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faerymin · 2 months ago

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So “Just My Luck” just hit 100 notes! This is a great achievement for a new blog like mine so I wanted to thank you guys on the repost 🩷 More will be coming out soon so stay tuned 🪽

Just My Luck: Episode One

Synopsis: With the discovery of a tribe populating a remote island between Japan and South Korea, your lover and head of the broadcasting network, Kim Namjoon, temporarily demotes you from your role as a news anchor and sends you on location in favor of filming a documentary. With your already cold relationship straining further, you’re sent to film the project only with a cameraman infamous around the station for womanizing, the recently recruited Jeon Jungkook.

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Reader (ft. Kim Namjoon)

Tags: Drama & Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, From Sex to Love, Infidelity, Brief Friends With Benefits Situation, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Workplace Romance, Dubious Morality, Fluff, Guilty Pleasures, I'm Sorry Kim Namjoon, Secret Relationship, Mutual Pining, Substance Abuse, Rich RM, (Kind of) Slow Burn, Eventual Smut

Word Count: 4.7k

Author’s Note: Cross-posted on AO3 under another title "The Mist & Other Illusions".

━━━

“Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.�� Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce

━━━

IN THE FIRST HOT MONTH of the fall KBS gave an obituary to a popstar who’d been admitted to Asan Medical Center with her wrists cut in a segment on the morning news, which you watched only because you forgot to switch off the TV and must have pressed some buttons in your sleep to play that particular channel. The medical records and the anchor (who was the weather girl before you’d divorced the broadcasting system) said exhaustion but in the afternoon you spoke to Seokjin and he told you about the actor who left her for an underwear model, which is why you spoke to him in the first place, because Seokjin knew about things like that, knew about people, and to appease you he continued to tell about the news anchor, Mido Nang, becoming the frequent visitor to a surgery clinic in Hannam.

“How do you know it,” you said. You were on the long white chaise in the employee lounge, and he smoked by the open window although it was forbidden. “How do you know she got anything done?”

“I know because I know this surgeon who did her. And you want to hear something funny? Apparently she asked to get her nose cut from all sides the second time so she’d look like Shin Minah in A Love to Kill. The poor thing doesn’t understand that’s not how bones work.”

“Her performance was lackluster this morning,” you said then, swirling sugar cubes into the coffee. “She was trying to pose for the camera while pronouncing the girl dead.”

“She’s lackluster every morning. The only reason she stays the anchorwoman is because she’s screwing, I think, the president’s nephew.”

Echo of voices bounced in from the hallway, and Naeun, who was a director and wore her hair choppy and boyish, flipped a page of the copy of Cosmopolitan she’d been exhausting for the better half of an hour, her foot swinging in the air in single pendulum motion. “If HR gets another complaint about the smoke you’ll be the next one pronounced dead.”

He laughed. “What are they going to do. Fire me?”

The lounge at once became populated with insiders of another crew who were responsible for an underperforming tabloid show and seemed perpetually exhausted. They had come from location, their faces grave and cameras slung across their shoulders, and milled about the kitchenette in a terrible racket. One of them said, “I got the footage of IU, the bitch, flipping me the bird.” Somebody answered, “You think that’s good? I have a shot under Suzy’s skirt, right at the angle where you see all the cellulite.” And they all appeared at once placid and greatly weary with this particular conversation as they got their sandwiches and instant coffee and spread their banquet upon the board in the corner, a Dantesque mass of white shirts and blazers. Naeun made a point to show her back to them.

“You’re a lot of laughs this afternoon, ladies.” Seokjin threw his cigarette out the window. “I’m glad I didn’t dine out.”

“Don’t leave,” you said, draped lazily across the chaise. You’d only begun to drink your coffee.

“Can’t, I already told you. I have to see someone about a job.” Seokjin’s fingertips grazed very lightly across your arm on his way out, and before the door had closed after him someone else entered, someone you realized was the cameraman only when he’d passed you.

“Sunbae,” he said, to neither of you precisely, and continued to the coffee machine.

You noticed Naeun’s foot had stopped swinging and after a moment she retired the magazine, looking at you. She did not have to say anything. The new on-location cameraman had joined the news station that summer, after a soapy program about a ghost copulating with a diner waitress got cancelled. The management liked him for being a son to a videographer who was acclaimed overseas but everyone was sceptical due to him being only twenty-four and having completed his master’s degree earlier in the year. Naeun especially was peeved at having him dumped into her department.

He was a bewildering presence anyhow, entirely emblemed in ink and sultry, and even when he took the jewelry out of his face there were small chinks in his lip and eyebrow. The air around him had proven persistently languid, all gum-chewing naiveté and a boredom so direct that it was offensive. Bets about when he would quit had already been made in his second week on set, and Naeun Bae placed thirty thousand won on ‘until September’ then and lost, because it was already September and instead of a resignation letter there were dressing room rumors about how he’d seduced half the talk show staff. Perhaps due to the hearsay, he seemed to change more recently from simply flippant to downright and impervious.

“You’re a sunbae,” you told her.

“Don’t start with me.” She leaned closer and the bangles on her arm clattered, air cloying with the note of iris in her perfume.“Minji from archives told me the other day she suspected he snuck in there for his rendezvous. She hasn't caught him yet but an employee pass is missing.”

“You think he’s getting it on next to financial reports.”

“I think I’m getting him fired.”

Both your hands wrapped around the cup. “Do you think the editors will give you those thirty thousand won back?”

“The way I see it,” she smiled, “they’ll all be treating me to a meal.”

“You’re optimistic.”

“I’m in a good mood this week, naturally.” When you said nothing, she fixed you with a sceptical eye, as if you had blundered at picking up a thread or failed to react appropriately to some particular allusion, but you did not know what she meant even as she gave pause, a moment of extra leeway for you to continue where she’d left off. “Are you not?” she said then.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re fine,” she repeated. “We have everything well underway and you’re fine. You in particular should be ecstatic.”

“Because of what?”

“Because,” she began, and then sighed. Her bangled hand came to rest against her forehead like she was nursing an impending migraine. “Have you heard nothing from Namjoon?”

