how many | jjk | 0
Pairing: Jungkook x TattooArtist!Reader
Genre: Fluff, Smut, BadBoy!AU
Summary: To Jeon Jungkook, you're just the cutie who sits across from him in art class. He doesn’t have a clue that you're also the hidden face of his favorite tattoo artist on social media. When the bad boy notices you've taken a surprising interest in his ink, he dares you to explore every inch of his body until all of his tattoos are accounted for. Tempted by his irresistible smile and delicate touch, you might even let him in on your little secret.
Word Count: 3.2k
Parts: 0 ◆ 1 ◆ 2 ◆ 3 ◆ 4 ◆ 5 ◆ 6
A/N: hello! this is going to feel more like a series of drabbles with an overarching plot rather than a traditional series. also please note that only certain chapters will contain smut (ill mark the ones that do). this particular chapter has no smut
Art class isn’t supposed to be scary, but that doesn’t stop you from taking the furthest possible seat from where all the chatty people are getting acquainted before the new semester officially begins. Maybe you fucked up. Maybe you should’ve picked a seat closer to all those extroverts, and maybe you would’ve naturally fallen into their circle. Or not. You wouldn’t blame them.
You decide you’re fine right where you are. It gives you the space you need to ensure no one else sees the internal chaos reflected in the whites of your eyes whenever it comes to social interactions. You’re the opposite of a social butterfly, and it’s at times like this when you wonder how the fuck some like you has such a huge social media following—503,448 followers to be exact. It’s not your personality (you’re too much of an introvert for anyone to really get to know you). It’s not your face (you haven’t posted a single photo of yourself on your account). So it has to be your art.
And although you’re a lover of all different art forms, your true love lies with ink on skin. It’s a bit unexpected for someone like you, a soft girl with not a single drop of ink on her own arms. But regardless of your unassuming appearance and quiet nature, you’ve won over countless people who proudly wear your art on their skin. That’s the business you built for yourself from nothing more than a passion you’d always kept close to your heart.
So maybe you should stop worrying so much about making good first impressions. Your art will break the ice for you.
“Is this seat open?” A finger with a fine crown etched into it points at the spot across from you. Your eyes follow a long sleeve of eyeballs, text, and rock ’n’ roll up to a handsome face with too many piercings to count. He fits the description of someone you’d only heard rumors about but never saw in the flesh. Tatts and piercings? Check. Man bun? Check. Hot as fuck?
You take a quick glance at the boy as a whole. Some of his features are surprisingly soft. His eyes are enormous, his nose is adorable, and his lips are the prettiest pink you’ve ever seen—1775 C in Pantone if you had to guess. He even smells nice. Fuck. Definitely hot as fuck but also lowkey cute.
“Yeah, go ahead,” you say while trying to get your heart rate under control. He nods and pulls his earbuds out as he takes a seat. He uses his phone screen to check his reflection, making more of an effort to rub a speck of who-knows-what off his lip than to make small talk with you. This person is someone who clearly doesn’t give a fuck where he sits, and it’s sad that you’re envious of that.
“Hey, nice tatts, bro,” another guy calls out as he passes by your new neighbor.
“Thanks,” he calls back. It isn’t long before he’s back to his phone. You wonder if he’s too absorbed in his own reflection to hear the girls talking about him at the other table.
“I told you we should’ve sat over there.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“That’s Jeon Jungkook, isn’t it?”
Aha. Jeon Jungkook. That name rings a bell. You whip out your phone and search him up. It only takes a few seconds to find that his Instagram @ArtOfKooking has quite a following too. You scroll through his most recent posts but find none of this “art” that he speaks of in his handle aside from what’s visible on his arm. Imagine having 100k followers just for being an attractive human.
Your mindless scrolling comes to an abrupt stop at a black and white photo from a few months back. He weaves his fingers through his long locks with a killer gaze. You take back what you said about the lack of art on his page. It turns out the boy himself is a work of art and he knows it.
