Chapter Text
“I’m so glad you have moon mode on right now. Sorry, ‘Do Not Disturb’. I can’t sleep. It’s my birthday I guess, it’s past midnight already. (Static). Doesn’t feel like my birthday until I’m with you. I miss you. I saw you hours ago. I still miss you. What the hell are we going to do once we graduate, huh? I’m trying to get the fuck out of Busan, out of South Korea, and you’re gonna go try and be a proper city boy. What the hell. Honestly, I’m still waiting for high school to be like those Western movies where there flash mobs and over-dramatically falling in love and food fights in the cafeteria. There’s just books, and studying, and exams, and studying, and exams. I miss you. I can’t sleep. There’s less than a year left with you. What the hell. What the fuck Taehyung. This is such a ripoff. You’re my soulmate. I can’t sleep. I should. Let’s go watch the sunset … tonight, I guess. Sweet dreams Tae, I love you. Fuck why can’t I sleep.”
––– ––– –––
Jimin’s blond hair is a bright travesty against the setting sun. It makes him look sixteen again, with a full smile and full cheeks and a fully atrocious faded tangerine colored hair. The dye job was terrible, Taehyung would know, he was there. Sitting on the counter while telling Jimin that he should be more patient, just wait a little longer, finicky colors and gentler shades and anything that fragile takes time to set, far more time than Jimin would allow.
Jimin didn’t listen to him, of course, had nodded along and agreed and then rinsed his hair far too early for the dye to fully set. Taehyung had pouted and Jimin had laughed and then held a dry towel out to Taehyung. Jimin was, of course, too impatient to treat his brittle hair with kindness, with patient. Patience is all Taehyung’s ever known.
Jimin’s blond hair is a bright travesty against the setting sun and it makes Taehyung squint in Jimin’s direction, the remnants of sunlight still reflecting off the comings and goings of the tide.
“You’re looking at me again,” Jimin says without looking up from the tangerine he’s peeling. There’s a bowl of them set off to the side, half submerged in the sand a little bit too much for Taehyung’s liking but well, Jimin’s the one who put it there anyway.
Taehyung chuckles, switches his gaze towards the horizon. There’s a small boat in the distance, a dark blob against the vastness of the sky and the sea. Wonders if the boat’s coming closer, coming to shore, coming home. “Your hair looks good right now. Bright, too.”
“It always looks good.”
He snorts, “Bullshit.”
“Tae,” Taehyung turns his attention back to Jimin — not like it wasn’t there in the first place regardless of where he was looking — and there’s half a tangerine held in Jimin’s outstretched palm. “Have some. Your birthday boy commands you.”
“My birthday boy?” Taehyung teases as he takes the half tangerine from him. Jimin hums an affirmative. “He commands me?”
Jimin punches him lightly. “Birthday boy gets his birthday wishes during his entire birthday day. It’s almost been an entire day now.”
“Right…” Taehyung trails off as he fakes being in deep thought. “Thought you said that your birthday doesn’t really start until I’m with you, and I’ve only been here for half an hour, so —“
— “Just eat your tangerine slices please.”
Taehyung complies, shoving the entire half of the tangerine into his mouth, cheeks stretching to fit. Jimin laughs at him, not unkindly, never unkindly, and Taehyung can almost see the peals of laughter echoing out into the sea, reaching that distant blob of a boat way off shore. It must be coming home, it must be, it just doesn’t look like it yet. Can’t be more than a few dozen kilometers out to sea, maybe a bit more.
“It’s good,” he remarks after finally chewing and swallowing the last of it. “A bit sharper than usual, but still nice and sweet. Like summer.”
“I thought so too, I kinda like it that way.” Jimin starts peeling another tangerine, his short nails barely digging into the tangerine’s skin.
“Here let me,” Taehyung offers and Jimin gives it to him, small crescents of his nails pressed into the skin of the tangerine. Taehyung thumbs over the ridges, the indents, feels the way the tangerine gives into the gentle pressure of his fingers.
“Hey Tae?” Jimin asks, stretching his legs out lazily. “Do you we’ll still be doing this next year?” Jimin’s voice is light like he was just talking about the weather, or what he and Jieun did over the weekend, not like he’s asking about what’s going to happen when they — Taehyung’s finger nail digs in too deep, cuts the delicate skin of the tangerine and he curses.
“In some degree, probably.” He finishes peeling the tangerine — with patience, with care, with all the time in the world that nobody really has — and looks over at Jimin. “Why?”
