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Jeongguk was not having a good day.
He'd stayed up to finish a report for The Class from Hell and had slept through his alarm like the genius he was, jolting awake five minutes before said class.
There's a saying that a college student will only get out of bed when he encounters a panic great enough. Jeongguk is that college student when he spots the green digits of his clock through bleary eyes and nearly chokes to death on his own spit.
He'd scrambled out in his pikachu onesie and was sprinting across the quad, when the realization that he had forgotten his laptop sucker-punched him in the face.
Way to go Jeon. Today is going absolutely great. Fucking fantastic.
He ignores the weird looks directed at him (haven't you fuckers ever seen a running pikachu?) as he tears back up the stairs to the apartment he shares with Kim Namjoon, part-time music major and full-time philosopher wannabe. Who is currently snoring away peacefully, free from the bane of morning classes and oblivious to Jeongguk's impending doom.
Namjoon lets out a magnificently thunderous snore as Jeongguk searches frantically. He experiences a brief meltdown before he spots the laptop on Namjoon's desk, where it definitely hadn't been the night before.
"Yeah, fuck you too," he mutters, rolling his eyes at his roommate, but tucks the blanket more tightly around Namjoon anyway. Only because Namjoon with a cold was even more insufferable than Namjoon on a normal day — definitely not because he, you know, cared or anything dumb like that.
They'd met this year when fate had conspired to throw them into the same room together, and had surprisingly gotten along. If trading insults over episodes of Game of Thrones and ganging up on Hoseok counted as getting along.
If Jeongguk had known what he'd find on his laptop later that morning, he wouldn't have done that.
In fact, he probably would've poured ice down Namjoon's pants and immortalized it on Instagram.
------
Now in class with the professor glaring at him from across the room, Jeongguk scrambles to locate the file so that he can deliver a flawless, mind-blowing presentation that would secure him an A.
He's just typed in his password when a hot-pink page expands to fill the screen. Jeongguk's eyes grow as wide as saucers as he takes in the explicit photos and — holy fuck. He's going to have to scorch his eyeballs later. Preferably with industrial bleach, maybe a dash of detergent too.
What the hell was this? A virus?
"Mr. Jeon?"
"Fuck!" Jeongguk yelps, with feeling, instinctively slamming the screen down, and if he wasn't screwed before he's definitely screwed now. His professor gives him the stink eye as a collective chuckle ripples through the classroom.
"Did you forget to do it?" The professor thunders, and Jeongguk quickly shakes his head.
"N-no, I've got it," he stammers lamely, surreptitiously inclining his laptop away from prying eyes (fulfill your deepest sexual desires at this one stop portal —) and hurriedly closing the page.
The presentation passes without hitch and even his professor can't find fault with it, though he does deduct marks for punctuality and that dratted pikachu onesie. Clearly not a Pokemon fan. Jeongguk's just relieved that no one saw that thing on his laptop. He's pretty sure he knows how it appeared, recalling that his laptop had been on Namjoon's table instead of his own, and boy is he going to have strong words with his roommate when he gets back.
"Hey Guk, I bought pizza," Namjoon greets when he pushes open the door, and Jeogguk is somewhat mollified by the appetizing smell drifting through their apartment. Not completely, though.
"Dearest Namjoon," he begins in a soft, dangerous voice, that has Namjoon looking up in trepidation, "I would appreciate if you deleted your porn tabs after using my laptop."
"Porn tabs?" Namjoon repeats blankly, and for a brief moment Jeongguk thinks he's gotten it wrong. Then realization dawns on Namjoon's face. "Oh."
"Oh indeed," Jeongguk echoes, plonking his bag onto the ground. "Guess what I found today?"
"Ugh. No, don't tell me."
Jeongguk leans in and makes sure to hiss into his ear, "busty babes galore."
"Shove off," Namjoon snaps, but he's blushing.
"What would possess you to search that up anyway?" Jeongguk demands, thoroughly exhausted. He feels like he's lost ten years of his life. "Don't you have your boyfriend?"
"I was trying to buy sex toys —" Namjoon starts to explain, but Jeongguk immediately holds up his hands in a pathetic, ineffectual shield.
"Stop right there," he says warningly. "Just don't do it again. I think I nearly had a heart attack."
"Yeah, sorry bro," Namjoon says apologetically, then holds out a box of pizza as a peace offering. Jeongguk scrutinizes it and carefully picks out a decently-sized slice.
"You know," Namjoon begins as they sit around, munching pizza and waiting for Game of Thrones to come on, "their stuff is really good."
Jeongguk grimaces. "Somehow I don't think you're talking about the pizza."
