DNA

by AlainaMill

Summary:

The only thing that saves Jeongguk from always feeling alone is Taehyung,

Taehyung only knows how to be alone but somehow fate always brings him to Jeongguk.

Notes:

The underage tag is because they reference sex a lot and make out a bit when they're younger but still 16+

The fic is basically time skips of Jeongguk growing up with their broken lives always leading them to meet again in bad places when they do bad things to the point where it simply must be wired in their DNA that they end up together

Chapter 1: i. ii.

In September of 2007, Jeongguk has just barely turned ten years old. In September of 2007, his mother passes away.

 

Orphan. This is what that makes him. Technically, he has a father. Realistically, his father doesn’t know he has him. Jeongguk doesn’t quite understand what the system is, but it sounds all big, governmental and, frankly, scary. If it weren’t for people telling him that he was going in the system, though, perhaps it could have sounded cool. The system.

 

The System. Sounds like something out of an action film, and currently, at the vulnerable age of ten, that is his genre of choice, favorite movies necessitate a large dosage of action. The System. He imagines spies when he hears it, doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t let fantasies run too wild in his head, because he starts picturing the bad guys as well and he doesn’t know how to fight them without his mother.

 

The System.

 

It’s him that’s going in it. Him. Alone. Without his mother. He’s always had his mother. His mother has always held his hand whenever he needed it, at the dentist, when he had to get shots done, when he watched that horror movie he wasn’t supposed to and she was marginally angry, but she still let him sleep next to her because he was scared.

 

He doesn’t really understand death. But he knows it means she will no longer be there. Like it was with his grandfather. He died and he was no longer there. When a person dies, Jeongguk knows, they become a memory. They become as virtual as the movies he watches, conceptual, they join the fantasies in his head as a figment of his imagination. They still exist, if he thinks of them, they do. But they can say nothing new, do nothing new. They can no longer hold his hand.

 

The lady smiles at him and he doesn’t know what she means to gain out of it, however it does anything but put him at ease. She speaks to him in a voice he is not dumb enough to think is her natural one, but he doesn’t tell her to stop. He doesn’t tell her anything. He doesn’t speak. For three days straight he says nothing. 

 

It annoys the woman who takes him in. A foster home for boys, that’s what he’s taken to. Currently there are six more of him there, of orphans, he’s told. He’s an orphan now. That means he doesn’t have a mother and a father anymore. Most of the boys there, most of the orphans, are around his age. The lady explains all this to him with that same voice and that same smile. When she hasn’t taken it off her lips for two days straight, it starts to border on creepy, like it was in that one movie he wasn’t supposed to watch but he did. His mother isn’t there to hold his hand this time when the grinning lady’s lips pull and her shiny teeth bare with a sparkling glint. 

 

Dinner is when he is supposed to meet everyone. People he is apparently going to live with before they find him an actual home. This is temporary, the grinning lady promises as she steers the wheel, but Mrs. Park will do anything to make him feel comfortable.

 

Quite frankly, Mrs. Park does not at all make him feel comfortable. Her palm is very wide and her fingers are short but big and he does not at all want to hold her hand.

 

Not that she offers. 

 

Without introductions, he is put at a table with six other boys and this woman and he already feels she hates him. She has asked him seventeen questions. He has been counting. He counts, sometimes. He’s answered none. Zero. Still, she puts him at the table. Some other boy places the food in front of him, in a ceramic patterned plate that is chipped off at one side. He isn’t exactly hungry, but his mother would want him to eat, so he does. He stares down at the plate and eats. 

 

The house he is in is big, but it isn’t huge. It’s old. The floor is authentic wood and it makes a very distinctive creaking noise when people step. All eight inhabitants eat together. The tables are two, pressed together, and the chairs they sit on aren’t a set. They’re different. Jeongguk wants one with a cushion, but he doesn’t get one, and he certainly isn’t about to ask for it, so he settles on hard outdoor McDonald’s metal and struggles not to move too much, because it makes sounds. The boys are not loud, but they aren’t quiet either. The noise of their presence is like a buzz to him. It’s unintelligible to his ears, just a noise, perpetual and humming, a very solid presence in his senses. 

 

Senses. He sees bland food, tastes bland food, smells a myriad of indistinct scents, touches the rigid metal of a rusting fork, hears the sound of those boys. 

 

Jeongguk stays there for two days before they find him an aunt.

 

He stays there for two days and yet he still manages to miss it, or rather, him. He manages to miss him. The him who sits across from him on the table, watching him with wide, glazed eyes. His face is round, cheeks full and his hair is cut wrong and crooked over his forehead. The him has a pout on his lips when he chews. His lips pucker up, press together as his teeth move over whatever he’s stuffed puffy cheeks with. He’s barely blinking and Jeongguk wants to tell him to look away, he can almost feel the glassy gaze on him.

 

The eyes make him wary when Jeongguk himself is gnawing down food. The first bite makes him aggravatingly aware of his hunger. As he swallows and food slips down in his stomach, he feels it shift, bowels growl and suddenly he wants to maul it all, no matter how it tastes of nothing other than the overwhelming salt of soy sauce. 

 

All the boys eat fast, shoveling down food, directly into their throats. Some of them fail to even chew. The boy in front of him is slow. He savors the food in his mouth. His lips smack a bit with it, it’s almost noisy, but the chewing doesn’t bother Jeongguk. The incessant looking does.

 

He raises his own eyes to him under bangs several times, peaks at him to question with a gaze why this ceaseless observation is necessary, but the boy simply remains—shameless and staring. Jeongguk cannot hold his eyes for too long, meets them for barely seconds before he stirs his chin down brusquely, hair falling over his forehead and he remains focused on the food in his broken plate. 

 

Chores. Mrs. Park explains to him about chores first thing after dinner. He has to do his part for this household, she instructs most sternly, looking at him nearly haughty over a raised chin and a long nose. And to teach him the importance of chores she assigns to him dish duty that very night. Some other boy carries the dishes from the table to the sink. He has to wash. 

 

He nods when she speaks, but he stands helpless and confused before the sink as the others pile out of the room, chatter erupting as their mouths are no longer full of food. There is something so very lonely about it all. He thinks he didn’t feel as lonely when he was alone the past three days. Today when all the others speak and he stands, mute and perplexed, unfamiliar, the stranger to these strangers, he feels the solitude blur into harsh loneliness.

 

He used to help his mother with the dishes, yet a sink was never as intimidating. He stares ahead with his lids stretched to the very corner. His mouth quivers. It’s ridiculous. He’s not really a crier, he has hardly cried during his first ten years of life, and he has not shed a tear since the death of his mother. His sadness is poignant, perhaps too much to be channeled into just salty water. But right now he simply cannot find the detergent and he has to ask where it is, but he can’t and he doesn’t think he has ever felt so helpless before, so utterly helpless and he knew neither loneliness nor helplessness before and his whole chin is trembling with his need to just break down, but he holds it.

 

He holds it until a hand pushes at him gently. Long, thin fingers touch at his shoulder. They allow him to flinch as he turns, blinks away moisture as his gaze finds the boy from across the table. He says nothing, just permits his hand to gently suggest he moves away. The boy pushes him until he frees the space in front of the sink, and squats before it. He opens a drawer underneath it, takes out the detergent Jeongguk desperately needs and straightens on his feet.

 

“Here,” he says, stretching his hand forward. Big eyes blink at him. The boy has an inch or two on him certainly. Tall, he’s tall. He’s incredibly skinny, bony and tan, the bone of his wrist protrudes as he holds it out towards him.  

 

Jeongguk layers his eyes over him, searching for any clear sign that he is one of the bad guys, but by all indication, he seems to be just a boy. He’s wearing a big, grey t-shirt, certainly not his size and there is something mildly comforting in how bad his haircut is. His eyes are big, but he isn’t scary.

 

So, Jeongguk reaches forward, wraps his fingers around the detergent, careful not to touch his own. He wants to say thank you, but he doesn’t, only nods. The boy lets go, long fingers peel off and he lets his arm fall down to his thigh. Jeongguk’s eyes trail after if for some reason. His hand perhaps looks a bit nicer to hold. 

 

He pries his eyes away, snaps them up to his face to venture another nod that he hopes conveys enough of his gratitude. The boy grins back at this as if he has spoken to him. His lips stretch to corners, stretch so far back Jeongguk thinks he sees all his teeth. It makes his eyes crease slightly, his cheeks getting even rounder to accommodate the pull of his mouth.

 

Jeongguk blinks at him, confused. He hasn’t seen a genuine smile in a while. He’s uncomfortable with how it makes him feel comfortable, so he spins away, gets on his tip toes to reach the faucet and starts the sink. The sound of water running blurs the boy’s presence, blurs his exit from the room. 

 

“Find a bed.” That’s what Mrs. Park says. Find a bed. She doesn’t tell him where to sleep, doesn’t take his hand and lead him to a warm bed. Find a bed.

 

There are two rooms for the boys, both of which are full. There are six beds and he doesn’t know if she knows this. There is no bed for him. He has never felt more awkward in his life, hanging by the door of one room, head tilted down toward the floor as his eyes take subtle glimpses around the space to find an empty bed. His fingers coil around each other, pulling at the end of the fabric of his shirt. He’s twisted it so much at this point, palms sweating into it and it makes it all the more wrinkled. His mother didn’t use to like it when he walked around with wrinkles in his clothes, but he needs to do something with his hands.

 

He shuffles his feet across the hallway to the next room. He doesn’t lift them too much off the floor because it creaks loudly if he does and he would rather his own presence was as small to the others as he feels himself to be. He would very much like to disappear completely if he could. He wants to be where his mother is, he misses her. He wants her to hold his hand and he doesn’t understand why she can’t come back and do just that. She’s always there when he needs her and he has never needed her more, never felt more alone. 

 

He hovers with raising emptiness at the doorstep of the other room, his fingers twirling restless, palms stretching the fabric of his shirt. He doesn’t know how emptiness can be so full. He knows little about feelings as a whole, mainly the basics, so he cannot put into words what goes on in him entirely. Mostly he feels lost.

 

Slowly, he does start to learn about emotions like this, one by one. He feels as if he forgets all he knows by now and he needs to start all over. Today he learns loneliness, learns helplessness. He learns loss. 

 

There is one empty bed in that room, but the sheets are thrown off as if someone had been recently there. Two of the boys in the previous room had been murmuring to themselves, but both that are currently in this one are asleep, one of them whistling a soft snore in his slumber. Jeongguk thinks he remembers from the dinner table that he had a runny nose. 

 

He rubs at his own, chasing away a curious sensation there, too. It feels itchy. 

 

The sound of a toilet flushing makes him jump slightly where he stands, his eyes peeling wider as he hears running water and then a door open. The steps are distinctive on the parquet flooring. They near. Jeongguk’s heart runs wild in his chest, thumpthumpthump, and he keeps his head down. If he looks down, maybe they won’t notice him.

 

He counts. Counting helps, counting always helped. He simultaneously counts the steps taken and the beats of his heart.

 

He loses the number when he feels a palm on his shoulder. He sinks his body immediately down, ducks away from the touch and spins. He’s almost not surprised to see the boy with the big eyes standing there a few inches from him. His eyes shine in the darkness of the hallway, but he recognizes him with the dim light of a night lamp that is turned on in the room he had been observing.

 

“Hey,” the boy murmurs quiet. It’s a whisper, sounds private. Jeongguk cocks his head, stands there silent, but he is almost convinced by now this boy is not one of the bad guys, so he lingers, nods to him again.

 

“What are you doing up?” The boy asks yet again in a murmur. “Bed time has passed,” he shakes his head, his wide eyes growing somehow wider, “Mrs. Park doesn’t like it when we’re up past bed time.” 

 

Jeongguk’s teeth gnaw at his lip, eyes finding the floor once more. He inadvertently sees his palms rub into his shirt, twist more wrinkles into it, nervous.

 

The boy’s eyes dart behind him through the opened door, flash across both full beds before they land on his own. He raises his brows slightly and glances back at Jeongguk. “You don’t have a bed, do you?”

 

Jeongguk’s teeth sink into the flesh of his mouth harder. He shakes his head, blinks at the floor. 

 

The boy watches him silently for a couple of moments which to Jeongguk are filled with the sound of his own heart drumming loud into his rib cage. The boy taps a finger on his chin, once, twice, mulls it over. 

 

“Come on,” he says next, and Jeongguk’s eyes spark up just in time to see the motion of his head, small and inviting towards the room. “You’re small,” the boy nods to himself. “You’ll fit. Sleep next to me.”

 

His hand raises a tiny bit and Jeongguk thinks maybe he will offer it for him to hold, but he seems to change his mind, draw it back to his thigh, perhaps because Jeongguk flinches away from all his touches, anyway. He doesn’t think he would have pulled away from this one, but it’s too late for that.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes are a bit wide as an aftermath of the suggestion, but his heart seems to relax in his chest. He pulls his lips fully into his mouth, makes them a thin line on his face, a short moment of hesitation, contemplation, but he nods. He has no other place to sleep and this boy with the big eyes is the only person he knows who definitely isn’t a bad guy. 

 

He isn’t, Jeongguk establishes. Bad guys tend to be distorted, unshapely, often they are ugly, and their eyes are certainly not so big. They are slits, evil like a serpent. The only unshapely thing on this boy is the hair. 

 

The boy juts his head again and starts walking. Jeongguk bends his head down but follows, taking exactly the same steps that the boy takes, same pace, same width. 

 

The boy pauses in front of a short wardrobe of drawers, turns to him again. “Do you have a change of clothes for tonight?” He whispers to him.

 

Jeongguk shakes his head. He has a suitcase of his things but there is apparently some adult stuff, as the grinning lady had so maturely put it, in fact some legal procedures to take care of, before she can give him anything that was taken out of his mother’s apartment. 

 

The boy nods, turns back and pulls at one of the drawers. They’re old and wooden like the rest of the house, noisy like the rest of the house, it creaks, and the boy’s lips hiss a bit with it, draw back and flinch as he tries to do it as slow and quiet as he can muster. He rummages a bit through it before he pulls out something with a tug that messes up a couple of the nicely folded fabrics above it. He hands it to Jeongguk, who takes it with minimum reluctance. The boy presses his palm on top of the rest of the clothes, stuffs the fabrics back in and simply closes the drawer with the mess in it. 

 

He glances at Jeongguk again, sees his nervous stare downwards as he shifts the shirt he’s given from hand to hand, rubbing it together. He blinks at him, pulls his lips slightly into his cheeks. “I won’t look,” he promises, reaches a lanky arm up and turns the night lamp off. Jeongguk is shy enough to want the boy to turn away. He’s too shy admit it and it is a bad combination, so he is very much glad the boy reads it on him, though it does make his cheeks heat up a bit that he is that obvious. 

 

He changes his shirt, slips off his jeans. His boxers are long enough to fall over half of his thighs, so he doesn’t mind it all too much, although the prospect of getting into the bed does make him gulp. 

 

“Do you want the inside?” The boy whispers and Jeongguk is quick to shake his head. The bed is pressed up against the wall and sleeping on the inside will leave him essentially trapped. 

 

He only sees the boy nod in the outline the moon creates of him where it peaks through a light curtain in front of the window. He hears him move more than he witnesses it himself, the shuffle of fabric, somehow distinctive as sheets sliding into place. 

 

“Okay,” the boy says when the sound halts. He’s settled, he means. It’s Jeongguk’s turn. He needs a moment, but he’s tired, so awfully tired. His body is desperate for the warmth of a bed, his eyes needy for a long rest.

 

He presses a palm into the mattress, lifts one knee up and gingerly gets into the bed, as far away from the shape he sees of the other boy. It’s virtually impossible not to touch him at all. The bed is single. They share a blanket; they share a pillow. He knows the boy has his back almost entirely pressed into the wall, flush against it to allow for the most space possible for Jeongguk. When he lies down finally, sideways and facing him to track with his eyes how far he is, to know he isn’t touching too much, the boy lifts the blanket and throws it over Jeongguk’s shoulder.

 

Their opposite cheeks rest into the same pillow. 

 

Jeongguk thinks his eyes adapt to the darkness because slowly he starts to see more of his face. He sees his lashes as they fall over his big glinting eyes. Mostly, he sees them, those enormous eyes. They seem to shine. 

 

He feels more comfortable than he reckoned it was possible for him, but the darkness makes it all easier. The fact that there is someone next to him, whose smile is genuine and who doesn’t keep him away from adult stuff makes it easier. This boy is not one of the bad guys in The System.

 

“My name is Taehyung, by the way,” he mumbles to him, mouth squished slightly by the pillow. His cheek is mushier like this. “What’s yours?”

 

He isn’t one of the bad guys.

 

“Jeongguk,” He says. Speaks for the first time since he was told his mother was dead. He can barely recognize his own voice. It’s dry and it gives him the incentive to clear his throat, but his name feels easy to pronounce, nevertheless.

 

“Goodnight, Jeongguk,” the boy yawns, his mouth stretching as wide as his eyes. They close easily in the darkness.

 

He has to learn so many things anew. That first night teaches him gratitude. Sadly, it also teaches him trust, trust for this boy. He should know better. 

 

He’s ten. He can’t know better. 

 

In that very moment, after all, all his senses become him, that him, Taehyung. He sees him, sees the outlines of his face and body in the moonlight. He feels him, feels the heat of his presence and their toes knock together. He hears him, hears him breathe as his breath shallows and evens. He thinks he can also taste that breath. Jeongguk doesn’t brush his own teeth that night, but the taste in his mouth is that of mint. And he smells him. The most powerful sense, the scent. It is entirely encompassed by this boy and it shapes a memory in his head, the memory of Taehyung being there where he was most alone, of Taehyung giving him a shirt to sleep in, a bed to sleep in, of Taehyung giving him a presence beside him. 

 

“Goodnight.”

 

Sometimes, in retrospect, Jeongguk wishes that following morning he had known waking up next to Kim Taehyung is a unique experience. He wishes that boy had somehow hinted to him that he needed to savor because life will teach him not to allow it. But at this point Jeongguk doesn’t care who he wakes up next to as long as they don’t have a twisted grin with shiny teeth bared.

 

The boy smacks his lips twice when he wakes up with his eyes still closed. Jeongguk has been awake for two hours and thirty-four minutes before the other’s lids blink to awareness. He has been counting.

 

The boy—well, Taehyung, now he is Taehyung—is extremely difficult to raise off of bed. He groans, he rotates around the sheets, bundles the blanket and clutches at it with both his arms, stripping it off of Jeongguk to raise one leg on top of it. 

 

He is a messy sleeper as a whole. Jeongguk at that age believes he would never want to sleep next to him if it weren’t for necessity and the comfort of a warm, human presence. Jeongguk at that age is wistfully wrong. 

 

Breakfast is cereal. There are two types. Jeongguk chooses for himself the less sugary one. Taehyung who gets up seventeen minutes after everyone else has finished eating chooses the other. 

 

The day is loud, and the day is a blur. Taehyung has a friend and he tries to introduce him to Jeongguk, but both of them together have too much energy for him to handle and he recoils away from interaction. There is another boy who is quiet, not as quiet as Jeongguk as in borderline mute, but he allows him to sit next to him and watch TV in silence. Jeongguk doesn’t learn his name until he crosses paths with him again several years later when both of them have changed so much. 

 

The grinning lady brings him his suitcase. The first thing he does is brush his teeth with his toothbrush and not with his finger.

 

At night Jeongguk is too shy to ask Taehyung to sleep next to him again. He is still next to that boy on the couch and they are watching an American cartoon that is not meant for children, but Mrs. Park does not necessarily care as long as they are entertained enough not to interrupt her business of arranging newspapers in her basement. There is a gentle tap to his shoulder from behind and he turns to a yawning Taehyung.

 

“I’m going to bed,” he says. “Are you coming?”

 

They fit themselves in it easier this night and when all the lights are out and the boys are sleeping, Jeongguk feels better.

 

He knows by Taehyung’s breathing that he has yet to drift off. Then, he knows by his whispers, “Do you like it here?” 

 

Jeongguk opens his eyes. He thought if he held them closed for long enough, he’d trick himself into falling asleep. He held them closed for one thousand a hundred and forty-two seconds before Taehyung spoke. He shakes his head into the pillow. “I don’t know,” he murmurs back to him.

 

He doesn’t know, but he is certain he prefers Taehyung to the grinning lady. There is some familiarity in slipping into that bed the second night. It smells the same as the previous one, smells like Taehyung.

 

“You’ll get used to it,” Taehyung mutters back to him, whisper ghostly on Jeongguk’s nose. “I always do.”

 

I always do, he says, and it is the first time it hits Jeongguk that those other boys are actually orphans, too. They have as much as he does, suitcases of their belongings and simply memories of their parents that cared about them and not about outdated newspapers. I always do, he says, and suddenly it is even easier for Jeongguk to lie next to this boy.

 

He speaks his name for the first time. “Taehyung,” he whispers tentatively when he sees his eyes fall closed.

 

They part again. Taehyung has his hand between their cheeks, resting gingerly on the surface of the pillow and Jeongguk cannot stop staring at the outlines of his fingers.

 

“Yes?” he prompts into the silence that follows.

 

Jeongguk swallows. “Can I hold your hand?”

 

Taehyung says nothing and, in the darkness, Jeongguk gets so nervous he almost turns his back to him. He cannot gauge anything but the shininess in his eyes, the moon seems weaker today. He’s almost told him to forget it when he sees the hand between them move. It slips down the mattress, searches the space between them, meets Jeongguk’s shuffling one by their stomachs. Their palms slide together, fingers touch. He doesn’t know if it is too bold to intertwine them, but Taehyung is doing it before he can consider.

 

His palm is wide, and his fingers are long, thin. The skin of it is a little dry, but so very soft, warm. It’s universally different from his mother’s hand, but Jeongguk clings onto it, perhaps he squeezes too hard, but he can’t not. 

 

He holds his hand. He holds Taehyung’s hand, finally has a hand to hold, and he thinks, maybe, perhaps, doubtfully, but yet possibly, he could get used to this as well. Maybe things will get better. 

 

But they find him an aunt. 

 

She is his mother’s cousin apparently, and she gets paid to take him in, just like Mrs. Park does. She gets monthly payment for having him as she is not his legal guardian, just a foster parent. That’s how the system works. The money is supposed to be used for caring expenses for Jeongguk. Mrs. Park gets the same amount for every boy she takes in. But this aunt of his apparently has more rights to have him. He doesn’t want anyone to have him really. 

 

He doesn’t get to say goodbye to Taehyung. The grinning lady is glad he says words from time to time now. 

 

His aunt wears a lot of mascara and it gathers in the corners of her eyes. She smokes a lot inside the house. This is what that house smells like to him in the construct of his memories, smokesmokesmoke. He doesn’t like cigarettes. 

 

One of the boys in the school he goes to smokes as well. He is thirteen, but he is in his grade. Jeongguk does not like smoke at all. 

 

It starts to settle in his head what it means that his mother is gone. That she is dead. She doesn’t come back. She doesn’t physically, materially exist anymore. She can’t hold his hand. Taehyung can’t either. With the state of his aunt’s nails, he gives up entirely on hand holding. Instead, he starts running. 

 

First, he starts running track. Next, he starts running away. 

 

He doesn’t know where he expects the latter to take him—he always ends up in the car of the grinning lady. The former does him better. It gets him teammates and it gets him medals. Apparently, he’s good at running. 

 

He’s good at running track, not that good at running drugs, but that doesn’t become a problem until later.

 

The second foster home he goes to, when his aunt marries and gives up on him, is different. It’s larger, has as many as fourteen boys and bunk beds for them all. Jeongguk is number fourteen and this time there is a bed meant for him. 

 

He stays there for a week and a half when one of the boys gets adopted.

 

Adopted. 

 

Capital A, adopted. Supposedly that’s the dream when you’re in the system. It means you get permanence. This permanence, of course, can be a gift and a curse. You can get loving parents who are unable to have children who will appreciate you. You can get a broken home.

 

The problem is, people love babies. No one likes twelve-year olds like Jeongguk. His cheeks are chubby, but not chubby enough. They want someone to coo at, someone to raise as theirs, someone who will believe they care, someone who will believe they are parents.

 

Jeongguk will never believe someone else is his mother. 

 

The boy who gets adopted is a replacement. Parents lose child. Parents want another one. The boy is ecstatic. Jeongguk himself does not want to fill shoes. He does not want his home to be a consequence of tragedy. He does not want people who call themselves his parents to look upon him with a sadness in their eyes. Or maybe he just does not want to confess his envy.

 

His adoption frees up a bed. That means the Gyeongs have a spare bed to fill. The Gyeongs are nice-er. They are three people, three adults in this household. There is a Mr. Gyeong, a Mrs. Gyeong, and a Miss Gyeong, who is a sister. Mr. Gyeong works. He does not communicate with the children in the house too much. Himself and Miss Gyeong are orphans and they are not actual siblings. They were adopted by the same family by mistake because of their shared last name and ever since they have clicked as if it were fate for them to meet, so they repay the karma of the world for bringing them together by setting up a foster home to give children the same opportunity to find their destiny.

 

Destiny. Jeongguk, at this point in his life, does not believe in destiny. It’s difficult to believe life has a plan for you when it steals your mother at 10. People who believe in destiny tend to be happy people. Jeongguk is twelve, knows little about life, yet more than other boys who are twelve, boys who are not in the system. Mostly he knows he doesn’t know, mostly the difference between him and boys with happy families is that he is aware of his own ignorance to what life holds. One thing he is sure of, however, is that he is not happy. 

 

He’s okay, that much he is, he’s okay. But he’s not happy. He’s been trying to learn new feelings, but happiness, he thinks, is something he knew before and is slowly starting to forget. With his time at his aunt’s, he learns a great deal about anger, frustration. He learns more about loneliness, less about trust. He certainly does not learn happiness.

 

The thing that is closest to it that he learns is the pride and cocky joy of victory. Jeongguk counts the times he’s won a race. Fourteen. When he tells his coach he has to leave the team because he’s moving to another school, the coach almost offers to adopt him. What he feels at that is certainly not happiness. He doesn’t smile. He smirks. It’s not an appreciation of him, it’s an appreciation of his ability to run. That, he is proud of, that, he is confident with, but that, he knows is not as whole hearted as he thinks happiness should be, as it was with his mother in the simplest moments. 

 

So no, on paper Jeongguk does not believe in destiny. Though a small portion of him finds it hard to believe that it is a coincidence that this very same week, miles away from the Gyeongs, Mrs. Park is deemed unfit to raise children and stripped off her rights to be a foster parent for a little while because her hoarder OCD is acting up too much. 

 

One bed free and six boys needing new allocation. Yet, the boy that ends up at the Gyeongs is none other than Taehyung. This has to be somehow predetermined, Jeongguk feels, when they bring him in for introductions with this ladybug suitcase.

 

His hair is better. It’s nicely cut, falls slightly over his eyes. He’s grown taller, lankier. He’s still bony, but there seems to be more meat on his stomach. His clothes don’t fit him, still, so Miss Gyeong takes him to the mall the following day and buys him a few t-shirts.

 

This time round, Taehyung is the one that doesn’t know anyone and Jeongguk is the one who knows where stuff is. With pride at his knowledge and comfort of his surroundings, he wants to return the favor, show him around, offer him a bed and hold his hand. He’s outgrown hand-holding personally. There isn’t much room for hand-holding in this world, really, but if Taehyung needs it, he’d be ready. 

 

But the Gyeongs have a bed for Taehyung and he isn’t half as shy as Jeongguk used to be. He meets the rest of the boys quickly, flashes that toothy, boxy smile at them almost immediately, and Jeongguk has to wonder if the boy even remembers him. It makes him curiously sullen that he might not, that he doesn’t appear to need him at all. 

 

He doesn’t know then how many times Taehyung has gone through transitions like this, that it is an instinct for him to blend in, that new surroundings are something common and he’s developed a fluidity to his personality that allows him to chameleon himself into a space almost disturbingly quickly. He doesn’t know Taehyung last had a home when he was four years old.  

 

Jeongguk refuses to be the first one to talk to him, but Taehyung seems to be talking to everybody but him. Maybe it is then he learns the unflattering flutters of jealousy. The sensation of Taehyung next to him, of his palm slipping into his own was his first experience of some semblance of comfort after he was thrust into the System. It was small, a small gesture, a short moment, but it was peculiarly meaningful. To him. 

 

Taehyung himself does not seem to care much. He speaks to everyone. He smiles at everyone. Taehyung is special, but Jeongguk, apparently, is not. 

 

Everyone experiences feelings differently. For Jeongguk, jealousy is angry and strangely vengeful. He is almost pointed in speaking to one of the boys he’s formed a tentative friendship with. 

 

“I’m Taehyung.” 

 

It’s the first thing he actually hears him speak, after an hour and 46 minutes of being there, not directed at him, or perhaps not only directed at him. When Jeongguk turns, looks at him, he finds his eyes focused on the boy he’s speaking with, rather than on him, and he’d glad and mad at the same time. He certainly doesn’t want his introduction, obvious proof he’s forgotten.

 

But he hasn’t.

 

“Hoseok,” the other boy shakes his hand, flashes a smile as equally bright as Taehyung’s to him. Jeongguk thinks he gravitates to people who are not afraid to genuinely smile. It puts him at ease. Hoseok, for one, rarely stops grinning.

 

Jeongguk feels mute all over again when big eyes blink at him, twinkle under longish hair, messy hair. His head tilts slightly when he captures his gaze, those never fearing eyes bold as they fall over him, study him. He raises his hand, his palm and his fingers. They seem longer. He wears a thin ring at the middle. It is strangely fascinating to Jeongguk, that hand. He’s moved on from hand holding, really has, so he tends not to focus on hands, but this one he watches as it shakes in a wave.

 

“Hi, Guk,” he greets before he’s taken away by Miss Gyeong.

 

The name makes Jeongguk feel warm, a redness slipping over his cheeks. It’s endearing to him, makes his eyes widen and fall to the ground of the back yard under the curious observance of Hoseok. 

 

It lasts less than an hour until, at dinner, he learns Taehyung simply does not remember the first half of his name.

 

“Would you pass that to Jeongguk?”

 

“To who?”

 

“Jeongguk.” A finger points at him sitting at the other end of the table, gullible eyes stretched wide and awkward. He spent an hour thinking Guk was affection when it was forgetfulness. 

 

“Ah, that’s right,” Taehyung nods to himself, hands slipping under the bottom of the bowl as he stretches cold potato salad to him. “Jeongguk.”

 

Perhaps it’s stupid that he doesn’t talk to him for several days after this. Perhaps it’s stupid because Taehyung doesn’t seem to want to, but he himself desperately does. He’s only punishing himself, essentially, but victory teaches him to be slightly prideful. He admits nothing and refuses to talk to him first.

 

Jeongguk is really much too pointed in his pride, his resolve he’s uninterested to see that Taehyung is always, always looking at him.

 

When Taehyung’s own grinning lady asks him if he wants to go to a foster home that currently hosts three of the boys that used to stay at Mrs. Park’s, one of who’s fingers is adorned by the very same ring that he has on his, on a whim he accepts.

 

The next day, just over a week after he moves to the Gyeongs, he will leave.

 

Jeongguk doesn’t know this then, but a couple of days before the children get taken away from Mrs. Park, a friend of Taehyung’s, this Namjoon who is a bookie at fifteen, admirably smart, something Taehyung aspires to be, tells him what it is like to kiss a girl. Jeongguk doesn’t know this then, but Taehyung, at thirteen, still has not had his first kiss, but with the tales of the mighty Namjoon he grows extremely curious. 

 

However, he has no particular curiosity as to what kissing a girl feels like. He wonders mostly about kissing in general, lips to lips. It seems simple, not too interesting at all. He looks at girl’s lips at school, but there is nothing too alluring about them.

 

There is just one certain pair of lips that he feels the urge that Namjoon describes to press his own to.

 

He knows he’s leaving the next day. He knows there will be no consequences.

 

On another whim, he does. He kisses those lips. 

 

Jeongguk feels even less of a desire to speak to Taehyung after he finds out that he chooses to leave. Of course, it is ridiculous of him to expect that Taehyung would have an incentive to stay based on his unspoken thoughts about him, hidden confessions that he makes him feel comfortable and he has a deeply rooted appreciation to the very scent of his presence, which on its own is utterly ridiculous and has no place being true in the System.

 

He is certainly surprised when shortly after Hoseok goes to bed after Jeongguk gets too cocky about beating him at the Poison basketball game in the back yard of the Gyeongs, another person appears. 

 

“Good shot.”

 

He recognizes his voice. It makes him miss his next shot. It bounces off the hoop and tumbles defeated to the ground, but Jeongguk only hears it, because his eyes are immediately trailing, startled, to the voice. 

 

“Can I try?” Taehyung asks and Jeongguk stares at his approach, his body moving closer in the grass to his. He has his eyes pinned to him, blinking, dropping to his hand that stretches out to ask for the ball, at his hair that falls in messy strands above dark eyebrows and huge eyes. 

 

Stares, really that is the only way to call it. He’s staring and it is his fault for avoiding looking at him all week because now he can’t look away, knowing that it is essentially his last chance to do it. Taehyung is leaving tomorrow. He has his ladybug suitcase, the one he has been dragging around, unbeknownst to Jeongguk, since he was just four years old, packed and ready and propped against the front door in the hallway at the Gyeongs. Jeongguk avoided looking at Taehyung, but he has been glimpsing at the damned suitcase all day long. The spots of the ladybug shine with the artificial lighting of the lamp in the corridor, reflect it in black circles, and it feels like it glares at Jeongguk every time he passes by.

 

He tears his gaze away now just as suddenly as he kept on doing in his staring contests with the suitcase. He rips it away and looks down at the ball that has rolled conveniently right to his feet. 

 

“Whatever,” he shrugs. He bends, grabs the ball, dribbles it easily straight into Taehyung’s waiting hands.

 

He catches it, bounces it off the ground without looking, eyes fixed on Jeongguk. “You seemed to be quite good,” he tells him, shameless both in observing and vocally admitting to it, “before with Hoseok.”

 

Jeongguk slips a hand in his pocket, finds a pebble on the ground he feigns interest in as he listens to the distinctive sound of the ball hitting the ground, kicks at it to see it move. “Yeah.” 

 

The ball dribbles. “Bet I’m better, though.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes roll and end up at him as the circle is complete, a snort escaping his nose as he bathes his gaze over Taehyung’s lithe frame. “Yeah, right,” he snickers, arching his lips into chubby cheeks with a smugness he only has reserved for sport.

 

Despite his natural athleticism, as his previous coach praised, his cockiness is currently groundless. Basketball is not his area of expertise. Running is. However, above all, what’s in his area of expertise and what summons the sudden attitude is competitiveness.  

 

Taehyung’s hand is large. It grips the ball easy as he bounces it to the ground and catches it for a moment, eyes almost narrowing now. “I can prove it.”

 

Jeongguk’s smirk spreads. He slips his hand out of his pocket, stretches his arms to the side, beckons with a haughty nod. “Be my guest.”

 

The other’s boy head tilts. “Fine.” He grasps at the ball with both hands, holds it tight before his chest as challenge glints bold and unrelenting in his big eyes. “What does the winner get?”

 

“He wins,” Jeongguk answers simply.

 

It motivates a brow raise from Taehyung. He curls it up into his hair, the cock of his head deepening as his nose arches slightly in perplexed skepticism. “That’s enough for you?”

 

Jeongguk’s lips flatten, form a line. He shrugs. 

 

Taehyung pulls his own, arches the corners down in consideration. “Gyeongs must be treating you well, then,” he concludes with a small nod to himself, the reasoning behind the words slipping over Jeongguk’s head, but he’s not about to question. “Gotta learn to ask for things, though.”

 

Jeongguk courses his eyes over him. His comments feel subtly condescending, him speaking words as truths that Jeongguk is unfit to understand, saying things private to his own intelligence and experience aloud just to mock and it is aggravating enough for Jeongguk to compete with the haughtiness as well. He flutters his lids almost judgmental as he rolls his gaze over him, says, “Nothing that I want from you, really.”

 

“Fine, then,” Taehyung shrugs with a thoughtful purse of his lips. “Think of something if you win. It’s useless now.”

 

“You have something in mind?” Jeongguk cocks his head, looking more closely at him, slightly irritated that he has an answer to everything.

 

Taehyung fixes his own attention on him, pupils sliding with underlying provocation, but his attitude remains a semblance of indifference. “Maybe,” he says. He tosses the ball with no warning towards Jeongguk’s stomach, and he almost doesn’t catch it at the unexpectedness and subtle aggression in the force of the toss. “Let’s shoot. You go first.”

 

He doesn’t ask. He instructs. Jeongguk is much too competitive to risk seeming he’s afraid of going first. He clutches at the ball with his fingers, tightening digits slightly as he narrows his eyes. He doesn’t bother with an actual answer. Jeongguk is not as good at words as he is with his body, his legs, arms, hands. He bounces the ball twice. He scores.

 

Jeongguk’s lip quirks in time with Taehyung’s eyebrow. It curls in interest.

 

He scores, too. He scores until Jeongguk’s lips are pulling in a straight line, then the edges are curling down, eyes narrowing more, forehead creasing. He feels the perspiration break out on his skin, his fist clenching. He wants to be confident enough not to glare at Taehyung every time he bounces the ball, pokes his tongue to the corner of his lips in concentration, shoots, scores, and smirks, but he isn’t. He’s frowning in his glare, something tight rounding in his stomach.

 

He misses once. Jeongguk misses once. 

 

Taehyung doesn’t miss. At all. Jeongguk would count shots, but there’s no point. He does not miss a single one.

 

“Do you play?” Jeongguk asks gruffly through gritted teeth, though his glare has subsided to something different, eyes wide in a little fascination. Is it skill or luck or both, Jeongguk doesn’t know, and he hopes Taehyung is secretly as versed in basketball as he himself is in running for the sake of his pride which swells every time the ball falls through the ring.

 

Taehyung bounces the ball again, now subtly smug with the victory written on the features of his face, the curve of his mouth and the glint in his eyes under the light of the moon under which he always seems to see him. He doesn’t know whether he has ever truly looked at him in broad daylight. “No, not really,” he seems to take pleasure in shaking his head. “Despise team sports.”

 

Jeongguk’s brows furrow. “Why?”

 

Taehyung’s eyes fall away from his, trail to the ball and watch it fall onto the hard ground. He doesn’t touch it again, lets it bounce into rest as he teases his teeth over his bottom lip for a moment, blinks up. “Each for their own, Gukkie.”

 

Jeongguk regrets how that sentence, the meaning behind it bypasses him at the moment. He is too irritated at the use of the nickname, it irks somehow offensive at him and he disregards the entirety of everything else he says as some shit justification to satiate more of his condescension at the fact he is the older one in the situation, the wiser one who gets to say ominous, wise things he’s heard some adult say or he’s conjured up from a mixture of things adults have said. He cannot imagine it is one of the mottos Taehyung absolutely lives by, his own mindset that makes him entirely unattainable.

 

No, Jeongguk does not heed that warning. Taehyung does warn him then, in the backyard of the Gyeongs, he supposes, in retrospect. He chooses, though, to focus on the Gukkie part, the part that warms him with affection because his mother used to call him that and also spikes his blood with irritation because Taehyung doesn’t get to forget his name when he himself, whenever he couldn’t sleep missed him so inexcusably, irrationally much.

 

“My name is Jeongguk,” he tells him, attempts to say it loosely, but he tastes the ounce of spitefulness on his tongue.

 

Taehyung blinks between his eyes, studies his face. It’s brief, but it’s there. He nods. “I know.” 

 

He’s still looking, staring at him with this big-eyed curiosity he subjected him to when he was across the table from him that first night two years ago and Jeongguk can really barely take it. He angles his chin to the ground almost sharply, shuffling one foot around mindlessly to give himself reason to look at its motion. “So,” he starts, withholding an urge to clear his throat, “what do you want for winning?”

 

He peaks back up at him and finds Taehyung’s face more settled than before, softer. He still gazes at him almost unnerving, but his features are loose, light, and just nice. He glances at him in silence for a short moment.

 

He breathes and his chest fills. “Stay still,” he says and with the words he himself moves, stepping closer to him and Jeongguk is inadvertently stepping away. One of his heels buries in the ground further behind him, he angles his body away, but he cannot commit to a full-hearted step, as if he’s scared. He isn’t. He’s a big boy now, big eyes don’t scare him. 

 

“What?” Jeongguk exhales as Taehyung nears, pausing when their toes line together. 

 

“Stay still,” he repeats, voice soft and low now, no competition, no nothing, just a murmur. He raises his hands, touches his shoulders, palms cupping over their edges. “Can you close your eyes?”

 

Jeongguk darts said eyes all across his face helplessly when he sees his from so close, his own hands dangling limp by his thighs. “Yeah,” he breathes. 

 

He can. He doesn’t particularly want to.

 

But Taehyung whispers, “Close them.”

 

So he does.

 

Taehyung’s lips are cold, but soft when they press to his. The first touch is barely such. He just brushes them against his, releases a breath and it hits him gently, raises a tingle over his own skin, arouses in him an urge to part his mouth, but he can’t muster up courage to move any part of himself. He stays still and confused as Taehyung’s nose comes closer and so do his lips, applying slight pressure over his own. 

 

Jeongguk feels warm. He feels so warm. The beat of his heart escalates in his chest, a warning he’s too stumped to acknowledge. His cheeks feel like they’re on fire, his ears ablaze, something fiery sliding and wrapping around his neck. The press of Taehyung’s lips is startling, and he wants to open his eyes, but he doesn’t, only sends his brows into his hair and sucks in a breath through his nose.

