Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The thing about 2 a.m. was that it had a unique quality to it that no other hour did.

The hour of convenience stores, bad decisions and standing in front of a slushie machine for longer than was strictly necessary, watching the blue ice turn in its cylinder and thinking about nothing, or trying to.

Jeongguk was very good at trying to.

He'd come in for sparkling water, but then he'd walked past the slushie machine, and his hand had just moved.

So, he'd been standing in the refrigerated section with a blue slushie he didn't plan to get, which felt, honestly, a little metaphorical. He took a sip, and it was good, better than what he expected, actually. He stared at it with mild resentment.

The store was quiet.

A guy near the ramen section was staring at the options as they'd personally wronged him. A woman in scrubs moved through the aisles with the efficiency of someone on a timed break. The cashier was on his phone, unbothered. It was clear he didn’t want to be there, because that was the same expression Jeongguk wore at work.

He'd been so afraid of not finding a job.

Four years of university, four years of his stomach in knots every time someone mentioned graduation, every career fair, networking event and carefully worded emails to people he didn't know, all of it building toward the singular terror of, what if nobody wants me? What if he came out the other side with a degree and nothing to show for it?

And then his third interview was incredibly fine. A firm handshake, a start date and a salary that made his mother cry happy tears, and Jeongguk had stood outside the building in the September air thinking I did it and waiting to feel something good.

He was still waiting.

Because nobody had told him about the other thing. The part where you got the job, the full-time five-days-a-week job, and you sat at your desk at nine a.m. and thought: this is it. This desk, this monitor, and this inbox for the next forty years.

He took a long sip of his accidental slushie and stared at the snack aisle without really seeing it. Twenty-two years old, fully employed (un-fortunately), great benefits package, standing in a convenience store because his apartment felt too quiet and the ceiling had nothing interesting to say.

The door chimed, and Jeongguk didn't even bother to look up at first.

He heard footsteps and then, almost immediately, a kind of energy that felt out of place for 2 a.m. Not the shuffling quiet of everyone else in there, brighter than that.

The guy was standing in front of the slushie machine with an expression of genuine, uncomplicated delight, as he'd just discovered something wonderful.

Oversized hoodie, round glasses sitting slightly askew on his nose, hair a little dishevelled in the way of someone who'd been sitting at a desk for hours. He was cycling through every flavour option with the focused consideration of someone making a decision that actually mattered to him.

He landed on red.

Jeongguk watched him snap the lid on, take a sip, make a face, and take another sip anyway.

His eyes landed on Jeongguk. "Blue or red?"

Jeongguk blinked and looked around briefly, because—well, people didn't just do that. People didn't turn around in convenience stores at 2 a.m. and ask questions to strangers like they already knew them.

That wasn't a thing that happened, not to Jeongguk and in his experience of how the world generally worked. And that definitely wasn't something he would do.

But the guy was still looking at him expectantly, like this was a completely normal thing he had done.

"...Blue," Jeongguk said finally.

"Yeah?" The guy looked at Jeongguk's cup. "By how much?"

Jeongguk looked at him for a second. Then, because it was 2 a.m., he was tired, and the ceiling had nothing useful to say: "I don't even drink these. That was a first, actually."

The guy's brows lifted. "No? Then how do you know blue is better?"

"The red one looks bad."

"It—" The guy paused. "How does it look bad?"

"You made a face."

"I made a—what face? What kind of face did I make?"

Jeongguk paused, then, without any enthusiasm, he tried to imitate it. He pressed his lips tightly together, and a vague look of pain appeared on his face.

The guy smiled faintly. "I did not look like that."

"You did."

"That's—" He laughed, just slightly. He held his cup out toward Jeongguk. "Here, try it. Tell me it's that bad."

Jeongguk looked at the straw and his eyes narrowed because was he serious? Was this person, whom he had known for approximately twenty seconds, genuinely extending a straw he had already used toward him with the expectation that Jeongguk would just use it? Like that was a normal offer to make to someone you'd just met…?

Jeongguk looked back up at him and his brows pulled together slowly. He pointed at the cup with one finger, very clearly.

"That's your straw," he said flatly. In the tone of someone explaining something to a person who should already know it.

The guy blinked and reached up to scratch the back of his neck, head tilting down just slightly, and his ears—Jeongguk noticed, because he was standing close enough to notice—had gone a little pink.

He was a little boyish like this; caught off guard, and the easy confidence briefly misplaced (kind of cute). It wasn't what Jeongguk expected, which wasn't a thought he should have been having about someone he'd met seconds ago.

And Jeongguk thought, abruptly, why was he still talking to this person?

He wasn't unfriendly, as a rule. He just didn't do this. He didn't talk to strangers in convenience stores, didn't fall into easy conversation with people he'd never met, didn't understand the impulse to do so.

If he spotted someone from high school on the street, someone he'd sat next to for a year in university, or someone who would almost certainly recognise him, he would cross to the other side of the road. Or find something very interesting to look at on his phone. Or simply tilt his head down at the precise angle that communicated, I have not seen you, you have not seen me, and we are both fine with this.

Some people moved through the world like this guy apparently did, frictionless and open, treating every room like somewhere they already belonged, and Jeongguk had always found that slightly baffling, the ease of it. The assumption that any given stranger was worth the energy.

He didn't make that assumption. He never had.

And yet there he was, almost half a minute into a conversation he hadn't started with someone he didn't know, and apparently invested enough to correct him on basic straw etiquette.

"Technically," the guy started, rallying, "saliva is one of the cleanest substances in the human body. Scientifically speaking—and I swear I am not making it up."

The guy's ears were still pink. He was looking at Jeongguk with an expression that was trying very hard to look confident but not entirely succeeding, and it was a lot for a person Jeongguk didn't know and had no intention of knowing any further than this refrigerated section.

Jeongguk bit his lower lip because something pulled at the corner of his mouth. He felt it coming, felt the laugh sitting right there, and he also did not do this. He did not giggle at things strange (but cute) guys said to him. Especially in convenience stores at 2 a.m.

He could giggle at home, where nobody could see, and he would probably later, when he was back in his apartment with the unhelpful ceiling.

But not there.

Not in front of someone he'd just met, someone who was, for all Jeongguk knew, just being friendly in the completely ordinary way some people were friendly, and the last thing Jeongguk needed was for some stranger to think he was responding to it. That he was flattered. That there was anything there to be flattered by.

He had enough experience with men to know that assumption led nowhere good.

So he pressed his lips together and met the guy's eyes.

And slowly, purposefully, shook his head. Eyes falling shut for a second, like the effort of it required them to be closed. The universal gesture for, no. you did not save that. that is not recovered.

"...Fuck," the guy muttered, barely above a breath.

The guy's ears had, if anything, gotten pinker, almost red. He exhaled through his nose, looked briefly at the middle distance, and then seemed to make an internal decision. He straightened up slightly and cleared his throat.

"Okay," he said. "Different approach."

Why does he care, Jeongguk thought, almost idly, what I think of that?

They would finish their drinks, go their separate ways, and in all statistical likelihood, never see each other again.

Whatever impression Jeongguk was forming right now—of the pink ears, the red slushie and the technically, saliva—would be filed somewhere in the back of his memory and gradually dissolve, the way most things did.

So why did this guy look like it mattered?

Jeongguk looked at the oversized hoodie, the dishevelled hair and the expression of someone recalibrating, and thought, strange night.

The guy looked down at his cup. Took a long sip, like he was buying himself time, and whatever came next was being carefully screened before it was allowed out.

His face did the thing again—the same face, the exact same face Jeongguk had just imitated—and then he exhaled through his nose.

"Okay," he said again. "You're right. It's really bad."

The laughter pulled at the corner of Jeongguk's mouth again. He felt it coming, the same laugh from before, still sitting there and apparently very patient. He pressed his lips together and looked at the snack aisle, breathed through his nose, and did not laugh.

"I'm Taehyung, by the way," the guy said, looking back up.

Jeongguk raised a brow. Because this person had been standing next to him for several minutes, he offered his used straw, attempted to deploy human biology as a recovery strategy, and was only now introducing himself.

And this was the part where he said nothing. Gave a polite non-smile, turned back to the snack aisle, waited for the natural end of a conversation that shouldn't have started.

That was what he would do. That was what he always did.

Taehyung caught the look. "I know," he said. "Backwards."

Jeongguk looked at the blue slushie in his hand.

"Jeongguk."

The thing about Park Jimin is that he has never, not once in the six years Jeongguk has known him, taken no for an answer.

“It’ll be fun,” Jimin had said, three days ago, perched on the edge of Jeongguk’s bed while Jeongguk lay face-down on it, doing a very convincing impression of a man who had ceased to exist.

“You need to get out of this apartment and see new people. You need to remember that you are young, hot and the world does not, in fact, end because Kim Taehyung—”

“I know I’m young and hot.”

Jeongguk doesn’t even disagree. He is young, and he is, objectively, hot.

Jimin had blinked. “…Yeah.”

“And the world hasn’t ended.”

“It really hasn’t.”

And that was that.

He has spent the last month being very reasonable about the whole situation—going to the gym with perhaps a slightly unhinged level of dedication—and he is genuinely ready to go out, have a good time and maybe meet someone whose name he’ll remember in the morning.

He has decided this. It is decided.

Which is how he ends up standing in the middle of Jimin's bedroom three days later, being wrestled into a pair of leather pants by Park Jimin, who is pulling them up over Jeongguk’s thighs with the grim determination of a man completing a sacred mission.

"I can't—" Jeongguk grabs the waistband, tugging. "Jimin, I literally cannot breathe."

"You can breathe fine."

"I cannot breathe fine, my organs are being reorganised—"

"Suck it in."

"I am sucking it in—"

"More."

Jeongguk sucks it in more, and Jimin yanks. Something gives, and suddenly the pants are on, sitting low on his hips, skintight from waist to ankle, and Jeongguk stands very still and takes a careful experimental breath.

"See," Jimin says breathlessly, stepping back to assess him. "Fine."

"Define fine."

"You're alive, aren't you?"

Jeongguk looks down at his legs. The leather is so fitted it looks almost painted on, leaving approximately nothing to the imagination.

"Wait." Jimin is already moving back to the wardrobe.

He pulls out something black and holds it up—a shirt, if it can be called that. Sheer fabric, completely transparent, the kind of thing that technically counts as clothing in the same way two words technically counts as a sentence.

Jeongguk stares at it. "That's not a shirt."

"It's absolutely a shirt."

"I can see straight through it."

"That's the point."

Jimin shakes it at him, and he gives him the look. The one who has been ending arguments since they were friends.

"You are going to put this on, and you are going to be absolutely sexy, devastating, delicious and edible. Everyone who sees you will want to fuck you, but it shouldn't be that easy for them to get their hands on you—they'll have to work at it." He holds the shirt out. "Put it on."

The fabric settles over his shoulders, sheer enough that the lines of his chest, the faint outline of his tattoos, are all visible underneath, like something half-revealed.

