My fingertips were still wrinkly from the hour-long bath I shared with Taehyung and Jungkook.

After a while of testing the waters and figuring out how to go about it all, we'd finally done it. We'd really risked it all...

The three of us had fooled around and experimented together, to see if something as insane as what we all longed for could actually work.

And by God did it.

I had to admit that I feared what would become of us if we all gave in to our shameful desires. Three men, two relationships, one house. To be frank, it sounded absurd. Fuck, it sounded depraved. But I knew that denying ourselves the chance to try it would only complicate things further.

Taehyung and I had fallen for the same boy, and that boy somehow ended up enamored by us both. I wasn't sure if it was luck, or fate, but I was glad that everything played out this way. I was really, really glad.

"Excited again, moj aniol?" Taehyung asked as we made out on my bed. The man wrapped his fingers around my swollen length and began to massage it at a slow pace, smiling into our kiss all the while.

"He was so handsome, wasn't he mio amore?" I sighed in delight. "So, so pretty."

"Yes, he was," the groundskeeper chuckled, his hair still carrying the scent of the lavender soap we'd washed ourselves with. "To think he was once hateful toward homosexuals..."

"He wasn't hateful," I said, shaking my head with a pout. "He was scared. The poor boy was scared."

"You've developed a soft spot for him, haven't you moj aniol?" Taehyung asked, gently squeezing my cock as I humped into his hand.

I leaned away from Taehyung, my eyes growing wide. "You don't... want me to?"

"I didn't mean--"

"Because if you want him to yourself-- if-- if I should step aside and let the two of you be, I will. I never meant-- I don't want to ruin--"

"I am obsessed with you," Taehyung murmured, grabbing my chin and giving me a deep kiss. "Obsessed."

"But the butler--"

"I am obsessed with him too," the groundskeeper said, jerking me off at a faster rate. "I can like carrots and cucumbers at the same time, no?"

I glared at my love, though I was too weak for him to actually retaliate. "I b-better not be the f-fucking carrots in that scenario."

"Ah, moj aniol, how many times must I tell you that your body is perfect, hm?" Taehyung said, grinning when I began to whimper against his shoulder. "Jungkook also likes it. He got hard the second he saw your nakedness, and I caught him staring at your cock the entire time we were bathing."

"R-really?" I asked, a faint blush spreading across my cheeks.

"Absolutely," Taehyung murmured, kissing the shell of my ear. "He adores you. It is easy to see."

"He adores you too," I whispered. "He looks a-aroused whenever you're around him. It's quite f-funny actually. To see it, instead of e-experience it."

"Is that so?" Taehyung asked, tormenting my member until I was a shivering mess. I clung to the groundskeeper, gripping at his skin
when I climaxed with a moan I wanted the entire house to hear.

"Hmm, fuck... I feel so good right now... Taehyungie," I panted, hugging my love with closed eyes.

It felt just like the old days again. Back when we first started messing around together in secret, and I sill believed that I could trust Taehyung with anything.

We were both excited again. Alive again. Instead of breaking us apart, the butler had managed to fortify our connection even more, and now it felt stronger than ever.

"I am happy too," Taehyung whispered, resting his chin atop my head. "So happy I could burst."

"Taehyungie?"

"Hm?"

"I'm going to fall asleep now."

The groundskeeper wrapped me up in his arms and laid down with me, keeping me warm and comfortable as sleep tugged at my mind for the first time in over a week.

I had finally found the time to rest my conscious. Finally found a small moment, in which the voices stopped harassing me, and the only people in my mind were my two angels. My two, handsome saviors.

_____________

The next day I sent Taehyung to the city so he could buy me a new telephone. The machine often showed up in my nightmares, but I didn't think my father would be very pleased if he couldn't ring for me when needed.

And Jungkook, dear Jungkook was passionately working on my pocket-watch, taking it seriously in a way I never actually expected.

But without them both. Without my candles in the dark, I was sailing blindly, lost and confused in a maze of my own darkening thoughts.

I'd been trying to read, because the words of other men were like a lifeline to me, but after an hour or two that lifeline was no longer strong enough. I sat tucked away in the library, exhausted again, because I'd only slept a total of four hours in the last ninety-six.

I was falling, drowning, trying to stay afloat by desperately treading water.

But then, just as I thought I wouldn't last any longer out there on my own, the watchmaker entered the library with an envelope in his hand.

"Should I leave?" Jungkook asked after handing it to me, trying to give me privacy even though I was sure the amount of privacy I'd already been given in this life had turned me sick.