 

Technically, it is a kiss. Technically, Taehyung kisses him. Jeongguk has never before kissed anyone nor has he ever had any interest in doing so, but the sensation, although cripplingly overwhelming is more nice than it is not. It’s foreign, so sudden. Jeongguk would have never in a million years guessed that this is what Taehyung wanted from him, and he likes to think had Taehyung tried to make it last longer, he would have pushed him away.

 

But he doesn’t get the chance to. The kiss is brief. It’s so brief Jeongguk has enough time to just figure out what it is and then Taehyung’s lips are gone and his are left tingling with the remains of the foreign sensation. The last person to ever kiss him was his mother and it had been colossally different, a promising peck on the forehead, an everything will be alright kiss from a mother to son.

 

This kiss, this completely absent of promise or reason kiss is startling enough that Jeongguk cannot even count the seconds for which it lasts, so all he knows by the end of it is that Taehyung gives Jeongguk just enough time to sense him all. He gives him time to be deprived of sight under his instruction, last memory of an image being his big, flashy eyes. He gives him time to feel his big palms, long fingers curled around his shoulders and his lips on his own. He gives him time to hear his own breath hitch as he listens to him come closer,  time to almost taste that kiss, and to smell him, his nose invaded by the scent that to Jeongguk stands for having someone by your side when you are at your loneliest. 

 

He gives him just enough time for that, just enough reason to miss him again, and then he pulls away to meet perpetually wide eyes with wider ones, Jeongguk’s hand flying to his mouths, two fingers pressing with cautious wonder, trying to soothe the prickly tingles left to promise him this happened.  

 

He offers no explanation, offers nothing really, no word, no goodbye this time either. He parts his own lips with his stare, but then he closes them shut, spins and leaves him utterly bewildered in the backyard of the Gyeongs. 

 

And on the next day, Taehyung’s once more gone.

 

Chapter 2

Jeongguk only joins that group of boys in the Juvenile Correction Centre because he used to do track with one of them when he lived with his aunt. He only joins them because the way he sees it, it’s better to scare than to be scared.

 

He has no particular taste for punching whimpering children. He is good at it, makes a point to be good at it, because the better he is at it, the less he has to do it. Most boys know to be scared of him and his… group – he doesn’t know what they are, but the word ‘friends’ certainly does not come to mind. They are a coalition of sorts, gather forces to stay on top of the food chain, to strike fear and collect privileges from kids that are as fucked as they are.

 

The children there know to fear them, him. Of course, at least once every week, however, there would be a new kid. A new kid more often than not required a beating. They were all mouthy in the beginning, it is a Juvenile Correction Centre, home of the mouthy. Battling hormones, suffering angst at real or imagined worldly injustice and presenting a variety of behavioral problems. All of them are like this. It’s a difficult food chain to stay on top of. Can only be manageable with violence, the occasional rumored or actual possession of contraband knives or ring knuckles or any other form of weaponry. For a while people believed one of them had a bomb because he has the word tattooed on the fold of his fingers.

 

Jeongguk is a collector. He has four ring knuckles. He has a stainless steel one, a brass one, a folding one made of zinc alloy and one for whose material he does not care because it’s so nicely spiked, breaks skin even just on a graze, all sharp and glistening. It’s his personal favorite.

 

He calls it Spike. He’s fifteen, recently turned, less than a month ago, and he thinks naming your weapon is quite cool even if he is not that much of a fan of actually using it. He prefers whipping it out, sliding it across his knuckles and using it mostly as fear-inducing accessory, so to say. He’s an accessory type of guy, likes earrings and the lot. Spike is as much a fashion statement as his double helix is.

 

He has it ready on his fingers, glinting all pretty, prettier than any jewelry, really, when he is called over to intimidate the weekly new kid into sensibility. It is a favor, honestly, of him and his associates, to most informatively welcome new guys and make sure they are aware of the consequences of misdemeanor.

 

“Hey, Jeon, fresh meat.”

 

It is with a sigh that he hides his Nintendo back in the part of his mattress where the fabric is unsawn (ripped). He jumps down his bunk, secures Spike over his knuckles, pulsing his fingers around it to make sure it hugs them tight and in his perfect control in case he’s mouthier than usual.

 

“Real scowl on there,” the guy who calls him comments.

 

“Was about to go to the fifth Super Mario World.”

 

“One step closer to the heart of Peaches, ay?” his brows raise suggestively. “Hear that weirdo that sleeps under Yoongi rubs it out to her.”

 

“Gross.”

 

“Yeah. More of a Zelda man, myself.”

 

They walk arm to arm, shoulders bulged out and spread more than necessary to assist their peacock strut in loose self-made tank tops. Jeongguk chuckles out of courtesy more than of anything else, whistling a strand of hair from before his eye when he rolls them with a small shake of his head. “It’s the ears, isn’t it?”

 

“Yeah, she looks like she could really listen to my problems.”

 

“What problems, ladies?” Yoongi crosses his arms as he observes their approach, his jaw moving especially obnoxiously today in the rapid chewing of his no smoking patch gums. “Ran out of tampons?”

 

His head cocks where he relaxes against the brick wall of the shower room, white hair falling over his forehead. He stands out in the group, physically. He’s short, disturbingly pale, his fingers tremble in abstinence of caffeine and nicotine, and he’s never in his life worn a tank top, doesn’t have the arms for it, while for the others it is practically a uniform of the alliance.

 

The difference is, he has no muscles, but he has the attitude to cover for it. And a gun right next to his pack of gum.

 

“Ran out of spunk more like it,” an awfully burly guy with a ridiculous sleeve tattoo on his right speaks, a smirk that shows off his chipped tooth pulling nasty at his features.

 

Jeongguk flutters his eyes over to him, his mere blink in his direction a silent warning. He crosses his arm, rests Spike on top to have him there, his pride and joy. The guy is wide, but Jeongguk is more skilled, quicker on his feet, and better equipped to, modestly put, fuck him up.

 

“Any tips on the new guy, hyung?” someone nods at Yoongi.

 

He pops a bubble with his gum, straightens up on his feet, giving himself his full height, which is less than impressive. “None.”

 

“What he in for?”

 

Yoongi shrugs one shoulder, clicks his tongue.

 

“Mysterious.”

 

“Hardly matters,” Yoongi shakes his head, dismisses. “Let’s go put him in order cause I have anger management in twenty.”

 

 

No way is Jeongguk’s first thought as they near the guy who innocently and unsuspectingly lines some of the belongings they’ve allowed him to bring in at the top of his mattress. Of course, is his second thought.

 

Of fucking course, Taehyung’s here.

 

At first, he thinks he imagines it’s him, but no, it’s not imagination, it’s recognition. He’s taller. Somehow, he’s grown taller. His hair is curiously silky, dark brown, but shines under the terribly artificial lighting of the sleeping hall. Jeongguk can see his collarbones from here, stretched under tan, smooth skin. The meat he had started to get on his stomach is gone. Jeongguk can see his ribs, his hip bones where his sweat pants hang low over them. He tugs them up, but they fall down again. He’s slim to a point where it looks unhealthy and Jeongguk wants to ask him what the fuck happened, but he knows he won’t.

 

He has his arm inside some trousers, fixing them before he folds them because they’re inside out, when he first notices the group that approaches. He glances once casually when he senses motion from the side and returns to his trousers business before he suddenly looks again, this time longer when it becomes evident they are not just nearing. They are nearing him.

 

Those big eyes roam over each and every person that approaches in the group until they land on Jeongguk. They pause. He recognizes him this time, Jeongguk knows it. It shines obvious in his blink, in the way his lips part slightly and he releases his trousers, lets them fall to the lower bunk. His eyes do not move away from their stuttering stop at Jeongguk’s own until the guy who volunteered as front man for today is stepping in his view, too close to ignore, and he has to rip his gaze apart from his.

 

Jeongguk himself does not bother looking away from Taehyung for that first minute. He has an excuse. They are all looking at him. Essentially, he’s prey. They have to size him up, see what they have on their hands as they pile around him in a circle, leaving no room for escape, naturally falling into formation. It’s a dance they’ve danced before. They know their positions, their steps.

 

What Jeongguk does not have an excuse for it is that moments before the guy steps in offensive proximity to Taehyung, the type that means to intimidate, Jeongguk briefly drops his eyes to the boy’s parted lips, the memory of their very last interaction flashing in his mind and he’s yanking his gaze upwards before he’s pulling it away entirely.

 

“Put some clothes on,” their front man guy instructs gruffly.

 

“My shirt is a little far away,” Taehyung glances indicatively at the edge of his bed to which he cannot move with the guy in such threatening proximity to him. He would have to touch him, push him slightly away, and by the way his eyes fold over him it’s quite apparent he has no desire to.

 

His voice is different. It’s deeper, calmer, but it is distinctively still his own.

 

“Aw,” the guy’s speech contorts in mock sympathy as he pouts at Taehyung, cocks his head to the side. “Would you like me to pass it over to you?

 

“Yeah, that would be—”

 

The guy reaches over to the edge of the bed as Taehyung makes the mistake of trying to be civilized in this. He grips at the material of his shirt, wraps it around his hand in a smooth rolling motion to mimic a fighting glove and then he’s shoving it into Taehyung’s chest, pushing him back in the metal, rusting railing that holds up the upper bunk, his spine helplessly twisting into it, the sharp line of the bed above cutting doubtlessly painful a little beneath his shoulders.

 

It’s loud. The feet of the bed screech across the floor with the force of the shove. Taehyung’s back colliding with the bed rattles it, sounds around above conversations and other noises that have become such background mutters in this space that Jeongguk hardly even hears them anymore.

 

But so has that scrape of metal and floor, so has the pained groan that leaves Taehyung’s lips as his eyes close shut for a single moment. This is all just typical background noise, and no one really bats an eyelid.

 

Jeongguk tries not to flinch when Taehyung’s neck arches backwards, when he grinds his teeth together in a subdued murmur of, “Fuck.” He is sure it must hurt, even if the evidence of it does not much show on Taehyung’s face. His eyes close, but it is almost relaxed. His teeth press, but that is it. Not a line of distortion on his face, not even a flinch of his own when Jeongguk has to hold back his.

 

“Why there you go, princess,” the guy cracks out a falsely benevolent grin, which subsides in a very smug smirk once Taehyung’s eyes open in an almost lazy glare.

 

He pulls away less than a step and the motion of Taehyung’s arms is forcibly awkward in the small space he’s allowed as he tries to shuffle the shirt on top. He pulls the hem down and with the motion of it, his chin raises up, tugging out of the collar, and his eyes fall on Jeongguk in between bodies of boys pretending to be men. Jeongguk does not hesitate when he blinks away this time.

 

“You ever been to a place like this before, new kid?” Yoongi asks through incessant gum chewing, stepping forward.

 

Taehyung’s eyes flutter over to him, fall to his jaw then saunter up. “No.”

 

“Got ourselves a first timer, boys,” the guy in front of him hoots in cruel excitement, obnoxiously loud and very much in his face, but Taehyung keeps his focus on Yoongi.

 

“I’m buzzing,” some guy next to Jeongguk speaks. Jeongguk’s eyes roll.

 

“It’s an honor to deflower you, princess,” the guy before Taehyung bites, raising an arm and pressing it onto the bed next to his head, a half-hearted cage for Taehyung between his body and the metal railing, “and walk you through some ground rules.”

 

Taehyung’s head tilts. “I sat through one set today already.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes are narrowing at him. He is so frustratingly sensible. Without a doubt, he is not scared. He can judge by the way he holds himself, casual, his voice even and nothing tentative in his eyes as they allow themselves curiosity when they dart across the guys. Jeongguk cannot exactly blame him. This is all overly theatrical, with the gum chewing, name calling and unnecessary shoving. They must look like they have a whole lot of bark, not much bite. But he is being cautious, too. He is not afraid, but he is not being smug about it, not mouthing off, just taking it. A lot of the boys here could never do that. Temper. None of them have it, really. Jeongguk certainly doesn’t, and Taehyung’s is steely and dangerous.

 

“Well,” the shove-a-lot guy clicks his tongue, “those are the ones that count unless you want to meet Spike over there.” He nods his head to Jeongguk in indication.

 

It’s his cue, technically. They have never rehearsed this. It’s not that much of a theatre. But they have done it enough times to put on a seamless show, and Jeongguk won’t be the one to forget his lines. They include no speaking, thankfully. He just crosses his naked arms, the weapon on his fist on top and on sight, flexes them so muscles bulge and the lighting shuffles over Spike, makes him wink in greeting.

 

Taehyung’s eyes follow the nod of the guy’s head, answer their own cue to look over at Jeongguk. At first, they fall on his and this time Jeongguk is not allowed to tear them away. This is all put on to intimidate and eye contact is absolutely vital, so he stares into his familiarly big eyes until they drop to the sharp, glinting spikes wrapped threatening around his fingers. “Oh.”

 

“Listen, new kid,” Yoongi speaks once more and Taehyung trails his attention to the voice. Eye contact is, after all, key to this confrontation. He is not afraid to answer to it when others seek it. “We have quite a tidy situation for ourselves here, works so well for us all. We just agree on terms, you don’t break them, and we all live happily ever after.”

 

“Terms?” he lifts a brow.

 

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, pretty much,” Yoongi shrugs. Jeongguk would never understand why he chooses to speak in references to people who hardly know how to make their way through comic books let alone allegories for communism. “You don’t mouth off, if you get any cigarettes, I get them, you document weapons and drugs, try to do those guys favors if they ask for it, don’t make too much eye contact and you’re good to go.”

 

“Simple enough, ay?” someone adds.

 

Despite the last aspect of the terms Yoongi outlines, Taehyung keeps his eyes on his. “Yeah.”

 

“Good boy,” a guy to his left praises, raises a hand and pats it heavy and nasty over his head down to his neck. Taehyung lets him. “Smart boy.”

 

“Have a name, princess?”

 

He looks away from Yoongi then, but instead of meeting the eyes of the guy who asks the question, his gaze ventures back over to Jeongguk. “Taehyung.”

 

He knows, he remembers. But he doesn’t nod, doesn’t do anything. He just watches, tightening and releasing his bicep to get Spike to do a subtle, pretty dance over it.

 

“Welcome,” Yoongi nods, steps back, and that is the cue they’re leaving.

 

The guy in front of Taehyung is nice enough to say goodbye, slaps rhythmically at his cheek twice before he spins and follows.

 

“Solid, isn’t he?” Yoongi notes as they walk. “Didn’t flinch once.”

 

“Yeah,” someone agrees. “You thinking of recruiting?”

 

“He’s too lanky,” another complains.

 

“He’s cold,” Yoongi states. “That’s good, can’t have only gorillas that jump at every insult.”

 

There’s a snort, a scoff, some glares.

 

“Don’t know, hyung,” Jeongguk shakes his head. “Don’t see him following orders.”

 

“You kidding, Jeon?” the shove-a-lot guy cackles, arches a brow at him as he turns his head to glance at where Jeongguk walks behind him. Jeongguk never did like this guy. Today for some reason he has even more of an urge to fist bump him with Spike on. “He agreed so quick.”

 

“To get you to stop shoving him around, calling him a princess,” Jeongguk tells him, “not because he meant it.”

 

The guy shoots his eyes over to Yoongi, a question resting in them as he waits for him to dispute, but he doesn’t, and with Yoongi, silence at such bold conclusions from the other boys means agreement. The guy scoffs at the quiet, shakes his head with rolling eyes, voice pulling out of him near a screech. “Pathetic.”

 

“Clever,” Yoongi corrects, steps to the side, and they disband. Jeongguk goes back to his Nintendo. He has a couple of hours before he has to clean the yard off of leaves as punishment for missing three therapy sessions.

 

Yoongi tells him to get some other boy to do it, but Jeongguk does not really mind having something physical to do once in a while. It’s demeaning, supposedly, but Jeongguk does not imagine himself having a legal work short of some sort of street cleaning and scraping, not with his record, so he might as well get used to it.

 

 

 

 

“Hello, tough guy.” Jeongguk sweeps at leaves without deigning a glance, but he almost feels his ears twitch at the sound of words, alert with presence, much alike a cat. His chin tilts up, the motion miniscule, not an act of acknowledgement, but a raise to alertness. He sweeps at leaves.

 

Just like his overall presence in the Juvenile Correctional Centre, his appearance in the yard is unexpectedly expected. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Taehyung ignored him, but he also genuinely is not surprised that he approaches him.

 

Jeongguk sweeps at leaves. He has performed exactly 147 sweeps so far. He does his 148 when he hears the very distinctive sound of Taehyung’s body leaning into the metallic fence of the courtyard. He could picture it twisting and keening under his slim body, but not giving up entirely, never more than a semblance of movement towards the world outside: a gentle curve, a bent into freedom, but a perpetual barrier, nevertheless.  

 

“Don’t look that scary with the broom not gonna lie,” Taehyung keeps talking, the lack of response not making him shy. He cocks his head, he raises eyebrows. “Is that for being naughty?”

 

Jeongguk’s 152^nd swipe is particularly harsh, fails to actually gather leaves, sends them in directions of all sorts instead. He grits his teeth very slightly, tightens his fingers just barely around the handle of the broom. “Yes,” he says, between a growl and his forced casualness. He wants to be casual.

 

“What did you do?” Taehyung pries, as casual as Jeongguk hopes to be. Sounds drawl out of his mouth, somehow lazy and somehow childish. He’s piping words, unbidden and unhidden curiosity slipping into his question and his gaze alike.

 

Jeongguk aims at him a type of calmly warning glare he’s used to by now. It’s his go-to look when someone’s bothering him, and it shapes almost automatic on his expression, almost speaks on its own the words he drags out of his mouth. “Not your business,” he says with his eyes and with his lips, and he is pretty sure anyone else on the premises would catch the drift, back away.

 

And perhaps Taehyung catches the drift, but all the movement that he does is to adjust against the loud and louder metal. “I’m just curious,” he shrugs.

 

Jeongguk slides his eyes across him once, witnesses him get more comfortable, angle his shoulder so it could last longer, dug into the fence. He blinks at him and blinks away, eyes on his next swipe. He lost count. He grits his teeth, fist clenching around the length of the broom. He has nothing to busy his brain now. Numbers are lost on him, and he can feel his mind open, gateway to other ideas, to thoughts. His palm is hot around the broom as he twists it in his hold, his wrist arching uncannily around it.

 

“You don’t talk too much, do you?” Taehyung’s voice comes still. With his count lost, the sound summons his disoriented attention. Jeongguk’s eyes slip to him, alert once more as his ears distinguish the keen of the fence as he pushes away from it, straightens. “You don’t remember me?”

 

He holds the broom further from his body, limper. “Of course, I remember you,” he speaks somewhat gnarly, lids closing in, narrowing. “You kissed me,” he accuses.

 

Years later, his are still the only lips he’s tasted. He doesn’t remember the taste, per se. He could not describe it if asked, but he knows if he feels it again, it will ring with recognition. The backyard of the Gyeongs will flash in his mind, with all its messy bushes, uneven ground, and abandoned kids.

 

If he tastes him again, with his eyes closed, he’ll be able to tell it is him. If he catches a whiff of him, too, he knows he’ll be sent back to the first night he wasn’t alone since he’s been alone.

 

And he brings it up because it still confuses him. He still thinks about it.

 

“I did,” Taehyung says, unapologetic and simple.

 

The bottom of the broom lifts into the air behind Jeongguk, a single fallen leaf catching on its end. He doesn’t notice as it hovers above the ground. His forehead creases. “Why?” It’s calm, it’s curious.

 

Taehyung shrugs once more. The shirt he’s wearing now is big on him, sleeves cut around his bony elbows, ruffling gently in September wind. He slips his hands in his pockets as he steps forward, his shoulders curling. The hem of the shirt slides down on tanned chest, stops under an exposed cutting clavicle. “Felt like it.”

 

Jeongguk takes a single step back with just one foot, heel digging into the ground. His eyes dart to the collarbone, pushing back against Taehyung’s skin viciously as if it means to slash through it. He wants to ask him where he was, before he got here, how much he ate, did he eat. He doesn’t. He narrows his gaze, and he grumbles, “Don’t ever feel like it again.”

 

Taehyung eyes him. He eyes him in a way that rips Jeongguk’s gaze away from the jutting bone and forces it onto his expression with caution. His lips twist, edge on the left knocks into his cheek. “Can’t promise that,” he cocks his head. The grin on him looks positively devilish. “In fact, I kind of feel like it right now.”

 

Jeongguk knocks the broom into the ground before he steadies it in his grip, holds it in his hand straight. “Do it and I’ll fucking pow you,” he says it, he means it. With or without the broom, he’s pretty sure he can knock the lanky sod unconscious in about a minute.

 

Taehyung cranes his neck back, strands of hair falling in the air. “Mm,” he teases, “love dirty talk.”

 

Jeongguk rips his gaze away, readjusts the broom in his hold. He starts counting from one. One sweep, two sweeps. “Shut up.”

 

Three, four, five, six, seven…

 

“What you in for?” He’s stepping closer, face relaxing but Jeongguk wouldn’t know.

 

He wouldn’t cause he isn’t looking.

 

… eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…

 

Taehyung’s edging closer, the arch of his movement circular as he steps. “Come on, I know you want to brag.”

 

The closer he gets, the fiercer Jeongguk sweeps at leaves.

 

… twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-six, fuck no. Five, six. No. He’s still sweeping, sweeping too quick, he sweeps it twice just as he curses. Fuck, fuck. Fuckity fuck.

 

He sighs, shakes a strand of hair that obstructs his view of his countless sweeps. He looks up. “Drug running,” he shrugs. He’s not bragging, except they both know he is. But he’s casual about it, so he shrugs. “You?”

 

He’s returning the question, he justifies. He doesn’t otherwise care.

 

“Bashed a cop with a pipe.” He doesn’t shrug. He doesn’t need to; he says it with enough eased nonchalance. He’s a natural at this, Taehyung is, at not caring.

 

“Why?”

 

“He caught me drug running,” Taehyung cocks his head, risks a step closer; he’s not entirely sure a Jeongguk armed with a broom is the safest to approach, “doesn’t remember anything, though, so I sold a believable policeman abuses homeless boy story, so I’m just here for that.”

 

Homeless. It strikes Jeongguk particularly hard to hear it, to imagine it, though it seems to slide easily between Taehyung’s lips.

 

“So,” he’s swiping at nothing, but at least he pretends his attention is on the ground, “you’re here for how long?”

 

Taehyung’s lips twist. “You gonna miss me when I’m gone?”

 

“Fuck off,” Jeongguk says with a single look. He seems to slip automatically into unnecessary swearing at the mere sight of Taehyung’s smugness. Admittedly, it fits his face well, the small self-satisfied smile and the way it makes his eyes change. He’s grown up, a bit.

 

He circles closer still, the trajectory of his approach naturally reminiscent of a predator. To Jeongguk, at least, that’s how it feels. He tightens his hand once more around the handle of the broom. He is not the prey in this interaction, not in any – he will not allow himself to be.

 

“I can teach you,” Taehyung proposes, his eyes unwavering in their fixation on Jeongguk and he pretends not to notice.

 

He gives a couple more sweeps, or three or four. He cannot concentrate on counting, forcing every sense of his to focus on deciphering just how close Taehyung is without actually looking at him directly. “Hm?”

 

“How to run,” Taehyung clarifies.

 

Jeongguk affords a look just to communicate his skepticism. “You got caught, too,” he shakes his head, clicks his tongue, “So high and mighty.”

 

Taehyung remains unbothered, returns the focus of the conversation to Jeongguk. “How did you get caught?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Your mistake,” he says, eyes dancing with unsubtle exploration over every inch of Jeongguk as if he can judge by his stance what it was that he did wrong. “What was it, you think?”

 

Jeongguk returns the scrutiny as he feels is right, but it only raises an abundance of question in his mind, the way he looks and holds himself. “Slow partner,” Jeongguk dismisses, not entirely sure what summons his honesty, “Tried to help him.”

 

“Ah,” Taehyung bounces slightly on his heels, mouth opening wide before his lips touch with his smirk, hands moving all casual in his wide pockets. “Partner.”

 

“What about it?” Jeongguk asks, more defensive than he means to be. He’s usually better at constructing a front, at being deliberate with how he comes off, but Taehyung throws him off guard, most likely because, currently, he is unsure how he wants to come off.

 

Taehyung shrugs simply. “He here too?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk shakes his head, perpetuates that curious honesty that draws out of him. “Jail. He’s old.”

 

“Old?” he tweaks a brow.

 

“Twenty-two.”

 

“Oh,” his mouth grows circular, “old.” One of his hands leaves its pocket, raises in the air as he ventures another step closer, “But see. Lesson one—”

 

Jeongguk twists his palm around the broom he no longer pretends he’s using, voice raising. “I didn’t ask—”

 

Taehyung’s raises higher. “Lesson one,” he repeats. “No partner,” he shakes his head. His face appears more reticent, less teasing, and like this, slightly softer. His cheeks are still round and features similar although they seem to sit differently as he ages, and it is not necessarily… bad. “Each for their own.”

 

Jeongguk studies his face for a moment more before his head dips shyly to the ground, a memory tugging at his stomach, one that he, for some reason, feels at the top of his skin, a warmth coating over his naked arms and the back of his neck. “You said that to me before,” he mentions softly, quietly, before he peaks back up at him. “Before you kissed me.”

 

“Obviously, you’re in need of a reminder,” Taehyung answers, a certain meekness to his own tone as his eyes briefly skim down, flutter over Jeongguk’s lips, which elicits from him the strangest urge to touch them, hide them. The gaze carries up once more as Taehyung cocks his head, “No?”

 

Jeongguk angles his body more towards Taehyung’s, holds his arms opened, allows his shoulders to appear broader. “Is there a lesson two or is that all you know how to preach?”

 

“I don’t preach,” Taehyung advances, not impressed with the stance. “I teach.”

 

Jeongguk preserves his posture, his greatest leverage in all his confrontations. He knows enough about facades to realise the appearance that Taehyung is entirely unfazed should not necessarily be true. “What’s the difference?”

 

“Logic,” Taehyung shrugs, simply, taking a step to the side as he approaches and brushing past Jeongguk’s shoulder. His eyes roam from his feet to his head as he circles him from the back, make account of every attribute before he comes to face him again. “In teaching there is no blind belief. There’s logic.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes roll. “So high and mighty.”

 

“Yeah?” Taehyung comes to a stop in front of him, his arms folding. “You been working out?” he questions with a flutter of his lids, another pointedly unsubtle once over before they boldly meet his.

 

“It matters?” Jeongguk tips his head to the side.

 

“I believe it does,” Taehyung remarks, lips parting and Jeongguk can see his tongue briefly touch his teeth before he speaks, “You wanna get all muscly to scare kids away?”

 

“Kids?” he huffs a laugh.

 

“That’s all you gonna get with biceps,” Taehyung starts, “No one is going to fear your guns, Jeongguk.” And wow, this time he remembers his whole name, all the syllables, all the two complicated syllables, such a smart boy. “People out there have ones of their own. Only theirs are firearms.”

 

“Are you making actual puns?” Jeongguk bites, his lip curling more antagonistic over his teeth as Taehyung appears to him now effortlessly smug with his stupid wordplay and his stupid ­know-it-all haughtiness. Jeongguk takes a step forward, though the space between them is scant and the more he gets in his face, the more he senses him. “Is that how much of a child you think I am, or is it for your own benefit?”

 

“Hm,” Taehyung’s eyes flash over him with amused consideration, lips stretching once more, “it bothers you when people call you a child?”

 

Jeongguk’s own lip arches further, a single flinch of it, not his own volition.

 

“You think you’re very smart, don’t you?” he runs his gaze over every hint of self-satisfaction on Taehyung’s expression. “Reckon you have me all figured out cause you made my mouth twitch?”

 

Taehyung’s lids lower in turn with his voice. His tongue skims quick over his lip, eyes trail over him different; there is something dangerously enigmatic about the control he has of himself, how easily he morphs his expression, makes himself entirely provocative. “Can make other parts of you twitch.”

 

Jeongguk’s expression hardens, a sudden flush running hot over his neck and his cheeks. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that.”

 

Taehyung’s sultriness drops. “Look who’s blushing.”

 

“Fuck it,” Jeongguk curses, again, dropping the broom. “I’m done with you.” He attempts a side-step but Taehyung twirls after, catches at his arm in the process. There is some striking familiarity in the stark sensation of his skin on his and Jeongguk’s gaze falls compulsive to the sight of it, lips parting slightly. Despite his teasing, he grabs impossibly gently, his thumb on the flesh of Jeongguk’s forearm whereas the rest of his fingers curl over the back into the bone. The tip of his thumb feels oxymoronically ghostly and burning as it glides, a small, slight, almost negligible motion.

 

Jeongguk forces his eyes back up.

 

“Aww, come on,” Taehyung whines, makes no attempt to touch him again when Jeongguk shakes the hold off. “I was only kidding.”

 

“Why are you here anyway?” Jeongguk breathes out, frustration taking over. He folds his arms together, makes sure to rub the sensation of Taehyung’s touch out with the feel of his own skin.

 

“Told you,” Taehyung shrugs, “Bashed a—”

 

“I don’t mean here,” Jeongguk interrupts, patience wearing thin. “I mean here.”

 

“How eloquent,” Taehyung draws.

 

“Fuck off.” Jeongguk spares him only an eyeroll as he once more turns to leave, but Taehyung stops him again, this time only with words.

 

“I wanna get out.”

 

Jeongguk blinks, body sideways turned to him, incomplete in its departure and its interaction. Curiously, with this boy there always is that fleeting sense of incompletion; nothing feels started, but nothing feels over – there always seems to be a promise of more. His presence is simultaneously a given and transient. He is as familiar as he is a stranger, as permanent as he is a nobody to Jeongguk.

 

“What?” Jeongguk asks.

 

“I don’t like it here,” Taehyung confesses. “The point of my story was I don’t end up here at all.” The tease leaves his face as he stares ahead with pointed determination. “I want out,” he declares.

 

Jeongguk squints, adjusts his footing. “Announcing your masterplan to me so I will be considered an accomplice when they catch you?”

 

“I don’t want you to be considered an accomplice,” Taehyung says. “I want you to be an accomplice.” With his gaze unrelenting, he tells him. “Want you to come with me.”

 

Jeongguk feels a rush of something course through him, the mere idea of escaping this place coating his blood with adrenaline, but the prospect of Taehyung asking him to come with coercing an entirely different reaction. He swallows, eyes him skeptic. He doesn’t like the way his own heart beats. “Why?”

 

“It’s all boring out there,” Taehyung shrugs, goes a tiny bit whiny. “And I could use a bit of muscle, and, well,” he hesitates, and it comes with unwanted anticipation for Jeongguk, “Spike.” He nods indicatively at his hand.

 

Oh. For some reason, Jeongguk’s swarmed with disappointment.

 

He presses his lips together, arches a brow. “Thought my biceps weren’t scary.”

 

“They aren’t,” Taehyung insists, before in a tinier voice and with an even tinier shrug, he concedes, “They could be useful, though.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes narrow. “Useful how?”

 

“Well,” Taehyung adjusts his footing, his tongue poking out as he appears suddenly concentrated. His hands raise to assist his explanation as he starts, “we’re going under the fence.”

 

Jeongguk groans, head rolling back, eyes screwing together in exasperation before they open to wander across the night sky. “At least use a fucking conditional.”

 

“Don’t bother me with grammar, would you?” Taehyung says, meets his gaze readily when Jeongguk tilts his head back. He looks at him softer, speaks at him softer. "Come with me.”

 

“Why would I?”

 

If it weren’t for Spike, Jeongguk thinks stupidly, if it was because he smells to him like home, too, then maybe he would. But maybe he still will because he smells like home. Taehyung does. The proximity between them Jeongguk considers as marginally unhealthy because it brings about certain unattainable cravings of having something solid in his life, something his and something permanent, something of his own, that belongs to him, that at least could border on the definition of home and the thing in the world that for him mostly carries the semblance of that is that frustrating scent of Taehyung that once cured his loneliness, offered consolation, a place to sleep, company, security.

 

Jeongguk should heed that pull he feels to be around him. He should know better than to trust an instinct as primal as that of scent. He should have learned more on the streets and between homes, should have learned as much as Taehyung had and what Taehyung has learned is to trust no one.

 

“Oh, come on,” Taehyung urges, a single note of impatience twisting his voice, “You don’t want to stay here, do you?”

 

Jeongguk worries his bottom lips between his teeth, allows himself the vulnerability of glancing down, his eyes searching the ground. September wind blows and some of the leaves he has stacked up ruffle, fly between them and around them. Jeongguk takes advantage of its whistle, speaks when he hopes any emotion his voice unwittingly and helplessly carries will go unheard, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

 

He keeps his eyes on the ground, but knows Taehyung’s are on him. He can feel the heat of them on the side of his face, can imagine them dart calculative, likely teasing, but when he musters up courage to look up, the boy that is staring back at him is that same wide-eyed kid with crooked haircut from across that table that held his hand and offered him a bed. “Neither do I, Gukkie,” Taehyung confesses, head shaking. “Come with me.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes dash searching across his expression, focus powerlessly on his own and root there. He blinks his thoughts away, cranes his neck different, standoffish, his chin pulled up, jaw more enhanced. He presses his teeth together. “Say please.”

 

He expects Taehyung to change, too, recede back to teasing, to cocky, but he doesn’t, just shakes his head once more, nearly whispers in tune with the whistle of wind, his slick, light hair ruffling together with it, “I’m not scared of please and sorry.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes coat over him in a moment of silence. He doesn’t know if he believes him because a please and a sorry are sentimentalities Jeongguk mostly deems forbidden; this is generally the dynamic of the group he hangs with and he is not one to break protocol, so originally, with the request he simply means to tease back, but with Taehyung’s reaction it turns more genuine, something he actually wants to hear.

 

“Say it then,” he challenges.

 

Taehyung darts his eyes between his, his lips a line, face relaxed. “Come with me, please.”

 

Jeongguk pauses for a moment, gives him a slight nod and then his back as this time he is allowed to successfully, uninterruptedly side-step him. “I’ll sleep on it,” he says, meaning for those to be his parting words.

 

But Taehyung makes a sound, asks. “Is that code for yes?”

 

Jeongguk stops in his tracks, a certain distance away, cranes his neck to glance at him again. “I’m going to bed,” he declares, “It’s code for goodnight.”

 

Taehyung faces him with his entire body when he senses him halt. “I’m not scared of goodnight either.”

 

Jeongguk isn’t scared of goodnight, too. It’s just so mundane, so human, so normal. It suggests a connection, too somehow. He feels like a goodnight should be followed by a good morning, and he hasn’t had anyone to look for in the mornings for a long while.

 

“Goodnight, then,” Jeongguk says, turns, walks.

 

“Goodnight.”

 

 

 

Jeongguk is on the final Super Mario World, intensely clicking away at buttons, brows furrowed in concentration, when a hand clasps at the metal railing of his bunk, loud and confident in announcing itself boldly. “Did you sleep on it?”

 

He turns to see dark brows, big, smirking eyes, slanted with sleek pieces of hair. He wonders if the hair is as soft as it looks, wonders how it is anything but covered with grease and tangles, and perhaps it is grease that makes it kind of shiny, but he kind of wants to touch. He turns back to his Nintendo, only mutters, “When do we leave?”

 

He doesn’t see Taehyung’s grin turn devilish, but he can guess it does. “Meet me in the bathrooms at four am,” he says. “Pack light.”

 

 

 

They do partially go under the fence, partially through it. It takes Spike, a pocketknife that Taehyung is definitely not supposed to have, and a weak spot in the fence, where it already has a couple of tears that Jeongguk for all his time there didn’t notice.

 

They have to go through the courtyard, a part where the fence is weak because it is constantly under surveillance, but Taehyung’s stand is as long as they are not caught at it, it doesn’t matter if they watch a tape of them escaping. When Jeongguk expresses his surprise that night-time security doesn’t interrupt, Taehyung’s smirk is perilous and telling. They have their own need of the bathroom, apparently.

 

Jeongguk could never describe how incredulously exhilarating the mere act of freely walking the street feels. It’s a very simple thing, really, borderline ridiculous, but he thinks the air smells and tastes different outside that courtyard, concrete seems softer on the soles of his feet. Sunrise is definitely brighter when it comes, and he swears his bag is lighter than it was inside. He busies his mind with comprehending that, counts the steps they take away from the Correction Centre until Taehyung chooses to speak.

 

“Glad I could put such a grin on your face,” he observes, his eyes reserved for Jeongguk, whereas the other boy cannot get enough of the simplest scenery around him, gawking.

“Isn’t you,” Jeongguk shakes his head with a brief glance, “It’s the air.”

 

Taehyung snickers, “Air only gets worse as we get into the city.”

 

“Precisely,” comes the reply and Taehyung shrugs, lets him have it. If dirty air is what he wants to be reminded he is now permitted to walk amongst regular people, deemed not in need of correction, then so be it.

 

However, he simply refuses to allow him to ignore the part he played in this. “But it is because of me you get to breathe it,” he remarks, a grin stretched wide on his own face.

 

Jeongguk tugs the strap of his bag, drags his eyes from their corners all across Taehyung. He seems different, too, on the outside. His gait more bouncy, his smile less wicked. He is nearly childlike. “Hardly,” Jeongguk challenges with a curl of his lips, “You needed me for this as much as I needed you.”

 

“Yes, okay,” Taehyung agrees with an enthusiastic nod, without debate to Jeongguk’s surprise. “I admit your muscles also came in handy, but it was mostly my cunning genius,” he declares, the grin stretching impossibly wider into his full cheeks. Jeongguk huffs, meets his eyes to be pointed when he shakes his head, glances forward. In a second, though, he has a hand pressing into his arm, fingers molding against his bicep shamelessly. “You really do have such big strong muscles,” Taehyung addresses, “maybe you should carry me for gratitude.”

 

Before Jeongguk has any chance for a retort, Taehyung disappears from his side and instead reappears as a weight that sends his bag dangling down on his wrist, right at his back. He strewns himself over him with surprising agility, wrapping his arms around his neck and jumping on, high. It doesn’t help that Jeongguk’s body reacts instinctively, one hand catching his bag while the other cups over Taehyung’s thigh for support.

 

He releases it as soon as he realizes he has had any assistance in Taehyung replacing his bag as himself, proceeding instead to groan, “Tae-hyung.”

 

Taehyung’s response is to wrap himself further, rest his chin on Jeongguk’s shoulder. He is unsurprisingly light, with how thin he currently is, but the sensation of his chest pressing into Jeongguk’s back, his thighs into his sides and his arms around his neck and his own chest is all strikingly warm, not entirely unwelcome. September is still a warm month, but mornings are brisk and cool, but the chill Jeongguk feels from the cutting air is stifled and replaced by an entirely different one that runs through him, unfamiliar and sudden, at the peculiarity of Taehyung slanted all over him.

 

“How long can you last like this, do you think?” Taehyung asks, breath hot against the skin of his neck. Jeongguk knows the unfamiliarity of the sensation gives rise to the small hairs that line his nape, hopes Taehyung doesn’t notice this, too, read into it.

 

It’s a piggyback ride, that is all it really is, and it is just another projection of Taehyung’s mischievous form of cockiness, but it feels too much like a hug. It feels affectionate and it traps words in Jeongguk’s throat at first, especially when Taehyung squeezes himself closer to adjust his hold. Jeongguk hasn’t hugged anyone in years and this is particularly hard when it encapsulates all his senses with Taehyung.

 

“I can carry you like that to the end of the world,” Jeongguk drawls dully.

 

“There is no end of the world,” Taehyung whispers in his neck.

 

Jeongguk touches his thigh again, squeezes and jostles as he tells him rather brusquely, “For you there will be if you don’t get off my back.”

 

He releases him and Taehyung slips down, a lot of unnecessary touches perpetuated along the way before finally his feet meet the ground on their own and he resumes his previous position beside Jeongguk rather than on him. “I’m only providing workouts along the way,” he shrugs with his overly innocent justification.

 

Jeongguk’s head cocks, eyes slip to him briefly. “Is that so?”

 

It summons Taehyung’s smirk once more. His lashes bat with prolonged blinks. “Don’t want to compromise the carving of the new David, do I?”

 

Jeongguk shakes his head, sighs at the other boy’s antics. “Where are we going, anyway?” he asks, figures Taehyung has an answer for that as well, as he seems to have one for everything. Jeongguk doesn’t particularly care about lacking direction; he’s never really had one and now at least he has a choice, he could go right, go left, go forward, go wherever he wants to and not have to report back to anyone about it.

 

Taehyung mulls it over, presses a finger to his chin in exaggerated consideration before he taps it, raises it in the air and retains once more that perilous smile. “Wanna get breakfast?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Just act natural, act like you belong.”

 

It’s technically brunch when they reach. Taehyung has made Jeongguk discard of his back for now in a cardboard box by a garbage unit, slip his most presentable shirt, which is just a black piece of cloth over his current t-shirt that has a slight tear at the neckline, lectured him on not rolling his shoulders as much when he walks and keeping his feet so far apart and lead him into the lobby of a hotel that has left him gawking like a fish and forgetting all the pep talks Taehyung gave him.

 

It’s big, shiny, unnecessary to a point, but impressive nevertheless, the peak of kitsch, however eye-stopping. Potted flowers, smart-dressed people, and an innumerable amount of staff flock in the grandeur of the lobby that has Jeongguk’s small, tiny reflection all around, in the well waxed floor tiles, in the marble and exotic materials of the pots and some statues, and the ambivalently prevalent mirrors or similar surfaces.

