Read table of contents (chapter 1) for description.

An ao3 fic of mine that I'm reposting here. Please enjoy :)

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No one ever made a better life by being someone else, did they?

Taehyung has his teeth grit just to keep his jaw shut in place, forbid it speaks out the boiling pyre of jealousy in his chest. "Hey hyung?" he draws in a long breath, pastes a libel of a smile before stepping into Yoongi's office.

"Your boyfriend dropped flowers for you again."

"He has a name, Tae." Yoongi gets up from the table like it's a fervid hassle but the bounce in his step as he snatches the pretty hand-tied posy arragement of multi-colored gerberas. The upward tug of his lips unconcealed "Try saying J-I-M-I-N."

"I have work." Is all he spares, turning around the cubicle to exit for his office whilst wondering why he's somehow  always the fellow marcher in his friend's love parade.

Taehyung, in all senses of the phrase, has always been a cloud-walker. Has always flown like a storm. Fallen like rain.

He's known his happy days like sunshine, and sombre ones like cacophony of thunder. Nothing more, nothing less.

Nothing intermediate.

That's all he's known and been. The Top Thrill Dragster roller coaster that will ascend slow but steady and then drop suddenly with the heart disgorged from mouth.

Nothing intermediate.

He knows some such. He knows how overbearing a cloud walker can be to one who loves laying on the ground. Does not render anyone wrong. But factually speaking, where are the ground and earth meeting?

It's the fact that he would look at someone like Jungkook, the solo brightest star even in the pinnacle of a supernova, and know that he could single mindedly crawl the circumference of the earth scrape-kneed if the boy even breathed in that favor.

Yet another teeth tittering wound is to know that what he feels is not returned.

What he feels... would be impossible to rejoinder, since he is almost certain it is bordering on occult to covert such strong emotions for another human (even if the human in concern is the most beautiful combination there is of the four elements).

And a part of him, the devil on the left shoulder, would selfishly keep Jungkook. Hidden in the confines of the dermite ridden cottage of his too-little heart. Would light lanterns on his naked palm, just so the littlest dash of darkness cannot surf near the light of his own life.

It was a good plan. And it worked wonders for himself.

Until it didn't.

Until it was the Guilt-banshee on his right shoulder showing him the mirror. Yes, gatekeeping Jungkook from the world and occupants would a cert be spring in the middle of snow for Taehyung. But what about Jungkook?

Is it not unfair to keep Jungkook from feeling this high in love? Falling this hard in love?

Maybe out of an unhinged outrage of unsaid veto, maybe from the sheer unadulterated love for him; Taehyung decides that he wants Jungkook to be free of him. From his ropes that strangle the precious boy in the name of affection, and still mope around dissatisfied.

He wants Jungkook to find love like Taehyung did, and feel like Taehyung did, crave like Taehyung did.

Ache like Taehyung did.

In these patchworks of yes and no and maybe and maybe nots. It's the banshee that had won.

Taehyung had decided to free Jungkook.

~

"Jungkook, I'm sorry." Taehyung had squeezed his eyes, bit his tongue like it was a slip-up.

As if he hadn't spent the entire previous night and better part of the day concocting diction to articulate his feelings without coming out as a jerk, or worse, making Jungkook feel like one.

He had expected Jungkook to be a little more confused, a little more questioning. For his glitter eyes to go all round and big in a stance of alert as they do.

Much to his downtrodden funk, it was not so. Jungkook had closed the book that had laid in his lap for an hour (only for Taehyung to realise later how not a single page had been turned since), and.. had gulped. "Why?"

He had uttered with so much aversion, that Taehyung had to re-think if he had already, in the disconsolate stupor of his, dropped the bomb on his precious. That Jungkook had somehow already known what the apology at the prefix of his confession had been for.

"I don't think we should do this anymore."

He doesn't remember much then, his brain had been so muddled by the internal screams that his own voice was zooming away from him.

"D-don't think... we s-should do this." Even though it was a schlocky replica of Taehyung's own words, it's Jungkook's punctuation in it that didn't sit right with him. There's a scratch that it induces somewhere behind his throat. He clears it loudly. "Should do.. Us?"

