Chapter 6: Bleeding Knuckles
The metallic taste of blood was familiar, a dull copper penny on his tongue. Jungkook stared at the stained wraps around his knuckles, the white fabric blooming with rusty Rorschach blots. Each throbbing pulse in his hands echoed the deeper, more insistent ache between his legs, a phantom memory of her heat and pressure. The gym was silent now, a vacuum after the storm. The only sounds were the low hum of the refrigeration unit for the water cooler and the drip of his own sweat onto the rubber mat between his feet.
He hadn’t moved since the door hissed shut behind her. He sat on the cold floor, back against the heavy bag, feeling the rough texture of the vinyl through his damp shirt. His mind was a whirlwind of static and vivid, disorienting snapshots: the way her back had arched off the mat, the shocked ‘O’ of her mouth as she came, the brutal honesty in her eyes when she’d called the track—and this—a confession.
Send me the next one. Before you polish it.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, a violent vibration against his thigh. He pulled it out, the screen blinding in the dim light. A notification for a new email. The sender: MIYOUNG_PRODUCTION. The subject line: RE: The ugly one.
His thumb hovered, a slick with sweat and a faint smear of blood. He tapped it.
The body of the email was empty. No words. Just a single audio file attached. Not one of his. He downloaded it, fumbled for his wireless earbuds case in his bag, jammed them in. He pressed play.
It wasn't music. It was noise. The chaotic, beautiful noise of a city at night. Rain on pavement, the distant wail of a siren, the distorted rumble of a subway train deep underground. Overlaid on top, a haunting, wordless vocal run—her voice—soaring then breaking, glitching as if the recording was corrupted. It lasted forty-seven seconds. It ended with the sound of a needle being dragged off a record, a final, abrupt scrape.
He played it again. And again. His eyes closed, leaning his head back against the bag. It wasn't a critique. It wasn't a melody. It was a feeling. A challenge. This is what raw sounds like to me. Now show me yours.
A slow, unwilling smile touched his lips. The ache in his hands, the soreness in his body, the confused, electric charge in his blood—it all coalesced into a single, clear impulse. He needed to be in the booth. Now.
---
The studio at 2 AM was his kingdom. He dismissed the night engineer with a wordless nod, the man taking one look at Jungkook’s raw-knuckled hands and disheveled state and deciding questions were not in his job description. Alone, Jungkook didn't open his old project file. He started a new one. A blank slate.
He didn't call up a beat or a synthesizer patch. He opened a microphone channel, set it to record, and closed his eyes. He thought of the noise she’d sent. The rain. The broken cry. He thought of the gym mat under his back, the smell of sex and effort, the shocking intimacy of being fully known in a moment of complete loss of control.
He began to beatbox. Not the polished, percussive kind for a track, but something grittier. The thud of a fist on a bag. The gasp of air being driven from lungs. The rhythmic slap of skin on skin. He layered it, looping the sounds until they formed a primal, driving rhythm. Then, over it, he hummed. A low, pained drone that cracked at the edges.
He sang no words. He sang sounds. Grunts. Breathy exhales that hit the microphone too close, distorting. A keening, high-pitched note that he let shatter into a cough. He was mining the physicality of the last few hours, turning the sensations into sound. It was ugly. It was alive. It vibrated in his teeth.
The door opened softly. Jungkook didn’t stop. He was chasing a syllable, a feeling just out of reach.
Jimin stood in the doorway, a shadow in gray sweats and an oversized hoodie. He didn't speak. He just listened, his head tilted, as Jungkook finally ended the take with a sound that was half-groan, half-sob, and then silence.
Jungkook opened his eyes, panting slightly, the headphones a heavy weight on his ears. He saw Jimin and didn't flinch.
After a long moment, Jimin walked in, pulling the door closed behind him. He went to the mini-fridge, pulled out two cold cans of barley tea, and handed one to Jungkook. He took the producer's chair, spinning it slowly to face his friend.
“I knocked on your door. You weren’t there.” Jimin’s voice was quiet, neutral. “I had a feeling.” He took a sip, his eyes scanning Jungkook—the bloody knuckles, the hollow, fever-bright look in his eyes, the energy crackling off him like static. “So. You sent it.”
“I sent it.” Jungkook’s voice was rough from the vocal takes.
“And?”
“She sent something back.” Jungkook gestured at the screen, at the chaotic waveform of his new recording. “So I’m sending something else.”
