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Taehyung was moping.
You were avoiding him, and Taehyung was moping.
Taehyung's lips folded into a sad pout as he curled up on the couch in the living room, throwing his arms over the backrest and letting his head loll back as he stared at the ceiling, his sword dangling from one of his hands and glinting a vain, attractive bronze in the sunlight streaming in from the windows.
Yesterday, when he'd lost his temper with you, it was enough to make you close off. He'd known it, he'd known that just a push in the wrong direction would shatter everything he was supposed to be working for, and yet he'd lost sight of it anyway. It wasn't much, Taehyung knew that. When Taehyung was younger, it had taken him a while to master control over his anger and his bloodborne fits of violence. Being a son of the war god wasn't a pretty business— even before he'd been claimed, still just a lanky teenager with the strength and stamina of a horse helping his grandmother support her strawberry farm, he'd been the kid no one wanted to provoke, lest Taehyung came home with blood splattered over his knuckles and bare chest streaked from wrestling in the mud.
And then promptly be smacked upside the head by a displeased grandmother for fighting with the village boys again, because how many times had she told him they were trouble, but that was beside the point.
This was why Taehyung seldom allowed words to affect him, allowed himself to express frustration, even if it was just for a moment. It was dangerous to the people around him.
And yet his heart had been aching and twisting in on itself so much that he'd forgotten, let the side of him he'd always been determined to bury shine through.
You are not your father, Taehyung.
If only he could believe it.
With a long sigh, Taehyung let his precious kopis fall into his lap, the diamonds studded up along one of the razor edges glinting, and twisted his fingers in his hair, trying to ignore the dull pain pulsing in his chest, in time with his every heartbeat.
He'd scared you off.
He'd done it again.
It surely couldn't have been a coincidence that you hadn't said a word to him after, shutting yourself in your room and not even bothering to eat anything as you'd quietly spoken on the phone with whoever had been trying to contact you then for at least 30 minutes, voice muffled and quiet through the wood of your bedroom door.
It couldn't have been a coincidence that when Taehyung had (carefully maneuvering through the war zone you called your 'kitchen' this time) rummaged around in your huge food-cooling machine and pulled out some fruits, bread, and milk you had in there and knocked on your door maybe a few hours later, guilt eating him up inside, you hadn't answered, perhaps by sleep or just to ignore him.
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.
He was also fairly certain that Jimin and Jungkook were being of no help at all.
In case anyone was wondering, Taehyung was currently regretting all his life's decisions.
Like, all of them.
Firstly, he wished there were a way he could turn back time to make sure that he'd never been thrown into this sword. Maybe never answering the call of his father before he'd asked him to slaughter near every mortal on Earth. Maybe some other clever idea, but anything that would have allowed him to escape that torture.
And also to escape the debatably deadlier torture of having met you and now pining like Eros has repeatedly stabbed him with his stupid love arrows over your every move, your every smile.
Which led him to his second point: he wished he'd been able to overcome his nature and stayed three hells away from you when he'd first met you instead of flirting with you like some thief son of Hermès had burgled his brain and doing nothing but watching as his seduction tactics backfired almost laughably back at him.
Thirdly, may Hades curse it all, he wished he'd never attained such friends as Park Jimin and Jeon Jungkook.
"I fail to see how this is amusing," Taehyung's voice was overwhelmingly dry, which somehow just made Jungkook on the other end of the line laugh harder.
"HE'S SO WHIPPEDDDD," Jungkook hollered obnoxiously, out of breath from wheezing so hard, "Gods of Olympus, who would've thought Kim Taehyung, the demigod with a body count to rival my dad himself, would be the first one to go head over heels for a girl—"
"Now, now, Kook, we cant really blame him, now can we," this time, it was Jimin's delicate voice ringing out of the communication device, laden with faux thoughtfulness, concern, until he spoke again, this time his tone almost wicked, "Y/N is a gorgeous woman, and Taehyung always did have an eye for the most challenging and dangerous of situations. It can't be a surprise that he's fatally fallen for the one girl in the universe Namjoon hyung placed off-limits for us, right?"
