Chapter Text
Jungkook remembers his life in flashes of smoke. Perhaps because the smell of it is his first conscious memory, perhaps because nothing else has happened to him worth noting like the smoke that had engulfed any last remnants of normalcy he had in him as a child. Strangely enough, he doesn’t remember the flame; only the smell, the heat, the cigarette his father had smoked in their old car as he was finally being discharged from the hospital.
Now, smoke seems to follow him everywhere he goes. It’s in the cigarettes he gulfs down, the car pollution in the Seoul air as he walks to the bus station. It coaxes it’s way down his throat, claws down and spreads into his lungs, and leaves him breathless, suffocating, and his mother is looking at him but he can’t breathe—
Jungkook gasps awake, desperately sucking in the stale air of his apartment, heart pounding rapidly in his chest. It takes a moment for his surroundings to make sense—the lone room of his apartment: the cinderblock walls, the pile of unwashed clothes in the corner, the street lights seeping in through the window that is not big enough to fully light the place even during daytime.
Jungkook exhales, shoulders shaking. No smoke, no…whatever else it was he had been dreaming about.
He gulps around the coppery taste in his mouth, feeling like maybe he’d bitten he’s tongue, trying to hold on to the remnants of the horrific images his sleeping mind had conjured up. They’re dissipating like the sweat drying on his shivering skin. Something about being watched, he thinks, but why would he want to remember at all? Nightmares are not meant to stay, and that’s good. That should be a relief.
The shadows of the apartment suddenly seem denser, areas that had seemed perfectly normal with the lights on suddenly a possible crevice for someone—or something—to crouch in.
Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut, shaking out the sweat-damp strands of his hair before reaching to the floor down by the mattress. One good thing about not having a bed—nothing can hide under it.
His sweaty fingers leave even more greasy streaks on the cracked screen do his phone, and the time shows he’s been asleep for less than an hour. It had felt like ages. Goddamn it.
He has work in a few hours, but he learned to give up on falling back asleep when terrors hit him. And they hit him most nights.
He lies on his side, staring out into space—there isn’t much, the cinder block wall only five meters from each corner. The lights shining through the single, tiny window illuminate the kitchen counter and cast deep shadows onto the floor, dark enough to hide something. There’s a creak somewhere in the walls, then a small thump that might just have come from the bathroom.
Jungkook pulls the covers up to his chin, glad for once that the landlord still hasn’t fixed the heater and the autumn chill is freezing enough to keep him from roasting under the blankets for a while. He only has a couple hours before he needs to start getting ready for work, so he kills them scrolling through his phone and trying to ignore his surroundings, no matter how suspicious the lump in the corner looks. It’s just a pile of laundry.
He’s tempted to turn the lights on, but it would be no use; his mind would find another way to keep running and he can’t spend every night burning through his electricity bill when he can barely pay it as is.
That’s the only thing that forces him to push his aching body out of bed and across the freezing concrete floor to the bathroom, long immune to the couple of house centipedes he has to wash down the rusty drain before getting in himself.
As expected, work is hell. It isn’t even that he has to drag his zombie-like body through the store opening procedure in the darkness before dawn while the only three other employees that come in that early swallow their own yawns and avoid him like he’s got a life-threatening, contagious illness. Or even when the customers start piling in and overloading him with questions and yelling at him for the price of rice. No, it’s Minjoon that sets him the fuck off, one of the owner’s son who is hellbent on making Jungkook suffer no matter how much he ignores him.
Every establishment has a Minjoon, and Jungkook is no stranger to these guys, being—as his father had put it once—‘an easy target with the kind of face that makes people want to hurt him’. Not that his speech was that eloquent five bottles of soju down, but that’s what Jungkook had deduced he meant to say.
“Hey, freak!”
Jungkook mentally braces himself as Minjoon calls out from where he stands with a group of girls, the ones that seem to only come to talk to him. They’re laughing, likely at his expense. Minjoon is not clever enough to make jokes without throwing someone under the bus.
“You hear me, Jungkook?” he chuckles. “Get over here, I think Huna is just dying to meet you.”
A girl—Huna, he presumes—makes a face at Minjoon and they all burst out laughing.
“She says she saw you staring at her.”
Jungkook scans the next item to see where it should go. It’s too early in the morning for this shit.
“Don’t worry, I told her girls don’t do it for you.”
Jungkook feels sick as the gasps of disbelief and laughter explode within the group, and he breaks his stare, hurrying to finish the job.
It’s the occasional ‘jokes’ from Minjoon, the occasional pushing-around that turns into the occasional threats of getting him fired, then into crude and humiliating remarks, then slurs, then more physical intimidation tactics. ‘Jokes’. They tend to build up in that order; Jungkook likes to keep tabs to know where he stands. Not that he’ll react regardless, but it’s probably smart to know what to expect. He thinks. He never really figured out a strategy for these things.
In a way, it feels like his own fault. Perhaps if it wasn’t for the ugly burn scars climbing up to his neck, for his inability to talk back, for that look in his eyes people seem to hate, and his overall freakishness, he wouldn’t be such an easy target.
It’s not that these things don’t have an effect on him at all; contrary to Minjoon’s and the other employees’ beliefs, Jungkook is in fact human, and no amount of freakishness will change that, no matter how much he wishes it would. It’s just that he doesn’t really know how Minjoon wants him to react. Cry? Maybe Jungkook had become desensitized through the years of the same thing—Minjoon is not the first bully he’s encountered—but in his experience, tears never worked either, and he just never had the energy to cry and plead and whatever the fuck else they probably want. Maybe if it turns physical, Jungkook will do something. But as of now, Minjoon has yet to be a real threat, paling in comparison to Jungkook’s father.
The store barely pays enough—they’re the kind of establishment that claims to be a ‘family’, which is true to some degree, in a literal sense—but Jungkook doesn’t have many choices—no college degree, no available spots in anything more respectable. People here cling to their positions like a lifeline. It is their lifeline.
“You’re not that fucking important, you know. I could get rid of you, easily.” Minjoon reminds him, lightly pushing Jungkook’s head down on the way past him. “You know what happens if you get sacked these days? You’ll end up on the street, sucking cock for a living.” He snorts. “But wouldn’t you like that?”
Jungkook glares at his back. He suspects Minjoon doesn’t even believe the stuff he says, only does it to establish some power over him in front of others. It still makes Jungkook’s blood run cold.
He’s just spouting bullshit, he tells himself. But how do they always know?
♾️
Jungkook had learned to dumpster dive back when he was a teenager, and it earned him many a beating from his father when he realized he had shit they should never have been able to afford, but even that never stopped him. The store throws away most of the perfectly good returns, a policy on unsealed bath items and just about any kind of food, even packaged. Just loads and loads of hand soap and body wash and packets of ramen all piled high into the dumpster locked behind a padlocked chain-link fence. Jungkook is not the only ‘thief’ they deal with, but it does make it easier for him that he has the key from the managers’ office in the back room. It’s easy during closing shifts.
That’s how he finds it.
At first he thinks it’s something from the home decor section, the ceramic snake just bigger than his palm. A paperweight, maybe? He hasn’t seen anything like that at the store, though, which makes him think maybe some customer had left it on accident, something they may have bought from the home improvement store down the street and forgot it here?
It’s not something he needs. It’s a ceramic snake—the fuck is he going to do with it? He doesn’t even have a nightstand to set it on, and no space in his bag to fit it comfortably, which is proven as it digs into his back on the bus ride home.
He spends some time toying with it as he lays on his mattress, running his finger over the subtle scale details, the smooth fangs of its gaping mouth. Interesting that there’s no matching forked tongue, he thinks. Just complete hollowness down its throat. The serpent is coiled around itself with an empty sort of space in the center, like maybe something is supposed to go there. Maybe it had broken off.
