My Throat Is Still All Closed Up Fuck - Tumblr Posts
sleepwalking ● 15 | jjk
pairing: jungkook x fem!reader
summary: due to unfortunate circumstances, you ended up managing your ex-boyfriend’s band. you thought you’ve both made peace with it, but suddenly he’s very eager to prove to you that first love never dies.
genre: rockstar!jungkook / exes to lovers
warnings: explicit language, SLOW BURN, ANGST (including some miscommunication due to alcohol & descriptions of anxiety)
words: 10.9k
read from the beginning ○ masterlist
chapter 15 ► i had the whole damn world and i gave it all away, what did i think i would save?
Waking up on a good day was not a pleasant experience for Jungkook. But waking up that morning in Tilburg felt a bit like having his brain pulled out through his nose with a metal hook.
The bus was dim—was he on the bus? How did he get here in the first place?—and the slightest light coming from the skylight made his eyes sting. His head seemed to split in two, and his whole body felt as if he had deliberately allowed a lawnmower to run over him.
So this was a hangover, then.
He hadn’t had many of those in his life, which of course, did not indicate how often he drank. Maybe he had lost his ability to drink without getting really drunk. Or maybe he drank so much that even this ability wasn’t enough.
“You awake?” a voice asked, and the kaleidoscope of sharp echoes in Jungkook’s head forced him to retreat further into his bunk.
“Why,” he uttered, each word like fire in his parched mouth, “would you yell?”
A chuckle in response helped him identify the speaker as Hoseok.
“You’re the only one still sleeping. Everyone else is getting pancakes for breakfast,” he said. “Do you want to know what ‘pancake batter’ is in Dutch? Word on the street is, pronouncing it three times in front of the mirror will kill you.”
“I will kill you,” Jungkook retorted, “unless you can bring me some water. Please?”
Amused, Hoseok walked to the back of the bus where the mini-fridge was. He grabbed a bottle and brought it to the younger member before settling on the edge of his bunk.
“Here,” he said. “Why’d you drink so much last night in any case?”
It took incredible effort for Jungkook to sit up, but he managed—while groaning and moaning, and glaring at Hoseok each time the older boy chuckled at his exaggerated struggle.
Jungkook took the water bottle and emptied half of it in one gulp, but it didn’t make much of a difference. The bitter aftertaste lingered in his mouth, and every word he spoke still felt like acid.
“I can’t remember,” he said, even though something inside of him told him that this wasn’t true. Apart from the pain, he also felt this heavy unease—as if he had an apocalyptic event scheduled for this afternoon, and he needed to prepare for it, hence the excessive drinking. “I’m sure I had a reason.”
Hoseok assumed as much and he asked, “did something happen?”
“I—” Jungkook interrupted himself when he threw his head back to finish the rest of the water. This didn’t help either, and now his stomach felt uncomfortably heavy. He said again, “I don’t know. Can’t remember.”
“I saw you leave the venue with—”
“I remember that,” he said quickly as if he was afraid to hear the conclusions Hoseok had drawn after seeing him leave with you.
“Where’d you two go?” Hoseok asked.
“To this park,” Jungkook said, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers as he tried to bring last night back to him. He remembered kissing you. Unless he’d dreamt that, of course. Both options were likely. Neither was acceptable to say out loud. Weakly, he continued, “uh… I don’t really—we talked there.”
Since Hoseok did not know what had really happened between you and Jungkook at that park, he followed up with the logical question, “did you have a fight?”
“No, we…” Jungkook sighed. Another memory returned, this one more vivid than the kiss he thought he remembered—which was a shame. He would have preferred the kiss. He opened his eyes and looked at Hoseok questioningly, “Namjoon called her. Yoongi’s laptop?”
“Ah, yeah.” The older boy laughed. “They went to McDonald’s and left it there. Then they got so wasted, they forgot about it.”
Jungkook snorted weakly. “Idiots.”
It gave him great pleasure to say the word, because for once, it wasn’t him who was being described here.
“Just like you, huh?” Hoseok teased nonetheless. “Seems like everyone had a reason to drink last night.”
Jungkook ignored the gentle jab and focused on remembering you.
“Did you see her this morning?” he asked.
Hoseok nodded.
“Did she seem angry?” Jungkook continued, hoping for a clue about the rest of the night. The last thing he seemed to remember was the truck stop. He was alone in his memory, but he assumed that was because you hadn’t returned from finding the missing laptop yet.
Jungkook didn’t think you had gone drinking with him last night; he seemed to remember—or just assumed—that you had left before he got drunk. And he realised that he knew why he got drunk – he was worried about the bet and how he would tell you.
He thought he remembered talking to someone about this last night, but it couldn’t have been you, because he recalled being called “son.” It must have been someone else at the bar, then. Maybe the bartender.
But what happened afterwards? Did his chest hurt so much because he still hadn’t told you?
“No. She didn’t seem angry,” Hoseok said. “But she’s never angry with me because I never give her a reason to be.”
The teasing smile on the older member’s face made Jungkook grimace. “Good for you.”
Hoseok chuckled because he didn’t get to see Jungkook like this often. Usually, the entire band was wiped out with a cursed hangover, and Jungkook was the one obnoxious ray of sunshine in the room. Hoseok and the others always thought this was unfair. Clearly, this morning was a welcome change.
“She seemed okay,” Hoseok said. Then, more seriously, he asked, “you think you did something? Besides getting drunk, I mean.”
The younger boy exhaled and watched the bedding on his bunk for a minute. It was black and seemed even darker in the shadow inside the bus. It did nothing whatsoever to jog his memory.
He was worried that he had done something very terrible. Not worse than having made the bet in the first place, but terrible nonetheless.
What if he’d missed his chance to tell you and someone else had told you first? Probably not Sid, because he may have been an absolute dickhead, but he needed to win the bet fairly to be satisfied. But what if—
Taehyung, he thought suddenly.
Taehyung knew. What if he’d found you while Jungkook was in the bar?
You tell her or I will, Taehyung had said to him back in Amsterdam.
What if he had told you everything because he couldn’t bear to keep it to himself any longer?
Jungkook had seen how distressed the bassist was. He had noticed how he kept avoiding his eyes when they were in the same room.
Groaning, Jungkook pressed his palms to his forehead and strained to remember something. Did he talk to you after you returned with the laptop? What did he say? More importantly, what did you say that left him half-paralysed with this unidentified worry?
“I… don’t really…” Jungkook tried to cling to a memory and see what happened next, but his thoughts remained muddled. Did he kiss you in the park before or after you told him about your parents’ tumultuous relationship?
