One Of The Girls

{7}

Taehyung was different tonight, his eyes held emotions she'd never seen before and he was gently caressing her thighs while she sat on his lap in the van as it drove to his home after yet another concert. The other night had fucked with her badly, and upon realizing she woke up on Jimin's couch after a much-needed breakdown, it didn't take her long to be back in his arms.

Seeing him like that, high off his mind certainly put the pieces together and into perspective. What could she expect? Taehyung liked having fun, albeit in mostly bad ways, he did anything to feel numb. Drinking, fucking, and now she learned that he also turned to drugs to feel the slightest bit of relief from the choking grip reality had on him.

It coiled around his throat and suffocated him until his head turned light and his eyes watered with heavy collapsing lungs that had him spiraling out of control. Realizing his emotions, seeing the pain in her eyes, and witnessing her mental breakdown, he harbored guilt and regret, which was unusual for the man he was.

Someone who took everything he wanted without a second thought to those he hurt. And yet when she left, he felt the hollowness in his chest, like a seeping black hole that slowly sucked him away into misery. He loved her. He said it aloud after she left to see if it sounded right, to taste it on his tongue and clarify what those words meant.

It all made perfect sense that he only now decided to pay attention to it. All those desires to hurt her, to see those red crescent markings from his nails digging into her skin and the brutal bites littered across her stomach, made him feel sick. As he looked up in her eyes, since he held her while she straddled him, he pushed back the braids falling into her face and breathed out.

That heavy feeling weighed on his chest, the one that you get when you see someone you so deeply care about. The overwhelming warmth flooded his veins as he looked into those starry eyes of hers, but the void of pain lingered behind them. He saw it clear as day, just like last night when she caught him and many times before.

The look that screamed adoration with a string of struggling resentment and anger. He saw all the colors, all the emotions, the whole world behind her eyes. Only now after he's gone too far does he share those complex emotions. The adoration for her, the anger towards his weakness and fear, and the regret he felt forever becoming this type of man. Toxic, manipulative, a menace to society. His heart felt it all, he let himself feel for the first time in his life.

All that fear and self-doubt he harbored did him no good. He hated admitting he was wrong, but he loved her much more than he ever thought he could because his pride and ego were thrown out of the equation. He's completely self-aware, he knows what to feel, how to feel but it's wrong.

Taehyung feels like he doesn't deserve her. He knows he doesn't. He can't understand that look in her eyes towards him. His brain fails to process any reason as to why she would love him. Why? What was he that made her so...weak and willing for him? She didn't care about his money or fame, she wasn't shallow enough to value those types of things over a person's true identity.

Every logical explanation as to why she felt this way towards him was much less than logical in his case, considering what he'd done to her and his use of her for his entertainment and desires. He was a cunning, selfish bastard. But right now? He didn't feel like that.

While cradling her precious face in his hands, his eyes stay locked with hers as he remembers the million ways he's fucked her over. Never did a relationship get this deep to where Taehyung was willing to try. To give himself to only one person and become what he knew to be a better man.

Because all this time he has been capable. He knows how to treat somebody right, and he knows how to be selfless and loving but the overwhelming fear of being vulnerable and seen as weak has crippled him and his image of love. At his age, he feels like such a fool, such a moron for ever being scared because he's been through so much unimaginable shit.