Chapter Text
The sound of the soles of his worn-out brogues smacking down against the concrete seems to echo through the whole street, accompanied by the quick, heaving gulps of air that he takes every few paces, his legs already feeling the sting of lactic acid as he runs.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, fuck!”
He barely has time to glimpse an old woman staring him down in disapproval from a nearby bench before she’s dissolving into the backdrop of streaky colours blurring around him, for his focus is on one single spot: the bus stop.
Late by an excruciating ten minutes would usually mean giving up: take a leisurely stroll to cut down on the thirty minute wait for the next bus; maybe even get a coffee on the way. But today is different, because in exactly one hour from now, Kim Taehyung has a date. Hold for applause. It’s, rather unfortunately, a tradition that he and Ryujin have had since they were freshmen. They’d find the first semi-elligible match for each other that they could within the first week of the first quarter of the year, and they’d set up blind dates for each other. And they’re always historically, hilariously awful, in the perfect way to get them to loosen up for the new year. It’s also proven to be the best way to get Taehyung out of the weird, shuttered funk he gets in with new people, worst at the beginning of the year.
Catching sight of the looming back of the off-white bus that his butt is supposed to be in right at that very moment, he doesn’t let up his pace, pushing on faster; feeling the wind half carry him along and half push him backwards.
“Mother… fucker,” he breaths out as the red brake lights go cheerfully on, taunting him. But now he’s started running at this maniacal speed, he can’t seem to stop, just watching the children on the ad pasted on the back of the bus for a nearby daycare taunt him as they shrink further and further away. The vehicle is already turning the corner onto the next block when Taehyung finally makes it, head spinning and lungs heaving, to the bus stop.
He drops his satchel to the ground, where it lands with a thump that says it, too, is not in the mood, and rubs his hip where the satchel has been periodically smacking into him with each sprinting step he took. And he carries a metal reusable water bottle after much duress from Lexi, his friend from class, so that shit hurts.
The sun through the clear shelter window makes him squint, and he slumps into the seat with a hand over his eyes, at length wrestling his phone out of his pants pocket — his tightest ones, because the least he could get out of a predictably terrible date is a fun night post-date .
gonna be late 4 date missed mf bus :/
Ryujin sends him a series of emojis ranging from sympathetic to downright cruel in response, and he’s gasping exasperatedly at the final few when a shadow passes over the sunlight on the screen and someone asks, “hey, mind if I sit here?”
The universe is even crueller than Ryujin, apparently.
Want and fear mix in Taehyung’s mouth; the hot guy in the letterman jacket gestures at where Taehyung’s satchel is blocking the floor in front of the free seat next to him. The shutters go down, quick and cutthroat like a reflex.
“Oh! Sorry.” He yanks the bag over to his own side of the bench, face burning in the sunlight as the stranger ducks back out of its way.
“No worries,” smiles the guy, and he’s so gorgeous, and Taehyung starts waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Their shoulders brush as he sits down, because of course he’s just immensely broad. Of course. Taehyung thinks that if Ryujin could see him now she’d be in stitches. He can picture her getting pensive after brushing the tears from her eyes, smile flattening out, and waxing him some kind of bullshit about how people liking sports doesn’t automatically make them a bad person. He begs to differ.
“Can’t believe I missed the fucking bus,” the guy laughs in a way that’s frustrated but content with the happenstance, like he, by contrast, doesn’t feel the crushing desire to throw himself into the oncoming traffic zipping by them at any minor inconvenience. Easygoing. Pushing a hand through his thick dark hair as he does it; a row of silver hoops hanging from each ear. “You heading back to campus?”
It takes Taehyung an approximate five embarrassing seconds before he realises that the question is directed at him.
“Oh, uhm. Yeah.”
“Cool, me too. I’m Jeongguk— junior year.”
In no particular order, the things that Taehyung knows about this boy-slash-man are as follows: he is Korean, his name is Jeongguk, they go to the same university, they’re in the same year, he is (shudder) a jock. Oh, and he’s possibly the most beautiful specimen Taehyung has ever seen even remotely in the vicinity of campus.
He mumbles back, “Taehyung. I’m a junior too,” and starts wishing that he’d just given up on the bus and gone to get a coffee instead.
“‘Nice! What’re you studying?”
“Environmental Science.”
Jeongguk persists in looking at the side of Taehyung’s face as he fixes his gaze firmly on the left buckle of his satchel on the floor, running over the frays in the leather and coffee-drip stain at the corner, and wanting to be anywhere else. His back is pressed uncomfortably against the plastic panel of the shelter behind him, and the seat is too small to really relax.
“I’m doing Bio Science. Public Health track,” Jeongguk explains even though Taehyung didn’t ask, and it’s pleasantly surprising. Taehyung runs his fingertips along a crack in the shutters, peering tentatively into the sunlight.
He finds himself asking, “and based on your jacket I’d say… d’you play sport, or does your boyfriend?” without looking up.
Cheap shot; a snipe where it should hurt. Seeing just how fragile this guy’s masculinity could be. Testing the waters, laying his hand flat against the shutters and stepping back out of the light.
Unexpectedly, Jeongguk laughs easily, and when Taehyung risks a look at his face there are crinkles around his eyes and his front teeth on show between his defined lips. Cute.
“Soccer, yeah. And none of my boyfriends have ever been particularly sporty, actually. Opposites attract, I guess.”
