➵ 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓: 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒 [𝐊.𝐓𝐇]

"HE'S SO WHIPPEDDDD."

And it certainly couldn't have been a coincidence that despite your sphinx telling you not to go off anywhere without him because you could be hunted by monsters and DIE, you'd woken up early, left a sparse breakfast for Taehyung on the counter and without even bothering to leave a note, you'd departed for your classes.

And leaving Taehyung with his mouth dry and practically sick to the stomach with worry as he kept his eyes trained on the door, time seeming to tick past far too slowly while he waited for your classes to end and you to come home within ten minutes of them.

If you didn't, Taehyung did not care, he was going to tear this city apart looking for you.

They hadn't even had a fight, for Olympus's sake, and you'd gone and done the one thing you weren't supposed to do! Taehyung had simply given in to the selfish desires in the bottom of his heart and let his irritation show when you refused to recognize them.

But perhaps you were just scared.

Perhaps you were simply terrified of what would happen the second you decided to either seal up all the cracks in your armor or tear the walls all the way down.

That was always a possibility. The most likely one, if Taehyung was being honest— your fear of being hurt was enough to push aside any feelings you may or may not have had for him and just try to run away from it.

But despite that, Taehyung couldn't help but remember the carefree, lightened look on your face the minute your sphinx had told you the curse was breaking. The way your entire demeanor had changed, as if a weight was being lifted from your shoulders. The way you'd just been joking with him about it, all but plain excited.

That stung. That really did sting.

Taehyung's chest ached dully just thinking about it.

Did you really want him gone? That was the agreement you two had made in the beginning, sure, the reason you'd been so reluctant to let your walls down to him, because you knew attachment wouldn't end well if he was simply going to leave. He'd leave as soon as he could— he'd be free to do what he liked, you'd be free of having to take care of his dumb a*s. And yes, Taehyung was dumb. Without you, he wouldn't have been able to survive a minute in this strange new world without something going horribly wrong because he was just so clueless.

It was a hit to his ego when he'd realized that fact, but it just made him adore you all the more, strangely. You'd done so much for him.

Could he really... gods, could he even blame you, if you wanted him far away from your life, after he'd flipped it on its head?

This was unfair. This was very unfair. If Taehyung ever got his hands on Eros for stabbing him with those accursed love arrows of his, he was going to wring his neck.

"Gods of Olympus, what has Aphrodite done to me?" Taehyung moaned, throwing an arm over his face in exasperation as he lie sprawled over the couch, legs spread widely. An obnoxious crackling permeated the air from the small blob of plastic you hadn't told him the name of yet that rested beside him, and Taehyung correctly interpreted the ear-murdering sound as a certain son of Zeus's laughter, distorted through the enchanted communication device.

With a sigh, Taehyung rolled his eyes and glared at the small, unassuming purple object and picked it up, fingers trailing over the Greek letters carved into the plastic in that familiar, scrawling handwriting that could only belong to one demigod. Property of Jeon Jungkook.

"Don't forget to use the present, Tae!" was what that fool had yelled the last time Taehyung had talked to him. Jimin had warned him it was for emergencies only, because if he used it too often, the hyungs would catch on and they weren't supposed to be talking with Taehyung during the quest, for 'motive and intention' reasons, which were annoyingly important in this sort of business, but frankly, with Taehyung's lungs burning every time he breathed and his heart sending waves of pain through him every time it pulsed, Taehyung was fairly certain this was an emergency.