It's currently one AM and Jungkook wants to bang his aching head against the wall. Namjoon would yell at him if he were to do anything to fuck up his face, but he's scarily close to not giving a shit. He knows he has a meeting with Hoseok early this morning, but he thinks that's going to be rather difficult running on less than six hours of sleep and with no music for him to choreograph to. He thought that he and Iris would have at least had something by now, but their long hours of labor have been entirely fruitless. It doesn't help that his and Iris's processes for writing are very different.

He figures out early on that Iris starts with the vibe of a song, figures out a melody and then tackles the lyrics, while Jungkook usually begins with writing the lyrics and then decides the other musical elements later. So, there they sit, Jungkook on the couch with a pad and pen in his lap, and Iris at his computer recording guides and plunking out melodies on the keyboard. Despite the incessant sounds of the keyboard, she looks rather disinterested in what she's doing. She'll check her phone, or take overly long breaks for coffee or food that agitate Jungkook, but he keeps it to himself.

Every now and then, Jungkook will show Iris his work, thinking it's satisfactory. Her eyes skim the paper, struggling through Jungkook's messy handwriting and skipping over parts he angrily crossed out. It's in moments like these that Jungkook finds out that Yoongi may have competition for being the most brutally honest person he knows. Within the past few hours, he has gotten:

"It sounds like an angsty twelve year old wrote it."

"Very emotionally shallow, not gonna lie to you, man."

"Oh, no. That makes me want to cry for all of the wrong reasons."

"One Direction called, they want their cheesy lyrics back."

And, most creatively:

"It sounds like Chris Brown and Nickelback had a baby. That's a very disturbing thought."

It was after that last one that Jungkook finally let his building frustration show. He had tried to be nice to Iris, tried not to let her in on his disdain for collaborating on his music, but he was at a breaking point. Iris was here to give him constructive criticism and assistance, but all he had gotten from her was a few melodies he couldn't use yet and some sarcastic comments.

"Are you done?" Jungkook replies. Iris doesn't even glance up from her phone, which only fuels Jungkook's irritation.

"Done with..?"

"Being rude for no reason." Jungkook sighs, tossing his notebook onto the coffee table in exasperation. Iris raises her eyebrows.

"You know there's a difference between being rude and being honest, right?" She asks, glancing up at him. She watches as Jungkook rolls his eyes, jaw pulsing with annoyance.

"Okay, well, honesty helps when it's accompanied by some sort of constructive feedback. All you've done is tell me what I wrote is shitty." Jungkook exclaims, pacing back and forth in the same three foot radius of the small room.

"I mean, was I wrong?" She asks, her plump lips turning up into an infuriating smirk. Jungkook doesn't know if he finds it more attractive or irritating, and the combination is not helping him respond logically in the slightest.

"You're missing the point. We didn't hire you to hang around and tell me my work sucks, we hired you to help fix it. You haven't done anything to fix it." Jungkook states, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. If his words are getting to Iris, she doesn't show it. The smirk only grows.

"Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but those lyrics are beyond fixing." She says, words malicious but tone saccharine sweet. Jungkook bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning in frustration. The pet name makes his stomach do flips, but he pushes it down.

"Well, it's not like you have any better ideas." Jungkook snaps, and Iris grins. She stands up with finality.

"Welp, I guess not. What a shame. Goodnight, Jungkook. I'm going home." Iris declares, grabbing her hoodie from the back of the couch and pulling it on. Jungkook just gapes at her.

"Seriously? You're leaving?" He asks.

"Yep. It's one in the morning, and I believe my work here is done." She grins, that mischievous glint in her pretty brown eyes.

"What work? You've written, like, three melodies! The rest of the time you just sat there on your phone!" Jungkook raises his voice, frustration getting the better of him. Iris's eyes light up, and for the first time, she looks genuinely interested.

"That! That was it!" She exclaims enthusiastically. Jungkook, still pissed but slightly more confused, raises an eyebrows.

"That was what?" He asks.

"Passion!" Iris exclaims, grinning at him widely. She moves closer to him to grab him by the shoulders and shake him lightly. "That was passionate anger, Jungkook! Use it!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jungkook asks, squinting at her, trying not to blush under her gaze and the feeling of her clutching him by his shoulders. It's
not within the same vein as the feelings The Person Who Shall Not Be Named stirred up within Jungkook, and Jungkook can't tell if he likes or hates that. Jungkook isn't one to get flustered easily around girls, especially after becoming famous and having girls throw themselves at him left and right, but something about Iris makes him lose his cool. She pats his chest twice, firmly.

