Archive of Our Own

Seokjin isn’t really sure how he feels about this whole internet thing.

Not that he’s living in the dark ages or anything. He has internet. He just thinks he hates it. It is not straightforward and oftentimes, things happen that he does not intend. Scandalous women of unknown origin send him invitations to meet “hot singles”, down to the town and zip code, and Jin manages to panic in a very calm way – if he’s receiving these messages, it’s probably due to him getting a cell phone and maybe tracked somehow, though he has no idea how, so he does the sensible thing and destroys the phone. He sweeps up all the glass, packs the remnants of the iPhone into a small plastic bag, melts it shut, and travels to a distant river that he knows will flow at least to the gulf.

The next morning he returns to the storefront he purchased his device from, and successfully navigates a strained, awkward conversation about “malware” and “pop-up advertisements”. The two staff members aiding him, bewildered as they are, are helpful enough to glean that he is not as up to date with technology as someone his age should probably be, and one even asks if he’s been traveling, or on a mission.

“Yes, I’ve been on many missions,” Jin smiles wryly, sarcasm gently laced into his reply. 

The one on the right lights up. “Oh that’s great! I did my mission trip to Namibia. It was such a great experi-”

Jin realizes that miscommunication has happened at some point, again, but his tight, polite smile and reckless fantasies of committing mass murder in the Apple Store keep him calm and lucid until he leaves the establishment with a new smartphone that he will, hopefully, not have further issues with.

–

The ads are going to drive him crazy. Maybe even before you do.

There are new and different ones. The fake text ones almost got him. Despite his confusion, the bid to “send nudes?? ;) pic 4 pic?” had him wondering in profound disbelief if the youth of today really sent each other fine art portraiture of the female form as a form of courtship, but–

“You look like you’re trying to crack a safe,” you coo from your side of the table, smiling sweetly and pushing your hair behind your ear. Jin sighs.

“I could manage a safe with less difficulty than this,” he deadpans, but your good-natured laugh drags him forcibly from his irritations. A little bit. He gives up and puts his phone down, granting you his full attention once more, and your lips wrap around your lemonade straw as you sip lightly, hidden under the comfortable shade of the outdoor umbrella. You’re like a painting, or a picture, the way the sunlight hits the pastel flutter of your skirt, not a wrinkle in sight for work.

It’s nice. As always. If a bit stifling.

“…Do people really mean what I think they mean when they say ‘send nudes’?” He ventures instead of further ruminating on the way you distract him.

Your eyes go wide and you detach from the straw, a pretty pink tongue swiping over your surprised lips. He hears your heart above all the noise, escalating, the way your breathing trembles a little more; flustered.

Curious. Or maybe he’s just said accidentally made a fool of himself for the umpteenth time this week.

“Um,” you begin, patiently and not at all unkindly, pausing to dab a napkin to your mouth. “Y-you mean… like… in a text?”

Seokjin frowns, puzzled. “Are there non-text contexts?”

You pause again, to ruminate on that one. “No… well, unless you count social media. Is it… Can I… Do… …M-may I ask why you’re asking?”

For a moment, he lets time slow down.

Despite the shade, he can almost taste the heat in your cheeks. Certainly flustered. He wants to memorize how you can only keep eye contact for brief stretches before hiding behind your lowered eyelashes. Still, you’re careful, your movements are measured – it’s cute. He understood at the very least that you worked for a proper business, and from time to time saw the vestiges of your hard-earned, meticulously crafted facade like now in your admirable poker face. There is something endearing about how you seem to radiate delicacy but temper it under something refined to give the appearance of control. It reminds him of a different time. Something in it recalls fine porcelain; a skilled maker can evoke a sense of priceless fragility with the right touch, and even that in itself is a strong defense – why would anyone approach something that might break?

Seokjin sighs, and decides to save that for another time. After all, he still might just kill you.

“I just keep getting these detestable pop-ups or whatever they are,” he finally says. Well, it had only felt like a proper second for you, but nevertheless. “And I must confess my… modern literacy has declined in terms of slang.”

Your shoulders rest and the way your eyes smile softly relaxes, too: relief. No, no; he mustn’t kill you yet, not when there’s so much of you left to figure out.

“Ah,” you hum back, and take a fresh sip of your drink. “Your age is showing, dear. How old are you again?”

“Old enough.”

–

Half an hour later, your lunch break over far sooner than either of you cared to admit, you return to work oddly flushed and Seokjin walks home with a mixture of flat horror and a mortification that bordered on fugue.

–

Something he is grateful for is that in your new, budding friendship, you don’t seem to mind any of his idiosyncrasies, outlandish as they are.

In fact, you’re the only human in a long time to not only accept it, but respond in turn with appropriate etiquette. You always wait for him to get your chair, hold a door for you – not that you’ve had to wait, ever really. He is always sure your glass is full, that you are on the safer side of the sidewalk, that you have a coat, and your shared meals are paid for. 

He is not, unlike some other vampires, a savage yet.

It’s later that night when his phone lights up with a text. You, only you – always you. You’ve taken to evening correspondence before bed, sometimes, perhaps when you don’t feel much like reading. You’d told him in passing that you were quite a stereotype at bedtime, in reading glasses with a small lamp on, under the covers, whatever novel you were chewing on tucked safely between your palms and washed under the warm, soft light.

