Chapter Text
The first time Taehyung thought something was wrong was not when he saw the photograph.
Not even when he recognized the hand resting on Jeongguk’s waist.
It was much earlier.
Perhaps that night, while he waited awake in the apartment they had lived in together for almost four years—though the address did not appear on any document that could connect them. Perhaps when he looked at the clock for the fourth time and understood that he was no longer waiting for Jeongguk to arrive, but wondering which version of him he was going to meet.
Outside, the city remained awake. From the twenty-seventh floor, Seoul stretched out like an endless tide of white and red lights, glowing windows and vehicles sliding along the avenues as if everyone had somewhere to go. Taehyung had nowhere.
He had left the file on the table almost an hour ago. The laptop was still open in front of him, full of legal notes he had stopped reading a while back. He took off his glasses and set them beside the untouched glass of water. The scent of his own stress had begun to change: dark chocolate and amber, normally faint, were growing denser in the air of the apartment. Taehyung noticed it and frowned. He disliked it when that happened. It was an involuntary reaction he had learned to control for years, especially since his relationship with Jeongguk had become something he could not afford to reveal. An omega whose professional life depended on keeping a cool head could not go around letting every emotion show in his scent. And yet, lately, his body seemed to have grown tired of obeying him.
The phone vibrated on the table.
Taehyung picked it up at once.
Heading out.
There was nothing strange about the message. Nothing reassuring either. He checked the time: 1:43 a.m. He typed a reply, deleted it, typed it again.
Everything okay?
The answer came in less than a minute.
Yeah. Long meeting.
Taehyung set the phone face down. It was not exactly a lie. That was the worst part. Jeongguk had always been good with incomplete truths. A meeting could last three hours. A company party could end at two in the morning. An interview could turn into dinner, and a dinner into a private meeting with producers, executives or colleagues. His life was made of things that could be explained. There was always an explanation. The problem was that more and more often there were things Taehyung had to decide for himself whether he wanted to accept.
He did not know how much time had passed when he finally heard the sound of the lock. He did not get up.
The door opened a few seconds later. Jeongguk came in without making noise, left the keys on the entryway table and took off his coat with slow movements. He was still wearing the clothes he had gone out in that night: dark pants, a black shirt slightly open at the collar and that coat that probably cost more than the first car Taehyung had ever bought. Hair messy, shoulders slightly slumped.
He looked tired.
He also looked beautiful.
That had not changed. Perhaps that was one of the things that confused Taehyung the most.
Jeongguk was still, in many ways, the same. He still walked into the room and looked for him with his eyes almost by instinct. He still took off his shoes before approaching the sofa. He still let his shoulders drop the moment he closed the door, as if all day he had been holding up a version of himself he could only abandon there. But those small routines no longer led to anything else. And that, precisely, was what had changed.
“Still working?” he asked, his voice lower than usual.
Taehyung looked up.
“Not anymore.”
Jeongguk nodded and came closer. For a moment neither of them said anything. They had learned to live with each other’s silences long before they learned to hide their relationship. Before, those silences used to end differently: with Jeongguk pulling him toward the sofa, with hands sliding under clothes without asking permission, with a mouth seeking his as if he had been holding back for hours. Sometimes it was against the hallway wall, fucking him slow and deep. Other times a long kiss was enough, or staying tangled on the sofa, or falling asleep holding each other after coming. Even the nights when they barely had any strength left, they still ended up looking for each other’s bodies. It had been a long time since that happened.
There had been no fight that caused it. They simply started going to bed later and later, getting up earlier, sleeping on different schedules. And then they stopped seeking each other out. Now Taehyung no longer knew how long it had been since he last remembered what it felt like for Jeongguk to want him without thinking. That was perhaps what hurt the most. Not just the absence of sex, but that both of them seemed to have gotten used to it.
Jeongguk sat at the far end of the sofa and let his head fall back against the cushion with a long sigh.
“I’m dead.”
Taehyung watched him in silence for a second.
“Looks like it.”
A small smile appeared on Jeongguk’s mouth. He turned slightly toward him.
“Is that all?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something nicer.”
Taehyung tilted his head, assessing him.
“I could tell you you look like death.”
Jeongguk let out a short, real laugh. For a second Taehyung felt that night could be like any other.
Then he caught the scent.
Jeongguk’s scent was still the same—grapefruit, cedar and sandalwood—but there was something else. An unfamiliar scent, sweet and floral, barely noticeable on his shirt.
Taehyung stopped smiling.
“Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
Jeongguk looked up without fully letting go of the watch strap.
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Tae.”
The way he said his name was almost a soft reproach. Taehyung looked away toward the window.
“I ate.”
Jeongguk stopped halfway through the movement, the watch still in his hand.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Then don’t ask if you already know I’m not going to answer.”
Jeongguk’s expression shifted only slightly. It was not annoyance. Not yet. It was confusion. He kept looking at him a second longer, as if he were trying to read something on his face.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Taehyung did not answer right away. He breathed slowly, trying to keep the scent of his stress from growing even denser.
“Nothing.”
Jeongguk stayed quiet for a few seconds, watching him as if he were trying to decide whether it was worth pushing. Then he stood up. Taehyung expected him to go shower. Instead he came closer until he was standing in front of him, close enough that the unfamiliar perfume became impossible to ignore.
“You’re angry.”
It was not a question. Taehyung looked away for a second before answering.
