Work Text:
Il mio cuore batte solo per te. – My heart beats only for you.
They say the first thing you forget about a person is their voice.
Their face, touch, smell, mannerisms, they’re all still there, tucked away secretly for later discovery. But how they sound, as their lips form around words to say, sing, or whisper into your space.
Disappears.
Lost to the merciless erosion of time.
At least, that’s what people say. That’s what Jimin’s heard.
He wishes they were right. He wishes so badly that they were right and that he truly had forgotten that voice— his voice.
But they’re wrong, so terribly wrong—or maybe five years wasn't enough time to completely wash all traces of him out of Jimin’s system—for when he picks up the sound of an achingly familiar timbre over the whirr of the cable car doors sliding open, his heart stops.
Five years ago, a voice that would’ve lifted his heart so giddy with love from the fleshy confines of his chest, now has Jimin tucking himself as far away as he can into the corner of the padded bench.
Taehyung’s chatting away on his phone, back angled away from Jimin, hand clutching the safety handle suspended from the top of the cable car. He’s blissfully distracted from the piece of his past that is struggling so desperately to evaporate.
“No hyung I- I promise I didn’t forget my passport this time.” He laughs, broad shoulders shaking with the force of the happiness that holds him.
A cursed, poorly silenced part of Jimin wishes Taehyung would angle himself towards him so he can catch a glimpse of that sunray smile. It was large and square like, lips stretched around a beaming display of teeth as his eyes curved over the push of his grinning cheeks.
Each time Jimin sat in the presence of such a smile, he swore the stars had fallen into Taehyung’s eyes, breathless at how they twinkled.
The pride Jimin felt for being the cause of such a dazzling smile echoes faintly in a specific spot behind his lower left rib. It pinches right behind the bone.
Happiness had never looked so good on a person.
Jimin raises his hand to soothe the small jab of pain at the same time that Taehyung laughs his goodbyes into the phone.
“ The cable car will now be preparing for take off. Please make sure all passengers are seated. Thank you for choosing-” The rest of the robotic Italian that the overhead voice rattles off gets lost as Jimin finds himself too tense to mentally translate the rest.
“Oop,” Taehyung glances at the overhead speaker, turning himself as he does “I’ve gotta go hyung. Ride’s apart to…..”
Their eyes meet.
Taehyung’s phone slips from his hand, hitting the ground with a sickening crack.
The cable car gives a controlled lurch before it begins its gradual ascent to the skies.
Taormina, Sicily.
A quaint hilltop town that’s built itself into the sides of a mountain. Pastel in-hill apartments charmingly creep their way up in multi-colored packs from the sandy white shorelines to the densely vegetative top. Jimin’s plane had flown over such a striated blue body of water that it appeared as if the sky had liquified and fallen into a bottomless basin.
It’s narrow streets were even more charming, shop after shop squished next to one another to create a bustling, intimate atmosphere below, and a plethora of french balconies that jutted out above.
Jimin’s eyes were almost always glued to how each balcony, though made of the same wrought iron, were decorated so differently, a reflection of each varying individual.
Now he wishes more than anything to be back on cobbled ground, gazing up in wonder as he braces the February chill. Anywhere but here. Trapped in four walls that all but crawl over an ocean that he is going to jump head first into if Taehyung sneaks a peak at him again over his raised arm with such sad eyes.
He supposes it’d be too specific to search ‘how to strike up a conversation with your ex-fiancé after having not seen them for five years’ on Naver but it’s not like he has any other options.
Maybe they can sit in choked silence until the ride’s over.
Yeah that’s a great idea.
An hour of silence could work wonders for Jimin’s creative flow. He could scribble up enough fragments to make up for two well fleshed out scenes for his upcoming film project.
Taehyung opens his mouth, then closes it, clearly stumped. His lips struggle to form the shape of words, as if the sounds of language are unfamiliar to him.
“Um...how-” Taehyung starts unsure.
Well there goes that.
Whatever it is that he wanted to ask Jimin swiftly crawls back in his throat when they lock eyes again. Taehyung tears his eyes away, tugging at the high collar of his turtleneck with a painted index finger. He swallows loudly.
“Say it,” Jimin reaches into his pocket and begins to click repeatedly at the pen he’d brought in case he was struck by the inspiration goddess miles above sea, “whatever it is that you want to say just say it.”
God knows I’m too scared to say what’s on my mind.
“How..” He licks his lips, “how are you?”
It takes Jimin by surprise how a question of such simplicity shoots right down his chest and stings. He winces.
“Fine. And you?”
