Work Text:
ONE
The purple can of soda topples downwards from the interiors of the brightly lit vending machine as Jungkook sends the heel of his boot into the flimsy side, watching as it bangs on the metal interiors. It’s much louder than he would like, but there isn’t a single being in the narrow alleyway.
Beside the broken air conditioning vents and electricity control panels is a single lit-up sign that hangs only from a single hinge. The red characters are smudged, and looking at it makes Jungkook’s eyes throb in his skull, so he sends his bat crashing into the heavy plastic panel. He narrowly avoids the sparks flying into the night air and snaps the soda open with an audible hiss.
“Fuck,” he coughs out when the fizz burns all the way down his throat, sickly sweet soda that they always make too strong these days. He doesn’t glance back at the fallen sign, lifting his bat instead. Light catches on glinting metal, ‘Patroller’ imbedded on the hilt. A scream disrupts the group of rats rummaging in the trash and the sound of people arguing from a street away. Jungkook twirls his bat, lets a smile take over his face, and he runs to the direction of the sound with his heavy boots barely making a sound.
It’s the night of the full moon, and the polluted air scrapes the insides of his nose as he breathes in. It’s rancid, even for a human like him, with the smell of garbage and old blood raising a sour tang that gets stronger with the wind. It’s no wonder the wolves must be going crazy, the pull of the moon drawing them farther from sanity, and the offensive scent does nothing to ease them. The scream comes again but this time in chorus, like there’s a crowd of people now, then a chilling howl, and Jungkook speeds up to a sprint, cold wind chafing his sharp-edged cheeks.
The sound leads him to a nearby bar in the edge of the red-light district, this seedy old thing with vodka-stained seats and the smell of sex and sweat in the air. Jungkook fights back a sneeze and zones in on the commotion at the back of the room.
There’s a man, half-turned and growling with his eyes glowing a sickly pale yellow, fur beginning to sprout from his neck and arms. It’s a sickening sight, the terror emanating from the people and the crazed, wild look in the werewolf’s eyes. Jungkook has learned in the months he’s been working as a patroller not to care too much about who he kills, has convinced himself that he’s saving more lives than he’s taking, but seeing a Dark One as out of control as this always leaves a bad taste in his mouth. They’re human-like, capable of kindness and empathy, and Jungkook wonders if they can be saved even when the darkness takes over.
The man lunges for him, bones cracking and shifting, and Jungkook sends his bat into the side of his head with a sickening crunch. He never quite got used to the sounds of fighting. It adds a realness to it, the squelch of blood and the snapping of bones. The wolf is undeterred and fully shifted now, and as he lunges for Jungkook with nothing but animalistic rage in his eyes, Jungkook sends his bat swinging again, following it by planting his heavy boot hard on the wolf’s chest. He uses the momentum of the wolf falling backwards to get on top of him and plunge a short, slim dagger into the wolf’s heart. He doesn’t miss, hasn’t missed in months. The wolf thrashes underneath him, and Jungkook rams the dented top of bat into his head over and over again while digging the dagger deeper and twisting it as blood seeps out and onto his hands.
It takes a while, and Jungkook has scratches running down his sides and arms, but the wolf finally stops moving. He gently tugs the dead wolf’s eyelids shut and turns away when the claws begin to retract and the fur thins out until only bloodied skin is shown. It’s always especially difficult seeing a Dark One turn human again because it is, after all, what they are at their core. Jungkook pulls his phone from a zipper inside his jacket, panting and a little shaky.
“Jungkook?” a male voice sounds as the ringtone stops. It’s rather high-pitched and gentle-sounding, but it carries a tone so serious that it becomes obvious this man isn’t to be taken lightly.
“Jimin,” the Patroller breathes heavily into the line. “I’m gonna need a clean-up crew over here. Red-light district.”
Over the line, Jungkook hears Jimin scoff. “You only call me when you need someone to clean your mess,” he says.
Jungkook laughs. It’s a little crazed from the fight. “That’s not true,” he denies. “I call you when I need someone to pay for my meals too.” There’s so much blood on his hands. Jungkook closes his eyes for a quick moment to gather himself.
“Brat,” Jimin says. “Where in the district?”
Glancing around gives Jungkook nothing but a view of dazed, drunk lowlives and the keening feedback of an abandoned microphone. Jungkook pushes back the headache that’s slowly building and calls out, “What’s the name of this place?”
Low chatter comes from the crowd, but no one is willing to approach Jungkook, bloodied and in all-black. He grabs his dagger and bat from the ground and stands up, about to check from the outside when a tall man with pink hair gelled up and away from his forehead approaches. “Play Dirty,” he says.
Jungkook’s expression twists. “What?”
“The name of this club,” he clarifies. “It’s called Play Dirty.” His voice is smooth and low, a little rough from overuse. Jungkook allows himself a moment to check him out, long legs and dark leather, dyed hair matted on his forehead. He looks wrecked, hot, exactly Jungkook’s type, so he tears his gaze away.
“Thanks,” he grunts out. Now that the wolf is dead underneath him, his fingers itch where they’ve been coated in blood, and his head gets hazy as it always does. “The club’s called Play Dirty, Jimin,” he says into the phone. He steps off the dead Dark One and wipes the blood on his jeans. It doesn’t work; his hands are still stained red with blood drying under his short, broken fingernails. There’s blood on his face, probably, and his arms too, but he heads for the bar anyway where a frightened bartender stands.
“Sex on the Beach,” he says as he sits on the stool. Fuck, sometimes he really hates his job. The bartender makes his drink with jerky movements. They’ll close up soon. People are already filing out, stumbling and drunk but with enough basic sense to realize that the night’s over. Jungkook feels a heavy hand settle on his shoulder, and he twists his neck to look at it. They’re long and just barely thick enough to be considered masculine, but the heavy rings on his fingers, one with a prominent dark blue gem shaped ovaline and flat with barely any sheen, make it look just a touch more dangerous. There’s a single black teardrop tattoo at the side of his index finger.
“His drinks are on me tonight.”
It’s the pink-haired man. He takes the seat next to Jungkook, and he looks a lot more intense up close. His leather jacket is thrown wide open, and the black shirt he wears underneath is cut low enough to expose the prominence of his collarbones underneath. There are large, yellow-tinted shades over his eyes, and Jungkook can barely make his eyes out through them. His lips are thick and pale pink, chapped at the bottom, and his nose is small and a little upturned. There are small black earrings on both of his ears and an almost dainty chain of silver around his neck. “Namjoon,” the man introduces himself, extending his hand for Jungkook to shake.
Jungkook looks down at his ring-clad fingers and lets his lips pull into a charming smirk. “I would shake your hand, Namjoon, but I’m afraid they’re a little bloody.” His laugh isn’t quite amused, but it escapes him all the same. “I’m Jungkook.”
“Jungkook,” Namjoon tests. His voice makes the words sound exotic, and the clarity of his pronunciation is almost like an incantation. “You’re a Night Patroller?”
A squat glass with orange liquid is placed in front of him, and he gulps down half before responding. The vodka isn’t all that strong, and the cocktail looks out of place in his bloody hands. It’s fruity, peaches and citrus and a bit of cranberry. His breath leaves him in a hiss. “Yeah,” he says. “Hunt down the ones who go rogue and shit.”
Namjoon shrugs off his leather jacket. There’s a full sleeve of tattoos on his right arm, black and intricate with an inconsistent pattern. Jungkook watches the slight muscles move underneath his skin. He wants to trace the tattoos with his tongue, sink his teeth and suck at the sun inked into his skin at the inside of his arms. Jungkook needs to let off some steam, and Namjoon seems exactly his type. Dangerous, the type that would both fuck him up and also fuck him good.
“Hm,” he says. “You don’t look like the type to like fruity cocktails.”
Jungkook licks at the alcohol sitting on his bottom lip. The tang of orange makes him feel reckless. “And you don’t look like the type to be approaching a Patroller at night. What are you? Bloodsucker?”
Namjoon laughs. “If I said I’m human?”
Jungkook laughs in return. “I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Fair enough.” Namjoon’s grin is dimpled. “I’m a land siren,” he says. “Can’t sing for shit though.”
Jungkook pushes down a deep groan. Sirens. They’re manipulative, and if you listen to their voice for too long, they can get you to do anything. If Namjoon’s dimples weren’t so deep, hands so pretty and tanned, Jungkook wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Work aside, Jungkook’s not invincible. He’s as susceptible to a siren’s call as anyone else.
“Well, I’m human,” he says instead.
“Boring, then.” Namjoon flashes him another dimpled smirk. He takes the glass from Jungkook’s hands, blood smearing over his pretty fingers. Jungkook watches as he lifts the glass to his lips and swallows the rest of the drink in a smooth tilt of his head. His neck is long, and there’s a single, prominent vein running down one side. He lets out a breath as he sets the glass on the table and observes his bloodstained fingers. Jungkook has the sudden urge to suck on his fingers, lick them clean.
“So Namjoon,” Jungkook says slowly, almost a careful drawl, “Did you come here with someone tonight?”
Namjoon wipes his hands on the cloth the bartender had left on the table. “You got Smirnoff?,” he asks the bartender. The man nods and goes to grab one, setting it on the table and popping the cap off. Namjoon gazes at Jungkook, and he notices the uncharacteristic lightness of the siren’s eyes. They’re a purple-grey with pupils much too large to be normal. Contacts, most likely. One eye is more curved than the other, but both are pleasantly-shaped monolids, the kind that makes him look perpetually half-lidded. Jungkook wants to kiss him.
He leans forward, a smirk on his lips and pulls close enough that the space between them could be defined by two fingers.
Namjoon is still smiling when he sets his finger on Jungkook’s lips. “It’s just infatuation,” he says. “I’m a siren. Don’t let it get to you.”
Jungkook rolls his eyes as he sits back. He raises two fingers to call for the bartender and orders another cocktail. “I don’t mind letting it get to me,” he says. “No harm in a good night.”
Namjoon laughs. “No harm until you fall too deep and start telling me you love me,” he states with a tilt of his head. His matted fringe shifts to shield his eyes, the barest glimmer or grey peeking through faded pink. He raises his bottle and inclines it towards Jungkook, a friendly gesture, and drinks it just like he had done before.
The door slams open and the sound of thick soles taking heavy steps resounds through the bar. Jungkook glances to the side and sees Jimin arrive. He’s a demon, a Dark One himself, but he’s approaching the dead Dark One with an expression of disdain. Jungkook watches him, sees him grimace before he decides to look away.
A small-framed man approaches Namjoon, black hair similarly damp with sweat and cut just an inch too long that it would have covered his eyes if he hadn’t had them parted to one side. His eyes are small and triangular, a pretty dark brown, and where Namjoon’s lips are thick, this man’s are thin with a plumper bottom lip, pale and lightly glossed until they look natural. Where Namjoon is tall and slim, tan and made of all smooth lines and steady strokes, this man is short with a surprisingly strong chest, pale and angular with the rest of him delicately slim: his jaw, his wrists, the prominent jutting of bruised knees though ripped jeans. When he speaks, his voice is slurred and rough. “Namjoon,” he calls. “We gotta go.”
Namjoon looks up at him with a lazy tilt of his chin. “It’s a little earlier than you normally prefer.”
Jungkook watches Yoongi tug at the sleeves of his thin black sweater. Yoongi looks at him sharply, and it places his features in an ever gaunter light. He’s pretty in the way albino snakes are, in the way blue flame is pretty. The kind of pretty you’d never touch.
“Patrollers, Namjoon,” Yoongi hisses. His eyes are glossy as if they’ve been open for too long. “You tempt Fate all the fucking time.”
Jungkook watches Yoongi, lips twisting when he finally notices them: blackened veins stretching up his neck, fading to a bruised green as it peeks over his clothes. His breathing is harsh and heavy, sharp and irregular in the way his chest seems to constrict before releasing another breath.
Namjoon taps his blunt nails on the bottle and frowns. “Fate doesn’t make decisions for people like me, Yoongi. Keep your fairy shit to yourself.”
Yoongi’s dark pupils bleed black into the white of his eyes, streaking outwards, and the black in his veins reach up and seem to push at his pale skin prominently. “The last time I kept my fairy shit to myself, you ruined it for all of us,” he growls, hand reaching out to fist Namjoon’s leather jacket.
“Yoongi!” a voice yells. Jungkook looks up and sees another man rushing over in that moment, eyes wide and lips pulled downwards. His hair is a shock of reddish brown, the type that suggests he had tried to dye it from a faded red to brown and failed. He wraps a gentle hand around Yoongi’s bony wrist and pries his fingers off with the other. His movements are slow and soothing, little caresses left on the back of Yoongi’s hand.
