word count: just a little over 5k

recommended listening: I made a playlist!! Link to my spotify is in my bio - look for the playlist called 달토끼

premise: jungkook can be anything and everything he wants, except be yours.

pairing: idol!jjk x reader

inspiration: the billboards outside my room during quarantine lmao, I've been working on this one for a little while. I started writing it at the same time as I began night crawlers, fun facts!!

mood board courtesy of joontaekooq
(thank you (ㅠㅠ))

June

His hair was poker straight, remnants of the perm he'd had when you'd first met discarded on the floor of the companies styling room earlier that day. You missed the waves, but there was something so beautiful about his natural hair and the way that the strands crossed over themselves as he slept.

There were a few dimpled marks on his skin, blemishes that the world would rarely see, if ever. You realised how lucky you were to see him in his human form, after the concealer had been wiped off and the contact lenses had been removed, revealing his silky onyx eyes. They were closed now, his short lashes feathering across the top of his cheeks.

Serenity suited him.

When he was like this, he could have been anyone. A barista, maybe. It would have befitted him, but he didn't drink that much coffee, not favouring the bitter taste. Perhaps a school teacher? He was great with kids, but he was too much like a kid himself to be given that much responsibility. An office job wouldn't have been right for him. The predictability of the mundane would have driven him mad.

And yet the only thing that gave away who he was, was the indelible ink that covered his hand; a homage to his one true love in the world. You'd trace it occasionally, wondering how one man was capable of harbouring infinite amounts of love inside his singular vessel. It was a gift to be around a soul so virtuous; as pure as the first layer of snowfall after a biting winter's night.

Occasionally he watched you like this, too; the way your hair spilt around your head like a halo, beneath the moonlight that seeped in through his half-drawn curtains, and the shallow breaths that elevated your chest before letting it back down again. He thought that he was the lucky one.

Serenity suited you just as much as it did him.

But tonight was not a night to lay bathed in the lunar light. Pressing a kiss to his forehead, you pulled yourself away from the brushed cotton sheets. He'd only bought propper bedding once you started staying over. On your first visit to his apartment, he had lied and said that his pillows were at the dry cleaners, and that he'd just left the towel there after his shower.

You soon learnt that he liked to do that; tell little white lies to cover his embarrassments. They'd be played off as jokes, awkward misunderstandings, and truth be told, you found it endearing - mainly because you saw through it each and every time. There was never any point in lying to you. He knew this too, which is part of the reason he didn't feel bad about it, because he was under no illusion that he was actually ever pulling wool over your eyes.

He'd never want to actually lie to you. Not a big lie. He was dreading your upcoming birthday next month and the questions you'd be asking about that. He wanted to surprise you.

You sat on his balcony, legs crossed, looking up towards the sky. You hadn't been sleeping well, lately. Dread settled in your stomach, as if you knew that the inevitable was coming, whether you wanted it to or not.

The relationship was growing unsustainable. Your feelings were too big for this, for him, for what you could be. The potential of what your relationship could facilitate was about to reach its capacity.

You were working towards a promotion at the marketing company you had been at for the last five years, and he? Well, he was Jeon Jungkook. Say no more.

Neither of you had the time needed to nurture one another's hearts anymore. You were lucky on the days you could eat dinner together. All you ever seemed to do was sleep together. You were just glorified pillows for one another.

Obviously, that wasn't the case - but you were both so scared of having to deal with the fact that sometimes love wasn't enough, that neither one of you had dared to admit it.

Both of you were suffering, but neither of you wanted to inflict it onto the other.

"Hey," Jungkook's sleepy voice greeted you. His footsteps padded heavily, his body not quite awake. "Watcha doin' out here, Bea?"

It was a nickname he had christened you with not long after you had first met. All you ever seemed to eat was strawberries. You smelt like them, too. One mispronunciation of strawberry as 'strawbebbea', when he had been tickling you on his sofa, had led to weeks of teasing, until he shortened his term of endearment to 'Bea'. On occasion, he'd call you 'bae-bea', deliberately disguising it to sound like baby. He thought he was being slick. He absolutely wasn't. Other times, he'd settle for 'baby Bea'.

