Work Text:
( tunnelrunners )
Jungkook gamely crushes the cardboard cup in his palm, secures a flickering flashlight between his cheek and his shoulder, and makes the shot for a trash bin that’s two meters away.
That’s the fifth cup of coffee he’d emptied since he’d started his shift.
(That’s the first one that hits the carpeted floor instead and rolls off toward the rope line dividers surrounding a portrait painting, and, well. Shit.)
Jungkook jolts closer to fully conscious when he remembers about the vibration sensors—those troublesome little pests—around the recently donated Chun Kyung Ja.
“Fuck,” he blinks, grasping the flashlight tightly and breaking into a run towards the painting. Under the light, the roses on the canvas look dull. “Shit, why the fuck did I do that—”
He catches the cup before the alarms shrilly resound.
Jungkook pants. Turns to the bin with furrowed eyebrows, with breaths dissolving into coarse huffs.
“Stupid,” he mutters, shoving the cup into a mound of recyclables.
It’s a tasteless job, signing up for museum security during gray hours. Jungkook’s been here for seven months but nothing ever really happens. Muffled footfalls in the dark at two in the morning. Faces of people that were and people that are yet to be stare back at him emptily. They’re supposed to be beautiful but Jungkook feels nothing.
Overpriced graphic fuckers, Jungkook calls them. Sometimes they appall him. Uneven textures on canvases, a cacophony of colors, subjects that don’t even appeal to the most superficial of his senses.
He shines his flashlight over the next row of paintings in the most secluded portion of the exhibition hall. The CCTV camera blinks red in the shadows and follows him.
Jungkook supposes he could use a show.
The tune starts off quiet, tentatively drips from the precipice of his tongue in languid strokes. It turns rapid, eventually. It’s from some time ago, a flitting song on the radio when Jungkook still lived by the sea and caught crabs and didn’t sleep in a shitty apartment with the permanent stench of mustard and cheap smoke.
The song spans three minutes. All in good timing, since Jungkook’s off the clock just two minutes after. He walks out of the hall and makes a left toward the library, then to the stairs.
Jungkook hopes that the nearby convenience store still has some instant jjajangmyeon. He’s got a couple of broken bills in the breast pocket of his uniform, flimsy and washed out for having been stuck in the laundry last week.
A minute until his shift ends. A minute until he goes for a well-deserved four thousand won breakfast and attempts not to drift off on the bus home.
The daylight hasn’t reached Seoul yet. He sighs, but then—
Jungkook’s right foot grazes the first floor the same time the alarms from the opposite wing start screeching.
The slow realization ebbs in a heartbeat and he turns on his heel. Races through the aisle as he yanks his walkie-talkie out of the holster on his belt. The protocol should be common sense but Jungkook grits his teeth when no one answers him, eyes wide under the flood of red light.
“Security control,” Jungkook hisses into his radio, proceeding to the fire exit first. He gauges what’s missing—it’s one of those Van Goghs, one of the only interesting pieces he’d peered at when he first visited the place.
It's one of those ridiculously expensive restorations and Jungkook will be thoroughly fucked from this life to the next if he loses the dude.
The fire exit’s empty. His line is dead.
Strange. SeMA’s supposed to have a solid security plan but it’s almost as though nobody else is there.
Jungkook runs.
He finally takes apart the dimness to find a silhouette. A camouflage cap, gloved fingers. Eyes that glint in the dark.
The thief looks back at him when he reaches the curved windows—actually studies him for a brief moment before there’s a brief flash of teeth, before he breaks past the glass with crossed arms and the Van Gogh in tow and some kind of hurling motion that produces a stark flash of light in the passing seconds.
Asshole decided to pick tonight among the rest to steal a painting, pick the goddamned minute before Jungkook can punch out.
Still no word from the control center nor the police department.
Jungkook groans and decidedly gives up on communicating the burglary. He finds the grip of his Colt instead and follows, soles of his boots crunching on glass shards when he steps through the wreckage and out into the open—
Except the open isn’t the open, not anymore. Jungkook lets his mouth hang heavy, punch to his gut when he tastes vastly different air, knees swaying because he’s standing on the pavement instead of the stone steps on the entrance of the museum.
