Chapter Text
Taetae
good morning jinnie
It is not dawn yet.
Taetae
youre only technically correct
are you asleep? u probably r cause youre not an alien
...
I wasn't.
Taetae
gud
You should mute ur phone when you sleep!!
I’m usually up late anyway.
Taetae
lol
srsly tho just tell me off if i'm bothering you
You have not bothered me.
Taetae
<3
im so fucking bored
yikes. youre in a church right? can I curse?
It only matters if I do.
Taetae
Ooh
do it do it
?
Taetae
for me pleeeeease
Fuck
Taetae
Mmm nice
Did you say it out loud?
I did.
Taetae
I knew there was a reason I liked you so much jinnie
Anyhoo, what’s up
I turned on the radio
Taetae
miss u
Send me a video
Of?
Taetae
you
Doing?
The reply comes suspiciously late.
Taetae
Listening to the radio
It takes Seokjin a few tries before he gets it right.
At last the video he sends is just a two minute shot of flickering flames from the fireplaces casting shadows on his beloved hardwood shelled radio as it plays Brahms; slow-burning and mournful. Intercepted by the rustle of his clothes and the wind stealing through his garden outside.
A moment later, a picture comes through in answer. A slim, fine-boned hand, the index finger pressed against the thumb, the remaining three fingers standing to attention. It's a very pretty hand, well-maintained, of someone who knows how to take care of themselves.
~*~
Seokjin expects the conversation to dwindle, but it doesn't again and again. Every evening, when he sees the new message, he can’t help but smile.
Seokjin imagines bringing the shoes but it never seems like a good day and besides he would not want Taehyung to know he’s snooping. The thought plagues him, he puts the box in the furthest place of his cupboard, behind winter coats and Armani tuxedos and waits for the right time.
At their sojourns in the cafe, he teaches Seokjin to press flowers, on his own insistence: Not bad. Be more careful when you press it though, or the petals will get bent and its beauty will be lost a bit. It took me a while to get it. Don’t worry if it’s not easy at first.
At the counter, Seokjin pays hastily, adds a large tip. And doesn't hang back for gossip. Which makes Yoongi look over his shoulder, through the glass front where Taehyung is fiddling with the weave on the basket of his bike. His eyes soften, which isn't something that often happens when Yoongi looks at him. Seokjin barks a whispered “Not a word,” at him and brisk-walks out to the sIdewalk.
Seokjin dreams like a mortal again. When the sun knocks him unconscious, he sees terrible, fanciful colours; white mixed with red. Of blood that sings to him and whispers tantalizing secrets. Of a different kind of hunt. Sinking until the rot takes to the core.
Of morbid forevers.
~*~
Seokjin is on the roof of the church, and below him, a young bevy of children dressed in grotesque inaccurate costumes mill about in close knit groups. They stop at the church grounds to catch their breath.
A small girl in a hulking green head mask and blue dress turns to the church. She has to bend back to be able to see the entirety of the structure.
It’s lovely, Seokjin knows, even though he’s never really been one for religion. The steeple rises high into the air, and there’s a big stained glass window around the back with pictures of people in it, a lot like the pious effigies of the Vatican.
On a full moon night, it's not dark enough to conceal him, and Seokjin can hear her audible gasp when she finds him leaning against the spire.
He winks to her, and she trips in her haste to get away from him. It knocks off her sweets basket and the mask off her head to expose a full head of blonde curls. The spilled candies draw enough of her attention away from him and Seokjin watches her friends help her up. When she turns her head again, Seokjin’s hidden in the shadows.
At the vibration near his hip, he slips the phone out to see two messages from Taehyung.
Taetae
Mr Kimmm Jinnie Seokjin Jinnnnn
how soon can i see you again
How soon would you like?
Taetae
right now
theres a party at Jimin’s
Hobi’s here. s halloween thing
did I ever tell you about Jimin?
You did Taehyung
Taetae
Sweet
[address]
this is it ig idk actually
I’ll find you
Then Taehyung signs off with an annoying self assured: See you there. A smiley added at its tail.
And no matter how much he may want to, he can’t turn Taehyung down.
He wants him too much.
The world outside is dark, dead leaves scattering down the quiet street.
Despite his stealthy tracing Taehyung, Seokjin hasn’t been in the suburbs in a long time. He decides to walk the roads instead of slinking on the roofs. Saying the town is unrecognizable is an overstatement. Not much touches their paper town. Gas lights lit the busy street where people spilled in and out of twinkling pumpkin dotted porches.
Seokjin is dressed casually, and little faces tilt keenly towards him, all looking at him and whispering behind their hands. The same opinion: he doesn’t have a good costume.
“Ha.”
He actually says it out loud, already judging which one of them would be the sweetest trick or treat.
Up the street, older children are hanging out wearing slapstick makeup. One of them is bullying a smaller guy with fake teeth and black cape with a red underside and hair matted unnaturally back.
“I fucking hate vampires,” Seokjin hears them say. Voice thin and cutting and ugly in the frigid air. “I hate them. I wish I could shoot every one of them myself.”
Seokjin inhales the aroma of the blood pumping in the boy’s veins. It raises the hair of his neck and sharpens his canines, he imagines he can make someone really hate him if he wants. But he isn’t motivated, his destination is far more enticing than the ephemeral pleasure of feeding from a passer-by. He takes out the text and reads it again.
The farther he leaves behind the residential areas and closer he gets to the magical community; he can pick up the crackling in air. A low zzt-zzt-zzt curling into the wind, incessant like a faulty electric bulb.
“What if we find a vampire tonight?”
“Shut up Tasha, don’t say shit like that.”
“What if we find the ghosts of vampire victims?”
“Ugh why?”
“Weren’t you just now going to kill vampires?”
“I’m going to drown you guys in the river.”
“Then we’ll come back and haunt you.”
“Whatever, fuck you.”
“Seriously, it’s really spooky here. Are you sure we shouldn’t turn around?”
“Come on, I want to find something at least. Even a serial killer would do.”
“Natasha!”
At that moment, as if he’s landed in a fabricated little corner of the universe, a lumbering, witching figure in red stumbles out onto the sidewalk in front of them. Its terrible hair hangs over its obscured face and stumbling skinned knees. For a moment, it faced away, threatening to fall down, arms swaying aimlessly as if waving in the breeze and they stand in a frozen, slow-motion moment of surprise. Then its head jerked suddenly to the side and its shadowy, hairy, terrible face locks onto them. It charges.
The vampire hunter kid probably wakes the whole neighbourhood with his scream. Many of the kids scramble and latch onto each other before running away, screeching. They bang into a car and set off the alarm, loud and terrible in the suspended air. The dogs in the neighbourhood start barking. Some others yell and start sprinting left towards the Town Square. One of them jumps the fence of a house and takes off running through the lawn, gets caught in a laundry line and slams down into the petunias.
Seokjin steps up and smooths all that fake hair back.
“You didn’t even blink, you bastard.” Taehyung snatches the wig off and throws it at him, his words blurred, nearly lost, in the fiery alcohol that Seokjin can smell churning in him.
Seokjin smiles despite himself.
“What are you exactly meant to go as?” he asks slowly.
Taehyung is wearing a red coat dress that comes up to his mid-thighs and the side of his neck holds a large artificial bruise. The makeup is good, too: the blood-red bite looks fresh and wet, and his hair was bedroom-mussed up underneath the wig. He wears fishnets cut up at his knees; perfect for the boots Seokjin has bought just for him.
His eyes are dark and glistening from a combination of sweat and alcohol as he tilts his chin up to look at Seokjin’s face.
Seokjin can see the dim streetlight painting the planes of his face in ugly yellow, his natural hair shining. He looks soft and incandescent, muttering in smiling frustration, “Are you seriously going to judge my red riding hood fit now? I actually prepared for this, you could’ve at least pretended to be scared.”
Seokjin gets a brief glimpse of himself clutching at pearls and screaming in hysteria.
“You forget I can smell your scent from miles, Taehyung,”
“So unfair,” Taehyung sighs, then he perks, sways towards his side, “what’s my scent like?”
Like it would make me very happy to snap your neck.
Seokjin doesn’t say.
“You didn’t forget already, did you?” Taehyung exclaims, “You can have another go. I can, maybe lean against a bark, it’s quiet here, right? I’m not sure I’ll be able to stay awake though, I’m really drunk.”
Inconveniently, he thinks of backing Taehyung into the oak trees by the side of the road or wall of one of the quaint houses, his hand closing around that throat… the look in Taehyung’s eyes as he swallowed against the cup of it. Drinking him. Taking him. Even if he were to bite and alcohol would be all he tastes.
Seokjin’s own inhibitions are lower around this Taehyung; pink-cheeked and babbling. He proves to be an easy read when Taehyung’s smile turns coy as he leans in and says, “Maybe not a feed then. Maybe…”
“You know it is almost midnight, don’t you?” he asks, tilting his head scornfully. “You’re not safe.”
“If I die, that’s my problem,” he replies. “If you’re so concerned, why don’t you walk with me?”
“I already am.”
They are nearly at the high street at the end of which Taehyung lives.
His fingers reach out to Seokjin’s elbow and he leads them around by the forearm, thumb pressed to the underside of his elbow, towards the giant metal gates instead.
“This way, I usually take the shortcut through the cemetery.”
“Why am I surprised?” Seokjin manages to say, without raising his voice at all. His throat has gone dry.
“Come on,” Taehyung beckons, rolling his eyes as though Seokjin’s the one being unreasonable, “I’m really tired by the time shift ends, kay?”
The gates grate as they fall back on the hinges. They steal through the cemetery with ease, before Taehyung jerks his arm and yanks him behind a large mausoleum.
“You’re walking right towards the cameras,” he whisper-shouts.
“I don’t appear on film.”