“Shit,” he says under his breath. “Calm down, Yoons. I know all this patroller shit gets you on edge, but you gotta calm down.”
Jungkook watched Yoongi take shuddering breaths, eyes rolling up before clearing. The darkness in his veins seems to recede, millimeter by millimeter, until it peeks out from past his sleeves just the slightest bit. His eyes are watery, but he directs his gaze at Jungkook. His gaze is intense, dark and almost angry, but at whom, Jungkook isn’t sure.
“Stay away from us,” he tells Jungkook. “And if he didn’t fucking warn you, then I’ll tell you myself. Getting involved with him is a death wish.”
Jungkook feels uneasiness settle in his gut, but Yoongi is a fairy, and fairies are tricksters—liars. Don’t listen to a land siren. Don’t listen to a fairy, especially ones whose wings you can’t see. Even when both are telling him to stay away. “I think I can do whatever I want,” he says.
He takes Namjoon’s bottle from his hands and chugs down a large amount. From the corner of his eye, he can see Jimin’s crew start to lift the dead werewolf up, hears the grunting and the groans of complaint at having to clean up another one of Jungkook’s messes. When the body disappears through the worn doors, Jimin approaches them. There isn’t a single drop of blood on him despite his stark white clothing. It’s almost pretentious, the way he carries himself, with smooth, styled hair, the layer of BB cream on his clear skin, the pink tint on his plump barbie-doll lips. Jimin was never made for the clean up. He was meant to be ogled, pretty demon like him, but then again, Jungkook had never seen Jimin let the darkness control him even once. He’s a Dark One with none of the darkness.
“Jungkook,” Jimin calls. “Who are these friends of yours?” His voice is high and faux sweet, and his deceptively kind features are twisted into one of sharp curiosity and awareness. His eyes linger on Yoongi in particular, narrowing as they observe the way he carries himself, the way he looks.
Jungkook doesn’t look away from Yoongi either, and the man squirms as though their gaze is burning his skin. The man who had placated Yoongi has one hand on each of Yoongi’s biceps, squeezing gently as though telling him to keep still and relax.
Jungkook shrugs. “This is Namjoon, land siren. He told me what this place was called, bought me a couple of drinks. That’s Yoongi, I guess. He’s…” Jungkook tilts his head as he watches the labored breathing and the darkness that had stopped receding. “Well, he’s something. And that guy I don’t really know. He just jumped in, kinda.”
The anger in Yoongi’s face renews with an intensity close to that in the eyes of the Dark Ones who had gone rogue. Jungkook instinctively wants to grab a dagger or pull his hands up to prevent a blow. “I’m a fairy,” Yoongi hisses as he tugs his sleeves down. “And stop fucking staring at me.”
The man holding him laughs, a bright, forced little chuckle. “Ah, ignore him. It’s been a stressful night.” His reddish hair shift from his forehead when he speaks, and his thin t-shirt shifts to show off delicate collar bones, hanging over his shoulders in a way that makes him look breakable. “I’m Hoseok,” he introduces himself. “Warlock, at your service.”
Jungkook nods, “Jeon Jungkook, Night Patroller, and that’s Jimin, my personal clean-up crew.”
Jimin pinches Jungkook’s arm and twists viciously, eliciting a couple of alarmed grunts of protest. “Damage control, more like,” Jimin says. He lets go of Jungkook’s arm and continues to look at Yoongi calculatingly.
“Yoongi, right?” Jimin asks after watching the man for a few long moments. “Have you charmed your wings out of view?”
Yoongi’s jaw tightens, jumping, and his eyes glaze over. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and muddled. “None of your business,” he growls out. His trembling gets worse, and his skin looks paper-like and ashen. He turns to Hoseok, grabs his wrist with more strength than he appears to possess and pulls. “We have to fucking go,” he says with his voice rough and angry, shaky as though something horrible would happen if he stayed any longer.
Namjoon stands up as well, leaving his bottle half-full on the counter. He places a hand on Jungkook’s shoulder fondly. “It was nice meeting you,” he says. He tosses a couple of bills on the table and gives a quick, two-fingered salute to the rattled bartender. He moves to leave but turns back to look at Jungkook again. “Yoongi’s right, really,” he says before trailing after the two, long, leather-clad legs disappearing from view.
When Jungkook finally moves his gaze away from the doors swinging as Namjoon leaves, he sees Jimin worrying his bottom lip. “Shame,” Jungkook says. “Namjoon’s pretty fucking hot.”
Jimin helps him up from the stool with an unreadable expression. “Kook,” he says as they begin to move towards the entrance. “What did he mean?”
Jungkook shrugs off his jacket and slings it across one shoulder. “Told me to stay away from them. Said if I got involved with Namjoon, I had a death wish.”
The doors are heavy as Jungkook pushes them open. There are people outside, eyes wide and jittery from the events of the night. There are barely any cabs out anymore, and no one would come to the red light district where Dark Ones thrive, so those who are left behind are mainly those too drunk to stand, wasted until they stumble over themselves and choke on their own bile.
“One of them’s gonna go rogue soon,” Jimin says once they clear past the thin crowd and reach the dark streets. There are prostitutes and beggars at every street corner, expensive cars coming only to pick barely-dressed men and women up, but no one’s paying attention to the odd pair—Jungkook in his bloodied black and Jimin in his unruffled white.
Jungkook hums, “That Yoongi guy, yeah.”
“I wonder what caused it. Fairies rarely lose control.”
Jungkook sighs. He’s feeling restless, jittery, like he always does after a kill. He doesn’t really care what caused it, doesn’t care about how long he’ll hold on to sanity. He just hopes he doesn’t have to be the one to kill him when he time comes. God, he needs a good fuck.
TWO
“What are they called?” Jungkook asks the young woman next to him. He has to raise his voice to be heard over the music, has to move closer to her ear. The bar is small but packed with people, people drunk and passed out on the couches. In the corner, two women are pressed much too close, hands underneath each other’s clothes, hair messy and lips sucking at skin. There’s a man sprawled on the counter, passed out drunk with alcohol stains on his shirt and spit over pale, chapped lips and running over a sharp jaw.
The woman leans up to reply, “Dare.”
There are three men on stage. One is Namjoon with telltale pink hair and a torn red muscle shirt, front and center. He has one Converse-clad foot on one of the bar’s speakers, and his tanned knees show through the rips in his jeans. He has the microphone gripped loosely in one hand as he raps almost lazily into it. His heavy voice rings through the bar, something about bruised skin and split lips, mindless love and endless pain. His tone is mocking and angry, no, resentful, really.
A flash of reddish brown and then it’s Hoseok with his mic set on a long stand, slim fingers wrapping around the mic and the thin base. He’s in another oversized shirt tucked into loose, acid-washed jeans. He shifts the tone of the song from bitterness to simple pain. His voice has a grating quality to it, but surprisingly, it’s rather pleasant. He shifts from singing to rapping, words falling from his lips as though ripping from his throat.
Yoongi is in the same black sweater but in black skinny jeans this time. He has a black cap atop his dark hair, a black mask over his lips, and Jungkook can see veins trailing up his neck. He’s seated by a keyboard, fingers nimbly playing out a melody in time with the rough guitar of the backing track. The music ends with Yoongi expertly playing the last set of notes, and Namjoon moves to his side.
Namjoon slings an arm over Yoongi’s shoulders as the fairy starts playing a newer, softer melody. He’s sweaty under the yellow lights of the stage, but he looks relaxed on stage, casual, although he had been the same when Jungkook had met him.
“The next song,” Namjoon says, his deep voice echoing lightly through the room, “is dedicated to a lost friend. There are things I’ve done that I’m not proud of, things that I would take back in the blink of an eye, but there are things even a deal with the devil can’t change.” His eyes are shining as he gazes at the audience. It’s a small room and the stage is low, and Jungkook knows if he pushes himself to the front, allows the light to wash over him, Namjoon would see him. As it is, Jungkook stays in the dark, continues staring at Namjoon who looks positively radiant under the stage lights.
“This is an apology,” Namjoon continues. His shoulders are set so softly now, so unlike the harsh lines of his form earlier. “For broken trust. For broken promises. For broken hearts. This song is my apology.”
The piano picks up and so does the backing track, but the notes remain mellow. Hoseok lifts the mic first, and in a surprisingly clear voice, he sings of regret. His eyes are closed, form vulnerable, and he’s swaying as he sings. It’s an anthem of betrayal and a medley of apologies. His voice grows weak at a certain point, breaking into silence for a brief moment before picking up in a now-hoarse falsetto. He looks, in that moment, like he’s glowing with a gentle light, like all of his natural glamour has been stripped away, like he’s more human than warlock.
Namjoon takes a long verse after him. His voice is emotional and a little slurred. His eyes are shut as well, leg jolting up and down in time with the music, and his hair is pushed upwards in messy coiffes. Yoongi moves his mask downwards as he takes a break from the keyboard. The notes pick up in the backing track, obviously carefully practiced beforehand. Namjoon hands him the microphone as Hoseok sings a few more lines, and then it’s Yoongi rapping. His veins are black against his pale, pale skin, but his voice is so raw, so pained and anguished that Jungkook notices nothing else but the way he trembles as the words wash over the crowd like it’s taking everything in him not to break at their delivery.
Jungkook moves to the bar and grabs a mojito. The salt stings the cut on his lip, but it’s dulled by the sensation in his throat. Hoseok speaks to the audience with a bubbly tone as Yoongi pushes his mask up his face and shifts awkwardly, ready to get off the stage. The crowd cheers, but Jungkook hasn’t heard a single word. It’s Namjoon’s voice this time, thanking the crowd for coming, the bar for hosting them, the bartender for the free drinks. Laughter and the sound of glasses tinkling. A final goodbye. Jungkook moves away from the counter to the edge of the stage and catches them just as they leave.
“Namjoon,” he says breathlessly. “What a coincidence.”
Namjoon looks pleasantly surprise to see him. He’s sweaty, still, and his lips look like they’ve been bitten raw. He looks absolutely wrecked, and Jungkook wants to taste the salt of his skin.
“Jungkook,” Namjoon says. “Hey.”
Yoongi bumps into Namjoon’s back and looks up. Jungkook sees the moment Yoongi recognizes him because his eyes shift from melancholy to frustration. “I thought I told you to stay away,” he says coldly. He looks worse today, weak and this close to passing out. Hoseok is behind him, a hand on the small of his back. He smiles at Jungkook when he sees him.
“And I thought I told you what I think about that,” Jungkook says. “This is a coincidence, really.”
He looks up at Namjoon through his lashes. “Or maybe it’s Fate.”
Namjoon looks as though he’s fighting back a smile. “I don’t believe in Fate,” he reminds him, but there’s no malice in his tone. He seems almost playful, in a subdued sort of way. “Well, since you’re already here,” he says with a dimpled smile, “why don’t you join us for the afterparty?”
“Namjoon,” Yoongi says in a warning tone.
“I can handle myself,” Namjoon says. “No harm in it, Yoongi.”
Jungkook looks at them, lets a smirk pull up his thin lips. “I guess, since you asked so nicely.”
The afterparty, as it turns out, is less a party than it is drinking cheap beer at their shared apartment. Jungkook is hanging upside down from Namjoon’s couch, back on the seat and legs dangling at the knees over the backrest. His head is hanging over the edge, blood rushing to his brain, and he feels fairly euphoric. The room smells like smoke, Hoseok’s special party shit, the type that gets everyone woozy and light and not quite there in the moment. The air tastes sickly sweet on his tongue, like flowers and honey.
It’s reckless. He shouldn’t be out with a bunch of Dark Ones at this time of night. He shouldn’t be listening to Namjoon’s voice, entranced, as he raps him a little part of this thing he’s working on. He shouldn’t be breathing in Hoseok’s magic in the air, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, and yet he is. It’s so much easier to forget like this, how many people he’s killed for the sake of safety in the streets. It’s easier not to think about how many people he’s robbed of life. It’s easier because in moments like these, it seems like there’s no redemption for someone like him, so if Hoseok’s magic soothes his nerves and tugs at his eyes until they’re fluttering shut, then no one can blame him for staying.
“You should head home,” Namjoon mumbles into his ear. Jungkook stirs awake and slithers off the couch until he’s thudding onto the ground. Namjoon steadies him, helps him right himself. Jungkook giggles into his chest.
“Hey, Hoseok,” Jungkook hears Namjoon say. “You gotta cut him off your magic. He’s got a pretty low tolerance.”
