Chapter Text
At watchtower five, row three, Jungkook’s new shiftmate wastes the morning alternately texting on his phone and singing under his breath.
Jungkook has never thought of singing to oneself as annoying —not when he indulges in it so much himself —but today it’s intolerable, the song choices subpar and the vocals honestly leaving a lot to be desired. Woong either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that he’s the newest nuisance in a long list plaguing Jungkook’s life. Jungkook’s list is titled, THE WORLD IS AGAINST ME. The list looks something like this:
- Park Jimin (+1)
- Min Yoongi (-1)
- Min Yoongi’s Old Man, The Geezer of Haeundae Beach
- Seo Woong, The Worst Shiftmate Ever (NEW)
- Lee Hyeja
Jimin and Yoongi are currently in a close battle for first place. They keep swapping places, depending on the slant of Jungkook’s thoughts. When Jungkook glances over at his stupid shiftmate typing away on his stupid Samsung phone, he’s reminded of Min Yoongi’s stupid face and then Min Yoongi jumps up to first place.
When Jungkook glances over at anything else, he’s reminded that Park Jimin is in fact a real person and then Jungkook’s brain crashes like a bad computer. Jimin is infecting all the tabs Jungkook has open in his head. Jungkook has so many mental tabs open, and now every last one of them is unresponsive. Jimin is like one of those awful malware ads: HORNY SCAMMERS IN YOUR AREA! < 1 Kilometer Away!
Jungkook didn’t mean to click on the ad, but in the end he did, and because of it, his brain is virtually unusable.
Worse, he forgot his earphones at home and left behind his bag of banana milk, so he can’t even distract himself from today’s newest horrors. Beside him, Woong is still singing under his breath, volume peaking on the chorus of a TWICE song that he does not have the technical ability to pull off, if Jungkook is being completely honest.
Jungkook sets his forehead in his hands.
It’s a bad DJ set on an otherwise good (god-awful) day. Winds are choppy and blowing in over the water — optimal for aerial maneuvers. There are more surfers out than usual and Jungkook’s focus is too shot to sh*t to pay them the attention they deserve. Overhead, the sky is so blue it almost doesn’t register as sky, heat growing heavier by slow degrees. Sky and sea, sea and sky. It’s all the same. So blue it burns.
At ten-thirty, Jungkook has to break up two tourists arguing over a rental umbrella, the sort of simple miscommunication that only occurs between men with the emotional intelligence of toddlers. Mine! No, mine! One of them takes a swing at Jungkook, and when Jungkook ducks that swing, calls him a pansy.
“It’s a tiger lily, actually,” Jungkook says in English, turning his head to show off the tattoo where he’s pulled his hair back with a rubber band. His birth flower, blooming right behind his ear.
That’s when the second swing arrives. Also ducked.
Someone comes up to complain about a missing engagement ring, like Jungkook is personally at fault for it. Like he can do anything at all except take down their number and promise to call if anyone turns it over to Lost and Found. Someone else asks him to take a photo for their group, a huddle of girls in denim shorts giggling behind their hands. They want a photo with the ocean in the background, then the umbrella maze, then they want a serious photo, then a silly, and then they want to try doing a popular girl group choreo trend for TikTok, can Jungkook please film it for them? and, okay, look, Jungkook has to put his foot down at some point.
He hands the phone off to Woong, who’s more than happy to swap places.
“Oppa, we’ll miss you!” one of the more daring girls shouts at Jungkook’s retreating back, and the rest of the group dissolves into scandalized laughter.
Jungkook sighs.
At eleven-fifteen, someone screams her head off over her runaway dog, pink leash dragging behind it through the sand. The dog takes a nip at Jungkook’s ankle during the ensuing chase sequence, a Yorkshire Terrier with a tiny ponytail and scraggly beard. The worst part is the tinkling collar (also pink). When he finally catches it, Jungkook hoists the dog up over his head — growling and thrashing still, probably trying to chomp off one of his fingers — a la Lion King.
“Appa, look, those two match!” a little boy in a sunhat says, almost certainly referring to the fact that both Jungkook and the dog are wearing their hair in ponytails today.
Jungkook hands the dog off to its owner while she weeps with open relief, thanking him over and over. He bows in acknowledgment, deeply fed up, and rips the rubber band from his hair on the way up the ladder of his lookout tower. Jungkook will not allow a little rat dog to be his thirteenth reason. He won’t.
The morning feels endless.
Jungkook passes the time thinking about Hyeja — her silences and her easy, assured competence, the cast of her face when she stood waiting in his apartment lobby. He thinks about food couriers lost in umbrella mazes, spitting in Woong’s lunches as an act of class vengeance. He thinks about tteokbokki-flavored chips. He thinks about the promotional Snoopy banana milk he left in Hyeja’s sedan, probably sour by now where it’s baking under the sun.
Jungkook thinks relentlessly of Jimin’s face, and Jimin’s hands, and Jimin saying, “Meow,” with that mischievous curve to his mouth. Jimin referring to Jungkook’s fingers as really big. Jimin the kkonminam, and Jungkook follows that thread to its historical origins: kkonminam, meaning a member of the hwarang, meaning flower youth, meaning so beautiful ancient kingdoms would have had to invent new language for his existence.
If Jungkook ever asks Jimin for his number, that’s what he’s putting him down under in his phone. Pretty boy. Flower boy. Fragrant disciple of the Silla kingdom. So stupid.
Jungkook is never, ever asking Jimin for his number.
He huffs under his breath, sharing a private laugh with the universe.
He wonders how many cars Jimin has washed so far and whether he’s washed them well at all. He wonders if those cars include Hyeja’s sh*tty Hyundai. If it now shines. He wonders whether the convenience store cats have gathered to watch, assuming sleepy posts along the lot’s rock border.
Jungkook sees Jimin in his mind’s eye, belly-rolling against the hood of a hot, wet car like a surfer riding a wicked wave, his hips canted as he sponges for the farthest edges. Jungkook imagines stepping in behind those hips, taking them in hand and hitting full throttle. He imagines Jimin sudsing his pointy tit* up, slow and satisfying, puckered from the frictionless glide of soap and water and warm metal. He imagines Jimin so wanton with it that every little bounce backwards starts to sound squeaky, friction found and kindled, Jungkook digging in until he can go no deeper, until Jimin has been so thoroughly humbled he can’t say a word, can only lie there and take it.
Jungkook spends the last twenty minutes of his shift glaring out at the ocean, one arm thrown strategically over his dick. Woong does not notice, too busy KakaoTalking with cute girls and eating contaminated takeout.
Jungkook knows deep down he’s already come to a decision. He knows it before his shift is up, knows it as he slips the straps of his backpack on over his wetsuit, knows it as he hikes the half kilometer back to the corner store in his sandy sneakers, still glaring at nothing in particular.
He is, after all, a sorry sucker in the making.
It’s not like he rolls up with binoculars and a plan to play detective-in-disguise. He doesn’t give a sh*t what Jimin and Yoongi have gotten up to since he left. Separately or together. Really. Truly. Jungkook just has snack cravings he needs satisfied. That’s all.
He hasn’t even rinsed the sea from his hair — hasn’t even changed back into his CK ensemble — when he strides through Everyday’s entrance, hungry enough to take the little answering chime for exactly what it is: a signal that food is coming, and soon. Immediate and unhealthy. Packed full of carbs.
Jungkook’s stomach growls.
Inside, he lets himself turn his face up for a kiss of greeting from the cleverly angled aircon unit. One corner of a charity car wash flier flaps from it, before the door swings shut again. Ahjussi is piping a MelOn Top 100 hit through the store, something or other with a ricocheting pop instrumental and a deep-toned girl taking a rap break over it. Jungkook doesn’t know the song, but it sure as hell beats Woong’s morning karaoke covers.
He spots ahjussi right away, sitting on a tall stool behind the counter. He is, Jungkook sees, thoroughly engrossed in a book with a busty pirate woman on the cover. She has a hook for a hand, and a whole lot of cleavage going on.
“Knew you’d be back in no time,” ahjussi says without looking up. He licks his fingers and loudly flips to a new page in his book. “The ones without girlfriends always are. Still … I think this might be a new record.”
Jungkook does not dignify that with a response, taking a sharp right turn down the chip aisle.
“Sale running on all bento boxes for the rest of the week!” ahjussi calls out in his slice-of-life apocalypse voice. “Buy one bento, get one bento half-off!”
“Woohoo,” Jungkook mutters, a bag of tteokbokki-flavored chips shoved under one arm.
He comes to a grudging stop at the refrigerated bento box section, checking over his shoulder to make sure ahjussi isn’t watching. Jungkook turns back, scanning the offerings at the speed of light. There’s nothing about a promotional sale on any of the price tags.
He squints, sensing a trap. Then he snatches two bentos up — rice, rolled egg omelet, spam, pickled plum and dried daikon strips, all for a decent price — because Jimin’s face won’t stop haunting Jungkook’s brain and what if washing cars is hungry work, what then? What if Jimin has heatstroke and needs calorie-dense foods to survive? He’s a little brat built into a hyung’s body, so he probably eats like a prince, sparkling mineral water and grapes straight from the vine.
Jungkook relishes the thought of insulting his tastes with convenience store gruel, factory-packed.
At the counter, ahjussi takes one look at Jungkook’s two-box haul and smiles. “Good choice,” he says, sounding far sunnier than the situation warrants, in Jungkook’s personal opinion.
Geezer, Jungkook thinks.
In parentheses: derogatory.
Aloud, Jungkook says, “I only came back because I was craving chips.” Then he pointedly nudges his jumbo bag across the counter.
Ahjussi does a slow blink. He’s still holding his erotic literature open one-handed.
Jungkook breaks — too fast, too defensive. “I eat enough for two.”
“… Wow, you expecting?” ahjussi says after an excruciatingly long pause. “Congrats on the baby.”
Jungkook pulls his wallet out of a side pocket in his backpack, holding a sigh in. Any outward reaction would be a victory for ahjussi.
Ahjussi scans each of his items, an incredible feat considering he’s still working one-handed, going slow like this is a government-mandated torture attempt. It’s the polar opposite of his rushed grump act from this morning. Jungkook hates it.
“Done with work for the day?” ahjussi says pleasantly.
Jungkook eyes the donation can by the register. He doesn’t know how he missed Jimin’s koi pond sticker before— that has to be 14 pt font, at least, with about twenty exclamation marks. FOR OUR FUTURE KOI POND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Yup,” Jungkook says.
“Save any drowning cats?”
“Dog,” Jungkook corrects, “though it wasn’t drowning.” And it tried to bite me as thanks.
Ahjussi grunts, bagging Jungkook’s haul. “Have a nice walk over?”
“Great breeze.”
“Goes nicely with Jiminie’s hair. Fresh color ’n all.”
f*cking —
“Okay,” Jungkook says.
“I call him the Little Mermaid now, makes my son laugh like he stole himself an underwater prince, heh.”
Jungkook’s left eye twitches. “Uh-huh.”
“Our Jiminie, they say he’s got a voice and a body like —”
“Listen, can I have my receipt?” Jungkook interrupts. “You didn’t give me one last time.”
“I’ll do you one better. How ‘bout a ride home?”
“… Eh?” Jungkook says, a repeat of this morning.
Ahjussi reaches back with his free hand, unhooking an honest to Goku wall-mounted rotary phone, with a curly wire cord and everything. Outdated as f*ck. “Noona down the street runs a car service — I get discounts out the ass when I refer new customers. What’s your address? On me, as an apology for that donation confusion this morning!”
‘Donation confusion … ?’ Is that what they’re calling it now?
“Never takes the taxis more than two seconds to get here.” Ahjussi’s dark eyes are positively gleaming. “You’ll be home before you can blink!”
“No, I —” Jungkook stops. Starts again, white-knuckling his new plastic bag, with Everyday’s logo stamped across it in vivid purple: E/D. 24/7. “I mean … I’m, uh …”
Ahjussi raises one eyebrow, receiver wedged between shoulder and ear. Jungkook can hear the dial tone, can see those workman fingers poised over the keypad. Waiting.
“Unless you have somewhere else you need to be?” ahjussi says.
“I do,” Jungkook says, then refuses to add any further detail.
He can’t exactly recite the GPS coordinates of the dumpsters behind this building.
“Okay,” ahjussi says, unblinking. “Address?”
… Only an asshole this accomplished could create a low-level gangster baby like Min Yoongi.
“Your son is a kkangpae who writes terrible things about you on the internet,” Jungkook says, because he doesn’t go down, not without a fight. “And your ‘little Jiminie … ?’ He eats men’s faces off. For fun, like a real mermaid. Both of them together? Even worse. You know they tried to proposition me this morning?”
“Who’s ‘they?’” ahjussi says, expression inscrutable.
Jungkook flings a hand into the air. “I’m down a hundred and sixty thousand won since yesterday!”
“A hundred and seventy-two now,” ahjussi says, smiling, card reader beeping that it’s through with its card-reading. He hands it back to Jungkook. “You’re betting on winning dogs here, kid.”
“Cats,” Jungkook says bleakly.
“You want me to call you a taxi before or after you have your beachside bento lunch with our little Jiminie?”
Jungkook is betting on losing dogs (cats) and will be broke by the end of summer, probably.
“… After,” he says, and accepts his receipt with a sigh of resignation. “Enjoy your book.”
Ahjussi hangs the phone up with a decisive click. “Oh, I will. Enjoy your picnic,” Jungkook hears on his way back out the chiming door.
Outside, the beach has burned off all its morning fog, the rocks a sheen of slick black against hissing blue. It’s the sound of Jungkook’s childhood, like falling asleep with your ear pressed up against a seashell instead of a pillow. The office building rising up out of the cloudless sky is as empty as ever, and what Jungkook can see of the rock border is mysteriously cat-free.
He fists the handles of his plastic bag and turns the corner with the grim inevitability of a man about to enter a war zone.
In the wrap-around lot by the water, several facts become clear to Jungkook:
- Park Jimin is the worst.
- Park Jimin is the worst, ever, until the end of time.
- Park Jimin, like ahjussi, is a scammer of the most insidious sort.
- Park Jimin has a tiny mole under his left ass cheek.
- Jungkook has got to get his mouth on that mole at some point.
The Hyundai Grandeur is right where Jungkook left it. It looks no different than its usual scarred glory, all four tires filled with air, windshield still streaked with grime, which means no one has made good on their Ferris Bueller threats but also that Jimin is a dishonest scoundrel and has not so much as rinsed the sedan down since Jungkook saw him last.
Jimin hasn’t done anything except clamber sideways into the passenger side seat and stick his little ass out in the worst pair of shorts Jungkook has ever seen in all his life — and he’s seen so many Megan Fox movies. Michael Bay’s Megan Fox is f*cking saintly beside Park Jimin’s ass mole.
Jungkook can’t even enjoy the pleasant surprise of Yoongi’s absence, because the whole lot is barren, not a single customer in sight. Jungkook thought he would be walking into a soft-core p*rn shoot. He thought he’d have to elbow his way through a wall of pervy ahjussis and defend Jimin’s honor like a white knight with promises of a bento box picnic waiting at the end of it all.
