
“Maybe we can fit it next to the one of you and Namjoon at the UN,” she suggests. “There’s space there. Or we can replace the one of you and your boxing instructor?”
“I like that one,” replies Jungkook without looking up, now busy assembling breakfast. “Do you want ham?”
“Sure, thanks,” she says absently. Glancing down at the picture again, she shakes her head slightly. It looks like a still from a movie. “It’s a really nice picture, Kook.”
“They’re all nice pictures, but something or the other would get cut,” he says reasonably. “These three are the least nice ones, I guess.”
“It was nice enough to get framed,” she points out. She knows she’s being persistent but it’s most unlike Jungkook to deliberately exclude a picture with his friends, especially the members of BTS. “Even the colour palette would look great with the rest. I think you should consider it.”
Jungkook sucks a bit of sauce off the tip of his finger. “It’s my shelf,” he says simply.
There’s a line, a line beyond which she’s sure her sweet and patient boyfriend can snap. Lia doesn’t think she’s there yet but a part of her is curious to see how far she can take this - and how concerning the situation is.
“Jungkook,” she begins, her tone gentler than before, “is something wrong? Because I thought everything was starting to go back to normal.”
He pauses before sighing softly. “You’re right,” he says finally, looking up but not quite meeting her eyes. “Everything’s okay now. You should put up that picture.” He gives her a small smile and goes back to the sandwiches.
Lia obliges, but something continues nagging at her. Jungkook is an open book, but this topic feels so out of reach to her that she can’t even begin to know where to start. As their comeback rehearsals and studio sessions have increased in frequency, he’s started to reach home later and later, looking more relieved and happy each time. She wonders if it’s still not enough for him, if something has changed so irreversibly that things aren’t bad - they’re just different.
But there are other things to do today.
“This might be the coolest thing we’ve done together,” says Jungkook excitedly. He slows the car, searching for a parking spot. When Lia doesn’t answer, he frowns. “You don’t agree?”
She winces. “I don’t think it’s the coolest.”
“Can you name a cooler thing we’ve done?”
“I can name, like, twenty.”
Jungkook huffs. “Do you really not want to do this?” he whines, his shoulders slumping.
“Of course, I do,” she answers immediately, squeezing his arm, her fingers pale against his dark tattoo sleeve. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Are you sure? Because it’s really not a big deal, we don’t have to -”
“I know that, Kook,” she interrupts him patiently. “I want to, I promise. I mean, it was kind of my idea,” she adds.
“What?” He glances at her incredulously. “I suggested couple tattoos, like, one month after we started dating.”
“Yeah, that probably wasn’t the best strategy,” she mutters wryly. “But, I meant, the design of the tattoos was my idea.”
“That’s true,” he allows. “And it’s a nice design. Very…” He breathes in dramatically. “Very us. Our core. A lot of history there,” he points out, grinning.
“And the least cheesy design I could think of.” She pinches his cheek as he slides into a parking spot, unable to resist. “Also one where if we break up, mine won’t look strange.”
“Wow, way to ruin it, Lee-lee,” he mutters, scowling as he switches off the car. “That’s it - we’re switching. I’m getting the basketball, you’re getting the basket.”
“What? Absolutely not,” argues Lia as she climbs out of the car. “I’m the one who came up with it; I’m getting the ball.”
“No, now I don’t want the basket. Why can’t you get it?”
“Because it’ll make no sense, an empty basket,” she points out, walking alongside him. “You have enough tattoos that it won’t stand out. Oh, and also - I actually play basketball?”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“That’s tough, Jeon,” she says shortly, patting him on the shoulder as they climb the stairs to the entrance of the tattoo parlour. “But we’ve already got the sketch and placement and everything done, and we’re sticking to the plan.”
“God, you’re bossy.”
“And you’re bratty,” she retorts, squeezing his shoulders and kissing his left one. “But I love you anyway.”
“Yeah?” Jungkook grins as they enter the reception, trailing slightly behind her. The low hum of the air conditioner takes over from the traffic outside as he follows Lia to the desk, keeping barely an inch of distance between their bodies and leaning over her shoulder. “You mean that?”
“Sure.”
“God, I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he mutters, pulling out his wallet for his ID and placing it next to hers, flashing a smile at the receptionist. “Fine, I’ll get the basket.”
He pinches her waist gently and she gasps in surprise, swatting his hand away. “Good. Because we’ve pushed this appointment enough times and I just want it to be done. I hate that it’s just unfinished and incomplete and just hanging there, waiting for us to get on with it.”
“Huh.” Jungkook is quiet for a moment. “What if the artist isn’t available today?”
“Then I will physically pick up the tattoo gun and draw the tattoos on us.”
“You’d really draw a tattoo on me? You? I mean, I love you,” he quickly backtracks, “but… you?”
“Exactly,” she says as they walk inside together. “So you better hope he’s in today or you’re going to end up having my artwork on your skin forever.”
“Point taken.”
Fortunately for them, not only is the artist available, but he’s prepped and ready to go. Two reclining chairs have been placed next to each other, the tattoo guns are plugged in and kept on the table, sterilised needles still in the packets, and a tray with small bottles of water.
“Ah, my favourite customer is here,” he greets, his lined face lighting up when he sees Jungkook. “And my second favourite customer by association,” he says to Lia, chortling at his own joke as they bow slightly to each other.
“Thank you for making the time,” she says, while Jungkook genially hugs him.
“Of course, of course. Ah, this is Eunbi,” he remembers, turning slightly and gesturing to a young woman who steps out of the staff room, “my apprentice.”
Eunbi gives them a small smile, smoothing her short blond hair self-consciously. The roots have begun to darken but it gives her a nice, rustic look.
They get settled after that, Lia and Jungkook on one chair each, while Eunbi and her boss take their seats on revolving stools, sketch pens in hand and tattoo guns on standby.
“It’s a really cute idea,” says Eunbi, carefully drawing the basketball on the inside of Lia’s wrist. “Jungkook oppa, you’re getting the basket?”
“That’s right.” He takes Lia’s free right hand from beside him and squeezes it. “I’m taking one for the team,” he says dramatically.
She rolls her eyes but squeezes his hand back anyway. “You’re the one who wanted couple tattoos. If anything, I’m taking one for the team.”
“Same difference.”
“Why basketball?” The tattoo artist, who Lia realises has yet to mention his name, peers at them from above his dark glasses. “Is it some new meme I’m not aware of?”
“Oh, no, it’s not a meme,” says Jungkook quickly. “We met while playing basketball.”
Eunbi looks up. “Really?”
“Playing is a bit of an overstatement,” says Lia.
“I didn’t know you played basketball,” says the tattoo artist skeptically to Jungkook. “Are you any good?”
“I’m getting better,” he mumbles, while Lia snorts.
“It’s true, he is,” she adds, grinning at Jungkook’s increasingly annoyed expression. “The first time was… not great. But he’s been practising since then.”
“Good on you, kid. You know, I used to play basketball in high school.”
“Really?” Jungkook turns to him excitedly. “Which position? Do you follow the NBA? I’ve started recently…”
Lia bites her lip as she watches him prattle on about his favourite team, about the last match he’d watched. It was one of the most endearing things he’d done: diving into her favourite sport with interest, learning the rules, watching the matches and following the players on social media.
She squeezes his hand absently, also glad that his strange mood from earlier seems to have disappeared. He’s cheery as ever, all the way from flirting his way into her shower, to proclaiming how he was willing to get the basket tattooed to prove how, much like the basketball filled the basket, she filled him with happiness.
Then she’d groaned and cringed while he’d laughed his arse off, turning the volume up in the car and singing along angelically to whatever song was playing.
“Lia.” Jungkook tugs at her hand. “You want to take this one?”
“Huh?” She turns apologetically to Eunbi. “Sorry, what was the question?”
“Oh, I - I asked how you two met.”
“Oh.” Lia glances at Jungkook, pursing her lips in amusement. “I think you should probably take this, no?”
He shakes his head and mock-glares at her. “Uh, okay. Well, long story short: we went on a date, I was a bit of a douche, but she decided to give me a second chance anyway.” Despite the humour of the situation, the relief in his voice is audible.
Heart warm, she nods. “He worked pretty damn hard for it.”
Jungkook nods. “Basketballs to the face notwithstanding.”
“Aw, that’s cute. And so are the tattoos,” adds Eunbi. “I wish my boyfriend would agree to one - but he’s terrified of needles.”
“I was terrified of basketballs for a good week there,” notes Jungkook. “But you’ve got to face your fears to overcome them,” he says wisely.
“You’re right. I wish he’d been a douche on our first date,” she jokes, “then I could’ve asked him to get a tattoo for me.”
“He’d have to be a really big douche for that,” says the tattoo artist, before lightly smacking Jungkook on the shoulder and ignoring his gasp. “And why were you a douche, huh?”
“I wasn’t - I didn’t -“
“His friend set him up and he was in a bad mood,” supplies Lia, reaching over and pinching her boyfriend’s cheek as he scowls.
“A really bad mood,” he clarifies. “Because he kept texting during dinner and asking for updates - I could’ve hit him, I swear.”
The tattoo artist responds reproachfully to Jungkook, but Lia barely hears it, for it brings back another memory she doesn’t dwell on too often.
She likes video games.
It’s the only aspect of their history she would rather ignore. Everything else - his apology, his attempts at getting to know her better, riding home on his motorbike in the rain, basketball with Dal - makes her reminisce with fondness, more often than not leading to an increased amount of affection for her boyfriend for the rest of the day. This one part of it, though? Not ideal.
She feels Jungkook clutch her hand tighter then, and she realises his tattoo has begun, the hum of the gun cutting through her thoughts. She squeezes his hand back automatically, endeared and exasperated at his wincing despite hundreds of tattoos, and pushes the unwanted detail of their history aside.
“I love it,” he says later, once they’re almost back at his house. He peels off the plastic from his shoulder a little bit before hissing.
“Don’t take it off yet, come on,” she tells him, pressing it back into place and stroking the reddened area. “It’s still fresh. And it does look great,” she acknowledges, lightly tracing the basket that’s wedged peacefully between two bigger tattoos on his tricep. “Do you think the fans will notice a new tattoo?”
“Doubt it. Or maybe they will,” he says after a moment. “You never know. They won’t be able to tell it’s about you, though,” he assures her.
“I’m sure,” she agrees, observing her own basketball tattoo. It hurt more than she expected but somehow, having Jungkook there doing the same thing helped. She won’t admit it to him without some eye-rolling, but she finds herself happy with their decision to get the tattoos after all.
“Do you want to get lunch?” Jungkook asks, unlocking the door and gently steering her in first.
“I’m good with ramen, honestly,” she says, taking off her shoes and padding through the living room. “Could you get a couple packets from the pantry? I’ll put the water on.”
Jungkook nods and disappears, softly humming a tune. Lia glances at the entertainment unit, his Playstation and neatly stacked DVDs, mildly satisfied that after an entire weekend’s worth of work, his apartment is properly set up.
Her gaze falls on the pictures, scanning Jungkook’s handsome face in each, before landing on the same group picture they’d argued about this morning.
And something falls into place.
“Got it!” When Jungkook returns a few minutes later, arms laden with no less than four packets of ramen, it’s to see Lia standing in the middle of the carpet, one of the photo frames in her hands. Even from here, he can tell exactly which picture it is.
She doesn’t look up at his entrance, and he takes the opportunity to dump the ramen on the kitchen island and slowly approach her.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Lia seems to tear her eyes from the picture to meet his eyes. To his relief, she doesn’t look angry or hurt. She simply looks curious - and confused. “This is - this is her.”
Jungkook bites his lip. “What are you talking about?”
She turns the picture towards him. “The girl you had a crush on. Back then.” She deliberately doesn’t elaborate and for that he is thankful. “This is her,” she says, pointing and tapping her finger on the glass.
It’s barely a question. After a moment, he nods. “Yeah, it is.”
She raises her eyebrows in surprise, as though she wasn’t expecting him to admit it so quickly. “And this is clearly the boyfriend,” she mutters as she gazes at the frozen faces, seemingly to herself, not being able to tell how his heart jerks. She looks up at his again, frowning. “Is that why you didn’t want to put this picture up? Because she’s in it, too?”
Jungkook sighs, his shoulders slumping. His gaze briefly falls on the picture, on her face, and he immediately looks away. “It didn’t feel right,” he confesses. “It felt like I would be… I don’t know. Disrespecting you.” He shakes his head and looks at the floor. “Especially if… someday, you decide to…” Here, he trails off, unable to find the nerve to finish his sentence.
“But… why?” Lia still just sounds confused. “She was just a friend, right? And you said it was over.”
“She was. And it is.” He shrugs, ignoring the old, dull pang in his chest. “I haven’t seen or spoken to her in years.”
“Did you think I would be mad?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles, now wishing he’d just agreed to put the picture up when she’d handed it to him in the morning. This isn’t a topic he ever wanted to surface, and not with her. “When I first told you, you seemed… kind of mad. And then a bit sad.” He shakes his head. “You’re the most important thing to me now. I don’t want to ruin it.”
After a moment, he hears her sigh. He knows this sigh; it’s the same one he’d heard when he’d confessed to her that he didn’t know a lick of basketball, when his meticulously-planned drive-in movie date had gone to shit, when he’d inadvertently revealed that he was afraid she’d think he was too young for her.
“Kook…” She comes up to him, placing the frame on the coffee table on the way. Gently holding his hand, she tilts her head to meet his eyes. “I can’t be mad at you for something that happened before we met. Everyone has a past.”
“Yeah, but I’ve told you about this particular past before,” he reminds her, feeling wretched. “And it didn’t go very well.”
“Well… yeah. It didn’t come up in the best way, I guess,” she murmurs, and he knows she’s remembering their conversation in the Hybe copy room. “But now that we’ve moved past that… I can’t hold you to a crush you had years ago. Especially when it seems like you were friends,” she adds quietly.
Jungkook’s chest starts to feel heavy again. “You just… you sounded kind of mad. I think. Maybe I was imagining it,” he mutters, shrugging tiredly.
“I wasn’t mad… I guess I was a little thrown,” she admits. “I mean, I know you said she had a boyfriend. I just didn’t think it was one of the other members.”
He says nothing. He appreciates her understanding, although he should’ve always expected her to rise above petty jealousy or insecurity. It occurs to him for the hundredth time how lucky he is to have her; how, in the midst of a truly despondent time in his life, she’d been the beacon of light he’d been fortunate enough to stumble upon. He hadn’t looked back since.