"Y-yes." He clears his throat again for a good measure. Half to rid that vexing scratch, half hoping his voice won't break. At least not as bad as the heart. "But I want you to understand why I'm doing what I am."

There's a film over Jungkook's eyes, as though he blanketed all the stars that reside in them and put them all to sleep. "O-okay."

"I love you. You know that, right?"

Jungkook had nodded promptly. Taehyung had never hated himself more than then when he quelled the itch to reach forward and hold Jungkook's dainty hands that were visibly trembling. But then he had looked up and there was an unmitigated calm on his face despite it being unusually lackluster.

"It's just that I love you so much, so unhealthily fierce, that.. it's started to scare me."

He isn't sure if he had whispered the latter part of his sentence or was it the fuzz in his system.

"It is scary b-because I feel like my l-love..the fire of it.. that is supposed to keep you warm, is starting to burn scars on you. The lapels have gotten too high and-"

The words that had left his mouth were the epitome of foolheaded bullshit, he thinks.

But, there was Jungkook.. the precious boy, titleholder of his smarting heart.. Looking at him so silently responsive that一 Taehyung.

Taehyung felt his eyes water. "A-and-. I wouldーw-would never ever invalidate your feelings but.. It's not how love should be.. You're just.. N-not as in love with me."

"I-i am not?"

"P-please.." he didn't know what he had pleaded for then. Please don't hate me. Please fight. Please be near. Please love me. "Please u-understand.. I'm becoming this toxic heft in this relationship that-"

"Don't-" In the sniffle-long pause that Taehyung took, he had heard Jungkook mutter. It's the most unsound his mellow voice had ever come out. Only added to the abhor Taehyung had for himself and all the things he wished to have. "D-don't say that."

"I don't w-wanna pull a cliche jerk 'it's not you, it's me' but.. It's never you at fault, baby. You are and will be, my baby."

Jungkook's hand fisted the cushion in a death-grip and Taehyung had to look away.

"Would you l-like to.. Like t-to.." Every time a stutter interrupted Jungkook's sentence, Taehyung had this pressing urge to scamper for its assistance twice over and tear every hindrance down to the skeleton of it. Even if it was him himself.

"W-would you like to give me another chance.. to be better?"

Taehyung's heart broke a second time that night.

"NO. There is not one thing in the world better than you!" He had rushed to speak, tumbled over his own words and lisped out. Heart oozing inside his ribs at the mere thought the Jungkook could so much as even think himself wee short of anything perfect.

Jungkook's eyes, that had long exhausted any remnants of light, blew wide in an urgency when Taehyung's cheek had felt a pent line of moisture beneath his eyes. Was he breaking Jungkook's heart and crying about it?

"Hyungie.. I u-understand." Jungkook's fingers, always that reminded him of those little wool dolls his grandma used to knitーsoft, assuaging and homeーhad instantly come to wipe it off. "P-please don't cry... ever."

Ironic.

Because he says he understands, but the tremble in his voice and the downtick of the lips screamed betrayal. Because he asks him not to cry but his own nose is red with the harsh sniffs of tears he himself is holding back.

That night, Taehyung had spluttered apologies then, Jungkook had chanted them back with equal vigor.

He had held Jungkook in his arms like a beast rattling the bars of the dungeon he's held captive in. But instead of jostling it to breakage and free himself, he pulls the bar into captivity.

Jungkook had curled in tighter, only to warble sorries in Taehyung's neck with fervor as if, if the world was to end this moment, he would choose this as his last word.

He had no idea what Jungkook would be remorseful about. Because in all the possible theories that Taehyung's self-mutilating brain could come up with, it was him to blame for.

It was Taehyung destructively functioning on all-or-none principle. Where he's roping between only sky-highs and rock bottoms, asking his boy for a bleed-yourself-dry love or walk away.

Never intermediate.

Funnily enough, it's another 4am of Taehyung scrolling through old chats and photographs like he hasn't inflicted enough pain on himself  already, knifing at the sore skin so the wounds never get to scab, he pauses.

Reads that one, completely random, uncontexted chat over and over till it engraves into his lungs...  He goes still. Benumbed.

