Work Text:
“You know that if you’re having connection problems you can just come to mine, right? I’m only four floors down.”
Jungkook collapses onto the couch at the back of the studio, between his meticulously tidy station and Jimin’s home of chaos. His appointments have been booked back-to-back since morning and any time not spent trying to be the fictitious extroverted version of himself for the sake of his clients has been occupied by stencilling. The busy day is a good thing; it does not afford him the time to think. “My connection?”
“Four messages and a missed call, all from WiFi Guy,” Jimin says lightly, with a significant look in the direction of Jungkook’s phone, face up on the counter. “He must really want to get hold of you.”
His stomach flips over.
Taehyung.
Fuck.
The cracked screen lights up with another notification. Innocent. More innocent than Jimin, who can be too nosey for his own good, because without fail Jungkook leaves his phone with the screen down.
“They’re helping me fit a new router,” says Jungkook, but his mouth is dry.
“You need a guy for that?”
“Why wouldn’t I need a guy for that?” he snaps. There is no time to make himself sound less defensive.
Jimin snickers. “Just seems like overkill. Yoongi could have done it for you.”
As if to mock him, his phone buzzes again and Jungkook sees WiFi Guy appear on the contacts once more. His traitorous heart shivers with embarrassment and then flutters. A strange sensation like cool water runs down the back of his head and neck.
He already knew that Taehyung was in town. He’s known since Tuesday, when he noticed a photo of him on the second page of a newspaper that he read over someone’s shoulder on the metro. But there’s never any way to predict when or if Taehyung will contact him. Whenever Taehyung is in Seoul, Jungkook works hard to pretend that nothing has changed and life goes on, but it hovers at the back of his mind. Same city. Same air. So close.
“Well I should go home so I can make sure everything’s alright.” The shop will close soon anyway and Jimin can handle any last-minute walk-ins.
“I guess so.”
Jungkook grabs for his bag and his phone, but he can tell from the mean look in Jimin’s eyes that he is not going to get away this easily. He falters. “What?”
“Why won’t you just tell me you’re banging the WiFi Guy?”
“I’m not banging the—” Jungkook kneads his forehead. “I’m not.”
Nibbling on his lip, Jimin considers him, like he’s contemplating how far to push it. “Good,” he sighs, “because the guy who wired up my place was super old.”
Jungkook forces a laugh. A stone sits in the pit of his stomach, heavy guilt that he can’t shift from lying to his best friend, but this isn’t his secret to share. “I’ll see you Monday. I might be busy over the weekend, with my—with my new router. My guy is really committed to improved download speeds.”
-
Their arrangement started more than a year ago.
Arrangement? Jungkook doesn’t like the word. He looks for another one while the metro rocks. An arrangement is too clinical. A relationship is far too intimate. What he and Taehyung do together is simple and it’s complicated. The first time was the product of too many tequila shots and the strange serendipity of working a tattoo convention in New York at the same time as Taehyung launched new offices in the city, both six thousand miles from home.
Jungkook can’t think of any other way their lives would ever have intersected if it weren’t for that strange night.
His world is the studio, and the characters who defy convention to cover themselves in ink here in Seoul, and his small apartment and games night with Jimin and Yoongi, and ramen from the shop on the corner and occasionally hitting the clubs.
Taehyung’s world is first-class flights across the world from office to office. A world of luxury hotels and champagne bars and restaurants with booking lists that stretch for years, surrounded by men in stiff suits brandishing embossed business cards.
Yet every few months, their worlds come back together for a night, or two nights, when Taehyung calls him.
And Jungkook runs to his summons.
Fuck, Jimin would be outraged if he heard the truth. He’d tell Jungkook that he deserves better than trailing around after a man who’ll never truly want him. Jungkook knows that. He knows for Taehyung that this is convenient and that it will never be more, and he knows in his chest that it isn’t enough for himself, but he does it anyway. Maybe that’s another reason that he hasn’t told Jimin.
He presses his head to the glass screen and thuds it there just a little as the train pulls to a stop.
Sweat forms at his collar. No one else can make him feel anticipation like this, or excitement like this. It’s like an addiction, a habit he knows he should kick, but he can’t shake off the way that he feels when he’s with him, just for a night.
His phone vibrates as soon as he leaves the station.
WiFi Guy [19:05]
Blue Suite. 42ndFloor.
JK [19:07]
Give me ten minutes.