But the moment his gaze lands on the picture discarded behind her, his heart creeps up his throat again.
“Is that what it is?” Her voice brings him back. “Do you feel guilty because she was dating your friend?”
For starters. There’s no point, he realises. As mature and understanding as Lia is, Jungkook doesn’t think he can find the words or the courage to relive his regrets, the ones that still catch him unawares when he hears her name in passing, or when he goes to rehearsal and inadvertently locks eyes with his hyung.
“Kind of.”
Lia nods slowly. “It’s okay, Jungkook,” she murmurs, tugging at his hand again. “No one can control how they feel.”
Jungkook can’t bring himself to respond to that. He makes a non-committal sound, his gaze flickering to the ground.
“You told me you were over her.”
“And I meant it.”
She squeezes his hand. “Good.”
He wills the heaviness in his chest to go away, and forces a small smile onto his face. “Sorry.”
She returns it, holding his gaze before reaching up and pressing a quick kiss to his mouth. “We don’t have to put it up,” she reminds him.
But Jungkook shakes his head. “No, you’re right. It is a nice picture,” he allows, picking it up. “And it was a long time ago.”
Apparently satisfied, Lia smiles back radiantly. “And you look very hot in it.”
“If only you’d known me then.”
“You would’ve learnt to play basketball a lot sooner,” she agrees, chuckling.
“So you forgive me?” he asks after a moment.
Lia’s smile fades slightly. “For having a crush?” she asks, reaching up and touches his forehead with hers. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Not even to your friend,” she adds. “I mean, nothing happened, right?”
She’s beautiful. A beacon of light in a period of darkness he couldn’t see beyond. She saved him, more than she would know.
Jungkook brushes a lock of hair off her forehead. “No,” he lies.
After lunch, Jungkook volunteers to clean up the living room and kitchen while Lia goes to do the laundry. Collecting their clothes from his bedroom, she chucks them in the washing machine, loading it with detergent and softener and turning it on.
She stops by the pantry on her way back, looking for a chocolate bar or any other candy, something to officially clear the air with Jungkook. She searches along the shelves, passing by ramen, boxes of Caffetta coffee, and a lot of protein powder - only to come to the conclusion that his house is hopelessly understocked with sugar.
“We can get low fat,” she murmurs to herself, preempting his response as she makes her way back to the living room. She stops abruptly at the doorway when she spots him, his back tilted towards her, framed picture in hand.
Lia’s heartbeat feels louder for a moment. She takes a quick step back behind the doorway; it’s unnecessary, though, for his focus is on something else entirely.
She ought to have seen it before. It wasn’t until they returned to Jungkook’s apartment that she even noticed the most important detail in the picture. Mingyu sat to Jungkook’s right while a girl sat to his left, perched on the arm of the sofa. One hand hung loosely around Jungkook’s shoulder, so casually, so harmlessly, that Lia hadn’t even registered it this morning.
On her other side was her boyfriend, clearly. The way she leaned into him, the way his arm rested confidently on her waist, his fingers brushing the bare skin between her light blue jeans and striped crop top, the way their bodies fit perfectly - it looked like they’d known each other forever. There was no doubt as to who he was, especially since he was someone Lia had definitely met.
In light of how intensely close the couple looked, the girl’s hand around Jungkook’s shoulder seemed unimportant. It was almost like a habit, or convenience, her dark nail paint and the small cigarette stub between her fingers looking like they belonged there.
It’s her, isn’t it? There was no one else in the picture it could be, not any of the other handful of girls in the same frame. It’s her; the one who likes video games, the one with a boyfriend - the boyfriend who Lia now knows is one of Jungkook’s best friends, a big brother he loves.
She bites her lip, continuing to watch him until his shoulders relax slightly and he places the photograph back on the shelf. He gathers the empty bowls on the centre table and heads towards the kitchen, and Lia feels the seed of uneasiness sink in her stomach.
She can believe he’s over her. She can believe it’s in the past, that Jungkook is with her in the present.
Whatever it is, though - it’s definitely not finished.
—
Thank you for reading. Don't forget to leave a review :)
celebrates love, exploration and joy of literature all mixed up with South Asian Heritage. It is centered around reading poetry, making perfumes, decorating hands with henna, painting, sewing.
Note: this aesthetic is mainly based on Bengali culture. I am just really emo today and I couldn't help but make something that I could relate to! I hope you like it!
The first picture in the second row is a poem by the Rabindranath Tagore.
The note in the second picture of the first column reads- "ek sohorei othocho dekha hobena." It means:- (we are) in the same city but we won't/can't meet (or we won't be able to see each other). Hdkzkmzjxjs idk why but it sounds sadder in Bengali than in English ( ⚈̥̥̥̥̥́⌢⚈̥̥̥̥̥̀)
the first small sticker at the left side means:- "In my opinion, there's no one like you." It's actually a line from a song that I really adore! I will link it here!
definition taken from aesthetics.fandom.com
*click for better resolution*
BTS Academia Aesthetic Series
<<scroll down the link above to find the series masterlist>>
❝ If Jeongguk were asked about any moment of you captured in frame? He'd admit, without a shadow of doubt, that you were beautiful. ❞
・❥ pairing ・ visual arts major!jeongguk x dance major!reader
・❥ genre ・strangers to lovers ; fluff ・
・❥ rating ・ 18+ ; for the series. PG for this snippet ・
・❥ word count ・385・
・❥ content ・no warnings applicable ・
little note: just a little disclaimer, things are subject to change for the final draft. these blurbs act as a chance for me write potential ideas into scenes and discover how i want to piece things together, so please excuse any spelling and grammatical errors. i would really appreciate it if you shared your thoughts with me if you have the chance ♡︎
It wasn’t Jeongguk's ideal setting.
The walls of the studio were a muted grey and the marley floors were even darker. A colour closer to black than anything else. It absorbed all the light that came from the single Edison bulb fixture dangling overhead and in turn everything was dim. From where he was standing he couldn't pinpoint any details, not the corners of the walls, nor the signs of exertion he's sure anyone who'd move in the same calibre as you had for the past hour would have. Nothing but your silhouette in the foreground as its shadow danced in the background. There wasn't much depth, so it was less than ideal...but it was something. Something he could work with and he brought the camera to his face once more.
Finding the viewfinder with practised ease, Jeongguk's lips parted in concentration as his tongue mindlessly fiddled with the ring that adorns it. Shallow breaths of air escaped him as he sharpened the image, while changing his angle, keeping the visual composition he had in mind and there—
He saw effort.
The rawness of the human form as it moved on its own accord, every muscle in the body working in tandem to form shapes and lines with such precision and virtuosity. One could even say he was witnessing the pursuit of perfection before his very eyes. The resiliency of a dancer on display. Exposed.
And he—*Click*—captured it.
The moment was gone just as quickly as it arrived.
Jeongguk seldom doubted his abilities in photography, but there’s an urgency behind his actions. He observed you for a fraction of a second with his naked eye, catching glimpses of you seemingly lost in your own world as you push and pull against gravity, before he rushed to look at the LCD to see the final shot.
Creeping onto his face was a smile. One that threatened to reveal his bunny teeth and he fought hard against it. It’s strongly held back by the sense of professionalism he feels that he must maintain in fear that you had seen. But if in that moment he were asked he’d admit, without a shadow of doubt, that you were beautiful.
(He was reminded, yet again, that pictures were not taken but made).
.
.
.
scenario from 'through your lens' of the black swan collection ; masterlist ; lost letters
⤷ if you enjoyed this drabble, don’t hesitate to reblog, comment or send an ask. i’d love to hear your thoughts !! it’d mean a lot to me. love always,
Summary: Lia hates leaving things unfinished - something Jungkook knows a thing or two about.
Pairing: Jungkook x OC
Genre: Fluff, angst (but not the kind you think)
Rating: 18+
Word Count: 5.4 K
Warnings: language, tattoos and needles, a lot of ambiguity
A/N: Writing for the OG couple after a long while. Highly recommended reading (or re-reading) The Fifth Part 1 and 2, or at least Part 2 for sure. Contains a lot of references to the past. Takes place post-military enlistment, a few months after Honey.
Tagging: @bbl32 @ggukkieland @bangtannoonalvg @pb-n-juju @juciu @jeoncookie-bts @quarter-life-crisis2 @dreaming-with-happiness @meirkive @kflixnet (italics cannot be tagged. If you want to be added to the taglist, drop a comment or ask)
Listen to: "suspicious minds" by elvis presley
jungkook masterlist | main masterlist
It’s only seven am, but Lia’s focus has already been stolen.
Clutching a cup of hot coffee and dressed in nothing but Jungkook’s t-shirt, she leans against the kitchen doorway of his new apartment, pensively surveying the last remaining boxes that need to be unpacked. They aren’t too big; all the major work was done yesterday, including unwrapping, decorating and cleaning up. The three cartons left in the corner of the living room, one of them marked Fragile, can’t take too much time or effort.
But Lia can’t handle things left unfinished.
Draining her cup, she places it on the kitchen mantle and retrieves a pair of scissors, getting to work. The first box is living room utilities; a key holder, fridge magnets, a few chargers. She moves them all to their correct locations, trying to make as little noise as possible so as to not wake Jungkook.
A lot of the heavy lifting yesterday had been done by him; even though he’d seemed to enjoy it, he’d been exhausted by the end of the night. As determined as he’d still been, by the end Lia could tell his energy was declining, especially as his hints to get her to move in with him began becoming less and less subtle.
She’s rummaging through the second box, filled mostly with other knick knacks, when Jungkook emerges from the bedroom, squinting sleepily and pulling on a t-shirt.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, voice thick with sleep. He clears his throat.
“It’s no problem,” she replies absently, glancing up at him. “There’s coffee in the machine.”
The sound of his feet padding into the kitchen fades away slightly as she continues unpacking. The second box has only the dregs of a bachelor’s past in it, including a remote that seems to belong to nothing and a half-empty box of condoms. Deciding to let Jungkook deal with it, she reaches for the last box just as he joins her on the floor.
“Okay, I don’t know where to place these,” she tells him, gesturing to the carefully bubble-wrapped photo frames. “I mean, I can try, but -” She scans the entertainment unit around the television, noting space for at least eight or ten frames. “This seems like something you should decide.”
“You can, too,” he offers, picking out a frame and unwrapping it. “Half the pictures are of you,” he points out, flashing her a toothy grin.
“They’re with me, not of me,” she corrects him, even as she takes the frame from him and admires the picture. It’s of them seated on the edge of a go-kart, in racing overalls and with breathless grins. “This was a fun day.”
“Yeah. The cars were faster than I expected.” Jungkook is quiet for a moment before placing the picture down and tilting his head towards the box. “How many are there in total? I’m not even sure all of them will fit.”
“Sure they will.” Lia drags the box closer and they begin unwrapping the pictures one by one, the memories making them chuckle occasionally. Despite the fact that a large number of them don’t include her, it’s strangely endearing to view glimpses of Jungkook’s youth, his friends and his success.
“This one should go right in the middle,” he decides, holding up a framed picture of the day he’d taken Lia home to meet his parents for the first time. Jungkook had dragged her to the centre of the group, his parents on either side of them, and his brother behind them right after he’d set the timer on the camera.
“It’s cute,” she agrees, “but shouldn’t you put this one up there, too?” she asks, holding up a picture of him with his group members. “Wasn’t this your first award?”
“Oh, yeah…”
“There’s probably space for both.”
“What about this one, though? This was in Wembley…”
They continue debating between what must be at least fifteen frames, eventually standing up to start arranging them on the shelf.
“Wait, you want to do them all now?” he asks a bit incredulously, eyes wide.
“It’s not that many, Kook,” she tells him, patting his shoulder encouragingly. “We’ve unpacked everything else - do you really want just one box to lie around in the living room?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Really.”
“Let me say that differently: I don’t mind.”
Lia struggles to suppress a smile at his cheeky response and picks up another handful of frames from the box, moving to the shelf. “You got me. I don’t like loose ends. Now can we do this? Come on, you’ve always said you wanted one of these in your living room,” she reminds him. “You finally have it.”
Jungkook sighs dramatically but joins her, for she’s not wrong, and picks up a picture of himself and Namjoon at the United Nations. “Okay, let’s see…” Filled with concentration, he scours the shelf and finally picks a spot near the top. “There,” he says, carefully placing it at an angle and turning around with a flourish. “Okay, what’s next?”
She chuckles and hands him a picture of BTS on stage, and they get back to work. Eight more carefully arranged pictures later, both of them stand back to admire their handiwork.
Lia nudges his side gently. “It looks good, don’t you think?”
“It does… but I’d imagined a lot more pictures, to be honest.” He looks down at her inquiringly. “We have more, right?”
“At least ten,” she assures him. “Any particular events you want to put up? People or birthdays or anything…?” She rummages through the box and retrieves a few more frames, moving to arrange them on the sofa so they can both look at them.
“This one for sure,” says Jungkook after a moment, pointing at a picture of himself and a couple of his band members. “It was after Coachella - such a fun night. This one, with you in Incheon,” he adds, like it’s obvious. “This one, backstage.”
“Was it a special concert?”
“No, but I think I look good in it,” he admits sheepishly. “Or is that too conceited? You know what, forget I said -”
“I agree, completely,” she interrupts him seriously, swiping the picture up from under his nose and placing it next to a frame of Jungkook with Seokjin. She pauses at the sight of her boyfriend in the first one, looking dapper in a suit at the engagement party she’d attended as his date. In the second, Jungkook’s hair is thick and lush, falling onto his forehead with ease, his face shiny and alight with post-concert adrenaline. “Looks good, no?”
Jungkook grins. “If you insist. What about those?”
Lia takes stock of the remaining. “This one is nice… oh, this one is, too - but it might become repetitive… why do you have so many pictures with Namjoon? Okay, wait - this one, for sure. Oh - and this group picture.” She hands half of them to Jungkook and starts arranging the rest.
“Perfect.”
At his proclamation, both of them step back again to survey their progress. “Looks great, babe. We can get rid of the box and finally clear -” She breaks off when she sees a few frames still in the box. “Wait, what about these?”
“No more space.”
Lia frowns. “Huh,” she utters softly, tucking her hair behind her ears and reaching for the pictures. One is of Jungkook and Bang PD, but there’s already another one of them on the shelf, so she lets it go. The second is a slightly unfocused one of him at dinner with a few friends, while the third is the group picture she’d handed to him a couple of minutes ago.
She holds it up to show him. “You’re not putting this up?”
