THE BROTHERS | NCT BXB

2: Manhunt

Time had a way of slipping past that was seamless and unrecognisable. It could have been minutes, seconds, hours, that Taeyong had spent with his mind drawn blank. For a moment, he couldn't think, he couldn't breathe, and he couldn't even begin to rationalise it. He was staring down at himself and at the momentary pleasure that had his features so perfectly unwound even in sleep. He had done this to himself. He had allowed himself to be caught by the needle-like hook and reeled in, and now he could only feel pain as blood seeped from the wound.

He hadn't drank the night before. He didn't get drunk often because he knew what drinking could do to people, he knew of the monsters they could become. So he remembered it all clearly in fragmented pieces, like shards of glass tearing into his mind - Jaehyun is who it all circled back to; Jaehyun's pretty smile, and pretty words, and strong, brutal hands which gripped and bruised in a way that had made him lose his mind.

He had lost his mind. That was the only reason he had ever let them get that far, and it was the only reason that he hadn't pushed Jaehyun away, the sole and solitary reason he broke down his defences to let him in. After Minjae, Taeyong had thought he'd learned his lesson. You don't trust men who were beautiful and spoke with soft words, you weren't supposed to go near them because they burned, because they burned so much that it would always leave him in ashes and ruins.

And that was all he had left now - his own ruin in the form of a black and white polaroid picture. If there was one, there were two, and if there were two, there were hundreds.

The picture in his hand felt like fire.

The door was pushed open, and Taeyong was met with a strange woman. Or maybe he was the strange one; naked, cold, and alone in a bed that didn't belong to him - in a bed that had nothing but evidence of his mistakes to decorate it like some sort of trophy. Taeyong pulled the blankets up to his exposed chest, shame flooding over him as if he'd been caught in the act itself. The woman had a uniform on, he registered, and she was dressed as a maid. They didn't speak, he simply watched with bated breath as her eyes flicked downwards to the bedsheets and back up to him before she silently closed the door.

He had stayed staring at it for a moment before it came to him. The door had been unlocked. The door had been unlocked for the entirety of the time he'd been there. His mind had gone to Jaehyun at first, the most obvious perpetrator, but who was to say he was truly the culprit? It could've been another man, a woman too, or both, who had come in and seen him like this and taken pictures of his misdemeanours when he was asleep. And Taeyong prided himself on being a light sleeper, but he had fallen into a dreamless sleep and his body hadn't awoken at a sound. He had risen, for once, naturally.

It could have been anybody.

His entire body was shaking from the inside out, starting at his very core, as he drew the sheets away to place his feet on the solid ground. He could hear the palpitations of his heart when he glanced at the forgotten, discarded clothing from the night before. He picked them up slowly, body not yet coming to terms with his mind, and put them on. They were too big. They weren't his. They weren't his. He was in someone else's home. The way the clothes hung around the lithe frame of his body was like a slapping reminder to the face.

Now as quick as lightning, he scrambled to gather the damning evidence, crumpling the pictures in his hand. He was frantic almost - there was too much and too many, and wherever he looked, he saw himself. It was nausea-inducing. But he swallowed down the urge to throw up and collected what he could, carrying them in his trembling arms. With spindly legs, he left the room, clutching the polaroids against his chest. The hallway was empty bar the maid he'd met earlier.

"C-Can you help me get rid of these?" Taeyong asked in a croaked whisper, and he watched as she stilled, broom in hand.

She turned and met eyes with him, surveying him as he squeezed polaroids in his hands. Taeyong swallowed down thickly, praying she could read just how much he was begging with his eyes. He couldn't flush these, they both knew that, it wouldn't work - there was too much and they were far too thick. Taeyong locked eyes with her again.