Chapter Text
“I can’t believe we did it. It’s finally behind us.”
Yunwoo paused on the rock to look back. The Tower of Eyes stood behind them, now nothing more than a tower. No more malevolent than any other vaguely creepy tower.
Jiho watched him assessingly. Despite his earlier misgivings, Yunwoo’s leg really did seem fine. Fully healed aside from Yunwoo favoring it occasionally when he walked.
“I can. Now it can stay behind us forever. We never should’ve had to come to this cursed place at all,” Jiho grumbled, turning away.
He led them back to the well quickly, Hana keeping pace with him. He was ready to leave, finally free from the crushing weight he’d felt around his ribs all year. For the first time, it was gone. Even if he was grumbling, even if he was hurrying, Jiho felt—happy. He guessed that’s what it was. He was happy.
That was his mistake.
When he reached the well, he rested one hand on the polished black stone of the rim. It hummed familiarly beneath his fingers, that energy he loved and hated. He felt it in his dreams, sometimes, when he was away for too long. Maybe, now that the tower was neutralized, he could learn to love it. Maybe the trips through the well could become a way of exploring with his friends rather than an ordeal that would inevitably leave them traumatized. Maybe it could be okay now.
Two things happened simultaneously: behind him, there was a small noise, like a bird falling from the air. Before him, Hyesoo’s tortured, monstrous face appeared from the well, contorted with horror. He reached out for Hana next to him on instinct, just in time for Hyesoo to grab him with one clawed hand and drag him down into the well.
“Wait—” Jiho shouted, struggling against her grip. “No! What are you—Yunwoo!”
He twisted, looking for him. He’d been just behind them, he must be close by, he must be—
Behind him, a few meters away, a crumpled form lay small on the rocks. Like a bird fallen from the air. It was Yunwoo. He was so still. And above him stood a Harbinger, hulking and formless, shifting continually before his eyes.
“Yunwoo!” Jiho screamed, pulled backward no matter how he tried to get away. Next to him, Hana was screaming too, wordless, agonized cries. He kicked and flailed and clawed, knowing there was nothing he could do when faced with a Harbinger, but still, he had to get to Yunwoo somehow, he couldn’t leave him, he had to—
The last thing Jiho saw before he was swallowed in the transporting depths of the well was Yunwoo, on the rocks. Still as death.
Silence.
“Chapter 23,” Namjoon’s own voice intones over the car speakers, a living artifact of the younger man who’d recorded it.
Present-day Namjoon, older but certainly not wiser, glances over at his boyfriend, whose normally wide eyes are narrowed in singular focus on the road ahead. It’s been well over an hour of this: silence, broken only by the audiobook of The Tower of Eyes, which Jungkook had begun playing somewhere midway through Chapter 19. As soon as they’d picked up the car (in the same stony, tear-stained silence with which they’d packed up, bid goodbye to Jimin, and locked up the apartment), he’d plugged in his phone and scrolled to an exact time code with the unerring certainty of ritual.
“I can’t see the road if I’m crying,” he’d explained, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “And this is how I deal with my feelings when I don’t wanna cry.”
Then he’d set the Naver maps route back to the house in Hwacheon County.
“Are you sure you—” Namjoon had begun, meaning to give Jungkook some kind of out. A way to escape the oppressive tension they’ve found themselves wading through, and the inevitable slog of trying to work their way out of it.
But Jungkook had cut him off.
“Where the fuck else am I gonna go.”
It wasn’t a question. And he hadn’t looked at Namjoon when he’d said it.
Namjoon isn’t sure how listening to what is, in his opinion, the most stressful section of any of the books in the entire Well of the Worlds series is a way to avoid crying, but it’s seemed to work for Jungkook so far. He’s barely moved, his body and gaze almost meditatively still aside from the occasional shift of the gear stick or the movement of his lips as he mouths along to a line here and there. It’s strange how little Namjoon is involved in this ceremony. How little it’s about him. How Jungkook is using his words, his voice, his art, as a way to escape him.
The Namjoon who read that audiobook has never hurt Jungkook, after all; he never could. He didn’t even know Jungkook existed.
Maybe it was better that way.
They pass a sign for a rest stop up ahead, and Namjoon shifts, wondering if he should suggest pulling off for some food. Jungkook hasn’t eaten yet, the jajangmyeon Namjoon had brought back to the apartment discarded uneaten in the aftermath, and maybe some sustenance would make him feel better. But Jungkook glances briefly at the sign before jabbing the volume up button on the steering column until Namjoon’s droning voice fills the car even louder.
Okay, no stopping then.
He looks down at his own phone for a distraction, feeling strangely as if he’s intruding on Jungkook by listening to this book along with him. He remembers him confessing how he used to jerk off to the audiobooks, and tries insistently to forget it. The confession feels like it belongs to another time, like Jungkook had confided that in a different person. He’d told that to his favorite author; it’s not something for Namjoon to know.
Back in the retreat of the glowing screen of his phone, Yoongi has replied to his earlier text.
KNJ
Can you check on Tae or call him later today? Make sure he eats dinner? He found out about me and Jungkook. It went badly. He kicked me out, so I’m going, but... he needs someone. Sorry to saddle you with this.
Min Yoongi
Fuck. Sure. Fuck.
Want me to call you?
KNJ
No
I mean, I might call you later, but not now
I’m in the car with Jungkook
Things are weird
Min Yoongi
What happened?
With Tae? He didn’t walk in on you, did he?
KNJ
No, thank god, I can’t imagine
He saw this. Think a friend sent it to him
[@UnworldTraveler on Twitter: Kim Namjoon new boy toy? 👀]
He sends him what he’s come to think of as The Tweet. Despite looking at it, and every reply to it, at least twenty times over the course of the last hour, he opens it once again. Tries to see it through Yoongi’s fresh eyes. Last night, he’d felt so confident he was keeping a respectable distance between him and Jungkook; plausibly deniable. But here, captured in this sequence of slightly blurry, poorly-lit pictures, it doesn’t look plausibly deniable at all. They look about two seconds away from fucking right there on the dance floor. In every picture, his own gaze is so focused on Jungkook, so intent and single-minded, there’s no room to misinterpret it.