There’s the deep creaking of the couch and a low groan before the sound of bare feet padding on the ground resounds close to Jungkook’s head. Or maybe not close, just that his senses are heightened to the point of numbness and everything sounds close yet feels so far away. An eternity passes, warm and hazy, then something much too cold is being pressed to his lips, mint washing over his tongue and suddenly down his throat as his head is tilted back and his throat swallows almost greedily. The blur in his brain clears.
“What,” he chokes out, “what?”
When he puts his fingers to his lips, they come away covered in thin blue liquid. “What—I was fine,” he insists. It’s not addicting, Hoseok’s magic, but it is pleasant, and Jungkook wants to float away.
Namjoon is holding him steady, concerned. “Nope,” he says. “I think it’s time for you to head home, actually, after you sober up a bit.”
Jungkook shakes his head. Home means his sad little apartment on the fifth floor with that one broken window and the thin mattress and the unwashed plates still piled up in the sink. Home means he’s alone again with just his thoughts to keep him company, and he doesn’t feel like going home if that’s what home means.
Namjoon sighs. “If you stay any later, it’ll be too dangerous to go outside.”
“I’m a Night Patroller, Namjoon,” Jungkook says while blinking heavily. The room is of a much sharper quality now, no longer washed out and blurred like earlier. He feels more than sober, hyper aware of everything.
“Yeah, well, you’ll be coming home from my place, so you become my responsibility. Can’t have you mauled on the way home, Patroller or not.”
Jungkook flops onto the floor, presses his cheek into the cool ground. “Just 30 minutes, please,” he pleads. He feels a kick land softly at his side, and he looks up in irritation to see Yoongi, arms crossed with his shirt off. The veins look worse like this, and the outlines of his ribs are hinted through his pale skin.
“As much as I would love to see you mauled on the streets,” Yoongi says, “I would love it even more if you left right now.”
Jungkook snorts.A flash of irritation crosses the fairy’s sharp features. Another soft kick aimed at his thigh, but Jungkook reaches out to hold his ankle with loose fingers. His skin is almost alarmingly cold, and he can feel the protrusion of his veins even at the ankles. Jungkook’s brain is muddled and so is his mouth, so he takes the moment to ask something that twists in his chest painfully.
“How long?” he mumbles through numb lips.
Yoongi’s muscles tense. “How long for what?” he asks.
“How long until you go rogue?”
The silence seems to weigh heavier than ever, and Jungkook almost regrets asking except he’s so damn curious. Yoongi’s leg twists out of his hold almost violently, and Namjoon’s hand lands on his bicep and squeezes in warning. He hears movement, expects Yoongi to kick him for real this time, maybe curse him like fairies do, but then he sees the outline of bony knees through black fabric, ribs and veins and paper skin.
Yoongi has squatted down, manhandling Jungkook until he’s in a seated position again. “Who the fuck knows?” he says with raw pain in his tone and black bleeding into his eyes. “But if you keep pissing me off I fucking hope it happens soon, so I have an excuse to have you cursed and dancing ‘til your feet bleed.”
It isn’t funny. It’s sad, really, but Jungkook’s laughing anyway. Yoongi gives him a single, rough shake. “Go the fuck home, kid,” he says. “Before it gets too late.”
Jungkook is about to, he really is. Strength is filtering back into his body, and the sharpness is dulling down into normality again, so he’s about to get up and out of their apartment, but there’s screaming. Somewhere outside, below or out on the streets, there’s a scream and animalistic growls, more than one, maybe a whole pack. His eyes widen, and he reaches for the bat that he realizes he didn’t bring. He hadn’t expected to need it tonight, so he’s loose-limbed and unarmed and about to do his job. He shuts his eyes to get the world to flow back into perspective when thin fingers wrap tightly around his wrist.
It’s Hoseok, looking worried and a little scared. “Actually, maybe stay the night?” he says with a glance at the window.
Jungkook laughs lightly. “That’s my job out there, so I guess I gotta go.”
Namjoon reaches for him too, concerned and a little confused. “I didn’t expect the wolves to come out so early,” he says.
That means it’s already too dangerous outside. That means Jungkook steps out with his human self and the blood of the Dark Ones from yesterday still scented on his hands, and he’d be torn apart in seconds. Someone out there is hurt, though, perhaps dead. It’s Jungkook’s duty but also a suicide mission. They all know this, and now Hoseok’s got his hand on Jungkook’s wrist, Namjoon with his damn dimples blocking the path, and Yoongi with his arms still crossed, form still angry, but no longer urging him to leave.
A series of howls rise from outside, and Hoseok’s grip gets tighter. Namjoon shrugs like he’s trying his best to play it off. “I guess you should stay the night.” Yoongi doesn’t say a single word, lets himself nod just once.
Jungkook glances at the window too. Whoever’s out there is a lost cause. There’s no more screaming. The hunt is over. He looks back at Namjoon, shrugs once. “I’ll take the couch.”
THREE
Jungkook doesn’t take the couch. Namjoon’s bed is surprisingly large with soft, worn sheets that smell like Hoseok’s magic and Namjoon’s spice. Jungkook is lying on the bed, far too awake for his liking, and he’s watching Namjoon change out of his jeans and into black sweatpants. Jungkook scoots forward, wrapping his arms around Namjoon’s hips and pressing his face into the bare skin of his waist. His fingers trail the slightly muscled outlines of Namjoon’s abdomen, revels in the tiny give where his body is just a touch soft. Namjoon’s hands land on his shoulders, push him back just a bit.
“Are you still drunk off Hoseok’s magic?” he asks softly.
There’s a line of tattoos running up his spine, the beginnings of a sparrow right at his hip bone, peeking above the band of his sweats. Jungkook presses forward, sets his lips on the tattoo and kisses his skin lightly. “I’ve never been more sober,” he mumbles against him, lips brushing his warmth every so often.
“Jungkook, just go to sleep,” Namjoon says. His breathing stutters, and his fingers tighten on Jungkook’s shoulder.
“I’m not sleepy,” Jungkook says. He lifts his eyes towards Namjoon’s face, watches how he hesitates, how he shifts like he wants to and his lips tighten like he shouldn’t.
He’s sober, really. Jungkook’s mind is clear, body grounded, and what he wants is Namjoon against him with his thick lips against his. He tugs lightly at Namjoon’s sweats. “Don’t pretend,” he says, a light blush settling over his cheeks.
Namjoon sighs. “This is irresponsible.”
“Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll stop,” Jungkook intones. He has his eyes closed for rejection, for the fear of Namjoon’s rationality. He seems like the thoughtful type. Jungkook thinks of the scream from earlier, the growls resounding through the streets, and he wonders if the wolves are sated for tonight. He wonders if he should have tried—to help, to do his job.
A rough palm settles against his clothed chest, pushes him down onto the sheets, and he’s surrounded by the scent again, soap and spice. He opens his eyes, pupils shot wide, and his breathing grows heavy. He needs a distraction, and Namjoon’s hovering above him, arms tensed on either side of him, looking like a goddamn dream. Jungkook is thoroughly distracted.
Namjoon leans in, lips brushing his neck. Jungkook bites back a surprised gasp, leans into the touch and shifts his head until the smooth column of his neck is exposed. “That’s not fair,” he hears—feels—Namjoon whisper against his skin. Jungkook locks his legs around Namjoon’s body.
It’s a blur of sensation. Namjoon over him, against him, with him. Jungkook allows Namjoon’s hands to trail under his shirt. His hands are surprisingly gentle, fleeting touches over Jungkook’s paler skin, and settling, almost as though in a trance, above the rigid lines of his abdomen, the tight coiling of muscles as Jungkook shudders at the sensation.
He lifts himself up, allows Namjoon to push his shirt up and above his head until it’s on the floor and his skin is oversensitized against the sheets and Namjoon has his hand down Jungkook’s pants, fly undone. Jungkook’s panting now, arms curled around Namjoon’s back, biceps flexing as he pulls himself closer, pulls Namjoon closer to him. His hands trail down, slip under his waistband, and he squeezes Namjoon’s ass.
Namjoon’s tugging his pants down, cursing lightly, and he nearly sounds desperate, voice heated and heavy. He mouths at Jungkook’s neck as Jungkook kicks his jeans off and works Namjoon’s sweats down. His tongue is working on his neck, teeth scraping the skin, little nips followed by soothing licks, and Jungkook keens at the thought of waking up the next day with Namjoon’s marks all over his skin.
“F—fuck,” Namjoon breaks away to breathe out. He looks at Jungkook under him, Jungkook with an arm thrown over his eyes at the realization that Namjoon is looking at him, really looking at him. Jungkook with his skin flushed, sweat rolling over his skin, smoothing past light scars, and with his lips still untouched but already bitten raw. His chest is heaving, abdomen rippling with each breath.
“Namjoon,” Jungkook moans in protest at the loss of contact. Namjoon pushes Jungkook’s boxers down, breath hitching, eyes wide, and he sets two fingers against Jungkook’s lips, parts them gently.
Jungkook sucks on them, instinct winning over, and it’s all hazy as his tongue laves over the underside of Namjoon’s fingers, lap at the rough skin, suck at them with abandon. He takes it down until he’s at the base, and he must look so absolutely wrecked, so desperate, so needy. Namjoon’s other hand is around Jungkook’s cock, slick with his own spit, and he’s moving up and down, slowly building up to a heady speed. He slips a third finger into Jungkook’s mouth, eyes focused on the way Jungkook’s bottom lip is plump and pressed into his skin, how his upper lip is thin yet defined and closed sinfully over his fingers. It’s too fucking hot.
Tears are slipping past Jungkook’s closed eyes. Heat is coiling into his gut, but he wants Namjoon closer, harder, wants Namjoon’s hands tight around his neck, wants him to fuck him like they’re running out of time. Namjoon slips his fingers out of Jungkook’s mouth, replaces it with his tongue, mouth working expertly over Jungkook’s clumsy, distracted sucking.
Jungkook can feel Namjoon push his legs apart, moans at the knowledge of how exposed he is, how defenseless. He would let Namjoon do anything to him, would let him fuck him until he passes out, would let him hurt him if it got him off. Anything for the sensation, for the distraction.
Namjoon’s tongue is working magic against Jungkook’s own, pulling needy little moans from his lips, all soft and sweet and high like his kisses are ambrosia. Namjoon doesn’t move too far, forehead settling against Jungkook’s, hands stilling, spit-slick fingers resting carefully over Jungkook’s entrance.
“Are you sure?” he manages to choke out, lust-filled and hoarse. Jungkook presses his lips into Namjoon’s as a response, pushes his hips down until his ass is flush against Namjoon’s fingers, and he moans heavily.
Namjoon presses him down, kissing back, and suddenly, his hesitation’s gone. He’s pushing Jungkook down with one hand, knees pushing his thighs apart, and his finger is slipping past his tightness. Jungkook’s arms tighten around Namjoon, and he can’t keep his moans down, can’t stop himself from pushing down.
“More,” he chokes out between kisses, and the sound gets swallowed into Namjoon’s mouth. Another finger slips in and he’s working him open now, and Jungkook’s consciously letting himself go, allowing his legs to fall open, his back to arch. Namjoon’s other hand reaches for a nipple, and Jungkook jolts violently this time. Shocks of pleasure are spreading through his body, and he’s painfully hard.
“Sensitive,” Namjoon chuckles lightly. He pulls away from Jungkook’s mouth and latches onto his nipple instead, teeth scraping over the tight bud every so often. Jungkook is struck by impatience, and he whines loudly.
“Get inside me,” he growls out. He feels laughter vibrate in Namjoon’s chest, and another finger pushes inside him, curling once, twice, a third time, until they’re brushing that one spot that has Jungkook keening, tensing, hands clawing down Namjoon’s back.
He feels Namjoon’s teeth clamp down on one nipple, a harsh pinch on the other, and his vision fills with spots at the mixture of pain and pleasure. Namjoon’s fingers pull out, and Jungkook thinks he could cry, but then Namjoon’s cock is at his entrance, hard and heavy, the tip feeling huge against him.
“Yes, go—d,” he moans brokenly. Namjoon’s pushing into him, and the sting of not enough lubrication and the stretch Jungkook has grown unaccustomed to sends him into overdrive. He pushes his hips down, mouth sucking at any part of Namjoon he can reach. He wants Namjoon everywhere, his mouth, his hands, inside of him, and it should be illegal—how good it feels.
When he bottoms out, hips pressed almost painfully against Jungkook’s ass, he pauses for a moment, waiting for Jungkook to adjust, but Jungkook moves against him immediately. He grinds down, hips rotating. “Move,” he whines.
Namjoon moans, tongue slipping through to lick at his lips, and then he’s moving slowly, tentatively, like he’s scared Jungkook will break. It doesn’t matter when Jungkook likes the pain. Jungkook pulls him down, eyes filled with tears and lips wet, and he whispers through his moans, “Harder.”