“Why are you so cool?” Taehyung pouts, “You can literally go anywhere, I’m so jealous, Mr Kim.”
“Or you could just take the route you’re supposed to,” Seokjin replies.
Taehyung skips ahead of him, “Where’s the fun in that?”
Stupid boy, Seokjin thinks. Everyone knows you don’t speak aloud in a graveyard.
True you didn’t actually have to hold your breath when crossing a cemetery and make the dead jealous but the sweet swish of life might attract the things that lurked amongst corpses. Though Taehyung seems to have done that already.
Seokjin watches him sweep through the land of tombstones, fingers brushing against levigated rocks; icy to the touch. Not that Seokjin would know, he doesn’t touch them. He just remembers that it’s cold to the touch. These details don’t matter much, to him, everything has been cold to the touch for a long time.
Eventually, Taehyung slows down to walk beside him again, he yawns and rests his head on Seokjin’s shoulder, body sagging so Seokjin has to hold onto his waist, “Wow, this coat is nice. It’s, like, heavy and silky instead of woolly, I like it, also my head hurts,” and proceeds to complain about the fruit punch Jimin had concocted from bathtub gin.
He...he smells good, looks good, and Seokjin’s not even a little surprised to feel his cock twitching.
Seokjin tells him on a whim, or maybe Seokjin had decided the moment he’d seen the old cemetery, “I have something I wish for you to see.”
Taehyung raises his head from Seokjin’s shoulder, “Is this the bit where you turn into a bat?”
“Would you like me to?”
“You can?” Taehyung asks louder, stepping back.
“I can turn into anything I’ve drunk from.”
Taehyung halts him with a hand on his arm, gaping.
“You’re kidding right?”
Seokjin shakes his head, “I’m not.”
“Fuck, there is no way- what, seriously?”
“I can turn into you,” Seokjin explains, earnestly.
“Holy shit!”
Seokjin shrugs, standing as straight-faced as he ever does in contrast to Taehyung’s coin-sized eyes.
Then he takes a deep, steadying breath, and finally cracks a smile.
At that Taehyung laughs in delight, and the sound echoes and lunges around the dark, still night. Overhead, a startled owl hoots. “I almost believed you! Damn you, Jinnie. Were you funny this whole time? I had vivid fucking images of you robbing a bank looking like me.”
“I think the need for me to look like you to rob a bank is very low,” he contemplates, inclining his head and beginning to walk again. “Come along,” he says, turning back to make sure that Taehyung is walking beside him.
Their footsteps crunch into the ankle-high grass, Taehyung murmurs, “You should smile more, you look really good. You always look good, it’s very upsetting,” Seokjin doesn’t answer because he has a feeling Taehyung doesn't know he’s speaking aloud.
As they walk deeper among the dead, Taehyung starts humming a slow and ominous lullaby that sounds suspiciously like it is These are My Favorite things,’ and by the last few rows of ancient tombstones and brick paths, Seokjin pauses to say, “Here.”
Seokjin thinks he sees the perpetually cheery and excited expression slip a bit, “A grave?”
One sculpted with strings of ivy wrapping around the thin marble corners visible under dead leaves and twigs, and real ivy right over it. Taehyung only hesitates in what is already a made decision, before bending down to wipe away grime off the concrete tomb.
Black river birds swoop behind him, high up in the grey.
The carving in the marble and concrete tomb is caked in dust, but they can make out the lettering in the pale moonlight:
Kim Seokjin
1692 - 1716
Beloved son and brother.
Hazel eyes fix him with a gaze, mild panic blooming into terror in them.
Taehyung’s voice comes out croaky and a bit broken. “This is yours.” He blinks, confused, betrayed, "Why?"
Seokjin tries not to smile.
"The dead must be put to rest."
Taehyung’s hands rub at his chest, as if to comfort.
Finally, Seokjin has managed to go and scare him.
“I wanna go now,” Tahyung says firmly, mouth dangerously downturned.
Taehyung lets Seokjin accompany him but he stays at least two feet away from him all the way home and refrains from cracking wise about every little thing in the streets. Only the sound of his feet hitting the pavement in soft thuds while the sensation of his gaze follows Seokjin like a touch.
At his front door, Taehyung turns to Seokjin. His face twisted with quiet misery. “You’re not dead.”
“Mm,” Seokjin says. He reaches as if to straighten Taehyung’s red coat— brass buttons sewed on to the hem that Seokjin could rip apart and expose his body to the icy air — he reaches into the pocket in the lining and draws out the wooden stake that Taehyung kept well hidden and on himself at all times.
Taehyung's widens his eyes at Seokjin, then at the stake which looks more like a very thin, very pointy letter opener.
Seokjin raises an eyebrow, holds it between them, “This won’t protect you for long Taehyung, it won't even make a difference.”
In one single jerking motion, Taehyung knocks it out of his hand making it clatter to the ground and wraps his arms around Seokjin’s neck, swaying into him, and it’s only instinct: Seokjin's hand shoots out for his hip, steadying himself and Taehyung both. Taehyung's hands grasp Seokjin’s arms. tighten.
Seokjin’s own arms slide around that lithe waist, thumbs dipping to rub at the arch of his spine, like a man starved, skims the top of his ass. Taehyung moves against him, his body reacting to every minute touch like they were orders.
The moment passes… the very one when he was supposed to let go of Taehyung. But Seokjin doesn’t. And Taehyung doesn’t either.
A hand comes to rest on his cheek, cupping it like he’s something sweet, something kind, something deserving of softness. “If I have to kill you, you’re not dead.”
He closes his eyes and tilts his head, leaning into it very, very slightly. Taehyung’s precious thumb runs along the cut of his cheek and down the side of his mouth, and Seokjin doesn’t stop him when Taehyung touches the seam of his mouth and pulls up his top lip, revealing the fatal point of a gleaming fang.
Taehyung’s hitching breaths quieten a little, just from seeing them but Seokjin watches his dilated eyes, like blooming ink drops.
The smell of him, the scent. Seokjin’s fangs descend on impulse alone. He fights against every base instinct to reign them back in.
“No,” Taehyung whispers, “let me see.”
He reaches with another finger, Seokjin’s hands loose and permissive around his wrist, to pet the long, deadly curve of the nearest fang.
Seokjin is shocked to hear himself make the strangest noise, his eyes slip closed. He shudders.
His arms go around Taehyung again, and he gives the smallest tug. Taehyung fits up against him now, flush, pulling a weak groan out of him. He can feel Taehyung now. He’s hard. Taehyung’s cock is hard. Seokjin slides a hand up to cup the back around Taehyung’s head. He’s panting against Seokjin’s jaw. One of Taehyung’s hands shifts up into his hair, and he makes a fist. Seokjin could just flip the skirt of his coat and get where Taehyung wants him most.
He’s still petting Seokjin’s fangs and it sends waves of pleasure coursing down his spine, making him weak in the knees so he has to press them against the door to keep them from sliding onto the landing.
Alarmingly, he realises there’s a very good chance he could come like this. It makes him dangerous, unhinged.
Seokjin’s fumbling right hand feels across the expanse of Taehyung’s clothing, a reverie of Take me inside, let me in, invite me in, running in his head like some ritualistic incantation.
They are still so close; lean in a hairbreadth and it would be over.
Seokjin raises another arm and winces a little and presses himself away from Taehyung and Taehyung further up against the doorway, away from himself, away from his fangs.
“Do you want to come inside?” The words drip from Taehyung’s lips in a lower pitch than he was expecting, altered by his proximity, by how badly he seems to want this.
Seokjin can only stop a groan from happening by constricting it to a mildly humiliating grunt. Taehyung doesn’t seem to understand that what little semblance of control he had over his thirst has vapourised. It has been gone for days. He turns his lips to Taehyung’s ear, and he speaks slowly, “Please stop coming closer. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You wo-”
“Go inside and close the door,” he manages to say, an imagined heat starting low in his belly, lit by the sharp physical wanting in him, by his powerful, insatiable attraction to this boy. His need for him. How warm Taehyung's body feels under the one palm Seokjin's pressed against his sternum to keep him at bay. “Do not speak of this.”
Seokjin growls, a deep rumbling thing in his chest and notes with some excitement that Taehyung’s face drains of blood, the quick rainlike patter of the organ locked inside of his rib cage.
But as soon as he pales, Taehyung blushes. A soft red tinging the healthy curve of his jaw.
“You could just come-“
“Go!” Seokjin slams his hand on the door by Taehyung’s temple, only narrowly missing his pretty face. His teeth bared at him, the flash of twin points sharpened into weapons, and the horror that overtakes Taehyung’s perfect face shatters Seokjin’s unused, ancient heart.
Taehyung swallows, panting, closes his eyes and bangs his head against the wooden grain of his door. The feather-soft grip of Taehyung’s hands leave him and he’s gone, the wooden door clattering shut behind him. Then he latches the door on the other side and disappears behind it.
Seokjin lingered in the landing for a long few minutes, forehead pressed to Taehyung’s door — breathing hard, his fist against the wood, ready to knock.
He didn’t.
~*~
Seokjin does not show up at the cafe next week, or the week after. They come in the night, the dark shadows, of his father and his brothers and his fearful mother, their faces morphing, their voices low and accusatory. Murderer. Murderer!
He doesn’t do much at all except tend to his garden that looks so beautiful under the moon. He imagines Taehyung in his nightgown, roaming marked and barefoot amongst his deadly flowers; illuminated by the lanterns dotting the gravel path.
Because Seokjin’s just a man.
Monstrous, yes. But still, terribly, a man.
He doesn’t hunt, he doesn’t feed, doesn’t leave his bed.
The sky rips open its belly and showers down in solidarity with him, drowning the seeds he'd sown for winter and washing them away, away from where he struggles inside the altar room he’d kneeled before the Lord three hundred years ago and couldn’t meet his likeness' eyes.