But there’s just — f*cking — ass, and Hyeja’s unwashed car, not another living soul for kilometers. Not a single stray cat.
Jimin has loud music playing, his phone mounted on Hyeja’s dashboard dock. It’s currently funneling disco pop out towards the water. He’s only singing along to Beyoncé’s ad libs, moany little cries of turn it up! and roll it up! in thickly accented English. Jungkook can’t tell if those are the only lyrics he knows, or if Jimin just has to inject sex into absolutely everything he does, including car karaoke.
Good song choice, given that Jungkook is also in the mood to f*ck something up.
On the hood of the Hyundai, there’s a mixed puzzle activity book (FOR ADULTS! EXPERT LEVEL), because of course there is, gel pen holding Jimin’s place like a bookmark. Jungkook knows it isn’t Hyeja’s, because Hyeja isn’t a nerd like that, and also because there’s a music magazine next to it, one of the moody blue issues that Jungkook saw on the rack inside this morning. It’s open to an interview with an idol, posing beside all of his transcribed answers with legs in the air.
The whole set-up must be some kind of sick joke, because Jimin is already as smooth and obscene as a centerfold model. Saddle-stitched, almost nothing left to the imagination. No airbrushing needed. He’s made for a gentleman’s mag: erotic but not explicit, hard but also soft, with delicately sloping shoulders showing through his tank. Those are shoulders that exist to sit at a slant, cat eyes angled back.
The only thing missing is actual eye contact, but Jimin’s face is turned away, bent over the footwell of Hyeja’s passenger seat. He’s rummaging through an Everyday-branded plastic bag full of who knows what. His hips won’t stop shimmying to the song playing over the speakers.
There is, Jungkook observes as though from a great distance, a bento box already open on the roof of the car, lid tossed to the side, food mixed up like a bird has been picking through it all morning. It’s rolled egg omelet and spam. Because of f*cking course it is.
The whole scene, from start to finish, is so profoundly presumptuous — so insufferably shameless — that Jungkook can only stand there in his sand-beaten sneakers, fingers numb around his scam of a bento box purchase, while white-hot anger builds in his gut. He can’t f*cking believe this.
There was never any extra special sale running, and ahjussi knew Jimin had already bought himself a meal, the exact same breakfast combo as Jungkook. Jungkook is just the stupid, sorry sucker trying to wine and dine someone else’s boyfriend with nothing but a pipe dream in his pocket. He’s been set up for failure.
“‘On my body, boy, you got it,” Beyoncé is currently singing through Hyeja’s speakers. “‘Hit them ‘draulics, while I ride it, got me actin’ hella thotty …’”
Jimin hums, slowing his shimmying hips for a lavish grind back. It’s pure f*cking filth. He’s unaware of his pervy audience and therefore completely unashamed about it.
Jungkook is sure that under different circ*mstances, those would be acceptable cut-off shorts by most cultural standards, and even on-trend if you believe current trends to be controlled by the new generation of bubblegum pop boy toys with pouty mouths and perfect skin. But like this, bent over and rooting around Hyeja’s sh*tty car, the shorts are pulled so high up Jimin’s hips that his ass is practically eating the denim. Devouring the denim.
The under-cheek crease of that round little ass is briefly visible where endlessly delicious-looking fat is hanging past two gaping hemlines. They’re hemlines that look like they’ve been fringed from a recent encounter with a pair of scissors.
Jungkook pushes back a noise of utter disbelief. He can feel both of his eyes twitching with the need to blink.
He didn’t think wedgies could be sexy until ten seconds ago, and he certainly didn’t think wedgies could be wedgies without any visible underwear to do the job. Not until he caught this scammy car wash attendant in tight denim, two smooth calves dangling past the open passenger seat door.
Jungkook’s eyes skate down the length of those long legs.
Jimin is wearing shoes so studded and with such intensely jagged platform heels that for a moment Jungkook fears he’s fallen in love.
He wants him. No, he wants them — the shoes. Obviously the shoes.
Then a saltwater breeze sifts through his hair and he’s himself again. Jeon Jungkook — cousin, lifeguard, son. Killjoy and college dropout. Future dog father.
“Hey!” he barks, closing in from behind.
Instead of startling and doing something deservedly embarrassing, like clipping his head on the roof of the car, Jimin peers between the gap in his thick thighs, meeting Jungkook’s gaze. His eyes are as wide as a puppy’s. Then the devilish twink backs his sweet f*cking ass out in one lithe twist.
Jungkook says, “Are you burning through gas for this — ?”
“For what?” Jimin says around the unlit cigarette in his mouth, so that it comes out like mush: foh wah?
He doesn’t say anything else, trailing off as his gaze catches on something other than Jungkook’s face. It slow-travels Jungkook’s body, taking in the new work uniform — no civvies to be seen, just a Haeundae Beach wetsuit clinging to clean-cut muscle. It’s the kind of brutally conditioned brawn that bulges, even through thermal-protected fabric. Jungkook is aware of this fact. It’s his body, after all.
And yet.
It’s another thing entirely to be scrutinized by a face that pretty.
Jimin’s pouty lips part, cigarette in danger of falling.
Jungkook yanks it free before it has the chance. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says, holding the cigarette up to underscore his point.
There’s a pack of Esse Classics in Jimin’s hand, lid flipped open. Jungkook recognizes the red design from parking lot rendezvouses last spring, gossiping about their coworkers around tendrils of tobacco smoke. Hyeja holds her cigarettes like a flapper lady from 1920s America, a long dangle between two fingers, hand resting heel-up. Jimin does not hold his cigarettes at all, because these cigarettes don’t belong to him, and because Jungkook has decided he’s banned from them forever, judge’s order. It has been signed into local and national law. Done and done.
Jungkook slaps the box free, too. For good measure, he crushes it in his fist, squeezing down until the entire pack has been pulverized. Tobacco scatters to the wind.
“Hey — !” Jimin has the audacity to say, like he has any right to someone else’s things.
“Do you smoke?” Jungkook demands. “Have you ever, in all your life, lit a cigarette?”
“No, but I can try,” Jimin says, still pouty-mouthed. “I wanted to take a picture with one, to see how it looked …”
“Looks terrible,” Jungkook says. “Hope that helps.”
Jimin pouts harder, angling his chin up to show it off.
Jungkook glares until he can glare no longer, until he’s giving Jimin his own slow once-over from the front, automatic. The shirt is the same as this morning, fishnet mesh tight enough to strangle, except there’s more light now to track the way Jimin’s piercings catch on the white threading — straight barbells so silver and so shiny with sun they look like little pearls framing a perfect pair of tit*, bookending the tight brown nipples budding up out of them. The smear of rib ink finally resolves itself into an actual tattoo: the phrase LIKE CRAZY in a darkly chaotic font, fully English.
Jungkook can’t help but concur, given that the tit* above this tattoo are currently driving him f*cking crazy.
His mouth fills with saliva as he thinks about the many things he could do to a set of nipples that decorative, nipples taught to endure and maintain above all else. He spends a moment imagining himself sucking on them. Warming the metal with his mouth. Pulling those sweet knots between his teeth and worshiping them the way they so clearly deserve, hearty and hungry for more.
Jungkook’s dick decides it’s all the way in.
“You don’t have anything else you want to say to me?” Jimin says.
Jungkook says the first thing that isn’t I want to tongue-kiss your tight nipples right now: “Your shoes are different.”
“What?”
“Are you preparing for an album concept?” Jungkook says, because although the shirt is the same, Jimin has switched out his jeans for short-shorts and his Creepers for combat boots with chrome hardware. They buckle and lace up. What the hell. “How many outfit changes do you need to do in one day?”
“Life is more fun when you treat it like a music video, Jungkook-ssi.”
“Explains the set list,” Jungkook muses. “Explains the hair color. Does not explain stealing someone else’s cigarettes or lying about cats.”
“I would never lie about cats,” Jimin says. Then he tips his head to the side to show off his hairdo, dimpling adorably for Jungkook’s viewing pleasure. His hair is as red as Maraschino cherries, bangs parted down the middle with a voluminous blow-dryer lift that flawlessly frames his face. “Do you like it? I’m working my way through all the colors of the rainbow.”
As if you could get any gayer, Jungkook thinks, hopefully with derision, more realistically with awe. He has a moment to imagine Jimin platinum blond, brows dark, his hooded eyes a catlike pop against the cornsilk of his bangs. Jungkook’s groin gives a curious pulse.
He sighs, disgusted with himself, and turns on his foot.
“Excuse me!” Jimin says from behind him, forced to waste away without a single compliment. “Where are you going!”
“Throwing these away,” Jungkook says, shaking the smashed-in cigarette pack over his shoulder.
“I’m telling your Lee Hyeja!”
“So I can turn over the raccoon who ransacked her car? Good idea. Let me know when you get a hold of her.”
“I’m not a raccoon! I’m a puppy-kitty! Hey, come back here!” Jimin cries, growing brattier the longer he’s left unattended. “Fine then! I won’t wash your ugly car! I’ll kick it off a cliff like Cameron Frye!”
Jungkook is just glad Jimin can’t see what his face (or his dick) is currently doing. He stops at the dumpsters edging the lot, for a moment safe from scrutiny.
Jungkook has been nursing a low-grade boner for most of the morning — by which he means, he’s been doing his level best to ignore the boner, then thinking about things that are deeply unsexy as a deterrent method.
A list of deeply unsexy thoughts:
- cicadas
- socks with slides
- overcooked meat
- ahjussi’s diabolical face
- Hyeja snapping photos of Jungkook’s Baby Groot figurine behind his back, then uploading them to Reddit
- Jimin honeymooning with his honey Min Yoongi in the Florida Keys
- etc.
It’s highly offensive to Jungkook that Hypothetical Jimin would even consider celebrating his horrible, hypothetical, criminally fraught marriage in Florida of all places. The blonde mom tourists from that state are always the worst.
“How can you be a puppy-kitty? Those don’t exist,” Jungkook says on his way back to the car, cigarettes trashed forever.
Jimin has begun occupying himself in Jungkook’s absence with his expert-level puzzle book. He’s now working on a word search, bottom lip sticking out. Jungkook doesn’t understand why anyone would willingly subject themselves to this sort of brain teaser outside of a school assignment.
“Are you a mutant?” Jungkook adds.
Jimin looks up at him through his lashes, haughty. “It’s very possible,” he says. “Do you want to see a video example?”
“No,” Jungkook says—what he had really wanted when he walked out of Everyday he can no longer voice for fear of further scam-related humiliations — but Jimin is already setting his things down and climbing back into Hyeja’s car, ass wriggling excitedly.
Seriously. It’s like he thinks this is one of those cartoon peep show bits, a woman’s bare leg extended past red curtains to wild audience cheering. In this scenario, Jungkook would be the audience. He forms two fists with his hands to avoid clapping for more.
The disco pop cuts out suddenly, followed by the car’s engine. Jungkook stares down at Jimin’s ass because … well, because it’s a good ass, like he said, and it’s right there, and he’s already looked at it once this afternoon, and because he’s tired of being courteous, and — and, frankly, Jimin deserves to suffer the consequences of his actions! You can’t just scam people, then wave your perky little ass around in cut-off shorts and expect to get off scot-free! That is not how the world works!
“Look, see!” Jimin says when he’s back to standing, phone in hand.
(Jungkook would like to point out that it’s not a Samsung.)
“What am I looking at here?”
Jimin proceeds to show him a Twitter video captioned, ‘this puppy thinks he is a cat.’ In it, a tiny puppy has to be scruffed by a mother cat to get over a brick ledge with the rest of her kitten litter, little legs kicking. Once safely relocated, the mother cat begins to groom his fur like he’s one of her own.
“That’s me,” Jimin informs Jungkook. “I’m the puppy. The cats took me in 'cause I’m so cute.”
“So you’re an orphan, is what you’re saying.”
Jimin sniffs. “My parents love me very much, actually.”
Jungkook tries to think of a follow-up insult to this. He fails, too busy wrestling with the little voice in the back of his head, because — because it’s obvious how true this is, even from a remove.
Some kids wear their misfortune on their sleeve; you can tell in a single glance that they went unloved, that they’ve hardened themselves to notions of never getting what they deserve from anyone they encounter. You can even tell, if you’re looking closely for it, when someone’s parents were neutral and mostly uninterested in them growing up — when the attention-seeking is intended to fill a void.
Jimin overflows with so much happiness and so much golden warmth that he can only really be the product of two people deeply in love, and then, after that, two people deeply besotted with the baby they’d created together. He’s too well-adjusted. He takes everything in stride and he laughs like it’ll be his last, like he’s going to die from it, every single time. He loves life. He loves low-level gangster babies. He even loves their awful dads. He has the mark of someone who breezes through life with one thousand kisses at his disposal, always and eternally loved.
Jimin’s attention-seeking behavior is the result of commanding the attention of every room he walks into. Jungkook knows this because he was in one of those rooms. He’s in it right now. He never left it. Jimin isn’t filling a void, which means Jimin is stretching a well-trained muscle — luxurious, co*cksure.
What a revelation. Jungkook doesn’t know how he didn’t think of it first.
“Do you have calls with your parents every night?” he says, his voice dark with distrust.
“Of course!” Jimin says, like that’s the only acceptable answer. He slides his phone into his back pocket, probably next to all his cat mugshots.
“And they approve of this?”
“‘This?’” Jimin repeats.
Jungkook sweeps a hand out to indicate the unwashed car and the empty parking lot, but maybe from Jimin’s point of view, it looks a bit like Jungkook is gesturing between their bodies, maybe that was easy to misunderstand, maybe that’s why Jimin opens his mouth and says —
“But we haven’t even done anything together yet?”
A wall of silence descends— thick, thunderstruck.
Jimin apparently does not notice the silence or its quality.
“What could my parents possibly disapprove of?” he goes on, confused. “Or are you imagining it already? Are you saying, ‘let’s get a move on, Park Jimin, let’s get to the fun part right away!’”
Jungkook gapes.
Yet?
The fun part?
It’s true then — Jimin thinks the whole world is his oyster. He’s never been told no in all his life and now he’s spoiled rotten because of it, gorged on love and golden light. He thinks having filthy gay infidelity sex with Jungkook is a foregone conclusion. Thinks it’s the most natural course of events.
“… Hah … ?” Jungkook says, a mouthful of air expelled in pure astonishment.
“If I brought you home to my mother,” Jimin begins.
“To — !” Jungkook exclaims. “Brought me to your where? To your what?”
Jimin holds a finger up, wagging it demonstratively. “My mother would look you over and say, ‘Jimin-ah! A gym bunny!’ She’d say it just like that, and she’d be really scandalized by the size of you. Her expressions would be so funny … she’d be trying to mentally calculate how we could possibly make it work while naked … who goes where and how I get out alive. But then she’d hold your big hand in both of hers and she’d feed you her homemade kimchi-jjigae. You’d be so full by the time you left. You’d absolutely have to — leave, I mean — because she’d know.”
