Homelander did not use evidence to form a conclusion; he used a conclusion to organize evidence.
Starlight’s explanations, delayed processing, harmless misalignments of attention never reached him as anything other than rearrangements into what he had already decided was true.
And once Homelander decided what she was or what she had done, nothing she said could change it.
The balcony door unlocks with a soft click, and Homelander steps inside like the penthouse has been waiting for him all along. The cape settles behind him in a slow sweep, the fabric still carrying the faint burn of flight. The city sprawls beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, cold and glittering, but he doesn’t look at it.
His attention is already fixed on Starlight.
She’s still on the couch where he left her earlier, limbs heavy and slow from the cocktail he’d pressed into her hand before his mission. “A little more, darling. Need you compliant,” he’d said with that soft, understanding smile. “None of that pretend roleplay bullshit tonight, princess. I want the real thing—your mind thick, your body compliant.” She’d taken it because saying no had started to feel like negotiating with a force of nature. Now her thoughts move like slush, and the familiar dissociation armor is already sliding into place across her skin, the same full-body mask she wears whenever he pushes too far.
He had heard it while he was halfway across the city, a single discordant note slipping through the ceaseless roar of wind and distant sirens, faint enough that any ordinary man would have dismissed it as nothing more than the product of his own paranoia.
It was not a confession. It was barely even a fragment: the soft notification chime on the encrypted tablet, followed by the quiet misalignment of a timestamp on one of the intimate photos she had sent him — minutes adrift from the moment she had sworn, in that soft, fogged voice, that she had been completely alone.
It could have been the most innocent of mistakes. A drunken mis-send born in the haze of alcohol and the cocktail he himself had encouraged her to drink earlier that evening, the same cocktail that had already begun to thicken her thoughts and blur the edges of her memory. Something she might not even fully recall in the morning, lost somewhere in the slow, syrupy drift of her medicated mind.
Most people would have allowed the ambiguity to linger, to breathe, to remain unresolved in the space between suspicion and certainty.
Homelander did not allow such spaces to exist.
By the time his boots touched the balcony, the story had already been written in its entirety inside his mind, every small discrepancy stretched and reshaped until it fit perfectly into the only narrative he was willing to accept. The evidence had not led him to a conclusion. The conclusion had simply been waiting, patient and absolute, for the smallest scrap of evidence needed to hurt in a way that justified what came next.
Unhurried boots silent on the marble despite their weight and a fixed gaze that almost passes for warmth if you don’t hold it for too long. “I missed you,” he says, voice low and honeyed, like the words could smooth over every fracture he’s about to create.
Then he’s in front of her, gloved fingers tilting her chin with a practiced gentleness that feels less like affection the longer it lingers. “You look good like this, Annie. Heavy. Foggy. Exactly how I like you.”
Annie’s head felt too heavy, the world tilting in slow increments. When she tried to lift her gaze to meet his, the motion lagged, her neck loose and reluctant. She managed a neutral reply, something simple and safe, the words dragging sluggishly from her tongue.
He tilts his head, studying her with that performative attentiveness that never actually listens. His super-senses catalog everything: the slight hitch in her pulse, the way her breathing catches, the micro-twitch of dissociation behind her eyes. It looks like care. It isn’t.
“You don’t have to do that,” he murmurs, still gentle, still composed.
“Do… what?”
“Act like it didn’t happen.” The tone stays soft, almost sympathetic, as if he’s offering her an easier path. “I could hear it, Annie. You think I wouldn’t know?”
There is no real question in his voice. Only conclusion.
She reaches for something linear, something that can be followed step by step, because that is how she understands the world when it is not being bent out of shape in front of her.
“It didn’t happen the way you think it did,” she says, and even to her own ears the sentence sounds insufficient because it is too large and she’s trying to compress a chain of small, ordinary decisions into something defensible all at once. She thinks about how to explain the timeline, the context, the delayed processing. But she’s already done this before — was it yesterday? The day before? She's explained it so many times. And he seemed to understand.
She forces herself to slow down, to break it apart, because maybe if she can explain it just so, he’ll understand. But her mind is slow and her head is heavy and she's repeating herself into friction. “There were multiple conversations open. I send things quickly, sometimes without checking which thread I’m in. You know that. I was drunk… drugged… but I only meant to send them to you. I deleted it but not before he could reply. It was meant for you and I did send it to you… but you still won’t believe me.”
Her hands move slightly as she speaks like she’s holding onto the tension of the instability.
He does not interrupt. That is almost worse.
“And the messages you’re pointing to,” she continues, pushing through the drag in her thoughts, “the tone wasn’t what you think. He talked constantly, most of it is noise, reactions, fragments. I muted him half the time. I froze. When something crossed into that territory, I either didn’t read it fully or I ignored it because I thought it would pass.” She pauses, searching for the exact phrasing that will not be reinterpreted on contact. “Ignoring isn’t the same as agreeing. It’s… delay. I don’t process like you do. You already know this…” And she's not sure if her words or slurring, if he's listening, or if he even cares.
There is a small shift in his expression at that, something almost like amusement, as if she has just confirmed a detail rather than clarified it.
“And when I did understand,” she adds, more firmly now, “When you helped me understand… I cut it off. Immediately. Blocked, reported, everything. That part matters. The timeline matters. You’re collapsing it into one continuous thing when it wasn’t experienced that way.”
He tilts his head slightly, studying her with that precise, unsettling focus, as if each sentence is being stripped down to its most incriminating interpretation before it even fully lands.
“You keep saying ‘I didn’t process,’” he says quietly, almost kindly, as if helping her refine her own argument. “But things still happened. You betrayed me, Annie. And you did it again today. You think I didn't hear that? Should we look at the cameras together to see my little whore being a slut today?”
She exhales, a small, controlled release, because this is the point where the frameworks diverge completely. “No,” she says, “things can happen before I… process… assign meaning to them. Exposure and recognition… there’s a lag. And during that lag, I respond in default ways. Neutral. Polite. Sometimes I freeze. Sometimes I redirect. That doesn’t mean I’m endorsing what’s happening… it means I'm still processing… especially when it’s traumatic.”
He watches her like she's just described a flaw in machinery.
