🤍 an archive from yours truly—a collection for all seven stars.
handmade with love: find ongoing series, drabbles and one shots!
jeon jungkook.
MIND GAMES — ongoing series.
⬞ esports!au, gamer!jungkook, teamleader!jungkook.
⬞ you will be playing under jungkook’s team as the only female player—and the ace—if it wasn’t for your sudden deterioration in skill. the tournament is around the corner, and jungkook isn’t the type to pass up a win.
VELOCITY — ongoing series.
⬞ carmechanic!jungkook, enemies to lovers!au.
⬞ you and your brother—min yoongi, happened to stay at jungkook’s temporarily until the car was fixed. just when you were about to praise jungkook for his generosity, you discover how much of a misfortune he is—or is he just some guy you hate?
PROTANOPIA — ongoing series.
⬞ vampire!jungkook, forced roommates!au, enemies to lovers!au.
⬞ you can’t handle your own instinct sometimes; day by day, you start to realise how strange that really nice guy at church is. jungkook is the kindest person you know, but everything goes wrong when you pinpoint details he didn't think he had.
HIT THE LINE — a one shot.
⬞ racer!jungkook, rivals!au.
(LOVE) YOU — a one shot.
⬞ player!jungkook, nevertheless!au.
kim taehyung.
CINEMATIC — a one shot.
⬞ photographer!taehyung, long lost lovers!au.
park jimin.
coming soon!
jung hoseok.
WHY DON’T WE? — a one shot.
⬞ dancer!hoseok, established relationship!au.
min yoongi.
FOR TONIGHT — a one shot.
⬞ idol!yoongi, ex lovers!au.
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jeon jungkook drives you to think strict criticism isn’t too bad, purely because you didn’t expect things to turn a bit steamier than intended.
as the one and only female esports player, misery was at your fingertip when your skills suddenly deteriorated. however, the stoic leader of your team—jungkook, simply couldn’t sit back. he puts you back on track, yet no one told you sparks would fly; and the crazy fact that it’s inevitable.
pairing : jungkook x you (as aeum).
au(s) : tsundere!jungkook, leader!jungkook, gamer!jungkook, roommates!au.
genres : fluff, (intense) mutual pining, slowburn, innuendos of suggestive themes, (a sick) love triangle.
content : you thought your skill was the one problem here, but you eventually realise you’re quite surrounded by guys that you’d like to go on your honeymoon with. clearly, consequences follow since you’re not the only person who thinks so (the rest of the world does too).
peek jungkook’s mind in this playlist.
previous chapter.
next chapter.
chapter directory.
masterlist.
chapter eleven.
word count : 3,3k.
there's a faint smell of whatever seokjin made for lunch still lingering warmly in the air when you walk back into the house. but you notice something in the atmosphere that wasn't there this morning—a specific tightness, like everything inside these walls has been holding its breath and is waiting to see if you caught it.
you wonder if everyone else feels it too, because they were all here before you. jimin spent the day being a normal person and is now snapping back into professional mode with the efficiency of someone who never fully switched off. seokjin came from the kitchen, where he appears to have been cooking something that required significantly more concentration than any recipe should demand. yoongi came from his room, where he was almost certainly asleep and is now delivering a convincing performance of someone who absolutely was not. taehyung was already home. so was jungkook.
the coach sets his laptop on the table.
he doesn't open it.
that's the first detail you catch—a small wrongness, like a painting hung slightly crooked. namjoon always opens the laptop. he shows you the thread, the data, the timestamp, the thing you can point at and call by name. the visual evidence. tonight the laptop stays closed, and namjoon stands at the head of the table with both hands resting flat against the surface and an expression that gives nothing away yet.
the whole room tilts toward him.
"the company completed the first stage of their investigation." he starts, and his voice has the measured, careful cadence of a person who has been choosing their words since long before walking into this room. "i want everyone to hear this directly from me before you hear any version of it elsewhere."
jimin sits up straighter. yoongi's eyes sharpen. seokjin stops fidgeting with the sleeve of his jacket. taehyung goes very still—not frozen, just present in a more concentrated way than usual. jungkook listens like someone absorbing information he's already been turning over in his head and is now waiting to have it confirmed.
you fold your hands in your lap.
"they found nothing." namjoon says.
a beat passes.
"nothing?" seokjin repeats in disbelief.
"no account trail. no device registration they could trace. no identifiable location data from any of the messages or the videos." namjoon exhales through his nose—not sharply, just the sound of someone absorbing the full weight of what they're delivering. "whoever this is, they've been careful. every account used to contact aeum was created through a proxy, wiped within hours of each message, and routed through a chain of servers that dead-ends before it reaches anything traceable."
the room absorbs this.
you feel it land somewhere low in your stomach—not the sharp drop of fresh shock, but something more unsettling than that. a dread without edges. because a face was something you were prepared for. a face meant a person, a location, something finite that existed somewhere in the world and could eventually be found. this has no face. this has nothing.
"so we don't know who it is?" jimin asks. he's the first person to find his voice.
"not yet." namjoon says. "the company is escalating to a cybersecurity firm with more specialised resources. but as of tonight, we have nothing concrete. i'm sorry to tell you this."
"they followed us to our private dinner." taehyung says, once again re-exploring the severity of the fact that they can access us, but not the other way around. "they were close enough to film us without a single one of us noticing. they knew about the scrimmage results in real time. they mailed a package to this address." a pause. "and we don't know who they are."
"correct." namjoon confirms.
"that's—" jimin starts.
"i know." namjoon says.
yoongi has been looking at the table since namjoon started speaking. now he lifts his gaze to make a word himself. "they're not a stranger." he says, with the tone of someone working through an obvious conclusion he doesn't love arriving at. "random people don't have access to private scrimmage data. random people don't know this address."
he's not wrong.
"the company reached the same conclusion." namjoon nods. "whoever this is, they have proximity to the industry. that narrows it significantly, but it doesn't identify anyone. we simply don't have the evidence yet."
you look at your hands.
adjacent to the industry. someone who understands how scrimmages work. someone who knows team addresses. someone with enough access to move invisibly through the spaces your world occupies, and enough motive to use that access as something sharp.
"we can find evidence." jungkook says.
not loudly. not urgently. just plainly, the way he says things he's already decided are true.
namjoon looks at him. "how are you going to do that?"
"we lure them out."
the table doesn't react—not because it isn't a significant thing to say, but because jungkook said it the way you'd state the next logical move in a game you've been watching long enough to see the pattern in. namjoon studies him with a trust that has been built over years and doesn't need to announce itself.
"the first time was direct messages to aeum in-game." jungkook continues, methodical and unhurried. "they addressed her but made sure to put my name in it. second time, the same. third time was at the supermarket. just myself and aeum. they followed us there." he exhales once, and something in it sounds like he's holding himself accountable for a variable he didn't create. "so whoever this is, they have something to do with me specifically."
"that's what you're working from?" namjoon asks.
jungkook nods once. "fourth was the blade. they left a letter with the package, which aeum missed in the moment. the company is aware of it." he turns his head to meet namjoon's eyes directly. "and so are you. you know what the letter begins with. you know who it mentions."
namjoon holds his gaze for a long moment. "we need to protect you too, jungkook." he says. "we're not putting you at risk to draw out someone hiding behind a screen. the tournament is less than a week away. we do not let this derail what we've built." he breathes in. "the cybersecurity firm begins monday. formal police involvement is being discussed at company level. in the meantime—" his gaze moves around the table, settling on each person, landing on you last—"nobody goes anywhere alone. not to a convenience store, not for a walk, not for anything. any new contact from this account gets reported immediately. to me. and to jungkook."
he says it naturally. and to jungkook. like it was always going to be that way, like it was never a question, and nobody at the table reacts to it because somehow it isn't a surprise.
jungkook looks down at the table. not in defeat. in the dissatisfaction of someone who has been handed a boundary they find insufficient.
what is he thinking?
you watch the line of his jaw and feel the particular anxiety of knowing him well enough to know that don't do anything irrational is a sentence he's probably already having with himself internally.
"captain." your voice comes out before you fully decide to use it. "please don't think about doing anything reckless."
he lifts his eyes to yours from across the table. and for a moment he just looks at you—not blankly, not through you, but directly, with the specific expression of someone choosing not to say several things and saying one instead, without words.
don't worry.
you're not sure you entirely believe him.
"understood?" namjoon asks the room.
agreement moves through the table. you nod.
"eat something." namjoon straightens up. "all of you. tomorrow we rest. the day after, we get back to work." he looks around the room one final time, and there's something in his expression that isn't fear but occupies the same neighbourhood. "i'm proud of this team. whatever happens, that doesn't change."
he picks up the laptop he never opened and leaves the room.
the table sits with it.
eyes still glued to the ceiling, back pressed against the softness of your bed—a nostalgic memory finds you when your stare rolls onto your keyboard collection in the corner of your room. six keyboards stacked by someone who invested real money and care into something they loved before the world knew their name. you used to spend hours waiting for parcels. refreshing tracking pages. calculating delivery windows with the focus of someone who had nothing else to calculate. that was before the team. before sending money home every month to your parents.
you smile gently at the thought.
you slide off your bed to approach your little corner full of the past. peering up, you find a higher shelf filled with dusty boxes. you're curious about what they may hold, so you extend your arm, bringing your toes into a steady tiptoe before grabbing the first box you can reach.
just when you feel like you can normalise your stance, you stumble the second you feel your left feet wobbling at your own weight. your hand involuntarily loses grip, allowing the box to plummet onto the floor rather dramatically.
shit.
you're an idiot.
it's quite literally midnight and you're still busy being stupid and clumsy for the world.god must be so disappointed.
instinctively, your shoulders judder in surprise at the noise of an unfamiliar creaking outside your room. there shouldn't be any visitors, nor should there even be ghosts in your house. it's midnight—there's no time to hire ghost exterminators if you happen to be correct.
you peek out of your door, only to be exposed to the person who uncontrollably tugs on your heartstrings.
beside jungkook's face, there's the forbidden romance you crave. the face of a leader, but alsoa face that tempts you into choosing regretful yet beautiful decisions. in his hand, there is the medical supply box from the kitchen cabinet—the one namjoon keeps stocked and everyone pretends not to know the exact location of.
distance was your own suggestion, but the urge to retract everything heightens every single time he appears.
"did you make a wrong turn?" you ask.
jungkook averts his eyes to your hand holding the frame of the door. "i heard a noise."
"it's the sound of a human dropping something on the floor."
jungkook simply nods in acknowledgement. he doesn't move, but he stays like there's something that needs to be done.
not knowing what else to do but stand there awkwardly at his appearance, you decide to spread the door open wider.
"do you want to come in?" you randomly suggest.
nope. never mind.
you're being stupid. how is that a good idea?
"okay, i totally agree—" you reply to the silence, automatically assuming that's the answer you've been given considering jungkook's personality.
"how long has it been since you changed—"
changed? is he talking about—is this about the t-shirt? you've been wearing this for a while, but he can't know that, or maybe he does, or maybe—
"i'll change soon!" you blurt out, cutting jungkook's question in half. "this is going straight into the laundry the second you walk away." you point to your own baggy t-shirt.
the corner of his mouth pulls. he turns away and laughs at the floor—genuinely, from somewhere real, which is still one of the rarest things you've seen from him and your heart does something extremely unauthorised in response. "what a shame." he lifts his head with a grin that has absolutely no business looking the way it does at midnight. "i was hoping you'd need help with that."
"w—wait," your jaw drops at his direct comment. "i can change my own clothes!"
his fingers close around your wrist before you've finished the sentence.
your heart does a little jump.
his thumb finds the inside of your wrist as he angles your bandaged hand toward him carefully. "how long has it been since you changed the dressing—" he says, quieter now, close enough that you feel the words more than just hear them, "—is what i actually meant."
too close.
too close!
you take a step back on instinct. his fingers stay where they are, which draws him forward with you into your room, and now jungkook's eyes are doing the quiet sweep they always do when he enters a new space—skimming the furniture, the organised chaos of your decor. you have colour in here. unlike his room, which is essentially a very expensive grey rectangle.
but now it seems as though he's more interested in the mysterious box dropped behind your feet. his round eyes make it quite obvious that he's intrigued.
"think you can behave?" he doesn't ask about the box.
behave?
he takes your hand and guides you through your own room without answering, sets the supply box on your bedside table, and steers you to the only spot that fits two people with enough space between them to be technically appropriate.
the end of the bed.
nobody speaks.
this is awkward.
jungkook opens the medical box and begins peeling back the dressing on your injured hand. the adhesive is too sticky—nobody's saying it but it absolutely is—and the sides of your wound burn when it finally comes away. you're quieter about it than you were with taehyung, which surprises even you. you mask it by biting the inside of your cheek and saying absolutely nothing.
the dressing is soiled. more than you realised. dried blood and cloudy ooze that makes the whole situation look considerably worse than it felt.
jungkook opens the saline without comment.
your hand rests flat against your knee, faced upward, and then his fingertips find you again. the skin-to-skin contact conducts some type of electricity straight through your nervous system that has nothing to do with the saline now being dabbed carefully against the wound.
"does it hurt?" he asks.
thank you. finally. first words in three full minutes.
"not really." you lie awkwardly, squirming under his care.
"you're lying to me now?"
intimidated by his question, you immediately surrender. "it is painful."
"i'll be gentle." he says, and means it, and discards the gauze to start again with a fresh piece. his hands are extremely careful in a way that makes the pain easier to sit with. "have you ever been hurt through someone else?"
you sink into your own memories in an attempt to find an answer for your leader.
have you?
"not that i can think of." you reply seriously. "are you concerned about something?"
"clearly." jungkook breaks into a scoff-like smile.
"now you're here to tell and share."
"it's about you, so maybe you can be of some help."
you suck in a breath because you might know exactly what he's thinking.
"i'm sorry." jungkook lifts his head to apologise. "i've been meaning to say this."
the breath locked against your chest still hasn't found its way out of your airway. you feel more nervous than suffocated.
"everyone and their pet dogs know that it's not your fault."
he looks up in response to your randomness. "dogs?"
"it's a saying." you frown. "i'm exaggerating the fact that you're not obliged to protect me." then you snap back in realisation. "how is anyone meant to know this was going to happen? this was the most creative threat i've seen."
the sound of fresh packaging peeling catches your attention. a new dressing. slightly different from the ones you've been using.
"that night when we kissed."
oh.
oh.
we're doing this now?
jungkook smooths the dressing over your palm and tightens his grip around your wrist just slightly, and then he looks at you directly.
his face is illegal.
"i kissed you with purpose." he says. "so i'm accountable for it. gladly."
heat arrives in your face without permission. "willingly?" you ask. "as jeon jungkook or as the team's leader?"
"as jeon jungkook." he leans forward slightly toward your very red face. "i don't expect you to feel the same way. just tell me when you're ready." he exhales, "take as long as you want. i'm not going anywhere."
something blossoms in your chest.
it catches you completely off guard. your pulse does something ridiculous. your brain, which has been running at full capacity for approximately ten consecutive days, goes briefly and blissfully offline. you are looking at jeon jungkook sitting at the end of your bed at midnight and your heart is behaving like it has never once encountered a human man before in its entire life.
get it together.
you are a professional.
you are a composed and rational individual.
your heart continues to be absolutely none of those things.
jungkook finishes with the dressing and sits back slightly, not moving from the end of the bed, not making any particular move to leave. his hands rest loosely in his lap and he looks at the medical kit with the gaze of someone who is still thinking about something he hasn't said yet.
you watch him collect his thoughts one by one.
"jungkook." you say, after a moment.
"i'm going to make a call tomorrow." he finally reveals, without looking up. "i want you there when i do."
clueless, you blink. "a call to who?"
he looks at you then. "hayoung."
the name arrives and something in your chest does the small, involuntary thing it has been doing every time you've heard it for two months—a tightening, a recalibration—a sensation of a word that has been living rent-free in the back of your head finally showing up to explain itself.
"hayoung." you repeat, carefully.
"we've known each other since high school." he explains. "she works in digital forensics." he then stops briefly. "she's been quietly helping the company quietly since monday. i asked her to look into the account that's been contacting you."
you sit with this for a second.
two months of that name sitting at the back of your brain like something just out of reach, assembling itself into a shape that turned out to be entirely wrong.
"she's not—" you start.
"don't even think about it." he interrupts hurriedly.
"and you didn't think to mention it?"
"i should have," he admits. "i know that."
you look at him. he looks back at you with the expression of someone who is not going to make excuses for the oversight and isn't going to apologise excessively for it either.
"what does she think she can find?" you ask, pulling yourself back from the wrong subject. nothing is more important than figuring who the threat is. your feelings come second.
"she needs more information. what we provided isn't enough, and whatever namjoon said earlier is also what hayoung would say as well."
"whatever it is, you're not doing any of this alone." you reassure, because you understand what's underneath all of this—it's the plan he was already building at the table.
"aeum."
"jungkook."
"if you're planning something—"
"i'm planning something responsible." he asserts with the certainty of someone who has already defined the boundaries of what responsible means and intends to operate right up to the edge of them.
you look at him for a long moment.
he looks back.
"what are you planning?"
"we'll go out together," he suggests. "i'm sure they'll be on our tail. i'll have someone follow us."