And in the fleeting grey clouds, suddenly a thunderbolt of realization strikes him loud enough to deafen every thought he's ever had. Only one chiseled into his brain sayingー

Wait. What the fuck have I done?

~~~~~

There's no bad and good to someone. There's only bad and good to your revisions.

Somewhat like the easy-bruisers. Who wouldn't remember where they got the outlandish hue, the blue on talus that was accidentally discovered during a shower. But thinking of how it must be there, will remind of every mar they've ever experienced. Before they know, their conscious is whispering, remember that one time we almost died.

Taehyung would've laughed japingly at Yoongi's words. Perhaps throw a few jeers on top, had they not cut through his chest like a cleaver knife.

Because fuck was that true. The moment Taehyung had started seeing Jungkook in the light of a non-giver, it was all he could reflect on him.

It was then that he'd watch Jungkook's sleeping face blotched on his shoulder like a cotton ball with hitched breath every morning, learn the curves and slopes, kiss every mole, burst into tiny hearts and reform; yet always ending the admiration with a 'If only you knew what this feels like.'

"What do you know?" he still quibbles bitterly, because it'd be a bungle after all this mess to simply accept that he aches with every breath he takes. "Go sniff the flowers your boyfriend left for you." and tries the best to bite back.

"Jesus, you're a fucking child. No wonder Jungkook got annoyed." Yoongi chuckles, expecting the pillow Taehyung was holding to jam into his face, but turns his head from the TV screen when it doesn't.

He sees the other wobbly lipped and gloss-eyed, clutching the pillow tighter to his chest and staring at him like a dart to the board. Yoongi jumps to wrap his arms around Taehyung. "I'm sorry! Fuck, that was a horrible joke."

"He didn't." Taehyung buries his face into his shoulder and exhales. "Jungkook never got annoyed with me."

Yoongi soothes a hand on his nape. "I know buddy, I know."

"There's a reason I wanted you here tonight." He mumbles, pressing the balls of his palm over his eyelids.

"I figured. But I didn't want to press on it." He keeps his hand on the hair and smiles when Taehyung leans into it.

"Flowe- Jungkook loved- loves Marvel." He throws clueless asterisks. "And Black Widow releases tomorrow." He draws in a sharp breath. "Jungkook had tickets for the first evening show booked for us a month ago. He was so pumped, countdowning the days and-"

Yoongi holds his hand. It'd be baloney to say he guessed what the reason was. But he did guess what it'd be about. "Do you want to go watch it?"

"No. it's just that.. Ugh.. I am so stupid."

"I want you to keep me distracted because-" Yoongi winces at how aggressively Taehyung rubs his hands on his face. "I can't stop thinking about the possibilities."

"Possibilities of what?" he coaxes out as softly as possible.

"If Jungkook doesn't go, it'll break my heart because earlier he would never miss it for the world. B-but then thinking if he would go, I'm mad again because.. That was our date! He can't just go there alone! Or worse if he goes with someone-"

"You could just go to the movies and see for yours-"

"How petty do you think I am?"

"A lot actually."

Turns out Taehyung is not petty.

The movie was 8 pm and he had triumphantly kept himself engaged decorating his house for halloween two months advanced, gave Tanie a manicure, washed a town's worth of clothes and pitifully watched Black Widow on his computer.

The sand in the hourglass appears stagnant to Taehyung as he glances and glances at the clock unknowingly waiting for what, he isn't aware. It's at midnight he gets to feet, too jittery to be steady in his bed.

He tells himself he's going to drive around the block, clear his fuzzy head a little.

So it's unclear to himself why he's rounding the turn for the cinema, watching the lights to the poor building woefully flicker.

It's creepy when put to words, but every inch of the street seems like a phantom telegenic display of memories.

At the first window by the end of the road he sees himself on his second date.

Jungkook's hand shyly peeks out from his sweater paw and Taehyung was quick to slide his fingers between his. He can see how the phantom Jungkook simply lowers his head, doesn't smile, doesn't react, doesn't tighten the hold. Yet he sees the flaming tip of his ears and the lip bitten brutal into the teeth.

At the first gate he sees himself returning after The Grinch preview.

All flailing-handedly excited, he explains to phantom Jungkook the uncanny resemblance between Grinch's dog and Scooby-Doo. From the car windshield, Taehyung can see his phantom self growing increasingly aggravated in his self-indulgent mooting; only till Jungkook, who'd been silently watching him rant had paused back to peck him on the cheek suddenly.

He sees himself still, then chortle, and drag Jungkook to kiss him on every inch of his giggling dear face.

In the withdrawn alley right beside the cinema he sees himself after the midnight show of A Secret Love.

Jungkook is hiked up against the wall, his thighs around his waist like a belt. Even if it's a mirage he can feel the heat streetwide, Jungkook's soft gasps ringing in his ears every time the phantom Taehyung presses him between the wall and himself. They make out so vulgarly that he's surprised they managed to not get caught for public indecency.

He drives ahead to the main gate and sees himself entering for a movie he does not remember (they've watched too many).

With his hand inside the back pocket of Jungkook's jeans and his chin on the boy's shoulder, both waddle like ducks in line. But Taehyung gets his lace stuck in the jammed door and consequently falls backwards on his ass with a yelp. As he gets back up and dusts his jeans with tawdry curses, Jungkook has a tummy laugh, all bright and glitzy. Phantom taehyung tries to pout and turn back, but Jungkook hugs him tight and nudges their noses together; then bends down to blow lightly on the elbow that had barely scratched against the ground. 'Better now?' he had jawboned with a smile.

Fuck. Why is he doing this to himself? Was desisting the one good thing in his life for all the high-and-mighty bravado of selflessness not enough that his brain has painstakingly contrived an uglier ruinition for himself?

With state-of-the-art self loathing, he has his foot ready to jam down on the accelerator when he sees an unsettling memory broadcast. He tilts his head in confusion.

Besides the main entrance, on the sidewalk, phantom Jungkook leans against the wall alone. He has the biggest bucket of popcorn planted in a circle of one arm while the other shoves fistful popcorns in his mouth one after the other.

What has him appalled at this memory is phantom Jungkook's nose, even in the dim wavers of the light, twists into a sniffle一 red like the fire in the pits of his plunging stomach.

What has him almost pouncing over, ready to dive out of the car is when a silent tear rolls down the cheek until it looses it's path on the jaw.

Belatedly, breathlessly, life-ceasingly his tires screech to stop the moment he shakes his stupor and realises that this isn't a cruel figmant of his head.

This was Jungkook, flesh-and-bone, standing outside the cinema.

Crying.
~~~~