Taehyung struggles to hide the flash of hurt surprise at Jimin’s clipped tone but Jimin still sees it, still feels sorry for being so cold although he has every right to be.
Taehyung was the one who upped and left without warning. And each evening that Jimin dared to brave the solitude that waited for him in their once shared apartment, he’d come back to find chunks of Taehyung’s belongings had magically disappeared.
The coward had been too afraid to face Jimin, erasing himself while Jimin feigned ignorance, as if he wasn’t working himself to the bone to avoid facing the reality that was his fiancé leaving him.
He licks his lips, knuckles now white where he’s fisting the safety handle. He answers faintly, voice taunt. “Fine.”
Where have you been all these years? Why didn’t you ever call? How could you walk out like that? Did you ever regret what you did? Are you okay? Are you happy?
Did you miss me?
Jimin twists the lid tighter over his feelings. He refuses to let anything leak. Once the dam starts it doesn’t stop and it’d be such an embarrassing mess of himself to clean up. He’s stuffed his broken heart back into his chest too many times. Any more and he’ll just have to leave it to beat weakly on the floor.
A lumpy, misshapen thing that’s barely being held together by the sparse thread of pretending everything’s okay.
But this time Taehyung will be here to witness the pathetic spectacle. One unguarded glance at Taehyung and the thread will unravel, leaving Jimin to bleed in pieces.
He never did heal correctly after the disastrous end of his and Taehyung’s relationship. It left an ugly scar.
The cable car whirrs softly along in it’s ascent, rocking the cabin ever so faintly. He gazes over at the marvelous wonder that is the sea below and feels nothing but the pit of nerves chewing at the inner lining of his stomach.
Inhale.
3...2...1…
Exhale.
Jimin opens his eyes and tries again, looking to the sea to feel some form of tranquility. But as the cabin car continues to sway and the pastel colored-flats drift further and further away, the sea offers no help to Jimin’s nerves.
Leaving him and dry in his misery. Almost literally.
After his third failed attempt at calming the unrest beneath his skin, Jimin huffs, eyes flying open to now glare at the endless baby blue below him. Taehyung’s still trying to take up as little space as possible from Jimin’s peripheral vision.
And then it hits him. The reason why the nerves won’t dispense and he can’t relax.
It’s Taehyung.
It always has been Taehyung.
There’s a beautiful ocean spread out as far as the eye can see for Jimin to gaze at to his heart's content and an even more breathtaking city for him to explore for as long as he wants and yet the only thing that his wily little brain can focus on is Taehyung.
Taehyung. Taehyung. Taehyung.
He might as well be sucking up all the oxygen in the cabin car with how much Jimin’s... everything seems to be latching on to him. Drawn to his stiff aura.
And that…
That pisses Jimin off.
He came to Taormina for vacation. To let go, unwind, detach from the demanding social buzz that Seoul nearly drowned him in.
(Its excuse for coming so close to murdering Jimin’s sanity is because he’s an up and coming film director. He should be able to handle the daunting pressures of fame.)
His skin had already begun to feel like his own in the short time that it had taken for his taxi to travel from the airport to his hotel. Baby steps to becoming whole again.
Leave to his subconscious want—no need to make Taehyung the center of his universe. No matter how painful it is to carve space for him in a place of himself that he’d purposely slammed shut.
But his heart doesn’t care. Fighting tooth and nail with reason to reach for Taehyung, yearning for a person that’s right there, but feels as if he’s oceans apart. Familiarity over self-preservation.
Jimin clings to such anger, no matter how ill-placed it may be. It’ll keep his stupid feelings distracted long enough for the cable ride to en–
The cable car suddenly jerks to an abrupt stop. The sudden movement has Jimin knocking the back of his head against a window, pain flaring up upon impact. Stars burst behind his shut eyes.
“Ow! Shit!”
The cable car still rocks from the aftershocks from the sudden stop and Jimin’s dizzy from the hit but neither of those things slow his steps as he staggers towards a whining Taehyung.
“Tae! Taehyung ba- are you okay?”
The endearment nearly slips like water, Jimin blushing in his dazed stupor. He blames the cloud of panic that fogged his mind at the sight of Taehyung sprawled on the floor. Blood trickles down the side of his stunned face in a singular sanguine stream.
“Y-yeah. Just accidently let go of the safety handle.” He braces himself against the floor with his palms, grunting as he struggles to heave himself up.
“Ah, um I think I hit my head on the window but ‘m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Taehyung's eyes widen. He makes a questioning noise in his chest. “I am?”
He raises a hand to touch.
“No Taehyung don’t–”
Too late. Taehyung grazes the cut at his hairline, fingers coming away wet with blood.
