Archive of Our Own

River Flows in You

I

Seven.

Seven years old when Taehyung finally understood that he wanted Min Yoongi to like him.

Of course, it was platonic. Yoongi was Jungkook’s older brother and he was just so cool. He was a quiet kid, unlike Jungkook who was loud and fast and was constantly plotting something for him and Taehyung to do. He was smart and artistic, even for a kid, and he had that silence that enveloped him that made Taehyung want to hear all his sounds one day.

Made Taehyung want to discover.

Taehyung was in the middle of them, two years younger than Yoongi, two years older than Jeongguk, and in the middle he drifted for time enough to wonder where he’d fit better. Jeongguk was his little brother back then, not yet his best friend. Yoongi was the cool quiet one who was constantly playing by himself and drawing or just reading alone.

Yeah, he read alone a lot.

Taehyung used to sit near him in between the three seconds he managed to keep Jeongguk distracted and just try to come up with something, something that maybe would make Min Yoongi acknowledge him. He used to sit and ask “What are you reading, hyung?”, to which Yoongi would only offer an unamused look like Taehyung was the most annoying kid around.

Because yeah, even though at nine, Yoongi seemed to think he was too mature and too cool and Taehyung believed him because how could he not? If Yoongi believed so himself. Taehyung learned that early that people believe in the same thing you believe about yourself.

Of course, he didn’t know it yet.

He just knows he believed Yoongi to be the greatest of all time, since Yoongi seemed to believe it too.

“You should be taking care of Gguk, Taehyung” the kid mumbled, same apathetic and flat expression that has kept with him until adulta age, looking back at his book “If you want to be a good hyung to him, you have to pay attention and be careful so he doesn’t get in trouble”

Taehyung blushed and nodded quickly, because Yoongi was a great hyung to Jeongguk and he wanted to be so too. And he wanted Yoongi to be proud of him.

“Yes hyung, I’ll take care of him”

And Taehyung did.

He took care of Jungkook the whole time, not only because he loved Jeonggukie but also because he wanted Yoongi to tell him he did good, to be proud and happy with his behavior.

Taehyung took care of Jungkook until they were the bestest of the friends, until the two years apart didn’t matter, until they met Jimin and the three of them became inseparable during school and until they went to high school together.

Yoongi never really seemed proud.

Actually, he didn’t seem to care at all.

Never.

Taehyung has tried. He has tried to share with Yoongi his passion about piano, because Yoongi plays it so beautifully so that it really does something to Taehyung’s inner balance. Because Taehyung plays it too and he thinks maybe Yoongi can talk to him about it since Jimin and Jungkook don’t share the same interest and often say Taehyung is boring with his “old people music”. He knows they’re kidding when they make fun of his appreciation for art and classical music, because they know it’s important to Taehyung, but he still can’t really have a conversation with them because they won’t really know what he’s talking about. However Yoongi barely listens to Taehyung and shoos him away just like he does with Jungkook because Taehyung is like his annoying younger brother. Except they’re a little older and Taehyung doesn’t see Yoongi as an older brother anymore and it’s kind of scary.

Scary because Taehyung finds out what feelings are too goddamn soon and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He was rejected before he even knew he was giving something.

Yoongi also never wants to see Taehyung’s drawings, or talk to him about books, or listen about the exposition he went to, and Taehyung feels sad because he likes those things and he’d like to share them with Yoongi because he thinks maybe he likes them too, but he never, ever listens to Taehyung.

At some point it gets cruel.

It gets really cruel because at that point Taehyung wonders if Yoongi would even be able to like him. Does he even likes boys, and if he does, would he even like Taehyung? The realization is excruciatingly painful because yes, Yoongi likes boys too, Jungkook says. But he doesn’t like Taehyung. And why not? Taehyung wonders for several nights in a row, for weeks, for months, looking at the fluorescent stars on the ceiling of his bedroom that he glued there in the shape of Perseus, the constellation, when he was a kid who found a Greek Mythology book. They have so much in common, Taehyung thinks, and Yoongi would like him if he ever gave him a chance, he knows that.

He knows that.

But the fact is Yoongi doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want Taehyung.

It gets crueller then, to try to get over him, because it doesn’t really matter how much Taehyung tries, he can’t. He can’t stop the effervescent warm feeling manifesting in his body as soon and he hears the low hoarse mumble of Yoongi’s voice. He can’t stop the bubbly giddiness in his stomach in those rare moments Yoongi sits with the three of them on the couch to watch the movie with them, so close Taehyung can smell his human and still very earthy scent that Taehyung just would love to get intoxicated with. He can’t stop his hand from aching with the need to have Yoongi’s bony, pale and long fingers intertwining with his.

He just can’t.

It’s like his body refuses to get over him. It’s like his whole self has gotten used to loving Yoongi, wanting him, needing him. It doesn’t matter how many boys Taehyung kisses, goes on dates, or even fuck. Min Yoongi it’s engraved in his body, under his skin, like tattoos, and it doesn’t even make sense anymore, since there is no intimacy, no consistency to their whatevership. Because they’re older now and Taehyung knows enough about relationships to know whatever he has with Yoongi, is not it. And it’s lacking. It’s lacking in closeness and confidentiality.

There’s nothing to it.

Just a mildly increasing infatuation that clouds his judgement and mind and sits almost oppressively over his self love and sense of self worth.

Because yeah, he knows even though Yoongi sits with them sometimes on the couch and even though he smiles at Taehyung sometimes like he’s amused at something he said, and even though he casually exchanges words with his heartbreaking naturality, Min Yoongi doesn’t and will never want him.

It just drags through the years, out of school to high school to the university halls because yeah, even though Yoongi is years ahead and they saw each other much less in the past two years because Yoongi was gone before, Taehyung is perpetually attached to him. He is perpetually attached to the stupid pride and gratitude that comes with the smallest of Yoongi’s actions directed at him, like he is special somehow for deserving them.

For deserving simple ‘thank yous’ or small acknowledging rustles or polite smiles that are given as rarely as comet Halley cross Earth and are given to anyone. Small meaninglessnesses that are devoided of significance to Yoongi but mean the world to Taehyung.

And it’s problematic. Yeah, it’s fucking problematic and Taehyung is not unaware of it. Of how meaningless it all is to Yoongi and how it mirrors perfectly how meaningful it is to Taehyung.

And again, it drags through the years until it comes to this very moment.

The moment when Jimin and Jungkook are finally dating, and Taehyung shares his apartment with Jimin and Hoseok, their friend they met at the dance studio of Jimin’s uni, while Jeongguk still shares it with his older brother, because they’re that close. The moment when Taehyung is saying goodbye to Jeongguk and see you tomorrow and when he closes the door behind his back Yoongi is there, standing in the hallway, dressed in black like he always is, bangs covering his feline-like eyes and mouth in a permanent pout when he mumbles “Can I talk to you Taehyung-ah?”.

It’s a crazy hybrid moment, like a mix of time-lapse and slow motion and the heavy words being poured onto Taehyung’s shoulders because “Can I talk to you” is everything Taehyung has ever wanted to hear from Yoongi and yet…

… yet the words feel unsettling and misplaced like they don’t belong in the world. Like they don’t belong in existence. Like they’re made to be trapped in that secret unnoticed little bubble under reality where Yoongi sees Taehyung, really sees him, rather than freed into a materiality that suddenly seems too harsh. 

Because when Taehyung nods and says “Of course, hyung” and they walk near the stairs, Yoongi’s face tells everything he hasn’t in almost seventeen years. And Taehyung doesn’t know the facts yet, or why they’re even there, but he knows what’s about to happen.

He knows it’s hopeless.

“I am dating” Yoongi blurts out too damn slow and Taehyung hates slow-mo and misses time lapse because it stings behind his eyes as if his body has processed the words before his mind and heart “I am dating this guy and I thought I should tell you”

Okay.

Taehyung didn’t know /that/.

Silence grows thicker and heavier almost like it’s tactile before there’s any reaction.

And then...

Taehyung is whatever he wants to be.

He is great at showing his feelings, mostly doesn’t try at all to hide his affection or his fondness or his interest. If something annoys him, he can show his distaste and discontent with such clarity words become unnecessary, because he has never needed them anyway.

Taehyung’s language of love is through his body. Through his eyes, through his touches. Jimin, Jungkook, Hobi, they all know Taehyung loves them and he never needed to say. Not the conventional way. Taehyung expresses through his paintings, through his music, through the way they hold hands and leans to their bodies and the way he looks at them when he laughs.

He has control over it though. He can give the warmest glances and the coldest ones. The most loving eyes and the most indifferent ones. He has learned to. He has learned when things get to the surface he is vulnerable, and that’s how he learned to obstruct it. Like things are still surfacing but he puts a cap in front of them, and no one will ever know.

Taehyung is a great liar, a great actor, and yes, he has never, ever tried it with Yoongi, he has never purposefully hidden it. On the contrary, he has always, always left it there, drifting on air between them, clear enough so maybe Yoongi would feel curious enough to catch it and examine it like a kid who catches a butterfly.

But Yoongi was never curious enough and now he is saying it, he is saying he has caught something more interesting and that’s when Taehyung realizes, almost automatically, that it’s time to gather his feelings and lock them in. So he closes it, traps all his feelings behind his eyes just like the tears he won’t allow to fall until he’s safe and far from Yoongi.

“Oh?” he mutters, watching as Yoongi’s eyes travel over his face, going back to his eyes after a while, in an attempt of seeing anything, any reaction.

It worked.

Taehyung wants to smirk because he likes to win, likes to leave people on the dark, not knowing what to expect or even what they’re seeing. However it’s sad, that his expressionless face is the only possible one that suits for the moment of heartbreak, because Taehyung has given Yoongi a lot, but he won’t give this.

“Okay?”

He says it like a question because he wants Yoongi to explain. He actually wants him to confess he kind of always knew because it’s the only explanation for him to be telling Taehyung this now.

And if he always knew, then he’s an asshole.

“I thought I should let you know”, Yoongi repeats, and in his words it’s clear how surprised he is with Taehyung’s lack of reaction.

Because he knows Taehyung well enough to know he is indeed a cry baby, but not well enough to know he’s also a pretender.

“Why?”, the question comes out genuine and it’s good, to see how Yoongi’s eyes widen as he is surprised about Taehyung’s response.

That’s one more thing to add on the list of Taehyung’s artistic skills. Acting.

Taehyung realizes he likes seeing Yoongi’s face shifting to confusion and unexpectation. The sight hits sweetly in the middle of all the bitterness of the moment.

“B- because of… you know” Yoongi shrugs and Taehyung raises a brow, making it as frustrating to the elder as he can, because he’s a brat and he does what he can to make sure he’s a pain in the ass “your f-feelings for me?”

It’s almost amusing, if it wasn’t painful, to see Yoongi suddenly unsure of his words and actions. Him, who always considered himself the adult one, the mature one. Him who has always had confidence on display.

“Okay hyung” the smile comes easy, because it’s real. It’s not for the same reason Yoongi thinks it is, but real nevertheless.

Taehyung is smiling because he can’t believe Yoongi did this.

He actually can’t believe Yoongi did this.

Yoongi outed him just to reject him, which he thinks it’s pretty mean, although he sees his intentions were not.

Taehyung tightens the grip on the shoulder strap of his caramel leather and worn out bag and nods, compressing his lips in a sympathetic curve, as if he pities Yoongi. As if he is not the one getting bluntly rejected out of nowhere.

He turns around to walk down the stairs, because he really is a practical person and doesn’t see any reason to keep having this pointless dialogue since Yoongi has already admitted he knew about Taehyung’s feelings all this time, which honestly makes it more painful even if Taehyung isn’t exactly shocked.

“Wait, Taehyungie” the nickname comes as a tsunami instead of a pleasant and light ondulation of the water that lifts you up like it should.

Taehyung would never think he’d hear it in this situation.

“Yes?” Taehyung sounds tired as he turns around from where he stands, almost at the end of the stairs.

As tired as you can be after years of unrequited feelings.

“A- are you upset?” the little pout Taehyung has hoped countless times whispered warm words seem more offensive than the nerve Yoongi has to even ask that question.

Because apparently he is one of those people who can’t stand to have someone upset at them, even though it’s their right to be. Taehyung wonders if he is sorry because Taehyung made it clear how insensitive is his stunt of warning about his new relationship or if he really cares.

Taehyung knows the answer already.

Because Yoongi has never cared before, so why would he have started now?

“Am I upset because you’re dating or because you pulled out my own confession, even though I have never made a move, just to reject me?” his head tilts to a side, the wavy brown locks over his glasses, almost as if they’re trying to protect his eyes from facing Yoongi.

Yoongi is not tall, and his posture kind of sucks, but it goes unnoticed and no one would even realize unless he changed it. Which is why it’s so easy for Taehyung to realize he is tensing up, because his lips part and his eyes widen ever so slightly but significatively when it’s an event so rare and he looks taller because he is not curved forward anymore.

“Because for the first one, I could never be that selfish hyung, nor that immature to the point of getting upset at you for loving someone” the sincerity in Taehyung’s grave voice is so clear it’s almost tactile “And for the second, I am actually surprised. I don’t really need words, Yoongi hyung, and neither do you, so I don’t really understand you’re giving me them now after all the years of silent rejection, which was honestly louder than the words you said just now”

Taehyung can see each one of his words hitting Yoongi’s body and he can observe, again in slow motion as he reacts, shaking his head in a negative as if he is just realizing, having a twisted epiphany about his behavior. His chest swells like he’s about to explain, but Taehyung doesn’t allow, because now the words came out he thinks this is almost deliciously cathartic and he likes their taste.

“I understand hyung, of course I do, it’s a complicated situation” Taehyung’s voice is lofty and he likes hearing himself “but to answer you, no, I am not upset. How could I get upset over something I have known since forever? You’re as good as hiding your lack of fondness as I was at hiding my excess of it” he giggles, and he sounds so light he can almost believe he is actually okay “Don’t worry for my heart now hyung, your timing isn’t the greatest. But don’t feel guilty for not worrying before, it’s as much your fault not liking me as it is mine having liked you” Yoongi moves his foot to the lower step and Taehyung mirrors his action, being finally back to the front door “I have never expected you to like me because you have always made it clear you had no interest so… I just never thought you’d actually address me words to it. As I said, none of us ever needed them, but since you’re using them now, I am too, just to make it clear to you that I don’t want or need you to explain or warn me of anything. We’re too far gone to start that now”

The lump downing Yoongi’s throat with all his justifications is loud enough Taehyung sees it from the lower floor, and then he knows the conversation is over, even though it wasn’t a conversation properly.

“Anyways, I really have to go” the door handle it’s colder under his fingers “bye hyung… and congratulations, honestly. I hope you know I truly wish you the best”

By the time Yoongi unfreezes to mumble a choked up thank you and a goodbye, the door is closed and Taehyung is already riding his bike as fast as he can, because there’s no way he’ll allow the tide gates to open and his tears to pour until he is home and far from Yoongi.

**

Jimin’s forehead is pressed against Taehyung’s temple, because he has healing powers and Taehyung just knows it.

They have this thing.

They have always had this thing ever since they met (and thank God they did) where they press their foreheads against each other’s to share their thoughts and emotions and to transfer good things to the other.

It’s a silly joke, or a superstition, and it started after they fought the first time and Taehyung felt the overwhelming pain of having Jimin mad at him, so he walked to him, pressed their foreheads together and whispered “I’m robbing your anger to keep it away from you” and Jimin giggled.

He giggled.

And it became a thing.

At first it was just theirs, because even though Jeongguk it’s his oldest friend, Jimin has accessed his soul so deeply and instantaneously that it couldn’t be anything other than destiny that reunited them. Because Jimin is a part of Taehyung and when he found him he found a missing piece of himself, and then lots of things started making sense.

So yeah, at first it was just theirs but then it was Jungkook’s too and then Hobi’s and now they all heal each other telepathically. Yet, Taehyung is sure Jimin himself has powers because he is a relief to his spirit that no one else is.

That’s why he is curled on his mattress and his tears flow unstoppably and Jimin is bigger spooning and eventually kissing his temple.

“Let it out” Jimin whispers so lovingly, his small hands rubbing circles on Taehyung’s chest right over his heart, almost collecting the violent beats under his rib cages and trying to calm them down “Let it out”

The sobs are loud.

So loud they fill Taehyung’s small bedroom, reverberating on his wooden pallets, on the small replicas of famous paintings that are covering the walls and that he painted himself, on the vase with Ceriman plant and the fairy lights and the map with all the constellations he drew and painted on his ceiling when he moved, because he missed his fluorescent Perseus stars.

It’s like his small room is a dome and he drowns inside it and his tears fill it to the point he feels floating. And as his sobs slow the frequency and volume, it’s so good and exorcising, to have his body becoming weightless as he is surrounded by his own noises and Jimin’s peaceful heartbeat against his back. And he doesn’t feel gravity working until crying comes back to being suffocating because he’s reached the roof and there’s no more space to the salty wetness that goes back to drown him, and his punches on the dome are synchronized with his violent heartbeats against Jimin’s hand.

“I don’t even know why it’s hurting this bad” Taehyung hates how thick and tangled his voice sounds, with as much clarity as a dark hole “I- it’s not like I didn’t know”

Jimin’s hums sound as musical and soothing as a Solfeggio Frequency “Because there’s a difference between knowing it and hearing it” his fingers thread through Taehyung’s curls, pulling it away from his sweaty forehead “Words are meaningful for a reason Taehyungie. They’re powerful even if you already know”

He nods, face twisting in a grimace before more tears leak, silent this time “I guess so”

There’s a huge gap in between knowing the weight and feeling the weight. Like looking at a heavy bag and preparing yourself to lift it and lifting it just to feel gravity pulling your arm with it to the ground as you try hard to be strong to keep it.

It’s heavier than you thought and it might even dislocate your shoulder and it’s painful to put it back.

“I’ll tell Kookie to come here these days instead of you going there” the suggestion comes with the best intention, but Taehyung is a little prouder than he should be.

“No” the word is vomited like a desperate reflex “No, Jimin, I have to go. I know myself, if I don’t” he sits abruptly “If I don’t I’ll be comfortable avoiding him. It’ll make everything more painful… And he’ll know he hurt me”

Jimin’s lips purse in the pout Taehyung knows comes before a burst of honesty. Like the sky turns a certain way before the storm. He winces before Jimin even pronounces it, because Taehyung has been on the receiving ends of Jimin’s almost brutal honesty and it’s a double edged sword.

“You’re reckless with yourself trying to prove a point” he sits up, mirroring Taehyung “You have already slaughtered him with your words today”

“Yeah, but if I vanish he’ll think it affected me”

“It did affect you” Jimin argues furiously and Taehyung can be as stubborn as his soulmate.

“He doesn’t have to fucking know”, the frustration is louder than his voice “I’ll barely even interact I promise. And you’ll be there, it’s your boyfriend’s house”

“He can come to my house though?” Jimin’s brows are risen and his pout is bigger than ever.

“He’ll know something happened” Taehyung closes his eyes because he hates long arguments but Jimin is just as restless as he is.

“He’s your best friend. He knows you have feelings for Yoongi hyung. He knows his brother is dating. Even if you don’t properly say it, he knows you enough” eye rolls are Jimin’s specialty “He’ll do the math Taehyung”

“I’m okay” he insists, and Jimin raises a brow “I’ll be okay” he tries.

It’s silent for time enough before Jimin breaks it.

“What if he’s there?” it sounds as hard as swallowing rocks would feel “his boyfriend”

Taehyung breathes out.

“Then I guess you’ll have to hold my hand”.

**

He isn’t there.

Not at first.

Not at the first following four days Taehyung comes. He isn’t there but Yoongi is and it’s unsettling because there is something in Yoongi’s actions like there was never before. Something Taehyung has always wanted but never got.

It’s a glint of warmth.

It makes Taehyung furious.

The thing about Taehyung is that he is inconsequent, yes, and he is petty, captious almost, and he makes sure he doesn’t make it easy for someone who has pissed him off and now, Yoongi did, by giving him a pitiful and unwanted glint of attention that Taehyung has always craved for and died for.

But Yoongi’s timing sucks and so does Taehyung’s permissiveness.

Because Taehyung has offered Yoongi all his warm and bright pieces and Yoongi has refused him, so now he’ll give him the darkest and coldest ones.

And it’s not because Yoongi didn’t like him. No. That, he thinks it’s bearable.

It’s his condescency that pisses him off and presses all the wrong buttons.

“Hey”

There it is, the hoarse voice that haunts him so badly.

Taehyung is on the couch and he chose a movie and they started to watch it, he and Jeongguk, because Jimin is at the studio. And suddenly Yoongi is sat there, next to Taehyung, close enough Taehyung feels his presence and his smell.

“Hey” he bites at his licorice and pushes his knees up to rest his feet on the couch, getting comfortable and acting unbothered.

He can see through his peripheral vision that Yoongi stares at him, at his ever present barefootedness, his khaki loose pants, his white buttoned blouse under his sleeveless cotton pullover and his thin silver rings on three of his fingers, skipping the ring finger, and his hair, that it’s long now, hidden under a beret, his glasses falling on the bridge of his nose.

Yoongi is looking for the first time, like he is finally perceiving Taehyung. It’s a very ‘oh-oh-my-god-you’re-here” kind of look. A very ‘oh-you-exist’ kind of look.

Jungkook doesn’t notice anything, because he is oblivious and he is on the floor, like he always is. But Taehyung does, because he is not stupid, or blind, and he doesn’t think of Yoongi as a good guy. He is not the bad one either. He is just a guy who can’t stand knowing someone thinks he’s an asshole, and Taehyung knows it too.

He can’t stand it because he doesn’t think of himself as an idiot.

No man ever does.

Taehyung forces himself not to roll his eyes at Yoongi’s restlessness and it’s a bit comical because Taehyung used to get restless near Yoongi when he was a teen, afraid Yoongi’s approval would never come.

Now, after crying a lot and after thinking a lot and after having things settling a little calmer, he just gets annoyed, because yeah, his feelings for Yoongi didn’t disappear, but Taehyung doesn’t think of him as a saint either. He let idealizing Yoongi’s personality behind, along with his eyeliner and emo phase.

That’s when Jungkook, in an act of complete irresponsibility with the duties of preventing Taehyung and Yoongi to interact for too long that Jimin had assigned him to, announces he is going to the restroom.

“I have a stomach ache and I think I’ll be gone for a few minutes” he touches his belly in an unnecessary demonstration of the issue.

“I can make you some tea?”, Taehyung offers, because yeah, he has learned a few things from Yoongi and one of them it’s how to be a good hyung to his baby brother.

“Tea is disgusting” Jungkook twists his nose, cute and bunny-like teeth appearing and Taehyung giggles.

Apparently Taehyung giggling startles Yoongi.

Maybe he thinks Taehyung it’s supposed to be sulking, or sad, or pissed enough at him he will get quiet the entire time. Because yeah, Taehyung is quiet. But no, not with everyone.

And now Yoongi knows it.

“Just go, I’ll make you the tea and we can finish the movie another time? I have to go anyways”

He stands up, leaving Yoongi alone on the couch.

“Why so early?” Jungkook pouts and it’s almost like he isn’t 22.

“I have this exposition tomorrow morning? And after it me and my partner from History of Art have to write and essay after and ugh, just busy day” he shrugs.

“So you’re not coming tomorrow?” Jungkook looks kind of pale and he vibrates a little because his feet are shaking under him.

“Just… go fucking poop already. I’ll text you” Taehyung rolls his eyes “And no, I’m not coming tomorrow but it’s cuddle festival and you have to come”

Cuddle festival it’s tradition. It consists in Taehyung, Jimin, Jungkook and Hobi under a fort of sheets with fairy lights, pillows and junky food.

“I’ll make the tea so you’re better by then”, Taehyung adds while Jungkook celebrates cuddle festival with a quick hug, saying goodbye.

Taehyung moves to the kitchen, completely ignoring Yoongi’s entire existence and the elder sits on the couch like the tremendous imbecile Taehyung wants to believe he is.

He wants to believe he is because of things like the lazy way he drags his feet to the kitchen while Taehyung boils water, with his back turned to where he can’t see but knows Yoongi is at.

He wants to believe because of things like

“Hey”

It’s the third one of the day. The first when Taehyung arrived, the second when they were on the couch and now this.

Taehyung turns around with his best “oh-you’re-here” look, almost revengeful. A mix of a lazy lift of brows and unbothered features “Hey” he turns back to face the kettle on the stove.

There’s a saliva swallow that comes from the elder that resonates so embarrassingly loud Taehyung doesn’t need to turn to see Yoongi is blushing.

“I wanted to talk to you?” Yoongi sounds shyer and insecure in a way Taehyung has never even heard in so many years of knowing him.

“Mhmm” he mumbles, because yeah, he might be converting all his undeniable infatuation for Min Yoongi in annoyance, but still, it just fucking hurts a lot.

“I- I just wanted to say sorry?” Yoongi saying everything like it’s a question when he has always been so much an statement guy it’s kind of twisted and weird like Alice through the looking glass.

Taehyung turns around because it doesn’t matter how painful, he wants to look him in the eye for this.

Taehyung always thought sorrow wouldn’t suit Yoongi, but now it looks bizarrely like something recurrent, like when you have a dejavu and you know you never lived that situation but it feels familiar anyway.

“Sorry for what?” Taehyung asks after a long minute that feels like an hour.

Looking into Yoongi’s eyes were a rare occurence on Taehyung’s life because Yoongi never looked at him properly, but now he does it’s kind of bitter and hurtful and almost unbearable.

It’s nothing like he thought it would be because he thought Yoongi would be looking at him when it happened but Yoongi is blind enough to look at Taehyung thinking of what he is showing and not thinking about what he is seeing.

Taehyung shouldn’t be negatively surprised because it was only obvious.

“Just… The way I treated you all those years and last week, when I did… That” his voice is weak.

Sorrow looks kind of pathetic and it pains Taehyung because Yoongi never looked so small.

“It’s cool hyung”

It’s not cool. But at the same time, Taehyung recognizes what a shitty thing must be to have his younger brother’s best friend following him around like a puppy and not knowing how to deny him.

Because denying people can be as painful as being denied and Taehyung gets that.

So okay, it’s kind of cool as long as he stops with the patronizing bullshit.

“No, no it’s not, um, it’s not cool” he mutters “I made you feel like crap and I just wanted you to know that you’re an amazing, smart, talented and beautiful boy and…”

Oh. Fucking. No.

Yeah, making it up as annoyance won’t do.

Because yeah it’s annoying but it’s just really. fucking. painful.

“Hyung stop” Taehyung demands, raising his hands in front of his body and shaking them, and Yoongi’s eyes widen and suddenly he seems even smaller.

“Just, fucking stop, please” Taehyung isn’t sure about what he looks like but it must be really different than anything Yoongi has ever seen stamped on his face because he looks almost scared “I don’t need it. Okay? I don’t need you validation. I know, I fucking know I am beautiful, I fucking know I am smart, and brilliant, and any other thing you might think of saying.”

There’s no color on Yoongi’s face and he looks like he got punched.

“Yes, it was shitty what you did last week but I get it, life doesn’t come with a manual of emotional responsibility or one for boundaries” Taehyung is just tired “Just forgive yourself, be happy, I don’t want your apologies when they come with a bunch of words that are meant to make you feel better, not me”

Taehyung turns of the stove because the kettle, in a better timing than Yoongi could ever have, just announced the water boiled and he pours it at two cups with chamomile, breathing in and out before turning to face Yoongi again, who remains stuck on the same place like a statue, looking at his hands.

Taehyung places a cup of tea on the counter on the spot where Yoongi’s eyes are glued to, so he finally looks up to face Taehyung.

“We’re okay” he looks Yoongi in the eye, and it’s a painful half lie “And I’m twenty-four hyung, I’m no longer a boy. You don’t have to kiss it better you know? I’m fine”

Yoongi curves his lips up and then open his pretty mouth again.

“Yeah, okay”

Taehyung smiles so faintly one could barely miss it, but Yoongi doesn’t because well, they speak the same language after all.

“Tell Jungkookie to call me, please?” Taehyung is grabbing his bag again and Yoongi is leading him to the door like he always did since Jungkook has no manners.

“Sure, I’ll tell him” he mumbles.

“Okay, bye hyung”

“Bye Tae”

And when the door closes, it hurts again.

Because Min Yoongi doesn’t know Kim Taehyung at all.

**

And then there is the day.

He is there.

The boyfriend™

Jimin is in Jeongguk and Yoongi’s apartment and he texts Taehyung to warn him, but he only sees it when he is at their door and maybe he is a fucking masochist but he opens it anyway because he can’t pretend curiosity isn’t killing him.

So he gets in and he immediately hear all the noises he wished he was making but he can’t, and the prettiest of them is Yoongi’s laughter.

Taehyung freezes at the door where no one can see him from the living room and from where he still can’t see anyone and all he does is close his eyes and take Yoongi’s sounds in like it’s air to his lungs, except it’s smoke and it burns all the way down.

Because it’s the first time in years that Taehyung hears Yoongi laughing like that, so vividly and bubbly and like he really wants to. Like the laughter comes from the deepest pit of his soul and they hurt more than a thousand cuts. And it’s so hard because every single laughter Yoongi has ever blurted out when near Taehyung seems so dimmed now, like he was just weakly doing so until he found the true will to do it.

He feels so on the border.

On the verge.

Like even a gate won’t be enough to contain it now, how much he needs to pour.

Taehyung breathes deeply one more time, sound shaky and wet as he grounds himself with his back against the front door, and the world outside seems so appealing now, chanting his name like the prettiest mermaid, compelling him to just allow himself to leave.

But Taehyung is brave, or inconsequent, at this point he can’t detach one feeling from the other. And he thinks facing this will be better somehow, like it will force his brain to assimilate the fact that this is reality. So when he walks towards the stairs he just pretends to himself he is not hoping deep down that none of the people in the room will notice as he passes behind them.

But of course

Of fucking course they do.

“Taehyungie?” the voice sounds so warm and hopeful that there’s no way Taehyung can contain his big boxy grin, even if his eyes are still wet and glassy.

“Jin hyung?” he is so dumbfounded with the figure before his eyes.

Because Jin hyung is back. And Namjoon hyung is back too.

Jin and Namjoon are Yoongi’s best friends and they were studying abroad, until they graduated and decided to stay there for work, but their schedule is different so their breaks are different and the both of them are back and Taehyung wants to cry, because he kind of wanted to cry anyway and he was just so inside out that the smallest hint of sunlight is enough to burn.

There are two more figures in the room but Taehyung doesn’t look at them, not even through his peripheral vision. Not even a glance. He uses all his strength to not once allow his eyes to look because he was not ready but he made this dumb choice anyway and now he has to deal with it.

Jin and Namjoon were kinder and warmer than Yoongi ever was and he loves them tremendously because they were there for him all the time, through it all. They made him feel included, valuable, like he mattered and like he wasn’t a dumb kid.

But even though warm, Jin’s eyes are too perceptive to miss the watery glow in Taehyung’s eyes and his face twists from a grin to a frown and in a matter of seconds he is blurting out the last thing Taehyung would like to be said out loud because he kind of hoped Yoongi was far enough  for it to go unnoticed.

“Are you crying, Taehyungie?” Jin’s voice is so kind and if it was anyone else, Taehyung would be pissed, but it’s Jin, and he offers this kind of peacefulness no one can ever.

Taehyung’s face contorts in the grimace he makes when he cracks. Because having someone asking if you’re okay when you’re trying to be okay it’s like a hurricane when you’re on the verge of a pit and dizzy looking down.

He throws his arms around Jin’s neck and buries his face there, mumbling the loudest “I missed you” he has ever heard because his voice gets louder when he’s feeling a lot “I missed you so much why would you stay away for so long?”

Taehyung never says he misses people. He just lets it show through his own body, but now that he is looking at Jin in all his soothing presence, he realizes god, he missed him so much.

“To study?” Jin jokes like he always jokes and tightens his grip around Taehyung’s body and when their hearts beat together in the middle, Taehyung feels like Jin is giving him strength like he always is.

Like he always was.

When they part, Jin’s pretty hands are wiping away Taehyung’s tears as he smiles through them and giggles at Jin’s facial expressions.

“Yah, your hair is so long” he mumbles, as he tucks it behind Taehyung’s ears.

Taehyung’s hair is indeed long, wavy brown locks shaping the sides of his temples and eyes like a veil, leaving his forehead on display as he takes his glasses and cleans the lenses.

“I’m allowing it to grow, hyung” he smiles, big and boxy “I want to see how long it goes”

“You’re really one of those artists, huh?” Jin rolls his eyes.

“I’m just trying to cultivate things” Taehyung fakes the offended tone.

Because he is, indeed trying to cultivate things, to allow them to grow without him stopping them. It’s all a part of the creative spiral his in lately, and whoever knows him a little bit, knows Taehyung gets obsessed with ideas and concepts and lives through them for periods of time until he gets it, in epiphanies or slow realizations, and then he moves on.

Maybe that’s why he was never able to move on from Yoongi.

“Cultivate your hair?” Jin raises a brow.

“Hey, not all of us are plantsy like Namjoon hyung” Taehyung complains, running his fingers through his hair “Plus, it’s organic”

Jin scoffs, but it’s the loud laughter that comes from behind Taehyung that makes him look in its direction out of reflex, and he hates himself for it because now he acknowledged them. Because Yoongi looks tense and pale, but the man next to him seems to think Taehyung is funny and perhaps it goes unperceived by the rest of them, and Taehyung only notices because he knows, but there’s expectation on the air, almost like his reaction would set the mood.

So Taehyung smiles faintly to the boy, looking at the spot behind his head just so he can’t take in the details of his pretty face, and he bows in a simple gesture of politeness, turning back to Jin as soon as he can.

“Taehyungie!” Namjoon’s grave voice echoes through the room, because he wasn’t in it but now he is and Taehyung’s smile becomes his wide grin as he jumps on Namjoon.

Namjoon is not the touchiest, but he does have a soft spot for Taehyung, Jimin and Jungkook, so he does support Taehyung when he wraps his legs around his waist and his arms around his neck.

“Namjoonie hyung, I missed you” his eyes water again, because Namjoon’s presence is enough to relieve his heart, to make him wiser, less emotionally disturbed.

Because Taehyung and Namjoon think a lot alike, but it’s like Namjoon has mastered the art of rationalizing feelings and Taehyung is at their mercy still. Like Namjoon controls the tides and Taehyung potentializes them.

Because they both feel a lot.

“I missed you too kid” Namjoon always talks like he’s the eldest.

Taehyung rolls his eyes because Namjoon is just a year older than he is, but he always calls Taehyung ‘kid’.

“When did the two of you get here?”

Jin and Namjoon taking breaks at the same time is honestly the best thing that could happen.

“Today” Jin answers “We’re actually going home, to our old apartment. We’ll stay there for a while, so maybe we can have a get together? The six of us? Well… seven” he adds while looking behind Tae to Yoongi and his… one.

Taehyung turns very slightly just to acknowledge them, but his eyes crosses with Yoongi’s for a second before Taehyung looks away as a reflex, because it feels just as it does when you burn yourself while cooking or doing something mundane that you should be used to being careful already.

Maybe carelessness is a reflex of habit.

“Can we make it eight?” he asks, looking back at Jin but not missing how Yoongi frowns when he says that.

“Eight? Is my little Taehyungie dating?” Jin teases, earning Taehyung’s biggest eye roll.

“I have got no time for such thing?” he tries to convey his most casual tone, because even though he knows it wouldn’t affect Yoongi if he was fucking the whole Korean Military Army, it’s still weird for him.

“Don’t lie to me, I know you didn’t sleep at home two weeks ago. I was facetiming Jiminie and he told me” Jin can get really annoying sometime.

Two weeks ago was before Yoongi told him he was dating.

Two weeks ago was a lifetime ago.

And one night stands are a common occurrence in Taehyung’s life.

He has liked Yoongi but he was never idiotic enough to wait for him.