Jimin shrugs and kicks his legs idly. If they were sitting down somewhere, Taehyung knows that Jimin’s feet would have just kicked and swayed in the air like a petulant child’s. Eighteen years old and never outgrew that childish trait.
Never really outgrew other things either.
“Dunno. Was thinking about it.”
“Do you think about that stuff a lot?” Taehyung doesn’t specify what exactly the stuff is, because he’s not exactly sure what stuff Jimin’s referring to. Or if it even matters come next fall anyways. He holds the peels tangerine out to Jimin and he takes it, and Taehyung keeps the peeling in his other hand. Finds something soothing in running his thumb over the textured outer layer. Besides, it makes his hands smell good.
“Dunno.” Jimin repeats. “Last night had me feeling all weird and shit. Feel weird about a lot of things right now. Unbalanced or something like a rug was just swept out from beneath me.” Jimin stills, cocks his head and looks him straight in the eye. “There’s a lot I want to stay the same, and other things I want to change. Which I can’t, no matter how hard I try.” Taehyung frowns, having lost any understanding he initially had of this conversation. “I wish I could make you as happy as possible, you know that right Taehyung-ah?”
“You…you do though. You’re my best friend. Of course you make me happy.” Jimin lets out a laugh under his breath. “You do, Jimin-ah, you really do.”
“Right. Okay.” Jimin’s eyes skitter away from Taehyung’s. “Can you kiss me you now?”
Taehyung’s taken by surprise, so of course he laughs. “That’s a bit forward of you Jimin. What would your girlfriend say?”
Jimin rolls his eyes. “Same thing she said when I kissed you for your birthday. And when you kissed me for my previous birthday. Absolutely nothing at all.”
They both smile at that, because it’s the truth, after all. It can’t be considered cheating because it’s simply platonic, they’re just birthday kisses after all. They’re absolutely nothing at all, because they don’t really mean anything to begin with. That’s what it’s been and that’s what it is and that’s what it always will ever be.
“What birthday boy wants, birthday boy gets,” Taehyung teases Jimin in an overly seductive voice. Jimin makes a sour face and Taehyung can’t help but laugh fondly. Some things never change.
“Taehyung.” Jimin says quietly, not whining or soft or sharp. Just his name as it is, as it’s always been.
“Fine,” Taehyung says as he leans in, habit taking over as he cups Jimin’s cheeks in his palms. Not unlike his fingers, the fat still sits childlike on his cheekbones like it’s refusing to give way to harsh lines, or forgot to grow up. Still a child in all the ways that don’t matter. Maybe one way that does. Taehyung’s never been able to decide.
“Happy eighteenth Jimin-ah.” He murmurs, and then presses his lips against Jimin’s. They’re soft, they’ve always been soft ever since he introduced Jimin to overnight lips masks a few years ago and Jimin got way too invested in that sector of skincare. He likes that far too much than he should, that he only tastes himself on Jimin’s lips and not the lingering traces of the peach chapstick that Jieun’s been trying out for the past two weeks and kissing Jimin with. He likes that far too much than he should, and he knows that too, and he’s far too self aware to fool himself into thinking otherwise. Some things never really do change, after all.
Taehyung smiles against Jimin’s lips before pulling back, away, heart two sizes too big.
Jimin smiles back at him, the last sliver of the setting sun caught in his eyes.
“Happy eighteenth to me.” Jimin says softly, letting out a content sigh as he closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the soft of Taehyung’s shoulder.
And Taehyung ––
Taehyung just watches the sun slip under the waves as the far away boat starts heading towards them, heading towards home.
––– ––– –––
If anyone were to ask Jimin or Taehyung why they give each other birthday kisses, they would both shrug before bursting into laughter.
It isn’t, it isn’t romantic. Not in the way people usually mean it. Yes, they love each other, yes they're best friends, and yes, for the hundredth time yes, they’re platonic.
They're platonic birthday kisses, if such a thing were to exist. And it does, obviously, because look at them.
The truth is, very early on in Jimin and Taehyung's friendship, they had stumbled through the kitchen door to find Jimin’s parent’s kissing. Jimin pulled a sour face and Taehyung interrupted the parents, confused, asking Jimin’s parents why they would touch faces like that. It didn’t look very hygienic.
Papa Park had only laughed before sitting them down at the breakfast table as Jimin’s mom left to go run an errand and explained that people who were close to each other, who trusted each other to the moon and back, who knew each other inside and out, kissed each other as a sign of trust, of closeness, and intimacy.
