𝙁𝘼𝙇𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙂 || [JINKOOK FF]

[3]

𝐊𝐢𝐦 𝐒𝐞𝐨𝐤𝐣𝐢𝐧:

When a muted shockwave hits the water, my first feeling is disappointment. I'd rather the world didn't know that I got hard for my landscaping client's showering ass. Then a hand grips the back of my t-shirt and yanks upward.

Air rips my lungs apart like glass. I snort water and cough until I'm dizzy and my sinuses are burning. The lip of the pool appears in front of me and I cling to the concrete, wheezing and trying not to throw up.

My apathetic dream state burns away in the sun and all I can see is Irene sobbing as they ask her to identify my body with its pathetic rigor-mortis hard-on, and worse, the way she would have to tell my Eomma the news again and again until the pain is too much and they let me become a picture in her album that she points to and asks “Who's he?”. I start shaking uncontrollably.

Milky,long-fingered hands grip the wall on either side of me. One of the middle fingers has a signet ring I recognize— the dragon-bird hybrid from the Jeon family crest.

ESPN did a segment on it between commercials during one of the world championships. I can feel a breath on the back of my neck, the churn of water around my legs as he keeps himself afloat. I wanted to see him, and here I am. This is the part where I pray he won't get me fired.

When I turn around, Jungkook lets go of the wall and floats low in the water, staring at me as tiny waves lap at his lower lip and his arms make lazy circles. People claimed that his GQ cover was photoshopped, that no one has such doe-shaped eyes, but I can see clearly that they're wrong. He has big round eyes, hazel brown until they take on the hue of whatever's nearby. Right now, it's a bruised purple, like the dark circles beneath them.

His face is all angles and pale skin, flecked with spots of sunlight reflecting off the surface. He has thin and evenly shaped brows and a mess of blonde wavy hair that looks well past the point of needing a trim. Water trickles down the sides of his lean big nose and gathers in the corners of his mouth, which turn up slightly when he catches me looking.

“Who are you?” It's the exact mesmerizing, slightly bored voice I heard so often on my TV, but it sounds ragged around the edges. He takes a mouthful of water and spits it out again, waiting.

“Thank you.” I'm still struggling to breathe. “I'm so sorry about this. It was an accident.”

He cocks his head like a puzzled animal. “You're a pervert, aren't you?”

“I'm your landscaper,” I protest, trying to keep my hold on the wall.

His smile is wrong, disconnected from the rest of his face, not the dazzling, camera-ready grin I remember. “Uh-huh. Tell that to your cock.”

One of his hands slips suddenly under the water and cups the bulge in my pants, fingers wrapped up under my balls, hefting me as I make a strangled sound. My knee jerks up reflexively and he catches it with his other hand, huffing a soft laugh.

“I really need to cover the pool. I hate cleaning out trash.”

Then he’s gone, lifting himself out of the water in a long, easy motion that rains droplets across the deck. He must have come straight from the shower, because he’s completely naked. I fix my stinging eyes on the wall in front of me and wish I could get the fuck out of here. But he crouches down until I look at him.

“What’s your name?” He rocks back and forth slowly on his toes.

“Kim Seokjin”

“Why are you in my pool, Kim Seokjin?”

“I was cutting the hedge and I tripped.”

He scrunches up his face, glancing across the garden toward the lake. Then he starts prying my fingers off the wall.

I slap his hand away, heart still going a million miles an hour. “Stop it.”

“Stop lying.”

“I saw you through the window.”

“Good.” His tongue tastes the water at the corner of his mouth. “What did you think? Did you want to come in and try me on?”

I open my mouth to say something professional. All that comes out is, “What’s the matter with you?”

Then he grins for real, flashing his expensive teeth, grabs my wrists, and shoves me off the wall. He hops up and trots toward the large French doors that he must have thrown open on his way to rescue me.

Since my body has decided it doesn’t want to die, it lashes out and finds the side of the pool, scraping my palms and knees. I prop my elbows securely on the decking and watch my childhood hero grab a pair of red boating shorts from a basket by the door and pull them on. He picks up a towel draped over the door handle and ruffles it in his hair.

My muscles are shaking so badly it takes me three tries to get out of the pool. I limp to my wagon and grab my wallet; maybe my business card will prove that I’m not some kind of sex offender.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Leaving the towel draped over his head, he studies me up and down. “Jesus.” He reaches out and swipes a thumb across my knee, coming away bloody. I look down. It’s barely a scratch, but the water is carrying rivulets of red down my calf, staining my sock. He sticks his thumb in his mouth and straightens up, nose wrinkling slightly. I’m surprised to see that he’s shorter than me.

“On behalf of Emerald Lawncare, I want to formally apologize and assure you that you won’t be charged for this visit.”

He sighs and drops his towel on my feet, retreating into the tiled hallway leading to the rest of his mansion.

I make a terrible mistake. Maybe everything is inevitable after all. Maybe none of us have any choice. But by any measure, if I had a choice, the one I make now is the wrong one. “Wait.”

He stops with his back to me. He still has a swimmer’s profile, wide shoulders above a narrow waist, but it’s obvious that whatever steroids gave him such a jaw-dropping body in his prime haven’t been in his system for a long time.

“This is a ridiculous thing to ask, but I have a cousin. We were huge fans. I promised him I’d get this signed someday, somehow.” I pull a pristine, foil sports trading card out of my wallet. Part of me wants to explain that I’d  never ask this if my promise to Ji-Hoon hadn’t become the last one I ever made him.

He turns around, frowning, and squints at the card in my hand. It was a lucky find from a Rio Olympics Young Champions set printed months before the fateful drug tests. A younger-looking Jungkook beams at the camera, goggles dangling from one finger and a thumb looped in the waistband of his high-tech swimming trunks. Ji-Hoon memorized the stats on the back, promising he would beat them someday.