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It’s quiet, save for the ruffle of the bag when Jeongguk throws it into a corner of the room.
“We should be safe here for a few,” he says, hushed, looking over his shoulder at the boy who stands at the entrance of the room. “Rest well, yeah? We leave early tomorrow, so make sure to sleep enough.”
The words are foreign on his tongue, since being concerned isn’t really an emotion Jeongguk is accustomed to feeling. He finds that it weighs down heavy on his bones, like an ever-present lethargy settling into his ribs, making it difficult to breathe.
His suffocation only mitigates when Taehyung catches gazes with him, and in the perpetual darkness of hell, no matter how afraid he may be, Taehyung still scintillates like a firefly at sea under a stormy sky. He smiles.
It’s not a happy smile, going by the way his throat bobs immediately afterwards, but Jeongguk will take what he can get.
“Okay,” Taehyung whispers, taking in their hotel room. It’s not the fanciest, considering ‘hotels’ in hell are only utilised for casual sex, hookups, and not extended periods of stay. Jeongguk feels a little guilty for having his angel grace such a shameful location, but he has no other choice. “Thank you.”
“Tae, why,” Jeongguk shakes his head, and he hasn’t been able to speak freely ever since… it happened. A guilty conscience is one of the most torturous things to be subjected to, and Jeongguk has found himself drowning deeper into a pit of despair ever since he saw Taehyung be ripped of what made him, him. “Why are you thanking me?”
Taehyung tugs on Jeongguk’s sleeve, and Jeongguk shuts his eyes at the pleasant buzz that runs through his skin at the touch. He lets himself be pulled closer.
“If it weren’t for you,” Taehyung furrows his brows, looking to the ground, searching for answers, “they would’ve left me to die.”
“Don’t fucking—” Jeongguk runs his hands through his hair, his scoff holding little back from how convoluted he’s feeling right now. He pulls Taehyung close, pressed up against his chest, and tucks his nose into his neck.
Breathes.
“Don’t you ever fucking say that again,” he says, fingers quivering, and Taehyung is so impossibly warm against his numb body that Jeongguk can’t help but want him closer yet. Till he’s taken all of Taehyung in, till there’s nothing left.
He ensures to not accidentally brush his fingers by the partially healed wounds on Taehyung’s back.
“It was my fault, anyways,” Jeongguk continues, his angel crumpling within his hold and growing smaller and smaller with each passing moment. “You fell because of my sins. It’s my fault.”
“It hurts,” Taehyung chokes out, voice watery and so, so broken. “It hurts so much.”
Jeongguk pulls back, but does not separate from him. Something akin to acid sits on his tongue when he notices those tears clinging to Taehyung’s lashes, and he can’t help but mourn how long he must’ve been keeping them in. How he held them back through the pain, through escaping from heaven and eluding to hell. His otherwise glowing features have now dulled down, and his tears leave behind pink cheeks, hollow eyes.
Jeongguk aches for him, but he doesn’t know how to make it better. He’s never had to in the past.
For now, he settles on cupping Taehyung’s face, wiping those tears away with his thumbs.
“I know, angel,” Jeongguk says to him, soft, kissing both his eyelids one-by-one. “I know.”
“And it looks so u-ugly,” Taehyung musters, his breaths coming to him in small spurts, eyes wide and he keeps trying to bury away in Jeongguk’s clothes, to look away but Jeongguk isn’t having any of that. He can’t, now that he finally has him. “Everything looks so ugly now. Why are you even—?”
“Taehyung,” Jeongguk says, firm, tilting his head up so that he has no option but to look him in the eyes. Silver to black. Big, round, tear stricken ones into hesitant, angry, smitten ones. “I love you because you are beautiful not only in appearance, but mind and soul as well. Your wings were beautiful, but so are you.”
Taehyung’s eyelashes flutter, and another tear manages to sneak past his glimmering lashes.
Jeongguk’s heart clenches.
“But I was an angel.”
He’s whispering again, and past wobbly lips does Jeongguk manage to muster a smile of his own. It’s melancholic, but Jeongguk hopes Taehyung cannot see the traces of sadness behind it.