Jimin leaned forward, listening to the playback. The raw, wordless sound filled the control room. Jimin’s expression was unreadable for a full minute. Then he leaned back, a slow smile spreading across his face. It wasn't his usual bright, cheering smile. It was deeper, more solemn. “Ah,” he said, softly. “There he is.”
“Who?”
“The guy who’s scared.” Jimin took another sip. “Not of being bad. Of being real.” He stood up, patted Jungkook’s shoulder—a firm, grounding touch. “Don’t overthink it. Just send it.” At the door, he paused. “And for God’s sake, wash your hands. They look like you lost a fight with a lawnmower.”
Alone again, Jungkook stared at the waveform, a jagged mountain range of impulse and emotion. He attached the file, wrote nothing in the subject line, and hit send. It felt less like a message and more like dropping a grenade into a dark room. He sat back, the adrenaline draining, leaving him spent. He must have dozed off in the chair, because the next thing he knew, his phone was buzzing on the console.
Not an email. A text.
Unknown Number: Your turn.
He stared at the screen, his heart kicking against his ribs. He didn’t need to ask who it was. He typed back, his fingers clumsy.
Jungkook: My place. 30 minutes.
The address he sent was for a discreet, high-rise building, a purchase not even the other members knew about. A true solitude.
---
He let her in wordlessly. The apartment was all clean lines and muted tones, professionally decorated and deeply unlived-in. It smelled of new leather and filtered air. Miyoung stepped inside, her eyes taking in the sterility with a single, sweeping glance. She said nothing, dropping her bag by the door.
The tension from the gym was still there, but it had changed. It was no longer a spark waiting for fuel. It was a deep, subterranean current, pulling them both toward a pre-determined point. There were no taunts now. No challenges spoken.
She walked up to him where he stood in the vast, empty living room. She reached for his hands, turning them over to examine the bruised, broken skin on his knuckles. Her touch was clinical, but her thumb stroked once, slowly, over the swelling. Then she raised his hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to the worst of the abrasions. The gesture was so unexpectedly tender it made his breath catch.
When she looked up at him, her eyes were dark, clear pools of intent. “No gym mats this time,” she said, her voice low. “No company cameras. No one to hear.”
He nodded, once. The consent was absolute, the understanding complete.
He led her to the bedroom. It was just as impersonal, a king-sized bed made with military precision. He stopped at the foot of it, turning to face her. The silence was thick, charged.
She closed the final distance, her hands coming up to frame his face. Her kiss was different now. Not a battle, but a claiming. Deep, searching, impossibly slow. He yielded to it, his own hands sliding down her back to pull her flush against him. He could feel every curve of her through their clothes, the hard planes of muscle and the soft give of her breasts against his chest.
He broke the kiss to trail his mouth down her jaw, to her neck, breathing in the scent of her skin—clean sweat and something uniquely her. “I want to hear you,” he murmured against her pulse point. “I want to hear everything.”
In answer, she grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head. Then she pushed him, firmly, until the backs of his knees hit the bed and he sat down. She stood between his spread legs, looking down at him with an authority that made his blood heat. Slowly, she peeled off her own top, her sports bra, letting them fall to the floor. She was breathtakingly bare, confident in her skin.
“Lie back,” she commanded.
He obeyed, settling back onto the cool duvet. She followed him down, straddling his hips, but not where he expected. She sat on his thighs, leaning forward to kiss him again, her breasts brushing against his stomach. Her hands explored his chest, his arms, tracing the lines of his tattoos, the ridges of his abdomen. She took her time, as if memorizing him by touch.
Then her mouth began to wander lower. She kissed a trail down the center of his torso, her tongue dipping into his navel, making him jerk. She undid the button of his jeans, the zipper a loud rasp in the quiet room. She pulled them down, along with his briefs, freeing his erection, which stood thick and already leaking against his stomach.
She didn't take him in her mouth immediately. She nuzzled the coarse hair at his base, inhaling deeply. She kissed the head, a soft, languid press of her lips that had him bucking his hips off the bed. Only then did she open her mouth and take him in, deep, all the way to the back of her throat in one smooth, shocking motion.
Jungkook cried out, a raw, unfiltered sound. His hands flew to her hair, not to guide, just to hold on. She began to move, her mouth a wet, hot, perfect slide. She used her tongue expertly, swirling around the head on each upstroke, sucking hard on the downstroke. Her hand worked the base in time, her other hand cupping and rolling his balls with just enough pressure.
“Fuck, Miyoung,” he gasped, his hips moving involuntarily. “God, right there… don’t stop.”