The replies are already a mess, and it hurts Namjoon to look at them, but he also can’t seem to stop. There’s a distant sting to it: seeing people speculate about Jungkook’s age, his looks, his tight body, and condemning Namjoon for daring to dance with him like that, or look at him like that. Even the people defending Namjoon are postulating that Jungkook is older than he looks in the blurry photographs, or that he’s just a stranger Namjoon was dancing with rather than a long-term association, or even some particularly naive souls hoping Jungkook is the son they’d heard Namjoon was with. (Thankfully, that last one is dismissed out of hand by fans who know Taehyung doesn’t have tattoos, otherwise Namjoon might have an even bigger potential scandal on his hands.)
But that’s just the problem: even the defenses of Namjoon rest on the idea that Jungkook isn’t inappropriately young, or that Namjoon hasn’t pursued a real relationship with him. But he is, and he has. There’s something satisfying about witnessing his own worst thoughts about himself coming from the mouths of strangers. Like a confirmation. If he didn’t seek out this sting, he doesn’t know what he’d feel about himself right now anyway: he feels like he’s behind glass, the usual anxious inner monologue so overwhelmed that it’s gone silent. Instead, there’s just a dull buzzing inside his head. Numbness and dread. Eventually, the enormity of the possibilities will have to come crashing down—the possibility that people will identify Jungkook by his tattoos, that the press could pick it up, that details of their lives could be dug up and rolled out—but, for now, all of that feels remote. Impossible to consider as a reality.
That anxious part of his mind is otherwise occupied, he supposes. If he lets himself drift for too long, inevitably his mind repeats the scene in his apartment this morning. The look on Taehyung’s face. The betrayal he must feel. And then Namjoon is underwater, drowning, kicking back to the surface. Retreating to the safety of numbness and distraction.
He wants to feel something, vaguely, but it’s as if he’s forgotten how; he’s forgotten how to feel anything but self-loathing, grief, and the loneliness that comes with that. The conviction that he cannot be understood, and doesn’t deserve to be either. Not by Taehyung, not by Jungkook, not by anyone.
Min Yoongi
I’ll call him
Hyung will take care of it
KNJ
Thank you.
He’s glad Taehyung has Yoongi at least. He trusts him to make sure he’s cared for when Namjoon has lost the privilege.
Next to him, Jungkook makes a small noise of surprise and empathy, reacting to the audiobook he must have listened to many times over by now like it’s brand new. Namjoon steals a glance at him, at the familiar profile of his face, the tattooed hand resting on the gearshift. Namjoon doesn’t even have his driver’s license. But Jungkook stepped up. He didn’t cry. He’s driving them home.
He wonders if Jungkook has seen the replies on Twitter, or if any of his friends have recognized him. If someone sent it to Taehyung, someone who knows him must have seen it. Would he care? He’d seemed genuinely surprised by Taehyung’s reaction, like he’d never really considered that Taehyung might feel lied to, or like he’d assumed everything would just work itself out. Namjoon wonders if he even understands that people will view Namjoon as a creep, and Jungkook as a helpless victim.
He feels like Jungkook’s been chasing what feels good: Namjoon’s attention, his affection, his devotion, his desire. And he’s gotten it all, precisely because of his own dogged lack of regard for the consequences. (Well, his lack of regard for consequences, and Namjoon’s weak, sick heart, which never should have given him any of it.) But now the consequences have begun. Reality has intruded on the fucked up little paradise they’d built for themselves. What happens now? How will Jungkook feel? Even before Taehyung had discovered them, he’d seemed more conflicted than Namjoon had expected. Uncertain, like he was pulling away from Namjoon’s over eagerness. Like maybe he’s gotten what he thought he wanted, and realized it’s not as satisfying as he thought it would be.
The chase is over for them now. Jungkook has caught Namjoon (or Namjoon has caught him, pulled him in with his inconsistent affections like a rat in a Skinner box searching for an increasingly unpredictable reward.) Is he really going to want the part that comes next? Will whatever meager love Namjoon has to offer really be worth the consequences?
The worst part is, Namjoon could ask himself the same question. Is loving Jungkook worth the consequences? And he knows the answer doesn’t matter. His heart already decided it is. He knew what might happen if he let himself feel things he shouldn’t feel, or do things he shouldn’t do, and he did them anyway. He wanted Jungkook too much.
Maybe Jungkook would have the same answer. Maybe some rational cost-benefit analysis is useless here. Maybe they’ll both keep hurtling themselves at each other even if it destroys them, begging for love from the thing that will obliterate them.[1]
He leans against the window, watching as the landscape turns more rural, as they wind their way away from Seoul and all its people, its watching eyes, back toward the safety of his remote little house. Just this morning, he’d felt that he and Jungkook were returning to who they are when they’re alone—the exchanges that make his heart flutter, the lingering hands, the distances they’ve given themselves permission to cross now. He’d thought it would be just like it was before, but better—lighter.
But now, stealing a glance at Jungkook’s sweet face, hardened into a mask of hurt, now he sees—it’s never going to be like it was before. That time is gone. All that’s left is Jungkook. Jungkook, and the fractured, shattered thing between them. The thing he has to try to rebuild, impossible as it might seem. The thing he never wanted. The thing he wanted so desperately he destroyed himself for it. The only thing he has left now.
————
They unload the car wordlessly in the gravel driveway, the silence between them filled in by the raucous singing of insects, louder and more constant even than the noise of the city. Louder than the thoughts in Namjoon’s head. Louder than despair.
Inside, the house is stuffy and hot after days with the aircon switched off, and strangely still. He feels like an intruder. He feels like he’s never been here before. Like all these things belong to someone else: someone else’s art; someone else’s cabinet carelessly left open in the kitchen; someone else’s life.
Behind him there’s a shuffling noise as Jungkook removes his boots. He doesn’t dare turn to watch. He’s already anticipating Jungkook retreating silently to his room—Taehyung’s room—no, Jungkook’s room now; Jungkook’s room where Taehyung’s childhood stuffed tiger still sits on the windowsill, sent to watch over him.
He stands, and he waits for Jungkook to walk past him like he’s not there, and he wonders what he’ll do now. He can’t imagine what will happen next, like the film reel of his life has been abruptly cut and now he’s—what is he.
What is he.