Words, they're like colored paints.

Dull colors, bright colors; barely there, prominent; cracked, fresh; insignificant or gaudy. What's your bad can be someone else's best.

He realises love isn't much different. The trilogy of analogy.

However, the undisputed crux of this all is that.. Words, love, paint. They all can blend.

They all can shine in your eyes, ring in your ears or throb in your heart and intermingle the way you like to see it. Beautyーeyesーbeholder or some shit like that.

It's the reason why sometimes something enormously toxic might start to seem rational. Something natural starts to seem toxic.

"Jungkook!" He watches Jungkook's eyes widen and rise from where they focused solely on the bucket of popcorn. And they're...barren.

As though the wildest gush of wind had extinguished the stars that charred the warmed in his eyes, not one by one, but altogether. Taehyung was that gush of wind, wasn't it?

"Taehyungie hyung!" Unlike himself, Jungkook hastily shelves his face in the fold of his arm and heavy-handedly wipes the tears on his face; redder than before when he 'composes' himself.

Taehyung's phony, rascal of that heart, tears the it's crack into two pieces, opening the barely healed cut. Because it doesn't take so much as a breath's time before he finds himself holding Jungkook's face between his hands like a frail glass.

"Why are you crying? What's wrong?" He's breathless already, and rightfully so, when the reason for his pensive sighs and hitched gasps, the only boy ever, stands looking like a broken doll. Broken doll. "W-why?"

Jungkook only stares. His red-rimmed eyes seem to search something in Taehyung's, and the elder even with  panic of a destructive kind rising in his bones, feels abstracted to stay still and let the other drink whatever he's looking for, for a while.

"B-baby why?" he whispers into the bubble of theirs, carefully thumbs off the silent tear that rolls out of Jungkook's eye.

"T-the.. the p-popcorn.. they w-were.. spicy."