He pouts at the red staining the pads of his fingers.
“Oh.”
Old habits spring to the surface and Jimin finds himself itching to step forward and clean Taehyung’s cut.
Self preservation ! Self preservation ! Self preserva-
Dammit!
The thread in Jimin’s heart begins to slip. He’s two steps too close, already thinking of a million and one ways to patch Taehyung up. Make him better.
Taehyung.
Taehyung.
Taehyung.
“Hey, let me he–”
“–no thank you.” Taehyung cuts in with his own steely voice. Jimin swallows back embarrassment, eyeing the blood that has now squiggled it’s way down to Taehyung’s chin.
“But–”
Taehyung presses himself away, walls rising around. “I said no thank you.”
Jimin deflates, hand falling limply to his side. The thread loosens further and the first piece from Jimin heart falls.
It hits the aluminon floor with a wet splat.
“Okay.” He mumbles in defeat.
Jimin slumps to the ground, utterly spent. In the thirty minutes of his unceremonious reunion with Taehyung, he’s managed to wring himself dry of all energy, deflated between the support of the padded bench and the chilled floor.
His head lolls against the bench cushion.
By god, it’s just his fucking luck that something like this would happen. Of course something like this would happen.
“Are...are you um okay?” Taehyung asks softly, apprehensive tone apologetic without saying “I'm sorry for snapping’. He must smell the blood or know that Jimin’s heart is failing.
Maybe he thinks his unspoken apology will offer up some sort of repair.
Jimin hums, eyes closed, head tilted up. The back of it still feels a little tender but other than that he feels fine. Still a bit rattled but anyone would be in a situation like this.
“ ‘m fine.” He sighs heavily, adding on in a smaller voice, “just fucking tired.”
Jimin doesn’t need to look to know that Taehyung is making that face where his forehead wrinkles between his brows and the ends of his lips sink down in a subtle, sadden purse. It happens whenever Jimin says anything that’s displeasing to him on a deeper level.
He can sense the disappointment in waves, but he chooses to continue hiding in the soothing darkness of his shut eyes.
The overhead speaker crackles on loudly, shaking them from the path that leads to imminent conversation.
Jimin hopes to avoid it like the plague.
“Good afternoon Ladies and Gentleman, ” A shaky, very human voice starts, “ We apologize for the sudden stop but the cable line seems to be going through a mechanical difficulty that our maintenance crew is currently working on. But...but..uh…it will take at least three hours before the problem can be resolved without placing any of you in danger. We apologize for the inconvenience and we will be giving refunds once you reach the bottom of the hill. Again we apologize.”
More crackling static and the speaker shuts off. Jimin’s too tired to chuckle at the unanimous groans that come from other cable cars around, others rightfully annoyed.
“What’d they say?”
“Huh?” Jimin moves his head to meet Taehyung’s eyes.
“What’d the people on the intercom say. I don’t understand Italian.”
Jimin raises an eyebrow. “And you think I do?”
Taehyung licks his lips, eyes fluttering down to his twiddling fingers. “Well, you seemed to get what they were saying.” He mumbles. The tip of his ears blush a soft rose.
Cute.
Jimin huffs an amused noise, lips even bothering to lift just a little at the ends. “They said we’re stuck together for the next 3 hours.”
Taehyung’s fingers freeze. Jimin picks on his sharp inhale. Being stuck with your ex-fiancé in a tiny cable car isn’t the most ideal of situations.
Well fuck, this isn’t exactly a walk in the park now is it.
“That okay?”
Taehyung adam’s apple bobs, now squeezing his fingers into an intertwined fist in his lap.
“Fine.” He grits.
“ ‘kay.” Jimin responds like the liar that he is.
That they are.
No.
They’ll be fine. It’s fine.
Hour 1
It’s not fine.
The way time crawls within the four walls of their suspended prison grates at Jimin’s nerves, toying and testing with his already flimsy will to make it down the hill with his heart still somewhat intact.
The one piece that had already fallen lays a little ways from Taehyung’s outstretched leg. One wrong movement, one careless word and the piece gets kicked to the side.
How fun.
That threat and the expected hesitation of having gone five years without communication should be enough for Jimin to keep his head down, heart cradled but he itches.
His mouth does to be specific.
It feels so odd to the point where it could be labeled as feeling wrong. He should be fired up from years of pent up hurt, tongue sharp as it slaps down grievance after grievance after grievance, furious at Taehyung for abandoning something that they had created that was so good, not this flimsy excuse of “anger” that’s really just a distraction for him to keep his mouth shut.