He—
There are hands on him and the room spins and Jungkook’s mouth is on his, his brow furrowed and his eyes tightly closed as Namjoon blinks in surprise, kissing back automatically. He kisses Namjoon hungrily, intensely, his tongue swiping at his lower lip, the hand already tight on his hip gripping ever-tighter, and the shock of arousal that springs from Namjoon’s belly is so sudden and intense, he has to break the kiss to gasp for breath.
“Jungkoo—” he begins, but he’s cut off by another bruising kiss, by Jungkook’s body pressing closer, closer, like he can’t ever be close enough. He’s everywhere, his hands moving ceaselessly across Namjoon’s body, shutting out everything else.
Namjoon tilts his head to fix the angle, his hands sliding into Jungkook’s hair, and Jungkook’s mouth opens in a groan. He feeds the noise into Namjoon’s mouth and it slides, simmering, down his throat to sit in his chest, hot and tight and prickling like the burn just before tears fall.
It’s as if all his grief is set alight, burned up by the proximity of Jungkook’s body, and suddenly he’s no longer sad. Instead he’s afire. He’s raging. He is consuming everything in his path.
Jungkook keeps making those noises, moans and grumbles and whines that slide sinuously down his lip ring and out of his mouth, and Namjoon swallows them all, fills the hollow place inside him with Jungkook, with the taste of his mouth, with the strength of his arms, with the hair that slips between his fingers. He’s real. He’s here. He’s happening next.
He slides his hands down Jungkook’s warm body, feeling the curve of his biceps where his arms flex and clutch, his narrow waist and firm stomach, creeping beneath his shirt to hold him where he’s alive and moving and hot. The movement of his abdomen with his breath, the downy slip of his skin, reminds Namjoon of some underwater creature, something unknowable and alien undulating way down on the ocean floor. Down where Namjoon would have to drown to reach him. His lungs must already be full of him, liquid and painful.
Jungkook pulls away, panting, then drops to his knees right there in the foyer, pressing a palm hard against Namjoon’s cock through his pants.
His mouth opens on reflex, ready to tell Jungkook to stop, to take it slow, to be responsible, to let him hold him instead—but Jungkook looks up into his face, brow furrowed in determination and defiance, and what’s the point in denying him? What’s left to protect? Jungkook wants to be reckless, and Namjoon wants it too. He wants to let the desire raging within him burn unattended. He doesn’t want to feel sad, or numb, or alone. He wants to feel this.
So he doesn’t say anything. He lets Jungkook undo his pants with nimble fingers, lets him press his nose against the waistband of his underwear. He presses his hips forward, letting Jungkook know where he wants him, where he’s finally inviting him to be. Jungkook complies, so quick and clever that he’s barely tugged Namjoon’s underwear beneath his balls before his fattening cock is sucked between his lips with a groan. His eyebrows draw together, lashes fluttering closed in satisfaction as he runs his tongue around the crown, savoring the still-manageable mouthful of it.
Namjoon is filling up fast, the shaft of his dick nudging up against Jungkook’s soft palate as it grows within the warmth of his mouth, spurred on by the slide of his lips and tongue. But Jungkook copes like he’s born to it. He sets a deep, steady pace right away, his hands clutching at Namjoon’s hips for purchase. He looks so natural down there, and his mouth feels so good—the sweet, sucking relief of it—Namjoon can barely bear to look at him.
“Fuck, baby,” he groans instead, “You look too good, pretty mouth around me.” Jungkook just shoves his head down on Namjoon’s cock like he’s trying to choke himself on it, like he can shut Namjoon up by sucking the words out of his mouth through his dick.
Last time they’d done this, Namjoon’s body had been reluctant to respond, deciding to cut things off when his conscious mind couldn’t. But now—with his hand cradling the back of Jungkook’s head, with the wet heat of his mouth around him, with the way Jungkook’s knees spread beneath him as he reaches down to palm at his own cock through his jeans—his body is eager, rushing forward where his mind might hesitate. It feels like barely any time at all before his cock has gone from plump with arousal to diamond-hard and throbbing on Jungkook’s tongue, dangerously close to coming straight down his throat.
“I’m gonna come if you keep that up, angel,” Namjoon grits out, and Jungkook’s teeth scrape at his dick as if in retaliation.
Dimly, he’s aware that Jungkook might not want to be called baby or angel or anything else by him—not right now—but he can’t help himself. The words seem to simply fall from his mouth when Jungkook is around.
Jungkook pulls back, wiping wetly at his chin.
“Then come,” he breathes, voice rough. “Want you to. Want you to pull my hair, use it like a handle, come in my mouth. Been waiting for it. Gimme it.”
“Fuck.”
Namjoon does as instructed, hooking his fingers more firmly into Jungkook’s hair, testing out how much Jungkook wants from him. But Jungkook seems unwilling to wait through Namjoon’s tentative tugs; he lunges forward against the leverage of it, pulling his own hair like a wild horse resisting the reins. Then he’s back on Namjoon’s dick: tight, almost brutal heat punctuated by the sting of teeth when he sucks with too much force, cheeks hollowing and fluttering. Namjoon’s grip in his long hair tightens reflexively in response; Jungkook moans into it, eyes rolling back.
Warm fingers grasp at his free hand where it’s bunched up against the wall, guiding him forward to touch Jungkook’s cheek. He looks up at him, big eyes wet and shining, then slowly angles his head until Namjoon’s cockhead nudges at the barrier of his cheek. When he rubs Namjoon’s fingers against the bulge, the dual sensation of it has him melting against the wall, hips moving to chase that feeling. The sweet pressure of the silky slick pocket of Jungkook’s cheek catches the head of his cock with each thrust forward, the bulge it creates appearing and disappearing under his fingers.
Jungkook grunts out a sound, tongue moving wetly, and adjusts the angle so Namjoon’s thrusts hit deeper, no longer trapped in his cheek. He redoubles his efforts, determined, one hand fisting Namjoon’s slippery length where it doesn’t all fit in his mouth; the extra tight warmth of it is perfect, too hot to bear, and Namjoon moans, already lifting up onto his toes despite himself as he strains.
