Archive of Our Own

Taehyung takes a sip of protein shake from his place in front of the wall of windows. In his penthouse apartment, he's on top of the world – or at least on top of Seoul.

The city sprawls so far below him that the sea of lights on buildings and cars look like stars. If he stares long enough, it's easy to become disoriented. Sometimes he stands here until he feels like the whole world is upside-down, and he's suspended, floating in the center of it.

In those moments, the world makes more sense to him than the luxury apartment at his back, a gilded cage.

He finishes his shake and gives the glass a quick rinse. Someone will come to clean it and put it away eventually. He doesn't mind washing dishes, but if he's going to be plied with servants and security guards, he's come to find it easier to let them do their jobs. If it's going to be paid for anyway, then fine. He'll leave the place a mess. It's not money from his pockets.

Not that he has access to much of that anymore.

He brushes his dark hair out of his face and gives his head a little shake. He cracks the knuckles in his hands, rolls his shoulders back, leans his neck from side to side. None of it is enough to dispel the energy building under his skin. He needs to get it out, or it will be another sleepless night on his 120 GSM sateen bed sheets.

It's already – he checks the time on his phone – after midnight. Not that midnight is late around here.

He pulls a bottle of water from the fridge, drinks half of it, and then heads for the door. He grabs his duffel, which is light because he doesn't have far to go, and steps out into the hall.

"Good evening, sir," comes the predictable greeting from both security guards posted outside his door. One stands beside the door itself, the other waits across the hall at the elevator.

They don't look like security, but that's what they are. It's a ridiculous ruse, because the only person who ever sees them (with one rare and painfully frustrating exception) is Taehyung, and he knows exactly what purpose they serve.

"I told you not to call me that," Taehyung says. He doesn't know why he bothers. Even with his fiercest scowl in place, the guards only ever nod to show that they've heard him and then go on with the show.

Taehyung knows why. For all that they make their deference to him like he's some sort of king in a play, they take their real orders from someone else. They'll bow and scrape and do anything to please Taehyung – as long as it doesn't get in the way of what they're really here to do.

He rolls his eyes when the guard by the door, in his million-won jeans and designer brand leather jacket, predictably nods. Taehyung crosses the hallway to the elevator and presses the only button: down.

The elevator arrives immediately, because it's private. Staff uses a different one, probably hidden away at the end of the hall somewhere. He steps into it, but there’s no relief.

The guard from outside the elevator steps in after him. "Where are we going, sir?" he asks. His tone is light but respectful, like he's excited to have something to do. He probably is.

Taehyung doesn't even want to guess how long he's just been standing in the hallway, getting paid who knows how much to wait for Taehyung to open the door.

He wants to argue. It would be pointless. Of course he knows Taehyung doesn't need him to push a button or walk him down the hall. He isn't truly here to help. That's only the mask he wears. His true purpose is to make sure Taehyung goes where he says he's going.

"The gym.” He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the mirrored wall. The glass is cool against the bare nape of his neck and his upper arms.

The guard presses the floor number to access the gym, and the elevator doors slide silently shut.

There's no sense of awkwardness or tension inside the elevator. Maybe there would have been a few months ago. Now Taehyung has learned to treat the staff almost like annoying coworkers. He talks to them when he has to, and he doesn't hide that he's annoyed about it.

It's not as though he isn't used to being surrounded by staff. In his old home – his own home – there had been staff everywhere. It hadn't felt like this. They had been both more deferential and more personable. They had been, if not a part of the family, then at least familiar enough that he could talk to them like real people, if only when no one else was paying attention.

Of course, that had been a mistake hard-corrected.

He doesn't have much time to think about it. The elevator takes them swiftly and smoothly down the few floors to the gym. The security guard holds his arm in front of the door so Taehyung can step out ahead of him. Then he follows him out.

"I'm just going down the hall,” Taehyung says, unable to hide his annoyance.

The guard shrugs, eloquently reminding Taehyung that there's nothing he can do, his hands are tied, he has his orders – without having to say any of it out loud.

Helpless anger wells up in Taehyung's chest. It's secondary, nothing more than a reaction to his circumstances. He opens his mouth to take it out on the guard anyway when a voice calls from down the hall.

"It's okay!" the voice says. Taehyung shuts his eyes, trying to compose himself. "I'll go with him!"

He turns to look. "I don't need anyone to go with me. What do you think I'm going to do? Jump out the window?"

Jimin stops walking as he reaches Taehyung and the security guard. He gives the guard a look and he nods, backing away and heading back for the elevator. Jimin doesn't pay him any more attention than that, and Taehyung doesn't either.

"Of course not," Jimin says. "But it kind of depends on your mood, don't you think?"

Taehyung rolls his eyes. At least with Jimin, he doesn't have to feel guilty about treating the hired help like shit.

Not that he knows exactly what Jimin's role here is. He seems to be something between an assistant, a consultant, and a part of the "family." He certainly has authority over most other people.

He could get rid of Taehyung's shadow with a single command, after all, whereas Taehyung is incapable of dismissing anyone for anything. These people would follow him into the bathroom if they had been ordered to do it, and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.

At the same time, Jimin seems to manage a multitude of tasks – not the least of which being to befriend vulnerable enemies.

Taehyung doesn't let himself scowl, even though Jimin's presence still turns his stomach, especially when he acts like this: familiar, friendly. As though they have a shared history that hasn't gone rancid with betrayal. He doesn't like the idea of Jimin being able to see it on him, how affected he still is.

In his lonelier moments, when he feels small despite himself, no veil between his empty apartment and the city outside except the reinforced windows – in those moments, he almost wonders if this is the real Jimin.

If, now that they're here, Jimin is letting Taehyung see the truth of him, and what he really wants is for them to be friends again.

Then he crushes that idea, because it doesn't change anything, and he ought to keep Jimin outside his armor and his walls, for his own protection.

The truth is it doesn't matter either way. He doesn't need to punish Jimin any more than he needs to forgive him. He shouldn't care about Jimin or what's real, or what might have been real.

All that matters now is that he's behind enemy lines.

It doesn't even matter that Jimin put him there. Jimin is nothing to him now. All that matters is surviving – long enough to get out, and to have something valuable to offer when he does. He learned that lesson too.

Taehyung doesn't dignify Jimin's comment with a response. He turns away and heads in the direction of the door to the gym. The rest of the household seems to call it a fitness room, but that strikes Taehyung as faintly ridiculous. It takes up more than half of the thirty-third floor and houses multiple rooms for different training.

There's even a pool, not that Taehyung has ever been allowed to visit it. That room, like many in the building, is behind a locked door that can only be accessed with a key card Taehyung has not been given.

He opens the door to the gym and steps inside with Jimin at his heels.

"You know, you can't ignore me forever," Jimin says conversationally.

"Watch me," Taehyung mutters.

There are a few other people in the gym, and he doesn't want to cause a scene. He has to assume everyone in this place will be reporting back to someone, and eventually those reports will make it to the top. He wants as little mention of him getting that far as possible.

Jimin follows him deeper into the gym, and Taehyung wars with himself over whether he thinks it's because Jimin genuinely wants to hang out, or if he's just keeping an eye on Taehyung.

Really, though, this is one of the places where he can do the least damage. He isn't going to jump out a window on the thirty-third floor, no matter what Jimin says. Even if he wanted to, there would be no way to break what he's sure is bulletproof glass to leap to his death.

And if he did want to off himself, he's sure he could find plenty of ways to do it in the comfort of his own apartment.

But as Jimin follows him, docile and suddenly quiet, through the gym, Taehyung wonders if maybe there is some truth to his first thought. Maybe Jimin does just want to hang out with him, like they used to.

Before he can remind himself that he doesn't have room for thoughts like that, Jimin says, "Do you ever miss it?"

He doesn't elaborate any further than that, but the wistful tone of his voice shatters any tender feelings that may have been brewing in Taehyung's chest.

Suddenly the fluorescent lights of the gym seem blinding. The scent of sweat and antiseptic cleaning supplies crawl up his nose and curl painfully in his head.

He squeezes his eyes shut against it. Music plays on invisible speakers, a bright pop that makes it feel like it’s a different time of day in this room than it is anywhere else. He wishes someone would turn it off.

It occurs to him that if he asked, they might do it, and then he knows that because of this, he can't ask.

A small, gentle hand comes to rest on his shoulder blade, half over the soft fabric of his black top, and half on his bare skin.

"Are you okay?" Jimin asks. Again, that gentle tone, as though Taehyung isn't stuck here – trapped here – because of him. As if he had no part in it.

As if he hadn't thrown years of friendship down the drain, all to drag Taehyung here and destroy his life for the sake of someone else.

Taehyung jerks his shoulder away from Jimin's touch. "No, I'm not okay," he snaps, quiet and vicious.

He sounds like a cornered animal, which is exactly what he is. He could say more. There's a lot he could say. But the devastated look on Jimin's face is satisfying enough.

He doesn't want to leave any openings for Jimin to exploit with his soft gaze and even softer words. Taehyung can't afford to hear them, because he can't afford to allow himself to believe them.

Jimin takes a cautious step back. He schools his expression away from heartbreak and into neutrality. Taehyung hates the way it tugs at something unnamable in his chest. He can't let himself believe that anything Jimin shows him is real.

"I'll leave you alone," Jimin says.

Taehyung stands still, watching Jimin stonily as he makes good on his word and backs away. He doesn't leave the gym, but he does cross to the other side of the room, giving him space.

He’s sure that if he were to go into the next room, Jimin would follow, but he thinks maybe he's bitten back hard enough that Jimin will stop trying to pretend he's here for any other reason than to keep an eye on him.

He drops his duffel on the floor by the free weights. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jimin pull his phone from the pocket of his shorts and type out a quick message. Taehyung has no doubt who that text is going to, and what the subject of it is. He seethes but he does it silently.

For a few minutes, he's able to lose himself in his workout. This is something he's trained himself to be able to do, and enjoy.

When he'd been younger, it was everything his family could do to cajole him into building physical strength. It simply hadn't been how he wanted to spend his time. In many ways, it still isn't, but he's learned to appreciate it for the clarity it gives him.

When he's pushing himself, just the right amount, his body demands all his focus. For those few moments, he's out of his head. There's no room to turn around and around the same thoughts that plague him. Every bit of attention is poured into making sure he has the right form, that he's walking along that fine, perfect edge between just right and not enough and too much.

For those few moments, he can almost believe he's free.

And in the moments after, as his body floods with the endorphins of a hard, successful workout, he can think like he is too.

So he pushes himself, drives himself on, picks up one set of weights and then another and another until he feels beads of sweat slipping down the nape of his neck, tracing down the length of his spine like the tip of a lazy finger. He stops just before his arms start to shake.

He shoots one glance over his shoulder at Jimin, who has struck up a conversation with someone Taehyung doesn't recognize. While he's distracted, Taehyung slips into the next room and finds a bench press that isn't being used. He sets his weight and settles onto the seat, hoping he'll be left alone.

There are a handful of other people in this room too. Weight machines line the walls, but most of the space is left open with a large mat on the floor for sparring.

He pushes through the burn in his legs and glances toward the door. He's surprised that Jimin hasn't followed him into the room.

Not wanting to waste the peace, he doubles down and works even harder. When he's finished with the leg press, he moves on to the leg curl machine. At this point, he's hoping to tire himself out. Sleep has never come easily to him, and since he's been here, it's even worse.

His mind turns over and over the events that have led to him being here as though it's a movie he can't press pause on. It shows him every mistake he's ever made on a loop, and it keeps sleep out of reach for hours at a time, sometimes all night.

Not that it matters much here. No one comes looking for him. No one expects him to do anything. He's left alone in his too-big apartment with his comically large TV and every game console he could name, including a state-of-the-art computer, though he's sure it's monitored.

But here, in the gym, those thoughts are pushed out. He sinks deeper into himself, feeling calmer as a result, and then a shape takes form in the doorway. It’s a shimmer of a moment before he steps into the room, just long enough for Taehyung to know exactly who it is.

Suddenly Taehyung knows why Jimin hadn't followed him.

"You don't have anyone spotting you," a voice says from behind him – too closely behind him. He feels hot breath on his ear and a traitorous jump in his chest.

He doesn't turn, even though part of him wants to. That part of him has been forced into submission more than once, and he'll do it again, as many times as he needs to, until he stops feeling it at all.

"I don't need anyone spotting me," he says. He tries to keep his voice neutral, but he sounds pissed. Better than it could have been. He counts it as a win.

"Everyone needs someone watching their back," the voice says.

"Sounds like a good way to get stabbed in it," Taehyung bites out.

There's a huff of laughter, and then Jungkook steps out from behind the machine to circle in front of Taehyung instead.

He looks fresh from the shower, his hair wet where it hangs in front of his face, still dripping. He's in a black tank almost identical to the one Taehyung is wearing, exposing skin that looks like it would be warm to the touch and the full sleeve of tattoos he'd gotten in the last few months.

Taehyung hadn't even known he wanted them, but he must have. He must have been thinking about them, dreaming of a day when he would be free to adorn himself however he wanted.

"I guess you would know," Jungkook says.

He has an expression on his face that Taehyung doesn't want to see as complicated, but he does. There is a certain smugness to him – a flavor that's always there these days, the literal cat who got the cream. But there's something else too, a hint of something softer, tucked into the corners of his eyes, the rigidity of his cocky grin.

Taehyung doesn't let himself look any harder to try to figure it out. Nothing lies down that path but pain.

He drops the weights on the machine with a pointed clang and meets Jungkook's eyes. "I guess I would."

Jungkook holds out his hand, offering to pull Taehyung up from the seat. Taehyung ignores it, even though what he really wants to do is slap it away for the presumption – that he would take it, that he would be tempted. The truth is, he can't allow himself even that much. He doesn't trust himself with it.

Taehyung stands without Jungkook's help. He considers walking right back out of the gym and to his apartment, just to get away from Jungkook.

In the end, he doesn't. Working out will help him calm down, even if Jungkook does insist on being in the same room for it. That's a good enough reason to stay. There doesn't need to be anything more to it than that.

He does his best to ignore Jungkook as he walks to another machine. He isn't even paying attention to where he's going or what he's signing himself up for.

Jungkook is like a beacon behind him. Even with his back to him, Taehyung is aware of him in the room, his big, dark eyes, once so innocent, watching Taehyung move.

For years he had thought Jungkook a harmless creature, only to learn in one catastrophic instant that he'd been a predator all along. Even harder to accept was the knowledge that Taehyung had been the prey.

"You just going to ignore me then?" Jungkook asks.

Taehyung swears he can feel Jungkook move. Now that he knows the truth of him, he finds it impossible to forget. Turning his back to Jungkook was once something he could do without a thought. Now he's aware of him every instant.

Jungkook's tattooed hand closes around Taehyung's upper arm, drawing him to a halt. He could easily jerk out of his reach and step away.

There's nowhere in this tower where he's ever truly safe or entirely protected from Jungkook's presence, but he also knows that Jungkook won't follow him into his own apartment if he makes it clear that he isn't welcome. That's one boundary Jungkook has never crossed, in all the months Taehyung has been here.

Taehyung doesn't pull away, but he doesn't turn toward Jungkook either. Jungkook's hand on his arm is warm and firm, his grip a little too tight to be comfortable but not tight enough to hurt.

"Come on, Tae," Jungkook says, his voice pitched lower now, even though there's no one else around to hear. "How long are we going to keep playing this game?"

"It's not a game to me," Taehyung bites out. Still, he can't seem to bring himself to move away. Call it muscle memory. Or toxic curiosity.

Most of the time he's spent in this building, he's spent alone in his penthouse apartment, wondering what he's even doing here.

When Jungkook texts him on the phone he'd gifted him the day they arrived, Taehyung leaves him on read. When Jungkook sends someone to his door to invite him to dinner or ask him to join him for drinks, Taehyung thanks the messenger for their time and tells them he would rather die.

On the rare occasions when Jungkook turns up at his door himself, usually so late at night it's practically morning, with eyes slightly glassy in that way that should make him pathetic but only ever seems to make him infuriatingly enticing, Taehyung slams the door in his face.

But the rest of the time, when he's left to his own devices, meandering around an apartment that's too big and too empty, he wonders when the next text, the next invitation, the next drunken late-night mistake, will turn up.

So maybe there's a part of him that doesn't mind Jungkook egging him on now. Maybe there's even a part of him that wants it, if for nothing but the satisfaction of an interaction he can sink his teeth into.

The worst thing about being trapped here is how painfully bored he is.

He turns to face Jungkook, aware of every inch of skin Jungkook's hand brushes along his arm as he moves.

"What do you want, Jungkook?" he asks. He realizes as the familiar feel of the name fills his mouth that he hasn't spoken it aloud in some weeks.

"Same as you," Jungkook says. He waits half a beat, like he thinks Taehyung will fill in the blank. Then he says, "A good workout," like that’s what he meant all along.

"You just showered," Taehyung points out.

Jungkook shrugs. "Long day," he says. He grins, and it lances through Taehyung like a stab wound.

When he smiles like that, he looks exactly the same – despite the haircut, despite the tattoos, despite the little pinpricks in his lip where his piercings used to sit.

Taehyung had almost asked about them, the first time he'd seen Jungkook here. It had been a few days after Jungkook brought him, passed him off to Jimin as though Taehyung could stand to look at him any more than he could look at Jungkook.

Jimin had been the one to bring him up to his new penthouse apartment. Jimin had been the one who explained his new circumstances – that he could have anything he wanted, do whatever he liked, except leave the building.

And then Taehyung had been left there, listless and something like homesick, except it had nothing to do with missing a place. That had been a hard truth to face, with the city spread out beneath him as though he were some conquering hero.