“No.”
“Yes,” Jeongguk insisted, quieter. “You are.”
“Jeongguk.”
“Taehyung.”
The way he said his name finally made Taehyung look at him. There was something tired in the alpha’s eyes. Something that, at another time, would have been enough to soften him.
“It was a party,” Jeongguk said, even though Taehyung had not asked anything. “Afterward we had dinner with the brand people.”
“I know.”
“Then—”
“I’m not asking where you were.” Taehyung cut him off.
Jeongguk went still. The silence that followed was too long to be comfortable. He swallowed.
“Then what are you doing?”
Taehyung swallowed too. He did not want to. He did not want to turn this into another argument. They had had too many over the last few months, and they all ended the same way: Jeongguk saying nothing had happened and Taehyung trying to decide whether the fact that nothing had happened was really enough.
“Nothing.”
Jeongguk closed his eyes for a moment, as if he needed to gather patience.
“You can’t keep telling me that.”
“And what do you want me to say?”
“The truth.”
Taehyung let out a humorless, low laugh.
“The truth?”
Jeongguk looked at him without blinking.
“Yes.”
“The truth is that I’m tired.”
Something unreadable crossed Jeongguk’s face. Taehyung stood up. He did not want to argue in the middle of the night. He did not want to do it after a full workday or when Jeongguk could barely keep his eyes open. But he also did not want to keep swallowing this.
“I’m tired of wondering what I can say to you without it looking like I’m trying to control your life.”
“I’ve never told you that you’re trying to control me.”
“You don’t have to,” Taehyung answered, with a bitter smile. “I see it on your face every time I open my mouth.”
Jeongguk opened his mouth to reply, but this time nothing came out. The silence between them fell heavier.
Taehyung looked at him and, for a moment, could only think of the boy he had been. Hands trembling before an audition. The nights he fell asleep practicing choreography. The calls where he said maybe he was not cut out for this. Taehyung had been there. Before the stadiums, the awards, the contracts and the millions of followers. Before anyone had an opinion about him. And perhaps that was precisely the problem: he knew too well the man who existed before everyone else started claiming a piece of him.
“I don’t want to control your life,” he said finally, quieter. “I want to know what place I have in it.”
Jeongguk lifted his head. For the first time that night he seemed completely awake.
“You know what place you have.”
“No.”
The answer came out too fast. Jeongguk kept looking at him. Taehyung did too. Neither of them backed down.
“I don’t know anymore,” Taehyung repeated, more slowly. “And lately I feel like you don’t either.”
Something tightened in Jeongguk’s face. His jaw clenched slightly.
“That’s not fair.”
“Probably not,” Taehyung answered.
Jeongguk looked at him a second longer, as if he were searching for something in his expression.
“I love you.”
Taehyung closed his eyes. There it was. The sentence that used to fix anything. The sentence he still wanted to believe.
“I know.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
Taehyung opened his eyes. He looked at him for a few seconds, as if he were trying to find the boy he had known so many years ago inside the man standing in front of him.
“I want you to care.”
Jeongguk frowned, confused. “I do care.”
Taehyung shook his head. “I want you to care about what we do with this. What we allow. The things you used to not do because you knew they could hurt me.”
“I’ve never cheated on you,” Jeongguk said immediately.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you’re implying.”
“No,” Taehyung answered, though honestly he was not sure he was not doing exactly that.
Taehyung breathed deeply, trying to keep the scent of his stress from growing even denser. And trying to set that doubt aside.
“I’m saying that before I didn’t need to ask you to set boundaries.”
Jeongguk did not answer. And that time the silence was answer enough.
Taehyung looked away. On the table, Jeongguk’s phone lit up. A notification. Then another. The screen stayed on for only a few seconds, but it was enough: a name, a photograph, a message Taehyung did not manage to read completely.
Jeongguk took the phone. Too quickly. Not because he was hiding something—or at least that was what Taehyung wanted to believe.
“It’s not what you think,” Jeongguk said, his voice tighter.
Taehyung smiled weakly.
“I don’t even know what I’m thinking.”
Jeongguk put the phone in his pocket, as if that could undo what had already happened.
“Tae—”
“Go to sleep.”
Jeongguk did not move. He took another step closer, voice lower but firm.
“I don’t want to leave it like this.”
“It’s already like this,” Taehyung answered without looking at him. “It hasn’t bothered you to leave it like this every other time.”
Jeongguk took a step toward him. Taehyung did not move. For a moment they were too close, and both their scents mixed in the air of the apartment: Taehyung’s chocolate and amber against Jeongguk’s grapefruit, cedar and sandalwood. A combination that once had meant safety. Now it only seemed to remind them of everything they could lose.
Jeongguk lifted a hand, but stopped before touching him.
That small gesture hurt more than it should have.
Because Taehyung did not know since when Jeongguk had started hesitating before touching him. And Jeongguk, for his part, did not know at what point he had started feeling that any move of his could turn into another argument.
They both stayed still.
Outside, Seoul kept shining. Millions of people could recognize Jeongguk’s face. They could sing his songs, buy his albums, fill stadiums to watch him appear on a stage. But none of them knew that the man everyone admired was standing, in the middle of the night, in front of the only person who had known him before the world learned his name.
And they also did not know that, for the first time in many years, Taehyung was starting to wonder how much longer he could keep being the secret Jeongguk claimed to protect.