Taehyung had then asked what intimacy asked, and Papa Park had only chuckled as he started making ramen for the eight year old boys. They were growing up, he had said, needed to feed their growing bones.
On Taehyung’s ninth birthday, Jimin had leaned in real quick, lips still sticky with tangerine slices, and kissed the skin right next to Taehyung’s mouth, missing his actual lips in his rushed movements.
Jimin pulled back before stuttering out that they should give each other kisses, because they trust each other to the moon and back, and they’re so close that obviously they’re soulmates, and that they can’t see it but there’s actually a red thread that connects the two of them together.
That’s why Taehyung trips over nothing sometimes, it’s obviously the invisible red string. According to Jimin at the time, at least.
Taehyung had giggled, before promising that he’ll give Jimin a birthday kiss for his birthday.
And not miss.
Jimin had blushed before shoving Taehyung hard and Taehyung hadn’t bothered to stop his laughter from bubbling out.
So, it became their thing. One of their many things that made up Jimin-and-Taehyung, Taehyung-and-Jimin. And they grew up, grew older, and it was with other people that they learned all the other ways kissed could feel: when they were full of want and desire and pent up everything.
And yet, without fail, for their birthdays, they would share a tangerine, watch the sunset, and kissed each other as soulmates do.
Taehyung’s never told anyone he’s dated about him and Jimin kissing, and he doesn’t think Jimin’s ever told his current girlfriend either.
Not that it matters. Not that any of this matters, anyway.
––– ––– –––
“You guys won’t believe who my English class teacher just mentioned.” Jieun greets them in front of Taehyung’s locker.
“Who?” Taehyung asks, struggling to take out his lunch out from his backpack, the various books and papers somehow unwilling to let the lunchbox escape.
“Let me guess,” Jimin interrupts in a teasing tone before Jieun can answer, “the one and only Kim Namjoon.”
“Yeah.” She frowns for a moment. “How’d you know?”
“Because you would be smiling this big if it didn’t have something to do with Namjoon-oppa”
Jieun laughs and swats his shoulders and Taehyung tucks his face in his locker to hide his smile.
“That was years ago!”
“Was it?” Taehyung teases.
She sticks out her tongue at Taehyung, and Jimin swoops in to kiss her on the cheek. They both break into smiles, the soft kind that Taehyung’s never been given.
“I don’t tease you about when you had a crush on Jung Hoseok.”
Jimin holds up his hand for Taehyung to fist bump. “That wasn’t so much a crush as it was a —"
“Also, Hoseok-hyung was very aware of my existence, and of my attraction to him, and of his attraction to me.” Taehyung adds and Jimin winks at him. Taehyung doesn’t even try to fight the smile on his face from making itself known. “Meanwhile, I don’t think Namjoon-hyung knew you were interested in him any more than wanting him to tutor you in English.”
“Namjoon this and Namjoon that,” Jimin groans in faux annoyance, both knowing him far too well to take him seriously, “It’s me that she’s dating, not him.”
“And she’s very well aware of just how much she had to settle.” Taehyung tells him sweetly and Jieun laughs, bumps her head against Jimin’s shoulder.
“Oh fuck off Tae.” Jimin replies, smile still so big on his face.
“It’s true though,” Jieun says, “but I wouldn’t trade you for anything. Got the best boy in the world right here in my arms.”
They look at each other and smile again, so soft. They deserve it, they really do. The brightest boy and the brightest girl that Taehyung’s ever known and they’re so soft for each other. So soft.
“Yeah, you do.” Taehyung agrees.
––– ––– –––
Taehyung can no longer pretend that there’s even the last whispers of summer in the air by the end of October. They sky is still more blue than grey, but it’s the bleak kind of blue that makes no effort to trap in the heat. He hates weather like this, the kind of in between that doesn’t give any promises into becoming something actually substantial. Which is ironic, he knows, he really does.
He’s all swaddled up in a long tee and an oversized sweater that faintly smells like Jimin, might’ve actually been Jimin’s at one point in time, is mostly likely Jimin’s if he were to pause and trace the overlapping lines and years of Taehyung’s and Jimin’s things that are actually Jimin’s and Taehyung’s. Over the years, they’ve given up on keeping their closets distinctly separate. It’s a bit pointless with how much they sleep over and borrow each other’s clothes. God, they’re so tangled up in each other in so many ways. It’s cold in the apartment too, and he can hear his mother puttering around in the dining room, trying to fix up some vintage stereo she found at a flea market, the occasional static sound of random music slipping under his doorway. It’s cold, but he still refuses to close his bedroom windows. Everything always feels better when there’s a gentle breeze, when there’s movement.