“What?” He glances at the picture and shakes his head. “No… it’s really crowded and you can’t see anyone in it. Besides, it’s not even a special event,” he adds.
She looks back down at it. It’s clearly taken at someone’s house - and at a party, judging by the attire. There are definitely a lot of people, but crowded might be a bit of an overstatement. There are about ten or twelve people at most, some sitting on a sofa and the rest standing behind it, almost everyone clutching glasses with varying levels of drink and smiling into the camera.
Even through the motionless image, the air of mild intoxication and friendship and fun is palpable. Almost all the members of BTS are in the picture, but the rest are a mixture of unfamiliar boys and girls, most of whom Lia doesn’t think she’s ever met. Jungkook is towards the side of the sofa, looking younger than she’s ever known him, with his friend Mingyu on one side and a girl on the other, perched on the arm of the couch.
Lia’s gaze lingers on Jungkook; this picture is pre-military, clearly, before the group went on hiatus to enlist. His eyes are shining, his hair thick and long, the lip ring glinting in the dim light. She spots various members of BTS; Jimin’s infectious smile, Namjoon’s dimple, Taehyung’s arrogantly handsome expression. All the other pictures with the group members on the shelf are at events - tours, shoots, engagements, the White House. This one is the most candid - the only candid one.
She bites her lip; she knows reuniting for a comeback wasn’t the cakewalk Jungkook tried to pass it off as. From the snippets she’s picked up from him and the way her marketing team at Hybe has been working on it since before she and Jungkook even met, it’s been clear that the members have been approaching it with different states of mind - and it’s no surprise that Jungkook might be struggling with it the most.
She watches him saunter into the kitchen and duck behind the fridge door. She’d never wanted to push him, especially about a part of his life she didn’t really know, but maybe that wasn’t the right way to go about it.
“Maybe we can fit it next to the one of you and Namjoon at the UN,” she suggests. “There’s space there. Or we can replace the one of you and your boxing instructor?”
“I like that one,” replies Jungkook without looking up, now busy assembling breakfast. “Do you want ham?”
“Sure, thanks,” she says absently. Glancing down at the picture again, she shakes her head slightly. It looks like a still from a movie. “It’s a really nice picture, Kook.”
“They’re all nice pictures, but something or the other would get cut,” he says reasonably. “These three are the least nice ones, I guess.”
“It was nice enough to get framed,” she points out. She knows she’s being persistent but it’s most unlike Jungkook to deliberately exclude a picture with his friends, especially the members of BTS. “Even the colour palette would look great with the rest. I think you should consider it.”
Jungkook sucks a bit of sauce off the tip of his finger. “It’s my shelf,” he says simply.
There’s a line, a line beyond which she’s sure her sweet and patient boyfriend can snap. Lia doesn’t think she’s there yet but a part of her is curious to see how far she can take this - and how concerning the situation is.
“Jungkook,” she begins, her tone gentler than before, “is something wrong? Because I thought everything was starting to go back to normal.”
He pauses before sighing softly. “You’re right,” he says finally, looking up but not quite meeting her eyes. “Everything’s okay now. You should put up that picture.” He gives her a small smile and goes back to the sandwiches.
Lia obliges, but something continues nagging at her. Jungkook is an open book, but this topic feels so out of reach to her that she can’t even begin to know where to start. As their comeback rehearsals and studio sessions have increased in frequency, he’s started to reach home later and later, looking more relieved and happy each time. She wonders if it’s still not enough for him, if something has changed so irreversibly that things aren’t bad - they’re just different.
But there are other things to do today.
“This might be the coolest thing we’ve done together,” says Jungkook excitedly. He slows the car, searching for a parking spot. When Lia doesn’t answer, he frowns. “You don’t agree?”
She winces. “I don’t think it’s the coolest.”
“Can you name a cooler thing we’ve done?”
“I can name, like, twenty.”
Jungkook huffs. “Do you really not want to do this?” he whines, his shoulders slumping.
“Of course, I do,” she answers immediately, squeezing his arm, her fingers pale against his dark tattoo sleeve. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Are you sure? Because it’s really not a big deal, we don’t have to -”
“I know that, Kook,” she interrupts him patiently. “I want to, I promise. I mean, it was kind of my idea,” she adds.
“What?” He glances at her incredulously. “I suggested couple tattoos, like, one month after we started dating.”
“Yeah, that probably wasn’t the best strategy,” she mutters wryly. “But, I meant, the design of the tattoos was my idea.”
“That’s true,” he allows. “And it’s a nice design. Very…” He breathes in dramatically. “Very us. Our core. A lot of history there,” he points out, grinning.
“And the least cheesy design I could think of.” She pinches his cheek as he slides into a parking spot, unable to resist. “Also one where if we break up, mine won’t look strange.”
“Wow, way to ruin it, Lee-lee,” he mutters, scowling as he switches off the car. “That’s it - we’re switching. I’m getting the basketball, you’re getting the basket.”
“What? Absolutely not,” argues Lia as she climbs out of the car. “I’m the one who came up with it; I’m getting the ball.”
“No, now I don’t want the basket. Why can’t you get it?”
“Because it’ll make no sense, an empty basket,” she points out, walking alongside him. “You have enough tattoos that it won’t stand out. Oh, and also - I actually play basketball?”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“That’s tough, Jeon,” she says shortly, patting him on the shoulder as they climb the stairs to the entrance of the tattoo parlour. “But we’ve already got the sketch and placement and everything done, and we’re sticking to the plan.”
“God, you’re bossy.”
“And you’re bratty,” she retorts, squeezing his shoulders and kissing his left one. “But I love you anyway.”
“Yeah?” Jungkook grins as they enter the reception, trailing slightly behind her. The low hum of the air conditioner takes over from the traffic outside as he follows Lia to the desk, keeping barely an inch of distance between their bodies and leaning over her shoulder. “You mean that?”
“Sure.”
“God, I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he mutters, pulling out his wallet for his ID and placing it next to hers, flashing a smile at the receptionist. “Fine, I’ll get the basket.”
He pinches her waist gently and she gasps in surprise, swatting his hand away. “Good. Because we’ve pushed this appointment enough times and I just want it to be done. I hate that it’s just unfinished and incomplete and just hanging there, waiting for us to get on with it.”
“Huh.” Jungkook is quiet for a moment. “What if the artist isn’t available today?”
“Then I will physically pick up the tattoo gun and draw the tattoos on us.”
“You’d really draw a tattoo on me? You? I mean, I love you,” he quickly backtracks, “but… you?”
“Exactly,” she says as they walk inside together. “So you better hope he’s in today or you’re going to end up having my artwork on your skin forever.”
“Point taken.”
Fortunately for them, not only is the artist available, but he’s prepped and ready to go. Two reclining chairs have been placed next to each other, the tattoo guns are plugged in and kept on the table, sterilised needles still in the packets, and a tray with small bottles of water.
“Ah, my favourite customer is here,” he greets, his lined face lighting up when he sees Jungkook. “And my second favourite customer by association,” he says to Lia, chortling at his own joke as they bow slightly to each other.
“Thank you for making the time,” she says, while Jungkook genially hugs him.
“Of course, of course. Ah, this is Eunbi,” he remembers, turning slightly and gesturing to a young woman who steps out of the staff room, “my apprentice.”
Eunbi gives them a small smile, smoothing her short blond hair self-consciously. The roots have begun to darken but it gives her a nice, rustic look.
They get settled after that, Lia and Jungkook on one chair each, while Eunbi and her boss take their seats on revolving stools, sketch pens in hand and tattoo guns on standby.
“It’s a really cute idea,” says Eunbi, carefully drawing the basketball on the inside of Lia’s wrist. “Jungkook oppa, you’re getting the basket?”
“That’s right.” He takes Lia’s free right hand from beside him and squeezes it. “I’m taking one for the team,” he says dramatically.
She rolls her eyes but squeezes his hand back anyway. “You’re the one who wanted couple tattoos. If anything, I’m taking one for the team.”
“Same difference.”
“Why basketball?” The tattoo artist, who Lia realises has yet to mention his name, peers at them from above his dark glasses. “Is it some new meme I’m not aware of?”
“Oh, no, it’s not a meme,” says Jungkook quickly. “We met while playing basketball.”
Eunbi looks up. “Really?”
“Playing is a bit of an overstatement,” says Lia.
“I didn’t know you played basketball,” says the tattoo artist skeptically to Jungkook. “Are you any good?”
“I’m getting better,” he mumbles, while Lia snorts.
“It’s true, he is,” she adds, grinning at Jungkook’s increasingly annoyed expression. “The first time was… not great. But he’s been practising since then.”
“Good on you, kid. You know, I used to play basketball in high school.”
“Really?” Jungkook turns to him excitedly. “Which position? Do you follow the NBA? I’ve started recently…”
Lia bites her lip as she watches him prattle on about his favourite team, about the last match he’d watched. It was one of the most endearing things he’d done: diving into her favourite sport with interest, learning the rules, watching the matches and following the players on social media.
She squeezes his hand absently, also glad that his strange mood from earlier seems to have disappeared. He’s cheery as ever, all the way from flirting his way into her shower, to proclaiming how he was willing to get the basket tattooed to prove how, much like the basketball filled the basket, she filled him with happiness.
Then she’d groaned and cringed while he’d laughed his arse off, turning the volume up in the car and singing along angelically to whatever song was playing.
“Lia.” Jungkook tugs at her hand. “You want to take this one?”
“Huh?” She turns apologetically to Eunbi. “Sorry, what was the question?”
“Oh, I - I asked how you two met.”
“Oh.” Lia glances at Jungkook, pursing her lips in amusement. “I think you should probably take this, no?”
He shakes his head and mock-glares at her. “Uh, okay. Well, long story short: we went on a date, I was a bit of a douche, but she decided to give me a second chance anyway.” Despite the humour of the situation, the relief in his voice is audible.
Heart warm, she nods. “He worked pretty damn hard for it.”
Jungkook nods. “Basketballs to the face notwithstanding.”
“Aw, that’s cute. And so are the tattoos,” adds Eunbi. “I wish my boyfriend would agree to one - but he’s terrified of needles.”
“I was terrified of basketballs for a good week there,” notes Jungkook. “But you’ve got to face your fears to overcome them,” he says wisely.
“You’re right. I wish he’d been a douche on our first date,” she jokes, “then I could’ve asked him to get a tattoo for me.”
“He’d have to be a really big douche for that,” says the tattoo artist, before lightly smacking Jungkook on the shoulder and ignoring his gasp. “And why were you a douche, huh?”
“I wasn’t - I didn’t -“
“His friend set him up and he was in a bad mood,” supplies Lia, reaching over and pinching her boyfriend’s cheek as he scowls.
“A really bad mood,” he clarifies. “Because he kept texting during dinner and asking for updates - I could’ve hit him, I swear.”
The tattoo artist responds reproachfully to Jungkook, but Lia barely hears it, for it brings back another memory she doesn’t dwell on too often.
She likes video games.
It’s the only aspect of their history she would rather ignore. Everything else - his apology, his attempts at getting to know her better, riding home on his motorbike in the rain, basketball with Dal - makes her reminisce with fondness, more often than not leading to an increased amount of affection for her boyfriend for the rest of the day. This one part of it, though? Not ideal.
She feels Jungkook clutch her hand tighter then, and she realises his tattoo has begun, the hum of the gun cutting through her thoughts. She squeezes his hand back automatically, endeared and exasperated at his wincing despite hundreds of tattoos, and pushes the unwanted detail of their history aside.
“I love it,” he says later, once they’re almost back at his house. He peels off the plastic from his shoulder a little bit before hissing.
“Don’t take it off yet, come on,” she tells him, pressing it back into place and stroking the reddened area. “It’s still fresh. And it does look great,” she acknowledges, lightly tracing the basket that’s wedged peacefully between two bigger tattoos on his tricep. “Do you think the fans will notice a new tattoo?”
“Doubt it. Or maybe they will,” he says after a moment. “You never know. They won’t be able to tell it’s about you, though,” he assures her.
“I’m sure,” she agrees, observing her own basketball tattoo. It hurt more than she expected but somehow, having Jungkook there doing the same thing helped. She won’t admit it to him without some eye-rolling, but she finds herself happy with their decision to get the tattoos after all.
“Do you want to get lunch?” Jungkook asks, unlocking the door and gently steering her in first.
“I’m good with ramen, honestly,” she says, taking off her shoes and padding through the living room. “Could you get a couple packets from the pantry? I’ll put the water on.”
Jungkook nods and disappears, softly humming a tune. Lia glances at the entertainment unit, his Playstation and neatly stacked DVDs, mildly satisfied that after an entire weekend’s worth of work, his apartment is properly set up.
Her gaze falls on the pictures, scanning Jungkook’s handsome face in each, before landing on the same group picture they’d argued about this morning.
And something falls into place.
“Got it!” When Jungkook returns a few minutes later, arms laden with no less than four packets of ramen, it’s to see Lia standing in the middle of the carpet, one of the photo frames in her hands. Even from here, he can tell exactly which picture it is.
She doesn’t look up at his entrance, and he takes the opportunity to dump the ramen on the kitchen island and slowly approach her.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Lia seems to tear her eyes from the picture to meet his eyes. To his relief, she doesn’t look angry or hurt. She simply looks curious - and confused. “This is - this is her.”
Jungkook bites his lip. “What are you talking about?”
She turns the picture towards him. “The girl you had a crush on. Back then.” She deliberately doesn’t elaborate and for that he is thankful. “This is her,” she says, pointing and tapping her finger on the glass.
It’s barely a question. After a moment, he nods. “Yeah, it is.”
She raises her eyebrows in surprise, as though she wasn’t expecting him to admit it so quickly. “And this is clearly the boyfriend,” she mutters as she gazes at the frozen faces, seemingly to herself, not being able to tell how his heart jerks. She looks up at his again, frowning. “Is that why you didn’t want to put this picture up? Because she’s in it, too?”
Jungkook sighs, his shoulders slumping. His gaze briefly falls on the picture, on her face, and he immediately looks away. “It didn’t feel right,” he confesses. “It felt like I would be… I don’t know. Disrespecting you.” He shakes his head and looks at the floor. “Especially if… someday, you decide to…” Here, he trails off, unable to find the nerve to finish his sentence.
“But… why?” Lia still just sounds confused. “She was just a friend, right? And you said it was over.”
“She was. And it is.” He shrugs, ignoring the old, dull pang in his chest. “I haven’t seen or spoken to her in years.”
