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The dream landscape is so vivid, lucid, Taehyung knows what he’s doing. He’s running, running after a young teenage boy. The boy’s laughter resonates in the silent, still air and Taehyung’s heart pangs. He’s so happy, so happy.
“Hyung!” Jungkook calls chirpily and Taehyung replies with a lazy ‘what?”
“You have to run faster!” Jungkook shouts cheerfully, his eyes crescents as Taehyung slows to a stop.
But that dream landscape is taken away as quickly as it comes. Taehyung feels a jarring pain in his abdomen and when he coughs, he coughs blood .
The sun is a scorching ball of fire as Taehyung lays on the mattress in the empty field. That’s where Yoongi had asked him to meet. That’s where no one could ever find out what they were to talk about. The bushes surrounding rustle and Taehyung is shaken harshly.
“They are after me,” Yoongi says. Taehyung understands. He knows what Yoongi is talking about. But he doesn’t anticipate what comes next. “Take care of my baby brother, please. It’s a debt so big I can only owe you my life. He’s done nothing wrong. He’s innocent and I don’t... I don’t want him to be tangled in my mess.”
Taehyung contemplates the situation. Yoongi is quick to speak again. “I’ve told him that my friend would come pick him up from school this afternoon. Please do me this favour. He’d be waiting.”
“I’m sorry,” Yoongi mumbles quietly. “I have to go.”
That could have meant that he is going to leave, but it also meant that he is going to set the house on fire. So that they wouldn’t find him. The gang that he owed money to, wouldn’t find him.
Taehyung waits outside the school gates. It’s a quiet school, not attended by many and if he were to compare himself to a student, he’d look like a criminal. The school bell goes and a stream of students flow out from the gates. Jungkook identifies Taehyung easily. How could he not? Taehyung looks just like his own brother.
“You must be Yoongi hyung’s friend,” Jungkook states and Taehyung acknowledges his statement with a slight nod.
“These are your friends?” Taehyung asks, referring to a group of boys just behind Jungkook. The younger boy nods energetically.
“Yes! This is Jimin and these three, Hoseok, Namjoon and Seokjin are my hyungs,” Jungkook smiles. His cheery attitude pushes Taehyung off the edge slightly, it gets annoying after a while and Taehyung is feeling that annoyance set in the pit of his stomach.
“Why did hyung ask me to stay with you?” Jungkook asks, breaking the formidable silence he and Taehyung shares as they walk to the bus station.
“No reason,” Taehyung shrugs. Surely he couldn’t tell Jungkook, a mere 14 year old that his only relative is going to commit suicide, could he? “Maybe he just wants to be alone.”
“What do you mean? He’s never complained being with me,” Jungkook says, almost sadly.
“I don’t know! Okay? Please. Just stop asking questions. He’s an adult, he can do whatever he wants,” Taehyung retorts. That includes dying, Taehyung wants to add but doesn’t. Jungkook cowers when Taehyung yells at him. That’s definitely a bad start.
Every little thing about Jungkook irks Taehyung but he couldn’t let the boy affect him. He couldn’t let Jungkook be a part of his messed up life too. The way Jungkook smiles, the way he brings himself to accept the reality, it irks Taehyung that... that... someone could be this positive. Taehyung can never understand why he has to do what he does, he can never see the big picture, he lives his life day by day, accepting his fate with Jungkook.
Ever since Taehyung has begun taking care of Jungkook, the boy has stopped attending school all together. Taehyung glances at Jungkook writing at the desk. He is engrossed in writing in the book he carries around, his expression is so concentrated that Taehyung doesn’t want to stop him from writing.
But he asks, “What are you doing?”
“Writing,” Jungkook replies quietly. “Writing a letter to hyung.”
Taehyung chuckles tiredly. “He would never receive it, Jungkook. When will you ever stop?”
“I won’t,” Jungkook answers firmly. “I know he will get it and he will come back to me.”
“How would you know that?” Taehyung shakes his head. The fact that he’s so determined, that alone makes Taehyung want to drive a stake through his heart and get out of this life. One day, you just let go, right?
It has been three years since Yoongi had asked Taehyung to take care of Jungkook. Jungkook has matured, has turned 17, Taehyung, 23. That spirit he has in him, has had since the day Yoongi left, still remains and Taehyung has learnt to love it. Taehyung has learnt to love every single thing about Jungkook, has learnt to cherish every flaw the boy possesses, has learnt to love the boy’s determined spirit, his entire existence.
Their faces are close, Taehyung dominating the younger’s lithe frame. Jungkook meets Taehyung’s lustful gaze, his palm warm on Taehyung’s cool cheek. Their lips connect in a heated kiss, Jungkook’s cheeks are flushed as Taehyung pries his lips apart with his tongue. It’s a languid kiss, tongues sliding erotically along each other, as Taehyung pushes himself against Jungkook.
Their lips are swollen and throbbing and coated with the other’s spit as they stare at each other. It has never been more than making out, never gone further. Taehyung would never hurt Jungkook, he would never try to hurt him physically or emotionally, never breach his walls no matter how much Jungkook would want it. He couldn’t bear to tear him apart. Jungkook is his, will always be his.
