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In the Paris stop of their 2020 European tour, Jungkook sits on the edge of the stage and watches Taehyung rehearse his solo. It isn’t an unusual place for Jungkook to be when Taehyung’s rehearsing, performing, doing anything at all, really—Jungkook watches him all the time, any moment he can. Because Taehyung is captivating, and he’s living art, and Jungkook is so desperately in love with him.
It’s a secret, but an open one. Everyone knows—the members know, and the managers know, and even some of the fans know, or at least suspect. Jungkook isn’t too careful these days, and he can’t help what his face does whenever he looks at Taehyung in public. He can’t help the glimmer in his eyes, or the way he reaches out to touch without thinking.
He’s seen the compilations, the theories and proof and analyses. He’s seen it all, and he sees it mirrored in Taehyung, too, because this love between them, this all-consuming ball of molten desire and breathtaking adoration, it’s a mutually terrible thing, shared and suffered together, so complete and so very painful.
Jungkook is in love, and Taehyung is in love, and that is something they can’t be, not with each other.
So it stays a secret, unspoken. Known, but not acted upon. Only endured. And Jungkook is starting to forget how to breathe.
*
They go for dinner, as a unit, after the show. Go to a restaurant in the centre of Paris, in the middle of it all, right where all the tourists are. Someone secured them a private room in the back and they pile into it, all bubbling adrenaline and leftover energy and too many of them trying to talk at once.
Jungkook snags a seat at the end of the table nearest the window and Taehyung slips in beside him, smiling softly, candlelight catching the sparkle of his eyes and the clamminess of dried sweat on his temples. He looks wrecked, completely shot through, but he’s starving and smiling and he sits close to Jungkook, their thighs pressed together, and it’s nice. It’s not enough, but it’s nice.
Hoseok’s doing that thing he likes to do where he tells them all where they fucked up during the concert, but he says it in such nice ways that they end up feeling complimented and motivated to do it better next time. Opposite him, after, with twin mouths full of pasta, Seokjin and Namjoon engage in some kind of confusing debate that’s making Seokjin go red in the face and his hands flailing, Jimin watching them and laughing and Yoongi, one seat down, quietly looking through his phone and ignoring it all.
The wine sits warm in Jungkook’s belly and the adrenaline pulsing through his veins simmers to a light burn, and when Taehyung holds a piece of chicken to his mouth with expectation, Jungkook parts his lips and takes it in and doesn’t question it. Because it’s normal in this crowd, feeding each other, and none of them look at him like it’s weird, not even when Taehyung brushes his thumb over Jungkook’s lips to catch the grease, sucks his thumb into his own mouth, eyes twinkling.
“You sounded great out there tonight, Jungkookie,” Taehyung says, quietly, voice pitched low and deep in that way he knows Jungkook feels in his bones. “Looked great, too.” He skims a hand over Jungkook’s thigh, rests it there, just the hint of pressure in the space above his knee. “I couldn’t stop watching you.”
Jungkook swallows the chicken, takes Taehyung’s hand from his thigh and tangles their fingers together beneath the table, squeezing, holding tight. “You shouldn’t let yourself get distracted, hyung,” he murmurs, twisting his fingers in Taehyung’s clasp, feeling and brushing and gliding their skin together, in and out, linked and unlinked and linked again.
Taehyung laughs, breathy, entirely mirthless. He presses his forehead to Jungkook’s jaw a moment. “Ah, Jungkook,” he says, sounding amused, and so brittle.
It’s stupid, really, to do it, to turn his head so he can rub just a little against Taehyung’s face, like a cat—jaw against Taehyung’s cheek, the edge of his lips catching Taehyung’s temple. A soft sound rumbles from Taehyung, his eyes closed, and then they pull away, and Namjoon’s watching them, his eyes cloudy and his brows pulled low.
Jungkook swallows and lets go of Taehyung’s hand.
*
In Milan, there’s a fuck up with the hotel, and someone’s left without a room. Jungkook feels terror like a thousand spiders in his veins when Taehyung offers, casually and without inflection, to be the one to bunk in with someone. With Jungkook.