“It was just a one night stand, Jesus” Taehyung groans but the sounds comes out softly after his smile gives away the fact that he is so fond of Jin acting like a nosy older brother.

“Taehyungie, you’re a boy, you shouldn’t be sucking dicks, you should be falling in love” Jin truly is annoying.

“God, you’re so embarrassing? Who even falls in love these days” he giggles.

Because yeah, now that he comes to think of it, he never got the chance. He never fell in love with Yoongi. He never felt the thrill, the exchange, the sweet glances traded like both of them know a secret.

He never had what Jungkook and Jimin have and he watched it from close enough to be able to tell.

He has never had that and perhaps that’s what he wanted when he tried so much to get closer to Yoongi all those years. A chance of having that with someone for some reason he woke up loving.

“Yoongi and Chunghee-ssi” Namjoon adds playfully and obliviously.

Taehyung looks at Yoongi, but the elder turns to the floor when their eyes meet like he wants it to swallow him whole.

He doesn’t want that as much as Taehyung does.

“Oh, yeah” Taehyung giggles, because again, he is composed and ready to act again, even though his heart twists in agony inside his body “So I’ll leave that to them and continue with my one night stands then”

Taehyung walks to the stairs

“And the eighth person is Hobi hyung, he is mine and Jiminie’s roommate and he is the best human being out there, you’ll love them” he adds.

“Hey, I’m the best human being out there” Jin sounds truly outraged.

“Hobi hyung doesn’t scold me for the dicks I suck” he giggles one more time at Jin’s grimace “Gotta go, so please fucking call me, and you too Namjoonie hyung, I wanna hear everything”

There’s an agreement sound and some shouts towards the stairs from Jin’s loud voice, but Taehyung is already in the bathroom upstairs, texting Jimin.

taetae:

please come to the bathroom.

minie:

oh no

minie:

taetae ):

minie:

you came ):

taetae:

minie please come

taetae:

i don’t want gguk to see me like this

minie:

okay baby, coming )):

The sleeves of Taehyung’s creamy crochet sweater are pulled to his elbows and he presses his lips against his forearm to muffle his sobs because maybe he is not that strong anymore. Maybe he underestimated how painful it would all be.

“Baby” Jimin mumbles terribly sorry and it’s even more painful after he hears how relentful he sounds.

“I didn’t even look and it was painful” Taehyung curls to his chest, letting Jimin heal him like he always does.

Jimin kisses his head, tugs his hair, holds him tight and takes it away as much as he can.

“Let’s go home Tae” his tone of voice is soft, but commanding.

Taehyung shakes his head no and it’s pathetic really, his insistence. It’s his biggest flaw.

“Taehyung…” Jimin never calls him like that except when they’re about to argue or in it already, and it’s an ultimatum.

He raises his head to look his best friend in the eyes, Jimin’s mirroring his pain and Taehyung feels guilty, but so grateful for having Jimin, who feels what he feels too and never lets him feel it alone.

“You’re right, I can’t come here anymore” he confesses, sniffling and wiping his own tears “And I won’t, but I have to survive this day, okay? Just today”

Jimin seems as unamused as someone can be, and even though Taehyung is hurting, he smiles at his best friend because he loves Jimin’s unamused expression, it’s very characteristic of him.

Jimin’s petty pout turns reluctantly into a smile and he rolls his eyes.

“I hate how inconsequent you are” Jimin pokes him.

Taehyung smiles wider and wetter “I know”

They get up, Jimin cleaning Taehyung’s face, drying it with toilet paper and pecking his cheeks several times before they spend a whole minute with fingers interlocked and foreheads touching to calm each other down.

“But Taehyung” Jimin grabs his wrist with the strength no one believes him to have in his tiny body when they’re on the hallway “You’re not coming back soon”

Taehyung nods, because yeah, he can’t come back soon.

*

“Hey, do you, um, think we can hang out at my place for a while?” he asks while Jungkook is distracted playing Overwatch with Jimin clung to his side, pressing small kisses to his neck.

It’s a common scene, and it’s endearing and amusing to watch Jungkook completely focused on the game and seeming to ignore Jimin’s cuddles the whole time, but groaning at the absence everytime Jimin stops or parts them.

Jungkook is a simple man, all he needs to survive is Jimin, his playstation and his camera.

“Sure?” Jungkook frowns, but his eyes never leave the screen “Why? Is it about hyung and his boyfriend?”

Taehyung smiles because Jungkook is kind of naive and oblivious at the intensity of a few things, but he is not dumb at all and Taehyung knows it.

Jimin looks at him, urging him to speak as if Taehyung wasn’t already doing it so. He rolls his eyes.

“Um, kind of, a little bit, but also, I have been in a creative flow and I feel like I have to be surrounded by my own walls you know, because I feel what I need right now is there” Taehyung bullshits his way around it, and Jungkook buys said bullshit.

Because it isn’t bullshit at all.

Taehyung has this schisms with random stuff that he truly believes are emanating the right energy to all his creative spirals and whoever hangs with him for time enough just knows it too, so Jungkook just shrugs and goes along.

“Cool”

And after that and the Overwatch match, Jimin and Jungkook get into their own spiral of displays of affection that get a little too much for Taehyung, so he goes downstairs, Jimin so distracted with Jungkook’s lips he completely forgets about his mission of keeping an eye at Taehyung for the rest of the day.

Jin and Namjoon are gone, that’s for sure, because the house is quiet and it never is when they’re around. Taehyung believes then that Yoongi and his human are in his bedroom and that it’s safe for him to make a sandwich.

Beliefs are dangerous because they bite you in the ass.

“So, you’re Taehyung” the unknown and saccharine sweet voice that echoes behind Taehyung’s back is louder than Taehyung wanted it to sound.

It’s inevitable to look at his face now, because there are only the two of them in a house that sounds terribly silent and cold and Taehyung turns to him because well, he’s already here and he needs to face reality.

“Yes” he offers his nicest fake smile.

The boyfriend™ looks so horribly elegant in contrast to Taehyung’s loose sweater and pants and bare feet. He has his hair perfectly combed back and a baby blue button shirt and black slacks and he wears fancy shoes that make it look like he’s about to attend a wedding. And his face... his goddamn face has impeccable makeup.

Taehyung has never thought this is Yoongi’s type because he’s fancy and sophisticated and has perfect posture and Yoongi is none of those things, but Taehyung guesses he doesn’t really know Yoongi well, so it makes sense that it all comes as a huge surprise.

“I’m Chunghee” he smiles politely, but seeming so genuine that Taehyung doesn’t have a choice other than return it.

Because Taehyung would love to be the childish type that would hate him for free and be rude and distant, but he can’t.

“Nice to meet you, Chunghee-ssi” Taehyung brings his plate to the counter that separates him from the man, getting closer to him, then grabbing a knife and dividing his sandwich in two triangles.

He pushes the plate towards him, because he can’t be anything but nice when someone smiles at him like that.

The man’s eyes widen in surprise as he looks from the plate to Taehyung before he smiles gratefully.

“Thank you” he politely bites at his half of the sandwich.

Taehyung just allows his lips to curve up quickly before he looks away and finishes eating quietly, because he might be nice but he won’t make efforts to start conversations.

“So you’re the best friend…” apparently Taehyung is the only one who doesn’t want to talk.

“Jungkookie’s. Yes” he answers practically.

“Yoongi mentioned you’re inseparable, attached to the hip, even when his boyfriend is around?” he says, and Taehyung thinks he must be older because he hasn’t called Yoongi hyung.

He doesn’t want to be defensive, or to project his annoyance on him, but he really doesn’t know how to answer it politely, because it’s none of his business if Taehyung is attached to Jimin and Jungkook’s hip.

“He is even closer to me” Jimin’s sweet voice rumbles through the room and he is using his petty tone that Taehyung would recognize even if he was earless.

Because Jimin didn’t like what The Boyfriend™ said either.

“They’re soulmates” Jungkook adds unbothered, moving to grab a bottle of banana milk from the fridge.

“Soulmates?” Chunghee frowns “Shouldn’t you be dating then?” he jokes, and maybe he isn’t misintentioned but it sounds pretty fucking clueless.

“I’m too lazy to explain” Taehyung mumbles and Jimin giggles and the man raises a brow.

“It’s a really strong connection” Jungkook tells him, drinking at his milk “It just isn’t sexual or romantic”

The Boyfriend™ hums.

“And you’re okay with that?” he asks.

It must look like a movie scene, the way the three of them look at each other to check if they really heard the absurd question.

“Man, there are so many possible answers to this question” Jungkook chuckles “Like I could tell you I’m not insecure. Or that I trust my boyfriend”

“Or he could say that he has a deep understanding of my relationship with Tae and I have a deep understanding of his relationship with Tae” Jimin continues.

“I could just say we have threesomes from time to time” Taehyung shrugs and Jimin giggles, slapping Tae’s arm while Jungkook chuckles drinking his milk again.

The boyfriend’s™ eyes widen and he blushes a little.

“Are you three a couple?” he asks, squinting his eyes at them.

“What the hell?” Yoongi comes from behind his boyfriend™ and slides his hand around his shoulders, smiling at him but then locking eyes with Taehyung and having it falter.

“Well, we are not a couple but we have slept together a few times” and it’s so good it’s Jeongguk who says it because the shock in Yoongi’s face is delicious.

Taehyung giggles.

“You’re lying” Yoongi says to his brother, leaning to the counter with his hand still around his boyfriend™ and pointing his chin up.

Jungkook frowns.

“And why would I? We do it all the time” he bites at an apple he found around the kitchen “Taehyung does it with Hobi hyung all the time too” he adds with full cheeks.

Taehyung rolls his eyes.

“What is it with the two of you oversharing my sex life, what the fuck?”

Jimin giggles, snuggling to Taehyung’s side.

“It’s fun teasing you”

Taehyung looks at his best friend pretending he’s annoyed, but both of them know he’s not.

He thinks it’s the worst possible moment for this whole conversation about his sex life to be happening, because Yoongi might think he’s doing it on purpose to try to get a reaction.

Because yeah, he thinks Yoongi is that much of a self absorbed asshole.

But he shrugs to himself because Yoongi wasn’t even in the room when the conversation started and Jin hyung brought it up before so to hell with Min Yoongi.

Taehyung snorts at Jimin and he gets on his tippy toes to press a peck on Taehyung’s cheek, like they all do whenever they’re playing or they’re drunk.

He feels Yoongi and his boyfriend’s™ eyes on them, and he knows Jimin does too because instead of a peck, Jimin bites Taehyung’s cheek and pulls it down.

“Ow” Taehyung complains, pushing Jimin away and touching his lip, “what the fuck idiot”

Jimin giggles mischievously and Jungkook grins, bunny like.

“Your boyfriend is a maniac” Taehyung groans at Jeongguk, who leans to press a soft peck on Jimin’s lips, which turn into several pecks and then a deep kiss “Disgusting, I hate you both”

Jimin giggles on Jungkook’s lips and clings to his neck and Jungkook looks at Taehyung with a smirk.

“Will you join, hyung?” he raises a brow as he licks Jimin’s lips.

It’s obviously teasing and Taehyung hates his friends.

“Later” he whispers loud enough for everyone to hear, making his flirting face and licking his lip, biting it then, winking but his eyes never leaving Jeongguk’s.

Jungkook and Jimin know he’s teasing back, but maybe Yoongi and Chunghee don’t, because they seem startled when Taehyung walks to them and press an open mouthed kiss and a small teasing bite on each neck, making Jimin giggle.

“Okay I know we just met but you’re weird” the boyfriend™ has a sweet smile on as he says it so it seems less awkward and more playful.

“We tend to demonize the things we don’t understand” Taehyung raises a brow at him, but then smirking to make it clear he is being playful as well.

Chunghee stares at him and Yoongi does too and even though Yoongi is tense, his boyfriend™ seems friendly and unaware.

“Look, you’re all really hot but damn, Taehyung, when Yoongi said you were “fucking beautiful” he wasn’t joking” he makes air quotations with his fingers “I kind of understand why they drool over you”

Color fades from Yoongi’s face and his eyes widen as if his whole life have passed in front of his very eyes and everyone in the room tenses except the boyfriend™ because why.

Why.

W H Y.

Why would Min Yoongi do that?

Taehyung can be the best pretender but his smile does fade from his face because he looks at Yoongi and he just doesn’t care if it gets really fucking obvious to his perfect chosen one, he hates Min Yoongi for being such an asshole.

“Tae…” Yoongi’s voice sounds so explanatory it’s kind of ridiculous that he even tries.

“Thank you hyung” Taehyung turns his eyes back to Chunghee and “can I call you hyung? I assume you’re older and since you’re dating Yoongi hyung we will see each other a lot?”

The boyfriend™ smiles.

“I became your hyung in the moment you shared that sandwich” he giggles.

Taehyung giggles back but it’s fake, because he feels annoyed and angry and he hates, he absolutely hates, Min Yoongi.

“Tae, can I talk to you?” Yoongi says it casually and of fucking course the boyfriend™ wouldn’t know the reason, because Yoongi sounds very ‘oh-I remembered something I have to tell you’.

Because they’re ‘friends’ apparently.

Yoongi seems so fond of those ‘can-we-talk’ words lately and Taehyung hates them almost as much he hates Yoongi.

Jungkook goes behind Taehyung and grips his shoulders as if he’s saying ‘I’m here’ and Jimin holds his hand and they’re touchy so no one would know they’re doing it because they know Taehyung got terribly hurt.

Because in years, Yoongi has never, ever complimented Tae.

and now this.

“Sorry hyung, I’m in a hurry now, but maybe next time I come over?” he sounds poisonous innocent as he says it like it isn’t tearing him inside.

“Kay, sure” Yoongi smiles, tightening the grip on his boyfriend’s™ shoulder and Taehyung looks at his hand before looking at them again “You’ll be here tomorrow right?”

There’s some kind of nod he does just so he doesn’t have to lie out loud and then he is telling Chunghee what a pleasure it was and that he hopes they meet soon.

Lies.

He hopes they merge into a megazord of shit and fucking explode.

“You’ll be here early tomorrow?” Yoongi asks again, very lowly and loud enough just to the two of them to hear, as he leads Tae to the door with Jimin and Jungkook.

“Yeah, probably”

Lies.

“Are you okay?” Jungkook asks when the three of them are outside without Yoongi already.

“Yeah, of course Koo”

Lies.

Taehyung wonders if he is a pathological liar or just really fucking stupid.

Jimin can tell though, he can tell Taehyung is lying.

But again.

It’s okay.

Because he can never really lie to himself.

Unfortunately.

**

II

It’s been a month and a half.

In all these years, Taehyung has never spent so long without going to Jungkook and Yoongi’s house and without seeing Yoongi.

He has done it all.

Unfollowed him online. Stalked him online. Hated him. Cried for him. Showered himself in self hatred. Showered himself with self praises.

Cried for him.

Cried for him.

Cried for him.

Taehyung have written him songs. Long, deep, beautiful and soulful compositions on his piano. On his violin. On his saxophone.

Written him lyrics.

Written him poetry.

Written him a letter (never sent).

Cursed at him and until his seventieth reincarnation.

Cursed at him until his seventieth generation.

Cried some more.

And painted.

Seventeen canvases.

Yes, of course, they say the number seven is perfection, but Taehyung hates it now because it reminds him of Yoongi just like everything else and he completely and absolutely despises it.

He has also tried fucking his heart out of the situation.

He has fucked random guys and friends.

Hoseok thrice in a week, even though they’re friends and roommates, it’s also a bit of fuckbuddies situation. It’s cool because they’re close, they’re best friends and they cuddle and comfort each other, but there are no romantic feelings involved.

And they fuck too, hard and a lot and good.

Hoseok thinks Taehyung should date more and Taehyung doesn’t want to at all, but he ends up in random dates with random guys Hoseok sets him up with.

When it goes well, he sleeps with them and then never answers their calls.

When it goes wrong, he fucks Hoseok.

And also, he gets high, but that’s just always, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Yoongi. It’s a habit Taehyung picked up in high school and kept it.

It’s not everyday, of course, but there’s a constancy to it.

Taehyung has painted a lot during afternoons and he never fails to get inspired. At least that is going well. He has painted beautiful images, every afternoon on his living room, between his piano and his sofa and under the sunlight that pierces through the big window and covers him and the wooden floor with a golden glow that matches Taehyung’s brilliant mind.

He has painted a very colorful mis shaped heart with a very deep wound and he found Yoongi in it.

He has painted a demon possessing a mind and he doesn’t know if he is the demon or the brain.

He has painted a mouth swallowing a hurricane and he thinks he is both.

Trying to get over Yoongi is a lot of trouble because he has to go through a lot of himself too, and everything was so organized already so he feels like he is playing tangram and he has the same pieces but has to reorganize them in a different shape.

Taehyung is completely aware of the fact he and Yoongi have no connection at all and he knows now that his body is conditioned to loving him like it’s a trait of his own personality.

It gets a little better when he realizes that.

Yes, Yoongi messes with his heart but there’s no reason to it and when his body finally processes that then he’ll be able to move on.

He convinces himself of that.

Because he truly believes in the organic processes of his own body and mind and heart and he thinks it will work as it will always work because he trusts himself and his soul.

Obviously it’s taking long for his body to process it, but he thinks now Yoongi is dating and is happy with someone else, it’ll be easier for him to finally break free from this addiction he has on Min Yoongi.

The process isn’t constant nor easy and it’s not a paved road, so there are days that are better and there are days that aren’t, because the way Yoongi looked at Taehyung when Jin said those things or the way he looked when Jungkook told him about their threesome or the way he said Taehyung was really fucking beautiful are vivid memories that trouble him.

Sometimes Taehyung is painting and he thinks of it, Yoongi saying he is fucking beautiful.

He hates himself a little for clinging to a memory of something that wasn’t even said to him properly, but he can’t really blame himself because all his previous versions are jumping inside him because their precious Yoongi hyung has indirectly praised them.

Because Taehyung thinks of himself as a matryoshka doll, where he is bigger and stronger but inside of him rests his previous version who is smaller and more vulnerable than the current one but bigger than the one before. And there are many, many smaller, more sensitive, versions of him inside that he has gotten over and has grown from, but that are still there because they’re as part of him as himself now.

Except they’re not as big and strong and mature.

But they’re still there and they still talk from time to time and whisper to him and they’re still in love with Yoongi.

And Taehyung is the biggest Matryoshka and 10 is the highest number in the 1-10 scale, but if you separate them, if you let ten have its independence and its rupture from the previous ones and they gang up on it, they’re bigger and louder and stronger.

Because one plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six plus seven plus eight plus nine are higher and way bigger and way more than ten alone.

And all Tae’s versions who rest inside of him are smaller alone but bigger together and they all still love Yoongi.

So on the days they’re trapped inside him it’s okay, he is stronger than the tiny voices swooning over the idea of one Min Yoongi saying they’re fucking beautiful.

But when they pile up and tower over him then he swoons along.

Then he’s nothing but at their mercy.

The day Jeongguk came to sleepover with Jimin though, one week after Taehyung met his boyfriend™, is one of these days Taehyung feels coerced by his own mind to think he is never getting over Yoongi, which makes everything worse.

“Yoongi hyung asked about you” Jungkook’s voice sounds softer than ever.

Taehyung smokes a joint on his mattress, looking at the fairy lights and the stars on his ceiling.

He doesn’t own a bed because he likes the coldness of the wooden floor close to him, and there is a vase with a cariman plant next to him that is now so big the leaves tower over Taehyung’s head like they’re watching him.

His room is small and cozy and artsy like him. His clothes are hanged on a vintage clothing rail on the corner and his shoes are in a box and what actually takes more space are the canvases, the blank and the painted ones.

“Yeah?” his grave voice sounds calming but he isn’t at all.

Taehyung blows the smoke above him and watches as it dissipates.

“He asked many times this week, to be honest”

“Mhmm?”

Jungkook knows Taehyung enough to know when he is in his introspectiveness and will not come to the surface, not even for a glance.

Because Taehyung is an endless black hole and he swims beautifully at the margins but some days he dives so deeply into himself he doesn’t come out and everyone knows that and know how to recognize these days.

Taehyung lifts his free hand in the middle of the smoke and moves it smoothly, with his thin silver rings like sometimes you do with water when you’re in the bathtub or the sea. It’s weightless in the middle of the smoke but it’s resistant inside the water.

“He asked why you disappeared” Jungkook wants to go away to Jimin already because he knows he is talking to the ghost of Taehyung.

“Clouded sight” he talks more to himself than to his best friend “thoughts rising to my neck”

Anyone else would’ve thought it was cannabis influence, but Jeongguk knows best. He knows Taehyung could have a glass of coke in his hands rather than a joint, it wouldn’t change.

Taehyung just gets like this.

He has those waves, those moments.

He is just barely there.

That’s when he paints the most.

“Thought so” Jungkook informs, knowing Taehyung isn’t really interested. Not today at least “He asked if I knew when you were coming”

The stars are replaced with the darkness of his closed eyelids.

“Did you tell him it was because of him?” that’s the most Jungkook will get out of him though.

“No, I told him you were in a creative spiral and needed your walls, as you indeed are and as you say so yourself”

“Cool” Taehyung takes a drag again “Thanks Koo”

Jungkook smiles and turns to leave, but not before muttering a good night wish.

Not even ten minutes later, Taehyung’s phone bips next to him and he rolls his eyes at it but unlocks it anyway just to get overwhelmed with realization.

minyoongi:

tae, can we talk?

you disappeared

taetae:

cant hyung

sorry

busy.

minyoongi:

whenever you’re free

taetae:

k

ill let u know

minyoongi:

okay

i’ll wait for you…

… to text me

i mean

taetae:

got it

minyoongi:

looking forward to it

i really have a lot to explain

taetae:

k

minyoongi:

good night tae

taetae:

gn

Taehyung hates Min Yoongi.

He hates how he seems to know exactly when Taehyung is on the brink of letting go and appears out of nowhere with just one single drop of something that resembles warmth and it’s enough to damage all his progress.

Crumbs.

That’s all Yoongi gives to Taehyung and he is so tired.

He reads once again all the messages and finds it quite amusing that the last time Yoongi texted him it’s been so long, it was before he even got this phone. He was so attached to anything he gave that he never deleted it, and the messages that came with the backup were the opposite of the last ones.

It all consisted in Taehyung trying to drag as much as he could Yoongi’s “tell Kook to call me” cold and objective messages.

It’s humiliating to read them now, because he can see the perfect image of his younger delusional and infatuated self giggling and celebrating the first time Yoongi texted, even if all he said was “s kook w u?”, to which Taehyung responded with his entire devotion.

Suddenly he doesn’t feel bad anymore, for barely answering Yoongi now.

Because he knows exactly how that’s gonna go and that Yoongi just probably wants relieve his own conscience after the embarrassment of their last encounter.

It doesn’t matter how much Taehyung wants to cling to the biggest of the crumbs Yoongi gave him. It doesn’t matter that he said he thought Taehyung was beautiful.

Because he said it to his boyfriend™, and this itself is enough.

And Taehyung knows the narrative and the knows how it ends up.

It ends up with Min Yoongi with his boyfriend™ and Taehyung high on his mattress trying to find a way to wash away from his body all of the remains of his love for Yoongi.

He has to wash himself away, he thinks, and start brand new.

That was one month ago and now Taehyung is on the floor with his painting shirt, which is actually a huge oversized former white and now abstract painting itself shirt, and his art supply scattered all over.

Taehyung always wears the same shirt. He uses it also as a towel to dry his paintbrushes and he loves the clothing more than anything because it’s now colorful with random stains and that’s all he needs to feel beautiful. He doesn’t wear pants or shorts, just his boxers under it, but the shirt is so big it covers to his mid thighs.

He looks at what he has so far and it’s missing something. It’s all to pale and too salmon and he needs red.

Taehyung always needs red.

He opens a pretty deep wound right in the middle of the painting and he sees himself there, his heart.

He sinks his fingers into the paint because at some point it needs that roughness and adds some brown and black until he can’t see the end of the wound, and that’s exactly what he wants. He wants to stare at the endless depth of his laceration and find the will to dive in it.

The door opens because their apartment is actually no-one’s-land and Jungkook has his own key and Taehyung is looking down but he raises his eyes through is bangs that falls irritatingly on his eyes to make out the shape of Jungkook’s baggy black clothes.

“TaeTae hyung” he greets and somehow he sounds surprised Taehyung is even there.

“Hey” he mutters because he is too concentrated, looking back at the painting on the floor and examining it to try to find what’s lacking.

Taehyung tucks one of his bang locks behind his ear and yeah, his face is probably stained with paint and also his hair and the other side of the hair still falls on his face but he doesn’t care because he likes the mess. He thinks being stained with paint makes him a part of his own creation.

Like God creating the man to his own image and likeness and other religious yadda yadda.

“Didn’t know you were here” Jeongguk murmurs awkwardly and Taehyung knows he’s up to something, he has a Jungkook’s-bullshit-proof-detector, but he has been doing life with Jungkook for time enough he learned sometimes he shouldn’t ask.

“At my own house?” he raises a brow as if his own canvas had said the absurdity Jungkook just did.

“Actually I thought you would be in your room if you were home” Jungkook explains.

“That makes no sense, Jungkook, you know I paint in the living room because I like the sunlight from the big window and I play between breaks” he looks at his best friend like he is growing a second head and thinks Jungkook seems a little unsettled at his presence.

“It’s just I…”

There’s not time to the explanation, because Taehyung can already see the old skool vans next to Jungkook’s boots and he looks up just to confirm that yes, Min Yoongi was in fact there.

“Tae?” he frowns as if Taehyung is a strange body inside his own place.

“Hyung? What are you doing here?” Taehyung asks just because.

Because Yoongi has never been here.

Because his heartbeats increase fast at seeing him after more than a month.

Because why the fuck would Jungkook put him through this kind of distress and misery?

Yoongi looks as cool as he has always. His bangs fall perfectly over his soft milky skin and his cheeks are flushed pink and he and Jeongguk dress like siamese twins.

“My wi-fi is broken and I really needed to solve a few work things so Gguk told me Jimin said I could come here to work for an hour?” he explains so nervously and he loses his cool.

Taehyung tilts his head to a side to look at him, and it all falls so suddenly quiet as he does so and it’s in the quietness of the moment that he realizes that yes, his heart still beats fast for Min Yoongi, but also things took turns and now they’re different.

His tangram-self is not shaped as what he aims to but it’s not what it used to be too.

Because Yoongi actually doesn’t look so cool.

He looks small, soft, distressed and unsure and this is all Taehyung never thought he would see when he looked at Yoongi.

Because years ago Taehyung would want to look good for him but now he has paint stained hair, face, arms, fingers and naked legs under a shirt that it’s so old and spent it has holes in it, and yet, he couldn’t care less about his appearance.

And also, because it’s Yoongi who seems antsy to talk to him and afraid he won’t say the right thing.

Oh, the tables have indeed turned.

“Wel,l it’s Jimin’s house as well so make yourself at home I guess” Taehyung says as flatly and apathetic as he can and goes back to pouring his attention back at the painting on the floor and rubbing his red stained finger on it to make a detail.

Silence installs itself as Jungkook wide eyes his older brother and purses his lips and mutters something about going to Jimin’s room because of fucking course he would leave them alone now.

Taehyung works his best to obliterate Yoongi’s presence of his conscience and focuses on his art instead, hoping Yoongi will get the hint and work silently on his computer.

But it doesn’t happen.

Of course it doesn’t.

“Oh, you’re painting” it’s a very dumb statement to which Taehyung would like to roll his eyes to.

“Yup” he pops the ‘p’ as he squints his eyes to his own work.

“What is it?”

That’s the question Taehyung hates the most.

He doesn’t want to have to explain his art. It cuts the whole purpose of it. He’d love to debate, to listen to the viewer's perspective but never, ever explain it.

It’s kind of funny how out of the sudden Yoongi just gets to his nerves and says all the wrong things and maybe it’s because he is paying attention rather than looking up to him.

“What do you think it is?” Taehyung raises his head to look above him, where Yoongi stands, his bangs in front of his eyes again making him shake his head a little to move them away without having to touch it.

He might have phrased it like he thinks Yoongi is stupid and he feels a little guilty over that, because he hates it when he’s on the receiving ends of such situation, but again, he decided he hates Min Yoongi so to hell with him.

Yoongi’s mouth parts a little like he wasn’t expecting the question at all and he stares at Taehyung for time enough for it to be awkward. Taehyung refuses to get intimidated though so he just stares back, face as blank as he can because he doesn’t want to give himself away.

He doesn’t want to give Yoongi anything anymore.

“I- I don’t know” Yoongi says, almost like he is afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Taehyung smirks at him because it’s funny. Now he is angry at Yoongi, he can see all his resolve crumbling behind the façade of a guy who has everything figured out.

Yoongi frowns because maybe he doesn’t understand why Taehyung is smirking at him. He knows for sure it’s not because he is being nice.

“Okay then”

Taehyung looks back to it and well, maybe he can add burgundy on the edges because perhaps it is healing after all, little by little.

“I- It looks like an injury?” he takes a step forward and Taehyung wasn’t really expecting for Yoongi to drag the interaction any longer.

“I guess” Taehyung is not in his most talkative moment and he is also annoyed, because he hates to be interrupted.

He carries on with his painting, running his fingers through his hair because well, it’s not like it isn’t splattered with paint already, and then going back to his work.

However, to his surprise, Yoongi is not good at taking hints.

Taehyung can feel the elder’s eyes above him, hovering over the top of his head, his back, his spreaded legs in between which, the canvas Taehyung leans over rests.

It’s disturbing and unsettling and he just can’t really understand why Yoongi is even there, and why isn’t he doing what he came to do, and why he refuses to just back the fuck off and why

WHY.

W H Y

Is he standing there looking at Taehyung like he is seeing him?

Taehyung grits his teeth and clenches his jaw and Yoongi can’t see because all he can see is the back of his head from above, but it takes everything in him not to explode.

He won’t look up.

“Taehyung…” his name sounds too good on Yoongi’s lips and that makes him angrier.

“Hyung, aren’t you here to work?” Taehyung doesn’t want to hear him anymore “The wifi password is ‘dumpling’ and you can use it”

“I- yeah, yeah okay” Taehyung doesn’t spare a glance because he is just too fed up.

But he finds it Yoongi, for a quiet person, seems incapable of leaving him alone for twenty minutes and he thinks that if he was this annoying when they were kids maybe he can understand why Yoongi kind of hated him from the start.

Because Taehyung’s chakras aren’t well balanced enough for him not to want to ask Yoongi to fuck off.

“Oh” he hears Yoongi mumbling after typing annoyingly loud on his computer for several minutes.

Taehyung sighs loud enough to let Yoongi know he is a bother and looks up “What?”

Yoongi swallows, the sound echoing through the walls. He looks at Taehyung for a while before looking to the small, creamy and vintage piano on the corner of the room.

“You have a piano” again, dumb statement.

“I do” Taehyung responds, face still expressionless.

“C-Can I?” Yoongi’s stutter is beginning to annoy more than it should.

Taehyung shrugs and pretends to go back to his painting, but he can’t focus at all and watches from his peripheral as Yoongi walks towards it, because the piano stands just so close to where Taehyung is.

He sits, and Taehyung would love to see, to watch as his pale long fingers touch the keys so delicately before pressing them.

To each key Yoongi presses, there is a pang to Taehyung’s chest.

Why is he so cruel?

Taehyung doesn’t need much to realize it’s Clair de Lune and it’s obviously a fucking cliche, but who even cares when Yoongi plays it so breathtakingly beautiful that it feels like the air is being stolen from the world, and Taehyung is trying to find it, to find relief for his agonizing lungs, but he can’t.

A single tear escapes from the inner corner of Taehyung’s eyes and slides ever so softly through the bridge of his nose to the tip and there it remains, about to drop but never doing it so, like frozen rain on branches after a very snowy day.

It agonizes him.

Taehyung can’t see his painting under him anymore, behind the watery wall that rises before his irises, so he closes his eyes and more tears slide, following the same path as the previous one, adding more volume to the unshed one on the tip of his nose to the point gravity is stronger than their resistance, and they fall.

And Yoongi presses the last key.

Taehyung hopes he can’t hear his wet breath now the piano keys are not resonating through the room anymore.

“It’s stained” Yoongi observes.

“Hm?” Taehyung can’t allow himself to say anything else because before a word takes shape, a sob might escape.

“The piano keys” Yoongi presses a few in a random way that it shouldn’t be so musical “They’re stained with paint”

Oh.

“Yeah” Taehyung hopes he sounds distracted, because he realized the quality of his acting is as inconsistent as his progress in disentangling from Yoongi “Yeah, sometimes I play when I take breaks from painting”

A pause, and Taehyung can’t see Yoongi’s face but he tilts his back to a side like he’s furrowing his brows at the wall.

“Do you play?” he asks, turning a bit to look at Taehyung on the floor.

Of course he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t remember.

It was so exciting for Taehyung as a kid to see Yoongi played too, because his parents surrendered to his musical tendencies and bought him the small piano. And they hired a teacher and little Taehyungie just loved the sounds so very much and he loved it as he realized he could make them. He could make whatever music he wanted, he just needed to learn how to combine the sounds like he did to the colors of his crayons and it would be magical.

And it was magical.

And it was lonely, because he had no one to share it with.

But when he thought maybe he could have a friend that understood just a little bit of what it did to him, that he could share his magic with him, then the world seemed a little, just a little less overwhelming.

But Yoongi never wanted to hear it and it became lonely again.

And Taehyung learned to live with it until it became solitude and not loneliness.

Until music was his magic and his company.

Taehyung huffs out a silly laugh because at seven he would have just fucking died to have Yoongi acknowledging they could share this beautiful thing, but now it just seems pointless.

“What”, Yoongi asks and he has a small, hesitant smile trapped on the corner of his lips waiting to come out and his eyes close a little and he thinks this moment is finally a breather from the suffocating awkwardness that have been toning their interactions lately.

“It’s just…” Taehyung laughs to himself and Yoongi’s smile widens “I tried to tell you so many times when we were kids, but I think you never listened”

Yoongi’s smile melts from his face and Taehyung can see as the realization crashes upon him like a piano falling onto a cartoon, and it’s horrible and agonizing to see how embarrassed Yoongi feels, and for a second and just a second, Taehyung wishes he hadn’t told him.

Because there’s nothing more ridiculous and embarrassing than the moment you realize how awful and inconsiderate and disregarded you acted towards someone.

“I-” his eyes widen a little and he shakes his head no to himself and Taehyung can almost see the thoughts behind his eyes.

The “how can I have been so mean?” thoughts.

“Did- did you play because of me?” he asks.

And of course he would think that.

Taehyung compresses his lips and closes his eyes and lets the air escape from his nose as he just shakes his head no.

“No” he whispers.

He can see a bit, just a bit of relief flooding into Yoongi’s eyes and it turns it all just an almost insignificant little less embarrassing to the elder.

“I just felt alone back then because Jeonggukie was too young and none of my friends liked it and when I found out you did I thought I could maybe have a friend who understood it” he confesses, way

way,

W A Y

more vulnerable than he’d promised himself he’d allow himself to be in front of Yoongi ever again.

“But I didn’t listen” it sounds almost explanatory coming from Yoongi’s lips.

“But you didn’t listen” Taehyung smiles sadly, and turns back to his painting because he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

The silence that engulfs them it’s just so heavy Taehyung almost feel like Atlas carrying the whole cosmos on his shoulders.

Yoongi is still looking at him and he can tell, but he doesn’t look up again.

“I’m sorry I was such a bad hyung and a horrible friend” he whispers.

“You weren’t a horrible friend because you were never a friend so you could be a bad one” Taehyung’s voice is anything but accusatory. He is just stating a fact.

“I guess you’re right” he mutters.

“I guess I am”, Taehyung uses his fingers to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear.

He thinks he made a mistake because Yoongi is facing the side of his face that is now on display, and he thinks he should have let it covered.

“We could, um… Hang out?” Yoongi’s words come out as thick as wood and it feels like is is tasting them.

Taehyung truly hates Min Yoongi.