“Stop. Stop with that. He didn’t sexually assault you. You’re not a victim. You liked it. You initiated and escalated. You did all of it and you won’t take responsibility and it’s pissing me off.”
He moves toward her and she backs away.
“No. Don’t do that. Don’t pretend like you’re scared of me. As if I’m the bad guy.”
She doesn’t know how to turn it off, the over-explaining, the need to help him understand… if she just words things right.
That’s the dangerous part. Not the anger, not the grip on her chin, not even the certainty in his voice, but the illusion of processing — the brief, suspended quiet where it seems like something might shift if she just finds the right configuration of words.
It doesn’t.
Because her thoughts are not lining up cleanly anymore. The edges blur before she can hold onto them long enough to assemble anything precise. She can feel it happening, that slow, viscous drag in her head where language becomes heavier than it should be, where cause and sequence slip just out of reach as she tries to stabilize them.
“I’m not—” she starts, then stops, because the sentence fractures halfway through. She recalibrates, tries again, smaller this time, more contained. “You’re… combining things. This isn’t… right.” She can’t place why with her mind full of fog and smoke and thick air. She only knows what she did and didn’t do and that Homelander doesn’t believe her, won’t believe her, and she’ll pay for this.
He reaches his hand out and she flinches. His thumb presses more firmly against her jaw, not enough to hurt, just enough to hold her attention exactly where he wants it.
“That’s what you keep doing,” he says softly, almost gently. “Breaking it into pieces so it doesn’t look like what it is.”
The room tilts slightly, or maybe it’s just her mind slipping again, the medication pulling her further from the center of herself. She tries to anchor on something concrete, the cold seam of the couch beneath her palm, the steady rhythm of her own breathing, anything that doesn’t depend on interpretation.
“I’m not… breaking it,” she says, slower now, words spaced out so they don’t collapse into each other. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Her slow mind is jumping over hurdles in her haze and she knows nothing will change his mind. “I did everything you asked, showed you everything… He— I didn't ask for that. I didn't consent."
There is a pause, and for a fraction of a second, something in his expression flickers, not doubt, not quite, but irritation at the structure of her answer, the way it refuses to conform cleanly.
Then it smooths over.
He exhales, long and controlled, like he’s the one exercising restraint.
“You hear how that sounds?” he murmurs, almost kindly. “Like you’re trying to outthink it. Like if you make it complicated enough, it stops being simple.”
Simple.
It didn’t feel simple while it was happening. Her thoughts try to reorganize around it and fail.
“I’m not trying to make it complicated,” she says, and there’s a pause before the sentence completes, like her brain has to catch up to her own voice. “I’m trying to make it accurate.”
His smile shifts, just slightly.
“That’s the same thing, Annie.”
And there it is again. His quiet inversion where precision becomes distortion, where clarity is reframed as manipulation.
Her hands move, not deliberately, just a small, instinctive motion, fingers pressing lightly into her own arms as if to confirm she’s still there. The dissociation is thicker now, more pervasive, a soft diffusion at the edges of everything.
She can still track what’s happening. She just can’t keep hold of it long enough to change its direction.
“I didn’t—” she starts again, and this time the words come slower, heavier, each one placed with effort. “I don't know what you want me to say.”
That should be a neutral statement. It isn’t.
His expression softens immediately, almost relieved, like she’s finally said something that fits.
“Exactly,” he says.
The agreement feels wrong before she can even process why.
“Exactly,” he repeats, quieter now. “You don't know what to say because you know what you did.”
The logic folds in on itself, clean and self-sealing. Her perspective becomes a limitation rather than data. Her lack of recognition becomes further proof of what she failed to recognize.
She goes still.
Not deliberately, not as a strategy. Annie tries not to move but sometimes she has to check if she’s still there. It’s easier to remain where she is, to conserve what little clarity she has left instead of spending it on a response that will be absorbed and restructured anyway.
He watches that stillness, and something in him settles.
There’s no satisfaction in it, not exactly. More like confirmation. Alignment between what he decided and what he’s now observing.
“That’s better,” he says softly, as if she’s finally stopped resisting something inevitable. His hand drops from her chin, the pressure gone as quickly as it arrived. “You don’t have to fight me on this.”
Fight.
The word echoes faintly, detached from any real sense of conflict. It doesn’t feel like fighting. It hasn’t, at any point. It feels like trying to map something in real time while the terrain keeps shifting underneath her.
But even that thought slips before she can hold onto it.
He steps back, giving her space in a way that reads as generosity, as if he’s de-escalating something she created. The distance between them doesn’t relieve anything. It just makes the room feel larger in a way that emphasizes how little control she has over it.
“I just needed you to be honest,” he continues, voice quiet, almost tired now. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
Honest.
Another word that no longer has a stable definition in the room.
She doesn’t respond.
Anything she says will be used.
Anything she doesn’t say will be filled in.
He needed to know. So he decided he knew.
She stays where she is, on the floor now without fully remembering how she got there, arms drawn in slightly, not defensive so much as containing, like she’s holding the remaining pieces of herself in place.
Across the room, he watches her for a moment longer.
Then he exhales, a faint, almost dismissive sound, and looks away first.
Where she is quiet because there is nowhere left for her words to go, he is quiet because the conversation, in his mind, is finished.
And for the first time since he walked in, he looks bored.
“The way you’re framing this,” he says softly, as if that settles everything, as if perception alone is proof. “The hesitation. It was against your will? He apologized? You know what you did to me. You ruined me.”
Each clarification is always absorbed, then rotated, then fitted back into the same outline he walked in with.
“I’m telling you what happened from my side" she says, quieter now.
His gaze softens in a way that reads as empathy from a distance.
“That’s what I mean,” he replies.
And there it is, the closed loop completing itself without friction. Her explanation does not collide with his conclusion; it feeds it, becomes further evidence that she is shaping reality rather than reporting it. The more detail she provides, the more material there is to reinterpret. The less detail, the more he infers to his narrative.
She can feel, with a kind of detached clarity, that there is no version of this conversation where the structure changes. Explanation was never the variable being tested. The outcome was determined before she opened her mouth, and everything since has been measured against that fixed point.
Nothing she says alters the shape he arrived with.
