Chapter Text
It had been a week since Jimin had returned.
Taehyung watched Jimin scream; he could feel himself being dragged forward with him. The fear in Jimin's eyes was something he would remember until his very last days.
Jimin felt himself slipping again. He was scrambling to push himself back up. He felt high on adrenaline. His instinct to survive was pulsating through him.
He wanted to live.
Taehyung was starting to say something. And even whilst held in mid-air, fighting to survive, Jimin knew it was going to decide his fate.
“But I am in love with you,” Taehyung was saying, afraid that Jimin wasn’t registering the words, the panic plainly written across his face.
Taehyung felt the blood in his veins stop in its track and he loosened his grip on Jimin's hand.
Only to re-adjust it and pull Jimin into his arms, where Jimin belonged.
He stepped back and pushed himself to the wall on his right, so Jimin knew they were aligned with something solid; something that would not give away.
As Taehyung held Jimin tightly to his chest, he smiled; the sun had finally risen. It was a brand new day.
The concept of time was skewed to Jimin; he had just seen death right in the face and yet managed to evade it. It was not something he could file in any of the boxes of his brain. There really was no place for such a thing.
And so, the images swam in Jimin’s head until he felt like it was all he was going to see for the rest of his life.
Taehyung held onto a shaking Jimin, clung to him with a promise of never letting go. “But I am in love with you,” he whispered over and over again, as softly as the clouds in their shades of yellow and oranges. He knew Jimin could not hear him. Could feel Jimin’s heart hammer against his own chest. I t was trying to escape and enter his own rib cage; he would willingly let it.
Jimin dug his foot onto the floor of the balcony. He needed to remind himself what solidity felt like. He pushed forward into Taehyung’s body, to know that the wall behind them was going to stay there. The aftertaste of fear still swirled in his mouth and his nostrils filled in with the smell of Taehyung’s body; he filled his lungs with it. He could still see himself falling, but the image was not as overpowering as before. He was calming down.
His brain was finally cleaning up behind the tornado of emotions and hormones that had been released to try and save him. The adrenaline was being mopped up and he was starting to breathe again. And he could hear Taehyung’s “but I am in love with you” in his ears... and knew he was going to live.
Jimin lifted his head away from Taehyung’s neck. Their eyes met, and for the first time, they both saw the homes they had built in each other since their teenage years. They had been through a lot, but it was going to be okay because just like they were meant to, they had found their way back to each other.
“I love you too,” Jimin uttered. And just like before, Taehyung felt himself heal of all the wounds of the past 3 years. He felt whole for the first time since Jimin had left.
Taehyung pressed his forehead to Jimin’s, and Jimin tilted his face so that their noses were touching. They stayed like that; breathing each other in. Trying to piece together the puzzles of the past week, of everything that went so horribly wrong. Of what could have just occurred.
Their first kiss in 1095 days felt just as they had both imagined it to and even more.
Jimin dug his nails into Taehyung’s shirt, his head swimming in a thousand feelings, each more prominent than the last. Taehyung felt the same way he did when he sat under a tree and cast his eyes out to everything that was green and alive; he felt connected with the world once more. He found his roots in Jimin’s being. This was probably their gentlest kiss; both having left their former teenage shells in the past.
As adults, they were more caring, attuned in the way the other moved more than themselves. It was a kiss that said, ‘I lost you once, but never again.’
When they broke away, Jimin looked at Taehyung, his lips quivered, “I’m scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Of the past week, of what just happened,” Jimin did not let his gaze falter away from Taehyung’s, as he said, “...of you.”
As gently as holding a newborn kitten, Taehyung led Jimin inside by the hand. The kitchen was bathed in the soft white lights of the new morning.
“Here,” Taehyung said, handing Jimin a glass of water.
It was at Jimin’s "Do you see a future with him?” that Taehyung had realised his mistake. The penny dropped and every one of Jimin’s actions over the past week finally made sense; Jimin had gotten the wrong end of the stick and thought that he and Yoongi were dating. Because since the start of his and Jimin’s relationship, the promise of a future had always meant more than “I love you”. This was Jimin asking him where his priorities lay.
Taehyung wanted to confirm that what he had finally come to conclude was right, and decided to tell Jimin that yes, yes, they did want to grow old together. He did not imagine what would come next; if he had thought there was a risk to Jimin’s life by one of his sentences, then he would have remained mute for the rest of his life. He was never going to let harm come to Jimin.
No matter how many times Taehyung’s brain showed him images of him hurting himself or someone he loved, he knew he was better than that. He had been learning to overcome his imagination, the one caused by his illness.
“Why is the balcony’s barrier gone?” Jimin asked. He needed to know what the reason behind his near-death experience was. It was only rational he’d ask.