“Holy fuck,” heaves Jungkook around the stunner clogging his throat.
He drops his pistol, lets it clatter to the ground when he finds himself in the middle of a one-way traffic of nordic blue Ford Cortinas with rusted front grilles, tangled cable wires overhead with a mess of shop signs protruding from a strip of three-storey buildings.
The drizzle wets the waves in his hair and makes the road glisten.
Jungkook breathes harshly, turning around to be met by the looming view of the sprawling mountain, the one he’d visited a good twenty years ago. His ears take on a constant ringing.
He’s in Busan. But he isn’t.
Can’t be.
The people around him stare curiously. A woman clutches the side of her pleated skirt, her child’s small hand. Jungkook’s chest seizes.
The thief doesn’t look back again. He slides into a duotone sedan conveniently parked between fruit trucks, tossing the million-dollar canvas into shotgun.
Jungkook only watches him maneuver through the crowd of marketgoers until he regains a steady pulse. Feeling in his feet still muted, he drags himself to the side of the road.
Jungkook leaves his Colt behind. Someone continues to roar over the chatter of the street scene to coax customers into a quaint barber shop. Another vigorously fans the tomatoes on the cart with a sodden roll of yesterday’s newspaper.
None of it makes any sense. This is not Seoul and Jungkook can’t have passed out on the job and wasted away in a dream that’s far too real for him to even bring the oddly specific craving for jjajangmyeon in the recesses of his mind.
His stomach rumbles. His hands shake. The sedan speeds away at twenty five kilometers per hour, give or take a few, cruising through the film of unsuspecting civilians.
There's a muddied yellow bike resting on the nearby streetpost.
Jungkook swallows.
He strides toward the bike, faster and faster until he's running again. Wades through the viscous stream of what the fuck is going on, swings his leg over the seat and doesn't listen to whoever's shouting at him to keep him from stealing her ride.
It should seem silly that he's still in full security gear and that he's cycling through the market on a sunshine yellow Schwinn, strawberries in its basket, but it's sort of a fuck-all circumstance at the moment.
Jungkook ups it to a thirty and bikes away from the woman who attempts to chase her Schwinn back. He clenches his jaw, rain dripping down his lashes and his cheeks. Eyes set on the sedan as its driver makes a hard turn to the street flanked by more stalls of fresh produce.
All the air almost leaves him as sights of an entirely foreign city flit past him.
The sedan slows to a stop in front of a cramped shoe-shining shop. Jungkook gets off the bike, leaves it to fall on the damp curb and glares at the galvanized tin front. Skyward is its logo, a meager illustration of a polished leather shoe with the name of Shin Shin painted across the light blue board.
The thief comfortably steps out of the vehicle. He takes his cap off and exhales, figure bound tightly by his turtleneck sweater, and Jungkook doesn't need to think in order to move.
Jungkook surges toward him. He can't bother to look at his expression when he slams the guy against the tin wall, pulse too loud in his ears, trembling hands on the robber's shoulders.
"Where," Jungkook starts, meeting a flare of brown as he grinds his teeth, "Where the hell did you bring me?"
The dude blinks at him. Cups the back of his head with a soft, Ow, like the son of a bitch had the right to sound innocent.
He furrows his eyebrows, shifting, and returns Jungkook's intent gaze with a passing shrug. "Huh. You followed me here."
Jungkook exhales and presses harder on muscle, the tips of his hair sticking to his forehead in a water-logged mess. "I stepped through the museum window in Seoul and ended up in not-Busan."
"Not-Busan," the dude scoffs. He tries to shake Jungkook off but Jungkook doesn't lose his grip. The folds of tin hum under his weight. "Wow. Real eloquent. It's Busan."
"Don't fuck around."
"It's Busan," the guy says, clicking his tongue. "Look, man—I'm sorry I couldn't clean up the mess, the portal was unstable—"
"What," Jungkook gapes.
"The portal," echoes the thief, brandishing his hands in a simulation of some kind of magic trick. "You know, you gotta listen well the first time."
