Exchange student - one year ᵗᵃᵉᵏᵒᵒᵏ

46

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Almost two weeks passed, during which Taehyung was haunted by nightmares every night, which woke him from his sleep, drenched in sweat and trembling. He woke up again and again with his heart pounding wildly, while Jungkook's guilty conscience broke him down inside. He couldn't bring himself to end what they had. Not because he was selfish, but because he saw Taehyung, who was usually so closed off, slowly opening up and trusting the blond.

Jungkook didn't want to take away the older man's freedom or make him feel like his own free actions were wrong. But every time he had to watch Taehyung quietly sneak out of bed after a nightmare to disappear into the cold shower, it broke the blond's heart.

Jungkook would rather suffer himself than see the dark-haired man suffer - even though they both suffered from the situation.

One Saturday afternoon, Taehyung sat hunched over his textbooks, trying to study. Jungkook, meanwhile, paced restlessly up and down the room with his cell phone firmly in his hand. His eyes sparkled with frustration and desperation as he tried to reach Jimin again.

He bombarded him with messages and calls, but everything was ignored. The blond missed his pink-haired friend terribly and was desperate to sort things out between them. At college, Jimin avoided Jungkook and hid so that they wouldn't bump into each other.

The voicemail sounded again and the blond dropped his cell phone with a frustrated snort. "Jeez Jimin, pick up, please," he muttered desperately to himself and dialed his best friend's number again. His fingers trembled slightly as he typed in the number and his throat felt dry. He longed for Jimin's voice, for the connection they once had. But all he got was the cold, mechanical voice of the voicemail.

Taehyung lifted his head from his books and watched Jungkook, who was still pacing restlessly around the room. He saw the suffering in Jungkook's eyes and felt how much he was suffering from the separation from his best friend.

With a soft sigh, the dark-haired man stood up and walked towards the blond. He took the cell phone from his hand, pressed the red button to end the call and then threw it on the couch. "That's enough," he said in a firm but gentle voice as he looked at the shorter man. "I've been watching you chase after this guy for almost two weeks."

Taehyung grabbed Jungkook's hand, which was still shaking slightly, and pulled him out of the room behind him.

Outside the front door, Taehyung put on his black sneakers and pointed at Jungkook's shoes with a nod of his head. The blond looked at him in confusion, but finally followed the request and slipped into his white sneakers, even though he didn't know what the older man was up to yet. "What do we do now?" the younger man asked, his voice sounding a little uncertain, but also hopeful.

Taehyung didn't answer him, but grabbed Jungkook's hand and pulled him behind him. In the past two weeks, the dark-haired man had become a lot more open, almost as if the two were actually in a relationship. He kissed the blond spontaneously when the desire overcame him, told him he looked cute when he was and touched him in a way that wasn't sexual but incredibly intimate.

Even holding hands in public always bothered Taehyung little, as did kissing as long as they weren't surrounded by a crowd. Even kissing or cuddling in front of Jungkook's parents, which had been so strange and unfamiliar at first, gradually became normal for him. It was almost frightening how quickly Taehyung had gotten used to it all, as if he had always been with a man and didn't have his father's words of warning buzzing around in his head every day.

None of this bothered the blond at all, on the contrary: it made him incredibly happy that the dark-haired man had shed his shyness and opened up. But the more open Taehyung became, the greater Jungkook's guilty conscience grew. He knew that he was still the reason for Taehyung's nightmares, that he remained a painful trigger point for him.