Jungkook chases him, still hungrily attached to his cock, still pulling against the grip of Namjoon’s fingers in his hair like he can’t get enough of the sting. But what finally pushes Namjoon over the edge is seeing Jungkook’s free hand snake into his open jeans, touching himself to the pleasure sucking Namjoon off brings him.
“Fucking perfect, like that, fucking—” Namjoon groans, hips stuttering as he comes into Jungkook’s waiting mouth, pleasure flowing so brightly through him he can’t feel anything else.
Jungkook sucks him through it until he slumps, panting, grip slackening in his soft hair. Namjoon begins to pet through the strands, feeling loose and sated and grateful, in love with Jungkook all over again, but Jungkook seems to have other ideas. He tugs Namjoon’s pants roughly up his legs before he rises to his feet and pulls Namjoon in by handfuls of his shirt, spinning them so his own back is to the wall.
“Touch me,” he demands, pulling Namjoon’s body closer and closer until it must be hard to breathe, pressed as he is between him and the wall.
Namjoon does. He touches his chest and his waist and his sides, broad sweeps of his hands; he kisses him; he tries to keep up. He wants to keep him here, to hold him, to do what he asks. He feels—desperate. Frantic to be loved.
“Harder,” Jungkook growls into his mouth, prompting Namjoon’s hands to squeeze tighter around his waist. “Harder. You’ve been waiting long enough, haven’t you? Touch me like you fucking mean it,” he insists, voice tight with anger. Namjoon tries to obey, squeezing him tighter, wanting him to feel—if not good, at least alright. At least—held.
His body seems to harden under Namjoon’s hands, his hands over top of Namjoon’s, encouraging him to squeeze ever-tighter. Finally, when Namjoon can feel his nails digging into Jungkook’s skin even through his clothes, his muscles straining under his hands as if trying to escape his grip, Jungkook moans contentedly, his head dropping back in bliss.
“Like that,” he breathes, letting Namjoon kiss tenderly at his neck as his hands threaten to crush him. “This is what it was for, right? Why you’ve been looking at me like that all these months. Take what you wanted.”
This is what it was for, Namjoon thinks, letting his arms slide to wrap around Jungkook instead, hugging him close as he tongues at the tender flesh of his earlobe between all those silver hoops. It wasn’t just for his body; it was for him, for this, for all of him. Jungkook gasps, shudders, hiccups out a sound.
“Not like that,” he begs, sounding desperate, writhing under Namjoon as he tries to bring one of his hands to his neck, urging him to squeeze. Namjoon balks, tugging against Jungkook’s grip.
“No. I’m not doing that. Hey, are you okay?”
Maybe it means something, or maybe Jungkook just really wants to get off. Maybe other men would do it for him without protest; maybe they’d gladly grip his pretty neck with rough hands. He tries to get a good look at his face, but it’s difficult, compounded by his hair in the way, to tell what’s sweat, what’s saliva, or what might be tears. Whether his eyes are red from sucking cock or from grief. He seems increasingly desperate, panting and eyes darting wildly.
“Yes, yes, hyung, just want you. Wanted you for so long. Please. Please help me.”
He grinds his hips forward, wincing as his dick makes contact with Namjoon’s hip, his face furrowing like it hurts. And maybe it is painful, to wait so long, to be so hard and not be able to get what he needs.
“Need it, hyung.”
Namjoon wants to give him what he needs. He’s spent so long denying it to him, and it’s just them now. They’re all he has left: the two of them. He wants them to be okay. He doesn’t know how they’re going to be okay. Maybe Jungkook can tell him.
“Need what?”
“Need you to hit me. Hurt me. Please, please it would feel so good, please, I need it so bad,” Jungkook begs, his hands fisting into Namjoon’s shirt like he’ll die if he doesn’t get what he wants. “Please,” he pleads, dropping little kisses across Namjoon’s nose and cheeks. “Just once.”
Namjoon doesn’t know why he says “Okay,” but he does.
“Okay,” he repeats, reaching down to cup the bulge between Jungkook’s legs, but Jungkook catches his wrist before he does.
“No, not yet, not right now. Just, please,” he says wetly, “Here.” And he points to his cheek, his pretty red mouth hanging open.
Jungkook likes this, Namjoon reminds himself. He likes pain; they’ve talked about it. Right now, he seems even to need it. Before he can overthink himself out of it, he braces his feet, smacking at Jungkook’s cheek with his fingers. The hit is weak, makes only a dull sound against his flesh.
“Harder,” Jungkook pouts.
He takes a breath, then obliges, trying to put more force into the hit, which makes a sharp sound this time. Jungkook breathes out a pleased hum, his eyes fluttering closed.
“Hard—”
“Harder, I know,” Namjoon sighs, frustrated. He can’t help but feel that this isn’t important. It’s their first time with each other, and instead of trying to enjoy the experience, he’s stuck here standing in the sweltering hallway of his house, sweating through his shirt and trying to figure out exactly how hard his new boyfriend needs to be hit in order to actually get off. “You’re so demanding.”
“Just want it harder,” Jungkook whines. “Wanna feel it. Want you to do better.”
Better. Like this isn’t good already. Like Namjoon’s the one derailing things. Like he hasn’t already thrown it all away—the love of his son, his professional reputation, any semblance of moral decency—for this, for a boy he doesn’t understand and can’t satisfy.
His next slap lands with a crack right on the fat of Jungkook’s cheek, and Jungkook gasps when it hits, head wobbling to the side.
“Fuck,” he moans, shivering.
Fuck. He really must like it. Watching him, he looks—nearly beatific. An icon of ecstasy, varnished so it glows. He slaps him again, and Jungkook’s hands curl into Namjoon’s shirt, body slumping as he takes the hit.
“Yeah,” he whines, high and breathy. “Again, another, again.”
Namjoon gives him another. His cheek is growing hot under his hand. He wonders if he’ll bruise, and is dismayed to find that he likes the idea of a pretty purple mark blooming on his face.
“Fuck, come on,” Jungkook spurs him, fingers twisting where he still holds tight to his shirt. “Isn’t everything all fucked up now? Doesn’t it make you mad? It wouldn’t be all fucked up if it wasn’t for me, right, so come on, hurt me, I deserve it, I want it, I need—”
His face crumples, twisting, and before Namjoon can say anything, or even really process what he’d said, Jungkook begins to cry.