“Did you drink together?” Hoseok enquired, slipping into investigator mode as he crossed his legs on Jungkook’s bunk. He thought he was being helpful, but Jungkook felt pressured into giving answers that wouldn’t reveal too much—you’d rubbed off on him, he supposed. Or maybe he just didn’t want to upset you any more than he may have already had. “Or did you get drunk after she left to find the laptop?”
“After. I think,” Jungkook said. “I was driving before.”
“Driving?” Hoseok repeated, visibly surprised.
Jungkook waved his hand dismissively. “Long story.”
Hoseok noticed that Jungkook was struggling to speak in longer sentences, as evidenced by his colourless face as he shrank away from the skylight. He decided to quit questioning, assuming it was a hangover that plagued the younger boy.
Instead, he shared his last memory, hoping it would be helpful: “I think I heard you come back. At about nine.”
It was not helpful.
Jungkook frowned and asked, “you were already awake?”
“Well, Namjoon and Yoongi caused a scene on the bus earlier,” Hoseok explained, shrugging one of his shoulders. “They woke everyone up and I couldn’t really fall asleep after that.”
“Oh.”
“But I can’t help you with anything else. Sorry,” he said, biting his lip. “Maybe once your hangover wears off, you’ll remember.”
Jungkook lowered his head because it started to burn when he attempted to shake it in response.
Stubbornly, he mumbled, “I’m never hungover.”
Hoseok was about to laugh but he managed to contain it to a soft snicker. “Well, you’re hungover now, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
“What time is it?” Jungkook asked.
Hoseok had to check his phone first.
“Eleven,” he said.
“Eleven?” Jungkook repeated, his mind fighting against him as he tried to piece the timeline together. “I only slept for… if you saw me at nine, then I only slept for—wait, and you said you hadn’t slept at all?”
Hoseok shook his head, but looking at his phone had distracted him. Truthfully, he hadn’t told Jungkook everything he knew.
He had seen Minjun half-carrying a drunk Jungkook onto the bus at around eight-forty this morning. Hoseok remembered the time because his phone had died about a minute later, and he didn’t get to finish the Falling in Reverse album that he had been listening to on a loop that night.
Minjun’s presence might have sparked a memory, but Hoseok decided not to mention it. He preferred it when Jungkook’s friends weren’t involved in the situations that Jungkook seemed to have forgotten about, and he didn’t want the younger boy to go looking for said friends right away.
“Get something to eat,” Hoseok said, getting up from the bunk. “Pancakes. That’ll help you.”
Eating didn’t sound terrible, but it wasn’t that easy. For one thing, standing up seemed almost like a Herculean task right now—Jungkook was only slightly exaggerating here: he could extend a hand. But a leg? Not so much. And walking was probably completely out of the question.
“Yeah, fine,” he said as he lowered himself face-down onto the mattress, preparing to get out of the bunk—either by crawling or rolling out. “But I need to wash up a bit first. Somehow.”
“Yeah, that’d probably be good,” Hoseok agreed. “You reek of a bar.”
Jungkook glared—more at his pillow than at Hoseok—and mumbled, “thanks for the help.”
“Anytime!” Hoseok said with his usual good-natured laugh. He watched Jungkook try to stand and decided that the younger boy had brought this on himself, so it would do him good to find a way out himself, too. Approaching the door of the bus, Hoseok added, “I’ll wait for you outside. Don’t hurt yourself!”
Straining and grunting, Jungkook managed to wash up, despite his almost unbearable headache and the cramped bathroom of the bus—it was, really, just a toilet and the smallest sink imaginable. He slammed his knees into the wall twice and kicked himself in the shins one and a half times.
He could still taste the whiskey in his mouth, and he thought he could still smell it on himself as well—he’d need a proper shower, maybe several, to get rid of that—but he felt a little better. The improvement was barely noticeable, but it was there, and he got off the bus with a lighter step.
He wondered if the restaurant outside only served pancakes, as Hoseok had advertised, or if they were also prepared to make some other dishes, such as the greasiest, oiliest chicken possible.
When he got off the bus, hoping to find out, he first spotted Hoseok who was lifting his chin and pointing forward, gesturing for him to go on.
Jungkook turned his head and immediately saw you standing right at the entrance of the restaurant. He forgot all about Hoseok and the food.
Right away, he felt an odd sensation in his stomach; something that transcended worry and turned into outright terror. He watched you for a minute, almost petrified. His feet refused to budge as if his body remembered last night better than his mind.
You noticed him in the middle of your conversation with Luna. You saw him freeze first, then eventually start to walk towards you. Right after your eyes met, you looked back at Luna briefly and turned to enter the restaurant without a second glance in his direction.
This was, of course, hardly the reaction Jungkook had been hoping for because one of your last interactions that he could remember with questionable certainty was a kiss.
The horror inside him grew. Something must have really happened last night—something so horrible that his mind chose to drown in alcohol rather than remember it.
Maybe he had found you after Taehyung had talked to you last night, and he’d attempted to make amends, but he was too drunk to tell you everything he needed to tell you…
He had to find out. He had to fix it.
Jungkook walked past Luna, gave her a quick nod hello—and cringed in pain when he moved his head, therefore missing the glare she gave him—and went in after you.
He called out your name, then touched your shoulder. You turned around very slowly, almost reluctantly. He suspected that if he hadn’t touched you, you would have ignored him altogether.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
You gave him one look – maybe even less than that – and turned away, taking a small step to the side to escape his touch.
Before you looked away, it seemed to him that you hadn’t slept at all. He knew you well enough to recognise that. He also knew you well enough to recognise the obvious disapproval on your face—as if you were talking to Sid and not him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
What happened last night?
“I don’t have time,” you finally said, and his panic deepened.
“Please?” he asked, trailing behind you as you walked towards a table by the window in the farthest corner from the entrance. You’d chosen it as your workspace, but Luna had persuaded you to have breakfast with her and the boys first.
Right away, Jungkook spotted Taehyung, Luna and Yoongi on the other side of the restaurant—all three of them were watching Jungkook follow you.
“I appreciate the manners,” you said as you walked, “but I still don’t have time.”
Close to despair, he whispered—as if your friends could overhear your conversation from across the room, “d-did something happen last night?”
This finally made you turn around and look at him.
Suddenly, he wished you hadn’t.
There was a look in your eyes that reminded him of something. He couldn’t quite place that look, but he felt his chest tighten so much that his heart could barely fit inside, the beating violent and terrified.
It wasn’t anger that he saw when he looked at you. It wasn’t contempt, either. Nor disgust, nor revulsion—it wasn’t anything he had expected to see.
It was a weary disappointment—as if you had been worried about something for a long time, but still hoped it wouldn’t happen, and it did. It happened. And Jungkook realised in horror that he was probably what you were worried about.