But it was a simple night, and that called for a simple term, so 'Bea' it was.

His knees cracked as he sat behind you, legs outstretching, arms wrapping around you like a koala bear. His eyes were still closed, his chin coming to rest on your shoulder, before he nestled his head into the crook of your neck.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"No," he lied. One of those sweet little lies you never minded, much.

"Was just thinking," you said quietly as he squeezed you a little tighter.

"Thinking? Sounds dangerous," he mused with a smile. "Tell me what you're thinking about, baby Bea."

You let out a small laugh from your nose, body rocking against Jungkook's embrace.

"Nothing," you said, realising that you told just as many white lies as he did.

"What time is it?" he asked, deliberately changing the topic, never wanting to push you. He knew that you'd have a good reason for not sharing your thoughts, and he'd never pry or demand to know anything you weren't willing to share openly.

"Just gone four," you whispered, suddenly feeling incredibly bad for waking him. He had schedule in the morning, so his alarm would be going off in an hour or two. "Sorry."

His lips pouted, pressing a kiss into the crook of your neck, as if to tell you to stop worrying about it.

"I wish we could see the stars," you hummed with a slight melancholy that didn't go unnoticed by him. "Somewhere without the light pollution of the city."

Jungkook began to rock his body, as if he was attempting to lull you into a tranquil state of being. A smile crept onto your lips. He wanted to go back to bed, but put priority on making sure that you were okay.

"I'll take you out to the country when our schedule eases up, m'kay?" he mumbled against your lightly perfumed skin. He'd never grow bored of the way you smelt. It was like his own personal cocaine stash. All he needed was a single hit to fuel him for hours. "We'll find the rabbit in the moon. I promise you."

"I like the sound of that," you nodded against him, twisting your head slightly to press a soft kiss into his temple. His eyes were still closed, but he sleepily turned his head and pressed a kiss against your cheek, subliminally working out where your mouth would be before stealing another from your lips. He knew your body better than his own, at this point.

"I'll make it happen."

This was another lie. He didn't mean it to be, it's just that his schedule never would ease up.

You knew this, but you chose to believe him regardless.

"Thank you. Shall we go back to bed?"

"Please," he nodded, pulling you up with him as he stood. "C'mon, Bea. Long day tomorrow."

There was a soft mellowness to him that was hard to find in people these days. Truly, you'd never met anyone like him, and you never would again.

August

The air was thicker than usual, dust clouds hiding Jungkook's favourite view from him. In the distance, he knew that the mountains still rolled on, but for now, he would be denied the simple pleasure of admiring their beauty.

And just like that, the change in weather had him thinking about you, again.

He knew, just like the mountains, you were somewhere within the city, out of sight. Out of grasp. Eluding him.

From his window, he watched the billboard on the building opposite flicker through. He didn't mind it so much, the never-ending slog of theatre promotions and a singular tasteless jewellery company, who must have paid an absolute fortune for such a long slot in the heart of Gangnam-gu.

When the lights were off in his apartment, curtains wide open, the billboard's LEDs pooled in, drenching his furnishings in soft blue hues.

As he sat by his window, knees huddled to his chest, his glossy black eyes reflected the shimmering city skyline.

You'd once told him that he held the whole entire world in his eyes.

On the nights when he was working, on stage, he thought that you might have been right.

But when it was just him, alone with thoughts of you, he'd have traded the world for just a little bit longer.

Beyond the smog, he knew you'd be cursing the billboard by your own window. You'd always hated it, your curtains too thin to block it out. It was smaller than the one by his place, but it always played the same run of adverts. You fell asleep underneath the same sky; polluted by the same lights. He took comfort in that.

Maybe you'd be thinking of him too.

November

Checking your wristwatch, you noted that it was four in the morning. A sense of sadness washed over you like the November rains you kept finding yourself getting caught in lately.

