Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kim Taehyung is neither here, nor there. In a constant state of a personality flux Taehyung manages to be the very perfect and poetic definition of a wallflower one day and the most flamboyant person in the room the other. It all depends on the company and his mood, and the place, of course, a little bit, and what music marks the background and what he has had for breakfast and normal factors like that, like everyone has. 

But in any case, in all of Richhood, his and his sister’s choice of reference for Gangnam and its most noteworthy inhabitants, he is invisible, to his knowledge. There, he is an outsider, but a careful observer. He observes everyone in this bubble, he reasons with himself, and has no reason to worry that the person over who his eyes glaze the most is Jeon Jungkook, the person on table number sixteen on July the sixteenth right now. 

"I'm bored," Julia complains, one of her first sentences in greeting. Her right leg bounces slowly crossed over her left one whose Gucci heel rhythmically clicks on the Gangnam pavement. 

Jungkook shifts his gaze to lazily look at her. She had gotten him out of bed and demanded his attention and he does not particularly care to entertain her right then. "What?" He cocks his head quizzically and very much ironically, lifting a brow. "Two weeks vacationing in the Bahamas is a bore for you, is it?"

He is not exactly joyous at her return from her yearly summer trip. He had taken full advantage of the absence of his girlfriend and spoiled himself with sex and liquor and now, the moderate guilt that accompanied the former forces some tolerance into him so he humors her instead of snapping.

Julia does not resist an eye roll that starts from staring at Jungkook’s disinterest and ends up at Taehyung’s unsubtle indulgence. He looks away quickly upon being discovered and she sees a delightful redness crawling up his neck. She rests her stare on him and keeps it there with a spark of a smirk. "There is nothing to do on the Bahamas, but tan, Jungkook. You, of all people, know I am not that easily satisfied."

Taehyung feels her nagging eyes bore into him as he tries to move around and do his job. Unsure of whether he has started imagining things or not, he pays a hopefully cautious glance in the direction of the couple, skidding his eyes over Jungkook first, over his long, carefully built body, his casual stance, and the tap of his ringed finger on the glass table. Dissatisfied with just how observant he is of the guy notorious for being a right bastard, he moves further, landing his stare right into the trap of Julia's. She holds it firm and pointed as she raises a manicured hand in demand of his service, uncrosses her legs, spreading them and flashing red lace at him before crossing them again on the other side. 

Jungkook stares at her prolonged movement with the corner of his eye. He raises a brow and scoffs, the end of which ends with a bitter smirk twisting at his features. "You think that virgin can satisfy you?" She snaps her gaze at him and glares. Taehyung, in response to her gestures has come near; he hears. Jungkook doesn’t care; if anything, he basks in the visible discomfort it induces. The smirk stretched malicious on his face. He reaches a hand, big palm, callused at the top from pull ups and weight lifting, and long fingers encapsulating her slim thigh before he pushes up at her otherwise short skirt boldly. "Only I can satisfy you, Julia." The temper of his voice is suggestive, only just reminiscent of a whisper, yet still pointedly enunciated — not at all only reserved to charm his girlfriend, but seeking to petrify their waiter as well, which is a right success.

Taehyung is practically at the table when Jungkook moves brusquely. He grips the leg of Julia's chair and pulls it into him, the metal scraping against the cement. Close enough now, he sneaks his hand underneath her skirt and with a gasp and surprising composure after the brief slip, she loosens her legs.

Taehyung cannot tear his eyes away from it, from Julia as she shifts on her chair, ruts her hips slightly, almost unnoticeably into Jungkook’s venturous hand and her head lay back, her neck craning and her mouth parting, a pink tongue poking out. Her chest pushes out with he curve of her back at the new position, her tank top doing little to conceal and Taehyung cannot help it, his eyes dart all over, all wide and shocked. It is late afternoon. The sun is still there, shining and unfaltering and there are people all around. He gulps.

Yet Jungkook, shameless and unfaltering, is staring at him, at his reaction, his eyes boring into the reddening boy.

Taehyung tries to look at him, tentatively, gaze jumping from where his hand is moving in between Julia's legs and his expectant centered, challenging eyes.  He clears his throat. "Was there-" he struggles, breathing in, chest expanding. He wonders who’s having more trouble staying coherent, him or Julia. "Was there something that you wanted?"

His heart thumps violently in his chest and his neck and ears are burning. Suddenly he feels as if his body has too much blood circulating in it and it is going in all the wrong places.

"Yes, actually," Jungkook speaks calm, but tantalizing. His hand speeds up or his fingers do some trick or something of that sort because Julia suddenly makes a sound, so feminine and desperate and her body convulses and snaps on her chair. It is subtle, but for Taehyung it is all he can notice now, all he can focus on. It makes his blood flow even quicker and a thought strikes him, a query, whether she can feel the ring on his fingers and he flushes more, wants to close his eyes and maybe just for a moment, die. "I wanted you to tell me and my pretty little Julia, here," upon addressing her, Jungkook does it again, a snapping movement, harder than before and Julia gasps, her hand landing on his wrist. "Have you ever touched a woman, boy?"

As his heart is ferociously beating, it suddenly stops, skips a moment of beating and drops in his stomach. "I-" he blinks at Jungkook helplessly as he keeps fingering his girlfriend for everyone to see if they turned their heads for long enough. 

"Answer the question, boy," Jungkook instructs, the entertainment subsiding on his face to allow for a threatening vibe to vibrate off of his voice.

Boy. It was a ridiculous way to address him, considering they had a year and some pathetic months difference in age, but the sternness and size of Jeon Jungkook  intimidates him into feeling just that, like a boy.

"I, erm-" he hesitates. He had, technically been with a couple of girls, but just that really. No foreplay, no anything. Both were on some of Ji-woo’s house parties where everyone is horny enough to be immediately fucked. "No," he confesses finally, looks down as he finds he cannot hold Jungkook’s gaze: it is fiery enough to blister his skin.

"Hm," Jungkook cocks his head. "And do you think you can make her come if you tried right now?"

Taehyung’s eyes involuntary land on Jungkook’s hand working her into moaning and trashing just a little, just subtly. He can see her trying to hold back, her teeth sinking into the pillow of her lower lip, a hiss escaping her, her fingers latched around his wrist tight and whitening with pressure. Jungkook, throughout the whole ordeal, does not move his eyes from his once. 

Taehyung gulps down spit. "No," he says, just barely a whisper, his head still down but his eyes wandering.

"Aha," Jungkook is nodding energetically, irony-clad energy as his lips curl cruel and unforgiving a glint passing in his eye. "I agree with you on that." He pauses. “And with those conditions straightened out, I will kindly ask you to stop fucking staring at my girlfriend and think I'm dumb enough not to notice. You've been eyeing us since we've sat down, thinking you're all subtle, Kim."

Taehyung has no words left in him at that point. He stares at Jungkook's feet dumbly. "I... erm. I'm sorry," he says after a moment. He hadn't been staring at Julia in all honesty. He does not particularly care about her revealing tank top, short skirt and newly tanned body. He was staring at Jungkook. But that is much too inappropriate to admit. "It won't happen again," he tries to promise in a small voice and finally gathers up the courage to glance at the other’s face. 

He finds Jungkook’s smirk has dropped entirely at some point. "Good," he announces and briefly nods at Taehyung’s crotch. "Now go jerk that thing off. I don't want you serving me with it. It's disgusting."

Taehyung obediently nods, not even daring to assume he had been more embarrassed at any other point of his life. Was the situation different, he would not be this timid in response to the likes of Jeon Jungkook. But sex and the likes of the aforementioned in a combination make him a kind of nervous he has never before been and he has no knowledge how to deal with it— or the ridiculousness of what the spoiled brat is doing because of a couple of stares too much on his part. 

Julia had come at some point, but his ears are buzzing too much for him to even notice the peak of sounds, trashing and desperation and she is now recovering with a satisfied smile on her face as Jungkook rubs calming circles into her thighs and in between.

When Taehyung leaves, which is immediately, with quick, wide steps and a curiously positioned trey, Jungkook turns to Julia the smirk back and more dangerous, the thrill of the kill. It gives him pleasure, always has — the taunt. Touching Julia solely for the sake of making her come had become disinteresting for him a while back, he knows how to work her, where to press. It is moments like this, rarely granted by pathetic, poor boys that still give him satisfaction, a rush, maybe even the beginnings of an erection. “Still bored now?"

Julia is breathing hard but happy. She lets out a breath of a chuckle, feeling her body tingling, almost giddy, all over in effect of different thrills of pleasure and gratification, twisted like her boyfriend. “You can fuck me anyway that you'd like tonight," she tells him before she seals their lips together.

Chapter Text

“Don’t move,”Ji-woo scolds, her fingers threading through Taehyung’s hair and tightening into his scalp. She is rough as she keeps his head straight and clicks the scissors at a scathing proximity to his left ear. He holds back a flinch but does not shy away from a grimace and some whining.

“Aww, fuck. What do you want to do? Rip my fucking scalp of my head?” He attempts a pointed glare, but she has his hair in such a tight grip, he has to be content with giving it to the kitchen sink from his position on the stool.

“Well, I don’t have a goddamn degree in hairstyling, Taehyung,” she grits out as she holds him in place by the hair. “If you want someone to give you a massage and ask you is the water okay,” and she says that in the brattiest, most nasally high-pitched voice she could manage, “you have to pay.”

Taehyung’s eyes roll lazily, and he wiggles on the chair as she gives him a particularly hard tug. “I ampaying you,” he points out, without too much of an actual bite.

He hears her scoff as the scissors snap by his nape. She pushed his head forward brusquely, his chin forced into his chest. She leans in close to explore as she cuts. “Not nearly enough for me to ask you is the water okay.”

“There wouldn’t have been any time for you to ask anyway. You literally poured it over my head.”

Another scoff. “Shut up.”

“And do you speak to your customers in that voice?” He questions as she pulls his head back up -- by his hair,because why not.

“What voice, Taehyung?”

She does end up scraping the dumb blades of the scissors on the corner of his ear and he hisses at the immediate sensation but does not acknowledge it otherwise.

“The nasally how is the waterone.” Taehyung does his best to imitate her level of high pitch, but it comes surprisingly like his waiter voice.

“Hm. Well, I’m actually quite lucky. I don’t really get to speak to the bastards a whole lot. They just want their houses clean.” She’s distracted as she speaks, sorting out strands. She’s taking this seriously now for some reason, a strike of inspiration maybe, she should get a degree in hairstyling. Her eyes dart to his ear as she feels a warmer moisture on her finger. “Shit, you’re bleeding now. Goddamnit, Taehyung.”

“What do you mean goddamnit, Taehyung? Youmade me bleed.”

She snatches a napkin from somewhere around her and presses it into him. “Hold it and don’t complain. Your capillaries are weak as fuck. My scissors just barely grazed you. And honestly, those scissors are so shit they barely cut your hair, but of course they would go through yourgoddamn skin.”

Taehyung folds his arms before his chest and tries to drag his eyes out to the corners as far as they would go so that his glare will be as directed to his sister as possible. “Thank fucking god you don’t speak to clients. You would have been out of a job a long, long time ago.”

She deliberately threads four fingers through his hair and tugs, sharp enough for him to almost lose his balance, but he untangles his arms and grips his seating at the last moment.

“And you would have been even more malnourished, Tae. Appreciate me, yeah?”

He snorts. “Yeah, sure.”

Her voice booms close to his ears next as she is bent to him and eyeing strands. He jumps on his chair, which she wholeheartedly ignores. “Are you even watching the eggs, you brat?”

Taehyung manages his balance on the chair once again after her widely unnecessary shriek and remembers to reach forward in the tiny kitchen, grip onto the pan, shuffle the liquid in it a bit with desperate hopes it would have some solidity to it. It swishes, and he frowns. “Ts. The stove is more useless at being a stove than you are as a hairdresser,” he remarks, a bit of a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.

The scissors snap sharply by his ear. “Tae, dear, you do realize I now have the power to cut you up so bizarre you will not only be out of a job, but potentially hospitalized if you step foot in Gangnam.”

Taehyung blinks, allows himself a rather genuine smile. He tries to turn around to flash it to his big sister, but her hands grip onto the sides of his head into stillness at any notion of motion and squeezeto get their message across. “You can do anything you want to my hair and I’ll still be hotter than you.”

“Yeah?” A small grin plays at her lips as she stands back and gauges her work, but it’s a little off, a little sad. Her voice draws softer. “Try not to be too hot around them, okay?”

His eyes roll naturally, but a little fondness seeps in and he feels the nature of his own smile, previously mischievous with a slight smugness, change into something more dangerously genuine.

“I’ll be fine. I just see them in the streets. You go to their actual homesand come back alive.”

Her fingers are softer in his hair now as she lets them roam, pulling gently at strands to see if they are at least somewhat even, releases them when she finds them satisfying and then gliding through purposelessly. “I’m stronger than you, Tae. Always been.”

His arms tangle again and he’s pouting, subconsciously edging his head back to her touch; it’s been rarer and rarer on her part, he’s noticed, affection that is. “Bullshit.”

She flicks him then.

“They’re not that nasty most of the time, though, are they?” He asks. He knows the answer, but he asks, because he wants the conversation to naturally flow towards the direction he wants, to the nastiest, to the Jeons.

She snorts. “Some are decent. Others are beyond your imagination. The parents, I mean. Jeon, for example, is out of the world.”

“Hm. The father?”

“Yeah,” she nods and clips at something with the scissors again, straightening up behind him. “He’s the devil, I swear. The twins are pretty horrible, too, but with a father like that I’m not surprised the girl feels the constant need to be drugged up or get fucked or get fucked while she’s drugged up.”

Taehyung perks up. The twins, that’s what he wanted to hear. The Taunting Twins, notoriously entitled, quick, scathing tongues, wastefully talented to the brim of their skin, perfect on the outside, rotten on the inside.

“Have you met her?” He questions, looking at his nails as if they matter, as if he could ever afford to care for them. But he hasto look at something now.

“Not really,” his sister says, too engaged with strands of his hair to notice his sudden inadequate interest. “She’s around the house the most, but she’s rarely conscious. Rarely dressed, not that she finds nudity particularly bothering. She never says anything. I’ve never heard her speak, but I have heard her moan.”

Taehyung grimaces. The Taunting Twins could very likely easily live up to their reputation and more.

“She does not look particularly despicable, though, compared to Jeon,” Ji-woo continues unexpectedly before Taehyung could slip into thoughts. “Just a bit dead inside.”

“What about Jungkook?” He says, and he registers the words have been spoken after he hears them.

He stirs a bit, but it goes unnoticed. Ji-woo is once again too intrigued by her own interpretation of making sure strands are even. Taehyung is personally starting to feel she is having too much fun for this, considering she demands some actual pay in return. She hums as her fingers work pieces of hair.

“Do you see him?” Taehyung asks now, particularly encouraged by her obvious distraction.

“I have a couple of times, unfortunately,” she replies and straightens up. Taehyung is starting to wonder how her waist doesn’t hurt from all the unnecessary bending she is doing to fool herself into feeling professional.

His brows raise to his hair, an expression of curiosity that is reserved for him alone, but he cannot help it — maybe the kitchen sink appreciates it as well, though his sister is currently pushing at his banks and he is unsure how his fully exposed forehead would be received even by inanimate objects.  “Unfortunately?” He probes.

Ji-woo scoffs a bit, by now just taking advantage of the freedom she’s given with Taehyung’s hair to experiment with looks on him. “The guy’s a prick. He doesn’t speak to me either, but he does look at me, unlike his sister, all entitled and condescending, has a bit of a permanent sneer.” She pauses and lifts her hands off of Taehyung’s hair, gesticulating instead as she seems to recount something she feels particularly moved by, eager to tell him with that annoyed irony laced in her voice she always uses when she describes the actions of her clients. “I remember, he came home one day when I was cleaning, and he was bleeding all over.”

“Bleeding?” Taehyung slightly twists, instinctively searching her face to find her as he expected her: residually pissed off.

She nods, looks Taehyung in the eye and presses her lips together, before she embarks on a particularly animated continuation. “Their whole marble hallway — they have a fucking hallway made out of marble — all stubborn red, stinking of iron. Foolish me, decided to ask him if he was alright, where the bleeding was from. He got a bit in my face and snarled at me, something along the lines of,” and she lowers her voice and speaks all masculine and brusque and burly. “I’m not paying you to know where it’s from; I’m paying you to get rid of it.”

Taehyung turns back around, reaches a hand out to grip at the pan, check on the eggs. He’s almost positive by now they will have to drink them, instead. The stove is utterly useless. “Wow,” he exclaims, a bit silent, mostly to himself.

“Yeah. Prick.”

“Prick.” Taehyung agrees. He gives the pan a bit of a shake. “So, you didn’t find out why he was bleeding?”

Ji-woo opens a drawer and it clutters with contents. She carelessly drops the scissors in there, already disregarding the frustration of having searched for them for half an hour as she never pays much mind to where she places them – or anything else, for that matter. She shrugs at Taehyung, eyeing him a bit with a curiously arched brow. “Kind of stopped caring after his response.” She uses her hips to click the drawer shut and it slams with a worrying bang she ignores as she leans into it. “Wouldn’t you?”

Taehyung replaces the pan on the stove, though he is pretty sure if he slammed his palm on it, he would not feel heat — not really into attempting it just yet, in case his skin does come off. He shrugs as well, eyes boring into the kitchen sink because he can feel his sister’s stare on him now and he dislikes it, almost as much as he dislikes how badly he wants to know why Jungkook was bleeding, despite the fact he is still borderline traumatized by his last interaction with the boy. “Would probably be curious, is all,” Taehyung settles for after a moment of searching his mind for a proper response.

He is curious, but that’s the problem: it is nothing new, this perpetual, infuriating curiosity. He is always curious. Always sort of enjoyed his job because of how much it allows him to pry, to listen in on conversations of the rich, who mostly care so little about his presence around them that they carelessly go off into streams of gossip and unconscious self disclosure around him that he feels he has managed to peek into much more of what these people would like him to have. He gets off on it, a bit, of being present in their lives without them as much as suspecting he knows who spends the nights with whom and who pays for it, sometimes.

Some of them know him. The regulars know him. The ones that frequent the night club have seen him hang by Jimin’s side, after he dances, know he is their cleaner’s little brother, some have flirted with him, even. Some have demanded favors from him with disregard of all common decency that is to be at least flirtatious before you inform you are looking for some cock sucking, but that is it about those people. They can afford to disregard any decency in their private lives at all times and comfortably live with people like Taehyung and Ji-woo on their knees for them, scraping their floors, shining their shoes or sucking their dicks, figuratively and literally alike.

Taehyung has always been cautious not to allow himself to go this far, considers his prevalence in his denial a strength of his. Ji-woo considers it a weakness.

Jungkook knows him. Julia knows him as well. Kim, they call him, Kim, they call his sister. The Kims they call their entire family, all five members, including their mentally absent father, their little brother and their estranged older brother. The Kims, the hopelessly poor individuals that always somehow manage to string their lives around their rich people business. Their father had done it, their brother had done it fairly well before he got up and left, saved himself, he said, from the sticky, toxic webs of it, now Ji-woo was folding their sheets and cleaning their underwear and Taehyung was serving them coffee and cocktails and watching them finger their girlfriends out in the open.

The Kims, is what they would call them before they went in circle talking shit, laughing their asses off, made comments about Ji-woo in her uniform skirt that would offend Hugh Hefner, then concluded with the matter of putting them in their place.

A hand falls on top of his head, making him retract his neck back into his shoulders, much alike a turtle, snapping him rather roughly out of his otherwise unwanted thoughts. Fingers wiggle playfully around freshly cut strands. “Be careful with that curiosity. Yeah, Tae?”

He reaches a hand, swats his sister’s away. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he lists offhandedly, betrays annoyance in his voice and his actions, though he feels none of it, but rather something he doesn’t particularly want to confess to himself or to her, an apprehension akin to dread he cannot quite fathom.

“I’m serious, pretty boy. You can’t let your mind wander, or your eyes. Okay?” Taehyung is rolling his eyes and folding his arms, forging the perfect depiction of childishness, before she can even finish. “No, I’m serious, pretty boy. You have to promise me, okay?”

She steps around the chair, forcing herself in his line of vision, her eyes capturing his with soft pointedness.

“Okay,” he answers to her emotional coercion.

She places one hand on his shoulder, lifts another up, curls a fist. “Pinky promise.”

Taehyung’s eyes fall on the finger, such a simple gesture it would be of him, to lift up and curl his digit around his sister’s as he had done numerous times, but somehow his skin tingles with the same apprehension from before and he feels weirdly as if hers does as well and joining them together would light a spark, maybe he cannot quench.

Before he hesitates enough to worry her, Taehyung lifts his hand up and wraps his finger around hers.

“Pinky promise.”

Taehyung is poignantly aware that Jungkook is in the Ozone that night – Julia is there as well, and she has herself wrapped around him tightly, in a sort of VIP booth where all of them are, his arm lazily tugged on her shoulder and her whole palm resting on his chest, one of her legs strewn over one of his. Her nails play around the fabric of his shirt, her other hand is on his thigh and it is still, but under the glare of the almost epileptic lights of the club it seems to tease, somehow, with the rhythm of the heavy beat of the music.

Taehyung is poignantly aware that Jungkook is in the Ozone that night and he is giving his best not to break his promise, but he’s had a drink and the darkness in the flash of the lights fools him into the bravery of thinking his wandering eyes will go unnoticed.

“The little brat is looking again,” Jungkook acknowledges, his fingers tapping on the throat of his bottle as he leisurely lays his arm on the table. Julia’s lips are gliding across his neck, soft and teasing, above a mark she left the previous day that had made him snap at her. She appreciates it more now.

“Let him look,” she teases into a gap at his collarbone, opening her mouth against it. His hand hovers at her breast and she arches into him, but his fingers twitch away.

Jungkook’s eyes are on Taehyung and Julia’s are on him, watching him watch him. His tongue pokes into his cheek and she grins a tiny bit.

“You want him to look,” Jungkook says, his voice is casual, his body is as well, but there is the little tick in his jaw and she knows he is uneased. Competition always threatens him, no matter how much he has it engrained in his skull that he could beat anyone into regretting the simplicity of their very existence.

Julia presses her palm harder into his chest to force him to be aware of her, her nails creating crescents in the skin underneath the exquisite Egyptian cotton of his brand shirt. “I look as well,” she confesses, her eyes straying from the features of the boy she has under her palms to poor, lovely Kim Taehyung.

He is radiant, as always, hair in his eyes, though shorter than it was a couple days ago, said eyes enigmatic and fit perfectly into the soft, round, shapely features of his beautifully crafted face. He may be poor, but he is a visual, lean, but malnourished, collarbones protruding sharply, stretching pure, tan skin and she sort of wants to create crescents with her nails there as well, maybe draw some blood, soothe it over with her tongue.

As the thought passes, so does Jungkook’s own tongue over the full pillow of his pink lips and it occurs to her she wouldn’t mind if hesoothes the pain she draws from Taehyung.

“At Kim?” Jungkook says in a voice that implies the mere thought offends him and it does. His arm wraps further around her neck, like a snake, and he draws her closer, caging her in as his hand grips at hers and squeezes at her fingers. She does not deserve to mark him while she’s looking at someone like Kim.

Julia replaces her gaze on Jungkook. He chooses to look at his bottle now.

“He’s pretty,” she confesses, voice as sultry as she finds Taehyung’s eyes to be when he’s sipped on too much of whatever he’s having and steals a glance at their, elaborately put, embrace. It’s an understatement, for her, as, at least while she is on E, she finds him to be positively ethereal. She wants him almost as much as she wants Jungkook to want her.

“He’s cheap,” Jungkook enunciates, brings disgust into the spite of his voice and he almost feels it as well, as his nose bundles up and he returns a lazy glare towards the person in question.

“You can’t afford him,” Julia teases, the twist of her mouth curling malicious.

Jungkook laughs, low and disingenuous – cold. “I don’t want him. Do I look gay to you, Julia?” His smile stretches poisonous in that it seems to hold truth, actual entertainment as he finally looks at her.

“Look gay?” she says, eyes rolling, “No, but he does seem to want what you have, doesn’t he? He stares.”

“You like it when he stares,” Jungkook counters.

“You don’t.”

“No,” he confesses, “but at least he’s keeping you entertained a while.”

Julia hums, relaxes her head on his shoulder. “It’s your reaction to him that is keeping me entertained, Jungkook.”

“You think he’s pretty.”

She nods. “He is,” she says. “And you’re hot.”

She’s overwhelmed by the combination of truths as it formulates in her head and again, maybe it’s just the ecstasy, but she cannot imagine a more desirable pair. It’s playing tricks on her calm night out, her heart no longer beating with the rhythm of the music, but faster, which scares her, and she has a little bit of Jungkook’s beer to calm it down.

“You’re hot,” Jungkook retorts, taking his beer back and sipping on it himself.

“Who else do you find attractive here?” Julia is asking as she watches the bob of his throat.

Jungkook’s eyes train briefly on Julia, trail to Taehyung, and then skim around the crowd, landing on a girl whose dress clings well enough for him to wonder how she feels underneath. He points the throat of the bottle in her direction and Julia glances at her with immediate contemptuous distaste.  

She’s pretty, but she has nothing on Taehyung.

“Do you reckon you can have her before I can have Kim?” Julia asks and Jungkook’s fingers tighten round hers, squeeze into the bottle as well.

He shifts. “Not fair. Kim’s already proved interest.”

Julia’s eyes roll lazily, and she worries they will remain behind her lids for a moment, but they come back out and find a target quicker than she had anticipated, close by the bar, close by Kim. She knows Jae has wanted her for a while, but Jungkook doesn’t. She’s sure she can have him in a blink of an eye, a much more unfair choice than Taehyung himself, but that is information only available to her, and she plans to keep it that way as she indicates him with a nod.

“Fine,” she sighs as if she concedes, “blue shirt,” she says.

Jungkook’s eyes scan him briefly. The guy in the blue shirt is as ordinary as they come. Standing so close to Taehyung, he is nothing. Jungkook is satisfied with this, nods, takes a sip and lowers the bottle.

“What does the winner get?”

Julia’s lips curl dangerously on her face. “A choice.”

“For?”

“A threesome,” she blurts.

Jungkook pauses. He untangles himself from Julia, pours the rest of the liquid down his throat then eases off the booth. “Hope you’re ready to fuck a girl.” He turns to her, smirks, and she meets it with a rival twist of her mouth. “Usual rules?”

“Usual rules.”

Chapter Text

Taehyung hates the fact they sit at a table he has to serve. He eyes the pair apprehensively as they position themselves and feels immense dread at the fact he has to approach them.

Hecannot, not after his body had decided to be treacherous in the most embarrassing way humanly possible. It is a little sick of him, he realizes, even though on a conscious level he does not find anything in the situation sexually exciting, especially considering the circumstances and the message which was specifically contemptuous against him, for him to go and pop a boner. Hormones, though, never really mind one’s personal supposed preferences and have absolutely no consideration for appropriateness and simple adequacy, do they?

He wonders, still, what was it that made his body betray him so horridly and thinks it might have been the adrenaline of confrontation from his object of curiosity combined with his unfathomable wondering of whether Julia could feel Jungkook’s ring.

His fingers are thick and considerably long, look warm, though, mostly, his whole body does, and he imagines the cold metal of the ring must be quite a juxtaposition to the heat of his skin.

He wonders if the ring feels cold and metallic now as he presses it into his lip, toying with it for a moment, then it hits him he is watching Jungkook play with his mouth, and whips his head away, going to check on a customer.

He is starting to question this worrying infatuation he has with observing the Taunting Twin. It is getting rather bothersome, especially because it does not only involve looking, which is not that surprising to do, he is a lot to look at. He is handsome, sharp featured, muscled.

It is the muscles that began it. Taehyung has always wanted to work on himself, but never really imagined he could actually put it as a priority. Jungkook is exactly what Taehyung has always dreamed of -- to be, not to have, Taehyung chastises the misinterpretation his flow of thoughts could have even in the confines of his head -- perfectly proportioned, lean, sinewy muscles, skin stretched tightly over protruding veins. He could see definition through his clothes, chiseled as the structure of his sculpted face, are his stomach and his thighs, trousers and jeans always clinging into the shape of him, flexing apparent as he adjusts. His arms are constantly exposed, and it is borderline rude, Taehyung thinks, how pronounced each muscle is on there, perpetually on show making Taehyung all… envious, he concludes.

Taehyung thinks he should dislike Jungkook more than he does, considering. He certainly should not be as aware of him as he is. Lots of rich, entitled pricks surround him at his particular place of work, some have been suggestive towards him, none quite as far and as bold as Jungkook had been to prove a point, but lots have done things to make him aware of their presence. None have left much of an impression, though.

With Jungkook, as soon as he arrives, Taehyung learns it and does not forget it, becomes more conscious of his own movements and manners, somehow more alert as to not embarrass himself, though he knows Jungkook does not look at him.

He doesn’t now, when Taehyung glances from the corner of his eye. He is relaxed back into his chair, legs spread wide and possessive of the air around him, the space around him. He is on his phone, seemingly oblivious even to Julia’s presence. Julia herself is propped up on the table, legs crossed, sunglasses on. She appears pale to Taehyung as he dreadfully approaches.

He stops as far away as he feels he can afford and glances at Jungkook first, instinctively almost, as he addresses the table.

“Hello and welcome. What can I do for you today?”

Julia’s lips are stretched wide at the sound of his question, but Taehyung forgets to look away from Jungkook’s disinterest until she speaks up, voice much too sultry for the morning. “I can think of a few things, actually.”

Jungkook’s eyes lift up from the screen with peculiar nonchalance considering his girlfriend’s obvious flirtatiousness and he catches Taehyung in the moment he replaces his stare to the girl who had addressed him. He struggles with an urge to gulp, feeling a warm rush crawl up the skin of his neck and sneak upon his cheeks, securing them a red color he despised.

He pokes his tongue at his lips quickly, smoothly, a subconscious nervous gesture and Jungkook’s stare falls on it briefly, the lazy arrogance a perpetual atmosphere he carried with himself.

“What would that be?” Taehyung asks, and he struggles to keep even the merest suggestion of suggestiveness out of his tone of voice, but with the variance of scrutiny centered upon him, he feels some that can be interpreted at such betrays his attempts.

Julia’s ragingly obvious self-satisfaction reaffirms the potential for this. Her smirk nags at his nervousness as her lashes, a little full and fake, bat at him from above her sunglasses. Her lips part slowly, and perfect pearly teeth peek along with the tip of her tongue.

“How about we start with just coffee?” Jungkook’s voice interrupts from her side. Her eyes roll from their elicit stare at Taehyung and land a little icily at her boyfriend’s awaiting dullness.

“Will we be not keeping promises now, my love?” Julia asks, the words rolling tightly from her tongue. Her fingers pray distractedly with her hair. She sounds somehow slow today, drowsy, as if it takes effort for her to fully formulate coherence. The arm she uses to prop her chin up is necessary, she appears, as holding her head is a struggle.

Taehyung gives the silence a moment in case Jungkook would decide to fill it, but the pause is long enough for him to feel comfortable with speaking. “So,” his brows lift, “two coffees? Would you like some milk with it?”

Her head tilts and the little view he has of her eyes disappears. Her sunglasses, fully hiding her gaze, make him nervous. He knows she’s looking, but he doesn’t know how, and his imagination is brining wild things into play. “I would like mine to be Irish,” she announces. Her smile is tight-lipped and as lazy as Jungkook’s following attempt of a scold.

“It’s elevon o’clock in the morning.”

“It’s eleven pm in the Bahamas,” she replies, not missing a beat.

Taehyung does not know what influences him to do it, but he shifts his glance from Julia to Jungkook right then. It is a search for approval that he himself rationally finds to be incredibly bizarre in its misogyny and blatant unreasonableness. It is a reflection of his position, he supposes, in Richhood, to seek permission in some variation of authority he finds near, however, he cannot explain to himself what pushes him to consider Jungkook an authority over Julia.

It is a short moment that takes all three parties to realise the intent of his change in attention. Julia scoffs, a move so animated it triggers an actual wave of her body, her back arching with it. Jungkook replaces his eyes from his girlfriend to acknowledge Taehyung, tilting his head in an ever so slight curiosity to betray his insouciance. His lips twitch.

He shrugs. “Whatever,” he says, but his eyes dance along the indication of Taehyung’s silent address with the starting notion of a something and Taehyung can slightly feel it on his skin.

Julia’s voice is heinously sweet when she speaks. “He won’t give me what I reallywant, so he’ll allow me that.”

Her tongue clicks, and she pauses, stops. Her legs are crossed, and her foot is toying with slipping an expensive heeled shoe on and off.

Taehyung’s eyes jump to her, the red colour painting his cheeks resurfacing slightly over his tanned skin and his body wants to flinch, but he holds it back.  He chooses to nod. “Anything else?” he asks politely. He is using his waiter voice for them, though it is a bit more pitched than that, even.

Julia bounces her shoe into place and it smacks against her heel. “Actually—"

“No,” Jungkook interjects, short and dismissive.

Taehyung is nodding again. He is pressing the trey that he carries into his stomach protectively, as a shield, but it does nothing to hide the crimson of his skin that is not usually there. “Your order will be with you shortly,” he announces as custom and makes a step to leave.

He does, but he is still there to hear words he does not expect as Jungkook, still short, somewhat cold, says, “Thank you.” It is a phrase, Taehyung realizes as he walks away, he has not heard leave the other boy’s lips no matter how many coffees and drinks he has brought him over his work span. It makes the colour darken on his face.

Minho is the one to bring the couple their drinks as Taehyung is stuck in the back room, back pressed against some cases of beer and books propped in his lap, dealing with some mishap in accountancy that the manager asked him to look over. He is good with numbers, always has been. And he is cheap. The manager knows he will readily do it for a larger portion of his tips that day and unfailingly trusts him with looking things over to save a few paychecks for bureaucrats, as he constantly chides.  

Minho returns as Taehyung taps the frame of his glasses against his nose, a privately personal indication of concentration that few others are familiar with. Minho is not one of them, though he has avoidantly witnessed it numerous times. Unaware and uncaring, he interrupts.

“Why did Julia ask about you?” Minho questions as he opens the door.

“What?” Taehyung says dumbly, barely shifting his attention, too engrossed in the consistency of a set of numbers.

“Jungkook’s Julia?” Minho specifies, still at the door, practically hanging by the handle. “She asked me why Taehyung was gone and pouted at me when I said you had some business to attend to. Made sure to drop a mention that her coffee would be tastier if you were there.”

Taehyung almost drops the book he is currently propping up. He catches it last moment, but pages suffer from his clumsy handling and he feels a couple of buck slip right through his fingers as one tears slightly.

“She’s—” he stutters, pauses. It’s not like he has a reason.He knows nothing of why she chooses to tease Jungkook like this, why she does it at all, except maybe to coax him into the sort of sexual outburst that she triggered the other time a couple of days ago. He does not know what made him her target, supposes maybe it could be how easy he is to make blush and the convenience of his job. It is still not enough to formulate a proper answer in his head. “She’s just kidding,” he says, finally and it feels dumb, but he can virtually think of nothing else.

“Are you friendswith Jungkook’s Julia now, Taehyung?” Minho asks.

“No,” Taehyung shrieks at the sheer incredulity of the question.

Minho shakes his head, more to himself. “You always get yourself into trouble, don’t you, pretty boy?” he says, but he does not seem to await a response as he lets the handle go and walks away.

Taehyung sighs, concentration entirely lost and now some additionally burdening thoughts of what it is precisely that Julia wants from him. He is a pawn, he realizes, in some game with no rules she is playing with Jungkook, and he does not like to imagine, but feels the games will only have one loser and it will be Kim Taehyung.

He closes the books and places them on an arbitrary industrial shelf. He stacks his glasses on top of them as well, rubbing the heel of his palm over an eye slightly. He yawns. He has not had much sleep, working some problems for a summer course on geometrics he is forcing himself to complete as it would help him with his potential (though prospectively unlikely) pursuit of a degree in architecture.

He steps out of the back room into the corridor, hands still slightly blocking and blurring his vision of his surroundings, head pointed to the floor. He does not particularly care about being aware in this space as he has spent so much of his time there, he could literally turn blind and still point to a hole of a tragically misused champagne bottle drilled into the wall on the first time.

He hears steps that do not surprise him as that is the hallway which leads to the customer’s toilet. What does surprise him is when a pair of feet stop right into the front of his downward line of vision. Dark shoes, trimmed all the way around the soles with the Louis Vuitton logo, stand impossibly close to him and appear dangerously familiar. The raise of his head and eyes across the body they are attached to is almost comically slow. He takes in the perfect lines of the well-dressed body that was subject to his rather inappropriate, but mostly envious thoughts for the better part of the morning, skimming over blatant muscle, thick thighs, tight stomach. His eyes have barely managed to skim past a sharp jawline when a hand wraps around near the knot of his tie and his back meets the wall.

The force of the push is unnervingly strong, stronger than what somewhere in a restricted section of his mind he had imagined it could be. His back collides with the hard surface it is easily tilted and directed to and for a moment it sucks the breath out of him along with the shock of the concept of it actually happening. It doesn’t hurt — most of the power of motion comes to do the tilting and very little actually pushes into the collision — but it’s obstructively firm and startling. His eyes are wide and staring as Jungkook edges closer, his grip unrelenting against the tie, which he uses to manipulate his body to his will.

Taehyung’s hand is wrapped around his wrist without his conscious permission, flying up and long fingers twisting around his skin, clasping. He had been right – Jungkook, about sinewy muscle, is warm, hot,scorching. Or maybe, Taehyung is going insane, but the contact he subconsciously makes with such a small bit of his skin feels so forbidden it does feel as if the touch burns him.

His eyes fall to it briefly before they refocus on Jungkook’s. Taehyung’s stare is wide and wild, perplexed and doe-like. Jungkook is as it previously was – lazy and unbothered. It shocks Taehyung, that it takes so little effort of him to throw him around like that, could still his countenance unmoved and lazy while easily twisting him to his will. So close, he feels so small, though in height they are not much different. It is the size of Jungkook’s very presence, though, that is impressive and makes their difference so significant.

Taehyung hasn’t much time to mull over that fact and how it secretly makes him feel, as Jungkook is speaking next. It distracts Taehyung that the air of his breath, smelling of coffee, hits him, along with another peculiar scent that is as expensive as it is nice. It makes him slightly light headed, but he is unsure whether it is not just the proximity of Jeon Jungkook that is enough to turn his brain to the stuttering mush he feels it is, as first lazy, somewhat tantalizing words travel to his ears. “Blushing over my girlfriend’s words, aren’t you?” It’s almost a whisper and Jungkook’s nose almost touches his before he tilts his head. It all feels private with an inappropriate, threatening sense of intimacy. Shivers bring out gooseflesh on Taehyung’s skin and his hand tightens subconsciously against Jungkook’s. “You like the idea of her wanting something from you.”

Taehyung stutters, voice almost a cough. “Jungkook-nim, I—”

“Shh. Ts, ts, ts,” the sound of the shush is a wave of a breath over Taehyung’s face as Jungkook brings himself closer. Taehyung’s heart is palpitating worryingly in his chest, beating so powerful and vicious it’s certainly not healthy. He can feel the heat of Jungkook’s body lining up with his own and it brings out peculiar sensations in him, all warm and somewhat vacuous, igniting, he feels desperate to move away, but too scared to do much about it. “Excuses are pointless, I know she is pretty.”

He pauses briefly, tongue poking out to wet pink, full lips. Taehyung raids his mind for a response, but just as something surfaces on the edge his eyes begin a brawl with his sense of adequacy about glancing at his mouth again and again and he finds himself slightly at a loss for words. He has not much to say to help his case, really, does not reckon the admittance he thinks Jungkook is worthier to look at will do a whole lot in his favor, so he keeps his tongue behind his teeth and tries to fix his gaze into Jungkook’s lazy eyes. It becomes most troubling when said lazy eyes drop to do a bit of an exploration of their own, moving across his face slowly and dragging along the length of his body as well before returning to dart across his expression again.

“You arepretty, too, aren’t you?” he says, and it is somehow gentle, yet somehow vituperative. Taehyung’s ears are ablaze, body catches internal fire at the brim of his stomach and he becomes weirdly aware of his knees. Jungkook makes their eyes meet and his lowered lips betray little to no expression, while Taehyung imagines his must speak a thousand words. Jungkook comes closer still and his nose is almost nudging at his cheek. “Smell a bit good, too.”

Taehyung wants to gulp but is afraid Jungkook will feel it from the grip her has on his tie. He tries to stay impossibly still, eyes helplessly studying the features on Jungkook’s face, falling a little to slide across the expanse of his neck. He is so close, and it is killing Taehyung that he can smell him and Jungkook, obviously, can as well. He probably stinks of the moist, dull smell of the back room, some cheap product he uses to wash himself. Jungkook is only a bit divine, a scent that is pointedly expensive, Taehyung might have smelled it before, on other clients, but it does not sit as well, sink so perfectly into their skin, and it is combined with the little more familiar nuance of sweat, which, ridiculously is the furthest thing from repulsive. It’s -- and Taehyung cringes as it passes through his head – weirdly masculine.

Jungkook’s hand tightens its grip while the other raises, a finger gilding at the corner of collar and Taehyung is now striving so hard to stay still, he forgets to breathe. “Uniform looks nice on you.” He speaks with a peculiar mixture of intimate impartiality, low and deep and measured.  “Probably the most expensive thing you’ve had on you,” he notes, still in that much composed voice and Taehyung needs a moment to realize he has been offended, but before he even has the chance to think of a possible response, Jungkook is saying more.

“Well, except now, you have me.” And he takes a step, closes a gap that sucks any rationality away from Taehyung, lining his body along with his, the similar proportions of their length allowing him to smoothly press against him. He can feel his thighs, his goddamn thighs.

Taehyung feels a bit faint and Jungkook is looking him over with those lazy, lazier eyes, smoothing over the other boy’s discomfort and maybe a little smugness seeps in, threatens to expose itself at the edge of his lips, which Taehyung glances at a couple of times for the briefest of seconds because when he parts them, he can feel the warmth of his breath fan.

Jungkook’s eyes land on his own hand, the one which is holding him perfectly in place by the tie, and now, he scoffs, brows furrow the tiniest bit. “Of course, you’ve done it the idiot way.”

He pulls away and both hands land on the tie now, undoing the knot. His eyes focus there, on the movements he is making, and Taehyung’s heart is beating strenuously against his chest. It worries him how close those hands are to his heart, worried if he knew why it was beating so hard if he wouldn’t try to rip it right out. “Listen, pretty boy, Kim, I’m here to ask you something, yeah?” He speaks to him now with the voice he uses to order his drinks, cold, detached and condescending. His hands work the tie still, now creating a knot of their own. He is watching his hands move and Taehyung is watching his lips move. “If my girlfriend comes to you and asks for a favor of anysort,” the knot is almost done, all it takes is a little tightening, his eyes lift, and Taehyung’s instinctively meet them, “be kind to yourself,” his fist glides against the length of his tie and the knot is done now. “Say no.”

Jungkook pats him on the chest a single time then and leaves. Taehyung lets out a breath, head falling back to the wall. He needs a minute, maybe more, just until it doesn’t feel like he has a handprint on his chest from heat.

Chapter Text

Ji-woo announces her entrance with a door slam that Taehyung, doing some poor attempt of seasoning – as he refers to putting on an overly generous amount of salt -- their dinner, a dubiously cooked omelet, fails to hear with headphones in his ears, humming to a tune. So, he is only made aware of her presence when she takes the liberty to hit him over the back with their little brother’s school bag.

He shrieks and spins at the attack, ready to reciprocate with both the particularly heavy salt shaker he had stolen – or, well, borrowedas he insists – from his workplace and the spatula he used to poke at the eggs which he kept to utilize as a microphone in the case he decided to be expressive with his nightly performance.

“What the--?” his eyes widen as he processes the sight of his older sister’s enlarged nostrils and narrowed gaze. His mind immediately rummages for what mistake of his could have brought upon her current rage, but he comes up blank.

She does not leave him wondering for long, though, as in a moment, she is yelling, “Did you forget to pick up Woowoo from kindergarten?”

Taehyung blanks further, pales, stutters next. “I—what?”

Her brows lift up at his slightly gaping mouth. “Woojin? Our baby brother, Taehyung?”

“I know who Woowoo is, noona,” Taehyung counters dumbly.

“Well, do you know why he was left waiting for 2 hours outsideuntil his teacher called me and asked me what the fuck was going on?” she closes up on him a little as he speaks, and he feels himself retract towards the stove, backing down and nervously glancing at the stance with which she holds herself and the strap of their brother’s bag, so easy to swing. “Hm, Tae. What the fuck went on?”

“I—” Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He forgot. He had finished up his shift and just gone straight home, really desperate to take a shower and clear his head a little, as his thoughts had seriously deterred in certain directions he wanted to avoid and saw no true point in indulging. “I forgot,” he confesses, voice thin.

“You,what?” Ji-woo shrieks, pitched, takes a step forward and Taehyung almost recoils, almost feels the bag colliding with his body. “I told you two days ago that rent is coming up and I’ll be cleaning at the Jungs house warming party with the agency to earn something extra as well as agreeing to do weeklies for an additional family and all youhad to do was remember to pick up our brother up and you forgot?”

Shit, shit, shit. He takes a step forward, arms opening. “Ji, I’m so- “

She interrupts him with a finger in the air, a loud, brisk suck of air through her nose as she resorts to something more torturous than her screaming – her reasonable, deflated disappointment. “Do not apologize to me, Taehyung. He’s our brother. And he was waiting for two hours.”

Taehyung shakes his head, quick and desperate. “I know. I know. I know. It won’t happen again. I just—” and he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to excuse himself, because he reasons I was a bit overwhelmed by those rich guys you have to deal with as much as I dois clearly not an adequate enough explanation for replacing the memory of having to pick up his brother with panicking over Jeon Jungkook.

Ji-woo presses one hand into her hip, runs the other over the whole of her face before she weaves it through her hair, pulling at the roots, the action drawing strands back and baring her face, pulling Taehyung’s attention to the dark circles underneath her eyes. She sighs. “We promised each other Woowoo would never feel abandoned, Tae.” Her voice is one of defeat as she closes her eyes, she will not scream anymore, not tonight, and it breaks Taehyung a little.

He places the salt and the spatula on the counter behind him and steps closer, his hands wrapping around her biceps and squeezing, but her eyes remain shut. “I know, noona, I know. I’m sorry. He won’t. Not again. Not ever. I’ll speak to him,” it is a mantra of promises in a gentle, soothing voice, his eyes searching her face.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “Speak to him tomorrow, he fell asleep. Don’t wake him.” She steps away from his touch, not meeting his eyes, and his hands drop aimlessly by his body. She lifts Woojin’s bag on a counter, leaning against it by her palms, her elbows twisting together with how skinny she is.

“What about dinner?” Taehyung asks, but does not attempt to physically approach her again.

“I bought him a burger to make up for your absence,” she says. “You can have whatever you made on your own. Omelet again, is it?”

“The eggs go bad tomorrow. I wanted to use them up,” he explains. She nods, eyes still pointed blank to the counter. “What about you?” Taehyung questions.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re tired,” he says.

Her head shoots up, eyes bore into him. “Well, of course I’m tired, Tae. I spent eleven hours of my day, cleaning and then I had to walk to Woowoo’s kindergarten and around to find him food and get him home.”

Taehyung knows nothing he can say will be of any true substance. Words have rarely been, lately – lately being the last he doesn’t know how many years. Still, he tries. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Ji-woo sighs, pulls away from the counter. Her lips tighten in something akin to a smile, but sadly it is far away from reaching her eyes. “Yeah,” she whispers, maybe because she wants to, maybe because she does not have the strength to do more. “Me too.”

She climbs the stairs after that, skips the third as they all know it’s a weak one and Taehyung got his leg stuck there once. Taehyung eats two bites of the eggs before he scoops them in the bin. He thinks about sleeping on the couch for a while that night before he goes upstairs to his and Woojin’s room. He climbs the top bunk and spends a good few hours staring plainly at the ceiling before he manages to fall asleep.  

Jungkook drops his sack on the couch when he walks in, goes to the fridge. He grabs a bottle of beer and attempts to go for his room, walking past the study. The door of it is gaping, however.

“Did you win?” his father’s voice sounds and Jungkook’s feet pause.

“Yes,” Jungkook replies honestly, swinging a gulp.

“Come closer,” his father instructs, fingers rotating his crystal glass on top of the end table, his legs crossed. If Jungkook did not know better, he would assume his father actually had class.

He hesitates in following the order, but does not let his father see it, allows his legs to move smoothly towards the armchair the other man is sitting on. He stops only a few steps into the unnecessarily big room. He makes it apparent with a conclusive stance of wide legs that he has no intention of coming further in.

His father’s eyes skim his body silently for a moment. “Must you keep that hideous hood on?” he speaks with distaste, sips on his drink.

“It’s raining,” Jungkook shrugs.

“It’s not raining in here,” his father deadpans. His eyes are on him, always scrutinizingly on him at this part of the night, when he is still coherent, when he can hold his head up enough to look at him.

Jungkook’s eyes roll, tongue pokes in his cheek. He reaches up and slides the hood from his head, directs his stare to some piece of contemporary art that sits in their study for it is accredited by its price tag.

His father makes a sound of dissatisfaction with his tongue that makes Jungkook’s skin crawl. “He got you pretty bad, boy,” he comments.

Jungkook knows the bruise is already forming round his left eye, the skin angry and reddening, flesh swelling underneath. The guy had got too clear of a jab on his face and Jungkook knows it, does not need to be reminded of it. He also knows the skin of his stomach will be a variety of colors of red, blue, yellow, purple. He realizes it will hurt him when fucks Julia the following day. But he also saw the other guy fall to the ground, felt a rib crack under his fist, completely changed the look of his nose even underneath the shots of blood, was the cause why the people he was with had to drag his body in a corner and then away. They will have to search for someone to check on him, see if he has internal bleeding, if the ribs will heal, while Jungkook will just have to deal with his father today and then he gets to go to bed.

Jungkook is heavily entertained by the prospect of saying you should have seen the other guybut holds back on it. “I won,” he says simply. “Does it matter?

His father hums, sips. “As long as you didn’t make a fool out of yourself.”

“I didn’t,” Jungkook strains too quick, throat tight around his palpable instinct to snap.

His father’s eyes flit to him with the pace of his reply. They dart across him as his son stays still, chin tilted slightly up, so the lightning would catch more on his good eye.

“Good,” he says, but it means nothing, “Because your sister did.”

Jungkook’s teeth grind together, jaw ticks, he acknowledges the comment with a head tilt. “Did she now?” he asks tightly.

“She failed her violin solo,” his father explains, voice detached and casual, yet lilted by some sort of iciness that Jungkook is terribly familiar with and despises – it is an arrogant note, a despicable note. “It is hard to play an instrument when you have snorted too much cocaine.”

Jungkook remains wordless to this, stares at the excuse for art again, though he knows the prickly eyes of his father are searching for his with a glint of condescending self-satisfaction, just because he wants to see it all bother him.

“Jung Byung-Chul was present for it,” he continues, lifting the glass and tilting it towards his lips. “It was wildly embarrassing for the whole family.” He pauses, sips. “You weren’t there, of course,” eyes are sharp on him. “Where were you?”

“I was with Julia,” Jungkook answers honestly. “And Yoongi, briefly.”

“Ah, yes. The Mins were disappointed in the absence of their son as well,” his father acknowledges.

“We went to the Ring earlier to discuss terms. He had to be there.”

His father lets the excuse hang in the air for a bit. “Schedule your beatingsaround events from now on, would you? I need at least one presentable child around influential people.”

Jungkook allows his eyes to finally meet his father’s, struggles to keep the contempt away from himself whenever there is a mention of his sister in their conversations.

“Did you hear me, Jungkook?” he insists.

Tightly, he says, “Yes. I will.” His tongue pokes out, goes briefly across his lips. “May I be excused now? I am slightly tired.”

“As long as we’re clear.”

“We’re clear,” Jungkook responds automatically. His father lifts a hand, waves it dismissively. Jungkook bows, keeping eye contact.

He spins and goes to leave, but his father’s voice stops him in his tracks. “Oh, and Jungkook.” He pauses, sigh on his lips, eyes falling shut.

“Yes.”

“Would you make sure the maid is paid on Sunday? Neither I nor your mother will be available, and she takes weekly payments in cash.”

“The maid?” Jungkook pauses, thinks. “Kim Ji-woo cleans for us, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t keep account of the names of the help.”

Jungkook twists his head, arches an eyebrow. “Not even for Kim Junsu’s daughter?” he pipes.

His father lights a cigar. “Hm. Cannot keep track of the bastard’s children. Poor people do reproduce like bunnies, don’t they? How many did he have again?”

“Four,” Jungkook replies.

“That’s four too many.”

Jungkook hums in agreement and turns. He leaves next, going for his room. Down the marble corridor he pauses. He hesitates in front of his sister’s room, lingers, eyes root to the door. It intimidates him in a sort of way that he is unfamiliar with and, frankly, unready to address. It takes him a moment, but he pokes his tongue in his cheek, rolls his eyes and goes in.

She is sprawled on the disproportionally enormous bed, her body looking tiny on top of engulfing sheets; she almost disappears within them, but he comes closer and sees her distinctively, her hair long on her back, clad in something expensive and decent, he imagines it was demanded of her to wear. Her breathing is slow, her pose does not seem to be too comfortable, but he can guess she is too trashed to care.

He comes close, crouches by her bed, studies her from there. She has her head on her hands and her eyes shut, hair ruffles from the poof of her soft breath, falls in stranded waves in front of her face. It is instinctive of him to reach up and move it behind her ear.

Her eyes part with his touch and he pulls his arm back, lets it hover in the air above her. Her lids bat, once, twice, before she can fully keep them opened, one slightly squished by her position. Her eyes are bloodshot.

Jungkook lets his hand fall back to his side.

“Hey,” he says softly as their eyes meet. He stretches his lips pointlessly into his cheeks, though they both know it is not a smile.

Hers is. It is weak and barely there, but it is genuine. “Hey, Kook,” she rasps.

“How are you,” he asks carefully, “Clo?”

Her eyes fall closed for a moment and Jungkook wonders if she briefly falls asleep just then. They part again and dart across his face numbly. After a second of silent gazing, she moves her hand, reaches a finger towards his face, but he flinches before she can touch him, and she lets it drop on the bed with a soft thud. “You’re bruising,” she tells him.

He looks at her eyes, first at the both of them, then focuses on one. “So are you,” he replies.

The weak stretch of her lips is no more; her mouth recoils briefly into itself. Her stare has no focus, but then she looks at him bravely. Her voice is all she can manage, “He only hit once, don’t worry.”

His response is sharper than he means, almost like an exhale. “Once?”

“Yes,” she confirms, nods.

Jungkook breathes heavy, sucks his lips between his teeth. He looks away, shakes his head, darts his eyes all across her room, her expensive, exquisite, rich fucking room, with all those expensive thingsin it, furniture, art, goddamn vases with all these decorative flowers. He has that, all that, as many fake flowers as he fucking wants, he can probably buy all the fake flowers in Korea.

And Clo has a bruising on her face and it is in the shape of a ring he has on his finger, one his father has, too, one she herself owns, but never wears.

“Someday…” Jungkook says, trails off. He does not mean to trail off, he actually wants to finish the sentence for once, but she catches he can’t yet and interrupts him.

“I know, Jungkook. I know,” she whispers. “Not today, though, Kook.”

His tongue pokes between his lips. He thinks. “Clo—”

“It’s fine.” She smiles again, but this time it is more like Jungkook’s smile. “I’m tired now, Kook. You can go to sleep.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?” He asks.

“Probably not,” she responds, and her eyes fall shut.

He nods although she is already out of it and he gets up and leaves.

“Are you dancing tonight?” Taehyung asks Jimin as he watches him change in a private room of the Ozone. “Or just doing the bar?” He is toying with a delicate chain that has a jewel bunny in the end and fell off one of Jimin’s outfits, whipping it up and down with brisk motions of his wrist, slapping it Into his forearm. It has gone red now in a circular shape near a vein. His eyes stay centered on the angered skin.

Jimin does his buttons. “Dancing,” he replies.

Taehyung lifts a brow. “That’s three shifts in a row now,” he acknowledges with a slight pout. His legs are stretched long in front of him, heals digging in an excessively furry carpet near a suspicious spot. His ass is propped on the arm of the leather couch and if it weren’t for the friction provided to his feet, he might have been toppling to the floor.

“I need extra tips,” Jimin says, fixing something on his costume. He glances at Taehyung in acknowledgment, but the other is still too engrossed by the jewel slamming accurately in the exact same spot over and over again. “Rent is coming.”

“So I hear,” Taehyung snorts, and Jimin lifts a brow, but there is some particular deflation in the scrunch of Taehyung’s nose and the following expression of inexpression that keeps him off of questioning the comment.

“You know you can actually sit on the couch, right?” Jimin asks instead, lips tilting slightly at Taehyung’s awkward and muscle activity demanding position.

He finally receives a stare, one of glaring horror, from his friend, as his eyes, quick and wide and bewildered meet his. “And catch AIDS?” His voice is expressively high. He returns his gaze to its previous indulgence. “No, thanks.”

Jimin’s eyes roll naturally. “Taehyung, for the I don’t know which time, that is not what these rooms are for.”

“Then why is there a couch here?” Taehyung challenges.

“So people can sit?” Jimin says, filling his voice with sheer, ironing obviousness.

Taehyung lets his eyes play again, this time smirking when they meet Jimin’s, lips indulging as well, twisting at edges. He looks a bit devilish when he makes such expressions and Jimin often thinks with the assets Taehyung was born into physically, he could play his cards a lot more sinister. “What, while other people ride them?”

Jimin nears him, uses the fabric he has in his hands to slap at him. It sounds in the air as Jimin laughs. “Filthy,” he calls Taehyung, eyes playful on him and smile fighting hard to spread on his face, dubiously entertained, yet certainly fond.

“Rich,” Taehyung retorts, “coming from you.”

He grips at the fabric when Jimin attempts to hit him again, and he tugs, pulling the other forward unexpectedly until he loses his balance and awkwardly stumbles. He catches himself by instinctively stretching an arm, pressing it into Taehyung’s shoulder, which falters slightly under the weight of holding him up. His legs spread, each one on each side of Taehyung.

“Do you want me in your lap, Tae?” Jimin teases, voice slick. “Is that what this is about?”

“Please,” Taehyung peels Jimin’s hand off of his shoulder easily as the other straightens up, walking backwards. “Don’t project your desires on me.”

Jimin smacks him successfully this time. “I have to go,” he tells him. “I don’t imagine you’re staying here?”

“No,” Taehyung stands on his feet now. “I give it half an hour until someone busts in to introduce more curious spots on the carpet. It’s dangerous.”

Jimin shakes his head, sighs, as he’s walking out. “I can’t keep you company, though, for at least two hours. You’ll be fine at the bar, yeah?”

“I’m a big boy, hyung. Worry not,” Taehyung assures, following him out.

“I’m not worried,” Jimin says, a little low considering they are walking towards the hard thump of the music.

“What was that?” Taehyung hums, lips rubbing together.

“I’m not worried,” Jimin repeats. “I don’t worry.”

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay.” He chooses to agree, letting as little irony as possible seep into his response. He doesn’t worry either. It’s a rule, unspoken rule, but it’s a palpable, well-established one. He doesn’t worry. No one here worries. No one here cares. It’s the Ozone and the Ozone is in Richhood and Richhood is no place for the personality and inter-personal indulgences of worrying.

When Jimin leaves him at the bar and goes to dance, Taehyung drinks as he always does. He gets approached as he always does and he flirts as he always does. He tilts his head back, downs a shot, pouring it down his throat, trying hard not to let the liquid make actual contact with his tongue. As he always does.

And when he gulps it down easily and straightens up, when he shakes thick strands of hair out of his face, he lets his eyes wander. As he always does.

He tells himself he is not searching for anything explicitly, not for anyone, certainly, though the part of him that worries someone will steal Jimin’s tips straight out of his pocket like it happened last week, knows very well his sights are set. He glances at a boot up on the podium, the type of booth that they keep reserved, which tonight plays host to Min Yoongi and Jung Hoseok. It’s just them tonight and some faceless, nameless people, Taehyung doesn’t recognize and neither Yoongi nor Hoseok will remember.

He rests his forearm on the bar, sighs. The bartender for the night is handing him another drink that he is happily taking.

“Taehyung,” he thinks a voice sounds over the overwhelming thump of the music. It is the type of music that will make him have problems hearing when he leaves. The type that forces his heart to beat in accordance of its beat.

He feels a touch to his shoulder, delicate and almost there, so different to all the shoves he has dealt with in this night, and he tenses. A body presses in his back, flush and tight, the shape of a woman fills in awkwardly with his back, her warm breasts too close, too relieved. Her breath is on his neck and her arms wrap around his waist, fingers draw on his arm, making hairs stand up before they reach his wrist. She squeezes and tugs.

“Taehyung,” she says again, and this time he is certain his name has sounded; he feels it, the vibration rubbing into his back as she does. “I have something to ask you, Taehyung.”

Her body disappears, but her grip on his wrist stays and she rotated him with her motion. Her voice is almost ominous with how much it feels like a whisper when it is a shout.

Taehyung already knows what he will see when he turns, but still when his eyes find Jungkook leaning on the bar behind Julia, he tenses further.

Jungkook has one hand loose on Julia’s waist while the arm of the other is fully lounging on the counter next to him, fingers wrapped around a glass with no ice and lots of liquid. The fabric of his simple clothes fits into him right, tight and flattering on top of his form, buttons popped on top, sinewy neck revealed as well as the top of his chest. Taehyung does not know if he can get used to the sharpness of his features, to the strictness of his eyes, so blank of anything, yet utterly demanding.

They are on Taehyung, and he can’t really think properly while that stays such, not when he is wondering if he smells the same as he did the other day, deliciously, explicitly masculine, if, were Taehyung wearing a tie astray, he would fix it again, if his body would mould better against Taehyung’s back than Julia’s just did. He imagines it would, snug and hard.

Julia tightens her grip on his wrist, her nails digging into skin and he breaks eyes contact, pulls his eyes away, though Jungkook keeps his in place. Taehyung looks at her. She looks a little dead.

She pulls at him and he follows because Jungkook spins and walks. Taehyung’s eyes stay on his back for the duration of the awkward, panic-inducing walk. The lights are going insane to fit the upbeat music and each time they change so do the shapes on his shirt, moving over his shoulders.

They take him to a room much nicer than the one Jimin uses to change his clothes. It has a couch as well,  some mirrors and chairs, an even furrier rug. It’s tastefully colorful, feels perfectly with the extravagant richness of the Ozone, designed perfectly to fit the vibe and style of those who perpetuate it.

Jungkook is the one to open the door and, after Julia takes him to the center of the room, he is the one to close it. He does not venture into the room as his girlfriend does. Rather, he chooses to remain by the door, leaning on the surface, hard eyes finding Taehyung and he has never felt so trapped.

He is actually beginning to feel the commencement of fear, a cold sensation that is most palpable in his tummy and on his neck.

Taehyung would not have been able to imagine it if it had been left to his creativity, but now with clear lightning and the music only a numbed memory that tries to force itself through the door, Jungkook’s eyes are worse. His continuous vibe of lazy arrogance is particularly intimidating that day, stare hard and dark, though it holds a glint of something almost fiery. An actual expression on his face is nearly non-existent. His features are set into the way they have been perfectly molded and he is nearly reminiscent of a statue to Taehyung.

He holds himself so casual, back against the door, arms folded, yet his vibrates something intrinsically dominant and captivating, and Taehyung is striving hard to look at Julia, who is clearly after his attention. He wants to allow them to perpetuate their shared belief that it is Julia who draws Taehyung’s eyes for inappropriate amounts of time, but the compulsion of Jungkook’s demanding stare feels impossible to evade until she speaks.

“Have you been here before, Taehyung?” She asks, voice light and pitched and very much rehearsed. She speaks like a character from a movie, reading off of a script, with a lilt so pointedly nuanced into feigned innocence that Taehyung worries she is unreal.

“No,” he says and he fails to keep the shake from his voice, though he is not entirely sure he is trying. Intimidated, he is. He is not particularly surprised at their approach, had been apprehensively anticipating it ever since Jungkook’s confrontation in the café. “I don’t know why I’m here now, either.”

His eyes fall on Julia’s and she smiles a smile so gentle. There is a pause as he does and he has the instinct to look back at Jungkook, ask him with his eyes, though he realizes it is ridiculous to expect an answer.

Jungkook has been so quiet, he is mostly a presence, an incredibly enthralling, slightly hostile, mostly neutral presence.

“Do you think I’m beautiful, Taehyung?” She asks, still using that fabricated innocent femininity and Taehyung gapes, at a loss for words. It is harder now for him not to look at Jungkook — he feels he needs permission for whatever his answer might be. Julia cocks her head at his hesitance, pouts, though she does not mean it. “I think you’re incredibly beautiful,” she tells him.

Taehyung can only blink for a bit. Eyes dart to Jungkook with one of the helpless flutters of his lids, but it is so quick he does not properly see him.

He has been called pretty boy many times. He has never been called beautiful.

“I,” he stutters, lets the pronoun hang in the air.

“Be honest,” Julia instructs, prompting him softly.

“Yes,” he gulps, after a beat. “You’re marvelous,” he tells her and she is, but he does not particularly care; she’s beautiful and it is undeniable, but she has nothing that captures his attention.

“Oh,” she says, her smile spreads. She takes a step forward. “Can I ask you to do me a favor, Taehyung?”

His heart drops. His eyes fly instinctively to Jungkook, wide and perplexed, scared, almost. He thinks he sees the other guy’s chin move in a nod, but he could be wrong, takes it as such anyway.

“I, uhm,” he is still stuttering and it is embarrassing, though he does not think he has been anything but in front of this couple. “What could you possibly want from me?”

He allows his genuine curiosity and surprise shine through the question. She chuckles at this, but stops before the sound feels naturally completed. “You’d be surprised,” she tells him, bites her li, puts her arms behind her back, stares at the floor. She forms the perfect imagery of an innocent girl and it is borderline ridiculous that he can see her nipples through the dress she is wearing. “I want you to watch Jungkook fuck me, Taehyung.”

His jaw drops. Her lashes bat. Jungkook does not move a muscle.

“I— you, what?”

“It’s what I want,” she says, simple as that, and in retrospect, he supposes it is simple: people do just want things at times, independent of their opinions, what they think is right or wrong, what they want to want. “It’s what I want,” she repeats.

He has stilled completely. He knew the answer before she asked the question, because he has no interest in Jungkook rearranging his face.

He has not processed it well, not processed the fact that maybe he wants it a little as well, when the word leaves his mouth, hopefully definitively.

“No.”

Julia arches a brow. “No?” Her attitude does not change despite his denial and it is a worrying indication for him that he is not being convincing enough.

He feels hot again, is pretty sure there is perspiration layering his neck, maybe his forehead a bit, and not just from the heat of the Ozone. His eyes peek at Jungkook for help, but find none, only newfound entertainment at his discomfort.

“No,” he repeats.

“Why?” She says, childish curiosity layering her voice. It makes his ears burn hot.

“Because I…” his eyes find Jungkook’s again for the merest second and he wonders how quickly he would have said no if he hadn’t approached him, if he would have said no at all. He scrunches his brows. “Why would I?”

Julia hums, takes a step towards him. She reaches, her nail falling on his chest and teasing along its length. Three pairs of eyes follow the motion. Taehyung’s heart is rapid underneath the feel of it and the scrutiny it causes.

“What if…” she trails off, voice syncing with the movement of her finger. It drops off of him when it reaches too low and their eyes meet simultaneously. He can feel her breath on him and it is almost as tangible as Jungkook's stare. “What if you get your sister’s monthly pay for doing it?" She pauses and her when she hums in question and begins again, her voice twists higher in a textbook definition of manipulation. "For sitting in a chair and watching something you’re only pretending you don’t want to because it feels wrong?”

Her eyes search his and his search hers. Wheels turn in his mind like insane.

Money. It’s the dirtiest thing she could have offered and simultaneously and most sadly, it is the one thing to unfailingly grab his attention.

His sister’s monthly pay on top of what the both of them usually make? For them, that would be a small fortune. He can replace the stove with that; he can pay his part for next month’s rent as well and keep a bit for severe cases. He can buy Woowoo that toy he forgets that all the other kids in his group have but he doesn’t.

Her palm lays on his chest and, though it is warm, it is not nearly as scorching as Jungkook’s brief pat felt the other day. “Think about it,” she tells him, barely above a whisper.

She can see his hesitation. It is written on his face that the no from before is now shaping into a maybe in his head. It is enough to allow the smirk to linger on her lips. 

She leaves him with the words and spins and goes, a small smirk finding itself on her mouth. Jungkook’s hand is on the doorknob, he’s already twisting it and Julia is nearly there, they have both nearly left, each of them self-satisfied for a different reason with an underlying conviction of their own -- one about to be broken -- and then Taehyung’s voice sounds before he has really made up his mind.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“What?” Jungkook snarls, snaps, head whipping and a powerful glare landing on Taehyung at the same time that Julia spins with a much calmer “what” of her own.

Taehyung ignores Jungkook’s burning eyes and instead indulges Julia’s smirking stare with all he has. “I’ll do it,” he repeats. “If you pay me, I’ll watch you.”

“Good choice, pretty boy,” she tells him, smiles, almost genuinely. For a second, she looks less dead. “We’ll be in touch.” With that she spins, she leaves.

Jungkook holds the door open for her. His eyes are dead set on Taehyung and all his previous nuances of almost fear have now gathered and shaped into a complete and utter horror. Taehyung is terrified.

“We’ll be in touch,”Jungkook tells him, promises through gritted teeth. It is a clear threat and it does not fail to send shivers down Taehyung’s spine.

The door slams and he jumps. With the ring of it, the fact settles into his head, that he got himself into his biggest trouble yet.

Chapter Text

Taehyung barely manages to open the door, labeled staff only,when he is roughly shoved back inside. The door slams shut again, but not before someone who is certainly not staff enters the small space of the storage room.

Small?It is tiny now, feelstiny, not enough space to properly breathe actual air, as his body meets some metal shelving, digs into skin and bones and meat. It will likely mark with the force ofthe collision, but physical pain is not what he can focus on as a hand grips his chin, fingers cold and bruising, much too tight on his jaw. He holds Taehyung’s face in place, makes eye contact unavoidable as he closes in.

“What the fuck,Kim?” his voice is not the shout he was expecting, not the angry snarl from the previous day. Rather it is a calculated demand, slow, low and chilling, deep and almost guttural.

Taehyung knew he would face the wrath of Jeon Jungkook after his rashly made morally dubious decision, which, he reasons with himself, was the right choice. He does not know what is going on between Jungkook and Julia and nor does he wish to – which is maybe not the mostaccurate statement, but he settles for it. All he does know is he will get an overly generous amount of money to satisfy a rich kid’s whim borne out of a peculiar perversion of some sort, the analysis of which is not in his domain of interests. Where his interest lies is, he simply has to be presentfor an act that, while admittedly potentially disturbing, will unlikely last over an hour to receive full month’s salary. It is not like he has to partake; his conscience, as desperate as him to maybe not eat nearly raw eggs for a day or two, dictates there is nothing illogical in the decision he made, taking everything into consideration.

Except of course, the factor of the worryingly violent, well-muscled other party affected in his decision-making process, who is currently shoving him into shelves and cornering him tight.

He does not touch his body to his, not this time, stands close enough to feel and put into proportion in Taehyung’s impulsive head the sheer difference of their sizes. His shoulders are broad, and his hold is unwavering.

His eyes are as ever demanding, hard when they bore into Taehyung, pierce into him more brutal than the accompanying scathing hiss of his voice. One is slightly swollen, purplish and yellow, and Taehyung has the most ridiculousintuition to ask what happened. He remembers Ji-woo telling him of her own meddling into his hurt, that he does not particularly enjoy it – though, quite frankly, he doesn’t seem the type-- and Taehyung has already done enough to initiate a beating for himself – he certainly does not need to give him another reason to slap him around some more. Most importantly, he shouldn’t careabout Jeon Jungkook’s swollen eye.

“I—” Taehyung attempts to begin, but Jungkook takes a single step forward that almost seals their bodies together, leaves just a breath of space. Taehyung’s back arches at an awkward angle, the edge of the shelf digging painfully into his skin. His hands grip onto the lower shelf, squeeze tightly until their knuckles turn white to distract him from other sensations coursing through his body.

“I asked you for one thing, Kim,” Jungkook interrupts, hisses.

Taehyung grits his teeth, attempts to shake his grip off, but Jungkook persists, tightens. “You asked,” Taehyung confirms. The sound of his words mimics the intonation of the other’s hiss, hostility too much for the confines of such a tiny space. “She’s paying.”

His musing from the day before are answered. Jungkook smells the same, expensive and masculine and a little sweaty. He reeks of testosterone, Taehyung formulates, not just in his scent, in his stance as well, all physical and threatening, gripping at him, bending him to his will. Taehyung’s alert, aware of it, of him, of how close his body is and how warm his breath feels on his lips, how even and controlled his breathing is despite the confrontation, juxtaposed to Taehyung’s labored exhales and thumping heart. It annoys him, really, that he can remain so calm.

Jungkook’s proximity holds a worrying mixture of intimidation and allure. Taehyung refuses to consciously acknowledge that the heat of his tangible presence brings more than infinite dread.

His head cocks and he sneers, “Should’ve known you would be easy to buy.” His next sentence is alike a spit. “You’re a Kim.”

Kim. There it is. A Kim. The Kims. He’s one of them.

Taehyung’s eyes narrow. Distaste pulls at his mouth, causes his lips to edge down. “If you think youropinion on my poverty means anything to me, you’re dead wrong.”

Jungkook shakes his head as if in disappointed disbelief, his tongue peeks out slightly, pokes at where his upper lip meets his teeth.

“Why are the poor so fucking self-righteous?”

Taehyung scoffs. “Why are the rich so fucking entitled?” He retaliates. Jungkook’s eyes are sharp on him when he continues. “I don’t owe you anything, Jungkook-ssi.” He tries to pull his head away again, but Jungkook’s fingers tighten in a warning before they relax against his skin slightly, just hold him. “Unless you pay me. Which your girlfriend will be doing, so if you have problems with that, hit her, not me.”

Taehyung half expects to be hit at this point, almost flinches as he speaks. Instead, Jungkook smirks. His voice drops a note when he talks next, reaches its usual laziness and more. His eyes drop as well, dart across Taehyung’s face as he loosens his grip on it further to reveal it fully. His touch is barely there by that point, fingers ghosting over skin and it is almost gentle. Taehyung does actually flinch when his thumb glides across the line of his jaw, and Jungkook’s lip twitches in amusement at his reaction. “You’re mouthy today, aren’t you?” he questions lightly, it is near a whisper and Taehyung pauses in his venture of response, though he has a couple of things in mind, stiffens both at the unexpected sound of it and when Jungkook’s eyes pointedly drop to his mouth, a thumb sliding underneath it on his chin. With the same tantalizingly gentle voice, he whispers, “It really sucks your face is too pretty to ruin. Julia would be so mad.”

His eyes dart upwards again, meet Taehyung’s widened gaze, scrutinize subtly every feature of his face and the way they would twist at his handling or words. Taehyung feels just a bit like he’s on fire under those eyes. They’re a powerful set, dark and deep and demanding, yet possessing the eeriest sense of playfulness. They tease him, without even fully intending to, it seems, and Taehyung hates them.

“You really need to sort shit out with her, don’t you?” Taehyung says, and he attempts to layer his voice with a bite but is unsure it is successful.

Jungkook’s face is way too fucking close. He realizes the proximity of it is threatening, a statement of its own to stand near enough to breathe on his skin, to almost brush the tips of their noses, but to Taehyung it simultaneously feels like more, and he hates that, too.

“It’s none of your business,” his mouth says it to him, but it his eyes that spell it out.

Still, Taehyung cannot resist the rashness of his own tongue. “You’re makingit my business.” He can’t see why not, really, Jungkook had already stated his face would not be rearranged – too pretty.

The skin of it where Jungkook’s fingers still slightly ghost feels scorching. Jungkook’s head cocks. The neutrality of his set face is troubling to Taehyung, who is perfectly sure he reads like an open book, has always been cursed with expressive features, the vulnerability of which always most palpable and dangerous in Richhood.

“You could have said no,” Jungkook says calmly, yet Taehyung can almost feel the rumble of his chest against his, just a breath of an air, really, between Jungkook’s Egyptian cotton and Taehyung’s polyester.

Taehyung shakes his head as much as Jungkook’s loose grip would allow him. He does not know why in that moment he tries to genuinely reason, lets honesty soak through his words, though Jungkook could never understand. “I needto say yes.”

Jungkook’s eyes harden. “Are you sure you’re just not using your poverty as an excuse to watch my girlfriend naked?”

Taehyung breathes, the exhale of his angered disappointment flowing through his parted lips and directly into Jungkook’s and he hopes the other can taste it on his tongue, though he understands that would be giving him too much credit into the ability to empathize. His eyes narrow and as honesty does not seem to work – and as Taehyung does not have the capacity or trust for more in the presence of the rich – he resorts to spiteful hostility. “Maybe if you satisfied her better, your girlfriend wouldn’t want meto watch her naked.”

It leaves his mouth and Jungkook moves quick enough for Taehyung to know it is not fully conscious. His body closes in further, thigh forces its way between his legs as his elbow and the length of his arm press sharply into his chest under the ministration of his hand, fingers, quick and agile, wrapping around his neck. The pads of his digits squeeze into flesh and his palm digs forward into his jugular. Taehyung’s hand flies up instinctively, latches around what he can of Jungkook’s forearm, though it is trapped flush between their chests. His eyes go wide as the heat of shock and fear grips him, running over the length of his body almost like a current. He can feel his throat constrain around a choke, but the other’s grip is not truly hard enough to take his breath, just brusque enough to surprise and scare, and when Taehyung’s lips part to gasp for the air he is afraid to be rid of, instead they expel a subtle, quiet moan.

Jungkook’s mouth had previously opened to prepare for retaliation, but as the sound hits his senses, the breath of it hot on his skin, he pauses. The boy in his rough hold visibly stiffens. Taehyung is engulfed by nerves of a nature that is not exactly clear to him as he stares, eyes wide and perplexed as Jungkook watches him. Those eyes, those eyes that he hates, study his face, dart across it with a quiet, bemused interest, still not entirely rid of their lazy, arrogant indifference, though it is subdued by a small betrayal of curiosity. They are slow in their exploration of his features and completely shameless, unadulterated, bold, charting across as if they have the right to be exposed to each sentiment of Taehyung’s newly emerged vulnerability.

The gaze is as scorching as the grip still firm on his neck, as the thigh still pressed into him to keep him in place. Taehyung squeezes at the other’s forearm and it is a plea that Jungkook uncaringly ignores. He is fully engrossed now in scanning every inch of Taehyung he can cover with his scathing eyes, his face a mask that Taehyung loathes.    

It doesn’t mean anything. None of it does, nothing in this interaction means absolutely anything, because Taehyung said yes and no matter what confrontation he is promised enough money to perpetuate that answer. So Jungkook’s hand on his neck and body on his means nothing; in a moment it will be gone and then, forgotten. Jungkook won’t remember that when he squeezed his neck, Taehyung moaned, because Jungkook doesn’tcare. And Taehyung won’t as well, because, as much as he is aware what implications it may have, he also knows the truth of it was just a peculiarly shaped gasp of pain and shock and nothing more.

It doesn’t matter how Jungkook’s body feels on his, because the heat is fear and the palpitations in his heart is stress. Because no matter what twisted interest he has taken in Jungkook’s outward physique, no matter what curiosity he feels towards him, Taehyung likes to be inside of girlsand thinks nothing of the leg Jungkook has between his – all it is is discomfort. He thinks nothing of how easy Jungkook can manhandle him – it’s derogatory, nothing unexpected of the rich towards him. He thinks nothing of Jungkook’s eyes taking in his entire being right about now, pausing at his foolish mouth through which the cursed sound had been evoked, as all Taehyung could do is breath through parted lips and helplessly stare back.

The poor’s life is as ever in the hands of the rich. The silence kills him, and he needs to have the other one distracted.

“I don’t care to see your girlfriend naked,” he partially says, partially croaks out, voice rough and breathy.

Jungkook’s eyes dart up at the sound of his voice. He is still quiet, awfully quiet, though his eyes speak volumes, which remain nonsensical to Taehyung, coded in a language he can’t learn to read.  He still voices nothing as his fingers tentatively tighten around Taehyung’s neck. He watches his face contort, features twisting dubiously, lids struggling not to meet. He hasto keep his stare, but teeth take his lip, bite down into the tissue until Jungkook loosens his grip.

Taehyung instinctively loosens the one he has on his forearm, realizes he might have been squeezing there too hard, using his unevenly cut nails, and worries he might have left marks that would remind Jungkook of this, but then reasons Jungkook is probably in the capacity to ignore any scar if he wills it, and summon any inexistent one on Taehyung’s skin to remain in the position he is in.

Jungkook shakes his head suddenly, nose scrunches up, creating lines between his eyes, and the atmosphere in the room twists and bends to his bidding – as does Taehyung’s body. “What’s wrong with you, Kim?” Jungkook snarls and releases him, steps away.

It can mean anything, and, honestly, too many things are wrong with Taehyung for him to answer, so he remains silent, still in his position reminiscent of that of a cornered animal. He has the urge to touch his neck where Jungkook’s hold had been, but he resists it, stares ahead instead.

“Get your money,” Jungkook tells him, cold, firm and dismissive. “After that, stop fucking watching us.”

Us, he says, not her. And then he leaves.

Ji-woo is almost done, fortunately, when Jeon Jungkook enters his kitchen and clears his throat.

She is wearing the uniform required of her agency, playing as a docile maid, almost ridiculous and movielike, so stereotypical it reminds her of the costume of the service in The Sims. She is wiping at his table, body bent awkwardly, arm stretched to cover as much mahogany as possible from one and the same position.

She straightens up at the sound he makes to announce his presence, retracts her arms protectively into herself, instinctively moving behind the cover of a chair. Working for her particular agency, she has met enough brats that sexualize her uniform and think fit to make advances with the rationale they are paying. Though the few times she has encountered the younger Jeon he, unlike his despicable father, has never laid even an eye on her, it is second nature for her to be protective of her appearance in front of male clients. And bending over a table is a no go for her.

He’s bruised, it’s the first thing she notices. His neck is layered with several marks, reddish and purple in color, mapped on his skin, there to stay as reminders of something privy to him and whoever left them – and Ji-woo would assume it was Julia, but it is never a safe guess with people like Jungkook. He is sporting a blue eye as well, a bruise of a completely different character, but it sits less angry on his skin.

“Good day, Jungkook-ssi,” she addresses and bows down in greeting. She is slightly apprehensive as to why he would take the time to notify her of his presence, seeing as he usually treats her like excessive furniture.

His response is a nod, more than his father is willing to give and she attempts to pull her lips in a smile. He steps forward, and she tells herself to stay in place. He is impressive as is his sister, both in looks and in talent, and it is hard for Ji-woo not to acknowledge this, no matter how perfectly cold and distant the Taunting Twins are. Of all their talents widely known, in sports, in music, academics, thisshe is most envious of, their ability to completely detach.

He continues stepping closer and remains obediently in place until he makes his pause a couple of steps from her. He has a presence and a stance that is naturally intimidating, fed well with his physique, but Ji-woo has spent her entire life being intimidated and by now for her it has lost its significance.

He reaches a hand into his back pocket, fishes out a wallet of some coarse material, all simple and black with the expectance of the Louis Vuitton logo embraided in the corner. She goes off as she always does, wondering for how long her family and her can survive on the price of an object as simple as this, as he peeks at his insides, counts some notes, gathers them into his hand and then stretches them towards her.

“This will be for your service for the week,” he tells her.

She takes them, bows again, smiles in truth this time now with the notes secure in her fingers. “Thank you,” she says, pitched work voice easily falling through her lips. “I’m almost done. I’ll be leaving in a bit.” She informs him out of habit, though she doesn’t suppose he cares. His penthouse is big enough for him to avoid her presence completely if he wills it.

She bows at him again, conclusively, and twists with the intention to continue her work, though in mind of her position, careful not to do anything that could be in any way assumed provocative. It doesn’t matter really, the perversion and entitlement of some of the rich can sickeningly twist any small indication into sexual. She is used to their lewdness.

She has taken advantage of it, as rare as she can, but she has. There was shame tied in with this fact of her life once, but shame is not something she can afford.

“Is my sister in?” Jungkook’s voice is nearly startling for her. She does not expect a conversation with him.

“I believe she’s asleep,” Ji-woo responds honestly. She had had to spit the girl’s room for the day with her cleaning, as the Taunting Twin had been plastered on the sheets, nearly bare, her clothing half-way off and a little ripped. Asleep, Ji-woo says, but she is almost convinced the young girl was passed out.