Jungkook sets the ceramic aside to light a cigarette, the lack of ventilation in the room quickly making the smoke spread quickly. The smoke detector in this glorified closet of an apartment has never worked, and he’d long given up on bringing shit up to his landlord.
He blows the smoke out in the direction of the ceramic snake, watching it get momentarily engulfed, and that’s when he finally realizes what it’s supposed to be. Jungkook’s mother used to burn incense regularly—to clean the house of dark spirits, she said, though he suspected it had more to do with overpowering the smell of his father’s cigarettes.
Jungkook sets it by his mattress again and forgets about it, lying still and staring at the ceiling, tracing the crack that runs through it from some leak a few months ago.
He tries not to move and simply sleep—just sleep, is that so hard?
His brain doesn’t cooperate, because what is that rustle in his ear? A whisper? He shudders. What is that creak? Someone trying to climb through his window?
He tosses and turns in the dark and finds himself in that strange half-asleep state of dreaming, somewhere in a place his conscious mind doesn’t dare venture. The thought of getting the breath knocked out of him, his airway blocked as salty skin is pushed into his mouth, and he gasps awake to his hand already clawing at his hard-on.
His muscles are shaking as he buries his face in his pillow, fist trembling as he tugs on his cock so tightly it’s almost painful, as if that’s punishment enough.
He hears himself gasp and moan, and tries to quell his noises by biting his pillow case, because god knows these cinderblock walls aren’t as noise-proof as they seem, until hot, sticky fluid finally spills onto his fingers and he drops onto his stomach with a sigh, his pillow and bedsheets wet beneath him.
He lights a cigarette and smokes it, then finds his sketchbook and scribbles with nothing but a black ballpoint pen that has a pungent enough smell to slightly burn its way up his nostrils and leaves ink stains all down the side of his hand.
It’s wasting electricity, having his light on, but he needs to distract himself, anything but to think about that.
Amongst this, he can’t shake the feeling of being watched—not like his usual paranoia that has him whipping his head in all directions like something will spring up on him. It’s a stoic thing, as if content to observe.
Chills run down his spine, and he turns to look across the room at the incense burner. Its snake eyes are dull and lifeless, as a ceramic should be.
He gulps down the heaviness settling in his gut, suddenly unable to look away. That empty mouth needs a tongue, he keeps thinking. He wishes he had some incense—candles and incense burners are not allowed at the apartment, but then again, neither is smoking.
Jungkook is stocking the two aisles they have of home items—all picture frames, decorative paper weights, scented candles, oils, wax warmers, and of course, incense sticks. The aisle smells like a mixture of heady artificial lemons and sandalwood, and makes him think of the way his own home—if you can even call the single room with cracks running through the walls, and the mattress plopped against the wall, a home—smells like stale cigarette smoke and sweat and something damp, and for some reason he’s suddenly very aware of that.
He stares at the incense—he needs the cone-shaped kind, he thinks. That snake, with its bared fangs and long eyes, needs a tongue.
He swipes some colorful packages off the shelf, not worried about the surveillance camera in the corner. Most of them don’t work, and no one ever checks them.
♾️
Jungkook has to look up how to light the incense properly. He never paid attention when his mom did it—something he suddenly regrets with an ache in his chest—but thankfully it doesn’t prove to be too difficult.
A thin trail of white smoke unfurls out of the snake’s mouth and fills the gap in between its coiled tail like a pale, moonlit pool. This one smells heady, like perfume.
He watches the burner for a bit, hypnotized. It feels more complete now, the eyes no longer so hollow.
He sighs and slumps back onto the mattress, breathing it in, running his eyes along the long crack in the ceiling. This mind-numbing routine—when does it end?
He’s zoned out, his hand wandering towards his crotch, because what else does he have to do, lying here alone? He palms at his bulge through his worn-down pants, sighing as his head falls back.
He rubs over his pants, feeling heat rush to his cock, feeling it grow. He has a big cock, he thinks. There’s gotta be someone that would like it. He reaches under his waistband to wrap a fist around the shaft of it. Imagines a wet, hot mouth around it instead of his own sweaty palm. Ignores how bad he wants that. Even if he could manage to not freak someone out for a night, the thought of bringing someone back to this slum puts a gross taste in his mouth.
He’s panting as he pushes his hips into his palm, and it takes him a while to notice the way the ceiling is filling with that curling incense smoke, but doesn’t have it in him to question it, lost in the wet friction his cock is getting. He just sucks it down his throat, imagining a hand wrapped around it, a heavy body over him, a thick, sweat-salty cock in his own mouth.
The smoke is not so pale anymore—it’s pitch black, and it fills the room with its curling designs. They’re almost beautiful—elegant. Jungkook groans, fist moving frantically now, and fuck, he’s so close, so close as the room is entirely swallowed up in smoke so thick he can’t see through it anymore—
He wakes to the sound of his alarm, squeezing his eyes shut and open again to grasp ahold of reality. His alarm rings again, and he rushes to find his phone on the floor before it can set off the loud noise.
It’s 5:30 in the morning—time for work. When had he fallen asleep? How had he fallen asleep? When was the last time he’d slept so many hours at a time?
He sits stoic, still too dazed to move. So much so that he doesn’t even realize how hard his cock still is, underwear slightly wet around the poking tip—when had he even taken his pants off? Maybe in the middle of the night, in his sleep? He’s still wearing the hoodie from last night, and it reeks of that incense.
Which reminds him—the last of the cone is still burning through, the pale trail of a tongue slowly fading. Not at all like it was in his dream, all rich and dark as it swallowed him up. He thinks it’s supposed to be bad for your health, sleeping with it burning, but he had no idea it could help him sleep, though maybe that’s too soon to call. It might have been a coincidence.
♾️
“Did you hear me, or do I have to fucking repeat it?” Minjoon’s is projecting his voice like he’s a military commander and not a grocery store manager. Jungkook wonders if that’s how his higher-ups will be when he does his military service. His father used to say he’d get eaten alive.
You can’t even handle a light slap, he had said, as Jungkook clutched his bleeding nose. What are you gonna do when the squadron leader hits you?
Jungkook’s mother had tried to soothe him. It’s different now, for young people.
His father scoffed. Weak brats. Nothing gets done if they don’t get beaten.
But then, his father also said they’d be kept awake for days, and that’s Jungkook’s expertise, so maybe he’ll actually do quite well, he thinks, swallowing down the dry food from the deli section, slumped in the chair in the break room. That’s when he walks in, Jungkook’s eyes automatically drawn to him.
He has bleach-blond hair, a lithe frame that even the oversized vest they’d given him doesn’t hide, and a doll-like face with pouty lips and rosy cheeks, though his expression is anything but. It’s rather grave, lips pressed tightly together and eyes narrowed as though on a mission as he bends to retrieve something from under a table. It makes his long vest and hoodie ride up, his baggy pants stretching around the thick muscles of his ass and thighs.
Jungkook doesn’t realize he’s staring until the guy stands and makes eye contact—he doesn’t smile or anything, but it makes Jungkook’s heart race just as much, and he quickly looks away.
Park Jimin. For some reason that name comes to him. He thinks he heard some employees talking about some new hire earlier this morning. He had no idea they were even hiring—they’ve always preferred to have their employees do three jobs at a time than hire more.
It’s beyond him how he managed to miss him up until this point. Sure, Jungkook doesn’t pay that much attention to his surroundings, but wouldn’t he at least have caught a glance at some point?
