Her Image (NAMJOON FIC)

Friends that have secrets

Now 

In only a matter of a few days, Gia Young had seemed to age a couple decades. The bags under her eyes grew in size as her nights grew longer, and even her hair seemed dry and thinner. From having a carefully curated wardrobe, she had become a disheveled-looking girl who attracted many pity stares from her coworkers. Out of shame and guilt given the current investigation situation, her boss had placed her on an obligatory paid vacation. Her apartment was currently a prime site of interest for the police department as well, so she had been crashing at Tea's place, in her extra room. In the midst of all, she had a hard time making sense of things and telling real from wrong.

"Thank you," Gia said, only a faint whisper escaping from her lips. 

She stretched her hands out of the blanket only to receive the cup of coffee Namjoon had generously prepared for her. Although under different circumstances it would have brought her much shame, Gia had spent the previous three days wrapped in her blankets, unshowered, and barely moving to eat and use the bathroom occasionally. She tried numbing her mind with television, trying to find a distraction from the real world, as it was a lot to take in at the moment. 

When he was dating Nicole, Namjoon learned that Gia was extremely particular about her coffee- she only took it with large amounts of cream, three teaspoons of sugar and a bit of whipped cream at the top. He tried to get creative with the whipped cream design too, like the pictures he saw on Instagram, but ultimately failed and hoped Gia, in her endless sulking, would not mind.

"Sure, any time," he replied, sitting down next to her on the sofa. 

Truth be told, Namjoon was not visiting Gia as the faithful boyfriend-of-her-best-friend offering consolation in trying times, but he had ulterior motives. In the days leading up to Nicole's disappearance, things had been strange, to say the least, and he intended to know what was going on. He thought Gia, as Nicole's live-in best friend would hold the key to some of his answers. 

Or at least, she was his first stop.

"Have you talked to the police yet?" he asked trying to seem nonchalant, even though he already knew the answer. 

She nodded. "I talked to that weird detective lady and I already told her everything I knew," she said, "I don't know, I'm scared."

"Yeah," he confessed, "I am... kind of, too."

"People at work were saying," she began saying, but by the end, she started tearing up so much she could hardly cough out the words and had to stop.

"Shh, it's okay," he tried to console her, putting his arm over her, and rubbing his thumb gently on her shoulder to soothe her. Gia looked very small in his large arms, like a small delicate puppy protected from all the evils of the world by its mother. 

"People are making up all sorts of vicious rumors right now, because that's just how shitty people are, but we have to be above that. Don't pay attention to any dumb speculation, G," he said, as she leaned her head on his chest, as what felt natural to do. 

Namjoon dried her tears with one hand, and as he stared down at her, he realized that even at that point of her mental breakdown, Gia was still quite cute. Her face had lost some of its softness in the past few days, and she was beginning to break out, but he had to give her credit: she was still cute. Though, admittedly, in Namjoon's eyes, she was cute in the way a baby sister or a younger cousin was cute. She did not look as young as Tea, or as alluring as Nicole, but the girl did have some charm to her. 

"Nicole had been acting a little strange, don't you think?" Namjoon told her, hoping to spark some sort of revealing/ enlightening conversation. 

"Well, yeah, but it had been a while," she said, snuggling with no reserves on his chest.