Chapter Text
The streets were Jeongguk’s graveyard.
He bled for the adrenaline of racing down the street at a bedazzling speed, and he absolutely lived for the thrill of throwing his life to the hands of fate. Nothing made him feel more invincible than those two seconds of touching death, decorating his own grave, only to claw his way back to life with a wrecked grave in clasped in his hand.
It’s a gamble between life and death. That's what made the street racing so tricky, so fascinating. One false move and he could crash, get skittled by another bike on high momentum, go high-side over his handlebars, or smash headfirst into some dumbass rookie biker.
However, the thought of taking a hit to his bike wasn’t something he liked to dwell on. He had been in countless accidents before, not a new occurrence for him, but a scratch to his handsome bike would make him go bonkers.
But street racing was never supposed to be fair.
It’s illegal in the country. It’s illegal, that’s why it keeps his pockets heavy after every race. Rich fuckers love to milk their money on exploiting reckless men who put their lives on the line for some bucks and cheap entertainment. Joke’s on them, he races because he likes fondling his grim reaper’s balls, and if he accidentally becomes a millionaire with his winning streak, that’s not on him.
There are certain rules, more to safeguard the streets than the players, but with no real consequences if you don’t follow them. It’s a criminal activity for a reason. Nobody gave a fuck if you fell and died in the middle of the road. If you could crawl off the road, good for you; if not, you’d be disposed of quietly without any trace.
Nobody’s loyal on the street.
Each to their own.
The real problem was the adversaries you created in the pit. Jeongguk had beaten the same conceited names over and over again. He has left them tasting defeat, beaten their ego to dust, left them staring at his taillights as he returned home with a heavy wallet after grabbing yet another victory under his belt.
He learned it soon enough that winning constantly bred resentful enemies faster than it built respect. Having enemies in this world was a liability. Jeongguk had enough reputation in the pit for nobody to fuck with him. But in the illegal scene, mafia money sat closer to street racing than anyone cared to admit. Backers with nothing to lose and boredom to burn funded entire groups just to cause some tremors in the background. That’s when it stops being about races and starts being about territory, pride, and revenge.
There are no rules in the pit; if you pissed the wrong crowd, they might kick your ass, maybe they’ll fuck up your bike, or they might even kill you. You can either cry, or swing a leg over the bike, hit the clutch, and try again. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. It was just how things went.
But Jeongguk didn’t live by rules.
He always wins.
The only races he doesn’t win are the ones he does not want to win.
The chill of the wind pricks his cheek. The adrenaline is skyrocketing, blood pumping hot in his veins as he veers into an underground bypass, and right into the shadows lit by amber lights and glowing arrows.
Ravenous for the glory he is about to snag, Jungkook revs the throttle, redlining the engine with his heart ramming against his ribs.
A soft rumble resonates behind him. A second pair of headlights breached the dark blanket of the night. He glances at the rearview mirror quickly to catch a glimpse of the red helmet barely catching up to him. Jungkook snorts in pity, rolling his wrist and squeezing the front brake lever harder together to load the front suspension, racing down the curve of the freeway.
Jeongguk adds pressure to the right footpeg at the turning, the bike tilts 45 degrees from the ground, and Jeongguk leans into the curve, body loose, breath stuck in his lungs, his knees hover a breath above the asphalt, the back wheel screeches behind him. The smoke of burning and rubber fills his nose.
It’s the seconds dilating, moving slower and slower, the faster and faster he speeds. He’s beyond any safety bubble; one wobble and he’s done. He accelerates. The whole speedometer clocks out at max, the pointer blocks by the instrument’s limit. The red helmet tries to catch up, but they’re blitzing so fast he can’t control the wobble of his front wheel against the opposing forces.
Jeongguk pulls the bike upright.
Ahead, the metal arms of the barricade are intentionally pushed aside where the railroad goes down. The railway signals are flashing green, and to his left, brilliant beaming headlights glide rapidly towards the intersection. They are speeding towards the tracks, and so is the train in his periphery.
Jeongguk assesses it; if he hits the break now and waits for the train to thunder past, all the momentum he built to widen the gap between him and the others would be lost. The race would reset.
Absolutely fucking not.
It he crossed, though –
Jeongguk grins as he twists the throttle, aiming straight for the tracks. It’s a daredevil pass. He could die a gruesome death if he keeps going, his brains splattered across the tracks, his limbs shredded off and strewn about the street, or maybe he won’t.
The red helmet starts to decelerate behind him, but Jeongguk doesn’t look back. His glittering eyes are fixed ahead on the target, feels his synapses blink wide open with sparkling power, wind thrashes against the leather of his jacket, his bike flying.
He feels so… alive.
And this is it.
His chance.
The train’s horn bellows from his left, so much closer than he anticipated, sending a shiver down his spine, but Jeongguk doesn’t hit the brake. The front of his tire hits steel, the vibration of the rails reverberating underneath him. The golden headlights of the train blinds him for a brief second behind his helmet, and Jeongguk feels a bubble of laughter rising but he keeps it in.
All the best things about him are crazy and reckless, and here he is, soaring, flying, free, to prove it.
Jungkook slams his foot down, teeth grinding as he turbos down the last few inches. It’s just him and the howling train, and the envious eyes of the red helmet on his back as he all but leaps across the tracks before the train barrels past.
He hits the throttle harder, laughter tearing loose from his chest as he is swallowed by the whooshing train. The wind blasts through his body as he glances back, heart hammering, and breath coming heavy.
He made it.
He fucking made it.
Leather tight around his shoulders, Jeongguk takes off.
He could see the crowd waiting with bated breath at the waiting line. He sees Jimin’s pink jacket standing on top of Yoongi’s bike with binoculars in hand. He whoops when he catches Jeongguk’s figure in the distance.
It takes the biker five seconds before he screeches to a halt right past the finish line.
The screams turn numb as he takes his helmet off, a leg balancing on the asphalt as he shakes the sweaty bangs out of his eyes. His chest heaves in wracking pants as he waits for his eyes to adjust to the normal velocity of the world. He sees the annoyed faces and gleeful expressions, the stacks of money passing from one hand to another, members of the groups frowning and hissing.
It takes another two seconds before he has a laughing Jimin looped around his neck, and Hoseok repeatedly smacking his back. Seokjin tries to ruffle his hair but he smacks it away with a growl.
“Not my fucking hair.”
Seokjin rolls his eyes, but the smile stays strong.