WiFi Guy [19:08]
I booked your favourite view.
Jungkook’s heart quivers again.
He’s grown so used to seeing the messages come in under this ridiculous code-name that he doesn’t even notice it anymore. It almost threw him into a fluster when Jimin mentioned it. When he left the hotel on that night in New York and Taehyung asked him to save his number under anything but his real name, it was the first thing that Jungkook could think of.
After all, Taehyung is the CEO of one of the biggest service providers in the world.
By the time that he skips up the steps to the single revolving doorway, his stomach is full of butterflies.
Over the last year, he has grown used to walking into hotels without a booking. People stare at him, because his jacket doesn’t cover the kaleidoscope of bright colours tattooed across both hands, and no matter how high he knots his scarf the flowers that stain his throat peek out, stroking petals at his jaw. His clothes aren’t cheap but they aren’t from designer brands either—semi-expensive jeans and the leather jacket he spent most of last month’s paycheque on.
People think he doesn’t belong here, and Jungkook guesses they’re right, but he’s learned that it’s all about confidence.
If he walks into the lobby like he owns the place, they don’t question it.
“The Blue Suite,” he says to the attendant at the elevators. “Please.”
He doesn’t spare much of a glance for the extraordinary architecture of the lobby, with its domed ceiling and marble floors, nor the lavish red furnishing and gold rails. This kind of place has never amazed him. He isn’t with Taehyung for the luxury. You’re not with Taehyung at all, he reminds himself, because turns of phrase like that begin to suggest something more than whatever this is.
Sure enough, they take him where he wants to go without question.
Jungkook knows that Taehyung books into every hotel under a false name, and he knows that alias if they ask, but they don’t ask.
He smiles to himself.
This used to make him more nervous.
Still, when he stands in front of the door, that old anxiety bubbles in his stomach. There wasn’t much time to make himself look presentable on the metro after a long day of work. He tamed his hair as best he could and angrily picked at the flecks of ink that stained his skin beyond his gloves during the day. Wishing that he’d worn a nicer shirt this morning instead of this plain, raggedy black one, he pulls his jacket tight.
The door opens just a crack, and Jungkook sees one dark, beautiful eye, before Taehyung lets him slip inside, and Jungkook’s worry turns to relief.
I’ve missed you, he thinks. “I was starting to think you might not call,” he says.
Taehyung surveys him with a penetrative gaze that he has come to recognise from him. He’s dressed for work too, but his work is a crisp white shirt and slender blue tie, a matte black suit, and a chunky watch that Jungkook’s knows cost more than his yearly lease. “I’m sorry,” he says in a voice rich and saturated as Jungkook’s favourite black coffee, “I’ve been in meetings all week.”
“When did you arrive in Seoul?” Jungkook asks. He wishes his voice wasn’t shaky. But it’s been three months since he last saw him. Taehyung never stays on the same continent for long. He takes off his shoes before stepping one pace into the suite.
“Monday. I thought about you then.”
“But meetings,” nods Jungkook with a grimace. “I get it.”
This part of their arrangement—their relationship—their thing is always awkward.
A polite precursor to the reason Jungkook is here.
“Have you eaten?” asks Taehyung. “I worry that I called you straight from work.”
“Oh I had ramen for lunch. Kind of on-the-go. We were busy today.”
“Were you tattooing people?”
Jungkook laughs. “Yeah. That’s the job.” He’s not sure Taehyung has any real grasp on what he does every day. He certainly doesn’t have any tattoos. For a second, he imagines picking a spot on Taehyung’s skin, brushing a razor there to clear the fine hair and cleaning him up with gentle strokes, and holding him just firm enough to keep him steady as he put something pretty there forever.
But he doesn’t know enough about Taehyung to know what to draw.
“I can order room service,” says Taehyung. “The restaurant here is remarkable.”
“I’m fine, really. Don’t worry.”
“I worry.”
I worry about you too, Jungkook thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it out loud. He worries not about what Taehyung eats, or how much he might overwork himself, but about what storm cloud he battles in his mind every day. Because it can’t be easy. Taehyung lives a public life, in the newspapers and on important lists, but his secrecy is a prison that even he can’t escape from. And he’s complicated.
“Maybe later.”
“Later,” nods Taehyung.
“Show me this view that you’ve promised!” says Jungkook, trying to keep his voice airy and bright.