He thought about that sometimes, when it got late. (Turns out it got late every calendar day.)

[9:47] Still up? :)

[9:47] But of course. Shouldn’t you be reading Chopin?

[9:47] That’s the glory of old age, darling. Lots of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” just vanish. Ghosts in the night.

[9:48] Old age indeed… Then to what do I owe this pleasure, Miss?

[9:48] Just wondering what The Great And Mighty Seokjin getting up to at this hour if he’s still prowling about :)

Prowling? An intrigued brow raises at your choice of phrase, and he drifts his thumb over his bottom lip thoughtfully.

[9:48] Bored, mostly. Though this conversation is a balm to that wound.

[9:49] You flatter me. Most men aren’t so good at conversating, you know…

[9:49] Certainly, but I am not most men, and I must say I am charmed at your mind’s immodesty - tell me, my lady, were you expecting me to say “send nudes”? 😛

He tacks on the “emoji” with its tongue sticking out in jocund nature, hesitantly. The Apple assistant had explained the purpose of the tiny caricatures – emotional punctuation of sorts. He hoped it conveyed his tone adequately - the short-form scribe of text messages were an awkward, hard tongue to learn compared to his literacy in letter-writing.

Jin realizes a full minute later, lost idly in his own thoughts, that you have yet to reply.

It feels as if a stone has dropped into his stomach, cold and smooth and heavy. It sets there, adds to his weight, and his mouth is uncommonly dry.

Why hadn’t you replied yet?

Something like discomfort grips at his throat. A compulsion to text you again sweeps over him, and he lifts his index finger to begin building an apology, but then a tiny icon flickers in the corner, signaling something, and then the screen expands and moves and there is a portrait. A small photograph is planted in your speech bubble, and he gazes at it, opens it. It swallows the entirety of his screen. The world crawls to a halt.

Jin paws back to your texts, his eyes glazes and blown red like a hot, dying coal as he reads the words indecorous, I know - a whole ankle! and exhales on a raspy sigh.

Your bedding, it seems, is all pale and white and faint peach. The comforter is thick and downy, your sheets are rumpled and clean, and they’re all tugged out of the way just enough to expose the delicate lines of your bare foot, cutely curled toes, the mouthwatering jut of your ankle at the crown. Something deep in the pit of Jin’s heart comes to life when his eyes hone in on the raspberry lacquer you’ve used to adorn your nails, and how it gleams rich and bright against your skin and the bed.

Gods above. Your skin.

[9:53] I give thanks to the sun but my love to the night
Both maids keep me slaved to such foolish desire
And I rend and grieve in sweetness, scarlet delight
Its cruelty is cream; its heaven is fire

Beauty escapes me, so often soft, unemboldened
Bidden by passion, by Pandora alike
These are the great pleasure of which I’d foretold, and
Yet the violence of yearning takes me to that respite

I cannot find language, the hymns to say
The words of my father; my counsel; my guard
I cannot know what I know not of you on any given day
Without thimbling the seams of a heart mourned hard

And yet somehow, still, as above and so below
Sordid beauty arrests me; it possesses me so.

Silence lingers much longer this time. It gives Jin time to realize in blanched, belated, horror, what he’s just done. What he has wrought upon himself. The clock ticks in callous mirth, one second at a time, and Jin considers his follies in the infinite space each one offers him. He can barely bring himself to re-read his own words.

Quietly, Jin places his phone on the small table beside his favourite sitting chair, and goes to stand in front of his back doors to look at his garden in healthy, detached distraction. The moon dapples the foliage in patches of ghostly light, illuminated like a well-kept haunted house, and then he hears the soft bzzt of his phone and is instantly at his chair, mobile nightmare device in hand.

He stands still, staring, for so long, that his screen turns off, and he almost makes a noise in his haste to activate it again.

Goodnight, Seokjin

Is penned in black ink, surprisingly neat in its lines, on your wrist. He can see the sleeve of your resting attire has been pulled back to expose it as well. He can see the way your veins and tendons pop out against your skin like smooth lines in a tilled garden. He can see that same vermilion lacquer on your nails, matching your toes, and he sees his name, the way you have chosen to temporarily brand yourself with the epithet of his title. He knows you couldn’t have known how such a gesture would affect him.

Yet.

Yet Jin allows himself one, long, glorious moment of indulgence – of fleeting, poisonous fantasy. In the darkness of his home, he could flit away in the blink of an eye, and find you. He could cull you like a ritual lamb, to be sure; but he could also kiss you, deeply and fully as a woman should be kissed, especially of your caliber. He could become the ankle-biter in ways that lacked any decorum at all. He could become sin. He could pen sonnets across your throat about your fragile divinity, and underline the truth of it all in bright, luminous red.  

His screen perks up with a new message from you, and it’s a single heart emoji, encapsulating all your radiant, authentic, innocence. Your humanity.

You do have a heart, after all, and he does not.

He bids you goodnight as well with equal etiquette, and wanders off to his garden with a feeling both tormenting and saccharine; painful and dulcet.

Maybe he’ll plant lilacs.

–

You shift your schedule around in the morning; the moment your alarm goes off, you’re more tired than usual, and it’s entirely your fault. Stopping for coffee will be absolutely necessary.

…You just can’t help but wonder if staying up had been worth it, though – all that Googling and you still couldn’t figure out the author of that sonnet, let alone where he had copied and pasted it from.