You could say nothing, because indeed you had not heard a word from Namjoon, and you suspected you should have known something that was well underway and would make you ecstatic and that others already knew. Naeun took your hand and when she looked at you, because it was very hard for Naeun not to, she failed to avoid looking superior, soft fingers bringing yours into her lap.

“Well, he’s been so busy. He’s surely planning on telling you one of these days.” Then, leaning, she said, “He has to tell you, I mean. We can’t do the segment without our star anchor. Mido Nang will be green with envy when she sees it in a few weeks, that’s a promise.”

━━━

“I’VE BEEN BUSY,” quite funnily, was what Namjoon said the following evening, while you dined at Pierre Gagnaire in Executive Tower 35F, just off the Namdaemun road. You weren’t quite so fond of the floor-sweeping, white tablecloths or the chandeliers looming overhead, but he insisted on going there and you supposed the landscape of Seoul from so far up was nice. You were wearing, you realized only then, a babydoll dress from black chiffon he had bought you last summer. “There has been an offer for one of our series to be broadcast in America but I’m sure you don’t care for the details.”

Repeatedly he ordered an entire feast, numerous plates of roasted scallops, smoked eel, and a tenderloin steak which he now cut into morosely, face sullen as he stopped a dashing waiter and ordered another bottle of wine. Dessert, too, was to be brought out soon, but you had already stopped eating at the second course. “I don’t feel so good,” you said. “I can’t drink any more wine.”

“Then don’t drink it.”

“I mean,” you leaned over the table, “I don’t feel so good and I want you to take me home. I’m too unwell for dessert.”

“You have a delicate palette,” he said, and it did not seem like a compliment. “Stay put a bit longer. Chaulkin, the American, has a reservation here at eight. I have to speak to him. Then we’ll see.”

“Speak about what.”

“The series, Y/N. I just told you about it.”

“Why do you have to speak about it now.”

He lowered the silverware. “Stop that.”

“Sorry,” you told him after a while, and stabbed the sea urchin floating in your consommé. “I didn’t mean it. I’m tired.”

“You always say things you apparently don’t mean.” Namjoon retired his fork and knife entirely in pursuit of the wine glass. “When I’ve spoken to Chaulkin we’ll go. We’ll go home and spend time alone. I’ll make you some tea. Will that make you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Then please try to stay put until we’re done. I have enough problems as is.”

Conversations with Namjoon, as it were, often bore an illusion of a problem having been solved. There was nothing else to say now and you reposed on the chair, continuing to pick on the food. You desperately wanted to order water but felt that doing so now would seem frivolous.

He noticed and then he said, “When the American comes over, please don’t look so hostile.”

You left the Haute French restaurant at quarter to ten, after finishing the bottle the American Chaulkin had ordered, and at the end of nearly two hours plump with conversation it remained unclear whether they would be picking up the series; there was a dreadful altercation about a translation issue, talk about censoring a scene in which a character gets assassinated. “Too much blood,” he had said in clumsy Korean. “This is, how do you say, a purple-rated channel, and that is leaning towards a Tarantino film. And you.” He turned to you. “You said you’re an actress. You act in this show?”

“A news anchor,” you told him for the second time.

“Shame. You should be an actress,” he said for the third.

Namjoon was quiet then and he was quiet in the car.

When you arrived at his house in the Cheongdam area, Gangnam, he did not make you tea. Instead he sat on one of the lounges in his living room, all of which were dressed in cowhide and made an ellipse around the fireplace, and stared up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and you knew the vein in his temple was pulsing. “Listen,” he said. “Come here.”

You did come, sitting beside him.

“I mean closer.” He still did not look at you when he pulled you by the waist, until you were cradled against his hip. He sighed and opened his eyes. “Listen. I love you.”

“I love you too,” you whispered.

“Right.”

His hand settled on the back of your head to pull you closer, but he did not kiss you until you kissed him.

“I really love you,” you breathed against his lips.

“I know you do.” He led your hand to his belt. “Take it out.”

“Namjoon,” you said.

“What?” He was preoccupied with kissing your neck, and when you weren’t fast enough he pulled on the thick leather strap until it popped off the buckle.

“Nothing.” Your hand dawdled reaching into his underwear. His skin was hot, almost scorching. “I love you.”

Later, while you lay across his bed, studying the books trapped inside his vitrine which had been organized in the same way since you’d known him (English ones in alphabet, Korean by width), you asked him about the well underway project everyone knew about aside from you.

“I was under the impression that it involved me directly.”

“Nobody told you about it. I’m certain I delegated someone to tell you.”

“Tell me what.”

“There’s this uncharted island between Jeju and Fukue. Staff from some cargo ship noticed people. Turns out it’s populated by a tribe, all Korean-speaking.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You’re going.” He rested against the headboard, naked, and put down his cigarette to chase a pain pill with wine. “Next Monday. You’re going with someone from the camera crew alone, the tribe chief wouldn’t allow it otherwise.”

“Why not some on-site reporter?”

“Because,” he said. “The footage needs a star.”

━━━

“LET’S GO TO ITAEWON TONIGHT,” Seokjin said when he picked you up in his Corvette the next morning. You could see through his sunglasses that he was eyeing the spotty discoloration on the back of your neck, but it was too hot to let your hair down and hide the marks. He would know they existed anyway.

“Why?”

“To grab drinks, listen to music, I don’t know, have fun. Seems like something you would need.”

“You think I don’t have fun.”

His hand wandered out of the car in greeting, then draped across the door. The roof had been brought down and wind was mussing his hair. “You’re cranky. We’ll fix that.”

“Do you think he knows?”

There was a long silence. “It happened a long time ago.”

“Maybe he knew for a long time.”

“We’re going to Itaewon,” he decided.

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Yes you do.”

━━━

FOUR DAYS BEFORE DEPARTURE, the cameraman chosen to accompany you ended in a small traffic accident which dislocated his shoulder. He had been a bulky man with a bent nose, your senior by a decade, and had years of experience on the scene. Seldom you’d spoken to him in the genesis of the station and remembered liking him. Somebody told you he’d been shot at before while filming. “Look,” Naeun said, tapping a mechanical pen against her desk in a deliberate, mind-numbing rhythm. There was a fleeting impression she was looking at you as she studied her hair in the wall-length mirror. “We need someone who can protect you.”