There’s homework he has to finish, and study guides he has to make, but all that can wait for a few more minutes. Jieun just sent a photo to one of their mutual group chats of their high school friends. They look good in it, real good — bright smiles and glowing skin and it’s obvious they’re on a date at the bowling alley that Taehyung had suggested. They both look good, and there’s a subtle hickey peeking out from under Jimin’s shirt collar and that wasn’t there this afternoon when Jimin came over and asked for help getting dressed for the date. Two years after Jieun asked him out in the middle of a guest lecture and Jimin’s still shamelessly asking Taehyung for help to get dressed and Taehyung still lets him.
Jimin’s the first to reply, just a simple kissy face emoji, the sap that he is, the little boy with a lot of love that he is. Taehyung stares at the screen for a moment, watches everyone else reply before typing his own response. Bowling pins and a winky face. He hesitates before pressing send, maybe there’s a joke in there, an innuendo of some kind, his minds only working at half capacity right now.
He should ask Seokjin later on when he calls him.
He presses send anyway. He should call Seokjin later on anyway, hear all about university and scary professors and the business of it all. But for now, he sits at his desk and stares at his screen, the chilly wind slipping through the weaved knit of maybe-Jimin’s-maybe-Taehyung’s sweater. There’s a pinned tab on his browser, a map of the two continents with a blue arc denoting a distance of about ten thousand kilometers. Europe to Asia. He should delete it, he knows, it’s just a drain on his computer. Spain to Korea. Hoseok would tell him to, and probably Seokjin. Namjoon might be sentimental to advocate against it. Jimin to Taehyung. Either way, it doesn’t matter, not yet at least. Not yet.
There’s a ton of shit he needs to do, should be doing right now, but he thinks he should just sit here for a minute, maybe two. That’s a good idea, no homework sets, no study guides, no messages from his phone and no hickey on Jimin’s neck. He’ll just take a minute, maybe two, listen to his mom take a broken thing and teach it how to sing again as the chill wraps around him like a hug. A hug. That sounds nice, it really does.
––– ––– –––
Jimin’s fourteen and drunk on love. He isn’t in love, no of course not, because it would be obvious to him if he were. At least, that’s what Taehyung can understand as Jimin is dancing around the apartment. Something about love being as bold as planets colliding, or the moon falling into the sea, or some shit like. Honestly, Taehyung just wants to finish reading the required chapter for Monday.
Jimin’s fourteen and drunk on the idea of love and Taehyung wants to finish his reading but he can’t help but gaze fondly at his best friend with pink hair and tiny hands spin around the room at the mere thought of meeting the person that’ll sweep him off his feet, unrepentant and unflinching and unabashed.
Jimin’s also a little bit drunk, was experimenting with combining a taro boba drink with vodka but that’s neither here nor there.
Jimin’s fourteen, and Taehyung is too, and he can’t for the life of him imagine what it would be like if love were to barge into his life like a drunkard crashing through the front door. He doesn’t think that’s possible. For him at least. He doesn’t need a loud kind of love, he doesn’t even know if he can love loud enough, big enough for someone like Jimin to hear, to notice. Knows he doesn’t need to imagine to know, not really.
That’s okay though, because even though Taehyung’s only been fourteen for less than a month, he’s still fourteen years old and understands more than he did at thirteen and twelve and eleven and understands that Jimin needs something different, something grander than that.
Jimin twirls over to where Taehyung’s sitting and slumps into the empty chair beside him. He leans haphazardly into Taehyung’s side and Taehyung scoots closer if only to make sure that Jimin’s chair doesn’t tip to the side.
“Thinking about your prince charming?” He asks and Jimin giggles into his arm.
“Or princess. Or both.” Jimin adds. “Oh I really like the idea of both.”
“You deserve something like that,” Taehyung says as he picks his book back up, thumbs back to the beginning of the chapter.
Jimin sighs dreamily, “Yeah, I really do.”
Jimin nuzzles into his arms and Taehyung absentmindedly runs his hand through Jimin’s hair a few times before picking up where he left off. The beginning of the chapter, first page, and all it’s talking about is children and their unbreakable fragile hearts. Taehyung puts the book down and tries to think of anything else at all.
