Work Text:
Jeongguk likes it when he gets nights like these.
Laying beside Taehyung.
He feels his heart against his chest, beating slow, steady. And all he can do is smile helplessly when he brushes a lock of brown hair behind the gentle curve of Taehyung’s ear.
Taehyung is beautiful. Beautiful in the way a field of wheat sways gently in the summer breeze, in the way the sea sparkles against the shine of the sun, in the way the sky runs on forever, cornflower blue and free. He breathes salvation with every blink of those pretty pretty eyes and Jeongguk feels his chest tighten.
It’s strange. The way he looks. An elegiac cast to those eyes: so brown and so lovely and so shuttered that it makes Jeongguk want to press kisses to soft fluttering lids. His lips are pink, like the fresh blush of spring, and they pull red when Taehyung bites them, the sheen of his spit reflecting the light from the streetlamps outside. They hit the slope of his sharp jaw, casting shadows across browned tan skin.
Jeongguk takes a deep breath.
They don’t speak. Not on nights like these.
Other nights, they laugh and sing. Taehyung leans into Jimin while Jeongguk scarfs down cup after cup of instant noodles. On other nights, it’s easy to hide what they have behind loud guffaws and easy grins. Jeongguk can place a hand on Taehyung’s shoulder and ask him if he wants a snack. He can smile along with his own mirth reflected back at him and his heart won’t make that rapid two-beat staccato against his chest. No one else would be any wiser.
He gets to sleep on nights like those. He gets to call his parents and pretend that he’s the son they have always known. He gets to retire to his room under the clear light of the full moon and know that, for the moment, he is as blameless as a newly baptised babe.
Jeongguk hates those nights.
Because on nights like these, Taehyung lies still. Jeongguk traces a finger around the pink mouth that is parted just so as Taehyung’s breathing slows. Taehyung’s skin is a warm brown, the exact shade indistinguishable in the orange light of the table lamp, and the pillow beneath his head is damp. Taehyung’s hair tousled after a shower, still wet and smelling of synthetic strawberries.
He is calm in his repose. So perfect that it takes Jeongguk’s breath away. Handsome and sweet – Ganymede in his youth, fallibly mortal with lashes that brush the barest edge of his cheek.
Jeongguk lies beside him, hands reverent, head calm, and soaks in the symmetry of his features, the rhythm of his heart.
Maybe it’s a bit wrong, Jeongguk thinks, to lie here beside Taehyung and pretend everything is okay, that everything is the same. Like his fingers don’t know the arch of Taehyung’s back, and his mouth the taste of his lips.
Taehyung’s eyes are dark brown and unfocused, half-lidded – he is minutes from sleep, the restful slumber that will leave him looking like the way he did when they first met. Jeongguk lets his hand slip down to curl around the dip of Taehyung’s waist, fingers tightening around the soft flesh around his digits. It feels like ownership, this quiet possession that takes hold of him when no one is present to witness the nameless exchange.
Jeongguk’s heart grows heavier, stiller. He lets his breath brush the exposed expanse of Taehyung’s long neck and breathes in deep at the depths of his sacrilege.
Because when Jeongguk was young, he used to pray. He used to pray to a faceless god, with practiced words and well-meaning intentions. He used to kneel and close his eyes and climb back into the bed feeling nothing else but a sense of the small and the lethargic.
But those words mean nothing to him now. It has taken Jeongguk his unbridled youth to realise he was praying to nothing but false gods. There is no sacrament to attend or communion to be taken in this bedroom. There is nothing but the heady warmth of Taehyung’s body beside him, rising and falling, soft and angled, all his and yet, not really.
When Jeongguk shifts closer, Taehyung’s body slots neatly into his. And if it – this – is meant to be wrong, then why did they fit each other so perfectly. The bend of Taehyung’s elbow, the tilt of his head, the spread of his legs, they welcome Jeongguk’s body like Taehyung’s been made to one day hold him close.
The tug between what is right and what feels right has plagued Jeongguk since their first dalliance. That first night Jeongguk had let himself surrender to the crash of unrelenting water on shore. And between the sex and the sleep, Taehyung lets Jeongguk paint his confusion in fading splotches on renewing canvas. He’s the seafoam on turquoise water. The violent red of the setting sun. The purpling coolness of dusk.
Jeongguk knows it hurts. In a way, every piece of art does – there is no masterpiece without struggle, no happiness without pain – so he continues to scratch and to bite and to hurt. Because when Taehyung whimpers and presses urgent kisses to the underside of his throat, Jeongguk feels alive. There is no incense to burn. Only bruises to leave. And those nights burn electric.
Taehyung’s eyes slip shut and Jeongguk exhales.
The boy beside him is his damnation, he knows. Alluring and sinful and so tempting that Jeongguk’s fingers itch even now. To pull off the tie around that silk robe. To slip over smooth shoulders. To trail down a soft belly. He would worship at the altar of Taehyung’s crossed legs, the curve of his hip, the sweep of his jaw. He could sup at the table of the divine.
Taehyung is a pagan hidden in a beautiful beautiful boy and Jeongguk finds that he cannot quite resist.
Jeongguk thinks that he would be glad to kneel before Taehyung and worship him forever if it means another night like this one. Another night pretending that they’re okay, that this is okay, that this is enough. That forgotten touches in the wee hours of the night can soothe the burgeoning want of more more in Jeongguk’s heart. That Taehyung’s smiles do not carry shards of broken promises.
It’s sweet and ripe and merciful when Jeongguk leans in slowly and steals a kiss from red lips. Taehyung doesn’t stir. He wouldn’t. If Jeongguk bit down now, he could draw blood and paint these red lips a deeper crimson. He doesn’t. Jeongguk lets his eyes drift closed.
Jeongguk likes it when he gets nights like these.
Laying beside Taehyung.