Her office occupied the highest floor in the building and was three doors away from Namjoon’s, on the corner which looked at the Jeongdong park. There were no curtains, abstract brush-stroke artwork occupied the indigo walls, and incense permanently burned in the enamel censer upon her desk.

“Don’t tell me that.”

She shrugged. “It’s true. You should know how this goes, you used to be a reporter.”

“And then I became an anchor, thinking I wouldn’t get demoted out of nowhere.”

“You’re not demoted.” She focused on you. “Listen honey, you’re not seeing this the correct way. This is a good thing for your career, this is a story nobody in the nation got a hold of yet. When the ratings skyrocket, it’ll be your face everyone remembers, and it’s nice having a documentary under your belt anyway. We’ll twist a spiel about how you’d chosen to do this yourself. Being humane is the chic thing to do right now.”

You sighed. “Just tell me who’s going with me instead.”

Naeun opened a drawer and gave you a file. Black and white headshot paperclipped to the carton. Jeon Jungkook.

“You’re serious.”

“About that. Someone from technical forgot to return their pass.”

“Who are you putting on air instead of me?” you snapped.

“Just someone.” When Naeun spoke again, her voice was flat and preoccupied. “We’re still seeing about it.”

You left her office and tried to see Namjoon, but his secretary told you he was having lunch with the American and head of the programming department and you left three messages on his machine, none of which he returned. That afternoon the bank called about your overdrawn account, your stockings ripped while filming the evening news, and once you left the dressing room you encountered Jungkook smoking at the back of the building with an apprentice journalist on his arm.

“Good night, sunbae,” he said, unconcerned with hiding the sneer in his voice. The girl untangled from him and bowed but you refused to look at her, in fact you refused to look directly at either of them and vaguely nodded, pulling hair over your neck. While you walked off there was a sigh, a relieved chuckle, the wet, wicked sound of a kiss.

━━━

IN A DISPLAY of what Seokjin had told you was a “self-destructive personality” streak and reason enough to “consider seeing a shrink,” in the days leading up to departure you began harboring great regard for the cameraman who’d help with the perilous expedition. Mechanics of him interested you, why the snark on his face, why join this broadcasting house in particular. There was no sleep, or hardly any at all, a continuous hovering over the coffee table, the scratch of pen as you wrote down, in order, everything you could remember he’d said or done. On Friday Seokjin copied his employee file and brought it to you, which he’d easily done not because he was the Chief Marketing Officer but because everyone knew he was Namjoon’s confidant. Just that morning there was a column about them in the tabloids, a photograph from a party of which you’d refused the invitation, with a starlet whose name you didn’t recognize.

“There’s some principle in here I’m not grasping.” He sat on your sofa, rolling a cigarette. “I’d really like to understand the inner workings of your mind.”

Papers were spread across the table, over the floor, all gridded scraps from notebooks, half-written pages that revealed nothing much in conclusion. “There’s nothing to understand. We’re going together. I want to know.”

He tapped the cigarette butt against the table, lit it, and watched you search through the file. After a time he said, “You never asked how the party went last night.”

“How did it go?”

“We went to my place afterwards.”

He left half an hour later when his phone rang, and he spoke to the person on the line all the while he put on his jacket and shoes. There was a tousle of hair, a promise he would call you later. The door banged. Silence fell upon your apartment again.

File belonging to ‘Jeon, Jungkook’ listed his place of residency as Nowon, the neighborhood on the outskirts of Seoul, nearly bordering Gyeonggi. He was born on the first of September, 1997. His social security number and financial information were scratched out with a blue pen. Korean by birth, but his education history suggested he’d lived in Australia, spent several years in Japan, and previous work experience was notched with helping his father on various documentaries, the last of which explored a jungle on the west coast of Tahiti and won numerous awards. When you searched his father’s name on the internet you found he was rather well-situated.

There were notes from HR about suspicions of “unprofessional conduct” in the workplace but no definite proof, and aside from those notes he appeared entirely clean, even competent. You copied his phone number and in the afternoon you called him.

“When we board that boat on Monday,” you told him. “I don’t want to see you being late.”

There was a smile in his voice. “I don’t know if you know this, sunbae, but you’re calling me on my day off.”

“I’m not your boss. I don’t have to call during working hours.”

“Then why are you calling me at all.”

“Because this is an important story,” you said. “Because you’re a novice.”

“I didn’t even know a celebrity had me on her phone, my heart is pounding with excitement. Who gave you my number. Naeun-sunbae?”

You paused. “Someone in HR the other day.”

“This is too fun.” His voice had a particular condescending quality that never really waned. “Am I allowed to save your number as well. Will you respond if I text you.”

You said nothing.

“It will be all right if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve filmed documentaries, I know how to make it look good.”

“All right is not good enough, this has to be great.”

He laughed and you could hear him do something, perhaps unload a car. “You’re not a fan of me, sunbae. But I’m a fan of yours. Don’t lose sleep over it.”

After the call ended you stared for a long time at the list you’d compiled, of various names which had claimed an affair with the cameraman. In the administrative department were three names, five in marketing, and in programming there were twelve. You did not know what the name of that apprentice journalist was.

━━━

WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG on Sunday, it was four o’clock in the morning, before dawn, and you untangled the cord in darkness. The evening had been hot and your skin was wet beneath the blanket, a dreamy lethargy you’d imagine of a snake poison permeating your muscles. In those days you did not sleep in your bed but on the leatherbound, glossed couch which made a terrible creak with every dip of pressure. The dreams which played when you slept there were terrors of Mido Nang and KBS, but you continued to doze off on the couch, in a convoluted pretence of an accident for no one but yourself. The ritual eventually began to seem penitent.

No sound came from those cords until there was a long, desperate draw on a cigarette. “You may be the only person in Seoul who continues to keep a landline,” the voice said, draggy, and then came a quiet, rustling sound of moving clothes. There was only one telephone in Namjoon’s home and it was in his office on the second floor, in the room with a window that overlooked his garden, which was the only place he didn’t allow visitors to roam.

