You were happy

Pt5

It'd been two months since you were stolen; Jungkook had kept him updated underneath Taehyung's nose. You'd been sighted only twice in the span of two months-but you were always long gone by the time the police got involved.
Now here he was, passing by your apartment only to see the light on like it always was. He could imagine Taehyung was still holed up in there with photos of you taped up to every inch of your blank walls. Hana tugged on his arm, alerting him that for once he wasn't alone on his nightly walks.
She'd wanted to see what he did with his free time when he was choosing not to spend it with her. Hana looked up at the light, her lips twinge into a smile of pity. "He really won't give up on her, huh?" She brought her hands to her mouth to blow hot air into her hands in a gesture he once found cute.
"Why would he give up?" He whispered. "He loves her right?" It angered him to say the words, like Taehyung was getting all the credit even though the most Jimin had done to help you was feel sorry for himself for getting you into this mess-not like Taehyung would have let him help anyways. The man was convinced that Jimin should never see you again.
He didn't like you, so he couldn't feel jealous. But he still wanted your feelings; he wanted you to still care about him-as selfish as it was he just wanted to cradle your feelings to his chest. He didn't even know if that was all there was to it. He was always bad with deciphering his own feelings. Maybe if you were back he could figure everything out.
"Jiminie?" He snapped his mind from its runaway thoughts, turning back to her as she spoke. They'll find her, don't worry."
"I'm done waiting for me to matter to you, Park Jimin." He knew what came next, your face when he told you how he'd thought he felt. The way that he had the power to break you like no one else before had been able to. His heart shoved itself lower in his chest with pain from missing you, from hurting you, from seeing anything but a smile on your face. You were his best friend no matter what, and here he was repaying you by being the sorriest excuse for a man that he'd ever been.
"Hana, can we not talk about Y/N?" He took a step away from your apartment, letting himself be led by his feet. He knew where they would take him; he knew the horrible path of self-loathing that it would lead to. It always did.
She tilted his head into his line of view, but his feet kept moving anyways. Hana wasn't good at dissecting his feelings-not like you. She wasn't an expert in his facial expressions, so she didn't always know how to help him in the way that he needed her to.
Unlike you.
He still remembered one day you were at the arcade to attempt to beat your latest high score and he'd just looked at you. His girlfriend had broken up with him, one that he was starting to get attached to for once. You immediately left the joystick and slapped him on the back. "I changed my mind. I want ice cream!"
"Didn't you just put a five in there?" He'd laughed, momentarily forgetting the hurt his ex had inflicted.
"That's why you're buying." He doesn't know why he didn't notice before, but your grin could melt even the most frozen of hearts.
"You're still blaming yourself?" He was honestly surprised Hana was on the mark, which meant that he must have been pretty distraught if even she could tell what was bothering him.
"It's my fault."
She bumped his shoulder with her own, in what was supposed to be an act of comfort. "Kinda." He adjusted his expression into one he was positive she wouldn't be able to read and kept walking forward towards his ultimate destination. He felt her turn away-he knew her well enough to know she was upset with him for not considering her feelings as much as he should. "But her going off with whoever took her was her own fault."
As they reached the edge of the club he pulled his arm from hers. "No. That's not how it works. It can't be her fault if she was drunk."
"And how do you know she was drunk enough to not make rational decisions, Jimin?" It was becoming another firefight, but he didn't care enough anymore to stop it. There were becoming more and more of these lately, but he only half listened to Hana's side of the conversation-it mostly involved her saying that Jimin never paid enough attention to her lately because of the situation with Y/N.
"Because I've known her since we were kids, I can take one look at her and know her entire mood. I can read her like a freaking book and she was drunk off her ass. This wasn't her fault-how dare you say it was!"
Her hands clenched into fists at her side. "I thought you didn't want to talk about her, huh? Is that why we're still talking about her? Why we always talk about her?"
"She's missing, Hana." His voice dropped an octave, easily made to feel guilt by the girl he was supposed to love.
She released all her tension, letting out a sigh as she looked at her surroundings. Of course, the club where she went missing. Her eyebrows furrowed and she cupped his face in her hands, letting him lean into her touch. "I know Jimin, and it's not all your fault okay? Everyone is doing the best they can."
He didn't see Hana in front of him, instead all he saw was you comforting him and pulling him close into a hug. If he was less delusional he would have been able to tell that Hana was shorter and her hugs weren't as spine-crushing as yours had always been.