Jungkook turns away, chin jutting out when he licks over his canines, and looks back to sock the guy in the plane of his stomach. The dude sucks in a sharp gasp, clings to him as he dry-heaves. Sputters out and over Jungkook's knuckles on his abdomen.
"Why aren't we in Seoul," Jungkook spits, breaths coming sparse and panicked. He's lost. "Where are you gonna take the painting?"
"Christ," the thief wheezes, "you've got a mean right hook."
"Why doesn't Busan look like—" home, he almost says. Only almost. "Like the way it should?"
"You ask too many 'why' questions," the guy sneers through the gravel in his voice. He curls in on himself, hand snug against his belly. "Ouch. That hurts like a bitch."
Jungkook fists the thief's collar and drags him up.
The guy must feel the tremors in Jungkook's fingers. He coughs and gawks at Jungkook's face. "Okay, wow, you got pretty eyes, there."
"—Shut up," Jungkook forces him further against the wall, winded. Maybe this isn't real. Maybe he's just dreaming. He tastes saltwater on his lips, a cry bubbling on their cusp. "If, if you answered then I wouldn't have to keep asking."
"I told you, kid," the guy exhales, and for that Jungkook pushes him higher. He yelps. "Can you please chill."
"Tell me I'm imagining things."
"I can tell you that but I thought you wanted me to be honest—"
"Tell me," Jungkook despairs, the spray of rainfall wetting his back, "where we are."
The thief laves his tongue over his teeth in contemplation. He blinks down at Jungkook with an indefinite blur in his eyes and cocks his head to the side.
"For the last time, where we are is Busan," he says. "And as for when, well. Guess I gotta welcome you to 1968."
* * *
Hoseok, he tells Jungkook when he seats him on a recently upholstered couch. It squeaks under Jungkook's mass, a horrible shade of puke-green under the faded wash of a neon lamp overhead. The name's Hoseok, and here're some noodles —you look like you're gonna pass out. I'll return your uppercut some other time 'cause you got me good, there, and I'm not the type to let things go easily.
Jungkook stares blankly at the chopsticks in his hands.
"Huh," remarks another stranger propped up on Hoseok's coffee table. He lowers his rounded, purple-tinted sunglasses, raises his eyebrows at the sight of Jungkook. Slack-jawed, he takes out the strawberry lollipop he'd been gnawing on since he'd dropped by the shop. "I didn't know you were recruiting new guys, hyung."
"Nah, I'm not," Hoseok says. He blows across the surface of the van Gogh and pats it gently. "Security dude happened to tag along before the portal collapsed. Ain't my fault he's having a crisis right now."
"You fucker," Jungkook seethes. He almost snaps the chopsticks in deplorable halves, but the violent stir in his belly protests.
"Whoa, let's just. Stay cool, yeah? Cool is good. Cool is awesome." The other guy waves his hands, the fringes on his suede vest swaying in the steady stream of air generated by a portable electric fan.
He points his half-eaten lollipop toward Hoseok. "Besides, I don't know any fuckers in here. Last time I checked Hobi-hyung hadn't gotten laid for, like, a year. Although the definition of time is a bit hazy in this context, given all his skipping..."
"Taehyung-ah, kindly shut up."
"A year and a half, then," Taehyung says smugly, sliding his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. "But I digress. I'm gonna pick up on being noble and apologize on Hobi-hyung's behalf, since obviously landing your ass in the distant past isn't something that'd keep your sanity intact."
"How do I get back if any of this is even—real," blurts Jungkook. Steam hangs heavy over his meager serving of ramyeon. It lies untouched.
"Easy," Hoseok pipes up, setting the painting on the foot of the couch. "We go through the same route. You know, psychedelic time tripping and broken windows and all. I throw this thingamajig...this orb into the air and voila! A bright light. Portal opens up like Taehyung's legs on a very fond reunion with certified hot medic Park Jimin."
Taehyung rolls his eyes. "And then you, brazen Cop Man from the 21st century, can arrest him and everything will be fine and dandy," he laughs, ducking when Hoseok throws a ratty sock at his head. "Chill. I'm still takin' your van Gogh to the reconstruction villages south of the DMZ, it's a win-win. Jiminie's camping out there, got a couple of veterans he wants to cheer up with art theory."