(It’s starting to fail. He wants to ask.)
But curiosity outweighs— distracts from —the hurt.
He has too many unanswered questions and what feels like a chance of a lifetime has just been served up on a platter to either avoid or awkwardly pick at until something caves.
Jimin prays his heart isn’t the one that does the caving.
After an inhale so deep that Jimin envisions his lungs expanding to shelter his heart, he averts his eyes to a tense Taehyung.
He opens his mouth and begins to ask.
Breaking and entering the lion’s den is a lot easier than Jimin thought.
With a few miscellaneous questions Taehyung unravels, slowly, cautiously, coming undone with each small anecdote that he chooses to offer up.
They’re all vague and one-dimensional, like the fluff you’d feed a stranger who’s wanting to make conversation.
But isn’t that what they are? Strangers?
Time erodes with the same intensity that she heals, chipping away at the accustomed, draining memories of their warm colors until there’s nothing but an unrecognizable shell.
It’s incredibly disjointing to sit and watch the stranger tell of things, places, people from around the world while they wear Taehyung’s face. His lips even pull up into Taehyung’s infamous lopsided grin, the one where a corner of his lips raises higher than the other, a subtle promise of mischief.
But this isn’t Taehyung.
The Taehyung that Jimin knew was more reserved, shy about how he presented himself before the public eye. He hid beneath cable knit sweaters and thick-rimmed spectacles.
That Taehyung would never do body shots in Malibu, go cliff diving in Greece or sit high amongst the clouds in Hawai’i.
Perks of being a hotel connoisseur. The job seems to be treating Taehyung well, even his complexion has changed, tanned to a golden brown from how much time he’s spent frolicking under the sun.
“-even if the agency didn’t send me here, I would’ve found this place eventually. Everything’s aesthetically ancient.” Taehyung laughs softly to the city on the other side of the window, “I love it here.”
Taehyung’s too preoccupied with falling in love with Taormina to notice Jimin’s eyes widen. The spark of recognition lights a dead fire.
This Taehyung Jimin recognizes. It's such a sudden, delightful instance that Jimin finds himself chuckling.
“You’ve always loved old things.”
The air stiffens. Amicable to stale in a matter of seconds.
Briefly, Jimin wonders what he’s done wrong. Then he notices the stiff lines in Taehyung’s shoulders and how his hands are now fist resting on the ledge of the window and it clicks.
An unspoken was born from their awkward conversations, an unspoken that implies that they’re pretending.
Pretending to be strangers, pretending to not know each other, pretending that there isn’t a past to be unpacked.
Pretending that Jimin doesn’t know that Taehyung loves old things. It’s a fact too intimate for pretend Jimin to know about stranger Taehyung.
More thread unravels, the second piece of Jimin’s heart readying itself to be the next to fall.
And to the soft rocking of the cable car, they proceed to wait out the silence.
The sun hangs midway in the sky. It’s trying it’s best to warm what it can against the chills of February. The day is bright but freezing cold. It’s a paradox that Jimin and Taehyung have also subconsciously embodied.
They must look like two friends on vacation. They’re the farthest from it.
Taehyung eyes remain glued to the window, avoiding Jimin.
“And you?”
“What?”
“What are you doing in Taormina?”
Oh. Jimin wasn’t expecting Taehyung to show any interest in him. He quickly scrambles to gather what he can feed from real Jimin so that pretend Jimin can contribute to ‘show and tell” without disrupting the delicate balance.
“I’m in Taormina for vacation. I just needed some time away from...everything.” That’s good Jimin, keep going. “Especially now that I’m trying to create a screenplay for a ne-”
Taehyung’s whips around from the window, his face alit, the spark that burst in Jimin’s chest reflected in his shining eyes. His previous hostility is forgotten.
“So you went through with film school! Oh my gosh, I’m so happy you chose what you loved! God,” Taehyung groans all of a sudden “You always looked so miserable studying la-”
It seems Taehyung is terrible at playing pretend as well. His words trip to a halt, ashamed at how he didn’t even bother to play by the current pretense.
He pinches the curls at the base of his neck, ears rosy.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, eyes downcast, “if I overstepped.”
Jimin gives a half-hearted shrug, chest stinging. The second piece of himself has already hit the floor.
When did loving someone feel like such a crime?
“It’s fine.”
Taehyung’s right though. Jimin’s heart had been drawn to the wondrous art of filmmaking, to tell stories through a lens, hoping to move hearts.
Law school could’ve been one of the ways in which to inspire, but it just wasn’t the way Jimin truly wished to do so.
But admitting that Taehyung’s right means admitting that he knew before their confinement in the cable car.
