Work Text:
— ↣ ♡ ↢ —
The thing is, Taehyung knows this meeting happens on accident.
He likes to think that over the years he’s gotten quite good at reading people, especially with how much his work necessitates it. So within less than five minutes he’d been almost certain that the drunk pretty blonde smiling at him from the other side of his high-top was not here for the munch bustling behind him. As a matter of fact, he was reasonably sure the other wasn’t even aware of the entire group just beyond Taehyung’s shoulders at all, with the way that he seemed to hold the entirety of his attention. He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the overlarge plush alpaca sitting prominently on the table beside him, always Seokjin’s tacit mascot for the public meetups he organizes.
It’s honestly cute to be so shamelessly pursued. To have someone emerge from the bathroom hallway at the back corner of the bar, quite literally do a shameless double-take as soon as he’d set eyes on him, and then proceed to dodge through the crowd straight towards his table with a renewed sense of purpose. His hands are boldly empty, too, like he’s the kind of three-drinks tipsy that’s nothing but effervescent confidence, perfectly fine without the physical buffer of fidgeting with a glass or bracelet because he now believes he owns at least half the room. And perhaps he does, because the whole of the person that strode over to introduce himself as Jimin is—disarmingly pretty and charming to a fault. Smooth wheat-gold curtains of hair, sparkling eyes, and a brilliant smile framed by glossy pink lips. He’s got a slender frame, narrower than Taehyung at almost every point, but he still uses every inch of it to take up space and holds himself with a mixture of raw grace and practiced confidence. (Everything about him is almost tragically Taehyung’s personal type.)
The suddenness of the entire situation has taken Taehyung aback just a little, enough to make himself aware of the slightly indulgent smile he’s wearing as he listens to Jimin continue their small-talk with just a little bit of tipsy conversational wandering. He asks the right questions, tilts his chin and arches his brows on every perfect beat so that beneath the soft-looking feathers of his hair, the tips of Jimin’s ears slowly go rosier the longer he spends bearing the weight of Taehyung’s full attention. Given the fact he’s missing a drink—and there’s the smallest part of his brain urging him to fix that—Taehyung is only too glad to take credit for his subtly-growing fluster. He is about to bring the proverbial hammer down with no small amount of amusement once Jimin turns the What do you do for work question onto him, but then the other’s head turns quite suddenly to the more bustling side of the bar like he’s heard his name through all the noise.
(The wide-eyed sparkling obedience spread so quick and guilelessly across his face is even more Taehyung’s type.)
“Oh God, I’m definitely here with people,” is what Jimin seems to mutter into the shoulder of his t-shirt, and Taehyung can’t suppress half a chuckle at it. He hides the quiet sound into the lip of his wine glass and doesn’t miss the way Jimin’s eyes track his jaw and neck as he swallows.
“I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to go now,” Jimin says, and sounds genuinely put-out about it. He’s not sure if it’s the drinks again or if Jimin is naturally so expressive, but there’s a slight pouty set to the edge of his mouth that suggests he’s annoyed, too. It’s gone, though, when he rolls his lips together for a moment, apparently making his mind up about something before his eyes flicker down, then back up to lock with Taehyung’s again. The glimmering confidence is back along with an enticing tilt of his own head and damn, apparently Taehyung isn’t the only one who’s too good at this game. “Do you have Instagram?”
Taehyung presses his own lips together to keep his smile from broadening into something too amused. He accepts Jimin’s phone when he passes it over and types his handle to submit the follow request for his profile. And then, because he’s played so nice the entire time and really can’t resist, he—toys a bit. He drags the tips of his fingers all the way along the back of Jimin’s hand as he presses the phone back into it, caressing his wrist so lightly but with undeniable intent. Faintly, he feels the other’s pulse is jumping up under the thinnest skin to meet his brushing thumb. Jimin seems like he’s about to sway where he stands when the rest of Taehyung’s body follows, hedging enough into his space for the other to smell the Santal cologne clinging close to his skin and dress shirt collar.
“It was lovely meeting you, Jimin,” he murmurs with just the slightest something in his tone, and this time he’s close enough to feel the goosebumps that prickle along the smaller man’s skin. “Take care and get home safely, okay?”
When he pulls away, Taehyung catches the barest flutter of his lashes in his peripheral before they’re fully face-to-face again. “I will,” Jimin promises almost immediately, as if on autopilot. His ears are fully blushed. Adorable. “Nice meeting you too, Taehyung.”
Taehyung finishes his glass of wine as he watches Jimin weave through the tables towards a small group of people gathered by the exit. He catches Jimin glancing back just once—watches him startle slightly when he realizes he’s been caught—and just holds his stare for a beat and winks. It’s for the best that he’s bustled out with his group right after, because Taehyung definitely fails to fend off the twitching urge to smile at the corners of his mouth.
“I can’t decide if his friends are the best or the worst,” comes a voice at Taehyung’s shoulder once the group has left the bar entirely. Taehyung turns to Seokjin at his elbow, looking after the entrance before his gaze flicks to leer at him over the rim of his cosmopolitan. “Because it looked like he either got the cockblock of his life or they saved him from being eaten alive by you.”
Of course Seokjin had been watching, if not dragging others into a leering group to try and read lips. Taehyung sucks the wine dryness off the back of his teeth with half a shrug. “I thought that was the munch organizer’s job,” he hums with a lilt, “you know, saving the cute vanilla newcomers from the sadistic deviants prowling for fresh meat.”
Seokjin rolls his eyes and takes a mutinous sip from his glass. “I was on my way—just got caught up as I was circling around.”
Taehyung just barely suppresses a scoff. It’s a bit shameless to pretend that Taehyung doesn’t know the distinct feeling of Seokjin’s eyes burning on the side of his head after all these years. “Tell that to Jimin’s bones you apparently think I’m gnawing on.”
The other’s eyes go comically round with interest, bustling closer into his space like a nosy bloodhound that’s caught the slightest scent. “Oh, so it’s Jimin already? No formalities?”
