Archive of Our Own

I am so violently sad.

I am so violently sad.

I am so violently sad.

Jungkook thinks he’s ripping the words right out of T.S. Eliot’s poems, splicing the lines. Shoving pieces together, fragment upon fragment until it’s a mess, but worth something, just to him. Nonsensical in every way, but visceral.

I am so violently sad, he writes again, taking up the page with the identical column of characters.

I am so violently sad.

1

“Jungkookie,” his mother used to scold, “Stop writing, would you?”

Though the words became colder over time, Jungkook can still remember the way she initially said it. At the dinner table, her head in her hands, voice brittle with tears, desperation and a bone-deep frustration. “Jungkook.”

Jungkook, as he gets older, wished he’d replied, back then. He couldn’t detach himself from the notebook. He used to make lists of the ingredients in their food. Write steps of how dinner was prepared. Often, he recorded everything that was said, word for word. He wishes, back then, that he could have said something. Something like I’m sorry, or I’m trying.

He hadn’t, though.

Some days Jungkook likes to blame how he feels on that, instead. Teenage years spent in the dark, with a notebook or at school, trying to disappear under the gaze of his peers.

“Jungkookie,” he says to himself, as his hand writes down the poem he is meant to be analysing exactly, line for line, in unreadable scrawl down the page, “Stop writing.”

He doesn’t stop. He knew he wouldn’t.

Jungkook keeps writing and radio static crackles in his ears, vibrates under his skin, wearing away at his bones and he feels, so deeply, exhausted.

In his final year of high school, his parents spent a lot of money buying him a computer. It’s thanks to that, Jungkook reasons, that he even made it through school and clawed his way into a Seoul university. Typing is fundamentally different to writing by hand, and he can’t tell why, but he doesn’t have the same desperation to type. He stops carrying pens with him to lectures. Stops bring notebooks. Removes all possible temptation he can, just to hold off until he’s done for the day.

“That’s it for today,” Professor Kim announces, clapping his hands together but he misses, kind of, and Jungkook watches the way one hand skitters over the other, hitting too high on his palm. “Next lesson covers pages 102 to 140. Please read in advance.”

When Jungkook was younger, he used to press his nail into the paper in a last-ditch effort to claw the words into the page, out of his head. It used to be terrible. At home his head had always been so loud, always full of something like words, throwing them out at him. Jungkook, who used to write lines to memorise wrote them out of desperation instead. He even copied the novel he was being assessed on into a notebook, word for word.

Now, it’s all white noise.

“Jungkook!”

His head snaps up, and Professor Kim is waving at him from his desk, still putting away his notes. Professor Kim is nice. Jungkook knows this. In fact, he’s probably too nice. Barely out of his own studies, he lets Jungkook get away with most things. When he submitted his screenplay assignment, several hours overdue to the teacher’s private email, he still gave Jungkook full marks, purely because, “if it were on time, I’d give it 30/20.”

But even that can’t push away the anxiety Jungkook feels. It always starts in the same place; at the top of his ribs, just below his throat. Just enough to choke him. He hurries down the steps as quickly as he dares.

“Professor.”

“Relax, Jungkook, you’re not in trouble.” Professor Kim smiles, dimples appearing at his cheeks. “I know how you are.”

“Sorry,” Jungkook mutters, and it always amazes him, really, how quickly everything inside him can turn inside out. What was once nervous energy suddenly becomes a blanket of shame.

“Don’t worry about it,” Professor Kim says airily, more like a hyung than a teacher. “I just wanted to ask you if you’d be willing to work with a third-year of mine.”

Jungkook doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing. Kim smiles, tight-lipped and bright-eyed, far younger than he really looks. It’s a little feline, Jungkook thinks sometimes, kind of cute. Kind of reassuring.

“I just thought, since you’re so talented with your work, another student would be a good experience.” Namjoon slings the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll be frank, none of the other students are quite at your level yet. Not even Kim Taehyung—that’s his name. His style is very, very different to yours, but he has great range. That is, admittedly, something that you don’t have just yet.”

Jungkook tries not to think about how often he follows the same formula: unassuming male character discovers the dark parts of self. In the screenplay, he’d deliberately used time travel just for some variety. Somehow, Kim had liked that.

“I know,” Jungkook says quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck. Professor Kim chuckles. “Sorry.”

“Hey, if you do something well, keep doing it.” Professor Kim fumbles putting away the microphone for the next class. “I just think it’d be a shame to let someone as talented as you stay in their niche, you know? You’ve got so much untapped potential and I think he’d really help that.”

It sounds terrifying, but Jungkook is no stranger to third-years. He hates to break it to Professor Kim, but this Kim Taehyung will probably show up once and then give up. It’s no fault of his own, third-years just have too much on their plate. That, and Jungkook just isn’t interesting enough to keep them around. 

“I’d be honoured,” Jungkook says, and he means, I hope it’s him that calls it off.

His lecturer grins, ear to ear, and Jungkook feels the shame crawl up his gut, hook its fingers around his ribs, even before they’ve started.

“You all right, kid?” Yoongi propels himself over on his desk chair. Jungkook expect this from him, by now. Yoongi practically lives in the music labs, has his own studio on the floor below, and Jungkook has only ever seen him stand on his own two legs a handful of times. It’s kind of his charm. “Seem kinda . . . flat.”

“Sorry, sunbae,” Jungkook says, staring at the pinpricks of syncopation on his screen. They look kind of like bugs. Maybe glitches. Visually wrong. “Tired.”

Yoongi grunts. Yoongi, if nothing else, understands being tired. He’s the kind of guy to live with smudges under his eyes. On the first-year music Facebook group, the current meme is finding Yoongi’s old photos and studying the evolution of the Yoongi Bags™. Yoongi knows about this. Doesn't care.

“Give us a listen,” Yoongi says, nudging Jungkook out of the way. Jungkook relents immediately, resigned. Though he’s only a tutor, Yoongi is notoriously involved with the process. Jungkook is just lucky Yoongi seems to like him.

Yoongi listens the whole way through, blunt fingernails tapping the desk in time to the beat, and if he has any opinions about the change from 4-4 time to 6-8 time, he says nothing. When Jungkook first started working on the piece, he liked it. Now he can’t stand it. It kind of feels like he’s forcing it, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Can’t remember, exactly, what an energetic sound is.

“It’s all right,” Yoongi says. “You’ve got more in you. I think it’s too dull, y’know? Add something sharper. Not enough treble.”

“Thanks, sunbae,” Jungkook says, and hears Yoongi grunt something along the lines of call me hyung one of these days. The day is turning into afternoon, and if Jungkook doesn’t stand up to pull the blind down on the window, the sun will catch him right in the eye. He thinks of Professor Kim. Thinks of Kim Taehyung.

“Do you know anyone called ‘Kim Taehyung’, sunbae?” Jungkook asks before Yoongi has moved away. “Sorry. That was—”

“Yeah, I know Taehyungie.” Yoongi props a pale elbow on the table, eyeing Jungkook curiously. “Why’d you ask?”

“Professor Kim—my Creative Writing lecturer, I mean—”

“Yeah, I know Namjoon-ah, too,” Yoongi supplies.

“Well, he wants me to work with him. And I—well, I don’t know many people, so I thought—”

“He’s a good kid.” Yoongi’s lips twist into a rare smile, one that he appears to only have for these occasions. The lazy lines of Yoongi’s face sometimes become warm. Jungkook sometimes wonders what kind of person he must be, outside school. “He’ll take care of you. Don’t worry, yeah?”

Jungkook swallows, looking back to his music. Yoongi gives him a slight squeeze on the shoulder, the maximum level of reassurance from Min Yoongi, and moves away to another student, somewhere else in the room.

Jungkook thinks of lost voices, fragments of a proper message in the dark. Looking for something, but there’s not enough light to just reach out. 

Kim Taehyung, he writes later, into his notebook. The sky is the colour of a bruise, old blood under skin. Kim Taehyung. Kim Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.

Journey 1

Jungkook, even now, isn’t sure what he expected Kim Taehyung to be.

In a way he’s everything Jungkook expected. In a way he’s nothing like it at all.

He arrives in a flurry of energy. Feathers ruffled, a brilliant bedhead, every part of him mismatched and thrown on in a hurry. Jungkook can almost read the thoughts inside his head, going a thousand kilometres an hour and wonders, vaguely, if Taehyung belongs somewhere other than on the ground, confined to where only his two feet can take him.

His 8AM tutorial with Bogum has just finished. Jungkook takes diligent notes, and Jungkook doesn’t let himself think about tomorrow. Or the day after.

Taehyung, in a moment of poetry in motion, throws open the door just as Bogum as dismisses them. Maybe it’s an alignment of celestial bodies, maybe it’s something else—but the door does not slam against the wall, nor does Taehyung’s rapid panting fill up the room. His hair is golden-brown and a bird’s nest on his head, his face is puffy from sleep, his jumper hanging off his shoulder and he is still wearing his house slippers. He doesn’t even have any books.

“I’m late!” he announces, voice deep, and it’s so jarring yet so fitting. “I’m so sorry!”

Jungkook stares at him, at the guy whose name he doesn’t yet know, and he is, in the simplest words, like everything Jungkook wishes. His hands don’t shake and his voice doesn’t waver. Confidence bleeds through his skin like a glow, but it’s soft.

“Taehyung,” Bogum starts, “aren’t all your lectures in the afternoon?”

“No, no. I need—I have someone I was meant to sit with,” Taehyung says, clutching at his side. “But I slept in. Is, uh, Jeon Jungkook here?”

Taehyung looks at him, and it’s a peculiar thing, really. His face is open, unbearably handsome, eyes wide and searching his face. Maybe he’s telling himself, as Jungkook is, that, so this is the guy I was meant to be waiting for.

Maybe they weren’t meant to be anything. Jungkook feels like they might just be, just a little. Like a dirty secret. We were meant to be.

Jungkook doesn’t hear, can’t hear what happens around him, because with anyone else he wouldn’t be able to meet their eyes but he can’t move his from Taehyung’s face. His sunbae stumbles over, still breathing hard, everything about him just a little bit off centre, the world spinning just a little too fast for him. Jungkook knows the feeling.

“Hey, nice to meet you,” Taehyung says, and he reaches out to take Jungkook’s hand with no prompting. “I’m Kim Taehyung, a third year, call me hyung—have you eaten? I haven’t eaten. Let’s go. Hyung will pay.”

Maybe Taehyung’s word spins too fast, his orbit too strong, and Jungkook feels weightless for one long second, staring as the muscles of Taehyung’s face pull his grin wider, and it’s so bright that Jungkook squints. Jungkook thinks of how he doesn’t know this boy, doesn’t know anything, but his name is Kim Taehyung and his hands are warm and he breathes a little too fast and kind of messily, through his mouth like a kid, and Jungkook’s chest pinches.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, hyung.”

