Oak Prince

"Then...then...what happened when we went up to your room?" 

Jungkook asked Taehyung in desperation, upset by his inability to remember anything he had done the night of June 24th. Taehyung paused his story to think for a moment, his face clouded by an unreadable air. Jungkook pressed him to continue, determined to piece together the events of that night.

"Well..." Taehyung adjusted the obsidian necklaces on his neck nervously. "We went into my room and...I gave you..." Taehyung stopped to pour himself more tea for his dry throat. When he set the porcelain kettle back down on the table, he met Jungkook's impatient brown eyes. Naturally, his gaze led him lower, to the younger's pursed and bitten up lower lip...

"Come on Taehyung! It's getting late and I need to know this!" Jungkook reprimanded the older male's slowness in telling the tale. Why is he looking at me like that? What the hell happened in his room?

Taehyung suddenly became very angry, pinching his brows together. He sipped at the piping hot liquid from the tea cup, dark eyes regarding Jungkook over the delicate rim. 

"Why do you want to know so badly?" Taehyung watched the Oak Prince closely. "You haven't even told me why your uncle is trying to retake Noirwood. I deserve some sort of explanation for this!"

"Uh..." Jungkook looked away quickly and stared in pain at the old books stacked in his bookshelf. His shelves held numerous volumes, all erudite books jam-packed with random tidbits of knowledge. Now however, those books spared him no insight on what happened the night be broke the pact...which so happened to be the night he attended the party at the Laurel Castle. I want to know what happened...

Jungkook would have to open up to Taehyung sooner or later. He wasn't used to spilling his guts in front of someone else, especially since that someone else was the second ruling prince of Noirwood. A man of most exquisite power, seated across from him with his crown slightly tilted on his head, staring at him in annoyance. 

"Listen...I'm sorry I seem so desperate for the information, about the party. It's just..." Jungkook bit his lower lip, tasting slightly of iron. "You've probably figured out that I've broken the pact. And you also probably want to know how I did so."

Taehyung stared back at the stressed ravenette, twirling one of his rings between slender fingers. He said nothing, only listening with the utmost attentiveness.

"Well...I want to know how I broke the pact too. You see, I have a break in my memory from the night of the 24th. I can't remember a thing from that night...and I'm worried that I did something to seriously upset my uncle. I just--I just don't know what I did. I remember nothing from that night, Taehyung. And now the entire kingdom will put the blame on me when the northern troops start attacking our villages. I want you to help me remember what else I did that night...what I did to upset Jihoon."

Taehyung listened, eyes going wide when he realized that he was somehow partly responsible for the growing wrath coming from the north. He swiftly removed his crown, setting it down carefully on the wooden table. With a lazy hand, he messed up his blond hair, frowning. He's clearly distressed. Probably mad at me for breaking the pact. Can't blame him.

Jungkook let a loose breath escape his mouth as he watched Taehyung shift around uncomfortably on the couch. He bit even harder on his lips, peeling the skin off as his nerves bested him.

"Okay, I'll help you." Taehyung started, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands, elbows propped on his knees. "But um...I think I might have...well, helped you break the pact."

Jungkook's eyebrows contorted in full confusion. He didn't know if he heard what the blond prince told him correctly, but if Taehyung helped him break the pact, then they really were in trouble.

"I can explain." Taehyung licked his lips and lifted his head up to face Jungkook's frozen face. "I-I'll finish the story and it will make more sense."

With the sky almost fully black outside the window, Taehyung leaned even closer to a puzzled Jungkook and continued on with the story that he had started telling before. 

~

After Prince Kim had led the mysterious black-haired man up the white staircase into his personal chambers, he asked a nearby servant to fetch some wine. He ordered the command as usual, with a tap of his cane and a unique facial expression. 

Only, the servant did not miss the wink and two cane taps that went along with the special command. The servant left at once to prepare Taehyung's specific request for drugged wine.

"Ah, here we are." Taehyung reentered the room and propped his cane along the wall. He watched in intrigue as the mysterious man gazed around the room, admiring the different oil paintings Taehyung had decorated his bedroom with. Then, to Taehyung's surprise, the man asked him a question.

"How did you get authority from the Laurel Prince to come into one of his bedrooms?" The man spewed without glancing at Taehyung, currently studying a painting of Taehyung's flower garden on a spring day. "Are you close with him?"

At first, Taehyung thought the man was joking, but after thirty seconds without a single peep of laughter from the man's mouth, Taehyung was baffled that this man did not recognize him. Does he live under a rock? Taehyung thought.

"Um...yes. I'm very, uh, close with Prince Kim." Taehyung walked closer to the man who went by the name Jay. He positioned himself behind the odd man, staring at the painting with equal admiration. "He lets me use this room whenever I please."