Because he would just absolutely die to hear them at anytime, but they’re said in the worst possible circumstance.

When his heart is too hurt.

When Yoongi is already taken.

When Taehyung knows he doesn’t want his friendship.

Taehyung snorts as aggressively as he can because it’s just fucking unbelievable.

“I don’t think we could” Taehyung turns the opposite way, pretending to need a paintbrush just so Yoongi will not see how it truly shatters him to say no to the question he has always wanted to hear.

Taehyung can’t be friends with Yoongi.

Because Yoongi doesn’t deserve him.

Because he won’t fit in small places and it’s all Yoongi can offer.

Because Taehyung wants to fall in love and to fall in love he can’t love someone already.

And to unlove someone he can’t allow himself to accept the crumbs, doesn’t matter how hungry he is and how good they smell.

The smell won’t fill his body.

“I’m sorry” Yoongi mumbles, his elbows on his knees and his fingers interlocked in the middle, body bent forward and head down.

“It’s okay” but is it?

Yoongi nods, pursing his lips.

“Maybe I can hear you play, some time” he says.

Taehyung closes his eyes.

Why Min Yoongi?

Why can’t you just go and ignore me like you have always done?

Why do you suddenly want to claim a heart you never wanted if yours belong to someone already?

Why are you so selfish and so goddamn cruel?

Taehyung is about to ask.

He is about to send everything to hell, about to really ask Yoongi why he can’t just go on with his life and leave Taehyung behind with his undying unrequited affection now he has learned to live with it already.

“Hearing Taehyungie playing is a rare occurrence” Hobi’s cheery and vibrating voice fills the room almost as brightly as the sunlight that creeps through the window.

Taehyung’s serious, melancholic expression crumbles to give its place to the biggest boxy smile.

“You hear it everyday” Taehyung argues “It isn’t rare”

“Not everyday” Hobi places his bag on the couch and walks towards his roommate on the floor “And I miss the violin”

Hobi has noticed Yoongi’s presence because a frown has crossed his face as he sits on the floor behind Taehyung with opened legs so Taehyung settles with his back against his chest.

Arms pull Taehyung close by the waist and a chin hooks his shoulder to look from behind at the painting on the floor in front of them.

“Hi Yoongi hyung” Hoseok greets politely and Yoongi answers with a nod.

They have met before and Hobi has gone to Jungkook and Yoongi’s house a couple of times for them to be considered acquaintances but not friends.

“Do you play the violin?” Yoongi’s surprise is heavier than the words.

“I do” Taehyung smiles to himself, leaning to Hoseok’s embrace.

“Taehyung plays everything” there’s a bit of admiration in Hobi’s tone and Taehyung feels grateful for his friend and for the way he simply cares about anything Tae does “He plays the saxophone too”

Yoongi raises one of his brows.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” he asks.

Get over you.

“Sleep while I’m high” he confesses “Or at all”

“Oh, you smoke?” Yoongi is finding so many thing about Taehyung.

“Yeah” he mumbles, playing with Hobi’s fingers in front of his body.

“Play for us” Hobi asks, pressing a small kiss on Taehyung’s shoulder that doesn’t go unnoticed by Yoongi.

“Don’t want to” the paint on Taehyung’s fingers is almost dry.

“Please babe, Yoongi hyung is curious” Hoseok knows about it.

He knows about it all and he reads people well so he must see something on Yoongi that Taehyung is unable to.

“I can play another time” Taehyung just doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to give Yoongi this.

He doesn’t because Yoongi will not care anyway.

He has waited so, so long to share this with Yoongi. Waited long enough to stop wanting to.

“He won’t be here another time” Hoseok insists, which it’s annoying.

Taehyung closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before he gets up, giving in just too easily because he knows Hoseok won’t ever stop bothering him.

“Okay hyung” he says, defeated “I can’t seem to say no to you”

Taehyung turns to the piano to see Yoongi looking at him, from his toe to his face, their eyes meeting in the most cruel, heartbreaking moment.

Taehyung almost forgot what he’s dressed in, his old and spent beautiful shirt that makes him feel more himself than any other piece of clothing.

He sits on the still warm piano bench where Yoongi was at just seconds ago, turns to it and sees the stained keys, running his fingers over them because that’s the closest he’ll get from Yoongi’s touch.

“What will you play?” Yoongi asks, and Tae’s eyes are closed so when Yoongi’s voice comes from behind him, it’s the closest his voice will ever be.

Taehyung lets the sunlight warm up his right cheek and he feels sad but he feels pretty too.

He knows what he wants to play.

“Play your favorite, Tae” Hobi encourages.

No.

“Which one is it?” Yoongi asks.

Hobi doesn’t know the name.

“I don’t know the name, but Taehyung gets spiritual when he plays it, it’s like watching a possession” he explains.

Taehyung smiles with his eyes closed but his eyelashes are almost wet over how much he wants to cry.

“Play it Tae” Hobi asks.

“Which one is it, Taehyung? Do I know it?” Yoongi sounds so curious and eager and Taehyung wishes he was as curious as this, the first time.

Because this song is the one he heard when he was little and it made him want to learn the magic of the piano and this song is the one he wanted to show Yoongi he had learned how to play.

Nuvole Bianche.

It was the first time Taehyung has ever felt powerful and beautiful and like he had something good to share. It’s his song.

And out of all people he wanted to share it with Yoongi.

Taehyung didn’t play well enough back then, not as well as the song deserves, but he could play it nevertheless and he had no one that would understand it. People would find it pretty and beautiful and would appreciate it...

But they wouldn’t get it, not like he thought Yoongi would.

They wouldn’t know what it was like to feel it coming out of their own body and how redemptious it was to play it.

And now Yoongi wants it.

Now he is here, against all odds, he is here. Taehyung isn’t sure enough he wants to share it anymore, but doesn’t he owe that to his smallest version that lives inside him with the dream of having Yoongi listening to it?

Yoongi doesn’t deserve it but Taehyung does, and that’s the only reason he says it in a whisper.

“Nuvole Bianche”

“Oh” Yoongi says softly, and of course he knows it.

“It’s Tae’s favorite and he plays it like it’s his” Hoseok says it and Taehyung nods to the wall because yes it’s his favorite and it’s his, somehow.

And that’s how he starts.

He plays for the first pang of his heart.

He plays for the second pang of his heart.

He plays for the third and fourth and fifth.

He plays the keys nine times before it starts and he doesn’t even need to open his eyes because he knows them by heart.

There are smaller sequences that grow and grow and get faster and faster and the melody gets more complex and more keys follow along, but the main ones remain being pressed along as it goes.

Because to Taehyung, this song is about himself and about the way he loves and it’s about being a kid and those memories. But then it grows and it becomes wider and wider and more and more sounds tag along, but it’s always about the same thing and about the same love.

It’s about how complex it is something that was once so simple and so innocent and how complexity can be beautiful even though painful.

He dives to it, his head going along and his chest closer to his hands on the piano because his heart recognizes it and wants to be so close to the sound.

The song is about learning that a feeling divides itself almost kaleidoscopically in so many colors and shapes that come from the same center and the more you spin it more colors you find and spinning gets dangerous and gets overwhelming but it gets colorful and it’s addictive so…

A pause.

Repeat.

All the pangs in his heart again.

Restart, complex but this time so so calm because he knows it already.

More keys.

More complex.

But way, way more calm.

Taehyung thinks his heart beats at the same rhythm and now he doesn’t know why he hasn’t sat down to play this song in the past one month and a half because it tells him everything he needs to hear.

The song ends complex en lieu of its simple beginning.

Taehyung thinks that’s how humans work.

They are born and when they learn how to feel it’s just so simple but then they end up where he is.

With branches that split into more branches and more branches and there are leaves and flowers and how can he rip out the roots if they’ve grown so much?

Of course he is crying, of course he is almost sobbing, because he did it for the small lonely and ununderstood little boy who lives inside him.

And when he hears Yoongi’s voice he knows he doesn’t want it anymore.

He looks at the wall through his soaked eyelashes and his paint colored bangs and when he dries his cheeks, his tears and the dry paint on his fingers stain his face with the most unintended yet beautiful watercolor he cannot see but Yoongi can.

“Taehyung” the hoarse voice keeps calling him until he numbly looks at it.

Taehyung feels drained and hollow because he poured it all and hurt.

Yoongi’s eyes carry something Taehyung can’t read but it’s similar to recognition and understandment.

Taehyung knew he’d get it.

Too bad it was too late.

“I knew you’d understand it” he says to the elder.

“I do” he says.

Jungkook is in the room now and he and Hobi watch from afar as Yoongi seems to want to say something.

“I-” he starts but Taehyung recognizes the stutter and everything that’s creeping into Yoongi’s body language and eyes, like that vulnerability from seconds ago it’s not gone and hidden behind his contained and controlled façade.

Taehyung fucking regrets it, playing for him like this.

He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve to think it’s his, or about him.

“I think you should do your job now hyung” Taehyung runs his fingers through his hair and stands up with a big sigh.

Taehyung collects his material and places his painting against the wall to dry, facing the biggest wound he has ever seen, before turning to go to his room.

“Taehyung” Yoongi holds his wrist strongly and Taehyung has his back on him but is turned to Jungkook and Hobi. He rolls his eyes at his friends because they cowardly leave them alone and go to Hobi’s room.

“What, hyung?” Taehyung just gets so fucking tired whenever Yoongi is around.

“C’mon, let’s talk”

Taehyung is done.

“What do you even want, Yoongi? Just say it please, because you keep asking me to talk and keep stuttering like you don’t know what to say when you have the chance? Why did you even come?” Taehyung throws his art supply on the floor and crosses his arms as Yoongi seems one more time completely taken by surprise and unable to respond.

“I want to say that I am sorry”, Yoongi finally manages out of his lips “I know that growing up I was an asshole with you, not because of your feelings but because I have never payed you any attention and I wasn’t a good hyung or a good friend as you pointed out earlier, because we weren’t even friends”

Okay.

“I am sorry for that, for being awful, and mean to you, and for never ever considering your personality” he breathes out “And I am sorry for what my boyf- Chunghee said, about what I said about you, I think it must’ve hurt because you disappeared after that and I…”

Don’t say it. Don’t.

“... I missed your presence all those days”

It doesn’t even make sense.

“It doesn’t even make sense” Taehyung does spit “You missed me? You don’t have the right to miss me. You don’t even know me, hyung. ”

Don’t say it.

“I want to” he says it.

Taehyung feels so goddamn furious because Yoongi can’t stop poking him and hurting him. He wouldn’t be able to even if he wanted to. It seems like Min Yoongi was designated to make life hard for Kim Taehyung.

It just felt so fucking good to be understood by Yoongi.

Taehyung doesn’t want to feel like this anymore, he doesn’t want to live under the illusion Yoongi is the only person who gets him and gets the way he feels and he doesn’t want to live this romanticized fantasy where Yoongi is the one.

But it just felt so fucking good.

“I want to be your friend, Taehyung” he repeats.

It’s just too fucking late. That’s what Taehyung wants to tell him, that it’s too fucking late for that. Taehyung hates it, that Yoongi suddenly wants him, but wants him to occupy a place it’s not the one Taehyung wants to be in.

“I just don’t see a point” Taehyung shrugs and when Yoongi opens his mouth, one more time, nothing comes out, so Taehyung continues “Find a point, show it to me, make it make sense and then we’ll be friends”

Taehyung doesn’t think Yoongi will manage in finding the point because he himself has been searching for it ever since the beginning and never found one to explain his reasons and his feelings for Yoongi.

“You think I’m self centered” Yoongi deadpans.

“You are” Taehyung says it back.

“I understand already, Tae” Yoongi takes a step closer to look into Taehyung’s eyes, but none of them can hold it “Seeing you play, I understood”

“It wasn’t about you” Taehyung roars, because it really wasn’t about him.

Taehyung’s art is perhaps the only thing Min Yoongi has never touched.

Because Taehyung has written and painted and played about Yoongi but he never wanted to do it for him. He wrote and painted and played about Min Yoongi as he did it about everything he went through in his life but it was never, ever aimed at him.

Taehyung has wanted to share it because he knew Yoongi would understand that it’s untouchable.

It’s off limits.

“I know” Yoongi’s eyes are overflowed with transparency and Taehyung knows, looking at them as briefly as they can hold it, that Yoongi is being honest.

Taehyung eyes him for long enough, wondering why this now, why is he being so insistent? Why can’t he go with his boyfriend and live without Taehyung’s friendship like he always did with no problem at all?

Yoongi wants it all

And Taehyung won’t give it to him.

“I don’t think we can be friends, hyung” he knows it’s true and it doesn’t matter how much Yoongi would like to pretend, it’s not possible.

Because Taehyung might hate him now, but he still loves him too much.

Yoongi nods, and he seems sad with realization, which makes Taehyung realize the look Yoongi gave him minutes ago was hopefulness.

Taehyung also learned a lot about Yoongi today.

He learned how he looks when he is taken aback, how he looks when he is realizing something, how he looks when he gets hopeful and how he looks when he gets sad.

Taehyung’s heart hurts so much with the realization he does want to know more about Yoongi. He wants to collect all the nuances of his eyes.

But he can’t because Yoongi has someone already.

“Are we okay?” Yoongi asks.

What is even okay?

“Yeah, we’re okay” Taehyung says, because the situation is dead, there’s nowhere else to go from here because that’s how far it goes.

“You should hang out at our house again, it…” he swallows “It misses you”

This hurts almost as much and Yoongi saying he missed Tae.

Taehyung misses their house too, and being there, but he knows when he goes there will be someone else there and he doesn’t want to feel that kind of pain again.

“As soon as it is over” Taehyung says, and looks at his painting and his supplies and Yoongi nods in understanding.

“Bye Tae” he says.

“Bye hyung”

And this time, weirdly, it doesn’t feel like a goodbye at all.

**

III

The days that go by after their last encounter, Yoongi’s presence remains ingrained in Taehyung’s house like a ghost.

It’s just not a safe place anymore.

The phantom touch of his hand around Taehyung’s wrist tingling perpetually like Taehyung has been cursed to feel it forever, with an eternal sensation of it being too much and not being enough.

Because Taehyung had never, ever been touched by Min Yoongi.

Not like that.

Not like he wanted Taehyung to stay. Not like he had something to say. Not like he wanted to look him in the eye and have a share of him, and his mind and his attention.

It is helpless to think it meant nothing because logic is a systematic function Taehyung’s body unknows and disconsiders. His body acts like an irrational being that aches for something once it has had a taste of it.

Like a vampire drinking blood after too long.

Like a starving animal facing its prey.

There’s no mercy in the way his body burns when he thinks about that single touch. A touch he can’t get rid of, no matter how much he tries.

Because again, it still tingles.

Taehyung closes his eyes and he can see Yoongi’s hopeful ones, selfish ones wanting him to play a part to his life that Taehyung is incapable of playing.

Being a friend.

He closes his eyes and feels it more present than ever, the hand so cold, so obstinate to collecting this Taehyung to Yoongi’s long arsenal of Taehyungs.

Yoongi owns as many versions of one’s heart someone can get, because to each version of Taehyung, he has loved Yoongi.

The grip tightens, invisible and absent, but lingering.

And it’s the exact same grip Taehyung feels pulling him to the edge, sliding so strongly yet so sweet, claiming Taehyung from inside out until he pours, and pours and pours painting his own body like it’s one of his canvases.

It’s after this moment, Taehyung sees the stars on his ceiling as he pants, gooey chest swelling up and down until his breath evens and he feels insignificant and pathetic.

Because it was just a touch, and here he is, laying on his bedroom, back feeling the emanating coldness from the floor through the stuffins of his mattress in contrast of his golden, burning skin, and thinking of it.

Taehyung doesn’t return to Yoongi and Jungkook’s house.

But after five days, Yoongi returns to his.

Taehyung is painting, like he constantly is these days. He has been painting to sell on his online store, and he has been painting to himself. When he finishes one he believes it’s particularly intimate, even though all his works are, he keeps it. The rest of them though, he sells.

His store online sells well, it actually pays his bills and it’s enough for him to save money because he wants to tour to Europe at some point in his life. Taehyung also has plans to expand his store eventually, since it sells a lot. He is not very fond of mass produced stuff, but he is considering making replicas of his own paintings because people are starting to want to buy them and it’s hard if he only has one of each.

But that is something he thinks for the future. He is taking special classes in university, even if he is about to graduate already, because he wants to expand his knowledge as much as he can.

Life is good when you can paint.

That’s why he does.

“Oh, oh my God, I’m sorry” it doesn’t matter how many times Taehyung hears it, Yoongi’s voice will always be something his body reacts to equally intensely every time.

And Yoongi stands in front of his open door, with wide eyes like Taehyung is a ghost at his own residence.

Taehyung thought he was alone, so he wears the shorter salmon shorts he owns, like he belongs in somewhere in north Italy, and his opened creamy flowy oversized shirt, which is unbuttoned, exposing his paint stained chest. The shirt is also stained like several of Taehyung’s clothes and he doesn’t mind one little bit about it. He wears a red beret that keeps his long waves from falling to his forehead.

“Hyung?” he asks because he has to, because it’s still abnormal to place Yoongi at his house, the only place that had never, until a few days ago, witnessed Taehyung’s humiliating emotional prison.

“Hi, um, Tae” he seems to have forgotten Taehyung’s name, which wouldn’t be surprising because that’s how significant he is to Yoongi “Jungkookie gave me the key?”

Why is it that Yoongi suddenly seems unsure of everything in his life?

“Okay?” Taehyung phrases it like a question as well because what the fuck.

“I, um, needed the wifi” Yoongi has a bag on his hands and it seems like it contains his laptop, judging by its shape.

“Didn’t Chunghee-ssi had wifi?” the question slides out of Taehyung’s lips as naturally as a breath and he widens his eyes at his own lack of subtlety.

Yoongi blushes, and in several years Taehyung has never witnessed such event.

“Ah” Yoongi steps forward, closing the door behind him and dropping his bag at their old couch “Chunghee hyung is almost never home, and also… I don’t feel really comfortable asking for his keys yet”

It all sounds like oversharing, misplaced and almost, almost like he wanted Taehyung to know.

Like he wanted to give Taehyung something to irrationally hold on to because hope is a sneaky bitch who will kill Taehyung before dying.

But Taehyung knows best and knows if Yoongi, unlikely to his own habits of being the briefest, more reserved human being, let something out that it wasn’t supposed to, it’s not because he wanted Taehyung to know or to hope.

It was because he, or the sadist divinity in charge of moments like this, want Taehyung to suffer.

“Oh” it’s all Taehyung can say.

“I…” Yoongi points behind him with his thumb “I can go… If you want me to, I can maybe find somewhere else”

What’s the point, honestly, in asking him to go, if his presence will remain like embers after a decimating fire?

“It’s okay” Taehyung sounds a little defeated “You can stay”

Yoongi’s eyes widen with a glitter that lasts so much less than a nanosecond Taehyung wonders if his mind is playing tricks on him.

After minutes, the silence between them sounds almost musical as Taehyung focuses back on the image taking shape in front of him, wondering which tone of yellow would merge better with the green ochre at the edges.

“Mustard” Taehyung follows the sound even though he knows exactly where it comes from, looking up to see Yoongi on the couch, laptop resting open on his thighs and eyes on Taehyung, not so discreetly traveling his whole body, even the naked strap of skin in the middle of the unbuttoned blouse Taehyung for a second forgot he was wearing.

“What?” Taehyung has to ask because it just sounds so highly unlikely that Yoongi really did speak to him.

The elder blushes again and this must be a parallel reality or a product of Taehyung’s imagination, because it’s all very unfamiliar.

Can it be that this is regular Min Yoongi behavior and Taehyung never knew because he doesn’t know him at all?

“You, um, seemed conflicted between the yellow tones so I, um, suggested…” Yoongi sounds absurdly distressed and awkward as he scratches the back of his head.

He noticed Taehyung’s dilemma, which means he noticed Taehyung, which means he was looking.

But Taehyung refuses to go there.

“You know what? I’m… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mettled” he adds, turning his head to the computer to do his job “You know a lot more about it than I do, it’s stupid”

Taehyung hates that he feels endeared. Hates that Min Yoongi can sound so absolutely amazing while doing something so absolutely idiotic.

“No, it’s okay” Taehyung finds himself reassuring the elder, which is something he should never do, something Jimin would kill him for doing “It’s good to have an opinion”

It’s not good. Taehyung hates it, he hates when people give him their unrequired opinion on his art.

But Yoongi is not people, and this is basically their first alone conversation that wasn’t initiated by Taehyung and there’s no way

Absolutely no. way.

That Taehyung can help it being giddy and gooey and excited about it, even if he knows he shouldn’t.

“Oh” Yoongi sounds surprised this time, perhaps unprepared for a non-hostile response from Taehyung, since it’s all the younger can seem to offer him lately “Okay, uh…”

Yoongi places his laptop on the couch and moves away, kneeling in front of Taehyung like they’re somehow used to proximity.

Taehyung’s eyes widen when they meet Yoongi’s right in front of him, staring back like never before.

“I, uh, really like the combination between green ochre and mustard because it’s almost like they’re made to be put together?” Yoongi points, getting one of the paintbrushes that rest on the floor and soaking it with the golden tone of yellow, placing it near the already painted green part “See? They’re just a match”

Like Taehyung always thought he and Yoongi should be.

“Yeah” he whispers, eyes focused on Yoongi’s pretty fingers around the brush.

When he looks up, Yoongi is looking at him and seems startled at Taehyung’s eyes so he ends up dropping the paintbrush, staining with yellow the beautiful green Taehyung had used.

Yoongi’s breath falters and his eyes widen as panic and horror floods his body and he tries to rub it off while muttering apologies and saying that he didn’t mean to.

“Tae, I’m so, so sorry, fuck” he looks at Taehyung and his eyes seem almost terrified of Taehyung’s reaction and the younger thinks maybe it’s fair, since Taehyung has done nothing to cut him some slack lately.

And obviously Yoongi still seems a little too selfish and even cruel for wanting to be friends with Taehyung now, after everything and knowing that it must be hurtful to the younger to be this close, but how can Taehyung be mean now, when he seems to be beating himself up so much. It would just be too cruel.

Yoongi is whining to himself, obviously absent mindedly, about how stupid he is and it makes Taehyung release a low chuckle that was trapped in his throat. Yoongi looks up wide-eyed, because he thinks it might be one of those i’m-laughing-because-i’ll-kill-you situations.

So Taehyung laughs harder.

Because Yoongi, the man who always intimidated Taehyung, now looks scared of him.

“I-” he starts, and his stutter makes Taehyung finally burst into giggles and it takes several seconds of his vibrant laughter filling the room and Yoongi’s frown for the elder to realize Taehyung is, indeed, amused.

Yoongi’s laughter is pitchy and choked like his vocal chords are muffled when they vibrate. He and Taehyung had never laughed together, at least not like this, and something about it sounds almost harmonious. Like they should have been laughing together for long.

It sounds so good, so, so good it almost sounds like the excruciatingly painful laughter Taehyung heard that day on Yoongi’s house, when his boyfriend™ was present.

Taehyung tries to breathe out, to let the air fill his lungs while trying to replace the painful memory of never having shared a moment like that with Yoongi for the fresh one of this moment.

It still stings, though.

Because Yoongi is still going home to someone else and Taehyung can never, ever forget that.

It’s too dangerous.

“I’m sorry” Yoongi mutters again, when the sound of their laughter has already dissipated on air like smoke.

“It’s okay” Taehyung repeats, looking back at the mess Yoongi made.

“No, it’s not” Yoongi whispers, leaning down to put his face in front of Taehyung’s eyes, in between the painting and his face “I keep ruining things for you”

There are some true to his words, even though Taehyung can’t place it properly.

“And what else did you ruin for me, hyung?” Taehyung asks honestly.

“I don’t know” Yoongi’s eyes are apologetic “But I feel like I did anyway”

Taehyung closes his eyes and presses his lips in a small smile that it’s almost a confirmation, because yeah, maybe not on purpose, maybe not for being mean, but Yoongi did, ruin something.

He ruined Taehyung’s heart.

He ruined Taehyung’s faith.

“I guess at least this is something you can help me to repair” he mutters, a little reluctantly to himself “If you want”

“I want to” Yoongi answers too fast and he seems to notice it himself, blushing before adding “I’m not as good as you, though”

Maybe there are hidden meanings behind his words.

“I just want you to be honest” Taehyung whispers, and when he looks up, Yoongi’s eyes are on his, wide open with furrowed brows and a brutal sincerity that Taehyung recognizes right away.

He is talking about the painting, at first, because Taehyung has one rule he has never, ever broken, and it is about being honest with himself and his art, and if he is sharing it with Yoongi, he has to follow it too.

“That’s my only rule, hyung” he blinks, but going back to look Yoongi in the eye “You have to be honest, because whatever I put out, it’s sincere”

Yoongi nods avidly, like he is promising he won’t lie, like he is promising he will, regardless of anything, tell the truth.

“I promise” the elder says.

“Okay” Taehyung mutters.

The first yellow mustard stain Yoongi draws over the ocre green Taehyung has painted before, comes as a rip on Taehyung’s skin, like a knife that sinks deep and lethal inside his flash and tears it all apart inside.

Because Taehyung has never shared this with anyone.

Ever.

And now he does and it’s with Yoongi and he realizes a little too late that Yoongi is not sharing anything with him.

Yet, here he is, sharing his most intimate moment with Yoongi.

“Stop” he asks as suddenly as he did the invitation and his chest just swells and empties with the speed of sound.

Yoongi’s eyes widen so much they almost jump out of his face and he looks up to frown at Taehyung’s expression, worry written all over the elder’s face.

“Tae?” it really hurts when Yoongi calls him like that even if everyone calls him like that.

It’s not about the name, it’s about the voice.

“You can’t just take this” Taehyung lifts his eyes to meet with Yoongi’s preoccupied ones.

“What do you mean?” Yoongi questions because Taehyung makes no sense.

And he doesn’t want to explain because he will give himself away.

But he has to.

“I am sharing it with you” Taehyung says “My painting, I am sharing it with you” he bites his lower lip for a long second before adding “You can’t just take this too”

“I don’t want to take this too” Yoongi moves his hand to touch Taehyung’s but he pulls it away before Yoongi even reaches it.

The elder seems a little pained by the way Taehyung avoids him. Not in an accusatory or hurt way, but as if he is realizing how far he is from being okay.

“You have to share something too” Taehyung whispers “If we’re gonna… If I’m allowing you to paint with me”

Taehyung hates that he is asking.

“I am” Yoongi promises “And I can wait, to paint with you only after”

“After what?” Taehyung asks.

“After we’re friends” he says “After I no longer hurt you”

That sentence itself hurts.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Yoongi has a boyfriend™, Yoongi is a little selfish and wants Taehyung to be only his friend and Taehyung knows it already so why can’t he act like he does?

Why does this cruel, voracious and decimating blind hope insists in crawling out of the dungeons of Taehyung’s soul in search of sunlight?

“Okay” Taehyung accepts it, because does he even have another choice?

Yoongi presses his lips together and nods, resignedly.

He stands up, walking back to the couch and sitting, before getting up again and walking to Taehyung.

He looks up, to find Yoongi staring at him.

“Can I come back tomorrow?” he sounds hopeful and it hurts and Taehyung knows he shouldn’t say what he is about to say but he doesn’t want to deny himself that.

“Yeah” he whispers “You can come back, hyung”

Yoongi smiles, and it’s gummy like Taehyung hates to love, so he just looks down so he doesn’t have to stare at it anymore.

“Thank you” Yoongi says it like it’s a privilege to sit as Taehyung paints.

Maybe it is.

Taehyung thinks Jimin will kill him.

**

Taehyung tries not to hope too much.

Of course he fails.

That’s how he finds his chest emptying with all the air he had kept it in, in the blind expectation he shouldn’t have, that Yoongi would be back.

Yoongi doesn’t have a notebook, or a laptop, or even a bag. He doesn’t have an excuse, but here he is again.

“Hi” it sounds soft and hesitant and it makes Taehyung’s heart ache.

“Hey” Taehyung greets from the floor, where he is at, surrounded by colors and brushes.

Yoongi watches him for a heartbreaking second before he closes the door behind him and take off his shoes and sit criss crossed in front of Taehyung and his canvas.

Taehyung blinks at the green painting with a yellow stain that will remain forever and he thinks maybe it’s kind of ironic, in a twisted way, that the stain was made by Yoongi.

Because Yoongi himself is the stain in Taehyung’s heart.

A stain he can’t get rid of it.

“You remind me of my mom” Yoongi blurts out and it’s so sudden the paintbrush in Taehyung’s fingers freeze on air as he looks up “Do you remember her?”

Taehyung does.

Yoongi’s mother is not Jungkook’s mother. They have the same father though, and Yoongi came to live with him when his mother got sick. That’s how Taehyung met him.

His mother was beautiful in the same way Yoongi is. It’s a quiet, almost ordinary kind of beauty that doesn’t follow the traditionality of what being pretty is like. It’s a very human, wise kind of beauty. The kind that makes you think that person is intelligent, enlightened and won’t fall from regular shiny things that distract you from it’s meaning.

The way Taehyung thinks they’re beautiful is the way their essence appear.

His memories of Yoongi’s mother though, are limited and blurred like scenes from his imagination.

Like a watercolor painting, where everything is bright and vibrant but blended together to the point you don’t know where a color ends so the other can start.

Like everything is clear but in the shadows.

Like everything is at the same time. 

There’s the shape of a tiny boy dropping his book next to a very, very infatuated little wide-eyed Taehyung and running towards a car.

There’s a gummy smile as he jumps to a wavy brown hair and a floral dress.

There’s the first register of Yoongi’s happiness in Taehyung’s presence.

“I remember her a little” Taehyung answers, looking distracted by the yellow stain “Not much, though”

She died when Yoongi was nine and Taehyung remember wanting to hold his hand and telling him he would play for him if he wanted, but never getting the chance.

“She was cool” Yoongi says, and it’s kind of like he talks about it like he isn’t really talking about her.

“That’s why I remind you of her?” Taehyung mutters, with a small smile on the corners of his lip “Because I’m cool?”

“You think you’re cool?” Yoongi jokes back, raising his brow, his lips curving up in the most subtle way.

“I know I’m cool” Taehyung smiles, box-shaped and honest, but his eyes rest on the painting and not on Yoongi.

There is a small chuckle that escapes Yoongi’s lips before the room falls back into the warmest of the silences.

Taehyung looks up, just his eyes, to spot Yoongi sat on his folded leg under him and another one to his chest, forearm resting on his knee to bite the thumb nail and eyeing Taehyung.

Their glances meet for an everlasting second before Taehyung looks down at the painting again.

“No…” Yoongi says after so long it doesn’t sound like there even was a previous conversation to continue.

Like it’s a whole new paragraph even though there never was a period to the last one.

“You… it’s something” Yoongi doesn’t seem to find his words and Taehyung just lets him search for them, giving him the privacy of not having his eyes on him “She used to paint too. I painted with her, before she got sick”

Taehyung didn’t know that.

Yoongi’s mom disappeared from the conversations like she was made of smoke.

No one talked about her, at least not in front of the kids.

Taehyung is not good with words. He doesn’t really know what to say.

Taehyung holds hands and touches foreheads and presses kisses.

He doesn’t say anything.

He can’t do anything too.

Because he can’t touch Yoongi the way he would with any friend because there are too many implications behind it.

“She was kind of artsy? Like you are. I guess that’s how you remind me of her” he carries on “There’s the same glow behind your eyes”

Taehyung never thought Yoongi had noticed his eyes and it does something to his chest.

Something it shouldn’t.

“I think that’s why I kind of hated you when we were kids” he purses his lips and bites the inner part of his lower one and looks away, like he is embarrassed for ever confessing “You reminded me more of her than I did myself and I envied you”

Taehyung’s lips part and he finds himself dumbfounded, like he just got punched in the face.

Because Yoongi hated him.

Because even though he never intended, he hurt Yoongi.

“People think I was too young to even remember her, you know?” he doesn’t stop and Taehyung feels dizzy but he nods and watches as Yoongi uncoils this never ending thread of thoughts Taehyung could have never, ever imagined “But I remember everything about her, to this day, and when I was about to paint with you yesterday…”

Taehyung stopped him.

“I felt her” he says “And I never painted with anyone else but her, not even in school projects, so I felt like I was doing something horrible”

Taehyung nods.

“If you hadn’t stopped me, I guess I would’ve, at some point” Yoongi confesses it like it’s a crime “But I went home and I thought about you…” Taehyung’s heart clenches like it’s contorting in agony before Yoongi shakes his head and fixes it “I thought about that moment. About painting with you and about being honest, like you told me I had to be”

Taehyung blinks at him.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t being honest yesterday” he says it like he is a horrible person “But I went home and I thought about it and I want to paint with you whenever I can. And I had to be honest so I’m being”

“Okay” that’s all Taehyung manages to say at first “It’s okay”

Yoongi nods.

“And I’m sorry for hating you. You didn’t deserve it” it’s weird to have someone you love so deeply telling you such things.

“It’s okay”

“I don’t want you to say that because you feel sorry for me” Yoongi looks at Taehyung like he is confessing something he has never told anyone.

“I don’t” Taehyung means it “I just understand what it’s like to have strong feelings for someone against logic” he looks Yoongi in the eyes for it “Or against your own will”

Yoongi’s lips part with the realization of what’s behind Taehyung’s words and it must do something to him because he looks conflicted.

He nods though, and Taehyung goes back to watch the untouched painting, wondering what will he do with the stain.

Because as much as he looks at the green, more the yellow jumps out to his eyes and it’s exactly the same.

As much as he looks at himself, more he sees Yoongi.

It all sucks.

“Thank you, though” Yoongi always seems to wait forever before he says something.

“For what?”

“For making me promise, yesterday” he explains “I guess it made me start being honest with myself, and that’s something I never allowed myself to be”

Taehyung wishes he wasn’t so hopeful.

“I’m glad, then” he says, instead “It’s the only thing we have, after all”

Yoongi nods in agreement, and then silence, old, comfortable silence, covers them like a cloak.

Taehyung finally soaks his paintbrush with green paint and works around the yellow, immaculate stain.

He thinks it really will, after all, remain there forever.

Taehyung knows eventually he will have to move on from it, get over it.

It’s not because it’s there that it makes it right.

But for now, he just can’t.

“Tae?”

Taehyung follows the voice like it’s a call and looks up to find Yoongi looking right into his arms.

“Can I play for you?” his eyes are begging for Taehyung to say yes.

Taehyung’s heart is begging for him to say yes.

Because Yoongi asked if he could play for him.

/For him/

F o r  h i m.

How could he deny it?

Taehyung can’t help the smile that creeps it’s way to his lips at Yoongi’s request because it’s Yoongi.

And someone else has Yoongi.

But Yoongi has Taehyung’s heart.

Whether he wants it or not.

“Yes”

Yoongi plays the Moonlight Sonata.

He plays it as long as Taehyung paints. Longer than it actually lasts.

Yoongi drags it, unfolds it, multiplies it.

He makes it more, way, way more than there is to it.

He plays it until Taehyung gets tired of painting and just falls back, with his back on the wooden floor, his exposed chest over the unbuttoned shirt, feeling the sun that colors the room with a shade as golden as Yoongi’s stain on his painting and on his heart.

Taehyung watches from the floor, Yoongi’s back curving towards the piano, his awful posture shaped by the sun and staining Taehyung’s wall in the most beautiful shape he has ever seen. Something grotesque and intoxicating.

A beautiful image Taehyung couldn’t portray in his canvas even if he wanted to.

He closes his eyes and lets the sound fill his hollow chest, smiling at the burning light on his face.

There’s a wooden floor under him, but as Yoongi plays, Taehyung feels floating at the widest, more crystalline lake there is, bathed by its emerald water and the warmest sun rays.

When Yoongi stops, maybe hours later, Taehyung remains with his eyes closed for as long as he can.

He opens his eyes to a bluish room, twilight shaping Yoongi’s body on the piano bench, this time turned to Taehyung on the floor.