"Sit," Jimin says, already rummaging through the small pouch.

"What are you doing?"

"Your eyes." He uncaps something and turns around. A small eyeshadow palette, very dark. "Hold still."

The brush is soft against his lid, featherlight, and Jimin's expression is one of complete focus, tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek.

"You have genuinely unfair eyes," Jimin informs him, tilting his chin up slightly to blend something into the crease. "Like it's actually a little offensive."

"Thank you."

"It wasn't entirely a compliment."

"I'm choosing to take it as one."

A few more minutes, and then he steps back and surveys his work—chin lifted, eyes narrowed, the satisfaction of a problem solved exactly as intended. The way an artist looks at a finished canvas.

"Okay," he says. "Look."

Jeongguk turns to the mirror.

The leather fits like a second skin, the sheer shirt sits over it like an afterthought, and whatever Jimin has done to his eyes has made them look darker, deeper, smoked out at the edges in a way that makes them seem almost unfair even to Jeongguk himself.

"Wow," he says.

"Yeah," Jimin says.

Jeongguk looks at himself for another moment.

The recognition of your own face after a few weeks of not quite looking, of passing mirrors without stopping, of brushing your teeth with the light off because the light made it worse somehow.

He'd forgotten what it felt like to try.

"I look good," he says.

"You look incredible," Jimin corrects, completely without modesty. "Now let's go before Hoseok texts again."

Hoseok is waiting outside, hands in his pockets, breath fogging in the cold air. He looks up when they come out, and his expression does something interesting—eyebrows climbing, mouth pulling into a slow grin.

"Okay," he squeals.

"I know," Jimin says.

"No, I mean—" Hoseok gestures at Jeongguk. "Okay."

Jeongguk pulls his jacket tighter around himself. "Can we go?"

"We can absolutely go," Hoseok says, still grinning, falling into step beside him. "You look terrifying, by the way. In a very good way."

"Thank you. I know." Jeongguk says.

Hoseok points at him. "That's the energy."

"I'm serious, by the way. Tonight I'm having fun and talking to people. I'm—" He gestures broadly at the street ahead of them. "Living."

"You're going to pull someone," Jimin says, delighted.

"Maybe." Jeongguk shrugs, very casually. "Probably. I don't know. We'll see how the night goes."

"He's going to pull someone," Hoseok tells Jimin.

"He's absolutely going to pull someone, and whoever's on the other end of tonight is not going to know what hit them."

Jeongguk thinks about that for a second, whoever's on the other end of tonight, and decides he likes the sound of it, even though it makes him feel strange at the same time.

A night with no history attached, just someone new who doesn't know anything about him except what they can see, which tonight, in these pants, this shirt and whatever Jimin has done to his eyes, is apparently quite a lot.

There is something freeing about being only surface. Being only the version that shows up, looks good and doesn't carry anything underneath it. He wants a night where he is just a body in a room, and the body is enough.

Jimin loops his arm through Jeongguk's before he can respond to that, pulling him close.

"Okay, ground rules," Jimin says, in the tone he uses when he's decided something and is now simply informing everyone else.

"You will drink exactly enough to be fun and not enough to be tragic. You will talk to at least three people you don't know. And you will not—" He points at Jeongguk. "—spend the whole night in a corner thinking about you-know-who."

"I wasn't going to." Jeongguk murmurs.

It sounds like a lie even to his own ears, but he hopes at least it doesn’t sound that way to Jimin.

"Perfect."

The venue isn't far, ten minutes on foot through streets that are cold and bright, convenience stores, pojangmacha carts and the late-night energy of a city that hasn't decided to sleep yet.

Jeongguk's leather pants make a faint sound with every step that he's choosing not to think about.

Hoseok is telling a story about something that happened at work that Jeongguk is only half-listening to, because the other half of him is doing the thing he told himself he wouldn't do: think.

Not about Taehyung, specifically. Just about… the month. The way it had gone.

The first week had been genuinely bad in a quiet, flat-toned way. The kind of bad where you sit on the kitchen floor at three in the morning and eat cereal out of the box and don't cry, which somehow feels worse than crying would.

And then the two weeks after that, which had been fine, mostly, punctuated by moments that weren't.

A song was coming on shuffle that he couldn't skip fast enough.

A convenience store brand he'd stopped buying because the packaging was the same shade of blue as Taehyung's phone case and his brain had decided that was a problem now.

The drawer.

He still hasn't dealt with the drawer.

It isn't even a big thing. A hoodie, a phone charger, a polaroid tucked under a pair of socks, like it was hiding. And probably a few other things as well. Since Jeongguk hasn't dared to look over there for a long time, these are the things he remembers from the last time he saw it.

Things that don't mean anything except that they do.

Every time Jeongguk opens that drawer, the moment his hand brushes the hoodie, his whole body flinches like it's been burned.

So he's just stopped opening it.

He pretends it doesn't exist, the way you can pretend a lot of things don't exist if you're committed enough.

But tonight is not about the drawer.

Tonight is about the leather pants, the smoky eyes, and Jeongguk is twenty-three and looks incredible, Jimin's words not his, and the world has not, in fact, ended.

He's decided.

The venue appears at the end of the street, a converted warehouse, the kind that looks like nothing from the outside.

There's a short queue at the door, and at the front of it, a girl in a sequined jacket is handing something out to each person as they enter.

"What's that?" Jeongguk asks.

"Oh, right." Jimin brightens. "Okay, so it's called 'shot n card'. They give everyone a card when you walk in, and if you find the person with the matching card and kiss them, you get a free shot."

Jeongguk considers this. "That's kind of genius."

"Right?!"

"But what if you don't find your match?"

"Then no free shot." Hoseok is already craning his neck to look at the cards being handed out, approaching this with the focused energy of a man who has not paid for a drink since 2019.

"I'm finding my match," Jeongguk decides.

"Obviously," Jimin says.

"I'm finding my match, and I'm getting my free shot and then—" He pauses because he feels queasy but isn’t letting on. "We will see."

"Living," Hoseok says solemnly.

"Living," Jeongguk confirms.

The queue moves, then they're at the front, and the girl in the sequined jacket is smiling at him, holding out a card face down. He takes it, lets Jimin and Hoseok collect theirs, then they're through the door, and the noise hits him all at once—music, voices, heat, the smell of a party that's already been going a while.

Jeongguk looks down at his card.

"Ace of hearts."

High card and easy to find. This is already going well.

He pockets it and looks up at the room, and it's already packed. Bodies everywhere, lights doing something complicated overhead, the bass sitting low in his sternum.

Hoseok is already scanning the crowd with the expression of a man approaching a tactical situation.

Jimin has his card out, examining it with mild interest.

"Seven of clubs," Jimin announces. "Respectable."

"Two of diamonds," Hoseok says, deeply unimpressed. "Who designed this system?"

"The same shot either way," Jeongguk points out.

"Whatever." Hoseok pockets his card and nods toward the bar. "First round's on me. Then we find our matches."

They find a spot near the edge of the dancefloor, close enough to feel the music but far enough to still talk without shouting. Hoseok comes back with three drinks and the satisfied expression of a man who has successfully navigated a crowded bar.

Jeongguk takes his and exhales.

It's loud and warm. Someone nearby is laughing very hard about something. The lights are low enough that everything looks a little cinematic, a little removed from ordinary life, which is, actually, Jeongguk thinks, exactly what he needed.

A room where nothing is real enough to hurt. A room where you can be someone who is just having a good time and not someone who flinches when he opens the wrong drawer.

He takes a sip of his drink and lets himself just be here for a moment.

"Okay," Jimin says eventually, looking around. "I'm going in."

"Already?" Hoseok asks.

"The night is young, and my card is not going to find itself." He straightens up, smooths his jacket, and gives Jeongguk a pointed look. "You should go too. That's why we're here."

"I know why we're here."

"I'm just saying." Jimin gives him one more look and then disappears into the crowd.

Hoseok watches him go, then turns back to Jeongguk. "You good?"

"I'm good," Jeongguk says, and means it, mostly. "Go find your two of diamonds."

Hoseok points at him. "Don't stand here alone all night."

"I won't."

"I mean it."

"Hoseok, go."

And then it's just Jeongguk. One drink in, leather pants, darkened eyes, ace of hearts in his pocket. He finishes his drink, sets the glass down, and rolls his shoulders back.

Find the match, free shot, live his life.

He pushes off the wall and moves into the crowd, doing a slow sweep of the room—faces, cards held up, people already comparing suits in corners.

The energy is good, loose and easy, and Jeongguk lets himself get absorbed into it, lets the music sit in his chest where the quiet had been all month.

He's almost at the other side of the room when he sees him.

Not the face, the back.

Just the set of the shoulders, and the way he's standing. Weight shifted to one side, one hand in his pocket, the other holding something Jeongguk can't quite see.

Dark hair, slightly grown out. A jacket, with a white tank top underneath and he can see the line of his shoulder where the jacket has slipped, and his body knows before his brain does.

It's a full-body thing, recognition.

Not the slow kind where you squint and wonder. The kind that starts somewhere behind his ribs and drops straight through the floor of his stomach, instant, total and deeply unwelcome.

No, he thinks. That's not—

He looks away. Looks back.

The guy is turned just enough that Jeongguk can't quite see his face, and for a moment, he lets himself believe it's someone else.

Someone who just happens to have the same shoulders, the same posture, the same jacket that Jeongguk had watched get pulled off a hanger approximately a hundred times—in his apartment, in the morning, when Taehyung would stand at the closet, take too long deciding what to wear and Jeongguk would watch from the bed, say nothing because he'd liked the looking.

It's not him. There are a lot of people in Seoul. There are a lot of jackets in the world. That is simply a person who happens to—

The guy turns slightly to say something to the person beside him, and Jeongguk gets his profile.

The nose. The jaw. The way his mouth moves when he's mid-sentence, slightly lopsided, like every word is being considered one last time on the way out.

Oh, he thinks. Oh, no.

Kim Taehyung.

Right there. Twenty feet away, drink in hand, looking like himself—completely fine, like the last month has been… nothing.

Just time passing, just ordinary days.

No kitchen floors at three in the morning, no drawers he couldn't open, no songs he had to skip.

And between two fingers, held loosely, as it costs him nothing at all—

Jeongguk looks down at his own card without deciding to.

Ace of hearts.

Please, he thinks, with feeling. Please let that be a different card. A king, a two, anything. A joker, even, whatever, it doesn't matter, just—

Taehyung shifts his hand, and the card catches the light for just a second.

Ace of hearts.

Jeongguk stares at it.

Of all the cards in this building, of all the possible permutations the universe had at its disposal tonight, it landed here.

On this. On them.

He looks back up, but Taehyung still hasn't seen him.

Jeongguk stands very still for exactly three seconds, runs a quick internal cost-benefit analysis, and arrives at the following conclusion: no.

Absolutely not.