Jungkook nods, and she expects he will walk away after, but he lingers. Her ears and the corner of her eyes track his movements as he strolls towards the fridge, takes out something that sounds like a can when he pops it opened and leans against a counter. She’s uncomfortably aware of the younger’s presence, mainly in how atypical it is, wishes he would leave, though when she chances a glance, she can see he is on his phone, not looking at her.

In a mediocre attempt to ignore him, she focuses on wiping his table.

“Is that how much all families pay you for weeklies?” his voice sounds and Ji-woo’s eye shoot to him, narrowing. His are still on the device in his hand.

“Excuse me?” She straightens up, one hand automatically clutching at her hip. She squeezes it to remind herself to be careful with him, though she can’t help the animosity that falls through her voice. His had been neutral if anything, but to her it sounds like accusation and if he dares to insinuate she is taking too much from them she will be ready to beat his ass with his fucking Louis Vuitton wallet no matter how many muscles he has.

He looks up briefly. “Can’t really be enough to look after a household,” he acknowledges, and it could have come across empathetic, but he makes sure it doesn’t.

His eyes are back on his phone and Ji-woo studies him for a moment before she decides it’s pointless, he gives nothing away other than sheer brattiness. She shrugs her shoulders, “Taehyungie works as well,” she tells him, though she regrets it as soon as it comes out of her mouth. She is always hesitant in mentioning anything about her family around her clients.

“Taehyung?” his eyes are back on her and his voice is slow as he lets the name roll on his tongue. She does not like the way he says it, does not think he has any place speaking it, especially as ominously as he does.

“My baby brother,” Ji-woo says, though she knows Jungkook knows exactly who Kim Taehyung is. Everyone knows who each of the Kims are, and she’s always hated that. “He waits at Rouge,” she continues, though her client is well aware of that as well. She’s sure Taehyung has served him enough times for him to take note that he is being waited by aKim.

Jungkook nods. The pause that follows is long enough for her to finish up the table. “Does he fuck girls, your baby brother?”

Her brusque, sharp ‘What?’ is spluttered out of her mouth as soon as his words register. Wide eyes search for his, but he is once again taken with his phone.

“You heard me.”

She blinks at him, at his boldness. “What sort of question is that?” her client voice is replaced by shrillness she can’t control.

His eyes jump to hers briefly before returning carelessly to the screen. “He looks a bit like a homo, doesn’t he?”

Her hand is back on her lips and her eyes are narrowed in a lethal glare. “Not that is any of yourbusiness, Jungkook-nim,” she licks her lips. She’s trying to keep her anger low and under control, refuses to hand on a platter another reason for her brother to be the talk of Richhood. His name and salary do enough damage. “But he does fuck girls. Some I would rather he didn’t, honestly.” She lets genuine annoyance at some of her brother’s past rendezvous’ coat her voice, as he does tend to sleep with herfriends, hoping maybe the other would detect it.

She does not know what looking like a homo is supposed to constitute in his limit, rich head, but she refuses to question it. Her brother, she knows, is certainly not one, not a homo and not gay, either.

Jungkook’s brows lift on his forehead. “Hit a nerve?” he teases, is arrogant enough to even tease with indifference.

Ji-woo cocks her head, scoffs. “My responsibilities here are done for the day, sir, so if you’ll excuse me.” He doesn’t excuse her, but he doesn’t stop her, either, so she gathers her belongings from their marble hallway and leaves.  

Chapter Text

Taehyung was well aware of the hatred he harbored for Jeon Jungkook’s eyes, but he could have never really imagined what the extent of it was until he met them while he was fucking his girlfriend.

Taehyung receives a message from an unknown phone number at noon on one of his free days. As soon as his phone vibrates, his heart squeezes in itself. He has not opened the notification yet, but he feels weirdly uncomfortable at merely receiving it. He isn’t usually superstitious, but there is some unpleasant giddiness disturbing his chest and his hollow stomach as he feels the device. He straightens up in his lounging position, preps himself, once he’s sat properly, he does not feel ready per se, but he sees no point in waiting. Then he opens it.

Letters stare at him. Bright and numbing, he sees the words on his flashing screen. It’s ridiculous how something as simple as a text message can carry an ambiance that is this intimidating. Maybe he’s just broken now, maybe Jungkook squeezed at his neck too hard and somehow, he popped a braincell too many.

The words are very simple. The Executive Tower. Room 7.13. Saturday. 22.00

The message is signed a very simple ‘J’and it could mean both Julia or Jungkook, but either makes his heart swell and tremble worryingly into his chest and drives him to be peculiarly aware of the tonsils in his throat, which feel weirdly large in their confines. He swallows in attempt to make them settle.

It is obvious to him what the message refers to and his eyes bulge a bit at the destination the pair have chosen, though retrospectively, he shouldn’t be surprised. Jungkook’s a Jeon and Julia’s a Seung. He briefly catered for an event in the Executive Tower once, knows the prices range from 400,000 won a night to about a million. A greedy, curious part of him wants to go solely for the purpose of witnessing such luxury. He remembers he had entertained the idea of trying to sneak into a room while he was there, absolutely fascinated and intimidated by the sheer glory of the foyer and the restaurant. The world fancy had been engrained in his brain for the whole duration of his busy stay in the premises, though it failed to even begin to describe the quality and nature of his surroundings.

It is fitting, he thinks, that Jungkook and Julia could afford to bask even their perversions in utmost luxury.

Taehyung already knows he will go. Privately, he sees no chance for him not to. Ji-woo and WooWoo and him, they need those money. Their father has not been home for three weeks and four days now – Taehyung counts, and he knows his little brother does as well, he sees the lines he makes on the wooden boards of the top bunk with an especially pointy pen he has. Ji-woo has been working her ass for lately, taking every opportunity her firm gives her to wash more toilets. He knows she is tired, that she hardly eats so that there is more food for Woo and himself, that the stress and desperation attached to sense of responsibility drives her into making harsh, rash decisions which get people talking, calling her names that reach Taehyung’s ears. He knows the rumors, knows even that some of them are true.

He hasto go. That is not what worries him. Rather it is the fact, he wantsto.

His rationale is a strange mixture of flattery and curiosity, to the extent he is willing to admit to himself. He does not want to entertain even as privately as it is in the very personal confines of his own brain, how much his ridiculous and inexplicable fascination with Jungkook is at play in the formation of the realization.

He is nervous, and he is guilty. When Ji-woo smiles at him on Saturday morning before she leaves to go to work, he feels an encompassing sensation of shame. He knows she has always made bad decisions so that he doesn’t have to, yet here he is, wondering how to fucking dressto play a background role in some exhibitionistic sex fantasy a rich girl can afford to have and act out. He is explicitly aware he is nothing more than a convenient pawn that is, as Jungkook had accused, easy to buy.

He is pretty sure most of the clothing he owns could lead to him being physically kicked out of a place such as The Executive Tower, though Taehyung, considering his budget, is usually distinctively well dressed. He likes clothes, he thinks, sometimes the ones catching his eye being what most would see as ridiculous. His taste is particular. He would love to have the opportunity to explore this peculiar passion, but rationalizes his admiration of purposefully ugly brand clothing is at the lowest on his lists of priorities.

Especially as he enters the foyer of the Executive Tower. Filled with giddy dread, he feels small, insignificant. He’s put on nice, but bleak clothes, yet he still feels immensely out of place. Everything is simply grandiose, huge, towering and tangibly expensive. Radiant and luxurious, and it does not fail to leave Taehyung’s mouth gaping and eyes impossibly wide as soon as he sets foot on the exquisite flooring. He reminds himself not to gawk, to walk, is put at unease as people in suits mostly, pass him, unbothered, thoroughly unimpressed.

A man bows at him as he enters, and, instinctively, he presses his palms together and respectfully reciprocates the gesture, eyes wandering to his feet. When they return to the person’s face, Taehyung recognizes perplexity coloring his features, brows furrowed and nose arched, his heart pumps faster with worry that he had done something wrong.

The beat escalates further when fingers latch around his bicep, tightly, almost painfully, and thug at him with sharpness and strength that propels him forward without a choice. He loses his balance for barely a moment before his footing settles, body thinking quick in result of his countless accidents as a waiter. He is now forced to take quick steps in a direction unbeknownst to him, digits still bruisingly tight around his arm, a body close to his.

“Don’t do fucking full bows for staff, Kim, do you imaginemebowing to you?” Jungkook hisses, speaks mostly through his teeth, lining his mouth with Taehyung’s ear just for the briefness of saying that, but it is enough to elicit goosebumps on the other. He pulls his body away, but keeps his grip, doesn’t trust him to fucking walkwithout assistance. He sets a pace that is just short of running and leads him in a direction he is obviously well familiar with.

“I—” Taehyung attempts to speak, retort, but Jungkook interrupts him brusquely.

“Spare me the excuses and concentrate on walking before someone sees us.”

Taehyung’s mouth smacks shut, eyes rolling. He briefly considers making a scene just in spite of the other’s entitled attitude but concludes he cannot risk the money at the expense of retaliation to someone who will not even care in the end.

Jungkook only affords to let go of him when they step into an elevator that is wonderfully golden and full of mirrors, gives Taehyung the stupid urge to take a selfie. Once the doors of it shut, Jungkook drops his hold with exaggerated mannerisms, as if Taehyung would give him the plague if he touches him for too long. He naturally leans his back onto a wall, props his hands on a railing, after pressing the button, moves around the space with a comfort of familiarity that reminds Taehyung just how different their lives are.

He does not dare lean on a wall, afraid he’ll somehow damage it, but does stand as near as the one opposite from Jungkook as he could just so that he can be the furthest away from Jungkook that is possible.

Taehyung’s eyes center on the floor as he simply refuses to look at Jungkook from such a proximity, reasons he will be doing enough of lookingas the night proceeds, the twisted variation of dread and excitement swelling inside of him as the thought strikes him again. He has been ignoring actively contemplating what it is he is about to take part in -- or witness, he insists -- preferring to just go with it and then forget about it, let his presence in the room be entirely physical and momentary.

Jungkook’s eyes are on him, however. His face is as ever oxymoronically intense and indifferent, though in a moment in twists ever so slightly, brows drawing nearer and lips tilting downwards. He frowns. “What’s with the hair?” he says into the ringing silence of the elevator.

Taehyung’s eyes snap up, hand instinctively flying to grip at some strands at the back of his neck, fingers scratching. He hesitates. “It’s erm, because of my brother,” he settles for after a moment. Normally, he wholeheartedly avoids speaking of his siblings to anyone in Richhood, especially of his brother who is still not as actively labeled a Kim. His family has always been his greatest vulnerability and, naturally, the last person he wants to betray that to is Jeon Jungkook.

Taehyung’s hair is currently painted bright red, which had been WooWoo’s condition for him to forgive him for forgetting about him and practically abandoning him. Supposedly, wearing his favorite color on his hair was a testament for his dedication and love, and when Taehyung kindly explained to him he will likely be kicked straight out of work if he showed up looking like a stop sign, WooWoo justified he could just do it for the weekend. Taehyung agreed, not really considering Jungkook and Julia would see him with it, because quite frankly, WooWoo and Ji are always his number ones.

Jungkook is silent for what feels too long to Taehyung after he acknowledges the hair. His eyes are scrutinizing, plastered on him, boldly studying his features and the strands that fall into him, and it makes him nervous for some reason. Suddenly, he is hit with the bewildering desire to know what Jungkook thinks of something as insignificant as his hair color. He wants to know if Jungkook still thinks he is pretty. He hates that he does.

“I know it’s weird. I –” Taehyung begins to say, his nervousness forcing a babble out of him, but the other interjets.

“You should get rid of it,” he states curtly. His featured have settled into their usual insouciance again, his voice and stance betray nothing. Taehyung’s mouth smacks shut for the second and contorts into an instinctive pout, his eyes a little wider with deflation at the response.

Jungkook hates the hair. It’s vibrant, pulls his eyes right to him, like a magnet, attracting and gripping his attention without his consent, and he really wishes the boy would get rid of it. He does not wish to be as awareof him, of a Kim, and he does not want Julia to be either. He does not want for her to look at him and see how the vibrancy brings out the melanin of his skin tone, which flatters his features, takes him a little outside of being pretty on the verge of being beautiful.

Jungkook is not blind, neither is he stupid; he is perfectly capable of acknowledging when physical characteristics sit well together, whether it is on a male or a female. Usually, he would just not have that acknowledgement attracting his attention on a boy as it would on a girl. Taehyung’s unavoidable goddamn hair makes that impossible. He could probably see him from a mile away on a crowd of people with that glaring, poignant color.

His full lips are pouting and Jungkook is distracted. “It’s too vibrant. It’ll attract attention,and it will get you fired,” he says, and Taehyung’s face twists confused at his elaboration after a prolonged pause. The other boy’s pout softens, and he does not really think about it when he adds, “and we don’t want you even more desperate for money now, do we?”

Taehyung’s eyes immediately narrow, a small semblance of hope that there is a shred of decency in the rich fuck shatters as quickly as it had foolishly sprung. He wants to say fuck you or simply ignore him, something that will not reap repercussions. That is not what he does, though. Impulsivity has always been a sin of his, and he knows it, as words lush spitefully to his lips. “Why?” he speaks roughly. “Are you worried your girlfriend would want to buy more of me?”

Jungkook does nothing but stare, though a bit of something flashes in his eyes, as he cocks his head. Taehyung is shamefully irritated the other manages to remain so much in control, he has always taken him for the violent, rash kind, had expected to have his hand around his throat again at the boldness.

Jungkook’s stance is casual and unbothered, but his voice is icy. “Careful with those lips, Taehyung. You don’t want something shoving in between them to keep them at bay.”

The elevator dings and Jungkook steps out, back to Taehyung before the other can even begin to process what had been said. He gapes after him, stunned into immobility for long enough for the doors of the elevator to slam into his sides when he begins to step out.

There is so much wrong with Jungkook’s last sentence, every bit of it, starting from its very implication and ending with the fact that it is the first time he says his name to him. Taehyung, he’d called him, not Kim. Taehyung is flushed and jittery, heart palpitating as Jungkook wordlessly leads him towards their destination. He has been feeling generally inadequate and disconnected throughout the day, ever since Ji-woo smiled at him the morning, but now sort of settles into reality and his fingers are twitching.

Taehyung. He sort of wants to hear him say it again, the acknowledgment of him being his own person, not a Kim. Then again, the context of the pronunciation of his name makes him tangle his feet a bit. Taehyung knows these small, ridiculous desires, wanting to hear his name, wanting to know what he thinks of his hair, are paving an extremely dangerous road, but he relaxes himself, knowing he would not walk on it for a boy, especially not for a rich one.  

Jungkook never pauses, not when he reaches his desired door, even, already having fished out a card out of his pocket. He opens the door and Taehyung has to, of course, embarrass himself in his efforts to reach it before it slams shut, doing a small half run to catch it.

It shuts behind him.

Jungkook enters as if he owns the space, shunning himself out of a suit jacket he was wearing as soon as he steps in, throwing it on a couch in a lounging area that is in front of a huge bed. The room is naturally impressive, big and sterile, fit for luxury, warm brown, orange, beige colors with a couple of bright reds for contrast. It is beyond Taehyung’s imagination really, considering he has only ever been in a motel. It is something off of a movie for him. He refuses to allow himself to gawk at it, at what money can buy, though he does not know what else to do, really. How to handle himself in such surroundings. He lingers awkwardly by the door.

Julia is there. She is curled elegantly to the point of it seeming unnatural on a couch in the seating area, adjacent to the one Jungkook used as a clothing rack. She is wearing something black that is contrasting to her pale skin and Taehyung cannot properly distinguish whether it is a dress or a nightgown. Her eyes drag slowly towards Taehyung and he gulps.

Jungkook approaches her, rolling the sleeves of his shirt, exposing sinewy forearms that Taehyung refuses to look at.

“Were you seriously going to allow him to wander off to the receptionists?” Jungkook snaps, looming above her.

Her eyes shift to him. She smirks languidly. “I don’t see why not.”

Jungkook huffs, shakes his head and walks away from her. “You’re going to get me in so much trouble one day, Julia.”

He stalks to a cupboard underneath the flat screen TV that is fitted to a wall that is so nicely paneled Taehyung could spend an entire day just looking at it, as he could at the embraided pillows on the couches and the bed. Jungkook’s fingers disappear in his pocket, and he pulls a small metal box out of it, that by itself is prettier than anything Taehyung owns. He places it on the cupboard, opens it and hastily toys with its contents.

“You get yourself into enough trouble without my assistance, love,” Julia speaks to her boyfriend, but her eyes are on Taehyung. He, however, fails to notice as he is too engrossed in watching Jungkook.

“Not over a Kim,” Jungkook grinds out. He picks something metal, thin and pointed, bends over the cupboard, and snorts.

Back to a Kim, is Taehyung’s first thought. He’s snorting cocaine is Taehyung’s second, though it fails to genuinely surprise him. Working where he does, he has dealt with removing remains of the white powder from toilet sits and sinks enough times to know where its pseudonym Rich Man’s Drug comes from.

Jungkook straightens up, wipes at his nose. “Do you want some?”

“No, I want to be sober tonight,” Julia says, though the way she speaks makes Taehyung wonder if she has taken anything else.

“Suit yourself,” Jungkook says. He does another line quickly. His eyes then fall on Taehyung, dark and pointed. “Kim?” he arches a brow.

Taehyung blinks, taken aback. “Are you offering me?” he implies incredulity in his voice without actually attempting to.

Jungkook’s lips stretch, twist, and he is smirking as well, all lazy and nonchalant. His body is half twisted to him, staring at him from his side, half a profile, half en face, and Taehyung is annoyed. Dark hair, pale skin, and sharp, rugged features. Everything about him is so prominent, muscles, bones, beauty. He doesn’t deserve it, Taehyung thinks.

“I have manners,” Jungkook says, teases, and Taehyung knowshe doesn’t deserve it.

Taehyung’s lips crack opened. Julia interrupts, and her voice is rougher. “I want him sober as well.” Taehyung’s eyes are forced to hers. She stares, unbothered, when she says, “Your hair is fucking hot.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, whether to thank her or not, feels dumb when he turns to gauge Jungkook’s reaction. He sees his jaw tick, firm. The line of it is harsh and protruding on his face. “Julia,” he says, but she keeps her eyes on Taehyung, even when he walks towards her and pauses beside her. “You’re the director. Say how you want this to play out and let’s get it over with.”

She finally does entertain his presence, lifting a hand and flattening her palm against the lower part of his stomach, her fingers long and well-manicured as they stretch out on him. Taehyung wonders whether the lines of his stomach feel as hard as he imagines them to be. His teeth sink to his lips, nervous and punishing of his thoughts.

“Eager, are we?” she grins and it’s venomous.

“I want this done,” Jungkook says.

“Why?” Julia’s voice is sultry and malicious. Her fingers sink lower and her palm hovers at his crotch. “What are you afraid of?” she nearly whispers to him, looking up, widening her eyes with innocence that is foreign to her body. She presses her hand against him.

He grips at her wrist and pulls her at her feet. She stumbles a bit, the elegance that she had been forcing into her demeanor breaking a bit. He keeps his hold on her, placing the other hand on her hip. He presses her into himself, something fiery sneaking into the glare she turns to him. His indifference remains, and it is almost palpable as he looks down on her. Taehyung already knows that indifference well enough, but he wonders what it would be like to be looked like that by someone you tell you love.

“Tell him where you want him,” Jungkook instructs Julia, his hand lowering from her hip, circling around until it reaches her backside. It pauses there and after a firm squeeze, settles. They’re mouths are a breath away, words traveling from his to hers and Taehyung already feels he is breaking in on intimacy where he is not supposed to, mostly because of the way her eyes dart across Jungkook’s face, losing their hardness with each passing second and softening into a vulnerable affection that lacks in the other’s entire being.

Taehyung wonders if his eyes had been as traitorous of vulnerability when words travelled from his mouth to Jungkook’s when he had his hand around his throat and his leg between his a few days prior.

“Here,” Julia says, she points to the couch where she had been sitting. It looks towards the bed, and it is way, way too close to it. “I want him here.”

“Okay,” Jungkook breathes, releases her wrist for the sake of brushing a finger across her lower lip, his thumb and forefinger cupping her cheek. He turns to Taehyung. Julia’s lips touch at his jaw. “Can you sit here for me, Taehyung?”

Taehyung’s mouth is dry, and he does not trust his voice. It is the second time he says his name and Taehyung is glad he had granted him with the first one as a chance to prepare himself because he is not sure he would have been able to live through that one. He swallows nothing and nods, tongue poking out to taste at his lips, checking to see if there is actually any moisture left.

Jungkook’s lips twist ever so slightly at Taehyung’s obvious affect and the latter hates it with a passion. Julia tongues at a hollow dip of his jaw and throat, her lids have closed together, and Taehyung wonders if she knows his attention is on him. Jungkook lifts a hand up, the one that used to hold her chin and beckons with a single finger.

Taehyung has underestimated this, he realizes wholeheartedly, as soon as his feet move under the motion, as soon as something unfamiliar and charging courses through him. He has underestimated the unwitting power Jungkook has developed over him due to his awkward and misplaced interest.

Jungkook slides his palm in Julia’s and tugs her away. Taehyung stands before the couch they had indicated for him. His eyes dart questioning and wide towards the other boy. He nods at him and Taehyung drops to the cushion.

When Jungkook looks at him, it is with the perpetual indifference and some borderline distaste. Taehyung knows what the gaze says, that it means he is doing this for Julia and that he does not want to be there. Yet, there is a pinning intensity to his last glance that makes Taehyung forget he is doing this for Julia(‘s money) and not because he wants to be there, there for Jungkook.

The object of his thoughts turns to Julia at last and his tone drops. He defines seduction and he does it well, says, “Now tell me what you want me to do,” demands it softly, but firmly at the crown of her head, brushes her skin with his lips lightly,  lets them hover as his lids drop low as if heavy, to allow his pupils to focus on her from his towering proximity to her.

Taehyung gulps.

He sees her bare skin awaken under his ministrations, gooseflesh layering her body. He understands, imagines it would have the same effect on him, and hates himself briefly for replacing himself with Julia and not with Jungkook, like they expect him to do.

“Kiss me,” she tells him.

He cocks his head, lets his lips hover high up on her cheek before he presses them there, kissing her gently. 

“Jungkook,” she whines, frustration oozing from her voice and traveling into Taehyung’s body. She fists at his shoulders, her fingers gathering the expensive fabric. He hums to her in question, a soft vibration of his chest where her fists lie. “Kiss me.”

“I did,” he teases. His mere voice is a sin.

“Properly.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere,” she breathes with exasperation.

She almost does not get to finish her last breath because he sucks it out of her, lips meeting hers, parting immediately and he kisses her, properly. Taehyung stirs. He has no place there. He shouldn’t be there. He should go. Jungkook kisses with vigor and she returns it with just as much if not more. It’s slow, but it’s deep, it’s bold, it’s wet, it’s… erotic.

Her hands are on his biceps, on his shoulders, on his neck, in his hair, fingers threading through, tightening in strands, tugging. His are on her body, squeeze at her waist, her hips, her ass. He pressed her to himself, holds their body flush, uses the hold he has on her cheeks to control her movements and she is pliant in her hands, though Taehyung knows his strength is enough to move her even with protests.

His fingers gather the material of her gown and he bundles it until reaches above her backside, revealing her tight, round cheeks. Taehyung watches the veins and bones in his hands and fingers move as he does it, as he touches her skin next, digs into it, underneath it and next she is in his arms, her bare, skinny legs strewn around his waist, high heels still tightly fit to her feet. She seems to weigh nothing to him as he lines her body with his. Her fingers are still in his hair, he’s kissing her jaw, her neck, her collarbones. He’s kissing her everywhere.

Her head falls back, lips gasp and part, her eyes are shut. Taehyung sees Jungkook roll his body into hers, directing her middle with his hands as he wishes, pressing her where he wants her on him.

He has her back on the mattress in a moment, walking her over the side so that Taehyung would have a side view as his body aligns on top of her. Jungkook tugs on her dress and it drops off of one of her shoulders easily, revealing a single small, perky breast. He runs his fingers over the curve of it, and Taehyung is mesmerized by how naturally his fingers find her nipple, press and roll it between their tips as he kisses her neck. She arches her back, releases a lewd moan, her fingers still on his nape. She tugs on his hair

He grips her wrists, presses them into the mattress by her sides, her hands so, so small in his. His tongue licks a stripe down her skin. Briefly his mouth simply parts against the globe of her breast, does not touch it, rather than just allow the warm ghost of a sensation pass through her. It gets her whining again, and he closes his lips around her nipple. Taehyung sees the graze of his teeth before he parts with it because he is watching Jungkook move down her body rather than the way her features twist and her lips shape around her moans.

Jungkook straightens up on his knees, looks down at her. He has his muscled ties in between hers as her legs fall apart from their hold on him. Though he releases her hands as he looms above her, she keeps them in the position in which he had pointedly pressed them. He looks at her, eyes dark and low-lidded. He has disheveled her in the shortest time. They match in heaving breaths and parted, swollen lips.  Her eyes open, finally again, and she takes him in, gaze questions and beg, why had he stopped, leaving her half naked and waiting.

Her legs press into him, and he taps the knee of one with a single finger. She parts them. He settles his whole palm there, wordlessly sliding it across her thigh, lower and lower until it disappears underneath her gown. It comes back out again, this time a finger hooked on a flimsy piece of fabric. He drags it up to her knees, then moves back to allow it to fall.

Taehyung has his own hands on his knees, fingers squeezing hard into his protruding caps. His heart is racing in his chest, mouth drier. He feels his own lids have dropped slightly, heavy, as his eyes watch, his lips are beginning to part.

The fabric catches on her heel, but Jungkook pushes it away. He places both hands on her calves, runs his fingers up until they reach the back of her knees, gliding them across her skin ever so slights, then grips, holds her, Taehyung sees them dig into her flesh. He parts her knees and bends.

Taehyung sees very little, watches it like soft porn from a movie scene, her legs around him, him fully dressed and her stretched out in the scant dressed, one breast on show. He sees him bite her thigh first before his head dips, sees Jungkook’s dark hair between her parted thighs, sees the muscles on his back move even under the fabric of his shirt. He wishes he would take it off. He sees her hands finally betray their position and reach for him, tangle in his hair again, sees her back arch more, her lips gasp and moan. One of his own hands slides down the length of her, then diverts at her elbow. His fingers tease at her breast again, twirling around her nipple.  

Her digits squeeze into his hair, tug at strands.

“Jungkook,” she says, she moans, she whines. Her head falls to the side, her face now fully revealed to Taehyung. He squeezes at his knees harder when her eyes part briefly, tease over him, heavy and dark and gone, she’s gone. Still, she manages a smirk, her mouth curling cruelly before a gasp is forced out of her, her lids draw together with pressure and her teeth bare, white and glistening as she closes them over her lower lip.

Jungkook straightens up and she whines terribly again, returning her attention to him, eyes wide to his. He is stable on his knees while her legs are trembling around him. He runs a hand in his hair. Taehyung feels scorching, blazing heat course through him at the sight of him. His hair is wild, and his eyes are lazy, but dark, deep, intense. His lips are full and swollen, glisten.

Julia’s thighs press into him desperately, her eyes never leaving his face. He licks his lips and Taehyung squeezes his knees even harder.

“Wanna suck my cock?”

Taehyung does not know how he doesn’t snap his kneecap into pieces.

Julia’s smirk turns devious. She twists on the bed, lying on her stomach in front of him. Her fingers cup around him, her eyes following the movement of her digits for a moment before her lashes bath and she stares up at him.

Her smile twists, the corners frowning. “You’re hard,” she tells him, feeling him.

“You make me hard,” he responds slowly. Her eyes drop to his crotch again, where Taehyung can see the clean outline of a firm bulge. It makes his face burn, makes the blood in his vessels rush worryingly. He keeps his eyes away from him. Julia’s twist to him and, accidentally he meets them. She does not look at him with the same sultry zest from before; there is the strangest notion of deflation in her orbs.

“Julia,” Jungkook calls, his fingers lingering beneath her chin. Her attention falls on him again, their eyes connecting as she lies before him. He strokes his thumb across her jaw. “Suck my cock.”

He drops his hand from her face and instead replaces it in her hair as she brings hers forward, fingers pulling at his belt, unfastening it quick and clean and smooth.

Careful with those lips, Taehyung. You don’t want something shoving in between them to keep them at bay.

It rings promisingly, threateningly through his head as Julia slides his zip down. Jungkook sucks in a breath, hisses, cocks his head. His fingers thread through Julia’s hair. Her digits disappear beneath the fabric. She pulls his cock out and, indeed, Jungkook is hard and thick,and she holds him, licks the underside of him, before her tongue teases at the tip, lips circle and her mouth sinks on him, and fuck, Taehyung is hard as well.

He hates it, hates the fact that he barely feels the type of discomfort he is supposed to. Rather what he faces is a tightening in his pants, a racing heart and heaving breaths, worst of all, running, ludicrous thoughts, urges, wonderings – he wonders, wonders if Jungkook is heavy in her arm, if he is hot, if the skin of him feels silky, how his skin tastes, if it’s uncomfortable to stretch her lips like that around him, if his fingers are pulling too hard in her hair. If it hurts her.

“Good girl,” Jungkook hisses under his breath and Taehyung has to skip a breath to avoid choking on it. She takes him well, he sees, her cheeks hollowing out around him and his length disappearing with the bob of her head.

Jungkook gathers all her hair in one hand, shapes it like a ponytail and holds it like that, using his grip to set and direct her pace. His head cocks, twists, and suddenly his eyes are on Taehyung and this time Taehyung skips a full ten seconds of breathing. His eyes are blatantly dangerous, still very much lazy, but glinting, focused, heavy-lidded and dark. His face is a peculiar mixture of relaxed and tensed with pleasure, features sharp, but softer than usual. His lips are parted, breaths shallow as they pass through. His jaw angles upwards, the line of it straight and cutting as he looks at Taehyung from above it.

Taehyung leans back into the couch; he wants to be as far away from that stare as possible. His legs part unconsciously, he does not want to put pressure on himself in case his situation gets worse and the position allows him a little freedom. His hands now grip at his thighs, not at his knees, and he accepts the challenge in that look. He does not shy away from it, no matter how much it burns him, at his skin and at his insides.

Jungkook returns his eyes to his girlfriend. He tugs at her hair. “Enough,” he mutters, hissing when she pulls away and his cock falls out of her mouth. He holds her in place by the grip he has on her, his other hand falling to him, stroking himself languidly a couple of times. Taehyung pulls his lips in his mouth, sucking on them, biting, hard.

 “Lose the dress,” he instructs and releases her hair. She straightens on her knees in front of him, the both of them mirroring each other on the mattress, eyes rooted into the gaze of the other, his hand on his cock. She grips the edges of her gown, lifting it shamelessly over her head and discarding it carelessly on the floor, not even sparing it a glance, less Jungkook’s focus escapes her and Taehyung does not want to think of its price. She’s slim and tight and firm, her breasts small, but full. Taehyung’s gaze doesn’t linger.

She crawls towards him, her fingers latching on buttons. They’re trembling a bit; her legs are as well. She undoes his shirt and he watches her, but when she goes to push the fabric off of his shoulders, he grips at her wrists.

“No,” he says.

“Why?” she whines, her hands struggling in his hold, but it is firm, causes the muscles in his forearms to bulge.

Jungkook’s jaw juts towards the couch on which Taehyung is sat. “Hedoesn’t get to see me,” he grunts out. His voice is rough and raw and final.

“But Jungkook—” she attempts, but in a flash he has her on her back beneath him, a hand pressing her down in between her collarbones. He looms above her completely bare body, his own clad, though his parted shirt allows for glimpses of bruised skin and sharp muscle and Taehyung loathes his desire to see more.

“I. said. no,” he grinds out, pressing his hand into her harder.

Julia’s eyes harden into a glare. “Fuck you,” she breathes.

Taehyung agrees, fuck him.

Jungkook’s lips stretch. He smirks as a hand reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a condom that now Taehyung realizes would have been imprinted with the tightness of the back of his pants and marvels at his boldness, to stroll around the Empire Tower with the glaring implication of a condom. “Works other way round, sweetheart.”

He opens the packet of his teeth, because of course that is what he does. He rolls it on himself with one hand, the other disappearing between her thighs, but Taehyung cannot see exactly what he does from the side. Only sees her twist and gasp.

“Fuck,” she hisses. “Fine. Fuck me.”

“Gladly,” he tells her, grips at himself. He props a fist by her head and slides inside of her with a roll of his body that to Taehyung can only be described as exquisite. A loud moan jumps through her parted, gasping lips, answered in a grunt of his.

Taehyung’s hands gather into fists and squeeze into themselves as he watches Jungkook move. He is ruthless, quick and rhythmic with his thrusts, moving Julia’s body easily beneath him. He rocks into her with power and control and it drives her desperate and whining, her legs hooking around his waist, her hands gripping at his shoulders, but he pushes them into the mattress above her head with one of his, grips at them there and fucks into her faster.

Taehyung is throbbing. His eyes are transfixed and captivated, darting across the whole of his body, the way he moves, rough, hard, but controlled. Taehyung hates his clothes, fucking loathes them more than poverty in this goddamn moment. He wants to see him, wants to see his skin, his muscles, where they dip, where they protrude, how they align and bulge underneath his hot, glistening skin.

Jungkook fucks like it’s goddamn job.

Julia is lost beneath him, a mess, she moans and arches into him.

“Fuck,” he’s hissing, voice impossibly breathy and nuanced with pressure and strain – it’s beautiful. “How are you such a slut and you’re still so tight?”

Taehyung’s ears burn. Julia moans.

“Jungkook,” she calls his name, desperation lacing through her shaky speech. He fucks her a bit harder. “Is he—“ she stutters, struggles, moans. Her eyes are shut, and her lips are trapped between her teeth. She releases them to speak, attempt to, whimpers betraying through her words. “Is he watching me?”

Taehyung’s heart drops in his chest when Jungkook’s head turns and their eyes meet. His eyes are permeating, sultry, demanding, glaring, and absolutely beautiful and Taehyung absolutely hates them. He despises them, loathes them. He has never been more passionate about anything as much as he is about his loaded hatred towards Jungkook’s eyes.

His expression is strained, more authentic, vulnerable. He is softened by pleasure, and though his movements are controlled, composure slips through his face to betray the most erotic defenselessness of sex and pleasure. It’s in the furrow of his brows, the tongue poking lightly through lips as he breathes hard and uneven, but mostly, it is in his eyes.

Jungkook knows where Taehyung’s eyes are before he even turns. He feelsthem.

He knows the pair are rooted on him, haven’t left him all night, and won’t. He is well aware of the bulge straining in Taehyung’s pants before he even sees it, though once his eyes do pass by it, his hips stutter roughly inside of Julia.

Taehyung is sat there, legs spread wide and stretched before him, expression hooded by whatever it is he desires, by the fact he is turned on. His face is soft and exposed, pouty mouth parted around slow, heavy breaths. He wonders if Taehyung knows how his stare looks, how his eyes have dropped low-lidded and alluring, beckoning and sensuous. He wonders if Taehyung knows his want has morphed him into something completely different than the nervous mess he is supposed to be.

His wide legs and hooded eyes make him look as if he is the one orchestrating this, as if Jungkook is fucking for his sake. He appears domineering, possessive of the air around him, powerful, seductive, bordering on devious underneath the vibrant red hair.

Jungkook is glad for his uneasy shift on the couch, for his tightening fists. They remind him he is the one in power. Taehyung is there because hecan pay him, and he is there against his will, but he still has his cock hard in his pants, wanting, struggling. Jungkook knows it must be straining against the fabric, uncomfortable. That with the little shift of his hips just now it must have brushed against them, teasing him. He wonders how much Taehyung has to hold back; how he much he would like to stare right into Jungkook’s eyes with that heavy, gone gaze and reach into his pants, pull his cock out, wrap his goddamn endlessly long fingers around it and stroke himself until he’s spurting, maybe Jungkook’s name a breath on his pouty, desperate lips.

“Jungkook,” Julia moans and his hips snap.

“Fuck,” he curses, losing a bit of his control, his rhythm. “He’s looking.”

He spares Julia a glance, but his eyes are quick on Taehyung again.

Jungkook allows himself a smirk and sees Taehyung’s tight fist shift closer to his stomach. He wonders if he can fuck Julia hard enough to make the other touch himself.

Taehyung’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets when Jungkook releases Julia’s arms and instead wraps his fingers around her neck. He squeezes. She gasps her name falling through her lips, more pitched now, her trashing is getting more desperate, her hips lifting to meet his are brusque and instinctive.

She’s close, but Jungkook’s eyes are not on her. They are on Taehyung as he holds her neck. Taehyung’s lips part further, lower one dropping. He’s gaping. His cock twitches, untouched in his pants, and his legs close together on their own accord. Jungkook’s smirk stretches more, and Taehyung is convinced he is the Devil reincarnated, but then he grunts, betrays that same vulnerability again. His hips are rushing, snapping, rhythm dropping.

“Jungkook,” Julia whines, chokes out, more and more putty in his hands by the second.

“Come for me,” he rasps to her, putting pressure on her neck. His eyes are still firm on Taehyung and the latter feels a bit faint. He’s hot, sweating, feels the perspiration layer each inch of his skin underneath his clothes, and wonders how Jungkook survives with the exertion, wants to scoff at his stubbornness.

Julia’s hips pace impossibly against his and then they still completely, pressure gripping her body and holding it for a moment as Jungkook keeps fucking into her. She comes with the syllables of his name loose on her lips.

Jungkook lets go of her neck and falls on his elbows, his mouth layers with hers briefly, and their eyes meet before he turns his head. She breathes words in the skin of his neck and ear as he rocks into her, hard and rough and unrelenting. His thrusts are snapping. His eyes are shut tight until they are not, and he stares at Taehyung for the last time before his breath hitches, hips shove into her and still. He rolls himself languidly inside of her a few final times. She holds his biceps and keeps her lips on his skin.

It’s the last time that night Taehyung gets to see his eyes. Jungkook avoids his presence like the plague when he slides out of Julia, when he pulls the condom off, when he walks off to a room he supposes it the bathroom.

Julia, on the other hand, does not stop staring. She pros herself on her palms, breathes heavy, fucked out and sweaty. She stares at him, naked, shameless, a handprint on her neck. She struggles to catch her breath for a moment, disheveled, but when she does, the smirk is immediate on her face – it’s different, though, gentle, almost, soft. He feels she is not smirking at him, but to herself and very privately to herself.

“You’re hard,” she announces, her eyes bold and wandering to the obvious bulge in his pants.

Taehyung’s gaze instinctively falls to it, too. He shifts, clears his throat. “I—

“He’s leaving,” Jungkook appears at the door, his hard, indifferent eyes settled and firm on Julia. “Give him the money. He’s leaving.”

He disappears inside the room again and Julia flashes a manicured middle finger at his back. She pushes herself out of the bed and walks comfortably around the room, completely bare. She flinches with her first step, switches her footing a bit, then walks easily. She almost has a leap in her step as she walks over to the cupboard on top of which Jungkook’s cocaine still stays. She opens a drawer, takes out a fat load of cash.

She’s casually in front of Taehyung in a moment and he stares at the floor.

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes, “you just watched me get fucked. It made you goddamn hard, Taehyung. You can look at me naked.”

Taehyung blinks. “I—

She brushes a finger on his cheek, he lifts his head with the motion, following it until he meets her eyes. “I want you to look at me naked.” She bends, next, and his heart stutters with nerves when her lips gently land on his cheek. He stares at her collarbones, at the hair that falls in the both of their faces. “Thank you, Taehyung,” she whispers to him before she straightens up.

He’s wordless.

She slips the money in his lap, spins and returns to the bed. “You can go,” she’s barely said, and he is on his feet. He wants to get out of there. He wants to get rid of the fucking hard on he’s sporting, is actually considering amputating it at this point, ponders children and sex are worth the embarrassment of Jeon Jungkook knowing he turns him on and Seung Julia thinking she does.

“Taehyung,” she calls when he is at the door. He pauses, though he does not look at her. “What do you think of me?”

His hand is on the handle. “I think you’re beautiful, Julia,” he tells her. Then he leaves.

Chapter Text

Ji-woo comes down the stairs on Tuesday after a nap she was too tired not to take. Taehyung is at that point humming distractedly to himself as he cooks. Bibimbap, he’s cooking, not just eggs. He’s using nice ingredients as well, not ones that were on promotion because they were about to go bad.

Her hands grip a ball on the rail, dig into it until knuckles turn wide. Her eyes are wide and her voice is shrill when she calls to him, startling him into almost dropping his utensils before taking a ridiculous defensive stance.

“Tae,” she shrieks. “Woojin steals.”

Now, Taehyung drops his utensil and it falls to the dingy floor with a loud, penetrating ring. “What?” He responds, mirroring her alarm.

Ji-woo takes a couple of more steps down, edging closer to him. She replaces her wide eyes from him to her footing a few times. Those stairs can’t be trusted even if one knows them well. “That automated car toy he wanted with a remote control that three of his friends reportedly have? He’s currently playing with it. Taehyung, he stole it.”

Granted, her voice is brimming with exasperated disappointment. The thing is, the Kims? They steal. Their father steals. Their brother used to steal, he doesn’t anymore, to their knowledge, though they currently have no knowledge of him. Ji-woo takes things sometimes, things she knows won’t be missed, little, meaningless things. Taehyung borrows things from the restaurant. The utensil currently lying at his feet, for example, he did not buy. The stainless steel got burned in a clumsy mistake of an assistant chef, so he figured they could do without it.

They do it. However, that does not mean they don’t consider it wrong. It does not mean they would ever endorse their little brother doing it. Ji-woo and Taehyung have promised each other time and time again, each time their father disappears, the day their brother left for good, that Woojin’s life would always be the furthest it could from that of a Kim.

Taehyung sighs, relieved, his eyes rolling backwards on their own accord as he waves a dismissive hand and bends to pick up his utensil, wiping it off on his ancient, similarly burned apron. “He didn’t steal it, noona. Chill.”

Ji-woo’s arms fold in front of her chest as she steps towards him, the scent of his cookery reaching her senses and sneaking into her nostrils. Her brows arch. Her voice rings suspicious. “And how did he get his hands on it then?”

Taehyung hesitates, licks his lips. He has his back to her again, but feels her edging closer. He shrugs. “I bought it for him.”

The shrillness and incredulity return as Ji-woo speaks. “You bought it? With what money, Taehyung? And why? Are you trying to buy his forgiveness when we still haven’t paid rent— Is that brand fucking rice? Have you gone absolutely mad?”

Her voice raises so suddenly and loudly, close to his sensitive ears, that he almost hits her on instinct. “My god, noona, scream any louder my ears will fall off.”

“Can you focus on the fact you’ve completely flipped out?” She chastises, backing off a bit physically, but ready to yell some more if it needs be. “They’ll kick us out if we’re late with rent again.”

Taehyung refuses to turn to her. “They won’t. I already paid.” He mumbles as he speaks, talks underneath his nose, but she hears.

Her brows draw together, lids blinking on their own accord like a bat flapping its wings, rapid and heavy. She pauses. “What do you mean you paid?” Disbelief layers her voice, perplexity as well; she’s doubtful and confused.

Taehyung pretends the food he is cooking is in dire need of his absolute undivided attention as he speaks. He cannot look at her when he is spewing his carefully prepared lies. He is afraid she would be able to tell by the spark of guilt in his genuine eyes. His mouth crafts lies easily, trained to do so by the life he’s been living, but his eyes, when it comes to his family are treacherous of all his intentions. “A waiter spilled brewed tea on me and the restaurant paid me damages not to sue them for potential bodily harm like the Lees did two years ago.”

Ji-woo blinks once more. A smile too big for the perpetual unobtrusive sadness of her natural face spreads immediately into her cheeks, shining through her voice when she shrieks entirely too differently from before. “Really? Oh my god, Tae, that’s fucking amazing. That’s awesome, how even the fuck — I, er, I mean. I mean you’re okay, right? Are you okay?”

Her slim hand is suddenly on his shoulder, spinning him around as sympathetic eyes examine him from the forehead to the heels of his feet, though the unadulterated happiness has not left her face. Taehyung meets those eyes, worries his lip between his teeth, but allows the tips to twist, a grin a helpless reciprocation of his sister’s happiness.

“I’m fine,” he says, placing his hand on a spot on his stomach which he randomly chooses. “I just have a big red blotch right about here, but really I’d take a couple of more oolongs if it means I get to see you and WooWoo smile like this.”

He’d watch anything Julia wants him to to see his siblings shine like this.

Ji-woo swats at his shoulder. “That’s shit, Tae.” She tries to remove the grin from her face, but it seems impossible for her to fight it. “Did he really smile?”

Taehyung’s nodding hurriedly. “He was beaming. You should have seen him.”

“I wish I had.” In a sudden outburst of movement Ji-woo wraps her arms around Taehyung’s middle, cheek pressing tightly into his chest, and she rocks them both to the sides gently. “God. I can’t believe I’m actually happy you got boiling tea spilled on you. I’m bad.”

Taehyung’s smile changes slightly, grows fonder and more vulnerable on his face as he eyes down the girl clinging to him firmly. She’s warm against him, but he holds his arms spread wide apart to accommodate her, doesn’t really hug her back. It’s been so long, he realizes, since he’s been embraced like this. It feels warm and weird, but good.

He’d fucking join the rich brats for this.

He grips at his sister’s shoulders and gently peels her away from him, suddenly even more uncomfortable at holding her when the thought hits him. His cheeks burn slightly, blood running hot on the inside of his skin as prospective images cross his mind, vision of Jungkook moving above Julia, him shunning his shirt this time. Him touching Taehyung this time

He should want to be inside of Julia, he realizes. And he does, a bit. She’s tight, Jungkook had said, igniting a fire in Taehyung with the desperate breathiness of his strained voice, and for a moment he imagines the roles to be reversed, him fucking Julia and Jungkook’s ungodly eyes focused on him, forced on him, all his undivided attention reserved solely for Taehyung. Would it turn him on like it did Taehyung? Would he be tempted to reach inside his pants, tug himself out, fuck his palm with the fire of his gaze engrained on Taehyung’s body?

“I have to finish dinner.” Taehyung announces, clearing his throat. He turns away from his sister, swarmed with a variation of guilt that is entirely new for him. He’s never hidden something like this from her. Ever. She has dedicated her entire life the past couple of years to taking care of him and WooWoo. And what does he do in return? Wonders what a Jeon would look like masturbating.

Lies. He tells dirty, stupid lies. Lets himself get bought. What would Ji-woo think if she knew? She falls low for money as well, she does – he doesn’t ask, but he knows. Still, he thinks she would throw away their dinner and WooWoo’s toy straight away if she knew how he’d bought them.

She’d still allow him to pay rent, though. She can’t afford to be that disgusted.

“You do that,” Ji-Woo smiles at him and an empty sort of hurt bugs at his stomach instead of the burnt that is supposed to be there. “I’ll go play with WooWoo until dinner.”

Taehyung nods and she turns to leave, a hop in her steps as she bounces up the stairs energized. She halts at the top, turns to look at her other little brother. “Taehyung,” she calls. He hums in response, focus on his food. “Thank you,” she says softly.

She disappears then completely and so does his smile.

Jungkook’s eyes roll almost naturally. Annoyance pricks at him and his voice is akin to a scoff, when he lazily drawls. “How many times?”

Julia’s fingernails skim across a bruise her own lips left that he allowed out of regret. Now, that he has been previously punished for it, he flinches away from her touch and her hand drops to his shoulder, the fabric of his shirt exquisite, but not nearly as his bruised skin is to her. “As many as it takes to convince him,” she replies as she pulls away. She takes Yoongi’s lighter from where it is lying on the table on the Mins’ roof garden and smokes. Her fingers tremble a bit as she tries to hold the thin cigarette and it could be because she hasn’t taken anything this week. “A bet is a bet, Jungkook.”

She leans back again, but not into him this time. She props herself on soft outdoor pillows and blows smoke, legs crossing and her eyes focusing on Hoseok who is in swimming trunks, trying to shake the girl who passed out in the hot tub awake. He gives her exactly two nudges on the shoulder before he gives up and lets her droop.

“I hate that,” Jungkook voices distaste, layering it on his face as well. “You’ll get the stench on my clothes.”

Julia sucks on her cigarette firmly. “I’ll buy you new clothes,” she dismisses.

Yoongi walks leisurely towards the hot tub, a colorful drink in his hand with a funny straw. He is wearing trunks as well, and dark sunglasses to hide his red eyes. His body is dangerously skinny, skin pale and sweating. “At least drag her body out of my tub, Hob. I’m not swimming with carcasses.” He swings his bony legs into the water and sinks in, placing his drink on the side.

“Carcass is only used for animals,” the girl’s friend says, her head tilted back to look at the clouds. Or maybe she can’t properly hold her neck up.

“Whatever,” Yoongi says. He turns his head and lets his lips find the top of the straw. He sucks the liquid until it’s slurping, and it disappears, coloring his mouth and tongue loud, neon blue.

“Corpses,” her friend says. “You don’t want to be swimming with corpses.”

“I don’t,” Yoongi confirms.

Hoseok grips underneath the passed out girl’s shoulders and pulls up until he can wrap his arms around her stomach and easily lifts her from the water. He lies her body down on the nearest chaise lounge.

“Be a doll, Hobi,” Yoongi calls. “Make me another drink.”

Hoseok clicks his tongue. “Suck my dick,” he says.

Yoongi’s lips stretch lightly on his face. “Okay.”

The other rolls his eyes, stepping into the closed glass space on the roof garden where Yoongi’s personalized mixologist bar is. “One of these days,” he mutters, though it’s heard loud and clear. “I’m actually gonna put it down your throat.”

“Until I’m choking, please,” Yoongi says, smirks.

Julia finishes her cigarette and puts it out on the glass layer of the end table in front of her. “Make one for me as well.”

“He was hard last time,” Jungkook says privately as he watches the skin of the thin passed-out girl glisten with the water from the hot tub before it dries underneath the sun.

“He was,” Julia nods, a smile teasing at her lips.

“He’ll cave soon,” Jungkook continues.

“Eager?” Julia drawls, cocking her head and cozying her eyes towards him. She wants to touch him again, but she feels he will flinch and Yoongi is here now. He will notice and she hates to let him see.

“To be rid of him, yes,” Jungkook nods, speaks rough but lazy.

Julia clicks her tongue, hides her smirk, though her eyes glint with eerie, sultry mischief as words roll out her tongue almost cunningly, “If I ask nicely enough.” She licks her lips with intent, with insinuation, “maybe he’ll agree next time. Do you think he wants me?”

Jungkook clenches his teeth. “Yes,” he grinds out. His eyes blink away from the bare girl and focus instead on Hoseok who returns to Yoongi and teases him quietly before handing him the drink. “I’ll be the one asking, though.” He announces.

Julia’s brows arch, head cocking further. Entertainment stretches her mouth suspiciously. “You?”

“I don’t want you getting too cozy with Kim,” Jungkook says, purposefully lilts his voice with a condescending form of disgust when he explicitly mentions the boy. “He’ll be out of the picture soon,” he promises.

Julia’s eyes roll tediously. She lets his palpable distaste hang in the air between them, pauses. Her eyes are on Hoseok’s approaching form as she speaks. Her voice is numbed in a deadpan. “You got hard from eating me out, Jungkook. You. He gets you off as well.”

Jungkook’s eyes finally shoot to her, accusatory and scathing as his glare settles on the side of her head. “He—“

“For you,” Hoseok’s permanently cheery voice invades his ears as his physique blocks the sun suddenly, looming over the pair. His ears buzz.

Julia takes the suspiciously colorful drink he has extended to her with her manicured figures. The straw in it is ridiculous as is the umbrella he has stuck in it. Her lips ignore the straw as they latch onto the glass and her head tips.

“What’s with you, Kook?” Hoseok’s eyes have skimmed to him, studying the glare he’s focused on his girlfriend, atypical for Jungkook to put so much of anything into his countenance.

Jungkook’s tongue pokes into his cheek as he rolls his gaze to his face, losing the heat of it in the movement. “Drop the questions, Hoseok hyung, and go fuck your girl.”

Hoseok grins widely. “She’s unconscious,” he says.

“Yoongi hyung’s, then.” Jungkook smirks.

“Yoongi hyung, then,” the boy in question calls from the hot tub, craning his neck, arching his entire back, his arms spread on the edges of the tub. His drink is finished again.

Hoseok props himself on a leg he lifts to the table, bend by the knee. “One day,” he tells them all, “I’ll actually fuck you like a pussy.”

Yoongi turns fully then, his lips spreading into a lazy grin. He’s still chewing on his straw, though liquid from his glass is long gone. He shakes his wet hair out of his hooded eyes. “Homo,” he laughs.

Hoseok laughs as well and Jungkook does, too.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” are the first words that foolishly leave Taehyung’s lips when his eyes lift from the accounting books at the sound of the door to the storage room opening and closing and widen with recognition and alarm as the broad, threatening and inconveniently familiar shape of Jeon Jungkook invades the privacy of his room.

Taehyung straightens up from the regretful for his back position he has previously taken, slumping over the printed numbers with his ankles crossed. He places the papers behind himself on the storage unit Jungkook had pressed him into the last time the two had shared the air in this room. He leaves the pen he had used to underline inaccuracies as well and watches it awkwardly roll to the floor behind the unit and out of his reach.

Jungkook pauses a few feet away from him, though his presence is enough to make Taehyung’s heart palpitate worryingly into the cage of his ribs. His gaze, stoic, dark and lazy, focusing on him as he casually struts into his space with his arms crossed and bulging in front of his chest is all it takes for the uppermost layer of Taehyung’s skin to suddenly become alive and buzzing.

The other’s head cocks, an authoritative arrogance dripping from his voice. “Should I even dignify this with an answer,” he says.

Taehyung scoffs, his eyes rolling instinctively. He shouldn’t probably, none of his managers would make much of a problem if they find a Jeon in the back. Rather, they would likely be proud they have enticed his curiosity enough for him to explore, scared it is too dusty for his brand clothing, shiny shoes and shinier presence.

“What are you doing here, Jungkook-ssi?” Taehyung asks, carefully. A pang of fear is coursing itself through his veins, through his voice as well, if he has to be completely honest. Julia was done with him, after all, and now there was nothing stopping Jungkook from rearranging his face until his own sister wouldn’t recognize him.

Jungkook ignores the question completely, taking leisurely steps towards where Taehyung stands, and he physically recoils with a flinch without fully meaning to when Jungkook reaches out a hand. It passes by him, however, fingers delving into the papers and listing through pages distractedly. He eyes Taehyung briefly as the other recovers and attempts to hide there was anything to recover from altogether. He fails and judges it by the nearly inconspicuous smirk that graces Jungkook’s lips.

“Are you an accountant now as well, Kim?” Jungkook asks.

Taehyung blinks, hesitates. He is as physically taken aback from the question as he was from the approach. “Erm…” he prolongs the sound, rummaging his head for what the right thing to say is, scared to be honest, but unable to think of a lie. “I’m just helping out is all. I’m good with numbers,” he settles for, finally.

Jungkook is close now, though his eyes are on the paper. It is distracting for Taehyung to have the other in such proximity. Presence is unnerving enough, but proximity is downright dangerous. Especially when he can smell him.

“You like Math?” Jungkook asks, nose arching upwards with a bit of a distaste.

Taehyung shakes his head. He can’t take his eyes off of Jungkook’s face, but he desperately wants to. “No,” he replies. He does not know why, but he continues speaking afterwards, clarifying as if Jungkook could ever care about his interests and endeavors. “Architecture. Math comes with it, though, unfortunately.”

Jungkook’s eyes skim to his, his fingers pausing and instead just resting there, close to Taehyung’s head. His body is angled towards Taehyung’s while the other’s is pointed straight, and his other side is completely free and potent for escape. He still feels trapped, though, locked in space with his feet immobilized just because of the heaviness of Jungkook’s gaze.

“You know this is illegal, right?” Jungkook says, edges a bit closer and, though his face does not betray it in any way, Taehyung swears entertainment flashes through him as Taehyung pales. He gulps.

Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod.

“I—” panic laces the single syllable loud and clear, but before he can say anything else – and he is not necessarily sure what his mouth is going to blurt out – Jungkook interjects.

“Relax,” Jungkook instructs, voice demanding, yet peculiarly calm, hissing. He is used to holding authority, it is clear in his merest requests. “I’m not going to get you in trouble with the law, Kim.”

“No?” Taehyung perks, word tilting curiously, and he follows Jungkook with wide shiny eyes as he edges closer still, extending another sinewy arm to prop near his waist on the other side, essentially trapping him now, but remaining a distance, his arms both stretched fully, keeping him away.

“No,” Jungkook confirms, nodding his head. His voice drops an octave lower, or it feels to Taehyung as if it does. As if he speaks rawer now, from his chest and through his throat. “As long as you answer a question that is?”

Taehyung’s tongue pokes out, wets his lips. Jungkook’s eyes briefly drop to it, attracted by the motion, before they lift to hold the other’s gaze. “Okay,” Taehyung breathes carefully, slowly, his agreement holding a question in itself.

 
Jungook pokes into his cheek with his tongue, his lazy, captivating eyes boring into Taehyung’s face. He’s studying him, the younger realizes, again and again, he is under the constant, exhilarating scrutiny of Jungkook’s powerful eyes. He breathes and he speaks, rough, but easy, unobstructed and Taehyung wants to die. “Did you get yourself off afterwards?”

His eyes widen even more, helpless, innocent and shocked, before they change shape and narrow. He backs up, recoiling further into the storage unit behind him, pursing his lips, mouth a thin line, but the pair of them still perky and full and pink on his offended face. “Jung— “

His voice is not far from the breath of a beg and Jungkook already knows before he hears it that it won’t be an answer he finds satisfying. So he takes a step, instructs softly but firmly. “Tell me.”

Taehyung’s cheeks burn. His heart is irrational in his chest by now, dangerous, but he can’t help it in the clutches of Jungkook’s eyes. The skin on the back of his neck is tingling uncomfortably, as well, red with memories and truths he refuses to voice to himself let alone to a Jeon. “What’s it to you?” He asks and it is spiteful, defensive in the way it attacks.

Jungkook’s brow arches at the tone he uses, but other than that, he preserves the ambiance he forces with his calm demeanor of authority. His voice is light, but dismissive. “Curious,” he says, though he does not sound it, does not allow himself to betray any interest at all, even though he claims it, and Taehyung yearns a bit for the vulnerability of him that he only got to witness ones.

That shone through his eyes in the hotel and then through Taehyung’s mind when he desperately and shamefully got himself off to recent memories in his cheap bathroom. He’d leaned his forearm on the tiles, pressed his eyes onto it, onto the bone, engulfing himself in darkness and jerked himself off, biting on his lips punishingly, until he’d spurted on the tiles with a strangled cry.

He’d scrubbed his skin even more desperately after that, almost to the point of pain. It was red and angry when he was done, and Taehyung deserved it.

Taehyung is silent and nervous and Jungkook gets antsy and impatient with waiting within a minute. He murmurs and it gives his voice a gentle note that forces intimacy in the breaths they share, though space between them is still not scarce enough and much too small at the same time, “Did you?” Jungkook tilts his head, he parts his lips and leaves them such, drawing a glance from the other boy. His own eyes fall to Taehyung’s mouth when he feels the puff of his warm breath on his skin. Jungkook chases a smile away from his lips when he watches him subconsciously shiver and he draws closer still. “What did you think about? Did it play out in your head?”

He whispers the mind numbing questions with suggestive conviction and Taehyung is afraid he nodded without realizing. He presses himself further back into the unit and the smirk that graces Jungkook’s sharp, handsome features is unquestionable, tugging at his mouth and mocking Taehyung with its teasing, smug quality. Jungkook’s unaffectedness in all of their interactions is unmeasurably frustrating. It makes Taehyung want to tear his hair right out of its roots.

Jungkook’s provocative and he knows it. Taehyung, if he allowed himself to theorize about his behavior, which he doesn’t because dwelling on it, indulging him, would only makes things worse — the Taunting Twin haunts his thoughts enough, did so even before his girlfriend and him took this unbearable interest in him — Taehyung would then think he was enjoying it, doing it on purpose to coax a reaction out of him, literally using him as a toy to go on a little power trip. The rich have always got off on what they hold over the poor, on their manufactured superiority. It gives a certain high, he imagines, and maybe this does, too. The affect he so easily draws from Taehyung with the meters form of attention he pays to him must be satisfying in a sick sort of way, one he would expect from someone nicknamed Taunting.

Taehyung hates he’s so easy to rile up, despises the fact he allows this satisfaction to breach Jungkook at his expense, that he’s just that pliant to toy with, cheap to boy, quick to react.

Now, he’s flustered and unease under Jungkook’s crafted simple — so fucking simple — ministrations, heavy eyes and whispered words. His steady breath filtering over to fan across his reddened skin coerces Taehyung’s own into quickened unevenness.

Jungkook takes the tiniest step, but Taehyung notices, his body acknowledging it without his explicit permission.

Jungkook tongues at his lips. Taehyung’s breath stutters as it leaves his. “Did you envision other things you wanted me to do to her?” Jungkook asks. He’s closer now, too close. Taehyung refuses to respond as meaning reaches his ears, irks at his skin, his blood, which feels heated. He turns his head away and stares at the floor on his side, his arms close to his body, rigid and uptight. He’s scared he’ll feel Jungkook’s fingers on the skin of his chin again, but it is worse. He feels his breath on his cheek, instead, his own picking up again, hopelessly, the heat of his body closing up on him. He sees his feet, his fancy, shiny shoes almost touch the tip of his worn out, borrowed ones. Sees his elbow bend as he moves. Taehyung senses the pattern of Jungkook’s breath shift with the words he taunts him with, coy and slow at his cheek, by his ear. “Her riding me?” Jungkook arches his voice into a question. Taehyung struggles to breath, images flashing through his naive, creative stupid poor head. Jungkook’s mere voice is a sin. It’s peculiarly erotic against his skin. “Me fucking her in the ass?” He says crudely, yet so softly it’s like he’s whispering sweet nothings into his ears.

Taehyung’s head turns sharply and their noses brush before he pulls back, growling through gritted teeth with treacherous frustration. “Stop it,” he grinds out. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it.”

Taehyung refuses to allow himself to be used for the personal entertainment of the rich. The last person he would allow to tickle his ego with his responsiveness is Jungkook. Not when he desperately wants the other to be affected as well, affected by him, by their proximity.

Jungkook’s voice drops some of its teasing eroticism, but he keeps himself in his space. He switches to a casualness that annoys Taehyung further. Why is he allowed not to care? He shrugs. Jungkook fucking shrugs, nonchalant and easy. “I’m not doing anything in particular just making conversation.”

Taehyung wonders how quickly will Jungkook hospitalize him if he finally flips out and hits him.

“What made you come here then?” He speaks with unhindered animosity. His eyes are narrowed in a glare, but it is soft and hooded, affected, regretfully. Jungkook’s proximity, his words, their blatant sexuality and the raw eroticism he forces into his whisper and even the vibrations of his body, they do something to Taehyung.

Jungkook is blunt. “Julia wants you again,” he tells him and Taehyung blinks, confused.

He wants to cross his arms but he is afraid he will brush Jungkook’s if he moves and he doesn’t want to touch him because of how much he yearns to touch him. He arches his brows. “Why doesn’t Julia tell me herself then?”

Jungkook allows a lazy smirk to sneak onto his lips again. “I volunteered,” he confesses idly.

Taehyung’s mouth opens and closes dumbly. Something spikes through him at the prospect, at the fact Jungkook is not here to order him to refuse, but to ask him to come. Taehyung wants to say something, but Jungkook interrupts, rearranging his footing. The tips of their noses are close, too close. Jungkook’s lids are low on his fiery eyes, which dart across the features of Taehyung’s face. Sultriness crosses his words again. “And if you tell me what you want, I might do it to her.”

White, hot anger spikes through Taehyung. Anger, it is. “Shut the fuck up,” he grunts. His voice is more leveled than he expects, than he feels and he’s glad.

Jungkook’s lips twitch. “You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?” His brows arch, his head tilts. Taehyung’s heart pounds and he pushes his head back in the gaps of the shelves, taking it as far away from Jungkook’s as his neck would give. “What do you want me to do her, Kim?” He questions. His nose brushes his cheek for the briefest moment before he pulls away and watches him instead.

Taehyung wants to die. “Leave,” he tells him, begs him almost. “I have work.”

“Your work is worthless compared to what we’ll give you,” Jungkook dismisses quickly, arrogantly. “Tell me,” he instructs. “What do you want, Taehyung?”

His name on Jungkook’s lips forces a shameful shiver to run through his body. His eyes don’t miss it, dart across the length of him, to his face again.

“How do you want me to do her?” All Taehyung can do is breath. Jungkook’s close, so close, too close, and he’s caging him with his body, muscled arms, broad shoulders. “Or do you want her? Or do you want—?”

The door slams open and Minho’s voice startles Taehyung, his head tilting to him immediately, though Jungkook doesn’t even flinch. “Taehyung, Jung-nim wants you to— Oh. Jungkook-ssi. I apologize.”

Minho’s eyes widen and search Taehyung’s in question as he bows at Jungkook’s back instinctively. Granted, only someone like Jungkook would get apologized to for interfering with his trespassing.

Jungkook sighs. He drops his arms from Taehyung’s sides, but remains in the dangerous proximity, still keeps his eyes on him, though now they betray annoyance instead of their previous suggestiveness. It doesn’t mean Taehyung can relax. He’s still burning.

“It’s alright,” Jungkook says, voice enviously leveled and holding a neutrality that makes Taehyung ache. “I was just checking something.”

Jungkook’s hands raise and Taehyung’s breath hitches in his throat, eyes return wide and questioning with alarm. His fingers settle at his neck, catching at the fabric, undoing the knot of his tie before he redoes it, eyes falling on his handwork as Taehyung stares and studies as his face helplessly.

“Okay...” Minho says, prolongs. He is hesitant and bewildered, eyes darting across the two as Jungkook skillfully and quickly ties a perfect, textbook knot right around the other’s neck. His hand fists at the bottom of the knot and glides slowly up until it reaches the top, securing it tight.

Jungkook leans forward, lifting his eyes slowly from where he was tracking his illicit motions to meet Taehyung’s eyes. He speaks privately when he does, speech reduced to a whisper, though it it just low, not as suggestive. “You really need to learn how to do that,” he tells him and it is enough to make something cold run straight down the line of Taehyung’s spine.

He gulps, his throat bobbing. Jungkook places a palm on his chest, the touch igniting a small fire with its shape. He leans closer still and Taehyung tilts his head away. His lips are close to his ear, coaxing goose flesh. “Saturday,” Jungkook whispers. “Same time. Same place.”

There is pause that is loud and buzzing for Taehyung. Jungkook steps back before Taehyung realizes he has nodded. The rich boy moves away, leaving behind a gaping coolness as Taehyung stills in his place. He brushes over Minho as he leaves, not paying him a single glance, sharp jaw held high as he struts away, leaving with no further word or look towards either of them.

Taehyung follows him with his eyes and when he disappears completely from view he looks at the empty space he has left behind.

He ignores Minho’s questioning, perplexed gaze and quickly gathers the sheets behind him, eyes falling desperately to the numbers.

Chapter Text

Taehyung finds himself in the uncomfortably luxurious suite, same time, same place, as instructed and paid for, and Jungkook is not there. He’s sat, legs pressed tight together, hands in his lap with his long fingers tangled and clumsily intertwined, tugging at each other absent minded, palms rubbing together. He’s leaning forward by the elbows, body folded in on itself, eyes focused on the carpeted floor.

Julia is there. She’s sprawled on the bed on her stomach, her ankles crossed and lifted into the air. She’s propped herself on her elbows, chin in her palm and she appears as if it is hard for her to hold it up just on her neck. Her hair is disheveled; it’s everywhere. Her eyes are intense on him, focusing and losing it every few seconds as her lips, maybe dry, for she tongues at them a lot, stretch lazy and sultry on her pale face, teeth shine whitened in between. Her lashes bat slowly, illicitly. She’s somehow suggestive in the very way she lays on her bed, skin mostly bared. Taehyung is once again not convinced the crimson piece of branded fabric on her body is not simply underwear, but he hasn’t been looking at her enough to judge fairly.

He is afraid the sound of his gulp rings around the room, that she can hear his breaths and his moistened skin rubbing together as well as he can hear the sheets rustle with her merest movements and small sighs he feels she makes on purpose. They’re soft and unnecessary and border on moans as they are expelled through her parted, dried lips.

“Are you nervous, Taehyungie?” Julia says and it sounds like a sigh as well, breathy and leisurely.

His eyes shoot to hers. Only his sister calls him that and he feels her mouth dirties it, he does not want to hear it again. “I— no,” he replies, and it is a lie so blatant it is unnecessary to even attempt to convince. He keeps his chin up though, nose high. “It’s not like I have to do anything,” the justification falls through and it is voiced for his own sake and not for hers, but she smiles.

“You don’t have to,” she’s amused when she pauses, something new is flashing through her eyes now as they dart across Taehyung, scrutinize his traitorous body language. Her tongue coats her lips again as they stretch cunning and cold. “You canif you want to,” she finishes and Taehyung pales.

A “What?” slips through his mouth, brusque even to him. It’s mostly through his teeth, near a gasp. It’s breathy as well, but different to hers, listed by disbelief. His eyes search her for teasing, to see her break character and laugh at him for falling for her implications.

Her body rolls to the side, her whole body stretching, and he swears he hears her purr, like a cat, her entire behavior is feline, he concludes in a suggestive, nearly perverse way. “Don’t you want to touch me, pretty boy?”

She’s offering herself, it occurs to him, and Taehyung’s blood runs hot with the immediate question of what would Jungkook thinkinvading his head. How would he look, his eyes, would he even react, or would that completely bypass him as well, allowing him to remain calm and collected, keeping that cool, utterly frustrating demeanor? Taehyung wonders were he to lift up off the couch now, look at his girlfriend straight in the eyes and say yes, he wants to touch her, wants to do everythingto her, spread her on the bed they pay for, would it at least tug at his goddamn rich kid pride if not at his probably inexistent emotions?

He doesn’t, though. Instead, he swallows nothing, presses his lips together tightly and shakes his head. “No,” he voices, brief and soft.

Julia straightens on her knees and the mattress barely dips under her weight. The strap on her shoulder slips down her arms, collarbones protrude underneath her pale skin. Her lips don’t hold a smile anymore. They’re set in a line. Her eyes are lidded low, narrowed. “You’re lying,” she accuses darkly.

Taehyung does not know how he would have replied necessarily, but he doesn’t get to, anyway, as that is the moment Jungkook barges in. The door slams slightly into the wall and Taehyung flinches instinctively. Even the walls are expensive here and it is simply disrespectful to treat them like that, but Taehyung quickly forgets all about that, because Jungkook vibrates. He literally carries with himself an energy of frustrated rage that is atypical for the Jungkook Taehyung has directly experienced, but akin to rumors he has heard of him, the violent, vituperative Taunting Twin, the one who likes to hurt, can’t help but hurt, as much as his sister enjoys doing it with her mouth, he supposedly does with his fists.

He shuts the door behind himself with his entrance, and the automatic lock clicks brusque, abused. Taehyung almost flinches again in his place, his eyes sealing compelled on the other boy, who walks in somehow possessive of the space that surrounds him, of even the last string on the intricate carpeting. He disregards Taehyung’s presence completely, but he can hardly take offense, as Jungkook does not acknowledge his girlfriend either as he strides towards a cupboard, fishes out of it a bottle whose shape and label scream expensive to Taehyung. He moves some more, takes out a glass that Taehyung has seen enough movies to know is for whiskey.

What Taehyung senses is off about Jungkook, Julia must as well, because her eyes fall dead on him, and she falls into complete silence, allows for the sound of him opening the bottle to penetrate the tense air, the liquid pouring down, him gulping it in one go, before he fills the glass again. He relaxes into the counter after that, crosses long legs and holds the glass light and casual as if his jaw does not keep ticking, as if his eyes don’t flicker with pent up something, that irks at Taehyung’s curiosity with power he cannot explain.

As much as the alcohol by his waist screams expensive so does everything about Jungkook. His posture, his skin, the thick ring on his finger, the watch strapped around his wrist, the belt high on his waist, the fine dark trousers hugging his legs, and the darker shirt pulled at his muscles. He’s strewn with elegance, with quality, and Taehyung wants to know what is on the verge of making that careful front burst.

His dark eyes dart to Taehyung, and he blinks away, quick and obvious, as if burnt. He’d be embarrassed, but Jungkook, for as many bad qualities as Taehyung can assign to him doubtlessly, does not seem stupid. He is aware Taehyung watches;what he watches he cannot be sure of, as Taehyung himself is not entirely sure, but that his eyes are almost always on him is obvious.

Jungkook’s eyes pry away from Taehyung and instead center where they should, on his scantily clad girlfriend so demandingly focused on him, it must scorch. His lips are tight and thin today, a fine line; it parts as he sips golden liquid as if it a refreshing drink and not a burning spirit, and then, then he smiles. It is a dangerous, dark tug of his lips, malicious and predatory as turns his glance, glinting with something unspoken, yet felt, felt in the pit of Taehyung’s stomach and seen on the tips of Julia’s skin.

“Shall we begin?” Jungkook breaks the silence, voice like lead. It’s low and hard. The corners of Taehyung’s eyes are darting to him again, and then again, until he’s fully staring at Jungkook as he approaches, slow leisurely steps, and once again Taehyung’s watching, but he cannot bring himself to care – they payhim to watch after all.

Julia is still on her knees, close to the edge of the bed. Her eyes follow her boyfriend in his stride, but they have taken some open, wide, wet vulnerability that Taehyung immediately has to look away from. “Jungkook…” she pronounces, trails off.

“Take off your dress, Julia,” Jungkook instructs in a voice that would have got Taehyung to shed his clothing too, if addressed. He pauses close to where she is kneeling and watches her, a hand in his pocket, the drink in his other one.

She seems reluctant for less than a second, their eyes firm on each other, before thin fingers grip at the hem and she lifts the fabric up and over her head, drops it on the floor near the bed and once again meets his gaze, her own challenging, but her lips shut. She’s slim in her lacy underwear, breasts small, but perky, nipples hard above her ribcage.

Jungkook takes the small necessary step forward to be almost touching her. He watches her for a moment from the new proximity before his head drops, lips seal to her neck. Julia’s mouth falls open, a small sound exhaling through, akin to a hiss at first, and then it is not; it’s a sigh. Her hand flies up, grips into the fabric of his shirt at his shoulder and her fingers stay there, digging into it hard. Jungkook’s hands remain as they are, one in his pocket and the other gripping at his whiskey and Taehyung doesn’t know what to make of that, but Julia’s eyes fall shut and her teeth take her lower lip into her mouth, so he supposes there is nothing to make of it.

Jungkook’s lips bruise her. They’re almost systematic in the way they leave a trail of love bites on her paling skin, marking down the line of her long neck, before they skim at collarbones and dip further lower. When his teeth wrap around her nipple, her fingers dig hard into his shoulder, her other hand flying up and grasping at his slim waist.

His fingers leave his pocket, and he reaches in between her legs instead, rubbing two long fingers across her once. It makes her shudder and it makes him pull his head away.   

“You’re already wet,” he hisses. A breathy, uncomposed “shit” leaves him, and Taehyung finds it exhilarating, the frustration he obviously has built up inside him, snapping and adapting into sexual tension. Jungkook’s voice is rough and exquisite when he continues, dark eyes focusing on his girlfriend as her head dips back and she moans. Taehyung has limited vision over Jungkook’s broad shoulder, but he thinks he sees one of his fingers push her underwear to the side. He brushes his knuckles over her, moves one finger languidly across her, but teases, doesn’t fully touch. “You get off just on thinking about this, don’t you?” Jungkook asks. His head cocks, and he presses his fingers against her past a tease, a real touch, before he takes them away again.  “Is it for him or is it for me?” He rasps, tongue poking out to skim at his lips. He almost looks hungry now as he sizes up his pray, then those eyes, dark and starved, turn to Taehyung, interrupt his breath – he nearly chokes with the amount of air he sucks into his lungs – with a single, short, indicative jut of his sharp jaw. “Bet your boy toy’s turned on, too.” Taehyung’s ears are ablaze, and he gulps – he wasn’t, a mere minute ago maybe he wasn’t, but the way Jungkook speaks, somehow, he manages to gather all his previous anger and conduct It into raw sexual energy whose allure courses straight through Taehyung’s blood. Jungkook suddenly pouts, and then he whines with structured irony.  “Did you start without me?”

Julia’s nails dig into the fabric of his clothes. Her head shakes. “Never,” she breathes.Never, Taehyung confirms in his head.

Jungkook smirks. “Be a doll,” he says, voice sultry. His head tilts again and the corner of his eyes briefly catches on Taehyung’s unwavering stare. “Take off my shirt.”

Taehyung flushes, rubs his palms on the length of his thighs, then catches his knee caps, holds, squeezes. His palms are sweating, and his heart is thudding in a way that is familiar to him, in a way he allows himself to feel every once in a while, mostly for prudish, simple reasons, never because he was about to see a man shirtless. He’s… excited.

He abhors it, is absolutely furious with himself at what pricks at him as Julia’s fingers, agile, but trembling readily work Jungkook’s buttons. She is quick, and Taehyung is glad for it, stupidly afraid Jungkook might change his mind and stop her. She untugs the material from his belt then reaches for his shoulders, pushing at it. He lets it fall down his arms, replacing his glass from one hand to the other to allow the shirt to fully slip from his body.

Taehyung’s breath hitches, his thighs drawing closer together. He lets his eyes roam. Skin, there is so much skin, smooth and perfect and stretched over muscles and bones that shift and protrude. He’s admiring his shoulder blades, his arms, he’s admiring the goddamn dipped line of his spine. Julia is running the palms of her hands all across the skin and Taehyung has the most despicable urge to replace her hands with his.

Jungkook steps closer to her, presses his front to hers, his lips on her skin again, obviously oblivious of Taehyung’s silent begging desperation for him to turn around, so that he can see. The fingers of his free hand seem light and feathery as they explore the skin of her back for they own, caress down the length of her spine until they dip low. Taehyung’s wishes completely shift as suddenly he hopes Jungkook never turns for he is taking such a ridiculous position on the couch to follow those ringed fingers. He cups at her cheek for a moment before he slips a finger sideways into her panties, close to where her ass meets her back; he slides the length of his finger beneath the fabric before he allows it to twist, close together, and her panties gather as he pulls up. She gasps as fabric digs into her, between her legs unexpectedly, cheeks fully exposed know with the lace of her panties tugged in between under Jungkook’s ministrations.

He pulls his lips away and readjusts his grip on her underwear, holding it with two fingers and his thumb. He gives it another tug and watches, sees her mouth part as another strangles gasp escapes.

Taehyung cannot imagine how this is anything but uncomfortable for her but the way her thighs shift, so similarly to how his unconsciously move, betray she is just waiting for more. He is positively mesmerized by the way Jungkook is able to work her so well, his eyes glued to the boy, to his sharp, broad back, so full of skin, to his wondrous, wandering fingers, to the line of his lips, the glint in his stare.

Julia’s hips are making the tiniest movements and Taehyung wonders if she is even aware she is grinding slightly into the fabric Jungkook holds for her, pulls for her. He tips his head, lines his lips with her ear, briefly teases at its lobe with pearly white teeth, then he’s murmuring in her ear in a voice too loud to be simply for her sake and Taehyung can’t help when his mind wanders with curiosity of why Jungkook is so much more adamant on putting on a show for him today. “I’m tired baby,” he tells her. “I’ve had a long, hardday.” His tongue teases at the cleft behind her ear. “So, I want you to ride me.”

He tugs on her panties one final time, before he lets her go. He replaces his grip on her wrist and pulls her of the bed, and she follows, willing and obedient. With her feet on the floor, he faces her, sideways to Taehyung and he can see a nipple. He swallows nothing and almost chokes on it. Jungkook’s fingers tug a stray strand of hair behind Julia’s ear as she watches him as if there is nothing else in the world worth watching and it is so eerily gentle, what transpires between them, that is makes Taehyung feel more out of place than Jungkook demanding she rides him.

“Can you do that for me, baby girl?” he says. And she nods, she smirks, and she is Julia again, smirking and suggestive, low-lidded and so illicitly sexual. She grips at his arms, wraps her fingers right around his biceps and Taehyung wonders just how hard they must feel.

She turns him and he allows her and Taehyung and Jungkook’s eyes would have met right then if Taehyung’s hadn’t immediately drop to explore with a slight heat made apparent in his tanned cheeks. He is perfectly aware he ogles, but it cannot be helped as his eyes follow the hard, defined lines of his well-relieved stomach before they slide across his chest, his nipples, small and pointed on his bulked chest. Taehyung’s jaw loosens slightly and his tongue pokes out, skims across the oval shape the part of his lips create before they close, thin, and his chin sets, eyes meet Jungkook’s, and he’sglaring.

He’s glaring because Taehyung is supposed to look vulnerable, like a deer caught in the head fucking lights, he’s not supposed to be low-lidded, gaze heavy, and doing that thing with his mouth whatever the fuck that thing even was. He’s not supposed to be setting his jaw, and he really shouldn’t be allowed to be that fucking pretty. It’s annoying, really. He’s a man. What is a man doing being pretty? His hair is blonde now, not red, but it is still so glaringly light that eyes seal to it irrevocably, and Jungkook is angry again.

Julia pushes him to sit and he does. He spreads his thigh on the bed wide, mirroring Taehyung’s position perfectly, but he can’t lean on the back of a couch. Instead, he uses his hand, twists his wrist and leans on a palm, the whole weight of his upper body dependent on it, and Taehyung’s eyes trail to it, dart across the places it bulges with muscle.

He looks away, forces his eyes on Julia. If that is the position they will stay in, and it looks like it, as Julia drops on her knees in between his spread legs, Taehyung is not sure he will survive the night. Blood is already rushing in places it is not welcome to, heart palpitating. His legs are shifting on their own accord, betraying his discomfort as knees bound to sides, but he just can’t seem to keep still. He doesn’t hear what Julia says, doesn’t hear what Jungkook replies, his ears buzz, but then she is pulling his cock out and he is half hard as she holds the weight of it, licks the underside slow and tantalizing, eyes looking up to meet Jungkook’s and he is staring at her as well, even as he brings his drink to his lips and sips on it. His neck seems longer when his chest is bear, when his head tips back to accommodate the glass and Taehyung wonders if he would look better if he was arching back to moan.

“Don’t tease,” Jungkook grinds out and it sounds almost like a warning. It sends Taehyung wondering once again, what if she does, what if she does tease, what would Jungkook do, then.

He sees the back of Julia’s head moving, hears the explicit, wet sound of her going down on him, notes a stutter in Jungkook’s breathing pattern, in a small pause of his chest when they fill out to inhale. Taehyung wants to cross his legs, but he is afraid it will create a tightness harder to resist and his hips will just shift into it; he does not trust his hormones enough to make friction so tangibly attainable.

Jungkook’s hips shift and he allows himself a slight grunt. “Fuck, you take me so well.” She makes a sound around him, readjusts on her knees. Taehyung supposes he should be staring at her ass, perfectly on show, emphasized by the way she sits on her calves and arches her back to reach Jungkook. Instead, he’s focused on the barest movement of the other boy’s thighs, on the exposed skin of his stomach and chest, on the muscle that bulges in his arm, the one that ticks at his jaw. Jungkook, however, is watching the way Julia trembles on her knees, the way her thighs tighten together as Taehyung’s crave to do. “This is getting you off, too, isn’t it? Always so hungry for my cock.” Jungkook finishes his drink and rolls the glass on the bed until it falls to the carpet with a dull thud. He sits up, threads his fingers through her hair. “And he’s watching,” Jungkook’s eyes lift up and Taehyung’s heart pauses in his chest. His tongue pokes out, wets his lips. Then he smirks, holds Taehyung’s gaze with those loathsome, compelling eyes and speaks some more, “He’s looking at you, baby. I bet you can’t wait to show him how good you ride me. I bet he’ll imagine it’s himself.”

Shit. Shitshitshit. His mouth is sinful, and his words are dubious. Leave so much room for interpretation, too much room for interpretation. Taehyung’s throat constricts on itself.

Jungkook wraps his fingers tight around her hair and pulls her away. Taehyung doesn’t see her face, only Jungkook’s when he glances down at her and smirks, again and again. “You ready to fuck yourself, baby?”

Julia’s fingers grasp on his thighs. “Please,” she says, voice hoarse.

“Come here,” Jungkook says, nearly soothing. She’s on her feet next, dropping her underwear to the floor and stepping out of it. He is fishing his wallet out of his pants, a thin Louis Vuitton. He takes out a package and tosses his wallet away carelessly, eyes shifting to Taehyung briefly, but the other is keeping his on him.

