Chapter Text
“The fuck is this I hear about tutoring?!” Jimin near screams at him when he gets back. In fact, he’d been so livid he wasn’t even inside the room. He had been waiting for Taehyung outside of their shared apartment, pacing angrily and also a little bit in shame before his best friend returned. Taehyung, however, is too physically and mentally exhausted to reply, and he sidesteps Jimin so he can unlock the door and step inside.
“I can’t believe you told me it was a date, you complete dumbass!” Jimin follows him in, the door falling shut behind him in a semi-loud slam. Taehyung remains silent as he starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Taehyung! Are you listening--” Taehyung spins around as Jimin places a hand on his shoulder, and his eyes are crazed and face flushed.
“Okay, I can’t believe I thought it was a date either, Jimin, okay? I’m horrified, and I never want to step foot outside this room again. At least it wasn’t you going and making a fool of yourself, so. Calm down. Okay?”
“Calm down,” Jimin scoffs. Heck, he would be a lot more calm if he was in any other circumstance. “Do you know what I did for you?! Yoongi-hyung had to hold me back, you little shit, I’m never listening to you again, I can’t believe--”
“Yoongi-hyung had to hold you back?” Taehyung repeats. “From what?”
Jimin flinches, but before Taehyung can pounce on his best friend and pry an answer out of the guy there is an angry pounding on their door. They share a glance, previous hostility forgotten in the face of a new foe, and Taehyung slowly goes to twist the handle of the door. It flies open from the force on the other side, and Hoseok tumbles in with a glare Taehyung doesn’t remember ever seeing on the guy. “Hoseokie-hyung???” He calls, bewildered. “What are you doing here…” and trails off as he gets a closer look at the other’s face. “Oh my god, what happened?!”
Self-consciously, Hoseok presses a hand to his cheek, a little swollen and darker than the rest of him. “Oh, you would know,” he answers, eyeing behind Taehyung. He swivels around to see Jimin blatantly looking away, even lifting a hand so as to cover his vision, and wow. Taehyung is touched.
“You punched Hoseok-hyung for me?!” he begins, about to go cradle Jimin in his arms.
“Yeah, didn’t know it warranted such a hostile reaction to offer a blind date to a friend, when it wasn’t even a fucking blind date in the first place.”
“Circumstances,” Jimin mumbles.
“Not the problem,” Hoseok dismisses. He shoves a phone into Taehyung’s face, and the glare contrasts so much with the darkness of the room that his eyes almost burn. Backing up to get a better view, Taehyung pales when he reads the conversation on the screen.
Maknae Kookie
[9:12 PM]
Your friend fucking asslted me i’m not ding it i quit ill fail
[9:12 PM]
I HATE YOU
“Why don’t you tell me what the fuck this means, Taehyung, because as much as I love you I’m pretty pissed right now and if I can’t punch Jimin I’ll kick you--”
“It was a misunderstanding!” Taehyung screams. “He--he, I, I was stupid and I thought--” he sinks down onto to floor and begins to sob, and Hoseok immediately balks and crouches down with him. Jimin approaches, warily eyeing his hyung until he’s sure that he’ll be met with no retaliation. “I’m so embarrassed,” Taehyung cries. Hoseok shoots Jimin a helpless look, and Jimin swallows and takes his best friend into his arms.
“Hey, Taehyung, it’s okay. We’re not angry anymore, it’s fine. Tell us what happened.”
A glass of water that Taehyung chokes on and a few soothing moments later, and Jimin is finding it really hard to maintain his look of understanding when Hoseok is about to piss himself from laughter on the other side of the couch. Taehyung still seems a little down, but happiness is infectious and he at least has a small smile on his face now that he recounts what happened. It’s more reassuring to see him in this state than seeing him a sobbing mess, Jimin will admit.
“You suck, hyung, stop laughing,” Taehyung says, but it doesn’t sound like he means it. Hoseok’s doing pretty well with staying quiet, but his expression is getting uglier and redder by the second. “I’m going to take a picture of your face and post it online,” he warns. Hoseok sobers up pretty quickly after that threat.