“… Know … what …”
“That if not, I’d try to convince you to f*ck me in my childhood bedroom,” Jimin says. “My mother, Jungkook-ssi, she doesn’t like wearing earplugs to sleep.”
Jungkook stands there, silent and unmoving, his mind blue screening. An error message makes itself known. Connection Lost: The device is busy. We're trying hard to restore the connection. Please wait as long as you can ...
The loading screen of his life appears to ask him if he would like to reset his game, forever wiping out the progress from this attempt.
What do you wish to do?
Proceed. Delete.
Jungkook dismisses the prompt.
Then he considers walking off to put his head between his knees somewhere more private, like he’s about to be sick all over the parking lot pavement, with the faded traffic markings.
Jimin blinks languidly at him, content to wait this out.
“And — and — and your father? What about him?” bursts out of Jungkook’s mouth, without his permission at all.
He has no idea why he says it. No. Moving on. What the f*ck.
“Ah, my father!” Jimin says, moving his finger to the point of his princely chin. He taps at it, thinking hard.
Jungkook can’t believe he just asked that.
“My father would pretend not to like you,” Jimin tells Jungkook, “but you’d be able to tell that he does, because all throughout dinner, he’d say, ‘And Jungkook-ssi, what do you think of that?’ That’s how you know my father likes you, if he keeps badgering you for your opinion on things. You have to have a lot of opinions to get through a conversation with him. He’d ask for your number right away, and then every day he’d message to say, ‘Jungkook-ssi, how is my son doing!’ even when you’re not with me. So you’d have to know. You’d either have to know everything I’m doing all the time, or you’d have to ignore my father’s Kakao messages. Pick one.”
Pick one? Those are his only two options?
Jungkook vanishes to a private corner of his brain. There, he sets fire to the filing cabinet containing a folder labeled, ‘HYPOTHETICAL JIMIN’S HYPOTHETICAL HONEYMOON WITH MIN YOONGI IN THE FLORIDA KEYS.’ He won’t be needing that any longer.
Jungkook sends someone from his subconscious to buy a new filing cabinet, and also to create a revised folder labeled, ‘HYPOTHETICAL JIMIN GETTING f*ckED BY HYPOTHETICAL ME IN HIS CHILDHOOD BEDROOM.’
Jungkook is going to have to update all of his Jimin fantasies now.
Jimin says, “Why does your face look like that?”
“Look,I — I’ve had a bad day, okay?” Jungkook says. He tries to recall something specific that’s happened to him prior to the last sixty seconds. The last minute of Jungkook’s life seems to have wiped out the twenty-three years that preceded it. “A … dog bit me this morning. On my ankle. So yeah.”
That’s another point in the cat column, isn’t it? Everything is turning out terrible today.
Jimin starts laughing.
It isn’t fair or right to call him petite, not without comparing heights while they’re barefoot, except that it’s the truest thing to say Jimin is built like silk: soft and fine and featherlight. And, Jungkook guesses —forecasting it like a far-off honeymoon — milk-pale in winter, a perfect match for the freshly fallen snow that Busan never sees other than in incremental amounts.
In summer, Jimin is the faintest freckles known to man and eyes that hold five million secrets at a time. Jungkook would give two bento boxes and his entire backpack to know even one of those secrets, if any at all concern him or the hunky angles of his body, what he’d look like shoved back onto Jimin’s childhood bed while Jimin climbs up with his horrible, magazine-worthy thighs and rides Jungkook into oblivion, apologies to the mother in the next room over. Beside Jungkook, Jimin is petite, meaning he’s skinny hips and so much ass, his shoulders taken in by kilometers, his legs endless and tan.
“In that case,” Jimin says, “when you bite me later, don’t break skin. I can’t afford to get rabies right now. I have a lot of cars to wash this week.”
Jimin is the worst person alive. Jungkook should jail him for his crimes against humanity.
“You don’t have any f*cking cars to wash but this one,” Jungkook says, thrown right back into a boiling vat of anger. “And you can’t even be bothered to do that much. Seriously, am I your first and only customer? Where is everyone else?”
“You should be so honored to be my first and only, Jungkook-ssi,” Jimin says with feeling.
Jungkook can feel himself starting to blush and so, to distract from that fact, he says, “Stop calling me that.”
“Well, you have to give me your last name if you want me to treat you like more than a valued customer.”
“‘Valued?’” Jungkook says. “‘Like more than … ?’ You just spent two minutes dragging an imaginary me all the way out to meet your parents —”
“They don’t live very far from here at all,” Jimin says in his own defense.
“— and you didn’t need any knowledge of my family name to do it!”
“And I didn’t drag you,” Jimin says. “I held your imaginary hand very gently and you followed after me in your imaginary wetsuit. It was still wet at the time. It was so inappropriate of you, walking up to their front door with your big package out. What if my poor family had mistaken you for the mailman! Did you know my father’s eyesight is starting to go?”
Jungkook opens and closes his mouth. Opens it again. “‘Package — ?’”
“Big,” Jimin adds, gaze bouncing from Jungkook’s chest, to his navel, to his … well, best not to draw further attention to the mega boner he has going on right now.
“This isn’t a — a video game! Imaginary me doesn’t have any agency! You’re making him — me — do these things!” Jungkook explodes, like he hasn’t been defiling Hypothetical Jimin in his brain for the last five minutes. Like he hasn’t dressed Hypothetical Jimin up in assless chaps and cowboy boots. Like he hasn’t f*cked him against a wet car all morning long.
“Hm. Well, imaginary you uses a lotion brand that I really like,” Jimin says, gleefully spinning his own web of lies now. “It makes your big hands so soft in mine, when we go visit my parents in Saha-gu together … tell imaginary you not to wear your wetsuit to see them anymore, okay? That’s for my eyes only.”
Jungkook brings his arms up, covering his face to put an end to this madness (the madness being uninterrupted eye contact with Park Jimin). Saha-gu, seriously? Are his and Jimin’s parents zip code neighbors or something?
Jungkook squeezes his eyes closed to stop a wave of family holiday fantasies. No. No! No way — !
“Jeon,” he says into his hands.
“Huh?”
“My family name is Jeon,” he says. A beat. Then: “I moisturize with Pyunkang Yul after showers. It’s cheap and fragrance-free.”
Showers can sometimes involve too many conflicting scent profiles. It overwhelms Jungkook’s nostrils, if he isn’t careful with his products and their ingredient lists.
Jimin hums, taking all of this in stride. “That’s a good choice. I like their formula a lot,” he says. “Oh, and, Jungkook …”
Jungkook opens his eyes behind his hands, seeing nothing. He’s just ‘Jungkook’ now. “Yeah, what?”
“You left your banana milk in the car this morning, so I gave it to all the cats before it could spoil.”
Jungkook drops his hands, frowning. He catches his bento box bag before the handles can slip past his wrist. “Right,” he says. “These make-believe, imaginary cats of yours? The ones you keep going on and on about to sell your sham car wash? You know what’s funny? I have yet to see a single. Damn. Cat.”
“That’s because you’re not looking closely enough,” Jimin chirps. “What did I tell you before? You need to stop and smell the roses sometimes.”
“And … hold on, I thought cats couldn’t have milk?” Jungkook read that somewhere once. An article headline, maybe, that he then closed out of. “They can’t digest it right. See, you —”
“I know they can’t. I lied,” Jimin says, starting to sound smug. “That was a test. I actually sold the banana milk back to ahjussi at half price.”
Jungkook nearly says, you come from a community of scammers, before writing it off as redundant. “A test for what?”
“Cute animal vulnerabilities.” Jimin fingers the silver hoops stuck through his left lobe, like a cat batting at a feather toy. “You failed the first test — my puppy-kitty video … you didn’t react to it prettily at all — but you just passed this one, so I’ll let you become a hot deadbeat cat dad now.”
“Deadbeat?” Jungkook says, aghast. “Wait — back up, did you just say you’ll let me?”
“Yeah,” Jimin says and giggles a little hehe of a laugh. “Before, I wasn’t going to introduce you to our strays, but now that you’ve passed one of my tests, you can come see them with me whenever you want. You can even pet their little heads … I’ll let you staple fliers with me so other people can love them the way we do.”
“I don’t love them,” Jungkook says, mortified by this imaginary version of himself.
f*ck. Maybe he would be a deadbeat cat dad …
“But you will, won’t you? If I show you how to love them?” Jimin says, voice tapering off into a seductive murmur.
All the remaining blood in Jungkook’s body cross-country races its way down to his dick, a dizzying, toe-long rush. He can feel himself throbbing in two different places.
“No,” Jungkook says.
It’s that or, let me put my dick in you.
To Jungkook’s surprise, Jimin makes a noise of sudden defeat, the smile dropping off of his face. His hand falls away from his hoop earrings. “Jungkook!” he whines and Jungkook thinks, instantaneous and deeply embarrassing, wow, yes? like a dumb f*cking dog. “You’re so —ugh!”
“I’m ‘so ugh?’”
“Yeah, you’re so ugh!” Jimin says, building up to a full-blown tantrum now. Jungkook watches, captivated, as two splotches of deep pink claim Jimin’s freckled cheeks. “You’re — you’re — you always tell me no all the time! And you accuse me of lying about everything and having kkangpae boyfriends! It’s not fair!”
“I only did that once,” Jungkook says. He feels it prudent to clarify: “… The last thing.”
“And then you smash up your Lee Hyeja’s cigarettes just because I touched them a little bit!”
“You had one in your f*cking mouth when I got here —”
“— and you don’t even tell me that my hair looks nice today, even though I did it so nicely after you left us in the dust! And six hours ago, you were saying I would never see you again, but then you sneak up on me from behind and you give me your family name so I’ll stop calling you ‘Jungkook-ssi!’ You’re making my head hurt!”
“Need I remind you,” Jungkook says, very slowly, “that I paid you sixty thousand won to give this car a Deluxe washing?”
“Yeah, for the girlfriend that you love!”
“What?” Jungkook says, instantly sidetracked. “I never said anything about loving girlfriends?”
“Wow, so you hate your girlfriend and want to leave her for someone prettier?” Jimin concludes, sounding shocked by the scandal of this fictional scenario.
Jungkook shakes his head, wild-eyed and wracked with laughter. He almost can’t keep up with the flow of Jimin’s thinking, all his criss-crossed conversational threads, the webs he’s weaving and the quilts those weavings are fast becoming. Jimin is crazy. Jimin is starting to make Jungkook feel crazy, too. What a fitting rib tattoo he has.
Jimin crosses his arms over his chest, an unfortunate development given it hides his nipple piercings from view. “Let me ask you something,” he says, and oh, boy. Here it comes. “How can you accuse me or this humble establishment of scamming you when you continue to come back and give us your business? Hm?”
A great question.
And one that Jungkook will be evading today!
“I needed to make sure you hadn’t damaged this car,” Jungkook says, as if that’s everything all wrapped up with a nice little bow. If only. “And … I was craving something I’d seen here this morning.”
“What? The fried chicken noodles?”
“No,” Jungkook says, staring hard. “I have my own noodles at home.”
Jimin squints, lashes quivering from the force of his glare. “Is that a euphemism for something?”
“What?” Jungkook says. “No? It means I literally have noodles in abundance.”
Jimin’s glare grows pouty, like he thinks Jungkook is lying. “Show me.”
“What, my noodle recipe?”
“No. What you were craving this morning,” Jimin says. “If you had to come back for it so bad, prove it. Open the bag.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Jungkook sidesteps Jimin to dump his things onto the passenger seat, along with all his hopes and dreams of beachside bento picnics. Tarnished, just like that. “Because it’s none of your business what I spend my money on.”
“Just tell me!” Jimin cries.
“Or what?”
“Or … or I’ll assume you’re addicted to gambling and bought a bunch of lottery tickets! I’ll … I’ll inform your employer now that I know where you work! Every day, I’ll come to your lookout tower and I’ll throw peanuts at you in your tight wetsuit!”
Jungkook covers a laugh with a cough.
“Jungkook, seriously, I will …”
“And what else?” he says, pursing his lips to hide his smile.
“And every day after that, I’ll pretend like I can’t swim so you have to show me how! Your big arms will get so tired, holding me up like that while I try to kick my feet.”
“‘Every day … and every day after that?’”
Jimin nods. “For infinity.”
Jungkook imagines a world where it’s not just the pervy ahjussis who are hoping to cop a feel. A world where it’s Jimin who’s demanding a hands-on demonstration of the doggy paddle, and one where Jungkook is the pervy lifeguard taking advantage of his tight little body in the water. I’ll show you the doggy something. Jungkook doesn’t hate the idea.
He adds it to his miscellaneous sex fantasy filing cabinet, to be fleshed out at a later date.
“And what about you, huh? What’s in here?” Jungkook leans down to flick open the plastic bag he saw Jimin digging through earlier. “Do you buy all your meals from ahjussi?”
“You’re always doing that, you know — turning the question back on me as a way to deflect.”
Jungkook leans down a little lower, eyebrows knitting together. “Is this … underwear … ?” he hears himself say, trying to figure out why Jimin would have a spare pair on hand if not to seduce Min Yoongi into dirty, unprotected sex in someone else’s car.
Does ahjussi have a secret lingerie line available for purchase? Or is something more sinister afoot? Jungkook is going to be so pissed off if he finds out Jimin took these off for Min Yoongi before he got here.
“Oh. Those. They belong to your girlfriend,” Jimin says from behind Jungkook.
Jungkook drops the scrap of satin fabric in immediate horror, rearing back so suddenly that he bumps into Jimin on his way out of the car. “What!” He rounds on Jimin. “Why would she … ? What?”
“While I was clearing everything out to vacuum, I found underwear stuffed down the driver’s seat pocket. I think your Lee Hyeja forgot she’d put them there, but I don’t know for how long, and I wondered if they could be considered biohazardous material … I scrubbed my hands after, just in case.” Jimin’s face does something right then — grave or giddy. “Maybe she’s cheating on you with another woman!”
“Maybe,” Jungkook says sardonically. He looks at Jimin through narrowed eyes, trying to decide if this is another one of his whimsical lies. “You’re saying these aren’t … yours?”
“Why would I plant used panties in your girlfriend’s car? What would I gain by doing that?”
“She isn’t,” Jungkook says, curt, for what feels like the five hundredth time. “And how do you even know that they’re … ?”
“‘That they’re … ?’”
“Used.”
Jimin scoops up the bag containing the underwear, plastic handles dangling from his pink fingertips. “You can do a sniff test if you don’t believe me, but I really think they could use a wash,” he says, waving the bag like a race queen with a checkered flag. Which is not a mental image Jungkook needs in his life right now.
Jungkook must make some kind of face — and how could he not, the thought of someone shedding their dirty underwear like their car is nothing more than a rest stop on the way to the laundry hamper is harrowing — because Jimin begins to loudly cackle.
“You’re lying,” Jungkook accuses, right back to his Min Yoongi theory. “You put them there.”
“It’s not going to suddenly become true just because you keep saying it,” Jimin says reasonably. “Please believe me when I say my panties are much prettier than these.”
