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White sand stretches out in endless multitude over an extensive beach. There is silence and the lone voice of the sea, it’s soothing sound that recounts slumber with fond nostalgia and eats sand with it’s foam, licking a shoreline that bore no footmark of human or animal or anything other than the waves.
A lone hut sits forgotten in the middle of nowhere. Taehyung calls it home.
Taehyung exists; it is a fact. He is a breathing, walking proof of existence of species like him that once roamed this side of a planet that anchors solitary and alone here. He exists in the way his skin can feel the sun against his golden back, the way he breathes in the salty summer sea, tastes the crab meat and coconut on his limp tongue and shivers in the cool waters when time slips in the form of day and night and winter kisses Taehyung’s world.
But Taehyung has learnt more than just existence in his days (was it years? Decades? Time ceases to mark anything of significance a long, long daydream ago).
Taehyung also lives.
Taehyung’s laughter rings amidst the roaring storm that sweeps him off his feet when the winds are harsh, runs along the shore in playful glee when his tiny boat gets back to shore with four fish on the stern to show for his efforts, the joy that bubbles within him when bottle caps and pretty seashells wash up on shore which he hangs about his hut with growing pride, sings with his echoing voice when day turned to night and only the wind could hear him cry alone.
Language and music were luxuries Taehyung doesn’t remember being bestowed on him, but he is grateful anyway.
Sometimes, the loneliness clenches at his heart so suddenly, Taehyung finds himself on the floor, grasping for someone who will never come. Every once in a while, he sees a boat in the far off horizon and he doesn’t know what it means except that hope was the strongest emotion he knew he could feel.
Sometimes, Taehyung stands on the shore and watches the boats go by.
And then one day, a boy with green hair and eyes that look like the sea greets him with a smile he is sure he will never find, even if he did end up seeing others like him every moment for the rest of his days.
*
It is the the boy who speaks first.
“Do you live here?”
Taehyung doesn’t move from the door of his hut, doesn’t let the excitement register on his face. He doesn’t do anything at all. He just stares at the pale boy and his overgrown mint green hair and his boat anchored by the shore.
“Is there anyone else on this island?”
Taehyung lets the wind ruffle his hair in the darkening twilight. It’s impossible; impossible for someone with hands and legs and a voice that formed coherent words to exist, to find him, to let him know that Taehyung wasn’t a lone freak of nature.
It almost brings Taehyung to his knees.
“Do you -” The boy hesitates. “Do you understand what I’m saying at all?”
Taehyung stares at the boy and nods once, slowly. Green hair boy smiles. It twists something in Taehyung’s heart he has never felt before. It is warm and as radiant as the sun.
The boy gestures to the hut.
“Can I come in?”
Taehyung says nothing, but he pushes open the hut door that streams light from a glowing fire and he sees it reflect in the boy’s eyes and it’s the most beautiful thing Taehyung has ever seen.
“My name is Min Yoongi,” the boy whispers later in between sips of coconut water Taehyung pushes wordlessly towards him. Taehyung lets the words sink in, treasures the syllables of the only name he has ever known.
*
“Min Yoongi,” Taehyung says, relishing the feeling of the words in his mouth.
Yoongi tears his eyes away from the sea and grins at Taehyung. Taehyung grins back; he has only been able to start speaking to Yoongi two weeks ago (he knows, because for the first time in his life, Taehyung counts the days since Min Yoongi entered his home; the scratches on the table rake up to fifty six markings now), long after Yoongi has learnt every nook and cranny of Taehyung’s hut, long after how Taehyung has wordlessly shaken Yoongi awake every morning and taken the groggy, pale boy on fishing trips, long after Taehyung has gotten used to putting out two plates on the table instead of one.
“Kim Taehyung.” Taehyung closes his eyes, reaches his fingers out to Yoongi’s lips. They are soft and warm beneath his fingers.
“Again. Say my name again.” Yoongi hums and looks back to the sea.