He is going to find Park Jimin, take his seven of clubs, and Jimin is going to be annoying about it, but that is a price Jeongguk is fully prepared to pay.

He turns around and goes to find Jimin.

It takes longer than it should, because the crowd has thickened and Jimin is small and also apparently already in the middle of a conversation with someone who is laughing at whatever he just said, which—good for him, genuinely, but also Jeongguk needs the seven of clubs right now.

"Jimin," he says, appearing at his elbow.

Jimin looks up and clocks Jeongguk's expression immediately. "No."

"I haven't said anything yet!"

"You have the face. I know the face."

He turns back to the person he'd been talking to—a brief, apologetic smile—and then steers Jeongguk two steps away by the arm.

"What?"

"I need you to trade cards with me."

"I have a seven of clubs."

"Perfect. Give me the seven of clubs."

Jimin looks at him, looks across the room, and looks back at Jeongguk. "No."

Jeongguk stares at him.

"You," Jimin says, pointing a finger at his chest, "are wearing those pants, that shirt, and I did your eyes." He crosses his arms. "You're not hiding in a corner with a seven of clubs. Keep your card."

"Jimin—"

"Living," Jimin says firmly, and has the nerve to look encouraging about it.

Jeongguk looks back across the room.

Taehyung is still laughing at something, holding his card loose between two fingers, and completely unaware that Jeongguk is standing thirty feet away, having what can only be described as a very contained meltdown in leather pants.

He could say it. He could just say Taehyung is here, and Jimin would—well… Jimin would immediately try to leave, actually.

He would grab Hoseok and announce they were going somewhere else and spend the whole journey there, telling Jeongguk he was better off anyway.

Which is… Jeongguk doesn't want that. He doesn't know exactly what he wants, but he knows it isn't that. It isn't the whole night folding up around just one name.

"Okay, living," Jeongguk scoffs and blends into the crowd again.

He'll swap with Hoseok.

Jeongguk heads another way, already feeling better because Hoseok will trade. He is practical, and he doesn't ask too many questions like Jimin.

Hoseok is at the far end of the bar, yes. He seems to have found his match—too busy with her to notice anything else, both hands occupied, a two of diamonds, and zero awareness of the rest of the room.

Jeongguk watches this for a second, then he turns around and walks away.

He moves through the crowd slowly this time, more deliberate, keeping his own card in his pocket and his eyes open. Someone holds up a three of spades at him, hopefully. Jeongguk shakes his head and keeps moving.

The room is full of people comparing cards, laughing at mismatches, the whole thing playing out exactly as designed, easy and uncomplicated for everyone except Jeongguk, apparently.

And then, near one of the side walls, he spots three girls, who are sitting close together on a low bench, drinks in hand, cards out and being examined between them.

He clocks the energy immediately. They are not strangers to each other. Probably came together, and all three are still holding their original cards. Which means, potentially, one of them is holding something tradeable.

"Hey," Jeongguk says, stopping in front of them.

All three of them look up near-simultaneously. They look at him in a way that is slightly different from how people usually look at him.

"Hi," the one in the middle says, slowly.

"Hey," says the one on the left.

The one on the right just raises her eyebrows, which communicates quite a lot.

Jeongguk blinks. "Hi. Sorry—have any of you found your matches yet?"

"No," the one in the middle says. Then, after a half-second, she speaks again. "Did you want to, though? Because we could probably—"

"We could work something out," the one on the left agrees, nodding.

"I have a king," the suspicious one on the right offers, holding up her card. "Just so you know."

Jeongguk looks at the three of them. They are looking back at him with the collective energy of people who have decided the night just got more interesting, and he is—okay, he'll be honest, it's good for his ego. Jimin would be insufferable about it.

"I actually wanted to ask about trading cards."

"Trading?" the one in the middle repeats.

"Yeah." He pulls out his card and keeps it face down for a second.

“Any chance one of you would swap? I'd rather—" He stops.

They're looking at him expectantly.

He needs a reason. A normal, reasonable, non-embarrassing reason that does not involve the words ex-boyfriend or one month or I haven't dealt with the drawer yet.

"My cousin," he hears himself say and is completely startled by his own words because what the actual fuck? "We came separately, but we got the same card. Didn't know we'd both end up here, and it's just a bit weird, you know."

"Oh," the one in the middle says, nodding like this makes complete sense. "Yeah, fair enough."

"Totally," the one on the left agrees.

The one on the right tilts her head. "I mean, we can swap, sure. But—" She pauses. "What if you just don't like whoever you matched with and you're trying to offload the card onto one of us?"

Jeongguk stops and closes his eyes for exactly one second.

Don't like Kim Taehyung. The specific task of not liking Kim Taehyung. It's laughable. He doesn’t think there’s any alternative reality in which he wouldn’t like Taehyung,

The laugh, the jacket, the ten months and the drawer he still hasn't dealt with and the way he'd say Jeongguk's name in the morning like it was the first word that occurred to him—

He opens his eyes and points across the room. "Over there."

All three of them look and a beat passes.

Then the one on the right sits up slightly. Her eyes go a little bright.

"Oh," she says.

"Yeah," Jeongguk swallows.

She looks down at her card, looks back across the room, then holds it out to Jeongguk without another word. He takes it and hands over the ace of hearts.

Nine of spades. Completely unexceptional and exactly what he needed.

"Thanks," he says.

But the girl isn't listening. She's already standing.

Jeongguk pockets the nine of spades and walks away. He gets maybe ten steps before he looks down at the card in his hand.

Nine of spades: plain, boring, and perfect.

He keeps walking.

Eleven steps. Twelve. The crowd thickens around him, and the bass shifts into something slower, and he's almost, almost at the other side of the room when his brain catches up with what he just did.

He stops.

Not the trading part.

The trading part was sensible, strategic, correct and a mature response to an impossible situation.

The other part.

The part where he'd pointed at Taehyung and said over there, watched her whole face change, and then handed her the card like handing over a key to a room he'd locked himself out of.

He gave someone else the match.

He turns back to see across the room.

The girl is already moving. Of course, she is, because he'd pointed, she'd seen, and now she's cutting through the crowd with the energy of someone who has a destination, card in hand, heading straight for—

Jeongguk looks away.

Right, good. That's… that's fine. That's what he wanted. Clean swap, problem solved, night back on track.

Except he stands there for a second, nine of spades in his pocket, and thinks, she's going to go up to him.

She's going to show him the card, Taehyung is going to look at it, look at her and do the thing he does when he's surprised, the slight widening of his eyes, the half-beat before his mouth catches up, and then he'll smile.

He'll smile because he smiles at people, makes them feel like they are the only interesting thing in the room, and she will feel it the way everyone feels it.

The way Jeongguk had felt it, in a convenience store at two in the morning, holding a blue slushie, ten months and a drawer ago.

Jeongguk's teeth click together.

He makes himself stop and breathes out through his nose.

Because here's the thing, here's the actual thing, if he's being honest with himself, which he is apparently doing now, in the middle of a party.

Taehyung chose to come here tonight.

He didn't stumble in by accident, didn't get dragged here by a Park Jimin who has never once taken no for an answer.

He looked at this party, at this specific venue with this specific card game, and decided, yes, I'll go.

He was already here before Jeongguk arrived. Already had the ace of hearts before Jeongguk took his.

Which means—if Jeongguk had never come tonight, if he'd stayed home, face-down on his bed, doing his convincing impression of a man who had ceased to exist—the ace of hearts would still have existed.

It would still have been in someone else's hands and would still have found its match.

Just not his.

Taehyung was always going to be here. The card was always going to go to someone.

Jeongguk just made sure it wasn't him.

And that should feel like the right call—it is the right call—except there's a small, honest, inconvenient part of him that is standing in a crowd of strangers thinking, but it was mine first. Taehyung was mine.

He looks down at the nine of spades.

Yeah, he thinks, quietly, in the way thoughts arrive when they've been waiting a while and have finally found a gap.

Yeah, okay.

He pockets the card and keeps walking.

He finds Jimin near the edge of the dancefloor, which is either very good timing or very bad timing, depending on how you look at it.

"Hey—" Jimin starts, and then stops. "What happened?"

"Nothing. I just need a drink, you go ahead."

Jimin looks at him with that expression he gets when he's decided not to push yet but is filing everything away for later. He turns toward the dancefloor without another word.

Jeongguk exhales and runs a hand through his hair. The back of his neck is warm, his pulse is doing something irritating, and he is fine.

He's fine.

He handled it. He walked away, which was the right thing to do, which was the only thing to do, and now he's going to have a drink, find his nine of spades match, and get his free shot.

"Jeongguk?"

Every muscle in his body goes tight.

He knows the voice before he turns. He could pick it out of any room, any crowd, any frequency. It sits in some part of his brain that doesn't answer to reason, that never learned how to forget.

He turns around.

Taehyung is standing three feet away, slightly out of breath, which means he'd actually had to work for it—had followed him through that whole crowd, had pushed past people and kept going anyway.

His hair is a little messed up from it, falling into his eyes. He's still holding the ace of hearts.

Not her ace of hearts. His.

"Hi," Taehyung says, quieter this time. Just for him.

Jeongguk's mouth is dry.

His hands are easy at his sides, and he is giving absolutely nothing away, or he's trying to, or he thinks he is, but Taehyung has been able to read him in a way that Jeongguk found charming once and finds unbearable now.

Like being transparent. Like being the sheer shirt—everything underneath is always visible, no matter how badly you want the fabric to be enough.

"You changed your card," Taehyung says.

Jeongguk blinks. "What?"

"The girl who came up to me. She said she'd swapped with my cousin." His eyes stay on Jeongguk's, steady and careful. "And then she described you."

The silence sits between them, filled in by the bass, the crowd, and the kind of noise that exists to make quiet conversations feel louder than they are.

Jeongguk should have seen this coming. "So?"

He’s acting as if it hasn’t embarrassed him. It was kind of pathetic.

"So I figured I'd come find the cousin."

"Great," Jeongguk says, unimpressed. "You found him. Was there something you needed?"

Taehyung looks at him for a moment. "You didn't have to do that."

Something pulls tight behind Jeongguk's sternum. He looks at Taehyung and feels the month sitting between them like furniture someone forgot to move. Still taking up space, exactly where it was left, and impossible to walk around without bumping into it.

"Sorry?" he scoffs. Irritated with the way Taehyung speaks. "What did you want me to do?"

He keeps his voice even, but there's an edge to it now, something that's been sitting all evening quietly and has apparently decided it's done being quiet.

"Walk up and tap you on the shoulder? Hey, we matched, pucker up?" Jeongguk tilts his head, his eyebrows furrow involuntarily. “Thought you wouldn't exactly want to see your ex at a party."

Taehyung is quiet for a second. "I just meant—"

"I know what you meant." Jeongguk takes a sip of his drink and sets it down. He meets Taehyung's eyes. "So leave me alone and go do whatever you were doing."

Taehyung doesn't move.

Jeongguk holds his gaze and waits.

"I'm going, then."