You suddenly remember why you’d avoided searching Jungkook up when your friend Seokjin first mentioned him to you a while back. The last thing you wanted was to fall victim to a pretty face with excellent taste in body art—a deadly combination and one of your biggest weaknesses. But it’s already too late. Your thumb double-taps the photo to trigger the little heart animation.
Wait.
You study his profile again and identify a bigger problem than your tiny crush on a boy who’s probably going to get you into a lot of trouble. Jungkook follows your tattoo account, which means he’s going to get a big fat notification that you liked his photo from months ago, which means you must’ve been scrolling through his posts for some time, which means you’re clearly intrigued by him, which means you’re actually fucked.
Thank god your professor finally starts the class. You need some sort of distraction from the first-world problem you currently find yourself in with the fine specimen sitting across from you.
“Let’s start with an exercise with the person sitting across from you.” You already hate this professor. “To get better acquainted with your classmates, I want you to draw whatever your partner requests in your own style. The request can be as specific or vague as you want. Oh, and no dick pics or boobs, please. I was told to keep the first day as clean as possible.”
With the assignment underway, you and Jungkook both pull out your sketchbooks. Yours looks practically new despite being halfway filled. His looks like a dinosaur stepped on it with more than a few pages falling out. Without saying a word, he slides his sketchbook over to you, inviting you to snoop around inside his world and waiting for an invitation of his own. Your sketchbook is too heavy to slide across the table, so he watches patiently as you push your sketchbook to him inch by inch until he picks it up with a silent chuckle. Great, he already thinks your weird.
The physical state of his sketchbook is deceptively sloppy. There are probably more torn-out pages than actual drawings, but you have to admit you like what you find. His style is a tad chaotic yet somehow in good taste. You can easily picture these designs somewhere on his body, and perhaps they already are.
Your favorite detail is that everything is in ink.
“You’re incredible,” he says, flipping through your pages. “You’re like those YouTubers who draw soda bottles and shit as if it's sitting on the page in real life. You know what I mean?”
“Thanks,” you nod. The compliment is oddly specific and not exactly your niche or platform, but you do get what he means. You have a knack for replicating what you see. If you were to copy a barcode line by line, it’d probably fool the scanner. That’s the level of precision in your work.
“Ah, I got it.” He twirls his pen around. “Can you draw my arm drawing whatever you want me to draw?”
“Sure.” Of course Jeon Jungkook wants you to draw him. Sounds on-brand for someone who is quite possibly in love with himself. But maybe you can use that trait of his to your advantage. “I want you to draw your next tattoo.”
You see his eyes shift from your art to your face. He studies you for a moment. If you had to guess, he probably doesn’t believe someone like you is actually interested in his tattoos. After all, most tattoo enthusiasts are identified by the ink they proudly wear on their sleeves. Meanwhile, your version of a sleeve is cozy, knitted, oversized, and void of any ink.
“What if I drew one for you instead?” He places the pen down on the blank page in front of him and stretches his arms up toward the ceiling. The upper section of his sleeve peeks out from his black tee. It's even more intense than his forearm. “I’m kind of over the thrill of injecting ink into my veins.”
“Oh…” That’s most definitely not the response you were expecting. Maybe you shouldn’t have assumed that someone with a lot of tattoos wouldn’t mind one more. How dare you make such a bold assumption. You'll never open your mouth again.
“I’d much rather taint someone else,” he hums. His tone is light but his eyes are dark as they pierce the air between you and him. You’d really like to see him try.
“Art can be tainted by people, but people can’t be tainted by art,” you respond. As introverted as you are, you gain a sense of comfort to speak your mind when it comes to an art form that has defined your life thus far. “Unless they have a tattoo of their ex. Then I guess they’re kind of fucked.”
“Truer words have never been spoken. I knew I liked you.” Oh. His nose crinkles and his laugh is much softer than expected. He picks up his pen and starts drawing heavy smooth lines. “I was just fucking with you, by the way. You can never have too many tattoos, right?”