Taehyung offers a noncommittal hum and takes advantage of their closeness to take an indecorous slurp off the top of Seokjin’s drink. “We’re the same age,” he says, swishing the cranberry over his tongue before forging ahead over over the other’s indignant squawk. “You might’ve been able to meet him too if you weren’t hanging over the boyfriend who is already coming home with you tonight.”
“The disrespect,” Seokjin grouses, but downs the final third of the cocktail in one go before setting the glass down on the table next to Taehyung’s. His long fingers move up to fuss slightly at the dark hair already perfectly swept up and off his face, full lips pursed. “I liked you better when you didn’t know anything and behaved.”
“I think every one of my clients would disagree, it’d be much less fun for them.” Taehyung props his chin on his hand against the table and narrowing his eyes at the elder. “When are you going to ask Jungkookie to move in?”
Seokjin glares just slightly at the obvious conversational redirect, but also returns his eye contact almost too readily. “I’m waiting until his lease expiration gets closer,” he replies as if he’s trying to convince himself of it as much as Taehyung—the firmness in his look is at odds with the caginess in his voice. Interesting.
“So you can degrade and call him the filthiest shit while you paddle his ass for an hour and yet asking him to move in is what makes you squirm?” It’s hilarious, really, that for all the scenes he’s watched Seokjin run, speaking so frankly right now is enough to have choked the man if he still had a drink. Taehyung pulls his voice a little petulant, tilting his head to the side. “I thought communication is Step One in any one of these relationships, hyungie. It’s only the password for like, every kink webinar you film and put up online.”
“I’ll paddle your ass and put it up online, brat,” Seokjin threatens, eyes wide and voice pitching with indignation, though they’ve worn this particular trail enough to know there’s no actual heat to the words. It’s more hilarious than anything else—Taehyung has never been interested in cultivating that dynamic with the other, anyway. “I took you under my gracious wing for years, built you up from nothing but a boring little college student blind to the beautiful world of deviance, and this is how I’m repaid?”
“You’re right, maybe I should stop,” Taehyung sighs, standing up and elbowing the other lightly out of his personal orbit to head back towards the bar. “I might get reported for elder abuse.”
Seokjin sputters for half a moment, left behind, before artfully dodging around other bar patrons and eating up the distance between them in two long strides. “I’ll find Jimin and tell him about your first munch. When you sat down with us at the park like you had a stick up your ass and repaid the kindness of my introduction by spilling an entire beer in my lap.”
“And it’s been nothing but eight golden years ever since,” Taehyung replies, overly-saccharine, as they wedge their way up to the bar. “The beginning of a beautiful dom mentorship. You’ve gotten almost all of my twenties, who else can say that?”
Seokjin rolls his eyes at the simpering tone as they’re approached by a bartender, though he allows Taehyung to order first and settles both drinks on his own tab. He turns to regard the other fully once new glasses are pushed towards them.
“Anyways, Jimin.”
It’s Taehyung’s turn to roll his eyes. “What about him?”
“Well he wasn’t here for the munch, obviously. I personally thought it was cute how he mooned at you, but of course he nabbed some onlookers considering you’re a pretty aloof son of a bitch that doesn’t chat with just anyone.” Seokjin’s eyes look too innocuous as he sips his cocktail, which means they’re trying to drill right through him. “Don’t know what anyone sees in you to get so jealous over, but he’s a head-turning little looker.”
“Don’t let Jungkook hear you, that’s entrapment,” Taehyung warns. But then, because he knows he won’t be let off so easily, he keeps his voice more carefully neutral when he recalls, “He’s training to be a doctor. Said he was almost finished with his hospital internship year and just got accepted for a pediatrics residency. ”
“Well, at least that’s sorted then—med school means he’s already got a masochist streak.” Seokjin keeps his composure for half a moment before snorting too hard at his own joke. Taehyung staves off a grimace into his third glass of wine when the other prods meaningfully, “Any kinky vibes at all?”
He slants a sideways look at Seokjin. “We spoke for half an hour at most,” he tries to argue, but when Seokjin’s stare doesn’t let up, he sighs. “Maybe. Maybe not. Couldn’t really tell.”
“Being able to tell is literally your job,” the elder wheedles, though they both know it’s mostly to be contrary. For how hard of a dom he knows Seokjin can play when he scenes he is just as responsible and considerate for anyone in their community, especially newcomers, or else the munches he hosts wouldn’t be regarded as the most popular and welcoming in their local scene.
But still, Taehyung plays along. “Actually, I think my job is being aware that anyone can have kinky vibes, no matter what they look like.”
(Well, that, and being paid to whip congresswomen and degrade CFO’s while they grovel under his Saint Laurent boot, but he won’t say that out loud—the last and most important part of his job is discretion.)
Seokjin seems to consider this for a moment with another drink. “This could be interesting,” he says, thoughtful. Not a moment later though his eyes light up, full lips pulling into a smirk that’s even more self-satisfied than before, which means Taehyung is definitely about to hate whatever he’s going to say. “He’s like a cute little Alice that’s just about to fall down a kinky rabbit hole. Which makes you, my dearest and most promising protégé, the ugly weed-smoking caterpillar.”
(Actually, maybe he can offer some silent points for creativity. The mental image almost startled a laugh out of Taehyung, but there’s no need to let anything go to Seokjin’s head.)
“I’m your only protégé,” Taehyung retorts, finally splitting off from the counter back to the corner of the bar, where their decently-large group is still laughing and chattering two hours into the meetup like it’s just begun. A few people have gotten lightly handsy, moved close or into people’s laps, and Taehyung spies Jungkook at a long bench-style table with one of their other event regulars, Yoongi, just about to do the same. He takes advantage of the momentary lapse in Seokjin’s attention beside him to pull out his phone.
Sure enough, a lock screen notification from Instagram boasts a new follow request worth noticing. Jimin’s account is public but a bit sparse, featuring pictures of vacation landscapes or friends or animals, a handful of old selfies, college graduation photos. Quite different from the accounts that he usually encounters on the particular corner of social media he’s made his own.
“So you traded Instas?” Seokjin pipes up, startling Taehyung lightly. He grunts in confirmation but swats away the hand around his wrist trying to pull his phone closer to see for himself. The other’s eyes shoot up and lock with Taehyung’s once he breaks free. They start to narrow in careful and pinning suspicion. “Which one did you have him request? Personal or Work?”