Jungkook showed up a few days later, his shaggy hair cut short and practical, the new beginnings of the tattoos already peeking out from the sleeve of his t-shirt, and his lip piercings removed.

Taehyung had opened his mouth to ask where they'd gone, and why, before anything else. But the reason occurred to him before the words ever made it past his lips.

They would be a liability now – now that Jungkook wouldn't be confined to a compound anymore, now that he would be free to take part in the “family business.”

For some reason, it had been that detail that put the final nail in the coffin for Taehyung. It drove home the realization that everything had changed, that he wasn't even a princess locked in a tower so much as a trophy – brought home to sit on a shelf after a victory in which he had been thoroughly vanquished.

It all finally clicked into place, standing with his luxury apartment at his back, and Jungkook there in the doorway, so different but still with that open, wide-eyed look on his face.

As though he could still be the Jungkook Taehyung knew, the Jungkook he had grown up with. As though he could still be the innocent kid thrown to the wolves, the boy unloved and forgotten by his own family, the first person in Taehyung's life who he had ever related to, who he had ever believed could understand him.

But Jungkook could never be that person again. Jungkook had never been that person to begin with.

It had only ever been a part he played for a greater purpose, and he had played it so well that it destroyed Taehyung from the inside out. He'd looked into those eyes for one long, perception-altering moment, and then he'd slammed the door in Jungkook's face.

Under the fluorescent lights of the gym, he feels suddenly exhausted, so much older than his twenty-five years. He feels like he looks it too, when he catches glimpses of himself in the mirror, which he tries not to do.

It's yet another reason Jungkook's presence itches under his skin. Twenty-three looks a lot different on him here, with his shorter haircut and sharp jawline and tattoos. It's like their mere existence in the same room mocks Taehyung with how tired and run-down he feels.

"Come on, Tae," Jungkook says, and it's only then that Taehyung realizes he's still waiting for an answer to his implicit request. "We used to work out together all the time," he says.

He takes advantage of the fact that Taehyung is too stunned by his brazen swagger to respond right away. He steps closer, and then closer again, until they're looking right into each other's eyes.

"How long are you going to keep punishing me?"

The choice of words hits Taehyung harder than any punch he's ever weathered. For a moment, he's too stunned to respond, and when he finally does, it's more a reaction to Jungkook's smug smirk at having thrown him off than it is to the words themselves.

"I thought you liked that," he snaps. At some level, he's sure he's hoping to catch Jungkook off guard, to make him feel even half as unsteady on his feet as Taehyung feels every moment they’re in the same room together.

Of course, it doesn't work, and he never really thought it would. If he had more self control, he never would have said it in the first place.

Jungkook grins at him, sharp and almost mean but not quite. "Sometimes," he says, like it doesn't cost him anything to admit. "When it's the right kind," Jungkook says. "When it comes from the right person."

And that line does hurt. It cuts, deep and bloody.

Taehyung moves to turn away, but Jungkook doesn't let it happen. He reaches out to him again, this time wrapping his strong fingers around Taehyung's wrist. Taehyung keeps moving until Jungkook makes it clear that he isn't going to let go and Taehyung's arm pulls at the socket.

"Seriously," Jungkook says. For the first time since he'd stepped into the room, his expression falters. He's no less pleased with himself, but he is slightly less sure. Taehyung hates that it doesn't feel any better. "What are you going to do if you don't stay here with me?" he challenges. "Go back upstairs and wait to fall asleep by yourself?"

Taehyung yanks his wrist from Jungkook's grip but doesn't answer, because Jungkook is right, and if he tries to pretend otherwise, he'll know.

"You know I'm good at tiring you out," Jungkook says. He meets Taehyung's eyes, brazen and infuriating. "Play with me."

The sheer frustration of his situation wells up in Taehyung all at once. He hates this – hates this place, hates knowing he's trapped here, hates that Jungkook is here with him, and hates that Jungkook insists on getting under his skin, as though he hasn't done enough already.

He hates Jungkook. Hates him as much as he ever believed he loved him. Hates him more.

And the fact that Jungkook thinks he can just follow him around, get his people to report on Taehyung's every move and then show up to demand his attention, acting like nothing has changed – it does more than make him angry.

There's a humiliation in it, this idea that after everything Jungkook has put him through, he still thinks he has any right to make demands.

Who does he think Taehyung is? What does he take him for?

The feeling alchemizes in his blood and turns to something wrathful, and alone in the gym with Jungkook, he feels the moment he loses the fight against it.

That, too, makes it all so much worse, because he knows it's all Jungkook. He knows it, but he's past the point of being able to resist the temptation. Jungkook looks at him with that cocky smirk and Taehyung wants nothing more than to wipe it off his face.

The feeling swells and before he knows it, his hands are in Jungkook's shirt, seemingly unable to decide whether he wants to pull him closer or push him away. Jungkook looks at him with that face, insufferable, and it makes the decision for him.

Before he knows it, he's shoving him away, but it happens too fast for his hands to get the message. He pushes, but his hands stay gripped in Jungkook's shirt, so they both stumble back toward the mat in the middle of the room.

Jungkook laughs, as though he can feel how conflicted Taehyung is and finds it funny. Taehyung grits his teeth. He doesn't want to let Jungkook get to him, but he's tired and he's worn down after too many days alone in his apartment.

"That's it," Jungkook says, like this is exactly what he wants, like Taehyung can't help playing directly into his hands. He's still laughing, and it just makes Taehyung so mad. This time, his hands get the message too, and in a second, Jungkook is sprawling back onto the mat.

Taehyung thinks for a moment that he's actually caught him off guard, and then Jungkook's fingers close around his ankle.

He gives one hard, inexorable pull, and Taehyung is on the mat with him. It stuns the breath out of him – only for a second, but it's long enough.

The next thing he knows, Jungkook is leaning up over him. He has the presence of mind, at least, not to straddle Taehyung. Maybe it's self-preservation, but it's not enough. Taehyung feels his own expression harden.

"We used to play like this all the time," Jungkook says. It could be innocent, but it's not. He smirks down at Taehyung, the white glow of the lights forming a halo around him.

Taehyung grits his teeth but he doesn't let Jungkook see it, doesn't want him to know just how much he's getting to him. Instead, he tenses. It doesn't matter that Jungkook can probably see exactly what he's going to do before he does it, purely based on the way his body moves.

He launches up from the mat, shoving Jungkook as much with his body as with his hands, and then it's Jungkook with his back on the floor and Taehyung looking down at him.

He gets close on instinct, leaning down until he can feel the heat of Jungkook's body radiating into his own space. He gets too close, maybe. Close enough to smell the familiar scent of him, which should be different now but isn't. Somehow it's the same clean-laundry scent, like no matter where he goes or what he does, he smells like home.

"I think it was a little more like this," Taehyung says. He tries to grab onto some of that obnoxiously arrogant demeanor Jungkook is so good at emanating. It's easier like this, with Jungkook on his back underneath him, looking up at him with those eyes. It hurts more too.

"You're right," Jungkook says easily. Taehyung doesn't understand how, if this is who Jungkook really is, nothing Taehyung says can get under his skin.

If he were still the same person, it would make sense. If he was still that sweet, innocent kid Taehyung thought he met so many years ago, he could understand. But he's not. He's never been that person.

When Taehyung first saw Jungkook, he'd looked small for thirteen. Skinny and shy, he'd seemed frail to Taehyung who, at fifteen, felt so much older than this kid sent to his family's compound as part of some sort of deal. At least, that's what Taehyung had believed at the time.

All he’d been told when Jungkook appeared at the Kim family compound was that Jungkook would be staying with them indefinitely. He had picked up from servant chatter and overheard conversations that Jungkook had been sent, upon request, by his own “family,” as collateral.

It took him a while to fully understand it all, to piece together the fact that Jungkook's family, not even tied to each other by blood, had been growing more and more threatening and worse, more and more brazen, over the last years.

The Kims had decided that to keep Bangtan in line, they would take one of their own – someone young enough not to cripple their organization, maybe, but important enough to ensure their good behavior. A political prisoner in a sense.

To Taehyung, he had been a friend. Someone he could relate to, tossed into the lion's den by his own family. Taehyung believed Jungkook had been like him, undervalued by the people in his life who were meant to care most about him.

He'd believed that, like him, Jungkook had been seen as expendable by the very people who should have been sources of love and acceptance.

Taehyung had never grown up learning that lesson, only feeling its absence. And then Jungkook had been tossed to him, like a pet. Maybe it had been inevitable that Taehyung would grow attached. Even if it had been the biggest mistake of his life.

Lost in thought, and definitely not lost in the dark pools of Jungkook's familiar eyes, he's thrown off both figuratively and literally as Jungkook takes advantage of his distraction and gains the upper hand again.

Once more, Taehyung is underneath him, glaring up at that delighted grin that has no business looking so innocently sweet.

"It was like that,” Jungkook says. “But not anymore," he tells Taehyung, smug, so much older than he had been a few months ago. Taehyung feels older too, in an entirely different way.

Taehyung’s face goes warm at Jungkook's implication. He hates the way Jungkook baits him with the idea that their relationship ever really meant anything to him at all, only to laugh in his face.

It makes Taehyung itch for a fight, and he almost gives in to the temptation, thinks maybe that's what Jungkook really wants from him. But even though they're alone in this room for now, Jungkook's people are just on the other side of the door.

So he doesn't let his hands ball into fists, and he doesn't let himself hit that look off of Jungkook's face, no matter how badly he wants it. But he can't entirely hold himself back either.

He's too angry, and he's been itching for this fight for too long. He can't ignore it when Jungkook is practically presenting it on a silver platter, almost begging for him to take the opportunity.

"Keep telling yourself that," Taehyung bites. He presses up to try to shove Jungkook away from him, but he's stopped by the weight of Jungkook's hands on his shoulders, and then when he keeps fighting, his chest.

His anger takes a firmer shape under that heavy pressure. It sends heat flooding through his limbs, and he wrangles it to give him the strength he needs to push back.

He may not have had the unconditional love normal kids get growing up, but he certainly had never lacked for his family's brand of education. He draws on that experience now and manages to dislodge Jungkook enough to get away.

For a few minutes, they tussle like they never have. It's satisfying in a way Taehyung doesn't want to think too much about, bodies pressing together before coming apart, only to collide again.

Jungkook's grip on him, when he gets one, is firm but malleable. He doesn't impede Taehyung from moving, only ever demonstrates just enough force to show that he's still in the game.

And just like he said, a game is what it is.

Jungkook is playing. To him, this is all for the fun of it, because for him, it can still be fun. It isn't fun for Taehyung as he grabs Jungkook by the arm and twists him down onto the mat, just like it isn't fun when Jungkook gets out from under him with a sharp buck of his hips, dislodging Taehyung's grip and gaining the upper hand.

Taehyung wants to spit and swear, but he knows it will only make Jungkook laugh again, so instead he tries to speak in a language where there can be no misunderstanding. He puts his all into the fight, even though really they're doing little more than sparring, rolling around on the mat together, trading off who comes out on top.

Almost as though Jungkook can read his mind, he flips Taehyung onto his front and yanks one arm behind his back. He leans down over him, and this time he doesn't bother trying to keep any semblance of space between their bodies.

He climbs onto Taehyung's hips and presses down against him, holding him in place. He knows exactly the right amount of pressure to exert to keep Taehyung still beneath him. He knows just how high up his back to yank his arm to make it twinge any time he twitches.

He leans down low over Taehyung, hotter now than he had been before, after several minutes exerting himself. Taehyung is sure he's giving off more heat now too. Jungkook comes closer and closer, until Taehyung can feel the whisper of his breath teasing his hair.

"Come on, Tae," he says. Taehyung doesn't have to see him to know that he's got that smirk firmly back in place, but he can also tell that he's been working hard.

His chest moves against Taehyung's back and arm, breathing heavily, and Taehyung knows that if he could see his face, he would see something that until recently, he'd only ever caught glimmers of.

It's a ferocity, a fire. It lives in the grit of Jungkook’s jaw, the creases around his eyes. Before, Taehyung would see it in flashes, every once in a while. When his competitive spirit would come out, before he crushed it down again. When someone insulted him or something he cared about, before he would master himself and refuse to let it bother him.

It's an expression he wears often now, and Taehyung knows it's there in this moment, right behind him.

"Let me in," Jungkook says, right there against his ear, and Taehyung's gut twists.

Judging by the nature of their conversation so far, it's impossible to miss the double meaning. Despite himself, Taehyung flushes. He has no more than a second or two to hope that Jungkook doesn’t notice before he feels a huff of breath against his ear and knows Jungkook is laughing at him.

That deep-seated heat of anger wells up in him and he tries to jerk back, to shove Jungkook off of him, but he can't. Until now, the fight had been a back-and-forth, a conversation between their bodies that Taehyung had refused to engage in verbally.

This is different. Taehyung could get out of Jungkook's hold on him, maybe, if he really needed to. He might hurt himself in the process. He stays still, gritting his teeth, refusing to play along any more than he already has by giving into his frustration.

Jungkook is still right there, his full weight leaning down against Taehyung's back, pinning him to the mat. He's close enough that he can no doubt see every shift in Taehyung's expression, and Taehyung hates how well Jungkook can read them – hates himself for making it so easy for him.

"You know you'll give in eventually," Jungkook tells him, his voice low. He sounds dangerous in a way that Taehyung had never believed him to be, until Jungkook proved him so painfully wrong.

Taehyung loses the battle with his own temper. He laughs and the sound is grating and bitter. It satisfies him because he knows Jungkook will hear how fake it is.

"Why would I?" he says. "Everything you ever showed me was a lie."

There's that little breath of a laugh again, right by Taehyung's ear. Jungkook presses as close as he can to him without crossing the boundary of what could be considered a fight.

Taehyung almost wants to goad him into taking more. Like the itch to pick at a scab, he thinks that maybe if it hurts more, it will be better somehow. Easier. But Jungkook never crosses the line.

"That's true," he says, amusement still in his voice, "but I think you'll give in anyway." This time, he doesn't wait for Taehyung to challenge him before he goes on. "I'll tell you why. You're curious. Maybe you hate it. Maybe you hate me. But you want to know what it would be like."

"There's no maybe about it," Taehyung says through bared teeth. His arm hurts where it's twisted behind him and he tries again to shove back hard enough to dislodge Jungkook's grip, and can't.

"If you didn't want it, we wouldn't be here," Jungkook says, so smugly sure of himself.

Taehyung tries a different approach, jerking his arm, but the pain in his shoulder radiates through him, pulsing in time with the flow of blood.

He could push through it. He's been trained to separate physical pain from the workings of the rest of him. He could steady himself, breathe, push through this. It doesn't even touch the pain he's experienced before, which Jungkook well knows.

It doesn't even match the pain he's faced in other moments like this one, training in the gym with someone only too happy to put the boss's kid on his back.

He's been stabbed, shot, had limbs dislocated. What's a little bit of discomfort in the face of that? Unlike some Taehyung knows, pain isn't something he enjoys for its own sake. He may be just as fucked in the head as the next person, but he doesn't have that particular pathology. All the training in the world hasn't been enough to flip that instinct on its head.

He wouldn't enjoy it, but he could endure it. He could force Jungkook away from him, at the cost of a minor dislocation – if Jungkook would force it, and some part of Taehyung, some foolish part, still believes he wouldn't. That he would let Taehyung go before it came to that.

Which is why it's especially infuriating when Jungkook keeps talking. Because every word he says is true, and they both know it.

"You could stop me," he says.

Taehyung hadn't even realized he shut his eyes, but he squeezes them even tighter now. He’s afraid that if he doesn't, they'll open on their own and he'll see Jungkook there, hovering over his shoulder like a vengeful spirit intent on haunting him, his familiar face twisted from sweetness to this mocking, hard-edged mask that isn't a mask at all.

Jungkook's weight on him is heavy, hot from fighting Taehyung as hard as he has, and he doesn't shy away from using his body to hold him still.

"You could push me away if you wanted to," Jungkook taunts him.

He pauses for half a second, as though expecting Taehyung to argue, but Taehyung can't find the words. His tongue is heavy behind his teeth.

"But you don't," Jungkook says then, as though Taehyung's silence confirms it. "You don't want me to stop."

Somehow he leans in even closer, so that his next words are spoken directly against Taehyung's ear, his lips brushing skin for the first time since Taehyung had come to this tower, and his whole world had collapsed under his feet.

"You want it as bad as I do," Jungkook says. The words, as much as the brush of them against him, send an icy shiver down Taehyung's spine. He has to fight every instinct in his body to remain still.

He's so tense that he can feel every inch of his body. Every part of him that's touching Jungkook feels as though it's a completely different temperature, as though it belongs to someone else entirely.

Each breath he forces himself to take burns in his throat. He wants to argue, fight back, tell Jungkook he's wrong, that Taehyung has never hated anyone like he hates him. It's saying a lot, because if he had been trained to endure and to fight, then he had been bred to hate.

But he doesn't say any of it, because he can't trust the sound that will come out of his mouth if he frees it to speak.

It's probably only a few seconds that they stay there, suspended, living in the moment Jungkook forces open, dragging it out. It's not a stalemate, but Jungkook pretends it is. Taehyung almost wishes he wouldn't. He would almost rather they both admit he’s lost.

Before they can navigate their way out of it, there's a swell of voices and laughter from the other room. Taehyung's blood goes to ice in his veins as he realizes several more people are about to walk into the room. His panic doesn't even have the chance to take shape before Jungkook is off him, cold air enveloping Taehyung in his wake.

He doesn't even know what's happening, but suddenly he's on his feet, dizzy with the speed of it, the phantom press of Jungkook's hands on him shifting from where they had been pinning him down to where they settled to drag him up.