He is looking at Taehyung, silent room almost as loud as Taehyung’s heartbeats.

Yoongi’s eyes glitter in the almost dark room, but he doesn’t break his stare, not even when their glances meet.

In the dark room, they remain.

Yoongi collects himself and goes home to his boyfriend.

Then all that remains is Taehyung’s aching soul.

**

He knows he shouldn’t let it happen.

Taehyung knows.

But here is Yoongi again and how can he stop it, if this is all he ever wanted?

Jimin is mad at him, and Jimin is also mad at Jeongguk for bringing Yoongi to their house in the first place.

“Taehyung, you’re being completely irresponsible with yourself. I know you love yourself enough to recognize the problem here” he is on Jimin’s bed and they’re cuddling, the both of them and Jungkook.

Taehyung knows.

“I know” he says, breathless, looking at the spot at the wall where Jungkook spilled coffee and never cleaned.

“Hyung seems to be… Changed, though?” Jungkook adds, from behind Jimin.

“Jungkook, shut up” Jimin complains, his chest vibrating against Taehyung’s back “You can’t be telling Taehyung that, he might get his hopes up.

Taehyung sighs.

“You have to stop hanging out with him. Tell him to stop coming” Jimin continues “He has a boyfriend and you still like him”

Taehyung knows Jimin is right.

“He and his boyfriend are weird though” Jungkook comments, and Taehyung tries not to act like a puppy whose ears just perk up at the sound of food or their collar, but he thinks he fails and Jimin can feel his muscles tensing in anticipation.

He can’t help it, though.

It’s his body’s natural reaction.

“What do you mean, weird?” to Taehyung’s surprise, the words are shaped by Jimin’s voice, not his.

The both of them turn to Jeongguk and now Taehyung is the bigger spoon, hooking his chin over Jimin’s shoulder.

Jungkook’s eyes widen like he said something he shouldn’t.

“I don’t know?” he asks, squeezing his eyes tentatively.

Jimin sits up.

“You do know” he presses, and Jeongguk realizes he is lost because he can never, ever win against Jimin, if not by intimidation, by how cute Jimin can act to manipulate him “Tell us”

Jeongguk sighs and he doesn’t even try to resist a little more.

“First of all” he wiggles closer like the walls can’t hear him “They are literally never together. They barely see each other, it’s all just so casual”

“What do you mean, casual? Say it” Jimin can be a little too much, and Jeongguk looks at him like that, even though he knows his boyfriend well enough “Stop rambling”

“Oh my god, calm down, not even Tae is that interested” Jungkook argues with Jimin.

Taehyung is.

“He is, he's just not outing how hopeful he just got” Jimin almost yells and Taehyung is not surprised of how well Jimin knows him.

Jungkook looks at Taehyung and his eyes soften at the sight of his best friend, almost apologetic.

Taehyung knows he is giving himself away because he can’t lie to his best friends.

Jungkook sighs, but not before glaring at his boyfriend for scolding him.

“They hardly ever hang out, but when they do it’s like, just sex I guess? They lock themselves in hyung’s room and stay there all weekend” he looks at Taehyung to make sure he should continue “They only come out to eat and they’re never talking when they do”

“And?...” Jimin insists, and Jungkook glares at him once again.

They’re such a funny and adorable couple, even when they argue. Taehyung can’t help feeling his heart flooding with affection even at the moment it agonizes with pain.

“They fought? The other day” Jungkook phrases it like a question just like Yoongi does and it’s kind of annoying to Taehyung sometimes “I don’t know what it was about, but in the end hyung said…”

“Said what? Oh my God Jungkook, just fucking say it already!” Jimin is so impatient.

“Why are you so impatient? I’m just being fucking careful” Jungkook argues with Jimin, completely upset now.

“You weren’t being careful when you fucking brought him here in the first place” Jimin throws it at Jeongguk’s face and Taehyung rolls his eyes because he knows exactly like it’s gonna go.

Because every time they fight it’s exactly the same.

Jimin gets impatient. Check.

Jeongguk gets upset. Check.

Jimin pulls something to scold Jeongguk. Check.

Jeongguk blames Jimin…

“You gave me the fucking keys, don’t act like you didn’t know” he yells.

Check.

Jimin explains it and implies Jungkook wasn’t careful enough…

“I told you to check with Tae!” he waves his hands like he is explaining something obvious.

Check.

Jungkook explodes.

“I am not fucking responsible for Taehyung and hyung’s relationship. If I hadn’t brought him here he would find a fucking way because he has been annoying me about Tae for more than a fucking month” He stands up “You can’t fucking blame me because you’re upset at Taehyung hyung’s recklessness”

Check again.

Jimin fights back if he thinks he is right and gets quiet of he thinks he is wrong.

Silence.

Jimin feels bad and looks up to Jungkook with his puppy bright eyes. Check.

Jimin apologizes.

“I’m sorry” his voice is carried with the weight of his unshed tears “I’m sorry, you’re right. I am wrong and I was unfair to you”

Jimin never, ever justifies himself, and that’s something Taehyung loves and admires about Jimin.

Jimin is humble, and Jungkook knows it too.

“It’s okay, I am wrong too, I should’ve been more careful” Jungkook sits on the bed again and Jimin crawls to his lap and straddles him, burying his face on Jungkook’s neck and nuzzling, begging for cuddles.

Jungkook holds him close and kisses the top of his head.

“I was mean though, you’re right, they would’ve met anyway” Jimin mutters like Taehyung isn’t there.

“No baby, I shouldn’t have allowed him to get near Tae, I have to protect him” Jungkook peppers kisses on Jimin’s cheeks and the elder giggles “I just… I wish they got together”

Taehyung rolls his eyes.

“Finished?” he asks, drawing their attention.

“Oh, yeah” Jungkook blushes, even though they’re best friends.

Jungkook always gets shy when he gets caught being particularly soft with Jimin.

“And since when do you want me to get together with hyung?” Taehyung raises a brow, with a smile on his face.

Jungkook shrugs with Jimin on his lap.

“I think you two would be good to each other” he says, shyly, and Taehyung thinks he is so cute.

A pang of sadness hits Taehyung's heart because he knows it’ll never happen.

He thinks about what Jungkook just said, about his brother spending the whole weekend locked in a room having sex with his boyfriend.

Taehyung thinks how pathetic he is, laying on his mattress, looking at his stars and touching himself thinking about one single grip.

Taehyung thinks about sex with Yoongi.

Animal, passionate, burning hot sex with Yoongi.

Taehyung thinks Yoongi has a boyfriend™.

Taehyung thinks about how Yoongi said he didn’t have the keys to his boyfriend’s apartment.

Taehyung thinks so, so many things in a fraction of a second that he nearly bursts into tears.

Because he gets conflicted between reminding himself of the reality and clinging to wishful thinking.

“He doesn’t think so, so…” he shrugs.

“So you should tell him not to come” Jimin adds, and Taehyung knows he does have a point.

“I think…” he tries to convey some of his thoughts into words.

Because Taehyung has been thinking so, so many things.

He has been thinking about how weak he is for Yoongi and how he is setting himself for the biggest heartbreak, almost like he hates his own self.

He has been thinking how irreversibly entangled to Yoongi he is, from his newest branch to the oldest of his roots.

He has been thinking, against his own reason, against his own efforts, about how would it be if Yoongi just magically realized he loves Taehyung.

“... I think maybe I idealized Yoongi hyung for so long, and maybe if I get to know him for real I’ll somehow break this wondered version I have of him in my mind” Taehyung says, because he has been feeling that.

“Really?” Jimin’s incredulity comes out heavy in his voice, along with a raised brow “And how is it going? Because for what you told me, it’s quite the opposite”

Taehyung knows Jimin is right. He knows it.

“What happened?” Jungkook frowns at it.

“He…” Taehyung doesn’t know how to explain.

“He pulled the fucking MOM CARD” Jimin can be poisonous when he is mad “What an asshole, he is so low”

“Jimin…” Taehyung warns, because Jungkook is there, because Taehyung knows Yoongi is being honest for the first time.

“Jimin, what, Taehyung?” Jimin parts from Jungkook’s lap “Look I know you think he was honest and okay, maybe he was, but he is so fucking selfish and manipulative. You said no to being his friend and yet he came back”

“He came back to work” Taehyung needs to convince himself of it.

He just can’t, he can’t let it grow in his mind the idea of Yoongi coming back for him.

“To work my ass” Jimin yells “To make sure you’ll still be there feeding his fucking ego” Jimin presses his temples “Look… I love hyung, but honestly I think it was just very mean that he pulled the ‘you remind me of my mom’ card”

“Hyung said that?” Jungkook’s eyes widen like Taehyung has never seen before.

“Yeah”

Jungkook looks distressed and hesitant to his boyfriend and then to Tae.

“What is it, Jungkook? Tell us” Jimin never stops.

“Look, Mimi, I know hyung is not the best with dealing with feelings, I know he hurt Tae and yeah, I know it’s fucked up that he keeps coming back and insisting with Tae but…” He looks up and something in his eyes seem almost pained “My brother has never talked about his mom. And when I say never, is NEVER. He hasn’t talked to me, he hasn’t talked to our dad, he hasn’t talked to Jin and Joon hyung… The only person I know he talks about her with is his therapist”

Jimin’s eyes nearly jump out of his face and his lips part and he seems regretful for implying that Yoongi did it just to manipulate Tae.

“Yeah… Yeah, oh my God, I’m sorry I even said such thing, I know hyung I know he isn’t mean” Jimin sounds sad with himself.

Taehyung pulls Jimin to his lap and holds onto him as tight as he can, his heart melting with affection at how protective Jimin is over his heart.

He feels so guilty for not being nearly as responsible and protective with himself as Jimin is.

“It’s okay baby” Taehyung mutters on his neck “We know you didn’t mean it”

Jimin nods, looking at Jeongguk, completely preoccupied about hurting his boyfriend, after all, it’s his family.

“Tae is right, puppy” Jungkook leans and presses a kiss on his cheek “We know you’re just protecting Tae, hyung”

Jimin remains silent for a second.

“Do you really think hyung has good intentions, Koo?” Jimin asks his boyfriend and Jungkook blushes at the pet name.

“I… I don’t really know” Jungkook confesses “I don’t understand hyung well. But I know for sure that whatever he is doing, it’s not to hurt Tae”

Jimin nods.

It really doesn’t matter though, because it can only end one way.

With Taehyung’s heart shattered in so many pieces it’ll look like dust.

It just doesn’t matter how much Taehyung wants to believe that something will change, or that it’ll end up being like a romance movie.

It’s real life, and in real life, Yoongi has a boyfriend.

“I can try to talk to him” the offer slides so appealing out of Jungkook’s lips “To ask him, to maybe tell him to give Tae a break”

Taehyung doesn’t want that.

He wants that, he wants to get rid of Yoongi.

But he doesn’t that at all.

“No” he answers “I have to deal with this. I know I’m about to have my heart shattered but… I think it’s better if I just… live this through”

Jimin looks hurt, seeing his best friend trapped in such situation.

“Tae…” his voice comes out whiny “I don’t like this, I think he will hurt you more than you can think, and I have to be honest”

Taehyung nods, the watery walls rising to blur his vision, turning Jimin and Jungkook into indecipherable blots.

Jimin leans, and hug him. Jungkook holds both of them.

“But we’ll be here, okay?” Jimin whispers “I don’t want to see you hurt but if you think you have to see where it goes then we’ll be with you”

Taehyung nods, and ends up sobbing inside his best friends’ embraces.

Because after all, after thinking how much he’d like to rip Yoongi out of his heart, and mind, and soul.

Taehyung still thinks about the way he looked at him, the way he played the piano for him, the way he didn’t want to leave.

It’s all just too hard

**

IV

Taehyung is playing his piano.

His eyes are closed and he feels it in every key the multitude of feelings and thoughts he has been fighting against lately.

His body feels like a hornet, thousands and thousands of wasps flying spirally like a small tornado, piercing his skin from inside out, begging to rip off his cutis trying at all costs to break free.

But Taehyung has kept them.

Thousands of them.

He plays every key to each wasp and hopes that it helps calm them down, settle them in their home.

Because he knows he can’t get rid of them.

He can’t make sense of them.

He can’t do anything except to learn how to live with this pain.

So his eyes are closed as he dives into the piano and feels the warm sunlight like he feels it everyday and hopes that the music he’s pouring works as a lullaby to his own chaos.

He presses the last key.

“So beautiful” the hoarse whisper comes as a disservice to Taehyung’s attempts of hushing his personal swarm.

It startles them like a poke on a tiger.

And it starts all over again.

Thousands and thousands of wasps hurting him again and in a sisyphean cycle of self flagellation.

Living with his love for Yoongi is like living with a terminal disease.

Any medication might soften the symptoms but they never

ever

heal.

Taehyung turns around just to check if Yoongi was even there on the first place because his pain is so overwhelming he sometimes wonder if he is even seeing or hearing reality or if those beautiful low murmurs come from a place inside his mind.

But Yoongi is there, with his black hoodie, his dark bangs over his eyes and his old and worn out vans that make him look so good yet so simple.

For a second, Taehyung allows himself to believe those words were about him.

“Didn’t hear you arriving” Taehyung mutters.

Today his own bangs curl in front of his eyes making it a very hard task to discern the expression on Yoongi’s face, so he runs his fingers through it, pulling them back until they fall to their sides

“I heard you were playing from outside so I tried to be silent” he confesses, taking a step forward “Didn’t want you to stop”

Taehyung smiles sadly, looking at the floor and then turning back to the piano, back to playing.

Taehyung can never play with his eyes open, his fingers dancing on the right keys just by his memory.

Taehyung can’t even open his eyes when he feels Yoongi sitting next to him on the small bench.

Not even when he realizes how Yoongi is pressed against him like he has never

ever been.

Not when he feels their shoulders and arms touching, their thighs glued together like they’re about to merge.

Not when Yoongi’s earthy scent pierces through Taehyung's nostrils, obstructs every single one of his pores, intoxicate him like the most addictive of the drugs.

He can’t open his eyes, not even when one of Yoongi’s hands rests on top of his, moving fingers along.

He wants to play.

So Taehyung lets him.

Taehyung has never played together. Not with anyone that wasn’t his piano teacher when he was young.

It’s an extracorporeal, spiritual experience.

It’s like a dance, where their bodies move so in sync one seem like the extension of the other.

Yoongi knows exactly where to press, he doesn’t miss the tempo.

Taehyung didn’t know it could be like this. He didn’t ever think it would be like this.

It would feel like this.

It would feel this intimate.

As if they know each other this profoundly. As if they’re used to each other. As if they’re inside each other.

It must be what making love feels like.

Transcendent.

When they stop, Taehyung’s breath is uneven, panting like Yoongi has touched him in all the right places. Like Yoongi has undressed him and traced all of his body with his fingertips like he did with the keys.

It’s too much and it makes him want to undo in tears.

And Yoongi’s body is still pressed against his.

Like an anchor.

“Tae…” it’s a whisper, weak and so, so emotional.

Taehyung can’t help but to wish with all his body that maybe Yoongi feels it too.

Just a little bit.

He feels Yoongi’s forehead bumping his shoulder lightly and then pulling apart again. He tries to contain a grimace. The proximity kills him once, twice, three times, over and over and over again and just a matter of seconds. 

When Taehyung opens his eyes and gathers enough courage to look, Yoongi’s eyes are closed too.

Taehyung can’t look away. He can’t help but to admire as the sunlight touches Yoongi’s face and shapes it perfectly, golden light against the silvery skin.

Maybe Yoongi is like the light.

It can cover Taehyung, it can burn Taehyung, it can touch Taehyung…

...but Taehyung can’t touch back.

All he can do is to be there and take it.

Yoongi opens his eyes and dares to turn and their eyes meet, faces close, so close.

But not close enough.

None of them say anything, but Yoongi’s eyes burn on Taehyung’s.

So he looks away.

Yoongi doesn’t though. Not at first.

He just stays there, looking at Taehyung’s profile while the younger goes back to playing. It’s almost shameless, the way Yoongi’s eyes run over Taehyung’s demi naked body, his profile, his skin. Taehyung notices and winces in pain because he wonders what does Yoongi mean, when he looks at him like that.

He plays the same song he was playing when Yoongi arrived.

“Tae…” Yoongi says again, this time a little louder.

“Yes, hyung?” he asks, looking up from his piano when he finishes playing.

It’s silence for a while.

Yoongi looks down and when Taehyung follows it, he finds the elder staring at their hands, both of them resting still on the piano keys, pinkies millimeters away from each other.

Maybe Taehyung imagined that Yoongi’s moved just a barely real bit, but he is sure it didn’t when he feels it, so light it’s almost ghostly, the touch.

It’s just the tip of Yoongi’s finger, the short bitten nail looking lovely next to Taehyung long one. He closes his eyes and enjoys it, just a little bit, the feeling of Yoongi’s bare skin on his.

Taehyung breathes deeply but it falters as he exhales and Yoongi presses his finger further.

Taehyung swallows and pulls it back, curling his fingers in a fist. Yoongi keeps his finger there and his eyes on the exact same spot where Taehyung’s was.

It seems like the world is going through a semantics crisis and everything is devoid of meaning and Taehyung is the one who has to find it and attach significance to signs.

He bites his lips before turning to Taehyung and they both face each other with masks on, hiding from the other what’s really behind their eyes.

Because Taehyung is tired of asking himself why.

Why does Yoongi does this kind of stuff?

Why does he come, startles the chaos and just goes to the comfort of the one he truly loves?

“What…” Yoongi pouts a little and furrows his brows, like he is wondering the answer to his own unasked question “What do you do when you and Jimin fight?”

Oh.

The question gets Taehyung by surprise.

“Uh” Taehyung frowns “Why? Did you and him fight?”

Yoongi frowns this time.

“Why would we?”

“I just asked because you suddenly asked about it” Taehyung giggles “So I thought you had fought and you wanted to know how to make amends”

Yoongi’s eyes widen before it softens in a pitchy giggle that sounds too endearing.

“It’s just… Jin?” there it is, the question-sentence again “We kind of argued and that never happened at this proportion before so… I don’t know”

Oh.

Taehyung wonders what it is about.

Yoongi, Namjoon and Jin are the best friends. The three of them are very similar in many aspects. They’re calm, quiet, centered. It always made so much sense they were friends.

And of course they fought already, all people fight, but Taehyung would have never imagined they would not immediately talk about it. Or that Yoongi

Min Yoongi

Would ask Taehyung for this kind of advice.

Taehyung, who always thought Yoongi was so emotionally intelligent and mature and would always know how to solve anything.

It’s an oddly pleasing sensation, starting to demystify Min Yoongi.

“I guess I’m not really good with feelings” Yoongi huffs out a laugh to himself “Not like you”

Oh, how ironic.

“If I were good any with feelings I wouldn’t really be here” Taehyung blurts out and it comes out without him meaning too.

He hates it, that he outed himself and exposed his still lingering feelings for Yoongi.

He closes his eyes at his own sentence, feeling bad because he threw it out of nowhere and also because he feels highly humiliated, reminding Yoongi of his feelings all the time without being able to control himself. A part of him just wants Yoongi to go, but also, the other part, the bigger and stronger part, all that part fucking wants is for Yoongi to stay.

“Okay” Yoongi laughs a little, but it seems to taste bitter on his lips, he winces nervously before he continues “You’re right, I’m sorry”

“Stop saying sorry” Taehyung asks, because it makes everything worse “Don’t say sorry”

“Okay…” Yoongi nods “Okay I’m s-” Taehyung giggles “Just, okay”

“Okay” Taehyung smiles a little.

“You’re still better at feelings though” Yoongi mutters “I just… Pretend they’re not there” Taehyung understands about that “You’re also better at relationships”

Taehyung giggles loudly, because it sounds just too funny, in a cruel way, that they’re even having this conversation “Hyung, I don’t do relationships. My life consists in one night stands”

Yoongi’s facial expression is a riddle Taehyung can’t unveil.

“So… You’re not with, um, Hoseok?”

The first feeling that floods Taehyung is hope. Overwhelming, consuming, burning hope that Yoongi is asking this because maybe he is interested, maybe he is jealous, maybe he is slowly realizing…

Oh. That’s right.

… Yoongi has a boyfriend.

Taehyung hates himself for allowing his mind to ignore that fact for a second that it is.

He hates himself for having read too many romances and bought all that cliche patronizing bullshit the media sells to make you fall for the stupid idea of romance.

It’s all a form of oppression anyway.

Taehyung also hates himself for allowing himself to hate himself over a fucking man.

“Huh?” he just asks because where did that even come from?

“Jungkook said that day, the day he told about your threesome or something, which I still don’t know if it’s real” he smiles shyly and awkwardly “He said you and Hoseok, uh, sleep together”

It’s kind of adorable how awkward Yoongi is.

It’s infuriating too, because he has no right to even be curious, to even bring it up, to even ask.

To even be so cute.

“It’s true” Taehyung chuckles “The threesome, we do that sometimes. With Hobi hyung… Yeah I guess I could say it’s regular”

“Oh” Yoongi masters the art of being unreadable sometimes “Doesn’t it… ever get weird? The three of you though”

Taehyung giggles again.

“No. It doesn’t… Firstly because our friendship is very clear and transparent, secondly because we just… know each other’s feelings? And third because it’s just fun” he shrugs and Yoongi nods.

“What about… Hoseok? It’s a constant thing?”

Taehyung thinks about it.

Yeah, it’s constant. Hobi has his own emotional struggles with a guy from the dance studio and he understands Taehyung well. He is his friend. He takes care of him and he doesn’t make it weird.

Two emotionally damaged people who just want to pretend.

“Yeah, it’s… very constant” he confesses, giggling shyly.

Yoongi purses his lips and nods and he seems to be thinking about something, almost choosing carefully his next words.

“Do you… Have feelings? For each other I mean…” he winces at his own words and twists his head as if he has heard a pitch in a melody “Since you do it constantly and he seems to be touchy with you, that day he came and hugged you on the floor… Anyway, uh, you seem to like each other very much”

Taehyung would be amused if everything wasn’t just so fucking unfair.

Yoongi has no fucking right. But he claims it and Taehyung gives it to him.

“We do like each other very much” Taehyung confirms, and he just wants to leave it as that but Yoongi eyes him like he expects more.

“Do you think you could…” he starts, and Taehyung just stops him.

Because it’s maybe one of those situations where Yoongi thinks if Taehyung falls for someone else then he won’t have to feel guilty.

“I mean I don’t know hyung, maybe” he says almost intentionally aggressive “I hardly ever say no before I say yes, so I think maybe if it comes to that, then yes, we could be a thing”

It’s an outright lie. One of the biggest ones Taehyung has ever told. Yes, he usually says yes before saying no. It’s a huge life motto.

But there’s not a chance anything emotional might develop between Taehyung and Hobi.

They have talked about it.

They have it established.

“Yeah… Got it” he mutters and for the gazillionth time, Taehyung just doesn’t fucking understand.

The silence is heavy because where do they go from there? They don’t even understand. Taehyung doesn’t even understand.

“I guess you just seem too good at relationships” Yoongi breathes out “You seem to have it figured out, I guess”

“You have a relationship yourself” Taehyung responds “Which is way further than I ever managed to get”

Yoongi seems to be reminded of it as Taehyung says it “Yeah, right, I have one indeed”

Taehyung licks his lips, turning back to the piano and looking at it as the quietness spreads between them.

There is something hostile about the way Yoongi eyes the piano, almost resentful.

“I touch our foreheads” Taehyung’s voice rips the thick veil of silence.

“Huh?”  Yoongi is brought to the surface of his own thoughts, conscious taking shape behind his glassy eyes that stared empty at nowhere in particular.

“Jimin” Taehyung turns to him “When we were young, Jimin and I fought and it was horrible. It teared my heart apart to be fighting with him and it just seemed we couldn’t get to an agreement on things. I was really trying to make him understand and he just wouldn’t agree” Taehyung smiles at the memory “Jimin and I are very different. When I fight with someone I love deeply, I cry, immediately and a lot. Jimin gets mad, he looks tiny and soft but he gets scary angry and he says a lot of words that hurt. He doesn’t do it because he is mean, but he says with without filter or the carefulness that he usually has when saying potentially heartbreaking truths. Like hitting the brakes of a car without the brake pad. There’s this… deafening noise. Fighting with Jimin is like that noise. It’s loud and it hurts, mainly because he is the most important person of my life”

Yoongi nods, blinking slowly but having his whole attention to Taehyung, almost like he knows exactly how it feels.

Taehyung moves on the seat, turning a little to Yoongi, moving his hands and widening his eyes, completely involved with the story, missing the way Yoongi smiles a little at his excitement.

“Anyway, we had this fight and I got desperate because I felt the fact of Jimin not understanding me was excruciatingly painful, so I walked to him and I touched our foreheads and when he asked me what the hell was I doing I said ‘I’m robbing your anger away, to keep it away from you’ and he giggled”

Yoongi giggles too, high and pitchy, and Taehyung giggles too because it just sounds so silly now, but that moment truly changed their lives.

The sound of his laughter along with Yoongi’s fill the room and it reverberates on the walls as beautifully as his piano.

“It sounds silly, and of course we never leave it at that. I went to my room and I calmed down and I was wrong so I apologized, but, in that moment, it just filled me with peace” Yoongi smiles, endeared by the story, which makes Taehyung smile at him too “We just, needed to calm down. We needed to remember how much we loved each other in the middle of the fight because anger is potentially destructive. Sometimes we think about stuff when we’re angry and it isn’t what is in our hearts, and if you act like it is then you might break something too valuable so… All I wanted was to ground us back into what mattered because the rest we could solve”

Yoongi keeps staring at Taehyung, looking into his eyes and it just consumes Taehyung how much he can’t read him.

“I-” he stops to laugh to himself like he knows a secret “When I was a kid and I fought with Jin hyung or Namjoonie I used to hold their hand”

Yoongi has a smile trapped behind his pursed lips and he looks at Taehyung’s eyes like he just want to giggle at the similarity of their thoughts and Taehyung can’t help but allow the growing violent and inevitable boxy smile to break to his face.

Yoongi smiles back, gummy, happy, beautiful.

For a second, there is complicity between them and it just feels so good.

It’s these moments with Yoongi, these small, rare moments that break endless darkness like fireflies, that make it all too difficult to let go.

Because when you’ve been in the cold for too long, any spark is warm enough.

Yoongi giggles at Taehyung, body trembling and barely bending forward with the pitchy delicious rustle that comes out of his lips. Taehyung giggles back and looks down, biting his lower lip in an attempt of containing his outburst.

He looks up again, head turned down at his hands but eyes on Yoongi’s, lip still trapped in between his teeth before freeing it.

“Maybe you should hold Jin hyung’s hand, then” Taehyung suggests.

Yoongi smiles, hiding his teeth this time, almost sadly.

“I don’t think it’ll work” he mutters “Jin hyung is right”

Taehyung nods.

“Tell him that then, and apologize”

Yoongi takes a deep breath and pouts a little, and it’s just so fucking hard for Taehyung to watch because his heart burns and aches with want.

“To admit that he was right is to admit that I’m an asshole” Yoongi confesses.

It takes Taehyung by surprise, the weight of the sentence.

He can’t pretend he isn’t burning with curiosity.

Yoongi is, indeed, kind of an asshole though.

If he wasn’t then he wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t come, having a boyfriend, knowing about Taehyung’s feelings, to play and paint and just be with him.

If Taehyung was strong he’d deny it.

“And are you afraid of admitting it to him, or to yourself?” it’s a simple question.

It’s a hard question to answer, whether to yourself or to someone you love and respect.

“Both” Yoongi murmurs almost so inaudibly as a whirr.

Taehyung only hums.

“I don’t really know how to apologize to him if I can’t find the strength to change. That would be highly hypocritical” it’s a conclusion.

It gives Taehyung a lot to think about.

He thinks he is hypocritical because he keeps allowing himself to go back to this situation. So he might understand what Yoongi is talking about.

“Just, be honest with him. Tell him you know you’re wrong and face the consequences. Just admit that you’re an asshole and face the consequences. Don’t try to justify your actions” Taehyung is a great believer that honesty, with oneself and with the others, is the best and only answer. “I’m not saying for you to be proud of being an asshole, nor to embrace it. I’m just saying, if it’s something you’ve yet to find the answer then it’s a process, and if it’s a process he’ll understand”

The tip of Yoongi’s pink tongue peaks out to lick his upper lip as he looks to the piano and there it remains for several heavy and slow-motioned seconds.

“Tae?” it’s the only thing he says.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you” he says “For your words, I mean. You’re right, I guess I gotta talk to Jin”

“It’ll be alright, hyung” he promises, even though he shouldn’t.

Yoongi smiles, a little to himself and a little to Taehyung. He pulls in the air between his lips in a sharp breath as he turns to the piano and presses the keys, this time to an unknown melody.

It starts sweet, tender, soft. The sound is composed by so many small glints that travel inside Taehyung’s body like the air, run through his veins, wake something on them, speeding the tempo with which his heart pumps his blood to the same as the music reaches. It increases, it gets faster and hurried and Taehyung closes his eyes, feeling almost part of the tune.

Something about the song sounds so much like his own feelings towards Yoongi. It feels, for the whole time Yoongi plays, he is conveying Taehyung’s thoughts into a melody. It sounds softly desperate.

Like a plead.

Like a prayer.

Taehyung recognizes it because it’s the sound of his own mind.

And then it ends, and Taehyung feels the magic of art.

Of finding something seemingly so arbitrary but that hit the deepestness of your soul and drags the most obscure feelings that yourself could never explain but someone else could.

He smiles, with his eyes closed and his soul relieved.

“Did you like it?” there’s a glint of hopefulness and anxiety on Yoongi’s voice and Taehyung smiles wider because he loves it.

He loves it when Yoongi’s blase energy melts and his voice trembles with transparency.

He loves the real Yoongi, the one who undresses.

“Yeah, God” Taehyung whispers and smiles wider with his eyes closed and bumps his head back “Hyung, it was… Everything I needed to say”

He opens his eyes and looks to Yoongi and he is smiling.

“Whose is it?” Taehyung straightens his head and curls forward to try to reproduce the beginning of the song on the piano.

“You have a good ear” Yoongi points out, listening to the way Taehyung presses the right keys.

“I do” Taehyung giggles, pressing more keys, a little slower but still the perfect melody “Whose is it?”

“It’s mine” he says “I thought of it yesterday, when I was going home”

Taehyung’s smile melts and his heart falls to his stomach and his whole body tingles, warm inside and cold outside.

Yoongi did imply something.

He isn’t crazy.

Yoongi thought of it when he was going home, from where he spent the day with Taehyung, confessing parts of him he hadn’t before, where he played piano and looked and the painter boy splattered on the floor like wine on a dress.

Did he think about the before or the after?

Did he think about where he was coming from or to where he was going?

Home.

Is home a person to Yoongi?

Is home his boyfriend?

“Oh” Taehyung lets out “Did…” he licks his lips “Did you show Chunghee-ssi already?”

He went there.

He had to go there, as much as it rips him from inside out.

Because maybe it’s masochist but if he hears it from Yoongi over and over again he’ll believe him.

He’ll believe Yoongi because he can’t believe himself, falling over and over and over again in the bottomless pit of hope his own mind seems to turn into.

Maybe then his body will register the reality, if Yoongi repeats it. The reality that Yoongi is in love and in a relationship with someone it’s not him. Doesn’t matter how much his desireful thinking wants to cling to small insignificancies that mean nothing to Yoongi.

The elder’s eyes widen before a frown like it’s so characteristic of him. He tilts his head to a side and Taehyung can’t help but to think the movement resembles a little kitten.

“Why… No?” he says “I wanted to… share it with you?”

Oh no.

“It’s about…” He stops himself “I wanted to show it to you”

Oh no.

Taehyung barely registers.

“Why wouldn’t you show him, though?” he tries, because he needs to hear Yoongi saying it. He needs Yoongi to hurt him so he can get angry, so he can hate him and forget about him “He works with music, right?”

“Tae…” Yoongi straightens to look at Taehyung like he is about to explain something important and his heart races “Did you hear, I think it was last year, about the guy who wanted to add lyrics to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor?”

Taehyung rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I heard about that criminal” he says.

“So, I told this to Jin hyung, Joon and Chunghee hyung the other day...” he widens his eyes as if creating suspense to finish the story and there’s a shadow of a gummy smile trapped behind his lips and Taehyung hates the fact that he smiles back in anticipation “... and Chunghee hyung said, and I quote: ‘that’s a great idea! Music is so much better with lyrics, this way everyone can understand what the a u t h o r means’” Yoongi says ‘author’ slowly and loud.

He also makes a perfect impression of Chunghee’s voice but with extra dumbness pouring over it and it hits bittersweet, because it’s funny to see Yoongi being so candid and it hurts that he can make a perfect impression of his boyfriend.

Taehyung can’t help it, all he can do is burst into a fit of giggles that make him cover his mouth with his hands and shakes his head no as if he wants to say he is sorry for laughing, or that he doesn’t want to keep laughing like this but he can’t avoid.

Yoongi giggles too. A lot. He giggles as he raises his hand and circles it around Taehyung’s like he did that day, the perfect grip, pulling Taehyung’s hand down, but not letting go as he watches Taehyung’s boxy smile shamelessly.

Taehyung laughs until he notices Yoongi’s eyes on his smile and then he burns, biting his lip to tame it as he blushes.

Yoongi doesn’t have the right but he doesn’t care for limits.

The elder’s eyes raise to meet Taehyung’s.

“I want to share this with you, because you get it, and…” he blinks “it’s just, you, you know?”

No. Taehyung doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know anything.

“I don’t know, hyung” he says it, word heavy on his tongue like bricks on paper “and I don’t think this is fair”

Their moment is gone.

Yoongi looks down almost like he is heartbroken and it pains Taehyung terribly to be the cause of that look, of that fall, of that pout.

But he has to do it for himself.

“And, I’m thankful you showed me the song, I really am so, so grateful because I can’t even say how much, because it’s everything I needed and it seems like you read my heart” he looks at Yoongi and his own eyes water and Yoongi raises his hand to wipe the tears away but Taehyung flinches away “I want to be your friend hyung, I really do and I’m trying…” Yoongi nods with furrowed brows “So please help me, because you have a boyfriend and you can’t cross some lines, hyung, you should know that”

“I know that” he whispers.

“Then if you do, please be careful, okay?” Taehyung sounds a little like a baby and he sounds just so fucking sad and he hates it that he is showing it to Yoongi a little, small fraction of how hurt his heart it “You might think you’re an asshole but I don’t believe that so please prove me right”

“I’ll prove it, Tae” Yoongi promises, he seems so regretful.

“Okay” Taehyung nods.

“C-Can I touch you?” Yoongi doesn’t seem to understand, or he doesn’t want to seem to want  to understand.

Taehyung closes his eyes to feel the soft brush of Yoongi’s thumb on his cheek, wiping away his tears. He leans to the touch, because he just loves, he absolutely loves Yoongi’s fingers, his thumb particularly, with his bitten nail and skin that Taehyung would love to kiss.

Taehyung allows it because it’s his only chance.

“I won’t say things like that anymore, I promise” Yoongi dares to cup Taehyung’s face and tilt his head to press their foreheads together “I’m sorry I robbing your method” Taehyung laughs wetly “I just want you to know that I don’t want to hurt you more”

Oh, Min Yoongi, you can’t help it.

“Come back tomorrow” Taehyung whispers “I want you to paint with me”

Yoongi opens his eyes, his dark, profound pits, like a black hole almost as endless as Taehyung’s heart, just to make sure he means it.

“Are you sure?” he sounds almost pleading.

“You shared something, hyung, so I want to share it too” Taehyung whispers, the tip of their noses almost brushing on each other’s.

“Okay”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean, okay?”

“Okay”

“Okay”

**

That night, Taehyung gets fucked by Hoseok.

“You were eager today” salty drops run down Hoseok’s smooth skin as he falls inert on top of his panting chest.