That they’re something more.
Unfortunately, that’s not the world they’re choosing to orbit in as of now. More time passes before Jimin feels stable enough to pick up where they left of.
He fills the space with talking. He talks about the films he’s created, the process, the people, spilling a filtered version of himself. There’s only so much he can hold back from Taehyung, no matter how much of a stranger he appears to be.
He does a decent job at keeping things superficial, even stopping himself from slipping up about how draining the industry is, about how Taormina was more of a runaway than it was a vacation. He doesn’t need Taehyung’s soft-spoken words of advice to wear him down into a false-sense of safety.
He can’t lose any more pieces of himself.
Taehyung eyes go wide, struck with realization.
“You directed Eleven and Park didn’t you?”
Jimin can’t fight back the tiny grin that tucks itself in the lines around his lips. He quickly decides that acknowledging positive emotions from Taehyung is fine.
No it is not born from fondness. Their game of pretend has been upgraded from strangers to famous director and fan. Jimin’s only smiling out of pride. It’s a great feat to have your work recognized.
Jimin latches on to the lie, playing his own minigame of pretend within himself. He pretends that he’s not sinking into the gentle waves of Taehyung’s voice as he rambles on about what he adored in one of Jimin’s earlier projects.
Apart from the ego trip, it’s nice to see Taehyung this at ease, vulnerable as he uses his hands and fingers to create comical gestures that go along side with his authentic gushing.
Jimin slips further, ignoring the quiver of his mangled heart as he dives deeper into Taehyung’s now buzzing aura.
It was always so easy to get lost in Taehyung.
He nearly laughs aloud at the oddly endearing hum and finger snap combination Taehyung does to remember the name of a character that had left a lasting impression on him.
Here, suspended miles above for the first time since they’ve crash-landed back into each others’ lives, the air is warm with an amicable energy. Taehyung lulls Jimin into a sense of safety.
Turns out five years also can’t scrub out the calming nature of Taehyung, there’s an urge to crawl into Taehyung’s space and rest there.
Jimin’s glad that all that global sight seeing hasn’t taken away that part of him.
Taehyung’s everything continues to gently rock Jimin along with the cable car, distracting him from how far he’s sunk.
Slipping
Slipping
Slipping
And then Jimin hits rock bottom.
And suddenly, he’s not in a cable car but in his first shared apartment, from five years back, cramped in a tiny kitchen under the diluted golden hour of early morning.
Taehyung sits across from him at their old round table. It has a nick on the rim of the wood from the one instance where they’d been messing around on it’s rickety surface and it hit the wall.
Jimin had thumbed over the scar, amused. Taehyung’s just as enthusiastic in this memory, rambling on passionately about something, too chirpy for the early time of eight a.m.
His face is haloed with a dewy glow from the gentle sunlight that’s let itself in through the slanted blinds, a pale caress of warmth over their linked hands that rest on the edge of the table.
Taehyung’s thumb had stroked the back of Jimin’s hand. There were parallel shadows that had fallen horizontally over their casual display of affection.
Here too, it is bright with sunshine but bitterly cold in temperature. Love dying in broad daylight.
Jimin feels sick all of sudden, the cold of the aluminum floor seeping through his pants legs, to bite into his bones.
He doesn’t want to play pretend anymore.
“Taehyung, why’d you leave?”
Hour 2
“You weren’t listening to me Jimin! I had to leave.”
“Listening t-! So you’d rather leave and save yourself than try and fix what you thought was wrong in the relationship?”
“I just told you that I did, I wanted to, but you wanted to pretend everything was perfect!”
They’ve gotten themselves into a bit of a yelling match.
The cracked rose-colored lens had been torn off, giving way for the suppressed ugly to come forth and present itself. Jimin had struck first with his “why’d you leave”, Taehyung not taking kindly to the question sharped with accusatory undertones.
And just like any other human being when shown their faults, he became defensive, striking a nerve as he tried to save himself from the forthcoming, judgmental waters of guilt.
Jimin had bristled to the tune of Taehyung’s sob song. He, out of the both of them, has no right to pull the victim card. Jimin had voiced as much with burning eyes which, in turn, only pushed Taehyung’s self-saving attempts to a level that was scathing.
His comebacks from then on were equally as condemning, biting Jimin at the heart, merciless to the tattered thing. A third piece had dropped right onto the point of his shoe and he hadn’t even flinched.
Blood on leather.
Any semblance of a proper, adult conversation disintegrated under the flames of old anger and aching pains.
Hurt people hurt people.
