NOTE: Part one is set during the 2018 MMA and part two is set during 2019 GDA. Sorry that this is just a one shot please be patient as I try to find my muse. Hope everyone is well!

PART ONE:

Jeon Jungkook blinks twice and suddenly the vision of her sitting metres away seeps into his skin like poison, burning him alive. He finds himself flinching away out of pure instinct as she turns her head, as if he’s scared that her eyes were filled with electricity. As his lips take position in a tight line, he finds his chest rising as he holds his breath, only finding the courage to breathe out when she turns back towards the front of whatever performance that felt long forgotten to him. He takes offence to the beauty that was sitting in front of him, hair tied up in a low ponytail and skin that somehow glistened with a glow of some sorts. And he decides right there and then, that she’s a curse. Park Chaeyoung was the kind of woman who’d practiced witchcraft, and he had been her lab rat for way too long. He’s not ready to admit that he still cares for her, especially after the plethora of months that had passed but he’d be lying to himself if he were to say that there wasn’t an unbearable aching in his stomach whenever he’d see her, a kind of burning that didn’t lessen with time. Jeon Jungkook is tired. He’s tired of being the only one between the two that was hurting. 

“Oh sorry.” 

Her familiar voice captures his attention. Dark eyes flutter shut as he feels her bare flesh brush against his clothed skin in the midst of the chaos that was happening backstage as the other boys were trying to figure out whether the car outside was for them or for another group. 

“It’s fine, Chaeyoung.” 

He almost cringes at the bitterness as her name rolls off the tip of his tongue. It’s not until he feels the coolness of her tough, digits touching his arm as she’s pushed by the crowdedness to him that he can smell the vanilla scented perfume on her skin. He doesn’t need to ask to know it were the one he’d gifted her a week before she’d ended things with him, because she told him how much she hated the smell of vanilla. 

So why was she wearing it? 

It was hard for him not to overanalyse what perhaps was so insignificant. Perhaps— she’d had a change in taste or that her scents of choice were running out and she wanted to save it for special occasion. He found himself overanalysing, wondering where he’d gone wrong for weeks and months before eventually— he’d gave up. 

Park Chaeyoung was someone who wasn’t made to be understood.

His eyes fall, watching as her face scrunches in discomfort as she’d being pushed by the crowded space and out of instinct, he finds his own body fighting against the logic in his brain. Able arms wrap around hers protectively, his back suddenly towards where was the movement was as he gently pulls her towards the back of the room, not caring that he was no longer in the line of sight of his other group mates. 

“Are you okay?” 

His voice is heavy, gaze slowly studying her to make sure that she wasn’t hurt in any way and for once, she doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable with his public display of affection. He wonders if she’d craved it just as much as he did. His thumb brushes the softness of her cheek in a gesture that he knows is intrusive and past the boundaries that she made clear those months ago. She nods, taking a step back.