He says it like a question, almost. Like he's waiting for something, though Jeongguk can't imagine what.

He can't imagine what there is left to wait for, what either of them could possibly still be standing here for when the music is loud, the room is full, and there are a hundred other people in this building who aren't each other's exes.

Ten minutes later, Jeongguk still hasn't found his match.

Nine of spades. How hard can it be?

The room is full of people holding cards, and he’s circled it twice now, focused, intent on finding what he needs so he can claim his free drink and shut his brain off, but still, nothing.

Not a single nine of spades in sight, which feels personal at this point. Like the universe has decided that Jeongguk has not suffered enough tonight.

So he just gives up and goes to the bathroom.

The bathroom is quieter, which is all he wants right now. He pushes through the door, lets it fall shut behind him, and turns on the tap.

The water is cold. He cups it in his hands and presses it against his face, once, twice, and exhales.

The eye shadow has smudged slightly at the corners. A little undone, a little less put-together than when Jimin put it there. He doesn't fix it.

The face looking back at him is his, but slightly loosened and off-centre from the version Jimin had built an hour ago. Closer to how he actually feels, less armour and more skin.

He wonders if this is what the month has done to him— shifted everything a degree to the left. Just enough for the fit to feel wrong, noticeable if you were paying attention.

Behind him, the door opens and he doesn't look. Just reaches for a paper towel, takes his time with it, because it's a bathroom and people are allowed to come in, and it's fine, it's nothing.

The door falls shut, and then silence. No footsteps, no tap running. Nothing.

Jeongguk looks up at the mirror, and Taehyung is standing inside the door.

"You have got to be kidding me," Jeongguk exhales.

Taehyung says nothing. He's just standing there, which is somehow worse than anything he could say, and Jeongguk grabs his jacket off the edge of the sink.

"Free drink?"

Taehyung says, and Jeongguk falters. He is holding up a card between two fingers: Nine of spades.

"How..?" Jeongguk asks.

"I traded too," Taehyung says simply.

Jeongguk stares at him, and the anger he’d been bracing for doesn’t come. Instead, there’s just… a giving way. Slow and quiet, like a held breath finally let out, like a fist unclenching after too long. The feeling of a ground you thought was solid shifting under your feet.

Because here’s the actual, exact, unbearable thing.

Taehyung was the one who ended it.

Not in a fight, or in a moment of heat where words get said that nobody means.

Just a quiet evening, Taehyung sitting across from him with that careful, considered expression he gets when he’s thought something through, and Jeongguk had known before he even opened his mouth.

Had known and sat very still and waited anyway, hoping to be wrong.

He hadn’t been wrong.

And the thing is, Jeongguk knew. Had always known, in the honest part of himself he didn’t visit often, that he wasn’t easy. He came with walls, silences and his own brand of distance that he’d never quite figured out how to dismantle, not fully, not even for the people who deserved better.

He knew he was the difficult one in the relationship. Had known it from the beginning, had seen it in the way Taehyung sometimes looked at him with this quiet, patient thing, like he was waiting for a door to open that Jeongguk kept forgetting to unlock.

He’d hurt Taehyung. Not deliberately, but the road to Taehyung’s hurt had been paved with all the things Jeongguk hadn’t said and all the times he’d retreated instead of reaching. He knew that too, had known it even while he was doing it, and still hadn’t quite managed to stop.

But Taehyung hadn’t given him a chance to explain.

That was the part Jeongguk kept coming back to, the part that sat in his chest like something unfinished.

Because he would have listened. Would have sat across from Taehyung, heard every word and actually tried to be better because that was the thing about Taehyung.

Jeongguk would have given Taehyung anything.

And he had.

That was the part nobody saw. The small, unglamorous ways he’d tried. The times he’d caught himself retreating and turned back. The things he’d said out loud that didn’t come easily, that had cost him something, that he’d said anyway because it was Taehyung and Taehyung made him want to try in a way nobody else ever had.

He wasn’t good at it, and he knew that, but he’d been trying.

But Taehyung had just decided, and Jeongguk had nodded, said okay, and meant it as much as you can mean anything when your chest has just caved in.

He had not begged, argued or asked Taehyung to reconsider because Taehyung had decided, and Jeongguk had enough pride left for that much.

He’d gone home and looked at the drawer. He hadn’t dealt with the drawer.

A month had passed.

Thirty days of putting one foot in front of the other, of Jimin perched on the edge of his bed saying you need to get out, of reaching for his phone and putting it back down, of getting dressed tonight in leather pants and smoked-out eyes and telling himself, tonight.

Tonight, you move forward. Tonight you find someone whose name you don’t already know by heart, and you remember what it feels like to want something that isn’t—

Taehyung had been here.

And Jeongguk had handled it. He’d been so careful. He changed the card, avoided the crowd, and managed every variable. He’d done everything right.

But Taehyung had traded card too.

"Why are you doing this?" Jeongguk's voice comes out low. A little ragged at the edges, like something that's been folded too many times. "What do you want from me, Taehyung?"

Taehyung's expression shifts. Something tightens in it. He takes one step forward, and his voice when it comes out isn't soft. It's quiet in a different way, controlled, like he's keeping something in check.

"What do I want?" He tilts his head slightly. "You had the ace of hearts. We matched and you went and traded it away."

"Yeah," Jeongguk says. "I did."

"Why?"

"Because—" Jeongguk laughs, short and disbelieving. "Are you fucking serious? We broke up—you broke up with me, Taehyung. What was I supposed to do, walk up and—"

"I don't know, maybe not run away?"

"I didn't run away!"

"You changed your card and then spent ten minutes trying to lose me in a crowd." Taehyung's jaw tightens. "What do you call that?"

"Handling it," Jeongguk snaps. "I was handling it. Which is what I've been doing for a month while you—" He stops himself.

Taehyung takes another step forward. There's a feeling under his voice now, something that isn't quite anger but has its teeth. "While I what?"

"Nothing."

"No." Taehyung's voice drops. "Tell me. While I what, Jeongguk?"

The bathroom is still. The music from outside bleeds through the walls, muffled and distant, and Jeongguk stands in the middle of it with cold water still on his face and a month's worth of things he hasn't said pressing up against the back of his throat like a fist.

"You didn't call," he says finally. Hates how it sounds—thin, too honest, the kind of thing you can't take back once it's out—but says it anyway. "It's been a month, and you didn't even call."

Something crosses Taehyung's face. A crack in the controlled thing he'd been holding.

"Neither did you," Taehyung says.

Jeongguk's eyes widen in disbelief. He can't believe what he's hearing.

"Neither did I? The fuck?!" Jeongguk practically screams while he points at himself with his index finger. "You broke up with me!”

"And you—" Taehyung exhales sharply. "You just let me. You didn't say anything, you didn't fight, you didn't—"

He stops and runs a hand through his hair. When he looks back up, his eyes are a little bright, and his voice has lost some of its edge, the control slipping just slightly.

"I waited, Jeongguk. Okay? I waited and you never—"

"What was I supposed to say?" Jeongguk's voice cracks slightly on it. Enough that they both hear it, and neither of them pretends they didn't. "You'd already decided—"

“I wanted you to tell me I was wrong. I wanted you to ask me why, but you never did.”

The words come out quietly. Like he hadn’t meant to say them quite like that, and they’d been sitting in his chest the same way Jeongguk’s had been sitting in his—one month, no calls, a matching card in a crowded room.

“I thought we’d talk. I thought you’d—” He stops, and starts again, slower. “You’d ask me to explain myself, and you’d want to know why. I thought you… wouldn't want to break up. ”

Jeongguk says nothing.

“And you just—” Taehyung’s voice shifts, something rawer coming through now, the controlled thing cracking further at the seams. “You said okay. That was it. Okay, then you got up, and then you left, and I sat there thinking—did it even matter? Did I matter?” He exhales, unsteady. “Did any of it?”

“Of course—”

“Because that’s what it felt like.” His jaw is tight, eyes glistening. “Like I could just walk out of your life and you’d close the door behind me, and that would be it. Like ten months was something you could just file away and move on from.”

A pause.

“And I thought… maybe that’s what you wanted. Maybe you’d been waiting for an out, and I’d just given it to you.”

The tile is wet where the tap had dripped, and Jeongguk stands in the middle of it all, cold water on his face, and feels the month rearrange itself around him.

Every day of it.

“I thought—” Jeongguk stops and tries again. “You’d made up your mind. You always make up your mind and then that’s it, that’s the end of it, and I wasn’t going to—” He presses his mouth shut for a second. “I wasn’t going to beg you to stay if you didn’t want to.”

“I wanted to—I didn't want you to beg me but… I wanted you to tell me to stay.” The words come out like something breaking open. “That’s the thing, Jeongguk. I wanted to.”

The silence that follows is different from the ones before it. Softer, somehow. More dangerous.

Taehyung looks at him for a moment. Like he’s deciding something. Like he’s been deciding it for a month and has finally arrived at the answer.

“I needed you to fight for us,” he says. “Just—once. Just to know that you wanted it as much as I did.” His voice drops. “And you didn’t. So I thought I had my answer.”

Jeongguk looks at the floor. The tile is wet where the tap had dripped, and his reflection is in it, barely, just a dark smudge of a person.

"I thought you didn't want me anymore," Jeongguk whispers. “I thought I wanted this more than you did. I thought I was—” His voice drops. “I thought I was the only one still holding on, and I didn’t want to hear it,” Jeongguk says finally. His voice comes out low. Barely above the music.

“That’s why I didn’t… fight. I didn’t want to ask you to stay and have you say it out loud that you didn’t want me.” He meets Taehyung’s eyes and holds them. “Not from you. I could’ve handled it from anyone else but—“

He stops.

“You were the person I loved—I love. I couldn’t hear it from you.”

The silence that follows is the softest one yet.

It comes out quieter than anything else he's said tonight. The kind of sentence that costs you something to say out loud, that strips away whatever you'd been holding up in front of yourself.

Jeongguk can feel it happening as the words leave, the last of whatever armour the leather pants and the shirt and the eyes were supposed to be just… going.

And underneath it, there's just him, standing in a bathroom in a shirt you can see straight through, which suddenly feels less like a fashion choice and more like a fucking metaphor.

"And I'm not—" His jaw works. He still hasn't looked up. "I wasn't going to chase someone who decided they were done with me. I'm not going to beg to be wanted, Taehyung. That's not—I won't do that."

“Jeongguk,” he says, and his voice breaks slightly on it. “I was never going to say that. I could never—” He shakes his head once. “Never.”

The bathroom is very quiet.

"I want you," Taehyung says. "I've always wanted you—I still want you. Just you."

Not past tense or conditional, or I wanted you, trailing off into something unfinished.

Jeongguk stares at the card still loose between his fingers. At the face, he's been trying to stop seeing in everything for weeks—in songs, in convenience store packaging, in the drawer, in the particular angle of morning light through his bedroom window that hits the empty side of the bed.