Jungkook has learnt to love the brash boy who had sacrificed his delinquent life to protect him. He has learnt to appreciate the silence he is always met with when with Taehyung. He has learnt to love how Taehyung doesn’t talk much, every answer he gives is short and to the point. There are never long stories, there is never anything to talk about and Jungkook doesn’t complain. Because for him, Taehyung has given up his youth. His young adulthood.
Jungkook has finally accepted the fact that Yoongi would never return. That Yoongi had left him with Taehyung without a word. Jungkook can’t connect why Yoongi would ever do that to him. The Yoongi who’d sung lullabies to him so he’d sleep, the Yoongi who’d read stories to him so he’d fall asleep.
Taehyung accompanies Jungkook everywhere he goes, he even follows when Jungkook hangs out with his friends. Seokjin, Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin? That bunch. They love the sea, it’s where they always sit and talk and Taehyung can admit that it’s nice to hear the waves crash ashore.
Seokjin always has a camcorder with him and he’s always recording anything the group does. Today they are sitting by the sea, playing truth and dare, the dare being to climb to the top of the structure and climb back down.
The mouth of the bottle lands on Jungkook and he quickly says, “Truth.”
“Do you have any crushes?” Jimin asks. Oh, the classic question. It is always asked once, sometimes more in every game of truth and dare.
“Not exactly,” Jungkook says. “I can’t call him a crush since I’m already in a relationship with him. You could all easily guess who he is.”
“Taehyung?” Jimin raises a brow. “It must be, right? You two are close.”
Taehyung chuckles. “I can’t say you’re wrong about that.”
It’s been half a decade since Yoongi left Jungkook in the hands of Taehyung. Jungkook is 19, Taehyung is 25. Each year passes monotonously, the name ‘Yoongi’ long forgotten. Jungkook has travelled to more than half of the states in Korea, never outside the country, only within, always on the run to keep safe. Each time they run, they’d always return, always one day when Jungkook could spend some time with his friends. Taehyung could never deprive him of that. They still did share their intimate moments, that never died.
This time, the group sits around a fire. Jungkook lies in Seokjin’s lap, the elder guy filming him up close once every few minutes. Taehyung speaks, the rest nod. No words are shared over the bonfire, just silence, a silence much needed by all.
Polaroids are taken, the pictures developing quickly from the heat of the fire, all chucked into someone’s pocket. They are never checked to see if the image has developed, just taken to capture the moment shared by everyone.
“It’s a harsh world,” Taehyung says. The others agree in nods.
“We,” he begins again. “Need to survive.”
That very night, Taehyung and Jungkook engage in their own activity, the sounds from their lips in contact, loud in contrast to the still air. Their lips meet and pull, the same action repeated over time, as they kiss the night away. The chill air blows in once every few minutes but they keep each other warm.
It has come to a point in their relationship that Taehyung can’t understand why he does what he does to Jungkook. The kissing at night, the close contact. He had never had that in his life until Jungkook had come along. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he’d learnt: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed. To love is to destroy, to love is to destroy, the very overused quote but Taehyung can relate to it well. He has always foreseen the day when Jungkook would succumb to the pain Taehyung had caused him, though until now, Taehyung holds his boundaries. He forces himself to control and not inflict pain on Jungkook, though the want, the need to, surges through his veins.
Jungkook is just another human that has walked into his life. He could never understand the pain Taehyung goes through, just trying to think straight for once. It makes Taehyung want to become a hermit, a mute lost boy who could never gain direction ever again. That is and has always been how Taehyung lived, using the love he and Jungkook shared as energy.
The dream landscape is so vivid, lucid, Taehyung knows what he’s doing. He’s running, running after a young teenage boy. The boy’s laughter resonates in the silent, still air and Taehyung’s heart pangs. He’s so happy, so happy.
“Hyung!” Jungkook calls chirpily and Taehyung replies with a lazy ‘what?”
“You have to run faster!” Jungkook shouts cheerfully, his eyes crescents as Taehyung slows to a stop.
But that dream landscape is taken away as quickly as it comes. It’s not Jungkook whom he stabs in his dream. Because when Taehyung feels the jarring pain in his abdomen, he realizes it’s not Jungkook who’s dying. It’s him. He holds up the polaroid he had chucked into his pocket nights back. Jimin isn’t posing with him. Neither is Jungkook in the second one. Nor Namjoon or Seokjin in the third. It is then Taehyung realizes that none of this ever existed. There is− was no one by those names. Jeon Jungkook, Min Yoongi, Park Jimin, Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Jung Hoseok. There were no such people. All of them had been a figment of Taehyung’s imagination. Taehyung had grown up without parents, a true orphan, seeing as to the fact that he’d run from the orphanage. And being on the run constantly made him go mad, it made him go crazy.
The empty field that Taehyung had met Yoongi at, that didn’t exist. The place by the sea where they had played truth and dare, there was no such place.
Everything, every single thing had been Taehyung’s imagination. And he lies in an abandoned alley, clutching his abdomen, the blood staining his hands uncontrollably. This is the end, there is no more he can do. To love is to destroy, they say. And that is true. To love oneself, is to destroy oneself.
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