Feeling - Chapter 2.2 Shading
AU: Performing Arts, School, Tattoo Artist Â
Genre: Dance, Â Romance, Angst, AU, School Life etc.
Pairing: Jungkook ( BTS) x Reader
The phone rings, and I know that there's only one person to call me this late. I sigh and answer.
"Little brother, so pleasant to hear your dulcet tones!"
Jimin's drunk, I can hear it in his voice. He's drunk almost all the time lately, always calls from some club or bar or concert hall, some random chick's house, wherever. Out on the road, he's got nothing but time to waste between performances, and handlers who get him hammered from morning till dusk. I wonder if he's spiraling out, but he's an adult, ain't he?
"What do you want. It's late."
"Is it a crime to want to speak to my beloved younger brother?â
"At midnight it is. I have class in the morning."
"I think we both agree that you have no class." Then he laughs at himself, and against my will, I smirk a bit, too. Because I go to this rigorous, elite, prestigious performing arts school, but I'm draped in tattoos and a bad attitude. No class is right.
"Where are you now?" I ask, just for something to do. Because even if I resent my brother for his success, and even if I'm bitter and heated and everything that I just can't seem to stack up, he's my brother, and I love him.
"You have no idea, do you."
And he means the question innocuously, but it hits me really close to home and shit. Does it matter?
Does anything matter? Music, tattooing, art for the sake of art, competition, being the best, beating the best, trying, working, sweating, bleeding...at this fucking academy, what is any of this for? What's the pay-off?Â
"I'm going to bed," I mumble into the receiver.
"Good night, little brother. Sweet dreams." More giggling; he's really fucking hammered.
And I hang up on him, on this heroic big brother of mine, who's disillusioned to the point of drunkenness every single night, who doesn't know where he's at or even cares anymore, who's sold his soul to his art without being really aware of the price he'd have to pay:
Self-control is the first thing to go when you're out on the road.
And I lay back down and try to sleep, but there's a burning pain in my arm that tells me I need Aquaphor and a decent meal, and maybe to take caution from my brother's example, and ease up every once in awhile.
There's no need to go balls out on every single aspect of your life, but with a full self-drawn fresh sleeve on my arm that stings like a motherfucker, I'm the last person to preach about temperance.
Yugyeom 's annoying. Ever since he brought her up the other night, I've been seeing more and more of that Y/N girl without meaning to. You know how you never really notice if something's there or not, until somebody brings it up, and then you start seeing it everywhere?
It's not that I go out of my way to look for her, either. But she kind of sticks out everywhere she goes. Which, as it turns out, ain't so many places: the rumors about her are true, and if she ain't in class, she's holed up in that dance studio across campus.
I stay in the musicians' dorms, and I practice in the music room. I have no reason to stray onto the dance quad, and I'd never even bother cutting through there in the first place, but the tattoo shop I work at is close by. So because Yugyeom pointed her out to me, and because I've always had an eye for freaky shit that looks totally out of place, I start seeing her more often.
And it's so fucking cliché, how we officially meet.
I'm on my way back to my room from the tattoo shop; Minho normally doesn't care if I experiment on myself as long as I ain't working on clients without his supervision, but he saw my sleeve and really chewed my ass out.
"How long did that take you?" he'd asked me.
"And let me guess: you did it in one session."
So I had to sit tight and listen to a lecture on taking my time with shit, and not rushing, and whatever. But in the end, he told me my line work was solid and my shading was on point.
So with that in mind, I'm in a decent mood as I head back to my room.
I cut through the dance quad, since it's faster, but I'm not really in any hurry to get back. I'm not tired yet, and I have some new ideas for new tattoo designs that I'm working out in my head as I walk. And it's a warm night with a decent wind, so my footsteps drag.
The buildings here are older than the ones on the music quad, where I stay. They renovated the music rooms a couple of years ago, installed new equipment, updated the acoustics, added a whole bunch of shit to keep us as modern with the times as possible. But the dance quad looks largely untouched, big stone buildings from years and years and years before I was born, wearing down but standing strong, imposing, permanent.
And completely by accident, I happen to be looking over at Dance Studio A, when the door is thrown open and that Y/N girl comes floating out.
I don't mean to notice things about her, but I'm an artist (an amateur, pathetic, shallow imitation of one anyway) and I look at everything with an artist's eye, so there's things about her I can't help but pick out.Â
She's not dancing right now, of course, but she carries herself like she doesn't know any other way. There's this weird kind of grace that you don't see in the average girl, like she's...like she's floating, rather than walking. Her posture is perfectly straight, and she moves quickly, her footfalls in the tiny slippers she's wearing light as air on the grass. Her ponytail flips back and forth like a pendulum, and she's reading something with a backpack slung over her shoulder. She doesn't notice me.
But I notice the guy following her.
It's not my business. Maybe it's one of her friends. Y/N's pretty popular around here, even if she never has any spare time to spend with the people who worship her so much. Maybe it's a boyfriend. Maybe he knows her. It's not my business. None of my concern.
And I can't explain it, I really can't, but something doesn't feel right. And so even though it's completely out of my way, I follow both of them. Y/N, who's absorbed in her reading and not paying any fucking attention, and the tall guy hurrying behind her.
