Still With You || Jungkook x Reader

Cards

The next few days were some of the hardest of my entire life.

He was angry - I could sense it, but he didn't say it. It was fine by me. I didn't want to seek out any conflict anyway. He would be gone for another tour in another week, I remembered with relief.

And pain.

Naturally, I went to extreme lengths to avoid seeing him apart from work. I'd spend my breaks in the library at BigHIt - it was the last place I expected him to come to - I stayed clear of the gym, and the dance halls. In fact, I'd been able to avoid seeing him completely for the past 3 days since we had no scheduled shoots either.

I avoided his eyes when we did have shoots, and I realized with dismay that he avoided my camera too. Not entirely - but I couldn't catch his happy shots during the episode shoots anymore. At first, I thought he was just reluctant to smile at my camera, but I couldn't help but notice he was just smiling a lot less in my presence. It made me feel conflicted - hurt, guilty, miserable I was - but also shamelessly flattered that he had cared enough to be affected like this - thinking that made me feel even more guilty.

"Hakseng! Hakseng! YAH!" Yuki sunbae's yell finally reached my ears. We were in the middle of shooting the BTS Gayo episode. I'd been staring at the brick wall wondering when I would be out of this crowded hall. I turned my attention to Yuki sunbae.

"Are you okay? You look like someone died." he asked.

I went scarlet. Jungkook was right there. "I'm okay. What do you want?" I snapped. For an editor, he spent an awful lot of time on set.

"Distribute the cards." He handed me the pack of BTS Uno cards to distribute to the members. They were supposed to play a round of Uno to decide teams for the main games. I took the pack from him reluctantly, not looking in the direction of the members, who were sitting in a semi-circle facing us.

Starting from the left, I gave seven cards to V. "Thank you," he said in a low voice. I proceeded to Suga, "here you go -" I started to speak politely but he gave me a death stare in return. Nevertheless, he said thanks too. I moved on to Jin, a little shocked at the momentary hostility. It didn't help that Jin had zipped up his hoodie until it covered his whole face so that it looked like there was a holographic gargoyle sitting in his place. I instinctively took a step back. V burst out laughing.

"Sori sori," Jin said, unzipping his hoodie to reveal his face, accepting the cards.

I steeled myself. Next was Jungkook, in a classic black sweatshirt. We avoided each other's eyes. Just as I was handing him the cards, Jimin coughed loudly. I dropped them on the floor. Both Jungkook and I bent down to pick them up at the same time - and thankfully we didn't end up head butting each other - but this was too close for comfort. I could sense his warmth, his familiar lemongrass scent, my heart would burst any minute now. I got the cards first and hastily thrust them in his palm before marching on to Jimin, who seemed to be rather giggly at this point.

I am okay, I told myself.

Right then, it dawned on me that they probably knew. Why on earth had I assumed that Jungkook would keep mum about us?

Like that, the scope of my discomfort and guilt widened. I was glad that today's shoot wouldn't involve me running behind Jungkook. We were taking a snack break and he was grinning at something PD-nim was saying. I longed for him to laugh in my direction, for that easy space we'd come to share, for me to be able to -

"Hey hakseng!" My reverie was broken by Ae Ra unnie.

"Hi," I responded, my tone morose.

"How are you holding up?" she asked, placing an arm around my shoulder.

"I'm good!" I tried to project a brave face.

"You know you can talk to me about anything, right?" she added in a soft tone.

"Yeah. Yes, of course. I - will talk to you - when I need to." I had trouble forming the sentence. How could I talk to anyone about this?

"Don't stress out okay. Let's go out in the evening. My treat."

"Ohh unnie.." I hugged her gratefully. An evening out, maybe some soju, ought to help me snap out of this hell.

It was about to get a lot worse.