On a hiking trek through the mountains on the outskirts of the city, you knew better than to be out here alone at such a time - but you didn't feel alone. From your vantage point, though obscured by some jade green leaves and a few stagnated clouds, you could see the moon, and sure enough, the bunny was there to greet you hello.

"Missed you," you whispered fondly towards what you realistically knew was just a rock orbiting another rock in a great expanse of nothingness. Being a realist had never done you any favours before.

You lasted thirteen and a half minutes until you let your eyes flicker back down towards the city.

A maze of lights stopped the city from ever sleeping, and, in turn, the boy who was sat solemnly on his balcony, legs crossed, hugging them into his chest. The moon looked down on him, mocking his sadness like a cruel bully waiting for him in the corner of the playground.

The difference was that Jungkook was the only one beating himself up.

He couldn't see the rabbit.

Just the moon.

And all he could do was think of you.

But how could he not? He'd fallen in love with you under pale moonlight and given his body up to you as it voyuered on in through his bedroom curtains. It had stripped the pair of you of privacy as he'd promised you forever, and it had commanded that the heavens cried when you had told him that you couldn't do it any longer.

The moon had melded you together and it had watched on in horror as you slowly cracked apart.

January

Jungkook didn't like checking his phone anymore. He didn't care for notifications and he especially didn't like seeing that it was now January.

You'd been apart for longer than you'd been together by this point.

Both of you had struggled; you from overexposure, him from the fact that you'd all but disappeared.

He was everywhere. Billboards, television adverts, on the news, on the side of fucking buses. He was on the sleeve of the coffee you had picked up that morning and on the end of a pen one of your co-workers was using.

You weren't sure at which point you'd grown so bitter, but you knew that you needed to go and see a therapist when your coworker returned to her desk and spent five minutes looking for her pen, only for you to pass her a basic biro instead.

She would never find her pen, for you'd slipped it into your bag like a thieving magpie, only to toss it into a public trash pile on the way home from work.

You smiled to yourself, pleased with the irony of throwing the personification of gold onto a rubbish heap.

It was your little secret. You were good at keeping those.

You'd never signed an NDA. You'd just recorded a video when you were drunk pinky promising that you'd never tell a soul.

And you didn't. Your friends knew him as J. You'd told them that he worked in PR, and that he was too busy with an international client for a relationship. White lies. A speciality he'd taught you himself.

When you got home, you pressed your back to your apartment door and slid down it, head in your hands. You couldn't cry anymore, but your body could shake from the emptiness that was weighing down on you like the weight of ten thousand Tiny-fucking-Tan pens.

Your phone buzzed. It wasn't him - it never was - and you sighed a thin exhalation of your stress from your lungs.

It was astonishing, really, that the bruises on your heart remained as pigmented as the tiny smiley face he'd let you tattoo on his elbow during a late-night trip to a parlour. The artist had shrugged and let Jungkook do as he pleased - after all, he was the Jeon Jungkook.

He could do anything in this world that his heart so desired.

Anything and everything.

Except be yours.

March

Hidden behind a cloud, the moon was disguising you in dreary darkness as you hiked through your favourite trail in the chill of a spring morning.

Your eyes searched the city, for any sign that could lead you back to him, but the only things you could see were the flashing red lights of the high-rise buildings. A soft, sombre laugh shook your body pitifully.

"Red lights," you said out loud to no one in particular, completely alone on your hiking trail. "More like red flags."

It was funny, really, how Jungkook was also mapping out the intermittent flashes.

Sat on his balcony, he looked at them with a similar pitiful smile, but instead of seeing them as flags, he chose to interpret them as something else entirely: red strings. Maybe if he followed them around the city, they'd lead him back to you.

He hadn't thought about you all week.

Apart from that one time he passed an old man walking a sandy coloured Chow Chow, and remembered how much you adored fluffy animals.

And that other time Jimin came into the studio wearing a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, which always reminded Jungkook of the earrings you had been wearing when you first met.

Oh, and that other one time when Namjoon asked for his advice on incorporating the legend of daltokki into some new lyrics.

