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The first time Taehyung finds the cat, it is a week after he's moved into his new place and the cat almost kills him.
Taehyung’s vision at the time had been obstructed by the delicate balance of canvases in his arms and he almost misses the stray feline completely. The only reason he avoids tripping over the misplaced pet altogether (thus saving the skin of his ankles), is by virtue of the cat taking the initiative to wind himself around the man’s legs. The creature is also purring like someone had switched on a small motor inside of his throat.
Taehyung’s ankles are nearly sacrificed nevertheless when he jumps at the unexpected sensation of soft fur to skin and he neatly trips over the shoe he had only managed to toe half off. The man lands, hard, on his back but with the canvases cradled safely to his chest so he considers it a success (he’s a student. He knows where his priorities lie, and art supplies do not come cheap). As a bonus, his head also gets intimately acquainted with the hardwood floors of his room.
The cat, ignorant of his pain and sensing a good opportunity to acquire a new heated mattress, drapes himself across Taehyung’s neck in the sliver of space between where the canvases end, and Taehyung’s face begins. His vision is suddenly filled with white, black and orange. Ah, Taehyung notes distantly, is a calico, then. The sounds of purring get louder.
Once the world stops spinning, Taehyung recovers enough to gently move his canvases aside before turning his gaze to his furry trespasser. Sensing his attention, the animal preens and moves to make himself more comfortable by settling high on Taehyung’s chest.
“Good kitty,” Taehyung soothes as he carefully reaches for the feline’s delicate-looking collar. The cat looks friendly enough now, but Taehyung's heard enough horror stories to know the situation may change at any moment. For all he knows, his tri-coloured guest is lulling him into a false sense of security and has placed himself next to Taehyung’s vulnerable jugular by design.
Taehyung doesn’t breathe freely again until his fingers touch upon, then lift up the small silver disk. He nervously takes his eyes off the cat’s face to properly look at the writing engraved onto it.
‘Jimin’ , he reads. He calls the name out experimentally and is rewarded by the sensation of a raspy tongue to the pad of his thumb. Taehyung flicks the disk over and finds an address printed onto its flip side. He breathes out another sigh of relief. Looks like Jimin hasn’t wandered far from home at all.
As a second-year art student, Taehyung no longer has the debatable privilege of living on-campus. He is currently renting a room inside a shared house. The house is located inside a small neighbourhood a comfortable forty-minute bus ride away from the university campus in an area filled with houses rented to students under the same arrangement.
The address carved into the flip side of Jimin’s collar is located just across the street. Taehyung looks outside and sees the beginnings of what looks to be some nasty bit of rain. He supposed the cat has sensed the oncoming bad weather and had slipped into the closest bit of shelter.
“I suppose I should get you back,” Taehyung says. He gets up and Jimin rolls off his chest with a disgruntled look. "Come on then," Taehyung cajoles, kneeling to scoop the creature up. Jimin hops out of his reach with a mutinous look.
Outside, as if on queue, there is a flash of lighting and the rain falls harder. Jimin jumps onto Taehyung’s bed and settles in. He stretches languidly, yawns and rolls onto his back, tail swishing from side to side. He looks adorable. Taehyung sighs.
"No-one ever tells you 'no', I bet," Taehyung mumbles. Jimin chirps his agreement and uses a forepaw to bat at the air, unabashed.
“If you pee in my bed,” Taehyung eventually allows, knowing a losing fight when he finds himself in one, “I’ll eat you for breakfast when I wake up.”
“Sorry about him,” a smaller, lithe man, Hoseok, Taehyung recalls, says, beaming when Taehyung catches him the next morning. They’re both stood at the doorstep of the house across the road. Taehyung had come by on his way to class and to return Jimin to his rightful owners. The man who had answered to the door had introduced himself as Jung Hoseok with a bright and friendly smile. It is the brightest thing Taehyung has seen all week and he fights the urge to squint.