It garners looks—Namjoon and Seokjin sharing a knowing glance, Jimin biting his lip and lowering his gaze. They all know. Everyone knows, and Jungkook knows, too—knows he can’t share a room with Taehyung, share a bed, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t protest it. His voice catches in his throat, and Taehyung’s fingers catch his behind his back, and the warmth catches his skin like a brand.
They go to bed that night, keep an ocean of space between them, lying on their sides facing each other, looking, not touching. Taehyung reaches out, just for a moment, dips his fingers into the curve behind Jungkook’s jaw, beneath his ear, over his pulse.
“Do you ever wish—” Taehyung murmurs, and Jungkook sucks in a breath, cuts him off.
“All the time.”
They smile, sadly, and they separate, and they sleep through the night close but not close enough. Jungkook wakes to soft morning light and Taehyung pressed against him, as he knew he would, curved into his side and breathing quietly.
Searing heat burns in Jungkook’s bones and he waits for Tae to stir, grabs Tae’s thigh, pulls it across his own and snakes an arm beneath him and pulls all of him in, pulls and pulls until Taehyung’s gasping a soft, sleepy, “Kook-ah,” and Jungkook buries his face in Tae’s neck, just needing to feel for a moment, to breathe him in.
Taehyung rocks against him, grabbing him, fingers snagging on his t-shirt and his hip, their breaths stuttered in the silence and Jungkook’s hand slipping underneath the hem of Tae’s shirt, touching hot skin with a dangerous intention and feeling the desire of it in his stomach, in his gut, lower and lower until he’s rocking his hips up and pressing an open mouth to Tae’s neck and—
A knock on the door springs them apart, a manager shouting for them to come to Namjoon’s room for breakfast. Taehyung gives him a hot, guilty look, swallows thickly. “We should go,” he says.
Jungkook nods. He can’t go anywhere, not yet. He’s got a problem. “I’ll, ah—I’ll be there in a minute.” He only needs a minute. A quick touch. It won’t be long.
Taehyung knows what he’s saying. He goes red across his cheekbones, his lips parting. A short, ragged breath spills from him. He tips forward suddenly, kisses Jungkook—quick and bruising and without warning. Jungkook’s whole heart stops.
“Think about me,” Taehyung whispers, pressing his forehead to Jungkook’s, eyes closed. Then he’s gone, and Jungkook tips his head back and groans in frustration, in the kind of pain felt deep in the fabric of his DNA. He slips a hand into his boxers and thinks of Tae, never thinks of anything but Tae.
*
In Rome, they sit on the balcony of Taehyung’s hotel room and watch the busy street pass by below. Moonlight kisses Taehyung’s cheekbones and the tip of his nose and the pale purple streaks in his hair, sets him aglow in muted tones like a watercolour painting presented for Jungkook to admire. He complies, watching him, his slow blink as he relaxes, the lazy swerve of his gaze, tracking a couple strolling the street arm in arm.
The couple stops to kiss. Jungkook only knows because Taehyung’s frame goes tight suddenly, his breathing paused, and Jungkook follows his gaze to see what snagged him.
It’s a picture of young love, carefree and as light as the breeze.
Jimin, beside them, sighs. “I wonder how old we’ll be before we get to have that,” he says wistfully, and Jungkook’s heart stumbles. He’s already got that—the love, at least, but not the freedom to kiss in the street. Taehyung coughs. They both turn to look at him.
“It’s getting cold,” he says, and he gets up abruptly, leaves them outside alone. The back of his neck is flushed red, his shoulders tense.
Jimin’s eyes are knowing, and far too sympathetic. “I think you’re very strong,” he says, as if it’s an achievement. “Both of you.”
Jungkook almost laughs. He reins it in, but bitterness still passes over his features. “Strength is fighting for what you want.” He picks at his fingernails. Can’t look at Jimin, not directly. “What I’m doing is weak.”
There’s a long pause. A car alarm goes off in the distance, and the kissing couple below pull apart and move on. Eventually, Jimin says, “This isn’t forever.”
Except it is. This life doesn’t stop when BTS ends. They belong to the public now, forever. He is not and never will be a former idol, because he is Jungkook of BTS. He will never have obscurity again. Some days, their fame and success and the history they’ve made tastes like acid in his throat.