Jungkook has no idea what to do with that, so he stands there and flaps his gums like a very stupid goldfish. Necessary losses. He is expending all of his energy trying not to put visuals to Park Jimin in ‘prettier panties.’ Prettier panties, what the hell does that even mean? Lace? Thongs? Lace thongs — ?
Lace thongs with kitty-cat tail attachments!
“Why do you always assume the worst of me, Jungkook-ssi?”
Jungkook has enough foresight not to say, Actually, I am assuming incredibly slu*tty things of you right now, Jimin-ssi.
He settles for, “Why were you searching for buried treasure in someone else’s car?”
“Dirty underwear hardly counts as treasure.”
“Can you please stop saying stuff like that?”
“Like what?” Jimin asks, as though he’s a blameless little angel boy.
“Like you inspected for DNA evidence!”
Jimin gives Jungkook an arch look. “You and your girlfriend need couple’s counseling,” he decides, his tone cheerful. “How do you have any fun together if you can’t even stomach the idea of stained underwear?”
“How many times,” Jungkook gets out, “do I have to say this? We. Aren’t. Dating!”
“Oh, really? Then what’s with the altar dedicated to you in her trunk?”
Jungkook’s eyes bug as he considers the very real possibility that his former coworker has been erecting secret shrines in his honor. Then Jimin ruins it all by starting to laugh, crinkly-eyed and with an endearingly off-center front tooth, and Jungkook can’t take another f*cking minute of it. He’s been launched past his threshold for earthly patience. He’s a ballistic missile, and the sudden onslaught of violent impulse that overcomes him tries without success to find an outlet.
He attacks Jimin with his eyes like some sort of insane person, looking for — something. An answer, a target, a landing place to lay waste to, anything at all. Jungkook sees those thick golden thighs, the bend of a laughing throat, pierced ears and pretty cheeks. Freckles. Fine-boned wrists. Stubby fingers with natural French tips, totally clean and long enough to lacerate. Everything he arrives at is worse than the thing that came before it. It all coalesces until it becomes one big blend of unbearable, the most beautiful creature that Jungkook has ever caught on his collision course.
Jungkook doesn’t think. He acts, ripping the dirty panty bag from Jimin’s grasp, tossing it into Hyeja’s car, and slamming the door shut, all before Jimin can do more than cry out, “Hey!” like a child who’s had their favorite toy taken away.
Jimin is a lot like a baby in this way; Jungkook is the bully sent to mete out punishment. It’s the path ordained by God — God being the flow of Jungkook’s arousal, the flow of his arousal being unidirectional, the direction being Jimin (J): 0° = 360°.
In seconds, Jungkook has Jimin shoved up against the side of Hyeja’s hood, cornered and dropped flat on his ass, his thick thighs hiked up. Jungkook steps in to rudely knee them farther apart, a perfectly defenseless splay that pulls Jimin’s tight denim even tighter. His combat boots are no longer touching the ground; now, they’re skimming Jungkook’s calves.
Then, because Jungkook has already come this far and his arousal is flowing in one single direction, he uses a big (tattooed) hand to clamp Jimin’s wrists together, palm-to-palm in the style of shackles. Or prayer, depending on your perspective.
Jungkook likes the look of them together: the tendons of his hand straining thickly, dark knuckle ink against Jimin’s thin wrists, his pink palms pressed tightly together, all of those silver rings glittering under the sun. Jungkook uses the captured wrists to wrench Jimin into a little arch of submission.
There. That should drive his point home.
(His point being, I am so f*cking horny right now.)
To Jimin’s credit, he doesn’t put up any kind of fight, spine rounding out agreeably. His sweet nipples pull higher, barbells bobbing on a big breath in, then out.
Something in Jungkook settles at the sight. Jimin, finally contained. Confined. Controlled. Restricted in the best, most efficient way possible. This is as the world should be, always, for the rest of time, until they’re both old and dead and future generations have long since succumbed to flesh-eating plagues.
Jimin flexes his stubby, pink-tipped fingers in Jungkook’s hold, testing out his new handcuffs with a thoughtful hum.
In response, Jungkook tightens his grip.
“Ow,” Jimin says, aiming a pout of betrayal up at Jungkook.
“Ow, what? Too tight for you?” Jungkook asks and jostles Jimin’s entire body by his fine-boned wrists, just to prove that he can.
It’s possible that Jungkook has gone mad with power.
“It’s hot on my butt,” is what Jimin ends up saying, which is not a sentence Jungkook had previously thought possible. Somehow Jimin’s pout gets poutier. Also possible, apparently. Miracles happen when you’re born with that much bottom lip. “Jungkook-ssi, I have sensitive skin …”
“What part of you isn’t sensitive?”
“Is that a reference to my gums?”
“It’s a reference to your siren nature.”
“Meaning, what?”
“Meaning it’s in your nature to appear delicate,” Jungkook says, thinking to himself, and divine, and alluring, and dangerous, and deadly. He delivers his final verdict: “You eat men’s faces off.”
“Oh,” Jimin says, as earnest as ever. “That’s true.”
Jungkook can feel his own pulse in the veins running up his co*ck. “Does it burn very badly?” he asks, still like an insane person.
“Yeah, really, super badly …” Jimin says, and there’s a whiny little catch in his voice when he says it.
Jungkook does not grind his erection against the side of Hyeja’s sun-baked car, but it’s a close thing. “Good,” he murmurs.
Jimin huffs. “You’re the most impolite customer I’ve ever met.”
“You’re barely even a car wash attendant.”
“I never claimed to be! I’m an off-duty angel,” Jimin says with utmost seriousness, “and a part-time pollinator fairy.”
“What the hell is a part-time pollinator fairy?”
“Just what it sounds like,” Jimin says. “A tiny woodland creature that moves pollen from one flower to another. Kind of like a bumblebee, but cuter.”
“You’re insane,” Jungkook says.
“Says the guy currently pinning his car wash attendant to the hood of a very hot car.”
f*ck. Okay, point.
“… Nothing is cuter than a bumblebee,” Jungkook says, just for something else to say.
“I am,” Jimin says, then pouts hopefully at him, like he’s waiting to be showered in compliments.
Jungkook closes his eyes. Nope. Still no higher powers willing to help him out. He opens them again and says, “You’re not a f*cking fairy.”
Jimin squints a little. “You’re not allowed to say that word to me.”
“Huh?”
“When you say it, it almost sounds hom*ophobic.”
“I am,” Jungkook says, summoning his final reserves of self-control, “going to kill you.”
“Not really helping the hom*ophobia accusations.”
“f*cking — I like boys,” Jungkook says, all in one rush, so he’ll never have to say it again.
Jimin bites his bottom lip, thinking this new piece of information over. “Then,” he ventures, bare legs starting to swing merrily, “you like me.”
He doesn’t even say it like a question. He says it like it’s an official ruling issued by the Supreme Court.
Jungkook doesn’t know what his face is doing right now. Something insane probably. Something that really communicates the depths of his fracturing selfhood. There Jungkook goes, slowly flaking away. Who is he in the face of such carnal rage? He is but a body buoyed by longing. And Park Jimin’s stupid f*cking pout.
Jungkook knows what it means to be god-fearing. He can feel his heart in his ribs. He can feel his ribs like a cage containing a wild, gnashing animal. He’s the animal. He’s the f*cking animal, pinning his car wash attendant to the hood of his not-girlfriend’s car.
“How many cars have you washed over the course of your very prolific career?” Jungkook says, in the quietest voice he’s capable of while standing opposite a sex demon.
“Probably six thousand and something,” Jimin reels off, with a complete straight face.
“And how many of those cars came with customers who wanted to kill you?”
Jimin’s swinging legs start to swing a little faster, a little merrier. “Just you.”
“Just me,” Jungkook whispers to himself, shaking his head. “I almost can’t believe it.”
“What about you?” Jimin says. “Is this a serial offense or am I your first victim?”
“If I’m killing, I’m killing you and you alone,” Jungkook says. After a pensive pause, he adds: “And then myself.”
Jimin nods his understanding. “Romeo and Juliet-style. Romantic.”
“That’s not how that story goes.”
“It’s not technically a story,” Jimin retorts, like a total nerd. “It’s a play.”
“Well, I slept through all of my literature classes and frankly, I don’t give a f*ck about the western canon,” Jungkook says.
Jimin arches a well-maintained eyebrow. “Is there anything you do give a f*ck about, Jeon Jungkook?”
Jungkook opens and closes his mouth, for a moment floundering. He says the first thing that comes to mind. That thing ends up being, “Coin karaoke.”
Jimin, whose wrists are still pinned to his chest like a little bouquet, throws himself backwards to laugh, throat exposed. It’s like he trusts Jungkook to catch him, to pull him up against the weight of his own incandescent laughter. Trusts Jungkook to be stronger than that laughter.
“Stop laughing,” Jungkook says.
“No,” Jimin laughs. “You’re so — funny, ah!”
Jungkook’s face flames, horrified at how flattered he feels by a compliment that might equally be an insult. “You — all you do,” he says, reeling Jimin back into his orbit by his delicate wrists, another firm shake to wake him up, “is kiss your weird kkangpae boyfriend on the clock!”
“That was before you’d booked my services! And it was a nice, friendly kiss to the forehead!”
Jungkook had been hoping for a swift denial, but oh well. “Tell me why you haven’t washed this car yet.”
“Well, as you can see, I was just about to get to that part, before you so rudely interrupted me.”
“‘Just?’ I just got off a six-hour shift,” Jungkook says. “What have you been doing all day?”
Jimin shrugs, framing his face with the pink-heeled hands Jungkook is still holding shackled together. “Being cute, being angelic, pollinating flowers, doing puzzles, snacking, getting pinned to cars by giant, tattooed thugs, umm, what else? Petting the cats … listening to the ocean … loving life … liking boys. Things like that.”
“Do you like — ?” Me. Jungkook cuts himself off with a teeth-grinding glower of embarrassment.
Jimin’s other eyebrow joins the first. “Do I like, what?”
“… Binggrae or Maeil banana milk more?”
“Hmm,” Jimin says, humoring Jungkook. “Maeil is cheaper, so I like that one more, but if you’re paying, I prefer Binggrae. Why? Are you going to buy me some to make up for manhandling me like a brute?”
“Why do you talk about me like I’m cut from the same kkangpae cloth as your stupid kkangpae boyfriend?”
“Why do you keep calling him my kkangpae boyfriend to my face?”
“Because your face annoys me and he was kissing it this morning,” Jungkook says.
“Why were you watching him kiss it, huh?” Jimin says and grazes Jungkook’s calves with his combat boots, a clear taunt. “Are you a weirdo? A stalker? A voyeur … ?”
“Because you owe me a f*cking wash — !” Jungkook shouts, shaking Jimin hard enough that he starts giggling all over again, cheeks pink, totally enthralled by the bound-and-roughed-up routine they’ve got going on. “What about that don’t you get? Do you think money grows on f*cking trees? Some of us actually have to bust our asses for our paychecks! Not all of us can afford to wag those asses to Beyoncé in tiny shorts … like —like a f*cking — puppy!”
Jimin starts giggling harder, gasping out, “What kind of puppies …” He’s red-cheeked now, head bobbling from the force of Jungkook’s jostling. “… wear tiny shorts and — and dance to … to Beyoncé … ah, I wanna see them … ! Show me! Quick!”
Jungkook makes a sound like a growl, squeezing down around Jimin’s wrists until bone is grinding against bone and Jimin has been dragged to the farthest edge of Hyeja’s hood, a rubbery-sounding burn of ass on metal. Jimin’s giggles give way to a yelp of what might be genuine pain. His legs flex against Jungkook’s hips, tightening for balance or comfort.
Jungkook can’t take much more of this. He can feel his dick throbbing, aching for the apex of heat it’s being smothered by right now, hard, rhythmic pulses of want. Any longer and he’s going to start thrusting to that rhythm, rubbing off until his mind has quieted and he’s shot off all over himself.
Jimin’s knee twitches, an accidental caress that comes nowhere near Jungkook’s dick, and Jungkook throbs harder. Madness.
One of his hands — the one not shackling Jimin — catches Jimin under the knee, pulling him higher, opening him up wider.
Jimin’s nipple piercings start to move faster, breath speeding up. His face is tipped up to display his surprise at this unexpected turn of events. His mouth is bright pink with balm and puckered like he’s tasted something sour. His freckles are infinite, gathered in small clusters beneath his eyes. His eyes are everything Jungkook has ever wanted, and Jungkook didn’t even know what he wanted until today.
He’s so beautiful it burns to look.
“Is this still a joke to you?” Jungkook whispers.
Jimin rolls his ankles inwards, until his boots are fondling the back of Jungkook’s thighs. “Yeah …” he whispers back.
“You don’t have anything else you want to say to me?”
Jimin lowers his eyes to Jungkook’s chest, seeming uncharacteristically timid. “Copycat,” he mutters.
“Sure,” Jungkook says, “but you don’t have any cats at all. You, Park Jimin, are a dirty little liar, and a scammer on top of it. You probably photoshopped all those cat photos. You probably saved them from a stock image website, then had your kkangpae boyfriend print them out for you, all so you could lure in a part-time idiot like me. Well, good job — congratu-f*cking-lations — because you got another provincial punk’s hard-earned paycheck out of itand now —”
At that moment, with what can only be described as cosmically comedic timing, a three-legged cat in (honestly) exceptional condition for its physical predicament wends its lazy way through Jungkook’s legs. He feels it before he sees it — a sinister brush with death, and then down his eyes go, to a mass of black and white fur, long tail whisking the air.
The cat butts its little head into Jungkook’s shin, loudly purring a greeting. It starts to rub its curved spine against the neoprene of his wetsuit.
Maybe cats are attracted to synthetic polymer. Maybe Jungkook is considered trustworthy by virtue of standing near Park Jimin, the alleged cat whisperer with a cat allergy.
“What the …” Jungkook whispers.
He doesn’t have the chance to finish this thought, because right then, Jimin hunches forward for a high-pitched sneeze, eyes screwed shut as he braves the unexpected sting from his sinuses. It’s over and done with in an instant, a falsetto —chuu! of a sound.
The aftermath lands almost entirely on Jungkook’s wetsuit.
A tiny wrinkle appears at the bridge of Jimin’s nose. He looks a bit like a chibi-style drawing of himself: doubly cute, pink splashed across his cheeks, his lips pursed for an allergy face-scrunch.
It is, Jungkook is alarmed to admit, the cutest sneeze he’s ever witnessed in his entire life. And he spent ages thirteen through sixteen babysitting germ-happy toddlers for his aunties.