“Yeah” Taehyung breathes out, gasping for air.

“What happened?” Hoseok rolls on his back and pulls out out Taehyung’s body.

“Nothing” it’s a lie and Hoseok obviously knows it.

Taehyung snuggles on Hoseok’s side, soaked bangs falling curled on his eyes as he feels the warm comfort of his friend.

“Piano guy?” Hoseok knows Yoongi’s name pretty well, but he never refers to him by his name when they’re talking about him in circumstances like this one.

Taehyung looks at the ceiling from where his face rests on his hyung’s chest. There are no stars on this one and Taehyung misses them almost as much as he misses Yoongi’s soft touch on his cheekbone.

“Piano guy” he blinks as Hoseok lights up a joint for them to smoke, like they usually do.

“What did he do?” the smoke escape Hoseok’s lips like in a cold winter night.

“He exists” Taehyung gets the cigarette in between his fingers and takes a drag “That’s enough to fuck me over and over again”

“He came here again, today?” Hoseok’s voice sounds terribly distant under the clouds of smoke that blocks Taehyung’s eyes from the blank boring starless ceiling from Hoseok’s room.

“Yup” Taehyung sucks the joint, feeling as the smoke burns its way down his throat “Played piano with me, told me about how stupid his boyfriend is, touched my face like he wanted me and told me how I got him differently than anyone else” he takes another drag and blows the smoke out as he speaks “I told him to stop playing with me and then I invited him over tomorrow”

Hoseok explodes in a laugh that reverberates against the walls and Taehyung can swear they tremble.

Taehyung laughs too, at his own idiocy.

“Yeah, I’m an idiot” another drag “I don’t even know why he is coming”

“Ask him” Hoseok steals the joint.

“He says he wants to be my fucking friend” Taehyung snorts to himself “Asshole”

Hoseok moves under Taehyung, entangling their naked legs and soft cocks brushing, so he can stare at him.

“He is, indeed, an asshole” Hoseok rolls his eyes “Close the door on his fucking face”

Their noses brush as Taehyung laughs, Hoseok turning his face up a little to keep smoking.

“The worst part is… I can’t get over him, you know? It feels like a prison in my own body” there’s heaviness in the way he sighs, like he has ran WMM thrice “And he knows it”

“God, what a dick, Taehyung” Hoseok offers him the cigarette “Fucking murder him”

“I wish I could” Taehyung blows the smoke “He dared to asked about us… you and me. Asked if there’s something between us”

Hoseok snorts “Maybe he is jealous”

“Yeah, right” there’s a glint of hope in the depths of Taehyung’s chest but he doesn’t allow it to jump out “This is not a fucking rom-com hyung”

Hoseok laughs and leans to press a wet kiss on Taehyung’s neck.

Taehyung just closes his eyes and enjoys the warm moistness of Hoseok’s tongue, sucking more bruises to his skin.

“We could test it” he whispers, teeth scratching the curve before his shoulder “See if he reacts”

Taehyung giggles when Hoseok sucks obstinately right on his jaw, knowing it’ll turn black soon, like a rainy cloud on a sunny day.

“He’ll barely even look” at some point they finished smoking but Taehyung doesn’t know when, all he feels is Hoseok’s pretty hands around his dick and his heart shaped mouth on his neck.

“Well, maybe he doesn’t” he bites hard, pulling Taehyung’s skin so strongly he moans, a mix of pleasure and pain, so much pain he thinks Hoseok will rip the skin “But at least he will think you’re getting over him” another bite, this time on his lower lip “He won’t know how much power he has”

It sounds good.

It sounds so fucking delicious the idea of Yoongi thinking Taehyung is sublimating in front of his eyes. That his solid, thick, heavy affection is turning to a smoke as dense as the one Taehyung blows when he’s high.

Yoongi thinking Taehyung broke free.

Taehyung knows how far from his reality it all is but just pretending just sounds so fucking good he could cum just from it.

He giggles and murmurs a breathed “Yeah” because Hoseok is swallowing him and making magic with his tongue.

And for that moment, Taehyung  can almost believe his lie.

**

jinhyungie:

taehyungie

i miss u

taetae:

hyungie

miss you too

He has the stars back now, and it’s soothing and if he closes his eyes really hard he can hear them twinkle even if they’re just ink on a wall.

Hoseok fell asleep and Taehyung got tired of feeling cummy and sticky so he went to a shower, another joint and then his mattress.

Hoseok’s voice echoed inside his head as he dried his hair in front of the mirror, watching as the purple and black marks bloomed like galaxies all over his collarbones, neck and jaw. He wouldn’t be able to hide from Yoongi even if he wanted to.

Taehyung thinks he looks pretty, all bruised like he was loved. Like he was one of his watercolors. If he closes his eyes and presses where it hurts, the pain can almost feel good.

Almost feel like reciprocity.

He closes his eyes and starts drifting into a sweet sleep that feels as light as Yoongi’s touch on his skin before he gets pulled back to reality by the ring of his phone.

jinhyungie:

did yoongi stop by?

Of course.

taetae:

he did.

u two fought?

jinhyungie:

oh

so he told u

taetae:

yup

jinhyungie:

did he tell u what it was abt?

taetae:

no

just something about him being an asshole

jinhyungie:

it was about u.

Taehyung’s heart sinks faster than an anchor in the middle of the atlantic.

taetae:

what about me?

jinhyungie:

i dont think you should hang out

i think he hurts u

taetae:

so he told u?

jinhyungie:

if he told me about the way you put him in his place when he behaved

like a complete jerk by calling you to warn u about his relationship?

yeah

he told me.

taetae:

oh

jinhyungie:

yeah

sigh

taehyungie

i know he has been coming over

why do u let him?

he is my best friend but he is being selfish

taetae:

idk hyung

i guess i thought by getting to know him

i’d break the perfect image i created for him in my head

so maybe i’d unlove him

jinhyungie:

and how’s that working out for you?

taetae:

it isn’t.

jinhyungie:

why do u let him taehyungie?

taetae:

do i really have to answer?

why did u fight though?

jinhyungie:

i told him he was selfish and hurting you by going over.

Oh.

taetae:

and what did he say?

jinhyungie:

i dont think it’ll do good to your heart to know

taetae:

not like my heart isn’t already shattered tho

jinhyungie:

k

he said he didn’t know why but he couldn’t stop himself from seeing u.

Oh no. Oh no.

Fucking no.

Taehyung’s heart bursts in deteriorating hope and then there’s nothing he can do to help it. It doesn’t even have to make sense and it is helpless to try to remind himself all of the reasons why he shouldn’t let himself cling to that.

It’s already too fucking late.

taetae:

oh?

what did u say?

jinhyungie:

i reminded him that he had a boyfriend.

taetae:

and what did he say?

jinhyungie:

taehyungie…

taetae:

tell me hyung

please

…

please

jinhyungie:

…

he said he was aware

that he just wanted to be your friend.

Taehyung can’t type because his eyes are blinded with thick tears.

jinhyungie:

taetae…

taetae:

i hate him hyung

i really do

jinhyungie:

i know

taetae:

i love him

jinhyungie:

i know

**

Taehyung wakes up with swollen eyes and heavy lids that stamp on his face how much he cried himself to sleep.

He hopes Yoongi doesn’t show up today. He hopes Jimin stays on Jungkook’s house again. He hopes Hoseok finds a hook up and doesn’t return. He hopes he closes his eyes and never opens them again until there’s a capsuled cure to the gigantic, endless, consuming and destructive pain in his heart.

Hoseok is there in the morning and he knows Taehyung is feeling like crap, even though he doesn’t know why. They smoke together before he leaves to teach at the dance studio and Taehyung slides into his short peachy shorts and his beige paint stained button shirt that he never closes and goes to the living room to paint.

Under the window the sunlight illuminates his bruises and he feels pretty.

It’s a new canvas now. He doesn’t want to stare at Yoongi’s unfixable stain anymore. He doesn’t want anything to do with Yoongi.

He paints with his hands and it’s almost like he’s spanking the canvas. It’s red, it’s obviously red as the blood that boils under Taehyung’s skin and as the color he sees when he thinks of his embarrassing, sad situation.

A pathetic little boy who never got over his crush.

Who feasts at crumbs.

Who can’t say no.

He runs his fingers through his bangs and paints himself a few red locks and then he slaps the canvas again as he cries and he cries

And he cries.

Because he’s been trapped in the same day over and over and over again.

Yoongi comes,

Yoongi fools him,

Makes him dance like a clown on his little box.

Yoongi breaks his heart over and over and over again and he lets him because he is weak.

Taehyung falls on the wooden floor under the sun and he closes his eyes until his dreams cloud his mind in the sweet relief of unconsciousness.

He wakes up to the sound of the piano flooding his chest and waking him from inside out with the same lingering melody of the composition Yoongi showed him the day before and the creeping headache collects itself back to the hole from where it didn’t even come out.

Taehyung hums as he feels the melody waking his feelings and he contorts on the floor in a laze that drags away the slumber.

Apparently Taehyung’s hurt and anger dissipated in his sleep, because when he looks up and sees the shape of Yoongi’s body curved on the piano painted by the sun on his wall, he sits up and begins to paint it too.

He doesn’t know if Yoongi notices as he grabs a blank canvas and starts to paint it, the same yellow Yoongi previously used to stain his green and a dark shade of gray.

When Yoongi finishes playing and he turns back, his eyes are sad.

“Hey, sleepyhead” he mutters, hoarse and low like if a cave had vocal chords.

“Hey” Taehyung smiles sadly at him too.

“Can I see it?” he asks, leaving the piano to crouch and sit criss crossed in front of Taehyung and his painting.

Taehyung looks at the image, it is still taking shape and it’ll need days and days of work on the details but it’s undeniable what it is.

It’s Yoongi, and his bad posture and his tiny body and his endless, endless soul.

Taehyung turns it to him and rests his chin on top of it and watches as realization hits Yoongi in the face.

“It’s me” it’s a soft breath more than are words, but Taehyung hears it clear.

“It is” he says, setting it aside.

Taehyung doesn’t miss the way Yoongi’s eyes travel through his half naked torso and rest on his bruises for longer than just a moment, then they raise to his eyes.

Taehyung’s breath is trapped on his throat but it escapes as soon as Yoongi smiles at him.

It’s an undoubtedly sad smile, low eyes with no glitter, but a smile nevertheless.

“Wanna paint together?” Taehyung asks.

The question sounds too intimate, too naked.

Yoongi feels it too, Taehyung can see it in his eyes just for a second, but he manages to show his gums and nod.

It’s painful to see how sad a pretty smile can be.

“Are you okay?” Taehyung asks once there’s a brand new canvas on the floor and Yoongi stares at it like it insulted him.

It’s the third one today and Taehyung reminds himself to get more and also to buy more yellow paint.

“Yup” Yoongi mutters aggressively and Taehyung wants to roll his own eyes but he doesn’t.

Yoongi is moody and quiet and that is something Taehyung knows for a fact and he won’t poke the tiger because if Yoongi blows up Taehyung will snap back at him.

And it won’t

be

fucking

pretty.

“Okay” that’s all he says because what else can he do?

Heavy silence fills the room as they paint.

Several minutes pass and the colors replaced the whiteness of the cotton cloth they paint. Yoongi started with blue and black and purple. It’s lighter in the middle of it and darker on the edges and it looks like a cave.

He is better than Taehyung ever thought he could be.

“I hate you” Taehyung mutters, adding black on a few spots to increase the shadows. Yoongi looks up suddenly, wide-eyed and surprised by such harsh words breaking the peaceful quietness of the room.

Taehyung keeps painting, but allows himself to smile, poking his tongue on the inside of his lower lip, mouth closed as if it fights against the insistent grin “You’re just so good at everything” he whispers, smiling at the paintbrush.

Taehyung doesn’t look up but he feels Yoongi’s eyes on his profile and he can see as the adorable gummy grin breaks his face. The pitchy chuckle comes out seconds later.

“You play piano, violin, saxophone, you paint, you sing…” Taehyung looks up and Yoongi shrugs “You don’t notice but you hum while you paint and sometimes you sing it loudly so yeah, I know you sing” Yoongi looks down, shyly, pink blush on his adorable chubby cheeks and Taehyung just wants to die “You can dance, Jungkook showed me videos last week, and you can write so… I guess I hate you too, for being so fucking awesome”

Taehyung’s heart ache and it’s bittersweet how good it feels and how painful it is.

He smiles though, because it’s sweeter than bitter.

“Guitar…” he mutters.

“Huh?” Yoongi’s confused face comes with a frown and a pout and Taehyung has to beg gravity to pin him down so he doesn’t lean to recklessly try to hug him.

“I play the guitar too” Taehyung adds.

Yoongi chuckles.

“Yeah” he nods and wiggles his brows “I hate you”

“Like I don’t know that since we were kids” Taehyung jokes and maybe he regrets it because Yoongi’s smile melts and looks down at the painting.

They go back at it because there’s seemingly nothing else to add and it’s lighter this time, even after Taehyung’s comment.

Taehyung doesn’t know how long it is before Yoongi breaks it.

“So… You and Hoseok?” the world sounds awkward and unnatural.

“Huh?” he doesn’t understand why does it always has to end like this with them.

Awkward, painful conversations.

Yoongi points at his neck with the ending tip of the brush and looks back down.

“Was it him?” he asks.

Oh, Min Yoongi, why do you even care?

“Yeah, it was” Taehyung giggles shyly “Jimin slept at yours and we ended up fooling around”

Why is he oversharing?

“Oh” Yoongi takes forever to speak “So, do you guys hook up everytime Jimin is at mine?”

“Not really, sometimes he’s here, but we don’t really care because neither does Jimin nor Gguk”

Taehyung rolls his eyes in annoyance.

“Got it” it’s all he says.

There’s not much Taehyung can do. He doesn’t really understand Yoongi nor his insistence in asking about his relationship with Hobi, but he thinks about what Hoseok said, about at least pretending just so Yoongi thinks he’s getting over him.

It’s utterly juvenile, and hopeless if the aim is jealousy, but Taehyung has to try because he feels too naked and too vulnerable in front of a guy who rejected him and keeps rejecting him

Over

And over

Again.

“Is it always this… violent?” Yoongi pulls Taehyung out of his thoughts and why the hell does he want to know?

Taehyung just giggles.

“I guess it depends on the mood?” he is being honest. Maybe talking about it with Yoongi will ease the situation “But mostly yeah, it’s hard”

“Oh” he says “So you like it like that”

Taehyung frowns at him and only then Yoongi seems to notice what he just said and he blushes.

“I mean, it depends on who I’m with” he shrugs “But with Hobi is like that”

Yoongi hums.

“I guess I always thought you’d be more the ‘make love’ kind of guy”

The sentence sits heavy between them because

“You /always/ thought?” Taehyung questions.

Since when does Yoongi think about what kind of sex Taehyung likes?

Yoongi blushes and his eyes widen and he stutters for a good amount of seconds before he can come up with a cohesive sentence.

“Yeah” Yoongi sounds too sure of his words after stuttering so much “I always thought you’d be more the type to make love”

Taehyung narrows his eyes and he feel bubbly anger roaring on his stomach because Yoongi just can’t help it being an idiot.

“I guess I never got the chance to ‘make love’ but I’ll let you know if I like it better when I do” he sounds defensive, and he hates to sound defensive more than he hates Yoongi.

“Right” Yoongi clenches his jaw and Taehyung shuts his own face and neither of them know why.

The conversation escalated to something Taehyung doesn’t know what and where it came from or even why.

Yoongi is mad at him, Taehyung knows by the way he grits his teeth and pouts and turns his face slightly to the other side so Taehyung can barely see him and as much as Taehyung wants to ask him why he is mad, he also wants to send Yoongi home.

Because he keeps bringing things up, he keeps pushing Taehyung too far and he keeps crossing the fucking line and he just has no right and Taehyung is finally done with being kind and soft and giving him chances.

The hard, painful, agonizing truth is that Taehyung has clinging to the hope that maybe this time it would be like a rom-com, and that Yoongi would realize.

But he is not anymore.

Which is why he wears his best boxy grin when Hoseok arrives early and notices Yoongi there and purposefully walks to them with a mischievous grin.

“Hey, hyung” Taehyung smiles widely when Hoseok crouches next to him and in front of Yoongi.

“Hey, babe” he says it loud enough so Yoongi can hear, and Taehyung feels the elder’s eyes on him, but doesn’t spare him a glance.

“Hey” he greets again.

“You look pretty today, all colored” Hoseok slides his fingers over Taehyung’s bruises and leans to press a peck on his lips.

It’s absolutely cringey and again, utterly juvenile, but Taehyung lets him because it won’t make Yoongi jealous but maybe it will make him think Taehyung is finally moving on, even though he made it clear yesterday that he is still stuck there.

Because maybe he can use the blind hope he felt about Yoongi loving him will turn into a blind hope that he can actually move on from him.

“Hey Yoongi-ssi” Hoseok greets smiley at the elder who watched as he tilted Taehyung’s chin up with his fingers and kissed him again, fakely domestic, just another peck.

Taehyung and Hoseok never kiss.

They have already, but it’s a rare occurrence.

That’s how Taehyung knows Hobi is just pointlessly trying to get on Yoongi’s nerves.

“Hey” Yoongi mutters, standing up and turning his back to them, throwing his bag on his shoulder.

“Are you leaving already?” Hoseok asks, because Taehyung won’t say a word to him.

“Yeah” Yoongi clenches his jaw and storms out.

There’s a remaining feeling of bitterness in Taehyung’s lips and a lump begging to come out in the shape of a scream and tears burning behind his eyes.

Yoongi is confused and messy and he never, ever stops to think about Taehyung first.

He arrives like a tornado, decimating every inch of Taehyung’s soul and leaving without sparing a glance back to the trail of destruction it left behind.

Because that’s how Taehyung feels.

Like wreckage. Like lifeless remains of an utter disgrace.

Shattered.

He falls with his back on the floor and looks up and lets the pain lull his body and mind into the deepest of the griefs.

“What did he do?” Hoseok asks, kindness in his voice as he threads his fingers through Taehyung’s paint dirty hair.

“Asked me if you always fucked me hard and then told me he thought I was the kind to make love” Taehyung snorts with wet eyes already “Then he got pissed when I told him I’d tell him if I would like it better when I got the chance to make love to someone”

Hoseok snorts this time

“Fucking asshole” he mutters “He’s jealous”

Taehyung rolls his eyes because he doesn’t want to fool his poor heart.

“He’s not fucking jealous, hyung” he wipes his own tears “He’s just selfish”

“Yeah, he’s selfish Taehyung, but he is also jealous, trust me, I saw it in his eyes” Hoseok says it so sure it almost makes Taehyung believe it.

“I hope he goes to hell” it’s all Taehyung can say before Hoseok hugs him and lets him cry.

**

V

jinhyungie:

made amends w yoongi

he said i was right

that he is, in fact an asshole

and that he’ll leave you alone

taetae:

yay

awesome

i hope he fucking d*es

junhyungie:

he told me about today

how r u?

taetae:

high

and miserable

but ill survive bc i’m a 100% that bitch

jinhyungie:

sorry bby

i thought about asking you to a get tgthr me and

joon will throw on saturday

jimin and jk are coming

taetae:

cool

‘m in

can i take hobi hyung?

jinhyungie:

yoongi will be there though

with chunghee

and yes you can take your fuckbuddy

taetae:

i hope he chokes

i’ll be there and i’ll bring tequila

and hobi is my friend and roommate

before he is my fuck buddy

jinhyungie:

okay bby

ily okay?

taetae:

ily too hyung

**

Seokjin and Namjoon’s apartment has a great view.

Taehyung is at the balcony and the vaulted sky curves over him like a black veil.

It’s not a starry night and the moon stands shy and knowing, like the cheshire smile on the edge, almost hiding. The small glitter of the few stars that watch him from the past is so ghostly they almost look like tiny fireflies inside the darkest of the caves.

Taehyung thinks the night matches the gloominess that overpowers his soul.

Yoongi didn’t show up the following days and his absence haunted him like a ghost.

He’s supposed to be content and satisfied with his own decisions. Taehyung didn’t allow Yoongi to keep hurting him, that’s what he tells himself.

He has let Yoongi go.

He has at least started to let him go.

If the one month and a half before Yoongi showed up at his door was painful, Taehyung can’t even begin to explain how agonizing the past days have been.

He didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Yoongi, the real Yoongi, but he has had enough time to start to fall for him.

If Taehyung wanted the chance to fall in love like a normal person instead of dreaming about someone he could never have, he got it.

Unfortunately it was given to him by the same sadist who took Yoongi to his door in the first place.

The thing is Taehyung didn’t need much. In fact, he didn’t need anything at all. It seems like his body and his mind already have the natural tendency to cling to hope of things that are not his destiny to have.

It all got too heavy.

The way Yoongi came, with the excuses of wanting a friendship. The way he kept coming, willingly even after Taehyung just told him to go away, like the waves at the shore, insisting and digging and violent. The way he played the piano, touched their foreheads, pushed his pinky towards Taehyung’s.

The way he kept asking like he cared, looking like he saw, talking like he wanted.

Taehyung reduced his brain to ashes in the attempt of coming to an explanation to it all.

To the way suddenly Yoongi seemed to just be drawn to him the same way he was to Yoongi for years, even after denied.

All the options were just too fucking ruthless.

Because in the end of every single one of the paths, Yoongi is just mean.

He is just cruel, barbaric, sadist and evil.

He just loves to torture.

There is no other answer.

He wants Taehyung to be his bed, where he comes, rests, falls into the sweetest of the slumbers and then leaves, leaving the emptiness and the cold messy sheets behind without having the decency to organize it after.

He wants Taehyung to heal him, to pick up the pieces of his broken heart just so he can go home to give it to another man and leave Taehyung’s cut bloody hands behind, in search of an useless band-aid.

He wants Taehyung to teach him, just so he can make someone else proud.

There’s no possibility he loves Taehyung. There’s no possibility he even likes Taehyung.

Whoever cares wouldn’t knowingly hurt the other again and again and again.

There’s a huge glass door in front of Taehyung from where he can see the room. His friends sit and drink and play with each other, Jimin on Jungkook’s lap, Hoseok in a very animated conversation with Namjoon. Jin gifting them with his savage and witty comments.

Taehyung smokes outside, cold and griefing, dressed in black and with no glitter at all, just like the sky. He hopes he gets blended with it, disappears like the smoke he blows above and becomes nothing soon.

It doesn’t happen, of course, and Taehyung falls on the floor faster than an anvil.

He watches from outside as he has always, the moment Yoongi arrives, hand in hand with his pretty, sophisticated boyfriend.

Their fingers intertwined disgust Taehyung, twist his entrails like he’s being tortured, squeezed into general organ failure.

Like he’s suffocated.

He takes a drag, his arm semi opened resting on the balcony counter, hand hanging almost numb. The other hand traveling to his lips with the joint.

Taehyung feels lighter, smoke filling his veins like helium as he allows himself to drift apart weightless and aimlessly through the endless sky. Like a balloon lost from a careless kid.

Between the clouds of thick vapor and his curly bangs on his eyes, he spots the exact moment Yoongi looks at him, through the glass like Alice.

Chunghee giggles to his side. It’s inaudible and Taehyung tries to remember the sound of his laugher, but all he can hear in his head is a mix of Yoongi’s laughter and the piano melody he played Taehyung that day.

Yoongi is still looking at him, for the first time after days, and the familiar hybrid feeling of time-lapse and slow motion returns because for some reason unknown to Taehyung, it feels like the fucking first time.

There’s a weird heaviness at the moment that makes Taehyung feel he is meeting Yoongi several times, over and over again, in all of his forms and all of his ages.

Almost as if their encounter is aligned in every parallel reality, in every multiverse, in every timeline.

Somewhere in existence, kid Taehyung is seeing kid Yoongi for the first time.

Somewhere in existence, old Taehyung is seeing old Yoongi for the first time.

And they all meet in sync with this moment, the moment Taehyung looks at Yoongi through the glass and it all feels frozen and it all feels too real.

Because in this very moment, Taehyung is all Taehyungs there are out there. And he is feeling himself meeting all Yoongis there are out there.

Like all of these cosmic parallelisms are strings connected to this Earth’s Taehyung.

And he feels it all.

And he feels too much.

Yoongi doesn’t move his eyes away from Taehyung and Taehyung doesn’t move it too, but he notices the moment Chunghee notices it, follows Yoongi’s stare to watch Taehyung.

Then that’s his cue.

He takes another drag and blows the smoke, hoping it would cover his face and break the moment, just so he doesn’t have to.

When the smokes dissipates, Taehyung’s breath falters as he sees Yoongi closer, his bright eyes behind the glass but still closer.

Taehyung’s heart beats against his rib cages like a wild animal behind bars, begging to break away, to crawl up from Taehyung’s jaw and set himself free.

Yoongi slides the door open and closes it behind himself, isolating the both of them under the domed sky, shutting all the laughter inside the apartment.

“Taehyung” the sound comes out as a whisper but hurts like a guttural scream, carried with angst and sadness.

“Yoongi” he dismisses the honorifics and it should come out as rude but it just sounds acknowledging.

Yoongi walks towards him like fire spreading through a forest and for just a second Taehyung sees a possibility that Yoongi will do something.

Anything.

He doesn’t.

He stops in front of Taehyung, inches away, chests almost touching.

They never do.

Yoongi is a few inches shorter than Taehyung but this time his posture is lofty and his eyes have a glint…

… a glint of something.

Something so painful, so strong that it pours out of the edges of his dark pupils and it seems so much like want.

It’s the first time Taehyung recognizes himself like that on Yoongi’s eyes.

Recognizes a feeling like he’s looking at himself in the mirror.

And if Taehyung thought he felt hope so far, then it’s because he never truly knew what hope was.

Because hope hits him in the face like a fucking tsunami and now he is being drowned in it, thrown everywhere by violent water and he knows that everything he felt before was just simply nothing

not even a drop

of the overwhelming hope he feels consuming his body and soul.

“We need to talk” he breathes out, and he seems as disturbed for realization as Taehyung.

Oh.

That’s right.

They’re at Jin’s place, their friends are there, Yoongi’s boyfriend is there.

It’s painful like falling on concrete and shattering into dust.

“I don’t know what you want but I don’t think there’s use in us talking” it pains him to say it but it’s true.

Yoongi doesn’t have the answers to give Taehyung.

Hell, he doesn’t have the answers to give himself.

Yoongi is lost as a little boy whose mom left him at the supermarket.

“There is, and you know it” he steps closer.

Too. Fucking. Close.

Close enough Taehyung sees the growing hair under his eyebrows and feels his breath hitting his lips.

His warm breath, that smells like tobacco and coffee and a glint of cinnamon and that drives Taehyung into a frenzy and almost

almost

makes him lose it.

Because Yoongi wants him too. Taehyung knows it. Even if it’s barely, even if it’s just a little.

Yoongi wants him.

“What will you even tell me, hyung?” there’s expectation in Taehyung’s voice because now it’s really helpless, there’s no going back

In order to get rid of Yoongi, Taehyung will have to go all the way down. Either live it through or die trying.

And he is willing, as reckless as that might be.

“I-” there it is again, Yoongi’s uncertainty.

Ever present.

“Nothing” Taehyung feels himself growing, confidence and anger mixed together in a powerful drug that runs through his veins and takes him completely. He eyes Yoongi from his toes to his head and lets his lips contort into a bitter smile “You won’t say anything, as always, because you have no idea how to. Because your boyfriend is right there, looking at us and you still don’t know why you’re here”

Yoongi looks behind him to find Chunghee sparing a glance with furrowed brows, but looking away fast as soon as he gets caught.

He turns back to stare at Taehyung, head turning down just enough so he takes the joint from Taehyung’s fingers and slides into his lips, sucking it, eyes not leaving Taehyung’s as he blows smoke up and against his lips with a pout.

“I know why I’m here” he mutters, his raspy voice scratching Taehyung’s insides like cat claws on a fluffy pillow.

“Why you’re here, hyung?” Taehyung asks then “Why didn’t Chunghee-ssi came with you to greet me? Did you tell him?”

Yoongi clenches his jaw as if the constant reminder of Chunghee’s existence annoyed him to the bone.

It’s amusing, yet very painful to Taehyung that he has to be Yoongi’s constant reminder that there’s someone for him.

He feels hopeless again, like when you look at all the work you’ll have and you get tired before even starting. Because now, more than ever, Yoongi looks like that messy closet you throw all the things you don’t want to deal with and the one time you decide that it’s finally time to, you just want to give up.

Taehyung just wants to give up.

Because Yoongi can’t even admit to himself that he did, yes, see something in Taehyung that brought down his walls and his shelves and now he has to relearn his ways.

Yoongi is pathetically paralyzed, stuck in a perpetual limbo where he just doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Taehyung just doesn’t want to deal with him anymore.

“He hates drugs” Yoongi mutters, taking another drag and passing it to Taehyung, who sucks on it too, trying to avoid the highly childish thought that Yoongi’s lips were there just a second ago.

“And here you are” Taehyung blows the smoke, eyes resting on Yoongi’s pout, watching as the vapor hits it ghostly like he’d like to do with his lips.

Taehyung reaches new levels of low when he realizes he is envying smoke.

Envying light.

Envying anything that might touch Yoongi.

“I need them if I’m dealing with him tonight” Yoongi shamelessly takes a step forward until the tips of his shoes step on Taehyung’s bare toes and he looks at Taehyung’s lips.

He looks at his lips like he wants to suck them and bite them and die in them.

Taehyung doesn’t begin to imagine it.

“Sounds like fifty year-old married guy” Taehyung snorts, trapped between Yoongi’s body and the counter “Aren’t you supposed to be in love, or something?”

He bumps his head back to look up at the almost starless sky, leaving Yoongi to face his clavicles and neck and adam’s apple.

“Yeah” Yoongi mutters.

Taehyung looks back down and Yoongi is impossibly closer, their noses almost brushing to Taehyung’s surprise.

There’s a lava-like goo running through his veins, consuming him with agony and the feeling of being burned alive like an innocent accused of witchcraft in the middle age, watching his surroundings unveil slowly while fading in unbearable torment.

There’s his body caving and begging, crying, desperate for him to just spontaneously combust already because anything is better than living such disgraceful misfortune of being in love with a man who doesn’t hesitate when it comes to torturing him.

It’s all very stockholmish, the way Taehyung keeps coming back to the man that mercilessly hurt him, poking him with burning forks, ripping his skin off, tearing his heart apart just for the fun of feeling good about himself, then throwing him in the dungeons of his own bottomless affection to recover slightly

just so Yoongi can torture him over and over again.

“Why do you hate me, Min Yoongi?” Taehyung lets it escape absentmindedly, as soft as a breath.

Yoongi’s eyes widen at that.

Taehyung wonders how must Achilles have felt, drowning in the Styx, feeling his whole body pained and hurt, being turned into stone, into steel.

Having all his weaknesses concentrated in only one, small, sensitive place.

Knowing where it is.

Knowing someone knows where it is.

Yoongi seems to see it now, and it is just too much, to have himself exposed like that, saying things like that with all the letters for Yoongi to hear. No riddles. No secrets.

Taehyung feels like he is made of his fucking heel now and it would be just so easy to terminate him and his heart in a blink of Yoongi’s eyes.

He is all vulnerability.

At some point he kind of hopes Yoongi does finish him.

That Yoongi will slaughter him, decimate him and every single one of this atoms from existence, reduce him to the nothingness he feels already because someone shouldn’t have so much power over you. Someone really shouldn’t.

Taehyung thinks the biggest pain comes from the awareness that it’s just a matter of time before it ends, so it’d be better if it just ended already.

“I don’t” Yoongi insists in dragging his misery as long as he can.

It makes sense though, since sadists don’t like the ending, they like the torturous path.

“I don’t hate you anymore, Taehyung” there’s a breath dancing at Taehyung’s lungs but they burn like the smoke he loves to inhale. The breath refuses to leave and it has to be what suffocating feels like “I don’t hate you at all. I don’t think I ever did…”

There it is.

The verge.

Taehyung feels like Yoongi is an endless pit and he is always dancing at the edges, desperate to jump in but always kept at the verge.

Taehyung just doesn’t really believes in God, yet desperation has his soul surrendered to his knees in a chanted prayer for something

For Yoongi to just give him something.

“... I don’t think I ever did” Yoongi’s repetition looks almost epiphanic when in sync to his softening expression.

Like he didn’t know it himself.

The breath escapes and it’s a pained relief because it never came with what he dreamed of hearing.

“I think we should go in” Taehyung concludes and pushes Yoongi away against his own will “Your boyfriend is waiting”

He can see how all of his friends didn’t miss their interaction. They probably didn’t see how close they were, as a result of their angle, but interactions between Yoongi and Taehyung  alone are as rare as miracles and, except Chunghee, every single one of them know exactly the situation.

Taehyung feels naked to his bones when he enters the room, warmth hitting him in the face en lieu of the cold autumn wind that held him standing during his whole conversation outside.

Yoongi is greeted behind Taehyung by a muttery Chunghee and there’s a loud smack that can only have come from a kiss and that causes Taehyung’s guts to wince and contort in pain and disgust.

Jin’s eyes follow Taehyung like a compass needle follows the north and he can’t help but avoiding his stare.

Because Taehyung, as always, is at the verge.

The night follows as it should.

There’s a loud discussion between Namjoon and Yoongi. It’s political and filled with interesting information and sophisticated words and verbiages. Taehyung would participate in it, like he usually does, but he just feels overwhelming apathy covering him like a veil. Jungkook and Jimin giggle and yell loudly with Hoseok, weird blabbering that would sound a lot like sound pollution if Taehyung didn’t know how deep they can get even with yelling.

The sounds pass through Taehyung’s ears without any recognition because he feels taken by numbness.

“Are you okay?” Jin mutters next to him so low Taehyung himself can barely hear.

His eyes on Jin are glassy and almost lifeless and there he is again. Taehyung under his own layers, his own covers, his own cap. There’s just not even a sparkle inside his body that makes him want to say anything.

“Yup” he pops the ‘p’ and clicks his tongue inside his open mouth a few times before he takes a large gulp at the pure vodka on his cup, eyes passing by Yoongi and Namjoon and going back to Jin.

“I know you’re not” he says.

Of course he knows.

Jin always knows.

“Yup” Taehyung says it again, the exact same way he did before.

He just doesn’t want to elaborate because it would get really pathetic.

Jin just pours more alcohol on his cup. Taehyung looks at him with a small smile, clinks his glass in the bottle in Jin’s hand and raises it before gulps it all down.

Jin snorts and drinks from the bottle.

“How’s with Joon hyung?” Taehyung finds in himself to finally ask.

Jin almost chokes, seeming surprised at the question, brows raising and cheeks flushing.

“I-” Jin seems speechless for the first time and it’s kind of funny, because Jin is never fucking speechless.

On the contrary, Jin looks like he is never, ever uncertain.

Taehyung can’t help it, laughter builds bubbly and warm at his stomach and it explodes loudly, like a volcano erupting after burning for so long. The lava-like goo that reduced Taehyung to ashes not long ago just pours and pours and Taehyung missed it.

He spends all of his sounds in the strongest laughter he can because he has been miserable for days and he is so damn tired of feeling it.

Jin explodes too and they both pouring in a fit of giggles that calls everyone in the room to join. Taehyung feels the eyes on them, the noises dying around to contemplate their pretty sounds and lots of random comments around.

“Why are you laughing?” it’s Yoongi’s voice, coming out shaky and amused and Taehyung recognizes it under layers and layers of his and Jin’s loud giggles.

It’s just a pretty, natural and candid tone that does well with Yoongi’s voice.

Sounds like hearing someone sing for the first time and finding out they’re good.

“C’mon, why are you such idiots?” Jungkook asks, pretty bright eyes widened in curiosity.

It’s cute, how they all gather together around the small room, some standing, some sitting comfortably.

“Jin hyung-” Taehyung tries before exploding back in twinkle laughter and Jin panics visibly, which makes Taehyung even more amused “Jin hyung made a funny face”

There are disappointed groans, like everyone expected them to tell the funniest jokes and ended up with knock knock ones.