––– ––– –––
Taehyung takes two minutes, maybe five, maybe ten, and then he’s just frozen solid by the chill in his room and the phone that has made a single sound since the phot of Jimin and Jieun at the bowling alley.
It’s the second Friday of the month, which doesn’t mean much to anyone at all, but to Taehyung it means being bombarded by photos in their three person group chat and Jieun sending discreet of Jimin acting like a beautiful fool in love and Jimin sending audio recordings of their conversations, just snippets really, over dumb stuff like differing opinions about word pronunciations or if black cats are magical or sometimes it’s just memorializing the sounds of things. The clatter of a busy diner, the quiet waves coming to shore, Jieun’s raspy laugh and Jimin sounding so fond, so terribly fond of it all.
But tonight it’s just silence, blessed cursed silence that Taehyung finds all too stifling, chafing against it as he struggles to focus enough to work on his study guides. Another minute goes by, a few more, and he puts his pencil down and picks his phone up. Dials a number he knows by heart and doesn’t even hear it ring before they pick up.
“Hyung,” He says in lieu of a greeting, “Tell me about Hanyang. Please”
There’s laughter on the other side of the call, noisy like he’s in the middle of a crowded room or a party or something livelier than the stillness of Taehyung’s empty apartment.
“I’m putting you on speaker,” Hoseok says as a warning. Taehyung hums, confused. “Everyone,” Hoseok shouts and Taehyung has to pull away from his phone just a little bit, “this is Tae, he’s my favorite person in the entire world and he’s following me here next year so he better become your favorite person too.”
“I’m not following you, Hyung,” Taehyung retorts. “Hey everyone, I’m Taehyung, and I’m cooler than Hoseok-hyung.”
Somebody shouts “that’s a pretty fucking low bar!” and Taehyung can't stop himself from laughing as Hoseok tries to defend himself.
“Just tell him everything about Hanyang so he’ll come hang out with me here. He doesn’t believe that I’m actually cool.” Hoseok manages to get out in between the laughter and the jokes and Taehyung squawks in indignation and suddenly the room on the other end of the line is clamoring with anecdotes and professors to avoid and the best study spots and Taehyung listens, and laughs and dreams and for once autumn is more than the distance between two points.
––– ––– –––
Halloween, to Taehyung, is one of the most inconsequential events of the year, easily overshadowed by the Fireworks Festival that occurs a week or two prior.
The Fireworks Festival, at least, involves gold shimmers lighting up the sky as Jimin gasps at the accompanying boom. Makes the most beautiful mess of a gorgeous night sky in the most dazzling way. Halloween is just … another reason to for teenagers and foreigners to throw parties while Taehyung and Jimin usually have their heads stuck in their textbooks.
Call it serendipity or fate or simply the universe listening to Jimin’s desires as it always does, but a month ago Jimin had declared that he was going to go to a halloween party — exams be damned — and suddenly all their teachers had made decided to shuffle around their exam schedule just a bit, for some reasons or another and all Taehyung could think while in the middle of their History teacher explaining why the exam day was moved was that Jimin really could get anything he wants, anything at all. .
What Jimin wants, Jimin gets. At this point Taehyung has just accepted that as a truth written in the stars.
Jimin had wanted to go to the party, and wanted Taehyung to pull his head out of his book and come with him, so here Taehyung is, three hours after being pulled through the front door of the party host’s house whose name he still doesn’t know, peeling off his socks as he sits down beside the party host’s pool, the rest of the partygoers having abandoned it an hour ago for a karaoke machine in the living room.
It’s quiet out here, the only disruption to the calm of the night is the occasionally spike of laughter, and the only light provided is the full moon, the house lights spilling through the open windows, and the pale blue lights that dot the walls of the pool.
Taehyung dips his feet in, surprised at the warmth of the water, smiles at the rabbles that emanate from his motion. Sways his feet, just to see those ripples bounced off and onto one another, fade back into the stillness of the water.
There’s something soothing about resting your feet in a strangers pool at midnight.
Maybe it’s the healing nature of water, even with all the chlorine in it. Or maybe it’s just relaxing, watching the ripples spread quietly above the blue pool lights as muted laughter and music shake the house from indoors. Whatever it is, it makes him feel better than it did back when he was hanging out in the kitchen, stuck peeled to the wall and somehow frozen by the business, the loudness — the liveliness— of it all.