Taehyung likes to talk. His voice is deep and pleasant, comes from some deeper, throatier part of himself and there is an energy that breathes life into every menial comment he makes. It’s a little like watching a maestro conduct the orchestra of his language. Control the performance of his conversation.

Kim Taehyung is everything at once. So much that Jungkook wants to leave, wants to take one step back, wants to breathe, but he can’t.

“So, Namjoonie-hyung told me you write really well, and that I should work with you, and I was like, ‘sure!’ Except, I’m sorry, I’m so bad at getting up early, and it was 8:40 when I looked at the clock and he sent me your timetable and I’m so glad I made it before you left, phew!” Taehyung grins, and his voice does something funny, a little noise of pure joy from the back of his throat. “And anyway, I haven’t had breakfast, and even if you have, I’m going to buy some for you.”

Jungkook doesn’t know how to say he hasn’t eaten yet either, so he says nothing. Taehyung, if anything, doesn’t seem to mind. He shifts between periodically smiling at Jungkook and at the rest of the world speaking at anywhere between too fast and too slow.

“Ooh! Egg toast!” Taehyung’s train of thought stops and restarts at the same pace as the rest of him. He shrugs his jacket back over his shoulder, glancing back at Jungkook. “Do you like sweet egg toast?”

Jungkook doesn’t say anything. He blinks, once, and it feels slow, like he’s left the majority of himself behind, lost in Taehyung’s whirlwind of energy. Of presence. Taehyung eyes him for a second, waiting, then smiles and takes Jungkook’s sleeve.

The egg toast shop in the campus mess hall is busy enough to have a huge line stretching around the corner. Jungkook sees it every time he walks past, the way students bundle up more and more against the cold, blinking with tired eyes as they wait for some food. Jungkook, in all his time at this place, has never once eaten their sweet egg toast.

“Wow, there’s a breakfast queue.” Taehyung states it likes it amazes him, and Jungkook can’t help but look at him as his mind works behind his eyes. Taehyung taps a finger to his lips, pensive, eyes scanning the crowd.

“Wait here,” he says, patting Jungkook’s shoulder, and then jogs into the throng of people, crying out names left and right, getting himself jostled into one-arm hugs. Jungkook wonders, vaguely, if seeing him act like this proves the existence of people Jungkook thought were fiction: wholly, entirely adored. Because Taehyung cuts through the line instantly, calling out ‘hyung’ and ‘noona’, the occasional ‘hyung—oh, sorry, sunbae’, and then he’s just . . . at the front. Making his order. And it’s amazing, because nobody seems to mind.

The egg toast is still steaming when Taehyung delivers it, but Jungkook doesn’t see what it looks like. Taehyung’s face is rosy and pink, flushed on the crests of his cheekbones. Jungkook wonders if he’s the sort of person who, in some world, some era, that was raised by someone who traced his shoulder blades and said, this is where we had wings when we were still angels.

“Thanks, hyung,” Jungkook says, distant, and Taehyung beams.

2

Birdlike, Jungkook writes. Across the desk, Taehyung has fallen asleep with his head pressed into the novel he’s meant to be reading. Jungkook doesn’t have the heart to wake him. Hollow bones.

The 24-hour library is littered with students on the campus computers, poring over textbooks. For a while, Taehyung had been one of them. In the past week since meeting him, Taehyung has attended every one of Jungkook’s Creative Writing lectures. In the past week, Jungkook has tried harder than ever to try and tone down his writing. Because if there is one person he doesn’t want to scare off, it’s Taehyung.

Jungkook isn’t sure, really, what kind of work he’s meant to do with Taehyung. He isn’t sure what Professor Kim expected, what Yoongi expected—there really isn’t that much Jungkook is sure of—but the majority of what they’ve done is Taehyung running into Jungkook’s lectures or finding him on campus and demanding they spend time together.

So, it’s okay. Taehyung talks a lot and Jungkook likes to listen. Taehyung gesticulates and Jungkook follows with his eyes, soaks him up. There’s a restless energy in Taehyung that itches to reach out, itches to touch. Jungkook can see it, but he never says anything.

In the tired gloom of the library, he kicks his shoes off under the table and pulls them onto the chair. He rests his notebook on his thighs and he writes.

Song in him. A glow like a dying star. Something about him that feels like it’s waiting to grow wings waiting to fly

He is loud but his voice does not carry. He yells but the volume is lost in his throat. Sings through his ribs. Resonates deep, like a cello, everything singing.

Like a voice cutting through underwater; it’s time to come up.

“Whoa,” Taehyung says, the fateful day everything hits the fan. Jungkook, too placid under Taehyung’s intense gaze has been caught red-handed, shame up to his throat, as Taehyung’s eyes scan the black, inky mess on his page. “Words.”

Jungkook feels his throat close up. I’m sorry, he wants to say, or maybe, forgive me. The words don’t come, however, and he feels the strength of him wilt away, starved of energy. Taehyung’s eyes are dark, tracing the circle of messy, unreadable hangul.

“You wrote that?” Taehyung asks, filling in the silence, and he leans over the desk, then, into Jungkook’s space. Lets their heads brush together, hair on hair. “Whoa.”

Jungkook wills himself to accept what comes next. Weird. Freaky. What the fuck?

“That’s amazing,” Taehyung says instead, hand reaching out slowly, like he’s afraid of startling him. “Can I see?”

Jungkook wants to voice his denial, but everything is lost. Suddenly his head is so loud, so blaring with noise, with words that he just can’t bear to say. He claws at the book, tugging it back to his chest. All the desperate, lonely trust he placed into his hyung’s hands turning cold.

“Sorry,” Taehyung says sheepishly, pulling away. “It’s private, right?”

Jungkook nods, eyes staring at the scuffed desk in front of him. For a long moment, there is no sound at all. Taehyung sit in his seat, uncomfortably quiet, and the droning of the clock echoes through everything.

“Is it a diary confession?” Taehyung tries, eyebrows wriggling. “Little Jungkookie has some secrets.”

Jungkookie, his mother used to scold, so tired, so frustrated, stop writing.

“It’s a disorder,” Jungkook says. “I’m sorry.”

The table is bland and uninteresting. The silence is deafening.

“Why would you be sorry?” Taehyung asks, painfully gentle, absent of anything other than good-natured curiosity. “Jungkook?”

Jungkook just shakes his head. His arm aches. He feels hollow, like if Taehyung were to touch him he would chime. He feels blood pushing past his ears. Tastes this morning’s medication on his tongue; bitter where he’d swallowed them dry, too tired to go get water.

“Sorry, I’m prying,” Taehyung says. “It’s not my business.”

Jungkook shivers. Maybe there are no outward comments. Maybe it’s not the disorder pushing people away, this time. Maybe it’s him.

Taehyung smacks his lips, and Jungkook knows if he were to look up, Taehyung would be fisting a hand in his hair, trying to form the right thing to say. Too kind. Too gentle. Jungkook wishes he could tell him to leave. Tell him how sorry he is. No words come.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” Taehyung says softly. “That’s weird, though.”

Jungkook wants to look up. Wants to see if Taehyung has that wide, kind look on his face, like he always seems to. He doesn’t.

“Do you want me to leave?” Taehyung asks, and there’s a sadness to his voice. Like leaving genuinely saddens him. “Jungkook?”

Don’t leave, Jungkook wants to say, and his eyes sting. His throat aches. A bone-deep shift in him, something inside him groaning under his weight, giving way. Muted. Jungkook barely hears it. I don’t want you to leave.

“Okay,” Taehyung says. “I’ll come back, okay? Just wait for a little.”

What a nice way to let go of someone, Jungkook thinks. He sighs once, heavily, and finally looks up. Slowly, he packs his bag. Taehyung’s books are still here, and Jungkook is overcome with the urge to leave before he can come back.

“Oh, Jungkookie,” Taehyung says when Jungkook runs into him at the entrance. He’s holding two coffees in his hands, steaming warm in the cold, dark night. “I was just going to bring you this.”

Oh, Jungkook wants to say. The words don’t come but he lets Taehyung press the coffee into his hands, smiling, face pink and warm.

Jungkook doesn’t know what he’s meant to think, so for once it’s comforting, the silence in his head. Taehyung grins, and in this velvety night, all his teeth glowing in the light of the library, just enough light.

“Thanks, hyung,” he says, and Taehyung makes that sound again. That little, pleased sound behind his smile.

She stood like an empress, back straight, even under the weight of her gown. Her gaze, steely by nature, tracked over the man before her. Though she bore no riches, her gown made from peasant’s thread, she commanded the attention of her audience.

“Release me,” she ordered. There were no more words needed, for the man steps back, releasing as if stung. Where she stood, not a single hair was misplaced, still pulled into a tight bun. “You will not . . .”

Taehyung’s writing is different to Jungkook’s.

Jungkook reads, through Taehyung’s words, a little bit of everything. So often, he writes as women. Jungkook doesn’t really feel the need to ask why. There is a delicacy in some characters and a power in others. Professor Kim barely scratched the surface when he said range.

“Which do you like best?” Taehyung asks, mouth full as he chews on cold noodles. “Also, you should ask me why they’re mostly girls.”

“Why are they mostly girls?”

“Just because.” Taehyung smiles, making his telltale pleased sound, and goes back to eating. He paints quite the picture, eyes twisted up to watch Jungkook read, even as he is hunched over to eat. Just because. How very Taehyung.

“I like Sea Burial,” Jungkook admits. “She’s . . . I dunno.”

“I like her, too,” Taehyung says, and it feels, looking at Taehyung, like all his characters are so dearly beloved. Other people. Other stories. It’s so different to Jungkook’s own. When he thinks about it, all his characters are the same boy, suffering through the required word limit. Not like this.

In a way, Jungkook muses, all of his stories are about himself.

Sea Burial is a first-person story about the trophy wife of a millionaire, who kills said husband after finding out he was a drug lord. Jungkook likes, in some dark way, that it isn’t really about justice. The woman couldn’t care less about the drugs. Money is money. It’s about vengeance, because her daughter died an addict.

It’s not cold. There is passion in the monologue, in the way she so disinterestedly critiques her world. She wants money. She wants opulence. She wanted her husband dead.

“She’s nothing like you,” Jungkook says, and Taehyung laughs so hard he nearly chokes on his noddles.

“Of course!” Taehyung says, grinning wildly. “I didn’t want her to be.”

Jungkook smiles, heart pinching painfully. Taehyung has talent for all genres. Sea Burial is passionate but dark, a little bitter, but he has sweeter, sadder stories. One of them features a lesbian couple, pulled apart by freak accident, and now the protagonist’s lover is trapped in an almost vegetative state, her entire life on hold as she attempts to care for her, every day.