She hummed around him, the vibration traveling through his entire nervous system like an electric shock. He was already close, the intensity of the day, the week, coalescing into this single point of pleasure. He felt the orgasm building, a terrifying wave.
He tugged on her hair. “I’m gonna come…”
She pulled off with a wet pop, her lips swollen and glistening. “Not yet.” Her voice was husky. She moved up his body, aligning herself above him. She was soaked; he could feel her wetness against his shaft as she rubbed herself along his length, coating him. Then she positioned the head at her entrance and sank down onto him in one slow, relentless, inch-by-inch descent.
They both groaned, a shared, guttural sound. She was unbelievably tight, hot, gripping him like a fist. She rested there, fully impaled, her head falling forward, her hair creating a curtain around their faces. She was breathing hard, her inner muscles fluttering around him.
“Look at me,” Jungkook whispered, his voice strained.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were glazed, her pupils blown wide. She looked utterly conquered, yet she was the one in control. She began to move, rolling her hips in a slow, deep circle. The angle was exquisite, grinding him against a spot inside her that made her breath hitch every time.
He gripped her hips, helping her set a rhythm. It wasn't frantic like before. This was deep, deliberate, a thorough taking. He thrust up to meet her downward strokes, driving himself deeper. The sounds were obscene: the wet slap of skin, their ragged breathing, the soft, choked sounds she made in the back of her throat every time he hit bottom.
One of his hands slid between them, finding her clit. It was swollen, hard as a pebble. He rubbed it in firm, tight circles, matching the pace of their joining.
“Jungkook…” His name was a prayer, a curse on her lips. Her pace began to stutter, the deep rolls becoming frantic bounces. “I’m… I can’t…”
“Come for me,” he gritted out, his own control fraying. “Let me feel it.”
It slammed into her. Her body went rigid above him, her mouth falling open in a silent scream. Her inner walls clamped down on him in rhythmic, intense pulses, milking him mercilessly. The sight of her—completely shattered, lost in pure sensation—was the final trigger.
He held her hips down, burying himself to the hilt as his own orgasm tore through him. He came with a shout, a release so profound it felt like his soul was being pulled from his body. Wave after wave of pleasure racked him, emptying into her as she continued to pulse around him.
She collapsed forward onto his chest, a dead weight. They lay there, a tangled, sweating mess, the only sound their ragged attempts to breathe. The room smelled of sex and skin and salt.
The room smelled of sex and skin and salt. Jungkook's heartbeat slowed from a frantic drum against his ribs to a deep, weary thud. Her weight on his chest was solid, anchoring. The evidence of his release was a sticky, cooling presence between them. He didn't move.Neither did she. The silence wasn't empty; it was full of the aftermath, thick and complicated.
Her hair fanned across his collarbone, each exhale warming his skin. His fingers, lying limp on the bedding, twitched. He slowly brought a hand up, the movement tentative, and rested it on the knotted curve of her spine. She didn't flinch. The muscle under his palm softened incrementally.
“I should have used protection,” he said into the quiet, his voice hoarse from disuse.
Miyoung’s head shifted slightly. “I’m on the pill.” A pause. “Should I not be?”
“No. It’s… good.” The words felt inadequate. The act had been so far beyond such practicalities. They’d been raw in every conceivable way. “I just… realized. After.”
“Classic Jeon Jungkook,” she murmured, the ghost of a taunt in her tone. “Overthinking the technicalities post-game.” She pushed herself up on her elbows, looking down at him. Her mascara was a faint, smudged shadow under her eyes. “The take you sent me before I came over. The new one.”
He held her gaze. “Yeah?”
“It wasn’t music.” Her expression was unreadable. “It was a document. A recording of a live event.”
He searched her face. “Was it what you wanted?”
“It wasn't about what I wanted.” She rolled off him, the separation sudden, the cool air rushing in to replace her warmth. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him, a landscape of vertebrae and tense shoulders. “It was about what you needed to expel.” She stood, walking naked to the en-suite bathroom without a backward glance. The door didn't close.
He heard the faucet turn on. He lay there, staring at the pristine ceiling, feeling strangely hollowed out. Expelled. The word was accurate. He had poured something out in that studio booth, something festering and undefined. Then he had poured something else out, here in this bed. A twin release.
He pushed himself up and followed her. She was bent over the sink, splashing water on her face. He leaned against the doorframe, watching the play of muscles in her back. The fluorescent light was unforgiving, highlighting the faint red marks his stubble had left on her inner thighs.
“You said mine was a confession,” he said. “What was yours? The noise file.”