Julia wordlessly takes the condom out of his hands. She straddles his hips easily, comfortably, and Taehyung wonders if Jungkook ever does have sex without any of his clothes. Julia doesn’t seem to mind his pants stay on as her thighs are on his. Blocked from Taehyung’s view, she rolls the condom on Jungkook. Her fingers remain on him, stroking him, and she looks at it briefly, focused, before her eyes lift up to Jungkook’s, wide and wet and darkened with unbidden arousal. “Can I?” she says, she breathes.

Jungkook nods. “Of course,” he whispers to her.

She holds him as she lifts her body up on her knees and now Taehyung can see, between her legs. He sees her hand that grips him, that lines him carefully with herself as the other holds onto his bare shoulder. She sinks on him slowly, so unnervingly, frustratingly slowly, and Taehyung’s legs stutter to and fro by the time her ass rests on him again. Her mouth is wide opened and she’s whimpering, ever so softly.

Jungkook leans back on one hand again, fondles at her hip with the other. “Move,” he says, short and dark, and she does. She lifts her hips up and slides down on him again, and again, and then, she’s fucking herself on him.

I bet he’ll imagine it’s himself.

Taehyung swallows. Jungkook’s cock is long and thick and it must be stretching her out, and she moans on him, she loves it, she moves confident, but hungry and Taehyung can barely look at it. It’s harder this time, so much harder with Jungkook fucking facinghim. With his sultry, dark eyes filtering over to Taehyung as Julia closes hers, arches her neck, her back, brushes the tips of her breasts on his chest.

Her eyes are screwed shut and his are wide opened and Taehyung has his lip in his mouth, biting on it hard. His hands are on his knees, he’s squeezing them so hard, they’ll likely bruise. He bruises easily. His back bruised from Jungkook pressing him into the storage unit, when he was on him, so close, he could feel his thighs. The thighs Julia uses for support as she rides him.

“You’re so wet,” Jungkook speaks to her, sighs.

Julia wraps her arms around his shoulders, tips her head forward. She wants to meet his eyes and he allows her, tears them away from Taehyung and catches his girlfriend’s primal stare.  “All for you,” she tells him, whispers to him, bringing her forehead close to his so she can speak in his mouth and there are the first words spoken not meant for Taehyung, but he hears, anyway. He hears their breaths as well, heavy, getting heavier. He sees her move, her hips, systematic, experienced, the way her fingers dig into his shoulders.

Jungkook trails his hands across her thighs, slow and pointed; he fondles, grips into her flesh as if she belongs to him, and, frankly, Taehyung reckons she does – with the way she moves on him, the way she calls his name, most of all, with the way she looks at him. His palms trail to her ass and she squeezes, both cheeks at the same time, coerces her movements into a certain pace by the grip he preserves on it and Taehyung watches the way her flesh dents and the thin bones of his hands protrude. He wonders what the fuck’s wrong with him, why the hell he is more focused on the back of Jungkook’s hands than he is on the tight ass of a girl.

Jungkook looks as if it is intrinsic for him to get pleasured, confident and domineering even in the way he sits, the way he seems to control her with his very gaze, the way he makes Taehyung’s breath stutter each time he teases his eyes in his direction. It fits him, being pleasured, Taehyung concludes, but still, he is still too composed; he’s different from last time, but he’s not nearly as lost as Julia is bouncing on him.

He sucks on her neck, on the side he left unmarked, he teases her breast with his mouth, with his teeth and his tongue. She moans, she digs her nails in his nape and he hisses at her, squeezes her ass hard as a warning.

Jungkook’s stare darts to Taehyung in a moment he readjusts quite obviously on the couch. His hair is in his eyes, punishingly teasing, and his mouth twitches. He smirks and looks away, pulls Julia up by the grip he has on her until he slips out.

She whines, her palms spread on his chest. “Jungkook,” her voice trembles and so do her thighs as her knees hold her up.

“Patience,” Jungkook chides, tsks. “Hold like this for me, baby.”

“Why?” she’s whining again, but she remains up as Jungkook’s hand dips. He brushes his fingers over her navel, light and feathery, and she retracts from the touch a little. He presses into her next, between her legs, slips a finger inside of her.

“You really are fucking wet tonight,” he grunts to her and she sighs, holds onto his shoulders as her hips push into him, into his hand. He pulls it away, slipping his digit out of her, and she seems ready to throw a tantrum in his lap, but in a moment he’s pushing in her ass.

She gasps, fingers digging hard into him and her hips snap forward, almost brushing into his chest. “Jungkook—” she startles, though it’s breathless, disheveled.  She’s biting her lips as they’re forming an excited smile.

“Wet enough for me to fuck you in the ass,” Jungkook’s saying and he’s meeting Taehyung’s eyes, whose are wide, so wide and bulging, his knee bouncing up and down; his jaw is loosened, lips are parted. Oh god. Ohgodohgod. Jeon Jungkook is simply cruel. “Would you like that, baby?”

He rubs his thumb into her front and moves up to the knuckle into her back and she fucking falls into it, allows her thighs to set back gently, carefully, pushes herself into his fingers. “Yes,” she grinds out, and there is something primal in the way she says it.

She sinks into it, grinds into it, and Taehyung’s eyes are finally sealed on her, on the fact she seems uncomfortable for about a nanosecond before she appears to be enjoying it, rubbing herself onto Jungkook’s glistening fingers as he gathers more of her natural wetness and slips in a second one. A sound escapes her, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause.

“Just like that,” Jungkook murmurs. “Fuck yourself on my fingers.”

She’s moaning and he’s slipping a third, the one with the ring.

Taehyung gulps, swallows. His knee is going wild and he’s not sure he can properly breath at this point. He hates Jungkook, that much is certain, but he loathes himself a bit, too, because his fucking body is tingling all over and his goddamn mind is wandering to places so derailed from where they should be.

He shouldn’t be here at all. He shouldn’t. But WooWoo had been so happy with his toy. Ji-woo hadhuggedhim. She’d thanked him.

“You ready for me?” Jungkook leans, whispers in her ear and she cannot see his dark eyes briefly dart to Taehyung.

“Yes,” she hisses.

His palm lands on her ass with a smack. “Get on your knees,” he instructs, and she only takes a moment, to pout, before she’s climbing off his lap and onto the bed. She faces Taehyung for the first time in a while and he makes sure their eyes meet, makes sure he’s watching her, licking his lips. Makes it obvious he thinks she’s mesmerizing, worthy to look at, at all times, then Jungkook pushes at the back of her head and she presses it into the mattress, and he looks away.

Her arms stretch forward, face in the duvet as Jungkook directs with subtle touches before he positions himself on his knees behind her. He grips at her ankles and parts them a little more, glides his hand across her back, squeezes firm at her hips. Taehyung’s eyes are glued as he probes at her with his fingers for a bit more, before he grips at himself, presses the head at her and ever so slightly pushes, she gives and he’s sliding inside her.

Taehyung’s teeth are pressing so hard into each other they might snap. He’s too focused on this, on the fact Jungkook is sliding his cock into an ass, to really notice the other is watching, dark eyes dancing over a twist of his mouth, sultry and malicious and smug, oh so smug.

“She has one hole free, you know.”

Taehyung’s eyes snap to him, head moving so fast he nearly gives himself a whiplash and he stares, open-mouthed and dumbfounded. He wants to say something, but one has to breathe in order to make sounds and his lungs are failing him, brain as well, worse than his family tree. He can’t even stutter a pronoun. Can’t even sound afuck youthis instance.

They never address him during this. They talk about him, about the fact he’s watching, but they don’t address him, they can’t; no one warned him they would – that Jungkook would be shirtless and balls deep inside of someone and looking at him and speaking to him, in that rugged, rough voice, with that tantalizing, horrible smirk.

Jungkook is still inside of her, and he can’t tell if he is waiting for her to adjust or for Taehyung to respond.  Jungkook’s head tilts and the smile at his mouth turns positively evil, makes cold sweat run all across Taehyung, makes his heart thud. “You wanna join, pretty boy?” he says. He says, and Taehyung almost runs, but doesn’t.

“Jungkook,” Julia speaks, pressing her cheek into the bedding. “Fuck me already. Please. I want you.”

She presses her hips back into him and Jungkook glares at her. He grips at her, holds her still. “Patience, I said.”

He shakes hair out of his eyes and looks at Taehyung again, the cruel entertainment settling back into his sculpted features. “You wanna touch yourself at least, pretty boy?”

He does. God, he so desperately does. His cock is aching in his pants and it’s getting worse and worse with every single syllable that falls through Jungkook’s lips. Pretty boy. If he calls him that again, he’ll burst.

“Come on, I can see you’re hard from here. You can if you want to” Jungkook continues nodding at his crotch and Taehyung’s hand jumps across it instinctively, an effort to hide it from the other’s penetrating eyes, but he touches himself ever so slightly and he’s hissing. Something flashes in Jungkook’s gaze. “Do it,” he challenges. Taehyung’s head shakes but his hand itches.  “You know,” Jungkook’s head is cocking to the other side – he looks lazy again, lazy and teasing and way too fucking smug, “I won’t move until you do.” Julia whines, her hands gathering into the fabric, fisting at it until her knuckles are white. Jungkook’s lips arch and they are pouting. His places his palms on his girlfriend’s back, glides them across, presses into dips and crescents. “You’re being cruel to our horny Julia.”

“Taehyung, please,” she moans as if on cue and his name feels wrong, so very wrong in the context of this.

 Jungkook raises his brows. His own hands are tight on her flesh, this must take a lot of willpower for him, too. Still, he manages to tease. “You got her begging,” he says.

Taehyung is very explicitly aware of the hand above his crotch. It feels warm and it’s twitching. His hips are a moment away from thrusting into it, and he’s so goddamn hard it’s starting to hurt. Most of all, he reads the challenge in Jungkook’s eyes and he sees doubt. As provocative as he is being, Taehyung knows Jungkook likely believes his coercion won’t fall through.

“Your pants must be tight. Straining,” Jungkook is saying. He’s laughing at him, at his prudishness or something else, at some inside joke he has with himself and Julia’s moaning underneath him.

“Jungkook,” She’s whining. He’s shaking his head, turning to her, gripping at her hips. He’s readying himself and the smirk on his goddamned mouth is so fucking annoying.

Taehyung is pretty sure all his braincells have evaporated when he snaps the button of his pants and pulls the zipper down. Jungkook’s smile falters, he stills, for barely a moment and then his eyes turn to Taehyung again, and the other does not shy away. He looks straight at him when his long fingers dip into his underwear and pull him out. Jungkook’s jaw ticks, tightens. His lids drop as his pupils dart across him, fall towards his hand that wraps around himself.

Taehyung’s hissing, sighing, finally reaching some notion of physical relief. His lids drop as well, mirroring Jungkook when eyes trail back to him. His mouth parts, tongue pokes out for a second. He cannot help his expression, is too far gone with what he doesn’t know to even care.  

Jungkook struggles not to swallow air. He forces the smile back onto his expression and it irks at Taehyung, so much. “There you go,” Jungkook says softly, gently. He grips at Julia, finally moves his hips ever so slowly and she’s whimpering contentedly. “Yeah. You’re making my girl all kinds of happy. Come on, now, pretty boy.” At the endearment Taehyung’s eyes narrow. He pauses his movement, reaches his hand up and stares at Jungkook dead in the dark, teasing eyes as he slowly drags his tongue right across his palm. Jungkook’s hips shove into Julia, his hooded eyes glaring as Taehyung reaches for himself again, wraps his moistened palm around his cock and slides it.

It feels good. Amazing. There is a rush going through him, scorching and alive and it laces over his skin and traces underneath as well, setting a fire inside him, the pit of his stomach and over his blood and it all begins and ends in Jungkook’s fiery eyes that are on him as he touches himself. It’s an excitement, an unfamiliar adrenaline mixed in with a challenge, an unspoken competition of a sort he is doomed to lose because no matter how much he surprises Jungkook he is too far gone just for being in his presence. He does not want to focus on that, though. Not now. Instead, he focuses on pleasure. He focuses on Jungkook. On his face, his eyes, his lips, his jaw. On his body, his arms, his chest, his stomach. On the way he moves, the way he speaks.

And he’s speaking now, speaking to Taehyung. “You set the pace,” He says, eyes trained on the motion of Taehyung’s hand across his length. His fingers are so thin, so long, so elegant. Even his hands are pretty, and they shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t but they are, and he wants to punish him for it. “Just so you know, she likes it fast.”

Taehyung listens. Eyes narrowed and one hand dug tight into the cushion next to him, he takes his lip into his mouth and he tugs at himself, sets a pace, jerks himself off, and Jungkook, now he watches. He has to, to match the pace and he does. With the same rapid motion that Taehyung snaps his wrist with, Jungkook thrusts into Julia, unforgiving and thorough.

Taehyung hates him all over again. Hates him because Julia is moaning and he is wondering, why? How is that comfortable, let alone pleasurable, having something shoved into your ass, what is it like, how does it feel? A finger? Two, three, a cock? Hips slamming into her, Jungkook’s hips smacking into her thighs, her ass every time he completes a thrust, every time Taehyung’s fist reaches the head of his cock.

He’s breathing hard. He’s breathing so hard and his heart is about to jump out of his chest.

“Faster,” Julia moans and he’s thankful because he needs to go faster, lest he bursts.

“Faster,” Jungkook repeats, for a moment blinking away from Taehyung’s motions to look at his face when he pauses the instruction. His eyes pause, stare, and what’s he thinking, Taehyung desperately wants to know what he is thinking.

At that moment Taehyung himself cannot think. He just moves, simply fists himself, presses his thumb into his slit when he manages and he sees Jungkook’s hand reach forward, brush between Julia’s legs and it remains there, rubbing. Taehyung’s hips are restless on the couch at this point, no matter how much he wants to preserve at least the vulnerability of helplessness to himself, hide it away from Jungkook’s prying eyes. He can’t. He’s gone. He fucks his fist and bites into his lip so hard, the skin breaks, but he will not, he refuses to, absolutely refuses to make a sound.

Jungkook wants to hear him. He knows it will torture Taehyung if his mouth betrays him, if he moans, and he thinks it is proper punishment for him, for being like this, for looking like this. He’s a Kim and he’s poor and he’s a man, and he’s pretty. Pretty when he’s turned on, too, those fine dark eyebrows knotting together, forehead creasing, lips turned white. His eyes are wild and so, so vulnerable Jungkook almost pacing.

“Will you come for me?” He says, and then he turns to Julia. Julia. Julia. He wants to see Julia come. “Come for me.”

Julia. Julia. Taehyung reminds himself. He wants Julia to come for him.

Still. Still. His hips stutter violently, hand moves so fast over his cock, so desperate. His mouth almost bleeds and he looks at Jungkook. Jungkook, Jungkook, fucking Jungkook. And he comes for him. Comes with a choked, swallowed noise and he comes so hard for a brief moment he loses sight. He’s spurting, fist still rapid, but slowing over him as he rides his high, making a mess on his shirt, but he doesn’t care he feels so damn good. He has no limbs for a brief few moments.

Julia must be coming as well because Jungkook is talking. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Ah. Good girl.”

She’s moaning, she’s saying his name, and she’s fisting the bedding. Taehyung doesn’t really care.

He’s spent, trying to catch his breath and calm his heart, chest raising and falling.

Jungkook comes as well, slamming his hips into Julia’s and twisting his face beautifully, features tightening and head tipping back. He allows a sound, a groan, and it’s not nearly enough, nearly not what Taehyung wants to hear from him.

He slides out of Julia and stands, taking the condom off of himself and walking towards the bathroom. Julia lets her hips fall to the bed, stretches. Her thighs are trembling with aftershocks and she’s moaning into the sheets, feeling them with her hands.

“God. I won’t be able to sit for a week.”

She seems tired, too tired to speak to him, at least, because with him she would have to put up a front, and he is thankful for that, as he cannot speak to her either. He’s too confused, too spent, too much back on earth now, can sense the come staining his shirt sink into his skin as well. He feels dirty; he’s dirty. And an idiot. He doesn’t know what he did, why he did it. He’s panicking. He’s tugging himself back into his pants, doing the button with trembling hands, and, oh god, he’s panicking.

What would his sister think? He has the scent of come on his hand, the stain of it on his shirt. What did he do? What did he do?

He’s panicking and Jungkook is walking out of the bathroom. He’s not ready to face him, not at all, let alone bare chested, but he’s there, as Taehyung stands up, there he is in all his shirtless, cruel glory standing right in front of him.

“Here,” he says, and he stretches out money, practically shoves them at him, expression gone and slipped into a cold neutrality that is ironically so palpable it almost hurts. Taehyung’s fingers wrap around the fingers and Jungkook’s hand draws back so quick they almost fall in between them. “And here,” he speaks again, and this time shoves a shirt at him, the one that he had worn that had been disregarded to the floor. “This one doesn’t have come on it,” he explains, though it is with a scathing disinterest and he steps away, and Taehyung thinksgood, good because he should not be allowed to stand so close to him, shirtless.

But then, he has his shirt in his hand and he’s mouth is parting, stuttering. Are you sure, he wants to say, because this is expensive surely, brand clothing, the most expensive article he’s probably ever held between his fingers. I’ll give it back,he wants to say, because that is what he should say. Thank you, he should thank him.

Instead, his dumb mouth speaks, asks the question that has been running through his head ever since Jungkook set foot in the room, obviously angry. “Are you okay?” Taehyung says, and Jungkook’s head snaps in his direction.

Julia’s head lifts off the bed, eyes rolling towards them, but she remains silent.

“Am I okay?” Jungkook snarls and he takes a step towards Taehyung and he immediately takes one back. “Am I okay?” Jungkook’s laughing, humorless and cold and Taehyung is flinching. “Get the fuck out of here, Kim.”

And Taehyung does. He hesitates, a passing moment in which their eyes meet and his heart trembles, but he does leave. He takes his shirt off in the elevator, wipes himself, puts Jungkook’s shirt on, the fine fabric that smells like him, the one he takes off as soon as he steps into his house, where he goes to bed, but doesn’t fall asleep until the early morning.

“Jungkookie! Hey, how are you?” Jungkook knows the voice, recognizes it the second it hits his senses, yet he does not expect to hear it here, now, a few blocks away from the Executive Tower where they’ll be waiting for him. He does not expect to hear it pitched this way, either, excited and cheerful.

It makes sense when he sees her, the way she is draped over some mildly familiar man, her hands all over him, legs stuggling, and dress offensively high on her thighs. Jungkook briefly wonders if he has seen that guy with Kai and it makes his blood run cold. It makes sense when he sees her eyes, pupils blown wide and all gone, incapable of focusing on one thing.

“Clo,” he addresses, trying to keep his voice in line.  His eyes fall to the way the man wraps his hand around her hips, falls near to her thigh, and he wants to bash his skull in. “What are you on?”

Her hand’s wave around her dismissively and she puts so much motion into it she nearly stumbles, and he reaches, despite the grasp the man has on her. He wraps a hand around her wrist, steadies her, squeezes just for the sake of it, the sake of giving her some sensation of him being there, because although she speaks to him, he is not sure she is aware. “Nothing new. Nothing new.” She falls a bit with the words, and he tugs her, until she slips from the man’s hold and has to steady herself with her palm on his chest. The man glares but says nothing. “What are you doing here at this hour, Jungkook-ah?”

“I’m meeting Julia,” Jungkook says quickly, simply.  He squeezes her wrist, tries to coax her into speaking again. “Clo, tell me what you took, yeah?” He’s gentle, slow.

She’s brusque and fast, hitting her hand into his chest “Nothing new,” she insists. She isn’t looking at him. She isn’t looking at anyone. Her tongue pokes out, licks over her mouth and it draws Jungkook’s attention to it. Her lips are so dry, they’re peeling. “But hey do you know what is new, what I found out today. Seokjin sleeps with older women for money. Remember Seokjin? The one with the morals.” She laughs as she says it, spits the last word more so than she says it – it offends her. She cackles. It is loud, short, forced, and so ironic is physically pains him. “Well, he fucks sad hags for money.”

Jungkook turns his head to the man beside her, trying to judge if he is bothered she speaks of another man, but now as he sees him, he is convinced he has seen him with Kai.

He tightens his grip on her wrist and tugs, “Clo, come home with me now.” He asks, low, through teeth, but it only coaxes her to try to pull away. She’s too weak to successfully do it, limbs useless. She settles for shaking her body, like a child throwing a tantrum.

“I thought you had a thing with Julia,” she says, even smirks. Her laughter rings now as if the mere notion of having a thing with Julia is purely hilarious and her head tips back, the sound of it dying down as soon it does. She moans instead, a whine that’s almost indicative of pain and Jungkook tugs at her again.

“That can wait, she can wait, come with me.” Jungkook says and he means it. Julia can wait. Taehyung can wait. She’d have enough fun with him on her own, he doesn’t care.

“But I need to go to the Ozone cause Seokjin wanted to talk.” She laughs to herself then, teeth baring. She has too much saliva in her mouth. Her eyes are wet and glossy. “You reckon he’s going to charge me?”

Jungkook’s teeth grind together, jaw ticks. “I thought you promised oppa you wouldn’t speak to Jin again, Clo.”

Julia scoffs, glares at him with such conscious passion that throws him off enough that when she attempts to shake his hand again, he lets her. “And you promised you wouldn’t let him hurt me again two years ago, Jungkook, but I still get black eyes, don’t I?”

His mouth parts, but it falls shut again, as soon as it does. He’s wordless, speechless for long enough that she falls a few steps back, back into the arm of the man who holds her up where Jungkook failed to keep her in his grip. Her eyes soften on him, the glare glosses over with the wetness. His voice is a breath, a plea. “Clo—” he attempts.

She doesn’t allow it, though. “Leave, Kook.” She says. “I don’t blame you.”

And he doesn’t. He stays. But soon, she’s gone and all he can do is watch the man take her away and hope Seokjin does find her, does speak to her, despite their father’s wishes.

And when she finally completely disappears from his sight, he does leave, but not before he beats his helplessness into the nearest trashcan, breaking it apart, piece by piece.

Chapter Text

Ji-woo had felt something was wrong from the very first crash she heard. She had flinched, grimaced, eyes falling shut and a breath of loaded exasperation had expelled through her lips, but that had been it. She kept cleaning, just as rigorously scrubbing at the shelf, if not with even more intent now, suddenly overcome with the desire to leave as quickly as possible. She had a room to complete, though, and it was a comparatively huge one.

Everything is huge in the Jeon’s home, if she has to be honest. It’s bountiful and luxurious, unnecessarily enormous and shiny, some ornaments elaborate and sophisticated, while others modernly stylish, contemporary, yet still showy, all having their own particular beauty as separate objects or pieces of furniture, but altogether poised and tasteless. It all just gives the notion, to Ji-woo, personally, that the eldest Jeon has an exceptionally small dick.

She had tensed when he had entered, as she could hear, even with her back to him, his steps were clumsy and uncoordinated; she just needs her ears to recognize a drunk – experience teaches. So, she knows, as soon as he enters, she grows increasingly aware. She always is in homes that belong in Richhood, especially in ones whose owners she suspects of having tiny penises and scarred egos. Entitlement reeks off of men like Jeon. Over possessions, over behaviors that go unpunished, over people he can afford, and he can afford her.

And today, a shiver had run down her spine the moment she noticed his presence.

She did not entirely remember what had transpired.

He’d stood near behind her, she’d startled. A crash had sounded as she’d spun, instinctively, her fingers opening for the barest second needed for the ornament in her hand to slip right through. She’d faced the towering man, his eyes bloodshot and gone. The slap to her cheek had followed, ringing eerie in the way it so easily bounced off of the walls, familiar to the room.

As he grips her elbow tight by the bone and gets in her face, pupils dilating and large, nostrils widened and mouth snarling in an ugly rage, she’s terrified, white, hot fear rushing through her blood, her heart thumping in her chest in a steady, but escalated rhythm. She keeps her head averted, to where it points automatically with the force of the slap, and doesn’t move. Her breathing pattern is the only evidence something was wrong. She knows to keep her calm.

She’s scared and she knows it, but he doesn’t have to. He’s entitled to a lot, but not to her fear, and she won’t give him it, knows it will only aggravate him further, egg him on, urge him to do more to her, hit her again. Her fingers tremble and so do her lips, but her body keeps still, thankfully.

His digits tighten around her arm so viciously were he a little soberer her bone might have snapped. He uses the hold he has to shake her, her whole body moving with his drunken stupor. He says a number, slurs it passionately, face red, a number that she easily forgets. “That’s how much yourfuckingmistake just cost.”

It’s his fault. He snuck up on her, startled her. She doesn’t say it, never would.

“I’m sorry,” she says cautiously, struggles not to let her voice betray her affect, but her tongue feels incredibly dry when it touches the roof of her mouth and she’s afraid it shows.

Not that he would notice, as he shakes her again. “Clumsy bitch,” he snorts, distaste as obvious as his drunkenness, “Sorry doesn’t pay me back.”

“I—”

“You either leave with no salary, or,” her eyes screw shut before he finishes, a single tear rolling down her cheek past her dried lips, squeezed white into each other until they’ve disappeared. She doesn’t know when it gathered in her eye, but it doesn’t matter. Her heart is crashing against her chest now, about to burst, crashes in tandem with her back as he pushes her and she stumbles, cornered into a wall. She knows how the sentence will finish before he opens his smirking, twisted mouth to speak.  “we will have to find another way for you to pay.”

It still strangles out a sob from out of her as he rounds up at her, like a vulture its pathetic prey. Final hope diminishes as the words reach her ears and breath escapes her entirely. Her ribcage closes up on her heart, on her insides as she sucks in air so desperately, she almost coughs.

Her head shakes, and the word no is a mantra on her lips, though she does not know if she whispers it aloud or it just stays private to herself. She has done things, been offered things, and accepted, to keep food on the table, to pay rent, she has. But she can’t, physically can’t do this, with him, not when the mere thought of him makes her want to retch, when she can even now feel the bile rise in her throat. She’s afraid if he touches her, she’ll vomit, and she’ll go home moneyless and jobless.

His hand is reaching towards her – she doesn’t look, but she feels it. She’s digging herself so hard into the wall, she actually hopes for a blind moment it will dematerialize and let her fall through, swallow her whole.

Naturally, it doesn’t. But he doesn’t touch her either.

“Leave her alone.”

The voice is cold, almost  firm, firm enough for her, and it is close.Her eyes open instinctively, and Jungkook is there, and she had never, ever, not even in her bravest dreams in which she’s a worldwide famous billionaire, imagined she could be glad to see Jeon ungkook.

He stands near in a simple white t-shirt, arms crossed, an unreadable expression set on his harsh face, directed at his father. She has never seen him so casual in attire, so pointed in emotion, but, though it is little and dwindling, he has it. It’s unrecognizable to her, maybe she has never felt it, maybe it was never even given a name, but his eyes betray something, and it is passionate in the way it oozes off of him onto the elder Jeon.

“Mind your fucking business, Jungkook,” his father slurs, his eyes fixated on Ji-woo. He attempts to take a step towards her, and he stumbles, arm reaching out to support him, plastering loud and echoing right next to her head. She recoils, her shoulders lifting with her flinch and remaining there to uselessly shield her.

“This ismy business.” Jungkook insists through teeth, his jaw ticking. He steps forward, arms untangling. “Get off her.”

He reaches forward and grips at his shoulder, but his father brushes the touch off roughly, stumbling even more forward with the brusqueness of his motion. His other arm raises, and it presses into Ji-woo’s waist, digs into her flesh. He’s not touching her for the sake of it as much as in attempt to hold himself up, but the sensation of his heat on her still sends her heart into overdrive, makes it spiral with disgust. She wants him gone, gonegonegone.

She breathes, nearly chokes on it.

“Go to your room, ungrateful piece of shit.” He edges close towards Ji-woo, his body nearing, his face inching dangerously. She can smell the liquor on his breath, and it makes her light headed. Her heart is thumping. Silent tears are falling freely now, wetting her cheeks as she squirms. His hand lifts off the wall, it graces her chin. She has the encompassing urge to gather as much saliva as her dry throat can hold and spit in his red, distorted face. “Daddy wants to play.”

It hasn’t fully reached her ears, she hasn’t allowed herself to panic yet, when the man is ripped off of her and shoved away. Jungkook stands nearer now, almost in front of her, his body a shield to hers. His fists are gathered tight together, knuckles bulging, and he stands, eyes narrowed, legs poised. “I told you to get the fuckoff of her.” His voice rings changed and unrecognizable. It is close to a yell, and now when he doesn’t speak so leveled, so lazy, so sinister, there is something strangely melodic to his anger.

There’s only spiteful hostility in his father’s when he manages his footing, surprising them all, even himself when he finally straightens. “You’ll get yourself in trouble, little boy.” The threat is a slurred whisper, and, though it is not directed at her, it entices a shiver in Ji-woo, raises the hairs on the back of her neck, which feels explicitly cold now, layered with the moistness of sweat. His father reaches forward and pushes him back, but it is futile.

Jungkook reciprocates, delivers a shove to his shoulders, but he is obviously careful, only to push him away. His father stumbles, snarls – his mouth curls so ugly and vituperative. He charges forward with clumsy steps. The hit he delivers to Jungkook’s chin is thankfully drunken, but not at all held back. “It’s past your bedtime, Jungkookie.”

When his fist draws back again and swings, Jungkook swiftly captures it in his, squeezes.

“Don’t bring her into this,” he says; his voice has dropped, not for a lack of anger lacing it anymore, but it seems to seek privacy. The other emotion, the one from before, the one that was coloring his eyes, now strings through it, forces into him some sort of ill-tasting vulnerability and he seems to push it away, his head shaking, as he pushes his father back as well and this time, he does it with power. His father loses footing, drops foolishly to the floor – it fits him, Ji-woo thinks. Jungkook looms over him, replaces the previous eerie emotionality with a firm harshness that nears the melodic yell again. “You do not want to bring more people into this.”

Taehyung’s sister. It’s flashing through his head; it’s been flashing through his head ever since he saw her trembling against the wall. She lookslike him, a bit, not nearly as pretty, as memorable, but she does, and his father, he cannotbring more people into this mess of his. He cannot bring Taehyung’s sister into this, and maybe it is too late for Jungkook to protect his own, to protect the most important woman in his life from the pure heinousnessof his father’s whims, of his disturbances, but it is not too late for him to protect Taehyung’s, and he will.

His father glares at him in a way that promises future regret, but Jungkook only stares back for a moment. He is drunk, and it will be hard for him to get on his feet without assistance, but he has done worse things when he was drunker and Jungkook needs to get Ji-woo out of there.

Jungkook’s fingers wrap around her wrist and pull her as she stares in shock. “Shit, come on,” he mutters underneath his breath, giving her a firm tug that forces her into motion. Despite his intentions, he is rough with her, brusque, his digits too tight and powerful, too controlling, and she wonders if he has ever held someone gently, if he even can.

The steps he takes are large and pointed, and she follows. He does not give her much of a choice, leading her into that marble hallway. The collision of their feet with the expensive stone rings around the room, hers more regularly than his, until they pause. Her heels root into the ground, but she stumbles a couple more steps after him with his initial inertia.

“Wa-wait,” she implores, and she stutters. She never stutters, and she hates it for a moment, but doesn’t care the next. Can’t afford to care as he turns, still as brusque, eyes hard as they fix on her.

“Fuck, what?” he snaps, hands releasing her wrist and she surrounds it with her own digits instinctively, fingers wrapping around skin in a subconscious need to soothe it, and his eyes fall to that, too, almost seem to soften before they dart to hers again, as set and as harsh as before.

“I can’t — I can’t afford not to finish my shift. I, Tae and WooWoo need me to finish this.”

Jungkook blinks, eyes widen. “Are you fucking serious right now?” His stare darts to the door behind him. They can both hear the fabric shuffling along the floor.

“No, I—”

Jungkook interjects, states firmly. “You have to drop our weeklies.”

“What?” she breathes sharply, sucks in air. It’s still hard for her, heart still dangerously uncalm. She had been close to hyperventilating moments ago. She’s not rationally surprised by what had happened to her, but she is irrationally still in shock of it. She gathers thoughts, tries to voice them. “No, I can’t. WooWoo—”

Jungkook sighs, breathes. He’s exasperated, and it shows. He’s never seemed to her like a patient man and it is very unlikely that he can be one, but he tries to reason now. “You have to before he fires you. If he fires you, you get a bad name. You drop out, it won’t be that bad. Clashing hours, unpredicted inconvenience, you’ll think of something.”

She shakes her head, her mouth opening and closing dumbly for a moment, and she feels she is much uncharacteristically reminiscent of a fish. They can’t fire her. “I need the money,” she tells him, though her voice is a plea. “I won’t tell anyone he hit me. I won’t, I swear.”

Jungkook blinks for a moment, staring at her, before he pauses, eyes fall shut, jaw ticks tight and he breathes through his nose. When they open again, it is with a start that he hides well, as the two are both alert to the fact they no longer hear shuffling, but steps. “Go,” Jungkook instructs, hurried. He touches her shoulder as he urges, but when she flinches at the touch, he easily drops his arm. “Go now. I’ll find a way to pay you for today later.”

She listens, leaves. He closes the door behind her, and she thinks in another world she might have thanked him.

“You still on lunch break, Tae?” Jimin’s voice sounds clear and familiar through the phone when Taehyung presses it to his ear. He relaxes back onto the edge of the stool after shifting to fish his phone out of his pocket and crosses his legs.

He swallows the apple in his mouth. Jimin always scolds him if he speaks with his mouth full, disgusting, he calls him. “Wouldn’t have answered if I weren’t, babe.”

Jimin’s gasp sounds on the other end of the line as Taehyung eyes the half-eaten apple in his hand a little sadly. He wants to eat already. “You wouldn’t pick up even if it’s me?”

“Nope.” Taehyung rotates the apple in his hand, carefully plans when his next bite would be placed. If he has to wait, then he will reward himself with a supple one after he hangs up, finally.

“And what if it is urgent?”

“Nothing’s urgent enough to get me fired, hyung,” he answers easily. He has now located the exact spot where he desperately wants to sink his teeth into. He can almost taste it in his mouth.

“What if I’m dying?”

“Make sure your funeral’s on a weekend if you want me to make it.”

“I hate you,” Jimin snorts.

“You love me.”

“I might just,” he replies, and it lingers. The door to the kitchen where Taehyung is taking his lunch opens, and he instinctively lifts his eyes up. Minho walks in, carrying a tray with empty glasses on it. He meets his gaze immediately. Taehyung lifts his eyebrows into his hair, questioning silently, and Minho raises his arm, taps at his wrist a couple of times.

“What’s up, Jimin?” Taehyung asks into his phone as he pushes off the stool and nods in his coworker’s direction. “I have to go.”

“Come with me to the Ring tomorrow,” Jimin spews quickly, his voice rapid and slightly childish, hurried, likely because he knows what the answer will be.

“What?” Taehyung hisses sharply. “The Ring? What the fuck  would we do at the Ring?”

“I’ll dance and you’ll support me because I don’t want to be alone,” Jimin explains firmly, as if it is a given already as Taehyung starts to walk out of the kitchen. Taehyung’s features contort with questioning confusion even if Jimin cannot see him, but the other elaborates anyway, a pinch of annoyance shining through his voice. “The brats are so bold they’re now collaborating with the Ozone for illegal goddamn fights. My boss’ got me on duty cause I deal with them best.”

“Why do they need male dancers for a boxing fight anyway?” Taehyung asks, incredulous. Of course, they would have the nerve to hire professional staff, associated with an actual club to an underground fight. Only Richhood youth goes to the Ring really, and a few others, desperate or brave enough to be their prey, he can’t know for sure. He’d been there once, briefly, and he’d regretted it. “Don’t they only need exceptionally busty girls in their underwear?”

“It’s a final of a championship or some shit, so it is an event.” Taehyung can practically sense him rolling his eyes with the sigh he expels. “We’re doing an actual routine.”

“A routine?” Taehyung questions with an almost amused skepticism.

 “Well, as close as it gets to it, Tae. I’m not filming a freaking K-pop MV, obviously,” he sounds aggravated and Taehyung knows he’ll take pity on him. He’ll agree. “Point is, I have an actual fucking choreography, I’m not just shaking my ass shirtless tomorrow and I want you there, cause I have a dance in the beginning of the night and in the end as well, and I’ll fucking die in the middle if you’re not there.”

Taehyung snorts. “I’m pretty sure you’ll find someone else to entertain you, hyung. You always do. Especially on nights you dance.”

“Idon’t find them. Theyfind me.”

Jimin and Taehyung’s relationship first and foremost prospers as such because of how much they are capable of understanding each other’s most dubious motivations. Park Jimin is almost a Kim in his successful, unobtrusive way to sneak into the premises of Richhood before it is too late to kick him out, though, quite honestly, no one would attempt to. Jimin’s a name that people know as simply that, his first and given name, he does not have the label of a family attached to him – he is alone in who he is, and it is a fitting reflection of how he has spent most of his life. Not alone, but lonely, trying to scorch loneliness with movement, with sensation. He’d never been as settled as he currently is, never before been somewhere long enough to have a reputation, but now he does.

He is Kim Taehyung’s friend. But above that, he is a dancer in the Ozone. He engraved his position with a natural sultriness and a calculated quality of salaciousness, oozed just right, in the most pragmatic direction. Jimin is consciously titillating in the most shameless and, consequently, dangerous sense possible. It gets him places, gets him things, gets him money. It is exhilarating and gratifying in a way that is not entirely familiar to Taehyung – more a state of callous, ill-tasting accomplishment that his sister can relate to, but he understands it.

Jimin has always insisted Taehyung had the asset to play the game of being poor in Richhood similarly, but Taehyung almost never caves, because Jimin would understand, but Jimin is alone. Taehyung is not. Taehyung is the only remaining man in Woojin’s life, only figure he has access to look up to if he were to venture into masculinity and some scant shape of honor, he has to be there to incline him to believe it is possible. So, Taehyung almost never caves.

Sometimes, it’s too easy, though. Sometimes when Jimin dances and he’s alone by the bar in the Ozone, someone would inevitably approach him, buy him a drink. He would smile at the girl that wants him inside her, look her over – he would be slow, unsubtle in a way that would make her reciprocate the nature of his smile, lucidly provocative. He would simply suggest she could have him, never promise, and his long fingers would pat at her palm, her wrist, her own digits, immemorable jewelry easily slipping off and into his pocket. It shines bright, but he shines brighter and, in some moments, very few, negligently few, he allows himself to know it.

Nothing compared to Jimin who now asks of him to come, again. He’d have more luck trying to convince him in person, work his tricks on Taehyung as well, though he understands him much too well for any of them to work. What does coax Taehyung into considering it is the repressed fondness tugging at him, one Jimin would outwardly reproach.

“Who’s fighting, do you know?” Taehyung asks, maybe it’d be someone interesting. Curiosity has always been Taehyung’s greatest sin.

He suffers from it now again as he exits the kitchen and pauses behind the bar to finish the conversation. He suffers in the way both his footing and his breath slightly halt with Jimin’s reply. “Taunting Jeon and Yunsik.”

Jungkook’s fighting. For a moment Taehyung thinks he might have heard wrong, his imagination playing tricks on him, because it is too damn comfortable for it to be him. But then again it simply makes sense. Of fucking course if it’s a championship, he’d be the one on the Ring. Taehyung tries to remember all the things that had encapsulated his burdening curiosity and shifted it to the Taunting Twin, exactly, and he knows one of them was raw, enviable talent. He has a talent for everything unrelated to sensitivity; he supposes it spreads even to violence.

“I have to go, hyung,” Taehyung says into the phone. “My shift is starting.”

“Are you coming?” Jimin pipes with finality.

Ironically, it’s the exact moment he sees him  through the window. “I’ll see.”

Taehyung ends the call. He puts his phone away with one hand behind the bar and throws away his half-eaten apple with the other.

Jungkook is unsurprisingly there and it makes Taehyung’s throat feel awfully dry and constricted. Fortunately, he’s, firstly, sans Julia this time. Instead, he’s with Jung Hoseok, who seems a wonderful alternative to Taehyung. In daylight, that particular rich kid can almost be pleasant. He is the only one who is actually capable of smiling, does it quite a lot even, other than Seokjin, though Taehyung, despite his diminutive knowledge of the newcomer feels it would be offensive to place him in the same category as the likes of a Jeon and his most trusted company. The second fortunate aspect of Jungkook’s daily visit is that he is not sat at a table Taehyung has to serve, so, theoretically, he should be fully able to avoid contact.

It reminds him it is Julia who’s targeted him from the two, and though with the situation as such Jungkook has taken a liking to playing with him, he does not have a genuine interest in Taehyung.

It’s weirdly dejecting.

Taehyung ignores it the sensation when it swells up in him, wholeheartedly avoiding any plausible implications that could derive from it, but he cannot ignore how conscious he is of the knot of his tie. He fumbles with it, carefully inspecting it before he sees a couple sit outside in his area and he gathers some menus, goes out to do his work.

He hates the tense awareness he feels when he walks perfectly in Jungkook’s sight. He hates how badly he wants to know if Jungkook acknowledges his presence, if without Julia around, he spares him a glance. It is a destructive headspace that he wants to escape, but his heart still beats one pace too quick when he takes the couple’s order.

He doesn’t recognize the woman, just the man, but today, he isn’t particularly interested in who either of them is.

Jungkook doesn’t say anything to him as he saunters by, and he tells himself he doesn’t purposefully slow his step to give them both a chance to look at each other. Mostly he tries to convince himself that because when he can’t resist anymore, and he steals a glance, it is unreciprocated. Jungkook is engrossed with whatever it is that Hoseok is saying, and though he does not seem to like it one bit, his attention holds firm and set.

The pang of deflation that surges through him is unwelcome, and unlasting.

He lets the door fall shut behind him automatically, pays no mind when he doesn’t hear it close.

What inevitably does capture his attention is the voice that calls his name. “Taehyung,” it lilts familiarly behind him, extracting an immediate shiver, throws him off a bit and he visibly takes a step too close to a client. The voice is no longer a problem in a moment, as an arm snakes along his lower back and a hand grips on his waist unnecessarily, intuitively; there’s something familiar and natural in the way Jungkook’s fingers assert themselves on Taehyung, something instinctive and borderline possessive, and it could be an unhealthy combination of his innate sense of entitlement and the fact they have seen other orgasm. Whatever it is, Taehyung’s immediately reaches to it, about to push it off, but it disappears on its own. “Hey. Chill. I’m not doing anything. I just want you to give this to your sister.”

His hands raise of him completely as Taehyung only half turns to address him. His eyes, however, fall on a small stack of money in Jungkook’s outstretched hand, something immediate and hostile washes over him. “My sister?” He voices with a sounded clasp of his teeth, animosity seeping from his tongue and his narrowed eyes alike when he questions, “Why the fuck are you giving money to my sister?”

Jungkook’s brows lift, likely he does not expect Taehyung to be this aggravated, but Taehyung is still ridiculously bothered by the fact he cared Jungkook didn’t even spare him a glance. “Cause she cleans my house?” Jungkook suggests; it comes off taunting, and Taehyung rolls his eyes. He takes the money without allowing their skin to brush and ducks behind the bar. Jungkook doesn’t leave, though, as Taehyung drops the menus in their place. No, Jungkook leans, he crosses his arms, presses himself onto the bar and he leans.  “Relax. Julia and I don’t have her booked on Fridays or something.”

Taehyung’s eye roll only manages to complete now, and it finishes with a blank, open mouthed stare pointed at Jungkook’s amused features. “You don’t actually think this is fucking funny, do you?” he snaps at him.

The entertainment dwindles, but it isn’t replaced entirely by his typical lazy boredom. There’s something else when he asks, “Would it bother you,” and then he pauses, cocks his head in half a nod, indicative of Taehyung’s own expression and stance, “this much?”

Taehyung doesn’t skip a beat. “Yeah.”

Jungkook’s tongue clicks. “Why?” he ventures, and Taehyung is spinning around before the word even finishes.

“Cause,” he deadpans with his back to Jungkook.

Taehyung pointedly strides into the kitchen, though it remains unbeknownst to him why he had even for a moment figured Jungkook wouldn’t follow. It’s an attempted escape from the interaction, but, if anything, it deteriorates the situation. It’s an hour at which they don’t serve food and the dish washer is nowhere to be seen, so what Taehyung does is he essentially leads him to privacy, space in which he thinks the entitlement of people like him amplifies with the unprecedented impunity it grands them.

Moments prior to this, Taehyung had loved the particular time of the day which allows him to take his break in peace and quiet. Now, he abhors he.

“That’s not really an answer,” Jungkook saunters in as if he owns the place, and Taehyung forgets to be surprised at his audacity as he turns to direct his annoyance.

Jungkook pauses near by the door and it allows for some space between them, which Taehyung appreciates, because he himself had stopped near a counter, and the prospect of having an unmovable surface behind him when Jungkook lingers close by unnerves him.

“I’m working,” Taehyung declares emphatically, but all it earns him is a shrug.

“That’s not an answer, either.”

Taehyung looks away briefly, his tongue poking out to brush at his lips, wetting them. His arms cross and in a venturous moment, he is speaking. “You don’t pay me to talk to you, do you?” he meets his eyes firmly. “You pay me to watch you have sex. So that’s all I owe you, really.”

He turns to face the counter he had paused by, removing the cloth he keeps at his belt to clean tables with and slams it onto the surface with zest, simply to give himself something to do, to distract himself. If he focuses himself entirely on Jungkook, he’ll get lost, and it won’t be pretty, not for him.

Jungkook takes a step now and Taehyung senses and hears it all alike. The other does not seem to be in any way fazed by the attitude, nor is he discouraged from confidently demanding more. “What do you do with the money?”

Taehyung glances at him over his shoulder. “What’s with the interrogation?”

Jungkook takes another step. It’s a small one, languorous, he somehow makes it seem natural that he has to step forward.  “I’m just...” he trails off, and now that seems, while not unnatural per se, atypical, “curious.”

Taehyung hates Jungkook being unexpected in an unexpected way. He’s used to the other surprising him, but in a particular way – he’d learned to expect the unexpected from this man. Yet, his hesitance catches him so off guard, it evokes an actual response. “Rent.” Taehyung says at first, scarcely, and he doesn’t mean to say more, but Jungkook is quiet, and Taehyung needs to feel that silence. He notices a spot on the tiled counter in front of him, a full-on blotch, one a health inspector would not be happy with. He’s glad to be able to scrub at it with his towel as he distractedly speaks, lists for him, his previous animosity a bygone. “Clothes for my brother, school supplies for my brother. I’m thinking of replacing the stove, but it will be hell explaining that to my sister.”

Jungkook is taking another step forward behind Taehyung’s back. “Don’t you buy anything for yourself?” he asks; he does so with indifference, bordering on a hint of curiosity, but as long as he isn’t malicious, as long as he isn’t teasing, Taehyung keeps talking.

“Well,” He shrugs as he scrubs, “My potential education into architecture fond did suddenly become abnormally large. And I might have bought a couple of shirts for myself. Oh.” He glances behind his shoulder again, tries to be casual, but his eyes are flitting all over Jungkook when he realizes his proximity, and the topic he is about to go onto makes him tingle, so, incapable of full on nonchalance, he settles for steadiness, “By the way, how do you want me to return yours?” He turns back to inspect if the spot’s disappearing. It’s been long gone, he supposes, but he just wants to make sure. His next words are quiet. “I don’t reckon you want it in front of people.“

Jungkook’s eyes roam over him, over his back and stance, at the unnecessary, quick motion his long, thin fingers make, scrubbing back and forth at the surface that by now is practically so clean it glitters. Jungkook shrugs. “Keep it.”

Taehyung’s brows arch, lift into his hair and he can now see it from the side as he stands beside him, presses his hip into the counter next to him. His eyes grow wide; he has big eyes, Jungkook supposes. When he bats them with sheer incredulity and only faces him slightly, only with a tilt of his neck, angling his body consistently away from his, he notices the lids are different. “Keep it?” he questions.

Jungkook nods. “Yeah,” he confirms aloud, near a hum. He doesn’t particularly care for the shirt, doesn’t even remember which one it was that he gave him – just a shirt, but Jungkook knowsit smells of him, reminds him of him, even if he were to wash away Jungkook’s skin, the fabric would remain too fine, to nice, the shirt a size or two too big to be Taehyung. There’s something peculiarly alluring in having a piece of his clothing in Taehyung’s house, Jungkook concludes for a twisted reason that doesn’t spark familiarity in him.

“It’s Hugo Boss,” Taehyung informs him, slowly, enunciates it, those different eyes still wide with disbelief.

The brand means nothing to Jungkook. He has a lot of shirts with that label, none particularly distinctive to him. He’d probably give them all to Taehyung if he asks him nicely, but the other’s face and voice spell it out for him he finds even Jungkook’s current suggestion abysmally preposterous. Jungkook’s shoulders lift casually, hands in his pockets. “Sell it then,” he tells him.

Taehyung eyes him slowly, cautiously, before his head cocks and his upper lip curves in a way that would have been unattractive on anyone else, but Jungkook is starting to accept it is simply not physically possible for Taehyung not to be frustratingly pretty. He’s still pretty when he shakes his head and once again turns his back fully on him. “Do you really don’t want to touch something I’ve worn that much?”

“No,” Jungkook replies, short, simple and straightforward. His arm reaches instinctively, hand pressing in the side of Taehyung’s waist that is nearest to him, and he pushes at it slightly to tilt him, draw his attention. His flesh is soft underneath his grasp, and the touch lingers. “How old is your brother?”

For Taehyung, every grace of Jungkook’s firm, subtle touch feels scorching. He takes a step back, out of his reach, out of his grasp. He does not particularly like the way Jungkook simply angles his body as he sees fit, the way he readjusts him; he reminds himself he currently owes the other nothing, except a shirt, maybe, but certainly not the will to be manhandled. “Stop touching me, will you?” it slips out of his mouth as his hands lift up, defensive, though with no particular intent.

Jungkook replaces his hand back in his pocket calmly, and Taehyung allows himself to shift back towards the counter, but he simply fingers at the gaps between the tiles, staring down at the emotion of his own digits. “How old?” Jungkook repeats.

“Six,” Taehyung answers, before he sucks in a breath, looks at Jungkook again, but not at his eyes, more at his nose. His nose’s the easiest part of his face to look at if he can resist glancing at his lips. “Listen,” Taehyung starts, and he tries to be firm. “I don’t want to speak about my family with you.”

Jungkook’s brows raise, his mouth tilting slights and Taehyung fails, he steals a glance at full red lips, which shape words with the tiniest bit of amusement. “What doyou want to speak with me about?”

“I —” it catches Taehyung off guard. Stupidly, the answer to that is just about everything. His curiosity often adventures to places of simply what it would be like to hear Jungkook speak, to share, opinions, thoughts, ambitions, interests. Anything.   “nothing,” Taehyung replies.  “We don’t exactly have any tangent lines, do we?” And he asks the question pointedly, including his eyes as well in the manifestation of that particular thought – he wants to be proven wrong, but he knows he won’t be. So, he adds, “Won’t you be the first to say?”

Jungkook moves. “Sure,” he says offhandedly, the voice coming from straight behind him and the hairs on the back of his neck inadvertently raise, minutely aware of the other’s presence. It escalates, the pestering awareness does, and so does his fragile heartbeat, when Jungkook’s sinewy forearms come into view as he places his hands on the edge of the counter, trapping the other between his intimidating body and an impenetrable piece of wood and granite. “Do you need more money, Taehyung?” Jungkook asks and his voice has lowered

“What?” Taehyung breathes out. His eyes focus on Jungkook’s fingers, the ring on them, the bones on his hands. They appear loose in the way they are plastered on the counter, yet Taehyung doesn’t dare try to escape.

Jungkook shifts on his legs and it sends Taehyungs heart into overdrive. “I’m speaking about the one thing we have in common,” Jungkook informs him, casual, nonchalant, but then when he speaks next, his voice comes much too close to the shell of Taehyung’s ear and he has to censor a visible shiver, stares forwards, blank and dump. “When I said, you could join,” Jungkook pauses pointedly and it reaps a result that coaxes a smirk out him; Taehyung sucks in a breath.“I meant it,” the other finishes dangerously, malignantly.

Taehyung’s head is shaking. “Jungkook-ssi,” he spells out, just above a whisper, his voice not dissimilar to a pant, though he does not have much else to say, not at this current point – his brain struggles and so does his mouth.

Jungkook lets out a sound that borders on a snort, but his voice is still hissing in a teasingly, suggestive way when it waves over Taehyung’s ear. “For fuck’s sake, you can call me hyung.”

“Hyung, then,” Taehyung acknowledges, but his head keeps shaking. “Sex for money.” He says, outlines it as clear and simple as it it, out loud. He needs to hear it to realise it, it seems, because the moment he does, something stirs in his chest, a discomfort that is profound and disarming in a way it is entirely withhimself, with whohe is. “That’s...” he continues futile and forward, “that’s prostitution. I — no.”

When Jungkook’s hard chest presses against his back he feels his heart skip a beat. The sensation of Jungkook fitting himself so physically, so palpably against him, aligning their bodies together, it almost strings a gasp out of him, but he sinks his teeth into his lips and swallows it safely until it closes on his throat. “Don’t do it for money then,” Jungkook’s whispering  now, and Taehyung has to squeeze at the cloth to remain calm. He can feel his breath on the back of his head, ruffling strands of his hair. “Do it cause you want to.”

Taehyung twists his fingers with utmost lack of coordination and the cloth rips in his hands. He stares ahead, eyes wide, lips no longer worried between his teeth, for his mouth gapes with his stutter. “Wha- what? I don’t, I don’t want to.”

He wants to speak clear, say more, but it is practically impossible when his whole back is on fire pressed into hard, burning chest. It’s ridiculously difficult for him to concentrate on words and their actual, transpiring meaning when he has to put so much of his composure into not pressing back into the heat of Jungkook’s body.

It becomes harder still when Jungkook’s lips brush at the shell of his ear. He cannot stifle a shiver now. It rocks through his body electrically and Jungkook does not remain ignorant to it, mouth curling cunningly as he murmurs to the other boy. “Come on, Taehyung,” he lets the name roll out, slow and long and teasing and Taehyung seriously loses knowledge of how people breath. “You came so hard,” the other continues, illicit and explicit in his ear. Taehyung feelsthe words rumble through his chest, vibrate on his back, before he hearsthem.  “You can’t tell me you don’t want…” he pauses and something lingers palpable between them, something unspoken, yet nevertheless exchanged, “Julia.”

“I... don’t.” He’s honest, he figures he can’t be anything but when his head is spinning as much, thoughts fragmented and fraudulent, but sensation there to envelop. He doesn’t want Julia. He never has.

“No?” Jungkook breathes out, quick with forged disbelief.  Taehyung shakes his head. He can feel the shape of his nose against it as he does and there is something scathingly intimate about that proximity. “You don’t want to be inside of her...” Jungkook’s thin fingers reach forward from the right, touch Taehyung’s fidgeting digits, brush over them, and Taehyung watches, entranced – his ring feels cold, “just a thin piece of skin separating you from me?”

That does it for Taehyung. He bursts. “Stop,” he exclaims, orders, as he pushes Jungkook’s dauntingly gentle fingers off of his roughly. He spins in his grasp, knocks his shoulder into his chest, before he shoves him away with his hands. “Stop.stop stop.” Taehyung begs. He’d been right, he’s in no state to be dishonest at that moment, so he has no other choice but to shove him away, because if has to answer, does he want that, does he in some twisted, borderline degenerate shape or form want Jungkook? He does. But Jungkook doesn’t want him. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. Taehyung has to remind himself that he doesn’t so he asks, as Jungkook settles a good two feet away from him, regressed back to his previous condescending boredom, he hasto ask. “Why do you— why would you even want this?”

This time when Jungkook’s shoulders lift in a shrug, Taehyung’s slouch with unwarranted disappointment. “I don’t,” Jungkook answers as if it is simple, as if it explains things. And it doesn’t. It confuses them.

And Taehyung gapes, bewildered. “What?” he questions, and there is a shrillness to his voice that to his own ears rings with piteousness.

“I don’t,” Jungkook repeats with that mind-numbingly frustrating ostensible indifference, and Taehyung breathes in, closes his eyes. Jungkook finishes and it is as if he delivers a blow. “Julia does and I lost a bet.”

“A bet?” It’s choked, and Taehyung’s eyes open wide again as an unfamiliar type of nuanced disgust roots into him, curls his mouth into an unflattering grimace.  “Is that what I am?”

Jungkook scoffs. “Please.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest and cocks his head, the condescension now seeping in waves. “Don’t tell me you have enough pride to be offended.“

Taehyung wants to laugh. It plays in his voice when he speaks next, a dejected, disbelieving laughter. “Oh, so I’m poor. I’m desperate. I must be shameless then as well.“

“Taehyung,” Jungkook tries to interject, but it’s built up now. It overwhelms him, the fucking need to just scream. He doesn’t, but his voice still raises high and he moves, steps right and steps left, needs to let off some of what is bubbling inside of him.

“Fuck you, Jungkook,” he proclaims, points a single finger at him. “You. Your girlfriend. And your money. Fuck you.”

“Taehyung,” he attempts again.

“Stopsaying my name like this,” it’s the loudest he allows himself to get and he looks at the ceiling as he does, his arms raised in exasperation, voice shrill and vibrating with his anger. He’s angry, he recogonises that, though he’s not as angry with Jungkook as he is with himself, because first and foremost he is something he never expected to be in relation to him and Julia. He is hurt. He meets his eye and speaks almost normally again. “Go back to Kim. I prefer Kim.”

This time when Jungkook begins he does not allow himself to be interrupted before he finishes it, completely disregarding Taehyung’s last request. “Taehyung, your sister will drop our weeklies.”

Taehyung’s mouth opens and closes. “I— What? Why? What did you to her?” His eyes narrow, fists curling,.

Jungkook’s head shakes. “Nothing. Listen—"

“No,youlisten,” Taehyung grinds out through gritted teeth and he takes a step forward; it’s small, a gesture more so than anything else. He enunciates, “Just stay away from me and my family.” Their eyes meet and Jungkook’s obsidian fucking orbs probe into him, oxymoronically penetrative and dull, and Taehyung really wishes he were in the position to hit him. “Okay?”

Jungkook’s jaw clenches. It ticks. He seems to swallow some words before he opens his mouth and announce, “Saturday.”

Taehyung blinks, confused. “What?”

Jungkook speaks calmly. “If you change your mind, we’ll be there Saturday,” he says coldly and with it, he spins, and he leaves, and Taehyung desperately searches for something in his reach to throw behind him.

Taehyung thinks not only will he not be there on Saturday, but he is not even going to the boxing fight with Jimin. He wants to be in at least a fifty-mile radius from Jungkook, Julia, and all of fucking Richhood.

All it takes is a single conversation with his sister for Taehyung to go to the boxing match.

He goes with Jimin. The only other male dancer who is called in tonight drives a car that has the passenger seat missing, but he always welcomes Taehyung for a lift if he needs it. The Ring is naturally not particularly close to neither Taehyung nor Jimin’s places, so Baekhyun is kind enough to pick them both up. Taehyung sits at the side of the passenger seat, shoulder pressed to Jimin’s warm arm, as his legs are much too long for the driver’s side to accommodate him. It will never not be weird to have the front of the car empty, but it’s certainly not what’s prickling at Taehyung with foreboding anxiety, what makes him rub his palms together in between his thighs and keep his lower lip vacuumed into his mouth for most of the trip.

Jimin eyes him wearily when Taehyung inadvertently draws his attention to himself when he subconsciously rocks into his seat. He watches him for a moment, parts his lips, then shakes his head and turns away.

Taehyung follows Baekhyun and Jimin into a dressing room that some bulky European with a folder points them to. It’s situated in a tiled corridor that makes Taeyhung wonder how it doesn’t repel its usual spoiled, fancy occupants. It’s dim and long, has several doors all similar in shape and size. Min Yoongi is the sole current inhabitant of the space, other than them, as he steps out of a room, closes the door behind himself and walks confident and unbothered down the length of it without looking up from the glaring light of his phone once.

He’s so focused on whatever the screen holds that Taehyung allows himself to trail his eyes along him, turn his head to stare after him as he turns a corner and disappears. Taehyung’s gaze replaces to the door from which he had materialized. He’s instantly curious as to what hides behind it, has his suspicions.

The room they enter is simple. Benches, lockers, showers all in the same tiled room. There are a couple of girls there that they greet, they know them – other dancers.

Taehyung does not want the front row standing spot that he gets. He feels he stands out like a sore thumb at the ringside, rigid and most obviously uncomfortable. The room is loud.It’s boisterous and filled with the vibration of excited conversation, laughter, screams. The skin of the people around him glistens, the pupils of their eyes are huge, and their smiles enormous. He sees perfect, straight white teeth everywhere he turns, legs of girls, countless pairs of bare, thin legs, and hair sticking to moist skin.

He sees Jung Hoseok and Jung Hoseok sees him. He’s relaxed into a chair, long legs forward, the ankle of one thrown over the knee of the other and he has his arm strewn over a girl with bare legs who is comfortably tugged into his side, her fingers drumming suggestively along his chest. Hoseok’s pupils are wide and black and his dark hair sticks tight to his glistening skin, and his teeth shine bright and sparkly with the width of his smile. It falters when it lands on Taehyung, visibly contorts all features of his face, and Taehyung looks swiftly away, centers his gaze on the Ring, where it shouldbe in the first place.

Jimin’s dancing.

Taehyung’s heart paces with directions in which his mind is wandering. He is overthinking  and he knows it, but he can hardly help mulling over the obvious attitude Hoseok had towards him. Lack of indifference always disconcerts him in the premises of anything Richhood, and he allows himself to think maybe Jungkook mentioned him, but then he remembers he is a Kim, and that is enough to provoke distaste.

Jimin stands next to him, shirtless, in jeans, and with some glitter on top, when the fight begins. They don’t talk – Taehyung doesn’t. He just watches.

Everyone does as the two man climb into the ring. Yungsik walks in alongside five other people when he does, moves his shoulders unnecessarily and stares straight, stares dead, underneath a hood. He kisses a particularly thin girl on the  lips chastely before he slides in between the ropes.

Jungkook walks in with Min Yoongi alone and the other leaves him wordlessly to saunter over to Hoseok before he even reaches the Ring on which Yungsik is now bouncing, raising his gloves, visiting corners. As Yoongi approaches Hoseok untangles himself from the girl beside him and whispers something to her that makes her face drop, a frown coloring her features. She almost stumbles as she folds her arms and leaves, a snarling expression directed at Yoongi as he passes by her. He does not spare her a glance as he falls into her seat and nuzzles his shoulder underneath Hoseok who smoothly positions his arm on the back of his chair to accommodate him.

The crowd cheers louder when Jungkook throws his leg over the ropes, though he does not seem like a pleaser. He doesn’t egg the audience on in the same movie-like way that Yungsik had. He simply climbs onto the ring and stands as shouts erupt around him. Taehyung’s eyes zero in hopelessly on his build form and they root. He’s got a dark hood over his raven hair as well, an unzipped, sleeveless piece of material covering his back.

The intensity of his obsidian eyes is ground-shaking for Taehyung, and they are not even fixated on him.

He takes the cloth off with a backward motion of his head and then a roll of his shoulders. It’s attractive in a bizarre way, makes Taehyung swallow around nothing. He has never seen Jungkook like this, so bare. He’s just in shorts and shoes and gloves. His calves are on show, muscled and spread slightly in a stance that if it were directed at Taehyung, he is not sure he would keep consciousness. His broad chest is bare, back as well, relieved stomach. There is nothing expensive on him, and he seems different, primal. He has a strand in those eyes, his jaw his chiseled. Taehyung finds even the bone structure of his face threatening.

The gloves are a lot thinner than they are in actual boxing. Taehyung’s lower lip is sucked back into his mouth.

Yungsik is bigger.

Taehyung’s heart thumps in his chest.

He doesn’t fully register words though he does see other people move around on the Ring, someone making announcements. A European girl in bikini. She passes too close to Jungkook, skids her eyes across the whole of his body, bites her lip.

The fight starts. The crowd is alive, a wave of passion, and Taehyung doesn’t understandwhy. He wants it to stop as soon as it begins.

Yungsik is bigger. Jungkook is quicker. And he’s restless.His expression is gone, dark. He hits with passion. He looks the way he looks when he fucks, if not even more moved. He’s fervid, animalistic. He’s terrifying. His eyes do not leave his target once. He’s alive on the ring, agile, rapid and unforgiving. Taehyung’s breath hitches each time Yungsik manages a hit.

The fight has nothing to do with what Taehyung has seen on television. There’s nothing that can be interpreted as hugging, barely any distance between them at any moment. It’s pure, clear cut hurt, hurthurthurt.

Sweat layers Jungkook’s body from the exertion of movement. The strand before his eyes wets, his chest expands and contracts heavy with breaths, but they are steady. He is still under control, always under control, though with the way he delivers powerful punches it is borderline disturbing that he can be so aware of himself, so conscious and rapacious, while inflicting such violence.

Both men are vicious. Neither holds back and the crowd simply loves it.

Everything’s so loud and bright and violent and it feels dystopian to Taehyung.

The fight ends in the second round when Jungkook knocks Yungsik out cold with a jab to the chin that would be certain to fracture. He stands over the lifeless body in his feet, catching his breath. His lips are parted, and his head is tilted downward, eyes darting across the unconscious man. His chest fills out and sinks rapidly and he takes a step back, falls into it more so than he takes  it, balance barely attainable, and Taehyung sinks his teeth into the flesh of his mouth, hard, punishing, because he’s fucking concerned, and of all things,that is simply unacceptable. Jungkook pokes his tongue into his cheek, wipes at his mouth with his forearm and it comes off crimson. The color glares at Taehyung.

And then in the next moment so does Jungkook.

His head tilts, eyes shoot up into the overwhelmed, screaming crowd and they bolt right into Taehyung. His heart minutely stops in his chest.

Jungkook’s eyes remain fixed, still containing in themselves a dark, animalistic quality that burns through Taehyung with penetrative intensity. A man catches Jungkook by the wrist, lifts it up into the air and Jungkook takes a couple of more breaths with his eyes perilously fixated on Taehyung’s before he averts them, tilts his whole head and he really looks at the crowd now, lifts his other arm up, pulses it into the air, announcing himself champion. It drives everybody wild, and no seems to notice the thin girl trying to pull Yungsik’s body of the ring on her very own.

Jungkook leaves shortly. Taehyung’s eyes trail after him as crowd parts in front of him and hands reach for his back. Bodies coalesce once he passes through, and it swallows him entirely until he disappears from view.

Jimin has to dance again. Taehyung turns to his left. Yoongi’s eyes are closed shut and Hoseok is focused on him, hands on his shoulders, shaking him from left to right with a concentrated expression.

Taehyung takes a chance. It’s not particularly easy to reach the hallway with the dressing rooms, but it’s not as difficult as he expects it to be, either, and he manages, relieved to be free of countless bodies, greedy for violence.

He pauses when he does reach it. The space seems to be glaring at him, challenging him. He takes a breath, one that is quick and short and makes his shoulders lift and fall. He disregards the need of a mental pep talk, figures it is best to just walkand he does, because he went there for a reason and he’s not going to leave empty handed.

Taehyung halts in front of the door Min Yoongi had come out of and he takes a chance. He raises his hand, turns the handle, and it swings opened, and he had been right.

Jungkook is there, sat on the bench in the middle of a room, identical to the one given to Baekhyun and Jimin. His thighs are spread wide, and he leans on them, both elbows digging into the firm muscle underneath his shorts. His hands are busy uncurling a strung fabric that had been protectively wrapped around his wrists and palms. Taehyung’s feet are rooted in the doorway by the simple way he glances up, captures him with his piercing eyes.

The primality of his fighting countenance has evaporated, and he has sunk back into his emblematic languor, but the intensity to his eyes is not yet lost entirely as they fix over Taehyung.

He waits, it seems, but Taehyung is silent.

Jungkook’s tongue darts over his lips. “Did you come by to see me shirtless one more time?” his voice rings.

Taehyung leans on the side of the doorway, ignores the way the words make him flush. “I’m here because of Jimin,” he states firmly.

Jungkook returns his attention to his wrist, proceeds to uncurl the fabric. “I know,” comes his simple reply.

It surprises Taehyung that a single line of teasing is all Jungkook serves to him. His eyes dart across the other, the cut underneath his left eyebrow, the smudge of red beneath his mouth. “You’re bleeding,” Taehyung announces suddenly, dumbly. He shouldn’t notice. He shouldn’t care,but Jungkook just sits  there with an open cut, and this isn’t the cleanest place that there it. Woojin’s cut infected once and it wasn’t pretty.

Jungkook’s brows lift and he speaks with a condescending laughter in his voice, when he responds. “I know that as well,” he says and allows himself a smirk. “It happens.”

Taehyung blinks away at the patronizing superiority the other insists on forcing into the exchange as he pointedly talks to him like to a child. He huffs to himself, shakes his head. He really doesn’t care about his stupid cut.

So, he gets to the point.

He exhales and it is after a laborious silence that his voice feels the vacant room again. “Jungkook, why is my sister dropping her weeklies?”

The other looks up at this. He stands, steps forward. “She is going to do it, after all?”

“Yes.” Taehyung presses as Jungkook nears. The angle of his body suggests he is not walking towards   Taehyung, as much as he is about to walk by  him, but the directed steps still unnerve him, stir something within him. “Yes, she is.” Jungkook’s close now, and he is about to step over the threshold, but Taehyung with sudden bravery, or stupidity, he can’t be sure, shifts right in his way. “Why?” he demands.

Jungkook glances at him, the dullness of the stare somewhat annoyed, as if Taehyung’s a pest. “She won’t tell you?” he questions, and attempts to sidestep him again, but Taehyung’s set on it now. He blocks his path.

“Did you hurt her, Jungkook?” he asks loud and clear and it lingers in the air between them, which scant, space is lacking.

Jungkook’s eyes narrow slightly at the question, at him. They fall on his indignantly, and he sets his angular jaw, makes the bone at the edge of it tick. “Get out of my way, Taehyung,” he instructs authoritatively, lowering the timbre of his voice, which emphasizes its current deepness.

Taehyung swallows, musters up courage, but he doesn’t obey. “Did you?” he insists.

Jungkook’s eyes roll, his tongue first invades his cheek and then clicks along the roof of his mouth before he centers his dark gaze on Taehyung again. He crosses his arms, leans forward a bit and his hot breath washes over Taehyung when the other whispers, malignant yet soft. “If I did,” he begins and his pupils roll over Taehyung’s entire body, takes it in as it treacherously heaves with the effect of his teasing breath, “what are you going to do about it?”

Taehyung really does not know what in the world compels him after what he had witnessed barely minutes ago, maybe sick hopes that his prayers would summon Jungkook’s exhaustion, maybe his intrinsic impulsivity that, if it escalates in similar patterns, will border on lunaticity, but he swings.

It catches Jungkook and his crossed arms off guard and he manages a single jab, but anything after that, the initial betrayal of what his intentions are, every attempt on his side is futile. Jungkook recovers from the first hit so quickly Taehyung has to wonder if he even landed it. He steps back from the second, ducks from the third and at the fourth time, Jungkook, in a single motion captures his wrist.

Taehyung fights dumbly. He fights with frustration. He’s grunting as he attempts to free his arm foolishly. He attacks with the other as well, not even curling his fingers into a fist, just slapping at him, and he is so wound up, he knows the frustration which he now channels is not just at this, not just for the sake of his sister – it’s for anything and everything, for the very fact of Jungkook’s existence, and he just wants to fucking hit him again, hurt  him, but he can’t because the other has encapsulated his other wrist as well.

Taehyung struggles against the hold, and it reaps no results, but this isn’t boxing, there are no rules, so he lifts his leg up, knees somewhere around Jungkook’s hip and the other hisses in pain, finally makes a move of his own.

Jungkook never hits him back. He just contains him, pressing him against the wall and lining his body with his, trapping his legs into place between his strong thighs. He walks him back towards it with firm, long steps and Taehyung almost loses his footing. Jungkook releases one of his wrists, slams his palm into the wall instead to balance both of their bodies upright and Taehyung instinctively reaches for him to hold himself up, captures the warm dip of his waist with his long, cold fingers.

His back hits the wall, and so does his wrist that Jungkook still has clenched between his digits.

They’re close now, proximity inebriating for Taehyung, and his heady scent is words, and Taehyung can’t breathe. He’d breathed out all his frustration and now he can’t still his chest; it raises and falls, rhythmic, but hard, quick, rapid, not dissimilar to the way his heart pounds within it, uncontainable.

Jungkook’s breathing is strained, too, with holding himself back, with getting Taehyung to just fucking relax. He has him now, firm and still against the wall, he has him.

They’re too close. Taehyung’s breath will never return safe to his lungs if Jungkook is at such a distance. They’ve been in the same position before, with Jungkook being precariously physical  in all he does, and Taehyung begs he can get used to it, but he can’t. Especially not when Taehyung’s releasing weeks’ worth of frustration canalized in an aggression to akin to savagery he does not associate with himself, and Jungkook’s so bare.

He’s hot, scorching even, to the touch and Taehyung has his hand on him, on his thin waist, palm holding him solid and curled. His bare upper body still glistens with the perspiration from the boxing fight, and it accents the definition go his stomach and chest.

But Taehyung’s stupid. He wishes he was looking at his chiseled body, but he isn’t. He’s staring at the features of his face, darting all across them, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. All across, his own expression almost one of pain as his focus falls on the pink tongue that pokes out.

Taehyung’s pants expel and propel right into Jungkook’s parted lips.

So do Jungkook’s words when he breathes, speaks intimately, barely an inch from Taehyung’s mouth. “I didn’t,” he confesses, and Taehyung’s brows raise, perplexed, his head blank and eyes rooted to lips. “Hurt her,” Jungkook provides and Taehyung’s gaze liftes to meet his. “I wouldn’t.”

Taehyung lets his head fall back onto the wall. “Why do I find that hard to believe?” he murmurs.

Jungkook blinks at him, pauses and sighs. “Can’t blame you, can I?”

Taehyung’s calm now. There’s no need for Jungkook to hold him, but he does, his hard body keeping him in place, and he’slooking him, so closely and somewhat intimately in the way their breaths tangle, that it just reminds Taehyung how much he wishes he wasn’t just a bet.

The thought courses through him with venom and he tugs at his wrist to free it, nearly whines as he demands, “Get off of me.”

Jungkook doesn’t, though. He stays put, stays on  him, and he presses forward, with his hips that tame Taehyung’s lower body, and his pelvis almost rolls into his, and Taehyung gasps a sigh so shamefully lewd it almost reverberates into a moan. His fingers clench into Jungkook’s waist, squeeze at the heated flesh, and Taehyung wonders, what are they even doing there still? “Is that really what you want?”

Taehyung gulps. He hates that question, hates it, because in that moment in that moment Taehyung wants something ridiculous, He wants to kiss him.  

It’s such a strange urge to him, but it’s intrusive, unavoidable, makes his lips fucking tingle, and he wonders, with the way Jungkook is still pressed to him, the way he looks at him, teases him, just how gratifying he would find the bodily damage he inflicts on him if Taehyung does move an inch and seal their lips together.

Or maybe—

A throat is cleared and Taehyung pales, removes his hand from Jungkook’s waist with admirable quickness, slapping his palm into the wall behind him.

Jungkook, to his surprise, only retracts himself a little, just so that he isn’t touching him anymore, and does not mirror his wide eyes and panicked retrieval of limbs. Instead, it is with lazy annoyance that he turns to look at the intruder.

When Taehyung himself turns, he thinks maybe Jungkook was able to recognize the person just by the sound they had made to announce their presence, because there in the doorway with one arm thrown across the frame and her head leaned on it, stands his sister, pupils dilated, body glistening, legs exposed, and smile bright.

“Ring girl asked for you,” Jeon Clo Eun says, as indolent as her brother, if not more. Her eyes dart towards Taehyung lazily, and an instant discomfort waves over him, so he presses his hips firm back into the wall, lifts the thigh closest to her up a little. She appears to take effort in closing her eyes and opening them again to look at her brother. “I thought I’d tell her where she could find you. I know you like to fuck after you fight.”

Taehyung sucks in a breath harshly.

Jungkook pushes off the wall and moves himself away from Taehyung entirely, and Taehyung just has to wonder, was it so cold in here before. “So good to me, aren’t you?”

Taehyung blinks at the both of them, the exchange bewildering him first and soaring an uncanny twist through the pit of his stomach next.

He’ll go, Taehyung realizes despondently. He’ll really go and fuck the European girl in the bikini that made eyes at him. And Julia probably won’t even find out about it.

Clo Eun follows him with her eyes as he moves towards the door. “Yoongi passed out. Someone has to manage your sex life.”

Jungkook huffs half a laugh as he pauses by her. He twists his neck, looks over his shoulder, a final glance sheering over Taehyung, and he utters a single word. “Saturday,” he says, and Taehyung looks away, looks at the lockers, the bench, anywhere, but not at him.

He saunters out of the room and Taehyung begs the other Taunting Twin would leave with him, but she lingers.

“Aren’t you a Kim?” she questions, voice lilted by unhidden curiosity.

He glances at her from the side. “Yes,” he answers shortly.

The girl cocks her head, idly scans him from the bottom of his feet to the top of his hair. Then she pushes off the doorway, turns and leaves, but not before she utters a final appraisal.

“Interesting.”

Chapter Text

Ji-woo is not the type of person to get nervous,so when she feels a slight empty disturbance to her stomach as she most pointedly struts, much more in fashion of her typical character, she is perplexed.

The night at the Ozone has not yet began, it is entirely too early for people such as them, who are likely still recovering from whatever they had consumed or injected themselves with the previous night. It’s so early the lights are still on and the space around her would look unrecognizable if she hadn’t helped clean it as many times as had. That is what she is supposed to do now as well, but she grows aware of a certain someone entering and desire for confrontation nags at her.

She knows why he’s there, both him and Min Yoongi, as they sit on one of the VIP exclusives boots, though it itself looks much less impressive when light shines upon it. It’s the 12^thof August, which in Richhood equates to Seung Julia’s birthday and loyal, model boyfriend Jungkook has to make sure everything is right: music, setting, people.

Ji-woo feels incredibly underdressed and straightforwardly poor as she approaches the both of them. On this particular night they have gone out of their way to look rich. Undeniably, they appear beautiful, perfectly exquisite, rivaling on marvelous with a fancy touch of elegance to both, legs long, waists thin, materials sewn explicitly for them, tailored to their chests and arms. Ji-woo wears a uniform that is, fortunately, not her lewd porn-esqueone, but something that indulges a lot more in being simply sanitary and disposable.

The both have drinks in front of them, Jungkook’s unattended, Yoongi’s drained to the last bit. Their conversation is quiet, but ongoing, and she feels her voice sound a notch too loud than she intends it. “Why did you give me the money through my brother?”

It’s a sharp, short question, and she doubts it necessitates a proper address, so she skips that part, shoots straight.

As two pairs of eyes drowsily shift to impose on her with paradoxically half-assed scrutiny, she folds her arms and cracks a hip to the side. She stands her ground, always does. 

Jungkook’s arrogant. He sits arrogantly, looks arrogant, speaks arrogant. He is dismissive in the way he acknowledges her, and she hadn’t known such a combination was even possible. His elbow on the table, his ringed fingers close to his lips. He lifts one as he arches an eyebrow. His chin is held high and it does not help his condensation and how easily Ji-woo is made to feel small with the way the boot is platformed and she’s leveled with their ankles, their feet. He looks at her from above; she supposes he always will. “Cause he works in a cafe which I frequent?” he says it as a question, voices it as if it bewilders him she’d even ask and beneath his words underlies an obvious, why are you wasting my time.

Ji-woo supposes she should be thanking him. But it is a lot more in her nature to narrow her eyes, purse her lips. She tries to force a warning in her following demand, though she does not imagine any variation of her voice could ever appear threatening to him. “Stay away from him.”

As she says it, she spins, and she leaves. She has no use of witnessing the way they would mock her – she’s said what she had to. She has not forgotten Jungkook’s prying. Jungkook taunting, he looks like a bit of a homo, doesn’t he? She never wants to be a reason why someone like the younger Jeon would approach her brother, no matter what he saves her from, even if he rescues her from allof the more fucked up versions of himself in Richhood.

Yoongi rarely has what can be perceived as interest depicted on his countenance, and what sits on his face now is not exactly it. It’s close enough to curiosity, however, and he speaks. “Her again?” he addresses. “This is starting to smell, Jungkook.”

Jungkook separates his eyes from her retracting form and faces Yoongi. “Don’t bother your lazy, little head with it, hyung.”

He says it with a smirk stretching on his lips, one that is positively devious. He doesn’t need to go to Taehyung; no, not at all, because tonight Taehyung will come to him.

It’s the 8^thof August, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a Saturday and that does.

Taehyung has never been more mentally split. Honestly, thus far, for what it’s worth, his life has been fairly easy. Being as poor as he was, raised as a Kim, it is simple to go with the flow, to follow his name, to only ever face moral ambiguity when he slips jewelry in his pocket and utensils in his jacket, but to never really mull over the ambiguous aspect, as quite frankly, he is aware enough that the rich, supposedvictimswon’t care, so why should he? He shouldn’t, he won’t. He doesn’t.

He bounces a ball to the wall as he feels the laundry machine vibrate uncomfortably underneath him. He has taken to sitting on it when it is his turn to wash up, as otherwise it makes attempts to bounce through the wall, and the plaster suffers horribly. It’s an old machine. He wonders why it’s becoming more vigorous with the years instead of losing power, but as long as it keeps his clothes clean, he deems it senseless to complain.

This is new to him, Taehyung acknowledges as he captures the ball, the doubt, the impugning apprehension of deciding. That’s what Richhood does to you, makes you question everything you know, instills an unsettling unfamiliarity of your own self. It’s him that is put at a test now, his sense of morality, which dwindles, has been dwindling since he first stole food and he was just four when that happened. It has always been out of need, as he chooses to interpret it, though he did not need to keep that one ring he has in the seams of his mattress. It’s different now, though. This is terribly different, leaves an actual ill taste in his mouth as he works his tongue over his teeth, over some hollows and crevices of his dried-up tissue.

He’s aiming the ball too hard at the walls, doing as much damage as the laundry machine would.

He can’t go.

Just a thin piece of skin separating you from me.

Taehyung trembles slightly as he sits on top of the machine and blames the sporadic shiver of his body to the vibrations underneath him, no matter how withering it had been. The memory of the words washes over him, like a promise, but like a threat, as well.

He won’t go.

Taehyung kicks his heels at the door of the laundry machine in unintended rhythm, drawn out from the frustration of uncertainty. When he does it, he certainly does not expect the machine to reciprocate, but it jostles so suddenly after the motion of his kick that Taehyung, startled, topples to the ground.

“Fuck.”

They need a new laundry machine. It happily digs into the wall after it has securely removed Taehyung’s thwarting weight from its surface. He straightens on his feet, expels a sigh, and chooses to lean on the wall instead. His ass is pulsing from the vibrations, and he figures it is not worth the discomfort – the plaster is already in tragic condition. The suffering of his ass is a futile sacrifice that will fail to save it.

Taehyung used a fair amount of money to replace the stove. More importantly, he did a fair amount of lying to afford it, which, regretfully, earned him a few slaps around the head. “Gambling?” Ji-woo had been shocked and appalled. She’d actually forgotten to be happy this time, did not gift him with another one of those rare, curious hugs, though she did at least smile, which was rewarding enough. Having a stove that actually cookswas rewarding enough.

As much as he abhorred deceiving the sole person in this world who unconditionally cared for him, he had been satisfied with that particular excuse of his, because it incorporated a certain important quality: it was reusable. Though, he did not see himself coming into any more money, as he simply wouldn’t go.

Do it cause you want to.

He hits the ball so hard on the floor it ricochets into the ceiling. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t. He’s conflicted. He’s so fucking conflicted, and there is only one person to blame and it is not Julia.

He wishes he could ricochet the ball into Jungkook’s smug, deadened face.

They need a new laundry machine. And Woojin would need new clothes for the winter, he’s growing so fast, and, yes, maybe he could reuse Taehyung’s, but Taehyung’s are already hand-me-downs and ripped a little, and just not good enough. What if it’s cold? And rent, they need to pay rent. Rent is due. It’s always due. Rent and bills. Bills, bills, bills. So many of them, phones, electricity, water, heating. God, last time Ji-woo was dismissed from a weekly they had gone without electricity for threedays, and their father had even been home at the time.

And Jungkook and him will only be separated by a piece of skin.

Taehyung has to go.

He piles clothes out of the laundry machine, sticks them in the drying one, though it hasn’t properly dried anything for about two years, and he charts up the stairs. It’s 7:34. If he leaves now, he can make it.

Taehyung hates himself. For every single moment he takes to take off his sweat pants, his tee shirt, he loathes himself. For every moment he takes to put on a shirt, black pants, he despises himself. He knows it will be worse when he gets home. It had been last time; he’d felt dirty, nearly used. He hadn’t slept that night and he won’t sleep this one, either. He will be used tonight. He’s a bet, that’s all he is. It tastes so bad in his mouth, his stomach, his mind. For a short, petulant moment, he wants to cry, but he doesn’t, he won’t. Ji-woo never does. He hasn’t seen her cry in twelve years.