“Welcome to the Nicotine Drift.”
The heavy stare burns into Jungkook’s skin, and he swallows a thousand curses on his tongue at the thin sleeveless undershirt he decided to don today.
He peeks past the hood of the Honda Civic he’s working on to glare at Namjoon leaning on the other side of the room. He has a cigarette perched between his lips, and he’s very much enjoying his break and Jeongguk’s temperament at dealing with customers.
This one in particular makes his skin crawl.
“What was the problem again?” Jeongguk asks, keeping his voice neutral because snapping at the customers isn’t usually good customer service.
“Oh, yeah. It’s been making that sound again. The one I told you about last time, remember?”
She bends down to point under the hood, except she doesn’t look where she is pointing and almost jabs his chest instead. He flinches back, and the girl has the audacity to look embarrassed. She is young – younger than him, probably in her mid-twenties. She also has a lot of free time on her hands, considering this is her third visit in the last six weeks.
“Right.” A drop of silence. “Show me where you heard it.”
She then points at the engine. Jeongguk grabs her wrist with a hiss.
“Don’t touch the engine,” Jeongguk hisses, tossing her hand to the side. “It’s hot.”
“Oh – oh! Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t paying attention.”
Clearly.
The girl tilts his head bashfully and looks at Jeongguk with that coy gaze that he can read quite well. Only if she had the wits to comprehend he isn’t fucking interested. He doesn’t date, and his extremely short and very strict moral list draws the line at sleeping with clients.
And two seconds of checking, he already knew that the car was completely fine.
He shuts the hood with a lot more force than necessary.
The girl jumps at the sound.
He hands the keys back to her. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says flatly. “You probably misheard it.”
He walks away, dropping the rag on the counter, already thinking about the next car he actually has to fix.
“Are you sure? I swear I heard it this time, Jeongguk-ssi,” the girl argues, following after him. “It was making that tchkk tchkk sound again.”
“You can leave the car. I’ll ask someone to inspect it.”
“Why can’t you do it?” The girl crosses his arms on her chest and pouts. She pouts. Fucking god. He is going to key Namjoon’s bike. “You always do it. I’ll wait in the meantime. I’ve nowhere to be.”
“Your car is in perfect condition,” he tells her, and a little exasperation sips into his voice. “But if you’re concerned, I’ll ask my workers to inspect it once again because I genuinely can’t see the fucki – further problem.”
He hears the soft snort Namjoon lets out from the other side. Jeongguk’s patience is really wearing thin.
“I don’t care about that. I want—” the girl suddenly pauses, and Jeongguk was certainly not planning to hide himself in the washroom until she left if it wasn’t for how her voice dipped low in a strange lilt.
She is gawking at his bike.
“Is that your bike?”
Jeongguk looks over his shoulder, at where his Ducati Desmosedici is sitting demurely under the shade in a poise he can’t help but call majestic, shiny, and polished red like the gorgeous thing she is. He feels a sense of pride that people always lose their breath a little when they first land their eyes on her.
“Yeah,” he answers, incredibly proud, rubbing his hand with the cloth and reaching for a screwdriver.
The girl gapes at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly dropped.
“It’s you.”
“Sorry?”
“Oh my god,” she groans exaggeratedly, completely ignoring Jeongguk in favor of muttering under her breath. “—got to be kidding me. Why are the hot ones always taken.”
Jeongguk narrows his eyes slightly. What? Taken where?
He doesn’t know what that means. He’s not interested in finding out either.
Jungkook reaches for the receipt pad and fills out the receipt for Vehicle inspection and Basic diagnostic scan. It’s a little ridiculous since there was nothing wrong with her car. But Yoongi had a strict policy – “If your time has been used, it must be accounted for” – and Jungkook agreed wholeheartedly. This was precisely why he disliked ambiguous complaints. A thorough diagnostic check required time, equipment, and effort. The fact that her car did not have a detectible problem does not exempt her from the standard procedure.
He tears the slip from the pad and sets it on the counter.
“You can pay up front,” he tells her monotonously, already thinking of taking a break and going for a drive even though the sun’s out for a killing.
She fumbles with her card. “Actually, can you cancel my maintenance subscription?”
That snaps his attention.
“What.” And now, he definitely sounds frustrated.
She winces. “I just – yeah. Cancel it. Please.”
“That’s a year-long plan,” Jeongguk informs her, keeping his irritation at bay. “You’ve got three months left.”
“I know. I don’t mind.”
“There’s no refund.”
“I don’t care.”
What the actual fuck.
He hesitates because he knows what canceling the subscription means. One look at the other side quickly tells him Namjoon isn’t in the workshop anymore to help him out. He grits his teeth and eventually goes to the office to retrieve the store’s work laptop.
“—can’t believe it either.”
“I saw it this morning,” the voice whispers in hushed tones. “Fuck, man, I had to hold a wall, I was so shocked.”
“Can’t really see that guy in love though,” someone else says. “You think it’s casual?”
“Probably. He’s the most unapproachable guy I’ve ever seen,” another voice fills in. “I’ve worked here two years and he doesn’t even know my name.”
“It’s funny, though. Maybe the boss is finally settling in.”
Jeongguk pushes the door open and the entire room goes dead quiet.
All four heads of his workers stare at him with dazzling shock like they just saw a ghost. Jeongguk frowns at their weird behavior but doesn’t say anything. He couldn’t care less about their mundane gossip in the slightest when he just potentially lost a fucking customer. He’s too fucking busy trying not to punch a wall to give a fuck which one of his hyungs is finally settling in.
When he comes back to the main area with his work laptop in hand, the room is still quiet.
Jeongguk internally rolls his eyes and outwardly points at the door irately. “Get back to work.”
They scatter immediately. Jeongguk exhales, putting the laptop on the counter desk. He loads up a new client’s subscription form and cancels it with gritting teeth. There goes his income.
A few minutes later, the receipt is printed, stamped and handed over. Jeongguk watches the Honda Civic drive out of the workshop for the last time.
He leans against the desk and takes a few deep breaths.
What the hell just happened?
After composing himself a little, he decides to fuck it all and take a break. Luckily, the workshop he owns with Namjoon and Yoongi sits on the ground floor of their five-storey building, which means home is only ever a lift ride away.
Owning a workshop was never on his bingo card, but he’s good with machines. He likes working with them. And at nineteen, he had been strongly advised to get a legal job; earning millions in his bank account weekly without the income tax authorities knocking down his door wasn’t exactly sustainable.