“No,” you said, deciding that it wouldn’t do either of you any good to argue here. It scared him, this split-second decision that you made. He wanted you to shout at him, he wanted to see the fire in your eyes. He was afraid of the emptiness he found in them instead. You finished, “nothing significant happened at all. Not last night, or any night before.”
Your words disturbed him. It sounded—and his head began to pound much harder than his heart—like you were talking about all these weeks in Europe. All that the two of you had done together.
He swallowed the concern on his tongue. He still felt half-drunk and three-quarters hungover, so he didn’t know if the assumptions he was making were a result of a hangover paranoia or if he’d interpreted everything you’d said correctly. Honestly, he didn’t even want to know. But he had to ask.
“W-what is that supposed to mean?”
He realised he was clinging onto a tiny, pitiful hope that he’d seen the look in your eyes in a distant nightmare and not right in front of him at the truck stop last night. It seemed more and more unlikely the longer that he waited for you to speak, but while he breathed, he hoped.
“It’s supposed to mean that you need to get something to eat and join the rest of your band,” you said, picking up your coffee cup from the table next to you. Jungkook noticed that there was nothing else on it, just a stack of papers, your laptop, and your phone. “I have work to do.”
Suddenly, he wanted to pause this uncomfortable exchange where the two of you stayed quiet about more things than you expressed. He wanted to tell you that it was you who should have got something to eat. He wanted to remind you not to overwork yourself.
But the way you looked at him was an alarming indication that it wasn’t his place to say these things to you anymore.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck—
“Did you…” Jungkook tried to choose his words carefully. “Did you talk to someone last night? After we got back from the park, I mean?”
You looked startled somehow as you swallowed your coffee and set the empty cup down. Then you gave him a smile with not one bit of humour or kindness behind it, and he felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle with horror.
You did talk to someone. And he made the mistake of asking who it was.
“I didn’t talk to anyone important,” you finally said.
That was enough to confirm all of his foreboding senses.
“You know,” he concluded breathlessly.
Looking away instead of acknowledging his vague—but obviously correct—statement, you picked up your belongings from the table.
“I know enough to see that you need to eat and then sleep this off,” you said. “You smell like a bottle of Jack Daniels.”
You tried to walk past him, but Jungkook moved to block your way.
“Who told you?” he pressed.
You raised your eyebrows at the question.
“Are you—okay.” You closed your eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. You tried to phrase your next words as tactfully as possible, aware that you would have a large audience if you raised your voice here. “It’s a little mind-blowing to me that you think the issue here is who told me. And it’s a lot mind-blowing that you dare to ask me that.”
Uncomfortable under your affronted gaze, Jungkook blinked and looked away. His heavy head was slowly dragging him to the floor, and he leaned against the table for more support.
“I—I’m really sorry,” he said, not daring to look at you again because the emptiness in your eyes was so discomfiting that it felt almost unnatural. He realised, painfully, that he’d taken all of your timid glances for granted. He missed them now—so much.
But as soon as the apology was out of his mouth, he immediately remembered that he had said the exact same words to you. Unfortunately, he had said them to you many times before.
This could have been déjà vu.
It could have been a memory from weeks ago.
But it also could have been a memory from last night.
Now you were hesitating. You didn’t know what he was apologising for specifically, and you suspected that he didn’t know, either. Then you finally nodded your head.
Jungkook worried that you’d come to a decision—a final one, to make up for all the previous times you’d claimed this was final but hadn’t meant it.
Now you looked like you meant it.
You didn’t offer him any relief from his misery and gave him no hints of what had happened after you returned from the park.
Instead, you said, “eat something,” and walked around him.
He didn’t stop you this time. He knew he couldn’t.
But he also knew that he would find you as soon as he figured out how you discovered the truth and whether he talked to you after that.
You joined Yoongi, Taehyung, and Luna at a table in the annexe of the pancake restaurant, right next to a wall-sized window with a view of the vast, completely empty fields of green behind the building.
“Everything okay?” Luna asked as you sat down in the remaining empty chair by the table, next to Yoongi.
You were uncomfortable with everyone’s eyes on you. You knew they’d witnessed the exchange you’d just shared with Jungkook, but you didn’t know what they thought they saw.
“Absolutely,” you replied in a manner so manufactured that they could all tell it was insincere.
While you pretended to be interested in the food that your friends had ordered for you, Yoongi glanced at everyone by the table one after the other.
“Is, uh, something wrong?” he asked, fixing his gaze on you. “With Jungkook?”
“No,” you said. Again, with a noticeable bitterness. “Some tension, that’s all.”
Yoongi was still processing your revelation about Reconnaissance. Yesterday, he had told you that you didn’t have to tell anyone else about it, but he wasn’t sure if he’d really meant it. He assumed you could guess as much. And now he was starting to think that you’d told Jungkook about it, after all.
Carefully, he asked, “did Jungkook get mad at you for not telling him about… things?”
Yoongi wasn’t very good at being discreet. You saw Taehyung frown as he looked up at you.
Taehyung was understandably confused. He thought it was Jungkook who hadn’t told you “things.” Why would he be the one getting mad?
“No,” you said to Yoongi. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be mad here. But it’s fine. I just—I’m not even—I just need a minute.”
Huh, Taehyung thought to himself as he continued to eat in silence. You were obviously seething. Something must have happened.
He had suspected that Jungkook was going to tell you last night when the two of you left together (and, naturally, Taehyung went to find Luna right after witnessing your exit, so he could finally calm himself down). But if Jungkook told you—what the hell was Yoongi on about?
“Well, wait a second,” Yoongi pushed, also very confused. “What do you mean? Why are you mad?”
To him, it seemed like you were prepared to handle the news about Reconnaissance on your own. He thought it was possible that Jungkook had reacted very negatively when you told him and he’d said something upsetting. He knew the vocalist would be unhappy if he found out that you were getting offers to leave Rated Riot.
That would explain—sort of—your emotions. And if that was the case, Yoongi was prepared to interfere.
“Did he say something to you?” he asked. “If he’s upset about this… possibility, then I can talk—”
“Yoongi,” Luna cut in with a rushed whisper. “I don’t think this is about Reconnaissance.”
She was quick to figure out that you had told Yoongi about Nick’s offer—it wasn’t difficult, considering Yoongi was about as vague as a treasure map with a giant X on it. She wanted him to drop the topic before you were forced to admit that this was actually about Jungkook’s bet.
Luna could tell from your body language when you saw Jungkook—and from the way you were about to bend the fork in your hand right now—that you finally knew about the bet, too.
Taehyung, on the other hand, remained simply baffled.
He knew about the bet, sure. But he looked up from his plate again, and correctly guessed from the frowns on everyone’s faces that he was the only one who did not know about this Reconnaissance business that Luna had just mentioned.