He exhales slowly, almost tenderly, as though he’s the one carrying something difficult. “You don’t have to pretend with me. That’s what this is, right? You thinking if you explain it just right, it’ll change what it was. You’re trying to manipulate me and you know it.”
The room feels larger with every word. Explanation itself has become proof of guilt.
When she pushes back, his smile thins. “Right,” he says, soft and final. “We could have had it all and you destroyed it for… him.” The taste feels disgusting in his mouth. "Not a misunderstanding… lied to me multiple times… continued participating in something that disrespects me and then framed it as "non consensual, overwhelming" and yet, continued it? Listen to yourself. You are who you hang with, Starlight. Fucking degenerates. It makes me sick."
In a second, his gloved hand tightens on her chin, not enough to bruise but enough to remind her how easily he could. The wounded tone fractures into something uglier. He grabs her thighs with both hands and spreads them forcefully, super-strength making the motion casual and impossible to resist. His grip is angry, impatient, the way it gets when the mask slips. “You pretending to not understand, to deny still, the fucking audacity to lie to me like this… to play the victim.”
Annie is frozen, nonverbal, and it only enrages him more. He doesn’t wait for sober consent. He never does because consent is implied.
He pushes her down with that terrifying gentleness, fist tightening in her golden hair as he guides her to her knees. The marble is cold against her skin, but his body heat radiates through the suit. He feeds himself into her mouth slowly, deliberately, savoring the way the medication makes her loose and slow. “That’s it,” he murmurs, voice dropping back into that fake-intimate register, the one that pretends at depth while his eyes stay cold and calculating. “Look at you, Starlight. So good for me. So warm and stimulating. This is what I need from you—every day, just like you promised. Only I get this. Only I get to see you loose and obedient and mine.”
His super-senses drink in everything: every choked sound, every reluctant twitch of her tongue, the exact rhythm of her breathing as dissociation creeps deeper. He rocks his hips with controlled thrusts, narrating the whole time like it’s romance instead of possession. “Deeper… that’s my good girl. You feel so much better when you stop thinking. When you’re heavy and compliant and can’t slip away from me.” The cape brushes her cheek with every movement, a constant reminder of the power imbalance. Vought cameras in the ceiling record it all, but he doesn’t need them now—he’s memorizing it himself, super-hearing tuned to the smallest hitch in her throat. He’ll view them later.
“You broke me so many times I just can’t anymore. I wanted us to have a healthy thing. I thought we could be so happy. So happy… I wanted to give you the world.”
He builds it slowly, deliberately, drawing it out because he can. One hand stays fisted in her hair, the other strokes her cheek with mock tenderness while he fucks her mouth deeper, chasing the validation he craves. “You were supposed to be my real thing,” he breathes, voice cracking between lust and accusation. “The one person who wouldn’t make me doubt.”
When he finally finishes—thick and hot down her throat—he holds her there a moment longer than necessary, savoring the way she stays compliant and heavy beneath him. Only then does he pull back, breathing hard, and adjust his suit like the last fifteen minutes were nothing grotesque at all. Quiet tears gather in Annie’s face but she doesn’t say anything, she can’t. She’s still processing. Hot, wet tears on her frozen face and she wishes she could process faster, could collect the pieces enough to understand and leave. But she can’t leave him – she never could.
He steps away, wiping his mouth with the back of his glove as if the entire act had been mutual. It was to him anyway and he shapes their reality.
The tablet is already in his hand, timestamps and audio fragments glowing on screen. Nothing conclusive or definitive. Just enough for the story he arrived with.
His voice shifts again—soft, heartbroken, wounded. “You sent those to someone else. Minutes apart. While I was gone risking everything for us. I offered you a home, the sea, warmth your own family never gave you… and this is how you repay me?”
The spiral pours out, raw and familiar. “You were my dream. The one real, dynamic thing in this fake fucking world. I tried so hard to understand you. Was that you trying? Was that you trying when you hesitated? When you made me doubt? When you fucking betrayed me? I wanted to give you everything, and somehow it’s always ‘we’ or ‘us’ when you apologize for things that aren’t even your fault. But never me apologizing, right? The way you twist things.”
He ignores the way he’d just used strength and foreign commands to push past every boundary. Ignores that he wanted her impaired because sober-her kept saying no. No real empathy. Just his own victimhood painted in warm, pseudo-intellectual tones.
She tries one more time to explain, voice still thick from the medication and the act.
He cuts her off with a soft, pitying laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“But I needed to know the truth,” he says, tapping the tablet once, decisive. The red glow flickers behind his irises for a heartbeat. “I know it and you know it. Don’t fucking deny it. Maybe I could have forgiven you if you had just admitted it but you manipulated and lied… so many times.”
The rage drains away for half a second — then surges back hotter.
Homelander stands abruptly, cape flaring. In one violent motion he grabs the front of her supe costume with both hands and rips it straight down the center. The reinforced fabric tears like paper under his super-strength, exposing her completely. He yanks the shredded remains off her shoulders and throws them across the room like waste.
“You don’t deserve to wear that,” he snarls, voice low and venomous. “Starlight? What a fucking joke. You’re not a hero. You’re just a stupid, worthless slut who spreads her legs for anyone who gives you attention. Hanging around degenerates, letting them talk to you, sending them pieces of yourself that belong to me.” He grabs her by the hair again, forcing her head back so she has to look up at him from the floor. His boot comes down on her shoulder, pinning her there—not crushing, but pressing hard enough that the pressure radiates through her medicated, heavy body. “Look at you. On the floor where you belong. Pathetic. Weak. I gave you everything and you still chose to betray me. I should laser that pretty face right off for what you did.”
For a moment the red glow in his eyes brightens dangerously, the heat building just enough for her to feel it prickling across her skin until she smells burning flesh. Her burning flesh. Then he laughs—short, cruel, dismissive—and steps back.
Starlight stays curled on the cold marble where she is, arms wrapped tight around her bare chest, the torn costume lying in a ruined heap several feet away. The dissociation is total now; her eyes are open but unfocused, body rocking almost imperceptibly in the heavy fog of medication and pain. Every slow thought is delayed, struggling to connect. She hugs herself tighter, trying to disappear inside the armor that no longer works.
