Diamond Dollface // jikook

seven

!!!! some IMPORTANT WARNINGS for this chapter !!!

there is some very important talk here of how jungkook had been taken advantage of before and how he has felt an obligation to consent in the past with other people. there is nothing explicit and no SA took place but if you are sensitive to jk feeling like he has to do things in order to be liked/accepted/etc then i suggest keeping that in mind.

that aside, i hope you all enjoy this chapter and i hope to hear ur thoughts!!

- em <3

twitter: kookiecherub

Jungkook stares at the glass in front of him, the amber liquid taunting him. The bar had been conveniently located across the street from his hotel, and lowkey despite its almost maximalist decor. He turned heads as he walked through the door like he always did, but especially since he towered over everyone in his glam-rock get up. The pleats in his leather skirt were creased and his makeup smeared beyond recognition on his face. His hair is still dripping from the rain as he swirled the whiskey around in the glass, trying to gather the courage to drink it.

He didn't even know what was holding him back from doing so. His brain insisted that it was obviously Jimin or the fact that if he relapsed here that it would be outed to the media, unlike the last time. It made sense that Jimin and his career would hold him back from drinking, but he still didn't feel like that was the truth. It felt like something so much deeper than that.

Something so much more personal.

He thinks back to the concert. How that had been the first time in years he had actually felt something. How he didn't need to know anyone's name to understand that they were experiencing that same feeling. Those people in that crowd had grown with him, had looked at him, and saw a piece of themselves. They didn't shun him for his mistakes, or the parts of himself that he had been told over and over would make him unlovable. Instead, those things were embraced. Within two hours those people had proven every music executive, every journalist, every person that had told him he was nothing, wrong.

And he helped them do it.

That connection had felt so distant, he didn't even know what it felt like to be seen again. The person he had been for so long, who drank and fucked and gave no regard to his art or the people he loved, his fans didn't relate to him. They related to the sixteen-year-old kid who moved across the world to prove that he could be worth something. That he didn't need to be who everyone wanted him to be. They related to the boy that had the will to prove that a diamond in the rough could still be golden.

They embraced his vulnerability, the parts of him that didn't fit a mold. That's who they related to, not the larger-than-life piece of personified media that had been forced upon him.

The crystal glass is cool against his palm as he stares into the alcohol as if it were a crystal ball with all the answers. Was the drink worth giving up that embrace of vulnerability? Was it worth giving up the connection?

It was interesting, how people used to only be willing to connect with him, accept him, if he was fucked out of his mind and willing to fit the mold of whatever fantasy they had. That acceptance had been addicting and became his one true vice. Now the thing that had once brought him that connection now stood in his way of holding onto it. There was no way to maintain his connections with those fans if he slipped back into who was before.

But a small part of him insisted that it would never be enough. He had been looked at like that by a crowd before the alcohol and drugs came into play. At the end of the day, he still went home alone, because no one wanted a rockstar who didn't act like a rockstar once the show was over. Jungkook was theirs for an evening and then belonged to no one. How heartbreaking it was to be loved and then abandoned night after night.