The bathroom is still, and Jeongguk thinks, Fuck it.

He crosses the distance in one big step and kisses Taehyung.

Taehyung makes a surprised sound against his mouth, then his hands are on Jeongguk’s face, and he’s kissing back like he’s been waiting for exactly this, like the whole night was just the long way around to here.

His fingers slide into Jeongguk’s hair, grip tightening, tilting his head back. Jeongguk goes with it, hands fisting in Taehyung’s jacket, pulling him closer until there’s no space left between them.

Taehyung kisses as he means it, always has. Like he’s not thinking about anything else, and Jeongguk is the only thing in the room.

A month is a long time to go without being looked at like that, touched like that, and Jeongguk feels it everywhere. He feels it in his chest, his hands and the back of his knees.

He bites at Taehyung’s lower lip. Taehyung exhales sharply against his mouth. Hands sliding from his hair down to his waist, gripping hard through the sheer fabric of his shirt, fingers pressing into the leather at his hips.

“God,” Taehyung breathes. He looks at Jeongguk like he’s something devastating. “You wore this tonight and expected me to—”

Jeongguk kisses him again before he can finish.

One of Taehyung’s hands slides from Jeongguk’s waist to the small of his back, pressing him forward, and Jeongguk lets himself be moved. Lets himself be backed up against the sink, the porcelain cool against the heated skin of his lower back.

Taehyung’s thigh presses between his legs, and Jeongguk’s head falls back, exposing the line of his throat. Taehyung takes the invitation without hesitating, biting just below his jaw, sucking a mark into the skin, a promise that will still be there tomorrow.

Jeongguk’s hips roll forward, seeking friction. Taehyung makes a low sound against his skin and presses back, and this is familiar. This is muscle memory. This is knowing exactly how to move, how to touch, how to make each other fall apart.

“Missed you,” Taehyung murmurs against his throat.

His hands are everywhere. They slide up Jeongguk’s sides, over his chest, thumbs brushing over his nipples through the transparent fabric, making him shiver.

"Jeongguk—I missed you so bad."

“Stop saying that,” Jeongguk manages, breathless. His hands are in Taehyung’s hair again, holding him close, holding on.

Taehyung doesn’t stop.

He says it again, quieter this time, right against Jeongguk’s jaw—missed you, missed you, missed you—and Jeongguk’s hands tighten in his hair. He squeezes his eyes shut because a month is a long time to not hear it, and he’d forgotten. Or he’d tried to forget, which is different, and now it’s here again, and he doesn’t know what to do with how much he’d wanted it back.

Taehyung’s hands are on Jeongguk’s ass this time, squeezing through the tight leather, pulling him flush against him.

Jeongguk’s mouth parts on a gasp, and Taehyung takes it. He sucks on Jeongguk's tongue, kisses him deeper, hotter, swallowing Jeongguk’s gasp.

He tastes something sweet, the last month and something that is entirely, uniquely Taehyung, and Jeongguk is dizzy with it.

He needs… something. More. Less. He needs to be closer, needs to feel Taehyung’s skin against his own, needs to erase the space between them.

With a surge of impatience, he grabs the front of Taehyung’s jacket and pulls, guiding him backwards, stumbling a little until Taehyung’s back hits the door of one of the cubicles. The lock clicks shut, loud in the quiet of the bathroom.

The space is small and cramped. The air is thick with the smell of their breath, their bodies.

Taehyung looks at him, eyes wide and dark in the dim light, and Jeongguk can feel the frantic beat of his own heart, can see the reflection of Taehyung’s pulse fluttering at the base of his throat.

Taehyung's back is against the cubicle door, and Jeongguk is in front of him, the sheer shirt doing absolutely nothing to hide the frantic rise and fall of his chest.

He catches himself in Taehyung's eyes—the way Taehyung is looking at him like he might come apart just from the sight alone, like Jeongguk standing there half-wrecked and breathing hard is enough to undo him—and possessiveness and hot coils tight low in Jeongguk's stomach.

He looks wild-eyed, beautiful, wrecked already, and he knows it. He can see it reflected in him.

“I want you to fuck me.”

A harsh breath punches out of Taehyung, darkness and hunger flaring in his eyes at Jeongguk’s words.

He doesn't speak. Instead, he moves, a sudden, fluid motion that spins them around. The back of Jeongguk’s head hits the cubicle door with a dull thud, the wood cool against his scalp.

Taehyung’s hands are on him immediately, not gentle, framing his face for a bruising kiss before they’re yanking at the hem of that ridiculous shirt.

His fingers fumble with the delicate buttons, not with hesitation but with a frantic impatience. The little discs of plastic were scattered on the grimy floor.

The fabric falls open, and Taehyung’s gaze drops. Raking over Jeongguk’s exposed chest, the dark lines of his tattoos are stark in the dim light.

“You dressed like that,” Taehyung grits out, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that vibrates through Jeongguk’s entire body, “just to get fucked by a stranger?”

He doesn't wait for an answer. One hand slides up Jeongguk’s torso, thumb brushing over a peaked nipple, circling it slowly.

Jeongguk’s breath stutters, his back arching into the touch.

Taehyung ducks his head, and takes the other nipple into his mouth. He sucks hard, and this sharp, exquisite pressure sends a jolt straight to Jeongguk’s cock.

A helpless moan tears from Jeongguk’s throat. Taehyung’s other hand pinches and twists the neglected nub, a twin point of pleasure-pain that leaves Jeongguk gasping. His hands scrambled for a grip on the door behind him.

He’s fully hard now, achingly so, trapped and straining against the unforgiving tightness of the leather pants. He tries to shift, to rub his hips against Taehyung’s thigh, seeking any kind of friction, but it’s useless. The pants are a cage, the slick leather denying him any relief, and only amplifying the desperate, throbbing need.

Taehyung feels the helpless roll of Jeongguk’s hips and chuckles against his chest.

He releases Jeongguk’s nipple with a final, lingering lick and blows cool air over the wet, sensitive skin. His hands move to Jeongguk’s hips, thumbs pressing into the hollows, holding him still.

His palm finally comes down to rest over the prominent bulge in Jeongguk's trousers.

Jeongguk shudders, a full-body tremor of anticipation. He bucks his hips up, chasing the pressure, a desperate, pleading sound catching in his throat.

"Please," he whispers. "Taehyung, please."

Taehyung only smiles, a slow, predatory stretch of his lips. His touch follows, light at first, almost absent, then just enough pressure to make Jeongguk’s breath hitch. It’s teasing in the worst way. Not nearly enough, never quite where it should be.

He drags his hand over the leather, the faint friction sending sparks up Jeongguk’s spine, leaving him chasing something that never fully comes.

"You're so hard already," Taehyung murmurs, his voice a low, intimate thing. "All this for me? Or were you hoping anyone would do?"

Jeongguk just wants Taehyung to fuck him.

“Maybe I should just leave you here like this,” Taehyung says, and Jeongguk panics for a moment. “After all, you gave the card to another girl—maybe I should’ve gone and done this with her.”

The palm on Jeongguk's crotch stills, the pressure a sudden, maddening tease.

He whines, a low, pathetic sound, before he can stop himself. Taehyung’s words land like gasoline on a fire, and the heat that spikes through him is vicious, immediate.

A month of careful distance, of pretending he didn't care, shatters.

It's just to tease him, but the image of Taehyung with some other girl, touching her like this, whispering to her, sends a jolt of pure, undiluted jealousy through him. It's almost dizzying in the worst possible way.

He hates it. He loves it. He needs to prove it wrong.

Jeongguk gets the belt open, then the button of Taehyung's jeans, yanking the zipper down with a sharp, metallic rasp.

He slips a hand inside, past the waistband of his boxers, and curls his fingers around Taehyung's cock. It’s hot, heavy, and already rock-hard in his palm.

Taehyung hisses, his head falling back, hips jerking forward into Jeongguk’s grip.

"Fuck," Taehyung grits out, his hands flying to Jeongguk's hips, pulling him closer.

The possessive glint in his eyes is gone, replaced by unvarnished need. He looks at Jeongguk like he’s the only thing that’s ever mattered, and the sight of it, of Taehyung falling apart under his touch, is more potent than any drug.

"You want it that bad, huh?" Jeongguk starts to stroke slowly, watching Taehyung's face, the way his mouth falls open, the way his eyelids flutter.

Taehyung's other hand moves, and he grabs a handful of Jeongguk's ass, the leather smooth and tight beneath his palm. Then he brings it down in a sharp, stinging slap. The sound is loud in the small space, echoing off the tiled walls.

"You're dressed like a slut," Taehyung says, his voice rough with satisfaction. "Like you were begging for it. Did you want me to find you? Is that why you wore these pants?"

Jeongguk moans, high in his throat. He pushes back against Taehyung's hand, silently asking for more.

"I hate you," he pants, but there's no heat in it, only a desperate, breathless need. "I just wanted to forget you. I wanted someone else to—"

"But you got me instead," Taehyung cuts him off, his grip tightening on Jeongguk's hip. He leans in, his breath hot against Jeongguk's ear. "And now I'm going to fuck you so hard you won't remember anyone else's name."

The teasing, the dirty talk, the maddening lack of friction—it all coalesces into a desperate need.

He spins Jeongguk with brutal efficiency, slamming him face-first against the flimsy cubicle door. The cheap wood groans under the impact.

One of Taehyung’s hands flattens between Jeongguk’s shoulder blades, a solid weight pinning him in place, while the other claws at the button and zipper of the leather pants.

"Fuck these things," he snarls. His knuckles scraping uselessly against the tight waistband. "They're painted on."

"Come on," Jeongguk urges, arching his back, pressing the curve of his ass back against Taehyung's frustration. "Get them off. Hurry."

Taehyung gives up on the zipper with a curse and shoves a hand down the back of the trousers instead, the leather fighting him every inch of the way. He manages to get them halfway down Jeongguk’s thighs, exposing him to the cool, damp air of the bathroom.

"God, you look absolutely gorgeous like this," Taehyung breathes, the praise a stark contrast to the rough handling. His palm smooths over the exposed skin of Jeongguk's ass. "You're so pretty."

The praise makes Jeongguk shudder, but it's immediately followed by the stark reality of their situation.

Taehyung has no lube. He curses under his breath again, the sound sharp and impatient.

Taehyung brings his free hand up to Jeongguk's face, tracing the seam of his lips. "Open up," he commands. "Suck. Get them wet and nice for me.”

Jeongguk parts his lips without hesitation, and Taehyung pushes two fingers into the wet heat of his mouth. Jeongguk closes around them, his tongue swirling, sucking hard, getting them as slick as he can while Taehyung’s other hand continues its exploration of his body.

Just as Taehyung starts to pull his fingers free, the bathroom door creaks open, followed by the sound of footsteps and two voices laughing. Taehyung freezes, his body going rigid against Jeongguk's back.

He leans in, his lips brushing against the shell of Jeongguk's ear.