"and then we catch them on the spot?"
"if it's possible."
"that sounds—"
"too easy?" he speaks of his afterthought. "might be, but i'm not betting on this to fully work. it'll be an attempt."
"okay."
"stay right beside me."
you nod slowly, and it only clicks now that the two of you are inside the room, sitting at the end of your bed at midnight. you both ended up spending time longer than either of you planned.
"you should sleep." he says, standing as if he realised as if he's in sync with your thoughts.
"i was getting there." you point out.
"you were investigating dusty boxes at midnight."
he is speaking the truth. he always does.
he picks up the medical kit on the way out. he's almost at the door when you say his name again, quietly, and he stops.
"thank you." you mutter courageously. "for dressing my wound and about hayoung."
he turns just enough to look at you over his shoulder. "i should've told you sooner." he replies softly. "sorry."
you shake your head. "you're not ever late."
something shifts in his expression. it's subtle yet gentle. then he goes, and the door closes behind him with a soft click. you sit on the end of your bed and think about hayoung in digital forensics and jungkook in high school.
jeon jungkook drives you to think strict criticism isn’t too bad, purely because you didn’t expect things to turn a bit steamier than intended.
as the one and only female esports player, misery was at your fingertip when your skills suddenly deteriorated. however, the stoic leader of your team—jungkook, simply couldn’t sit back. he puts you back on track, yet no one told you sparks would fly; and the crazy fact that it’s inevitable.
pairing : jungkook x you (as aeum).
au(s) : tsundere!jungkook, leader!jungkook, gamer!jungkook, roommates!au.
genres : fluff, (intense) mutual pining, slowburn, innuendos of suggestive themes, (a sick) love triangle.
content : you thought your skill was the one problem here, but you eventually realise you’re quite surrounded by guys that you’d like to go on your honeymoon with. clearly, consequences follow since you’re not the only person who thinks so (the rest of the world does too).
peek jungkook’s mind in this playlist.
previous chapter.
next chapter.
chapter directory.
masterlist.
chapter ten.
word count : 4,1k.
no alarm. no party invitations pending on your screen or headsets waiting on the desk. just a morning on a weekend, which is its own kind of luxury you'd forgotten existed. casually seated in the kitchen with your hair tied back, you've prepped yourself a buttery toast with condensed milk drizzled across the surface in a pattern that could generously be called artistic. you've already said your goodbyes to the members who filed out this morning—jimin, seokjin, yoongi, taehyung, and even jungkook himself.
the house is empty this saturday morning, and you are absolutely, completely, not complaining.
all of them deserve the break. you just hope none of them run into any misfortune out there; the media should be quieter today, but you've learned you can never be entirely certain about these things. exactly like how a pretty blade came to you through a pretty box and introduced itself to your palm without being invited.
you reach for your phone out of habit, unlock it, and find no messages from the unknown user. just one message from chaewon, sent at some point last night, which you missed because you were asleep at a reasonable hour for the first time in recent memory.
[12:15AM] chaewon: are you okay?
[9:32AM] you: i'm okie
the reply comes in forty seconds, which means she was already awake with her phone in her hand, fully prepared.
you've known chaewon for about four years now. she knows about the team. she knows about jungkook in the abstract—the leader or the one you stopped mentioning because you realised you were mentioning him too much and that was information. she knows about taehyung the way everyone knows about taehyung, which is to say she has very strong opinions and will share them whether asked or not.
she's been worried since the photos went public, which you know because she sent you twelve voice messages across two days that you've been consuming in small doses while buried under your fluffy sheets with the phone at arm's length.
[9:35AM] you: i'll pick you up in an hour
[9:35AM] chaewon: come dressed like a girl please
[9:36AM] you: okie.........
[9:36AM] chaewon: hoodies and trackpants are banned
[9:37AM] you: gg
you put the phone down and stand in front of your closet.
the closet stares back at you.
you stare at the closet.
this is going to take a minute.
chaewon arrives with the punctuality of someone who said she would be there and absolutely meant it, radiating the energy of someone who has been composing her opening statement since last night and has run through at least three versions.
you hear the car before you see her face—her music bleeding through the closed windows at a volume that is generously three notches louder than anything the neighbourhood consented to. you grab your jacket and bag and head downstairs, which is when you find jungkook already at the door.
jumpscare.
he's simply standing there, one hand loosely in his pocket, looking completely unbothered by the concept of existing attractively at ten in the morning.
"are you heading out?" he asks.
you nod, slightly too many times.
jungkook steps back from the door. you look at him once, then turn away all you can. but the particular awareness of him is something you've never been able to turn off.
"call me if you need anything." his voice finds you from behind.
you walk out the door at a perfectly normal speed that is definitely not a power walk.
chaewon is leaning against her car in a saturated blue cardigan that you could spot from the end of the street and probably from low orbit. her arms are already open before you've reached the gate, and the hug she pulls you into is immediate and firm and slightly more aggressive than strictly necessary.
"it's been so long!" she squeezes you.
"has it though?" you mentally calculate.
"yes. really." she pulls back and grips you by the shoulders, conducting a thorough inspection of your face. "you look like someone who hasn't touched grass in a week."
"i haven't touched grass in a week." you confirm. "the news happened, chaewon. going outside would've been a death wish."
"death wish." she repeats, appalled at your reality. "get in the car."
you get in the car without further argument.
chaewon's car smells like the vanilla air freshener she replaces with religious punctuality every two weeks, and the back seat still has a jacket she's been meaning to return to a store for approximately three months. the music is too loud. she turns it down one notch when she pulls away from the curb. that is the full extent of her concession.
"okay, aeum." she settles in. "tell me everything. zero secrets. go."
"what do you want to know first?" you ask, cautiously, like you're negotiating terms.
"i've seen the news." she navigates a corner with great confidence. "i want your version. the one where you're actually inside of it."
so you tell her. the threat, the blade in the pink box with the hand-drawn hearts—which still feels surreal every time you say it out loud—the videos, the footage going public, the way the week collapsed and the team absorbed it and kept moving regardless. you even mention your improvement in practice, which you feel deserves at least a small round of applause.
chaewon listens without interrupting, which is unusual for her and means she is genuinely worried. her expression moves through a series of things. concern. then anger. then something softer.
"someone mailed you a blade." she says, carefully, like she needs to confirm this is real.
"in a pink box." you nod.
"with hearts on it." she repeats.
"hand-drawn." you add. "they took the time."
"i want to find this person." chaewon exhales with great control. "and have a very lengthy conversation with them."
"you can line up. we all want to have a word."
"was taehyung upset?" she glances at you sideways with an expression that suggests she already has a full hypothesis.
"taehyung was—" you think about his shaking hands, his jaw, the scarf coming off his neck in one swift pull to wrap around your palm. "—he reacted the way any reasonable person reacts when they witness blood for the first time."
chaewon makes a very specific sound.
"why do you keep making that sound!" you pout.
"and your leader?" she asks, in a tone so casual it cannot be trusted.
"what about him?"
"aeum."
"chaewon." you match her energy. "yes. i'm here."
"i have been your friend for four years." she says, with the patience of someone who has had this exact conversation three times and intends to have it twelve more. "i sat with you through yeonjun. i will sit with you through whatever this is. but i need material to work with."
you look out the window. the city drifts past—storefronts opening, people walking with their hands in their pockets, the ordinary, unbothered saturday world going about its business completely without you.
"captain is complicated." you say.
"good kind or bad kind?"
you think about the indigestion remedy at four in the morning. the kiss. the handmade ramyun. the arm that came out at the red light without him deciding to. his hoodie falling over your hands in the frozen aisle. you tell me directly, in that particular voice he keeps for smaller rooms. the backs of two fingers barely grazing your cheekbone.
"the good kind." you say, and it comes out quieter than you meant. "but i think he's extremely disciplined. he wants to be an even more responsible leader, although there are parts of him that probably want otherwise. he never makes himself known—what he likes, dislikes, what he wants for dinner. it's always about his teammates and never himself."
you didn't mean to say that much.
"and why did he give you his hoodie in a frozen aisle," chaewon says, pulling into a parking space with surgical precision, "if it was just about keeping a team member warm?" she turns off the engine. "don't answer that. actually, answer it. actually—never mind, you'll rationalise it. yeonjun obliterated your ability to read a room and we both know it."
"rude!" you protest.
"true." she corrects. "let's go."
chaewon takes you to the small udon place three streets away from her apartment. you've been going to this tiny restaurant since before either of you had careers that required explaining to strangers. it's a spot where the tables are slightly too close together and the menu hasn't changed in years.
after ordering your usual bowls, you sit down across from each other. chaewon unwraps her chopsticks to get one job out of the way so she can focus on your untold stories. "we're starting with the photos." she announces.
you nod obediently.
"he took his hoodie off in the frozen aisle," she leans forward, "and gave it to you. do you know what that looks like from any external angle?"
"it looks like a responsible team leader protecting a team member from cold air before a major tournament, exactly as stated in his own public livestream." you deliver this calmly. "i have nothing further to add at this time."
chaewon stares at you.
"nothing!" you add cheerfully.
"fine." she moves on with the energy of someone saving this for later. "taehyung calling you pretty. multiple times."
you had actually almost completely erased this from active memory. your brain had been doing such good work.
"i mean—" you start.
"he called you pretty."
"taehyung is—" she's important to us, he said, like it was the simplest fact in the world. "—my closest friend on the team." you finish, weakly.
you don't sound convincing.
you don't sound convincing at all.
why don't you sound convincing?
"have you two done anything?" chaewon narrows her eyes.
"not really! sort of! we went to the movies but he had to leave halfway through because of yeontan." you wave your hand. "does that count?"
"isn't it sort of about the fact that he asked you in the first place?"
she has a point.
an extremely sharp, extremely inconvenient point.
"he said you're pretty." chaewon says simply. "that's it. that's the whole confession. for men, that's basically a wedding proposal."
he did say it. multiple times. with the particular ease of someone who wasn't performing it.
your jaw drops.
you might be stupid.
which is exactly when the udon arrives. you wrap both hands around the bowl and let the steam drift up to your face and take a slow breath.
"there are rules." you say, gathering yourself. "there were rules. i never thought anyone was going in that direction."
"the no-dating rule." she nods. "which the coach retired. on camera. in a video that is now on the internet."
"how did you—" right. the footage. distributed globally. naturally.
"men are beasts!" chaewon says, with controlled urgency. "if they like you, they come at you full speed! that is all they know how to do!"
this is perhaps the most accurate thing she has ever said.
your history with romance has genuinely rewired certain circuits in your brain in ways you're still identifying. going from yeonjun straight into a house full of six professional gamers was not exactly the gentle re-entry you needed.
can you even picture dating again?
can you picture dating any of them?
"taehyung is someone i care about deeply." you say. "and i don't want to get it wrong. i don't want to misread him and make everything weird and awkward for the entire team."
chaewon eats a mouthful of noodles, thinking. "forget the rules. forget the team for thirty seconds. look at them as actual people you could see yourself with. and before you say anything—i'm only asking this because it genuinely seems like they're both already looking at you that way."
you scrunch your nose. "i can see both of them in my future because they are embedded in my career which is currently paying off my parent's house."
"okay, real question." she puts her chopsticks down. "jungkook or taehyung."
you look at the udon.
as people.
you think about taehyung and the tulips and the river and i truly enjoy being with you. you think about jungkook's shoulders and call me if you need anything in that voice that doesn't come out often.
he hadn't said that before.
"jungkook or taehyung." she repeats.
the leader or your best friend.
you groan like you've been assigned a twenty-page essay due monday morning. "how am i supposed to function professionally if i pick one over the other and it goes wrong?"
"that's actually a fair concern." she concedes. "there's genuinely a reason people say don't do this."
but who would it be.
absolutely not. you are not doing this right now.
why are you doing this right now.
"tell me more about mingyu!" you say brightly. "he sounds interesting!"
chaewon gives you a look that says she sees exactly what you're doing and is letting you get away with it this once. then she launches in—the colleague who continues to ask her out, the presentation that went sideways on slide three in front of the whole client, the new coffee shop beside her building with the oat milk latte that changed her life in small but meaningful ways.
you listen to all of it and feel the particular warmth of being somewhere ordinary with someone who requires absolutely nothing from you except your presence.
no stress face. no performance.
just you, eating udon badly and feeling grateful.
you and chaewon insist upon a walk afterward because your stomachs require it and you both know it. it's one of those aimless saturday afternoon walks—no destination, just the two of you moving through the quieter parts of the city at whatever pace feels right.
"so he keeps coming to my desk with absolutely no pretence." chaewon is mid-mingyu when it happens. "like, yesterday he came over to ask me if i preferred the blue pen or the black pen. who does that?"
"someone who likes you." you say simply.
"oh!" she brightens. "that reminds me, there's this new coffee shop right next to our building and the oat milk latte they do is actually—"
chaewon is mid-sentence about the oat milk latte when you see him.
not across the street.
right there.
same pavement. six steps away. coming out of a clothing store with a branded paper bag in one hand and his phone in the other, head tilted down, entirely unaware—and then he looks up.
choi yeonjun.
in under a second the six steps become nothing, and there is absolutely nowhere to go because you've already made eye contact and the universe has apparently decided that today is that kind of saturday.
he looks exactly the same. that's the first unfair thing. the easy way he exists in space, like he's never once been on the wrong side of something he caused. he's wearing a grey jacket you don't recognise, which means time has passed—which means his life continued the way lives do for people who leave damage behind without checking on it.
you watch his expression move through recognition. the small pause. the recalibration. and then he smiles.
like this is uncomplicated.
the audacity of that smile.
"aeum." he says, with a breath behind it.
chaewon goes completely still beside you. you feel it without looking—the specific stillness of a person who has heard this name said by this voice before, extensively, over many late-night phone calls that went on too long, and has fully formed opinions about it.
"do i know you?" you ask, pleasantly.
your voice is even. you are choosing to count this as a win.
he closes some of the distance—not all of it, just enough to be conversational, which is still too close—and looks at you with the expression of someone who has decided this is a delightful coincidence. "you should." he laughs, light and familiar. "it's been a while."
"should've kept it that way." chaewon says, to the pavement.
"it has." you offer him a neutral answer he doesn't deserve because you genuinely don't have the energy today.
"you're pretty." he says. "as always."
chaewon fakes a loud, theatrical gag.
yeonjun actually laughs at this, which is irritating. his eyes move to chaewon—a brief acknowledging nod—which she receives with a sour expression.
"i follow the team." he turns back to you. "you've been doing really well."
something tightens in your chest. not the old kind. not the particular ache of someone still inside of it. more like pressing on a bruise that healed slightly wrong—present, recognisable, and not devastating.
"have you climbed out of silver yet?" you ask, with a smile so polite it's practically an art form.
"damn." he exhales. "still working on it. i genuinely don't have your instincts."
what did you see in him?
"i saw the news." his expression shifts into something that reads as concern—a tone you remember very well, one that used to work on you completely. "the photos. are you okay? it looked like things got complicated."
complicated. interesting word choice from someone who invented that particular feeling for you.
"and jungkook—" he starts, with the energy of someone who had this specific sentence queued up from the beginning.
"don't say his name like you know him." you smile at yeonjun brilliantly. "you're literally silver."
he puts his hand over his mouth and laughs behind it. "you're still exactly the same."
"thank you!" you say, because it is genuinely a compliment.
"we are leaving." chaewon announces, with the finality of someone ending a meeting.
"not very nice." yeonjun tilts his head. "don't make me come to the tournament just to prove a point."
"please come." you say warmly. "i'll blacklist you in under a second."
"sure." and then—unbothered, unannounced—he reaches out and twirls the end of your hair between his fingers.
you step back on instinct. you save the considerable collection of words currently backed up in your throat for a more appropriate occasion.
"good to see you." he says, and the truly frustrating part is that he might mean it, which is the most complicated thing about yeonjun—he was never a clean villain. that would have been easier.
he lifts the bag in a small goodbye gesture and steps around you. his footsteps continue down the pavement and you don't turn to watch them go. you stopped doing that a while ago.
you look at chaewon.
"you weren't even rattled!" she looks at you with genuine surprise.
"he's literally silver." you say, and somehow this remains the most complete response available to you.
"i still don't fully know what that means."
two years ago, you would have rehearsed that conversation for a week and come out of it breathless. the version of you that gave his words more authority than they deserved because you were still in the habit of trusting him.
you dated for eight months—eight months of the right words arriving at the right moments, of feeling like someone had finally looked at you clearly and decided you were worth staying for. he was charming in the way that doesn't announce itself. he had a particular gift for making you feel like the most important thing in whatever room you shared—and the cruelest part of that gift is that it worked equally on every room he walked into, on everyone inside it. words you thought were yours, offered to someone else in the same tone, with the same weight, like they cost him nothing to say twice.
he didn't fight for it when it fell apart. neither did you. that was the part that lodged itself deepest—not the betrayal itself, which at least had the dignity of being something real, but the absence that followed. the ease with which he let you go, like someone who had already made peace with losing you before you'd realised anything was wrong. no confrontation. no explanation worth keeping. just a slow, quiet withdrawal—like a tide going out—leaving you standing on the shore of something you'd largely built alone without knowing that's what you were doing. that's what yeonjun left behind—not a scar you could point to, not something you could metabolise cleanly, but a small persistent voice that lives just beneath every good thing.
