Work Text:
It started with a tap against the windowpane.
Soft. Barely there. But in the hush of 2:07 a.m., it might as well have been thunder.
Taehyung blinked up from his bed, sketchbook still open on his lap, charcoal dust smeared across the side of his hand. The glow of his lamp cast golden shadows across his wall. He hadn’t drawn much—just lines, restless and jagged, like the rhythm of his thoughts. Another tap.
He knew who it was before he even moved.
Crossing the room with the practiced stillness of someone too used to sneaking around, Taehyung peeled back the curtain—and there he was.
Jeon Jeongguk. Hoodie up. A bruise blooming just beneath his cheekbone. His lip split and crusted dark at the corner. And still—still—he grinned like sin.
“Open up,” Jeongguk mouthed through the glass, tapping again, softer this time. Like they weren’t on the fourth floor. Like he hadn’t climbed a rusted fire escape with blood on his mouth just to see him.
Taehyung rolled his eyes, but his heart was already beating too fast.
Sliding the window up, he leaned on the sill. “You’re gonna fall and break your neck one of these days.”
Jeongguk shrugged. “Worth it.”
Taehyung didn’t let himself react, didn’t let it show how those two words caught low in his throat. Worth it. Worth him.
“Come out,” Jeongguk said, voice just a rasp in the wind. “Let’s go.”
Taehyung looked at him for a long moment. At the busted lip, the bloodied knuckles. The storm in his eyes.
He didn’t ask what happened. He never did.
Instead, he grabbed his jacket and swung a leg over the sill.
The cold bit at his skin as he climbed out, metal groaning beneath their weight. They didn’t speak. Jeongguk just tugged him forward, fingers curling around Taehyung’s wrist like he’d been waiting for him.
They disappeared down the stairs together, into the night, into the hum of a city that never slept.
Just like them.
They walked without a word, side by side beneath flickering streetlamps and rusted signage, down sidewalks stained by old rain and neon. The city felt half-asleep around them, yawning open in alleys and glowing convenience store windows, and it was only in this hour — when the noise died down — that Taehyung felt like he could hear the sound of Jeongguk breathing beside him.
Jeongguk’s knuckles were worse in the light. Purple and raw.
Taehyung shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “So,” he said eventually, voice low. “Was it someone we know this time?”
Jeongguk smirked without turning. “Some guy at the club. Thought I was looking at his girl.”
“Were you?”
“Was looking past her.”
“To what?”
Jeongguk looked over then — lip bleeding a little again from the grin he couldn’t seem to hold back. “To you.”
Taehyung rolled his eyes hard, trying not to smile. “You’re an idiot.”
“You keep coming with me.”
A beat. Taehyung inhaled, sharp through his nose. “I know.”
The fluorescent glow of the gas station spilled over them as they stepped inside, the hum of machines and refrigeration units the only soundtrack. They shared a Sprite in a plastic bottle. Jeongguk tipped it to his mouth with one hand and leaned back against the vending machine, looking like he belonged in the pages of something Taehyung would never admit to reading—hood pulled low, bruises fresh, eyes too bright.
Taehyung watched a drop of soda trail from the corner of his mouth, catching against the cut in his lip.
He reached forward, thumb brushing it away slowly. Intimately.
Jeongguk stilled.
His breath hitched almost imperceptibly, but Taehyung noticed. He always noticed.
“Does it hurt?” Taehyung asked softly, eyes lingering on the bruises he couldn’t stop memorizing.
Jeongguk shrugged. “Not when you do that.”
Taehyung’s hand hovered a little longer than it should. Neither of them moved. The space between them folded in close, too warm for a gas station. Too charged.
“I hate this,” Taehyung said finally.
“I know.”
“You could stop.”
“I know.”
Silence fell again—like a secret passed between them. Then Jeongguk tipped his head slightly and said, like it was the easiest thing in the world:
“Run with me.”
Taehyung stared at him. The question was too big and too small all at once. He could have said no. He should’ve.
Instead, he drained the rest of the Sprite and tossed the bottle in the bin.
Then, simply: “Where to?”