For the first time, Taehyung touches him. He nudges him by the waist, ghosting a hand at the small of his back, and guides him through the suite. The floor is pale, polished wood. A white desk, holding Taehyung’s laptop and a large stack of his folders and files, overlooks the window. Taehyung places him before the glass and settles his hands firmer to his hips this time.
Even through his clothes, Jungkook’s skin tingles where Taehyung touches him.
“I know you like to be able to see the river. I made sure this was the right suite.”
Jungkook looks down on Seoul and wishes that his eyes wouldn’t sting. Things are complicated, with Taehyung, but there are little things… little things that Taehyung remembers. It might seem that he forgets him for months on end but he keeps these details in a file in his mind, a Jungkook file. The city evening glitters. Jungkook blinks and blinks and swallows his feelings.
“It’s lovely. Thank you.”
The air vibrates between them. Jungkook can feel Taehyung’s breath on the back of his neck. His fingers tighten, just enough that Jungkook’s skin dimples under his clothes, and then Taehyung lets him go.
“Would you take a shower?”
“Sure,” nods Jungkook. Taehyung doesn’t mean together. He never means together.
There are certain rules when it comes to their arrangement. Taehyung is anxious, on the border of obsessive, when it comes to cleanliness. He’ll already have got clean and dressed back up in new clothes as if attending another business meeting long before Jungkook arrived, and the same is expected of him. There are other rules. Rules that Jungkook doesn’t look at him, not really, when they’re fucking, and rules that he not touch him afterwards until Taehyung has got clean again.
Jungkook admires the lavish bathroom in the suite. It’s half the size of his entire apartment. Bright lights show up the imperfections on Jungkook’s skin that he hasn’t yet covered in tattoos, because maybe he’s anxious too and maybe he doesn’t like people seeing his scars. He’d tattoo his face, if he could, but that would make it too hard to move around Seoul.
He showers for long enough, but leaves the water running for even longer as he fixes up his hair so that Taehyung will be reassured that he’s soaked away any trace of the outside world in hot water. Naked before the vast mirrors, Jungkook examines the way his body looks under such exploitative lighting. He’s stared before, in the mirror at home, often after too many whiskeys and an episode of particular self-loathing, but it’s different here.
Very little of his skin is bare. These pictures are so much more beautiful, so much more animated, than his truths.
When he slips back out of the bathroom, he walks through to the bedroom and finds Taehyung sat at the end of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He’s whispering something under his breath. Maybe instructions or orders to himself. Maybe something else. Jungkook waits, tentative, wrapped in one of the soft white towels that the hotel provides.
“All clean,” he tells him.
Taehyung’s head snaps up. “That’s new,” he says, nodding to Jungkook’s chest.
“Jimin did it for me,” he explains the new tattoo, a curling black rose over his heart that covers older, poorer ink there from his teenage years.
“His art is beautiful.” See Taehyung knows Jimin, even if Jimin doesn’t know Taehyung. Everything is messed up.
“It is. When we met I felt like I’d met the only person I could ever connect with, artistically. It’s why we opened the studio together.”
“Do you have feelings for each other?”
Jungkook stares. Taehyung has asked him before whether he’s got a boyfriend, and whether he’s fucked other people between their meetings, but he’s never been so specific, so direct. “No. Hell no. I mean I love Jimin but not like that. He has a boyfriend.”
“Have you been with anyone since we last saw one another?”
There it is. “No,” he whispers, and it’s the truth. He’s tried flirting at the clubs—tried finding someone with whom he can feel any kind of spark because this isn’t a relationship and he isn’t bound to Taehyung—but he feels nothing. Nothing for anyone else. “You know if you want me to just promise—”
“I can’t ask anything of you.”
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
Jungkook swallows. “It makes you anxious, doesn’t it? The thought of me sleeping with someone else and then sleeping with you?”
“Please don’t, Jungkook,” Taehyung whispers.
He bites his lip. He knows that for Taehyung, the anxiety isn’t about emotion, about feelings, about any possessiveness he feels over Jungkook, but about the physical. It’s about himself, not Jungkook. Jungkook has to remind himself of that every time. “If it’s important to you—”
“You’re not mine to be demanding promises of,” Taehyung says quietly. “Whatever my… issues are.”
“I want you to be comfortable.”
“I’m never comfortable.”