"Just use it. Write something. I'm going home." She grins.

"Iris, what the fuck?" He exclaims exasperatedly, and she laughs at him, shoots him a wink, and like that, she's out the door, a flurry of tightly coiled hair and beautiful bronze skin and infuriating intrigue.

Wait a second...infuriating intrigue. He likes that. He could use that. He doesn't waste any more time staring at the door. Scrambling for his pen and his pad, he scribbles down the first two words of his newest brainchild. Then he writes more, and more, until after an hour and a half, a song is formed around those two words. He's mildly shocked that he just did that, considering all of the songs he had written in the past six months were about heartbreak and were also heartbreakingly bad. But this song isn't a byproduct of heartbreak, no—this was born out of the agitation, curiosity, and attraction he feels towards Iris. An odd combination, but he feels that it makes sense with Iris, somehow.

He doesn't have the energy to form a melody or a backing track tonight, but he has certainty that the lyrics are usable. With the songs he has written in the past months, he has used the tactic of telling himself his mediocre lyrics are good so many times that he believes it, but now, he just knows. Feeling satisfied, he tosses himself onto the couch and falls asleep easily.

+++

"Rise and shine, sleepy head." A gentle, smooth voice seeps in through the cracks of Jungkook's dreams. He only realizes then that it's the voice of the very person he had been dreaming about. Jungkook groans groggily and peels his eyes open to see a smiling Iris. The early morning sunlight streaming through the windows of the studio makes her look even more angelic than before, and he begins to wonder when the lines between dream and reality became so blurred. "Wow, good morning." She chuckles softly at him as he wordlessly wipes the sleep from his eyes. In the short time she has known Jungkook, she has never seen him so innocently adorable. He has always been ridiculously sexy, but never cute like this. "Sleep well?"

"I think sleeping on this couch will be the reason I have back problems for the rest of my life." Jungkook murmurs, voice raspy with the residue of sleep. Iris grins, taking a seat in the chair at his desk.

"Oh, really?" She teases, and he nods. A sly grin grows on his lips then.

"Yeah. Between that and carrying the music industry on my back." He jokes lamely, and Iris snorts at his stupid sense of humor.

"Jesus, was the song you wrote last night after I left that good?" She asks, and Jungkook shrugs, standing up. After stretching his long limbs with a yawn, he retrieves his notebook from where he had left it on the floor.

"How'd you know I wrote something?" He asks, and Iris shrugs nonchalantly, but the glimmer in her warm chocolate-y eyes tells him she knows something he doesn't.

"Lucky guess. Let me see." She says, reaching for the notebook. Jungkook holds it just out of her reach.

"Promise not to insult me this time?" He asks, and Iris chuckles knowingly.

"Pretty Boy can't handle it?" She asks, and Jungkook rolls his eyes, but the grin doesn't leave his face.

"Pretty Boy, huh?" He raises his eyebrows at her. Iris is always so conscious of her words and actions, but it seems like she didn't mean to let that slip from the look of realization on her face.

"You dodged the question." She changes the topic.

"So did you." Jungkook points out, and Iris decides she's had enough of this conversation, because she stands up and walks over to Jungkook, snatching the notebook out of his hand with a stuck out tongue in retaliation. Laughing softly to himself as Iris flips open the notebook to the newest pages of writing, Jungkook watches her face as she reads it over, gauging her reaction.

"You are a new little mystery with such infuriating intrigue, you have me fact checking my history, girl, you leave me with fatigue. Such a perfect little mystery with such infuriating intrigue, you've got me so jittery, girl, you're so out of my league." Iris reads aloud, and turns to face him. He gives her a hopeful grin.

"You gonna compare it to the metaphorical lovechild of two mediocre early 2000's pop stars?" Jungkook asks, and Iris shakes her head, grinning.

"Nope, I'll spare you this time. It's not bad, Jungkook. Not bad at all." She says, and Jungkook raises his eyebrows.

"Really? Just 'not bad?'" Jungkook asks incredulously. "Not even a 'good?'" Iris shrugs, smirking to herself as she hands him back the notebook.

"Maybe if you admit you wrote it about me I'll upgrade you to a 'good.'" She teases, and Jungkook laughs a little bit to cover up his surprise at how direct she is.