“I saw it described with the phrase, ‘the malaise of everydayness’,” Taehyung says proudly. “The genre I like to use. Sounds kinda sad, right? Namjoon-hyung is a sucker for that depressing stuff, though. He loves it.”

Jungkook smiles to himself, thinking of all the work he’s submitted. “Yeah. He really does.”

“Your work is, like . . .” Taehyung is pensive as he chews. “I dunno.”

Jungkook, just a little, is endeared by how eloquent Taehyung sounds on paper compared to how vague he is in person. Makes his head a little clearer, his chest a little tighter. “Thanks,” he says.

“Ooh, sass,” Taehyung wriggles his eyebrows at him, grinning wildly. “If I had to describe what you write, it’s like . . . it has all the elements of going somewhere, growing into something, but just, like . . . never getting there, y’know?”

Jungkook doesn’t know at all, but he smiles when he shakes his head, laughing silently.

“We,” Taehyung announces, too loud for a library but still said in an undertone, for him, “are going to write a manifesto for you.”

Jungkook slams his notebook closed, surprised by Taehyung’s sudden appearance, but the elder doesn’t even bat an eye. “A . . . a what?”

“It’ll be our little project,” Taehyung says. “I think that there’s a little more in your writing. Like, it’s still in the sad backstory part of the narrative. And you”—he places his palm on Jungkook’s head, staring him straight in the eye with no seriousness at all—“are going to write out the rest of your story.” 

Jungkook doesn’t let himself think about what it means that Taehyung already knows that he’s the main voice in every one of his pieces.

Taehyung shows him a dog before speaking, the next time they see each other. It’s a tiny thing, one that he hugs against his shoulder, leash looped around his hand. “Look, Jungkookie!” Taehyung says excitedly, and even though Jungkook is growing accustomed to Taehyung’s constant energy, he can’t quite catch up in time. “I took him from my hyung. Isn’t he cute?”

The tiny dog looks at Jungkook with big, dark eyes, completely lost. Jungkook wants to say, “me too.”

“His name is Yeontan,” Taehyung coos, rubbing the puppy’s head with his thumb. “Can we steal him? You can hide him in your dorm, I’m sure he’d be happy with you.”

“Taehyung!” someone yells. “Bring my dog back here!”

Taehyung turns so fast, messy hair flying, that Jungkook thinks he sees what it must look like when nebulas become stars. Bright, blinding, explosive. Pure energy.

Taehyung dumps the puppy in Jungkook’s arms and winks at him, dashing away. Jungkook stands still for so long Yeontan falls asleep in his arms, content against Jungkook’s chest.

The nameless hyung comes back later with Taehyung in a headlock, gratefully and apologetically taking the tiny puppy from him.

Taehyung’s ears are pink when their eyes meet, and he smiles bashfully.

Jungkook feels like an electric shock goes through him. Restless, static energy. A misfire of a conclusion he was meant to make.

3

“I like this,” Yoongi says, before the track is even through. The days are shorter now, colder, too, and Yoongi is wearing at least three jumpers and his scarf hasn’t come off. When he hunches, like he is now, his face is buried beneath the woollen folds. “Kind of . . . grunge.”

It’s not how Jungkook would describe it, but he smiles just the same. Yoongi very rarely admits to liking anything, be it his work or anyone else’s. It’s possibly the highest praise he has.

The beat is the same, but the layers are different. A thudding bass pulse at 80 beats per minute, topped off with some heavy reverb treble parts make it sound dark. It sounded like a heartbeat originally, but now the shriller, metallic parts make it sound like heartbreak.

It’s funny. Since Jungkook has seen how fond Taehyung becomes of his characters, so vastly different to himself, he can’t help but want to portray someone else in everything he does. He wants to create a character who, as Taehyung put it, is moving beyond the sad backstory part of the narrative.

“Thanks, hyung,” Jungkook says, the title slipping out easier now that he calls Taehyung by it, and Yoongi raises his eyebrows, surprised.

Jungkook feels his face burn. His hands lock themselves in fists, and he stammers, “so—sorry, I didn’t—”

“At last,” Yoongi says, and his eyes crinkle in what seems to be a large smile, but his scarf hides that. “Taehyung’s influence, I’m sure. Keep up the good work, Jungkook.”

Taehyung, Jungkook doesn’t know how, has an ability to find Jungkook anywhere, anytime. Jungkook likes to think he exists in a not-quite-there space, like where all the birds go when it rains. Tucked away. Always ready to be exactly where he needs. A little bit like a lighthouse. Or maybe a voice, just clear enough to be heard: I’m here.

“Heyo, Jungkookie!” Taehyung sings, and he latches onto Jungkook’s side. He’s done that a lot, recently. It’s always been in him, Jungkook is sure, but he went from barely touching Jungkook to barely leaving him alone. Jungkook still isn’t sure which he prefers, but he tries to drown out the questioning thoughts.

“Hey, hyung,” Jungkook tries to reply, but it’s barely a whisper by the time he manages to say it. Taehyung beams, wrapping his arms around Jungkook’s shoulders as they walk. Jungkook grips the strap of his satchel for dear life.

Taehyung, he thinks distantly, above or below the haze in his head, he isn’t sure—is like walking into the dark. Blind, feeling out with hesitant, shaking hands. Trying to navigate his hyung feels fathomless in a way he can never hope to explain to him.

“What did Yoongi-hyung say?” Taehyung asks, and Jungkook lets him lead. They always go to the same place, this late in the day: the library. “He’s your TA, right?”

“Yeah,” Jungkook breathes, watching the plume of steam from his single word drift away, thin and ribbon-like. “He . . . he liked it. The thing that, I’m, um, working on.”

“Oooh,” Taehyung coos, ruffling Jungkook’s hair. Jungkook stiffens, waiting for that rough all-knuckle feeling, but Taehyung barely touches his scalp. Taehyung, Jungkook is noticing, always has an acute sense for the gentlest thing. “High praise from the one and only Min Yoongi.”

I wanted to do what you do, Jungkook wants to say, but he doesn’t. For once, it’s not because of the deep ache down his front, like he’s swallowed sand. It’s a different kind of lump, dry on his tongue, making his face warm. Jungkook’s chest pinches, again, a little painfully. It’s done that a lot, lately.

“Do you . . . what do you do, hyung, outside of Creative Writing?”

“Theatre!” Taehyung’s volume makes up for Jungkook’s shyness ten times over. “I do musicals. Well, I’m trying to. I did composition in my first year, and Yoongi used to help me.”

“That’s cool,” Jungkook says, and for once his voice isn’t so small. Taehyung coos loudly, jostling them together, and Jungkook thinks Taehyung, even in this cold weather, smells like spring.

Taehyung, like magic, like clockwork, can always finds Jungkook.

Even when he doesn’t want to be.

Jungkook doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He has an essay due for his composition class, but he could never find the energy to start. Jungkook stayed up all night, dreading the process until he finally did it with the dawn, and ran across campus to hand it into Yoongi in person.

Jungkook, if he were honest with himself, wants to cry. Really bad. There’s a lump in his throat and his eyes sting, every breath tasting like blood and his heart thunders so hard in his ribs it shakes his entire person. Jungkook doesn’t know why he put it off. He loves that class. He loves it when Yoongi compliments his work and he loves it when something sounds good. He’s sure he does. And he likes history.

So why didn’t he start it earlier? Why had he stared at the empty word document for hours and hours, feeling the dry beginnings of panic but no energy to write?

Jungkook shivers without his coat, running out of his dorm too fast. He wants to get back; the cold air is making the moisture around his eyes sting, turn to ice, nearly. Maybe Jungkook wants to sit down, curl up, shiver himself still.

“Hey, Jungkook,” Taehyung says, unusually serious, appearing before him. His smile is soft and there’s something in his eyes. Jungkook wonders what he must look like. “Did you forget your coat?”

Jungkook just drops his head, contorts his face. It feels a little like there’s a tiny stab, right in the middle of his chest, the weight of something on his shoulders. The gravity turned up just a little too high. The world is cold and Jungkook feels his joints stiffen like metal, rusting under his skin. He wants to cry but he can’t, because Taehyung is here, because he’s meant to be better than this.

“I’m fine, hyung,” Jungkook says, and he’s grateful, because just this once, Taehyung doesn’t speak. “Sorry. Haven’t slept.”

“Here.” Taehyung winds something soft around his neck. Jungkook sees the toes of his shoes shuffle forward as he reaches up. His hands are warm where they brush Jungkook’s cheeks. Jungkook wants to wonder what it means but his mind draws blank after blank, too worn thin to think through. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

No, Jungkook wants to say. No. No, no no.

“Yeah,” he says instead, studying the damp toes of Taehyung’s brown shoes. “Sorry.”

Taehyung hesitates for a long time, breathing softly, slowly, at a pace completely different to Jungkook’s own. He wonders, dimly, how much distance there is between the two average people.

Then he sees Taehyung step forward, and Jungkook doesn’t realise he’s being hugged until he is, face pressing awkwardly into Taehyung’s shoulder. Jungkook feels his ribs seize and constrict, throat burning, every fibre in his body pulled taut, singing with the need to just cry. It feels like he has to beg himself to.

He doesn’t. His eyes are watery but no tears form. He breathes wetly against Taehyung’s shoulder, hands rising up to fist in the wool of his hyung’s coat on their own, and wonders why nothing ever comes.

“Kim Howon, a published author, will be giving feedback on these short stories you submit,” Professor Kim says, smiling proudly, and even from where he sits at the back of the hall, Jungkook can see the white slash of teeth as he grins.

“Dude,” Taehyung squeals in an undertone, shaking his arm. “Dude, this is it! This is your chance! We’re going to write your anime character training and triumph arc!”

Jungkook’s face morphs into a grin, just like Taehyung’s, and it feels so easy. “Yeah?”

“Yes!” Taehyung throws his head back, kicking his feet out and punching the air. “Yes, yes, yes!”

Jungkook is struck, so suddenly, that there is a word that describes Taehyung. A word that is concise, that encapsulates his whole. A word that takes into account his hollow bones and singing voice. His ability to appear, whenever needed. His ability to just know.

Jungkook, so used to writing down word after word, meaningless and yet so inherently important, cannot think of it at all.

Taehyung takes their quest very literally. “Let’s be logical about this,” Taehyung says. “Let’s call it, say . . . The Most Beautiful Moment in Life.”

“Okay,” Jungkook snorts, and Taehyung kicks him under the table, pouting. “Sorry,” he relents.

“So, ideas,” Taehyung pushes his chair back, propping his feet on the table exaggeratedly. He grins, thin and wolfish, eyes glittering with cunning. “Author-ssi?”