He looks at him again, from the side of his eye. Some of the girls’ heads turn towards him, giggling to each other, but mostly no one pays much attention as he walks out, and—is Jungkook imagining how he flicks his sultry-eyed gaze to him and smirks? Definitely, so he tries to shake that blooming feeling off with a shiver.
It feels as though Minjoon’s gaze is burning into him from across the room.
Jungkook suddenly feels sick, barely able to force the remaining gimbap down his throat, but he paid for it and someone will take it if he leave it in the fridge.
When he comes home that day, something feels off. It takes him a moment to realize how eerily silent it is. Usually he can hear the shuffles of mice somewhere behind the walls, can only hope they don’t chew through the few things he has. Even the critters usually crawling in the bathroom are gone. Maybe it has finally gotten too cold. Even his own fingers are already turning numb. He needs that fucking heater fixed soon.
He hurries to light the incense burner, hands shaking in his haste to get that thin trail of smoke to pool into the snake’s coils. Once again, he gets the feeling of it being pleased, somehow, at being complete. He chalks it up to the same feeling he’d get as a child towards his stuffed animals. It’s not so freakish to feel a sense of sentience where there is none. And considering he’s using this to sleep, too, it’s not so different from a stuffed animal, is it? Only hard and cold.
He actually does notice himself drifting to sleep this time, his senses clouding as his nose is filled with those strong fumes. He lets his mind be enveloped, feeling it wonder into strange images, his body feeling detached until he no longer feels the ache in his muscles from all day on his feet.
He’s drifting, drifting, not knowing up from down, or right hand from left.
Then, it’s as though his mind hits a dead end, and suddenly he’s thrust back into his body—but still unmoving. No matter how hard he tries, feels himself sweat with the strain, his body is a rock on the mattress.
His room is draped in darkness and illuminated by city-lit smoke. He squints, trying to see through the haze to the looming dark shape somewhere behind it.
Oh, fuck, is that…
He tries not to think about it, it’s just his imagination, it must be.
There’s someone in the smoke, the shape becoming more apparent as it gets closer.
Jungkook needs to move, he needs to, he feels tears sting the back of his eyes.
Then his alarm rings, and he bursts awake with a gasp.
His heart is racing in his chest, his body dripping in sweat. He reaches for his phone just to get a bit more light in the room, wishing for a brief moment he had his mom’s contact.
The incense is, of course, as he left it, the smoke just a thin trail by his side.
♾️
“You got a light?”
The last person he’d expect to be approaching him outside the store is Park Jimin, but there he is, in all his pale-haired glory.
He’s already got a cigarette wedged between his thick lips. Up close, he seems like something more of this world. The roots of his bleached hair are growing out dark, his copper-colored hoodie looks like it was maroon once, and he smells like stale smoke.
It’s relieving. Jungkook doesn’t know what to do around people that seem too high above him. The occasional upper middle class people that come in asking for the latest Android model from the electronics section are never particularly pleasant to him.
Jungkook nods, handing him the lighter.
Park Jimin frowns, leaning back before taking it, and Jungkook wonders if he’d wanted him to light it for him. “Thanks.”
He should probably ask something to start a conversation. Like How do you like working here so far? or Has Minjoon gotten to you, yet?
Jimin beats him to it, and it’s not a conversation starter one would expect. “What’s with the scars?” he says, gesturing to the side of his neck.
Jungkook blinks, not sure how to feel about someone being so up front about it. Yeah, he’d given up wearing high collars to hide it back when he was a teenager, but no one ever points them out—not even Minjoon when it comes to humiliating him. “Oh, umm. Got caught in a fire when I was a kid.”
Jimin exhales smoke into the freezing, dry air. “That sounds so scary.” He sounds almost as though he’s impressed.
Jungkook doesn’t know why that brings him a bit of satisfaction. He shrugs, tugging the collar of his hoodie aside to show it going down his collarbone. “Was my fault. I decided to play with my father’s lighter.”
Jimin’s gaze lingers there, flickers to Jungkook’s cigarette as he places it between his peach lips. “You’re Jungkook, right?”
“Yeah, and you’re Jimin.”
“They don’t seem to like you, do they?”
Jungkook keeps getting a whiplash with Jimin’s wonderfully imperfect responses. “No, I don’t think so,” he ends up saying with a snort. It’s the closest thing to laughter he’s had in a while.
“Why’s that?” Jimin tilts his head at him, sizing him up and down. It makes a shiver run down his body. “Did you do something?”
Jungkook can’t imagine Jimin hasn’t already heard what they say about him, so why does he feel the need to confirm? And yet, he’s still here talking to him. “Guess they just think I’m a weirdo.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jimin says, with a grin. He’s got a crooked front tooth, and his hair almost glows under the pale sky. “A real psycho. You have that stare, you know? Think it scares them.”
Jungkook feels his chest shake with laughter before it registers, and he looks at the ground, kicking at a rock. He doesn’t intend to stare, he just zones out often. He wants to reply, scrambles for something to say just to keep him around longer, but then one of the managers comes out and tells them to get back to work.
Jimin puts out his cigarette in the metal trash can nearby and gives him a soft smile. “See you around, Jungkook-ah.”
Jungkook feels all floaty and also sick all at once. He keeps replaying Park Jimin’s words in his head, even though none of them were particularly pleasant. Not on their own, at least. It’s just that they were said by him…
Fuck.
He doesn’t dare use the incense burner again after last night’s nightmare, and spends the night thrashing around with no sleep, and shows up to work with even darker under-eye circles than usual.
“Morning, Jungkook-ah.”
Jungkook’s knee-jerk reaction is to ignore it, because only Minjoon bothers saying anything to him so early, but it’s not him this time.
Jimin’s eyes are still puffy from sleep as he hands him some keys, their fingers brushing.
It’s just the keys to the register, but it takes him way too long to realize that, and he keeps thinking about it. Keeps stealing glances at him throughout his shift. They’ve got Jimin in the back room most of the time, and he doesn’t want to go to him too often, partly because he fears if he’s too friendly with him, Minjoon might tell him something to turn him against him. He wouldn’t even have to lie, really.
After a day of dozing off standing up, Jungkook decides it’s ridiculous to think some scent had anything to do with some creepy nightmare when he’s been having them for years, and goes right back to lighting it before bed.
For a few nights, he sleeps well—insanely well. No nightmares, or anything. It feels good to wake up after hours, to not have to wrestle with his own mind to fall asleep, but if he’d been hoping his disorientation and zoning out would stop, he was wrong.
Somehow, he feels more worn down than ever before, to the point that he catches himself from falling face first over the register more than once.
“My…change?”
He shakes himself out of it, nodding before opening the register. He doesn’t think he gives the right amount, but the customer seems too weirded out by him to say anything. Jungkook tends to have that effect on people, and sometimes it serves in his favor.
He goes through the motions as though floating in and out, beginning to wonder if oversleeping can cause even worse haze and fatigue.
It’s only the glimpses he catches of Park Jimin that keep him engaged enough to not simply pass out. Sometimes he even sits next to him in the break room, but Jungkook can’t bring himself to say anything.
That short moment of a conversation had been nice, but now, Jungkook can’t help but think he was wrong. Jimin is not of the same world as him. He has an aura of something bright around him, his hair like an angel’s halo, his eyes crescent moons when he smiles. It doesn’t feel right for Jungkook to be near him, as if the mere presence alone would taint him.
He finds himself over the store bathroom sink one day, the rusty drain swallowing the water falling from his face. He braces his palms on the porcelain, his reflection staring back at him from the splotchy mirror.
His skin looks sickly and stretched thin over his face, his eyes mostly hidden under his bangs. He likes to keep them that way, in that childish ‘if I can’t see them, they can’t see me’ mentality.
