High Between Floors - m.list
➳❥ Synopsis: you just moved into a new apartment, ready to reinvent your life. Until... your upstairs neighbor loud, reckless, and impossible to ignore. Makes you realize some things can't be fixed. only felt.
❤︎ Pairing: dealer!jk x female!reader
❤︎ Chapter Warnings: explicit language, masturbation, drug dealing.
⋆ ⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱❀ • ❀⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆
That's how long it's been since you moved in. Three weeks of adjusting, three weeks of unpacking, trying to build a routine in a place that still feels new. Three long weeks.
School. Work. Home. Repeat.
School has been so boring and just filled with a lot of information. The burnout is getting to you, and you're not even halfway done. Your mentality you started with is not the same now. The academic exhaustion is too real. You're not getting the best grades, and you're barely passing. This is not like you.
It's been quiet upstairs lately. Like really quiet. No bass through the ceiling, no footsteps, no unexpected knocks at your door, just nothing.
He's been gone for almost a week.
You're not keeping track.
Well kinda. But not the point.
Today was already a shitty day before it even started. Your alarm never woke you up, so you were very late to school. Your phone didn't even charge last night, so you're stuck on 16%. You forgot your homework, which was needed for the group discussion, the one worth 10% of your participation grade. You sat in class with an almost dead phone, running on five hours of sleep and whatever was left of your will to exist, watching everyone else pull out theirs and just staring straight ahead, trying to make it to the end of this day.
You didn't retain a single thing from the 3 hour long lecture. You tried your best, but there's just too much stress on your mind.
By the time you got to work, you were already slumped with a lot of phone calls from people setting appointments. So many cases to file and organize. Not to mention, all the people coming in. One thing at a time. You smiled, nodded, and barely got through it even though you wanted to cry your eyes out.
You clocked out at six, feeling like never clocking in again. But then you remembered bills are due in two days.
The walk home was rough. It rained, and you missed the bus by 3 minutes. Today is just not your day. You walked home hood on and ready to sob.
As you walk up the stairs, all you can do is contemplate your life; you're just so tired of everything. There's just nothing exciting anymore. You thought moving into a new place would give you that exhilarating feeling, but right now you just feel numbed.
The routine you're stuck in is making you feel like a ghost in your own life. Everything about it is blurring into a gray, predictable loop. You reach the top landing and freeze.
It's still quiet upstairs. You hate that you notice. You hate that six days of nothing from someone you don't even know somehow made this exhausted week even more boring. Even if the saxophones get louder every time you are in his vicinity.
Your apartment feels less interesting without him.
You get into your apartment, drop everything by the door, and just stand there in your living room for a second. Your apartment has come along slowly but surely. You've decorated a little bit, trying to bring some personality into your place. You should be happy that everything is coming together, but you just don't feel like yourself inside of it right now.
You hop in the shower, praying you don't catch a cold from walking in the rain. The hot water hits your skin, but it doesn't quite wash away the chill. You stand directly under the stream, eyes closed, letting the steam fill the room. But even the sound of the water can't drown out your thoughts. The burden of college debt, bills due, living alone in a new place, and balancing your responsibilities… is a fucking pain in the ass.
After your shower, you immediately hear your phone buzzing. Its lyric calling you. She already called you twice and texted you. You really don't want to pick up. It's just been a long day, and you don't feel like talking to anyone, but she is your best friend, and you decided to pick up.
“Hey, Lyric. Are you okay?”
“Me and Namjoon broke up.” She sniffles.
“Can you believe him? He said he needed space. Like what the fuck? We were together for a year and a half, and he needs space?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
You sat down on your couch and pulled your knees to your chest. You didn't respond right away because sometimes, people don't need a response immediately. They just need someone to listen.
“I don't even know what I did wrong.” She said quietly. “I’m just so confused right now because I really thought he was the one.”
“You didn't do anything wrong, Lyric. Believe me. Sometimes you meet someone in the right place but the wrong person.”