The rage drains away as quickly as it arrived. He sinks onto the couch across from her, staring like she had shattered him. The cape pools around him like spilled blood. “Sometimes love isn’t enough,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “I just wish we could do well for once… why do you always do this to me? You’re a bad person, Annie.”
Homelander watches her for a long moment, then scoffs—a short, disgusted sound that cuts through the silence. He leans back on the couch, legs spread casually, cape draped over the armrest, the picture of relaxed satisfaction while she lies broken and exposed on the floor in front of him.
The contrast is absolute.
He is already moving on.
She is still trying to remember how to exist inside her own skin.
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Now I need to know who in BTS (or kpop) could run a mafia? 😂😅
yeontan. literally only him. the other members just don’t qualify. to summarize:
namjoon - not vigilant enough, breaks all his weapons, will then have a meltdown and guilt-fueled redemption arc from realizing how it’s not a feminist job
jimin - mafia and ballet don’t go together friends, skilled criminal but too pretty for this, mad how he won’t get his praise kink catered to, creates chaos everywhere and dies in a jealousy drama on day 2
yoongi - might be a scammer and liar who can handle weapons but still has a conscience, would feel terrible, gets exhausted and retires to a foreign lamb skewer shop (only member who survives long-term)
hoseok - huge sadistic mf and in charge sure so there’s potential, but too much of a sunshine and clueless about everything, would fall victim to a cocaine dealer fraud in the first week
tae - never heard of a cuddly mafiosi who invented the phrase i purple you, only thing he would ace is the fashion and facial expressions i guess, shot in the back for judging the godfather
jungkook - definitely cheeky and has the athleticism but also too sensitive to inflict that level of brutality, constant panic, could never order someone to cut off a horse’s head in a million years
seokjin - very talented, but would only do it to install an oppressive regime to control the kimchi market, but since he can’t follow rules he will be stabbed in a heartbeat or get fucked up by police
verdict: bts = useless for structural violence, too meme for mafia.
You've been visited by the soft hugs fairy! Think of 5 things you like about yourself and hold onto these for the day! Pass it on if you feel up to it~ 😌💙🌿✨💚
Awwwww thank you for the soft hugs uwu this is so wholesome
I think I have stated what I like/love about my personal traits in my 51 Questions Ask Game so I would sightly alter this to what I like about myself for today
1. I actually got up early today despite completely restless last night
2. I was able to hold myself together during clinical ethics class where triggering topics like mental health and bipolar disorder was discussed and didn't have any panic attacks or explode right away (but lots of thanks to my groupmates who were especially empathetic toward me and was careful the whole time)
3. I didn't break down into a mess when I checked in with my opthalmologist and he implied the prognosis of my eyesight is quite poor, which could take a toll on my future career as well as my academic performance
4. I still have the mental capacity to endure the quiz of today and maybe would get a not-bad score
5. I did eat some vegetables today instead of indulging in some too much comfort food that is not so good for my physical health
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Serial Killer Jungkook and Detective Taehyung (Dead Dove: Do Not Eat). Ch. 2/5 (ao3 version)
Detective Kim Taehyung's headlights slice through the morning fog, the tires whispering over damp asphalt. He isn't technically sleep-deprived. He's taken the pills as directed. But his body feels wrong, like he is wading through sap. The medication clings to his skin and mind like sweat, dulling the edges of his thoughts. The coffee in his cup holder went cold hours ago, but he reaches for it anyway, grimacing as the bitter liquid slides down his throat.
Taehyung blinks slowly, deliberately, trying to sharpen the road into something that doesn’t blur at the edges. The sky hangs low and purple—an in-between hour where night hasn’t quite left and morning hasn’t fully arrived. His limbs feel both too light, like they might float off the steering wheel if he stops concentrating, and too heavy, as if he's wading through a dream.
Jungkook had only wanted to help. "Just a little more," he'd said last night, kissing the corner of Taehyung's mouth and placing the pill gently in his palm. "You'll finally sleep through the night."
And he has. Sort of. There are gaps. Soft, yawning silences where his memory should be. Patches of darkness stitched together by the sound of Jungkook's voice humming quietly from the other side of the bed.
Now, with the fog thick and clinging to the windshield like breath on glass, Taehyung can't quite remember when he woke up. Only that he is driving. On his way to work. Or something close to it.
The trees bend inward, their spindly fingers reaching. Taehyung squints—is that movement? His perception swims, reality rippling like a stone dropped into still water. He eases off the gas, uncertain whether what he’s seeing is real or just another trick of the medication.
Then, unmistakable, a smear of unnatural yellow, slick and twitching, peels itself from the tree line. The figure bleeds into view like it has been conjured by the fog, crawling, dragging itself across the asphalt. The victim leaves behind a ghastly trail, arterial red against the dull gray of the road.
The brake slams beneath his foot. The car jolts to a stop, pitching him forward and snapping him back. Pain blooms at the base of his skull, bright and clean. A sharp edge through the drug haze.
Red.
Red, and so much of it.
For one disorienting moment, Taehyung wonders if he is still dreaming. The smear of crimson trailing behind the figure looks like paint, not blood—too bright, too deliberate. But the cold air that hits his face when he stumbles from the car is real. So is the wet sound of the person's breathing. The victim's fingernails are torn and caked with dark soil. They've crawled. God knows how far they've crawled.
"I'm—I'm a detective," Taehyung says, though the words tangle in his throat. His tongue feels too thick. Is he slurring? He fumbles for his badge, his fingers numb, his mind rushing. "I'll... get help."
The dispatcher's voice sounds far away, like she is speaking underwater. Taehyung hears himself giving directions, but can't be sure if he's making sense.
"Sixteen minutes," the dispatcher says. Or maybe it is sixty. The numbers blur together like watercolors. 16 minutes until help arrives. 16 minutes alone with a dying man on an empty forest road.
He kneels, and the blood is immediate. It soaks his pants, sinks into the fabric, spreads through the seams. The warmth of it against the chill of the air feels wrong. Visceral and insistent. This is real. All of it. The realization cuts through the drug-induced haze like a light beam. He presses his hands against the worst of the wounds, trying to remember his first aid training. The blood pulses between his fingers, hot and relentless.