It's almost eleven, I think to myself, irritated with a girl I've never even spoken to, for her naivete. What kind of girl is she, to walk around this late by herself?
I'm getting closer to the guy, and he's getting closer to her. And I realize grimly that I was right to follow them, because the closer I get, the more I realize this asshole's intention, and it ain't friendly. He looks side to side and sees that there's nobody else around, before he calls out, "Oi, Y/N!"
She whirls around, surprised, sees who it is, and her eyes narrow.
"I told you to leave me alone," she snaps. And this is odd, for me, anyway. Because for as many times as I've seen her, in passing or by accident or whenever Yugyeom points her out with that slavish affection, I've never seen any expression on her face but serenity. Friendliness. Always smiling, even if it's fake.
Now, though, I see what she looks like pissed. Confrontational.
And it's more of an honest emotion, more honest than the saccharine sweetness she effects for all of her admirers. Begrudgingly, I admit to myself that the look is attractive, before I remember why I'm here. They don't seem to have noticed me yet, since it's dark and there's shadows and this kid, is an idiot, which suits me fine.
"No need to be such a tight ass," he snaps back. "Jesus, what's with you ballet girls?"
"I can't speak for the others," she hisses, like a viper, "but I've got standards. Stop calling me. Stop texting me. Stop showing up at my rehearsals. Stop asking my friends about me. I'm not. Fucking. Interested."
And she spins around again.
Big mistake. I can tell by the way he coils like a spring; you never turn your back on an enemy. And maybe this girl's been sniffing rosin for too long, holed up in that ivory tower of a ballet studio, thinking she's untouchable, because the second her back's turned, the kid makes his move. Reaches out, his hand on her shoulder, goes to pull her back around, but I speak up.
They both jump, and they finally see me. Y/N looks confused; she's never spoken to me in her life, so why would I be interfering in something like this? And the boy, to my eternal gratification, looks horrified.
I'm fucking famous around this school, even if I don't want to be, and sometimes, like now, just my name is enough of a threat to weaklings like this shithead, to the point where I don't even need to show him why I've never lost a fistfight in seventeen years.
"This don't concern you, man," he barks out, looking intimidated, but still trying to act like tough shit. His hand, I notice, slides off Y/N's shoulder, though.
"You heard her," I say quietly, and I keep my face neutral, but I concentrate enough venom into my voice to give this kid a heart attack. "Clear out."
Y/N's eyes are wide, and I've never been this close to her before, to see that they're this bright. Unconsciously, I think about how I could mix that precise color with ink, and then I note her pale, luminescent skin, and think to myself how well light skin like that would pick up ink. Nice pale skin that would show off bright color really well.
He opens his mouth to argue, then clearly thinks better of it. He shoots a filthy glare at Y/N before muttering, "Whatever, bitch," and stalking off.
I debate if I want to follow him, if I want to smack him around for using that word to describe a girl, even one as notoriously uptight as Y/N, but I don't think it's worth it. Instead, my gaze shoots to her instead.
Realizing what a close call this must have been for her, I'm expecting tears, maybe shudders. But I'm surprised, because she looks perfectly composed. Like this is nothing new for her, like she's used to this kind of treatment, which I recognize as sexual harassment, but she might see as something else entirely: status quo.
"You all right?" I ask, just to see if she'll crack. She should; I read the intent in the boy as clear as anyone. If I hadn't been there, who knows what would've happened?
"I'm fine, thank you," she replies, her voice lower and raspier than I've been expecting from someone in ballet slippers. She adjusts the strap of her backpack, which slipped when he grabbed her. "You didn't have to do that. Usually he just gives up."
"'Usually?'" I repeat, even angrier. "So this has happened before."
"It's nothing," she shrugs it off. "But thank you, seriously. I'm Y/N, by the way. You're Jeon Jungkook, right?"
So she has heard of me, then.
"Nice to meet you, Jungkook," she says, and there's a smile on her face that looks as honest as the snarl she'd worn two seconds ago. She sticks out her hand like we're strangers meeting at a party, instead of on the street in the middle of the night.
I'm a bit taken aback, honestly. Y/N's regarded as so untouchable here that I never thought she might actually be just down-to-earth. In my head, I always pictured her as an aloof little snob the way most of the dancers here are. I might need to reevaluate.
But I take her hand anyway. It's colder than I thought it would be.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm holding you up... Sorry, I'm fucking exhausted...it's nice meeting you, Jungkook. Thanks for your help. I'm sure I'll see you around sometime."
With a final smile, she bounces away from me with a spring in her step, returning to her reading.
"Pay attention next time," I scold her, but I don't think she hears me.
By coincidence, later in the week, that same guy shows up in Minho's shop for a shin tattoo. Wants the words "No Regrets". One of the other apprentices, BamBam, is a friend of mine, and when I briefly explain the situation, he smirks in understanding and takes him for his client.
And it's a total fucking accident, I swear it, when he leaves the shop pissed as shit, his jacked-up tattoo reading, "No Egrets" and all of us laughing behind him.
And it's all in the name of art. I swear.
I just hope one day, this all pays off. Whatever's waiting out there for me outside this school, I hope it's worth all this uncertainty.