“Then why does it feel like I did everything so wrong?”
You didn't have an answer for that. So you just stayed on the phone with her. Let her talk, cry, and go through all her emotions.
By the time she finally went quiet, you’d been on the phone for almost two hours.
“Thank you for picking up,” she said softly.
“Always,” you said. “Get some sleep, okay?”
You hung up the phone and just sat there in silence. At least your mind had been cleared of all of your problems for a while. Sometimes listening to someone else's problems is the only break you get from your own.
But now your apartment is quiet again, and everything in your mind is slowly creeping up to bother and irritate your consciousness again. Your grades, Lyric, the bills, the assignments you still haven't made up. The Feeling of being twenty-two and exhausted in a way that doesn't even make sense yet.
You tried to do some reading. Couldn't focus
Tried watching some TV. Nothing stuck, and you kept zoning out.
You picked up your phone and googled…
The results were insulting but expected. Exercise, journaling, deep breathing, limit caffeine, get enough sleep, spend time in nature.
Masturbation as a natural stress reliever.
You stared at the screen for a solid five seconds. Then you laughed out loud to your empty apartment.
You put your phone down and stared at the ceiling.
That was not the answer you were looking for. You closed the tab, brushed your teeth, and got into bed by ten.
You lay there flipping between your back and your side, adjusting your pillow. Your brain would not stop. Your last search just kept you awake.
You stared at the ceiling that's getting way too familiar now.
Then you thought about it again.
“I'm not doing that,” you said to yourself.
I mean. It did say it was a natural stress reliever. You could feel better after and finally sleep.
You start with circling your clit to get something going inside of you.
You are just craving that exhilarating feeling that you haven’t felt in forever. 
Then you pump two fingers, the sensation felt calming and relaxing, chasing your release to let everything go. As you start to fasten your pace, your breath catches, and for a second everything feels close.
Then your mind turns against you, and now you're reminded of everything going on.
You lasted an embarrassing seven minutes before you gave up.
It just wasn't working. Your brain refused to cooperate. One second you felt relaxed and worry free and the next second, you were thinking about your grades, then Lyric, your bills, then somehow, annoyingly…
Dark hair, tattoos, vulnerable, glistening brown eyes. “Stay.”
“Absolutely not.” you said out loud to nobody.
You lay there for a second, staring at the ceiling, feeling so fucking defeated.
And you order a vibrator…
Your face is illuminated with the screen showing.
Order Placed. Your package should arrive within 4 days.
My phone buzzed at 8 am. Waking me up after 3 hours of sleep.
I looked at the screen. One message from an unknown number.
The car will be at the corner at 10. Pack a bag. Be ready.
I set my phone face down. Trying to prepare myself for this job. Taehyung was already up, I could hear him moving around in the kitchen, eating our leftover pizza from last night.
“You see the message?” he called from the other room.
“Yeah,” I say, reaching for my prerolled blunt.
“Now I am,” I answer while lighting and taking a long needed pull from my blunt.
“Aye, let me hit some of that too,” he replies while plopping onto my bed.
We’ve known each other since third grade. Got placed in the same group home and never really separated after that. By the time we were twelve, we’d stopped expecting anyone else to stick around. Caseworkers changed, foster homes changed, but Taehyung was always there.
Taehyung and I just never let go of each other. That's the only way I know how to explain our bond. But I'd ride for him, the same way he would ride for me.
We went through everything together in that house. Shit I don't talk about. What I can say is that it made us hard in ways that took years to understand, and in ways we'd never admit out loud.
August was our youth mentor. He came in when we were around sixteen, which was late enough that we'd already seen too much and early enough that we still listened to the right person. He wasn't like other mentors who would bullshit you into thinking you'd get adopted or fostered one day. He didn't pretend the world was going to be fair to us. He showed us how to move in it.
He showed us how to hustle.
How to survive outside a system that was already done with us before we were old enough to know what that meant.