Jimin starts a huge monologue about Taehyung’s randomness and silliness and he is obviously endeared at his best friend’s sense of humor. Jungkook rolls his eyes and Namjoon joins them.

Yoongi looks at Taehyung and he giggles too, shy at first and blushing, but so, so pretty. Taehyung loves Yoongi like this. He loves their small exchanged smiles and smart comments and how their sense of humor matches perfectly.

There’s loudness in the room around them, but they don’t care. Taehyung can count on one hand the amount of times he has laughed with Yoongi and this is one of them and it’s just so familiar, and warm and…

It’s being robbed by Chunghee.

He plops on Yoongi’s lap, smile on his face as he wraps his arms around Yoongi’s neck and giggles along before saying how cute Yoongi gets when he laughs.

Of course.

It’s not particular of Taehyung to notice and it’s hard because Yoongi is Chunghee’s and every second of being there is a reminder.

Laughter dies slowly, melting into thin air as everyone in the room gets tired and feels the tension that emanates from Yoongi’s body. He’s supposed to react to his boyfriend’s cuddles, but instead he looks petrified, eyes on Taehyung.

Taehyung looks back at Jin, ressemblance of a smile still on his face and he bites his lower lip.

“You’re cute when you’re nervous, hyung” he giggles lowly.

“Hyung was nervous?” Namjoon’s ears perk up as a lost puppy’s one, dimple showing under his shy smile “Why?”

Jin visibly blushes, ears as red as the scarlet letter when he feels everyone’s stares on him.

“T- Taehyungie was telling me one of his dirty little secrets” Jin grins mischievously, almost like he wasn’t having a huge panic fit just seconds ago.

“Oh, then I don’t care, I know all of his dirty little secrets” Jimin giggles “I even am one of them”

Hoseok rolls his eyes.

“As if it’s a secret what you, Taehyung and Jungkook do when you drink” he mutters.

Here they go again.

Taehyung rolls his eyes because he just hates it, all eyes on him, even if they’re his friends’. He hates the fact that Chunghee is there, sat on Yoongi’s lap and that the two of them have eyes and they are both paying attention.

Taehyung venomously wishes they were both eyeless.

“What do the three of you do when you drink?” Namjoon, as often, seems oblivious, cute innocent dimple showing as he smiles.

There’s giggles, groans and eye rolls at the question.

Jimin just walks to Taehyung, straddles him all of the sudden and kisses him.

There’s no feeling behind it. Taehyung has done this enough so he recognizes Jimin’s juicy lips sucking Taehyung’s, pretty teeth biting at the bottom one. Taehyung smiles and giggles against his best friend’s lips and opens his mouth so Jimin’s warm, fast and sweet tongue licks inside.

Taehyung’s big hands grab Jimin’s tiny waist and pull him closer at the same time he feels hot breath against his neck. He giggles again when he feels Jungkook behind him, sucking at his jaw and earlobe, pressing small kisses and pulling his chin to tilt Taehyung’s head away from Jimin’s and kiss him.

Taehyung and Jungkook had made out before, so he also recognizes the familiar slide of thin lips and the bunny teeth that nibble before licking his way in. Jungkook is a great kisser, and so is Jimin, which makes it all kind of addictive.

Jungkook ends up humming and it makes Jimin kind of jealous in a non harmful way. Jimin is just too greedy, so he interferes and they end up in a very heated triple kiss, tongues working in perfect sync their way in and out and around like they’re used to do.

Jimin lifts himself on his knees on the chair to settle better and move to nibble on Taehyung’s jaw as Jungkook keeps on kissing him. Taehyung hums, smiles on his best friend’s lips and Jungkook pulls Taehyung’s upper lip between his teeth because he has a special liking to it. Jimin somehow manages to pull at the bottom one. Taehyung thinks Jimin and Jungkook are a perfect match.

They complete each other.

“This” Jimin breathes out heavily with swollen lips, moving to cling to Jungkook’s side as both of them smile playfully.

Namjoon rolls his eyes and sighs, looking like an old man who just gave up on understanding contemporary youth.

Taehyung can feel Yoongi’s and Chunghee’s eyes on him, since they’re sitting right across each other. He only grabs the bottle from Jin’s hands and drinks directly at it.

“You two just go away” Hoseok interrupts between Jin’s giggles behind them “Taehyungie is mine”

He pulls Taehyung to his lap, burying his face on the crook of his neck and nuzzling on it, wrapping his arms around Taehyung’s waist.

It’s almost like the walls transform with the sense of distress that emanates from Yoongi, his body tensing under Chunghee and it’s a weird parallel, since Taehyung mirrors his position, across the room, but on Hoseok’s lap.

“You seem so disputed” Chunghee giggles “No wonder, since you’re so pretty”

Chunghee is a nice guy. He is pretty and sweet and Taehyung feels a wave of annoyance at his kindness that he can’t control.

“Taehyung is more than just pretty” the mutter comes out of Yoongi’s lips and even though is low and soft, almost shy, it resonates like a thunder.

It causes shock and fear and general anticipation.

Maybe no one else feels…

… But Taehyung does.

He feels the air over him turn into something thick and dense and it’s almost impossible to breathe it in. They’re all suddenly underwater and his lungs might explode at any second. Like he’s tiny and trapped into a gigantic strawberry jello, red and sticky and shaky.

Yoongi is constantly choking him, almost brutal. 

Everyone looks, and even Yoongi gets caught by surprise as the words slide out of his lips.

“I- I didn’t mean…” Chunghee looks between them, brows furrowed as nervousness gets the best of him.

“It’s okay” Taehyung finds his voice and instead of sweet it comes out rasped, like rocks tilting together to make fire.

“It’s not okay, it sounded rude” Yoongi talks again and it surprises Taehyung even more because before it sounded like a slip but now he is aware of what he’s doing and he is still talking.

“Babe, I… I didn’t mean to offend” Chunghee turns to Yoongi on his lap and Taehyung feels hypnotized by the whole interaction even when everyone else in the room is already dispersing.

And for the first time, he wants to watch Yoongi with someone else.

Taehyung hears no more and sees no more, because Hoseok is turning him around on his lap.

“TaeTae, come here” he says it like he feels what Taehyung feels.

Taehyung knows he is being spared, taken care of.

But he is a masochist and a part of him wants to know.

Hoseok leans to him, pressing wet kisses on his neck. Taehyung has his back turned to Yoongi and Chunghee and everyone seems to act tense and robotic. As if someone just found out about a relative with terminal disease and they all want to make amends and make it better.

But no one knows how to.

Like it’s all a huge stage and everyone is acting okay even if they all feel the awkwardness in the latest events.

“What did he want?” Hoseok whispers in Taehyung’s ear and he closes his eyes.

Hoseok is talking about the moment outside.

Taehyung likes the warmth and he likes the reassurance that comes with his friend’s actions.

“To act like he cared” Taehyung whispers back, sucking on Hoseok’s earlobe.

“He does” Hoseok bites the words on Taehyung’s neck and he hums a little low, fingers digging into Hoseok’s hair and pulling him closer “He’s jealous”

Hoseok knows how to rile Taehyung up, teasing him the right way.

“He’s not” Taehyung mutters against his skin “He’s selfish”

“We had this conversation” Hoseok giggles lowly on his neck before biting and pulling “He is, indeed, selfish, but Tae” he cups Taehyung’s face to look at him “He’s glaring at me like he’s about to murder me”

Taehyung can’t help it, how much he wants it to be true.

“Probably because he argued with his boyfriend” he mutters the possible explanation.

“He argued because of you” Hoseok pecks Taehyung’s lips “You had to see his face when Jimin and Jungkook kissed you. I thought he was going to combust”

Hoseok giggles, loud and exaggerated and vibrant like the sun. He always makes Taehyung feel better.

Taehyung giggles back.

Hoseok’s eyes widen a little at something behind Taehyung and he looks back into his eyes, devilish grin forming and taking shape on his heart lips “He’s coming here”

Taehyung feels something pull at his chest and maybe are the strings that connect him to all the Taehyungs and the Yoongis in all the multiverses above and around.

“Is Chunghee-ssi with him?” Taehyung whispers, feeling like a kid about to meet santa or the boogeyman.

It’s all highly unpredictable.

This whole night has passed too fast through Taehyung’s fingers, slipping like sand, shifting like tides under the many faces of the moon. It started sad and then hopeful and then awkward and then…

“No, he got up and went to the kitchen a few seconds ago”

Then there are these many nuances to Yoongi that have happened today and again, it’s too fast and too slow and too hard to unveil.

“Taehyung”

It towers over him, the voice that pulls him just like the strings. Yoongi is right behind him and Taehyung’s breath just hitches because Yoongi has been testing him all night, pulling him in, showing him things that he hadn’t before.

Just a puff

and Taehyung will fall from the edge inside the black hole that calls him.

“Taehyung” he calls again, like a siren, chanting and drawing man to certain death.

Taehyung turns on Hoseok’s lap, the elder’s arms still around his waist, looking up to Yoongi.

The elder has his jaw locked like he hates what he sees. It’s so strong that Taehyung wonders how his bones aren’t becoming dust already.

“What” he mutters, as apathetic as he can.

“Let’s talk” Yoongi is not requesting, he is stating.

“You keep saying that” Taehyung relaxes on Hoseok’s lap and it seems to annoy Yoongi even more “But you don’t say anything”

“I will if you let me” Yoongi looks to a side, visibly affected.

“I’m busy, hyung” Taehyung rests his back on Hoseok’s chest “And so are you”

Yoongi exhales through his nose and pinches the bridge of his nose, jaw still locked.

Then he looks at Taehyung, eyes so intense, dark and wild.

“I swear to God, Taehyung” there’s a dangerous tone in his voice, something appealing and deep and about to snap “If you don’t come talk to me I’ll make a scene in front of our friends”

Oh.

“You mean like the one you just did?” Taehyung raises a brow, because he can be the devil if he wants to.

A breath.

Another breath.

Another one and something pained floods Yoongi’s eyes like he is desperate.

“Please” his voice comes out choked like an animal hurt and small.

Taehyung fooled himself by thinking he could ever, ever deny Yoongi something.

Hoseok watches in silence as Taehyung nods and Yoongi seems like he could cry. Taehyung stands up right in front of him and Yoongi pulls him by the wrist with that same old tight and warm grip that has become so familiar to Taehyung.

Yoongi chooses the bathroom for some reason that’s beyond Taehyung and now they’re boxed up in the middle of it, Taehyung against the sink, back facing the mirror and Yoongi in front of him, leaned against the tile wall.

They’re close, but now the calm has taken them, Yoongi looks at Taehyung from across the bathroom like a lost, hurt puppy who is terrified of the human approaching him.

Sepulchral silence and broken stares.

Taehyung feels about to implode at any second with the growing inquietude inside, that builds at his stomach and tower up until his throat.

“Why are you doing this to me?” it’s Yoongi who shatters silence like a rock that hits a glass, and suddenly there are so many smithereens sprawled across the floor that anywhere they try to go. becomes dangerous and lethal.

Taehyung knows then, that there’s no way this conversation might end without one of them bleeding to death.

“Why am I doing this to you?” there’s an outrage in Taehyung’s tone and he only realizes it when it’s already hanging on air with the sound of his voice “Why am I doing what, hyung?”

His teeth clash and rang on one another and the words escape struggling like a prisoner trying to squeeze his way out, between the bars.

“With Hoseok” Yoongi chokes “Why are you doing this to hurt me?”

Taehyung suddenly wants to crouch on the floor and get all the sharps he can and throw them all at Yoongi, even if he hurts himself at the process.

Because he is wounded already, more deeply than anyone can see.

Because Taehyung has an elastic heart and Yoongi just pushed the rubber band too far and now it’s back too hard and too strong to hurt him too.

Taehyung huffs out a laugh and it comes out as bitter as biting aloe vera straight from its roots.

“I just don’t get you” his whisper sounds deadly and dangerous and it startles Yoongi “You reject me like I’m nothing, like I’m a bug that annoys you, you come to my house, you don’t leave me alone when I ask you to. You insist in torturing me with your songs and your smiles and your touches and your dubious words when you have someone”

Taehyung looks Yoongi in the eye for this, because it’s finally rupture.

It’s finally him jumping from the verge into the darkest of the abysses.

It’s finally catharsis.

“How could I, the person you reinforced it over and over and over again through all of my years that you didn’t want, possibly hurt you?” Taehyung’s voice increases by the second and becomes a giant with life of its own, leaving his body willingly to say without a filter, every single one of the most obscure thoughts has ever crossed his mind “Tell me hyung. Tell me why are you asking me this? Because if you tell me I hurt you then you’re telling me something I don’t know. Because so far all I know is the million forms /you/ have hurt /me/. All I know is you hate me, you despise me, you want to see me contorting in pain and agony to your feet. You want to see me lifeless, you…”

“THAT’S NOT WHAT I WANT” Yoongi’s voice sounds like it found rupture of its own too.

And it robs Taehyung from his purge because he has never, ever heard Yoongi speaking one decibel higher than his soothing velvet voice, but now he is screaming.

When Taehyung looks at him, he seems imploding in agony.

And he is crying.

It consumes Taehyung in overwhelming pain.

“THEN WHAT DO YOU WANT, HYUNG?” he yells back and it sounds a lot like pleading.

Yoongi breathes heavily and his feet in front of him seem to be pushing him back to the wall as if he wishes it would part open and engulf him in a concrete hug that it’ll crush him into nothing.

“I want you” he says, and even though is not screaming anymore, it’s loud enough everyone outside can hear.

And it comes with sobs, and sobs, and sobs, like Yoongi’s soul is being exorcised from his own body.

Taehyung doesn’t know what to say.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Those are the words he dreamed, prayed, begged to any deity above or below to hear during all of his life and now he’s heard them he can’t accept them.

He just can’t.

Because it makes no sense.

Because they don’t fit into reality.

He shakes his head no and Yoongi is blurred and jellowy behind the wall of tears in front of his eyes and he can’t close them so they’ll fall because

because he wants to cling to that Yoongi.

He wants to cling to those words.

Because what if he closes his eyes and they’re not there anymore?

He wants to feel them filling him to the bone, replacing the burning lava that run through is veins and relieve him of such agonizing misery he has been experiencing for so long.

He wants once,

at least just once

To feel what it’s like to truly be wanted by Yoongi.

“You’re lying” it’s all he can say, desperately trying to test the truth.

Taehyung can’t really see but he thinks Yoongi might be crying again.

“I’m not” he is definitely crying “I am not, Taehyung I wouldn’t”

He would.

“You would” he vomits “You have hated me forever, you have despised me, you have made it clear that you didn’t want me”

Yoongi seems in agony hearing those words, like he doesn’t want to accept them.

Like they torture him.

“I KNOW” he yells again, so strong as a gale, and Taehyung can almost feel the violent wind shutting him up as he brings his hands together on his chest, protectively, tears falling just by the blow of Yoongi’s words on his face “I FUCKING KNOW, TAEHYUNG, AND I AM SORRY”

Yoongi sobs.

He sobs.

“I fucking know and I am so, so sorry” his voice is loud still, desperate.

He covers his lips with his wrist and he cries silently for a minute.

“I know you don’t want to hear me saying it but I am sorry, I am so deeply sorry that I don’t think I’ll ever, ever stop being” Yoongi walks around the tiny bathroom and he looks at Taehyung, the pain burning behind his eyes like the fire of a thousand suns and Taehyung feels it too “I am sorry I was too fucking damaged to ever see you or appreciate you. I am sorry I didn’t want you before because how fucking could I when I didn’t even want myself. I am sorry I envied you as a kid, I envied you as someone who was everything I would never be. I am so, so fucking deeply sorry that the only person that I have ever truly wanted has wanted me from the start and I just couldn’t want him back because I was too damn destroyed” he looks at Taehyung and he is falling apart “I’m so so sorry Taehyung, for hurting you over and over and over again, for being to damn selfish to let you go, to let you heal. For hating, hating to see you with someone else even though I’m with someone else too”

There’s a pause

A fucking everlasting

painful

disgraceful

pause

and then

“I am sorry I told you you were hurting me by being with him when it’s not my right or my place. When you could, in fact, hate me, torture me, kill me for what I did to you” Yoongi turns for a second, facing the wall and crying, loud, desperate, heartbroken, before he takes the deepest of the breaths and turns around “It’s just too fucking hard to see the greatest thing in life when it’s handed to you so soon, and in the middle of the worst things happening. Because how could I have recognized you when I had lost my everything? And how could I have ever, ever loved you whilst I hated myself? All those years, all of them, I didn’t even want to be alive. I was missing myself. How could I, an empty shell, have ever loved the prettiest, the brightest of the souls? How could I have even recognized you?” he bites his lower lip, brings his pale, so lovely hands to his face and it’s trembling so hard. “I couldn’t see you, and I couldn’t have loved you because I didn’t know how to live back then. And yes, I’m the most selfish asshole for wanting you now but I think I would have been worse if I had claimed you heart then. You have no idea how destructive I was and all I wanted was to be alone because whoever came close I’d hurt”

For the first time ever, Yoongi looks fragile.

Like he’s made of the thinnest of the glasses.

“I’m not saying all this to justify myself” he says behind his hands, then he runs his fingers through his hair and he looks mad, bonkers, completely insane with red eyes and flushed face and locks pointing everywhere like he’s thrown sanity by the window “There’s not justification for treating someone like crap for years and torturing them emotionally” Taehyung lets out a small windy laugh “I just had to explain myself though” there’s a nod coming from Taehyung and it surprises himself “And I really hope I haven’t damaged you forever because you’re the most precious mind and soul I have ever seen and you deserve so, so much more than me” this time, Taehyung shakes his head no “I guess even though I know you hate ‘I’m sorry’s I just had to tell you because I don’t think I can forgive myself for what I did to you, so I just hope you know that and you know I’m not treating it like it doesn’t matter”

Taehyung nods again, tears falling down his face, flowing out like the river of love that flows in.

Because yes, Yoongi did hurt him

Yes, Yoongi was selfish

And yes, there’s no excuse.

But there is the truth, and the truth is Yoongi isn’t mean

He isn’t cruel, or evil, or a sadist

He is Yoongi

Taehyung’s Yoongi

And he has been in pain and he is in pain.

And all the love Taehyung had for Yoongi, Yoongi never had to himself.

“Just to be clear, I have learned to want myself” Yoongi mutters as if he’s reading Taehyung’s mind “I thought, after years, I was finally ready to have someone into my life, to let them get to know me and that’s why I decided to try things out with…” tears fall again from his eyes “I just didn’t think you… I didn’t think I would find you, even though you were there already. And I guess I was selfish because you showed me how hurt you were and I tried to fix things with you and make it work with him and I just didn’t expect I…” Yoongi keeps avoiding words “I thought if I showed myself to you, as friends, then you’d realize you didn’t want me” he grimaces, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth to sob and sniff one more time “I’m so sorry I should’ve walked away like Jin told me to, I shouldn’t have been so selfish and I wanted to stay away but I just couldn’t”

Yoongi looks up

He looks into Taehyung’s eyes and it’s heartbreaking

and overwhelming.

And it’s filled with pain and regret and something else

“I’m sorry, Taehyung”

As if in a snap, Taehyung dives forward and pulls Yoongi into his arms for the first time in forever and it feels a lot

a lot

like redemption.

Because Yoongi is smaller and even though Taehyung has always wanted to be under his body and into his arms and around his length, he is now the one to protect him.

He is the cocoon.

He is the one to have Yoongi sobbing and undoing against his chest.

Taehyung curls over and around Yoongi, presses him closer, runs his fingers through his hair. Taehyung kisses his head and feels as Yoongi’s pale and long fingers curve over his back and tug at his shirt and pull him closer like he’s scared Taehyung will escape, will leave, will go.

And it all feels too much.

Too much like Taehyung never thought he could have.

Because in his dreams he would never have Yoongi’s noises, Yoongi’s smell, Yoongi’s movements, Yoongi’s tears.

It feels overwhelmingly real and it feels like this because it is.

Yoongi is really inside his embrace, with his human scent that smells a little bad. With his sweaty forehead and running nose and soaked eyes and his red skin.

His skin.

His pale, always cold skin that now burns hot like flames dance under it.

Taehyung lowers his face just a little bit so his temple is pressed against Yoongi’s ear so hard his earrings hurt and most likely will leave a mark. So their cheeks are pressed together in a way that it’s so hot and so wet and it’s almost agonizing.

So their lips are paralleled.

Then Taehyung turns just enough so he presses feather like kisses on Yoongi’s wet, salty cheeks.

And it feels so, so good.

Like the lava-gooey slick has turned into sweet jelly.

And Taehyung turns just enough so he hears Yoongi’s sniffs and sobs on his ear like confessing a secret just for him. So he can whisper to Yoongi back.

“It’s okay”

Yoongi sobs harder and Taehyung is right.

Nothing is ever, ever like we imagine it’ll be.

Because he walked to the verge to find Yoongi at the bottom.

Because he was not the fragile one, the one who would shatter first.

Because when Yoongi broke the glass with his hard rock voice, Taehyung expected everything

minus

For Yoongi to be the smithereens.

“You keep saying is okay, but it’s not” Yoongi whispers “I hurt you, I hurt you a lot”

Taehyung nods.

“You did” he murmurs “And I forgive you”

“I don’t deserve it” he argues, and it’s almost like he doesn’t feel worthy.

“You didn’t deserve all that pain too, yet you dealt with it” Taehyung won’t let Yoongi refuse this “Deal with my forgiveness too, because it’s being handed to you”

“I don’t deserve you”  he whispers, and his voice is so, so tiny it’s barely audible.

“But you have me” Taehyung concludes “What are you gonna do with it?”

Yoongi moves so he can look at Taehyung and yes, it’s like redemption.

And in any circumstances, Taehyung shouldn’t forgive Yoongi so soon.

He should protect himself instead of recklessly betting they’ll work.

But he can’t

Because what he said was true

Yoongi does have Taehyung.

And yes, he hurt Taehyung, he was selfish.

But Taehyung understands about being hurt. And he understands about being selfish in his own selfishness.

Yoongi was also right

He couldn’t have loved Taehyung back then. He couldn’t have seen him. He would’ve wrecked him and he would have wrecked himself and then there would be no remains.

So yeah, Yoongi couldn’t love him back then

But maybe he can, now.

And Taehyung is willing.

“I think we need some time” Yoongi mutters, taking a step back from Taehyung to face him properly “I have things to solve” he points at the door with a head movement “And also… if- if you’re really gonna give me a chance to make it right, there’s so much to talk”

Taehyung nods.

He knows Yoongi is right, he knows healing and trusting is a long road, unpaved and narrow. But he wants to try.

“Yeah, we do” he confirms

Yoongi looks into his eyes and again, Taehyung didn’t know hope until this very moment.

“I want to be with you Tae, and I want to make it right, but I don’t want you to do this if it’s gonna hurt you more” he looks down “I don’t think it’s fair to you and yes, I haven’t been fair to you, but I want to be”

Taehyung looks at Yoongi’s eyes and there are so, so many things telling him not to take him.

There’s Jimin’s voice. There’s Hoseok’s voice. There’s Jin’s voice. There is all his hurt, all his pain, all his scars yelling back at him not to go, not to give him a chance to hurt him again.

But staring at him are Yoongi’s bottomless, black pit eyes filled with hope.

And Taehyung…

Taehyung was always at the verge.

“You won’t hurt me anymore” he whispers “We’ll go slow, learning together”

Yoongi looks like he’s about to undo, to melt like gold under the fire.

He looks like hope must look like.

“I won’t hurt you anymore, Tae” he promises.

Taehyung really, really wants to kiss Yoongi.

He wants to surrender and pour and explode into affection because this is the closest he ever got and the closest you get the more unbearable it becomes to wait until you’re there.

Like you’re about to be trapped in the almost and the almost is agonizing.

Yet, Taehyung knows it’s not the time

And he knows there’s someone outside waiting for Yoongi.

Someone who’s also hurt.

Taehyung steps forward just enough so their chests brush and their eyes meet again.

“I believe you” he says.

Yoongi takes his hand in his and raises to press a kiss on Taehyung’s knuckles and somehow

That worths more than anything.

When they come out it looks like a funeral.

“Is he here?” Yoongi breaks the funeral-like silence, under the the appalled looks from all of their friends.

“He- um, he went home a while ago” weirdly, it’s Jungkook who breaks the mood.

Jungkook looks startled, eyes wide open and glittering like he’s seen a ghost.

“How long?” Yoongi asks, voice hoarse and deep and heavy after crying.

Yoongi’s nose and eyes are red and his hair is a mess and he looks almost about to pass out in exhaustion.

“Not long after the ‘I want you’ part” Hoseok explains, apologetically.

Yoongi nods, pressing his lips in a thin line.

In front of him, Jimin looks pale and contained and somehow Taehyung knows he won’t be able to rest when they get home. They probably only heard the part when they screamed and it of course let a lot of question mark feelings.

Across the room, Jin and Namjoon stand near each other, Namjoon’s hand in Jin’s with fingers interlocked and Taehyung wonders if anyone have noticed it in the middle of the chaos, or even if Jin and Namjoon themselves have noticed it.

“Yoon” Jin rips the veil of silence again “I think you should stay here and sleep”

Yoongi looks up, frowning at Jin and Namjoon’s intertwined fingers and then looking back at their faces.

“I have to talk to Chunghee hyung” he mutters, almost numb.

“Hyung, he needs a break” Namjoon argues, worried look revealing affection when resting on Yoongi “And so do you”

Yoongi blinks, and nods.

Taehyung can imagine how mesmerized their friends are by everything. None of them have ever seen Yoongi reacting like that, losing composure, having a meltdown. Even Jungkook, his brother.

He finds himself in a state of numbness as well, as they go home, flashes of the conversation coming back to him in shapes just like his watercolor. He feels Jungkook’s hand on his and Jimin’s forehead on his temple and Hoseok’s knowing soothing eyes and he can find it in himself to smile.

Because yes, he’s tired, and shattered and spent

But Min Yoongi wants him too

And more than that

They’ll work things out.

**

VI

Five days went by since ‘the episode’, as Jimin likes to call it.

Taehyung has been thinking a lot.

He has been thinking about everything Yoongi said. About the pain behind his eyes as he told about how he didn’t want to live for most of his life. It wasn’t something Taehyung had ever noticed or Jungkook had ever commented on, so he had no idea.

Of course, Taehyung knew Yoongi went to therapy ever since he was a kid, ever since his mom died, and kept on going for years and years and he still goes there. Taehyung used to know the day of the week he would find Yoongi arriving and going straight to his room.

He always knew losing someone you love so much, so soon, could scar you forever and irreparably.

But Yoongi had always seemed so calm, so sure, so knowing.

Taehyung had thought about Yoongi in many ways and had always wanted to know Yoongi’s deepest horrors, his scars, his fears, his demons.

He just had never wondered what they might be.

Because Yoongi, with his everlasting calm, and his soothing voice was never at the verge like Taehyung.

Taehyung knew losing your mother so soon could scar you, he just didn’t know how, or to what extent.

He just didn’t know it could scar Yoongi.

Because to Taehyung, Yoongi wasn’t human, he wasn’t breakable or fragile.

Taehyung only ever thought how invincible Yoongi was, having such terrible thing robbing him the one he loved the most and then rebuilding, growing, owning his hurt and taming it to serve him.

Taehyung loved and admired Yoongi because he seemed untouchable, unlike anyone else Taehyung had ever met.

Taehyung feels embarrassed, to be honest. Of course Yoongi’s struggles don’t excuse the fact that he treated Taehyung poorly, that he overlooked him and dismissed his feelings, and Yoongi said and recognizes that himself, but the sense of shame remains over Taehyung like a shadow because he has never, ever considered another perspective that wasn’t his.

He has never thought about Yoongi as a person of his own, only as a person he loved.

Taehyung has ever only given this part for Yoongi to play and he never could.

It hits Taehyung like an avalanche, the way you can love someone so selfishly.

Because Taehyung thought that what he didn’t see wasn’t really there.

He thought all there was of Yoongi was his surface.

He had thought about Yoongi as the shore, as the waves.

When in reality Yoongi is an ocean, a high sea where, if looking from above the only thing you can catch is a peaceful, constant dark blue veil seeming so quiet it might get mistaken for the solid ground. Where if you look from above, around, all you can see is blue and not a resemblance of land in its surroundings. Where seaquakes have so much space to happen that they happen at the depths, equally decimating, but hidden.

Yoongi was filled of unknownness to the bone, keeping wonders right below the surface like a force of nature.

Yet all Taehyung ever got to see was himself.

He wants to correct that. He wants to change that. He wants to know Yoongi, explore his abysses, get lost in them.

He wants to never, ever go back to the verge.

Taehyung has still yet to hear from Yoongi, but instead of overwhelming anxiety, his body gets flooded with profound calm and peacefulness.

With trust.

minyoongi:

haven’t talked to chunghee yet

he doesn’t want to talk to me

i have to wait for him to

i’m sorry

i’ll make things right

It’s the message Taehyung got from Yoongi the following day.

taetae:

i know

take your time and let him take his

i trust you

It’s what Taehyung responded.

They haven’t talked ever since.

Until the sixth day.

Taehyung is in his living room, sun covering him as he likes right below the window as he sits to play the piano. He’s playing Yoongi’s melody, the one he thought about when he was leaving Taehyung’s house that day that now seem years ago.

There’s something comforting about a melody that sounded so much like pleading back then. Something soothing, solid even, almost like a presence. Taehyung plays it non-stop, like one of those youtube compilations that repeat the same song for ten hours straight.

Because the song reminds him of Yoongi, and he can never, ever get tired of it.

He dives in it like he’s diving in Yoongi’s soul and mind, like he wants to bathe in it, to drink it, to drown.

That’s when it happens.

The collision.

The first thing that Taehyung’s brain registers with his closed eyes is the scent. That familiar, earthy, human scent that it’s a mix of cologne and body heat that drives Taehyung’s atoms to a frenzy. Then there’s the weight, as he is delicately pushed aside for a presence next to him, wordlessly demanding space.

And then finally, the sounds.

Taehyung finishes it just to start again, the same delicate piano keys that sound a lot like genesis, this time played together, in the spiritual experience that feels a lot like making love.

That sounds a lot like making love.

It’s an apex.

It’s purification.

Just like the first time Yoongi played it to him and it felt like he was Hamelin’s flutist, hypnotizing Taehyung’s cells to follow him out, claiming Taehyung’s feelings to erupt on his chest like a volcano.

And it pours.

And it keeps on pouring after it stops.

Because it can never go back again.

“I need you” Yoongi’s velvety yet raspy voice whispers close.

Taehyung has his eyes shut but he inhales a sharp breath that sounds a lot like a hiss and tears still fall, thick and fat through his closed lashes.

“What?” that’s all he manages to say, between the high of hearing Yoongi saying words like that to him.

“I need you” Yoongi repeats, voice closer “It’s the name of the song”

Yoongi’s knee is pressed against Taehyung’s and the side of their thighs brush together and the back of Taehyung’s shoulder rests on Yoongi’s clavicles.

“I wrote it about you” he mutters “After that day you fell asleep on the floor while I played. That’s when I realized”

It takes a while for Taehyung to open his eyes, registering the words Yoongi just confessed on his ear just for him. Like the song.

Like the beautiful song Taehyung has felt claiming him from the very first second.

It has claimed him because it was his.

Because it wanted home.

Taehyung turns his face blindly and inhales the sweet scent of Yoongi’s breath before he opens his eyes.

There they are, Yoongi’s black irises staring back at him, this time pouring with warmth, with affection, with tenderness and caring. It’s overwhelming to Taehyung, thinking that those feelings are there just for him.

“Hey” Yoongi mutters, raising his hand to move Taehyung’s curly bangs away from his forehead and eyes, cupping his face to wipe away his tears with his thumb at the same time he touches their foreheads.

“Hey” Taehyung murmurs back with an airy laugh that comes out shy.

There’s a long moment of staring, taking in, inhaling each other. All that Taehyung wants is to kiss Yoongi, to merge their souls together. Yoongi seems to desperately want it too, by the way he rubs their noses like he’s about to seal their lips.

He doesn’t, though.

“Time” he sighs “We need time”

Taehyung laughs again, low and shy and very wet behind the waterfalls from his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah we need” he agrees.

“I missed you, though” Yoongi says with a smile.

A sweet,

Happy,

Gummy smile that is directed only to Taehyung.

Taehyung bumps forward, throwing his arms around Yoongi’s neck and moving fast to straddle his lap and burying his face on his neck, right behind his jaw.

Yoongi holds him tight, low chuckle on Taehyung’s ear, sending a chill to his spine and a tremble to his body. Taehyung doesn’t know how, but he tightens his embrace and maybe Yoongi will die with no air, but he needs him closer.

“I missed you” he mumbles against Yoongi’s neck.

They remain like that, a quiet yet loud embrace, Taehyung curled against Yoongi like he’s afraid the elder will disintegrate in front of his very eyes, desperate to closeness. Yoongi runs his fingers in soothing circles on Taehyung’s back and with the other hand he holds Taehyung’s head in place.

“I’m sorry” Taehyung mumbles.

There’s a moment, and Yoongi leans back just enough to look Taehyung in the eyes, with furrowed brows and curved lips.

“What? Why?” he’s cute when he’s confused, Taehyung notices.

“For all the times I didn’t see you, only saw what I wanted you to be” Taehyung confesses, a bit embarrassed “You didn’t see me back then, but I didn’t see you too, not for who you really were”

“Yeah, because I didn’t let you” Yoongi argues “Because I was always hiding and pushing everyone away”

Taehyung shakes his head.

“No” he sounds sure “I wasn’t ready to see you too. I thought you were different, I idealized who you were and that kept me from thinking of you as someone who was hurt too, rather than someone who hurts” more tears fall from Taehyung’s eyes “I guess I gave you a role and I refused to see you out of it and this is very cruel because yeah, you treated me badly but you were treating yourself badly and I didn’t know because I was just being too selfish”

Taehyung bites his lip and tries not to sob, tries to make his cry silent. The shame, though, is overbearing, falling on his shoulders with the weight of the whole sky above. So he sobs, because he needs to.

“Tae…” Yoongi tries to cup Taehyung’s face, but he doesn’t allow, rubbing his hand on his cheeks like a kid from where he stands on Yoongi’s lap “Baby…” Yoongi murmurs, leaning closer again, tender hands finally reaching Taehyung’s face and wiping away the tears.

Taehyung burns at the pet name, bones melting, reducing to a puddle of goo.

He throws himself against Yoongi one more time.

“It’s okay. Neither one of us was the epitome of emotional maturity” Yoongi’s reassuring words come solidifying Taehyung’s body again, filling him with strength “It couldn’t have worked. I just… Didn’t want to hurt you so much and I feel like I did it irreparably”

Taehyung shakes his head no in despair.

Because maybe there was a time, really recently even, that he would think so too. But now he knows it’s not the case. He knows he couldn’t have loved Yoongi the way he needed too because it would have been, at some point, self centered.

Based on an illusion.

It would have been demanding and filled with crazy expectations that Taehyung cultivated like an horture for years and years, dreaming about an unrealistic version of Yoongi.

An immaculate Yoongi, that had no flaws and no scars and no hurt

And that would never, ever hurt Taehyung.

Like he was there to serve, not to be.

“You didn’t” he promises “You hurt me yes and it was hard yes but you didn’t do it irreparably and part of the hurt only came because I wasn’t accepting you or thinking about you as you” Taehyung cups Yoongi’s face with his big hands and he looks him in the eye “But I want to get to know you. You, with all your hurt and all your pain and everything you can’t deal with yet”

Yoongi blesses Taehyung with his smile.

His big, wide and gummy smile.

“I can’t believe this” he murmurs, stroking his thumb on Taehyung’s cheekbones “I can’t believe I’m this lucky” his eyes water just enough for them to shine and it makes Taehyung smile big, bright and boxy.