"Don't make a sound," he warns, his fingers still pressed against Jeongguk's tongue. "Or everyone out there will start talking about how much you enjoy getting fucked in a dirty club bathroom."

If you'd told Jeongguk an hour ago that he'd be having makeup sex with Taehyung in a filthy, disgusting bar bathroom, he would've laughed in your face. But the past month had been a slow, aching void, and he’d missed him so much it was a physical pain, a constant thrum beneath his skin.

Right now, he needed him with an urgency that eclipsed everything else—pride, comfort, location. Even without lube, even though he knew it was going to hurt like a bitch in a minute, it didn't matter.

Somehow, with Taehyung, pain always tangled with pleasure until they were indistinguishable.

The footsteps and laughter outside the cubicle door were a distant, annoying buzz. Taehyung’s weight was a comforting, grounding pressure, the only thing that mattered.

He obeyed the command to stay silent, relaxing his jaw as Taehyung slowly withdrew his fingers, a thin string of saliva connecting them to Jeongguk's lips before breaking. The wet, slick fingers disappeared, and Jeongguk held his breath, the anticipation a taut wire inside him.

As the voices draw closer, Taehyung makes a split-second decision. He yanks Jeongguk away from the door, spinning him and pushing him back against it again, chest-to-chest. His mouth claims Jeongguk's in a bruising, desperate kiss, swallowing any protest. It's messy and deep, a frantic attempt at silence.

At the same time, the hand not braced against the door moves down, and the fingers Jeongguk had just slicked with his saliva find their target.

A single, wet fingertip circled his entrance, light and teasing, drawing a shudder from him. Taehyung pressed two fingers to Jeongguk’s rim, not pushing in—just tracing slow, maddening circles.

Jeongguk's breath catches. A choked whine lost against Taehyung's lips as he arches into the touch, the external voices fading into meaningless noise. He braced himself, hands flat against the door, pushing back slightly, a silent invitation.

Taehyung abruptly breaks the kiss as the footsteps begin to fade,his eyes blazing as he stares into Jeongguk's dazed ones.

"Be quiet," he mouths, the words a silent, forceful command.

As Taehyung finally pulls away, he reaches into his jacket pocket, and Jeongguk's heart skips a beat.

It's a small, pocket-sized tube of lube. Jeongguk’s expression hardens instantly, the soft intimacy from moments before freezing over.

"What's that?"

Taehyung pauses, looking confused. "Hm?"

He squirts a generous amount of the clear, slick gel onto his fingers, then onto himself, completely oblivious to the sudden shift in Jeongguk's mood.

Jeongguk's mind races, a venomous coil of jealousy tightening in his gut.

He'd brought it with him. He came here intending to fuck someone. Did he have a condom too? Or was he planning on fucking whoever came his way raw?

The possibility that he was just a convenient replacement, another warm body in a long line of potential conquests for the night, makes him feel sick.

He thinks about leaving, about shoving Taehyung off and wrenching the door open, but the muffled voices outside are a stark reminder of their predicament, and the idea of walking out of here alone in these ridiculous pants is somehow worse than staying.

Taehyung looks at the lube, then back at Jeongguk's face, and a flicker of hurt crosses his features.

"I thought you didn't like mint-flavoured lube. Did your tastes change just in a month?"

The question is genuine, laced with a vulnerability that makes Jeongguk's own anger feel petty and misguided.

"Taehyung," he says, his voice tight, "What the fuck are you talking about?" He stares at the tube in Taehyung's hand. A small, damning piece of evidence.

Taehyung has a hurt look on his face. "I took this from your jacket pocket," he says softly, misunderstanding the source of Jeongguk's anger.

Then it clicks. Jimin, patting him down, gave a conspiratorial wink as they left the apartment.

"Jimin," Jeongguk breathes, the name a sudden, overwhelming relief. He closes his eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Jimin put it in my pocket."

He opens his eyes, meeting Taehyung's gaze. The admission feels vulnerable, but the look on Taehyung's face is worth it.

Then, feeling a bit embarrassed, "I hadn’t really been out of the house much for the past month, apart from going to work, and Jimin… well, he took me out and kept telling me to find someone,” he adds.

When he looks at Taehyung again, his face has softened. There’s no trace of that old, sad expression. It’s much softer now.

Taehyung is kissing him again, even harder this time, and as he does, he slides one finger past the tight ring of muscle, sinking in to the first knuckle.

Jeongguk's whole body trembles, a violent shudder of pleasure and pain that he has to bite back. His fingers are digging into Taehyung's shoulders.

The world narrows to the feeling of Taehyung's finger inside him. The possessive weight of his body, and the muffled voices just inches away. 

Jeongguk bit down on his lip, and a whimper caught in his throat as Taehyung worked him open.

The voices outside faded into a dull hum as Taehyung added a second finger. The stretch exquisite, a promise of what was to come.

He pressed back against Taehyung’s hand, wanting more, needing more. The pain was already blooming into something darker, more delicious.

The bathroom door creaks shut, plunging the small space back into a tense, private silence. The abrupt departure of the strangers feels like a punctuation mark, a permission slip.

Taehyung doesn't hesitate. He presses forward, and the sudden stretch draws a sharp, hitched breath from Jeongguk's lungs. He starts a slow rhythm, thrusting in and out, scissoring gently, opening him up.

When he looks down, he sees the tracks of tears glittering on Jeongguk's cheeks in the dim light. He leans his head down, pressing a soft kiss to Jeongguk's chest, right over his hammering heart, then another to the wet skin of his cheek.

"You are taking my fingers so well, baby," he murmurs, "I promise I'll make you feel better." He pulls back to meet Jeongguk's gaze, his thumb brushing away another tear. "How do you want it?"

"From behind," Jeongguk whispers, the words ragged.

Taehyung turns him again, pressing him face-first against the door. He guides himself to Jeongguk's hole, the slick head of his cock nudging against the loosened muscle.

He pushes in agonisingly slowly, and Jeongguk's hands fly out to brace against the door while his face contorts in a grimace of pain.

Taehyung's hands cover Jeongguk's, and their fingers interlock against the wood. Then, with a sudden, sharp jolt of his hips, he buries himself to the hilt.

A raw scream tears from Jeongguk's throat, a mix of agony and overwhelming sensation.

"So tight and hot. I can feel how happy your hole is."

Taehyung immediately wraps his free arm around Jeongguk's waist, pulling him flush against his chest, holding him tight as he stills, letting him adjust.

He peppers Jeongguk's shoulders and neck with kisses, murmuring praises into his skin. "You're so hot, you feel so good," he pants. "God, I've missed being inside you." 

Jeongguk turns his head slightly, seeking. "Kiss," he says, and Taehyung complies. Their mouths meet in a messy, desperate kiss.

The kiss deepens, a wet, messy tangle of tongues and breath. As their mouths move together, Taehyung’s hips begin to move in a slow, rocking rhythm. Each inward press is a deep, possessive claim that makes Jeongguk’s body tremble.

They break the kiss, gasping, and Jeongguk’s forehead drops forward to rest against the cool wood of the door.

Taehyung wraps both arms securely around Jeongguk’s waist, using the leverage to establish a more deliberate, rhythmic thrust. The slick, dirty sound of their bodies joining fills the small space.

He brings one hand down in a sharp, stinging slap on Jeongguk’s ass, the smack echoing.

"You're doing so good, baby," he leans in to whisper, the words hot against Jeongguk's ear. "Taking me so well."

His praise is a constant, breathless murmur as he continues to fuck him, punctuated by the sharp slap of skin on skin.

One of Taehyung’s arms unwinds from Jeongguk’s waist. He reaches around, finds Jeongguk’s cock. Hot, heavy and leaking against his stomach.

He wraps his fingers around it and begins to stroke in time with his thrusts. The dual sensation is overwhelming.

Jeongguk moans; a low, broken sound, pushing back into Taehyung's hips and forward into his fist, caught in a perfect and maddening rhythm.

Jeongguk’s hips begin to stutter, a tell-tale sign that he's right on the edge. "Ah! Tae—M'close," he gasps out, the words broken and desperate against the door.

Taehyung tightens his grip, stroking him faster, stripping his cock with perfect, ruthless pressure.

"Come for me, baby," he huffs out, and Jeongguk does, spilling hot and wet over Taehyung's fist with a choked cry. His whole body went lax for a moment.

But Taehyung isn't finished. He feels his own release cresting, the tight heat of Jeongguk's body pulling him under.

"I'm coming," he grits out, starting to pull out as a last-ditch show of restraint, but he doesn't get the chance.

Jeongguk's arm shoots back. His hand clamped onto Taehyung's ass, holding him in place, pressing him deeper.

He twists his head, and Taehyung sees the tears still tracking through the smudged makeup on his cheeks, sees the pleading look in his eyes.

"Come inside me," Jeongguk says breathlessly.

The words hit Taehyung, and it feels like his heart is about to burst out of his chest.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he mutters, the last of his control shattering. He starts fucking Jeongguk faster, harder, chasing his release. 

Jeongguk cries out and meets Taehyung’s thrusts, pushing back with a newfound energy.

With one final, deep thrust, Taehyung buries himself and comes. A white-hot rush that empties him completely, filling Jeongguk as they shudder together in the aftermath.

They stay like that for a moment. Taehyung is still buried deep inside him, both of them struggling to catch their breath in the close, humid air of the cubicle. The frantic energy has subsided, replaced by a heavy, pulsing stillness.

Taehyung begins to press soft, open-mouthed kisses along the nape of Jeongguk’s neck and the knobs of his spine. He doesn’t pull out. Instead, his hands slide up Jeongguk’s torso, palms flat against his heaving chest. His fingertips find Jeongguk’s nipples, still sensitive from earlier, and he rolls them gently, teasingly. 

A soft moan escapes Jeongguk's lips as Taehyung's fingers work their magic. He arches his back, pressing himself flush against Taehyung's chest. The movement causes Taehyung's still-sensitive cock to sink deeper inside him. They both groan at the renewed pressure.

Jeongguk's breathing comes in ragged pants, each inhale a shaky ah. He can feel Taehyung's cum, hot and wet, deep inside him. The knowledge that he's filled with Taehyung's cum, the slight trickle of it beginning to leak out and onto the leather of his trousers, makes him feel deliciously dirty, ravenous for more.

Lost in the sensation, Jeongguk covers Taehyung's hands with his own, guiding them, pressing them harder against his chest as the two of them caress it together.

A new hardness begins to grow inside him, pressure gathering steadily against his walls. A disbelieving laugh bubbles out of Jeongguk’s chest.

"You hard again?" he asks, breathless. "Are you a pervert or something?"

He can feel the vibrations of Taehyung's low chuckle against his back.

"No, you're just incredibly sexy." Taehyung mumbles, his lips brushing against Jeongguk's ear. "And I love you."

The last three words are whispered, a raw admission that lingers between them, more intimate than the act they’ve just shared.

Jeongguk's breath catches, a fresh wave of tears stinging his eyes as the words sink in.