“Did you think I would be mad?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles, now wishing he’d just agreed to put the picture up when she’d handed it to him in the morning. This isn’t a topic he ever wanted to surface, and not with her. “When I first told you, you seemed… kind of mad. And then a bit sad.” He shakes his head. “You’re the most important thing to me now. I don’t want to ruin it.”
After a moment, he hears her sigh. He knows this sigh; it’s the same one he’d heard when he’d confessed to her that he didn’t know a lick of basketball, when his meticulously-planned drive-in movie date had gone to shit, when he’d inadvertently revealed that he was afraid she’d think he was too young for her.
“Kook…” She comes up to him, placing the frame on the coffee table on the way. Gently holding his hand, she tilts her head to meet his eyes. “I can’t be mad at you for something that happened before we met. Everyone has a past.”
“Yeah, but I’ve told you about this particular past before,” he reminds her, feeling wretched. “And it didn’t go very well.”
“Well… yeah. It didn’t come up in the best way, I guess,” she murmurs, and he knows she’s remembering their conversation in the Hybe copy room. “But now that we’ve moved past that… I can’t hold you to a crush you had years ago. Especially when it seems like you were friends,” she adds quietly.
Jungkook’s chest starts to feel heavy again. “You just… you sounded kind of mad. I think. Maybe I was imagining it,” he mutters, shrugging tiredly.
“I wasn’t mad… I guess I was a little thrown,” she admits. “I mean, I know you said she had a boyfriend. I just didn’t think it was one of the other members.”
He says nothing. He appreciates her understanding, although he should’ve always expected her to rise above petty jealousy or insecurity. It occurs to him for the hundredth time how lucky he is to have her; how, in the midst of a truly despondent time in his life, she’d been the beacon of light he’d been fortunate enough to stumble upon. He hadn’t looked back since.
But the moment his gaze lands on the picture discarded behind her, his heart creeps up his throat again.
“Is that what it is?” Her voice brings him back. “Do you feel guilty because she was dating your friend?”
For starters. There’s no point, he realises. As mature and understanding as Lia is, Jungkook doesn’t think he can find the words or the courage to relive his regrets, the ones that still catch him unawares when he hears her name in passing, or when he goes to rehearsal and inadvertently locks eyes with his hyung.
“Kind of.”
Lia nods slowly. “It’s okay, Jungkook,” she murmurs, tugging at his hand again. “No one can control how they feel.”
Jungkook can’t bring himself to respond to that. He makes a non-committal sound, his gaze flickering to the ground.
“You told me you were over her.”
“And I meant it.”
She squeezes his hand. “Good.”
He wills the heaviness in his chest to go away, and forces a small smile onto his face. “Sorry.”
She returns it, holding his gaze before reaching up and pressing a quick kiss to his mouth. “We don’t have to put it up,” she reminds him.
But Jungkook shakes his head. “No, you’re right. It is a nice picture,” he allows, picking it up. “And it was a long time ago.”
Apparently satisfied, Lia smiles back radiantly. “And you look very hot in it.”
“If only you’d known me then.”
“You would’ve learnt to play basketball a lot sooner,” she agrees, chuckling.
“So you forgive me?” he asks after a moment.
Lia’s smile fades slightly. “For having a crush?” she asks, reaching up and touches his forehead with hers. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Not even to your friend,” she adds. “I mean, nothing happened, right?”
She’s beautiful. A beacon of light in a period of darkness he couldn’t see beyond. She saved him, more than she would know.
Jungkook brushes a lock of hair off her forehead. “No,” he lies.
After lunch, Jungkook volunteers to clean up the living room and kitchen while Lia goes to do the laundry. Collecting their clothes from his bedroom, she chucks them in the washing machine, loading it with detergent and softener and turning it on.
She stops by the pantry on her way back, looking for a chocolate bar or any other candy, something to officially clear the air with Jungkook. She searches along the shelves, passing by ramen, boxes of Caffetta coffee, and a lot of protein powder - only to come to the conclusion that his house is hopelessly understocked with sugar.
“We can get low fat,” she murmurs to herself, preempting his response as she makes her way back to the living room. She stops abruptly at the doorway when she spots him, his back tilted towards her, framed picture in hand.
Lia’s heartbeat feels louder for a moment. She takes a quick step back behind the doorway; it’s unnecessary, though, for his focus is on something else entirely.
She ought to have seen it before. It wasn’t until they returned to Jungkook’s apartment that she even noticed the most important detail in the picture. Mingyu sat to Jungkook’s right while a girl sat to his left, perched on the arm of the sofa. One hand hung loosely around Jungkook’s shoulder, so casually, so harmlessly, that Lia hadn’t even registered it this morning.
On her other side was her boyfriend, clearly. The way she leaned into him, the way his arm rested confidently on her waist, his fingers brushing the bare skin between her light blue jeans and striped crop top, the way their bodies fit perfectly - it looked like they’d known each other forever. There was no doubt as to who he was, especially since he was someone Lia had definitely met.
In light of how intensely close the couple looked, the girl’s hand around Jungkook’s shoulder seemed unimportant. It was almost like a habit, or convenience, her dark nail paint and the small cigarette stub between her fingers looking like they belonged there.
It’s her, isn’t it? There was no one else in the picture it could be, not any of the other handful of girls in the same frame. It’s her; the one who likes video games, the one with a boyfriend - the boyfriend who Lia now knows is one of Jungkook’s best friends, a big brother he loves.
She bites her lip, continuing to watch him until his shoulders relax slightly and he places the photograph back on the shelf. He gathers the empty bowls on the centre table and heads towards the kitchen, and Lia feels the seed of uneasiness sink in her stomach.
She can believe he’s over her. She can believe it’s in the past, that Jungkook is with her in the present.
Whatever it is, though - it’s definitely not finished.
—
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is an aesthetic that revolves around the pursuit of knowledge through reading, writing and research. It focuses on flowers specifically rather than all plants in general, making it similar to Bloomcore with an additional academic motif.
is a literary and artistic genre of the early 20th century that encompasses many subgenres of literature, especially horror, detective and science fiction. However the "adventure" subgenre also had a significant impact, drawing inspiration from the "Lost World" fiction and non-fiction explorer literature.
Definition taken from aesthetics.fandom.com
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BTS Academia Aesthetic Series
<<scroll down the link above to find the series masterlist>>
everyone knows, what loneliness can do to a mind. his mind is something that likes to use negatives, if only to complicate his feelings. yoongi is at the edge, thinking about everything that has built him into the man he is. then what is it that he still craves for? nobody doesn't know — because everyone knows it's not him, but his loneliness thinking.
pairing ; no pairing ft. yoongi
rating/genre ; pg // angst, idol au.
wc ; 1.4k
warnings ; thoughts about past, heavy use of metaphors (forgive me), my bad interpretation of people pt 2, hard childhood, inner turmoil, feelings of grief and loss.
note ; i wrote this so quick. people made me think so so so much. and i am in no way saying that this is what he is talking about in the song, so mind me. it's just that this song inspired me to write this. take this as a disclaimer but m not claiming that these are yoongi's thoughts — these are mine. if you understand what I'm trying to deliver, have my kisses please. listen to people pt 2 ft. iu by agust d for that's what compelled me to write this lol. again, this might not make much sense and idk how I've ended it! also, this is unedited hehe. for we die on this hill.
masterlist | taglist
---
Yoongi likes to think he has accomplished a lot in his life, but even that is a lie. And he knows that.
He had a dream when he was in middle school, and the years he had put into achieving it had been lengthy, and stressful. There were stretched moments of happiness too, where he had found himself at peace, proud of himself. But come today and he feels like there's a hole inside him.
He feels hollow. His heart still craves for more.
The dim light of his bedroom falls on his eyes and he breathes easily, taking in the air conditioned air with his eyes fluttering shut.
His mind drifts to his years of being a rebel, always disappointed by the ways of the world, and his lips quirk a little. Oh how foolish he was to think that he will be able to change it, that he will be able to see a place different from the one he has seen. With his eyes closed he shakes his head, thinking about the time he had realized how wrong he was.
The world is not going to change. It has billions of years in the making, and he, a mere man in his twenties, who has hardly seen the depth of the people living in it, has no chance of changing it. People might think he has seen a lot, known a lot, and is familiar with the ways of a lot – but the truth is that his knowledge has always been bound by his interests. He learns about the things he wants to know about, he doesn't go and seek answers for the questions which have never made their way into his mind.
His fingers twitch on his chest. He has always had this innate desire of being at peace. But even now, when he is supposed to feel it, his heart aches for something else. And maybe it's a shot in the dark, but the thought of an emotion that is so raw, but still built with layers of other feelings is what makes him crave for it.
His childhood years were not easy. He hadn't received the love, the support for which he had yearned. He was like a soul treading on, towards the light he had seen at the end of the dark tunnel he was residing in. But after years of his walking in the dark, when he had finally felt the light hit his withered, lifeless skin – he had grimaced and squinted his eyes. It had taken him a long time to get accustomed to that feeling, the raw warmth and the peaceful breeze.
His steps though, they never stopped. He had walked on and on, and had met a few too many travelers on his way, some of them joining him on his journey. Now that he had found the light, he didn't know what he was aiming for. Maybe just sit on the shore he could so clearly see, dip his feet in the sand and have conversations with the ones who had felt him worthy enough to join.
He had reached the shore too, pride swelling in his chest as the sand touched his feet. He had dipped his ankles in the warmth, and had enjoyed the softness. His greed, never ending, had compelled him to walk towards the water, hand in hand with his companion. He had perched himself at the edge, at the line where the warmth of the sand met the cold waves. His feet were no longer dipped in the grains, but in the cold water which washed away any remnants of the warmth he had yearned for.
The calmest of waves, had washed away something he had been wanting for so long. And that had him recoiling from there, leaving his companion's hand and looking back at the water as if he was burned. He was again in the sand, but the grains stuck to his feet, no longer making him feel warm, but irking him. He had run back, forgetting there was someone washing themselves in the waves for him. His selfishness had made him blind, and in his haste he had stumbled and fell on the ground.
That night the tears were thick, rolling down his face like the waves he so despised. For now there was no one to hold his hand and breath his scent – they had already been taken by the calmest of the oceans. The moon in the sky was covered by the clouds, and the only light he saw was a distant lighthouse. But he was tired, and he hated the water, so he made his house on the shore.
Now when he looks out of his window he doesn't see the light, for it had been taken from him the moment he had recoiled from the waves. He thinks he was selfless, because he hadn't brought his partner back, letting them revel in the peace the water provided. But even he knows how wrong he is – how the water did little to ease them, and so much to unnerve them when they saw how it affected him.
He still goes about his day with chivalry. Hoping that someday he will meet someone who will make him feel less lonely.
When he thinks back on that day, he realises he never feared loss, but the dread that came with it. He feared the possibilities, the future that will come with it. Maybe he never truly loved them, but the thought of being alone again was so daunting that he had folded like paper and fell on his knees when he had lost them.
He remembers the sandcastle he had built with them, the one which had been taken down by the calmest of assaults. Later when he had come to terms with the reality of him being alone, he had thought how people were fleeting, how feelings were fleeting. How easy is it to build something with someone, and easier for it to crumble down into nothingness.
So far away, that day, that feeling, that person. Everything is so far away from him, he can do nothing but sigh. When he had though that life was a struggle between revolt and submission, he was wrong. It was a struggle against loneliness. For he had rebelled, and surrendered but never did he understand the true sadness, until he was left alone, all on his own.
With eyes closed and breaths steady, he moves his hand on his bed, searching for his abandoned notebook. He needs to write, or else the calm breaths will turn ragged soon – and he can't risk it again.
On a page, he has already written down some lines. Has also scratched out some lines.
Maybe I didn't recieve enough love
Forever is a sandcastle, even with gentle waves, it collapses without resistance.
He scoffs, rewriting the lines and scratching the ones written before again.
Wasn't loved enough as a kid,
That's why I'm the cautious type.
Forever's something like a sand castle, you know.
It comes crumbling down at the calmest of waves.
He rubs his thumbs on the side of his pen, his tongue peeking out and brows furrowed. It's his countenance when he is in the mode of deep contemplation, and right now he is thinking if he should write about his loneliness or not.
Someone had once told him that a song tells the story the artist wants to say, and it can also communicate with the artist – telling them things they need to hear, not want to. With that in mind, he shakes his head and writes down a few more lines.
The say life's a struggle between resistance and submission.
I say it's a struggle against loneliness.
If you can't hold back, it's okay to cry.
He takes a deep breath before writing down the next line.
You're already more than enough to be loved.
His heart swells at that. Maybe he won't have to battle with himself every day. If he is able to accept that he is capable of being loved, he will come to terms with his future, his present too.
His journey has been fulfilling, he has discovered himself. And his feet land on the floor of his bedroom, thinking that maybe some day, he will have a hand to hold on to, without feeling the guilt that eats at his insides.
Because the greed that he wanted to give up was of no use, and his selflessness only caused him more pain. Maybe this time, he will be selfish, wishing for something which he will never let go. Something which has layers and a string of emotions strung together like a necklace – Love.
Because he knows that everyone knows. And nobody doesn't know anymore, that loneliness has been the root of all his desires.
Warnings: language, a lot of alcohol, peer pressure, shady characters
A/N: It’s happening! Jimin is back to dealing (or profusely not dealing) with his baggage when it comes to his ex, and Hoseok is back to being a pain in the ass for his best friend’s little sister - just a day in the life 🖤 Takes place a couple of months after A Phone Call and about six months after Movie Night.
jimin masterlist | hoseok masterlist | main masterlist
Sooah checks her phone as she steps out of the building, squinting slightly at the sunlight. The battery is depleting fast; she hopes it’ll last until she gets home. She considers plugging it into her scooter, when she remembers. Whipping around to run back into the building, she halts in her tracks when she spots her target jogging out of the building in Sooah’s direction.
“Hey!” The younger girl - for she has to be younger; no one her age still has bag tags with fur on them - waves and stops in front of her, panting slightly. “Sooah, right? You forgot this.” In her hand is Sooah’s power bank, slightly frayed on the edges but still sturdy and reliable, her name written in the corner in silver ink.
“Right, thanks.” Glad she doesn’t have to go all the way back inside, Sooah tucks her yoga mat under her arm and smiles. “Your phone good and charged?”
“Yes, thank God. You’re a lifesaver,” adds the other girl, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on the class at all if my phone had died.”
“You concentrated alright, from what I could see,” remarks Sooah. “That was a hell of a backbend.”