A lump sits tight and heavy in his throat as he trudges down the stairs, skips the dangerous one. He’s so close to the back door of the kitchen. And then, he hears a voice.

“Hyung, can you play with me?”

Taehyung whips around at the voice, at a small hand that tugs at the sleeve of his shirt. He retracts his arm back instinctively, wraps his fingers around his own wrist. He doesn’t want WooWoo touching him, not when he knows what he was about to do. He feels it on his skin, reckons it is guilt, but it might as well be disgust.

Woojin stands there, dressed in clothes Taehyung’s probably worn before, and he stares at him with big brown eyes. They are wide and gullible and young, so young. He holds a joystick in his small hand, extending it a bit forward, a suggestion.

Taehyung closes his eyes, blows air through his nose and it ripples a strand of his hair. “Shit, WooWoo. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry, hyung,” Woojin murmurs and it breaks Taehyung’s heart a little bit. He hadn’t scared him, he couldn’t. It’s himself that Taehyung has been afraid of lately, what he’s been becoming. “You just—You bought this, but you never play with me.”

Taehyung huffs. “That’s cause you never want to play Overwatch.” He removes some hair from his face with a shake of his head.

Woojin perks up. “We can play anything you want.”

Taehyung’s lips purse. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, checks the time. If he doesn’t leave immediately, he’ll be late. “Why don’t you play with Ji noona tonight? I have to be somewhere, Woo.”

Woojin’s eyes find the ground and his lips form a pout that is too much for Taehyung. He’s weak when it comes to certain things, incredibly and admittedly so, and WooWoo’s pout is one of them. His brother speaks in a small voice, keeps his gaze on the parqueting. “Noona’s room is locked,” he informs quietly. “She has an important meeting and says not to bother her.”

A deep sigh leaves Taehyung’s chest. He looks at his phone once again, before he secures it in his pocket and crouches down, levels himself with his brother. He reaches an arm, cradles him by the shoulder to regain his attention. Their eyes meet and Taehyung arches his brows, asks softly, carefully, “Someone’s there?”

Woojin’s gulping a bit and Taehyung’s eyes fall shut when he hears the whispered confirmation. “Yeah.”

Taehyung breathes. He doesn’t think. He’s past thinking when he sucks his lower lip into his mouth and nods. “Okay,” he says. He parts his eyes, repeats, “Okay, Woo. I’ll play with you.” He straightens on his feet, reaches a hand down. “Come on.”

Woojin’s small hand comfortably slips into Taehyung’s and he doesn’t feel he dirties his little brother with the touch.

“Thank you for this, TaeTae,” Woojin tells him as the game loads and it is all worth it.

“It’s fine WooWoo,” Taehyung assures as he looks at the way the boy looks excitedly ahead at the flashing screen. He can’t help himself, reaches a hand, pats at the back of his head, and his neck, his touch lingering and his eyes remaining focused on his brother even as the game starts. “Always for you, okay? When I can, always for you.”

Taehyung doesn’t know what to expect. It’s Monday and he’s working, and he has to see them, most likely, and he has no idea whether they would acknowledge his absence at all, and if they would, he dreads it. Any confrontation with Jungkook, he dreads.

He gets under his skin, palpably, annoyingly, indelibly. Before this whole perverse fiasco had commenced, Taehyung used to look, to watch, he admits. But he didn’t think. Out of sight, out of mind, it was, and he was comfortable with that. If the twin was at the café, at the Ozone, he would slide a glance, let it linger, but once he was gone, he was gone. Now, Jeon Jungkook constantly lurks in the twisted confines of his mind, and they simply must be twisted to skew Taehyung’s thoughts in the directions in which they do so constantly he has to wonder what he even had to occupy his attention previously.

He’d have to physically pry him out of there, it seems. He gladly would. He attempts to busy himself. Plays Overwatch, works, talks to Jimin, to Baekhyun, even. It doesn’t work, though, because thinking is just so frustratingly easy. So, he goes off, doing just that, wondering not if Jungkook fucked that European girl, but how, wonders if he thought about him there, watching him, if for Jungkook he remains a bet, or he likes having him there. He seems to, in a degenerate, deprived way, he does. He wonders other things as well, stupid things, like what does Jungkook do? When he doesn’t brood, or does he always brood. He imagines he has interests, explores his imagination for what they could possibly be, but falls short, because he’s so far from understanding Jungkook, he is.

So, he doesn’t expect fingers tight against his wrist to pull him into the hallway, leading to the storage units.

He doesn’t expect the burning digits to release him as soon the door falls shut behind them and piercing, obsidian eyes to glare into his, surprisingly treacherous of some dubious, undecipherable emotion.

He doesn’t expect Jungkook to look at him and almost accusingly, but mostly flatly, dully, state, “You didn’t come”.

Taehyung blinks. He’s still not fully comprehending he’s been dragged into the hallway, let alone that he is being confronted. His heart beats weirdly when he does, when he allows his eyes to meet Jungkook’s intense stare. “Observant,” Taehyung mimics dullness. He attempts dismissiveness; he might not be able to chase him away from his thoughts, but maybe he can eradicate him from his life.

“Why didn’t you?” Jungkook asks, and it’s simple. So simple. He’s asking as if they’re pondering the weather. As if his expression isn’t set and his eyes don’t attempt to probe through Taehyung and then inside him, with the way they scorch across him.

Taehyung crosses his arms before his chest, pretends he hadn’t almost opened the door to leave that night, to go to him. “I told you I want nothing to do with you,” he breeds a hostility in himself he hardly feels. It’s not animosity that charges him truly, but a deeply rooted frustration, a sensation that he attempted to literally beat into Jungkook, but of course he quickly put an end to that to instill a whole new wave into him.

Namely, the mind-hogging wave of wondering what it’d be like to kiss him.

It’s such a stupid thing to want, Taehyung realizes, to press his lips against his. It’s nothing and it’s everything. It’s so utterly simple, yet so overwhelmingly difficult.  

Jungkook is glaring, but he is silent, as Taehyung drops his gaze to his lips, unintentionally, instinctively, but he can’t really stop himself, doesn’t fully regret it. They’re pretty lips, they’re red and full and he keeps them glistening. Taehyung runs a tongue over his. The frustration that now almost perpetually resides inside of him resurfaces tangibly and embodies itself into a grunted question. “Why don’t you drop me already?”

Jungkook’s impartiality irks at Taehyung’s insides. He’s dragged him in a hallway against his will to question him, glares at him as if this means something, then speaks as if Taehyung’s still just his waiter and he’s ordering himself a cocktail. “Our bet was for a threesome,” he has the audacity to shrug, “I owe her.”

Taehyung’s aggravated. He lets it seep into his speech and his motions as he spreads his arms to two sides, exposing his chest, puffing it out. “Why don’t you find someone else then?” he asks, and he doesn’t mean it, but it sounds a bit like a challenge as well. His hands drop, lay motionlessly by his pockets, as he follows with a statement that is true in a way that does not sit well with him, “Loads of people would be up for it for free.”

In a situation like this, Taehyung is dispensable at best, and he knows it perfectly well. Jeon Jungkook and Seung Julia could persuade anyone into their bed, even their shared one. Fuck, if they pulled it on Jimin, he’d probably agree. It makes Taehyung nervous. He worries a lip between his teeth, tries not to show it, but what if they did exchange him. He hates that it inexplicably bothers him, but it does, the idea of another man entering Jungkook’s life like that, his intimate life. That European girl was one thing. Julia is a whole other. But the prospect of a guyirks him unfamiliarly, yet discernably to an extent he can almost physically feel, in his stomach.

Jungkook’s stare manages to preserve the intensity of a glare while filtering in the frustration of languor. His lids are low and his head tilts back slightly in a motion that centers Taehyung’s attention to the pronounced line of his jaw, strong and chiseled. “She wants you, pretty boy,” Jungkook tells him, speaks idly.

The nickname falls from his lips easily. He’s used to saying it – Taehyung’s not used to hearing it.

He ignores it, arches a brow. “Does she?”

Jungkook’s eyes are unwavering on him. “Yes,” he says.

The words drop out of Taehyung’s mouth, unbidden and exposing of a certain vulnerability he prays would remain for himself. “You wouldn’t mind?” he asks, you wouldn’t mind exchanging me?

Jungkook’s stare falters. He blinks at Taehyung. Once. Twice. And he looks away. His arms cross as his tongue pokes in his cheek. “Don’t expect anything from me, Kim,” he says caustically as his gaze returns, tone and eyes are different now – they’re colder, and Taehyung’s chest hollows, “you’ll be disappointed.”

Taehyung nods. He nods a lot, stares at the ground and just nods, and then he breathes through his nose, looks Jungkook straight in the eye. “Don’t worry. I never would.” He says – he lies – with something belligerent behind the words spoken and he leaves to finish his shift and Jungkook lets him, staring at the empty space in which he’d just stood.  

Taehyung hasn’t seen Ji-woo cry in twelve years, and he does not suppose she will allow him to witness such a sight now, but it does not mean he can’t recognize her utter devastation as she sits on the table when he comes down the stairs and into the kitchen the very same night.

He just wants some water.

Instead he gets to hear her suck in a sharp breath, gather her shoulders together, when she recognizes the distinctive sound of him approaching. One of her hands holds her head, brushes irritably, weakly, underneath her nose. The other holds paper, sheets and sheets of paper.

He knows the look in her eyes as she stares down at the contents of what she reads, he recognizes desperation when he sees it, and that is exactly it. Her eyes glisten weak and wide with exhaustion, too much of it for her to appear composed. And he supposes he catches her of guard with the way she shifts, she tries to gather herself, straighten on the chair. Her head lifts to Taehyung as he walks and her fingers gather paper nervously, squeeze into it with vengeance.

Her lips play at something, at some game of happiness and smiling, but they lose. They are tight as they stretch on her face, much too tight, and dry. “Hey,” she greets, her voice rasps and thickens. He hears her swallow, sees the bop of her throat as she tries to clear it.

“Hey,” Taehyung says back.

It’s only in moments like these where Taehyung allows himself to acknowledge the hate he harbors for his own family. His older brother and his father. Anger thugs at him in the form of hate, as he witnesses their doing, what they left behind; Ji-woo, now the oldest, with the whole weight of the world on her shoulders.

“Are you alright?” Taehyung asks after he begrudgingly gulps down the onslaught of feeling with the cold water he pours himself. He draws a chair and sits by her, tries to search her with his eyes, but at the moment, she won’t allow him. She always has to be strong, for him and Woojin. She promised them. Taehyung wishes she would take it back.

“Yes,” she says. She chokes, “No.”

Taehyung pushes his glass towards her, and she sips it, quietly. He listens to her gulp down the liquid in silence until the water is drained and she sets it back down. She breathes, wipes at her mouth.

“What’s going on, Ji-Woo?” Taehyung asks. He has an instinct to reach out and touch her, but on a rational level it seems inappropriate to him, so he holds his own elbows as he folds his arms on the table and leans.

She shakes her head. “Everything,” she says. “Everything is going on, Taehyung. I’m looking at numbers, I – I don’t think I can drop the Jeons’ weeklies.”

She leans back into her chair, licks her lips. She still does not allow herself to cry, not in front of him. She chews on her lip, drops her hand on the table with a slam and proceeds to repeatedly hit her fist against it, small, measured punches to the wood. Her eyes are not on him, they are on nothing, scrunched together to maybe keep the glossing inside, not allow it to formulate into tears that would drop. Her voice strains when she speaks, stretches around a gulp in her throat he recognizes in the mere strength it takes her to speak coherently. “I don’t know what to do, Taehyung. I don’t want to go back there. Jungkook said—”

She cuts herself off, brings one hand to her face, but Taehyung latches on. “What?” he demands sharply, sharper than he had intended. “What did he say, noona? What did Jungkook do to you?”

Her eyes find him with a focus of some incredulity only she knows. He, on his part, is wildly confused. The look in her eyes is almost offended. “Nothing,” she says. “Okay, Taehyung? He did nothing to me,” she stresses. There’s too much emphasis, he thinks. Something’s wrong, he knows.

“Then why do you want to drop their weeklies so badly?”

She sighs, breathes so deeply. “It’s just—I can’t go back there, Tae. They’re a lot. They’re too much. I can’t. I don’t want to.”

“Okay,” Taehyung starts slow. He adjusts on his chair, looks at her tentatively. “Okay. What if I tell you you don’t have to?”

She meets his eyes, shakes her head. “It’s impossible,” her fingers latch around the cursed numbered papers and she tosses them at him. “Look at this. We have factored in another two weeklies at the Jeons for this month. It’s impossible to pay off everything without them.”

Taehyung licks his lips. “What if I told you I lied?”

Ji-Woo lifts two brows, cocks her head. “You lied?” the skepticism hurts, because of how much it is undeserved. Taehyung nods. “And what did you lie about, Taehyung?”

“The amount of money I gambled—

“Tae, you piece of—”

“It’s double,” he interrupts firmly, and she halts what was narrowing to be an outburst.

“Double?”

“Double.”

Ji-woo’s eyes shut, she exhales heavily through her nose and lips alike. “You mean to tell me,” she pauses. Her eyes open slow and dangerous as they focus on him. “That you played with your whole fucking salary?”

“I mean to tell you, Ji-woo,” he leans towards her slightly, speaks slowly, cautiously, running his tongue across the surface of his lips, “that I doubled my whole fucking salary.”

“I don’t know if I should tell you I love you or beat you the fuck up.”

He smiles. “You can do both.”

She shakes her head. The slide of her chair across the floor is rough to his ears. “You’re fool, Taehyung,” she tells him, looking at him from above with glossy eyes and a soft expression. He knows she wants to scream at him. He knows she’s too tired to do it. “You’re lucky, but you’re a fool.”

“I know,” Taehyung nods.

“Don’t do it again,” she says sententiously. His eyes stray from hers, drop to the numbers. “I mean it, Taehyung. You could have lost it all.” She digs a forefinger into her chest, presses it tightly. “And it is my job to save your ass, okay?”

Taehyung shakes his head. He stands. “No, Ji-woo, no. It’s not okay. You’re as much my responsibility as I am yours. And I make my decisions.”

Ji-woo’s jaw sets, eyes narrow. She seethes, “You make stupid decisions.”

“Ihaveto,” Taehyung snaps, focuses a gaze of passion towards her, too much of it for this time of night, too loaded to be pointed to his own sister. “I have to. Just like you do. We’re Kims, Ji-woo. We survive on stupid decisions. They save us. This time’s no different.”

The tension in the dance of challenge between their similarly unmatched eyes burns through the small kitchen. It’s Ji-woo’s that falters first. “I’m going to bed,” she announces. “Thank you,” she tells him, she whispers to him. “Thank you for saving my ass, but I’m going to bed.”

He follows her with his eyes as she skips a step and climbs to her room. He sighs to himself when she disappears, falls into his seat again. He’s tired, exhausted.  And it’s draining in more ways than one that once again, he lied. Taehyung has no money, not enough for sure. He needs money. And, for better or for worse, he knows exactly where to get them.

Ji-woo hasn’t cried in twelve years. And he may not be as strong as she is, but he won’t cry, either, no matter how much it tugs at him.

Taehyung is glad a girl is hitting on him quite determinedly that night because he needs all the liquid courage that her bank account can offer at the striking prices of the Ozone.

He downs a shot and settles it on the bar at which he leans. She speaks, but he doesn’t listen. He’s concentrating, targeting.

Jungkook is dancing tonight. It’s a considerably rare sight, though Taehyung, with his regretful experience of constant, curiosity-bidden observation has previously witnessed it, studied it. Though before, he could not realize that the sensuousness of Jungkook as a dancer is reminiscent of his passion as a lover. His sense of rhythm is remarkable. His clothes are tight on him tonight, permit for the illustrious agility of his body to appear, to tease with the fact he is talented in this, too. It’s a peculiar thing to possess a flair in, fucking clubbing, but of course, he would. There’s a titillating quality to the way he moves, and Taehyung is as always obnoxiously, ineluctably captivated.

The other man sweats. It’s unsurprising. The heat of bodies and dancing would do that, but it’s distracting, because even perspiration sits well on him, on the fringe of his hair and the lines of his jaw. It reminds him of when Jungkook fights and it reminds him of when Jungkook fucks.

Julia is in his arms. She ensconces between them with the ardent ripples of her own body, and they coalesce together in a pattern that is betraying of just how well they have explored each other, how familiar they are to this. Something malignant grows inside of Taehyung, something acerbic that has no place in him, none at all. She presses her back into his chest, crevices filling. Her neck arches, she holds his nape in her palm, arm stretched. She’s saying something to him, and she leaves him among bodies for the third time that night.

Taehyung doesn’t know for how long she will be gone this time, so he downs another shot. It stings on his tongue, his throat, but he ignores it, excuses himself from the rich girl who bought it for him. Alcohol invigorates him to move. It’s a foolish technique to muster up courage, a vulnerable one, but necessary, it seems.

Reaching Jungkook is a strenuous exercise, one that requires of him to come into contact with a lot of bodies he certainly wishes he could avoid. When he finally squeezes to his side, he runs his fingers over his bicep, presses into the muscle that lies underneath, a physical call for his attention, as he deems an audible one useless at first. As indolent, hazy eyes flutter towards him he retracts his hand demurely. There’s something indecent in touching the other while he’s like this.

Taehyung’s figure stands still and rigid, incongruous in the midst of an electric wave of dancing.

There’s something to Jungkook’s eyes that night, to his expression as a whole. The surfaces of his orbs glisten reddened around dilated irises. His lids fall almost half across them in a hooded, alluring gaze that settles on Taehyung with unbidden intensity. His lips are slightly parted, pink tongue poking in between to run over white, sharp teeth. The perspiration is more obvious now, bright on his skin. He’s high but beautiful.

Jungkook’s arm reaches instinctive towards him. His wrist rests on the crevice of his shoulder for a moment before his fingers curl, extend to the back of his neck, his palm cupping at his nape. It spreads a fiery sensation across Taehyung’s skin, each outline of a digit scorching where it touches. His own hand moves, pushes at Jungkook’s elbow, gathers his shoulder together until the other’s palm drops, leaving a lingering fire in its wake.

“What happened between you and my sister?” Taehyung shouts close to him.

Jungkook arches his neck, tilts his head slightly, lets his ear be close to Taehyung’s mouth as their shoulders brush. He still moves, still dances. Taehyung’s eyes fall on the ear he’s given him, study its shape as he moves his lips closer to it, licks them.

“What happened between you and my sister, Jungkook?” Taehyung repeats. He needs to know. Before he does anything too stupid, stupid even for him, he needs to know.

Jungkook’s parted lips spread into a lascivious smirk, the tip of his tongue poking in between still, teasing. He tips his head some more, so that his own mouth is close to Taehyung’s ear as his is to his own.  “Dance, pretty boy,” he speaks beguilingly, breath washing over Taehyung’s cheek in a thrilling wave that almost produces a shudder.

His head shakes. “No,” he stresses. He stares ahead, looks at other people dancing now, as he does not trust himself to look at Jungkook, not at the brazen suggestion. He has to remind himself of certain things, Taehyung does. That Jungkook is currently high as a kite, and that Jungkook is a manipulative prick, working him for a reaction. He does not want Taehyung to dance, not in the same way he had Julia between his arms, pressed fully, securely, most lewdly against him, at least. It’s an entirely different dance that he wants to see from Taehyung, a swift repetitive rotation around his little finger.

“No?” Jungkook quirks. His own low-lidded eyes flutter across the side of Taehyung’s face, chart over his body, stoic and rigid as he shakes his head again. The discrepancy between him and Jungkook on the dance floor is palpable when they stand so close together. Jungkook wants to quench it. “Why not?” He lifts a hand, presses it lightly against the other’s waist. Taehyung shifts at the contact, a single step forward, away from it, but inadvertently closer to Jungkook. He runs his hand across his back shortly, furtively. The touch in such a setting is inundating to Taehyung, sends his heart into overdrive. “You’ve been such a good dancer for me until now, Taehyung.”

The words are unequivocally sensuous as they travel in between them, Jungkook’s lips brushing his ear for the barest of moments. He’s stopped dancing almost completely, but still stands there, in Taehyung’s space, reeking of himself, musky and expensive. Taehyung hates how it makes him shudder.

“This is not a game for me, Jungkook,” he gulps through the sentence. He wonders just how high the other must be not to care, someone might be lookingand if people look, they will talk. A Jeon speaking so closely to a Kim on a dance floor. Jungkook holding a Kim by the waist, a boy by the waist.

Nobody seems to be capable of paying attention, though. Music palpitates in the beat of hearts and people seem too lost in each other to care about bystanders. Taehyung supposes his bystanders are their own people, with their own lives, their own dances to dance. But then again this is Richhood. Privacy is public unless you can pay for it not to be.

Jungkook’s eyes are rapturous, appetitive in the way they dart across the whole of Taehyung, take him in, make his breath race. His own heart does not beat with the pulsing sound of the music. It drums to a rhythm set by the intensity of their interaction, bold and fast.

“Pity,” Jungkook tells him and he feels it across the line of his spine. “You can make a good player.” His lips touch to the lobe of Taehyung’s ear again, and it’s not an accident this time, it’s not, a second later something else brushes over the cartilage, above, something teasing and firm, the tips of teeth, bared through his parted lips, and Taehyung presses a palm into Jungkook’s chest, pushes him back.

He can’t breathe with him so close, can’t fucking focus. He’d rather scream his lungs out to make sure Jungkook hears him than give him an excuse to speak in his ear.

Jungkook’s lips finally seal shut, pull tight against each other. He’s completely still himself now, like Taehyung, the both of them standing with locked stares. His jaw ticks with the way his teeth press together, and his eyes fall hard on Taehyung, skimming across him with their typical languor, though its slightly different today, almost petulant post-dismissal, somehow whiny.

“What happened with my sister, Jungkook?” Taehyung asks again, voice as firm as it would pull through.

To his utter surprise, Jungkook’s following response actually relates to the question, though it’s wildly unsatisfactory for Taehyung’s purposes. “It’s not my story to tell,” Jungkook tells him. “It’s her you need to pry it from, Kim. Not me.”

There’s a certain distance in the way he addresses him, calls him Kim, a distance he supposes he put there when he pushed him away. Taehyung tries to ignore that – he prefers Kim to pretty boy, anyway. He focuses on the response, on what it could mean. The purposeful ambiguity irks at him, in toll with the way there seems to be something peculiarly noblein Jungkook’s evasiveness. Chances are, it’s fake, but it’s all Taehyung has to work with. He’s not entirely sure what exactlyto believe, but he does trust Jungkook did not hurt his sister.

So, he summons up all his courage (read: alcohol), chases away every last notion of pride his body might possess, and he pronounces, “I’ll do it.”

Jungkook’s reply is terse, sharp, a hiss. “What?” His eyes flash.

He knows Jungkook hears him over the boom of the music. “If you and Julia still want… me, I will—” he swallows, literally swallows down pride, “I’ll do it.”

The next question that leaves Jungkook’s mouth, Taehyung certainly does not expect. “Why?” he asks, just as cuttingly.

It’s striking enough for Taehyung to hesitate, but he composes himself into a response. “You know why, Jungkook.” Money.  Of all the things Taehyung remembers from time to time to hate, maybe money sits on top of the list, a devil of greed and a devil of need, and, sadly, hopelessly, Taehyung falls perfectly into the second category. It is his unbidden devil, always chirping at his shoulder, forcing him like a notorious Kim to make stupid decisions, as he does now.

The duel of their stares falters following several moments of Jungkook’s heavy silence. It feels quiet to Taehyung, which is borderline ridiculous, considering bodies still dance, music still charges them, loud and powerful.

Jungkook’s tongue runs over his lips, his eyes roll, and then he’s leaning, back in Taehyung’s space. His fingers are on him again, dig into him this time, in the bone of his hip, harsh into the flesh. “Tomorrow,” Jungkook says into his ear, accentuates his words with a squeeze of his hand that elicits a helpless whimper from Taehyung that he fruitlessly tries to mask. “Come heretomorrow.” There’s a newness to his voice and it is cold and sharp, cruel, “It’s Julia’s birthday, and you, pretty boy, will be the perfect gift. She would love to unwrap you.”

He releases him then and before Taehyung can form a coherent thought, he disappears, leaves him lost and somehow stranded in the middle of the pulsing body of dancers. The music is loud again.

Jungkook lifts his arm off of Julia’s bony shoulders as she climbs out of Min Yoongi’s rooftop terrace hot tub. He trails eyes after her lazily as she makes a show out of habit, swinging her hips from side to side salaciously as she struts towards a chaise lounge. She settles on her stomach, folds her arms, places her face in between them.

The roar of the hot tub is loud as water bubbles. She’s considerably far away. Jungkook’s gaze roots on Yoongi’s scrawny form as he sits, arms spread long on both sides and his neck craned uncomfortably as he stares at clouds. He likes clouds, he always says it.

“Yoongi,” he calls. The older hums in acknowledgment but does not bother to move a muscle. “Do you know of Kim Ji-Woo?”

His reply comes idly. He speaks slow today, drowsy, has trouble formulating sounds that do not slur, and he hates to slur. “Kim Junsu’s only daughter is she not?”

Jungkook nods. “Very same.”

It’s perhaps enough a striking of a name drop as Yoongi actually moves for it, lifts his head off of where it relaxes and focuses his eyes calculatingly on Jungkook. “What of her?” he questions.

“She cleans,” Jungkook states simply.

“Okay.”

“I want you to hire her.”

Yoongi’s head cocks, brows arch. “I already have a house keeper.”

“Fire her,” Jungkook responds rather coldly. There’s a determination in his voice. A finality.

Yoongi pauses, ponders, but it’s for mere seconds. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Jungkook nods. “Subin might want to sell to you again. I’ll talk to him.”

A slow smile stretches on Yoongi’s features, as he relaxes back into his previous position, half submerging his face underneath water as he props the back of his head on the edge of the tub. His eyes fall shut as the sun glares down on his face, and he appears for a moment to be in a perfectly euphoric state. “I love you, Jungkook,” he slurs this time, uncaringly.

Jungkook snorts. “You love drugs.”

“I do,” Yoongi says. “But I love you, too. You and even Hoseok. I love love love you.”

Jungkook jostles him when he thinks he might fall asleep, but he’s gone already, so Jungkook slips an arm underneath his legs, one underneath his shoulder, carries him to the bathroom. He sticks two fingers in his throat until Yoongi throws up, and then puts him to bed.

When Yoongi wakes up an hour later, Hoseok’s there, and he makes him a cocktail.

Taehyung’s presence in the Ozone that night is not acknowledged for a good hour before Clo Eun approaches him.

“Jungkook told me to give you this,” she tells him. She’s sober and it’s downright weird. He’s never witnesses such a sturdy focus to her yes, such coherence and straightforwardness in her words, such enunciation. Not that he’s witnesses too much of her closely,still, it’s a peculiar sight to see.

Her eyes are unnerving. They rake over him with a calculatedness akin to that of her brother, though she lacks some of the condescension and adds to the idleness. She holds herself with a conscious stoicism that makes him slightly envious. Makes him wonder what sort of life both her and Jungkook have to lead to be that composed and amputated of emotion.

She slips an envelope between his fingers, and his eyes fall to it instinctively. He’s not even looked at it properly, hasn’t entirely processed the scenario, but she’s disappearing already, walking away with ominous, charged words. “Mind your step, Kim,” is what she says as she struts away.

Taehyung’s head snaps up, gaze trails behind her as she saunters over to Seokjin. They don’t touch each other as they leave the club, but they walk side by side and their shoulders brush.

The envelope holds a key card, asks him to go to the hotel and wait there. Granted they do not want him for the birthday party itself – just need him for desert. He cannot fool himself into being surprised. He was actually staggered he was allowed into the Ozone in the first place; on a night such as this, people were incredibly filtered. It was no place for a Kim. Even Jimin was dismissed for the night.

Waiting at the hotel is a real test of character. His phone is simply not entertaining enough to take his mind off of the bubbling nervousness, the growing shame he tries to lucidly ignore, but it’s there, baleful to his stomach. He scrolls, he texts, watches a game stream. None of it helps, not when the bed is glaring at him. It taunts him. He hates how nothing, but a mere piece of furniture can intimidate him so, make him want to pull strands from his hair off of his head.

How is this even going to work?

It’s a question he chooses not to dwell on, gags on a swell of apprehension. There is a dread in his stomach, in his chest. There is. But it’s not enough. There’s something else as well and the audacity of its presence magnifies the dread and gives it a new focus, a new target.

They come so late it’s early and Taehyung’s a jittery mess, but he won’t show it. They don’t deserve it, any of it, any of him, but he’ll give himself to them anyway, because he has no choice, but to. He’s already told the lie, promised money; damage’s done. He can’t escape this.

The both of them are flashy tonight in a way that is admittedly beautiful. Julia’s dress is wondrous, sits well on her. Her hairstyle is elaborate, but she pulls at a long, elegant stick that pokes through the bun of it as soon as she steps into the room, releasing it in gentle curls that fall over her shoulders. She dismisses a scarf from around her that falls on the armchair beside him.

He sits, stunted with her immediate approach. She looks down at him, her eyes narrowing, expression fierce. She says nothing to him, though, but her blatant expectation, her unavoidable focus unnerves him.

He hesitates, but he does end up meekly saying, “Happy birthday.” It’s inappropriate in more ways than he can count, but he has nothing else to tell her, really. It produces a smirk on Jungkook’s lips, one that Taehyung fails to notice.

She crosses her arms. “I was hurt, Taehyung,” she announces, and it annoys him. They shouldn’t be entitled to expecting anything from him, especially not something like this.

He doesn’t voice this, however. Not to Julia. Were it Jungkook trying to be confrontational, he probably would have, but for Julia he remains silent. He has no desire to discuss this, anyway, in any way, shape or form. A discussion is an acknowledgment, makes this whole thing real and he doesn’t want it to be. He can ignore it, he can get it over with and he can ignore it.

He is not the first person in the world to sell sex, his body, himself. He certainly isn’t the last. Some people do it every day. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not. Taehyung is pretty sure his sister has indirectly gone through this before. He suspects Jimin might have. Not so explicitly, not a done deal, not such a forward exchange, not a currency after they are done, but gone through it nonetheless.

“I thought you didn’t want me anymore,” she continues, her voice is whiny.

He wonders if she sometimes forgets they pay him. If she likes to pretend they don’t.

But they do, and Taehyung caters. He swallows down a wave of something in his throat, gulps visibly, and Jungkook follows the bob of it with scheming eyes. “I do,” Taehyung says vacuously. Jungkook’s eyes return to his face, they narrow on his features.

A smile stretches on Julia’s face. It’s slow and crooked, but high and genuine. She extends her arm, which twists at the elbow with how skinny she is, palm spread and opened towards him. He eyes it for a moment wearily. He fights an instinct to look at Jungkook, who hangs by the door silently a few feet away from the exchange. He’s awfully quiet and it brings a new turmoil of frustration to Taehyung.

For Taehyung, this is between him and Jungkook; this whole game they have been the major characters and Julia has been a plot device. He constantly strives to find proof that for Jungkook he is at least acharacter – and he is, he knows he is, but he also knows Jungkook plays a different game. He does not play against him. He plays with him, more like an instrument, he feels, because Taehyung has so far, elicited all the right notes, the sounds he strives for. Except, perhaps, on Saturday.

He begs his uneasy reluctance does not show when he slips his hand in Julia’s and allows her to coax him to his feet with a gentle tug. Her fingers are cold and slim, and too small. Their hands don’t fit, but he follows her, stupidly hopes his palm isn’t clammy. He doesn’t care, he shouldn’t.

She leads him to the bed. The intimidating bed that had glared at him for hours with the memories of what he had seen and the anticipation – apprehension, he corrects himself – of what had been to come, what now is. For the merest moment Julia has her back to him, and Taehyung’s eyes compellingly stray. They drift to the boy at the door, slide across him. He’s exquisite tonight, clothes tight pressed and simply beautiful. Taehyung’s repressed appreciation for fashion could admire him, really, but he is entirely too busy posing a question with his eyes as they cross pathways. Why is he impartial and quiet, why does he remain by the door?

Jungkook’s eyes are as ever hard, dark, inundating and challenging. He seems sober to what Taehyung can judge, sober and composed. His gaze follows the interaction between his girlfriend and him, an interaction that he allows stoically, as he lingers in his position with his arms crossed. Taehyung is surprised how quickly their stares fall together, how immediately they meet.

Julia quickly forces his away. She spins him, presses her fingers lightly on his chest, just above her nipples, and he can mostly feel her prickly nails. Her touch pushes, directs, and he obeys, falling onto the bed, right onto the spot at which Jungkook sat as she rode him the previous week.

Taehyung’s heart drums. His eyes trail back to Julia, whose focus is reserved to Taehyung’s face. She lifts a finger and it ghosts over Taehyung’s chin, her thumb grazes over his bottom lip and she whispers, “So pretty.”

She drops her hand, next, but not her eyes, they stay rooted on him and he keeps his head tilted upwards, watching her, striving to ignore the scorching sensation on the side of himself which excites and teases with the suggestion of Jungkook’s own gaze situated on him.

“Can I undress him, Jungkook?” Julia pipes without looking away, some feline, feigned innocence seeping in the way she contorts the pitch of her voice, the pout of her lips.

She demands Jungkook’s involvement now, and Taehyung has to struggle even more not to look at the other boy, though a curiosity to study his reactions wages a war within him. His breath hitches for a moment at the insinuation of her question, but he quickly releases it, allows himself to breath at least steadily, although heavily. His mouth sucks in the lip she had touched, and he has to fight his knee’s desire to nervously bounce.

It’s happening, he thinks, it’s starting. He still does not entirely feel like a participant, not with the way Julia regards him as an actual present she can open up, with the way she seeks Jungkook’s permission, but not his.

“Just a bit,” Jungkook’s voice sounds rough and raw for the first time that night and it triggers a shiver in Taehyung. The older leans against the door, lining his shoulder blades with its surface as his calculating, permeating eyes dance across the whole of Taehyung, his rigid position, the nervous bulk of his throat.

Julia’s fingers touch his neck briefly as they land on a button, and he sucks in a breath sharply, hisses. Her eyes chart to his, blink at him, all sultry and dangerous. “Relax,” she coos at him, presses at him a bit more until he leans on his palms and releases a labored exhale. She works his shirt. Her gaze drops to follow the pattern of her motion as he tries to level his breathing. Her digits wrap into the cheap fabric, tug at it until it slips from the confines of his trousers.

“Enough,” Jungkook says and Julia turns to him with a petulant glare. She can see the length of Taehyung’s skin now, the melanin that stretches over his bones and chest, his small nipples, but Jungkook can’t and he does not want to.

“Jungkook—”

“Don’twhine,” he demands warningly, in a voice so set and domineering Taehyung’s skin prickles, and her mouth seals shut. Jungkook tilts his head, nods his chin simplistically. “Get on him,” he instructs, and Taehyung struggles to keep breathing. “Knees on each side.”

Taehyung can’t do this. He can’t. He thought he could, but this is too much to take, not with Jungkook fucking narrating it, in that goddamn authoritative voice, with those piercing, idle eyes searing as they explore him from the side.

Julia is docile when it comes to this. Her fingers slip beneath the collar of his shirt on his shoulder and rest there, tighten as she uses him to support herself as she positions herself above him. She does as Jungkook dictates, positions first one knee on his side and then the other. She’s close to him now, so close, proximity hot, but not what he wants. She does not completely straddle him as he expects, she hovers first, though the weight of her eyes is enough to him, her fingers are on his skin, and her knees touch to his thighs.

“You can touch her, Taehyung,” Jungkook teases, addresses him, and his eyes shoot to his leaning form inadvertently. He is watching with a neutrality that somehow palpably represses something and when their gazes meet and his lips twitch, Taehyung supposes it is entertainment. “She doesn’t bite too hard,” he doesn’t miss a beat.

“You can touch me,” Julia whispers above him and he cannot tell if the demure innocence is fake or not anymore as he hopelessly returns his eyes to hers. “Touch me,” she says.

He does. He has no excuse not to. Considering he will have to be inside her in a matter of minutes, touching her may be a start. He palms at her waist. It’s small, and the fabric of her dress feels exquisite underneath his skin. He firms his touch, cradling at her, his fingers tightening. She relaxes into it, pushes herself against the cup of his palm and lowers her body into his lap.

She fits herself over him, the dress riding up on her thighs as she pulls her knees apart, until it bundles almost at her hips. The crevice of the middle of her thighs is snug on him, on his crotch, and he wonders how she manages to position herself so swiftly so perfectly over him. She does not settle singularly, she moves over him, rotates herself in place with a languid motion of her hips that stirs something in him. The revealed lace of her panties ruts against the fabric of his trousers. There’s a heat between her legs that she presses over him.

“Does she feel good?” Jungkook’s voice startles him. He looks at him again, while Julia’s gaze refuses to falter. His eyes are dark, so dark they’re black, completely and entirely. The lids are low, and his chin is still tilted, jaw set, tight and sharp. There is a permanent challenge etched into his countenance today. One that Taehyung is uncertain he can uphold.

The hesitation is clear in Taehyung’s demeanor as his lips part and expel a futile pronoun. “I,” he stutters out, pauses. Julia teases her hips over him; it’s barely a motion, but when they are lined so close together, he feels it, every slight motion of her. “Yes,” he grits out.

It’s what she wants to hear, and it is not exactly a lie, a warm, soft heat grinding directly across his crotch can hardly feel bad.He knows, however, that is conscious of half of the sensation because of the way Jungkook speaks to him. It makes him aware of the way she fits over him, feels over him. It increases the sensitivity of his body, the tingles on his skin, the laboriousness of the action of breathing.

Jungkook pushes away from the door, straightens on his legs. Julia grinds into Taehyung’s lap and he squeezes at her harder when Jungkook shuns himself off of the luxurious suit jacket he had adorning his shoulders. It’s in perfect sync with the motions of her hips, and Julia sighs over him. Jungkook disposes of the jacket on the couch as he struts about the room. His dress pants are high on his waist, accentuate his figure, which is alluring, at best. It’s dangerous, beautiful. He’s built so temptingly, and Taehyung supposes Julia is as well, but maybe she is just not his type.

There is an air of superiority in the way Jungkook carries himself about the room, something that attracts Taehyung’s supposedly otherwise occupied attention, and binds it to him. Long strides pause close behind Julia. He centers his own gaze to his wrists as he undoes the cuffs of his shirt, first one, then the other, nimble fingers work them opened. He pushes the sleeves of it upwards, revealing wiry forearms, each lined with a protruding vein that Taehyung wants to trail a fingertip over.

Jungkook’s head raises, fiery, powerful eyes meet Taehyung’s. “She’s warm, isn’t she?” He’s smug.

Julia moans in a way that is attention-grabbing more than it is needy. “He’s getting hard,” she voices. Frustratingly, it’s true and he squeezes into her side when she ruts her hips into it.

The smirks that stretches across Jungkook’s face is positively devious. There is something menacing, yet suggestive that flashes across his eyes. They’re glinting and compulsive, and it’s what Taehyung stares into when his own lips part slightly to betray a first sound.

Jungkook’s lids flutter at the softness of it. It’s reminiscent of a whimper, quiet and unsolicited, but there sounding through the air and reaching Jungkook’s ears, whose tips heat peculiarly. He filters out a breath and it irritates him that is slightly shallow.

He’s not doing anything. There is nothing there that should cause his breath to stir and shake. For Christ’s sake, he’s had to be solidly sucked into an erection for the past two years, by his own girlfriend, the one woman that should always get him excited.

“Of course, he’s getting hard,” Jungkook seethes more than he intends. His teeth grind together. “He’s a little slutjust like you.”

Taehyung’s eyes widen, and he’s fucking offended, he genuinely is. His own teeth clamp together with the brief anger that surges through him, his blood and his mind, but there is something else, something uncanny and largely uninvited, personally disturbing in the way it makes his pants tighten. Julia’s hips stutter on top of his, soft grinds into his crotch. Her gaze is on him, on Taehyung as she rotates onto his hardening cock, but his glare is unrelenting on Jungkook.

He bites back words, a caustic remark that sits on his lips just at the edge of his teeth. He’s hesitant to interrupt this, wants it over and done with, and he does not want, for some reason, to reveal what he now has the audacity to say to Jungkook in front of Julia. Is not that their interactions have developed, not at all, but maybe they have altered, and he wants to keep the particular direction in which they have made alteration private to the two of them. He wonders how blatantly ridiculous Jungkook would find his thoughts, one moment, doesn’t care next, as he glared. He charges his gaze with as much viciousness as he can. He is pointed and he feels Jungkook understands.

Because Jungkook’s lips twitch. He steps closer. “He wants it,” Jungkook says. Taehyung feels he uses ambiguity on purpose, narrows his eyes even more because of it.  

Taehyung does not understand his own motivations, cannot comprehend what invigorates him, but he uses his other hand, palms over Julia’s thigh, spreads his fingers wide on top of her cool skin and sinks his digits into her flesh in a forward motion that propels her closer to him, speeds up a grind she was already in the midst of. “Yes, Julia,” he breathes. He replaces his eyes on her. “I want you.”

The beginning of a smirk on Jungkook’s face subside, disappear. His expression darkens as Julia sighs on top of Taehyung, rhythmically nestling her crotch against his.

He steps forward, takes quick, sure strides and then he is behind Julia, towering over Taehyung. He’s between his legs and his eyes are so daring, so intense Taehyung is actually glad to have the girl serve as a barrier between them.

Jungkook slides a hand into his pocket, settles into a pretense of coolness, of detachment, that speaks of the composure of dominance in the situation, but he keeps the glare in his eyes passionate, likely cannot control it, and it makes Taehyung harder. “Pretty boy is eager, it seems,” Jungkook mocks. He lifts his free arm, wraps the fingers of it against the back zipper of Julia’s dress, and he pulls. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

He undoes the dress as Taehyung swallows. Maybe he is taking on something he can’t handle, answering to Jungkook’s taunting challenge.

“Take off my girlfriend’s dress,” Jungkook instructs.

Taehyung is reluctant and it is obvious. Jungkook is observant, anyway. There’s no point in pretending, really. He presses his hand upwards on her thigh, slides it across her skin until it reaches the hem of her dress. He replaces his other arm as well, takes lifts her dress up and over her head and she helps him, raising her arms and throwing it on the floor.

She remains in stockings, heels and lacy panties, and it seems like Jungkook is satisfied with her state of undress as such. The stockings are the definition of sexual, salacious, and she grinds into him wantonly, but Taehyung’s attention is explicit on Jungkook. Even when he doesn’t look, he is conscious of him, even when he trails his eyes across Julia’s newly revealed body, so bare and so close. Her skin is hotter now, when he presses his hand against her waist again. Without the restraints of her dress she fits better against him, more closely, the heat of the inside of her thighs inviting against him, slightly wet, and he rolls back into her. Any friction is delicious.

 Jungkook’s eyes snap to the motion. They prickle at where Taehyung and Julia’s bodies connect and then return to the other boy’s, who isn’t looking at him. He is trained on Julia, venturing, exploring, skimming every naked inch of skin that is revealed before him and Jungkook locks his jaw, reaches forward. He curls his fingers against Julia’s neck, brings the digits forward, the tips on her trachea, and he squeezes only indicatively. She relaxes her head back, tips it, and it rests on his hard chest.

Taehyung’s eyes draw to Jungkook’s thick fingers, lids flutter as pupils concentrate on the metal of the ring as it tightens over Julia’s neck. His lips part. Julia’s do as well, in unison, and she moans.

Jungkook holds her as he removes her from his chest. He leans down, brings his red lips to her ear. He is close now, so damn close to Taehyung with that stare, unrivaled, feral, scorching, most importantly, on him. Though he speaks to Julia, he watches him, and Taehyung can hardly keep coherence of thought, let alone of movement, of speech. “Do you want to ride the poor, pretty boy, my love?”

From his position over her shoulder, Jungkook can see Taehyung, he can see the revealed tan skin, stretched over his flesh, which appears soft, but firm. He looks so smooth, so clean, not a single defect on the length of it. His nipples are hard, and his collarbones protrude, stretch the melanin above them sharply and Jungkook wonders how it feels, wants to trail his finger over it, dip in the crevices his clavicles create, imagines just what sort of reaction it would coax out of him, if he presses into it, if he rolls the tip of his digit on the buds atop his surprisingly solid pectorals.

“Can I?” Julia whines, twisting her head onto Jungkook’s shoulder now. He squeezes lightly into her neck again.

“Anything for you, baby, anything you want,” Jungkook murmurs in her ear, chest vibrating onto her. “It’s your birthday.”

It elicits a moan from her, an erotic sound that Taehyung sees, hears, and feels when she releases it.

The one hand that is not wrapped around her throat, glides across her back. His fingers press into the line of her spine firmly, dragging downwards in a revelation he knows her body just right, as she arches, moaning. He dips lower and lower, the twist of her back follows the motion, her chest curving into Taehyung’s, hard, perky nipples brushing against him illicitly.

“Isn’t that right, Taehyung?” Jungkook addresses and Taehyung twitches.

He still cannot look at him with a gaze different to a hooded glare, he cannot meet his eyes without feral animosity, but he wonders if it is enough to cloud the other sensations he feels, the other things he wants to foolishly communicate to the other boy.

He nods acquiescently. He’s paid to.

“Are you wet?” Jungkook asks, low, raw, as he slides a finger in the back of her panties. “Hm? How does his cock feel under you, baby?”

Taehyung almost chokes. Jungkook is filthy, of course he is, everything about this is such, lewd and filthy and borderline wrong. The way he dips his fingers in her underwear is wrong. The way her hips stutter in Taehyung’s lap at whatever his ministrations are, is wrong. The way Taehyung’s cock twitches is certainly wrong.

“Do you want it?” Jungkook continues. The tone of his voice is pure sin. It evaporates all proper function directly from Taehyung, makes him ravenous for something.

“Yes,” Julia hisses. She seems as gone as Taehyung feels, head thrown back, breathing ragged and words rasped. “He feels good, Jungkook. He’s big, I can tell. I feel him when he twitches.” Jungkook inhales sharply, his lids flutter, and he tightens his fingers around her neck, slides his other ones across her as she lifts of Taehyung’s lap to accommodate her boyfriend as he slips a digit inside of her. She is wet. “I want him.”

He releases her neck and wraps his arm around her waist instead, pulling her back slightly so that he can work her more comfortably with his other hand. She’s gasping, reaching an arm back herself, slipping fingers between strands of his hair. She tugs on him as he moves inside her.

“Take it out then,” Jungkook tells her softly. He skims his teeth across the lid of her ear, takes it between, teases, then releases. He dips his head more, mouths at the side of her neck, skims his tongue across it, and she cannot seem to focus on his command as he overwhelms her with sensation.

Taehyung is brimming as well, with something, with everything. He cannot comprehend any of what is going on, of the fact Jungkook is fingering a girl that sits in his lap, he can almost feel the motion of his digits as they thrust inside of her, just above him. That Jungkook is kissing her neck, trailing his tongue on it, his teeth, but still looking at Taehyung, dark, glorious eyes settled on him with a destructive libidinousness.

He watches the way his lips move, explore her revealed skin, and Taehyung wants; he desires things he is not ready to admit to himself, but he cannot part his eyes with the way tongue, teeth and red mouth moves wet and sultry over her. And Jungkook watches Taehyung watch him.

Jungkook’s previous instruction seems to register with Julia when he thrusts a finger hard enough to makes her jostle. She fidgets, her fingers jittery, but still agile, experiences when they reach towards him. Nails scrape across the skin above his trousers and he exhales sharply, tugging his stomach away from the sudden touch. She undoes the button, pulls down the zipper.

As she pulls out his cock, Taehyung heaves a breath. He gulps. He is relieved when she frees him of the confines of his tight and tightening pants, but he is undeniably fucking nervous.

Jungkook separates his lips from Julia. He straightens up, head tilted down. His eyes hood over, drop over Taehyung’s cock.

Taehyung might collapse. Julia runs a fist over him, and Taehyung’s hips jerk into the sensation, but as he leans back on his palms, he looks at Jungkook. Jungkook, fucking Jungkook, whose goddamn eyes are on him, unrelenting and exploratory. Taehyung tingles, all over, he burns.

Jungkook’s face is a mask. Taehyung can’t tell anything of what the other is thinking, what runs through his sick, rich head. He stares, reticent and still, the motion of his fingers inside his girlfriend slowed.

Is he disgusted? It tugs at Taehyung balefully. Fuck, he probably is. Taehyung is overcome with rapid, encompassing deflation at the prospect, but he figures, sudden and wrenching, that it is only logical that he would be. Rich, spoiled, masculine boys, fighter boys, they tend to be disgusted by dicks, don’t they?

Jungkook’s eyes lift, meet his. He’s scared his vulnerability sits on his face, exposes his current fragility.

“Lay down, pretty boy,” Jungkook instructs.

He removes his hand from Julia, and she whines, audible and lascivious, his name falling from her lips.

When Taehyung doesn’t move, Jungkook cocks his head. He orders, “On your back.”

Julia presses her free hand, the one that isn’t teasing lightly over his cock, on his chest and suedes him into Jungkook’s instruction. “Listen,” she hisses. Her fingers are tentative on his dick, sure on his chest, and he slides back to his elbows, then some more. He’s on his bad, pliantly, just as Jungkook wants him.

He hates it, but he doesn’t all the same.

Jungkook undoes the buttons of his own shirt and Taehyung supposes maybe he should take keener of an interest in the way Julia strokes his cock than the way Jungkook’s fingers move across the fabric, but he’s entranced. He reveals skin, inch by inch, and Taehyung watches, gulps as with fluid motion, Jungkook takes it off of his shoulders.

His bare upper body is marvelous to Taehyung, built, strong and relieved. His shoulders are sharp, everything on him lean and defined and it hits Taehyung that Julia could never look like this. No woman could ever look like this.

Jungkook props a knee on the bed, in between Taehyung’s spread legs and the other boy’s chest rises aggressively, searching for breath, desperate for it. The older’s fingers are on Julia again. He presses his chest to her back as she hovers over Taehyung’s back, as Jungkook stands between his knees. He palms at her ass cheek, fondles the flesh lightly in a single squeeze and then it moves to tug at her panties.

“Are those expensive?” he murmurs.

“Yes,” her voice is breathy. Her fingers grow firmer on Taehyung’s cock and he has to bite his lip, sinks teeth into it. He fists at the sheet, the fabric exquisite underneath, but he cannot care.

Jungkook sighs, pauses. Then he grips at her underwear with both hands and in a smooth motion rips it right off, muscle in his arms momentarily bulging.

“Unnecessary,” Julia hisses, and she pouts. “They were so pretty.”

“I’ll buy you prettier ones,” he promises. “You would’ve had to stand up.”

Jungkook does what he did last time, rubs the tips of his fingers in the front, slips two inside of her briefly, before he pulls back and prods at her other entrance.  He keeps his eyes on Taehyung, all fucking night long, he keeps his eyes on him and Taehyung has long forgotten why he’s doing this, he’s forgotten everything, really, everything but the masked lust in Jungkook’s dark eyes.

Jungkook uses his free hand to undo the buckle of his belt. He slips it form across his waist, lets it clutter to the floor. He pops the button, tugs his own cock out. He’s hard, Taehyung notes with a swallow, with a gulp. His breath shallows as he only pries away his gaze from Jungkook’s to observe the motion of his ringer fingers as he wraps them around his length, strokes over his erection idly, like he does everything, and Taehyung releases his lip, parts his mouth, runs a tongue over it.

Jungkook’s eyes drop to it before they harden, narrow at him.

Taehyung almost cringes as how obviously wanton he must appear – the other must really be repulsed.

Repulsed, but firmly palming at his cock, fisting at it with languid stroked. Taehyung wishes Julia would fist over him with the same pace, mirror the motion.

“Are you hard?” Julia asks, and there is something to her voice, something indecipherable to Taehyung, but bordering on incredulity. She twists her head slightly to glance at him over her shoulder, her hand slowing on Taehyung.  

Jungkook thrusts his fingers in her with power that makes her arch forward. She grunts, keeps herself up with a palm that props on the bed near Taehyung.

Jungkook does not reply to her. He lets go of his cock, lets it hand limp and hard, reaches for his back pocket. He hands her a packet, a condom, instructs. “Put this on him.”

Julia’s lips pull, sinister and taunting as she teases salaciously, “Don’t youwanna do it?”

Taehyung’s breath hitches. She squeezes at him.

Jungkook’s motions are a flash as he slips his digits out of her and retracts his hand. His palm rings against her skin when it lands on her ass, send her forward with a jolt and a gasped shriek that inadvertently escapes her smirking lips. His fingers venture to her neck again, wrap around it, more centered around the underside of her jaw, and tug her upwards roughly, pressing her back against his bare chest. He levels his mouth to her, jeers close by, “Don’t be a fuckingbitch, if you want to be able to walk.”

Taehyung simmers. His blood runs hot and quick in his face, and his cock is aching.

She swallows thickly around the hold he has on her and nods. Jungkook releases her.

“Now be a good girl, put the condom on him, and sit on his cock, okay?” With mocking gentleness, he brushes all her hair from one side to the other, plays singularly with strands as he instructs, and pats on them. The tips of his fingers brush at her nape and she shivers.

Jungkook holds her hips with both hands when she does as he says. She slides the condom on Taehyung, and he waits, apprehension, anticipation, whatever it is, he’s hard, he needs release, or he will burst, and he cannot handle Jungkook’s fucking eyes anymore, his presence. The way he speaks, the way he moves, the way he handles himself in the space around him. It is driving Taehyung insane, actually freaking mad, every single demoralizing sentence of this fucking exercise, this play on nerves and sanity. He’s losing, he’s lost, and there is nothing he can do about it. This is the moment, this is it, this is when he officially loses all respect for himself.

This is his goddamn inauguration in becoming a Kim. Julia slides down on top of him, on the length of him, slow and wet and hot, and tight. Jungkook was right, she is tight, and he lets out a soft grunt, can’t help it, and his initiation is done and fucking complete. He’s part of the family now. Bets they’d all be proud of him, lying there pliantly on his back, while a Seung sinks on his cock, pays him to, and he allows her, and he watches the man behind her when her eyes drop shut and she tilts her head back with an open-mouthed moan.

Taehyung hasn’t slept with anyone in a while. An it feels good. It does. It’s sex, and he’s hard, what the reason is for him being so desperately turned on does not need to be revealed to Julia. And Julia does not need to reason for her to feel good when she fucks herself on his dick.

His hands move to her thighs subconsciously, dig into flesh.

She’s good at it. It comes to no surprise to him that she is, that she moves in a way that is rhythmic and pleasurable. But his concentration lies on the fingers that squeeze at her waist, the dark eyes that peer at him from behind her.

Jungkook watches Taehyung’s face twist. It contorts, eyes narrow, features tighten. He’s pretty. He’s so fucking pretty he actually wants to beat it out of him. Prettiness can be demolished. It can be broken. He can wreak destruction on that face, he can. But not now, now he looks.

Jungkook presses his mouth to Julia’s ear again. “Baby,” he breathes and her acknowledgment’s a moan. He flexes his digits into her waist. “Can you take me as well? Do you want me?”

“Yes,” she gasps. “Yes, Jungkook. Please, yes.”

“Okay,” Jungkook says. “Good girl, okay.”

He releases her waist, slips a moistened finger in her ass again, and when it goes in easily, he allows himself to add in a second. “Bend over for me,” he whispers.

Taehyung hasn’t had sex in a while, Julia feels good and warm around him, and if Jungkook keeps talking like that, Taehyung might actually come.

Julia places her palms on Taehyung’s sides, bends. It switches the angle of the way she rides him, but she adjusts to it quick, ruts her hips against him, rotates in patterned figures. Taehyung keeps his hands on her thighs, raises his own to meet her in her thrusts.

Jungkook opens another packet, slips the wrapping back in his pocket from where he took it. He slides it on him, and Taehyung is frustrated, because he can’t watch. Julia is above him, blocking view and demanding attention, demanding his eyes, because hers are on him, and he can’t not look at her, though he has absolutely no desire to.

Her hips still for a moment when Jungkook holds her in place, slides inside of her, slow, and Taehyung feels her somehow tighter,as the other’s cock squeezes into her other hole. He places his other knee on the bed as well, fully now settling between his legs.

Expect that Julia’s between them.

It’s exhilarating to think the slide of Jungkook’s cock adds to the tightness he feels around himself. It steals his breath. He wants so desperately to look, to see him. He’s technically above him, hovering over him, and he starts moving. Starts fucking, slow and deliberate, and Taehyung doesn’t see it, but he does feel it.

It’s Jungkook that sets the pace, of course it’s him. He grips her hips and fucks into her. The motion’s over Taehyung’s own cock are repercussions of Jungkook’s thrust, and conceptually, it is too much to handle.

He picks up quickly, goes hard, goes rough, and Julia is crying out.

“I’m so full,” she moans, her palms give, and she is on her elbows next, forearms a line against the sheets and her forehead falls on the mattress beside him. Her face is close to his, incredibly close, he can feel it with some thrusts, and he can sense her entire body at all times, hot and almost flush with his, breasts rubbing against his chest.

But he doesn’t care, really, because now she is out of his way. His hips stutter.

He has an excuse now, an excuse to look at Jungkook, above him, thrusting in earnest, hard and rough and powerful. He feels it, and he sees it. Sees the way his features contort with pleasure in a way that is by now familiar, but entirely new again, so exquisite, explicit, so hot.Hot in a different way to how Julia’s is, hot in a way that is erotic, sensual. Hot in a way that scorches him and imprints itself into his mind.

Jungkook bites his lip. He seems concentrated, face tight and pointed, narrowed with pleasure. He’s not looking at Taehyung now, he’s staring down at where his body meets Julia, and Taehyung realizes he must see him as well, his dick sliding in and out of his girlfriend as he tries to respond to the pace Jungkook sets.

“Yeah?” he strains. “You like it? Like riding pretty boy’s cock while I fuck you in the ass?”

Julia whines in Taehyung’s shoulder, in lost confirmations.

“Fuck. Of course, you do. My little whore, loves getting stuffed.”

And his eyes lift then and there and meet Taehyung’s and he could just die.

Julia responds with something, but it doesn’t register to Taehyung. If it does with Jungkook, he doesn’t acknowledge it as well. He holds Taehyung’s eyes. It’s brief; it’s so brief before he’s looking away, gives him his jaw instead and looks ahead, stares at the wall.

It’s brief, but it’s better than when Julia first slid on him, turns him on more, makes his cock twitch.

Taehyung wants to see his eyes again, does not want his freaking jaw; it’s pretty, it’s beautiful, but’s nothing on his eyes, absolutely nothing, not with the way they pin Taehyung down, pierce him, entice him and threat him all the same.

Jungkook’s picking up pace. He goes hard, fast. Taehyung has to wonder how Julia doesn’t hurt, why she only keeps moaning, crying out beside him, writhing. She’s absolutely lost to sensation. He supposes maybe she does, maybe she just doesn’tcare. Maybe if there is pain, it’s worth it.

She groans. “Jungkook,” she’s desperate.

Taehyung hates how she is allowed to say his name.

“Yes, baby?”

Taehyung bites his lips. He squeezes into them hard, almost breaks skin.

“Can I come?” her head turns, and her begging breaths come as whiffs to the side of Taehyung’s head, tease over his skin. “It’s so much, Jungkook, I need to come. Please. Fuck. Please.”

Jungkook’s thrusts are merciless, he fucks her, and it causes her to fuck on Taehyung. It’s too much for him as well. He’s squeezing onto her thighs, hard. He’s going to break the skin of his lip, he knows, but he cannot face the vulnerability of moaning.

“Anything you want, baby. Do you want to come?”

His voice is soft, though raw and breathy, juxtaposed to the way he relentlessly fucks into her.

He does something next, something so simple.

He touches Taehyung’s thigh, just above the knee. He lets go of Julia with one hand, places it on him, light at first, barely there, just the ghost of sensation. If he means to coax a reaction, he succeeds. Taehyung’s lips betray a whimper, his eyes widen and search his evasive face, but he does not concede, stares ahead.

“Ye-yes,” Julia moans, she begs.

Jungkook’s fingers close more firmly over Taehyung’s thigh. They squeeze into him, dig right into the flesh with a single, searing, breathtaking motion.

And then his eyes drop, hooded, dangerous and irresistible. They meet Taehyung’s wide, questioning eyes.

“Come for me,” he says.

And Taehyung does. His hips gyrate into Julia’s with a raising thrust, his back arches slightly of the bed and his head falls back, press tight and uncontrolled on the mattress. His eyes seal shut, hopeless, and he moans. He can’t hold it back, not now when his world fucking spins with sensation. His muscles contract, hold, as he spills inside the condom, pleasure washing over him, pleasure that numbs his mind, captures him completely.

Julia comes with him, her orgasm heightening his as she squeezes around him, but that is all he cares to see of it.

Jungkook’s hand disappears as he has to grip onto the girl’s hips again, hold her tight as he slams into her until he comes as well and Taehyung’s too gone to witness it, though he tries, cracks his eyes opened, but the other is not looking at him again. He just sees the tightening of his jaw, the veins that bulge on his neck.

Jungkook slips out of Julia, grips her elbow and tugs at her until she straightens. “’M tired,” she whines. But she lifts herself despite it, this and her trembling thighs, off of Taehyung and his cock falls limp on his stomach.

He can’t catch his breath. Hair sticks to his forehead with a small layer of sweat covering it. He breathes heavily, chest rigorously moving up and down and lips parted and he tries to look at Jungkook, but the other won’t allow him.

Julia curses. She touches herself lightly between the legs and swears again. She slides the condom off of Taehyung without an acknowledgment before, during, and after as he hisses. She ties it up, takes Jungkook’s and saunters into the bathroom. He’s surprised she can walk, sees a falter in her step.

When he returns his eyes for trailing after her, he catches Jungkook’s on him before he rips them away. Jungkook tugs himself back into his pants, strides towards his disregarded jacket. Taehyung takes advantage of his sudden departure to do his own pants as well. He sits up, wants to get up next, but he doesn’t get the chance to do it on his own.

Jungkook grabs him by the wrist, tugs him on his feet. They’re both disheveled, harbored breaths in rhythm still lined with what they just did, the same pattern of sex. There’s something terribly erotic in even standing before him, right now, Taehyung feels. Their pants expel into the air between them, from a pair of parted lips into another, chests glisten, stomachs hollow.

There’s a moment. For whatever Jungkook means to say, to do, he pauses, and it is not deliberate. It’s a moment in which he loses himself a bit, glances at Taehyung’s mismatched, heady eyes, at his pink, parted lips, the way his neck and throat heave with the weight of his fucked out breath. Something lingers palpably between them, something Taehyung doesn’t understand, but he senses.

Taehyung’s gaze darts across the other’s face, skims across his mouth. It’s almost painful not to kiss him. It’s a stupid urge, condemnable urge. He needs to get rid of it. He needs to leave.

Jungkook stretches a neatly rolled up stack of money. “This is for your service,” he tells him, breathily, dismissively, he stresses. Whatever had transpired had been entirely imagined, he proves to Taehyung. “You’re free to go.”

Taehyung blinks, once, twice. He forces his mouth closed, sets his jaw tight; it heightens the exposure of his muscles at the end of it. They tick and then relax. He looks away, at the floor, the carpet. He nods. He’s nodding, small, irritated shakes of his head up and down. He holds the money as he does his buttons. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay,” he says. And he’s fumbling. His fingers are not doing it properly, failing at a task so simple as doing buttons, and he walks, he walks away.

It is a single step that takes him to evade Jungkook. He brushes his shoulder into him, roughly, hears him inhale, slow and deep, but then he walks away. He doesn’t finish the buttons, doesn’t wait for Julia to step out of the bathroom. He paces out of the room and slams the door shut.

Chapter Text

Taehyung is at the Ozone and he hasn’t looked at him, once, for a period longer than would circumstantially have to be considered accidental. It doesn’t matter, really. He’s completed his punishment for losing the bet and has no more use of poor boy’s interest in him other than personal entertainment, which if he’s frank Taehyung’s consistent reactions to him provide quite religiously.

So, okay, maybe it irks at him only slightly that his eyes don’t burn into him tonight. Jungkook reads people, he has always been quite efficient at it, and he just knows Taehyung’s participation in this short game he played with Julia stretches beyond his need of money. At least, he suspected it does.

Whatever this annoyance is that Taehyung looks content enough only sticking his eyes to the dancer Park Jimin tonight, he decides it won’t be too hard to ignore it, not when Julia returns from the line she does in the bathroom and settles her thin ass in his lap. She’s been extremely overly generous with him post the completion of his punishment and imagines she would just delight in it if he asks for a quick suck in a cubicle.

Jungkook does notice when his girlfriend begins her return to their booth. He rests a hand on Hoseok’s knee, swiftly bringing his attention to himself and away from whatever he was whispering in Yoongi’s ear. The elder leans his head invitingly in acknowledgment, offering his own ear to Jungkook’s mouth, though his arm still resides extended on the cushion of the booth around Yoongi’s shoulders. “Hobi,” Jungkook says to him, voice curling with a playful malice that should not exist in combination, “wouldn’t you fancy a lap dance from little Jimin tonight?”

Hoseok’s features narrow. His fingers tap absently at Yoongi’s shoulder as the other sucks quite contentedly on an elaborate straw. “No,” he replies, slightly embittered. “I only joke, Jeon. I don’t actually—”

“I know, hyung. I’m not implying you’re a homo.” Julia is getting closer. “Little Jimin looks quite like a girl, tonight, though, doesn’t he? Keep him busy.”

“Jungkook—”

“I’ma sking you to,” Jungkook stresses, squeezes his fingers over his knee cap slightly and Hoseok’s distaste falters slightly on his face, morphs into a softened perplexity before it sinks into a neutrality. It takes a moment, but he nods, and Jungkook nods back, it’s a thank you. When Hoseok begins to lean away, to detach his arm from the cushion of the booth, when he makes to stand, Jungkook tightens his digits in last indication, “Don’t tell Yoongi.”

Hoseok leaves with a lasting look of curiosity just as Julia returns and Yoongi pouts slightly at the departure.

Her ass is bony when Jungkook wraps a hand around her elbow and tugs her into himself as she tries to sit, but cocaine would do that to you, he supposes. Her eyes, dilated and glistening, slide over to him with a silent question, a gasp dying on her mouth from the roughness of him manhandling her in place with no adequate warning when he threads fingers through her hair and squeezes them around strands, bringing her lips down on his.

She meets him with her mouth open and she kisses him like somebody who’s high, which she is. She kisses him wet and wanting and vigorous, she kisses him well. And Jungkook wonders if Taehyung’s watching.

He pulls her mouth away from his by the grip he keeps on her hair and she exhales, eyes immediately on his, hands fisted at his chest. “Jungkook—”

“I want you,” he tells her. And he is supposed to, to want her. He does, he tells himself. He wants to take her to the bathroom and fuck her throat as her knees bruise, but mostly, he wants to make a spectacle out of it. He wants Taehyung to know she’s sucking his cock in the bathroom, to think about herlips stretching around his dick, though his own lips are rather prettier than hers, fuller, pinker. Jungkook’s fingers tighten in Julia’s hair at the unbidden thought. “Now,” he adds.

She easily allows him to take her away. She’s out of his lap in a moment, clutching to his forearm and pulling him up. It allows him a glimpse. His eyes fall on Taehyung just as Park Jimin says something in his ear, his arm wrapped around Hoseok’s waist, who lingers beside with no decipherable expression whatsoever. As the dancer speaks, Taehyung’s mouth falls slightly opened, those pink lips parting as he looks marginally confused, face a bit blank. By the time the other is pulling away, however, his mouth shuts tight, jaw slackening and his eyes narrow as quick as they move to directly and unquestionably meet Jungkook’s.

The glare glints with embittered passion even from across the dance floor and Jungkook meets it, relentless and smug. He smirks, watches as it deepens, as a grudge forms in his pupils, glittering in the epileptic lights of the Ozone, and raises his glass, a toast, before he takes one final sip and allows his eager girlfriend to pull him away.

That sparkling glare follows them across the club as they move and Jungkook doesn’t like to think how it excites him more than the lips that shortly close around his half-hard cock.

His nickname doesn’t come from thin air, Jungkook promises himself. He’s always loved to taunt, he’s always loved to tease, to play, and Taehyung is just another game, and this is it. Jungkook promises himself.

Taehyung supposes he has always underestimated himself as a cook, because, as it turns out, his interpreted recipes don’t taste half bad when the products aren’t reduced due to impending expiry dates and he actually has a functional stove and oven at his disposal.

Ji-woo says so as well, though it is one of her favorite things to pick on him for, his culinary escapades. Namjoon had been the cook of the family, even if when their mother had still been alive long, long ago he had been practically unable to cut an onion without her assistance, and Taehyung had felt quite safe about being fed. Namjoon, after all, had always been resourceful, and, therefore, reliable. Until he up and left them, that is.

Taehyung grew into the position of a cook quite forcibly. “You work in a restaurant,” Ji-woo had exclaimed one night, quite aggravated as she pulled on her hair, and chucked a packet of ramyun at the wall. “For God’s sake, you must have picked up something.” Most of their exchanges had been filled up with exasperation at that particular point of time. Both of them were brimming with tension, with Namjoon leaving naturally everything they had strained to build had deteriorated into a colossal proportion of horseshit. Quite a few of their interactions were fueled by anger, not directed at each other particularly, but they were only outlets they could know.

It was a rough patch, but they always get through those, always. They’ll get through this one as well, through the one that has Ji-woo eyeing Taehyung wearily if he goes out at night, every time he buys anything. She’s scornful of what she believes he has done, but Taehyung is well aware it’s best she thinks he’s dumb fucking enough to gamble than for her to know he practically prostituted himself to a Jeon and to a Seung.

Not that Jungkook did much to him, really, except of course, make certain Taehyung felt like absolute shit, a delusional one at that.

Good food is quite efficient at soothing the tension, it turns out, especially when Taehyung is the one to deliver it.

“Can’t believe the onetime I make something delicious, WooWoo won’t be here to taste it,” Taehyung remarks as his tongue runs over his spoon. His voice sounds easily over the hum of the TV. Some drama is on, but it’s the first episode of it he’s seeing, and he has no idea what’s going on.

Ji-woo adjusts the bowl in her lap for a moment, propping it up with one hand to make sure it does not spill over the worn-out couch, as she checks her phone when it vibrates for the fifth time in a roll. “Well, he’s not like us. He has friends.”

Taehyung slurps quite disgustingly. He eats too fast. One benefit of Woojin’s absence is there’s more for them, though, so he’s unforgivable towards the food in his bowl. “I have friends,” he insists.

“Jimin doesn’t count,” she says as she smacks her lips together.

“How come?”

“Cause it’s convenient if he doesn’t,” she replies typing something away on her screen, a bit slow because she can only use one hand. “I might have to make a call.”

“You have friends,” Taehyung replies.

“No, I don’t. I have people who I party with.”

“And when I sleep with them, they suddenly become your friends and I’m bad for doing them?” Taehyung speaks pettily with his mouth half full and Ji-woo sends him a look that spells she is grossed out by his pouty, open-mouthed chewing.

She is too distracted, however, to verbally scold him as her eyes quickly return to the device in her hand and she makes to lift off the couch, leaning forward to place her bowl on the coffee table and knocking Taehyung’s feet off of it simultaneously. “Yes, that is also quite convenient. I do have to take a call.”

Taehyung’s pout deepens as he glares after her retreating form and stuffs his mouth as he most comfortably returns his legs to their previous position, strewn across each other with his heels pressed close to her bowl. He hears the muffled sound of her conversation, but she is strategic in how far she goes so that he would not be able to hear. She is well aware he has some tendencies of eavesdropping, and if she means to hide something from him, she easily can.

She returns shortly, knocking his legs right of the table with a single kick of hers that almost startles him into choking. She falls onto the couch, body angled towards his, propping an elbow on the back and starts talking without much of an acknowledgment of his narrowed eyes.

“So,” she begins conversationally but her voice is pitched high and a smile that previously wasn’t there is tugging at her mouth, hiding still, but sure to spread momentarily; if Taehyung didn’t know better, he’d say she’s excited. But it’s Ji-woo and Ji-woo doesn’t have an excited bone in her body. “The weirdest fucking thing happened,” she pauses. For impact, he supposes. “The Mins requested my service.”

Now the choking hazard is even bigger for Taehyung. He splutters. “I’m sorry,” he says, perplexed, as he lowers his own bowl on the coffee table. It is unsafe in his hands. He lifts two brows, “the Mins?”

It’s absurd. It’s absolutely fucking absurd that someone of the worth of the Mins would as simply and suddenly request Kim Ji-woo. While Taehyung has no doubt that his sister is incredibly efficient at what she does and has a perfect work record and ethic, it is just incomprehensible to him that the Mins, one of the families that embody the very concept of Richhood, would willingly invitea Kiminto their house.

“Well,” Ji-woo says with a bit of a shrug. She raises a hand, atypically gesticulated, lifts a finger. “Just the one. The kid. Min Yoongi,” she explains, and Taehyung’s brows proceed to furrow as her animated speech continues. “He has his own penthouse in Gangnam, and he wants me there.” She pauses again, but then continues with her voice even more lilted. It’s obvious to him she finds the situation incredulous as well. “Several times a week, not just once. Apparently, I have been recommended.”

“Recommended?” Taehyung’s jaw slackens slightly. It’s obvious to him she does not mindthe incredulity of the sudden interest. He does.

“Yes,” she nods. She’s almost smiling at this point, and it’s too disheartening to him to ruin it with his downright suspicion.

But he cannot keep the tension of his voice when he asks, “By whom?”

“The Jungs,” she suffices. Something lingers in her own tone as she feels the need to add, “They told me it was the Jungs.”

Taehyung doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like it one bit. But he supposes it is a steadier and healthier income than his other techniques, so he supposes he will just have to live with it.

Jungkook does not like to be kept waiting, especially by people like Subin, who is aware of it and smug about it. He pulls the chair across the cement and it grazes with a scathing sound before he sinks into it with those god-awful sunglasses that are constantly perched on his nose. He relaxes into the seat, spreads his legs wide and unnecessary and crosses his arms, a smirk almost perpetual on his mouth. “Since when do you want to meet me at Rouge?” he asks, and he is snide about it.

Jungkook himself sits with his legs crossed at the knee and his face set. He’s terse. “Since now.”

“Can’t exactly sell you here.” Jungkook hears him say and tries to pay attention to it, to look at him, not to glance as the passing waiter to check who it is.

He already caught a couple of glimpses of Taehyung, knows he’s there and he’s on shift, as the boy strode around all docile and respectful with some menus, some drinks, and a couple of fake smiles and deep bows.

“I’m not buying,” Jungkook informs him. He’s playing with a lighter he took from Julia, his fingers rotating it around meaninglessly and his eyes centering on the motion for a longer while than he’s genuinely interested in. “We’re talking.”

Subin’s brows reach above his shades. “About?”

Jungkook looks at him then, lifts his eyes with his head slightly angled in a manner he knows people like Subin find slightly intimidating. That he knows Subin finds intimidating “I want you to start selling to Yoongi again.”

The other’s brows lift significantly higher this time but that is all the indication of surprise he allows Jungkook to read. Jungkook really despises sunglasses as dark as his, though he cares very little about Subin’s reactions. “I thought you wanted him to quit.”

“He won’t.” His fingers light a flame before they smack the thing shut. A waiter passes by and his head turns instinctively at the motion. Human’s attention is naturally drawn to movement. “He’s found a new dealer. He was better off with you.”

Subin slides a tongue across his lips. His digits tap at his elbows where he has his arms crossed. He stopped selling Yoongi for a reason. And that reason had partially been the Taunting Twin himself. He cocks his head, says, “Tell your sister I say hi.”

Jungkook’s eyes draw to him darkly, yet he remains mostly inexpressive. Even his voice is void of any real bite, when he replies, “Tell her yourself.”

“I haven’t seen her in record time.” Subin shrugs and, though Jungkook is halfway midst turning his head to study another moving body, he tilts at this.

“What?” he actually conveys surprise and it breeds a cautious smirk on Subin’s face.

“Her new…” and he pauses; he’s careful, “friend, Seokjin?” he arches his voice, waits for Jungkook’s nod and it annoys him he feels he has to seek permission, but he would rather it than having another break to his nose. “I don’t think he likes it when she comes to visit me.”

Jungkook uses the elbow he has propped on the table to lean just slightly, just to let the other know he’s trudging around territory where he has no place. “Clo and Seokjin are not friends,” he speaks slow, enunciates his words,“nor could she ever give a fuck what he dislikes.”

Subin withholds a snort as his upper lip lifts curiously towards his nose. “Here I was thinking I was being sensitive by implying they’re friendly.”

Jungkook’s eyes dart across Subin’s entire lanky form, he sizes him up, says, casual, but pointed, “I think I’ve heard enough of your commentary on my sister.”

“Ah,” Subin adjusts on his chair, shakes his head, “you Taunting Twins, I wonder sometimes. What would you do if she kills a person?”

Jungkook shrugs, and this time when he turns his head to follow the motion of a waiter, it is Taehyung, but he is walking towards the inside of the café instead of outside. He catches another man clad in the same uniform by the elbow to get his attention, says something to him, and when they talk, he does not let go of the much unnecessary grip he has on his arm. “I’ll bury the body.”

Subin’s smirk stretches into a smile and he nods, air leaving through his nose that is close to a chuckle, though he isn’t exactly brave enough to laugh. Jungkook’s attention is not snapping to him at this, though, remains fixated on something else, and he attempts to follow it with his eyes. “It there a problem, Jungkook? You seem…” and he really has to be careful now, assuming Jeon Jungkook’s mood shortly after he has made remarks about his sister,“distracted,” he chooses.

“No.” Jungkook replies curt and dismissive as Taehyung releases the guy’s arm and sinks behind the bar before he disappears into the kitchen. The man himself turns, meets Jungkook’s eyes quickly, too quickly, and begins a stride in their direction. “No problem.”

The man bows at them when he reaches them, greeting them, wearing that same respectful and fake smile that tends to adorn Taehyung’s face when he works. It is so fucking sweet it is actually sickly. “Are you ready with your order?”

“Vodka,” Subin says, his eyes on Jungkook while the other darts his own calculatingly across the waiter.

“Size?”

“Generous.”

The waiter parts his mouth to speak, but Jungkook interjects. “Isn’t this Taehyung’s table?”

The guy replaces his attention to him. “Yes, usually,” he responds, his voice so annoyingly polite.

Jungkook leans back into his seat fully, his fingers snapping the lighter, on and off, on and off. “So why isn’t he serving me?” Subin personally would not enjoy it if Jungkook spoke to him like that, looked at him like that. There isn’t anything too distinctive about it, no highlighted emotion or point, but the younger Jeon’s perpetual air of threatening superiority suddenly escalates past his detached insouciance.

The waiter obviously hesitates, cautions a brief look behind his shoulder before he responds, arching his words at the end questioningly, “He’s currently otherwise occupied?”

Jungkook’s brusque, “With?”

The guy blinks a little blankly, “I’m not at ability to disclose—"

Subin’s hissing, clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shaking his head. Rookie. Jungkook’s laughing, cold and humorless and short. “I suppose you don’t know who I am.” He straightens on the chair and he lifts a brow and the tilt of his mouth makes him look so falsely, ironically friendly Subin would have probably shat himself were it directed at him.

Poor guy shakes his head, tries to explain himself, “No, I’m new. I—"

He interrupts, “What’s your name?”

“Bogum. Park Bogum.”

“Well, Park Bogum,” and Jungkook almost leans towards him now, eyes trained on his, demanding undivided attention, “I want a Corona,” he spells it out, speaks slow and downright eerie, though the waiter does not seem particularly affected and Subin deems it a mistake of lack of experience, “and I want it served by Kim Taehyung.”

The waiter’s parted mouth seals and he’s pausing. He’s careful. Subin wonders if when they train them here in Gangnam, they go through specific instructions on how to deal with the regulars. Flirt with a Pyeong if you want an extra tip, make sure Min hasn’t taken too many pills before you serve him alcohol in case he passes out without paying, and never, ever, mouth off to a Jeon. He figures it’s blatantly cruel not to. “I’ll let him know then,” new boy replies smartly, and Jungkook dismisses him solely with the assistance of his facial expression.

Subin wants to snort. More than that, he wants to ask, Kim Taehyung? But he’s not brave enough to laugh and he’s certainly not brave enough to enquire into Jungkook’s business with a Kim. He didn’t even buy from his elder brother when he was still in town, and Namjoon sold some good shit.

So, he settles for territories that are allowed for him. He settles for substances as he lifts a brow, “A Corona?” Western beer, Mexican beer, 4%, almost not alcohol. “Are you not drinking again, Jeon?”

Jungkook’s eyes dart to him. “I was talking about Yoongi, weren’t I?”

“Yoongi.” He nods. “Yes. Why don’t you get his new dealer to stop selling him, too? You can be quite… persuasive.”

“He’s been buying off of Kai,” Jungkook replies tightly, but in a moment his eyes are detaching from him.

“Oh.” Subin pauses in understanding. Then he releases a breath of laughter, shaking his head, saying, “Keep forgetting how fucking rich you all are.”

But Jungkook isn’t paying attention to him. He doesn’t even dignify him with a reply. Taehyung carries their drinks without a trey, has one in each hand and has his eyes set on the table. He’s moving quickly, too quickly, feet barely lifting off the ground as he comes, bends, places the orders on the table.

He looks at neither of them, doesn’t smile, nothing, and it isn’t uncommon, for a waiter to try to be nearly invisible as he delivers drinks, but he has completely dropped all semblance of courtesy, and it irks Jungkook the wrong way. Taehyung is not supposed to ignore him, he never has. Pretty boy always looks.

He doesn’t seem particularly nervous, either. Frankly, he appears as neutral to Jungkook’s presence as Jungkook is supposed to be to his, though he knows there is something off about Taehyung’s behavior as a moment ago he was smiling and polite, like a good, trained waiter boy at Rouge is instructed to be, paid to be.

It’s the audacity, Jungkook concludes, that bothers him, the audacity that poor boy now thinks he can get away with being impolite to him. He almost has a goddamn attitude as he clicks the glassware onto the table and immediately straightens without as much as a glance, and Jungkook doesn’t really think, doesn’t actively contemplate his actions when he reaches out and catches his wrist.  

“Is that all?” Jungkook speaks slowly, darkly, and Taehyung’s finally meeting his eyes.

And no, Taehyung is not neutral. He’s borderline hostile, and it is something he easily recognizes in him, as it is a layer over nervousness in most of their interactions, and usually a result of Jungkook actively and most consciously aggravating him into animosity. Taehyung arches a brow above glinting eyes. The sun looks good on his face, highlights his features. “Did you order anything else?”

He tugs at his wrist indicatively and Jungkook allows him to release himself because fucking Subin is there, watching.

“No,” he replies.

“Then that’s all,” the boy announces with finality and he walks away and there is not much that Jungkook can do other than trace narrowed eyes after him, because anything that Taehyung does is meaningless to him.

When Taehyung volunteers himself to cater at the Executive Tower he does it with burdening apprehension at the mere fact the event would take place there. The mention of the hotel itself causes images to resurface in his mind, images and feelings alike, and they are staggeringly frustrating. It is good pay, though, and with his head slightly hogged with uninvited thoughts, he’s there.

“Are you good, Taehyung?” Bogum asks him, a hand warm as it squeezes into his shoulder, and Taehyung shakes his head, then nods, grits his teeth a little because it is Bogum’s first event like this for Rouge and he’s supposed to be attentive to him, walk him through it, not have the other pull him out of unsolicited dazes.

“Yes,” Taehyung says. He’s lying.

A rational part of him wants everything related to Julia and Jungkook out of his life, especially the latter. Whatever it is that draws him to the twin, it’s toxic. It’s simply not fucking adequate that he felt worse about the fact Jungkook had been dismissive towards him after what happened on Julia’s birthday than about what actually happened. Taehyung knows he lives a life in which morality is hardly a priority for him to indulge in, but he had thought better of himself, honestly, thought he would be more bothered by selling sex than by a rich, spoiled Jeon giving him an attitude.

He’d warned him, don’t expect anything from me, he’d said. But Taehyung, courtesy of how fucking good his sister is, is naïve. He can’t exactly pinpoint what it is that he expects, that he wants, but he is sure he needs to drop any and all ideas related to it because harboring such is simply destructive.

It annoys him that it has got to the point where even setting foot in the Executive Tower results in an onslaught of memories. Jungkook, Taehyung concludes, is an actual bitch. There was no fucking need for him to touch him, none whatsoever. Taehyung was already there, already giving him and his girlfriend what they wanted. Jungkook had already won. But because he is an actual bitch he just had to go and touch him, then look at him like that, then make him feel like a common whore.