And Namjoon does. He fucks into Jungkook with abandon, one hand pushing his thigh down and the other pressing down on his hip. His hold is tight, and Jungkook’s sure he’ll bruise, but he’s high off of it. Namjoon’s grunts mix with Jungkook’s moans, and he’s fucking faster, rougher, and Jungkook’s writhing underneath him, body jolting with each thrust. He latches onto Namjoon’s nipple, wants something to do with his mouth, and his teeth graze his skin when Namjoon fucks straight into the one spot inside of him, and he screams.
Namjoon thrusts into that spot with a singular mind, and Jungkook is a mess of moans and whimpers and oversensitivity. It’s too much, just the way he likes. He’s sucking on Namjoon’s skin, his hardened nipples, the thin skin of his collarbones, distractedly, not giving it much thought. His mind is of hazy pleasure, eyes rolling back every so often, unfocused and heavy, and the pleasure is merciless, washing over him until he can barely do anything but jolt.
When Jungkook comes, it’s blinding. White covering his vision as warmth paints his chest in ropes, and he trembles as Namjoon fucks him through the orgasm, shakes when he comes down from the high. Namjoon’s still pushing into him, movements sharp and jerky now that climax is so close, and he’s still hitting that spot that has Jungkook screaming from the pain of too much sensation and the pleasure of being fucked so harshly, destroyed so completely. Namjoon pulls out and comes on top of his skin, release coating his ass, his thighs, the tightness of abdomen, and Jungkook feels almost empty without Namjoon inside of him.
Jungkook is sated, trembling still, and he watches Namjoon slowly come back down to him, watches his body relax, slumping forward as his weight comes to rest on his elbows, and he’s still propped up over Jungkook’s body. Namjoon presses a kiss into his sweaty chest, something fond and much too gentle for how they’d been earlier. Jungkook’s eyes fall shut as Namjoon strokes his skin, and he succumbs to the haze that’s settled over every inch of his skin.
FOUR
The view that greets Jungkook when he wakes just before dawn is one that’s pleasant, a little dreamlike. The shutters of Namjoon’s bedroom window are thrown open, exposing a dizzying backdrop of neon signs and old, high-rise buildings. There’s a light bulb in glass tinted red hanging from a single, thick black wire right next to the window, and then there’s Namjoon. Namjoon has one hand propped on the edge of the window, one knee on the ledge right underneath it, and he’s leaning out the window, hair moving in the night breeze. There’s a slim cigarette between two tattooed fingers, smoke billowing upwards from his slim silhouette.
Jungkook shifts from where he’d been buried in the sheets and lays on his stomach, chin tilted in Namjoon’s direction. The blanket is low on his hips, and his muscles feel sore, but he’s feeling surprisingly clean. Namjoon must have cleaned him up after he’d fallen asleep.
“Namjoon,” he whines playfully. The light is tinting Namjoon’s skin red, and he only has boxers on, legs stretching out for miles. The line his spine marks in a long dip down his back, the marks Jungkook’s nails left in raised red, has him thinking he’d be up for round two.
Namjoon turns, face cast in the shadow, and he stubs the cigarette on the ledge, shifts to sit on the edge. “Hey,” he says, voice rough and a entirely too soft. There’s a different quality to it, like it’s been layered over by low chorus.
Jungkook smiles, eyes barely open, limbs loose, and he feels light, feels like teasing. “Hey yourself,” he says with silent laughter. He opens his eyes fully, but they flutter with sleep, “I didn’t know you smoked.”
Namjoon’s looking at him oddly, something tight in his jaw. “I quit a month ago,” he says. “I, uh, really shouldn’t have smoked that.”
Jungkook rolls onto his back, one muscled leg slipping through the blanket, and he’s frowning now. “Any reason why you did?” Namjoon’s voice is sending odd waves up his spine, words crawling over his skin. Through the haze of sleep and night and magic in the air, Jungkook’s mind starts waking up, starts telling him ‘land siren’ and ‘warlock’ and maybe he’s not safe.
“I—no, I guess not,” Namjoon says. Jungkook stands, stretches the tightness in his lower back and winces at the weakness in his legs, the sight of a bruise beginning to form on his hip. He grabs Namjoon’s sweatpants from off the floor and ties them loosely around his hips. He walks to where Namjoon’s sitting, wraps an arm around his waist.
“Your voice,” Jungkook says although he’s almost unaware of the words slipping past his lips. “It’s different tonight.”
Namjoon’s voice, now that Jungkook’s mind is clear enough to hear it, is heavy, and it echoes in the mind somehow, swirls and rises only to sink in Jungkook’s throat, and he thinks it’s dangerous how if Namjoon asked him to jump, he would, if he asked him to stay, he would.
Namjoon’s fingers twitch, and his arms come to rest on Jungkook’s shoulders, fingers pressing lightly on his nape. “It’s a little difficult to control my voice after.”
Jungkook tilts his head. “After?”
“After sex,” Namjoon clarifies. He seems a little shy, head turning to the side to avoid Jungkook’s gaze. “And after feeling too much, if that makes sense.”
Jungkook hums in understanding. He tugs Namjoon off the edge, pulls him back to the relative warmth of the bed. Namjoon settles and so does he, between the length of Namjoon’s legs, curling his slightly bigger frame within Namjoon’s long torso, and he doesn’t give a fuck if he’s a land siren, a Dark One, barely cares if there’s a glimmer of chance he’s go rogue in the future, because it feels so good right now, listening to his voice and staying in his arms. It’s like he’s safe and untouchable, like he hasn’t killed, like he isn’t scarred.
“I think I could get used to this,” Jungkook says. His eyes are falling shut, and he feels so small now. Warm. He feels free of all responsibility. He doesn’t have to protect anyone here, doesn’t have to be on guard or be armed. He can be bare and loose and light and sweet because Namjoon’s fingers are slowly running over stomach and his head is on top of Jungkook’s own. It’s so damn nice like this; he could get used to it.
Except Namjoon’s tensing underneath him, shifting like he’s not sure if he should leave. “Maybe I should go,” Namjoon whispers. “Sleep on the couch or something. It’s not exactly safe for you to hear my voice like this. I, I don’t want to make the same mistakes.”
Jungkook’s fingers twine through Namjoon’s. It’s easy to trust a land siren, he knows, but he wants to believe it’s different. He wants to believe, even without the reassurance, that he’s in Namjoon’s arms because he trusts him, that he’s soft like this because Namjoon is safe. “Stay,” he whispers back. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.” What mistakes? He wants to ask, but he supposes it would ruin everything, the illusion of trust, the careful, tentative, gentle way Namjoon’s holding him.
Jungkook doesn’t say anything after that. The shutters remain open, but they’ll be fine. The coolness of the night air breezes past his exposed skin, but that’s okay too. Everything’s okay with them like this.
Everything’s okay.
FIVE
His patroller badge rips right through the fabric of his shirt and clatters on the gravel. Jungkook backs up and twirls his bat, lip stinging and mind swimming from being slammed into the wall just a bit too much. He sucks on the blood welling from his lip and grimaces at the pain.
A flurry of black rushes past the corner of his eye, and he swings his bat to the direction of the movement, but it never connects. The swing momentarily throws him off balance, and his mind is running much too quickly for him to process, so he catches awareness when he’s pressed against the wall, forearm at his throat, gasping for breath. Vampires, two of them, one that distracted him and one that attacked him. Doesn’t matter which one has him trapped right now, he’ll be eaten alive anyway.
He sees red flickering every so often in this one’s eyes, not rogue yet but too far from sane to be saved. Jungkook’s least favorite ones to deal with because it makes him feel that much worse. The arm pressing into his throat grows stronger as the vampire shifts to a firmer grip, and Jungkook’s choking but unable to make a sound, wet little rasps as he tries desperately to breathe, and his hands are pulling at the arm, kicking as he’s held with his feet off the ground, and he can feel strength leave him in slow increments.
And then he’s being dropped, two cold hands holding his arms tight behind him, dragging him to a bony body, and he’s slumping, head lolling, because there’s nothing left in him to fight. He never thought he’d go out like this, outnumbered two to one after killing rogue witches just a few blocks down. He’s tired and gasping for breath, tears streaming openly from his eyes from the sensation of being choked for much too long.
There’s a hand in his hair, unwelcome, and then his head’s being pulled to the side, the long column of his neck exposed in the night. The muscles in his neck and shoulder twinge then the pulling gets harder, and it’s burning now. He chokes out a protest but nothing comes out except a weak, wet cough, and he thinks the vampires are laughing, this crazed, far-gone laughter that would leave him with nightmares if he got to live another night.
And then there’s pain. It’s liquid fire pushing through his veins as his blood is pulled out of him, and it’s enough to have him bucking, kicking, and choking in alarm. Their hold gets tighter. Jungkook thinks his neck will snap, and he’ll definitely leave with bruises if he’ll even leave alive, but he’s getting weaker. Eyes shot wide and now fluttering. Darkness is ebbing in his vision, and the fire is everything but at the same time so far away.
He’s lucid enough to register a loud thud before the pain morphs into this sharp, horrid thing that feels likes fangs being pushed under, dragged down, and pulled out of his skin. He’s bleeding and mindless, crumpled on the ground with his hands trembling and tears in his eyes and bruises forming everywhere.
There’s a wet sound, something sharp slicing through air, and then there are large hands shaking his body, tapping his cheek to wake him.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Jungkook registers a warm voice say.
Jungkook can’t find it in him to respond. The pain is dull now, nothing compared to earlier, and he just wants to get some rest. He feels the ground fall away from underneath him, feels strong arms and wide chest, and he’s tired, just so tired. He cracks his eyes open for a moment, vision blurry, and manages to catch a glimpse of two large, curved horns extending from either side of dark hair grown too long.
His eyes roll back into his head, and he grows limp as consciousness leaves him. A thought before the lights blink away into nothingness: they’re the horns of a demon.
SIX
Yoongi is sick. Jungkook had known it from the start, from the veins that stretched up his skin, dark and rooted so deeply where it spreads from his heart. Jungkook knows, so when Namjoon pushes him away after one of their gigs when Yoongi hadn’t shown his face, hadn’t spoken a single word, he’s sensible enough to realize it’s not an escape from their casual fucking.
“You should see a medic,” Jungkook tells him with a pleading edge to his tone. Yoongi’s passed out backstage with lips stained purple and black coloring even the delicate veins on his eyelids. He’s shaking, breath coming out in rasps, because he’s still fighting the darkness. Jungkook never liked Yoongi, and Yoongi never liked him, but if he could save the guy, he would.
“What good would a medic do?” Namjoon asks, tone so caustic and bitter that Jungkook nearly flinches at the sound of his voice. Yoongi’s head is resting on Hoseok’s lap, and Hoseok—God, Hoseok—looks so defeated. His shoulders are slumped, lips pulled tightly downwards, and his eyes are shut because he knows that if he opens them, if he sees Yoongi like this, he’d lose it all.
“They could at least try,” Jungkook insists. He’s standing by the doorway, Namjoon barring him from entering, and he looks angry, so does Hoseok. They’re all a little bit angry with how unfair it all is, taking it out on everything they can because there’s really no one to blame.
“And what?” It’s Hoseok speaking this time, still with his eyes closed, fists clenched in a way that makes Jungkook think that if Yoongi’s illness had a physical form, Hoseok would have given it the most gruesome death. “They’d check him out, classify him as rogue, and pass him to people like you. Patrollers like you.”
This time, Jungkook does flinch. Hoseok finally opens his eyes, and he’s crying now. He’s not looking at Yoongi, but he’s stroking his brittle hair, caressing paper-thin skin, and looking at Jungkook with a heartbreak that encompasses falling stars. “Medics are for people who have a chance at getting better. Yoongi isn’t getting better.”
Namjoon looks pained as he gazes at Jungkook, and in that moment, Jungkook feels so incredibly young, so fucking helpless. He feels like curling in on himself when Namjoon sets a hand on his shoulder, nudges him away, says, “Please leave us alone.”
Jungkook shakes his head. “He needs help, Namjoon,” he says, lip pulled between his teeth and hands wringing from the tension.
Yoongi’s body convulses, and he lets out a moan of discomfort. He shifts into awareness, but barely there, and dry heaves over the side of Hoseok’s knees. He retches violently, but nothing comes out, and Hoseok’s there with gentle hands and the most delicate, breakable fingers, and he’s whispering comfort into Yoongi’s skin.