If he was being honest with himself - which he didn't enjoy, lately - then he'd know that he'd thought about you just as frequently as he always did.

He was just getting better at lying about it.

"We wanted to convey a message that sometimes it's okay to fail," Jungkook nodded in response to the journalist who was asking them questions about their latest release. He'd been credited as a co-writer, so naturally, he was the one to share his thoughts. "We go through trials in life, and although the outcome might not be what we wanted, it's important that we learn lessons from them. That's it. That's the message."

Namjoon was a co-writer, too.

He'd hopped on the track and rephrased the sections about your strawberry-scented hair to more fan-appropriate tales about visiting strawberry farms.

The world watched on as the message of self-love and acceptance spread around the globe once more.

You watched on and wondered if he had meant to quote you in the chorus.

I was never destined to be a star; just a watcher of them instead.

It sounded so beautiful when he harmonised with his bandmates. Far prettier than it had when the pair of you had been screaming at one another about how incompatible your lives truly were.

July

Jungkook felt good. Genuinely.

And so did you.

When people asked if you knew who BTS were in casual conversation, you could smile and nod. You'd say that Jimin was your favourite and think fondly about how you'd wind Jungkook up with similar lies during your time together.

His song about strawberries and stars had done well. It had finally bagged them their first UK number one, which saw a new wave of popularity. He thought it was probably because he'd put rain sound effects behind the melody. It resonated with the drab melancholy that clouded the nation.

Tour rehearsals were beginning to ramp up, and he'd be out of the suffocating city skyline before he knew it. He couldn't wait.

You were heading out of town, too. Stagnated in a city that never let you forget about your past, you had decided that a move would be good.

Remote working was so commonplace these days that you'd been able to strike a deal with your employer that meant remote working was your primary focus. Every two months, you'd have to come back to the office for a big team meeting, but other than that, you were free to go wherever you pleased.

And so you roamed for a bit. Bali was nice, but not like Instagram had promised. Australia, too. You tried out a few more islands until you settled on New Zealand.

Clean air, clean mind. It was perfect. You lived in the country, renting a small cottage set on acres of land. You could see the stars every single night without fail. Bunny rabbits would hop across your lawn as you looked for the one in the moon.

Eventually, though, you stopped looking.

You started looking for constellations, instead. Planets. Shooting stars.

Anything but a bunny.

Jungkook only really saw the stars when he was flying at night or jetlagged as fuck. He didn't mind it, though. Every single night, he had the luxury of looking out across a microcosmos. He'd have never traded that. Not even for you.

Not that you'd ever wanted him to.

The world needed Jeon Jungkook and he needed the world to want him. Validation kept him thriving. It wasn't enough to get it just from you.

At the time it had been a hard reality to accept, but now you could look back with unbiased understanding. Jungkook had never been selfish, not like how you had told him he was. He just experienced the world in a different way to you, and that was okay.

Sometimes, things sucked, you had realised. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't exactly as it was supposed to be.

July, again, but after a few more trips around the sun

You didn't expect to gasp in such a way when you noticed your first grey hair.

Hell, you hadn't expected to get your first grey hair on the eve of your 29th birthday, and yet here you were, plucking at it in a bathroom mirror in the main office building.

Seoul was home once more. A promotion had drawn you back. Marketing Director looked good next to your name.

Much better than you were sure '29' would look after you name come tomorrow morning.

"Big client coming in," your assistant had panicked as you strolled into work with coffees for you both at just gone nine.

"Huh?"

Your clients were all fairly big, but all of them had regularly scheduled appointments. Today was normally an admin day.

"Memo from the CEO. We're getting a new brief, client is confidential. What if it's-"

"Don't," you shushed her, eyes wide as the moon.

She squeaked, sealing her lips, knowing exactly who she meant.

The rumours were all over tabloid magazines.

Enlistment was coming to an end.

BTS were coming back.

"Shit," you sighed.

It made sense. You'd done collaborations with them before, helped with promotional marketing that their in-house team didn't have specialists on.