“I want to see your face," he whispers, the words muffled against the wood. There's a desperate plea in his tone, but he also pushes back slightly. 

Taehyung slowly pulls back and slides out. Jeongguk hisses at the sudden emptiness inside him. His hole clenches around the void, a phantom ache where Taehyung just was.

He turns around, the movement stiff, and now he can see Taehyung’s profile; the sweat beading on his temple, the swollen curve of his lips. Their noses brush, and finds Jeongguk’s mouth in a kiss that’s nothing like the frantic ones from before.

This is gentle, searching, a quiet conversation in the aftermath of the storm. A slow, deep, and messy kiss that tastes of salt and everything that’s passed between them. Then, as they press closer, their cocks brush against each other. Hot, sticky slide of skin.

Jeongguk laughs breathlessly, in a tone of disbelief, and looks down at the space between them.

“You are really hard.”

A faint flush spreads across Taehyung’s cheeks, and this rare sight tugs at Jeongguk’s heart.

When Taehyung says, a little hoarsely, “I’ll handle it,” Jeongguk just moves closer.

He reaches for the lapels of Taehyung’s jacket and shoves it off his shoulders, letting it fall to the grimy floor. The simple white tank top he wears underneath is a stark contrast to Taehyung’s honey-coloured skin, and the sight makes Jeongguk’s mouth water.

He runs his hands over Taehyung’s arms, feeling the corded muscle beneath the warm skin.

“I can come again. You know I can.” His voice is a low, confident purr, and a clear challenge in the dim light of the cubicle.

The last vestiges of clothing become a frantic, desperate pile on the dirty floor. They’re left with nothing on.

Taehyung’s white tank top joins his jacket, followed by the rest of his clothes, kicked away without a second thought. Next is Jeongguk’s sheer shirt, which wasn’t much use anyway.

But getting those leather pants off is absolute hell—the slick, unyielding fabric fighting him every step of the way. He has to peel them down his sweat-slicked thighs, the material catching and refusing to give.

"I'm going to kill Jimin," Jeongguk mutters under his breath out of frustration, a promise that makes Taehyung chuckle even as he helps, finally yanking the offending garment free and tossing it aside.

Naked, the air feels cool against their overheated skin. The sight of Taehyung, all muscle and golden skin in the dim light, makes Jeongguk’s breath catch.

He doesn't wait.

He crowds Taehyung back against the toilet seat. Their bodies meet with a slick, sticky heat.

He claims Taehyung’s mouth in a fierce kiss, all teeth and tongue. His hands roam, relearning the familiar planes of Taehyung’s body. The curve of his waist, the hard lines of his shoulders…

He's not just touching him—he's trying to memorise him all over again, to erase the last month with his hands and his mouth.

When Taehyung’s hands come up to grip his hips, pulling him even closer and their hard cocks sliding together, Jeongguk knows this is just the beginning.

He pushes Taehyung down, and Taehyung falls back onto the closed lid of the toilet with a surprised grunt, a look of fascination and admiration in his eyes as he watches Jeongguk straddle him.

Jeongguk doesn't hesitate, swinging a leg over and climbing onto Taehyung’s lap, his knees bracketing Taehyung’s thighs. He reaches down, grips Taehyung’s hard cock, and lines it up with his rim.

In one slow movement, he sinks down, taking Taehyung in inch by inch until he’s fully seated. A guttural moan tears from both their throats at the overwhelming sensation.

He stays like that for a moment—head thrown back, body taut as a bowstring, adjusting to the deep, full feeling.

Jeongguk leans forward, bracing his hands on Taehyung’s shoulders, and begins to move slowly. This rocking grind sends waves of pleasure through him.

He captures Taehyung’s mouth in a kiss that is softer this time, more intimate, and murmurs against his lips, “I missed you so much.”

These words are more powerful than any declaration of love. They are a fragile confession, a truth.

As he lifts his hips, the burn is sharp, a reminder of their haste. A grimace of discomfort flashes across his face before he can hide it.

Taehyung notices instantly. He stills Jeongguk’s movements with a firm hand on his hip. "Wait," he breathes. His concern cuts through the haze of lust.

He shifts slightly, reaching down to where they are joined. His fingers come away slick with a mixture of lube and his own cum, a pearly white mess that coats Jeongguk’s rim and the base of his own cock.

"You're not... It's not enough." His voice is rough with a mixture of guilt and overwhelming arousal at the sight.

He uses the slickness as a starting point, gathering more of the mint-flavoured lube from the discarded tube on the floor. He coats his fingers liberally, the cool gel a stark contrast to the heat of their skin.

This time, when he presses against Jeongguk’s entrance, he does it with a gentle, insistent pressure that has Jeongguk gasping. His head falls forward onto Taehyung’s shoulder.

Taehyung works the lube into him. His fingers slide easily now, pushing the remnants of his own cum deeper. This lewd, intimate movement makes Jeongguk’s cock twitch.

"There," Taehyung murmurs against Jeongguk’s temple, his voice a low, soothing rumble. "That's better." He pulls his fingers free and grips Jeongguk’s hips again. "Ride me. Properly this time."

The command is gentle but firm, and Jeongguk is helpless to do anything but obey. He sinks back down, and this time the slide is more effortless. A smooth, slick glide causes both of them to moan in unison.

The burn is gone, replaced by a deep, satisfying stretch that has him arching his back, setting a rhythm that is slow, deep, and utterly consuming.

Jeongguk’s arms wrapped tight around Taehyung's shoulders, throws his head back and let out a long, drawn-out moan of pure pleasure.

He cries out, “There, there, there!” with each deep roll of his hips. The words are like a breathless mantra.

In response, Taehyung ducks his head, his teeth sinking into the tender skin of Jeongguk’s neck, sucking a dark, possessive hickey into the flesh.

He doesn't stop there.

He trails a path of wet, open-mouthed kisses down Jeongguk’s chest. He finds a nipple, already peaked and sensitive, and closes his lips around it. He bites down gently before sucking hard, sending a jolt of electricity straight to Jeongguk’s cock.

Taehyung helps by grabbing Jeongguk’s waist, and he grabs it so hard that Jeongguk feels it. Taehyung’s fingers dig into the soft flesh of his waist, leaving marks that will surely bloom into bruises tomorrow.

The grip is an anchor in the sea of pleasure, allowing Taehyung to control the rhythm, to pull Jeongguk down onto his cock with a brutal, punishing force that steals the air from his lungs.

Jeongguk can feel the strength in Taehyung’s hands, the power he’s holding back, and it makes him wild, makes him want to push, to see just how far he can go before Taehyung breaks.

The combined onslaught are too much. The slick, deep rhythm, the sharp sting of the hickey, the big hands on his waist, the wet pull on his nipple… It all coalesces into a wave of pleasure that crests and breaks.

Jeongguk starts screaming wildly, a series of high, desperate cries that echo off the tiled walls.

“Taehyung, Taehyung, Taehyung,” he murmurs, the name a repeated, reverent prayer.

Taehyung moves in, capturing Jeongguk’s lips with a firm kiss and silencing his cries. He bites Jeongguk’s lower lip, then soothes the pain with his tongue, taking the full lip into his mouth. This frantic gesture leaves them both breathless and craving more.

Taehyung wraps one arm around Jeongguk’s waist and slips the other under his leg, pulling him close and pressing his back against the door. They stay like that for a moment, a tangle of limbs and ragged breaths.

"Your inside keeps fluttering, and it feels so hot," Taehyung says restlessly. "You're twitching inside. It tightens up and then starts trembling again." He kisses Jeongguk briefly. "I'm so deep inside you… That feels amazing—you feel amazing."

It’s rare to be with someone who can make you feel so strong just with their words—someone whose influence on you is so powerful it could even bring you to climax. It’s something that deserves to be appreciated.

And Taehyung always makes Jeongguk feel amazing (except for that one time a month ago).

The words he spoke just a few seconds ago make him feel like he’s someone amazing and special. Like he’s the sexiest person in the world. Taehyung strokes his ego, and that’s why Jeongguk wants to make Taehyung feel exactly the same way. He wants to return the favour.

Jeongguk’s hand is moving up and down Taehyung’s biceps, feeling the corded muscle, while the other is wrapped around his neck, holding his (ex-) boyfriend as close to him as possible.

He leans in, and his lips brush against the shell of Taehyung's ear. “I love it when you fuck me like this.”

He can see Taehyung swallow hard, the muscles in his throat working.

He continues, his voice a low, provocative murmur.

“I love it when you rough me up, manhandle me. Sometimes I even say, ‘I bet I’m stronger than you,’ on purpose, just so you’ll top me. Or else I already know you’re stronger than me.”

Something snaps inside Taehyung. “Fuck—Oh my God, shit.”

The control he’s been holding onto by a thread shatters. The look in his eyes goes dark, a primal, possessive glint that makes Jeongguk’s heart pound in his chest. His hands tighten, and with a low groan, he hoists Jeongguk up, wrapping his legs around his waist.

He slams Jeongguk back against the door, the impact rattling the flimsy wood, and starts to move. The pace is brutal, relentless and punishing, stealing the air from Jeongguk’s lungs. Each thrust lands deep and hard—a clear, forceful reminder of who’s in charge.

Jeongguk’s head falls back. A silent scream catches in his throat as he’s taken, overwhelmed, consumed by the unbridled force of Taehyung’s desire.

The words, the teasing, the challenge—it all led to this. To this moment of complete and utter surrender, and Jeongguk wouldn't have it any other way.

He’s being used, fucked with a ferocity that borders on violence, and it’s everything he wanted. Taehyung’s hips snap forward, again and again, the slap of skin on skin a raw, obscene soundtrack to their desperate coupling.

Jeongguk’s fingers dig into Taehyung’s shoulders. His nails leave crescent-shaped marks in the skin, but Taehyung doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, it only fuels his frenzy.

Jeongguk moans in a high, wanton sound that echoes in the small space. "Taehyung, right there, right there!" His voice breaks on a sob. "Yes—fuck me, fuck me just like that."

The tears come. He doesn’t feel them building. They’re just suddenly there, spilling hot down his temples and into his hair as he tilts his head back.

He can’t tell if it’s the pleasure, the month or the specific, unbearable feeling of being held like this again—of Taehyung’s hands and Taehyung’s voice and missed you, missed you so bad, still ringing somewhere in his chest.

Probably all of it.

Probably all of it at once.

“Hey—” Taehyung stills immediately, pulling back to look at him. His hand comes up to his face and brushes the tears away gently, eyes searching. “You okay, baby?”

Jeongguk nods, can’t speak. His chest is too full, his eyes are still wet, and he’s a little embarrassed, but he just pulls Taehyung back down.

“Don’t stop,” he manages. Barely. “I'm okay. Please.”

Taehyung looks at him for one more second, and he presses his forehead against Jeongguk’s.

“I’m not stopping,” he says quietly. “I’ve got you.”