However, instead of heading to his own floor, Jeongguk lets himself into his brother’s humble abode with no prior warning, but he’s not the only one. He swiftly kicks off his shoes beside Namjoon’s loafers and heads straight towards the kitchen with the intent on chewing through his anger with whatever food he can find.
He hears several voices overlapping each other from the other room, and his jaw starts working. Perfect. Now he’s going to have to explain the reason for his foul mood to everybody. Still, he trudges towards the voices, simply trying to grasp the buoyant discussion occurring.
He doesn’t even know why he is so annoyed; he lost a customer, so fucking what? They’ll pull in two more to cover the loss by the end of the week. Namjoon keeps half the neighborhood’s ladies in rotation from his pecs alone, so the income wasn’t the problem. If Jeongguk ever joined him in his shirtless shenanigans, they might just double their clientele.
There’s nothing to worry about or beat himself up over. And yet the image of the Honda Civic pulling out of the workshop and his workers shooting him those uneasy looks sends the frustration boiling up again.
Then he realizes that he hates mouthy people. Fucking hate when they cut him off, try to talk over him, overly talkative, give him sass, test him – and then pretend they didn’t just say shit when he’s standing right there. Fuck that. Say it with your chest or don’t fucking say it at all. He hates small talk. But goddamn does it make Jeongguk’s blood boil when people don’t know when to shut the fuck up.
“—that’s Jeongguk’s bike!”
“Oh, and that’s definitely Jeongguk’s helmet.”
“Look at that arm! Those are Jeongguk’s tattoos.”
“Holy shit!” Hoseok laughs. “That’s literally Jeongguk!”
“What the fuck is going on.” Jeongguk snaps pointedly from where he stands in the kitchen entrance, his hand in his pockets and deep creases between his pulled brows.
Five heads whip to look at him. They’re all crowded around the dining table with their phones out and heads bent together like conspirators. At his sudden appearance, three grown adults suddenly find the floor very fascinating.
Yoongi sends him a casual wave from the other side of the kitchen. “Congrats on the relationship.”
Jeongguk scowls. “What?”
He catches Seokjin squinting eyes then, observing him closely with something like faux anger in his eyes. Jeongguk is very confused.
“Is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Jin hums, still squinting at him suspiciously. “Someone uploaded a picture of their biker boyfriend on Twitter, and the guy and his bike look suspiciously like this fucking guy I know,” Jin waves his finger around. “So now I’m just sitting here, staring at this picture and wondering how and when my brother managed to get himself a fucking boyfriend.”
“I’m what?”
“You tell me when you go take a shit, but you don’t tell me when you get a secret boyfriend?”
“I don’t tell you when I take a shit,” Jeongguk snatches the phone from Jin’s hand, heart beating hard in his chest as he turns the screen towards himself. Jimin makes a noise somewhere between a bewildered screech and a wheeze behind him. “And I don’t have a fucking boyfriend.”
But Jeongguk pauses, completely halting when he looks at the screen Jin was scrutinizing two minutes ago. His eyes bug out of his skull in complete astonishment at the clear picture of himself on the fucking screen. What the fuck?
The shine of his bike glitters brightly under the streetlights. The figure sitting on it isn’t facing the camera, leaning forward over his bike, leaving tattoos bare where the jacket is ridden up, gloved hands loose on the throttle. Obviously, the face isn’t visible, and Jeongguk doesn’t fucking remember ever posting a picture like this. Hell, he hates having his pictures taken, but it’s undeniably him.
The bike is a dead giveaway, so are the tattoos, and the leather on his shoulders and his initials—JK—printed on the helmet in small letters make everything devastatingly real.
He stares at the picture until the screen darkens, then he lights it up once again to gawk at it. This time, he holds it between his thumb and forefinger and zooms in. The fuck. The actual fuck. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, gaping at the image at hand, speechless, before he finally exits the photo and looks at the tweet itself.
He feels the disorientation crawl up his throat trying to choke him.
3.4 Million fucking views.
There are 3.4 million fucking people who have seen this tweet. Three hundred and thirty-four thousand liked it. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand retweeted it. And fifty-three thousand quote-tweeted it. Holy fuck.
The others immediately register the shock on his face.
“Oh, this just got ten times more entertaining,” Yoongi barks out a laugh and gets elbowed by Hoseok for his unnecessary fuelling. “That’s not your boyfriend, JK?”
Jungkook stops midway in his approach to irascibility and furiously flings a saltshaker at the latter who just catches the item and keeps on grinning.
“Don’t fucking test me right now, Yoongi. I’ll blow off your fucking engine.”
“Charming. Blowing your new boyfriend next?”
“Ew,” Hoseok and Jimin groan in unison, shoving Yoongi and causing a short laugh to rough out. “Stop aggravating him. You know how he is. He’s going to prove a point just to piss you off and make us suffer.”
“Yeah, please. I do not want to hear my brother and blow jobs and dicks in the same sentence ever again.”
“My bedroom is below his!”
“Shut up, all of you,” Jeongguk snaps coldly, teeth grinding, trying and failing to restrain his feverish anger from erupting the more he looks at the screen. He waves the phone around in the air. “Who the fuck is this guy?”
“Some cafe boy claiming to be your boyfriend. We didn’t know you were into soft blondes, Kookie.”
“I’m fucking not,” Jungkook clenches his jaw and grits out. “Why the fuck is this guy lying?”
“But he’s so cute, though,” Jimin argues unhelpfully. “Maybe let him lie. Social media’s fake as hell. It’ll die in a day.”
“Fuck no,” Jeongguk growls, vexation building up calamitously with every word that leaves the other’s mouth. “We just lost a customer because of him.”
“What?” That gets Yoongi to drop his witticisms.
“Is it Miss Lee?” Namjoon enquires with a frown.
“Yeah. Canceled her warranty too.”
“Oh, sweet fuck. That’s fucking bad,” Namjoon curses softly, standing up and picking up his phone from where it was plugged in to charge, his screen flooded with messages. “She was one of the regulars.”
“Damn. Fun’s over,” Seokjin chirps, snatching his phone back from him. “Not to forget, this is quite dangerous. If the wrong people see it, good fucking bye-bye. They’ll think Jeongguk is distracted. It’s going to be a blow to our income.”
“Heard he owns a café,” Jimin scoots a little to show Yoongi the screen. “Shall we pay him a visit?”