“Don’t cry” Taehyung begs, leaning to peck Yoongi’s smooth skin, drinking his tears from his cheeks “Don’t cry, please, don’t cry” he murmurs against Yoongi’s face.

“I want to get to know you too” Yoongi whispers, wrapping his arms around Taehyung’s waist and pulling him closer.

Taehyung smiles into his ear.

“Okay” he says “You will, you’ll see everything of me”

There’s a vulnerability in the promise that floats in the air like smoke, recognizable on each other’s eyes and voices.

They remain there for a while, Taehyung leaning on top of Yoongi gotta be bad to his spine because the piano bench doesn’t have a back rest, but the elder doesn’t complain. Instead, he rubs circles on Taehyung’s back again and he tugs at his scalp hair caringly and sighs.

Taehyung has his arms wrapped around Yoongi’s waist now and his head rests on his shoulder and he starts to fall into a state of peacefulness that edges slumber and just feels Yoongi’s heart beating against his ribcage like a heartfelt tactile lullaby.

It’s way, way more than he could have ever wanted.

“Baby…” Yoongi mutters, and again, Taehyung shivers at the name “Can we… Can we go to your room? My back hurts and I’m tired and maybe we could, um…”

Taehyung opens his eyes, turning his head and waking his body, taking a distance from Yoongi’s chest.

“Yeah” his voice is graves than before because of all the minutes he spent trapped in between sleep and consciousness.

He stands up and offers his hand to Yoongi and the elder stares at if for a second before taking it and intertwining their fingers.

Taehyung feels his veins in turbulence with the feeling of having Yoongi’s hand on his, his eyes on his nape, his thumb stroking his knuckles.

Of having Yoongi following him to his room, to his sanctuary, the place that shelters his dreams and the walls that listened to him crying, chanting Yoongi’s name repeatedly in pain and agony.

It’s a small room, Taehyung’s, yet Yoongi looks at it with adoration. He examines all the shelves, the canvases, painted and blank that rest on the corner. He runs his fingers through the paintings on the wall and he caresses the plant near Taehyung’s mattress.

The mattress.

He looks at it, then at Taehyung, a silent request for permission.

Taehyung grants him.

Yoongi lays next to the wall and the window and looks up at Taehyung, eyes meeting in expectation.

Taehyung knows they’ll just lay down and take a nap, but he can’t help the furious butterflies from startling in his tummy at the sight of Yoongi, with his charcoal hair falling on his lash line, almost hiding his eyes and his black oversized hoodie in which he drowns, patting the empty spot next to him so he can join him.

He smiles at Yoongi, as wide as he can, before joining him and curling on his side.

Taehyung presses his body on the side of Yoongi’s, resting his head on his shoulder and throwing his leg on top of Yoongi’s. Their bare feet meet and they play footsie just enough so it can warm them, Yoongi turning so their legs entangle.

“Tell me about that wall” Yoongi points to the wall with many famous paintings Taehyung replicated himself.

Taehyung smiles, satisfied at his word. He squirms closer to Yoongi, tightening the embrace of the arm around the elder’s torso, thinking about it.

“I think every artist has inspirations” he mumbles, nose on Yoongi’s jaw as he strokes and tugs locks of Taehyung’s wavy chocolate hair “Those are mine. Not… not inspirations as in people I’d like to paint similar, but as in people with beautiful journeys. I guess I painted them there because they’re significative to me, some of them felt exactly like what I felt when I saw them”

Yoongi hums, pulling Taehyung closer “What about the stars?”

Taehyung looks up, to his starry ceiling. He smiles at the beautiful map above.

“That’s a funny story” he giggles.

“Is that so?” Yoongi sounds intrigued as he nuzzles his face against Taehyung’s nose, the younger’s lips brushing against Yoongi’s jaw as he speaks.

“Mhmm” he hums in confirmation, smiling with his lips ghosting on Yoongi’s skin, closing his eyes and enjoying Yoongi’s scent.

“Tell me, then” Yoongi’s voice sound sleepy and lazy.

“When I was a kid, I got obsessed with this greek mythology book I found in my house” he starts “I used to read it everyday before I sleep, even though many of the stories were inappropriate to a kid…”

Yoongi fakes outrage as he turns his head to face Taehyung with pretty mouth in a perfect ‘O’ and furrowed brows “Little Taehyungie was a bad boy?”

Taehyung giggles at Yoongi’s silliness, and something sweet and warm slides into him because he feels so happy to witness Yoongi’s smallest moments like this. Seeing him being silly and dumb and breaking that blasè, flat expression into his gummiest and most spontaneous moments feel like finding a treasure.

Feels like finding Yoongi under Yoongi.

Taehyung loves silly Yoongi, even if he hasn’t seen much.

Because Taehyung is silly too and he wants to share it.

“He was” Taehyung snuggles closer, closing his eyes and humming “Anyway… Perseus was my favorite of all time, even more than the gods. One day I found out there was a constellation named Perseus and I just decided I needed it on my ceiling, so I could look at it a lot and maybe recognize it in the real sky one day” he chuckles “Which is silly because it can only be seen in the north hemisphere” Yoongi smiles at the comment “Anyway, I bought those plastic fluorescent stars and glued them on my ceiling with my father’s help”

Yoongi giggles “That explains half of it?”

Taehyung yawns slowly, Yoongi following right after as a reflex, before continuing “I came here to live with Jimin and Hobi and I missed them on my ceiling so I decided to paint them, and while I was at it, I decided to paint other constellations”

Yoongi pulls Taehyung closer, turning so their chests meet and cheeks press and legs entangle more. Taehyung curls his body against Yoongi’s chest and grabs his hoodie to pull him impossibly closer and inhale him.

Yoongi slides his hand into Taehyung’s shirt and it’s a cold touch against the warmth of Taehyung’s honey skin. He squeezes Taehyung’s waist and the younger can’t help but whimper.

Because just this touch is unbearable.

Because Taehyung wants Yoongi like he is air and Taehyung is underwater.

Because it’s Yoongi. 

“Baby…” Yoongi mutters at his ear.

“Stop it” Taehyung whispers.

“Stop what?” Yoongi’s voice is unreadable, but his lips are against his earlobe.

“Mmm your hand” Taehyung snuggles closer, contrary to his words.

Yoongi squeezes one more time before pulling his hand out and wrapping his arm around Taehyung.

“Sorry, it was unconscious” his pouty lips are wet and warm right on the spot where Taehyung’s jaw meets his earlobe and it feels like torture.

Because they decided to wait and yet Taehyung’s skin craves for Yoongi’s touch.

That touch.

That grounding strong grip that even absent pulling him from inside and made him pour.

Just the memory of that touch is enough to make Taehyung hot all over, burning for Yoongi.

“We have to wait” there’s no more space between his body and Yoongi’s but he keeps on trying to find a way to merge them together, squirming closer.

“It’s so hard” Yoongi confesses on his ear in a murmur “I just want to kiss you”

Fuck.

Fuck.

Taehyung wants it too.

He wants it devastatingly much. He wants it more than anything he has ever wanted.

He wants to disappear under Yoongi’s hands and under his hungry gazes and under his skilled fingers.

He wants Yoongi to touch him like he touches his piano.

“Stop” his voice is barely audible between Yoongi’s face and the mattress, force and will power lacking, losing to aching desire “We have to make things right”

Yoongi nods, cheek rubbing against Taehyung’s

“Yeah, we’ll make it right”

He presses a peck on Taehyung’s temple and it’s supposed to be sweet and tender and caring but it’s wet and hot and almost profane.

Like Judas betraying Jesus with his kiss.

“Stop” Taehyung whispers again, moany and weak and almost caving.

Begging for Yoongi to stop.

But hoping he doesn’t.

Except this time he does

And as hard as it is, they fall asleep

**

Yoongi and Taehyung seal their willingness to get to know each other deeply with a pinky promise while they’re splattered on the floor under the sun after playing piano and beginning a paint-off.

The room is filled with laughter and loud heartbeats and an abstract painting neither one of them can tell what it is.

Taehyung finds that Yoongi is silly.

Sillier than he ever wondered he would be under the contained, pacific surface.

Yoongi laughs loudly, as loud as Taehyung’s heartbeats when he’s near. He is loud and whiny and behaves like a baby sometimes. He makes dumb jokes and he dances around in the most innocent way, almost like a kid learning how to move after hearing music for the first time.

Yoong sucks at games and sports

Except basketball.

Taehyung finds that out when he gets into Yoongi’s bedroom for the first time and finds many trophies displayed in a shelf.

They’re doing that.

Hanging out on each other’s places and telling stories about the unseen corners of their childhood and teenagehood. The ones they didn’t know about each other.

They sit on the wooden floor of Yoongi’s room and spread the content of dusty untouched boxes that Yoongi didn’t allow himself to open, afraid of some pandoric event that could follow.

“I didn’t handle well when my dad told me about Jungkookie” there’s a glint of shame to his voice as he looks at the objects on the floor.

There’s a golden reliquary, oval shaped and engraved with Yoongi’s name. There’s a photo album and music sheets, some written and some blank. There are comic books and a journal and an old, old version of Shakespeare’s King Lear with a random dedicatory.

Yoongi’s legs are folded loosely in front of his body, he rests his arms on his knees and lets his hands fall lifeless while he bumps his head back on the bed, against which his back rests.

Taehyung sits criss crossed next to him, but has his chest turned to his side.

“I was only four but my dad said I kept saying he had no other son, that I was the only one” his voice is low and he looks up at the wooden ceiling “Did Jungkook tell you this?”

Yoongi’s profile is round and soft and his pale skin glows shyly like the silver moon.

“No” Taehyung murmurs, still caught on how pretty Yoongi looks in such a simple situation.

There’s an airy huff that escapes Yoongi’s pouty lips and sound like a roar in the quiet room.

“I always wanted to be like Jungkook” the confession is unexpected like rain on a summer day

“Why did you?” Taehyung thinks is sounds funny.

It sounds funny because even as a kid, Jungkook has always looked up to Yoongi, tried to look tough like him, wise like him, smug like him. Even the way Yoongi dressed, Jungkook followed.

The loose black shirts.

The hoodies with longer than necessary sleeves.

And finally.

The bucket hat.

In eighth grade for Taehyung and sixth for Jungkook, Yoongi bought a black bucket hat that he wore to go fishing with Jin.

Taehyung can’t help but to hold back a laugh when he thinks about little Jeonggukie, all excited because his dad agreed with buying him one too.

Yoongi was annoyed at first about it. He said Jungkook should stop copying him.

Jungkook cried a lot because he was really excited about the hat, so Taehyung gave him the idea of hiding it and using it only in school, since Yoongi wouldn’t see it. Jungkook said he didn’t want to anymore and Taehyung remember how sad he got seeing Jungkook so disappointed.

Two days after, Yoongi talked to Jungkook and apologized, said he was nervous and that he loved the fact that Jungkook liked it too, so he invited his baby brother to go get ice cream and they both wore the hats.

After that, Jungkook never stopped wearing it and sometimes when he and Yoongi hang out Yoongi wears it too.

Taehyung remember how his heart melted when Jungkook told him the story and how deeper he fell for Yoongi.

“Because Jungkook is… sweet, and innocent sometimes, even if he’s already a mature adult. He is not silly innocent, or naive, he is just… that kind of innocent that smiles at cute things and have fun in every situation no matter what” Yoongi rambles, almost as if he’s thinking about it still.

Like he’s developing the thought.

Yoongi does that a lot. He rambles absentmindedly in front of Taehyung and even when it’s about the most random and irrelevant thoughts, it feels intimate, like Taehyung is listening to his mind working rather than a solid idea.

“He’s pure” Taehyung says it because he knows what Yoongi is talking about “In some kind of miracle”

Yoongi closes his eyes and smiles and hums “Yeah”

“Jungkookie is like he is because of you, you know?” Taehyung breaks the silence after a while.

Yoongi remains with his eyes closed and his head on the bed and Taehyung can not stop staring at him because he is pretty and captivating like the Monalisa and now

now Taehyung can.

After so many years sparing small glances, looking secretively, taking forever to solve Yoongi’s face like a puzzle in his head because he could never look long enough to take every small detail in at once

After years and years collecting tiny, subatomic pieces in order to have Yoongi’s face memorized

Taehyung can.

He can look at Yoongi’s face and he can stare at him like he’s a masterpiece in a museum and Taehyung is just some infatuated lost boy.

He can look at Yoongi’s face long enough he can see every flaw, every pore, every ingrown hair, every scar.

It all makes him even more beautiful.

“How can it be, if I was a walking disaster?” he mutters.

“I think it’s okay to recognize your flaws from the past and recognize you weren’t your best version. But even then, your essence was the same and you had amazing qualities that were visible back then too, and Jungkookie saw them and loved you for them and loved you for the bad things too”

Yoongi’s head doesn’t move and his eyes don’t open but his hands search blindly for Taehyung’s in order to intertwine their fingers.

And here it is

Taehyung’s favorite discover.

Yoongi absolutely,

completely,

entirely,

loves,

to hold hands.

Taehyung should’ve known, by the way he said when he and Jin fought when they were kids he wanted to hold his hand. Or for the way his pinky tried to touch his that day they played piano together. Or when he was reluctant to let go after their fight on the bathroom on Jin’s place.

Instead he realized little by little.

It wasn’t something Yoongi said, it was the way he held Taehyung’s hand even when they were tangled on the floor. Or when he intertwined their pinkies one day when Taehyung was reading a poetry out loud while Yoongi rested his head on his lap.

And finally it hit him, when they were doing game night on Jin and Namjoon’s place and Yoongi and Taehyung teamed up and Yoongi suggested their team was called ‘hand holding’, which make Taehyung giggle and intertwine their fingers and feel heartwarming affection possessing him like an entity.

Yoongi and Hoseok argued that night, and under the excuse of the game, Yoongi accused Hoseok of cheating, and then he glared at him.

It was jealousy though.

So when Taehyung and him had a discussion on the bathroom (again), he held Taehyung’s hand and apologized and confessed he was a little insecure.

Taehyung dove into his embrace and mumbled on his neck that he was the only one he wanted and that he had to respect Hoseok and understand that he was one of Taehyung’s best friends and that they didn’t have sex anymore.

Yoongi walked out of the bathroom and apologized and also held Hoseok’s hand as he did it, to prove he was being sincere.

Taehyung remembers thinking Yoongi was everything he loved him for not being back then.

Taehyung remembers thinking he loved Yoongi even more for it.

He remembers thinking that that must be the real meaning of love.

Entirety.

Because Taehyung loved Yoongi for being calm, contained, quiet, grumpy and even rude, and now he knows Yoongi is cute, gentle, kind and soft and that makes him burst with love like fireworks on new year’s eve.

Yoongi rubs his thumb on Taehyung’s knuckles and drags him back to reality, to his room.

“You’re always right” he smiles.

Taehyung lifts his free hand to draw a line with his fingertip from Yoongi’s forehead, over the dark black hair, to his button nose, passing softly by the cupid’s arch and then his lips.

His pretty, pouty thin lips that Taehyung is yet to kiss.

A whole month has passed and they see each other every day.

Holding back is the most difficult thing Taehyung has ever had to do.

Because Yoongi is tender and he is all Taehyung wants and all Taehyung thinks about.

And knowing Yoongi’s touch, knowing the smell of his breath, knowing his weight… It makes it all harder. Taehyung’s mind flows like the river of desire under his skin as he lays on his mattress and feels it, the grip he has known for so long, now synchronized with the memory of Yoongi’s long, veiny hands around his waist, the strong tobacco scent of his breath over the shell of his ear, the tickles of his charcoal hair brushing is face.

It all seems to real because Taehyung has felt Yoongi’s presence from close and he knows the weight of his body next to him and he knows his hums.

It makes Taehyung pull himself from inside and see the same stars in his ceiling with eyes closed.

Yet it’s not enough.

Because Taehyung is yet to know Yoongi’s lips. He is yet to know Yoongi’s desperate noises and body fluids and his pace.

He’s yet to let him in.

And he’s kind of desperate for it.

Yoongi slides his lips up, pout opening so he can press the most simple, most subtle and tender and barely there wet kiss on Taehyung’s digit.

The burning sensation spreads for Taehyung’s bones and he feels as light as a balloon and as grounded as a ship anchored in the middle of the ocean at the same time. Yoongi’s lips on his digit pout again and this time is more discreet than ever and yet, Taehyung knows it’s there.

There’s a hitch in Taehyung’s breath that is more present than lacking and he thinks maybe he’ll undo just from that single kiss.

Because when it comes to Yoongi, it’s all too much.

“Yoongi” Taehyung whispers, dismissing the honorifics to taste the sweetness of his loved one’s name on his tongue.

Yoongi lets go of his hand to pull him to his chest, blending them together in a hold so tight no one could tell them apart.

Like Taehyung’s watercolors.

“Thank you” Yoongi breathes out in Taehyung’s ears, one hand around his body and the other curled on the hair of Taehyung’s nape.

It’s tender and hot at the same time and Taehyung wants more, he wants so much more.

But they promised to wait and so they’ll keep it.

“I’m here” Taehyung sighs

And it’s a promise

That night, they cuddle in bed for hours, as Yoongi tells Taehyung his favorite stories with his mother.

He tells Taehyung about when she died.

He tells Taehyung everything he remembers feeling after that, from that day until the present day, and when he cries, Taehyung cries with him.

**

Yoongi isn’t the only one to share.

Taehyung lets him in the deepest, darkest corners of his mind.

He too, opens himself like a book, words flowing along with his tears as he tells Yoongi his own struggles with his mind, with his body, with himself.

Taehyung has had a good life, a good family, good friends.

It wasn’t easy for him to understand that. It wasn’t easy for him to accept and to feel deserving. It all led him to think he was pointless. It led him to believe he had nothing else to say, no one to reach, no one to touch.

It led him to emptiness.

For years of his life, Taehyung felt like the most insignificant of beings, and even if that doesn’t seem like a lot, it tore him apart in pieces he couldn’t fathom back anymore.

Maybe that’s why he loved Yoongi.

The imaginary Yoongi, he means.

Because Yoongi was everything he wanted to be and maybe, just maybe if Yoongi had loved him them, had gotten him then, maybe he would have made sense.

“I’m sorry” Taehyung mutters, lying on his mattress with his head on Yoongi’s chest and listening to his heartbeats.

“You have nothing to even be sorry about” Yoongi’s grip tightens on his hand and when Taehyung looks up, he presses a kiss on his forehead, giving him a reassuring smile.

“I put so much on your back without you even knowing it or wanting it” he snuggles closer to Yoongi “I made you responsible for my sense of self worth. I know I told you I didn’t, that day on your kitchen, and I didn’t lie then. But before, during my whole teenagehood I did and it’s too cruel”

“I was also too cruel” Yoongi slides down so his eyes are on the same level as Taehyung’s “It’s okay”

His thumb on Taehyung’s cheek is more than enough.

“I guess I loved you then with what I thought it was love” Taehyung whispers “And it was real but it wasn’t it”

Yoongi smiles, and he nods, chest against Taehyung’s.

“I guess love is a widening spiral and each time you love you learn more to it. Then the previous version seems distant from what it is now” Yoongi is doing it again.

He’s letting Taehyung read his mind

Letting him hear the thoughts as they come

Letting him see his undressed essence.

Taehyung wants the spiral to be everlasting.

He wants to love Yoongi with many, many more versions of himself and of love.

“But it’s still love…” Taehyung whispers, claiming Yoongi’s eyes to meet his “...Everytime”

Yoongi nods, so solemn and truthful.

And behind his eyes, on the verge, Taehyung sees it.

Because Taehyung never needed words.

And neither did Yoongi.

But they both know it’s love.

They decide to draw a map to their souls together.

It was Yoongi’s idea and it’s a very Taehyung-like idea, so he giggles in excitement when they’re painting together and Yoongi blurts it out.

They’ll trace a map with many, many points, and every point it’s a must-see. Almost like those ‘a-thousand-places-you-have-to-know-before-you-die’ books, but this one it’s more like a ‘an-undetermined-number-of-randomnities-you-have-to-share-with-the-other-before-you-date’ kind of book.

In Taehyung’s map of the soul, he decides to put everything he has always, always wanted to share with Yoongi. He thinks it’ll be a lot of trouble for the elder because Taehyung is a little over the top in everything he does and this is a one time opportunity.

His map consists in all 925 episodes of One Piece (which he knows Yoongi won’t see anyways, but he wants to put it because he wants him to know how much Taehyung loves it). The book ‘Call me by your name’, the movie ‘Call me by your name’, the soundtrack of ‘Call me by your name’. The book ‘Demien’, which was the most significative book of his teenagehood. The greek mythology book he read as a kid. Sleeping at Last’s album ‘Atlas’, Death Cab for Cutie’s song ‘Transatlanticism’. Ludovico Einaldi’s album Una Mattina, highlighting Nuvole Bianche, Taehyung’s favorite song and the first one Yoongi has heard him play. He adds a documentary about famous painters with mental illnesses, The TV series Ghost Whisperer, which is Taehyung’s guilty pleasure and also the game Overwatch.

There are many other things Taehyung would love to share, but for now this will do.

Yoongi’s map the the randomest thing Taehyung has ever seen. It’s a mix of classical music, a brand of cigars, an youtube channel with asmr videos of a white samoyed dog called Maya, an youtube channel with videos that proof aliens exist, an youtube channel with videos of cats. Dostoevsky's book Notes from the Underground, a documentary about the musical industry in South Korea and a bunch of comic books from authors Taehyung unknows. In the end, there’s an extra topic with “fishing with Jin hyung”.

Taehyung decides to add ‘Cuddle festival’ in his map too.

They decide to spend the week before the fishing date with Jin apart, just so they’ll have the time to really dive into the maps and pay attention to the details.

It all seemed like a great idea, but after the first day, Taehyung’s body feels dry and weak and it’s almost like abstinence.

Getting to see Yoongi everyday is addictive. It leaves Taehyung simmering, in the perfect in between state that he loves so much, like when you’re about to sleep but some of you is still present in the world and the collision is almost psychedelic, pulling to surface the most honest fantasies.

Getting to see Yoongi everyday, knowing Yoongi wants to see him too is ecstatic.

It comes with a paradoxical sense of unrealness that’s too real and feels like a dejavu and a jamais vu at the same time.

Getting to see Yoongi comes with desperation and hunger and thirst Taehyung struggles to hold back.

That’s why he thought not seeing Yoongi would make it easier.

It doesn’t.

Taehyung takes two days to finally dive into reading the book. Most of the time he reads three pages until he realizes he hasn’t absorbed a single word of it, mind drawn to Yoongi like a magnet, thinking about all the new things he has learned about him.

Like the fact Yoongi has two funny faces that he makes randomly and Taehyung almost rips his lips with the strength with which he bites it, in a desperate attempt not to coo.

Because Taehyung also finds out that Yoongi is just overwhelmingly adorable and he needs, his body begs for him to coo.

Taehyung’s favorite funny face is when Yoongi furrows his brows and purses his lips like a square bracket. The second one is his cheeky smile with gums and boxy shape.

Taehyung can’t spend a day without smiling at the memory of Yoongi’s small, unnoticed manners that captivate him and rob him from reality to a world filled with him.

Yoongi.

Yoongi.

Yoongi.

Taehyung loves natural Yoongi, careless Yoongi, distracted Yoongi.

When Taehyung finally gets back to reading Notes of the Underground, Yoongi’s personal and highlighted copy, he cries.

He cries for all of the sentences marked with fluorescent yellow marker.

He cries because the book is the most torturing agonizing exercise of looking oneself in the mirror.

He cries because the mirror reveals everything one would want to hide.

He cries because Yoongi felt that way too.

That night, he cheats on their week apart and he curls against Yoongi on the elder’s bed, pressing small soothing kisses on his hand.

His pretty, long, reassuring hand that holds Taehyung’s like is holding the world.

“Baby, what happened?” he asks softly, cupping Taehyung’s face with his free hand and rubbing small circles with his thumb.

Taehyung shakes his head no, but grimaces and cries harder.

“Did you read the book?” Yoongi laughs, airy and endeared.

“Yes” Taehyung’s grave, deep and constipated voice resonates around, covering them like a blanket, a roar in contrast with Yoongi’s low whisper “It’s an exercise of self flagellation”

Yoongi laughs, loudly this time, sounds filling Taehyung to the bone, warming the way from his toes up, shoving out Taehyung’s own smile.

“I’m sorry, love” Yoongi pulls him closer.

It’s the first time Yoongi calls Taehyung love and even though it was always there, clear like water on the edge of his eyes and the tip of his fingers, now it was put into the world and it weights, heavy and meaningful like lead.

And if Taehyung ever thought he didn’t need words, that’s because he had never heard Yoongi calling him love.

Taehyung undoes, putty and jellowy under Yoongi’s soft thumb on his cheek.

“I’m sorry you felt that” Taehyung cries, closing his eyes and sliding his head closer so he feels Yoongi’s calm breath hitting his lips.

“It’s okay” Yoongi pulls him to a hug that heals him all together, fathoming all the sharps into a beautiful constellation “it brought me to you”

They fall asleep like that, and on the following day, Yoongi cooks them breakfast while Yoongi tells him his impression on Demien.

Taehyung thinks that it’s kind of metalinguistical in some twisted way that makes sense to him.

***

Cuddle Festival with Jimin, Jungkook and Hoseok happens on the same weekend they go fishing with Jin.

Taehyung finds out that Yoongi and Jin have been doing that since their school took them on a fishing trip when they were teenagers and they have been doing it ever since. Despite years of practice, Yoongi is not good and Jin manages to be a little better but still awful.

Taehyung gets a fish and he feels bubbly like sparkling water when Yoongi looks at him, under the sun, all dressed in a big black coat and with a headband that makes his hair points to a thousand directions, and looks proud.

Jin rolls his eyes at them, accusing them of being “too in love”

And that’s a thing.

Because love has been dancing between the lines for them, subtle as meaning can be, encrypted like a poem yet obvious like the light. Love has been present even though none of them have properly said it yet, even though they don’t seem to know the words.

Yoongi calls Taehyung ‘love’ and it thunders over him, spreading throughout his body and soul and embracing him with safety.

Because yeah

Taehyung feels safe.

He feels safe with Yoongi like he had never thought he would. Like he thought it didn’t even existed. Like one of those things that are a possibility to everyone else, except for you.

“I’m proud” Yoongi’s voice is barely a rustle under the roar of the boat engine and the whistling wind and the splash of the water, yet it spreads over Taehyung’s heart louder than the world around.

Taehyung and Yoongi hold hands, intertwine fingers and cuddle, but words are a little difficult and trapped on their throats and teeth and Taehyung has started to miss them. He has started to want them, to want to murmur them, confess them, scream them. He has been wanting to tell Yoongi how cute he is, how much Taehyung likes it when he bites his thumb nail and how much he loves all of Yoongi’s sounds.

Taehyung has been wanting to tell him everything.

He starts slowly though, finally gathering courage enough that they feel like a glob under the roof of his mouth and he just finally says

“I like it when you look at me” as random as it might sound.

Yoongi’s eyes open a little and he spares a subtle glance behind to make sure Jin didn’t hear, and if he did he makes a great job acting like he didn’t, focused on the open sea. When Yoongi looks back at Taehyung there’s a blush on his cheeks and Taehyung just watches as the sun covers him, his small yet strong pose. For a second, Taehyung envies light for being allowed to kiss Yoongi so shamelessly like that.

“Yeah?” Yoongi is closer now and it is just absolutely insane how the simplest of the words come out sensual and hypnotizing from Yoongi’s lips.

Maybe is the fact that they’re on a floating structure in the middle of the ocean, yes, there’s always that possibility, but Taehyung suspects his surroundings would seem equally wavy if they were planted on solid ground.

Because that little word, that little “yeah” whispered by Yoongi so casually, just shakes Taehyung whole, pulling his roots upside down.

And as much as Taehyung likes it when Yoongi looks at him, he likes it way more to taste the ambrosian liberty of being allowed to look at Yoongi as much as he wants.

“Yeah” he answers, more dazzled for Yoongi’s gummy grin then by the flaming sun over them.

He doesn’t know when Yoongi’s arms wrap around his waist or when his face gets buried in the crook of Yoongi’s neck or when exactly the words that come out of Yoongi’s lips straight onto his ears start to burn, but they do.

They rip him at the edges and tear him in the middle like gift paper under a kid’s fingers on christmas.

“I love looking at you” and there it is again, the love, omnipresent amongst them “I wish I could kiss you”

And Taehyung can swear he dies, under the immense sky and above the profound sea, like they’re in between two infinities, filling the gap with their own everlastingness.

“You can” it’s all he manages to say, because yes, Yoongi can.

And there’s a pause, as poetic as the breaks between the bridge and the shouted chorus in the near ending of a song, as tactile as the heaviness before a thunder, where Taehyung can swear Yoongi will kiss him.

And oh, how he wants it.

How he has been literally dreaming about it.

How his body chants like a mantra for Yoongi’s lips on him.

There are moments in life when you think ‘this is finally it’ and it seems like everything around you tell you ‘yeah, it’s it’ and then nothing happens.

Yoongi looks at Taehyung like he’s witnessing a miracle, like he’s about to perform a miracle himself.

He looks at Taehyung like he loves him.

And then, nothing happens.

“No” the whisper sends a chill to Taehyung’s skin so strong his pores hurt, wanting to purge his body hair and then wanting to peel himself off “Because when I kiss you I don’t think I’ll stop”

And again, Taehyung swears he dies.

**

The ride back home is like an inner odyssey, thoughts hovering on air so colorful and clear Taehyung can almost reach them and grab them with his bare hands. The landscape is pinkish with the setting sun, freckles of lilac and gold and just the perfect amount of orange.

It’s one of those sunsets.

One of those like Yoongi’s airy laugh, existent but rare, revealing in the most unexpected moments.

There are sunsets everyday and there are laughs everyday but…

there's this one.

This particular one that makes everything feel like a fluke and make Taehyung feel the most fortunate person to ever walk on Earth for being able to witness.

Being in a car with Yoongi is one of Taehyung’s favorite things ever because it feels like everything he used to wonder and dream about suddenly solidified in front of his very eyes.

Yoongi is a good driver and he does it absentmindedly, distracted, almost on autopilot, like his body already knows what to do, his mind knows where to go.

Yoongi drives like he lives.

The sunlight shapes his profile and Taehyung’s head is resting on the car seat, and he turns and all he can see is Yoongi. He doesn’t look particularly good, his hair is a mess and his posture still sucks and there’s this spot,

this precious spot Taehyung dreams about kissing.

His jowl, the soft, chubby skin under his chin that’s probably just the perfect amount of smooth so Taehyung can poke it and bite it and kiss it, in the most innocent way he can think of.

Like petting a puppy or hugging a teddy bear.

Taehyung smiles to himself as he feels free, like crystal finally free from bubble wrap, to lift his hand and to touch.

They’re exploring touches as much as they’re exploring each other and it feels like hot chocolate for the heart, the feeling of having Yoongi’s hands on his as they’re walking at the museum or being able to peck his cheek when they’re cuddling or just simpler things, like when Yoongi puts one of Taehyung’s hair locks behind his ear, or when Taehyung leans to pop a blackhead on Yoongi’s nose or when Yoongi unconsciously rests on his body.

Taehyung finds paradise in ordinairities with Yoongi.

Like grocery shopping, like hair cuts and doctor appointments and being on the passenger seat as he drives.

Like Taehyung is part of his life and he is part of Taehyung’s life.

Like they have a life together.

Yoongi makes favorite funny face number one, frowning and pursing his lips and chubbying his cheeks even more, just like he does when he wants to pretend he hates Taehyung being clingy.

“Stooop” he pushes Taehyung’s hand from his jowl with a whine.

Taehyung loves whiny fake-annoyed Yoongi so much that it makes him giggle. He pinches the skin harder, like an irritating aunt with her nephew’s cheeks.

“Let gooo” Yoongi sounds even whinnier and something akin to a bubble bursts into his stomach, escaping as laughter from his mouth.

Taehyung behaves bratty often and Yoongi have noticed it already and he pretends he doesn’t like it but Taehyung knows he does.

That’s why he leans over the limit of his seat and presses a simple, teasing but innocent kiss on the soft skin.

It’s so fast Taehyung is already going back to his spot when he registers that Yoongi hissed at the affection.

He bites his lip as if he just found out Yoongi’s dirtiest secret and when the elder spares him a quick glance before going back looking at the road, he giggles.

“Stop” it’s a low growl, followed by a pout, and Yoongi looks too young and pure and Taehyung trembles in the urge to coo.

“Did you just…” he bites at his nail, just like Yoongi does, and giggles.

“Stop it, okay? I’m very protective over my double chin” Yoongi thinks Taehyung misses the smile he tries to hold on the corner of his lip as he frowns.

“Okay” the smile Taehyung tries to hold back comes out heavy in the word “I kind of knew you were ‘protective over your jowl’” he teases “I’m just glad I found out why”

Yoongi’s eye roll and he pouts looking at the road and Taehyung smirks to himself over finding a sensitive spot, keeping the information like it’s sacred, wondering when he’ll be able to use it.

“Brat” Yoongi mutters after a while, but there’s a smile on his face.

It’s a bit movie like, but something somehow seems changed between them when Yoongi stops in front of his apartment. Maybe it was the sun, or the sea, or the way Yoongi looked at Taehyung like he was going to kiss him.

Somehow, Taehyung feels like they’re ready.

It feels like something stantaneous, like somehow they woke up today and everything changed, but it was more metamorphosical than that. They were changing bits by bits, building a small cocoon over them, around them, locking themselves together the same way they lock eyes, diving into each other.

That’s really how everything happening. Bit by bit and all of the sudden.

“Come up” Taehyung whispers.

They’re holding hands on the car, Yoongi is turned on his side and looking at his thumb drawing circles in Taehyung’s knuckles. Taehyung loves the contrast of their skin, honey against pale white snow.

“I don’t think I want to hear Jimin’s comments on my looks” Yoongi snorts, amused though.

“They’re not here” Taehyung bites his lip, looking up to see Yoongi’s reaction.

They all slept home, at cuddle festival. Taehyung woke up right next to Yoongi under a tent of blankets and fairy lights and it’s epiphanic to say the least. They sneaked out at dark hours still to go fishing.

“Jungkook and Jimin are at yours and Hoseok is at his hook up’s place and will stay the night” Taehyung adds, just in case.

“Mhh” Yoongi hums and Taehyung shivers at the way he simply adores his small noises “So he and the guy are really together now?”

A small smirk dances through his lips and Taehyung smiles in reflex because he knows even though they get along now and that Yoongi has apologized, he is still a little jealous of Hoseok.

“Yeah” he confirms.

It takes a while of Yoongi looking at their hands and biting his smile and caressing Taehyung’s knuckles before he agrees.

It’s exciting, the way he locks the car and circles it to hold Taehyung’s hand to get in together, like they’re an old couple, even if the door is just a few feet away. It’s even more exciting the way they don’t let go of each other even if it makes harder to climb up the stairs.

When the door closes behind Yoongi, Taehyung throws himself at him, with arms around his neck and face buried between it.

“What is it?” there’s a stutter in Yoongi’s voice that suggests he has an amused smile on.

“Nothing” Taehyung’s voice sounds muffled and tangled “I just… Missed you”

Yoongi’s arm circles around his waist and one of his hands goes straight to Taehyung’s scalp, like he loves so much, to draw circles with his short nails and to tug at the hair.

“We spent two days together” Yoongi laughs on his ear, low and velvety.

Taehyung snuggles closer, as if it’s possible.

Because yeah, they spent two days together but their friends were around and it was different. Because Taehyung can’t spend one more second apart from Yoongi without missing him, missing his soft skin, his deep voice, his agile hands and delicate touch.

He touches Taehyung like he’s precious.

“I missed you anyway”

Yoongi’s laughter sounds a lot like thunder. Like there’s a little sky right above Taehyung’s ear and it’ll rain just for him to hear.

“I missed you too” is comes a whisper, like the wind before the storm

And then there is a wet, soft kiss on his temple that feels a lot like rain.