Taehyung had thought he’d seen something.

That something had obviously been some very privileged and petty interpretation of sadism. Jungkook does like to taunt it seems, to play, but it’s bordering on cruelty and Taehyung hates how easy of a victim he is.

Still, he’s human, he’s dumb. He has an irrational, visceral part of himself. An irrational part that pays too much attention to Jeon Jungkook, that reads into the fact he made Hoseok take Jimin away from him, wanted him to bring him his goddamn Corona, touched his fucking thigh while they were both inside the same girl. That irrational part of him likes to ignore that Jungkook by nature appears to take pleasure in the misery of others. It assigns to him a humanity that he doesn’t deserve and causes him to monopolize Taehyung’s thoughts at any given time.

It is that same irrationality that stirs something inside of him when he sees him.Taehyung’s not even surprised he’s at the event, if he has to be honest. A Richhood event without representatives from the Jeons is hardly complete and they are there, full package, both parents, both twins, looking absolutely ethereal with elegance and beauty. He’s particularly exquisite today. He’s dressed to impress and impress he does, every single layer of overpriced, brand clothing on him black and presses perfectly into the shapes his body forms.

Taehyung has been doing so well not looking, being residually pissed with Jungkook’s unnecessary attitude has made it quite easy for him, made avoiding him almost automatic and animosity a natural reaction as soon as he set his sights on him.

Taehyung hopes he’s glaring now, though Jungkook doesn’t see him, but he knows he isn’t.

“Him again?” Bogum’s voice sounds as the two of them distribute platters of appetizers. “Jungkook, right?”

It’s easy to trace Taehyung’s stare to where Jungkook is standing by his sister, posture nonchalant, but elegant, important, as he sips lightly on a glass of champagne and speaks to who he knows to be Jung Byung-Chul and his wife, whose name he forgets. Byung-Chul does not seem to care for her all too much, either, though, if Taehyung can judge by the way he has his eyes inappropriately rooted on Clo Eun.

“Yeah,” Taehyung says, swallows. He returns his eyes to where they should be, on the appetizers he’s laying out. “That’s Jeon Jungkook.”

Bogum nods. “I’ve heard about him,” he informs Taehyung as he assists him in the arrangement of the plates – they have to look all pretty and perfect. Taehyung hums, who hasn’t. “I’ve heard he’s a prick.”

Taehyung snorts. “You’ve heard right.”

“What does he want from you?” Bogum asks. He’s nice. Bogum’s nice. Taehyung almost feels bad for asking him to take care of his tables without as much a warning, but he hadn’t exactly expected Jungkook to get confrontational.

“To make my life living hell, basically,” Taehyung says. He believes it as well.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “He gets off on it, I think.” It’s the only explanation Taehyung can find for his continuous interference in his life.

“So, he really is that much of an ass, huh?”  Bogum straightens after they finish with that table. It’s the last table to be arranged. “Pity. He’s quite hot.”

Taehyung’s eyes slide over to his coworker, an eyebrow quirking at him inadvertently. Jungkook is hot, Taehyung would be the first to attest to that, but it’s not something a boy openlysays about another boy in Korea, certainly not in Gangnam.

Bogum’s response to the curious gaze features a small smirk. It’s different to any Jungkook’s ever sent him, it’s mild and teasing, but in a way that is friendly, maybe even slightly flirtatious. “Don’t worry,” he tells him. “You’re hotter.”

Taehyung bristles at first proceeds to full on laugh in a moment. He sidesteps Bogum, going for the kitchen, but he does tap his shoulder on the way out. “Not so bad yourself, hyung.”

Bogum makes good company for distraction, it turns out, but it does not erase the impending doom of interaction. It comes surprisingly quick when Taehyung is the one trusted to replace the bottle in the cooler at the Jeon’s cocktail table of choice.

Taehyung is actually pissed he has no alcohol to assist him in mustering up strength this time. He’s admittedly nervous. Every single Jeon at one table is a recipe for the misery of a Kim, of him. He establishes it is highly unlikely that Jungkook would as much as look at him in the presence of his parents, however, the twin has repeatedly proved himself to be completely unpredictable and considering the rumors of who those people are he would expect that they would all enjoy making an embarrassing mess of him in one way or another.

He trusts the nature of how Jungkook has chosen to embarrass him in particular would prevent him of taking advantage of it in public, at least.

And he has no choice.

So, he walks there, apprehensive and quick. He tries to be ghostly, reach there, replace the bottle and disappear, but the motion of his approach attracts eyes. The adults gathered at the table simply slide their gazes towards him for the time that it takes to establish the reason of his presence, but to them staff is of the same use and importance as the table is. The eyes of the twins, on the other hand, linger.

Taehyung does not mean to look back. He is simply compelled, wants to see if Jungkook is as handsome tonight up close as he is from a distance, and it only takes the single glance to realize that, yes, he is, and also, he’s looking back, and their gazes are locking. Jungkook’s eyes widen slightly, briefly, his brows shooting up before they settle too close to his eyes again, features aligning in a hard, set frown, whose vulnerability is only betrayed by his lips which remain ever so slightly parted.  

Taehyung’s immediate reaction is to bow, palms meeting by his knees.

Clo Eun’s sober and staring. Her eyes drift calculatingly from Taehyung to her brother, who is looking away now, taking his eyes off of the waiter, but not focusing them on Byung-Chul immediately after like he is supposed to. He darts them around, briefly, jaw ticking, before he falls into his previous and constant composure and for the barest moment he seems slightly awkward.

Clo Eun’s head tips. Her lips thin, curl downwards.

Taehyung is not surprised at the lack of any acknowledgment different to the quick albeit lingering gaze. Still, somehow, he manages to be foolishly deflated. He straightens and turns. He leaves.

It is close to the kitchen that Jungkook catches up to him. He’s turned a corner and he’s out of sight of the Jeons, close to a highly unnecessary column that is likely there simply for the glamour of design when fingers wrap around the bone of his elbow, digging into it, hard. The digits are bruising as Jungkook squeezes, tugs Taehyung and settles him into a position he deems fit with a single motion, a forceful reminder of his physical strength and authoritative audacity.

Taehyung spins, is spun, and his feet stop just short of Jungkook’s shiny shoes, he notices with a glance to the floor as he tries to catch his footing. He lifts his eyes to narrow them at Jungkook just in time to witness the tick of his jaw as he hisses, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m catering,” Taehyung stresses, pulling his arm away from Jungkook’s hold and the other allows it with a cautious look around. They are still at the event, and Taehyung cannot help it. He looks around as well. His fucking boss might be watching, and he certainly does not need to be caught lingering behind columns with one of the guests. He only catches one person passing by, only Bogum, who does quite obviously look at them, but continues on with his trey without pause.“I didn’t come here for you,don’t worry. I’m doing my job.”

Jungkook’s snicker is cold and short and his following words come with a snarl. “You and I both know how you really make money.”

Taehyung scoffs. Fuck him. “Fuck you.” He attempts to walk away, attempts to, honestly, he is in no way obliged to listen to the prick; he’s going to have to find another victim for the night if the event bores him that much. Of course, it’s wishful thinking to believe he would just allow him to leave so suddenly and of his own accord. His fingers are back around his elbow, still bruising, maybe tighter. Taehyung’s teeth clench. “Let go of me. I have to get back to work.”

“Listen,” Jungkook says, he sighs. He’s not as malicious now with the way he speaks, though the grip he has on Taehyung is, “how about you handle the other end of the restaurant?”

“Why?” Taehyung sneers with something akin to a breath of a laugh at the finalizing vowel. “I thought you wanted me to serve you.” His head tilts and he’s angry enough to take a step forward. “Or is it too hard for you to pretend you don’t pay me to fuck you when your parents are around?”

Jungkook’s eyes sear into his with staggering vehemence. He growls, “I don’t pay you to fuck me.”

Taehyung doesn’t know what in the particular situation summons his bravery, maybe he’s had enough of it, but he’s completely rid himself of a filter even if he is well aware audacity with a Jeon equals stupidity. “I suppose you didn’t get Min Yoongi to hire my sister as well.”

He’s surprised his bones don’t snap with how hard Jungkook’s fingers dig into them. “The fuck are you implying, Kim?”

Eyes search his with palpable rancor, and Taehyung thinks he returns it quite well, does a solid job of seeping the spitefulness into his voice as well, when he tries to free himself with the statement, “I have to go back to work.”

“No, you’re coming with me.” Jungkook’s jaw is tight and he immediately begins his stride, pulling Taehyung along, of course he does. He likely thinks he is entitled to simply manhandling just about anyone who is of worse social standing than he is.

“Why?” Taehyung grits out and attempts to press his heels into the floor, but Jungkook’s muscles are not just for fighting, not just there to make him enticing when bare, they’re there to further his power, and it is child’s play for him to drag Taehyung’s struggling body along.

Taehyung’s movements cannot be overly flamboyant in his attempts to stay as well; he cannot afford to drag attention to himself, can’t make a scene, not in these circumstances.

“Cause I said so,” Jungkook announces simply and he presses the button to an elevator.

“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” Taehyung is saying, glaring at his nape before Jungkook turns to allow him to meet his eyes, which most annoyingly have receded back to their usual infuriating superior composure.

“It should, or your sister might lose her job as quickly as she got it,” he says, he threatens, a glint in his stare and a darkness to his voice. He allows Taehyung to shake off his grip when they step into the elevator.

Taehyung’s glare hardens on his, before he looks away, breathes. He shakes his head. He’s shaking his head, biting at his lip. He’s so fucking defeatedevery time it comes to Jungkook, and he hates it. His frustration is growing into exasperation and he wonders if he is ever going to be rid of him, the monetary power he holds over him, and the ambiance of control he’s gained through the unsolicited effect he has on him.

Taehyung’s fingers dig into the flesh of his own arms punishingly as he crosses them. He holds onto himself tight, urges himself not to lose his fucking grip. His head snaps to Jungkook, to Jungkook who is watching him as he grows into the quintessence of frustration, and his teeth release his lip, which pouts out fuller and pinker from the abuse. “Why’d you do it, anyway?” Taehyung demands, his brows shooting up. “Make sure I actually got money now, so that the whole fucking you thing becomes virtually unnecessary? Do you get off on me suffering or something?”

Jungkook, of course, of fucking course, Jungkook simply shrugs his shoulders, eyes on Taehyung, eyes all over Taehyung, who is wearing his shirt. “Yoongi needed a new house keeper. I heard the Jungs referred your sister,” he lists as if it is simple, and most natural. “Not everything is about you, Kim.”

Kim, he calls him Kim and Taehyungs wonders what will happen if he punches him again. “Then why am I being dragged off now?” He says and he’s not harsh, he’s breathy and pitched, and he doesn’t know what he is, really. The elevator stops and his eyes dart to the number. Seven. “Wheream I being dragged off?”

Jungkook steps out, gives him his back, and he’s so unnervingly confident that Taehyung will follow, and he does, because his threat is too realistic of a risk. “The room,” comes the response and Taehyung stiffens even if he had a feeling that was where they were heading.

The walk down the familiar hallway itself gives him goosebumps. “Do you have that room permanently reserved to lure people?”

“I own it,” Jungkook says and he touches the key card to the door to 7.13, and God, thirteen really is a cursed, condemnable number.

“Of course, you do,” Taehyung snarks sardonically and the door closes after him, clicks shut, and it is such a loud sound, penetrates through the whole of his skin, his largest organ and seeps into his blood, launching a fire.

Taehyung’s suddenly obnoxiously aware of where he is and who he is there with. Alone.

“And no one lured you, Taehyung,” Jungkook spins to say and his eyes now, though not incredibly expressive, just chargingly intense, pin him to his current position just at the entrance. “You came to us,” he insists, voice firm.

“I had no choice.” Taehyung supposes his eyes hold a certain intensity as well if he can properly judge by the passion that seizes his blood and his tongue.

“Yeah?” Jungkook exhales. He’s close, and then he’s closer, but Taehyung’s so high with the pure testosterone of confrontation that he doesn’t even consider the proximity, does not retract from it, easily stumbles into it instead. “You wouldn’t have come to us if you weren’t desperate for money?”

It’s somehow wildly satisfactory for him to spit, “Precisely.”

But then Jungkook’s all too close and there is a door behind him, and he has nowhere to run. Jungkook’s voice is liquid, it drips with cruelty, and something else, something disturbingly salacious and captivating. “What if Julia wasn’t there?”

Taehyung’s stumped. He’s frozen into place at the question, because Jungkook can observe it, but he is not allowed to address this, certainly not now. His heart palpitates dangerously in his chest and all he can do is watch Jungkook take that one other step closer that allows him into the intimacy of his personal space, that causes his familiar scent to invade his senses. His pink tongue teases over militant lips and, really, all Taehyung does is watch.

Jungkook’s head cocks. “Hm?”

The hum is as soft as it is malignant. The lids of his eyes are dropping and he’s studying Taehyung, notices the pattern of his pupils as they dart across his face, as they hood themselves. Jungkook’s demeanor is dubiously provocative.

Taehyung has always been jealous of how fucking strong Ji-woo is. He’s also always hated how loving she is, because it’s made him weak. He’s weak. He’s not ready for Richhood, hasn’t suffered enough, but he thinks Jungkook wants to make sure he will.

His eyes capture his. He’s so close, he can feel him breathe, the exhales gentle, but striking on the skin of his face, of his neck. “Would it still be only out of desperation?” Jungkook asks and it is but a murmur, and that slightly rational part of Taehyung wants to laugh.

He almost does, but he can’t channel enough energy to, so he simply shakes his head, watches his mouth and breathes through his, “I don’t understand you, Jungkook.”

The other’s lips part, and he stares entranced as they form words, falsely, deceptively soft, “I never asked of you to understand me.”

Taehyung’s eyes chart to his and he endeavors to fill his voice with the same determined vociferousness from before, but he fails. It strains as it leaves his throat and it resembles a plea, “Then what do you want from me?” he asks, he begs, “Your bet is over and done with, what do you want from me?”

It’s unhealthy. Jungkook’s unhealthy for him and he cannot keep making himself part of his life. Taehyung’s never thought his curiosity and wandering eyes would ever lead him to here, to this. He’s breathing hard, as if he’s ran, though he hasn’t, and he isn’t now even if he should be.

Jungkook doesn’t answer. He ravages Taehyung with his eyes, sliding them across the whole of his body before he slowly returns them to his imploring ones, rid of all vehemence. “You’re wearing my shirt,” Jungkook announces simply.

He’s inhaling sharp as well, chest filling out and falling in, deep and unsteady, but Taehyung is too lost to notice.

“I—”he struggles. His shirt, yes. He hadn’t washed his uniform and he needed a shirt, a simple white shirt, and Taehyung hadn’t really thought when he’d slipped this one on. He tries to narrow his eyes. “You told me to keep it.”

“Yeah?” Jungkook asks, but he is so absent with it. His hands reach and Taehyung flinches, elbow hitting the door and it just reminds him how trapped he is here. Jungkook’s fingers touch the material of his tie in an action that has grown somewhat familiar, but it does not fail to make Taehyung’s heart thunder as he easily and swiftly undoes the pitiful knot.

“Yes,” Taehyung’s teeth knock together with assertiveness. He wants to pull away, but he has nowhere to go. His eyes drop briefly to where Jungkook’s own focus lies, the digits that move so close to his neck. “Is that what you want?” Taehyung breathes. He expects Jungkook to redo the knot the way he likes it, but he doesn’t. He tugs at the fabric and lets it slither along Taehyung’s chest and to the ground, atop their feet. “You want it back?”

Jungkook’s eyes peer at him. “Maybe.”

His hands do not drop, they linger, and they pop a first button and Taehyung cannot fucking breathe, not with his fingers lingering so close to all parts of his respiratory system. But Jungkook is undoing the second button, too. Taehyung’s chest sinks sharply, breath inhaled through teeth. His eyes search Jungkook’s face helplessly, but Jungkook’s own seem entirely entranced by the motion of his finger as they dip lower and part buttons. He’s slow, overwhelmingly deliberate, and it’s so easy for reality to slip away from Taehyung.

And Jungkook is entranced, because Taehyung’s skin is fucking golden. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t really care, just as long as he gets to see more of it, stretched over bone, muscle and flesh. It seems soft, so very smooth and unpolluted, so perfect that Jungkook just wants to touchand he wants to scar.

The shirt cost him a fortune and naturally the material of it is exquisite, but it cannot begin to rival what it reveals as he parts it, because what’s underneath simply must be priceless. Taehyung’s tan. His clavicle is sharp and protruding, but the sight of it bare is peculiarly provocative. His nipples are perky, small, so dissimilar to Julia’s but sit so well on the expanse of his alluring skin above the hinted outline of his ribs.

Taehyung’s not bulky in any way, but his shoulders are broad, and he, Jungkook knows as he undresses him, is most certainly a boy.

“It’s too big for you,” he notes softly, through a breath mostly as he tugs the remaining fabric out of his waist line and pushes it off his shoulders, leaving his entire upper body bare.

Taehyung nearly gasps as Jungkook’s skin brushes his lightly when the removes the shirt from him entirely and perplexingly allows it to drop to the floor.

It’s a waste, Taehyung thinks, though currently thinking is not something he can pronounce himself efficient at. That shirt is too nice. It does not belong on someone like him.

“It’s too expensive for me,” Taehyung whispers, unintentionally matching the tone of conversation that Jungkook sets. It forces a strange intimacy between them, between their parted lips as they breathe words to one another. They’re so close.

“No,” Jungkook shakes his head. He gives into it, he touches. “It suits you.” His hand is on his waist and Taehyung hisses, sucks in a breath. His stomach hollows out and then fills sharply. The touch is scathing on his bare skin, scorching. Jungkook’s calloused hand has a heat attached to it that burns through him when he slides it across him, still very much deliberate, very much slow.

It’s so simple. It’s nothing. He’s just running his hand across him, cupping at his waist, at his ribs, and why Taehyung is more turned on than he’s ever been with any girl in his life is beyond him. Jungkook’s hand edges higher, a single thumb brushes over his nipple and Taehyung’s sigh is almost reminiscent of a moan.

His skin is as smooth as Jungkook imagines. He’s never expected a boy could be so gentle, so soft. Softness, he’s always been taught, should be reserved to girls. But he is. He’s different, there’s no globe of a breast, his rib cage is wide, his chest is so different, broad and shapely. He’s different, but the curves of him are so inviting, so nice underneath Jungkook’s wandering touch. He cannot help the brush across the bud at his pec, and Taehyung recoils from it with the immediacy of automaticity before he curls against it, a tender, panting sound elicited from his parted, pink lips. Even his goddamn nipples are pretty. He runs a forefinger against it, too.

Jungkook hates him. He absolutely fucking loathes Taehyung. He wants to ruin him.

This exploration of Jungkook’s hands on his bare body is lethal. It’s firm, teasing, but gentle, so incongruous with who he is as a person, and it is just so unfair.“What do you really want from me, Jungkook?” Taehyung asks, breathes, because he has to.

“Right now?” Jungkook’s eyes spring to his, brows shift.

“Yes, right now,” Taehyung says. He can’t take this. “What do you want from me in this fucking instant?”

Jungkook grips at him with both hands, holding each side of his waist. It’s firm, it’s burning, and so is his breath on his neck when Jungkook draws closer. He pulls him into him, has him stumbling a step that aligns them in a way that is physically dangerous. Taehyung can feel him, all of him. He’s hot. He’s scorching. His lips are brushing at his ear as he’s tilting his head. “You really want to know?” There’s residual cruelty clouding his voice, but it is overpowered by its sheer eroticism.

Taehyung swallows, for a short moment he only manages to nod as he tongues quickly at his lips, dried from staying parted for this long. “Tell me,” he exhales.

Jungkook’s hands tighten on his hips, muscles contracting and unconsciously bringing Taehyung’s body closer still, until there is not even a breath of air between them, and he’s so warm and soft beneath him, so pliantly curling himself against Jungkook’s hold, whether he does is purposefully or not, he falls into it with ease, and he just fucking fits into the crevices of him so unnervingly well. He’s wearing dress pants, dress pants that leave nothing to the imagination and Jungkook surprises himself at how he is not repulsed when he feels him distinguishably harden slightly. He fucking likes how hot it feels against him, how shapely, the very concept of it, of Taehyung’s resolve in opposing him failing to give way to arousal.

It turns him on. The other boy’s fucking scent does as well, when Jungkook’s nose brushes his cheek, eyes studying every inch of him from the angle, his clavicles, his throat, his goddamn ears. It’s poor, so pointedly inexpensive, fruity, maybe, but distinctly masculine. And he’s not supposed to fucking like how a boy smells and it’s so fucking unfair.

Jungkook’s fingers are bruising on his hips and his mouth is scathing at his cheek. “I think I want you on your knees.”

Taehyung’s breath stutters, skin flushes heated and red. The blush of crimson dances all across him, ventures down his neck, the back of his ears. He closes his eyes, seals them shut. Jungkook is playing with him, must be, because it is simply impossible that he would want him.

“You’re sick,” Taehyung hisses. And truth is, Taehyung must be fucking sick too, because he wants to, wants to drop to his knees. Taehyung blames it on the disturbingly extensive level of his curiosity, he blames it on that and blames it on Jungkook, the way he touches him now, the way he holds him, grips at him, breathes on him, teases him – the way he speaks, he demands, compels, but it’s so alluringly soft. It’s cruel, but it’s gentle, the paradoxical epitome of tender vengeance. 

“I’m rich,” Jungkook murmurs and Taehyung can feel his lips move on his cheek when he speaks, and it knocks all reason straight from his head. He pauses, he’s pausing, and he’s moving, keeps his body still by the tight grip he has on his hips, and brings his own forward. He’s on him, presses his pelvis slow yet unyielding against his in an almost circular motion and Taehyung’s hand flies, grips at Jungkook’s wrist and clenches, a regretful whimper evading his lips “I’m hard.”  

He is. Taehyung can feel him. He can feel his cock as it patterns around him and Jungkook might be playing, but he’s hard. Julia is not here. No woman is here. No one else is here. It’s for him. Jungkook is hard for Taehyung and it will be the death of him.

Jungkook pulls his head away, retracts enough to give himself view of Taehyung’s face, to study it and Taehyung’s eyes crack open at the sensation of the motion. It’s a mistake, really, it’s his biggest mistake yet, because he meets Jungkook’s gaze and it breaks him.

Those eyes, he loathes those eyes with ambiguous passion. They’re piercing, they’re intense, and they’re black, pure obsidian, gone and hooded and deadly.

Jungkook’s tongue darts across his lips and he whispers with the rhythm with which he clenches his fingers around him again, “Get on your knees.”

And Taehyung fucking does. He allows Jungkook to take a single step back, separating their bodies and before he can feel the cold abstinence at the loss of his touch, he bends and drops, settling his on his knees on the floor.

His tongue is instinctive, pokes out, darts, wets at his lips as he stares up, holding the stare in which Jungkook’s compulsively captured him, dark and unyielding until pupils drop, study the motion of his tongue as it teases around his mouth. Jungkook’s jaw tightens, ticks, a muscle at the very end protrudes almost threateningly.

His eyes are rough on him, glaring, yet hooded in a way maybe he simply can’t help, and Taehyung waits.

Jungkook keeps a challenging hold on Taehyung’s stare as his fingers venture to his belt, to the button of his trousers. It’s such a distinctive sound, the unbuckling of a belt, archetypically lewd in nature, it seems, at least from Taehyung’s current position. Makes his ears buzz.

Taehyung swallows, gulps down thin air and saliva and his throat bobs.

He’s nervous. His heart rages. He’s never done this before, because Taehyung likes girls and boys who likes girls don’t suck cock, but he wants to, he will, just for Jungkook. Peculiarly, it is with a surge of power that the reality distorted with arousal hits him, as it will be a fact. He will suck Jungkook’s cock and Jungkook will have to live with the knowledge of it, the memoryof it, that he got hard touching Taehyung and got a boy to drop on his knees and get him off, got Kim Taehyung to wrap his lips around his dick.

Jungkook shakes the blazer off of his shoulder and allows it to drop onto the floor, before his hand reaches and fingers cradle at the underside of his jaw. The intensity of the glare of his eyes is so intrinsically different to the delicacy of the touch as he proceeds to glide a thumb across his pouted, parted lips, a single soft brush, quick and fleeting, yet it makes Taehyung’s mouth tingle.

“Open your mouth for me,” Jungkook says and the thumb dips, slips in between just lightly and presses onto the top of teeth, the tip at the moist edge of his tongue, Taehyung’s lips parting significantly at the gesture, at the words that hold an oxymoronically gentle authority.

His other hand makes its way into his pants, frees his cock and it is there, thick and real, a man’s cock and Taehyung’s eyes fall away from Jungkook’s compulsive hold to explore it.

Jungkook’s thumb drops from his mouth, moves to his chin, and Taehyung moves forward boldly; he’s had this done to him, he’s seen this done, watched fucking porn – his tongue teases out and at the head and Jungkook hisses, two fingers digging into the bone of Taehyung’s jaw as he blinks up at him.

Jungkook’s teeth are clenched. He glares. But the vulnerability of arousal is spelled out on his face.

Taehyung reaches a hand, touches the base of him, and it chases Jungkook’s own fingers away, as his wrap tentatively around it, his thumb brushing along a vein it feels over the silky texture of his length. It’s heavy in his grip, hot, and different to his own.

His fingers are so long, so thin.

He bends forward, props his other hand on Jungkook’s thigh, the muscle hard and tightening underneath his timid touch and then Taehyung’s tracing his tongue over that same vein and Jungkook’s hissing again and he replaces the grip he has on his jaw to thread punishing fingers through his hair. They squeeze, tense into the strands and Taehyung’s gasping a bit at that, shifting on his knees, the sensation edging from his stomach to his own bulging cock.

“Don’t fucking tease,” Jungkook growls, punctuating the words with a constrict of his fingers that pulls deliciously at Taehyung’s scalp. “Open your mouth,” he instructs again, and Taehyung does and Jungkook layers his fingers over his, directs his length into the crevice and sinks into it with a sharp exhale.

Taehyung loosens his jaw as much as he possibly can, presses his lips into his teeth and feels the alien length slip onto his tongue and down. His mouth stretches and the very pronounced scent and taste of skin reaches his senses, but it’s not uncomfortable, nor is it unpleasant.

Conversely, Taehyung wants to fucking do it, he likes it.

Jungkook’s hips stutter into his mouth at the sudden warmth of it, only lightly, not enough to hurt him, the head of his cock pressing into the beginnings of Taehyung’s throat and all the reaction he gets of it is Taehyung’s fingers tightening into his thigh and tongue pressing upwards into the skin of him.

So, he does it again.

Taehyung replaces his second hand on Jungkook’s other thigh, keeps palms opened for balance and does his best to loosen his mouth, tongue at his cock, hollow his cheeks. He bobs his head only slightly, a simultaneous rhythm with Jungkook’s thrust, and he looks up, meets Jungkook’s gone eyes and the contortion of his face, features twisted and narrowed, traitorous of his affect, and it nulls any possible discomfort – he’d do this and a lot more to have Jungkook stare at him like that, to drive him to such vulnerability.

He has always been a pleaser, for his boss, his sister, his brothers, his parents when they were still around. Taehyung has always enjoyed the power of pleasing others, never really in the current sense, but the raw sexual nature of how he pleases now causes something fiery to surge through his blood. The way Jungkook’s hold of his hair burns into his scalp spikes tingles of arousal within him, he hums around his cock and Jungkook’s hips stutter. Taehyung’s own digits are tight in his muscly thighs, digging into flesh over the exquisite fabric of his dress pants.

Jungkook’s all so prim and proper, tie still in place, shirt still buttoned, dress pants on and all, but apart from that, he’s fucking disheveled. His face is gone, his thrusts peak up, relentless, almost make his throat hurt, but he bears it, the burn of it is inexplicably gratifying.

The sound of it is obscene, sound of saliva, yet there is something salaciously naturalistic about it, something so raw and Taehyung finds its pure crudeness overwhelmingly hot.

Jungkook is getting rougher with his thrusts, still not entirely processing that he’s having Taehyung suck his cock.

Naturally, he’s not skilled at it. He’s wonderful at it, though. He’s warm, hot, and pliant. He’s so putty and eager to satisfy, allowing anything that even the merest movement of Jungkook’s body suggests, allows his own to be manipulated and adjusted just as Jungkook would like it. He tries hard, hollows his cheeks, flattens his tongue, makes his throat perfect for Jungkook to fuck and use and it’s Taehyung. When Jungkook glances down — and honestly, he can’t rip his eyes away from it — it is Taehyung’s red lips stretched out wide and uncomfortable around his cock. It is him on his knees, getting light bruises as a reminder of this, of the fact he was on his knees for Jungkook — it is his shiny eyes glittering with concentration as they stare forward or shimmering enticingly when Jungkook tugs at his hair and forces him to look at him. He looks almost innocent with his eyes wide and glinting and Jungkook can’t pace his own hips.

Half the sensation, Jungkook thinks, comes from the fact and sight it is Taehyung. It is that pretty fucking boy almost gagging on his cock, giving it his all, his absolute fucking best to try to satisfy Jungkook, and Jungkook would honestly rather this than the most skilled dick sucker in history.

It feels dirty to fuck the mouth of a Kim, of a boy. To see the pretty, pouty lips of a man glisten with stretched saliva and his precome. But Jungkook has never had less control of his body in a sexual situation. He has never been so needy and desperate as he is watching Taehyung be needy for his cock.

He takes pleasure in holding Taehyung by the hair and pulling his hard, pulsing cock out of his mouth just to see the younger boy try to search for it with his lips again, poking his tongue at the head at the slit. Jungkook hisses. Taehyung looks up with hooded, gone eyes, question in them, as he licks swollen lips. A string of saliva that attaches his mouth to his cock breaks as he does and Jungkook shoves his dick back into his mouth with an almost animalistic growl. Taehyung takes it, readily, hungrily.

“Fuck,” Jungkook curses as Taehyung swallows around him once he takes his cock again. “Fuck, Taehyung.”

Taehyung’s eyes flutter and he moans. And God, it’s so good, so hot, wet. And then it hits him he’s said his name; he’s practically fucking growled poor boy’s name and shit. Shitshitshit.

This shouldn’t be about Taehyung. It shouldn’t. It’s just a mouth, it’s just a mouth, it’s just a mouth. Jungkook’s just hard and that is just a mouth, and this is punishment, because he can’t be that pretty and have skin this soft and not be on his knees. And this was supposed to be degrading, but it Jungkook who is absolutely humiliated with how fucking hot he finds this, how he loses every ounce of composure as his hips stutter towards the mouth that is supposed to be just a mouth. But it’s not, it’s Taehyung, and Taehyung’s fucking gorgeous like this. He shouldn’t be, he should be pathetic not gorgeous, but he is and no matter how hard Jungkook snaps his appetitive hips into him, no matter how harshly he pulls at the soft locks of his hair, he can’t ruin it.

Tears brim out at his eyes, make them all glossy and shiny, and Jungkook has the fucking ridiculous urge to reach a thumb, wipe them away as one drops at the delicate line of his nose. His glance up must be fucking coy, it’s so titillating and wet.

He’s going to come. His hips are snapping relentlessly and Taehyung’s taking it, he’s doing so well, so perfect, and it hasn’t even been that long, but Jungkook’s going to come. He’s grunting, tensing.

Fuck. He’s beautiful. He’s not pretty. He’s pure fucking beauty. Jungkook comes, hard and blinding. Goddamn memorable, shaking fucking orgasm, eye-clenching, vein-popping, toe-curling fucking orgasm at the mouth of a Kim.

When he comes, he doesn’t give him a warning because he doesn’t deserve one, doesn’t say anything, but instinctively flexes his fingers into his hair, pulls him back a little as his hips slow.

Taehyung watches as Jungkook’s head arches backwards, exposing the attractive length of his neck, and it’s all Taehyung gets to see; he’s not allowed to know his face when he makes him come, when fingers pull at him warningly, though he tightens his grip at Jungkook’s thighs and sits still, lets him fill his throat until he retracts his hips, slips a softening cock from his mouth.

He swallows down what he can, feels some moisture on his lips as well. Jungkook glances down and meets his exploratory eyes just as his tongue pokes out to gather and lick, and he suddenly releases his hair, brusque, so quick. He steps back, he curses under his nose, looks away, looks down, at his feet, drives both his hands through his hair and he swears, aloud, so loud.

“Fuck,” his voice thunders as he pulls punishingly at the strands of his own hair. “Fucking fuck.”

Taehyung recoils from the boom of his voice, sits back on his calves for a moment and feels the door at his back. He props a palm into it and stands, knees sore, throat sore. He’s sore. He’s ignoring that, though, forgets everything for the sake of watching Jungkook who tugs himself back in his pants, who’s taking steps, such large steps around the room and away from Taehyung, who’s doing his button fervently with almost tangible vehemence.

Taehyung’s nervous all over again. He feels so empty. Jungkook’s immediate retraction turns his insides into something he cannot explain, something intense and bilious. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself, scrambles to get his shirt off the floor, gathers his tie as well. He puts it on, does buttons as he sees Jungkook stride over to a drawer.

He sees him pull out something, watches with parted lips and wide, glossed over eyes. He can’t make it out, and then suddenly he can and his heart lifts from his chest and travels right up to his trachea, to his throat in which he can still taste Jungkook and he wants to vomit it right out.

“What are you doing?” Taehyung asks and his voice trembles with distinct deflation he can’t even bother to try to control.

Jungkook’s striding over to him again, arm extended forward, and he’s saying, his voice tight with something heavy and repressed, he’s saying, “Here that should be enough,” and he’s pushing money at him with one hand, the other running through his hair again and again, and jaw ticking. He doesn’t look at Taehyung, refuses to, eyes dart all across, but not at Taehyung who’s staring right at him.

“I’m not taking them,” he responds, soft, but sure.

Jungkook’s eyes snap to his, fierce. He speaks through clenched teeth. “What?” He rasps with a step forward that is pure threat, reeks of violence, but Taehyung stands still.

“I’m not taking your money,” Taehyung is firm. He’s angered by hurt and it fuels his stoicism, jaw equally tightens, though his eyes cannot reciprocate the belligerence of Jungkook’s.

“Taehyung, everything that happens in this room you’re paid for,” he says almost as if he’s spitting.

Taehyung shakes his head. “Not now.”

Jungkook’s palm smashes into the surface of the door right next to his head, loud and aggressive and his voice edges, nears a shout. “Yes, fucking now,” he breathes, shoves the money into his chest. “Take them.”

“No.”

His voice booms, juxtaposed to the firm, yet tentatively gentle denial of Taehyung’s. “Take the fucking money.”

Taehyung shakes his head, hand reaching for his shoulder, to keep him still. “Jungkook—”

But he pulls away so fast, as if burned, as if he’s allergic to Taehyung. He takes steps back and Taehyung’s hands linger and fall futile and dumb in the air. Jungkook’s own spread to the sides, arms lifting, and he’s ranting immediately, a mantra, “Don’t touch me. Okay, Taehyung? Don’t fucking touch me.”

And Jungkook’s breathing heavy, like he’s panicking and there it is, Taehyung thinks, finally, that’s what can break his composure, that’s what can make him tick. Taehyung’s mere touch. Something sits in Taehyung’s throat, tight and constricting. He has entirely hollowed out from the inside, he’s completely and pathetically hurt.

His lips part, but Jungkook’s speaking again. “You’re just a warm mouth to me, okay?” His voice is rough, but it shakes, chest lifts and falls so hard; he’s like a man disturbed. He’s lost all semblance of control. His words reek with emotion, and suddenly Taehyung wishes he would go back to his indifference, wishes he never triggered this, because he’s saying, “Make no mistake you’re just a warm fucking mouth to me, a poor one, a poor throat that I can buy.”

Taehyung swallows, bites at his lip. It’s pathetic, he’s pathetic, but he tries, reaches again, begs, “Jungkook—”

As soon as his hand touches him, Jungkook’s own reaches forward, catches at his shoulder and clavicle and pushes back with force that sends him right back, that surges him straight into the surface of the door, whole body flush into the crash with it, head bouncing off, and now it hurts physically as well.

“Fuck,” Taehyung curses, hand cradles at his head at where the pain is emphasized most, features contorting, and Jungkook’s eyes are wide then, though still set.

 “Shit, shit shit shit.” Jungkook’s saying, it’s basically exhales, exhales of shit and that is all he can manage. Jungkook breathes fucking shit. He’s screwing his eyes shut, then opening them again. “Taehyung. I didn’t mean to —” And he stops himself because what, he didn’t mean to what, push him against the fucking door? He’s a fucking man, he can take it. Jungkook doesn’t apologize to boys when he pushes them, he rams into their jaws until he knocks them out.

“To what?” Taehyung’s eyes suddenly open glaring into his. He’s staring with new fire. The gentleness has dropped, the tentativeness disappears, and he bares his teeth when he speaks now, passion etching into his words as he bites them out, gaze narrowed and determined. “To hurt me?” His brows shoot up in a pointed challenge that Jungkook does not accept. It just makes him clench his teeth harder, jaw ticking. It’s a pause long enough for Taehyung to charge again, while the implication of his last words lingers echoing in the silence. “Hit me,” he pronounces, enunciates and Jungkook’s eyes darken. “Hit me, push me again, Jungkook, just take your fucking money away.”

He might do it, Taehyung knows. He might hospitalize him if he wills it, he’s witnessed it by now, but Taehyung doesn’t care, because he’s not going to allow him to make this into a transaction.

Jungkook’s fists land onto the door on either side of him with charge and Taehyung flinches, eyes almost shutting, but he strives to keep them opened and glaring. He searches Jungkook’s face as Jungkook’s searches his, trapping him against the door. Neither of them speaks for several moments, only breaths are exchanged, breaths and hard glares, tension physically tangible between their aggravated bodies, and suddenly Jungkook’s moving again, but he’s not hitting Taehyung.

No, he presses the money into his palm with just three fingers and moves both hands towards him. Taehyung’s breath stills in his throat, eyes not dropping to follow the motion as Jungkook still glares at him, and he needs to return it. And Jungkook, with his heated gaze not dropping once, does the knot of his tie the way he likes it, tightens it around his throat, until Taehyung’s prim and proper as well, though he still feels the taste of Jungkook in his mouth. His hands don’t lift immediately after, though. He reaches a thumb, with a single motion wipes at the corner of his lip, and Taehyung realizes, he wipes at his come.

Jungkook sucks at his own thumb so briefly and naturally Taehyung almost doesn’t notice it, before his hands drop from him completely and the heat of his body disappears as he steps back.

“Fine,” Jungkook says, and it’s cold, so figuratively cold that it actually makes Taehyung physically shiver. He slips the money in his back pocket and looks away. “Go back to work.”

And with a final lasting glance that can no longer be classified as a glare, Taehyung does.

Chapter Text

“So,” Clo twirls the straw in the vibrantly colored cocktail that Hoseok had passed to her previously before he ventured off to wake up Yoongi, deeming three o’clock in the afternoon a good time for him to finally be summoned into consciousness. Jungkook’s brow twitches at her tone, but he does not acknowledge her with a look as she wraps lips around her straw and speaks most coyly, “what’s with that boy?”

Jungkook keeps his body stoic, face unrestrained, but reticent. He keeps himself casual, eyes closed, and head arched to the sky, the hum of the hot tub so common his senses have adapted to it beyond registry. “What boy?”

Clo’s eyes narrow just slightly, with something akin to offence. “Don’t play with me, Jungkook.” Her voice rivals a scoff. “What’s up with Kim?”

He tells himself he does not care for his sister’s expression as she probes into his personal life, but it’s a lie, and he straightens lazily, puts the weight of his head onto his own neck and shoulders and cracks his eyes opened, strained and hurting under the powerful light of the afternoon sun. Clo has, as is to be expected, her features dulled into a virtual inexpression, simply sitting there with coy expectancy that is vibrant and pointed. She does not appreciate being fooled, it’s one of their common characteristics. Another one being their adoration for their personal privacy and lack of taste for disclosure of their own matters. So, Jungkook does try to fool her, as frankly, she has no business sticking her nose in hisshit.

“Julia has a thing for him,” he replies slow and measured and their eyes lock now, similar in the intensity of their un-intensity.

Her head cocks. She releases the straw from in between her lips. “Julia only has a thing for you, Jungkook,” she states. “And you always seem to disappear when he’s around.”

“He’s nothing, okay?” Jungkook replies trying to string his tone of voice away from animosity that trudges by its edges. “Don’t bring him up.” He relaxes his head onto the tub again, but his eyes remain opened.

He’s nothing. Jungkook believes it. Poor boy’s nothing. He’s nothing but a warm, pliant mouth.

Jungkook releases a breath, a sigh. His fingers tighten into a fist that clenches underneath the water, away from his sister’s view. He’s not going to think about this.

Clo does not skip a bit, voice slithers around her question, “Why shouldn’t I bring him up if he’s nothing?”

He is nothing. Jungkook’s thoughts never resonate around the meaninglessness of the things he fucks. He fucks after fights and he fucks sometimes on drugs, and sometimes when he’s simply tense. And if it is not Julia, then it is nothing relevant. It is never about the person, always about the act, about release, relief, it’s about sex, and what sort of a horny teenager would he be to dwell on the simplicity of details of past sex, keeping ridiculous mental images to toss off to. If he wants sex, he can get it.

“He pisses me off,” Jungkook says simply, and because he senses her mouth opening again, he tries to be firm, demanding, “That’s it. Drop it.”

He doesn’t want to think about him in any context, certainly does not want to entertain the fact that he has been paying enough attention to him to make it suspicious. He doesn’t want to know that Taehyung is likely going to ignore him even more now after this. He hadn’t contemplated it when he’d told him to get on his knees, and when he’d pressed the money into his chest. He doesn’t usually tend to think about the consequences of his actions when it comes to sex, when it comes to most things, because ordinarily he doesn’t care about them.

He doesn’t this time as well. He’ll make sure of it. He’ll lose a fight if he has to, let his father beat care out of him.

Clo leaves her glass on the edge of the tub and straightens. Her eyes look tired, skin pale, but circles dark underneath her irises. She covers it up, usually, but not in this company, not with him. She used to be more beautiful when she wasn’t simply sober, when she had never started. She speaks with certain distaste, “I don’t like that you’ve targeted Namjoon’s little brother, Jungkook.”

And Jungkook lifts his head up and speaks with even more of it. “Fuck off,” he says, he spits, and lets his eyes roll with all the pointedness he can manage. He reaches for her glass and removes the straw, tips it over and drains it off liquid, practically inhales it.

Clo pauses, but not for long. “Jungkook—"

“What?” He says sharply, straightening his head again to pin her with a glare that comes to him naturally. His voice toys with a narrow tinge of humor that is more cruel and cold than it is anything else, though he does seep in the suggestion of incredulity, “You want to start a fucking fundraiser for your precious Kims?”

Clo remains typically calm to the pointed animosity of his slight outburst as she asks, slow, but confident, “Is it about Namjoon?”

“No,” Jungkook snaps, because it isn’t. “It has absolutely nothing to do with Namjoon,” he declares with a little more passion twisted into bitterness than he would like to admit. It strikes him as offensive, somehow, inexplicably, that she would suggest this thing with Taehyung would have to do with his brother. It doesn’t. It has to do with Taehyung only.

He forgets it has to do with Julia as well.

“I’m just saying,” Clo is atypically careful. She trudges on sensitivity, and it is something the two of them do not cope all too well with. “Don’t project—"

“I’m not projecting anything,” Jungkook interrupts harshly. He stands up, water dripping down him somehow loud as he looms above her, face pointed and hard. “They’re all the same fucking lot.” He steps out of the hot tub, saunters away to make himself another drink.  “Would do anything to get ahold of some money.”

“You still blame him,” Clo says, keeping her eyes still on where he used to be, the space now as vacant as the direction of their conversation, as the direction of most of their conversations in the past couple of years.

Jungkook scoffs easily as he walks away, “Of course, I still blame him. Kims are fucking pests.”

All Kims are simply fucking pests, nesting in places where they don’t belong, on their streets, their houses, their cafes, work places, and most inexcusably in Jungkook’s fucking brain.   

Jungkook rarely fucks her in his own bed, but when he does, it’s usually hard.

This time it’s harder. He’s inside her as she’s sprawled on his godly mattress, fucking her into it, fast and good. He hovers above her, palms by her head as he uses them for leverage to keep himself up, looking down, bangs moving heavy with sweat with the force of his thrusts.

She’s keening, moaning, arching into him, her thin legs wrapped around his waist, keeping her eyes set on his, so set, because he rarely allows this for so long, rarely initiates and perpetuates eye contact from start to finish but ever since he pushed her down onto his bed he hadn’t ripped his gaze away, and it makes her melt into the velvety sheets.

He’s fucking her fast and good, fast and good, of course it’s good, it’s always good. He’s a talent, talented at everything physical, everything primal and fucking is not an exception, he’s exceptional. But there is something indisputably mechanical about the way he does her tonight, a repetitive rhythm of him slamming his hips into her while he hovers above her. It’s a good rhythm, good depth, hits all the right places, knows just how to make her moan and whimper.

But there is some terrible dispassion in the way he moves into her as he gazes into her eyes. Maybe, she realizes, maybe it’s too good, too fast and good, too hard, too much just the way she likes it, too perfect, controlled, balanced. Machinal.

But then after a slow release of breath, his elbows bend. His forearms straighten into the mattress and he comes closer, body brushing against hers, and though it takes his eyes away from hers, though he has to look away, it’s suddenly different. His head twists away, gaze disappears to stare at nothing in particular, maybe his eyes screw shut, she imagines, and his breath hitches by her ear and the sound of it is deliciously uninhibited.

He falters once in his rhythm in a snap of his hips that feels unrestrained and punishing in all the right ways and it makes her gasp. He’s still fast, still good, but now he’s more frantic, now he seems purposeful, seeking his own pleasure as well as simply grinding into her. He groans, he’s growling, chest rumbles against her as he presses his forehead onto a pillow and fucks her, frustrated, frustratingly.

It’s different now. It holds something. It’s better now. His hips gyrate, sink into hers, arch. The rhythm is not as set, it seems he feels it rather than controls it, and it makes her lose herself in him that he seems to have lost himself in this.

She calls his name when she comes, telling him how good he makes her feel, gripping onto the back of his neck, treading fingers through his hair and helplessly cursing at him in a pleasured mantra of rephrased thank yous.

He himself is atypically silent, foul, demanding lips shut and bitten as he comes afterwards. His teeth sink into the pillow of his flesh hard, too hard until the red is white before it cracks and he releases it before it turns crimson again, before it bleeds, a licentious groan traveling raw and beautiful in her ear as he empties himself into the condom with final movements of his body.

The heat of him evaporates quick, so quick. He’s up and off of her, out of her, before she can properly weave her fingers into his hair like she means to. He disposes of the condom in a bin by his bed as he sits on the edge of it, legs spread wide, elbows pressed into them. He’s hunched over, tense, regardless of what they just did. He’s running palms across his face, as If he’s scrubbing it with water, then his own fingers sink into the strands of his hair, restless and firm as they tread and pull onto them.

Julia straightens on a single elbow, eyes fixed on her boyfriend.

“Are you alright, Jungkook?” she asks, slow and cautious.

His back tenses, muscles rigid under his smooth skin before he straightens, shoulder blades relaxing. He twists slightly at the waist, arching a pointed eyebrow at her, quizzical, “Yeah?”

There’s a suggestion in his demeanor, a suggestion that she’s imagining things and it offends her slightly that he believes after all those years he either thinks he can still fool her or doesn’t care to try.  She grips on a sheet, layers it protectively over her body. “Don’t fucking look it,” she says, only a bit harshly.

He sighs, leans back. His head cocks and his eyes venture away from hers again. “The rumors about Clo and Seokjin,” he addresses and pauses until he notices her resolve change with the barest notion of hesitance. “I don’t like them,” he finishes.

It’s a pattern she knows well, but still lacks the capacity to fully comprehend, because it’s a very well manufactured form of manipulation for him to stir clear of actual discussion. Jungkook has long ago established his sister holds a tender spot in his heart, inaccessible by others – he has long ago deemed conversations about her taboo but has allowed Julia into the privacy of his insecurity revolving around her. She’s allowed to know, but not to address, not to comment on. So, whenever Jungkook is unnerved by anything he does not want talked about, he simply brings up his sister.

If Julia knows this, she never addresses it as well.  What she does say is, “You think about your sister and that newbie when you fuck me?”

He looks at her again, and with an intense conviction and honesty that she cannot help, but trust, he claims, “No.”

The word carries an idiosyncratic weight that she cannot fully decipher, only feel.

She yearns to address it, lips parting, but then the door cracks open and his mother is there, smiling and unbothered. Her son sits naked and exposed on the edge of his bed, his girlfriend sprawled behind him, barely covered, and the scent of sex punctuates the air.

His mother’s eyes venture to Julia and widen in recognition. Her hands clasp together, fingers intertwining as her palms press tight and a smile spreads on her face. “Julia,” she addresses, pitched and short, “wonderful. I thought I’d heard you. Would you stay for dinner, darling?”

Julia’s eyes venture to Jungkook instinctively, though she is nodding and saying of course. The answer is always of course.

“Perfect,” his mother announces, and she saunters off, a dismissive motion of her hand as it hangs in the air. “Min Su, would you change my son’s sheets?”

Taehyung does not know what it is precisely that transpires inside of him when Jungkook appears at Rouge with Julia, but he can tell it is peculiarly vindictive. It’s the first time he sees Julia after the night of her birthday, but it does not properly register with him, because he’s too busy processing the fact it is the first time he’s seeing Jungkook after he got on his knees for him and allowed him to come in his mouth.

It sits irritably with him that their first encounter post the incident has to feature Seung Julia before he bitterly remembers all of their encounters were supposed to feature her.

And she is his girlfriend.She’s the one supposed to suck his cock, not him, she has every right sitting on that table with him, trailing fingers across the sinewy lines of his forearms, dragging nails playfully across his thighs, the very same thighs Taehyung held onto as Jungkook fucked his mouth.

It is Taehyung who does nothave a place there. He has to serve them and that is it, that is what he does, but as he carries the menu, he also carries the knowledge that he did make Jungkook come, and he had moaned his name moments before he’d spilled into his mouth, and it had had nothing to do with Julia  at all and the fact of it is cruel and twisted in the way it grants him a sense of gratification and empowerment. He almost feels smug which is ridiculous and borderline petty, but he does.

They’re sat on one of his tables, and though Taehyung suspects Jungkook would not make a scene againand in front of Julia he cannot afford to ask Bogum to deal with anything more related to this. He already seems suspiciously involved with Jungkook and he does not want to provide leverage for questioning. What is more, he does not want to simply avoid Jungkook, especially not when Julia is around. He can insert himself into their situation and not shy away from it, not run away flustered and hard. He doesn’t have the upper hand in this, but he does have a hand and he’s set on proving it, for the sake of his own sanity and internal well-being.

It does not mean the presence of Jungkook does not resonate with a sensation of hurt, especially when his smirking, perpetually salacious girlfriend is currently occupying his attention, a reminder Taehyung never truly does. She touches him and he watches her. She smiles at him and he smirks at her and it tugs at Taehyung, because the shape in which Jungkook’s lips twist may not necessarily be a smile but it closer than anything Taehyung dreams to be awarded with.

It’s beyond ridiculous, honestly, that he would crave a smile from Jeon Jungkook, but he does want an array of the strangest things from him. When Julia leans and her lips meet his, Taehyung starts walking. He walks towards them, he has to bring them their menus, take their order, and to order, they need to break apart.

He still wonders what a kiss would feel like, but he abhors seeing it.

“Taehyung,” Julia says as her lips immediately twist with a familiar, titillating curve that is very much a smirk and very little a smile. Taehyung is not surprised at her address, at the pitch of it and the bat of her lashes as her eyes slide away from her boyfriend and over to him. He doesn’t much care for it. He does, however, feel irritated at the fact Jungkook is not looking at him. No, he has his phone out now and he’s fucking scrolling through social media and completely ignorant of Taehyung’s presence and there he is, with Julia’s attention on him, though her palm on Jungkook’s thigh, and Jungkook full-heartedly ignoring him and it is square one. Deja fucking vu. It’s not like this anymore. It shouldn’t be. It should be more, he should be more now.

“Is there anything I can get you to start off with?” Taehyung speaks and he knows he says it tightly, it registers in his own ears and he hopes it does in Jungkook’s as well.

Julia’s lips spread. “Hmm. So professional, Taehyung.”

He does not like the way she says his name, like she has some claim over it. “I’m working,” he states simply, strained in his endeavors to not be overtly brusque with her and to keep his eyes away from Jungkook, though he’s like some interpretive magnet for them, claiming his attention inadvertently, regardless of the fact his own is utterly lacking.

 He gives her a door, he supposes, and she sticks her foot in it and cracks it opened, saunters right in. “If you ever get tired of this working and need a little extra money, Taehyung,” She trails off, her smirk transforming into something he interprets as positively evil though it is mostly suggestive. Her brows lift and fall swiftly. “Or if you’re ever fucking bored.”

Taehyung swallows around his words, “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, blinking towards the other man, whose thumb is aggressive as it perpetuates a continuous, absent scroll. “Anything to drink?” He tries to be leveled, tries not to sound frankly and simply pissed. Maybe he fails.

“A double coffee and a San Pellegrino,” Julia says and somehow even that manages to slip through her lips with an air of something teasing.

Taehyung nods and his eyes naturally slide to Jungkook and he waits. The other does not deign him with a look before he speaks, before he asks, “And for you?” Not before he adds, “Sir?”

Jungkook’s gaze does wander to him then, languorous and tantalizing as it slides to his from under brows, under lashes. There’s some hardness in it as he captures Taehyung’s firm, set glare.

“A coke,” Jungkook says and Taehyung cannot know if he imagines the tension or it is truly palpable and then his eyes drop to his phone again. “No sugar.”

Taehyung nods, licks at his lips. “Will that be all?”

Julia’s lips open, but Jungkook cuts her off, succinctly, “Yes.”

Taehyung is dismissed,technically, and so, he leaves. He walks into the café, places orders, places them to Bogum who’s behind the bar today, to Bogum who has his eyes scrutinizing his face, studying the all too obvious disgruntlement that encapsulates his pretty features.

Bogum’s leaning his elbows on the counter of the bar as Taehyung slips behind to make the coffee himself. He appreciates the distraction of having something to do with his hands, something that requires his attention, because otherwise it begrudgingly misplaces, seals onto the couple.

“He’s here again,” Bogum acknowledges and Taehyung’s eyes dart to the person in question, automatic and regretful, as Jungkook has forgotten his phone and is present now, present with her. “What did he want from you, the other day?” Bogum continues after Taehyung only lets out an annoyed noise of affirmation. “You kind of, disappeared for a while.”

He’s cautious with his wording and Taehyung senses it, appreciates it, though he does suppose it is done more for Jungkook’s sake than it is for his.

“Just to rough me up a little bit,” Taehyung replies as he works the espresso machine with the automaticity of longitudinal familiarity. “Told you he gets off on making me suffer.” He says and the coffee is done, so he makes to bring the drinks to the couple, but Bogum is on the other side of the bar and has the trey in his hands as soon as Taehyung places the porcelain onto it.

“I’ll take care of it,” he informs him and when Taehyung attempts to protest, he interjects mid-spin, “I’m closer.”

Thanks, Taehyung means to say, but he doesn’t, just nods. He watches as Bogum places the drinks on the table, as Jungkook’s head twists to look at their waiter and then eyes, sharp and intense, center on him through the window.

Taehyung refuses to award him with the satisfaction of a reciprocated look, so he replaces his gaze to Bogum, follows him as he returns and as he places the tray onto the counter. Work is slow today, it’s chill. It’s an hour during the week at which people are usually busy, it’s a money-making hour, but Julia and Jungkook do not have to worry about making money, just spending it.

“Can I ask you something?” Bogum leans against the bar again. He is casual, but tangibly bordering on some intent, tiptoeing around actual points, while focusing on nonchalance.  As Taehyung mimics his position on the other end of the counter and their elbows brush, he adds, “Don’t get offended.”

Taehyung’s drive to show indifferenceinvigorates him to seal his eyes onto Bogum though they practically itching to check if Jungkook’s are still on Julia. “Yeah, no worries,” he tries to focus on this conversation, with this person. He meets his eyes. “Few things can offend me.”

Bogum’s lips twitch before they straighten. He clears his throat, shakes some hair from his face. “Do you deal to him?”

“What?” Taehyung asks a little bit sharply, a little bit blankly. It’s a lot more surprising to him than it is offensive as Bogum had worried, and his brows shoot into his hair, features twist with the confusion of the question.

“I just.” He’s playing with something he finds on the bar, some object that Taehyung does not exactly know the purpose of, but it’s small and metallic. Bogum hesitates as he lifts his eyes from the movement of his digits and looks instead at Taehyung, “I heard a Kim sells around here and I thought it might be you. Thought it might have to do with your…” he chooses carefully, “misunderstandings.”

“Ah,” Taehyung exhales, tongue tapping against the roof of his mouth, features tight as he nods, once, twice, he’s shaking his head. His fingers clasp together and squeeze into each other.  “That would be my brother.” He straightens up, but he realizes he has nothing to do with himself, really, so he stretches his back and leans onto the bar again. “He’s gone now, though. He went away.”

“Oh.” Bogum’s eyes widen slightly, genuinely. It’s refreshingly rare. “Sorry. I—"

Taehyung waves a hand. “It’s fine.” He grips onto his own elbow and allows a bit of a smile to tease at his lips. “You really don’t know much about Richhood, do you?” A new variation of fondness touches his voice at the end.

Bogum’s brows arch curiously, “Richhood?”

“Gangnam.” Taehyung responds, laughs, shoulders shaking with it as he drops his head and twists it side to side. He says with a breath under his nose, “Christ.” Then lifts up to look at his coworker, slapping a palm over the curl of his shoulder definitively. “Okay, Bogumie hyung. You work in Rouge, you need to be educated in order to survive.” He enunciates pointedly, then announces,“You’re coming with me to the Ozone.”

A smirk spreads on the other’s face, friendly enough but a little teasing as well. “To the Ozone, yeah?”

Taehyung nods. “Yeah.”

Bogum lifts his brows up again, but this time differently, this time with suggestion, though it remains pointedly playful, “Are you asking me out, Taehyung?”

Taehyung snorts, eyes rolling easily. His conversations with Bogum flow; they’re easy, casual. It relaxes him slightly, to finally have something like this. Sometimes he feels every moment of his life is burdened with a type of unspoken tension, bred from his clear-cut status of poverty. “No, I just want you to see them in their natural habitat, snorting coke and dirty dancing and all that.” His eyes dart unintentionally to the smoke-snorting, dirty-dancers in question, but he is quick to return them to Bogum.

“Dirty dancing?” Bogum grins all wicked. “Is that what we’ll be doing?”

Taehyung buries his face in his hands, prolonging vowels as he whines, “Hyuuung.” Everything he says can be used against him apparently, so he settles for nothing but a whine.  

Fingers thread through his hair for the barest moment, ruffing it up, fluffing it, before they are removed. “I’m just teasing, Taehyungie.” Taehyung straightens, his eyes naturally darting to Jungkook as he regains vision of the background behind Bogum, a bit of a residual pout on his face as he leans his chest and whole body on his fists against the bar. “Though, I wouldn’t particularly mind.”

It takes Taehyung a moment, he needs to pause, because his gaze lingers and it does because it does not meet the side of his head as expected, it meets his eyes, set and penetrative. But Taehyung does remove his, speedily. He meets Bogum’s. “Keep going and I’ll report you for harassment,” he jokes. He tries to keep it light, this light is the only one he is allowed to have, and he clings onto it.

But then Bogum’s smirk softens into a smile. It’s small on his face, and he is no longer staring at Taehyung, so Taehyung looks away as well. “You look at them a lot,” Bogum announces. He says it simply, quietly.

Taehyung nods. He knows he does. He always has. “Observation’s preservation.”

He settles for this, though currently Jungkook’s magnetic pull to his eyes does anything but keep him safe. Conversely, it exposes truths he does not want to acknowledge.

“Who’s that with him?” Bogum asks, his chin nodding indicatively.

Taehyung’s tongue runs across his lips. “Seung Julia,” he says, looking around for something to do. He desperately needs to be busy right now. “She’s his girlfriend. They’ve been together for like…” and he realizes with a small sigh, “ever.”

Bogum nods, leaning backwards against the bar, scanning them over briefly. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“Gorgeous.” He makes another coffee, this one for himself, offers Bogum one, but he shakes his head, so he makes himself a double because it takes longer.

“They look good together,” Bogum acknowledges, and Taehyung pulls at a lever a bit too hard, begs he wouldn’t notice.

“Yeah,” Taehyung hits his finger on the machine with a movement that is too brusque and uncoordinated, hisses, sucks on it briefly. “They fit.” He says.

It’s convenient when three people only two of whom Taehyung recognizes sit at a table that Bogum has to serve because it effectively ends the conversation that Taehyung is not sure how to stir. He doesn’t even like coffee.

He shakes his head, at himself, to himself, figures that with how slow the day is going it is not a crime for him to go to the toilet when he is not on his break, so he slips away, ventures into the hallway and then towards the bathroom. He stares at his own self in question when he washes his hands, fills his cheeks with air, his chest and releases it in a large burst through circular lips.

He cups his palms, fills them with some water and chucks it at his face, and then he leaves.

His pause is immediate when he sees he is not alone in the hallway.

His steps halt unintentionally, eyes dart across the familiar figure of Jeon Jungkook as the door shuts behind him, he’s clearly just come into the space as well. Taehyung’s chest fills with a breath he struggles to take, but then he manages and drops his gaze to the floor with a small nod of acknowledgment and he walks.

He means to walk past, pace quick and pointed, but of course, of course, fingers lock tight against the bone of his elbow and Jungkook tugs him into a position that is not too close, not too far away, that makes him face him with at least half of his body. Taehyung’s eyes narrow. His glare burns at where Jungkook’s digits coalesce with his body, then up along the length of his arm and settles into his own hardened stare.

Jungkook’s teeth are tight pressed, but he still manages to speak with insouciance. “You’re not gonna tell anyone about what happened, right?” he says, and at the address of thisTaehyung’s surprised into flinging his brows up into his hair.

He’d never expected Jungkook to voluntarily bring it up, with words, though not naming it, per se, but instilling the fact of it happening into the tension of the space between them.

Jungkook only does it because he wants Taehyung to think about it when that other poor bastard runs his hands through his hair again.

“What?” Taehyung hisses, because Taehyung is pissed, pissed because he can’t ignore him when other people are around, then fucking seek him out and speak to him with the notion of a threat.And if Jungkook wants to talk about it now, well then, he will talk about it, the way it was, “That I sucked your cock?” He takes a single step forward, it’s brave and it’s stupid and he takes it. He lets the ring of his words linger in the air of the quiet room. Then, he says, “I know I must be somelevel of masochistic to talk to you, but I don’t go around looking for a good beating.”

Jungkook’s eyes shift away from him then return, jaw tightening. His free fingers, the ones that do not attempt to bruise the memory of their hold into his flesh, tap repetitive and quick against his own hip.  “I mean Julia,” he tells him.

Oh, Taehyung thinks. “No,” Taehyung says. He does not manage to stray from embitterment, when he promises, “I won’t.” He can, he could,thinks maybe she won’t kiss him so readily, won’t touch him so freely, so often, so possessive, so confident in her possession, if he did, and he could spill it to her in details because it’s sealed in his mind, engrained and visional, sensational. He could probably rehearse every word, most importantly, the way Jungkook had said fuck, then, fuck again, and then Taehyung, and then he’d come. But he won’t.

And after he concludes that, after he informs him of it, he glares away from Jungkook’s searching eyes, reciprocal to his, and he attempts to walk away and for a moment the fingers around his elbow are loose enough that he’s allowed to take a step.

Then they tighten, and they squeeze with suddenness that has him stumbling into his previous place.

Taehyung’s eyes dart to Jungkook again, seal onto him with the unspoken, but obvious, what now, what does he want from him now.

Jungkook’s voice is indecipherable, but perceptibly constricted. It holds something sour, and impugning, though he seems to force into it a casualness that does not fit the glint of his eyes and the tick of his jaw,“You making a new friend?”

Taehyung’s brows lift, eyes blink, and is he implying something about Bogum, he scoffs. His face deadens and he jostles his arm away from his grip. “Fuck off, Jungkook.”

He says and he walks away and Jungkook lets him, he has to let him, because any determination in this case would signify bother, and he is most certainly not bothered by the fact Taehyung walks away from this conversation and falls right into one with whoever the fuck this Park Bogum is. He ignores the way his fingers twitch with encompassing irritability and stalks back to his girlfriend slipping into the set neutrality his sister and him have an unspoken rule to perpetuate.

When Jungkook revisits Rouge the following day when Yoongi says he wants to talk, he tells himself the destination has nothing to do with his curiosity of whether Taehyung would let Bogum touch him again, and a lot more to do with the quality of the coffee, though he does not order one.

“I don’t think Subin is selling me clean,” Yoongi is saying, and Jungkook is willing himself to pay attention, but Taehyung and Bogum are speaking inside, and it does not appear to be a professional discussion, not one of co-workers, because co-working certainly does not require giggling and that is exactly what Taehyung is doing.

His smile is so wide his eyes almost disappear, teeth fully exposed as his lips spread in a shape that is almost rectangular, and some of his prettiness dwindles, his face dysmorphic with the purity of a grin that reaches all aspects of his features. It’s not pretty, no longer pretty, but it is still attractivein some sort of way that makes Jungkook want to put his fist through it until it’s ugly, as ugly as what he feels when Taehyung flashes that frustrating smile simultaneously as he pushes Bogum by the shoulder with discernable playfulness. Their interaction spells out reciprocal teasing, and, frankly, Jungkook does not think Taehyung deservesit.

“Jungkook,” Yoongi presses and he realizes he might have made a mistake bringing him here, because he is sober and when he is sober, he reads Jungkook almost as well as his sister does.

“No, he’s not,” Jungkook returns his eyes to Yoongi’s lazy, measured stare.

It narrows slightly. “And why is that?”

Jungkook shrugs in a way he knows infuriates his hyung. “Cause I told him not to.” He slides his eyes briefly away, glancing through the window of the café, where Taehyung has his fingers on the middle of Bogum’s forearm, other hand curled around his ear and he is whispering, and what the fuck would they even have to whisper about. It is highly unnecessary, as is the hand that Bogum keeps on Taehyung’s back when they talk.

“I’m not a baby, Jungkook,” Yoongi says with filtered aggravation.

Jungkook blinks back to him. “Then why do you cling to substances like a baby to its mother’s tit?” He arches an eyebrow. He’s cruel and he knows it, but Yoongi is not one to take offence, and Jungkook is not one to tiptoe around his friends, especially not when he is particularly ticked like he is today.

Yoongi’s head cocks and his tongue drips venom. “I’m not that good with words. Why don’t you ask your sister? She’s eloquent for an addict.”

Jungkook’s eyes flash brief and warning with the way he tilts his jaw. His tongue pokes into his cheek. “Careful,” he says.

Yoongi laughs. “With who? With you?”

“Are you ready with your order?” And it is neither Bogum nor Taehyung who asks this because the two are too busy laughing.

“I want something colorful,” Yoongi says, glancing up with a close-lipped smile that makes the crescents of his eyes thin.

“Colorful?” It is a waitress that lingers with a worried arch of her eyebrow.

“Yes,” Yoongi nods with ready satisfaction before he adds, “And strong.”

“Do you have a preference for the spirit?”

He shakes his head. “Surprise me.”

Jungkook orders a diet coke, and she walks away and Yoongi grips at his knee where he has his legs crossed one on top of the other and uses the hold he has to arch his body slightly, look the waitress over. “I kind of want to fuck her, don’t you?”

“No,” Jungkook says. “Glad to hear you can get hard again.”

Yoongi scoffs. “You’re one to talk. Julia shares.”

“My dick’s limp out of boredom, not out of drugs, and I always deliver.”

Yoongi’s eyes trail smirking over the length of Jungkook’s body and his lips twitch. “Yes, Julia shares about that as well.”

Jungkook tries not to be distracted by the fact Bogum’s hand still lingers on the back of Taehyung’s waist and it seems to have dropped inappropriately lower. His fingers drum atop the table, tongue poking into his other cheek as well.

“Do you think you’re taking care of me, Jungkook?” Yoongi’s voice carries gentle, deep, and slow. It’s always relaxing. Jungkook used to love to just listen to him speak, when he had any good thoughts to share.

He turns to him now with a pointedly questioning expression, raising a single eyebrow. “Huh?”

“I’m your hyung,” Yoongi says, still clad in languor. His throat must be dry; there’s no moistness in his words. “I’m supposed to take care of you.”

Jungkook chooses to stare at his frustrated fingers, jarring and restless, tap tap tap, as they knock against the surface of the table. “It’s just age, hyung,” he tells him, “It’s just numbers. It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does,” Yoongi declares and it means something else as well, but Jungkook doesn’t catch it because Taehyung’s brining their drinks over.

And they’re fucking walking together. Jungkook’s jaw slacks, teeth pressing rigid. It’s so goddamn annoying.They’re working, not out on a fucking date, yet they both grip treys in their hands and walk close to each other, shoulders brushing, speaking even as they do their job, as if their conversation could possibly be so engaging as to not want to leave it even for a moment enough for them to properly do what they are paid for.

They have to part ways for them to deliver to different tables, and Taehyung has the nerve to fucking pout. Like a child. He looks ridiculous. He is certainly not paid to do that. Jungkook does not appreciate servers that slack off on the job for the purpose of personal entertainment, workers that are unprofessional enough to display their relationships with their colleagues. He does not pay 18% service fee for Taehyung to have fucking fun, in a largely unnecessary manifestation of some misplaced codependent affection for the new person who’s in this with him.

Taehyung slides the tip of the trey onto the edge of the table, reaches to place Yoongi’s drink in front of him. He’s actually quite skilled at balancing the trey so that is takes up minimal space, experience has bred in him some professionalism, though he disregards it for the sake of a newbie, and really, it’s shame that Jungkook feels the need to stretch in just that moment. His fingers pause their tap and his hand glides across the surface and knocks into the trey, disturbing its tentative balance, and it twists and slips, Jungkook’s coke toppling to the ground, breaking into pieces and spilling over.

“Shit,” Taehyung’s hiss is a murmur, but it is immediate.  His eyes are brief in the scathing glare they lift to burn into him, before a mantra of swear words string from his lips in the breath of a whisper and his gaze falls, concentrated and searching. He falls to his knees so naturally on the cement, holding a palm opened and piling shards of glass into it and Jungkook is swarmed with a wave of pleased satisfaction at how much better he looks on his knees between his legs than he does standing up next to Bogum. “Shit, shit, shit. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He apologizes so quick and worried it must be instinctual, automatic. Jungkook supposes the belief, the customer is always right, is one of God’s ten commandments in a place like this. He realizes Taehyung must not mean to say sorry to him, but very likely feels he has to. It’s gratifying in a way he is debauchedly familiar with, that it must be internally killing him to fall on his knees and to apologize for it, but that he has no choice.

After the first quick, fiery glare he focuses on gathering the glass mostly, does not portray his distaste in any way that is clearly visible, but Jungkook is starting to know Taehyung. He can feel it virtually pulsate off of his skin, vibrate in the erratic motion of his hands, too quick, too sharp. He’s buzzing with it. Jungkook wonders how much he would like to be able to afford to stand up and hit him right then, but he can’t.

Yoongi studies the smirk etched into Jungkook’s features as he seals a cruel gaze on the poor boy that gathers glass with his bare hands. It’s more pitiless than is typical for the younger man, who, though is far from being particularly kind, usually does not care enough to be callous with staff. He has always considered it beyond him, has never sunk into that specific pettiness of being rich. Yoongi says nothing of it and he tries not to think anything of it as well.

“Taehyung,” Bogum, playing fucking Superman or some ridiculously pointless shit like that, calls his name with concern, and angles closer, slipping his own now empty trey beneath his shoulder to permit himself the mobility of helpinghim.

Jungkook lacks a filter. “Oh, don’t worry,” he says. He sits with his legs spread wide, possessive of the mere air around him, and when Taehyung looks up at the sound of his voice with something that is more confused and vulnerable than it is glaring, with lips slightly parted, he looks from in between his knees and it is a pretty imagery, indeed. “He’s used to this.”

Taehyung’s lips clasp with resolve and he notices the bob of his long throat as he swallows. He pauses as his eyes narrow and harden, his features twisting in a combination that perfectly depicts a loaded aversion. “You wish,” he says slowly, he says petulantly. It’s such a simple thing to say, so fucking schoolground, but it strikes Jungkook wrong, tugs at him, and he really wishes they were alone.

He means to respond with something that is primal enough to not have consciously formulated in his head as impending speech, when a person smartly dressed, smart, but cheap, practically flies out of the restaurant, hands up in the air and clinging together. He speaks with the feigned drama of business, screwing his features to convey textbook remorse, brows tight together and forehead creased. “Jungkook-nim,” the man, much older than he is addresses with a voice that cannot naturally sound this pitched, “I cannot even begin to communicate how terribly appalled I am that Rouge has allowed this to happen. I will take measures—”

And he reaches down to take Taehyung by the elbow and Jungkook interrupts the ass-licking sleaze. “If you fire him, I’ll fire you.”

There’s a concrete pause after the statement, and it annoys him how the sound of it lingers, so he dismisses. “Just clean up this fucking mess and bring me another coke, yeah?”

Taehyung does take Bogum to the Ozone. It’s a Friday night, and the club is most naturally buzzing. Jimin dances on Fridays, always does. Tips tend to be generous in the end of the week and he could never deny the generosity of rich kids, so he passes by, introduces himself, politely slaps Taehyung right in the middle of the ass cheeks and excuses himself as he climbs on a platform near the bar top.

Bogum’s eyes slide across him as he leans into Taehyung, palm cupped at the small of his back. They’re close, the space in a place like the Ozone requires it, people fit together tightly, and if they have any intention of hearing each other, they have to deal with merging proximity.

Taehyung has one hand wrapped around a bottle. He’s drinking beer tonight and it tastes bitter, but he doesn’t want to do shots around Bogum just yet, considering he is most certainly a lightweight.

“Well, Jimin is certainly dirty dancing tonight,” Bogum jokes in Taehyung’s ear as the two share a glance with lifted eyebrows before they refocus gazes on Jimin, who is definitely working for his tips. Taehyung has watched him many times; he is no longer surprised by the pure eroticism of the way he moves. It’s always an elaborate dance, it’s not simply seductive, not only sexy, it’s heavily technical, body twisting complicated and sensual and so perfectly with the rhythm set by the boisterous music. But still, in the end of the day, it fascinates with sex appeal, with the way Jimin is not afraid of eye contact – he endorses it, perpetuates, lazy, wandering eyes as his hips basically thrust into nothing. Taehyung smiles softly when his friend’s seeking gaze lands on him. He raises his bottle lightly and Jimin has to look away to fight off a break in character for a sneaking fondness.

Taehyung’s forehead almost touches the side of Bogum’s as he speaks, “He’s good, isn’t he?”

Bogum’s fingers tighten a bit onto his back, an indication he wants his attention as he speaks. A smile stretches on his face, one that shows off his teeth, but is consistently playful as well. “He’s contagious,” Bogum says, something teasing lacing around his voice.

Taehyung leans away, shakes his head, bites his lower bit as he stares at the ground. “Sure, he is.”

He runs a hand through his hair, spreads it in two at the forehead and does what he’s really trying to force himself not to. He looks around. He already knows Jungkook is there. It’s Friday and Jungkook and Julia never skip Fridays. Today is no exception.

Taehyung only manages to look at them from the side, only from the corner of his eyes as he replies to other things that Bogum says. He’s laughing, he’s smiling, but he glances at the couple.

They’re at their booth, the booth that might as well have their names fucking engraved into it. She’s sat so close to him, she might as well be in his lap and has her head twisted, jaw exposed, murmuring something in his ear. He has an arm around her, fingers hovering over her breast. Hoseok, Yoongi and peculiarly enough, Seokjin are also at their table, Hoseok with a girl he doesn’t recognize twisted around him with tangled limbs, lips on his, tongue in his mouth — Yoongi’s watching. Seokjin has a girl next to him, too, and her body is quite overtly angled towards him, but he has his gaze rooted on Jungkook who sits opposite him and the other returns it with its typical insouciant intensity.

It’s as if he senseshim. Jungkook’s eyes stir away from whatever duel they’re fighting with Seokjin’s and slide lazily and so directly to his that he simply must have known he would be there, he would be looking. There are hundreds of people in the club. It’s a Friday, but Jungkook’s eyes are on his with powerful immediacy.

And just as immediately, Taehyung blinks away, heart palpitating in a different beat now, one he thinks is reserved as a rhythm for Jungkook. He’s still smiling, teeth bared and eyes dancing with the entertainment of his current conversation and he deems it a vulnerability he does not want to award him with. He grins at Bogum, who says something funny. Bogum is funny. It strikes Taehyung he rarely laughs lately with the way Bogum gets chuckles out of him ever so often.

He pushes lightly at his shoulder, looks at the ground. He looks shy, and he feels it, too, but Bogum stares at him with confidence, angling his body differently, so that they are front to front and now his hand twists, doesn’t hold him casually by the back anymore, he holds him intimately by the waist, his palm cupping over in a touch that is unnecessary and intentional.

Taehyung recognizes he is being hit on. He’s not dense. Bogum is still incredibly friendly, but he’s walking on boundaries, testing waters to see if Taehyung is hot or cold. He’s not interested, per se, but Bogum’s pointed interest is flattering. He’s not pushy, he’s careful, and he is undeniably charming, so Taehyung lets himself go a bit too much then he expects of himself, with a man.

Though, he does figure his set preference for women is a bit out of the window, considering he sucked a boy’s cock, which is not something a lot of straight people pride themselves on doing. Taehyung still does not know what to think about it. He wanted to do it, so he did it. He is attracted to Jungkook, he’s not going to lie to himself; it’s physical and a little bit beyond that, maybe. Jungkook has an allure. But a large part of him thinks it is not really boys, as much as it is Jungkook.

But he is not opposed to the way Bogum flirts. He does not necessarily want to act on it, doesn’t really crave to kiss him, press himself into him, doesn’t really want to drop to his knees and suck his cock. But when Bogum suggests they dance for the fourth time, he agrees with a shake of his head.

The Ozone is one of the few places in Gangnam where all types of promiscuity and salaciousness is allowed. A boy dancing with a boy is not as scandalous, though it is viewed upon with the connotation of something perverse. The rich, however, have always been allowed their secret perversions in certain contexts. The poor are not allowed perversions, but they are allowed shamelessness, and that is what they display.

Bogum slips his hand to his back again, but it’s different. He presses him forward, beckons him with a body movement and meets his eyes. His smile is small, it’s close lipped and it borders on a smirk. Taehyung shakes his head again, more to himself because he’s raising his arm, resting it on Bogum’s shoulder. They dance differently to the way people around them do, there is no grinding. It is playful, teasing, but still somewhat distant. Taehyung keeps it friendly. He keeps it friendly until he remembers Jungkook’s fingers around his elbow, punishing, his teeth pressed as he seethes, “You making a new friend?”

And then something flips inside of him and he spins. He gives Bogum his back and the other’s eyebrows raise, the smile on his mouth completely morphing into a smirk and he sneaks his gaze all across of what is now exposed to him, the whole length of Taehyung’s body, and he offers it, so he does not shy on the look, he drags his eyes across, the dip of his back, the curve of his ass. He places his hands on his hips, bony and warm and niceunderneath his touch, and he holds him, he presses his fingers into the flesh of it pointedly.

Taehyung backs into the touch, he allows his body to brush Bogum’s and there’s some spark of excitement inside of him at it. It’s impure in the way it is not about the dance itself, not even about the people involved, but it charges Taehyung in a way similar to that of the beer and he permits another brush, then another, until they touch more than they don’t.

He does not know what he hopes for, does not fully think of what consequences might be. He’s aware he’ll stop after a dance, cannot allow himself to lead the other on more and with the way he breathes a laugh against his ear that is heavy with the start of something he should probably really stop.

He stops. He’s stopped.

Bogum’s body flies into his a little brusquely before he spins. Someone brushes past him with unnecessary roughness and both Taehyung and he turn, him with a word on his mouth that falls unspoken when he recognizes the culprit.

Jungkook’s eyes fix over Taehyung with a piercing intensity. It’s pinning and pointed, the direction of it speaking in an unknown language before he takes them away, rests his elbows on the bar and orders. Jungkook has no need to go to the bar. His booth is served by waiters. No one expects the VIP’s to walk and queue for drinks.

Bogum’s gaze falls away from him and turns to Taehyung, a question lingering in his voice, “Tae--?”

Taehyung’s eyes narrow. He looks at Jungkook when he says, “Let’s dance.”

Bogum’s tongue graces his lips. “Taehyung…”

Jungkook’s eyebrow lifts slow, his head turns slower, and now he’s looking at Taehyung as well, but Taehyung is no longer looking at him. He turns to Bogum, clutches at his arm, “I wanna dance.”

Bogum’s lips part, but the next words Taehyung hears don’t come from him.

Jungkook’s fingers wrap around his forearm tautly, start at his wrist and slide up until they circle into flesh and squeeze. His chest presses into Taehyung’s shoulder, hot, but not as scorching as his breath feels on his jaw and neck when Jungkook orders in his ear, “No, I think you need to take a piss.”

“What?”Taehyung hisses, teeth clasping together with the power of it.

“Bathroom,” Jungkook simply says and then he releases him and walks away.

Taehyung’s eyes pathetically follow as he strides not in the direction of his booth, but towards where they both know the bathroom to be. He glares at his receding form, heart beating in his chest, blood pulsing in his veins. He hates how he gives him a choice. He would much rather have Jungkook drag him away by force and threats like he did in the hotel, so that he does not have to deal with the internal embarrassment of choosing to go to him.

For the first few moments after he loses sight of him completely, Taehyung’s mind is firmly set on the conviction that he won’t go. In the following few, he is excusing himself, “I think I need to take a piss,” and he’s walking away.

He reaches the bathroom, sparkly and clean and stylish, so unlike that of most clubs, with a repressed excitement and an overly enhanced dread. The door closes behind him and the powerful sound of the music dulls and fades into a vibrating background. It’s him and Jungkook, and they are alone.

Jungkook appears almost leisurely, back pressed into the polished counter of the sink, legs crossed, arms, too. He lifts his head up at Taehyung’s entrance, eyes find him and cause a halt in his movement. Taehyung pauses at the door, lingers beside it as the silent glare zeroes on him and he speaks before he thinks.

“I need to take a piss,” he announces, pries his eyes away and ventures into a cubicle. It’s a pitiful attempt at trying to retain pride; they both know that is not the purpose of his presence. Still, he forces himself, pisses some of the beer out. He walks out of it silent and Jungkook shamelessly follows him with hard, sinful eyes as he treads to him to wash his hands.

The streak of water is loud, and Taehyung does everything in his power not to return the look that is so palpably seared into him. Pupils seal into his barest movement, and it again makes him nervous, and he hates it, every bit of it. He feels peculiarly electric in Jungkook’s presence. Something buzzes over his skin, something slithers through his blood underneath. It’s verging on discomfort, but in a way that is disturbingly addictive.

When he turns the tap off and spins to direct his body to the door is when Jungkook gets tired of it. He straightens from his position, with a single stride pins himself right in front of Taehyung and inch or two before him. Taehyung stutters in his gait, taking a step back and his ass presses into the counter of the sink.

“What?” Jungkook’s voice’s a bite, and Taehyung remains silent. There is a violent vehemence to it that raises hairs on his body. “Do you officially like men now?” It’s caustic, vindictive, and filled with a dripping irony that mocks him as he stretches arms and places each hand on a side of Taehyung. There is something unnervingly oxymoronic in the casualness that his posture keeps as his voice bathes in malignancy. “Are you really going to be such a little whore?” Words burn through Taehyung as he enunciates them properly, so properly, speaking in a drawl that stretches every vowel to hit hard. “You were fucking flirting,” he announces with a finality that demands an answer.

Taehyung swallows, raises his jaw high, nose higher. He hopes his voice comes clean and reticent. “What’s it to you?”

Jungkook blinks. He can practically hear his teeth grind together. “I want you to stop,” he says, he demands, eyes so bold in the way they take in all of Taehyung as he speaks. His next word is a breath, “okay?” And his next borders a growl, “You’reours.”

Taehyung’s body ignites. A fire blooms through him. Ours, ours, he says as if this is about him and Julia, and not about him and Taehyung. The claim burns through him depraved. It carries an offence, an insult. His own teeth clash together, and he sneers, “You don’t owe me, Jeon. You borrowme. Outside of that I can do what I want.”

He makes to walk away, if that is fucking all, straightens and paces, but Jungkook is pressing a hand into his chest, pushing him back into place somewhat weakly, with a word that is somehow weaker, “Please,” he says, and it almost makes Taehyung choke. It’s airy, breathy, and his jaw slacks so pointed after it that Taehyung wonders if it slipped through unintentional, if it’s purely accidental. When he speaks next once Taehyung is safely pressed into the counter, his voice is hard again. “Don’t.”