She straightened, meeting his eyes in the mirror. Water droplets traced paths down her neck. “An invitation.” She turned, leaning back against the counter. “Or a test. To see if you’d send back another polished demo, or if you’d actually dig in the dirt.”
“You treat art like a fight.”
“Art is a fight.” She crossed her arms. “It’s you against your own bullshit.Your image. Your fear. Your training. Everything they taught you to be is an opponent.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I just cornered you. You had to throw a punch.”
He moved into the room, stopping just in front of her. The space was small, charged again, but differently. “What happens now?”
“Now?” A faint, sharp smile touched her lips. “Now we make a song. A real one. With the ugly demo as the skeleton, and that… document you just sent as the flesh.”
“Together?”
“You have a problem with that?”
He thought of the management, the labels, the expectations. The sheer, unapproved volatility of her. The thought should have terrified him. It lit a fuse. “No. I don’t.”
“Good.” She pushed past him, back into the bedroom, and began to dress with efficient, unselfconscious movements. “Come to my studio. Tomorrow.Three PM. Don’t be late.” She pulled her tank top over her head. “And bring your fucking ego, but check it at the door.”
He watched her, a strange fascination coiling in his gut. “Is that all?”
She paused, one sneaker on. Her eyes scanned him, from his bare feet to the mess of his hair. The assessment was professional, almost detached. “For now.” She finished tying her shoe and stood, grabbing her bag. She walked to the apartment door. With her hand on the handle, she looked back. “Your bed is too hard. And your apartment has no soul. Fix it.” She left. The door clicked shut with a quiet, definitive sound.
He stood in the middle of his pristine, soulless living room for a long time. The silence was absolute. He felt scraped clean. He walked to the piano, a glossy black monument he rarely touched, and lifted the fallboard. He placed a single finger on middle C and pressed. The note resonated, pure and lonely in the empty space. He didn't play a chord. He just let the single tone fade into nothing.
His phone, discarded on the kitchen island, buzzed. He walked over, expecting it to be her. It was Jimin.
Jimin: You alive?
Jungkook stared at the screen. His thumbs moved.
Jungkook: Not sure.
Jimin: That’s a start.Get some sleep. You look like hell on the security cam feed from the lobby.
A startled laugh punched out of him. He hadn't even thought about the cameras. He was slipping.
---
Miyoung’s studio wasn't in the company building. It was in a converted industrial space in a nondescript part of the city, up a freight elevator with peeling yellow paint. The space was cavernous, high-ceilinged, and gloriously chaotic. Exposed brick walls were covered in soundproofing foam and mismatched art. Cables snaked across a concrete floor. A vintage mixing console sat beside a state-of-the-art digital rig, like an old warrior next to a young king.
She was hunched over a laptop, headphones on, when he entered. She didn't look up. He set his bag down, the sound echoing. She finally pulled one earphone off. “You’re late. It’s 3:02.”
“Traffic.”
“Bullshit.” She finally looked at him. Her gaze was a physical scan. “You stood in your empty apartment for ten minutes deciding whether to come.”
He didn’t deny it. “What are you working on?”
“Your vocal. The ugly one.” She tapped a key, and the raw, wordless track he’d made filled the room from massive monitors. It sounded different here—more exposed, more vulnerable. “It’s a killer hook. But it’s just a cry. It needs a body. A context.”
“So build one.”
She smirked. “Finally. An order I can work with.” She swiveled in her chair. “Sit. We’re going to build a beat from the ground up. And you’re not singing. Not yet. You’re making sounds. Hit something. Throw something. I want texture.”
The next three hours were the most grueling, unorthodox studio session of his life. She handed him a metal ashtray and told him to scrape it against the brick wall. She recorded the shriek. She had him slap his own thighs in a complex rhythm, then speed it up until it sounded like frantic rain. She layered his breaths, his sighs, the groan he made when he stretched his sore back.
It was music construction as archaeology, digging for the human noise beneath the performance. She treated his voice not as an instrument of melody, but as a source of raw material. She would take a single, cracked note from his demo, sample it, stretch it, warp it into a shimmering pad of sound.
During a break, as she programmed a frantic, glitchy drum loop from the sound of his knuckles on a table, he asked, “Why do you do this? Why dismantle everything?”
She didn’t pause her work. “Because polish is a lie. It’s a shield. I want the nerve. The thing that jumps when you touch it.” She finally looked at him, her eyes intense. “Your company sells polish. Beautiful, flawless polish. It’s worth millions. I’m not interested in millions. I’m interested in the one real thing underneath.”
“And you think I have one?”