Time passes differently when Seokjin is this hungry. He tried once, when he was first turned, to resist the inexorable pull of blood. He lasted eleven long days and had gone half out of his mind.
The rain doesn’t let up even when Seokjin fetches an umbrella at last and starts out through the sweet-smelling wet forest, it feels like he’s in the middle of a waterfall, walking through a thick sheet of damp.
Walking underwater.
Lightning brews in the clouds above, lashing out to strike a pine tree just inches away. The bark explodes but Seokjin dodges it easily. Around him, the forest turns yellow summery; scorching with boiling sap, wildfire roaring in the underbrush. Flames in the timber like something alive, bellowing black fumes like an exorcism.
At the Wet Bar, the scent of live, warm blood tints the air. Even from the entrance, it is impossible to get away from.
Because as pathetic as he sounds on the other side of the door, once it opens to him, once he sees Taehyung—skin effusive with the very thing he needs. His mouth waters.
Taehyung sees Seokjin too, rushing to stand in a single, swift motion, and approaching Seokjin before he can brace himself for Taehyung’s presence, making up the distance between them with a handful step to hurtle into him.
“You came--” Taehyung's cut off by the impact of his hug halted by the hand Seokjin has thrown out, holding him away.
He sucks in a breath, a pitiful hiccup of a sound. Seokjin sees the exact moment that Taehyung understands he is keeping them apart. He blinks, stands a little straighter. In a few rapid seconds, Seokjin sees surprise, confusion, denial, disappointment, and then finally, crushingly, hurt, flash across his face. He looks off to the side like he's searching for something better to do yet he doesn’t step out of where Seokjin’s fingers are curling into his sleeves.
Inexplicably, Seokjin wants to say: I’m Sorry.
He wants to flee so badly but the blood sings to him, he can sense it calling out to him—sweet and heady in its siren from beyond the locked door.
Taehyung’s heart is pounding so fast and hard that it feels like it's reverberating into Seokjin’s arm and up his shoulder. The kick of his pulse at the base of his throat the most erotic thing Seokjin has ever seen. It makes Seokjin feral just looking at him.
He breathes and can smell the buttery pasta Taehyung's had for dinner, the floral wine he’s sipped, the soap he’s used in the shower before he left for the cafe, the dust and grime of the town and the distinct musk of rain clinging to his skin, to his body, to his soul.
He inhales the burning pines. The ground ripped right open like a wound. The dead silence.
“Don’t take the graveyard route tonight.”
Taehyung goes lax at once, maybe at Seokjin's voice, maybe at the fact that he's being addressed after so many tense moments of silence. He steps away so Seokjin’s hands come to fall awkwardly at his sides. Asks, “Why?”
“Just, don’t,” he repeats, just as Taehyung adds, “You look weak.”
“I’m thirsty,” slips out of his impoverished mouth, his voice changing as his animal takes over. It’s the voice of someone between worlds, half-whisper, half-music.
Taehyung thinks he’s weak. And yet Seokjin can send him flying across the room with one shove if he wants to. Like he should have just minutes ago.
“Come here,” Taehyung says softly, the expression on his face oddly fragile, welcoming. He guides them back to sit.
Maybe Seokjin shouldn’t. But he wants to.
“It’s okay, Jinnie,” Taehyung says quietly, which is rather telling about his understanding of the situation because it is so far from okay that Seokjin can barely think. “I know what you need. It’s why I’m here.”
That, and because the truth remains that Taehyung is an addict.
At first, all Seokjin knows is blood. Warm, hot, pulsating beneath his tongue. He doesn’t even savour the initial bite, just drinks deeply from the wrist over and over again in long, luxuriating gulps.
Seokjin drinks Taehyung’s pulse down his tongue, throat working quickly to get as much as he can. Maybe he even groans into it a little and doesn’t notice, too caught up in the act, not because it is blood but because it is Taehyung's. His mouth numbs with the intensity of his greed. It’s not right—it’s not how this is supposed to go.
“Jin... Jinnie, it hurts,” he hears Taehyung murmur from very far away, his touch flutters over Seokjin’s hair like he’s submerged and can’t quite scratch the surface.
When Seokjin finally tears himself away from Taehyung’s wrist, he gasps at the sight. It looks like Taehyung had been attacked by a beast.
Also, he isn’t moving anymore.
“Taehyung,” Seokjin murmurs, trying to feel for a pulse. His blood still calls to Seokjin, but the desire has been smothered by fear. He feels a little insane.
When he touches Taehyung’s neck, his pulse is slowed but regular. Taehyung looks pale and nearly drained, and it’s all Seokjin’s doing. He opens Taehyung’s parted mouth and pours the meagre potion down his throat, saying, “You need somewhere safe, this is not safe."
He's said it a hundred times before; I am not safe.
Taehyung’s eyes flutter open to him.
Seokjin says, “You will not invite me into your house, ever again.”
He blinks, slowly, just the once.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Taehyung whispers.
“Aren’t you?” he nearly snarls. “And you’re going to tell me I’m your friend then?” The fear like a fist clenched hard in Seokjin's throat and he couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to, “You’re going to tell me that I’m alive?” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair, tousling them, “Although, ‘alive’ is really pushing it, isn’t it? You should feel how slow my pulse is.” Seokjin wants to leave, but the fact that Taehyung still hasn’t shown signs of stability is the only thing keeping him here, “Do you know how hard it is to stop feeding once I start? How horrible those blood bags taste? How cold and lifeless? The plastic against your teeth. Do you know how badly I want to kill someone?” his voice is changing again, “You’d do. Do you know that? That’s why I come here. I don’t come here to be a good samaritan” He spits the word like it’s beneath him to say it. “I come here because it would be an easy kill.”
The inside of his eyelids begins to sting.
“I’d kill you in a heartbeat," he utters through gritted teeth.
Taehyung lifts his left hand, and reaches towards him. Seokjin flinches but doesn’t move away, his heart beating six feet underground. Taehyung's hand is soft when it touches Seokjin’s lips, gentler as they wipe off a smear of blood from his lips.
Taehyung lifts his gaze, dips his thumb into his mouth, and his eyes find Seokjin. Something drops into his stomach. Something hard and unyielding. Something he can never unfeel again.
“Then kill me.”
~*~
Outside, a blackbird calls out several times in question, the first of the dawn chorus. The curtains of his drawing-room are all drawn open. It is one of those winter evenings where not a flicker of life can be found, and thunder is still roiling in the distance, electrifying the air.
Seokjin contemplates it for a long time, mulling it over as he buys asphodel seeds for a pretty dime to plant in May.
He has seen in royal courts what happens to those who try to wean off of opium, the deathly sickness of their skin, their nails scratching their own skin. If the drug in his teeth is similar then Taehyung will not be able to cope with its withdrawal. In the end, he convinces himself it is the only reason he heads out the following week-- many hours late and still unsure.
He traverses the roofs this time for a quicker route, seamlessly jumping from terrace to terrace till he flies down at the sidewalk outside Les Fleurs Du Mal. In the cafe, the roar of the crowd is nearly dead, given how close it is to dawn.
A clatter of the door announces his arrival and Yoongi’s head snaps up when he sees him. Seokjin doesn’t quite understand that till he stops short midstep and all the wind leaves him.
Frozen, he stares with an intensity at the scene that sends a shockwave through him. He makes a sound in his throat.
“No,” he says aloud, but his throat wants to close on the word. “I cannot be here.”
He can't see much, only in the far corner, in the shadows, so that you can only see the back of her head as she voraciously feeds from the fine-boned wrist held up in her worthless hands.
Yoongi pulls him out of the room, his eyes turned to molten silver, like blazing mercury in the dark orb of his eyes where Seokjin’s turned golden. He’s already anticipating a fight, a vampire going rogue inside his cafe hinted at way too many casualties.
“I can’t,” Seokjin repeats. Louder. A roar.
“Then go!” Yoongi’s fangs have begun to descend, ready to spar, sparking a pavlovian fight response in Seokjin, he felt his thinly veiled control begin to slip away.
“Don’t let me be here!” Seokjin says so loud that Taehyung turns his head once, looking for him, but before Taehyung’s eyes can latch onto his face, Yoongi’s forced him away and into the storeroom.
He grabs for the blood bag on his shelf, thrust it into Seokjin’s chest, like a security blanket or a teddy bear, and pushes him out the back door.
Immediately Seokjin huddles under the dark, cowering against the rain-splattered windows, his teeth sinking into the blood bag and sucking. The blood that fills his mouth is necessary but unsatisfactory— something savoury when he wants sweet. The texture is terrible; like cold cucumber soup and the plastic rubs unyieldingly against his sensitive teeth.
Yet he’s shaking by the time he’s deep into the third of three blood bags, suckling, some of the blood dripping down his chin and soaking into his white shirt. He growls and tosses it aside.
Lives are inconsequential to Seokjin. Certainly not another of his kind, especially if they have been feasting on what is his; Taehyung with his blood that tastes like a clear mountain stream free of impurities, who gives generously to Seokjin every time his tongue runs over his lips in hunger.
Jealousy like a tight knot in his chest and the thoughts in his mind run rampant and mad, an endless stream of violence, of murder and pools and pools of blood, drained from vital organs.
He whips his neck up at the sound of a purr, baring his teeth at the cat in the shadows, making it jump out of its fur with an alarmed cry and scramble away.
Seokjin recoils at that, at himself. The hot metal smell of cold blood clinging to his body. Various spots on his clothes-soaked red. He scowls to himself, brooding now and settling into it. When he rises and turns to right himself he bumps into a lamppost. Or...a human. Yeah, it’s a human. Great.