He blinks and suddenly there’s another face in the mirror next to him.
“Fucking hell!” He snaps back to look at Park Jimin, who is leaning against one of the stall doors with crossed arms.
Jimin smiles, looking languid in his position. “Sorry, Jungkook-ah,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Jungkook shakes his head, hair still damp from the water he’d splashed in his face earlier and it sprays more over the sink. He sniffles, feeling suddenly annoyed at being caught—as if he was doing something wrong. Well, he sort of was. He’d been avoiding going back to work.
But judging from how Jimin is standing, leaning back as though he has all the time in the world, he might just be doing the same thing.
Jungkook pushes himself off the counter, and Jimin speaks again, voice smooth as buttercream. “You in a hurry to get back?”
Jungkook pauses, feeling suddenly conscious as Jimin’s gaze burns into him. “What else would I…”
Jimin snorts softly. “Oh, Jungkook-ah.” He stalks towards him, and Jungkook avoids his predator’s gaze by turning his full body towards the mirror again.
That only makes it worse, because now Jimin’s body is centimeters away from being pressed all up against his back. “There are so many things you wish we could be doing,” he says, voice husky in his ear.
Their eyes meet in the mirror, and it sets off alarms in Jungkook’s head. “Is this a fucking joke? Minjoon set you to this or something?”
That makes something harden in Jimin’s expression, his body suddenly caging him against the sink. “Do you really want to talk about someone else while we’re doing this?”
He says this with his lips against Jungkook’s neck—the unscarred side, so he can feel every hitch of his breath, every movement of his lips, sending shivers down his spine, making his palms clench around the sink.
“You think I don’t see how you look at me?” he whispers, nose rubbing up his neck as his hand touches Jungkook’s hip.
“Say it,” Jimin whispers, so, so tempting. “Tell me what you think about. What you want to do to me.”
He clenches his teeth. “W-what are you…”
“Show me,” Jimin says, placing his wet open mouth onto Jungkook’s neck, making him gasp in pleasure, his already hardening cock growing harder. “Come on, I’m starving.”
Jungkook jerks away with a shudder, slamming Jimin back into the wall, so hard his head bounces off. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I’m not—“ He keeps glancing at the door, praying to fucking anyone that no one saw that, saw him practically moan for a guy.
Jimin lets his head fall back with a sigh of pleasure. “More.”
Jungkook doesn’t know what he means. The whole place seems to be growing blurry around him. There are mirrors all over the walls, every one showing Jungkook his own terrified face, and Jimin’s half-lidded expression.
There’s one right behind Jimin’s body—when had it gotten there?—and it reflects a tunnel through the one right across from it, the one Jungkook had just been pressed up against.
Jimin doesn’t seem so shocked when Jungkook pulls him in by a handful of hair and attacks his neck with his own mouth, sucking and biting onto the tender skin in a way that will leave it marred blue and purple all over the left side. They’ll match then, a sick part of him thinks.
Jimin’s hard breathing just keeps getting louder and he wants him to shut up before someone hears them—or maybe it’s his own hard breathing? He shoves Jimin down to his knees and pulls his hard cock out of his pants, rubbing the leaking tip all over those fat lips. Jimin’s eyes roll back, and Jungkook squeezes the fistful of his hair harder before pushing his cock into the heat of his mouth.
He feels Jimin’s throat constrict around him and groans at the feeling, before thrusting in. He feels Jimin’s hands on his hips, clutching painfully with his nails as he fucks his mouth.
“This,” Jungkook groans. “This is what I want to do to you. And many other things.”
A wet noise escapes around his cock, and the mirrors seem larger. In each one he sees Jimin, on his knees for him, mouth wide open and taking his cock, moaning wetly around it.
Jungkook is close, heat building in his cock and about to spill right down Jimin’s throat, but when he looks down, his pupils are slit, like a snake’s, and all the mirrors show only Jimin, standing and watching Jungkook with satisfied grins.
Jungkook wakes with a gasp, his cock throbbing between his legs. He wraps a fist around it, pumping hard and fast, fuck, fuck—
He bucks his hips into his hand, tears in his eyes as he comes thinking of Park Jimin’s face full of cock, entire body breaking out in a shudder as he spills. It just keeps going, the orgasm drawing a high, strained sound out of his throat.
There are tears in his eyes when it finally stops. He climbs out of bed and takes a freezing shower.
♾️
He can’t even look at Park Jimin at work, avoids him like the plague. Every time they make eye contact from across the aisles, every time Jimin says something to him, he can’t shake the thought that he knows somehow. It makes bile rise in his throat every time he so much as thinks of him.
He keeps breathing in the incense until he’s out of those colorful little cones and swipes more off the shelf while no one is looking. Sometimes he sleeps all through the night, peacefully, like a child. Most times he wakes shaking in cold sweat, and can’t shake the thought that someone is in the room with him.
As a child, sleeping was a battle. He’d scream and cry when it came to bedtime, giving his mom hell until it earned him a backhand from his father to shut him up. He’d wet the bed a lot, wake up screaming. His mother would usually try to get him quiet before his dad woke up, but sometimes it was in vain and he’d scream at him for being too old for that. So Jungkook learned to keep his fears quiet, not wanting to bother his mom, too old to climb into his parents’ bed.
So it’s not so different now from how he’d slept before, except he has a real chance of sleeping through the night.
Once, he wakes in fear, from a nightmare that involved some kind of fall. It doesn’t matter now, his heart rate picking up even more as he realizes he can’t move just like that one time. His room seems still and quiet, and he’s turned on his side, his arm squished under him, cutting off the circulation there and making it almost numb save for the little pinprick sensations.
He squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to think of anything creepy. Easier said than done as the room seems to expand around him.
It’s not real, it’s not real. It’ll pass. Wake up, wake up.
But his brain will not let him rest, no matter how hard he tries to claw his way out of his stubborn, unmoving body.
The darkness of the room is thicker than ever, and he can’t even tell if it’s filled with smoke like last time.
His sweat-soaked body is too cold, even in his oversized hoodie.
That’s when he feels it, light and cool against his neck. He squeezes his eyes shut, sure he imagined it.
But then it’s there again, an unmistakable heavy exhale on the cusp of his neck. He can’t turn to look, can only urge himself to think of something else.
The body behind him presses into his back, arms wrapping around his waist and pulling him closer, pressing them flush together.
Jungkook wants to thrash and scream, but can only lie there.
“Shh, little lamb,” that person—thing?—whispers into his ear. “I’ve got you.” The voice is hisslike, high and slightly hoarse.
Jungkook’s eyes are wide as saucers staring at the wall across from him, unable to see behind himself. It kind of sounds like…
He shakes that thought.
The body is a sturdy presence against his back, one arm wrapped around his shoulder, the other under his side, holding him tightly.
Jungkook can’t remember the last time he’d been held. Maybe when he was really small.
There was a guy once—he was from the same apartment complex as Jungkook’s family, and he doesn’t know what happened to him after—no, that’s not something he wants to think about. In any case, he had never been held like this.
His heart is still a drum in his chest, but his mind is hazing over.
There’s that whisper again. “Such simple desires you have, Jungkook-ah. Don’t worry, I’m here.”
That’s definitely Park Jimin’s voice, and he feels the threat of tears clog his throat.
“Sleep, my little lamb.” And he places a kiss under Jungkook’s ear, lips soft and sending a tingling feeling up his neck.
Jungkook doesn’t try to pull away anymore. He lets sleep drown him again, lets himself melt into that embrace.
Hours later, he wakes up alone, and his body mourns the loss of that touch like a throbbing ache.
He blinks a few times, rubbing the crust out of his puffy eyes, wondering why everything feels so much brighter.
