The Jimin Effect ✔

Part Four/Chapter Fifteen

Jungkook:

The lights fell and Jimin and Jungkook walked out onto the stage and got in their starting positions. Jimin was balling the sleeves of his long sleeved tee shirt in his hands nervously.

"I'm sorry," Jimin whispered under his breath across the stage. "Please Jungkook..." Jungkook didn't allow himself to look at Jimin's sad little face.

And then the lights came on, and the music came on, and both bodies automatically started to move.

As they danced, inside his body was the memory of their week of practice. He remembered Jimin first dancing this song for him, naked in his cabin with the afternoon sun streaming in his windows. He remembered Jimin and him dancing together in the studio, still smelling like sex...

As he and Jimin danced, and he watched the little twink move with the grace of a professional dancer to this ultimately seductive song, he felt out of body. Suddenly he was in the body of Jungkook of days past, in which his whole being ached with love and possession for Jimin.

His heart felt as if it beat in two different Jungkooks:

First, the old Jungkook: who saw Jimin as perfect and idealized... the Jungkook who looked past his lies and seduction and manipulation and whose heart just beat in tandem with Jimin's anyway...

And then his current self: the Jungkook that saw exactly what Jimin had done to him, that saw that Jimin was far from perfect.... How could he still love him?

He felt his heart bum-bum... which body did it beat in? Bum-bum. He watched Jimin dance, felt their bodies moving together as one. Bum-bum. He felt like he was being split into two different timelines—but his heart was being torn apart. His heart couldn't live in two bodies. Bum-Bum

You have to choose.

The lights fell, a brief break in the choreo and they scrambled to get their hats, and when the music and lights started again they dropped in unison into a crouch, grabbing their crotches, thrusting...

Jungkook met the eyes of the campers, who were as young as 11. Their eyes were wide...some older campers licked their lips. Jungkook met the eyes of Hoseok, he was wide-eyed, and so was Namjoon.

Oh fuck, thought Jungkook. And yet they danced on, and on, until they came shoulder to shoulder for the final moment, and then the lights fell. Jungkook breathed hard. I shouldn't have let him do this song—I tried to tell him no, but he didn't listen, did he?

"I love you," Jimin breathed over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, please!" Jungkook forced his eyes to meet Jimin's. "I want to be better—to learn to be a better boyfriend," Jimin whispered, and Jungkook's eyes couldn't break away from his. Bum-Bum.

Suddenly the lights went up and he realized the campers and counselors all looked stunned. But scattered applause began and Jungkook stalked off the stage, and kept walking, and didn't look back.

Let him clean up his own mess, for once.

***

Jimin:

Once again he was running after Jungkook, who walked off the stage and away, across the lawn.

"Jung—" But he was stopped by strong, dark arms, grabbing him before he left the stage area, and when his eyes met Montero's, his friend's eyebrows were raised at him, and his lips were pressed together. Jimin got the immediate hint. Shut the fuck up, you're in front of the entire camp.