Hung Up On You | KNJ

Prologue

You stood on the balcony of the palazzo, espresso in hand, waiting for the sun to rise just a bit more. The steam from the coffee was nearly invisible, the heat of the Italian summer strong even at this pre-dawn hour.

You had woken up early. Knew he wouldn't be home for a while yet. Couldn't stop the anticipation from building anyway. It had been weeks of building towards this, and even as that thought flew through your mind, a faint smile crossed your lips.

It had been entire decades, one and a half of them now.

At 26 you had been on top of the world. Your monetary wealth had put you near the top of the Forbes list. Your brothers were all well-off, joining you on that list. The company you worked for, partially owned, and operated was on a different Forbes list, but the one that made you the happiest was that people enjoyed working there.

Things had looked nothing but up for you and your chosen family.

Now at nearly 28 things were different. Certainly, all of that remained the same but your entire life has shifted in the last 14 months. Things had changed so rapidly that you had needed this time away in order to contemplate all the changes. You were here now to continue doing that internal retrospective for a little bit longer at least.

You watched as the sun began it's climb from behind the horizon, and the rosy color of dawn began to flood the canal with light. This balcony wasn't over the grand canal. You hadn't wanted the noise or the tourists and were grateful that your friends who had helped you find this place had understood your need for solitude after the events of the last year.

Now as you began to hear the faint noises of boats in the distance, you shifted your gaze towards the darker end of the canal. You turned slightly, the silk robe slipping off your shoulder, exposing the spaghetti strap of the silk nightgown underneath. You enjoyed the breeze against your skin for a moment as you sipped your coffee and waited a bit longer.

Slowly the light crept down the canal, and your eyes drifted closed momentarily as the warmth hit your back. The noise levels continued to rise as the sun moved higher until finally, the first touches of light began to hit the old bridge at the edge of your vision. You'd seen the bridge when you first arrived and had been fascinated by the hidden depths of it. Like the 100's of other bridges in Venice, this was meant to be used, but it was easy to see this wasn't a strictly utilitarian bridge, even when it had still been just another bridge to you.

You watched now, as you had every morning since your arrival in Venice, as the light began to walk its way over the bridge, exposing all the glorious carving that had been hidden away for who knew how long. The marble sparkled, this morning even more after you'd bribed your housekeeper to help find someone who would scrub the bridge back to life. And now, you were rewarded with this amazing view.

You loved the idea that it was sparkling at being able to enjoy being in the sunlight again. The amount of grime and algae that had been scrubbed off the bridge before had made you a bit concerned that perhaps it shouldn't have been cleaned at all. But the man who had been hired was vetted for you by some pretty well-connected people after all, so he had known what he was doing. And when the man later introduced himself as an Art Archivist from the Gallerie dell'Accademia, you thought the bridge was probably in safe hands.

You'd gotten a ton of shit about it from Yoongi and Hobi though.

"Livie, it's just a bridge. Why are we going through this level of detail again?"

"Because it's our Livie, yeobo. And she's a lot more worried about these sorts of things than any of us ever are. Which is why it's probably the right thing to do, and we're going to help her now."

You sipped from the tiny cup in your hand as you brought the memory into visual replay in your head. How worried they both still were about you. About the company. About their brothers.

About him.

Your hand faltered a moment as you came full circle in your thinking. This trip had been so necessary for you when you'd planned it originally, and now you were here. It was still vital. Your mental wanderings showed you exactly how much you needed to consider yourself in your plans for once. You weren't quite ready to go back yet. After all, there was still one more stop yet to come.

But everything had been thrown off your planned course a few months ago now.

That first heart wrenching phone call, the grief and heartache finally piercing the wall you had struggled so hard to keep around yourself. Oh, how you'd cried those first few hours after that call. And certainly, hadn't been able to stop the tears during all the calls afterwards.

The quick texts, and the bombarding of your poor postal box with gifts until you'd finally convinced him to calm down a little. Slowly, steadily, rebuilding himself into a man you actually wanted to know. Again.

You glanced at the bridge and were happy to see that the glitter in the marble shone brightly in the morning sun. But you were out of coffee, and the humidity of the day was already rising from the water. You stood from your pose at the balcony, and then laughed as a passing boater cat-called you from below.

You blew him a kiss and were amused when the other men on the boat gave him a hard time for harassing you. You turned and walked into the palazzo, and hurriedly shut the doors to the balcony, and then closed the shutters as well, turning the room back into the dark gloom you were used to.

You were paying a fortune to have air-conditioning, but you were too Americanized to not have it anymore. Spoiled, you thought to yourself as you set the cup on the bed side table, then crawled back into the blanket nest on the bed.

You glanced at the phone charging on the table nearby and sighed when you realized it wasn't even 8pm in Los Angeles yet. Still another hour or more. You knew these clients were trickier than most. They were from Seoul after all.

You didn't miss work most days, but as the VP of Bangtan, you weren't completely unaware of the day-to-day goings on from the office either. Even with this sabbatical as JK called it, you were still taking meetings and dealing with emails. Just not as many as before.

Not as many since he woke up.

You snuggled down into the blankets to wait, and let your mind continue its wander, and realized you were about to wander through some unhappy territory. That psychologist that Jin had asked you to talk to had told you that in order to truly work through something, you might need to go back through it.

You shook your head slightly. Your brothers knew your story. Some knew slightly more than others. Only he knew everything though. You thought by now that Yoongi had told Hoseok, they told everything to each other. You weren't so certain that Jin had told JK though. Seokjin would hold any secret you gave him to the grave, and if Kookie knew, well a certain someone would not be alive to be calling in a few hours after JK had finished with him. Hopefully just one more hour now.

You thought Jimin had a slight idea, certainly you and Jiminie and Tae had gotten drunk before, but you didn't think they'd ever heard the whole story.

You frowned slightly against the pillow and rolled onto your back.

You tried not to think of your whole story often, but maybe that shrink had had the right of it. You grabbed the orange teddy bear with the frown on his face that had been in the second package you'd received after that original phone call and began to calm yourself enough to go all the way back to the beginning. The beginning of our story, and even the idea made you giggle a little.

You smiled to yourself as your brain began to envision a story book. Old leather, gold tooling, small painted flowers on the front, opening slowly to see a photo. It was fuzzy, you didn't have a lot of memories of that time, but you tried your best to remember what you could.