The lube they’re using and the fact that Taehyung’s cum is already inside Jeongguk are making squelching sounds with each brutal thrust. And somehow that’s even more arousing, like a filthy, visceral reminder of what they’re doing.

Jeongguk feels the heat building up below his stomach. Tight, coiling pressure that feels like he’s about to explode any second.

He doesn’t even notice the tears starting to stream down again his face until Taehyung leans in and kisses them away. The gesture is surprisingly tender amidst the brutality.

When he feels Taehyung’s hand close around his cock, his hole clenches involuntarily. The greedy makes Taehyung’s face scrunch up with pleasure.

Taehyung keeps fucking him hard, and when he finally feels it hit his prostate really hard, he feels a direct, blinding spark of pleasure, and he cries even more.

“Tae—Taehyung, please. Just like that—you're so deep,” he whimpers, the words a desperate, broken plea. Tears stream down his face as he screams. “Taehyung—there, there, there!” he chants, trying to push his hips against Taehyung’s cock, and seeking more of that mind-numbing pressure.

He comes as Taehyung strokes his cock, the hard, fast pull milking him dry, his cum painting both their stomachs.

He feels as if all the energy in his muscles has suddenly drained away, leaving him limp and boneless in Taehyung’s arms, but Taehyung hasn’t finished yet. So, while running one hand over his (again, ex-) boyfriend’s chest, he murmurs dirty words into his ear. He tries not to moan or scream anymore—his throat hurts a little.

“You’re fucking me so well, I can feel you everywhere,” he feels Taehyung’s breath grow even rougher against his skin. “Come inside me, come so much that I’ll be leaking your cum for days,” he mewls, and Taehyung lets out a loud groan as he cums inside Jeongguk. It rushes through him, hot and powerful, seeming to go on forever as it fills him until he’s overflowing.

Their foreheads touch, the tacky sweat on their skin making them stick together for a moment. They breathe in and out together. The scent of sex and sweat hangs thick in the air, clinging to their skin like an intimate perfume.

They kiss briefly, and it's almost a chaste press of lips that is a stark contrast to the frantic, desperate coupling of moments before. It's a moment of quiet communion, a shared understanding.

Just as Taehyung is about to pull out of Jeongguk, he wraps his arms tighter around Taehyung’s neck, holding him in place.

He squeezes his hole, and the sudden clench makes Taehyung gasp, his whole body going tense.

“Don’t pull out yet, stay inside me,” Jeongguk’s voice is low, raspy whisper and the words sound like a raw, possessive plea.

The request is a shocking, intimate declaration that makes Taehyung's breath hitch.

Taehyung curses. “Stop saying shit like that.” His voice thick with arousal.

The words are a feeble attempt to maintain control, but they're undermined by the way his hips jerk forward, sinking deeper into Jeongguk's heat, a betrayal of his body's desires.

Jeongguk laughs. A breathy, disbelieving sound that is half whine, half chuckle.

The vibration travels through Taehyung’s body.

Jeongguk tightens his legs around Taehyung’s waist, holding him close. It's a silent challenge in the way he looks at him, a dare to stay, to stay right here, in this moment, in this filthy, beautiful intimacy that they've created.

He’s not just asking him to stay inside him. He's asking him to stay, period.

And from the look on Taehyung's face, he knows he understands.

Taehyung curses again. The breathless profanities are a testament to his unravelling control.

Taehyung manages a few shaky steps back, sinking onto the closed lid of the toilet without ever pulling out of Jeongguk. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, trying to catch his breath as his chest heaves.

But Jeongguk has other plans.

He starts grinding lightly, rolling his hips in a slow rhythm that makes Taehyung’s eyes fly open.

Jeongguk presses both hands against Taehyung’s chest for leverage, biting his lower lip in a way he knows drives Taehyung insane.

Taehyung’s hands instantly fly to Jeongguk’s hips, trying to still the movement. "Stop it."

His voice was a strained, breathless command. It's a half-hearted protest, and they both know it.

Jeongguk puckers his lips, the pout teasing yet utterly sincere.

"I just missed you."

An honest confession that disarms Taehyung completely. His grip on Jeongguk's hips loosens, his resolve crumbling.

He’s a goner, and he knows it. He's completely and utterly at Jeongguk's mercy, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Taehyung’s hands slide from Jeongguk’s hips to his back, pulling him closer in a silent surrender. He leans in, capturing Jeongguk’s lips in a kiss.

It’s a kiss full of unspoken apologies and promises, silently acknowledging the pain they’ve both caused and the longing that has brought them back together.

The tension in Taehyung’s shoulders eases, his body relaxing into the embrace as a clear sign he’s given up the fight. He’s lost the battle, and he’s more than happy to accept defeat.

When they finally pull apart, Taehyung's mouth is swollen, his eyes are soft, and for a second, neither of them says anything.

"I'll do this with you until morning," Taehyung says, his thumb tracing the line of Jeongguk's jaw. "But not here."

Jeongguk blinks and looks around.

It hits him in stages. The fluorescent light is buzzing overhead. The graffiti on the cubicle wall—someone named Minho was here, apparently, and had thoughts about it.

The floor, which is sort of wet in a way that Jeongguk is choosing not to investigate. The faint smell of industrial cleaner and something worse underneath it.

His face twists with disgust. "Oh, my God."

Taehyung laughs, bright and startled out of him, and leans forward, pressing a kiss to the centre of Jeongguk's chest.

The gesture is small, warm and completely at odds with their surroundings, which is maybe the point.

Jeongguk’s hand comes up to the back of Taehyung’s head without thinking, fingers threading through his hair as he holds him there a second longer than necessary.

He makes no move to get up. He's still determined to keep him aroused, refusing to get off Taehyung’s lap or make a move to pull his cock out.

But he knows—in the practical, logistical part of his brain—that they need to move, separate, and deal with the leather pants situation, which is going to be an engineering challenge in the other direction.

But there's a stubborn part of him that isn't ready yet. That wants to stay exactly here, in this terrible fluorescent-lit bathroom stall, because the alternative is standing up and re-entering a world where things are complicated again.

And because he can feel Taehyung still half-hard inside him, and he is not above using that as leverage.

He shifts his hips, just slightly. Taehyung's breath catches.

"Don't," Taehyung says, but his hands tighten on Jeongguk's waist.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're doing exactly something."

Jeongguk looks at him—innocent, wide-eyed, a performance so transparent it's almost insulting—and shifts again. Taehyung's jaw clenches, his fingers dig in, and Jeongguk files this away as a victory.

But eventually, a minute, maybe two, maybe long enough for the song bleeding through the walls to change twice, he pulls back.

"Come home with me," Jeongguk murmurs.

It lands differently than it would have an hour ago. An hour ago, it would have been an invitation. Now it's something closer to a decision.

Taehyung looks at him. "Yeah?"

"We'll talk," Jeongguk says it simply, like it's obvious, like it's the easiest thing in the world and not the thing they've both been failing to do for weeks.

His fingers find the hair at the nape of Taehyung’s neck. He plays with it absentmindedly, an automatic gesture. It’s the kind of thing someone does without thinking, something done a thousand times without ever learning how to stop.

"You're going to tell me why you broke up with me. And why you didn't even call."

Taehyung opens his mouth. Jeongguk can see it forming—the reflex, the defence that's been sitting all night like a wall neither of them built on purpose.

Jeongguk narrows his eyes. He brings his index finger up to Taehyung's lips and presses it there, gentle but firm.

"Shh. Shut up."

Taehyung's eyebrows climb.

"And for the record," Jeongguk says, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly tone, "I called you."

Taehyung’s eyebrows knit together in genuine shock. He looks as if he is processing a truth he never expected to hear. "What?"

"Don't drive me crazy, for God's sake," Jeongguk snaps, a flicker of frustration dancing in his eyes. "I called you exactly two days after you broke up with me."

A dry, disbelieving laugh escapes Taehyung’s lips. He turns his head away and rolls his eyes. Before he can retreat, Jeongguk’s hand moves fast. His fingers hook under Taehyung’s chin, forcing him to look back.

"Did you just roll your eyes at me?" Jeongguk asks. There is no heat in his voice, only a weary bluntness.

Taehyung doesn't pull away. His gaze remains sharp as he challenges him. "Do you even remember why you called, then?"

Jeongguk opens his mouth to answer, but Taehyung cuts him off before he can speak.

"You called to ask for my dorm address," Taehyung says. His voice sounds upset. "To send my stuff back."

Jeongguk lets out an incredulous breath. "Yes, but—why on earth do I call just for that? I would've just texted. Besides, I know your dorm address. I sent you gifts like… I don't know, at least thirty-five times before."

Taehyung freezes. The silence stretches between them as his defence collapses. His shoulders drop, gaze falling to the floor, and his face does the thing: mouth turning down, expression gone soft, sulky and a little miserable. He looks, honestly, like a pouting child.

"I just couldn't think straight," he mumbles. Head still down. "Back then."

Jeongguk watches him for a beat before he speaks again.

"I am going to explain," Jeongguk says. "You are going to listen. Then you are going to explain, and I am going to listen, and we are going to do it like adults who are capable of communication, which apparently we are not, but we are going to try." He removes his finger from his face. "Okay?"

"Okay," Taehyung whispers.

"I—I want us to work, Tae. I don't want to lose you again."

Taehyung freezes, as if he didn't expect this from Jeongguk. And he's right, because Jeongguk isn't exactly the type to say things like that.

Jeongguk’s fingers are still in his hair, moving in that absent, automatic way. He looks somewhere just past Taehyung’s shoulder when he speaks, because looking directly at him for this part is… a lot. Even now.

“This month was,” he stops, then tries again. “It was bad. It was really bad.” His jaw tightens slightly. “And I know—I know you were the one who ended it, I know that. But I also know that I—” He exhales through his nose. “I hurt you a lot. In a lot of small ways that probably didn’t feel small.”

He is delivering this speech like a boardroom negotiation from Taehyung's lap with his cock still inside him, in a bathroom cubicle. It's ridiculous.

"So—wait.” Jeongguk pauses. The new thought occurs to him. He looks around as if he just remembered where he is. "We didn't get our free drinks."

Taehyung starts laughing this time.

Not the careful kind, not the one Jeongguk had watched from across the room and tried not to care about.

This one is loud, sudden and completely graceless. The kind that crinkles his whole face and makes him throw his head back, and Jeongguk watches it happen from six inches away and thinks, oh, there you are.

That's the laugh he'd been missing. The one that doesn't perform, doesn't charm, doesn't try.

The one that's just Taehyung. Unfiltered, caught off guard, delighted by something stupid.

Taehyung cups his face with both hands, still laughing, and kisses him on the mouth. It's brief, warm and tastes like the smile he hasn't finished yet.

"We'll get our free drinks," Taehyung says against his lips.

Jeongguk looks at him. At the smile, he hasn’t finished yet, at the hands still warm on his face.

The ace of hearts he’d traded away, and the person who’d come to find him anyway.