“Reconnaissance?” he asked. “What about Reconnaissance?”
He appeared to enjoy saying the band’s name and seemed oblivious to your cringing every time he said it.
You looked up at Luna first—her eyes were wide as she realised that she shouldn’t have mentioned the band outright. To make matters worse, it suddenly occurred to her that you didn’t know that she and Taehyung knew about the bet, so you must have been confused as to why she would divert the topic so suddenly and plunge you straight into a different awkward conversation.
But before she could apologise, you turned to Yoongi, who lowered his head as soon as he met your eyes. He realised that he couldn’t ask Luna what she’d meant—what else could you and Jungkook argue about?—because there was a more important discussion waiting to happen.
You cleared your throat.
“Nothing important,” you finally said. “Their manager contacted me the other day about an open position in their staff, but I told him I wasn’t interested. I mentioned this to, uh—to Luna. And to Yoongi, too, a few days ago.”
You chose not to reveal that Maggie and Namjoon also knew about this, so Taehyung wouldn’t feel as left out as you assumed you had just made him feel.
There were several things that Taehyung struggled to process here. He tried to look at his girlfriend for help first, but Luna purposefully made herself busy by drinking her orange juice. Then he glanced over at his bandmate, but Yoongi turned his entire body away from him to look out the window.
Clearly, neither one of them wanted to explain why they weren’t questioning you about this, so it took Taehyung a minute to find his words.
“But this is…” he started, then paused. “It’s big!”
“Yeah, I—well, you know,” you said while knowing that he didn’t know. You felt guilty and uncomfortable having to explain this right after he found out that you’d kept it from him. “I-I’m happy here. I like what I do. I would—I’d have far less responsibility, but a lot more pressure if I went to work with them.”
Taehyung considered this.
“It would be a great opportunity, t-that’s true,” you added, sounding increasingly uncertain as you spoke. “They’re million-dollar sellers. But I don’t—I want to reach that level with you guys. Not join someone who’s already at the top. Where’s the fun in that?”
You smiled as you finished, hoping to soften the impact of the news. Taehyung finally allowed his muscles to relax a little as he leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his iced tea.
“I see,” he said, placing the glass back on the table. “Okay. So, you’re staying. Right?”
You were on the verge of responding—because you thought you’d just be repeating yourself again—but then you stopped.
You said you were happy here.
You said you weren’t interested in leaving.
But you didn’t, technically, say that you were staying.
You’d said it to Maggie and Luna, and then to Yoongi and Namjoon. But that was before you allowed yourself to confront your feelings for Jungkook while he just tried to win a bet against Sid.
And now you were hesitating.
When you eventually nodded, the assurance from your lips sounded far less convincing. “Mhmm. Yes.”
Silence settled at the table until Luna, still feeling guilty about the slip-up (she would apologise to you as soon as the boys were out of earshot), changed the topic to something completely unrelated: namely the sights she thought would be interesting to see once you were in London.
You hoped to avoid discussing Reconnaissance again, but Nick’s offer had suddenly gained more weight in your mind.
As you returned to your designated workspace after breakfast, you remembered the pros and cons list that Maggie had suggested back in Oslo.
The pros of leaving Rated Riot and joining Reconnaissance had expanded dangerously following your conversation with Jungkook last night.
You worried. You didn’t think you would actually leave, at least not just because of this ridiculous bet. But the more you thought about it—and the more you remembered that Jungkook’s friends were right around here somewhere—the more you couldn’t help it.
Would it really be so terrible to continue your career with a band that had a massive following and did not have your ex-boyfriend as a member, and his good-for-nothing friends as a persistent shadow?
Contrary to what Hoseok had promised and what he had expected himself, eating didn’t make Jungkook feel better. If anything, it only made him feel more irritated.
As he mindlessly chewed the pancakes—which were probably delicious, really, but they tasted like napkins in his hungover mouth—he went over the conversation he’d just had with you.
Again, he arrived at the same conclusion: you knew about the bet.
But everything else in his mind was speculation.
He might have talked to you after you found out, and he might not have handled it very well.
He might not have talked to you after you found out, which was just as bad.
He realised then, with a sinking feeling in his cotton-filled stomach, that he might have also been the one who told you about it.
That would have almost been good, he’d meant to tell you—but when he was sober. And, ideally, without forgetting about it the next day.
He hoped desperately that this wasn’t what had happened. But he needed to know for certain.
He had concluded earlier that only one other person could have talked to you about this, so he pushed his plate away and looked around.
He didn’t spot Taehyung here anymore. But Luna was standing by the cash register.
He stood up and approached her right away.
She didn’t look particularly pleased to talk to him, and Jungkook quickly surmised that she knew about the bet, too. He fully expected this since Taehyung considered her mind an extension of his own. Now, Jungkook thought, he had even more reasons to talk to him.
Luna informed him that Taehyung had felt tired and returned to the bus for a short nap. She said she was waiting to grab some dessert for him.
Jungkook couldn’t thank her for the information quickly enough.
Acting solely on instinct, he ran out of the restaurant, flung open the bus door, and marched inside. He was glad to see that the bus was empty except for Taehyung lying in his bunk.
“Did you tell her?!” Jungkook fired immediately. He wasn’t sure if he’d meant to sound so accusing—he was simply frantic to learn what was hiding in the dark spots of his memory.
Flinching at the sudden shouting that he managed to hear over his music, Taehyung opened his eyes and sat up. He paused the song on his phone and raised his eyes.
He didn’t have to ask what Jungkook meant.
“I didn’t tell her anything,” he said as he pulled his earpods out of his ears and slid them back into their case.
“I saw you talking to her after the show last night. Did you find her and tell her later?” Jungkook demanded through agitated, heavy breaths. “You were with her and Luna at the restaurant just now.”
“I didn’t see her after you left. And all I said to her after the show was that she should talk to you,” Taehyung explained, displaying more patience than most people would under the circumstances. “And I didn’t really talk to her much at the restaurant.”
Slowly—because he was fuming, and the entire bus was red—Jungkook accepted that this was most likely the truth. Your response to him changed after last night, not after the concert. He assumed it was because you’d talked to someone while he wasn’t there, but maybe Taehyung wasn’t that someone.
Again, he remembered Sid. He could still ask him, he supposed, even if he doubted that Sid told you.
But there was a very big problem with this plan. If Sid found out that you knew about the bet, he would immediately amplify all of Jungkook’s problems by claiming that someone broke the rules of the bet—even if Sid was the one who told you.
He’d organise a manhunt, Jungkook didn’t doubt it. Or maybe he’d just blame Jungkook straight away—never mind that the bet ceased to exist to Jungkook the moment he barged into Sid’s room in Amsterdam, and demanded they ended it.