"we deserve something sweet." chaewon links her arm firmly through yours and steers you toward the patisserie two streets back with great conviction.
"we really do." you agree.
the patisserie is the kind of place that makes you want to document your existence in it. all warm light and marble countertops and pastries arranged in the glass cabinet like they were placed there by someone who takes beauty seriously. chaewon noticed it from the street and made the executive decision that you were going inside.
"sit right there." she points at the window seat with the small round table and the afternoon light coming through at exactly the right angle.
"are we taking photos?" you ask.
"we are absolutely taking photos." she is already pulling her phone out. "you're wearing an actual outfit and i refuse to let this go undocumented."
you sit. you smooth down the front of your top. you pick up the pastry she puts in front of you and hold it up because this is apparently what you're doing now.
"okay, look at it like you love it." chaewon crouches slightly to get the light right.
"i do love it." you take a bite immediately.
"aeum!"
"what! i was hungry!" you say, mouth full, entirely unrepentant.
"you just bit the prop." she gives you a look of profound disappointment before dissolving into laughter, which makes you laugh, which means the next three photos she takes are both of you in various stages of losing it over nothing—your head thrown back, her shoulders shaking, the half-eaten pastry sitting abandoned on the plate between you looking very sorry for itself.
then chaewon composes herself. she tucks her hair back, and holds her own pastry up to her lips like a person in a magazine. "like this." she demonstrates. "elegant. refined. like a cute girlfriend."
you hold the pastry up. you tilt your chin slightly. you look at the camera with what you hope is the expression of someone who has their life entirely together.
"perfect." chaewon takes three in quick succession. "you look actually beautiful, i'm annoyed."
"let me see." you lean over.
the photos are genuinely good, actually. the light through the window is doing something soft and golden to everything. you look like a person who has not spent the last ten days inside a house being stalked and stressed and catching feelings for her team leader in an amber-lit room at midnight. you look like someone who went out on a saturday and had a nice afternoon and ate a pastry and was fine.
you look, in other words, like someone who is okay.
"send me those." you say.
hell yeah, new profile picture. it was well overdue.
"sending." chaewon taps through quickly.
now you eat the pastry chaewon puts in front of you and look out through the window at the street and think about what you want—not in the messy, managed way you've been thinking about it for weeks, but just plainly. honestly. the way chaewon asked.
you think about jungkook.
you think about taehyung.
you think that maybe the difference between yeonjun and all of this isn't that jungkook and taehyung are safer. it's that with them, for the first time in two years, you are not trying to convince yourself of anything. it just sits there—silent, stubborn, the way true things tend to.
and also: jungkook is a god. taehyung is a god.
yeonjun is a non-recyclable bin that has been rolling down a hill and you have just stepped neatly out of its way.
growth!
your phone buzzes on the table.
[4:14PM] captain: are you far?
you stare at it.
chaewon looks at you. then the phone. then back at you with the expression of someone who has just won an argument without saying a single word.
"who is it?" she asks, with tremendous innocence.
"captain." you say, reading the contact name aloud, which you immediately regret because chaewon's face does something extremely victorious.
[4:15PM] you: nope!! what's wrong?
[4:16PM] captain: you have a meeting booked.
you blink at this.
[4:16PM] you: WHAT
[4:16PM] you: since when??
[4:17PM] you: i'll be back in an hour i promise!!!
[4:17PM] captain: take your time.
you put the phone in your pocket and look at chaewon with the expression of someone who has no explanation for their own life.
"i have to go back." you say. "there's apparently a meeting. on a saturday. with zero advance notice."
"of course there is." chaewon stands up immediately, unbothered. "come on, i'll drive you."
you leave the patisserie together. the afternoon light has shifted—lower now, golden in the way it gets in the later weekend hours when the day decides to be generous about its exit. the city feels softer. slower.
chaewon squeezes your hand once when you reach the car. brief and firm and warm, the kind of contact that doesn't need words.
"call me after." she says. "i want to know everything."
"you already know everything!" you protest.
"i want to know the new things." she corrects simply. "now get in before your captain thinks you got lost."
you get in.
the city moves past the window on the way back—same streets, same shops, same ordinary beautiful saturday world—and yeonjun is somewhere behind you on a pavement you've already left and jungkook's text is sitting warm in your pocket.
jeon jungkook drives you to think strict criticism isn’t too bad, purely because you didn’t expect things to turn a bit steamier than intended.
as the one and only female esports player, misery was at your fingertip when your skills suddenly deteriorated. however, the stoic leader of your team—jungkook, simply couldn’t sit back. he puts you back on track, yet no one told you sparks would fly; and the crazy fact that it’s inevitable.
pairing : jungkook x you (as aeum).
au(s) : tsundere!jungkook, leader!jungkook, gamer!jungkook, roommates!au.
genres : fluff, (intense) mutual pining, slowburn, innuendos of suggestive themes, (a sick) love triangle.
content : you thought your skill was the one problem here, but you eventually realise you’re quite surrounded by guys that you’d like to go on your honeymoon with. clearly, consequences follow since you’re not the only person who thinks so (the rest of the world does too).
peek jungkook’s mind in this playlist.
previous chapter.
next chapter.
chapter directory.
masterlist.
chapter nine.
word count : 4,5k.
fragments of the morning slips through the gap in your curtains. it settles across the foot of your bed in a thin rectangle of light that slowly widens as the minutes pass. you’re awake before you mean to be, lying on your back with the ceiling above you and the quiet of the house pressing in from all sides. it’s the kind of quiet that only exists in the hour before anyone else has decided to be conscious.
you’re thinking about the way his hand barely grazed your cheekbone like an idiot first thing in the morning.
you tell me directly. four words in that particular voice, the one he keeps for you and smaller spaces, and you’d carried them all the way to your pillow like something worth keeping.
you pick up your phone laying face down beside you. it’s quiet like it knows you’re in deep thought. at least your phone knows how to behave because your leader definitely doesn’t.
no new messages from the unknown user.
then comes a random notification you weren’t expecting—a kakaotalk message from a contact saved simply as captain.
[7:02AM] captain: did you sleep?
you stare at it for longer than two words deserve.
did he just text you?
he picked up his phone and texted you?
not about work but to ask if you slept?
[7:03AM] you: a good sleep
what if you told him you didn’t sleep?
would that concern him too?
what would he say?
the response comes in the time it takes you to set the phone down and pick it back up again.
[7:05AM] captain: good.
that’s it.
just good.
you put the phone face down again.
you sit there for a moment, the house yet to be awake. for a solid minute, you think about how a single text from jungkook can make you feel so slow.
this is exactly why you were practicing distance with this guy!
taking one deep breath, you type out a courtesy text.
yes, courtesy.
you have to return a text back to your leader.
[7:08AM] you: did you sleep?
[7:08AM] captain: yeah.
he sucks at texting.
no fun.
no fun but sexy.
god is fair.
[7:09AM] captain: are there any new texts from them?
[7:10AM] you: do u think psychopaths are awake at this time?
[7:10AM] captain: who?
[7:10AM] you: knife sender or stalker
[7:11AM] captain: maybe they’re standing at your door.
[7:11AM] you: that’s not funny
[7:13AM] captain: sorry.
[7:13AM] you: i’m just kidding
[7:14AM] captain: get some more rest.
the laugh comes before you can stop it—the kind that escapes through your nose when something catches you genuinely off guard, warm in a way that sits in your chest longer than it has any right to.
sorry. he texted. almost too quickly.
you press your lips together against the rest of it, turning your face into your pillow like that will somehow help. you lie there on the mattress and the quietude of the room pressing in around you.
there’s just something about the whole thing—the hour, the darkness, and the fact that jungkook just made you laugh without even trying—makes it funnier than it probably is.
it’s oddly calming for you to think he’s always watching over you.
he makes it seem like it’s inevitable for him.
you exhale slowly through your nose, pull the blanket back up around your shoulders, and close your eyes.
the kitchen smells like coffee and seokjin’s inexplicable commitment to a handmade breakfast on a day that doesn’t warrant one. he’s always been an enthusiastic chef within the team, but only god knows where he gets all this energy from when it’s literally nine in the morning.
he’s only recently started this routine—ever since the day after you injured your hand. perhaps a coincidence, you’d think, but you simply brush over the glazed thought after catching seokjin sizzling a piece of egg rather loudly.
“holy shit, i almost burnt myself.” seokjin exclaims on his own without turning around. “oh—hey, good morning!” the pan hisses quietly under his hands, steam curling up toward the ceiling in thin ribbons. the fact that he heard your footsteps and identified them without looking—that he has lived in close enough proximity to you long enough to know the particular weight of your steps against the floor—is also quite endearing.
“good morning, seokjin!” you easily match his volume of sound with your own voice. you and seokjin are definitely the rowdiest in the team. “what’s with the eggs?”
“i dreamt about the chicken man from toy story 2.” he says casually. “it gave me bad omen, so i thought i’d somehow pay him back.”
“by cooking eggs for breakfast?” you tiptoe behind his shoulders to peer at his pan. he’s already on his third egg. “is this for the whole team?”
“no one can back out on it.”
“which one’s mine?” you chirp obliviously. “i get hungry in the mornings.”
“the one i’m making now!”
“can you make it into a heart?”
seokjin glares at you for the high difficulty request. “make it your own.”
“but…” you fake a frown. “my hand is injured. i might need you to fill in for my role soon.”
“i’ve never tried making a heart.” seokjin, preoccupied, mumbles to himself.
you merely smile to yourself, backing away to rest your chin on your palm, watching him crack two eggs into the pan like this is the most important reason in the world, like dreams about eggs are a perfectly legitimate basis for standing in a kitchen at nine in the morning.
“are you going to eat this heart egg and get better soon?” he glances at you over his shoulder briefly, just long enough to show concern in his eyes. “or maybe you can get first blood in the tournament?”
“i’ve never been better.” your smile still remains in place. “it’ll definitely help with the first blood. i’m sure of it.”
jimin appears in the doorway approximately ninety seconds later wearing the expression of someone who detected food from a level up and simply followed his instincts here without question or hesitation.
“where’s coach?” jimin yawns as he walks down the spiral of stairs. he then rubs his eyes before approaching seokjin propped in a pink apron. “did you scare him off because you look like this?”
seokjin swings his spatula up like a sword. “what’d you say?”
“good morning, seokjin.” jimin grins cheekily before jolting away from seokjin’s swing. “should i make coffee?”
“no need.” seokjin says. “jungkook went out to buy takeaway coffee with namjoon because we ran out of beans.”
“okay!” jimin comes over to sit in his seat instead. he turns on his computer, keen to scroll through his social media while he waits patiently.
seokjin slides the finished egg—heart-shaped, barely, more of a lopsided oval if you’re being fully honest—onto a plate and sets it in front of you with the solemnity of someone presenting an award. “the heart egg.”
“it’s beautiful!” you gasp in all seriousness.
jimin leans over from his seat to inspect it. “that looks like a mashed potato.”
you pull the plate closer to your chest protectively. “don’t diss my child like that.”
“where’s my heart?” jimin questions his perfectly cooked fried egg.
“yoongi texted and said he can smell the eggs.” jimin reads, not looking up from his phone. “he’s not coming down until the food is directly in front of him.”
“this little brat.” seokjin is already plating another egg while shaking his head profusely. “i hope he gets a troll in his game.”
“where’s taehyung?” you ask as you glance over to his empty seat this morning.
“he went out for a run around the block.” seokjin answers. “he’ll be back soon.”
you nod. what a disciplined guy.
the front door opens—the particular sound of it, the keypad beeping and then the handle turning and then the rush of outside air that briefly changes the temperature of the whole room—and you hear them before you see them. namjoon’s voice first—low and even—the tone he uses when he’s wrapping up a conversation rather than starting one. then nothing, which means jungkook was on the other end of it and has already said whatever he needed to say.
they appear in the doorway together, coffees in hand—six of them in a cardboard carrier. jungkook’s eyes find you first, which catches you off guard. you quickly lower your gaze back onto your heart egg, preparing to stab it with a fork like a normal person.
“why is aeum’s egg not cooked properly?” namjoon judges your plate as he walks past.
“it’s a heart.” seokjin clarifies from the stove, not turning around.
jungkook inspects your plate for another second without questioning it. then he sets a coffee down in front of you without being asked—the right one for you, the one you always order.
“thank you.”
“it’s nothing.” jungkook says—which is what he always says, which means nothing and somehow everything simultaneously.
namjoon sets the remaining coffees down for everyone and looks around the kitchen before finding his own seat at the top of the table.
seokjin appears at the table with two more plates—one for the coach who is already present, one balanced precariously on his forearm for yoongi, who appeared at the bottom of the stairs with his hair in a state that suggests he’s still half awake.
“good morning, yoongi.” you wave your fork at him animatedly.
“morning.” yoongi says to you, then to the rest of the team. “what’s with the meeting?”
a meeting?
“we’ll eat first.” namjoon reassures the team with a calm nod. “we need time to appreciate seokjin’s eggs.”
“thank you!” seokjin yells in satisfaction. “that’s exactly it.”
“why are we having eggs?” yoongi questions the unusuality with a scrunched expression. “like, just eggs? no bacon?”
seokjin shakes his head and lifts his spatula up again. “you want to starve today?”
the front door opens again. taehyung walks in, sweat glistening on his fair skin. he swipes his own sweat away with a swipe of his wrist before joining the table of six casually like he missed nothing. “am i on time?” he glees as he makes his way to you, like he always does. “good morning, aeum.”
“good morning, taehyung.”
“is that a heart?” he points out successfully. “seokjin did a good job.”
“he did.” you whisper loudly. “you’re the first person to compliment his eggs.”
“really?” he raises a brow innocently.
you sigh out loud on seokjin’s behalf. “we might not see him cooking breakfast tomorrow at this rate.”
“he will.”
“what makes you so sure?”
taehyung smiles knowingly. “i don’t know. i have a feeling.”
and so the kitchen settles into the sound of forks against plates. seokjin eats with the quiet satisfaction of a man whose dream has been appropriately honoured. yoongi works through his plate with the focused efficiency of someone running on four hours of sleep. jimin and taehyung eat the way they do most things—easily, without requiring a reason, filling the silence between them with the particular warmth of two people who have never needed an occasion to be content. namjoon eats slowly, deliberately, the way he does everything, like each bite is part of a thought he hasn’t finished yet. and jungkook eats the way jungkook exists in every room—quietly, self-contained, present in a way that takes up no space and somehow all of it at once.
you eat your heart-shaped egg rather slowly, slightly saddened by the fact you have to see it disappear so soon.
so long, heart egg.
the plates are cleared by the time namjoon decides to open his laptop. his presence is almost like a silent trigger—jimin sat up a little straighter. yoongi put his phone away. taehyung crossed his arms loosely over the table, eyes fixated on namjoon, patient in the particular way he is when he already suspects something is coming.
jungkook remains quiet, sitting like he knows it all.
namjoon turns the laptop around slowly and sets it in the center of the table without a word.
the screen shows a thread. hundreds of thousands of interactions, still climbing in real time. at the top of the thread—two video files. it’s shaky and blurry at first glance, the angle slightly too low.
you’ve seen this before.
you’ve definitely seen this before.
this can’t be good.
jimin is the one who reaches forward and presses play.
taehyung’s voice comes through the laptop speaker, warm and sincere like a constant reminder. then jimin’s. then namjoon’s own voice, saying things that were never meant to leave the table.
the footage is short. it ends the way it began—abruptly, like whoever filmed it had already gotten what they came for.
the silence after it is longer than the video itself.
“when did this go up?” yoongi asks. his voice is even. his jaw isn’t.
“sometime between midnight and four.” namjoon reveals. “the company flagged it at six. i’ve been on calls since seven.”
you feel it—the particular shift in the room’s atmosphere, the way certain silences change quality depending on who’s inside them. you don’t even have to inspect everyone’s expressions to know how they’re feeling. your eyes stay on the table. your clenched fists remain loyal on your lap for now.
no one can stay relaxed after their privacy was blown to the internet. easily accessed and preserved.
“and the public response?” yoongi continues calmly. “should we be worried?”
“it’s surprisingly not too bad.” the coach answers lightly. “the photos of jungkook and aeum were strangely worse. some fans are supportive, but still, most of them are disappointed.”
“supportive?” jimin prods for further context. you were hoping to question the same.
namjoon scratches his head awkwardly. “some… fans are rather supportive of taehyung and… aeum… well, i don’t know—it’s just been a thing since she came in and it never really died down—maybe it’s because it’s a known fact that they’re friends?”
the heat arrives and springs up from the base of your throat, spreading outward across your cheeks in a slow, traitorous bloom that you are completely powerless to stop. you can feel it the way you always can, that particular warmth that settles high on your cheekbones and refuses to be reasoned with.
how didn’t you know this?
do you live under a rock?
god, you just want to be a rock right now.
you press your lips together and look down at your hands, which contributes to nothing, because the table definitely isn’t going to cool your face down and it certainly isn’t going to stop taehyung from noticing from across the room or jungkook—who you are specifically not looking at right now for this exact reason.