Namjoon’s expression hardens, his fists clench, and the nudging turns into a more insistent push. “Get out,” he says, and this time his voice is layered with charm. It’s thick and syrupy, and it seeps into Jungkook’s ears, bleeds into his throat, and lays heavy just behind his eyes. It’s the call of the siren, and he can’t say no.
So Jungkook does as the voice tells him. He leaves them alone, walks back home, and doesn’t have the heart to face himself in the grime-covered surface of his bathroom mirror.
SEVEN
The shower in Namjoon’s apartment is shitty with barely any water pressure. There’s a patch of dark green growing on the upper right corner of the room, tiles haphazardly scrubbed in a last ditch effort to get clean, and a tube of facial wash tilted beside a bottle of multipurpose shampoo and body wash. Jungkook has always been particular about hygiene, hates that post-sex, dazed stickiness that clings to his skin.
He remembers the first time he showered in Namjoon’s apartment. Lazy and hazy, a little drunk off sleep and warmth, he moves out from Namjoon’s hold and slips his sweats off on the way to the bathroom. It’s a little late in the morning, bordering on noon, and he hears Namjoon stir behind him. He catches him right before he steps into the shower, sets his chin on top of Jungkook’s head and just holds him there. He can feel the rise and fall of Namjoon’s chest.
“Showering without me?” Namjoon asks. His voice is normal again, albeit a little hoarse, and there’s a hint of amusement in his tone.
Jungkook laughs, turns and shoves at his chest playfully. “I prefer showering alone,” he says.
Namjoon puts his hands up in mock surrender, laughs silently. Jungkook is mesmerized by his dimples, by the dips of his collarbones and the slender lines of his waist. Mesmerized by how his body seems to stretch out for miles, by how his tattoos curl over his arm, how there’s a dragon curling over his shoulder, clawed feet stretching towards his chest.
“Alright, I can take a hint,” Namjoon says. He pulls Jungkook forward by his neck, grins at him with something so carefree, so playful, and he kisses him soundly on the lips.
Now, Namjoon kisses him like he’s angry. They don’t fuck in Namjoon’s room anymore, not when Yoongi is in and out of dark and light in his room just across the hall. Not when he’s screaming sometimes, crying in others, but always holding Hoseok like he’s the last thread of sanity, and it’s so utterly painful to see them exchanging kisses and clinging to what they can. Not when Namjoon knows that Yoongi will go rogue soon, and if Jungkook’s there, he would have to kill him.
There’s a motel two buildings across the street to Namjoon’s house, one whose sleazy, red neon signs had completed the image of Namjoon leaning out the window just weeks before. Jungkook gazes at the 24-hour sign, ducks his head when he sees the heavyset woman behind the counter, and thinks he hates this place a little.
They use the same room each time, 201, and Jungkook’s used to the interiors by nows. He knows that the sheets are softer than Namjoon’s but so much colder from the times he’d been pressed up against them, skin rubbing against the fabric. He knows the foam of the headboard is thin from the times he’d had his back pressing against it or his hands gripping the edge or his head slamming the foam when he get carried away.
Most of all he knows the shower. He knows because he spends way too long inside, pouring bottled shampoo into his palms and working it into sweaty hair and wondering what changed.
He doesn’t know when their kisses shifted from sweet to desperate, their touches from warm to lighted matches on bare skin. All he knows is that being with Namjoon now feels dangerous. It feels like fangs at his pulse, claws in his chest. He doesn’t want to kill Yoongi. He doesn’t want to lose Namjoon. He thinks of the first time they’d met, the firm, “Stay away,” and he wishes he had listened. Then he thinks of Namjoon and his damn dimples, his rough palms, the way he smiles all blissed out and his voice is the call of the siren after fucking, kissing, being. He wishes nothing had changed.
He stands under the spray for much too long before he finally steps out. He towels down and pulls black boxer-briefs on, slings a smaller towel around his neck and steps out to see Namjoon sitting on the bed, similarly attired, and watching the evening news with glazed eyes.
Jungkook presses into his side, and Namjoon loops his arm around his shoulders, presses a gentle kiss into his hair. “How’s Yoongi?” Jungkook asks.
Namjoon slowy breathes out, and all at once, the atmosphere shifts into a tense, almost-disaster. “Worse,” he says with a tight-lipped smile. “But Hoseok’s keeping him grounded. I try not to show up in front of him too much. It stresses him out.”
Jungkook nods. He’s absentmindedly drawing circles on Namjoon’s chest, breathing in the smell of body wash and spice, always. “What happened to him?” Jungkook asks. Fairies rarely go rogue, as close to the light as a Dark One could be, and it’s never someone as headstrong, as stubborn, as Min Yoongi.
Namjoon presses his lips together. He closes his eyes and clenches his fists like he’s shutting Jungkook out one by one. But he’s stretching out again, legs sprawling, mouth opening.
“He made a deal with the devil.”
EIGHT
The thing about demons is that you can never really tell when they truly go rogue. On the spectrum of dark and light, they’ve always had a foot in the pool of insanity. ‘Dark Ones’ is a collective term, but it’s rooted in the evil, the chaos, the anger, and the bloodlust that is located in the very essence of every demon. So demons are rogue, naturally, and that’s when they’re still sane.
The night Min Yoongi meets the Kim brothers is the night of their biggest gig. It’s on Valentine’s, in the open area at the center of one of the few surviving malls, and Yoongi’s cursing.
“The leather jacket’s cutting my wings up,” he growls at Hoseok who’s sporting the same patched up black and red leather with pins and patches pierced through the thick material.
The keyboard’s already on stage, mic stands set up, and they’ll be heading up any second now. Yoongi’s wings flutter, the only indication that he’s the slightest bit nervous. They’re a sheer curtain of black, looking like they’re made of chiffon and thin, wired metal, less here than there. He’s restless, fingers drumming, wings twitching. No wonder the base if his wings are chafed by the rough-cut edges of the jacket born from Hoseok’s eager countenance and a dull pair of scissors.
Feedback screams through the speakers, and Namjoon’s face twists in disapproval at the sound. His hands are tight around his electric guitar, heavy boots tapping on the dirt ground under the makeshift tent. He hears grumbles of disapproval from other bands present, werewolves and vampires and other hybrids of sorts cover their ears when the sound get too loud. There’s laughter too, loud and raucous, coming from somewhere to their left.
Yoongi turns, relinquishing his hold on the base of his wings. The sound of laughter had sent a shudder down his spine, and he’d always been told that’s Fate’s warning. He licks glossed lips, skin prickling as his eyes land on a duo just steps away. They are, put simply, well-formed. It’s in the handsome features and the soft hair, the long fingers and unblemished skin, the large horns curling from either side of their heads.
He should have known it was trouble when they approached. Fate had warned him. He should have known.
“Hey, you guys are ‘Dare’, right?” the tanned one asks. His voice is deep and velvety, the kind of voice that would sing you to sleep and settle in your soul. He’s got green dye in his fringe and the largest eyes, and his grin stretches out sideways almost impossibly wide. He has a beauty spot on his bottom lip, and his tongue has swiped over it twice in the course of their conversation. He looks like an animation, one of those hallucinations from fairy pastries that he used to have back when there were more of his kind around.
“Yeah,” he grunts out. His arms are crossed, wings lowered defensively.
The paler one gives him a plump-lipped smile. There’s something mischievous in his features and something stronger about his presence too. Maybe it’s in the broad shoulders, the slant of his eyes, or the imposing curve of the horns, much larger than the other one’s and formed with a big loop before it ends at a point. Whatever it is, it swirls like stardust in Yoongi’s gut.
“We’re new,” he says. There’s a glow to his skin, a flush to his cheeks. “We’ve heard you guys play before at the club near Dime Diner.”
“I’ve never seen you guys around,” Hoseok chirps, friendly. “What gigs have you done before?”
“Just bars here and there, nothing as big as you guys,” the tanned one says. If anything, his eyes are even brighter now, a light of something excited deep within.
“You could say this is our big break,” the paler one speaks again this time, and there’s something in his tone that hints at more than just a simple gig.
Namjoon comes closer now, extends his large hands out towards the two and gives them one of those practiced, diplomatic smiles that make him impossible to refuse.
“I’m excited to see you guys perform later,” he says. His tone is neutral and carefully controlled. “I’m Kim Namjoon.”
“Kim Seokjin,” the paler one says, “and that’s Taehyung. We’re brothers.”
“Jung Hoseok,” Hoseok greets enthusiastically. When he shakes their hands, it’s with a firm grip and a bright smile. “Stoked to meet you guys.”
Yoongi keeps his arms crossed, gives them a casual nod. “Min Yoongi.”
It’s the first of many meetings. Seokjin and Taehyung are singers. They perform all simple with white guitars and mics on stands while in blazers and t-shirts or loose, collar-popped button downs.
Taehyung’s singing voice is much like his speaking voice, warm butter and smooth velvet, and it would be a crime not to lose yourself in his words.
Seokjin is powerful, and it carries over on stage. There’s confidence in his stance and assurance in the broad set of his shoulders that come alive in the power of his voice.
They’re in Guardia the next time they meet. The club isn’t all that packed, and the other bands aren’t all that great, but the booze is good. Seokjin sees Yoongi first, and he’s got that same glint in his eye from the first time they’d met.
Yoongi’s sitting on a bench right beside the entrance. Hoseok is off charming free drinks off the bartender, and Namjoon is where Namjoon is, looking for a pretty face for the night.
“What a coincidence,” Seokjin says as he sets himself down right beside Yoongi and gives him a closed smile.
Yoongi barely glances at him, but it seems the not looking thing just sharpens all his other senses. He can feel the warmth of Seokjin’s back from where it brushes his outstretched wings, can smell the masculine perfume off of his skin and hear the ever-present amusement in his tone.
“Not really,” Yoongi says. “We were bound to get gigs at the same place with how limited the good clubs are.”
Seokjin laughs. It’s this high, out-of-breath sound that doesn’t last for very long. It’s odd when set against the image of his devastatingly dark hair and bitten lips. “I guess I just didn’t expect to see you so soon. At least, not without an invitation.”
Yoongi looks at him with furrowed brows. The sound of electric guitars and bad singing is ringing under his skin. “What do you want?” he asks, not one for patience.
“Maybe I just want to get to know you,” Seokjin says. He’s still smiling. He’s never really not.
“I have a boyfriend,” Yoongi quips. Hoseok and him aren’t really official, not really boyfriends, but they kiss and fuck and hold hands sometimes. It’s really nearly the same.
“As a friend,” Seokjin clarifies. “I do prefer women.”
Yoongi is distracted by the glint of something dark against the club lights. It’s Taehyung with horns that look a little larger than last time, a little stronger at the base. He only registers that it’s Namjoon who has his arm slung around Taehyung’s waist, under his shirt, when the doors swing shut behind them.
“My brother, however, does not.”
It’s a joke, but it settles uncomfortably under Yoongi’s skin.
“What are you two?” Yoongi asks, eyes still trained on the doors. God, what is Namjoon thinking, going home with someone who would be dangerous like that, who’s obviously a Dark One with the horns curling from his hair? Fate is sending tingles up the space between his wings, sends them buzzing at the tip, and they flutter again.
“That’s a little rude, don’t you think?”
This is said with a tilt of the head, a smile on the lips, and that damn glint in the eye that grows stronger each time Yoongi’s mind roils and his stomach churns.
“My friend left with your brother,” Yoongi grits out. “I want to know if he’s dangerous.”
“Just about as a dangerous as a fly,” Seokjin says. “There’s a misconception about us, really, that we’re all evil, that we’re all rogue.”
Yoongi’s heart is thudding in his chest. It’s drowning out the beat of the music, threatening to jump out of his chest. “What are you?” he asks again.
Seokjin tilts Yoongi’s chin towards him. “I thought it was obvious?”
Yoongi’s mind is running backwards to the first time they’d met. He thinks of what he knows. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Seokjin and Taehyung with their voices and their beauty and their damn horns. He shuts his eyes because what else could they be, really?
“Demons,” he breathes out.
Seokjin lets go of his chin and claps softly in delight. “I’d like to say that’s smart of you for realizing, but there wasn’t really a question.”
Yoongi should have listened to Fate. He stands, spots Hoseok laughing by the bar. “Where is he taking Namjoon?” he growls at Seokjin.
Seokjin grabs his wrist. “We’re not evil. Taehyung’s just having a little fun.”
“Demons are creatures of chaos and despair. You thrive off of it, so don’t tell me Taehyung’s just having a little fun.”
“You fairies are the same though, causing trouble and making messes. Tricky creatures, but I don’t judge.”
Yoongi wrenches his wrist out from Seokjin’s grasp. “We’re a mischievous people,” he says, “but you would kill just for the fun of it. Don’t loop me in with you.”
