Despite the faint feeling of hoarseness that persisted in his throat, Taehyung joined his friends at the beach. He didn’t go for a swim since he was afraid his condition would worsen and instead enjoyed the scenery while drawing sketches of random people.

“Tae,” Jimin uttered as he tilted towards him. “That guy has been glancing at you nonstop.”

Taehyung followed his friend’s eyes and located a young-looking man, who was reclined in the sunbed close to them. He had mellow characteristics, short black hair, and a lean figure. He was cute — he couldn’t deny that, but nothing sparked inside him at the sight of him. “He’s okay.”

Hoseok tossed his head in Taehyung’s direction as his eyes popped. “Okay? Just okay? He’s hot. Go for it.”

Taehyung laughed his suggestion off. “He seems... too nice. I’m tired of nice. I want a challenge.”

“Oh, so you’re hung up on Jay. That’s why you don’t want to make a move on that guy.”

Jimin’s face distorted with a baffled frown at Hoseok’s words. “What does this mean? Do you seriously like Jay?”

Taehyung lowered his gaze to the drawing in his hands. “I’m having weird thoughts, guys. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“What thoughts?” Jimin asked.

“Highly inappropriate thoughts. Not to say horny.”

The two exchanged a surprised look, and Hoseok was the first to register the meaning of his words. “You want to have sex with him? You still haven’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, I haven’t seen his face yet, whatever,” Taehyung snarled. “I don’t care. Looks aren’t everything in life. All I know is he has muscles and I want to lick them.”

Jimin choked on a laugh. “You’re so lewd, Tae,” he teased. “What are you going to do about it?”

“What do you mean, Chim?” Hoseok asked, brows drawn together. “Nothing. He will do nothing. We don’t know anything about him. He’s been an ass since day one. Don’t get involved with him.”

“It’s too late for that,” Taehyung breathed out as his eyes saddened. “I want him. And he’s not that bad. He took care of me in his own way. We’ve gotten a bit close, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.”

A long nasal sigh sounded from Hoseok, intense disapproval written all over his face. “I told you what I think. Do whatever you want. Just be careful.”

Taehyung nodded. He brought a blank paper in front of him and browsed the place for the next face he could draw. His eyes caught that guy he had been seeing since day one around the hostel and rested on him. He began drawing the outline of his face as his two friends bantered about something he didn’t pay attention to.

He soon finished the sketch and observed it, sighing. Why is he keep coming here?

 
They headed back to the hostel a while later. After a brief stop at the reception to chat with Yoongi, they resumed their way to their room.

“Oh?” Jimin eyed the empty room with slight surprise. “Jay isn’t here.”

Taehyung shrugged his absence off and took out the sketches he made earlier to analyze them. A faint smile pulled at the corner of his lips with a glimmer of pride.

“Let’s go shower,” Hoseok said, already holding a casual outfit in his hands and his towel.

“Wait for me,” Taehyung said in a sing-song tone. He placed his drawings on the nightstand and grabbed his towel and clean clothes before he exited the room with the other two.

. . .

Jungkook strolled back to his room after refilling his bottle of water. Confusion swept across his traits at the scattered papers he found all over the floor. What happened? He sensed a gust of air strike his form that blew the papers further away, and his eyes flew to the open French doors.

With a disgruntled sigh, he threw the bottle of water on his bed and picked up the papers. He glimpsed at the sketches of faces, items, and drawings of the sea, low key feeling amazed by his skills.

The next drawing he collected had his eyes bulging and his blood freezing in his veins. The rest of the papers slipped through his hold unconsciously, and he brought that drawing closer to his face.

He spurted towards the exit and hurried down the stairs to get to Yoongi, who was at the reception. He slapped the drawing on the counter, panting, his eyes still rounder than normal.

Although perplexed by his frantic behavior, Yoongi maintained a stern expression at his presence. “Do you have something to say?”

The little fight he caused yesterday between them was lost somewhere in the agitation that consumed him, and he was reminded of it by his hyung’s steely eyes. “Later. Look at this.”

Yoongi wordlessly glanced at the paper and his brows shot up at once. “What... the fuck?”

“That’s him, right? I’m not delusional. Right?”

Yoongi reached for the drawing and inspected it from up close. “Yes. That’s definitely him. Where the hell did you find this?”

“Taehyung drew this.”

“Why? Does he know him?”

“How would an innocent little boy, who’s never broken any rules, know a scumbag like him?”

“Wait, how do you know that? Are you guys talking?”

“That’s not important.” Jungkook took the drawing and gazed at it as a wicked, contented smile sprawled on his face. “I’ve been looking for you all over, Ji Hoo-yah. You came to me and I had no idea.”

“Yah. Stop with this crazy look. What are going to do?”