“Besides you,” you said.

“Besides me,” he repeated. “People who do business have it. You have no need for it other than the fact you’re used to it. You keep it because you have trouble letting go.”

You lay very still on your back, brushing off a lock of hair that had stuck to your forehead. “Why aren’t you sleeping.”

He sighed. You could imagine him hunched over the grand mahogany desk. “I’m depressed.”

“What for.”

“I don’t know,” he said, then silence.

You didn’t want to rush him.

“This station would be shit if I hadn’t brought you on,” he said after a while. “You know that. Everything would be shit.” You could hear him take off his glasses, and when he spoke next it was with a careful, sensible voice of declaring condolences. “Listen, Y/N. I’m not good to you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Maybe it was a mistake to mix business and feelings.”

You had always imagined that hearing him say this would hurt more than it did. “People do it all the time.”

“They do. People do all sorts of things. A little number of them are right.”

“You want me to resign,” you concluded.

“God, no,” he sighed again, “but I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did.”

Silence. Something awful was happening.

“Maybe we could try,” you said.

“Maybe we could.”

For a long time both of you thought of what to say next.

Namjoon took the coward’s way out. “Listen. Look pretty for the party today.”

Before you could get another word in, the call ended, and you stared at the telephone pensively for several minutes before you pulled the cord loose from the jack and turned around. No sleep came for you that morning, no matter how much you goaded the punishment of dreaming about Mido Nang replacing you on national television.

━━━

THAT AFTERNOON, fifteen hours before departure, the starlet you had seen in the tabloid was oiling her legs across the pool. Namjoon had thrown a party in honor of the brewing documentary and populated it with people you didn’t much like; now he spoke to an executive from Mnet two feet away from the chair she lounged on, but he didn’t seem capable of seeing her, as if she were spectral.

Her name was Binna and her last name used to be Lim, Naeun had told you so, and she was experiencing a crisis after a divorce with a B-rated movie producer which, she said, you could see in how her thighs had become rough. Now her agent begged for jobs to be given to her “as a favor to Donggeun.”

“That’s tragic,” you said, and meant it, but Naeun derived the sort of enjoyment from your words that made the lines around her mouth crease. Her eyes were not on you but on the girl’s legs. She was putting down the bottle of oil and turning to an actor’s assistant who’d been trying to get her attention for the past several minutes.

“When I see how dry her calves are, I feel almost… frightened.”

About the party there were crowded tables and a band and a thousand white napkins folded into doves, as if the courtyard had been dressed for a wedding. Nobody milling around registered to you as anything other than a foreigner, a hussy or a gangster, and there was a circle of people who’d gathered on the long cantilever deck and danced what seemed to be the tarantella. Someone, a girl, had stumbled and fell into the pool, and two or three people jumped after her, their costumes soaked as they dove out of the water and began to play Marco Polo. The ruckus made Namjoon’s forehead crease and he murmured something to the executive before they disappeared inside.

The crowd and the noise had made you queasy, and for a long time you listened to Naeun report on who was coming and going and pretended to study the small letters on the card, the digest of the upcoming documentary where “the star anchor Y/N” would uncover the traditions of a previously unknown tribe. This woman written about on the card seemed to you someone other than yourself, a grinning television representative you might see if you switched on any channel other than the one you acted for. You wondered if Mido Nang would be sent to a deserted island with only one cameraman.

“Your first documentary,” someone said behind you, and when you turned you saw that it was Min Yoongi. “Looking good, baby. It’s going to look great. Superb.”

Seokjin stood beside him and flicked the gold lighter closed, smiling as Yoongi kissed you on both cheeks like a European.

“How’s Namjoon?”

“Namjoon’s around,” you told him, but Min Yoongi was staring at the very young girl who’d fallen into the pool.

His head canted to get a better look. “I’d like to get into that,” he said contemplatively to Seokjin.

“I wouldn’t call it an impossible mission.”

“Not much competition tonight, mostly sissies. Foreigners.”

“Maybe she’d go for a sissy.”

“Maybe I show her what a good time looks like.”

“Riddle of the week, Min.” Naeun showed her polished teeth and leaned over the table. “Whose ex-wife has been spotted whoring herself out at this very party?”

“Let me guess.” He searched the courtyard until he spotted Binna Lim kissing the actor’s assistant and looked wayward at Seokjin, allowing him to light his cigarette. “Your friend from the tabloids?”

“Friend?” Naeun was scoffing now. “Did you enjoy fucking her?”

He smiled. “Not particularly.”

Min Yoongi was staring at the girl again. He absently patted your arm. “How’s it going, baby? How’s Namjoon?”

At the table on the terrace where Naeun and you sat for dinner, aside from Seokjin and Yoongi, there were a Japanese actor, the director of his latest film, and two talk show hosts who lived in the skyscrapers across from Samsung Town. You sat next to the director, who spoke no Korean, and during dinner Seokjin and the Japanese actor disappeared into the house. You could see the white specks under their noses, the thin red fissure of vessels on the cornea, but this was not mentioned on the terrace. The director and two talk show starlets were discussing the dehumanizing aspect of film succumbing to westernism, in Japanese. When the actor got up to dance with a girl in a red halter dress, you excused yourself to the bathroom, only to find once you stood before the mirror that your eyes were wet, and the mascara was beginning to blotch beneath them. Why were you crying, you wondered. You couldn’t think of an answer.

#thanks for the interest!#100 notes wowie #ily all

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faerymin · 2 months ago

Text

Just My Luck: Episode One

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Reader (ft. Kim Namjoon)

Word Count: 4.7k

Author’s Note: Cross-posted on AO3.

━━━

“Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.” Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce

━━━

“How do you know it,” you said. You were on the long white chaise in the employee lounge, and he smoked by the open window although it was forbidden. “How do you know she got anything done?”

“Her performance was lackluster this morning,” you said then, swirling sugar cubes into the coffee. “She was trying to pose for the camera while pronouncing the girl dead.”

“She’s lackluster every morning. The only reason she stays the anchorwoman is because she’s screwing, I think, the president’s nephew.”

He laughed. “What are they going to do. Fire me?”