Then it clicks, and he throws himself out of bed, the cold floor slicing into the soles of his feet as he runs to get dressed, because it’s fucking daylight.
Sure enough, as he sits in the dirty bus seat, he sees all the missed calls from the store. Frantically, he tries to call back, but no one picks up, the customer service employees likely watching it ring with bored expressions like they do sometimes.
Shit. Shit. He wants to throw his phone across this fucking slow bus, tears stinging his eyes.
That’s when the bus stops—strangely, it seems to be the first stop this ride—and the person he wants to see both the least and the most walks in.
He floats through the bus aisle like a dancer, even as his face is buried in his phone, blond hair wind-tossed and coat unzipped.
Jungkook thinks for sure he’s going to walk past him, but at the last minute, Jimin slips into the seat by him.
Jungkook stirs in his seat, suddenly very conscious that he had not showered.
“You’ve been ignoring me, Jungkook-ah,” Jimin says, still looking at his phone.
Jungkook blinks. “Huh?” The silence stretches for a moment—isn’t it strange for a bus at 11 in the morning to be so empty?
Jimin puts his phone in his pocket to look at him, and Jungkook suddenly notices just how packed it actually is. “You never talk to me.” He’s pouting, eyes glimmering as they look up at him.
Jungkook looks at the ground, tapping his worn-down boots on the dirty floor. What’s he supposed to say? It’s because I have the most disgusting thoughts about you that would make you hate me. You don’t want me around you. “I never talk to anyone.”
“Hmm, I guess that’s true.“
Jungkook doesn’t look up, but he can feel Jimin’s eyes on the side of his face.
“Starting later than usual?” he says, voice gentle.
Jungkook groans, squeezing his eyes shut. “I overslept. Minjoon’s gonna kill me.”
“Tell him to fuck himself,” Jimin says.
Jungkook snorts, though the situation doesn’t feel so funny, his anxiety growing with every second.
When they stop, he springs up and runs off the bus—which is pointless, seeing as he’s already hours late, and sure enough, when he runs into the back room, Minjoon is expecting him, eyeing him with a sneer when Jimin walks in after him.
Jungkook must have been in worse shape than he thought if he’s so breathless after sprinting here while Jimin hasn’t even broken a sweat.
“Took your time,” he spits out as Jungkook clocks in. “Was sucking Park’s dick more important?”
Jungkook feels a rock wedge in his gut, gaze fleeting to Jimin, who raises a brow in Minjoon’s direction. He’s leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, expression neutral as if he’s merely observing.
Jungkook doesn’t know how he does it, be so unbothered. Maybe that kind of mockery doesn’t strike a nerve within someone if it doesn’t hold a semblance of truth to them. “Sorry,” he hears himself mutter.
“What was that?” Minjoon’s footsteps are heavy as he approaches. “Is that all you have to say?”
Jungkook sighs, feeling suddenly tired. “It’s not like I’m that important,” he mutters.
“Are you fucking talking back to me?” He waits a moment, then yells when he realizes Jungkook isn’t planning to answer. “Huh? You said something?”
“I have to…” He makes a move to walk around him, but Minjoon grabs him with his meaty fist and yanks him back by the collar of his shirt. It temporarily gags him, and Jungkook’s body is thrown to the ground. His side will definitely bruise.
“You’re fucking nothing.” Minjoon’s breath is hot and sour in his face. “You don’t fucking talk back to me, got that?”
Jungkook feels his fists curl as he stares back at him unblinkingly.
“Got that?”
Jungkook can hear his own blood pumping through his ears.
Then, one of the other managers walks in, and Minjoon backs off. He pretends to not see Jungkook on the floor, and Jungkook pretends there aren’t angry tears prickling his eyes. Everything is floating, his vision fading in and out.
A hand drops in front of him.
Jungkook takes a moment to register why it’s there, and when he takes it, it’s soft and warm as Jimin helps him up.
“You should’ve hit him back,” he says. “Didn’t you want to?”
Jungkook shakes his head. “I don’t care enough to.”
Jimin doesn’t seem convinced, but he doesn’t press. He must think Jungkook is pathetic, that he’s weak, that he can’t stand up for himself. It’s not untrue, but in Jungkook’s experience, fighting back only makes things a hundred times worse, the subtle crookedness to his nose is proof of that.
They keep finding each other after that. Sometimes Jimin sits with him during break, smokes with him outside. They don’t talk much, but it still feels surreal, and Jungkook is terrified to break this rapport they’ve built, trying desperately to not seem like a freak.
Once, Jungkook picks up an extra closing shift, staying until midnight, and Jimin is the only other person in the store. His shifts are strange, Jungkook thinks. Always switching times around, not like the other full time employees. Is Jimin a full time employee? He doesn’t seem to be there that often.
It’s eerily silent in the store, lit brightly by the fluorescent lights, contrasting with the darkness outside the windows.
Jungkook is finishing the inventory—or, tries to. As he blinks down at the papers, the numbers begin floating in and out of his vision. He blinks harshly. He’s more tired than he thought. He needs to go to bed. Needs to light that incense burner.
That one nightmare—or dream—is reoccurring. Occasionally, in the dead of night, someone creeps in and holds him to sleep.
After that first time, a few days of nothing passed, and Jungkook had convinced himself it was nothing, but then it came back again. And again. And he’d grown accustomed to falling asleep in his nightmare’s arms. He knows it’s not real by now, so why not let it be? Pretend someone really is holding him, enveloping him in a heady scent, and whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
“Done?” It’s Jimin.
Jungkook blinks, and the numbers are back as they should be, though he doesn’t remember writing them. “Yeah.”
Once they close the store, he lights a cigarette outside, the little flame on the lighter bright over his hand.
“It’s interesting you still do it after…” He gestures to Jungkook’s neck.
Jungkook looks up, realizing he’d been staring at the flame on the lighter. He quickly lets it go. “Yeah, it’s weird. It feels kind of…nostalgic, I guess.”
Jimin gives him a disbelieving look, gaze darting to the scar again.
“Not for the—“ He shakes his head, taking a drag. “I don’t know, I think that just made me more curious about it. Plus, it was just always in my house, so I’m used to the smell.”
“Hmm. Familiarity.”
He nods, thinking of how it reminds him of his childhood. It wasn’t all that bad. The smell of stale smoke on the blankets he wrapped himself into in his childhood twin-sized bed, the cigarettes he used to steal and light just to put them out on their couch, fascinated by the trail of smoke it would leave, burning a little circle into the fabric. “I guess. I was too young to remember it clearly, but…” He shrugs. “Fucked around and found out, I guess. I kept stealing my dad’s cigarettes to play with them, even after that, until he—“ He cuts off, catching himself about to tell the not-so-pleasant story of how his father put a cigarette out on his shoulder, adding a small speck to the expansive scar. He takes a drag instead.
Jimin listens intently. He doesn’t try to say something soothing, just nods and takes a drag, blowing it out into the chilly night air.
Looking at him, surrounded by that glow of street lamps, cheeks rosy from the cold, Jungkook can’t help but feel he’s too good to be true. Maybe it’s how he seems to smoke a lot but somehow has perfectly shiny, peachy lips and pink-hued skin that, now that Jungkook is paying attention, doesn’t seem to have much texture, smooth as buttercream.
Jimin puts out his cigarette on the metal trash can and sighs at him. “I need to get dinner. Good night, Jungkook-ah.”
Like that, Jungkook’s vision seems to clear, and he sees the chapped skin on Jimin’s plump lips. Jimin applies some balm that smells like vanilla to them with the tip of his finger, and gives Jungkook a small smile with his freshly slicked lips before leaving.
