♠︎ twenty eight

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

⁃⁃⁃⁃♠︎⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃♠︎⁃⁃⁃⁃

♠︎ JUNGKOOK

"Jungkookie! Focus!"

Namjoon's sharp voice dragged him back into the moment - a moment in which, if he didn't move in the next half a second, he was going to be smacked in the face with a volleyball.

He ducked, but only just in time, and the ball deflected off his shoulder, pathetically bouncing into the sand to lose yet another point for his team.

Namjoon, clad only in swim shorts and a discerning glare, narrowed his eyes at him. "You're supposed to be our best player, Jungkookie. You know I can't play volleyball for shit."

"Me neither," nodded Hobi, from behind him - his other teammate in this game. 

Jungkook glanced over at the other side of the net, where Jimin, Jin and Nia were celebrating another point. "Sorry," he mumbled, trying to get his head back in the game. 

At first, when Yoongi had suggested you took your extended party of guests down to the beach for the day, Jungkook had been thrilled. Jungkook didn't feel right being stuck in the house all day, lounging around the pool. He was a mover. He liked to swim and run and play. 

But now he was here, playing beach volleyball - something he was usually very good at - and he was losing, badly. 

Because you were standing twenty feet away, at the mini drinks container they had wheeled down to the beach, talking to some guy.

Jungkook didn't know who he was. He must be one of Yoongi's friends who had arrived yesterday. But if you carried on stroking your fingers up and down his arm, he was going to hurl the guy into the sea and make sure he never came out again - Yoongi's friend or not. 

Shit. Get a grip, he pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly very aware of the burning in his chest, that matched the burning sand beneath his feet. I thought you'd gotten a handle on the whole possessive thing?

"What's the matter?" came the teasing voice of Nia over the net now, who was grinning triumphantly. "I thought Jimcluck over there was supposed to good at sports?"

"Jimcluck?" Jungkook repeated incredulously, while Namjoon pointed a warning finger at her.

"You be careful," Namjoon told her, though a smile danced on his lips. "You're on thin ice."

Nia had cocked her hip into her hand and was rolling her eyes hard. "I'm not scared of a man who can't throw a ball over a piece of fabric, Kim Namjoon."

Jungkook couldn't help but laugh. You and Nia really were alike. 

"Jungkookie, I'm gonna need you to destroy her or else I'm gonna have to do it later, and she really doesn't want that," Namjoon said now. He was, in theory, talking to Jungkook, but he hadn't taken his eyes off Nia. Her eyes darkened when he said it, and the tension pulsed between them. Clearly, they were a good match.

"Being destroyed sounds lovely, actually, if it's by a man who knows what he's doing," she shot back. "But I don't think you're up to the task, pookie."

Namjoon's jaw clenched at the nickname, tongue poking into his cheek.

Damn, Jungkook thought. He could see why the two of you were best friends. Apparently it was your mission in life to break the spirit of every man you came across.

Jungkook weirdly liked it.

Jin was glancing between Jimin and Nia, his teammates, with an incredulous look on his face, as Namjoon stared Nia down. "First Jimin in the scavenger hunt, and now this?" Jin whined. "Why do I always get put on the horniest teams?"

Mina, Jin's girlfriend, gave a chuckle from where she was watching on the sidelines, but Jimin raised his hands in innocence.

"Don't look at me," he said indignantly. "I've changed my ways."

"Yeah right," Jin scoffed. "As if you'd ever stop being a flirt."

"Well," Jimin said now with a bite of bitterness in his tone. "It's not exactly fun when the person you're flirting with wants nothing to do with you."

"Jimin," came a stern voice next to Mina. It was Yoongi. He hadn't looked up from his phone, but clearly he had heard Jimin's words.

Jimin huffed, but said nothing. He wouldn't look at Yoongi, and Yoongi wouldn't look at him. For a moment, the court was horribly quiet. 

Jungkook had been too buried in thoughts of you to really notice what Jimin and Yoongi had been up to in the last few days. The last he'd heard of it, Yoongi had turned Jimin down, but he hadn't noticed that since then, they had barely been speaking at all. As best friends of nearly a decade, this was entirely unusual.

But Jimin, Jungkook knew, did not do well with rejection.

After a long moment Yoongi stood, breaking the tension, shooting Jimin a glare before he turned and stalked off down the beach. "I'm going to sit in the shade," he called back over his shoulder.

Jungkook felt a pang of sympathy for both his friends.

"Hyung?" Jungkook called to Tae, who had just walked out of the shallows of the sea towards the court. "Can you take over?"

Namjoon and Hobi groaned in disappointment, and Taehyung shot them a withering look. "Sure," he nodded. Jungkook thanked him, jogging off the court. 

For a moment he was torn. He desperately wanted to go over to where you were still talking flirtatiously to that guy, but to do so would be to admit that it was affecting him. And though Jungkook felt like he'd one-upped you at breakfast this morning, he knew it was foolish to rest on his laurels. You could gain the upper hand again at any time.

Besides, Yoongi was still striding away angrily, looking like he needed someone to offload things onto. So Jungkook swallowed down his jealousy, and went after him. 

"Yoongi-hyung," he called when he reached his shoulder. Yoongi didn't stop, continuing to stride away from the crowd on the beach. Jungkook was faster, and he overtook his hyung, stopping him in his tracks. "Talk to me."