Taehyung’s eyes widen and he feels colour rising up his neck again, stare flicking away from the scar on one of Jeongguk’s cheeks to the floor. “I— sorry. I’m not a homophobe, I swear. The complete opposite, actually.”
“All good, bro.” Laughing it off with a careless hand thrown Taehyung’s way, Jeongguk settles in closer, crossing one leg over the other next to the manspread that Taehyung has never quite been able to condition himself out of — too much comfier.
“So—“ Jeongguk starts, and is he seriously still talking? How? “Taehyung from Environmental Science. You got any fun evening plans?”
A sigh that’s been building up for the past twenty minutes pulls out of Taehyung and fissures through the fading embers of sunlight caught reflecting back and forth in the plastic-glass bus stop shelter. “Nope. None that I’m not gonna give up on.”
Jeongguk’s furrowed brow and inquisitive eyes push him to elaborate. Normally he wouldn’t, but…
“I was supposed to go on a date. A blind one. It’s sort of a start-of-year tradition I have with my friend,” he finds himself mumbling.
“Ah, right. Sorry you’re missing it, then.”
He shrugs; tries not to buy too far into Jeongguk’s genuinely sorry look. “My fault I was late.”
”Same for me. I didn’t notice the clock at my friend’s place wasn’t working for, like, an hour. I deadass thought it was five-ten for a whole hour. Didn’t even question it.”
Taehyung barks out a laugh that’s too big and echoes brashly around them. Jeongguk looks positively elated about it, though. Weird guy. Weird how he’s making Taehyung feel, too — almost too comfortable to be true.
“I don’t really care about the date, to be honest.” He realises what he’s saying as he’s saying it, and it’s not like him to forget to think. “They’re always bad, I was just…”
“Yeah,” Jeongguk agrees even though the sentence goes unfinished, as if he somehow knows what was going to be said anyway. “I stopped letting my housemates set me up on dates a long time ago. Never goes well.”
“Housemates?”
For once, Jeongguk is the one looking at the ground now, seemingly sheepish, lacing his fingers together in his lap, all strong knuckles and pronounced veins and a tint of pink. “Yeah, I’m in a frat house.”
“No way,” Taehyung scoffs, and Jeongguk levels him with the dry kind of ‘shut up’ look that Ryujin should have patented by now. “I— wow… which one?”
And it’s adorable how Jeongguk actually goes to answer, mouth opening fish-like before he’s getting cut off.
“Chi-squared Alpha Dick, is it?”
Banter with a complete stranger is a bit of a step out of the comfort zone, even for Taehyung, who’s been told (by Ryujin when she gets drunk enough to start trying to therapize him with her AP Psych knowledge) that he uses insults thinly veiled as humour to keep people at arm’s length. Keep them in the sweet spot where they laugh politely then go home and wonder if they really feel insulted or not; their confusion stops them from searching for any deeper kind of connection. For a few seconds he’s worried that the comment didn’t even land well enough for the polite laugh, and that Jeongguk might even get mad, but then the corner of his mouth twitches reluctantly.
“That wasn’t funny,” he deadpans, staring ahead with a determined straight face.
Taehyung is about to reply without thinking again when the dirty white panels of a bus are passing in front of them. Saving grace or disappointment heavy in his chest.
There’s an awkward moment after they get on the bus, in which Taehyung wonders if they’ll return to strangers — put their headphones in sitting at opposite ends of the bus and leave what could’ve been to rest. What could’ve been , that’s silly. They are strangers, and Taehyung doesn’t believe in fate. Or nice frat boy athletes, for that matter. Lost in thought, he slides into a window seat. It startles him when Jeongguk smiles and flicks his big, brown eyes down to the seat beside him, asking, “d’you mind if I sit?”
“I’ve never met anyone on Environmental Science before,” he says, simply, like that’s explanation enough.
“Sure,” Taehyung replies, feeling more relieved than not, which is weird.
“And it’s Delta Kappa Epsilon, by the way.”
“What?”
The bus pulls away from the sidewalk and Jeongguk nudges him lightly in the elbow with another boyish smile.
“My frat. You should come to our next mixer.”
Taehyung’s nose wrinkles on instinct, but luckily Jeongguk doesn’t seem to be offended. He doesn’t take it back, either, regretless, letting it sit in the air.
“So, what’s Environmental Science like, then?”
“It’s good— nice. I like science, and I like to think that what I’m studying will make a real positive impact in the world, so. It’s pretty perfect.”
There are beads of condensation on the window, stagnant in waiting. The blue-background stuff of moody Tumblr posts and the mid-grade photography assignments that Taehyung used to turn in at high school. They lack real emotion, Taehyung. Sometimes photography isn’t just about what looks the most pretty or perfect.
“Nice. Wish I could say the same, but I’m probably going to throw away all my potential after I graduate.”
Jeongguk says it with an easy, world-weary smile, like he doesn’t quite want to play it off completely but doesn’t know what else to do, eyes turning wistful at the heavy remark.
“It’s okay— that whole ‘wasting your potential’ stuff is bullshit, anyway. Your potential is what you decide, and how much you can do whilst still feeling content. Potential shouldn’t be a pressure; it’s in everything you do, really.”
“Wow,” Jeongguk laughs, face brightening. “Didn’t know they bred philosophers in Environmental Science.”
Taehyung feels his face heat up, again . When he shifts in his seat his knee knocks into Jeongguk’s a little before he moves it away. He doesn’t think about what he says in reply before he says it, stares at the droplets of condensation and doesn’t take a photo, letting the moment slip away undisrupted.