Taehyung thumbs back to the Follower Request page and gives a noncommittal hum. He accepts Jimin’s account along with a handful of other random requests with ages listed in their bios, rejects some other obvious bots. Seokjin seems to be looking again on account of the choked-off noise he makes.
He continues to navigate to his drafted scheduled posts, completely unperturbed at the mix of shock, awe, and slight horror bubbling off Seokjin beside him. His next one is due to go up tomorrow because something’s always felt a bit powerfully sacrilege about posting at eleven on a Sunday morning. It’s one from a portrait series Jungkook had taken and edited a couple weeks ago, just a few days after his hairstylist trimmed off the last of his grown-out perm and turned him honey-blond. The entire line of him is silhouetted and spread in an armchair against a window, riding crop hanging loosely from one leather-gloved hand.
“The one with significantly less pictures of Yeontan,” he says, off-hand, and manually pushes the post through.
“Fucking hell, Tae,” Seokjin laughs, peering over his shoulder as the newest image posts successfully, joining the curated rows of leather, rope, and artistic glimpses into his… studio. The bio only boasts the name Vante and a link for business inquiries. There isn’t a black-and-brown Pomeranian in sight. “You’re gonna kill him.”
— ↣ ♡ ↢ —
Taehyung is going to kill him.
This is one of the things that Jimin is sure of, even in the current hazy ebb-and-flow focus of his mind. It’s a final thought he clings to even as the rest start slipping away, pleasure replacing lucidity like fog coating a window.
Taehyung is going to kill him, and there’s no one he trusts more to take care of him. These things can be true at the exact same time, he thinks. He knows. He feels it, as real and certain as anything else.
But thinking takes effort right now, it takes parts of his brain that are kicking harder than ever to stay afloat right now, when it could be so much easier to just let go—
His wavering attention is yanked taut, air catching in his throat as he’s pulled to the single freezing slide over one hipbone. He twitches at the sensation, skin flushed so hot that the contrast feels like it’s burning, but the movement doesn’t get him very far at all. It’s not like it was going to, with his legs in butter-soft leather cuffs spread wide and stretching him to either corner of the bed.
“Are you still with me?”
The tone of voice is so low, but warm and amused enough that it kicks up something tactile simmering right under his skin. Despite the fact that Jimin can pull his head back down and see Taehyung seated straight and tall and out of reach by his waist, his voice rasps intimate right against his body like brushing velvet. Like he’s crawled right up under Jimin’s skin and settled closer than anyone else and Jimin has let him do it. Taehyung’s long fingers slacken on the ice cube pressed to the inside of his hip and it slides further, glacial melt dripping down the ridges of skin and muscle. Half of Jimin’s mind is almost surprised it doesn’t curl off immediately into steam.
There’s the gentlest dig of fingers into the numb skin, and Jimin twitches again. This time, he chokes on a slight whimper. The touch is nowhere near close to his flushed and aching cock, but somehow his skin feels live-wired to the need pulsing between his legs regardless of where he’s touched.
“I asked you a question, sweetheart,” Taehyung reminds, voice deceptively light. He slides the melting ice all the way across to Jimin’s other hip, right along a path where the band of his underwear would sit. By the time he reaches the other side, leaning halfway over his hips, it’s just his fingers grazing cold, wet skin. There’s a teasing smile tugging at his lips, just the slightest sharpness to it that makes Jimin’s breath catch behind his ribs.
He gives a nod that flutters strands of his dark hair into his eyes, but a certain instinct—one that’s been coaxed into him, always dead-set on being so good—knows that’s not enough. “Yes,” he breathes out, and almost wants to curl into himself at how wrecked he sounds. In his defense, though, his current state is not entirely his fault.
Or maybe, technically, it is.
“Let’s play a game,” Taehyung had said an hour ago, fishing into the crisp Dior shopping bag sitting on their dresser from when he’d come home earlier. Jimin was perched at the edge of the bed, eyes the slightest bit lidded and heat pooling in his gut from Taehyung kissing him filthily not heartbeats before. His mind had already begun to float a little as he watched the other unbox a small sleek black tube and uncap it with a luxurious click.
Taehyung turned and fixed him with a considering look for only a moment before prowling back over, forcing Jimin halfway down to his elbows when the other propped one knee on the bed beside Jimin’s hips and slotted his standing leg between his thighs. The familiar sandalwood of his cologne lingered heavy on his tongue as Jimin luxuriated in the weight of the other’s heavy stare, the kind that made him feel picked apart and cornered in the best ways. He didn’t even realize his eyes had slipped closed until there was a touch underneath his chin, raising his head and his lids fluttered open again. Taehyung twisted the lipstick in his free hand and Jimin’s eyes darted over to watch the pristine bullet roll up a deep, classic warm red.
“The woman at the counter said this color suits everyone,” he said matter-of-factly, as if completely unaware of the slight shudder going through Jimin as soon as he touched the lipstick to his parted mouth. The entirety of Jimin’s vision was filled with Taehyung, nothing but golden skin kissed with beauty marks, blond hair, dark eyes intent and focused on painting his lips. The intensity of his stare was more than enough to melt under and had Jimin already floundering slightly to stay together. “And that it’d make a perfect present for Valentine’s Day. So we should try not to waste it, don’t you think?”
At this point, Jimin knew well enough the difference between questions seeking answers and questions seeking to get under his skin. Taehyung’s voice was as dangerous a tool as any other he used with exhilarating confidence and ease, and one that Jimin had been damn weak for since the very beginning. He was sure Taehyung could feel the shallowness of his breaths ghosting against his fingers as he worked on his lower lip. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly on instinct in an attempt to close.
Pressed this close, the action didn’t seem to go unnoticed. “Oh, good boy,” he purred, the words drizzled against Jimin’s skin like syrup. He flashed the barest hint of an indulgent smirk, obviously pleased. “You already get it.”
Taehyung took extra time tracing the full shape of his cupid’s bow before instructing him to press his lips together to even out the color. Heat dripped down his spine at the unmistakable hunger in the other’s eyes as he watched him, but Jimin still had the presence of mind to offer an inquiring hum as he popped his mouth with a soft little exhale. “Get what?”