“Fuck!” he yells, tilting his face up toward the ceiling when Namjoon reaches for him, blinking aggressively like he can stem the flow of tears.
But already his nose is red, tears falling freely from his eyes.
Namjoon is bewildered. He doesn’t know if Jungkook is angry with him, or angry with himself, or sad, or horny, or impatient. As soon as he expresses one emotion, he seems to flit to the next, unable to settle long enough for Namjoon to get a sense of what’s happening with him. But—how is he supposed to ask, when asking is so inadequate? What’s wrong seems barely to cover it. Because Namjoon knows—he’s feeling it too—that everything is wrong. If someone were to ask him what’s wrong right at this moment, he would laugh in their face. He’s felt a thousand contradictory emotions this morning alone, and all of them seem somehow to lead back to self-hatred, to a conviction that something is indescribably broken: within himself and within his life.
The list of what’s wrong is too long to even begin.
He doesn’t ask Jungkook what’s wrong.
“Did I hurt you? Was it too hard?” he asks instead, touching Jungkook’s cheek for clarity.
He knows the answer to that might be more complicated than he wants. But he just slapped Jungkook and now he’s crying, so he’d like to know if he’s injured somehow.
“I’m fine,” Jungkook says with exasperation. The way he’s still sobbing while he says it isn’t all that convincing, though. “I don’t even know why I’m crying. I don’t—” he hiccups, “cry that easily.”
Namjoon wants to say I’ve known you for two months and this is at least the tenth time I’ve seen you cry, but Jungkook doesn’t seem like he’d be able to take that with the humor with which it’s intended right now.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He pets at his neck, letting out tension he hadn’t realized he was holding when Jungkook allows it.
This is all he’d wanted, he realizes: for Jungkook to let him touch him gently. Not to have his affection rejected.
“I really, really don’t,” Jungkook hiccups, taking aborted deep breaths. “Please don’t make me talk about it,” he begs, and Namjoon bristles.
Is that really how Jungkook sees him? Someone who’s always forcing him to talk about things? Like a parent trying to foist emotional growth where it’s unwanted?
It’s not a role Namjoon wants—not with Jungkook. But it feels like he’s been pushed into it, always obligated to be the one who responds reasonably or tries to work things out. He tries so hard to let Jungkook have his place, to respect his boundaries, and now—don’t make me talk about it. As if Namjoon would, or could.
“I didn’t say I would make you, fuck,” he mutters.
He turns away from Jungkook, too annoyed to want to continue anything if this is how he’s gonna be about it. But as he does, their bodies barely brush against one another, and Jungkook lets out a yelp and a shiver.
“Fu-fuuck,” he moans, high and breathy. Almost pornographic.
“What? I barely touched you.” He’s suspicious, half ready to believe this is some weird seductive manipulation on Jungkook’s part. But the flush that’s formed high on his cheeks—that’s hard to fake. It has Namjoon’s body stirring again with interest.
“I might’ve, uh—fuck it, I should just show you.”
Jungkook’s fingers go down to where his jeans hang open, carefully sliding the tight fabric down his legs. He steps out of them, dropping his underwear unceremoniously just after. And Jeon Jungkook is standing in Namjoon’s entryway, naked from the waist down. Or—does it really count when his shirt is so long it falls to the top of his thighs?
Jungkook reaches down and raises one edge of the hem all the way up past his nipple: there’s no pretense of seduction; he’s just showing Namjoon his body, like he’d present him with any other object of interest. Something about the very lack of sexiness to it turns Namjoon on almost desperately. He has to re-learn how to breathe around it.
And there’s—there’s Jungkook’s cock, all dark and pretty, flushed red at the head where it rises proudly from his foreskin, and—
“What the fuck?” Namjoon whispers, crouching at his feet for a better look.
It’s fucking—pierced. There is a metal barbell running right through the fleshy head of Jungkook’s dick, one shiny stud emerging from each side. He reaches out to touch it, unsure if it’s real, but Jungkook jerks with a whimper when he gets close.
“Sorry,” he says in a hush. “Sorry. Just. Can I touch?”
He looks up at Jungkook, who’s chewing on his lip, eyes big and wet and still kind of teary, the hem of his shirt clutched in one hand. He nods.
“Gentle, though. It’s healing.”
When the tip of one finger makes contact with the smooth head, slippery with pre-come, Jungkook twitches again, breathing rough. But Namjoon keeps his touch gentle, stroking the finger down the side until he reaches one end of the barbell. It’s smooth, warm like his skin. It’s real.
“Does it really go all the way through?” he asks, fascinated. He puts just the tiniest bit of pressure on the end, and it moves, sliding smoothly deeper.
Jungkook whines.
“Yeah,” he gasps. “Can feel it moving inside.”
“Fucking hell.”
Fucking hell.
“Didn’t it hurt? Doesn’t it still hurt?”
Even thinking about it makes Namjoon wince, his own cock pulsing in sympathy.
“It hurt so bad. I was all—” he makes a series of little whimpering, gasping sounds, presumably imitating what he was like while getting it pierced, and Namjoon feels himself blush. He wishes—he wishes he could have seen his face. Gone with him. Held his hand. Watched him hurt his pretty body just to make it even prettier. “But it doesn’t hurt as much now, unless it like, brushes up against something wrong. It’s just really sore.”
“You got it at the same time as the tattoo?”
Jungkook nods.
“Fucking hell,” Namjoon repeats, wishing he could find anything more eloquent to say.
It’s so—extreme. Not even all that nice looking, for how much it must have hurt. How long it must take to heal. But it’s like—how it looks isn’t what turns him on about it, what fascinates him. It’s—it’s the fact of Jungkook having done it. The bravery it would take. The kind of person you’d have to be to walk into a piercing shop at age 20 and say Stick a needle through the head of my dick, please. To pay for the privilege of it.
“Does hyung think it’s pretty?” Jungkook asks quietly. He’s all gentle shyness now, like the anger and the tears have drained out of him. Maybe the physical pain replaces them. Maybe it washes them away.
“Hyung thinks it’s beautiful.”
He strokes over it once tenderly, pre-come beading at Jungkook’s tip in response.