At the next stop, Jeongguk leaves with a quick smile, tips of his teeth poking over his bottom lip, and a “see you around.” Taehyung thinks about nothing for the rest of the drive, pressing his blush-warm cheek against the cool window.
★
The ceramics studio is always warm, warm enough that Taehyung always gets a little damp under the arms and across the back of his neck — but it doesn’t bother him, because the sweat feels productive, like triumph and satisfaction. He sniffs; rubs a knuckle across the tip of his nose where he’s beginning to get stuffy. The change of season riling up his sinuses as per usual. Classes at this time of year are raucous with stifled coughs and the rustle of tissues. First year was the worst, though: Taehyung was practically bedridden for two weeks with the worst flu of his life. Maybe that’s what made his immune system strong enough to fight it off pretty well every year after that.
Outside the glass window, the sky is just a touch of the hazy kind of orange dusk that you can only get in the city, making the light in the studio seem paler. Taehyung is quite proud of the stark little alien figure-shaped blob on the table that he’s produced today, sniffles and hair in his face and all. He likes to switch it up and alternate between practical stuff like bowls and vases and the most inane, useless things he could ever come up with, normally to gift his friends at any given opportunity. Jimin still has the little surfboarding snowman sculpture that Taehyung made for him two Christmases ago on his bedside table, every time he calls. Around him, people begin to pack up their things and he breathes in the smell of clay and the crispy hot tang that lingers in the air once more, knowing what’s coming.
The weight hits his back like a sure thing, Ryujin’s soft brown hair pooling over his shoulder and tickling his chin as she knocks their heads together.
“You need to shave,” she says, loudly enough to be heard through his noise-cancelling over-ears.
“Nice to see you too,” he replies, pushing them down to his neck while he gathers together his tools.
After dropping her frayed, Buzz Lightyear keychain-adorned bag to the floor with a resounding thunk, Ryujin hops up to perch on Taehyung’s workbench. “He’s cute.”
Taehyung glances back up to smirk at her. “He’s your next birthday present, so I’m glad you like him.”
Pretending to be exasperated with his bullshit the same way she’s been doing for years with little real effect, she swings her feet back and forth, tucks her hair behind her ear and asks him in her most guarded, pleading tone if they can go to Seven-Eleven for dinner.
The night continues to blacken, street lamps tangerine blots in the darkness, as Taehyung shrugs his apron off in between goodbyes to people clearing out of the studio.
“The nearest Seven-Eleven is, like, a twenty minute walk.”
“I know ,” she sighs. “But I’ve been watching so much Kdrama lately and it’s not my fault we don’t live in the promised land of convenience stores.”
“You know, you ‘n’ me would probably be hate-crimed as soon as we set foot in said promised land.” He tucks his stool underneath the worktop and nods to himself, satisfied with his tidying efforts, and sets his little alien on the rack for painting next time.
“Exactly. Which is why we should just go to Seven-Eleven instead.”
It’s that thing they do where she goes on trying to convince him to do something even though they both know that he’s already made up his mind to do it anyway, when she follows him down the Arts Block corridor rambling on about how convenience store ramen just tastes better somehow — that it must be something they put in the water — there's now a whole conspiracy unravelling, Tae, so we should definitely go check that out.
They step out into the chill of the October air, and Taehyung pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose; links their arms together.
“Come on then,” he says in exaggerated weariness, tucking his coat further around his body as they set off with their hybrid air of an old couple heading out for a brisk evening walk in the autumn and a pair of broke loser college students driven on by the promise of steaming noodles. It’s probably Taehyung’s glasses that cause the former — he only wears them sometimes.
“How was it today? Looked like you made good progress.”
“Yeah, it was good. Hey, Aisha told me this crazy story from some sorority party last week…”
Ryujin listens obediently through the whole recount, but he can tell that she’s only half-listening, if at all; that there’s something else much more important that she’s raring to bring up.
“Speaking of sororities!” she bursts out almost before he’s finished speaking. “Delta Kappa Epsilon is having a Halloween mixer and I wanna go.”
“No you don’t,” Taehyung says easily, recovering from his excessive snorting at both the name and the word mixer .
“I do,” Ryujin insists, twisting to look at him and putting her weight on the arm he has interlinked with hers. “ Karina’s gonna be there.”
“ Oh . I see now.”
“Yeah, exactly. So you get it?”
“I get it,” he hums. “Doesn’t mean I’ll come with you, though.”
“Ugh, fine. I’ll get Jiu to go with me, you miserable bitch.”
“You flatter me, Ryu.”
There’s something bothering him, itching at his mind, pulling at a loose corner. Delta Kappa Epsilon. Where has he heard that before?
“Hey, which sorority is Karina in, again?”
Ryujin gives him a kind of flat look before admitting, “Alpha Kappa Delta Phi.”
Quite literally choking on his own saliva, Taehyung has to take a second to stop on the sidewalk and bend over in order to survive a crippling laughing-coughing fit.
“Alright, alright. It’s fucking stupid, I know. But she’s so gorgeous, Tae. You haven’t seen her face-to-face… You know I wouldn’t go this crazy about any old nobody.”
“I do know,” he assures her, wiping the last of his tears and taking a few deep breaths before they can carry on.