“Let’s do that,” Hoseok stands up, pulling on his gloves and cracking his knuckles. “Just to be clear, we are going to ruffle him up a bit, right?”
“No,” Jimin protests immediately, frowning. “He looks harmless in the pic—”
“Absolutely,” Jeongguk interrupts him, already gathering his leather jacket and helmet. “Who the fuck does he think he is?”
“Fuck, right,” Yoongi rolls his head back and groans at the stretch. “Motherfucker is going to pay for making me lose money.”
Jimin scoffs, derision clear in his voice. “Is there anything you love besides your stupid money?”
“Definitely not you, Park.”
“Aw. You and your outdated insults, Min” Jimin smiles sarcastically. “My ears are begging for one original insult from you.”
“Begging?” Yoongi perks up, grinning and excited. Jimin’s face falls into something more deadpan, retracting his arms and crossing them over his chest. “Of course, you like to beg. Bet you like it roug–”
“Stop fighting! Let’s go!”
“I swear to god if this is the wrong address, I’m gonna beat all of your asses,” Yoongi hisses as he eyes the place with a tetchy frown.
Hoseok squints at his phone then back at the storefront. “This is the address, right?”
Jungkook pulls his helmet over his head, shaking out his flattened hair and feels the sun beating down on him. It’s scorching as he leans back on his bike and takes a look at the place, helmet tucked under his arm, fingers threading lightly through his sweaty bangs. The heat is unbearable, and Jungkook grits his teeth together as Namjoon happily takes his time double-checking the street number, then the café name.
“Yeah. This is it.”
“What the fuck,” Jimin breaths out stunned behind him. Jeongguk straightens up. “Who the hell did this?”
Berry Brew Café looks nothing like the photos described the place to be.
In the place of a bustling café, a broken, ransacked statue of the shop stands. The sign is still there, but it has taken its fair share of damage. The wooden palette with the Berry Brew stamped in it is splintered from the middle, warm yellow bulbs strung along the awning all broken and crooked. All of the front windows are broken, half-shattered, surface is covered in circular spiderwebbed fractures. Chunks of glass littered the pavement in tiny flakes of broken glass.
The CLOSED sign is flipped.
Jeongguk steps over the broken lamp without looking down and swings the door open.
The entrance’s little bells jingle above him.
If it was bad outside, it’s even worse inside. The stench of strong coffee mixed with something foul and disgusting permeates the air. Jeongguk wrinkles his nose as he looks around. The entire place is trashed. Tables and chairs are overturned, the dessert shelf is partly cracked. The floor is littered with concoctions of things; dark scatter and broken ceramic pieces, coffee beans and pastries, some type of sugary syrup and crushed flowers along with their vases into a sticky poodle.
Seokjin gasps behind him, and Yoongi grunts. “This is a fuckin’ shithole.”
The glass and coffee beans make a boding evil crunch under his boots as he steps forward. There is no one at the counter, not a single soul. He can’t see anyone around either. Fucking great. They just wasted their time and gas over nothing.
Under all the stored rage, he realizes they are standing in the middle of a wreckage on private property without the owner around. He is about to tell the others to call it quits and try their luck the next day because he can’t see anybody around and they don’t need a lawsuit on top of their names, but stops dead in his tracks when he hears a sniffle.
Jeongguk whips his head around so fast he’s convinced he’s given himself a crick in the neck, eyes immediately locking on the figure crouching on the other end of the café, peeking from behind the counter.
All Jeongguk could hear was the shuffling, another sniffle, and then he saw the back of their head slowly peek out. His back is turned towards them, and it doesn’t look like the man has even registered their presence inside the café yet. Too much in his own world to pay attention to his surroundings. But Jeongguk doesn’t care about that. All he records is the blonde hair, and he knows he found his guy.
“There he is,” Yoongi pats his shoulder with a hearty rasp of enjoyment, then shoves him forward. “Go teach him a lesson, JK.”
Annoyance fizzles in Jungkook’s chest before he can tamp it down. He cocks his head, hand going into his pockets and leisurely taking a slow step forward, eyes don’t waver away from where they glare the man down lying on his own rubble. He hears another sniffle and almost rolls his eyes. Fists shaking in an obvious attempt to hold back aggression.
Just like that, Jungkook has finished considering the options, whether he’s going to be polite for once and ask him to delete the tweet or just bash his head to the same ground his tears are mixing into and threaten him into it anyway. He’s stepping forward. Bending down to pick up a vase from the ground, and advancing with his jaw clenched hard.
The guy is crying, sniffling and shoulders hitching with every sudden sob that wracks his frame. Tears dripping down, splashing onto the floor, onto the glass.
Good.
Jungkook doesn’t fucking care; he doesn’t feel bad about it. If anything, it pisses him off more because tears are cheap, and his mess is fucking not. He doesn’t know what happened to his café, but fuck, does it make him feel lovely. He thinks about upturning what’s left. Knocking a table over just to hear the guy sob some more and utter those words of apology to him, begging on his knees, amplifying his pain and make him feel the despair of a real loss to his very bones.
Jeongguk is going to teach him a fucking lesson.
That’s the plan.
Until the man turns, and Jeongguk gets a glimpse of his face.
He almost trips over his feet. Thoughts stop and his mind goes blank as suddenly as it had built as he feels his heart practically leap out of his chest. Jungkook halts in his steps, focuses his wide eyes on the sight, eyes dragging over each and every corner of the man’s face and body.
The sight that greets him is one to behold.
He thinks he loses his breath a little.
Head swirls with feelings that are hard to place. It’s different in daylight when the sun shines bright and the shadows merge into each other. He can acknowledge when someone is attractive, when someone piques his interest, it’s entirely different when someone just does nothing and yet takes away his ability to speak, think, and breathe. Jeongguk has seen and met many types of people in his life. Has kissed and slept with even prettier ones; however, nothing comes close to what he witnesses right now.
It feels like forever that Jungkook is standing there, watching the oblivious man with wide eyes. He barely hears his hyungs shuffling behind him, and as if he’s brought back to reality, yet it isn’t reality at all, can’t be reality because this boy is too beautiful to be real.
Yoongi - oblivious to the fact that why Jeongguk has stopped – keeps on jostling him forward, and when he doesn’t budge, steps around him to scowl at him. Yoongi is speaking to him, but Jeongguk can’t hear anything but the quiet sniffles that fill the crevices of his senses. Yoongi suddenly steps into his view, and Jeongguk hisses, shoving him aside unceremoniously.