“It’s so pretty. Pretty like artwork is pretty. Half the beauty is just in the idea of it. The act of the creation. Art isn’t art because it’s nice to look at; it’s art because you look at it with the knowledge that someone made that. It’s a human act put on display. An expression.”
Jungkook’s length twitches. Maybe Namjoon talking about art does it for him. Or maybe he’s getting impatient with these barely-there strokes of Namjoon’s fingertip.
“Can I look at you better?” Namjoon asks, peering up at him.
Jungkook nods.
“Okay.”
He rises up out of his crouch, determined, then bends down to scoop Jungkook up with one arm at the back of his thighs, sweeping him into his arms in a bridal carry.
Jungkook giggles, a cackling, surprised thing. Namjoon leaves his pants and underwear there on the floor in the entryway and hauls him down the hall to his bedroom. Where he can look at him better.
He drops Jungkook onto his bed where he lands against the pillow, breathless and flushed and big-eyed. The late-day summer sunlight pours through the windows and onto his face, dappled with shadow by the tree just outside. There’s a wonder, a kind of awe at the mere fact of him, that wraps itself around the despair settled in Namjoon’s stomach, enfolding it until they merge into something different. Some entirely new feeling. Its ache—the raw hope of it—makes him want to cry.
Is this what it’s like to believe in god? This powerless beauty and terror? This smallness in the face of unfathomable bigness?
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, the words expanding and writhing within him, inadequate and frivolous, as he crawls onto the bed to brace over him. “What did I do? What do I do? When you’re so beautiful that just looking at you makes me feel more beautiful too? Like I could catch beauty; contract it like a disease.”
“Maybe you kiss me?”
Namjoon breathes. “Maybe I kiss you,” he agrees; and so he does. He kisses him.
It feels like they’ve never kissed before, like every kiss before has only been waiting for this: all-consuming, all-encompassing. He loses himself in the heat of Jungkook’s mouth, the careless and greedy way he kisses, like he won’t be satisfied until he’s touched all of Namjoon inside and out. Namjoon’s always felt a little scared of it: the way Jungkook wants so much of him.
He’s his own person, built through decades of living. He has a family, a career, an artistic passion. Even if the last few years since Tae left home have been a little less fulfilled, a little more lonely, he still has a nice life. An enviable one, by most people’s accounts—and it’s his. So he’s held it tightly, protective of this fragile thing he’s built that holds all the weight of who he is. Fearful of ruining it somehow. Reluctant to allow Jungkook to touch every part of it.
But what does he have now? What has it gotten him? Ruins. A landscape already changed. A fragile thing that can no longer stand under the weight he’s so carelessly stacked atop it. He tried to let Jungkook in only a little, small steps at a time, and he failed even at that. As soon as he gave him an opening, he burrowed in and all Namjoon did was invite him deeper at every turn. He’d gotten greedy: he thought he could have Jungkook while keeping the life he had now, but slightly improved, with slightly more love and happiness and companionship. But he was wrong. Jungkook doesn’t want anything slightly, and he was never going to sit quietly in the corner of Namjoon’s life, unnoticed by anyone. Namjoon had been stupid to think otherwise.
But why shouldn’t he let Jungkook crawl inside him now, burn him clean and start anew? Like a dead tree that catches fire from the inside out, a husk of bark around a core of consuming flame. Why shouldn’t he give himself over to this completely?
For the first time, he kisses Jungkook like he really means it. No hesitation. No fear. Have me. Have whatever you want from me. Burn me down like I deserve.
Jungkook whimpers into his mouth, huffing long breaths through his nose like he can’t bear to break for air, sucking on Namjoon’s tongue with the same fervor with which he’d sucked his dick. Desperate and shameless and so, so free. Like he can’t possibly lose.
Namjoon craves that freedom, that recklessness, wants to break open on the rocks of it.
“Can I touch you?”
“Please,” Jungkook whines, eyes hazy with desire.
“No, I mean—how can I touch you? Without hurting you? What am I allowed to do?”
How does one get off with a wounded dick? Surely there are hygiene concerns.
“Oh,” Jungkook huffs, pouting down at where his cock eagerly pokes up over the hem of his shirt like it’s betrayed him somehow. “Well, I’m not allowed to jerk off for a couple of weeks, and oral’s out of the question because of infection or whatever. So--I dunno, maybe I’ll just die instead.” He groans, throwing one arm dramatically over his face. “I just wanna come,” he whines pitifully.
Namjoon considers for a moment.
“There are other ways I could make you come. Spread your legs for me?”
Jungkook does, gazing up at him shyly. Something about the image—clad only in his oversized shirt while naked from the waist down; the coy expression; the bigness of his eyes—makes him look so pure. Innocent, like the buttercup flower tattoo plastered prettily across the surface of his thigh, the norigae’s cord stretching all the way up to his hip.
Even now, there’s a part of Namjoon that wants to pull back; that doesn’t want to taint him, even if he understands that Jungkook is old enough to make his own decisions. It’s hard to remind himself: Jungkook deserves to have a say, and he’s not shy about telling Namjoon what he does and doesn’t want. And he wants this.
He believes in Jungkook. And yet, even so, it’s difficult to believe him.
Nausea roils in him, down in the center of him which he’d so recently melodramatically imagined being cleansed by the flame that is Jungkook. Nothing’s been cleansed or burned away: all his old morals, his hang-ups, his fears, are still there. Even if he’s betrayed them. Even when he has nothing left to lose, the fear of losing lingers, stubborn and inescapable.
He’s lost all the good things and kept only the bad. Or the inconvenient.
Except one thing: he hasn’t lost Jungkook yet. Jungkook who makes him feel alive, makes him feel desired, even makes him feel happy in most of their moments together. Jungkook, whose mere presence in his life made him start writing again. Jungkook, who is freely offering him even more.
He swallows down his stupid fears and retrieves the lube from his bedside table.
He strips off his clothes for good measure, soaked through with sweat in places since he hasn’t bothered to turn the aircon back on. But he’s not about to leave now, so instead he tosses the soiled clothes onto the ground and settles down on his knees between Jungkook’s legs.
He runs a palm over one well-defined thigh, fine hair matted down by a thin layer of sweat. When he presses a kiss to the inside of it, he comes back with salt on his tongue. He’s reminded, as he constantly seems to be, of the first time he saw Jungkook—of sitting in his house, hunched over his phone, watching his thighs flex on the screen as he ran around the soccer field.