“I’ll go ask Taehyung about it.” A tinge of hesitation crept into Jungkook’s eyes as he glanced away. “Let’s talk later about... everything. Okay?”

Yoongi gave two little nods as his chest fluttered to a slow drop. “Okay.”

Jungkook aimed a tight-lipped smile at his hyung and shuffled upstairs. He found Taehyung in the room, though he didn’t expect the dour stare he pierced him with the moment he opened the door.

“Yah. Did you mess up my sketches?” Taehyung growled with an undertone that highlighted his enraged state.

Jungkook scanned the papers in his grip; a few of them seemed rumbly, so his fuming anger was justifiable, he concluded. “The wind blew them away. Now, question time. Who is this?” He presented the drawing he was holding, an eager glint dancing in his eyes.

Taehyung’s gaze crisscrossed between the sketch and his face. “Why do you ask?”

“He’s pretty. Now, who is it?”

Taehyung huffed, as if he had just heard the most ridiculous thing ever. “Just a guy I’ve been seeing since the day I came here.”

“What do you mean? Where do you see him?”

“He’s just wandering around the hostel. It’s so weird, you know. He looks like he’s waiting for someone. Or like he’s monitoring someone.” He investigated Jungkook’s cogitative look, and a shallow crease formed between his brows. “Why are you asking, though? Do you know him?”

“Can you tell me one more thing without asking anything?”

“Hmm, no,” Taehyung chirped with feigned sweetness.

Jungkook tsked. “Do you see him every day at the same time?”

Taehyung decided to give him the information he asked for, although his persistent questions about that guy baffled him more and more. “Yes. He comes around noon. I’ve also seen him a few times around eleven at night, when we come back with my friends.”

Jungkook nodded slowly, as if realization sank in. “I’m keeping this.”

“Why?”

“I told you he’s pretty.” He made a step towards his bed, but Taehyung’s voice caused him to stutter into stillness.

“Prettier than me?”

A twinkle of amusement reinvigorated Jungkook’s cool eyes as he locked them on him. “Do you want me to say no to praise you? Are you really asking for praises?”

Taehyung’s face cut wide open with a playful grin. “Yes. I love praises.” A sultry notion seeped into his fixed gaze on him as his smile reshaped into a sly smirk. “So tell me. Is he prettier than me?”

Those flirty, innocent-looking eyes of his did things to Jungkook he couldn’t control. While he knew he shouldn’t play along and instead he should cut any intimacy between them, his mouth tossed off the words his brain crafted before he could stop them. “I want to say yes, but... that would be the biggest lie I’ve ever said.”

Taehyung threw a hand over his chest as his face brightened with a spark of blissful fondness. “That feels so good,” he released on a breath. “Thank you for the praise. I’ll do anything you want to get more from you.”

Jungkook snorted, rolling his eyes. It was the only thing he could do. Scoff at his words. Because if he took them seriously, he would push him down to his knees right then and there and feed him his cock in no time. “You’re impossible.”

The beep of the door unlocking interrupted Taehyung’s answer before he could let it out.

Jungkook jolted away from him at once and shoved the drawing into his pocket. He ascended the ladder and slipped into his bed, facing the ceiling.

“Tae.” Jimin glanced between the stranger and his friend as he walked inside with Hoseok. “How about we go out for lunch?”

“I don’t know. I’m a little tired.”

“Come on,” Hoseok said, smiling. “We can’t go for drinks yet since your throat still hurts, so let’s go for lunch at least. Maybe you can meet a guy who’s your type this time.”

Jungkook’s consideration about Ji Hoo ceased abruptly as Hoseok’s mystifying words entered his brain. What guy? Where? When? Fuck. His fingers dug into his palm absently with the suffocating surge of frustration that tumbled over him.

“I don’t feel like I want to meet someone.”

Jungkook’s clenched muscles mellowed a fraction.

“You know, because I’m still a little sick.”

And with Taehyung’s additional remark, his boisterous reproach about the matter boiled over so much it smothered him. He rolled on his side to face the wall, his brows set low over his incensed eyes.

Taehyung espied his movement and inspected it, though he didn’t comment on it. “But you’re right, hyung. Let’s go for lunch. I can sleep later.”

“Yay,” Jimin cheered. “We can go to the restaurant down the street, so you won’t have to walk a lot.”

“Okay.”

With Taehyung’s smiling response, the three friends only needed to wear their shoes since they were already dressed in casual clothes after their shower, and they were ready to go.

Taehyung cast a glance at Jay as he trailed behind his friends, who trudged towards the exit. “Bye, Jay.” He slowed to a stop at the absence of any kind of response to his goodbye. He stood there, holding the door open, as his eyes remained focused on his back. What happened now again? A gruff outflow of breath leaked out of his throat as he dropped his head and left the room with sunken features.