 

Jeongguk and Taehyung appear absolutely diminutive in the frame of it all, but Taehyung seems utterly unfazed. He walks like he belongs, his gait changing with his entrance. He holds his shoulders wider and his countenance meeker, the ever-present smile replacing with thin, important lips that purse as if they judge as he looks around unimpressed. He walks them up a staircase, shushes Jeongguk’s pouring questions and then stands in front of a maître d’ with his chest puffed out and a subdued, cold smile back on his face.

 

Jeongguk stares at his feet, shoes terribly unfit to walk this floor as he begs he is the only one to notice. Taehyung greets and Jeongguk awaits doom, but that is not what comes.

 

“Name?” a high, polite voice asks and Jeongguk peaks up, tries to stifle his surprise.

 

“Kim,” Taehyung replies without skipping a beat.

 

The man’s eyes turn to a paper in front of him. He fails to notice Taehyung’s neck craning, his own gaze roaming the sheet he scans. “Room number?”

 

“313B,” Taehyung says readily once more, his lips most politely tugging into a smile.

 

Jeongguk waits to be called out on bullshit until the very second the man gestures to the door behind him with a hand, bows slightly.  “Any table that you like, sir.”

 

Taehyung nods his gratitude, strides confidently through the door that the man leans to open for him and beckons a confused Jeongguk to follow with a miniscule motion of his chin.

 

“Kim?” Jeongguk raises eyebrows as they step in, a room equally as grand as all else they walked through, bubbling with chatter and governed and attended by even more staff.

 

“Always go with Kim,” Taehyung turns to him, his own natural expression easily slipping back over his features, which, for some reason relaxes Jeongguk slightly. “There is at least one Kim,” he notes as he walks forward, his direction set by a huge buffet in the center of the room. “And bonus, I’m a Kim too.”

 

“Kim Taehyung?” Jeongguk asks, his eyes sliding over Taehyung’s profile when they should be gluttonously taking in the endless amount of unnamable, various food, strewn all pretty and expensive all around the

 

“Yeah,” Taehyung nods.

 

Jeongguk’s teeth dent his lip. “I’m Jeon Jeongguk.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes slant over him once, intention unknown, before they return where they should rightfully be. “Nice to meet you.”

 

“Funny,” Jeongguk shrugs as they line behind a woman wearing a cardigan that has a word in English written again and again and again. "We’ve known each other for years and we never knew that.”

 

“We haven’t known each other.” Taehyung grabs a huge, impossibly white plate out of a stack. “We’ve known of each other.”

 

Jeongguk follows suit, surprised to feel its surface is warm. He has the urge to press his palm in the center but that would be both idiotic and get the perfectly clean plate dirty with his handprints. “You’re so technical.”

 

Taehyung’s lip twitches. “Technicalities could save you, baby boy.”

 

“Don’t call me that,” Jeongguk grumbles, holding the plate close to his chest to feel its heat.

 

Taehyung steals an olive before his turn technically comes, chucks it in his mouth. “Sensitive.”

 

“Maybe,” Jeongguk mutters begrudgingly, shrugging only one shoulder.

 

“You know who else is sensitive?” Taehyung perks a brow. “Baby boys.”

 

Jeongguk sighs, head shaking, but he barely has it in him to even glare as food starts to reveal itself before him and he wants one from everything. “You are begging to be punched,” he says for the sake of saying, cannot let Taehyung go unanswered.

 

“Maybe,” Taehyung shrugs back innocent, as they both start to fill their plates with an array of foods, neither of them particularly caring if it goes well together or not. “Was there another transition before juvie or just the Gyeongs?”

 

Jeongguk is slightly thrown off by the interest, deems it to be curiosity and only gives him a side look before he returns to the stacking of food. “Just them,” he answers through the grotesque grumble of his stomach that he simply cannot subdue with every single sense of his filled with everything savory he can imagine and beyond. “A guy on my track team got me into drug running and here I am.”

 

“You just run them, or you do them?” Taehyung asks, his own attention mostly on the food, but he does spare the occasional flutter of his eyes towards Jeongguk, his head tilting right back to the buffet when he feels he might return the look.

 

“Nah,” Jeongguk shakes his head, “only sell.”

 

“Same,” Taehyung nods, a semi-relieved sigh escaping him. “Enough of a fuck up, don’t need to be a junkie too.”

 

“Precisely, yeah.”

 

They move along the buffet, slow with the way they have to put absolutely everything on their plates, but quick with how eager they are to have it on.

 

“That short chewing gum guy?” Taehyung perks a brow.

 

“Yeah?” Jeongguk’s brows furrow at the mention. “Yoongi,” he clarifies.

 

“Yoongi, then.”

 

“What about him?” Jeongguk asks.

 

“Is he your friend?”

 

Jeongguk snorts. “No.”

 

They are reaching the end of the savory buffet and it is simultaneously sad and exciting because Jeongguk can see from where he is stood that just around the corner awaits an indescribable collection of the most orderly, beautiful sweets.

 

“He seems smart-er,” Taehyung remarks.

 

“Went to a private school before,” Jeongguk details as much as he knows. Yoongi is the one who chooses who learns what and naturally, he often chooses that almost nobody knows anything too elaborate from his past. “He likes to read, I think,” Jeongguk shrugs. “I’ve heard.” Yoongi likes talking and Jeongguk himself is not much a talker, so they go little beyond mutual respect in their relationship. Perhaps, Jeongguk considers with a tug of something unfamiliar and uncomfortable in his stomach, he'd get along better with Taehyung. He’s probably hungrier than he thinks.

 

“Rare,” Taehyung says simply before they turn around the corner and Jeongguk is once more gawking like a little child. He thinks his mouth is physically salivating at the sight and smell before him. He feels monstrous with how much he wants to destroy all the beauty that spreads across the length of the surface. Everything is so pretty, tidy, nicely done, put in order. He’s never realized food can be gorgeous, but it is. It absolutely is. Pastries of all sorts, cakes, muffins, muses, things he’s only seen in pictures and more things he never knew existed, all revealed before him.

 

Taehyung isn’t looking at the food, though. He’s got his gaze softly fixed on Jeongguk, who is much too enthralled to notice. He follows his eyes to a particular elongated piece of pastry with a layer of chocolate on top and a generous amount of whipped cream. “You ever had this?” Taehyung raises a brow, the smirk back in place.

 

Jeongguk’s lips part, but he says nothing, only shakes his head.

 

 “Try it,” Taehyung insists, but before Jeongguk can react in any sort of way, he holds it between fingers and brings it to his open mouth, practically shoves it in.

 

Jeongguk splutters, his whole face smearing with whipped cream. He stumbles a step back, his eyes widening, nostrils too, as his hands lift when Taehyung lets go, one tries to balance the plate while the other lifts to cup any falling pieces of food out of his mouth. He struggles to chew, shoving the rest of it over his tongue, too. He’s not wasting food. Fortunately, its mostly cream, easy to gulp down and get it all in, the texture of the pastry itself soft and thin. It’s absolutely delicious, he has to admit, though it would have tasted better in bites. He likes to think it would have been better without Taehyung’s ringing laughter in the background, too, but he actually enjoys the sound of it. It’s light and genuine and it leaves an aftermath of a huge, boxy grin that changes all his features, his eyes curling into half-moons with the width of it as his cheeks push up, an amused glint in them.

 

Jeongguk swallows down the last of it, looks up in warning as he wipes some white cream away from his lips and nose and chin with the back of his wrist. “If you say anything—” he starts, as forcedly vicious as he can muster.

 

“I wasn’t,” Taehyung insists, eyes on his for the time being, but they fall to his lips as the insinuation settles in, “but now that you mention it—”

 

“Don’t,” Jeongguk interrupts firmly.

 

Taehyung steps closer, leans closer, his features morphing a little to depict mischief, but not entirely losing the spark of genuine and simple entertainment. “What are you gonna do about it?”

 

“Nothing, here,” Jeongguk makes eyes at him, widening them a bit and nodding at the ground. “Not gonna attract attention to myself, Taehyung.”

 

“Well, well,” Taehyung leans back, smacks his lips together with an impressed bounce of his eyebrows. “Not all arms, are you?”

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk agrees, sliding his thumb along the corner of his lips where he feels a smudge of cream still irritates the skin. “You should see my pecs as well.”

 

Taehyung’s head tips. “You offering?”

 

The other flashes a look. “Pervert,” he mutters before he extends his plate free arm, turns the very elegantly written small paper sign placed before the dish of pastries an exemplar of which he still has remnants in his mouth, towards him, his eyes squinting at the word. “What even is this?”

 

Taehyung reaches for it, too, his fingers brushing over Jeongguk’s as he tries to tilt the paper in his direction at which Jeongguk instinctively readjusts his digits. “It’s an ec—” he squints, too, leans closer, “how do you read that? Éclair,” he tries once, shakes his head and straightens up. “Fucking tongue twister.”

 

“Éclair,” Jeongguk repeats to himself, touching his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he smacks his lips twice, savors the taste.

 

He straightens up, too, finds Taehyung’s eyes on him. “You have a little—” he starts, his hand reaching towards his face, but Jeongguk swats his touch away.

 

“I can do it myself.”

 

“Chill,” Taehyung says as he watches him wipe his entire hand across to make sure he gets everything.

 

“I’m chill,” Jeongguk answers within a second, before his eyes widen, and he’s gasping, side-stepping Taehyung easily, his lips forming a perfectly circular shape. “Ooh,” he pauses before he reaches for an oversized tart with glazed strawberries on top. “Wanna try that.”

 

Taehyung huffs a light, short laugh. “Gonna ruin your Adonis body with those.”

 

“Couldn’t give less of a fuck.” Jeongguk says and proceeds to stuff his face with everything he can get his hands on.

 

 

 

 

“I have an idea,” Taehyung says, hand on his stomach as they skip down the stairs.

 

“Another one?” Jeongguk asks through half a groan, his head tipping back. He himself is struggling to take steps down. He doubts he has ever been as full in his life, his stomach currently stretched to every corner as it tries to contain all the food he most greedily had to taste.

 

Taehyung pauses on a step suddenly and Jeongguk notices three steps down, turns to him with question. It even takes overwhelming exertion to look up like this. “Wanna spend the night with me?” Taehyung cocks his head.

 

Jeongguk groans through another sentence. “Will you ever actually fuck off?”

 

“I mean,” Taehyung says, quieter, taking a step down, “wanna spend the night here?”

 

The other’s face screws with a nervous confusion. “How would that happen?”

 

Taehyung’s smile grows slightly ominous as his eyes chart to scan over the lobby, return to his. “Cause alarm.”

 

“What?” Jeongguk breathes.

 

“I need you to distract people around the reception desk,” Taehyung says.

 

Jeongguk’s nerves and confusion deepen all at once, brows drawing near. “How?”

 

Taehyung’s eyes capture his, somehow different to a moment prior as they choose to study him now rather than their surroundings. He takes another step, and another, and he pauses just above him, Jeongguk’s neck craning higher to keep his stare. “Prove to me you’re actually not all arms,” Taehyung challenges, chilling voice a little above a murmur. “Improvise.”

 

He steps around him and walks down the stairs all cocky, so high and mighty, but he should have learned already that Jeongguk never backs down from a challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s less than an hour later that Taehyung is pressing a key card to a door, while Jeongguk hovers behind him, smug he did his part well. They watch the light turn green, step inside.

 

The room is just as impressive as the rest of the space, as new to Jeongguk in experience, but what impresses him more is that Taehyung’s idea actually works.

 

“How’d you do that?” he questions as he follows him in, more focused on his back than the beautiful, spacious surroundings. Jeongguk himself had been marvelous in execution, but not particularly original in idea with a diligent simulation of suffocation right in the middle of the lobby. With the amount of food he had in his stretched out, novice stomach, an attempt at rescuing him led to a little bit of vomit that Taehyung couldn’t help but tease about on the way up, but which led to an even better distraction.

 

“Simple,” Taehyung shrugs, sliding the key card into a space near the door, “once you get around the desk – check for vacancies for the night, get a card, magnetize it—”

 

“Why do you know how to do that?” Jeongguk interrupts, not as interested in the technical delicacies of the craft as he is in Taehyung’s previous experience breaking and entering in random places.

 

“Knew a guy who got mad technology skills,” Taehyung says simply, his arms locking before his chest somewhat protectively and Jeongguk nods, drops it, walking further in the room, his eyes sliding across each feature.

 

“I’ve never been to a hotel before, did you know?” he confesses absently as he drops his bag on the carpeted floor, tilts his head to look at the ceiling, the golden lines at its corners, the lamps attached to it.

 

“Never?” Taehyung asks, head tilting. He is curious of Jeongguk’s curiosity. There is something endearingly innocent about it.

 

He shakes his head. “Never had a reason to, never travelled,” he tells him, runs his fingers gingerly across the bedding on the king size bed that centers the room. His eyes dance up to Taehyung’s as he rubs his digits into his palm after touching the fabric. “Feel like Kevin McCallister now.”

 

Taehyung’s expression dulls, eyebrows lowering over his eyes. “We’re not ordering room service if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says, takes a couple of steps towards Jeongguk as his own face changes, bottom lip tugging forward and down. “Don’t pout.”

 

“I wasn’t,” Jeongguk answers petulantly, pulling away when Taehyung nears. He walks instead to the other door in the room, cracking it open and sauntering in, the impression of wonder still written on his face. “Who needs a shower and a bath—?” he thinks aloud as he paddles in before his eyes land on the sinks and all the products that adorn them, “Oh god, would you look at the size of those?”

 

He grips at two miniature bottles of shampoo, wonderfully tiny and a soft, cream color, whips around to show his discovery to Taehyung.

 

“Small,” Taehyung smiles as he approaches from the doorway, “like you.”

 

“I’m not small,” Jeongguk protests, clutching his hands back to his body, forming fists around the tiny bottles.

 

Taehyung cocks his head, says rather fondly, very much ironically, “Sure, baby boy.”

 

“I’m still growing,” the other mutters.

 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Taehyung chuckles, eyeing the shower, his hand reaching to glide over the glass door.

 

Jeongguk huffs, not doing much to help his point and returns to his previous exploration for as long as Taehyung would let him do it in peace. It doesn’t last much longer. He hears water running. The sound of it pouring is powerful and sudden enough for him to flinch, duck slightly before he spins and finds Taehyung in the shower, clothes on, door opened, but him entirely drained. “Hey, the fuck are you doing?”

 

“Taking a shower,” Taehyung shouts back, the sound of the water booming in his ears. He grips at the shower head, lowers it from its position, though a rain still pours over him from a different one, fixed on top. He points this one to his chest briefly, then turns it around. “Want some water?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk says, stepping back. His hands raise protectively, clutching the shampoos in front of his body, “Don’t you dare,” he warns, head shaking.

 

“Come on,” Taehyung rolls his eyes, his knees shaking once, “when are you going to have an opportunity like this again?” he asks, shifting the direction of the water, his wrist shuffling around. “A shower to yourself?”

 

Jeongguk narrows his eyes. “It’s not exactly to myself if you’re in it, is it?”

 

The other boy beams. “Even more of a onetime opportunity.”

 

“Not one I’m interested in,” Jeongguk remarks, a small blush sneaking its way onto his neck and cheeks at the suggestiveness. He deems it safer now to turn his back again, continue his inspection.

 

“Sure,” he hears behind him, skeptic, and then is immediately proved wrong as water comes shooting at his back.

 

“Aw,” he flinches away from it, turning on his heel to glare, arms raising in front of him to try to fight off the stream, eyes closing on instinct, “told you not to fucking—” he tries to bite out, but his eyes peel back, arms drift down as he feels the water wash over him, “how is it so fucking hot?”

 

“Five-star hotel, Gukkie,” Taehyung grins, proud and cocky, beckons him with the shower head, taking the water away from here. “Come on,” he urges, “come here, want you to feel it with the rain.”

 

Jeongguk follows the stream, seeking its warmth again. Steam raises around them with how hot the water that pours is. He walks in between glass walls, lets it drain his clothes, his hair, him, and as he feels loud, almost boiling water trap him all around, drawn out everything else he hears, feels, and sees as he has the most ridiculous pull to laugh.

 

He only huffs out a chuckle, an honest one that comes straight from his chest. He presses both bottles in one hand, runs a hand through his hair. “You could wash a car with all those,” he shouts over the booming drip of the water, laughter seeping through.

 

Taehyung’s voice holds a similar air as he replaces the shower head back over them. “Yea?” he laughs.

 

Jeongguk does a slow, thorough spin. “Never felt so clean in my life.”

 

“Wait,” Taehyung reaches forward catches his arm, his hand glides down, touches his own palm and for a second Jeongguk almost tries to wind his fingers around his, but Taehyung slips a shampoo bottle out, “wait, come here.”

 

He squeezes the shampoo in his hand then smacks his palm right into Jeongguk’s hair, gets the other one in there as well, rubbing it in with quick, sure touches until it foams in the tresses and he cups at it, spreads it down. “Small but foamy,” he beams again at Jeongguk, who watches wide-eyed, his heart thumping impossibly in his chest as Taehyung cups his hand lower, shapes the foam over his chin. “See you’re a man now,” he teases as he observes his handy work. “You have a beard.”

 

It releases Jeongguk out of his immobilized trance and his hands are moving, reaching up to gather product from his hair and transfer it all over Taehyung. Unlike Jeongguk, Taehyung anticipates it now, so he’s using his arms as protection, struggles through bubbling giggles and even more bubbles, but Jeongguk manages to get his hands on him. “And you legit look like you have a dick growing out of your chin,” he says, a roaring laughter ripping straight out of his chest as he takes in Taehyung momentarily startled face at the news.

 

He gets over it pretty quickly, grips at the imagined dick with his fist and blows the deformed foam straight into Jeongguk’s face. It is the start of a very risky, slippery, out of breath war of foam, water, beards, and dick, and it is the most fun Jeongguk has ever had as far as he can remember into his past.

 

“I can stay here forever,” he sighs, back pressed against a wall after all of the shampoo has gone down the drain.

 

Taehyung shakes hair away from his eyes. “Skin is getting soggy, Guk,” he comments, head tilted towards the shower head he’s toying with, playing with the different functions.

 

Jeongguk is just about to complain when water erupts louder and then it is digging in his ribs, actually digging in there which how powerful the spurt of it is. “Ah, Jesus fuck,” Jeongguk gasps, reaching for Taehyung’s wrist to point the water away from himself. In the past half hour he gets much better at tiny, meaningless touches with him. “What is that stream?”

 

Taehyung looks up from in between bangs; his hair is heavier now that it is wet, falls like a drape over his eyes and makes the devilishness of his stare appear even more wicked. “I think that’s especially made for women.”

 

Jeongguk shakes his head, tongue clicking as he begrudgingly turns the shower off. “You really are such a pervert.”

 

“You too,” Taehyung returns.

 

“Um, no,” Jeongguk protests with an expression that conveys just how incredulous the mere suggestion of it is.

 

It only deepens Taehyung’s grin. “Then how did you know what I was thinking?” he raises his brows suggestively. “Got any porn on that Nintendo of yours?”

 

“Oh, shut it.” Jeongguk blushes some more, almost slips in his rapid attempts to get out of the hot, steamed up shower cabin that now when the distraction and loudness of the waters is over seems much, much too small to host them both, especially with Taehyung’s white drenched shirt that is so transparent and sticking to nipples and collarbones, he might as well not be wearing it.

 

 

 

 

“What?” Taehyung asks once in the room again as Jeongguk stands and looks at him awkwardly from some distance, his hands wound at the hem of his shirt.

 

Jeongguk’s lids flutter with embarrassment, glancing down at the floor, their hands leaving wet imprints in the tidy carpet. The clothes are much more uncomfortable now that they are out of the shower, pressed into skin and weighing heavy on his shoulders and legs and Jeongguk wants very desperately to shun them off, but apparently Taehyung won’t allow the same courtesy he did some years ago. Jeongguk hesitates, tugs at his lip with his teeth and requests shyly, “Don’t look.”

 

Taehyung’s brows fly. “Are you serious?” he asks. “Don’t you literally shower with others?”

 

“First of all,” Jeongguk starts defensively, his arms locking in front of drenched chest. “I try not to. Second of all,” he pauses, feistiness trapping in his throat and returning back to his stomach as his eyes drift over Taehyung. “It’s different when it’s just the two of us.”

 

Taehyung watches him for a moment, his eyes an inconsistent pattern all over him, but mostly drifting to his face, the teeth that peek out and worry over his lip. “It wasn’t different,” Taehyung sighs, getting his own fingers on the hem of his shirt and quickly lifting it past his head, dropping it to the floor. “But you just made it.” He reaches for his jeans next, gets them off in a heartbeat and steps out, and it is the least sexual thing in the universe, he makes sure of it. “Come on, it’s okay,” he tells him. “See.” He reaches for the neatly folded fabric on top of the bed. “Wanna get in the bathrobe.”

 

He unwraps it, and it is very much oversized, but he slips it over his shoulders, nevertheless, ties it around his waist and slips his hands proudly in his pockets.

 

Jeongguk dashes his eyes over him, snorts. “You look ridiculous,” he shakes his head.

 

Taehyung furrows his brows, spins to face a mirror nearby, checking himself out with a grin. “I look important.”

 

Jeongguk unfolds his arms as he nods in ironic agreement. “A true VIP,” he chuckles as he strips his shirt off, discards it on the floor.

 

“Really got impressive pecs there, Guk,” Taehyung grins. “Catch,” he warns, throws the other bathrobe at him and turns to check himself out some more.

 

 

 

 

 

They pretend to be important together, each basking in the feel of the lavish bathrobe, walking barefoot over exquisite carpeting. Taehyung pretends to receive a call from reception that informs him he has an imminent meeting awaiting the following day. Jeongguk pretends he has a spa package with a pedicure in a couple of hours.

 

Like teenage boys with no intention to pay for all this, however, they naturally gravitate to the minibar, spreading each and every item of it on the floor.

 

“No one will miss that, will they?” Jeongguk cannot help but ask, his conscience randomly coming into play. It does that sometimes, when he sells drugs, when he scares kids, and now, when he steals. He thinks of his mother and what she would think of him and his conscience comes into play.

 

“Trust me,” Taehyung pops some type of nut in his mouth, “a huge amount of people that can afford this hotel steal a lot more than we do from people that have less than we have.”

 

“I’ve nothing.”

 

Taehyung eyes him. “That’s very offensive to your Nintendo, isn’t it?” He points at a bottle. “What’s that?”

 

“Champagne, I think,” Jeongguk guesses as he passes it to him when Taehyung pumps his fingers over his palm three times in indication, like a baby.

 

He sits back on his thighs, struggles to get it opened but manages, not for a lack of flinching on part of them both. He tilts his head, takes a sip and lowers the bottle on the floor, gripping it by the throat. He closes his lips, lets himself swallow as Jeongguk stares, awaiting the verdict. Taehyung’s entire face screws, eyes, mouth, nose. “Ok, ew.” He parts his lids, blinks in disgust a couple of times and passes the bottle back to Jeongguk. “Hate it, give me the M&M’s.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Of course, the bed is fucking heaven as well,” Jeongguk moans with satisfaction as his back touches the surface. He lies down with hesitance at first, as far away from Taehyung as possible, but in a second he feels like he is melting in feathery heaven, eyes falling shut and each of his muscles relaxing. It doesn’t screech with metal underneath him. He doesn’t worry he is lying on a mattress stained by aging urine. It is so comfortable. It is too comfortable.

 

“Isn’t it?” Taehyung returns with similar pleasure coating his voice.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes open in a moment, followed by a large exhale through his nose. “You’re a dick, Taehyung, you know that?” he sighs, staring at the ceiling, his arms moving to prop at his head, molding back into the pillow, chin adjusting as he blinks. “You’re one absolute dick.”

 

“No,” Taehyung says softly, turning to lie on his side, his eyes roaming boldly over Jeongguk’s profile, “for the first time, I don’t know.”

 

Jeongguk lets his head tilt some more, meets his eyes honest and big and wondering. “Why show me this when you’re just going to take it away?” And later on, it seems, when it comes to Taehyung, that is all that Jeongguk ever asks.

 

Taehyung shakes his head lightly, releases a breath of his own and rolls to lie on his back, too, eyes prying away from Jeongguk. “I’m not the one that takes it away.” And later on, it seems, when it comes to this question, that is all that Taehyung ever answers.

 

Jeongguk studies him for a second or two before they are both staring plainly at the white ceiling with its golden corners.

 

“It’s Tae, by the way,” Taehyung interrupts the silence that falls over them.

 

“What?”

 

“Tae,” he repeats. “People that know me,” he tells him softly, “They call me Tae.”

 

“There are people that know you?” the words are a whisper on Jeongguk’s breath; he’s scared any louder they will sound like an accusation when he just wants them to be a question.

 

He feels the sheet shuffle. “Sort of.”

 

Jeongguk rolls only his head to look at him. “Do I know you?”

 

Taehyung returns the look, their bodies facing the ceiling, but their eyes sealing together in a whispered conversation. “You know where I’ve been.”

 

“Sort of,” Jeongguk shakes his head. “I don’t know where you went. After the Gyeongs. Don’t know why you left.” Me.

 

No, the syllable has no place being there. Taehyung didn’t owe him anything and Jeongguk shouldn’t want from him anything, he chastises himself internally, rips the word out of his thoughts. He wants to look away but doesn’t.

 

“Went to a different foster home,” Taehyung tells him. Jeongguk’s eyes drift for a ghostly moment to his lips to watch just how barely they part in his murmur as he speaks. “One of those people that know me was there.”

 

His gaze drifts back up. “A friend?”

 

Taehyung doesn’t say yes or no. “He calls me Tae,” he says. “Called me Tae,” he corrects himself. He is the first one to be blinking back up at the ceiling. “He’s gone now.”

 

Jeongguk’s features twist. “Gone how?”

 

“I won’t get to see him again,” Taehyung shakes his head, his voice building up slightly firmer but still not escaping the gentle tone of a whisper. “We ran away. The foster home I went to,” he blinks back to Jeongguk’s waiting eyes, runs a tongue to moisten his lips, “it wasn’t like with the Gyeongs. It was—we couldn’t, couldn’t stay.” He doesn’t turn to the ceiling once more, but he chooses the night lamp that shows over Jeongguk’s ear. “We ran away. We had to get on this train, the plan was,” he pauses, swallows. “He got on it. I didn’t.”

 

Jeongguk’s gaze darts across every single feature he is currently permitted to see, a wave of sympathy swarming over him. He wishes there was something for him to do. He is reminded once more, of his mother, a feeling he used to get only with her, the most frustrating of all, the inability to take away from someone else’s pain. When Jeongguk hurt, he knew he would be fine. When he scraped his knee, he knew it would heal, when a movie made him sad, he knew it would go away. But when a frown was on his mother’s features, he never truly knew if it was genuinely gone or just minutely replaced for his sake. He never knew and there was never really something he could do, and it was such a numbing, horrid helplessness he felt with it.

 

He feels it now, brief but powerful, the moment of utter helplessness as he watches Taehyung’s throat contract with his gulp, his eyes blink longer than they have to, glisten brighter than they do naturally in the reflection of the lights above.

 

“I’m sorry,” it’s all he thinks to say, no matter how useless it feels on his lips.

 

“It’s okay,” Taehyung shakes his head, blinks rapidly four times. “Each for their own, yeah?”

 

Jeongguk drags his eyes across him once more as the helplessness dwindles but does not fully erase. “You seem to say,” he murmurs, the words coming sticky with drying saliva.

 

Taehyung shrugs. “It’s how it is.”

 

Jeongguk looks at his mouth, he looks at the corner of his eye, at the mark at his nose, the tips of his hair. “We’re here,” he says.

 

“We are,” he confirms.

 

Jeongguk moves to lie on his back.

 

Taehyung sighs, shuffles in the bed as he reaches. It takes a single button to turn off all the lights at once and they are left in a darkness with no gold corners to stare at.

 

Sheets shuffle once more. “Gukkie?” Taehyung calls, voice tipping innocently at the end.

 

“Yeah, Tae?”

 

He can practically hear him smile. “Do you want me to hold your hand?”

 

Jeongguk groans long and exasperated, untugging the duvet underneath him from beneath the mattress. “Fuck off,” he curses him out as he slips underneath.

 

Taehyung chuckles quietly, gets himself under the bedsheets as well. “Goodnight,” he murmurs, voice muffling in the pillow as he lies down on his side.

 

Jeongguk’s mouth opens then closes. He pauses. “Will you say good morning to me as well?”

 

It takes a beat from Taehyung as well. “It’s common courtesy, isn’t it?”

 

They drained all of the shampoo, conditioner and body lotion in this hotel room, but Taehyung still manages to smell like Taehyung. So Jeongguk believes that, even though once again Taehyung doesn’t say yes; he doesn’t say no. Jeongguk closes his eyes, and he tells him, “Goodnight.”

 

 

 

Good morning is not what Jeongguk gets, though. No, rather it is half the hotel staff at the door, a man speaking to him as condescending as he is disgusted. “Unless you can show me evidence you are renowned businessmen Kim Hyojun, you are in serious trouble.”

 

--

 

 

Jeongguk thought Taehyung is not one of the bad guys.

 

The problem is Taehyung thinks everyone is a bad guy.

 

--

 

 

When Jeongguk learns from Yoongi that Taehyung is back, he is not all too excited to face him, yet at the same time he can’t fucking wait.

 

He’s on edge all day long. Just wants to know what corner he would pop out of. The anticipation he feels is very much physical, a layer he has to carry on his skin, and a ball that shapes furiously in his stomach. In one blink, he wants desperately to see him. In another, he hopes the bastard runs away before he has to face him again. He’s a storm of a boy all day long, broodier than usual, to his group’s testament, arms constantly wrapping around him, flexing, teeth pressing together, eyes shifting in the direction of every sound and then scurrying away.

 

Nighttime hits and he hasn’t seen him, and he cannot sleep. He steals a pack of cigarettes from Yoongi, offers it to the guard and he's breathing the brisk air of the night in the courtyard. Alone.

 

He’s bouncing the basketball hard into the ground. He almost begs someone provokes him that day, gives him a reason to let steam off, but the basketball will have to do. He wonders if he can slam it hard enough to knock the air out of it. It’s the only basketball they have, it is very much unlikely they would feel so generous as to replace it if something were to happen.

 

He tries to go easy on the fucking ball, but then he hears fucking him.

 

“Jeongguk.” As in a déjà vu, he strides into the courtyard when Jeongguk is alone, immediately makes him lose count of the dribbles he has done, evokes instead a wave of frustration. He walks over, pauses close, not close enough to smell, but certainly at a proximity that is in Jeongguk’s peripheral vision and he sees him, but doesn’t see him, because he refuses to look.

 

One of the reasons he dreaded seeing him again was he couldn’t predict his own reaction. But his blood is sizzling now, and he faces forward, eyes on the ball and he ignores him, slamming the ball into the ground.

 

“Hey,” Taehyung calls with a bold step forward. “Are you going to pretend I’m not here?” He has the audacity to demand. Jeongguk can imagine those huge eyes dance over him, fix at arbitrary points of him to pass some wise judgement before they move on and settle fiery on his face. He swears he can feel them. “Hey, that basketball didn’t do nothing to you, let it rest.” Then he does the worst. He touches him, calls him by the name his mother used to call him. “Gukkie.”

 

Jeongguk tears his wrist away before Taehyung can wrap his fingers around it fully, tugging the ball to his side. He whips around, faces him fully, eyes locking on his face with the imminent need to glare and despite the vice he pours into that stare he pins him with, his voice comes shallow. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

 

“I want to talk to you,” Taehyung counters, eyes set and determined.

 

“Don’t give a flying fuck,” Jeongguk turns away again, letting the ball bounce on the ground as he readies himself to dribble it again with all the force his arm possesses, but Taehyung reaches forward, snatches it away as it travels through air and steps back, locking his hands around it.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes narrow. He sounds almost calm as he seethes, “Give that back.”

 

“No,” Taehyung shakes his head, “it’s distracting you and I want your attention on me.”

 

Jeongguk turns to him again, helplessly led forward by an aggression that captures his feet, his fists as they form by his thighs, and his tongue as it bashes. “Oh, now you do?”

 

Taehyung blinks over his expression, lets the ball fall to the ground but neither cares. “Yeah”

 

Jeongguk hates he has to look at him from so close now, to face the familiarity of his features, the fact every time he sees them he has grown up just a little bit more and they have settled more on his face, and more in Jeongguk’s memory in the creation of what is Kim Taehyung to him, what he looks like, feels like, smells like, sounds like, a distant knowledge of what he tastes like, too. He looks better. He’s been eating more this time, and Jeongguk notices that with begrudging relief. His jaw appears more enunciated even if his cheeks are still round and full. But it’s him. It’s most definitely him and every bit of him is the most familiar and long-lasting thing Jeongguk has in his life. His mom is gone, Miss Park is gone, his aunt, the Gyeongs are gone, and all that comes with all that, but all along the way after he lost his mother, it is Taehyung that prevails. Taehyung and his damned eyes and the damned way he smells like home.

 

Jeongguk pulls away. “Needy little bastard,” he mutters. Taehyung probably never even notices what Jeongguk smells like.

 

“What’d you call me?” he breathes.

 

Jeongguk begs his eyes are sharp. “You heard me.”

 

“I’m older than you,” Taehyung reminds.

 

Jeongguk smiles a foul smile, irony lacing through. “Not really the place for caring, is it, hyung?”

 

“What’s up your ass?”

 

“Mine?” Jeongguk huffs in disbelief.

 

Taehyung’s arms lock together. His nod is cold, voice chilly, stare icy. “Yeah, mine’s pretty empty.”

 

It’s the coldness that does it, the way Taehyung stays there clearly aware it’s all wrong and pretending it isn’t. The front of impartiality or true impartiality, Jeongguk doesn’t know, but he accuses with three simple word that boom around the yard. “You left me.”

 

You left me, he says and it rings all around, bounces of the ground, the wall, the fences, hangs in the air. Silence, stretches after, their eyes helplessly locking.

 

He wanted a good morning, he remembers. From one person, Jeongguk wanted a fucking good morning. That is all.

 

It takes Taehyung time to respond, but he does it. He opens his mouth, gulps down his first intention and then starts again. “I didn’t leave you,” he tells him, legs adjusting pointlessly on the ground. “You wouldn’t wake up, I saved myself,” he declares. His eyes drop to Jeongguk’s feet, track over his body and land back on his. “Each for their own, Gukkie.”

 

With a poisonous stare, Jeongguk enunciates, as slow as he can, as poignant, with as much charged deliberation. “Fuck. you.”

 

Taehyung’s eyelids flutter as he watches him. Jeongguk can see him gulp and yet he still pretends this is a game of wits for him. “Guess that would fill my ass, yeah.”

 

Jeongguk breathes out his frustration, eyes shutting as he draws out, “Will you shut the fuck up with bullshit for one minute?”

 

“Why so serious, Jeongguk?” Taehyung asks. He’s better at this now than he was a second ago, at not caring. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

“Does to me,” Jeongguk replies, shameless and truthful, without skipping a beat and it is the honesty that strikes Taehyung. In a conversation like this it’s supposed to be forbidden.

 

“Why?” he insists.

 

“Because,” Jeongguk answers childish and he is a child, really, what should either of them expect. He runs a hand over his face, tries to turn away.

 

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung stops him, getting his name out surprisingly softly, but he shuns the tentativeness for his next words. “You know everything is temporary for you and for me.” He lets him see his eyes, as they implore him to listen, read between the lines. “Don’t let it matter that I left you.”

 

Jeongguk’s teeth dig into his bottom lip with hesitation before he lets his tongue loose. “Wouldn’t it have mattered if I left you?”

 

Taehyung shakes his head. “Only because I would have been the one that got caught.”

 

Jeongguk laughs, shortly, and it is at no one else but himself, really. “You’re a piece of shit,” he tells them both, nodding to himself, to confirm the truth of it twice.

 

He watches Taehyung’s eyes pry away, bat to the floor. He sees the fingers of one of his hands curl together in a fist. He notices the movements of his throat and he hears the strain in his voice. “It’s easier like this.”

 

It’s because he witnesses it all, every subtlety of his demeanour, that Jeongguk says, “I fucking trust you.”

 

“Don’t,” Taehyung shouts, for a moment loses himself. He bites his tongue to stop other words, looks over Jeongguk, tells him quietly. “Makes you look stupid.”

 

Jeongguk sucks a breath through his nose, his lips press together, jaw tightens. He nods, he concedes. It does make him look stupid. “Why should I talk to you then?”

 

Taehyung’s mouth parts, his tongue flat inside it ready to speak but then he stutters slightly. “I don’t know,” he says, shoulders shrugging. “I’m here, you’re here.”

 

Jeongguk answers with a humorless sigh of laughter. “There are a lot of people here I’d rather talk to, really.”

 

“Hm?” Taehyung challenges, his chin tipping, eyes narrowing with concentration and retaining that perilous glint as he drops them down, courses them up. Jeongguk feels their path almost as if he traces a finger over his skin. “What would you rather do to me, then?”

 

Jeongguk’s neck twitches, eyes engrained on his face, on his own. He takes a step closer, protective arms falling to his sides to allow space for his chest to puff out, to broaden. “I’d really fucking love to—”

 

“Yes,” Taehyung beckons, one step for him, too.

 

“I just really—” his fist pulses. He comes closer.

 

“Yeah,” the other urges, his lips remaining parted, his tongue touching the top of his teeth. Jeongguk’s attention seals to it. Even the way he sits his tongue in his own fucking mouth is goddamn cocky.

 

“Really want to—”

 

“Tell me,” Taehyung breathes.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes rip away from his lips and lift back to his. “Punch the fuck out of you.”

 

Taehyung pauses, head drawing back. There is an inch of a space between them now, breathing heaved with charge. Taehyung pauses and Jeongguk thinks he’s won but then that tongue peels away from the roof of his mouth. “Do it,” he says, eyes slanting slowly over his face, meet his and his head cocks. “I dare you, baby boy.”

 

And he does. He doesn’t punch him, really, as much as he pushes him, and then Taehyung pushes him back and they are at it.

 

They’re fighting. They can’t get close to each other cause each for their fucking own like Taehyung insists always, so Jeongguk sees no harm in expressing his frustration at that with his fists and Taehyung may be smart as fuck, clever, sly, and he is quick on his feet, but Jeongguk is stronger.

 

So, Taehyung does what Taehyung does. He plays dirty. He gets his foot behind Jeongguk’s ankle, trips him with a smirk, but Jeongguk grabs his wrist, his ribs, refuses to go down without him. And Jeongguk is stronger, so when he holds onto him and topples over, Taehyung follows suit, Jeongguk on the ground, on the concrete and Taehyung on top, his knees scraping as their legs tangle, staring bewildered and scared – he doesn’t expect to fall, too -- eyes darting around Jeongguk’s face, his hand instinctively on his chest for support.

 

And it is the first time Jeongguk sees his eyes, truly, since he touches him, since he pushes him. They are wide and wild with searching. He breathes out, breathes in, the exertion of this, the frustration of it, and Taehyung does, too, and his exhale is on his lips when he does it and the next thing that Jeongguk knows is that he can see nothing and he’s inhaling sharply through his nose, and lips are touching his.

 

Lips are touching his, and moving, and gasping. Lips are parting against his, hissing, breathing. They’re wrapping with his, trapping his upper lip, his bottom lip, molding against his. Lips are kissing his. Jeongguk pushes forward, up, hand releasing Taehyung’s wrist and cradling his head.

 

 

 

Jeongguk doesn’t know if he is kissing him really, or simply pouring years-long built frustration in his mouth, but – most ironically – he feels as if sealing lips to lips helps him breathe so he does just that.

 

Jeongguk doesn’t know, also, who kisses first. He has enough mistrust in his impulses and urges topped with his insensible infatuation with this boy to deem it plausible that it is him who first leans in. It doesn’t matter to him, anyway, as long as they both press forward, as long as they both move, sigh, grip, lick, kiss. And they both do, hard. So very hard.

 

But Taehyung knows he kisses first. He does it. He tries not to. He thinks he shouldn’t, not Jeongguk, but it seems impossible not to. He kisses him first. He thinks, maybe, it will be brief, as brief as the first time. Maybe Jeongguk will push him off and away, curse him out some more. He partially hopes he will. But it is another part of him that gets what it wants.

 

The parts that wants to kiss him into virtual oblivion – because Taehyung forgets himself in that kiss, forgets promises (that he makes to himself, not to anyone else, he never promises things to others). It’s simultaneously the worst and the best kiss he’s had in his life – he’ll have in his life. He’s never wanted a kiss less and more, but he’s already done it, so he lets himself have it.

 

He palms at his neck, fingers slipping into his hair and tangling in strands. He moves himself away slightly, so he is not on him as much and Jeongguk follows, sitting himself up slightly, one hand supporting him whereas the other circles around Taehyung’s waist, catches at the side of him and tugs him forward. Taehyung’s back curls, thighs part as he sits on Jeongguk’s and he tries to only kiss him on the lips for a moment, just kiss, no tongue, no teeth, no frustration, just kiss, slower and realer. It’s almost gentle for a moment.