He storms to Hoseok, grabs his shoulder and drags him to the exit. “Get your shit together and find Namjoon,” he hisses at Hoseok who’s drunk and falling over himself.
“Why?” Hoseok asks in Yoongi’s shoulder. He’s rubbing alcohol stained lips into his shirt.
“He left with a fucking demon.”
Hoseok sobers up in minutes, pausing only momentarily to throw up onto the sidewalk. His magic is potent, so much so that it overpowers Yoongi, sends him stumbling back a bit at the immensity of his power. Hoseok rarely uses his magic, never really finds a use for it. He’s never liked the feeling of power, too scared of what he could do or what he could become when his kind is turning to darkness as the taste of bad magic. When he does allow the red of his energy curl around his frame, it’s enough for Yoongi to get high off of it, high to the point of nausea.
They find Namjoon in an old, run-down diner just outside the red light district. He’s having a grand time with Taehyung laughing at everything he says, throwing fries and little balls of tissue at each other like they’re five-year-olds rather than inebriated adults.
Yoongi storms inside and takes Namjoon by the collar, pulls him away from Taehyung’s whose eyes flash black. It might be the alcohol talking, but Yoongi swears he sees insanity in Taehyung’s expression. Seokjin had said they’re not all rogue, but demons—they’re rogue in and of itself, in their very nature.
“He’s a demon, Namjoon,” Yoongi hisses into the man’s ear, grip tight, body shaking, and mind shot with panic.
And Namjoon turns to Yoongi, has the gall to look irritated, and says, “I know.”
The night shatters from there. Yoongi drags Namjoon away from an angry Taehyung, and Hoseok trails his heavy steps with staggered, exhausted ones. They crash back at the apartment, and Namjoon shoves Yoongi to the ground, still a little drunk and a lot angry.
It’s uncharacteristic for them to fight like this, for Namjoon to ever get violent at all, but Yoongi knows it’s the demons. He knows Seokjin and Taehyung have been riling them up, fueling all the negative emotions until they spill out from their hands and their mouths, so they can lap it up to calm the darkness inside.
“Not all demons are rogue,” Namjoon is yelling something of the sort, over and over again in varying words and varying tones.
And then Yoongi’s sending frustrated little sparks of shot magic energy into their shared apartment, a fire hazard in and of itself, and he’s saying, “They’re all fucking rogue, alright? They’ll take your defenses down and make you suffer for their own gain.”
And then Hoseok’s pushing them apart with surprising force. He seems angry too, and he’s rarely ever angry. He’s shoving them to opposite sides, slamming his long fingers and normally gentle hands onto the shitty dining table even when it rattles his thin wrists. “Calm down!” he says even though he’s yelling too. There’s red magic curling around his neck and closing around his hands.
Namjoon turns away from Yoongi with another angry scowl, and storms off into his room. Yoongi slumps into the dining room seat, and that should be the end of it.
That should be the end of it except Namjoon meets with Taehyung again. He meets with Taehyung so many times that Yoongi loses count of how many times they’ve fought, how many times Namjoon comes home with a haze in his eyes and a lost smile on his face.
It’s two months in, and Yoongi’s beginning to think he’s wrong. Maybe Fate was wrong too, and Taehyung’s just… Taehyung. But then he thinks of Seokjin and the glint in his eyes. It can’t be. Demons can never just be.
When Hoseok bursts into Yoongi’s room at three in the morning with magic frizzing up from his shoulders, he knows something’s wrong. It says a lot about how he sees Taehyung and Seokjin that his mind jumps immediately to the fact that Namjoon is spending the night away with them, immediately jumps to conclusions about where he could be, if he’s dead or dying somewhere in the recesses of the red light district.
“Someone sent me this,” he says, breath punched out of him.
He flashes his phone screen at Yoongi, and it’s blinding. It’s Namjoon with blurred eyes and golden wineglass in one hand. It had been one of those rare nights when Yoongi had slept easy, not under the weight of exhaustion nor in the dizzy irritation from tossing and turning for hours before falling asleep. It’s a shame he’d slept for barely four hours before he’s being woken up like this. He squints at the light from the screen, feels momentarily like his eyes are falling from his skull, and then the doubles and the blurs merge into one, and he’s scrambling with numb limbs, trying to get a feel of his magic.
Namjoon’s in Fantasia, the land of the fairies, except it’s a nothing but a death wish, really. Yoongi knows because he used to stay there, used to pour drinks under the electric lights and watch Dark Ones sign their life away with the taste of honey and vanilla on their tongues. It’s what fairies do; it’s what’s in their nature, but Yoongi’s nature had always been different. He’d made music without the intent to lure, engaged in conversation with the hopes of having someone sign their life force to him. Yoongi had been different, but Fantasia is as it always is—dangerous and alluring. A tiger made to look like a cat curled within golden bars, harmless until it has its jaws closed over one’s throat.
Yoongi’s magic comes to him in white-blue sparks, and when it comes, it comes flooding up his spine, rolling in his eyes. Namjoon is in danger, and when all is said and done, Yoongi is still his friend—his sworn brother. His magic clouds over his eyes, just raw instinct and anger, and it leads him to Namjoon with unrestrained will.
Seokjin is at the entrance. He’s standing with a drink in hand, a knife in the other, and he’s in a pressed suit that hugs his strong frame like it’s been tailored.
Yoongi curls buzzing electricity over Seokjin’s wrist. It’ll leave a mark, that much he’s sure about. “Where is Namjoon?” he hisses with as much venom as he can muster.
Seokjin smiles. “There’s really nothing for you to worry about,” he says. His tone is cool and diplomatic, almost like he’s placating a child. “He’ll be out in minutes.”
Yoongi opens his mouth to yell, to curse him to the non-existent heavens, but Hoseok moves faster than he can. He’s across the distance in seconds, delicate fingers delivering surprising strength as they wrap around Seokjin’s throat. His magic is curled over his skin in runes, and he’s buzzing with enough energy to cause Yoongi’s magic to snap into his own skin. He’s much too strong, and any more provocation with tip the scale from sane to rogue.
“Bring him out now,” Hoseok says. For all his brightness and his gentle demeanor, Hoseok has always been the scarier one. His eyes shutter and his lips tighten and his voice drops into one of frozen contempt, until his magic’s at their throats and piercing through skin. “Not in minutes. Now.”
Yoongi pulls Hoseok back, hand burning in contact, and presses close. “Calm down.”
Seokjin coughs for a while, rubs at the rawness of his throat, but he looks smug, still. “The way I see it,” he says, voice hoarse, “Namjoon’s just making a necessary sacrifice. I mean, any more time with Tae, and he might just go rogue. We have to save him from himself, you know?”
“You’ve been messing with his head,” Yoongi breathes in realization. “You—you’ve been trying to make him go rogue, to feed your need for chaos. You knew we’d fight, thought you’d feed off the despair. I have never met anyone more despicable.”
“What do you think keeps Taehyung and I sane?” Seokjin asks with a tilt of his head. His expression is of the same unruffled nonchalance, but there’s something much colder in his voice now. “Do you think it’s abstinence and vows of purity?”
“I don’t give a fuck what y—”
“It’s the chaos, Yoongi,” Seokjin interrupts. “To keep the monster at bay you have to satisfy it. We’re doing what we have to do, the lesser of two evils. Namjoon just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Yoongi’s fists clench, and his wings snap wide open to try and make him look bigger. The anger bubbles inside him and threatens to spill from every inch of his skin.
Seokjin turns and heads inside the club. “He’ll be out soon.”
“Why did you send me the photo if you didn’t want us to interfere?” Hoseok calls out to his retreating form.
The demon freezes, frame seeming to lock up and tighten.
When Yoongi glances at Hoseok, the warlock is wide-eyes and breathing heavily with magic taking over his being.
“You’re already rogue,” Hoseok says to Seokjin with a desperate shake of his head. “You call it sacrifice but don’t see it for what it really is. You’re accepting the darkness and saying you have control over it. Bullshit. You’re as rogue as they get.”
Seokjin disappears between the double doors, and Hoseok runs towards the swinging entrance. Yoongi sprints after him, pulls him back before he can enter. “It’s dangerous in there,” he says, urgency in his tone.
“I know,” Hoseok grits out, “and Namjoon’s inside.”
Yoongi shakes his head. “I know this place, okay? Let me go on first, and I’ll call you when I need you.”
Hoseok looks he’s about to argue, but the doors push open right then, and a lean form stumbles through, more limbs than body, falling all over himself in his haste. Another person follows suit, and Yoongi sees the horns. He sees the horns and sees Taehyung below them and knows it’s Namjoon running from Fantasia with his entire form wracked with despair.
“Namjoon,” Taehyung calls. “Let me walk you home.”
There’s something intense, high, in his eyes. His face is flushed with the red of indulgence, and his being seems to glow with overripe gluttony.
Yoongi watches Namjoon open his mouth, hooded eyes shot wide, and he looks like he’s trying to yell at him, trying to say anything, except nothing’s coming out, not a single sound. He’s shaking his head, looking as though he’d kill Taehyung if he got any closer, and it becomes all too obvious what’s going on.
Namjoon signed his voice away, somehow. He must’ve lost it in a card game or eaten one of the brownies on carved porcelain plates, and now, he’s paying the price of fairy hospitality. And Taehyung. Taehyung’s feeding on his despair, on the sadness and anger and frustration rolling off of Namjoon in waves. It’s in the spoilt curve of his lips, the twitching of his long fingers, the jittery way he carries himself like he’s holding himself from an addiction only three steps away.
“It’s dangerous to walk home alone when you’re in shock like this.” Taehyung’s voice is odd, and his eyes are manic. “Let me go with you.”
Hoseok runs towards Namjoon, fingers fluttering over his face like it’ll bring his voice back, and his magic is finding its medium through the hard gravel. It’s striking the surface and breaking the mold, streaking underneath in a way that makes traces of glowing red show between cracks of the pavement. His magic is curling over Taehyung’s ankles, running up his thighs, and Yoongi’s anger is feeding it, blue electricity twining around red tendrils, and they’re slowly turning black as they move over Taehyung’s skin, taking the decadence of everything horrible from his over-indulged form.
Taehyung crashes onto the ground with hardly any protest, and Seokjin steps out, eyes trained on his brother in concern.
“Get Namjoon his voice back,” Yoongi growls at them. He’s almost hovering off the ground with the way his wings are snapping with unease, poised to catch the wind.
Seokjin frowns, eyes flashing black but less malicious and more upset. “It’s not up to me to give that back. I don’t have his voice.”
“Then Taehyung,” Hoseok says. “Tell Taehyung to give it back.”
From his curled, shaking form on the ground, Taehyung speaks with decaying lucidity. “The lady said she’d take his voice so he wouldn’t hurt anyone when he goes rogue. She said if you love a demon, you become a demon.”
Sparks of magic are still jumping in the veins that suddenly appear stark on his skin. “Namjoon said that my power doesn’t affect him and that he wants to stay with me,” he says, black rolling in his eyes. “He said I don’t make him feel angry, but I should have known. It felt so good to be around his despair that I told myself it was his happiness I had learned to enjoy instead.”
Seokjin crouches on the ground and runs a soothing hand over his clammy skin. Yoongi is watching with wide-eyed realization as Taehyung continues to speak, some of his words fading out before he can get to them.
“I didn’t want him to hurt people when he went rogue for being around me, so I let them take his power away. Look at us, brother,” Taehyung babbles, eyes unseeing but hands gripping at Seokjin. “We kept our powers and hurt people.”
Seokjin shakes his head, runs his fingers around the base of Taehyung’s horns. “If we had denied ourselves, we would have been worse,” he whispers to him. He shushes Taehyung softly, places comforting caresses on his cheek. “We would have been worse,” he repeats. It sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself.
Taehyung and Seokjin, in their own twisted way, had convinced themselves they were choosing a lesser evil. Or perhaps they were. Perhaps denying themselves would have caused the darkness to consume them sooner, but as it is, Taehyung’s sanity is leaving him. He hadn’t been acting rational, neither of them have, and he had justified indulgence with false reason. It doesn’t matter, Yoongi decides, if Taehyung had no bad intentions, if Taehyung had thought he loved Namjoon, because Namjoon’s clinging to Hoseok with pained eyes and no voice and defeat in the lines of his shoulders.
Yoongi is a fairy, so he knows how this works. If he’ll take from them, he’ll have to give to them. Eye for an eye—fairies take a limb for an eye—and so Yoongi must give more to take Namjoon’s voice back.
He closes his eyes, makes his way to the doors, and sets his head on the hard metal for a moment just to steel himself. Namjoon’s voice in exchange for his light: Yoongi would give it. Even if it means his wings will be taken from him. Even if it means he can never return to this land he calls home.