You nod as if you also have a full sleeve of eyeballs and rock ’n’ roll. That’s when you notice he’s drawing in your sketchbook as if what’s yours is his. Whether intentional or not on his end, you don’t really want to swap back.
“I don’t think the professor intended for us to draw in each other’s sketchbook,” you point out as you follow his lead and start marking up the next blank page in the Jurassic artifact. You outline the positions of Jungkook’s arm, your sketchbook, and the top of his sketchbook from your perspective.
“I like it better this way,” he says. His lines are starting to come together, but you still have no idea what it’s supposed to be. You just have to trust the process. “It’ll give me something to remember you by.”
“You make it sound like I’m going to be dead by sunrise.” You try not to look at the smile that forms on his face when you say that. Instead, you focus on the details in his tattoos and transfer them onto your page. Some of the tattoos match the style found in his sketchbook, and it’s not a coincidence. “How many of your tattoos are your own design?”
Jungkook puts a pause on his drawing to examine his arm and run some calculations in his head. His answer isn’t a number. “I lost track, but maybe you can count them for me.”
He gives you a better look at all the art on his arm. He’s practically asking for your attention, and a part of you hates that you’re so quick to give it. Your innocent soul diligently counts all of the ones you assume to be in Jungkook’s style. You count around five. But then it hits you. You don’t know how many other tattoos are beneath his clothes and where they might be hiding.
“How many others are hidden?” you ask.
He shrugs. “Let me know when you’ve found them all.”
It takes you a minute to wrap your innocent head around what he’s implying. You imagine he might have one on his ribs—that’s the most attractive spot you’ve come across as a tattoo artist. But in what scenario are you going to find a shirtless Jeon Jungkook in front of you? Clients strip down for you all the time in the name of art, but it’s not like Jungkook is aware of your inking business. So the only way you’d ever thoroughly explore his bare body is if—
Your mouth forms a tiny O, but no words come out. In fact, you find it pretty hard to do anything at the moment, so you just watch as the boy continues on with his mysterious design. He definitely knows what he’s drawing, and yet you can’t seem to crack the code.
“You’re fun to tease, Y/N,” Jungkook says, nonchalantly flipping your sketchbook back to the inside cover to make sure he got your name right. Of course you’re That Girl with your name written in fancy font on your fucking sketchbook. And of course he’s going to tease you about every quirky thing you do. “I really hope you aren’t dead by sunrise.”
“Unlikely.” You realize you’ve regained your ability to function properly and point to his work in progress. “But if I am, promise me you’ll get that tattooed on your forehead where everyone can see it.”
“It’s a promise.” He plays along with your dry humor before getting back to work with a cute smile. Wholesome smiles always seem to hit different when they’re coming from the people you least expect.
At some point, Jungkook waits for you to finish drawing his arm so that the two of you can complete his design at the same time. He claims his design is only a few strokes away from the big reveal, but you’re still not seeing it.
As class comes to a close, your page is filled with a beautiful arm, two sketchbooks, and a design that’s apparently “only a few strokes away.” Jungkook takes you line by line until you see it. Very clearly, in fact. It’s a bunny with a tiny carrot tattoo, and it’s been staring you in the face the entire time. The boy drew it upside-down from his perspective so that it’d be right-side up for you. You’re thoroughly impressed.
“Is this tattoo for you or for me?” you ask. While the bunny might definitely be on-brand with Jungkook’s art style, it’s not quite as edgy as his other tattoos.
“Does it get your stamp of approval?” He closes your sketchbook and hands it back to you.
“Of course it does.” You try not to smile too much at the fact that Jungkook’s adorable design is forever inked into your sketchbook. “I love it,” you say as quietly as possible.