"I'll kill you both," Taehyung growled as there was a moment of silence to process Jimin's words and then they both absolutely lost it, snickering, "you think I'm kidding, but I'm not! I will do it!"
"Tch, don't be mean, Tae," Jungkook laughed, "you called us for a reason, didn't you? Who would have thought the womanizer of the ages would need advice in trying to bed a girl. Your days in the sword really did a number on you, buddy."
"I AM NOT— you know WHAT, to Tartarus with you both," Taehyung groaned, digging his fingers into his bright, blood-red hair, vaguely irritated, "I ask you to try and win over Y/N, just go ahead and try."
"Wait, really?"
A pang of possessiveness threaded through Taehyung like a snake, slender and coiling. "No."
"Well, to be fair, Kook, we have to give him some credit," Jimin conceded after a moment of silence, voice a little more genuine now and no longer taking that mischievous, chaotic undertone that made Taehyung desperately want to strangle him, "he's managed to do in weeks what we couldn't even do in years. Y/N's always been a tough one to crack."
"The number of times she's denied me are immeasurable," Jungkook sighed, lamenting, making Jimin from beside him snort.
"Haven't you only asked, like, twice?"
"Like I said," Jungkook reiterated with a self-suffering sigh, "immeasurable."
Taehyung rolled his eyes and tried not to think too hard on the fact that Jungkook had once been working his charms on you with that toothy, innocent smile of his that made near all girls drop to their knees at his adorable nature and sweet disposition— well, until the sun slipped behind the horizon and he morphed into something else completely.
And you'd said no.
Heart stuttering in his chest, Taehyung's head flooded with fantasies of how you would finally, finally say yes to him.
The feeling was fleeting but euphoric, and filled him with a newfound sense of determination.
"Look, are you going to give me advice or not?" Taehyung sighed, running his fingers over his face as he gazed blankly at the ceiling, "You may laugh, but you are not feeling the way my chest feels like it's about to split open, how I can barely breathe because she won't look at me twice. I've just... I've never done this before. And holy Hera, nothing I try seems to work! Surely the female population couldn't have changed so much while I was wasting away in my sword, this shouldn't be this difficult!"
There was a moment of silence before Jimin spoke up again, voice a little gentler this time. "We're sorry for poking fun, Tae," he began, and Taehyung could almost see the thoughtful pout on his face, could almost feel the phantom pat of his small hands on his back, "you really do care about her, don't you?"
"Of course I do," Taehyung sighed after a heartbeat of pained, drawn-out silence, "I... I just don't know what to do about it anymore."
There was an awkward spell of quiet, the thundering of Taehyung's heart in his ears the only noise that really mattered.
"Have you tried stripping in front of her?" Jungkook piped up, breaking the silence with a self-assured, suggestive scoff and a bang from the other side of the device (Taehyung hoped nothing over there had been randomly stricken by lighting, as what was prone to happen when Jungkook was went wild), making Taehyung nearly fall off the couch, "I find that tends to be a very solid strategy."
"I'd like to keep all my limbs intact, thank you," Taehyung spluttered after a moment of horrified silence as he actually entertained the idea, playing out the scenario in his head, like what had happened when you two first met. And him ripping his shirt of before your very eyes. Taehyung winced as he recalled your scandalized expression, your near-panic as you'd all but restrained yourself from literally killing him. Yeah... there was no WAY that was going to end well. "I'm not doing that again, I'm pretty sure she wanted to murder me the last time I tried something even remotely like that."
"Hmmm," Jungkook mused almost comically at this information, "this will require some work, then. Don't worry, hyung, just listen up and I'll tell you everything you need to know about getting a girl to fall in love with you in the 21st century. Maybe begin with making her a little jealous—"
"Jungkook, I'm not trying to f*cking die."
"Oh, by all the— Tae, don't listen to this fool, his advice isn't going to get you anywhere, trust me," Jimin sighed loudly, making Jungkook gasp, affronted, "just... you need to let her know how you feel about her. And if she thinks you're just playing with her, you need to prove to her that you aren't. Do things that she'd like, go out of your way to make her smile. Surely you know some things she's attracted to by now, right?"
By Dionysus's crusty wine glass, when did Park Jimin get so wise?