“I . . .” Jungkook stares at his notebook. The page is blank, but he’s sitting on his right hand to try and not start breaking out into lines. Lately, everything he’s written has been geometrically spaced, precise and identical. Hyper-fixation, displayed visually. “I dunno.”

“Well—” Taehyung is cut off by a librarian snapping at him in the distance about putting his feet on the tables. He grins sheepishly, waving an apology as he sits up properly and pulls his chair back in. Jungkook’s chest pinches, as it always does. Jungkook has a word, a phrase, for that, now: painfully endeared.

“Well,” he says, expression revealing he’s going to pretend that he didn’t just get told off, “it can go a lot of ways. I don’t want this to be too different to your usual stuff, you know? It’s still got to have that dark, meaty undertone.”

“Meaty,” Jungkook repeats numbly under his breath, and Taehyung chokes on his laughter. “Okay. Sure.”

“I’m not the author!” Taehyung whines, pushing Jungkook’s notebook back so far it nudges his chest. “You tell me. What do you think are your safe topics?”

“Um,” Jungkook chews on his lip. “I . . . I dunno.”

“Yes, you do,” Taehyung says patiently. “You’re just shy. Come on, tell hyung. Here, I’ll embarrass myself first: I wrote porn once. Like, not a script—actual porn. Okay, like, four times. But whatever. Now you don’t have to be embarrassed.”

Jungkook feels his face burn. Taehyung says it like it means nothing, but Jungkook can count on his hands the amount of times he’s talked about porn: twice. Once, when the boys in his class afterschool were talking about an actress, and they all looked at him expectedly so he’d just agreed, and again when his brother jokingly called him a ‘homo’.

He blinked, shivering hard to rid himself of the memories. Taehyung just raises an eyebrow.

“Themes?” he says, and then throws himself back over his chair. Jungkook stares at the long, ribbed column of his throat as he stares up. “Okay, fine. It was gay porn, okay? I wrote gay porn. Now you can’t be embarrassed anymore.”

“Okay.” Jungkook murmurs. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like he has to offer support. Gay porn. Taehyung wrote gay porn four times. Did that make him gay? Jungkook isn’t sure but it might. He isn’t sure but he feels like he’s socially meant to offer his support. Or his condolences. It makes his stomach flip uncomfortably.

Taehyung rests his hands on the table. “Show me what’s in your head,” he whines, pouting like a child, completely unaffected. Jungkook smiles.

“Uh, youth?” he suggests. “I, um—well, that’s something I’ve written about before." 

“Yes!” Taehyung pumps a fist in victory. “Sounds good. Works with the title. What else you got?” He makes strange, fluid movements as if to convey how he’s trying to draw it out of Jungkook’s mind. 

“Why did you write . . . gay porn?” Jungkook’s voice is a painful whisper on the last two words, and Taehyung blinks owlishly at him for a long second, comically in time with the ticking of the library clock.

“Because I could,” he answers.

Oh, Jungkook thinks. “Oh,” Jungkook says.

Taehyung smiles, face scrunching up in that impish, childish way of his. He makes that little smiling noise he has. Jungkook feels something unravel under his skin. Relief.

“Okay, so we want to explore youth,” Taehyung thinks aloud, pressing one finger back from a fist as he speaks. “What do you want to explore? The nature of youth? The dark side of youth? The fleetingness?”

“I guess . . . all of them,” Jungkook shrugs. There’s an idea forming in his head, distant enough that he can’t tell what the it is, but he can feel it. A little violent. A little sad. A lot of things tried, time and time again. It feels sad, but a burning, desperate kind of sad.

“All of them, huh?” Taehyung leans forward, eyebrows raised. “Explain.”

“I guess . . . a few guys. Like, our age guys, and they just . . . everything seems to go wrong for them, every time.”

“Time travel,” Taehyung says, smile growing. “You want to write time travel.”

Jungkook thinks of the hundreds of voices, the hundreds of faces Taehyung writes through, speaks through, lives through. He thinks of the woman who pushed her husband off a cliff, thinks of the other woman who lets her life fall apart because of one fateful accident.

“Yeah,” he says. “I want to write time travel.”

His first draft is terrible. It seems fine when Taehyung is next to him, full of energy and throwing Jungkook’s ideas back at him, getting constantly told off by the library staff, but other than that, it’s flat.

Jungkook stares at the plan. Stares at the page.

He types the words slowly, but suddenly, alone in the darkness of his dorm room, the only light coming from his green night-light, he can’t find any interest in it. He’s written time travel before. It’s not the content that is tiring.

The story is meant to be harsh. He has three thousand words to condense one man’s struggle as he goes back in time constantly, trying to pinpoint where everything in his life and his friends’ lives fell apart, failing over and over again, and Jungkook just . . . can’t.

He thinks of T.S. Eliot.

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

Taehyung reads it over, chewing on some cold noodles of his. Jungkook wants to sink through the table and into the floor. Disappear. He hates how it reads, hates how it sounds. Hates how it’s unfinished, because at 4AM he just couldn’t do it anymore.

He thought about it a lot. Wrote loose lines a lot, over and over again, trying to push them into the mouth of his protagonist, but it never, ever was enough.

“You don’t like this,” Taehyung says, not looking up. “You seem . . . unimpressed.”

Jungkook, for once, is surprised to see that Taehyung can describe it the way he would. “How’d you know?”

“Because you wrote in all lower case, 3 pages later, ‘I hate this’.”

Jungkook wants to stop breathing, just for a few minutes.

He isn’t talking about the story, there.

“It’s just . . .” Jungkook picks at a cuticle. It’s a bad habit, a dirty habit, but he keeps tugging at the uneven skin until it bleeds. “It feels flat.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it feeling flat,” Taehyung says, a crease between his eyebrows. “If anything, you can explore it. I mean, technically, this is sort of a monologue of the Time Traveller, right? Sure, you have scenes, but you, at the same time, want this tiredness to come through, you know?”

“Isn’t that the same as my usual stuff?”

Taehyung grins. “It’s the levelled-up version.”

The longer Jungkook works on The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, the less he finds himself able to care. Maybe about everything. There is a prologue, seven scenes, and an epilogue. The Time-Traveller’s voice at the beginning is older than the one at the end. In between, he covers each failing moment.

The Serpent is named to contradict himself. Rather than tempting others, he gives up all temptations, and it hurts him. The dreams he never followed drag him down until he finally gives in, breaks into a store to play their piano. He gets hit by a car, in the end. An accident. He is also the Time-Traveller’s oldest friend.

The Archer is the opposite. He tries too hard, aims too high, and when it falls through, he falls into despair. He tries to kill himself with pills but he’s saved. He lives the rest of his life in a mental hospital.

The Genie is the McGuffin of the entire story. He offers the rare introspections about their lives, about what they’re doing. He is the way Jungkook tries to promote the message of the story: they’re so busy running away from themselves to realise they’re wasting away their youths. He is also the vaguest character of the story. Taehyung likes him like that. Jungkook doesn’t really feel any need to change him. He has no beginning nor end. He’s just there when it matters. He’s just absent when it all comes down to him.

The Seer is the innocent character. Taehyung is adamant there must be some in the story. Everyone’s sympathy aligns with him as he witnesses everything fail, watches everyone fall apart. The sacrificial lamb, Jungkook supposes.

The Fallen Boy is different. When Jungkook tries to picture him, figure him out, he can only think of Taehyung. The catalyst of their destruction is when The Fallen Boy strikes out and kills his father. He gets arrested, and when he only has one call to reach out, to get help, the Genie is nowhere to be found.

Jungkook feels the utmost sympathy for all these characters, people he has never met, people he thought up. He wants them to succeed at the exact same time he just wants this to be over.

Taehyung likes it. He likes it so enthusiastically that Jungkook half-thinks he’s just trying to make Jungkook happy. He knots his hands until his fingers twist and ache. He wants to pull on them until they pop, just so something is clearer than the low hubbub around them. Not in a violent way, he just does. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Taehyung covers his hands with his. They’re larger, finer, and Jungkook sometimes muses they’re the exact sort of shape that could make wings, if he wanted. Golden-brown skin, delicate, perfect digits. “Jungkook,” Taehyung says, small and earnest, squeezing their hands softly, “I really like it, okay?”

Jungkook believes him. Not in a reluctant way. He just does.

Journey 2

Taehyung is practicing for his musical and Jungkook is entirely alone.

Normally, it isn’t that big of a deal. It never used to be, not really. But the first snowfall of the season is today and Jungkook sits at his desk and just watches. It’s light; just a dusting of white on the ground and by midday it’s all gone, again, the air crisp and clear and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

Jungkook feels a little bit like all the wind in his body has been pushed out of him.

It took Kim Howon two weeks to review all their pieces. Taehyung had been there, looking over his shoulder, when Jungkook had pressed submit.

Yesterday, he got it back.

The first snowfall of the season is today, and Jungkook spends it sitting at his desk with a notebook and pen, writing out the lyrics to the song his mother taught him for this day, over and over again.

Jungkook stays in.

Jungkook writes.

It’s slow, heavy feeling, like his blood is too thick, like it’s too much work for his heart to push it through his veins. He realises, a little belatedly, that he hasn’t taken his medication for the day. Epilepsy. He has that.

Quiet, he writes, loud, but quiet. Low enough to resonate with an instrument, carry with the right aid, but quiet. Can’t yell. Can’t get angry. Like an owl, maybe. Their calls are low and distant in the night. Comforting when they should be scary.

Or, like rain. Thundering on the roof, on the ground, beneath the roar of the downpour is the trickling of droplets falling to the ground, hitting leaves, tinkling, nature’s bell we never learned how to understand. Water drawn to earth; too heavy to stay in the sky.

Jungkook reads the feedback again, like pulling on a nail. He’d done that, once. A strange day. No one ever found out but him. It was wonky and wrong and he pulled it, watched it split down the middle and well with blood, breath shaky and he pulled.

He wasn’t desperate to. He just did.

It feels the same, a little, reading a man tear up the work he worked on, even when he was so tired. Taehyung had told him it was good. Told him he liked it. Taehyung is as much the author as he is.

Maybe that’s why it hurts a little more.

“He doesn’t speak. Lets himself not notice the desperation.” Don’t use negatives!! Tell me what’s happening!!  

Jungkook wants to defend it. It’s always come easier to him to use negatives, to not specify exactly what’s happening because often the character doesn’t know. Often the author doesn’t know. Maybe he just wants to emphasise the lack of things. Or maybe he’s just wrong. Maybe he’s just bad.

Jungkook did Creative Writing because he didn’t know what else to do, after High School. Music and writing were the only things that felt all right. The only things he could think of doing, really.

Maybe he can’t. Maybe he never could.

Why isn’t ‘Time Traveller’ using better language? Show me your vocabulary!

