When Taehyung woke up the next day, he felt nothing but pain.

His neck and back were strained from his awkward lying position, not to mention the black eye his father gave him, a few injuries on his shoulders and stomach aswell.

Not to mention he was cold and lying on the damn floor. He felt like his limbs were unable to function and despite being unconscious for such a long time, he felt like he hadn't slept a wink, his head was hurting and throbbing.

He saw his digital clock from the corner of his eye, it was only six AM.
In an hour, his mother would enter his room and wake him up to go to school.

But after this certain incident, Taehyung didn't want to face anyone. Not a single soul. He didn't want to do anything, he didn't want to be awake.
Inside of him was an emptiness, an emptiness that made him feel excessively tired and suffocated.

But then he thought about having to face his mother or his father again and lifted himself up into a sitting position, wincing at how painful every movement was.
How could his life change from so good to so bad in less than a second?

While feeling nothing but pure misery, Taehyung dressed himself in an oversided turtleneck pullover and baggy pants, trying to cover his eyes with his now pretty long fringe.

Then he grabbed his backpack and tiptoed out of his room, sneaking through the still silent house and closing the front door as quietly as possible.

Then, he just started walking towards school, extra slowly since he knew he was going to be way too early.

His steps were heavy, unhurried and uncoordinated and his head hung down low, so low he could barely see anything but the grey, boring brick floor.

For a long while, he did nothing but feel miserable while sitting on a brick wall at the back of the school and watching the depressing, naked trees with their uncovered branches and the thin layer of snow on top. Something about this certain picture felt like it could resemble him.

Then, he realized he had now waited enough and should get going to school or he would be late.
Quite ironic, in his opinion, since he technically had been in school for the past two hours.

When he entered the classroom, he could hear whispers.
His fringe must not have been long enough to cover his black eye, hence his fellow classmates gossiping about him, quite obviously.

"What happened to Kim?"

"Is that a black eye? Did he get beaten up? That looks pretty serious, why didn't he get any treatment?"

"Did he finally man up and decide to pick some fights? Well, then again... Look at his face, man up wouldn't be the right word. Hahaha."

Taehyung felt highly uncomfortable, he definetely did not like being the center of attention. He could hear every single hushed whisper that his classmates not-so subtly murmured, it made his palms sweat and his confidence shatter.

As he glanced into the left corner of the room, he saw a raven-haired boy sitting in a chair while crouching down onto his desk, his head lying on it while being supported by his arms. Probably sleeping.

Having the sudden urge to confront him, this being the very first urge he had felt today, he made his way to Jungkook's desk and tapped his arm.
He could hear a soft hum, but not a concrete response so he tapped again, this time harder.

"Huh?" The younger lifted his head, his disheveled hair sticking out in all directions.
Taehyung didn't feel like explaining himself, so he just grabbed Jungkook's arm and dragged him out of his seat, making him gasp.

"What the hell, Taehyung?," the other asked confused, his morning voice evident.
The blonde still didn't speak a word, feeling utterly betrayed and lied to.
He knew everyone's eyes were on them but he didn't care and just dragged him out of the classroom

Taehyung could feel himself suffer since his strength was hereby being challegenged since dragging Jeon Jungkook out of a classroom definetely required more arm strength than he possessed, not to mention his injuries that kind of handicapped him.

When they had arrived in the hallway, Taehyung cornered the other boy and stared into his surprised eyes.
"How could you do such thing? Do you realize you basically ruined my whole life with your actions? And here I was thinking you actually wanted to be my friend again..."
That was the first time he spoke today.
He slapped Jungkook's chest with every sentence he spoke which resulted in him being pushed even further towards the wall.

"Woah, woah, woah. What the hell. What are you talking about?" The ravenette grabbed Taehyung's wrist to stop his slaps rather harshly and furrowed his eyebrows, now starting to get irritated.

"Don't play dumb! You even fully admitted it, what's the point of hiding it?! You were one of the only people I trusted, how could you betray my trust like this?! Do you realize what a mess you made?!," the blonde cried out and yanked his wrist out of Jungkook's hold aggressively, pushing him one last time so his back hit the wall.

The younger, who was now extremely annoyed, flipped over their positions so that it was now Taehyung's back hitting the wall.
"Calm the fuck down, Taehyung! What's your problem?! I have literally no idea what you're talking about!," he exclaimed.

Did he really not know? But he had to, right?

"Wait a second..." Jungkook's eyes caught the bruise on the blonde's eye.
"What happened to your eye?"
The older was now starting to get emotional.