Taehyung closes his eyes and feels it, as Yoongi’s lip pour over his skin like it’s washing away his uneasiness.

“You taste like salt and fish” Yoongi whines “EW, YOU SMELL BAD TOO”

Taehyung giggles against his chest, pulling away just enough to look at him.

“So do you”

“Well, I think you smell worse” Yoongi is making favorite funny face two, which makes a turmoil of happiness start in Taehyung’s tummy.

Because Taehyung could fall apart while trying to explain how in love with Yoongi’s silliness he is.

He giggles, and Yoongi giggles too.

“I’ll take a shower, then” he promises.

“You better” Yoongi lets him go, trying to push him toward the hallway and then he stops.

Because he thinks about all the small ordinarities he shared with Yoongi today and it occurs him how much he wants more of them. More of the small little things one does alone ever since they learn how to until his very last second of independency, and that never feel lonely but now do.

Because he wants to go grocery shopping and drive together but he also wants to sleep together and to cook together and to eat together and…

“You can join me” he says as he turns around all of the sudden, Yoongi already on the couch and with his phone in hand.

It takes a second

a long

desperating second

until Yoongi raises his eyes with his opened mouth and

smirks.

Like he thinks Taehyung is joking.

“Stop teasing” he says, going back to his phone.

Taehyung stares at him, all dressed in black, smelling like dead fish and with salty, messy hair. And still Taehyung would cuddle him right now and never let go if he had the chance.

“I mean it” he says suddenly.

Yoongi raises his head again, surprised by the fact that Taehyung is in fact still there, feeling naked already just for suggesting it.

Because they’re yet to show their bodies but Taehyung has already bared his soul so Yoongi could see him.

Their breaths are heavy, not in sound but in meaning.

Taehyung’s eyes glitter in expectation because he just did that, he just offered himself for Yoongi like that, and it reminds him of how much he wore his heart on his sleeve for him.

Yoongi licks his lips, leaning his body to rest on his knees on the couch. He looks down, intertwine his own fingers in front of his knees and then looks up.

“I- I don’t think now’s a good time” the words come out like they struggled not to.

Oh.

Taehyung blinks at him, and logically he knows Yoongi must have a reason but his body rushes into registering the whole thing as a rejection.

And rejection hurts.

“Oh” the sound is choked and Yoongi seems to be in pain listening to it “W- Why?”

Yoongi turns his head a little, opening his lips and seeming conflicted.

“Taehyung…”

“Y- you wanted to kiss me today, didn’t you?” he can’t help it, maybe he’s overreacting but he never thought he’d feel rejection coming from Yoongi again.

It’s like a trigger, being this vulnerable just to receive a no.

“Do you not want to anymore? D- Do…” he feels the tears beginning to rise from his chest up, feels them coming like the shore when it rises “Do you not want me?”

Yoongi’s eyes widen as if he’s hear the biggest absurd.

“No” it’s a blink of an eye before he’s standing in front of Taehyung, hands trying to reach him to touch but hesitating “Taehyung, oh my God, no”

Yoongi’s voice is contained but there’s a pitch to it that suggests he’s nervous and desperate.

He finally touches Taehyung’s wrists, always there.

The familiar grip all over again.

Taehyung knows Yoongi can feel his pulse and how fast his heart beats and he tries to get away but the grip tightens.

“Taehyung, I want you, you know I do” he touches Taehyung’s cheeks and his touch, for the first time in forever, hurt “There’s nothing I want more” the last part is whispered.

“Then why are you denying me again?” Taehyung’s voice breaks at the end and Yoongi knows, he just knows what is it about.

“Because I am not ready” he snaps “I am not ready yet”

His words hurt because Taehyung thought he was. He thought they were together on the same pace.

“Why not?” he knows he’s not being really mature, asking such question.

You can’t ask why someone isn’t ready because ready is organic and will happen when it does and Taehyung knows that.

“You’re being childish” Yoongi takes a step back.

It hurts, the step back. It hurts a lot because they were good, they were okay, they were just fucking fine and they seemed to be walking together, towards each other, towards something.

It hurts that Yoongi called him childish and it hurts that it’s true.

“Tell me then” Taehyung is fully crying now, desperate tears fall from his eyes “Did I do something?”

Yoongi closes his eyes and it also hurts Taehyung because he seems impatient.

Taehyung knows he’s just nervous and he has to calm down but they’re fighting again and there’s a fear growing that Yoongi will just now realize Taehyung is childish in fact, it’s too immature, and he won’t want him anymore just like he didn’t want him back then.

Taehyung feels like he’s having a synapse with that old Taehyung.

The Taehyung that was always younger than Yoongi, sillier than Yoongi.

“This is not about you” Yoongi almost

almost yells.

“You’re making it about you and about things you might’ve said or did but it’s not”

Yoongi is irritated and Taehyung feels selfish.

Fear grows even more, like a shadow behind Taehyung, bigger and bigger and solidifying until it is body, a person, a monster capable of eating him alive in front of Yoongi’s eyes.

He doesn’t know what to say.

And then

“I should go”

The Fear eats Taehyung, bites him, breaks his bones, devours him and his visceras. It’s a bloodbath in Taehyung’s living room, bones breaking, flash ripping, heart breaking.

“No” it’s all he manages to say, desperately grabbing Yoongi’s wrist with what he hopes is the same resolve Yoongi held his that day “Please, no, I’m sorry, don’t go”

He’s begging. He thought he’d never have to beg Yoongi to stay again.

It’s falling apart too fast and he thought they were building on solid ground but it all feels like a sandcastle now.

“Taehyung, let go” Yoongi’s black eyes on him feel a lot like a wrecking ball, destructive and lethal.

“Please, don’t go” Taehyung cries.

“I’ll go” Yoongi says “Because… Nothing changed”

“Everything changed” Taehyung sobs.

Yoongi seems pained.

“How? You just said it Taehyung, that I’m denying you /again/, like all of the past still hurts you. How can I stay if everytime I tell you no, I tell you that I’m not ready yet, you act like that? It’s okay if you’re still hurting about that because forgiveness and cure are different things but it hurts in me too” Yoongi is crying.

Yoongi. Is. Crying.

“I don’t want to hurt you again but I can’t give you what you want right now” Yoongi’s words sound harsh because he doesn’t intend to let clear how selfish Taehyung is being but he does anyway.

And it hurts to recognize your own immaturity.

“Stay, please. It’s not like that, I’m just… I’m too…” Taehyung tries to argue, but Yoongi manages to let go.

“I need some time” he says “To think”

Just like that, he’s out the door.

It was too good to be true, Taehyung thinks.

He had been feeling like living in a dream, a real dream, a mature dream, but a dream anyways.

His problem was that he was too greedy.

Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun.

Taehyung lets the water wash the remains of the day, the salt of the sea, the burn from the sun, and Yoongi’s touches. Taking a shower is painful because then all that’s left is his memory, and memory is the worst, the most cruel jailor there is.

It’s a state of numbness that becomes his relief. Laying on his mattress with wet hair and Yoongi’s black oversized sweater like a true hostage.

Yoongi gave him everything he could but he wasn’t satisfied and now he finds himself as hollow as all the liquor bottles he and Yoongi have drained on that very floor.

Taehyung cries,

cries

floods.

He allows himself to grow in size, pouring fat, gigantic and heavy tears just like Alice, creating a puddle, a pool, a sea. And then he shrinks to his tiniest form and drowns in the seaquake of himself.

Back at the dome, floating to the roof, swallowing the saltiness of his own tears and crying more when thinking about the salty kiss he just washed away.

He cries until there’s no more space to breathe and then he faints, falling into slumber.

Taehyung can only be dreaming, hours later, being woken up by the heartbeat against his back, the arms wrapped around his waist and the warm scent of tobacco and cinnamon over his ear and jaw.

He opens his eyes and it’s dark like a starless night, even with all the constellations on his ceiling.

His hand finds Yoongi’s in front of his belly and the cold familiarity of the bony fingers interlocked with his just pushes him over the edge

And he sobs.

“Shhh” Yoongi whispers at his ear and presses a soft, sweet kiss on his temple “I’m here”

The words, the voice, the presence, it all feels relieving, agonizingly good, like a blanket on the coldest winter.

“I’m s-sorry” he sobs in the dark, unaware of the time, like he’s drifting into the ocean and all sides are blue.

“No, no baby” Yoongi whispers, peppering kisses behind his ear, sending shivers all over the place “I left you I shouldn’t have”

“I was selfish again” Taehyung bites his lip, trying to muffle a loud sob “I was immature and demanding and…”

Yoongi tightens his grip so much Taehyung can barely breathe.

“No, no you weren’t. It’s okay, we’re together so sometimes you’ll demand things and sometimes I will” Yoongi sounds so pained “And sometimes it’ll be too much and the other won’t be able to offer that and it was too much today but I shouldn’t have left”

Taehyung cries harder, desperate for a second.

“I thought it was over” his grip on Yoongi’s hand so strong it aches “I thought I had ruined everything”

Yoongi presses more kisses before squeezing Taehyung’s sides so he can turn around and face him.

The pale glow of the moon through the window reveals Yoongi’s swollen eyes and red nose and he’s been crying as much as Taehyung and it pains him because he has made Yoongi cry.

The elder’s arms wrap around him again to pull him so close their chests collide like a supernova, heartbeats loud like an explosion and legs entangling.

“You didn’t ruin anything” Yoongi promises, looking into Taehyung’s eyes.

The truth burns behind his pupils and it feels like the verge is widening so the black hole is purged, turning inside out.

Taehyung can see everything.

“When you said that… It hurt me because I thought I was doing it again, being less than you want, and need and deserve. I thought I was hurting you again and I thought…” the words come out of Yoongi’s lips in whispers, but all so pained and hurt and choked almost, that it makes Taehyung wince “I thought even when I was giving you my all I wasn’t being enough”

Taehyung sobs, pulling Yoongi closer to his chest this time.

Yoongi curls there like a ball and his legs cling to Taehyung in a desperate attempt to merge.

“You’re more than enough” Taehyung sobs on his ear “I’m so sorry, so sorry I made you feel like you aren’t because you are, Yoongi” he knows Taehyung is serious when he lets go of the honorifics “You’re more than I could ever want. Believe me, I have literally dreamed about you for most of my life and you’re so, so endlessly better than any of the dreams in my fertile imagination”

Yoongi ruffs out a wet laugh on Taehyung’s chest and it’s a sparkle brighter than the stars in the middle of consuming and freezing darkness.

“I was just blind by want” Taehyung confesses after a while “You don’t hurt me hyung, you’re healing”

Yoongi raises his head, eyes wet on Taehyung’s. Their breaths are so close, scents mixing together in between their lips, parted just enough so they can look into their eyes.

Taehyung closes his eyes at the swift, lovely touch of Yoongi’s thumb on his lower lip, curling there and shaping every wrinkle in Taehyung’s mouth.

“I can wait” Taehyung whispers “I promise”

Yoongi hums, eyes closing like he’s about to fall asleep.

Taehyung curls at his chest, throws a leg over his and lets the other in between Yoongi’s thighs, circles Yoongi’s waist with an arm and holds their hands between them with other. Yoongi’s fingers sink into Taehyung’s wavy locks and thread through them tenderly.

When Taehyung is almost asleep, he can hear Yoongi’s chuckles filling the room, replacing the tears he cried hours ago, warming every corner around them.

“What?” he mutters softly, with his sleepy voice.

“We just survived our first fight as a couple” Yoongi shrugs, amused.

It does something to Taehyung’s chest. It spreads like lightning, from his belly button out like he’s a chandelier, the glow of the sentence sinking in like reality.

As a couple.

A couple.

Couple.

Like the two of them together, sharing life, sharing love.

“As a couple” he repeats dumbly, sounding soft while inside the wind, the butterflies, the atoms, the organs, the blood, the flesh, the soul, they all chant together like a choir and Tibetan bells.

“Yeah” Yoongi’s hot, burning with sensuality mutter is there again “Isn’t that what we are?”

He looks into Taehyung’s eyes and his words sound casual but the floating insides of his pupils hold a mix of hope, expectation and nervousness, all hovering, suspended on air like stars.

“I guess it is” Taehyung smiles “I guess you’re my boyfriend”

It’s dark, but Taehyung manages to make out favorite funny face number one.

“You’re so cheesy” he whines, and Taehyung absolutely bursts into giggles.

It’s dark, but Taehyung manages to make out his favorite gummy smile at full depth.

“Go to sleep” Yoongi groans, and after a while he adds “boyfriend”

Taehyung giggles louder, room overflowing with happiness and laughter.

Yoongi pulls him closer, peppering kisses on his cheek and whispering loving words and then everything is okay.

***

“Hi” Taehyung has one eye closed, puffy cheeks and his hair is a brown nest.

“Hi, boyfriend” Yoongi smiles lazily and closing his eyes and pinching Taehyung’s face, from where he rests on his shoulder.

Taehyung feels his smile grow on his face so violently he feels his lips might rip and widen so much it’ll swallow him from outside in.

Because Yoongi is his boyfriend.

Yoongi, the man he has loved for so long.

Yoongi, the one he loved before knowing how, and when, and why.

Before he knew who.

The man he has loved like sonnets.

Yoongi didn’t give up on him, didn’t bail, didn’t give up.

He came back and held Taehyung and promised they would try together, talked to him and held his hand. Taehyung can’t be happier because they’re actually building something, learning about each other, being honest.

Being in his room, under his painted stars and into Yoongi’s arms feels like being in a parenthesis, isolated from all meaning surrounding them.

“Boyfriend” he smiles, index finger tracing Yoongi’s face, his nose, his lips.

Taehyung looks at Yoongi like he is not real, like he’s still taking in the sight in front of his eyes. They’re so close their breaths mingle, like their own atmosphere is being created around their little world.

Their little parenthesis.

“Yeah” Yoongi smiles, his voice cutting through Taehyung’s skin and settling right in his heart.

They smile quietly to each other, tip of their noses so close they can almost feel the other, eyes meeting just to look.

There’s a chill that slides down Taehyung’s spine like a snake, wrapping tightly around his abdomen and keeping him from breathing.

Because Yoongi is really there.

At some point during the night Taehyung wondered if he was real.

“I thought I had dreamed about you coming back” he confesses, pointer finger tracing circles on Yoongi’s chin and eyes on the same spot.

Yoongi hums, pulling Taehyung closer.

“I got home, took a shower and… cried” Yoongi blushes and takes a while to continue “I didn’t want to lose you… I couldn’t lose you. I thought I had hurt you too much and that’s why I left but then I thought… I thought I couldn’t just let you go without trying to fix it” he bites his lower lip “I was going to wait until the morning but I couldn’t”

Taehyung smiles faintly at him, looking up to look into his eyes.

“I’m sorry for the things I said yesterday” he says “I didn’t mean to push you. If you’re not ready, I can wait. I trust you”.

And Taehyung does.

“And thank you for coming in the middle of the night” he smiles again.

“You don’t have to say sorry. I guess we both freaked out for the same reason yesterday” it seems like Yoongi is thinking about it now “Just from different perspectives”

Taehyung nods, knowing that is true. He felt himself getting desperate at the smallest glint of rejection, when actually it wasn’t a rejection, they had talked about waiting. Yoongi felt desperate thinking Taehyung was still hurt.

“I just want you to know that I’m not hurt from the past still, and that you shouldn’t think this. It’s just… It’s something I have experienced so it’s an emotional baggage I have, it’ll come up eventually, not because I resent you but because it’s a part of my story” Taehyung explains, because he doesn’t want Yoongi to feel guilty or to think Taehyung blames him for everything “I have understood your side and I don’t blame you at all, but those are things I felt, back then, and they are part of me, and I’m still trying to grow past them, and I will, I promise, I just…”

“Hey” Yoongi frowns “It’s okay. I promise it is”

Taehyung slides his arms from Yoongi’s chest to his neck and just presses himself there. He wants to press a kiss too, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want to pressure Yoongi more.

There are words dancing on the tip of Taehyung’s tongue.

There are words that are the only ones to describe the immensitude of the feeling that seems to crush him like the sky on Atlas’ shoulders, the feeling that seems to consume Taehyung, to scrape all of his flesh and blood and bones and fill his skin, crawling into his veins and ripping him apart like a possession.

The feeling, that just like the Fear he felt the day before, grows upon them and solidifies and becomes someone with their own mind and body.

The person walks around the room, heavier than a ghost, facing Taehyung from where his eyes lift from Yoongi’s neck. This person, Love, looks him into his eyes and there’s a silent question mouthed from Love’s lips: “How can you not acknowledge me?”

Because that’s the question echoing like a song in Taehyung’s mind.

How

How can you still swallow it, still bite it, still pretend it isn’t there?

Even if Taehyung shows, even if he touches Yoongi’s hands and pecks his cheeks and takes care of him when he’s feeling ill...

He hasn’t said it yet

And until today, he never knew what necessity was

What was like to have you body begging you to say three little words.

I

Love

You.

The Love disappears from Taehyung’s sight but remains present, only in its transparent form.

It disappears because Yoongi pulls Taehyung, mumbling something about having breakfast together.

They do.

They fall back into the same domesticity they were drawn into the day before, with slow cuddles on the kitchen, and eating while watching a documentary about penguins. They end up piled up on the couch, Taehyung leaning  his back against Yoongi’s chest and feeling it.

Feeling as Love sits with them on the couch and looks him in the eye and the same question prevails.

Taehyung wants to give in and say it.

But he doesn’t, because he knows Yoongi is not ready, and for now, Love has to go back to its smaller form, inside Taehyung’s chest and only being able to reach to Yoongi through Taehyung’s fingertips.

It must be really hard for Love, Taehyung thinks, to shrink and try to fit in a smaller place.

He knows it because he’s done it before.

It’s also painful to keep inside something bigger than you.

Taehyung feels his body stretching and his skin caving and Love wants to go out, to leak through his pores, to crawl out of his lips in a scream.

In a shout that resonates across the world like the angels in the bible and the trumpet.

Something that everyone can hear.

That Yoongi can hear.

Taehyung swallows it though, and snuggles into his boyfriend’s chest and hopes it isn’t long before he can say it.

**

The days follow like they should. Holding hands, cuddling, small and shy pecks on the cheeks and sweet words being exchanged and becoming as present in Taehyung’s life as himself. Yoongi is not the kind to really say them all the time. Neither is Taehyung, but he still says them more than Yoongi. At least at first.

At least at first because then suddenly something seems to break inside Yoongi, like a dam that contains waters and after that it just flows.

It flows when Yoongi calls Taehyung ‘love’ way more often than ever, holds his hand even while they’re eating, takes Taehyung to dates. He takes Taehyung to museums and cafés and fishing again. He takes Taehyung to visit his grandmother and he introduces Taehyung as his boyfriend and Love beats against Taehyung’s chest begging to come out.

Yoongi plays Taehyung piano.

He plays ‘I need u’, the piece he composed to Taehyung. He plays the same song Taehyung played that day when he came in, and he plays it for hours and hours as Taehyung paints.

Today is one of these days and Taehyung looks at Yoongi from the floor behind him, the same old sun piercing through the window and stamping Yoongi’s shadow on the wall and Taehyung loves it more than any of Van Gogh’s or Matisse’s paintings.

Taehyung finishes, and falls with his back on the floor and one more time he closes his eyes as Yoongi plays and this…

this /must/ be what paradise is all about.

Only him, the sun, the piano and Yoongi.

Yoongi plays Nuvole Bianche, the same song that makes Taehyung fall apart into himself and cry and sob and feel the Milky Way on his belly button.

With his eyes closed and tears on his eyelashes and his favorite song pouring out of the man he loves, Taehyung can swear he feels the Earth rotating around the sun and around itself.

A smile dances at his lips along with Love’s murmurs and he just feels it, listens to it, listens as the song starts, one more time, simple and delicate and kaleidoscopically dividing into smaller notes that sound a lot like snowflakes.

Taehyung’s chest swells as big as it’s humanly possible in between his unbuttoned shirt, that falls to his sides like a cape. The sun kisses his skin the way he dreams about Yoongi doing and he almost, almost misses as the song ends, because it remains playing perpetually on his brain.

The sun is blocked by something and when Taehyung opens his eyes there’s Yoongi, and a halo of golden light around him, like the truth magically revealing itself, epiphany taking shape, personified.

Yoongi’s chest is pressed against Taehyung’s side, his head resting on his hand, folded elbow on the floor. There’s a breath that remains trapped on Taehyung’s swollen chest and it kind of hurts.

Because Yoongi’s face is so close, and there’s nothing on the verge but also, there’s nothing in.

Everything is there.

It’s Yoongi’s love, sliding out of his body like it spent too long without seeing the sun.

There’s a spirit beating against Taehyung’s chest, against his teeth, crying to come out, held hostage for too long.

Taehyung has no more strength to fight it anymore.

So he doesn’t.

Before Taehyung’s Love can finally break free from its captivity, it’s Yoongi and his redemptive voice that says in its usual quiet tone, in a murmur that rumbles through the world like the apocalyptic trumpet

“I love you”

And it’s the Rapture.

Taehyung feels surrendered, captured from the mundaneness of the Earth.

The river that flows inside Taehyung is suddenly immune to gravity and it floats, like a balloon, like a ghost, like a body on the moon. The tears that slide from his eyes are warm and it’s agonizing how slow they reach his ears.

Their eyes meet and Taehyung hopes with all he has, all there is left of him, that Yoongi sees.

Yoongi’s index feels a lot like a paintbrush, tracing circles on the base of Taehyung’s stomach and this

only this

is more than enough.

Taehyung’s lips open in a gasp when he feels the touch, light as a feather sliding up to his belly button, poking the Milky Way and spreading stars throughout all of his body. Yoongi’s eyes never leave Taehyung’s as he skims in between his nipples, nail scratching lightly at his Adam’s apple until it reaches his chin.

Taehyung tilts his head back just a little, but not breaking eye contact.

Yoongi cups his jaw, fingers brushing at the back of his neck and thumb pressing at his lower lip, turning Taehyung’s face so their noses brush.

Taehyung can’t help another gasp, as if Yoongi is robbing his air with every move.

“I love you” Yoongi repeats, lips finally brushing on Taehyung’s, but eyes open, honest on his.

Taehyung nods,

Taehyung swallows,

and then finally

“I love you”

Taehyung doesn’t know if the relief he feels is from his skin and organs going back to their places, not being stretched or squeezed anymore once Love is out, or if it’s from Yoongi’s lips finally on his.

At first there’s an harmony of two moans, low, but loud enough that it echoes.

It’s just lips touching, and then it’s lips sliding, and then it’s surrendance. Taehyung’s hand rest against Yoongi’s face as the elder sucks in his bottom lip into the sweet warmth of his mouth. Taehyung pants when Yoongi allows his weight to fall on top of Taehyung’s body, his thigh in between Taehyung’s, his hand tilting Taehyung’s head just a little so he opens his mouth and Yoongi licks his way in.

Taehyung’s body melts under Yoongi’s hands, Salvador Dali’s clocks-like spreading on the floor under the burning sun. Yoongi kisses tenderly, like Taehyung is the biggest preciosity of the world and at the same time voraciously, like Taehyung is the less drop of water and he’s dehydrating.

Yoongi’s head turn a little lower, sighing in Taehyung’s lips as if he’s feeling relief as well, nose brushing on Taehyung’s nose and cheek and nibbling at his lip, moving to the upper one and biting it, tongue dancing back inside, waltzing along with the younger’s as his hands slides lower through Taehyung’s sides.

Taehyung moans at his touches, his cold fingertips digging into Taehyung’s flesh at the same time their legs entangle and their hips press together in a way that makes stars burst in the blackness of his closed eyelids, his growing bulge aching.

Yoongi’s hand grab Taehyung’s naked thigh, hand on the curve of Taehyung’s ass under his boxer shorts. Taehyung folds his long leg on Yoongi’s side and their collision is just so good his back arches from the floor and his fingers slides into Yoongi’s hair, grabbing and pulling him down.

It feels like supernova.

Being kissed by Yoongi and being touched by Yoongi is an spectral experience and somehow he wonders if that was how the Universe felt being created after the Big Bang. He wonders if that’s the feeling of being born if you had yourself already inside your baby’s body.

Taehyung thinks you are born empty the soul is created with your life, like a painting, every moment is a brushstroke and at the end there’s your masterpiece.

Right now, he feels like his own soul is swelling and filling and projecting.

“Yoongi” he breathes against his lip, sliding his hand on Yoongi’s back and grabbing at the soft skin on his lower back.

Yoongi groans, lips parting just so he can moan on Taehyung's ear, moving his mouth to suck at the earlobe and jaw and again, Taehyung’s back arch and his hands guide Yoongi’s hips to press against his hard on again and more stars burst.

Yoongi moves down, hands back up to help Taehyung get rid of the sleeves of his painting shirt, taking off his own shirt as well. He dives back to press open mouthed kisses on Taehyung’s honey skin, Yoongi’s hot tongue tracing and nibbling at the younger’s nipples, pulling them in between his teeth, drawing melodic moans out of his lips.

Yoongi leaves pretty bruises all over Taehyung’s chest, at his collarbones, at his neck. This must be how Taehyung’s canvases feel when painted by him. Taehyung’s eyes roll when Yoongi reaches his hip with his mouth and bites at it. Taehyung knows a purple mark will bloom there too and he smiles at that.

The sun paints them a pinkish shade, yet the contrast between Taehyung’s golden skin and Yoongi’s silver one make it look like their eclipsing into each other, like the sun and the moon.

Yoongi looks up at Taehyung, fingers grazing on the waistband of his boxers, asking for permission. Taehyung grants it. Yoongi smiles tenderly, affection escaping his eyes and covering Taehyung like a veil when his hard cock hit his abs.

There is a soft brush of lips on his lower ab and then on the base of his cock and then on the joint between his balls and his crotch and one more time Taehyung’s ability to breath is stolen from him.

His fingers find Yoongi’s hair again when the elder licks and presses open mouthed light kisses on the sensitive spot under his testicles.

Yoongi swallows him with devotion, eyes closing and hands massaging Taehyung’s thighs and bobs his head, tasting the tip like it’s the Host in this sunday morning mass. Yoongi’s fingertip massages Taehyung’s perineum as Yoongi licks the tip and the ceiling is wooden in the living room, but Taehyung swears he sees constellations.

A symphony of moans echoes through the apartment as Taehyung reaches his high and he goes back to his condition of being one of Dali’s clocks, a puddle on the floor, melting even more, into nothing, under Yoongi’s loving gaze when he hovers back over him, leaning carefully to press soft pecks on Taehyung’s sweaty forehead.

Yoongi’s hand cups Taehyung’s face, eyes staring at his again and noses going back to their perpetual state of brushing against one another’s and Taehyung smiles, with glassy eyes and heavy pants.

“I love you” Taehyung repeats, pulling Yoongi to press against him, trapping his softening cock in between their bellies and wrapping his legs around him, allowing his finger to trace the shape of Yoongi’s face.

Taehyung’s digit feels Yoongi’s forehead, the spot between his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose until the tip, resting there a little. Taehyung smiles at Yoongi, slipping his finger to rest on Yoongi’s lips. The elder purses his lips into a pout, subtle enough to be a kiss against the pad of Taehyung’s index and it makes Taehyung giggle quietly.

Yoongi smiles at him, quiet and gummy, but a low rustle escapes his body and Taehyung’s eyes curve into little moons and his boxy grin appears and he makes his own noise. Yoongi’s finger raise to his forehead to put away his sweaty bangs behind his ear and leans to press another kiss, this time on his skin.

“I love you too” he breathes in his deep roar against his skin, moving to his temple “I love you so much” he presses an open mouthed kiss on Taehyung’s cheekbone “So much” he keeps on whispering until his lips are against Taehyung’s.

They’re kissing again, peacefully like a piano melody, slide of lips tender and passionate, Taehyung’s hands on his face and smile on his face against Yoongi’s own smile until they can’t kiss anymore. Yoongi peppers kisses on Taehyung’s face and then goes back to his lips once they stop smiling and Taehyung could be like this forever, naked, body and soul, under Yoongi’s body, Yoongi’s gaze, Yoongi’s lips and Yoongi’s love.

Yoongi hums and Taehyung moans, just from the feeling of having him showering him with love.

“There’s condom and lube on the small table next to the sofa” Taehyung murmurs.

Yoongi kisses him one more time, then he presses two more pecks.

“You have lube and condoms in the living room?” he teases, thumb brushing the mole on the tip of his nose, making Taehyung giggle.

“It’s a three-gays apartment Yoonie” the nickname tastes sweet and Yoongi seems to think so too “And one of them is Jimin”

Yoongi laughs louder this time, joyful and almost endless and it makes Taehyung’s body tremble under his, like mountains during an avalanche.

Yoongi kneels, his legs one on each side of Taehyung’s body. He opens the small drawer and pulls out a small and almost empty bottle of lube and a condom and goes back, leaning over Taehyung and supporting himself on his forearms.

“Hi” he whispers at Taehyung with a smirk on his lips.

“Hi” Taehyung mumbles, biting his lower lip.

Yoongi’s hair is a little sweaty too, his dark locks glued to his forehead and his cheeks flushed in a lovely tone of pink, lips swollen. Taehyung feels like the luckiest person that has ever been born, laying undressed next to Yoongi and being loved by him, seeing him in his most vulnerable state, loving, crying, tired, scared, brave, loving, loving, loving.

Loving.

“Are you sure you want to do this here?” Yoongi asks softly, just to make sure.

Taehyung looks around, at his painting supply on the floor, his piano, the memory of Yoongi’s shadow on the wall, the sun covering them, the same sun that has covered them every minute of their story.

“Yeah” he confirms, because there’s no other place he’d like to do this for the first time.

Yoongi nods and leans to kiss him one more time, completely kind and tender and sweet.

He parts their bodies to unbuckle his belt and it’s like watching a poem writing itself in front of his very eyes. Yoongi’s skin is soft, and pretty, and it shines like the moon, under the thin layer of sweat. He has moles on his stomach and his nipples are pinkish and his thighs at thin and his cock is the perfect size once he strokes it a bit while looking at Taehyung.

Taehyung feels so lucky being under this gaze.

Yoongi runs his hands through Taehyung’s thighs, leaning and kissing them from his hip to his knees, then folding them carefully to Taehyung’s chest, in order to have access to his hole. Taehyung closes his eyes as he feels Yoongi’s wet finger pressing inside and small sucks on the back of his thighs.

Taehyung feels his heart beating against his chest as Yoongi searches for him, widens him and pulls him out, curling his fingers in a call that makes him arch his back in completely surrendance, squirming at the way Yoongi claims him.

“Yoongi” he whispers, his voice only a weak cry at the pleasure of having the one he loves touching him in places no one ever did.

Yoongi understands the cry and gets ready, motioning to grab the condom.

“Are you clean?” Taehyung asks between gasps “I… I want you raw”

He wants to feel Yoongi, as vulnerable as he is, as undressed as he is.

Yoongi’s eyes widen in surprise at the question, his chest swelling as heavy as Taehyung’s and drops of precum leaking from him, like he’s overflowing just like Taehyung. He nods, avidly, like he was thinking the same.

“I want to feel you” Taehyung murmurs, and before he can expect, Yoongi is kissing him like there’s nothing else he can do to his life, his hand on Taehyung’s face and his lips saying with their slide and his tongue, everything they cannot say through words.

Everything they paint.

Everything they play.

Everything they feel.

It’s all there, in that kiss.

Taehyung wraps his legs around Yoongi’s waist and the elder slicks his length with lube and lines up, eyes meeting Taehyung’s and remaining on his as he slides in.

Taehyung moans at the sensation of having Yoongi inside, touching him in places no one ever did, brushstrokes like he’s an artist and Taehyung allows himself to be colored.

Yoongi touches places the sun has never and will never reach, rolling his hips and thrusting in so deep it might grow roots, so deep there’s no way back. He finds Taehyung’s secret spot, the one that kept hidden like the promised land, and he takes light to it, takes color to it.

Their bodies twist and contort and agonize together in perfect syntony, Yoongi’s hips moving in the perfect tempo, his pouty swollen lips meeting Taehyung’s to a breathtaking kiss, the kind of kiss where souls switch bodies and then merge together. Their fingers interlock in one hand and Yoongi’s free one wraps around Taehyung’s leaking cock, ripping from him a tortuous moan.

Yoongi keeps moving, thrusting, the wet noise of their skin colliding filling up the room, along with pants and moans in the most human and real melody, their sweaty carnal scent intoxicating Taehyung’s nose, reminding him that this is real, the smell, the sweat, the slide, the flesh against flesh and breath against breath and soul against soul.

There’s a pull on his stomach and he thinks it’s what nothingness must have felt when God whispered Let There Be Light.

Yoongi’s eyes never leave his

not even for a second.

As Light is in his hand and Taehyung’s stomach.

and Yoongi’s eyes never leaves his

not even for a second.

As he paints Taehyung’s insides with his seeds.

Seeds Taehyung knows will become roots and will bloom into beautiful flowers and fill him from inside out.

It’s the most beautiful thing to see, Yoongi’s eyes at the same exact second he bursts, skin glowing silver like the moon under the pink light that fills their living room.

Yoongi falls on top of Taehyung and then falls on the floor, both of them turning to each other and remaining there, sweaty chests against each other, heartbeats so loud that could rumble through barriers of time and space. Taehyung’s stomach is gooey and sticky and so is Yoongi’s hand but none of them care, with their legs entangled and their noses brushing.

Their eyes meet.

Their eyes will always meet, Taehyung thinks.

Yoongi lifts his clean hand, the other has his fingers interlocked with Taehyung’s in the middle of their bodies. His fingers touch Taehyung’s face just like Taehyung often does with his, admiring, loving.

Taehyung smiles faintly, but honest, and Yoongi smiles back.

“I love you” Taehyung will never get tired saying it.

Yoongi smiles wider, scooting closer to press the tenderest of the kisses, opening his mouth to suck sweetly at Taehyung’s lips and then tongue and then peck

peck

peck

peck and smile

peck and boxy smile

peck and gummy smile.

Lips

Tongue

Peck

again

again and again and again

until the pink fades and the blue twilight embraces them and they’re drifting.

“I love you”

It’s the last thing Taehyung hears.

**

Jimin, Jungkook and Hoseok are having a drunk dance-off in the middle of Jin’s living room.

The sound of seven overwhelmingly loud laughters escapes the walls and the windows and the doors and travel the world before dissipating.

Jin and Namjoon have their pinkies intertwined and judge loudly every move the three dancing boys do wrong, Namjoon a little nervous about one of them falling and hurting and Jin finding it completely amusing and encouraging them with absurd dance moves that are impossible of being executed.

Yoongi’s laughter is muffled against Taehyung’s ear. His back is pressed against Yoongi’s chest and the elder’s arms are around his body, holding him close and having their fingers interlocked.

Taehyung laughs too.

Getting used to being loved by Yoongi is a beautiful process. It’s hurtful when they fight but it’s the kind of hurt that it’s never too deep, because it comes with certainty.

Taehyung never thought he could feel so safe in life.

He never thought he’d feel this safe with Yoongi.

Because sharing life with him, even the worst moments, comes with this lingering sensation that equals the one he feels now with Yoongi’s arms around him and his heartbeat against his back and his laughter being confessed into his ear.

It’s everlasting, through it all.

Yoongi presses small kisses on Taehyung’s neck as they watch their friends’ silliness like it’s a movie and Taehyung will never, ever get tired of those.

He snuggles closer and Yoongi purrs like a little kitten because yeah, in the months they’re dating Taehyung finds that Yoongi does purr a lot.

And Yoongi is clingy, even though he pretends he isn’t.

And he is everything Taehyung could never dream.

He is better.

Taehyung was seven when he learned he loved Yoongi, and through all of his versions, he has loved Yoongi.

He has imagined loving Yoongi.

He has imagined being loved by Yoongi.

He just had never thought it would be like this, with realness of flaws and particularities and details that not even the most fertile mind can conceive.

He just had never imagined it would be real.

The end.