------
Call it simple curiosity, but after the shock had worn off, Jeongguk finds himself mildly interested. On his off day, when Namjoon is in class and he's absentmindedly scrolling through Twitter just for something to do, his mind involuntarily turns to the porn page.
He brings up his history and clicks the address. The pink page loads again, making Jeongguk wince at the horrendous color scheme, but this time he suppresses his contempt and scrolls down.
Love Cavern seems to specialize in selling sex toys, and a fuck load of them at that. He clicks on a black contraception at random (where does that even go?) and dozens of reviews flood his screen, with comments like my sex life has improved after buying the mega deluxe triple vibrating butt plug in one!! Thank you so much!!!!
It's over-the-top and borderline cringe-worthy, but he can't find the energy to mock them. At least they had someone to use the toys on.
The truth: Jeongguk doesn't have a sex life. Hooking up had been fun at first, but ultimately it wasn't his scene. He wanted a relationship, not a booty call.
Add to that his painful social awkwardness that prevented him from actually asking anyone out, and he had a huge problem when finals came, because he had a lot of stress-induced sexual frustration and no one to expend it on.
Jeongguk purses his lips as he opens the dildos tab, then abruptly freezes and stares at his reflection in horror.
Is he actually, seriously, unduitably — considering this?
Okay what the fuck, this isn't a crime. So he wants to buy a sex toy; it's perfectly normal. He's a healthy, virile twenty-year-old, and a ten-inch vibrating dildo is not going to bite off his head. Deep breaths. He can do this.
Ten minutes and a lot of fumbling, backspacing and oh my god am I really doing this moments later, he's ninety-nine dollars and ninety cents poorer, and the not-so-proud owner of a spankin' new dildo.
------
As a university mail boy, Jeongguk has the dubious honor of receiving his own parcel. He spies the box on the shelf right away and the jolt of excitement it induces is incredibly embarrassing.
He can't help glancing around nervously. It feels like there's someone watching him, just waiting for him to take the box so that they can jump out of the bushes and triumphantly snap incriminating photos to show his parents.
Seriously, why couldn't he be a normal college student and hook up at a party instead?
Oh, right, because he's a romantic. Why does he insist on digging holes for himself?
But what's done is done, and Jeongguk is not about to waste ninety-nine dollars and ninety cents. He's going to be living off cup ramen for three months, it had better be the best thing since sliced bread.
He tucks the box into the bag along with ten other parcels and gets into the mail caddy. In no time at all he's at the final apartment, tossing the parcel onto the doormat and ringing the bell, and at last he's free. Home sweet home.
His body is thrumming with anticipation as he skips up the steps. Closing the door to his room, he slits the tape and pulls out a bubble-wrapped package, which was kinda soft? and squishy??
Jeongguk pauses. Wait a minute.
He gives the package another tentative poke. Yup, still squishy.
Was this some new hybrid dildo or what? Because even with as little experience as he's had, he knows dildos aren't supposed to feel like cloth.
Cloth is, incidentally, exactly what he sees when he removes the bubble wrap (and resists the urge to pop all the bubbles first). A very flimsy, lime-green monstrosity the size of his palm. With four holes.
Is this some kind of joke.
He holds it up gingerly, half-hoping that it'd pull some Transformer shit and turn into the black and distinctly not-green dildo he'd ordered, and sees a silvery inscription emblazoned on the front instead: The Bestest Dog in the World!
Startled laughter bubbles from his throat, despite the fact that there's nothing remotely funny about ordering an expensive dildo off a sketchy website and getting a shirt for pampered chihuahuas instead.
Of-fucking-course.
When he's recovered from the rude shock, he goes to throw the useless, and very ugly, shirt back into the box. He's already resigned himself to the fact that the website was a scam, Namjoon is an idiot, and he's just signed himself up for three months of bad cholesterol and skin breakouts for nothing. But sometimes life gives you lemons because you have bad karma. Suck it up.
Then he sees the address on the box
Kim Taehyung, Apartment 338, Holden Hall
and shrieks.
In fact, he yells so loudly that Namjoon bursts into his room, even though they have a rule of not entering when the door's closed after the disastrous incident of 2015, when he'd walked in on Namjoon jerking off.
"Where's the danger?" Namjoon bellows, glancing frantically around. He's holding a fruit peeler over his head like a weapon and the sight is strange enough to make Jeongguk stop screaming.
"Why are you holding that?"
"...I was eating fruits?"
"You were going to fight off an intruder with a fruit peeler?" Jeongguk asks incredulously, momentarily putting his crisis on hold in order to take a piss at his roommate. A man's gotta have priorities.