No. It was better to keep Sid out of this.
Jungkook swallowed and shuddered faintly when he felt the bitter aftertaste of everything that he’d drunk last night.
“Did you tell anyone?” he asked Taehyung.
Looking down, Taehyung brought his tongue over his lips. “Well...”
“Anyone other than Luna, I mean.”
“No. You asked me not to. I only told her after I assumed—”
“Okay, well,” Jungkook cut in, guilty suddenly, about forcing his friend into this. “C-could Luna have told her?”
“She could have,” Taehyung admitted. “But she was with me the whole night. And besides, she agreed that it should be you who tells her. That’s what I thought you were going to do last night.”
Jungkook shut his eyes and exhaled so deeply that Taehyung could feel it on his face from two metres away. “I don’t… I was—it would have—”
Interrupting his miserable struggle to construct a full sentence, the older boy reiterated, “we didn’t tell her. Honestly, I assumed that you did.”
Taehyung had had doubts before, but seeing Jungkook’s uncontrollable frustration right now convinced him that you must know about the bet.
Still, Jungkook’s confusion confused him.
It had to be Jungkook who told you. Who else could have?
“Well, I was—” Jungkook swallowed before charging, “actually, wh—what—what right did you have to tell her to talk to me? After I specifically asked you not to tell anyone! She obviously understood that something’s up.”
Taehyung looked offended at the outburst.
But Jungkook couldn’t control himself.
The longer he stayed away from you on the bus, the more he hurt. The more he understood that none of this mattered—not who told you, not what he said to you afterwards.
What mattered was this: he had made the bet. And you knew about it.
And now he wasn’t sure what would happen next and the guilt and the fear and the hurt could not fit in his chest anymore. He desperately needed a real, tangible something to blame his pain on. He needed someone else to be at fault.
“Something is up. And she’s our manager,” Taehyung said. “And you clearly need… managing.”
Childishly, Jungkook retorted, “you don’t know what I need.”
“You told me, because this was bothering you,” the older member said. “I was trying to help you do the right thing.”
Jungkook frowned so deeply that a permanent wrinkle was slowly beginning to form on his forehead. Then, he finally relaxed his face and stopped moving altogether—to breathe instead. And to think.
Perhaps, he thought as he rushed to inhale and exhale as if he was being pursued by the invisible horrors that he had battled last night and this morning—perhaps the look in your eyes that he’d seen today hadn’t come from a nightmare, after all.
It couldn’t have been Sid who told you. And it wasn’t Taehyung. It wasn’t Luna.
You looked at him like it was him.
“It—it must have—it was—” He inhaled and held his breath for one, two, three seconds. “You’re right. I-I must have told her. It was—I did—I-I told her.”
Taehyung watched as acceptance darkened Jungkook’s already hopeless eyes.
“I was really—I still feel kind of drunk, but I was even more wasted last night,” he continued, staring at the floor. He was breathing so rapidly now that he could have powered every streetlight in this whole city if they ran on oxygen and not electricity. “Maybe I was the one who told her. No one else could have, and it—it should have been me anyway, but I—it was—”
“Okay,” Taehyung said, quickly realising the direness of the situation. He put an arm around the younger boy’s shoulder. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Jungkook hadn’t realised he was standing.
He didn’t feel Taehyung lower him onto his bunk, he didn’t feel the soft mattress underneath, he didn’t feel his friend’s hands around him.
All he felt was an oddly familiar tremor taking over his body—as if he’d already been here, shaking uncontrollably in another life.
Taehyung was aware of the predicament that Jungkook was in. Really, he was. But, honestly, he was proud of him for telling you the truth. He probably shouldn’t have felt this way, considering that telling you about the bet was common sense, but he couldn’t help it.
He was glad that Jungkook had chosen honesty—even though Taehyung hadn’t really given him a different choice, and the truth had made the younger boy nearly transparent as his shoulders hunched under his friend’s touch.
Taehyung wanted to believe that this honesty, despite how much discomfort and pure pain it brought Jungkook, signified growth. And with growth came the decision to choose better friends.
However, telling you about the bet and then forgetting about it? That was bad. Taehyung didn’t want to imagine how bad.
He sighed, releasing one breath in the time that Jungkook released ten.
“Maybe you should talk to her. When you’re a little more put together,” Taehyung suggested, hoping that a clear plan of action would calm Jungkook down.
“She won’t talk to me,” he said, and his breaths grew more ragged.
“Ah.” Taehyung raised his head knowingly. He needed a moment to compose himself before he admitted that he knew this would happen—and that Jungkook deserved this silent treatment just a little bit. “Yes. Well… That—that was to be expected, I would think.”
Despite his words, there was a comforting warmth in Taehyung’s eyes that Jungkook missed because he was too preoccupied with fighting his inner demons. He remembered something else—a sharp tension in his lungs, much like the one he was experiencing right now, as he struggled to contain everything that he was inhaling: revulsion and regret, despair and dread.
He had told you. He couldn’t remember it exactly, but he knew he had.
Jungkook managed to raise his eyes.
“W-what—what do I do?” he asked in between breaths.
Taehyung sucked his lips in. “I have no idea.”
Jungkook groaned as he ran his shaking fingers through his hair and pulled away from the other boy.
“For fuck’s s-sake,” he hissed, then took another unsteady breath. “You could—you could try being more helpful, you know.”
“You could try giving me less attitude, you know,” Taehyung returned. “Considering your position.”
Jungkook scrunched his nose irritably but refrained from arguing. His breathing began to slow as he shifted his focus from regretting the past to fixing the future.
“Fine,” he said. “Sorry. Please help me figure this out.”
There wasn’t much that Taehyung could have helped him with, and they both knew it. What Jungkook really needed was just encouragement that this wasn’t over yet. That he could still do something and hope for a positive outcome.
Taehyung contemplated this for a minute. A part of him honestly thought that this might be over. But as much as he valued honesty, he knew that sometimes it wasn’t the best option.
This was one of those times.
Not to mention, there were two sides to this coin.
The first was that you and Jungkook had known each other for years before you began to work together. Taehyung virtually knew nothing about your relationship prior to Rated Riot. He knew nothing of your history together. Maybe there was potential for resolution, after all.
However, the other side of the coin was this: you had an incredible opportunity to work with one of the biggest rock bands in the world. And even though the vocalist of this band was prone to alcohol, he was not prone to toxic friendships—at least as far as Taehyung knew. Not to mention, you hadn’t dated anyone in Reconnaissance, which had to be a massive plus after all that had just happened here. And so, although you said you would stay with Rated Riot, no one would have blamed you if you left.
Taehyung sighed.
This was a very, very unpleasant situation, to say the least.
