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Jimin places a bottle of antiseptic on the bedside table.
"I swear this never happens," he says, straight-faced as he hands Taehyung a cotton pad.
"No?"
Jimin glances up and raises an eyebrow. His lips are plump, tinted pale pink and glossy.
"He knows," Jeongguk mutters. He's sitting on the edge of the bed in the room behind the club's dressing room. Being here brings Taehyung's mind back to the time he'd spent here with Jeongguk, the moment they'd had. Jeongguk had looked to beautiful then, so alive, the sweat on his skin and the redness of his lips. Right now, circumstances are quite different.
"Hm?" Jimin turns to Jeongguk.
"He knows I do this a lot."
Jimin clicks his tongue and digs through the small first aid kit. "Knows you're a fucking idiot?"
Jeongguk bristles, fists clenching in his lap, fingernails digging into his palm. "Knows I can take care of myself—"
"Knows a hell of a lot more than the other ones."
Jeongguk goes silent. The bass of the music seeps through the walls, the pulse of the club so distant in a way that seems somewhat despondent.
"I'm just teasing you," Jimin says with a low laugh. He pokes Jeongguk's knee and pulls gently at one of the strings of the fishnets.
"Stop, man. You'll ruin 'em." Jeongguk bats his hand away.
"Ruined 'em enough yourself." Jimin turns to Taehyung, who rests his weight on the arm of the couch, watching the exchange—more playful than virulent—between the two. "You've got this, then? 'Cause I've got my own business to take care of." With careful fingers he lifts the hem of his T-shirt to show the blotched bruises along his ribcage, ugly things that have no right to be on such a body. "Jeez, look at that. Already bruising."
"Sorry," Jeongguk mumbles. Seeing Jimin's injuries seems to only upset him more, and he's been pouty ever since leaving the alleyway. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, looks back and forth between Jimin and Taehyung, and then gestures to the hem of Jimin's shirt.
"What?" Jimin grunts.
"Just—"
With a roll of his eyes Jimin shucks his loose shirt off his body, leaving him in a flashy gartered outfit. "No," he says. Jeongguk's eyes flash with irritation and Jimin laughs loudly, throwing the shirt to the corner of the room and crossing to the vanity against the wall. Taehyung blinks back and forth between them, uneasy and confused.
The Jimin here is a different man than the one Taehyung had spoken to before—the pretty thing who'd leaned against the bar counter and batted his eyelashes, whose sharp eyes could tell a dime from a dollar in a man's pocket just from the sway of his walk. Here, Jimin is a little cruder, a little more tactless, rougher around the edges and a lot more like Jeongguk than he'd initially seemed.
But at this point Taehyung knows to expect that. Part of this makes him wonder how many of the people he's met in his life have been nothing more than personas.