Jungkook exhales shakily and crosses to the bed, because at the very least he knows that if he can make Taehyung lose himself for a moment, that it’ll be some time in which he doesn’t worry. He cups Taehyung’s face in his palm and tilts it up to kiss him, brushing his lips with a softness that promises he can pull away any second that he wants to. Taehyung doesn’t pull away, but rather lets Jungkook deepen the kiss. Jungkook threads his fingers into his hair, soft and clean like silk.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done this dance. They don’t have to play pretend for too long when they both know why they’re here.
Jungkook slips Taehyung’s jacket from his shoulders and loosens his tie. Taehyung fiddles with his own buttons. Though his fingers don’t shake, they seem clumsy on his shirt, so Jungkook helps him, with reassuring kisses to his temple and his forehead as he goes. He’s never been sure whether this is something Taehyung wants or whether it’s something he needs, but it always comes first, before they talk properly, before they do anything else.
He traces shapes on his skin, stopping when Taehyung shivers just long enough for him to give a nod to continue. Jungkook undresses him carefully, measured in the way that Taehyung likes it, and Taehyung looks up, meets his eyes. Then he blinks. “Can you turn out the lights now?”
Jungkook nods.
With only the shining night of the city beyond the windows to guide him now, Jungkook takes Taehyung’s hand and pulls him onto the bed. His skin shimmers under the strange combination of stars and distant office windows and light pollution. Jungkook kisses his knuckles and helps Taehyung find a comfortable position. Only once he’s sure he’s settled does he slide a hand to his front, stroking a hand over his cock. Taehyung is soft, but Jungkook knows how to get him there.
“I’ve thought about you so much, these last three months,” he whispers with kisses to the tender skin below his ear and down to his jaw. At the same time, he palms over him, shapes with his fingers until he feels Taehyung start to harden up to his touch. “I missed you,” he says, because in the dark the words seem less dangerous.
The room is so silent that their breathing could be the rush of waves.
“I missed you too,” says Taehyung, and Jungkook’s heart twitches.
Jungkook folds around his body where Taehyung lies on his side, and kisses a line down from his shoulder, across his tight bicep, to the crook of his elbow. On the nightstand, Taehyung has already laid out the lube for him and the condom for him and it’s all so clinical that Jungkook circles back around to thinking it’s an arrangement. God it’s so fucking weird and he shouldn’t need it as much as he does but he needs this, needs Taehyung, needs whatever this is that they have.
“I got myself ready earlier,” says Taehyung, “in the shower.”
“You know I could… I could do that for you one time,” Jungkook whispers, because he hates that Taehyung feels he has to do it, alone, detached in the way he must stretch himself out with his own fingers because Jungkook knows Taehyung and knows he won’t get anything from it. “It would feel nicer. I could make it feel so good.”
Taehyung presses his face into his pillow and doesn’t answer.
This isn’t a rule, but somehow it feels non-negotiable.
Their skin looks like they’re from two different planets. Jungkook’s is colourful and textured, and Taehyung’s smooth and unmarked. This shouldn’t work. But something about it is so natural that Jungkook forgets everything else that makes it strange. He kisses the knots of Taehyung’s spine as he slips his fingers down to touch him intimately, just enough to spread the lube and check that he’s open enough to take him.
Taehyung shifts against the pillows, eyes closed.
“Okay?” Jungkook checks.
“Good.”
The sheets shuffle and there’s a clunk of the water pipes somewhere overhead. Jungkook tries to concentrate on the lines of Taehyung’s body, as far as he can make them out in the darkness, and the sound of his breath. The sound of the condom wrapper tearing makes Taehyung fidget again, pulling one pillow in to his body to prop himself up. The sex has never been sensuous, never even carnal; it’s hardly fucking tantric. Yet Jungkook is addicted.
Somehow he’s addicted.
He’s addicted to the moments after, even the mornings after if Taehyung lets him stay.
He’s addicted to being with him, even for a short while.
“Fuck,” he exhales as he pushes inside with one firm hand on Taehyung’s waist. Taehyung feels hard and soft, lean but pliable, like he goes to the gym but only to keep himself sane, not for the sake of his body.
A small moan escapes Taehyung’s throat. He’s never vocal. Jungkook thinks he’s doing something right when he gets to hear him. The silky sheets slip and slide around them as Jungkook adjusts their position. He waits a moment before rocking against him, deep enough that Taehyung exhales and clenches his fingers on those white sheets, and then he starts to move.
