RUSE || Taekook

EIGHTEEN || A5C4C2C3J5A5A5F4

Taehyung keeps his head low as he walks on the streets of Croatia, feeling almost insignificant. He gave Jungkook a shit excuse of having work and walked out right after cleaning his face.

Taehyung had to give Jungkook the blowjob so the younger wouldn't think more about his faulty memory and potentially take advantage of it.

Jungkook was good at lying. He easily made Taehyung believe the last two lies were incidents the trio actually experienced.

Taehyung draws in a breath and looks around at the park, smiling softly. It's where he and Yoongi would hang out to get away from the world sometimes, when he was actually alive.

It's still hard believing Yoongi's dead.

How can he have died? That too, of suicide?

He was okay, he was perfectly fine when Taehyung last saw him. Yeah, he was a little emotionally distressed, but so was Taehyung. And Yoongi was always the stronger of the two.

How can he give up so easily?

Taehyung inhales the fresh scent of daffodils and smiles to himself, recalling how Yoongi blew dandelion seeds in the air and for a few moments, the two chose to live in a fantasy.

Taehyung smiles sadly at the setting sun, the absence of someone beside him hugging all the cold away making itself painfully aware. Nights like this, Yoongi would cover them both in a blanket and they'd cuddle till they were tired.

Taehyung wants to cry, so bad. But for some reason, he just... he can't get himself to. There are no tears, there's no wobbling lip, there's no sting above his eyebrow. Just a deafening numbness, eating away at his insides.

Taehyung bites his lower lip as he thinks of the last thing he ever said to Yoongi.

"Fuck you."

As opposed to Yoongi's, "I love you. Always have and always will."

Taehyung closes his eyes and allows himself to swim in memories of Yoongi smiling his beautiful gummy smile. He always said he'd do whatever he could to keep Taehyung safe and never harm him or his reputation.

Taehyung frowns, his eyes opening as he stares at a blooming, yellow flower.

Did Yoongi kill himself to protect my secrets?

Taehyung clenches his jaw and inhales.

Of course, that sounds so much like Yoongi.

Taehyung closes his eyes again and exhales through his nose, letting his feet lead him to the hidden meadow in one corner of the park, a common hang-out place for him and the elder.

Taehyung opens his eyes as he jumps over a shrub and ducks under a tree branch into the quiet opening, one lonely bench sitting there in the middle.

And now, Taehyung might just cry.

The flowers he and Yoongi arranged around the wooden bench long since wilted and died. Even the flies take no more interest in them. The grass around, still fresh as ever, tickles Taehyung's toes from beyond his slippers.

He walks over to the bench and traces the edge of the headrest, watching the children playing through the gap in the trees and shrubs, faintly smiling to himself.

The sun has set and the night is taking over, the moon shining bright in all her glory. Taehyung wants to see the stars because they remind him of Jungkook, but instead he has to stare at a big, round reminder of everything Yoongi.

He crouches and gently places his hand on one part of the dirt, a place where Yoongi and him had buried a little capsule in case Jungkook ever found a lead on them.