"Stay with me," he urges, his voice steadier now. "Help is coming. What's your name?" The victim's eyes flicker, struggling to focus on Taehyung's face. His breath comes in shallow gasps, each one sounding weaker than the last.
"Kim..." the victim manages, the word barely audible. "Kim Namjoon."
Taehyung nods, trying to keep the man engaged. "Kim Namjoon. I'm Detective Kim Taehyung. You're going to be okay." The lie tastes acrid on his tongue. They both know Namjoon isn't going to be okay. The amount of blood, the nature of the wounds. Whoever did this made sure of it.
Taehyung has seen death before. He's worked homicides where bodies lay splayed in violent tableaus. Gruesome scenes. But only once has he witnessed the precise moment when life slips away. Only once has he been the last face someone might see. It feels intimate in a way he wasn't prepared for, being here with Kim Namjoon as he dies on this lonely stretch of road. He thinks of Jungkook and how he dealt with death in his former profession. How many times has his husband watched the light fade from someone's eyes? Does it ever get easier?
The victim's skin has already taken on the waxy pallor of death, lips blue-tinged and trembling. Their eyes stare beyond him, locked on something he can't see. Taehyung wonders what Namjoon sees in these final moments. Is his life flashing before his eyes? Or is he seeing his attacker's face, haunting him even now?
"Who did this to you?" Taehyung asks, his own voice sounding brittle. "Tell me who did this." He needs information—something, anything that might help him find whoever is responsible. He's still a detective, even through the sedative fog, even with blood soaking into his clothes.
The victim's eyes are glassy, pupils dilated to brown pools. Their mouth works soundlessly for a moment before words bubble up, wet and broken.
"Young..." The jogger's voice rasps, wet and cracking. "His face... I— I see his face."
Taehyung leans closer, catching the sickly smell of blood and fertile earth. A young man. That narrows it down to thousands in the area. But it's something. "What about his face? Can you describe him?"
"Moles," Namjoon chokes. "Under his lip. His mouth—" A shudder runs through him. "He smiled... like he knows me. But I don't know him." Namjoon's hand shoots out, grabbing Taehyung's wrist with surprising strength. "Callous... his eyes. Cold. But so bright."
Taehyung feels something stir in the back of his mind, a whisper brushing the haze. Something important. He leans closer, holding onto the victim to give them comfort, the smell of copper and soil flooding his nose.
"Was there anything else?" Taehyung asks, desperately trying to keep the young man conscious, to extract every piece of information he can. "Anything that might help me find him?"
"He was waiting for me," Namjoon whispers, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. "Knew my route. My schedule. He knew." His eyes widen slightly, fear giving him one last surge of energy.
And then... nothing.
The pressure is gone. The hand falls away. Taehyung checks for a pulse he knows won't be there, fingers clumsy against the victim's neck. His hand comes away red. He stares at the still body and the blood-soaked neon shirt. The victim's eyes remain open so he shuts them. It feels like the least he can do, this small act of dignity for Kim Namjoon, who died alone on a forest road.
In the distance, sirens wail.
Later—how much later, he can't say—Taehyung sits at his desk, bathed in the cold lights of the precinct. The sedative has mostly worn off, leaving him with a dull headache and a sense of unreality that lingers like smoke. He's showered and changed his clothes, but he swears he can still feel the tacky sensation of blood on his hands. Can still see Kim Namjoon's face as the light left his eyes.
He's typed the same sentence three times.
Victim found at approximately 7:15...
But was it 7:15? And what is the route number? The details keep slipping away, dissolving like sugar in hot coffee. The medication has left holes in his memory, gaps he can't quite fill. He stares at the computer screen, the cursor blinking accusingly at him. He needs to get this report right. He owes that much to the victim.
Lips… young… face… moles… callous.
He was waiting for me.
The victim's words echo in Taehyung's mind. He scrolls through traffic footage, his eyes sliding past frames of nothing. Black roads. Empty intersections. Too clean. Too quiet. The forest route has no cameras. Of course it doesn't. That's why it happened there. That's why the killer chose it. Someone who knows the area. Someone who planned this violence meticulously.
He was waiting for me.
The killer knew this man's route and his schedule. This wasn't a random killing. It was calculated.
Taehyung presses his palms to his eyes, feeling grit beneath his eyelids. The station ceiling seems to pulse, expanding and contracting with each throb of his headache. Everything pulses. He is missing something. Some connection just beyond his grasp. His thoughts feel rubbed raw. The medication hangover and lack of proper sleep make it nearly impossible to think clearly. He needs to sleep, real sleep—not the drugged unconsciousness that passes for rest these days. But how can he sleep when there's a killer out there?
Young. Lips. Callous. Waiting. Moles.
The words replay in his mind. Is that all the victim said? His mind swims, a dull throb echoing the pulse in his vision. The killer let the victim see him, let him see that he has distinguishable marks on his face. Why? He had to know the victim might survive long enough to tell someone.
The description narrows it down but not enough. And he was waiting for him… How did he know? And what of callous…? Are they looking for someone with rough hands? Or did the victim mean the brutality and senselessness of it all? Cold eyes, he'd said. Like taking a life meant nothing to him.
Calculated and callous.
This won't be the last time. The thought forms slowly, pushing through the fog in his brain.
His phone rings out, the melody fracturing the silence like a hammer through glass, as he fumbles it to his ear.
"Tae, are you still at the station?" Jungkook's voice. Soft and sweet. Like a warm blanket sliding over cold skin. A stark contrast to the clinical coldness of the station and the horror he witnessed today. "It's after midnight. How am I supposed to sleep without you? You weren't even here when I got home." There's concern in his voice.
Is it? Taehyung blinks at the clock on his computer. The numbers swim, then settle. It is definitely after midnight. When had that happened? How many hours has he lost to this investigation, to the fog that keeps claiming chunks of his day?
"Tae, are you ignoring your one true love? Can I call you a workaholic now?" His tone is playful, a pout barely hidden. It draws a smile from Taehyung despite everything. Despite the blood and death that clings to him. Despite the exhaustion that weighs on him like a physical thing.
"I'm..." His voice cracks. He clears his throat. "I'm still here. There was an incident. Someone was... hurt." Killed, his mind supplies. Murdered. Left to crawl from the woods with his insides spilling out.