From behind, he can hear the door creak as it open. “Taehyungie,” the laughter and music crescendo for a moment before the door closes again. “What are you thinking about?”
Or maybe it’s soothing just because Taehyung knows that whenever he slips away, Jimin will eventually follow.
What Jimin wants, Jimin gets. Where Taehyung goes, Jimin follows. Except not really, not really at all.
Taehyung idly kicks his feet back and forth underwater, and watches as Jimin sits down beside him, peeling off his dainty lace socks before dipping his feet in too.
Jimin, despite Halloween not really being a thing here, was determined to dress up for the party that just so happened to fall on Hallow’s Eve.
Taehyung had watched out of the corner of his eye as he attempted to focus on his history paper, as Jimin scurried in and out of his room, dropping lace clothing and and vintage jewelry on the bed.
“What’s your costume?” Taehyung had asked after an hour of fruitless studying, baffled as he watched Jimin pick through the different clothes and jewelry. There was lace, a lot of lace, but also satin and denim and a fabric so sheer that it simply looked like the air was shimmering.
Taehyung tried not to think about that one too much, at all the possibilities of it.
“I don’t have one.” Jimin had laughed. “These are just all the things that make me feel pretty.”
Taehyung had hummed in acknowledgment, eyes roving over the various shiny earrings and necklaces. “You’re always pretty Jiminie, and handsome too,” he said as he held up a single earring, a shimmering cascade of silver strings. “Here, I think this would look pretty catching the lights.”
Jimin wrinkled his nose in thought. “They look like something Baz Luhrmann would have an actor wear,” he said decidedly delighted, eyes scrunching up into crescents.
Shit, Taehyung had thought as his heart warmed, I want to always make you smile like that.
Instead, Taehyung just laughed and said that they never should have watched that version of Romeo & Juliet and Jimin just shoved at him and said that it was his idea in the first place.
“Tae,” Jimin nudges his shoulder, take him back to right here, right now, “What’s going on up there?” Jimin raps his knuckles against his temple. The simplest of touches and Taehyung’s mind goes spinning.
“I…” Taehyung’s mind stills, searching for a truth that isn’t the truth. It’s chilly outside, and there’s a pool of water, and there’s Jimin clothes in varying shades of white. “I want to have an underwater kiss like in Romeo & Juliet.”
“Is that what you want?” Jimin asks carefully. His fingers move to tap against Taehyung’s open palm, trace over his outstretched fingers. Restless and warm, always moving. Jimin used to be shy about this kind of affection, the needless hand touching and hand hold and hand touching skin, so every morning during break at primary school Jimin would offer to read Taehyung’s palm, grubby fingernails skimming over his open palm, reluctant to withdraw as he stuttered through an explanation of his life and love lines.
Taehyung quickly caught on, and when Jimin would read his palm, he would close his fist around Jimin’s tiny fingers. Jimin would try to fruitlessly wriggle out of his grasp, and as a compromise they would intertwine their fingers, palm to palm. Comfort in a way that only children shamelessly seek. Except for Jimin, that is.
It took six years for Jimin to finally admit that he had no idea how to read palms. Taehyung had laughed and wrapped himself around Jimin, said that he figured that out on the second day, and then offered to read Jimin’s palm for real.
Jimin slips his foot in between Taehyung’s legs, pins his left foot against the roughness of the pool wall. Jimin — always touching, always seeking, always moving. Always moving. Taehyung wants to laugh all of a sudden, and cry, and build a time machine and go back in time and convince Jimin to take English with him, not Spanish. Never Spanish, not when it —
“Tae,” He begins slowly, “do you really want that?’
Do you really want that? Jimin asks, and Taehyung knows that if he said I want nothing more, then Jimin would say then I’ll do it for you.
He knows that Jimin would giggle and and push Taehyung into the pool before following suit, Taehyung's wings — Jimin insisted that he wear his so he’d have at least excuse of a halloween costume — weightless in the water and Jimin’s glitter floating off from his skin as he pulls them both under. Jimin would do that, for Taehyung, would pull them both under and kiss him even with chlorine slipping between their lips, simply because Taehyung wants to be kissed underwater.
Never mind the fact that he’s dating Jieun, has been for a while now, and that she’ll taste the terrible chlorine on his lips later on. Not that she doesn’t know, this terrible affection that Jimin holds for him, that has Taehyung squinting his eyes sometimes and staring at all these blurred lines, all these messy ways they’re tangled up in each other until it makes sense again. Neatly packaged into their own boxes and boundaries and barriers carefully erected until something blurs again, until Taehyung squints his eyes and blurs the world a bit and lets himself imagine, just for a second, just for a heartbeat.