“I want you to keep my hard work nice and pretty,” Taehyung murmured, every word darkening with the familiar velvet-coated steel that always crept into his direct orders during play. Jimin barely had time to let the tone wash over him before a thumb slid past his lips. He recalled watching his mother do the same thing in childhood and explaining once that it kept the lipstick off her teeth, but at this point with this man it was practically second nature to suck.
A faint little sound crawled up the back of his throat as Taehyung pressed down against his tongue and continued in a voice now dripping with serene sweetness. “Each time you smudge it or get it on your teeth, I won’t let you come.”
The words drew a sharp inhale from him, teeth closing slightly and his thighs twitching closer together on instinct. They hadn’t even started yet, but something about being bookended between Taehyung kissing him deep and slow and filthy for the better part of an hour and the new impending challenge just leaving that still-reddened mouth had Jimin’s blood singing and the wires in his brain already starting to cross. The next time he raised his eyes to the other, Taehyung was already looking back with an expectant raise of his eyebrow.
He slid his thumb out, and in his peripheral Jimin caught sight of the perfect red ring painted around the base. The image flickered something that felt warm and delicious like possession in a hazy part of Jimin’s head, but his attention was quickly diverted when the thumb returned to the plush swell of his bottom lip. Taehyung kept his eyes burning on Jimin as he dragged the pad of it along the perfect crisp edge he’d just painted, and Jimin’s breath caught at the creamy slip on his skin.
“Oh, pretty,” Taehyung tutted, without an ounce of remorse as he pulled away from the smear he’d just made at the corner of his mouth. “It looks like that’s one.”
After that came the real play, and by rights Jimin had been doing pretty well under Taehyung’s touch alone, even playing nice enough while the cuffs went on with kisses to his wrists and ankles. But things began to fall apart when the candles burning on the side-cart beside the bed had pooled enough wax to pour.
Taehyung skims his touch along the line of his hip, down to his splayed inner thighs. Jimin feels the sensation of him pressing along the wax hardened on his skin, into tender rope marks from a previous scene underneath, and shudders. (His right leg had gotten him one edging, and when Taehyung had drifted the candle even higher up on his left thigh toward his hip he’d arched hard, rolled and caught his lower lip against his teeth between curses, and earned three for the trouble.)
Despite the fact that Taehyung’s denied him five chances at an orgasm tonight and he’s teetering on the knife’s edge of deeper subspace, he feels good. His skin tingles everywhere, pulsing under the tightness of the lines dripped down his thighs, in the thin little pools created by his straining biceps. He’d very nearly lost it this last time, on the shouting precipice for the fifth time with three of Taehyung’s fingers curling against his prostate and just the barest graze of lips on the dripping head of his cock. As soon as he’d calmed down enough to be three steps away from the edge instead of two, Taehyung started toying again. He’d then had the audacity to look annoyed by the fact that Jimin’s heaving chest was making it difficult to precisely drip the characters of his name across it in a blackened red wax specially scented like his cologne. (That candle had been the real Valentine’s Day present, customized and ordered two weeks ago once they’d started planning this scene.)
Taehyung, nothing less than a strident professional and attentive artistic boyfriend, managed the feat perfectly regardless. The wax along the thinnest skin over his sternum still throbs slightly, warm to the touch in careful strokes he knows too well. The heady scent lingers on Jimin’s tongue as he sucks in little half-pants that keep his chest steady. He knows that even if Taehyung hasn’t said it outright, messing up or cracking the writing might earn him some other kind of exquisite agony. He’s telegraphed it enough in the careful few minutes he’s spent clicking pictures with Jimin’s phone camera, just the way he’d asked.
“I have one last thing for you,” Taehyung promises once he’s set the phone aside and snapped off the latex glove he’d used to hold it, and there’s even a husk to his voice that whispers he’s almost had enough. There’s a dizzying kind of delight in the realization that all this denial has affected him, too. Jimin has been surpassing both of their expectations tonight, he’s usually only patient enough for three or four edgings when they’re this intense. “Can you take it?”
A whimper slips past Jimin’s lips like a Pavlovian response. He’s not sure whether it’s meant to be a yes or a no, not sure how the wax on his skin hasn’t melted back down because of the way he’s burning. The only things he is sure of are the sweat rolling backwards down his neck and shoulders, dripping down off his back and soaking the sheets, the aching need between his legs that’s grown ferocious enough to climb all the way up into his throat—
“Baby,” comes close, closer than anything in the last hour or—day, week, year, maybe, what even is time anymore—and Jimin’s stomach clenches in the kind of way that yanks on the floodgates of his eyes. Taehyung is so close now, propped halfway over him on an arm resting by his head, and he comes closer still. He presses his cheek along Jimin’s and the relative coolness of the other’s skin tethers him, sudden but gentle, back to something real. Jimin feels lips grazing soft against his temple when Taehyung turns his head just so. A hand strokes down his waist in a way that makes him feel comforted instead of teased, a solid, reassuring touch that guides him just a little closer to the ground. “Jimin-ah. Just checking in. Do you still want to keep going with this part? Give me a color.”
He feels strangely full in that moment—caged in by the other’s body, nose full of the scent he’s known over two years now. Ears greedily drinking in his baritone and the steady sound of his breath, eyes filled both with soft honey-gold hair and tears that feel overcome in the best way. Jimin turns his head just a little to prolong the contact, to feel Taehyung’s lips against his forehead and gentle fingers combing back the dark hair sweat-matted to his forehead as he takes a few slow breaths.
He becomes unequivocally sure of something else, plucked clear out of the haze like he’d never lost it.
Taehyung makes him feel so safe.
“Green,” he promises, shifting his hands in his cuffs just to come back to himself a little more. The insistent aching want is still there, unraveling him almost completely, but slipping in between all the sinuous edges is the feeling that he’ll be cared for. “‘M green, keep going. I want it. N-Need you.” Then, after another moment of carefully rousing himself to take enough stock of his body, mind, and pleasure, he chokes slightly on the request that burns his chest and throat as it crawls up and settles heavy behind his teeth.