By the time Jungkook gets home, his hands are shaking to get the incense lit.
He sighs as the rich smell fills the room, dropping down onto the bed.
His body feels heavy, too heavy to lift and drag to the shower, so he just lays there hoping the energy to do that will strike before he falls asleep.
He stares at the ceiling, at the way it seems to be moving with the way the lights move outside the window. His vision fades in and out, as do his thoughts.
His body gets a tingling sensation all over, the way a limb does when you move it after it had its its blood circulation cut off for a while, except it’s less unpleasant.
His mind keeps drifting to Park Jimin’s voice, his long, keen eyes, his whispy hair. It’s like he can see those features form in the cloud of smoke filling the room, the way it catches the light from the window.
Then his thoughts take a darker turn. What if he really hates him? What if he’s inwardly laughing at him?
Jungkook is lying on his back, mind running, and he feels the weight settle on him before he sees anything.
He gasps, jerking back—startled to find that he can move, which can only mean he’s fully awake. His heart is racing as he climbs backwards on the mattress. He’d grown used to the nightmare, but this feels entirely too real. “No—“
“Shh, don’t be scared,” a voice coos. His voice.
“W-what the fuck are you?” Jungkook is backed against the wall, trembling as he feels the weight shift closer. Jumps when a hand settles on his thigh, another on the side of his neck. It’s cool and soft, and he feels a clawed finger settles gently on his skin. “What do you want?” He hears his own tear-strained voice through a cloud of fear.
“No, Jungkookie.” The whisper comes warm on his collarbone, the soft trace of lips sending shivers down his skin. “The question is what do you want? It’s your desires that shape me, after all.”
He feels them inhale up the crook of his neck, soft hair that isn’t his tickling the skin. A hand wraps around his waist and gently pulls his body to press against…this creature, stroking his waist soothingly. Jungkook’s traitorous body begins to relax in the creatures arms. “W-what?” He says, trying to think past the nose nuzzling against his neck. “My…what?”
“Desires are not always clear to their owners, are they, little lamb? But I think you know yours perfectly well, don’t you?” A kiss pressed under his ear.
“N-no,” Jungkook manages through the lump in his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. You’re just scared to admit it.”
There’s a flare of light behind Jungkook’s eyelids, like from a street lamp being lit outside his window, and that’s when he realizes his eyes have been closed—squeezed shut. He doesn’t dare to look.
“Look at me, little lamb,” the creature croons, and Jungkook just squeezes his eyes shut tighter. “Look at me,” it breathes into neck, gliding its hands up his body.
He shakes his head.
“Why won’t you?” it says, sharp nails gliding over Jungkook’s neck, like it’s just curious. “Is it because you already know what you will see?” Jungkook feels its nails rake down his body, over his hoodie, leaving a tingling trail all the way down to his belly button, pausing at the waistband of his pants. There’s bare skin there, where his hoodie rides up, and a single sharp point presses on it lightly, tapping over the seam of his waistband. Each tap sends a little wave to his cock, the hardness of which is becoming glaringly obvious, and he can no longer ignore it.
“Please,” he hears himself whisper, not wanting to specify what he’s asking for. He doesn’t know himself.
He doesn’t expect for the creature to thread their fingers together, pressing closer as if they’re lovers.
It’s a cold, wet lick to the side of his neck that makes his eyes snap open with a start.
The tongue is slow as it travels up his scarred neck, leaving a cold trail in its wake. He shouldn’t have this much feeling on the scarred side. Jungkook feels himself shuddering, and a smile is pressed into his skin.
He’s suddenly aware of how his fist is clenched around the man-shaped creature’s upper arm, the flesh soft under the material stretched around it.
Jungkook does not close his eyes in time as it comes up to face him, grinning like a cat who got the cream.
Jungkook has resigned himself to what he knew was coming, the face he would find staring back at him. The resemblance to Jimin is just about identical, the same small nose and plump lips and sharp jaw. Only his hair is dark as night, his eyes inky black—dark as the smoke he came from, dark as Jungkook’s mind.
If Jungkook were to be forced to acknowledge the rest of his body, he’d also point out how his clothing clings to his body like a second skin, showing each dip and curve of him, leaving little to the imagination. There’s a slit in his shirt, on his chest, and Jungkook finds himself staring at the sliver of moonlit skin, feeling his own crawl with self hatred.
The creature finally seems satisfied, mouth curling into a fanged grin—fanged like a snake, just like the incense burner. “There you are, my little lamb.”
Clawed fingers tentatively trace Jungkook’s jaw, and he lets him lay him back onto the mattress again, and Jungkook’s lips part when he feels a thigh press between his legs.
“I have seen so much suffering,” it whispers into his neck again. “So many desires. Some so disgusting you would get nauseous just imagining them, little lamb,” it says, licking up to his ear with a single swipe of a tongue that seems abnormally long.
Jungkook shivers.
“Yet here you were, crumpling in on yourself with so much self-hatred, resigning yourself to misery like it’s your home, like you’re the one feeding form it, and not me.” There’s a low chuckle against his skin. “And all for something so minuscule. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much to feed on, and I’ve been starving for a very long time, Jungkook-ah.”
Jungkook’s breath hitches as it latches onto his neck with its mouth, likely sucking a mark above his scarred skin, and his head falls back with a breathless moan.
“So I just can’t help staying a bit longer to feed off this miserable existence, these secret little desires of yours, little lamb.”
Jungkook feels himself bark out a laugh. Desires. What a way to make its prey compliant and needy, taking the form of what he wants the most. Feeding on his guilt.
He doesn’t realize there are tears that have fallen down his cheeks until that wet tongue catches one, breath hot against Jungkook’s cheek.
“Yes, let me in deeper, darling.”
Jungkook feels his cock throb, and then it latches onto his mouth, sucking on his tongue like it’s a meal, the action almost too depraved and wet to be called a kiss. Jungkook moans, and then his throat is clogged by that long tongue, cutting off his air.
He gags, tries to push it away, but those clawed fingers are holding fast to his cheeks. There’s smoke swirling around them, and it’s coming out of where their mouths are connected.
Pathetic wet sounds keep escaping around the appendage lodged in his throat, and when it finally withdraws, he’s too dazed and tired to move, lying back as he tries to suck in desperate breaths.
“Good,” Jimin says, pressing his hand over Jungkook’s chest, licking around his mouth, dripping in some slick black substance, which doesn’t help because it’s his tongue that’s coated in it. Some of it drips onto Jungkook’s chest. It’s hot to the touch, like wax, and he realizes his jaw is sticky with it when he tastes it—sour-sweet and tangy.
“So delicious,” Jimin moans.
Heat blooms up Jungkook’s neck as if that’s praise, and he lets those long claws comb through his hair until he loses track of everything.
When he wakes up, he’s rock hard and throbbing to the point it’s almost painful. He whines out loud when his fist wraps around the base of his cock, and his hips keep bucking into his hand in oversensitivity as he strokes himself, filling the room with fast slick sounds and his pathetic whines until he finally spills all over his hand, and it’s—it’s a lot. The waves of his orgasm wash over him and just when he thinks it’s over, there’s more, thick white fluid coating his hand like glaze. Fuck, he didn’t even know a person could cum this much, and it’s all because of that fucking dream where his coworker was some kind of horrifyingly sexy demon.
Jungkook covers his eyes with his elbow, feeling the need to moan in embarrassment. How fucked up can his mind get? Or…is it his mind?
His gaze slides over to the incense burner, the last of the cone burned out some time during the night. Those eyes…they’re long and keen.
Jungkook shakes his head. He’s a freak, maybe, but he’s not fucking crazy. He’s not.