“Alright. There’s something you should know,” the older boy finally said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be helpful for you, but, um… sh-she got an offer to work with Reconnaissance.”
Jungkook heard the way all the sounds inside the bus and inside his head and even inside his chest suddenly ceased, leaving only a faint buzzing.
He wasn’t sure what was buzzing. Maybe he hadn’t realised he was screaming.
“Wh—what?” he asked after a loaded minute. “She—what? When?”
“I don’t know,” Taehyung said. “I just found out today.”
“So, she’s—what? She’s leaving?”
“I don’t know.”
Jungkook got up from his bunk and spun around, restless all of a sudden, as he ran his fingers through his hair again, messing it up even more. “Fuck.”
Taehyung gave him a moment to process this.
“What do I do?” Jungkook repeated, his breathing uneven again. Taehyung tensed when he heard the panic return to his friend’s voice. He stood up, but couldn’t reach Jungkook as he paced away from him on the bus. “What the f—what do I say? S-she won’t talk to me. Fuck.”
“Give her some time, then,” Taehyung said—quickly. Because he could tell that Jungkook was approaching a concerning new level of distress. “She just found out about the bet. This must have been quite a shock to her. It was shocking for me, and I have nothing to do with this. So, imagine how she must feel.”
“Okay. But it’s—what if she—”
“She’s not impulsive,” Taehyung cut in, guessing the younger boy’s concern. “She won’t just get up and leave. But if you keep pushing right now while the—” He clicked his tongue, looking for a more sensitive word. “—while the shock is still fresh, then you might end up pushing her towards the wrong decision.”
That sounded reasonable. Painful and terrifying, too, but reasonable, nonetheless.
Jungkook slid his hands down his face and spent a minute inhaling and exhaling in two-second increments. Then he nodded and looked up at the other boy.
“Yeah. Okay,” he decided. His head still felt like he had stolen it from a bronze sculpture—heavy, yet completely empty. But he thought he was gradually getting used to the pain. “You’re right. Okay. So, I should wait, right? Just… wait?”
“That’s what I’d do,” Taehyung said. “Wait.”
And so, waiting was what Jungkook did. For exactly six hours.
By then, everyone had already returned to the bus for the trip to Cologne, and the French bus driver had finished half a pack of cigarettes. You were unaware that it was just you and Jungkook left outside—you were still on the phone with the other roadies—and Jungkook used that to his advantage.
Anticipating your usual excuse of being too busy, he prepared in advance and spoke to the bus driver to find out the scheduled departure time. He learned that he should have enough time to have a proper conversation with you or, at the very least, address some of the drunken confessions that he must have made last night.
He had promised himself to hold off speaking to you in hopes that his mind would clear and he could remember a bit more—anything other than this suffocating misery that still kept him in a relentless chokehold today. But that promise was in vain.
He couldn’t wait.
“I need to talk to you,” Jungkook said as soon as he saw you come out from behind the bus.
Just as he had expected, you shook your head. “Now’s not the right—”
“We still have twenty-five minutes before we leave,” he said.
“It wouldn’t hurt to be ahead of schedule,” you argued, but he refused to move, so you couldn’t reach the bus door. “The equipment team had already left. We have to—”
“Please. Give me five minutes,” he said. “Please.”
As you were beginning to look away from him, your eyes involuntarily lingered on his face for a moment longer, and you felt your heart make the decision for you. You’d give him five minutes.
Really, the ache in your chest was just an excuse, as you realised in a fleeting moment of sober clarity. Your mind didn’t want to walk away from him, either.
He looked hurt—he had no right to look that way, not after what he’d done—but the look in his eyes still cut into your already wounded heart a little more.
You couldn’t remember if he had looked like this last night. All that you could see after he told you about the bet were the dangerous ripples of the ground beneath you and the unyielding darkness surrounding you.
You’d listen to him, you decided. That was all that you could still offer him.
“Fine,” you conceded, realising that you had a weakness, and it was standing right in front of you.
Jungkook inhaled—he’d managed to get his breathing under control in the past few hours—and straightened.
He’d seen this before, he thought. This moment that hadn’t even happened yet already echoed in his mind like a forgotten passage from a book that his grandmother had used to read to him—about heartache and the eventual happily ever after. He was too young for those books, really, he just wanted to be in grandma’s room longer. But he remembered the glistening tears in her eyes as she turned the last few pages, and he, too, found himself rooting for the people in the book.
Surely, then, if this was the painful part of the story—the part where the two characters couldn’t look at each other at the same time—then you had to be approaching the conclusion? The happy ending that he found himself dreaming about for the first time in Paris?
All that was left for the two of you was to resolve it all.
“I was very drunk last night,” he started. “I should have told you the truth before I got drunk, but the way the night unfolded… it didn’t work in my favo—okay, that—that sounds like an excuse. But I want you to know that I had the intention to tell you all along. It wasn’t something that I decided on a whim after I had some drinks.”
“Hmm.” You were staring at your shoes before you pursed your lips and glanced up at him. “And, uh, what about the bet? Was that something you made on a whim?”
Something very unpleasant churned in his stomach. He felt queasy.
“I did,” he admitted. “I was—it was—I thought it would prove a point.”
“Did it?”
“No. All it proved is that I made the wrong choice of caring about what my friends thought of me, when I should have cared about what you thought,” he said. His jaw was clenched, but his face was soft and almost fragile. You looked away again. His words sounded clumsy when you weren’t looking at him, when he didn’t know if you heard him. “I-I’m sorry. I swear I meant it when I said I loved—”
“Look,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest. “I don’t really see the point of this conversation, so maybe—”
“Okay—okay, just—listen,” he said in a hurry, raising both of his hands to the back of his head in a desperate attempt to keep himself together. Reluctantly, you returned your gaze to his. “I-I wanted to say that you can ask me, or say anything to me. I want to talk. Give me a chance to explain.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you, though,” you said, and he felt his heart fall and thrash in the cavities of his chest like a frightened, dying fish out of the water.
He tried to remember if this was what you’d said to him last night—this brutal declaration that you’d run out of words—perhaps right after he told you about the bet.
It would have explained why he felt smothered the whole day—as if your decision to talk to him directly influenced his decision to breathe.
“Okay,” he said, swallowing something sharp in his throat. “Well, what about Reconnaissance?”
Your eyes widened for less than a second before you composed yourself. It confirmed to him that everything Taehyung had said was true.
“How did you—?” you began to ask, but Jungkook didn’t let you finish.
“Taehyung told me. You didn’t—you told everyone, but you couldn’t tell me.”
Despite the twinge of guilt in your stomach, you still thought this was an unfair accusation. You hadn’t told everyone. And Jungkook was the last person who could have reprimanded you for keeping a secret.