There’s a pause on the other end. A small inhale, barely perceptible.
“Are you okay?” Jungkook asks, his voice soft with concern. “You don’t sound well. Did you sleep enough? You know you’re supposed to sleep at least eight hours and not drive after taking your medication. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to accidentally hurt anyone else either.” The concern in his voice deepens.
Taehyung feels a pang of guilt. He knows better than to drive under the influence of his sleeping medication, but he'd been called in early, and he'd felt fine when he left. It was only later that the side effects had really hit him. "I'm fine," he lies. "Just tired. It's been... a day." He pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling the vertebrae in his back crack as he stretches. His body feels like it belongs to someone else, stiff and aching in places he didn't know could ache. "I could use your soft touches, Kook. Today has been overwhelming." He doesn't elaborate, doesn't mention the feeling of Kim Namjoon's hand going slack in his, or the sound of his last breath rattling in his chest.
Taehyung looks down at his notes. The ink has smudged, the words bleeding into one another. Young. Callous. Moles. He was waiting. The killer is still out there. But he can't bring himself to tell Jungkook now. His husband worries enough as it is.
"I should come home," he says, suddenly desperate to feel something solid. Real. Jungkook is real. Everything else feels like it's made of fog.
"I think that's best," Jungkook agrees. "You need rest and I miss you. It's hard to sleep without you next to me." His voice is warm, wrapping around Taehyung like a physical presence. "I made your favorite stew. It's keeping warm on the stove. And I've got a new prescription for you— something that might help with the insomnia without the side effects."
Always taking care of him. Always looking out for him. Taehyung feels a rush of love for his husband, so strong it momentarily drowns out the horror of the day.
Taehyung begins gathering his things, movements slow and deliberate. Each action requires intense focus. Pick up the notepad. Put it in the bag. Close the laptop. Stand up. Don't fall. His limbs feel disconnected from his body, like he's trying to operate a puppet with very loose strings.
"I miss you too," he says, the words distant in his own ears. "I'm on my way."
"Drive safe," Jungkook says. "I love you, Kim Taehyung." The same words he says every time they part. Like a blessing. Like a promise.
"I love you too, Jeon Jungkook." It comes out rougher than he intended, his voice thick with emotion and exhaustion.
The drive home stretches before him like an impossible distance, passing in fragments. The black inkiness of the road. So many places to get lost. Streetlights elongate into cold, silvery filaments. Turn signals pulse too bright, then too dim. His eyes burn from fatigue, the tang of convenience store coffee bitter on his tongue. His knuckles white and aching. The thought of the forest makes his skin crawl, evergreen-scented darkness still clinging to his clothes like a phantom touch.
But the thought of Jungkook waiting, warm and safe, pulls at him like gravity.
As he drives, Kim Namjoon's words echo in his mind. The victim's raspy final breath replays in his ears, a sound he can't unhear. He should be more alert amid his exhaustion. A sense of duty weighs on him: to ensure what happened that morning doesn't happen to anyone else.
In his rearview mirror, the empty forest road fades into darkness. Somewhere back there, a killer walks free. Somewhere back there, blood still seeps into soil and bark. But Taehyung can't dwell on that now. He needs sleep. Real sleep. Then he can think clearly, can start piecing together the clues that will stop this from happening again.
Ahead is warmth. Ahead is Jungkook.
Jungkook who stayed up late to make sure he's okay, who waits with hot food and gentle hands. He can almost smell the savory aroma of homemade stew, can almost feel the soft cotton of their bed sheets against his skin. Jungkook, who loves him despite the hours, despite the darkness that follows him home from work. Jungkook, who will hold him through the nightmares that are sure to come tonight, whose heartbeat against his back will lull him to sleep like a metronome.
Taehyung doesn't know that the hands soothing him to sleep tonight are the same hands that sliced open Kim Namjoon with surgical precision. Doesn't know that the moles beneath Jungkook’s lip were the last thing Namjoon saw. Doesn't know that his gentle, doting husband will kill again, methodically, joyfully, while he sleeps wrapped in love.
And Jungkook, waiting at home with blood scrubbed from beneath his fingernails and a new prescription for his detective husband—at a slightly stronger dose, to ensure deeper sleep, longer gaps in memory—sets out a bowl of stew, the steam curling into the quiet air.
The bottle of pills makes a satisfying rattle as he shakes two into his palm, the sound like small bones. The new pills sit beside Taehyung's empty place setting, stark white against the dark wood. A natural calm settles over Jungkook as he straightens the cutlery, each movement precise and deliberate. He glances at the clock and waits for his husband to come home.
Serial Killer Jungkook and Detective Taehyung (Dead Dove: Do Not Eat).Ch. 3/5 (ao3 version)
Taehyung barely remembers parking. Barely remembers climbing the stairs to their apartment.
Then Jungkook is there—unyielding, tangible, a steady hand coaxing Taehyung’s fractured thoughts into a semblance of order.
Strong arms guide him inside, and Taehyung sinks into the familiar sanctuary of their home and the deliberate choreography of Jungkook's devotion. Warm hands undress him with clinical tenderness, each button undone with infinite care, each fold of fabric lifted away as though Jungkook is unwrapping something delicate. Jungkook's touch maps every exposed part of Taehyung—the hollow of his throat, the ridge of his collarbone, the vulnerable curve where shoulder meets neck. As if Taehyung might dissolve without this constant inventory of presence. He peels away the day like bandages from a wound, until Taehyung feels almost human again.
A glass of water, cool and crystalline, rests suddenly in Taehyung’s trembling hands. No memory of Jungkook stepping away, no sound of water pouring—just the glass, pressed into his palms with reverence as Jungkook’s thumb grazing his knuckles like a tether to the present.
"For sleep and your headache," Jungkook whispers, pressing small pills into his palm. "You look like you're in pain."
Concern in Jungkook's voice wraps around Taehyung like the gentlest embrace, chasing away the chill that had settled in his chest since the crime scene. Here, in their home, with Jungkook's measured attention focused entirely on him, the world aligns, sharp contours dissolving into a calm stillness.
Taehyung swallows the medication without question, trusting in the way Jungkook always knows exactly what he needs. Jungkook's thumb strokes across his knuckles in small arcs before offering him more water, watching with those attentive eyes until Taehyung drains the glass.