"What am I going to do if they don't find her, Hana?" Saying the other girl's name felt foreign when all he could see was the you that wasn't there.
"They will, they will find her. We just have to have some hope."
He'd never cried in front of Hana, never. But all he saw was you, and so everything crashed around that one pleading moment. He sobbed into her shoulder resting his forehead in the crook of her neck. This image of you overlapped over Hana drowned out the many different yous that replayed in his head: the screaming one, the crying one, the broken one, the drunken one that went home with some strange man. "I miss her so much." His voice was obstructed by his sobs. "I did so much stupid shit to her and I can't even say I'm sorry because she's not here."
"I told her I didn't feel that way about her, Hana."
She bit her lip in worry, but not for you-for her own relationship with Jimin. Truth be told, when you met you she was incredibly jealous. But, she had the ability to cover that with smiles and the genuine want to get to know you better. What made you so close to Jimin?
"I know, I trust you Jimin. I trust you."
He kissed her as if to prove that he was here, that he didn't care about Y/N how she cared for him. "I love you, Hana. I love you-she's just my friend. I don't love her like that. I don't. "He would have kept repeating himself for forever if she didn't interrupt.
"I love you too, Jimin-and I know." She laughed, slapping his arm. "You don't have to keep telling me."
She was always so bad at identifying what he was feeling based on his expressions.
"Are you sure you were telling me the truth, Jimin?" She whispered, trying to hold her fragile boyfriend together with the weak power of her arms. "Are you sure you were telling the truth to yourself?"
His dampened sob brought a sad smile to her face. "What are you even talking about right now?"
She rubbed her palm in circles on his back, patting him once to signal him to get off of her. When he broke from her, he saw Hana again. The ghost image of you had fled somewhere to the back of his brain, waiting for your next appearance. "Come on, let's go home."
He was still staring at the ground with her words, trying to make you come back so he could apologize-so he could do everything in his power to become someone worthy of being your best friend. Or more. The thought snaked through his head before he could crush it, and suddenly the only thing he could think about was holding you.
"Hana, what does love feel like?" He whispered as she looped her arm through his.
She felt like a nurse walking a patient with Alzheimer's back to their room as she started to lead him back to their own apartment. She hissed in a breath that he obviously didn't notice or paid no mind to. "Even I don't know the answer to that question anymore."
~.~
Taehyung sat with his back pressed against one of the living room walls, a bottle capped with his thumb draped across his lap. He stared at the wall of your pictures, trying to remember how you looked when you were a physical presence in front of him rather than a flat image. He held the phone so tight against his ear he felt the back end of his piercing press into the base of his skull. He prayed that they would have good words for him.
But god didn't exist for him, because they never were.
"We spotted her again." An officer started to tell him before Taehyung cut him off.
"What did she look like?"
He heard Jungkook pause in the kitchen, the clattering of the dishes the boy was doing ceasing for a minute to judge Tae's mental state.
"Sir, I don't think you want to-"
"Just tell me, I can take it." He gripped the phone tight, his fingers becoming whiter with the pressure.
The officer still sounded hesitant when he spoke. "She...she didn't look good, I'm sorry. There were signs of severe bruising around her neck and....
The second you found an opening to escape you ran. You ran like the ground was made of glowing coals and there was an escape from the pain at the end. You ran until your lungs heaved and your horribly malnutritioned and busted body screamed and tore with the energy it took to move you forward at the speed you wanted to go. You heard them shouting to each other in the background, yelling for someone to go get you.
After all that had happened they weren't planning on letting you escape so easily.
You heard the gunshot before pain ripped through your thigh and you collapsed to the ground. Your body rolled with the momentum, hands scraping across the ground. You refused to give up. You tried to get your feet underneath you, tried to crawl forward with your hands and nails until they ripped off and you left bloody claw marks on the road. Their footsteps walking up to you caused you to scream before they had even done anything.
They pressed a booted foot to your neck, pressing you into the ground. "We're not done yet." One of Hanseul's friends snarled, pushing harder until your hands dug into his shoe and left bloody streaks. Your face was turning red and you saw black dots swarming your vision. He laughed, pulling his foot from you only to watch your ragged gasps. You were unstable, your vision swimming with the sudden intake of oxygen. He crinkled his nose at you, eyes scanning your beaten form. "You fight back too much, you know that? Who the hell is going to want to buy you if you look like shit?"
