✔️ 𝐈𝐧𝐤𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐞 | 𝐓𝐚𝐞𝐠𝐠𝐮𝐤

Chapter One.

—Two Weeks Prior to Taehyung Finding Himself in Jeongguk's Tattoo Parlor—

Taehyung

It was late.

Taehyung had gone out with his friends earlier that evening as his twenty-first birthday had passed just a few days ago, and they decided — against his will — that they would take him drinking. Unfortunately for him, as he had always avoided drinking alcohol, he was heavily drunk after two glasses of soju.

"Taehyung, you can't be wasted already!" a fuzzy voice came, filtering into his ringing ears.

Taehyung, not processing that someone had spoken to him, found himself swishing a large amount of soju around inside a clear crystal glass, only looking up when he seemed to forget what he was doing. He then unintentionally slammed the glass onto the dark mahogany countertop of the bar before looking over at his best friend, Park Jimin.

"What?" he asked, narrowing his eyes to get a better view of his friend. Jimin's fluffy, ash-grey hair was sticking to his sweaty forehead due to the heat inside the club, and his plump, pink lips shimmered under the dim lights —most likely from his favorite sparkly lip gloss. Most noticeable, though, were his rosy cheeks and intoxicating smile.

"Are you drunk?" Jimin repeated loudly, annunciating his words slowly. Taehyung frowned at his friend before frowning at the glass as well, as if it would sense his disapproval with it.

"Well," he began, thinking long and hard about the question. "I might—"

However, he didn't have time to finish, as the pair were pulled away from the bar roughly when the group of friends who had dragged them to the bar in the first place appeared suddenly. There was Seokjin, Hoseok, Joonheon, and Kihyun—all seemingly having a drunkenly good time. They were laughing and making jokes that simply didn't make sense to Taehyung in his drunken state.

"And he looked up at me with those large brown eyes of his and said, 'Am I supposed to put my mouth on it?'" Kim Seokjin recalled, and the group erupted with laughter. Taehyung, his wrist grasped tightly in Jimin's small hand, smiled along with his friends, yet he didn't completely know what they were talking about. What was he going to put in his mouth?

"Jimin," Taehyung whined. The older boy turned to him, a perfect smile spread across his mochi-like cheeks.

"What, Tae?"

"What does hyung mean when he says that he was going to put it in his mouth?"

Jimin giggled at him and shook his head, covering his mouth with a small hand. "You need to stop drinking, Tae."

After a stumbly journey, the group finally stopped moving. They were now across the club, in the center of the dance floor. Seokjin and Hoseok immediately started dancing as sexually as they could, which elicited a few cheers from their small group. The music around them was something in English that Taehyung couldn't understand, and he frowned as he watched his friends grind their hips together.

A moment later, Taehyung tore his eyes away from his dancing friends and instead looked to the numerous faces around him. Many were dripping with sweat, eyes closed, enjoying the heat and loud music that tore through the space. The lights above were dim, yet they changed colors rapidly, casting multi-colored shadows onto the drunken people dancing around without a care in the world.

Taehyung then turned on his heel, his gaze shifting towards the entrance of the bar, when he saw one man that stood out starkly from the rest: a heavily tattooed and pierced individual who didn't seem drunk at all. In fact, he looked extremely sober, yet he moved slowly, a hollow look in his dim eyes as he shuffled through the crowd. Taehyung's eyes only lingered on the indivual for a second before turning back around to see that Kihyun and Joonheon had joined Hoseok and Seokjin, Jimin cheering them on.