🥀

Jungkook sauntered along the hallway with his hands buried in his pockets and his eyes monitoring his heavy steps.

Although he wouldn’t admit it even to himself, he was still salty about the thought of Taehyung meeting another guy, talking to him, touching him, taking his cock in his holes instead of his. It was so fucking unfair, he thought. He could be having at that moment that svelte, sexy body of his underneath him, devouring it, giving it ultimate pleasure, but he was instead heading to the storage room while Taehyung was at a small event at the beach with his friends.

Jungkook stepped into the room and shed his mask, then reached for a can of beer before he sank into his seat.

“Yah.” Seokjin pitched forward, owlish eyes staring at him. “Did you really find Ji Hoo?”

“Yes. He’s been under our nose for a week now, if not longer. Taehyung said he looked like he was waiting for someone or monitoring someone. And I’m confused as fuck.” He raised his gaze to his friends, showing them the said confusion that was inscribed in his traits. “He’s supposed to be hiding. And especially from me. Why is he wandering around the hostel I’m staying at? And how does he know I’m here? Because he has to know. It can’t be a coincidence.”

Namjoon meditated on the situation for possible reasons. “There’s definitely something we don’t know. We have to talk to him.”

“Exactly. We have to catch him.”

“We?” Yoongi scoffed at Jungkook’s statement. “Not you. You’re not going outside.”

“Then bring him here, I don’t care,” Jungkook flung back with a thread of exasperation. The pending apology he owed to his hyung dispersed any dreg of his hostility and gloomed his eyes. “I have to talk to him, hyung.”

“Oh, so now I’m your hyung again.”

“Yoon,” Seokjin uttered, faint disapproval cloaking his tone.

“No, it’s fine,” Jungkook said. “He’s right to be mad. I crossed the line. I shouldn’t have talked to you like this, Yoongi hyung. I’m sorry.”

Yoongi’s harsh features didn’t soften and his arms stayed folded over his chest. “I’m waiting for an explanation. Because no matter how mad and frustrated you were about this situation, you never talked to us like that. I want to know what’s wrong. So talk. Now.”

Jungkook’s gaze plummeted on the table. He knew he was cornered and had to confess his unholy, suffocating thoughts to his hyungs because they wouldn’t stop asking about his behavior. He took a swig of his beer and vacated his lungs with a long sigh. “Can I be completely honest?” He paused, gazing at their attentive eyes on him. “I want to fuck Taehyung. Like, really. Like, so much I get hard just by thinking about him. And it’s driving me crazy.”

The air in the room grew taut with a deafening silence. His confession was surely something they didn’t expect, but the desperation they detected in his eyes was what left them throughout speechless.

Seokjin swept the other two with a swift view and easily concluded they wouldn’t talk anytime soon. “Kook,” he breathed out, a fog of sorrow wandering in his gaze. “You know you can’t show your face to anyone.”

“I know. And that’s why it’s driving me crazy. But I really, really want to fuck him, guys.” His face wrung with a moue of whiny frustration, and he bent forward to rest his forehead on the table.

Yoongi’s cheeks bloated with the chortle he suppressed. He palmed his mouth in his exertion to stifle the waves of snickers that bubbled in his throat, hoping no one would notice him.

But Namjoon did, and he punched his shoulder in sheer disapproval. “Yah. How can you be laughing? This is serious!”

And the outbreak of laughter Yoongi strove to conceal exploded out of him at once.

Jungkook huffed at his hyung’s reaction and straightened his stance to peer at him, shaking his head.

“It’s ridiculous, Joon, not serious,” Yoongi said through his now diminished chuckles. “Kook, you’re not fifteen. You’re a grown ass man. Just control your hormones.”

“I’m trying, okay? The point is, it’s the first time I can’t get what I want, and I took it out on you. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. I get it,” Yoongi said. “Jokes aside, be careful. If you show him your face, he’ll be in danger. We may even have to kill him, Kook. And Jimin loves him too much. I don’t want to do that to him.”

“But what if he doesn’t talk?” Jungkook voiced out in a tentative tone that hid a hopeful whisper behind it. “He doesn’t know anything, so he won’t suspect anything. Maybe I can fuck him just once?”

“No,” Yoongi stated.

“Maybe I can fuck him without showing him my face?”

“That’s just not right,” Seokjin said. “He has to know what you look like. He can’t have sex with a guy who wears a mask.”

“Then maybe I—”

“Kook.”

Jungkook took in Seokjin’s condemnatory look through droopy eyes, and he could only sigh. “Fine.”

“Let’s get back to the main issue,” Namjoon said, bracing his forearms on the table. “What are we going to do about Ji Hoo?”

“Do we know what time he comes here?” Yoongi aimed the question at the still sulky Jungkook.