NINE
Jungkook finds the demon who saved him in a diner situated in a nicer area of town. The place is unfamiliar to him because he truthfully doesn’t remember much of the night he’d nearly died, but he does remember the path he took home the day after.
He approaches Jungkook with a leisurely gait, a black apron hanging from a thick neck, broad shoulders, and cinching around a tapered waist, slim hips.
“You’re back,” he says as he reaches the table Jungkook is seated at. “You ran away so quickly after you woke that I thought you’d seen a ghost.”
Jungkook licks his lips and raises his gaze to the demon’s. There’s something in his gut that clenches at the sight of him, and it could be a coincidence, a crazy coincidence, but the feeling had grown much too strong to ignore. Jimin had always told him to trust his gut, said that it was one of the few things that had ever been honest, so he eyes the demon for a few seconds more and asks the question that could end him.
“What’s your name?” he asks. His hands are strung together tightly, and he’s sure his anxiety is feeding the demon’s form at this very moment.
The demon’s eyes are amused, but Jungkook thinks they always are. There’s something playful about him, like he always has a trick up his sleeve, but something tells him that’s less characteristic of him as an individual than him as a demon. It’s an expression that invokes irritation, and it’s taking a lot not to let it get to him.
“Kim Seokjin.”
The place is still, but everything seems to swing in and out of perspective. The tiles rush upwards, lights suddenly sharp, and the scents of vanilla and grease grow stronger. In Jungkook’s eyes, Seokjin’s face sharpens, plump lips shifting into an upward V, horns suddenly looking dangerous. It’s a smile so unsettling that Jungkook finds himself closing his eyes. How much must Namjoon have loved Taehyung if he could have stayed in his presence for so long, held on despite this despair and wrongness in his gut.
“Kim Seokjin,” Jungkook repeats. He takes a deep breath, opens his eyes so he can see each emotion flitting past the demon’s face. “Do you know Min Yoongi?”
He sees darkness flicker in the recesses of his eyes, sees his teeth clench as his large hands settle on his hips. His lips pull into a smile, one that’s a little alarmed, a little angry. He sits across Jungkook, eyeing him all the while, and only speaks when the silence begins to choke Jungkook’s neck.
“It’s been a while since I’ve heard that name.”
Jungkook’s lips twist into a wry smile.
Seokjin smiles back, that same, angry little smile. “You’re a Patroller, right?” he asks, and then without waiting for a reply, “Are you here to kill me?”
“Maybe,” Jungkook says with a slight tilt of his head. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t really feel like I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not rogue,” Jungkook says.
An expression of shock crosses Seokjin’s face before he’s laughing, bitter and mocking. “I’m surprised that’s coming from a Patroller who was attacking vampires who weren’t rogue yet.”
Jungkook swallows shallowly, feels his stomach lurch at the thought. Somehow, Seokjin knows exactly what to say to hurt him. “They were beyond saving, and you know that.”
Seokjin’s expression shifts, and his anger turns into something sad, like he’s already grieving. “Then I guess you should kill me too.”
“Why?” Jungkook asks. “Why, when just weeks earlier, you saved a Patroller from death. You could have watched them kill me and fed off my fear, but you didn’t.”
“Maybe I’m not rogue now, but if the rogue have to die, then kill me as well.”
Jungkook’s jaw clenches. He needs Seokjin to listen. “I know everything, alright? I know about what happened, why Yoongi lost his wings, but he needs peace right now. You don’t know how bad he’s getting—he’s sick.”
“He’s going rogue,” Seokjin says with an intense gaze.
“How did you know?”
“It was expected. Fairies are tricksters, but they’re filial. Losing their wings—it’s worse than death. It’s the loss of family. It’s alienation. If he does go rogue, what will you do?”
Jungkook swallows thickly. “I’ll kill him.”
Seokjin closes his eyes briefly, stands and beckons Jungkook over as he begins to walk away as though he’s asking for Jungkook to follow him. He waves at the girl behind the counter, tosses her a set of keys from his pocket and walks out with Jungkook at his heels.
“You think I can help him?” Seokjin asks. His steps are large and hurried.
Jungkook matches his pace, shoulders set. “Fuck if I know,” he says. “But if his burden is even a little bit lightened, then there’s hope.”
“Then let me show you something,” Seokjin says. He turns just slightly to meet Jungkook’s eyes. “Don’t be too disheartened.”
TEN
Seokjin’s home is surprisingly modest. It’s smaller than Namjoon’s apartment, but it has higher ceilings and a well-kept appearance. The kitchen is stocked, tables wiped clean, and floors moderately free from clutter. It creates the impression of a functional member of society, someone who’s not exactly well-off but certainly not struggling either. It feels like a home, just a little too cold.
“You want a drink?” Seokjin asks him. His entire demeanor seems almost flat, like he’s being asked to perform a task that doesn’t quite appeal to him.
He pulls a clear pitcher from the squat refrigerator and pours himself a glass of water that immediately condenses the air around the glass, frosting over and then rolling in heavy beads downwards. Jungkook watches him drink it down, says, “No, thanks.”
There are three rooms in Seokjin’s home. The hallway leads to three doors: Seokjin’s room, a guest room, and a bathroom down the hall. The guest room has a deadbolt on the outside, a carved triquetra right in the center, and a single potted plant hanging from a peg above the door, leaves yellowed and half-dead.
Jungkook sets his palm on the door, and he feels numbness move its way up his arm. The sensation is followed by something hopeless and bitter and so damn empty. It feels like suffering set on loop, and it clouds over his eyes, blocks his ears. He’s pulled from the door, and the numbness subsides, but the emptiness is replaced by anger, a strange sort of irritability that stems from something within himself. In that moment, he resents everything—demons and fairies, his fucking job, himself for meeting Namjoon, for getting involved in something that could only hurt him.
It’s Seokjin’s hand on his shoulder, tugging him away. “That’s not a good idea,” he remarks.
Jungkook speaks through gritted teeth and blazing eyes, “What?”
“Touching anything in a demon’s home,” he says. “We’re dangerous, haven’t you heard?”
Jungkook turns, defenses high. “We don’t have the time to joke around,” he says. “Yoongi is losing himself, and you’re—you’re speaking like you aren’t responsible.”
Seokjin pushes him back. “I’m very much responsible,” he admits, “but is anyone really blameless?” He sighs heavily, and he leans his form onto the guest room door. “Namjoon knew he was digging his own grave getting involved with Tae, whether he deluded himself into thinking it would be good for him or not. Taehyung continued seeing Namjoon when he knew nothing good would come out of it. Yoongi willingly sacrificed his wings.”
“And you watched,” Jungkook hisses with his lips curled in distaste. “You watched it tear them apart, watched your brother gorge himself on Namjoon’s despair and fed on his suffering as well.”
“Take a step back,” Seokjin says, and it’s so sudden that Jungkook momentarily forgets his anger.
“No, I—”
“That’s Taehyung making you angry right now.” Seokjin strokes one of the dying leaves spilling from the sides of the orange-brown clay. “He isn’t in a very good state today.”
Jungkook breathes in so sharply that something twinges in his ribs. “Taehyung’s here?” he says.
Seokjin inclines his chin towards the door. “In there. I wanted you to see.”
The anger drains out through Jungkook’s skin, leaving his skin prickled with goosebumps. His heart is thudding in his chest, and Seokjin can probably taste his anxiety. Taehyung too.
“Tae,” Seokjin calls out, forehead set against the door. His broad shoulders hunch forward, and he looks small in this moment, like the weight he’s so bravely carrying is crushing him bit by bit. “I’m coming in with a friend.”
Something crashes from inside, something blunt being thrown against the wall. Seokjin looks uneasy, but he unbolts the door, runs his fingers over the carving before pushing the door open.
That same horrible wave of sensation and emotion spills from the room like thick smoke filling Jungkook’s lungs and pushing at his ribs until the crack and wrapping around his heart, squeezing until it’s pounding to stay alive.
The room is entirely dark. The window on one wall is barricaded with wooden planks. Books, pens, and balls of crumpled paper lay discarded at the edges of the room, and at the center is a single bed. Seokjin feels up the wall and clicks on the light. It doesn’t turn on immediately, flickering first with this buzzing sound, and Jungkook hears metal clink against metal. When the light floods the room, he hears a loud hiss, and his eyes land on the person curled up in bed, cowering from the light like it burns.
“Tae,” Seokjin calls out. “Want to tell me how you feel today?”
The figure shifts, and his black long-sleeved shirt hangs from his frame loosely, elbows jutting through the thin fabric almost sickeningly. He’s wearing black pyjamas that tighten at the ankles, white socks on his feet through which his toes curl. He’s fidgeting with something, something that glints in the light, and Jungkook realizes they’re cuffs attached to a string of chain looped through the rungs. His hands are shaking, and he looks like he’s closing it around his wrist desperately instead of trying to break free.
“You don’t have to chain yourself,” Seokjin says. There’s a smile on his lips but nothing but pain in his eyes. The despair is overwhelming, and it’s coming from the both of them. Jungkook doesn’t think he can breathe like this, live like this.
The figure turns, and the face that greets them is one with a beauty yet untouched by madness. His cheeks are slightly sunken, bags purpling under his eyes, skin ashen, but his eyes are wide and pretty, framed with thick lashes. His nose boasts a tall, strong bridge, and there’s a beauty mark by his bottom lip. It’s Taehyung, it must be. Jungkook can see Namjoon with him, running his rough hands over Taehyung’s dark, outgrown hair. He can see him staring into Taehyung’s large doll-eyes and holding his shaky hands.
It should alarm him how he can see so clearly why Namjoon would have liked a demon like him, but it’s staring him in the face as plain as day, inexplicable and somehow unexplainable. Namjoon becoming infatuated and maybe falling in love with Taehyung is something Jungkook can see because Taehyung is beautiful to the point of intimidation, and yet there’s something lost and young in his eyes that Jungkook knows Namjoon would do anything to protect. Taehyung and Jungkook are the same in the way they both need something, emotion or comfort or escape, and Namjoon is someone who loves to provide, fill in all those empty spaces with his large hands and his warm heart.
Taehyung’s voice is hoarse when he speaks. “I don’t feel good today.” Then, he looks at Jungkook as his eyes shift into focus. “You’re familiar.”
Seokjin strides to the bed, leaves enough space in between them to back off if asked. “I’ve brought him home before,” he explains. “I guess you recognize the feel of his pain.”
Jungkook moves closer as well. He feels uneasy, a little dizzy, and upset in his mind and chest and throat. “Why are you showing me this?” he asks Seokjin. He can’t stop hurt from seeping into his tone, even when the hurt isn’t his own.
“Because I need you to understand that I can’t do much,” he says. “Taehyung is—he’s never been good at controlling the darkness. It consumes him if he doesn’t feed it, and he hasn’t allowed it anything since—since Namjoon.”
He looks at Jungkook. “I can’t help my own brother,” he whispers. “So how can I help Yoongi?”
Taehyung looks up at them. His eyes are completely black, but he doesn’t seem evil just yet. “Yoongi?” he asks. He sounds small and upset and somehow a little heartbroken.
Jungkook brings himself down to his knees and eye to eye with Taehyung. “Yoongi’s going rogue,” he says. He watches Taehyung’s shoulders stiffen and his hands tug at the chains around them. “I think if he had a bit of peace, maybe he’d get a little better. And—and maybe the same goes with you.”
“And if I can’t help him?” Taehyung asks. His hands grow lax from where they’re chained, and Seokjin reaches for them, runs his fingers over the reddened skin.
Jungkook watches Seokjin grab a key from his pocket and listens to the click of Taehyung’s hands being freed. If he’s sane enough to protect others from himself, he’s not too far gone. Jungkook sets a hand on his shoulder, “Then we’ll find another way.”
ELEVEN
Yoongi looks almost normal when he meets Seokjin again. They’re in this hole-in-the-wall restaurant with dim lighting and stone tables, only a single waiter with a pencil set on his ear waiting to take their order.
Yoongi’s eyes are clear today, and the darkness in his veins are only wrapped around his wrists, faint like a fading bruise. His jeans are ripped, shirt loose, but his hair looks like it’s been carefully styled, maybe a hint of balm on his normally cracked lips. He doesn’t look angry when he sees Seokjin and Taehyung. It’s Namjoon next to him with his jaw set in that way Jungkook recognizes from the times he’s angry, upset, feeling wronged, who looks like he might start yelling. “What is this?” he asks Jungkook.
“I wanted to help,” Jungkook says. He’s feeling nervous, biting down on his bottom lip and tugging at the short strands of hair at the back of his neck.