 

But then Jeongguk flips him over and he lets him. Jeongguk probably needs to be on top of him for a bit, to calm himself down, so he allows it. He likes having him on top of him, too. His body urges forward when he settles himself on, so Taehyung spreads his legs a bit more, wraps his calves over his thighs. He forgets gentle with the way Jeongguk is, his hunger invigorating his own.

 

Jeongguk is hungry. His mouth is and so is his body, and touching Taehyung, feeling him, tasting him all at once drives him just a little bit insane. He’s surging forward, kissing him with all he has. He never even knew he wanted to kiss him, but he does, desperately. He’s sighing in his mouth, inhaling him in and when Taehyung’s legs part that little bit more, Jeongguk’s body moves on its own with the way it slants over him. Warm thighs press into his sides, feet tease at his calf and Jeongguk lets all the instinct of inexperience and wanton take control.

 

Taehyung’s fingers squeeze in his hair, push under his shirt, scorching tips dancing along the skin of his back, his spine and Jeongguk’s moaning and not even embarrassed about it.

 

Some moments before Jeongguk genuinely thought he wanted to hurt him for hurting him, but he doesn’t. He just wants to feel him. Taste him, smell him, hear him, see him. That’s it, that’s what he wants from Taehyung. For him to be there.

 

He feels him now, all of him, tasting all of him. He wants more, stupidly, naturally. His hips are rolling against his and Taehyung is warm and soft and brilliant, and it feels so unbelievably good just to kiss him, to part his mouth against his, dip his tongue in, have Taehyung’s own tease at his teeth, his lips, tangle with his. It’s ridiculous really. Jeongguk’s never been one of those boys that think about girls and boobs and talk about making out and petting. He never has and he certainly doesn’t imagine himself developing an interest in boobs, but he definitely has one in kissing.

 

Namely, kissing Taehyung, moving against him. They’re both wearing sweatpants and the fabric feels offensive in between them but thankfully leaves little to the imagination, drives the roll of Jeongguk’s hips, but he wants more. He cannot get enough. He wants more and his hands get bold, reach for the hem of Taehyung’s sweatpants.

 

That’s when he pushes him away. “As if I’d let you fuck me,” Taehyung scoffs, propping a hand into his chest and pushing him away and off of himself as he sits up.

 

Jeongguk clicks his tongue, shakes his hair from his eyes and wipes his mouth as if it isn’t on fire. He scoffs right back. “As if I want to fuck you.”

 

Truth is, Jeongguk wants to, wants him, in any shape or form, really. In this world, in this life, where Jeongguk slips so easily within the bad guys, in which he is a bad guy, essentially, everything is crooked, everyone has some ugliness to them, whether it be in appearance or in personality, in this world, Taehyung with his stupid hair, wicked grin, and smiling gaze is the most beautiful thing Jeongguk has ever laid his eyes upon.

 

Maybe he becomes a bad guy, too, he becomes the worst guy, but Jeongguk wants him still.

 

Being prideful in that very moment, scoffing and lying, is one of his few regrets in life. They are each other’s first kiss, but they aren’t each other’s first times, and this was their chance to be. He wishes he hadn’t scoffed at him. He wishes he’d kissed him again, told him please, said to him, I want you. He wishes he’d asked him to allow him to take care of him, been gentle for him. Of course, this is only in retrospect. He doesn’t know how he would have actually handled it if Taehyung had let him then and there, with all the anger sizzling just beneath the uppermost layer of his skin that always tingled with his touch. What he does know, however, is that Taehyung hated his first time. It was cheap, it hurt. He did it not because he wanted the person. He did it because he wanted to have had sex, he wanted it out of the way.

 

At that point in his life, Jeongguk knows little about sex. He knows how to want it, knows how to jack off, knows how to use it as profanity. He doesn’t know how to take care of another man, but at least, at least, he knows he would have tried, and he would have been with Taehyung for him, not for sex. No matter what hormonal war wages inside of him, no matter what rage spikes his blood at Taehyung’s attitude, he could not be with Taehyung and not be in it for him.

 

And if Taehyung were to say let me, let me fuck you, if he wanted to flip him now again and get inside him, he’s spread his legs and let him, and he doesn’t know if it’s cause he’s stupid, young, or horny or all at once, but he will. Taehyung doesn’t, though, and maybe it’s for the best. Maybe Jeongguk is too young to let him do that to him in a courtyard, maybe he’s too inexperienced to know that is what he wants. Maybe he will just latch more onto this boy that will surely disappear once more.

 

Jeongguk lies quietly on his back, chest heavy with his shallow breaths, one of his knees up pointing at the sky he’s staring at.

 

Taehyung’s sat beside him, legs spread forward, one knee a mirror to Jeongguk’s, equally as silent. His wrists are twisted uncomfortably at the concrete, elbows turned to his body, arms propping him up. He’s staring ahead, at the fence that separates him from his previous freedom, that alike, separates him from Jeongguk.

 

Jeongguk glances at his back.

 

“Bet I’m better at basketball than you now.”

 

Taehyung shakes hair away from his face as he chuckles breathy. His teeth touch at his bottom lip and then his tongue runs soothing over, tasting traces of Jeongguk. “I’m sure you are.”

 

When Taehyung runs away again the next day, Jeongguk counts the days until they catch him. He wonders if he hadn’t reacted so angry to him, would he have suggested he comes with him again, run away together for a second chance. He can’t know.

 

It’s a hundred and fifty-six days without him.

Chapter 3: v.vi.

Summary:

developments and regression and developments and regression and just growing up

The next time Taehyung is admitted, his hair is longer. It’s grey, silver maybe, because it seems to sparkle, and he has a ring in his lip that they take out for safety measures, but he has back in as soon as they leave him to his own devices.

 

The hair annoys Jeongguk. He thinks this is the most beautiful Taehyung has ever looked. He didn’t use to think of Taehyung as beautiful. He was okay, at least, not as crooked as most people he knew, no knocked-out teeth, no senselessly huge, hideous tattoos, no questionable haircuts that were somehow meant to be threatening. Taehyung has always looked normal. He has always been just a boy, like the ones he met in school, shabby hair, lanky, perhaps cute. He grows into his features and it is startling to Jeongguk, because now he looks different, but he smells the same, feels the same.

 

This time when Jeongguk sees him, he is beyond showing affect. He leans his shoulder on the wall as he passes, stares at him with brief consideration, at the lip ring, at the hair. The hair that isn’t so sleek anymore. It has volume and appears drier. He’s still slim, but his shoulders are broader and from them hangs a loose shirt, the last few buttons of which he has not bothered to do.

 

And Jeongguk looks him over unabashedly, absolutely shameless in the track of his eyes as they skim him over head to toe, quickly once then pausing to take interest in certain parts of him, the sparkling ring in his full lip, the length of his lashes, the hood of his eyelids. His gaze is somehow lazy when he nears Jeongguk, though it widens slightly when he notices him fully, darting his own eyes across Jeongguk’s shape.

 

He himself has upgraded from loose fitting clothes, has his t-shirt tugged in his pants and every piece of his clothing hugging his body. He holds himself with some newfound nonchalance that he has worked hard on managing to perpetuate. He pushes himself off of the wall, makes his scrutiny of Taehyung more pointed when the other boy pauses instinctively before him with hindered expectation. Jeongguk holds his chin high, his hands on his arms as he drags his eyes over. His head cocks.

 

“You look like you’ve been doing sex work,” he tells him as his hello.

 

Taehyung sucks a breath in, tilts his chin up, too. “Sex work is honest work.”

 

Jeongguk raises brows and when Yoongi beckons from behind Taehyung’s shoulders with a motion of his head, he wordlessly side-steps him, follows Yoongi and the others to the bathroom.

 

 

 

It is only when he is away from him after being close enough to see the details of his face that Jeongguk really knows Taehyung makes his heart beat slightly faster. It’s annoying that he does, yet somehow it is calming. Jeongguk is glad there is something, someone, that can so distinctly make him feel, no matter what those emotions are and the array of complicated connotations that tug along and mess him up. With what he observes of people around him, he has always been scared of growing impartial, of growing numb, of surviving as an instinct and only bearing an instinct for survival.

 

Unlike some people, Jeongguk still remembers his mother, still hears her voice, wonders when he makes a choice, if she would be disappointed, angry, saddened. He has to start from scratch from his own, relearn all feelings, how they strike him in his new world, but he never forgets what it was like not so much for him to love his mother, but for his mother to love him – she did with all her being. From all the things she’s ever proved to him, given him, that was what mattered the most, and it’s something Jeongguk desperately clings to, the need to learn on his own how to give it and receive it, and he knows for that he must never grow utterly impartial.

 

It is difficult not to when everything around him is so numb and numbing, but Taehyung makes it easy. Especially with the way he pisses him off. It is a surface feeling, which makes it all harder to ignore. He simply struts and Jeongguk’s pissed off. He simply smiles and Jeongguk’s heart flutters and then he is even more pissed off, but in a second he is calm again. And he knows Taehyung will disappear again. Sooner or later, Taehyung will be gone and Jeongguk has learned his lesson, so he is not ignoring him this time.

 

He doesn’t talk to him too much in front of people, lets the afternoon linger between them and the evening, lets him think he will be back to petty ignoring, but he isn’t really, so this time he does notice when Taehyung glances from the corner of his eyes, that he trails attention after him if he passes by if he is in his line of sight as he crosses the room. He notices that Taehyung notices him, keeps eyes on him, attention that only wavers when Jeongguk returns it.

 

Jeongguk still waits until nighttime, waits until the others are asleep or pretending to be, to tug at his wrist, to shake him awake.

 

“Tae, hey, Tae,” he whispers, the hush of the name comfortable on his tongue and on his lips as his eyes greedily take the silhouette of his profile in the scant lighting of the moonlight falling through windows.

 

“What?” Taehyung murmurs as he moves to be more on his side, his knee folding over the blanket and his arms wrapping around it as they had many years ago. He still sleeps the same.

 

“Wanna show you something,” Jeongguk tells him, his hand cupping over his wrist now that he has an excuse to touch and Taehyung is too groggy to really make sense of it or question it.

 

“Now?” Taehyung’s eyes part, less intense with how sleepy he is. Jeongguk almost feels bad for waking him up when he has managed to fall asleep – some nights it isn’t easy. But then again it is Taehyung’s fault for the uncertainty his presence carries. This might be his only night here, their only night together, and Jeongguk has this other weird urge that he has with Taehyung that used to also be reserved for his mother, to share.

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk says in a hush, lips parted as he watches Taehyung nuzzle more comfortable in his bed, his eyes fall shut once more.

 

He is swarmed with those curious nerves once more, the ones that used to always come about when he had to talk to anyone at first, the ones that Taehyung stifled that first night when he held his hand, but now are only for him, and only slightly different. Jeongguk suddenly doesn’t know why he was so sure he could just wake Taehyung up in the middle of the night, tug on his arm a little and he would follow him, and now he’s scared, fears his rejection.

 

But Taehyung only nuzzles to get his hand more comfortable to push himself up and he does. Jeongguk’s fingers reluctantly release his wrist, where skin feels warm and smooth and he stands back, watches as Taehyung straightens. He rubs his eyes before he parts them, his cheeks puffed with sleep, lips in a bit of a pout. He’s cute for a moment and then his eyes open and he’s beautiful again.

 

“Okay,” he says, and he gets as silently as he can of the top bunk, follows to where Jeongguk wants to take him.

 

He doesn’t say much as he walks, still half asleep and trailing after Jeongguk, except for muttering something about Dora the Explorer when he leads him out of a window that he tampers with despite the warning it should not be tampered with and onto a fire escape. When Jeongguk turns to flash him a look, one leg over the sill, Taehyung’s lips tug, teeth show, and he smiles, too sleepy still to smirk, so it’s easy and genuine, and Jeongguk stares at the floor for a bit after, before he climbs over and starts up the stairs.

 

Jeongguk tries to swallow down the tug of pride when Taehyung seems to be in awe when they reach the top. Despite the few loud industrial fans, the roof is smooth for them to stand on, high enough for all the sky to be seen without the obstruction of buildings, and not surrounded by fucking fences that remind them, or Jeongguk mostly, that they are trapped. Although he does think despite Taehyung’s tendency to run away, he will appreciate the open sky as well, the lack of clear signs of incarceration, because there must be a reason he is always so hasty to get out. He must hate the very existence of that fence bellow them and sometimes when he is up here, Jeongguk thinks he can forget about it.

 

Jeongguk leads him to the edge and allows him to sit first to sit close. They dangle their legs off the edge, and he watches him watch the sky. His eyes never once fall to the yard underneath and it is what Jeongguk expects of him, because it is how it is for himself. His pupils dance across the never-ending dark sky above them, head tipping back, neck arching and somehow even that is beautiful about him with that hair, the delicate curl of his neck, as his lips part slightly and he takes it all in. 

 

“Shit,” he half says, half gasps as he brings his attention down to Jeongguk, forcing him to replace his own away, “that’s cool.”

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk nods. “Would have been cooler if there were stars.”

 

Taehyung forgets about the sky for a moment as Jeongguk focuses on it and stares at the boy next to him instead. He makes himself smaller as he sits on his hands, slumps his shoulders a bit, the shoulders he always keeps pumped and straight to appear so huge, larger than life. He doesn’t bother with this now, has no one to scare, to warn, so he simply allows himself to relax.

 

Taehyung blinks at him under the moonlight. Jeongguk seems to have the stars he misses so dearly in his eyes, but Taehyung is not about to tell him that.  

 

“Have you even left this place since I was last here?” he sounds more awake with the crispness of the night air surrounding them and Jeongguk thinks his shirt is too thin for this, has a small urge to wrap himself around him, keep him warm, but he never would, so he sits on his hands to repress it.

 

“Yeah,” he nods, and Taehyung is looking at him and not at the sky, so he allows himself to return it, at least for a bit. “But I come back on my own,” he shrugs as he admits. It wasn’t his idea, once more he escaped on someone else’s whim. They do that, the boys do, sometimes. Yoongi is the instigator usually, urges them outside and acquainting them with the world there so they would be ready when they release them. Yoongi himself is getting old, the end of his stay there drawing near and he is determined to leave his mark on them before he’s gone. It’s a pretty idea and it would be prettier if he didn’t mostly take them drinking. “If they don’t catch me, I get to leave, permanently, with no one looking for me one day.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes pry away when Jeongguk confesses this. He leans on his hands, extended to his back and cranes his head up, looking for some stars in the sky, but truly there aren’t any on there. It’s beautiful but black. If he wants to see stars, he has too look back to Jeongguk’s eyes, but right now he doesn’t. He can’t.

 

“So,” he swallows. He blinks and his hair is in his eyes, but it doesn’t seem to bother him as his lashes brush at its ends. “Potentially,” he licks at his lips, his tongue toying briefly with the ring and Jeongguk wonders if he can get to play with it as well, “one time I will be brought back here, and you will be gone for good.”

 

Jeongguk’s gaze snaps up from his mouth and moves instead to his own that he keeps pointed up. “Potentially,” Jeongguk says. He turns his head away.

 

Taehyung nods, folds his head in, chin in and his jaw touches his chest as he stares down at the yard for the first time since they have come here. “Right,” he speaks and to Jeongguk it sounds tight, but he can’t know.

 

He allows himself to study him briefly, tries to gauge his expression, but with his own need to ask questions, he is turning forward, feels more comfortable gazing at the yard, at the distance, than at him when he speaks. “What about you?” His legs dance as they dangle, swing back and forth, back and forth.

 

He wants to ask him where he has been. Truthfully, he wants to know every detail of his life outside, he wants to know him, earn the right to call him Tae for a list of selfish, silly reasons. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to, however, fears he will chase him away by demanding he accounts for where he’s been what he’s done. It’s really one question that truly tugs at him unwavering. One question he feels he cannot not ask.

 

“What about me?” Taehyung turns to him.

 

Jeongguk blinks at the yard. He relaxes harder on his hands until he feels them grow sore underneath the weight of his body. “Did you do it?”

 

He cocks his head. “Did I what?”

 

“Do sex work?”

 

It comes out between his lips sharp and quick and without an actual permission, communication to his actual intentions. It shoots, an absolute whim of a question jumping past his lips unheeded. He says it, and he bites his tongue, pauses, but when Taehyung sighs, when Taehyung’s head tips further and his lids lower, when he utters his name airy and prolonged, Jeongguk’s resolve fails.

 

“Jeongguk—”

 

He lets his tongue go, turns to him. “Just tell me.” A moment before he doubted it was true, more a joke than a genuine enquiry, provoked by Taehyung’s own off-handed comment to his earlier speculation, but his reaction to the question says different.

 

He breathes through his nose, slowly, shakes his head as he tells him. “Stripping, that’s all.”

 

“Stripping?” Jeongguk pronounces, his teeth meeting each other, last hopes that the answer would be a clear cut no falling and replacing in his chest with palpable deflation.

 

Taehyung’s eyes fall shut with his murmur of, “yeah,” but he parts them after, stares between Jeongguk’s with no lasting excuse in his gaze, because he shouldn’t be feeling this strain to apologize; he has nothing to be sorry for in front of him.

 

Jeongguk huffs a humorless laugh and he tries not to be petty, tries not to accuse. He tries and he fails, “Other men watched you shake your ass naked, you mean.”

 

Taehyung leans away from him, his face going blank for less than a second before his eyes narrow. And if Jeongguk tries to subdue accusation, Taehyung does his best to make his drip when he speaks. “What do you mean other men?”

 

“I don’t—” Jeongguk looks forward again, away, away from him and his demanding, knowing eyes. They both know what he means, men that aren’t him, as if he has some ground to ask for loyalty of this kind. “I didn’t mean anything,” Jeongguk shakes his head.

 

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung presses as he walks his palms forward, straightens up completely.

 

“Cause,” Jeongguk shrugs, “cause you’re a man,” he tries, awkward and strained. He scratches at his ear, feels dumb, so dumb for caring and for insinuating he has the right to.

 

And it seems to feed Taehyung, gives strength to an ugly, petty side of him. “Mhm,” he hums and nods and drips all the irony in the world in the simplicity of the single prolonged sound. He adjusts on his ass, brings himself closer now, too, and it feels somehow cruel, the way he fills his senses with himself only to snap. “Did lap dancing as well.” His eyes narrow, but their focus grows salacious, just as his voice elaborates, slow, enunciating and sultry. “In this glittery, skimpy thong.” His hand is on Jeongguk’s thigh when he speaks, nimble long fingers cradle at it, spread wide, their movement over him in rhythm with his voice, gliding upwards as the sultriness starts to coalesce with spite.

 

Jeongguk’s cheeks flush, at the touch or at the words, or perhaps of the insinuation of the whole situation, the fact that Taehyung hitting right on the nail speaks volumes of how Jeongguk is, for the lack of a better word, jealous. He snatches his thigh away, brusquely, and Taehyung’s hand flies up, disinterested as it squeezes into a fist and draws back to his own lap. “Shut up.” Jeongguk says, insists, eyes firing down daggers at the yard he was forever kept in, the yard where he kissed him.

 

Taehyung’s voice slips away from its previous illusion, climbs loud and hoarse. “Don’t say other men.”

 

Jeongguk swings his legs on the other end, stands. He throws him a look, a glare, quick and petulant. “How about I say nothing at all to you?” he asks, charged and childish and he doesn’t really care, at that moment. In retrospect, he’d consider it atypically dramatic, and it is, but he is feeling some sort of way and he doesn’t like it and it is Taehyung’s fault.

 

“You asked me,” Taehyung’s voice peaks loud and Jeongguk has to wonder why Taehyung allows himself to be so invested in this, why he spins after him with wide eyes and impassioned gesticulation, his hands everywhere, upon his chest and in the air around him. He wants to know why Taehyung cares so much that Jeongguk shouldn’t care. “What did you want me to do to,” he urges, brows bouncing as he gets on his feet, “lie?”

 

Jeongguk crosses his arms, touches his fingers to the outline of his ribs, hugs himself but doesn’t call it that. He snarls, his eyes bouncing from the beginning of Taehyung to his end, from his feet to his awfully stupid hair all across his dumb collarbones and enigmatic eyes. “Don’t want to know the fucking details.”

 

“Why?” Taehyung asks, demands, sharp and quick and he is stepping forward with the pace of the word. “Why, because it’s other men?” He speaks it like it is incredulous, so utterly beyond comprehension that Jeongguk would actually manufacture some sanctity to the fact he is partial to him, kissed him, wanted him, to the fact Taehyung is, in a most basic sense, the only continuous relationship Jeongguk has had since the death of his mother, and it pisses him off.

 

“Shut up,” he tells him again, because he doesn’t want to hear, and he doesn’t want to be made fun of for this, for caring, because it is the road to that poisonous impartiality of solitude that everyone around him is so desperately obsessed with, most of all Taehyung, with his each for their own bullshit that does nothing but condemn them to loneliness.

 

Jeongguk would honestly rather have him for some time and then miss him then constantly push himself away. If he never lets himself have anything he wants, why should he even bother, what is the fucking point then?

 

“Why does it matter?” Taehyung is asking in the completely opposite tow. He’s stepping closer still. “When will you grow up?”

 

Jeongguk bristles, “When will you fucking grow up?”

 

And Taehyung scoffs. “Making money by rubbing my ass into men’s crotches until they almost spill in their pants is pretty grown up, I’d say,” he says, the definition of bitchy with some ill-tasting smugness. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he adds, voice edging higher in its pitch, mocking, as his arms lock together before his chest as well. “I meant other men’s crotches.”

 

“Fuck off, Taehyung,” Jeongguk shakes his head, because Jeongguk is disappointed. His nostrils enlarge, his clothes feel tighter, hotter. “Fuck. off.”

 

“What?” the other’s asking sharply. “Were you waiting for me?”

 

“As if I’d be dumb enough.” And he feels dumb because he did, technically, wait for him. He counted the days. The first time he got on top of here, his first immediate thought was he would show it to him when he returned and he supposes that does constitute waiting, as does the constantly dulled expectations of Taehyung’s return he was for some reason so set will definitively occur.

 

And they did and he’s here, blinking at him, face set. “Dumb enough?” he voices.

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk nods, breathy with the way he tries to summon something bitter, something hurtful. “It’d make me look stupid, wouldn’t it?” he raises brows, his voice vindictive as he mirrors Taehyung’s poisoned irony. “Waiting for the likes of you.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes coat over, gauge his expression for a moment and he inhales through his nose, speaks slower, puts on the front of old and wise once more, talks to him as if he is a child. “It’s how the world is, Jeongguk.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes flash. “No, it’s how you are, Taehyung.”

 

Taehyung shakes his head, his upper lip curling over his teeth in a snarl, “We’re not playing fucking boyfriends, you realise that, right?” He tells him, steps forward. “We rolled around the courtyard once. I’ve done much more than that with others.” Jeongguk blinks to the ground when he speaks, as Taehyung’s head shakes once more and he mutters lower, crueler. “It means nothing.”

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk breathes, nods again and his lashes flutter, arms unfolding as he takes a step back. “I mean nothing.” His body uncoils itself, rotates away and he doesn’t wait for a response, doesn’t even wait to see it register with Taehyung, doesn’t see the very ostensible exact moment the words reach and dawn on him. He doesn’t witness the words hit home, the guard drop, his face fall.

 

“No, Jeongguk—” he calls after, a small little, “Wait—” and his hand reaches stupidly for nothing because Jeongguk is gone.

 

 

 

 

 

“Can I steal you for a moment?” Taehyung slides himself forcefully into his peripheral vision, leans his shoulder on the wall beside him, arms folded as if he is there to get comfortable, to stay, and eyes invigorated as they fixate on Jeongguk with an expecting immediacy.

 

The boy, one of the younger ones, talking to Jeongguk stops mid-sentence at Taehyung’s careless interruption, charts his eyes up to him where he looms taller, blinks with question, but for Taehyung to register it, he would have to acknowledge his presence at least somewhat. He doesn’t. He chooses to acknowledge only Jeongguk’s existence for the moment. Jeongguk, who himself blinks irate, purses lips and ignores the demanding and expecting stare.

 

“No,” he says, singular and clear, only true recognition of the fact Taehyung’s there. He nods at the boy next, an invitation for him to continue his previous thought, even though he is unsure he can concentrate on anything he’s saying with the shadow of the figure next to him cutting across the face of the boy as he speaks.

 

“Fine,” Taehyung straightens, takes a step to the side and for a moment Jeongguk thinks he will actually leave. But he simply rotates his body to face the poor boy who loses his tongue when the older one juts his chin at him. “You,” he says, eyes zeroing in on him with their natural intensity, “go find a hobby.”

 

Taehyung’s face is resting, neutral, and yet it demands attention. Jeongguk has to admit he radiates an enigmatic intimidation, especially with his stare so deliberately fixated. He can’t necessarily blame the younger boy for stuttering his response, charting nervous eyes at Jeongguk for salvation. “What?”

 

Taehyung steps forward, looks down. “Leave,” he says, enunciates. When the boy only blinks blankly between them, he untangles one hand from the lock of his elbow, raises it in the air and flicks his wrist twice as if he’s shooing a fly. “Chop, chop,” he urges in falsely friendly pitch and the boy flashes a final look at a silent Jeongguk, before he obediently leaves.

 

Jeongguk sighs, long and heavy, through his nose mostly, eyes closing for the time being before he slowly pries them open to look at Taehyung who fits himself in the space the boy leaves vacant, right into Jeongguk’s line of vision. “You’re scaring kids away,” he says as he glimpses at his face tiredly as soon as his lids draw back.

 

Taehyung raises an eyebrow, but the rest of his expression remains as it is, a calm reticence that emphasizes the pure shape of his features and how flatteringly they combine on his face. “Did I scare you?” he asks, attempts a tease, and draws out another sigh from Jeongguk.

 

He adjusts on his feet, comes closer for a lasting moment before he moves completely away. “Told you you couldn’t steal me for a moment,” he says, eyes darting impinging with his meanings across his face with a brief pause. “Don’t push.”

 

He walks away from him after that, trails after the boy, whom he was talking business with, and Taehyung pokes his tongue in his cheek, turns his head to follow him with his eyes. He locks his arms securely in front of his chest again, lifts his foot, knee folding back. He taps his toes twice into the ground, rolls his eyes, mostly at himself, unfolds his arms tersely in frustration and leaves.

 

 

 

Jeongguk moves along with his tray in the canteen, getting whatever they have deemed them deserving of the morning of the following day when another tray bangs with a clink against the metal rails in front of him. He doesn’t have to turn to see who it is. He can tell by the way his own body betrays him, independent of his intentions, chin raises, his nose sniffs air, and he takes his presence in subtly.

 

“Hey,” the person says first. Jeongguk nods, wordless. He presses his teeth together as he angles his head down again, towards the excuse of food, slides smoothly a step to the side. Last time he ate next to Taehyung, he could have had any delicacy in the world, so much and so exotic he couldn’t even tell what it all was. Now, too, he can’t really tell, but for different reasons entirely, ingredients murky and mixed.

 

Taehyung follows in the step. “Today, too?” he pronounces, voice pitching as he forces into it surprise, the suggestion that Jeongguk is being stupid or unreasonable, or both. 

 

Jeongguk moves another step, offers no response, not at the haughtiness with which Taehyung endeavours to grasp his attention. He keeps it on his plate, stubborn and to an extent petulant, but Taehyung makes him feel better about it with the way he himself reacts like an unsatisfied child, half throwing a short, sharp tantrum.

 

“Fucking fine,” he groans into his silence, throwing his hands in the air as he turns on his heels and walks away, leaving a tray full of food behind. Jeongguk’s eyes fall upon it and then dart up, head turning towards Taehyung’s disappearing figure. He contemplates calling after him, simply because he wants Taehyung to fucking eat, but he gets an elbow in his ribs, an angry murmur of move along bitch and the moment is gone. He moves along.

 

 

 

On the third day, Taehyung gets pissed off enough to give voice to his exasperation. He catches him on his way to meeting Yoongi, reaches for him, for a second gripping at his elbow, just to summon his attention, a moment of a touch, a semblance of it, but Jeongguk’s skin remembers after. “Hey, Jeongguk,” he calls, first, and Jeongguk looks, skims his eyes across tellingly before he turns to walk again, only to be interrupted by Taehyung demanding in a pitch he hasn’t heard from him before. “Quit it.” He says, with an elongation that appears slightly whiny, but perhaps to mask something else, “Don’t avoid me. I know you want to talk to me, I--”

 

“Taehyung,” Jeongguk is the one to interject this time, giving him the courtesy to angle his body towards him, going as far as to take a step forward. He locks his arms, adjusts his feet, makes an attempt to seem stern, firm. “I have a life here, unlike you. Not going to put it on hold for the three or four or however many days you deign to be here.”

 

Taehyung presses his lips together, his teeth, too, underneath, his jaw lining straight as he raises it up, higher. He sniffs, shakes some of that hair away from his eyes. “I was going to be here for one night.”

 

It’s all he says, very simple, very short, and Jeongguk darts his eyes repeatedly over the features of his face. He’s staring dumbly, but he thinks his brain isn’t clicking right because it must be imaging things. “You’ve been here for three.”

 

Taehyung’s lip twitches downwards. “Yeah, I have.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes keep dancing over him, gauging his expression for explanation as his words offer none. He stares at him for a couple of moments, parts his lips once, futile in search for something to say. He does have thoughts almost on his tongue and he feels it would be easier for him to voice them if Taehyung actually spoke and didn’t just imply, but the matter of fact is – Taehyung offers nothing but a flimsy suggestion of a between-the-lines that he could easily then deny. So, Jeongguk glances away, lets his arms free. “I have to meet Yoongi,” he tells him, and he goes, does that.

 

 

 

 

 

The next time he sees him it is not Taehyung chasing him around as he gives him no opportunity to. He has to admit to himself there is something satisfying, perhaps flattering in the way Taehyung is the one who has to pursue. He imagines this is the closest he would get to high school games and he does understand partially why people do it for the sake of it, even if his purposes lie a lot more in the fact he wants to separate himself from hurt, wants to make himself less convenient for Taehyung to just randomly come back to.

 

Next time he sees Taehyung, he sees his back. His hair ruffles gently in the whispers of wind and Jeongguk thinks Taehyung hears him get there a lot sooner than he willingly announces his presence with the way his shoulders shift, raise higher, straighter with alertness.

 

Jeongguk knows he knows he is there, but for a moment he pretends he doesn’t and simply takes him in, sat before the moon, that is big tonight, round and huge and luminous, and it frames him as so small in its bright contrast. He seems to glow, with the way light shapes him, bounces from his shirt and hair, and Jeongguk is enthralled with the sight. For a while it fills him with a curious warmth – it’s beautiful, he thinks. But then the warmth is gone and with its palpable disappearance, his chest feels empty – it’s lonely, he thinks. He sits all alone, made tiny by the size of the moon, a darkness, a shadow, a mere silhouette in the way of its encompassing brightness, that could, potentially, be any lonesome boy.

 

Except Jeongguk would recognize the outline of him anywhere. He takes a breath, and then a step, and soon he nears him, stands behind. He crosses his arms and thinks perhaps, to go for firm again, but his voice chooses its own tone; it speaks to him softly.

 

“What are you doing here?” he murmurs essentially.

 

Not a part of him changes at the sound of another and it erases any doubt he didn’t know Jeongguk was there, standing and watching. He turns, very slightly, just his head, until the light is drawing the features of his profile, gracious neck, slender nose. “Couldn’t sleep,” he says.

 

Wind plays with Jeongguk’s shirt and he hugs himself a bit, though he doesn’t feel the cold. “This is my spot.”

 

“You showed it to me,” Taehyung answers, his feet dangling over the edge. He speaks softly, no challenge, no nothing, and his voice sounds deeper like this, calming somehow. He blinks once at his own feet as they move through the air and then up at Jeongguk who stands, a little beside him, a little behind him. “Have you shown it to anyone else?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk confesses within a breath, sees no point in lies and hesitation. This vision of Taehyung in the moon draws a certain honesty out of him. It doesn’t help he feels especially vulnerable this day, past the stupidly significant cut of the hour of midnight. It should be a sentimentality that is difficult for him to allow himself, the attachment he has to this date, but its association makes him feel younger and he remembers the times where he used to not care about peeling down to exposure of vulnerability.

 

He swings his legs over the edge, sits down next to Taehyung and he tries to imagine how they would both look against the enormity of the bright moon. “It’s my mom’s birthday,” he tells him, though Taehyung doesn’t ask why Jeongguk is there. “It would have been my mom’s birthday,” he corrects himself in an innocent elaboration, a ramble he has a hard time regretting. Taehyung says nothing in retaliation, but he turns to him, a silent sign he’s listening. “I wonder what she would have looked like now,” Jeongguk continues, curiously comfortable in the other’s current muteness. “I have no pictures of her, you know,” he shrugs, leans back on his palms. “One low resolution one saved on that fucking Nintendo and that is all.” He turns to him, too. “What if I forget what she looked like?”

 

Taehyung shakes his head, a small motion that Jeongguk manages to read only with how attentive he immediately grows of him as soon as he has him in his sight. He tells him gently, “You don’t forget things like that.”

 

Jeongguk swears he hates the wise things Taehyung says, ominous in the way they fall like utter truth out of his knowledgeable lips but are foreign in concept to Jeongguk. They make him feel young, or little, inexperienced and unready to fully talk to him, be with him. But the way this whispered sentence feels like painful truth to him he cannot seem to despise, doesn’t take it personal. Instead he takes it to be another part of Taehyung he wants to unfold, that makes him just a little curious and just a little sad.

 

“Tae?” he murmurs.

 

Wind blows at Taehyung’s shirt and it clings to the shape of him, body protruding as if he is completely bare in the light of the moon. “Yes.”

 

“What happened to you?” Jeongguk ventures, just a wisp above that stripping wind.

 

Taehyung brings one leg up, hugs it, rest his chin on the knee as he turns to stare forward. Jeongguk thinks for a moment the change of posture is the only answer he’ll get, or a denial of such, but Taehyung breathes out through his nose and his lips part. “They gave me away,” he says and Jeongguk feels a sharp cut of cold, and he doesn’t know it if it’s wind or it’s words. He looks at Taehyung’s eyes, sees the way they blink, lashes lower slowly over them and raise even slower. “I was four. It was cold. It was too cold, and they gave me away,” he elaborates in a series of short whispers, before his voice changes, builds power with its next revelation. “I didn’t end up like this because of a tragedy, like you. Even my own parents didn’t want me. Did for a while, four years, enough to make me remember them. And then they stopped.” He shrugs, he shrugs, and it kills Jeongguk on the inside that he tries to put any nonchalance into this whatsoever, even in a gesture as simple as that, because Jeongguk knows him enough by now to realize it is some futile defense technique that builds more walls around him that trap him and condemn him to a loneliness which he thus chooses.

 

He supposes for a long time loneliness wasn’t a choice but a terrible, suffocating consequence, so he turned it into one, made it a choice to deal with it. He forced it to be a choice and now, with Jeongguk next to him, it is.

 

I won’t stop, he wants to tell him. I won’t stop wanting you. He cannot imagine he could. He doesn’t remember what it was like, because all he recollects before he entered his life was loving his mother, but then she was gone and Taehyung was there, the only spark of solace, and Jeongguk is afraid a part of what he needed to feel for his mother attached to this boy foolish and hopeless simply because he let him hold his hand. And Jeongguk says nothing, doesn’t want to scare him with fondness and doesn’t want to make Taehyung’s loss about his own feelings towards him, so he sits there in silence as Taehyung himself had done when he was the one to speak and allows the confession to be a stone off of his heart and not a building block for him in Jeongguk’s own.

 

 

 

 

“Good morning.” The irony of the simple greeting cuts Jeongguk deeper than he expects it as he walks past Taehyung in the earliest hours of the day.

 

He doesn’t stop in his step as he flashes a look at him. “Don’t,” he bites, a short anger escapes him that he then buries; it’s useless.

 

“What--?” Taehyung stutters, mouth gaping and brows tugging, oscillating confusion and perhaps worry but then it falls shut and he seems to remember the unspoken promise he made of good morning the day that he left him. He swallows his question, visibly gulps, then calls, “Jeongguk.”

 

Jeongguk nods at him, hello, he nods, good morning to you too, but he doesn’t stop walking.

 

 

 

Jeongguk lets himself be tugged behind the wall, in the secluded area of the yard. The boys hate going there, the ground is thin, the fence is near, and it is the most claustrophobic space, dangerously reminiscent of a prison. Mostly, people venture there out of necessity, tend to business matters there. It is site of almost every illegal exchange that has taken place in the Juvenile Correction Centre, but Jeongguk has absolutely no desire, or intention, to barter with Taehyung in any way, so he fails to see the reason why he is brought there. Still, Taehyung is incessant, and curiosity is as adamant on leading him there as the older boy is. Plus, is he has to be honest, he is no longer angry at Taehyung for making him feel meaningless, his defenses are back to low and he is back to prioritizing taking advantage of his presence while it lasts instead of avoiding him at any cost to spare his own pride and, apparently vulnerable, feelings. 

 

 

So, he lets himself be tugged behind the wall. Taehyung puts himself in the bad spot anyway, his back facing brick, while Jeongguk has more space to move. He still insists on feigning anger, doesn’t particularly know why, just feels like it because it makes Taehyung seek after him and he is enjoying it more than he would like to admit. He holds his lips thin, closed, jaw a line. His lids are low, and his arms are crossed even though Taehyung tries to wrap his hand at one of his forearms.

 

Jeongguk stands still and silent like that in front of him. There is not much space for distance, and he doesn’t particularly crave distance when he’s around him, rather prefers to have an excuse to stand close enough to smell him. He tips his chin up, scrunches his nose briefly, in a condescending invitation for the other to speak that he has observed on some of the boys from his group but has never truly put into practice on his own. The only confrontation in his line of duty is, after all, to flex. Conversation is not part of the deal, and he tends to suck at it, but with Taehyung it is easier.

 

Taehyung takes the cue, speaks, and when Jeongguk hears he feels his lip twitch without permission. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

 

He says it and Jeongguk feels it puncture through his skin. It takes a moment for him to fully comprehend the words, and he has to adjust on his feet, clear his throat to avoid sounding sullen. His eyes briefly, distractedly, find the rough, concrete ground underneath and he watches his shoes attempt to find comfort. He sniffs air, looks up once more, shakes some hair from his eyes and raises a brow.

 

“Telling me as if I care?” he challenges because it feels somehow necessary to him.

 

Taehyung’s fingers try harder to wrap around his arm, fight their way underneath his other one until they sneak in snug and warm in between. He blinks and his eyes are much too big for Jeongguk to search them. “You do care,” he tells him, softly, a little above a whisper.

 

Jeongguk feels something heavy raise in his chest and he tries to breathe it out, takes a deep breath and then exhales, but it gets harder somehow, when Taehyung swipes his thumb over a vein of his. He shakes his head, says, “I don’t.”

 

He hears his own voice and its rawness disappoints him. He has to gulp it down.

 

Taehyung’s lip twists, pouts, the ring on it glistens. His eyes become more unbearable to look at. “Jeongguk,” he tugs at his arm. “Gukkie,” he whines his name softly, that name, the one that to Jeongguk is attached to the warmest affection, and he pulls him closer with that tug, forces his arms to unfold, and Jeongguk is pretty much done.

 

“You fucking prick,” he swears, exhales, long, too long and it leaves him breathless so he chooses to steal Taehyung’s breath for revenge, hurling himself forward with the end of his words, allowing himself to follow the motion of his innocent, indicative tug until his lips are sealing with his.

 

He doesn’t know what compels him to kiss him, whether it is his big, shiny eyes, so unprovocative and pouty like this with their innocuous, emphasized width, their seeming innocence a dubious provocation on its own, or perhaps his whiny voice calling his name, that name only he ever uses after his mother, or maybe just the hidden fact this is the last chance he will get to do it for a while and he has been craving it ever since their lips parted so many days ago. He knows he wants to, unconditionally, wants to kiss him, to be kissing him, and it is no harm done. He’s sure Taehyung knows he wants it as well.

 

So, he surges forward, and he gets his lips on his, gets his lip between his and gets a hand on his body, one on his waist, one on the wall behind him, and he kisses him. He wraps his lips briefly around the metal on him, tastes it, but he knows Taehyung tastes better and he wants more of him. He runs his tongue over it, feels it dig some more into his mouth and hears him moan a little at the action, so he does it again before he kisses him harder.

 

Taehyung either expects it or acts so purely on instinct because Jeongguk can’t sense even a moment in which he is not responding. He is in the kiss, too, immediately, and it charges Jeongguk’s want. He grows eager, fervent. The way he tastes familiar makes it all worse, because it is exciting for Jeongguk to do this, so so grippingly exciting, but it is also comfortable and comfort is something a boy like him, who struggles so hard not to be hesitant and awkward, who has grown to only know perpetual discomfort, cherishes.

 

Taehyung is comfortable to kiss in the way he tastes so familiar and the way he so avidly kisses back. He does not permit Jeongguk hesitation, doubt, not when he is kissing him. Somehow, he makes it feel as if he is not kissing back, as if he is just as much instigator as he is, ready, responsive and encouraging. Jeongguk can feel every part of his mouth, his tongue, then his teeth. Sharp teeth that wrap around Jeongguk’s lower lip, tease over, then sink, make him hiss and release.

 

Jeongguk draws back sharply at the sensation, eyes narrowing at the other, though he still remains close, exchanges breaths as he speaks.

 

“Did you just fucking bite me?” he says, exhales more like it with the way he still struggles to capture breath. It gets out of him angry, with some spite, as if Jeongguk has been confiscated some natural right by the interruption of the kiss, and it is exactly how the action strikes him.