“Kim Taehyung,” he says slowly, enunciating every letter, letting it roll off his tongue.
“Min Yoongi, tell me a story.” Yoongi looks at Taehyung then, eyes questioning, but Taehyung just seats himself on the warm sand in front of Yoongi and props his chin between his palms. Yoongi doesn’t speak for so long, Taehyung feels like an embarrassed child for having asked at all.
“Once upon a time,” Yoongi says suddenly, and Taehyung closes his eyes again. Yoongi’s voice washes over him like the waves he has always played on.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy called Yoongi who ran away from home.”
“Why?” Silence.
“Because he didn’t know what else to do.” A longer silence.
“What was he running from?” To this, Yoongi seems to know the answer.
“He was running away from himself.”
The waves crash onto the shore to signify the tides coming in; Taehyung knows he should drag his and Yoongi’s boats further up the shore so that they wouldn’t get washed away, but he’s willing to wait.
They have all the time in the world.
“And then he found this boy who changed his whole world. His name was Kim Taehyung.”
Taehyung smiles, eyes fluttering open to a quiet sigh escaping Yoongi’s lips.
“What happened next?” Time passes between them so slowly, Taehyung can taste it.
“They stayed in Kim Taehyung’s hut and lived happily ever after.” Taehyung hums, closing his eyes again. The tide is getting higher.
“I like this story.”
*
The day Taehyung crosses off a hundred on his table, he jerks Yoongi out of bed to show him.
Yoongi laughs and strokes Taehyung’s hair, entwining his small hands in Taehyung’s rough ones. A shot of adrenaline pumps through every inch of Taehyung’s body and he stares at their hands like a miracle and Yoongi is laughing again and it’s a beautiful sound; soft and high pitched and carefree, the kind that makes Taehyung feel something in his chest, warm and glorious all at once.
Taehyung likes how Yoongi's laugh makes him feel.
That night, Yoongi makes a flute out of coconut tree bark. He goes at it with his knife for hours and Taehyung watches Yoongi at it, face scrunched in concentration, eyes unwavering from the edge of his blade.
Yoongi plays music that breaks Taehyung’s heart.
The notes fall like droplets into the still night, drowning out the rumble of the ocean, engulfing Taehyung in their untouched perfection. Yoongi plays to the sea and Taehyung watches from the window for so long, his feet fall asleep.
Eventually, Taehyung opens his mouth and sings. Yoongi continues to play, changing the melody to let Taehyung’s voice melt in. They stay like that, like two sides of a coin, one non existent without the other, till time falls into a void where there is only warm beating hearts, fading mint green hair and music that reminds Taehyung of long days under the sun.
*
“How old are you?” Yoongi asks in the middle of gutting the third fish that day. The sun is hot against Taehyung’s skin and sweat clusters on his brow.
“I don’t know.” Yoongi doesn’t seem surprised.
“How old do I seem?” Taehyung asks eventually, after he has climbed down with two coconuts and cracked them open, giving one to Yoongi and draining one without stopping.
“Eighteen? Maybe nineteen,” Yoongi says without looking up. Taehyung repeats it to himself.
I am Kim Taehyung. I am nineteen years old.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty one.” Taehyung’s jaw drops open.
“You’re older than me?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says, eyes glinting. Taehyung wishes Yoongi had told him he looked twenty two. He pouts.
“But I’m taller than you,” he says, sticking his tongue out.
Yoongi rolls his eyes. The fish is almost done and Taehyung puts out two plates on the table that has one hundred and sixty eight scratches on it already.
*
“And then he found this boy who changed his whole world. His name was Kim Taehyung.”
Taehyung smiles. He will never get tired of this story, even if he hears it two hundred times more.
“What happened next?” Yoongi hums a little, placing his small hand on Taehyung’s cheek.
“Then Yoongi asked Taehyung if it was okay for him to kiss him.” Taehyung breathes in sharply, eyes flickering to Yoongi’s lips.
