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The air is warm, thick, and filled with lust. It kisses Jeongguk’s skin with gentle familiarity; the touch of an old, near-forgotten friend. Red paints the scene in front of him: sweaty bodies entangled, blushed elbows and swollen lips, wandering hands and smokey exhales exchanged. Undefined faces with unrefined intentions. It’s dirty, sinful, and everything Jeongguk yearns for.
His black blazer sticks to his damp skin, the tie he threw on almost as a mockery to the typical professional attire brushing every so slightly against his stomach; a reminder. Jeongguk almost wants to join the masses and take the damned jacket off, but he resists. He keeps the little modesty he brought with him, and he searches.
His eyes catch on pretty girls and ethereal boys, meeting the eyes of a few. They all have the same droopy heat, eyes telling. Jeongguk knows they want him. He looks good. Charcoal smeared on his eyes, lips bit red, abdomen refined and muscles contoured under the crimson lights. Band of his underwear teasing his v-line, black jeans so tight they look like they were painted on. He’s like a walking temptation. A new toy to some, an old one for others.
Jeongguk’s let’s his eyes roam, the rapid bass of the music pulsating in his ears. Possessed bodies overcome the dance floor, and the people become mere movements in front of Jeongguk’s eyes, all parts of a greater body. Wiggling limbs, sex-obsessed, all searching for a high they can’t get elsewhere.
On stage, there are dancers performing enticing routines. They’re all naked, cocks hard and pussies wet. Rubbing themselves on the poles, eyes rolling, tongues drooping, necks glistening. Putting on a show, pushing their pheromones to the audience. Jeongguk feels himself grow hot as one dancer catches his hand as he passes her, guiding his hand to her breasts, allowing his fingers to touch her pierced nipples. She watches him with dilated pupils as she drags his touch down her body, reaching her mound, nearly dipping his fingers into her heat before he retracts his touch. He shakes his head. The dancer just nods, and moves onto someone else.
Jeongguk pushes his way through hot bodies until he reaches the bar. He sits down and waits.
There’s a boy here more enticing than the rest. Jeongguk noticed him years ago, before he reached his peak. Before his face started to be plastered on billboards and his voice became something more meaningful. Back when he was center stage, crooning to the audience, snorting lines in the back with the dancers and becoming part of the monster on the dance floor. There was a boy.
Taehyung.
He’s still here, and Jeongguk tracks him with his eyes as the man pours a boy with flaming red hair a drink. He looks so different: hair long, choppy, wet where the sweat makes it stick to his neck. But he also looks the same: eyes still a warm brown, skin still so beautifully tanned, eyes kind. Misplaced. Kindness that doesn’t belong in a place like this, one filled with misfits and people who don’t give a flying fuck about themselves or the people around them. Kim Taehyung started his first day with warm eyes and a kind smile, and Jeongguk knew he had to have him. Had to pick him apart. Break him and then put him back together.
Jeongguk keeps his eyes on him until Taehyung feels the heavy gaze. The boy turns his head to look at him, and he tilts his head. They stare at one another as Taehyung listens to his customer talk about something that’s probably fucking useless. Jeongguk smirks at him, and Taehyung’s lips purse.
He says something to the man babbling to him, and starts to walk to him. It’s a short distance, but Jeongguk tracks every step. Taehyung is wearing a sheer, sleeveless top that's shocking gold. He knows how to make himself stand out, does it to make more money, to entrance people. But Jeongguk likes the way he does it unintentionally.
(Kind eyes, warm smile. Honey voice and high-pitched moans.)
“Hey,” Taehyung greets him, a little loud so he’s heard over the music. “Haven’t seen you in a while, Jeongguk. Aren’t you supposed to be in America snorting coke with supermodels?”
Ah. So still angry, then.
“Took a detour.” Which isn’t exactly true. He has no plans of attending his schedule in the States. His company can’t force him, not when he has them wrapped around his finger. He’d rather be here. “You know how it is. Paris calls, I come.”
Taehyung rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and you choose this shithole out of all places?” He gestures to the people around them. Jeongguk takes a chance to look around, and he knows this club isn’t anything glamorous. But Jeongguk loves it. It was his home when he was nothing. “I’m sure you have VIP access to those other clubs. The ones with fucking olives and shit. Not with prostitutes and coke heads dropping everywhere.”
“I don’t want those other clubs. I like this one. The people here… they’re invigorating. Unique. Not some of the fucking fake people who try to get with me for my fame.”
“No, they just try to get with you for your cock, instead.”
Jeongguk shrugs. Smirks. “I don’t mind that as much.”
Taehyung gives him a disgusted look. Then, his face turns to something calculating. “What are you really doing here, Jeongguk?”
What are you really doing here, Jeongguk?
He had asked him that same question four years ago. In the secrecy of the employees break room, as they laid on the oily-feeling couch. Taehyung had been stroking long fingers through his hair as Jeongguk trembled, coming down from a high. He had asked him in a whisper, like it was a secret. Then, Jeongguk whispered back, just as quietly, just as vulnerable, “I don’t know.”
Now, he takes the question in a stride: “I missed you.”
“You missed me.” Taehyung repeats, tone disbelieving. “At least tell me a lie that’s believable.”
“I’m not lying, Taehyung. I promise.”