“He’ll forgive you,” he reassures after he’s finally calmed down (breathing exercises really do the trick, Hoseok insists), “Jungkook is a nice guy. I mean, he’s my friend. That says something, right?”
“You make friends with anyone,” Jimin counters, and Hoseok tsks at him.
“Oh, you young, inexperienced soul.” Geh. Jimin swallows down the violent urges. “Just because I’m pleasant with everyone doesn’t mean I’m friends with them. Jungkookie though, he’s real sweet. Not good at math, but good at everything else. That’s why I was like, oh, hey, I know someone who could help you out. I told you this first thing, Taehyung, were you even listening to me?”
“I mean… I kind of stopped paying attention after you told me there was someone you wanted me to meet…” You can’t blame him if he gets a little too disheartened to focus after that.
“Aaand now you’re a mess, and my dongsaeng hates me.”
“I’m… sure he doesn’t really hate you.”
“Oh, no he doesn’t,” Hoseok waves off the idea, “Please, we’re not in elementary. A kiss shouldn’t be a big deal, especially one without malicious intent. Either way, Jungkook will probably forgive me when he sees my face tomorrow.” Jimin flinches in apology, and Hoseok taps his arm. “You’re forgiven by the way, brother-in-law.”
“Sorry about that, hyung.”
“Although I’d like to know why you’re so against it? I always thought Taehyung would want to settle down.” Oh, there’s really no other way to put the situation down as than the word awkward. Taehyung and Jimin just kind of… shift gazes for a while, having their own little telepathic conversation while Hoseok builds up the impatience in his veins. “Yeah, okay, fine, don’t tell me assholes. I’m not the type to push when it’s uncomfortable anyway.”
“Oh, ew, gross--”
“I wasn’t talking about that, you idiot, I see Yoongi-hyung hasn’t passed third base with you yet--”
“Don’t you come onto my love life--”
“I’m not allowed this much after getting punched for a reason I don’t know? Ugh, you’re both so high maintenance--” he motions for Jimin to shut up and turns back to Taehyung. “Just. Apologize, or whatever you do. Avoid him if you want, although he’s not a bad guy. I’ll try talking to him too, okay? This mess is hereby closed, and I skipped practice because I’ve had a shit day so I’m going to go back and pass out way earlier than I planned to, okay?” Hoseok stands, but he makes sure to give both of them half-hearted hugs before he goes. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks Taehyung.
“Yeah, I’m making too big of a deal out of this. I’ll be fine. Sorry to bother you, hyung.” Hoseok smiles and gives him a pat on the head. Taehyung ducks down and waits until the door closes before dropping to lay on the couch. Jimin catches him halfway.
“You sure you’re fine with not telling him?” he asks him.
“I’m a little emotionally unstable here, Jiminie,” Taehyung offers. He thinks back to the look of horror on Jungkook’s face, and immediately wants to dunk his head in river water. “First,” he breathes, “I have to apologize…”
“And how are you going to do that? Send a bouquet? Chocolates? A serenade?”
“Uh, I was just thinking a text…” Oh. Jimin hides the sigh of relief. “I mean, do you think I should--”
“No way you shouldn’t. A text sounds fine. We can get his number from Hoseok-hyung tomorrow or now, if you really want it, and…” he trails off as Taehyung pulls out a damp rolled up scrap of paper. He half expects his friend to stop the conversation in order to throw out the thing, since Taehyung’s done it before, but instead his best friend unravels it to reveal a bunch of numbers sectioned off in a familiar way, smudged but still legible. Jimin crosses his arms. “You got a number from a guy you were planning on rejecting,” he hums. “Talent, bro.”
“He gave it to me because I refused to give him mine--”
“And you went and kissed the guy because he wouldn’t give up, am I right?”
“No! Weren’t you listening to me at all?”
“I was, I was. I’m just kidding.”
Taehyung sighs. God, he hates sending written confrontations. Even professional texting takes him at least an hour, and don’t even get him started with emails. He can read those thirteen times before he sends them and even then he’ll end up finding stupid mistakes like a missing letter, or skipping a space. At least Jimin is next to him this time, but even so he types the numbers into his phone slower than when he’s trying to recall one.