Jungkook starts slow. He’s never rough with Taehyung but he doesn’t treat him like he’s made of glass either. There is a balance that he has found over the last year. When he starts to thrust, chasing the sparks in his navel from the friction of Taehyung’s tight body, he flattens a hand to his lower back, tattooed fingers splayed on Taehyung’s iridescent, moonlit skin.
Taehyung slips a hand down under his own body to jerk himself off. That’s the way he likes it. And Jungkook doesn’t mess with the way Taehyung likes it. Things are on tenterhooks. He never knows how long this arrangement will last. And he sure as hell isn’t going to do anything that could scare Taehyung away from it.
He tries to concentrate on chasing his own high, rather than pushing Taehyung towards his, but he can’t help himself. He notices the deep spots, the swell of his prostate, the angles that make Taehyung’s breath hitch and his body shiver. The electricity that charges his body buzzes in time with his motion. His skin grows sensitive. He kisses Taehyung’s neck, but he can’t leave a mark, not even the slightest tint lest someone notice, so he has to pull himself back and bury his face in his hair instead. Taehyung always smells so fresh, so clean.
Jungkook notices the sheen of sweat on Taehyung’s back and he presses his forehead to his skin, anywhere he can breathe him in. More kisses to his shoulders. As his rhythm starts to stutter, he restrains himself because he likes Taehyung to get there first but it’s difficult to tell how close he is when he’s always so non-verbal. Only when his breath trembles and Jungkook notices the pitch of his gasps does he shift back to a rhythm that will afford his own release.
“Fuck, Taehyung,” he whispers, hot breath on his neck. He finishes with a groan and a sigh and tries to keep himself grounded even as his mind shoots up to the skies for a second. He has to be careful, because saying the wrong thing could be fatal in their… arrangement.
His navel tightens and his muscles tense up. The moment isn’t long enough. All too soon he has to pull out and he can caress his side in a soothing motion only for a moment before Taehyung shrugs him off.
Jungkook tries not to let it hurt him.
This is just the way that Taehyung is. He accepted Taehyung for everything that makes him Taehyung months ago, the second time they slept together when there was no tequila to grease the wheels. He can handle things being the way they are because the alternative—no Taehyung—is unthinkable.
“I need to get clean.”
“I know,” murmurs Jungkook, watching Taehyung’s silhouette slide from the bed. He pads across the bedroom to the bathroom.
Jungkook rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. By the time that Taehyung returns, he’ll need to have tied off this condom and got it way out of view, straightened the sheets and cleaned up any mess, put on some clothes, until no trace of what they’ve done remains. He has time, because Taehyung spends a long, long while in the shower. For a while, he can watch the walls and pray that Taehyung doesn’t ask him to leave right away.
Sometimes they spend the night together. Other times Taehyung becomes detached and can’t bear to have him close.
Fucking hell. The thoughts when spoken that way even in his own head seem so callous. They make Taehyung seem callous and he’s not. Jungkook drags himself out of bed and finds the clothes that Taehyung laid out for him, brand new sweats with the tag still laced through the label with a ribbon rather than plastic. They’re expensive. Taehyung doesn’t buy Jungkook gifts per-se, perhaps afraid of what he’d think their arrangement had become, but he always brings clothes for him since Jungkook usually comes straight from work.
Always, there are fresh sweats and shirts for him to sleep in. And new clothes for him to travel home in, even coats and warm gloves for the winter, as if Jungkook could not possibly put on the same clothes that he wore yesterday.
This time, there is no shirt, so Jungkook just pulls on the sweats and drags his feet back to the bed. He pulls back the first layer of sheets, because Taehyung doesn’t like sweat or mess. After the pillows have been adjusted and the sheets rearranged, the bed looks quite undisturbed.
“I’m sorry.”
Jungkook turns around to find Taehyung in the doorway, towelling dry his hair. He often says those words after they’ve slept together.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Taehyung,” says Jungkook. A lump hovers low in his throat.
Taehyung clears his throat, like he has the same. Maybe he has the same. “I… I didn’t bring a shirt for you. I thought that today you could be in the bed with me like that.” He gestures to his bare chest, as bare as it can ever be when every inch of skin is dark with ink.
“Like this? This is okay?”
“Yes.”