The sign for Seven-Eleven halos the sidewalk in green-yellow hope, and Ryujin flops her whole body weight against the door to open it before heading straight for the refrigerated section, the zips and keychains on her cross-body bag jangling as she goes. Taehyung makes his own beeline for the chip aisle; takes a moment to peruse and mediate a little longer on the whole frat name development. He trusts that Ryujin will pick him something good from the refrigerator.
He’s so absorbed in his inner conundrum and deliberating between different packets of honey butter chips that he is in no way prepared for the projectile onigiri that comes sailing into the back of his head.
“Ow! What the fuck?”
“I yelled ‘Heads!’” Ryujin starts in defense, scooping up the now misshapen rice ball from the floor and pushing it into Taehyung’s hand, ramen cups under her armpits. “What were you daydreaming about?”
He shrugs on instinct. “Nothin’. Just tired. And about to go into a hypoglycaemic coma if I don’t get some noodles into me, stat.”
Rolling her eyes, she pulls him away from the shelf — he only just manages to quickly grab a bag of chips in time. “What is it now? Grey’s again? Chicago Med?”
“House, actually.”
“Oh, yeah. Bet you really resonate with the arrogant, cynical protagonist, don’t you?”
Taehyung reaches up and pushes Ryujin’s jacket hood over her head just as she’s paying at the checkout.
“Hey!”
“Did I ever tell you you’re my best friend in the whole wide world?”
In return to her half-hearted shove, he swats her poofy black sleeve with his chip packet, and watches as she struggles to fend off a smirk.
“Don’t tell Jimin that, he’ll be down here trying to get a hitman on me in a heartbeat.”
“You wouldn’t be in favour of that?” he asks, draping an arm around her shoulders — bordering on a headlock — while she sets down the cup noodles and peels back the foil lids. The nests inside are mazes of possibilities, but Taehyung knows exactly the flavour that will hit his tongue when he drinks the broth. Seriously, he’s sampled every single brand and variation of ramen in the store at least once, limited editions included. “It’d keep things exciting.”
“Y’know what would really keep things exciting,” she side-eyes him dryly. “Is going out and, I don’t know, socialising. Perhaps, for example, at the Delta Kappa Epsilon Halloween mixer?”
“Not a chance,” he replies with a grin and a resounding kiss to the side of Ryujin’s head.
“Ew! Gross! Get off, do you want to eat sometime this evening or not?!”
So Taehyung surrenders and eats his onigiri as he sits patiently waiting for his ramen to cook, and forgets all about Delta Kappa Epsilon all over again. Fickle; consumed by the simple promise of good, cheap food and the constant, contented love for a friend. What more could he possibly need?
★
You have four new voicemail messages.
“Taaaaaeeeee, there’s nooo cool people here. None. It sucks, you should’ve come.”
“ Got th’ music guy to play Hype Boy hehehe… Also think ‘m getting drunk now. ‘Kay, bye.”
“She’s sooooooo gor’jus, Tae— hugh! I wanna marry‘er. Bu’... bu’ she doesn’ lov’ me. Why doesn’ she lov’ me?... Oh, wow, keg stan’s. Guys’re doin’ keg stan’s ahr en, Tae.”
“Acsssdenly go’ suuuuupa wasted, uhmmm. C’you pi’ me up, puhleeease?”
End of messages.
★
“Ah, shit,” Taehyung mutters, dropping his phone into his lap where its black screen stands out stark against the homely patchwork of the blanket that Adrian’s mom made for him before she let him move halfway across the world for college.
“What?” Adrian’s hand is frozen comically between the popcorn bowl and his mouth, a strand of curly hair swaying across his forehead — the giveaway. Taehyung gives it a quick tug and watches it spring satisfyingly back into place.
“I’ve gotta pick Ryujin up.” Wearily, he starts to peel himself away from the warmth of his roommate’s side and the glare of the laptop screen; feels guilty about talking over Daniel Craig.
“Oh, is she at that party you were on about?” Adrian recovers from his brief cosplay as a mannequin and tosses another handful of popcorn back, without the candy corns because he picks them out, protests against the so-called artificial, sugary hell of American candy.
Taehyung regretfully leaves their ‘Knives Out’ rewatch rolling and scrambles out of their late-October comforter pile. “Yeah. The freak. She’s crushing on one of the sorority girls, hard.”
He pulls a trench coat over his tank top and cardigan combo and shoves his sockless feet into sneakers. This shouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes — hopefully he’ll be back in time for Chris Evans trying to stab Ana de Armas with a prop knife.
“Which one?”
Turning back with a palm on the door handle, Taehyung smirks. “No idea.”
★
The first thing that Taehyung feels on approaching the Delta Kappa Epsilon residence is, surprisingly, awe. It’s a decently sized house, what with all the messy, matching tshirt-sporting jocks they have to cram in there, he supposes. And it’s also so full of people in fancy dress that they’re spilling out into the brisk autumn air on the lawn, too warmed by alcohol to care, garish up to the nines; moving easily in and out of groups and all aglow with fun. Taehyung feels something in his gut and only realises as he’s elbowing his way into the house as politely as possible that it might be envy.
Inside, the air is contrastingly humid and thick with the smoke from people’s vapes, firm staples in their hands as they mill about and dance. Taehyung is immediately too hot in his layers. A DJ in the corner of the open plan living room is playing a horrific EDM remix of ‘Monster Mash’ and Taehyung laughs to himself before he starts seriously scanning the room for his friend.
She’s dressed in a (sexy) witch costume, he knows from the three thousand selfies she’d sent him while getting ready earlier that night, asking if he thought the look was “Karina-worthy.”