“You scared my cat,” Namjoon graces him with one of his knowing smiles, reclining against the grimy wall. His eyes have that sheen that Taehyung gets, a vague swimming thing, one of the twin claiming marks on either side of his neck is fresh. It must have taken some persuasion to calm Yoongi down.
His chest aches dully in guilt as Namjoon stands in the doorway and watches him, all Seokjin’s sullen temper leaving him in a slow exhale.
Namjoon gestures with a wrist wrapped in protective willow wood bead bracelets, to the empty blood bag on the ground, “and you’re littering.”
Seokjin grunts. He buttons his coat all the way up and rearranges his scarf to its previous immaculacy, “They’re bloody terrible.”
“I sent him home,” Namjoon tells him and Seokjin doesn’t have to ask who to hate Namjoon for it and still be eternally grateful.
Namjoon softens, “Hyung, I have tea for…” For what? A chaser? “For when you want it. For… after,” he offers.
“Thank you,” says Seokjin, and then to his chagrin adds, “Actually, could I have a Bloody Mary?”
“Coming right up,” Namjoon laughs, leading him inside where Seokjin can no longer pick up the scent of Taehyung and Jungkook proceeds to mix the negative O with a couple of shots of vodka. He adds a celery stalk as garnish, which strikes him as almost hilariously sarcastic.
He leaves a large tip for Taehyung as recompense for the indecency.
All Seokjin seems to be doing is amass apologies.
~*~
He doesn't move. He drifts, lying on his canopied bed. Dreams of snakes whisper to him. He twitches. And then… the Forest. He's colder than cold. Everything around him has died. Everyone he has ever loved is buried in the quiet earth. The world withers around him as he shivers uncontrollably.
I'd kill you in a heartbeat.
How could he say these things, how could he, how could he.
He sits up, panting, but it wasn’t the dream that woke him. It’s the pounding at his door. It’s the faint cry of his name, “Jinnie.”
He stops breathing then, holds onto an inhale he does not need, and feels every single muscle in his body go completely still.
Silence.
Thirteen seconds later, another knock.
Knock, knock… knock. Weak knuckles, unsure. Desperate.
"Jinnie."
He flees to the dungeons, climbs into the ornate coffin so he doesn’t have to hear anymore.
He does not know when the knocking stops, if the stop at all.
He does not open the door.
He understands the feeling inside him; he knows it will pass. But the soft beast of him does not live in the stream of time.
And then, one morning on his way to pick up more blood, on a day he knows Taehyung woks at Jimin’s apothecary and will not be around, he happens upon a letter under the trefoil foyer weighed down by a rock. He opens the envelope, and there’s only a couple of banknotes.
There’s a slip of paper: I cannot accept this.
His chest contracts until he has trouble breathing; it’s the last tip he had left.
Enclosed in the envelope, lay a single pressed white rose.
At the cafe, Hoseok is not so merciful to him.
“Jesus,” he says, ringing up his purchase of to-go blood bags, staring. “Where have you been?”
And even now, after all this time Seokjin wants to correct him for taking the lord’s name in vain.
“Around,” Seokjin replies.
“He’s upset.” Hoseok adds, never once to mince his words and Seokjin thinks He should be. “I hope you had good fucking reasons.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying,” Seokjin takes out his leather wallet and pays, “Keep the change.”
“You’re afraid.”
He wasn’t afraid.
It's only that, well, how can he say this and expect it to mean something when he didn't dodge, he didn't dodge. Taehyung stepped up to him on Halloween, and Seokjin let him close the strenuous gap he’d worked so hard to maintain, fuelled by only unspeakable, bone-headed lust. He should have been afraid.
He is afraid now.
“I don’t see how this concerns you.”
Hoseok emits a derisive snort and Seokjin lets him.
What he cannot explain to Hoseok and expect him to understand is; Seokjin is not Yoongi, or Jungkook. In his weakest moments, it is not Taehyung’s death that he craves. Not by very far.
He turns his back on it.
~*~
Taetae
I came by the other day
guess you werent at home
I found the envelope.
I understand your inhibitions.
Taetae
Oh yeah well. I was sort of looking for a reason to come.
People don’t need a reason to come to church
Taetae
they do when theyre me.
if I come again will you open the door?
Probably not.
Taetae
See the church and I never agree.
~*~
Seokjin doesn’t return for another month. Or perhaps it is a week, maybe more, maybe three months. Seokjin has never been good at gauging the span of time. As a child, it took him years to read the hands of a clock, much to his parents’ annoyance. If the sun didn’t drive him to unconsciousness every morning, he doubts he’d sleep very much at all.
He pours blood into a crystal flute; laces it with some ill-considered belladonna to liven the flavour. Though the belladonna does not help.
Belladonna. ‘Beautiful woman’. Back in Florence, when he was new and the most delinquent thing he had done was draw men closer behind gauzy curtains by the hour. His friends put tiny drops of distilled belladonna in their eyes, to make their pupils large and black.
He swirls it round and round in the firelight, where his father’s pulpit used to be. He’s small in a room scaled for masses of people from another era, a man alive at the wrong time, coping by chasing eternity.
It’s almost dawn when he gathers his coat and surrenders to the voice inside his head. The one that sounds a lot like Taehyung.
“The usual?” Jungkook asks him at the bar, he doesn’t insist Seokjin try one of his signature dailies. How the tides of time alter things. “He’s been here every day for weeks.”
Seokjin feels the way his entire body aches. He hesitates, he almost says no.
“Don’t worry, he hasn’t accepted anyone.”
The words hang in the air between them like a heavy heart.
Jungkook is not looking at him, he seems engrossed in rearranging the bottles of bitter under the rim.
A vampire is a possessive thing. They want to own.
But Namjoon isn’t enough for both of them to feed healthily from, Seokjin knows this. Jungkook’s whole life is about sharing, if not Namjoon with Yoongi then Yoongi with someone else. That is how they came to start the cafe.
Seokjin looks at him with painful understanding. He opens his mouth, to say what exactly he has no idea, thankfully Jungkook cuts him off.
"He's waiting."
Seokjin hangs his head and leads himself into the Wet Bar.
Taehyung looks up sharply as he approaches. Seokjin hasn’t seen him in what feels like years and the first thing he notices is that his hair has grown, the dark curling ends just brushing the collar of his woollen cardigan. A strand of it falls from where it was tucked behind his ear as he looks Seokjin quickly up and down, his accusatory glance morphing into a concerned frown. He’s very grey and the dark circles beneath his eyes look like bruises.
Taehyung doesn’t extend a greeting at Seokjin, and neither does he.
Seokjin only asks, “How have you been?”
“I missed you.”
He answers quietly, his eyes lowered, hands clasped together in front of him.
Seokjin sits a foot away and hates himself for putting that look on his face.
There is a thick roll of white bandage around his wrist.
“What happened?”
Taehyung follows his gaze, then digging a hand to his eye mumbles on a long exhale, “Nicked myself, with a kitchen knife. They had to put in a few stitches, but it’s alright, it’s kinda- yeah.”
Seokjin takes the hand, running two cold fingers around the edge of the bandaid, he tsk’s, “clumsy, clumsy boy.”
He doesn’t look up but in his periphery, he can see Taehyung avoiding his gaze, upset mouthed, “I didn’t mean to.”
Seokjin just squints at the bandage, distrustful of Taehyung’s body in its ability to properly build him back to an appropriate level of quality. Seokjin knows it isn’t advisable to feed from the dominant hand, something about appendages and such. He sighs, clasping the fingers of his bony freezing hand around Taehyung's bandage in a band and then lets it fall, “I still need to-,” he trails off, “I’ll make it quick and then we can talk some.”
He makes to move, when Taehyung catches him with handfuls of his coat jacket.
“No,” he hurries, eyes cutting to Seokjin’s. There’s the edge of panic in the flicker of them. “You- you can- from my neck.”
“No,” Seokjin says — hears that it's actually a whisper. Feels it in his throat like a scab dislodging. Everything slows like a dream, like he’s fallen into dark, warm water.
Standing as he is, Taehyung is a full head shorter than him, maybe even more, and his eyes are filled with the bright glimmer of tears as he tightens his hand on Seokjin’s arm, just above his hand.
“You know what that will mean, don't you, sweetheart?” He whispers, trying very hard to make light of it.
Taehyung nods, quick and hurried, making a tear track down his flushed cheeks, “I don’t care.”
Seokjin's fear is a dagger to his gut. “But you will!” he growls. He grits his teeth, fangs digging into the inside of his bottom lip. He forces them back, swords returned to their sheaths. Valiantly, a battle lost.
Taehyung pulls at him, uncaring, “Won’t. I don’t want you to – from someone else – please.”
Seokjin sneers. “But you have been feeding others.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you wouldn’t come- I thought I’d scared you away”, his chin is trembling, a second hand coming up next to the first, further up Taehyung’s arm. Squeezing. Begging. Seokjin lets Taehyung pull him back into the booth. “Please. Please don’t.”
He watches the tears well up in his eyes again, the strong front his upper lip puts on, the sharp and almost beautiful cut of his chin. He wipes at his eyes quickly, as though maybe Seokjin will not register him doing it if it’s fast.
Taehyung shudders, pushing hair away from his neck and baring it, eyes squeezed tight. Seokjin’s stomach turns.
“This is a terrible idea. Why are you doing this?” he asks, the monster inside overpowering every sense and he’s leaning forward already towards Taehyung’s jugular, pressing his forehead against the boy’s shoulder and inhaling deeply.
He growls. Low, rumbling. It’s not anger this time, though. It’s hunger. It’s naked need. He leans back and opens his eyes, waiting until Taehyung does the same, looking at him with big eyes.
Whispering, “Please.”