“No,” Taehyung finally replies, voice careful in its neutrality. “Not really.”
“So what do you want?”
This, this, especially, has always been a slippery slope with Jimin.
Jimin’s the type of person who believes that you should want whatever you want, regardless if it’s a flower or good luck or the world, and then bend over backwards trying to give it to you.
“What do you want?” Jimin asks, has always asked, because the rest of the phrase is needless when Taehyung has always known what he means.
Taehyung balances Jimin out in that regard, understands that just because he wants a flower, good luck, to be loved back, that doesn’t mean he can have it. Doesn’t mean he needs it, either.
“I think I just want to stay here, just for a few minutes longer,” Taehyung answers. “With you.”
Jimin bumps his shoulder, and then leans his head against it, his blond hair rough as it brushes against Taehyung’s neck.
“What do you want?” Jimin has always asked. “Because I’ll give it to you.”
And, selfishly, he almost tell Jimin. Which is foolish, given that he already has Jimin. Already has him resting against his shoulder in the chilled autumn night instead of flitting around the indoor party with his girlfriend like Taehyung knows he wants to, He already has him so why does he still ––
He closes his eyes, pictures the thought as a pebble, and then imagines tossing it into the pool in front of him, sinking down, down, down, until it rests gently against the bottom.
Heavy.
He opens his eyes as a breeze ripples past the pool, Jimin’s white lace and exposed skin no match against it as he presses further into Taehyung’s side to seek warmth.
The imaginary pebble rises from the pool surface, bubbling as it breaches the pool surface: the thought, the desire, the wish, the want of it twisting Taehyung’s heart something funny.
You, Taehyung thinks plainly, I want you.
––– ––– –––
“Seokjin-hyung,” He whispers into the phone, “I’m so in love with him I think it’s starting to hurt.”
“I know Taehyung-ah, believe me I know.” Comes the hushed reply, thousands of kilometers away in the heart of Seoul.
“I don’t want it to hurt, I don’t I don’t I don’t.”
––– ––– –––
When Taehyung was eleven, he was scared of heights, and water, and swimming, and falling.
Jimin, also age eleven, was scared of no such things. Seokjin and Namjoon had tagged along too, Namjoon with his favorite book and Seokjin with his newest game boy and they took turns pestering each other the entire trip, never touching their respective toys once.
It was the beginning of spring, and their families had taken them to a semi secluded beach about two hours away from the center of the city by train.
The beach was cold, the fog having only recently receded back into the sea, and Jimin had found an outcrop of rock that he could jump off of and into the sea.
The water was as deep as it was calm.
Yet as Jimin leapt off the ledge, Taehyung had stepped back.
When Taehyung was eleven, he was scared of many things, and he hadn’t yet learned how to voice his fears.
He hadn’t needed to learn, when Jimin had taken one look up at him after resurfacing, and had immediately scrambled back up the rocks to where Taehyung stood frozen.
“You don’t have to jump if you don’t want to,” Jimin said as he reached for Taehyung’s wrist. “But, if you do want, we could jump together? It wouldn’t be scary, if it was with me, right? If it was me?”
Mute, Taehyung had nodded.
Jimin laughed, delighted.
He took hold of Taehyung’s hand, intertwining their fingers. Jimin’s fingers were so pudgy still, like it was only that part of him that didn’t know it was time to start growing up.
Taehyung adored them.
“Jump!” Jimin giggled, and then leapt off the ledge, and so Taehyung followed, tugged along by their joined hands.
The fall was gentle.
But the chill of the water stole his breath from him once he sunk underwater, and he remembers gasping for air as he resurfaced.
He remembers blinking the water out of his eyes, and Jimin being the first thing he sees.
Pale from the winter with lips a dark plum from freezing water, but still laughing nonetheless.
Jimin has always been the first –– the only –– thing he sees.
The fall, in every sense of the word, was gentle.
––– ––– –––
Not for the first time, Taehyung feels like he’s drowning.
He always does around this time of year, when the practice exams and textbooks and revision notes pile up and up and up as the end of semester exams come speeding towards him.
And, like clockwork, when Taehyung starts to flounder and slip under the waves of all the stress and expectations and everything else that his shoulders have been deemed responsible enough to bear, Jimin holds onto him.