Suddenly, Taehyung could only think of how much he completely and totally would owe Choi Soobin if what Jimin was saying would actually work.
Because, yeah, he did know what you liked, what you were attracted to, thanks to him, thanks to that night.
It was just time to put it into action.
"You think it'll work? Just... talking to her?" Taehyung asked hesitantly, "Proving it to her?"
"Look, Tae, you told us you blew up because she didn't understand or was in denial about how you were feeling about her, right?" Jimin countered impatiently, sassily letting his voice lilt, "So then let her know! And then problem solved! Gods, you're hopelessly in love with her, aren't you."
"Disgusting," Jungkook muttered in the background, and there was the decisive sound of Jimin whacking him in the back of the head, "and anyway, I still think you should take the old-school route—"
"Taehyung, if you listen to this idiot and do that you're going to be pining for the rest of your life, trust me."
Taehyung took a steadying breath as he stood up, watching sunlight filter from the windows and trace gold pattens on the elegantly paneled floor, mimicking the rays of hope just beginning to shine from inside him. His already dark eyes gleamed coffee brown as he glanced out the window, sunlight splattering over his face as he thought.
"Well, I hate to cut this great talk short, but Tae, the hyungs are calling us," Jimin's voice broke Taehyung from his stupor, crackly as ever through the purple, oddly-shaped plastic blob, "and don't worry too much, you're literally Kim Taehyung. What girl wouldn't want you, is the question. Just look in the mirror and tell me I'm wrong."
"I can tell you you're wrong!" Jungkook offered, making Taehyung snort, "Just try not to have too much fun if by some gods-given miracle this does work. Hyung might get pissed. Actually, scratch that, do whatever you want— this might get entertaining."
The son of Ares felt his lips curl into a grin at Jimin's encouraging words and Jungkook's snarky teasing. He'd missed this, a lot— missed the mischievous laughter, the messing around, the unbreakable bonds of a longstanding friendship.
He'd missed them, missed the memories he could have made had he not been trapped, barely hanging on to a thread of his sanity.
"Gods, you two are never going to let this go, are you," Taehyung scoffed, and Jungkook let out a loud laugh.
"What, the fact that you're losing your mind over Namjoon hyung's sister? Yeah, good luck with that, Tae."
"What better way to make up for lost time?" Jimin chuckled, not at all sounding remorseful. There was a heartbeat of silence before Jimin spoke up again, this time his voice a little more somber. "Oh yeah, and before I forget— we're in Olympus customs at the moment (because Jungkook's still grounded, apparently), to try and speak with Apollo to find an Oracle to stimulate the quest, and we've heard some rumors about your brothers. They really don't want you back, Tae— word's been circulating that— well, we don't exactly know why, but—"
"You heard about the rewards on our heads, then?" Taehyung interrupted, rolling his eyes. Jungkook muttered an affirmation, and Taehyung scoffed. "Yes, I figured. We found out only yesterday, but I think we will be fine. Tangling with me and my blade will only get any monsters stupid enough to approach either of us killed, and they should know it."
"This is why I missed sparring with you," Jimin snickered under his breath after a moment of comprehending silence.
"Speak for yourself, he always won, the cocky bastard!"
Taehyung once again fought down a smile and tried to focus. So the sphinx hadn't been lying, clearly, now that Jimin and Jungkook had confirmed it. It was so peculiar to him that the monster had actually helped them, but really, who in the world wouldn't have some sort of soft spot for Y/N, that was the question.
Frankly, Taehyung was less worried about the monsters that would come after them and more plain offended that his dim-witted older brothers had been too cowardly to release the two of the from their grip and face him themselves. They may have been lesser gods, but Taehyung had yet to meet any being aside from his father, mortal or otherwise, who could beat him in hand to hand combat.
But since you'd gone off on your own...
Shaking his head, Taehyung tried to expel all pessimistic thoughts from his mind. A monster wouldn't attack you in broad daylight in a crowded area such as your place of education. Surely you were smart enough to not stay out too late or go off alone anywhere: it was simply common sense. And besides, you were probably still sitting through your accursed lectures at the moment, so there was really nothing to worry about.