“The fuck,” he thinks he hears someone say, but his attention cannot be taken away, refuses to be taken away from the most beautiful person Jungkook has ever laid his eyes upon.
He’s wearing an oversized sweater tucked in his faded jeans, displaying collarbones as he leans forward that Jeongguk thinks he does not have the emotional capacity to handle right now, sleeves pushed up clumsily to his elbows. Even in his disheveled state, soft blonde hair unruly as it sticks up in multiple places, he looks stunning. Skin beautifully sun-kissed. He glows.
As Jeongguk steps closer, he becomes all the more vivid, and even the fallen, crushed peonies on the floor start to bloom the more Jeongguk looks at him. A trash bag is open beside him, already half-full, and he’s picking up glass pieces by piece with bare hand. He pauses every few seconds to scrub at his face with his sleeve. Jungkook feels something in his chest squeeze tightly watching him cry alone.
They’re bleeding, his hands. Just a little. Red smeared along the pads of his fingers. Jeongguk feels something like remorse kick in, and he’s not really sure why he feels that.
He stares at the man so long from a distance, he doesn’t understand if it’s still the annoyance coloring his heart with red ink and causing his blood to pump and his heart to race so hard it might gallop out of his body altogether, or if it’s something serious.
Shit. Is he having a heart attack? Isn’t he too young for that?
But then the realization whirls around in his mind the next second, and drawing the distress away.
Jeongguk feels his cheek redden in an instant.
Fuck.
Suddenly, the vase feels heavy in his hands, and he dusts it a little with his sleeve and awkwardly sets it upright on the nearest table. He clears his throat and looks up.
Yoongi stares at him like he’s lost his mind.
Jungkook glares at him half-heartedly, cheeks and ears burning up at an alarming rate that he knows is visible in the form of a bright red shade that won’t take Yoongi two seconds to distinguish if he looked closely. And then there’d be no coming back from it.
He works on autopilot as he grabs a broom from leaning against the table beside a couple of bin bags and shoves it into Yoongi’s chest. Yoongi’s mouth drops. Jungkook snatches a fresh trash bag from the table and tosses it towards a bewildered Jimin.
Jungkook grabs a cloth for himself and crouches. He scrubs the nearest table, pushing glass and sticky residue into the bag. When he observes no movement behind him, he glances over his shoulder and fires a deadly glare at his hyungs’ frozen forms.
It takes no more than two breaths for them to snap out of it and start helping.
They work as quietly as they can, but the boy still doesn’t seem to notice their presence. Jeongguk wonders if he’s blind.
Ten minutes pass like that. Namjoon and Yoongi have found a toolkit somewhere behind the counter. It looks old, but they make it work, kneeling beside tables and tightening the loosened bolts, easing bent legs back into shape. Hoseok is on dusting duty like Jeongguk. Jimin moves between the dessert display case, which definitely needs replacing. Jin is sweeping on the other side; he’s also eating something that suspiciously looks like a muffin. Jeongguk has no idea how he got his hands on one, and he doesn’t care to ask either, because he’s too busy watching.
The boy is still on the floor near the other side of the counter, but instead of crouching, he’s completely sitting on the floor in the midst of shards of glass with his knee bent to his chest and head lowered. Jeongguk can’t see him, but he sniffles occasionally, sometimes he is fully sobbing, face hidden, and his entire body shaking with every hitch of breath.
And Jeongguk decides he can’t fucking take it anymore.
He shuffles around one of the shelves he dusted some minutes ago and finds what he’s looking for. He pulls it out, checks it once, then closes it again.
He slowly treads towards the boy like he’s approaching a skittish animal. And maybe he is, because the moment he’s only a couple of meters away from him that the movement might be felt, the boy finally notices him.
“Wha—” He startles, body jerking and eyes flying up. Jungkook swears he sees a flash of fear in them. He’s crying. Jungkook hates the fact that he’s crying. He yanks one earbud free from his ear, then the other, cords tangling in his hands. Jeongguk watches him fumble with his phone, pausing his playlist.
Music Therapy for Anxiety and Stress Relief
The phone clicks shut, and Jeongguk forces his eyes to look away from the other’s phone. The boy lifts his gaze, blinking up at him
“Oh—” he tries to say, struggling to get the words across from how rough his voice comes out. He takes a staggering breath, tries to smile while his bloodshot, red, yet worried eyes stare right into Jungkook’s eyes. “I’m – I’m sorry. But we’re closed.”
Jungkook falters, but forces himself to take that step forward and lower himself fully beside him. His heart is racing in his chest, and he doesn’t know how he could act so nonchalant outwardly after being blessed with that voice. The deep timbre of his voice, low in resonance, deepened to the point that it’s a bit petrifying to hear it so closely.
It’s music to Jungkook’s ears.
Hesitantly, Jungkook reaches out and curls his fingers around one of the boy’s hands, watching him closely to see if there is any complaint on his face. There isn’t.
“Uh – here,” he blurts out, all because he wants to say something to fill the tense silence. He opens the first aid kit and gently dabs away his bloody fingers.
The boy is sitting on his knees on the dirty floor, hands on top of Jeongguk’s thighs. His attention on Jeongguk’s work. He doesn’t look as frightened as before, but he looks confused. There is a furrow between his brows that Jeongguk very badly wants to smooth.
He’s so close. And the biker allows himself the privilege to look because his dead mother did raise a shameless bastard.
It’s not his fault; it’s just really hard to look away from him. He can’t help but let his eyes linger. If the boy looked beautiful from afar, he was even more handsome from up close. Features delicate yet sharp. Hair soft and fluffy, each golden strand shimmering in the light, perfectly tousled as it falls over his forehead. Long lashes, and lips so pink and bitten from his teeth cutting into the skin of them.
He has a defined jawline but it isn’t razor-sharp like Jungkook’s; it’s almost soft, like his cheeks. Cheeks that are covered in dried tear tracks, painted in a subtle shade of pink.
But that’s not all he notices. He also sees the red-rimmed and swollen eyes and the dark circles, stained with drying tears, chapped lips, and a devastating state. It’s the most heartbreaking thing Jungkook has ever seen. Yet, he still looks so beautiful.
“You don’t have to do this. It’s really okay,” the boy murmurs croakily, voice hoarse and quiet. He sounds tired.
Jungkook looks down at his hand. It’s a pretty hand.