Imagine a boy who’s barely bloomed, hardly more than two decades on this earth, holding sway over you, a horror of the night, the thing to be feared, sculpted by centuries of nothing but stolen lives and blood and blood and blood.
Is he truly so weak?
Seokjin bares his teeth at him to remind him of what he really is. Taehyung’s eyes widen for a beat then he shakes his head. He curls up, drawing Seokjin down so that their faces can touch, their mouths ghosting, savouring the second before their first kiss. Seokjin’s arms go around to grip his waist, drawing him in close as Taehyung leans in, and gingerly presses his soft lips to Seokjin’s, so desperately wanting something and not sure how to go about getting it.
Seokjin snaps, pulls Taehyung towards himself as he scrambles towards Seokjin. And he steadies Taehyung with a broad hand on his thigh.
His tongue finds Seokjin’s, the almost sweet closing of their lips together. And then trace the smooth razor's edge along Seokjin’s tongue. Slow… so slow… so that he doesn’t draw blood. Seokjin slips his tongue out of that sweet mouth, “If you regret this, darling I will not survive it.”
What a thing for him to say. But he meant it, his heart at that moment felt more human than the rest of the bloody beating world’s.
Taehyung nods, shakes his head, nods again, his fingers twists in the buttons of Seokjin’s coat, “Take me home.”
~*~
Seokjin shuts the door shut behind them with a thud that echoes around the stone walls. Inside it’s vast, warmly lit with antique lamps, street light spilling through a wall of stained glass. Inside it is as garish as one might expect, full of dark wood and priceless paintings that he’s collected from around the world, a more innocent, bloodless hunt.
Under Taehyung’s watchful gaze, Seokjin sets about redoing the locks on the door painted flat, matte black, a nonverbal communication to Beware.
Taehyung stays where he is, planted on the dark Turkish rug, heavy backpack weighing his shoulders down, his eyes unblinking. Seokjin feels the moment teetering, waiting for Taehyung’s fate to be decided, and it surprises Seokjin when for the first time, Taehyung looks unsure. It’s affecting the scent of him.
“Have you changed your mind?” Taehyung asks, his hand lowering slowly from his backpack strap, his expression carefully neutral.
What sheer agony to not be able to read his mind, to not share his own true thoughts with this boy without needing to speak a word.
He closes the distance between them instantly, reaching for that hand before it has a chance to come to rest. He brings it up to my lips and covered it in kisses, a clergyman kissing the monarchy.
“No, no, no, my love” he whispers against that skin, the delicate knuckles. “Never that.”
Taehyung’s expression falters. Seokjin surprises him with a kiss, He takes Taehyung’s lower lip between his own when Taehyung’s mouth goes slack. Kissing his face, kissing his throat.
"You," Taehyung exhales, tilting his chin up to give Seokjin more of his humid skin. “called me love.”
“I did,” he tells the virgin throat. It is soft, and when he kisses hard, he can feel the structure beneath the skin, the parts of Taehyung that keep him alive, his blood pulsing so near to Seokjin. “I do.”
The backpack thuds to the floor and then Taehyung’s wrapping arms around his neck, pushing against him.
“Will you take me then?” There’s a warmth to the words, something coy in them, and the question makes Seokjin open his eyes again, lean back to seek his gaze and finding it readily.
“If you let me,” he replies, finding no reason to lie to him now, not when he’s all but embracing Seokjin for it.
“I want you to,” Taehyung nods, a confirmation.
“Then I will,” Seokjin promises, quaking in some intangible place even as his hands, large and steady as time, slide up to cup the impossible softness of Taehyung’s hips, fingers spreading out to span as far as he can.
Softly, he feels Taehyung’s hot little tongue pushing at his lips, wet and obscenely wanton in its greed. Seokjin opens his mouth and stays still, letting him inside this time, letting him do whatever it is he came here to do.
Taehyung’s tongue slips inside and heads right for one of Seokjin’s fangs, not hesitating for a second as it pushes in and drags against the side, slicing clean into the pink muscle and drawing an immediate pool of blood to the surface.
Seokjin groans like a gut-shot, he doesn't know they are moving till Taehyung bangs against a table full of daisies and lets out a soft, hurt sound. The vases teeter precariously, heavy with flowers he had to bring in from the garden before winter fell.
He sucks on Taehyung’s tongue with unprecedented hunger, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of precious, rich, salty blood till there is no more to swallow, full of his heartbreaking youth, of his shockingly dark, secret wants. Taehyung’s erection a hard press against his own tightening balls.
“Jinnie,” Taehyung mutters softly.
He hums, low and pleased, feeling the base sensation of bodily desire spread through him, akin in many ways to the bloodlust that has been his carnal focus for so many centuries, but much more focused. It seems Taehyung hears the slight tremor in his voice because his lashes flicker as he pushes up onto the balls of his feet to stand even with Seokjin, to make the embrace secure, unmistakable.
One of the vases tips over and falls with a hollow thud, spilling water and flowers. It rolls around its own axis and takes a long time to come to a halt.
They get waylaid on the way to the bedroom: Taehyung climbing him, making Seokjin carry him, putting him down on the altar where the Virgin Mary once stood. Panting when their foreheads touched and their mouths drew away, the sounds they made so raw, that it came out sounding like relief.
“Take me to your bed,” Taehyung says, simple and without seduction, silk soft. “Please. I want nothing else. I’ve thought of it so many times in the last few months, it’s all I can think about--” desperate.
Seokjin closes his eyes against it and takes a deep inhale before pressing himself against Taehyung. There is a surprised gasp from him and Seokjin wraps his arms around his waist, he seeks out a spot behind Taehyung’s ear, finds it. Nuzzles a circle: a warning, a promise. And then opens his mouth, licks at it, hard. Sucks. Rolls his body hard into Taehyung, his erection. Taehyung cries out and goes tight, goes taut—and pants, two fists of Seokjin’s hair twisted in his grip.
It takes some flopping and frustrated wrestling with the sweater and undershirt still clinging to his arms and the trousers around his knees, but eventually, Taehyung manages to get somewhat naked.
Seokjin thinks if he had to wait a second longer, he would probably die. Combust in flames amongst the daisies. Turning Taehyung around, Seokjin pushes him down over the altar, chest pressed against the varnished wood grain. Taehyung put his head down, cheek to the wood, watching over his shoulder as Seokjin pushes his trousers further down, spreading him to see a puffy, a smear of oil. Seokjin goes a little blurry, at that, growled, asks him, “What did you—”
Seokjin sinks to his knees behind him, as if entranced, not caring how submissive he looks. Taehyung blinks over his shoulder at him, spreads his thighs wider despite the distinct ripping of a seam. Seokjin thumbs at the wrinkled rose there and Taehyung’s legs tremble.
“What did you do?”, voice slurred a little with arousal and the protuberance of his fangs.
“I missed you,” Taehyung says, again, but this time it is less in sadness and more in the shape of desperation—a whine, a shimmy backwards, a forward, wanting, seeking—” I keep thinking. In bed, I-”
“I saw you,” his knees spreading on the rug, Seokjin cants Taehyung’s hips towards him, parting his asscheeks with two large hands, licking for a taste. He forces his tongue into where Taehyung unfurls for him, “I watched you, through your window. I saw you on the bed.”
A broken cry leaves Taehyung, a sound so young that it nearly drives Seokjin mad, something he felt sharp against his heart.
He sucks on Taehyung’s asshole like it’s a wound, like he’s drinking from it, letting the lethal edges of his fangs graze the pink of it, making Taehyung sob above him, straining down like he wants it.
Taehyung says, “ Ah !”, and sucks the tip of Seokjin’s dry fingers into his hole when it is given to him. He is open and wet only from Seokjin’s tongue, but blooming beautifully when Seokjin spits on the darkening whorl, pushing one finger in, slick and slow. “More,” he says, a deep heat pulling at Seokjin’s finger. “More more more—”
“Shh,” Seokjin says. “Shh, shh baby, shh—”
He has to be careful, it is so easy, always, to forget the coolth of his own fingernails, of his own clumsy teeth, and to forget the softness of a body against it, and Seokjin feels—
“I need to lie down,” Taehyung says; one leg hitched up on the altar, his trouser hanging from it. His cock standing straight up, veins pulsing along the length, the tip glistening and dragging through a pool of precome he has oozed onto the altar, “I— don’t stop but.”
Between one heartbeat and next, Seokjin’s carried him to the bedroom where the confessional used to be.
Taehyung undresses him and Seokjin kisses him. Taehyung gets his trousers open and Seokjin kisses him. Seokjin tries to get them up over the footboard and into the bed but they both get distracted, Taehyung half in his lap, making out with his trousers half down his thighs and Taehyung wanking him—softly, slowly, his touch barely there.
With winding concentration, Seokjin lays him gently down on the sheets, his hungry mouth moving to Taehyung’s collarbones. Taehyug’s hands scrabble at his back and his thighs press between Seokjin’s own. The scent of him is everywhere, so heady and overwhelming that he’s momentarily relieved when Taehyung pushes him back a few inches to fumble with the buttons of his shirt. But it doesn’t take long for the reprieve to feel like starvation, and Taehyung must’ve sensed something in Seokjin because his hands give up their pursuit to slide over his back, his face, drawing him in closer, holding him.
He tilts his head and licks between Seokjin’s cool lips, flicking an incisor.
“Kiss me,” he sighs, dreamsoft, though Seokjin is already leaning down to do so.
Eyes closed and chaste like he doesn’t dare to do more; like they have only just begun companionship, and he is still shy in his wanting, fearful of taking too much. It drives Taehyung a little around the bend, it seems: pulling noises from him, impatient, chasing Seokjin’s mouth; chasing more, losing his breath, panting. It makes no sense. They are naked, it isn’t chaste at all. It makes no sense.