“This has nothing to do with you,” you said.
“How—” he started, then cut himself off with a scoff. “You’re leaving, and it has nothing to do with me?”
“I’m not—I’m still here, aren’t I?” you countered, changing your mind about making a promise to stay when chaos roamed free in your mind.
Jungkook recognised the hesitation in your eyes. He felt his anger grow at the possibility that you were genuinely considering this.
“Yeah, but for how long?!” he accused. “I thought—I thought we were finally on the same page about everything, and—”
“Oh!” you exclaimed; the single syllable so full of irony that he stopped talking immediately. “On the same page, are we? Okay, then, let me see if I got everything right here.”
There was that fire in your eyes—the one that he had wanted to see.
He felt equal parts terrified—because he couldn’t predict what you’d say next—and hopeful—because you were finally talking to him—as he watched you instead of replying.
“You made a bet with Sid about us,” you said—short and sharp. Jungkook thought he flinched, but he hoped you didn’t notice.
“Yes,” he said. “And I—”
“He said we wouldn’t get back together, and you said we would.”
Jungkook nodded, his throat suddenly too swollen to speak.
“And if you lost,” you continued. “You had to give up your Katana.”
“Mmhm.”
You paused here, frowning. You weren’t sure if you’d forgotten this part or if he hadn’t mentioned it last night.
“And if you won?” you asked.
He felt an unpleasant warmth wash over him at your question.
“I’d, uh—I would have gotten $10,000,” he admitted, his eyes darting between you and the ground. “And, you know. Uh, also you.”
“Ah.” You nodded. “Double win, isn’t it?”
He cringed at the sarcasm.
You continued to watch him with narrowed eyes, but you couldn’t really see him, blind to everything but the raging fury that swirled inside you, pounding on the walls of your chest to get out.
It wasn’t even the bet that you were mostly angry about, not really. You were angry about his choices in general. About his constant need to do whatever his friends told him to. About his utter lack of ability to stand up for himself—and for you.
You were angry that you were back to where you started, back on the doorstep of his dorm room four years ago, when you said you were done, and he did nothing to stop you from leaving.
You were sure you’d had a point you wanted to make when you brought up the bet a few minutes ago, perhaps to counter his attempts to blame you for not telling him about Reconnaissance. But you didn’t want to make any points anymore.
You didn't even want to speak.
“It really sounds fun,” you commented dryly. “Shame you didn’t win.”
“Y-you’re—but I-I don’t care if I win or lose,” he stammered, anguished by your dismissive tone. “That’s why I told you about it. The bet was a mistake. But I can’t turn the fucking time back, even though I really fucking want to. So I’d rather tell you and lose it than win it and lose you. There’s nothing I want more than—I’m—I just want to be honest. And I was honest. Every time I told you how I felt, I meant it.” He inhaled, rushing to get all his words out before he truly lost you—he saw the way you positioned your body away from him as soon as he mentioned honesty. “I was drunk when I told you about the bet, I know. I shouldn’t have been. But I told you, and—”
“See—no,” you cut him off. “You don’t get to feel good about that. You forgot that you told me.”
“I…” his sentence broke off. “I-I did. Okay. That’s true. And I’m sorry. I was really—I was drunk.”
“You’re always fucking drunk.”
You finally turned away as you groaned and allowed the wind to tangle your hair around the hood of your jacket.
You were exhausted of these same old excuses: either he was drunk, or he was with his friends. Sometimes both.
You thought you’d walked away from all of this four years ago. How had you ended up back in the exact same place? Why did you think it would be different this time?
Sid was still here. And his endless games were still here, too.
“Oh.” You remembered suddenly and turned back around. “Was this what the Paris trip was about? When we went to Kihyun and Chloé’s wedding? Is that why Sid didn’t want me to go with you?”
Jungkook closed his eyes. “It’s, uh… yes. It’s sort of what started the, um—the whole thing. But it wasn’t—I actually wanted to go there with you, it wasn’t—”
You hummed, cutting him off—as if you were a teacher, giving him a test, and he was a student, answering every question correctly, but letting you down every time he opened his mouth anyway.
You didn’t say anything else.
Jungkook thought he was going to burst into flames.
He could tell that you didn’t want to listen to him when he said he loved you. In fact, you made a conscious decision not to hear him.
He was horrified to realise that these past few weeks and all the conversations, all the unsaid words that you finally said, all the closure that you’d welcomed after years of evading it—all of it had evaporated after last night.
You refused to remember these moments, refused to believe that they were real.
He wasn’t just back to where he started when this tour began—back when you wouldn’t accept his confessions. When you tried to explain his feelings for you using the circumstances: a different continent, too many forgotten memories, too much time spent together. And you were right, in part, to have your doubts. He really hadn’t told you everything. But everything that he had told you, he’d meant it.
But now he was much farther back—at the very last row, merely observing your silhouette as you climbed on stage and introduced yourself in a cold, detached voice. Like he didn’t know you. Like he hadn’t spent the past seven years loving you.
One bet. One fucking bet.
And now he was scared that there was nothing else left.
Gripping the stitching on the sides of his dark grey jeans, Jungkook said one more time, “I’m sorry.”
You were looking down as you repeatedly nodded your head—each nod a new dagger in his chest.
“Thank you for that,” you said, letting the sentence falter.
It was clear that you’d meant what you said—you had nothing else to say. He would have liked to hear anything, really, except for the silence that followed.
“W-what can I do?” he asked, afraid that the conversation—that all of your conversations— had come to an end.
You frowned—all of your conversations had come to an end.
“What do you mean?” you asked almost incredulously.
“Well, you’re clearly mad, and—”
“No,” you said. “I briefly flew over mad last night when you pulled me out of the bus at six-thirty in the morning. Now I’m back to normal.”
Biting his lip ring and pulling it into his mouth, Jungkook stayed quiet for a few seconds.
He had expected this to be awful, meaning you’d be angry.
He hadn’t expected this to be worse than awful; meaning you’d stand here, looking at him with a straight face and hollow eyes, almost daring him to apologise again.
Now it’s finally too late, your posture was saying. You fucked up one too many times.
You truly weren’t mad, he realised.
You’d given up.
“And w-what—what is ‘normal,’ exactly?” he asked finally, even though he feared the answer.
You hammered the final nail into the coffin that he’d built himself.
“I’m your manager,” you said. What a great eulogy. “You should get back on the bus. We’re leaving soon.”
He knew he needed to apologise again, but nothing he said seemed to make a difference. You weren’t hearing him—and, honestly, he understood why.
But a part of him still felt frustrated. You had kept something from him, too. There was a risk you’d leave—forever—and he needed conditions; something he could do to make this right. To make you stay.