Even though in this smallest moment they’re just Jimin and Taehyung, a breathing space for Jimin to collect himself because Taehyung had noticed his mind drifting off to a place Jimin best prefers together, part of him curls in satisfaction when he hears how deferential he sounds on a soft, breathy, “Please, sir.”
Taehyung’s attention is on him immediately. He’s pulled back to look at Jimin’s entire face, the tears still gathered at the edges of his eyes that just wont fall, the tremble to his jaw. They’d decided titles weren’t necessary for this particular scene given it was more focused on pleasure than anything else, so his eyes are sharp and questioning, but Jimin’s pulse also throbs at the heat that smolders in his gaze now, too. There’s the slightest question being asked here, a double-check of a tacit invitation. Jimin nods because he is sure—he knows the game won’t change that much because he’s still too far down to renegotiate larger scene aspects in a way Taehyung trusts, but it will still be perfect.
Then he folds back down to Jimin, gives a soft huff of a laugh against his cheekbone. “So well-behaved,” he murmurs lower still than he has all night, just a tease that threatens to send something else inside Jimin thrashing loose and desperate for more of that. It’s his own answer to Jimin’s provocation, the best line they’re walking tonight, but yes damn, it’s more than enough. Taehyung presses one last kiss to his face and Jimin floats with that comforting tether between headspaces.
But because he’s still Taehyung, he slips just out of reach with a knowing wink when Jimin strains his shoulder up to chase a kiss on the lips, and chuckles outright and mean at the pathetic huffing whine it earns him. Their little game means he hasn’t had Taehyung’s mouth on his since the beginning (and now he’s certain that’s what the other had been planning all along with how long and intense their foreplay make-out had been); and that kind of denial mixes with his physical need into an even more volatile compound that just might shake him apart completely.
Taehyung’s hands slide down his sides again, thumbing delicately at his nipples which had almost been grazed by the wax over his chest. A plaintive sigh slips past Jimin’s parted lips as he circles them with a bit more pressure, then he pulls away completely and turns to the sleek cart pulled over beside the bed.
Jimin tips his head back to try and stave off the burn of the kindling starting to catch under his skin again. His lids flutter shut, too, because it offers another edge of anticipation to how Taehyung toys with his body. They’ve done this with Jimin blindfolded loads of times now, but while planning this time Taehyung had mentioned with a flirtatiously wicked glint in his eye that he wanted to actually see the pretty tears in your eyes when I make you cry, and Jimin’s toes had curled at how a threat could be made so playfully, and that was that.
He hears the now-familiar plink of ice stirring in the bowl Taehyung had brought in from the kitchen, but still doesn’t open his eyes. He wonders how it hasn’t all melted completely yet, the same way he wonders how Taehyung has still kept his slacks and dress shirt on—the bedroom has felt like a hundred degrees to him this whole entire time, and seems determined to keep climbing with every other heartbeat thudding in his ears and teeth.
His muscles tense and cause him to choke on a gasp when an ice cube settles just below his navel. The prickling cold is a slight shock to his system again and raises goosebumps all the way up his arms, and his stomach quivers to take in a deep breath as the cold sluices down so close to the wet skin under his cock. It’s on the verge of too shocking to somewhere so sensitive and aching, but he’ll take any sensation at all at this point.
“Ah-ah,” comes Taehyung’s reproach right before a decisive swat to his thigh. His tone is imperious, admonishing, but it’s also the exact same warning sound he uses on the dog when he gets into something he shouldn’t. The comparison is deliberate and intentional, they both know it, and it makes humiliation burn hot from Jimin’s chest all the way up to the overloaded pleasure-centers of his brain. It makes his skin itch with need again for when Taehyung plays him harder than this, when they’re in a different room of the apartment and the things laid out in Taehyung’s reach aren’t quite so kind.
Some of the wax cracks and tugs slightly on his skin and Jimin lets out a broken moan. “Be good and hold still.”
Jimin’s breath tightens into something shallow as the ice remains on his stomach, melting slow on his overwarm skin. He chances a glance down at the rest of his body and shivers. It’s a patchwork in the dim light of their bedroom, some parts of him glowing sweat-slick while others are coated in rivers and spots of dried wax droplets. Almost all of him is pink and sex-flushed, except his cock which is deep red with neglected arousal and still weeping pre-cum. Jimin’s eyes flicker up to catch Taehyung staring right back at him, something so strong and dark in his blown-out gaze that causes his heart to kick up that much faster like prey about to be devoured.
But there’s still a startling amount of fluid grace to his movement as he plucks the red candle off the drip plate. It’s not the same as the one still clouding his nose and mouth with Taehyung’s cologne but it’s the same shade as his lipstick, and so it’s probably just as intentional a choice. Jimin tries to swallow down a shard of jealous impatience as Taehyung tips the wax onto the inside of his own wrist, then careful against the thinnest skin he can reach on Jimin’s ankle. A breath he didn’t know he was holding leaves him in a rush at the pinprick of molten heat, and he nods at the temperature.
But then Taehyung turns and sets the candle back down, and something in Jimin snaps as his head tips back in desperate frustration and he kind of wants to cry. The tears are crowding back along his eyelashes and a whimper is crawling up his throat, but it’s caught and strangled there into a keen at the brush of lips and teeth over his lower stomach. Taehyung has taken the ice cube in between his teeth then chases the wet trail with his tongue, long intent strokes that are entirely misplaced just a few inches too high. It’s a heady mix of hot and cold that soothes the worst of the freeze-burn and prickling goosebumps, and time must be entirely too elastic for Jimin to hold onto anymore because the next time he blinks next Taehyung’s face is bearing back down on his, dark eyes open and intent on his as he drops what remains of the ice cube into Jimin’s slack mouth.
Their lips still don’t touch, and part of Jimin wants to bite the other’s bottom lip between his teeth when the edge of it traces his cupid’s bow as Taehyung tilts in and kisses his damn philtrum. He settles on crushing the slivers of ice in his mouth instead, and the way Taehyung pulls away with the barest smudge of lipstick flares up something bratty and possessive in him alongside everything else.
