The Escort

Jimin Can't Keep Secrets

A/N: Happy to announce I've made good (enough) headway on a Namjoon story! I will be releasing the introduction and cover this Thursday and do a special three chapter upload next Monday.  So excited, you have no idea how long it took me to think this up *eek*

It had been eight months. And now Jimin was standing on the floor where Y/N's office was. Jin was in front of him, quietly knocking on her door. This was a bit of a risk for him. The audit had gone well. He wasn't sure if he could ever fully regain Y/N's trust, but there wasn't this heavy tension in the air between them anymore. He did his job as always.

Jimin had debated this for awhile, whether he was ready. But he knew it needed to be done. Regardless of who was more at fault, he had still lied to her. A woman who had been kind to him. Who had helped shift his thinking about himself. She deserved an apology. And he'd never gotten a chance.

Jin entered and quietly shut the door behind him, acting very sneaky. Y/N immediately looked over at him with a cocked eyebrow.

"Why do you look like you're doing something you shouldn't." She had asked simply. Jin had sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Um....I know it's kind of sudden but....Jimin's here. He wanted to apologize to you. I'm sorry...it's not much of a head's up...." Y/N had stiffened, but nodded and motioned for him to let Jimin had enter.

It had been eight months. Jin didn't talk about him, except for that one incident with Lee. Nothing about him had really changed. He'd dyed his hair silver. His style was the same. She'd heard his name in passing conversation recently, but studiously ignored it. They had never been involved but sometimes she felt like she was moving on from an ex.

"Mr. Park." She said formally, motioning to one of the chairs in front of her desk. He bowed and sat down on the edge, looking nervous but determined. "What brings you here?"

"Don't be mad at Jin-hyung, please. I asked him to not tell you till right before. I wanted to do this and I thought it'd be best to do it in person."

"You're both still keeping secrets from me." She had muttered under her breath and he ducked his head, catching the words.

"I just thought you deserved that respect." He said quietly. "But if you want me to leave and do it by text, I will." Y/N leaned back in her chair and put her hands in her lap.

"No, it's fine. Go ahead. Say what you need to say." The Y/N in front of him was different. There was a wall. There was a barrier. It made him feel sad that he had helped build it. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders, then looked her in the eye.

"I came here to apologize to you. Jin-hyung's argued that he's more at fault, but in the end it doesn't really matter. Regardless of who's more at fault, I helped deceive you. Regardless of reasons or intentions, I deceived you. In some ways, I feel like it's worse that I did it. Because you've been vulnerable with me in ways that you haven't been with other people, or at least hadn't been up to that point." He shrugged.  "Yeah, you were my client, but that's the problem. You trusted me to take care of you, you trusted me to keep confidentiality, which I did. I didn't tell anyone things about you. But I still deceived you. And I kept doing it after knowing how that might affect someone who I know has problems trusting. And I know that when you found out....you would have been wondering how big my lies were. How badly you'd been deceived. So I'm sorry for deceiving you. And for probably scaring the shit out of you when you first found out." Jimin bowed his head. "Chwaesuhamnida." There was silence as Y/N stared at her hands, letting his words sink into her. Jimin waited, waited for her response.

"You know me so well, Park Jimin. It's fucking scary." She finally said. "I believe you both when you tell me you didn't have bad intentions. I'm glad you can recognize how big a deal this was to me." It was quiet again. "It sounds stupid now, I felt like an idiot." Jimin jerked his head up. "I was hoping that maybe.....maybe all our talks during our sessions weren't fake. That maybe we could be acquaintances or even friends once they were done." Jimin felt a lump in his throat.

"I would've liked that very much." He said quietly. "They were never fake." He added. Another silence.

"I believe you. And I accept your apology." He bowed again.

"Gamsahamnida." Y/N ran her fingers through her hair and bit her lip.

"So....how have you been? It's been.....what....eight months? Jin was respectful and didn't bring you up, except for that one time with Lee."

"Thank you for that, too. Both for this time. And the time at the party. And also that time when Taehyung came over. Jin told me it was you. I wanted to thank you then, but I wasn't supposed to know." He chewed on his lip. "I hope you know though, it made me more determined to do my best for you." Y/N gave him a soft smile.

"I appreciate that. It worked." Jimin leaned back and crossed his legs, feeling more at ease now that they were on good terms again. He felt a little pang in his chest at her last words but resisted the urge to ask who she'd found. At least he could maybe fully kill this ache in his heart, once and for all. It was relieving in a way.

"As for what I've been up to....I've gotten into modeling. It was Taehyung's idea. He was just throwing shit out there and happened to land on a good one. And I've started designing too. I'm working on a fashion line for the upcoming season." Y/N chuckled.

"Damn, doing all that and escorting? Do you ever sleep?"

"I left escorting." She blinked.

"Wha....you did? Why? I thought you liked it....?" Jimin shrugged, mind racing ahead to questions he wanted to ask her, leading him to pay less attention to the words coming out of his mouth. He had started looking at the memorabilia she kept on her desk as his mind wandered.

"I'd been discontent with it for awhile. And....after things...I thought about continuing it. But honestly, the idea of continuing was kind of repulsive because I really didn't like most of my clients and I didn't have the woman I love on my roster anymore..." It took a moment for his brain to catch up with his tongue and his eyes widened, almost comically in any other situation, and he slapped his hand over his mouth. Shit.

Shit, shit, shit. Eight months away and he had apparently grown abysmal at keeping secrets. He blushed a furious red and looked everywhere, anywhere.

Y/N had been nodding along, genuinely curious to hear more, and it took a second for his words to register. When they did she stilled, her eyes getting as big as his.

There was dead silence.

And more silence.

And moooore silence.

"Fucking shit." Jimin finally whispered.