“And then?” He asks softly, face hovering inches from Yoongi’s own.
“Then Yoongi took a leap of faith and kissed Taehyung anyway.”
And then there are lips against Taehyung’s, rough with hot breath, all tongue and scarping teeth, the kind that makes Taehyung moan and close his eyes and let the butterflies in his stomach multiply exponentially. Yoongi’s lips are thick and soft and addictive. Before he knows it, his hands have found Yoongi’s hair and he is pulling at his shirt to get him closer. Kissing Yoongi feels like heaven and hell and Taehyung cannot get enough of it.
Centuries pass, maybe even millennia, when Yoongi pulls away. He is panting slightly, lips swollen.
Taehyung smirks at him.
“I really like this story.”
*
Yoongi never talks about his past.
When Taehyung asks, Yoongi brushes it off with dismissive words and hurried kisses that leave a sad confusion in Taehyung’s heart. Taehyung can’t understand it at all; there isn't a thing Yoongi doesn’t know about him, so why was Yoongi different?
Eventually, Taehyung stops asking because it is easier to let it go.
Some nights, Taehyung wakes up to find Yoongi at the window, staring out at the sea. Under the moonlight, Yoongi looks out at his boat and the sea like he’s trying to remember a forgotten past that he left behind two hundred and eight days ago. A past that eludes him between the crashing of the shore.
Then, Yoongi pulls out his flute and plays a tune that is so sad, Taehyung has to hold back his sobs so that Yoongi doesn’t hear.
*
When the two hundred and thirty fifth day dawns, Taehyung wakes up to find an empty bed.
His heart clenches in panic as he looks over to the window that bears no shadow of Yoongi’s frame. By the time Taehyung has searched his tiny hut for the boy he loves, he has broken out into a cold sweat.
“Min Yoongi?” Taehyung whispers into the night, cracking the door of his hut open.
Only the waves respond.
The beach is heartbreakingly empty.
“Min Yoongi!” Taehyung yells into the night.
Far away, Taehyung thinks he sees a tiny boat in the horizon bobbing up and down with the breakers. He watches it in despair, knees buckling into the sand as sobs wrack through his body and his feet carry him to the water that splashes around his ankles icily. He kicks and screams at the waves that carry Min Yoongi away, weeping out his desperation in oceans that he lives between.
Eventually, he just sits cross legged on the beach and lets the chilly winds whip around him unblinkingly, staring at the point the boat disappeared in the skyline. The sun rises in the distance and thaws out the frozen tears on Taehyung’s cheeks. Maybe Yoongi has gone to search for the past he has been looking out of the window for and he’ll come back in a while, two fish in hand and a grin on his pale face.
The tides come in and then recede, the wind changes direction, the sun rises, moves and sets like it always has. Sand gets in Taehyung's hair, his eyes, his clothes. He digs and re-digs the same spot on the fine sand with his fingers absentmindedly, watching the sea. He doesn't move, doesn't feel anything at all.
Taehyung sits like that forever.
*
Taehyung marks the days Min Yoongi has been gone on one wall of his hut.
The first few he scratches in a daze, mind and body unwilling to accept that Yoongi is really gone. He still fishes for two people, walks around the white beach talking as if Yoongi is listening, puts out two plates, sleeps only on one side of the bed.
Maybe if he pretends Yoongi is here, one morning he’ll open his eyes to find Yoongi gutting fish like he always had, eyes focussed and gaze unwavering. He searches for Yoongi like a lost child, too afraid to let go. Yoongi, who clutters Taehyung's memory, blots his horizon, colors his vision red.
But it doesn’t change the fact that fish goes uneaten, the second plate untouched, the other side of the bed cold and no one but the coconut trees that echo Taehyung’s aimless chatter.
All Taehyung wants is to hear Yoongi tell him a story.
*
By the time Taehyung marks one hundred and six on the hut wall, he needs a new surface to write on. He takes the second plate and starts carving on that.