He tapes the last bandage in place, thumb lingering a second longer than necessary on the tips of his long fingers. Then he finally lifts his gaze.
He opens his mouth and asks him what he’s been dying to. “Are you okay?”
The boy blinks at him, then his face crumbles a bit, but he doesn’t cry. The corners of his mouth curl up in a beautiful smile. It doesn’t look authentic.
“I’m okay.” Jungkook doesn’t miss the way his voice trembles. “I’m fine.”
It sounds like a lie. A lot like he’s trying to convince himself. And he’s proven right, when the other’s lip starts to wobble and eyes brim with fresh new tears again.
Jeongguk looks away and clears his throat. “Are – are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure,” he lies again.
Jungkook doesn’t comment on the lie.
He pushes himself to stand.
“What the—” the boy gasps out, scrambling and blinking in his state of stupor as the leather arm reaches down to tug him upwards. He stumbles on his feet, and Jeongguk steadies him with a sturdy grip, walking him backwards until he meets a table.
“Sit,” Jungkook says, nodding towards one of the chairs they’ve managed to salvage.
The boy obeys automatically, perched on the edge, hands tucked into his lap, bottom lip caught between his teeth as he looks up at Jeongguk with the most adorably pensive expression. And the longer the guy stares at him like that, so close up with his wide, beautiful eyes, the faster the organ in his chest beats, the louder the banging in his chest gets.
To make matters worse, he holds eye contact with Jeongguk for a long time like it’s nothing.
Fuck. Jungkook looks away, forcefully taking a step back.
“I didn’t catch your name,” the boy asks, curious.
Jeongguk looks back at him, then away. “It’s Jeongguk,”
“Jeongguk.” The boy experiments with the name on his tongue, and something pleasant drops in his stomach at hearing his name in that voice. “Thank you for these, Jeongguk.”
Jeongguk looks at the boy looking down at his newly bandaged fingers, then back up at Jungkook. His smile somehow becomes brighter.
Jeongguk clears his throat, burying his hands in his pockets in case they start getting ideas. “Don’t work with glass barehanded,” he says instead, voice slow and soft. “You’ll hurt yourself again.”
“Oh, this?” he says, wiggling his hands a little too cheerfully. “This is nothing! I hurt myself all the time. My immune system’s elite at this point.”
Jungkook purses his lips. That’s not very reassuring.
“I’m clumsy. And my job doesn’t help in the slightest. Burns and cuts every single day, but it doesn’t affect me that much anymore. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel it was bleeding this bad,” he shrugs, smile still there. It looks so fake. “But it’s fine! Really! You know when you worked really hard for something, got hurt along the way but you didn’t stop, and the end result is really really satisfying, so,” He gestures vaguely around the café, lips downturned and wobbled the more he spoke, unshed tears layered over sad and empty eyes. “it’s all worth it? That’s how I feel.”
“What happened to your café?”
“Oh,” the boy lets out dejectedly. Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked that. But the boy smiles again, tight-lipped. It’s small, barely even there, but his eyes are glistening again.
Jungkook sees it. And he’s going to punch himself so fucking hard in the face he’ll knock his own teeth out for causing those eyes to brim with tears once again.
“I think I pissed the wrong group of people. I don’t know what I did. But they pretty much trashed my café.”
“Oh.”
Jeongguk isn’t the one for violence, but goddamn, he is going to kill some fuckers tonight.
“Anyways,” the boy suddenly stands up, clapping his hands and startling Jeongguk. “You’re here to order something, right? I don’t have much, but I baked a pie this morning, and I’ve another coffee machine in the backroom. It’s not much, but I can get you a piece of that? Would that be–”
Suddenly, he sways on his feet, body tilting, and hands clutching nothing but air. Jeongguk’s breath catches in his lungs before he frantically grasps the other’s forearms to keep him from falling backwards. Jeongguk catches his eyes shut tight, the faint furrow forming between his brows as he clutches his head.
“Are you—”
“Sorry,” he blushes, cutting Jeongguk off, but Jungkook couldn’t care less. He would let this boy talk over him whenever he wanted to. “Can you please hand me my glasses? They would be over there – on the counter. I can’t really see well without them. I usually wear contacts, but they keep slipping out today, and my migraine’s starting to hit.”
“Of course.”
Jeongguk finds them half-buried beneath a receipt pad and a cracked saucer. He hands them to the boy who gratefully slides them back on. Jeongguk doesn’t have much opinion around glasses; it’s a common item. He wears them too when he’s gaming, and it’s nothing huge, but right now, they might be the most attractive item in this wrecked place.
The boy blinks once, and twice, then his eyes land on Jeongguk where it stops. He’s still smiling, but the smile seems to be frozen over his lips now. The furrowed brows are back. Yet this time there’s a difference. Those eyes. Those eyes are on Jeongguk for one long, horrible second. Then, they skid away from him to look over his shoulder.
He doesn’t miss the soft, surprised hitch of the other’s breath, those eyes widening differently to how they previously did, glasses crooked, lips slightly parted. Jeongguk frowns when he sees him stiffening, the way his eyes flash in horror that doesn’t feel very splendid to him. Jeongguk doesn’t know what he sees, but he is already staggering a step back, eyes darting between Jeongguk and over his shoulder.
“You’re a biker?”
Jeongguk dares a hesitant glance over his shoulder. All his hyungs have paused in their work, staring at them.
“Uh – yeah,” he answers tentatively. “Are you—”
The boy’s breathing goes shallow. It’s like a flip that has been switched. Jeongguk tries to read what caused this reaction, because the undecipherable features suddenly looking stricken, chest beginning to rise forcefully, isn’t a very normal reaction. Jeongguk takes a step forward, ready to reach out in case he is feeling dizzy again.
But Jeongguk’s insides recoil at the intense, vexed look the other throws at him the next second.
“What the – what the fuck? You piece of shit!”
Jeongguk startles and jumps. “What?”
“You fucking did this!”
“Did wha—”
“The audacity to show your face! You fucking ruined my café!”
“What?” Jeongguk barely had the time to widen his eyes in confusion and register what he is been accused of when – the boy suddenly lunged forward and shoved him back. Hard. A barely there grunt leaves Jeongguk’s lips as he trips three steps back before catching his footing.
“Get out!” he hears the other yell, voice wobbling despite the panic that seems to engulf his breathing. “Get the fuck out!”
