teacher's pet | taekook

ThIRTY ThREE { promises }

ANNOUNCMENT!!

after this part, i'll be doing a QnA part along with my author's note. i'll publish it next saturday (June 12, 2021), so you have until then — starting now! — to ask anything. 

feel free to leave as many questions as you in the comments of this chapter, in my inbox, or on my message board. they can be about the story, even future projects, basically anything. i'll do my best to answer as many as possible.

pls enjoy this chapter, and i'll see y'all next time :)

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Five months; almost six.

That's how long Taehyung had been with Jungkook. Only five months. It's half of one year; short in retrospect, but to Taehyung, it felt like years — he wishes every night that that had been the case.

Seven weeks after their separation and Jungkook's arrest, Taehyung rarely leaves his dad's home. No one thought Taehyung could possibly be fit to return to his college campus, especially considering that's where Jungkook supposedly "groomed" him, so school was out of the question for now.

He rarely talks. During the beginning of Jungkook's trial when he was supposed to testify and provide evidence, Taehyung was mostly mute and didn't attest too much; he only gave investigators the absolute bare minimum, nothing that could be used against Jungkook. And he might have bent the truth by just a little, but people don't have to know about that part.

Now, he listens more than anything: to his father's rambling about business affairs; to Dahyun — who visits him every day — and her one-sided chats about campus life and spaghetti recipes; to the strangers down the street that rant about his "good luck." They all take a stab at small talk, and it's agonizing.

Taehyung spends his days and nights following the schedule he became so accustomed to with Jungkook. He still follows Jungkook's rules too, more or less — he still struggles with the swearing rule, but he always had.

He doesn't go for walks, despite his urge to. There's no point in going outside if he has to walk on concrete instead of dirt, and smell car exhaust rather than pine and petrichor. And it's useless if Jungkook's hand isn't there to warm his.

Nearly every night is sleepless, and when he does manage to drift away from reality and into dreamland, the void is either filled with nightmares or wet dreams. Either way, Taehyung will wake up sweat-soaked and sobbing — and when he does have those wet dreams, of course he never touches himself; he's supposed to keep his hands to himself.

They say he should be thankful. They say he's, oh, so lucky to have been "rescued," especially after being gone for such a long time. The odds of his return had been below the bottom of the barrel, and yet they still managed to dig him up and return him to "safety."

They say Jungkook kidnapped him, but they don't understand that it was the police who kidnapped him — he didn't want to come "home," but they made him anyway, that's kidnapping by definition. But he knows no one will listen to him, so he keeps that argument to himself. It's not worth wasting his energy on people who just don't get it — Jungkook would get it, he would understand, but he's not an option anymore.

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