“Then it's all yours.” He whips out a black marker and gestures for your hand. You give it to him without question. The hand that holds yours is rough (in that he should probably invest in some higher quality lotion) and gentle (in that you never want him to let go). The subtle caresses engulfing your hand distract you from the marker gliding across your skin. Twenty seconds later, you have a simplified version of the bunny on the back of your hand.
You flail your hand about and blow on it in hopes that the ink will dry before it can smug. “If you ever get your license, this is the one I want,” you say.
“Sounds like a plan.” He takes one last look at your completed drawing and tucks it away safely into his bag. For someone with such a beaten-up sketchbook, you expected him to be a bit more careless with his belongings. But maybe he’s a little different from what you thought you knew about him.
In fact, it’s thanks to this boy that your first day in art class went as well as it did. You made him laugh, and he made you smile. Like everything just felt right between you and him.
You feel like you’re forgetting something though.
“Hey, by the way, do you have an IG for your art that I can follow?” Jungkook pulls out his phone because why wouldn’t you have an account to showcase all of your art? You blink at him because here’s your next mistake: Your only Instagram account @snowsleeve is the one for your tattoo business, the one where your identity is more or less kept out of the spotlight. And you never thought to make a separate account with all of your non-tattoo art under your real name.
“I actually don’t… but it’d probably be beneficial for me to make one.” You’re embarrassed that this is your reality. You’ve utilized social media to build a strong reputation for your business, and yet you totally failed to get your real name out there in the art community. Because perhaps someday, you won’t want to be known solely for your tattoos.
“Well, make one and add me,” he says. “I’ll be your first follower.”
“What’s your account?” Of course you’ve already tracked him down at @ArtOfKooking with your subpar sleuthing skills, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“It’s @jjkINK.” He pulls the account up for you to view. All of the art missing from his other account can be found here, and his face is nowhere in sight. Maybe having multiple accounts is more common than you thought.
“Wow, 30,000 followers? I didn’t know I was in the presence of an influencer,” you gasp and make it extra dramatic. After all, 30,000 is a big following for someone who isn’t a celebrity or well-known figure.
“I’m not an influencer.” He laughs and waves off your dramatic performance. “I’m just someone who shares his art with others. It’s really not that impressive, you know.”
“Well I’m impressed,” you say. And you mean it. You find it interesting how he doesn’t just dump all of his art into his @ArtOfKooking account with over three times as many followers. You imagine it’d be pretty tempting to do that for the sake of more exposure.
Once you’ve set up an alternate account under your real name with @Y/NsArtCorner, you hit the follow button on Jungkook’s art page and leave it at that. A few seconds later, you get a follow back from @ArtOfKooking.
“Oh, that’s my main account,” he explains. “I don’t post any art on that one, so you don’t really have to follow—”
You hit the follow button on that account too. “104,343 followers... Are you sure you aren’t an influencer?”
“I haven’t influenced anyone to do anything, for your information.” You feel like there should’ve been a hmph at the end of his sentence. He points to the bunny on your hand and says, “Well, except for you getting that rad tattoo.”
“Hey, don’t go thinking your bad boy self is a bad influence on me,” you say, holding your wrist close to your heart. “I’m totally not against the encouragement of getting something permanent branded into your skin.” You play it off as sarcasm, but that’s how you make bank.
“Would you really get one?” His eyes lock onto your body, identifying it as the perfect blank canvas for whatever he’s imagining.
“How do you know I don’t already have one?” You raise an eyebrow and cross your arms, still careful not to smudge the precious ink on your hand.
Jungkook tilts his head and squints as if he’s trying to see through the knitted holes of your slouchy sweater. As far as he can see, you don’t have any. But maybe that’s the point. Any tattoo you may or may not have would have to be hidden somewhere on your bare skin beneath your sweater, your lingerie, and most importantly, your soft smile. And the thought of that puts a curious little gleam in the boy’s eyes.
“Wait, how many do you have…?” He needs answers.
You throw your bag over your shoulder and shrug on the way out of the classroom. “Let me know when you’ve found them all.”
