Candy | Jinkook ✓

Seokjin 10.0

So he didn't have a plan.

Well, he did. The only problem was that it was just as half baked and poorly thought out as everything else in his life.

It wasn't that he had made poor decisions. No, those had always been made for him. It was that he followed the pattern that had been set forth when he had been nothing more than a child. No one had ever taught him about what was right and what was wrong. About what was good and what was bad.

Growing up wouldn't have been bad, really, if he had been anyone else. There hadn't been much expected of him. Just go to school and attempt to be out of his foster families house for as long as possible. Easy.

For someone who wasn't six.

Each time he had been shifted around it had been with the promise that this time would somehow magically be better than the last. After a while, he desperately wanted nothing more than to tell them that they didn't have to lie. That he knew the truth and it was okay. He had accepted that things were never going to get better.

They had, if only slightly, when he had finally been kicked out of his last home and the system had collectively decided that he as just old enough. Had been through enough. Could probably take care of himself and handed him a slip of paper naming him his own legal gaurdian.

That had been six years ago, and he still didn't feel like a proper adult.

So he had no plan.

It wasn't like he had ever been taken out on a proper date before. Not unless you counted late night diners, crowded into the same side of booth and shoving pancakes into each other's faces.

But Kim Taehyung could not compare to Jeon Jungkook and those were just the facts. If he could, he probably wouldn't have wound up here, trapped in this mess of his own creation.

He had been fourteen the first time it happened. Honestly, he mostly just wanted to annoy his so called parents. Knew that they really didn't care what he did or where he was despite the face they tried to put on. He vaguely remembered that the guys name started with N and that was pretty much all he had taken away from the encounter.

That and he was likely going to go through life being thoroughly disappointed by the men he foolishly chose.

Number two hadn't been an improvement either. It had lasted a total of three weeks, directly after he'd found his way to freedom. A quick fling where he was still certain he count the number of times he'd actually been brought to completion on one hand. A sad state of affairs he blamed himself for.

Number three was a six month long roller coaster event that he did not speak of. Just placed it somewhere in the back of his mind, wrapped up in security tape and tried desperately and repeatedly to rid himself of. But nothing worked, and the memories would occasionally come back to haunt him when he was doing the most mundane things, like brushing his teeth or stocking a shelf and he would hate himself just a little bit more than he had just seconds before.

He tried to just remain single after that. It wasn't like he didn't have choices, because he did. The problem was that he never made the right ones.

Jimin would have been a good choice. On the surface. He was, despite how thirsty he constantly sounded, actually very sweet. A polite little thing who had somehow kept him from being harassed the very first time they met. It was where he had first learned that he liked it when someone could display duality, somehow become two sides of the same coin seemingly at the flip of a switch.

Jimin had taught him a lot of things. Like the fact that you did not actually need to thank someone through sexual favors, something the boys at his high school had apparently never caught wind of. That sometimes people did things out of the kindness of their hearts.

Jimin was also how he knew Taehyung - and sometimes he still wondered if he should really be thankful for that or not.

It wasn't that Taehyung wasn't a good person, because he was. The very best he had ever known in fact - right up until he had found someone better.

Taehyung made him feel like he was wanted. Always included him in everything. Called him and texted him randomly, just to see how he was doing. Bought him things and had movie nights. Of course he was going to catch feelings. There was no way he couldn't.

The downfall of Kim Taehyung was that he didn't just have a fear of committment. No, he didn't even know what the word meant. And that would have been okay, really. Seokjin had long since learned not to expect anything from anyone. But the problem was that he wasn't wise enough to place himself into the right position.

He didn't end up in the passenger seat. No, he was somewhere outside of the car entirely.

It happened the first time seemingly at random. Taehyung had been seeing someone he never even had a chance to meet and just like that it was over, a common theme that would repeat endlessly over the following months.

And it always followed the same pattern.

Taehyung would call him. Or text him. Drunk and alone and filled with sweet words that sunk into his broken soul and soothed it in ways they shouldn't have. Until he was putty in the other's far too capable hands and he was giving over pieces of himself that no one else should ever have held.

It was no one's fault but his own and he knew that. Took responsibility despite constantly being told that no one would really blame him if they knew the truth.

What was the truth? That he was an orphan, unwanted from the moment of his birth? A singular soul walking through life, destined to forever be alone? Sure the hand he had been dealt was shitty, but he didn't exactly do anything to make it any better.

Jungkook should have been absolutely nothing more than a means to an end. A way to use the assets he had naturally been given and maybe finally get somewhere. Sure, that place was exactly half a step forward from where he had been, but anything was an improvement at this point.

He should have been a person who was capable of seeing this for what it was. Accepting it. And if it had been anyone else - the middle aged suit with thinning, graying hair that he was expecting to get stuck with, he probably would have.

So what was the problem? What was it about Jungkook that had him so fucked up as Yoongi had put it?

He didn't know.

Maybe it was that Jungkook was so good. Pure and innocent, like this little ball of hopeful sunlight that hadn't been ruined by the darkness of the world.

Maybe it was that Jungkook wanted him. And sure, anyone else probably would have said that it was just because of the contract, but he got the distinct feeling that the other couldn't lie to save his life. Couldn't fake something that well. Couldn't pretend that convincingly.

Maybe it was that very first night when they had laid in bed together and he had felt those arms wrap around him and for the first time in his entire messed up life he had felt safe and warm and wanted and loved.

He could have that. He could let himself have that.

Would it last forever? It was impossible to know. No one could look into the future and know what it held. But just because he didn't have all the answers didn't mean he shouldn't try.

Three months, a year. All the contract had been doing was putting a finite amount of time on whatever they had. Adding confliction where it wasn't needed. Making them both confused, constantly wondering what the other's motives truly were.

But that night at the river, when they had been looking out at the horizon, it hadn't been the sky that Jungkook was focused on.

Jungkook had looked at him like he held the sunset within his eyes. Like he was the view and the twinkling stars above. Like he had stolen the moon and hung it again. Like he was the beginning and end of everything. The start of love and the finale of a story that had never been told.

Kim Seokjin wasn't someone how believed in love at first sight.

But maybe that was just because it had never happened to him before.

Because he did now.