But if, by some chance, you didn't come home when they were supposed to end...
Taehyung's fist curled over the hilt of his sword, sending a blood-red glitter through the diamonds flashing up at him as he did so.
"You still there, Tae?" Jungkook's voice broke the glint that was beginning to settle in Taehyung's eyes, and the son of Ares coughed, shaking his head.
"Huh? Oh— yes, I'm still here."
"I would have thought you wanted to hear how our epic quest is going before we leave," Jungkook's voice was taunting, as usual, and Taehyung rolled his eyes as he once again settled back on the couch, spreading his legs and snorting. "You know, the adventure, the great deeds, the trying not to get mauled by Yoongi's gods-damned hellhound—"
"Holly is perfectly sweet," Jimin huffed petulantly as Jungkook made an extremely disbelieving noise, "she just holds a grudge against you for nearly electrocuting her and burning her fur off, remember that, you idiot?"
"You did what?" Taehyung spluttered, choking on a horrified laugh as he envisioned that sight. More must have happened while he was gone than he thought. "How are you still alive? I'd have thought Yoongi would have—"
"Jimin, that's a total exaggeration," Jungkook muttered irritably, cutting Taehyung off, "But... hyung did try to kill me. A little bit. I think he complained to his dad, because even when I was nowhere near him, hand bones would pop out of the ground around me for two months and try to grab me every time I so much as walked— TWO WHOLE MONTHS. And I didn't even do it on purpose!"
Taehyung and Jimin both burst out laughing in tandem at Jungkook's childish whining.
"But anyways, Kook," Taehyung chuckled, rubbing at his eyes when his laughter died down, "don't tease me. I'm sure I'll be joining you for quests soon enough."
"Well. Good," Jungkook muttered, still sounding a little disgruntled from the teasing. "We missed you, dumba*s."
His voice turned a little quieter, a little more vulnerable at the end, and Taehyung's lips curled up into a soft smile.
"I missed you too," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck shyly even though he knew the two of them couldn't see him. Because he really did. He really had.
"Okay, enough of this sappy sh*t," Jimin piped up chaotically, voice mischievous even though the speaker, "hyung's going to come looking for us any second, so go get your girl, Tae! Just be yourself, I guarantee she's already in love with you."
Taehyung glanced at the kitchen and grimaced. He didn't quite believe that just yet... but he was going to try his hardest to change that cold fact.
This could either go very well or very badly.
"Alright," he chuckled, nervously rubbing the back of his neck, "pray to Tyche for me, okay?"
"Of course," Jimin drawled through the line, voice silky as ever, "but I doubt you'll need it. Confidence, Tae, confidence. What happened to the Taehyung who flaunted every single part of him for the world to see, huh? What happened to the reckless, crazy Taehyung who'd do anything for what he wanted? No, I'm serious, you idiot. You want this girl, go get her! What in the world are you waiting for? It's not as if she has anyone else at the moment, right? What happened to our Taehyung?"
Jimin, that motherf*cker, knew exactly what he was doing when Taehyung's face twisted into a scowl, slightly affronted. "He's still here," Taehyung said lowly, voice dark, "nothing's changed, Chim."
"That's the spirit," Taehyung could practically feel Jimin's smirk through the line, letting him know he'd been played like a fiddle.
Not that he minded, really.
Jimin was right. What in the world was he waiting for?
"See you on the other side, Tae. Give us updates, yeah?"
"And if all else fails!" Jungkook hollered right before the line was completely cut, "The clothes come off! I repeat, Kim, THE CLOTHES COME OFF."
A/N: I— I don't even know if I like this chapter or not, and I was just going to scrap it at some point but we have highs and lows and I am NOT going to throw away my work today. Nah. Not when I've sedated some of my vminkook urges with this chapter lmao.
As always, please vote, comment, and tell me what you think! Also, if you guys tell me what you want to see more of, such as scenes between any characters (but mostly Tae and Y/N ig), I'd be happy to take any requests haha. Go crazy ;)
[Side note: song of the day is Really Really by WINNER. Vibe of the century, I'm telling you.]
Love y'all!
—MARE