 

Taehyung’s eyes glint, lips glisten when they pull into a minuscule, teasing smirk. “Yes, I did, baby boy.”

 

“Not a fucking baby,” Jeongguk growls at him, his fingers digging tight into his sides.

 

Taehyung presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, lips parted, and tilts his head in a manner that allows Jeongguk view of it, so utterly titillating and by all means, frustrating. His lids are low over his eyes and his gaze as ever lucid with an alluring vibrancy; it challenges, teases with its petulance the tug of Jeongguk’s own. “Then why are you acting like it?” he quips, voice slow and leisurely the way it seems to drawl on beneath that elicit tongue.

 

Jeongguk sucks a quick, powered breath through his nose, settles forward a clumsy, hasty step that fully sends Taehyung’s back flush against the cement behind him. His hand squeezes harder and in turn Taehyung’s fingers pulse tighter where they clutch at his arm. “I’ll show you—” Jeongguk exhales, fiery gaze set charged on his lips, his tongue and his teeth.

 

“Show me,” Taehyung mimics, lids slanting closed as Jeongguk comes too near to observe. Taehyung’s hand ventures up, gliding over his neck, drawing gooseflesh and coercing hairs on their ends in its wake, before digits slip upper, lock dark strands in an instinctive, necessary fist.

 

Necessary because he knows what is coming and he needs to hold onto something as Jeongguk pounces on him again and Taehyung meets him halfway, lips parted, waiting.

 

He sighs into him as his eyes close as Jeongguk gets his body closer still, lines it with his, still clutching imperiously into his clothes and unwittingly into his flesh. He gets the hand he uses for support away from the wall and on him, too, grips first at his ribs, then lower. He knows not where he touches and Taehyung can tell by the way fingers displace, search and cling just about every portion of him they manage access to. And Taehyung, of course, has had people touch him with the salacious accuracy of experience, just where they are supposed to, just how they are supposed to. And yet, he has never had someone touch him better.

 

Jeongguk’s appetitive, clumsy, both with the way his hands roam desperate and his lips kiss almost feverish, but somehow still intrinsically sensual. His kiss is starved, his tongue is visceral, his breath is scarce. He doesn’t know how to kiss him and breathe, when to pause and when to begin – he only knows how to kiss, and it is without a doubt the best kiss Taehyung has had in his life. He has never physically tasted someone want him and he does now; Jeongguk reeks of desire and Taehyung wants to swallow it all. It feeds him, invigorates him, and it is not just some person who wants him. It’s Jeongguk. It’s Jeongguk, it’s Jeongguk.

 

He hopes to quench the boy’s own thirst by offering him his all just as he feels he does, but he seems insatiable and it makes Taehyung’s blood burn, skin scorch, heart hammer. He senses bits of him. He slides against him, his stomach, his thighs, his arms. He feels him everywhere, but in some places more and it makes other parts of him crave for attention.

 

His heart bounces, brows perk, when he senses him push closer. He fists his hair tighter, draws back for a moment.

 

“There’s CCTV right there,” he murmurs in warning, eyes opening scant just to flash a direction. His chest raises heavy as he tries to breathe, and when it brushes Jeongguk’s in their helpless proximity, recedes again in itself with new struggles for air.

 

The camera glares at them get disheveled, but Jeongguk fails to look at it once. Taehyung looks raw, his eyes spark, enchanting, his lips are swollen, luscious and wet with the common wetness of their kiss. He only parts his lids halfway, sees him like this and once more speaks in his mouth. “I don’t care.”

 

He kisses again. It’s the one opportunity he has. Taehyung allows it, and he will take it again and again, for as long as he has a permission to taste, he’ll kiss, to feel, he’ll touch, to smell, he’ll breathe. He presses harder and he hears, as well, hears him moan, a sound gentle and deep, pried out of depths of him he wants to unfold. He wants to hear it again, hear it forever.

 

He slides an arm against his back, his waist and feels it curl, Taehyung’s stomach pushing against his as his back still touches the wall. It brings parts of him impossibly closer, touch him, and he kisses him harder still. He wants more and at the same time he doesn’t. He’s satisfied with just this and the more he grow aware of it, the more allows himself to slow down, to grow ginger, but deeper. He tilts his head some more, parts his lips for longer. It’s a pace he never imagined himself to enjoy but it allows him to be thorough, to savor, and he finds that he loves it. It’s not rough, but it’s sensual, and his senses grow even more familiar with just exactly what Taehyung feels like and maybe that is dangerous, but Taehyung is running a thumb on his neck, fisting fingers in his hair and kissing him back and he just can’t seem to stop.

 

He has to wait for Taehyung to, and he does. He pulls away, ever so slightly, still holding onto him, his eyes still closed. He pulls away.

 

“I’m sorry,” he speaks the apology in his mouth, an intimacy he’s never afforded before despite anything he’s allowed himself physically, breathing honesty between another’s lips. But it’s Jeongguk and he can’t not, because he was going to leave that first morning. He had everything planned, but the previous night had left him with Jeongguk proclaiming he’s nothing and he couldn’t leave with that idea instilled in his brain.

 

“What?” Jeongguk breathes back, eyes still trying to open, accommodate to the features of Taehyung’s face in its daring proximity, much too close not to kiss again, not to feel for. He draws back a little, just to take him all in, locking his arms in the dent of his waist, holds him like this, with some naturally awaking affection – an instinct for him.

 

And Taehyung’s hands on him in response are as much of an instinct too, as they slide away from his head, but still touch him, dancing on his shoulders, his clavicles, sometimes his back. “I’m sorry,” he repeats gently, a murmur. He lifts a single finger from his shoulder, traces it along the line of his chin distractedly as he speaks, “I need to let other people touch me.”

 

Taehyung’s gaze drops to that finger, but Jeongguk’s never falters even when his breath does, ever so slightly, but Taehyung feels the subtle, telling altercation on his lips and his cheeks. Jeongguk shakes his head. “You don’t owe me anything.”

 

“I know,” he says, and his eyes bounce back to his own, part fully, lids drawn fully back as he confesses in a whisper, “Doesn’t mean I’m not sorry, though.”

 

Jeongguk’s pupils dart over him very simple and very calm. He watches him silently, for a moment or two, and then his head tilts, dips. He catches him off guard, his lips grazing, graceful, on his neck. The sensation excites his skin, however simple of a thing it is. It coerces his eyes shut again when Jeongguk kisses. Taehyung sucks a breath through his nose, releases a sound, involuntary and soft before he buries his teeth in his lips, holds them still. He knows what Jeongguk means to do the second his mouth parts and with his hands – now fists – on his chest and his shoulder, he could easily stop him. But he doesn’t; he squeezes his legs together, closes his eyes, allows himself to enjoy it, savors the notion of pain that seems so enticingly carnal, and lets him abuse the skin, claim it.

 

“This will be gone in less than a week,” Taehyung tells him when he comes up again, lids hovering low over his eyes.

 

“I know,” Jeongguk says, licks at his lips. His eyes dart to it, examine with interest how an evidence of his touch sits on his skin and finds it to look curiously beautiful, though it is objectively ugly, a misshapen imperfection on a man as handsome as him. Jeongguk has not known himself to be possessive, seeing as he has not many possessions, and continues to learn who he is in that very moment, through the other before him. He is not gruesomely possessive, not vengefully so, but he does feel a primitive pull of pleasure at the sight of a mark. “Let it last as long as it does,” he asks of him softly, returning his eyes to his own.

 

He very well knows Taehyung does not belong to him, or with him, for that matter, not at this point in time certainly, though he does hope some day he might. He knows a foolish, teenage hickey is in no way an offer of permanence, a promise of more, but it is, with the way it transpires between them, it is a gesture on Taehyung’s part, a silent means to show he allows him more, more than some others, those others he claims he has to let touch him, while Jeongguk he wants.

 

Jeongguk tries and fails not to lilt his voice with arising hope when he pipes, “Will you be back?”

 

Taehyung tries and fails not to feel so stupidly desolate when truth churns in his answer. “I don’t know.”

 

Taehyung has never had anything to come back to and it makes him feel a sort of way he can’t define. The words come with me sit on his lips and he imagines himself saying them, how he would do it, what tone, what timbre, deep and low, but breathless, come with me, and Jeongguk won’t answer, not at first, he would dart his eyes all over him, the way he does, the way only he does, and he will pause for a moment - he won’t expect it - and then he will kiss him again, charged and passionate, pull him in to pull him out, and that will be his answer. But Taehyung doesn’t say them, because he’ll probably end up leaving him again, hurting him again, and he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to offer himself because he cannot promise he will uphold.  

 

He leaves alone again.

 

 

 

 

Jeongguk knows he’s in love with Taehyung. He learns that the first time he has sex.

 

It’s not him. It’s some other boy he’s on top of, some other boy he’s kissing, some other boy he’s touching, feeling, and then some other boy he’s inside of, and it feels good, sure. It’s warm and a bit awkward, but it’s wet and nice, very, very different from his fist in the showers or under the blankets. It’s not the boy’s first time and Jeongguk tells him it’s not his either, but he thinks he knows he’s lying. He helps, shows him basics, tells him when to slow down and when not to, tells him when to speed up and how to move his hips, not to just jut, shows him what to do before,even if they don’t busy with an after. No time for afters, really.  

 

The boy looks nothing like Taehyung. He sounds nothing like him, tastes nothing like him, feels nothing like him. Most importantly, he smells nothing like him. Yet for the entirety of the time he’s with him, Jeongguk cannot help but think of Taehyung.

 

It feels good, yet fairly wrong. There’s something way too off about it, but certainly not too off to stifle an orgasm. Jeongguk sees the boy again a couple of times but the boy pretends nothing ever happened between them and Jeongguk’s weirdly okay with that, for someone who could never forgive and forget that Taehyung failed to remember his name fully.

 

Jeongguk sleeps with someone else quite soon after this. He has sex with a girl. Maybe, he thinks, it feels wrong because he’s not actually gay, just thought he was because of how Taehyung made him feel. But this is ten times more awkward, much less enjoyable, he doesn’t know where to touch, or how to, doesn’t particularly want to and he cannot entirely bring it down to nerves. He doesn’t get hard until she gives him a few firm pumps with her hands, then gets on her knees for him. Then it is hard not to get hard.

 

She is good, so it is good. He’s more confident with it, too, and she’s a talker, brings his confidence up a bit some more, saying things, makes his ears slightly warm in the back. He does better but doesn’t come as hard as the previous time. Still, with a grunt and with sharp snaps of his hips, he gets there with a girl, too.

 

But it’s about the sex, the release of built-up incessant hormones, not about the girl, and he’s pretty sure he’s gay. He’s entirely sure he loves Taehyung.

 

Getting sex is easy. Jeongguk doesn’t know if it’s because he’s attractive or because people in his world are desperate and from the short glimpses he manages to get of the outside, when sneaking out becomes a thing even if they sneak back in to avoid doing longer time, he learns it is a little bit of both. But he is, he realizes, not unappealing, for sex that is. He has something, a body, and in the circles he circles, that is quite the advantage. It is not that people there do not appreciate personality. They do. More, he would assume, than people on the outside. It is just that they do not explicitly look for it. It is more a game of chance; you might stumble upon it. It would be something of an accident, liking a person, not a body. Something that comes along the way, accidental, unsought for, something growing, potentially fleeting, but maybe for life.

 

Jeongguk does somewhat learn to appreciate a few people around him. They do grow on him. It is nothing like Taehyung and it never coincides with sex.

 

Sex is entirely different. He learns he likes it. Likes being liked. Likes being wanted, even in the most superficial, physical sort of way, it is a bit better than being wanted for State Help. Makes him conjure up this small type of smirk that Taehyung would be proud of, he thinks. Makes him all the more confident, when it comes to this. Makes him know how to look for sex. He does it with his body, mostly, not with words. With words, he remains scant, afraid of this awkwardness that makes his tongue tangle.

 

But he does like sex. Primarily because he absolutely hates to count during it. He prefers to feel it, let himself go, and that is good, something he needs. It’s a phenomenal distraction for until Taehyung is caught.

 

 

 

 

 

Taehyung lets himself get caught but refuses to admit to himself that he does. It isn’t a conscious idea that he plans in his mind, nothing with prior calculation. It is a whim that he gets when he sees a patrol car when he is out one night. He has already texted that he will be back home in a bit, he is on his way and he sees the car, and he knows he can just pass by and they won’t see him, have no reason to associate him with anything illegal. But the way it so slowly drives past him ironically tempts him and with five grams of cocaine mixed with another five grams of ground plaster in his pocket he starts to run.

 

He tries to fight a smile when they put him in handcuffs and ID him.

 

Jeongguk sees him immediately when they bring him in, and it feels ridiculously like fate. He shakes hair away from his eyes, regards him with a foolish smirk he feels is too much a genuine smile. “Did you miss me?” he asks as an officer pushes him forward by the grip he has on his hands. He is still very much in handcuffs and Jeongguk seems to halt everything he does in the midst of a punishment that once more involves a broom when his gaze lands upon him.

 

“Never,” he says, always, he means, and Taehyung reads in his breathlessness and the small tilt of his own lips.

 

He has more to say but the officer gives him a solid push, aggressive and very much on the surface of abusive handling, but Taehyung doesn’t particularly pay it any mind and Jeongguk doesn’t either. They are too unfortunately used to it.

 

 

 

Next time he sees Jeongguk during this particular stay of his, he most literally stops in his tracks. He has an excuse of a towel wrapped around his middle and walks over rough cold tiles, choosing an hour of the night to take his shower despite the coolness to avoid company. He tends to attract looks, sometimes, has been called supple on occasion and has developed a genuine dislike for prying eyes when he tries to get a semblance of clean.

 

The sound of running water makes him nervous first but it is what comes in his sight as he nears him that makes him physically halt. Because of course shy boy Jeongguk will have the same idea as him. It occurs to Taehyung in that very moment that he has never previously encountered Jeongguk in the shower rooms and now he understands why. Jeongguk enjoys privacy, he knows that, he remembers his relief when Taehyung promised he won’t look the first night they met, how reluctant he was to undress before him in the hotel.

 

For one reason or another, Jeongguk is adamant on keeping his body private to himself, and, encountering it now, Taehyung fails to see why. He certainly has nothing to hide. On the contrary, he leaves Taehyung a bit dumbstruck. He has always been aware Jeongguk likes working on himself, but he has always been little Jeongguk, younger than him, a bit shorter than him, albeit for a long time now stronger than him.

 

He certainly doesn’t seem little now, with an arm stretched behind his back, curved over as he wipes at his shoulders as water rains down on him. Taehyung blinks, lips part. No, he is certainly not little. Everything about him is big, diligently shaped, relieved. He’s built muscle that helplessly bulges with how little he eats, how lean he is. He’s not huge, not artificial either, Taehyung has seen so much injected muscle in the past couple of years that for the life of him, size and veins could never impress him. It’s exactly the opposite, how natural Jeongguk’s body appears that strikes him.

 

And then there’s another thing. Jeongguk’s naked. His Jeongguk’s completely butt naked. For some reason Taehyung flushes as he stares and he does stare, he cannot rip his eyes away from him, slanting them all over, studying every little detail they can greedily latch on, small imperfections on his skin that stand out that are unique and carry in their faults a quality of Jeonggukness.

 

His eyes are in the midst of their wondrous wandering, however, forced to hinder their ventures south and instead bounce up, when suddenly he turns, slow, careful half steps on the wet tiles as he rotates under low pressure water and faces him. His arm falls down, hangs next to his body as he fully turns to him and Taehyung almost gulps, waits.

 

He expects to see embarrassment that would stifle his, expects in the defense of his nakedness for Jeongguk to give him upper hand on a silver platter, distract him from sudden thoughts with the entertainment of his blushing cheeks.

 

But he doesn’t. Doesn’t make any attempt to cover himself up, doesn’t flush, doesn’t appear even a fragrance of shy. No, he steps a bit so that water falls behind him, bounces eyebrows, and he cocks his head.

 

“What you thinking so deeply about, Tae?” he asks, bold, his voice vibrating low and raw over the pathetic fall of little droplets.

 

Taehyung bites his lip, because he has to punish himself for the answer of that question. He can hardly tame his eyes that so desperately want to peak down again, see more of his shoulders, his chest, his stomach and below. He presses his teeth hard into the pillow of his mouth, because what he is thinking is just how easily Jeongguk could haul him against a wall and hold him flush while he fucks him. But he won’t tell him that.

 

Jeongguk stops the shower but doesn’t bother with a towel. He simply steps forward, tilts his jaw upwards. “Like what you see?” he teases, the corner of his lip jerking up to the side in a lazy smirk Taehyung thinks he should not be allowed to have, certainly not while he is stark naked and approaching.

 

Taehyung locks his arms in front of his chest, narrows his eyes in a futile attempt to replace his sudden whims to touch and feel with offense. “Don’t speak to me in ready lines.”

 

Jeongguk scoffs freely as he comes closer still. “Too important for those, are you?”

 

His hair is wet and strands cling together, shape a curved wave over one of his eyes, while the rest he simply pushes back with an instinctive motion and Taehyung thinks it is the most he has ever seen of his face. He looks older with all his features revealed, the line of his jaw more poignant, the chisel of his cheeks pointed and enhanced. Taehyung could have never thought it, but with the confidence of that smirk and the straight lines of his appearance, his Jeongguk borders on intimidating, and it catches Taehyung so off guard when it comes from him. It gets his tongue tangled and Jeongguk nears in his silence, opens his mouth again.

 

“Think you’re so hard cause you don’t give a shit, but I can fuck you up, hyung,” he tells him, instinctively pulls his shoulders back to stretch them, emphasize his mass.

 

Taehyung scoffs too, does a halfway roll with his eyes as he stares unrepentantly into his. “Think you have something over me cause you have a couple of muscles, baby boy?” he tries his chance with the name, thinks it will get him fussy, childish.

 

“This again?” he laughs, he’s haughty. “Look where we are. A little muscle goes a long way.”

 

Taehyung shakes his head, tries to get ahold of himself to put on his Jeongguk front, the I’m a big boy one. “Not with me it doesn’t.”

 

“Yeah?” a single brow curves higher and he presses his teeth together for a moment, just to make a muscle by his lip tick into appearance, accentuate his features better, and Taehyung is surprised at how utterly aware Jeongguk is of how to manipulate each portion of himself, even the structure of his face, to be attractive. That only comes with experience, he knows, as he has studied his own self through the reactions of others a lot now, has to with the way he sometimes comes into money. “I think it does,” Jeongguk says, and he is consciously working his voice, too, makes even that alluring as he nears him, closes in and Taehyung backs a step, he meets the wall. Jeongguk cocks his head as he regards him. “Just not in the traditional bash your skull in sort of way.”

 

Taehyung is not afraid to be backed up against a wall. Not by Jeongguk at least, but the thing is, he knew a Jeongguk that blushes at the mere suggestion of sex, not a Jeongguk that strides forward, comfortably nude, staring him down like this – this, he thinks, because he cannot coherently put into the words the sheer power of the gaze. His eyes are not curious this time, not wide and full of wonder, they are not narrowed with anger and frustration either, though the lids are somewhat low over piercing orbs. They’re lazy, somehow, venturesome and almost crude with the way they take, ravage. He’s not shy with the way he stares anymore, not at all, and with the way he nears, falls right into his space, comes so near Taehyung has to bury his head in the wall behind him, crane his neck to seek some distance.

 

But Jeongguk doesn’t ask for more proximity. Taehyung expects of him to want a kiss – that is all he knows how to do, how to demand of him. But Jeongguk’s eyes drop, sudden and pointed, stare straight down at Taehyung’s body and he remains a step away from him as he reaches. He moves just an arm, just one hand that approaches and fingers glide along the coarse fabric of his towel, a teasing promising trail at the hem of it, that starts at his hip and ends just below his belly button. Its motion is slow and somehow too quick for Taehyung’s chest to fill again when it empties sudden and surprised. Jeongguk’s eyes jump back to his again, summon his attention which he doesn’t even know he’s given to those fingers. He smirks again, head tilted down but eyes staring straight, amused at whatever he finds in his expression. The boy’s grown cocky.

 

Lazily, he undoes a lazy knot. The towel drops. “I do have something over you,” he keeps on talking as his gaze follows the ministration of his hand, falls down in indication, to just what he has over him and in a surge of boldness that startles him but captivates him all the same, wraps his fingers around him.

 

Shit. Taehyung’s head digs further back into the wall, neck arching as his eyes close. Shitshitshit. He hisses around pressed lips that bare with the way his lips helplessly pull around them. He didn’t even know he had a semi, but he stirs to live with scaring immediacy at the touch.

 

He never expected that from Jeongguk. And with his eyes screwing shut and another sound escaping in between his grinding teeth, he realizes he doesn’t fully know who Jeongguk is, he can’t fully know, because Jeongguk hasn’t yet become who he fully is. He knew a child, then a preteen, then a teenager, and Taehyung has to learn that someday he will have to know a man and that day is getting closer.

 

“Hmm,” he hums, and the vibration of the voice must travel through his touch because Taehyung refuses to believe something as simple as a sound makes him gulp, makes him twitch. “You like that, don’t you?”

 

“Shit,” he hisses once again, his hands reaching for support. They jump, hold him by his arms, cupping at his biceps, fingers squeeze at warm muscle, and it dips beneath, reminds him Jeongguk is not fully solid – he is flesh, vulnerable, damageable, real, (like him) and Taehyung wants him more at the sensation. “You’ve grown up, haven’t you?” he says, he breathes, eyes prying open very slightly as much as heavy lids would deign to lift, just to take him in.

 

“More than you know,” Jeongguk replies, so unfairly composed, the smirk still imprinted on his chiseled, grown up features and Taehyung cannot really look at him so imperiously entertained, but he is enjoying the motion of his hand, slick with water up and down over him much too earnestly to push away, so he simply lets his lids rest on top again. He relaxes into the wall, let’s go, prepares to feel himself brim with sensation because if teasing feels so utterly exhilarating with this boy, he knows when he gets firmer, gets bolder, it will all be over for him.

 

That is until Jeongguk fucking stops. He takes his hand away, steps away, folds his arms over as if he had previously not been putting them to use on Taehyung and smirks. Taehyung’s eyes unlatch, lids fly back suddenly and fully as his hands drop from Jeongguk’s arms at the motion. He uses his elbows to push himself slightly away from the wall, neck straightens, and he glares.

 

“Hey, if you’re going to start something, have the balls to fucking finish.”

 

Jeongguk’s eyes narrow, too, but with some punctuating calculation. They roam over him, land on his lips, bury there before they capture his. “Beg,” he says, commands. He teases, it’s a joke, but if Taehyung does, if Taehyung begs, then there is room enough for him to be serious, the way he twists the word around, all gruff and very much demanding.

 

But Taehyung doesn’t beg, he never does. He raises his chin in the air. “Fuck you,” he punctures.

 

Jeongguk shrugs. The bastard simply shrugs, says with his voice, his usual voice, high, melodious and even. “Gonna have to fuck yourself, hyung, sorry.”

 

When he walks away, Taehyung is frustrated, but after he takes a shower of his own and thinks, he’s grateful. He can’t allow himself to go this way, not with Jeongguk. He’s admitted partiality time and time again and that is one thing, but attaching to it also sex would be too much, make him too singular – it will make him an only, the only person he cares about, has cared about both in life and in sex and he simply can’t afford it. He lies to a lot of people, but he doesn’t enjoy lying to himself – he knows there has been little innocence in the way he’s let him kiss him, the way he’s kissed him back, but it was nothing that could have truly ever escalated into sex, and the water in the shower’s cold, but Taehyung feels himself almost heave. Suddenly it’s hard to breathe and he’s running fingers through his wet hair, tugging, ruthless with the strands.

 

Someone comes in, another boy that is starved for solitude, doesn’t even spare Taehyung a glance, but the presence is colder than the water, brings him back to earth and grounds him. He turns the shower off, breathes, and he leaves.

 

 

 

The night Jeongguk is curiously haunted by a certain thing, cannot stop replaying it in his head, sees it when he closes his eyes and wonders in what other ways it could contort and elapse if he did things different. He can’t stop imagining the look of Taehyung’s face when he touched him, features twisting beautifully helpless. He can’t erase the satisfying feeling of empowerment at the fact that he was the reason for it, for Taehyung to appear disheveled, bite his lip, fight an instinct. Jeongguk had the upper hand, visibly, surely, though admittedly physically. A stupid urge bundles in him as he turns in bed, tosses around sheets – the night feels exceptionally warm, hot, even. He wants to make Taehyung come.

 

He lures him on the roof with lollypops. Well, lures, he knows, is not the right word. Jeongguk is not that cunning and Taehyung is nothing if not willing. It’s late and they lie down this time, on their backs, a slight distance apart. Space between their shoulders and legs is scarce, but it is there. Jeongguk makes a conscious choice when he hands over one of the lollies. He wants Taehyung to have the red one. He wants to see it on his lips. He gets a blue one for himself. He doesn’t particularly care for blueberries, its flavor, but he kind of pretends he’s into them to avoid suspicion, plopping the lolly in his mouth as soon as he hands the other one to Taehyung.

 

They chat about pretty much nothing before Taehyung says what he has been meaning to. They murmur to each other, humbled by the moon that tonight is not as big and at whatever stars they can find that litter the sky because tonight with the way they are lying down they cannot help looking at it. If tonight they look at each other it will be a sign of effort, of something conscious, something they want. The natural line of their gazes is up, so they both try to keep it that way, slurping on lollies and talking

 

Taehyung falls silent after something Jeongguk says about Nintendo games he doesn’t really care about. He parts his lips, knocks his lollypop against his teeth, once, twice, and Jeongguk’s eyes find the sound and an excuse to peak. They manage just as his mouth closes around the ball of it, appears as if it kisses it, but it just sucks on its sweetness before he lifts it away.

 

“You’ve been with people, haven’t you?” Taehyung ventures, murmur somehow lower than before and he opens his mouth as he says it, wider, pops the lollypop inside it fully to busy his lips.

 

Jeongguk cranes his neck more to look at his profile better now. “Afraid to say other people?”

 

Taehyung rips the lolly somewhat forcefully out of his mouth. “Jeongguk,” he presses, his teeth falling together.

 

Jeongguk looks back up at the scant stars. “I have,” he confesses, and it coerces another silence that he refuses to interrupt before Taehyung sighs. He wants desperately to know why Taehyung cares enough to mention it, he grows thirsty, suddenly, for some verbal acknowledgment right then, from him. It’s stupid, childish, maybe, but he really wants Taehyung to be jealous.

 

Taehyung pokes the lolly back inside, gets his teeth working on top of it in loud clanks against the surface. “Do you ever get distracted, when you’re with them?”

 

“Distracted?” he questions, brows lifting naturally into his hair.

 

Taehyung pauses. For a moment he doesn’t nip at the lolly and then he starts again with new vigor. “Do you think about me?”

 

Jeongguk takes a breath, a moment for himself as well because Taehyung had afforded it. He sighs his confession. “Did at first, yeah.”

 

Taehyung bites harder into the lolly. “You stopped?”

 

“Does it bother you?” Jeongguk hopes he says it in a way that doesn’t betray how desperately he wants it to bother him.

 

A crack is heard. Taehyung’s incessant chewing on the lolly is brought to an end. He snaps it into pieces.

 

“Why would it?” he asks and Jeongguk feels his heart snap a little, too. He is not getting acknowledgement, he realizes in that very moment and the way it unfailingly makes his stomach empty, makes him lose any interest in the blueberry of the lolly, just reminds him time and time again that Taehyung is simultaneously the safest and the most dangerous thing in his life.

 

He sighs, drops his arm to the floor with the lolly in it, leaves it there to stick to dirt.

 

“Why do we always end up like this?” he asks, gazing up at the sky as he mostly questions it, not really Taehyung, because Taehyung will refuse to answer parts of what he wants to know.

 

But the sky offers no reply at all, and Taehyung takes a dumb attempt at one, so Jeongguk guesses he will have to settle for his words. “It’s in our fucking DNA man,” he tells him, voice peaking higher to dismiss the previous intimacy and Jeongguk pretends he doesn’t notice. “We’re wired for prison.”

 

Jeongguk scoffs, fusses a bit as he readjusts the way he lies down, turns on his side instead because the useless sky frustrates him. “You shouldn’t be,” he says as he now boldly charts his eyes all over Taehyung. He’s too pissed off at him to care he’s staring. He has the right to look wherever he damn well pleases and if it happens to be Taehyung’s lips there is nothing he can do about it. “Too fucking pretty for prison.”

 

His eyes break naturally away, however, from his mouth, when Taehyung’s head tilts and his gaze finds his. He raises brows. “You think I’m pretty?” he curls his mouth into a soft, small smirk, and it is innocent, but is still pissing Jeongguk off, nonetheless.

 

“I don’t think,” he shakes his head, insisting. “This is the most goddamn objective statement I’ve ever made in your presence. You’re pretty.” And just to make himself feel better, just to have pretended he’s indifferent, for the idea of it more so than to be actually convincing, he adds. “Means nothing to me but it might to someone who hasn’t got a good suck in years.”

 

Taehyung’s brow climbs higher. “You’ve gotten a good suck as of late?”

 

Jeongguk shrugs as much as his position allows him to. “Might have,” he mutters.

 

“Yeah,” Taehyung challenges, “from who?”

 

Jeongguk shoots his pupils like him in pointed attack. “What’s it to you?” he asks, he fishes.

 

But the other’s gaze narrows. He reminds him, Jeongguk may only miss one shot at the hoop, but he misses none. “I want a good suck as well.”

 

Jeongguk raises slightly on his elbow, gives himself height over him as he does, hovering as Taehyung simply tracks the motion with his eyes and relaxes back into the ground. He’s closer than he has initially thought, or maybe Jeongguk’s body brings itself closer on a dumb, physical instinct, scoots once when he turns, twice when he raises. He doesn’t realize this in the moment, not in his vigor to outpetty, to one up. “Those lips are exclusive for me.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes, to his surprise, seem to lose their own ardor for confrontation as pupils dart at Jeongguk now and not at stars, close above him, but still much too far away. His lips part once and hesitate, Jeongguk can tell by the way his tongue touches to them. Finally, he asks. “How good was it?”

 

Jeongguk’s own eyes dart confused over his expression that continues to relax. Hairs seem to stand up as his voice changes, grows once more soft, though now does not place intimacy in humbleness but in the exchange between. Jeongguk wonders if he reads it wrong, reads him wrong. “Very,” he takes a chance, tips his head, adjusts himself even closer, “let me fuck her mouth,” he drops his voice to match, blinks between his eyes and lips and then his jaw, when he sees it move, his neck, his collar, brings them up again, shakes his head, “absolutely no gag reflex.”

 

“Yeah,” Taehyung relaxes more, cranes his neck back when he sees Jeongguk’s eyes take interest in it, elongate it, “tell me more.”

 

Jeongguk reads Taehyung’s subtle motion much like an invitation. He gets himself closer, touches his thighs to one of his as he does. “It was someone’s sister,” he says, “came to visit.”

 

The touch is a test. Taehyung doesn’t back down. “Tell me about it,” he breathes, and it ravishes the last of Jeongguk’s decency.

 

He slaps his hand on the ground on the other side of him, does not receive as much as a flinch when he essentially traps him like his, between his arms half underneath him. He moves himself slowly, still dipping toes in water, as he gives himself more height still one thigh raising and dropping, touching both Taehyung’s legs now and they part and Jeongguk can barely breathe as he fits it between them, presses forward until he feels him warm against his trousers. He runs his tongue over his lips, chases away hunger that manifests so difficult to quench when he steals glances of his mouth. “What do you want to know?” he asks, summons patience – it’s how it is with Taehyung, no space for wrong moves, missed shots.

 

Taehyung’s chin raises, lids fall further down over his eyes, but never close completely, still unyieldingly glint up at Jeongguk. He says one word, a simple word, meaningless, almost, but it nearly devours all patience Jeongguk clings to. “More.”

 

“More?” he seconds, presses into him harder when he so innocently asks for it. His thigh is right between his legs, and Jeongguk knows bodies now, knows what the warmth and shape against him is. If Taehyung’s not completely hard, he’s getting there certainly, and it makes Jeongguk himself stir. He attempts a motion against him, just solely with his leg, grinds the muscle of his thigh down against him smoothly, presses, and Taehyung hisses and he lives for it.

 

He does it again, then again, then harder and Taehyung’s hands shoot up, one grips at his shoulder, one at his bicep. They squeeze.

 

“Speak,” he says, he pleas, and his voice alone could get Jeongguk hard like that. His eyes alone as well, lips, probably too. Every part of him on its own would be enough to be his undoing, and yet there he is underneath him whole and complete with every irresistible feature attached to Taehyung and he’s allowing this, urging this, though he makes it pass between the lines, subtle and unspoken of, and Jeongguk, too wants more, so much more.

 

“I moaned,” Jeongguk says, begs him to moan, as he prays he does not get distracted by the fingers on his body.

 

He moves and Taehyung answers with a sound, a delicious one that escapes confident and deep in between his lips and Jeongguk wants to hear it once again, hear it always. “Ugh, like that?” he asks, keeps talking, and the strain in his voice when it formulates words urges Jeongguk’s motion more. It is almost a pattern now, a subtle grind that makes him move beneath him a little bit, almost like he’s getting fucked and Jeongguk can hardly think anymore.

 

“Yeah,” he rasps, getting closer, “but more.”

 

Taehyung moans for him again, his eyes closing for a moment, but lids parting immediately after. A part of Jeongguk is wishful. It thinks maybe Taehyung wants to look at him as much as he does, to constantly remind himself who he’s with right now as they pretend they’re talking and not acting.

 

“More,” Jeongguk whispers.

 

“More,” Taehyung repeats, breathless, and Jeongguk presses against him harder, yet again.

 

Jeongguk falls silent then, enthralled with his face, his expressions, the way heat swarms inside of him, and the very nature of the fact Taehyung has fallen enough in the pretense they are talking of non-existent others to allow him to do this to him, with him. With, because Taehyung is a part as well, he is moving, too. His hips are rolling, pressing. His hands are shuffling over fabric, skin and muscles, squeezing, fingers clutching and nails sometimes punitively digging.

 

He seems to lose himself more and more with every given second and Jeongguk resists the temptation to say or do something that would ground him in the moment and of now and them because he’s afraid it will make him stop. He can’t know whether Taehyung is too far gone because though he looks it, that boy is full of surprise, always fluid, changing. And he’s changing underneath him, tan skin turning rosy with blush, sweat breaking on his brow in singular droplets, silver hair pressing tighter to his forehead, and his eyes finally losing a fight and falling shut, and Jeongguk witnesses it all because he simply cannot look away.

 

He notices teeth press over his bottom lip, too, bite down before he grinds out words, a question. “How did it feel?” he murmurs, struggling but managing to find a breathy coherence. His lids part again and though the effort to keep them open long seems futile, for a short moment he finds Jeongguk’s unrelenting gaze.

 

He drowns him with it, with his eyes and eyes alone as he moves over him. “Can you guess?” he says, throat dry. He wants to hear him more like this. He wants to hear calm, collected, in-control Taehyung break down. He wants to see the contortion of his features, wants to hear the strain of his voice.

 

And he does.

 

“Ugh,” Taehyung moans again, on the verge of whining, his fingers digging in the ball of Jeongguk’s shoulder. His other hand circles beneath his arm, grasps into the fabric of his shirt and squeezes for support. It’s clumsy, gives the notion he doesn’t really know what to make of his limbs, hardly has control of them and simply needs to touch, to cling, to hold onto something.

 

“So good,” he says and his eyes close, his teeth touch. “So fucking good. You’re so hard.”  He speaks to him then, allows himself for a naked, weak second not to escape the moment with the pretense of the story, and Jeongguk feels a greater surge of heat that courses through him seemingly electric at the acknowledgement, at the you. He wants more of that, too, and it is dangerous.

 

“Mm,” he moans back to him, too, a bit fake but a bit real as well. He’s not applying any pressure on himself, doesn’t want that type of sensation, not now, and it is funny to him, really, how in such moments with anyone else an orgasm is all he truly seeks, but now he’s set on not going anywhere near. “And she was such a good girl, let me go as fast as I pleased,” he tells him, lowers himself more over him, until their chests almost touch, speeds up all his movements. Taehyung’s legs part more, allow for his thigh to press closer into him, more definitively.

 

He’s grinding hard and Taehyung’s grinding harder back and he can tell, Jeongguk can tell, by the way his eyes scrunch tighter, his fingers pulse more and his hips rut desperate that he is close. He will actually let himself be brought over the edge by this, by what he would likely term horny teenage humping, thigh grinding on the roof, though Jeongguk finds it immensely hot, hotter than anything he has experienced no matter how deep he has previously buried himself in a boy.

 

He lowers onto him more, presses his elbows on the ground around him. “Then I came,” he rasps, urges, his eyes fervid as they skim all across him, attempt to seal Into memory just how each detail of his features twists and turns as he gets more and more lost and beyond conscious control, “Came hard, said her name.”

 

His teeth fall on his lips again, chew on the bottom until it is red, wet, hungry and welcoming. They release, and his mouth parts, whispers, “What was her name?”

 

Jeongguk doesn’t think. He nearly growls, “Doesn’t matter,” his teeth grind down, “say mine.”

 

He never wants to hear another name fall from his lips when he’s so pretty, vulnerable and hot. Other people can touch him if they have to, but this Taehyung, this broken, lecherous, beautiful one is his and only his name must sit on his lips.

 

He half expects him to argue, but he doesn’t. No, he wraps himself around him more, arms circling his shoulders and touching each other against his back, fills all his senses with his body, and he does as he asks, he says his name.

 

“Jeongguk,” he says, whimpers, his full name, both syllables confident on his lips, aware of him above him. “Jeongguk,” he repeats, even louder, more certain. The sound imprints in Jeongguk’s mind and he never wants to forget it. He would like to think this is a card up his sleeve, Taehyung moaning his name as he makes him come down his pants on their rooftop, but it isn’t. It feels somehow precious to him, a moment that is reasonably disgusting but something he doesn’t want to abuse, not by using it against him in confrontation, just something to savor, a validation for him to preserve for himself, private but more honest in its testament than any apathetically defensive claim spawned in an argument ever could be.

 

Jeongguk senses his peak, feels in his breath, as it gets heavy and then shallow as it tries to even, and he feels it on his trousers. He peeks down at him and just as his eyes refused to close before, they seem determined not to open now. He wants to kiss him, but he doesn’t. Somewhere along the way he decided their next kiss should be initiated by Taehyung. He rolls over and, on his back, lets him gather breath without his weight on top, though he can’t tame his own gaze into not turning to watch him do it.

 

He has to adjust his own leg, fold it at the knee, free up some space in his jeans to get his body to relax, stop wanting more. If Taehyung wants to return the favor, he’d gladly let him, but he is not the one initiating, most certainly not, and he needs to keep his imagination away from potential manners in which Taehyung could retaliate to keep himself still and sane.

 

Taehyung breathes hard, spent, a little cold with no body on top of him to overwhelm with all sorts of warmth, physical and otherwise. “Why are you so fucking fit?”

 

Jeongguk huffs a laugh, clicks his tongue and turns his head to stare upwards as Taehyung does, too, eyes latched onto the sky. “Not much to do here,” he shakes his head, dismissive. His lips attempt something dumb, they try their chances at a very private smile, just the corners of them turning up, making crevices in the beginnings of his cheeks.

 

It cannot stay there for long and he shouldn’t think that it might.

 

“Except have sex with other people, apparently.”

 

Jeongguk turns to him as brusque as Taehyung says it, eyes narrowing at his profile that seems to change from. “The fuck did that come from now?”

 

“What?” Taehyung asks, forcedly distracted as he gets on his elbows first, then fully sits up, wipes his hands together though they haven’t touched the ground, only as something to do with himself, something that would indicate he is about to leave.

 

“The bitterness.” Jeongguk says, says it with the bitterness it itself calls for as he stars to climb on elbows, too, body impossibly mimicking Taehyung’s, trailing after.

 

Taehyung is staring ahead, leaving Jeongguk to stare at his back with bare naked confusion for a couple of moments before he manages to straighten his features, recede them into the reticence he beckons and then turns, gives him his face. “There was no fucking bitterness,” he tells him and though his face is calm now, his voice is hissing beyond his control, and Jeongguk notices, of course he does.

 

“You’re dripping with it,” he accuses, own voice falling hard as he straightens up more, leans on his palms and gets so much closer like this and Taehyung has to stand up.

 

“No,” he only responds when he is on his feet, looming above and looking down, his teeth knocking together when he speaks, “I’m dripping with come, actually, and I need to go wash it off.” He sidesteps then, walks blindly forward, lifting his eyes to nothing just to not look at Jeongguk, so perplexed on the ground.

 

But Jeongguk is groaning and Jeongguk is on his feet as well, quick and agile and not currently stifled and rendered clumsy by the same nauseating inadequacy that Taehyung feels at relinquishing control like that, knees weak with physical aftermath and with the palpable discomfort of cheating on his own decisions.

 

“Why are you suddenly so fucking angry at me?” Jeongguk is asking, demanding.

 

And Taehyung halts. He’s spinning, insisting. “I’m not.”

 

“You are,” Jeongguk counters, slants his eyes over him, confusion still laced within them as he waves his hands indicatively over his body, halfway gone but still clinging onto the conversation. “You’re literally in the middle of storming out.”