Taehyung glances down at the half-eaten bucket, then back at the lying face; wipes the little popcorn hull that sticks to the corner of his lips with a finger that stays there in a drafty touch. "You have caramel popcorn, baby."

"W-would you, hyungie.. would you l-like some popcorn?" Taehyung doesn't know how to react.

It's the ridiculous asynchrony between Jungkook's words that snivel him an offer for popcorn (?) and his free hand that rises up to the front of Taehyung's t-shirt and fists in a grip as if he didn't, he'd fall backwards...that makes him look desperate.

Taehyung's eyes are only zeroing on the madcap hold on his t-shirt when he mutters. "N-no I think I'm okay."

"P-please.." A sound of something tearing comes out of Jungkook's throat. "P-please hyung..." He circles both his arms around the bucket that crumples around the rim with how tight it's held. "Why won't you take the popcorn? A-accept it, please. P-please."

Taehyung's world finds infinite more reasons to conk. Because Jungkook says 'accept it', but he looks 'accept me'. Seriously what the fuck has Taehyung done.

In a blitz of indignation Taehyung swats away the entire bucket and brings Jungkook to a hold in his arms, where he always should have been.

He feels like he's strangled at the crossroads of a paradoxーthe way he feels like he's breathed after two weeks of fatally deficient lungs; and the way feels breathless like never before.

Jungkook curls into him like he knows in a heartbeatー nuzzling into his shoulder, looping the searching arms around him, shrinking himself into withered a leafーinherently so flower of him.

"D-didn't have to throw the popcorn." he mumbles in faux protest, into his skin in little tickles.