They’re probably loud enough for the cars on either side to eavesdrop on their conversation. Jimin’s face burns hot with shame.
God, what have they become?
The sun has sunk to a level that teases the horizon, hovering a few inches from where the sky meets the sea. The heavenly expense is a bruised pink, streaks of purpled clouds trailing after the setting sun and the splotch of white sky that it carries down with it as sets.
Diluted shadows have fallen on everything that’s still high up, darkening the corners of the cable car and coloring Taehyung’s face into something grave. The lines of his jaw are lined and sharp, the curvatures and creases of his disturbed face darkened by fallen shadows.
His teary eyes no doubt shine under the fading sunlight.
“But wasn’t it? I mean, you’d just proposed and we were finally going to adopt a dog together, you had a job you loved and I-I felt whole. What was so wrong about us then that you had to leave Taehyung?”
Tears slip down Jimin’s face that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. The anger that he’d started with has hollowed him from the inside out, leaving behind melancholy confusion.
Jimin just wants answers.
At the sight of Jimin’s tears, Taehyung’s face softens. He sighs heavily, slumping along against the wall furthest from Jimin. The cable car is moderately sized, airing on the smaller side, but the space between Taehyung and Jimin as they stand on opposite ends appears vast.
A yawning wound that’s going to swallow them both if they don’t get to the bottom of this.
“Jimin,” he starts in a voice that is drastically different from the previous loud aggression, “ You weren’t whole, okay? You were only acting like you were. Did you really not see where we were going? We...we were bringing false versions of ourselves to the table.”
Jimin hates this, hates that Taehyung’s right. There were ‘fine’s and ‘im good’ in places where they should’ve sat the other down and talked.
“Those were red flags if I’d ever seen one. It meant we didn’t trust each other enough to walk about what really mattered.”
No, trust wasn’t the issue. Life was moving too fast and having to sit and dismantle the things that drained them of happiness meant forcing the world to pause.
Something that would’ve cracked their little happy bubble open.
Jimin sniffs, arms coming up to hug his torso, heart so rattled beneath his cashmere sweater, he physically has to hold himself together.
“I don’t know you’re talking about.” He lies petulantly.
“Jimin,” Taehyung scoffs softly, “You hated what you were studying and I hated my job, but we were both too scared to admit it. Imagine if we actually went through with the wedding. What would happen if we continued to pretend everything was fine and brought those lies home to each other? Wouldn’t it…wouldn’t it-”
“-poison us?” Taehyung nods, stunned that Jimin had caught on. It pinches at his pride.
“Don’t look so surprised. I’m not a child. I can recognize things for what they are as well.”
Even if sometimes it takes me ages to get my head out of my ass.
Call him sad but Jimin had wanted so desperately to cling to the glimmering, picturesque image he and Taehyung had molded themselves into when they’d first started to date. Holding out for hope, heart on the line that things would work themselves out. That they’d return to normal. Their relationship at the time was the only thing that was working right for Jimin.
He didn’t want to lose that.
He broke his legs chasing after an ununitable happily ever after.
“Plus we were in college. What would two college juniors know about everlasting love and commitment?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Taehyung offers up, dejection obvious in the empty bitterness of his tone. “We were young, dumb, and stupid.”
“And yet you still proposed.” In the snack aisle of a 7/11, Taehyung had gotten down on one knee, said something about how it was burning a hole in his pocket and how he couldn’t take it any more before popping the question. Jimin said yes to the soundtrack of light evening showers and a city dwindling to sleep.
“I was in love.”
He still remembers in the security cam, as they smiled and giggled to the camera, Jimin’s limbs starting where Taehyung’s stopped. Kisses were exchanged, promises whispered with grinning faces at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m.
Poster children for young, careless love.
So was I.
“Are you still?”
“Am I still what?”
Jimin forces his walls to stay down, offering up what’s left of him for Taehyung to see that he's trying. Two pieces remain, a small, damaged offering.
“Are you still...in love with me?”
Hour 3
Taehyung’s eyes gleam with a clarity that’s alarmingly bright in the darkness that has completely taken over. Early evening has arrived.
“I can’t lie to you Jimin.”
The silence that had followed before Taehyung’s answer was one of bated breath and anticipation. He’d sunk himself to sit down and think, staring off into space as the journey to his answer played across his face in an unpredictable series of knit brows, nose scrunches and the occasional hum.
Others would’ve been annoyed by his lack of sudden response but to Jimin it meant he was taking this seriously. It means he’s combed through every response he could give and how it’d affect Jimin. It means he cares.
(Could it also mean he’s wanting to meet Jimin in the middle, walk across the bridge he’d built from his vulnerability and start again?)