"I would, but that'd be lying. Do you want me to lie to you, Iris?" He asks, and she rolls her eyes at him. In truth, the song is about her, but he'd never admit it to her outright.

"Depends. How far will you go for my praise?" She asks teasingly, but there's something about the playful glimmer in her eyes that makes Jungkook want to walk over and kiss the smirk off her lips.

"Unfortunately for you, I'm not a liar. Sorry." He states, fake-serious.

"Then it looks like you're just going to have to earn my praise the hard way." She informs him. Jungkook tries not to let his mind run with the dirtier way that sentence could be taken, but it's hard not to when she's looking at him like that. As a person, Iris is one of the most frustrating people he's ever had to work with, but he can't deny the physical chemistry they share.

"You can look forward to it." He replies cockily, and she quirks an eyebrow at him, smiling despite the heat rising to her cheeks under his burning gaze.

"I will, then." She says quietly, and before the growing sexual tension is unable to be ignored, Iris walks over the guitar in the corner. "I have some ideas for the song. I'm thinking stripped down, just guitar and percussion. Think 'Here Comes the Sun' by the Beatles, but a tad more edgy." Iris suggests, and Jungkook nods, albeit hesitantly.

"I've never done something like that for an album before." He says truthfully. All of his music used to be simple guitar and piano, but ever since coming to Seoul he has transitioned more into what is trendy in pop music-- EDM and fake instruments to create a different kind of sound.

"Well, I'll write it up and compose it, and you can decide whether or not we go with it. In all honesty, I just wanted you to write a song last night to prove a point, so this doesn't even have to go on the album if you don't want it to." Iris explains as if it's simple, but something he says catches Jungkook's attention.

"What point were you proving?" He asks curiously, and Iris's smile fades as she grows serious.

"Listen, Jungkook." She sighs heavily. "When you said the whole goal of your album is to hit number one and that's it, I knew you weren't gonna be able to perform at a high level with your writing. Songwriting is drawn from active emotions, not passive emotions. Numerical goals can be good, but they won't get you anywhere if you don't have any strong feelings about what you're writing." She explains, and Jungkook nods, processing. He never wanted to end up this way--fueled by numbers and success and money rather than communicating a message. He kind of feels ashamed. "Every artist goes through times in their career when their priorities are a little out of order. I just wanted you to see that last night. I purposely pissed you off so you could realize that good songs happen when true emotion goes into them. When you write for the charts and the charts alone, the song doesn't feel authentic. You know what I mean?" Iris explains.

"Yeah," Jungkook replies, smile tainted with hints of sadness, "I do. Thank you for that." He says sincerely. Iris nods, smiling at him good-naturedly.

"Just doing my job. Now, you should go home and shower and brush your teeth and stuff. It's nine in the morning, you've been breathing the institutionalized air for too long and you smell." She says, and before Jungkook can protest, a red flag goes off in his head.

"Oh, shit! It's already nine?" Jungkook asks frantically. He slips on his shoes quickly, hopping around on one foot to keep his balance as he ties one foot, and then the other. Groaning when he jams his finger on the desk reaching for his keys, Iris laughs at him. "I was supposed to be meeting with Hoseok to discuss choreo at 8:30!" He explains, and Iris grimaces.

"Yikes, good luck with that." She says, and Jungkook throws his coat on over his broad shoulders and toned arms.

"If I'm not back in two hours, Hoseok killed me." Jungkook jokes lamely, but Iris still laughs. God, he can't get over the sound of her laugh. Like that, she waves, and he shoots her one last dazzling smile before running out the door, leaving her alone in his studio. Iris picks up the notebook and props it up in front of her so she can read the lyrics. Carefully, she begins to strum out a guitar line and half-sings the words under her breath.

Iris's laugh stays in Jungkook's ears as he commutes to the cafe to meet Hoseok, and Jungkook's Iris-infused words stay on Iris's tongue all the while.

hello everyone!!! surprise!

i've decided to make updates for this book on tuesdays and saturdays rather than just tuesday!

to those of us in the US, today is independence day. but remember who's independence this day commemorates: the independence of white people from other white people. the black and indigenous people had to watch their oppressors who were already free celebrate "freedom," and they still do have to tolerate this holiday celebrating freedom when they themselves are not equal today. needless to say, until black people are treated as equals, i will not be celebrating this holiday, because only then will america truly be free.

stay safe & healthy & happy. spread love!
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