Nobody really takes any notice of Taehyung as he wades through the crowds to the kitchen — nothing but a few lingering gazes. He’s not wearing a costume at a Halloween party, after all. Plus, he’s aware of what he looks like.
There’s a kitchen island — god, this place is boujee — crammed with glass bottles and red solo cups stacked in piles reaching for the sky, to get out and make it in the real world. Taehyung swerves around someone throwing up noisily into the sink and kicks a humming refrigerator door closed, nose wrinkled, envy dissipating in his stomach as he moves through the house, still yet to see anyone that he knows.
After a few hopeless minutes of searching, he decides that it’s probably time to brave the second story. Losing track of how many times he excuses himself as he weaves around people on the staircase, he reaches a series of closed doors. There’s a small queue of people outside of what is obviously the bathroom, and Taehyung carefully calculates which of the rooms is the first to not have obscene sounds reverberating out of it. He must look like a freak, creeping around and putting his ears to random doors in a frat house which he definitely doesn’t belong anywhere near, but frankly, he’s too tired to care.
With a deep breath, he’s twisting the handle on the fourth door in the corridor and pushing it open with his shoulder. The noise from the rest of the house goes spilling into the quiet room with him; he takes a second to steady himself and tries to let his eyes adjust to the dark, pushing the door shut behind him because he feels as if he’s doing something bad. It’s strangely purple and green in there, like he stepped into the Northern Lights. So different to the vivid LEDs strung up for the party downstairs.
The biggest glow in the room, aside from what seems to be a galaxy projector light that Taehyung is certain he himself has considered buying on Amazon, is a lamp at the desk against the wall across from him. He freezes halfway through marvelling at how much bigger this bedroom is than his own when he spots the figure hunched over at said desk, big headphones over their ears.
Deep breath, act like he hasn’t just walked directly into the lion’s den; the monster’s lair. If he can just get back out without revealing his presence, he’ll be fine. Speed back downstairs and wait on the lawn and find out if Ryujin is sober enough to pick up the phone and come and meet him.
It’s a pretty foolproof plan until he clutzes it up, knocking into the galaxy light on his hasty backwards walk to the door, and the entire projection jolts to the right. The person at the desk’s head pricks up, turns around and Taehyung pulls his arms across his chest, eyebrows drawn in a grimace, brace for impact.
“Hey!”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, fuck!
“It’s you!”
Huh?
Arms loosening, eyes opening, Taehyung sees… the guy from that one bus ride nearly two months ago?
“You came!”
The cutest, nicest jock that he has ever met… and now he’s… in his room?
“I, uhm…”
Jeongguk clears the room in a few quick strides until he’s right in front of Taehyung, until they’re less than arm’s length away from each other. Taehyung’s breath catches and he clears his throat. Forces himself to look away from Jeongguk’s bright eyes in the pale purple and his secret little smile. Then, Jeongguk takes another step closer and Taehyung starts to lose his mind, before Jeongguk is bending down and readjusting the galaxy, then moving away. Back to arm’s length.
“How’d you find my room?”
“Uhm.” Taehyung backs away further; his back hits the back of the door. “Funny story, actually.”
He lets that sit between them for a moment, and Jeongguk just stands there with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, headphones around his neck, a silhouette against the whole universe.
“I, uhm— I’m looking for my friend. She’s trashed— needs help getting home. She called me, so.”
He’s not sure what he expected: disappointment, a hurt ego. Jeongguk only smiles and tells him, “you’re a good friend.”
Feeling like his heartbeat comes in sets of four, Taehyung swallows and smiles back.
“Want me to help you look for her?”
“That would be great, actually. I haven’t been having much luck.” And all of his tension and worry comes rushing back to him; drips of guilt that he’s been too busy holding his breath in here while his best friend could be passed out in a corner surrounded by people who aren’t quite her friends in the same way that Taehyung is.
“No sign of her downstairs?” Jeongguk asks as he walks Taehyung out into the cramped hallway. The music has switched to something more legitimately techno that pulses through the floor into Taehyung’s old Nikes.
“Come on! Some people really need to pee!” yells a girl as she raps on the bathroom door with her closed fist, hard. On closer inspection, there’s a ClearBlue box clutched in her other hand, and a concerned-looking friend hanging onto her shoulders. Taehyung is about to make for the next set of doors down the corridor when Jeongguk taps his arm and murmurs, “one sec.”
Over by the bathroom, he gently talks the girl away from pummelling the door to pieces and slides into her place, knocking his knuckles against the wood and saying clearly enough to be heard without shouting, “hey, I live here, and if anyone is fucking in there, you’ll be blacklisted from any future parties here, ‘kay. It’s a bathroom, not a motel, so you better clear out in the next minute.”
He takes half a step back then seems to rethink. “If we break this door down and you’re not passed out, there’s gonna be hell to pay.” Be turns to the growing crowd of full bladders. “For now, everyone can use the bathrooms on other floors, please.”
A voice pipes up as everyone is dispersing with groans and muttered complaints, and when Taehyung looks over he recognizes— “Karina!”
He’s only ever seen her in photos, and Ryujin is right about her looking even more stunning in person. But it’s true that they’ve never met, so Taehyung breezes past her confused reply of, “do I know you?”
“Have you seen Ryujin?”
“Who?” she asks, distracted with adjusting one of the straps on her bloodstained white dress.