Jimin leaves a while later, heads to his room to call his parents. Jungkook waits for Taehyung to come back out, but time passes and the night draws in and goosebumps spread across his bare arms, and Taehyung doesn’t show.
He goes inside, finds Taehyung curled up on the bed, his eyes closed and a YouTube video quietly autoplaying on his dropped phone. Jungkook stops the video and plugs the charger into the phone and tugs the blanket out from beneath Taehyung to drape it over him.
Taehyung wakes, eyes blinking up at him in the dark, and he reaches up as Jungkook bends down and their lips meet, their breaths catching, the entire world outside stopping.
They have to stop kissing like this, Jungkook thinks, kissing him. He allows it a few more moments and he pulls back, and he kisses Taehyung’s forehead, and he wants to promise him he will be happy one day but he can’t, because he thinks it might be a lie.
Taehyung snags his wrist. “Sleep with me,” he murmurs, and Jungkook is weak, so weak, but in this he must be strong. He pulls free, smooths Taehyung’s hair off his face, brushes his thumb over his full bottom lip.
“Goodnight, hyung,” he says, and he pretends he can’t see the broken glimmer in Taehyung’s eyes as he leaves.
*
Ironically, it’s on the stage that they’re free. The fans expect it—the touches, the looks, the flirting. Skinship. The bond that put them on the world’s radar. It’s a part of their brand. For Jungkook, it’s a few moments off the leash.
Everything they do ends up on film somewhere, immortalised, scrutinised. But it’s okay—the company never reprimands them for it, because it gets them YouTube hits, millions of them. It gets them trending. Not like when they’re alone, backstage or at home, and the touches have a different meaning, an unacceptable meaning. When the love between them has no financial value.
On stage, Jungkook can touch. He can hold Taehyung by the waist. He can press his mouth to Tae’s jaw. He can look into his eyes and communicate all the emotion he wants to, and they can sing to each other, the most romantic lyrics in their arsenal. On stage, he can be in love, open and free.
In private, away from the cameras, he’s suffocating.
*
In London, they sneak away to the cinema, to the new Marvel movie—masks on, bucket hats pulled low, hoodies up high. They don’t book a private screening. They don’t take security. They’re reckless—too reckless. They say they’re going to bed, and they wait for an opening, and they find a fire exit out onto the street and they run.
This normal thing, catching a movie, feels like the most dangerous crime they could commit as people, and it’s intoxicating. They’re breathless with it, giddy, finding it absolutely hilarious when Tae tries to broken-English his way through buying popcorn and drinks, falling into each other’s space and holding on too tight.
They don’t understand everything in the movie, but that’s okay. They enjoy the fights and the explosions and they enjoy each other, tucked in the back right corner, entirely hidden in the darkness. It’s a freedom unlike on the stage, unlike at home—it’s their hands locked without pretence and Taehyung lifting Jungkook’s fingers to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of Jungkook’s knuckles. It’s Tae’s head on Jungkook’s shoulder like it belongs there, shared warmth and no space between them. It’s a date, like it shouldn’t be, and a kind of happiness Jungkook hasn’t felt in a long while.
He wants to kiss Taehyung after, as the credits roll, but he can’t. Because this is a date, but it’s not a date—it can’t be, not how they want. This is little more than an illusion, a couple hours of acting as if they can have what they want. The lights come up and bitterness settles in and the good mood evaporates.
It’s not just them. It’s their careers, and the careers of five others. The jobs of hundreds depending on them. The financial weight of an entire company on their shoulders. A country not willing to accept what they have. A fanbase of millions, tumultuous, unpredictable. The fallout would be catastrophic. They know it, and they ache with it.
They can have this, sometimes, a couple hours. But that’s all. For now, that’s all.
*
They’ve never spoken about it out loud. Not in full sentences. It sits heavy between them in the quiet moments, in the forbidden bubble of it all, and they can’t speak about it, because that would make it real, and that would make the pain real, and maybe the pain is strong enough for them to take too much of a risk.
But the silence is becoming harder to manage, and Taehyung, goddamn him, has never known how to keep his mouth shut.