“You’re a lot of laughs this afternoon, ladies.” Seokjin threw his cigarette out the window. “I’m glad I didn’t dine out.”

“Don’t leave,” you said, draped lazily across the chaise. You’d only begun to drink your coffee.

“Sunbae,” he said, to neither of you precisely, and continued to the coffee machine.

“You’re a sunbae,” you told her.

“You think he’s getting it on next to financial reports.”

“I think I’m getting him fired.”

Both your hands wrapped around the cup. “Do you think the editors will give you those thirty thousand won back?”

“The way I see it,” she smiled, “they’ll all be treating me to a meal.”

“You’re optimistic.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re fine,” she repeated. “We have everything well underway and you’re fine. You in particular should be ecstatic.”

“Because of what?”

“Because,” she began, and then sighed. Her bangled hand came to rest against her forehead like she was nursing an impending migraine. “Have you heard nothing from Namjoon?”

━━━

“Then don’t drink it.”

“I mean,” you leaned over the table, “I don’t feel so good and I want you to take me home. I’m too unwell for dessert.”

“Speak about what.”

“The series, Y/N. I just told you about it.”

“Why do you have to speak about it now.”

He lowered the silverware. “Stop that.”

“Sorry,” you told him after a while, and stabbed the sea urchin floating in your consommé. “I didn’t mean it. I’m tired.”

“Yes.”

“Then please try to stay put until we’re done. I have enough problems as is.”

He noticed and then he said, “When the American comes over, please don’t look so hostile.”

“A news anchor,” you told him for the second time.

“Shame. You should be an actress,” he said for the third.

Namjoon was quiet then and he was quiet in the car.

You did come, sitting beside him.

“I mean closer.” He still did not look at you when he pulled you by the waist, until you were cradled against his hip. He sighed and opened his eyes. “Listen. I love you.”

“I love you too,” you whispered.

“Right.”

His hand settled on the back of your head to pull you closer, but he did not kiss you until you kissed him.

“I really love you,” you breathed against his lips.

“I know you do.” He led your hand to his belt. “Take it out.”

“Namjoon,” you said.

“What?” He was preoccupied with kissing your neck, and when you weren’t fast enough he pulled on the thick leather strap until it popped off the buckle.

“Nothing.” Your hand dawdled reaching into his underwear. His skin was hot, almost scorching. “I love you.”

“I was under the impression that it involved me directly.”

“Nobody told you about it. I’m certain I delegated someone to tell you.”

“Tell me what.”

“There’s this uncharted island between Jeju and Fukue. Staff from some cargo ship noticed people. Turns out it’s populated by a tribe, all Korean-speaking.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Why not some on-site reporter?”

“Because,” he said. “The footage needs a star.”

━━━

“Why?”

“To grab drinks, listen to music, I don’t know, have fun. Seems like something you would need.”

“You think I don’t have fun.”

His hand wandered out of the car in greeting, then draped across the door. The roof had been brought down and wind was mussing his hair. “You’re cranky. We’ll fix that.”

“Do you think he knows?”

There was a long silence. “It happened a long time ago.”

“Maybe he knew for a long time.”

“We’re going to Itaewon,” he decided.

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Yes you do.”

━━━

“Don’t tell me that.”

She shrugged. “It’s true. You should know how this goes, you used to be a reporter.”

“And then I became an anchor, thinking I wouldn’t get demoted out of nowhere.”

You sighed. “Just tell me who’s going with me instead.”

Naeun opened a drawer and gave you a file. Black and white headshot paperclipped to the carton. Jeon Jungkook.

“You’re serious.”

“About that. Someone from technical forgot to return their pass.”

“Who are you putting on air instead of me?” you snapped.

“Just someone.” When Naeun spoke again, her voice was flat and preoccupied. “We’re still seeing about it.”

━━━

“There’s some principle in here I’m not grasping.” He sat on your sofa, rolling a cigarette. “I’d really like to understand the inner workings of your mind.”

He tapped the cigarette butt against the table, lit it, and watched you search through the file. After a time he said, “You never asked how the party went last night.”

“How did it go?”

“We went to my place afterwards.”

“When we board that boat on Monday,” you told him. “I don’t want to see you being late.”

There was a smile in his voice. “I don’t know if you know this, sunbae, but you’re calling me on my day off.”

“I’m not your boss. I don’t have to call during working hours.”

“Then why are you calling me at all.”

“Because this is an important story,” you said. “Because you’re a novice.”

“I didn’t even know a celebrity had me on her phone, my heart is pounding with excitement. Who gave you my number. Naeun-sunbae?”

You paused. “Someone in HR the other day.”

“This is too fun.” His voice had a particular condescending quality that never really waned. “Am I allowed to save your number as well. Will you respond if I text you.”

You said nothing.

“It will be all right if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve filmed documentaries, I know how to make it look good.”

“All right is not good enough, this has to be great.”

He laughed and you could hear him do something, perhaps unload a car. “You’re not a fan of me, sunbae. But I’m a fan of yours. Don’t lose sleep over it.”

━━━

“Besides you,” you said.

“Besides me,” he repeated. “People who do business have it. You have no need for it other than the fact you’re used to it. You keep it because you have trouble letting go.”

You lay very still on your back, brushing off a lock of hair that had stuck to your forehead. “Why aren’t you sleeping.”

He sighed. You could imagine him hunched over the grand mahogany desk. “I’m depressed.”

“What for.”

“I don’t know,” he said, then silence.

You didn’t want to rush him.

“Why do you say that?”

“Maybe it was a mistake to mix business and feelings.”

You had always imagined that hearing him say this would hurt more than it did. “People do it all the time.”

“They do. People do all sorts of things. A little number of them are right.”

“You want me to resign,” you concluded.

“God, no,” he sighed again, “but I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did.”

Silence. Something awful was happening.

“Maybe we could try,” you said.

“Maybe we could.”

For a long time both of you thought of what to say next.

Namjoon took the coward’s way out. “Listen. Look pretty for the party today.”

━━━

“When I see how dry her calves are, I feel almost… frightened.”