“Ryujin,” Taehyung tries again, more urgently this time. “She’s dressed as a witch, uhm… mid length brown hair, wears a lot of bomber jackets, studies Physics?”
“Oh, yeah, Ryujin.” She sounds absentminded, and one of her friends is tugging at her arm to leave. “I think I’ve seen her around, but not in a while.”
“Okay, thanks anyway.”
It looks like she’s about to go when she bats her friend’s hand away and turns back to Taehyung, looking concerned. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. She just had a bit too much to drink and asked me to come get her.” Karina’s eyes narrow. “Karina, I’m her best friend. I’ve known her since I was five years old. Plus, I’m literally gay.” Still looking unconvinced, she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Karina, let’s go,” whines her friend.
With her resolve already crumbling, all it takes for her to finally let up is Taehyung flashing her a glimpse of his lock screen.
“Fine. Let me know she gets home safe, though. You have my Instagram.”
Then she’s gone in a whirlwind of long dark hair and glitter and fake blood, and Taehyung laughs because he does have her Instagram. Doesn’t doubt that everyone in this house does.
“Dead end,” he tells Jeongguk back by the bathroom, getting a quirked brow in response.
“What’s your lock screen?”
“Nothing. Not— not anything. Anything important, that is.” He clears his throat and Jeongguk leans a hip on the doorframe.
“Well it can’t be such a secret if it’s literally the first thing anyone can see when you turn your phone on.”
Something in Taehyung wants to try this: flirt with the jock, dance with the devil the way he’s always found it hard to resist, especially with so many people getting high and falling in love around them. But Ryujin is worth more than any dance — more than all of them. He’d be paralysed forever for her.
“It’s a secret for now,” is all he responds with, coy enough but drawing a firm line.
Jeongguk’s smile could be a secret then, in the shadows of a desolate upstairs hallway. One of millions of moments in a lifetime that nobody will see but them, and they’re nothing but beautiful strangers, with the universe ahead of them. A universe of aurora back in Jeongguk’s room, lying in wait, coming alive when he turns out the lights. As if Taehyung could ever exist there, could even exist in this house.
“I’m gonna break the door down,” Jeongguk says solemnly, and it takes him backing away to the opposite wall for Taehyung to process the words.
“What?!”
“Stand back.”
“I am! What do you mean you—“
Before he can even finish, Jeongguk goes charging into the door, shoulder first as if he’s in a police serial… and it’s a success? Taehyung is pretty sure Jeongguk actually runs into the sink before he can stop himself but he recovers quickly nonetheless, and Taehyung hurries after him into the bathroom.
There’s nothing suspect at first. Lights on, no running water, then Ryujin slumped against the wall underneath a shelf of towels with her eyes shut.
“Ryu! Ryujin, holy shit.” Taehyung’s heart goes berserk in his chest as he rushes over. It’s one, two, three seconds of shaking his best friend before she groans and flops her head to the other side.
“‘M sleepin’,” she murmurs. “L’me alone.”
“Come on, Ryu, we need to go.” He tells her, hand on his ribs as he breathes out in relief. “You can sleep at home, c’mon.”
In spite of her noises of protest, she lets him haul her up and support her weight with an arm across his shoulders. He finds Jeongguk still waiting, rubbing his shoulder with a poorly concealed grimace.
“You okay?” Taehyung grunts as he waddles with Ryujin out of the bathroom.
“Yeah, uhm, can I get you guys an Uber? The walk might be difficult.”
Cautiously making his way down the stairs, he answers, “sure, that'd be great, thanks,” and sees Jeongguk pull his phone out of his pocket in his peripheral vision.
It’s a long and arduous journey to the front door of the house, involving many “excuse me”s and dodging several gross couples and telling a few idiots in costumes trying to be scary to fuck off, but eventually they make it. Subconsciously, Taehyung keeps tabs on Jeongguk following them, each testosterone-oozing handshake and remark he shares with who Taehyung guesses are his housemates. One guy tries to physically wrestle him into a game of beer pong in one of the huge living rooms, but Jeongguk shrugs him off, saying “I’ll catch you later, just got something to do.”
Taehyung tries not to feel too smug, mostly concentrating on getting Ryujin out onto the lawn with minimal damage to herself and others. Jeongguk tells him that their taxi will be there in ten minutes so he flops her onto the sidewalk, leaning her against the fence carefully.
“You’ve outdone yourself, Ryu.”
“I know,” she groans, seemingly more alert now and with a palm pressed against her forehead. “S’stupid.”
“Y’know,” he crouches down then, catching onto her despair, and lowers his voice. “Karina asked me to message her, letting her know if you get home safe.”
Ryujin’s eyes widen comically, her hand dropping to her side, inebriated and uncoordinated. “Sh’ did?”
“Mhm. So I’m gonna get you nicely tucked up in bed, then I’m gonna DM her and point her politely in the direction of your Instagram..”
Eyes welling up with actual tears, Ryujin’s bottom lip pushes out into a pout. “Y’re th’ best, Tae.”
As he straightens up, he nudges the side of her head lightly with his nose and whispers, “I know.”
His stomach does something weird when he spots Jeongguk looking on with a bemused expression, and he crosses his arms over his chest self-consciously.
“You should get back to your party.”
The streetlights cast a slight glare through Taehyung’s glasses, so that Jeongguk could be surrounded by star beams in the dark, the centre of the whole universe. Taehyung hears someone squeal with delight and it’s a girl being hiked over a friend’s shoulder as he zips haphazardly over the grass, smiles brighter than the sun on both their faces.