"Hmm...isn't this his bedroom? Seems kinda unsafe. That sounds like something he might do." The man hummed in disinterest. Taehyung watched as the man lowered himself into one of Taehyung's armchairs by the window and finally turned to look at him. "So where's this wine you promised me?"

"Won't you have to remove your mask to drink?" Taehyung teased and lifted his eyebrow. As if on cue, three knocks sounded on Taehyung's door and a servant was admitted into the room holding a tray with several glasses of wine on it. Taehyung watched the mysterious man's heavy gaze follow the servant to the table where the wine tray was placed down before she exited the room. Jay's gaze lingered on the servant's back, his curious gaze not even breaking when Taehyung caught him staring.

"You like what you see?" Taehyung asked, feeling a bit upset at the man's sudden interest in one of his own servants. He has the audacity to follow me into my bedroom, diss me personally, and check out my servants? 

"No, I'm just surprised that Prince Kim makes his servants dress in such elaborate clothing. It makes it harder for them to move around. With efficiency in mind, it seems almost pointless. Why make servants drag around fancy dresses and heavy jewels if speed is top priority? It's way different from my..." The man suddenly stopped mid-sentence. 

"Your...what?" Taehyung stepped closer to the armchair that the other was sitting in. 

The mysterious man cleared his throat and stood up to grab a wine glass off of the tray. "Aren't you having any?" Jay ignored Taehyung's question. 

The blonde shook his head and took a comfortable seat on his double king-sized bed. "No, I think I've had enough tonight. The rest is yours."

"Fine by me, that means I get more." The man said almost giddily, snatching a glass off of the tray. Before Taehyung could respond, the man turned around so that Taehyung only saw the back of his head. He rapidly pulled down his mask, giggled, and downed the entire glass.

"Hey!" Taehyung ran around the male, hoping to catch a glimpse of his exposed face, only to be met with crinkled eyes from above a black mask. Drunken chuckles emitted from the young man. "Why won't you show me your face, Jay! My gods..."

The man continued to laugh and grabbed for another glass. This time, Taehyung stood planted in front of the man and waited for him to pull down his mask again. The man only stared at him with his dark brown orbs, teasing...testing.

"So...the prince clearly has a taste for art." The mystery man mumbled from under his mask, rotating his head around the spacious room. He clucked his tongue in interest. "I wonder what the meaning behind most of these are. Some are obvious, like the roses--but others are so abstract, I wonder what they symbolize."

There were few times when Taehyung felt actual excitement when talking about something, and times discussing art was one of them. "Yes, yes...the Laurel Prince only picks out the finest art for his robust collections...he clearly has a unique taste in art." Taehyung walked around the room, looking lovingly at all of his framed artworks, from landscapes, to people, to abstract objects, to Greek gods.

As he walked around his large bedroom, he trailed on and on about the history of each of his beloved paintings, hardly paying attention to his guest. When Taehyung finally turned back around to face his guest, the entire tray of wine was empty--and the man's mask was still on. 

"What!" Taehyung gasped, shocked that someone could move behind his back so silently and manage to drink everything he had put out. "Did you even care about the art!"

The man laughed at Taehyung's shocked expression, pointing at Taehyung's widened eyes and parted lips as if he had beaten Taehyung in a bet. He had the I got you so good glimmer in his eyes and Taehyung smiled at the man's ignorance. He still doesn't know who he's pointing at. And he hasn't a clue what he just drank.

Every single glass of wine that the man had downed was tampered with. Drugged.

When Taehyung invited guests to his room, he gave them his specially-prepared wine that made a person bubbly, full of desire, and extremely bold. Each glass gave the drinker a heightened sensation of his/her surroundings, throwing them into an ecstasy of sorts. Libido became higher, lust spiking the drinker's sexual behavior.

However, the only side effects of the drug was memory loss and black-out. He included those aspects of the concoction purposely, so that each of his special guests forgot what happened when they woke up after the blackout. As the drug burned its way through the blood stream of each consumer of the liquid, they would get more excited, more lustful, more desperate for the feeling of human contact. And now, his only guest had downed every single drop of the red liquid in a matter of minutes. The drug will start kicking in soon...I have high hopes in this one.

Taehyung's servants knew about this behavior of drug-slipping, but none of them knew what happened in the room as the hours of the night slipped away. Everybody thought he was some horny prince who banged half of the kingdom of Noirwood already.

Taehyung, only Taehyung knew the truth...and it saddened him. It saddened him that he could not find his own pleasure watching the pleasure of others, no matter how many nights he tried.

Every party, he tried to invite guests into his personal space so that he could study them during the act of lovemaking. As he grew older, he had tried countless times to spend the night with women only to discover that he could not even allow the other person to touch him without feeling disgusted. 