Jimin makes a grumbly little sound like agh, the tip of his nose twitching. He follows the sneeze trajectory into Jungkook’s snot-sprayed chest, nose digging into Jungkook’s breastbone, near enough to probably detect his hammering pulse. Jimin leaves his face tucked there for a moment, rubbing his nose in little circles like it itches … or like he wants to smear his boogers around, maybe try to clean himself up before he has to face Jungkook again …
When he lifts his pink face back up, two things happen in quick succession:
1. Jimin sidesteps what should be an obvious apology for ruining Jungkook’s work uniform and instead says, in a voice like his nose is all clogged up, “That’s the first time you’ve ever said my name ... it sounded really good like that … Jungkook, your chest is seriously as hard as a rock, I can’t believe they let you wear this thing on the job, wouldn’t more people try to drown themselves so you’d save them … hey, see, didn’t I tell you we had cats? That’s Mulgogi, be nice and say hi to him —”
2. Jungkook does the most certifiably insane thing yet and catches Jimin’s open mouth with his own, snot be damned, lip ring digging in, hard and fast and with too much teeth by far, still holding Jimin up by his bound wrists, their noses mashed together uncomfortably so that Jungkook finally and intimately understands what it means to possess a button nose, not like his own at all, which his father has always called ‘commanding,’ and Jimin lets out a teakettle squeak of surprise that Jungkook mercilessly stifles with his tongue, and Mulgogi the cat is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand, the topic at hand being Jimin’s shocked mouth — so much mouth, Jungkook doesn’t know what to do with it all — and by the time Jungkook gets around to wondering what the f*ck it is he thinks he’s doing, he’s yanked himself free with a sound like … well, like two very wet-mouthed people pulling suddenly apart, a strand of spit caught between them, then ruthlessly severed.
Just like that.
Jungkook has no idea if that was five seconds or five minutes. Five years? His brain is broken.
Jimin’s mouth looks different than it did a second ago, though Jungkook isn’t sure how that should be possible. There’s a mark where Jungkook’s lip ring dug in too hard, like a little cut. Jimin’s eyes are wider than Jungkook has ever seen them. His face is a dewy pink. Every breath he pulls in is audible, a small huuh on the way out, like he has no idea what just happened to him or his body.
Jungkook can taste honey extract on his tongue. From Jimin’s lip balm, he thinks, which he’s probably now wearing all over his face. Jungkook can hear his own heart, a far-off drumbeat.
Oh no, he thinks, with slowly dawning horror. No, no, no, no. Wild, searing heat suffuses him in one disorienting assault. Did I just Lee Hyeja my car wash attendant?
Jimin fists his hands closed beneath Jungkook’s unforgiving grip, then unfists them slowly, fingers spreading, as if to relearn their use. As if to test them for sensation. His eyes won’t leave Jungkook’s eyes, pupils enormous.
“What?” Jungkook says, stupid and absurd and so defensive he feels five years old.
He knows— beyond a shadow of a doubt — that Jimin had enjoyed that, too. Enjoyed it in all the ways Jungkook did. Sure, yes, between the two of them, there had been so much lip going on that it would have seemed lush and petal-soft even if Jimin had gone as still as a bodhisattva sculpture, but! But! That was not a bandaid kiss! That was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, feverish and gasping, no f*cks given for any gangster boyfriends hanging out nearby!
Rescue breaths! On the fly revival! Yeah!
Jungkook had not imagined any part of that. He felt and heard the exact moment that Jimin opened his mouth wider, wordlessly asking for more, the wet click and sticky catch of too much lip balm suddenly split between them, and then there had been a timid little flash of tongue, like the first cool brush of a spring breeze. Yes, okay, Jungkook had flashed tongue first, but Jimin followed suit!
That was the part of the kiss where Jungkook surged forward with renewed vigor, using his own tongue to take a mean swipe inside of Jimin, forcing entry until things felt hot and slick and Jimin let out a small, near-silent sound of want against Jungkook’s top lip. So wanting it was almost a whine. So whiny Jungkook wanted to set it as his cell phone ringtone, listen to it every day on a loop, bottle it up and prop it on the edge of his desk like a little replica ship, a constant reminder of innovations of the sea. Siren nature and all.
Just to be sure, Jungkook replays the whole kiss in his head like a highlight reel. Then he replays it again, for posterity.
Then again, just because he can. Because it’s a memory he now owns.
He doesn’t think he’s ever kissed someone with so much mouth before. Previously, Jungkook would have thought it distracting. Overpowering, even, like a pungent smell. Except he can’t feel his own lips and all he wants is that little beak back on him again.
These things are impossible to misinterpret. Jimin had kissed Jungkook back! He had! Jungkook is not a Lee Hyeja! He’s not a Lee Hyeja with his kisses, ever! When he wants someone, he waits, and he reads the signals right! He doesn’t bet on losing dogs! This is not up for debate, so to act like it had only been life-changing in one single direction, to — to pretend at indifference when — when —
Jungkook opens his mouth to say all this and more, but then Jimin is casting a self-conscious look at his boots, still hooked around Jungkook’s knees, and whispering, “J … Jungkook … um, you’re not saying anything and … you keep looking at me crazy … and … I didn’t do anything wrong, so — so — but my butt’s really hot right now …”
Jungkook stares down at Jimin, ears ringing. Without thought, he’s thunking his forehead against one of Jimin’s shoulders and laughing, breathlessly relieved. Jimin is always assembling sentences in the least predictable order possible, and his meaning is never immediately clear, not until Jungkook sits with the words for a long while after. It’s like magic. Spontaneous spellwork or something.
“You weren’t saying anything, either,” he points out, lifting his head to give Jimin a look that he hopes isn’t too obviously and hopelessly romantic.
“Because you stopped me in the middle of saying something!” Jimin cries. “I was trying to introduce you to one of our cats!”
“Hello to Mulgogi,” Jungkook says, just to be polite, not taking his eyes off of Jimin for even a second.
“You’ve offended his kindness and now he’s hiding under your Lee Hyeja’s car!”
“Lee Hyeja is not my anything. We just work together,” Jungkook says. “And your Mulgogi was probably looking to nap somewhere cool. That’s why he went under there.”
“No, he went under there because you — you kissed the snot from my mouth when he was trying to say hi! And! And …” Jimin trails off, chest rising and falling at a rapid pace. Jungkook watches his little nipples twinkle from it. “And … I … I forgot what I was going to say. Oh! And I bet I tasted a bit salty because of it!”
That’s the grossest sentence that Jungkook has ever heard. “You did,” he says, starting to smile. “Like a sardine.”
Jimin groans, eyes fluttering shut like he’s mortally embarrassed by this knowledge. “Why would you do it right then … I gave you so many openings before that … Jungkook, I — I could seriously kick you right now!”
“You’re cutest,” Jungkook decides, “when you’re not trying to be cute. That’s why.”
Jimin shuts up at once. He stares down at the place where their legs are touching, lashes lowered. Then he lifts those lashes to shoot Jungkook a flirty little look. “What about when I’m trying to be cute? What am I then?”
“Then? You’re erotic,” Jungkook says, and he says it like an insult.
“It’s not fair that you made it so embarrassing for both of us,” Jimin mumbles, throat mottled pink. “It should only be embarrassing for you, because you did it in such an embarrassing way, stealing a kiss from me after I’d sneezed all over you …”
“Jimin,” Jungkook says and again, like magic, Jimin zips it and pays attention, snaggletooth peeking out from behind his fat top lip. “You liked it. Just like that. You liked it that way.”
“Yeah, but … but my butt is … so h … hot …” Jimin whispers shakily.
Jungkook nods, feeling stupid and enamored and like this is the strangest and most intense summer of his f*cking life. Never mind that June has only just begun.
“I meant that literally,” Jimin hurries to add. “Not like a self-compliment.”
“I know you did,” Jungkook says.
“Because you were holding me down really hard just a second ago. It felt like my ass was a pancake on a griddle …”
“Your ass could never be a pancake,” Jungkook says, with fervor.
Jimin, of all things, begins to go red from forehead to chest. Pierced chest. “I — thank you?” he says, whisper-soft.
Jungkook loosens his hold on Jimin’s wrists, reluctant to let go. “Turn around,” he says, because if not, he’s going to try to kiss Jimin again. Hard. “Let me look and see.”
“If my ass is a griddled pancake?” Jimin says. “Because it is. It really, really is!”
Jungkook tongues the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t tongue Jimin’s, and also so he doesn’t smile like a stupid, sorry sucker. “How bad your burns are.”
“Oh,” Jimin says, mouth shaping a little O of understanding. “Okay.”
Jimin pulls his wrists free and pushes off of the car, landing flat on his feet with a willing stumble. He tosses a doleful look over his shoulder halfway into his spin, like he hopes Jungkook won’t take advantage of his trust to do something totally heartless, like pants him or make his denim wedgie even worse. As if. Actually, neither of those are bad ideas, but not for reasons pertaining to bullying or embarrassment …
Jimin rests his elbows on the hood of the Hyundai, assuming a ninety-degree arch. He shuffles into it — tiny big-booted steps backwards to improve the curve of his spine, how far his fat little rump sticks out — in the manner of Hypothetical Jimin from Jungkook’s morning shift fantasies, except Jungkook had not been anywhere near creative enough to dress his twinky figment in shorts such as these.
These shorts are atrocious. They were probably once high-waisted jeans, given the perfectly good Levi’s label at the waistband, but then (Jungkook can only assume) Jimin started feeling a little frisky and took sewing scissors to the legs. That would begin to explain the fringed hems. That would begin to explain the cut of the waistline, sitting high and provocative on Jimin’s skinny hips.
There’s enough length to the denim to preserve Jimin’s modesty — meaning he isn’t flashing hole, thank f*ck — but so little that it’s not hard to imagine how much ass he has going on beneath. He has so much ass going on. Hazardous amounts of ass. It should be modeled on a magazine cover or a sex ed textbook.
At certain angles, especially sidelong, it looks almost comically large, like Jimin is in danger of tipping over from the undistributed weight of all that muscle and fat. Whoever gave him an ass this size, they were not thinking about his safety or his center of gravity at all. Now he’s too hopeless for contact sports. He’d flail backwards for sure if he tried out for a local basketball team.
Jungkook takes a generous step back, wanting to look his fill.
From this angle, Jimin’s ass looks deceptively nonthreatening, though no less magnificent. Jungkook can only see about one-fourth of those round, golden cheeks, twin curves that meet in the middle, and a middle that contains, somewhere beyond fringed denim, a small little whorl that Jungkook now dreams of f*cking open, a hip-screwing shove in to stretch that little whorl wide, and then wider still.
Jimin, like he can sense Jungkook’s bedroom eyes, centers himself with a small lean forward, chest skimming metal, and an even smaller flex of his smooth calves. It’s like he’s testing the solidity of the ground beneath his boots. Seeing if he can snag Jungkook’s attention, which is currently preoccupied with the muscle pulling taut beneath those denim hemlines.
Jimin says something.
What that something is, Jungkook cannot say for sure.
“Huh?” Jungkook says.
“I said,” Jimin says, “how does it look?”
“Honestly,” Jungkook says, “kind of illegal.”
“What?”
“… Like I’m about to be dragged away in cuffs.”
Jimin pushes his right shoulder into a dainty jut. He tucks his chin into that jut, slitting Jungkook a half-lidded look, pout unseen but suggested by the moody curve of his eyes.
He’s better than all the airbrushed idols on every one of those corner store magazine covers. He’s better than the pull-out-and-keep centerfold of a gentleman’s mag, made to be ripped clean and jerked off to. Jungkook feels lightheaded. He feels like a tomcat baited by a pretty kitty’s heat hormones.
This can only end in one of two ways:
1. Pregnancy (physiologically improbable)
or,
2. Cum tribute (way less improbable)
“You’re making it worse,” Jungkook decides.
“Huh? But how?” Jimin says, sounding distressed by this development. “Is it super red?”
“Uh …” Jungkook says, head co*cked, because he’d forgotten to check for that, and upon closer inspection, yes, Jimin’s ass and thighs are sporting two flaming red seat imprints from the hood of Hyeja’s car, oblong-shaped and impossible to miss.
Jesus. That looks painful. And delicious.
But, more importantly, painful!
But also … so good … and so deserved.
Jungkook does not know how he missed that. In all likelihood, it had looked completely natural to his brain, like playing one of those hidden object picture games. Jungkook has always sucked at those. Furthermore, Jungkook is staring at the Sistine Chapel of asses, a cornerstone work of godly creation, and he doesn’t even really believe in the existence of a god, so he can’t be blamed for overlooking otherwise obvious ass marks.
Jimin’s ass all marked up is a prophecy of biblical proportions. It’s written in the stars. Or cards. Or whatever. A second asteroid will one day strike Earth and wipe out life as they know it, the celestial body at the center of their universe will eventually implode — blah blah blah — and Jimin will soon be spanked for his sinful infractions.
It seems Jungkook is that guy. Eat your heart out, Min Yoongi.
“I can’t see it fully,” Jungkook lies. “You have to pull your shorts up higher.”
Jimin’s eyes narrow, but he complies without delay, shimmying the waistband of his shorts higher on his hips, so that his fat little cheeks start jiggling from it. It is an insignificant jiggle — not yet strong enough to register on the Richter scale — and yet it makes Jungkook’s Adam’s apple do an astonished bob.
“Like this?” Jimin says.
Jungkook thumbs the edge of his mouth, bowled over by what he’s seeing. “Little bit more.”
“Did you just wipe away your spit?”
“I had something in my teeth.”
“You didn’t even open your mouth …”
“I was trying to get it from the outside.”
Jimin makes a grouchy little harrumph sound and reaches back to pat his bright red ass with light pink palms, which is the worst thing that Jungkook has ever seen. Jungkook is not being hyperbolic. This takes the cake, the cake being Jimin’s godly ass. It’s also the best thing that Jungkook has ever seen, hands down. Hands literally down, though they could honestly be a bit lower, spreading those golden cheeks apart and showing off the tiny winking hole between.
f*ck. Jungkook has never felt this horny in his whole f*cking life.
“Jungkook, just …” Jimin whines. “Hurry and tell me if it looks bad!”
“Awful,” Jungkook croaks.
Jimin tries unsuccessfully to twist around for his own peek, straining at the neck. He smooths his palms up his thighs and then the rounded, half-moon hang of those heavy ass cheeks, testing the skin for sensitivity. Jungkook resists the urge to go, Yeah, squeeze them nice and tight, like some kind of sick pervert.
Jimin says, “Okay, but does it actually look awful? Can you take a picture so I can see?”
“It looks like you took twenty strikes from the spanking paddle,” Jungkook says, with revelatory weight.
Jimin pauses, hands no longer fussing, and flicks Jungkook an appraising look from under his bright red bangs.
“Twenty-five strikes,” Jungkook amends.
“You really do like boys, huh?” Jimin says.
That startles a chest-deep chuckle out of Jungkook. “How are you just now figuring that out?”
Jimin takes his hands back so he can return them to the hood of the car, the bottom half of his face momentarily hidden in his folded-up elbows. “Because you’re so rude to me,” he says into his arms, sounding sweetly vulnerable. “You have to say other stuff. Pretty stuff, all about me. You have to do that before you go in for a kiss, or else how will I know it’s not a mean prank …”
“It — you, right now, you look like a ten out of ten,” Jungkook says. A total kkonminam.
“No,” Jimin says, grouchy still. “Other stuff. Prettier stuff.”
“Eleven out of ten.”
“That implies that there are times when I look like a nine out of ten,” Jimin argues. “Or less!”