“Um, Taehyung said he has seen him around noon and sometimes around eleven at night.”

“Okay. I’ll keep an eye outside tonight,” Yoongi offered. “If I see him, I’ll take him to the garage and call you.”

As the two of them nodded, Jungkook’s mind floated in clouds of bitter exasperation about the simple fact that there was no way he could have Taehyung underneath him and fuck him deep and good.

🥀

The three cheerful friends traipsed back to the hostel after the dance event that took place at the beach.

As they approached the building, Taehyung perceived the dark figure of that familiar stranger he had been seeing. He just stood at the side of the hostel, partly hiding and glancing at the entrance.

Jimin and Hoseok shot perplexed looks at Taehyung as he walked past the entrance.

Taehyung drew nearer to the stranger on impulse. He plastered an affable smile on his face and halted in front of him. “Hi. Is everything okay? I saw you here earlier as well.”

The unnamed man twisted around and took off without a word. His jerky steps slowed seconds later until he stilled. He crept closer to Taehyung again, keeping his eyes on the ground. “Um, actually... can I ask something?”

Taehyung nodded hesitantly.

He slipped his phone out of his pocket and tapped a few things before he turned the screen to him. “Have you seen this man?”

Taehyung analyzed the full-body picture of an extremely gorgeous man who was dressed in a black suit. “No.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t stay here?”

Taehyung gave another scrutiny to the man’s face in the picture. “Yes.” He recognized the glimmer of disappointment that sparked in the stranger’s eyes, but he didn’t dare to question him about it.

“Okay. Thanks.”

Taehyung’s gaze lingered on the unnamed man as he shuffled off, and he trod back to his friends.

“Who was that?” Jimin asked.

“A guy I’ve been seeing around here often.”

Yoongi burst out of the hostel, causing the three friends to flinch.

He had been keeping an eye outside in case Ji Hoo would appear, but the moment he spotted the three, he hid inside so they wouldn’t suspect anything. At the sound of Taehyung’s words, though, he couldn’t stay hidden any longer, afraid he would lose his only chance to catch Ji Hoo.

Yoongi’s eyes roamed around in search of his target. “Where did that guy go?”

“He left,” Taehyung muttered with obvious bewilderment at his anxious behavior. “Why?” Another realization that brought him even more confusion thundered down on him a second later. “How do you know about him? I only talked to Jay about it.”

“I’ve seen him around here as well,” he lied casually. “I didn’t manage to question him before, and I want to do it now. Where did he go?”

“He went towards there.” Taehyung pointed to his right, and Yoongi hurried away. “I’m so confused.”

“Me too,” Jimin sighed. “What did that guy say?”

“At first he took off. Then he turned around and showed me someone’s picture, asking if I knew him. I said no, and he left.”

“Weird,” Hoseok said with a suspicious grimace. “Let’s just stay away from him.”

The two nodded, and they continued their way to their room after greeting Seokjin, who was at the reception.

Seokjin stared at his phone with frantic eyes, waiting for Yoongi’s call. But instead, a few minutes later, Yoongi stepped into the hostel with intense defeat adorning his features.

“I didn’t find him.”

Seokjin released a heavy sigh. “It’s okay. Namjoon will keep an eye outside tomorrow at noon.”

“Okay.” Yoongi presented a slight smile and retreated to his room.

 
Taehyung and his two friends entered the room, and he instantly looked towards Jay’s bed. He found him lying there, facing the wall as usual. “Hi, Jay.” The silence he received in response again tugged at his lips, dragging them down in a pout. “Why aren’t you talking to me again?”

“Just fuck off. Don’t talk to me.”

“Yah!” Hoseok snarled. “Don’t talk to him like that, asshole.”

“Hyung,” Taehyung whispered as he held on to his forearm. “Just let him. It’s my fault for being nice. I won’t waste my time with him anymore.”

His words bothered Jungkook more than he thought, even though he obviously deserved them. They sat heavy on his chest, along with his forbidden yearning for him, crushing it more and more until he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Despite the stranglehold around his form, he didn’t say a word to him, not even after his friends fell asleep. He heard him roll from side to side often, which could only mean he had trouble sleeping again.

“Jay.”

His eyes split open at the whispering call of his name a while later.

“I wish you would stop being a jackass for no reason. I don’t know why, but it makes me sad. And I hate it.”

Jungkook’s chest bloated with a deep inhalation, and he emptied his lungs with a silent, controlled sigh. I hate it more.

───⭒───༺🎭༻───⭒───

I'm so excited about the next chapters🤭

This book will have 34 chapters (35 with the introduction). As I said, you'll get daily updates from now on. Don't forget to add this book to your reading list so you won't miss any updates💜 Let's experience their story together!