The lipstick tube appears in Taehyung’s fingers again, and he twists it up again in that slow, considering way as his gaze burns like physical touch on his body. The sharp, fresh tip of it settles on his stomach at the narrowest part of his waist, glides across his skin in two slow, steady arcs on either side. The heel of Taehyung’s hand grazes against the very tip of Jimin’s cock as he closes off the tip of a heart on his stomach, and Jimin’s teeth clamp down on a groan.
Whatever plateau of reprieve he’d had sizzles off instantly at that kind of live-wire. In an instant the flood rushes back in, and knowing how long he’s been played with like this it’s all too easy to melt back more mindless haze, carried along in a desperate climb up he’s not even sure he’ll summit. But still, the trust makes it another kind of shuddering pleasure to give himself back over under someone else’s coaxing. No matter how the other is teasing him, Taehyung is still the one with all the power here, still the one he’s stretched himself beneath and allowed to play his body like a damn instrument.
Jimin tries a curse but it comes out as a broken whine, breath coming shorter now because fuck, it’s all crashing back into him and pulling him up short on the crumbling edge of a cliff. He doesn’t know how but he manages through braced teeth— “I-I think ‘m gonna come.”
A chuckle, low and too warm for right now, cuts through everything except the need, held up by a hair-trigger or a single pin. “Untouched?” The words come leisurely, taking up time Jimin doesn’t have, and somehow he lifts his head and watches through half-lidded eyes as the red taper candle tips over his body almost like it’s happening to someone else.
The first drips of hot paraffin land along the guides drawn in lipstick over his stomach, and Jimin gasps tightly. The prickling kisses of pain that graze the line of too much sink instantly into his greed for sensation and get swallowed whole, like water on parched dirt.
“Darling,” Taehyung sighs, drawing the candle upright again to melt more wax. His fingertips slide too slow down the center of Jimin’s body, past the bottom of the half-dripped heart then lower still. He must be able to feel the way his pulse throbs through his entire body, because Jimin himself feels like his skin is growing tighter and thinner by the minute. He’s not sure he can sweat or cry anymore or else he’ll flake apart and dissolve like tissue paper. He sobs nonetheless when fingers finally slide over the head of his cock, completely wet without touching and maybe that should be embarrassing, but he’s beyond caring for anything except now finally, finally—
Taehyung’s voice still cuts through the shuddering not-quite-relief because it’s been trained to, and it’s unmistakably chiding like he’s tired of repeating something obvious. Jimin sobs again before his words are even all the way out. “You’re going to come when I let you.”
The next round of wax comes slower than ever, because Taehyung stops every few drops to ease up on the gliding tease of fingers from the tip of his cock all the way down to his asshole. Jimin is more than driven out of his mind at this point, an uninterrupted stream of moans and half-hitched sobs spilling from the most desperate parts of him. Taehyung doesn’t do more than croon and pause to kiss his neck and jaw, murmuring how good he is in the warmest voice like he isn’t outright torturing his boyfriend. And it’s a bit worse, honestly, because he stops working to do it and they both damn well know it.
“Fuck—” Jimin shouts, arching hard against the bracing hand gripping one thigh. “—please, please let me come, sir, I can’t—” His eyes flutter shut, teeth digging into his undoubtedly ruined lipstick as he trembles in his restraints down to his twitching fingers. “Ngh, Tae—”
“Do you want to come before I fuck you?” The sheer gravel of Taehyung’s voice is enough on its own, but the broken-open sound of it catching on the tails of his own name has Jimin’s eyes opening back wide despite his tears. Taehyung is still sitting at his waist, one hand poised with the fucking candle, the other propping itself just inside the thigh he’d been holding to hover over him. The largest parts of him still look composed—he’s still clothed, calm and professional over however many years he’s done this for work, always alert in some way and in control of the situation before anything else.
But Jimin is able to recognize the parts of his boyfriend here in him, too, the way his own desire has finally bled through the attentive priority of his submissive. He’s able to juggle both of these things, and Jimin drinks it all in, from the dress shirt spread three-buttons open and sweat glistening on his collarbones and making his styled hair curl with humidity at his nape and hairline. His eyebrows are dark yet smooth but his eyes are wild, jaw set but lips as red as Jimin’s except he’s broken his own rules and bitten them raw. Jimin can’t think about the probable state of Taehyung’s cock in his belted slacks or he’ll lose his mind completely on the damn cusp of actual permission.
“Please,” Jimin throws back all too quickly, because this, too, had been something they negotiated beforehand. Overstimulation had been one of the first things Jimin had braved his early-relationship shyness to request they try, and Taehyung has only been too happy to indulge him since. “I need to, ‘m sorry, I—”
It could be half a minute or half a year, but Jimin breaks off as Taehyung finishes the heart on his stomach at the bottom tip and sets it aside as quick as he can. But something happens then, or a few somethings bear down on top of the other and shatter everything completely. One of the last wax drips runs too far down his lower abs when he sucks in a breath, and it trails a burning path that ends an inch from his cock and it feels so intense that the fantasy risk-play of more like that steals all his breath and focus. Jimin comes back to his body with a seeking touch running down between his thighs with more intent than maybe he’s ever felt, and he gets about half a second’s warning to gasp in some semblance of air before Taehyung’s mouth is finally, finally on his with the same burning desperation.
There’s not enough room in his skin for even air to fit, but a slick palm glides just a few times around Jimin’s cock and then fingers slip inside him with a devastating focus on his prostate, and still around the size of the world breaking apart as he comes, there’s space enough for the thought that maybe now, today, Taehyung has actually fucking killed him.
— ↣ ♡ ↢ —
Taehyung thinks often about two things:
Oftentimes—maybe too often now, considering how long they’ve been together now—Taehyung thinks about how up to fucking chance it was, meeting the most important person in his life. For all that Jimin revels in relinquishing a lot of control to Taehyung in certain parts of their lives, he doesn’t forget how they met. Granted it had taken a bit of mistaken identity and then the graceful intervention of one Kim Namjoon for Jimin to actually send a message to him, Jimin had still been the one to start everything in the first place. His raw confidence and shamelessness in asking for what he wants still surprises him sometimes in the most unexpected yet pleasant ways, like when Taehyung is blinking blearily at the espresso machine and Jimin regales him over the sound of a hazelnut latte being made with some new sweet torture he’s daydreamed up for them both. But it also sweetens the contrast when that confidence and trust is so willingly handed over to him, that Jimin loves him and feels safe enough to let Taehyung coax him down to incredibly vulnerable places and bring him back up again.
