Chapter 3

The rain came in sheets the night Jungkook followed Taehyung.

No warrant. No backup. Just a half-dead cigarette and the taste of that kiss still clinging to his mouth like sin.

Taehyung walked with purpose-no umbrella, hands in his coat pockets, head slightly tilted toward the sky like he was inviting the storm in. Jungkook stayed just far enough behind to be a ghost, but close enough to breathe him in. The scent was faint even through the wet air: clove smoke, bergamot, something dark beneath the sweetness.

He tailed him all the way to the warehouse district. Abandoned storage units. Rusted signage. Concrete halls where sound didn't echo-it drowned.

Taehyung didn't knock. Just slipped inside one of the units, the door yawning open like a mouth. Jungkook waited sixty seconds. Then followed.

What he found wasn't a killer's lair. Not exactly.

It was a shrine.

Photos-hundreds-lined the walls in precise symmetry. Victims, yes. But more than that: himself.

Jungkook at work. Jungkook at home. Jungkook watching Taehyung through the café window. Candid shots. Surveillance angles. Moments that should've belonged to privacy. Or dignity.

And in the center of it all: a single framed photo of a boy, maybe thirteen, smiling in the sun. The edges of the frame were wrapped in a red thread.

Jungkook's heart stopped.

He hadn't seen that face in over a decade.

"Hello, Jungkook."

He turned slowly. Taehyung leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

"It's not breaking and entering if I left the door open."

Jungkook opened his mouth, but nothing came. Just a rasp of breath.

"You remember him, don't you?"

The boy. That summer. The woods. The argument. The rock in Jungkook's hand.

His voice was barely there. "Your brother."

Taehyung smiled. Not gently.

"Used to be. Now I'm just... someone else. Someone who watched the world forget him. Someone who watched you forget."

Jungkook stumbled back a step. "You're not supposed to be here. That boy-he-"

"Died," Taehyung finished for him. "But so did I, Jungkook. I just came back meaner."

He stepped forward, and Jungkook let him. Couldn't not.

Fingers reached for his jaw, cold and firm. "You were always so good at pretending it didn't happen. Did Daddy scrub it clean for you? Did the police play blind?"

"I didn't mean to-"

"You did. You killed him."

Jungkook's breath shook. "Then why haven't you turned me in?"

Taehyung tilted his head. "You think I want justice?" He leaned in, mouth at Jungkook's ear. "I want you to remember. Every day. Every breath. I want you to look at me and feel it tear you open."

His lips brushed Jungkook's throat.

"I want you to need me," he whispered. "The way you need pain."

They ended up at Jungkook's apartment.

Not with soft confessions. Not with redemption. With hands on hips, backs against walls, teeth on collarbones.

Taehyung fucked like he was reclaiming something.

Jungkook let him.

There was no rhythm. Just heat and motion. Bruises bloomed like flowers. Fingers left crescent moons. Jungkook bled from a bite to the shoulder and came with Taehyung's name on his lips like a punishment.

After, he lay there, bare chest rising and falling, eyes unfocused.

Taehyung sat beside him on the bed, a small knife in hand.

Jungkook didn't flinch.

"Do it," he said hoarsely.

The blade kissed his chest-just beneath the collarbone. A shallow cut. Red welled up, thin and elegant.

Taehyung watched it with reverence.

"You only feel alive when it hurts, don't you?" he murmured.

Jungkook nodded.

"So do I."

They didn't speak for a while.When Taehyung finnally did,it was quiet

didn't kill the first two."

Jungkook turned his head. "What?"

"The first two victims. I didn't touch them."

"But the third-"

Taehyung's lips curled faintly. "He reminded me of you."

Jungkook sat up, heart jackhammering.

"You're lying."

"Am I?" Taehyung whispered. "Or are you just hoping I am?"

The rain outside had stopped, but the silence it left was heavier than thunder.

Taehyung kissed the cut on Jungkook's chest, slow and deliberate.

Then curled beside him in the sheets, like lovers do.

Jungkook wakes first.

The apartment is dark, save for the city glow leaking through the blinds. Taehyung sleeps beside him like a curse laid to rest-one arm draped across Jungkook's abdomen, face half-hidden in the pillow. For a moment, it almost looks innocent.

But there's blood dried on Jungkook's chest.

The ache in his muscles isn't just exhaustion. It's aftermath. Of sex. Of confessions. Of something deeper and colder that still hasn't thawed.

He slips from the bed and dresses silently. His badge feels heavier in his coat pocket than it ever has.

He steps out into the hallway and calls in a trace.

On Taehyung.

No existing records. No digital footprint prior to five years ago. No mention of a dead sibling-only a redacted file tied to his father's old firm. The entire past scrubbed.

Manufactured.

Back at his desk, Jungkook spreads the photos from the shrine across the table. Arranges them chronologically. Tries to find a pattern that isn't just obsession.

One detail catches his eye.

The last victim-the one Taehyung might have killed-had a note folded in his wallet.

A poem. Four lines. Handwritten.

He pulls it from evidence and lays it next to the cut on his chest in the mirror.

The writing matches.

He should turn Taehyung in. Should haul him in for questioning, blood still under his nails.

But he doesn't.

He goes home instead.

Taehyung is awake when he arrives.

Naked beneath the sheets, a cigarette smoldering between two fingers. Smoke curls toward the ceiling like a warning. He doesn't ask where Jungkook's been.

"You stayed," is all he says.

Jungkook shrugs off his coat. "I always do."

They don't talk about the poem. Or the blood. Or the way their story is circling the drain.

Instead, Jungkook climbs into bed beside the man who's either going to destroy him or save him by doing so.

And he lets it all burn a little longer.

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