The taste is chalky and metallic, but the weight in his chest begins to loosen, the pounding in his skull receding into something dimmer, more distant.
"I made dinner," Jungkook says, though they both know Taehyung's stomach has knotted itself into impossible geometries. "But it'll keep. Rest first," taking the empty glass and setting it aside before cupping Taehyung's face in both hands. His thumbs stroke across Taehyung's cheekbones with gentleness as if tracing a constellation. “The pain will fade soon,” he whispers, a promise woven between them. “You're home now.”
Jungkook leads him to bed. Helps him beneath the sheets. The sheets are already turned down, pillows fluffed and arranged just the way Taehyung likes them. Golden light from the bedside lamp casts everything in warm amber, catching the vibrant red of fresh Japanese Camellias on the nightstand, their petals mingling with the scent of clean linen that lingers in the air.
"We don't have to talk about it," Jungkook soothes, fingers stroking through Taehyung's hair as though tending to something consecrated. "But I'm here now. By morning, everything will be as it should." The words cocoon Taehyung in tenderness.
Taehyung wants to speak, to say something about the victim's words. The crime scene. The man who was waiting, his shadowed silhouette burned into Taehyung’s mind. But his tongue is thick and his thoughts scatter like moths.
"Sleep, my love," Jungkook whispers, his voice following Taehyung down into unconsciousness. "I'll be right here. I'll take care of you."
Guilt twists in Taehyung's stomach even as the medication pulls him under mercilessly. He wishes he could say no, that he could tell Jungkook how much he abhors feeling out of control and the heaviness that settles into his limbs like lead, the way time becomes elastic and slips between his fingers like water, and the fog that settles over his thoughts like dust on abandoned furniture. But he follows instructions because he needs sleep. Because his dreams have begun bleeding into his waking hours, indistinct as watercolors in rain. Because to disappoint Jungkook feels like a failure of gratitude.
Years ago, when trauma first carved its initials into Taehyung's mind, Jungkook took charge of the regimen. A gesture of care that slowly calcified into control. On nights like these, when fragments might otherwise coalesce into dangerous understanding, Jungkook administers stronger sedatives—just enough to fracture understanding like light through broken glass, blurring the edges to ensure memories can't crystallize by morning. The truth remains buried beneath pharmaceutical snow, a cultivated amnesia.
In daylight, Jungkook wears devotion like a second skin. The devoted husband who'd guided Taehyung through his darkest hours after the Daegu case almost broke him, who held him through night terrors and panic attacks, who whispered promises until tomorrow became possible again.
But darkness reveals different architecture: the methodical cataloguing of Taehyung's psychological fractures, each hairline crack that spiders under pressure so meticulously calibrated it feels like love.
The artistry lies in the subtlety. The way trauma compounds on itself when fed the right diet of doubt and dependency.
Taehyung's fingers twitch in sleep, still searching for a pulse long since stilled. Still trying to bring comfort to the dying.
The rain begins its percussion against the windows, and Jungkook settles into his vigil. He pulls the covers up to Taehyung's chin, then changes his mind and draws them down again, wanting to see more. The lamplight catches the hollow of his throat, the gentle slope of his shoulders. Taehyung radiates heat like contained sunlight, and Jungkook positions himself closer, until that warmth becomes his own.
He watches the rhythm of Taehyung's shallow breathing as shadowy drops trace abstract patterns across Taehyung's unconscious form. Sedatives have transformed him into breathing sculpture—all the beauty of life with none of its inconvenient autonomy. Jungkook's hand hovers over Taehyung's sleeping form, not quite touching the supple, golden skin that glows beneath the lamplight's muted reverence.
It's his fingers that finally make contact, ghosting over familiar topography. The curves of Taehyung's torso, the sharp angle of collarbone and shoulder blade, the subtle dips where fragility hides. Jungkook's touch is reverent, mapping territory that belongs to him alone.
The slender architecture of ribs expanding and contracting with chemical precision. He barely touches, savoring the permission unconsciousness grants him. The skin, warm and yielding beneath his touch, belies his inner violence. Along the elegant curve of Taehyung's throat, his thumb traces, feeling pulse points flutter beneath skin. So fragile. So trusting. Something primal coils tighter in Jungkook’s chest, intoxicated by how easily Taehyung could break.
These are the moments he treasures most. When there's no possibility of divided attention or misplaced affection. When Taehyung is wholly his, pliant beneath his gaze, consciousness eased into surrender.
Jungkook's palm settles over Taehyung's chest, feeling ribs flex beneath shallow breath. He could press down just a little harder, feel the fragile ribs yield, imagine consciousness flicker back to meet his gaze just long enough to understand before panic sets in.
Instead, he traces beloved features with pious fingers. The strong line of his jaw, the soft curve of his lips, the paper-thin skin beneath his eyes where exhaustion has carved shadows. Each detail memorized, archived, claimed.
"Perfect," he breathes, the word carrying weight it was never meant to bear. "You have no idea how utterly you belong to me."
The rain has found its rhythm now. Not violent, but persistent. Methodical. Each drop against glass like fingers tapping out morse code. Jungkook allows himself this. In a few hours, the performance will resume. The careful distance, the manufactured normalcy, the elaborate pretense that this is anything other than what it is. But here, in the space between midnight and dawn, his truth blooms like bruises beneath skin.
Serial Killer Jungkook and Detective Taehyung (Dead Dove: Do Not Eat).Ch. 4/5 (ao3 version)
Jungkook slips from bed with the practiced silence of someone who's made this journey a thousand times. Movement requires choreographed silence. Hardwood planks know his weight, each board's potential for betrayal memorized through ritual repetition. The study door accepts his presence without protest, the soft click of the lock muffled by raindrops.
It had been Jungkook's idea to have separate spaces. A healthy marriage needs personal sanctuaries, he'd said, and Taehyung had accepted this wisdom. It's the one room Taehyung never enters. The forbidden space that exists in plain sight, protected by trust rather than locks, though Jungkook has installed those as well.
Wooden bookshelves hold his collection: leather-bound psychiatric texts, medical journals, and philosophical treatises on suffering. His credentials hang on the wall like trophies, each framed degree a testament to his understanding of the human mind, how it fractures, yields, reshapes beneath persistent, patient pressure.