[10:04PM]
Is this Jeon Jungkook?
He gets a reply pretty quickly despite the fact that he’s an unknown number. Usually he likes to leave those for ten or so minutes to see what’s going to happen before typing out a response. Jungkook must be one of those kids who are always on their phones.
[10:04PM]
Who is this?
[10:09PM]
This is Taehyung. I’m really sorry again about what happened. I have a habit of not listening. If there’s anything I can help you with, I’d be glad to do so.
“...I think he’s ghosting me,” Taehyung says in shame after ten minutes of anxious waiting and neurotic behavior have passed.
“Maybe he’s asleep,” Jimin suggests, getting up and heading toward the bathroom.
“Very few people go to sleep at 10, and I don’t think any of Hoseokie-hyung’s friends fall in that category--”
“Look, Tae, sometimes when I have people I don’t want to talk to, I pretend to not see their replies until the next day. Maybe he put his phone down, maybe he just doesn’t want to reply yet. Either way, you made the first move and apologized. It’s done with, so just wait until tomorrow or forget about it.”
Taehyung pouts as he watches Jimin dig for clean pajamas to shower and change into. His best friend used to be so, so sweet and caring. Jimin used to reread emails twelve-hundred times and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Oh, where did he go? “You know, you’re really turning into your boyfriend.”
“Yoongi-hyung once told someone he didn’t have a phone while he was using it. I don’t think I’ll ever reach that level of... indifference.” Indeed, Yoongi was Taehyung’s secret role model. He smiles and throws his phone to the side. The screen’s already slightly cracked so he doesn’t have to worry about ruining perfection.
Jimin’s right; he apologized. There’s not much else he can do until he gets a reply. “Wanna’ save water?”
“Wanna’ die?”
--
Taehyung doesn’t see a reply from Jungkook (enough time’s passed that he doesn’t really care at this point, nor does he remember), but he does see him slouched over in the library, hogging one of the tables obviously built for more than four and looking like a final exam student that needs a 90 to pass a class. Jungkook’s still got a few months ahead of him before the boss battle, so Taehyung can’t help but feel for the boy.
A part of him feels like he should just move to the other side of the room (Taehyung is totally against avoiding places to avoid people. He pays for this type of freedom and so he’s allowed to be where he pleases. Legally.), but Jungkook looks like he’s on the verge of dying with the way his pencil is digging into the wood of the table and how his head is lowered so far down he looks like he’s sniffing his notebook. Taehyung is good at math, and Jungkook had asked for his help before, so what does it make him when he refuses assistance he can lend? He makes sure to approach quietly enough so that the other cannot hear him.
They’re math textbooks as expected, Taehyung can see as he gets closer. One page looks like derivatives while another’s opened to probability and a third is on hyperbolic functions and woah, that is a really bad method of studying if the kid actually wants to retain any of the things he’s looking at. He peeks over to the notebook filled with scribbles and a lot of doodles that look kind of cute for the morbid images they depict.
It seems like Jungkook is working on a problem about functions, but the graph doesn’t look hyperbolic and is that a mistake in the quadratic formula he sees written there?
“You forgot a negative,” he points out as Jungkook jolts in his seat, turning around to see who’s been hovering over him. His face goes through a series of emotions so quickly it’s almost comical, and finally settles on one of reluctance. Taehyung hopes that’s not the emotion he mainly feels in life--that would be sad. “You forgot a negative,” he repeats again, finger jabbing at the formula near the very top of the page. Jungkook looks back at his notebook and the grip on his pencil turns tighter.
“Son of a fuck me,” he hisses. And then, “...Thank you.”
“Yeah, I don’t really look at the beginning when I’m looking for mistakes.”
Jungkook hesitates. “It’s not...well, it kind of is,” he replies, automatically flipping back at least five pages of bullshit writing. Taehyung makes a horrified face. Oh, that’s just brutal. “This shit is all wrong though.”
“You should go over to the quiet study area so you can focus better, you know.”
“That’s okay, I kind of feel like dying whenever I sit there.” Taehyung chokes out a laugh, and he can see the corner of Jungkook’s lips lifting as well. Good sign, good sign. “Uh, do you want to sit?” Yessss.