He places his hand on Taehyung’s heart, which beats rhythmically, in harmony with his own speeding one. “You will forever be my angel.” Then, knocking their foreheads together softly, he goes to take off Taehyung’s beanie which had been hiding his identity, albeit poorly. “Not to mention, all this pretty hair, and—”
Taehyung’s hair falls into his eyes, so soft, silken grey and Jeongguk has to take a moment to himself. This predicament they’re in is hardly comfortable, and Jeongguk’s instincts are telling him to flee, to leave this boy behind. To fend for himself, he’s the prince of darkness, after all.
But then he’s stealing another glance at Taehyung, and is reminded of why he can’t bring himself to leave.
Taehyung is undoubtedly the most beautiful thing Jeongguk has had the pleasure of laying his eyes on, and he will battle all nine circles of hell before anyone lays another fucking finger on him. Before anyone dares to even look at him.
His bangs curl prettily across his forehead, and at this moment, Jeongguk wants nothing more for everything to go back to the way it was once.
When the two of them hadn’t been found out. When Jeongguk could lay by Taehyung’s windowsill in heaven, disguised, smug, and could steal kisses from the flustered angel
In the midnight darkness, Taehyung’s halo still flickers. It’s intact for the most part, cracked at one side though that’s subject to heal itself soon enough. “And your halo. What’s an angel without a halo, hm?”
“I guess,” Taehyung says, eyes peering into Jeongguk’s, and every time he blinks faint specks of glitter fall to his cheeks. Even now, when they’re on the run from people who could very well put them to death. Even now, after he’s fallen and he’s in the arms of a deceitful demon, he blushes. Because Taehyung is just so infuriatingly, unintentionally innocent like that. Then his lips part in a wet, soft exhale, and Jeongguk is just a creature.
He can’t be expected to not want in the face of a beauty such as Taehyung.
“Um.” But it appears that Taehyung has nothing more to say, because he curls his fingers into the lapels of Jeongguk’s shirt and kisses him.
It would be impossible for an outsider to tell where Jeongguk’s body ends and Taehyung’s begins, the two of them tucked against each other, pressed into the shadows. Jeongguk’s wings almost instinctively close around them when Taehyung shivers in his embrace, and he pulls away with glassy eyes, although just barely.
Jeongguk’s body thrums, and he has to restrict himself when Taehyung’s tongue darts out to wet his already glossy lips. Jeongguk scratches his nails through his scalp, watching intently.
“I feel dirty,” Taehyung tells him, frowning. “Bloody. Is there a shower here, or?”
Jeongguk shuts his eyes momentarily, because Taehyung doesn’t even fucking realise the power his words hold over him. He shivers. “Yeah.” Then, after a brief pause, “you want me to bathe you, baby?”
Taehyung hums, resting his head against Jeongguk’s chest which thumps erratically under his skin. “Please.”
Which is how Jeongguk finds himself with a lapful of Taehyung in the bath, stray hickies on Taehyung’s neck to which he pleads guilty. Steam rises and sticks to their bodies, and Jeongguk unwraps his arms from where they were previously encasing Taehyung’s waist.
They should be sleeping. Jeongguk, however, can’t find it within himself to let go of Taehyung.
He rubs his palm over the small of Taehyung’s back, kissing at his nape apologetically when he winces.
Then, does he confront the elephant in the room.
“Tae-ah…” Jeongguk says, water hitting the edges of the tub and threatening to overflow when Taehyung runs his hands through it. It flows gently, the sound comforting. “Can I—?”
Taehyung doesn’t know what Jeongguk’s referring to, but he has a faint idea. Trepidation sits in his throat like a knot, not letting him inhale deeply, but he trusts Jeongguk.
Trusts him with his life. So he answers, “yeah.”
And is pleasantly surprised when he feels the faintest brush of lips over the most sensitive part of his wounds, but it’s light enough to not hurt. Just barely enough to feel, and Taehyung’s fingers tighten on the edges of the tub as he lowers his head.
Warmth, light at the end of the tunnel, and unexpected adoration flood his being as he attempts to keep the trembling to a minimum.
And as Jeongguk makes his way down Taehyung’s back, kissing ever so lightly over the scarring skin, Taehyung cries. This time around, it’s not out of insecurity, but out of love.