“How,” Jungkook says, “do you hear someone say you look like the best thing he’s ever seen and still find something to take issue with?”
“‘Thing — ?’”
“f*cking — you are so pedantic, you know that?” Jungkook says, shaking his head as a new wave of crazed laughter washes over him.
“And you’re terrible at expressing your feelings to ten out of tens!”
“Sometimes eleven out of tens.”
“Sometimes nines … ?” Jimin goads.
“Everyone has bad days, Jimin. Even the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Jungkook says ruefully.
Jimin stomps a foot. It makes his ass jiggle harder.
Jungkook drops his eyes to watch.
“Jungkook!”
Jungkook clears his throat and closes his mouth so it doesn’t catch flies. “Yes? What’s up, pretty boy?”
Jimin immediately retreats into the shelter of his arms. A second later, he’s coming back up for air. “You’re not pranking me?” he whispers, sounding (wait a minute) flustered.
“Do you get a lot of straight guys around here telling you that you have an abnormally spankable ass or something? Why is this so hard for you to believe?”
“… You didn’t say those words,” Jimin says. “You keep expecting me to read between the lines … your compliments do not come out sounding the way you think they do … they’re way less —”
“You have,” Jungkook says, with revelatory weight, “an abnormally spankable ass, Park Jimin.”
In answer, Jimin backs up two or three steps, gazing at Jungkook through his lashes. It reminds Jungkook of a show pony readjusting its stance, tail swishing. “You want to?” he whispers, ears starting to turn pink at the tips.
“Someone has to,” Jungkook whispers back. “For the good of humanity.”
“… That’s true,” Jimin mumbles, so subdued he almost doesn’t sound like himself.
Jungkook studies Jimin’s ass mole, a tiny dot of dark brown closer to his inner thigh than outer. “Does it sting? You were sitting on the hood for a long time.”
“You made me.”
“I did,” Jungkook agrees, not remorseful in the slightest.
“I can’t feel it too much at the moment … maybe if you hit it a little to wake it up … ?” Jimin suggests in a voice so quiet it borders on shy. Then his head burrows back into his crossed arms, like he’s actually shy about making this request.
Holy sh*t. Jungkook’s dick twitches, too smothered by wetsuit fabric to manage much more than that.
He reaches a hand down to adjust himself, his gaze glued to Jimin. His focus feels needle-sharp. Most days, it’s a challenge to maintain his concentration, even when the activity is pleasant and the environment plain. Today, Jungkook’s mind is steadfast, turned unerringly towards the little redhead wearing his not-girlfriend’s car on his ass. Jungkook has entered a flow state. He’s so totally in the zone that he could probably summon a shadow clone if he wanted to.
When he steps forward, he can feel the echo of his morning fantasy singing through his veins: Jimin bent over the side of a sun-warmed sedan, in f*cking distance of Jungkook’s giant dick. Except things are bone-dry in the real version of events. There’s no water, not beyond the ocean that neighbors the lot. No soap or squeaky sound effects.
Even still … Jungkook thinks he might start practicing manifestation after this.
“You know, I’ve never heard of this part falling asleep,” Jungkook murmurs, the front of his thighs brushing up against the back of Jimin’s, still bright red.
Jimin tenses at the touch, his thighs clapping closed like Jungkook has taken him by surprise. Muscle and fat ripples — smooth, hairless — before stilling.
“… Don’t do that again or I’ll want to hit it a lot harder.”
Jimin makes a small, beautifully erotic sound into his arms. One of his ankles twitches, an uncontrollable show of overstimulation. How, Jungkook doesn’t know. He hasn’t even done anything yet. The ankle straightens a second later, combat boot scuffing pebbles and pavement paint.
“Or is that what you want?” Jungkook murmurs.
“Jungkook,” Jimin whispers, reaching a hand back for Jungkook’s hip.
Jungkook catches that small hand, delaying its travels, forcing it to take a detour by the monstrous dickprint he’s got going on through his wetsuit. “Jungkook, what?” he says, closing Jimin’s cool, ringed fingers around his immodest bulge. He’s still throbbing. He never stopped. Jimin’s thumb immediately sweeps out, only too happy to explore the terrain, and it feels so f*cking good on his swollen co*ck that he almost lets his attention drift, almost leaves it at that, a gentle handjob through his work uniform. Almost. “Feel that?”
“No … I told you … I lost all sensation, I can’t feel anything right now …”
“In your hands, too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re squeezing my package quite nicely for someone who can’t currently feel his fingers.”
“Am I?” Jimin says, his pinky finger extended, and Jungkook’s feels a slow, long-nailed stroke up his shaft like an itch he badly needs scratched. “I had no idea I was doing that …”
Jungkook inhales through his nose. “You’re still doing that. Present tense.”
“Oh … sorry …”
“You’re a slippery little snake, you know that?” Jungkook says.
“Mm-mm. ’M a puppy-kitty.”
“You think if I make you an even brighter red, that’s gonna bring sensation back to your ass?”
Jimin flutters his lashes, looking out towards the foamy surf for a moment. “C … come a little closer, I can’t hear you too well like this,” he whispers, gaze skittering to Jungkook over his shoulder. Jimin is all guile. He’s the roiling body of water and Jungkook is the stupid, sorry sucker getting ready to drown. “The sea is being really loud right now …”
Jungkook wants more than anything to take his dick out and stick it where the sun don’t — can’t — shine. “Tell me,” he says, undeterred from his end goal, “what hitting you is gonna do.”
“I dunno …” Jimin whispers, starting to sound deliciously distraught.
“Well, if you don’t know, how am I supposed to, mn?”
“Because … because you know better than m — oh!” Jimin jolts forward, hand falling away as Jungkook steps in behind those devious hips, closing in hard, ass to dick, so hard that Jimin is knocked into the Hyundai from the momentum of the shove.
He fits himself and his big package nice and snug against Jimin’s bright red thighs, feeling out the smooth curve of his ass. Jimin and Jungkook’s lower halves interlock like two puzzle pieces made to come together. Barely any breathing room between. Thick, smothered dick to ruddy ass cheeks.
Jungkook glides an open palm up Jimin’s left thigh, coming to a lazy stop as he reaches the outer edge of the car imprint. Red hot. It’s slow to fade. Jungkook tilts back slightly to study ruined denim and the marked-up flesh beneath it, thumb teasing a fringed hemline.
“Did you turn these into shorts yourself?” Jungkook wonders aloud. “Or did you buy them this way?”
“Um, I …”
“Don’t lie.”
“I changed into them because …” Jimin says, in a way that skirts the question, that doesn’t make a lick of sense, not until he continues with a hushed, “… because … because what if you came back …”
Jungkook goes deathly still, his gaze narrowed in on the side of Jimin’s face.
Jimin’s face is starting to turn scarlet.
“And if I came back … ?” Jungkook says, low and thick with promise.
“Then … you had to see me like this …” Jimin whispers, fiddling with his layered silver rings. He twists one around his chubby little thumb knuckle, eyes averted. “I wanted to be prepared …”
“Prepared to flash your ass at me?”
“Mm, my legs …” Jimin whines protestingly. “They’re my best part.”
Jungkook makes a tch sound with his mouth. “Are you sure about that?”
“Um,” Jimin says, distracted by Jungkook’s disagreement. “My thick lips? I like that part, too.”
“Keep going.”
“And … my eyes? Or my pinkies … or … maybe my butt? My moles? My eyebrows?”
Jungkook hums his agreement, fingers starting to skate up and down the red border of Jimin’s right seat imprint. He watches his tattooed knuckles play against that sunburn-worthy flush, thinking to himself, this should be lotioned up, arnica cream or aloe vera maybe …
“… You didn’t say which one it was,” Jimin says in a small voice.
“It’s all of them put together,” Jungkook replies — to Jimin’s immediate pleasure, if the gradual loosening of his shoulders is anything to go by. The backwards sway of his sweet hips, almost drug-like, ass fat smothering Jungkook’s wild arousal. “I think you prepped well for me, Jimin. Very clever, using the ‘life is like a music video’ excuse.”
“It’s your punishment,” Jimin mumbles.
“My punishment,” Jungkook repeats, testing it out on his tongue. He can’t help it: he laughs. “You think putting on a show for me with your bare legs is in any way a punishment? What kind of lesson were you trying to teach me?”
“W — I didn’t know you’d end up touching them … I thought … you’d just look a little, then leave …”
Jungkook’s thumbnail digs into Jimin’s right ass cheek so hard it leaves a temporary crescent moon behind, white and then a slowly darkening pink. He palms the mark, head spinning, his dick so hard that for a moment he has no idea what he intends to do with it. A dick this hard can’t go anywhere good. It’s a safety hazard. Someone will die, maybe, or fall into a coma. Jimin, most likely, because he’ll be the one braving that dick.
“That’s a failure of imagination on your part,” Jungkook says. He runs the pad of his thumb across the new moon he’s made for Jimin. “Did you honestly think you’d be able to stop at a strip-tease? That I’d let you leave things like this? Look at you right now. When I touch you, you touch me back. When I say ‘bend over,’ you say, ‘how low?’ You want it too bad. No. You need it too bad. You were always going to end up underneath me.”
“Jungkook,” Jimin says and makes a tiny, accompanying noise that’s too filthy to be called anything but a moan.
Jungkook hums in answer. “This was your plan all along? Mn?”
“I … I was only gonna homewreck your relationship a little. Just a little,” Jimin says. “Then I was gonna be good again and call my kkangpae boyfriend back home.”
Jungkook reels back for a hard, sidelong crack! of discipline, letting the wide heel of his palm catch all of Jimin’s ass fat in an unforgivingly rosy jiggle — 8.5 on the Richter scale, at least. Jimin sways forward from it, a small cry spanked right out of his mouth as he buckles into the hood of Hyeja’s Hyundai, elbows sliding askew.
“You wanna try that again?” Jungkook says, inked-up fingers flexing.
All Jimin can muster in response is a breathless ha … ha … into the little fists holding the upper half of his body up.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“No,” Jimin whines, canting back for a desperate grind against Jungkook’s pinned-in-place co*ck, so much almost-sensation that Jungkook can’t help a small groan of approval, thighs tensing with the need to thrust forward, to dig in until he can go no deeper. “I … I …”
Jungkook boxes Jimin’s boots in with his cheapest sneakers, crushingly close, his dick pulsing against that denim-covered ass. “You, what?”
“I mean …” Jimin draws in a shuddery breath of air. “I meant to say my kkangpae sidekick … not my boyfriend …”
“Oh, did you? Well, that’s a common mistake to make, I’m sure.” Jungkook rests a hand against the soft outer curve of Jimin’s left thigh, a wordless threat. “And what other corrections would you like to issue?”
“And … um, I promise I’ll stop trying to ruin your relationship with Lee H —”
Jimin is slim-hipped and pretty, with more sex appeal than can be handled by the Haeundae-gu population alone. Jungkook is only doing his civic duty by clapping Jimin’s left ass cheek a better and brighter red, another hard spank to match the first. This one he deals with more finger than heel and therefore covers greater ground, the ripple of fat left alone, no hand to catch and still its sting.
Jimin’s knees go liquid like lifeless puppet limbs. His noises this time are louder, a sharp, climbing cry washed away by the sea.
Jungkook catches him around the waist before he can crumple to the hot concrete. “Feel your ass now?”
“I …” Jimin’s fists have been flattened against Hyeja’s beige hood, fingers outspread for balance. “Uh … um …”
“You put these shorts on for me? Mn?” Jungkook whispers, using his index finger to tug teasingly at one of Jimin’s belt loops.
“Y … yes,” Jimin whispers back, head hanging between his heaving shoulders.
Jungkook’s dick throbs so hard that he goes a little lightheaded. He feels insane. No, he is insane. “Look back at me when you say that.”
Jimin clenches his fingers back into little fists, his silver hoops stirred by a hard breeze coming in off the water. “Jungkook …”
“Look back at me, when you admit that you wanted me to walk up on you from behind,” Jungkook says, dragging a big palm up the slope of Jimin’s back, skimming mesh netting along the way, the ridges and bumps of Jimin’s bowed spine shivering for more, “while you wore these tiny little shorts.”
Jimin does that thing again — fast becoming Jungkook’s favorite — where he hides his pout behind the point of a bare shoulder, button nose digging in. The eyes he angles back at Jungkook are catlike, divine and man-destroying, fringed with thick dark lashes.
“I … I … I think I can feel my butt again,” Jimin says, muffled into the skin of his shoulder.
Jungkook scoffs, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. “Oh, so suddenly?”
“Yes, suddenly! It works again, and I can feel it really well now, so … so you can go home, you can take your big package away …”
Jungkook lets his gaze drift, lingering at Jimin’s firecracker red thighs, all the blood burned and slapped to the surface, framed by loose, dangling threads. His little mole seems to have become collateral damage, surrounded by tender, scalding hot flesh. “I think it could honestly be a little bit redder, don’t you?”
“Nooo,” Jimin whines, in a way that implies, yesss, please. He rolls his left hip out, ass cheek pushing back for another sly grind against Jungkook’s dick. “You should treat it prettily …”
“Pretty this, pretty that,” Jungkook says and clucks his tongue in reproach. “There’s nothing prettier than me popping you on the ass like you deserve.”
Jimin’s eyelashes flicker, a spasm of disbelief. “I deserve it?”
“More than anyone,” Jungkook murmurs.
Jimin’s nose scrunches up where it’s digging into the slender line of his shoulder, as if, only a few centimeters lower, he’s smiling something furtive. He dips his head down, hiding the look in his eyes like he doesn’t want Jungkook to see it, to catch onto another one of those five million secrets.
Jungkook wants to yank his head back up by a fistful of bright red hair.
His line of thinking is interrupted by a faint, “Oppa!”
For a moment, he thinks his brain is playing tricks on him. He straightens up like he’s been struck. “What did you just call me?”
“Huh?” Jimin says. “I didn’t call you anything.”
Jungkook shakes his head. “I swear I heard you say ‘oppa’ just now …”
Jimin scoffs, a sound of pure scandal. “You wish!”
Jungkook’s face begins to warm. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” he says, because he only wishes Jimin on himself, and because if Jimin were fraternizing with Jungkook’s enemies, Jungkook would have to stoop to Min Yoongi’s gangsterly level and start pointing metaphorical pistols at people.
“Hm. It must be the angels I manage,” Jimin says, wriggling his ass more tightly in place, right up against the blood beating at Jungkook’s big dick. “They’re blessing our skinship … they’re praising you for a job well done … right now, they’re flying around and playing golden trumpets …”
“You call this skinship?”
“Uh-huh, I do,” Jimin says.
Jungkook lets his thumbs bite into the dip of Jimin’s skinny hips. “I don’t understand how you can talk like this.”
“Like what?”
“In pout.”
Jimin smooths a small hand over Jungkook’s knuckles, nudging them towards his tummy and across the shallow well of his belly button. “I just open my mouth and it comes out like that,” he says, seeming radiantly pleased with himself. “Jungkook, should I pierce this part here, too? What should I get? A diamond butterfly?”