“I was actually kind of hiding from it,” Jeongguk admits, and Taehyung wrenches his gaze back to him just in time to catch his sheepish look at the ground. “I’m not really a party person.”
“Me neither,” Taehyung replies, which is only partially a lie. He loves to party with the right people . And only them. Nights out with Jimin by his side are unmatched masterpieces, but something like this is far from what Taehyung would consider good times. So maybe Jeongguk is different too, maybe he can’t quite exist in the house either.
“Plus, I think I dislocated my shoulder with the door earlier, so I should probably go and get that checked out.”
“What?! Jeez, why didn’t you say anything?”
Jeongguk shrugs with his one good shoulder. “‘S not that bad.”
“Come with us, in the cab,” Taehyung finds himself saying without thinking. “I’ll drop Ryujin back, like, so quick, then we’ll go to the hospital. Nobody here is sober enough to drive you, and the Uber’ll be here any minute. Please.”
He only hesitates for a second with a pleasantly surprised little smile before he agrees. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”
“We should’ve grabbed some painkillers, in the bathroom,” Taehyung realises, frowning.
Jeongguk laughs like he’s already exasperated and fond at the same time — it normally takes Taehyung months to get to that point with people, for them to stop just being exasperated.
“Don’t worry about it, seriously. I have a high pain tolerance.”
Ryujin sniffs loudly, startling out of her snooze against the fence in time for the cab to pull around the corner. Wincing, Taehyung reaches down to hook an arm beneath hers again and lift her from the ground. He’ll never have to work out ever again, after this.
“Come on,” he mutters to her, and she manages to support some of her own weight long enough for them to pile into the backseat of the taxi.
Taehyung hears Jeongguk speaking to the driver and reels off the address of Ryujin’s dorm when it’s needed, then lets his head fall back against the car seat and breathes out. There’s still some kind of delayed adrenaline buzzing through him, watching the back of Jeongguk’s tousled hair as he makes light conversation with the driver. The night feels full of possibilities, full with the weight of a direct message from the most beautiful sorority girl at a party, and of being noticed, being asked after, and of stumbling into the wrong galaxy in the wrong room in the wrong house, and of pretty boys with their selfless hearts, running into doors just on the off chance that someone on the other side of them could be suffering.
The cab stops on the curb outside of Ryujin’s building; Taehyung makes an apologetic face at Jeongguk before leaving him to wait in the car.
“I’m just gonna drop you here, okay? I’ve gotta go to the hospital with Jeongguk. But Charlie will make sure you get to bed okay and I’ll come check on you in the morning, ‘kay?” he’s mumbling to her as they catch the elevator up the whole one floor that it takes to get to Ryujin and Charlie’s room.
She makes some sort of affirmative hum and they proceed down the hallway.
“Have you thrown up?”
“Jus’ once. In the bathroom.”
“Alright, I’ll tell her to prop you up to make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit in your sleep, then,” he says grimly.
Looking at him in her drunken, lovey-dovey way, she grins and says, “Thanks, TaeTae.”
“No problem,” he replies while struggling to get the door open with his copy of the key. Eventually he succeeds, and Charlie is ready and waiting with open arms to herd Ryujin to bed.
“Thanks, Charlie. Hope she’s not too much of a pain in the ass,” Taehyung tells Ryujin’s roommate.
“No worries,” she calls back. “She’d do it for me.”
And isn’t that true.
Back in the taxi, Taehyung hears Jeongguk say, “I’m just gonna move to the backseat to sit with my buddy there,” to the driver as he’s clambering into the vehicle. It makes him feel warm, even as he stifles a laugh because of course Jeongguk says shit like buddy .
“She get up okay?” He’s really cute when he’s concerned, too, eyebrows pulled together with his bottom lip subconsciously jutting out a little. God , does Taehyung want to kiss him? He can’t want to kiss him.
“Yeah, she’s her roommate’s responsibility now,” Taehyung chuckles, looking out the window quickly. “Is— is your shoulder okay?”
“It’s, uh. It’s really setting in now, I can’t lie.”
The streets wiz by in orange and blue streaks, like paint running and blurring the lines of what Taehyung knows and what he doesn’t. “Shit.”
“Yeah. That’ll teach me— just because they do it on TV doesn’t mean I can.”
He finds himself smiling, laces his hands together in his lap for something to do with them. “You a fan of police shows?”
“Sometimes.” Jeongguk seems adorably and dedicatedly pensive about this. “I’m more into, like, medical ones? I am on the Public Health track, after all,” he laughs. “The current favourite is House.”
“No way,” Taehyung breathes, turning back to him with a grin. “I love House. I’ve just started watching it but it’s so good .”
“Maybe they’ll reenact it at the ER— the mysterious case of the dislocated shoulder, where nothing is as it seems. Maybe they’ll discover that I have an incredibly rare genetic disorder which makes my shoulders extra prone to dislocation.”
In fits of laughter at this point, Taehyung drums the soles of his feet on the carpeted floor of the car. “Extra prone?”
“Yep. Extra prone.” Jeongguk is cracking, giggling, and his head tips forward just as Taehyung is midway through throwing himself around in joy the way that he picked up from Jimin when they were about five years old, and then they’re both very, very close, suspended over the thin middle seat — not big enough for someone to sit in, really — and Taehyung holds his breath.