"Good match," Jungkook says, just as several people enter the room together. He pats Taehyung on the shoulder as though they're friends. "Maybe I'll be luckier next time."

He grins, for all the world as though they've just had a friendly spar, and then he turns. Taehyung doesn't wait to see where he goes or what he does.

He leaves the gym as fast as he can, and heads back alone to the penthouse at the top of a world he can't touch, but which claims him anyway.

#

Taehyung is on the floor of the penthouse, looking out over the lights of Seoul, with no real idea of how he had gotten there. Not because he's drunk. The apartment is well stocked with all the alcohol he could ever imagine wanting, but he's only indulged in it a handful of times since he's been here, and he's always regretted it.

He's never been a big drinker anyway. In the family business, as much as it's looked down on to abstain, it's more dangerous to give in to the temptation to escape reality through a bottle.

That temptation has been strong in the tower where Jungkook keeps him like a princess in a fairy tale, or a pet. But it feels all the more important to resist it. So he does.

He resists, he endures, and yet he finds himself splayed in front of the window anyway, with only the vague memory of wandering through the silent apartment, gaze snared by the setting sun, hours ago now.

In his head, he's nowhere. He isn't here, but he isn't in the only place he can think of as home either. That's been the strangest thing about being here, how little he misses his old life.

He's angry, of course, to have had it snatched from him. But it's not because he would rather be there.

There's a small, still part of him that breathes a little easier for every day that he isn't confined to the Kim family compound, for all that he's more trapped than he's ever been. Every day spent away from his father, from the old guard who were less their own people and more extensions of that man's limbs and will, is a day he feels more relaxed inside himself.

Maybe that's why the lights of the city below capture him so easily. For the first time in his life, there is no one around him who has any expectations of him whatsoever. In these still, quiet moments, he can admit to himself that in some ways, there's a freedom in that – a freedom he's never had.

He's floating in the sense of having nowhere, nothing, to be, when he hears a thud outside the apartment door.

He's almost relaxed enough that he doesn't react immediately, but a lifetime of training to be on his guard at all times, has him tensing where he rests. He's turned his head to the door before he even realizes he's doing it.

He waits, not knowing what he's anticipating. The building has seemed particularly quiet today, though he's only ventured out once, briefly, to visit the gym.

He's been going less often, at stranger times of day, in the hopes of avoiding running into Jungkook again. Now he can barely step inside the place without remembering the weight of Jungkook pressing him into the mat, his grip on Taehyung's arm just firm enough to keep him exactly where Jungkook wanted him.

Today, though, the place had been emptied out. There hadn't even been anyone there to keep watch on him.

It had been eerie, and as much as he'd enjoyed having a sense of freedom for an hour or two, before long, he'd found himself wanting to return to his own apartment, creeped out by the pervasive quiet. Even the security outside his own door had been called away, which is ultimately what prompts him to stand up.

He almost worries one of the guards has returned and is hurt somehow. But when he crosses the apartment and opens the door, it isn't the security guard he finds on the other side.

It's Jungkook. Only he isn't standing there with a cocky grin on his face, acting like he expects to be welcomed even when he knows better by now.

He's slumped on the floor in front of the door, leaning against it so heavily that when Taehyung opens it, he falls back over the threshold into the apartment.

Taehyung's stomach drops and he feels himself fall into instinct that had been trained into him. He crouches low and peeks out into the hallway, but there's no one there.

Without another thought, he grabs Jungkook by the arms and drags him into the apartment. He slams the door shut behind and in a second, he's on the floor at his side, looking for whatever is wrong.

Because something is definitely wrong.

On the air, he can almost taste the salt-brine tang of blood, though nothing immediately stands out to his eyes.

Jungkook is alive, which is the first thing Taehyung confirms, his mind operating separate from the rest of him to go through the motions, while every other part of him panics and then ruthlessly shoves it down.

Jungkook isn't passed out either, which becomes clear within a few seconds when he starts trying to talk – trying to, not because it's especially difficult, but because he has to make himself heard over Taehyung's roaring blood.

"Hey," he says, his voice strangely soft, "it's okay. I'm okay."

Taehyung can't bring himself to answer, still searching with hands and eyes for whatever had brought Jungkook to Taehyung's door and dropped him to the floor as soon as he arrived.

Finally, he finds it, his hands on something hot and wet beneath Jungkook's jacket. He tears it off his shoulders as well as he can without jostling him.

Jungkook keeps talking, saying meaningless words. Maybe at some point he gives up on words altogether and focuses on making soothing sounds with his voice, or maybe Taehyung is only having a hard time processing what he's saying.

Eventually he snaps, "Shut up," focusing on lifting Jungkook's shirt away from his body. He doesn't do it as gently as he could, but he does try not to hurt him as he peels the black fabric away from his skin.

It tugs in a way that must be painful, but Jungkook does no more than suck a breath through his teeth. He shuts up like Taehyung tells him to and lies still.

At some level, he takes in other details. Jungkook is dressed all in black, which isn't unusual for him, but he's wearing more clothing than Taehyung typically sees him in around the building.

Instead of shorts or a pair of sweatpants to work out in, he's wearing practical pants that somehow are both well-fitted to his body and full of pockets – pockets that, he notices, are full of all sorts of things the errant criminal might find useful. His bulky leather jacket, which had so effectively hidden his wound from Taehyung, also hides the fact that he's strapped with weapons.

A job then. That puts Taehyung's mind a little more at ease, because it means he had probably come back here on his own after something went wrong, rather than something happening inside the building.

But he doesn't relax, because in addition to the cloying scent of his blood, Taehyung smells the faintest traces of smoky metal, the lingering residue of gunshots.

Ice flows through him where there should be blood, but his mind categorizes all of this information in the few seconds it takes him to reveal Jungkook's wounded flesh to the cool night air of the quiet apartment.

The low light isn't good enough to see by, at least not if he wants to accurately assess the damage, but it's enough to see the vibrant red of torn, bloody flesh where Jungkook ought to be clean and whole.

It's a stab wound – better than a gunshot wound, which Taehyung had feared – and it isn't as deep as the amount of blood first makes it seem.

It looks like someone had tried to gut him and he had managed, mostly, to avoid it. Instead of lancing through skin and muscle and into his vulnerable organs, the knife had only split through the flesh at his side.

It's probably painful, but it's relatively shallow. It would have been a lot worse, Taehyung is sure, if Jungkook weren't so quick on his feet.

Finally, the relentless pounding of his heart starts to slow. Jungkook had not, he comes slowly to understand, brought himself here just to die on Taehyung's doorstep.

For a man currently bleeding all over his million-won hardwood floor, he truly is, as he'd claimed, okay. Taehyung slaps him hard on the chest, at the same moment that his breath stutters out of him in a ragged sigh he refuses to acknowledge as relief.

"You asshole," he says, doing his best to sound as angry as he feels.

Jungkook, goddamn him, grins up at him.

"Knew you still give a shit about me," he says, like this is the most important thing in the world, and certainly far more important than the fact that he just got stabbed.

"Why the fuck did you come here?" Taehyung says. Not that he would have expected Jungkook to drag his ass to a hospital, but he's sure there are doctors and medics on retainer all over Seoul. He could have, should have, gone to whichever was closest.

Jungkook has the gall to shrug, the split in his side oozing gracelessly with the movement. "Didn't want anyone's hands on me but yours," he says.

It's such a fucking line, and the worst thing about it is that it sounds like it's true. It feels like it's true.

The cocky smirk has finally fallen from his face, and his eyes are fixed on Taehyung even though it looks like he's feeling dizzy between the pain and the blood loss.

"So you're an asshole and an idiot," Taehyung manages, despite the fact that he feels his body and his resolve weakening as his heartrate slowly returns to a semblance of normal.

Jungkook's eyebrows pinch together slightly. Taehyung doesn't think it's because of the wound.

"Come on, Tae," he needles, the same words he's said so often since bringing Taehyung here, but now tinged with a desperation that hasn't bled through before. "I'm here now. Are you really going to leave me here?"

Taehyung looks at his face and seriously considers it. He isn't going to die, that much is obvious. He could leave Jungkook here on the floor, go to his own bed and pretend he's alone like every other night he's been here.

Jungkook would rest for a while, and then he would get up and drag himself to someone who actually wanted to help him, who would be happy to get their hands dirty to patch him up.

He thinks about it. Not because he's cruel, or because he wants Jungkook to suffer. He would like to think that if nearly anyone showed up on his doorstep bleeding like this, he would do what he could to help them.

Taehyung knows how to fight. He's doled out violence probably more than Jungkook has, though it seems like Jungkook is making attempts to catch up. He's stabbed people himself, shot them, killed them he's sure, and he’s never batted an eye. It’s the life he was born to.

But this is different. They're not mid-gunfight, there's nothing at stake here – except them. The two of them.

And that's the real reason he hesitates. Because he knows that if he allows Jungkook in now, if he does what he wants and puts his hands on him, if he heals him and keeps him, there will be no getting rid of him again after, because Taehyung won't want to.

He's stymied every attempt Jungkook has made at getting past his newly constructed walls. This is only the latest effort in a long string to sneak his way past Taehyung's defenses and back into his life.

Taehyung considers leaving him here, cold and alone on the hard floor, because if he doesn't, he knows the last of his tattered willpower will be left here in its place.

But he can't do it. Jungkook looks pale and weak like he hasn't since Taehyung first saw him, when he had been small and young and vulnerable. When he had seemed so unloved, uncared for, that all Taehyung could do was care for him himself.

"I hate you," he says. There's no venom in it. It's only a fact.

Jungkook doesn't smirk or dissemble. There’s no smug remark. He only nods, accepting it as true. For a moment, Taehyung feels as though he's the one with a knife wound to the gut.

Then he pulls himself up to his knees, gets a good grip on Jungkook's arm on his uninjured side, and pulls them both to their feet.

For once Jungkook has the good sense not to say anything. He lets Taehyung half-lead, half-drag him to the bathroom attached to his bedroom. The whole way there, Taehyung tries to ignore the heat and press of Jungkook against him by telling himself he's bringing him to his personal ensuite, instead of the guest room, because it's closer.

It does mean he has to maneuver him up two steps. For the first time since it had become Taehyung's, Jungkook crosses the threshold into the room where Taehyung is at his most vulnerable. He doesn't let them linger there, instead dragging Jungkook into the bathroom.

The fluorescent light in the bathroom puts Jungkook's condition into harsh relief. He has bruises under his eyes, and he's paler than Taehyung has ever seen him. He also looks smaller than Taehyung knows him to be when he slumps down gratefully onto the edge of the bathtub.

"You probably did more damage to yourself coming all the way back here than the knife did," Taehyung mutters.

He hears in his own voice resignation and annoyance, and he hopes Jungkook interprets them less charitably than he means them.

"Worth it," Jungkook says.

It's as though now that Taehyung has accepted his presence, his strength for bravado is rapidly diminishing. It occurs to Taehyung that this is maybe the first time, in all the long years they've known each other (or thought they did) that he's seeing Jungkook's true face.

Taehyung leaves him there to rummage through his medicine cabinet. He comes up with a first aid kit, better equipped than the average. When he opens it, he finds everything he needs to clean, sterilize, and bandage Jungkook's wound, plus more besides. A little more digging and he finds a sterile kit with a needle and suture thread.

He hands Jungkook a couple of pain pills he feels quite sure could not be obtained over the counter, and Jungkook swallows them dry.

"You wouldn't be saying that if you died," Taehyung says, peevish. The wound isn't bad enough that Jungkook would have died, and he's sure that if it had been that dire, Jungkook wouldn't have taken the risk, but he wants Jungkook to feel the full weight of his annoyance.

It doesn't work. It never seems to, with Jungkook. Somehow, despite everything, he huffs out a weak laugh

 "No one's going to take me out that easily," he says.

"You don't know that," Taehyung says, wetting a washcloth in the sink with warm water. He thinks about making it cold, just to spite him, but the impulse passes. Not a good sign. He lets it go.

"I do," Jungkook says. Taehyung rolls his eyes, but Jungkook only says, "I still have work to do."

He says it right as Taehyung turns back to face him and accidentally meets his eyes. There's gravity in his voice, his expression, like this is the most serious thing in the world. Taehyung is caught up in it. He doesn't know how, but he knows Jungkook is talking about him – or rather, not solely about him, but he's including Taehyung in the work he means, whatever it is.

Taehyung forces himself to scoff, even though he's sure it's obvious how half-hearted it is. "You're so sure the world will bend for you," he says.

"It will," Jungkook says with a shrug of the shoulder on his good side. "It always has."

"Not always."

Jungkook nods. "Not yet."

Taehyung almost wants to ask him where he gets his confidence, but the truth is, he already knows the answer.

Jungkook had successfully pulled off the longest con Taehyung has ever seen. He had bent a whole family, a whole crew, to his purpose – two, in fact, one of enemies and one at a distance.

He had been sent to Taehyung's family as little more than a kid. He had spent years convincing everyone around him that he couldn't possibly be a threat, all while feeding a constant stream of information back to his own people – always just the right amount not to arouse suspicion, but enough to undercut the Kims and their operations, leaving them weak and unbalanced.

Bringing them down hadn't been his achievement alone, maybe, but it never would have happened, never would have been possible, without his contributions.

And those contributions never could have happened if he hadn't played his role to the hilt, without a crack, for all those years.

He hadn't just seemed like an innocent youth, tossed to the wolves by his own family in a desperate, political move to keep their heads above water. He had been exactly that.

And that was why it had been so easy for Taehyung to fall in love with him.

Jungkook had been so sweetly charming, so guileless. To a young Taehyung already used to hearing that he was a disappointment, already beaten down, at fifteen, by his own family, Jungkook had been a lifeline.

Someone he could relate to, someone he could protect and care for – and then, eventually, when they had become friends, when Taehyung had believed he knew Jungkook every bit as well as Jungkook knew him, Jungkook had been the person Taehyung could let his guard down with, in every way.

Or what had seemed, at the time, like every way.

He still remembers the first time Jungkook had fallen apart beneath him, shaking in Taehyung's bed. At nineteen, he had seemed so much older than he'd been when they met, though Taehyung knows now that he had still been playing the same role.

He had still been presenting himself as the innocent boy who could never hurt a fly, who rescued spiders from the house by carrying them bare-handed to the garden, who needed Taehyung to care about him because no one else would, no one else did.

And so when he had given himself to Taehyung, when he'd confessed his feelings, when he had let Taehyung kiss him, when he had opened for him so sweetly, Taehyung had believed it – all of it. He'd had no reason not to.

When tears had gathered in Jungkook's lashes, he'd kissed them away. When Jungkook had gasped brokenly, unable to find the words for what he needed, Taehyung had wrapped his hand around him and watched him come like he'd never felt anything like it, like nothing on earth could ever have been that good before him.

And when Taehyung had come, inside him because there had never been anyone else – how could there have been, when they'd spent all those years growing alongside each other? – Taehyung understood, because he'd known then that he could never have felt that good with anyone other than Jungkook.

For years, it seemed, they had drifted in their own world together. And then it had all come crashing down, and everything Taehyung thought he knew shattered in front of him.

The world he'd believed he lived in never cracked, never showed any sign that it was about to fall to pieces. It was simply there one moment, the bounds of his existence, the curvature of his universe, and then the next, what he had believed to be sky and earth and the laws of reality were nothing more than shards of glass at his feet.

The world where he had made his life, despite the pressures and the expectations of his disappointed family, had never been a world at all, only an illusion, painted glass meant to make him believe he had the world when all he’d ever possessed was a cruel imitation.

Jungkook betrayed them. Betrayed Taehyung. Had been doing it all along. His true loyalties had never shifted, never faltered, despite everything. With Jimin's help, he had given Bangtan everything they'd needed.

He'd let strangers, enemies, into Taehyung's house, and when the dust had settled, he'd claimed Taehyung as his twisted prize. He's been locked in Jungkook’s tower ever since, shattered and bleeding and wishing more than anything that Jungkook didn't know just how completely he had broken him.

"Tae," Jungkook says, bringing him back to himself. Taehyung hates how gentle his name sounds in his mouth.

"Don't call me that," he spits. He takes the warm, damp cloth to Jungkook's exposed skin and snaps, "Get your shirt off."

It's mean, and petty, and spiteful, but Jungkook doesn't call him on it. Despite the literal knife wound to his side, and the fact that Taehyung could easily help him remove the thin top, Jungkook takes a breath and begins the slow process of removing it himself.

His breath stutters only once as he lifts his arms over his head, but he drops the bloody fabric to the bathroom floor without argument.

For a few minutes, Taehyung is able to focus on the task at hand. He moves from hovering awkwardly over Jungkook to kneeling at his feet. He feels himself flush, but he ignores it. The angle is better this way for what he needs to do, and that's all there is to it.

Jungkook is quiet as Taehyung clears away the blood until he can see the wound itself better. He's quiet, but Taehyung can feel his attention nevertheless. He keeps perfectly still and lets Taehyung work in peace – except he's not in peace at all. His body is a riot of feeling, and he has to hide all of it, though he doubts he's able to hide it at all.

But Jungkook allows it. Allows the silence, the stillness. Maybe it's because he's in pain, but Taehyung doubts it. More likely it's because he knows exactly how Taehyung is feeling, and he wants him to soak in it.

The blood comes away from his skin easily, and before long Taehyung can properly see the wound. It's less dramatic than it had first appeared, but it will need at least a few stitches. He swallows down everything he feels being so close to Jungkook and turns to pull a handful of alcohol pads from the first aid kit.

"This will sting," he says.

"It already does," Jungkook says, "doesn't it?"

Taehyung doesn't answer that.