Yoongi glared at Jungkook. "I wanted to be alone, Jungkookie."

"No you didn't," Jungkook observed. "I do this as well, you know. Walk away when I get too angry. But the best thing to do is just let it out."

It took a long moment of Yoongi glaring at him like he might strangle him, but then a look of resignation took over. Jungkook knew he was right - he and Yoongi were alike in their tendency to turn inwards with their own feelings when they became too much. He'd felt this a million times before, as a young trainee, and it had taken him years to learn that it was better to just let it out than to bottle it all up.

"Since when are you so knowledgeable," Yoongi muttered, but he sat in the sand, and Jungkook followed him. 

"I'm not pissed off with Jimin," Yoongi began, staring out at the line of the ocean in the distance. "I'm pissed because I didn't want it to be like this."

Jungkook's brow furrowed. "Like what?"

"He's my friend," Yoongi clarified. "He's one of my closest friends. That's why I turned him down, because I don't want to ruin that by fucking him. But now he won't talk to me anyway, so it's like our friendship's fucking ruined either way. I feel very... very-"

"Stuck?" Jungkook offered. Yoongi kicked at the sand with his foot in annoyance.

"Yes. Stuck," he muttered.

"Right," Jungkook nodded. "And have you told Jimin this?"

Yoongi shot him a withering look. "What do you think? Did you see the way he was looking at me back there? He wants nothing to do with me."

Jungkook chuckled. "Hyung, have you even tried? You can't expect Jimin to read your mind, you know. If you explained your reasons, he'd understand. He hates being turned down, but he hates not talking to you even more."

Yoongi thought about this for a long time.

"Jungkookie," he said eventually, and he was half-smiling now. "Sometimes I forget that you're all grown up now, you know."

A sense of pride swelled in Jungkook's chest. He wasn't sure what Yoongi meant exactly, but he knew that he'd done a good job.

The pride deflated instantly, when he caught sight of you in his peripheral vision. You had progressed into the sea, splashing around in the shallow waves with Nia, the water droplets clinging to your body as you laughed at your friend.

It was just like when he'd first arrived. When you'd emerged out of the pool.

He felt his stomach ache with want, and it only took a moment for Yoongi to notice where his attention had wandered to.

"How's it going with the two of you, anyway?" Yoongi asked. It had been a while since they'd talked about it, considering Jungkook had turned to Namjoon for help last time. "She seems unusually happy."

"Good," Jungkook nodded. There wasn't really a word for the rollercoaster of desire and emotion the pair of you had been on for the last few days. "We, uh... we... you know. Yesterday."

Yoongi rolled his eyes. "God, Jungkookie, you're ridiculously cute, you know that? You can just say that you fucked."

His cheeks felt red as Yoongi said it. Clearly, he still had a lot of work to do if he wanted to become the kind of man Yoora wanted. 

"Well? How was it?" Yoongi pushed.

Jungkook smiled. "It was great," he said.

What an understatement. 

Since you'd left his room last night, he hadn't stopped thinking about it. It had been so much more than he'd thought it would be, and even though he'd wanted to spend more time with you, being inside you had felt so good that he'd happily wait days if it meant he could do it again.

It felt like you had given something up to him last night. It was hard to describe - it felt like both of you had lost some level of control, but it was mutual this time, not something you were trying to gain over each other. He couldn't help replaying the moment you'd wrapped a slick hand around him, or the moment you'd let him tighten his grip on your throat. It was burned into his brain.

And of course, he treasured what you had told him afterwards. What you had trusted him with. 

"She told me about Taehyung," Jungkook said now, before he could think about it.

Yoongi glanced at him, a hint of surprise on his features. "She did?"

Jungkook nodded. "She said she might talk to him. She's still hurting. She said Taehyung apologising might help her heal and move on a little."

Yoongi blinked, still surprised. "That's good," he said slowly. "You... you care about that?"

"I mean... yeah," Jungkook replied, uneasily, suddenly very interested in his own hands. "We're friends."

Yoongi gazed at him, his expression unreadable, a look in his eyes that Jungkook couldn't quite decipher. As if he knew something that Jungkook didn't.

"Just remember, Jungkookie," Yoongi said in a low voice. "You have a little over three weeks left before you go back to Yoora. So just... keep that in mind."

The words were not news to Jungkook, but they still left a punching feeling in his gut.

Six weeks had seemed endless. Three weeks... that seemed far too short all of a sudden.

"And you might want to decide what else you want to try with her," Yoongi continued. "Before you part ways."

Jungkook's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Yoongi stood up, brushing the sand off his shorts, his smirk returning. "I take it if you've just fucked once, you haven't tried out anything special yet? Like bondage?"

Bewildered, Jungkook shook his head. Yoongi grinned. 

"Don't worry," he said, helping Jungkook up. "Just talk to her. She'll know."

And with that Yoongi was stalking back down the beach towards the crowds, leaving Jungkook frozen in the sand.

The only image in his head was you, writhing in his sheets, tangled and straining in ropes.

He grinned. 

Maybe it was time to kick things up a notch.

 ⁃⁃⁃⁃♠︎⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃⁃♠︎⁃⁃⁃⁃