“I didn’t—”
“Out!” the boy roars, voice cracking now, breathing turning worse. “All of you. I don’t care who you are. You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know your bike, your leather jackets, your stupid tattoos – fuck. No, no. Get out! Get the fuck out of here before I call the police! I’ll call them right now—”
For a moment, Jungkook is lost. All he can do is watch the other with wide worried gaze. He knows for a fact that the other is serious in his threat that he would call the police, and Jeongguk doesn’t want to take chances in finding out how true that theory is. But he still can’t move back.
The panic, the fear, the anger in his bloodshot eyes. The boy looks at him like a frightened animal, brown bangs falling into his eyes. His glasses are fogged up and crooked. Jeongguk wants to reach out. He wants to say something, he wants to comfort him, he wants to tell him that Jeongguk would rather run his own bike over his own neck than hurt him.
The devastation settles in when he realizes that the boy is scared of him; he’s looking at Jeongguk with wide terrified eyes.
Eyes that are so terrific, yet so terrified.
He feels someone wrap a hand around his arm and pull him backwards. He stumbles, but doesn’t resist the hold. He knows in the back of his mind that he should be leaving now. His presence is not welcome anymore.
“We’ll leave,” Hoseok speaks softly, a little more conciliatory in nature. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Then, Jeongguk lets himself be dragged away.
The sun is still scorching outside, but Jeongguk is so cold, so cold to his bones. It’s even more unbearable than the heat.
“Who the hell did this?” Seokjin yells the moment they reach their bikes.
“He woke up to this,” Jimin paces the pavement in fervent steps with a glowering face. “We didn’t do it. So who the fuck did it?”
“Robbery perhaps?” Namjoon offers.
“Doubt it,” Jimin rumbles. Jeongguk is half listening, fists clenching and unclenching as he looks into the café through the spider-webbed windows. “The cash register was untouched. They didn’t take a penny.”
“My bet?” Hoseok grunts tersely, grabbing his helmet from his seat compartment and swinging a leg over his bike. “Someone saw the tweet and thought it’d be funny to swing at Jungkook by swinging at him.”
“Yeah,” Namjoon spares Jungkook a side-eye. “They probably think Taehyung is Jeongguk’s real boyfriend.”
Taehyung.
That’s his name.
TaehyungTaehyungTaehyungTaehyung
Through the glass, Taehyung has slid down behind the counter. His shoulders are shaking harder now, violently wracking through his chest with the force of his cries, face buried in his hands. If Jeongguk listened closer, he could hear the gut-wrenching sobs that left his lips. The unknown feeling is back, overpowering his thoughts and emotions, causing a distasteful churn in his stomach and leaving his chest squeezing painfully tight.
“The location was public,” Seokjin informs passively. There is a frosting on his face. He looks fucking ridiculous. “Anybody could’ve pulled it up. But looking at the recent activity, there’s a high chance it's Hyunwoo’s group. They have been sore ever since Jeongguk crashed their race last month.”
“The idiots are trying to be funny,” Jimin growls. “They’ll probably pull some more shit to harass the poor guy. Like, seriously? Destroying his café? That’s so fucking low.”
“We need to shut the rumor down before it gets messy,” Namjoon says, tongue clicking vaguely. “We don’t know how many people saw the tweet or what kind of fucked-up ideas they’re already getting.”
Yoongi throws his hands up. “We couldn’t even get him to delete the tweet!”
Jimin whirls on him, eyes narrowed into a reprimanding glare. “Are you serious right now? Do you really care about that when you just saw his condition? He was terrified.”
“Yeah? And whose fault is that?”
“What do you think, Gguk?” Hoseok's voice is quiet, almost calm, probably feeling the inner inferno he is raging with.
Jungkook removes his eyes from crying Taehyung and swings a leg over his bike. He shoves his helmet over his head, flicking his tinted visor down. The sun is scorching over his head, and so is the blood in his veins.
The engine roars to life.
“I’ll handle it.”
“Are my eyes deceiving me, or is that Jeon Jeongguk on my turf?” Hyunwoo taunts, a smirk blooming across the corners of his mouth. “Is the little boss in need of something? A new bike? I can tell you which model to buy.”
Jungkook’s eyes flick away from the shitty basketball court around them to the man in front of him. Choi Hyunwoo isn’t a dangerous man, but he is quite infuriating. Jeongguk usually wonders how he isn’t defunct ten feet under bearing in mind his exceptional talent of riling people up for his sick gratification.
Jeongguk’s eyes flash cold yet his tone remains plain and simple as he regards the other.
“Tell your boys to stay the fuck away from the café in Hongdae.”
“Jeon,” Hyunwoo chirps, clicking his tongue. “I was actually wondering when you’d finally show up. But you should try being a little polite when you’re standing on my territory.” He looks down at him like he’s disappointed. The sycophantic prick. “However, enlighten me, which café?”
Jungkook ignores him, lazily wandering over to the bike sitting in the corner, polished and glossy. A Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, a beautiful bike, less than his own, but it’s a good choice. He runs a finger along the tank. He checks for dust on his fingertips before wiping them in disgust on his jacket.
His hand dips into his pocket as he turns back to the others. The grin on Hyunwoo’s face is too predatory for him to play oblivious. If him waiting for Jeongguk to show up wasn’t proof enough that he was involved in trashing Taehyung’s place, then his wild hideous eyes gleaming with smugness certainly are.
But Jeongguk doesn’t want any doubts, so he says. “Berry Brew.”
“Berry Brew? Huh. Why does that ring a bell?” Hyunwoo hums, playful expression a stark contrast to the ominous lilt to his tone. The roguish tone ears some delighted snickers from his lackeys, although it soon turns into something more subdued when Jeongguk turns to bore his fiery gaze into them.
The emotion simmering beneath Jeongguk’s own veins is so strangely unprecedented that he has a hard time understanding why he feels as such. He’s accustomed to Hyunwoo and his group’s grating antics. It won’t be the first time they have tried to provoke them, and it probably won’t be the last. But due to some reason, the rage he feels today is so potent it’s threatening to split all his sense of reason.
“You got a cute boyfriend,” one of the lackeys, Jeongguk hasn’t concerned himself to learn a name of suddenly grins. It freezes Jeongguk for a second. The word. The fucking acknowledgment.
He works his brain for a name. Baek. The lackey’s name is Baek. Jeongguk is going to have a good chat with this Baek in private.
“It was a total shame we couldn’t stay to see his reaction. Bet he looks pretty while crying.”