After the Dublin concert, they take their group picture, as they always do. And Jungkook sits on Taehyung’s lap, as he often does, and he presses back against Taehyung and drinks his fill of the contact while he’s allowed it. The manager counts to three and the camera flashes and Taehyung touches his mouth to the back of Jungkook’s ear, tightens an arm around his waist, and murmurs, “I love you.” He doesn’t mean it in the way the whole group always say it to each other. His words carry the weight of his entire heart.
Jungkook’s breath freezes in his lungs. He grips Taehyung’s hand and presses his cheekbone to Taehyung’s jaw and the manager counts to three again, takes the second picture. Then it’s over and everyone’s separating and spilling out of the room and Jungkook gets up, pulls Taehyung up with him.
“Hyung—” he says, and they’re not alone in the room, not yet. Still people here, a buffer to their desires.
Taehyung shushes him, presses fingertips to his mouth, ghosting over the chapped skin of his lower lip. He doesn’t say anything, and he smiles, and there’s a glimmer in his eyes—sadness, longing, everything they need but can’t have.
“One night,” Tae says, “and then we let it go.”
It makes Jungkook’s stomach twist. Makes his blood hot. Makes his heart thunder against his ribs. “Okay,” he says, voice thick. “Okay.”
*
They have a week and half before the second leg of the tour, so they all go back to Korea, to studios and practices and work, work, work. It’s not a break. But they do get a reprieve of two days where they can do what they want, and it’s the opening they need.
Publicly, Taehyung goes home to his family. Jungkook goes home to his family. In reality, they go to Taehyung’s recently purchased apartment twenty minutes away from their dorm in Seoul.
There’s a notion, at some point, of doing it properly. Of making dinner and talking and watching a DVD maybe. To use the time as if they need to wedge an entire relationship between dusk and dawn. But they’re realists, really, at the base of it—and what they need, truthfully, is to fuck.
Jungkook strips Taehyung and strips himself and his hands are shaking and his heart stutters but his skin burns for this, searing at Taehyung’s touch. He lays Taehyung out on the bed and kisses his ankle and his knee and his thigh and his hip, murmurs his name and jumbled words of love into the soft skin of Taehyung’s belly. Taehyung gasps for him, whimpers, trembling against him—pulls Jungkook up to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, kissing him like he wants to take the air from his lungs, holding him like he wants to climb inside him and never face the world again.
Jungkook has to pin his hands down, both in one grip, above his head. Tells him to shush and works his other hand down and down and touches him until he’s begging. Jungkook doesn’t plan on taking it too far but Taehyung spreads his legs and pulls up his knees and then he reaches to his nightstand to hand Jungkook a small tube but no condom—“Nothing between us”—and Jungkook asks him if he’s sure, if he wants this, if he wants him like this.
Taehyung almost cries. There’s something in his gaze, in the liquid of his eyes, in the shine of his focus pinned on Jungkook. “Please,” he whispers. “Please, I need—” Jungkook kisses him.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Neither of them does. But it’s okay—they fumble around together, feeling their way through it, until Taehyung’s a quivering mess beneath Jungkook and mumbling pleas against his shoulder, loose and wet around Jungkook’s searching fingers.
Jungkook pulls his fingers free and settles between Taehyung’s legs and they look at each other, close and intense, and Jungkook pushes into Taehyung until their breaths stop and Jungkook tells him he loves him.
Jungkook has never held anyone the way he holds Taehyung when it’s over, when Taehyung’s shaking and still coming down and the sweat sticks them to the sheets—holds him as if he’s holding the entire world in his arms, pulling that world against his chest, desperate, devastated, so catastrophically in love. He holds him and he kisses him and he thinks about how this is it, their one night, and how the fuck he’s supposed to let him go. How is anyone meant to survive that?
He doesn’t cry, but it’s close. He does kiss him again, kisses down his feverish body, tastes him in the back of his throat and wrings more gasps from him, taking him apart again. Then again, a while later, and again, after food, until Taehyung can’t anymore, until his hands are weak and his body pliant and all he can do is let Jungkook kiss him so they don’t see the sun come up. So they don’t have to face the new day, and the end of their one night.
It’s the ugliest sunrise of Jungkook’s life.
*
Time passes, and they don’t let it go. They can’t. They don’t even come close.
They never had any intention to.