He isn't particularly gentle touching the first of the alcohol wipes to the edge of Jungkook's split flesh either. He hisses through his teeth but otherwise stays still.

Taehyung finds a needle and suture thread in the first aid kit. He preps them before assessing Jungkook's wound again. He's only done this a couple times, and only once on someone else, but he knows more or less what he's looking for, the places where Jungkook's body would struggle to mend on its own.

"How many, do you think?" Jungkook asks. His voice is quiet in the small space.

"Not a lot," Taehyung says.

There's comfort in the practical nature of the conversation, but there's danger in that comfort too. And Taehyung is tired, and he needs to concentrate on the task that needs to be done. He sinks into the comfort even as he knows it's a bad idea.

"Maybe five or six," he says.

Jungkook leans back slightly to make more space, and Taehyung flows easily into it, crowding close enough to get a good angle without blocking his light. Jungkook braces himself on the edge of the tub, and then stills.

When the needle first pierces his skin, he stops breathing for half a second, and Taehyung is so close that he both hears and feels the pause. Then he gets control of himself and lets out a slow, steady exhale before breathing in again. Taehyung would almost think he's done this before, except he knows better.

Jungkook has, in many ways, lived a sheltered life. He had been a ward of the Kim family for nearly a decade before the culmination of Bangtan's plan and the betrayal that left Taehyung a shattered shell of himself.

Until then, Jungkook had never been in a real fight, had never shot a gun. Taehyung can only assume that he must have had substantial training before he'd ever come to the Kims – training he'd lied about for years, found some way to maintain, and successfully hid from not only everyone else, but Taehyung himself..

He doesn't know anyone else who could have pulled off what he did. If he takes his personal feelings out of it, he has to admit it was an incredible feat.

If it hadn't destroyed him, he would be proud of Jungkook.

And beyond the pride, there's something else that stirs in him when he thinks about it, the game Jungkook had played, the commitment it required to maintain his dedication and purpose for so long behind enemy lines.

Normally he shoves down that sense of heat and urgency, but now, alone with Jungkook, he's too focused on the task at hand to worry about it.

The needle moves in Jungkook's skin, drawing the cut flesh back together, and the heat merely lives inside him, undampened by the scent of blood or Jungkook's focused breathing.

"I knew you'd take care of me," Jungkook says as Taehyung guides the curved needle through his third stitch.

"I didn't even know," Taehyung argues, though the fight has mostly left him now that he's invested.

"I did," Jungkook insists.

It's the same kind of thing he always says now, overly confident, frustrating because Taehyung knows he's earned it. But all the more painful because it's so different from the shy, unsure image he had presented of himself.

He doesn’t say this in quite the same way though, with that newly familiar cocky tone. It's only calm and assured, and it makes Taehyung look up at him, really look at his face, for the first time.

His eyes are on Taehyung's instantly, open and earnest. "I knew you wouldn't leave me out there," he says. "Not for me, maybe. You wouldn't do that to anyone."

Taehyung swallows, his throat hurting. He pulls his gaze back down to where it's needed and finishes his stitch.

"Isn't this enough?" he asks. "Do you have to rub it in my face?"

All his life, he's heard the same thing. He's too soft. Too easy to influence as a result. He cares too much about the wrong things and never enough about the right ones. No amount of training or honing his body or his mind has ever been enough to harden those parts of him. He had been doomed to be a failure before he'd ever had the chance to prove himself.

"I'm not," Jungkook says, and then when Taehyung doesn't respond or look up at him again, he goes on a little more desperately. "Tae, I'm not. It's not a bad thing. I know your shitty family made you feel worthless, but not everyone sees you that way. I don't. I never have."

The words twist in Taehyung's gut, and if Jungkook weren't injured right now, he has no doubt they'd be fighting again in a second. What hurts most is how badly he wants it to be true.

"How can I believe you, Jungkook?" he asks. He thinks it's the first time in a long time that he's said his name out loud. "How can I trust anything you say, ever again?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" Jungkook says. "You're here."

Taehyung scoffs. "Because you brought me here like some sort of prize," he says, biting through his own pride to say out loud what has only been a private thought for so long.

"Is that what you think?" Jungkook asks. Taehyung doesn't answer, just makes his fourth stitch. Jungkook doesn't even flinch, as though his attention has been entirely diverted. "Tae, that can't be what you think."

Again, Taehyung doesn't answer. He makes his fifth and final stitch and ignores the pang in his chest when he realizes that in a moment, there will be no reason for Jungkook to stay. Then he reminds himself he’s supposed to want him to leave.

"Taehyung," Jungkook says. Taehyung only realizes there had been a command in the simple use of his name when he finds himself looking up at Jungkook from his place on his knees. "Why would I bring you here just to – what, mock you? Punish you? You really think I would do that?"

"Clearly I don't know what you would or wouldn't do," Taehyung says, surprising himself with how cold it sounds.

Jungkook's brow pinches, and Taehyung looks away. He finishes off Jungkook's stitches and gestures for him to put his shirt back on, which he does, shrugging into it painfully.

Taehyung moves to stand, but before he gets his feet under him, Jungkook's hand darts out and stops him, a gentle but firm grip on his shoulder. He looks at him so beseechingly that Taehyung can't help feeling like it has to be real. But that's exactly the kind of naivety that got him into this situation in the first place.

"I brought you here because I didn't want to be away from you," Jungkook says. "And because you deserve better than to be trapped in that place."

"Better to be trapped here instead?" Taehyung challenges.

"Better to be trapped where someone actually loves you."

Taehyung is suddenly glad he's still on the floor. He isn't sure he would be able to keep standing.

The wave of feeling that rushes over him is too big to process all at once. It crashes down on him, and only as it recedes slowly through his body is he able to pick out specific emotions. Mostly he's overwhelmed, and he stares up at Jungkook like looking at him will make sense of this.

Is it some sort of game? Is Jungkook playing with him? The thought sends an icy chill down into his stomach. But if that's what Jungkook is doing, he's an even better actor than Taehyung has been giving him credit for.

He doesn't look like he's trying to be cruel. His eyes are wide and earnest – not just earnest, but desperate, like he needs Taehyung to hear him and understand. It tugs at something in Taehyung, a physical sensation that draws him forward, making him sway on his knees, though he does his best to remain in control.

In the seconds that follow Jungkook's words, though, a different emotion creeps back to the surface.

Beneath the desperation to believe him is an even fiercer need to remain wary, to keep him at a distance – to stop himself from ever being hurt again the way that Jungkook had hurt him.

Taehyung shakes his head. "You don't love me," he says. He's grateful for the way all of this emotion claws up his throat, because it makes the words come out rough, angry, when the reality is so much worse. "You never did." He takes a breath. "And I never loved you."

Jungkook opens his mouth to argue, but Taehyung doesn't let him get a word out.

"I thought I did," he admits. "But how could I love you when I didn't even know you?"

Jungkook's expression twists, his own flood of emotions showing on his face. At the back of his mind, Taehyung knows Jungkook could hide those feelings, but he doesn't. He lets Taehyung see. Affront, anger, and finally anguish shimmer and shift across his face.

"You really think, in all that time, I never showed you myself?"

Taehyung drops his head to look at the tile of the floor, because if he keeps looking into Jungkook's eyes, he'll humiliate himself even more than he already has.

"You really think none of it was real?" Jungkook presses.

Taehyung doesn't know what to think. He wants to believe Jungkook is telling the truth, but he can't trust it. Maybe it is unrealistic to believe that in all the years they spent with each other, Jungkook had been capable of hiding himself completely.

Even if it is, what does that matter now? He had still brought Taehyung's life crashing down around him. He had betrayed every confidence, broken every bond they'd had.

There was no one in his life Taehyung had ever trusted like Jungkook, and all of that was ruined now. Jungkook had to see that.

As though he can read Taehyung's thoughts in his face, Jungkook says, "Everything I did – none of it was to hurt you. Maybe you don't want to hear this, but you were the only thing that got me through all those years. You gave me something to fight for that I could see, and touch."

Taehyung does his best to make sure his expression and his voice give nothing away when he says, "What are you saying?"

Jungkook takes a breath like this is hard for him too, but then he speaks anyway. It settles something in Taehyung, because that is the Jungkook he knows. Faced with a challenge, he meets it, every time, no exceptions.

"I'm saying I wanted to get you out of there," Jungkook says. "If I hadn't met you, if you hadn't been there, what I did – it wouldn't have mattered to me. I would have done it because it was what I was supposed to do. It mattered, but not the way it did once I knew you. Those people – they never cared about you. They didn't understand you. They made you feel like shit for things that made you special. They never appreciated what you could do."

Taehyung lets out a humorless breath of laughter, but Jungkook doesn't allow him to laugh him off. So gently, he sets the tip of one finger just below Taehyung's chin and lifts, guiding him to meet his eyes.

"What we had was real," Jungkook says, low and serious. "And wanting to get you out of there, and take you somewhere better, somewhere you would be valued, and where we could be together for good – it was half the reason I did what I did."

Taehyung tries to shake his head and finds he can’t move, as though that single point of contact, the tip of one finger to his chin, is enough to hold him.

In some ways, it's almost easy to believe what Jungkook is saying. It's true that he had never belonged with his family. His father had never hidden what a disappointment Taehyung was. Too soft, too weak, too committed to his own ideas about the ways things could or should be.

For a few seconds, Taehyung allows himself to believe the idea that Jungkook had torn down his world not to ruin him but to save him. Instead of being the unwanted son of the Kim family, he has his own place for the first time in his life.

More than that, he has his own space – space that even Jungkook respects the boundaries of, even though it belongs to him. He had given him four walls and a door, and when Taehyung told him he wanted to stay on the other side of it, he did.

Taehyung has the run of Jungkook's place, can go anywhere he wants, do whatever he wants, as long as he stays within the bounds of Jungkook's world. He has everything at his disposal that Jungkook has ever known him to like or want.

He's been given everything to be able to enjoy his time here. He's taken care of as much or as little as he chooses, with people around every corner who bend to meet his every request.

Even his being left out of the business, kept in the dark about whatever Jungkook and the rest of Bangtan have been doing, could be seen as a benefit. He's been given the space to adjust to his new circumstances, with no expectations.

It's so tempting to believe him. He wants to believe him so badly. There's only one thing that sticks out to prove the lie to his words. Otherwise, it's as immaculate as every other con Jungkook has run.

"Then why can't I leave?" he asks. "If it's for me, all this," he indicates the luxury apartment surrounding them, "then why trap me here?"

Jungkook breathes in. It must hurt, the way it strains the new stitches.

"I don't want to trap you," Jungkook says. "I want to protect you."

Before Taehyung can tell him that’s bullshit, he goes on.

"It's not just that. I knew what you would think, after everything. I couldn't let you just leave, Tae. I would never see you again. You would leave and I’d never get the chance to explain or fix anything. I would never know what happened to you. Your family could get you back, and they might blame you. I couldn't let that happen. So I kept you here and hoped that someday, you'd let me in again, and I could tell you the truth. I loved you then. I never stopped. And you do know me. I know it's different, I'm different than you thought, but I let you know me, Tae. I couldn't help it."

Taehyung stopped breathing at some point during Jungkook's speech, and he doesn't start again right away. He wishes he could make Jungkook say it all again, as much because he wants to hear it (maybe over and over again for the rest of his life) as because he still feels like he can't allow himself to trust it.

The silence stretches. Taehyung's eyes are as trapped as the rest of him, held by Jungkook's steadfast gaze.

Jungkook's voice goes even softer as he says, "What can I do to prove I mean it?"

It's a straightforward question. And maybe Taehyung does know Jungkook, because this directness from him is familiar. Jungkook may not always be serious himself, but he’s a problem-solver, a risk-taker. If he sets his mind to something, Taehyung knows how he'll face it: with all his dedication, skill, and creativity – all of his substantial will.

"Show me," Taehyung says. Make me believe it, he keeps to himself.

Jungkook doesn't react right away. Maybe he's waiting to see if Taehyung will change his mind.

He probably should.

He doesn't.

Jungkook stands up abruptly, as though now that he's doing this, he doesn't have a second to waste. He tugs Taehyung up along with him, drags him out of the bathroom, and straight to the bedroom.

The room is dimly lit. The large, low bed at the center is draped in a deep navy blue Taehyung likes to imagine himself sinking down into, until he's floating in a timeless, placeless space. Now it looks like what it is: a bed, slightly ruffled from his listless afternoon nap.

He remembers the last time he had been in a bed with Jungkook.

It had been the morning everything changed. They'd woken up in Taehyung's bed together, like they did most mornings. Even after the noise started, and there were shots fired on the lower floors, it hadn't occurred to him to think Jungkook might have anything to do with it.

His first thought had been to protect Jungkook. He'd gone for one of the hidden emergency exits down the hall, dragging Jungkook after him, his heart pounding.

It wasn't until he'd opened that door to find Jimin waiting on the other side that he realized nothing was what it seemed.

"Take him," Jungkook had said, in a tone Taehyung had never heard from him before.

That was the first, and for several seconds, the only thing that registered to him in that moment – how strong, how authoritative Jungkook sounded as he wrapped his fingers around Taehyung's arm in a tight grip and shoved him into Jimin's arms.

Jimin shouldn't even have known about that hidden stairwell. It was a way out of the house, and more importantly, a way out of the compound. It would take them down into the basement, behind a false wall that ran through this side of the house, and then through a tunnel that let out at the back of the property.

He couldn't make sense of Jimin's presence there. He couldn't understand how Jimin knew about it, or how he knew to be there right now, or why Jungkook didn't seem surprised to find him there.

Taehyung had only told Jungkook about this escape route, no one else.

The pieces hadn't started to come together in his mind until after Jimin had a hold of him, after Jungkook had shoved him, gently but firmly, past the threshold into the stairway and shut the door behind him, leaving Taehyung with Jimin and himself alone.

Only he hadn't been alone. That was the truth that slowly came to Taehyung as Jimin wordlessly followed Jungkook’s instructions.

Taehyung had felt like a foreigner in a strange place as Jimin brought him down the stairs, leading him through his own family's secret pathways.

He knew the way, Taehyung slowly realized, because Jungkook had told it to him. And Jungkook had told him because he knew that this, whatever “this” was, would happen.

He knew it would happen, because he made it happen.

As he walked, quickly but in a stunned silence, he felt like his own mind was splitting into two separate but equally confident pieces.

Jungkook, his little Jungkookie, who he had known and loved since he’d arrived at thirteen, would never hurt him. But somehow, the man he had grown up to be, confident and smart and strong, had done just that.

Of course, he hadn't done it alone. He had worked with Jimin, and most likely other people Bangtan had maneuvered into the Kims’ inner circle over the years.

Taehyung had been a part of that years-long plan.

The long walk had been surreal, and it never occurred to him to resist until they came to the end of the underground tunnel, and the edge of the Kim property. Only then did he wonder if he could have struck out at Jimin and gotten away.

Then he could have run back up the stairs and – what? He’d thought dully of the family inside the house, fighting for their lives. He didn't care to find them. He wanted to find Jungkook. He wanted to understand what was happening.

It wasn't that this thought shocked him. Less and less, his loyalty had belonged to his family. Brick by brick, he had been disassembled and re-fortified in Jungkook's life.

But the knowledge came, sudden and devastating, that it hadn't been the same for Jungkook.

He floated outside himself as Jimin walked him up to a sleek, black car with tinted windows and guided him into the backseat. A driver Taehyung didn't recognize sat behind the wheel, and as soon as Jimin was in the car, he hit the gas. They disappeared down the street and around the corner from the compound in a flash.

Just like that, Taehyung had been whisked away from his entire life. He knew, at the back of his mind, what this would mean. Bangtan would never risk an open attack on the Kims if they were less than sure of their success.

People would die, on both sides. But his mind didn't go to the people he'd known all his life, or even to his father. It went to Jungkook. Wondering whether he would be caught in the crossfire.

But no – he wouldn't be caught. He was there to do a job. He had been the whole time.

In the frantic drive across the city, that knowledge formed a hard pit in the bottom of Taehyung's stomach. And it hasn't gone away for a moment since.

In the bedroom of the penthouse Jungkook had gifted him on a silver platter, with all its invisible strings attached, he stares at the luxurious bed he's been tossing and turning in for months.

He feels Jungkook beside him, not because they're touching but just because he feels him. He doesn't look at him, because he knows the power Jungkook has to cloud his mind.

He tells himself he has to be clear-headed when he makes this decision, but the truth is, he's made it already.

Jungkook had been right all along. It was only a matter of time before he would give in.

He'd challenged Jungkook to show him, to prove to him that he means what he says. He knows the truth: he wants to believe it. He also knows it will be harder for Jungkook to lie to him like this. It will be harder for both of them.

Jungkook doesn't rush him. He lets Taehyung take the time he needs. He lets Taehyung come to him.

And just as they've both known he would, he does exactly that. He turns away from the bed and everything it represents, and looks instead at Jungkook.

He's the same man Taehyung had known for so long, but he's not the same at all. He has the same black hair, the same dark eyes, the same soft lips. But everything else about him is sharper, and harder.

He works his body more, and for the first time in his life, he has the freedom and access to decorate it and shape it however he likes. The tattoos that crawl up his arm are stark against his skin, but they're also pretty. They suit him.

His jawline is sharper than it was, like all he had to do to finally lose his baby fat was decide to shed it the moment it no longer served him. His shoulders and arms are bigger.

He doesn't look any less like himself – he looks like the real version of himself. Though, if he can believe Jungkook's words, maybe he'd known him better all along than he'd wanted to admit or believe.

Isn't it all worse if Jungkook had been his true self all along, and Taehyung had fallen for him anyway?