It’s a step forwards, even if Jungkook watches Taehyung pull on a plain white tee himself, so they won’t be pressed skin to skin. Still, he’s relieved enough just to be able to stay with him. Though it’s too early to sleep, they crawl back into the bed, and now Jungkook is permitted to wrap his arms around him. He notices that Taehyung’s skin is scrubbed red, and he tries to soothe the inflammation with gentle kisses. He wonders if he’d be permitted to try with words.
“Taehyung?”
“Mm.”
He’s never asked an intimate question in the last year they’ve spent seeing one another like this, no matter how intimate they have been. “Is there anything I can do to help with the way you feel? About this?” He brushes the back of his fingers down Taehyung’s raw arm, as light as a feather.
“Don’t worry. It isn’t you.”
“But can I help?”
Taehyung turns in his arms to face him. Their noses almost touch with their closeness. “I don’t like… the thought of my skin being… being unclean.” It seems to take great effort for him to say the words aloud.
“I understand.”
“Does it make you feel safer having the tattoos?”
The question is so curious that Jungkook hesitates. “Safer?”
“Like a barrier to your skin?”
Jungkook wonders if that’s what caught Taehyung’s attention in the bar that night. His breath catches in his throat. He thinks of all the times that Taehyung has traced the patterns of his tattoos in bed. What was he thinking, then? Did he envy them? Or did they make him nervous? Jungkook frowns. “Not in the way you mean,” he says quietly, “but in a manner of speaking I guess they do make me feel safe.”
“Will you tell me why?”
Most personal things, Jungkook has only ever shared with Jimin, but this strange space he occupies that Taehyung feels like somewhere that he can voice secrets. “I started getting tattooed when I was a teenager. I was really young but back then the places I went to didn’t really care if you were old enough. And I used it to cover up the parts of myself that I didn’t want people to see.”
“But you’re beautiful,” says Taehyung, and it might be the most romantic thing that he has ever said to him.
Jungkook finds Taehyung’s hand to stroke, thumbing over every prominent bone and knuckle. “I love the art. I love the stories my tattoos tell. But that wasn’t where it started for me. I didn’t like my body or the way it looked. And I had scars and I didn’t like looking at them, or other people looking at them. The tattoos covered them up.”
Taehyung watches him, eyes curious.
“Here.” Jungkook brings Taehyung’s fingers to his skin so that he can stroke over the ridges and bumps.
“I never would have noticed,” whispers Taehyung. He doesn’t ask questions about what happened.
“That’s the idea.”
“Is that why you became an artist? So that you could help other people?”
“In a way,” nods Jungkook. “Not necessarily to cover up people’s scars but because tattoos help everyone, one way or another. Whether it’s to remember someone you lost, or somewhere you went, to make a statement about yourself or even just to make you laugh. Whatever the reason, I’m helping. And I like it when they tell me the story, especially. I find it difficult to talk to people but if there’s a story to build on then it’s easier.”
Taehyung runs his fingers over the rose on Jungkook’s chest. For a while he doesn’t say anything, committed to thinking. “I don’t know how I’d feel about having a tattoo.”
“Everything is completely sterile. There’s no cleaner place in the whole of Seoul than my studio.”
“I’d need to see it first. So I could be sure.”
Jungkook nods. “Please. Come any time. I’d love to tattoo you.” The thought sends a bigger thrill through his body than the sex. “You could tell me a story—one of your stories—at the same time.”
“Maybe,” whispers Taehyung.
“Can I ask you something?”
Eyes guarded, Taehyung nods.
“Do you see anyone else? You’ve always asked me but I’ve never asked you. I mean do you have a guy like me in each city?” Jungkook laughs nervously, to cover up the anxiety in his voice.
“No. God no.”
“So we’re technically exclusive?” he grins, trying to coax a smile from Taehyung too.
Taehyung continues his exploration of Jungkook’s tattoos with his fingertips. “You could say that. The night we met in New York was the first time I’d allowed myself to be intimate.”
“With a man?”
“With anyone.”
Jungkook has to pass off his surprise with the breeziest expression he can muster because Taehyung has never said this before. He’s never mentioned his age either but Jungkook thinks he must be couple of years older than him, which means he’s creeping towards his late twenties. “I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
“The tequila helped. I’d always been afraid of being touched but for some reason when I saw you I thought I could be brave. With you, it has worked out. You’ve allowed me to do things the way I have to do them and you even do the things I ask of you to make it easier. I never imagined that someone would be able to… accommodate me like that.”