Taehyung whines again, seeking out the hem of Seokjin’s shirt so he can pull it over his head. The buttons popping and scattering around the room. One clinking against the incriminating bottle of rose-scented oil on his side table, that he grabs before Taehyung can notice it. Or if he does, he doesn’t say anything.
Seokjin nudges Taehyung's legs apart before kneeling between them, sitting back on his haunches. He drips a line of oil across his fingers before feeding them into Taehyung’s body, sliding the length of two of them all the way inside. Taehyung gasps like he’s been pried open, his body thrumming and fluttering around Seokjin’s fingers, so infernal hot inside, so irrevocably alive.
“You watched me,” Taehyung whispers, grinding against his palm, on the full length of his fingers that Seokjin kneads his insides with. His face is flushed, his mouth damp, long lashes draped over his heated cheeks. “You knew what I wanted.”
“This,” Seokjin grits out, clamping one hand down on Taehyung’s soft thigh, giving him his first bruise. “This is what you wanted.”
He smooths his hands reverently over Taehyung’s abdomen and follows with his tongue. The muscles there tense under his touch. He takes his time, lips parted over the stretch of skin, his fangs merely flirting with visibility though his hands are restless with the hunger inside him for every inch of Taehyung. He shivers when Seokjin takes his cock in his mouth. When Seokjin flicks the head, runs his tongue over the pulsating vein at the back of it, dipping into the slit and Taehyung hisses through his teeth as precome blurts into Seokjin’s mouth.
Seokjin wraps his free hand gently around the base of it, tugging while he grazes it with his teeth just to make Taehyung fidget; half in fear, half in desperation. The cocktail of emotions spiking his scent in a way that makes Seokjin dizzy and he likes how messy it gets--thick saliva smearing on his chin and cheeks, hot skin, the taste of it.
Taehyung whimpers and bucks, hands seeking purchase on the bedsheet and finally in his hair. Seokjin does it again, just to hear the whimper that comes out of him. He opens his mouth enough that Taehyung chases to press inside himself, feeding him onto Seokjin’s awaiting tongue.
He keeps the steady pace of his fingers inside the rosy hole, scissoring his fingers in tune with sucking Taehyung’s cock. Seokjin pulls off completely and then swallows him to the root in one sweep, till it hits the back of his throat and Taehyung’s mouth opens on a silent scream.
His fingers curl around Seokjin’s shoulder in a vice grip.
“Wait,” he plaintively throws a forearm over his eyes, “don’t wanna- I’m going to. Don’t make me come,” he mumbles pitifully, though he tips his hips down, angling Seokjin’s fingers up inside of him to get to that good spot, one that he has already found for himself on his own sweet fingertips.
Seokjin draws off, with a laugh. He kisses up the heaving barrel of Taehyung’s chest, watching the skin break into fresh goosebumps. He takes the arm Taehyung has thrown across his face with his free hand and presses it back into the sheets.
“You will come if I say so,” Seokjin tells him.
Taehyung’s cock twitches at his words, and, god, what a perfect match they make.
Seokjin’s mouth descends to brush over one of his nipples, already shivering hard and cocoa in colour, just like Seokjin had thought they might be. He licks it before drawing it into his mouth, closing his eyes to savour the sharp intake of Taehyung’s breath, the tiny, aborted sound he holds back in his throat. He can feel Taehyung’s heart against his lips, can taste the blood thrumming under his skin as he nursed at him.
Taehyung’s legs push as far apart as he could make them go when Seokjin huddles closer.
It doesn’t make for a pretty picture when he opens his mouth, lips drawn back to expose my fangs and let the blade-sharp point catch on the flimsy skin right onto the centre of his nipple, the flesh giving way with no resistance. A hurt little noise escapes Taehyung, but he arches up into Seokjin’s mouth just as the first spill of blood leaves the puncture of his breast and starts to slide down his flushed chest.
Seokjin chases it with his tongue and latches on again, already overwhelmed before he has even swallowed his mouthful. The bite isn’t deep and the blood stems immediately but Taehyung rocks beneath him, seeking friction, his hole tightening around Seokjin’s fingers and his arms clutch around Seokjin so that he can do nothing but move with Taehyung, all his focus on the spill over his tongue, on the taste of Taehyung which is as virile as ever.
There’s a little puddle of precome on his stomach, and Taehyung’s hand is wrapped loosely around this cock, Seokjin moves it meaningfully away, for the risk of him coming before Seokjin can even fuck him.
Taehyung is writhing with what must be a hundred sensations. Seokjin crooks his finger and rubs his prostate. His legs flop apart, and he grips the sheet.
“I can’t…” he stammers.
“What?” Seokjin asks.
“Take much more of this,” he gasps. “Get in me.”
“You’re not ready yet. I can assure you that my cock is much bigger than my finger.”
Seokjin tells him, even as he lets more oil drip into his palm, pooling in the cup of it so he can coat his cock with it as he stares down at the body spread lewdly below him.
Pressing into Taehyung is a test of Seokjin’s strength and patience. Taehyung breathes out, his eyes wide and dark, one hand working up into Seokjin’s hair as his body stretches to accommodate--Seokjin feels the warm press of skin, his balls and thighs, his hips on the inside of Taehyung’s legs. He pops past the first ring of muscles and Taehyung’s back snaps off the bed, as he cries out. “ Ah, Jin-ah,” voice breaking prettily, “That’s so much.”
Seokjin is horribly delighted. He shouldn’t be, and yet…“Do you want to stop?”
Taehyung blinks up at him, wet eyelashes framing his pretty, pretty eyes, and shakes his head slowly.
Seokjin can’t help the smile on his face when he pulls out, pulls Taehyung to him. Taehyung’s legs hanging on either side of Seokjin’s waist, his ass cushioned on Seokjin’s thigh. He rubs over Taehyung’s hole with the runny, burning tip of his cock again, feeling it catch on the rim like a key sliding into a lock. Taehyung gasps, tensing up all over as his eyes fly open wide, and holds the gaze as Seokjin breaches him for real this time.
“Oh fuck,” he gasps out, weak and trembling already, mouth dropping open and eyebrows knitting together, “you’re gonna ruin me.”
Taehyung maybe tries to tell him more but when he opens his mouth all that comes out is an obscene, loud cry that makes it sound like he's dying. Seokjin holds him by the hips and drives into him with a steady, shallow rhythm. His balls slap against Taehyung’s ass, fucking sloppy pockets of air into him with the way he pulls all the way out and drives back in.
At least until Taehyung has loosened up a bit, at which point he switches to hard, deep thrusts, one hand holding tight to Taehyung’s hip to keep him from scooting up the bed.
Taehyung rises to prop up on his elbows to watch where they met, his voice cracks when Seokjin eventually picks up pace, feels good, the words tumble out of him in a rush, please, please, pleasepleaseplease.
Taehyung drops his body back to the bed on a particular upward thrust; the impression of which Seokjin saw behind Taehyung’s precious belly button. He grabs two handfuls of bedsheet and pulls the corners away from the edges of the mattress, rolling his body and making soft, desperate sounds when the length of his cock slides against Seokjin’s hard stomach, all slick with precome and sweat.
And Seokjin watches it all, his hands framing Taehyung’s delicate chest, thumb stroking absently over the other nipple. He breathes hard and dips down to lick him there, aching for the feeling of sharp, heavenly shiver that comes from the winespill taste of his heart blood. But he doesn’t proceed, Taehyung is so tight, and Seokjin’s going so fast the world blurs a little, he cannot trust himself and he doesn’t want to hurt Taehyung. Not like that.
He turns his face into Taehyung’s hair and Taehyung noses back at him, ragged nails digging into Seokjin’s undulating spine, his bandaid scratching at Seokjin’s skin.
“Why did you stop?” he asks on a moan, his hands returning to Seokjin’s hair.
Seokjin rises from where his big body covers Taehyung and when Taehyung arches to chase him, he presses a hand into the middle of Taehyung’s chest and presses down, down, making him shiver and melt.
Taehyung’s sweating, and his fringe is damp. His lips are swollen from all the kissing. Seokjin looks at him, and he stares back with an expression of helplessness.
Abruptly he whimpers on a thrust that nudges him purposely on the prostate. Seokjin reaches between their bodies and wraps his hand around Taehyung’s cock, giving it a squeeze that makes him flutter deliciously tight around Seokjin throbbing inside of him. Though his eyes nearly slip close as he focuses on where Seokjin was touching him, he forces them open to look at Seokjin through droopy eyes.
“Can you?” he whispers, hiccupping, sounding insane. “Can you, can you?”
Seokjin touches Taehyung’s heated cheek, his lips. Settles his grip loose at the base of Taehyung’s throat. He can feel the heartbeat there, lovely and strong and picking up speed, now, again. He thinks, here, he wants me here.
Taehyung’s throat bobs under his palm, his eyes gone glassy, mouth open.
“Please,” he says, chasing his hips back to meet Seokjin thrust for thrust, over and over. “Please, please, I won’t regret it, I need you to do it.”
His fingers card into Taehyung’s hair and close into a fist, to pull, force his head to one side and baring his throat. Taehyung looks at him with just the smallest glimmer of fear in his eye, but then he tilts his neck to the side. It’s an invitation.
Slowly he flattens himself back on Taehyung, nosing from the base of his throat to the side of his neck. He slides his tongue across the skin there, tucking his face into the curve of sweat-damp neck and Taehyung shudders at the contact. He smells so good, like seasalt and Namjoon’s sandalwood incense, shaking harder now, and trembling against Seokjin’s cool body.
The points of his fangs pinpricked the sensitive flesh of Taehyung’s neck, before he retreated to kiss the shallow impression of his teeth. Right on cue, Taehyung lets out a soul baring whine.
Seokjin smiles against him, aching to claim, “You have absolutely no regard for yourself.”