“Yeah, sure!” Jungkook makes to clear the space in front of him, pushing it all to the side before he has to push it back as Taehyung takes the seat next to him instead of across.
“You, uh, you can probably have more room if you go over there?” he offers.
“I would,” Taehyung agrees, “but you simplified something to sine squared when it’s supposed to be cosine squared so I thought I would be of more help if I sat next to you.”
“Damn it, where--” Jungkook looks flustered as he scans his work, and he erases furiously once Taehyung points out his mistake.
“Have you found yourself a tutor yet? I know you can apply for those kinds of things somewhere--” Taehyung never really had a need to use them, so he doesn’t know much in detail about their campus programs. He kind of feels like a smartass now, but Jungkook just shakes his head.
“For this class they do it in like,” he gestures a circle with his arms, “a larger group and I don’t get it, so. I still go, but whatever.”
Fuck school, Taehyung would rather eat dirt than talk about school stuff. But they’re in a library and they don’t really know each other that well, so who is he to complain? “So, um, what are you studying?”
“I’m undeclared, kind of wanted something in Design, or maybe Dance, I don’t know. Right now I’m taking care of most of my cores though.”
“Cool…” Awkward, awkward, awkward. He wants to leave. “So, um, about when we first met…”
“Yeah, okay,” Jungkook turns around, face back into that flighty look Taehyung had seen on him when he had first walked into the cafe that night. “I was wondering how to bring that up. I’m so sorry for overreacting--” he’s referring to what happened after the misunderstanding came into the light, when Jungkook had nearly sprinted from the place, and Taehyung had to do the walk of shame from a cafe with everybody (yes, everybody) looking at him in pity and anger. “I wasn’t even pissed, I was just so confused but Hoseok-hyung was like oh just go along with the flow because my friend’s kind of unpredictable so I thought something was weird halfway through? But like I just thought it was normal and then everything blew up and I left you like an asshole and--”
“You’re rambling, it’s fine,” Taehyung tries to stop Jungkook from having another nervous breakdown.
“I mean, it was pretty much my fault for not clearing up what was going on. I was just too devastated to be able to hear straight and Hoseokie-hyung was so excited like how could I say no? And he’s always been good at his stuff and it’s not like it was your fault so I thought I couldn’t leave you hanging and…” So they both ramble when they’re nervous. How nice to know.
Taehyung loves when he talks in circles, because he gets to see a whole variety of expressions. In this case, Jungkook looks like his eyes are swirling as he tries to make sense of everything.
The guy’s still nodding with a frown once Taehyung’s finished, but after a few seconds of careful contemplation he wisely chooses to keep his mouth shut.
“Could you maybe forgive hyung, though, it really wasn’t his fault I, quote, ‘assaulted you by accident.’”
Ah shit, so he saw those. “No, that was just--” Jungkook stammers, “you didn’t really--I was just stressed that day. It’s been weeks already, so we’re cool. And it’s not like I really meant it, you know?”
“I don’t know, do I know?”
“Um…” Jungkook blinks, and the expression Taehyung’s most familiar with appears on his face again. “I...hope you do know?” he tries. Taehyung grins. Hah, easy as cake.
“So...you need help with anything?”
“Huh? Uh, no, I think I’m..good. This was the last question, and I got the answer after I fixed what you told me. I don’t really want to touch math anymore after this.” Taehyung nods in understanding.
They drift off into another awkward silence after that, and although Taehyung usually likes to hang around and see what the other person is doing before he drifts off Jungkook is refusing to make eye contact with him anymore. He’d be offended, but hey, they really aren’t that close, and Jungkook does look like he’d rather bury himself alive than talk to anyone right now.
“Anyways, I’ll get going. See you around, yeah?” Sike. Taehyung doesn’t plan to see the freshman he’d accidentally embarrassed himself in front of ever again. And Jungkook seems to agree, because his nodding is the kind you do in front of your distant relatives, the type where you kind of just say yes to get something over with.
“Yeah, nice meeting you.”
Hallelujah and good-bye, Jeon Jungkook.