Isn’t he grieving? Do people in sadness have such large, complex words? Do people say things like ‘whereby’ and ‘therefore’, neck-deep in despair? Jungkook doesn’t know. Never has. Always thought differently. Maybe, he always thought wrong.

I can’t empathise with your characters when you haven’t given then names. Who is ‘The Serpent’? What kind of name is that? He isn’t tempting anyone. Readers won’t understand this. A bad choice.

A bad choice.

Yeah, Jungkook thinks to himself. It was a bad choice.

Jungkook’s phone rings the next morning. The side of his face presses into the desk, cold. He thinks of getting to bed, of getting under the blankets and duvet but it’s so far. Jungkook stares at it all with heavy eyelids. He wants to sleep but he can’t seem to quiet down inside his head. Why did I write this? Why do I write at all? A disorder doesn’t give me talent. You don’t get good at things by repetition. You either have it or you don’t.

Despite this, he feels the need to write. As if the sheer volume of words could help prove otherwise. Maybe he just didn’t put in enough effort. There wasn’t enough emotion. Maybe it’s something like that. It does feel half-assed to him, now that he’s read it over and over. Feels flat. Useless.

So he writes. He lists off everything in his room and he lists off the brands of clothes that he owns. He writes down the type of batteries his night-light uses, that silly, useless thing that he sometimes turns on just to feel a little better in the dark. He writes down every hue of green and then every brand of paint he knows. He writes, he writes, and he writes.

It doesn’t snow today. Jungkook doesn’t know why.

There’s no noise in his room but sometimes his phone rings. He doesn’t look at it. Professor Kim probably wants to apologise for saying such good things about him, when he’s so biased. Probably wants to ask Jungkook to apologise to Kim Howon, to submit some older, even worse work. Maybe it’s his mother. Maybe the university is expelling him. Maybe everyone thought too highly of him.

He lists every hangul character, down the page. A, ya, ma, da, ga, ka, repeat. He writes his name. Taehyung’s name. Yoongi’s name.

His arm aches but he keeps going. If he stops now, if he put down his pen or closed the book on his hand, he knows he’ll cry. He’ll cry and then keep going. But men don’t cry, Jungkook doesn’t cry, not even in the solitude of his own room because he can’t, he won’t, if he feels everything lock up and wants to cry, needs to cry, but nothing comes and Jungkook is sure his heart will break.

The day fades. The light turns grey, and everything in his room turns grainy and fuzzy as his eyes try to adjust. He writes down the names of the clouds, of the times of the day. He quotes poetry, word for word, writes the lyrics of his favourite songs. Remembers some parts from his high school textbooks, the ones he’d copied down, word for word, in an attempt to learn better.

It doesn’t feel like anything. Feels like trying to piece together a message when it’s in another language. Trying to feel his way through the dark. Like waiting for rain, for hours and hours, on the tips of his toes, ready for the downpour, and then it never coming.

So, he writes.

And when that isn’t enough he writes help.

Help help help help help help help help help h e lp

He feels bowed under the weight of himself. His spine is tired of holding him up. There’s a weight in his gut and between his shoulder blades. His eyes sting, tired. All the bright parts of his vision swim like oil. He hasn’t slept enough.

He thinks of calling Taehyung. Taehyung would always, always, know what to do. What to say.

He doesn’t. Taehyung is feather-light, hollow bones and an instrument of a heart. This dark, inky thing Jungkook feels like a second skin will cripple him.

Jungkook stays in the dark, and he writes help like a mantra. Makes circles and patterns out of the word. Goes back to old pages and writes it in the gaps he left behind so the word can stare at him like eyes; why are you like this?

4

Jungkook doesn’t know or when but his phone hasn’t buzzed in a while and then he hears the door click open.

He jumps up so hard he knocks the chair over, slinking back against his bed. Shame runs through him, cold and fast. The light from the hallway is yellow and warm, spilling into his dorm.

“Jungkookie?” Taehyung calls out, and when the door opens a little bit more Jungkook can see Taehyung’s hand on the doorknob. Or course it would be Taehyung. His throat closes up, painful. It feels a little like he’s swallowing a stone.

The room is so dark. Taehyung must think he’s out. Must think Jungkook just stopped being here. So the door opens the rest of the way slowly, light falling on the rest of the room and it feels a little bit like staring at a freight train coming at him, the edge of the light finally hitting him.

Taehyung’s eyes are wide and shadowed, backlit by the hallway. Jungkook knows that real life isn’t like literature, knows that it’s all inside his head—but he likes to think, just for a second, that when Taehyung sees him, without any judgement, he just knows.

“H-hey, hyung,” Jungkook tries, but his voice sounds weak and useless, garbled in the tight mess of his throat. “I’m sorr—”

Taehyung doesn’t say a word. Maybe there’s nothing to be said. But the room is small and it only takes him one, two, three steps until he’s pulling Jungkook to his chest. It’s dumb—silly, maybe—because they’re similar in height, nearly the same, and yet Jungkook feels so small. Taehyung’s arms are long and warm, wrapping around his back, holding his aching bones together.

Maybe Taehyung really does know.

Or maybe, he just knows better.

Maybe he does want to berate Jungkook, tell him how stupid he is for locking himself up for days—but he knows now isn’t the time. Knows he can’t, not now. Knows better.

Jungkook wonders, really, how people like Taehyung exist. Because there’s a little part of him, the part that used to play piano all day to make his mother proud of him for something, that thinks Taehyung just understands.

Taehyung is lithe and sturdy, and he’s speaking, muffled against Jungkook’s shoulder, and Jungkook holds on. That squashed, choking feeling doesn’t leave at all. And he doesn’t cry, because it isn’t worth it. It all lingers, cold and tense, under his skin, in the valleys between his ribs, but at least Taehyung feels like he can keep Jungkook in once piece, just for a little while.

“Have you eaten?” Taehyung asks after a long moment, palm rubbing up and down Jungkook’s back. “Jungkookie? Have you eaten yet, today?”

Jungkook doesn’t answer. 

Taehyung orders them food without letting go of him.

“Writing?” Taehyung asks, leaning into Jungkooks side as they eat take-away on his best. “All day?”

Jungkook nods, chewing the egg noodles slowly. They don’t taste bad, he’s sure, but they taste like nothing to him. He still isn’t hungry. He eats anyway, because Taehyung paid for these.

He tries to think about going to class. Did he do that? Was that today or yesterday?

“I went to class,” he says, afraid to acknowledge the possibility that it’s been two days since he last went outside. He knows he should try harder. Out of everything, explanations are some things he owes Taehyung the most. “And then . . . I dunno. I, uh, got the review back for the story we wrote. He hated it.”

Taehyung huffs. “Asshole. What a good fucking story. What’d he say?”

“Um.” Jungkook pauses, staring at his food. “He didn’t like how I used negatives. And uh, he said, um . . . my vocabulary was bad and stuff.”

“Snobbish prick,” Taehyung grumbles, mouth full of food. “I bet you he isn’t even that famous. Have you ever heard of him? Probably writes fucking textbooks and shit. Author my ass.”

It doesn’t make anything better, really, but Jungkook smiles. Taehyung sighs, putting down the tray of food. “So, you spent the last two days in here, writing?”

“I . . . I felt like had to.” Jungkook pushes the food around in its plastic tray, feeling sick. “You know?”

“Nope,” Taehyung says. “Not at all.”

A beat passes. No one speaks. Jungkook feels himself sink, very slowly.

“It means you have to explain, just a little,” Taehyung adds, smiling gently. “Hit me.”

“I . . .” Jungkook chews on his lips. It feels almost cruel that now, when he needs them most, no words come. “That thing. The writing thing I have. The disorder. It’s like, a compulsion to write. I’ve had it for years, and, well . . . I can’t control it very well. So, I felt like, when he didn’t like what I’d written . . . like I had to . . . to write, a lot. Like I had to make myself worth submitting writing." 

Jungkook doesn’t dare look up. Doesn’t dare see what kind of face Taehyung makes, how he takes the words. It’s almost ironic. Jungkook, for the life of him, can’t think of a simple complex word, like that author wanted.

“Wanna go out?” Taehyung says instead.

“Yeah, please,” Jungkook says. There’s no real emotion behind it. The thought of going out with Taehyung, into the night, into the city, like he’s never done before—it’s not an intense hunger. Jungkook isn’t desperate. He just wants to go. He just does.

The night is thin with chill, the air biting at his face. “You’re . . . aren’t you in folio season, hyung?”

“Yep.”

“Shouldn’t you be back, preparing?”

“Yep.”

“Then . . . why?”

“Jungkookie,” Taehyung says, looping their arms together. “My dear, sweet Jungkookie. I’m a grown man, you know? I can manage myself. And managing myself, tonight, involves getting you away from campus for a little while.”

“I feel bad.”

“Hakuna matata,” Taehyung brushes him off. “Don’t feel bad, okay? It may be a surprise, but I am actually good at what I do. You’re not allowed to worry. You’re only allowed to enjoy yourself.”

Jungkook pouts, just a little, and Taehyung coos at him, nudging him off the sidewalk at the hip.

Taehyung pulls them into a 24/7 Starbucks, where he orders them two of the most obscene frappuccinos Jungkook has ever seen. Jungkook still feels a little tight inside his own skin, a little drained, from a sleepless night and everything else, but at least Taehyung makes smiling easy. Makes talking easy. Jungkook feels a little dopey about it all, but Taehyung beams at him just the same. When he laughs, it’s low and deep, not quite enough to fill the room, but just enough to carry.

“Next time we go out, let’s go shopping.” Taehyung decrees it, more than anything, sipping at his cold drink despite the weather. “I love fashion. Please let me dress you.”

“You can dress me how you want,” Jungkook says. “I . . . I’ve never gone shopping for clothes like that before. It’ll be fun.”

There’s a look in Taehyung’s eyes that Jungkook doesn’t quite understand, but he doesn’t push it. Shopping is fun. Jungkook likes fashion. It’s just that whenever he wears anything, it’s so underwhelming. The last time he went shopping was in Busan with his older brother, to buy new shoes and some warmer jumpers for the snow.

“You’re gonna hate it,” Taehyung says, with absolute certainty. “But that’s the charm.”

They go to a club.

Jungkook knows better. He really, really does. It’s dark, cold, and neither of them are dressed for it at all but Taehyung jokingly suggested it when he saw the queue for one, and Jungkook just said yeah, okay, hyung.

He knows better.

He already feels uneasy waiting at the front of the line, Taehyung back-hugging him for warmth. This is a bad idea. He’s never gone to parties with strobe lights anyway. Never watched anything too flashy. Always been worried. Always just knew better.