Namjoon scowls and straightens up. "I take it there's no danger?"
Jeongguk shakes his head, and instantly regrets it when Namjoon flicks his forehead so hard he sees stars.
------
After the mortification comes the horror.
Kim Taehyung, a random innocent stranger, had had a sex toy sent to him instead of an ugly puppy shirt. His dog's going to freeze and Taehyung is going to murder him.
It's easy to find people on social media nowadays and Taehyung now has his full name and address. His life is over. He's going to have to deactivate.
Jeongguk thinks mournfully about the 90k followers he's painstakingly gathered on goldenjeon97. All the hours spent taking photos of his shirtless torso, putting nice filters (not the ones Insta has — Jeongguk is not basic) and crafting gym routines and diet plans. Gone. He wants to cry.
He briefly contemplates strangling himself with his pillow, but decides that he'd rather not have the dildo mysteriously turn up at his funeral in the middle of the eulogies. His mom would have a fit.
"Hey Guk, are you okay?" Namjoon asks concernedly as he prepares to leave for his Zumba class. When Jeongguk had first found out about the Zumba, he'd very gently asked Namjoon if he was taking drugs. Namjoon had hit him on the head and employed several choice words that he wouldn't have been able to repeat in polite company.
"You've been really quiet, and you haven't left the dorm for two days even though you said you hate it being here with me," Namjoon says.
"'m fine."
"Are you sure?" Namjoon leans over and peels down an eyelid, ignoring Jeongguk's offended yelp. "Huh. Well, you aren't sick. Did something happen?"
Jeongguk narrows his eyes suspiciously. Namjoon's really not the type to pry especially when he's made it clear that he isn't in the mood to talk. It's almost like he knows, but that's impossible, because Jungkook has sworn on his beloved dog Gureum never to tell anyone about the parcel mishap. In fact, he might be seeing things but there's a glint of amusement in Namjoon's eyes. "No, why do you care?"
"Hey punk, I'm only trying to look out for you," Namjoon grumbles, but even that is half-hearted. He's being extremely nice. Jeongguk is extremely suspicious. "Are you still going to be here later?"
"Yeah, I guess." He glances mournfully at the blank screen of the tv and thinks about the dance practice he's giving up because he's afraid of running into a Kim Taehyung in the quad. Not that Taehyung would recognize him because why would he look up a weird guy who had a fucking dildo sent to him? but still.
"All right, have fun with your stewing," Namjoon shrugs, and Jeongguk swears his lip quirks up at the corner. He doesn't have 20/20 vision for nothing.
He stares daggers into Namjoon's back and tries to calm his heart. He's being paranoid, Namjoon's just being a dick because Jeongguk doesn't call him hyung.
Too bad, Namjoon.
------
It's close to 10pm when the doorbell rings.
In hindsight, staying in was the worst thing he could do if he was trying to avoid Kim Taehyung because Taehyung had his address, and that's the first place you'd go if you had a mixup, right?
Then again, if Jeongguk had had the benefit of hindsight, he wouldn't have ordered a dildo off the internet in a fit of sleep deprivation and bad judgement.
He cowers in the living room, holding his breath just in case Taehyung has supersonic hearing, and desperately prays that Taehyung suddenly forgets what he's doing there and goes away.
Kim Taehyung is nothing if not persistent though, and the ringing doesn't stop.
There are some people in life who can hear an insistently ringing doorbell and not panic. Unfortunately, Jeongguk isn't one of them.
In the end, he gets so anxious from the stupid doorbell that he gives up and yanks the door open. Then realizes that Taehyung now knows he's been pretending he wasn't in for the last, oh, ten minutes.
Jeongguk's a big believer in confronting his problems head-on after he's tried and failed to run away from them. So he takes a deep breath for courage, chokes on air, and looks up while spluttering.
Oh god no.
His throat runs dry, because standing before him is the living embodiment of all of his wet dreams since puberty. Thick, strong brows, blonde hair tucked into a snapback, and the wickedest smirk he's ever seen.
There's a sinking feeling in his gut that feels awfully like, I'm screwed. Never in his wildest dreams did he expect this, and that's saying something.
Kim Taehyung, the unfortunate victim of Jeongguk's carelessness, is the Kim Taehyung, campus sweetheart that everyone, their mother and their mother's uncle's daughter's best friend's cousin twice removed knows, because he's fucking beautiful and also really nice.