They’re always touchy, part of their soulmate bond and everything, but for these few weeks in the end of fall, they’re practically inseparable.
If Taehyung sits down to have lunch, then Jimin drapes himself over his back. If Taehyung is at his desk making flash cards, then Jimin is leaning against his legs as he pours overs his own history textbook. Jimin knows Taehyung well. He knows him well.
Jieun never minds that, how touchy Jimin and Taehyung are, since she’s just as touchy with her own female friends. Both of them are bisexual and they agreed very early on in their relationship that it takes too much energy to be wary of anyone and everyone. Jimin still struggles with jealousy though, he’s just gotten better at hiding it from her, chooses instead to stomp over to Taehyung’s and scream into his pillow and pester Taehyung with questions that he knows are only born from insecurities and nothing else.
So Jimin’s overly affectionate with Taehyung, and Jieun’s overly affectionate with Hyejin and Minsoo and all of her other friends that she’s known since she first moved here back when they were all fifteen, Daegu accent still strong and all the more shameless for it.
Sometimes, when Taehyung is out late at the library, then Jimin would hang out with Jieun and then kiss her goodbye and then waltz into the library sometime after sunset. On the days that Jieun has debate club, she would swing by after she finished and hang out with them for a bit, comparing her homework answers to Taehyung’s and swapping rough drafts of papers with Jimin. It’s a good system they have, the three of them. She hasn’t been around as much lately. Taehyung makes a mental note to hang out with her as soon as they’re both free. Tonight, Jimin smuggled in some precious contraband like chocolate snacks and dried seaweed and then plop down next to him and start working on some homework collar pulled up high around his neck and hair a little more ruffled than usual.
Taehyung never mentions it, how Jimin wordlessly becomes Taehyung’s shadow during these few weeks when he’s so overwhelmed, he’s just one wrong move away from breaking down. They get each other like that, understanding without needing words. It must be a soulmate thing. Red string and half oranges and all that goodness.
The intercom overhead crackles to life, a distorted voice informing the occupants that the library will be closing in ten minutes, and Taehyung starts packing up. already wincing at the amount of studying he still needs to do once he gets home.
“How did your studying go?” He asks Jimin as he winces at the amount of studying he still needs to do once he gets home as he tidies all his loose sheets into a pile.
Jimin doesn’t answer.
Taehyung turns to face him, is expecting to maybe see him so engrossed in his studying that he didn’t think to actually reply, which happens far more often than Jimin likes to admit. The first and last time Hoseok studied with them he laughed in astonishment as he teasingly called Taehyung a closeted nerd. Which, he isn’t, really. It’s just he loves some things a lot quieter than he loves others.
Instead, he sees Jimin. Close eyed and slack jawed and one side of his face all smushed against his open math textbook. He looks adorable. He looks like a gremlin. He looks like an adorable gremlin that’s in a well-deserved sleep.
Jimin should have gone home hours ago, back when he started yawning, but he stubbornly insisted on staying as long as his ‘Taehyunggie’ did.
Something in Taehyung’s heart clenches and he wishes he could capture this moment exactly as is and hold it until he gets dizzy with it all, dizzy with the simple-minded affection he’s always held for this sleeping boy beside him. This sleeping boy — barefaced and blemished with fatigue underneath his eyes and a bird's nest of his hair — is a Jimin that only he knows no matter the distance between them.
Not even Jieun knows him like this.
Jimin starts snoring and Taehyung doesn’t even attempt to restrain himself from cooing at him.
“Jiminnie.” He says as softly as he can as he runs his fingers through Jimin’s dry and tangled hair. One of the lovely side-effects of bleached hair that’s never been given a respite in years. “Jiminnie, you gotta wake up.”
Jimin only snores in response.
Taehyung packs up the rest of Jimin’s study materials, saving the textbook Jimin’s napping on for last as he puts everything away.
“Jiminnie, we gotta go.”
Jimin’s eyes start to flutter open, and he smacks his lips sleepily. “What?”
“C’mon you goose, the libraries closing.”
“Oh.”
Taehyung watches endeared as Jimin blearily gets up, eyes still only half open.
“Taehyungie?” Jimin slurs as he puts his backpack on. “Can I stay over at yours tonight?”
“Can’t even stay awake for the extra train stop it’ll take to get to yours?” Taehyung teases as they make their way out into the night.
Jimin pauses, slowly blinks. “Yeah. That.”
“Of course, Jiminnie, always.”
“Right…” Jimin trails off. “Always.”