Jeongguk feels his impeccable self-control snap. All his proliferation of galled emotions releases, unleashed from their pits of hell, red and furious.
Jeongguk’s hand comes out of his pocket, and in a flash, he drives the tip of his screwdriver straight into the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R’s speedometer.
A beautiful motorcycle, but not for long.
The display glass shatters with a loud crack, the needle snaps uselessly to one side, and he hears the agonizing shouts from the others, but doesn’t bother listening. Jungkook pulls the screwdriver free. And before anyone can move, with something lethal stirring in the wake of his consciousness, threatening to consume his very sanity, he stabs it straight down into the leather seat, presses it in, and drags it across, tearing the material from one side to another. The leather parts foam swelling up through the split.
He retracts the driver callously from the seat and forces himself to take a steadying breath, only now realizing how hard his hands are trembling from rage. Fuck. He turns to look over at Hyunwoo, who is standing frozen. The state of his shock derives a sick kind of pleasure inside Jeongguk. It’s a small price to pay, Jeongguk thinks, after what he desecrated with his dirty hands.
He holds himself back from skinning the bike alive until nothing is left of it, disassemble its parts and smashing them to pieces right in front of Hyunwoo for him to see how viscerally painful it is to watch something you love get destroyed before your eyes.
“You see,” Jeongguk drawls lazily. “I’m not an advocate of violence. But you really pissed me off with that stunt of yours, Choi.”
He toys with the jagged screwdriver in his hand, gliding the tip of it enticingly across the bike, watching in utter delight as the other male before him tracks every movement with poorly veiled panic in his eyes.
“However, I’m ready to settle things amicably.”
“Jeon– step– step the fuck away from my fucking bike,” Hyunwoo threatens, voice cold as steel.
Jeongguk snorts at the wobbling tone in the visage of a fake affront. When Jeongguk turns to look at him, he barks out a laugh. Hyunwoo looks devastated, sheathed in cold sweat and hands raised midair in a helpless gesture. There are slight tremors wracking his frame, exposing the sheer panic slowly gripping him from the inside.
Jeongguk wonders if this is how Taehyung felt when he saw his café shredded into pieces, something he clearly cherished and poured all his time and love into. The knowledge does nothing to calm him down; if anything, it brings in a new surge of wrath coursing through his system.
“That doesn’t feel very nice, does it?” Jeongguk asks. He smiles, splitting yet another elegant cut into the leather seat.
“What the fuck do you want?” Hyunwoo spits. “It was a fucking prank, okay? We were missing around. Nothing serious. Get away from my bike, Jeon.”
Nothing serious, he says, when Jeongguk just saw the condition of the place that surely must have been just as beautiful as its owner, in nothing but dust. Nothing serious, he says, when Jeongguk saw the condition Taehyung was left in to inspect the damage and pick up the pieces of a place he must have put his heart into building. Nothing serious, he says, when Taehyung had been crying all morning, bleeding through his fingers, and doing his best to hide how not okay he was behind a bright smile.
Nothing serious, he says, when Taehyung thinks it was Jeongguk who did the unforgivable to his café.
Jungkook is relentless in the way he draws another line into the metal. “That’s not how you apologize.”
“I am sorry,” the leader chokes out desperately. It tickles pleasantly inside Jeongguk’s ears. “I wasn’t – I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have done that. I mistook him for – for someone unimportant. Insignificant in your life.”
Jeongguk frowns.
Is Taehyung supposed to be someone important in his life? He doesn’t even know the guy. But he doesn’t correct Hyunwoo, doesn’t know why he doesn’t do that, considering things would be much easier that way.
“Please – I’ll do anything – just stop. Get the fuck away from my bike, Jeon. Please.”
Jeongguk steps back from the bike, satisfied, pocketing his screwdriver back into his jacket. Hyunwoo doesn’t miss a second before making a dash for it, tons of expletives leaving his lips as he kneels beside the machine to check the damage. When Jeongguk glances at his creation and the carvings he left, he realizes it’s much worse than what he was planning.
He also realizes he doesn’t feel bad at all.
“10 percent of my race cuts if you stay the fuck away from him,” Jeongguk spits out coldly, crouching down so that he can stare straight into Hyunwoo’s blank skull. “My word. If you break it, I promise your body won’t be found when I hit it off the highway.”
Hyunwoo flinches and looks away, his fists shaking from where they were clenched on top of the tank, teeth pulled into a snarl, but he doesn’t say anything.
“And you,” Jeongguk drags his cold eyes at the lackey, Baek, who swears under his breath, cowering slightly behind two other guys. “don’t you ever talk about him like that again or I swear I’ll be punching that hideous face of yours until you’re coughing teeth, understood?”
Baek remains behind the two men like a statue. Not a word leaves his mouth.
Jeongguk takes a step forward. A muscle ticks in his cheek as he glares at the men in front of him. “Is that fucking understood?”
The other two guys jump away from Baek, who lets out a small whimper.
“Yes. Understood. Perfectly understood. Please.”
“Perfect,” Jeongguk comments, grinning at the sight. “Sorry for the bike, Choi. It was just a small compensation for your actions. A compromise. Don’t take it too personally. But you made it personal first. So it’s not all on me.”
“Your boyfriend put his address online. What did you expect us to do?” Hyunwoo grits out like that somehow makes it okay.
Once again, he doesn’t tell them Taehyung isn’t his boyfriend.
“Mind your business.” Jeongguk snaps, blood still hot. “Is it really that fucking hard?”
“Business,” Hyunwoo repeats incredulously. “You’re giving 10 percent of your race cuts for this. Does that include group race? Per night?”
“One race. Only my individual races.”
“And if we win?”
“Highly unlikely.”
Hyunwoo snorts. “Fuck that. I’m not entertaining this bullshit offer from a prick like you. I’m not the only one after your ass, JK. You’re going to pay everyone to stay away from your boy? Well, good luck with that.”
“5% of all my race cuts,” Jeongguk clenches his teeth. The predatory glint rises again in Hyunwoo’s eyes. “10% if you keep your friends away too.”
“You’re psychotic fucker, Jeon.”
“We’ve all got our flaws.”
“Whatever,” Hyunwoo stands up, composure a lot more stiff and a lot less initiative as he extends his hand. “I accept. You have yourself a deal. I’ll spread the word your boyfie’s off limits into the circle. And I need the payment weekly. In cash.”
Jeongguk ignores the hand and turns around, leaving the shithole.
He needs a fucking cigarette.