It’s nearly instantaneous. They walk in, and Taehyung shuffles them towards the bar. There are strobe lights carving patterns along the dark walks and there’s blacklights and flashing lights and Jungkook starts to sweat.

Jungkook keeps his eyes on Taehyung because he can’t bear to look anywhere else. Taehyung, leaning on the bar, smiling to the bartender, lit up in green and blue and purple, looking like something not entirely, not entirely here. Just a mirage in the light. It feels, just a little, like if Jungkook looks away he’ll disappear.

It hits him very suddenly. Something shifts in his peripheral and there’s a violent sense tugging at his gut, something wrong in his brain, something like déjà vu but worse. You’ve been here before coupled with why are you here at all? His vision warps, just for a second, and Jungkook thinks fuck.

He stumbles to the bench, holding it tight. Nausea bubbles in his gut. He needs to throw up. He casts a look at Taehyung, but the lights are too bright and there’s too much noise and Taehyung could never, would never notice him here. Not when Jungkook can’t speak, can’t shine the way he can.

Jungkook stumbles to the bathroom. He’s lucky it’s so close, because he can stumble in and throw up. It’s gritty and dark, the toilet water is dark with grime but he doesn’t care. Jungkook kind of wants to cry, just a little. He knew he shouldn’t have come. Knew he can’t make it inside with these conditions. But he did. And now he can’t even have fun with Taehyung. He’s even thrown up the coffee Taehyung bought him.

“Jungkook?” someone calls, and it’s Teahyung, always Taehyung, and Jungkook left the stall door open so he’s found quickly. Taehyung makes soothing noises and pulls back Jungkook’s fringe and his stomach clenches, but not from the need to retch.

“I have epilepsy,” Jungkook says, but it feels like a sob. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have come.”

Taehyung’s hands are gentle in his hair, steady when they help him up. Jungkook, in the biggest sense of the word, feels like he’s let him down.

They exit through the back door, and Taehyung pays for a cab.

Jungkook can’t even let his hyung treat him.

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook says. “I’m sorry, hyung.”

“I’m sorry,” Taehyung pouts. “I should have noticed you were feeling unwell.”

He says this, but he’s tucking Jungkook in, like a child. Jungkook feels spoiled, undeserving, but Taehyung isn’t someone Jungkook can argue with, anymore. Jungkook feels a little like he’s lost that right.

Taehyung took him to his college bathrooms after they came back and Jungkook threw up again, and Taehyung stayed with him when Jungkook brushed his teeth, combing back his hair with cool hands. If Jungkook weren’t so ashamed, he’d appreciate it. The tenderness that Taehyung acts with, heart-felt and written in his actions, on his face.

It hurts to look at him.

Jungkook waits for him to say, you should have told me, or maybe, why didn’t you think better?

“You have a night-light?” Taehyung says instead, reaching for the old thing on his desk. “That’s so cute.”

Jungkook lets the words die in his mouth. He doesn’t want to sadden Taehyung with the poor cadence of his voice. Taehyung fumbles, plugging it in, and its glow is warm and green, making the underside of his hands glow, thin and spidery, a little bit magical.

“Hey,” Taehyung says, turning back to him, and Jungkook is tired. He’s so tired of himself. “Hey, Jungkook.”

“Yes, hyung?”

“I’m sorry you didn’t have fun, tonight,” Taehyung says, soft around the eyes, gentle with his smile. “That’s on me.”

“It was fun,” Jungkook says, but his voice is painfully soft. Hollowed out. Hoarse. “It was really fun, hyung.”

Taehyung smiles, just a little rueful. “When you want someone to talk to,” he says, “you know you can call me, right?”

Jungkook doesn’t know what to say so he nods. Taehyung ghosts a hand through Jungkook’s fringe, and Jungkook is painfully, painfully endeared.

“Okay,” he says. “Goodnight, Jungkookie.”

Journey 3

The world is, as the temperature drops, grey.

Jungkook stares at his music. The lab is quiet, most students ditching in favour of staying in bed, so early in the morning. Jungkook feels okay but he stares and stares. He loves music, but lately it’s felt like a chore. He must be doing something wrong, but just thinking about it makes everything a little too slow. A little too painful.

“Morning, kid,” Yoongi says, rolling into place beside him. Their chairs knock. No one breathes. He smells like coffee, even from a distance. Bitter, familiar, exactly how Jungkook expects. “Lost?”

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, unsure of how else to put it. No matter how long he listens to the track, it feels like nothing. Background noise. For the life of him, he can’t think how to change that. “It’s just . . . sounding bad.”

Yoongi grunts, holding his hand out for the headphones while his eyes scan over the beats on the screen. When he presses play, he chews on a nail. Jungkook looks at his hands, sometimes. Yoongi must chew them often, chew them compulsively, because they’re a little thickened at the top, a little too round. Bitten down. Jungkook wants to ask what sort of person Yoongi is, outside of these music labs, when he’s not in front of a computer, but he doesn’t.

“It’s all right,” Yoongi says, but it sounds like it pains him. “What are you going for?”

“I don’t know,” Jungkook admits, and Yoongi is silent. It’s a little companionable.

“You’ll get there,” Yoongi assures him, handing back the headphones. “How’s Taehyung? Heard you got sick the other day. That true?”

“Yeah.” Jungkook swallows, his mouth feeling dry and bitter. “My, um, epilepsy played up.”

“Rough night, huh?” Yoongi smiles more with one half of his mouth with the other, small eyes glittering with a little bit of sympathy. Yoongi jerks, suddenly, and Jungkook reflexively goes to apologise, but Yoongi shuffles, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Huh. It’s Namjoon.”

Jungkook knots his fingers while Yoongi scans the message, as he soundlessly types out a reply.

“Sorry,” Yoongi excuses. “My friend’s a lecturer. He sent Taehyung to help with one of his students and he’s having a crisis about it.”

For a long second, Jungkook feels nothing.

Yoongi claps Jungkook’s shoulder. “Keep at it,” he says. “You’ll get there. Don’t stress about it. It ain’t going anywhere, you know?”

In the solitary seconds after, Jungkook feels something ache unpleasantly under his ribs. Sour in his mouth. A little bit like realising how unimportant he is. A little bit like wishing he was just more.

“Jungkookie,” Taehyung sings into the speaker. “Good morning!”

“Hey, hyung.” Jungkook wipes at his eyes, throat still scratchy from sleep. Since he’d been sick that night, Taehyung has taken to calling him every morning. Even though Jungkook knows Taehyung is barely functioning before 9AM, he calls at 7:30 in the morning, every morning. “Good morning.”

Jungkook dislikes—hates, rather—how much he looks forward to these calls. Hates that he depends so much on Taehyung when Taehyung has his own life, his own work, that he has another student he has to look after anyway. Maybe he does this for everyone. It’s a lovely thing, Jungkook tries to tell himself. He likes it. It’s nice. Taehyung is a wonderful person. Jungkook is just bitter and so, so selfish.

“How are you?” Taehyung says, voice bright and warm even through the mobile speaker. “Did you sleep well? Have you eaten yet?”

“I haven’t got out of bed yet,” Jungkook admits. “I slept okay. Did you, hyung?”

“My roommate was out and I had no one to cuddle with,” Taehyung admits. “Useless. But I mean, it was peaceful. You know when the weather is dick-freezing cold but you’re warm under like, six blankets? Perfect. Great sleeping weather. Would recommend.”

Jungkook laughs, and Taehyung keeps talking and talking, and Jungkook speaks sometimes. It’s nice. It’s always nice, hearing Taehyung speak.

“Hyung,” Jungkook asks, that little sour feeling in the back of his mouth. “Why do you call me, every morning?”

“Because I wanna hear your voice in my cold, lonely mornings, Jungkookie,” Taehyung whines, pout audible, and Jungkook just stings a little. Taehyung is the closest thing he has to a friend. He shouldn’t want to keep him to himself, but he does.

So Jungkook forces a laugh and Taehyung says his goodbyes, and when he hangs up Jungkook feels the lightness in the air crash back down on him, like being pushed underwater, the pressure always building.

That day, Taehyung has class with Jungkook. In person, Jungkook can’t force words past the lump in his throat, so he busies himself taking notes, trying to act invested in the class.

It ends fifty minutes too soon.

“Hey, Jungkook?” Taehyung asks softly, “did I do something wrong? Are you mad at me? I’m sorry.”

“What?” Jungkook’s head snaps to Taehyung so fast he hears wind gush past his ears. “No, no, I’m not mad at you.” He is, just a little, but it’s himself. It’s all him and his bitter selfishness. He’s mad at the thought that there are people besides Jungkook, people more special to Taehyung than him, even though it’s normal and Jungkook is in the wrong. He’s mad at himself, maybe, more than anything. “Why would you think that?”

“You won’t speak to me,” Taehyung whines, tugging hard on his arm. “Why?”

Jungkook clenches his jaw, suddenly ashamed. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you.”

“You so are,” Taehyung grumbles. “Did someone say something? Is it because Yoongi told you about how I set his socks on fire once? Because that was a total accident, I even bought him a new pair, I get it, socks are important, and—”

“Are you, like, tutoring first years other than me?” Jungkook says softly, praying Taehyung won’t hear but he does. He always does. Taehyung is silent for a long second, and Jungkook tugs on his hands. “Sorry. That’s—”

“Jungkook, are you . . . ?” Taehyung is grinning now, smirking, as he stops walking. “Are you jealous?”

Jungkook’s face feels too hot. His ears are burning. “No.”

“You are!” Taehyung yells, laughing hard. He pulls Jungkook to his chest, laughing right in his ear. “Oh my God, you’re so jealous, aww.”

“’M not,” Jungkook mutters, but Taehyung just squeezes him tighter.

“You so are,” Taehyung says warmly, releasing him. “No. I only help you with Creative Writing. Namjoon is my hyung, you know—Professor Kim? Well, he’s my roommate’s boyfriend. He noticed you always sat alone and asked if I’d come and sit with you, basically.”

Taehyung smiles, ear to ear, the picture of joy. Jungkook still feels bad, but Taehyung scratches his chin, still cooing about Jungkook being jealous.

“There’s only you, Jungkookie,” Taehyung sings, slinging an arm over his shoulders. “Besides, you’re the most fun to be with anyway. You know, my hyung, for theatre, Seokjin? He’s so annoying, and . . ." 

Taehyung feels a little bit like a lighthouse, sometimes, guiding Jungkook home.

Journey 4

The next time they meet, it’s by accident.

Jungkook is standing in the mess hall, watching the rain pelt down outside. It’s a little warmer today, but the rain would feel like ice. When he was younger, he used to run into it during the summer with his brother. When he walked home from school he used to keep an eye trained on the heavens, waiting so intently for the rain to start.

Walking through it alone, Jungkook thinks, feels a little bit too much like a very blatant metaphor. So he waits.