He doesn't know what this looks like with the new Jungkook, but he can't deny the shiver of anticipation that races down his spine at the thought of finding out.

So he does what he's yearned to do for months now. He lets himself fall into it, the story Jungkook has told him, that Jungkook never lied to him or forgot him, never meant to punish him or hurt him at all.

He reaches for him. He sets his hands on his waist, and he tugs Jungkook toward him like he has a thousand times before, until they're flush to each other.

Jungkook lets him do it. He doesn't try to push for more before Taehyung is ready. He simply stands there, still and steady, allowing Taehyung to look at him. Jungkook doesn't shy away from his searching gaze, or act like he has anything to hide. He meets Taehyung's eyes and takes his scrutiny like it neither costs nor weighs a thing.

Finally Taehyung is forced to admit to himself that all he sees in Jungkook's face is patience, and hope. He doesn't try to hide how much he wants this.

His gaze is steady, but his hands come up to rest on Taehyung's hips. His hands are warm and heavy and enticing, and Taehyung has to fight the urge to fall into them all at once.

Instead, he makes himself move slowly. Now that the scent of spilled blood isn't overwhelming him, the familiar scent of Jungkook comes back, clean and a little floral.

It's not just familiar, but comforting, and at the same time, it stirs something in Taehyung that he's tried to beat down over the last months. Just being close to Jungkook now makes him feel warmer than he had a few minutes ago.

Jungkook allows Taehyung to fall apart in his own time.

It happens in slow motion. Taehyung only wants a little more – to allow himself into the space Jungkook is offering him. He shifts forward, he isn't even sure how much, and Jungkook's hands shift with him, finding their way to the small of his back.

He radiates a new confidence, one he knows he’s fully earned. It's as though every part of him, without a word, is telling Taehyung that he's here, he isn't going anywhere, and that Taehyung can trust him – trust him to do what, exactly, Taehyung isn't sure.

But that whisper of promise is enough to have him reacting in a way that's unfamiliar. The room is too warm, going to his head, making it hard to think. He doesn't understand the urge he has to slip into it. Something in Jungkook seems to answer it.

He barely moves, if he moves at all, and yet it feels as though he shifts closer to Taehyung somehow, his body heat warmer, his grip a little firmer, gently encouraging Taehyung to give into whatever instinct has him wanting to give himself over completely.

Whatever need Jungkook is speaking to, Taehyung doesn't know if it's something he brings out in him, or if it's some long-dormant part of Taehyung's own nature, a part of him that's been crushed down so small he hadn't even been aware of it – but Jungkook had.

Jungkook sees it, or feels it, and he wants it. That much is clear. He can't hide that from him.

Whatever else he feels, Jungkook wants Taehyung badly.

And Taehyung can't lie to himself, not when his own body reacts to Jungkook just as strongly as it ever has. Maybe more. Maybe something in him wants whatever is new in Jungkook in a way he hadn't even known he could.

So, finally, he nods once, decisive, and he lets Jungkook off the leash.

Jungkook's grip tightens once, as though by accident, but that's the only moment of hesitation. Then his hands trail up Taehyung's body.

They slip beneath Taehyung's shirt as they go, and he has to suppress a shiver. It isn't the first time Jungkook has touched him since they've been here. That had happened in the gym those few days earlier, when Jungkook somehow tricked Taehyung into sparring with him.

But it is the first time in a long time that Jungkook has touched him like this, skin-to-skin, anywhere other than his arms.

He melts into it, slumps forward into Jungkook's hold, as though he's been held up by puppet strings all these months and now they've been cut all at once.

Jungkook catches him, and Taehyung isn't even surprised. The tips of his fingers trail along Taehyung's back. He's so sensitive to the touch it almost feels like they burn. Then Jungkook’s grip tightens again, steadying Taehyung on his feet and pulling him closer at the same time, and before Taehyung knows it, his body is pressed to Jungkook's, their faces a bare inch apart.

Taehyung is a small, helpless thing in a trap, but Jungkook doesn't take advantage of it.

He isn't even sure he's breathing air anymore. Jungkook is so close that he's the only thing Taehyung can sense, the only thing he can feel.

He wants badly to close the small distance between them, to suture it shut the same way he drew Jungkook's cut flesh back together.

Jungkook nudges closer to whisper his next words, so close that on certain sounds, his lips just catch on Taehyung’s.

"Let me take care of you," he says. "Let me make you feel good. Let me show you what it's like."

They could be anywhere and nowhere right now for all that Taehyung is aware of their surroundings. He is only aware of Jungkook: his hands heavy on Taehyung's body, his voice soft and low and sure, that old familiar scent of him that feels like home, all wrapped up in this new, unfamiliar version of someone he'd thought he knew inside and out.

He isn't asking for permission. He already has that. He's entreating Taehyung not just to let him in but to give himself over to it completely – to Jungkook, to the experience.

What he doesn't know is that all of Taehyung's walls have come down already. They've barely touched and he's a riot of feeling. Every brush of Jungkook's hands feels like a kiss, every breath a demand.

He wants to make some comment, some snippy reply, but the animosity he's clung to for months has abandoned him and he can't find words at all. So he does the only thing he can find the will to do. He nods, the smallest movement now that they're so close together it feels like he can hardly move at all.

The motion brings him finally into Jungkook's last inch of space. They’ve made it to the end of the line and this is what they've found there: nothing but each other, nothing but this left for them.

Taehyung finally allows himself to admit, if only in his own head, that there's nowhere else he would rather be.

There's a shift in the atmosphere then. Taehyung feels it deep in his body as Jungkook finally accepts that Taehyung is allowing this. He barely has to move at all for his lips to brush Taehyung's, and when they do, something snaps.

Taehyung couldn't say whether it happens in him or in Jungkook, or maybe it's both of them at the same moment. Whatever it is, they surge into each other.

It's the first time Taehyung has kissed anyone in months, but more importantly, it's the first time he's kissed Jungkook since everything had changed. He hates how much it feels like coming home.

At the same time, it’s different – new – because Jungkook grips his shirt and hauls Taehyung against him like he never did before. It's different because Jungkook doesn't wait for Taehyung to deepen the kiss. He parts his lips and nips at Taehyung's until he opens for him.

Jungkook makes a sound from deep in his chest and it's one that Taehyung has never heard him make before. It drops straight down through him and threatens to drag him down too.

The desire he feels to simply drop to his knees right here is frightening in its intensity. He's saved from himself by the fact that Jungkook is holding him too tightly for him to go anywhere.

Jungkook's tongue finds his and at the same time, one of the hands at the small of his back climbs higher, until it's buried in Taehyung's hair. He's never been more aware of how close they are in height as he is now. Jungkook's grip tightens and he tugs slightly, as though testing it out – testing Taehyung.

It isn't enough to pull him away, only to control exactly how much of the kiss is in Taehyung's power – precisely none. The realization is a shock that reverberates down Taehyung's entire body. A small sound is shaken loose from his throat. It doesn't seem to surprise Jungkook though.

He groans into the kiss as though they're doing much more than they are, and Taehyung is lost. He feels the kiss, and more than that, Jungkook's presence, in his whole body, all at once.

His head is fuzzy, his mind dim, his limbs feel like they're floating or falling, he isn't sure which but whatever it is, somehow he just knows Jungkook will catch him or keep him from drowning. Jungkook will be there with whatever he needs.

As though he can read every thought in Taehyung's head, Jungkook breaks the kiss and buries another groan against the hot, damp curve of his neck.

"I knew it would be like this," he says in a voice Taehyung has never heard before.

He wants to ask what he knew, what he thought it would be like, but he can't find the words to speak, and then he thinks maybe that's exactly what Jungkook means.

Because Taehyung is tipped into Jungkook's hands like water, helpless now that he's finally allowed himself to give in. And it feels good, so good to accept whatever happens. There's a freedom in giving in that he never could have allowed himself before.

He had pushed down this desire so ruthlessly that he hadn’t even been aware he’d craved it – the surrender, the submission, not just to Jungkook, but to desires it was always too vulnerable to feel.

He'd buried them so deep he hadn't even been aware of their presence in him. Not until Jungkook changed all the rules and parameters of his world.

It's what made it all so terrifying, this new promise in Jungkook that seemed to speak to a part of Taehyung he hadn't even known existed. He hadn't known, but Jungkook had.

Somehow Jungkook had seen it in him even with Taehyung instinctively hiding it from himself. He had not only seen it but wanted it. Taehyung doesn't know what that says about him, but he's too distracted by the feeling of Jungkook's words forming against his throat to think any more about it.

"I missed you," Jungkook says, pressing the words into Taehyung's skin.

His voice is so quiet that if there were someone watching from a few feet away, they wouldn't be able to hear a word, but Taehyung doesn't miss a single breath.

"It never felt right being here without you. Knowing you were up here and not being able to touch you. I get it," he adds, almost nuzzling against Taehyung like he can't help himself, like maybe he's as helpless to this as Taehyung is. "I knew why. I would have waited forever. But fuck, it feels so good to touch you now."

Taehyung shivers and his hands clench in Jungkook's shirt. He wants to ask Jungkook to touch him more, to kiss him again. He wants to ask Jungkook to catch him because he feels like he's falling. Into what, he doesn't know.

He manages one word alone – "Please." It's hardly a whisper, little more than a breath against Jungkook's ear, but it's enough.

If Taehyung had thought that Jungkook would snap and grab him, throw him down on the bed and rush into this now that he's finally allowed, he would have been wrong. Every move Jungkook makes is deliberate, not necessarily slow or cautious but considered. It's like now that he is allowed, he wants to make sure he does it exactly right.

He leads Taehyung to the edge of the bed by his hand. Taehyung almost wishes he would move faster, treat him a little harder, because that would be easier than this: taking every step with deliberation, making the choice again and again.

But Jungkook wants Taehyung to want this every step of the way, and he wants them both to know it.

When Taehyung stops in front of the bed, Jungkook puts his hands on Taehyung's waist and gently guides him to sit down on the edge. Taehyung goes without a fight. All the fight has left him. He thinks maybe the real fight left him longer ago than he'd realized.

He looks up at Jungkook, who is looking down at him. His eyes are shells that have cracked wide open, spilling out everything Taehyung hadn't even known he'd been holding back. He can only imagine his own face looks the same way.

Jungkook sets both hands on the sides of Taehyung's face. The pads of his thumbs brush so lightly along the tops of Taehyung's cheekbones that he almost doesn't feel the contact at all. Then one hand shifts to run the same pad of his thumb across Taehyung's lower lip. He doesn't seem to be asking for anything, just admiring, but Taehyung finds his lips parting anyway.

As soon as they do, Jungkook presses in, and Taehyung knows he’s feeling the edge of teeth and then the soft plushness of tongue as he never has before.

Taehyung's mind seems to lag further and further behind the rest of him with every moment. They stay that way for a few seconds, and then Jungkook pulls his thumb free and bends down to lick into Taehyung's open mouth instead.

As he does, he slowly pushes Taehyung back against the mattress. He catches him between his shoulder blades so he doesn't fall too quickly, gently laying him down.

Taehyung doesn't think he's ever been touched with so much careful, deliberate tenderness in his life. He doesn't know what to do with it, except to allow it to wash over him.

Somehow when he hauls Taehyung further up the bed, even that feels gentle. And then he drapes himself over the length of Taehyung's body like a blanket.

He leans in like he's going to kiss him again, but instead he speaks, lips brushing Taehyung's as he does, that close.

"You don't know how many times I thought about this. I mean before – everything. When we were with your family. You don't know how bad I wanted to let myself just be me with you. How bad I wanted you to let me take care of you back then."

"You could have," Taehyung says, the first words he's managed in several minutes.

They come out as a small, desperate whisper, as though he could reach back through those months and years to speak to their younger selves.

Jungkook gives his head a minute shake, but it doesn't feel like a dismissal. It's only an acknowledgment of everything they both know, everything they've been through, together and apart. But they've never truly been apart.

Even when Taehyung had done his best to put up new walls, Jungkook had never truly allowed him to do it. He'd always found his way through the cracks, under the wire. And maybe Taehyung had never been as committed to keeping him out as he'd told himself he was, or as he'd wanted Jungkook to believe.

As though Jungkook can hear Taehyung's thoughts as plainly as if he'd spoken them aloud, he says, "I'm here now. I never left."

It's easy to believe Jungkook when he's like this, pressing every word into Taehyung's skin. But Taehyung isn't sure how much more of Jungkook's words he can take. He feels split open as it is, and all they've managed to do so far is lay down together.

His head fallen back against the pillows, he cranes his neck further, hoping Jungkook will take it as the invitation it is.

He does, of course. His lips brush and then drag across the newly revealed skin. He trails kisses down the front of his throat, past his Adam's apple, until he can nip at Taehyung's collarbones.

Jungkook's hands are warm on Taehyung's skin as he slides them beneath the fabric of his shirt. They trail up Taehyung's body with reverence, though the touch is firm, a subtle command for Taehyung to lie still and let Jungkook do what he likes.

And Taehyung does. He does it like it comes naturally, like he hadn't been trained his whole life to fight back against anything that would subjugate him when his allegiance was meant to belong to one thing alone.

Maybe it’s so easy because it doesn’t feel like that’s what Jungkook wants to do. Jungkook touches him like he's worth something. Jungkook touches him like he loves him.

When Taehyung's shirt is bunched under his arms, Jungkook’s mouth follows the path of newly revealed skin. His mouth is hot, and Taehyung arches up into it.

Jungkook doesn't seem like he has any interest in tearing himself away from Taehyung's body, his skin, now that he has him where he wants him.

Taehyung, though, is starting to feel too warm to continue like this. He sits up as well as he can, ignoring the strangely pouty sound Jungkook makes, to tear his shirt off over his head. He throws it to the side before he falls back into the bed again.

Jungkook trails back up Taehyung's body, nuzzling into the newly exposed skin. His hands meanwhile once again trail up Taehyung's body, leaving shivery paths in their wake. He pushes up and up until he finds Taehyung's arms. Then his arms are over his head, and Jungkook crawls up over him.

As he does, his hips press down against Taehyung's thigh. Even through all the layers of fabric, Taehyung can feel that Jungkook is hard.

Something hot and sharp cuts at him from the inside and suddenly Taehyung can't take this pace any more.

He brings his hands back down and threads them into Jungkook’s hair. He kisses Jungkook like he used to, demanding and insistent, and Jungkook gives into it for a moment, maybe two, before he pulls back again, just enough to meet Taehyung's eyes.

When Taehyung tries to haul him back for more, Jungkook resists. No matter how hard Taehyung tugs at him, Jungkook remains just out of reach.

"Jungkook," he says, halfway between a huff and a whine. He doesn't know who this person is, the one he’s become in the last few minutes, or why finally giving in to Jungkook has him so twisted up and turned around.

Jungkook doesn't seem surprised by it at all, but he is delighted. His eyes move over Taehyung's face, and he grins.

"Yeah?" he asks, as though he doesn't know exactly what Taehyung wants from him.

Taehyung tries to glare up at him, but he feels loose and soft with Jungkook looming over him like he is.

"You know," he manages.

Jungkook puts on a faux-playful face. "Do I?" he asks.

Despite his teasing, he looks down at Taehyung with warmth. He's teasing, but it's because he loves this, Taehyung realizes. He loves seeing Taehyung like this, broken open and unable to hide even from himself, let alone from Jungkook. He loves seeing him this way. He loves making him this way. A shudder runs through Taehyung at the thought.

"Kiss me," he says, starting to get used to the sound of his own voice, low and liquid under the onslaught of Jungkook's attention. "Please."

Jungkook's expression shifts in some unnamable way and he leans down slowly. He brushes his lips over Taehyung's so lightly, not quite giving him what he wants. He goes on teasing just long enough to hear the breath catch in Taehyung's throat, and then finally he gives him what he asked for. After such a long wait, it ignites something in Taehyung, lighting up every nerve. He feels it so much more than any other kiss.

This is exactly what Jungkook wants, he realizes. He kisses Taehyung deep and slow, like he's trying to imprint himself on every part of him. All Taehyung wants is to let him.

Jungkook shifts against him and Taehyung gasps into the kiss, his body responding instantly. His hips jump up against Jungkook's thigh, revealing just how affected he is by Jungkook's slow but certain control. He wants to hide his face, but Jungkook doesn't let him, lifting his hand to grip Taehyung's chin and hold him in place when he tries to break away.

Jungkook takes Taehyung's mouth like it belongs to him, and all Taehyung can do is allow it to happen. He melts into it, going boneless in Jungkook's grip.

Jungkook seems to know exactly what's happening to him, which is good because Taehyung hardly understands it himself. He kisses him harder, deeper, moves against him until Taehyung is all but rutting on his thigh, and Jungkook doesn't give him a moment to think about any of it.

Everything he does only encourages Taehyung deeper into himself, or out of himself. He isn't sure which. All he knows is that Jungkook feels good against him, on top of him.

But then he pulls back, tugging at Taehyung’s jeans. Taehyung watches his face as he does this. He looks hungry.

It occurs to Taehyung that they have more freedom now than they've ever had. Jungkook is no longer beholden to a secret task that forces him to hide himself. Taehyung is no longer bound to a family that would demand constant obedience without ever offering any reward.

Things he's never imagined doing, because he couldn't allow himself to imagine them, flood his mind. He could ask for anything, and the impossibility of choosing paralyzes him.

Jungkook, though, may be overwhelmed with the sudden freedom of being allowed what he wants, but it doesn't stop him from taking it.

He strips Taehyung out of the rest of his clothes with efficiency, as though getting him bare and beneath him is the most serious thing he's ever done.

And then it's finished, and Taehyung is lying there, spread out on the bed that's his but that really belongs to Jungkook, just like everything else in his new life. He’s still beneath Jungkook's avid gaze as he takes him in like he's never seen him before.