So we dropped out. Both of us. Didn't feel like a decision at the time, felt more like the only option. School wasn't going to save us. We knew that. So we started selling, and we didn't look back.
I'm not proud of it, and I never should be.
And in this city, for someone like me, being alive is the closest thing to winning I've got.
I showered and packed a duffle bag of some of my clothes and essentials.
“It's already 9:50, you wanna head to the corner store and get some snacks before he picks us up?” I ask Taehyung.
“Hell yea let go.” he answers, already out the door.
While walking down the stairs. I stopped in front of her door.
I wanted to knock, but what would I even say?
Then I heard Tae call my name and I had to keep walking.
We grabbed a couple of snacks and waited at the corner. A few minutes later, I see the black Escalade pull up right in front of us. Then a buff built man hops out, and comes towards us. He stares at our souls, then starts to pat us down.
“Aye, man is all of this necessary?” I question him as he pats down my waist and down my legs.
“Just doing my job.” he replies cold and sternly. “Y'all are good to come inside; he's waiting.”
We hop inside to the very backseat.
“Shit, you got even scarier, August,” Taehyung says, teasing him.
“Not too much, you little shithead. Just taking some precautions." He hisses back. “I got a job for y'all, 3.5k each.”
“Hell yeah we’re in” I say.
Big buyer this time. Yoongi explains. We’re not selling street level for the next few days, we're moving weight. Drop offs only. No talking, no faces.
He slides a duffel bag towards me. “That one's yours. Hold onto it. Don't touch it. Don't open it. Don't ask questions.”
Inside, everything's so well organized, a bunch of little bags of white powders. Probably some cocaine, ketamine, or xanax. But wrapped and separated from everything else, small blue pills, way too many of them.
“It's not your business what's in there. Just hold it.” he says before I can say anything.
I zip it back up and don't say anything. I know people who take stuff like that without knowing what's really in it don't wake up.
I'm not that guy. Yes, I do deal drugs, but I sell what gets people high. Not what gets people killed.
At the end of the day, I gotta make this money. August is already looking out the window like the conversation never happened.
The drive was long. Nobody talked. Just pure silence. Taehyung fell asleep twenty minutes in like he had no care in the world. I stayed awake the whole ride, just in case.
We ended up pulling up at this warehouse way outside the city. As soon as we stepped inside, it was a business. People processing, weighing, and packaging drugs everywhere. One thing about August is that he can run a fucking empire.
The buff built man from earlier signals us to follow him. We follow him into a back room with a bunk bed and some all black expensive suits hanging against the wall.
“This y'all room. Wear these, look presentable, and wash your ass. Be ready in 15.” He says, pointing to the suits. “Bathroom down the hall to the left.”
I look around at this room that looks like a fucking jail cell.
“Damn y'all couldn't put us up in a hotel?
All he does is give me a side eye on his way out, bumping into my shoulder hard enough to make a point.
I glared at him and grabbed one of the suits from the hanger. I wasn't about to argue with the help.
The shower barely had any water pressure and was dirty as fuck, I got in and out fast. I put on my all black fit that fits me so right.
“We look fine as fuck” Taehyung comments.
“Nah, for real though” I answer back.
That man from earlier barges into our room, handing us some black sunglasses.
“The cars waiting outside” he says. “Keep those on the whole time, your faces can't be remembered if something goes wrong. Don't talk unless it's about the count. You’re not there to make friends.”
August pulled us aside right before we got in the Escalade.
“No playing around this time. This is a real serious job. Alright?” he says in a serious tone. “You count everything in front of him. Nobody reaches for anything.” August hands me something heavy, wrapped in a red bandana. I didn't have to unwrap it to know what it was. “Just in case.”
I tucked it in my back pocket.
The car ride was dead silent. We both knew how serious this deal was, and if we slip up even once. We're done.
We pulled up to this old abandoned mechanic shop. A man smoking a big cigar and two other guys in shiestys armed with AK-47s.