“don’t people write fanfiction about them?” seokjin snorts randomly. “even i knew this.”
jimin’s fingers move faster than the speed of light. clearly he’s searching this up to be enlightened by a digital footprint. “this was a thing?” he then asks rhetorically. “i didn’t know that.”
“we’re just worried about aeum.” taehyung finally says a word as the star of the show. “what if someone is after her again?”
the question drops into the center of the table and stays there, heavier than anything else said this morning. seokjin stops reaching for his coffee. jimin’s phone goes face down. yoongi’s eyes move to you with the particular steadiness of someone who has been waiting for this part of the conversation and isn’t going to look away from it now.
“the company is filing a formal report today.” namjoon continues, steady and certain the way he is when he’s decided the room needs someone to be. “they’re working with the platform to take the videos down, but the damage is already limited. the comment section is being monitored. the official statement goes out this afternoon.”
“are we going to find who filmed and leaked the videos?” taehyung rambles hastily, like he’s chasing after the answers he needs. “they must be the one who sent the knife to aeum as well.”
“we’re prioritising it.”
“are we going to press any charges for this?”
“the company is hesitant about the matter since they suspect the perpetrator to be rather young.” namjoon’s voice is careful. measured. the voice of someone delivering a decision they didn’t make and aren’t entirely at peace with.
you know this for a fact because if namjoon could, he would.
but sometimes, the company’s alignment and namjoon’s vision tends to clash. namjoon tends to be biased towards the team, meanwhile the company remains neutral at all times.
the silence that follows lasts approximately two seconds.
“that isn’t what we discussed.” jungkook’s voice comes out low and even and completely without heat, which somehow makes it worse.
“jungkook—listen, i know—”
the chair legs scrape back from the table before namjoon can finish the sentence.
it’s not a dramatic sound but because it’s jungkook, everything is emphasised in this moment because it’s your team’s leader standing up against the coach.
he crosses the distance between his seat and yours in four steps.
the shift in the air beside you, the warmth of him arriving at your shoulder—and then his hand is at your wrist, not gripping, just—finding it in a soft manner despite how heated he is. his fingers close around the inside of your wrist with a pressure that is gentle enough, and he draws your right hand up from your lap and forward onto the table.
slowly.
like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it.
the dressing sits there in the center of the table between all of them—slightly worn at the edges, the gauze discoloured.
jungkook doesn’t say anything.
he doesn’t need to.
that’s exactly why he’s here.
his hand stays loosely around your wrist, his thumb resting against the inside of it, and you are acutely aware of the fact that he is standing beside you in front of your entire team with your hand in his own—and the worst part—the truly catastrophic part—is that his touch is so careful it makes your chest do something you don’t have a name for yet.
you stare at the dressing.
the table stares at the dressing.
namjoon stares at it longest.
“her hand is still bleeding under this,” he says. never loudly. not with the sharp edge of someone making a point. just plainly, the way you state a fact that should require no further discussion. his eyes are fixed on namjoon across the table with a steadiness that makes the whole room feel smaller. “do you need to assess the severity with your own eyes?”
nobody moves.
namjoon holds jungkook’s gaze for a long moment. the kind of moment where two people are having an entirely separate conversation underneath the one everyone else can hear.
“jungkook.” namjoon speaks up again, quieter this time. the argument has left his voice entirely. “alright.”
jungkook exhales—not all at once, but in a particular way tension leaves a person when they’ve said what they needed to say and the room has finally heard it. his shoulders drop by a fraction. his jaw unclenches by a fraction. the breath that leaves him is slow, drawn out from somewhere deep, the kind that carries the full weight of everything he’d been holding since namjoon opened the laptop this morning.
his hand stays loosely around your wrist for one moment longer than necessary, the warmth of it steady and unhurried, and then it withdraws—quietly—and he takes a step back from the table like the matter is finally settled to his liking.
“we wish for the same.” taehyung says, and the word we lands differently when he says it. it’s not a deflection, but as something chosen deliberately. the way taehyung chooses most of his words when they matter. his smile is genuine and entirely sincere when he looks at namjoon when he says the first part. he then looks at jungkook when he says the rest, “we really don’t want aeum to be hurt again.” a beat—brief, weighted, the particular pause of someone who has been paying attention to things nobody asked him to pay attention to and has arrived at conclusions he’s keeping to himself for now. “i’m sure jungkook feels the same way.”
as much as you didn’t want it to, training ended early for the team today. namjoon had other priorities that urgently required his attention—everyone knew he was in a hurry to control the noise and disruption caused by the footages. he entrusted the team to practice alone with jungkook in-charge, cautioning everyone to stay away from their phones today.
as expected, jungkook did not falter when leading the team. his voice remained sharp, authoritative and calm. you’d think the slight clash he had with the coach would’ve dented his energy a little bit, but that definitely wasn’t the case.
“well played.” he summarised the session optimistically. “our coordination was nicely timed. everyone’s efforts paid off.”
validation from the leader himself dismissed all members to retreat to their safe spaces until dinner.
exhaling in thought, you blankly stare outside your window. the speeding cars, the rowdy city, the preoccupied people—they all move with such free will. a part of you feels like you’ve lost that freedom temporarily because of the recent leakages.
the worst part is it’s not just you.
it also applies to the rest of the team.
who would thrive on this sabotage?
who would be so invested into your lives to drag your team down this far?
you clench your bandaged hand into a tight fist. the pressure still brings pain, but that’s the least important thing in your mind right now.
could it be a team you’re competing against?
could it be an anti-fan? could it be an obsessive fan?
could it be anyone in the industry?
could it be an outsider? someone else in your life?
in a hurry, you open your phone to click on the profile of the user who sent you the videos before all this.
it’s an empty profile.
no profile picture.
no bio.
no link.
no followings.
no followers.
just a bunch of numbers as their username.
now, you watch the videos so many times now that you could recite the audio from memory—the crackle of the grill, taehyung’s warm voice, the particular way the camera shakes at the start before steadying—and still, nothing.
no glimpse of a hand, no reflection in a window, no stray voice you can place outside the six of you. you zoom in until the footage dissolves into meaningless pixels, you slow it down frame by frame until your eyes ache, you scrub back and forth across the same four seconds so many times the audio starts to sound like static.
nothing.
whoever filmed this knew exactly how to stay invisible, and the fact that you can’t find a single thread to pull on makes your chest tighten with a frustration that has nowhere left to go.
you slam the phone face-down onto your mattress harder than you mean to, then you yank your door open and take the stairs two at a time, descending into the unfamiliar noise echoing quietly in the house.
you’re halfway down the stairs when you hear them.
you stop on the fourth step from the bottom without deciding to. your hand finds the railing and grips it harder than necessary. your pulse picks up before your brain has even caught up to why.
the front door is open.
jungkook is leaning against the frame, arms crossed, the afternoon light cutting a sharp line down one side of his face and leaving the other in shadow—and even from here, even from four steps up and half-hidden, you can feel how still he’s holding himself.
taehyung stands in the garden, hands in his pockets, close enough to the threshold that you’d think he was about to step inside, except he doesn’t. he just stands there, fixed, like the distance between them is doing exactly what he wants it to do.
you should go back upstairs.
“do you know something we don’t?” taehyung’s voice.
he isn’t loud. he doesn’t need to be. his words land in the space between them like something dropped from a drastic height, and you watch jungkook’s jaw tighten at the impact of it.
“on the day aeum hurt her hand, there was a letter.”
a letter?
what letter?
“it’s from a fan.” jungkook continues calmly, “someone who claims themselves to be. there’s clearly room for correction, but they don’t look like the type to handle criticism.”
“why didn’t you bring it up?” taehyung asks. “it’d help the company with their investigation.”
“the company is aware. it shows why they didn’t want to press any charges.”
“we need to.” taehyung agrees back to what jungkook fought for earlier. “i want her to think she’s safe, and the best way to do that is to advance with legal action.”
“i know.”
taehyung’s eyes haven’t left jungkook’s face. there’s nothing soft in his expression right now, nothing of the easy warmth he wears for everyone else. just something deeper.
“she’s important to us.” taehyung confesses. low and certain. just fact, delivered with conviction he uses for everything that matters to him.
your whole body freezes like someone just stopped time. your heart stopped with it, and you’re barely managing to breathe because your chest is tightening like someone is pulling on each end.
you almost lose balance because there isn’t any part of you that feels strong enough to maintain the most simplest and natural thing like balance.
you press yourself flatter against the wall like that might keep you invisible, like your heartbeat isn’t loud enough right now to be its own kind of confession.
taehyung’s words hang there. heavy. jungkook doesn’t flinch from it like he’s never surprised. he just holds taehyung’s gaze, steady, unbothered by the assumption underneath it. jungkook’s silence afterward stretches long enough that you find yourself holding your breath, your knuckles white around the railing.
“i’ll take care of it.” jungkook responds softly. “put your trust in me.”
“i always have.” taehyung exhales—slow, deliberate, the sound of something finally being set down after carrying it too long. “because if she’s hurt again, leader or not, i don’t intend to be as polite as i’m being right now. whether that’s you or namjoon.”
taehyung is not joking. there’s no teasing lilt to it, no easy grin to soften the edges. just a quiet, absolute warning, delivered the way taehyung delivers the things he means most—softly, almost gently, which somehow makes it land harder than if he’d shouted it.
taehyung can be scary.
both of them are scary.
a beat passes between them—taut, electric, the kind of silence that could tip into either violence or understanding and genuinely could have gone either way a week ago. but something in taehyung’s shoulders finally loosens. he looks down at the tulips bending slightly at his feet, and when he looks back up, the warmth has returned to his face, easy and familiar, like he’s deliberately choosing to let it back in.
jungkook stands in the doorway a moment longer, watching him go, his shoulders rising and falling with one long breath.
author's note!
hellooo, guys! thank you so much for making it far! i've recently opened up a wattpad account and i'm planning to transition over there. there's up to 12 chapters that are scheduled to post and i'll try to update tumblr accordingly as well.
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jeon jungkook drives you to think strict criticism isn’t too bad, purely because you didn’t expect things to turn a bit steamier than intended.
as the one and only female esports player, misery was at your fingertip when your skills suddenly deteriorated. however, the stoic leader of your team—jungkook, simply couldn’t sit back. he puts you back on track, yet no one told you sparks would fly; and the crazy fact that it’s inevitable.
pairing : jungkook x you (as aeum).
au(s) : tsundere!jungkook, leader!jungkook, gamer!jungkook, roommates!au.
genres : fluff, (intense) mutual pining, slowburn, innuendos of suggestive themes, (a sick) love triangle.
content : you thought your skill was the one problem here, but you eventually realise you’re quite surrounded by guys that you’d like to go on your honeymoon with. clearly, consequences follow since you’re not the only person who thinks so (the rest of the world does too).
peek jungkook’s mind in this playlist.
previous chapter.
next chapter.
chapter directory.
masterlist.
chapter eight.
word count : 6,5k.
the walk back inside is easy for everyone else.
jimin’s eyes are in crescents: he’s still laughing about whatever seokjin said over the last round of soju. the two of them bumping shoulders through the doorway like the night isn’t over just yet. seokjin just seems to have that effect on everyone. he’s contaminated you a few times with his humour as well, leaving your cheekbones in a certain ache.
yoongi trails behind them with his hands in his pockets, quiet and content. namjoon holds the door, counting heads out of habit, nodding once when everyone filters through.
you’re last.
the warmth of the house wraps around you immediately. the homely scent, the soft light—while behind you, the night air still carries the last traces of charcoal and smoke.
your phone hasn’t moved from your pocket.
like fallen soldiers, seokjin plummets onto the couch with his full weight. jimin is already taking control of the tv remote with yoongi (also already one with the couch), which is a battle jimin has never once won and will apparently never stop attempting.
you stand just inside the doorway for a second longer than you need to.
you need to act normal.
normal.
you slip your phone deeper into your pocket, casually walking past the living room to move up the stairs.
“you’re heading upstairs already?” seokjin asks. “the night is still young!”
yoongi offers you the remote from afar. “do you want to choose?”
normal.
“i—” you stop when you feel a hand latch onto yours from behind, and before you can even process it, you’re being hauled backward with zero resistance.
“aeum will not retire tonight!” taehyung announces to the room, swinging your arm like he’s already won, “stay with me.” he flashes the kind of smile that makes it impossible to argue—wide and uncomplicated, like the night ending is simply not an option he’s considered.
okay.
what exactly can you say to that?
taehyung drops down onto the couch and pulls you with him, leaving you no dignified option but to land beside him. his smile is wide and entirely unbothered. “you don’t exactly have your going-to-sleep face on.” he inspects you closely, allowing you to gulp in nervousness. “i can tell.”
“agreed.” jimin confirms without looking up from his ongoing war with yoongi over the remote.
“how can you tell?”
“i can.”
how?
how?!
taehyung still has your hand. his grip loosened the moment you sat down, fingers barely there now, but you notice and you don’t move.
the tv flickers to life when yoongi finally surrenders the remote to jimin, who immediately puts something on that makes seokjin groan loudly.
your phone sits heavy in your pocket.
just a little longer.
the movie jimin chose is something loud and colourful that seokjin immediately has opinions about. whatever it is, seokjin strongly prefers horror movies when everyone is together.
unfortunately you’re not following the plot. you’re not really following anything.
you’re just… doing a very convincing impression of someone who is relaxed.
you’re so good.
you’re a top tier actress right now.
new career coming through.
huge middle finger to whoever is playing jokes with you.
taehyung’s hand finally leaves yours—he shifts to reach across for the throw blanket draped over the back of the couch, shaking it open before dropping most of it onto your lap without asking. you pull it up without thinking.
at some point, you don’t know exactly when jungkook comes downstairs.
you suddenly become aware of him the way you always do. he walks through the kitchen quietly, not announcing himself, opening the fridge and standing in front of it for a moment before closing it again. your peripheral vision is doing wonders right now.
hopefully you don’t look like a demon peeping on someone.
a glass of juice appears on the side table next to you.
no comment. no eye contact. jungkook just sets it down and moves to lean against the doorframe between the kitchen and the living room, arms crossed, watching whatever jimin put on with an expression that gives nothing away.
you stare at the glass for a second.
taehyung notices. you feel rather than see the slight turn of his head—just a fraction, just enough to clock the glass, notice jungkook, then you. he doesn’t mutter a single word. he just continues to laugh at seokjin’s complaints.
weird.
ultimately, you last at least forty minutes in this position.
seokjin was finally comfortable with the movie jimin chose, yoongi falls asleep sitting upright which jimin documents immediately on his phone, and taehyung chuckles so suddenly at something on screen that it startles you out of your own head for a moment.
jungkook hasn’t moved from the doorframe. instead he’s seated further away, no longer with his arms crossed like some kind of security guard. he’s focusing on the screen most times, but another piece of his attention is stolen by his phone.
he’s texting someone, or something rather nonchalantly.
his texts are short, but he’s punctual when checking for any replies.
speaking of phones… your phone also hasn’t stopped existing in your pocket. you should be doing the same thing.
“i’m going to head up now.” you say lightly, folding the blanket and setting it back on the couch. you try to equip your going-to-sleep face on this time—to convince the rest of the team. you’re just someone who had a long week, a full stomach and a reasonable bedtime. yes.
“already?” jimin asks. “you didn’t drink, so you can’t say you’re tipsy as an excuse.”
oh, for the love of god.
these degenerates!
you point at yoongi’s sleeping figure guiltily. “yoongi can sleep but i can’t?”
jimin corrects. “he drank!”
seokjin snorts and looks at jimin mischievously. “how should we wake him up?”
taehyung tips his head back and smiles dreamily at you upside down from the couch. “don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“you hold me back one more time and i’ll be the one biting you.”
“sweet dreams.” he whispers back.
you don’t look at the doorframe on your way out.
the stairs have never felt longer. each step up takes you further from the warmth below and closer to the thing you’ve been carrying all evening. by the time you reach your door, your hand is already in your pocket.
one breath, and you quickly close the door behind you.
the room is dark and quiet and entirely yours, which means there’s nobody left to convince. you sit on the edge of your bed, phone in both hands, screen still dark.
you press play.
the footage is shaky at first. whoever filmed it was trying to stay hidden, the angle slightly too low, the frame cutting off the top of namjoon’s head. but the audio is clear.
disturbingly clear.
you watch the grill smoke curl up into the dark sky and feel your stomach drop at how familiar it all looks.
“i thought she was pretty.” taehyung's voice comes through first, warm and unhurried, exactly as you remember it. “definitely.”
the camera shifts. then steadies. as if the filmer was just as nervous as you were.
“what happened to dating being prohibited?”
you watch yourself on screen. the way your eyes dropped to your plate. the warmth that crept up your neck that you thought nobody noticed.
they noticed.
whoever held this phone noticed everything.
“still valid?” jimin’s voice.
then namjoon’s. “you guys are free to do whatever you want.”
a pause.