 

“Well, if you could just let me finish,” He tries to walk away again, and he cannot help the bite that escapes him, latches onto his words in his desperation to escape this.

 

“Taehyung, just—” he catches at his wrist, pulses his fingers around it once, stops himself, voice seeping from confusion to a very gentle plea that tugs at Taehyung’s very guts. “What did I do?” he asks, eyes darting searching across Taehyung’s every feature, a little angry and a little sad because he thought they were in on it both, playing this game together this time.

 

Taehyung charts his eyes across his face for a moment, feels something inside of him swell at the look and sound of him. He looks away, strands slipping across his face with the motion of his head and he tries to blink it away, sighs, a single stream of air escaping from his lips. “I’m not angry at you,” he confesses, looks down at his feet. “I’m angry at myself.”

 

He feels him take a step forward. “Why?”

 

Taehyung blinks, sucks his bottom lip inside his mouth, his tongue teasing over his ring. “Because,” he mutters.

 

“Fucking why?” Jeongguk asks again his fingers squeezing against his wrist in his own confession of exasperation.

 

Taehyung lifts his chin up, dances his pupils between Jeongguk’s own, frees his bottom lip. “I have come down my pants, let me go.” He looks at his wrist where Jeongguk’s touch still burns, brows bouncing in indication, but he makes no effort to actually shake of the grip, misses it when Jeongguk actually listens, releases him and his skin disappears.

 

Taehyung knows it is stupid, but he knows himself well, knows it will be easier later if he pretends Jeongguk made him stay, begged him to talk, insisted he touched him, and Taehyung didn’t simply choose to.

 

“All the more reason to answer faster,” Jeongguk says. He really has grown up.

 

“I didn’t want to get off with you,” Taehyung charts at him, more emphatic than he means to, sentence brimming with his frustration.

 

Jeongguk looks at him, scrolls his eyes over his face, once, twice. Then he scoffs. “Yeah,” he huffs, looks up at the sky once more, just with his eyes, just through their corners and it illuminates the whiteness, makes it glint and shine and Taehyung thinks he can very well imagine what he would like if he cried,, “right,” he clears his throat with words of his own as if Taehyung’s make it scratch, “tell yourself that.”

 

“Not want,” Taehyung corrects himself. “I mean,” he breathes, tries, eyes closing shut as he searches for a word, fingers briefly slipping in his hand, tugging and releasing when he takes a chance with, “Should.” His arms fall dangling inutile by his body as his eyes part once more. “I shouldn’t get off with you,” he says it fully now, the whole truth in a single sentence and his hands turns into fists with determination at the spoken realization. “I shouldn’t,” he reinstates, shakes his head with the denial, an instruction mostly to him, one that he had already posed and had miserably failed to follow, at their very next interaction, with nothing more but a suggestion of Jeongguk’s body, no coercion on his part, not pointed attempt, just a thigh between his legs.

 

Jeongguk thinks different. He thinks Taehyung should only get off with him.

 

He angles his chin higher, nostrils flaring as they suck in breath. “Why’s that?” he says as he shoots his eyes back to him, adjusts on his feet and winds his arms together, his own way of summoning composure, locking himself away.

 

Taehyung cocks his head, lets his eyes fight his if he wishes it. “There’s no space for that between us, don’t you think?”

 

“Actually, I think there is,” Jeongguk counters, his voice an oxymoronic tangle of lightness and a dipping edge. “Plenty of it to be fucking fair. If anything,” he takes a step forward, roams his eyes over Taehyung and it is their heated trail and not the proximity that make Taehyung back away, “we haven’t done it enough.”

 

“Jeongguk,” he warns with his name, running away as he nears. He lets the word be emotional in hopes it will be emotive, hopes the underlying tone of his voice can fill the silences he leaves of unfinished explanations. He never expects that typically of people, to understand him with just half a word and a meaningful glance, but somehow from Jeongguk he does.

 

But it’s stupid of him to, because he cannot just expect Jeongguk to peer inside his head he tries to shield so much anyway. Jeongguk’s different. Jeongguk has a life outside of Taehyung, outside of these stolen moments together and it is that life that defines him and not the short instances in which their paths intertwine.

 

“What?” Jeongguk asks and his voice sounds harsh to Taehyung’s ears, though perhaps he doesn’t mean it to. “Am I another one of those stupid philosophies you have that you live by?” he asks more, and Taehyung knows he’s not harsh, he’s hurt and that’s worse. “Each for their fucking own. Never go near Jeongguk’s dick?” he mimics, drags it out whiny and high. “Is it cause of that, the dick thing?” he questions, his chin nodding to his crotch. “It is cause I’m a guy?”

 

He’s close now, has been edging closer with his questions and his eyes are wide, honest. He just blurts these out, things that genuinely concern him bold and brave and shameless and Taehyung wishes for a moment he knew how to do that do. “No, it’s cause you’re Jeongguk,” he grinds out frustrated, on the verge of honesty and he waits for that drowning wave of discomfort that always comes tidal with disclosure to hit but it doesn’t; he’s too distracted trying to understand Jeongguk to focus on himself.

 

“Yes,” Jeongguk says, teeth knock together from sheer, sudden pettiness, “I’m glad you finally learned my whole name—”

 

“Oh, fuck off,” he cuts him off, eyes rolling. “What I mean is there is no room for escalation here and you know it,” he says, words stumbling out in a single, quick stream. “I will be out of here in a few days and then next time I’m here you might not be. I don’t need to just fucking hurt myself over it.”

 

Jeongguk’s lips press together, a firm line. He seems eerily calm for a moment, but Taehyung is not looking at any part of him other than his eyes and those eyes are the worst they have even been, fixed yet so unscrupulously honest on Taehyung’s own, they dare to be piercing, dare to be pointed, dare to stare and accuse. “Yes, okay.” He starts and his jaw twitches at the end by his neck, voice somehow strikingly raw. “Let’s just hurt me, instead.”

 

Taehyung’s lips part with a pause. He tucks his chin back in his neck, blinks, startled once more at the brazen honesty, but it thins, dissipates into nothing as he is swarmed with something else entirely. Taehyung feels guilt. “I don’t mean to—”

 

“Of course, you don’t mean to,” Jeongguk says, the entire sentence a single scoff. His lids narrow on him, eyes scan over, once twice, lips curling in something akin to disgust and Taehyung never, ever wants Jeongguk to look at him like that again. “You wouldn’t go as far as to mean something. You only care about yourself.”

 

“You should learn something from that, shouldn’t you?” He charts his eyes over him, almost accusatory though he is unsure what he accuses him of. His tongue is brusque, the gaze is sharp and it makes it vulnerable, the way it is so desperately defensive. “If I don’t care about myself who will?”

 

“Me.” Jeongguk answers, not a beat in between Taehyung’s initially rhetorical question and the fucking confession. He unfolds his arms, buries a finger in his chest, loud and confident. “Can’t learn anything from that, because I care about you.” He blurts this, too, so open, sudden and with no sign of regret anywhere on him and he stands there waiting as Taehyung tries to comprehend it, him, really. A moment passes and then two and Taehyung does nothing but chart his eyes across every feature, every crevice waiting for him to retract, to take it back, to fail him, but he doesn’t. It’s Taehyung the one who fails him because he is sighing, eyes shutting, and he is walking away.

 

His shoulder shoves into Taehyung’s own and Taehyung is catching at his forearm before he’s really thought about it. He stares straight and Jeongguk does, too, even if he does pause, he doesn’t turn to him and maybe that is what makes it easier for Taehyung to speak, for his last resolve to break.

 

“If you thought about it for one second before you started yelling at me,” he whispers and he swallows, tongue cascading over his lips to give his words a clean slate, “then you would see I don’t want to touch you because I care about you, too.”

 

He tells him and he lets him go.

 

 

It’s Jeongguk who speaks to him first, but it’s Taehyung who asks him on the roof where they can be alone and actually talk.

It feels curiously different yet very much the same to be in Taehyung's presence after the confession. Jeongguk is not naive enough to think it actually changes anything on a practical level between them, but he cannot help but find the comfort of him being there reminiscent of the way it felt when he first held his hand. 

He is holding his hand now, just one with both of his, turning it around in the air against the moon, playing with fingers, some rings he's not supposed to have.

“We’re getting fucking old now, Guk. Guess next time we meet it's gonna be in prison.” Technically, if they both get caught for something  new right now, they are going straight to prison. No more juvenile correction; they have fully ventured into lawful adulthood, but Jeongguk is quite sure he is as capable of being a lawful adult now as he was before. He only knows life from the inside to its fullest, is only aware of certain glimpses of what it is truly like. 

 

Jeongguk shrugs. He flattens Taehyung’s palm in his own with both his hands and turns it around, stares at the subtle lines on his skin as if they could tell him their fortune, show him his path and just where it would cross Jeongguk’s again. “Maybe we can meet somewhere else,” he mumbles with his shrug, runs his thumb once across a line that seems particularly deep.

 

Taehyung’s fingers pulse, once, instinctive with the motion of Jeongguk’s skin gentle on his own. His chest moves with his laughter, a sound that bristles out of him as unconscious as the reaction of his body to the other’s touch. It rings surprisingly light in the air between them, though it does seem to make air weigh heavier on top of their chests in the moment after. “Where else would we both be, baby boy?” he asks, shoots both his eyes at the boy lying beside him on the rough ground.

 

Jeongguk sighs, drops his hand to the floor, gentle in that, too, escorts it all the way to Taehyung’s own chest where he instructs it to lie in the middle of his rib cage, just a little right off his heart. “Don’t you want anything else from life, Tae?”

 

Taehyung misses the sensation of his hand cradling his so protective and attentive, has to bring his own other one up to cover it, hugs it in his palm as he looks back up at the sky and mulls over an answer. He wants to give him one, an honest one, but he rarely gets the courage to go out wanting things out of life. He clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth, parts his lips. “I wanna adopt a dog,” he announces softly.

 

And Jeongguk doesn’t laugh like he expects him to, doesn’t seem disappointed either at the simplicity of the answer. He only adjusts himself to look at him better, blinks twice as his eyes fix, ready for their shameless, curious scrutiny and he asks, “What kind?”

 

“A cute one,” Taehyung proclaims, confident and short and when Jeongguk snorts, he parts his hands, lifts them up and tries to draw a dog in the sky with gestures of elaboration. “Like you know, fluffy and small. One of those ones with a whole lot of bark but little bite.” He finishes and props his chin on his shoulder, blinking at Jeongguk with expectation.

 

The other’s brows furrow. “You want one of those bimbo dogs?”

 

Taehyung mirrors the expression, forehead creasing under thick hair and lips pouting in a petty, genuine offense. “It’s not a bimbo dog,” he huffs.

 

Jeongguk gets on one elbow, holds his head up in his palm, to get a better look at him, like he had the other day and Taehyung has to look back at the sky not to think about it. “It’s the size of a rat,” he justifies. “It’s barely a dog.”

 

“It’s cute as fuck,” Taehyung protests. “And it’s a dog. I’d train it well and smart,” he declares, pronounces it proud and certain of himself.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes dart on him, draw a line between his own eyes and his lips, and Taehyung parts them slightly at the inquisitive gaze, take it as request. But Jeongguk’s just looking, just exploring and studying now that he has the chance. “Why don’t you get one then,” he questions, voice dropping lower from what it was before, softer and deeper, “when you get out of here?”

 

“I wanna take good care of it if I ever do,” Taehyung swallows. He moves his gaze between Jeongguk and the sky. “A dog needs a home.”

 

Jeongguk nods, ponderous for a moment or two, an unspoken common sadness transpiring between them, and Jeongguk folds his arm, gets on his back again. It’s very simple reasoning Taehyung has that Jeongguk cannot pretend he doesn’t understand, and he thinks, it speaks volumes about this boy he’d deemed insensitive. He wonders if that’s how Taehyung justifies running away from him, too, not having him as Jeongguk sometimes wordlessly offers, if Taehyung refuses him because he thinks he’s incapable of giving him what he thinks he needs in him. It would fit him, Jeongguk reckons, to be so foolishly wise, so thoughtlessly thoughtful.

 

“What do you want, Gukkie?” Taehyung asks in a light voice from beside him, rescuing him from a whirlpool of contemplation that is a priori doomed into uselessness. The sole use he would imagine it could have had is to dishearten him some more.

 

“Aaaa-I…” Jeongguk thinks, tilts his head to him, “wanna be an upstanding citizen.”

 

Taehyung does a double take. “An upstanding citizen?” he repeats. His voice is laughing but he doesn’t release as much as a chuckle, just lifts his head a bit as he blinks his stunted confusion, some entertainment tugging at the corners of his lips.

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk nods, confirms very much confident, “with insurances and shit.”

 

“Fucking insurances,” Taehyung shakes his head, breathes sharply through his nose as he relaxes his head back on the ground fully, “Living the dream.”

 

“Wanna pay mortgage,” Jeongguk details.

 

And Taehyung cannot help it then, snorts, as he turns to him fully and this time his eyes lock on Jeongguk’s dreamy dreaming ones as they stare up at the starless skies, wishing for things at its bleak emptiness as if suddenly a single star will penetrate the darkness and cascade down to them two, make them pay mortgage. “Do you know what mortgage is?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk says, as ever shameless and his lips are smiling now, too, “but I want it.”

 

“I don’t think it’s a good thing, baby boy,” Taehyung murmurs to him, head shaking lightly, and he bites down on his bottom lip, saves his face from beaming into absolute fondness as Jeongguk’s voice climbs with excitement and with the courage to confess it.

 

“But it’s normal,” Jeongguk insists.

 

“Yeah,” Taehyung breathes.

 

“Gonna become a fucking accountant or some shit,” Jeongguk states to the sky, eyes narrowing with overstated determination though a smile is still fit on his features, still filling the pupils of his gaze with its own little glinting stars, ones the sky could never match.

 

“Gotta know what mortgage is to be an accountant,” Taehyung warns.

 

“I’ll learn,” Jeongguk declares, unfazed. “You’ll teach me.”

 

“I’ll teach you?” he raises brows.

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk turns to him, nods. “And you know what?” he says, says it as it comes to him, lets Taehyung witness the very stream of his consciousness, an intimacy Taehyung thinks that is much worse than allowing him to kiss him again. “I’ll have a fucking sexretary.”

 

“A sexretary?” Taehyung exhales in a chuckle as Jeongguk pulls him out of his thoughts before any warning bell could ring.

 

“Mhm,” Jeongguk hums, still nodding to himself energetically with almost a cheerful conviction, as if he can speak things into being, “Hire me someone to cheat on my wife with.”

 

“Ah,” Taehyung’s brows bounce higher and he swears to himself he is still very much entertained by this entire ridiculous ordeal even as something in his chest tightens, squeezes at him physically painful, “you’re getting married, too, are you?”

 

“Of course,” Jeongguk announces, so sure Taehyung almost dreadfully believes it, and Jeongguk is lifting on his elbow again, turning on his stomach with both his forearms lifting his upper body from the ground. He leans to the side, gets closer to Taehyung and pretends to whisper, makes this prophecy private and Taehyung helplessly stare the approach of his face, which seems currently so gone from the present. “Gonna lead a mediocre, married life one day and the only thing I will get to be bitter about it is that dinner is cold by the time I get home cause I got home late after staying past office hours for a round of spice-life-up with my sexretary.”

 

Taehyung allows the smile to stay on his own feature, though it changes in nature. “And is your sexretary hot?” he plays along.

 

“The hottest,” Jeongguk nods, of course he does. “Best ass in the world, so round and perky, most fondleable—”

 

“Fondleable?” Taehyung snorts.

 

“Absolutely,” Jeongguk says. His gaze unwavering, it shoots all over, soft and seems to soften as he keeps on speaking, never stops, words come unfiltered to his lips, as he thinks them, he says them and he seems to think more the more he so piercingly, unforgivably looks. “And pretty eyes and pretty hair, silver and curly, and suck me off lips, and a beautiful, beautiful smile.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes dart between his. “You care about the smile?” he ventures, voice airier than he allows it; it betrays him, but he fails to care, too hungry for Jeongguk’s response to regret his own.

 

“I love the smile.”

 

Taehyung catches his lip between his teeth, feels the weight of his lids heavy as they fall too slow over his eyes, too reluctant to part with the image of Jeongguk so close. “Thought it was just a sexretary for added spice,” he’s saying, he’s murmuring.

 

“Well,” Jeongguk adjusts on his forearms, moves closer, glances down at his motion once, almost shyly, before he perks up again, “no.”

 

“No?”

 

“No,” he shakes his head. “Turns out my sexretary is cooler than my wife, smart and beautiful and amazing, and we run away together.”

 

Taehyung pretends like his heart doesn’t skip a beat at each fucking lousy, overused adjective. Stupid, words like these are stupid and he’s heard them before. They’ve always seemed so empty. Why is he so hopeful now? “You do?”

 

“Yes, and he feeds me stolen eclairs in fancy hotels.”

 

“As upstanding citizens do,” Taehyung chuckles.

 

“As they do” And Jeongguk had flown to the sky for a moment and had been looking at everything, but now he is back, and all his eyes are darting at is Taehyung and still his expression doesn’t seem to alter match. He still retains some communicated contemplation of awe; he still seems enthralled; he still appears to be looking at everything. His eyes remain insatiable in their pursuit to capture each detail, hungrily dashing to every lash and every mole.

 

Jeongguk looks at him more, looks at him deeper before he gets on his side, tilting his body and propping his head on his forearm. He skims his eyes across him like this, too, indulging in watching him as they borh allow a soft, continuous laughter to comfort them

 

“Can you let me do something to you?” he mutters after a moment of shared silence, his gaze as ever unwavering, eyes darting appetitive at different features of his face.

 

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung swallows, warns.

 

“It’s not sexual.” He thinks about it for a moment, adds, “Not about getting off.” Because it is, to him, in essence sexual, or more accurately, at least primitively physical in the way it relates to his abrupt desire to know his body on a level no one else does.

 

Taehyung dashes his eyes across his face for the moment that follows, whispers to him in a voice as private as the one he uses, “What is it?”

 

Jeongguk, to his surprise, focuses on his nose for his next elongated, pointed stare before he bounces his eyes upward and locks them penetrative onto his. He teases his teeth over his lower lip, a subtle quiet moment of him announcing his hesitation, on which feels Taehyung’s chest with palpable tension that reminds him too much of excitement before he releases and he speaks in a voice that is together timid and alluring, “Can I count the beauty marks on your body?”

 

Taehyung’s brows furrow, his eyes darting sceptic and alarmed over the familiar features of the other’s face. “Why?” he asks, his voice pinging with treacherous confession of his

 

“I just—want to,” and he tips his head a little to the side, curious and innocent, his body slanting more towards Taehyung’s own seemingly of its own accord. “Can I?” he bounces his brows up, makes his forehead crease underneath threads of dark hair.

 

“Okay,” Taehyung breathes his decision much more nervous than he would like to admit moments before he rationalizes to himself why he chooses to allow it.

 

“Okay,” Jeongguk repeats, voice enviously even. He nods his head a tiny bit, dashes his eyes across his upper body as he slightly raises himself. “Can you take your shirt off?” Taehyung narrows his gaze at him, his chest hollowing with damned windy wisps of excitement venting through it, though he supposes the activity he agrees to does suggest he would have to bare himself. Jeongguk’s brows bump higher at the charged reluctance, a glint of entertainment dancing in his eyes. “Or I can do it for you?”

 

Taehyung snorts, adds emphasis to it with an exaggerated eye roll before he sits up, pulling his shirt along the way. He feels Jeongguk’s attention trail after as he moves, swears he can physically pinpoint the moment his eyes latch onto naked skin when fabric is out of the way. Taehyung ignores the gaze and the heaviness it seems to weigh in on his body, puts the shirt on the ground and carefully lets himself lie down on it.

 

He doesn’t understand why simply being shirtless so close to Jeongguk’s scrutiny feels the way it does, very literally thrilling. He used to reveal much more to the eyes of strangers just for money and care incredibly little, mostly for his bothered pride and not for any physical uneasiness. But Jeongguk simply washes his eyes over the length of him and he feels a sensation reminiscent of a chill wave after the trajectory of his gaze.

 

He is torturously slow in going about it, his gaze fixing unrelating on Taehyung’s face throughout every motion with which he proceeds to get on top of him. He doesn’t really, doesn’t touch him, not even a bit of him. He gets on his knees, throws one on the other side of him, smoothly balancing himself by propping a palm next to his head in sync with the movement of his leg, an act that Taehyung dazedly deems as impressive coordination in comparison to the haze he personally feels at the moment from the demanding puncture of his gaze into his own.

 

His eyes are prying, Taehyung feels. They are searching, as if they mean to peel down a front, extract from Taehyung’s subtle shifts in expression everything he refuses to tell him with his words. They are ruthless until they are gone, scattering down to the abundance of skin that is revealed before him, immediately looking for targets. He spots one, a small brown dot on Taehyung’s skin and lowers himself towards it, getting close as if to determine it is what he looks for, and he begins his count down Taehyung’s neck and chest.

 

Taehyung struggles between closing his eyes and relaxing and taking advantage and forever looking at him hovering and moving over his body, holding himself up on bulging arms. He looks good above him, Taehyung thinks. He’d look good below him, too, but he would look best just next to him, beside him, preferable for longer, always, everywhere.

 

Taehyung screws his eyes shut, swears silently to himself, at himself.

 

In his thorough counting, Jeongguk whispers aloud, in small threads of air hitting the sensitive marks he finds, but the spoken number is too privately muttered between his lips and Taehyung’s skin, remains only for him to consciously know. At first Taehyung tries to count his exhales, but he finds he can’t keep track, not with Jeongguk hovering like this above him, so gently murmuring words over his skin.

 

“What’s this?” Jeongguk asks, his voice making Taehyung’s eyes peel open to find his mouth hovering over a line of damaged skin on his forearm. It’s long and straight, but rough. Jeongguk doesn’t know if he had personally noticed it before, but it stands out when he stretches curious eyes along every detail of his skin, erasing any unfamiliarity he has with his body.

 

“It’s from when I couldn’t get on that train,” Taehyung confesses to him, the memory of him reaching and missing flashing through his leg, the most rapid disillusionment he’d ever felt, swarming down atop his hopefulness and adding in the physical pain to top it. He remembers tracking down Namjoon, him nagging him to go get a tetanus shot, go to the hospital, go home, and he didn’t want to go wherever Namjoon imagined his home would be.

 

Taehyung’s brought forcefully back to present when Jeongguk shifts on him, moves to the side. For a moment his breath disappears and then it teases with no warning over the bone of his hip and Taehyung is hissing once more, inhaling breath sharply and praying he can keep it in. Jeongguk moves slightly, though, and his exhale is deep and shallow when he feels warm air brush over the tip of his hip. Taehyung’s stomach recedes tellingly, shying away from the tantalizing, foreign sensation

 

“And this?” Jeongguk’s gaze washes pointed over where his mouth hovers, exhaling methodic teasing breaths, scalding over pained skin. It is a blotch that is still wide and ugly upper on Taehyung’s hip. It stretches, not too big, but certainly not small enough to go unnoticeable, more pinkish than the rest and relieved amongst the smooth waves of tanned skin, another scar that Taehyung remains unashamed off, though it takes him a gulp to confess to its origin, not for Jeongguk’s sake but for his own.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes dart up just as the words leave Taehyung’s lips, “Is the reason I wanted to get on the train.”

 

Jeongguk’s expression changes when he hears it eyes darting careful and expressive over Taehyung’s features for a moment too long. But in the next he brings his lashes down, gently fluttering them to the scar again, not inquiring, though Taehyung knows he wants to. He lowers his head subtly downwards, and with a hiss Taehyung realizes he brushes his lips minutely over the skin, an almost negligible semblance of a kiss with how quick it is, but no touch from Jeongguk can go unnoticed by Taehyung, not with the sensation it inevitable invokes.

 

Taehyung thinks he saves himself from intimacy when he puts that physical barrier between them, but it is worse; this is so much worse, as he pronounces numbers the ghosts of each sound teases over his skin.

 

“Did you know how many you have on your arms and chest and stomach?”

 

“No,” Taehyung gulps, chest receding sharply and filling up again with air he struggles to find. “How many?” he asks in a wisp of an exhale.

 

Jeongguk presses his lips together for a moment as he raises his eyes upwards, catches Taehyung in his helpless, doomed staring. His lids are lazy, low on his orbs, but gaze is merciless; it glints and fixes certain and determined as he shakes his head, parts his mouth again and the warm, tantalizing brush of his breath is once more cruelly pleasing on Taehyung’s skin. “I won’t tell you,” he murmurs, and Taehyung feels each word more then he hears it. “Now I know you better than you know yourself,” Jeongguk announces, so quiet and sweet it might be just reserved for his own private knowledge.

 

He bows his head again, eyes searching patches of skin once more and he edges lower and Taehyung can’t breathe. Each thread of air escaping from between Jeongguk’s tentative lips is a path to his inexorable suffocation and it culminates in a pitch he can’t help, doesn’t plan as he simply blurts out, “Jeongguk, you have to stop.”

 

He processes it after he says it, but he finds that he means it – he needs Jeongguk to stop. He breaks his own unspoken rule and touches, gets his hands on Jeongguk’s shoulders and pushes slightly, only indicative, but he feels his fingers dig and clutch more desperately than they should.

 

Jeongguk’s head dashes up again and he pulls a little upwards and then forward, until his head is hovering closer over Taehyung’s, his body stretching over his as his elbows and forearms press against the ground. “But I’m not touching you, Tae,” he whispers, and the wisp of those words fall a little on Taehyung’s chin, a little on his neck, the skin there sensitive enough it makes him shiver.

 

“I know,” Taehyung tells him, meets his inquisitive eyes. He squeezes his hands in their grip on his shoulders once before he lets them drop, extends his arms close to his body. His next confession is his shiest yet, comes after a pause, quiet but unrestricted “But I really want you to be.”

 

“Then let me,” Jeongguk’s eyes are darting furtively across the other’s features for permission; he’s not doing it without Taehyung asking him to. His hand closes into a fist beside his head, subtle and subconscious, the only notion of the passion of his determination other than his telling eyes.

 

With the proximity and the weight of the gaze, Taehyung needs a moment too long to shake his head, to mutter, “I can’t.” A moment that allows him to grow more painfully conscious of the fact he would very much like him to do anything.

 

“You can,” Jeongguk counters breathless in a perfect mirror of his own exhale, and he’s almost tangling his lips with his, they’re so tangible upon his mouth, less than a breath away. Taehyung can almost feel the pillow of his bottom lip brushing fiery and electric on his upper one. He can nearly taste him and with the memory of what he tastes like so ardent in his mind, on his tongue, he craves it – this faultless epitome of absolute temptation. His lips are parting and Jeongguk’s are, too, just right, so perfectly to fit together because they know how to kiss each other now, and Taehyung wants to kiss him.

 

But he speaks instead, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

 

He almost feels the pressure of his lips on his and then he only feels the dawning pressure of his eyes. Jeongguk gains some height, pushes himself up and gives himself a fuller view of Taehyung underneath, his gaze sporadic as it studies features. “You didn’t tell me,” he says, flat and even and yet still somehow leaking disappointment.

 

He climbs further on his palms until he’s falling back on his calves, sitting down and staring, not accusatory as much as tired and it drains Taehyung, too. He shifts himself forward, chases after, shuffling on his forearms until he’s almost sitting, too.

 

“I wanted to spend this night with you without us thinking about it,” he confesses in a whisper, lids low on his eyes as he looks down, chooses his feet as comfort because Jeongguk is too much right now.

 

Jeongguk looks at him still, blinking numbly, somewhat dumbly as if trying to fit it inside his head. “I’m not spending this night with you,” he shakes his head, turns away. He gets one foot on the ground, pushes himself up with a sigh. He’s still looking away, eyes fixed on some meaningless distance. He doesn’t allow himself to return them to Taehyung “I can’t do this anymore.”

 

Taehyung has always been alone, never felt lonely, but somehow when Jeongguk leaves him on that roof that night, he feels utterly desolate.

 

The next time Taehyung lets himself get caught, Jeongguk is gone.

Chapter 4: vii.viii.

Summary:

very soft and sappy

 

He counts the blocks he runs. One, two, three, four. Seventeen. He’s a better run usually than this. The numbers start in his head but then they catch on his breath and he starts wheezing them out, words, muttered clumsily under his nose. He should know better than to waste his breath on counting, but he can’t – he needs to. He manages to run for seventeen blocks before they catch him.

 

They cheat, call for backup and get a car on his trail and it cuts him off at the corner of the sidewalk. He turns, sharply, hair in his eyes and he runs blind between two buildings, runs faster than before and then he hits a dead end. He stops, his worn-out shoes hissing against the concrete ground as he struggles to halt completely with adrenaline-fuelled inertia. His hands spread to his sides to create a false protective bubble around him and heed in his balance as he turns rapidly, left, right, left, right, he spins full circle, eyes raking the area for any sensible path of escape.

 

He has nowhere to go.

 

“Jeongguk,” the guy forces out through a breath that’s hard for him to catch and Jeongguk turns to see him leaning down, palms pressed on his knees as he tries to balance coarse, whistling inhales and exhales. “You little motherfucker, do you need to run every time?”

 

Jeongguk locks a hand to his hip, cocks it to one side and forces out a smirk, though his chest is swelling with bitterness. “Just making sure you get your exercise in, Officer.”

 

The man flicks his head up, eyes narrowing in a pungent glare, lacking all entertainment – something the two currently share despite the purposely infuriating smirk on Jeongguk’s face. This is the fourth time this particular man has chased him down, his second quickest catch, and, unfortunately this time Jeongguk actually has drugs on him.

 

He knows he is getting in serious trouble this time. Two times ago he dropped a bag of pills behind a dumpster – for which Seokjin wanted his balls – and spent only twenty-four hours in arrest for insubordination, but he claimed it was a misunderstanding as he was simply going for a jog and not running away. He spent the night under scrutiny and mistrust but Yoongi pulled him out in the morning with a small contribution for the on duty officer’s next vacation handed in gratitude under the table.

 

Then was his vandalism stay, which was short and uneventful. His last interaction with the guy currently wheezing before him was entirely personal and remained such. This, however, Jeongguk doubts will be so easy. He got someone else in the chase which is strictly against their established rules and certifies he was resisting arrest.

 

He wonders for how long he’ll stay in. He thinks possession is a year, which honestly, at this point in his life he can’t spend that much time behind bars.  

 

“Hyung,” Jeongguk whines into the phone. “The bastard has got a personal vendetta against me. It’s not my fault.”

 

“Why is it always you?” Seokjin groans on the other end of the phone.

 

“Hyung, please, I’m so scared,” he continues, eyeing the officer who rocks on his chair in the corner of the room. “I only had my Adderall cause—cause I needed to concentrate for Nani, okay, but they don’t listen, hyungie, I don’t know what to do.”

 

“Are you tearing up?” Seokjin sighs. Someone mumbles on the other end of the call. “Yoongi says remember the jaw work.”

 

His jaw is trembling, teeth repeatedly knocking together, and he has his eyes as wide and doe-like as he can muster. “I want to come home to you, hyungie.”

 

“Just you wait to come home, I will whoop your ass so bad.”

 

“What if I drop the soap, hyung?” he mocks a frightened whisper.

 

“Knowing you, you’ll drop it on purpose,” Seokjin says and he can hear him move around, one door, keys, another door. “You’ve lost all standards.” He hears the cupboard and there are little steps running on the floor, some excited barking. Jeongguk tries not to smile through the phone. “Have you moved the dog food?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk says. “You need to get some. Take care of Nani for me. Please, hyung, you know she can’t cope on her own, without me.”

 

“You leech,” Seokjin growls. “What? No, I don’t know if we have any free apartments, Yoongi. Not now. Jeongguk is going to goddamn prison.”  The line cuts short.

 

Two months. They give him two months. He supposes it’s alright. He can live through it – bearable. The cell appears comical to him, out of a film. He has thus far only been in arrest, never in prison. The clothes feel ridiculous, but it’s not like he’s ever been pretentious. They take out his earrings which is personally offensive to him, but they don’t seem to care and he rolls his sleeves as he rolls his eyes, allows himself to be roughly tugged into a cell.

 

“Chill,” Jeongguk mutters at the final shove that secures him, quite literally, behind bars. He turns around swiftly, wraps his hands around the bars of the door that the guard is currently locking with a sour face. “I’m a good boy,” he tips his head, grins, “promise.”

 

He receives a glare. “We’ll see.”

 

Jeongguk whistles his response at the disgruntled man, then pats at his stomach. “I’m hungry,” he complains.

 

The man’s glare deepens. “Next time eat before you break the law.”

 

Jeongguk’s grin disappears with his scoff as he pulls his head straight. “Who the fuck put the stick up your ass?”

 

He steps back on an instinct when the metal of cage clings loud and angry against the material baton of the guard, which he slams quite pointedly at the level of Jeongguk’s crotch. “Talk back some more and I’ll put that stick up your ass.”

 

“Ts,” Jeongguk clicks his tongue, glancing down. He cocks his head once more in some theatrical consideration. “You just liked what you saw on my strip search. Usually I like it the other way around,” he shrugs, looks up with bouncing brows, emphatically suggestive, “but I guess for you I’ll make an exception.”

 

The man’s teeth press together, eyes narrow. Jeongguk sees annoyance, maybe the beginnings of rage and feels that jut of entertainment in his guts he knows Seokjin and Yoongi both would avidly condemn. The response is hovering at the tongue of the guard, ticking at the muscles of his jaw, and Jeongguk awaits it eagerly, readying himself for his own, when a distant voice interrupts.

 

He doesn’t heed the steps. This place is full of innumerable noises, each more distracting than the other, and he doesn’t think to single out something like approaching feet. It’s light shoes against concrete in an aimless direction, one he doesn’t care for, before he hears the voice. That voice. That unforgettable, distinctive voice. A voice he can recognise anywhere, above all other noises.

 

“Who are you flirting with, hyung?”

 

Jeongguk’s head whips, eyes a little desperate. For a moment it’s like a mirage, but then it becomes rapidly material. It’s him. It is him. Jeongguk already knows that it is him. He’d never mistake his voice. Downing on him that it is him is a tearing mixture of of course and a complete awe of how could it be?  

 

“Kim—“ The guard is turning, some immediate familiarity in the address that Jeongguk is not even surprised Taehyung has worked out for himself.

 

“You were supposed to come lock me up and you’re out here flirting with the new boy,” Taehyung approaches, stops near with his arms locking together. He blinks at Jeongguk once and then proceeds to stare at the aggravated man beside him.

 

Jeongguk, on his term, does not even think about stripping his eyes off of him.

 

“Threatening,” the guard corrects, perfectly void of humour.

 

“Sure,” Taehyung smiles through teasing, but before the guy can grind something more to his surprisingly sturdy teeth, he nods to a silent, gaping Jeongguk. “He has no cellmate?”

 

“Not yet,” the guy answers somewhat begrudging, stealing a glare towards Jeongguk. However authoritative he wanted to come across before him, Taehyung has arrived and swiftly swept it away. “Tomorrow.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes slide over, capture his in a beat that for Jeongguk equals a moment of breathlessness. “Hm,” he turns away, “And I suppose you’ll move him to something less exhibitionistic than this.”

 

The guard skims the wide, exposing bars, behind which a previously smart mouthed Jeongguk stands now curiously stunted. “You know we will.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes bat to him once more. Jeongguk doesn’t remember his voice this deep, his tone that slow, though it vibrates with all the familiarity of Taehyung. “Can I have a word with him?”

 

The guard’s look on him is severe, but short. He concedes with a curt nod, and with a final icy glare towards Jeongguk, he spins on his boot and leaves. “Be quick,” he says in parting. “You have until I lock up Joon.”

 

Taehyung stares after the departing man for a short while before he casually repositions himself in his vacant place, securing himself right in front of Jeongguk, who trails the motion with eyes that have fastened on Taehyung and refuse to abandon his face.

 

“Gonna get your ass beat for looking at me like that in a place like this,” Taehyung tells him, his voice even more familiar now that they are alone. He slides his eyes across Jeongguk comfortably in their solitude, pausing at rolled sleeves and asserting themselves on his own with finality.

 

Jeongguk cocks his head, his hands curling against bars as he brings himself closer. “So?”

 

“So,” Taehyung blinks, “don’t look at me like that.”

 

Jeongguk looks him over too, but he doesn’t seem to see him. There is too much awe for comprehension. His eyes are behind in absorbing, but his mind is set at matching Taehyung. “What about if I saw you somewhere else?”

 

Taehyung’s lips curl. “Then only look at me like that.”

 

Jeongguk feels a pang of something in his chest, a very physical jump of something small inside of him, but he doesn’t want its insinuation in the conversation, not yet. He locks his tongue in the padding of his cheek instead, rocks a little back and forth by the hold he has on the bars, teasing himself closer and further away. “Funny how I could fuck you and no one would bat an eyelid, but I stare at you for a second too long and that’s wrong.”

 

Taehyung’s smile shifts, but Jeongguk doesn’t know how exactly. “It’s not wrong,” he shakes his head gingerly. “Just not the time and the place, baby boy.”

 

“So wise,” Jeongguk quips, irony crisp but fond as he voices it with a small smile of his own.

 

Taehyung shrugs. His eyes are warm. “Always.”

 

Jeongguk takes another chance at running his gaze over, at piecing him together in his head to internally emphasize, realize more like it, that he is very much, very materially standing in front of him. “Can’t believe you’re here,” he pronounces aloud as he subjects details of him to a scrutiny that Taehyung steadily permits, standing straight and still and keeping his attention entirely reserved on Jeongguk’s exploration.

 

“I wouldn’t have believed it if you weren’t,” Taehyung says, a little breathy and a lot quick and before Jeongguk can address it he is nodding at Jeongguk’s clinging hands and the bare forearms attached to them. “Nice tattoos.”

 

Jeongguk’s palms rub into the rough bars, fingers tightening around them. “Is that sarcasm?”

 

“No,” Taehyung shakes his head, returning his eyes on his after watching him inadvertently flex for a moment. “You’re hot now.”

 

Jeongguk’s hold relaxes as the corners of his lips shoot to the side. “Are you implying you didn’t think I was hot before?” he curves brows.

 

“Hotter,” Taehyung sighs with exasperated emphasis and clicks his tongue as he swipes some hair back from his eyes. He’s abandoned the silver for black, but the color sits on him just as perfectly. “Christ,” he shakes his head some more, “didn’t you change at all?”

 

Jeongguk’s head dips to one side. “Did you want me to change?”

 

The conversation intertwines jokes and genuineness swiftly. Jeongguk doesn’t know how one moulds into the other, only witnesses the change in the nuances in Taehyung’s gaze and the modest shifts of his smile. He himself has had this boy in his thoughts, with him, everywhere, for far too long for this moment to be branded with any distance. At the same time, no matter how many times he has imagined and reimagined the next time they would meet, he has never been able in the sole setting of his mind to give justice to Taehyung, to what he would say, how he would act, what he would look like and how he would feel. So, a significant part of the way he speaks to him is impulse.

 

Taehyung’s smile changes once more as he takes a moment to hum his consideration. “Yes and no.”

 

Jeongguk’s sigh is long, but his own smile lasts longer. “Won’t even ask for an explanation,” he says with a shrug, rocking himself closer. “You can be a cryptic asshole all you want.”

 

“You don’t want me to change either then?”

 

Jeongguk blinks, eyes caught on him relentless. He thinks about it for a moment. “Yes and no,” he replies, finds that in the interplay of joking and genuine, this is most definitely genuine.

 

Taehyung’s lips curl more, curl until it is not a smile on his face but something crooked enough to be forced, to be bittersweet. “I missed you, baby boy,” he pronounces softly, lashes brushing together as his lids dip and close lazy, parting slow as he regards him slower, sliding his eyes down over and up.

 

For the better part of the time he has spent without him, only carrying him in his head as a figment of his imagination built on a memory of something Taehyung is already not and has probably never really been, Jeongguk had steadily attempted not to be angry. He has too much otherwise placed rage, too much fear, too much overall negativity, to leave space for the reinforcement of anger towards the one person he either fortunately or unfortunately loves in this world.

 

But hearing him so blatantly address their parting, their absence from each other’s lives, reincarnates a poignant anger from the first times Taehyung had left. He has stopped blaming him for leaving, but he has yet to start excusing it, too. Taehyung has all the right to miss him. He, however, has no right to confess it, express it, certainly no right to sympathy on Jeongguk’s part for it.

 

“If there weren’t bars between us, Kim Taehyung,” Jeongguk says, hands twisting around the metal in question, “I’d drop you,” he promises him, steady and enunciated to the best of his abilities.

 

Taehyung keeps his gaze on his as Jeongguk seems to demand with the way the manner with which he looks mirrors the manner with which he speaks. He faces him head on, juts his chin a little higher, up in challenge until its roundness appears to be a finer line. He takes a step forward. “I’m close enough right now,” he says, voice low.

 

He is. He's most definitely at an arm’s reach and Jeongguk has the space to reach between these temporary bars. So, staring into eyes in which a forgotten but familiar calculatedness is suddenly beautifully reborn, Jeongguk reaches out.

 

He grabs at his collar, fingers locking tightly in the same coarse fabric he has pressed to his body, and he tugs him closer, watching those eyes lose control and widen, startled, for every second before he closes his own and fits his lips against his. He feels them cool and soft and dubiously fiery. He feels their charge as they most certainly need to be charged with something, anything, that causes a current to ripple through him as suddenly as they are touched.