♾️
“Yah! Did you hear me or not?”
Jungkook’s head snaps up from where he’d been staring at the floor.
“Clean the spill in the chemicals section. Now!”
He watches the bucket fill, the thin layer of dirt lining the inside turning the water grey, and drags it there.
It must have been some kind of pink soda, he thinks. As he mops, his shoulder aches—his entire body does, really. This reminds him, for some reason, of that one time. It’s always the strangest things, but hadn’t his mom hunched over with a mop over his spilled blood just like this? The water had tainted that same copper shade. Jungkook had been half-lying against the wall in the corner, and everything hurt too badly to move. His father must have busted one of his eyes, because it was hard to see through the blur and redness.
Jungkook is trying to collect all the fluid with the mop, but it just keeps spreading, not an end in sight, the color seeming to grow darker and darker.
His mom was scrubbing at the ground in that timid way she did things as if staying quiet, unseen, would prevent his father from lashing out. Jungkook could hear him, somewhere in the apartment, for once numb to the sound of his heavy footsteps. He could hardly feel anything anymore. He had fucked up. His father was wrong about a lot of things, but he wasn’t entirely wrong about that.
That might have been the last time he’d seen his mom, and she couldn’t even look at him.
Did she find him that repulsive? Tainted? He feels bile rise in his throat, on his knees now as he tries to gather all that fluid. Why is it so thick? So dark.
When he picks up the rag to wash it into the water, the blackness stains his hands, and drops down to his elbows.
Jungkook tries to wash it off, dipping it into the water again, but it’s completely overflowing with that thick black fluid. For a moment he’s relieved it’s not blood. Then the panic hits as he realizes how much it’s spreading, leaking all over the floor, under the aisles, and how is he ever supposed to clean this up? Tears sting his eyes as he frantically adds more water, spilling the entire bucket of that mixed liquid onto the floor.
The lights flicker and when he looks up, he sees it leaking from around the lamps too, dropping down onto the floor in slimy strings, shiny and heady-smelling.
He can’t get it off his hands, and the rag is becoming useless as he frantically tries to collect it all, of course to no avail. What had he done? His filthy mind is tainting everything he touches.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Jungkook blinks. The rag is dripping where it hangs in his hands, unable to collect the dirty water from the bucket he’d knocked over. His hands are wet, but clean. For a moment, he just breathes, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
The hallway is entirely clean. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.
♾️
Jungkook is in the store bathroom again, or maybe it’s his apartment? Maybe it’s Jimin’s apartment? He’s not sure, the walls keep changing. But there’s a bed there—and someone on the bed, naked and supple and waiting for him.
Jimin’s inky hair makes his red lips look starker against his moonlit skin. His body is a soft haven, the way he melts as Jungkook sinks into him over and over. Everything is slow and sluggish, and he can faintly hear Jimin’s moans through earfuls of water. He can see them, though, the way his luscious lips fall open and his head falls back onto the pillows, baring his elegant throat, and his eyes roll back before falling shut.
Jungkook is fucking into him, but when he tries to touch his skin, he’s like water, barely a feeling on his palm.
It’s okay. He buries his face in Jimin’s neck, inhaling his smoky scent, feeling his dark hair tickle his nose as he holds him close.
He’s wrapped around him so softly, fluttering around his girth, whining breathily when Jungkook brushes a certain spot.
He blinks and he’s fucking him from the back now, the moon globes of his ass rippling with each slap of skin against them. His head falls against Jungkook’s shoulder, and then another against his other shoulder. He looks to his right—it’s Jimin, of course, kissing up Jungkook’s neck as he’s fucking him, and then there’s Jimin on all fours under him. Another wraps his arms around him from the back, his cock rubbing against Jungkook’s ass, more lying on the bed, watching.
Jungkook feels an eerie sensation settle down on him, at the way their smirks suddenly feel sinister. He looks down, and Jimin is looking up at him with his ink black eyes and red lips, a trail of black fluid dripping from the corner of his mouth and into his jet black hair. His black tongue comes out to lick it clean.
Jungkook jerks awake with his heart hammering in his chest and a lump deep in his gut. What the fuck.
He’s hard, and he doesn’t even want to take care of it. That’s what he tells himself, until a brush against his leaking tip, on the little damp spot in his underwear, sets his toes curling and he palms at his bulge viciously until he can’t anymore, putting his hand under his waistband and tugging his cock to completion.
♾️
“I saw that.”
Jungkook’s breath gets caught in his throat as he tries not to rustle the pack of ramen he’d just put in his pocket as if that’ll help.
Then Jimin cracks a smile and slides a candy bar into his own pocket. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Everyone does it.”
Jungkook’s shoulders drop in relief, and he almost thanks him, but Jimin is already turning around to go stock some of the lower shelves, bending at the waist.
Jungkook feels his face grow warm as he snaps his head away, the dream from last night coming back to him, the words…
It’s your desires that shape me, after all.
It feels so wrong basking in the glow of Park Jimin’s friendship when that’s the kind of thing his mind conjures up about him. He feels dirty, disgusting, but it’s also the only thing he has to look forward to when he wakes up in the morning—seeing him.
He goes to splash some water in his face, but the bathroom suddenly reminds him of the other dream he’d forgotten, flashes of Jimin’s mouth stretched around his cock as the room floats and tunnels around them.
In the mirror, his damp hair hangs like greasy spikes over his eyes.
It’s almost like the dream, the way a single light bulb suddenly goes out with a sizzling sound, leaving a single one flickering dimly. He gasps at the dark-haired figure behind him, in the mirror, but when he turns around there’s no one—nothing—there.
Fuck, he thinks with a racing heart. If this shit is getting into his head in his waking hours, it’s way beyond a reoccurring nightmare. He’s going crazy.
No, no. He’s just sleep deprived and exhausted and burnt out.
But when he squints at the dirty mirror, at the spot on his neck, over his lumpy scar, he touches his fingers to it—a burgundy dark mark, different from the rest of the pink scar.
He blinks harshly, and everything around him swims, nothing solid, like a dream. How does he know he’s not dreaming now? Or ever? Can he trust himself to tell the difference anymore?
♾️
“Did you miss me?”
It’s a breathy whisper against his neck, closer to a hiss.
Jungkook is lying on his side, mattress warm beneath him, even though he doesn’t remember falling asleep.
“Of course you did,” it says, pulling him against it, body warm and solid against his back. “Why else would you keep inhaling me like that?”
Jungkook sighs, eyelids fluttering shut as warm breath tickles his neck.
“There’s no need to miss me,” it whispers, claws snagging at his hoodie. “I’m already a part of you.”
For once, Jungkook lets himself give in, lets himself feel the lump in his throat threatening to spill out of his eyes, and sinks deeper. “Don’t leave. Don’t let me wake up.”
He feels the body against him still. Seems his ability to freak people out extends to his own nightmares, he thinks with a shred of bitter amusement.
It squeezes him tighter, whispering against his neck. “I won’t.”
Jungkook shudders, suddenly wanting to take his words back.
“I’ll feed on you forever, little lamb. You’ll let me, won’t you?”
Jungkook can hear a shred of sick amusement in its voice. But he’s not willing to say any more, and he can’t tell whether it’s frustrated or amused about that.
Long talons take a rest on his cheek, turning it at an almost painful angle so that it can press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Those lips are soft as feathers and send a shiver down his body as those nails rake down his throat, hard enough to sting, light enough to not leave a mark.
That feeling makes Jungkook’s teeth grind together in frustration, as though he’s being teased.
There’s a grin against his skin. “There you are, my little lamb.”
“Shut up,” he forces out.