“I know you do.” She turned back to the screen. “I’ve heard it. Twice.”
The implication hung between them—once in the vocal, once in the bed. They were inextricably linked now, the creative and the carnal. One fueled the search for the other. As the afternoon light faded into the blue of evening, a track began to emerge. It was dark, pulsating, anchored by that primal beatbox rhythm but elevated by the atmospheric ghosts of their constructed sounds. His wordless vocal hook sliced through it, a recurring wound.
“Now,” she said, saving the project. “Now you sing.Lyrics. Real ones. Not the ones from the company songwriters. The ones in here.” She tapped her sternum, right over her heart.
She pushed a microphone toward him, inside a makeshift vocal booth curtained with moving blankets. “I’ll run the track. Don’t perform. Just… react. First thought.Worst thought. I don’t care.”
He stepped into the dim, muffled space. The track began in his headphones—their creation, a sonic beast both familiar and alien. The first line that came to his mind was a memory of her voice in the gym: You’re scared. He didn't sing it. He whispered it, the mic capturing every breath.
Skin on the mat, a taste of copper and shame… The words fell out, half-sung, half-spoken, a messy spill of confession. You called it ugly, you called it my name… He wasn't crafting a love song or a breakup anthem. He was mapping a collision. A crack in the statue, a fault in the frame…
He lost himself in the pulse. The lyrics turned raw, explicit, detailing the sweat, the split lip, the feel of her inside him. You took me apart with your hands and your hips, left me in pieces with salt on your lips… It was shocking, even to him. He was exposing not just their encounter, but his own vulnerability within it.
He sang about the silence after, the hollowness, the strange fear that the ‘real’ thing, once found, could also be lost. When the track cycled back to the wordless hook, his voice broke into it, a seamless blend of pain and catharsis. He sang until his throat was raw, until there was nothing left in the well.
He opened his eyes. The track had ended. The studio beyond the blankets was silent. He pulled the headphones off, the sudden quiet ringing in his ears. He pushed through the blankets.
Miyoung was standing at the console, utterly still. The playback was paused. She was staring at the waveform of his vocal take on the screen, a jagged, emotional mountain range. Her back was to him. He couldn't see her face.
He walked over slowly, his heart pounding. Had he gone too far? Was it too much?
He stopped beside her. On the screen, he saw the lyrical transcript, generated by the software. His filthy, explicit, vulnerable words were right there in plain text. He saw her hand, resting on the mouse, trembling.Not with anger. With something else.
She turned to face him. Her eyes were bright, shimmering with unshed tears. But her jaw was set. There was no smile. No critique.
“Finally,” she whispered, her voice thick. “A fucking duet.”
Before he could process it, she grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him to her, her mouth crashing against his. This kiss was different from all the others. It was frantic, hungry, but laced with a shocking tenderness, a kind of agonized recognition. It tasted like salt and triumph.
Her hands tore at his clothes, his at hers. There was no finesse, only a desperate need to erase the space between them, to confirm the connection the music had just screamed into existence. They fell onto the worn couch against the studio wall, a tangle of limbs and unfinished business.
She pushed him onto his back, straddling him, her underwear a mere scrap of fabric she ripped aside. He was already hard, aching. She guided him into her with a single, brutal, seated motion, crying out as he filled her. There was no preamble, no slow burn. They were already at the precipice.
She rode him with a ferocious intensity, her head thrown back, her breasts bouncing with each downward thrust. The rhythm was the rhythm of the track—driving, glitchy, unpredictable. He gripped her hips, helping her piston up and down, the wet, slapping sound loud in the studio. He could see the monitor from here, the frozen waveform of his confession staring back at him.
“You see it?” she gasped, leaning forward, her hands on his chest, her pace never slowing. “You see what’s underneath?”
He could only groan, his hips bucking up to meet her, driving deeper, wanting to bury himself in the truth of it. “Yes.”
“Say it.” Her command was a breathless snarl.
“I’m scared,” he choked out, the admission torn from him in time with their fucking.
“Again.”
“I’m scared it’s real!” he shouted, his orgasm detonating at the same moment, triggered by the raw honesty. He emptied into her with a shuddering roar, his vision whiting out at the edges.
Her own climax followed, triggered by his words, by the feel of him pulsing inside her. She collapsed onto him, her body trembling, her breaths hot and ragged against his neck.
They lay there, on the scratchy couch, in the ruins of their second brutal, truthful joining. The studio lights hummed. The scent of their sweat mixed with the smell of dust and electronics.
Her lips moved against his skin, the words barely audible. “Now we have a song.”