“just don't slack on performance. please.”
the video ends abruptly.
you sit in the dark with the screen going black in your hands, the ghost of everyone’s laughter still audible in those last few seconds of footage. the clinking of glasses. the crack of the grill.
they were close enough to hear all of it.
close enough to see your face when taehyung complimented you from the bottom of his heart.
close enough to see you look for jungkook at that last second.
this can’t be good.
you genuinely feel your heart sinking—it’s heavy, like an anchor that has just been relinquished to the sea. the worst case scenarios flash and spin in your mind like a panorama stuck on replay. the amount of effort and courage jungkook put into his livestream, the already released photographs and now, the videos?
it’s not even just that.
taehyung has been thrown into the picture. the tarnished picture between you and jungkook that has diluted the team’s synergy right before the tournament.
he’s going to be slandered, just as much as you are.
and if any threats go to him? what if he encounters sharp objects like you did?
if your team continues to be the highlight of the media for something that’s irrelevant to esports, you just know this will be fatal to the tournament. after all, who would support a team driven by romance rather than genuine passion for their career?
what can you do?
what should you do?
you can reply.
you can directly communicate to this person hiding behind the screen.
but… is this the right choice?
shouldn’t you tell namjoon?
or… jungkook?
the police?
you can’t handle this alone—you definitely can’t.
you can clearly see what this person is capable of.
if they can track down your whereabouts, grow this strongly in your proximity without the rest of your members noticing—you know this requires a thorough investigation, which you aren’t elected to do.
okay.
okay.
you have to tell someone.
gripping onto your phone tightly, you feel determined. springing yourself off your own bed, you take yourself out of your unlit room to explore your options.
it doesn’t feel like much time has passed, but the house is quiet by the time you sneak out of your room.
not the kind of quiet that feels empty—the kind that means everyone is behind closed doors, physically and mentally offline. you’ve been sitting with your phone face-down on your mattress for the last hour doing absolutely nothing useful except contemplating whether you could take on this psychopath alone.
now you’re just in need of some water.
that’s your excuse.
just water.
you pad down the hallway in the dark, soles barely making a sound against the floor. yoongi’s door, jimin’s door, seokjin’s door—all dark underneath. all quiet. not a single speck of light to be seen.
weird.
then taehyung’s.
you slow without meaning to.
the light is on. just a thin line of gold bleeding out from under the door, soft and still. not a single sound from inside—no tv, no music. just the light, which means he’s awake and choosing to be.
you stand there for a moment that stretches longer than it should.
you could knock. you’ve knocked on taehyung’s door at questionable hours before and he’s always opened it like he was expecting you, like your timing was never inconvenient. he would let you in without questions. make room without being asked.
and right now, with everything sitting heavy and unresolved in your chest, that sounds like the easiest thing in the world.
but that’s exactly why you don’t.
because taehyung is warm, certain and safe. you know that leaning into that tonight wouldn’t be fair to either of you.
you keep walking.
jungkook’s door is dark.
you don’t slow down this time. you don’t let yourself.
you get your water. you go back to bed. you lay there in silence, listening to the house breathe around you. there definitely isn’t a ticking time bomb on your phone right now, ready to detonate at any time of the day.
just for tonight.
you’ll let it go just for one night.
you find namjoon at six in the morning on the building’s rooftop.
he’s normally here before the team wakes for his morning coffee, and apparently, to concentrate deeply about whatever is inside his wrinkly brain—you know this because you’ve seen the light on up there through your window in the early mornings.
there was also a time you couldn’t fall asleep, and there he was—the intelligent man standing there with his warm latte.
this time it’s different.
you’ve brought yourself here with intentions.
your coach is leaning against the railing when you push the door open, and he turns at the sound of it. whatever expression he was wearing adjusts immediately into something more careful when he sees your face.
namjoon straightens. “how long have you been up?”
“5 minutes.”
“what?”
you walk fast to close the distance and to hold your phone out without preamble. “please look at this.”
namjoon takes it. you watch his face as he reads—the way his jaw tightens, the slight press of his lips together. he scrolls without rushing. when he gets to the videos he watches both of them in full.
the sound of yesterday night in the early morning makes your stomach churn all over again—taehyung’s voice, namjoon’s own voice—saying things that were only ever meant for the six of you.
namjoon hands the phone back without a word first. he just looks out at the city for a moment, both hands back on the railing.
namjoon is always hard to decipher.
probably because his iq is much higher than yours.
namjoon exhales through his nose—not unkindly, just the sound of someone absorbing something they wish they didn’t have to. “are you feeling alright?”
“not really, sir.” you joke. “i may have a stalker on my tail.”
“i think you already do.”
you cross your arms. “thank you for the validation i needed!”
“what do you think they’re up to?”
you exhale to collect your honest thoughts. “i thought it was all a personal grudge until the videos were sent. but now, the whole group’s image is targeted. i really don’t want them to hurt our reputation with this.”
“i understand.” he agrees huskily. “but it’s hard, based off what they have and how little we have of them.”
defeated, the corner of your lips sink immediately. “i know.”
“i’m going to contact the company today. privately. before anyone else is up.” namjoon turns to look at you properly. “in the meantime, do not respond to the messages. don’t even entertain them by reading the next messages. try to hold back. if they message you further, let me know promptly.”
“yes, sir.”
"and the team—" he starts.
“could you keep it to yourself for now?” you plead earnestly. “everything is moving too quickly. i don’t want the rest of the members to be worried. they’ll lose focus.”
namjoon looks at you for a long moment. “sure, if that’s what makes you comfortable.” he answers understandingly. “but aeum,” he pauses. “have you told jungkook about this?”
you shake your head obliviously.
namjoon nods slowly, turning back to the railing. he doesn’t push. he doesn’t interrogate further. “jungkook is still the leader of the group, so i’ll still need to involve him in the discussion. the company would want him to be included as well. so he’ll know eventually, unless you want to tell him yourself.”
you look down in thought.
do you have to?
“i know you two have something going on.”
choking on absolutely nothing, you dart your eyes at namjoon’s casual tone. he definitely retired from his own old rules. “i never said that!”
“i’ve known jungkook for years.” namjoon continues, “if you look at him close enough, he’s not capable of lying or hiding himself.”
you block your own ears with your hands. “can’t hear you!”
sighing out loud like an old man sick of younglings, he shakes his head. “you two figure it out yourselves.”
crossing your arms to return to serious mode, you turn to him for help once more. “do you think we can catch and stop them?”
“we have to.” he spoon feeds you the answer you need to hear. “this is genuine criminal activity that needs to be formally reported and investigated.”
“i can’t agree more.”
“i’ll keep you updated once i have the meeting.” namjoon reassures. “go down and get ready now.”
the morning bled into a vibrant sunny day. no longer six, but nine. you retreated from namjoon earlier and decided to spend the rest of the hours dozing off on the couch. you knew if you slid between your own sheets, you wouldn’t have made it out alive for today’s practice.
now, coffee.
perhaps namjoon influenced you this morning, because you don’t usually reach out for coffee unless necessary.
and today is necessary.
you haven’t woken up at six in the morning for years.
stretching your limbs as you walk towards the kitchen, you pause for a second when you notice that jungkook is already there.
you don’t want to dodge him like a bullet, so you just pretend to act normal.
top tier actress mode: on.
jungkook doesn’t acknowledge your presence when you walk in. you don’t acknowledge him either. it seems like this has sadly become its own kind of language—because, distance.
you move to the cabinet above the kettle and he moves to the fridge, and for a moment the kitchen accommodates both of you without incident.
then, you both reach out for the same mug.
it’s the one on the end—tucked away in a location where you both don’t need to look—the plain black one that neither of you owns but both apparently prefer.
your fingers land on the handle at the same time as he does, and the contact lasts exactly one second before you both pull back simultaneously.
“sorry.” you blurt out.
“i don’t need it.” he says.
despite his offer, you keep the mug untouched. you reach past for a different one instead. he does the same. the black mug stays where it is, unclaimed, while you both stand at the counter waiting for the kettle with several inches of deliberate space between you.
it’s so quiet you can hear the kettle working itself up to a boil.
this careful, courteous distance. you were the one who said it first, and jungkook respected the way he respects everything—completely and without complaint.
the kettle clicks off. you both reach for it.
you stop yourself first this time, taking a small step back. he pours without a word, sets it back down, and turns away from the counter like he doesn’t have any business with you.
“it’s hot.” jungkook just says as he leaves.
you stand in the kitchen alone, with the wrong mug and the plain black mug still sitting on the end of the shelf.
you start to think about how easy it was in his car; how easy it was in the supermarket; how you didn’t have to think about where to stand or what to do with your hands because it just—arranged itself naturally.
you take a sip of your coffee.
it’s fine.
everything is fine.
you practice saying that until it sounds true.
practice ends the way it always does. namjoon’s closing words, headsets coming off, chairs rolling back. one by one, the members peel away from their screens. jimin announces his nap before dinner and yoongi is already gone before anyone notices. seokjin follows, muttering something about a recipe he saw online that he intends to destroy in the kitchen.
you sit with your idle screen and namjoon’s words from this morning turning over quietly in your head.
tell him yourself.
whilst in thought, you hear a chair roll over.
taehyung settles beside you without asking, the way he always does. like proximity to you requires no announcement or permission.
he glances at your idle screen and says nothing about it. just leans back in his chair with his arms crossed loosely, looking at the ceiling like he has nowhere better to be but next to you.
you turn your head to him. “what are you thinking about?”
taehyung lights up at the sight of your face turned to him. “i was thinking about how delicious ramyun is.”
taehyung always makes rooms comfortable—he has this quality of making silence feel inhabited rather than empty. you’ve been grateful for it more times than you’ve told him.
at the same time, your phone buzzes against the desk. you glance down at namjoon’s name.
[5:36PM] Godfather: the company is aware of the situation.
[5:36PM] Godfather: we’ll think of ways to handle this.
[5:37PM] Godfather: any new messages from them?
you lock the screen before the words finish registering.
taehyung doesn’t look over and respects your privacy. he stays quiet for a moment longer before straightening in his chair and looks at you sideways. his expression is soft and completely unbothered. “want to go eat ramyun with me?”
your jaw drops at the sound of juicy, warm ramyun.
taehyung’s car keys swing from one finger like a quiet invitation—“let’s go.” is all he says. no elaboration, no itinerary. just that, and the assumption that you’ll follow.
“we’re going out?”
“to the han river.”
“what if—” you get stalked again?
“i also have masks in the car if you want to be a nobody with me.” taehyung suggests like he read your mind. “it’s always fun doing that.”
the han river in the early evening is a different world from the one you’ve been living in all week. the city pulls back from its own edges here—the noise softened, the sky wider, the light reflecting across the water.
you and taehyung walk along the path with your hands in your own pockets, shoulders occasionally bumping into one another without any complaints but tiny laughters.
“it feels good to have some fresh air.”
you agree with a nod. “we’ve been busy. too busy.”
taehyung leans his forearms against the railing and looks out at the water, the wind moving through his hair in the unhurried way things tend to move around taehyung.
you steal a glance at his side profile (like you always do—must appreciate beauty). the curve of his nose, the particular way he holds his jaw when he’s thinking. in this light, with the river ahead of him and the city glowing at the edges, he looks like something that belongs in a museum.
you look away before he catches you.
“you want to know what i think?”
“ramyun?” you guess the obvious.
“not anymore.” the corner of his mouth lifts. “i’m thinking of the person behind the blade. the one who was brave enough to cut you.”
“oh, yeah?” you roll your eyes and scoff at the sound of them. “i’m dying to know.”
“don’t be.” he starts, slow and deliberate the way he starts most things—like he’s turning the words over before he offers them. “none of us want you to be thinking about them as much as we are. you don’t deserve to stress about such a thing, especially not now.”
the river moves below you, indifferent and patient.
“that’s not possible.” you look back out at the water before faking a frown at him. “aren’t we all a team? aren’t we one?”
“of course—of course, we are!” taehyung panics for a second as if he wants to backtrack and correct himself. “we’re only worried about you. because at the end of the day, you’re just our team’s princess.”
you visibly cringe at his words, shutting your eyes a little. “taehyung…”
“what?” taehyung questions innocently, the mood lifting as naturally as the tide. “you don’t like it?”
a laugh escapes you—real and surprised, the kind that loosens something in your chest without asking permission. “i don’t mind it.” you admit playfully. “thank you because my inner child is happy.”
“that’s what i thought.” he pushes off the railing and gesturing for you to walk with him, “it’s been a while since we came out together.” he falls into step beside you. “it’s nice. really nice.”
you shake your head, still smiling. “it is.”
“aeum.”
something in his tone makes you look at him properly.
the lightness is still there—taehyung rarely puts it down entirely—but underneath it is something quieter. the version of him that doesn’t make noise, only presence at the most unpredictable times.
you raise your brow at him curiously.
“i truly enjoy being with you.”
the river catches the last of the light and scatters it in long, trembling ribbons across the water. somewhere above you, the first stars seem to hesitate, unsure whether this fuzzy moment deserves witnesses.
“i’ll save the rest of my words for after we figure out who did this to you.”
a breath lodges itself somewhere beneath your ribs and stays there, refusing to move for what feels like a full, suffocating minute. some dramatic, overripe part of you wants to crumple to your knees right there on the riverbank—but that’s just your mind being theatrical. what you actually need to do is look at him. something low in your chest insists on it, an itch you can’t ignore.
“because i don’t want to say it yet.” taehyung’s voice softens further, almost apologetic for bringing it up without further context. “it’s nowhere near perfect enough.”
you glance around, as if the river itself might offer you an argument, eyes widening with disbelief. “how much more perfect are you thinking?”
“you won’t know,” a teasing curve pulls at his mouth. “not with that brain.”
“wait!” you exclaim, already hunting for the insult buried inside his joke. “i don’t like the sound of that!”
and then—without warning—taehyung breaks into a sprint ahead. he’s already gone, sprinting off toward the convenience store glowing faintly down the path, leaving you standing there with your mouth still open on a comeback that never lands anywhere.
you wait by the railing, watching the water, trying very hard not to smile as much as you are.
he returns a few minutes later with two cups of ramyun balanced precariously in his arms, chopsticks pinched between his teeth like some kind of victorious raccoon, and drops down onto the grass beside the path without an ounce of grace.
“come sit next to me.” taehyung says around the chopsticks, patting the spot next to him.
“if that is your request, your highness.” you joke in pure excitement. the steam rising from the cups is already calling on your hunger.
taehyung hands you a cup, steam curling up between you both. “eat it while it’s warm.”
“would you want to see me eat it in less than a minute?”
“are you trying to go home already?” he blows on his noodles with patience while you stir up the noodles beside him. the city hums softly across the water, the whole night somehow smaller and warmer than it was five minutes ago. “i thought i said i enjoy my time with you.”
“of course not.” you respond, almost offended by his careless assumption. you lift a noodle with exaggerated care, “i just wanted to show you my hidden talent!”
“i’m not buying it.” he says immediately, not even looking up. “my feelings are hurt.”
“i’m going to push you in the river.”
“i don’t think you’ll let go of that ramyun.”
he’s too right.
you slurp on the noodles once the temperature has settled. being careful not to flick any of the droplets on your hoodie, you bring the cup close to your chin to have a mouthful.
taehyung follows you right afterwards, except his mouthful is naturally bigger than yours.
“wow.” he exhales in satisfaction. “ramyun beside the han river can never go wrong.”
you chuckle at taehyung who is trapped in awe. “ramyun is the best. it’s cheap, it’s tasty and it’s filling.”
taehyung nods frantically in agreement.
“thank you for taking me out today, by the way.” you mumble while chewing politely.
he looks to your side, sipping on his cup to taste the soup. “are you enjoying yourself?” he then asks with an innocent smile, clearly anticipating an answer.
“absolutely.” you answer without any hesitancy.
“i’ll take you to better places next time.”
by the time you reach the house, the lights in the living room are off. the rest of the members have settled somewhere behind their own closed doors, which makes the hallway feel longer than it usually does.
taehyung stops at the top of the stairs.
you stop too, one step below him.
for a moment neither of you say anything. it’s not exactly an awkward moment—it never is with taehyung—it’s just the particular quiet of a night that’s been full and is now asking you to figure out where to put everything you’re still carrying on your shoulders.
there’s a lot of it.
voices that were never meant for a stranger’s ears, preserved in someone’s phone like a knife they’ve been sharpening. you’ve been outrunning it all evening—through the ramyun, through the river, through taehyung making you laugh so hard you nearly dropped your cup—but the thing about running is that you always end up back where you started, only a little more out of breath.
namjoon’s voice finds you next, unhurried and certain, the way it sounded on the rooftop this morning with the whole city still half asleep below you—he’ll know eventually. unless you want to tell him yourself.
“will you be okay alone?”
“of course!” you reply confidently.
he gives you a look. the specific one—brows slightly raised, head tilted exactly two degrees, the expression of someone who has known you long enough to read the fine print. “i know you will be.” the corner of his mouth lifts to agree with your confidence.