Jungkook lands a light smack to Jimin’s right ass cheek, refreshing his first, enjoying the ripple of fat that catches against the heel of his callused hand. He wonders what it feels like from Jimin’s end, tough skin on endlessly soft jiggle. From Jungkook’s end, it feels heavenly, a hot bath to unlock the body’s worst tension, a fidget toy for restless fingers. He thumbs Jimin’s under-cheek crease, quick and rough and a bit too possessive, humming with a pleasure all his own.
“For me,” he murmurs, “I just open my hand and it ends up like this.”
Jimin drops his forehead onto his wrist, hips shoving back. “H … aah …”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Jimin whispers, in a flawless call and response.
“Jungkook-oppa!”
Jungkook’s head shoots up. “That’s —”
Jimin glances back, bangs caught at his sweaty temples. “Lee Hyeja?”
For a moment, Jungkook can’t make sense of that name in this context. She shouldn’t exist here. When he crosses over into this parking lot — the veil between his reality and its Jimin-controlled twin, evil and lustful and full of so many surprises that Jungkook is dizzy from it — he’s leaving behind everything from before. His lookout tower. Seo Woong. The mother and father living in Saha-gu, who just want to see Jungkook happy.
Jungkook doesn’t know what word he would use to describe his day today, but it’s more than he’s ever had at once, so much feeling that he doesn’t know where to put it all. His senses are a profusion of Park Jimin. Jimin beneath Jungkook’s punishing hands and Jimin sticky with balm against Jungkook’s mouth and Jimin inventing new piercings for himself on the fly. Jimin’s dimples and suntan and blow-dried hair. Jimin, good and soft and sweet for it, the smack of his apple red ass cheeks, his flexing calves, the burns he endures for Jungkook against the hood of an unwashed car. Incandescent laughter and tiny moans.
Jimin can’t belong to anyone but Jungkook. Not even Lee Hyeja. Especially not Lee Hyeja. It’s a violation of all known laws— written, unspoken, assumed. All of it. Everything.
“That’s not Lee Hyeja,” Jungkook says, more to himself than anything.
Jimin’s gaze is somewhere past Jungkook’s shoulder. “Um, it is.”
“It can’t be.”
“I think it really, super is … unless you know another girl who wears a visor with a lifeguard check on it?”
Jungkook swears colorfully.
“Jungkook-oppa! Oppa, hey!” he hears, the brisk thwap of footsteps gaining on them now. “Oppa, that’s you, isn’t it? It’s me!”
“You better go say hi to her,” Jimin stage-whispers.
“Ah, I’m so glad I was right! I thought I recognized you, but I wasn’t sure what you were doing next to my car!” Hyeja calls.
When Jungkook swivels around to face her, he takes Jimin with him, yanking his little body upright and locking them together from shoulder to waist and then from ass to groin. He belts one big arm across Jimin’s belly, pinning him in place, because if Jungkook is going down, he’s not going down alone, and since he’s currently sporting an erection of undisclosed length while wearing a uniform that would make this fact obvious —an erection hard enough to cut steel — there are only so many courses of action he can take here.
Hyeja pulls up short at the sight that greets her, crossbody bag rebounding off of her hip from the stalled momentum of her jog. Jungkook can’t see her eyes all that well, shaded by the brim of her visor, but he can see the way her mouth falls open, stunned.
There’s big, broad-shouldered Jungkook, dressed as usual in his red and black wetsuit, and then there’s the slender, golden-skinned kkonminam caught in his embrace, the very one that Jungkook’s bulky body had been eclipsing from view just a second ago. He tries to think of a succinct explanation: don’t mind us, we were just working on a crossword puzzle together … no, we were inspecting your hood for cosmetic damage … what I mean is, I owed my friend here a back massage … I was definitely not trying to spank my way into his pants — homemade short-shorts — uh …
Jimin lifts a hand to wave at Hyeja.
Jungkook catches Jimin’s hand mid-wave and pins it viciously across his mesh-covered chest, hoping to spare Hyeja the worst of those sparkly areolas.
“Hey,” Jungkook says, trying for nonchalant. He counts his breaths until they begin to slow, a conscious comedown from the sex-crazed panting he was doing a minute ago.
“Why do I have to be here for this part,” Jimin whispers up at Jungkook, voice sulky.
Jungkook does not deign to answer, because the only answer Jimin needs is jabbing him in the ass at this very moment.
“Oppa, hi,” Hyeja says and reaches up to straighten her white visor, a pom-pom keychain swinging from her grip. “Um, I was gonna see if you’d already had lunch …”
Jimin directs an unimpressed look Jungkook’s way — jealous? Jungkook thinks, kind of thrilled by the sudden role reversal. He makes a mental note to revisit this topic later.
“Actually,” Jimin says just then, “Jungkook hasn’t had any —”
Jungkook slaps one of Jimin’s pink, ringed hands over his yapping mouth, silencing him. “He’s gonna try to tell you I haven’t had enough vegetables to eat today, but he’s lying,” Jungkook says. “Don’t listen to him. About anything. Ever.”
Jimin thrashes free gasping, his little hand fisted in the air. “All he eats is fried chicken noodles and banana milk! He comes here every morning to pet the stray cats and pick up his breakfast!” he bursts out, sounding vengeful. “How can he have a body that looks like this!”
Jungkook and Hyeja start laughing at the same time. It’s so eerie that Jungkook’s mouth snaps shut on instinct.
He’s sharing a laugh with his kind-of coworker at his twink-to-be’s expense. Six or so hours ago, Jungkook was trying to talk himself into dating Hyeja. Now, he’s dead set on filthy gay infidelity sex with his car wash attendant. Cooking up new ideas for that sex. Spearheading those ideas, even. Suggesting new directions for their foreplay, to hell with Min Yoongi the TV gangster.
Reality is getting stranger and stranger by the second.
“I’m not a cat person,” Jungkook says to Hyeja, hoping to demonstrate that Jimin is in fact a pathological liar.
“I’m making him into one,” Jimin says, also to Hyeja. “He’s a work-in-progress and his children need him.”
“But to answer your question, I’ve already eaten,” Jungkook says, even though that’s a total fabrication and his bento boxes are currently going warm in the passenger seat of Hyeja’s car. He prays his stomach stays quiet for this next part.
“Oh, but weren’t you just saying you’re still hungry?” Jimin says, revising in real time.
“Hungry for company, yeah,” Jungkook says.
“The company of a coworker, I assume,” Jimin says.
“I’m really quite full and currently catching up with a friend — as you can see,” Jungkook says to Hyeja, straight through his teeth.
“He is not full,” Jimin says and extends an index finger for emphasis, wrist still clasped in Jungkook’s big, tattooed hand. “Look how big he is. He can fit a lot more in there than just fried chicken noodles! Boys like him, they need to eat a lot to maintain their physique. Me, I have to stop at six chicken wings or my face will look puffy the next morning. Why don’t you and him go grab—”
Jungkook gives Jimin’s dimpled back a censuring pinch through his tank and Jimin cries aiya! in a mournful tone of voice. It makes Jungkook bite back an idiotic smile. “You need more meat on your bones,” he says to Jimin.
“I think I might have a little extra saved somewhere,” Jimin says and nudges his hips back, not quite a grind, just a subtle shift of toned ass muscle right where Jungkook is hardest.
Jungkook rushes to think of something horribly unsexy: bugs, bad cooking, Yoongi and Jimin’s hypothetical shotgun wedding.
Hyeja shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “I guess I didn’t realize you’d be hanging out with a friend today,” she says. “Oppa, my apologies for interrupting.”
“No worries,” Jungkook says, as if everything is completely normal and he isn’t back-hugging Jimin like his life depends on it — which it kind of does. He says it in the tone of voice used for anyway, you can see yourself out now, thanks.
Jimin steps on the toe of Jungkook’s left sneaker.
Jungkook clears his throat, kicked right back into his manners. “Why, what have you been up to today?” he says and tries really hard to sound like he cares about the answer.
“Not too much. I grabbed a smoothie with my noona and then we walked around and looked at clothes for a bit. I couldn’t even take my sunglasses off in the stores. No amount of hydration prepares you for a hangover, I guess …” Hyeja says, trailing off as she tilts her head, eyes bypassing the back-hug to start investigating Jimin’s skimpy top.
Jimin glances down with her, like he has no idea what could be so interesting about his choice of wardrobe.
Again: Jungkook doesn’t think. He snaps into action, promptly clamping his hands over Jimin’s nipples, hiding the ostentatious display from inspection. It’s what he should have done this morning. Jimin’s nipples are in need of constant saving — from everyone, everywhere. Yoongi and Hyeja and Jungkook, too. Jungkook especially. They’re weapons of minor destruction.
If Jimin is the Little Mermaid, Jungkook’s hands are definitely his clamshell bra cups.
“Ahem,” Jimin says down to Jungkook’s hands. “Can I help you with something?”
“Ahem?” Jungkook repeats. “What, you got a tickle in your throat? No? Then quit messing around.”
“How am I messing around?” Jimin says and hooks his stubby little fingers through Jungkook’s until they’re all tangled up together at his pointy tit*. “Unhand me, you big thug. I’m labeled ‘fragile’ for a reason.”
Before, it had bothered Jungkook to have a comparison drawn between him and Min Yoongi. Thug, brute, manhandle. Now, it’s every instance of Jimin referring to Jungkook’s hands or arms as big, his body as giant, like Jimin thinks Jungkook exists to redirect his violence towards taming the tiny body in his arms. Like Jungkook is only fulfilling his nature by being big, and by bringing that bigness near to Jimin’s small.
Jungkook says, “You’re labeled ‘pain in the ass,’ actually.”
“Actually,” Jimin says, gloriously smug, “the only person with a pain in their ass right now is me and that’s because —”
“Hyeja, what was it you were saying?” Jungkook says over the sound of Jimin’s laughter.
“Uh,” Hyeja says, “well, I saw oppa’s text from earlier. Since noona and I were already hanging out near the beach, I thought I’d walk over to check on the car and see if the surprise was ready. I didn’t realize you’d also try to check on it … though I guess I was hoping I might run into you along the way …”
Surprise?
Jungkook stares, not understanding. Then the events of his morning rush back in.
Leaving Hyeja’s sedan in this parking lot at six AM. Stalking the half kilometer to his lookout tower. Changing right there in the sand, in full view of the pro surfers. Seething over the mental image of Jimin and Yoongi all alone together, doing unspeakable things to each other’s bodies. Seo Woong walking to their ladder at a backwards saunter and going, Wow, I’m not the only one late for once? Things are looking up, bro!
Jungkook hadn’t felt that angry in a long time. Now, he recalls pulling his phone out and shooting Hyeja a Kakao message, too bitter to resist. let me know if your car looks any different when u pick it up today, he’d sent, subtle enough that it wouldn’t raise any suspicions one way or another. there may be a surprise waiting for u. He followed this up with the corner store’s address.
“Oh,” Jungkook says. “Right, that … yeah …”
Jimin tips his head back to gaze spitefully at Jungkook, like, your actions have put us in this situation. Because of you, my ass is going unspanked right now. Everything ever is your fault and not mine. Meow.
Jungkook stares back in a way that says, Min Yoongi wishes he were me right now, fondling these perfect little tit* in the name of corporal punishment. Woof.
Did Jungkook need to message the corner store location to Hyeja at six in the morning? No. Was that message one domino in the butterfly effect that’s led them to this public nipple torture? Probably, definitely, most certainly.
Therefore … you’re welcome, Park Jimin.
But also: thank you, Park Jimin.
It’s only because of this pretty boy that Jungkook now recognizes his own knack for exhibitionism. Jungkook did not think he was capable of public filth. Jungkook didn’t even think he liked nipples all that much, but clearly his hands have an agenda of their own right now.
With that thought, he lets the pad of one of his middle fingers catch on a silver barbell, flicking it into a private little bounce behind his cupped palm.
Jimin’s hips kick back hard from the shock of stimulation. “A — aw, that’s such a nice — story!” he says, so loud and so emphatic that Hyeja actually jumps a little. “You should definitely check on your car! I’m sure Jungkook’s surprise is ready and waiting for you!”
Jungkook gives Jimin’s right nipple piercing a quick, hard tug, then pauses to greet the tiny brown nub holding that piercing in place. He circles it a few times over, feeling it firm up and start to stick out harder. Jimin lets out an undignified squeak, shoulders curling inwards as if to stop a sudden burst of pain. So sensitive …
“Are you okay?” Hyeja says, sounding slightly concerned.
“Yes, of course!” Jimin says, then sags forward like a Victorian lady prone to fainting spells.
“He’s sensitive to the heat,” Jungkook says in explanation, and pulls Jimin up so he can lean his weight back against Jungkook’s chest.
“I’m a siren,” Jimin mumbles, dazed. “Everything is sensitive — delicate? I don’t know.”
Jungkook nods to corroborate this claim.
“Are you sure? Maybe we should take him over to the shade?” Hyeja says.
Jimin waves the suggestion away. “Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine! Just a little embarrassed, that’s all! I don’t usually show off like this, since I have a few tattoos and things like that. How rude of me.” He lets a pause build before adding, “Thankfully, there’s someone here to keep my secret safe!”
Jimin’s candy red hair keeps blowing back into Jungkook’s face. His shampoo smells like green tea, or maybe ginseng. There’s the suggestion of something spicy and also something sweet. It makes Jungkook’s dick feel heavier, Jimin’s subtle scent profile and delicately built body. He leans in for a discreet sniff, his eyes slipping closed.
“You should be embarrassed, flashing cleavage at unsuspecting customers like this,” he murmurs into Jimin’s ear, mouth barely moving.
Without looking at Jungkook, Jimin reaches back and swats his hip.
Jungkook gropes Jimin’s tight little tit* harder, feeling wolfish and way cooler than Min Yoongi by far. His nonexistent nails snag on the mesh netting of Jimin’s tank-top. Jungkook can feel the cool, rounded touch of titanium barbells nestling into his palm’s life lines, predicting his future. This, and this, and — oh, yeah — more of this.
Jimin jolts, nipple piercings scraping at Jungkook’s palms. He almost tramples Jungkook’s foot in his surprise. “Ah — aigoo!” he says, his voice climbing an octave. “Careful!”
“Don’t mind him, he has poor balance in these shoes,” Jungkook says, and finally feels like he understands why Jimin lies so much. It’s kind of fun. “But big boots make him feel taller, so he keeps wearing them anyway.”
“Oh, well — you shouldn’t worry about me or my opinions!” Hyeja says, flapping her hand at Jimin. “I totally love tattoos. I would never think to judge someone over something like that.”
“Still, it’s best if we preserve his modesty,” Jungkook says, “or no one will want to marry him after this.”
“You’re one to talk, walking around looking the way you do!” Jimin exclaims. To Hyeja, he says: “People want to marry me all the time, everywhere I go, every day of my life. If you lined them all up, they would wrap around the planet twice over.”
“I can’t believe you’re single,” she says to Jimin, eyes wide. “I mean, look at you!”
“I know, right?” Jimin says, doing his adorable dimple routine. “But girls don’t seem to like me like that. I have no idea why.” Then he throws his head back, landing himself in the cradle of Jungkook’s clavicle, his bottom lip firming up for a fake pout.