I opened the telegram and felt a cold shiver run through my body.

A new learning opportunity has arrived. You're flying back to Italy tomorrow morning.

Yes. Yes, that seemed about right. The bubble had to be popped again. The play cancelled, the actors sent home.

I looked up at Jungkook with trembling pupils, and wondered for a moment what the boy would say if I told him I was a mass-murderer.

He probably wouldn't believe me, and the thought of that was unimaginably painful. He held an image of me no one else in this world had. An understanding of my being no one else could ever share. He thought I was some fragile creature, deserving of love and care. While everyone else knew I was a rabid dog, who bit the hand that fed it, and needed to be put down as an act of sympathy.

I rose to my feet and made for the bar, because I needed a drink. Or two. Or three. Or twenty. I needed to get silly drunk. Wasted. Gone from this world, just for a while.

"Master Park, you shouldn't!"

I grabbed a bottle, the first one I could find, and began to drink, drink, drink it all away. Jungkook was trying to stop me? He was trying to save me? What a child he was. What a naive idiot.

Didn't he understand that enough had tried and failed before him? My servants all backed away, because I threatened to take their jobs. Taehyung let me do as I pleased, because I threatened to leave him. They allowed me to be this way. In the end, they all accepted it. They stopped fighting. Stopped caring. They learned to watch me kill myself, and only shook their heads in disappointment as I did so.

The world was a messy watercolor painting, and I stumbled forward in search of the door. I needed fresh air, because I couldn't breathe, and getting a panic attack while being blasted was excruciating.

I made for the garden and danced under the moonlight, a slow jazz playing my mind while the world was quiet, and the cicadas chirped within rythm.

"Princesca?"

Before I knew it, the grim reaper had found me again. Emilio's hand was wrapped around my throat and my arm was painfully twisted behind my back. He dragged me towards his shed, towards death, and I went limp as I let him, taking my punishment in silence.

"What the--"

Suddenly, Emilio dropped me, and I landed on the ground. I blinked with heavy eyelids, all sound muffled, and all sight blurred.

I heard punches, grunts, yelps. A fight. Someone was fighting for me? Why? Who? Why?

I looked up to see Jungkook, the watchmaker, jump on Emilio's back and wrap his necktie around the stableboy's throat. He pulled and pulled, and Emilio's face turned red, and then blue, and and white.

"Tesoro... m-mio tesoro..."

"Beg me to stop!" The watchmaker growled, yanking even harder at his tie.

"Te-tesoro..." I mumbled, reaching out with a quivering hand. "Stop... s-stop it... this issn't you!"

Jungkook glanced at me, and though he looked mad with anger, the sight of me distracted him enough to second-guess his actions.

"You're n-not a killer," I cried, shaking my head at what I had almost turned my angel into. What I had almost allowed him to become. "You're not like me..."

___________

That night, Jeon Jungkook tried to convince me that he was not in fact perfect.

But I obviously wouldn't believe him.

He went on about his little sister and how he'd claimed that she was alive when he first came here, when that was actually a lie. She'd died, along with the rest of his family, leaving the young boy out in the cold, entirely on his own. He liked to pretend that it wasn't the case. That his sister was still in an orphanage, safe and sound. But that was just a lullaby he used to soothe himself.

The watchmaker cried about it. He cried about hiding a truth from me that wasn't any of my concern. He didn't owe me the deepest secrets of his heart. Anything he decided to tell me was a privelege, not a right, and yet he found himself so terrible for it. God, he was even more perfect than I thought, wasn't he?

The fact that he expected me to be angry with him would've made me laugh if I hadn't been so depressed.

If he only knew the kind of things I'd been keeping from him...

The watchmaker slept with me that evening. No, we didn't have sex, you salacious pervert. Jungkook merely held me, and clung to me throughout the entire night as though he knew I'd be gone in the morning.

And it dawned upon me in that moment, that I was not with Emilio.

I wasn't in a musty shed, trapped underneath the stableboy's body with my consciousness hanging by a thread.

I didn't get to kill myself, because Jungkook had interfered despite my warnings. He'd fought for me and pushed the gun out of my hand, even though I told him I'd fire it at him if he did.

Keep your enemies close, and your friends as far as possible... but I'd failed to scare one of my closest friends away. I'd failed to chase him out of my life in the way I'd done with everyone else.

The watchmaker proved to me tonight, that he would sooner kill a man than let me go.

And so as I fell asleep listening to the rapid beats of my butler's heart, I couldn't help but wonder.

What did that mean?