“thank you.” you respond ever so softly. “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
taehyung nods once—slow, the kind that means i’ll see you tomorrow—and turns toward his room. it occurs to you then, in the stillness he leaves behind, how quietly extraordinary he is at that. at making space without making you feel the shape of it.
tonight, he fed you ramyun by the river and stole the punchline of every joke before you could finish it. he walked you home at the pace you needed without once asking why you were walking so slowly. he gave you the whole evening without attaching a single condition to it.
taehyung has always been like that—generous in a way that sneaks up on you, the kind that doesn’t announce itself or wait to be thanked. somewhere between the han river and this hallway, standing in the low dark with his door about to close, you feel the soft, complicated weight of that settle somewhere behind your ribs.
his door clicks shut.
you stand in the hallway for a moment longer than you need to, long enough to feel the quiet wrap itself around you, long enough to make a decision you've been circling all night.
then you turn—not toward your room—but toward the end of the corridor.
you stand outside your leader’s door for longer than is strictly dignified.
your knuckles are raised. you’ve been in this position for approximately forty seconds—which is forty seconds longer than it takes to simply knock, and yet.
you knock.
three times. quiet enough that if he’s asleep you haven’t disturbed anything. loud enough that if he isn’t, he heard.
perfect amount of knocks to make excuses if he doesn’t respond.
a pause before the particular sound of movement from inside—unhurried, the creak of a chair, footsteps that don’t rush.
he’s awake.
he’s coming.
the door opens and jungkook is there, still dressed neatly in a plain t-shirt and grey sweatpants despite it being most people’s bed times already. for some reason, he doesn’t seem surprised by your visit.
“i just needed to tell you something.” your voice comes out steadier than you feel, which you’re choosing to count as a victory. “is this a bad time?”
jungkook steps back from the door in answer. you take it as an invitation and walk in, and he closes the door quietly behind you.
his room at night is different from his room in the daylight. the lamp on his desk casts everything amber and low, the city visible through the window in soft, scattered light. you stand awkwardly in the middle of it and feel aware of every word you rehearsed on the walk down the hallway rearranging themselves into nothing.
“so?” jungkook finally makes a sound.
“the night we went out,” you start, because starting is the hardest part and you've been putting it off since yesterday, “i received messages from an account.” you watch something shift behind his eyes, tectonic and quiet. “the messages were concerning. almost like a threat because they took videos of us. they were close enough to hear our conversations, and—”
jungkook is very still.
“i watched the videos that night in my room alone. then, i went to find the coach this morning. the company has already been contacted so it’s being handled. i should have told you first. i know that. i just—” you exhale, the rehearsed parts finally running dry. “i didn’t want to add fuel to the fire when everyone seemed so happy.”
the silence that follows has texture to it.
jungkook moves to sit at the edge of his desk, arms crossing loosely, and just looks at you. not coldly. not with disappointment. just the particular look of someone processing something they wish they didn’t have to.
“i’m—”
he exhales slowly and looks at the floor, the window, then back at you. something in his expression quietens further, like a held breath finally let go. “are you alright?”
“videos can’t really hurt anyone.”
“it must’ve been a scary experience regardless.” his voice is lower than usual, the edges of it soft in a way that does something unfortunate to your composure. “i’m sorry on their behalf.”
the words settle over you like a warm blanket you don’t quite know how to accept. you feel it before you can stop it—a familiar sting creeping up behind your eyes, that strange pressure building at the corners. your throat tightens.
you clear your throat—a small, quiet sound—and drop your gaze for just a moment, just long enough to collect yourself.
“i’m okay. these things can’t hurt me.” you say, and your voice only wavers the tiniest bit. “really.”
“show me the videos.”
you cross the room toward him. the distance closes in a way that feels different when you’re the one closing it—deliberate, each step a small decision. you hold your phone out and his fingers brush yours when he takes it, and neither of you comment on it, and that silence is somehow louder than anything else in the room.
the videos play.
you watch him watch them—the grill smoke, the laughter, taehyung’s voice, the whole table caught in amber and firelight. jungkook’s face doesn’t move. it rarely does when something lands heavily on him. but his grip tightens around your phone almost imperceptibly, and when the second video cuts to black, he stays very still for a moment before handing it back.
he hands the phone back. your fingers brush again. you both ignore it again.
“don’t leave this house alone.” his eyes find yours again, steady and certain. “their motives are clear as daylight.”
“what are they after?”
“the original plan was to keep you out of the tournament entirely.” he says it plainly, like it’s a fact that disgusts him more the longer it sits in his mouth. “they failed. and people like that—they don’t handle failure quietly.” his eyes cut somewhere distant. “so now they’re reframing it. making us look like some manufactured drama instead of a team that actually earned their place.” a bitter sound escapes the back of his throat. “exploiting a female player for a headline.”
“i’m beating them up.” you just say in disbelief.
“you’re not.”
“i am.”
“don’t be silly.” jungkook holds your gaze a beat longer than necessary, long enough to mean something, and then he looks away first—not dismissively, just carefully, like he’s giving you room to breathe.
you exhale slowly in pent up frustration. “nothing is going to stop us from competing.”
“who says we aren’t?”
a beat passes. then another. the kind of silence that doesn’t ask to be filled, that just sits between two people and waits to see what they do with it.
jungkook’s eyes stay on yours for a moment longer before they drift down—almost imperceptibly—to the tiredness you’ve been carrying under your eyes all evening. the kind that finds and settles there after a full day of pretending everything is fine. you wonder if he can read all of it or just the parts you forgot to hide.
he shifts—barely, just a fraction of his weight redistributing—and raises his hand. slow enough that you track every centimetre of it. his knuckles skim the curve of your cheekbone, the backs of two fingers barely making contact, so light it almost doesn’t count.
almost.
then his hand drops back to his side like it was never there. like he thought better of it midway through and the best he could do was finish the gesture quietly and hope you’d let it go without comment.
“you should head to sleep after we’re done.”
his voice is different when he says it.
you know how jungkook sounds when he’s being a leader—measured, certain, the kind of tone that expects to be listened to. this… isn’t that. it’s something lower. something he keeps for smaller rooms and smaller audiences.
“okay.” it comes out softer than you mean it to.
and that’s the problem—you are standing in jeon jungkook’s room at an hour that reasonable people reserve for sleeping, having just handed him the most vulnerable thing you’ve been carrying all week, and instead of feeling lighter for it you are acutely, humiliatingly aware of the fact that his shirt fits him the way it does. that the lamp is casting his jawline in amber. that he smells like whatever he used in the shower tonight and it is doing something genuinely unreasonable to your ability to think in complete sentences.
you are here about a threat.
a real, actual, legitimate threat that involves surveillance footage and the tournament and the integrity of your entire team’s reputation.
and some embarrassingly significant portion of your brain has dedicated itself entirely to the observation that his hand was warm. that it barely touched you. that it lasted approximately one second and you are still thinking about it.
snap out of it!
he’s sexy but you already knew this.
this isn’t new.
you are in serious, catastrophic, unrecoverable trouble.
“i’m glad you told me directly.” his eyes find yours again—steady, the way they always are when he wants you to believe something. “we’ll handle it.”
you nod. “namjoon said let him know if i receive any more messages—”
“you tell me directly.” he cuts in. “i don’t want to hear it from namjoon.”
you let yourself out and close the door gently behind you. the hallway is still dark. still quiet. but it feels different on the way back—lighter, somehow, in the way that happens when something long overdue is finally given somewhere to land.
and heavier, somehow, in a way you don’t quite have the words for yet.
you get into bed and stare at the ceiling.
you think about taehyung and the river and the first stars appearing above the city.
you think about the back of two fingers on your cheekbone, barely there, gone before you could decide what to do with it—and how that fraction of a second is now apparently going to live in your chest for the foreseeable future, quiet and inconvenient and entirely his fault.
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jeon jungkook drives you to think strict criticism isn’t too bad, purely because you didn’t expect things to turn a bit steamier than intended.
as the one and only female esports player, misery was at your fingertip when your skills suddenly deteriorated. however, the stoic leader of your team—jungkook, simply couldn’t sit back. he puts you back on track, yet no one told you sparks would fly; and the crazy fact that it’s inevitable.
pairing : jungkook x you (as aeum).
au(s) : tsundere!jungkook, leader!jungkook, gamer!jungkook, roommates!au.
genres : fluff, (intense) mutual pining, slowburn, innuendos of suggestive themes, (a sick) love triangle.
content : you thought your skill was the one problem here, but you eventually realise you’re quite surrounded by guys that you’d like to go on your honeymoon with. clearly, consequences follow since you’re not the only person who thinks so (the rest of the world does too).
peek jungkook’s mind in this playlist.
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chapter directory.
masterlist.
chapter seven.
word count : 2,4k.
jungkook drops his gaze—not in defeat, just releasing the tension before it has somewhere to go.
taehyung glances at the kit. "i've got it." simple and certain, the way taehyung says things when he's decided they're true.
"i'll update namjoon." jungkook says, and doesn't look at you when he says it, and turns and leaves the kitchen the way he always does—quietly, completely, like a door closing on a conversation rather than a person.
you follow taehyung.
the small, embarrassing part of you that was hoping jungkook would look back is something you choose not to acknowledge out loud. it sits in the bottom of your chest and weighs each step you take with taehyung down the hall.
taehyung takes you to the theatre room beside the kitchen—and you feel the ghost of it the moment you cross the threshold, the particular quality of a room that holds the last time two people didn't tell each other the truth. you ignore it. you sit on the couch and smile at taehyung's profile and tell the memories to collect themselves off your floor.
he doesn't deserve real estate in your head right now.
especially when you apparently don't have any in his.
"let's sort you out." taehyung says, flicking on the light.
"tell me i'm in good hands." you settle into the cushion and watch him open the kit with the focus of someone who takes this seriously. "am i?"
"hm." taehyung considers it with theatrical gravity. "you be the judge."
he reaches for the saline, opens a gauze packet—and then you watch the exact moment the obvious registers on his face. he blinks at his hands, which are still stained with dried blood from earlier. the realisation sits on him so purely, so genuinely, that you feel the laugh before it comes.
"we were close to making things worse." he says.
"i was going to mention it." you say sweetly.
taehyung gives you a look and uses the damp gauze to clean his hands instead, working methodically, the thin rings on his fingers catching the light. you watch him and feel the smile settle into something quieter.
the rings are dirty. your blood on his rings.
the smile softens before you can stop it.
taehyung finishes and looks up, and catches you mid-expression—the corner of your mouth, wherever it went, whatever was happening with it. the room has gone very quiet. he looks at you the way he sometimes does, like he's cataloguing something before the moment moves on.
you blink first.
"is something else wrong?" he asks, and reaches out and touches the sunken corner of your lip with one finger—light, a question rather than an assumption.
his finger is cold from the saline. your cheek is warm from something you're not going to name. "your rings." you say, which is honest. "i'm really sorry about them."
"what about them?" taehyung drops his hand, unbothered in the easy way he's unbothered about most things. "don't tell me you're upset because they're pretty."
"i was going to say they look pretty on you, actually." you meet his eyes. "which is a compliment."
"then i'm keeping them on." he raises a brow and takes your wrist—gently, drawing your arm across toward him, your body following the motion the way it always does with taehyung, naturally, without requiring a decision. "tell me when it stings."
"if i couldn't handle a small—" the saline touches the wound and the whimper escapes before you've decided it's allowed. "—scratch." you finish, with dignity, exhaling slowly. "i would not be here right now."
taehyung covers his mouth with the back of his hand.
"not one word." you say.
"i said absolutely nothing." he says.
"your face said something."
"my face is completely neutral."
"it's doing something."
"it's not." he stifles it further and dabs carefully at the wound, each pass deliberate and light, and you decide not to watch because watching makes it worse. "what were you saying, again?"
"i was saying thank you." you look at the ceiling instead. "endlessly. in many forms."
"that's a creative way of doing it." he tears open a dressing—larger than the ones you've been using on your own, the right size for the cut across your palm.
"unique is a compliment."
"i wouldn't say anything to you that wasn't." he sets the dressing flat across your palm and smooths the edges down. his eyes stay on the work but his voice is even. "all done. don't let it get infected. call me if you need anything changed."
"taehyung. you've already done too much."
"i want to." he says, and it's the particular tone he uses when he's stopped performing ease and is just being honest—no lilt, no teasing, just the words. when he looks at you now his eyes carry something layered. concern, yes. but underneath that, something that sits closer to the surface than he usually lets anything.
you look back at him and think about chaewon—loud, dramatic, entirely right about everything—they never say they care because they think it's embarrassing, i hate a man's ego with a deep passion—and feel something warm move through your chest for the boy sitting in front of you with blood on his rings and his hands careful around your injured one.
"thank you." you say, softly. "right back at you."
days pass. the wound doesn't stop you from anything, which you think about with a private, petty satisfaction every time you adjust your grip on the mouse. claw grip—less pressure on the palm, full range of motion. you figured it out in twenty minutes.
a loser, you are not.
i'd rather kiss you than focus on a game.
you exhale at your screen.
there's not much ahead for us.
another exhale.
let's stay apart.
you have got to stop doing this.
there is a real, actual, tangible human being out there who mailed you a blade in a pink box with hand-drawn hearts on it. who has been watching you and your team from close range and sending messages at irregular hours. who is still somewhere in the world, probably feeling very clever about themselves.
and you're sitting here processing the feelings of your own heart like you're the drama.
you flick your mouse over the matchmaking button.
"sunlight!" jimin appears from nowhere and swipes the mouse directly out from under your hand. "team practice ended two hours ago. you've been here like something dug up."
"jimin—" you lunge for it. "give her back—"
"she's in my pocket." he pats his back pocket with great satisfaction. "she's safe. she's resting."
you consider the other mice in this house. you consider mentioning them. "jimin. there are approximately four other mice in this building."
he pats your head. once. gently, like he's handling a creature he's fond of but doesn't trust not to bolt. "i'm thinking about you. we all are. now come eat pork belly with us."
you look up. "pork belly?"
"namjoon said we could go out tonight."
pork belly.
pork belly.
if pork belly were a person. if pork belly had hands and could hold you. you would let it. you would allow that completely.
"jungkook chose it." jimin adds.
"i don't like pork belly." you say immediately.
jimin blinks. "you ate six portions the last time we had it."
"that was a different time. my tastes have evolved."
"i also thought it was your favourite." taehyung comes down the stairs with damp hair and a carelessness to him that you've decided is illegal—one strand falling forward, pushed back by a hand that barely looked at it, and somehow that's the thing that makes the whole picture unreasonably attractive. you've filed a formal internal complaint about this and it's being processed.
"not anymore." you smile brightly at both of them.
"do you want to go somewhere else?" taehyung asks, already working through it.
you think about pork belly for approximately three seconds.
"i'll get ready." you say.
everyone showed up—obviously they did, free food and protein is a non-negotiable event for this group—and the grill is already going by the time you sit down, the smell of it reaching somewhere comfortable in your chest that the last few days have been trying very hard to vacate.
the seating situation, however.
taehyung to your right. namjoon to your left.
and directly across from you, at the other side of the grill where the heat sits between you like a very literal barrier—jeon jungkook.
the universe has a sense of humour and it is not funny.
you focus on the meat. the meat is uncomplicated. the meat has not kissed you in a dark room and then suggested you go back a few steps. the meat is your ally tonight.
"things are tense right now." namjoon pushes his glasses up and levels his voice to carry over the crackle. "the photos are still circulating. aeum's injury needs to stay private. we don't want to hand them another angle."
"if we stay quiet they'll think it worked." seokjin frowns. "that we're scared."
"i agree with seokjin." yoongi says.
"we handle it quietly." jungkook says, flat and final. "going public benefits them more than us."
"he's right." taehyung nods. "if this gets out alongside the photos, someone's going to twist it. the attacker might end up with sympathy."
"jungkook's fanbase alone—" jimin starts.
"i know." jungkook says.
namjoon leans across and places a few pieces of meat onto your plate, quiet about it, the way he does small careful things without making them into gestures. "jungkook and i will handle this. i anticipated something like this from the moment we brought a female player onto the team." he looks at you. "don't let it break your focus. the tournament is what matters."
you sneak a piece of meat into your mouth while he's still talking.
the whole table looks at you.
you swallow. "what?"
yoongi shakes his head slowly. "is it good?"
you nod.
namjoon smiles—both dimples, the real one. "a win sets us apart. that's all we're thinking about."
and then jungkook stands up.
nobody was ready for that.
he bows—full ninety degrees, sincere and unhesitating, the kind that doesn't perform itself. when he straightens, the thing sitting in his expression is quiet and resolved and utterly private. "i want to apologise. my actions affected this team." a beat. "i'll be more careful and responsible."
the table absorbs this.
"hey," seokjin says, still recalibrating. "that's not yours to carry."
"we're eating." jungkook says. "it's on me."
"it's on me." namjoon says.
"such good leadership." taehyung's mouth curves first—slow, like it started somewhere low and worked its way up. "maybe they'll take turns and we can come back tomorrow."
"i was about to say the same thing." you add, leaning in slightly, and taehyung tips his head at you with that specific grin, and for a second the table is just the table again—noise and warmth and the smell of the grill and people who are choosing to be here.
jungkook smiles. not the polished, distant one. something smaller. something you'd miss if you weren't already watching for it, which you tell yourself you weren't.
the soju passes around. the conversation finds its own level. seokjin says something catastrophically dramatic and jimin loses a mouthful of his drink. yoongi documents it without commentary. the evening does what evenings do when nobody's performing anything for anyone—it breathes.
"first impressions of aeum." seokjin says, apropos of nothing, pointing his glass at the table. "go."
"i thought she was overconfident." yoongi says. "didn't think she could back it up."
"i can still punch with this hand." you raise your fist.
"and then she absolutely destroyed us." yoongi says, to the grill, without remorse.
"she looked so confident though." jimin laughs. "i remember thinking—who is this person and why is she here?"