Sometimes, it feels like if he’d never seen that video, he could have been more normal about Jungkook. Like things would have been fine if it hadn’t been for that first twist of guilty interest in his stomach.
But he knows that’s ridiculous. He would have been lost the moment they met.
Or wouldn’t he? he thinks as he coats his fingers in lube.
He rubs the pad of one finger against Jungkook’s rim, watching his features furrow and twitch as he tries to resist pushing into the sensation, seeking more pressure. He’s hungry for every expression, attuned to even the smallest movements.
He’d been interested in Jungkook when he’d first met him, intimidated by him even. He’d been a pretty distraction, a puzzle for his brain to turn over while he’d avoided other things. But he hadn’t felt like this when he looked at him. It’s taken time to get here, and Jungkook only gets more beautiful the more his flaws and imperfections and uglinesses are revealed. It’s like with loving him, he grows more beautiful; more precious; more real. Namjoon’s helpless heart pours love into him, and when he looks at his face, that’s what he sees: all that love, reflected back at him. Sacred. A living object of his devotion.
“Shh, here you go,” he murmurs as he feeds one finger inside, his other hand rubbing at Jungkook’s thigh to soothe the small sound he makes.
He pumps slowly, and Jungkook stays quiet aside from the occasional hum, his fingertips resting on the base of his cock like he needs the touch even if he knows he can’t stroke.
When he adds a second, slow and careful, Jungkook welcomes it with a whine, squirming a bit more now as the fingers open him up.
“‘S so hot in here,” he pants, eyes squeezed shut, his hair already tendriled with sweat.
He wriggles more, gasping a tiny breath when it shifts Namjoon’s fingers inside him, and pulls the voluminous fabric of his shirt up under his armpits, not bothering to remove it all the way. His pretty flush extends down his chest, blotchy in places like a wash of watercolor. He looks—diaphanous. Namjoon doesn’t know how to feel. In love, probably. In love and in conflict.
He feels gently along Jungkook’s walls until he finds the bulb of his prostate, pressing up into it. Jungkook makes a high sound, letting out air in a sigh like a spent teakettle. The sound reverberates through Namjoon, heat singeing down his spine. He kisses Jungkook’s knee, shifting closer to his warm body, and resumes the slow thrusts of his fingers, keeping up that bare pressure on the end of each stroke. But Jungkook continues to wriggle and whine, eyebrows furrowing into a little glower. Impatiently, he tries to push himself down into the strokes so they hit deeper, rougher, silently urging Namjoon faster.
Namjoon pulls back, not allowing him the pressure he wants.
“Be good, baby,” he admonishes, flicking at the barbell through Jungkook’s nipple. Jungkook jolts and whines. He sounds so impossibly sexy, Namjoon never wants to stop drawing those sounds from him. “Can you trust hyung to make you feel good? Can you be patient?”
Another frustrated whimper. “I’m sorry; it’s hard,” he pants.
“Maybe you just need something to focus on, hm? Something to settle you?” Namjoon muses. He lifts Jungkook’s leg by the knee, pushing it up so the soft back of his thigh is exposed. “Hold that for me, honey.”
Jungkook obliges, hooking one elbow under his knee, and Namjoon winds up, then smacks the back of his thigh, watching the muscle jiggle and bounce back with the impact. He’s doing it left-handed, without any other leverage, so he can’t get the aim and speed as good as he’d like, but Jungkook gasps so prettily all the same. He goes still under Namjoon’s hands, like the stinging crack of Namjoon’s hand has shoved him right back into his body. Like the pain makes him at home in it.
“There. Good boy.”
Jungkook sighs at the praise, eyes closing.
After so much conflict with Jungkook over the past few days, feeling like he’s constantly being trampled over and judged and found lacking, it’s such a relief to finally have him go along with something. Even if everything else is a struggle, maybe they can still make each other feel good in this one way. They can be compatible here, in the privacy of Namjoon’s bedroom, with no one’s expectations but their own.
He takes his time with Jungkook, easing him into it with slow, steady strokes of his fingers. As he goes, he waits longer and longer to draw out until he stays put inside him, pads of his fingers putting steady pressure on his prostate. Jungkook pants and moans, grimacing in pleasure. But Namjoon doesn’t let up, pressing harder and beginning to rub slow circles right where his body is swollen and plump. He’s rewarded when Jungkook makes a high sound, free leg kicking at the bed as he tries to scramble away from the insistent ache of the pleasure. Namjoon tugs him back down, hand firm at the junction of his hip.
When his cock starts to leak in earnest, fluid puddling on his stomach under the head, he flips him over with steady hands, settling him on his knees. He tells himself it’s to keep the piercing clean, but it’s also for this: the way Jungkook’s legs spread and his back arches prettily as he pillows his head on his arms.
“You hold yourself so artfully, honey,” he praises as he strokes along the dip in his spine. “A feast for hyung’s eyes, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jungkook breathes hoarsely. “Yeah, hyung, eat me til you’re full. Wanna be in hyung’s belly. Wanna be good for him.”
“Fuck.”
He’s talking nonsense, but it’s working. Namjoon feels consumed, afire from the inside again. He bites at the meat of his ass cheek, gnawing and sucking until Jungkook’s whimpers and moans reach fever pitch, filling the empty house with the sound of him. When he pulls back, it’s to a blooming red mark. A sign of his presence. His own piece of art to decorate his body.
He doesn’t give Jungkook a break, sliding his fingers right back into him where he’s so helpfully displayed himself. He yelps when Namjoon begins to rub gently at his prostate once more, his cock dripping sticky streams of milky fluid onto the bedsheets below. He’s everything Namjoon could have imagined he’d be: gorgeous and overwhelmed, shifting his knees restlessly like he’s not sure if he wants to press back into his fingers or flinch away from them. Namjoon wants to take care of him. He wants to keep him safe and happy and sated here with him. He wants him to have what he needs.
He smacks at the back of his thigh, easier to get the leverage he needs now that Jungkook’s so exposed.
“Fuck, fuck!” Jungkook begs. “Please, oh, Namjoon-ah, please, I’m so close, please.”