And it’s odd, being tender and vulnerable again. When he met Taehyung, he had all kinds of horrible intentions. His head was clouded by the high, by the crash of it, by the euphoria of the stage and the pleasure of sex and self sabotage. The reminder of his past failures haunted him, how he once was something, then became nothing. He used to dig his own grave. Taehyung pulled him out of it. Stood beside him even when Jeongguk would tell him terrible, terrible things.
I want to break you, Taehyung. Like how they broke me. Your eyes are like how mine once were. Gentle. Innocent. All I wanted was to sing. But they broke me. And now, now I’m gonna break you too. You’ll be broken, and I’ll be your glue. You’ll have no one else but me.
It wasn’t good. Wasn’t anything that Jeongguk could keep alive when he decided to leave back to Seoul, to rehab, to his family. He left Taehyung here, but the boy had understood. Had just pressed their foreheads together and told him he’d wait for him.
But the thing is, Jeongguk never came back. Instead, he started to rise. His stardom came fast, a recruiter scouting him. At first, he nearly lashed out, memories of a hand wrapped around his neck, pressing his face into white powder, smearing his face in it, forcing him to open his mouth and coat his tongue bombarding him. But an old hyung- Namjoon- convinced him. Told him that this company was good. They were good and would take care of him. And Jeongguk wasn’t the gullible fifteen year old he once was. He knew better than to follow blindly after men and women in suits. To trust them to keep him safe in a foreign country. He knew, now, that not everyone in the industry was on his side.
So, he moved with calculated precision. Kept his circle small, the people he worked with intimate: Namjoon, Yoongi, Hoseok, Jimin, Jin, Adora. He refused to work with anyone else, which was why people wanted him so badly. His mysterious nature became his charming point. He was the bad boy, the one everyone wanted but no one had access to. He built a reputation aligned with that image: he partied, slept around, made mistake after mistake.
(But he never gave into his temptations. He resisted, no matter how much he missed when he could just stop existing for a few hours. When he could let it take over. Whenever he got too close, when a line was carded and so, so fucking enticing, he pictured Taehyung’s crying face when Jeongguk had collapsed on the ground. His screams when Jeongguk lost control of his body, his pale face when Jeongguk woke up in a hospital’s bed. How the boy had held his hand over Jeongguk’s heart when they slept on his small hospital bed.
His therapist told him he needs to stop his addiction for himself, but Jeongguk isn’t quite there. Not yet.)
Jeongguk is everything he wanted to be before he was fucked over, but there’s one person missing. Kind eyes, warm smile.
“You left me for years, Jeongguk. I know- I know you needed time for yourself. But six years, Jeongguk? That’s a long-fucking-time. Especially when I see your face everywhere you go. How’s Calvin Klein treating you?”
“I always intended to come back to you,” Jeongguk says. It’s true. He just… got distracted. The fame got to him, filled his belly full so that it all ended up going to his head. He became prosperous, successful. Why would he come back to the Hell he was tossed and forgotten in? Why would he do that? “I just got lost on the way.”
Taehyung laughs something cold. “Lost? You got lost in some ass and pussy, Jeongguk? In the money and fame? While I was left here to rot? Huh?”
Jeongguk shakes his head. “I never forgot. Never.”
“Then why wasn’t that enough, Jeongguk?” And although his eyes are still warm, Jeongguk’s heart breaks when he realizes they don’t look at him the same. There’s no… no love there. Not anymore. “Why wasn’t I enough?”
“You were. I just- I fucked up, okay? Got too caught up in it all. But- but Taehyung, you know it was my dream. I was just so happy.”
“And I was happy for you too!” The red lights flash to a cool blue, and Jeongguk realizes that Taehyung has tears streaking his face. Pretty. Like he’s crying diamonds. “You got everything you deserved, Jeongguk. But you didn’t get- want me. I wasn’t a part of your happiness. Not a part of your dream.”
Jeongguk, all brash decisions and no consequences, decides at this moment to hop over the counter. Some of the people around him chortle, startled by the movement, but most fade back into not mattering. They become shadows at the edge of Jeongguk’s vision, while Taehyung becomes the center of it. The boy has his arms laid against the side of his body, and Jeongguk’s eyes fall down his body, catching on the gem in his belly button, on the short-shorts that show his plush thighs. Beautiful.
“Jeongguk,” Taehyung warns, backing up to where the liquor bottles sleep in the wall. “Don’t make me call security.”
“Hong still works here?” Jeongguk murmurs, stepping closer. He’s wearing heeled boots, and the height gives him an advantage. He’s always loved being bigger than Taehyung– taller. The other boy loved it too. At the way Taehyung’s breath hitches, he thinks he still does. “He knows me. Won’t come save the damsel.”
“I’m not a damsel,” Taehyung breathes, and now Jeongguk is all in his space. He leans forward, and slowly places his hands on Taehyung’s waist, hesitant, waiting to see if he pushes him off. He doesn’t. The grip tightens.
“I know,” Jeongguk whispers, tilting his head. “My Angel. My Demon. My King. My Savior.”
Taehyung releases a shuddery breath, eyes fluttering shut as Jeongguk is about to capture his lips, merge them into one, get underneath his skin and swallow him whole.
“My Taehyung.”