The reality is far different. He's seen Taehyung like this hundreds of times, in stolen moments. They'd been sneaking into each other's rooms since they were teenagers.

But it was never like this. He's never felt like this before in his life.

Taehyung feels uncomfortably aware of his own body. He doesn't feel embarrassed exactly, or even shy, because there's no denying the obsession in the way Jungkook is staring at him. There's no room for uncertainty there. It's only that he feels almost trapped inside his own skin, like Jungkook's attention is pinning him not just to the bed, but inside himself.

"You're so beautiful," Jungkook says. He speaks quietly, and even though they're alone in the room, in the whole penthouse, it feels like he takes special care to make sure the words are only for Taehyung. "You have to tell me what you want," he says.

It doesn't sound like a command, and Taehyung still feels strangely rooted in his body, distant from the part of himself that allows speech, so he doesn't answer.

Jungkook almost laughs but doesn't. "You have to tell me," he says, "because if you don't, I might just sit here looking at you forever."

Taehyung isn't even sure that would be a bad thing. It's so easy to sink into the feeling of it, lying here, allowing Jungkook to look his fill. He feels heavy, his thoughts slow. He's aware of how flushed he is because he can feel the warmth of his own blood, running syrupy in his veins, soaking up Jungkook's attention like it's sugar sweet.

But faced with the threat of not being given what he really wants, he finally realizes exactly what that is.

"Touch me," he says. Has he said this before? He's losing track of what he's asked for, what desires he's spoken aloud, and what's only been in his head, or buzzing under his skin.

Jungkook sets his hands flat above Taehyung's knees. Even that touch is enough to make him tense in anticipation. He trails his hands lightly up Taehyung's thighs until he reaches his hips. He's made it clear that he intends to draw this out, as though he's afraid Taehyung finally giving in to him isn't permanent but only a crack in his will. Taehyung knows better.

His hands are warm but he touches Taehyung so gently that it makes him shiver anyway. He traces up along the crease of Taehyung's hips and Taehyung twitches, has to force himself to stay flat against the bed. Jungkook makes some small, almost unnoticeable sound that floats into the heavy atmosphere of the room and hangs there.

Then the tips of his fingers trail up Taehyung's belly, across his sides, over his chest. Despite the lightness of the touch, the weight is as heavy as everything else he does. He drags them over Taehyung's collar until they meet in the center of his chest. He pauses there, pressing one palm flat, leaning just enough weight down to hold Taehyung in place.

The other traces up, no pressure in the touch at all, until his palm comes to rest right on the front of Taehyung's throat. His fingers wrap lightly around, and even though he doesn't squeeze, Taehyung's breath stops.

The moment pulls slow and thick and heavy before tightening all at once as some latent instinct in Taehyung finally catches up with how vulnerable he's allowed himself to become.

In that flash of a second, it doesn't matter that he knows Jungkook could have hurt him, or killed him, at any time over the last several months. Taehyung could have been the first casualty of the coup against the Kims, before he'd ever even woken up in his own bed.

He knows all of that in his head, but his body knows something far more deeply: the cost of stillness. His body had been trained not to wait for input from his mind, and it makes him stiffen beneath Jungkook's hand as it registers the sudden danger.

It registers the danger, and yet it does nothing to combat it.

All at once Taehyung understands that everything his family had tried to tell him had been true all along. He is too soft, and his softness is and always has been a liability.

His father would be disgusted with him for the way he simply lies still, doesn't even try to fight. His pride alone should be wounded, but it's so far away from him now he can hardly feel it.

What he can feel is the heat of Jungkook's palm against the bare softness of his throat. When he swallows, he feels the pressure and wonders if Jungkook feels the movement in his hand.

They stay like that, probably for no more than a handful of seconds. Taehyung's body lives a lifetime in those seconds. But they stay in it together, wide eyes locked on each other, proving something to one another, and to themselves.

They should be enemies, and they're not. They should want to hurt each other, and they don't. They want only to be here together, shielded from the world that would pit them against each other, and in this quiet space Jungkook has carved out for them, they can be.

And then, when it's clear that Taehyung's desire has overruled any instinct to fight him, Jungkook releases him. His hand slips back to cup the nape of his neck instead, and he leans down to press a slow, deliberate kiss to Taehyung's parted lips.

"I want you," he says, such a simple sentence that doesn't sound simple at all. Only this time it isn't because of everything that should keep them apart. The kiss is heavy with the things that draw them to each other: their long history, growing from adolescence to adulthood side-by-side in a harsh world where they were each other's only tenderness; and maybe, for the first true time in their lives, the potential for a future.

Taehyung nods. Words don’t come, but they don’t need them now. Jungkook doesn't look for any further answer. For the first time, he touches Taehyung with something less than abject gentleness, his grip on the back of his neck going firm and commanding.

He goes limp in Jungkook's hold like this is what his body has always wanted, to let go of all the fight trained into him and allow himself to be taken care of.

Jungkook uses his new grip on Taehyung's neck to lift him into another kiss. He's not asking anymore, no longer making every move slowly to give Taehyung time to change his mind. They've proven to each other now what this is, and he doesn't need any further permission granted. He takes Taehyung's mouth like he owns it, and when he breaks away, it's only to pull back enough that he can flip him over.

It happens so quickly and so smoothly that Taehyung isn't even sure how Jungkook does it. One moment he's on his back, and then he's on his front, gasping into a pillow.

Jungkook's hands never seem to leave his body, but he manages to strip the final piece of clothing from him and discard it somewhere out of sight. Then his lips and his teeth are back on Taehyung's skin, tracing the length of his spine like a finger on a map, following a long-sought path.

His teeth are sharp but no less reverent for it, and Taehyung finds himself arching up into him, ready to serve himself up to be devoured. He hardly recognizes himself and there's relief in that. 

He leans into the fantasy that for tonight, at least, he is someone else entirely. He isn't a person who has to face consequences tomorrow. He doesn't have to own up to his weakness. But Jungkook doesn't allow him to bask in that lie for long.

Almost as though he can feel Taehyung slipping away from him, trying to hide in the dream of being someone who can have this without facing an enemy in the mirror later, he speaks where he's still pressed against the small of Taehyung's back.

"Taehyung," he says, as though by the power of saying it out loud, he can bring Taehyung back to himself and remind him that he is here, making this choice.

Jungkook is obsessed with them both knowing it, and Taehyung should have known better than to think he'd be allowed to escape from it. The worst thing about it is that he loves it. The shape of his name against his skin makes him shiver.

Jungkook nips at Taehyung's flesh in some sort of primal admonishment. "Say my name," he says. His lips trail lower, his voice rough.

Before Taehyung can process this new demand, Jungkook's hands, still on Taehyung's thighs, shove his legs open to make room as he settles down against the mattress. Taehyung chokes, but somehow a stuttered Jungkook still makes it past his parted lips.

Jungkook kisses the dip at the small of Taehyung's back then moves lower, allowing his lips to drag across Taehyung's skin. He kisses again at the join of Taehyung's thigh and it's all Taehyung can do to stay still.

Once again when Jungkook speaks, Taehyung feels the words take shape against his skin, pressed into his thigh like Jungkook is making a home there. His voice is quiet, but it's so silent in the room that it feels loud. His hands are hot as brands on the insides of Taehyung's thighs, holding him spread open.

"Have you done this before?"

Taehyung grits his teeth. "You know I haven't," he manages to say. It’s the truth. The only person Taehyung has ever been this intimate with, as Jungkook knows, is Jungkook himself.

He couldn’t have brought anyone here without Jungkook knowing, even if he’d wanted to. It never mattered anyway. Taehyung hadn't been pining for just anyone to come and absolve him of his loneliness. There had only ever been one person able to make it past his walls and reach the truest part of himself protected inside them, and that person is right back here again – where he belongs, some part of Taehyung whispers.

"Not even by yourself?" Jungkook asks.

Taehyung’s stomach turns and he again has to fight the urge to squirm away, not that he thinks Jungkook would let him. He wonders if that's what Jungkook thinks, if he's wondered about it. Has he spent nights like this one lying in his own bed, maybe just a floor or two away, thinking about Taehyung touching himself the way Jungkook is about to?

He shakes his head no. For a long time, he never even would have thought about it. By the time sex was on his mind at all, Jungkook was already in his life, and that simply wasn't what they did.

And then, after everything changed, Jungkook brought Taehyung here. After he'd given him time to settle in and began to let Taehyung get to know him again, he had made it clear what he wanted. Then Taehyung did start to think about it, but it wasn't something he could allow himself. He was afraid to think about it, because he was afraid to want it.

Jungkook doesn't say anything. Whether he's surprised or not, he gives no indication, and Taehyung is grateful for it. He doesn't think he's capable of explaining himself.

Taehyung's answer doesn't slow Jungkook down. He seems to take it in stride. He glides his palms up the backs of Taehyung's thighs until they come to rest on his ass. It's hardly the first time Jungkook has touched him there, but this is different, weighted with everything that's new between them.

Taehyung sucks in a breath and holds it, afraid of what sound might escape him if he allows himself to breathe. Jungkook must somehow sense him tensing, because he shushes him gently like he's a wild animal – which is exactly what Taehyung feels like.

His heart is beating so hard and fast that it feels like a small bird trapped in his chest. But he doesn't do or say anything to stop Jungkook as he finally spreads him open, revealing him to the cool night air and to Jungkook's gaze. He's never been so exposed and he feels like he's shaking apart with how he's trembling and trying to keep still.

The first lap of Jungkook's tongue against him sends his breath shuddering out of him as he's shocked into pressing back. He'd known what must be coming but nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of it, soft and somehow sharp at the same time. It grabs onto the formerly directionless heat that's been stirring low in his body and wrenches it sharply to attention.

He feels more than hears a little huff of breath from Jungkook that he thinks must be a laugh at his reaction, but Taehyung can hardly care with the way Jungkook's tongue works at him.

From the outside, Taehyung's reactions may not look like much. He fists his hands into the bedding and his shoulders tense. At the foot of the bed, his toes curl, and he has to fight himself to keep his legs still, not that it would do him much good to close them, with Jungkook wedged between them, making it impossible for him to hide.

He does hide his face, burying it in the pillow where he also attempts to bury the noises that spill from him. He knows none of it is lost on Jungkook. He knows Jungkook picks up on every detail, even as he remains dedicated to his task.

Jungkook laps at him like he's made of honey, his hands still gripping firmly at his flesh to hold him open, so hard that Taehyung thinks he must be losing himself in it.

He doesn't mind though; the little bit of pain helps ground him, something familiar in the onslaught of new sensations.

Jungkook groans like he's enjoying himself as much as Taehyung is and it sends a tingling buzz up the length of Taehyung's spine. He rocks back against Jungkook’s face because he can't help himself. Jungkook doesn't seem to mind, just holds him that much tighter, not to stop him, but to pull him even closer, like he wants to devour him completely. Taehyung would let him.

He tries to open his mouth to say something – to plead, maybe – only to find that his mouth is open already, panting against the bedsheets as he writhes in Jungkook's hold. A stuttered moan falls out of him, loud and unencumbered in a way he's never heard himself before.

Jungkook has never heard it either. He pulls away enough to rest against Taehyung's thigh, just long enough to say, "Fuck, yes, let me hear you. It's just me – just me and you." And then he's right back to it.

He does it like he’s been dreaming about it, obsessing over it, sucking and licking at Taehyung like he wants to consume him. It feels so good it’s devastating, wet and hot and soft and so relentless that Taehyung feels himself slowly breaking down, piece by piece.

Fists tense in the bedding but it’s not enough to stop himself from rutting back into Jungkook’s mouth. His eyes squeeze shut but it doesn’t stop the pinpricks of tears that leak into his lashes.

It’s hard to imagine that Jungkook hasn’t done this before, and it occurs to Taehyung that maybe he has. The thought tugs painfully in his chest for a fraction of a moment, but then he remembers how hard Jungkook has worked over the last months for nothing but the privilege of being back in Taehyung's bed.

He’d said it would be different, but he’d made sure Taehyung knew just how badly he’d wanted it. And if this is the different he wants, Taehyung can't help but want it too.

He seems to be helpless to all of it, falling apart beneath Jungkook and powerless to stop it. Jungkook takes him apart and seems content to leave him that way.

His cock is harder than he can remember it ever being, as much with the promise of what's still to come as because of the way Jungkook seems to light up every nerve in his body, stoking a heat that then melts him down to nothing, or less.

He is formless in Jungkook's hands. The violence that's lived in the darkness behind his eyes all his life is out of reach, all but forgotten. He couldn't call on it now if he needed to. At the same time, he knows he never would. He never will again if he doesn't want to.

Jungkook would keep him here, shielded from it forever if that was what Taehyung wanted.

He's barely even aware anymore of the way he moves, rocking down against the bedsheets tangled beneath him and then back again into Jungkook. He's mindless, and Jungkook encourages it, working all the harder the closer Taehyung gets to losing himself completely.

And then there's an edge that comes closer and closer. It's sharp and threatening, it looms in the unsearched shadows of Taehyung's mind like an enemy waiting to strike, but he's never wanted to be caught so badly.

Just when he can practically feel that knife's edge cutting into him, Jungkook stops.

Even though it leaves him feeling so exposed, Taehyung is grateful to be on his front then because he doesn't want Jungkook to see whatever his face is doing. He buries it in the pillows and bites back the sound that tries to claw its way out of his throat.

As he comes down, he's dimly aware of Jungkook leaning up over him. Even though he's just out of reach, it's like he can feel the full length of Jungkook's body along his. The heat of him makes contact with Taehyung's skin, brushing against him and making him press up into it with a shivery jerk.

Slowly Taehyung feels like his blood vessels rearrange themselves into their proper order. His lungs continue the daily mechanism of converting oxygen, first faster, and then slower, and as his body regulates itself, he realizes what Jungkook is doing.

He's opened the drawer in Taehyung's bedside table and is searching through it with one hand. The other hand remains propped on the mattress next to Taehyung.

When Jungkook draws back, he has a bottle of lube that Taehyung had definitely not put there. He doesn’t have many belongings, so he’s never used the drawer. A flash of something that feels like both embarrassment and arousal punches him in the gut, because he knows what it must mean: Jungkook had bought it as part of the apartment being set up for him.

He sits back in his place between Taehyung's legs. Taehyung tenses as he waits for the click of the cap, but it doesn't come.

Instead, Jungkook tosses the bottle onto the bed and gets his hands back on Taehyung. Holding him by the waist, he flips him over onto his back again.

It's jarring, but even more disconcerting is the fact that Taehyung is too far gone now to react. He doesn't even tense as it happens, sprawling loosely exactly where Jungkook puts him

He feels even more exposed like this, now that Jungkook can see his face. He's sure it gives him away just as much, if not more, than his cock, which is hard and leaking where it lies against his hip.

Jungkook makes him feel even more vulnerable by simply staring at him, as though he's been starving for months and all he needs to feel satisfied is to take in every inch of Taehyung's skin.

Finally, he touches him again, fingertips once more teasing over his thighs and up to his hips. Embarrassingly, his cock twitches every time Jungkook's touch strays too close. Jungkook smirks down at him but doesn't comment on it, which Taehyung supposes is a mercy.

"I want to try something," Jungkook says.

Taehyung doesn't think he's ever heard Jungkook sound like he sounds right now. Somehow he still seems so in control of the situation, even if some of his self-control seems to be slipping.

Jungkook finds the bottle of lube from where he had tossed it in the sheets, flips open the cap with that click Taehyung had been waiting for, and then he's slicking up his own fingers.

Taehyung barely sucks in a breath before Jungkook is reaching for him, but he doesn't touch him where Taehyung expects him to. His legs are still spread because Jungkook is on his knees between them, but he wraps his hand around Taehyung's cock instead of trailing down between his legs.

It's all Taehyung can do to bite down on the sound that wants to leave him at the feeling of Jungkook touching his cock for the first time in so long.

The touch is so hot it feels cold, a shock to his system, and his body's response to it is almost violent. He sucks a breath between his teeth, and his hands, which have been clenched into the bedding, fly to grasp at Jungkook wherever he can reach. One lands on his wrist, the other on his thigh, digging in maybe hard enough to leave bruises.

Jungkook doesn't move, but he doesn't pull away either. Through the blur in Taehyung's eyes, he sees that Jungkook's gaze is on him, waiting to understand, expecting an answer to an unspoken question.

"I can't –" Taehyung says, or tries to say.

Jungkook is still touching him, even if he isn't moving, and the sharp focus of that touch makes it impossible to think clearly. He means something between I can't take it if you touch me and I won't last.

It feels strange and foreign to communicate with Jungkook like this, after so many months barely speaking to him at all, and before that, years in which they'd barely had to talk to understand each other. And yet, the whole time, they had been understanding slanted versions of each other, of themselves.

Now there's no misunderstanding, no glancing off each other and making best guesses. Taehyung hardly knows what he means, and yet Jungkook understands him perfectly.

"You can. Just let go. I want to see it."

It's as though those words have some sort of inherent power over Taehyung, because his body responds even before he's processed what Jungkook is saying.

For the first time, he moves by instinct alone. He thrusts so hard up into Jungkook's grip that his hips practically jump off the bed.

If his sudden movement startles Jungkook at all, he doesn't show it. He makes a quiet, satisfied sound and tightens his grip, just enough to go from barely there to firm enough for real friction. It's exactly what he needs. Taehyung fucks Jungkook’s fist so all he has to do is hold still.

A moan rends the stillness and he knows it's his own voice but he can hardly make sense of it over the feeling of Jungkook's hand on him, warm and slick with lube.