“You’re right,” Taehyung nods, his hair sprawling in a halo beneath the two of them. He presses Seokjin closer to the fragrant point of his neck, so he can see the obscene rabbit kick of his pulse. “I don’t.”
Seokjin pounces.
“ Yes,” Taehyung hisses, so soft that even he scarcely heard it, but it is nothing compared to the groan Seokjin makes as his fangs pierces Taehyung’s throat and he tastes the heartbeat, and the first gush of blood over his tongue makes him shake down to his very bones.
The blood is sweet like spring blossoms. He is all but gushing until his swallows are full, luscious. Seokjin could have drained him until every drop of his blood is inside of his own veins and he knows it, craves it like he craves the sounds of his pleasure and his pain and the way Seokjin knows how sweet his kisses grow when Taehyung is truly desperate for him.
One of Taehyung’s hands drag down Seokjin’s spine and clutches at his hips, forcing them deeper inside him, the other threads into his hair, holding him close and encouraging him to drink deeper.
Curled up over Taehyung’s pale neck he does, rocking into the tight heat as his legs tighten around Seokjin’s waist, his mortal body lifting up off the bed as Seokjin fills him all the way up before drawing back, snapping his hips so that Taehyung makes these punched-out noises, gasping.
Belatedly Seokjin understands that he is being brutal, hips snapping, knocking the headboard of the bed against the ancient wall. He makes a soft, sweet sound, and he’s suddenly gripping Seokjin tighter. It forces a groan from him where he’s drinking.
Taehyung’s entire body locks as he comes on a near-silent scream, spilling wetly between their bodies, holding Seokjin inside him in a vice grip and refusing to let go, sobbing every time he is forced to do so. Seokjin only has to thrust a few more times before he is painting all that violent red with white himself, still moving lazily, chasing that good feeling in his stomach.
By the time Seokjin's wrung dry and lifting off him, Taehyung's crying a little, a drizzle of dewdrops on his cheeks and a perfect horror is left behind on his neck, a mangled mess, the focal of a smear of blood that still oozes and drips as his skin fights to heal from Seokjin’s ferocity.
His blood blooms against the white of Seokjin’s duvet spread out beneath him on the bed. The same red must be smeared across Seokjin’s lips, and he watches Taehyung vie for them again, his pupils gone a soft, liquid black.
"Pretty," he says, and touches Seokjin's mouth, then protests weakly when Seokjin moves to push off of his lap, clutching at his shoulder, “No,” he murmurs. “Stay inside me…please.”
“Christ.” Seokjin tears out of his lungs as he stays buried in him, slipping through your own come, when he begins to move his hips again.
He crushes Taehyung’s lips with his own, licking desperately, possessively, needily into his slack mouth as his hips snap lazily in their own pace. He wonders if Taehyung can taste the sweet aphrodisiac of his own blood and precome. He kisses him till all of the sweetness is gone, replaced with his own spit.
Taehyung doesn’t tense, closes his eyes, and doesn't react at all. He’s utterly docile, shivering from oversensitivity and moving how Seokjin wants him to, trusting him so much that it makes him ache.
He only turns them on the bed so Seokjin’s hands fall hard down on his split thighs, gripping tender flesh so tight that it seemed Seokjin might sink right down inside, beneath skin and muscle to the bone. It is Seokjin’s turn to arch, to writhe and beg beneath him, though Taehyung didn't make him do any of those as he fucks Seokjin back to hardness.
Taehyung’s knees press into the soft bedding so he can rock in Seokjin’s sprawled lap, his cock being working around inside of Taehyung like he is paying for the privilege. Or maybe Seokjin has given his soul for just a single night with him.
Taehyung’s eyebrows pull together in an infinitesimal frown, hands bracing on Seokjin's chest. His hair shines and glitters with sweat that falls like rain on Seokjin, his mouth softly parting and a wanton shade of pink that borders on red. His nipples are stiff on his bowed out chest, cock curved up and touching back on his belly, the head of it so desperate for release that it is nearly violet with blood.
He rides Seokjin slow, so incredibly slow. He looks down at Seokjin through his lashes, hips circling at a maddening pace. Arching, leaning back, a hand on his knee for support.
There are no paintings in his bedroom. Only a vacant mirror above the bed, so that he can see the play of muscle down Taehyung's back. Can see the possessive splay of his own hand over the dip of his waist.
He plants his legs and fucks up only so he can see the back tense further and Taehyung mewls above him, a tear seeping through his lashes as Seokjin bounces him in his lap.
He slumps on Seokjin's chest like the strings that had been holding him up have been snapped as Seokjin puts his full strength into driving up, warm and pliant, gnawing at his sides and shoulder while Seokjin runs his hands over Taehyung’s back.
Seokjin pulls him ever closer, their bodies flush together and Seokjin's arms go around him from behind. He nuzzles into Taehyung’s neck and feels him shiver as he approaches the precipice, groaning, his pleasure unchecked.
Seokjin finds that he is moaning brokenly as well, his body jostling Taehyung with each of his powerful strokes, with his everlarge hands roaming over Taehyung's buttocks, sliding between to feel the place where they were joined. It throbs dully there.
He wants this, wants him, every single night. For the rest of forever.
Wants the way Taehyung warped and bent himself; the way his body gives and does not give. The stiffness of Taehyung’s cock slipping through Seokjin’s fist when he reaches between them to wrap his fingers around where Taehyung seeps for him.
Taehyung’s nose to Seokjin’s jaw and mad with it, biting his cheek, the jut of bone below his ear. Seokjin answers with wet, messy kisses to Taehyung’s hair, his temple, the corner of his mouth when Taehyung pulls back a fraction. Extricates an arm from around Seokjin’s waist to bring up, to cradle his face. To press a thumb to his cheekbone, moving it back and forth.
Then going to his as the other threads through his and Taehyung’s works himself to orgasm a second time, whining out Seokjin's name, who bundles him in his immortal arms and follows.
The fire has settled into a low burn in the hearth. The hush of winter presses silence against the windows, wrapping the room in an ephemeral bubble. Seokjin matches his breaths to Taehyung’s and tries to look out into the night, he cannot concentrate; the world holds nothing in it that isn’t already here with him.
Taehyung regains himself in increments as Seokjin cleans them with a warm wet towel and offers to quickly get him nourishment. He hauls Seokjin back to bed. He grunts, a soft, sleepy sound while he winds his arms around Seokjin’s neck and tucks his face in there, his voice so soft when he finds it to speak.
“Not now.”
Seokjin very gently traces the shell of his ear, and Taehyung shudders.
“You don’t flinch when I touch you," he says
Taehyung hooks his ankle onto Seokjin's, the full length of Taehyung tucked into his chest, bodies comma’d together. “S’always cold where I’m from.”
Seokjin crawls down until they’re face to face.
He presses a hot kiss to Taehyung’s mouth.
It’s almost difficult not to touch him now.
Maybe he knows, because he palms Seokjin’s cock through the covers and squeezes just right.
“Taehyung,” Seokjin warns, lips barely lifted from his.
He smiles a little, backing away. He looks simultaneously like sex itself and endearingly shy.
With one warm fingertip, he traces Seokjin’s eyebrows. One, then the other. Maybe he is waiting for Seokjin to speak.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, brushing Taehyung’s damp hair out of his face.
“Exhausted,” he replies with a sleepy smile.
Seokjin returns the smile and kisses him lingeringly.
“Worth the wait?”
He closes his eyes and doesn’t move even a muscle for a while.
“Yeah,” is all he says, and Seokjin smiles. Apparently, he’s fucked all the snark right out of him.
Taehyung yawns, “I nap now.”
Seokjin’s smile is slow. He says, voice low, “Okay you nap now.”
He holds Taehyung tighter, wrangling a thick comforter up over the both of them, and Taehyung dozes. Body loose and warm on top of him. He half wakes when Seokjin kisses the thin skin of his shut eyelids, gives a sleepy kiss in reply, and then wiggles and burrows down to align them the way he likes.
Seokjin leans down still, and kisses his forehead, his cheek. He doesn’t think he can ever get enough.
He catches sight of the garish mark he has left behind is in the shape of his fangs, obscured by hair, and finds it in the dancing shadows of the fire.
Seokjin feels it like a wall breaking in his head, the magnitude of it closing in on his psyche like a warm embrace; Taehyung is his now, to keep and protect. Hold. His half. He resettles them back just so Taehyung is on his bare chest, so Seokjin can just close his eyes and feel the inevitable weight of Taehyung keeping him grounded here.
And Taehyung still dozes, blissfully unaware, draped across him, all over him, his face hot to his chest.
He wakes up near dawn. They have small conversations that trail off into the quiet of the near-morning. Taehyung has his head pillowed on Seokjin’s chest, tracing the shape of a pec, absently rousing it to stiffness. Seokjin murmurs his name before kissing the other side of his neck and holding him as close as possible.
Taehyung says, voice scratchy, “I didn’t mean that, you know?”
“Mean what?”
“When I asked if you watched me,” Taehyung tells him. “I meant I didn’t know you were looking. That you wanted-”
“You,” Seokjin finishes.
“Me, yeah.”
Seokjin gently cups his face, then runs a thumb over the mating bite. Taehyung shivers, nods, “I know now. And, the fingering is better,” he grins like whiplash, “You should finger me all the time.”
Seokjin laughs, an honest and deep-felt belly laugh, and inhales—and on his exhale he rolls them both over and buries his face in Taehyung’s neck and mock bites because he doesn’t know where else to put his emotions. Taehyung hisses and laughs and wraps his legs around him and locks him in, says, sounding very pleased,
“There, you got the memo.”
In the end, it is Taehyung who dresses first; it is too frosty outside for him to be naked. Seokjin has never enjoyed a sight more than the one of a dishevelled Taehyung climbing back into bed and settling against him dressed in one of Seokjin’s black dress robes, with nothing else beneath. A present that can be unwrapped at his will.