"What," echoes Jungkook, mouth dry. "The DMZ? You've gotta be kidding me."
"Wish he were," Hoseok says, scratching at the curve of his throat through his turtleneck. "1968, fella. The armistice agreement's gone to shit and Korea has, well. Apparently also gone to shit."
Jungkook is very much starved. And confused. Dealings with the latter would only further complicate things, so he tunes down the swarm of vastly different sensations and naturally goes for picking on the noodles.
"Long story short, if you were looking for an explanation on why I trespassed through your museum," Hoseok mutters. He lifts his chin and watches Jungkook slurp on his ramyeon. "Taehyung-ah and I take art to wars because sometimes that's all people have. Good art, doesn't matter what the era is. My stick figures didn't make the cut."
"Your stick figures don't even have straight lines."
"You ever see a real person without any curves, Taehyung-ah? Huh?"
"Geometric abstraction infused with mildly realistic elements. Wow. Your curly fry-esque human doodles sound legit if described that way."
Jungkook keeps chewing.
"Thanks," Hoseok idly replies, eyes still on Jungkook. "So, Cop Man. You wanna go back now? Two dudes in a stalemate, a shanty, and a desperate need of a smoke can't afford to babysit someone from the 2010s."
This time, Jungkook puts the chopsticks down, balancing them on the rim of the metal bowl. He mutters, "Yes. Fuck you for even dragging me here in the first place."
"Hyung," Taehyung supplies, "call him hyung."
"Fuck you, hyung."
"Funny jackass we've got here." Hoseok snickers and gets up from the cemented floor. He unplugs the electric fan, yellowed out blades whirring slower and slower until they halt. "Come on, then. I'll take you home. I probably deserved that suckerpunch, but whatever."
Jungkook is quick to reach for Hoseok's elbow. He frowns. "Wait. I still need the painting back."
"Uh, right," Hoseok swallows, "when you strut into the museum with it—and if you decide to go back to exactly where we left off—I don't think they're not gonna assume that you tried to steal it instead."
Jungkook almost sends his fist through Hoseok's teeth.
Hoseok shrugs. "I could always send you sometime else, you know? Like, a few years back in time in case you wanted to have do-overs—get a different flavor of ice cream at your high school festival, pass a math class, go cruisin' in Jeju. Maybe I could even take you to the future. Kickass stuff. Taehyung-ah, got any spare orbs?"
"I am going to kill you," groans Jungkook.
"Oh, would you look at that," Taehyung declares around his lollipop, swell of his voice muted, and pats on his denim pockets. "Conveniently, we're outta them. Which means Cop Man—what's your name, kid—"
"Jungkook. I'm not a kid."
"You gotta remember where you are." Hoseok rubs his temples, exhales harshly through his nose. "Kid. Jungkook. I'm sorry that this situation sucks and I clearly don't wanna keep you here 'cause I know you can break my neck, but. No orbs basically mean no traveling for us. Which means you're staying here until I can bargain with pals in the city. Shit, why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Hyung, my man, you didn't warn me that you'd bagged an officer, either."
Hoseok and Taehyung's conversation run as a bassline, a steady beat that's only appropriately faded for Jungkook to still hear them and make out the sounds despite the swirl of colors glazing over his eyes. The world tips and Jungkook drops to the couch again, slips on a newspaper whose date he catches a glimpse of. 1968, it says. 19 fucking 68 printed in italics just below the masthead.
He's stuck in a year that has gone a long time before he even existed.
"I think," he resolutely says, fist curling on the armrest. "I'm gonna throw up."
* * *
"Can't sleep?"
Jungkook looks up. It's dark, shadows of cable lines flitting across his face and bare arms when the brightly lit sign of the adjacent bakery flickers. The anger's mostly simmered by now. It leaves the bones in his fingers empty, rattling. Like he's got something to be afraid of.
Maybe he'll wake up if he tries harder.
He grumbles when Hoseok nudges him over to make space on the couch. "What did you expect? You haul my ass to god knows where, do you really think that I don't think I'm hallucinating you right now?"
Hoseok's changed into a loose tee. He squints. "You don't look like you've got the cash for some fancy acid trip. Please get over yourself."
