chapter 4

Taehyung tries. He really does. He watches you for a week, his breath catching in his throat when you take a drink, but you keep it to one or two, don’t engage in the behaviors that caused him to visit you in the first place, and he’s so proud when you delete your ex’s number that his chest swells.

But it’s torture. It’s the sweetest torture, watching you, how you still hiss when you take your first sip of coffee in the morning, never remembering how hot it is, how you sit on the edge of the tub to run your hands through the bath water before getting in, and it’s so much worse now that he knows everything about you like the little laugh you do everytime he looks at you in wonder and the way you look at him with admiration.

It hurts, it hurts somewhere deep in his bones and it’s not your pain he’s feeling but his own and it’s not something he’s used to, and he counts the days by the hours since he’s left you now instead of not realizing time much at all.

It’s 149 hours when his wings spread involuntarily, heat from angelfire boiling off him, and 149 hours and fifteen minutes when he bursts into Namjoon’s office.

“I need to be reassigned,” he blurts, and Namjoon barely reacts, just glancing up at him from his work.

“That’s not how it works. You used to know that, Taehyung.”

“Please,” he pleads, taking a few steps toward his mentor. “Please.I can’t watch her anymore.”

“What’d you see?” Namjoon asks softly, and Taehyung doesn’t answer, can’t answer, the words sticking in his throat, because it doesn’t make any sense.

It was just a moment, just a second, really, when one of your male friends threw an arm around your shoulder, and it wasn’t that, either.

It was the way you smiled. It was this small, secret smile, one you quickly covered with your hand, when the man had let his hand linger on your skin.

Namjoon wouldn’t understand, because angels weren’t supposed to feel things like jealousy buzzing like bees under his skin, or longing like a muscle ache that never healed.

Taehyung doesn’t realize he’s said what he was thinking until Namjoon puts a hand on his shoulder.

“I won’t reassign you,” he says, his tone soft, almost…empathetic, and Taehyung makes a protest before Namjoon shakes his head. “I won’t reassign you because it won’t help.”

Taehyung has been looking down at his feet, but now his eyes shoot up to his mentor’s face.

Namjoon chuckles and it’s surprisingly bitter. “You think this is my first?” 

Taehyung just stares at him, shocked, and Namjoon gestures to a nearby chair.

“Sit down. we need to talk something very important and don't make a sad face like that"

It’s been a little over a week since your guardian angel had left, and sometimes you wish you could feel his presence, at least a little.

Sometimes you think that might make things even harder, though, and you had reminders, after all: a soreness and redness all over your body, where his body had been pressed to yours, like a sunburn. That one silky feather, the one you kept on your pillow. The burns he’d left on your neck…until they start to fade…all but one, right at the base of your throat.

It had scabbed over, and then scarred, and it was raised there.

Every time you started to think you were crazy, that he’d been some phantom lover born of loneliness and heartbreak, you run your fingers over the scar, and it gives you a chill.

You had told Taehyung the truth. You were okay. You were able to get back to your life again, be more yourself, and that was all thanks to him. You’re sad, when he leaves, but you think about how upset he’d be if you went back to your bad habits, and you’re able to get past it…as much as you’re able.

You’re not even thinking about it on the way home from work, walking because it’s such a nice night, humming a little under your breath.

You come around the corner and there’s a man sitting up against the brick of your apartment building, his head down, huddled in a blanket. When you get closer, you can hear him crying, and it hurts your heart.

You reach into your purse to see if you have any cash, stopping next to him, and then you hear a low, shaky baritone, just two words, that make your heart stop beating for a moment.

“Little dove.”

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