“Your first documentary,” someone said behind you, and when you turned you saw that it was Min Yoongi. “Looking good, baby. It’s going to look great. Superb.”

Seokjin stood beside him and flicked the gold lighter closed, smiling as Yoongi kissed you on both cheeks like a European.

“How’s Namjoon?”

“Namjoon’s around,” you told him, but Min Yoongi was staring at the very young girl who’d fallen into the pool.

His head canted to get a better look. “I’d like to get into that,” he said contemplatively to Seokjin.

“I wouldn’t call it an impossible mission.”

“Not much competition tonight, mostly sissies. Foreigners.”

“Maybe she’d go for a sissy.”

“Maybe I show her what a good time looks like.”

“Riddle of the week, Min.” Naeun showed her polished teeth and leaned over the table. “Whose ex-wife has been spotted whoring herself out at this very party?”

“Friend?” Naeun was scoffing now. “Did you enjoy fucking her?”

He smiled. “Not particularly.”

Min Yoongi was staring at the girl again. He absently patted your arm. “How’s it going, baby? How’s Namjoon?”

#bts #bts fanfic #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts fic #bts jungkook #jungkook #jeon jungkook #jungkook x you #jungkook x reader #jungkook x y/n #just my luck (bts)#masterlist: fic

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faerymin · 2 months ago

Text

Sense and Sensibility: Prologue

Synopsis: "Stepfather you had known from the stories, the college friend who’d invited you there in another city: a strained scenario no matter which way you’d want to twist it." Chronicles of the scorching summer of 2006, when you find yourself adrift in Santa Barbara, away from the bleak prairies of Oregon and left to the mercies of your college friend's enigmatic stepfather.

Pairing: Kim Seokjin x Reader (ft. Kim Taehyung)

Tags: Angst and Feels, Drama & Romance, Sexual Tension, Explicit Sexual Content, Age Difference, DILF Kim Seokjin, Mutual Pining, Jin is a Menace, Cheating, Extramarital Affairs, S&M, Light BDSM, Alternate Universe - College/University, Kim Seokjin Has a Big Dick, Tragic Past, Daddy Kink, Size Kink, Moral Dilemmas, (Eventual) Shameless Smut, Power Imbalance

Word Count: 3.5k

Author’s Note: Previously posted on my now deactivated account @bambitae, and cross-posted on AO3.

━━━

“Well then.” The curt words, the bored sigh that came beforehand, the attitude.

You’d never heard someone use “well then” to say goodbye before. That’s what he’d told you on the day you met him, as he placed the one dented suitcase you’d brought before Maya’s bedroom door; a long, loud step back, bare foot slapping against the terracotta parquet. Then he disappeared down the high-ceiling hall, behind a potted palm, lustrous floor spidery with his own lanky, distorted shadow.

It is the first thing you remember about him, and you can still hear it today, “well then,” just the thought of it transporting you back to Santa Barbara, last summer, stepping out of the train to see him before the station, tan pillars rowed with arches and a flat, clay roof, colossal palm trees and the unclouded sky; and he, a stranger, with his billowy blue shirt, wide-open collar, opaque blazer limp on his arm, skin everywhere. Suddenly he’s shaking your hand, taking your suitcase, telling you Maya is staying a few days longer in Los Angeles with her aunt.

It may have started right there and then: the shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, aviator sunglasses gliding down his nose as he looked at a passing salaryman, palm up for a greeting.

The occurrence was a startling and gnarly one, and most of the ride to Riviera you remember by being terribly stiff and silent, perplexed whether you looked to the cigarette hung from his mouth or the soaring hillside through the window—the vistas of white stucco walls nestled in the mountains becoming closer and more tangible the farther you climbed up the twisty roads.

Stepfather you had known from the stories, the college friend who’d invited you there in another city: a strained scenario no matter which way you’d want to twist it.

You were a bit uncomfortable, after the diatribes you’d heard, having to do with his conceit and bestial cruelty toward Maya, and you were mad at her too for being too lazy to ring you and set you to arrive a few days after. You wondered, as the breeze mussed your hair and you squirmed on the burning seat, if you would even withstand those six long weeks you had promised her.

It was impossible in the first days you didn’t scorn and fear the stepfather a little bit, even as he drifted in and out of the house like a shadow, unobtrusive, remote from it for most of the day. Images conjured by Maya’s tales came alive every time you were in the same room as him, the first of many a tableau of him at the breakfast table: robed in velour, morning paper in hand, whipping you with a stare over the rim of his spectacles as soon as you stepped over the kitchen threshold.

Everything was similar to how you’d imagined it, the hostile air and white mug from Saks he began using after smashing his favorite in an argument they had, but instead of the silvery codger in your fantasies, senile and swivel-eyed, he was a man who couldn’t have been past thirty, slight in the face and alabaster skin stretched taut over his jaw and clavicle. Only at glimpses did it catch the golden Californian tan: a bit on his cheeks and forehead, over his jutting metacarpals and lithe fingers, on one of them a pale hoop you sometimes saw when his wedding ring slipped.

Looking back at that morning, the first breakfast you ate at his house and by far the most miserable, the worries plaguing you were vague and paranoid ones, spiraling like tentacles into the abysmal nothing. You remember eyeing the coffee he’d brewed to you, too afraid to ask where they kept sugar, and feeling like you’d made a terrible mistake when the jam slipped off your toast and made an ugly, crimson splotch on the china. When he’d apologized for not having a proper breakfast ready, “I don’t eat it myself, you see,” impersonal and hidden behind the text-condensed pages of The Wall Street Journal, your reassurance came much too quick and petrified, bubbling out of your mouth through a slew of unchewed bread.

Maya had made him out to be a brute, a tetchy old man; it was wise for you to be wary. For the whole meal, you thought of the broken mug, pitying Maya for having to call such a man her father.

Your spoon kept clanking against the plate. He put his mug in the exact same spot each time. Your legs touched once before he stood up and put his mug in the sink. Before he’d left for work, he told you smoking wasn’t allowed in the house, and he said it absently, looking at his watch, one foot already out the door.