Namjoon-ah. The intimacy of the banmal wraps around his heart and squeezes. Namjoon-ah, like he’s a partner. An equal.
“Fuck, I love you so much.” He knows he’s going back on his word from this morning, his earlier self’s fantasy of wanting to wait, wanting to say it better or more wisely or less messily. But it’s all messy. The way they met is messy. The way Jungkook is dripping like a faucet onto the sheets below is messy. The sweat they’re covered in from the summer heat is messy. It’s who they are, together. The way they fell in love is messy, so why shouldn’t Namjoon say it messily? He loves him, ruinously.
He gives him another cracking smack high on his thigh, reverberating through the muscle of his ass cheek. Jungkook sobs, squirming, and Namjoon gives him one more for good measure where his skin is pinkening up. He digs his fingers into his prostate, merciless and precise now, then slaps at his perineum, catching at the tight package of his balls where they dangle under him, and Jungkook’s whole body seizes and coils and shudders as he comes, voiceless.
His orgasm seems to go on forever, all of him drawn tight like a wire.
Namjoon catches him under his belly when he starts to slump into the sheets, turning him onto his side so he can avoid the puddle he’s leaked. He spoons up behind him, bare skin to bare skin, as Jungkook breathes heavily, panting like he’s just come back from a run. Their skin sticks together, slick with sweat. It’s the first time they’ve been naked together, Namjoon realizes. The first time they’ve made each other come. It’s the start of a thing, already so fragile and cracked from the pressure, and he feels—protective of it. Tender. Raw, with the things he knows, the things he’s already failed to protect.
Jungkook wriggles to flop over onto his back, chest heaving. He’s pink all over, body heat radiating from him.
Oh, right, the aircon.
Namjoon jumps up to fetch the remote, quickly turning on the ceiling unit. It hums to life, air beginning to circulate through the room, and Jungkook groans in gratitude, stretching his arms out.
When he settles back on the bed a short distance away, Jungkook, eyes still closed, wraps his arms around his middle and tugs him into his body with a pleased hum, holding him close despite the sweat.
“I’m glad we finally got to do that,” Namjoon says.
He feels—unexpectedly shy. Sated. In love.
“That was like, one of the top three orgasms of my life,” Jungkook pants. “Worth waiting for.”
He tugs him closer, like Namjoon’s a teddy bear he can cuddle, turning his head to rub their noses together. It’s so cute. He’s so cute, he doesn’t know if he can take it. He loves him so much.
“How did I miss falling in love with you?” Namjoon murmurs, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I didn’t even know it was happening, it’s like I just looked at you one day and I just was. In love. All at once. I feel like I missed out.”
In hindsight, it’s clear to him it had been happening for a long time, but he’d been so determined not to acknowledge it to himself, he feels like he missed it entirely. He wishes he’d known.
“I just wish... I wish it had been less complicated. I wish I could have enjoyed it more.”
Jungkook hums, burrowing closer to him despite their sticky skin.
“Me too.” He huffs a breath. “I mean, it’s not the same, but—I’ve been in love with you since I was thirteen. Since I knew what love was. If there was any falling, I don’t remember it. I’ve just always been... fallen, I guess.”
“Fallen,” Namjoon echoes.
It feels right, in more ways than one.
“Now we’re both fallen, aren’t we.”
It’s not a question, so Jungkook doesn’t answer it. They listen to the aircon sputter and hum. It’s blowing properly cool air now, raising goosebumps on his back as the sweat evaporates.
“I wasn’t in love with you, though,” Jungkook says quietly after a while. “I was in love with, like, your picture on the back of the books. Your voice on audiobooks. Your words. You’re not those things. Or like, you’re not just those things. But it—it took me a while to notice. I don’t think I even realized until after we kissed... the first time. In your office.”
Namjoon winces at the memory. Sometimes, he abruptly sees, as if from outside himself, the reality of what he’s doing (what he’s done): getting sloppy drunk on margaritas with his son’s friend, barely out of his teens, and then making out with him in his office. Letting him sleep in his bed. Touching him like a lover. Making him his boyfriend, as if a kid only a couple of years past high school is any kind of appropriate partner.
Instead of giving in to the shame trying to burrow inside him, he hugs Jungkook tighter. He presses a kiss to his sweaty hair.
“What did you realize?” he prompts, wanting to hear Jungkook speak.
“I dunno, that you’re... just a person. That you’ve got your own thing going on up there. That you’re kinda messy.”
Namjoon snorts. Messy is one word for his life these past few months.
“I don’t think I was that fair to you about it,” Jungkook says softly. “I was kinda mad, honestly. It still makes me kinda mad sometimes. But... I got to fall for you all over again. Even if I wasn’t supposed to. Even if you didn’t want me to. Even if people might think badly of me for it, or you. I got to follow my heart.”
Namjoon sucks in a breath, guiding Jungkook’s face with his palm to pull him into a kiss. It’s messy, open-mouthed, the kind of languid after-sex kissing where you’re just... soaking in each other. Basking. Suffuse with love. God, he wants to make love to him forever.
“I’m sorry,” he says breathlessly when they finally pull apart. “For the things I said back at the apartment. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Jungkook sucks in a breath through his teeth, blinking fast.
Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up. Maybe he’s ruined the moment. They only just got here, to this peace.
“It’s what I expected,” he says quietly. Dejected. “It’s what I’d want my dad to do for me. Put me first. Love me most. And I know I’m just—” he shrugs, “—a slutty gay kid who’s never had a real boyfriend. It was just—hard to hear it like that. That’s all.”
Namjoon reaches out to reassure him, hand sliding along the slippery skin of his side, but before he can speak, Jungkook sniffles, “I just—didn’t wanna hurt Taehyung-hyung like that. I wish I’d—”
He chokes, unable to finish the sentence through tears.
Namjoon decides perhaps it’s best not to push it tonight, folding Jungkook tight in his arms and stroking his hair as he cries. Perhaps he can get Jungkook into the shower later. The grocery store will still be open for a few hours—they could take the car, get something for Jungkook to cook. Or he could take him out to one of the little family cafes on the mountainside? Sit him down under the string lights. Hold his hand across the table, like a boyfriend would. They can fall asleep together.
Things won’t be any different tomorrow. But they’ll get through it all the same.