Taehyung sighed; he knew there was no evading Jimin now. His determination could be heard in the way he enunciated his words, the way his eyes looked like it was ready to burst into flames.
“I got diagnosed with harm OCD soon after you left. I met Yoongi-hyung at my therapist's office. We’re both enrolled in the same exposure therapy; it’s why you saw him with a pocket knife the other day.”
Taehyung watched Jimin take the information in, store it somewhere safe.
"But the barrier of the balcony?” he asked once more. He was sat at the edge of his chair, still unable to relax fully. Taehyung wondered how long it would take for Jimin to finally find his peace.
“That one side was loose from the hinges at the corners and was already coming off, we called the landlord a few times, but he never bothered with it,” Taehyung explained. The council never came to check their side of the city for their safety regulations anyways, and thus, the landlord had not cared to fix it. “So, Yoongi-hyung took it off completely.”
Since the balcony lay at the back of the house, no one had seen the missing third side, no stranger passing by with curious eyes could have pointed it out as something abnormal, if such a word did exist in Taehyung and Yoongi’s lives. And so, they had been left to their own will with it.
“What use was that?” Jimin was aghast; that was not going to help anyone! But he tried to keep his cool. He knew he had to remain calm for Taehyung, this was no easy topic to discuss.
He could see it in the way Taehyung was fidgeting with his hands on the table. His eyes never darting anywhere higher than Jimin’s chin. He felt for his Taehyungie, wanted to comfort him, but he himself was agitated beyond imagination.
“Our therapy is based on exposing us to risks. It increases in its severity to help our brains understand the meaninglessness of our fears associated with harmful thoughts and objects. My therapist says it’s a way for our minds to voluntarily create the same simulations that we normally have involuntarily due to our diagnosis.”
Taehyung had memorised every leaflet he had gotten from his consultant; he had an exceptional memory and could reiterate it front to back by now, he had read it that many times. Seeking answers, he knew was not there.
Jimin waited. He let the comfortable silence envelop them in its embrace. He was not going to rush Taehyung, not when he was finally talking. It had taken them long enough to get here as it was.
“Yoongi-hyung’s biggest fear has always been that he would jump from a height or push someone else from it. He decided to prove to himself that it was truly all in his head, that he would do no such thing even though he had the opportunity to do so; the balcony being something he had access to daily and yet he managed to control himself. He’s closer to recovery than I am, his mind no longer produces the same emotional distress due to heights like it used to.”
“Wait, I thought the reason why you didn’t tell me about Yoongi-hyung was that you two were dating, why didn’t you tell me about him if you were just friends?” Taehyung watched Jimin’s eyes narrow. His brows met in the middle of his face, furrowed in confusion.
After Taehyung had stopped talking, Jimin pushed the water glass towards him.
“You really thought I would think that low of you? Wow Taehyung, time has changed you. I thought we were best friends.” He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed to his utmost.
“It was stupid, the secrets kept piling on top of one another until I didn’t know my left from my right, I’m sorry,” Taehyung pressed his hands to the glass until his knuckles grew white.
Jimin reached over and wrapped his own hands against Taehyung’s. Maybe if he had come back over the three years, they could have avoided this entire thing. He had not thought himself or Taehyung strong enough for that sort of ordeal though, of them pretending like everything was normal only for Jimin to board a plane and leave Taehyung broken once more.
Jimin had always known that they would go back to their relationship once he returned; it would have just caused unnecessary pain for him to return mid-way through his degree and for the pair to be tiptoeing on the very thin line of platonic and romantic feelings.
He had cried on the phone, tears lining each of his words as thickly as his hurt, explaining to his mother of what his and Taehyung’s relationship had dwindled down to. But she had understood, like Jimin knew she would, and had not pressed on him to visit.
Without words, both boys accepted their share of the blame.
“He loves you, doesn’t he?” Jimin asked. He knew what it was to love Kim Taehyung, he had seen parts of himself in Yoongi.
Taehyung nodded. “I want him to stay.”
“I want him to stay too, I want to get to know my Taehyungie’s saviour of the past 3 years,” Jimin smiled, his eyes the crescent shape that Taehyung loved so much.
Taehyung let himself slip into bed with Jimin that morning. For the first time, his mind was allowing him to see things as they were, without the red screen of panic and danger; he would never harm Jimin.
He had had the chance to kill Jimin on the balcony and yet, as true to his morals, he had saved Jimin.
He was not going to recover overnight, but the future seemed filled with light for the first time in three years.
“We’re going to be okay?” Taehyung asked as he drifted off to sleep.
“We’re going to be okay,” Jimin confirmed.
And, as was only right, they would be until the end of their days.