14

                                    

                                          
Tae's POV
                          


                          
The doctor leaves. The doors are closed. 
                          
Jungkook turns around, looking at Taehyung's eyes, maybe searching for answers to unknown questions. 
                          
'' How are you feeling? ''
                          
How am I supposed to answer that?
                          
So he doesn't.
                          
"Jungkook, look, I -"
                          
"I know what he did, Taehyung. So you don't need to explain. "
                          
Taehyung frowns, a stinging spark of hurt arising in his insides.
                          
"If you knew, why did you let it go this far?"
                          
"Can't we talk about this later?" Jungkook grunts, irritated.
                          
"No, I wanna know."
                          
Taehyung sits up properly. The white sheets are not bringing in peace to his curious mind.
                          
And he pushes away the blanket covering his lower body. 
                          
Taehyung keeps looking at Jungkook expectantly, ignoring the way his tongue slides on his lips to moisten them, and then their gazes are hooking, and he's trapped there.
                          
"I would have let you go, Taehyung. If ultimately you would have decided that this is what you wanted. "
                          
Jungkook lets the words flow, he's saying them quietly, carefully but they seem stuck in his throat, like he's ripping off his own guts voicing them.
                          
Taehyung would like to be angry. But he's just hurting.
                          
"B-But don't you want to keep me?"
                          
Jungkook frowns.
                          
"Are you serious? Are you asking me this? " he lets a pregnant pause add tension in the conversation before he continues. 
                          
"You have no idea what I went through, seeing him kiss and lick the skin that's mine to cherish, Taehyung, I— "
                          


                          
Jungkook inhales deeply, closing his eyes.
                          


                          
"I almost killed him. And if you wouldn't have called out my name, if you wouldn't have chosen me, I would've stayed affixed. Because in the end, I made you suffer more than enough. And as a sympathetic human, I want you to be happy. So if you would've wanted Jackson, I would've let him take you. "
                          
There's a tight knot of warmth tangled with bitterness and a touch of guilt in his stomach and it takes too much place. So he tries to cover his heart with a shield, a fucking shield with thorns and he spits the last bit of denial Taehyung finds in himself.
                          
"Stop acting like that. I'll start thinking that you really love me. "
                          


                          
Jungkook hardly reacts, tiredness written on his features but Taehyung sees how his shoulders slump.
                          
"You really have your head shoved up your ass real deep if you haven't realized that I, indeed, am in love with you. " Taehyung wants to reach, now. He wants to reach try to ease the pain he can't stop creating. 
                          
"And you think that because you're able to look at someone else, that I can too? Well you're fucking wrong, okay? There's only you since day one, Taehyung. Since the first time we met, there's nowhere else I'm looking. "
                          


                          
They stare at each other, the dimmed light they're bathing in making the atmosphere that much more intimate.
                          


                          
Jungkook leans in. Taehyung lets him.
                          


                          
They went through a lot, those past few months, but Taehyung never felt so many emotions while they were kissing. They're his, but they're Jungkook's too, and they're theirs.
                          
Quickly, he's overwhelmed. 
                          
Taehyung isn't used to deal with those kinds of things. He isn't used to sharing so much with somebody.
                          
That's too much.
                          
And he pushes Jungkook away, more brutally than he intended to.
                          
Jungkook keeps looking at him with disbelief and then he drops his head in his hands, sighing. Hey reclines on his back, eyes tightly shut and lips in a thin line.
                          
"I can't do this anymore, Taehyung. It's really starting to rip me from the inside. "
                          
I didn't mean to be this rude, I—
                          
"We can find a way, maybe divorce and—
                          
No, no, that's not it -
                          
"—You'll be able to be with someone you actually love because I'm seriously getting tired of your constant rejection. "
                          
No, fuck.
                          


                          
"Jungkook,"
                          
The world seems to be crashing down on him, he feels crushed and broken and he knows Jungkook must be feeling the same.
                          
Maybe he realized too late. Maybe this time he went too far, with Jackson and now with the harshness of his reactions, and maybe he really did fuck this up. 
                          


                          
There isn't much he can do if Jungkook is too exhausted to go on.
                          
But there's one last thing he can try.
                          
And he knows what it implies. He knows he's plunging directly into the pit he's been avoiding since the beginning. He'd want the reassurance that the step he's taking is not the wrong one, that there'll be someone to catch him when he'll fall. But he can't have that.
                          
So if he can endure to scorch and carve his pride like he's about to, perhaps it can give Jungkook a reason not to give up.
                          
He sucks air in shakily, his surrounding becoming a messy, blurry canvas and slowly gets closer to Jungkook, who's still talking.
                          
And he licks the side of his mouth, nipping at the skin, submitting to him completely. 
                          
Jungkook's words fade away gradually. Too much feelings, too much observations, too much ego. Everything is mixing in the air may be it present from the beginning. 
                          
But even amidst this Taehyung breathes out to reach Jungkook. 
                          
A step taken consciously.
                          
Caressing Jungkook's face he pleas
                          
'' Touch me. I want you to touch me. ''