Jeongguk’s grin returned, wild and boyish.
“Anywhere.”
The car wasn’t theirs.
It was parked too neatly, keys carelessly left inside a glovebox, like it wanted to be taken. Jeongguk slid into the driver’s seat without hesitation, metal rings clinking against the wheel, while Taehyung climbed in beside him, heart already thudding with that familiar cocktail of fear and adrenaline.
They didn’t speak as the engine roared to life, didn’t speak as Jeongguk laughed — wild and breathless — and peeled out of the gas station lot like something inside him was burning too hot to contain.
It was always like this.
They ran.
Not because they were chasing anything — not really — but because standing still felt like drowning.
Taehyung leaned his head against the passenger window, streetlights smearing gold across his skin as they sped down the empty highway. His hand drifted to the center console — and Jeongguk’s hand was already there.
They didn’t look at each other.
Their fingers just tangled, knuckles brushing, hearts matching beat for beat.
It hadn’t started out this way.
They were just two boys in the same Intro to Lit class, months ago — both always late, always tired, always quietly angry at things they didn’t talk about. Jeongguk with bruises that never had stories. Taehyung with silence that filled the room.
They’d kissed for the first time behind the dorms, drunk off cheap beer and freedom, laughing too loudly to notice they were being watched. Jeongguk had said, “You’re not scared?” and Taehyung had whispered, “Of what?” and that was that.
They stopped asking questions after that night.
Maybe love was never soft with them. Maybe it was all sharp edges and sprinting hearts and whispered apologies in the dark. But it was real.
It was all they had.
“Pull over,” Taehyung said quietly, and Jeongguk did, skidding to a stop under a lonely overpass with nothing but trees around them.
The world was quiet again.
Jeongguk leaned back in the seat, chest rising and falling too fast, and Taehyung turned to look at him — really look at him.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
Jeongguk gave a soft, breathy laugh. “Adrenaline.”
Taehyung’s gaze dropped to Jeongguk’s hand resting on his thigh — tattooed fingers twitching slightly. He reached over and curled his own fingers around Jeongguk’s wrist, feeling the throb of his pulse.
“I hate this,” Taehyung murmured, echoing the words from earlier. “I hate that you get like this.”
“I know.”
“And I hate that I still get in the car with you.”
Jeongguk turned to face him, expression open and raw. “Then why do you?”
Taehyung was quiet for a long moment.
Then: “Because I love you. Stupid.”
Jeongguk froze, mouth parting, eyes wide. “You—”
“You heard me.”
It wasn’t the first time either of them had said it. But it still always felt like a crash when it came out — like slamming into something too fast and deciding not to care about the wreckage.
Jeongguk’s hand came up slowly, thumb brushing against the sharp edge of Taehyung’s jaw.
“I love you too.”
And then, finally, he kissed him.
Soft at first, impossibly gentle for someone who never did anything halfway. But it didn’t stay gentle for long. It never did with them.
Taehyung climbed over the console, straddling him in the narrow backseat, fingers tugging at the edges of Jeongguk’s hoodie. Their kisses turned urgent, breath hitching in the quiet, heat curling under their skin like something inevitable.
Because this was always where it led. To this: bruised mouths and clumsy gasps and the space between I hate this and I love you too much to stop.
They fell asleep tangled together in the backseat, clothes rumpled, windows fogged, Jeongguk’s hoodie pulled halfway over Taehyung’s bare shoulder.
Outside, the world was beginning to stir — faint birdsong, the hum of distant traffic, the first blush of dawn stretching over the sky like a held breath.
Inside the car, it was quiet. Too quiet.
Taehyung blinked awake first. His body ached. His skin was warm where Jeongguk’s arm curled protectively around his waist, chest pressed to his back like an anchor. For a moment, he didn’t move.
Then he shifted just enough to look at Jeongguk’s sleeping face.
He looked younger like this. Softer. The bruises didn’t seem as harsh in the pale morning light. His lips were parted, breath steady. Vulnerable in a way he never allowed himself to be when awake.
Taehyung reached out and brushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead.