He wasn’t going to be needing it anyway.
Sometimes, Taehyung wonders if he made the boy with the green hair up, thinks of ways in which Yoongi could have been a figment of his imagination. Yoongi’s voice and laughter is fading in his memory already as much as Taehyung fights to hold on. He closes his eyes and tries to conjure up the boy whose name had become a part of his heart.
The old flute lying on the counter is the only proof Min Yoongi existed at all.
That and the crushing pain that slams at Taehyung’s heart periodically to let him know what he felt was real.
At those times, Taehyung brings out the flute and tries to copy what Yoongi used to play. He runs his fingers over the holes Yoongi carved, trying to figure out what combination would give him the song his heart ached desperately for. He gives up in frustration after a while and stares at his hands that cannot produce what Min Yoongi could, cannot produce Min Yoongi.
A nd then he clutches his heart and cries.
*
On the one hundred and eighty seventh day, Taehyung hears the distinct noise of splintering wood outside the hut.
He looks out to find a boat that has crashed on shore sloppily, half wrecked from one side, battered and weather beaten. But despite its almost unrecognizable state, Taehyung could place that boat anywhere.
The bright green hair makes an appearance over the stern and Taehyung hitches his breath.
“Kim Taehyung,” Yoongi’s voice carries over to Taehyung’s ears.
Taehyung doesn’t budge. Yoongi steps out of the wreck and takes several steps towards the hut. It is almost like a dream, the kind Taehyung had hoped for again and again every single day since Yoongi left. But Taehyung will not forget the nights he spent walking up and down the beach calling for Yoongi along a shore that forgot the mark of time, till he crumbled on the sand and cursed at the wind. One look from Taehyung stops Yoongi in his tracks.
Yoongi opens his mouth and closes it again. No one moves at all.
“I missed you.”
“You left me,” Taehyung snarls. “You don’t get to miss me, Min Yoongi.”
He slams the door of the hut close with a heart that hammers in his chest, slides down to the floor and sobs silently.
*
By the time the sun rises again, Taehyung peeks out of the window to see if Yoongi is gone.
But Min Yoongi hasn’t moved. He sits outside Taehyung’s hut, lips blue from the cold night, expression deadpan.
Taehyung sighs and gets breakfast ready.
*
On the second night, Taehyung wonders about the last time Yoongi has eaten.
Yoongi is still outside, but he has moved to make a new flute out of bark and is now testing its weight between his fingers.
Taehyung watches with bated breath as Yoongi puts the flute to his lips.
It is exactly how Taehyung remembers it; the melody piercing his heart with such intensity, his whole world pales in comparison to what his ears hear. The music shreds the last of the anger in his heart as Taehyung listens on the window sill.
By the time Yoongi is done, Taehyung’s hands are at the door and his feet hitting the sand, walking up the beach to a freezing Yoongi.
Yoongi stares at Taehyung like he cannot believe he even came, like Taehyung was the last sunset he would ever lay his eyes upon. Taehyung places his hands on either side of Yoongi’s face and kisses him slowly, a dance of Yoongi’s cold lips and Taehyung’s warm ones, both their faces wet with tears, both their hearts heavy with a sorrow and relief they cannot fathom.
Many sunrises ago for as long as he could remember, Taehyung's whole world had been this beach, the sun and the waves. It was all Taehyung knew and all he would ever need.
And now, Taehyung's world was this beach, the sun, the waves and Min Yoongi. And Taehyung would learn to be okay with that.
When Taehyung pulls apart, he doesn’t break the moment with demands for explanation.
Instead, he gives Yoongi a small smile and runs his hand through the short boy’s hair. The wind whips his long fringe over Taehyung's eyes. Time stands still.
“Min Yoongi, tell me a story.”
Yoongi says nothing for a long moment. The waves crash into the shore behind them and Taehyung watches Yoongi’s silent tears slip down his face.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy called Yoongi who ran away from home.”
And so it begins again.