“Looks a mighty lot like rain,” Taehyung announces, appearing beside him. Jungkook startles, just a little, because he always does, and Taehyung grins at him. Makes his smile noise. “You waiting for it to stop?”

“Hey, hyung,” Jungkook says, turning back to look out the window. The campus green looks like a pond, now. Water soaking the grass. The brick path looks dangerously slippery. “Yeah.”

“Wanna run through it with me?” Taehyung asks, looking a little evil. “I used to do it all the time.”

“I did that,” Jungkook says, smiling to himself. Junghyun used to hold his pudgy little hand, squealing as they ran in circles in their backyard. Jungkook can’t tell if everything was simpler back then, or if it was a simpler matter to ignore things.

When he glances back at Taehyung, he remembers that word he can’t think of. The one that exists for Taehyung, a little, or maybe Taehyung exists for that word. There is one. Jungkook can feel it sometimes, on the tip of his tongue. A word just for him.

“Let’s go,” Taehyung says. “Come on. It’s not that cold today.”

Jungkook doesn’t protest, the smile coming easily and Taehyung takes his hand. A soft gesture, done in absolute certainty. Reassuring.

They run.

Taehyung shrieks, the downpour is icy cold and Jungkook laughs at him. They dash across the green, bricks slippery and a health hazard, but neither of them care, not enough.

They run down the university’s front drive, sheltered by the canopies of the trees they have growing, tall and proud, completely spent. Taehyung grins, and Jungkook grins back, frozen to the bone but warm where Taehyung looks at him.

Jungkook wonders how he’d describe the way the rain runs down Taehyung’s face in rivulets, cutting a path down the smooth planes of his face. How his hair is plastered down, how his lashes hang heavy, carrying perfect droplets of clear, icy water. Jungkook thinks of how he could write pages and pages about Taehyung. A little indulgently, he wants to write books for Taehyung, about how he looks, loose and carefree, even frozen to the bone with a winter downpour. Like a movie, but real. Magical. Enchanting. Marvellous.

“We’ll get sick,” Jungkook says instead, painfully soft. Taehyung laughs, breathy and deep. Everything Taehyung does is infectious, spreading out. Looking at Taehyung, his clothes are plastered down, and Jungkook can see the sharp outlines of his collarbones, long and curved. Like wings, Jungkook thinks.

Water drops off Taehyung’s chin, falling slow and meaningfully. A little magic. Jungkook reaches out to catch a drop on his fingertip.

It’s useless, really. It’s gone in an instant, rolling away. Human fingertips not made to catch things so delicate.

Taehyung’s hand catches his, still hanging in the air, empty. Jungkook wonders what he should say. What he should tell Taehyung. Something about how he only ever thinks of him. How his bones are hollow. How he is so, so beautiful. How Jungkook wishes he had a name for everything he feels for Taehyung, so abstract and distant and so consuming.

Taehyung’s hand, even in the cold, is warm.

He’d thought Taehyung was loud and rambunctious, but he is quiet, now. He traces a palm up to Jungkook’s shoulder, and even though he’s cold enough to shiver, it feels a little scorching.

Jungkook forgets, so often, that Taehyung can be quiet like this. Silent and tactile, so soft around the edges. The kind of boy who runs, hand in hand, into the rain. The kind of boy who makes everything so simple for Jungkook, in moments like this.

“Hey, Jungkook,” Taehyung starts, just a whisper louder than the roar of the rain. “Can I . . . can I kiss you?”

Jungkook wishes, like so often, that there was more to him. That he could speak freely and confidently, that he always knew what to say. But he doesn’t. He isn’t. He doesn’t know how to say yes the way he wants to so he says nothing at all. So he nods. He nods so quickly and vigorously droplets splatter them both from his hair and Taehyung laughs.

And then they kiss. It’s not like the movies or the books or the way people describe it. He can still feel Taehyung smiling, taste his laughter, but it’s just lips touching. Just skin on skin. It’s so beautifully simple, really, kind of relieving that there’s no fireworks, no Eureka moment. The word Jungkook looks for to describe Taehyung doesn’t appear to him. But comfort does. A little bit of love, too.

Maybe he’s always wanted to feel Taehyung’s laughter, soft and warm, against his face. Maybe he’s always wanted to be pressed so close to Taehyung he feels his laughter hum through his songbird ribs into Jungkook’s. Maybe he’s always waited to be able to tilt his head up just a little, silent and shy and unsure, and have Taehyung search out his lips in answer.

“I like you,” Jungkook whispers, and he doesn’t know if the rain swallows up the words. Doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, really, if Taehyung hears him at all. “I like you a lot.”

But he hears Taehyung hum, a deep, content rumble behind his smile, and thinks that just maybe, he did.

“I’m so cold,” Taehyung shivers, turning the tap on to hot water only. “Oh my God. Why did we do that?”

Jungkook is shivering too hard to answer. Jungkook’s dorm had been their first port of call. The dorm hot water service is spotty at best, but today it warms quickly, and Jungkook feels the sigh Taehyung lets out in the cubicle next door.

Taehyung wears Jungkook’s clothes and they huddle in his tiny bed for warmth. Taehyung pulls out his computer and they watch anime. It feels like nothing has changed when everything has. Taehyung doesn’t let go of Jungkook’s hands, rubbing them to get them warm.

“Hey, Jungkook?” Taehyung smiles at him, about to leave. “Can I kiss you again?”

Jungkook grins so wide he feels his ears lift. Taehyung giggles against his lips.

Journey 5

The year starts to draw to a close. Finals loom around the corner and the snow falls in earnest.

Taehyung studies in Jungkook’s dorm, mostly. Because it’s closer than his apartment and he’s charmed the security guard so well he’s invited in every time he’s near.

He kisses Jungkook’s cheek when he’s not looking. Kisses Jungkook’s lips when he goes home.

The whole thing has Jungkook feeling a little dizzy. Like the atmospheric pressure around him has lifted. Like there’s so much space inside his head.

Sometimes they go to the library, where the heaters are better and every student there ends up asleep. Taehyung kicks his feet under the table and Jungkook kicks back. They don’t work much at all.

“Hey, hyung?” Jungkook asks, when they pause on their walk home. Jungkook turns right to go to his dorm. Taehyung goes straight. “Can I kiss you?”

Taehyung beams, leaning in, hands holding Jungkook’s face and it’s nice. It’s always nice. Taehyung against his lips feels a little bit like seeing the flash of green on the horizon. Like staying up for the dawn.

Taehyung licks at his lower lip and Jungkook parts his lips, unsure, and Taehyung laughs at him, just a little, before licking into his mouth and it’s nice. Everything with Taehyung is just nice. Jungkook thinks about how they’re kissing outside in the dark, how anyone could see, but Taehyung is a comfort and he can tell himself, just this once, that they’re alone out here.

Taehyung kisses his forehead when they part.

Jungkook wonders if maybe that author was right, back then. Maybe Jungkook’s vocabulary is poor. Because everything they do, Taehyung and him, is just nice.

5

“Do you ever, like, read poetry, and want to tell him, ‘dude, sex isn’t that great, man’?”

Jungkook feels himself choke on air. Beside him, Taehyung taps his pen onto his page in thought. If anything, he looks studious. Pensive. A little bit like he expects Jungkook to know.

Jungkook swallows. “Dunno.”

Taehyung looks up at him, eyebrows raised. Jungkook feels himself shrink in his seat. All through high school, virginity seemed like a curse. Jungkook never really thought about it, still doesn’t, not really—but he does feel a little inadequate, sometimes. University students have a reputation. Jungkook gets it, he really does—he’s just never been close enough to anyone to ever consider it.

“Damn, I just ruined all your expectations.” Taehyung ruffles his hair, smiling. “Sorry about that.”

Taehyung, of course, would know. Taehyung seems close to everyone, in that wonderful way of his. Confident in his skin.

Jungkook thinks, why not?

“It seems fun,” Jungkook admits, and prays that his ears aren’t bright red. “In theory.”

“It’s fun,” Taehyung assures him. “Just, like . . . you’re not going to have an out-of-body experience or anything. Unlike this guy, who thinks you’re gonna discover the secrets of the universe by coming once.”

The silence is very heavy, Jungkook muses.

“If you ever want to, you can ask me whenever,” Taehyung says, breezy and calm, like it’s no big deal. Like Jungkook doesn’t feel his face get so hot he can see the red on his cheeks.

“Okay.”

“Is that a, uh, ‘okay, I’ll keep that in mind’ or an, um, y’know, ‘okay, let’s do it now’ sorta thing?”

“Um.” Jungkook stares at his page. “I . . . I dunno. I mean, sure? I don’t—I don’t mind, either way, um . . . yeah.”

Taehyung’s voice seems very tight, suddenly, so Jungkook looks over at him, wanting to crawl into a hole and disappear. “Um, sure. We can, uh . . . we can do that.”

Jungkook wants to fan his face. He feels mortified.

“Do you want to?”

Jungkook nods, mutely, awkward and embarrassed so deep he doesn’t know how he’ll ever look anyone in the eye, ever again, and Taehyung, at least, looks the same way. Ruddy pink stains his face. The white collar of his shirt glows next to the red up his throat.

“Okay.” Taehyung says. 

“Okay.”

Jungkook doesn’t really know what he expects sex to be like, but he doesn’t feel scared about it. A little weirded out, maybe, that he, at age 19, somehow managed to reach that milestone in life, but it’s Taehyung, so he doesn’t know what else to feel.

Taehyung keeps lube and condoms in the bottom of his bag. Jungkook tries not to think about why.

Taehyung is slow and gentle and golden all over, when he takes off his shirt. He keeps talking, asks Jungkook about anything and everything, wonders aloud about aliens. Jungkook laughs a little at that.

The entire thing is slow-moving, softer than Jungkook ever expected. Jungkook pushes Taehyung’s hair back and he makes faces at him until they’re in fits of laughter. When he kisses down Jungkook’s neck it’s feather-light.

Jungkook doesn’t have a profound revelation with it, but the first thing Taehyung says afterwards is, ‘do you think computers have a mind of their own but they pity us so much they keep in line?’ and that’s rather profound.

They wash up and shampoo each other’s hair. Jungkook gives Taehyung ears and Jungkook gets a Mohawk, everything smelling like the public supply of shampoo and the bar soap Jungkook buys. Jungkook hasn’t been around anyone naked since he was 4 and being washed in the same bath as his brother, but it’s not as scary as he thought.

Taehyung is warm as a person. When he wears Jungkook’s clothes and sleeps in the same bed, he’s warmer.

Jungkook doesn’t have his word yet.

But nice seems to be enough.

6

Jungkook tells himself it’s the weather.

Tells himself it’s homesickness.