This really is some serious shit.
“You got the package?” he asked, voice flat.
“You got the money?” I answered.
He chuckled like that amused him. “What? Y'all don't trust me?” he said, taking a puff from his cigar.
“Just business,” Taehyung says.
One of his little lap dogs throws a black duffle bag at our feet.
“It's all in there” one of them says.
“We're gonna count it just to be sure.” I respond
We counted everything. Bill by bill. Tae kept track while I watched the room.
Halfway through, one of his guys shifted and reached towards his waist, and I heard him cock the glock in his waist.
In one motion, I had the strap from my back pocket aimed dead at him. Tae was up on his feet the same second.
The cigar guy held up one hand. Real slow, just watching.
“Easy.” He said, not to me. To his own guy.
His guy slowly moved his hand away from his waist. Eyes still locked on mine.
I didn't lower my arm just yet. I am not trying to mess around and risk both of our lives. So I had to make my point.
I tucked it back in my waistband. Giving Taehyung a nod to continue counting. While keeping my eyes on them.
“It's straight. 20k.” Taehyung says, looking at me
I throw them the duffle bag, while they inspect all the products. Giving each other nods.
“Respect for keeping it a hundred. ” He says, putting out his hand.
We exit the shop and head back into the car. I could finally breathe.
The ride back was quiet for the first five minutes.
Taehyung broke the silence.
“Holy shit, that was intense. You were not playing.” Taehyung says
“Fuck. I know.” I responded. My heart was racing from that intense moment. I let out a slow breath and leaned my head back.
We were alive. Job was done. 20k between us, sitting in a bag at our feet. This day was long and stressful as fuck.
“I need a blunt.” I said out loud.
“I got you” Tae said while already lighting one and passing it to me.
We ended up at one of August’s clubs. It was already packed by the time we pulled up. Music loud, light low, and people dancing.
We find August in the VIP lounge. No small talk. I hand him the bag, he counts it without looking at us, then slides us our cut like it's nothing.
As relieving it is to get paid this much money. We could've died tonight. Over a bag. Over one motherfucker who couldn't stay still for one second. And August is up in here in VIP sipping the most expensive liquor with girls all around him. Like it was just another Tuesday. Sometimes it's not worth the risk and stress this job has. I appreciate the hustle and all. But tonight was different.
I put the cash in my back pocket while Tae drags me to the bar. The bartender lines up some shots of Hennessy.
He slides one towards me while he lifts up a shot. “Cheers?” he says.
Then two more before I even realize it.
Four shots in and everything I've been bottling up starts to creep up. The way everything gets louder and moves faster.
This is exactly why I don't drink.
Weed I can handle. Weed turns the volume down. I can function and be completely unbothered with anyone's bullshit. I feel nothing, and that's fine. It's comfortable even if it sounds depressing.
Alcohol turns everything up in the most uncomfortable way possible until I can't ignore it anymore.
Meanwhile Tae is turning up, dancing and laughing loud as fuck with his whole chest. Making out with random girls he just met. That's him. He can just act like it's nothing.
I've never been able to do that.
I'm already out of it, so I just found a little corner to sit in.
Then a girl came and sat on my lap. Making a statement moving slow to the music.
Maybe this is what I need? But I’m just not here mentally, I keep on thinking about someone else.
“Nah. I'm sorry.” I said, guiding her off my lap. “I need some air.”
She didn't argue or give me some attitude, just moved on to a new guy like I was already forgotten.
The cold air hits my face, and all I feel is relief. I lean against the wall and check my phone.
I don't even know why I keep checking. She doesn't owe me anything.
Baltimore at night looks the same no matter what kind of night you had. It's either comforting or depressing depending on how you look at it.
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Note: Heyy everyone again so sorry for the inconsistency. Apparently I suffered a concussion from my accident 💔 I am feeling way better though since I took a break. Please enjoyyy!
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