The Theft (taekook)

7. Help me with the word?

"You know, Jungkook?" the other hummed "All my life I have run away from my feelings, and it got repetitive soon. This, that I feel with you, I'm new to this. I think I always will be. It's frightening how much I like you and this is the first feeling I don't wish running away from. But if I bask in it, I feel someday I might no longer be my own. And it scares me more than anything. So I just want you to answer something with all honesty?"

There was something in his voice, so serious, yet so vulnerable. It was like jungkook breathed him the air he needed yet instead of inhaling it, he was scared of it being taken away and leave him breathless again. A contented present only terrified him about the lack of it in the future.

And jungkook himself did not know how to answer whatever taehyung would throw at him when he gestured him to proceed.

For he himself had no explanation for his dire need to please the other. To witness thousand other forms of his smiles, name them, and be the cause of them. He did not know why but he too did not want to run away from the feeling.

"Why are you being so good to me?"
Jungkook's heart cracked in his chest at how out of one billion things, he chose to ask this.

How surprising it was for the other to have someone put his happiness first, to consider his feelings, to consider him human.

It was so unnatural for him to have someone risk their safety to etch a smile on his face. Taehyung was not just unloved, he was indifferentiated. He was cut like a knife by the people he seeked out to, the people he loved.

It only made Jungkook want to do things for him more. To make him smile and laugh more. To take him out more. To love him more.

To love him more?

"I have followed my heart all my life. That is what I do now. I follow you not by the virtue of being your guard but because my heart tells me to guard you. I hug you not because I pity you, but because my heart wants you to lay all your sorrows on me. I don't question my heart, I trust it's instincts and I aspire to do that forever."

It's a different kind of beautiful when Taehyung smiled with glossy eyes. The healer kind of smile. Jungkook saw that his words made the other happy, but he also saw how the other clearly did not believe him.

It blew Jungkook's mind how he could read Taehyung and Taehyung could read him. It was like they are torn pages from a single book, having very different words written all over them but somehow their manuscript connected. And if these torn pages could only be placed back into their book, a story will be complete. A good story, complete.

"There is no forever for us Jungkook. This is doomed to end brutally."

"Then how about we change it to for as long as possible? That will be our forever."

"For as long as possible." both of them looked into the eyes, breaths intermingling.

Analogous experience of solitude in someone's company is a rare feeling. And it was without a doubt that both of them felt it, when one smiled at the other and leaned in towards, they both knew it would be blissful, maybe more.

"Food is ready, brother and brother's-friend-not-prince Taehyung-ssi!" Yerin entered the room with three bowls balanced on a small tray, eyes focused on the tray thankfully as she missed to see the two flustered boys that beamed red and got up in frenzy to try appear normal.

***********
"This.. This is beautiful. So thoughtful. I hope it was not too expensive?" Taehyung nuzzeled his face into the enchanting fragrance of the Carolina Allspice bouquet. It was rarest flower of Arauna and also happened to be Taehyung's birth flower.