There’s a lull in conversation again. Seokjin runs gentle knuckles from the base of Taehyung’s spine to his nape, trying to make out the shapes of the outside world through the fogged-up windows, but Taehyung makes him hold still so he can listen for his heartbeat — terribly slow, he knows, like a hibernating animal, though present — and his breathing.
Nuzzling into Seokjin’s neck and then nibbling gently on his ear, Taehyung says, “It does sound a little strange.” Then soft and dark and laughing already, “My handsome monster. My wolf in sheep's clothing.”
He rolls to lay himself on the comforter between Seokjin’s sprawled thighs, digging his chin into Seokjin’s ribcage and asks, “Should we break and enter into the back room? I want to see where the priests used to sleep.”
“Priests don’t live in churches,” Seokjin says.
Taehyung considers this for a moment, arm slung over Seokjin’s waist. Hand at his hip. Then, “You’re lying.”
“I didn’t grow up here,” Seokjin explains, “I wouldn’t live here if I did.”
“Oh,” Taehyung replies. “I thought they did. That’s disappointing. Where do they live, then?”
Seokjin shrugs. “Not in churches,” he says.
“Well,” Taehyung says, stretching his body like a cat, “I think I’ve seen everything I need to see, with regards to this. Let’s go outside, you have a garden don’t you? Or did you bring every flower in?”
“Not every flower is a daisy,” Seokjin tells him, “some flowers must die.”
Taehyung picks at the edge of the comforter, scratches at the hem, puts it down, wipes his hand on it. Swallows, looks up, tries to put on a self-important face and says, “Are you the flower in this construction?”
Seokjin rubs a thumb between Taehyung’s shoulder blades, “Maybe.”
“But you’re a daisy,” Taehyung says, hums, “and if you’re a daisy, I’m a daisy.”
Seokjin’s stomach falls through itself, bottom giving out, and his mind goes very wide and quiet and he leans down: he opens to meet Taehyung’s mouth, uncoordinated, a hell-hot depth. Taehyung blooms up into him, lifts his chin, offers his mouth as though he’s never done anything else in his life. Seokjin kisses him. Slowly, heavily, one hand to the back of his head, his thumb to the bone behind his ear.
I am to you, as you are to me.
If Seokjin had a breath left to tell Taehyung he loves him, loves him more than anything in his stretched empty life, he would. But he does not, he only has the slick dance of Taehyung’s kiss, and the knowledge that love is perhaps far too paltry for them anyway.
Against Taehyung’s lips, he whispers, “I have something for you.”
Taehyung blinks hazy eyes open, licking his lips, “A collar?”
Seokjin closes his eyes, if he could he’d be hot down to his chest. He simply gets up on shaky legs, fetches his pants and puts them on, asking: “Would you like one?”
Taehyung sits on his knees on the bed, back straight and hands on his thighs in a faux imitation of submission that makes Seokjin fumble on his buttons, “Mm maybe when I grow my hair longer.”
He is perfect, he does not have to alter anything to be heart-stoppingly breathtaking, but the promise in long hair thrills Seokjin, he imagines how easy it would be to thread his hands through them and pull Taehyung back, back against his chest and further onto his cock.
“Seok. Jinnie,”Taehyung singsongs behind him, “I. Am. Waiting.”
“Close your eyes,” he says, raising his eyebrows till Taehyung finally acquiesces, grumbling asking Seokjin what he is doing, why isn't he there already, and Seokjin stands by his wardrobe with shaking hands, reaching in behind the back panel, a latch, a door, a box. And in the box, an offering of his worthless, greedy heart.
He sets the box on the mattress before where Taehyung has his eyes obediently shut with a frown on his face.
“Open them,” Seokjin murmurs in his ear.
Taehyung spies the shoes and the way he goes still, staring at the box, makes Seokjin daydream for a moment that Taehyung is already beyond human, already preserved forever in blushing porcelain, kept forever in this incredible beauty the way a photograph captures a moment.
Yours, Seokjin's heart reminds him in a fierce whisper when Taehyung finally blinks, breaks his own spell, and reaches for the box. Now. Always.
He stares down at the shoes for a long, long moment, one hand hovering above them like he’s afraid to touch them, to find out they’re not real. He jerks back just before his fingers light on the velvet and looks around the bedroom frantically, eyes sifting to where Seokjin stands.
For Seokjin.
Who can only look back with open honesty in his eyes.
Taehyung sits still before it, his throat working in conflicted, emotional swallows. If Seokjin dares, he knows he sees the thinnest sheen of tears in those bright eyes, those nightless, cavernous eyes, and it makes him lean forward in almost panicked overwhelm, needing his mate so acutely right now that he thinks he’ll go mad with it.
Taehyung takes pity on him and pulls out one of the boots, drawing his attention away from his consuming passion and back to the moment, this precious, important moment. Taehyung's hands stroke over the soft surface, over the slick, metal toe, over the narrow stab of the heel, slow and reverent over the tumble of embroidered flowers as a lover before he holds it out to Seokjin.
“Put it on me.”
He stands on the mattress, and Seokjin comes to sit between his legs. Tugging down the laces takes time that Seokjin has no patience for, and soon he’s lifting one of Taehyung's precious feet tipped into the primest arch and dipping it inside the boot before he works it wide enough to take it. An eagerness Seokjin takes note of and appreciates all the way to the tip of his fingertips.
Seokjin does up the laces again with more patience, tying them off into a bow as pretty as the ones found in little girl curls. The other boot goes on just as forcefully, no poise to it, nothing but two eager souls with their secret dreams so, so close.
Taehyung stands straighter to look at the mirror opposite the bed, wobbles because of the downy give of the mattress and Seokjin holds him steady like he is made of glass.
Then he walks, like a love note. Small steps with Seokjin still in between his long legs reclining back with every step till he is prostrated back like a pilgrim now that finally, he has something to worship. The stiletto heels dig into the mattress on either side of his ears.
Taehyung looks down at him, smiles full and happy and beckons him, till Seokjin is sitting up again. Kissing the smooth velvet, where the tender heel of Taehyung's foot is, his ankle, his calf on the way up. Seokjin kisses the tender exposed side of his knees.
Taehyung reaches down and touches his ear. The hand with the bandaid smelling thickly of arrowroot. Only of arrowroot.
Seokjin turns his face to Taehyung’s palm, kisses the hollow of it, “You can take the bandages off now, sweetheart.”
It's received with a distinct gasp, with fingers tugging sharply at his hair once.
“You knew!” Taehyung exclaims, beaming with delight. He unwraps the light gauze to reveal smooth, unmarred skin and tosses it aside. His youth in the speed of his movement.
The corner of Seokjin's mouth twitches upwards. The thought that he has ruined Taehyung is laughable. Seokjin gazes up at him, from between his legs. Leaning on an elbow and shirtless, he doesn’t even try to keep the thick affection out of his voice.
“You keep forgetting I can smell you, Taehyung”
Taehyung descends on his lap, knees wide. Chest pressed close. Dark-eyed and smiling, languid and warm and a little wicked. Everything Seokjin has ever wanted since the very first day. He whispers a secret from very, very near, “Hmmm, and you keep forgetting to tell me what I smell like.”
Taehyung's scent swirls around him, and he inhales it contentedly.
He breathes wide, breathes deep.
The secret scent of forever boys.
A pain more exquisite than dying takes him over, Seokjin’s entire soul sighs.
“Mine.”
Je préfère au constance, à l'opium, au nuits,
L'élixir de ta bouche où l'amour se pavane;
Quand vers toi mes désirs partent en caravane,
Tes yeux sont la citerne où boivent mes ennuis.
I prefer to constance, to opium, to nuits,
The nectar of your mouth upon which love parades;
When toward you my desires set out in caravan,
Your eyes are the cistern that gives drink to my cares.
-Baudelaire, "Sed non satiata" (Never Satisfied), Les Fleurs du Mal.
Notes:
This is what I imagine the cafe's instagram page would look like.
This universe is set in an imaginary country, a small town somewhere between oriental and occidental spheres. All similarities with any existing location is purely coincidental.
Taehyung headcanons:
- When he says ‘It’s always cold where I’m from,’ he’s alluding to the fact that he’s from the North.
- The North, I imagine, is a very tumultuous vampire ‘kingdom’ of sorts which is ruled by Purebloods and it is known to be a notoriously unsafe place.
- Tw// noncon: There’s a prolific black market for vampire venom and other drugs up North though I imagine Taehyung was forcibly bitten on the wrist or on the arm. If it’s an old enough vampire, it would be potent enough to get him addicted.
- I assume Taehyung sort of just packed his bags and jumped the border and found this quaint little town to settle down in, which is far enough south to not get harsh winters.
- He probably met Jimin whilst applying for the apothecary gig.
- He definitely waited for Seokjin outside the café on purpose o_o.
- Seokjin and Taehyung both share unhappy family lives they left behind. A lot of Taehyung's emotions towards the shoes at the end stems from all the desires he has had to repress for a long time either due to an unsafe environment or an unsupportive family.
More Notes (feel free to skip):
This fic draws inspiration from a multitude of works, literary and otherwise.
-
- Dracula, Bram Stoker (The OG)
- The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
- Salem’s lot, Stephen King.
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt
- The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice
- The Vampire Diaries, L.J. Smith
- The Vampire Academy, Richelle Mead
- The Kiss, Gustav Klimt
- All the documentaries, fanfiction, published fiction, articles, podcasts I’ve ever perused on New Orleans.
- My entire screenshot gallery of Tumblr vampire discourse
- And those beautiful, iconic red Alexander McQueen boots that I shall forevermore daydream of.
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