Her smile brightens and she looks almost shy, as though she isn’t used to getting compliments. “Thanks.” She tilts her head up towards the sun, her long hair shining in the brightness. “Any plans for the weekend?”
Don’t start. “I did have plans but then my boyfriend got called into work which is where he’s going to be all weekend.” She shakes her head, trying not to sound too disgruntled. “Unless something goes really right and he gets a couple hours off tonight, I’m probably going to sit around with no one but myself for company the entire time.”
The girl winces, and Sooah gets the impression that she truly understands. “Well, I mean, if you’re not doing anything…” she begins, shrugging, “my roommate and I are having a party tonight. If you want to come?”
Sooah squints and frowns, somewhat amused that this girl doesn’t seem to realise she’s invited a total stranger to a party at her house. She asks the first question that pops into her mind. “You, uh… where do you live?”
“Hongdae,” she supplies. “There’s going to be drinks and music and dancing… I mean, only if that’s, like, your thing,” she clarifies suddenly. “Totally cool if it isn’t.”
“No, it’s… it’s definitely my thing,” murmurs Sooah honestly, realising she’s actually considering it. “I - will your roommate be okay with you inviting someone she doesn’t know? Or he?”
“Oh, no, Sungmi is cool. We both have free reign to invite whomever we like.” She leans in a bit then, lowering her voice. “To be honest, I won’t know a lot of people there,” she confesses, looking a bit sheepish. “So I just thought a familiar face would be nice. But, no pressure. Obviously.”
“Of course.” Sooah nods. “I’ll let you know if I can.”
“Sure.” She smiles again. “I’ll give you my number; you can text me in case you decide to come.”
“Cool.” Sooah dictates her number as the girl saves it. A moment later, she hears a ping from her own phone. “Got it.” As the girl waves and starts to leave, Sooah suddenly remembers. “Hey, uh… what’s your name, by the way?”
She looks confused for a second before her eyes go wide. “Oh, God, I’m such a ditz. I’m Chaeyoung,” she says, skipping back over and sticking out her hand for Sooah to shake. “Hope to see you tonight, unnie.”
—
The sun is just setting beyond the horizon when Jimin exits the elevator of the Big Hit building into the basement, with a spirited young idol who’s apparently just made his debut.
“... saw you in Wembley, too,” he gushes, in step with Jimin. His youthful face is full of energy and wonder, and his smile is the exact kind that Big Hit looks for to plaster on billboards everywhere. “My group was in the audience - we couldn’t believe it. The stage was just on fire.”
Jimin grins, a mixture of gratitude and pride. Next to him, Hoseok cracks a bashful smile. “Oh, come on. We all saw your debut. You guys are fantastic - you’ll be at Wembley in no time.”
The younger idol - Alex (“half British, half Korean”) - almost chokes. Even taller than both of them, certainly Namjoon’s height, he looks almost deferential. “We’re just learning from you, hyung,” he says humbly. “Even the hours in the studio are crazy - but it’s worth it.”
“Make good use of the free time you have then.” In a sweet yet clear way that they must now part, Hoseok pats him on the back and waves. “Have a good evening, Alex.” He and Jimin walk towards their car as Alex goes in the other direction, his shoulders clearly reflecting the tiredness Jimin remembers from his own debut days.
“Shit, I feel for them,” he muses, watching him until he disappears behind a pillar before turning to Hoseok. “Remember when Jungkook tried to sneak us that half bucket of fried chicken and got caught?”
“And put the blame on Taehyung?” Hoseok chuckles at the memory while Jimin laughs. “Man, we really had to beat some sense into that kid.”
“Still a work in progress,” remarks Jimin as he climbs into the shotgun seat of the car. While Hoseok adjusts the rearview mirror and straps himself in, Jimin checks his hair and smirks at his reflection. “The blond really suits me, doesn’t it?”
“I can’t believe we have to go to this,” grumbles Hoseok, sighing and reversing out of the parking spot. “Such a bad idea.”
Jimin deflates, realising that this tirade of it’s such a bad idea that had been a constant during their recording session just now, was only going to continue throughout this car ride. “Hyung, I’ll say it again. We don’t have to go.”
“Yes, we do,” mutters Hoseok, driving out of the private exit at the back of the building. “Chaeyoung invited me - because I invited her to my house. If I snub her invitation, she’ll probably go running to her brother or something.”
Jimin squints skeptically. “Really? She’ll go running to her brother if you don’t attend a house party thrown by her roommate?”
“You don’t know her like I do, Jimin.”
He rolls his eyes at Hoseok’s serious tone, unable to understand what it is about that girl Chaeyoung that riles him up. “Fine. Can we listen to music?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Jimin connects his phone to the stereo and puts it on shuffle, easily bopping to the music while Hoseok drives with a scowl on his face. Finally, he speaks again. “Hyung? Seriously, what’s wrong?”
For a moment, Jimin thinks he isn’t going to answer, but then Hoseok sighs. “Nothing.” His fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “I just don’t know how to be around her. She’s different and grown up and… we were never really friends.” He shrugs uneasily. “It’s just weird.”
Jimin nods, not quite understanding the extremity of his friend’s reaction. Still, he tries to be supportive. “Well,” he begins, shifting lower in his seat, “speaking as a person who just met her, she’s pretty nice. Fun. You’ve met her a couple times, too, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, at that shoot for Vogue - but she was only filling in for someone,” says Hoseok. “We didn’t really get an opportunity to say anything to each other except a hi.”
“It’s a good start.”
Hoseok cracks a smile. “Thanks for coming with me, though. I know I probably hijacked your Saturday night.”
“Nah, not really. I didn’t have plans.”
“And now your plans involve hanging with Chaeyoung all night.”
“I don’t mind. She’s cute.” When Jimin gets no response, he looks up and does a double take when he sees Hoseok staring at him. “What?”
“She’s cute?”
Jimin rolls his eyes. “Come on, hyung, don’t be weird about this,” he says dismissively. “She is cute. Jungkook thinks so, too,” he adds casually.
“Do I need to put a leash on you two or something?”
He snickers. “Kinky. Do you think Chaeyoung would -”
“I will drive us into a tree,” warns Hoseok, “and I won’t regret it.”
“No, you won’t,” he retorts, unimpressed. “This is Suga hyung’s car. And I was going to say: do you think Chaeyoung would mind that you brought me along?” Jimin clicks his tongue. “You’re being really high-strung about this. Do you have a crush on her or something?”
“Ugh. Let me know if you see a tree, yeah?” When all Jimin does is hum in response, Hoseok sighs. “I don’t think she’ll mind. She said herself that she won’t know a lot of people there, so she’ll probably be glad to see a familiar face.”
“You’ll be one of those familiar faces, too,” points out Jimin. “That’s probably why she invited you.”
“I guess.” Hoseok is quiet for a minute. “I know she’s not going to complain to her brother. It’s just easier to think that because I don’t know what she’ll do otherwise.”
“Here’s an idea: get to know her.”
Hoseok makes a choking sound. “Let’s not get carried away here. We’re not friends.”
Jimin is about to point out that they can be, but for some reason he feels as though the suggestion would be lost on his friend. He therefore leaves Hoseok to his pensive thoughts and stretches in his seat, feeling like he’d rather enjoy this impromptu weekend plan than sit around and decipher his friend’s many sounds and sighs every time Chaeyoung is brought up. In fact, if he’s learnt anything since he was a wee rookie, like that Alex they just met, it’s that free time cannot be treated callously.
With that thought, they reach Chaeyoung’s apartment twenty minutes later. The sun has now fully set and the buzz of a Saturday night is all around Hongdae. Hoseok parks a couple of buildings away and both of them keep their heads low as they pass the crowd, smoothly making it unseen.
“Jesus,” breathes Hoseok, when they step into the building. His tone betrays nothing except that of something unexpected, and Jimin can’t help but agree. Chaeyoung’s apartment is meant to be on the second floor, but it’s no matter since the entire building seems to be in party mode. It looks like how college dorms are portrayed in movies, with young adults bustling around in various styles of clothing, a thin haze of smoke permeating every corner, and thumping music that seems to be playing through the walls.
“Are you sure she lives here?” Jimin asks as they gingerly step in. He dodges a couple sharing a cigarette and grinding to the music at the same time. “Maybe you should call her.”
“No, this is it,” replies Hoseok grimly, snaking his way around a bunch of guys chugging huge mugs of beer. “Come on, I can’t wait to see how this generation parties.”
As it turns out, the aforementioned generation parties alright. The door to Chaeyoung’s apartment, while open, is still on a floor that’s less crowded. There isn’t as much smoke and most of the partying seems to be happening indoors.
Hoseok and Jimin pause at the door, peering in hesitantly. Jimin, at least, recognises no one - although he sees a couple of people do a double take at the sight of him. He smiles back charmingly while next to him, Hoseok gets on the tips of his toes, as though hoping to spot Chaeyoung in the middle of the party.
“Let’s just go inside,” suggests Jimin, and pulls Hoseok with him by the arm. The apartment is small but lively, seemingly held together at the seams, but has the unmistakable air of cool. Jimin can tell, especially when they walk further into the apartment and he catches a glimpse of someone familiar.
“What the -”
But she’s disappeared. Jimin frowns, knowing it’s too much of a coincidence for Sooah to be at this party, this awfully random party, but also knowing that he’d recognise her face anywhere. “Hey, hyung, did you just see -”
“Chae!” Hoseok’s voice is filled with a mixture of exasperation and relief, and Jimin turns to see Chaeyoung making her way through the crowd towards them, a glass of dark liquid in her hand.
“Hey, you came!” She sounds bright and cheerful, not to mention rather relieved as well. “And you brought Jimin! Hey,” she adds with a light laugh, reaching up to give him a one-armed hug. Jimin raises his eyebrows at Hoseok’s stony face over her shoulder and stifles a laugh.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he says cheerfully, straightening his jacket and running a hand through his hair, trying not to make it too obvious that he’s still searching for the face he knows he saw. He forces himself to look at Chaeyoung. “Nice party.”
“My roommate’s party,” she corrects, shrugging and looking around. “I unfortunately don’t have friends cool enough to smoke out of rolled up bills and still be doing body shots in this day and age.” She chuckles, but doesn’t sound judgmental. “It’s fun, though. You look great,” she adds, fingering the lapel of his jacket.
“Hey, thanks. You, too.”
“Thanks,” she replies sheepishly, sounding slightly self-conscious. “You look good, too, oppa,” she says after a moment, turning to Hoseok.
Hoseok, who’d been watching this exchange with no signs of amusement, takes a moment to realise he’s being spoken to. “Oh, uh - thank you. So do you,” he says a moment later, glancing and immediately averting his eyes from her bare legs under the short skirt she’s wearing.
Chaeyoung seems satisfied with this level of small talk. “You guys should meet Sungmi - she should be here somewhere…” She trails off, peering at the crowd.
“And Sungmi is… your senior?”
“Yeah, from college. Her boyfriend is here, too,” she adds, turning back around and taking a sip of her drink. “He’s pretty cool. Kind of quiet. But his tattoos are rad.”
Hoseok raises his eyebrows while Jimin makes a noise of appreciation, still subtly searching the crowd for her. “What, uh, what kind of tattoos?” asks the former.
“Nothing much. A tattoo sleeve on his arm, a bunch of stuff on his back,” she supplies, her head bopping subtly to the music. “The usual. His cousin’s are even cooler.”
“His -”
“Yeah, they hang out here a lot. Oh, there he is!” She points to the far end of the living room where a guy in his late twenties emerges out of a hallway, a tall girl swaying to the music beside him. His hair is a frozen blue, and Chaeyoung seems to have missed his most important tattoo - the one on his face. “That’s Ice, and Sungmi with him.”
Even Jimin lets out a low whistle, glancing over at Hoseok who looks scandalised. Neither of them bother to ask if his name really is Ice.
“How, uh -” Hoseok swallows. “And, uh, where - where did she meet this gentleman?”
“A concert.”
“Yeah? What was he doing at the concert?”
Chaeyoung gives him a look. “I don’t know. What do you do at a concert?”
Jimin snickers while Hoseok narrows his eyes. “I perform. What does Ice do?”
“Oh. Duh.” She lets out a light laugh. “He was just in the crowd. She met him while he was filming the mosh pit.”
Hoseok chokes just as the most familiar face comes back into view for Jimin - and this time, she spots him, too. “Of course,” he whispers, his heart already racing as her eyes light up with recognition.
Next to him, his friend seems to spot her, too. “Hey, is that Sooah?”
Chaeyoung frowns in surprise and turns around as Sooah makes her way over to them. In a shimmery top and black jeans, she looks, once again, like she just heard about this party and turned up to it, dressed to perfection for the occasion.
“Guys, hi!” She sounds more relieved than any of them at the sight of familiar people and immediately reaches up to give Jimin a hug before moving to Hoseok. “I had no idea you’d be here,” she adds, sounding slightly breathless and turning to Chaeyoung.
“Yeah, same here -” Jimin starts to say, but Chaeyoung beats him to it.
“Wait,” she says, pointing to Sooah and Jimin, “how do you two know each other?”
“Oh, we’re -” She catches Jimin’s eye and gives him a small smile. “We’re old friends.” She looks at Hoseok. “How do you guys know each other?”
“Same,” replies Hoseok, gesturing to Chaeyoung. “We’re old… neighbours.”
Chaeyoung wrinkles her nose. “Smooth.”
Hoseok makes a face while Jimin swallows, feeling the familiar rush of excitement and anticipation at seeing his ex-girlfriend. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he says.
“I didn’t either,” she agrees, taking a sip of her drink - a whiskey, from the looks of it - and nodding. “It was shaping up to be a pretty shit weekend in all, but then someone -” She throws a friendly arm around Chaeyoung’s shoulders and squeezes it “- invited a practical stranger to a party at her house.”
Chaeyoung chuckles, a faint blush spreading to her cheeks. “You’re not a stranger. Today was our fifth class together,” she points out. “But I’m glad you know these guys,” she adds, pointing at Jimin and Hoseok. “I was feeling a bit guilty, thinking you’d only have me and your boyfriend for company.”
Jimin’s mind does a double take but he can’t immediately pinpoint why. When he notices Sooah’s gaze flicker to him, he remembers.
I was a bit nervous to tell you that I’m seeing someone, if I’m being honest.
He’d balked at the word “seeing” but thankfully, Chaeyoung’s remark answers a question he didn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to ask - at least, not without letting Sooah think he really cared.
“You guys should meet him, too,” she says lightly after a moment. “He’s really great.”