Jimin traps his bottom lip beneath his teeth.
“Well?”
From his spot on the floor, Taehyung looks up at Jimin. It’s his turn to appear vulnerable, the answer obvious as it burns in his eyes. He struggles to hide it behind his curly hair.
But Jimin sees it and shakes when Taehyung opens his mouth to confirm.
“I do.”
“Even after five years?” Jimin dares to ask.
“Yeah. I never stopped loving you.”
When their eyes meet, no one looks away.
“So why didn’t you call or send anything to tell you were still alive?”
That you still cared?
Taehyung brushes back the curls from his face revealing eyes of deep remorse.
“I wanted to, I really did but I felt like you’d be better off without me. We were too sucked up in each other to realize when apart we were hurting.”
So he felt it too.
All along, Jimin wondered if he was the only one that felt like all it took was one look for him to spiral. No amount of time dating Taehyung could grant him immunity from the severe tummy swoops he developed whenever Taehyung so much as breathed in his space. His eyes of soft auburn were enough hypnosis to get Jimin to do anything, even stay in a major that he hated because the college was closer to Taehyung’s job.
To give your all for someone in the name of intense heart feeling. That’s scary.
Jimin voices as much and Taehyung agrees.
“The speed at which we were going was only going to end up with us crashing and burning. I couldn’t do that to you, to us. What I did hurt and for that I’m sorry but .” In the dark Taehyung’s eyes shine with something warm, “You look so much better, happier and if it took you hating me forever for you to get there, then it was worth it.”
“Oh god,” Jimin whimpers, eyes burning with overwhelmed tears. “You weren’t kidding about loving me.”
“Nope,” Taehyung says, popping the “p”. He looks at peace with his confession, face tranquil in a way that it never was since they both stepped into the cable car.
And Jimin’s heart for the first time, starts to strengthen. The frail string of pretending everything is okay, no longer needed.
“Even after everything?” He asks softly.
“Even after everything.”
Silence seems to have become their default settings, they fall into different variations of it when air becomes too tight to hold a conversation.
They have page upon page of dialogue to catch up on but for now at least there’s a means of reconciliation.
When the cable car starts again, they’re sitting side by side, pinkies brushing.
This is weird.
No, scratch that.
It should be weird. Jimin sits freshly showered on a loveseat positioned in the mini living room of Taehyung’s suite, listening to the sounds of water puttering against tile as Taehyung takes his turn in the bathroom.
It mingles and blends with the miscellaneous noise of Italian night life that floats in from the open balcony.
Instead of being on edge, Jimin feels surprisingly calm, a calm that persists even after Taehyung comes out of the bathroom and orders them room service.
They sit across from each other and eat in easy silence. The entire situation is saturated in deja vu. At one point, Jimin even blushes when Taehyung addresses him as “Jimin-ah” in a gentle tone to ask for the salt.
Surely things should still feel tense. Rome wasn’t built in a day and no relationship has been fixed in one.
It doesn’t seem to be bothering Taehyung, who hums as he cleans up their mess, shooting Jimin small smiles each time their eyes meet.
The question bursts from Jimin before he can stop himself.
“Don’t you think this is weird? Are we moving too fast?”
Taehyung stills. During what Jimin swears is the longest minute of his life, Taehyung sets his phone down, limbs sure as he makes his way over.
Jimin can’t look away as Taehyung dares to inch closer, bare feet against polished wood, placing one foot in front of the other in a cautious linear precision.
pat.
pat.
pat.
There’s not enough distance between the milky white single seater where Taehyung started from to the matching love seat that Jimin’s currently struggling to become one with, chenille fabric and all. He rounds the corner of the glass coffee table and panic hits, slamming into Jimin’s ribcage, head first for his heart.
A heart that’s still sore from this evening’s previous beating.
Now there’s nothing physical between them, Jimin calculating that it’ll take two more, softly placed steps before Taehyung’s toe to toe, looming over him and his feeble attempt to not take up space.
Voluntarily.
Oh god.
Jimin’s stomach churns at that. Taehyung is three...no two steps away from voluntarily placing himself in Jimin’s space after 5 years of running, pulling, retreating, (what happened in the cable car doesn’t count), fighting. Will it be a perfect fit like before or have their edges become frayed from years of hostile separation?
What if the molecular layer of himself doesn't remember how to react to Taehyung’s presence, his energy—a soft pulse of gold that seems to glow under his skin—and sets off a knee jerk reaction of rejection?
He can’t do that to them, not when they’ve finally, finally filled the cracks and splinters of what’s left of their “we” “us” “you & i”.