Jungkook's hand on him burns, pleasure tearing into him like a bullet, shattering and impossible to stop, and he’s coming before he even realizes it. He feels it pulling through him, like Jungkook is controlling not just the orgasm crashing through his body but the very blood in his veins.

Jungkook hardly moves but Taehyung comes hard. Hot drops of it hit his body, and when he fights his eyes open, it's to see his own come dripping from Jungkook's fingers and a rapt expression on his face.

He nods, but Taehyung can tell that it's only for himself. Satisfied.

It takes a long moment for Taehyung’s limbs to loosen again. He melts back into the bed and his eyes drift shut. Every part of him feels heavy. His thighs splay open like they have a mind of their own, and the pillow feels like the softest cloud caressing him and pulling him down.

He could fall asleep like this if he weren't still electrically aware of Jungkook, who has yet to release his heavy cock.

Jungkook gives him a moment. He lets his free hand wander across Taehyung's skin. When he finally does let go, the tackiness from the lube makes Taehyung acutely aware of how sensitive he is, but it isn't unpleasant. Or maybe it is, but he likes it anyway. He seems to like anything he feels, as long as Jungkook is the one making him feel it.

Jungkook nudges his legs further apart. He reaches for the bottle of lube again and adds more to his still-sticky fingers.

Taehyung's eyes are closed, but every movement, every sound is heightened. It's as though he can see Jungkook even through the lids of his eyes, the heat of him an impression in the dark.

He reaches down between Taehyung's legs with the same deliberation he’s shown everything tonight. He doesn't treat it like it's something that needs or deserves any particular care, but it's because he touches Taehyung with the same gravity every time.

Despite his recent orgasm, Taehyung tenses, but Jungkook doesn’t rush him. He looms over Taehyung, his eyes fixed on his face, drinking in every minute reaction.

Taehyung thinks Jungkook must be sweating slightly because he can smell him more than he could before. It's embarrassing the way it makes something in his belly tighten with something between longing and well-fed desire.

For the first time in a long time, he lets himself have the thought that used to come to him so freely: Jungkook is beautiful. With his wide, dark eyes and his sharp jaw, that intense expression on his face that can melt so easily into a laugh. What he sees that's new is how powerful Jungkook is.

He presses his fingers a little harder,  not enough to slip inside, but just enough so Taehyung can feel it. He rubs his fingers there like he's trying to get Taehyung used to the feeling. It is a strange sensation. Not bad, though not necessarily good either – slick, sensitive –  though his body responds anyway. That likely has more to do with Jungkook than anything else.

Finally, just as Taehyung has begun to relax into the new feeling, Jungkook presses his advantage, increasing the pressure just enough to tease at the idea of slipping inside.

To Taehyung's surprise, it makes him want it. It makes him suddenly feel like he needs it, and the surprise shakes a gasp out of him that has Jungkook looking pleased with himself.

He doesn't know what to expect, not really. He remembers, vividly, the sensation of being inside Jungkook. He remembers the euphoria of it, how Jungkook felt so good that it was like Taehyung was transported to another place, another life.

And he remembers that Jungkook had said the same, that the way Taehyung made him feel was perfect, but had it all been an act?

If so, he had been a talented actor. Taehyung remembers how he had writhed in the sheets, trying to keep quiet. They don’t have to worry about things like that now.

Will he feel as good as Jungkook had acted like he did, when he lets Jungkook do it to him? Had he exaggerated all that time, selling Taehyung on the lie even when they were alone together? Could he have contrived the sweat, the way his body seemed to move on its own, as though pleasure wracked him and took him over?

Maybe Taehyung is naïve, but he doesn't think Jungkook could have faked that. And that knowledge tightens the anticipation in him as Jungkook finally presses just so, just a little bit harder, and breaches Taehyung's body for the first time.

The sensation reminds Taehyung of being hit, but in slow motion. How soft he is, he realizes, how easy to hurt, despite a lifetime trying to harden himself. None of that protects him from the vulnerability of knowing Jungkook is inside him, if only by the fingertips.

Taehyung is caught. His breath stops as though every part of him is hanging on, suspended on Jungkook's will, waiting in the full fragility of this single moment that suddenly feels so momentous.

Jungkook pushes on and Taehyung's breath starts up again, sharp through his teeth. It feels impossible, but his body makes room, surrendering to Jungkook’s will. There's a faint trace of pain to it but he’s endured far worse.

He kinds of likes the way it shifts his focus down into himself, out of his head. He's always enjoyed the handful of things that could remind him he's as much his body as he is his mind. It's a small list, but being with Jungkook, whether they were fucking or fighting, has always been one of them.

Jungkook presses deeper into him and Taehyung thinks he must be giving him two fingers at once because it feels too intense to be just one. The feeling of stretching to fit him spreads up into his belly and down into his thighs, becoming more overwhelming, rather than less, as every second ticks by.

His body fights it, but that only makes him even more aware of it, the intrusion, the way he’s rent open without violence, flesh and muscle coerced, coaxed. Instinctively, he clenches down, but it does nothing except make the tension tighter, the burn brighter.

He chokes on sound and breath as he comes to understand that his body isn’t his own anymore. Any natural instinct he has is superseded by Jungkook. He’s in his power, from the inside out. More or less, it’s Jungkook’s to give him. He knows it, but he can’t master the need in him. His fingernails bite into his palms.  His cock drips.

Then it hits him that this is what Jungkook wants.

He wants Taehyung like this, overwhelmed and desperate and not even knowing what he's desperate for. He wants to be the one who knows, the only one who can give it to him. And he is. Taehyung knows that, has always known it. He is the only one.

His hands find their way back into the rumpled bedding and fist into it just to have something to hold onto. Jungkook's free hand moves back to the inside of his thigh, pressing it up and out of his way, and Taehyung realizes he's been squirming.

Jungkook holds him open and presses deeper, until Taehyung can finally feel that he's reached the limit of how deep his fingers can go. Colors play in the dark behind his eyes, squeezed shut. If Jungkook weren't holding his legs open, they would be clenched around him, tight as a vice. He can only imagine how he feels around Jungkook's fingers.

For his part, he’s stunned and overwhelmed, equally eager to twist away from Jungkook's hands or to beg for more.

He'll never be able to unknow the feeling of Jungkook inside him. He could tell him to stop now, and he would, but Taehyung is past the point of no return. He couldn't change his mind if he wanted to.

But he still feels like he should want to. He should be fighting this.

He digs down deep and tries to find the version of himself that's been fighting Jungkook all these months. Though his resolve has only recently weakened, that part of him feels far away. Somehow he manages to drag it up by the teeth and grit out, "Is that all?"

He doesn't know what he's hoping to achieve. Maybe he just wants to goad Jungkook into talking to him some more because he likes the sound of his voice like this, ground low and deep, down here with him.

Jungkook laughs, a breathy sound, so different from the loud, almost giggly laughter Taehyung knows. His confidence isn't diminished at all.

"Yeah?" Jungkook asks, a challenge to meet his challenge. "You want more?"

Jungkook pulls out until the tips of his fingers are only just inside. Taehyung squirms, uncomfortable, not sure if he wants to scramble away or shift his hips to take more. He realizes his eyes have drifted shut as he fights to open them and shoots Jungkook a half-hearted glare.

"Hmm?" Jungkook says, playful. Then he pushes back in, but it's different this time. The discomfort melts away, banished to the back of Taehyung's mind as Jungkook does something, Taehyung is too surprised to think about what. Whatever it is sends pleasure radiating through his entire body.

It's unlike anything he's ever felt before, not constrained to one place inside him but instead suffusing him. He hears a shocked gasp escape from his own throat, and that breathy laugh from Jungkook again.

It's almost enough to make Taehyung want to goad him further, but language is far out of his reach again as he floats in a haze of Jungkook's making.

There's nothing sharp about this pleasure. It's warm and soft and sweet, the first sip of jasmine tea after being out in the cold. But it turns heavier a moment later when Jungkook digs in harder, and it's only then that Taehyung finally understands that Jungkook must have crooked his fingers just right.

He'd had no idea it could feel like this. Of course he had always tried to make Jungkook feel good when they'd been together in the past.

And he knows – he remembers – how good it had seemed to feel. No one could have faked all of it. But even before he'd known that Jungkook was using him, he had assumed some of his responses had to be for his benefit. He hadn't known it could be like this, this consuming.

Jungkook lets up a little and then presses harder again, playing with Taehyung's body. Like he knows exactly how to make it react as he wants it to, how to make it sing.

"Anything to say now?" Jungkook asks in that taunting voice Taehyung can't understand. It's mocking and it should hurt, but it doesn't. There's no coldness in it. It's all warmth, heat.

Jungkook is enraptured. Transfixed. It transforms his teasing into something harmless, even sweet. His open adoration transmutes mockery into ravenous appreciation. He goads and he teases because he wants more, and if Taehyung is willing to give it to him, he'll do what he can to wring every last drop out of him.

Taehyung, he discovers as the feeling blooms, wants to give it to him. He wants to play along with Jungkook's game, for the first time since he'd understood he was playing one.

He shakes his head no, but at the same time he twists his hips down, demanding with his body what he can't ask for in words.

Jungkook seems only too happy to provide. He bites off a curse, betraying how affected he is despite his teasing, but instead of pressing deeper, he pulls out completely.

Before Taehyung can complain, Jungkook flips him again. He takes one of the pillows from the head of the bed and lifts Taehyung's hips to slide it beneath them. It's soft and plush and cooler than the bedding, and he can't help the sound he makes, or the way he rocks down against it.

Jungkook hadn't really allowed Taehyung to go soft after he'd come, and now he finds himself humping the pillow like he's never come in his life. It occurs to him that all of this will go to Jungkook's head, and then he decides he doesn't care. He only cares about Jungkook touching him more.

Need floods him, and he's pretty sure that if it isn't satisfied, it will bleed out of him, uncontainable.

Jungkook doesn't make him wait. He doesn't offer up any explanation for the change in position, just presses back into Taehyung with his fingers like he doesn't want to waste any more time. The stretch is more intense this time and Taehyung guesses he's using three now.

He's grateful to have the pillow to sink his teeth into. Jungkook stays close this time, holding himself up on his free arm so he doesn't crush Taehyung, but otherwise hovering just over him. He rests his head against Taehyung's shoulder and breathes like he wants to inhale him.

Taehyung can't stop thinking about Jungkook's hands. Even with his eyes closed, he sees them. Hands he's watched grow over years, hands he's seen turn into the hands of a man. Hands he's held. Hands that have held him. Hands that turned on him, took the lives of Taehyung’s own flesh and blood. Now those same hands are taking him apart.

It should be terrifying. It had been terrifying.

But Taehyung doesn't feel scared anymore. Not like he used to, not like he maybe should, because he knows that if he lets those hands take him apart, they're going to put him back together again. He may not know how to do it himself, but Jungkook will know. Jungkook will see it through.

He’s so confident in that realization that he feels himself finally, finally, let go. He hadn't realized how much tension he was still holding until it melts out of him. He feels muscles loosen that he hadn't even known he could control, from his jaw all the way down to his toes.

Jungkook must be able to feel it too somehow, because he groans and sinks deeper, leans a little harder onto him.

"That's it," he says, so close now that every sound is crisp and precise in his ear. "Let me in. Let me take care of you."

The idea that those two things could be the same would never have occurred to Taehyung before, but the more Jungkook touches him like this, the more he understands it. Especially when Jungkook adjusts his angle and finds the same spot from before. He teases at it and Taehyung sees red behind his eyes.

"Is that what you're doing?" he manages to bite through his teeth.

He expects Jungkook to laugh again, but this time he doesn't. "It is. If you'll let me."

Taehyung wants to point out that he is letting him, but then Jungkook digs in harder and Taehyung's jaw drops involuntarily as another shot of unfamiliar pleasure rushes through him.

He pushes back into it without a thought. So quickly, Jungkook has stoked his discomfort into arousal like he's never felt before.

When he buries his hands in the pillows, he brushes his own cheek, shocked at how warm it feels. The more familiar pleasure of the pillowcase against his sensitive cock is too much to resist, and he mindlessly ruts against it, heedless of the way it fucks Jungkook's fingers into him.

More relaxed now, a moan slips out of him, half frustration, half eagerness.

"What is it?" Jungkook asks in a voice that's more breath than sound. "What do you need? Tell me."

Arousal pulls hard in Taehyung's belly at the command but he can't bring himself to answer. He doesn't know what the answer is. He doesn't know what he needs, only that he does.

He's never felt this way, never felt anything like this, the way pleasure builds and builds but seems to have nowhere to go. He grinds down harder against the pillow and the disparate sensations coalesce and sharpen.

He could come again if he could just stay like this, face hidden in the pillows with Jungkook right over him, his fingers pressing into him and filling him with that strange, heady sensation, the pillow silky and now warm and soft beneath him.

But Jungkook doesn't let it happen. He resettles himself higher over Taehyung, bracing his arm across Taehyung's shoulder blades, holding him down. He dips his head so he can still speak right against Taehyung's ear.

"Maybe you need me to tell you, hmm," he says, not quite a question. It brings that rasp back into his voice, the one that's so new and that makes Taehyung shiver. "I can. I know what you need."

He nuzzles his nose into Taehyung's hair, fingers still working inside him, prying him open and driving that intoxicating pleasure into him at the same time.

"You need to get out of that pretty head," he says.

Taehyung is panting now, body trying to push back, grind down, anything, but he can't move anymore with Jungkook pinning him down like this. It should scare him but it only sends an enticing thrill down the length of his spine.

The way he's stretched around Jungkook's fingers has him feeling like he's on the brink of some tipping point, pushed past his own limits and still wanting, needing – something. Maybe Jungkook is right. Maybe he does know better than he does what he’s yearning for. Maybe Taehyung does need Jungkook to tell him, to give him what he needs without having to ask.

And then, impossibly, Taehyung feels more pressure. For a second, all thought stutters to a stop. Then he catches up and realizes that Jungkook is slowly pressing a fourth finger into him.

The stretch feels untenable, and for the first time since they started, even Jungkook's careful pace isn't enough to keep it from hurting. The pain is slight but persistent, and all at once, Taehyung is too aware of his body to think about anything else.

His brow furrows as he instinctively braces against the pain, but then long years of training kick in and he goes loose instead, accepting the feeling, allowing it to spread as it washes through him. His lips part against the pillow and he sinks deeper.

"That's it," Jungkook says.

He keeps his weight heavy against Taehyung's back and fucks him slowly but relentlessly on his fingers. When he shifts up and splays a hand between Taehyung’s shoulder blades to keep him down instead, Taehyung knows he’s watching what he’s doing.

The thought of him looking, at how he must be stretched obscenely around Jungkook's strong fingers, makes Taehyung’s cock leak against the pillow. He makes another instinctive attempt to grind down into it.

"Look at you," Jungkook says. "I knew you could do it, but," he breathes out, "I didn't know you'd like it so much. Take it so well."

Slowly, Jungkook pulls back and then out. Taehyung can feel the weight of his gaze and the intimacy of it is merciless.

Taehyung feels himself flayed open, no less exposed than he would be if Jungkook had gutted him. He's just as revealed.The vulnerability is sharp as a blade.

The seconds of waiting are not quite agony but close. Before the coldness of the pause can fully set in though, Jungkook finds the lube and presses back inside. It eases the mounting anxiety and the need growing in Taehyung at the same time.

He clutches at the pillow under his head and pushes back, as much as he can, against Jungkook's hand. It doesn't feel as painful the second time, and he realizes with a heated rush, part arousal and part embarrassment, that it's because he's already been stretched out.

"You're ready," Jungkook tells him – not a question, a statement, an assessment Jungkook is making about him, for him – and it shoots straight down to Taehyung's cock. He presses it down harder against the silken pillow, so warm now that it almost feels like just more skin. It's wet and he knows it's because he's dripping.

Jungkook grabs the lube again. He doesn’t reach for a condom. The apartment is stocked with them. He'd found them under the bathroom sink.

He knows that if he were to ask for one, Jungkook would do it – knows it just as surely as Jungkook must know Taehyung hasn't been with anyone since moving into his tower.

And of course he knows that Taehyung had never been with anyone but him before. Neither of them have.

For them, it's only ever been each other.

So he doesn't ask. 

He feels the subtle movement of Jungkook over him as he shifts his weight, changes his center of gravity. The sheets rustle under him, and the soft click of the cap opening almost seems to echo in the quiet room. The plasticy scent of the lube hits him and his entire body tenses in anticipation.

Jungkook leaves Taehyung where he is, trying not to rut into his own mess. The moment sharpens. Something in the air changes as Taehyung realizes this is happening.

All of the lead-up, the resistance, both mental and physical, has come to an end. Jungkook has defeated all of it, like a warrior out of history conquering every obstacle in his path, and now he's taking his reward. Taehyung wants to give it to him. He wants him to have it, to have him.

Jungkook presses Taehyung's leg up out of his way, forcing him to arch his back to keep the muscle of his thigh from pulling too tight. And then the head of his cock fits into place.

It’s a gentle nudge at first. The finality hits Taehyung with a jolt of almost-panic. He allows it to wash through him and fade. And then that pressure is back, bigger and firmer and even more relentless than before.

Taehyung sucks in a breath through his teeth; the hiss is loud in the stillness. If it's possible for Jungkook to slow down further, he does, but Taehyung isn't sure it helps.

He doesn't understand how after all the time Jungkook had taken opening him up, this could still hurt as much as it does, sharp and wrong as muscle is forced to give way. He grits his teeth and wills Jungkook forward. He doesn't want to stop. He wants everything all at once.

Jungkook makes a small sound that could be frustration and isn't quite. He leans down lower over Taehyung so he can speak quietly against his ear, sinking a little deeper as he does, and says, "Don't fight me."