The second thing Taehyung considers—maybe too many times in his daily adult life—is how there is no good way to work wax completely out of bedsheets or carpet. He’d been so careful with laying the drop-cloth out too, but now several brilliant spots of red on the opposite pillowcase and fitted sheet underneath stare tauntingly at him as he delicately thumbs one of Jimin’s wrists and trails kisses up the back of his neck.
The room is still thick with the scent of heat and sex, though it’s been long enough that his own heartbeat has slowed down to the usual warm, low sort of flutter it has while holding his boyfriend this close. Taehyung has turned them on their side and tangled them up together, wrapping arms and legs and their discarded flat sheet around the smaller man. Their difference in size does a funny thing to his heart, here, in the molten taffy-sweet feelings after a good scene and even better sex that he indulges in just as much as anyone he cares for. Jimin had admitted the morning after they’d slept together for the first time (which had been rather vanilla, to the amusing surprise of a fairly un-indoctrinated Jimin) that he especially liked being the little spoon between the two of them, because Taehyung felt like a weighted blanket with a sentient fondness for his hips and waist. It’s been over two years and Taehyung hasn’t forgotten it because of how it made Jimin feel, but also because of how it made him feel.
It’s another handful of minutes before Taehyung feels Jimin’s breath even out, pulse ratcheting down just a little. His body takes its own slow time in responding to the slow, steady touches over skin that isn’t so sensitized, but a month of waiting antsily for a gorgeous blond from a bar to make the first move has made him a very patient man. (That notwithstanding, the amount of endurance play Jimin endured had wrung two unbearably overstimulated orgasms out of him nearly back-to-back. He’s probably handling both doses of aftershock right now, and on top of coming back up from pretty deep subspace, he can take as long as he damn well pleases.)
Smaller hands eventually find the backs of Taehyung’s own and Taehyung smiles into Jimin’s hair, turning their palms together for a brief moment and squeezing his fingers. He allows his arms to be coaxed tighter across Jimin’s chest and waist, and pulls him even closer. His fingers find spots of wax by feeling just under the other’s collarbone, and he gently flicks them off with the tip of one nail.
Jimin sucks in a breath and shudders slightly at the sensation, managing a little grunt in response. He starts wriggling a bit and Taehyung loosens his hold enough to allow Jimin the space to turn around into his body. He flops back down against the damp sheets and burrows his face into Taehyung’s neck with a wrung-out sigh.
“Fuck,” is the first actual word that leaves him, with feeling. It startles a laugh out of Taehyung, warm and unexpected, and he feels Jimin melt further into the space against his chest where it came from.
“Agreed,” Taehyung answers, his own skin still sizzling with the overload of endorphins. But probably opposite to Jimin right now, his post-sex high has his body primed to jump up and run five miles, probably. The skin-to-skin contact grounds him as much as Jimin, bringing them both home to equilibrium. He compromises by running his hands up the curve of Jimin’s spine, one combing the back of his head as he presses kisses into his hair and reminds himself of everything he still needs to do now. “Are you ready to move, honey? Sit back a bit and let me see how we’re gonna clean up?”
Jimin answers with half a whine and presses back against Taehyung for a bit like he wants to crawl into his skin. Taehyung continues to hold him that close and rasps his fingertips along his scalp.
“Wanna get all the wax off first,” Taehyung says softly after another few minutes, just offering more real words for Jimin to tether himself. “Then we can take a shower or I’ll run a bath, whatever you want. Whole night’s about you, darling. Did so well and deserve every bit of it.”
The promise of getting clean is too much for Jimin to resist even when his mind still floats, and the practiced routine is a kind of intimacy they both crave at times like this. Jimin stretches back out on the bed and Taehyung takes his time carefully working the hardened paraffin off his skin, starting with his arms, then stomach, then thighs. He leaves his own name across Jimin’s chest until last, the same way he leaves all the lipstick up his neck and shoulders and keeps it on until almost the end of their eventual shower, because he knows how much Jimin likes to see it.
It’s as much as Taehyung likes to see the slightly-pink trails leftover on Jimin’s fresh clean skin, spread naked again on a fresh change of sheets and a massive fluffy bath towel he won’t stop running his hands over. His softest set of flannel pajamas sits on the bed within arm’s reach, but Taehyung has been taking his time rubbing Jimin down with lotion and working any bondage strain from his legs, hips, and arms and Jimin hasn’t asked him to stop yet. His hands glide over Jimin’s right knee and stop just shy of the marks that stand out brilliantly now against his creamy skin. Jimin flinches slightly at the touch, and Taehyung’s eyes immediately snap up while his hands still.
“Doesn’t hurt,” Jimin promises as he tips his head back down from the ceiling to meet Taehyung’s. “Just ticklish.”
Taehyung tilts his head in mock-consideration and lets out a long, considering, “Hmm.”
Jimin’s head falls back to Taehyung’s pillow with a slightly-incredulous laugh. “You’re a terror,” he says, but it’s hard for Taehyung to take offense to the insult when it sounds so fond. “You just edged and railed me within an inch of my life and you’re already on to plotting more?”
The shower or bath is usually what clears his head almost completely, settles him back to his lucid, reactive self, though the clingier need for emotional closeness typically lingers until the next day. But it’s the sort of needy ache that’s bone-deep but just as easy to oblige, and Taehyung is very hard-pressed to believe that any amount of affection could ever be too much for Park Jimin, anyway.
“I’ve got lots of plots,” Taehyung says, warming more lotion between his palms and gliding them up Jimin’s other leg. He prods the matching spot on the other side, but get any reaction for it. (He’ll have to try later when Jimin isn’t probably consciously fighting it.) “Tickling isn’t even factored into any of the five most recent.” But it can be if you want, he thinks but doesn’t say, because Jimin knows it by now. Jimin’s (and his own) evolving list of discoveries and things he’d like to try is one of his favorite parts of their relationship, and the precious trust he’s built with Taehyung to figure things out together makes him feel deep and settled. Call him biased, maybe, but obvious boyfriend status notwithstanding, there’s a reason Jimin has grown into one of his favorite subs to work with alongside their romantic relationship. He understands what Taehyung needs as a dom and considers that so carefully as much as the other way around.