Memories of the first time being alone in the hacienda are now murky, muddled with the sludge and sloth of forthcoming events, but the awe you felt exploring remains fresh. It was hard to believe you were in California, with the wood beams for a ceiling, endless archways for doors, the lord-like coastal view from the living room window.

Without having anything better to do, you meandered for most of the day, stopping to admire every painting hung on the white walls until an old Baroque piece beside the garden archway startled you. It was a Diego Velázquez, the portrait of little prince Baltasar on a horseback, and you knew selling your kidney wouldn’t have made you nearly enough to buy it.

“It’s a fake,” he had told you one morning, later, as he watched you gape at it from the patio. “But a good one. Even the slightest detail on the clouds are identical.”

“Have you ever seen the real one up close?” you asked as you studied the details on the plump horse, the billowing military sash wrapped around the boy’s chest.

“I have.” He was stubbing a cigarette, sinking into the embroidered pillows of the velvet-upholstered sofa. “It’s displayed in Prado.”

But you had already known that.

As it happened, he’d caught you on the patio, on the same sofa, when he came home that first day, curled up with a book you had stolen from his study, a cigarette in his mouth and tie so loose it bent clumsily to the side. He was much too sluggish for your apologetic fervor to faze him. “It’s alright,” he said and sat across from you in a wicker chair, dumping his blazer over the arm. “You must be bored.”

It may have even started then, with the way he lit his cigarette: good, bared forearms on his spread knees; eyebrows rumpled and smoke curling out his mouth.

“Have you called Maria?” he said after a time, and looked at you over the eyebrow.

“No,” you were stuttering, not having expected he would talk to you, “my phone has no credit.”

He dug into his pocket and fished out a cellphone, typing away on it as he blew smoke to the side. Afternoon sun streamed directly into his face, in such a strong light most people looked washed out, but his surly, angular features lit up with the warmth of near sun-down until it was a shock to look at him. He had leaned into the shadow of hacienda’s roof before you finished admiring him, eyes squinted as he handed you the phone with Maya’s contact on it.

“I’m sure you have a few things to talk about,” he’d told you and stubbed out his cigarette, and then he told you to ask if you ever needed the phone and, if he wasn’t there, to take the landline one in the hall, and with that he went into the house, not to be seen again until dinner. Even through the haze you can recall his curt murmur as he passed the prince Baltasar, “Well then.”

Prior to the first weekend in Riviera, the pictures arranged in your mind seem disjointed and hazy, but it is on that first Sunday when they come into razor sharp focus and he morphs from a discreet, eldritch figure floating through the hallways into a creature of flesh and blood, a real person with a beating heart. You too appear as somewhat of a stranger in these memories: gauche and oddly elusive because of all the anguish of being stranded in a foreign state and the chilling stories Maya had bashed into your head for the past year. It had taken you days to look him in the eye and speak without odd, wary pauses; and now all those times you had ducked into a room at the sound of his footsteps only embarrass you, especially because you now realize, long after the fact, that your attempts to evade him were far from discreet.

Maya’s stepfather didn’t appear to be the monster she had led you to believe, and only after the six weeks together and the long time after you parted, which you spent scrutinizing and obsessing over him, did you realize he too must have been frightened and bewildered, waiting for you to make the first move with hands folded on his lap, politely as a maiden aunt. You were an intruder in his house, a strange girl who seemingly had her mouth sewn and fell into long spells of staring directly at him. You were every bit of an anomaly to him as he was to you; an alien who was all of a sudden curling up on his patio and leaving breadcrumbs on his table in the mornings; a complete disruption. And still he had made every effort to host you until Maya came, despite not wielding any responsibility towards you.

After that first morning, the refrigerator had become plump with breakfast options and a warm pastry awaited you by the bread box after his early cigarette trips to the store, and it was often he recommended books, asked if you needed to use his phone, or otherwise apologized for Maya’s absence—something even she failed to do once you managed to get a hold of her. But all this he did with such a sour face, spoke in such an enervated monotone, that you were certain he only saw a huge bother in you. It was that first Saturday when this fear began to gradually dispel.

You had never realized, of course, that the hacienda would not be completely desolate on the weekends. You remember now, looking back, how on that first Saturday morning he was up and writing letters, not in his usual uniform but a pair of swimming trunks and a robe coming undone at the waist, and when you got downstairs, he was nearly finished and placing them into thick, cream-colored envelopes, a cigarette hanging at the corner of his mouth.

He swiftly plucked it upon noticing you in the doorway. “Don’t mind me,” he said; “this place should air out fine in a minute with all the windows this room has. Not that you should smoke inside just because you saw me doing it. The coffee and the hot dishes are on the sideboard, feel free to help yourself.” You said something about not minding the smoke, how all right with all of it you were, but he did not listen, he was looking down at a letter, frowning at something.

He didn’t seem to notice you, in fact, even when you sat across from him at the table, a little overawed at the brilliance of the breakfast presented to you: dishes of poached eggs, of bacon, and another of sausages and fried bread. There was tea in a grand porcelain tureen, and coffee, piping hot, in a similarly wonderful urn with two huntsmen in acryl, chasing after a deer. A cluster of grapes dangled from the dessert stand, surrounded by a ridiculous diversity of fruits—guavas and figs and pomegranate slices—but the tower paled in comparison to the one beside it, adorned from top to bottom with various cakes. It didn’t seem possible that he could prepare all of this by himself, and his disregard for the feast was perplexing. From the entire table he had taken only a cup of coffee for himself. And, it seemed, some grapes. The twigs lay barren on the saucer by his hand.

“Is today a celebration of some kind?” you said, unmoving at first, wary of bad manners. You didn’t know how hungry you were before you sat down.

But, “No,” he replied simply, unsheathing his pen. “It’s just a Saturday.”

It was strange to you to think that Maya, who back in Portland shared a dorm with you and bathed in communal showers, should sit down in her home on the hillside of American Riviera to a breakfast like this one, day after day, for her whole life probably, and find nothing absurd about it, nothing wasteful. You couldn’t fathom why she would enroll into a public university at all when she was accustomed to such banquets, but you now understood why she sometimes scrunched her nose at supermarkets and people dressed in secondhand, and were a little bit flurried.