“Of course,” he says, glad to hear his voice sounds normal, for if he really thinks about it, he doesn’t mind.
As he thinks about it, he scans the crowd, automatically wondering which one of the guys in this room could be Sooah’s new boyfriend. There’s the one in the middle of a circle by the sofas with a charming smile and a girl on either side of him; if this were high school, this guy would be Jimin’s first guess. But if she doesn’t know anyone at this party then neither does her boyfriend, so Jimin moves on.
There’s another guy by the dining table where all the drinks are, wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket - in the summer: also potentially Sooah’s type. Then there’s one by the balcony, not really standing outside but not standing inside either, smoking a cigarette while he stands alone. Not quite Sooah’s type of boyfriend, but definitely Sooah’s type of distraction.
Jimin’s brought out of his surveillance when Hoseok nudges him. “I’m going to get a drink,” he says, somewhat pointedly. “You want one, too?”
“Um…” He meets Sooah’s gaze, who gives him an innocent smile. Fighting one of his own, he shakes his head. “You go ahead. I’ll, uh… I’ll think about what I want.”
“Okay.” Hoseok shrugs and turns to Chaeyoung, his tone shifting. “Alright, what have you kids got to drink here?”
She clicks her tongue as they walk away. “Sungmi is, like, two years younger than you, oppa…”
Jimin watches them, fully aware of Sooah taking a couple forward until she’s right next to him. He catches a faint whiff of her perfume, something like roses and sugar.
“You look great,” she says, giving his frame a quick once-over.
He tries, for a moment, to think of something witty to say but gives up. “Thanks. You, too. But you know that,” he adds.
“I hoped.” She nudges his shoulder softly. “I’m really glad to see you.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” Sooah holds his gaze for a second before her shoulders fall slightly. “Come on, Chim. This isn’t going to be awkward, is it?”
Jimin flushes, suddenly feeling rather juvenile. “Of course not. It’s really good to see you, too, Sooah,” he says after a moment, realising he means it.
“Great.” Sooah nods in what he imagines is sympathy. “I would… really like for you to meet him.” There’s no need to specify who “him” is referring to. “If you’re okay with that.”
“Of course. Sooah, come on, I know we were… fooling around,” he says, and they share a sheepish smile, “but we haven’t dated in years.”
“Five years, to be exact,” she remembers softly.
He swallows. “Yeah. We’ve both dated since then. It’s not a big deal,” he adds, not fully sure if he even believes it himself.
Sooah watches him for a moment before nodding. “That’s true. I guess we’ve just never been friends while dating someone else. This would be the first time.”
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
She laughs and squeezes his shoulder. “I have faith in you, Chim.”
“And I have faith in you. Which is why I hope that I didn’t get replaced by a guy wearing metallic buckles in his jacket.”
She immediately turns in the direction he’s gesturing in, before snorting. “God, no. It would be so difficult to take off,” she adds cheekily.
“That’s what I thought.” He taps his temple dramatically. “The guy with the red hair, though -” He points at the makeshift bar, “he just drank the foam out of the mug while he poured his beer.” He lets out a low whistle. “Come on, that’s got to be impressive.”
“Everything a girl looks for in a guy,” she agrees dryly. “Any other guesses?”
Jimin grins, for this exercise feels like a crash course in Sooah’s romantic past - the one list Sooah has admitted in the past that was topped by him.
“Oh, I don’t know. How about that one over there? We all know how much you love facial piercings.”
“A real winner.”
“And he’s got one of those cool wrap-around earphones. Sooah, you may just have hit a jackpot with -” He breaks off when he sees Sooah’s gaze shift to something behind him.
“All worthy guesses, Chim,” she begins, clearly trying to suppress a smile, “but it’s time you met the real one.” She pats his shoulder and grins. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
Jimin takes a second to process this abrupt change in topic but turns to watch her wade through the crowd, only to reach -
“Fuck.”
The word falls out of his mouth before he can help it, and he hasn’t a clue what it means. All he knows is that when he sees Sooah reach up to hug debut rookie half-British-half-Korean Alex, he almost wonders for a moment if coincidences really do occur in the universe or if the universe just enjoys fucking with him.
As Sooah brings Alex over, Jimin is suddenly conscious of his hands. They hang by his side uselessly before he quickly stuffs them into the pockets of his jacket, just as Alex catches sight of him.
“Jimin sunbaenim!” Alex exclaims, loud enough that a couple of people even turn to look. “Sorry,” he mutters sheepishly. “I didn’t know you were going to be here, too! Sooah, do - do you know him?”
Sooah doesn’t speak for a moment. She looks up at him and nods before, with what looks like an enormous effort, she turns to Jimin. “Yeah, we know each other from school,” she says to Alex, while her gaze bores into Jimin’s, as though daring him to say something.
Jimin, for all his self-control, gives her a wide smile. “It’s true,” he agrees. “Sooah was the most popular girl in our class.”
“Really?” Alex grins down at her and they seem to share a momentary private joke. “Somehow, I can believe that.”
“And Jimin was the best dancer in our class,” she adds, nudging his arm. “And the best at math.”
“I can believe that, too. The dance part, not the math,” corrects Alex immediately. “I mean - I’m sure you were good at math, too, hyung.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence before Jimin chuckles. “It’s okay. You didn’t tell me this was your night off.”
“Big Hit must have gotten more lenient over time,” offers Sooah, giving him a knowing look.
Alex doesn’t catch on. “We’ve been rehearsing for three days straight so they gave us tonight to go home. But I haven’t seen Sooah in a while, so…” He shrugs and puts an arm around her shoulder. Jimin is surprised to see the smile that involuntarily appears on her face, when Alex continues. “You would know what that’s like, though, hyung.”
Jimin doesn’t say anything for a moment. “It’s the price of debuting,” he says finally, slowly looking over at Sooah, whose smile fades slightly.
“Seems like it’s worth it.” Before Jimin can process why this response stings something ancient in his heart, she turns to Alex. “Let’s get you a drink?”
“Oh…” He winces apologetically. “Sorry, noona, I can’t drink tonight. We have that shoot tomorrow…”
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.” She bites her lip before linking her arm with his. “Alright. Why don’t you come with me while I get a drink? You should say hi to Chaeyoung, too.”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll see you around, sunbaenim,” he says to Jimin, eyes shining, before he and Sooah leave for the drinks’ table.
Years and years ago, when Jimin had first accompanied Sooah to one of their high school parties, he had wondered for the umpteenth time whether they even made sense together. When they were alone, they did. They laughed, bickered, kissed in empty classrooms and texted all night underneath the covers. Beautiful, popular Kim Sooah was goofy and silly and funny and adorable, and Jimin felt like he’d won the lottery at sixteen.
But out in public, Kim Sooah was Kim Sooah, and Jimin was the boyfriend that everyone subconsciously frowned at momentarily before smiling and introducing themselves. Sooah hadn’t left his side, though, not even when her friends had called her over, not when the drinking games had commenced. She’d given him his first drink - a vodka - a little hesitantly.
“This doesn’t make me a bad influence, does it?”
She’d bit her lip, red and plump, as she tugged her tube top up her chest. Jimin, who’d been fairly curious about alcohol anyway, had only one answer in mind.
“Of course not,” he’d said, smiling and taking the glass. “I need to fit in with your friends eventually, don’t I?”
“Don’t worry about them,” she’d said dismissively. “It doesn’t matter what they think. You don’t have to drink that if you don’t want, Jimin.”
He appreciated it, but Jimin knew he had a rare opportunity. Boys like him didn’t attract the attention of girls like Kim Sooah; if he had any hope of sustaining this, he needed to prove he could fit in with the cool kids.
Across the room, Sooah mixes herself a gin cocktail, hands moving with ease. Next to her, Alex reads the label of a soju bottle before muttering something to her that makes her laugh and nod.
“Wow, you’re Jimin, right? From BTS?”
Startled, Jimin turns to see a girl about his height, her face flushed as she takes in his appearance.
“Um -” He clears his throat. “That’s right.”
“Wow, I can’t believe it,” she breathes. Behind her, a couple of more people spot him, their eyes going wide. “Can I take a selfie with you?”
“Uh, sure.” Before he knows it, she’s leaned over to him and raised her phone, clicking a series of pictures in succession in which she’s pouting and he’s just about registering what’s happening.
“Thank you,” she gushes, reaching over and giving him a half-hug that he returns hesitantly. “Find me later,” she says in a low voice before stepping away. “If you’re still here.”
It takes Jimin a moment to gather his bearings, even as a lightness spreads through his insides. Suddenly confident, he struts over to where Sooah is standing next to the mantle, this time by herself.
“So,” he begins, leaning against the wall next to her as she scrolls through her phone, drink in her other hand. “Where’s my biggest fan?”
Sooah doesn’t even look up. “Probably in a dark room somewhere, stalking your flight schedule?”
“Not him,” says Jimin, unfazed. “My other biggest fan.” He leans closer to her, his bangs brushing hers. “Noona.”
“Don’t start, Jimin.”
He laughs. “What? I thought you hated being called noona.”
“I don’t hate it.”
“Really? You threw a piece of chalk at Taehyung’s head when he called you that once.”
“That’s because he was fucking with me,” she clarifies, finally looking up at him and holding up a finger. “Secondly, it’s a little hard to get annoyed by it as you get older. There’s too many people calling you that all of a sudden.”
“Including your boyfriend. Where is he, by the way?” Jimin asks, scanning the crowd briefly.
“He ran into someone he knew.” Sooah turns to face him, leaning sideways against the wall. “Jimin.”
“Sooah.” He grins down at her, his gaze involuntarily flickering to her red lips. “Did he mention that I ran into him at Big Hit?”
“No. Was he supposed to?”
“Fans do that sometimes. How have we never been introduced before? I mean, we seem to have a lot in common.”
Sooah scoffs. “This might surprise you, but you are not first in line of the people I want to introduce my boyfriend to. But wait a second,” she adds, straightening up slightly, “weren’t you dating a girl, too? When do I get to meet her?” She looks around, as though hoping to spot her. “You didn’t bring her?”
Jimin frowns and it takes him a second to place the name. Ahnjong. The name, still one of the sweetest he’s ever heard, swims through his mind, as does the disastrous ending to their date two months ago.
“Yeah, that…” He rubs the back of his neck. “We, uh… we decided to see other people.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Not like, say, your boyfriend.”
“Jimin,” she repeats.
“Sooah.”
She sighs. “God, you’re cocky.”
Jimin chuckles as she rolls her eyes. “Hey, I love my fans, alright? They are what keep me going, Sooah. You should be more respectful of that.”
“Shut up.”
“What? You used to be one of them,” he reminds her.
“Yeah, and now I’m dating one of them.” She holds his gaze. “He’s my boyfriend, Jimin.”
“He’s a rookie.”
Sooah raises an eyebrow. “And?”
Whatever Jimin had been about to say goes straight out the window in an instant. “And…” He pauses, desperate suddenly to change tacks “… where does he find the time to date?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Where did you find the time to date?”
“I didn’t,” he points out forcefully. “That was the problem, apparently.”
“That was not the -“ Sooah breaks off abruptly, exhaling. “No. No,” she mutters, shaking her head before looking up at Jimin. “You really want to do this now?”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” he shoots back, even as his heart races. All it takes is a momentary lapse of emotion for them to fall back into the darkest pits of their history, and Jimin isn’t sure she wants that. Not with her new boyfriend in the vicinity.
Sooah sighs and looks away uncomfortably. “Look, aside from the girl that I met at yoga class today for the first time, I don’t know a single person here. Except for you.” She tilts her head and frowns slightly. “Can we please not do this now?”
A vision of teenage Kim Sooah, soft cheeks and sparkling eyes, whining cutely at him for the first time clouds Jimin’s mind. Even sweaty after volleyball practice with her hair unbrushed and tumbling down her shoulders, she was irresistible.
“You know Hoseok hyung,” he points out after a moment, mimicking her position.
She shakes her head. “Doesn’t count. He’s busy. In fact,” she continues, just as Jimin opens his mouth “word on the street is, he’s been prowling around the apartment and was last seen in the kitchen, taking pictures.”
He frowns. “What? Like, selfies?”
“No, pictures of the kitchen.” Sooah drops her hands from her hips to her sides. “I mean, I’m sorry to tell you this, Jimin, but your friend might be a crazy person.”
None of this makes a jot of sense to Jimin. He stares at her before clearing his throat. “Okay, we’ll - we’ll circle back to that,” he says quickly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So… what? We’re going to play drinking games until your boyfriend joins us?”
“Yes,” she answers, looking relieved. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“Fine. Twenty questions.” He smirks.
Sooah rolls her eyes. “Oh, God. Okay, twenty questions. But I’m warning you, you may not actually want the answers to some of your questions.” Her gaze darts to something over his shoulder and Jimin turns to see Alex wave back as he talks to a girl. “Do you mind if he joins us?”
Do I ever. “Hey,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets, “I am all for hanging out with -“
“Do not say my biggest fans.”
Jimin scoffs. “I was going to say… I’m all for hanging out with my ex-girlfriend’s… new boyfriend.”
Sooah gives him a look before chuckling. “You are so transparent, Chim.”
Jimin laughs. “What? You can invite him if you want.”
“Nobody should play drinking games with you,” she states, poking him in the chest. “Not without supervision.”
He nudges her shoulder playfully with his. “You’re supervising me, aren’t you?”
“And we both know I’m a really good influence.” She taps his shoulder and grabs his arm, steering him to the drinks table. “Go on, choose your poison. Oh, wait, I know your poison,” she chuckles, grabbing the vodka and cranberry juice.
Jimin snickers as she makes him his drink, taking sips of her own from next to her. When she hands him the pink cocktail, smelling like just the right combination of sweetness and youth, he suddenly feels as though the entire night was leading to this: a wild Saturday night with Kim Sooah.
“Cheers.” She clinks his glass with his and watches as he takes the first sip, grinning when he dramatically smacks his lips.
“You can become a great bartender,” he tells her genuinely, his face already feeling warm from the vodka. “If this entire event planning thing doesn’t work.”
“It’s worked out well so far,” she says serenely. “I get to meet a lot of pretty cool people that way.”
Jimin bites his lip, remembering the last time he’d attended an event she was working at. He wonders if she’s truly being so bold as to bring that up, when he remembers that a work event is also where she’d met Alex. His drink seems less pink all of a sudden.
Sooah doesn’t seem to notice. “Okay, I’m going to go rescue Alex now,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”
“For twenty questions?”