It was a stupid bet. He never should have made it. It was bad, but in comparison to his feelings for you—and yours for him, before he ruined everything—he didn’t think it was significant enough to make you consider leaving your job.
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re my manager. And you can’t—you can’t leave the band.”
The determination in his tone made you pause.
“I can’t?” you repeated, your eyebrows drawn together in a defiant frown. “And who would stop me if I said I was leaving?”
Fuck, Jungkook thought in a sudden panic. That was not what he should have said. Now you might really leave.
Taehyung had warned him that he might push you towards the wrong decision. And he was doing exactly that.
“You—you know what I mean...” he faltered, discouraged by your resistance. “I-I fucked up, I know that. Tell me how to fix it.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” you said. “Get on the bus.”
He stood still. “Is this how it’s going to be from now on?”
“It’s going to be like it always was,” you said. “Get on the fucking bus, Jungkook.”
He didn’t. You were so close to him now that he could smell your perfume and the apple scent of your shampoo. He remembered himself years ago, hoping that one day, apples would stop reminding him of you.
Now he knew how outrageously absurd it was to hope for this when he was convinced that all versions of him—across all universes—always immediately thought of you whenever they tasted apples.
“Don’t—you can’t start treating me like everything that happened between us didn’t happen,” he retorted—with all the anger that he had at the thought of never having you this close to him again.
“What happened, exactly?” you snapped. “You’ve clearly never bothered to be honest with me for one second until last night, never bothered to even think about me, because you—”
“I thought about you all the time, though!”
“Yeah, because you had no other fucking choice!” you rebutted. “If you didn’t think of me, you would have lost the bet. None of it was genuine—”
“I lost the bet because I was thinking of you,” he defended, furiously waving his hands around.
“Oh! That’s so considerate!” Your laughter was rigid and bitter. “Maybe it’s me who should apologise. I’m so sorry I ended up being the reason why you lost the bet.”
He dropped his hands, groaning. Once again, he realised how terrible he was at telling the truth, and how splendid at saying all the wrong things.
“Don’t—don’t be like that,” he asked, agitated.
You glared at him. “Like what?”
“Just—difficult.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” you said. “I’ll make this very simple for you: we’re done talking about your shit.” You pulled back from him to turn around. “Get on the fucking bus. I have more important things to do.”
Immediately, Jungkook grabbed both of your hands to stop you from leaving.
You turned back to him with wide eyes, and your stunned stiffness gave him enough time to properly wrap his fingers around your wrists.
“Is that your plan, then?” he demanded. His hands were cold, but his grip was loose enough for you to push him away—but the challenge in his question made you wait, frozen in place. “You’re just going to walk away again? Start working with a different band so you won’t have to think about your feelings? Won’t have to face your fears of trying again? That’s your solution for everything, isn’t it? Just fucking walking away.”
He'd touched something—there was a raw wildfire in your eyes now, nothing like the flames he’d seen before.
You yanked your hand out of his grip and took a step back.
“You know what?” you said. “It is. It is my solution to everything. And you want to know something else? This bet isn’t even the worst thing. And that’s the worst thing—the fact that this is just another bullet point in an endless list of shit that you and your friends have done. So, yes. I am walking away. I should have never even come back in the first place.”
Jungkook felt the ground beneath his feet tremble unsteadily at your words—much like his hands by his sides.
Back in Amsterdam, you’d told him that you forgave him for not realising how many mistakes he’d made in your relationship. He’d seen a glimpse of a second chance that night in your hotel room.
He was aware of his never-ending list of mistakes now. And still, he made new ones.
“I’m—I’m sorry, I—”
“Get on the bus,” you said, turning around to face the empty parking lot instead of his apologetic face. “I still need to call the other drivers and check in with the rest of the crew.”
You were doing your job. You were still talking to him. He should have been glad.
Instead, he couldn’t force his legs to move or his heart to keep beating.
“I… Can—can you just—just tell me that you’ll stay with the band,” he pleaded.
Your shoulders were straight as you stood with your back to him, your hands clenched into distraught fists by your sides. He’d once jokingly tried to teach you the proper stance in a fight. Really, it was you who should have done the teaching.
“Get on the bus,” you repeated.
His distress was relentless. “I will. But we have to talk about—”
“We don’t have to do anything,” you argued. “I think it’s better if we stop having conversations unrelated to Rated Riot altogether, if that’s alright with you.”
He watched your back with unwavering determination. “It’s not.”
“Tough. Get in.”
He needed a minute to convince himself to quit arguing, to drain the fight out of his chest. Then another minute to steady his breathing enough to turn towards the bus.
As he approached the door, he looked back at you and caught the way you had glanced at him over your shoulder. There was a dampness in your eyes from the heavy wind. He saw it right before you turned away again.
He swayed lightly on the steps of the bus. “Please, just—”
“Don’t,” you said, and your shaky voice turned the word into a warning rather than an order. “Just get in. We’re done talking.”
With your back still turned to the bus, you heard Jungkook climb the steps, seemingly hesitate once more, and then finally walk inside. The automatic door slammed shut behind him with a dull thud that was almost as loud as the defeated beats of your heart in your chest.
Alone in the parking lot, you finally exhaled all that you’d kept inside and then some. You wanted your lungs to feel as empty as your chest.
For just a minute, you couldn’t be Rated Riot’s manager.
For just a minute, you needed to be yourself and by yourself as you squatted, hugging your knees to your chest.
Your laboured breaths made you rock on your feet slightly as your chest rose and fell at an increasing pace, but you resisted the throbbing hurt inside—you couldn’t cry. You wouldn’t.
In a minute, you’d have to check on the band and make sure all of them were on the bus before leaving for Cologne.
In a minute, you’d have to face Jungkook again and talk to him as if nothing had happened.
You squeezed your eyes shut.
The bet was hurtful. But what hurt even more was your own choice to let it all escalate to the point where losing it all again hurt. Still wanting him, even now, hurt. His unchanging priorities—his friends first, everyone else second—hurt.
You didn’t want to talk to him as if nothing had happened. But you had to.
Maybe it was for the better. The bet was a cold shower, jolting you awake and reminding you that trying again never worked.
And really, perhaps you should have seen this coming. You knew that this was just another one of Sid’s games that Jungkook had willingly participated in. Truly, this was nothing new in your experience and hardly different from Sid dropping Jungkook off at the grimiest bar in town and sending you on a scavenger hunt to find him—night, after night, after night.
You stood up with a sharp inhale.
You’d had enough.
If Jungkook wanted to continue playing, he could do it by himself. You refused to be a part of it again.
However, ending things with Jungkook and ensuring that he didn’t win this bet didn’t feel like your win, either.
It felt like you both lost.
chapter title credits: bad omens, “the fountain”
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