“The paraffin felt really good,” Jimin sighs as Taehyung switches to a smaller jar of cream that cools inflammation for everywhere that’s still red. They’ll talk about things like this off and on for the next couple of days, too, but Jimin often likes offering his rawest thoughts while everything is still fresh in the immediate warm haze of aftercare. Taehyung gives him a soft hum so know he’s listening and spreads cream over the heart on his navel with his thumbs. The conversation unspools gently from there, brief touches on what felt good and things they might try differently next time, but there’s more time for that deeper discussion later on. There’s a slight lull of content silence when Taehyung’s finished with Jimin’s skin and has started moisturizing his own, but then there’s a decisive break that makes him stop.
“If everything’s still tender tomorrow, you should use the crop on me.”
It’s Taehyung’s turn to laugh incredulously, and he bears up from his position between Jimin’s propped legs to look down at his boyfriend square in the face. “And I’m the terror?” The hand not bearing his weight runs fully up his side and squeezes lightly at his more ticklish waist. “I think I might’ve created a monster.”
Jimin’s cheeks are still dewy and pink from the shower and his damp hair splays around his head like a black, coconut-scented halo. He looks like an angel, acts like one every single day whether he’s kissing him goodbye in purple dinosaur scrubs for a too-early morning shift or asking-not-asking for marks he’ll hide underneath the same uniform for the rest of the week. As it stands, they’ve got two more days off together before Jimin’s back on his peds rounds and Taehyung finds himself very interested in accommodating this particular request, but he can’t make it that easy. Not with a crop involved.
(Seokjin’s words over drinks still echo in his head from not a few weeks back—”You may be the Dom but damn you’re whipped”—and of course he’s not wrong, but there’s also no reason Taehyung can’t make it just a little harder for Jimin to get what he wants every once in a while.)
“‘M not asking you to flog it off me like Jin-hyung did with Jungkook,” Jimin argues, but Taehyung tracks the spread of a blush from his cheeks to the tips of his ears the longer they stare at each other.
“Yet,” Taehyung supplies eventually because Jimin won’t. The things that fluster him nowadays are infinitely fewer, and sometimes he misses the days where just the right look could derail the other’s train of thought, but he supposes that makes the times it still happens that much sweeter. Plus, he’s got a great many more opportunities to still see Jimin flush all the way down his neck and then some, so it’s not as though he’s missing out too much.
Jimin stalls to run the clock out on the conversation by downing the rest of his second water glass sitting on the nightstand. Taehyung decides to have mercy and slips off to the kitchen with the reassurance he’ll only be gone for a moment to refill it and grab a few more things. Any worry he might have had over Jimin still feeling hyper-sensitive dissipates when he returns and finds Jimin has ditched his own pajamas for a powder-blue set from Taehyung’s side of the drawer. The tips of his fingers barely peek out of the cuffs when he reaches for his water glass and a bowl of strawberries Taehyung had pulled from the fridge and sets on Jimin’s nightstand.
“They aren’t chocolate-covered,” Jimin complains, put-upon, though he still pops a brilliant red sliced quarter into his mouth and his eyes flutter slightly at the taste. He’s tucked up against the headboard with one side of Taehyung’s pajama shirt too askew on one shoulder, hair still flopped damply into his eyes, and he’s trying for an accusing admonishment. “C’mon baby, it’s Valentine’s Day.”
It comes off as nothing worse than the pout he gets when he’s half-asleep, and Taehyung can’t do anything but laugh. “I bought you Dior—” not just lipstick, but he’s saved that particular bag for tomorrow— “and flowers and candles.” But then, just because he needs to prove a point, he says, “Check your drawer.”
A smile breaks out across Jimin’s face, too bright and knowing. “Check yours.”
Taehyung is sure he’s wearing the same sort of smile, two years’ worth of a silly-sweet tradition borne out of a gift-hiding mishap on their first Valentine’s together the year before. He wonders when, exactly, Jimin had managed to sneak the pretty little blue ribbon-wrapped package of chocolate (handmade under Seokjin’s expertise) and an oversize tin of chalky sugar conversation hearts that Taehyung won’t admit as his guilty pleasure into his bedside table.
“I’ve still got something else for you,” Jimin promises as he stretches out on the bed again with his own nightstand box, an assortment from the same chocolate place year after year, but bringing the same fond little smile to Jimin’s face every time he gets one. That smile broadens even more when he wriggles down to rest his head in Taehyung’s lap and instantly Taehyung’s hands are carding through his hair and reaching for the strawberries or chocolate to feed him.
“Never say I don’t do it all for today,” Taehyung declares as he fishes the candy hearts from his own drawer along with his phone. He calls up the Bluetooth speaker on their dresser and picks the slow, meandering tenor sax and piano jazz they both tend to fall asleep to. Actually checking his messages sees about a dozen pictures of Yeontan over at Jungkook and Seokjin’s apartment, babysat for the night. He flicks through them to show Jimin and watches the soft light from his bedside lamp caress Jimin’s face as he smiles, the sort with his whole teeth that precedes the laugh he does with his whole body and Taehyung is in the sort of love with his whole heart that makes it all just the slightest bit unreal, makes him too aware of the fact again that all of this could have slipped through his fingers.
But then, at some point or another Taehyung’s phone and strawberries and chocolate and worries over the almosts of the past are all swept away and what’s left in his lap is Jimin, settled warm and solid with the remnants of Taehyung’s name pink over his heart that he can see under his shirt. But he can see it the most in Jimin’s eyes, the most vulnerable flicker of emotion before his eyes slip closed and he’s drawn into a kiss that’s full of that same emotion Jimin has always made certain he knows.
“I love you,” Jimin murmurs into the tiniest slip of air they share between their still-brushing lips because he’s still making him certain of it and always will, and that’s more than enough to quell anything else.