Taehyung studies him. He tries to but he cannot learn anything. He has to ask, and he does, “Why?”

Jungkook’s stare blinks away from the hold it has on him before it returns. “It bothers me,” he states simply.

Taehyung’s teeth grind harder together. He presses, “Why?”

But Jungkook doesn’t answer. He simply rolls his eyes, juts his chin. “How much for you to stop?”

Taehyung’s voice softens with the desperation of speaking to goddamn wall.  He darts his eyes across the whole of his face, taking in every feature, every handsome feature that is misplaced on a person as horrible as him. They linger on his lips. “You can’t buy exclusivity from me, Jungkook.”

“No?” His tone drops as well. Something sensual pulsates off the way Taehyung stares at his lips from such a proximity and it sneaks into the ambiance of the conversation.

Taehyung’s eyes lift to his again. He’s so close. It’s a mere whisper when he says, “You can say please again.”

And it breaks. Jungkook straightens. He scoffs. “Fuck you,” he says, voice hardening again.

Taehyung reciprocates the harshness, features narrowing as he makes his second attempt to leave with an announcement. “Actually, I’d rather fuck Bogum.”

He gets nowhere. He is sent right back into the counter and it’s forceful enough for it to hurt when flesh digs into the dark marble of it. Taehyung hisses with the pain of it, but Jungkook doesn’t care. He closes in, steps into his space and digs cold, hard eyes onto his face.

“Please...” his voice teases gently over and Taehyung’s chest recedes back, ribcage closing in and expanding with a harrowing sharpness. His skin tingles and his eyes are wide as they stare into Jungkook’s. Something’s bundling inside of him, a narrow, twisted hope that feels new and hot and exquisite, but Jungkook rips it right out of his chest, his stomach with a move that almost physically hurts, “wear a condom. Julia wouldn’t want to fuck you with herpes.”

Taehyung’s eyes fall shut. His exhale is sharp, and he tries to walk away again, because he cannot listen to this. Jungkook doesn’t let him though. He has him trapped, body stoic and unmovable. Unbothered.

“Let go of me, Jungkook,” Taehyung demands and it’s almost a whine; he feels petulant with the way he tries to trash into an escape, but it’s childish of Jungkook to keep like this as well, so Taehyung compromises. He spins, angles his body towards the sink because he simply can’tlook at him, but really it’s no good, because all he does is twist to a view of him between Jungkook’s arms in the mirror.

“Why?” Jungkook asks sharply, in his ear. He doesn’t spin him back, just moves closer to him, closer until he’s so close that there is no space, presses into him, fills each crevice and all Taehyung does is watch it happen in the mirror, his breath hitching when he feels him. Jungkook’s warm, he’s hot. His body on Taehyung conducts an energy that cannot be properly put into words, not now at least, not by Taehyung because he’s about to lose his fucking mind again, he can feel it slipping, and he doesn’t want to. He presses his lips together. He says nothing, he stares ahead, stoic and firm. Jungkook’s voice saunters to dangerous territories, dropping low and soft. It’s a breathy exhale and he speaks to Taehyung’s nape, forehead almost pressing into the back of his head as he whispers, “Why when you don’t want him anyway, Tae?”

Taehyung’s heat skips a beat, and he screws his eyes shut. “Shit, don’t call me that.”

“You don’t want him.” Jungkook repeats, firm, but still soft, enticing. He presses his fingers into Taehyung’s hips, the way that Bogum had, but it feels so different. His digits burn scorching into the bones that hide beneath Taehyung’s flesh.

A breath slips through Taehyung’s slips, a breath that is much too reminiscent of the words,  of the confession, “I don’t.”

He keeps his eyes close because looking at his face as he allows this to happen is torture. Looking at Jungkook as he does this to him is impossible. He feels his lips at his ear, a murmur that ruffles his hair, “You want me.” Jungkook exhales it and Taehyung sucks in sharply, heart violent in his ribcage. Fingers press harder into his hips, he’s squeezing into him so hard and Taehyung bruises so easy he might have the remains of his fingertips there tomorrow, an imprint of his already unforgettable touch. He pulls him closer to himself, though it is not much possible, lines himself with the globe of his ass as he presses forward and Taehyung can feel every bit of him, hard, poised chest, hot stiffening length. And yes, he does want him. His cock is stirring, mind is blurring, and Jungkook is demanding in the softest whisper, “Tell me.”

Taehyung swallows, but he doesn’t speak. He won’t tell him. No matter how much he does, Jungkook doesn’t deserve to hear it. His teeth find his lower lip, bury it in between. He’s set in his resolve, and Jungkook knows it, so he grips onto him harder and presses forward, rotating his hips into the warmth of him in a motion that emphasizes his shape against Taehyung and pushes him to rub into the marble of the sink. A gasp betrays him, strung from him at the sudden onslaught of sensation.

He has the lewd urge to press back into Jungkook. He wants to feel him some more, wants to know the sensation of him growing hard and harder against him. It’s exhilarating, feeling him like this, but he keeps his hips still, chides at himself, won’t allow him to use him again, won’t be just a warm mouth for him.

He just needs a couple of moments to gather strength to push him away.

But then Jungkook’s hand slips. It travels past his hip and teases over his sensitive stomach before it dips, and he shamelessly pops the button of his jeans. “I wanna make you feel good,” he breaths.

Taehyung’s eyes snap open, finding Jungkook’s in the mirror and he is looking at him with something primitive and intense, something that pierces through his resolve as fingers glide across the fabric on top of him in a motion that has his hips snapping back and rubbing into him. “What?” Taehyung exhales.

“I wanna make you feel good, Tae.” And it is as lascivious as it is purely cruel. It’s frustratingly tender, his breath slithers along Taehyung’s sensitive skin, his lips grazing ever so slightly at the tip of his ear, eyes preserving their torturous hold on Taehyung through the mirror now that he made the mistake to allow him to capture them. The way the nickname Tae slides from his alone feels indecent. His sister calls him that, brothers call him that, and Jimin, and that completes the list. But there is Jungkook now taking away his childhood out of it and instilling something raw and vengeful, that has a lot less to do with familial affection and a lot more to do with wanton promises. “Will you let me?”

Jungkook’s fingers close tentatively over him as pulls him back, detaching him from the counter of the sink and pressing him fully flush against himself instead. Taehyungs fights a small gasp and loses dramatically, cursing when it slips past petty lips, which he then punishes by digging his teeth into them. Damage is done and Jungkook is smirking. The touch of his fingers is light, digits grazing, not holding, but it does drive Taehyung mad, because in his logical perspective Jungkook would never touch him.

Taehyung is retrospectively not too surprised with how their last lasting encounter had played out. He has to remember sex is more a weapon than it is an act around people like them, a tool to put him in his place, and though he’d gone on a little power trip watching Jungkook lose himself, he imagines the other planned it to be the other way around and maybe for him it was.

But this is about Jungkook touching him. It surprises him; it scares him. Scares him how easily he sucks in a breath through the teeth harsh on his lip and nods, he nods, “Shit, yes. Okay, yes.”

And anyone could walk in, anyone, anyone, but Jungkook is doing this with such confidence, Taehyung would not be surprised if he has done some of his richmagic tricks to make sure no one does, to make sure he has him to himself to torture and bend.

Jungkook’s fingers pull the zipper down, so tortuously slow, and Taehyung stares at the motion of it in the mirror as Jungkook steadfastly studies his face. His body feels deliciously hard against his back, every bit of it, every shape of it that he can feel.And his digits are sneaking down his pants and he’s pulling him out.

Taehyung’s breath hitches and pauses in his throat for a worrying time. Jungkook releases him, brings his hand up, palm spread. “Want it wet?”

Taehyung stares at it with rapid heart, and he hesitates, not really because of hygiene, but because the last thing Jungkook touched was Julia’s knee and he wonders if her skin has a taste that clings to Jungkook. But when Taehyung darts his eyes up, meets Jungkook’s and leans, sliding his tongue along the length of his palm with the same excruciating pace that the other previously used on him, all he can taste is musk and Jungkook. It’s the first time he’s tasting him, but it’s terribly distinct and Taehyung is afraid it locks right into Taehyung’s memory.

Jungkook’s eyes narrow slightly in the mirror, the hand that holds Taehyung’s hip tightening and he presses forward into him, nestling himself against Taehyung’s ass. Taehyung does not know why that should be stimulating in any way, what is erogenous about the globe of his ass, it’s not like it’s his dick, but Christ he wants to push back into him, wants to feel more of him, because Jungkook is getting hard and the shape and heat of him against him is addictive.

His hand falls again, and fingers meet light around Taehyung, tracing veins, before his palm fits over him near the head, a thumb gracing over the slit at the tip. He squeezes, it drags out a hissing fuck out of Taehyung’s lips, because he can feel his goddamn ring, cold against him unlike the warmth of the rest of him, and a bead of precum that he spreads over.

Taehyung expects Jungkook to be at least some variation of shy about this. He’s straight, straight like most people, not like Taehyung is straight with a special dent for the man that now has him gripping at the edge of the sin counter, knuckles going wide.

But of course, he has confidence with this as well, the confidence to exhale by his ear, to meet his eyes in the mirror, to drag his fingers all the way to the base, then up, to squeeze at all the right places. It feels tremendously different to when Taehyung jerks himself of. It makes him feel like he’s about to spasm, and he knows it is about the whole configuration of it happening, of Jungkook pressed against him and capturing his eyes. Of this being a public place, where anyone could walk in. Julia could walk in, because Jesusif Jungkook has made someone keep guard, it is no one Seung Julia cannot pass through.

Taehyung knows he’s also high on the adrenaline of this being a repercussion of him flirting.Jungkook is territorial, it seems, does not like sharing.

Jungkook who is speaking to him, growling in his ear, “Wanna call me sir again?” It’s heavily laced with irony, but with his slick hand fisting over him, he cannot help but whine.

“Jungkook,” Taehyung’s voice strains, and his name is all that he manages. It is supposed to be a warning of some sort, or a plea, don’t bring shit up, but it comes out as a moan.

Jungkook’s head drops and he runs his lips along the side of his neck. He’s whispering into his perspiring skin, “I think you like it.”

Taehyung’s words are a breath, a hitched, tense breath, and he wants to close his eyes, but he simply cannot look away, the image of him between Jungkook’s arms. It does not look as wrongas he expects; he does not appear that cheap.“What?”

“I think you like it,” Jungkook murmurs close over the bump of his throat as he swallows nothing. “How rich I am, how I can hold that over you, how I can buy anyone, but choose you.”

Taehyung’s heart races. Shit, shit. He cannot say anything. Has nothing to say, because Taehyung hadn’t thought about why Jungkook is doing this and he hasn’t thought about why he is doing it, either. It’s not about money, Taehyung knows, not directly about it at least, though he does feel monetary prowess has shaped Jungkook into what Taehyung craves now. He’s so powerful and Taehyung is so powerless yetlook at Jungkook abandoning his girlfriend to stroke his cock in a bathroom. It’s not about money, but Taehyung cannot exactly tell him that.

“I could probably have him if I tried,” Jungkook hisses cruelly by a vein of his neck that stretches emphasized beneath skin with the pleasure that courses through him. His teeth bite into it, graze over it, and it is subtle, but also it is not and he’s teasing his tongue over it, but then his lips are detached.

Taehyung’s heart sinks all rapid and primal, because Jungkook can fuck faceless girls all he wants, Julia’s a brick in his wall, but he cannot touch other boys. He cannot be interested in other boys, and Taehyung’s growling, “Jungkook, don’t.”

He tries to spin a bit in his arms, only the upper part of his body, seal into him a glare that is real and palpable and not a reflection in the mirror, but as Jungkook straightens from teasing by his neck, he looks so much softer than he looks in the mirror. His lips are parted, wet, and glistening, eyes heavy and hooded, and glinting with undeniable lewdness.

His words are cruel, but his face is not; it’s soft. Taehyung’s own melts into a different expression, less set, less angry, more wondrous.

“Sh,” Jungkook whispers to him directly, breath fanning across his face and Taehyung’s eyes drop to the shape his lips make around the words. “I don’t want him,” he promises and something in Taehyung fucking snaps.

It snaps, it breaks and Taehyung, bold and stupid, leans, leans in desperation to find a craving his represses daily, what if feels like to kiss him. And he can feel his breath inside his mouth before he cannot feel it at all and something breaks harder.

Jungkook pulls away almost with a jolt of his neck. “Don’t,” he growls, but his eyes are still soft on him. His hand still moves across him and Taehyung can hardly breathe let alone think.

He swallows, “You said you wanted to make me feel good, right?” His brows arch, and he asks for it, fucking asks Jeon Jungkook tokiss him and he does not know what sort of an alternative universe he has ventured in. “Well, this will make me feel good.”

“No.” His chest rumbles with it and he snaps his hips with a force that settles him back into his previous position. Taehyung moans with it, still overload with sensation, and Jungkook speaks, he spills blatant sexuality into what they are doing, he speaks with an eroticism that drips, takes away the connection to feel it with primitive, simple sex, pleasure. “Am I not making you feel good, Tae?”  he uses that name again, and it sounds wrong, but it sounds good, like everything with Jungkook does, and then he’s humming by his neck. “Hm, aren’t you going to be a good boy and come for me?”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. Taehyung’s fucked. He is. Conversation and sex should be separate with Jungkook, because Taehyung is right. Sex is a tool. It’s a tool Jungkook knows how to use well, and something that Taehyung only does when he’s tipsy and horny.

Fingers depart from his hip and clutch into his jaw, and he forces the position of his head, makes sure Taehyung is looking at them through the mirror. “Look at yourself,” Taehyung does. He’s red, wet, eyes gone and hooded. He himself is sexual, his reflection alone. He wonders if Jungkook know how avidly his hips rub into his ass. “So pretty like this, aren’t you?” Taehyung’s crying out, moaning because pleasure sears through him as his hand speeds up, as his hips grind into the back of him, and because he calls him pretty boy, but he never tells him he is pretty. “Bet you’d be even prettier bent over.”

And Taehyung doubles a bit and he comes. Jungkook finishes him off, well, good, pumping his fist around him as he spurts into the sink, and Taehyung’s eyes fall shut and crease, but Jungkook’s stay opened and they watch him.

He does not know what possesses the final line out of him, he does not know what brings any of this over, and maybe it’s that Taehyung’s ass fits supple and hot so much better than Julia’s. There’s something feminine, and not in the sense of female,in the sense of something that is associated with femininity, gentle, teasing, wet and cold in the way his back arches so pliantly. Maybe it’s the way his face contorts with the pleasure of it, so frustratingly beautiful.

Jungkook lets go of him and he steps away.

There is something tangibly cold in the departure. Taehyung’s back misses the heat as he tries to gather himself, breathing in and out. Taehyung expects another outburst, but he doesn’t get it as he begs his heart to settle down.

An outburst is not what he gets, but he sees Jungkook’s hand, reaching for his back pocket, and he whirls around, not even caring his dick is out.

“Don’t you dare pull that fucking wallet out,” he seethes, teeth baring, and, honestly, he has no chance of taming his heart until Jungkook is out of sight.

Jungkook’s head cocks, and his hand continues the motion. “I wasn’t going to,” he says and instead fishes out a handkerchief that has his father’s initials ingrained in it. He hands it to Taehyung and watches as he accepts it with clear-cut hesitance and then wipes his dripping cock with it.

Jungkook juts his jaw to the bin afterwards and does not take his eyes away from the fabric until it disappears. Taehyung tugs himself in.

Taehyung’s tentative. He’s almost awkward as his eyes shy over the length of Jungkook’s body. “Do you want—"

“I’ll get Julia to take care of it.” Jungkook cuts off, and Taehyung’s eyes narrow. Oh, his face literally speaks, says, oh.

Taehyung huffs a breath. He rolls his eyes. He’s the definition of deflation and then he is the definition of annoyed and he starts walking.  “Where are you going?” Jungkook tries to take his arm, but he doesn’t let him, turns half of his body around to look.

“Bogum’s waiting for me.” He announces simply and then he leaves.

He leaves and Jungkook has to bite his lip and look away as the door closes, because that fucker’s name strangles something out of him.

He spins, looks at himself in the mirror, washes hands, throws some cold, awakening water in his face, hands running through his hair, squeezing thoughts out of his brain harshly. Since when is he that possessive of his toys, he thinks.

And then he also thinks maybe he should have fucked his mouth again so that if Bogum dares to kiss him he would taste Jungkook on his lips.

Chapter Text

Bogum gets on the subway at around 4 or 5 in the morning and he walks Taehyung home, though he lives nowhere close to him. After coming out of the bathroom, Taehyung lets himself go a bit, allows himself some actual alcohol, though he is most definitely a lightweight compared to what the bodies of the typical Richhood resident has grown accustomed to with the naturally demanded consumption.

At the point where they decide to leave, Taehyung is okay. He is still drunk – tipsy – but is nowhere at the intoxication level to require actual assistance. He’s used to having to sober up before he goes anywhere, because Jimin would never walk him home; it’s just not something Jimin does. He goes home with someone else that night. He often does on Fridays, and Taehyung never questions it.

Bogum is different.He’s not from around here, he does not care much for implications, and he walks Taehyung home. The trip sobers him up additionally, though he can still feel notions of intoxication discoloring his thoughts, making him giggle more than he would.

Bogum is distracting.Which is exactly what Taehyung needs, so he giggles at half the things Bogum says, lets his head rest on his shoulder when they sit together in the almost empty subway, and invites him in when they reach the back door that enters into the kitchen.

Taehyung never invites people into his house, mainly because he has no one to invite there, but also because the condition of it is borderline embarrassing. He does not feel the tinge of humiliation his family home sometimes makes tug at him, and he doesn’t know if it is the fact alcohol still laces through his judgment or the fact that Bogum puts him at ease.

Taehyung presses his forefinger to his lips and shushes Bogum through a chuckle that makes his eyes crease, then he lets him in. He does a quick check as Ji-woo sometimes falls asleep on the couch because the TV calms her down, but it’s empty, coast clear, and he returns to where he left his guest in the kitchen.

“Clear,” he announces, though he makes sure he is still quiet, walls are thin in this house. “You want coffee? It’s not as good as at Rouge, but I have some.”

“Won’t turn it down,” Bogum smiles. He leans elbows on the kitchen counter on the other side of where Taehyung stands. “So, who are we quiet for?”

Taehyung heats up water using his very functional stove, thank you very much. “My older sister and my little brother, right now. Usually my father lives with us as well. He’ll be back in a couple of weeks probably.”

Bogum nods, and Taehyung can feel the desire to pry radiate off of him, but he doesn’t, and for that, he’s thankful. He feels certainother people would not be as respectful of his boundaries, but he forces his thoughts to stir away from anything in the lines of that. He thinks he succeeds, but when he hands Bogum a mug, he reaches a hand and brushes a finger on his neck.

Taehyung almost flinches back from it, but Bogum’s touch disappears as soon as it signifies a certain spot. “So,” and he cocks his head and the smile he pops is a little different,slightly ingenuine, “he just likes to rough you up, huh?”

Taehyung’s brows twist, forehead creasing. “What?”

Bogum straightens up, fishes a phone out of his pocket and reaches a hand again, pushing at Taehyung’s jaw with two fingers to make him twist his head, and then snaps a picture of his neck. He rests elbows on the counter again and flips the phone. Taehyung’s eyes widen as they see his own skin, angry and reddened in a shape that is distinguishably circular. It’s a small mark, incomplete, and Taehyung’s hand instinctively flies, palm slapping over it.

“It’s—” Taehyung stutters, but he has to lie, because just with what brain did Jungkook think to mark him, “that’s not from him.”

He supposes he speaks with certain panic lacing his voice, because Bogum straightens again, shakes his head, he tries to calm him. “Taehyung, it’s okay—”

“Nah,” he shakes his own head in a very different manner. “No, it’s not. God, if he even heard you implying—”

Bogum’s brows draw together. “Oh, it’s really not him?”

“Do you want to get some bones broken?” Taehyung triesto be convincing and judges by Bogum’s expression that he is managing a good job. The guy shakes his head.

“No, Taehyung, I—”

“Then another lesson for the day,” Taehyung interjects quite passionately, though he keeps his voice to a rough whisper. “Don’t imply that Jeon Jungkook would touch me in that way. You’ll get yourself deformed.”

Bogum nods. “Okay,” he nods again, exhales. “Okay, I won’t – won’t mention it again.” And Taehyung nods, too, and he almost says thank you because Bogum shouldn’t mention it again, for his own sake and Taehyung, because Jungkook might not hit him, but if any of this gets out, he certainly won’t touch him again.

“Julia doeslook pretty scary,” Bogum says, and it’s a joke, an attempt to ease a tension that he unintentionally forces into the conversation. “I mean, her nails.”

“Julia,” Taehyung says as he sips on his own coffee and leans his back by the stove now, comparatively far away from Bogum, admittedly bothered by the fact he walks around with marks on his body he is unawareof, and just what was Jungkook thinking.“Julia,” Taehyung says, “is the least of your worries. You haven’t seen Jungkook fight.”

“He fights?” Bogum lifts brows. His eyes fall over the space that Taehyung keeps between them even from across the other side of the counter. When Taehyung nods, he breathes through his nose and glances down at his the black, cooling liquid in the chipped mug that Taehyung gives him. “Of course, he fights.” He shakes some hair from his eyes and looks up. “He’s good?”

“He’s amazing,” Taehyung says before he really thinks. He’s not bothered by the fact of it, he knows that Jungkook is amazing. He dislikes the enthusiasm of his voice. His own eyes fly to his coffee, and he fingers nervously at the edge of it. “I mean, I mean, he’s good, he’s a Jeon.” He likes to bring things down to that, to simplify them to the facts. Jungkook’s a Jeon and that pretty well defines him, and Taehyung is a Kim and that’s almost ninety per cent of his identity.

“You’ve seen him?” Bogum asks, and the answer is quite obvious, so Taehyung does not avoid it.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Can I?”

Taehyung’s eyes lift, bore into Bogum. “What?”

“I want to see him fight,” Bogum says, and he straightens fully now, walks over the counter and not into Taehyung’s space, but the kitchen is small, and he is ridiculously close. “Kind of want to see if he’s really that scary, if the suggestion of him touching you gets you that jumpy.”

Taehyung turns to his side, leaves his mug on the countertop next to him just to give himself a reason to look away for a bit. “Bogum—”

“Because honestly he must get hit pretty badly over the head if he thinks touching you is something bad.” And he says it with emphasis that makes Taehyung blink towards him again, and maybe he is tipsier than he thought he was. Bogum is close now, and he has a quality to his face that is unfamiliarly genuine, although his words are a clear-cut line. Taehyung does not know how to judge his own feelings for it.

Bogum has a nice face, nice body. Bogum is certainly charismatic. He does not make his heart beat, does not make his blood rush and skin tingle and flush red. He does not turn him on at the perverse drop of virtually nothing. And maybe that is good, and Taehyung still doesn’t know if he is gay, but he does not think he minds the way Bogum is with him.

“Bogum,” Taehyung says, and he chuckles again like he has done so many times tonight. He plays if off as a joke, a flirtatious joke, but a joke nevertheless. Bogum flirts a lot, he just does, but he’s closer now, and there is something different to his voice, drawn out and raspy, as it drops lower.

“I’m serious,” Bogum insists and he comes closer still and now he is in Taehyung’s space. “It’d be a fucking honor to touch you.”

It’s flattering. It’s so unlike anything that anyone ever says to Taehyung that it startles him into a silence that maybe Bogum interprets as an invitation. It’s not that exactly. It’s dumbfounded and it’s still a little tipsy, so he’s slow. It is in fact so flattering, that Taehyung cannot help but feel it slip into something disingenuous, some adulation.

It causes a pause in his own motions, own words, and he feels Bogum’s hand at the back of his head, fingers slipping gently around his neck, and he studies him with his eyes very carefully, darts gaze all across Taehyung’s blank face and then he leans, and he kisses him, simple as that.

It’s nice. It’s okay. It’s fine. Taehyung breathes through his nose and he closes his eyes and after a moment, he allows himself to gingerly kiss him back. His lips are soft, and he smells well, sweet. He is sweet. Bogum is a sweet boy, who walked him home, and who really leaned so slow, Taehyung had all the time in the world to pull away, but he didn’t.

But then again, Bogum is a boy. He’s tall, shapely, and he’s not Jungkook and he’s kissing him in his kitchen. Not that Taehyung would want Jungkook to kiss him in his kitchen. Honestly, the last place he would even want to see Jungkook is his kitchen, but Taehyung wants to kiss him, despite the fact he is a man, and maybe Taehyung had the very, extremely dumb desire for Jungkook to be the first boy he kisses, though he would probably not grant him that, ever.

It is the main thing that goes through his head as Bogum kisses him in his kitchen, and he cannot focus on the sensation of it, cannot lose the rationality from the fact that he is a boy and then a though hits him, a thought that makes his blood run cold, because what if Ji-woo wakes up, what if Woojin does?

Taehyung presses a palm into Bogum’s chest and pushes him back lightly, and he detaches his lips from him easily, though he does expel a gentle sigh just before his mouth stretches to the side in an exaggerated smile and he backs away, eyes parting and focusing on Taehyung’s face once again, replacing his hand on his shoulder instead of cupping his neck.

“I—” Taehyung begins, shuts his eyes briefly again, before he breathes and opens them. He’s awkward, and he knows it, but he feels slightly awkward. “I don’t—I’m not. I don’t kiss guys, Bogum. I mean, I haven’t. I’ve never.”

“Oh,” Bogum says, and his hand fidgets where it is on his shoulder. He moves it lower. “Oh. Did you – you seemed to… Did you hate it?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “No, no. I didn’t hate it.” He says and he is honest. He doesn’t know how he feels about the kiss, but he certainly does not hate it.

“Did you,” he pauses, he hesitates, but he smiles, “perhaps,” and his hand sinks lower on Taehyung’s shoulder, “like it?”

“I—” and Taehyung gapes, and he feels a bit stupid, but he confesses, “I don’t know, Bogum.”

“Well,” he says as he pulls away and it becomes a bit colder. “Maybe we can do it again sometime when you’re completely sober and you can decide.”

Bogum is pouring the rest of his coffee, which is less than a sip, in the sink and he is starting some water over it. Taehyung can tell by the angling of his body and its language as a whole that he is planning on leaving. Taehyung stands where Bogum leaves him, not moving, not even politely telling him he’d take care of his mug like he supposes he should. Instead he’s saying, “Okay,” and he’s swallowing. “Maybe we can.”

He shoots him a smile and it’s all that Taehyung thinks Bogum is, charming and boyish and so genuine that is just has to be dubious in Taehyung’s head, which is used to people with intentions worth hiding, with masks worth putting on.

“Okay,” Bogum says and he puts the mug with some dishes that haven’t been washed yet because Taehyung hasn’t been home. “Okay, Taehyung. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

They have a shift tomorrow, so Taehyung nods. He has to. “Yes,” he replies. “You’ll see me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Bogum repeats and he comes close again, and his face is close again and his lips are on Taehyung’s cheek, so quick and short and soft and they disappear. “Go to bed, Taehyung. You look tired.”

Bogum leaves after that and Taehyung, who is tired, washes the dishes because he cannot have Ji-woo waking up to unwashed dishes. And as he scrubs at some quite suspicious stains, he contemplates just what the fuck is wrong with him?

The sound of expensive cutlery clattering together, an overpriced fork uncomfortably occasionally brushing into a porcelain dish, is loud and obnoxious in Jungkook’s ears in a way that is disturbingly familiar, but he prefers it to the conversation he knows is impending.

His mother always insists on speaking during those family dinners, which he does not understand. He doesn’t understand why they have to do this at all. From all the unnecessary shit his family puts him through, this is the one he comprehends least. It’s a pretense of having a family time a lot more than it is a family dinner, done much more for the sake of being able to claim they are capable of sitting at a table together, just the four of them, of having a tradition, albeit manufactured. It’s not tense necessarily, though putting Clo and their father at the same table is bound to build some sort of tension, but it has a peculiarly palpable ambiance that he is perfectly comfortable with avoiding.

Jungkook is extremely set on chewing slowly. He wants to give himself something to do, his mouth occupied until the very end of this, so he is not expected to give an opinion on whatever his mother deems interesting to discuss, or more accurately narrate about, that night. He chews a lot, and he drinks his wine even slower, and he has the trim of the crystal glass to his mouth when his mother smiles charmingly and ever so politely says, her own glass making a distinct sound when she places it gingerly on the table, she says “So, I hear one of the Kim’s gay now.”

It is bad that Jungkook has his own glass tipped to his lips at precisely that moment because the liquid that sloshes down his throat almost traps and chokes him. He swallows, sets his glass down. He is aware, though his mind is alarmingly ticking, his demeanor does not change one bit, so he wants to know why Clo is suddenly so incessantly watching him, eyes searing into the side of his head as she stares. She studies his profile with a varied intensity as she has her own glass to her lips. She doesn’t eat, never eats during these, an interpretative form of a strike against these dinners at the start of them and just a bodily dysmorphic habit of her polluted brain after a while.

“That’s priceless, isn’t it?” Their mother’s lips stretch so wide. Her teeth flash impossibly white between her nuanced lipstick. “A Kim? Gay. It’s been a while since we’ve had someone gay.” Jungkook wants to snort at how she’s excited over it. Her plate is almost full much alike her daughter’s.

Their father on the other hand is inhaling food. “How?” He rasps, voice rough and escaping through munching teeth, tearing mercilessly into red meat. “How’d you hear?” Jungkook likes looking at his father in situations such as these, as simple as eating, because it reminds him he has nothinginherently gallant about him, does not have a thread of gentlemanliness, a natural bone of it, though he’s always poised in front of company, always so infuriatingly presentablejust as he likes his children to be.

Clo plays with her fork even if she doesn’t use it for its proper purpose. She pokes it in the pillow of her fingertip to discover with a pout it is much too dull to hurt her. She blinks at her brother who keeps his gaze on the table, set and firm and as dull as her fork. “He isn’t hiding it very well as far as I know.” She says bored and lazy and Jungkook’s eyes dart to her for the merest moment, becausewhy is she talking about this now? She leans a single protruding elbow onto the table and lets the fork dangle from her fingers. “He kissed a boy in public.” Clo watches him as she speaks, all she sees is him breath, though she does catch his digits tighten slightly into their hold of his glass.  “The new waiter.” She details unnecessarily and his tongue pokes into his cheek, quick once into the one before it shifts into the other. “Park Boyeoun? Boseok?”

“Bogum.” Jungkook interjects instinctively. His eyes root to his sister now and he watches her smile all fake and cruel and nod with feigned enthusiasm.

“Yes, that’s the one,” she announces, gaze fixed on his, before he takes it away. He knows she sees nothing on him, he betrays nothing. He has learned to remain neutral in any and all contexts his family can put him in, years of experience and hard work, but he’s mastered it now. But his mind is buzzing, because what the fuck is Taehyung doing, telling him he doesn’t go around looking for a beating and then kissing boys in public? And since when do Bogum and him fuckingkiss? Lips on lips, hands on waists, eyes closed shut, the image surges unbidden in Jungkook’s surprisingly vivid imagination and formulates with such detail that Jungkook has to force a bit of meat in his mouth to have something to chew on, something to destroy right at that moment. He clearly remembers Taehyung saying he doesn’t want fucking Bogum, minutes before he came so easily from Jungkook’s touch.

And he’s supposed to be into girls. Into girls and into Jungkook, and Jungkook tries to chase that thought away before he remembers he enjoys toying with the attention, so, yes, he is supposed to be into Jungkook, and there’s nothing inherently bad about Jungkook wanting his interest reserved for him. It’s a curious game to play, with a boy, how far he can push, how much Taehyung would bend. But Park Bogum fucking ruins all the fun, and Jungkook wants him out of the picture. He came up with the game. He gets to set the rules.

All he’ll do, anyway, is get the both of them beat up. People like Jungkook, they hit hard. They’ll ruin Taehyung’s face, break his spirit, before Jungkook gets to.

Jungkook’s father splutters food out of his mouth when he speaks, “And he kisses him in public.” He says it with offended incredulity, as if it is some pointed attack at his person. He aids his gulp with a thick swallow of whisky, his fourth glass for the night. He sighs with it, loud and obnoxious and with a disgruntled, moist mutter underneath his colorful breath, “Disgusting. Brings their fucking gayness onto my dinner table while I’m trying to eat.” Jungkook’s fingers twitches round his glass. It’s not Taehyung’s gayness bringing anything to his table, but his wife’s incessant gossiping and all of Richhood’s vendetta against the Kim’s. “Jungkook,” his father addresses gruffly, wiping at his mouth, “maybe you should teach the boy some decency.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, “maybe I should.” And he wonders how his father would feel about the behavioristic reinforcement practice of making him suck his cock again for punishment, because to Jungkook it seems like a rather fine technique.

The third time Bogum kisses Taehyung he has to think about Jungkook because Jungkook is there. He doesn’t dare kiss him in public again, not after Taehyung pushes him away and reasonably panics and he has to wonder in what sort of a perfect utopian world Bogum lived prior to coming to Richhood to deign to attempt such things in front of actual people, but he doesn’t care all that much, because he should get out of that habit quick.

He doesn’t know how he feels about the habit of him kissing him altogether. It’s not much of a habit, considering it has only happened three times, but it feels like more. It starts to feel like a thing, and he does not particularly mind the kissing. It does not feel wrong or anything like he half expects it to every time he senses it approaches. It doesn’t feel much like anything. It’s a kiss from warm, soft lips, and it’s nice to have someone who would want that from him.

They’re in the hallway that third time, coming out of the storage room after inventory of dry ingredients.

“Are you still mad?” Bogum questions with an innocence to his voice that makes Taehyung slightly guilty.

“I’m not mad, hyung,” He says, and he pauses in the hallway. If they’re going to have this conversation it’s going to have to be there,though he does not feel particularly interested in talking it through. He’d much rather be left to his work and just not be kissed in compromising situations. “I just wish you’d get how this works.”

“You overthink, Taehyung,” Bogum tries. “No one cares.”

“No,” he cuts him off, firm. “No one should care. But they do. And even if they don’t, I do, and you should care about that.”

Taehyung understands that Bogum doesn’t understand. You have to live in Richhood to truly get Richhood, to capture the essence of what gossip does to you, of how easily it can ruin you, of how there are enough rumors surrounding the name Kim, all of them somehow negative. He’s a leech, pretty boy, meddlesome leech, poor and envious, he’s greedy. His brother was a drug dealer, his sister is a slut, and their father is the worst. He does not want another label to his family. He doesn’t want to be the gay one.

“Okay,” Bogum says. He’s okay with everything, Bogum is. He steps towards him. “Okay, we can talk about this.” He also likes to talk about things, talk them through, and it is not a practice Taehyung is familiar with. It sits uncomfortable with him, that someone would expect him to disclose what goes on in his head, expose his thoughts like that. It would make him vulnerable. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Taehyung shrugs, much more out of desire for the topic to be concluded than the truth of it being fine.

He has his arms crossed before his chest as he stands in the hallway quite rigid. They’re working, and his current on shift manager is not all that pleased with him because he had to get threatened by a Jeon because of him and his panties are probably still trembling from the animosity of it, so he would much rather go back to his duties than have this conversation right now.

The Jeon in question is inthe café, just a couple of doors separating them now, and Taehyung might be imaging it, but he feels he traced his motion with his eyes when Taehyung disappeared into the hallway with Park Bogum and a folder. He has not said a word to Jungkook or perpetuated eye contact for more than a second since he was with him in the bathroom in the Ozone, the amount of interaction being terribly disproportionate to the amount of time Jungkook occupies Taehyung’s mind, both in terms of simpler things, innocent things, just thoughts, and then other images, ones that make him blush, especially since Jungkook had suggested he’d look prettier bent over, and he just cannot get the idea of that out of his hormonal, delirious mind. Ironically, he deems the latter safer. They are easier to explain, the fact he very much enjoyed his hand on him, physically, than the fact he wonders what detergent Jungkook uses that shapes his scent like this, when he’ll fight again and if he’s ready, what his relationship with his sister truly is.

Bogum places gentle fingers on his folded forearm, traces them gently. “Can I kiss you?” he says, “I’ll always ask, I promise. Even in private.”

Taehyung’s shoulders lift and deflate with the breath he takes, so heavy. His eyes dart to the door. He has a bad feeling about it, but he’s sighing. “No one’s watching,” Bogum’s saying, and he’s nodding.

“Okay,” he’s the one saying okay now, though the word is growing to irritate him, slightly.

Bogum swallows, nods. He lifts a hand and holds him by the cheek, thumb on the underside of his jaw, and he leans and kisses him, despite Taehyung’s body remaining rigid with the discomfort of doing this with that door to the world so close and glaring at him. Bogum closes his eyes, tilts his head a little bit so his nose brushes Taehyung and he just kisses him, lips moving slow and meek against his, wandering and questioning, as if Taehyung is a china doll, he might break with incessance, with force, and it’s another first for him, to be treated like this.

It’s a bit of a lie, he feels. It’s a promise that can’t be met, that he would get to be handled so gently, so carefully. It’s a lie he doesn’t need, but one he lets Bogum feed him, and maybe himself, because Taehyung thinks Bogum is just a bit too nice and gullible to realise things like this have no place in Richhood, and Taehyung feels a bit good to realise he is not the most naïve one around. It’s closeted and filtered, the way he kisses him, the way he kisses back. It’s slow. It’s conscious and self-conscious.

He likes that Bogum kisses him like this. He wouldn’t have it any other way with him, but he thinks with his repetitive desire for Jungkook to kiss him as well, he would hate if the other kisses like this. He imagines something much more raw, more powerful, something naturalistic and angry. Jungkook’s touch always radiates with certain honest anger, some at Taehyung, some at himself. It’s an anger that translates to him so palpably he forgets if he just absorbs it from Jungkook or it originates from himself as well.

He hates he thinks about Jungkook when Bogum kisses him, but he feels it might go away with time. He’s just such a nagging presence in his life currently, but he can’t imagine a Jeon in the life of a Kim would last, and he ignores the disappointment that tugs at him as the thought invades. He’s naïve, but he’s not that naïve, to think Jungkook won’t soon get bored and tired of this game, move on to something better, when Julia finds another target.

Taehyung feels ridiculously guilty it’s his ceaseless thoughts that summon him when the door opens and Taehyung flies back from Bogum as if burned. It’s like some fucking jokethat Jungkook would walk in on this, though retrospectively he is not all that surprised he would appear, considering they haven’t talked since last time Jungkook addressed his relations with Bogum, making it quite clear he was dissatisfied with them, and now he had watched them disappear together.

Taehyung hears Bogum sigh, sees the roll of his eyes as he removes his body from his frantically and turns with eyes slightly widened to his side. He doesn’t much care Bogum is potentially annoyed with him for pulling away so brusquely, because his heart is too angry in his chest now for such pointless considerations and he stares at Jungkook pause at the door, fingers lingering where they hold the handle.

Jungkook’s eyes harden when they land on Taehyung. He does not spare Bogum a glance, does not even dart his gaze towards him, they seal powerfully onto Taehyung and he feels as if he has committed some major transgression when he knows realistically, he has done nothing wrong.

He shuts the door. He shuts it slow and calm and he speaks in the same manner when he talks in a moment, though his voice holds another quality, something cold and achingly chilling. “I don’t think they pay you for that,” he says, and Taehyung swallows, breathes. He does not like the direction his words take, payment accompanied with the concept of kissing.

“The fuck does it matter to you what they pay us for?” Bogum asks unfiltered and offended, and it draws Jungkook’s eyes to him now. Slow and languorous, the balls of his pupils slide over to him and he cocks his head at him, tips his upper lip in an arch of distaste.

“Bogum,” Taehyung warns, “don’t.”

Jungkook is a dictionary definition of condescending when he tilts a single eyebrow. “I’m currently paying customer service for my girlfriend to wait twenty minutes for a soda while you homos fuck around.” His lip twitches when he witnesses the damage of his vulgarity – Bogum’s as if punched and Taehyung really feels jealousy sneak up on him that he has thus far lived in a context where something as derogatory is surprising. At the same time, he appreciates the fact words don’t affect himthe least bit. It’s Jungkook, he says what he says for the impact of it. “It matters.”

“I—” Bogum attempts.

“You—“ Jungkook interrupts, crossing his arms; he stands with haunting confidence, superiority transpiring into the ambiance of his presence just from the very way he stands, “should probably go get her a soda. She gets antsy when she waits, you’ll find if you work here long enough, though it doesseem doubtful.”

He laces a threat through his words so easily and naturally and Bogum is looking at Taehyung now, in question. He’s taught silence at this point, learned scarcity of words is only his friend, never an enemy. There’s not really a point in being defensive with Jungkook, it will just be more harm done, so Taehyung nods at Bogum, juts his chin indicatively towards the door. “Go,” he says. “I’ll finish up inventory.”

He watches his evident reluctance as he leaves, his pointed attempt to walk as far around Jungkook as possible when he passes by him and through the door. The door shuts firmly, and words are in the air momentarily with it.

“I heard about this but part of me still thought you weren’tstupid enough to actually do it,” Jungkook’s voice is dead and rough.

Taehyung gapes a bit at this, lips parting and eyes widening. “You heard—”

That’s bad, that’s so fucking bad that he would hear, though news travels faster to Jungkook than it would to his sister and maybe she won’t know at all. It’s not all hope lost.

Jungkook takes a step, a single step, he interjects the question that attempts to fall through Taehyung’s lips, and this hallway is really all too narrow. His voice feels louder, though it still reserves its scathing neutrality, but it has something lined underneath it. Taehyung has learned to distinguish it by now. “Is he your boyfriend now? I thought you weren’t fucking gay.”

“I’m not,” Taehyung says, “He isn’t my boyfriend. It’s just—”

Jungkook’s eyes are unwavering, a test on his, so demanding, and he doesn’t know what to say, because no matter how much Bogum enjoys talking things through, he doesn’t, and he has no idea what they are doing. It’s kissing for now, just kissing, but he doesn’t know how to explain that because it is not sex, but it is not a relationship, it’s not love, and basically it is nothing.

“Just what?” Jungkook bites when Taehyung hesitates into a blank stutter. He’s still silent, and Jungkook presses, “I thought you didn’t wanthim.” He says it in a way that only spells out the fact of it and erases completely the context of the conversation in which he’d said that particular sentence.

Taehyung looks away, he glances at the side, at nothing. “It’s different,” he says and virtually it’s meaningless because he cannot bring himself to finish the sentence for what it’s truly worth, for the fact that he means to tell him that he does not want Bogum like he wants him, doesn’t want him blindly and irresponsibly in the bathroom of a club, not like this. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to spend time with him, that he doesn’t want to try.

Jungkook scoffs. He shakes his head and a bit of a previous distaste that he seeped in for the sake of informing Bogum of it very much pointedly now finds its way into his expression, lip arching, nostrils broadening.  “All you Kims do is go around looking for attention,” he says in tone with how he shakes his head, “for some good fucking bone breaking.”

Taehyung wants to scoff at him as well. Instead he just grips at his elbows, mirrors the distaste. “Kim again?” He nods at air, nods to himself. “I’m Kim again.”

He likes to bring things down to the fact that he is a Kim and Jungkook is a Jeon, but he absolutely abhorsit when Jungkook does it. It means something else entirely.

“You’re always Kim,” Jungkook’s eyes are hard. Voice is hard. He no longer makes use of the pretense of neutrality, so he allows a tame version of disgust to color his words in tow with his features. “Bet you call up your brother once in a while, ask for fucking tips on how to be a fucking Kim.”

Taehyung’s teeth grind together. “My brother,” he says with much necessary emphasis, because he refuses to let the conversation stir in the direction of this, has absolutely no desire to have his brother at the mouth of the walking, breathing, flesh and bone representation of what he suspects drove him away, “has nothing to fucking do with you.”

Jungkook’s head whips, his eyes widening slightly. “Are you fucking serious?” he asks, and he asks with a pointed passion that makes Taehyung wonder if he should be as genuinely serious as he is. Still, he doesn’t hesitate when he nods his head, mouths the word yeah and Jungkook’s brows draw together and he dares to be confused. “You are?” His brows lifting up now as it registers with him that Taehyung has absolutely no idea how his brother would connect to him. He pauses. He shifts on his feet, adjusts his body towards him in a way that almost appears threatening, although Taehyung doesn’t think Jungkook scares him anymore, not physically at least. “Your brother,” he pronounces with fervid distaste,“gotmy sister into drugs and she’s been a fucking vegetable since.”

Taehyung’s lips part and seal dumbly, resembling that of a fish minutely, before he manages actual sounds, and when he does they are accompanied with narrowed eyes and disbelief at the insinuation, “He… didn’t.” He is well aware his brother sold drugs, sold them to people who wanted them, who asked for them, readily. He certainly wasn’t one to coax anyone into buying, or trying, and Jungkook simply must be mistaken,“Namjoon wouldn’t get –“

Jungkook interrupts with violent eyes and a ticking jaw. Jungkook interrupts with a layered emotion that Taehyung simply does not expect. “Why don’t you fucking call him and ask him?”

And Taehyung answers with that very same emotion, a specific, visceral sensitivity that is reserved for a hurt only his family can cause, only people he trusts. He hates how he allows it into his voice, but the fact he finds in Jungkook, who suggests his brother might be cause of it, draws it from him, bares it all. “I don’t even talk to him, okay?” He says and his voice raises with it, arches with the rawness of his throat. “I haven’t spoken to him since he left.”

Jungkook starts to say something, but his mouth closes for a moment and his eyes bind onto Taehyung’s expression, slide across with unwarranted scrutiny that chills Taehyung but not as much as the sudden nuance his voice takes, a breathy curious softness, “You haven’t?”

Taehyung swallows around the lump that attempts to build in his throat and meets Jungkook’s eyes, though he feels strangely naked as he fixes his gaze into his. “I don’t even know where he fucking went,” he confesses, and he hears the dying lump in his own words.

As Jungkook’s stare relaxes from its animosity, inadvertently so does Taehyungs. The atmosphere of their conversations softens and with the poise of a threat entirely departing from Jungkook’s body his proximity seems daunting in an entirely different way. There’s nothing sexual behind it, but now there’s nothing violent behind it as well, no confrontation, and they are just soft and close and it’s new. “Why?” Jungkook asks, and it’s not gentle,per se, but it borders on it.

Taehyung shakes his head. Looking at Jungkook’s face like that, so drastically human, draws some honesty from him he doesn’t like all that much. He never really talks about Namjoon. With Ji-woo it’s a subject taboo and she is the only person in the world he trusts enough to discuss him with. “I don’t…  I don’t know. Apparently, I don’t know him as well as I think I do.” There’s something defeated in the confession. Namjoon is a fresh wound. He thinks he might always be one.

Jungkook looks at Taehyung and then he looks away. He sighs. A hand goes through his hair, pulling at the strands, before it drops and his eyes are back on Taehyung and somehow, he feels closer, though he doesn’t move a step, and Taehyung figures it must be something about the way he watches him. “Your brother did some stupid shit, Taehyung,” he tells him in a voice Taehyung hasn’t heard him use before. “Got mixed up with really shitty people.”

The question is immediate from Taehyung’s lips. “Like who?” he asks. He knows so frustratingly little about this. Namjoon did not want neither he nor Ji-woo privy to this world and he supposes he understands because he never knows Woojin to know what he does for money, either. It still overwhelms with his thirst for a goddamn reason,for more of an explanation.

“Like Kai,” Jungkook says and Taehyung’s heart drops in his chest. “Like my sister and me.” Jungkook’s pausing and he’s allowing the silence for long enough for the other to speak, but as soon as Taehyung opens his mouth, he realizes he can’t answer his questions, so he won’t allow him to ask them.  He interrupts with a subconscious step forward, keeps his eyes firm on his face. “Just don’t repeat his mistakes. Smart people learn from other people’s mistakes, don’t they?”

It generalizes the conversation, stirs it away from his brother, because Jungkook doesn’t know enoughto share, and just rubbing salts in wounds is pointless. Taehyung is thankful Jungkook closes the door on the topic, but he doesn’t want to leave just yet, not with the way Jungkook draws closer, with the way he speaks to him with no intention to hurt or to take. He just speaks, voice ringing pleasant, though a bit lower than what he thinks he has heard from his casual conversations with his friends or Julia.

Taehyung swallows something else as he studies his face. He tongues at his lower lip, breathes. He’s cautious. His voice escapes with a subtle breathy quality. “So, I should stay away from you?”

Jungkook’s eyes drop to the pink tongue that so invitingly wets lips before they lift to Taehyung’s tentative gaze, “Probably,” he says. He should probably stay away from him as well. The bet is over, and this is nothing. He certainly should not be having a heart to heart about his brother with him.

Taehyung nods, his eyes darting across every single feature of his face. “If I do,” he begins with his gaze on his lips, “if I stay away from you,” and his eyes lift to his own, dig into his, “will you stay away from me, too?”

Jungkook blinks at him and he’s never before contemplated the fact that they are actively not staying away from each other, can’t really trace back why they interact so much, when the last time is he saw Taehyung somewhere and did not somehow approach him, or had the other approach him. The consistency of their interactions tugs at him now, and he wants to say fucking yes, he will, and it will be easy, won’t even be a task, just a natural progression of events, but the image of Taehyung kissing Bogum tugs at him worse. It’s one thing hearing about it, another thing seeing it, and yes is not what Jungkook says.

“Don’t know if I can promise you that,” he confesses and Taehyung’s chest fills with a breath that he doesn’t witness him take, because he doesn’t know if he can stay away, but right at that moment he feels the need to walk away. “Still not bored of you,” Jungkook adds for the sake of adding. He says it behind his back, does not see Taehyung’s face change with it. Then he leaves the hallway entirely and goes back to his girlfriend and he kisses her as he sits down, and she doesn’t ask him what took him so long.

Jungkook ties the hand wraps around his palms and wrists, careful, but quick in a motion that has become heavily automatic with the habit of it. Yoongi has left the dressing room to do some final negotiation with his opponent and it leaves Jungkook alone with his sister, who has her back pressed into the wall opposite him and her eyes rooted to her nails as if she has some genuine interest for their appearance. She hasn’t spoken to Seokjin for more than a week, Jungkook thinks, and it’s bothering her visibly in a way he’s witnessed few things affect her prior.

He tightens the wrap on one hand with a final conclusive pull, but he focuses his gaze on it as if it requires his conscious attention. “Clo,” he addresses and receives the acknowledgement of a single hum, “do you still talk to Kim?”

Her eyes shift to him, but he refuses to reciprocate. “I thought you didn’t want me to talk to him”

He looks at her from underneath focused eyebrows as she gives him a door for confidence. “Precisely,” he says.

She returns to her nails. “Not in a while, no.”

Jungkook waits. Then, he asks, “Do you know where he went?”

Her eyes dart to him, sharp like razors. She hesitates and the reluctance lingers in the air between them, but she confesses, “Yes.”

Jungkook doesn’t skip a beat. “Where?”

“What is this?” Clo’s eyes narrow with avid suspicion.

Jungkook allows his to meet her with their overbearing neutrality to punctuate the truth of his words when he answers, “Curiosity.”

Clo blinks. She studies his expression carefully for the semblance of something, but he remains reticent and she has nothing to call him out for. “Abroad,” she answers.

“That’s vague,” Jungkook accuses.

“You’re vague,” Clo shoots back, quick and firm, no underlying hesitation this time. “When you figure out why you want to ask, Jungkook, ask me again, and I might tell you,” she says and as if on cue Yoongi returns, curiously satisfied and it effectively concludes the conversation.

Taehyung takes Bogum to the Ring because he cannot think of a proper enough reason to feed him with of why he shouldn’t. He feels exaggeratedly nervous. It’s the second time he purposefully meets with Bogum outside of work, the first time post their newly developed kissing habit and it scares him the other might interpret it like a date, which would be downright weird.

Taehyung has in the entirety of his life never been on a date. Dates cost money, and dates build expectations and he has never been good with either when it comes to people outside of the narrow circle of his family and Jimin and parts of the expectations that feature his friendship with Jimin is that there are no expectations between them.

The potential label of a date worries him, yes. The fact that it takes place in Jungkook’s most violent niche magnifies that worry to an extent that makes his leg bounce incessantly. Baekhyun and Jimin join them because Taehyung crafts a reason of why their presence will be helpful, translates it to Jimin as a transportation need and stirs far away from mentioning that he wants to keep this as un-date-like as possible. He certainly does not say anything about kissing in relation to Bogum.

Jimin likes the Ring, he enjoys the bloodshed, watching people that get off on making him miserable or making use of him tear each other apart, and he is easy to convince. Baekhyun is easier.

The atmosphere at the Ring is similar to what it was last time, but it is a few decibels calmer. No championship this time, just fight night. Several fights are set to take place, Taehyung comes to learn, all personally arranged by the fighters for reasons that remain unbeknownst to him, but he suspects they have do with either money or some dick-measuring pride gags.

He knows Jungkook is in on it tonight, because when a champion fights it’s fast news. When the champion is one of the notorious Taunting Twins, it’s even faster.

Jimin talks excitedly to Taehyung about some older woman who bought him a watch that he thinks he can pawn for the worth of his rent for at least two months, describes explicitly with a terrifying grin what he did exactly to deserve the watch and Taehyung laughs at some quite inappropriate and flattering comparisons he makes between his tongue and a laundry machine.

Talking gets harder and proceeds to become virtually impossible as the night progresses and the actual fighting starts. Taehyung only recognizes one person in the first couple, but he knows both opponents from the second.

Bogum’s shoulder brushes into his as they stand. They’re not as close to the ring as they were last time, but still closer than he would prefer, close enough that his face would be recognizable to someone who scans the audience, upon Jimin’s insisting and convincing ways. He feels fingers hesitate by the small of his back before they gingerly press into the line of his spine and then he has breath by his cheek, warm and almost unnoticed with the amount of heat that swallows the space. “Who gets off on this shit?”

Taehyung tilts his head to bring his lips closer to Bogum’s ear. “Jimin,” he says with a playful grin as his eyes slide indicatively to his friend who is currently brimming with enthusiasm, knocking his fist against his spread palm in cheerful nagging, as he watches a guy he particularly dislikes -- that Taehyung cannot fully recognize with the way his face swells and bleeds -- get the shit beat out of him. “And everyone else here.”

Bogum’s brows lift. “Do you?”

Taehyung bristles at the suggestion. “No, hyung. Worry not.” He pokes a finger into his side, once, twice, and Bogum flinches away from it, pats an arm over it.

“Though I suppose you wouldn’t mind watching that pounding get done to our dearest Jungkook, eh?” Bogum laughs,and he knocks their elbows together with the same slightly brutal playfulness that Taehyung had previously addressed Jimin’s out of character thirst for blood. He forces the smile back onto his face, pulls at all his features tightly, as soon as it dares to drop against his conscious volition.

“It won’t,” Taehyung says, and he hopes the octave of his voice translates to Bogum in a disappointment that Jungkook is simply too good to get the living shit beat out of him, pity, instead of the much more genuine fear that he might not be.

Taehyung tries to imagine Jungkook bloodied and bruised like that, struggling to get on his knees like the guy on the ring currently is, and something terrifying swells in his stomach, raises through his chest and directs to his throat. He swallows around it and pushes it down, represses it, because he refuses to worry Jungkook might get physically hurt in something he choosesto do.

Bogum’s fingers tighten a bit into the fabric of his t-shirt. “Is he really that good?” he scoffs, clicks his tongue. His eyes roll and he is the very depiction of annoyed and Taehyung hates how it annoys him. Ideally, he should hope Jungkook gets his ass kicked as well, but the damage done on that Ring with no rules is simply too gruesome for Taehyung to even attempt to wish it upon him.

“You’ll see, won’t you?” Taehyung responds and he forces out a chuckle that struggles to escape his throat.

Another pair of fingers brush into his shoulder before they swiftly travel the length necessary for a hand to wrap against his bicep and he jumps in place – it startles him and does not cease to unnerve him as lips move close enough to his ear to speak to him in the chaos of the Ring. “Bold boys,” a voice teases before the person moves away and drops their touch.

Taehyung’s head whips and his eyes widen to find the departing coy smirk of Clo Eun. She leaves with haughty eyes and her arm tangled with Yoongi’s thin elbow. The guy’s own gaze skips over Taehyung, but it does not linger. The pair saunters to where Yoongi had sat with Hoseok last time and join him now as well. Yoongi’s mouth levitates to Hoseok’s ear immediately, the other’s arm lifting and nesting behind him until his palm cups his shoulder. When Hoseok’s lids bat and open to meet his stare, he realizes he’s made the mistake of tracing eyes after them.

 He snaps his head forward to the Ring. The appearance of Yoongi and Clo Eun can only mean Jungkook’s fight will follow. If Bogum notices Clo Eun’s short stop in acknowledgment, he does not mention it. Taehyung knocks his elbow against him purposefully. “He’s next,” he informs.

His opponent comes first. It’s the same type of crowd pumper as the previous one. Most of them are, engaging and throwing hands up in different corner of the rings. He comes with entourage, no hair and lots of muscles. Lots of tattoos as well, one particularly distinctive one, a detailed snake that slithers across his shoulder and down his chest, wraps around his nipple. Taehyung is not entirely sure, but he has some memory it’s a testament to an affiliation with an underground gang.

“That guy’s fucking scary,” Bogum whisper-shouts in his ear and Taehyung swallows around the truth of it. He doesn’t respond. His focus is taken, eyes darting to where the crowd parts for Jungkook, who comes even more alone this time, completely by himself. People cheer for him and Taehyung’s heart beats aggressively. He climbs between the ropes with confidence and stands tall and poised in his side of the ring, dressed in a similar sleeveless sweatshirt. Bogum is leaning to him. “Why do people like him?” It’s a question he has to ask with the way people around them go crazy for him without even being coaxed into it. He does not engage.

You’ll see.Taehyung wants to say again. Few people truly like either of the Taunting Twins, but in certain contexts they appreciate them, because they deliver. These people are here with the thirst for a fight, they want to watch blood spill, and they want to see it done well and thorough. The crowd is here for a technique of violence, for cracked bones and knocked out teeth. That’s what Jungkook gives them, and he does it beautifully.He does not fight solely with the strength of his punches. It is animalistic, but it is not purely that. It is an artistry, just where to punch, just when to duck, just how.

He’s an impressive fighter.

This time Jungkook sees him before the fight. His eyes catch Taehyung’s when he shakes the material off of his shoulders, and they linger with a glint that is visceral underneath the flashing lights of the club. A different European girl is passing on the ring, shaking her hips with emphasis and glancing over Jungkook, but his attention is set. Bogum is saying something to him, in his ear, hand on his back, but it is not properly registering with Taehyung. His heart thunders.

The gaze drops as quickly as it captures him, and the fight is starting. This one is worse. Jungkook is worse. He’s relentless. He hits hard, hits precise. His eyes are narrowed on his opponent, brows furrrowed and creased in concentration at some angles and completely flattened and relaxed at others.

Jungkook teases. After a couple attempts of his opponent to hit him that fail miserably, he drops his guard and bounces enticingly on his feet, chin jutted out invitingly, chest open, head open. When the guy swings, he bobs and weaves, jabbing him at the underside of his jaw. His footwork is magnificent, quick, swift, accurate. His punches are hard. Taehyung can see it in the way the flesh of his opponent bends, the way his eyes lose focus and grow heady, the way they draw blood.

Bogum whistles at a particular jab and Taehyung hears it in his ear.

He tries not to hiss when Jungkook is on the receiving end. It’s rarer, but it happens. He takes one to the side of his head, a few to his stomach. A hook. A cross. Taehyung is not sure, but he thinks he sees the cut underneath his brow open with the friction of a particularly punishing hit.

His opponent clearly fights with power, not with technique, so the times he manages to land a hit, it does damage. Taehyung things a good few of the jabs strike Jungkook simply becomes he insists on preserving an attitude in this fight, a teasing cockiness that plays him badly, but not badly enough, and the crowd fucking roars with every pattern of this game he dares to play on the ring.

He always plays games; the Taunting Twin does.

He taunts on the Ring as well, and still, he wins. He wins by knocking his opponent into bleeding unconsciousness. He wins sure and confident and with animalistic but precise violence, with depraved but calculated hits. He sweats with it, grows red with it, eyes go wild with it, but he wins with it, blood trickling from the side of his head where Taehyung now knows his wound opens, and he smirks with it.

His hands pump to the air now, an announcement of his victory, one of his wrists in the hand of their referee.

“He’s fucking vicious,” Bogum is saying in his ear.

“I know,” Taehyung nods. He’s nervous. Jungkook’s smirking gaze hasn’t found him yet, but he feels it will. The other guy’s limp body lies behind their feet, he has no girlfriend to pull him away and his entourage is slow with it. The most representable man out of them is bent by Yoongi, saying something in his ear.

His eyes do meet him, but they don’t linger. They only land on him for the duration of a single indicative jut of his chin that Taehyung might as well have imagined, a tilt in the direction he knows his dressing room to be.

Jungkook leaves soon after his fight like he did before as well. Crowd parts for him like the fucking Red Sea and swallows him up, closes around him, hands on his back, his shoulders, praises in his ears. Taehyung follows him with his eyes and buzzes with the idea he might want to follow him physically as well, but he doesn’t dare fully assume it, so he stays put.

“Okay,” Bogum is shouting in his ear. “I’m disappointed but impressed.”

“Yeah. Told you,” Taehyung returns his attention to Bogum, tries to, but it incessantly wanders, shifts to the direction in which Jungkook has disappeared, and he wonders what’s the harm in checking if Jungkook had wanted him to follow. He figures it’d be better for him to go without Jungkook beckoning him originally then leaving Jungkook hanging because, well, post witnessing thishe wouldn’t want to piss him off.

“Listen,” Taehyung is saying before he has fully rationalized it to himself. He knows he wants to speak to Jungkook as well, was too distracted by the peculiarity of their previous interaction to express his displeasure with the fucking love bite he’d left on him unannounced. There’s unspoken protocol with marks like these and he has yet to confront him, so okay, maybe he has to go. “Bladder’s calling. You fine with Baek and Jimin?” he lifts his brows up.

“Yeah, sure,” he’s nodding. “Want me to come with?”

“Nah, I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” Taehyung smiles at him and Bogum chuckles, head shaking.

Taehyung pulls away, the stretch of his lips dwindling from his features. He captures Jimin by the shoulder, leans to his ear. “Hey, take care of him, yeah?” He juts his chin towards Bogum. “Doesn’t know shit about Richhood yet.”

Jimin nods. “Boy’s under my wing. Where are you going?”

“Toilet.”

His brows shoot up. “Just after the fight?” Taehyung nods, informs him it is pressing matters. Jimin snorts. “Good luck, I’ll be expecting you in about an hour if you make it.”

Taehyung’s response is a pointedly dissatisfied expression and a cock of his head, but he leaves with it. It actually bodes well Jimin is skeptical he’ll be quick with it, gives him the excuse of time. Reaching the dressing rooms is easier than reaching the bathroom. The most major influx of people is in that direction. It’s still a considerably demanding task, but he manages, finds himself in the depressing, slightly chilling hallway.

He has no way to know if Jungkook is in the same room he was last time, but it is the only lead he has, so he treads towards it. The repeated state of nervousness feels emphasized in the lonesomeness and silence of the corridor, where he can hear his own paces and recognizes the beat of his heart is rapid despite the dulled music. A striking annoyance with himself for being like this invigorates him into just walking,not that much thinking. He promises himself, he’ll find him, see what Jungkook wants, tell him to never mark him like that again, as if he belongs to him and walk away.

After his small, but vigorous internal pep talk it is anticlimactic to find the room empty. He sighs, ignores the nuance of deflation and strides into the hallway again. He passes by exactly two doors before one opens swiftly and a hand is wrapping around his wrist, pulling him inside.

His back slams into tiled walls and he grunts with it, but the scorching touch that forces him into place departs immediately. The door is shut, loud and clear, and the very distinctive sound of a lock turning penetrates the air and nestles into Taehyung’s ears with apprehension. This room is slightly different, only has showers lined up at the walls, and it has a lock, a lock that Jungkook’s turned and now he looms before him from a small distance, sinewy arms crossed before his chest and the very fact of it appears somewhat threatening. He’s still in the attire from the match, chest bare and glistening, and it seems wider than it truly is like this, because it’s so clearly outlined by muscle.

Gone is the victorious smirk from his face, and instead he seems slightly pissed, features narrowed, yet so very typically reserved into a general nothingness.  

His features aren’t traitorous, but his voice is, or maybe it is pointed, because he speaks with the charge of enmity. “What’d you bring him here for, Taehyung?” he asks, and Taehyung’s mouth opens then closes.

He straightens up next to the wall, removes his back from it and instead stands tall on his two feet, gives himself all of the inches of height he can before Jungkook, and he stands leveled and fair. “He wanted to see you fight,” he announces the truth.

“Oh?” Jungkook’s head tilts, brows arch, and he drowns his voice in an ironic mockery. “Does he want to know how I’ll bash his head in if he gets mouthy with me again?”

Taehyung mirrors the position, arms closing together, and he holds himself by the elbows. He flattens his words as best as he possibly can. “Can you stop fucking threateninghim?” He doesn’t know what precisely summons the defensiveness, but if the excuse of a conversation is going to revolve around pointless threats and Bogum, then he might as well leave now.

Jungkook’s eyes shift into an undeniable glare, his step forward sounds clearly into the tiled floor. “Do you like his face that much?”

Taehyung shakes his head with the futility of trying to speak to him. “Well, I—"

He interjects, words twist cold and low. “You should really consider keeping him away from me if you like it in its current arrangement,” he presses, and it strikes Taehyung just how much Bogum has been a catalyst for their recent interactions. In fact, there has not been a time for a while in which he hasn’t been, and it must seem like he’s shoving him in his face, especially by bringing him to the Ozone, then here, places that inherently belong to the Rich, to Jungkook. From his viewpoint, Taehyung supposes, he wanders into his territory, brings someone along and allows him to play with his toy.

Taehyung knows people like Jungkook faultlessly grow up to be possessive, territorial. They grow up to be entitled. Bogum is the perfect tool to question and shake Jungkook’s authority over him, except that he is not a tool, he is a person, and Taehyung should not have a hard time forgetting that, because it would just make him more alike Jungkook than he dares and cares to realize.

“He’s not my goddamn dog,” Taehyung says. “He’s new. He simply wanted to—”

“Iwant you—“ Jungkook begins to declare with such pointed emphasis on the pronoun that addresses him, forcing into it all the power and authority that Taehyung tries to forget into a single syllable that denounces him,  “to stop kissing him.”

The request, demand, washes over him with a peculiarly wakeful sensation, it teases over and under his skin. His eyes narrow, they harden, fingers squeeze into the bones of his elbows and he feels them up. “Until when,” he presses with some reciprocal acrimony, “until you get boredof me?”

He spits the words, laces them with that mocking irony that is signature of Jungkook’s speech, holds a certain doze of petulance that does not retrospectively bother him because it fits the maturity of the conversation, and he watches him roll his eyes.

“Don’t play games with me, Taehyung,” Jungkook says, pokes his tongue into his cheek in a brief, fluid motion.

Taehyung bristles with the forced suggestion of incredulity. “That’s all you fucking do.”

Jungkook takes a step forward and the neat folding of his arms falls apart, revealing him whole, bare and wide and strong. “I can afford to play.”

His eyes roll. It’s true to some extent Taehyung feels he’s able to deny for a few minutes at a time. So once again petulantly, he says, “Fuck you.” And then he pauses, and because it bothershim and it so perfectly fits right now with everything other than the fact that he is a Kim and has virtually no leverage in front of a Jeon, he spills before he manages to filter, he spills with all the scathing bitterness of the fact of it, he spills,  “You get to kiss Julia all the time.”

It lingers in the air boldly. Julia is the one thing that can essentially not be removed from the situation between them, because it will suggest the situation is, in fact, between them.Julia is a halo for Jungkook, she is his intention, she is his reason for Taehyung even having a name in his mouth other than Kim. Julia is not another person, like Bogum is. Julia is essential.

There’s a natural pause that descends heavily into the stretched air between them after the sound of the words rings conclusively from the tiles of the walls and the flooring. Jungkook watches him with his eyes still fixed in the glare of before, but his face mostly slave to its usual master of reticence.

Taehyung’s heart beats loud and then louder, his ears buzz with the proclamation of Jungkook’s following words.

“I’ll stop,” Jungkook says as if it is simple, so simple.

All Taehyung can do for a moment is breathe and blink. Then, most blankly, he asks, “What?”

“If you don’t kiss him, I won’t kiss her,” he says, a deal. And it’s simple, so simple, and Taehyung supposes maybe it truly is because all Jungkook promises is he won’t press his mouth to hers. He does not say he won’t touch her, fuck her, have dinner with her, coffee with her, talk to her, smile at her. He does not suggest he won’t be her boyfriend, that he won’t be affectionate in all other ways possible, that he won’t pound her for a good night’s sleep and then sleep next to her and wake up next to her. He doesn’t say that, because he doesn’t mean that. “Just stop kissing him, touching him, stop fucking looking at him, okay?”

His downright jealousyis exhilarating to Taehyung, even if he is perfectly capable of rationalizing it with just who Jungkook has grown up to be. He forgets to do it now, instead lets himself the naivety to believe that this is not about Jungkook’s flaws, but about Taehyung. He doesn’t say yes, though, no he breathes heavy, and instead he suggests it with a question that sounds weak to his own ears, “So, I don’t get to kiss anyone?”

“Who do you wantto kiss?” Jungkook questions with steadfast exasperation.

“You,” it falls through his lips like a reaction. There is nothing voluntary in the confession. It is an impulse he represses every time Jungkook looks at him from such a distance, proximity once again at play, every time he licks his lips, pokes a tongue into his cheek, every time he fucking breathes. It’s pathetic, really, how much he wants to kiss him.

Jungkook’s eyes drop to the floor after the declaration fills the air.

“You know, Taehyung,” and he’s closer still, and then his hands lift, press into his hips and for the merest moment Taehyung doesn’t know how to breathe, but then he’s okay, it’s okay, everything’s okay, except for the voice that Jungkook speaks with which falls to be so deliberately and torturouslysoft, like his touch is, “my father said I should beat the shit out of you,” the brutality of his words both loses an aspect of its power and retains and emphasizes another with the way he pronounces it so strikingly gently. His eyes lift from the floor, stare straight into Taehyung’s and the glare is an apparition, a memory of the past; his eyes glint, they shine, “teach you not to kiss boys.”

Taehyung’s heart races. One of his hands settles above Jungkook’s in indication, fingers wrapping tight against his wrist. His skin is hot, heated and searing. His tone levels with his, words border a whisper, “And who will beat you up for touching me?”

Jungkook’s father. Notoriously, the worst Jeon. Taehyung has the luxury of going through life not thinking much about him and the way he handles Jungkook, the way he impacts Jungkook. For him, it is a personal consideration when he decides not to bring the fact maybe he enjoys kissing boys to his family. It’s something he’s not ready for, a confusion he deems unnecessary with the extent to which everything is already pure shit,a label he doesn’t want for himself. He cannot, however, imagine ever sharing this, sharing Bogum, for example, with his sister and receiving anything different than support. Jungkook, she would mind because of the context he comes with, not because of his gender.

But Jungkook’s father deems a boy kissing boys worth beating up. He wonders what else is a good enough reason for him. He watches Jungkook and he wonders if he hits, if he strikes both verbally and physically. He watches Jungkook and he thinks he might.

“Him, probably,” Jungkook shrugs and he keeps the same softness in his voice as he studies Taehyung’s face, pupils darting across the entirety of it as Taehyung’s remain fixed and entranced with the glint of his eyes. “If he found out, you know what he would probably do?” His gaze lifts to his and easily meets his waiting eyes. He indicates the question with a swift raise of his brows, before he returns his stare to the Taehyung’s lips and he speaks to them. “If he found out I touched you, he’d probably break my fingers so that I can’t touch you again. He’d probably snap my cock in half, just so that you never turn me on again. If he found out—"

“Well, he won’t,” Taehyung interrupts firmly and Jungkook’s eyes snap to him. He feels a very distinct, curious hurt strain at him, makes it hard to swallow. A desire washes over him, something rebellious and charged, and he wants Jungkook to touch him, he wants to turn him on, wants to do everything with him, wants to go back in time and enjoy wiping his cock on the handkerchief with their family crest a whole lot more.

“What?” Jungkook says with a genuine confusion that pauses the softness for a bare moment, though it remains atypically secured into the features of his expression.

“He can’t,” Taehyung breathes, and his fingers tighten over Jungkook’s wrist, their eyes finding each other easily. “Find out.” His tongue teases over his lips in a pause for mustering up bravery, and he is not internally rationalizing much of what he is saying. Words drip from his mouth, fall through like sighs, “You can do anything to me, and he won’t know.”

Jungkook’s fingers grip into his hips, adjust their position to capture him more thoroughly and he pushes him the one step necessary for the top of Taehyung’s back to press against the tiled wall, his hips tilted slightly forward into Jungkook’s hold. The contact is painless, slow, he suggests Taehyung leans on the wall, rather than commands it with force, and he chooses to remain aligned with it, digits squeezing over Jungkook’s wrist once and dancing upwards along the line of his forearm. Jungkook’s eyes fix over him, so piercing and heavy. “He’d like to see you bruised,” he tells him as If he confides in him, so personal and intimate in the small space that remains between them.

“Bruise me then,” Taehyung exhales. It’s a permission of many things, an invitation of many. Jungkook can hurt him now, hit him now. He can bruise him in any way he sees fit, because Taehyung does not only allow it, he invites it.

And Jungkook glances at him with a challenge, and then he does because he wants to bruise him as well, mark him all over so that Park Bogum just knows not to touch.Jungkook dips his head forward, ducks down with the agility he used to evade punches all night long and he seals his lips over the mark he’d left on Taehyung’s neck, the one that starts to fade. The contact of it somehow still feels sudden, new, peculiarly violent, though it is nothing but soft, and it coaxes a gasp out of Taehyung, his fingers snaking to Jungkook’s elbow and tightening there. Jungkook moves with the compulsive, charging impulse tolayer all his skin with the dents of his teeth, the purple of his punishing lips; he squeezes at him hard with fingers, tight and digging into the flesh of him, because he wants to leave hand prints all across him. His father is right, anyway; he needs to be bruised. He does not deserve skin that is so utterly flawless, not when he himself is so imperfect, so impure, a poor, little idiot, kissing boys, touching boys, boys who aren’t Jungkook.

Jungkook works the skin of his neck, bruises him. He uses his lips, uses his tongue, and he uses his teeth. It has a notion of expert composure the way he is skilled with the abuse of his neck, but it also has an element of deprivation, a cloud of something lustful and lewd with the way his mouth opens and exhales, and the way his tongue trails, with the way his teeth skim, tease, and dip minutely, something in the sighs it draws from Taehyung, sighs that do not register with him, but they fuel Jungkook, make his fingers reach to his waist, where he is softer, where they can sink into flesh.

Taehyung is supposed to be scolding him about marking him like that, not inviting more of it and basking in the sensation of cool, cruel lips on his skin. But Jungkook’s teeth are fixing over his protruding collarbone, his tongue is dipping in between the clavicle at the curiously elegant crevice of his throat and Taehyung is gone with it.

Taehyung is painfully aware that Jungkook refuses to kiss him the way he’d wanted it. He wants his lips on his, their individual breaths abandoned for the sake of taking each other in, but Jungkook won’t give him that and it comes with the bundling of a frustration he’s never known before. He’s never wanted something like that before, so simple as a kiss, yet so devastatingly complicated in the context of who they are and what they share, what they don’t.

Jungkook’s hands move and Taehyung’s hold on him is forced to drop. He hates he does not get to squeeze his frustration into him, but the feeling subsides when fingers fist at the fabric of his shirt and tug it up, rough palms unnecessarily snaking across his skin underneath. He raises his arms up and lets Jungkook pull it over his head, disregard it on the floor, and he’s bare like him now.

 His eyes take, take him all in, roam all over the skin he exposes. His eyes are hooded, dark and piercing, and Taehyung remembers he hates them and then forgets it all the same. His hands are all across him as well, touch searing and firm, but with a quality of reluctant softness, exploratory like the last time he studied his bare chest, his stomach, so unknown and unfamiliar to him. Jungkook’s hands are calloused. They’re rough. They touch almost gently but are coarse to begin with and it’s uncommon for who he is. The rich prefer to have the poor get the callouses for them, doing dirty work.

Jungkook bends and his mouth is on him, open, heavy and wet and exquisite. Taehyung tries to put his hands on him, there is something instinctive and needy in the way he reaches and attempts to lace them over his shoulders, his neck, he wants to put his fingers through his hair, feel if it is as soft as it looks.

He doesn’t getto. Jungkook halts his endeavors with all the impressive skill he has displayed for the night, capturing his wrists easily between strong fingers and forcing them to the wall, to the side of his head in a motion that brings his body closer, the heat of it invading Taehyung’s senses, but he forgets it for a moment, narrowing his eyes in a lost glare at the restriction he’s pushed into. “No touching for you,” Jungkook commands, voice a titillating breath.

Taehyung’s chest expands and falls rapid and full.  “Why?” he whines. He does not, however, to his own surprise act against Jungkook in any way, not even when the other releases his wrists and grips at his hips again, tugging his pelvis into himself roughly. No, Taehyung does not even consider the option of acting out. He settles for a whine, for a glare, purses his lips in the semblance of a pout, but that is all the reaction that comes to him naturally, his hands lingering where Jungkook instructs them.

“For now,” Jungkook says with a pinning stare that by itself is dangerously provocative. It remains on Taehyung’s face for a couple more moments even as his lips dip again and he focuses his touch on his exposed body. He mouths at his shoulder, under his clavicle and he bruises all across, fingers squeezing. He leaves marks on his chest, propels Taehyung’s body forward with subtle, but powerful ministrations of his hands, arches the bottom of it into himself and they almost touch, and then they touch, and then they don’t again.

Taehyung’s hips seek the heat of it, of his body, as Jungkook mouths at him. His blood pumps with the promise of the word ‘now’, the suggestion of a ‘later’ and wonders if the arousal of a substance-induced high can rival the delirious excitement of this, and he doubts it.

Jungkook’s tongue twirls around his nipple and it tears out a gasp from him. It is so unnecessary,cannot in any way bruise him there, leave a mark. Still, his tongue toys with it and then his teeth grace around it as it easily hardens, fingers treading to the dips of his ribs, fitting there easily and he can feel the cool of his ring contrasting the wrecking warmth of his touch.

Taehyung is so far gone, and maybe Jungkook is as well, and he seems to realize it. It bothers him, maybe, it does something to him. Maybe it hits him just how unnecessary it is to tug at his nipple with his teeth like that, maybe Taehyung moans a bit too distinctively and it wakes him up.

It triesto. He straightens and he drops his hold and Taehyung’s eyes open all too wide and vulnerable and curious. There is something wet that glints over them, underneath strands of fluffed hair, makes them glisten as his full lips do. It’s striking to Taehyung just how goddamn coldthis room is.

“I’ll go now,” Jungkook says, and it is tight. It strains. He says it as if he doesn’t mean it, and Taehyung latches onto it even if the danger remains that it is just a mirage of his clouded imagination, laced with vey human wanton.

“Why?” he asks, dreads the suggestion of involuntary panic that treads through. The naked truth is he doesn’t want Jungkook to leave him, not now, he’s getting hard for him, he’s turned on for him, and the prospect of his departure now comes with a certain humiliation he does not want to face.

Jungkook’s tongue which up until now explored every inch of Taehyung’s upper body with fervor ghosts over his lips. His head cocks. His eyes are still pinned on Taehyung, studying the damage he has done, the beginnings of bruises, the rare arcs of his teeth, the glisten of his saliva. He begs for it to be off-putting, on some level at least, but on any and all, it just makes him want more. “You know I like to fuck after fights,” Jungkook says, he excuses. He should get himself out of there before he does something stupid again.

Taehyung breathes, once twice. His nostrils flare, and there is some underlying anger, but mostly it is brazen, depraved determination when he pauses and then proposes loud and clear, “Well then fuck me.”

He’s thought about it, thought about it ever since Jungkook told him he’d look prettier bent over and he’d started kissing boys, and he’d grown curious. What would it be like to get fucked, he’d wondered, what it’d be like to have someone inside him, well, frankly, what it’d be like to have Jungkookinside him? When he offers himself so blatantly, it is not backed up by that rational curiosity, by him reasoning he should explore his sexuality. No, the words fall purely because he wants Jungkook to fuck him.

It’s a strange thing to want, considering he does not even know what it constitutes in its entirety, that in the suggestion of it lingers the possibility that it will hurt, that it comes with an array of consequences, that the desire for it comes with a vengefulness towards a man he does not even know. But in that very moment he is incapable of fully comprehending that, only knows that he wants, and he supposes that is what lust is and there is a reason it’s such a tragic flaw, such a dangerous sin.

Jungkook blinks. His heart skips a beat and his cock fucking twitches, and he cannot estimate whether this is some sort of a sick joke, and all he can say is, “What?”

Taehyung is tentative. He touches the side of his waist, just barely, just enough to give himself the leverage to just arch his hips forward in the way Jungkook had previously held him. He had felt the heat of him, is perfectly aware Jungkook is affected, much like he himself is, and he wants him to remember that. “Fuck me, Jungkook,” he says, says it softer. His eyes search his, teeth bite his lip, and he adds almost subconsciously, “Please.”

It’s a whisper and Jungkook does not know whether it is it or the way he says his name that does it for him, but something in him snaps and he loses a fight with himself he does not know he’s fighting. He curses, “Fuck.” The word is strangled out of his mouth, vehement and conclusive and it’s done, he’s done.

His hands find Taehyung’s hips again and he spins him. He captures him firm and pushes his front against the wall, traps his arms between the tile and his body as Taehyung raises them protectively. He grunts, curses in return. There is nothing soft about the way he handles him now, the underlying anger and frustration that comes with his usual touch so emphasized now. It reminds Taehyung that every time he even looks at him suggestively Jungkook goes against so many things, and it makes him feel wanted in such a depraved, forbidden way.

He’s wanted and he wants. And now it will happen, the pain from colliding with the wall comes with the satisfaction of that knowledge. They will fuck. Taehyung has never in his life been on a date and consequently, he has never before had sex that matters -- though he has not generally had that much sex -- in any way other than the physical gratification it grants, for any reason other than that it satiates certain desires. He thinks now should not be much different, though he knows it is. He knows he’ll care after it’s set and done, but he offers himself anyway, because he wants it and he certainly does not want Jungkook to go to someone else.

Rationally, he knows that whoever else Jungkook goes to that night won’t be anyone he remembers, but selfishly, he wants him all to himself, for tonight at least. He knows he won’t give him much more, and he knows this is just sex. This is physical. He knows Jungkook sleeps with people who aren’t Julia and then he goes back to her, always. He suspects she’s aware of it, everyone is. All Taehyung can hope for is that he is slightly bit different to him, more memorable, and he knows he will be, because he is a boy.

Jungkook presses himself against Taehyung, indulges in the way his ass feels, comfortably thick, round, so soft and perfect. He lines his hips with it, slides himself boldly to ensure Taehyung can feel him, all of him. He allows himself to enjoy the sensation of him against his cock. It’s just an ass, Jungkook reminds himself. He’s horny because fights get him horny and he always fucks after fights, always people who aren’t Julia, because she never comes to these, and this is no different.

This is not special. It has nothing to do with the way he is unable to resist after Taehyung so pliantly offers himself, because he is simply not trying to resist. What would the point be?He’s hard. Jungkook’s hard and the way Taehyung immediately pushes back against him gets him harder. His hands snake to his front, pop the button and he pushes his jeans down underneath the globe of him. Denim is hoarse and thick, and it prevents him from fully feeling him and he wants it out of the fucking way. Taehyung gasps when he presses into him now, when he nestles the shape of his cock between the fabric of his underwear and he can feel himself sink into the dip of his cheeks now, his boxing shorts not leaving much to the imagination, and it is terribly exhilarating.

He just really wants to fuck him. He would very much like to just shove his pants down, shove his cock in and fuck the daylights out of him, because he deserves it, for being so, so salacious. The way he’d asked him to fuck him with his lips parted, eyes glinting like that, so deceptively innocent, so frustratingly erotic, enticing. So pretty.

He wonders how much it will hurt him if he does it, if he’ll beg him to stop or if he’ll take it just for the sake of having Jungkook fuck him.

“Open your mouth,” Jungkook tells him and watches him with hard eyes as he rests his cheek against the wall and follows through. His profile is just as beautiful, even when squished against the tile like this, and he dares to make eye contact as his lips part, and Jungkook exhales, rotates his hips into him and watches his face change with it.

He squeezes fingers of one hand punishingly into the soft flesh of his waist and lifts the other up, slides two fingers into his waiting mouth. The ring with his family crest brushes cold onto his lip. “Get them really wet, pretty boy.”