"I'm not," Taehyung grits out.

Despite the intensity of the moment, there's a puff of air against Taehyung's hair and he knows Jungkook is laughing at him

 "You are," he says. "Why? You know I always win." He kisses Taehyung's ear, right at the helix, a place Taehyung doesn't think he's ever been touched before. The raw tenderness of that kiss hits him like a blow. "Give yourself to me," Jungkook all but whispers.

Nothing changes exactly. Taehyung doesn't take a deep breath and suddenly it's all easy. It's more that he settles into the knowledge that Jungkook is here with him – Jungkook, at once the kid he had taken under his wing, and also this man he'd become without Taehyung realizing it. A man who is confident and so assured of himself. So sure of Taehyung too, of what he needs and how to give it to him.

He lets it all go, because he knows Jungkook is right. Jungkook knows him, sees beneath the armor so ingrained that Taehyung had believed it to be flesh. He sees all the soft spots underneath it, and he wants to touch them. He wants to take care of him. Something in Taehyung responds to that, and melts into it.

With a satisfied groan, Jungkook sinks deeper into him. Every inch is hard-won, but there's satisfaction in pushing past the natural resistance, knowing he's lying still and allowing it to happen, allowing Jungkook to do it to him.

It's overwhelming, all-encompassing. It feels like being in the middle of a fight, the way it hurts but it's so much bigger than the pain.

His focus splits, fracturing around all the different sensations: the ache of Jungkook pushing past his resistance, the comforting weight of him draped across Taehyung's body, the warm breath that tickles his hair against his ear, the silky sheets tangled around his legs and feet.

And then Jungkook is inside him, as deep as he can get, and he feels closer than he's ever been before, even in all the times Taehyung had been inside him just the same way.

It feels like every nerve in his body is awake all at once. He reaches back until he's able to thread his fingers into Jungkook's soft hair, just to hold him close. He thinks he might be shaking.

A heady mix of pleasure and pain takes him over and all he can do is lie still while it settles over him. Jungkook settles over him too, heavy and almost too warm, but Taehyung is glad he's right there. He clings to him more tightly.

Jungkook wraps one strong arm around him and rests his fingers around Taehyung's neck. He doesn’t squeeze, he’s simply holding on.

When he starts moving, it's slow but effortful, as though it takes everything he has. He wishes he could somehow touch him more, but they're pressed together along the lengths of their bodies already. He tightens his fingers in Jungkook's hair, making him hiss, but it isn't a complaint.

As though in response, Jungkook’s grip on Taehyung's throat tightens too, just enough to keep Taehyung from forgetting it's there.

He rocks forward and nudges Taehyung in just the right place to have him flushing with pleasure. He tries to push back onto Jungkook’s cock, but he can hardly move, trapped between Jungkook and the mattress, his own cock still leaking against the pillow shoved underneath him.

Jungkook makes a small, unconscious sound and the next push comes harder. Whether it's because he loses himself and can't help it or because he decides Taehyung is ready for more, Taehyung doesn't know, but it feels mindless – mindless like his own insistent rutting. They move together like they’ve done this a thousand times.

They're so close that Taehyung loses track of whose sweat gathers and slips down his collarbone. So close that when Jungkook makes another one of those animal sounds, he feels it against his skin as much as he hears it.

"How is it?" Jungkook asks him, as though Taehyung can speak in language now. "Is it good, Taehyung? Tell me."

Jungkook has always been possessed of a demanding insistence. He’s always wanted Taehyung to play his games, his way. Never because he wanted to be assured of victory, but because he wanted to know that if he won, he’d earned it. Maybe it's that same need now that drives him to ask Taehyung for more than he can give.

He tries to give it anyway. He thinks he would do anything Jungkook asked of him. He opens his mouth to try to answer, but the sound that comes out of him is little more than a wanton moan.

Jungkook's hand tightens and he uses his grip to pull Taehyung down onto him at the same time that he thrusts up into him. And then there's no stopping either of them.

All at once, Jungkook stops holding back. He fucks Taehyung at a quick, steady pace. All Taehyung can do is cling on, to Jungkook with one hand and a pillow with the other. The pleasure changes again, as though the increased pace pushes it through his veins.

Jungkook clings to him just as tightly, like he's hanging on for life itself. Half-delirious, Taehyung thinks of the wound in his side. He tries to choke out the words to warn him but all he manages to get out is a sharp, "Your side –" before his breath stutters and words spool away from him.

"I don't care,” Jungkook says. “Let it bleed. I can't feel it. All I feel is you."

In another time, another place, Taehyung would laugh at that. But right now, he can't do it. Jungkook sounds so earnest, and what's more, Taehyung knows exactly what he means. He's hardly aware of anything but all the places Jungkook is touching him, inside and out.

If the sheets get a little bloody, what does it matter now? Taehyung can stitch him up again later.

For now, nothing matters except the way Jungkook holds him, the way he fucks him like it's somehow the first time and the thousandth time all at once.

There's something animal in the way he moves, the way he sounds, breath harsh and body hard against Taehyung's. But there's something soft too, something so human, about the way he touches him, holds onto him like the most important thing in all of this is just to be close. And the way he talks bridges the gap, a litany that draws the two sides of him together into one creature:

You feel so good. I knew you would. I wanted you so bad. I always want you so bad. Knew you wanted it too. You just needed us both to wait, didn't you? Until you couldn't anymore. Did you think you could hold out on me forever? Even if you did, I would have known what you really wanted. You could hide it from yourself, but not from me. I could see it when you looked at me. In the gym I could see how you wanted me to put you on your back on the mat. Pinning you down. I bet everyone else could see it too.

"Jungkook," Taehyung bites out, meaning to scold him though he's too breathless for that.

He's just talking – there was no one else in the room with them when they were sparring, no one to see the proof written all over him of how much he enjoyed Jungkook pinning him, holding him down.

Jungkook hisses. "Say it again. Say my name."

If Taehyung's eyes weren't already rolling back he would roll them now. "You're so obsessed with yourself now," he says.

Jungkook laughs. "No," he says, "I'm obsessed with you, like I always have been."

Taehyung doesn't know what to say to that. The grip of pleasure all around him is too hard to resist now. He ruts mindlessly down into the pillow beneath him and back onto Jungkook's cock, and Jungkook clings to him all the tighter for it. Finally, he seems too overwhelmed to talk anymore.

Their communications devolve into the sound of breath and unconscious noises as they move together, building toward something Taehyung has never felt before.

The hand holding his throat shifts to his jaw, turning his face toward Jungkook's. The kiss that follows is messy, the angle all wrong, but it hardly matters. Taehyung has long since given himself over completely to Jungkook's hands. He makes a primal sound into Jungkook's mouth, and it spurs him on.

All of Jungkook's restraint is finally worn away. He breaks the kiss with a sharp nip to Taehyung's bottom lip, and then his hand is back on his throat, holding on a little harder than he had before.

The slight decrease in oxygen heightens every feeling already mounting under Taehyung's skin. The silky fabric of the pillowcase brushes against his oversensitive cock with every jolting punch into him. The pleasure is a wound that pulls with every beat of his heart.

He’s strung taut along the full length of his body, from his brow to the bottoms of his feet. He can hardly breathe, and it's as much to do with his own inability to focus on his body's needs as the hand restricting him.

In every fight, there's a moment where the tides turn. Whether it's a sparring match with a friend or a shootout against an enemy, there comes a time when the end is inevitable. It’s the point of no return, when the shifting of violence must inevitably fall to one side or the other. It can turn on a dime at the last second, the underdog can find his triumph, the ruler secure his crown, but one way or another, the blood is spilled, the chips have to fall.

That moment approaches now. This is a different kind of clash, a different sort of violence, but the sensation rips through him in the same way, a bout of heightened awareness. It crackles, electric, across his skin and illuminates his blood. He's aware of every single point where his skin touches Jungkook's.

And when the chips do fall, when that final threshold is crossed, he's never been so content to lose a fight.

With a shuddering, helpless groan, every muscle in his body pulls taut and he comes fucking the pillow Jungkook had given him.

He spills like he hadn't just come not long ago. Pleasure tears him open and pours out of him. All he can do is dig his fingers into the bedding and Jungkook's hair to keep himself anchored in his body.

It's violent, the way it crashes through him, and Jungkook must feel it too. He buries his face in Taehyung's shoulder, his words muffled when he says, "Fuck, you're –"

He drags Taehyung down onto him and fucks him with a deep, filthy grind as he chases his final victory.

On the other side of his own climax, Taehyung comes down again with a growing awareness of Jungkook – the weight of him, the familiar, comforting scent, the sound of his breath still against his ear.

He spirals into oversensitivity, but he relishes the shape of the pain, a twisting ache deep in the lowest parts of him, because it's something Jungkook is showing him, something he'll own forever.

Jungkook buries himself deep and stays there. He's pressed so close that Taehyung can feel the way he trembles, shaking as he comes.

His teeth find their way into Taehyung's shoulder, holding him there too. He bites hard and the pain splits Taehyung's attention, fracturing his awareness so he's distracted when Jungkook suddenly pulls out of him and flips him easily onto his back.

It shocks a breath out of him, and then his lungs fill fully for the first time in a while, sending a tingling rush to his head.

Then Jungkook is kissing him again, and his hand is back on Taehyung's cock, sticky and oversensitive from coming all over the pillow and himself not two minutes earlier.

He's soft now, and Jungkook doesn't try to stroke him, just holds him, as though he needs to feel the proof of Taehyung’s satisfaction for himself. It forces a plaintive keen from between Taehyung's bared teeth but that doesn't stop Jungkook and Taehyung wouldn't have thought it would.

That need met, Jungkook releases him, but the relief doesn't last more than a moment before Jungkook's hand moves down between his legs. Still kissing him, he prods at Taehyung's used and tender hole.

Instantly Taehyung's hands come up to Jungkook's shoulders, digging in as Jungkook searches out that proof too.

Taehyung squeezes his eyes shut and lets him do it, though he breaks the kiss when Jungkook breaches him again, head falling back as he breathes through it. It’s no longer pleasant but still he finds he's willing to endure it if Jungkook wants it from him.

Jungkook drags his lips across the line of Taehyung's jaw, down his neck, to the sharp edge of collarbone, all the while his fingers playing between his legs just to feel himself there. Taehyung grits his teeth and bears it willingly, content to let Jungkook take what he needs.

Finally, he relents. He pulls out, pulls away just enough to allow Taehyung to breathe again. Taehyung slumps down into the mattress. He doesn't think he's ever felt so heavy. He could fall asleep in a second if Jungkook's eyes weren't so insistent on him, loud as words.

"What?" Taehyung asks, a whisper so quiet it's barely speech.

Jungkook shakes his head. "Just wondering if you believe me now." His eyes move over Taehyung's face, and he doesn't doubt that Jungkook is reading every scrap of emotion revealed there. "I can prove it to you again," he says and means it.

"I believe you," Taehyung says, just as earnest.

Jungkook leans in to kiss him again, and this time it's tender, sweet, the kind of kiss that proves once and for all that for all his new differences, this is the same Jungkook Taehyung had known all along. He’s only a version of him that's freer than he had ever been before.

And he wants to share himself with Taehyung.

Taehyung kisses back, letting himself be open to Jungkook's seeking, answering him with the truth in more than words alone. Jungkook kisses him deep, searching that truth out, finding the proof again and again, wherever he looks for it.

Finally seeming satisfied, Jungkook trails kisses across Taehyung's cheek to his jaw, then his ear, and then finally stops kissing him so he can hold him closer, burying his face against Taehyung's neck.

"Tell me I can have you now," he says. It's phrased like a demand but sounds like a plea. "I don't think I can go back to not touching you. Tell me I can."

This does make Taehyung laugh, even as his arms move to wrap around Jungkook's waist, pulling him into a hug, something that feels just as foreign as the rest of this, and just as right.

"I think you just did," he says.

Jungkook doesn't appreciate the joke. He pulls away just enough that he can meet Taehyung's eyes.

"I'm serious," Jungkook says.

It's impossible to look away from his steady, deep gaze as he looks into Taehyung's eyes like he thinks if he looks hard enough, he'll be able to read Taehyung's thoughts.

"I need you to know what I would do to keep you,” he says. “Not just here. With me, for real. You have to know. I would kill for you. I would die for you. I would tear everything down if you said you wanted it. Taehyung, I would give you anything. You have to know that. If you want to leave, we'll leave. I'll turn my back on all of this and forget about it forever. But if you want to stay, I'll do what your family never did. I'll see you. I already do. I know what you can do. I know that if you wanted to, you would have anyone, not just me, eating out of the palm of your hand. You could have this whole city if you wanted it. I would give you that, if you'll let me."

Taehyung swallows. It feels like everything he's ever felt for Jungkook is overflowing from him. It feels like everything he's ever felt in his life has been for Jungkook all along.

Anything and everything he'd ever given to his family – none of it mattered to him, not really, and even less so after Jungkook arrived.

When Jungkook turned on the Kims, it hurt because Taehyung believed he was turning on him too. Maybe it was easier, in some ways, to continue believing that. But he can't believe it anymore.

It's been a long time since he'd allowed himself to dream about what the future might hold for him. He thinks about leaving it all behind. Telling Jungkook he doesn't want any of this, testing to see whether he truly means it, if he would abandon everything he's worked for all his life, just because Taehyung said he wished it.

He doesn't want to do that to Jungkook, and he finds he doesn't care to do it for himself either.

What might life be like, out from under the boot of his own family? No longer confined like a princess in a tower, but a king in his own right, looking out to see the world at his feet? Knowing that Jungkook put it there, all for him?

It sends another thrill down his spine to imagine it, and he knows it's as much because of the image of Jungkook there, at his side, as the thought of the power he might wield.

"I don't want death from you," he says, still sunk deep into Jungkook's dark eyes. "I want a life. With you. I want to build something, together."

Jungkook is serious and still. "Then that's what we'll do," he says.

As soon as the words are spoken between them, and Taehyung doesn't back down from them, Jungkook breaks into a smile – the biggest, brightest smile he has. The corners of his eyes crinkle, and for that split second, he looks exactly like he did when Taehyung first met him, when he'd seemed so young and soft, too soft, maybe, for the world they shared.

He knows now that Jungkook had never been what Taehyung believed him to be – not in that way. And for the first time, he understands what a gift it is, not just to be here with him now, but to know him as he does, and to be known by him.

They have a future ahead of them that they get to build together, with whatever bricks they can take for themselves. The only people who could ever stop them are right here in this bed. Aligned, they can have anything they want. They can do anything.

The world opens up, sprawling beneath them, and Taehyung allows himself to reach for it.

#

"Two on the left," Taehyung says, so quietly it's probably barely picked up by the mic, but it's enough.

"Got them," he hears, crackly with static through the tiny ear piece tucked out of sight into the cradle of one ear.

They haven't been apart for more than a few hours, but it settles something in Taehyung to hear Jungkook's voice.

Most of the time, he prefers for them to work side-by-side, but sometimes the nuances of a particular job demand otherwise – at least, if they want to ensure their success. And Taehyung always wants to ensure their success.

He peers out from behind a shipping container. Behind him are a few other people he's finally allowed himself to start getting to know. They’re Jungkook's family and, by extension, maybe sort of Taehyung's family now too.

Namjoon offers support from behind the line, his voice occasionally crackling over the ear piece, directing the on-the-ground team. Behind Taehyung are Hobi, Yoongi, and of course, Jimin, working alongside him and also, he's sure, on strict orders to make sure he's protected.

He doesn't mind. He's given the same instructions to Jin, flanking Jungkook on the other side of the docks. Taehyung knows they've worked together for years, that they'd grown up together, and that there's no one Jungkook trusts more, other than Taehyung himself, but it still plucks at a discordant fear in him not to be doing this together.

But this isn't just any job, it's important – special, something they're doing for themselves.

Today, they take out the remaining, straggling, and scattered members of the Kim family. Those few remaining members who have managed to avoid them over the last months of their bloody vendetta across Seoul. Today, they put the past behind them for good, and step forward into the future, together.

For that, it had been worth splitting up for a little while. There are two distinct and essential phases to this operation if they're going to pull it off with no casualties, and this way they each head one of them.

The gun in Taehyung's hand isn't weightless, but it feels like an extension of his own arm. He holds it out in front of him, ready for use, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

One nondescript shipping container, nothing to set it apart from any others, sits directly in his line of sight. He knows exactly who cowers inside: his father, and those few still loyal to him, enough to hide with him in a stinking cell on the water.

Like a rat, he's run to the only place left to hide, the only place he believes he'll be out of Taehyung's and Jungkook's reach: out of the country.

What he doesn't know is that they would chase him to the ends of the earth if they needed to. If that were the cost of their future together, they would do it.

But they won't need to.

"We've got you now, you bastard," Taehyung says, mostly to himself, but it's heartening to hear Jungkook's quiet laugh on the other end of their staticky connection.

"Ready?" Jungkook asks him.

For one second, Taehyung allows his eyes to flick sideways into the darkness on either side of the shipping container. Somewhere in that black, Jungkook and Jin are waiting for the signal to move into place, where they can pick off any runners who escape the first wave of shots.

Taehyung knows that if anyone gets past him, Jungkook won't allow them to escape. He also knows his father won't make it that far.

But what he knows without a doubt, is that at the end of it all, when the blood's been spilled and the bones are set and the path is laid for a future where Taehyung is free from his past, Jungkook will be there waiting for him, ready to drag him from the wreckage, to clean the blood from his hands and tend his wounds – to give him anything under the stars and beyond.

"I'm ready," he says and runs for the door, a bullet into the night.