Candy | Jinkook ✓

Seokjin 1.0

It wasn't that everything was horrible.

There had been no earth shattering catastrophe. No world ending accident with circumstances that had been outside of his control.

No, this particular bout of despair had been brought about by a life time of mishaps finally adding up.

It wasn't that he would call himself unlucky. He certainly had evidence to the contrary. It was simply that genetics had given him extraordinary wide shoulders and apparently fate thought that meant he could carry more upon them.

And really, this wasn't even the worst thing that had ever happened to him. In the grand scheme of things, it came in around number six.

Maybe it should have ranked higher - and for anyone else it would have.

But Kim Seokjin wasn't just anyone.

...

Briefly, he considered the merits of just starting an OnlyFans - but the truth was he didn't even know where to start. Sure he was apparently devastatingly attractive, but was that really enough for anyone to pay money to see him with his shirt off?

But the truth was that he was running out of time. Because each day the tiny little store he had spent the last two years of his life working at became emptier, the last of their inventory going out the door in some desperate attempt to recoup their losses.

Going out of business, as it turned out, didn't simply fix all of the problems.

He was probably never going to see his last two paychecks - and whatever he had been handed in cash wasn't even enough to cover his rent. Whatever savings he has tucked away might get him through a single month, but what about after that?

He was fucked. That's what.

Eating all of the ramen in the world wasn't going to save him now.

...

If he had parents - which he didn't. Another sad story in the long line of them - he supposed he could just go home. But his last foster family had thrown him to the metaphorical and actual wolves at the age of sixteen and he didn't even have an address to go back to.

He could, in theory, ask a friend. One of them had to be looking for a near destitute room mate who's only life skill was being good looking and relatively okay at cooking.

Sighing, he considered actually answering Taehyung when he asked what was wrong. Opening their direct message and pouring his entire heart out.

But he didn't. Because that would make him seem vulnerable and open and the last thing he wanted was for anyone to think he had emotions.

So instead he closed Instagram, clicking instead to the internet, intent on looking at random content until he had finally fried his brain enough to sleep.

After all, maybe he would wake up and all of this would have been nothing more than a bad dream.

...

"Gonna tell me what's wrong?" He could. Out of all the people he knew on this earth, Kim Taehyung was probably the least judgmental.

But he was also probably the kindest, and the very last thing he wanted was to become some pitiful charity case.

"What makes you think something is wrong?" Besides the fact that he was currently sitting there, in a corner booth of the tiny little café they had come to love, drinking a nice, tall glass of ice water instead of the green tea he craved.

"Because you said there was?" Venting, while it felt good in the moment, always managed to get him in trouble. Gave undisputable proof that, at some point, something had in fact been wrong.

"Oh." He had no choice but to acknowledge it. "It's fine. I was just having a bad night and wanted to hear my adoring followers tell me how beautiful I was. You know how it is."

"No." It was impossible to tell what he was trying to deny. That he was fortunate enough to not know that particular feeling, or that he didn't think that was it.

"Everything is fine, Tae." Everything was not fine. Everything was very, very not fine. But no one else needed to know that.

"So you've already found a new job and you're not internally panicking?" Of course he was. But he also thought that he was doing a fantastic job of hiding it.

"Not even a little bit." A lot. He was panicking a lot.

"Is you say so." He did. And he was doing an amazing job at being convincing, thank you very much. "But you know if it's not, you can talk to me, right?"

"Yeah. Of course I know that. My silly Taehyungie." Overcompensating. That's what he was doing. Awkwardly overcompensating.

But he reached across the space that separated them, slid his fingers into the others currently bleached locks and ruffled them, laughing loudly as he completed the action.

"Hey! Do you know how long it took me to get that perfect?" It came out as a whine, and his own smile only brightened, almost turning real.

"Maybe you should reconsider how you waste your time."

The groan was so loud that literally everyone heard them, and suddenly the laughter wasn't forced anymore. And for a moment, brief as it was, he forgot about the disaster of his own life. 

...

Realistically, he only had so many options. 

Finding another job was, of course, right at the top. The one that any actual sane person would pick. The logical next step in this crazy equation. Most people didn't suffer something like this and instantly start thinking about buying a cheap web cam and just letting nature take it's course. 

It wasn't like he was that popular anyway. Sure he had a couple thousand followers on Instagram. Sure his handsome face was a huge selling point. A good draw. Could probably earn him something, eventually. But he just didn't have time to wait for to get there. 

So he had to put the thoughts of solving all of his problems the easy way to the side and focus on what was. Pulled out his laptop and filled out application after application. Spent so much time staring at the screen that he thought his eyes might bleed. Settled for positions he never would have otherwise, simply because they would barely be enough to pay his rent. 

But that was the current state of his affairs. And only a miracle was going to change it.