"You're coming with me."

~~~~~~

For Taehyung, Jungkook has always been the still, subliminal water on the floor of a ship. Harmless, but characteristically present. Devoid of it, he's known grief like no other. He lays on a platform with Jungkook and spins on a sharp axis without him.

Never intermediate.

When they sit across the couch, way akin to the grim night that he'd rather have removed from the drawer of his recollections, Taehyung feels the static water in his ship sinking it.

Jungkook's fiddling with the hem of his sweater looking a little too embarrassed but far too endearing.

"Why were you crying?" he tries again, which now adds up to a total of one gazillion times now all through the car ride and the ten minutes of couch quiet. Taehyung has no intention of giving up.

"The movie was.. Pretty emotional."

"Black widow... was emotional." Taehyung's lips press together and he isn't sure if he's annoyed or smitten (he does know but shh).

"Y-yeah."

"Mhm, which part?" Jungkook's walking on a thin rope. Even though Taehyung's waiting to catch him, he's certainly gonna rock the path a little.

"The one where..." Wide eyes shifting glances across the room, Jungkook bites down on his lip. "A-actually I'd rather not give you spoilers."

"Baby, my flower." Taehyung is only slipping out the words sitting on the tip of his tongue for days now. "Why do you always do this?"

He sees the younger's nails start to pinch at his cheek, a nervous habit, if Taehyung's nocturnal thesis on him is of any accuracy. "I'm not a mind-reader, y'know."

Jungkook looks at him finally, a subdued bleakness accompanying the nervousness. And Taehyung hates nothing more than having to be the cause of his precious' jitters, but he himself stands on the cliff edge of now-or-never.

"You went there at eight, wondering if I would show up." He announces firmly, yet keeping the gentle stance intact. "Didn't you?"

Jungkook is a quiet talker. The one who keeps his voice soft and actions loud. A hundredth time that day, Taehyung curses himself for being too blinded to remember that earlier on.

Because Jungkook does that again when in reply he shrinks into himself more, but simultaneously scoots closer. The shoulders hunched up to his ears in a defensive stance, he peers at Taehyung so softly that it's written in bold italics in his eyes that 'I'd like to be held right now.'

Taehyung jumps right to it.

Collects the boy in his arms, sweeping in the little parts that were withering away too. Jungkook fits right into them like dew to the dawn.

"I-i.. I'll.. H-hyungie." Jungkook's breaking in his arms into littler and little pieces but when Taehyung tries to retreat in a panic, he holds tighter. Tighter than he's ever held him before. "I'll l-love you b-better, Taehyung hyung.. I'm s-sorry.. P-please. I, I-I promise."

'I'm so sorry for doing this to you.' Taehyung wants to say, but can't. He is thunder struck and tongue-tied. Not a good combination when all you want to do is kneel down in front of your love and take back all the insecurity you've imbibed in him in a trance of green-eyed mistrust.

He was mean for doing that to the one most wonderful human in the world. But he's human too and he was  hurt too. An injured fox always bites. For once he wanted Jungkook to fight. For him or with himー beggar can't be a chooser.

"I d-do." Jungkook tardily speaks a minute later glancing from his chest. He looks up, blinking doubled normal, pulling his most valiant pluck to underdam the waterworks. Taehyung can tell because he knows him like his own, but won't point.

"I do love y-you as much as you love me." he squares up his shoulder, acting like his eyes don't visibly sting. His jaw locks into something between certainty and determination. "P-perhaps more."

Taehyung runs a hand through his hair. "I-i know t-that baby. I knew it t-the moment you left."

Because it's true. That 4am in the morning when Taehyung's brain was reeling high on adrenaline and dismay, he had pressed his nose into the pillow and loathed himself.

He thought over how he's here holding tight the pillow who despite not being as soft, pliant and fragrant as Jungkook, still somehow satiates his need to hold something in his sleep. But what about Jungkook? Is there a pillow that'd rather hold him.

When he was at work ordering take-out for lunch, he wondered if Jungkook even has the desire to compile cute bento boxes anymore if it's only for one.

The littlest thingsーtying his tie, taking care of Yeontan, bringing souvenirs for him no matter where he visited, dressing up for him just 'cuz, stalking Taehyung's favorite drinks in his fridge, infusing the entire house with his favorite scents, making everything about Taehyung under the excusal shrug of 'I'm fine with anything.'ー made the silent biggest impacts.

"I wanted to be this bigger person, y'know. Walk out if you don't want me there in your life. If I wasn't enough and-"

"No, you were enough. I was just-"

"I'm not m-mad hyung. Not at you at least." Jungkook rubs his nose on Taehyung's shoulder. "I just.. I was so taken aback but then again, I wasn't surprised." he mutters, having taken a breath of composure to himself.

"I've lost many people in life that were important to me, y'know, just b-because I have trouble verbalising my sentiments for them." Jungkook deflates at that; gulps rubbing his palms on his jeans.

"And everytime Namjoon would tell me how it's fine, and-  and I'll find someone who might understand! No! I don't want someone who understands my fucked up methods! I want to mend my fucked up methods with you!"

Taehyung didn't know the human heart was capable of feeling gutted and honoured at the same time. "Baby-"

"I-It's killing me every second to t-think that.. You looked so..s-so broken and insecure that I might n-not love you as generously, a-and all I said is 'I u-understand?' Oh my g-god!" Jungkook flings off the hoodie he was pulling at, only for it to helplessly fall at the same place.

Taehyung laughs wetly. His vision blurs but somehow he sees their situation more clearly now.