"Did you seriously not expect for this to happen? You must've known how my father would react beforehand when you told him...," Taehyung spoke weakly.
"Taehyung, I asked you a question. What the hell happened to your eye?," the ravenette repeated, grabbing his shoulders so he had no chance to escape.

The blonde whimpered at the pressure put onto his shoulder, his injury starting to sting.
"O-Ow."
The younger furrowes his eyebrows.
"What?"

"J-Just let go of me, I'll explain everything to you even though there should be absolutely no need to."
Ignoring the fact that he was getting very irritated again, Jungkook let go of his shoulders and just looked him into his eyes examiningly, demanding him to start his explanation.

"Yesterday, my father came into my room, he was furious. I didn't understand why but then he showed my a video on his phone, a video of Mark kissing me.
Meaning, someone recorded us and from that angle, it looked like a consensual kiss, which it was not.

"You know how my father is and you can probably imagine how homophobic he is. He was so aggressive, I thought he was going to explode. At first, I tried making up some excuses but obviously they were lame excuses that did not convince him. Then, he showed me the text messages he got, it was someone trying to expose my sexuality and it was signed by my 'raven-haired friend with bunny teeth'.

"I don't see how you could talk yourself out of this, Jungkook.
I hope you just know you basically ruined my whole life, last night he beat me up until I got unconscious.
That shows I basically got no options now because of you and whatever kind of intentions you had, thanks a lot. I thought I could trust you."
Taehyung tried to free himself from Jungkook's grip in order to walk away, but he came to realize that the younger still held him in place.

"H-How could you think of me that way?" The younger's voice sounded vulnerable, so vulnerable, which actually surprised the blonde.
"You and me are the only people who even know you have bunny teeth, Jungkook. If you're playing a prank on me, it's not funny."

He could hear a sniffle.
"N-No, Taehyung. It wasn't me, I s-swear. I would never do t-that. I don't know h-how they knew I had bunny teeth. P-Please believe me."
As he looked into the ravenette's eyes, he saw them glittering with many unshed tears which made him panic.

"J-Jungkook, don't cry. I'm sorry, but how can I make sure it wasn't you?"
Another sniffle could be heard.
"Don't you t-trust me? You're the most important person in my life and I care about you so much, you s-seriously think I would betray you like this?"
The blonde actually started to believe him, the look of sincerity in the other's eyes made him realize that could never have done something like that. Not to mention, his faith and loyalty in the younger boy.

Now Taehyung started tearing up aswell, his emotions going overboard. "I-I do trust you. Sorry I doubted you."
Suddenly, he felt a hand brush his fringe away, making him flinch and then blush nervously.

"Can... c-can you show me where he hurt you?," Jungkook asked softly.
To that, the older looked around the corridor first and since he didn't see a single soul, he nodded hesitantly.

He then pulled down the collar of his turtleneck pullover to reveal the bruises on his shoulder, the material luckily being elastic enough to even being pulled down that much.
He could hear a gasp from Jungkook's direction and he knew why. The prominent bruises stood out very clearly and they looked extremely nasty.

Covering up his shoulder again, he now gripped the material around his abdomen and pulled it up, three even bigger bruises grazing his soft belly.
"Oh my--," he could hear the other whisper softly.

When he completely covered himself up again, he finally dared to look into the younger's eyes and he was extremely shocked as he saw tears running down his face.
He looked so devastated.
But why? He wasn't responsible for this, was he?

Just as he wanted to wipe his tears away and tell him not to cry because of such a silly thing, he could feel himself getting pulled into a tight hug.
Jungkook paid extra attention not to make contact with his shoulder and stomach since he didn't want to hurt the older boy.

Taehyung embraced the hug wholeheartedly, also wanting to cry. Despite the very saddening circumstances, he couldn't help but admit this had to be one of the most beautiful moments of his life and nothing could beat the comforting feeling of being in the younger's arms.

"You're not going back there," the ravenette suddenly mumbled into the hug.
"Huh? But--"
"No, I won't let you. You're coming with me."

Taehyung didn't know what to think. He didn't know what to think about anything. He just wanted to stay in the younger boy's arms forever and feel his warmth until his muscles wouldn't let him anymore.
So he just answered with a simple

"Okay".

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

(A/N: as always, this chapter is way too long🤩🤩

i love how it's like chapter 40 already and they still haven't kissed for real skdkkslsa, patience please ;) i just love slow burns, sometimes they are veeeery slow tho

also, jungkook's new cover is so beautiful, mans really out there having the most angelic voice on the planet, thanks for blessing my ears kook i love it so much😔💜

i love you btw💘💘)