Blood Ink ✔️

55: Titans

The absence of sound.

Utter still, utter quiet.

Silence.

The hum of the car engine is a screeching cacophony of noise in the black-turmoiled muteness of the interior.

Since you left the ruins of the house, no one has breathed a word.

You all rest inside the car,  stiller than mountains, weathered and eroding with misery but still standing strong.

The window of the backseat is cold beneath your fingertips, scenery and city passing in an indecipherable blur.

Jungkook is beside you, Namjoon on his other side, and Yoongi reclines pensively in the front seat next to Jin, who drives.

The middle two seats are occupied as well, but you can't look at the men occupying them.

You tried once, and almost wilted under the weight of their eyes.

It turns out that when their family and friends are threatened, the people with the most compassion and enthusiasm for life become the most terrifying.

You suppose that the space inside them that houses such massive capability for love and emotion can, in turn, house the same massive capability for vengeful desire.

You can't decide which one is worse: making eye contact with Jimin, or making eye contact with Hoseok.

Jimin's so easy to read as he sits in the middle row of SUV seats, evening light shouting your glimpses of his eyes that are tight at the corners, pinched in worry and insurmountable anger.

His pupils are dilated, the black almost swallowing the warm chocolate brown to leave a thin sliver of cold fury shining through. The full breath of his lips are set firmly, all the plushness fleeing in lieu of a tight slash tending the lower plane of his face.

His anger is a boiling one, bubbling just under the surface of his skin to where you can almost see the fiery red of it.

Hoseok's face displays a whole different kind of  temper. His eyes are deeper than anything you've ever seen, cavernous emotion yawning in their unmeasurable depths. Fierce, ravenous hunger dances there, black and deadly, and starving.

Starving for revenge.

For the first time since you've met him, catching Hoseok's eyes sends shivers of terror down your spine.

But, for all the rabid emotion frothing in his eyes, he's holding it back with insane force of will, the rest of his face mastered into blank, cool composure. On any given day, you would describe Hoseok as a bright, sweet, caring man.

Not today.

Today, he's revenge incarnate.

Today, Park Jimin and Jung Hoseok aren't men. They're much larger, much fiercer than any man could every be.

They're two Greek Titans, otherworldly, strong beyond measure, and consumed with a fury that could rupture galaxies at a single glance. A piece of them has been taken, and they're ready to watch the universe burn at their feet.

They're barely keeping it at bay.

If you don't get Taehyung back...

You don't even want to consider that possibility. The mere thought makes you shudder.

Every scrap of supplies and equipment that could be salvaged from the damaged safe house is piled into a lumbering tower of desperation in the trunk. That's two houses that've been compromised since you came on the scene, but at this moment of stand-still time, you can't bring yourself to care.