“W … wow,” Hyeja says, fumbling for something to say in response, perhaps starting to do the math in her head — that people want to marry me all the time and girls don’t seem to like me like that are two totally contradictory statements. Unless you do the long division, in which case, those two statements make perfect sense side-by-side and Jimin is a man-eating twink with terrible powers of bewitchment. “Well, maybe they’re just a little confused about whether you’d like them back? You should be forward with them if you’re interested in dating!”
“Ah, really, you think so?” Jimin says. “But how should I do that?”
“Um, well,” she says, scratching at her temple with the hand holding her pom-pom keychain. “Just … try out things that would take them by surprise, I suppose. Pay for their food, pour their drinks, walk them places, do things that make it clear you want to take care of them. Then, if you feel confident, you can even go in for a first kiss.”
“What, like on the mouth?” Jimin says, mock-scandalized. “Just lean in out of nowhere, even if it seems wrong or out of place? But what if it turns out embarrassing? What if our teeth knock together, or one of us has boogers or something like that?”
Jungkook goes still, smiling with teeth to prove he totally doesn’t want to rend the fabric of Jimin’s tank-top right now, then bend him over for a good hard spanking.
“Sure, if the mood is right,” Hyeja murmurs, turning her head towards the noisy surf. In profile, Jungkook can see her pin-straight ponytail. He can see the patch of pink skin at her nape, her mascaraed eyelashes and pom-pom keychain. It’s suddenly so obvious Jungkook wants to laugh: she’s destined to date anyone in the world but him. “Embarrassing first kisses are alright, if both people like each other enough. Someday you might even laugh about it together.”
Jimin makes a considering noise in the back of his throat. “But what if one of them is already dating someone who dresses like a street thug and drives a Hyundai Excel? What then?”
Jungkook delivers a firm, stinging smack to Jimin’s left thigh, and when that earns him a wide-eyed stare from Hyeja, says, “Mosquito,” in explanation. To Jimin, he says: “You’re welcome.”
Jimin makes a face and rubs the spot on his thigh where he was just smacked; that face looks indignant and delighted in equal measure. “Sorry, so impolite of me to ask you this late into our conversation: your name is Lee Hyeja, isn’t it? Jungkook talks about you a ton!”
Jungkook scowls down at Jimin.
“Ah, really?” Hyeja says, face going pink.
Jimin hums in the affirmative, saying, “To be honest, you give much better advice than he does. Look how I’m treated by him! Only ever scolding me, and hitting me, and ordering me to stop hanging around scary-looking boys.”
Hyeja lets out a good-natured laugh. “Jungkook-oppa is just looking out for you, I’m sure. Maybe those scary-looking boys are the ones sending all the girls running.”
“But he’s so scary himself! He has no leg to stand on!”
“Who, Jungkook-oppa?” she says, surprised by this character assessment. “But he’s not scary at all? Look at his face!”
“You must not have seen him mad before,” Jimin says, with a long upward glance that makes Jungkook’s belly feel molten-warm. “Really mad. It makes my palms sweaty when he gets like that — so mean! Anyway, the first time I saw him, I thought for sure he was a hyung, because he has that kind of older boy swagger.”
Jungkook feels his own face starting to go pink. He opens his mouth to say, Seriously, you thought that? before deciding he’s not ready to let go of this particular illusion just yet.
“Oppa is mean?” Hyeja says, baffled.
“Jungkook is sooo mean, to me especially. When he gets really mad, he starts cursing and hitting like a kkangpae character from television. Even harder than the mosquito-swatting from before. It leaves me red all over, since I have super sensitive skin,” Jimin says, then snickers from the flattery of Jungkook’s gigantic dick jerking against his ass. “He doesn’t even dress up nicely to come see my parents with me in Saha-gu! He wears his work uniform to the dinner table. If he doesn’t stop, I’m gonna go harass him at his watchtower.”
“Ah, you two must be very close then.” Hyeja nods like she’s finally cracked the code. “If you visited Jungkook-oppa during his shifts, he’d probably be less cranky. I’ve never seen him truly angry, but cranky … ? He was like that a lot during our shifts last season. He only ever has patience with kids.”
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Jungkook says philosophically.
“Then, Jungkook,” Jimin says, voice conspiratorial, “shall I come visit you at work? Would it make you less cranky?”
“Would probably make me more cranky,” Jungkook says, eyelids lowering on an indrawn breath, all Jimin.
Sea and sand and expensive lotion, too. Green tea and ginseng. Maybe Kiss Kiss Lip Essence Balm. Maybe Jungkook’s mouth on Jimin’s mouth, a leftover shadow of sensation, indents left behind by his piercing. If Jimin visited Jungkook at work, people would start drowning on his watch; Jungkook would be too focused on trying not to f*ck his kkonminam to save the helpless citizens of Haeundae-gu.
“Then I’ll come,” Jimin says, as sweet as ever.
Jungkook does everything in his power to ignore the double entendre. “You’d have to walk half a kilometer to get to me.”
“I’ll walk it well,” Jimin vows.
“Sand will get in your shoes.”
“I’ll take them off along the way.”
“Your bare feet will burn.”
“Burnt is good sometimes,” Jimin says to Jungkook, a secret shared.
Jungkook’s fingers twitch at Jimin’s pointy nipples. “The … breeze will get stuck in your styled hair.”
“I like it that way. Just like that,” Jimin says, grinning at his coy little reference to Jungkook’s post-kiss commentary. You liked it. Just like that. You liked it that way.
“Do you really?” Jungkook murmurs.
“Yeah, I do,” Jimin breathes and his throat starts to elongate for a shivery pant. His next words are a whisper carried away with the wind: “Tighter … t … there …”
Jungkook ducks, resting his teeth against a patch of skin at Jimin’s nape that looks unimaginably bitable. “Jimin-ssi.”
Jimin rolls his hips back, shellshocked and half laughing, and then Jungkook has no choice but to catch those hips mid-roll, two arms sliding together to stop Jimin from doing something unseemly, like making Jungkook come his brains out in his work uniform while Lee Hyeja stands there and does not do the long division to put two and two together. Addition. Subtraction. Whatever. Jungkook doesn’t give a f*ck about math, simple or otherwise.
Both of their heads whip up when they hear, “Oh, I love this idol! Is this his newest cover?”
“It is!” Jimin says. “Feel free to look through it!”
Hyeja pages through the issue, stopping to skim the interview. “Oppa, how do you and your friend know each other?” she says, glancing at them over the magazine. “You haven’t even introduced us yet, you know.”
“We …” Jungkook says.
He has no idea how to fill in the rest of the sentence. How does one even begin to summarize the events of this morning, starting with I was scammed into paying for a fake car wash by an old geezer, which I then agreed to pay for a second time due to dopamine-induced mental images of another man’s boyfriend, and ending with, I still haven’t received the wash I paid for, but I don’t think I really care at this point, in fact, I am seconds away from dropping this kkonminam’s shorts and fingering him to kingdom come, then inviting him back to my place for a second round.
Jungkook stares into the middle distance, saying nothing.
“We used to be dance partners,” Jimin supplies right on cue.
Jungkook glances down at Jimin’s monster glutes. Sure, yeah, that checks out.
“I didn’t know you danced, Jungkook-oppa?” Hyeja says. “Do you two still perform together?”
“We’re excellent at performing together,” Jimin says with a single nod, which is definitely a euphemism, and for a moment Jungkook is distracted by the instant endorsem*nt of their hypothetical sex life. True. So true.
“Ah! That explains it then,” Hyeja says. “You two act so comfortable around each other.”
False. Jungkook is currently uncomfortably erect and would prefer to take care of that behind closed doors. Exhibitionism has to end somewhere.
“To let you in on a little secret, we were just practicing for a pas de deux,” Jimin says, already taking off in another direction entirely. “Have you ever heard of dancing en levrette? Very famous among the French!”
Hyeja lowers the magazine a centimeter, eyebrows wrinkling. “I don’t think so? Can you use it in a sentence?”
“Faire l’amour en levrette,” Jimin says, with a frankly impressive accent.
Jungkook blinks down at him, fascinated. So Jimin knows French. Another one of those five million secrets unlocked. At some point, Jungkook should try to translate that, but right now, he has bigger things to worry about (mainly, his painfully hard dick).
“Oh, no, I meant a translated version,” Hyeja says.
“Hm, how should I put it?” Jimin pretends to think about it, poker face out in full force. “In classical ballet, it’s a major area of technique that utilizes the glutes and thighs, as well as the forward momentum of the dominant partner. Typically, the pas de deux is performed by a man and a woman, but Jungkook and me, we’re all about breaking down barriers together.”
“Wah, how impressive!” Hyeja says, giving a polite clap through the magazine she’s holding. “Oppa, did you study contemporary, too?”
Oppa — ? Since when did Jimin become ‘oppa?’ Jimin is so not an oppa. He’s barely even a hyung. He’s a baby-turned-brat. Ageless, alluring. Full of love and golden light. Too devilish to be anything but the body Jungkook bullies. Too gay to ever go near another girl like that. No girl should be allowed to refer to Jimin as oppa, especially not in those over-the-top cutesy tones. It makes Jungkook’s skin crawl.
Jimin flicks Jungkook a look, eyes dancing. “Yeah, oppa, did you?” he says, honey-sweet.
Wait, what? Had Hyeja been talking to Jungkook?
Jungkook blinks several times in quick succession, uncomprehending. “Huh?” he hears himself say.
“Hyeja asked if oppa also studied contemporary dance,” Jimin says, doing it again. That thing that he just did with his mouth, and his words, and his eyes.
What? What the — what the hell did Jimin just call him?
Jungkook feels his belly bottom out with — shock, or scandal, or bloodlust. One of the three. No, all of the above.
This is infinitely worse than when he thought Hyeja had called Jimin oppa. Jungkook doesn’t know how, but it is. It just is. So much worse. Jungkook breaks out in gooseflesh on the spot. Whatever he’s feeling, it’s the opposite of skin-crawling. There is no name for this emotion. It hasn’t even been invented yet. His dick doesn’t know what to do with itself. His head is a snarl of ten different directions he could take this situation, each more depraved than the last.
He wants to shove Jimin forehead-first into the hood of the Hyundai and spank him until he’s sobbing, screaming out an apology. He wants to force Jimin into a kneel on the hot, uneven gravel, then f*ck his mouth over the sound of the sea. He wants to make Jimin strip, one article at a time, while the whole world watches, and Jungkook stands there palming his own pulsing dick, saying, “Slower, show off those little nipples. Touch them. Give those barbells a nice hard tug for us.”
Jungkook prods the inside of his cheek with his tongue, contemplating violence. “Cut that out,” he says, so low that for a second he’s not sure Jimin has heard.
Then Jimin co*cks his head, playing dumb, his freckled face turned in for a private moment with Jungkook’s throat. “Cut what out?”
“You know what,” Jungkook murmurs.
“Hm?” Jimin hums innocently. “Oppa doesn’t like it when I use jondaemal around him? But I’m just trying to pay respect to my elders?”
Jungkook feels his hearing go out.
Hyeja holds a hand over her mouth, back to being bright pink, though this time it seems to be the secondhand embarrassment of Jimin’s incorrect honorific that’s caught her off guard. “Um,” she says.
Jungkook wheels the two of them around in short order, giving Hyeja the wide expanse of his back through his wetsuit. He bends forward slightly, bringing his mouth close to Jimin’s ear, and says, tone deeply forbidding, “One more time — what was that?”
“Ah, your hair tickles!” Jimin says, jerking minutely in his hold, trying and failing to stanch a small, instinctive giggle. Then, because he’s a little devil in tight denim and clearly loves being spanked for his behavior: “Why is she allowed to call you oppa, but I can’t?”
Why? Why? Is he seriously — ?
“And anyway,” Jimin goes on, glutton for punishment that he is, “it’s so true, isn’t it? You want me to stop, but you’re really acting like you’re older than me, taking me this way and that with you, using such harsh speech on me in front of your coworker, pinching me and slapping me and pulling on my piercings … I want my praise already … you scold too much … talk about me prettily and I’ll consider stopping, okay? Jungkook, is it worse if I call you hyung or oppa? Pick one. One or the other and I’ll go with that one from now on.”
There’s that f*cking phrase again. Pick one. It’s Jimin’s way or the highway, because isn’t it always?
f*ck that.
Jungkook shakes his head and keeps shaking it, locking his arms over Jimin’s belly like the metal bars of a sky-high carnival ride, then hauling his little body into the air and dragging him off towards the first door he sees. Bright red, with a nice silver keypad below the knob that promises immediate privacy.
Jimin yelps, legs kicking out, his combat boots dragging against gravel and pavement paint in an effort to slow Jungkook’s impossible stride. A gray cat watches from the sidelines, gaze placid. “Yah!” he cries, finally startled back into his normal speech habits. “H-Hey, what are you gonna do with me!”
Jungkook hears Hyeja saying something behind him, but he doesn’t honestly have any leftover brainpower to devote to her right now, not when his temples are pulsing with righteous fury and there’s a squawking chick with a thick beak struggling in his arms. Jungkook feels like a butcher seconds away from beheading his irksome chicken. He hefts Jimin higher, bouncing that little body to readjust his iron-clad grip on things, until only the toes of Jimin’s combat boots are touching the concrete.
“Don’t try to lock me in here,” Jimin says, a little panicked now. He starts kicking harder, shoving at Jungkook’s hands, then crying out in frustration when that doesn’t budge him even a centimeter. “I know the code and from the inside, I can just come right back out!”
“Oh, do you? Good for getting in, but you’re not gonna have a way out when I’m blocking your only exit.” Jungkook snatches up Jimin’s wrist. He squeezes it into submission, no time for games, just a bone-crushing clinch as he holds those pretty fingers up to the keypad. “Open it.”
Jimin’s knuckles are dusted pink, twitching imperceptibly. “Jungkook —”
“Just Jungkook? It was oppa a second ago, wasn’t it?”
“Then … Jungkook-oppa,” Jimin says, correcting himself with Jungkook’s permission, and does a half yelp, half laugh as Jungkook slams his free hand against the door, rattling the painted wood on its hinges. “Aigoo, imagine if you’d done that with your tattooed hand instead of this one … that would have been even hotter … okay, okay, don’t be mad at me, I’m going, I’m going! Sheesh, such a thug …”
“In,” Jungkook spits.
“Hyeja, don’t mind us — we’ll only be a minute, I’m sure!” Jimin calls, because he has his sense of humor even now.
Jungkook stands there, radiating impatience while Jimin punches in four digits, taking little glances over his shoulder to check Jungkook’s expression. Jungkook’s expression is working its way through each of the seven deadly sins. Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. In that order.
The keypad emits a low buzz of acceptance and then the door finally gives under the strength of Jungkook’s shove, pushed open to reveal a low-lit bathroom. He doesn’t wait for a verbal okay, practically tossing Jimin bodily into the room, then yanking the door shut as he follows him inside, his pulse a low pound in his ears, and, more importantly, between his legs.