“Hey,” whispers Jungkook, catching Taehyung’s fingers and bringing them up to his lips to kiss. “Whatever works for you, I’ll do it. If I’d known all of this I would’ve made certain that you knew that as soon as we slept together the first time.”
“I ask too much of you.”
“It’s not too much.”
This is the most they’ve ever spoken. Jungkook can’t remember ever exchanging real words like this. Not a conversation that scratches below the surface. He wants to ask more questions but he doesn’t dare when Taehyung has already said so much. Instead, he keeps quiet, allowing Taehyung to rest in the silence. They both do, as if they have worn themselves out with so much talking.
“Can I hold you?” Jungkook asks at last.
“Yes.”
Jungkook is relieved to pull him properly into his arms. He’s relieved that Taehyung feels comfortable enough with him to be pressed in close to his skin for this length of time. More questions flit across his mind, such as how Taehyung feels on the nights when he doesn’t want him to stay, whether it’s related to a fear that has been triggered somehow, and what Jungkook can do to stop it in the future. But he keeps his silence.
Taehyung rests his cheek against his bare chest, and Jungkook strokes his hair. After a moment, Taehyung reaches up to take his hand and their fingers intertwine.
Some things are more intimate than what they’ve shared on these rare nights over the last year.
-
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Sunlight streams through the vast window. Jungkook throws an arm across his eyes, blinded, but he forces himself to turn to look at Taehyung. He never knows how long it will be before he gets to see him again and he needs to drink it in. Taehyung looks perfect, more beautiful than anyone he’s ever seen: sharp, angular face and lean but curved body. “You didn’t wake me,” Jungkook tells him.
“I have to attend a meeting.”
“On a Saturday?”
“You can use the room for as long as you want. It’s booked until next Monday. If you want to eat then you can order from the room phone but please use my alias.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
Taehyung buckles his watch. It seems he wants to occupy himself before answering. “I want you to stay.”
Relief floods Jungkook’s system.
Their eyes meet.
“I can’t stand the moments when we aren’t together,” says Taehyung.
Jungkook sits bolt upright. Stars flicker in his vision from the rush. His head spins. “What?”
“Never mind. It’s nothing.” Taehyung ties his slender red tie, turning away to watch himself in the mirror.
“That’s not nothing.”
Taehyung misses him. He thinks about him the way Jungkook does when they’re apart. Those moments comprise about three hundred and fifty days out of the year. And Taehyung can’t stand them. “Forget I said anything.”
“I’m not going to forget that.”
Taehyung turns to him. After a long pause, he squeezes his eyes shut and sighs. “Every moment.”
“Then let’s be together in more moments,” Jungkook says in earnest, noticing a glimmer of hope here, something which he can latch on to for the first time in an entire year. The sheets pool around his waist. “Just because you aren’t here in the city, that doesn’t mean we can’t talk. I always thought… I just always thought this was nothing but a thing, like a hooking up thing, for you. I’d love to be able to talk to you more. We could call each other. We could send each other messages that aren’t just the address of a hotel and the room number.”
For a second, he thinks he’s said too much.
But then: “I’d like that.”
Did Taehyung think he didn’t want more? All this time that Jungkook thought he was the one holding on too tight, was Taehyung thinking the opposite? Jungkook tries to track back through his every behaviour but he was so afraid of pushing Taehyung away. His memories are a jumble. “Like we could talk more? Like we could see each other more?” he asks tentatively.
Taehyung shrugs on his jacket. He occupies himself with anything other than facing up to what has been said. At last he clears his throat and turns to him again. “No one knows, Jungkook.”
“Knows what?”
“That I’m attracted to other men.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Jungkook swallows. It’s easy to forget, in this strange world they’ve shared for fleeting moments across these months, that Taehyung is often on the front cover of newspapers or on the news, and when he isn’t he’s in the board-room and giving out orders in his offices. In his fantasies, Jungkook has never considered how he’d fit into Taehyung’s reality. It’s hard enough coming out anywhere. Coming out as one of the most notorious businessmen in Seoul might well be impossible. “You’ve never told anyone at all?”
“I can’t.”
The momentary race of Jungkook’s heart plateaus. He was foolish to think that things would all of a sudden be easy with Taehyung. He needs to pull himself back several paces and bathe in the fact that Taehyung wants him, before he can get excited about anything else. “I’ve kept us a secret for a year, Taehyung. If it’s important to you then I can be discreet.”
“I won’t ask you to live like that.”