Taehyung moans around the fingers, closes his lips around them and tries to do as told, for his own sake. He realizes he will hurt, but he’s a bit too far gone to care, his hard cock brushing deliciously yet torturously into the tiled wall against which Jungkook so thoroughly traps him. The shape of him fits into Taehyung with suggestion, with promise, and his heart hammers, blood boils. He does not think sex ever came with the prelude of this, with such build-up, such excitement.

He pushes back into Jungkook, swirls his tongue around his fingers and keeps their eyes locked. Looking away feels impossible. He’s mesmerized.

Jungkook’s entranced. He does not want to look away from Taehyung. He presses his fingers into his tongue, under his tongue, wants him to secrete as much saliva as possible. He’s never done this without the lubrication of a woman and there’s something marginally uncomfortable in the idea that he will hurt him, but he gets off on it a bit as well, because he remembers he is meant to hurt him. Would not his dearest father just be fucking proud?

His fingers feel wet enough, but he knows saliva dries. He draws them out of his mouth and Taehyung’s lips remain parted and suggestive, and he really fucking wants to shove his dick into him.

He releases his waist for a moment, for the sake of tugging his underwear downwards, eyes dropping compulsively to peek at the skin he reveals, the globe of his ass so predictably yet frustratingly perfect. Taehyung watches Jungkook scrutinize every new inch of him, swallows some invasive nerves. There’s nothing judgmental about the way he looks at him, takes him in, but there is an intensity that makes Taehyung’s skin flare and heart pound.

He moves his fingers quickly, probing at him and Taehyung’s eyes screw shut, he presses his forehead into the wall and inhales deeply. He can take this.

The tip of a single finger pushes past the rim and he expects the slight discomfort at the stretch of it. He does not expect Jungkook’s voice, set and demanding, hard and rough, it’s rough. It has abandoned all softness and replaced it with sternness, but the connotation of what he says is different. He says, “Tell me if I hurt you, Taehyung.” Taehyung gulps and hums as his finger dips to a knuckle. “Okay?”

He’s careful, he’s slow, but he’s also impatient and needy, and used to taking when he wants, and he wants now, so desperately does. He presses his whole finger inside of him, watches his hips stutter with it. He’s tight, wonderfully tight and hot, and Jungkook feels himself twitch, his patience wearing thin and Taehyung is not answering him.

“Are you listening to me, Tae?” Tae. It falls off his lips easily, too easily but he chooses not to dwell on it as he currently has a finger up the boy’s ass.

He still does not answer, just trembles with the motion of Jungkook’s finger and it pisses him off. He rotates his other moistened finger along the rim, pushes the tip of it and watches him squirm around the stretch of it, basks in his gasp, in the way he notices his brows furrow from the side view he allows him, face buried in the wall. “Fuck,” Jungkook grunts, when Taehyung only bites his lip until it goes white, “do you wantme to hurt you? Has life fucked you up that badly?”

His second finger slides fully in and with it Taehyung gasps. “No,” he says, and oh, he speaks, tight and strained and maybe a moment ago, he simply couldn’t force out a response, but now he can. He gulps, releases a breath. “You did,” he finishes and Jungkook’s fingers thrust into him almost punishingly.

Taehyung means it. Safe from the occasional stealing, before Jungkook had entered his life, there was nothing particularly questionableabout it. Now everything is. He appeared and he fucked it all up, fucked him all up. Thiscertainly is questionable, just what the fuck is he doing. He pushes against the fingers, pushes against them because they stretch him out and feel downright weird buried inside of him, but not in a way that is wrong, no, he wants more of it, it draws out his curiosity. It’s a demanding sensation, steals his focus. Jungkook does as a whole. He forgets most of everything else and just focuses on him, on his scorching presence behind him, the shape of his cock that now presses against just one of his cheeks. He wants to feel more of it, more of him.

Jungkook says nothing to Taehyung’s accusation, simply shoves his fingers inside of him harder. He’s exploratory with the way he moves into him, never having done this with a man. He wants Taehyung to live with the fact that Jungkook makes him feel good,wants the other to keep wanting him, so he aims to please, curls his fingers, presses up. Taehyung’s hips snap, a sound drifting through his lips and he curses and Jungkook presses into him again at that very point and watches his fists tighten and his teeth bare more where he uses them to press down into his mouth.

Gratification slams inside of Jungkook at the sight of it, sight of repressed pleasure and his lips curve with a smirk, though his eyes remain narrowed at the younger boy as he works him. He’s still so impossibly tight. Jungkook slides his fingers out and his smirk stretches when Taehyung whines with it. He lifts a third finger to his mouth. “Open.”

Taehyung slicks it as thoroughly as he can, allowing his eyes to meet with lewdness and prettiness that strips Jungkook off of his smirk and he does not give him much time before he sinks three fingers inside of him. He stretches him out, aims the curve of his digits into that spot that makes him moan.

He reaches into his pocket, fishes out the condom that was reserved for the random girl of the night, relieved he has one with extra lubrication because he doesn’t always want to bother. Working Taehyung up is different, it’s gratifying as its own experience, making him squirm, seeing him struggle not to moan and failing miserably at hiding the fact he enjoys it.

Still, Jungkook’s so painfully hard.

“You ready, pretty boy?”

Taehyung’s eyes crack opened at him and dart across his face. He releases his lip for the sake of speaking, of teasing, “Didn’t think of you as one to ask.”

Jungkook’s jaw tightens and he takes his fingers out, shoves him by the back into the wall until he’s flat against it, arms trapped, and he grips at his hips. “I’ll take that as a fucking yes,” he says, he growls at him, brings his lips close to his ear to make sure he senses it all when Taehyung shivers at the sound of it.

He tugs his shorts down, just enough to get his cock out, tears the package with his teeth and shoves the remains of it in his pocket as he slides the condom down his length. It’s such a relief, the sensation of it, of having himself out – he’s so painfully hard. He strokes over himself with one hand, grips tight into Taehyung with the other.

He tugs at him, so his back arches and his ass gives. He’s bent. The line of his spine twists with peculiar elegance, and for a dumb moment he wishes he wasn’t fucking him in the shower room of an excuse of a club, where he is expected to return in moments. Christ, people are probably already looking for him, but he wants to take his time with this, indulge in it as much as the circumstances allow it.

There’s nothing more fitting than the fact he fucks him here, now. There’s no other context for him to be with him, no other reason. This is a consequence of circumstance, not something they seek out from each other. It cannotbe something they look for.

He takes a breath, and he slides inside of him. Taehyung’s teeth grit and his eyes screw shut. He hisses through the sensation of it, the burn of it. It stretches him out – he’s thick, but it’s not half as bad as he expects, and he takes it. Jungkook is slow with it, he is careful, and a part of Taehyung wants to tell him to just shove it in and fuck him already, and another is thankful he’s actually considerate of just how much that would hurt.

He fills him so well and Taehyung learns he likes the sensation of being full. It comes to him unexpected, but he basks in it, in the way he makes him feels. His skin tingles and his heart races, and he’s just so hot. He trembles with every touch and he represses a very ridiculous compulsion to beg Jungkook to move.

He does. He moves. He starts slow, rocks into him, but he starts off gentle, and it is very much contrasting to how his fingers clench at him, squeezing into his hips tight and controlling adjusting him and Taehyung is almost entirely sure he’ll have the prints of his grip shaped into his skin and it thrills him. He savors every mark, everything that seals the experience into a material memory, a physical proof, not that he could possibly ever forget. But Jungkook won’t be able to, either. Not with the way he colored his neck.

His fingers curl over his bones and he grunts with a thrust that propels Taehyung’s hips forward. He moans into the wall, his forehead pressing into it. He would very much love to watch Jungkook, wants to angle his head to allow himself to at least peek at him, but the next movement is slightly forceful, though he still does not bury himself fully inside, and Taehyung has a hard time keeping his eyes opened.

Jungkook’s breath teases by his ear when Taehyung bottoms out. He fills him, Taehyung feels his hips against his ass, and he speaks to him, low and raspy, “How does it feel?”

Taehyung’s features screw. He tries to catch his breath and fails, grunts out, “It hurts.”

Jungkook’s hips retract and they fall back into him with the mutter of, “Good.”

“You want, uh—” he struggles, pauses, Jungkook gathers the confidence to move inside of him and it is so unfamiliar, but good, and he cannot wrap his head around it, around the fact Jungkook fucks him, “you want to hurt me?”

His hips do not still once they build an initial pace. “I want to ruin you,” Jungkook confesses roughly as he shoves himself inside of him.

Taehyung’s teeth latch around his lip, but then he releases it, tilts his head, and he manages to open his eyes for the barest moment, but it is enough for him to meet Jungkook’s depraved gaze and tell him, “You’re gonna have to try harder then.” He’s going to have to because yes, it hurts, but the sting of it is terribly delicious.

Jungkook grunts and he does try harder, fucks him harder, lets himself go and fuck him with the abandon that he craves. He forgets how it hurts. He fucks him senseless and careless and Taehyung moans with it. Maybe life has really fucked him up. Maybe Jungkook really has, because he pushes back against the sensation, moves with the direction of his bruising fingers, and he makes the most mind-numbing sounds, lost and gone and pretty, so pretty. His voice is deep, much deeper than Jungkook’s, it’s manly, but it’s so beautiful.

Taehyung is surprised how easy it is to lose himself in the sensation of something that his brain has always pegged as slightly unnatural for him. The concept of getting fucked by a man seems so rationally emasculating, but when it happens, it feels just right. Jungkook is purposeful in the way he gyrates his hips to hit a certain spot, finds it impressively quickly and focuses on it and Taehyung wonders why he ever had sex in any other way.

“Fuck,” Jungkook groans to him and his lips are so close to his nape. Taehyung wants to feel them again, he misses them, but he doesn’t grant him that. “You’re so tight.”

Taehyung’s skin flushes with it. It feels like a praise, sparks something warm within him and he’s moaning out. He’s saying, “No one’s ever been inside me.”

Jungkook growls. His head presses into the back of Taehyung’s forehead in his hair, and it only lasts a moment before he straightens, but it happens. His fingers move up and down, his hips, his waist. They squeeze into him.

Yes, no one else has ever been inside of him, and he doesn’t want anyone else, not like this. Jungkook is so thorough. He’s so good. He’s so wrong, but so good, and the hurt is almost all gone. It’s such an overwhelming feeling, to get fucked, feels so real and raw and encompassing. The sounds that betray Taehyung are not subject to his control. He’s lost that, must have, to be in this position. He keeps only a semblance of it, a pitiful semblance that represses his desire to look at Jungkook, to try for a kiss he knows he won’t receive.

 Jungkook pulls his hip backwards until he’s fully bending, and he takes his forehead away from the wall, presses his forearms into it instead. He fucks him like this, snakes his hand forward and fists at him, slips his fingers around his length and strokes, and God, how is Jungkook so thoughtfulwith this.

Taehyung keens. He whimpers. “Jungkook.” It’s a deformity of the name, what escapes his lips, but it is distinctive enough and it coaxes another groan from the other, a thrust that is desperately out of rhythm. Taehyung loves the fact he has an effect, being so thoroughly wrecked himself. It’s only fair that the other loses himself as well. “Ngh, Jungkook.”

His hand is quick over him, skilled, thumb running over the head, palm soothing over veins. His hand is fucking enough, but the whole combination of it is enough to destroy. His arms move across the wall, fists clenching, he’s clenching and Jungkook moans with it, and it’s such an exquisite sound.

“Jungkook, I’m gonna—”

“Come for me,” he breathes.

And Taehyung does. It’s pried from him with the ministrations of Jungkook’s hand, the gyration of his skilled hips. He comes, comes so hard it eradicates all thought. He brims with the sensation of it, overwhelmed, tensing one moment, releasing the next. He comes on the tiles of the wall and Jungkook fucks him all through it.

He fucks him harder then, fucks him faster, with purpose and Taehyung takes it with his eyes screwed shut and his body almost numb. He fucks him until he comes as well. Comes with a groan and a slam of his hips. He grips at Taehyung, stills him forcefully and rocks into him until he pushes into him with the thrust that drains him, and he empties into the condom.

The silence that fills with their exhausted, satiated breaths falls heavy on them. Taehyung keeps his eyes closed, forehead to the wall, trying to fucking gather himself until Jungkook slips out of him. He whimpers a bit at it, at the emptiness. It hurts when he slides out.

His fingers leave his hips after a moment too long and then touch has left him altogether. Taehyung gulps. He has to open his eyes, straighten, face this. He takes his time with it, takes the time necessary for him to blink away the slight tears that gather at the brim of his eyes from mere sensation. Takes the time he thinks will allow him to stand without wincing, though his face still creases when he straightens.

Jungkook has his side to him when Taehyung gives him his side as well and he’s tying his shorts with unnecessary concentration, chest heaving, up and down, with what just happened. His skin glistens.

Taehyung tugs himself in, does the button on his jeans. He bends, winces, gathers his shirt and slides it on.

He runs a hand through his hair, hopes it sorts it out a bit. He breathes. “I should probably go,” he tries.

“You should, yes,” Jungkook is saying before he even has the chance to finish, and Taehyung thinks he expects nothing and still feels somewhat deflated.

His throat constricts. He nods. This is so fucking complicated. He should probably go. Bogum, Jimin, and Baekhyun, they’re waiting for him, and he prays the Ring is dim enough to hide his marks for at least that night until he figures shit out. He has so much shit to figure out.

It takes something for Taehyung to tear his eyes away from Jungkook’s profile, but he manages. “Right,” he says. He hesitates, gives Jungkook the chance to say anything, but he doesn’t, doesn’t even look at him. “Right,” he repeats. Then he goes. He leaves.

He does not see, but Jungkook does look then, looks as he turns the lock and disappears and slams the door shut, and Jungkook can finally breathe. He releases a breath so powerful it hurts his lungs, hollows his cheeks. His hands run wild through his hair and he walks frantic to the showers, eyes to the floor. He turns the shower underneath which they fucked, turns it so it washes away Taehyung’s come, and he turns the one next to that as well, the one next to that, and in the third one he allows himself to stand with his shorts still on.

He turns the cold water, makes sure it freezes and steps underneath, lets the power of the water beat into him, and he holds his head, pulls at the strands. He scrubs at himself, washes himself, but he can’t, can’t wash this off.And no, okay, Taehyung may have left, but he still cannot breathe. He tries to.

When Jungkook fucks people other than Julia, those people don’t matter. They’re faceless. Taehyung is not faceless. He has a face and it is beautiful and it is etched into Jungkook’s memory with the attachment of utter hatred.

He may have fucked Taehyung, but no one is more fucked than he is.

Chapter Text

To Jungkook’s memory, he used to enjoy nights where the Ozone afterparty was taken to Yoongi’s rooftop a whole lot more than he is right now. He uses Yoongi’s snuff kit tonight, as he bends down by the bar, for hygienic purposes.  He typically has trust that the surfaces in the penthouse are thoroughly cleaned and suitable for the spread of a line, though he does not know if Kim Ji-woo is already as accustomed to the necessity of incessant scrubbing as Yoongi’s previous house keeper was. On nights like this, however, there is enough human shaped pollution on the premises for Jungkook to worry it dirties the tables, so he sneaks the custom kit and does his lines on the snuff mirror.

He inhales what he can of it, straightens up and knocks his head back, arching his neck. He prods a finger at his nostril, it stings, but it hardly matters, and he wipes off some residual powder that gathers at the edge, because his hands are shaking a tiny bit and he doesn’t get it all in, the tube trembling with his fingers.

He brings his head back down with a sigh and he states to Hoseok who has been curiously hovering around him for the past couple of hours, and he tries not to show it’s pissing him off. He states with avid determination, “I want to find a girl,” he extends his hand on the bar and curls his fist onto the surface. The music is quieter here than it is in the Ozone, but he still speaks as if it vibrates just as powerfully around him. His ears buzz. “And I want to fuck the shit out of her,” he announces. He very expressively thinks to himself and then he looks at Hoseok’s dulled features directly. “You know what?” He pauses briefly. “I want to find two, I’m feeling like a threesome tonight.”

Hoseok cocks his head, raises a hand and pats at Jungkook’s shoulder. “Slow down, kid, you’re snorting more than Yoongi.”

Jungkook scoffs loudly, with his whole face, shaking the hand off with a roll of both his shoulders because he’s currently incapable of only rolling one. Then he rolls them again just because it feels good. “Yoongi doesn’t even like coke,” he says, and he prods a finger at the bar top repeatedly. “What’s your point, hyung?”

“My point is, Jungkook, that you’re going to knock yourself out at this rate and the only thing you’ll be balls deep in will be my nerves.”

Jungkook runs a hand through his hair, once, twice, just to have something to do with it. He’s feeling awfully jittery. “I’m not asking you to take care of me, Hobi,” he says, only a bit through teeth. He would put more of himself into it, but it hurts his jaw to keep it tight and the inside of his mouth feels numb.

“You wouldn’t,” Hoseok says, “But you would take care of me.”

He doesn’t entirely know what to say to this, doesn’t want to deny it, but he is not about to attest to it either, so he keeps silent, his fingers tapping at the surface of the bar top in the same rapid beat with which his heart slams against his chest, or at least it feels like it.

Hoseok sighs, turns his head away from Jungkook to observe, but does not spare himself an eyeroll before he focuses on the plethora of people that crowd in Yoongi’s penthouse. “What about her?” he juts his chin towards a girl who sleazes her eyes over Jungkook quite pointedly and Hoseok figures he can get her to do what he wants even in this state.

Jungkook traces his gaze towards the girl Hoseok references, meets her eyes and then immediately sees her startlingly white teeth as her tongue coats over them. He averts his attention. “No,” he says simply.

Hoseok arches a brow. “No?” Jungkook nods and he keeps nodding, small bobs of his head, before he catches himself doing it and stops. “She’s fit.”

“She’s short,” Jungkook declares. He watches his fingers tap.

Hoseok’s nose screws. “Since when do you give a fuck about height? Won’t change the fact she might be tight.”

Jungkook groans, buries his fingers in the front of his hair and latches them around a strand, pulls at it to see how it would feel. “Don’t rhyme, hyung. It hurts my head.”

“Jungkook—”

“Now,” he says, “since now. I care since now. I want a redhead.”

Hoseok’s brows arch skeptically onto his creased forehead. “A redhead?”

“Yes,” Jungkook nods. His legs shake a tiny bit, knees coming together before they go apart. “I want to fuck someone, I want to fuck a girl whose hair is red,” he states with hurried conviction. “I would also like a shot.” As soon as the idea sparks in him, he raises his hand, snaps his fingers and has a shot in front of him in a couple of moments, and the eyes of a weary bartended sliding over him for less than a second. Choosing this particular surface to prop Yoongi’s snuff mirror on is borderline genius, he thinks.

He grips the shot, throws his head back and pours it down his throat. A little bit of the liquid slides down his tongue before he swallows it, and he seeks the burn of its taste, but his buds have frozen, feel numb, and he only gets the heat of alcohol when it settles in his chest. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his wrist.

“There is no one with red hair here, Jungkook.”

“Fine,” Jungkook grumbles. He’s grumbling, he’s petulant, but he feels fucking good. His body tingles, fingers shake, and he senses it to be borderline amazing though his mind is running, runs, runs, runs, at some crazy miles an hour which he cannot determine. “Someone with a real nice ass then,” he insists. Yes, that’s a must for tonight. “Round,” he says, “perky.”

“Okay,” Hoseok nods.

“Have you ever seen how bony Julia’s ass is, God, there’s literally nothing to hold.I want to put my hand on something, you know? I want to, I want to—” what does he want, he was going somewhere with this, he swears.

“Yes,” Hoseok says, “but she’s Julia,” he emphasizes as if it means something, as if it means everything,

Jungkook scowls. “And I’m Jungkook,” he responds. “And you’re Hoseok hyung. And I want to fuck someone with a nice ass.”

He says that, keeps saying that, but no one is fucking good enough, not one ass that night captures his attention, his attention which is everywhere, so he keeps saying it to Hoseok all night long and then he passes out at one of Yoongi’s chaise lounges and Yoongi puts sunglasses on him and some sun scream before he puts some on himself and lies on the chaise lounge next to him.

The sound induces some anxiety and a reflex for Taehyung to pick up a lengthy umbrella on the way as he takes tentative steps towards his front door, because a) no one has come in through the front door in at least a couple of years and b) no one has ever knocked before they’d entered.

Not that the sound produced on the door is actual knocking. It’s a lot closer to the definition of banging, rapid and incessant on the fragile surface of the Kim’s wooden door that makes winters cold and summers scorch. The nature of the sound only serves to pick up his heart rate further, when he’d just been comfortably taking advantage of the free house, still in his work clothes, sans a belt, socks, and his tie, playing video games that were supposedly for Woojin on the couch.

When he does open the door and steps back a little with his umbrella readied, his heart rate spirals out of control. He freezes in the position he takes, and he runs his eyes over the guest, a double take, a triple take, and he still feels the ridiculous cartoon-movie need to rub his eyes to check if he perceives reality or he has taken to hallucinations because of too many video games.  

Because certainly Jeon Jungkook cannot be standing at his door. Taehyung, if he had to bet, would quite confidently venture a guess that he has not even heard of the neighborhood Taehyung lives in, let alone that he pays the occasional visit. Taehyung stares at him, dumbfounded, eyes wide, lips parted, as if he’s an apparition of some sort and he simply must be, because a Jeon would consider even the air in this area too unworthy to breathe, the ground too dirty to walk on with Louis Vuitton shoes.

But someone that looks strikingly alike Jungkook leans his arm at the edge of his doorframe and looks mind-numbingly relaxed while he’s at it. He dresses like Jungkook, brand names labeling all of his clothes, and he carries the same ambiance as him, smells like him, which is a scent Taehyung does not want to admit he recognizes, but he does, it’s inscribed in his memory painfully, attached to instances, to moments, he cannot allow himself to think about. The guy’s eyes slither across Taehyung’s body under a skeptically arched brow, as he stands holding the umbrella with confusion outlined on his features and Taehyung feels his heart palpitate in that very familiar way that only Jungkook can evoke. 

He straightens up. “Can I come in?” He sounds like him as well.

Taehyung feels rather eloquent when all he can produce as he lowers the umbrella and Jungkook brushes past him without waiting for an actual permission is the exclamation of, “What the fuck?”

Jungkook steps past the threshold of his house as if he has been cordially invited. Taehyung angles his body sideways to let him through without allowing his shoulder to brush his chest, because quite frankly, his presence scares him. He has not laid an eye on Jungkook for about a week and a half, because he has not been in vicinity for the time being.  The last time he saw him was beneath that shower and ever since Jungkook has been AWOL, nowhere to be seen, not at the Ozone, certainly not at Rouge. If Taehyung didn’t know any better, he’d assume Jungkook was specifically going out of his way to avoid him. He’d been about ready to be petty about it, certainly not enjoying how he went to work every single day with the anxiety of potentially seeing him again, and not knowing how to fully act if he does appear. He knows he has no specific right to act out in any way, but it does not remove the frustration from overthinking and planning and then wretchedly feeling ridiculously disappointed when another day passes without Jungkook.

When he settles on an attitude of sheer pettiness, he only knows how to apply it on a waiter-client basis in the frame of his mind. He certainly has never pre-imagined a situation in which Jungkook comes to his house, without any warning whatsoever. Not that were he warned, Taehyung would heed it, as simply it strikes him as a plot of some alternate universe.

“I can’t be home right now and Hoseok and Yoongi can’t know,” Jungkook speaks as he walks in, his eyes scanning the space he ventures into, head tilting in all directions.There’s something slightly different to his voice. Taehyung thinks he moves his tongue too quickly. Jungkook turns to look at him hover at the door, the door he refuses to close, because he refuses to accept Jungkook will actually linger. He looks at him pointedly, expressively. It’s so uncommon.  “And it’s ridiculously easy to find out your address, wow, this is a shithole.”

“Jungkook,” Taehyung says as he finally gives the door a push and hears it snap shut. He ignores the fact Jungkook found his address, is not too surprised it’s out there, considering, flattens his expression slightly at the very much unnecessary comment about his house, but remains surprisingly unbothered by it, which he largely justifies with the fact it is entirely unsurprising. He slips the umbrella back into place. “Are you alright?” He isn’t, he can’t be, if he’s here. Something must have gone horribly awry on a neural, synaptic level for Jungkook to have made the decision to seek out Taehyung’s house and enter it.

“Don’t know,” Jungkook shrugs and he’s fucking restless with the way he marches off to different corners of Taehyung’s living room, “haven’t snorted that much coke in a while.”

“Jungkook—"

“Christ,” he interrupts with some questionable passion and charges wide eyes at Taehyung for a moment before he allows them to continue their rapid exploration of the room, which he regards as if it is extraterrestrial,“how do you commute every day? I’d move in fucking Rouge if I were you.”

“Jungkook,” Taehyung tries to get his attention again, walking towards him and taking a toy figurine that he bought for Woojin out of Jungkook’s unwelcome grip. He tries to look at his face, because when has Jungkook ever moved with such borderline childish energy, tries to find his eyes, but as soon as he meets them, they are gone, scrutinizing every bit of the space. “What about Julia?” he asks, because why would he come here, even if Yoongi and Hoseok are not an option, surely Taehyung’s fucking house is not the next best place.

“Julia?” Jungkook contemplates somewhat animatedly. He’s incredibly chatty, tone light and lifted. He’s peculiarly breezy and it bothers Taehyung how out of character it is. He has no preconception on how to deal with this Jungkook, and just how much cocaine did he snort. “Julia’s in Paris. She wanted a pain au chocolat. Really craved it, she says.”

“Oh,” Taehyung says. He glances down at the toy he now he fingers anxiously. He acknowledges, “she’s gone.”

Jungkook does rest his gaze on him then, now that Taehyung is not looking. He skids his eyes over him, dropping them to watch the way slender fingers toy with the figurine. “She wanted me to come with.”

Taehyung’s eyes lift to his face, but Jungkook’s remain entranced on the digits that twirl around the piece of plastic. “But you didn’t,” Taehyung says and mostly, it’s a pointless statement. For a moment Jungkook’s gaze slides upwards and Taehyung can see the width of his dilated pupils before he takes them away.

“No, I’m off carbs,” he dismisses. “I have to say I did not picture the Kim residence like that.”

Taehyung’s brows shoot up on his forehead. It creases. “The Kim residence?” There is some humor in his voice as he repeats questioningly. He’s weirdly entertained by the phrase, by the way Jungkook says it as if he means humor, which is just as bizarre as the very fact he is physically inside the Kim residence.

“Yeah,” Jungkook nods. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and taps the tip of his forefinger on his chin and Taehyung has genuinely never seen this much expression on his features if it is not formulated in a threat. “Looks quite homely,” he shrugs and then shifts a pointed look to Taehyung. “Still a shithole, though. It could use a renovation.”

Taehyung’s features dull as he returns Woojin’s toy to its rightful place. He expects himself to be more bothered by such comments, by the very fact that something as expensive as Jungkook is inside his, admittedly, shithole of a house, an exposure to his monetary vulnerability, perfectly placing himself in the position to judge and to mock. “I barely have enough money to pay rent,” Taehyung says because he struggled and sacrificed his sensibility to replace a single stove. He’s not about to do a fucking episode of Fixer Upper because Jungkook suddenly decided visiting times are open.

Jungkook’s face shifts to something that is more familiar to Taehyung. A smirk graces his features, though his pupils are wide enough for the glint in them to appear different. It could be only that, or it could be intention as well, but Taehyung is sure it must be only the former. “Yeah?” his lips curl. “Want some?” and then, so very casually, with half a shrug, he adds, “You could always suck my cock.”

An unbidden color coats Taehyung’s cheeks as his eyes roll, a sigh immediately ripped from his chest, his mouth, and he does not know precisely where he attempts to go – he cannot escape him in his own house -- but he does mean to walk away from him, the slight concern, drastically unwarranted, dwindling from his awareness of Jungkook. He manages a step and a half past him before Jungkook’s body twists to follow his motion and his fingers, warm, latch securely around his wrist and tug him back, tug him closer.

“Wait,” Jungkook says as his hand briefly trails after Taehyung before he pulls him back and Taehyung falls into a position that is literal inches before him. “I didn’t mean that.” His eyes find Taehyung for a moment and he dares to simulate exasperation, “Don’t get offended on me.”

Taehyung’s eyes land on the grip Jungkook perpetuates, his thumb sliding lightly across the apple of his palm before he follows the gaze to where they touch, and he releases him. Taehyung sighs again, sighs differently, tiredly, before he glances upwards and allows himself to study Jungkook’s face again. “Why can’t you go home?” he asks softly.

He’s conflicted. He does not necessarily want Jungkook to leave, but he doesn’t want him there either, in his home, in his comfort zone, still acting and holding himself with utmost confidence even if the coke makes him peculiarly bubbly. He says a lot, yes, more than he usually would, but he does not show much more than he typically does and the frustration of lost communication, of his reticence characteristically grained into a cool neutrality now animated into chatter, remains.

He does not understand why Jungkook is there and he hopelessly wants to.

Jungkook pries his eyes away. He takes a step, another and he hovers around the couch Taehyung was sitting on when he was so rudely interrupted. “Clo needs to have the house,” Jungkook says with absolutely no semblance of being actually informative. “Can I sit?”

“Erm,” Taehyung hesitates, lingering at the other side of his coffee table. He crosses his arms. He has never expected Jungkook to ask him for permission for anything, let alone twice in one day and incidentally, this time he actually waits for a response. Taehyung swallows around it, for some reason it strains to leave his throat, “yes.”

Jungkook easily drops back onto the couch, bouncing once onto it as if he is testing it and he looks around again, his head finding what the furniture faces, and his features deform with something in the midst of horror and confusion. He lifts a finger to indicate and he only lets the horror seep into his voice as he asks, “What is that?”

Taehyung scans his eyes across the room to find what could possibly evoke such a reaction, moving subconsciously closer in effort to narrow his line of vision with Jungkook’s. His voice is dead with his reply when he recognizes Jungkook could only be pointing to one object. He blinks at his guest. “A TV.”

Jungkook leans back into the couch, placing his ankle on top of his knee and for some reason Taehyung looks at his socks, and God even they look as if they are too much of a luxury to exist in this neighborhood. He relaxes a single arm on the length of the back of the couch. His posture annoys Taehyung. Were the places reversed and on some unthinkable instant Taehyung ventured into Jungkook’s home, he’d probably not make it past his infamous marble hallway without asking verbal permission to take a step further.

“Ancient,” Jungkook notes and Taehyung groans.

He takes the one step necessary to reach and plops himself down onto the couch too, a hand running through his hair. He makes a point to sit on a separate cushion, but he angles his body towards Jungkook nevertheless and looks at him. “Seriously,” he says, “why can’t you just go home?”

Jungkook clicks hit tongue. “Can’t,” is all he delivers.

“Why?”

He does not look at Taehyung, gives him the side of his face so all Taehyung is allowed to notice is the pull of his jaw, the muscle at the edge of it ticking by his ear. “She feels crowded,” he says, voice smaller, quicker. He gets it out as if it physically pains his lips to formulate the words. His tongue pokes out, skims as his lips, “She just needs Seokjin right now.”

“What?” Taehyung asks, his brows furrowing, body involuntary edging forward as he attempts to catch a glimpse of Jungkook’s expression. There’s something tangibly ominous about the way he only delivers bits and pieces of information with a heaviness not akin to him. It gives rise to an awaking concern within Taehyung that he prays to chase away, but it tangles dangerously with his everlasting curiosity and it is a stimulating combination. “Why?”

Jungkook pauses. He adjusts his position, gets both feet flat on the floor now, knees spreading, just so he could lean on them to secure his expression as even less visible. “He helps her when she gets like this,” he says, speaks fast, jaw unhinging and tongue dancing at the relief of his teeth as he stretches out a silence when he formulates words in his mind, “when she panics. I used to help her best, but now he helps her better, and she’s better off with one person.”

“She gets attacks?” Taehyung is asking before he really gives himself time to think it is intrusive. He certainly would not be answering those questions readily if they were falling from Jungkook’s lips in relation to him, so really, he does not expect much of an answer.

He gets more than he would bet on, though it is much more typically laconic. He gets a shrug. He gets a mumble of, “Sometimes.”

Jeon Clo Eun gets panic attacks. Perfect, composed, sculptured in every aspect, cruel and beautiful, Clo Eun who is a Jeon and who always appears so utterly ethereal, who can get men of all ages on their knees. Clo Eun who is a prodigy at the violin and has whispers in the musical world about her from professionals who do not give a damn about the name attached to her but are still capable of acknowledging her potential for classical prowess. Jeon Clo Eun who is Jungkook’s sister. Stone cold Jeon Clo Eun who is a Taunting Twin. She gets panic attacks.

“That’s—” Taehyung begins and with that he ends. He does not know what to say, how to express what he is thinking because quite frankly he does not consider his shock that her perfection is imperfect appropriate. He wants to say sorry, but he is very consciously aware sorry is a piece of shit word to say when it comes to this. Sorry sounds insincere, stupid, textbook, not something he would want to hear about Ji-woo if he’d share something like this about her. What Taehyung settles for is just as stupid and meaningless, because all Taehyung manages to get out into the air between them is a short, “oh,” a dumbfounded exclamation of realization.

Taehyung doesn’t know much about panic attacks, but he knows more often than not they do not spiral out of thin air. They carry a history and carry a meaning. Taehyung forgets sometimes, that the Jeons can hurt as well.

Jungkook turns his head, turns it for barely a moment, and Taehyung does not manage to catch much, but what he does detect is that Jungkook has receded back into something more guarded than before, but it feels less cold than it typically does. It feels as if it is not for the sake of instilling a sensation into Taehyung, not a flash of reticent superiority, but for the sake of shielding Jungkook himself. “You don’t have to say shit,” he tells him, and he turns his face to his own hands which meet between his knees. He prods at his ring, slips it off of his finger before he rolls it on again and Taehyung’s eyes are hopelessly drawn to the motion of it as well. “It’s okay. She gets better,” he twirls the ring around his second knuckle. His gaze roots to it as if it necessitates his dedicated concentration. “Just needs him to tell her he loves her.”

Taehyung must have lost his sense of a filter because he allows words to slip too easily, “Can’t you?” he asks. “Don’t you?”

The only thing that Taehyung has in his life that he knows he can count on are his own siblings. He’d thought it was all of them, thought he could count on Namjoon as much as he would allow Namjoon to lean on him, and for him, he’d bend over backwards. He assigned to him a security he is too careful to entrust into people because people are fluid, they change. But maybe Namjoon simply did not love him as much as Taehyung loves Namjoon. He loves Ji-woo, he loves Woojin.

Taehyung does not know if Jungkook is capable of love.

Jungkook’s eyes snap to his and they don’t glare, but they do recapture some of his more characteristic intensity that makes Taehyung fidget. “Love her?” he says, and his voice is hard for the duration of the question before his gaze reseals to the motion of his own fingers and it softens, lowers, “Love her more than anything else, but it’s been getting harder to prove.” He straightens a bit. “He does it well, he calms her.” He shrugs. “It’s fine.” He shrugs.

Taehyung feels a desire prod at him to press further, see how much he would give, but it is almost palpable how he closes off more and more with every atypical shrug. He shifts his curiosity in another direction.

“Why can’t Yoongi and Hoseok know?” he asks because he is more comfortable intruding into his relationship with his labeled friends than venturing into the territory of his family. Maybe he projects his own sensitivity on the subject onto Jungkook, maybe he just feels his in the rising tension of his posture.

Jungkook leans back into the couch again, turning his whole head around to look at Taehyung with the confidence of insouciance that securely erases any and all affect from his features and allows them to flatten into a slightly hostile boredom. “You ask a lot of fucking questions, don’t you?”

Taehyung gives a short scoff. His eyes narrow and he is pointed. “You came to my house.”

The other’s head falls back, the whole of his throat exposed and Taehyung’s gaze graces over it, white and pale, untouched, while his still has a single dwindling mark to remind him of Jungkook’s touch. “Yeah,” he notes slow and meaningless. “What do you do around here?”

Taehyung watches him for a moment, stares at his jaded eyes as they comfortably fall on his face and just dart all over. Taehyung feels a sort of defensive animosity that could easily be cause of the simplicity of Jungkook’s very presence in his house, which conceptually is more unnerving than he feels it to be, but he senses it grow with the frustration of Jungkook letting him have a taste of sincerity before slipping into a Jeon, and then immediately recede with a peculiar tug of pity.

Taehyung looks away and allows the enmity of his own eyes to dissipate. “Well, when my family is out –”

Jungkook’s brows lift. “Your family is out?”  

He nods. He honestly does not know how either Jungkook or he would have explained his presence to Ji-woo had she been there, but in earnest Jungkook would probably not have made it past the door if she were. “My brother’s at a sleepover,” Taehyung says. He pauses, ponders, a quick poke of his tongue at his lips. “My sister’s at a different kind of a sleepover.”

Jungkook does not shift a muscle, relaxed onto the back of the couch, his body almost slacked in a posture not entirely as graceful as himself. “So, it’s true, she is a slut.”

Taehyung’s eyes snap to him, flashing with an offended warning. His teeth click together as he pronounces his name, “Jungkook –"

“What?” Jungkook interjects and lets his palms fall on the cushions of the couch around him. “There’s nothing bad about it.” He uses them to prop himself up and sit a little straighter, but his eyes do not shift away from Taehyung’s face. “I’m kind of a slut, if you haven’t noticed, fuck pretty boys when I should be fucking my girlfriend.”

Taehyung has his lips parted and tongue readied to snap, but instead his jaw slackens. He goes blank for a moment, keeps his glare firm on Jungkook. He has no proper response formulating as his mouth clicks and his blood rushes at the fact Jungkook would as much as mention it after disappearing for a week and a half. Jungkook confuses Taehyung, confuses the fuck out of him and he frustrates him, and angers him, and turns him on and makes him goddamn curious about Jungkook and about his own self, and he simply doesn’t know what to do with that.

So he turns his head away, looks at the TV, answers his previous question, “I was playing video games” He adjusts on the couch, puts the ankle of one leg underneath the thigh of the other. “You interrupted me.”

Jungkook’s head cocks. “Video games?” his voice lilts lightly.

“Are you going to insult that about me as well?” Taehyung says dully.

“No, actually…” he fully straightens now. He pauses, so visibly hesitates. “What were you playing?”

Confuses him. Taehyung frowns. Jungkook is the most perplexing individual he has ever met. Taehyung is almost cautious as he pauses, mulls over the potential repercussions of answering such a simple, easy question.  “…Overwatch.”

He does not know what to expect as a reaction, but he certainly did not imagine Jungkook would perk up. But he does. His eyes grow a tiny bit wider, brows shoot up and lips press together appreciatively. “Really?” he quirks. “Shit. I haven’t played in months.”

Taehyung blinks. “You play Overwatch?”

And the pattern begins again. Perfect Jeon Jungkook, stone cold, untouchable, unattainable, underground fighter Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook who is so constantly and pointedly bored because he cannot be seen entertained by the peasantry of those around him, who spends his pastime snorting coke and fucking girls (and Taehyung, maybe), and knocking people out. Taunting Twin Jungkook plays fucking video games.

It’s such a normal thing to do. Taehyung doesn’t only forget Jeons can get hurt. He forgets sometimes they’re people as well and can’t only fill their time with being rich and being pricks.

Still, how does Jeon Jungkook play fucking Overwatch?

Jungkook adjusts on the couch and he scoffs a bit, speaks with a bitterness that is not reserved for this conversation, “Not since someone cracked my rib once and my father blamed it on video game overdose and not the fact the guy was double my size.”

Taehyung’s eyes dart across Jungkook as he takes his face away from him with that final adjustment on the cushion. He doesn’t have anything to say to this as well, though he doesn’t figure voicing the slight pity that reemerges and thwarts his attempt to give way to the distaste at having Jungkook in his house, but he simply cannot find in himself as desperately as he searches for it.

He flicks his brows up even if Jungkook isn’t looking at him anymore. “Want to play?”

“Fuck, yes.”

Taehyung stands up, gets a second joystick, sits back, unintentionally sits a bit closer on the cushion next to him as he holds the joystick close to his lap to take it to him. Jungkook takes it as if the two of them can on any level be truly casual.

The game loads. Taehyung licks his lips, hesitates. Then he speaks. “So, your father knows you fight illegally?”

The game starts.

“Oh, he’s a fan,” Jungkook laces the words in a sour irony. “He doesn’t much care for the word illegal. It’s explaining my injuries at luncheons and gatherings that bothers him, mostly.”

There’s something about the attention of both of them being reserved entirely on the flashing screen that makes thinking less enough for the conversation to have some peculiar flow that is almost ordinary.

“That’s shit,” Taehyung states, genuinely.

“Yeah,” Jungkook grumbles out. His thumbs move on the joystick easily. “Being rich is not always a walk in the park, either, Kim.” He gives him a side glance short enough to smirk with the sound of his family name.

Taehyung’s eyes roll. “Yeah?” he clicks on his joystick passionately. “I’ve actually heard your father is the biggest piece of shit in all of Richhood.” His pupils dart to the side and return immediately to the screen. “No offense.”

Jungkook remains focused on the TV. “None taken. Your sister is entitled to think he’s a piece of shit.”

“She?” Taehyung’s brows crease. His head shifts for a moment long enough to see Jungkook nod. “Why?”

Jungkook’s teeth find his lip and maybe it’s in concentration. “Don’t you talk?”

Taehyung shrugs. He feels a compulsion to look at Jungkook, but the motion on the screen is gripping enough for now. “We used to,” he confesses, “Now, not much more than you and your sister do, I suppose.” He says it, pauses, thinks. Jungkook does not reply, not immediately, and his eyes seek him out. “Sorry, I—"

“It’s fine,” Jungkook interrupts. There’s a part of him that inexplicably wants for someone Taehyung trusts, someone like his sister, to stress to Taehyung just how much of a piece of shit his father is, so that he knows for sure that Jungkook means it when he says his father would be the type of person to slice of that which dictates him a man if he knew the last few times Jungkook fucked his own girlfriend who has been accredited as the perfect woman he thought about Taehyung. “God,” Jungkook exhales a bit as the game loads for a moment again and Taehyung looks at him feel the controller around in his hands, staring down at it with a somewhat innocent hint of fascination that manages to break through the walls he now builds. “I haven’t held a joystick in so long.” He glances up. “I’ll still beat your ass, though.”

The game has loaded. Taehyung scoffs, his head shaking as he sits more comfortably, leans on his knees to give the TV the full concentration it deserves. “No chance, rich boy,” he clicks his tongue. “All the time you’ve spend licking ass at luncheons I’ve spent practicing.” And the game has started. “I’ll own your ass.”

Jungkook reciprocates the scoff, furnishes it with a tug of his lips, a smirk that is somehow crafted and not warranted, a smirk that is for the sake of conversation. “Please,” he stresses. “I already own yours,” He says and Taehyung presses on a button with his thumb much too hard and the joystick almost slips from his hands, but he firms his grip at the last moment. “Allow yourself some self-respect and keep your mouth shut before you embarrass yourself.”

Another loading screen and Taehyung’s eyes are back on Jungkook, always on Jungkook as the both of them sit on his couch, the couch of the Kim Residence in mirroring gaming postures swearing they’ll beat each other’s asses on a game.

And Jungkook’s head snaps to him, “What?”

Taehyung blinks, pauses. “What?”

Jungkook’s chin juts at him a little. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Like what, Taehyung wants to say, but he doesn’t because he already knows his eyes are a bit too wide, and his lips part when they don’t need to. So instead of preserving an attitude, he simply says softly, he voices his thoughts, “You look so fucking out of place here.”

“Yeah?” Jungkook indicates with his whole face, with his brows, his tongue poking in his cheek and then his attention returns on the screen because the game has loaded. But Taehyung just keeps looking at him, at the protruding skin and flesh at the side of his face as his tongue prods at it from the inside. His mouth seals shut, and he takes a brief moment. “I don’t feel that out of place.”

Taehyung loses the next game.

Taehyung does not know how much time passes, but it feels incredibly short when the alarm on his phone goes off and then another sound rings around from the room under the stairs. He reaches for his phone to shut it off which, incidentally, is between the cushions of the couch on the other side of Jungkook. He aims for it so reflexively he does not factor in it will demand for his body to layer and hover over Jungkook’s lap as his fingers feel around for the device. Jungkook leans back, stares at the screen and Taehyung stares at it as well before he clicks the one button necessary for the phone to shut up and he discards it again somewhere on the soft surface.

Taehyung’s straightens up and stands and if reaching over Jungkook’s lap so casually is a transgression of some sort neither of them addresses it. “Laundry’s done,” he says in justification.

Jungkook’s forehead creases. “Laundry?”

“Yeah?” Taehyung nods, widens his eyes on purpose as he animatedly explains, rotating his forefinger in the air to simulate the motion of a washing machine. “You know that thing that gets your clothes clean.”

Jungkook glowers at him, though it holds little of the typical intensity of a Jungkook glare. “I know what laundry is, Taehyung.”

Taehyung is walking towards the room where the washing machine and the drier are situated and surprisingly, Jungkook gets up to follow. “Good then,” Taehyung directs behind his back, “you’re not completely imbecilic.”

He saunters in and Jungkook leans at the doorframe of the inexistent door because there hardly is enough room for Taehyung and the laundry basket he keeps on top of the washer, let alone the both of them, inside. He crosses his arms as relaxes the side of his bicep onto the wood. “Careful,” he says, eyeing Taehyung as he kneels in front of the drier.

“Why?” Taehyung says and he feels humor but speaks flat. “Thought I was too pretty for you to break my face,” he challenges just a little snidely. He allows his eyes to meet Jungkook’s under strands of his bangs, a stilted playfulness residing there to be masked over by dullness.

Jungkook shrugs as Taehyung piles clothes in his basket. “You have a lot of bones.”

“Okay,” Taehyung says as he shuts the door of the drier and puts the basket on top to have space to straighten up, “but I need them to do laundry, so please, refrain.”

“Can’t you do it later?” he asks, but there are not enough drugs in the world for him to add,because I want to play video games with you now.

“No,” Taehyung says and looks at him as he speaks, tries to articulate his point with his features as well as if he is partaking in a completely normal conversation, “clothes were in the drier. It will start to stink, water comes back down the pipe and gets the fabric wet again and keeping it in a closed space is not pretty. “

“That’s information I will forget,” Jungkook informs him as Taehyung refocuses to inspect the clothes for any missing socks.

“Doesn’t suit you to know it, anyway,” he mutters to him as he feels around the basket and scowls down at some moist fabric that brushes his skin. “Shit,” he breathes through his nose, some underlying exasperation, “half of those are still fucking wet.”

Jungkook taps a finger on his forearm, raises his eyebrows. “Need a new machine?”

Taehyung’s head snaps to him, his eyes growing immediately wide and the exasperation is anything but underlying now. “If you tell me to suck your cock, I swear—"

“I wasn’t,” Jungkook interjects, but he is smirking, and Taehyung does not know what Jungkook would have suggested exactly, but he is certain he would have not liked the sound of it. Maybe the feel of it, yes, but that’s a whole other story outside of the frame of any sort of payment.

Taehyung slumps his shoulders as he places both his hands on the handles of the basket. “I need to sort these out,” he tells Jungkook. “Upstairs.”

He secures the basket in his grip and pushes past Jungkook, who angles his body easily to let him slip through, trailing his attention after him.

“Okay,” he replies and uncrosses his arms, extends a motioning hand in front of Taehyung in a way that is ridiculously gentlemanly, and Taehyung wants to roll his eyes, “lead the way.”

He glances at him. “You’re coming?”

When Taehyung turns and walks, Jungkook follows with a shrug. “Want to see more of the Kim residence.”

“Fine,” Taehyung says with a careful glance behind his back as he leads him to the kitchen. “Don’t trust you to leave you here, anyway.”

Jungkook captures his eyes for the short amount of time he gives them to him and accompanies the contact with another small smirk. “When have I ever given you a reason not to trust me?”

Taehyung almost chokes on the snort that follows as he pauses on the bottom of his stairs because it is unsafe to be walking up and processing Jungkook’s last joke at the same time. Taehyung allows all of the incredulity he contemplates into his expression as he shakes his head and starts up. “Coke makes you fucking weird.”

Jungkook shrugs as he trails behind. “Sometimes.”

Taehyung tries hard not to be entertained as he climbs up. “Mind the second step,” he warns.

“Renovate,” Jungkook says.

“Fuck you,” he replies, realizes the door he’s opened at the second the words depart his mouth and he turns at the top of the stairs, sliding a momentary glare towards him to see the clear intention on his face as he glances at it. “Don’t say anything.”

Jungkook raises his brows, once, twice, the smirk secured on his face, but he does remain silent as Taehyung walks the two steps required to reach the room Woojin and him share.

“Is that your room?” Jungkook asks as he ventures in, eyes scanning the space immediately. Taehyung strolls over to the closet and cracks the door opened, settling the basket on the lower bunk that is right next to it.

“Yeah,” he says, his focus on the laundry, as he tries to swallow down some peculiar nervousness that settles in his stomach and the hollow of his chest. He has not had anyone in his room in literal years, not since he was a child, and he realizes the room itself tells more than he would like to. It’s been the same ever since he was born, the furniture inside of it as well, and each sticker on the doors of the closet, the walls, the scratches onto wood is a piece of memorabilia by itself. There are stickers from a variety of his and Namjoon’s anime phases, a few too many Naruto ones on the window sill. There are toys he used to play with that now Woojin uses. There are the lines that Woojin makes on the desks of the top bunk with his math’s compasses to count the days for which their father disappears.

There is no way for Jungkook to know the meaning of those lines, to understand their treacherous vulnerability, to know that Taehyung counts them as well when he tells Woojin goodnight, but he still feels overly aware of the corners of this room which are usually privy to him and his family alone now exposed to Jungkook’s eyes and he does not shy away from taking, gaze exploring.

Taehyung focuses on laundry because he cannot look at Jungkook look.

“That’s a fucking bunk bed,” Jungkook says as if its existence offends him and tosses himself onto the double bed propped by the window, adjusting both pillows to hold his head up.

“Saves space,” Taehyung shrugs as he folds some of the clothing that doesn’t need ironing.

Jungkook taps a palm on the cover sheet he lies on as he fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Who gets the double?”

“Namjoon.”

There’s a pause and Jungkook’s eyes lift from the screen they’ve newly found to glance at Taehyung who proceeds to sort out fabrics. “Oh.”

“Think you’re the first person to lie down on it since he left,” Taehyung confesses more for his sake than to be informative to Jungkook. He shifts his gaze to the other as his fingers fumble with a sock that has attached to a t-shirt. It seems nearly unnatural to have someone lay on Namjoon’s bed, let alone the likes of Jeon Jungkook.

Jungkook’s brows lift a bit into his forehead and he shifts, straightening, “Are you waiting for me to get up?”

Taehyung shakes his head, returns his attention to the clothes. “No, it’s fine.” He starts on the socks, placing a pair together and rolling it into a well held up tight ball.

Jungkook’s brows go further up towards his hair and his nose scrunches. “The fuck are you doing?”

Taehyung is just as confused as Jungkook appears. “Sorting out clothes?”

Jungkook readjusts the pillows underneath him for a second time. A third. Fucking picky. “That’s how you fold socks?” he says, exclaims almost.

Taehyung shakes his head, sighs, chases away the small smile that attempts to tug at his lips. “Of course, you don’t even know how to fold fucking socks.”

“Hey,” Jungkook says, his returning to the glaring device in his hand as he speaks, “you don’t know how to tie a tie. I don’t know how to fold socks. I don’t know how to work a laundry machine. You don’t know how to knock a guy out.” Taehyung glances at him, but he is firmly set on typing a message. “To each their own.”

Taehyung has little to say to that. He does not really want to verbally agree with Jungkook on anything, figures it useless. The day has been conceptually traumatizing enough. He allows the words to linger in the air and returns to his folding, lets Jungkook adjust the pillow for the nth time.

He gives him his back, reserves his whole attention to his closet, so he fails to see the fatal readjustment. All he is aware of next is that Jungkook’s shuffling on the bed, but then he is not, he is on his feet.

“What is this,Taehyung?” And it is his voice, so familiar, so much more like the Jungkook he knows that makes Taehyung spin with alertness not the memory that he is a forgetful idiot.

No, that only comes when his eyes land on the object that Jungkook’s got in his hand, the one he himself put under Namjoon’s pillow earlier this week because he knows it is the only place in the whole house that is secure from Woojin’s wandering hands and Ji-woo’s inspections. The object he’d desperately wanted to remain secret that now resides most comfortably in Jungkook’s raised hand.

Jungkook who is capable of some striking duality as moments ago he appeared so normal, a bit petulant, weirdly chill, playing games and marveling at sock folding skills, now glares, poised. His whole posture is different, stiffer, tighter. He is much more underground fighter Jeon Jungkook, rich ass prick Jungkook than he is the guy who plays video games.

“Shit,” Taehyung drops a sock back in the basket and reaches for it, but Jungkook raises his hand up and back as if he is preventing a child from getting its toy, “put it down.”

Taehyung tries to get it again, but it necessitates contact with Jungkook’s body. He would have to lean a hand on his chest to keep balance if he reaches for it, so his efforts are futile, yet the space between them is still erased in Taehyung’s mindless endeavor to take it from him. His skin is flaring. His heart thumps and, god, he wants to fucking hide. It’s granted that Jungkook’s presence in his house should induce some embarrassment, but he expected it to be more a consequence of Jungkook further focusing on the fact it is a shithole than this and honestly, he’d rather take Jungkook by the hand and show him every place in which this house falls apart but this.

Jungkook’s jaw is tighter now. His words articulate careful and hard, puncture through Taehyung’s skull. “That’s fucking lube.”

Taehyung swallows, his hand still up in the air, but it falls, drops, it’s hopeless. He means to take a step back but Jungkook just takes it with him, trails forward, and they’re still inches apart. “Yes, I –”

“Who the fuck do you need lube for?” Jungkook seethes and Taehyung still wants to back away, but he has Jungkook’s free hand, the one that does not hold his idiocy on glaring display, has the fingers on the other one searing into the flesh of his forearm and holding him in place.

Taehyung tries to look away, formulate a proper sentence as his lips hang opened around unspoken words, but Jungkook does not allow him much of that as well, tugging at the arm he holds to keep his undivided attention to himself. Taehyung’s running fingers through his bangs, pushing them back, opening his forehead and then his eyes, stares at his bare feet and Jungkook’s fancy shoes and then looks up, meets that glare with something imploring, with an underlying beg of fucking drop it,“Myself,” Taehyung confesses,“okay?”

Jungkook’s fingers tighten and relax onto his arm. Their pupils seek each other out in a searching game of darting around that starts to feel as if they have an invisible string attaching them together. “Yourself?”

Taehyung takes a deep breath in attempt to exhale some of the embarrassment that bundles in his chest, but it simply does not work. “Yes,” he strains out.

“Just you,” Jungkook elaborates, eyes compelling and voice an oxymoronic mixture of soft hardness.

Taehyung’s tongue pokes at his lips; they feel dry and his throat feels impossibly so as well. “Just me,” he promises. His lids tremble on top of his eyes, fluttering over his pupils as he falters, “I – wanted to try something after…” he trails off, sucks his lower lip into his mouth, “your fight.”

“Try something?” Jungkook’s eyes drop, watch Taehyung’s teeth violate his pillowed lips.

“Yes,” Taehyung gulps, the other’s gaze observing the bob of his throat, the almost unnoticeable mark next to it there unrecognizable for what it is anymore, except Jungkook knows. The fingers on his arm feel heavy and he tries to pull away.

Jungkook allows him to lose his grip but makes him regret it immediately because he replaces his hand on his waist instead, fingers snidely slipping in the gap between his elbow and his body and sealing into the curve above his hip where his palm settles as if it belongs. Jungkook has got a bit too used to holding him like he would a woman when he wants his attention. “Try what?”

The motion of it brings him closer and now Taehyung instinctively reaches, places a palm on hard chest to keep a distance he desperately requires right now, because Jungkook’s eyes are charged now, a tension rising from seemingly thin air. He looks away, looks at the floor, protects the vulnerability of his blush from the invasive, intense eyes – they’re shameless. They always take so much and give so little. “Jungkook,” Taehyung says simply, but it rings like a plea. drop this, drop this, drop this.

His fingers cling a little more than he intends at the fabric of his shirt.

“Just tell me,” Jungkook coaxes in a voice that he lowers so expertly, fills it with a titillating quality he’s painfully a master of. It teases at the sensitive skin of Taehyung’s reddened cheek.

Taehyung heaves a breath. Jungkook’s hold tightens on him and Taehyung pushes harder at his chest, yet somehow, they draw closer. He takes his time, hesitates, says in a voice that trembles as it sneaks through his lips, “With my fingers.”

He burns with the confession but allows himself to say it, nevertheless. He does not see Jungkook as someone who would give up, and he wants to rip it off, like a band aid, but he also feels the provocative internal compulsion to tell, to let him know. It’s faultlessly ridiculous, but it’s there prickling at him from the inside, tainting his blood, clouding his sensibility.

Jungkook does not skip a beat. His eyes are all over Taehyung at the way he tries to avoid any contact with him, whether it be physical or just the path of their eyes that pull. “Do you like it?” he asks, the sound of it dripping as lewd as he intends it.

Taehyung needs a breath, he needs to close his eyes shut for a moment, but he does manage a response, fingers of his both hands fidgeting. “It felt better than I expected, when you,” he pauses, and it trails off as he swallows around the words he means to say. He blinks and he finds his gaze on Jungkook’s face, on his cursedly handsome features that currently mask under something that to Taehyung would have been indecipherable some time ago but now speaks of an awakening arousal “– to have something inside of me.”

Jungkook’s fingers draw together on his waist and his palm slips, moves, glides ever so gently around the small of his back, eliciting a shiver as it graces over the tail of his spine before the touch dips, bold, and then the hand is venturing over the curve of his ass. He handles him with confidence, as if he has a right to feel him up like this. His palm curls over the flesh and, fuck, that was what Jungkook had meant when he had hopelessly demanded someone with a real nice ass. He has the urge to squeeze, the sensation of it so enticing beneath the warmth of his hand, but it would be too brusque. Taehyung’s obvious embarrassment coils into hesitance, and he has to be tentative.

With his touch, not his mouth. “When I fucked you,” he stresses boldly, takes advantage of Taehyung giving him his eyes and meeting them, holding them, the current sealing between the searching gazes, “is that what you wanted to say?”

Taehyung exhales, “Yes.”

There’s something mildly relieving about being able to share this. He is aware people learn about themselves their entire lives, but it is undeniably frustrating that he is just now exploring a part of himself he cannot reveal in front of anyone, not Ji-woo, not Jimin. There is some comfort in the disclosure of it, in the fact that when he breathes the word Jungkook’s hand tightens on his ass and the lids of his eyes droop with some undeniable headiness.

Jungkook’s head cocks in a way that emphasizes the line of his jaw to Taehyung’s wandering gaze. His voice, quite frankly, should be illegal in the way it drawls with such intention, such vibrant salaciousness. “Is that what you think about”

Taehyung turns to the floor again, his fingers curling in the precious fabric of the brand shirt. “Jungkook,” he nearly whines.

“What,” he stresses tightening his fingers over flesh in a gesture that makes Taehyung squirm, his eyes forced back to Jungkook to attempt a half-hearted glare, “do you think about? Guys? Me?” As he indicates his hand slips lower, kneads into the flesh and neither of them really knows why that would feel so questionably good. Jungkook’s tongue layers over his lower lip before it retracts into his cheek and the motion of it emphasizes the bone structure of his face, and Taehyung’s eyes take as selfishly as Jungkook’s tend to, “Do you think about me?”

Taehyung’s teeth press together. He feels the lids of his eyes hover more heavily as they take him in from just inches apart. “Yes,” he grinds out and gets drawn closer still with the motion of Jungkook’s hand possessively curled at the flesh of him. The last tug is brusque, fingers slipping from one cheek towards the other and hover over where he’s most sensitive and Taehyung’s hand charges there on reflex, fingers sliding around Jungkook’s wrist.

“Yes what?” Jungkook asks, but it vibrates from his chest more like a growl underneath Taehyung’s palm.“Guys,” his brows lift and fall. His eyes glint. “Bogum?”

“No,” Taehyung denies much quicker than he likes, it falls off his lips almost in an exclamation, and then his voice softens to fit more into the ambiance of the exchange, “not guys.” And because Jungkook’s proximity, his touch, and his eyes spark some unhealthy incapability of lying in Taehyung, he proceeds to confess, “You.” And he gulps with it, darts his gaze across every detail of his face, the scar on his cheek. “I thought about you.”

Jungkook steps closer and he can almost feel him now, easily senses the heat that comes from his body. There is no space for Taehyung’s arm between them anymore so the hand slips, glides across the hard length of his chest and stomach and curls instead a bit around his hip to have leverage to push away, he justifies.

“How does it feel?” Jungkook asks and the sensation of his palm over him makes Taehyung dangerously aware of himself, of just exactly how it felt, how it can feel.

“Good,” he exhales earnestly. Jungkook’s breath fawns across his face, his lips, and it coaxes lost confessions out of him, forces him to fall in into a mirroring manner of speaking, so undeniably charged with a tension of want, pries answers from him that Jungkook doesn’t even seek, the following sigh that escapes through him, “It feels so good.”

Jungkook’s palm and fingers feel so unbelievably hot even over the safety of the fabric of his pants and he prays to god he does not unintentionally arch back into the grip like a small part of him urges to do.

“Better than me?” Jungkook challenges, demands, along with a motion of his hand, kneading back into him, and Taehyung’s gasp falls from his lips and slips right into his own.

“No,” he shakes his head. “No,” he says because Taehyung did entertain for a bit the salvation from Jungkook could come if he could manage to make himself feel good like that, like he hadn’t before, but even with his thoughts constantly shifting to the way he’d fucked him against that wall, it’d been nowhere near. “Incomparable,” Taehyung breathes because Jungkook had been just that, incomparable to any experience of the sort he had had before, and it makes Taehyung helplessly crave a relief he knows comes with a burden that is not really worth it.

 But Seung Julia said something very simple in the beginning of all this. It’s what I want, she’d said, and she’d shrugged as if it were simple. It’s what I want, she’d repeated, so easily. And Taehyung? Taehyung wants Jungkook.

“Why?” Jungkook asks, his tongue slickening over his lips. He curls his palm almost offensively over Taehyung’s ass and tugs him closer, the other easily falling into the step he forces him to take and he’s pressing into himself now, bodies smoothing together. “Why, tell me?” His words come quicker now, with a quality to them that appears atypically ravenous for the pure fact that hunger is a need so deprived of control.

There’s something entirely encouraging in the crack of composure. Taehyung latches onto any reciprocity of affect and he is certainly far away from being collected. It burns into him that Jungkook slowly slips out of that as well, though he supposes he must have been slipping long before, when he touched Taehyung, when he made the decision to come to his house. “My fingers,” Taehyung stutters with it, the arousal of it, of having Jungkook’s hard body pressed into him like that, his scorching hand fondling over him, is not enough to erase the embarrassment of verbally addressing something so personal he has not even communicated fully to himself, “they, they are not…” he pause, he’s pausing, he’s sighing, “enough.”

Jungkook inhales audibly, his gaze so powerful with the way it dances over Taehyung’s face. The intensity of his eyes is unrivaled in the way it manages to make Taehyung lose his mind.

There’s a beat. “Can you show me?”

And Taehyung’s heart is beating, running, crashing. His chest closes in and he almost jokes around it, jokes around the “What?” that escapes through his mouth so sharply as breath is pried out of him so savagely.

It’s instinctual that as his body grows so alert, he tries to pull away, his fingers tightening over Jungkook’s wrist and pushing by his hip, but Jungkook is stronger, he does not allow him to move, to escape. He holds him where he likes him and voices darkly, demandingly, voices in the way he’d orchestrated and directed their nights with Julia, with an authoritative dominance that so naturally slips him. “I want to see.”

Taehyung’s insides boil with the prospect of it, but his mind does as well, boils and sears into a useless fucking mess and he cannot think straight. Cannot think straight past the way he so firmly says, “No.”

No. no no no. It’s ridiculous how a man who’s fucked him can make him blush so easily, like a fucking schoolgirl.

“Taehyung—”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to know what it felt like for her?” Jungkook murmurs to him and the feel of the words hits Taehyung’s lips. “Why she wanted it so much? To be watched.”

Taehyung needs to take his eyes away because Jungkook’s are lethal. “Why would you,” he says, he tries, he stumbles, “why would you want that?”

In Taehyung’s mind there is something so discernably gay in this. Feeling is one thing, he thinks, that when Jungkook fucked him he felt him, took pleasure in it himself, and it was different, not Taehyung on the spot, exposed and vulnerable. No, now Jungkook wouldn’t be feeling he’d only be looking and what if it looks disgusting.

“I want to see what you do to yourself,” Jungkook’s voice seems worse now that Taehyung takes his eyes away, because he moves to speak in his ear, whispers so gently by it, his words dripping with coaxing eroticism that might as well be poisonous. “It’s only fair. You’ve seen what I do when I think about you.”

Taehyung’s brows crease. His head shakes. “No, I…” he attempts but it trails over into oblivion with the way Jungkook’s hand fondles into the flesh of his ass.

Jungkook’s lips press at his ear then, cool at the lobe of it, and his words are practically a breath, a breath that knocks Taehyung’s own out of his body. “I fuck my girlfriend, Taehyung.”

“Shit,” Taehyung mumbles. Shitshitshit. It’s absolute fucking shit. He’s lying.

“Let me see,” Jungkook’s saying. Taehyung’s heart is hammering. He is speaking in his ear and then he is not because his mouth is busy, his teeth taking the lob of it lightly, applying just enough pressure to elicit a surprised gasp out of Taehyung. “Please,” Jungkook’s voice rings as he cocks his head, his tongue skimming at the shell of Taehyung’s ear. “I know you’re getting hard, Taehyung. I can feel you,” he mumbles to him, discards the lube onto the bed so his hand can cheat at this, palm at him.

Taehyung’s breath stutters, his hips chiding forward into the touch.

“Don’t you want to make yourself feel good?"

He does, with the way Jungkook’s palm fits over him so easily, over his growing hardness, the way he is so aware of his own ass, pulsating with the lingering touch over it.

Taehyung pushes him away and only manages an actual result because Jungkook certainly does not expect it.

“Okay,” Taehyung breathes. His chest lifts and falls heavily. “Okay, but you will sit.”

Jungkook’s lips part, the beginnings of a protest, but then they seal. His eyes seem darker somehow. “Where?” the word drops, strikingly conclusive.

Taehyung swallows. “Here,” he indicates the lower bunk. “You’ll sit there.”

There’s a pause. There’s a challenge between them, a challenge that lurks in the fact Taehyung gives a direction. He sees Jungkook’s teeth line together with the press of his jaw. “Okay,” he says. He takes a step and Taehyung takes one back, knocking his back into the poll that holds the upper bunk and his breath catches as Jungkook stands before him, so close yet again. “Okay,” he simply repeats, and he does, spins almost on his heel and he sits down onto his brother’s bunk bed.

Taehyung’s gaze hopelessly falls onto him as he stares back unforgiving. He almost understands why Jungkook had almost sounded offended in his indication of the bunk bed. The sight of him on it is incredulous. He sits with that posture of possession that naturally comes to him, knees spreading wide and muscular thighs claiming the space.

Taehyung gives him his back as he steps forward and Jungkook’s eyes shamelessly roam over the globe of his ass, so perfect. He stands, staring at the coming darkness outside the window as he undoes the cuffs of his shirt. He pulls it out of the confines of his pants. His fingers tremble slightly with the way he moves. His heart refuses to calm in his chest, but he does it nevertheless, pops the button of his trousers, slides them down his thin, long legs slowly.

He is undeniably nervous about doing this, but in a way that is curiously exciting. It is with a thundering adrenaline that he feels Jungkook’s eyes scorch into him as he slithers the fabric lower and lower, his body bending.

Jungkook finds Taehyung simply enthralling. It is the first time he sees that much of him, first time he sees his legs and fuck, even they are pretty. His skin is just as flawless, his thighs much meatier than Julia, in a way that makes his hands want to reach and squeeze. He keeps his shirt on as he steps out of the pants and it looks so big on his as it droops over narrow shoulder. Let loose now it hides the curvature of his behind, as he bends and as he straightens and Jungkook has to chastise himself into patience. He does not want to seem eager, enough is enough.

His teeth find his lips, and he watches, watches as Taehyung hesitates with the way his fingers fit into the bands of his underwear, watches his chest raise and fall as his back expands with his ribcage even underneath the loose shirt at the loaded breath he takes. He is so excruciatingly slow in the way he takes them off and he has to hold back, hold his tongue back, hands back, does not want to give him a reason to stop.

Taehyung steps out of the underwear as well as he straightens and, shit, Jungkook hates that shirt. He wants to see, see if bare his ass is as good as it seems, as it feels, as round and thick. Taehyung is skinny, but the curve of him after the gentle dip of his back is so eloquent, he cannot help but admire. Any woman would be envious of him.

Jungkook leans forward, places his elbows on his thighs. It is an incredibly uncomfortable position for him, makes the fabric of his pants press into his hardening length, but he cannot care for a moment. “Do you get on your hands and knees?”

Taehyung’s head turns, he looks at him over his shoulder, gaze unbelievably sultry underneath the light strands of his hair and he probably doesn’t even know it, doesn’t realize to Jungkook he appears blatantly seductive with the way he shows so much, yet so little, stands there with his long, pretty legs on show and the shirt hiding everything else, giving him this innocent, bratty over the shoulder glance, blushing like this. His fucking lids bat.

It makes Jungkook almost as angry as it turns him on.

“I—once, yes. Once not.”

Jungkook’s brows lift. “Twice? Have you done this twice?”

Taehyung nods. Jungkook breathes.

“Did you like it on your hands and knees?”

Taehyung takes his head away. “Yes,” he hisses out and the frustration of it is visible in his shoulders.

“Get on your hands and knees, Taehyung.”

Taehyung swallows, his throat bobbing with it. Jungkook makes this so much easier for him, telling him exactly what he wants, because he has the inadequate urge to deliver, exactly as he feels it would rid him of a sense of inadequacy in this case. He climbs onto the bed palms first, crawls onto it. He hopes his elbows don’t give.

The shirt rides up with the way his back naturally curves with the position he takes, the back of him exposed.

Jungkook breathes. “Show me,” he urges, the lisp of hunger still coating his lips.

Taehyung reaches for the discarded bottle as he holds himself up on the other before he relaxes onto his calf for a moment long enough to squirt some amount on his fingers. He drops the object that got him into this onto the bed again, rubs his fingers a bit to heat it up, having learned from the first, the second time. He tries to pretend Jungkook is not there, not scrutinizing him with those heavy, loathsome eyes, that he’s simply horny and lonely and wants to try some stuff out.

It’s impossible, though, because he feels himself arch his back more, take his time. He wants to please, desperately wants for Jungkook to like what he sees. He props a palm on the bed, bends on hands and knees and he screws his eyes shut, tries not to think what he exposed of himself and reaches. His circles a single finger around his rim, lets it slip, feels his lips part with the pressure of it, releases a breath when it falls in fully.

He’s slow but he manages, gets it to one knuckle then the next. He tests the feeling of it, pulling it out almost to the tip before he presses it back in and then again. He picks up a tentative rhythm with it, his skin burning, heart thundering. His mind pulses with Jungkook’s name, he’s so aware of him, his presence, his eyes, his opinion.

He feels himself putting on a show he’s not rehearsed for, something he does not know how to do. He naturally falls into the pattern of it, of throwing his head down and moaning when he doesn’t need to, of rocking his hips back onto his fingers when he still hasn’t got into it. He represses a compulsion to look at Jungkook, knows it will only make him shake again and he’s just barely learned to stand straight. In his mind he understands this has grown to be for him, for Jungkook, but he wants it to appear as if it is for himself, his own sake.

He stills his ministrations to press the tip of a second finger. He eases it into himself, careful. He slides both thin fingers in. Jungkook’s had been thicker the first time he’d opened him up and Taehyung feels himself miss that thickness, crave it as he works himself. He curls the digits inside of himself, tries to find the spot that makes his moans real, parting his fingers to seek some of that missing thickness.

His cock pulses, feels heavy, and at this point he would have probably touched himself, were he alone, but he holds back, fucks himself with two fingers and slowly it’s starting to build up into the reason he’d started doing this, the pleasure growing tangible in parts of him, his bones, his skin, his blood. He’s truthful when he says it feels good to have something inside of him, the stretch of it still burns slightly, but it’s easy and it’s gratifying before it is anything else.

He thrusts his fingers forward, moves his hips back. His head arches onto his shoulder and when a sound escapes him this time it’s genuine. His breath traps in his chest, then in his throat, it catches. It gets harder to control as he fucks himself with his fingers as Jungkook watches.

Maybe Taehyung does understand why Julia had enjoyed this, there is something incredibly pleasing about feeling so desired, something drastically disarming, so bittersweet, in revealing himself like that, doing something so intimate and private for the eyes of someone else. Taehyung does know, though, it is only because it is Jungkook, he’s conscious of it no matter how much he wants to pretend this is all some long journey of discovering his sexuality and along with it latching onto a couple of kinks. He is perfectly aware kissing Bogum had felt nothing like anything that Jungkook had ever allowed, that him merely fixing his tie takes his breath away more.

He knows he would not be bending over like that for someone else, because nobody else hold this unwavering authority that Jungkook does, this inexorable dominance that bristles off of him in waves and coaxes Taehyung into a strange obedience.

He grinds onto his fingers harder.

“Won’t you add a third?” Jungkook’s voice sounds and, fuck, he will. He does. Halts for a moment long enough to slip a third finger inside of himself, does not slide it in carefully enough, but he doesn’t care, he wants to keep going.

He moans with the feel of it – it stretches him. And then he moves.

And Jungkook’s on his feet. Jungkook’s on his fucking feet, and he means to turn around, tell him to sit, but he doesn’t. He allows him to come closer, feels the bed dip as Jungkook raises a knee, presses it onto the mattress next to Taehyung’s calves.

A hand is on his ass, on one cheek of it as Jungkook pushes his shirt away and Taehyung’s eyes screw shut tighter.

Fingers knead into the flesh of him and he keens, a strangled sound escaping from his throat as he attempts to hold himself up.

“You’re so fucking hot, Taehyung,” Jungkook growls, voice so naked and depraved, and Taehyung’s hips stutter. Were he to turn, he’d see his gone eyes, glazed over with the darkness of pure wanton as he watches the pretty boy fuck himself on his fingers for him, make a show, give a show, back so gracefully curved, the line of his spine so gentle it could only be feminine. But it’s not, he’s not. He’s a boy, pretty boy, pretty beautiful boy, who works his ass opened. “Fuck yourself so good for me.”

Taehyung’s breath leaves him in sighs, in grunts. He lets Jungkook watch from so close.  It feels exhilarating to know he’s behind him, to feel him touch him.

Jungkook’s fingers slide closer to where Taehyung’s are until they brush the skin of his wrist and, god, he’ll just about die.

And then Jungkook’s digits are squeezing into his cheek and his other hand raises, stills Taehyung’s hips.

“Taehyung,” he’s saying and all he does is whine unintelligibly in response. “Taehyung,” he’s breathing, “can I fuck you?”

The pause stretches long, too long. It’s heavy between them, tense, and every inch of Taehyung’s skin feels as if it’s on fire.

He cranes his neck, takes his fingers out, bites his lower lip. And then he says, “Please.”   

Jungkook’s undoing his belt before the word has fully left his mouth, fingers almost clumsy with the way they work it and he has not felt like this since he was sixteen. Taehyung leans on both palms now and his back dips with the new position, ass arches more, arches better, and fuck him if it is not a sight to behold.

Jungkook wonders if he should do another line before he fucks him, makes everything more intense, but maybe less real and he decides he doesn’t really want that, not now, he’s still high enough, at least feels like it with the way his heart thunders and blood pulses, though he thinks he would much like to do a line of his ass, the curve of it beautiful. He’s so impossibly perky and it fucks with Jungkook’s mind, boys are not supposed to be built like this, but there he is.

Taehyung’s gaze on him reserves that inescapable sultriness he deems him unaware of as he bats lashes and waits, bent over. But then his voice drawls as seductive as those eyes, dangerous eyes that maybe fuck with Jungkook’s mind as much as his ass does. “Can you take off your shirt?” he asks and Jungkook really wants to fuck that curious innocence out of him because it has no place sounding at his lips when he’s bent over ready to be rammed like a girl. “I like your body,” Taehyung tells him.

Jungkook does not say anything, simply reaches for his buttons, undoes them slow, but not painful, and he lets the material slip from his shoulder, basks in the way Taehyung’s eyes layer over him, attesting to his claim as they dart all across, pausing at every dip of muscle, at the lines and veins that lead lower, that disappear into his pants and Jungkook makes sure he is still watching when he undoes them, slips his cock out with a breathy exhale of relief.

Taehyung’s tongue pokes over his lips. Suddenly he recounts how heavy the length of him had felt on his tongue and he’s captured off guard by the rising desire to put it in his mouth a desire that will in no way serve him, but he thwarts it because he feels so fucking empty and every bone of his urges him to do anything to get the delicious stretch again, to be filled.

Luckily, Jungkook appears desperate. He fishes his wallet out of the pocket of his pants, takes a condom out and throws it on the bed, easily the most expensive thing that has freely roamed this house, but he doesn’t give a fuck, because Jungkook is tearing the condom opened, slips the wrapping in his back pocket and rolls it on.

One of his hands returns to Taehyung’s ass, cupping over the cheek and pushing at it, spreading it opened as he holds himself, fisting over the length casually before he lines himself up. Taehyung’s well stretched out, lubed up, not like before, not with just spit, but Jungkook still feels so incredibly thick as he presses the tip past his rim that Taehyung’s elbows finally do give, and he leans on his forearms, has to, features contorting with the pressure  of it.

His lips crack opened, a silent moan hanging in between them as he stares at the sheets, grips at them with whitening fingers,  with the feel of Jungkook entering him.

He fills him up so well, so much better than his fingers ever could.

He’s less careful this time, he’s still slow, still allows Taehyung to adjust to the thickness and length of him, but he starts rocking lightly so soon, fingers unforgiving as they hold him, one hand punishing on his ass, the other replacing on his hip once he’s fully directed his cock inside.

He thrusts once, twice, picks up, much more confident to set a pace this time. Taehyung’s whining at the feel it, trying to bite his lips, keep sounds down, but they’re cracking through despite his resolve. The stretch of it is what he had shamefully craved when he had first got the chance to try this out himself, reaching an oxymoronically frustrated relief, because it had just been so almost.

There’s nothing almost about this. It’s everything.

Hands secure around his hips and Jungkook is so quick to fuck him in earnest that Taehyung does not know what to do with himself. He picks up a punishing rhythm, practically pounding the frustration of his despicable desire. Jungkook’s wondering if he can fuck Taehyung hard enough to never want him again, if he can ram him out of his system. He tries to do just that, does not admit to himself that he’s aiming to angle his hips so he can press into that spot that gets Taehyung to forget his resolve of keeping quiet.

Jungkook feels he starts nearly slamming his hips into him much too soon, his thighs knocking into the back of Taehyung’s into crease of the cheeks of his ass, an ass that Jungkook thinks would look even impossibly better if it had his fingertips all across. But Taehyung just falls on his elbows and takes it.

Jungkook’s features tense. “How do you take me so well already, fuck?” He can’t be, not with how fucking tight and warm and wet he feels around him, he must be hurting, at least a little bit, and Jungkook wants to see,to know it, but Taehyung doesn’t let him. He shows so little now, head directed now, the shirt hanging loosely over his body.

Jungkook hates nothing more than the fact he does not feel entirely satisfied with watching him from behind, watching him so impersonal. No, he wants to see his face, witness the sight of what he does to him betrayed on his expressive, pretty features that he cannot repress no matter how hard he tries to swallow sounds.

Taehyung presses his forehead into the mattress, keens, but then he has fingers in his hair, unrelenting strong fingers that pull him up, tug at strands. He moans with it as he straightens under their command, the sting of it delicious.

“Come here,” Jungkook’s saying, groaning at him, but he’s not giving him much of a chance to do anything else. He wraps an arm around his middle, muscle of his bulked forearm pressed into his stomach as he allows Taehyung’s back to lean onto his chest. His teeth catch at his ear for a moment, rhythm unrelenting. “You like that,” he nearly growls, “you like when I tell you how good you are for me?”

Taehyung says nothing, bites his lip. The angle is so different, he does not expect the way it reaches into him, the way it creates more pressure inside of him. The feel of Jungkook’s chest sliding against his back is ruinous. Taehyung does not lie, he loves Jungkook’s body, the way it’s so crafted and built and the muscle of it looks good but feels better. The fabric of his thin shirt does little to mask the heady, heated sensation of so much of his bare skin being pressed into him.

He does not know what to do with his head, has the urge to rest it back onto Jungkook’s shoulder, but it seems somehow intimate, he realizes it will bring their faces close, raise the foolish desire for his lips again, a desire he so desperately tries to suppress.

The fingers tighten in his hair when all he does is grunt through savage teeth. “Of course you do,” Jungkook’s telling him, in his ear, the breath all across his cheek, his neck, the vibrations from his words rumbling from his chest onto his back, heat swallows him entirely the shirt sticking to him with the growing perspiration of clear-cut raw fucking, and if Jungkook wasn’t holding him up in so many ways he might have collapsed. “No one ever tells you, do they?” Jungkook’s groaning into the shell of his ear, but Taehyung still seals his teeth over his lip, and it drives him insane. His hand releases his hair, circles his body and starts at his chest, slips up until fingers close around the beginnings of his throat, like that one time in the storage room in Rouge, and it strangles a gasp out of him, mouth helplessly parting. “A Jeon’s never told you.”

“Jungkook,” Taehyung pleads though he does not know what it is he asks for, to be let go or not. He gives up on holding his own head up, cranes his neck back into the crease of Jungkook’s, into the gap at his shoulder, his hair attaching to his skin with the sweat of it.

Jungkook keeps moving and Jungkook keeps talking, his fingers ever so lightly applying pressure where they wrap around his neck.

“You’re so good for me, fuck” he grunts out as he snaps his hips up inside of him, voice still as depraved, lustrous, gone, he’s gone and there is something so visceral about the way his lips brush Taehyung’s ear as they form strung out words, “the prettiest thing I’ve been inside.”

Taehyung’s gone, just as gone, if not more. The hunger that levitates from Jungkook feeds into him, into his own and escalates it and it’s already dangerous to start with in the way it obliterates the chance of actual thought.

This is not about thinking, though. It’s about feeling, so that’s what Taehyung allows himself to do, sex, it’s about sex. Jungkook is the only one who can do him like that, the only one who knows that Taehyung wants it, why Taehyung wants it. And Taehyung is the only one who can know this about Jungkook that he also wants to be inside a boy, so really, they’re alone in this, but alone together and they might as well.

“You’re so good for me,” Jungkook’s whispering to him and in his ears it sounds vicious. Like a promise or a threat, because if Jungkook likes something, Jungkook fucking takes.

And Taehyung’s struggling to breathe and struggling to say, to confess, to himself and to Jungkook alike, he tells them, “You’re so bad for me.”

He is, horrible for him. But he’s still inside of him, he’s still fucking him, fucking with him. “Then why are you letting me do this to you, Tae?” He’s asking, voice deadly, intent lethal and he’s snapping his hips inside of him so hard, there is not way for Taehyung to be coherent, not when he calls him Tae like that, while he’s so pressed into him, he can feel his chest, his thighs, his arms, his breath, both as it forms in his body and as it waves over his cheek. “Why?”

He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be letting him touch him at all, but he is, and Jungkook is selfish so he’ll take it. And he genuinely wonders, why would someone like Taehyung let him inside of him like that, why Jungkook, Jungkook who cannot even take care of his own sister, not anymore.

Taehyung doesn’t know, knows nothing, just this that it’s happening. “I don’t know.” He breathes, the fingers burn on his neck. “Fuck. I want you.” He says it because it is all he knows. “I want you,” he confesses and then, just because he is so terribly aware of who is making him feel this, he whimpers, “Jungkook.”

Jungkook’s breath seems to hitch and still before the next whisper comes in his ear, “I want you, too.”

Taehyung does stop breathing for a moment, his heart palpitating aggressive in his chest. You have me, he wants to say. You have me, but he won’t, because yes, Jungkook has him, right now, in that moment, but he doesn’t deserve him, not now and not at all, not at grand, and he simply cannot let him know that he does.

So, he doesn’t say anything, nothing but his name, again and then again, and Jungkook seems to love it. His hand is sinking lower around his stomach until it’s wrapping around him, fist closing over the length, the base, then it’s on the tip and he’s jerking him off, steady, but fast, so fast as fast as he’s fucking him and he’s fucking ruining him. And Taehyung’s moaning, coming.