"i thought she was pretty." taehyung says. unhurried. simple. like he's saying the weather.
namjoon visibly cringes. the kind of cringe that travels through the shoulders before it gets to the face.
the warmth finds your neck before you've agreed to it—crawling upward, settling in your ears, the specific heat of something you don't have a clean word for curling somewhere low in your chest. you look at the meat on your plate and focus on it with great intensity.
"what happened to dating being prohibited?" seokjin is already shaking his head.
namjoon picks up his soju. takes a sip. adjusts his glasses. says nothing for a beat that is slightly too long.
"still valid." jimin supplies.
namjoon sets his glass down. "you're all free to do whatever you want." he says it quietly, almost to the glass. "just don't let it affect your performance."
the table doesn't react loudly—just a small collective inhale, the particular sound of people absorbing a rule being retired. you feel it in your chest before you process it in your head.
namjoon swirls what's left in his glass. "i didn't think you'd actually follow that rule." a small, private laugh. "you're all at that age anyway."
the groans around the table are low and theatrical. the weight behind them is real—years of choosing careers over everything else, quietly, without naming it as sacrifice.
your eyes move across the table before you decide to let them.
jungkook is looking at the grill.
you don't know if he heard namjoon the same way you did. you don't know if it landed anywhere near the place it landed for you. you don't know anything, which is the problem, which has been the problem since the beginning.
your phone buzzes.
once. then again. then it doesn't stop.
you don't usually get this. your notifications have been muted for years, the volume of the public side of your life kept deliberately at a distance. the kind of rhythmic, persistent buzzing you're feeling now means something is happening in a sequence, not a flood.
you pull it out.
@34742748392: shared a video.
@34742748392: so you got permission to pick between your boys and be a slut?
the air leaves your lungs cleanly, like it was always going to.
your thumb hovers. you don't play the videos. you don't need to—you can already hear what's on them from right where you're sitting. the grill. namjoon's voice. taehyung's easy confession. all of it, caught and kept by someone who has been close enough this whole time to reach out and touch any one of you.
@34742748392: you're not going to tell your fans about this.
@34742748392: we're your money makers.
@34742748392: are you excited to keep it hidden behind our backs?
@34742748392: shared a video.
your fingers tighten around the phone.
you look up at the table. at jimin laughing at something seokjin said. at taehyung lifting his glass. at namjoon adjusting his glasses. at yoongi already reaching for more meat. at jungkook, whose eyes are somewhere distant in the way they go when he's thinking about something he hasn't decided to share yet.
none of them know.
the evening is warm and real and entirely unaware of the thing sitting in your hand.
you lock the screen and put it face-down on your knee and pick up your chopsticks.
you are not ruining this.
not tonight.
not with the grill still going and taehyung's shoulder next to yours and jungkook smiling that specific small smile at the thing seokjin just said.
Woah, mind games is insanely good!!! Chapter 6 had me at the edge of my seat, specially towards the end 🤧 poor oc, that’s so messed up !!! Can’t wait for the rest!! Thank you💜
this!!! made!! me smile so hard!!! thank you so much for reading and thank you so much… for thanking?? ;-; <3 i’m too happy to know someone is still enjoying the series because it’s heading to a solid end!!! i’ll be sure to deliver the next chapter super soon :D
an album is in the works for yoongi. just when stress could corrupt the rest of his mind void of inspiration, he decides to find you—the ex of bts’ main rapper.
pairing : idol!yoongi, exboyfriend!yoongi x f-reader.
genres : mainly fluff.
content : yoongi takes you to his studio to prove that this isn’t just a fever dream, but his second confession.
word count : 2,7k.
“hello?” rubbing your eyes, you whimper in fatigue as you press your phone against your ear. “um,” your eyes open at the silence. “please leave a voicemail if this is anything important—”
“it’s me.”
you swallow once at the familiarity; it feels like you’re swallowing a hundred needles, or splinters—or maybe even nails.
“sorry for the random call in the middle of the night.”
it’s him.
you remember breaking up with your first boyfriend—min yoongi.
to others, he’s known as suga or agust d.
there’s no end if anyone was to discuss his successes, yet someone like you happened to be his girlfriend behind the scenes.
you were desperate to forget about him—and efforts never tend to disappoint, so it’s only normal for yours to pay off as well.
it’s been years.
“were you asleep?” yoongi asks vaguely. back then, discerning his emotions was as easy as falling asleep in his arms. now you can’t actually tell if he’s apologetic, or maybe feeling guilty—there’s a chance he could be feeling as paranoid as you right now.
then again, why would he?
“why did you call?” you finally muster the will to ask. it only cost you a few painful swallows and a couple of shallow breaths.
and it’s dead quiet again.
“why are we breaking up?”
it was dead quiet then too.
you exhale shakily as you clench your blanket in your fists.
you’re in dire of a distraction—you didn’t know you still had any space in your heart to be hurt after being scratched countless times.
you can’t believe this is real—this blazing pain you can’t compare with anything else.
why does pain like this still exist, and why is it related to yoongi again?
“i don’t know.” he just says.
he doesn’t even understand how fatal those words are to you; three simple words—three common words that possess the sick power to break you.
it’s every asshole’s evacuation and escape route. in the past, yoongi was anything but that, however time warps anyone.
“i’m hanging up if that’s all you have to say.”
“remember when you said to call when things get really hard?”
is he going through something?
last time you glanced at the internet and its headlines, you read that he’s preparing for a solo release before enlisting into the army.
that does sound like a harsh time for him, but you feel like he’s been through much worse—taking possible disbandment discussions as one, his early debut days as two, and his pre-debut shoulder injury and the story behind it as three.
“what’s wrong?” you can’t help to ask, you follow your heart more than your head—you always have; you haven’t changed.
“i…”
“did you have a drink?” you guess, only because he’s never the type to falter.
“i had a few shots of whiskey,” he confesses huskily. “it usually helps, but tonight it’s not doing shit.” you can hear his empty, hoarse laugh after indulging you into his new reality.
it’s as if you’re sobering, you slowly lift yourself up from your mattress. hair brushes past your dewy face and wetted lips, and you bring your knees close to your chest to stay seated under the slice of moonlight, eager to hear your ex-boyfriend’s rare struggle.
“how about you?” yoongi asks like he used to. “how have you been?”
“fine,” you answer. “me not calling you ever since and begging for another chance says everything.”
“i guess you’re right.” his hollow laugh reverberates in your ear. “i know it’s fucked coming from me, but i…” he breathes out loud, “—wanted to ask you a favour.”
“why?” you pry quietly. “what do i have and you don’t?” you ask with bitterness on the tip of your tongue. you’re no superstar and you’re no millionaire like him—you’re just you—the average you.
“want to find out?”
from there, all you hear is white noise. though yoongi kept the audio quite blank before, you couldn’t hear any background noise until now. there’s constant crackles and sounds that resemble the howling of the wind.
by sweeping open the curtain beside you, the drip of moonlight seeping through your room enlarges.
now you see the moon as whole in the starry sky alongside leaves rustling in sync with the noise from your phone.
“are you outside?”
“uh…” yoongi wonders huskily. he used to tousle his own hair while pondering aloud. “do you still live in the same house?” he inquires cautiously.
immediately, you crawl closer to your window, hurriedly smacking your palm against the glass to peer straight down from the third floor of your apartment.
your eyes brim with anticipation as they bounce everywhere—the flickering streetlights, the dimmed garden, the dormant cars parked outside, the swaying trees.
“are you here?” your breath trembles as you try to extinguish the glimmer of hope within. considering his status, everything he does on his own is like playing with spitting flames, although he’s human just like you.
“yeah,” he replies softly. “do you want to talk?”
“yeah,” you answer identically. “i’ll be down in a second.”
“alright.”
he always left you to hang up, and today wasn’t any different.
for a moment, you stare at your phone screen lit up with a new, unregistered number and the ongoing time beneath.
you’re inevitably on a delay because of how surreal everything is, but you manage to disconnect the call promptly in order to face him for the first time in years.
this is your ex—your ex, min yoongi, is downstairs—a ramble and an echo of your own words play inside your head while you storm out of your apartment to rush into the elevator.
because of how ungodly the hour is, there isn’t a single soul out in the lobby. secrecy is on your side today, and you know for a fact yoongi will be appreciative of it.
with breaths that you can’t even collect, you chew on your lip as the elevator dings on the ground floor.
the lobby is cold—insanely cold—the cold pierces through your skin, desperate to cling onto your heat. even so, the automatic doors slide open at the sense of your urgency, and your head turns in accordance to the voices of your heart—where is he? is he really here?
and you see him—he looks nothing like the yoongi you saw in your torturous and repetitive dreams back then.
yoongi has his eyes set to the ground as he absentmindedly roams around the front of your apartment. his pale skin infused with moonlight glows unlike his attire—he always liked his blacks.
“yoongi,” you involuntarily call out in an unexpectant soft decibel. you want to be louder, but the squeeze of your heart restricts you from doing so.
yoongi stops mid-motion to flick his head up at the sound of your velvety voice. “it really has been a while.” he laughs once in absurdity. “thanks for coming out.”
you only stepped out of your own home, but he’s the one who travelled beyond thirty minutes to see you.
“what brings you here at this time?” exhaling slowly, you hug your own bare arms to keep yourself warm.
yoongi averts your gaze by turning his head to sigh loudly. “it’s just me thinking for myself again.” he looks out, “you know how i am when it comes to my priorities.”
“did you argue with one of the boys?” you frown. “is something not working out?”
“the memories of you in my head were starting to fade,” he says. “i couldn’t sit around and let that happen.”
“we broke up.”
at that, yoongi takes his approach to walk closer. he’s intentional with his steps, keeping it slow amidst the chilliness which should be attacking him as much as it’s bothering you. “i know.” he answers deeply, still leaving gaps for you to fill.
“you’re going to be seen with me,” you dismiss heartlessly as you survey your surroundings worriedly before returning his stare.
yoongi drops his head again to exhale in thought. then, he wordlessly slides his zip up hoodie off of his shoulders to drape it around your smaller body. his eyes glide over your collarbones, but he’s quick to hide your skin by bringing each end of the hoodie together.
you raise your brow. “seriously?”
“is that all i made you think of?” yoongi cuts in. “i knew i was a shitty boyfriend, but, wow, it never gets old.” his hand drops in defeat as he laughs under his breath.
“forget it,” you bite the inner flesh of your cheek, grasping yoongi’s hoodie to tear it off. “we—no, you said you had a favour for me?”
yoongi reaches out to seize your hand, stopping you from escaping his scent and warmth. he’s rather blunt for someone who’s no longer with you anymore, nor is he even hesitant or cautious when touching you. “yeah, i do.” he then answers casually after retreating. “i have somewhere to take you.”
you don’t know how the hell you made it here; you don’t know why you’re seated here without any sort of resistance in yoongi’s studio—listening to nothing but the obnoxious ticking noises in the room.
it’s undeniably a distracting sound, so you wonder how yoongi works under it—or should you say above, considering how high he is up in the world?
“you got rid of your old speakers.” you mention as you start to realise everything in this room is unrecognisable to you.
yoongi falls lazily onto his chair, accustomed to this mundane routine of his. “which ones?”
“never mind,” you mutter in embarrassment. “it’s been years, and electronics get replaced all the time—” laughing awkwardly, you grip onto the edge of the couch. “—don’t they?”
yoongi’s breath tumbles into a nostalgic laughter. “just be yourself.”
pursing your lips uncomfortably at his familiarity towards you, your thighs tense as you remain quietly seated on his couch beside the rest of his equipment and multiple monitors projecting a music production software. “are you working on new music?” you ask out of awkwardness.
“yeah,” yoongi turns to face the main monitor. “my last album before i enlist.”
you try to swallow the gulp stuck on your throat. “when is it coming out?”
yoongi sucks in a breath as he sits back on the headrest, gazing at the ceiling thoughtlessly. “good question.” before you can open your mouth to inquire, he smiles knowingly and interrupts, “come see this,” he tilts his head in the direction of his workspace.
curious, you lift your weight off of his couch to trudge over to hover beside yoongi. your stare descends to the notebook covered in rushed, indecipherable handwriting.
“can you tell?”
by all means at his words, you squint, trying to decrypt the meaning behind his ideas formed in scribbles. “not really?” your voice projects with uncertainty.
yoongi cracks into a short, breathy laugh. “even after so many years with me.” he drags out a croaky yet deep ‘hm’ before confessing in a mutter, “it’s about you—listen, i know it doesn’t look like it, but… uh, fuck.”
you couldn’t help but to chuckle at him stressing. “yeah, okay.” you roll your eyes playfully, “sure it is.”
at your reply, yoongi wordlessly clicks through a few prompts on his computer. “and this.”
by rocking forward from where you stand, you instantly recognise the meaning behind the folders shown on the monitor. there’s four folders named after you—in your initials.
“they’re all for the album i’m working on.”
you turn to face yoongi blankly, faces now close from your slouch. “what if i told you i had a boyfriend?” you were meant to say boldly, however yoongi’s timeless pink lips take you aback.
“you wouldn’t have come out if you did.”
the confidence in his voice makes you freeze momentarily. the time he’s spent with you is definitely not a delusion. it’s no surprise he knows you well. “true.” you forfeit.
“so…” yoongi trails off huskily. “is it too late for us to start over again?”
did you hear correctly?
your heart comes to a brake; one with an aggressive skid. “are you being serious?” you ask breathily.
he nods once. “damn serious.”
you push yourself back a little, knees still bent. “i… didn’t think a day like this would come.”
“you have an unforgettable face and voice.” yoongi exhales, “i really tried.”
“thank you for not trying hard enough.” stifling your chuckle and retaining your helpless smile, you reach out to tenderly clasp his shoulders. “i think i would’ve gone crazy if you did.”
yoongi elicits laughter. “crazier than when you’re hungry?”
you attempt to shake his shoulders. “i really considered becoming your fan to justify my liking towards you.”
“even if every song of mine was based on you?” he genuinely asks. “you wouldn’t last a day being in the audience.”
“come on,” you roll your eyes.
“so stay as my girlfriend.” yoongi confesses. “i’ll treat you right—better, this time.”
you couldn’t deny the anxiety pooling in your stomach at his suggestion. after all, he’s a superstar—most fitted to be up high, sparkling like the twinkling stars in the night.
and what are you?
how will you shine beside him?
won’t you just drag him down?
no.
that’s not true.
you’re you—you’re sure you shine in your own way.
that’s the reason behind why everyone exists today.
you let a smile consume your lips as you nod. “i’ll trust you.” you muse, “like how i did long ago.”
yoongi ascends from his seat and stands on his feet, causing you to stumble back instinctively. “except this time i won’t disappoint you.” he watches you turn silent at his promise. “i have more than enough time to love you now.”
shaking your head, your smile widens. “you’re sounding a lot like someone who’s been an idol for over ten years.”
yoongi tightens his lips as he shrugs his shoulders like he normally does. “well, that’s the truth.” he answers huskily. “i’m growing old.”
“we are growing old.”
“hopefully together.”
you grimace jokingly. “you’ve gotten awfully sweeter.”
“it’s about time i try some romance.” yoongi tilts his head to the side invitingly before spreading open his arms for you to clearly jump into. it fuels a wave of nostalgia to flood into your mind.
you cross your arms teasingly, dismissing him for a moment. “in a company full of beautiful people dancing and singing everywhere they go, there’s no way you had zero interest after me.”
“just get in here.” he flicks his head towards himself and his arms.
raising one brow, you stare at him defeatedly. “you have a lot of storytelling to do.”
“and you talk too much,” yoongi says bluntly, however it’s just his way of speech. “you should know how impatient i am.”
“yeah, yeah.”
at that, yoongi loops his arms around you. with the force of his arms, causing you to subtly thud against his chest. an arm of his snakes behind your head, allowing his hand to rest against the softness of your uncombed bed hair.
taken aback, half of your face buries comfortably into the side of his neck and his left shoulder.
he still feels the same.
he still smells the same.
“thank you.” he mutters softly into your ear, holding you tightly against himself to refrain you from flipping and turning to observe his expression. “i had no hope for today, but—” he inhales sharply. “—never mind.”
you manage to leave a distance between yourself and yoongi to peer up at his face. “hey,” you whisper cautiously when you see the seriousness written over his façade. he blinks slowly, lips shut and quiet. “it’s not like we ended terribly.” extending your hand, you cup his heated cheek.
perhaps yoongi is guilty, he keeps himself isolated from the idea of elucidating.
“superstar, i’m honoured to see you look so unsure of me.”
he finally breaks into a croaky scoff. “don’t call me that.”
you quickly swoop forward to steal a kiss from his lips, immediately feeling red upon tearing away. “i’m just stating a fact.”
“i’ll be good to you.” he promises the moment you drift from his lips.
jungkook is shameless, especially when it comes to his lips. although you only want your lipstick to stain his lips, you find someone else’s; it’s a shame, because your shade would look prettier on him.
pairing : player!jungkook x art student!f-reader.
au(s) : nevertheless!au.
genres : mainly fluff, slight angst.
content : jungkook doesn’t date, but he still loves.
word count : 3,4k.