You noticed he poured himself more coffee. You took a slice of ham. And you were afraid to wonder what would happen to all the rest, all that meat and fruits and the chocolate gateau, and the tea once it went cold. There were no menials in the house, no one to wait for the gift of breakfast other than the dustbins.

“Why even try to argue with a woman of such a feeble mind,” he said suddenly after a time, during which he wrote furiously, the paper all a sharp, messy hand. He set down his reading glasses, not looking you in the eye. He waited for you to raise your head. “It seems Maria is coming next Sunday, after all. She banged up her phone and lost her train ticket. Her aunt will drive her back here, and she’s not free until the weekend.”

The announcement startled you. “On Sunday?”

“If Maria’s aunt is to be trusted—and she’s not. I don’t understand why everything has to become so complicated.” He got up from his chair and lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry about this, I really am. You’ll have to make do for another week even though it’s uncomfortable.”

“It’s all right,” you said, sounding quite small. Suddenly your appetite was lost.

“I mean this very seriously.” He was looking out the window, into the courtyard and pool, at the indolent rose bushes swaying slightly in the wind. His robe was open now as he leaned on the windowsill. “She’s being extremely irresponsible, I can’t begin to imagine why she left you here all alone.”

“It’s all right,” you repeated. “Did she leave some sort of message for me maybe?”

He shook his head, a cigarette upon his lips. “If she did, her aunt omitted it.”

Neither of you said anything for a moment.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Pardon?” Finally, you put down the heavy silverware.

“Are you going to wait for her until she comes?”

The question boggled you. Did he want you out of the house? But it would be a long way back to Oregon, and you had barely caught a glimpse of California. “If I’m not a burden on you,” you said, spineless.

He said nothing before coming to the table to put out his cigarette, the robe fluttering behind him. “Understood.” He took his papers, the conversation having seemingly left him sour. “Enjoy your meal.” Then he strode out into the hall, leaving you in the thick silence of the kitchen, alone among the plates of meat and dessert stands.

You tried not to be too curious, and after abandoning breakfast amused yourself with plans of taking a long walk to the East Beach, or reading, or even having a drink in West Mesa, on the terrace of a cafe with a good look at the ocean. It wasn’t until you were coming up to the bedroom to get dressed, sometime before noon, that you glanced through the window and realized he hadn’t left for work still.

Instead he lounged in the courtyard, along the edge of the pool, with his eyes closed and his back turned to you, and it startled you, what broad shoulders he had, the bare and wet skin, the slight quiver of muscles as he rested on both elbows, foot gently caressing the pool-water. For a moment he held it there, on the surface, unmoving, only to let it fall limp with a splash. Hair was sticking to his face; his swimming trunks clinging to the skin. Beside him lay his robe and his cigarette packet, as well as an empty glass, all scattered, and he seemed to care very little about the mess, instead tranquil, dreaming, slowly swaying backward as he soaked in the sun. He was a different person to the man writing letters in the morning.

For the first time it had struck you how handsome he was, and although you may have known this before, you were too afraid to think it. It would have been far more noticeable had his posture been less stiff or his gaze, behind the glasses, less shrewd. He looked almost young now as he stretched across the cantilever deck, younger than he already was, lingering for another moment before he dove into the water. There was a splash, a ripple. It all seemed very beautiful to you, how it danced and glittered in the sunlight.

You caught yourself by the window, peering at him from behind the curtains, and were promptly humiliated. You drew the curtains, the skin on your neck hot, and the back of your ears, and you didn’t know what to do with your hands or your feet or your reflection in the wardrobe mirror, prancing around half-undressed and with a wire poking out of your brassiere. You thought about how he could’ve looked up and caught you: the unwelcome guest, spying on him in nothing but her underwear. And what shabby underwear it was! You unhooked it the same moment and threw it in your suitcase, still burning.

The impression of looking battered was stuck on you even as you picked out your least worn swimsuit and a dress to go with it, which prior to coming here seemed rather Californian to you. Now it looked childish, too flowy, like a little girl’s dress. What did it matter if you looked silly? You didn’t know but you feared it, and as you twirled around and picked at the threadbare stitching, you only thought of how flustering it would be for him to notice the cheapness of the material, the slightly frayed hemline with a thread sticking out from beneath. Maya would have made fun of the dress, if she were here to see it. The thought alone made you swear not to wear it around her, perhaps never wear it again at all, and instead you dressed in a shirt and shorts, both fitting loose and boyish; they made you look plain but they at least didn’t make you look stupid.

You had just been packing your beach bag when a knock came at the door; it was him, changed out of his swimming attire and a towel on his neck. “Going somewhere?” he asked after a brief gust of silence, in which you stood there, staring stupidly at his face, and it wasn’t until he had spoken that you became aware, with a rush of color to your face, that you had blundered irrevocably in thinking he had come to reproach you, had noticed your watching him. You had made a fool of yourself looking so scared.

“Yes,” you said, stammering, your words tumbling over each other. “Yes, I’m going to the beach.”

“That’s nice,” he said; and he knew, you thought, he guessed you had done something wrong and inappropriate in his house, or in the very least finally pegged you as an odd person. It was in his eyes, the gentle, perhaps slightly pitiful scrutiny. “One of my nephews phoned me earlier. He and my sister will be coming for lunch and he asked for some sort of bracelet he borrowed to Maria. I thought to ask you to look for it, but it seems like you’ll miss them.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” You were overly relieved, overly eager. “I’ll look for it. It’s no problem.”

“You don’t have to inconvenience yourself, it was my mistake to bother you,” he said, his voice even. “Go to the beach.”

“I have the whole day, it’s really no problem.” You were already pushing the door into a close.

He put his hand on it. “It would be easier to find, I think,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a photograph, “if you knew what it looked like.”

There was a ghost of a smile on his lips, fingers grazing your as he handed it over. And you knew that, by then, it had already begun.

#we’re really in for a ride lol #lord have mercy i dream about dilf seokjin #bts #bts fanfic #bts imagines #bts reactions #seokjin #kim seokjin #bts jin #seokjin x you #seokjin x reader #seokjin x y/n #bts fic #sense and sensibility (bts)#masterlist: fic

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