Ever since his dad had molested him as a young child, Taehyung felt sickened by the act of love and tried to force himself to overcome this trauma by watching countless people hook up under his pained, watchful gaze. He wanted to see real passion, understand consensual physical love...he tried not to get disturbed by the nakedness of his guests and the close proximity of their bodies. It was Taehyung's form of exposure-therapy...someday, he wanted to be able to love someone and take care of their desires. If that meant numbing himself to the act, then so be it.

Every party, he watched. Every party, he strove to understand the meaning of love and physical pleasure. Every night, he could only watch for a few moments before going numb and leaving the room until his guests blacked out from the tampered wine. Taehyung never found himself aroused by their condition...but he always found himself disgusted. 

Generally, he brought his guests into an adjoining room off of his bedroom for their...activities. He didn't want people in his actual bedchambers, as that would be too personal and soil the sacredness of his own space.

But this time, he had brought the mysterious man named Jay into his own personal bedroom. 

And there was nobody else in the room but the two of them.

Taehyung didn't quite understand what he was doing and didn't try to understand. The normal wine in his own system was making his decisions for him and disregarded the fact that this man was lying about his own identity and probably knew who Taehyung was this entire time. 

The man was still laughing, tears falling from his eyes and absorbing into his black mask. He stood up and swayed a bit, heading towards Taehyung. He stopped when he was close to the blond male and leaned in. Taehyung caught the scent of sweet wine on the man's breath when he opened his mouth to speak. 

"Thank you for having me, but now I'm afraid I must go! Haha!" The man crinkled his eyes. "I appreciated the wine, and it was fun dancing with you! I'll be leaving now."

"You...what?" Taehyung whispered in shock.

Taehyung was confused. Most people under the influence of his wine were instantly drawn into Taehyung, flirting with him and trying to get his clothes off and onto the floor. Taehyung's cane came in handy for those who came after him hoping for something more than conversation. He always carried a cane with him for this reason. So why wasn't this man doing that? He had so much wine...an unhealthy amount in his system.

"I said I have to go...um...what's your name?" The masked man scratched at his black locks awkwardly. "I never caught your name."

"I'm...uh..." Taehyung was panicking inside. For some reason, this man had captured his attention so readily in the beginning and drew him in. He listened when he spoke about artwork, and actually interested him enough to keep him around for this long. Now he was leaving? 

The mysterious man leaned his weight to the side, blinking hard and shaking his head back and forth as the effects of the wine started to put strange thoughts into his mind. Taehyung watched him closely.

"It's alright, I guess I don't need to know your name. What's in a name? Haha..." The man turned to walk out of the room, swaying unevenly. "It was fun, anyway. Goodbye."

"Wait!" Taehyung suddenly grabbed the man's wrist and spun him around. In a second, Taehyung's hand was under the man's black mask and he tugged downward, exposing the man's entire face. The man had a sharp jawline with pursed pink lips and slightly tinted pink cheeks from the wine. Taehyung gazed hungrily at the man's exposed face for the first time in his life. Why do I want to kiss him? Why is he...why do I feel different now?

Jay was very handsome, alluring--flushed. Taehyung badly wanted this man, and it scared him. 

The man's hand came up and latched onto Taehyung's wrist, ripping it harshly away from his face. However, the man did not pull his mask back up right away. Instead, he bit his lips while staring at Taehyung's perfectly formed features. Without a second thought, the ravenette smashed his lips into Taehyung's--a spur of the moment act.

The man's purple stained lips glided over Taehyung's, full of lust and something much stronger. Taehyung hadn't kissed many people in his life, so he remained still, letting the other man do much of the work. The man nibbled at Taehyung's full lower lip, and Taehyung could feel the man's hand softly tugging at the back of his blond hair. 

After several seconds of desperate friction between mouths, the man pulled away, looking into Taehyung's eyes with fear and quickly pulling his mask back up. He took slow backward steps toward the door and slipped through without a last word to the other male who was standing there, fingers running over his lips. The mysterious man was out of the Laurel Prince's reach in a matter of seconds. What just happened...?

For the first time in his life, Taehyung wasn't disgusted at the contact between him and another person. In fact, he felt a strange heat coursing through him from his head to his toes. He wanted more more more of the male that had just left running from his room. I want him back.

More importantly, he wanted to know who this male was. The mystery man was going to blackout wherever he was going, and Taehyung hoped that he would stay safe. That man had a lot of wine, and he hoped that whoever he was, he was safe wherever he was running off to.

Why am I not disgusted?

Why...why do I...feel like this?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Hmm...I think Jay is a little tipsy!

What do y'all think about Taehyung's...behavior? 

I sure hope Jay doesn't blackout at the wrong time...

:) I guess we'll see. Thanks for reading, lovely reader! Don't drug other people's drinks--it isn't nice, okay?