Tells himself it’s just his personality.

Tells himself it’s just because he hasn’t slept.

There are no classes, and his exams aren’t for another two weeks. There’s no reason to get out of bed, anyway, he tells himself. Besides, he’s felt like this before. He used to set alarms hours in advance, so he’d wake up and turn them off, spending hours in bed before he gathered the will to get up.

The day turns golden with the afternoon, and Jungkook feels sick from it all.

Jungkook feels that bubble under his sternum, pressing down on him. It makes breathing hard, makes everything seem a little forced. He remembers when he first noticed the feeling, in high school. He’d done what he’s doing now; stayed in bed all day, watching the colours change on his white ceiling.

He always gets a little sad when the weather changes. He knows this. He always feels a little homesick for the salty air of Busan, of the winds where the smell of the piers would blow into his classroom. He misses speaking in satoori, misses his brother.

And he knows he’s just a dull person. Knows it’s easy for him to get sentimental, get sad. It’s not a big deal, he wants to tell himself, but the idea of speaking feels too heavy. Too dark.

Jungkook wishes he’d feel the need to write, but even that aches. Just a little tiredness, in his bones. Tired of this. Of himself.

It’s a hard feeling to describe. Most days it just feels a little heavy. Like the air is too thick or his body is too large to move. But today, it feels poignant. He can taste petrichor on his tongue, and he thinks about telling Taehyung this.

When he was younger, he used to walk home from school. The wet season was harsh and humid, and his mother gave him a clear umbrella to use. In middle school, alone, he used to stare up at the heavy, dark clouds, taste the rain in the air and wait. Count down the seconds to the downpour. Want to say, I’m here, I’m ready, please rain for me.

He wonders if the weather is like that now, in Seoul. The winter sky is usually grey, anyway.

He can hear his phone buzz where he left it in the pocket of his jeans, last night. Someone calling him. Maybe Taehyung. Probably Taehyung. Jungkook doesn’t really want to answer. Not like this.

Jungkookie, his mother used to say, stop writing, would you?

Over time she started to say, Jungkook, stop moping.

Jungkook, stop being lazy.

Jungkook, you can’t be like this.

What is wrong with you, Jungkook?

It doesn’t particularly hurt, remembering it. Her voice is faded now, one of the many memories in his head. Aches, a little, like pressing on a bruise. Everything’s a little subdued and a little too much, today. His mother used to be good at getting him to ignore it. Get him to keep working, regardless.

He’s just a sad person by nature, maybe. Because every time he remembers waiting for rain, he remembers the heavy, stifling sadness of waiting for hours and hours and not a single drop falling. Remembers staring up and saying, please. Please rain.

It’s that feeling, he decides. Funny, how he imagines telling Taehyung this, even though he knows he never will.

He knows it’s not just the hypergraphia. Knows it’s not the epilepsy. There’s something wrong in him. Something that makes him so tired of just being here, of waiting for rain. It’s not a violent pain, not today. Sometimes, he feels it so acutely he wants to scream. Wants to cry, in that ugly, ugly way he can never ever tell anyone about. Today is just long and heavy. Something under his skin, heavy and stagnant, like the puddles after a storm.

Funny, how he always thinks of rain.

He wants to write, but it’s too much, too hard. He traces words onto his skin instead.

Just an earthquake, he writes. Just a rumble. Some old, painful thing, reaching up. Aching to be heard.

His phone buzzes again. Jungkook wants to answer it. Wants to hear Taehyung’s voice say anything.

He doesn’t move.

He wonders what his mother would say, if she saw him now. They haven’t spoken in so long, he can’t imagine what kind of things she’d want to tell him. Maybe tell him to sleep better hours, tell him it’d make him more normal.

Jungkook isn’t sure, not really. He doesn’t really want to be. Because waiting for her to compliment him, say the words, I am so proud of you, Jungkookie, is like waiting for that rain, all alone on the sidewalk. Waiting so intently, a little desperately, and nothing ever coming.

Sleep comes easily, when he’s like this. The hours bleed into one another, everything too hard except staying in his bed. There’s a hand running through his hair and Jungkook, in his heart, aches.

“Hey,” Taehyung says, kneeling in front of his bed, soft and warm and loving all over.

“Hey,” Jungkook returns, and it feels like the wind rushing out of him.

He’s selfish, like this. He’s young and should know better, really, than to let himself wallow in it like he is. Taehyung’s hand his warm and he tugs it, rolling onto his other side so Taehyung can crawl into bed behind him.

Tired, he traces on Taehyung’s arm, where it wraps around his waist. I’m sorry.

He doesn’t know if Taehyung understands, but maybe he doesn’t really need to.

7

Exams are a numb affair, after everything. Students prepare to go home and Jungkook does, too. Yoongi grades his music and tells him good job in person. Jungkook smiles and thanks him. Prepares to probably never have Yoongi as his teaching assistant ever again.

He doesn’t see Professor Kim. There’s a part of him that wants to, after everything, knowing he sent Taehyung to look after him—but it’s impossible to find him and Jungkook doubts he’d even be able to tell him anything worthwhile.

He misses Taehyung.

It’s not that he doesn’t see him. Taehyung runs up to him on campus, pulls him into hugs, says hello. They don’t talk about the day Taehyung found in bed. It’s not that they shy away from it; Taehyung tries. Jungkook clams up, says nothing.

There’s a part of Jungkook that clings to the feeling of we were meant to be. That’s just fairy tales. Just myths. Because he wants more. Wants to have Taehyung always, even when he’s like this. Even when he lies in bed all day, writes compulsively, has too much or nothing at all inside his head.

Taehyung appears at his door in a storm, sopping wet. Jungkook feels his heart pinch, ache, and yearn.

Taehyung has taken some clothes and never given them back, but Jungkook doesn’t mind. He gives him more, too, and tucks him into Jungkook’s bed.

“Cuddle me,” Taehyung pouts. “Please?”

Jungkook deflates. Climbs in beside him. Taehyung is warm and comforting and everything Jungkook can’t ever, ever ask for.

Taehyung presses kisses to his cheeks and nose, says nothing, and Jungkook wishes, just once, that he would. 

It hurts a little bit, to have Taehyung’s word come to him so suddenly.

Selcouth.

8

Jungkook goes back to Busan tomorrow, and Taehyung spends the day with him.

The whole affair is soft and pungent with longing. Jungkook walks Taehyung out.

The night is clear and cool, and Taehyung turns to Jungkook with stars in his eyes and Jungkook forgets, just for a second, how it hurts.

Taehyung’s hands are bigger than Jungkook’s, and when they settle on Jungkook’s cheeks, he can feel Taehyung’s fingertips brushing his hairline, palms warm.

“Jungkook,” Taehyung says, face warm and open, voice serious. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Jungkook remembers when Taehyung had asked him to kiss him, how he’d been so shy, so caught up in the moment that he hadn’t been able to do anything except nod. He still feels the shyness, thrumming through him, rattling him like a leaf—but it’s different, now. Now, Jungkook feels just a little solid, a little strong, leaning against Taehyung, and he can push it away, just enough.

Jungkook is filled with warm, and he feels something inside him dissolve, too peaceful for anything of this magnitude.

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask that,” Jungkook says, and basks in the way Taehyung beams when Jungkook sounds confident. “Took your time.”

Taehyung laughs, and Jungkook thinks for a second that Taehyung will lean in for a kiss, but he’s wrong, and it doesn’t matter anymore. Taehyung wraps his arms around Jungkook’s torso, laughing loud and unashamed against his temple, warm and loving and really, this is what the fairy tales were all about.

Taehyung, in some way, is the perfect fit for Jungkook’s arms. A little ironically, Jungkook thinks of them like two Lego pieces, clicking together. It’s dumb and the exact sort of metaphor Taehyung would use, but it makes Jungkook’s chest feel warm.

“When did you get so confident?” Taehyung sighs, soft and content and very proud. He leans back, a little, just enough that Jungkook can look at him properly, see how pink and glowing his cheeks are, how his smile splits his face. Jungkook just grins back, knowing he must look the same way, and dives forward, pressing his lips to Taehyung’s, feeling completely and utterly sure, for once in his life.

They’re laughing and smiling too much for it to be anything that consists properly of a kiss, but it doesn’t matter, really. Taehyung rubs their noses together, dorky and silly, and Jungkook cackles right into his face.

“Hmm, boyfriend,” Taehyung hums, hugging Jungkook tighter with the word. “Feels nice.”

“I’m glad you think so, boyfriend,” Jungkook returns, and Taehyung outright squeals, jumping up and down with Jungkook in his arms.

Really, Jungkook thinks, he came into all this with his expectations too high. Because Kim Taehyung, with his delicate bird bones and deep voice went right under his radar, and now he’s here, filling with Jungkook with warmth.

Taehyung, who looks at him with a soft gaze, a little watery and emotional, utterly like him, that makes Jungkook peck his lips again. Taehyung knocks their heads together, mussing Jungkook’s hair.

The softness reserved just for Jungkook, that’s persisted even after coming to find him sitting in the dark, in front of his notebook, or that’s wiped him up after coming down with nausea—that one that came to find him on the bad days, the good days, and still looks at him like that.

Realistically, Jungkook knows that Taehyung isn’t magic. That Taehyung won’t stop the bad days or the writing or the epilepsy. Knows that Taehyung can’t eliminate the need for his medication, knows that Taehyung isn’t a substitute for medicine. Taehyung won’t put and end to the bad parts of Jungkook, but they both know this.

But Taehyung, Jungkook is sure, will make the bad days better. Will make the writing better, a little. Will make him feel better about the epilepsy.

And maybe that’s all he really needs, Jungkook supposes, walking back to his dorm completely wrapped up in Taehyung’s embrace because holding hands aren’t enough, and Jungkook can’t even disagree.

There’s no such thing as a happy ever after. Really. Life has ups and downs, good days and bad days. It’s just a fact. It’s just a trope of fiction parents tell their children to make the world seem a little brighter, let them believe in something as intangible and distant as true love.

True love may not exist, Jungkook decides. Happily ever afters don’t, either. But Jungkook thinks, as they walk down the campus’ main lane as the air gets colder but he gets warmer, listening to Taehyung talk his ear off about how many dates they need and about the places they need to go—he thinks, softly and certainly, that he may have just come as close as one can get.

“Hey, Taehyung?”

“Yes, Jungkookie-boyfriend?”

Jungkook grins, holding him tighter. “I love you.”

Taehyung coos, loud and kind of rude, and Jungkook’s face burns but it’s okay, because Taehyung jostles them together. “I love you, too,” he says, softly, grinning. And when it isn’t enough he says it louder, and then he yells it to the empty campus.

And it really, really is, for them, the closest thing that exists to a happily ever after.