He could count Jeongguk’s eyelashes; can feel the shadow of his bangs against his forehead. Jeongguk’s eyes are huge, he realises, from this close, and the brown irises move here, there, everywhere. Taehyung can feel the trails they leave behind, too, all across his face, burning impressions into his own eyes, over the bridge of his nose, searing up his cheeks and stinging at his lips. Jeongguk’s tongue darts out for a millisecond to wet his lips. And Taehyung pulls back.
He blinks away the blotches on his vision from standing too long in the sunlight and half cowers behind the shutters.
By the grace of some higher power, the taxi begins to slow and eventually comes to rest at the curb in front of the hospital.
“C’mon then, let’s get your shoulder fixed,” he mumbles, handing the driver a crumpled handful of notes by way of a tip as they climb out of the Uber.
It’s relatively quiet in the waiting room, with only a few weepy children dressed in costumes clinging onto their tired-looking parents, some older couples and other people by themselves, flicking through magazines or fast asleep with their heads against the walls behind them.
“I’ll wait here for you.”
“You don’t need to. You’ve done more than enough, seriously. You should go home and get some sleep,” Jeongguk says earnestly.
“Well,” Taehyung scratches the back of his head, embarrassed. “The Uber actually just kind of left, so.”
At that, Jeongguk looks mad at himself and Taehyung hurries to continue. “Besides, I wanna make sure you’re okay. So, go let the hospital people work their magic and I’ll be waiting right here, okay?”
Reluctantly, Jeongguk starts to back towards the reception desk with narrowed eyes.
“Fine. But I owe you one, big time.”
Taehyung makes sure to exaggerate his eye roll, and then settles in the comfiest-looking chair that he can find. Within ten minutes, he’s as fast asleep as the middle-aged man opposite him, who has his mouth ajar and is likely mere seconds away from honest-to-god snoring.
He doesn’t wake once, until something is tapping gently but insistently at his arm, and after a few attempts to brush it off thinking that Adrian can wait to put his sheets in the laundry, he remembers where he is.
“Jeongguk,” he clears his throat and blinks at the sickly fluorescence of the room.
“Hey.” Jeongguk’s voice is the softest Taehyung has heard it yet, soft like everything else about him: like his messy hair and the material of his hoodie and the dark brown of his big eyes. Taehyung doesn’t dare add anything else to the list, for fear that he’ll find out it’s true. Or that he won’t. “I ordered another cab; it’s outside.”
“How’s your shoulder?” He notices a bright blue sling across the front of Jeongguk’s black hoodie; feels something inside him ache.
“It’s okay,” Jeongguk says as they head to the exit. “Luckily I didn’t tear any ligaments or fracture anything, so. They’ve given me some painkillers and anti-inflammatories.”
Still yawning and struggling to respond with anything other than hums as he shakes off his sleep, Taehyung ducks into the back of the car waiting for them. Wait, the car is already waiting? Jeongguk had waited until the cab was there to wake him up, and on this realisation Taehyung flushes scarlet for a moment, baulking at the idea of Jeongguk watching him sleep in case he had adopted the same unattractive stance as the man snoring opposite him. He’ll have to pay Jeongguk back at some point, for all these taxis.
“My coach is gonna be pissed though,” Jeongguk laughs as he climbs in beside him. “No practice for a few weeks. What am I gonna do with myself, eh?”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
He seems so upbeat for someone who literally just had their shoulder bone wrenched back into its socket, giving Taehyung an easy smile. “Don’t be.”
The taxi sets off, and everything is starting to aggravate a headache lurking behind Taehyung’s eyes. The streetlamps are too bright, the driver’s talk station on the radio too loud. “What time is it?” he wonders aloud, pulling his phone out of his coat pocket to find a bleak 4:31 and four missed calls from Adrian on the display. “Fuck.”
“Everything okay?”
He hums distractedly, tapping on the contact that reads “roomie” with three exclamation marks next to it. Adrian put his number into the phone himself when they first started rooming together. “Forgot to update my roommate on everything,” he tuts. “Just sending him a text for when he wakes up.”
Jeongguk nods with his lips pressed together in a way that Taehyung has noticed him doing before. It makes his eyes look even bigger and wider, if that’s possible. Kind of makes Taehyung want to pinch his cheeks — grandma-mode. The pain in his forehead worsens the longer that his eyes flick back and forth between his screen and the boy beside him, so he finishes the message quickly and turns the device off in his lap. Rubbing his eyes, he feels a touch to his arm; pulls his hands away to see Jeongguk patting the fabric of his coat there before withdrawing, saying, “home soon, don’t worry.” Taehyung feels like melting, and settles further back into the pleather of the seat with a grateful sigh.
“Close your eyes, if you want,” Jeongguk says, voice barely over a whisper. “I’ll wake you up when we get there, promise.”
And Taehyung does let his eyes shut, feels only the rumble of the engine and Jeongguk’s quiet breathing.
“How do I know we won’t end up in fuck-ass Timbuktu or somewhere?” he murmurs back, teasing, half-asleep and thinking even less than not. Imagining how Jeongguk’s sly smirk looks then in the darkness, the blue of his sling like a slice of ocean and sky in the back of the cab. Taehyung can almost taste salt on the tip of his tongue, almost feel the wind on his face as he starts to fall.
“Don’t you trust me, Taehyung from Environmental Science?”
“Yeah,” Taehyung sighs, barely there. “Yeah— weirdly, I do.”
★