 

He pulls away from him with a loud, distinct sound and pushes him back where he previously stood much before he can reiterate in any way. He releases him and, parting his eyes, he finds Taehyung hadn’t even had time to close his. He’s blinking with the same shock Jeongguk had seen up close moments before he quite literally crashed his lips against his own.

 

“That’s for what you did at the Gyeongs,” Jeongguk tells him, pulling himself away from the bars towards which his body is now itching to press, bones inching forward without his command to seek a little more of that lively sensation he forced them into and then swiftly tore away.

 

Taehyung lifts a finger, presses its tip to his lips. “Got something else to avenge?” he asks as his expression relaxes.

 

Jeongguk’s mouth is falling open. He's on the verge of giving up the initial idea for this semblance of a kiss to be something singular. But he doesn’t get to say anything.

 

“Kim,” the guard is yelling, his boots quick against concrete. He bangs his baton against the wall once. “Cell. Now.”

 

Taehyung doesn’t even look at the man that is swiftly approaching. He lets his finger fall, wraps his own hand around the bars in front of Jeongguk once, resumes the previous smile that crept onto his face as if it never left. “See you for breakfast, baby boy.”

 

“Is it tasty here?” Jeongguk shifts his hand higher around the bar until the top of his hand is pressed into the bottom of Taehyung’s.

 

Taehyung’s voice drops to a whisper as he talks of one of their very first secrets. “Remember when we ate those eclairs?”

 

“Yeah,” Jeongguk nods. He pads at Taehyung’s knuckles with his thumb.

 

“Remember you threw them up afterwards?” Taehyung says, the smile inching more devilish on his face.

 

“Yes,” Jeongguk recounts, but he can’t summon disgust at the memory no matter how strongly he wills it.

 

“It’s pretty much like that,” Taehyung manages before he is ripped away by a push at his shoulder.

 

 

 

 

“How do we always fuck up at the same time?” Taehyung asks as he slides on the bench in front of his tray and its questionable contents. Jeongguk is sitting across from him, hands very involved in touching everything and anything to fight the instinct of touching Taehyung, though he had managed to brush his elbow in his greeting.

 

“Coincidence?” Jeongguk ventures in a shrug, currently preoccupied with managing utensils. The sound of his guess is quiet but distinctive in the rumble of too many people in the same space, too many unheard voice propelling over others, chairs and tables scraping into the floor as men move with the brusqueness of frustration.

 

This is the first exchange they have had private to themselves after Taehyung had quietly murmured to him, “Good morning,” when he’d felt the squeeze at his elbow and received a glare in return. Jeongguk’s morning had started with him getting moved to a cell with an actual door, heavy and intimidating, solidifying to him jail was a thing of the past and he was very much in prison now. He had been introduced to another person he was to share the space with, who grunted most of his responses and reminded him without any sentimentality of his crowd from juvie.

 

When released to move freely for breakfast, Jeongguk had quickly identified Taehyung by the back of his head and attached himself to his elbow to receive his greeting with a glare that on its part was full of sentimentality. Taehyung had proceeded to introduce him to some other people, a Sumi, a Songhyon and a Namjoon whom Taehyung had apparently known for years. They stuck with them for more time than Jeongguk was comfortable with, but Taehyung opted out from something they had planned the previous day, which secured their current solitary breakfast and left Jeongguk very grateful.

 

“Destiny?” Taehyung suggests with arching brows and the air of a joke before he shoves something Jeongguk is sure is served in prison because it looks criminally disgusting in his mouth. “What you in for, Guk?”

 

Jeongguk realizes with a downward curve of his lips that the food is much more bearable in taste than it is in appearance. “Drug running,” he says and leaves it for later to specify that he had not exactly been running drugs as much as he had been running with drugs, as he wonders to himself whether the aesthete chef in Seokjin had forever spoiled his ability to find comfort in the life he previously was so used to.

 

“Told you I should have taught you how to do that,” Taehyung tells him, his smile intimate with the way it hints at more sentimentality. Jeongguk wonders if a conversation between them is possible that is not submerged in history but finds he himself cannot speak to him without it.

 

It’s not a matter of longitude. Jeongguk does not talk to Yoongi with the layers with which he talks to Taehyung despite how far back they go. Yoongi himself does not talk to Jeongguk with the layers with which Taehyung does. It’s something else but he doesn't search for the word to define it.

 

“Do you believe in destiny, Tae?” Jeongguk asks. He means to make the question ring as light as Taehyung throwing the word in the conversation earlier did, but he doesn’t know if he manages, not through any fault of his own and entirely because of Taehyung’s answer.

 

Taehyung pauses before he delivers that answer. He doesn’t speak through a mouthful, makes it seem like he doesn’t speak through the process of breakfast at all. He levels his forearms with the table, elbows propping on the surface and he looks at Jeongguk as if that is all he has to do now, foods and prisoners and guards forgotten. “You kind of make me want to.”

Jeongguk stirs at the words, at the suggestion he didn’t want to make that Taehyung now boldly does that if there is a thing such as destiny maybe it wills for them to fuck up at the same time. He takes a moment too long to swallow and looks down at his plate, toying with food as he says rather weakly, “Thought it was each for their own.”

 

“You’re my own,” Taehyung pronounces deliberately, his food still forgotten as he has rooted a stare into Jeongguk that for all their history appears brand new.  

 

“Don’t fucking talk to me like this,” Jeongguk grunts at him with the same slash of anger that had struck him the night before. The words come with a memory, vivid as if it had happened just the previous day. He has said those words exactly, so many, many days ago, that he simply has to consider the clarity with which he recounts them disturbing.

 

Taehyung sits back on the bench, dropping his arms down. He looks at him over as Jeongguk resumes eating through the flood of memories. “When I went to juvie and you weren’t there,” Taehyung starts in a new voice with that new gaze, informing him of something Jeongguk had wondered about again and again, “I thought maybe you cleaned up your act.”

 

“Really?” Jeongguk says, blinking up as he licks the inside of his spoon. “Were you happy for me, hyung?”

 

Taehyung shrugs. “Yes and no.”

 

“This again?” the other sighs.

 

“I’ll disambiguate.” Taehyung’s leaning forward once more.

 

“How generous.”

 

He pays no mind to the irony and instead fixes a demanding stare upon him now. “I was happy you were out,” he speaks slow, but loud and clear. “I was sad you weren’t there with me.”

 

“Was it boring?” Jeongguk hurries the suggestion out as he clutches to ideas on the surface to withhold others from breaking in. He can afford to have Taehyung physically with him and lose him. He can’t afford to develop an idea that he cares as much as him and lose it. Not again. “No one there to taunt?”

 

“Taunt?” Taehyung repeats the word but makes it hollow. “No,” he shakes his head, leans closer still, “I came back for you.”

 

Jeongguk forgets how to use his spoon for a moment, so he drops it. It’s useless. He sighs, deep and guttural and runs both hands over his face in attempts to gather himself. “What’s with the sudden—” he tries when he lets himself see again, staring past Taehyung for the beginning of it, but then his eyes focus, catch on his expression and he is startled into silence.

 

“Sudden what?” Taehyung blinks.

 

“I don’t even know what it is,” Jeongguk pulls from between his teeth. He feels as if all the frustration imprisoned in this cafeteria bundles up inside of him. He had learned to expect everything and anything from this boy. He had not learned to expect worded, invulnerable affection. “I can’t fathom what you’re doing.”

 

“Honesty,” Taehyung provides, sure and secure. “It’s honesty,” he defines it for him to leave no space for theories, only for facts.

 

“It feels like a game,” Jeongguk says, nevertheless, shaking his head. Taehyung seems to have a rule of intensity attached to him and despite it being just breakfast, Jeongguk feels as overwhelmed as if he’s lived the whole day. “It feels like we’re shooting hoops in the backyard of the Gyeongs,” he confesses.

 

Taehyung, for all his insinuations that he cares about him, too, could never just so simply state it over breakfast. Jeongguk had had to push and push and push to hear it once from him, and here he is now, suggesting it as lightly as he had murmured his ‘Good morning.’

 

“Why?” Taehyung’s brows bundle.

 

“It’s what you’ve taught me, hyung,” Jeongguk tells him, shaking his head. “You always wanted to be my teacher. Didn’t you know this was the lesson?”

 

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” Taehyung says as if he is replying. He says as if he is staring a whole new conversation. He says as if he is restarting ones they have been having for years.

 

Jeongguk blinks at him with the same overwhelmed blankness he doesn’t realize Taehyung is blinking at him with. “You haven’t seen me in four hundred and seventeen days,” he tells him. Four hundred and seventeen days Jeongguk has woken up to no good morning. He has thought about him each day. Every single one, some days more than others. It doesn’t help him he goes back to the place where they met every week, goes by the room he first held his hand in. It doesn’t help him he wonders whether Taehyung would like his dog every time he feeds him. It doesn’t help him the few times he has been with other people, he always compares them to him.

 

“You count?” Taehyung gawks, running his eyes over him.

 

“Are you surprised?” Jeongguk asks, before he looks down. He shrugs, “I count everything”

 

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung starts with a breath, feet shuffling underneath the table. He leans forward more, enough that Jeongguk think it’s an attempt to summon his attention back and so he gives it. He has little problem with looking - there are few things he has left to unveil before him. When he finds his eyes again, Taehyung takes a pause, his own irises dancing between Jeongguk’s, building his expression to give it completeness or simply buying him time to begin. The room is full with the rumble of hundreds of people and yet his eyes make him feel as if they are alone. “I used to take seeing you for granted,” Taehyung begins, resting between sentences. Jeongguk feels a striking need to look away, but Taehyung’s gaze implores for him not to and Jeongguk listens. “But then suddenly I couldn’t find you. I guess you’ve taught me a thing or two as well.”

 

Taehyung didn’t know the number. He didn’t know it was four hundred and seventeen days. He knows he spent them all afraid he would never see Jeongguk again. I wouldn’t have believed it if you weren’t, he’d told him, but it had been, sadly, while not a lie, as believe he did, not the perfect truth. He believed he would see him. He was afraid that wouldn’t. And Taehyung always relied more on fear than on belief. So, when Namjoon uttered his name in a passing question, Taehyung had felt a wave of almost everything indecipherable strike him at once. “Wasn't your guy's name Jeon Jeongguk?” he’d said. “I swear, it was.” Taehyung had felt a startling crack in composure, a coolness, and then a heat, at the bare mention of his name, so many sensations that proved to him how unready he was to hear it, how much his fear had grown into a certainty. “They are bringing one over tonight.”

 

Taehyung was so afraid he would never see him again. But Jeongguk had never stopped counting.

 

“If it’s not a game,” Jeongguk’s starting after a small pause of his own and Taehyung has to blink several times to focus as if he needs to awake, “why are we keeping score?”

 

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he assures him, head shaking. “You’re the one that keeps count.”

 

“You can’t blame me for trying to keep my guard up around you,” Jeongguk tells him, slightly brusque, and it sounds too much like an accusation. Before his shoulders relax a little, fold down, his head reangling. He blinks several times when he doesn’t need to, lids fluttering. He speaks to him so much softer. “You knock it down way too fucking easy.”

 

“Why?” Taehyung says out of greediness more than out of anything else. He had been afraid of one thing more, a single thing, more than of never seeing him again. He had been afraid he’d see him and Jeongguk would have moved on. He was afraid Jeongguk really couldn’t do this anymore.

 

But Jeongguk looks at him in the eye with the same honest fierceness, the same angered sensitivity that Taehyung simultaneously feared and envied. “You know why,” he says, insists.

 

He had counted all those four hundred and seventeen days, but he had not started caring about him any less.

 

 

 

 

 

Taehyung is popular and Jeongguk is not even surprised. He is used to his chameleon tendencies by now. He cannot imagine the day would come when Kim Taehyung would not fit in. Even if Jeongguk himself by that point has acquired a confidence similar to his that permits him to much more easily get accustomed to new circumstances, new people, it is annoying to him how little he gets to see of just Taehyung.

 

Taehyung will be leaving soon. He won’t be escaping. He has given that up and Jeongguk can only be proud of him for it. They were convicted as juveniles until twenty, so he supposes Taehyung could afford the constant running back then with little consequences, but now, now they are playing the big boys’ game and an early escape certainly wasn’t worth it. He had been trailed for larceny, or more specifically, joyriding, and had been caught due to a dumb mistake, he permits Jeongguk to shortly make fun of. He has nearly done his time, which has graciously been shortened due to his impeccable behaviour that mostly gets reported as such because of his popularity with the guards as well.

 

Their privacy comes in glimpses. Taehyung has as much of a life there as he can and Jeongguk cannot ask him to suddenly forget it for him. He tries to join it instead and while Taehyung permits it, even makes it easy for him, it is frustrating how on the surface he has to keep his interactions with him, how it has to constantly be in front of others, rendered for the view of guards and fellow prisoners alike.

 

He is sighing, nearly trembling with gratitude a week and some days into his imprisonment when Taehyung takes him by the hand and in a wrenching moment of déjà vu tugs him to a more secluded part of the yard, where the building curves and they can sit down against concrete, claustrophobically close to a fence. A guard creeps on them once, but Taehyung pats the ground in promise and sits, tugging Jeongguk down to sit, too. The man glances once to a camera above them, nods and walks away to watch over some improvised ball game the others are playing.

 

“At last,” Jeongguk moans, letting his head fall down against the stone of the building, closing his eyes as he breaths in solitude with Taehyung.

 

“What?” the other asks, folding himself to sit as comfortably as he can next to the wall.

 

Jeongguk parts his eyes, rolls his head a little to peer at him. “Alone,” he mutters, and it sounds like a confession.

 

“You had to wait for me to instigate?” Taehyung asks, eyes rolling a little.

 

“Couldn’t just rip you away from your friends, could I?” Jeongguk questions, shrugging his shoulders. “You know I need to be alone sometimes,” he tells him, rather than asks him because he believes Taehyung to be good enough judge of his character to have noticed that by now. No matter how talkative he learns to be, there will always be that part of him that craves its solitude, needs the occasional break.

 

“Are you?” Taehyung ventures, eyes dropping briefly to the ground before they chart back up to him. His tongue sneaks once over his lips. “Alone, I mean,” he specifies tentatively, voice quiet as he takes to playing with a stick he finds on the ground. “Outside.”

 

Jeongguk looks at him ponderous. He wonders what he is asking, rarely cannot pinpoint what it is that Taehyung wants to know: if he is lonely or if he has found someone else. Jeongguk hopes he thinks better of him than to mean the latter as, however short, innocent and chaste it had been, he’d kissed him with a significant. Jeongguk is ready to break many laws of establishment. He is not ready to break laws of loyalty and he prays of all the people in the world, Taehyung learns this best.

 

“I have a dog,” Jeongguk tells him after a moment and he hopes it answers both the questions. “It’s not like the one you wanted, though,” he continues with a small shake of his head and a smaller smile on his lips as he pokes gently, reflexively at his own chest. “I got it off the street. It’s like me.”

 

Taehyung blinks with more surprise than the statement warrants on its own. “You have a home?” he wonders with wide, slightly glossed eyes in a never-ending reminder that the two of them are engaged in a never-ending conversation.

 

“I got an apartment,” Jeongguk says with some building enthusiasm, because he is proud. Four hundred and seventeen days and he has worked for about three hundred and ninety of them and now he has a place where he can raise that dog. “Well,” he shrugs, “it’s more of a room, but it’s something,” he concedes, but smiles down at the ground in a way that easily tells Taehyung no matter how big that space is he loves it. “My next-door neighbour should be feeding it now.”

 

“You trust them?” Taehyung asks gingerly, toying with the stick.

 

“Ah,” Jeongguk’s smile spreads. “Seokjin hyung wouldn’t hurt a fly unless its name was Jeongguk.” He looks to the fence, head cocking at the distance it hides with its bricks. Somewhere out there Seokjin is bitching to Yoongi that Jeongguk went and got himself locked up. “Then he’d probably give it a good smack if it earned it.”

 

“You’re close?” Taehyung pries some more in an airy voice, tapping the stick hurriedly into the ground. Jeongguk blinks down to the motion and then up to his face.

 

“He’s—” he tries, prods at his lips with his tongue and then formulates, “he’s different.” He looks at Taehyung as he says it, tries to put it to the best of his abilities, but Seokjin with all of his optimism and love for both life and himself is little alike any other people Jeongguk has met in his time and one of his most refreshing experiences. “He’s a very open person. He’s been teaching me how to cook.”

 

“Meth?”

 

“What?” Jeongguk’s head whips, brows jumping. “No,” he bristles. “Food.”

 

Taehyung shrugs a little. An honest mistake, really, it could happen to anyone. “Does it have a name?” he asks. “The dog?”

 

Jeongguk had known that question was coming up and yet he desperately hoped to avoid it. He cranes his head down, scratches at the back of it with his bottom lip tucked in his mouth as he searches for a way to deliver it. “It’s stupid,” he sighs his defeat, dropping his hand in his lap. “It’s Tete.”

 

If Jeongguk hadn’t been looking down at the ground, but instead up to see the smile curve into his cheeks until it reached his eyes, maybe he would have felt better about the name choice. “You named your dog after me?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk insists rather vehemently, his head turning back up, so that he can stare his conviction at him. “Your name is Taehyung. His name is Tete,” he lays out simply, firmly.

 

Taehyung hums, head cocking as he leans closer, pressing their shoulders together. “What do you call me for short?” he teases.

 

Jeongguk presses his teeth together, hesitates. “—Tae.” He rolls his eyes as he pronounces it, but finds on any level other than superficial, he is enjoying this slow, easy torture.

 

“Say it twice now,” Taehyung urges, his elbow nudging him at the ribs. “Quick.”

 

“Taetae,” Jeongguk grinds out begrudging.

 

Taehyung’s eyes crease with his smile. “Come again.”

 

Jeongguk shakes him off with his own elbow, pushing him away. “Fuck off,” he grunts.

 

Taehyung straightens up with a small laugh, adjusting his ass on the ground until he’s shifting closer. He clutches at the fabric on Jeongguk’s leg and uses it to straighten up, patting it down gently with his palm once, twice when he deems his position satisfactory. “I’m looking for an apartment now too, you know,” he tells him with a semi-shrug that Jeongguk majorly feels as it rubs into his shoulder. They’re both now staring down at his fingers which have abandoned their stick for the sake of playing with Jeongguk’s suit. “When I gather enough money to move away from Namjoon’s couch,” Taehyung considers distractedly. Jeongguk can feel his voice vibrate off the wall now but he thinks their heads are too close for him to turn, to look. “I want to have a place. I want this to be my last time in a place like this.”

 

Jeongguk’s fingers are twitching by his thigh with the nervous urge to feel them intertwined with Taehyung’s own. His long digits are clearly restless, itching for something to tease and play with and Jeongguk hasn’t held his hand in four hundred and twenty-eight days now and he wants to. He rests one of the futile hands in his lap on his thigh, close to Taehyung’s fidgety fingers.  “Then where will we meet after?” he asks, waits for the words to crawl over the wall and pulse in Taehyung’s ear.

 

“Well,” Taehyung starts, and his pinkie brushes over Jeongguk’s hand. “When you become an accountant, I’ll come to you for financial advice,” he suggests. “I might want to mortgage my apartment.”

 

“Taehyung,” Jeongguk starts with a heave, touching his tongue to the roof of his mouth in his dramatic pause. He moves most of his hand over Taehyung’s and feels it turn so their palms face each other. “I have a confession to make,” he says, and the other’s head turns to him, drawing his own head to mirror. He blinks at him in anticipation. Jeongguk takes a breath, chest filling. “I still don’t really know what mortgage is.”

 

Taehyung’s smile stretches slight over his features as his fingers slide over Jeongguk’s before they drop into their folds, lock around his knuckles. “We’ll figure it out together,” he promises in a private whisper, eyes dipping once to the other’s mouth, so close now, “I’m sure.”

 

Jeongguk nods, gulping down nothing. He hadn’t truly realized how close Taehyung would be when he turned, that despite the smell of prison, Taehyung would still carry his own idiosyncratic scent that reminds him of the most basic concept of home, the only living scent that makes him feel like that after he lost his mother.

 

Jeongguk would count seconds in a moment like this, in such a pregnant silence. He would, but with Taehyung’s hand locked in his, he doesn’t feel the need to. He can’t judge what is a second, or a minute, or however long they stay like that.

 

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung whispers. Jeongguk blinks down at his lips, up at his eyes.

 

“Yes?” he says back, not much air in the word.

 

Taehyung angles more towards him, his body twisting until he’s almost facing him. “Why haven’t we properly kissed yet?” he asks him quietly, a small strain in his voice that sounds to Jeongguk too much like pain. His forehead folds, features of his face creasing. “Since you came here.”

 

Jeongguk tightens his fingers around his in a singular pulse. “I wanted you to kiss me first,” he confesses, his own features mirroring his, scrunching in inadvertent reciprocation that passes over to him unconscious and immediate.

 

“Am I allowed to?” Taehyung breathes. He’s closer. It takes Jeongguk a moment to realize he’s tugged at his arm, pulled him closer to himself.

 

His other hand is reaching, fingers brushing once on his cheek before they rush back, tangling in his hair as his palm pressed in the fold of his jaw. “You’re always allowed to,” he tells him, squeezes lightly at him and then he’s kissing him for the first time in he doesn’t know how many days and it simultaneously feels like it’s been forever and like it just happened yesterday.

 

Taehyung pulses his fingers into his own once before he releases his hand to touch at his face, too, swiping his thumb over his jaw before he holds at the back of his neck. His other hand he clutches at his clothes, brings himself closer as he kisses him. It almost hurts to kiss the way they do. The first touch demands a proximity that has them moulding against each other, noses pressed into cheeks lips barely able to move with how tightly they’re crashed together before Taehyung swipes his tongue over and their mouths part.

 

He’s on his knees as he tries to move closer and closer still, pressing Jeongguk’s head and body back into the wall as an impulse hurls him closer. His lips may not hurt, not when Jeongguk tries to be gentle in his return, but his eyes certainly do, the way he has squeezed them shut into oblivion. He thought he’d never get to do this again, through no other fault than his own, he had feared and feared that no matter how much he told himself he believed in destiny, that destiny would bring them together, he’d cheated destiny’s too many chances with his cowardice, his own ineptness at affection, fear of it that Jeongguk didn’t cause but suffered, nonetheless. Jeongguk who had been the only person who every step of the way proved to him he wouldn’t leave him, he repeatedly left and left and left.

 

He can’t believe he’s allowed to do this. Not only is he allowed to, Jeongguk is eager. Of course, he is, he always is. He’s so honest, so, so ridiculously brave. Taehyung is so glad despite all his attempts he never taught him not to trust, not to let himself go. He’s tugging him closer as they start to kiss more for the kiss and less for primal sensation. They start to kiss better, more careful. Jeongguk has become a much better kisser over the years. He doesn’t know how he learned, and he doesn’t care. He just scoots closer, moves his knees over to him, one on the other side of his thighs, lets him get tugged down. He just wants to kiss him.

 

It gets more difficult to give into his every impulse like he desperately wants to, when Jeongguk grips at him by the collar with one hand and holds him a small distance away. He keeps kissing him, slowly, wretchedly languorous and elaborate to the point where it is torturous, brilliant, but torturous. He hardly allows him to kiss back if he refuses to match in pace and sensuality. The second Taehyung tries to rush, he tightens his hand in his clothes and pushes him away with a click of his tongue, an idle opening of his eyes, lids just low enough for irises to glint a lazy warning before he pulls him back in and kisses him the way he wants to, meticulous and slow, feeling different parts of him with his tongue, with his mouth, capturing his upper lip, his bottom, tastes them both with a gentle suck for however long he deems fit before he releases him, dips his tongue in between.

 

“What are you doing?” Taehyung asks breathy through fluttering eyes after another failed attempt to kiss him harder.

 

Jeongguk draws him in, kisses him so gentle it appears fleeting. “Savouring you before you pull away,” he murmurs against his lips and kisses him deeper.

 

Taehyung leans into him. “I won’t pull away,” he says with the strain of a little pain before he unleashes on another impulse, moving himself closer to him, on him, and swallowing some protest directly from his lips, moulding into a moan that tastes much more delicious.

 

He curls his fingers in the hair by his neck, clutches. Jeongguk is letting him kiss him as he wishes now. He moves his hand away from his clothes and down, runs it over his chest, his stomach and then folds it at the curve of his waist. Taehyung makes a small sound when he squeezes, and it opens his mouth for a deeper kiss. It invigorates Taehyung above him, to move more fervid, kiss more eager.

 

Jeongguk’s mouth closes with a breath he steals from Taehyung, who kisses resistantly over shut lips. Jeongguk slides a hand from his cheek to his chest, pushes him lightly away. “I will then.”

 

“No,” Taehyung shakes his head, kisses the last word on his mouth. “Gukkie,” he protests, and the endearment swells in Jeongguk’s chest and stomach and has him docile, parting his lips for him again. “No.”

 

“Taehyung—“ he tries, fingers pulsing at his waist as Taehyung’s own bundle in his hair and clothes.

 

“Don’t pull away, okay?” Taehyung whispers in a voice that trembles, opening his eyes for a short glimpse of him, a short moment of imploring that he then puts into the reangling of his head, feeds it to him with another kiss. “Don’t stop,” he sighs. He kisses him lightly, lightly. Once, twice. He kisses him deeper.

 

His lips insist, his voice cranes, makes Jeongguk putty, so again he allows it, enjoys it, basks in this rarest sensation. With his heart hammering helplessly in his chest, Jeongguk realizes this is the first time he’s properly kissed him since he’d come to terms with the fact that he loves him, and it makes it all simultaneously easier and harder. His ears are ringing, skin is tingling, and he can feel every part of him he touches with an electrical awareness, where their legs brush, where his fingers tease, where they squeeze, where his chest presses into his, his stomach and below.

 

Jeongguk pulls his mouth away with two attempts. Finally, Taehyung’s lips concede, kiss at the corner and then at his cheek, cascades towards his jawline. “There’s CCTV right there,” Jeongguk tries, a little breathless.

 

“I don’t care,” Taehyung mutters against his skin, heated lips brushing against the underside of his chin before he moves them against it in the softest kiss, wet and sensual and long. His thumb is swiping at the other side of his jaw, teasing the lobe of his ear. He arches up for a moment, blinks down at him. “I want you,” he’s saying in a rush, in a hush, and he is lowering himself, kissing again, charged against his mouth, quick and passionate and insatiable.

 

Jeongguk is a little high on his hunger. He’s never felt Taehyung so uninhibited, so absolutely and clearly wanton. He’s used to this senseless desperation evoked by the chance of touch, but he’s used to feeling it himself, pouring it out of him. But it’s Taehyung that appears boundlessly reckless, rushing into it like a man starved for sensation, affection, for Jeongguk.

 

It makes it so difficult to pat at his cheek, soothing there as he pushes him away. “Tae,” he breathes gingerly, sighing his soft demand, “stop.” And upon his whine, a little firmer, “Stop.”

 

He’d decided a long time he didn’t want to fuck him in a courtyard, not for their very first time at least. He doesn’t want a half-clothed, rushed romp, hidden away with the air of something wrong.

 

Taehyung sits back with his forehead creased and his lips frowning. “But why?” He asks, struggling to part his eyes for a long time, his hands running away from his hair and neck and down his chest, feeling wherever they are allowed to, savoring the liveliness of the breath beneath, more rapid and awake underneath his touch. Heady eyes drop down to stare, see the evidence of their connection when tasting is prohibited.

 

“Want to fuck you in my bed,” Jeongguk whispers weakly, his hands falling down to Taehyung’s thighs and his gaze trails after, lashes heavy.

 

The other blinks up, fixes his eyes on him now easily wide. “What?” He stammers, breath still laced with their kiss.

 

Jeongguk looks up, swallows once and then tells him firm and certain. “I’ll only fuck you in my bed.”

 

“What?” Taehyung repeats, voice coming hollow as his hands slip lower down to his stomach.

 

Jeongguk stares at him for a moment, takes him in so unbelievably, wondrously available, literally in his lap, in his hands, and he is still so very much afraid he would slip right between his searching fingers. He squeezes into his thighs, just to feel him, and bites down on his lip to punish his shy hesitation, so typical of who Jeongguk was when he met him and not who he wants to be now. “I wanted you to be my first time, Taehyung,” he tells him, tone low albeit steady, as he glances down to where their bodies meet before he gathers the honesty to look at him in the eyes. It’s the one thing that never changed about him, his eyes. They gained new dimensions through the years, new powers and new weaknesses, but when he stares at him now with unadulterated, curious expectation, he stares with the same eyes with which he did across the table at Mrs. Parks house the very first time he saw him, and Jeongguk struggles so much not to be the vulnerable, frightened boy who was getting stared at, “I wanted you to be my every time if I have to be honest. I want to do it right.”

 

Taehyung blinks. His eyes open wide and glossy, lips appear puckered when they are swollen so. Long fingers toy with prison clothes, intimately low over Jeongguk’s stomach, but shying away from anything suggestive   “You want to make love?” He asks him, voice airy, gentle.

 

Jeongguk’s tongue clicks as he hears it aloud, eyes prying away from his as he turns away, looks to the yard with his cringe. “It’s not funny,” he grinds out.

 

Taehyung has a single finger on his chin in a flash, urges his head back and leans into him to demand he looks. “I’m not laughing at you.”

 

His eyes dart between his own, speak or battle or promise. Whatever it is he tries to convey, in a moment Jeongguk is talking, his voice shy off a murmur, but his words raw and rough. “I want you to be my last time,” he says, licks at his lips and adds, “For a while.” He squeezes at his thighs to feel their warmth. “I don’t want you to run away again right after.”

 

Taehyung’s head shakes incessant so quick it seems to be a reflex. “I won’t.” He leans, whispers the words on the corner of his lips, where he presses his own for a moment.

 

“Should I trust you?” Jeongguk sighs against him before he’s even pulled away.

 

Taehyung’s eyes resurface under creased brows. “What?” He’s asking, the finger swiping at Jeongguk’s jaw and others reaching to feel the skin of his cheek.  

 

“You said I shouldn’t,” Jeongguk reminds him and watches his face alter with the memory, as poignant as it is to him. “It was a lesson that you taught me.”

 

Taehyung draws back, sitting fully on Jeongguk’s thighs to get a full look at him, at every feature of his face that he knows so well and now fits together to build an expression he never wants to cause. “Have I ever promised you anything?”

 

Jeongguk glances down. “No.”

 

His head is coaxed back up by a gentle tap at his cheek. “Well, I’m doing it now,” Taehyung is saying when he has his eyes, “I won’t run away,” he tells him, spells it out, slow and careful and heady before he kisses him more modest than their very first time and draws back to piece him together once more.

 

Jeongguk blinks to focus, but his vision is blurry. His heart is beating harder now than when they were practically devouring each other. “Why?” He asks, the question brusque. His hands release his thighs, fingers squeeze into thighs fists that he buries into the flesh of his legs as eyes, voice and manner all build to be demanding. “Why now?” His gaze chases behind him, glare at the bricks he sees through lone hairs of Taehyung, bricks that lock them, force them together. He wonders if Taehyung, shielded, cautious Taehyung would ever be daring to speak to him that way if that wall wasn’t behind him.

 

He doesn’t know that as he asks the question all he does is wreck and destroy to pieces the last bricks of Taehyung’s own wall. He pats hair away from Jeongguk’s cheek, his forehead. He tells him, more perfectly honest than he could ever imagine he could be. “I really don’t know if I’ll get to find you again.”

 

 

 

Taehyung is glad he gets to give him honesty then for what feels like the first time he has mastered it to perfection in his life because it is the last conversation they get to have, just them. The same guard that interrupted before appears beyond the wall and forces them to untangle. Taehyung only has a week and a half left.

 

A week and a half. He has eleven days. The number weighs physically heavy on Jeongguk. He wonders if he counts the hours if they will pass slower, like they sometimes do, but he sees him occasionally, in front of others and he loses count. He’d do the math, except he never knows what time of the day it is before they tell him to go in his cell, before they let him out in the mornings. Time has turned into meals, so he counts those, but their number becomes too low too quickly.

 

Until there’s only one left.

 

Taehyung covers the paper Jeongguk slips to him with his tray while Namjoon gives him parting speech rather dramatically. He blinks down at it, then up in question. He waits, Jeongguk’s mouth parts. Then Namjoon is patting Taehyung on the shoulder and the back as if he’s choking until he’s forced to give him his attention, to smile up and join in whatever he’s going on about.

 

He has to wait. His popularity does its mark, has several people speaking up, and Jeongguk has to listen to their personally impersonal small speeches that do little to no justice to who Taehyung is, what his absence constitutes. People talk until they have to leave, are asked to leave, but Jeongguk stays seated, so Taehyung does, too.

 

“My address,” Jeongguk says in the white noise commotion of leaving, so similar to what it was in juvie, such a forever background of his life.  

 

“What?” Taehyung’s asking, his voice distinct above the noise.

 

“The paper,” Jeongguk nods towards the trey, leaning forward on his elbows, to hear better, to speak better, to see him from up close in a feigned privacy. “It has my address.”

 

Taehyung glances down to where the paper lies beneath, hides a smile that lasts a little while. “What about destiny?”

 

Jeongguk huffs, head shaking. “I don’t give a flying fuck about destiny,” he says, means it in that very moment. A guard moves to his right and he turns briefly to him, finds him watching and nods at his warning.

 

“It got us here,” Taehyung is saying with a shrug, the tug of his lips into his cheek too small now to be considered a smile, but ostensibly there, twisting his expression into somewhat of a nihilistic fondness.

 

“In prison?” Jeongguk bristles, laughing his irony aloud. His lips peel around his teeth, latch onto his gums as he sucks in a cool breath that tastes like prison. His smile is cold, short, sardonic. “Should I thank destiny then?” he prompts with a cock of his head.

 

Taehyung’s brows raise. “First time you’ve bitched about it since you came.”

 

Jeongguk leans closer, his chest cut against the edge of the table. “Been a bit too preoccupied with you being here to bitch,” he tells him, and it’s true. He’s barely felt the claustrophobia of the four walls of his cell when he knows that when he leaves it, he gets to see Taehyung right outside. But with the weight of his impending departure, the walls seem closer each day and he can feel that all too familiar bitterness he grew up with and learned to swallow.

 

Jeongguk clicks his tongue before he pokes it in his cheek. He’s the first to look away. “Not too good at goodbyes, Tae,” he tells him, head shaking. “Never really said them to each other, did we?” he blinks to him again. “Can’t do you a speech like these guys.”

 

“I don’t need a goodbye from you, Jeongguk,” Taehyung tells him, fingers twitching over his trey, over his note.

 

Jeongguk’s eyes drop down at the motion, fall to his hand and linger. He looks up, nods, clears his throat when he stares too long, and stands. Taehyung’s legs shuffle in unison. He is up in seconds and they’re standing across from each other. Taehyung nods. Jeongguk nods.

 

Taehyung is opening his mouth and then he has a cough tearing out of it, another palm slapping at his back.   

 

“Hey, Kim,” Sumi is starting, loud, smacking a hand repeatedly over him. “Gonna miss you, yeah?” Taehyung nods a final time, his eyes connected to Jeongguk’s to see him shrug, smile his last one and start in the direction of an approaching guard. “Good run we had,” Jeongguk hears him as he walks away, until he’s out of ear shot, “but don’t let me see you again, yeah?” Sumi reaches for the edge of Taehyung’s tray, pulls it towards himself and it slides across until it’s half over the edge of the table. “Want this to be my last chance to steal your yogurt,” he’s saying, wrapping his hand around Taehyung’s abandoned carton, but he’s not listening.

 

His eyes are latching on the floating paper as it flies from underneath the tray with charge and then dances slowly towards the floor.

 

“Careful,” Taehyung grunts, too loud, and Jeongguk’s turning back, his voice once more distinct above all noise.  

 

He turns to see him bend, reach. His long fingers are almost on the paper.

 

And then it’s snatched away.

 

The guard straightens, shoves the paper down his back pocket. “If you think I’m going to let you pass each other notes,” he shakes his head and then he delivers a final round of rough pats on the back to Taehyung. “Off to bed now, Kim,” he says, pushes. “Big day for you tomorrow.”

 

He walks Taehyung to his cell, makes sure he receives no other note and Jeongguk can do little but watch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeongguk keeps counting the meals backwards, counts how many there are left until he gets to walk away. For as many parting words the men said on the day at his leave, they mention Taehyung little after, if at all. It’s mostly in passing and never to him, except once.

 

“You miss him, don’t you?” Namjoon throws the ball at him and Jeongguk manages to catch it despite the way the question startles him.

 

“What?” he asks, harshly. He spits on the ground to add to it, distract himself. He bounces the ball once, stares at it, and throws it back.

 

“Taehyung,” Namjoon says calmly despite his small fiasco. He returns the ball. Jeongguk bounces it twice this time, shakes some hair away from his forehead. He throws the ball harder. It crashes against Namjoon’s chest, but his hands rush to it before he lets it drop. “You’ve been quieter since he’s been gone,” he continues steadily, chucks the ball towards him again, easy and light.

 

Jeongguk knows what missing Taehyung constitutes at this point, knows it so perfectly well, like the back of his hand. It’s his one certainty in life, missing that boy. He’s perfected missing him, but it doesn’t mean it has got any easier. The first few days are always most difficult, his presence still palpable, places he used to be now piercing voids and chatter of everybodies empty of the distinctiveness of his voice. Then he gets used to it, the absence. There is a transition between focusing on memory and focusing on future. He stops thinking about where he was, what he said, starts thinking about where he will be, what he will look like next, new piercing, new hair above the same eyes, what knew way he would find to fascinate him.

 

Jeongguk’s not there yet, this time. It’s too soon. He has not gone past this part of missing him where he seems so tangible. Just a few days ago, he had been there, forming a triangle with him and Namjoon, maybe attracting a couple of other men into the mix. Jeongguk couldn’t speak to him, not properly, but there is a comfort to even throwing him a ball a little too hard if he’s not paying attention, in the occasional glance they could share, a smirk, one of his early ones.  Because he teases him, in front of others, he smirks like he used to when they were younger, he was mostly smart and snarky and Jeongguk was mostly angry and anxious. He’d smirk, so Jeongguk would throw the ball too hard for him to catch and someone would laugh, make a remark, and Taehyung would look at him with promise.

 

The ball flies at him. Namjoon pulls him out of the trance and Jeongguk has to shake his head again to convince himself Taehyung isn’t standing right there. “He misses you, too, you know.”

 

Jeongguk looks at him and directly at him for the first time. He keeps the ball to himself, bounces it from one head to the other. “How the fuck would you know, Kim?” he says, jaw jutting high, a little defensive and a little offensive. “You just met me.”

 

Namjoon catches the ball. “I just met you,” he nods. “I’ve known about you for years, though.”

 

When Jeongguk gets the ball again, he forgets to throw it back. “The fuck does that mean?”

 

Namjoon doesn’t ask for the ball, lets him prop it on his cocked hip, keep it there to have something to hold. “You know Taehyung sleeps on my couch when we’re out, right?”

 

He shrugs. “Right.” He remembers the ball, passes it to him, aims low.

 

Namjoon catches it nevertheless, lips jerking to the sides in some private entertainment of his own that doesn’t irritate Jeongguk as much as he believes it should. “You seriously think I can host him on my couch and not hear about Jeon Jeongguk?”

 

He throws the ball a little harder this time, but Jeongguk catches faultlessly. “Wouldn’t be too surprised, knowing him,” he says, hopes the slightly hurried palpitations of his heart don’t flush his cheeks. Hearing Taehyung’s talked about him feels strangely, stupidly like the raw rush of running.

 

“Please,” Namjoon snickers, his eyes rolling. “I make bank through that boy and I graciously let him live on my couch. He had to provide some explanation why he went and got himself purposely caught several times and it was always two fucking words. Jeon Jeongguk. Jeon Jeongguk. I’ve known about you since he tried to convince me kissing boys is better than kissing girls.”

 

“Well,” Jeongguk shrugs in feigned modesty, bounces the ball as he smirks to the ground where it hits, “I am a good kisser.” He bounces the ball once more, then catches it for longer in his hands, toys around with it. “We were playing basketball, you know.” Another bounce. “The first time we kissed.”

 

“I do know,” Namjoon nods, adjusts his footing a little to give himself something to do while he gives his Jeongguk his time to reminisce. “What? Do you want to smooch now, too, prove his point?”

 

Jeongguk charges the ball at him too hard even for Namjoon to catch. It bounces off his laughing chest. “Fuck off, Kim.”

 

 

 

 

 

He sits with Namjoon at those meals that he counts, joins in with snippets of conversations with the others. He fishes out of him the address of that couch Taehyung sleeps on, the thought that paper never reached Taehyung hoarding his mind at all uncomfortable hours, but Namjoon gives it to him without the guarantee that Taehyung will be there if he goes searching. Seokjin comes to visit and complains about his dog and Yoongi and some two new guys who have been added to the list of pissing him the fuck off, one who refuses to pay rent and another who wanted to do a viewing before moving in, which Jin found absolutely ludicrous. 

 

“A viewing? A fucking viewing. What does he think, we’re on fucking Selling Sunset?”