"I'm going insane." Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut. "I'm definitely going haywire. What did I even do."
"Jungkook," Hoseok says softly. He keeps his distance on the stupid green sofa that faintly reeks of vomit from Jungkook's stunt earlier. "Jungkook-ah. Look, I'm sorry."
"You're a felon, you can't just apologize. That's too easy. Please shut up before I break your nose."
Hoseok flinches but presses on. "Please don't. And I'm not apologizing for that. You realize what I do, yeah?"
"Take art to wars," Jungkook murmurs and throws his head back until his chin greets the ceiling in a hello. The throbbing in his temples doesn't ebb, and he'd left his packet of ibuprofen tablets in—in the future. Were they even available over the counter in 1968? "Huh. Sounds so hopeless. Make people happy before they die. Aren't you nice."
"This bunch? They're gonna live longer than you think they are," chuckles Hoseok. He takes a long look at Jungkook and tosses a folded quilt at him. Jungkook catches it, stunned. "Also. It may be summer but you're gonna wake up sneezing if you're only sleeping with an undershirt on. I can't take you back if you die from a dumb cold."
The quilt isn't woven out of the softest material, doesn't smell of Jungkook's favorite laundry detergent. But the warmth will have to do.
Jungkook purses his lips. "Don't think for one second that I'm not putting you behind the bars. Two years of jail sentence and a couple hundred hours of community service sound about right. If you're actually real."
"That's hyung to you, Jungkook-ah," Hoseok says. He rises on his feet, mouth curling in a tight smile. "And we'll see. Sleep on it and I'll take you out to see things, buy new orbs. You can try to catch me then if you want. But I've got the feeling you won't."
Why the hell not?
Hoseok turns his back on him. He leaves over his shoulder: "It's your eyes. They say so much about you. Right now they're telling me that you're curious 'cause I'm stealin' art and traipsin' across time. And going back to your old life at the museum after putting me in prison won't give you the answers you wanna hear."
* * *
It's the musk of rain that filters through the screened window when Jungkook rouses. His eyebrows collapse on a frown when he stretches, arms overhead, hands knocking away something rigid. Something brittle, evidenced by the sound of breakage that splits the silence of a humid morning. Jungkook startles up, blinking wide, and falls on the floor with a grunt.
Good thing he misses the shards. He rolls onto his back, griping, and looks up.
That's not his apartment ceiling. There's no popcorn texture, no cracks on the wall.
There shouldn't be a face hovering over his.
"Rise and shine, Cop Man," says Hoseok, gawking at Jungkook from above. A single droplet of water drips from his hair to Jungkook's forehead. Then another. Hoseok grips his towel tighter around his waist. "Come on—up, don't just stare. There ain't a secondhand shower going on anytime soon."
Jungkook stares at him anyway, far more with dread than with embarrassment. Why Hoseok won't cover up, towel himself dry, and just not exist for Jungkook's sake, Jungkook doesn't know. "You're still here."
"'Course I'm here, it's my place," Hoseok shrugs. "You made a mess, too. Broom and dustpan right by the sink."
Jungkook wipes off the water on his cheek with his forearm. Sits up to exhale heavily. "I'm still dreaming."
"There's some coffee in the cupboard, I think," Hoseok says, turning on his heel. "Sugar packets somewhere in there. Stole them in '08 in Andromeda but eh, should be good."
"In what?" reels Jungkook.
"Nothing." Hoseok's voice is distant as he pads away, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the floor. He seems to walk back into the narrow compartment that he has for a bathroom.
"Say what," he says when he pokes his head through the doorway, toothbrush in his mouth, "if my dealer's in town within the next few days and I get the orbs, I'll drop you off just right before you catch me at ass o'clock in your present morning. The alarm's still gonna sound but the van Gogh's gonna sit there primly. I'll just borrow the little fella for a while, tour him around here. Then it's gonna be as if you never knew me."
"Can't be that simple," Jungkook mutters, fixed in place.
"Oh, Jungkook-ah," laughs Hoseok, noises muffled by the brush. "That's the charming thing about being a drifter. It'll be simple 'cause things stay. I don't. And you'll never see me again after."
PART ONE END