“Or something.” She rolls her eyes but smiles, already taking a step in Alex’s direction. “Don’t make me regret this, Chim.”
Jimin simply raises his glass in response as he watches her go. Across the room, Alex doesn’t seem at all like he needs rescuing; his smile is the smile, the media smile that’s drilled into every trainee as he nods at the girls speaking to him.
It’s not quite Sooah’s move, he reflects. Jealousy had never been part of the many issues they had dealt with, which made sense given that there had never been another person that had entered their relationship. Just the two of them had been enough for it to implode each time.
As she reaches Alex and joins the conversation with ease, however, it occurs to Jimin that his data points are limited to their relationship only - and just because she wasn’t jealous with him, doesn’t mean she doesn’t get jealous at all.
The realisation confuses him to no end, as does the annoyance that comes with it. He gives her a proper once-over; she’s as gorgeous and sexy as ever, still somehow the life of the party despite not knowing anyone, but the attraction ends there. There’s too much baggage that prevents him from going further and the fact that one of them is in a relationship can finally signal the end of their ambiguous connection.
Sooah leans into Alex’s side then and he puts his arm around her shoulder. Jimin rolls his eyes, deciding he can’t watch this anymore; just because they’ve moved on doesn’t mean he needs a front row seat for their honeymoon period. He turns around and heads into the kitchen, only to be met by Hoseok with his phone pointed at nothing in particular.
“Uh, hyung?” Jimin steps in gingerly. “What are you -”
“Look at this,” interrupts Hoseok, not taking his eyes off the screen until he clicks a picture. He points to something in one of the lower cabinets and Jimin peers over his shoulder to check it out. “Look at how close the gas line is to that plug point.”
“The -”
“What if it sparks?” Hoseok shakes his head, eyes wide and manic. “The entire apartment could catch fire!”
“That’s a bit unlikely,” points out Jimin hesitantly. “And… why are you taking a picture of it?”
“I’m sending it to her brother,” he mutters, going back to examining the offending gas line. “God, this is so typical of Chaeyoung. So irresponsible.”
“So your solution is to tattle on her?”
“Well, she’s not going to listen to me.” Hoseok scoffs, turning and pointing to one of the upper cabinets. “Look here. Do you see that?” he asks, tapping a splintered piece of wood jutting out at his eye level. “I almost knocked my head on it.”
Jimin raises his eyebrows. “Well… she’s about six inches shorter than you so it’s probably not as much a problem for her?”
“Irrelevant,” he dismisses immediately. “Anyone could get hurt. Look, I don’t like having to take such drastic measures, alright?” he continues. “But believe me, she is going to resist every single suggestion that either of us -“
At that moment, a shorter figure comes barrelling into the kitchen, leaving a faint flowery scent in her wake.
“Oh, God, it’s true,” she exclaims with dread. Reaching forward and snatching Hoseok’s camera, she gasps as she sees the picture on it. “Jesus Christ, oppa, why do you have to be such a freak?”
“I’m the freak? Look at your gas line!”
“There is nothing wrong with -”
“Chae - do you have any idea how dangerous it is to have it so exposed that it’s -”
“It doesn’t even matter! It’s not my apartment,” she reminds him, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. “It’s Sungmi’s, and I can’t go around changing things without discussing them with her.”
Hoseok glares at her before exhaling through his nose, apparently trying to calm himself. “What about this?” he demands, pointing at the broken cabinet.
Chaeyoung raises her eyebrows “What about it?”
“Do you need her permission to get things fixed, too?”
“Um, kind of, yeah,” she answers, looking a bit incredulous now. “I can’t afford to get things fixed by myself in any case. And besides,” she continues, reaching up and tapping the piece of wood, “neither Sungmi or I can even reach this.”
“I’m sure Chan will be more than happy to help you out.”
Even Jimin, who hasn’t known Chaeyoung very long at all, knows from the way her eyes widen that this was the wrong thing to say.
“Oh, of course you think Chan needs to come to my rescue!” She scoffs and places her drink on the counter with a loud thud. “You really don’t think I can make it a second without my perfect brother, do you?”
“That’s not what I meant! I just - okay, I’ll pay for it,” he backtracks hastily. “I don’t mind, really, just as long as you -”
“Seriously? I don’t even know when I’ll be able to pay you back.”
“You don’t have to -”
But Chaeyoung cuts him off. “And you’re overreacting, oppa,” she informs him, folding her arms across her chest. “The only person who can even reach this is Ice, and he’s never brought it up in all the -”
“Ice? How often is he over here?” He whips around to look at Jimin, as though expecting him to have the answer. Before Jimin can stutter out a response, however, someone else joins them in the kitchen.
“Hey,” a voice drawls, sounding like it’s coming from miles away. Everyone turns to see the aforementioned Ice, blue-grey hair, facial tattoo and crooked smile on full display. In one hand is a glass of whiskey and in the other, a joint between his fingers. “Thought I heard someone say my name.”
“Oh… hey, Ice,” says Chaeyoung, taking a step back.
“Hey, hey,” he replies, swaggering into the kitchen with that distinct aura of speaking from far away. “Everyone having fun?” he asks, reaching down to hug Chaeyoung without warning, who simply pats his shoulder as he steps away.
Ice doesn’t seem to realise, drifting sideways to hug Jimin next. “It’s a party, yo,” he informs them, raising his joint. “Come on in, man,” he says to Hoseok, apparently waiting for a hug. When he doesn’t move, Jimin suppresses a snort, immediately burying his face into his glass.
Ice frowns, looking mildly confused. “No?” He places a hand on Hoseok’s shoulder. “I like this one,” he says to no one in particular.
Hoseok, clearly speechless, simply stares at Ice’s hand before looking back at him, and then at Chaeyoung as if to say Really?
Even Chaeyoung shrugs, looking somewhat embarrassed until a few more people enter the kitchen and Ice is successfully distracted.
Jimin, who had been greatly enjoying the episode between Hoseok and this girl from his past who irritated the life out of him, takes this opportunity to intervene.
“Alright, who needs another drink?” he asks in a low voice so only the two of them can hear.
Chaeyoung turns to him as though just realising he’s there. “Jimin,” she states, “will you please tell Hoseok that he’s being insane?”
“Oh, grow up, will you?” Hoseok snaps back.
“You grow up -“
“Okayyy, tensions are high,” interrupts Jimin soothingly, “because everybody’s too sober.” He turns Chaeyoung around by the shoulders and steers her out of the kitchen. Hoseok follows without a word, rolling his eyes.
They reach the drinks table again where Sooah seems to have successfully rescued her boyfriend.
“Sooah!” Jimin points at Chaeyoung and Hoseok frantically. “We have a sobriety emergency for you.”
“On it,” she replies, without missing a beat. “Cosmo for you and… Hoseok? For you?”
“I’m driving,” he answers sullenly.
“We’ll get Suga hyung to pick us up,” interjects Jimin hastily. “He’ll have tequila,” he tells Sooah.
“Perfect.” She bustles around the tables, gathering her paraphernalia and mixing a row of drinks with precision. Jimin watches with admiration, amusement and a bit of nostalgia while stealing glances at Hoseok and Chaeyoung beside him, both of whom glare in opposite directions.
“Alright, drink up, everyone.” Sooah passes a drink each to Hoseok and Chaeyoung, followed by one for Jimin. “You need to freshen yours up, too,” she adds with a smirk.
He holds up his half-finished drink. “But I’m not -” He breaks off when Sooah clinks her own half-empty glass with his. “Right.”
“Bottoms up, Chim.”
Both of them guzzle down their drinks in one go before emerging, warm and flushed. Jimin’s face feels like it’s on fire and his throat burns. But when he spots Sooah shaking out her hair and reaching enthusiastically for her fresh drink, he rallies.
“Cheers, guys,” he says, turning so that Hoseok and Chaeyoung can clink their glasses, too, when he notices something amiss. “Alex,” he adds, raising his eyebrows. “No drink for you?”
Alex, standing a step behind Sooah and smiling as he watched them drink, looks surprised to be spoken to. “Oh, I - I have rehearsal tomorrow.”
“And?”
“And… well, I don’t – I don’t want to be hungover during it.” He chuckles sheepishly. “Yeonjun hyung will kill me.”
“One drink won’t get you hungover,” says Jimin dismissively, reaching for a can of beer on the table and tossing it to him, which he catches at the last moment.
“You don’t have to drink that, Alex.” Sooah cuts in. “Jimin.”
“What?” Jimin half-chuckles, but there’s suddenly far less humour in it. “He can’t be the only one not drinking. They’re called drinking games for a reason.”
“I don’t mind,” says Alex quickly. “It’s just one drink, noona. And… beer doesn’t have sugar,” he adds a bit uncertainly, glancing at the label.
“Exactly. And he’ll work off the carbs at practice tomorrow, anyway.” Jimin grins. “Been there, done that.”
Sooah fixes him with a steely look that he returns innocently, taking a sip of his vodka drink. Behind her, Alex’s face seems to crease at the mention of carbs.
“Just one,” he mutters to himself, before holding it a few inches away and cracking it open. A bit of foam overflows and drips on the floor, but he takes a big gulp anyway. “Good beer,” he says after a moment.
“We also have breezers -” Chaeyoung starts to say but Hoseok catches her eye and shakes his head an infinitesimal amount, causing her to fall silent.
“Alright, now that everyone has their drinks,” continues Jimin, deliberately not looking at Sooah, “we can begin. Twenty questions, you said?”
“You said. And drinking games are perfectly possible without alcohol,” adds Sooah, apparently not about to let this go. “Remember your first drinking game?”
Jimin’s smile fades a bit as flashes surface from the recesses of his memory: a crowded house, a glass of Coke - and laughter from his classmates. Sooah hadn’t rushed to his defense this quickly then.
“Yeah, I remember,” he replies after a moment. “Just making sure Alex doesn’t make the same mistake.”
“That’s not your call, though. He can decide what he wants to do.”
“Wow, did you hear that, oppa?” Chaeyoung pipes up. “Sound familiar?”
Hoseok scoffs. “Seriously? How is what I said similar to this?”
“It’s the way you said it, like you think I can’t do a single thing right.”
“That sounds familiar,” mutters Jimin into his drink, just loud enough for Sooah to hear.
“Oh, God, Jimin,” she snaps, rolling her eyes. “Now you’re just reaching. You can drink if you want, but you don’t get to tell others how to -”
“It’s a party! Let loose here because you can’t anywhere else - remember when you told me that?”
“I remember that that was in the context of you worrying about your math homework at a party, Jimin.”
Jimin gasps, his cheeks growing hot. “Never have I ever worried about my math -”
“Oh, are we playing Never Have I Ever?” A voice interrupts them, sounding incongruously excited. Everyone turns to see Sungmi and her boyfriend Ice in tow, holding a drink and a joint respectively. When no one responds, she frowns. “No? Damn, this party must be going worse than I thought.”
“We can play Never Have I Ever,” offers Chaeyoung, turning to the others. “I’ll go first. Never have I ever… poked my nose in someone else’s business,” she finishes, looking straight at Hoseok.
He gives her an unimpressed look and takes an exaggerated sip of his drink, wincing slightly. Meanwhile, everyone else in the circle takes a sip as well, some sheepish, some shameless and, in Jimin’s case, with a bit of guilt.
“Okay, um…” Jimin wracks his brain, the alcohol suddenly making his mind swim. “Never have I ever dated a carbon copy of my ex.”
He watches as all the expression leaves Sooah’s face, but he turns away, looking questioningly at everyone in the circle. Hoseok wrinkles his nose while Chaeyoung snorts and shakes her head. Sungmi tilts her head thoughtfully and takes a sip, however. Across the makeshift circle, Sooah deliberately places her glass on the table while, to Jimin’s surprise, Alex takes a small sip of his beer.
“Alright, your turn, hyung,” says Jimin after a moment.
Hoseok’s eyes widen as he scrambles for a question. “Um, never have I ever… been to a party where I don’t know a single person apart from the host?”
Every single person in the circle takes a drink, including Ice, who takes a sip of his girlfriend’s.
“That was a good one,” remarks Sungmi, smiling with humour. “Okay, I’m next - and we’re going to make this exciting now,” she adds, rubbing her hands dramatically. “Okay, never have I ever… had a sex dream about someone in this room.”
A sort of silence seems to spread through the circle. Swallowing, Jimin takes a hesitant sip of his drink, glancing as quickly as he can at Sooah. She takes a sip, too, her eyes on the contents of her glass the entire time. Apart from them, Alex takes a sheepish sip, and Sungmi and Ice both take turns as well. Jimin feels something move next to his elbow but ignores it, eager to move the game along.
“Babe, that was an easy one,” drawls Ice, winking at the circle. “We’re all people, we all love, we all dream,” he rambles, taking another long puff of his joint. “I’ve had dreams, too, you know? I’ve had dreams about my lovely lady here -” He pulls Sungmi to his side by the waist and kisses her neck “- I’ve had dreams about my tattoo artist, I’ve have had dreams of Sungmi and my tattoo artist, Sungmi and her roommate -”
“Wait, what did you say?” Hoseok begins sharply, but Chaeyoung immediately interrupts him.
“Okay, no, the game, the game! Uh, Ice - it’s your turn, I think,” she adds hastily, stepping closer to Jimin. But Ice waves a hand good-naturedly.
“Nah, I’m good, sweetheart. I live here, in the mind and the -”
“Okay, moving on,” interrupts Sungmi, and Jimin guesses her boyfriend has finally made her uncomfortable as well. “It’s, uh - your turn,” she says, pointing at Alex. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Oh, I’m -”
“This is Alex,” says Jimin brightly. “He’s Sooah’s boyfriend.” Sungmi’s blank expression tells Jimin a moment later that she obviously has no idea who Sooah is either, but she shrugs eventually.
“You go, Alex.”
“Um -” With his wide eyes, full and parted lips, and his hair falling effortlessly over his forehead, he looks like every label’s dream idol. Jimin taps his foot impatiently, an act that doesn’t go unnoticed by a few others.
“Okay, uh, never have I -”
“Make it a good one, Alex,” warns Sungmi.
“Ah, I’m sure he will, unnie,” snickers Chaeyoung, raising her glass encouragingly. “Come on, Alex, the pressure is on!”
“- ever - okay -”
“They’re just kidding, babe,” murmurs Sooah with a smile, squeezing his arm.
“Only a bit,” adds Jimin, winking and ignoring her frown.
“- lost my virginity to someone in this room!”
Everyone processes this before a few chuckles break out. “Alright, that was a good one,” allows Sungmi. “Not one I can drink to, unfortunately.”