 

Walking into his apartment after two months feels like he hasn’t done it in a century and like he did it the day before at the same time. It’s routine to the marrow of his bone, unlocking his door, discarding his keys without looking at the kitchen counter and then opening the fridge beside it to find most of its contents useless, except for a plate he recognizes to be Jin’s with food in it. He showers, heats up his in the microwave and eats in his bed in front of his laptop with sweats and a tank top, the most comfortable clothes he owns. He watches half an episode of Selling Sunset for the shits after a sudden craving and then moves on to YouTube. He falls into the pattern so easily he surprises himself, doesn’t feel the nagging, pungent appreciation he thought he would for his private shower, bed, Jin’s cooking, and the entertainment at his fingertips. 

 

He’s almost bored himself to sleep when he hears it. It’s a dull pounding he recognizes unfailingly. Walls are thin and people are annoying. Living right across the door from the pseudo tenant who happens to be an amazing cook has its benefits but it has its downfalls, too, and that dull knocking, usually followed by hallway yelling is one of them. Jeongguk glances towards his door with dull eyes, rolls them and adjusts on his bed, but his privately exaggerated irritation of course does nothing to subside the knocking that seems to accelerate into banging.  

 

Jeongguk spins some in between sheets, gets on his stomach and bangs his own fist into his mattress with frustration before he uses it to push himself up. “Oh, my fucking god, hyung,” he groans loud enough that it would echo through the walls if Seokjin would bother to listen. He starts towards his door, appropriately pissed. “Have you gone deaf while I—” he keeps on whining, whines right until he reaches for his handle, turns it, whines up to the very moment he parts that door. Even then his mouth is still parted with the full intention to whine some more, but the door swings and his jaw remains unhinged, lips empty of words until they can form the whisper of a single one. “Taehyung.”

 

He’s standing there, right next to Seokjin’s door with this hand fisted and raised. It pauses mid-air when he turns at the sound of Jeongguk’s own door and he turns, only a little at first, then he spins fully, eyes widening.

 

“Jeongguk,” he says or mouths. Jeongguk doesn’t really know. His ears start to ring.

 

His eyes drop over him, all over him. He’s wearing clothes, normal ones not prison clothes. He’s there, tall, real, there, in his hallway with his fist uselessly raised and his whole expression gawking. He’s just unready to see Jeongguk as he is to see him. Neither of them seems to catch a straight thought well enough to speak.

 

He told him if you see me somewhere else, only look at me like that, so Jeongguk does, he stares at him, bereft with utter awe. He’s waited for so long, so damn long to see him on the outside, to see him somewhere where they are free – he won’t be embarrassed at the simple pleasure of looking, taking him in and piecing together the reality of his presence. 

 

“How did you—” Jeongguk stammers, blinks. He has a dumb instinct to rub his eyes, but he’s afraid he’ll rub the image of him away. His chest fills some air, too much air that he expels into, “How the fuck did you—” he starts, but he cuts himself off, shakes his head and reaches for his useless fist, wraps his fingers around the wrist below it. “I don’t care,” he says, pulls him in, walks back. He wants him in his apartment. “I don’t care,” he repeats, head still shaking but he can’t throw away the disbelief no matter how much he does it. “Come here, I don’t care.” He pulls him past the threshold, slams the door shut. “Come here.”

 

He releases his wrist to slip his hand by his neck, pull him closer still, as close as he can be really. Taehyung’s hand hangs futile in the air as Jeongguk believes in him first, but he’s kissing him in a moment, so Taehyung is forced to, too, realize he’s here and real. His hand charges, brusquely, clutches at his shoulder and massages there into the flesh and muscle, feels it. He tries to reach for him with the other, but Jeongguk is too eager, pushes him back again the door he’s closed, he’s chosen to close, and he could open any time.

 

He presses his back against it, moulds him in with the apartment as he tries to find a place for his hands, but they are too frantic, instinct draws them too many places. He kisses with the same fervour, not at all like he did in the prison yard and very much like he did that time when they wrestled in juvie, greedy, clumsy and young. Taehyung handles his disbelief with reluctance – Jeongguk pours his out on him. And there it is, suddenly, that appreciation he expected.

 

He’s so pungently aware he’s home. The apartment smells like his own, a little like dog food, a little like cologne, and now when he inhales, a lot like Taehyung. He’s full, full of food that doesn’t make him want to vomit his guts out. He’s clean. He’s comfortable. And Taehyung’s there. Free to leave and free to stay, they both are. He’s still a little scared if he lets go of him, Taehyung may choose the former, so he clutches at him just in case.

 

His hands are on his waist and he’s slipping his arms behind, making him arch into him and Taehyung does. His own fingers are in his hair and on his cheek, running there a lot slower than Jeongguk touches and kisses. He’s almost soothing. 

 

“Slow down, Guk,” he sighs in a moment Jeongguk kisses at his jaw, the corner of his chin, and then at a soft, vulnerable part right below his ear. Taehyung folds his fingers in his hair, pulls him back gently and tries to look at him, draw his eyes to his own but he’s staring at his lips. “Gukkie, slow down.”

 

Jeongguk doesn’t even try to catch his breath. His eyes fixed down, he’s pulled to him once more. “No,” he exhales and once again he’s kissing. Taehyung parts his lips for him because he asks it with his own, allows him to kiss almost feverish because he remembers very much how desperate he was against the prison wall.

 

He tries to respond to him as best as he could as he indulges in his proximity, in how very much he I sat his fingertips. He touches the warm skin of his shoulders, toys with the strap of his tank top, then his fingers down, the shape of his arm until he’s reaching the markings on his skin, tattoos he wants to ask after, study. But there is time. This time there is time. He’ll ask him later. He can kiss him now. He wants to kiss him now.

 

Jeongguk lets his mouth rest again, kisses his cheek and then the underside of his jaw. He kisses his throat and down, kisses the place where he marked him once, the first time Taehyung had attempted an actual goodbye. His hands are drifting low, fitting over the curve of his ass and pressing him forward where he is eager to feel him. Taehyung lets a sound rip out through his mouth, uninhibited and careless. Whatever Jeongguk pulls out of him, he’ll let him have, every breath, every sound, and every thought. He owes it to him, owes years of honesty to him.

 

He parts his eyes, finds skin, so much of it, so he kisses it, a ginger motion against his firm, hot shoulder and he feels Jeongguk tug him closer, thigh slipping between his. Taehyung’s lids are heavy, but he manages to lift them, glances at the blurred rest of his apartment. He tugs at his earlobe with his teeth, sucks it for a moment then speaks at the shell, “Is that your bed, then?”

 

Jeongguk’s hands squeeze, lips press, and it pries out another small sound from Taehyung. “Yeah,” Jeongguk breathes, picks his head up to look at him, his own lashes seeming to weigh heavy above eyes that glint a little darker than before, hazed over with sensation, “so let’s get you on it.”

 

Taehyung sucks in a breath of laughter through his teeth and it tastes of Jeongguk. “As if I’m letting you fuck me.”

 

Jeongguk tugs him into himself rougher, hands pulsing into flesh, vulgar in their greediness as he he nearly growls before he kisses him again. “Yes, you are.”

 

Yes, you are, Jeongguk says because he knows Taehyung only teases the words between them just to show he remembers as well, every passing word they have exchanged through those years, every syllable that has left their lips, stays with them.

 

He walks back and he pulls him with himself. He’d promised the bed, and they’re doing the bed, but he’s stumbling on his feet. He can’t move and keep him as close as he wants him and he’s struggling to choose.

 

“Jeongguk,” Taehyung tires again, hands running over his shoulders and then down firm, wide chest to put some space between them. “Breathe,” he sighs, touching his forehead and nose to his to assure him of his presence as he separates their lips to speak. “Slow down, okay?” he asks him, nods and it moves Jeongguk’s head with his own the way they’re pressed together.

 

Jeongguk shakes his own and it takes Taehyung’s too once more. “No,” he whispers, tilts, and takes his lips again, slow for a moment before he grows ravenous. 

 

This time Taehyung pulls away, pushes back at his chest even if their lower bodies stay connected. “I’m not going anywhere, Jeongguk,” he tells him, makes his second ever promise, gazing in his eyes. He runs a hand up, cups his cheek, thumb swiping over. He can feel his heartbeat with his other palm. It rages in his ribcage, pushing as fervidly against his hand as Jeongguk had previously kissed him. “You’ll fall asleep and I’ll be here, and you’ll wake up and I’ll be here,” he tells him, and he presses his lips to his lightly without closing his eyes. “You said you wanted it done right, yeah?”

 

Jeongguk glances down to his lips then back up to his eyes, nods, his cheek instinctively leaning into the shape of Taehyung’s palm. “Yeah.”

 

Taehyung pushes one step back. “Sit down,” he tells him, slides his hand down to his chest again and urges him back, watches him drop to the bed with little bounce. The mattress sucks. His hands feel empty when they are forced away from Taehyung’s body, reach out behind him on the bed for balance as his neck arches automatically, eyes never once parting from his. “Sit down and slow down.”

 

He stares up at him, adjusts on the bed with a small nod. His thighs flex and relax. He’s hard and his hands have to squeeze into his sheets to have something to do. It is a pause he needs a moment to realize he badly needs. Taehyung’s there. He is, in flesh and body and scent and sight and sound. Kissing him is not a fever dream. He’s standing above him, staring down with a curious patience he didn’t have back at the prison.

 

His breath grows rarer, deeper, but it never calms. It hits him for the second time that it truly is him standing there in his apartment. He swipes his palm across the sheets, feels their familiarity. He gathers them in fists and waits.

 

Taehyung takes a step half towards him, half to the side. He takes another, eyes still fixed down. He raises a hand, cradles it once more at his cheek, cocks his head. “Do you want me to show you,” he asks him, raising one knee to the bed beside Jeongguk’s thigh, “what I used to do– it got you all jealous.” His fingers trail down, knuckles brush teasing against his jaw, his neck, draw a line at his collar. “I wanna do it for you,” he tells him, voice suddenly passionate as his eyes drop to his lap with newfound ardour. “I’ve never given a private show.”

 

He says it and his fingers are gone, clutching at the hem of his shirt instead. He doesn’t tease with this, doesn’t have that much patience. He strips, discarding the fabric on the floor, reveals a body that Jeongguk once claimed he got to know better than himself. He knows the number of beauty marks there, where they are, just how close to his scars.

 

Jeongguk grips at his arm, spins him once and tugs him in sudden enough to make him lose his footing. His back is pressed against his chest in moments, feels hotter now that it is bare. He wraps an arm around his stomach, pulls him a little closer, spreading his legs slightly beneath him to feel him better. His hand lifts up, fingers finding his chest, a nipple, as the other moves in, slides from his belly down to his crotch and cups. He’s as hard as Jeongguk is and he can feel him, the shape of him which he teases with his fingers, applies a pressure that has him moaning, the vibration rippling from his back into Jeongguk’s chest.

 

“I don’t want to see what you’ve done,” Jeongguk murmurs in his neck, where he smells the strongest of himself, faintly of home. “I want to do to you something no one else has.”

 

Taehyung sighs, presses himself against him firmer once before he twists in his arms to catch a glimpse of him, looks down. His eyes are infinitely softer than they were the last moment Jeongguk saw them. “You love me, Jeongguk,” he tells him, voice shallow and trembling at the sentence. He shakes his head. “No one else has done that.”

 

Jeongguk’s forehead creases, hands intimately curling around his waist now. “You know it?” he asks, tries to pull him closer. “You know I love you?”

 

Taehyung throws an arm behind his shoulders, reaches the hand of the other to brush some hair away from his eyes. “Of course, Guk,” he whispers to him, moves his fingers to his chin and prompts it up. He kisses him shortly. “Of course, I know.”

 

Jeongguk rubs his hands into his sides, feels as much of his skin as he has. “No one else has?” his voice twists with the question, with the thought. His chest tightens, ribs seems to contract around his lungs, and he doesn’t understand why Taehyung is the one looking so softly, patting at him, soothing.

 

“No one else has,” he shakes his head, lips pressing together before he presses them to his again. “Not like you.”

 

Jeongguk doesn’t let him draw back this time, flies one hand to his neck and pulls him in, pecking again and again and again. “You know such, such stupid people.”

 

Taehyung hums against him, kisses him a little longer. “Maybe you’re the stupid one.”

 

Jeongguk’s hands squeeze. “No,” he protests in a breath, parts his lips against his and kisses him deeper now, eyes falling shut.

 

Taehyung allows it for a moment, lets his slowly mould his mouth against his. He sighs into it, basks into it and then peels himself away cautiously. “Jeongguk?” he calls softly, fluttering his eyes open and watches from up close as he nears and kisses him once more.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Do you—” Taehyung tries but it lodges in his throat. He licks at his lips and his tongue swipes against Jeongguk’s mouth as well. “Do you know?”

 

Jeongguk runs a hand over his spine. “Do I know what, Tae?”

 

Taehyung pushes a strand away from his eyes, pads his thumb high on his cheekbone. He sucks in a breath. Staring at him from this clothes tears the words out of him a lot easier than he expects them to. “Do you know I love you?”

 

Jeongguk is pretty sure for a second his heart doesn’t beat. He shakes his head, glances down, stares at his throat for safety. “No, Tae,” he mutters, “I don’t.”

 

Taehyung is standing, spinning. He moves back into him, but this time facing him fully, arms wrapping around his shoulders as he sits on him so close he feels the shallowness of his breath with his own chest. “I’m sorry,” tells him, voice raw. He lays a kiss on the corner of his lips. “I’ll show you,” he swears, nodding to Jeongguk and nodding to himself before he kisses him better.

 

“Show me,” Jeongguk urges softly at his mouth.

 

“I will,” he repeats, he vows. “I’ll show you.” He drowns the promise in his mouth, adamant to keep it, to prove it to him.

 

He kisses as deeply as he can, as passionately, and still Jeongguk cannot swallow the confession fully. His heart is hammering, skin is tingling. His hands are grasping again with a new charge, barely contained. No one has told him in so few words that they love him ever since his mother passed away. His head is gone, mind beyond coherence. He feels hot, so strenuously hot, so he parts from him a little, shuns the tank top and then grasps at his chin and his cheek, tugs him back in and kisses him harder, leaves no moments for confusion.

 

He feels that very same lack of control akin to panic that he felt the first time they dropped him off at Mrs Parks. He knew nothing then and he knows nothing now. He moves on basic instinct and it seems to be to touch all over. Taehyung’s moving into him, over him, and it is so exceptionally good even in its simplicity. He feels like he’s a teenager again, discovering what sensation is for the very first time again, sharing the excitement of being with an other, previously untouched.

 

He’s sneaking his hands in his pants with difficulty, so Taehyung moves his own between them, separating their bodies under the sound of a short whine before he undoes his button and lets Jeongguk feel him fully, slide his hands in and feel warm skin. He squeezes, greedy, crude, and Taehyung moans his satisfaction in his mouth, kisses him wetter.

 

Jeongguk scoots back as best as he can without disturbing him, moving with him until his bedside cupboard is in his reach. He digs around it with Taehyung’s lips on his neck and finally fishes out a bottle. He squirts a generous amount on his fingers before he digs his hands down Taehyung’s pants, fondles for a moment and then eases a teasing digit inside him. He swallows Taehyung’s reaction, doesn’t let him move away from his mouth when he tries to, kisses over and over again at each keen as he undoes him with his fingers.

 

As he tastes pleasure on his lips, feels with the way his hips grow fervid, just back and forth in restricted motions he tries to subdue but simply can’t, Jeongguk grows suddenly glad they waited for so long, he got to learn so much before he had him. He knows how to touch now, when and where and how, to make sure he feels good, so he doesn’t hurt him like he might have in that courtyard. He has so much more to study, all the particularities and peculiarities of his own body, of Taehyung himself, but at least he knows how to touch a man, a solid foundation to all the times he plans to be with him in the future.

 

Taehyung peels him away from himself, gets him groaning and grasping, but he clicks his tongue in warning and stands. Jeongguk permits it, once he realizes he only does it to take off what’s left of his clothes, but his patience wears thin too quickly. He’s tugging him back into his lap before he’s freed his ankle from his pants. Taehyung stumbles on him with a laugh. “Calm down, baby boy.”

 

“Not a baby, Tae,” Jeongguk warns, too, an exhale against his lips before he pries them with his tongue in the same rhythm with which he fixes his fingers back inside him.

 

“No, I know,” Taehyung sighs, rubbing into him with his whole body and Jeongguk doesn’t know what it is that makes him shiver, the voice that drips lust, the eyes that bat salacious or the much more physical sensation of his length pressed into the contracting muscles of his stomach, heavy and hot. “Big boy, aren’t you?” Taehyung teases his teeth lightly over his bottom lip as he glances down, undoes Jeongguk’s pants with that ruinous smirk of his. He reaches his hand in his underwear, tugs him out along with a hiss and then he’s lining himself up with him, long fingers reaching to press them both together. “You’re certainly big,” Taehyung blinks up as he brings his other hand down, tugs at himself and Jeongguk in unison, “You’d rather if I called you hyung, then?”

 

“Fuck.” Jeongguk’s hips twitch, rut upwards, his cock sliding against Taehyung’s.

 

“You like it,” Taehyung’s smirk deepens. He rocks himself back and forth, into his own hand that holds them together and back into Jeongguk’s inadvertently slowing fingers.

 

Jeongguk leans forward, jostles his slightly and loves the gasp it coaxes out of him that releases his lip from his teeth, and Jeongguk is stealing it away from him, trapping it between his own, gingerly for a moment, then a little harder. He soothes it with his tongue and kisses him once. “Say it again and we’ll see.”

 

“Mm,” Taehyung moans, moves up on his knees and then back down again. Jeongguk gets the hint, gets his fingers out of him and lets him angle above him.  “Hyung.”

 

Taehyung starts the word coherent but it grows into a hearty moan that dies on a breath as he sinks down on him. He does it slow, careful, lips falling open and remaining parted with an exhale as he fills himself more and more of him. Jeongguk has his hands clutching at his hips, squeezing his fingers there, once in reassurance and then twice because he has to, the relief of burying inside of him as good in idea as it is in sensation.

 

It’s absolutely exhilarating, the very thought of it, of it being Taehyung. He’s on him, Jeongguk is inside him. Taehyung is everywhere, lips brushing his own, hissing, eyes falling shut but then trying to open and Jeongguk gets to feel the flutter of his lashes as they part with several attempts.

 

“I think you like it, too,” Jeongguk whispers to him, the first to retain some semblance of composure. He presses his lips weakly to the corner of his own, his cheek.

 

“Never said I didn’t,” Taehyung sighs, seeks his mouth with his own, trailing over his face until he reaches it, then takes it.

 

He doesn’t know if he urges him with his hands or if Taehyung chooses to move on his own, but with his lips a little brutal on his, he starts to rock over him. He’s good, of course, he is. There was never any doubt in Jeongguk’s mind that he would be. He has the cockiness for it, the attitude, and he is very much Taehyung. Jeongguk doesn’t know if there is anything objective in the pleasure he receives from the way he moves his hips, his lips, the places he touches with his hands and how he does it, where he applies pressure and where he chooses to be faint. He is so subjectively Taehyung, the very idea of it turns him on, makes his blood run hotter and his mind spin.

 

But he does move so well above him, so certain, flexible. He builds a pace, quick and deep, comes low on him each time, his thighs slapping on Jeongguk’s. He squeezes at his hips then moves his hands down to his ass, cups there at firm muscle and follows his motions with his hands.

 

Taehyung drops the kiss at a certain point, when it comes to them just breathing in sounds they don’t bother to hide. He’s making little gasps every time he rocks down, his hands feeling over shoulder blades, biceps, running at his spine.

 

He’s moving into him fast and then faster. He angles his hips slightly different, starts to rock more forward and back then up and down and it makes him moan harder. It’s long, catches on his breath the first time he makes the motion and it pries Jeongguk’s eyes. He glimpses up, enthralled, as he watches pleasure contort his face, passion grip his features and distort them so powerfully it almost appears like pain.

 

Jeongguk started falling in love with him before he grew up so beautiful, but as he stares at him now, there is little room for subjectivity. He is most certainly marvellous.

 

So Jeongguk marvels. And Taehyung is opening his eyes, too, with a flutter. He does it slowly, struggles with wet, glistening lips parted below them, expelling rhythmic, small gasps. He opens his eyes and meets his own. The lids are low over his irises, heady, but he can recognize who that gaze belongs to just by the glint that shines in their gloss. There’s a teariness in them that makes them shine brighter and once more to Jeongguk it appears like pain but pleasure, too, and he can feel his hips snapping up, his stomach contracting.

 

“Can you slow down?” Jeongguk is the one to breathe now. He’s sucking in a breath, squeezing his eyes shut as he tries to calm himself down and clutching at his ass, too, tries to still him on his own.

 

“No,” Taehyung shakes his head. His body refuses to still. His hips move faster and he can’t force Jeongguk to open his eyes, so he chases him with his lips again, presses them to his mouth a little futile. He can’t really kiss. He just begs his attention, even though he doesn’t need to. Jeongguk is all his, all his. Has been unfortunately so for years.

 

“Taehyung,” Jeongguk groans, warns, snapping his hips up. He punishes his bottom lip, then shoots his eyes open once more to glare. “So fucking disobedient,” he snaps.

 

Taehyung manages a smirk even as he tries so very hard not to slow even for a moment. “Should I listen to hyung?” he teases, kisses his lips chaste as he moves over him vulgar and draws back to tease. “What if I don’t? You know it’s not in my blood to be docile.”

 

He teases with words, like always does, coy and cocky even when he’s full to the brim with cock. Jeongguk refuses to play around with sentences, really, certainly not now. He jostles him once, grabs firmer at his ass and simply stands.

 

Taehyung releases a yelp, clutches at his shoulders in short-lived fear before Jeongguk has his back pressed to the mattress. “I said slow,” he says, slow, low and calm, stares him down.

 

Taehyung blinks up his challenge, before he adjusts on the mattress, relaxes back into it. “I’ve never done this slowly,” he confesses, voice small and breathy. His chest raises and falls rapid beneath him, the skin of it as flushed as that of his full cheeks. Perspiration has started to layer him, gather in his hair as well, sticking it into thick strands that dance over fluttering lashes, themselves thickened by some tears formed from sensation.

 

“Well,” Jeongguk breathes out, lowers himself on his elbows above him, “you have to now, otherwise I’ll cum.”

 

His eyes are frantic as they seek him out below him, fucked out and red and pretty and in his bed. He’s on his sheets, pressed there to his mattress and with his lids heavy from fucking, Jeongguk can imagine him tired. He can imagine him sleeping. He wouldn’t mind waking up to that image. It has been so long, so many years since he last did. He wasn’t beautiful then. He didn’t know him then. He didn’t love him then.

 

“Isn’t that the point?” Taehyung smiles but he doesn’t try to move. His hand only rolls on the mattress and he gazes up with a curious serenity that Jeongguk wants to see on him always.

 

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to yet,” he tells him, swipes some of that hair from his forehead before he leans down and kisses him for a moment. “I wanna fuck you for hours, make up for the lost time.”

 

“It’s not lost time,” Taehyung murmurs back, reaching up to return the gesture, curling a finger behind his ear.  “Imagine if we’d done this earlier, when we weren’t ready and we ruined it.”

 

It has Jeongguk shaking his head once more, as he fits his lips against his to speak but doesn’t press. “I’ve always been ready.”

 

“Were you?” Taehyung replies before he can apply pressure. “What if we’d fucked that time in the yard and then I’d left you,” he asks. His voice is cautious, small. He says the words softly but it doesn’t take away from the cruelty of the idea. “And when I came back, I’d been with other people while you waited for me.” His fingers pat so gently at his brow and then his cheek. “Would you have forgiven me?”

 

Jeongguk swallows. He has an instinct to tear his eyes away, but he forces himself to keep locking, “Why are you sure you would have left and been with other people?”

 

“Cause you would have frightened me,” Taehyung says simply, his hand dropping to the mattress.

 

Jeongguk’s brows bundle. “With what?” He demands.

 

“With this,” Taehyung insists, his chin jutting down forcibly at where their bodies meet before his eyes bore into his, startingly close, suddenly almost wide and Jeongguk can better see their gloss. He blinks once and his eyes become a host of his reflection.

 

Taehyung’s legs are pulled up around his waist, their bodies are connected, his cock trapped between them and every single part of them touching. Jeongguk has never had a conversation locked in a position like this before, never talked from someone from close that he’s actually inside them. The intimacy is so striking, so undeniable and pungent that it almost scares him, and he’s never been one to run away from connection. Taehyung, on the other hand, has avoided it like fire, the only thing he’s ever known.

 

“I didn’t love you then,” Jeongguk tells him and he moves a little. And Taehyung feels him, he has to, because he is inside him. “It wouldn’t have been this.”

 

Taehyung’s lids drop over, shield his eyes. His voice is careful once more, but not with caution, with vulnerability. “And maybe you wouldn’t have fallen in love with me.”

 

“No,” Jeongguk shakes his head, denies it, leans down to kiss the word on his lips and his hips move with it, too.

 

“Maybe I would have hurt you too much.”

 

“No,” he repeats. Another kiss and another thrust.

 

“Maybe you would have found someone else cause you’d tried me already and felt—“

 

“No.”

 

“You had nothing more to wait for.”

 

“No.”

 

“Jeongguk—“

 

“No, no, no.” Kiss, kiss, kiss.

 

Taehyung pauses, his lips pressing together when Jeongguk pushes himself up in his silence. He cocks his head on his mattress. “How do you know?” he whispers.

 

Jeongguk gets on his elbows to come nearer. He can feel him breathe, both as his shallow exhales wash over his tingling lips and when his chest lifts into his own. “No one has ever felt to me like you,” Jeongguk tells him in an honestly more brutal than every time he’s blown up on him when he was angry. “I don’t care how many alternate universes there are but fuck me if there is a single one in which I am not fucking in love with you.”

 

“Can you move?” Taehyung pleads in a twisted voice, his hands rushing to touch, folding over his shoulders.  “Please, move.”

 

He moves for him, moves until they make each other cum. Then he sleeps on his chest for an hour, wakes up with his arms around and fucks him again, faster this time. Taehyung starts to drift off and Jeongguk starts kissing, starts prodding. Taehyung waits a break, Jeongguk doesn’t want to wait.

 

“We have time,” Taehyung whispers. It takes Jeongguk a moment, but he nods. “Okay,” he mutters on his lips. He shies away from a goodnight, but Taehyung insists on it, so he returns. He rests his head on perspired chest, feels arms slip over him again and lets his eyes close.

 

 

 

 

Waking up to a pounding very different to the one he had delivered the night prior is very much worse than how pleasantly he falls asleep.

 

He considers Seokjin lucky that he makes the effort of putting on his underwear before he walks towards the door with his fist rubbing at his eyes. He parts the door to find just what he expects, a pyjama-clad, angry Kim Seokjin, holding Jeongguk’s dog to his chest, or more likely cradling him like a goddamn baby.

 

“You could have said hello like a normal person,” Jin starts on his expected rant and Jeongguk cirnges slightly, glancing back to his bed where Taehyung bumps his foot on the mattress in his sleep, “but no-o-o I have to find out you’re home from goddamn prison by the sound of you moaning and ruining my wall with my headboard.”

 

Jeongguk turns back to him, scratches at his hair. “Your headboard?”

 

“Here’s your dog,” Seokjin juts the dog forward and Jeongguk takes him in his arms.

 

“Hey, boy. Did you miss me?” He feels him move around the second he is there, whimpering its excitement a bit too loud, reaching up to give kisses with bumps from his cold nose and small licks. His tail wiggles almost painful against his stomach, but Jeongguk doesn’t care, tries to keep a giggle or two down as he scrunches his nose down at him in a combination of a smile and a flinch from all the sudden sensation.

 

With Seokjin’s hands free, he can now easily and authoritatively place them at his hips. “I rent you this apartment.”

 

“Yes,” Jeongguk says, head flinching back from the licks of the dog, “but you don’t fucking own it.”

 

“Jeongguk,” he’s a second away from wagging his finger, Jeongguk is sure, “if you keep talking to me like that, I’ll take the dog back.”

 

“I knew you liked him,” Jeongguk accuses, brings the dog up and speaks to him in a voice he only reserves for him as he lets him lick away for the moment. “See, Tete, I knew Seokjin hyung liked you.”

 

“No,” Jin insists, “don’t lie to the dog. I don’t like him. I just dislike you.”

 

Jeongguk’s head jerks up and he blinks several times both to deal with the saliva and with the stern, serious image of Seokjin in front of him. “Don’t lie…—to the dog?”

 

It’s a serious jump from his claiming that the dog could not tell the difference between his shoes and a female dog, and no matter how drowsy, Jeongguk is not letting it slide.

 

“Jeongguk,” he hears the voice whine from the bed, some rustling of sheets as Taehyung rotates into a more comfortable position, “I’m trying to sleep.”

 

“Sorry,” Jeongguk whispers now, sheepish, glancing to him once over his shoulder before he returns to a very confused Seokjin.

 

“He’s still here?” he questions with his brows furrowed.

 

“Yes, he is,” Jeongguk nods, pointedly whispering now, “so you’re leaving.” He stretches Tete back to him. “Take the dog.”

 

Seokjin does a double take that results in him appearing positively appalled. “Take the dog?”

 

“He’s too excited right now,” Jeongguk insists, pressing him forward several times when Seokjin’s hands remain stubborn at his hips. “He’ll wake him up. Bring him over later.”

 

“Jeongguk,” Seokjin inhales rather dramatically, wrapping a single arm beneath the butt of the dog, but it secures a place for him, “sweetheart.” He raises his other hand to just about press his thumb to his forefinger. “I am this close to actually hitting you for once.”

 

“I—“

 

“Come back to bed,” Taehyung calls again, lazy and groaning, and Jeongguk looks back to him, enamoured enough to make Seokjin want to gag.

 

“Aw,” Jeongguk turns forward, leans a bit to whisper even lower, “he wants me to go back to bed.”

 

“I don’t —” Seokjin tries to blink himself into reality. “Do you mistake me for someone? I don’t care—“

 

Jeongguk, tactless even for himself, interjects. “Would it be too obtrusive of me to ask you to make us some American pancakes?”

 

“Seriously,” Seokjin exhales, jostling an excited dog in his hold before he instinctively pats at his head to calm him down, “are you on drugs, yes or no? I need a one word answer.”

 

Jeongguk offers no answer, because he’s turning back to his flat at the dejecting sound of steps.

 

“Guk, what’s taking so long?” Taehyung, who, too, has thankfully chosen scantily clad instead of completely butt naked, takes the handle of the door, swings it open wider to reveal himself and catch sight of Seokjin.

 

Seokjin, whose neck draws back in reaction. “Taehyung?” he asks, confused.

 

Taehyung regards him with a quick once over. “Huenin?”

 

“Huenin?” Jeongguk repeats, his gaze darting between the two men. “That’s Seokjin,” he corrects before he turns to the man in question with his eyes a little narrowed. “How the fuck do you know him?”

 

“I’m trying to find this motherfucker a place to live right now,” Seokjin explains before he leans his shoulder into the doorframe and continues with a little more consideration some conversation he has obviously been having with himself and potentially with Yoongi. “I was actually thinking of apartment 4. It has a nice view and I think Jamie is leaving the country again.”

 

“A place?” Jeongguk repeats, trying to absorb the idea into his mind but it keeps hitting bouncing off. He suddenly remembers to care that Taehyung was banging at Seokjin’s door, not his, that Taehyung had no real way of knowing his address even if he did want to visit. He was here, now, entirely up to chance. “Here?”

 

“You said your name was Huenin,” Taehyung accuses, eyeing Seokjin, careful and sceptic.

 

Seokjin shrugs, pulls the corners of his lips down. “I say a lot of things.”

 

Taehyung turns to Jeongguk, arms folding against his chest. “That’s your Seokjin?”

 

Seokjin, on his part, uses his free hand to point before the dog nudges it with his nose and head, asks for more pats. “That’s your Taehyung?”

 

“Uhhh,” Jeongguk scratches at the back of his neck before he attempts a lazy introduction, “Seokjin, Tae. Taehyung, Jin. Taehyung, Tete.”

 

Jeongguk drawing his attention to the dog cradled in Jin’s arms seems to completely and permanently wake up Taehyung, erasing any and all sign of drowsiness from him to be replaced with an excitement equal to that of the dog. “Oh my god, can I hug him?”

 

Seokjin doesn’t put up much of a fight as he transfers the dog over and for a moment they lose Taehyung to excited licking. Jeongguk has a bit of a hard time looking away, his gaze drawn to Taehyung’s very first interaction with the dog, so much better than he could imagine it would be. Taehyung holds the dog up to his face, smiles so wide his eyes almost go missing and indulging in some dog talk. Tete is just at ardent at getting introduced, very much satisfied with the attention he’s receiving.

 

He has to force himself to blink away and only because he’s taken with the need to inquire after the idea that has now settled as a permanent resident in his head. “Wait, are you serious about finding him a place here?”

 

“Well,” Jin shrugs, pried away from his own less fond, more curious staring at Taehyung, “I was thinking of offering him the one at Yoongi’s block cause it’s unoccupied.”

 

“Yoongi?” Taehyung joins in, repositioning the dog to get licks at his chin but still be able to see. “Juvie Yoongi?”

 

“Very same,” Jeongguk nods. “Seokjin’s his right-hand man now.”

 

Jeongguk attempts an indicative tap at his shoulder, but Jin dismisses the hand with a most demonstrative shrug. “Excuse me,” he protests, “Yoongi is my right-hand man.”

 

Taehyung rocks the dog in his arms but looks above his head with a narrowed scepticism. “You handed me legal documents that claimed your name was Huenin.”

 

Jin’s eyes dull as he glances from him to Jeongguk. “Is he always this petty and technical?”

 

“No,” Jeongguk shakes his head quickly, hurries back to the actual subject of interest. “When is Jamie leaving the country? We can move him in there.”

 

“I can get technical sometimes, though,” Taehyung calls from the side with a nonchalant shrug as he continues bouncing the dog gingerly. “Just a heads up if I’m going to live here.”

 

Jeongguk pats at Tete’s head encouragingly. “You look at the dog now, Tae,” he says with a brief glance before he nods his chin at the visitor. “I’ll handle Seokjin.”

 

“Handle me?” Jin nearly screeches. “Jeongguk, you’re the last person on Earth who can handle me.”

 

Jeongguk regards him with consideration, pulling his lips down in an arch. He raises his hand, taps it at the handle that’s so comfortably beside him. “I could close the door,” he shrugs.

 

Seokjin’s gaze morphs into a glare that to Jeongguk is all too familiar. He can barely believe it’s been so long since he last saw it. “You close that door and he’s not getting the apartment.”

 

“If you let me live here,” Taehyung intervenes, bringing Tete closer to his face and interrupting himself with a short, loud kiss on his head, “I’ll forever take care of the dog.”

 

Seokjin hums. “Enticing.”

 

“And of Jeongguk occasionally,” Taehyung adds, separating one hand from cradling the dog to run it at the back of Jeongguk’s head down to his neck, where it remains, warm and welcome.

 

“Groundbreaking,” Seokjin concludes before he turns to him more fully, locking his arms before his chest to speak more with consideration and less with scolding. “You know it’s great to finally meet you. Jeongguk told me once you’re more handsome than I am, and I haven’t forgiven him since.”

 

Jeongguk’s brows scrunch. “Yoongi said that, not me,” he defends before he shrugs, glances to Taehyung when he feels his fingers play with strands of his hair. “I just agreed.”

 

Taehyung’s smile is small, but it’s there and it keeps Jeongguk’s eyes on him longer than he intends to put them there. “Are you and Yoongi—”

 

“Jeongguk’s unfortunate parents, yes,” Seokjin cuts him off to nod most dramatically. “Not a couple, though,” he specifies and with a pointed glance at Jeongguk he insists on adding, “even if he did take his words back later. I am very much available.”

 

Jeongguk locks his own arms before his chest, makes sure both bulge. “If you hit on him, I’m feeding you laxatives,” he warns.

 

Jin’s brows shoot up immediately. “As much as I enjoy the very idea of you feeding me anything,” he starts with mocking emphasis at words of choice, “you’ve, like your dog, peed all over the place.” He lifts a hand, fingers spread, and rotates it around Taehyung in indication.

 

Jeongguk turns to Taehyung a little sheepish, the claim of it potentially too much too soon, but he appears unbothered. He supposes he would have questioned it more if he hadn’t known him to do the same, to speak of him to people that are a part of his life.

 

“Does Yoongi come around?” Taehyung’s asking, pulling his head back when the dog’s tongue comes too close to his mouth. “Will I get to see him?”

 

“You speak as if you’ve already moved in,” Seokjin observes, still making unnecessary gestures to utilize that raised hand. “I said I wanted to meet you. Not welcome to the building.”

 

Jeongguk turns to Taehyung to provide a replacement answer. “Yeah,” he nods, and reaches up to pet Tete again to distract him from his incessant attempts of making Taehyung’s lips taste of dogfood, and instead allows him to smear all its remains on his palm, “he’ll probably be back today at some point.” He shrugs casually, once, twice, just to make sure it is very much casual and glances up. “Why don’t you just stay here while Jamie gets her things sorted? We can split rent. I’m struggling a bit right now, you know. Prison and all that.”

 

“Mmm,” Taehyung’s eyes stretch open suddenly as he turns to him more, moves into him instinctively with newfound excitement gripping his features, “I didn’t get to tell you,” he says, a smile he uselessly tries to contain taking his face, “I got a job.”

 

“A job?” Jeongguk repeats, his own voice bouncing higher.

 

Seokjin’s eyes dart between the exchange with annoyance, but his pointed irritation at being ignored goes ignored.

 

“Yeah,” Taehyung nods. “You know Sumi from two cells to the right from mine?”

 

“Mhm,” Jeongguk’s fully turning to him now. “Got busted misusing workplace ketamine.”

 

“That’s the one.” He lets the smile fully roam now, reach past his lips into his cheeks and eyes. “He recommended me to his former boss. I can be a receptionist at his vet clinic.”

 

Jeongguk’s mouth parts on an exclamation, but Seokjin interrupts him with a deadpan, “He gets recommendations from former employees who stole ketamine from him?”

 

“Sumi’s a good guy,” Taehyung defends, glancing to him briefly with a small shrug. “The boss was raised by an ex-con. He’s all about chances.”

 

Seokjin doesn’t look convinced, but he dismisses it quickly. “At least with that job you don’t get to complain about what Jeongguk smells like when he comes home,” he allows, dipping his hands into his pockets as he leans back into the doorframe.

 

“Why?” Taehyung’s forehead creases as he blinks between them. “What does he smell like?”

 

“Old people,” Seokjin tells him. “I’m proud of him,” he insists, “I really am, but man the smell sometimes.”

 

Taehyung turns to him, maybe curious, maybe intrigued. “I thought that Nana thing was a trick,” he says, referring to the little Jeongguk permitted himself to reveal in front of others in the prison. He adjusts the dog. “Why do you spend time with old people?”

 

Jeongguk glances at Tete, cupping his small head as he shrugs. “I take care of them,” he says simply. “I had to do community work once after juvie and I was cleaning the streets off of leaves and I passed through Mrs. Park’s house,” he recounts aloud, an image of Taehyung’s crooked hair flashing in his mind so clearly. He always sees him when he’s there, when he walks past the room he first fell asleep next to him, when he serves her food on the table when he faithfully saw him for the very first time. “I help her sort out her papers once a week now and she recommended me to some other people, and I get paid for it now.”

 

Taehyung’s eyes drop over him at the mention, a soft smile, barely there, fitting on his features. “You didn’t tell me this,” he mutters, rocking the dog a little slower.

 

Jeongguk’s gaze flutters up. He looks at him from under lashes, tries to isolate his image for himself, away from Seokjin and even his dog, just to speak to him. “There are many things I haven’t had the time to tell you,” he speaks gently, “haven’t had the privacy to tell you.”

 

Taehyung’s lips twitch a little before they pulse back to his mouth, straightened. He blinks down to the floor for a moment before he glances up, fastens his eyes on Jeongguk’s. They don’t notice the silence in the exchange.

 

Seokjin does. “Okay,” he sighs, too loud, feigning some exaggerated exasperation as he flails his arms around, “fine. I concede.” He raises his hands, palms opened, in the pretence of defence. “I’ll make you breakfast once. One time,” he insists, pointing a single finger in warning and glaring at both of them for a moment before he turns his hand back and beckons with his digits. “Give me the dog, I still have his food over at my place,” he reaches, takes Tete again into his arms and cradles, lets him fold with his legs stretched up. “First and final time, kids,” Seokjin voices a firm warning before he insistently reaches for the handle, shoos Jeongguk out of the way and slams the door shut.

 

Jeongguk stares at the door. Taehyung stares at the door. Their heads turn. Their eyes meet.

 

Taehyung bursts out laughing first. His eyes scrunch, cheeks grow rounder. The smile changes his entire face and he’s bringing his fist up to cover it, so Jeongguk has to reach out, grab it and push it down, keeps his expression raw and bare.

 

It takes them a moment to come down, and the memory of laughter is till on Taehyung’s face, his fist still clutched between Jeongguk’s fingers when he asks, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

“I’m seeing you somewhere else,” Jeongguk says simply, shrugs. ”Just doing what you asked me to. I won’t stop looking you like that until you leave.”

 

Taehyung uses the hold Jeongguk has on him to tug him closer. “Gonna be quite a while,” he tells him. He promises him, the third promise he makes.

 

When Jeongguk goes to sleep that night, he tells Taehyung “Goodnight.” When he wakes up, he says to him, “Good morning.” He does it again. He does it again. He does it again. And he does it until he loses count of how many times they exchange, “Good morning.”