The cement’s still wet.
And Taehyung’s all out of steps.
The click of Jimin’s dry swallow seems to sound loudly in the suffocatingly silent hotel room. He’s so close, tan skin and unruly permed curls, cherry lips that he won't stop nibbling at and eyes though wide with hesitation are backlit by an unsure flame of determination.
There’s also a million and one things swirling within the brown of his iris but Jimin’s no longer an expert at reading Taehyung. All he can do is hold his mixed gaze and hope that he’ll become familiar with all that is Taehyung soon enough.
They continue to hold one another’s gaze, even as Taehyung leans forward to slip his hands onto Jimin’s shoulders, a firm slide that grates up his skin as Taehyung’s warm palms press the wool of Jimin’s sweater along his chest.
The thighs come next.
Jimin can’t breathe.
His heart stops, ribcage frozen now that he no longer has life bumping through him, frozen under Taehyung’s gradually increasing weight.
Jimin goes dizzy once Taehyung’s fully seated himself on his lap, thighs on either side of Jimin’s, hands now resting close to the base of his neck, the nail of his pinky grazing the skin there.
His eyes haven’t moved from Jimin’s however, asking a question that Jimin can’t quite discern, but he picks up what he can from what Taehyung’s putting down.
And then Taehyung’s leaning in again but this time to kiss him.
A gentle locking of lips.
But that’s dangerous.
So, so dangerous. Yes, they’re no longer volatile, remnants of their cable car confessions and rehabilitations smoothing things over but at best they're fragile. In the space of the three hours that it took them to get down from the mountains and back to the hotel, shower, and change nothing could’ve possibly budded from rocky, dried up soil….
But maybe something did because Jimin is kissing back, kissing back harmoniously. Even his molecular layer is on board.
It’s just like old times. Jimin’s hands rise to return home, in the subtle indents of Taehyung’s waist, fingers curling into Taehyung’s pajama top, disrupting the dust that’s settled there. They crave the warmer treasure that lies underneath, but Jimin makes himself content with what he’s allowed to touch at the current moment.
Taehyung’s fingers have also returned home, tugging at the curls gathered at the base of Jimin’s neck. A tug too harsh has Jimin groaning aloud, breaking apart the perfect lip lock to nip at Taehyung’s top lip.
It’s so warm.
The beginnings of liquid gold drip down Jimin’s throat, seeping into his vessels and spreading through his blood stream. Everywhere is buzzing, alit, in love.
The kiss continues for another long minute, toying with the line that crosses into making out. Spit’s swapped, lips are growing rosy, a little swollen.
They pull away when Taehyung’s hips grind forward, an unspoken agreement that they’re still too unsure to go that far.
Jimin pants, breath stolen and shining along Taehyung’s lips, his heart has been jump started into working again, jackhammering within the too small walls of his capsizing chest.
Taehyung’s a heavenly sight for sore eyes, lips shiny and fuchsia red, a flush coloring the apple of his cheeks a petal pink and his eyes are blown. Jimin knows he doesn’t look any better.
Despite the air that has tensely set the stage for something more, something heavier, Taehyung goes soft, tipping forward to place innocent pecks along the bridge of Jimin’s nose, under his eye, and at the corner of his swelling lips.
It’s another question, this time mapped into Jimin’s flushed skin for later, when he’s ready to piece it together.
“It’s only weird if you want it to be.”
Taehyung detangling himself from Jimin has got to be the absolute low point of the long, tumultuous evening, for he takes the golden warmth with him, skin tucking it back into the crevices of his being.
“Ta-” Jimin croaks. But the words aren’t there to complete the thought. He just wanted to get out the start of Taehyung’s name, relish in the taste of it at the tip of his tongue.
Taehyung smiles shyly.
“Good night Jimin.”
Jimin can only stare, dazed as Taehyung quietly walks to what Jimin can only assume is the bedroom.
He pauses, one hand resting on the sliding door. “H-happy Valentine’s day.” And then he’s disappearing behind the door in a flurry of shaky hands and red ears.
Jimin blinks repeatedly, his heart now strong enough to do back flips in his chest. He blushes beneath the air that’s gone fragile. It’s the good kind of fragile, the type of fragile where you make slow movements in order to cradle the tenderness that lingers.
They may have parted on less than amicable terms five years back, but there’s hope now, with promises of more conversions and eagerness to relearn each other.
Hopeful it’ll lead to an even stronger relationship.
Jimin can’t help the bashful smile that stretches along his face, struggling to hide it behind his hand but to no avail.
A happy valentine’s day indeed.