He comes, hard, presses his teeth into his lip punishingly as it tries to part to let out a name again. His eyes are screwing shut, body trembling. He comes so good, feels so good, a relief so different to that he can bring to himself even if he’s realized now that he prefers having something inside of him than jerking off.

Jungkook hates those teeth ridding him of the downright pleasure of hearing that deep voice drawl his name in such an abandon, but he feels too much to do anything. Taehyung closes around him when he comes and he fucks into him hard, harder, he’s lost all semblance of a rhythm now that he sees Taehyung finish, let’s his body do as it wills, let’s it take what it wants and it does manage to pry Taehyung’s mouth opened again. He’s crying out and Jungkook has to wrap an arm around him again to hold him for himself as he grinds into him.

He’s coming as well, snapping his hips, once, twice, hard, he’s gyrating inside of him then, grunting and he might be telling him he’s so good and tight for him as well, but he might just be thinking it really loud, pulsating in his brain just how good this boy feels.

Jungkook stills inside of him. Taehyung cannot catch his breath yet and neither can the man behind him, chest rising and falling so hard. He presses his forehead onto Taehyung’s hair, his exhales ruffling the strands at the beginnings of his neck and it makes him stifle a tremble all over again. He’s still holding him, arm still draped across his stomach, cock still inside of him.

Taehyung does not know how much longer his knees can hold him up. He’s cracking his eyes opened, looking at the mess he’s made of Namjoon’s bed, the mess he’s made of himself. He constricts around Jungkook, does not feel his body is ready to be left to fend for its own. His head is still gone, but it’s slowly coming around, and he knows reality will start to set in soon.

He knows probably as soon as Jungkook is out of him he’ll be out of his house, so he clings on the sensation of him draped all over him like this, pressed inside of him, because Taehyung knows what this is and it is sex and there is effectively no reason for them to stick around each other, but it does not erase the uncomfortable whim for Jungkook to choose to stay. He cannot even process what exactly has led to Jungkook ramming inside of him from folding socks.

It takes more than a minute for Jungkook to pull out and Taehyung savors it. He slips out slowly and Taehyung feels it, all of it, flinches with the sensation of it. Hands leave him next and he wants to be the one to move first so no matter how much his thighs tremble, how much he just wants to collapse forward he gets up, off the bed.

Jungkook steps off with his motion, having been just at the edge and Taehyung is stripping the sheets off of the mattress, needs to get rid of the fact he allowed this on Namjoon’s fucking bed. He gets them off, tugs them all off, roughly and he’s going down the stairs and around, not even caring much about the fact he’s completely bare underneath the shirt. He stuffs the sheets in the laundry machine, turns it on. He cannot be sure Ji-woo is actually going to stay the night wherever she is, and he certainly cannot think of a way to explain come stains on the bed sheets that have been touched so rarely since his departure they might as well be considered sacred.

He certainly does not expect that when he walks up the stairs Jungkook would be lying on top of the duvets that had remained unharmed, appearing as casual as he had before he’d found the lube, legs crossed, arm propped and one hand holding his phone as he scrolls away with it.

When he senses Taehyung’s presence, which lingers by the door with the surprise of the sight, Jungkook’s eyes shift to look at him and he does nothing but stretch, his bare chest raising with it, arms extending to the side, one brushing on the mattress next to him almost indicatively, and maybe it’s subconscious, but Taehyung’s gaze draw to the natural motion of the gesture.

“Let’s chill here,” he’s almost groaning with the stretch and then he retrieves his previous position, resting his phone on his stomach as he returns his eyes to the screen. “I’m too lazy to move.”

He’s coming down from a high, Taehyung’s thinking. He should have come down a long time ago, but then again Taehyung doesn’t know how much he’d snorted and just what quality it was.Taehyung doesn’t snort, but he knows enough about Richhood to observe that when they do lines, they need to revisit the bathroom at half an hour, or hour intervals to keep the high going.He’s still at the door, watching as Jungkook relaxes into the position he takes and tries to ignore the slight escalation of the pulse of his heart. Whatever it is that rises almost physically in his throat, like bile, and he swallows it down.

“Okay,” he says, walking in finally. He walks towards his cupboard, makes a very careful squat in front of it that allows his shirt to cover him and gets his current notebook out with the handout he’s been working on. “I’ll do some work.”

“Work?” Jungkook’s brows arch as Taehyung tosses the sheets onto the bed by his crossed feet. He is reaching for his underwear next, mouth opening to provide a response, but Jungkook is cocking his head, clicking his tongue. “You don’t really need those, do you?”

Taehyung slides his eyes to him, goes almost whiny, “Jungkook.”

He shrugs, returns his gaze to his phone. “Your shirt leaves enough to the imagination. Just do your work.”

Taehyung sighs, drops the fabric onto the floor just because he doesn’t want to wear the same pair and is all too worn out to find others. He lies himself on the bed where he’d thrown the paper, propping on his elbows as he presses his stomach on the mattress, body in reverse to Jungkook’s and keeping his distance.

He filters the papers out, seals his gaze on them, and tries to pretend he is not as aware of Jungkook’s body next to him as he is.  

“So, what’s work?” Jungkook asks though his attention is on his phone.

Taehyung hesitates for barely a moment. “I’m trying to get in this architecture night school course, but I need to pass a math exam for it, so I’ve been doing some problems.”

“Yeah,” Jungkook hums, head bobbing. “You’re good with numbers.”

“I’m good with numbers,” Taehyung repeats, confirms. He tries to focus on those numbers.

He lets him do this in silence and again Taehyung does not know how much time passes before Jungkook gets bored from whatever messages he’s writing on his phone, whatever media he’s scrolling through, because he actually manages to fall into his work. He does not necessarily enjoy the mathematical part of it, but he understands why it’s such an integral part of what he wants to do, and it does help he is truthfully efficient at it.

He has gone through several problem, hand incessantly scribbling on the pieces of paper, eyes darting from the handout copies of the textbook he cannot afford to buy and back to the patterns his own fingers make with the pen.

He almost doesn’t feel it when a warm hand touches at the bottom of his spine, ventures boldly up, revealing the expanse of his skin as he takes the fabric of his shirt with it.

“Jungkook,”Taehyung says, the suggestion of a warning coloring his voice, but his eyes remain fixed.

“What?” the other plays innocent, gaze falling over the line of his spine as he reveals it. It’s so gently curled, dips so beautifully before the arch of his ass. The skin is smooth, dark, soft, and he enjoys skidding his calloused arm against something so exquisitely velvety.

Taehyung does not respond, ignores him, hand scribbling viciously along the paper, and he may be concentrated, but Jungkook is bored. He lowers himself forward, urges to feel the skin with his mouth as well, and he presses up, near his shoulder blade, teeth sinking into the flesh of it. Taehyung hisses, but keeps his tongue behind the line of his own teeth, and it pisses Jungkook off a bit that he can ignore him so easily. He sins his teeth lightly around the skin lower on his back, tongues at the line of his spine.

He lifts himself up, skimming his eyes across Taehyung’s neck.

“The marks are starting to fade,” he tells him, because he’d given Jungkook the right to bruise him, but the evidence of it is starting to sink into nothing and it irks at him enough to mention.

Taehyung finally sacrifices some attention, tilting his head over the protruding bone of his shoulder, down which the fabric of his shirt so provocatively rides. He blinks at him bitter, his eyes pulled sharp.

“I haven’t seen you in over a week and a half, Jungkook,” Taehyung says, and he strives for something soft, conversational, simply a statement, a fact as numerical as the problem he’s solving, tries desperately to remain behind the border of accusatory.

He fails.

And because he fails, he does not allow him to see his face much more, turns back to his work, seals his eyes over it, but now numbers feel blurry.

They feel blurrier when Jungkook’s hand slides low, lower, then fingers layer over his cheek and in between, a single one, the one that holds that despicable ring, gracing its tip ever so lightly over the rim that’s still so sensitive it causes an almost embarrassing reflex in Taehyung’s hips against the mattress.

“Are you sore?” Jungkook’s asking and then, then Taehyung has to bite his lip because he is slipping that very same finger in, inside of him, and Taehyung’s still stretched from having his cock – it’s easy, but he feels the drag of it so enunciated inside of him.

He holds his elbows, tight, hard, knuckles going white with the strength of his grip as his head droops between his sinking shoulders. He withholds a sound, tries a scold, but Jungkook is speaking again.

“You’d feel so good like this, lying down,” he murmurs. “So tight.”

Taehyung tries to ignore the snap of his own hips, the grind against the surface underneath him, where is so tightly pressed. “I’m working,” he grinds through teeth, strives for an almost threatening pointedness.

Then Jungkook’s voice sounds different. “Did you end shit with him?”

And Jungkook is dragging his finger around him, so slow, leisurely, trying to reach again that spot that would make him keen. His ass looks so good, the skin there as pretty as on the rest of him, and Jungkook is still behind the idea that the mark of his fingertips would look marvelous on top of it, maybe even the ink of his name. 

Jungkook presses his finger into him harder, a punishment for evoking such a ridiculous thought in him. Jungkook used to be rational, once.

Taehyung bites back grunts, bites back any acknowledgement his body is starting to crave for him to rut into the bed like a fucking teenager. “With him?” he’s asking into his own chest.

“With Bogum, Taehyung,” Jungkook presses the finger right into that spot as his voice snaps.

Taehyung grunts. This is unfair. He cannot be trying to have a conversation like this while he moves that finger inside of him, that cold finger teasing at his rim every time he thrusts lazy, but sure, and Taehyung is so, so focused on keeping his hips still. “Why do you even care?”

Jungkook’s jaw ticks, dark eyes layer and glint dangerously over Taehyung’s back, at all that skin there, that pretty, untouched skin. “I like having things to myself,” he says, pulls his finger back out and slams it in, rough. “I like it when you’re tight.”

Taehyung’s shoulders quiver. He tries to steady his breath. “I’m not a thing.” He’s spiteful in the way he pulls the words out through his teeth, and he knows it, he means it.

“I know.” Jungkook works that fingers against him in more ways than one. “Doesn’t mean I want to share.”

Taehyung cries out with the next thrust and it is not of his volition, but he’s sensitive, so sensitive and the mattress pressed like this into his cock feels good, but he thinks he has himself restrained. His head rolls into his shoulder. “You’re so spoiled, Jungkook.”

“Yeah?” Jungkook’s brows lift as he fucks his finger into him. “Who’s getting spoiled now?”

Anything would be spoiling to him, Taehyung does not know luxury, though he is much too beautiful to live in oblivion of what luxury is. He could be one himself, with the way he looks, so irreversibly ethereal. Anyone can look good if they have enough money for it, Jungkook has realized, but Taehyung looks better without it. He wonders just how beautiful he can be made with pretty clothes and shiny jewelry. He’d fit it so well, he thinks. He’s the prettiest thing Jungkook’s ever seen and he’s Jungkook’s to fuck.

The thought is striking for Jungkook, because it forces the reality of the fact, he’s fucked him already, done him once, and now twice, and he’s sticking around, and he’s never fucked the same person twice, only Julia, only his girlfriend. The only one he lies around nearly naked with after, rehabilitating before fucking again. He knows by the way Taehyung ruts into the bed that he’d let him have another go, and he wants another go, and he needs to get the fuck out.

He’s slipping his finger out of him. He’s getting on his feet.

Taehyung turns his head over his shoulder, his eyes are wide, questioning, brows furrowed. “Jungkook?” he’s saying, saying his name and it’s with a palpable curious vulnerability that almost makes Jungkook climb back into the bed. But he can’t, for the sake of them both.

Because as much as he should not want to climb back in that bed, Taehyung should not want him to, either.

Taehyung is sitting up, letting the shirt fall down, cover him. “Jungkook, what—"

“I came down from the coke, okay?” Jungkook interjects. He bends, takes his shirt, slips it over his shoulders. He’s running a hand through his hair, strands still sweated from how hard he’d fucked Taehyung. “I’m going.”

And Taehyung just stares, stares with those eyes so wide and vulnerable until they are not, until they darken, they narrow, and he bends, grips his underwear. He’s pulling it over those long legs. “Yeah,” he says, brusque, embittered, “you know go.” He’s slipping his pants on as well and then he’s standing up to do them properly, to do the zip and the button, and because he is a man, he is as tall as Jungkook, the glare is right into his eyes. His voice is calm, yet it drips venom as he tongues overs his lips. “You should really fucking go. Reminded me I wanted to make use of the empty house to get Bogum to come over.”

“Taehyung,” Jungkook tries, does not know what he tries. Maybe it’s intended as a warning, but maybe it is something else.

“Bye.” Taehyung is saying and this time his voice cracks, grows louder, before Jungkook can figure out what his intention is when he calls his name. He starts to walk, circle past him, but he stops in front of him, so unbearably close to him. “But before you go, thanks for opening me up for him, wouldn’t wanna waste time.”

Jungkook’s tongue clicks. He mirrors that bitterness, those beginning nuances of rage. “You’re growing a fucking mouth, aren’t you?”

Taehyung’s brows lift, nostrils flare. “Needs to be big enough for you to fuck it on a whim, doesn’t it?” And he continues to walk, but he’s stopped again, this time by Jungkook, by that perpetually searing hand latching over his forearm, fingers digging so hard into flesh, as hard as they had been pressing inside of him.

He pulls him back, seeks his eyes out, captures them and there is something uncharacteristically genuine, almost begging in the way he pronounces his next question with the frustration of something nearly desperate. “What do you want from me, Taehyung?”

He asks because he’s already told Taehyung he should want nothing, expect nothing.

He should, they both should, so Jungkook does not know what it is that washes over him, so cold and vivid, when Taehyung looks at him dead in the eyes, swears, “You already gave me all I wanted from you. You reach my prostate quite well.” He frees his arm and Jungkook lets him, snaps his fingers into a fist once they’re not around him anymore. “Now you can let yourself out.”

Taehyung walks away, goes in another room in this house that is familiar to him, this space that is his. The door slams shut, and it rings in Jungkook’s ears as much as words do. He leaves. He lets himself out.

Chapter Text

A part of Taehyung expects that Jungkook’s absence will be repeated, but that part is proven wrong. Jungkook is there. He sits across from Min Yoongi on table sixteen and they have a slow, but flowing conversation, interrupted only by their own intended pauses.

Yoongi sits incredibly straight on the chair for his usual habits, seems to have actual control of his spine for the time being. Taehyung knows they are in no need of menus, but he is obliged to bring them out anyway and he does. He walks over with indignation that he hopes he represses into professional indifference.

The first to notice his approach is Yoongi and he does it with a tilt of his head, a lazy nod in acknowledgment. “Kim,” he drawls out. His eyes skim across Taehyung and it makes him slightly nervous. His gaze is heavy and previously he has not deigned to be so attentive of his presence, nor greet him by his name. “Heard you’re pretty gay now,” he says, and though he seems completely unmoved, he adds a dull, irony clad, “Congratulations.” He watches Taehyung’s mouth open and then shut, notices his eyes narrow. Yoongi’s head cocks. “Wonder if your sister knows.”

Taehyung swallows, lips thin. He notices from the corner of his eye, Jungkook’s head shifts to him, though he cannot know with what expression the other skids his gaze across the bop of his throat as he refuses to return the look. His heart thuds angrily in his chest, a heated adrenaline coursing through his blood at the last sentence, and he struggles to ignore it. “Would you like to look at the menus or will you just have drinks?” he speaks tightly.

Yoongi’s brows lift into his hair. He adjusts on the chair, brings his face close to Taehyung. “You know,” he begins, utterly conversational, tone light, “She’s been doing me a real good service as of late.” He pauses and with the same casualness, states, “Looks really nice bent over.”

Taehyung has to gnaw at his own lip in an effort not to snap. His finger taps at the menu, eyes dart to Jungkook, Jungkook who slides his own back to him for the merest moment before he takes them away. His finger taps at the menu. His mouth parts, and he means to speak, but Yoongi is interrupting again. Taehyung is unsure he has even heard that much from him before.

“Though she’d probably look better sprawled open.”

Taehyung’s finger stills at the menu. His mouth snaps shut, teeth knocking together, his jaw ticking. Something flashes in his eye. He can feel his ears buzz with it, but then the sound sizzles, stops, and is replaced with the familiarity of Jungkook’s bored voice.

“He’ll have the Piña Colada,” his words ring firmly. “I’ll have a diet coke.”

Taehyung’s eyes bore into Jungkook’s for the short moment he allows them to. He lets his jaw loosen, skids his tongue at his lower lip and tilts his head at Yoongi to give him a chance to deny it. He simply leans his elbows on the table, lifts a hand and makes a twirling motion with a single finger in the air. “Make sure you get me one of those funny straws.”

Taehyung nods, barely shifts his head with it, abandons all professional politeness and swiftly just leaves. He leaves, and he goes into Rouge, long legs taking quick steps. He lets the door fall shut so frustratingly slowly because of its mechanism behind him and he moves to the bar, throws the menus on top.

“Piña Colada and a diet coke for table sixteen,” he nods at Minho. “I’m taking my lunch break early.”

He does not wait for a response and barely awards Bogum with one when he wheezes past him as he works the coffee machine and asks him if he is okay. Taehyung is okay. He tells himself that as he storms into the back corridor and runs fingers of both hands through his hair, gathers the strands from his forehead and back and pulls, squeezes.

He breathes, he tries to breathe. He hates this, hates how powerless he is, how he is uncapable of protecting his own sister for the sake of his job. He knows what Ji-woo would say, ignore it, she would. But Ji-woo is mature, and Taehyung just wants to spit in Yoongi’s fucking funny straw.

He is having a fit. He is having a fit and Jungkook walks in and it is the last thing he wants.

“Taehyung,” Jungkook sneaks behind his back, startles him into spinning to face him. Taehyung watches with narrow eyes as Jungkook shuts the door on the dreadfully wrong side of it.

Taehyung steps back. “I have nothing to say you,” he says with the temper of his fit, pulling his hands away from his hair and letting them hang by his sides, fingers clenching together.

“Tae,” Jungkook tries again as he moves towards him and Taehyung knows him by now, his body knows he will reach for his hand before he consciously does and he pulls it away, lifts it into the air, brusque.

He seethes, eyes as challenging as his words, “You don’t want to be seen with someone pretty gay, do you?”

Jungkook’s gaze traces behind the hand his instinctively reaches for as his fingers close around nothing. He does not attempt again, lets his shoulders droop with the promise he won’t touch. He sighs with it, with his next words, which he says low with the connotation of privacy. “Listen,” he begins, and Taehyung rolls his eyes at the pure demandingness of the word. “Before you pull something stupid and get him angry,Yoongi would never tell your sister.” And he hesitates.  “About,” and he takes his gaze away for a moment, looks at the floor, runs his tongue across his lips, “about Bogum and you.” His eyes are back on Taehyung, and there is nothing to tell, he thinks, but he won’t let him know that. “Neither would he touch her. That wasn’t for your sake. It was for mine.”

Taehyung does not understand what that means, does not know if Jungkook’s word can be taken as true, but he likes to pretend he doesn’t care. He likes to think maybe this has tired him out too much to care.  It is tiring, it’s exhausting. He crosses his arms across his chest, does not let his expression soften, though he feels the fatigue of it all seep into his voice. “How come even when something is done for your sake, I am the one who takes it up the ass?”

Jungkook’s face sets now, features tighten as his eyes seal onto Taehyung with something achingly familiar. “You kissed a man in public.” He is abundant in accusation as he takes a step forward. “It’s on you being this fucking careless.”

Taehyung scoffs first and defends second, with a necessary amount of vehemence. “He doesn’t know how Richhood works,” his teeth snap. “But he won’t do it in public anymore.”

Jungkook is taking another step, but Taehyung is past the time in which he would have responded with a step back. So Jungkook steers close, closer, brows raising in his hair and eyes widening on his face in a pattern that almost carries the implication of offense. “In public?”

Taehyung takes his eyes away, snaps them up at the ceiling as he inhales sharply through his nose, begs the frustration away. He hates this jealousy that Jungkook has, this jealousy that is such a double-bladed knife, such a teasing liar, tricks Taehyung into the illusion of Jungkook potentially caring, then swiftly taking it away with the reminder he is possessive by nature and nurture, likes to have his things to himself.

“I don’t even owe you an answer to this,” Taehyung says as he brings his head down, shakes hair out of his eyes.

Jungkook’s tongue pokes into his cheek, stretched skin and flesh. He pauses. He tries for neutral, but it comes out tight. “Are you actually fucking him?”

Taehyung blinks. “He’s better for me than you are.” He knows it’s ambiguous, knows it leaves all the room for assumption and with the bitterness he says it with he feels a part of him does it on purpose.

The other’s jaw ticks, once. “Better?”

There is something typically condescending in the single word, in the arch of his eyebrow under his bangs that fuels Taehyung’s spitefulness. “Yeah,” his mouth curls, but it’s not a smile and it’s not a scowl, just an expression. “He fucks me better.” And Ji-woo may be mature, but he certainly is not.

Jungkook’s eyes flash and jaw snaps again, but it’s momentary. He is still, apparently calm, though something else entirely radiates off of him and between their rigid bodies. He keeps his voice composed, low. “That fucking mouth on you, Taehyung,” he says, gaze shifting leisurely low on Taehyung’s face as his own lips slightly part.

Taehyung’s head cocks, own eyes lowering to observe the tongue that slithers across the relief of Jungkook’s teeth. “What about it?” he questions a little challenging and a little absent.

Jungkook takes a single step and leans, lips coming closer to his ear though his body remains at some distance. “Honestly? I wanna fuck it till you gag.”

Taehyung feels something cold cascade down the line of his spine and it is almost entirely irritation. He wants to curse him out, but he also doesn’t want to waste more words on him, not today. He does not deserve his mouth. So, what Taehyung attempts with a labored exhale is a sidestep, but Jungkook mirrors it. He holds the silent promise not to touch, keeps his hands to himself, but still gets in his way and remains stoic and stubborn even with the chilly glare that almost automatically comes his way.

“Where are you going?” Jungkook demands, voice laced with something not entirely nameable. It does not sit well with him that Taehyung works with Bogum, not at all, wonders how long Taehyung will be mad at him if he gets the prick fired.

“Unlike you, Jungkook,” Taehyung grinds out, “I need to actually work to have money.” He tries to step around him again, but the other is in front of him again, proximity between them somehow increasing. With their height so similar they’re face to face, eye to eye, glare to glare.

Jungkook’s tongue clicks and he hisses, ironic, through closed teeth, an imitation of sympathy that is borderline bitchy. It somehow suits him and doesn’t. “Yeah,” he cocks his head. “Must suck to know I can hire your ass full time for me to fuck and you wouldn’t have to wash a dish in your life again.” His voice is icily low, almost murmuring, soothing, but the meaning of the words is vicious, sharp, sharp enough to puncture to Taehyung’s own composure.

 He tries to mirror the calm with which he’s spoken to helplessly, but he’s almost growling. “My ass is not for sale,” he says with his chest, through his teeth. Their eyes are locked together with a connection that is almost palpable, a current of animosity transpiring vivid from pupil to pupil.

Jungkook’s words are still more of a whisper, but they feel like a snarl. “That’s a different song you’re singing now.”

Taehyung never sold his ass, never his mouth, never let anything inside of himself for money and he wouldn’t. Still, the reminder of what he did do for money rings with hurt. Shame swallows his first attempt to speak, but the memory of Woojin’s smile invigorates his second.

“Old song’s forgotten now. Just like you can forget about my ass.”

Jungkook fakes a chortle, short and ringing and it irks at every inch of Taehyung’s skin. His face is close when eyes narrow and words travel from mouth to mouth in a tone that is almost threatening in its nature of a promise. “I make you hard, Taehyung,” he says, enunciates, makes sure every syllable is felt, “I always make you hard.”

Taehyung nods his head, the upper part of his mouth, teeth bared, hovers over his lower lip as he lets out a breath of a snort. “Yeah?” his lip twitches. “Is that it?” He challenges. “I can jerk off my own cock.”

He can, he does it, and it doesn’t matter he thinks about Jungkook when he’s at it. His face will fade away, eventually, it will. Every person who is not in his family does, sometimes his family as well.

Jungkook’s eyes dart across his face. “You can pretend it’s the same all you want, but you said it yourself.” There’s something dauntingly piercing to his stare, “I’m incomparable,” he spells it out with his mouth, says it so slow and pointed, Taehyung almost flinches. Neither of them knows when their mirrored breathing patterns escalated as they did, but chests rise and fall too heavy for the simplicity of conversation. Next sentence practically peels off of his tongue, hangs accusatory and smug, “You wantme.”

Not an inch of them touches, but Taehyung feels Jungkook’s presence burn into his body.

“Yeah?” he cocks his head. “I do,” he admits, takes a step closer, one that almost eradicates the distance, almost. He admits it loud and clear and indulges in the way Jungkook’s eyes fall to his lips as he does it. He admits it because it is the one thing he can afford that Jungkook can’t. “Probably as much as you want me,” He tells him and nearly smirks with the way the other’s eyes snap back to him. Before he allows a response, he steps back again, two steps this time, away from him. “I’ve got to work, Jungkook,” he shakes hair out of his eyes. “Get Julia to get you off. I heard she’s back from Paris.” This time when he sidesteps him, Jungkook allows it. “See if that’s the same.”

He allows him to step away, but he spins with the movement as well, just as Taehyung is about to reach the door. “Haven’t fucked Julia in a while, Taehyung.”

And Taehyung pauses.

“Why?” he asks because for a moment it is the only word he knows. He doesn’t understand why Jungkook would tell him this, why he hasn’t fucked Julia in a while, and why something warm and stupid washes over his bones when he hears it.

Taehyung’s left shoulder is aligned with Jungkook’s right one, but he watches them both as he shrugs. “Doesn’t feel fair to her.”

 Taehyung bristles but his tone is biting, “What?” He shakes his head with unadulterated disbelief.“You’re suddenly all righteous. You cheat on her all the time.”

Jungkook turns to him fully, and it is back on, he’s stepping towards him and the whispered tone of the conversation drops as his voice raises, “And what do you think you know about my relationship?” His arms lift in the air as he pauses, gives him a small door for an answer, but Taehyung doesn’t take it. “Julia fucks other people as well. She knows about the other girls, Taehyung.”  His arms fall and so does his voice. “She doesn’t know about you.”

You, he says in a manner that is coated with pure blame, some underlying anger. 

Taehyung blinks, once, twice, his head retracting back. “Well, there’s nothing to know about me, is there?” He’s saying, and he aims for the door again, but Jungkook’s fast, fingers wrapping around his wrist and pulling him close, tries for the nth time to manhandle him into place.

“Taehyung,” he starts, and his mouth remains opened, but words don’t fall, because Taehyung is rippinghis hand away brusquely, he’s stepping back. He’s raising his own voice now.

“Stop,” he fills with all his frustration from Saturday on, releases it in a single word that makes his deep voice twist ugly, before he gets ahold of it, “hogging me around like this, thinking I can never do it back.”

Taehyung pauses not for the sake of Jungkook, but for himself. His chest expands and retracts angry and fueled by that very same frustration. He stares at Jungkook hard and harsh as the other swallows down his previous thought and licks at his lips, face minutely blanking.

He doesn’t speak, so Taehyung does, charged with exasperation. “I’m a man, Jungkook,” He tells him, pokes his own chest, once twice, three times, four. “Just because I don’t bash people’s skulls in does not mean I’m not a fucking man.”

Jungkook still just stares, with eyes so full and empty at the same time, eyes that seal so bold and calm onto Taehyung as he barely catches his breath, taken by nothing but emotion. He can’t look at them, they’re engrained in his brain enough, he sees them sometimes when he closes his own.  “I am a man and you like to fuck me,” Taehyung announces with finality. “That’s the fucking tea.”

Taehyung leaves after that and Jungkook just watches. He goes in the toilet, washes his hands and wipes them on his trousers when Yoongi can see him. He sits and he watches, and it only takes Bogum a few minutes to make Taehyung smile and maybe it is not enough for Jungkook to know he only needs a few minutes to make Taehyung come, because he cannot watch that smile, however innocent it is.

Taehyung taps his fingers on the kitchen table as Ji-woo murmurs under her nose, says numbers. Her eyes are wide and wild as they look over all the papers strewn across the surface.

He’s done with his part of the pile, props himself up on an elbow, chin held in his palm and he watches her, looks on as she fervently sorts through bills and numbers as she insists she’ll help, though he’ll just do it quicker on his own. He looks at all the passion she’s ready to pour into this family.

And he says, “Ji-woo.”

“I’ll do it, Tae. Shut up.”

“Okay,” Taehyung nods. “But that’s not it.”

Her focus remains on paper. “What is then?”

He hesitates. “Why did you drop the Jeon’s weeklies?”

Her head snaps, eyes locking on him as wide as they were on the bills. She opens her mouth, closes it, looks down again. “I told you, Tae,” she says, she lies, “Timetabling.”

“Noona,” Taehyung calls and she allows their gazes to meet again, simply has to with the way he reaches a palm over her hand and closes it gently around. “It’s you. You don’t have to lie to me.”

Ji-woo’s eyes search his, find only softness. She sighs, breathes, takes her hand away and relaxes back into her chair. “Fine,” she says. “Get some soju, make sure Woo’s asleep and we’ll talk.”

She promises and Ji-woo always keeps her promises.

Jungkook’s shirt sweats into his skin when the elevator arrives on his floor. He’s managed to get his breath under control now, though he’s not done this for a while, almost forgotten how much he loves the high and pain of a good run, having abandoned most cardio for the sake of strength. He wipes at his forehead, walks through the hallway, his shoes dirtying the marble, the parquet flooring of the living room. He steps into the kitchen, reaches directly for the fridge.

He doesn’t notice her behind the island until he gulps down half a gallon of water and shuts the door. When the fridge closes, however, for a moment his heart drops, his face blanks. When he can feel his blood pump again, it’s quick, hot, runs through his veins with the nature of sheer panic.

He doesn’t remember crouching, dropping to the floor, only feels his bare knees against the cold tiles. His fingers reach for her cheek, he tries to be gentle, tries to be soft as he pushes hair away to look at her face, but his hand trembles a little bit and he doesn’t know if he should be allowed to touch her. “Clo” his voice shakes more. “Clo, Clo are you okay?” He’s frantic and he know it, tries to repress it into calm – she does not need him frantic, does not need him scared. He can’t be scared. “Can you look at me? Did you take anything?”

Her lower spine is pressed into the door of a counter, but the rest of it is curled, arms wrapped around her slim legs as she props her forehead on her knees, hair falling over and closing her off from view.

She lifts it easily and he can breathe again as she relaxes it back onto the counter. Strands fall across and away from her face and he can see her eyes now, but maybe he preferred it when she couldn’t. They’re empty. Her lower lip is cracked in the middle and saliva has gathered at the corner of her mouth.

Somewhere in the room her phone starts to ring, buzzes with a vibration in the rhythm with which her ringtone breaks through the silence.

Jungkook ignores it.

“No, I didn’t,” she shakes her head lightly. Her voice is as vacant as her face as she looks away from her brother, lets her head roll and fall away on one side, eyes choosing the floor. “They’re going on vacation now. He doesn’t want to see me.”

Her phone stops ringing, but then it starts again. The buzz of it sounds angry, but not as furious as the blood that makes Jungkook’s ears ring as the panic resurfaces again, slams like a wave, wet and powerful.

“What did he do to you, Clo?” he asks, begs, says, he doesn’t know what he does, but he knows she won’t answer, not to this. She would never give Jungkook a detail, never, because Jungkook cannot handle knowing without acting. But Jungkook has seen the pattern as well, he realizes their father only travels when he is swarmed by rare occurrence of guilt. Inducing guilt in his father is only achieved by his own greatest transgressions, and Jungkook does not want to imagine what he did that he cannot bare to look at his daughter. So, he closes his eyes, squeezes them shut until all he sees is black and not that red that tries to lens his pupils, opens them, new question on his lips. “Why?”

He searches her for an answer, fingers still on her cheek, lost in her hair. His thumb instinctively pats over her cheekbone, under her eyes, and she flinches away from it. He retracts his hand, presses his palm into his knee.  She’s looking at nothing but the pattern on their Italian tiling when she says, “There are rumors about me and Jin.”

Jungkook’s tongue licks at his lips as he sucks air, looks away for a moment, to contain his own self. He’d warned her about this, about being with Seokjin, but this is not the point. He stares at her again and wonders if his gaze can communicate half of his conviction. “There won’t be any tomorrow, okay?” he promises eyes searching her face as she rolls her head again, allows her eyes to fall on him. “Do you hear me? Anyone who speaks your name and his in the same sentence will get their own shit fed to them, get their mouths too stuffed to speak, okay?”

Her eyes are wet, but she doesn’t cry.

Her phone starts ringing again and he hadn’t even noticed the silence.

Clo Eun nods her chin at the kitchen island. “Get it to stop ringing,” she asks, voice atypically weak, a variation of her speech very few people would recognize as hers, but Jungkook would know it in his sleep.

“Okay,” Jungkook says, once, nods. “Okay,” he says a second time as he realizes he has not actually moved. He gets on his feet, straightens, reaches for the phone.

He only means to look at it to click it shut on the screen, because he does not trust his thumb with the button on the side. It is not intention to look, but his eyes find the name, seal on it, and he feels his fingers stop trembling. He stills. He recognizes a Japanese area code and he recognizes the name.

“It’s Namjoon,” Jungkook tells her, voice void, as he lets the call end on its own. “I thought you said you didn’t,” and he looks at her now, “you didn’t talk to him anymore.”

He tries hard to keep any judgment out of his voice, any anger. He knows nothing he says, neither the manner with which he does it, though, can fool Clo Eun into not seeing through his demeanor and into what lies beneath.

“I don’t,” she answers. “I called him now.”

Jungkook does not skip a beat. “Why?” He’s brusque, no matter how much he tries to stifle it.  

There is onething to Clo’s eyes now. They’re tired as she looks up, at him. She shakes her head in an answer to an unspoken question. “It’s not drugs, Kook,” she promises. “If I wanted drugs, I’d call Kai.” Her lids screw shut, and she breathes. She seems to need the darkness as she speaks next. “I want a friend, Jungkook. He’s the only friend I ever had.”

Jungkook’s stomach feels curiously hollow. He knows this, knows no girl in their surroundings would want to be friends with someone as apparently perfect as Jeon Clo Eun. He swallows. “What about,” he licks his lips, hesitates, “what about Seokjin?”

“He loves me, Kook,” she tells him, and she opens her eyes to try with them to convey something she cannot with simply words, because she knows he doesn’t understand what she means when she says this, he can’t, not yet, and his chest feels hollow, too. So does his head.  “It makes him selfish.”

What about me, he wants to say, but he doesn’t.

He walks over to her, squats down, levels his eyes with hers. “Okay,” He rests the phone on her knee, and she flinches away from that touch, too. It makes him pause, brief, before he nods, “okay, if you want to talk to him, I’ll leave, let you call him in private.”

And he leaves the device on the Italian tiles next to her and makes to stand, but suddenly he has two hands, ten fingers, clutching to his forearm, squeezing into flesh. “No,” Clo says. The naked desperation of the word tugs at him. It hurts. “No don’t leave. Stay.” She repeats, “Stay.” And then with their eyes connecting she mumbles, “Please.”

Jungkook swallows, shakes her grip off of his arm. He turns, stands next to the counter and slides down until he’s on the tile as well, back propped like hers. He reeks of sweat and so does she, and they stay like that for a while.

Jimin works the bar tonight, but Taehyung is not here for him, though does lean on the top and indulges him in distracting chatter between clients as he waits for Bogum to come.

He’d texted him some ten minutes ago to apologize for his lateness, promised his presence in about half an hour or so, but Taehyung doesn’t mind waiting. Not when he’s at the Ozone and Jimin is working the bar.

He sips on a Piña Colada, in a club, which is borderline ridiculous, but he’d had such a craving when Jimin had offered to get something for him on the house, he just couldn’t resist. Jimin has no funny straws tonight, so he has to settle for a regular one.

It is a Thursday, an off night for many of the typical Richhood residents, because it’s DJ night at Octagon and they move there, though it’s much harder to do lines in the bathroom. He’s glanced at a certain designated booth several times from the corner of his eye, when Jimin gets busy, and it’s empty. His Piña Coladas are safe.

“Sorry I can’t pay too much attention to you, baby,” Jimin tells him as he pretends to wipe at the bar top near him.

Taehyung sucks on the last bit of his cocktail until it slurps. “It’s fine,” he releases the straw after he chews on it a little bit. “Bogumie hyung is coming in a bit. He’ll keep me company.”

Jimin selects a spot and pretends there is something there that is particularly nasty to clean as he scrubs. “Keep forgetting you now have more than one friend.”

Taehyung narrows his eyes at Jimin, bites at the straw again and uses his mouth to point the other end of it towards Jimin’s comfortably awaiting ear.

“He’s my only friend actually,” Taehyung says as he perches one foot onto the foot rail. He smiles. “Unless you get me another cocktail.”

Jimin’s brows raise as he scrubs vehemently. “You’d sell yourself for a Piña Colada, huh?” he smirks.

Taehyung tries to shoot him with whatever remaining liquid he can gather from his drained glass. His teeth release the straw. “You’d sell yourself for less.”

Jimin most eloquently flips him off and leaves him to tend to his bar, but he does sneak by to wordlessly place another Piña Colada in front of him. Taehyung relaxes his elbows onto the bar top, now atypically clean, and wraps his lips around his straw, sipping happily. Yoongi’s a bitch but he has nice taste for cocktails.

He does not expect hands on his hips, certainly not a body pressing against his back, and it nearly makes him splutter when he feels him, rhythm of his heart speeding, goes sporadic, and he knows just who is behind him, just by the way his skin immediately tingles, his mind snaps alert and awake.

The press of it is familiar, he knows it, his body knows it, that treacherously addictive heat that he loathes with how much he sometimes craves, is palpable as crevices are filled and forgotten with the way he molds into him. Taehyung straightens up, spine goes rigid.

Bodies here are close, lights are dim, music is loud, much too loud, for anyone to really care about a back pressed into a chest. Space is naturally scarce, the nature of the Ozone, but Taehyung’s heart tremors, skin ablaze. His eyes widen with the surprise of it, the unexpectedness. It’s an off night, Julia’s not here, Yoongi’s not, Hoseok’s not. Jungkook’s not supposed to be here either.

But there he is, body molding so illicitly into Taehyung’s and then his mouth is by his ear. He can feel his breath and it almost makes him lose his.

“There you are,” Jungkook exhales, lips brushing the sensitive shell.

Taehyung’s eyes dart to Jimin, the palpitations of his heart begging for him to be busy and he is. 

He angles his head different and the next exhale hits his cheek. “Me?” his lips part, lids blink. He wants to spin, look at him, does not like this disarming proximity, the sensation of Jungkook against him is a weakness he has learned to know, but not accept. The corner of his eye almost catches his face, but he scares it tilts their lips too close together when he feels him on his tongue through the gap of his mouth and he takes his head away.

“You,” Jungkook confirms, still so close to his ear. “I’ve been looking for you,” he says, voice rushed. There’s a tinge of the beginnings of something desperate that makes Taehyung furrow his brows in confusion, induced along with the meaning of what he says. Looking for him. He gulps, waits for some kind of explanation and it comes with his next hurried breath, a lick of his lips that moistens the lobe of Taehyung’s ear and it almost coerces him into a flinch. “Come with me to the back room.”

“What?” Taehyung breathes before he thinks, moving instinctively in a fidgeting motion that he instantly regrets, because all it does is make him feel Jungkook. He retracts forward again, tries to take his body away from the sensation of the touch. He hisses, “I can’t.” And then,“I won’t.” He tries to look at him again, glare at him, but it is futile, so he channels all the animosity he can muster in his tone of voice, “I’m not your fucking booty call.”

A hand squeezes on his hip. “Yeah?” Jungkook’s head tilts, breath falls on his neck, and then hands are falling over him as well, fingers gliding over his thighs and Taehyung has nowhere to run. “I don’t even have your number,” Jungkook tells him with a frustration of something private, and maybe he really did look for him. His palm fits over the pocket of his jeans that bulges with the shape of his phone. His fingers slide upwards, contact pointed and unnecessary and then his hand is slipping into the tight denim. Taehyung gasps with it, with the surprise and the feel of it alike, but as soon as hot fingers touch him like this, they disappear, taking the device along with them. 

He raises the phone on the bar top, lets Taehyung watch through gritted teeth as he opens his password-less screen and types his number in as if he has every right to, dials himself and hangs up once the call goes through.

“Jungkook,” Taehyung attempts to filter his name with a warning and some distaste, and he manages, but Jungkook simply doesn’t care.

He says nothing to acknowledge Taehyung’s weakly attempted protestation, the elbow that tries to poke back into his ribs, as he simply maneuvers himself more comfortably behind him, locks the phone and slips it back into his pocket. He does it slow and pointed, a manner that is very much unnecessary and it elicits a small disgruntled sound from Taehyung’s prying lips, a sound that escalates when Jungkook’s hand does not leave, not immediately, it soothes over the fabric once the device is securely in, presses his thumb on top to slide it in fully, while the rest of his fingers twist, make a detour, grazing near his zip, tips coercing tingles as Taehyung’s hips instinctively retract from the unexpected touch, away from the digits and into Jungkook’s own.

“Come with me,” Jungkook is demanding in his ear again when he takes his hand away, puts it on the bar top instead, caging him in and Taehyung already has nowhere to go to.

His eyes drift back to Jimin, still as wide. Jimin’s busy. “If you don’t move,” Taehyung says, speaks through teeth, as he grits them, thinks – he tries to, it’s hard when Jungkook’s touch so easily stirs his body awake and wanting, but he ignores that, ignores the peculiar charge of Jungkook’s voice when he demands almost frantic, “someone will see.”

The one hand that remains scorching onto Taehyung’s hip layers over the bone and squeezes in indication as he urges, “So,” he pauses, shifts closer as Taehyung moves towards the bar, refuses to let him escape so easily, “come with me.”

“Shit,” Taehyung curses when he feels Jungkook’s thigh attempt to slither in between his legs, the relief of his crotch rubbing into the flesh of one of his cheeks. “The fuck is up with you?” he snaps, a little breathier than he intends, than he likes, careful gaze seeking Jimin again, though his lids begin to droop, then narrow.

Jungkook’s sighing in his ear, the pointed exhale of it ruffling Taehyung’s hair, chills over the sensitive skin of his neck. “I need to not think, okay?” he tells him at the brink of frustration. “Just come with me,” it’s almost a plea, almost a demand, but whatever the nature of it, it holds some sort of hurried desperation that just barely skims the edges of the whole conversation.

Taehyung absolutely abhors the part of him that allows him to be slightly worried.

“Jungkook, I—”

“Just come, Taehyung,” Jungkook murmurs and another thing Taehyung loathes to the bone is he still feels it in his knees when he says his name like this, so close, half a breath, half a word. “I need this. Need you.”

“Shit,” Taehyung curses again the sound of the two words in combination disarming him more than the feel of his muscled thigh between his legs and his body on his. He spins now, presses his elbow into Jungkook’s chest and pushes him enough to allow himself to turn in his grasp. His arm slides across, fingers and palm spread opened to replace on his chest and he can feel him breathe, feel his heart beat. “Fine.”

Fine, he says, because his worry escalates, because Jungkook would never be saying that if he himself were fine and by the bar top in the Ozone while Jimin works is certainly not the place to deal with that.

Fine, he says, meets Jungkook’s eyes and then he has fingers latching tight around his wrist that hovers over Jungkook’s chest. He pulls him away and Taehyung follows, blind to the sight of Jimin turning just then, trailing his eyes behind them as he trails behind Jungkook.

Passing through a crowd is easier when you have Jeon Jungkook pulling you along and Taehyung’s heart beats with the twofold nervousness of possible observing eyes and the anxiety of what is to come. The digits burn into his wrist, harder than they need be when he follows so pliantly. Taehyung tries to promise himself he’ll get Jungkook to talk, not fuck, but he knows that’s naïve with the way Jungkook seems desperate.

The room he takes him to is the one Julia used to tell him about her request that first time, seems so long ago now, so surreal that there was a time in which Jungkook had only touched him twice, hadn’t been inside of him at all. The door is barely shut when Taehyung’s back is on it, pressed against it, tight and flush.

Jungkook’s eyes stare into his, a distance between their chest as a powerful arm settles stretched next to his head, but there’s no space between Jungkook’s thigh and his legs as he pushes against him, muscle of it nestling comfortably in between his and Taehyung almost forgets his resolve to attempt to speak with the way it rubs right against him. It’s barely a moment of breathing and exchanged glances, Jungkook’s set almost into a glare, puncturing, dark and compelling, then he’s taking it away, lids falling shut as he leans and tilts, goes immediately for his neck.

Before lips can touch his skin, Taehyung’s palm is back on his chest. He presses onto him firm and pushes until he straightens, eyes open, now definitely set into a glare, hard and heated, but he doesn’t press back, allows Taehyung to move him away and only asks the question with that fierce stare. “Are you high?” Taehyung says, his own eyes darting all across his face for the signs of it. Lights are dim, shining neon purple in the hues of the Ozone, and he can’t tell if his pupils are wide, if he sweats.

“Yeah,” Jungkook breathes, adjusts his thigh closer to him, his knee fully sliding between Taehyung’s legs and pressing into the door until it physically can’t come closer. It’s warm against him, thick, and he has to strive to keep himself still. “What does it matter?” he says, quick and rough.

Jungkook isn’t high. There is not a bit of his mind that is clouded by a substance. He may not feel sober,but it’s not drugs. But Taehyung doesn’t have to know that.

He attempts to lean again, but Taehyung’s hand is surprisingly persistent on his chest. “I don’t think I wanna do this with you if you’re high.”

Jungkook’s sighing, eyes are rolling, the breath of his exhale hitting tingling lips as he presses closer, thigh digging into him. “Doesn’t matter, Tae,” Jungkook shakes his head as he practically murmurs over the dulled sound of music, free hand sauntering just over his hip and pressing into the flesh above it, fingers squeezing, indicative and enticing as he coaxes him closer in the rhythm with which he presses further against him. “I want you,” he tells him, sure and demanding, and God, for a moment Jungkook thinks maybe he is high, and at the same time Taehyung’s wondering if he can get high on the sound of this, “Doesn’t change anything. I’ll remember it tomorrow.”

It’s the third time he leans to the side and Taehyung’s fist clenches over his chest and soon it’s trapped against his chest as well, because this time he gets close, so close, lips hovering over his jaw when Taehyung’s eyes first screw shut. His whole face contorts with it, with the effort to push him away again, and when he says his name it rings like a plea, the same way Jungkook’s had a few moments ago. “Jungkook.”

Jungkook’s eyes cascade over that face from the side as the features of it twist as if this is somehow painful. “Please,” Jungkook murmurs and he knows it betrays a vulnerability he’s later going to hate, but he needs to shut off everything that goes inside his brain and the only way he knows how to do that is to get inside of Taehyung because then he can think of absolutely nothing else but the exhilarating feel of it. “I want you so much,” he confesses, adopts the assumption he’s high, feels like it, and just spills, presses against him, his chest into his closed fist, those clenching pretty fingers, and his thigh between his legs, “Just thinking about you makes me hard, Tae.” Taehyung’s teeth suck his lip into his mouth and Jungkook watches, sees the full pillow of it disappear, go white, he glances down, takes in his collarbones, his throat. He speaks, “Your lips, your skin, your ass, the face you make when you come, god, you get ten times prettier.” He layers his own lips over the bone of his jaw. “So handsome.”

Taehyung’s fingers close around the fabric of his shirt. “Jungkook —” he attempts the beginning of coherent speech, but Jungkook is adjusting his thigh again and it shifts against him in a delicious friction he can hardly fight against, and he pauses, swears, “I, fuck.”

“Can you feel me?” Jungkook utters in his ear and it feels to him borderline dirty, what with the way he can actually feel him, growing harder against the bone of his hip, the way Taehyung can feel himself as well, length of him pressed against Jungkook’s fucking thigh. “I feel you,” Jungkook tells him and he knows, Taehyung knows, because he’s getting regrettably hard, and with the way the muscle rubs against him it is beyond his control.

“Jungkook, please,” Taehyung says because the configuration of those two words are all the eloquence he’s capable of, fingers twitching with their hold of the shirt. He presses his knuckles into it, attempts a weak push, and the other actually leans back with it, and he hisses. He can breathe.

For about a moment.

Because next moment he is sighing a sentence that almost makes Taehyung convulse. “I wanna suck your cock.”

His eyes snap open, wide and disbelieving, search Jungkook’s face, looking for any sign that this is some elaborate, cruel joke, but he sees none, only nuances of determination. He begs Jungkook doesn’t feel him twitch. “Fuck, what?”

“I want to, pretty boy,” Jungkook says, licks his lips lewd and provocative and Taehyung’s gaze is helplessly drawn to it, “Will you let me?”

Taehyung’s eyes narrow with all that is left from his dwindling resolve. He gives his best to be firm, then, to be petty, “That’s pretty gay, don’t you think?” he bites, his grip loosening on Jungkook’s shirt before fingers clench tighter into the fabric.

Jungkook’s eyes seem liquid, dripping poisonous lust that seeps from his to Taehyung’s with the way he stares with such confidence, whispers shameless and breathy, “I’m pretty gay for you if you haven’t noticed.” Those eyes flash, he leans. His breath hovers over Taehyung’s parted mouth, gaze studying the whole of his face as Taehyung just watches those deadly eyes. “And now,” Jungkook’s lips open, tongue grazes over before his teeth clasp, and he speaks with almost whiny conviction, “I want to suck your cock.”

Taehyung blinks. His mouth opens and then closes, and all his fingers can do is squeeze. His mind goes blank with the prospect of it, the idea, and it still rings to him as a joke, a joke that makes all his blood pump faster. That should be it, though, he’s allowed himself to be turned on by Jungkook, admitted it, accepted it. He has not allowed himself to care about what alters his demeanor to the extent he would actually speak that previous sentence, that one that goes through ears to his brain and roots, readying for continuous obsession once he’s at liberty to think.

Silence stretches, so Jungkook moves, angles his head so he can speak by his cheek, lips brushing into the skin as his thigh presses against him, makes him squirm. Taehyung feels the ridiculous need to grind into it, the friction teases into insufferable frustration, but his voice is even worse when he murmurs, “Don’t you want me to get on my knees for you?” Taehyung’s head falls back, hits the door, eyes screwed shut. This is some contemporary fucked up form of torture, must be, and he cannot take it. “I’ve never been on my knees for anyone else.”

He hates he’s shown enough of himself to give Jungkook leverage to know exactly what to say because the last of his words make him crumble, when he puts it like that.

Jeon Jungkook. On his knees. For Kim Taehyung.

“Yeah,” Taehyung sighs as his teeth unlatch in a deep exhale. He has not yet allowed himself to agree, breathes the word only half in response, and half gets it coaxed out of him under the ministrations of Jungkook’s leg between his, so subtly on him, yet the tension of it is ridiculous as it brushes Taehyung firmly. He knows at this point his own hips are not entirely still. “Shit,” he spits and it’s for himself as much as it is for Jungkook, but then his eyes are cracking open and he nods as he swallows, “Yeah.” He meets his eyes, a final chance for him to pull out of this fucking joke. “Yes,” he hisses. 

Jungkook’s thigh grinds into him along with fingers squeezing his waist at the final sound and he grunts with it, cannot help himself. Lethal stare does not leave his as he leans, forward this time, so close he can feel his hair brush on his forehead, and Taehyung’s heart skips a stupid beat. He looks into his face, breathes into his lips, though he’s panting more than breathing. He’s so close, he can feel him on his tongue again, his exhales more leveled than Taehyung’s own, but loaded nevertheless. Jungkook’s eyes dart to his parted mouth, swiftly jump to his own and Taehyung grows hopeful.

It’s in less than a moment that Jungkook has his tongue in the crevice between his collarbones, eyes shutting and leaving. Taehyung’s next breath is a sigh as he relaxes his head back on the door again, screwing his own lids shut. He’s stupid, Taehyung is so fucking stupid.

Jungkook’s fingers squeeze into his waist one last time, bring him close, before they lift along with his other hand, move towards the collar of Taehyung’s shirt, pop the first button. Taehyung’s own arm is in the way, he moves it, hesitates with what to do with it, but Jungkook’s teeth nip lightly at the skin he reveals, and he instinctively latches onto his waist, fingers digging there.

Jungkook is quick but not hasty with the way he works his button, mouths over every new patch of dark skin he reveals as he goes down the length of Taehyung’s front and soon, he has to bent, taking his thigh away, which coerces an embarrassing whine out of Taehyung’s lips. He sinks his teeth into the bottom one. His hand falls off Jungkook’s waist as his shirt is almost undone and his fingers are pulling it out of his jeans, then circling around to hold his own waist, now sliding across bare, sensitive skin, carrying with themselves a certain current that makes him fidget, almost flinch away from the touch, but the other does not allow it, holds him firmly.

Taehyung is not built like Jungkook and he knows it; his stomach is flat, but soft, fleshy, yet not an ounce of insecurity he silently anticipates washes over him as Jungkook’s tongue dips, mouths very gently over his belly button and Taehyung gets the urge to hold his hair. He gets increasingly sensitive the lower Jungkook sinks, his stomach retracting with sudden, sighed breaths and then, without taking his lips away, Jungkook gets careful and slow on his knees.

The fabric of his own jeans is not meant for the stained floor of the back room of a club, even if it is the Ozone. Taehyung’s jeans are worn out, imitation denim, faded, hand me downs from Namjoon, almost ripped in places. He can be on his knees. Jungkook’s are brand, expensive, raw De Nîmes; they’re new. He has no place on his knees.

Taehyung lifts his head off the door, tilts it down, his lids lowered but eyes hazy with fascination. He thinks he might be dreaming, because the reality of this is certainly dubious, Jungkook on his knees, for him. He glances up as he senses him look, gaze still as puncturing and callous, still can be attributed a very Jeon authority, yet his mouth hovers over the bulge in Taehyung’s jeans, breath there labored and teasing, and he's on his knees.

Jungkook brings his hands forward, does not separate them from his skin for even a moment before he has the nimble fingers at the front, popping the button, pulling down the zipper. Taehyung can’t take it, knocks his head back again, shuts his eyes. There is something so conceptually and physically overwhelming about Jungkook on his knees.

“Want my shirt off?” Jungkook asks, staring up at him, and Taehyung nods, too readily. He hears the shuffle of the fabric as he sheds himself off it, but his eyes keep screwed shut.

“Won’t you look at me?” Jungkook’s saying and his voice resonates innocent yet still ridiculously composed, only falters at the end. Taehyung adjusts his chin, separates his lids, takes him in again, heart racing angry and dangerous. Jungkook teases, “I know you like to look.”

It’s granted he does, this is how all this began. If it weren’t for Taehyung’s curious, wandering eyes, Jungkook would now not be on his knees for him. Jungkook is on his knees for him.

Taehyung breathes, slicks his lips, then he forgets how to breathe again for a moment, because Jungkook’s hand is dipping, fingers wrapping around the length of him, and taking him out of his pants.

“Do you want me to look?” Taehyung mumbles.

Jungkook’s response is a hum that borders on the imitation of a moan and Taehyung wants to hear it again. His mouth nearly dries as he watches Jungkook lick a stripe down the length of his palm, never separating his eyes, before he wraps it around Taehyung, leisurely pumping his fist over him as if every touch doesn’t make Taehyung lose his mind.

It’s a struggle for Taehyung to keep his head straight, gaze tilted, but Jungkook’s question holds an underlying challenge and he takes it, always does.

Jungkook’s hand is almost lazy with the way it fists over him, a fucking tease, of course he is, breath layering over sensitive skin as he pants, lips so close to the tip that Taehyung has to withhold a hiss, eyes morphing almost into a glare as he stares down. “Don’t know how to do this for you, Tae,” Jungkook speaks over him and Taehyung is about ready to die, the sigh of his voice hitting him warm and powerful, and maybe Taehyung is not prepared to have his actual mouth on him, though at this point he’s almost trembling with the need of it. “You have to tell me what feels good.”

Taehyung’s eyes narrow, teeth grit as he continues this slow, elaborate torture. “Thought you could do everything,” he hisses at him, voice screwed with the tension of waiting for this, brimming with arousal, and a certain animosity towards the ploy of it.

Jungkook’s lids blink, so slow. “So much I can’t do,” he sighs words that are not part of this conversation, words that make Taehyung skip a breath. Jungkook does not allow a moment to pass after the slip of something so peculiarly genuine, wraps his mouth around Taehyung’s tip, and he’s gasping, teeth falling over his lips. He tilts his head back, eyes screwing shut for a bare moment before he forces them open again, looks down, stares down.

Fingers hold him at the base as lips stretch over him. Jungkook is careful as he sinks his mouth down further, then up, again, perpetuating an eye contact that is as beguiling as the warm sensation of his lips, his tongue, the heat of his cheeks on the inside.

Taehyung struggles to breathe evenly, to look as Jungkook’s lips reach his fingers and then move back. He does it slow and methodical once, twice, three times, before he speeds it up, does it faster, more confident. He does not take him all in, does not attempt to. Taehyung can feel the back of his mouth at some of the bobs of his head, knows any further would probably make him gag.

His fingers give in, lift to his head and tread in his hair, squeeze, just a bit. He needs something to hold onto to fucking survive this. Taehyung has only ever had one person suck his cock before in his life and it was nothing like this, not nearly as exhilarating and mind numbing.

There is some subtle hesitance to Jungkook’s movements at first, atypical and somehow reassuring, but it disappears with the clench of Taehyung’s fingers in his hair.

Jungkook’s free hand slides to the hem of Taehyung’s jeans, tugs at it, pulls them down until they are at his thighs, and he follows with his underwear as well, fingers gripping onto the fabric and yanking them downwards, before he reaches up, palms at the bare skin of his ass, the tips of his digits pointed towards the line between his cheeks.

The hand at his cock grips him firmer and he pulls his lips away, saliva stretching and Taehyung’s hissing. The sight of it is borderline unbearable. There is something so obscene about a man on his knees, a line of spit connecting his mouth to Taehyung’s length and all Taehyung can think about is how he wants to shove it back in, ininin. Jungkook’s hand fists over him, pumps as the fingers of his other one dip, brush over him and he flinches.

Taehyung’s digits squeeze into Jungkook’s hair, questioning and begging alike, because he needs to get his mouth back on him, right now.

“Can I?” Jungkook says, a finger slipping indicatively between his cheeks and Taehyung’s breath stirs.

“Yes,” he hisses, hand tugging and releasing onto the strands he grips. He knows what this implies, means he’ll fuck him after, and it is exactly what Taehyung wants, but first he needs to get his cock back in his mouth.

Jungkook’s hand leaves his ass, the other pauses on his length as he reserves all his concentration to bring his fingers to his mouth. Taehyung’s fingers tighten so harsh into his hair when he makes him watch, sucks on digits instead of on his cock, holds his gaze firm and unwavering as he gets them slick for him. Taehyung has his teeth on his lip, almost drawing blood, jaw clenching with the clasp of it.

He teases short, but it is enough to drive Taehyung insane. He takes his fingers out of his mouth and as it gapes to allow them to leave, he replaces it back on his cock without closing it once and Taehyung sighs, lids fluttering and falling shut for a weak moment of indulgence as the sensation returns. Jungkook’s hand circles him again, as his mouth swallows him, tongue flattening below and pressing upwards into the length, cheeks sucking him in.

The tip of a single finger hovers over Taehyung, presses lightly as his palm flattens over his cheek again, skin so warm it burns. Taehyung grunts at the sensation of it, upper lip curling, exposes his teeth. His eyes squeeze shut again – he can’t take it, not with the overwhelming combination of a warm mouth and thick finger.

He swallows, tries hard to relax in the feel of it, the stretch of it. It still burns slightly, no matter how slow Jungkook is, how careful. It is impossible to register discomfort, however, as it such a struggle for Taehyung to compose his visceral urge to snap his hips forward. He forgets to care about looking, as much as he somewhat twistedly basks in the sight of it, he cannot handle it, seeing and feeling this all the same, not when the finger presses in to a knuckle.

Jungkook’s mouth pleases, his finger teases, and Taehyung is all lost. The digit drawls in and out slow but certain.

“Fuck,” Taehyung hisses. “Jungkook,” he pants. He hates how whenever he has Jungkook on him in any sort of way he is so tangibly aware it is exactly him that touches him, himhimhim, Jeon Jungkook. It’s all that goes through his head, that very fact, as he can hardly process actual sensation, just falls into it, moans with it, gives into it, insatiable.

Jungkook acknowledges with a hum that triggers a shimmer in Taehyung’s hips, nudging forward and Jungkook strains with it a little, half a choke. His finger shoves harder into Taehyung in response and he grits his teeth, tries to stay still.

A second finger prods at him and he keens. It hurts, then it feels good, then it hurts again, and then it hurts so good. He knows the discomfort of the stretch, but the drag of Jungkook’s skin inside of him is delicious enough to make it worth it, only interrupted by the colder sensation of that ring.

“If you don’t stop,” Taehyung says, tries to, eyes cracking. It’s breathy and weak and filled with all the lewdness of getting his cock sucked and ass fingered in the back room of a club, “I’m gonna come.”

Jungkook’s eyes are dangerous when he swallows around him, once, twice, head bobbing before he pops out with a wet sound. Taehyung throbs at the loss of it, though Jungkook’s fist layers over, languorous yet firm, two fingers pressing hard inside of him and stilling.

“I think there might be some lube in this room,” he rasps, his tone of voice wonderfully fucked out and Taehyung cannot believe he finds something like a sore throat hot, but he does, makes him twitch in his hold.

He ignores the fact of his words, though he would very much love to shove it into Jimin’s face that those rooms are designated exactly for fucking.

He doesn’t think when he speaks, just basks in the pressure of Jungkook’s fingers inside of him. “No,” he sighs, almost hurried, nearly desperate, and maybe he is on the verge of it, pulses with the need of some release now that Jungkook’s hand pauses on him as well. “I don’t need it, I like it when you hurt me.”

He says it thoughtless, quick and honest, but his skin burns with the confession, not as much as Jungkook’s eyes do, dark and scalding. They narrow almost glaringly, and then that gaze nears, he stands. Taehyung hopelessly follows the stare that so compellingly summons his attention until its but a breath away.

Jungkook’s fingers draw back, still as the tips pause at entrance and Taehyung mulls on his lip, can’t think, can’t bring himself to ask him to shove them in, like his body implores him to do. “What else do you like?” Jungkook speaks rough and raw, and it hits Taehyung’s mouth. He’s so close again.

He attempts speech, but the fingers prod back in, tips slipping both at the same time and instead, he’s whining, his hand that fell out of Jungkook’s hair with his repositioning now clutching helpless to his bicep, just above the elbow.

“Do you like it when I tell you what to do?” Jungkook whispers, demands, and Taehyung, Taehyung shakes his head no, though the gulp of his throat feels like a yes.

Jungkook’s free hand grips into Taehyung’s own elbow, spins him with just that hold, firm and quick, shoves his front into the door. Taehyung’s cheek presses into it, he grunts. He releases his hold, and Taehyung watches him from the side as his gaze drops down, takes him all in, eyes as bold and ruthless as ever. His hand palms over his cheek again, pulls at it slightly as the fingers of his other one push in. Taehyung screws his lids shut, cannot take the scrutiny of this. Jungkook’s fucking filthy.

His voice sounds in his ear. “Do you like it when I feel you up?”

Taehyung shakes his head again, bites his lip.

Jungkook’s brows crease, eyes venturing to his face. “No?” His fingers shove in hard, gets him flinching, moaning.

“Do you like this?” Jungkook’s hand draws back, lands on his cheek, light, but ringing, unexpected and it elicits a gasp.

Taehyung’s eyes snap open, and fuck him, “Fuck you,” he says, he grunts. He shoves at him, though he misses his fingers as soon as they leave him. He spins around, shoves him again. “Fuck you,” he repeats. “You shouldn’t get to even touch me.”

“Please,” Jungkook huffs, teeth baring. “You crave it.”

“Yeah?” It’s the final shove that has Jungkook on the leather couch. He adjusts back onto it, glares up at Taehyung as he leans onto it comfortably, legs spreading and elbows propping as it were his decision to sit. “And you don’t?”

Jungkook’s tongue pokes into his cheek, jaw slackens, and Taehyung tries not to follow the motion of his hand as it travels to his bulge, adjusts him in his jeans. “I can deal.”

Taehyung looks down, eyes shimmer, something very petulant and something very rebellious in the way they glint, the way he repeatedly nods, small shakes off his head, the way his nostrils almost flare. “Okay,” he nods, he breathes. Then he kicks his shoes off, shoves his pants down, his underwear, glad Namjoon was a size above him and jeans fall without resistance, kicks them to the side. If Jungkook is surprised he doesn’t wear socks, it’s not the place to comment as Taehyung stands just in his parted shirt. “Okay, then you’re not permitted to touch.”

Jungkook’s eyes narrow, they glower, but he feigns casual as he shrugs, another challenge. “Okay,” he says, tongue layering over his lips.

Taehyung’s head cocks. “Okay.” It’s the final okay before, invigorated by an unhealthy mixture of petulance and frustration, he takes that one step necessary, gets both his knees on the couch on the sides of Jungkook’s thighs and kneels.

Jungkook’s eyes go wide, so wide, and Taehyung is almost smirking at the shock of it, that he allows for a few moments, but it is enough for Taehyung to know. Jungkook shifts into a glare, scoots his hips back into the couch, teeth over his mouth. His gaze darts everywhere, almost frantic, but he manages to somehow keep it subdued. He swallows. “What are you doing, Taehyung?”

The slight panic that laces his tone is satisfying to Taehyung, feeds him, as he stares at him, forces an innocence into the look that he does not feel with his next intention. He says nothing when he opens his mouth, swallows around his own fingers, thrusts them into his mouth, once, twice, just like Jungkook had been bobbing on his cock a moment ago and then he reaches back, raises on his knees, and slowly sinks them inside of himself.

He prefers Jungkook’s. They’re thicker, and though Taehyung’s are longer, he loves the stretch. But Jungkook’s expression is worth it as he fills himself up, parts his lips and moans a moan he does not entirely feel. He keeps his fingers still, instead moves his hips down, his thighs brushing Jungkook’s.

Jungkook’s features twist, and Taehyung recognizes anger. He props his free hand up, places it on Jungkook’s shoulder and digs his fingers in, uses it as leverage to move himself more efficiently, and Jungkook just about loses it.

He can’t just watch him from so close, feels every inch of his body, the heat of him, he’s never had him so naked, so close, face to face, features contorting with lustrous pleasure. It infuriates him, he infuriates him, puts on a show, exaggerates each motion of his hips, each gasp that leaves his lips. He’s so beautiful from so close. Jungkook keeps hoping that if he stares long enough, close enough, he’ll see some imperfection, but he doesn’t. He sees a mole on his nose, but he finds it kind of fucking cute, sees the lids of eyes are different, but it just makes him all the more unique, and Jungkook kind of wants to fucking pound him until he cries.

“Let me,” he says, moves his hand before he thinks, squeezes it around his hip.

But Taehyung shoves it with his elbow. “No,” he fucking pouts.

Jungkook’s eyes narrow. “Fine,” he’s saying. Fucking fine. He takes the hand back to himself, over his jeans, pops the button open, shoves the zipper down. Taehyung’s gaze seals onto the motion as he pulls himself out, wraps his palm over himself and jerks.

He stares until he doesn’t, returns his eyes to Jungkook’s just in time as Jungkook murmurs. “Wouldn’t that feel better inside you?”

Taehyung’s begrudging, but honest, hisses, “Yes,” yet still rocks his hips on his own, makes no indication of anything else. Their eyes lock in a challenge. Taehyung wants to get him to beg as much as Jungkook wants it, too. They touch themselves in a similar rhythm, both so frustratingly slow, but they’re distracted now.

Taehyung’s distracted, because Jungkook’s face is so close. His eyes soften on him, he knows it, feels it as he takes him in, guard slowly slipping as he studies it. His hard eyes give as well as Taehyung’s gaze loses its spite, lips part. He can feel him breathing, both from his chest, his mouth, his parted mouth on which his stare latches and does not let go for a moment too long. His lids blink, pupils seek Jungkook’s again and he does not find that previous challenging determination as Taehyung’s hips almost still and he’s taking his fingers out, resting his hand on Jungkook’s thigh instead. No, there is something very different, very new, and it’s a bigger liar than Jungkook’s jealousy because it tricks Taehyung into leaning down.

He does, tilts his head, leans down, heart palpitating with a dangerous urgency, slamming in his chest as if trying to escape, and it beats harder and harder, so angry against the cage of his ribs, but then it pauses, stops for a moment with the taste of disappointment that is so spoiled and deflating on his tongue it almost reaches his eyes.

Jungkook pulls away, looks to the side, Taehyung’s lips nearing his cheek before he stops himself, moves back. He blinks, he’s blinking. He wants to curse. He wants to get off him, but he can’t bring himself to acknowledge a kiss matters so much.

“Tae, don’t,” Jungkook’s saying as he twists away, the cruelty of what his motion feels like to Taehyung masked over by a scathing softness.

Taehyung’s hand squeezes into his thigh. “Why?” he asks, eyes seeking Jungkook’s, but he won’t let him have them. “Why not?” he demands. “You had your mouth on my cock and you still won’t put it on my own.”

Jungkook huffs a breath, shakes his head. He has his hand on Taehyung’s waist, but his eyes somewhere on the length of the couch. “Just drop it, okay?” he dismisses, pushes on his waist toward the pillows of the couch in indication. “Get on your knees.”

“No,” Taehyung stays firm, and he pauses, pauses for what he means to say next, begins to speak one sentence, but stops, changes and hopes defeat does not shine through his voice. “I want to ride you,” he whispers to him instead, squeezes his hand onto his shoulder before he lets it drop, fingers gliding across his chest before he wraps them around his cock lightly, “Let me.”

Jungkook’s eyes replace back to him, to the motion of his hand, though Taehyung stares at his face, so closed off as if it is that same day that Julia first asked him. He shifts a bit, gets his wallet out from his pocket with the hand that does not hold onto Taehyung’s waist. “I prefer doing the fucking,” he tells him through teeth as he uses them to rip the condom open.

Taehyung takes it from him as Jungkook reaches down.

“You let Julia ride you,” Taehyung murmurs as he rolls the condom on him. He grips onto him after, adjusts his hips over it. God, Taehyung falters. He underestimated how close he must get to him like this for this work, and he has to pause, exhale. He bats his lids, looks into Jungkook’s eyes. “Is it because I’m a boy?” he says, lines himself up, he speaks through a grunt as he slowly sinks down. “I’ll still be a boy no matter in what position you fuck me.”

The stretch of it hurts, Taehyung can’t take it with his eyes opened. They screw shut as his mouth parts, a silent, prolonged moan that is mixture of burning satisfaction and bittersweet pain. He sees black, dark, it’s all he sees, he does not get to see Jungkook’s face, only hears him when he says, “I know. You’ll still be Taehyung.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung’s eyes part and he feels his thighs against the back of his. “Yeah, I’ll still be Taehyung.”

And then he moves. He starts slows, so very slow. He’d only had two fingers inside of him, only spit and a lubed-up condom, and it hurts, but he’s too fucking tense to wait, just wants to give into what this is, a fuck, just a good fuck. He squeezes his fingers into Jungkook’s shoulder and rocks onto him, at first only grinding.

Jungkook isn’t looking at him. No, he’s staring at that damned cushion of that damned couch and Taehyung hates it. His own eyes are rooted onto Jungkook’s face, on the muscle, bone of his jaw, the creases in his brows, his lips, hissing when Taehyung moves against him.

He brings his mouth to his ear, breathes. “Didn’t you want to see my face?” He gets ten times prettier, he’d told him just moments before, so handsome.

“Shit,” Jungkook curses, head shaking, and then both his hands are on Taehyung’s hips, squeeze so hard, almost punishing, eyes on him. “yes, but not from so close, no,” and as his gaze filters over his face, he repeats, “no.”

Taehyung moves on him, breathes. He shakes his head and he himself does not know what he means when words first leave him. “I don’t know how to do this,” he whispers.

Jungkook’s fingers squeeze, “You’re doing fucking amazing.”

Sex, okay, he accepts it, they’re talking about sex. Taehyung just does what feels natural, what feels nice. He tries to angle himself so that he reaches into him the way he usually does, speeds up, moves quicker. He lifts himself more, rather than just grind, and sinks back on, grunts with it, moans with it. “I’ve never done this,” he gasps as Jungkook’s fingers dig into him harder, his hips slamming up.

“No?” Jungkook’s brows arches, the tension from before dissipating into something entirely sexual as they both try to fuck it into such. He thrusts up into him, fucks into him as Taehyung grinds down. “Don’t ride Bogum, do you?”

Taehyung’s hand squeezes into one shoulder as the elbow of his other arm stretches over the other. He bites on his lip as hips slap up into him but releases it with a whine. The rhythm escalates so well, he fills him up so good, slams inside so relentless and quick, “No, Jungkook,” Taehyung shakes his head, fucked into honesty, a part of him craves to disclose this to Jungkook, the same part that made his heart skip a beat when Jungkook told him he hadn’t fucked Julia for a while. “Only you, you’re the only one who’s been inside of me.”

Jungkook’s hips abandon the rhythm they have found for a single, hard shove before they fall into it again. “Yeah?” He says, shakes sweating strands of hair away from his eyes to stare into Taehyung’s. “Only one,” he repeats, savors the truth of it on his tongue.

Taehyung grits his teeth around a moan. He nods. “Yes.”

Jungkook fucks into him hard after that, Taehyung slams right back. They fit well, do this well, sweat and fuck each other. There’s some impeccable intimacy about fucking like this, facing each other, seeing faces and staring into eyes the whole time. Taehyung can feel his breath on his mouth, see every crease of his features, every indication of pleasure from this spelled out on his face. He can’t hide, not this, not now, not when he is allowed to look, when he forgets what line of perspiration is his and which is Jungkook’s.

They fuck like this until Jungkook wraps his hand around Taehyung’s cock, pumps him and tells him to come until he’s spilling, some on his chest and some on Taehyung’s own.

He moans with it, tilts his head back, shapes Jungkook’s name on his mouth, loses vision with the pressure of it, and he is not even fucking done, when he’s in the air, Jungkook holding on the underside of his thighs as if he weighs nothing and then his back is slammed onto that couch.

Jungkook’s hands leave his thighs, grip onto his wrists instead as he shoves them off of him onto the cushion and he holds them there as he fucks him with abandon. He slams into him senseless, rough, Taehyung’s back is arching off the cushion, chest pressing into Jungkook. He feels like he could come again, knows he can’t, but he’s gasping with it. He has the urge to wrap his legs around his waist, but if Jungkook won’t even let him touch his shoulders he doubts he’ll allow that.

Jungkook does not know what comes over him when he flips him, fucks a boy missionary. He used to like fucking Julia like this so he could watch the pleasure he gives overtake her features, got off on the fact he made her get off, but he doesn’t now. No, he buries his head in Taehyung’s neck as he fucks him, because he can’t look at him, not at his face, certainly not at his eyes, not like this.

He fucks him until he comes, hard. His teeth sink into Taehyung’s shoulder to silence Taehyung’s name.

He stays like that until he can breathe. Then he gets off of him completely. Taehyung flinches at the absence, feels the residual pain he’s grown accustomed to as he’s no longer soothed by the fill. Jungkook doesn’t look at Taehyung as he gets rid of the condom and Taehyung doesn’t look at him as he gets his underwear and jeans back on. Gets his shoes, ties the laces off one that has gone awry clumsily.

He doesn’t until his hand comes into view, expensive watch and stupid finger on it, a bunch of tissue in the fingers as they reach over him. Taehyung trails his eyes to his as he takes it, wipes the come off his chest, as Jungkook slips his arms into his shirt.

He might have said thank you, but he doesn’t because it is at that point the door opens.

Jungkook’s and Taehyung’s head whip to it with a similar urgency, eyes of them both of them bulging, but not as wide as Bogum’s who simply gapes, paused at the door.

It’s painfully obvious what they did, utterly undeniable. The room reeks of sex, hair of them both is a mess, Jungkook’s from Taehyung gripping it as he swallowed around his cock and Taehyung’s from those final moments on the couch, both stuck with the sweat of it. Their shirts are parted, breathing labored and Taehyung still has a tissue with his fucking come on it.

He only remembers to dispose of it when Jungkook lunges.

“Jimin said—"

“Close the fucking door,” Jungkook’s seething, but he’s not giving Bogum the chance to actually do it before he slams it shut, and has him against it, forearm pressing into the length of his chest.

“Jungkook—” Taehyung tries, lifts off the couch hurriedly, throwing the tissue in the trash nearby, that holds so much evidence of this happening,

“Get fucking dressed, Taehyung,” Jungkook practically barks at him as he shoves into Bogum once with his arm before he drops it. He doesn’t step back and Bogum doesn’t move, either, simply stares, eyes wide and vulnerable, throat bobbing with an uncomfortable swallow around nothing. Jungkook’s fingers fall to his buttons but his eyes remain on him, fierce and unrelenting, the way he looks at the people he fights. “If you tell anyone about this, I will rip your tongue out of your throat and blame it on Kai. Won’t fucking be able to speak a sound ever again.”

Bogum says nothing, just stares, eyes filtering over to Taehyung, who struggles with the buttons of his own shirt.

Jungkook’s palm slams next to his head and it rings, draws his attention back. “He can’t help you. He means nothing to me.”

Jungkook sees him glance behind his back again, back at Taehyung, and Jungkook is jealous, so fucking jealous of this right, because he cannot afford it now, can't look back, can’t see Taehyung’s face. He breathes, shakes his head, looks down at his feet. He tongues at his lips, straightens, grips at Bogum’s forearm and pulls him away, shoves him over to Taehyung before he opens the door, leaves.

Taehyung takes a moment of clear, cutting hesitance, before he goes after him.

“Taehyung,” Bogum’s fingers latch on his wrist. He says nothing more, but the gaze is clear, are you serious?

It’s the very same question that rings in his head repeatedly when he frees his hand. “I’ll talk to you later. I promise.”

He only manages to catch up to Jungkook outside of the club. It’s too late for lines. It’s empty, the street is completely empty and Jungkook has all the room to yell at him.

“What the fuck are you doing, Taehyung?”

“Jungkook—” he tries as Jungkook spins to him, gives him his wide eyes, arms opening wide as well, lifting in the air with the surprise of his presence. His nostrils flare, chest expand and fall. He looks as angry as Taehyung feels.

“I just said,” Jungkook punctuates, slow and though teeth, taking unconscious, harrowing steps towards him, looks right into his eyes from as close as when they were fucking, when he spells it out for him, “you mean nothing to me.”

“I know,” Taehyung breathes. “I know you said that to him. I heard it.”

Jungkook’s pausing. He bites his lip, shakes his head, and looks away for a moment, looks at a lamp post, then at the starless sky. He breathes through his nose, looks back at him. “Taehyung—”

“Bogum won’t tell,” Taehyung spits out before he can say whatever it is he wants to. “Okay? That’s all I came to say, Jungkook. Don’t do something stupid, because Bogum won’t tell.”

Jungkook’s eyes are all over him, his face, his body, his own eyes; they stop there, root. “That’s all you came to say?”

“Yes.” Taehyung nods, swallows.

Jungkook nods back. “Okay,” and it is when Taehyung angles his body back towards the club that he continues speaking. “Wanna get out of here?”

Taehyung’s head shoots back, neck almost snaps with the brusqueness of its motion. It’s his turn to study him now, eyes skim all across, dart to each and every inch of him for the sign of what he does not know. But Jungkook does not falter, does not say anything more. He just waits.

And Taehyung nods.

When Jungkook takes him to the Executive Tower a few blocks away, Taehyung turns back. When he shuts off his protests and takes him to the roof, however, he is in awe. He refuses to sit on the edge like Jungkook does, even watching the other dangle his legs off gives him anxiety that he doesn’t voice. Heights makes him nervous, but that is just another thing he can’t let Jeon Jungkook know.

But by the way Jeon Jungkook smirks, he probably guesses.

“Fine, don’t sit,” he rolls his eyes, as Taehyung pauses at the hatch door. “Just come closer for a minute, see the view.”

Taehyung’s steps are hesitant, but he does, begrudgingly walks over to where Jungkook sits. Jungkook’s eyes sleaze over him when his hand trembles to reach for the edge, but he allows it, lets him take his time. When Taehyung finally has the confidence to stand near enough to see, he certainly doesn’t regret it. It’s fucking beautiful.

And compared to everything in his life, it’s so pleasingly silent.

Jungkook’s voice has a calming quality to it now, as he speaks in a manner that does not disturb the setting. “You can see almost all of Seoul,” he says.

“You can see all of Gangnam,” Taehyung notes, for the first time when Jungkook’s around eyes not entirely reserved for him, because they venture fascinated all across. “All of Richhood.”

“Yes, that fucking shithole." Jungkook nods. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Taehyung layers his eyes over Jungkook now. “Sadly,” he says. Jungkook hums at this and if he feels his gaze on him, he doesn’t indicate it.

 He only turns his head to him after a moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit?” he arches his brows, that smirk from a little while before reappears as he adds, “I’ll catch you if you start to fall.”

“I don’t trust you,” Taehyung tells him, voice low. He does want to climb on, though, give himself the extra height to take in the view.

He places his hands on the roof edge and they tremble when he attempts to lift himself up enough to get his legs up. Jungkook’s fingers wrap against his wrist and hold it down, stable, until he manages, releases it immediately after his ass is on top, and answers, “Good call.”

Taehyung keeps his knees to himself, sits as close to the roof as the space would allow him and wraps his arms around his legs, peaking over. He does not like the proximity he subconsciously chooses to Jungkook, but he does prefer having him closer just in case he does topple over.

His heart beats a bit sporadically in his chest. They’re silent and he takes his phone out of his jeans, texts Bogum to ask him if he wants him to come back tonight or he doesn’t want to see him before he puts it away.

Less than another minute passes when Jungkook reaches his arm forward, one finger pointed. “That thing there above the very lit one is my apartment.”

Taehyung looks on. He can see from here he indicates a penthouse, two floors probably, and as dark as the sky. No one’s home.  

“Your apartment,” Taehyung chews a bit on his mouth. He hesitates, keeps his eyes on that apartment. “My sister told me about what happened.”

Jungkook’s hand drops in his lap, heavy. His gaze is rooted on that building as well. He’s lived there his entire life in that apartment his father bought. His father who tried to hurt Taehyung’s sister. His father who hurts his own sister all the time. “Yeah?” he asks. He sinks his teeth into his lip.

“Yes,” Taehyung says. He has the urge to look at him, but something makes him hold back, feels peculiarly as if he would intrude on some privacy if he does in that moment. “Thank you.”

Jungkook sucks in a breath so sharp Taehyung almost feels it himself, and he looks away from that apartment, looks to the other side, brings his knee up and rests his cheek on it, takes away the mere chance for Taehyung to look.

“You know,” he mumbles in his own knee and Taehyung doesn’t know if he is even meant to hear, “one time my mom threatened to leave my father and he went all soft and manipulative on her. I don’t think he’s ready to face the public embarrassment of a divorce, of failure.” He pauses, he gulps. His voice has never been as soft, his words never as harrowing, “He said he did not hit as hard as his own father did.”

Jungkook does not know completely what fully compels him to say this. He does know, however, he had no one else he can say it to. Yoongi, Hoseok, Julia. They all know his father sucks. None of them know he hits. And Ji-woo does. Taehyung does.

He turns his face on the other cheek, and Taehyung feels it, turns as well, meets his eyes. They glimmer. His voice barely sounds, “I don’t want to become that, Tae.”

Taehyung’s knees fall apart, legs dangle off the edge as he turns as much of his body towards him as he can, and he speaks before he thinks. “You won’t,” he promises with palpable conviction. Jungkook’s brows raise a bit, he lifts his head, rests it on his chin instead and he watches Taehyung’s eyes as he shakes his head and keeps talking.“Like, don’t get me wrong, you’re a fucking ass, Jungkook,” he says animatedly, nodding with it. “A condescending, entitled, sort of selfish fucking ass,” he lists, “but you’re nothing like your father.”

Jungkook drops his knees as well, straightens. He looks away, looks ahead, back at that apartment. Taehyung watches his tongue coat his lips, his lids blink. “I’m a lot like my father.”

Taehyung shakes his head, “No,” he isn’t, Taehyung really believes he isn’t. “You’re rich and young and it makes you kind of dumb, kind of shameless.” Jungkook is shameless and Jungkook is stupid in a way that has nothing to do with intelligence. So is Taehyung. “And I’m poor and young and it makes me kind of dumb, kind of shameless.”

Jungkook looks at him. His legs dangle and swing back and forth like that of a child and they are young, so fucking young, maybe it’s a good enough excuse for now to make the mistakes that they do, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s time they grow up and stop, but on that rooftop, there is room for one more and Taehyung stares at Jungkook as he makes it. As he admits, “And you make me kind of dumb and kind of shameless as well.”