Jungkook pinches his earlobe tensely. "I-I didn't even realize you were unhappy with me-"

"I wasn't unhappy with you." Taehyung is quick to correct. "Everyday with you was better than previous. I just.. You know how I am, living extremes and seeking extremes. It took way too long and wrong to understand that you were my intermediate."

He places a feather kiss on the crown of Jungkook's head and watches the other bonelessly melt into the brace with a sigh.

That's the windup for him.

While Taehyung will brand his affection with tactility—caressing, cuddling, squeezing; placing chancy unexpected kisses on Jungkook whenever and wherever, because touch is his adulation.

Jungkook will slowly slip beside him with a book in hand, and find the plenary satiety in the warmth of the proximity—silently basking in Taehyung's presence.

When Jungkook cries, Taehyung goes berserk. He would surge to the sun and back on an onslaught to extinguish the cause of tears, wipe them dry till the skin doesn't remember the sensation of ever being touched by anything watery.

When Taehyung cries, Jungkook will gently pull his head into his own chest and whisper complacent soothers, would rub his back with 'I'm here, hyung. Let it all out.'; and plaintly cry with him.

In days of the lowest, Taehyung will shut himself down inside the four-walled enclosure. Assuming that his wobbly state might be witnessed  and interpreted as cowardice. He fears the world.

Jungkook will go all out. Surround himself with legions to avoid facing a personality mirror that reflects on himself. He fears himself.

On occasions like anniversaries and birthdays, Taehyung is a radical like always. He plans the itinerary months prior. Establishes grandeur gestures with embellished presents. Basically carrying his heart on his hands for Jungkook.

Jungkook decorates his house for a stay-in, cooks and writes a song for Taehyung.

Taehyung chants his love confessions like a hymn. Reiterates and reiterates till he has the i love yous ringing in Jungkook's ears even in his absence. Pavlov'ified each sentence to end with it, every phone call, every text conversation. He wouldn't miss a chance to remind Jungkook of the abundance of love Taehyung is ready to shower him with.

Jungkook simply doesn't. He holds his confessions close to the heart and reveals them in the realest moments; or better yet once a day- when they're ready for sleep to pull them in, he would look straight in the eyes and whisper the words with utmost sincerity, perhaps one that has power over all Taehyung's chants.

"Don't apologise for something you're not, flower. I was just too much in my head." Taehyung mumbles, earnestly placing a little peck on Jungkook's nose thereafter. "I think I didn't take your rejection to meet my parents very nicely. Which is all on me, because you had every right to-"

Jungkook stares. Then gasps. Then groans.

"Hyung!" He throws a feeble punch on the elder's chest. "What is the matter with you!!" This time the punch-groan combo includes a tiny bite on his collarbone.

Taehyung yelps.

"I know bab-"

"No! Had you knownーughーDon't you know me?" He pouts, the one face he should know Taehyung could melt into a puddle for. "Of course I want to meet your parents!"

"Liar! You-"

"I said that because that's my innate response to socialising with anyone, is it not?" He slaps the chest and gets his wrist tugged softly with a second yelp. "I was extra anxious because I'm the worst at first impressions and your parents are people I actually want to impress on the first meeting. Dumb!"

"And who am I? A crystal ball? You could've just said that to me instead of breaking my heart like that!"

Jungkook goes eerily quiet and Taehyung bites his tongue at that. "I brought this on myself, didn't I?" he mutters with so much pain that it reverberates and seeps into Taehyung as well.

"No, I didn't mean that-"

"Hyungie." Jungkook climbs on top of Taehyung completely, cups his face and kisses his forehead. "This is the most I can love someone. So I don't think we have a scope for more or less, but I promise I will show my love better."

"All this time away from you-" even thinking about it, Taehyung has a chill down his body. "I got to appreciate the little things you did that blur into the background. I promise I'll be stubborn about my love for you, only flexible about the methods."

Two souls don't find each other by simple accident. And having Jungkook in his arms after almost losing him to unclarity, Taehyung realises one thing. Breaking things is easier. Keeping and healing them is what takes out of you but is still so worth it.

"I'd really like that." Jungkook pecks his mouth once, twice, then lands an entourage of kisses on his lips as if making up for the lost time. "I love you. So so much."

Taehyung's face tears in glee. He holds Jungkook's dear face in hands and kisses him properly, like he's missed. "I'd like to hear that more often."

"I'd like to say that more often. It'll be a shame on me if my only person isn't reminded of that."

Loving someone isn't the happy ending you'd think it is. Learning someone's love language is.

Learning to observe that, and yet authentically keeping the quirks of your own language is what marks the deal. 

"Can't believe I put us through so much-" Taehyung buries his head in Jungkook's shoulder this time and feels like the depth of the entire rundown boulder on his shoulders now that he isn't the one acting all brave. "My decisions are so bad. I give you all the rights for decision making in this household."

Jungkook knows Taehyung's gimmicks of humor to hide his aches, he lets him have it. "Well in the words of Mark Twain, 'Good decisions come from experience and experience comes from bad decisions'."

Taehyung presses his lips, unimpressed which triggers Jungkook into a wet emotional giggle fit. "Thank God, you're cute."

And just in a rocket high and submarine low, Taehyung found Jungkook as his middle sky.

His intermediate.

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An oldie but one of my dearest things that I've written.

Thank you X billion for sparing your time. xxxx