“did you do anything yesterday?” you ask as you observe jungkook get ready. at his usual delay, your gaze rolls flat onto the ground in disappointment, escaping the sight of jungkook fixing his hair in your mirror.
the couple of calls you made to him last night after gruelling moments of hesitation were all missed. you know he isn’t obliged to answer you, but for someone who’s been sleeping over at yours for countless nights, you anticipated a little more—just a little more attention.
“what was that?” jungkook then asks back absentmindedly.
“oh,” your gaze bounces up, knowing he’ll stare back once you reply. “were you busy yesterday?”
a lopsided smile flourishing on his lips, he turns his head to meet your expectant gaze. “i was at another gathering,” he answers. “you might know them, actually.”
“really?” a forced grin inevitably latches onto your features at his obliviousness. he talks as if he’ll invite you the next time he’s out, but the truth is that he won’t—more so if you know the people he’s planning to spend time with.
the moment jungkook fixes the last of his stray hairs, he retreats from his own reflection to position himself next to you on the side of your bed. “were you waiting for me?” he whispers teasingly into your reddened ear.
“no,” you interject in embarrassment. “i was just—”
a knowing chuckle spills past his lips. “sorry,” he murmurs sweetly. “my phone was on silent.” you watch his doe eyes evaluate; in his mind, he’s calculating what would throw you out of these phases of disappointment.
so he knew you called.
you shake your head profusely in dismissal. “don’t worry about it.”
at your reassurance, jungkook’s attention diminishes from the conversation. instead, he moves a hand close to your face, a finger delicately gliding across the lower lip before pressing down on it, causing your lips to separate and subtly spread apart.
“hey,” your voice squeezes out muffled.
“can i find you after class today?”
again, you’re found nodding at his suggestion. jungkook smiles at that, pleased with your compliance. he proves it to you by swiftly leaning forward, stopping mid-way just to catch you breathless before drawing close enough to capture your lips for a taste.
jungkook backs away with the sound of a subdued smooch, and you immediately sling yourself back and gasp dramatically in utter surprise. your eyes widen at jungkook who’s now grinning triumphantly.
at times where you should be fighting for extremities, he never fails to render you silent. he works harmoniously with the prickly sensation that only emerges into prominence when he’s around.
“i’ll see you later.” he whispers softly.
your head is peeking out and peering out to the distance while on your tiptoes expectantly. a sigh eventually tumbles out of your lips when another minute of nothing passes.
what are you waiting for?
you drop your head back, allowing the tide of disappointment to consume you as whole again. class ended an hour ago, and for jungkook, his class should’ve ended at a similar time to yours.
you peer up, exhaling freely at the galaxy looming over you. it’s the brightest company there is, yet here you are, waiting for someone who only offers fractured promises.
you don’t even know why you’ve devoted yourself to such shallow loving—he’s barely given you any signs of reciprocation, and deep inside, you know that—you’ve set yourself for detonation.
you begin to walk, breaking free from these hollow expectations embedded into your head. you leave any thought knotted with the remnants of jungkook in the air.
upon passing familiar buildings nearby, you coincidentally find someone who looks exactly like jungkook standing on top of a flight of stairs, melded majestically in flickering light. even with his back turned, the resemblance is uncanny.
stealing a glance through your narrowed lenses, you struggle to see the rest of his façade after observing for minutes. the anonymous barely moved since. he isn’t alone, because you can see another pair of legs through the gap of his own. your perspective from the lower ground is helpful in that sense.
then slight movement—you watch the mysterious guy randomly lean forward, naturally revealing more of the other person with him at this hour.
it’s a girl—a girl in your practical class.
now the mystery unveils; a fervent sensation pinches parts of your heart when you notice that the guy is in fact jungkook.
without giving you a second to breathe, he inches closer to plant a chaste kiss onto her lips. you’re unconsciously counting the seconds of their intimacy like a psychopath even with the aggravating heated jabs in your chest.
“jungkook?” she questioned, insolence apparent in her voice. “he doesn’t date.”
“he’s hot, but what’s the point when all he does is fuck around?”
you were warned.
you were seriously warned.
it’s you who chose this twisted fate for yourself.
with the lamp on, you lay still in bed, gazing at the dimmed ceiling. the stuffy feeling in your chest simmered, but now you’re dealing with a bundle of sickening anxiety that claimed its spot in the depths of your stomach.
the sigh you release aligns perfectly with the noise of your doorbell chiming. mainly startled, you spring up, creasing the sheets beneath as you stumble towards the monitor connected to the camera on your door.
as if god is entertained by the thought of suffering from your self-inflicted consequences, your breath hitches and your tongue tangles at jungkook’s spontaneous advent.
oh god.
through the fuzzy quality of the monitor, you feast your eyes on the rare moments of him waiting for you; for you to open up and embrace the danger he emanates like the scent of his fresh cologne.
that ultimately provokes you to push open the door. your frustration towards your own self is immeasurable, but there’s no cure for lovesickness. deadpanning, you raise your head, feeling a draft of wind caress your face before finding jungkook’s indifferent eyes.
“you’re ridiculous.” in all sorts of ways, jeon jungkook.
however all he does is let his eyes roam, allowing him to explore the elusive details of your body. averting his gaze from your eyes, he then stares at your lips, the curves of your neck before overtly pausing at your bare collarbones.
your jaw drops ajar the moment you decipher the true meaning behind his stare; you’re in nothing but your pyjamas—a tank top and shorts.
“have you eaten?”
brows collapsing into a tenuous frown, you shake your head adamantly. “no,” you shut down. “i wasn’t hungry.”
“still,” jungkook sighs out loud as he places his palm against your forehead, checking your temperature for his sake. “i don’t want to think about you getting sick again—”
you immediately grab ahold of his wrist, tearing his hand away from you. “come in,” you mutter. “i want to talk to you.”
jungkook steps in, automatically stopping in front of your closed door instead of entering further. “i’m listening,” he says knowingly. “tell me anything.”
you inhale, voluntarily stopping yourself from breathing at his sweet offer. “why do you make me wait?” you confess. “am i that easy?”
jungkook raises an aggressive brow, offended by your accusation. “it’s not that.”
“i saw you on the way home.” you cut in determinedly. “i didn’t mean to, but i saw you with someone else.”
“why does that matter?”
of course.
this is the type of person jungkook is.
“is it the kiss you’re worried about?” jungkook takes a step forward deliberately, naturally causing you to trip backward until your shoulders are harshly pressed against the wall, trapped under his piercing gaze.
shooting a pained glare at him, you scoff inwardly. “so you do know.”
jungkook looks away as he sighs frustratedly. “it wasn’t anything special.”
“that makes you even worse.”
“if it didn’t mean anything to me, you should be caring less about it.”
jerk.
you scoff in a series as you brush your hair back angrily. “that’s clearly not the point here.”
“then what is?”
he’s right.
what is the point of arguing when you’re the reason behind this heartbreak?
you knew this.
you had this coming.
“forget it.” you exasperate bitterly, “what can i say as someone who isn’t important to you either?”
“that’s not it.”
“then who am i to you?”
“someone different to me.” he answers vaguely. “you’re the only person i enjoy being with.”
his words take you aback, inducing heat to reside in your body again in unease; it melts down your next words lingering on the tip of your tongue.
“how about you?” jungkook asks deeply. “how do you feel about me?”
“i don’t know how to feel about—”
“should we let it go then?” his hand reaches out to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing your skin in tender strokes. “one word from you, and i’ll stop.”
you’re anxious; you’re frightened in case this might be the last.
jungkook is a paradox you can’t seem to grasp. behind your back is a world that carries his name; your mind searches for him in a cloud of cigarette smoke and a garden full of butterflies.
you’re afraid that’ll torment you; it’d kill you to think there was once a possibility to make that all into bliss.
because after all this time, no one’s ever been as magnetising as him.
fuck it.
tilting your head upward ever so slightly, you lean into plant a gentle kiss on his lips. you resign from the kiss quicker than usual; avoiding eye contact and turning your head to the side.
“are you sure?” jungkook questions.
“i’m not.”
oblivious to the silence, your gaze flickers, unsure of what to do next to relieve the tension. your blood surges, heightening the warmth in your cheek, making it known to jungkook’s fingertips.
wordlessly, his hand falls, instead it finds your jaw; he holds the end of your chin, steadily turning your head back to him.
your heart begins to race at a speed you’ve never felt; hard thumps thrash against your ribcage. there’s butterflies pedantically fluttering in your stomach, probably alarmed by the brute force of your heart.
“are you busy tomorrow?”
you simply shake your head.
“spend it with me then.”
“don’t you have class tomorrow?”
“i’ll just miss it.” jungkook draws in, shortening the space between your bodies before pulling in for a kiss harsher than yours. your eyes shut at his eager lips, arms instinctively finding its way to hook around his neck.
this is… fine—right?
before your shoulders can ram any harder against the wall, he fluidly slips his arms under your thighs, carrying you high against his chest. not only does it grant you the room to fully loop your arms around his neck, but it brings you dangerously near, offering you the option of fuelling the fiery kiss.
when he perches you on top of your own kitchen counter without giving your lips a rest, you fall back into his arms, curious to see the expression he has on for you.
jungkook tilts his head in wonder. “is this my first time seeing you with your hair tied up?” he smiles slyly, stiffening his grip around your waist.
“oh—” your hand frantically rummages for the hair tie buried in your hair. once you grab it, you slide it off in a panic, knowing it wasn’t your best job. you accidentally left it in and tossed around in your bed. “i don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“what was that for?” he cracks into an airy chuckle. “now i can’t say you look gorgeous.”
you purse your lips teasingly. “can’t you still?”
“but with your hair down—” he purposely tips into the curve of your neck to breathe against your ear, sending you continual waves of electricity. “—you’re something else.”
you smack his shoulder with a tough blow. “give me a break,” rolling your eyes sarcastically, you huff out a small pout. “i had enough of your vague words today.”
“yeah?” jungkook hums, “i’ll leave it to your imagination then.”
“very funny.”
“should we eat something?” jungkook coaxes in a whisper.
you side-eye the clock. “it’s so late, but…” you trail off. “this is the best time to eat.”
“that’s what i like to hear.”
“you did what?”
“please, don’t be so loud!” a girl hushes her friend beside her.
the ruckus lured your gaze to lift. it’s how you envisioned—just two girls procrastinating on their due work and relaying updates of each other’s lives on the weekend. you simply nod alone in understanding, gradually letting your attention pan back to your painting.
“come on!” a burst of laughter escapes the friend’s entire body. “jungkook came over to yours on saturday?”
inevitably, your whole existence comes to a complete stop at the sound of his name slipping out of someone else’s mouth. your finger buffers, causing your brush stroke to deviate elsewhere, abandoning a permanent red stain on a place you wanted uncoloured.
“shut up.” she stresses behind clenched teeth. “people are going to hear.”
you’ve seen and heard about him kissing people heartlessly, but a story about him staying over at another girl’s house is not only just breaking news, but something you weren’t mentally ready for.
“who cares!” she cackles hysterically. “it’s not like anyone here had the same amount of romance as you with him.”
“romance?” the girl groans knowingly. “as if he does any of that.” she sighs in sheer disappointment; a sound you thought you could only make regarding him. “i fucking wish.”
“we need to talk more about what the two of you did after class.”
the girl dunks her paintbrush back into a can of dirtied water. “where should we go?” she giggles enthusiastically. “my house?”
“ew,” her friend screeches. “without knowing what the fuck you two did in there?”
“shut up!”
lost in a world that now feels uncomfortably fuzzy, you suddenly jolt at a random vibration in your pocket. your phone alarms you of what feels like a new text. with a half absent mind, you take the phone out of your jeans for a dire distraction.
[jeon jungkook] 14:22.‘you’re finishing soon.’
[jeon jungkook] 14:23.
‘i’m coming to see you. let’s get lunch together?’
14:23. ‘sure.’
unlike him, he matched the time perfectly to invite you for lunch. it’s only minutes before your two-hour long recreational class ends, and all you’re taking to the future is an unerasable and disastrous story caused by a single mention of his name.
you’re pathetic.
of course, it’s from here onward, time loses its power against you. it always has, especially if it’s anything related to jungkook. though you’ve thoughtlessly accepted to be the extra company he can unconditionally ask for, you decide to remain seated in an emptying classroom, stupidly waiting for him to notice your wretched choice to rebel against him for the very first time.
this is who you’ve become—a person craving nothing but short-lived attention from someone who gives you bruises like presents.
“found you.”
there he is.
“not hungry again?”
your eyes stay grounded and your lips remain sealed in thinking. eventually, you feel a breath caress your ear, sending a frigid shiver down your spine. it wakes you up, triggering your gaze to shoot towards the beautiful yet menacing cause—jungkook.
flustered, your eyes widen in embarrassment. you totally lost your equilibrium. “i was distracted,” you mutter. “what did you say?”
“i’m complaining because you didn’t let me court you today.” jungkook replies smoothly. “did you change your mind?”
court you?
“a little.” you answer vaguely, still uncomfortable to face the truth.
“i’m a little hurt.” jungkook jests softly. “i missed you.” he casually drags out a spare seat beside you to sit on. “how about you?”
missed you?
you look fixedly at his attractive uneven grin. “more than you did.”
“really?” his eyebrows raise in contentment. “are you sure you’re not more interested in the masterpiece you’re working on than a date with me?”
a date?
with your head lowered, you sigh deeply. “let’s drop this.” you propose abruptly. “let’s drop it before i start to annoy you with my feelings.”
“is that the reason?”
“it’s the reason and the problem.” you turn back to jungkook, facing him through your seat aligned with his. “so let’s not see each other like this after today.”
he seems taken aback, speechless—almost.
“the reason and the problem is that i started to care about who you meet and kiss.” you confess. “and that shouldn’t happen between you and i.”
you knew all this time.
“because that’s a break of your rules.” your sick rules of seeing people without strings attached.
jungkook avoids your gaze by looking to the side. though not visible and barely audible, you can pick up the muted sound of his breath that’s longer than usual. you watch his eyebrow piercing twitch in contemplation as your chest starts to carry weight again. it feels heavy inside; it’s no longer a foreign feeling to you, but something so familiar.
pushing yourself out of the stool, you set off a loud screech before standing on your feet upon securing enough room. “i won’t apologise for it.” you exhale strongly, “i won’t join you today.”
“don’t forget your painting.”
“you take it if you meant what you said before.”
when you try to take a step further away from him, jungkook grabs ahold of your swaying wrist to stop you halfway. “do you mean it?”
“are you talking about the artwork?” you scoff lightly before clearing your throat awkwardly regardless. “i have to restart.”
“i meant your feelings.”
“what about it?”
“are you actually taking me seriously?”
offended, you aggressively flick your wrist away from his grip. “you’ve never been a joke to me like i was to you.”
“you’re judging me way too quickly here.”
“then can i give you time to explain?”
at the end of your sentence, he’s silent to make his hand known to you again. his fingers clamp your wrist gently, grasping it in a way that brings you to feel baffled at the unfamiliarity. he’s completely defenseless with you, to the point it’s forcing you to think you could be the person to break him if you wanted.
your breath trembles in confusion as you blink profusely at jungkook’s sealed lips. your arm solidifies under his grip.
“are you alright with someone like me?” he asks softly while caressing your wrist with the pad of his thumb.
you watch jungkook’s eyes deepen in curiosity. “i wouldn’t be here if i wasn’t.”
“really?” jungkook cracks into an enigmatic chuckle, masking his insecurities. “i want to believe you so badly.” he mutters under his breath.
“jungkook,” you pronounce.
the lingering movement in jungkook’s fingers halt at the sound of his own name gently rolling off your tongue.
“how do you feel?” you spin the bottle back to him verbally. “did you stop me because you’re afraid you might be losing one of your many girls, or did you stop me because you mean it?”
“i feel like i’d miss you.”
“to that someone you’re planning to miss, you’ve been flirting whilst kissing different girls in front of her eyes.” you mutter back. “can you get back to her when you feel apologetic about that? because she likes you so much now, she can’t handle the sight of you being your usual self anymore.”
“can i let her know that this is my first time feeling like this?”
“feeling like what?” you ask hesitantly.
“i feel like you’re going to be my last thought every night if you go like this.” he answers. “and i don’t know for how long.”
“i like you, jeon jungkook.”
“i—”
you whisper, “and i think you like me too.”
“yeah.”
turning towards his wrist, you take a step forward to close into his face. jungkook peers up to you from his seat in astonishment, however you simply reach out to press your fingertip against his bottom lip, wiping a darkened lipstick stain away in the opposite direction as an evident frown paints your softened features.
jungkook stares at your dirtied digit. “i’m sorry.”
“it’s okay.” you now reply softly in slight embarrassment. you talked with a bigger mouth than usual, which is a colour jungkook has never seen until today.
“is it?”
you shift your head to the side. “my shade would look prettier on you.”
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RION YOU ONLINE?!?! WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT EXPLICIT VERSION???? 🤯⚰️ THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR MY INNOCENT LIL MUFFIN BRAIN TO HANDLE
THE EXPLICIT VERSION OH MY GOD LYCHEE WHEN I FIRST HEARD IT I BACKTRACKED SO FAST AND I’M LIKE ???????? PARDON BABY ????? THEN SHE STARTED GIGGLING LIKE A MANIAC ;-; <3