Jeongguk may or may not have a lowkey crush the size of the Empire State Building on him, despite knowing nothing but his face, and now his name. It wasn't like he had any way to find out that wouldn't risk total embarrassment. Namjoon and Hoseok were out of question; they would probably plot ways to make Jeongguk embarrass himself in front of Taehyung. And Yoongi — well, Yoongi didn't know or care.
"So...I got your package."
Fuck. There it is. Jeongguk's spent the past two days imagining every possible way this meeting could turn out and what he could say to (hopefully) retain his dignity, but no amount of practicing in front of the mirror could have prepared him for the Adonis that is Kim Taehyung, both the cause of Jeongguk's humiliation and the object of his affections.
Jeongguk wilts in front of that piercing gaze. "It was for my...roommate."
"Uh huh," Taehyung drawls, deeply unimpressed and disgustingly impressive in his skin-tight leather pants and snapback. Jeongguk can't stop staring. He's pretty sure he's burned a hole in Taehyung's trousers at this point.
"I —yeah."
Taehyung suddenly lets out a bark of laughter and before Jeongguk can blink, reaches up to pinch his cheek. "You're cute, but I know for a fact that Namjoon only tops."
"What?" Jeongguk garbles, because did Taehyung just touch him? And he knows Namjoon? Knows that Namjoon tops? (that was information he could've gone his whole life without knowing) And...
"Yeah, Kim Namjoon, music major? He's my hyung's boyfriend. I was telling him about the funny parcel mixup. Imagine my surprise when he says he knows a" — Taehyung holds up a scrap of paper and proceeds to shake it out and recite at the top of his voice, like he's been charged by the king himself to deliver a royal edict, "—Jeon Jeongguk, Apartment 253, Ivy Hall, Gwanak-gu, Seo—"
"Okay yes that's me," Jeongguk desperately interrupts, slapping a hand over Taehyung's mouth, and oh, Taehyung's lips are so soft. And wet.
He yanks his hand back when the last thought processes. Taehyung just smiles, looking thoroughly amused, and licks his lips again.
Jeongguk is seriously contemplating becoming an ostrich, because digging a hole and sticking his head inside is sounding more and more like a solid plan.
Face aflame, he quickly snatches what will henceforth be known as EDDSJJKH (the encounter of dildo, dog shirt and Jeon Jeongguk's humiliation, which is long enough that he'll forget it) out of Taehyung's hands. "Ha ha ha, small world huh? Thanks and bye."
He tries to close the door, only for Taehyung to elegantly splay one hand on the other side, stopping him.
"Not so fast," Taehyung says, his eyes shining with mischief. "I didn't bring this over just to take a piss at you, dude. I actually really want my dog shirt back. It cost a fortune, it's limited edition. Silk, you know? For Soonshim's birthday."
Jeongguk only understood up till 'dog shirt', but it was enough to set him in motion.
"Oh, right! Um, just give me a sec —" Where had he put the fucking dog shirt? He prays he still has it. He really can't remember what he did to it, probably stuffed it in some godforsaken corner to banish it from his mind.
"No worries," Taehyung drawls in that fucking deep voice of his, casually leaning on the door frame and crossing his arms, and Jeongguk shrivels even more.
He surreptitiously pinches himself and tries to focus on finding the shirt, instead of drooling over Taehyung's very very nice body. Jeongguk sees his fair share of drool-worthy bodies on a daily basis (they come with the gym membership, and Jeongguk is all about getting his money's worth), but something about Taehyung's long, lean legs makes him choke.
"Here, your dog shirt," he mumbles, practically thrusting the package into Taehyung's hands after checking thrice that it was the right one. He's had enough embarrassing mixups for the rest of his life. Fuck, he's never going to buy anything online ever again, not even tickets to G-Dragon's concert. "Thanks for everything, bye."
"Nice meeting you," Taehyung smirks, pushing himself off the doorframe and sauntering away. Jeongguk doesn't state at his ass in those tight leather pants, nope.
In the safety of his apartment, the worst finally over, he nearly sobs with relief. Well, it wasn't too bad. At least Taehyung hadn't made any innuendos or threatened to expose his identity to the entire university. He'd just wanted his dog shirt.
He crosses the room to pick up the offending EDDSJJKH. He should probably throw it away, since he doesn't think he can ever get off with it after this, but it had burned a hole in his wallet. He should at least take a look at it before he launched it into the bin.
He peels off the tape that someone, probably Taehyung, had stuck to cover the rip, and a strip of paper flutters to the ground.
goldenjeon97: if you ever get tired of your right hand, hmu!
Jeongguk screams.
Somewhere several miles off campus, Namjoom pauses in his stretching and frowns. "Did you hear something?"