The room maintains a sterile coolness, heating deliberately kept low. Temperature controlled. Environment controlled. Like everything else in his life, calculated for optimal function.
From his desktop, Jungkook opens a concealed directory, buried beneath layers of encryption. Each gate is keyed to an innocuous line of code only he can parse. The directory is a reliquary, housing dozens of meticulously organized folders. Not the kind kept for patients. These are private records, rituals disguised as data.
Jungkook's posture shifts. Shoulders straighten. The careful husband recedes, replaced by something more focused, more precise. He navigates past dated entries, each charting an incident, a deviation, a decisive moment of unraveling. Most are clinical in tone, sterile and spare. Others read like confessions, pathology veiled as love letters. All of them belong to him, born from his mind and nurtured by his hands.
He pauses at the most recent update. The timestamp is from earlier that afternoon, while Taehyung had still been at the station.
Subject: K.T. [Domestic proximity - extended exposure study]
Observed response to indirect trauma consistent with prior behavioral profiles—narrative disintegration, dissociative conflict, increasing pharmacological dependency. Evidence of dream residue present (involuntary motor response during sleep).
Dosage adjustment: 0.25mg increase in evening compound yielded notable improvement in sleep compliance.
Jungkook's fingertips hover over the keys. He remembers the weight of Taehyung's head against his shoulder, the way those elegant fingers had trembled around the glass of doctored water. In this space, Taehyung becomes reducible, distilled to his essential components. The clinical framework contains what would otherwise consume.
Outside, the rain hesitates, then resumes with renewed force, smearing the darkness beyond the window into something fluid and uncertain. For a moment, his reflection stares back at him from the screen, features rendered spectral by the monitor's glow, eyes two pools of darkness in the half-light.
Test continues. Identifying facial features was an indulgence. Calibrate accordingly.
The words hang in the digital ether, nakedly honest in a way he allows himself only in these private moments. The cursor blinks—a digital pulse where his victim no longer has one.
In the bedroom, is Taehyung stirring now, his hand drifting across the sheets in search of a presence that isn't there, reaching for the empty space beside him, subconsciously searching comfort from the very hand that orchestrates his torment? Or does he lie motionless, finally claimed by the heavy pull of tonight's compounds, dreams full of crime scenes that smear into memory, where faces blur and blood pools in the folds of his sheets.
Jungkook saves the file, watching the data disappear back into its encrypted tomb. The silence that follows feels warmer somehow, as though the room itself conspires to protect his devotion. He traces a finger along the edge of his lower lip, where a small mole rests, the very detail he'd allowed the victim to notice, to speak of. An indulgence indeed. But the confession had been too sweet to resist; a signature hidden in plain sight, visible only to the one person who could never recognize its meaning.
Reckless. Beautiful. The closest thing to confession he'll ever allow himself.
Outside, the rain batters the windows like desperate fingers pursuing entry, each drop a tiny applause, and Jungkook smiles at the sound.
The storm will pass. His work will continue.
And Taehyung will never know how thoroughly, how beautifully, how lovingly he's being unmade.
The return journey maps itself in muscle memory. Each floorboard accepted in its proper sequence, each shadow navigated with grace. At the threshold, he pauses. Adjusts his breathing. Softens his expression. The transformation is instantaneous and complete. The bedroom door parts like water, admitting him to warmth and floral-scented peace.
Taehyung hasn't moved. Pharmaceutical paralysis holds him in perfect stillness. Moonlight through rain-streaked glass paints him in shifting silver, transforming familiar features into something ethereal, untouchable. Sleep cycle: hour three of projected twelve. Vitals stable. Subject unaware. The clinical assessment lasts only seconds before something else takes over, something hungrier, more personal.
Jungkook slips beneath the covers, careful not to disturb the sheets. He allows himself this moment of pure hunger—drinking in the sight of Taehyung's defenseless form, memorizing the way shadows pool in the hollow of his throat, how his lips part slightly in a drugged haze. This is his masterpiece, breathing and warm and wholly unaware.
The warmth of Taehyung's body envelops him, and Jungkook positions himself close enough to feel it without quite touching. Even in sleep, physiological responses remain consistent. Exploratory contact. Requiring proximity. Dependency mechanisms functioning as designed.
The temptation to touch becomes unbearable. His fingers hover just above Taehyung's skin, close enough to feel a faint pulse of warmth from his sleeping form, but not quite making contact. The restraint is both data collection and exquisite torture, a dance of desire and control. This delicate space between desire and permission, impulses coexisting without contradiction.
He settles against the pillow and allows himself to study Taehyung's profile in the dim light. Even in his stillness, Taehyung radiates an achingly trusting vulnerability, something that invites protection and exploitation in equal measure. His breathing remains deep, untroubled by the peaceful sedation that holds him.
Jungkook shifts closer and Taehyung's presence seeps into him, a quiet claim Jungkook welcomes. He positions himself to mirror Taehyung's form, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip—like two halves of the same broken thing. The intimacy is suffocating and perfect. They fall into their familiar dance: Taehyung reaching in his haze, Jungkook the anchor he’s been taught to need. The thought sends a thrill through Jungkook's chest— even in sleep, Taehyung seeks him. Needs him.
When Taehyung's hand drifts across the mattress in slumber, Jungkook catches it with careful reverence. He intertwines their fingers, marveling at how even unconscious, Taehyung's grip tightens around his. A reflex of trust so profound it validates every carefully orchestrated moment that led here.
Taehyung murmurs in his induced repose—fragments of cases, half-formed questions, occasionally Jungkook's own name spoken with such tender confusion. His limbs twitch as dreams fight their way through chemical barriers, fingers sometimes grasping at phantoms in his dreams.
Each small movement sends electricity through Jungkook's nerve endings. He catalogues every twitch, every soft sound, every unconscious gesture, filing them away in the museum of his obsession alongside all the other sacred moments.
Outside, the storm continues its methodical work, but here, cocooned in the quiet rhythm of Taehyung’s gentle breathing, there exists only the perfect synthesis of devotion and domination. Love refined to its most efficient form.
The mask fits so perfectly now, he sometimes forgets he's wearing it.