It was how you had first met. You'd been a under-graduate marketing intern, helping out on a shoot for a promotional billboard. You'd only stepped in because the photographers assistant had fallen ill.

Your coffee went cold, sat on your desk all morning. You couldn't touch it, instead opting to just kind of stare into the Seoul skyline that had illustrated your youth. It was a maze - a minefield - of memories, and it felt like you just kept on taking the wrong turns.

Until, eventually, inevitably, you were taking a left turn into the conference room. Late. Because you'd been nervously pacing in the bathroom trying to get your shit together.

It was only by a few minutes, but discussions were already underway. Another partner of the firm was discussing ideas with the men in the room. Ten of them. A manager, two creative assistants, and seven men in their thirties who didn't look a day over 25.

"Daltokki?" A voice you knew better than your own suggested to the pool of ideas that your colleague was jotting up onto a whiteboard. He hadn't noticed your arrival. None of them had.

His hair was shorter than you'd ever known it, only grown out a little bit post-military service. He'd always been strong, broad, built like a man, but he seemed different now. With age, he had come to hold his posture in such a way that his confidence prevailed.

"You've done daltokki before," you mused from the back of the room. Jungkook's shoulders seized up. You pretended not to notice as you walked up to the front, joining your colleague. "It would be better to take an obscure motif that you've used briefly, something like... the red string of fate, maybe? From my recollection, your fans love piecing things together. No one knows you're back yet, not really. Wanna create a buzz? Create mystery."

Jungkook's bandmates nodded, listening earnestly. They didn't know you. Didn't remember your face from that shoot, nor did they ever see you laughing and joking with Jungkook on his couch. You were an enigma; the strawberry girl who had put Jungkook off the sweet fruit for life.

But you were looking at him now with earnest eyes, willing for him to turn your way. He didn't. He couldn't. Instead, his eyes were trained on his hands, jaw a little tense, brows pushed together in confusion.

Why? He wanted to whine. Why are you here? And why does it hurt?

It was only six months that you had spent tangled in his sheets, yet he had still never found anyone that compared. Not in a whole six years. He had been almost positive that enlistment would be the making of him; that he'd finally meet a girl in a somewhat normal circumstance. And he did. Met plenty. Bedded plenty, too.

The moon was always hidden behind clouds on those nights. Covering its eyes. Refusing to bathe Jungkook in rejuvenation through his open blinds.

Reminded of the way his bedroom had always been lit up by shitty advertisements, an idea brewed.

"Billboards with obscure letters or numbers, maybe? They could be connected all over the city with red lines. We could spray paint them across the pavements, buildings, roads. When connected, they'd form a clue," you said, just throwing vague ideas into the room. "Maybe when they were plotted out on a map and connected, the billboards could spell BTS. There's enough in the city to make it happen. Your fans love a mystery. They'd eat it up. The general public would be intrigued too. Who's painting the town red?"

There was an exciting discussion unfolding, all of the boys active and engaging with the idea. It was fresh; new. Something that felt apt for the next comeback.

All of the boys, except for one.

Instead, Jungkook looked out of the window, wondering just how much damage jumping from a 19th-floor window would do.

It didn't stop your eyes begging for connection with him.

Looking at him felt like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, knowing his finger could trip the safety in the blink of an eye.

Shoot me, you thought. Embed your gaze into my skull. Leave the embers smoking on my skin. Make a mark. Make me yours.

But he wouldn't. And he didn't.

'Cause if there was one thing Jungkook was good at, it was telling little white lies.

I don't need you, Bea.

An exceptional lie, told to himself and blindly believed.

August

Jungkook had grown to hate the billboard that kept his bedroom constantly illuminated like a fairground ride. It was a ramen ad, presently, some brand that was just the same as all the rest of them. Cheap, cheerful, and sure-fire way to develop cardiovascular problems in middle age.

He shuddered, realising how dangerously close he was to that demographic. He'd be 30 next week. Fucking thirty.