Jimin’s inky eyes are scathing, smoke curling around him in dark rivulets as he flips on top of him with inhuman speed, hands culling his face to jerk his face up to his own, sounding almost desperate as he breathes into his mouth. “More, give me more.”
Jungkook’s chest is rising and falling rapidly against Jimin’s, his eyes stinging, but he needs this, and he can’t keep living with that hollow emptiness, can’t die with it. Wrong as it is, how could anyone know what’s happening in his head?
He brings his hands up to Jimin’s shoulders, and they’re shaking as they slide up the material of his thin shirt until his thumb comes in contact with one of the slits on his collarbone. He presses into it, a single thumb print on the skin, and it already feels terrifying.
Then, Jimin crashes their mouths together like before. It resembles more closely what a proper kiss should be than last time’s deepthroating, but it’s still wild and borderline painful—no, it is painful, as Jimin’s needle-sharp fangs split the inside of his lip and blood spills, filling their hungry mouths with the taste of copper and that sour semi-sweetness from last time that Jungkook realizes now must have been something like venom, dripping from his needle-sharp fangs.
The room is so dark he can’t see anything beyond the mattress, yet somehow sees Jimin perfectly. “Please,” he gasps when a hand presses on his growing bulge, hips rocking into the compliant palm.
There’s a flash of teeth and his breath is knocked out of him as he’s pushed onto his stomach. It’s done too inhumanly fast for him to register, sharp claws digging into his hoodie-clad back and scratching down, the sound of tearing fabric louder than the rush of blood in Jungkook’s ears.
He cries out, the nails definitely leaving bright red trails on his skin, the sting reverberating straight to his cock.
His entire body is shaking as clothes are pulled off him, and he can’t stop. Distantly, he hears his breaths come out hard and heavy, even though he’s just lying there and taking it.
His head is held up by his throat, and Jimin is hissing into his neck before licking a long, wet stripe up to his ear. “Delicious.”
For a moment, mouth full of his own blood and venom, Jungkook is seized by fear that Jimin—that this thing—meant it when it said it was going to feed on him. Piece by piece.
“I am not a physical being, little lamb. I cannot feed on flesh and blood like you.”
Jungkook doesn’t have the chance to be relieved, the demon seeming satisfied with his clothes hanging in tatters off his body, tiny little scratches dusted over his skin.
His lumpy scar trails all the way down his right shoulder and side, covering half his back. Jimin pays no heed to it, palm grasping a handful of his ass, and it’s embarrassing how Jungkook whines at that.
He expects him to just thrust in—is prepared to take it, doesn’t care how much it hurts anymore, wants it to burn—but that cold wet thing swipes up the cleft of his ass, the tip briefly dipping into his hole as it passes, and he nearly chokes, starting to crawl away more instinctively than anything.
Jimin is having none of it, grabbing his hips firmly, needle-sharp claws digging into his skin like a warning. “You cannot run from yourself here, little lamb, and most certainly not me.” He sounds pissed off.
Jungkook lets out a pathetic sound from somewhere in his chest, from between his gritted teeth. “I…I—“
“Shh, you don’t have force yourself to make sense of yourself. I can feel your desires just the same if they are not spoken.” That’s followed by another touch of his soft tongue right to his hole, likely smearing that sticky inky substance all over it.
Jungkook squeezes his eyes shut like that’ll stop the tears flowing from them. He doesn’t want to want it, doesn’t want to beg, but he needs it so badly it hurts—hurts more than the scratches trailing down his back, maybe even more than the flame that had melted his skin. This feels just as consuming as that.
The first moan breaks out of him when Jimin pushes his thick tongue inside him, his mouth falling open at the slick movement inside him.
“Ah!” he sobs as he actually thrusts, the stretch barely uncomfortable, a strange, tingling sensation overtaking it instead that he immediately assumes is the effect of that venom. “Gahhh.”
He just can’t stop his whining, squirming to pull away with tears in his eyes even as he’s internally begging Jimin to keep him close, to not let him run. That’s just what he does, hands firmly set on the plush skin of his ass, a low groan reverberating into Jungkook’s hole as he gasps and struggles more.
It only encourages his ministrations. He splits him open on his tongue, which Jungkook swears he feels all the way in his belly, though maybe that’s just his body reacting to an unfamiliar intrusion.
He sucks in a breath as Jimin sucks furiously at his hole, like he really does want to eat him, the slurping sound from that fluid sending more blood down to Jungkook’s heavy cock, which he doesn’t even dare think of touching. He feels disgusting enough as is, taking enjoyment from this.
Jimin pulls away with a last smack of his lips, and Jungkook moans breathily the entire time he slowly withdraws his tongue, wondering what his hole must look like, probably open and gaping for this demon. He feels it flutter and clench over and over.
Jungkook shudders. He’s on his hands and knees, sweaty hair curtaining his face, room thick with smoke and the smell of sex.
His eyes burst open when he feels it thrust into him—utterly splitting him open. His scream is silent, drool leaking out of his mouth as his mind goes blank for solid seconds.
When it comes back, he hears himself panting, begging, for more, for please, please, ah, AH!
It’s so many things at once, he struggles to wrap his mind around the feeling, around the thickness pushing into him, his hole helplessly clenching around it, the repeated smacking sound of skin against his ass, and the slick sounds that follow, the loud springs of his mattress whining louder than him.
He’s pressed flush against it, cock rubbing into his bedsheet as the body on top of him pushes into him.
Occasionally a spot inside him is stroked that makes Jungkook’s vision whiten and his mouth move of his own accord. “There, please, there—“
A kiss is pressed to the side of his neck, and he’s startled to realize he can barely feel it, over his scar. “So, so delicious.” Then it’s ans though Jimin unleashes his own pleasure, his weight lifting off Jungkook’s back, pulling his slack body up with him by the armpits like a ragdoll.
Jungkook makes some weak noises of protest—he can’t hold himself up, can barely think—but a light slap on his chest and a position of compromise—on his elbows and knees—he manages to stay how Jimin wants him.
He hears a breathy moan from behind him and is curious enough to look back with tears in his eyes, the sight of Jimin’s elegant throat bared as he moans, pretty lips parted, thrusting into him with enough force to knock Jungkook’s breath out each time, feels like a slap in the face.
He’s drooling against his pillow, neck bent at an angle to watch Jimin ruin him, body completely slack as he’s filled again and again, until his eyes are rolling back and he can’t keep himself grounded any longer, pleasure burning through him like fire.
He feels hot fluid spill inside him and for a moment feels too dazed to realize what’s happening, but then his mouth falls open as it strikes him. “Oh.”
But it doesn’t stop coming, filling him to the point that it comes spilling down his thighs in rivulets with Jimin’s thrusts, and Jungkook’s head is hanging down low enough to see it drip on his angles, and it’s ink-black and shiny as it’s spilling out of him.
He catches a drop of it lazily, rubbing it between his fingers. It’s thinner than the mouth stuff, transparent when he stretches it between his fingers, smells like something metallic and spicy.
He almost puts his finger in his mouth when he feels Jimin pull out, even more of that stuff spilling out of his quivering hole in waves.
Jungkook suddenly feels terrifyingly empty, hollow all over again, and an anguished cry escapes him.
“Oh, little lamb.” He’s pulled close against a warm body, and sobs as a fist wraps around his leaking cock.
He hears himself say a whole bunch of things, gibberish pouring out like he can no longer string words together, but knows he wants to convey something. What is it?
The fist is pumping his cock until it’s spurting with cum, white contrast to the black that had poured inside him and is still overflowing in rivulets. He’s only aware of a kiss pressed to his cheek once more before he’s pulled under and wakes up to an empty, cold room, body aching and chest heavy with guilt.
♾️