Jungkook’s hands trembled violently as he tried to calm himself, he went and wore a simple nightshirt over his nakedness and went back to the boys who were sitting together watching a children’s TV programme whilst Taehyung was seated at the small desk with his laptop open.
Neither adults spoke but the tension and hostility crackling in the air between them spoke a language both could hear and understand.
Jungkook’s headache might have gone but it had been replaced with an equally sickening sense of guilt when he sat down an hour later to read to the boys, now bathed and in bed. He watched his sons as they fell asleep after their bedtime story.
Today, something happened that he had never experienced before.
Jungkook had slept so deeply that he didn’t hear anything when Taehyung returned and took his sons.
How could that be?
How could he have been so careless of their safety?
Jungkook didn’t want to leave them, he wanted to stay here all night with them but then the bedroom door opened and immediately Jungkook stiffened, whispering, "What do you want?"
"I’ve come to say goodnight to my sons."
"They’re asleep."
Jungkook got up and walked to the door, intending to go through it and then close it but Taehyung was holding it and he was the one forced to leave and then watch as he went to kiss their sleeping faces.
Turning on his heel and heading for his room but before he stepped inside it his self-control broke and he whirled around, telling Taehyung, “You had no right to take the boys out without asking me first.”
“They are my sons. I have every right. And as for telling you-”
Telling him, not asking.
Jungkook noted his correction, consumed by the kind of anger that followed the trauma of terrible shock and fear, which was a form of relief at discovering that the unthinkable hadn’t happened after all.
“You were asleep. I-”
“You could have woken me, should have woken me. It’s my right as their father to know where they are.”
“You're right? What about their rights? What about their right to have a parent who doesn’t put his own needs first? I suppose a man who goes out at night picking up men needs to sleep during the day. And knowing you as I do, I imagine that is what you do.”
Sickened by what he was implying, Jungkook said fiercely, “Knowing me? You don’t know me at all. And the unpleasant little scenario you have just outlined has never taken place. I have never so much as gone out at night and left the twins, never mind gone out picking up men. The reason I was asleep was that I haven’t been feeling well, not that I expect you to believe me. You’d much rather make up something you can insult me with than listen to the truth.”
“I’ve had firsthand experience of the truth of what you are.”
Jungkook’s face burned. “You’re basing your judgement of me on one brief meeting when I was-”
“Too drunk to know what you were doing?”
For years he had tortured and tormented himself because of what he had done, he didn’t need Taehyung weighing in to add to that self-punishment and pain.
Taehyung’s cynical contempt was too much for Jungkook’s composure.
Jungkook shook his head in denial.