The light bleeding into his room changed suddenly, red flushing over his honey skin like strawberry syrup. He smiled, a little forlorn.

Hello, you, he thought. Nice to see you, Bea.

He only ever spoke to you like this. Never in person. His avoidance was starting to cause issues that he knew he'd have to confront soon. Still, it hadn't stopped him from turning his phone off one morning when he was meant to be at a pre-promo shoot, fearing that he'd get caught in a situation where it was just the two of you.

No one quite knew why he was acting so bloody strangely, but most were putting it down to post-enlistment culture shock.

He knew that the city would be covered in red billboards. That slowly, but surely, fans were joining the dots. He'd been keeping up to date with fans via twitter, lurking in the shadows, seeing what theories had been trending. Perpetually amazed by how smart their fans were, how determined they were to make sure that they were correct, Jungkook was in awe.

And despite telling himself that those feelings were only towards the fans, deep down, he was in awe of you, too.

How could he not be? It was your mind that had captivated the city.

Just like you'd captivated him all those years ago.

September

You watched fondly as the billboard by your apartment lit up in a sheet of crimson. The fans had cracked it last week, so today was the last day of its promotional run.

The office had celebrated the successful ad campaign that afternoon, so your veins were swimming with a little champagne, feet light, thoughts airy. Walking to your fridge, you opened it up and let the light bathe you, turning your studio pink instead of red. Pulling out a bottle of wine that you'd cracked open the night before, you effortlessly grabbed the glass from the drying rack and began to pour yourself a drink.

Nestling into your couch, feet curled up, you sipped on your wine like it was an old friend. Ignoring the remote for your television, you chose to bathe in the scarlet light that you'd grown fond of.

You tried not to, but you wondered if Jungkook would be watching it, too. Bidding it farewell. Bidding you farewell.

It's not like there was really anything to say goodbye to. He'd barely given you a second glance throughout the entire promotional campaign. Or at least, not that you'd noticed. He'd stare at the back of your head like it was a fucking Monet painting when you weren't paying attention.

Bizarrely, you almost didn't notice when the red of the billboard bled out - but that's because it was replaced by an equally crimson close up of strawberries.

Odd, you thought. It wasn't strawberry season - and farmers didn't typically tend to market them in such a way. There was no need to. But still, you watched it, craving the sweet treats. You ate them a whole lot less, these days. How he'd managed to ruin your favourite food for you, you'd never know. Bothered you to no end.

Swallowing down the remainders of your wine to wash away thoughts of him, the billboard changed once more.

And when you looked at it, you choked.

From his apartment, Jungkook was watching the billboards, too. Just making sure that the marketing agency he'd used hadn't fucked up his commission. So far, so good.

A moon was taking centre stage, now, the outline of a rabbit that he'd sketched out illustrating the centre.

Annoying, he thought. Should have tried to make the ears a little bigger.

But it didn't really matter. It looked like daltokki. He knew you'd know. Knew you'd be watching like you always used to do. Hoped you'd be watching alone, that you didn't have someone waiting for you when you got home every evening. Prayed that your chest had been feeling as heavy as his had done lately.

He was well aware that the fans would probably wrongly think that these were further hints. He just didn't really care at this point. Let them think what they like. One day, he'd probably write another song about the girl who shone so brightly that she drowned out the rest of the stars, and the fans questions would be answered.

One day.

But not today.

Today, he'd pick up his phone that started ringing as the daltokki billboard ticked over into some ramyeon ad.

Today, he'd take a second, pause. Breathe.

Today, he'd say an apprehensive 'hello' through the phone, waiting on your response.

And, today, he'd listen with a thundering heart as you took a moment or so to say 'yes,' after he asked you if you'd come round to his apartment.

Just to talk, he said. You both knew he was lying, again.

He didn't wanna talk. Not really. He just wanted to finally watch the rabbit in the moon with you, like you should have done together all those years ago.

Instead of making empty promises like he had back then, he was making it happen this time.

Because you had been wrong.

Jungkook could be anything, and everything he wanted.

But first and foremost, he'd always been yours.