“You always talk like you’re putting something on me. But I’m good, Taehyung. I’ll take things at your pace.”
Taehyung smooths back a strand of hair that has fallen loose from his pristine presentation. “Stay. Order yourself something to eat.”
“I will.”
“Thank you… for last night.”
“Don’t thank me,” Jungkook whispers, and then Taehyung is gone.
Like ashes in the wind. Sometimes Jungkook has to go through every moment they’ve ever had together in his recollection because whenever Taehyung leaves it’s like he’s been living one long delusion of his own creation. He disappears so quickly and leaves so little trace on the air, like his endless showers remove any human imprint.
Jungkook has grown so used to watching him go.
For the first hour, he doesn’t leave the bed. He can smell Taehyung’s aftershave and fresh products on the pillows, and when he wraps himself up in the sheets he can still feel his warmth. The white sits starkly against his inked skin. When at last he crawls from the overlarge bed, he does as Taehyung instructed and orders an eclectic breakfast that arrives steaming hot in silver dishes. That kills another hour, drowned in black coffee.
After that, he starts to pace. And when he paces, he gets inquisitive. Feeling like Jimin, he peeks into the closet, where he finds Taehyung’s suits and shirts arranged in perfect order, a selection of ties ready for his meetings. On the desk in the second room of the suite are piles of documents, but Jungkook isn’t quite nosey enough to encroach on Taehyung’s work so he moves on and heads to the bathroom in the hopes of borrowing some good skincare.
Taehyung’s products are expensive. Insanely expensive. Jungkook feels like he’s dabbing flakes of gold onto his face when he moisturises.
With nothing but his work bag for company, he pulls out his sketchbook to occupy the remainder of his time alone. He has several designs to work on for new clients, and some sleeve filler for his regulars. As he doodles, he considers once again what he would tattoo on Taehyung if he could. He doesn’t know anything: not his favourite flower, not his favourite poetry, not his favourite animal. Still, he draws out a design, a simple minimalist moon and stars which remind him of the nights they’ve spent together under the lights of the city.
Taehyung returns in the early afternoon. His forehead is knotted with stress and he flexes his hand in and out of a fist as he slips off his shoes and his jacket. Jungkook wants to jump up to kiss him but they aren’t boyfriends after one conversation and he doesn’t know where the boundaries are.
“Everything okay?” he asks instead.
“I’d rather you not have to waste a moment of your time worrying about my work,” says Taehyung. “Especially not our precious time together.”
“Right, but we said we’d talk more,” says Jungkook with what he hopes is an encouraging smile. “Talking about work is kind of a first step.”
As if he’d forgotten their conversation in the morning altogether, Taehyung steps back and stares at him in surprise. “We did say that.” He shuffles from foot to foot, looking for the first time vulnerable in his tailored suit and starched collar. “I need to shower.” The anxiety is heavy in his voice.
“Of course, go,” nods Jungkook, because he knows this matters. Urgently.
“We can talk afterwards, I promise,” says Taehyung softly. “We can talk about everything.”
“It’s alright. Go.”
Everything.
As Jungkook watches him go again, he tries to think about what everything can even mean. Everything is a year. Everything is their first night together six thousand miles away, and their last night together in this hotel. Everything is secrets and truths and all of the things that Jungkook has kept locked in his chest for too long. He’s ridden this wave on nothing but adrenaline but it’s crashing to the beach now and he needs to figure out how to stand on the sand or he’s going to fall flat on his face.
With a furtive glance to the bathroom, he considers the amount of time that Taehyung takes in the shower, before scrabbling for his phone.
Jimin answers before the second ring.
“Jimin speaking,” he says, in the kind of smug voice that suggests he knows exactly what Jungkook is about to say. His best friend has always had a sixth sense for this kind of thing.
“Jimin, it’s me,” he says, like he doesn’t know. He can survive without his counsel no longer. He and Jimin share a life together in the business they created. He’d trust him with his everything.
“You alright? Connection got you down again?”
“We need to talk. I need to talk. Fast.”
“Okay, okay. Talk.” Jimin’s voice sobers quickly.
Jungkook takes a deep breath. If things are going to change—and he thinks they’re going to change—he can’t keep up the emotional isolation that he’s maintained for the last year. He needs to start to plan. He needs to be ready to walk on the sand. With one more glance to the bathroom, he finalises his resolve. “Buckle in, buckle up. It’s about WiFi Guy.”