A memory flickered through him — their first night on the rooftop. The cigarette Jeongguk had offered with a smirk. The way he’d said, “You don’t seem like you belong here either.”
They were seventeen. Too young to be this reckless. Too old to pretend it didn’t mean something.
Taehyung looked down at the hoodie he was still wearing — Jeongguk’s, oversized and warm, the one he always wore after a bad night. He pulled it tighter around himself, fingers curling in the sleeves.
There would be fallout when they returned.
They always came back with something broken — a warning call from the dorm, a missed class, sometimes worse. Taehyung’s phone buzzed somewhere in his pocket, probably with his name on a missing list again. He didn’t check it.
Jeongguk stirred then, groaning softly, eyes still closed as he shifted beneath Taehyung.
“Mmh… morning?” he rasped, voice rough with sleep.
“Yeah.”
A beat.
Jeongguk cracked one eye open. “Did we crash the car?”
“No.”
“Steal anything else?”
“Just my time.”
Jeongguk chuckled — low and tired — and pulled Taehyung back against his chest. “Still worth it.”
Taehyung let out a long breath, then whispered, “Why do we keep doing this, Gguk?”
Jeongguk didn’t answer right away. Just rested his chin on Taehyung’s shoulder and stared out at the sunrise.
“Because no one else gets it,” he said finally. “No one else gets me the way you do.”
Taehyung turned his head slightly. Their eyes met. “And if we get caught?”
Jeongguk smiled faintly. “Then we run again.”
Taehyung shook his head — but he didn’t disagree.
Because the truth was, they’d already tried playing it safe. Tried doing things the right way. It never stuck.
The world had always told them they were too much — too loud, too strange, too full of fire. But together, they weren’t too much. Together, they just were.
Jeongguk leaned in and kissed him — slow this time, no rush, no noise. Just lips against lips in the quiet.
“I’m yours,” he said into the space between them. “Always have been.”
Taehyung smiled.
And for the first time in a long while, he believed it would be okay.
Maybe they didn’t know where they were going. Maybe love wasn’t always safe or soft.
But it was theirs.
And that was enough.
Bonus scene:
The dorm rooftop always smelled like old tar and burnt coffee from the vending machine downstairs. No one came up here anymore — except them.
Taehyung dangled his legs over the ledge, hoodie sleeves pushed halfway up his arms, a melting popsicle in one hand. The sky was streaked pink and gold behind him, the sun slipping slowly into the horizon.
Jeongguk sat beside him, a textbook resting uselessly in his lap. He hadn’t flipped a page in twenty minutes. Instead, he was watching Taehyung — the way his hair caught the light, the little curve of his smile when he licked the corner of his mouth.
“You’re staring,” Taehyung said, not looking at him.
“You’re pretty,” Jeongguk replied simply.
Taehyung turned then, raising an eyebrow. “Since when do you say that without teasing me?”
“Since I almost crashed a car with you in it.”
Taehyung laughed — bright and unguarded — and Jeongguk swore it sounded like a second sunrise.
They sat like that for a while. Shoulders touching. Not running. Not hiding. Just there.
“So,” Taehyung said after a moment. “What do we do now?”
Jeongguk leaned back on his elbows, squinting up at the darkening sky. “We go to class. Try not to fall asleep in econ again. Finish that stupid group project with Namjoon-hyung.”
Taehyung made a face. “That’s boring.”
Jeongguk smirked. “We can still sneak out sometimes. Just... maybe not steal any more cars.”
Taehyung hummed. “Maybe.”
A beat passed.
Then Jeongguk reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out — a tiny silver chain with a charm hanging off it. A simple lightning bolt.
“For you,” he said, dropping it into Taehyung’s palm.
Taehyung blinked down at it. “What’s this?”
Jeongguk shrugged. “Something to remind you. That even when we’re not running... I’m still yours.”
Taehyung didn’t say anything. Just looped the chain around his wrist and smiled, eyes soft and full of something heavy and light all at once.
He bumped his knee against Jeongguk’s.
“Still mine?”
Jeongguk nodded.
“Still yours.”
END.