“Help?” Namjoon grits out. His gaze is directed at Taehyung, and his fingers grip the table tightly. Hoseok reaches across from where he’s tensely seated next to Seokjin and taps at Namjoon’s fingers.
“Let’s hear him out, okay?” Hoseok says. He’s got a shaky smile on, grasping at a semblance of peace. The smell of electricity in the air is strong though, something that could only be from Hoseok’s magic begging for release through his long fingers.
Seokjin tucks his hands underneath his chin as he sets his elbows on the cold table, and his forehead tightens in an irritated sort of way. His shoulders are stiff and on guard. “I didn’t want to do this either,” he says underneath his breath.
Namjoon sighs, slumping forward as though defeated. “Then why are you here?” he whispers.
Taehyung reaches forward with his shaky hands, looking smaller than Jungkook had seen him days prior, and although his eyes look dark, they’re glistening with tears. “Namjoon, hey, I’m sorry.”
Namjoon looks up, and Jungkook notes the way his eyes can’t seem to leave Taehyung’s face. Maybe he still loves him, even just a little, and Jungkook supposes that’s okay—if he has to wait to receive that love.
“I,” Namjoon starts with a breathy tone, “I don’t understand why you would lead us around in circles, ruin our fucking lives, and then it’s radio silence for so months. And now you show up saying you want to help?”
Taehyung flinches, “It was shitty, I know.” It’s jarring to see his deep, melodic voice reduced to a small mumble.
“It’s been hard on us too,” Seokjin snaps. His hand is on Taehyung’s shoulder.
Namjoon opens his mouth to retort, likely something angry and poisonous, but Yoongi speaks first. “I know,” he says, “As much as I dislike what you’ve done, I don’t exactly like seeing Taehyung go rogue.”
Taehyung licks his lips. His body is shaking, and he has his eyes closed in a determined sort of way. “I’m not here to start anything,” he says, “so please calm down and listen.”
Seokjin nods from beside him. “Getting upset only feeds his demon.”
“So what are you here to do?” Yoongi asks. His eyes flash black for just a moment before they’re back to a glossed brown.
“We want to get your wings back,” Taehyung blurts out. “W—we know how much wings mean to a fairy, and you didn’t want to lose your wings, so, so it must be that loss that’s making you go rogue.”
His hands are twitching now, and Jungkook can feel Namjoon grow agitated next to him. Even he can feel the despair now, anger and bitterness coiled in his throat. It’s Taehyung’s aura intensifying around them, growing in stifling coils of dark energy wrapped around their skin. It must difficult for Taehyung to control, especially when being out like this means it’s so easy for him to fall into his needs.
Streaks of red move across the table to wrap around Taehyung’s wrists, and they all watch Taehyung flinch like Hoseok’s magic burns, and maybe it does, but the heaviness in the air subsides. Taehyung looks at Hoseok, nods a silent thanks.
“All we want is a little peace of mind,” Seokjin says. His eyes keep drifting back to Taehyung, but he doesn’t say a word about the magic cuffing Taehyung in. “If you could forgive him—us—I think it would help. I’m sorry about what happened before, about running away too, so…”
Silence falls for a few long moments, and Jungkook shifts uncomfortably. He feels almost like an outsider like this, with Namjoon by his side but truly so far away. Taehyung is looking at the curling red around his wrists, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.
“I was more hurt than angry,” Namjoon breaks the silence first. He’s silent, and he sounds calmer than he’s been since they’ve met. Jungkook jumps when he feels Namjoon’s hands reach to grip his own, tight and clammy and shaking. He squeezes back with a soft smile.
“I knew it was in your nature from the very start, and I knew you weren’t good for me. I knew how hard you were trying to control yourself, and I knew how bad I was for you too. I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I really, god, I really loved you, so it hurt when you disappeared.”
Taehyung doesn’t look up, but he nods. “I’m sorry.”
Yoongi jerks his chin upwards in acknowledgment. “Hey, I’m not mad either,” he says.
Hoseok opens his palms, and his magic flows back into his fingers. He smiles at Taehyung and Seokjin, and though his eyes aren’t exactly happy, his dimples settle briefly next to his pretty lips. “We warlocks aren’t the type to get angry, really,” he says. “If you can help Yoongi, I’ll consider it even.”
Taehyung finally lifts his head and studies Namjoon’s expression. He shifts his gaze to Jungkook as if aware that their hands are held together so tightly. He smiles softly, a little sad, a little hopeful. “We have a plan.”
TWELVE
“You took way too long, you ass,” Jimin calls out as Jungkook arrives. He’s in a sleeveless black tank and tight skinnies, but his jacket’s draped over his shoulders like he’s waited too long and gotten cold. His cheeks have a tinge of red to them, and his hair is messy from the wind.
“Yeah,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes. Namjoon has his arm slung around Jungkook’s shoulders, and Yoongi’s trailing behind them with Hoseok’s hand in his. Taehyung and Seokjin are following with grim expressions.
Jimin strides over when they get close enough, and he appraises Namjoon with mildly curious eyes. His plump lips press together, and he runs a hand through his thick hair. “Do you know how dangerous this is?” he asks, tone betraying just how nervous he is.
From the corner of his eye, Jungkook spots a group of girls, high off of fairy dust, stumble out of the wide doors. One of them, a slim kitsune, is barely lucid in the arms of her friend, two tails gone from her usual nine. He grits his teeth and directs his gaze upward, to the large blinking sign with curved velvet purple text spelling the ominous: Fantasia.
“We’re well aware,” Jungkook answers.
Seokjin speaks from where he’d stopped next to Jungkook. Taehyung is bundled up beside him, a thick beanie atop his outgrown hair. “Truth is,” he says, gaze fixated on the sign, “It’s scarier to make a deal with fairies than to make a deal with demons. We’re honest, at least.”
From Namjoon’s side, Yoongi scoffs. “Nah, they’re equally bad. Don’t make deals, period.” The darkness in his veins is more prominent than earlier, stretching up his arms and creating faint marks on his neck. Jungkook looks away. He’s fine. His eyes are clear.
Hoseok laughs from beside him. It’s more nervous than anything. He has a ball of energy in his right palm, tossing it upwards and catching it like it’s habit. “Coming from you, that’s a little funny.”
Namjoon ignores the two as they banter and focuses his attention on Jimin. “Jungkook said you could help?”
Jimin cocks his hip and flicks his fringe away from his pale skin. “I’m here to give advice, mostly,” he says. “If anything goes wrong though, I guess I’m on clean up duty again.”
Jungkook senses Seokjin stifle laughter from beside him. At a different time, he might have laughed too, but there’s no way he could lighten up enough to even try. Jimin’s a demon too, one that has no horns, no bitterness in his aura, no power. Jimin’s a demon who had made a deal with a fairy, one that ended to his benefit, somehow.
Taehyung lifts his lips, chapped and pale, “You’re a demon?” he asks.
The music from inside seems to grow louder. It’s something light and otherworldly, something vaguely addictive. The sign flickers, and Jimin’s expression changes as it’s darkened and subsequently illuminated. “I am,” he confirms.
“But you have—”
“No darkness?” Jimin asks with a smile. The lilt in his tone is unnerving.
Taehyung nods, and Seokjin’s expression shifts from amused to uneasy.
“I gave my power up a long time ago. Never wanted it in the first place. Being a demon only gives you the type of power that makes you weak, really, so I made a deal in there. I gave them my powers in exchange for a small favor.”
Seokjin’s lips twitch. “So if Taehyung gives his horns up, gives his abilities up, can Yoongi get his wings back?”
Jimin tilts his head. “No,” he says. “One pair of horns for one pair of wings—the fairies would consider that a loss. It’s too fair for them. A fairy’s wings are their home, their sense of belonging, their sanity and their vanity, it’s what makes up such a large part of their identities. Plus, fairies like pretty things. I’m sure his wings are prettier than your horns.”
Seokjin sighs, “Then what?”
Jimin smiles. He reaches his small hands up and sets his finger on the tip of Seokjin’s horns. “Two pairs of horns, however,” he says. “Two of them and maybe they’ll consider.”
Seokjin recoils from Jimin’s touch. He runs his own hands over the curve of his horns, and his lips twist downwards. He nods slowly, “Alright.”
“One last thing,” Jimin says, “you can’t get Yoongi’s wings back if he isn’t physically in there, so he has to come in with you.”
Jungkook bites his lip and feels his head start to pound. The music is thrumming in his head now, and he feels tired. He lets his body slump on Namjoon’s arm, and Namjoon squeezes his shoulders and presses a kiss into his hair. “They won’t let him in,” Jungkook sighs.
“You can only enter Fantasia if you haven’t made a deal with them yet or if you’re a fairy,” Hoseok says.
“And once you lose your wings, you’re off the register,” Yoongi says. His lip pulls up on one side in a wry smile, but the hope dies out in his eyes.
Jimin crosses his arms. “I still have a favor to cash in,” he says with a smile. “So getting you in really isn’t a problem.”
Yoongi’s head snaps up, and his normally lidded, uninterested eyes widen in surprise and something close to gratitude. Seokjin tugs at Taehyung’s wrist and looks over his shoulder at the rest of them. He smiles, something genuine, “Then I guess we’re getting your wings back.”
THIRTEEN
Play Dirty is always crowded in the new year. If anything, the place seems seedier and more rundown than before, and people are getting drunk and hooking up everywhere Jungkook looks. He appreciates it a little more now though, now when he’s not chasing down some rogue and drinking bloody drinks at the counter.
There’s something grossly charming about the area with sex and booze in the air, dim lights and warm bodies, and Namjoon center stage with matted hair and his jacket thrown off his shoulders. Jungkook looks at the stage with hazy eyes and twirls his bat lazily. The badge on his jacket still reads Patroller.
On stage, Hoseok has a guitar in hand, red spilling form his fingers and dancing around his arms to the beat of the song. Namjoon’s smiling, dimples prominent, hooded eyes confidently seeking the audience, and there’s a new tattoo on his arm, black wings like chiffon and dark wire. Jungkook turns to the keyboard, to the pale hands pressing at the keys, to the black hair shifting as the man nods his head to the beat. Yoongi looks so much better, barely any darkness in his veins, and there’s shimmer on his skin, a flushed tint on his lips. Behind him, large and beautiful and thrown open wide are a set of wings. They’re black and sheer but webbed with black, pointed at the ends like a dragonfly’s, and they flutter every once in a while, so damn alive. Jungkook smiles. He’s fine.
When they get off stage, Jungkook joins them with a drink in hand. He sucks on a slice of lime, pops it out, and presses his lips into Namjoon’s firm, spit slick ones. Namjoon’s sweaty and much too warm, but he drops his mic to wrap his arm around Jungkook’s waist, slides a little lower to squeeze at his ass. Jungkook pulls away for air, and Namjoon trails wet lips down his neck. “You were pretty hot up there,” he says, giggling at the feeling.
“Yeah,” Namjoon says, eyes sparkling mischievously, “And you look pretty hot all the time.”
“Okay, break it up,” a voice sounds from behind them. Seokjin’s there, eyes lined with black, broad shoulders bare, and he has a mic in hand. Taehyung is bundled up next to him, and his hands are shaking a little, there’s still a little crazy in his eyes—there will always be a little crazy in his eyes—but he’s smiling now. His movements seem lighter, his horns are gone, and his skin is colored with a faint tan, flushed now that he’s not locked up in guilt.
Yoongi rolls his eyes, wings moving to smack Seokjin’s back. “Move,” he says.
Taehyung laughs and picks the mic up off the ground. “Come on, Jin,” he calls.
Jungkook watches them make their way on stage, hears the cheer of the intoxicated crowd. Namjoon pulls him backstage as Hoseok whoops and presses another kiss to his lips.
Namjoon tugs his jacket off fully and moves to pull his tank off his body.
Jungkook chuckles as he wraps his arms around Namjoon’s waist. “You don’t seem like the type to mess around with a Patroller, siren,” he teases.
Namjoon slips his fingers under Jungkook’s shirt and circles the skin underneath. Jungkook pulls Namjoon closer, rutting into his strong thighs. “I don’t seem like the type to love you either, but here I am,” Namjoon whispers into his skin.
Namjoon smiles, the one that makes Jungkook want to stay by his side all the time, the one that shows a bit of teeth and shows his dimples and leaves his eyes a little glossed and hazy. The one that makes Jungkook want to say he loves him too.
So he does. He pulls Namjoon close and presses his lips to his, wraps his legs around Namjoon waist and swipes his tongue over his lips. “Glad you’re are the type then,” he says, voice rough and husky and a little out of it. “Because I love you too.”