You spat on his shoes, causing him to retaliate by pressing his foot to your bruising throat again. He snorted. "Maybe Hanseul'll be forced to keep you. Poor soul, his girls never last long." The blackness ate up your vision before you could stop it. "We'll have to start finding a new place to dump the bodies."
"Did you find her-did you get her?" There was no energy to his voice when he spoke, he couldn't force emotion past the lump of alcohol in the back of his throat.
"We had one police officer on the scene at the time; by the time backup arrived they'd already gotten away. I'm sorry." It sounded like he expected some sort of big breakdown of anger, some cause for concern.
Taehyung didn't have much left in him anymore. "Just find her, please."
"We'll call you with more updates, sir." The police officer said quickly, hanging up. Taehyung let his hand drop to the floor, the phone skidding across the hardwood.
"They got away again." Taehyung raised his voice so Jungkook could hear all the way from the kitchen.
Hanseul picked you up by your waist and set you on the countertop like you were a doll. "You're become a hassle you know that?" He grabbed a pair of tweezers to fish out the bullet from your thigh.
You just stared back at him with those eyes that he absolutely loved to see-unbroken, unfazed, and staring at him like they would kill him the first chance they got.
He chuckled at that gaze, plopping the bloodied bullet into the garbage before slapping a weak excuse for gauze to your thigh. "You don't break easy. Surprising, considering how I found you."
You snarled, but your hands were cuffed behind your back. They had to keep a tighter rein on you since your attempted escape; you couldn't go wandering off doing however you pleased. You were their merchandise, but since no one wanted busted goods you'd become a toy instead.
You spat at him, causing him to backhand you with a fresh bruise. Even when you turned back all he could see was that defiant stare. It excited him to no end.
"Then it's settled." He hooked his finger under your chin, forcing you to keep your gaze steady on him. "I'm going to take you after all." He jerked his chin to his boys behind you, watching the scene with a mixture of amusement and boredom. "Go prepare her room." With the smile that he gave, you knew this place would probably be the last you'd ever see.
Hanseul flashed you that same handsome grin he'd had at the club, noticing your sudden realization that sparked emotion across your face. "Such a defiant girl, I love a good challenge. Now how about we see how I can shatter such an unbreakable soul?"
Taehyung heard Jungkook come to take the bottle from his hands. He didn't put up any resistance, it wasn't worth it. In his state, Jungkook would be able to overtake him easily enough anyways.
Everyone was fully aware that if you came back to them, it was going to be in pieces. Whoever took you was going to make sure of that, but they also weren't going to let you go so easily. Your face was plastered all around town; you were sought after-that made you worth something. Taehyung didn't want to think about what they thought you were worth, because to him you were worth more than all the money on the face of this stupid planet.
Jungkook wrapped his arms around him, helping him to his feet so he could get to a more comfortable place on the couch. The boy knew as soon as he left Taehyung would be back on the floor with a bottle in his hand anyways, but he couldn't just sit back and watch that while he was still here.
Taehyung was afraid to blink, so he stared at your face until his eyes watered. If he closed his eyes-even for a second-he'd feel your hands on his neck, your hands choking back his screams to give him bruises that matched yours.
"Taehyung, you need to get some sleep." Jungkook said, walking to the closet to grab some fresh blankets. Your room was still untouched, your bed exactly as you'd left it. No one had the heart to disturb it yet. To them, that would be a signal that they had given up hope completely-that you'd never be coming back.
The day that they'd have to dress in black for your funeral would be the day that someone would finally lay in that bed.
"Does she get sleep?" Jungkook sighed at Taehyung's snarl, immediately calming his hyung. Jungkook was aware that most of what came out of Taehyung's mouth was influenced by the liquor. "Please, just go back to the guys, okay?"
"Are you going to drink again?" Jungkook had tried taking the bottles with him when he left, but Taehyung always managed to acquire more by the time the boy returned to check up on him.
Taehyung rested his elbows on his knees, placing his head in his hands as a low chuckle vibrated his chest. "I finally understand why she drank so much. You know? It makes things easier; I hear less of her screams when I drink. Sometimes I can even imagine that she's here."
Jugnkook knew it was hopeless to say anything more, to ask his hyung to sleep, to not drink, to eat, to do anything productive to his own health. So instead he grabbed his bag and headed to the door to slip his shoes on. "I'll send Jin over with food later, okay? Please just eat it."
He knew very well that Taehyung wouldn't.