“Yeah, we may have gone into historic territory here,” agrees Chaeyoung, “but you just made the game a lot more interesting. Cheers.”
No one seems to notice Jimin and Sooah lock gazes for a moment before quietly sipping their drinks. Memories that Jimin had always treasured threaten to resurface, but there is nothing he wants to be reminded of less at the moment.
“Your turn, Sooah.” Alex nudges her gently.
“Right.” She clears her throat and stares at the floor. “Never have I ever lied to someone while breaking up with them.”
Jimin scoffs audibly but it fortunately gets drowned in a sea of agreement, with almost everyone taking a sip of their drink. He doesn’t, however, shaking his head slightly at Sooah. A part of him is unsurprised; this had to happen eventually. There was seldom a time when he and Sooah got together and didn’t begin descending into their history - and it was never pretty.
“My turn, then,” chimes Chaeyoung. Her drink is almost over now and she stumbles slightly next to him. “Um… never have I ever been cheated on.”
Sungmi rolls her eyes and drinks, as does Hoseok. Across from the circle, Sooah lifts her drink to her mouth and pauses for a moment before drinking. Her eyes flicker to Jimin before looking away.
His heart thuds in his chest. Nothing would ever be good enough for Kim Sooah. Not two years of a relationship, not how much they meant to each other - none of it. All that would ever matter to her would be how they broke up - even if part of it wasn’t true.
“Jimin?”
He comes out of it, chewing the inside of his lip. “Never have I ever…” His eyes dart up to Alex, who seems to be realising that something is awry. “... dated another idol’s ex-girlfriend.”
No one drinks, predictably. Jimin ignores the “huh?”s and the joking groans, his gaze solely on Alex who, frowning at Jimin, slowly takes a sip of his drink. Next to him, Sooah closes her eyes.
Jimin waits to feel victorious, for it’s clear that Alex now knows about his and Sooah’s shared history. But a deep-seated bitterness creeps through instead. New boyfriend in, old boyfriend out.
“Okay… who’s next?”
“Oh, that’s me, I think,” says Hoseok distractedly, reaching out to steady Chaeyoung. “Um - I don’t know. Can I pass?”
“I’ll take your turn.” Sooah’s voice rings out, calm and sharp. She looks at Jimin through steely, heavy-lidded eyes; standing next to a tall and handsome boyfriend, Jimin can almost imagine this is high school once again - but in a parallel universe where she would ever look at him with anything but affection.
“Never have I ever caused a friend’s break-up.”
There are scoffs from around the circle, with Sungmi and Ice both taking a sip each. From next to him, Chaeyoung takes a sheepish sip as well, while Jimin glares at Sooah. The cranberry and vodka drink suddenly looks vile in his glass and he feels like he could throw up.
“Think I need some air,” he mutters, turning around and leaving the circle amidst the mild chatter. He places the glass on some surface on the way as he nudges his way through the crowd of drunken young adults. He just about exits the apartment when he realises he has no plan whatsoever of where to go, but he knows he can’t go back. So he carries on, reaching the end of the hallway where the warm summer breeze of the night gives him some respite from the haze of smoke at the party.
He hears footsteps behind him then, right on cue.
“Storming out, Jimin?” The footsteps stop abruptly. “Really?”
He doesn’t even turn around. “Don’t start, Sooah.”
“Jesus Christ. You have to grow out of this.”
“Grow out of this?” Jimin finally whips around, momentarily surprised to see her standing so close to him. Goosebumps have erupted on her bare shoulders but she doesn’t seem to have noticed.
“Yeah. It’s been long enough.” Sooah gives him a distinctly unimpressed look, as though this fight isn’t worth her time.
“You know what? Why don’t you just go back to your boyfriend?” Jimin says scathingly.
“I will, just as soon you stop - okay, no, you are not walking away from me right now.”
Jimin rounds on her the moment he hears footsteps behind him again. “You completely attacked me in there!” he blurts out accusingly.
“Because you attacked Alex!” Sooah sighs in frustration. “He’s my boyfriend, Jimin. You can’t go there - you know that.”
“You’ve known Alex for three months. And you’ve known me for six years, Sooah,” he reminds her, knowing deep down that it hardly matters. But the words spill out like they’ve been pressing up against his vocal chords, desperate to get out since the evening began.
She’s quiet for a moment, biting the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, well.” She gives him a look that’s part firm and part sympathetic. “Unfortunately, current boyfriend trumps ex-boyfriend. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.”
Jimin scoffs, ignoring his stomach sinking. “What happened to old friends?”
“You are an old friend, but you’re also my ex. And boyfriend trumps -”
“Yeah, I got it,” he interrupts her, rolling his eyes. “I thought it was all in good fun,” he says after a moment, looking away from her.
Even without looking, he can hear the skepticism in her voice. “Really?”
“Yes. I - I may have gone a bit overboard in the end,” he admits, swallowing as he remembers Alex’s confused face, the realisation dawning on him. “I just… didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” Definitely not with someone.
“Jimin, it’s been five years,” she reminds him in a low voice. “We’ve both dated other people since then; it can’t be a surprise that -”
“I don’t care that you’re dating him,” he interrupts her again, realising as he says it that it’s true. He doesn’t care, not really. Not like that, anyway. “You and I dated in high school. I never expected us to end up married or anything. Okay? We’ve all moved on.”
Sooah doesn’t say anything, just continues looking at him, a small frown on her face. She’s confused.
Jimin can relate. It’s immeasurably frustrating not being able to put his finger on the problem. “It’s just weird… seeing it up close,” he finishes lamely, knowing it’s the best he can come up with right now.
“Even now?”
“Yeah. I mean, the last time I saw it up close was…” He shrugs. “... when we were sixteen. With Daehyun.”
Sooah’s eyes widen right on cue. “Oh, God,” she exclaims, taking a deep breath.
“Come on, you know that -”
“If you bring up Daehyun one more time -”
She’s interrupted by the door to the apartment thudding open. A couple of people spill out, loud and drunk. Sooah turns back to him.
“Alright. I’m done.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Because I can’t have this conversation one more time, Jimin.” She shakes her head. “I’m going back inside.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Jimin watches her walk back inside, steps quick and steady, despite how much she’s drunk all night. Just as she enters, two people pass her by. Jimin realises with a start that it’s Hoseok and Chaeyoung.
“- only came here to criticise me!” Chaeyoung’s voice is loud and shrill compared to Sooah’s low one.
“If you think this is criticising, then you’re missing the point,” says Hoseok loftily, rolling his eyes. “I just don’t want you to kill yourself, okay? Sorry for being the only adult around here,” he mutters, striding down the hallway towards Jimin.
“Oh, please,” she snaps, scoffing. “You’re just programmed to find something wrong with everything I do.”
“And you’re just programmed to be a brat!”
“Great! Now you sound like my dad. Why don’t you call him and have drinks over it?”
“Seriously? I’m looking out for you because you’re my best friend’s sister,” he points out, turning around to face her. “I didn’t have to spend my Saturday night with Fire and Ice, you know?”
“Oh, because she has red hair? Clever.” Chaeyoung crosses her arms across her chest. “And you know what? Your best friend,” she continues, “doesn’t give a shit, alright? He knows I’m not twelve anymore. If he doesn’t care, why do you?”
“I - I don’t!” Hoseok sputters, going red in the face. “You know what? Fine. Hang out with that Ice and his group of Neanderthals - I don’t even care.”
“Great,” she says sarcastically. “Now you sound like the Hoseok I grew up with!” With one last glare, she turns around and stalks back into the house exactly the way Sooah had a few minutes ago.
Hoseok stands motionless for a moment before turning to face Jimin, eyes wide. “What the hell just happened?”
Jimin shakes his head, lost for words. “I have no fucking idea,” he mutters. “Do you want to call Suga hyung or should I?”
—
The doorbell rings and startles Namjoon, who spills a couple of drops of milk on his t-shirt.
“Damn it,” he mutters, dropping his spoon back into the bowl of cereal and holding the t-shirt away from his chest. “Can you get that?” he asks Jungkook, who’s sitting across from him at the breakfast table.
Jungkook nods and heads towards the door as Namjoon disappears into his room, opening it to see someone he hasn’t in a while.
“Sooah?” He chuckles in mild disbelief. “Um - hey, noona. Didn’t expect to see you… here.”
“Yeah, I know,” she says lightly, biting her lip. “Is Jimin here?”
Jungkook’s pause before he nods tells her that he knows something happened last night. “Come on in. He was pretty drunk last night so he went straight to bed,” he adds, shutting the door behind her and beckoning her inside. “I’ll just get him.”
Sooah nods as he shuffles inside, hearing a door open and him softly calling Jimin hyung. “He’ll be right out,” he says generously, coming back out from the hallway and going back to the kitchen table. A minute later, Jimin emerges from the same direction, his hair messy and eyes still a little droopy. He doesn’t look wholly surprised to see her.
“Morning,” she says after a moment. “How’d you sleep?”
“Crap.” He gives her a quick once-over. “Are you hungover?”
“Not in the least. You?”
He shakes his head, frowning a little at the movement. “Nope. Not at all.”
“Right.” Sooah falls silent, glancing surreptitiously at Jungkook as he scarfs down his breakfast. Jimin copies her, and they stare at him until he looks up from his phone.
“What?” he asks through a mouthful of cornflakes.
“Hey, Jungkook,” she begins. “Um, do you mind if…” She trails off, biting her lip when Jungkook simply frowns.
“Leave us alone for a minute?” Jimin prompts, and Jungkook immediately nods.
“Oh. Yeah, okay. Right.” He climbs off the chair, gathering his bowl, a plate of toast and a bowl of ready-to-eat kimchi, with his phone piled on top of the bread. “I’ll just… finish inside,” he mumbles, balancing everything and precariously walking inside.
Jimin turns back to face her again. “So… what’s up?” He frowns as she throws something to him, catching it easily. “Hangover pills?” he reads off the label. “I told you, I’m not hungover.”
Sooah shrugs. “Just keep it. For some other time.”
“Okay,” he says, slipping it into the pocket of his track pants. “Thanks. Was that it?”
Without his hair styled and his expensive clothes, he looks… young. His cherubic face, even with a straight expression and tired eyes, stirs an old, innocent adoration in her.
“I wanted to talk about last night,” she says. “Sober.”
Jimin shakes his head. “We don’t have to. I was - I was a bit of a dick, I know.”
“Yeah… but so was I.” Sooah’s eyes flicker to the floor. “I got defensive when you were picking on Alex and… I may have said some stuff I didn’t mean to.”
He nods slowly. “Guess I didn’t know what it’s like on the other side,” he says, cracking a half-smile. “I’m sorry if I… did I get you in trouble? When he found out that we used to…” He gestures between the two of them.
“No, you didn’t. He was a little surprised, yeah, but… kind of impressed?” She shrugs. “He really looks up to you.”
“That’s nice of him, I guess. He seems like a good kid.”
She chuckles. “He’s not that much younger.”
“No?”
When he doesn’t say anything further, Sooah sighs. “Jimin… I didn’t mean to say all that stuff last night.”
“No, you were right. Current boyfriend trumps ex-boyfriend,” he repeats, swallowing. “You weren’t the only one thinking it.”
“No, Jimin, that’s not true. Okay, fine, it’s true if I have to choose between them,” she amends, rolling her eyes. “In that case, I’m forced to choose my boyfriend over my ex.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“So don’t make me choose.” Just as she’d expected, Jimin’s shoulders relax, as though he hadn’t considered this. “Jimin, you are my ex but you don’t have to be just that for the rest of our lives. Come on, we’ve been broken up for longer than we were together - isn’t it time we actually became friends?”
“Friends?” He says it like it’s a foreign word. “I - Sooah, I get what you’re going for, I really do, but…” He takes a deep breath, like he’s bracing himself to say something. “I don’t know how we’ll do as friends, honestly.”
“Why? I can be a good friend,” she says, a little defensively. “I had a pretty good circle of friends, you know?”
Jimin chuckles. “No offense, but that is not a group I want to join. Come on, you’re talking about your high school friends, right? Sooah, they were awful,” he confesses, shaking his head. “Those girls didn’t have a shred of loyalty - they’d sell their mothers for gossip. And those guys you hung out with?” He exhales in disgust. “They weren’t friends. They were complete jerks and they just wanted to get with whichever girl would give in first.”
There’s a moment while Sooah processes this. “Right,” she says. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” he says immediately, the regret audible.
“I know you didn’t,” she assures him. “I know, Jimin, because you’re a good guy. You were the best person I knew,” she admits, hoping he believes her. “That’s why I fell for you, and not any of those other jerks.”
Jimin says nothing, his eyes falling to the floor.
“You still are one of the best people I know,” she adds after a moment. “And I don’t want you to just disappear from my life because I’m dating someone. I’d rather have you as my friend than this - this guy from my past I hook up with a couple times a year.”
When Jimin still doesn’t respond, she sighs.
“Fine. Whatever. I’m still your friend.” Sooah stares at him, hoping for something, anything. “Bye, then.”
“You really think it’ll work?”
“Yeah, I do. We get along pretty well, in case you haven’t noticed. We can try at least,” she adds when he continues looking doubtful.
“You’re sure you won’t fall in love with me?” he asks seriously.
Sooah stares before snorting. “Jesus, Chim,” she says admonishingly as he bursts into giggles, “don’t say whatever pops into your head.”
“Sorry, I forgot you’re dating another idol now. Probably not a big deal for you,” he allows.
“It wasn’t a big deal when I was dating the first idol either.”
“Not even with his abs?”
“I preferred his calculus notes over his abs.”
Jimin makes a face. “Some friend.”
Sooah smiles back. There’s still something resembling hesitance in his expression, but she hopes it’s temporary. It’s unchartered territory for both of them, but a necessary change. She suspects it was what scared Jimin last night in the first place.
“I should go,” she says after a moment. “I just came to…”
“Ask for my forgiveness?”
She rolls her eyes. “Sure.”
Jimin grins, and she breathes a silent sigh of relief. He walks her to the door and for the first time in a long time, Sooah looks forward to their common future.
“By the way,” he asks, just as she’s stepping out, “you - you don’t actually think that I cheated on you. Right? When we broke up?” he clarifies.
Sooah frowns. “Um… no. Why - oh, the game? Last night?”
Jimin nods, his lips pursed. “You drank.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She shakes her head and pats his arm comfortingly. “That wasn’t about you. Like you said,” she adds with a half-chuckle, “most of them were jerks.”
—
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