“He was no bother,” Taehyung finds himself saying. He really hadn’t been. After a brief scuffle over the ownership of Taehyung’s favourite pillow (Jimin had won), they had both slept quite soundly. However, Taehyung suspects that had Jimin been a hellcat who had ripped all his worldly possessions to shreds, one look at Hoseok smile would have had him replying in the exact same manner.
“Jimin fancies himself a bit of an escape artist,” Hoseok explains. “If you do come across him again, just dump him into the garden, or next to one of our windows. He’ll find his way back in.”
The second time Taehyung sees the cat, he can’t say he’s surprised. In fact, he pays his furry visitor so little attention that he almost completely misses the note. He’s too busy reaching for the yellow paint on his top shelf.
Once Taehyung does notice, however, he wonders at how it had slipped his gaze. The note is wound like a particularity utilitarian, yet garish wrestler belt strapped around Jimin's middle and he looks deeply unhappy with the way the belt is interfering with the natural order of his fur.
The moment they lock eyes, Taehyung immediately abandons his quest for the paints to help his friend out of his confines.
“Oh Jiminie,” Taehyung sighs, patting down the distinctly ruffled hairs, “who did this to you?”
Jimin rolls onto Taehyung’s lap the minute he is freed and kneads his paws into the soft thigh beneath him; trauma evidently forgotten. Satisfied that the calico is unharmed, Taehyung begins work on unravelling the note. To his surprise, the first word he sees is his own name.
Taehyung’s first instinct is to expect something rude. He would be the first to admit that he is a difficult neighbour, so he expects the note to carry a complaint about the toxic fumes his flat sometimes (often) emits during his different art projects, or, much more likely, a complaint for the volume in which he sings his trot songs at all hours of the day.
Every morning, he wakes half-impressed that he has somehow avoided being evicted, but it is still early days.
So, when Taehyung does read the rest of the note that had been delivered, he can hardly believe it.
Could you please sing Ring Ring by Kim YoungChul tonight? Your voice is quite wonderful.
Taehyung puzzles over the note for a good half hour, trying to work out if it is somehow a trap. Someone could be trying to set him up, he supposes. They could, potentially, have plans to record him singing at some ungodly hour of the night in hopes of acquiring the audio evidence needed to report him to whatever authority it was that dealt with these things, but even as he’s thinking it Taehyung isn’t convinced.
It all seems to be a lot of effort for something he’d most likely do anyways (he self-aware enough to know that he ends up singing, at volume, almost every night).
His thoughts turn instead to guessing at who the mysterious note-writer might be. The writing is precise and clear; it is beautiful, almost like something that had been printed or designed on a computer. The note has been written on adorably decorated stationary paper. The mysterious writer had also picked a happy song, a curious mix of EDM and trot. His fingers fiddle with the edges of the scrap of paper for a while, and then he comes to a decision.
Taehyung gets out a step stool, grabs the lemon yellow, paradise blue and cherry blossom pink paints from the top of the shelf before climbing back down. Humming the first notes of the synth beat, he paints a line of vibrant blue. He dances around to the first verse, splashes the pink in a grand arc underneath.
By the time he is done, Jimin doesn’t look very impressed, but Taehyung finds himself hoping that the person who had requested the song had enjoyed it.
Over the course of the next day, and after depositing Jimin at the doorstep of his rightful home in the morning, Taehyung comes to the conclusion that the person who had strapped the note to Jimin’s middle must be living close by. Most likely, the note writer is one of Jimin’s owners. Taehyung is aware that his voice projects, but he doubts it carries further than the house opposite. He is honestly a little surprised that it had carried that far.
That afternoon, Taehyung walks past the shared house where Jimin lives again on his way back home and attempts a casual glance at the mailbox. There are three names written on the paper taped above the mail slot in total; only two of which are familiar.
The first line holds ‘Jung Hoseok’ printed in bold across it. Taehyung recognises it to be the name of the guy who had taken Jimin back the first day. He’s the only one from the house who Taehyung had spoken to directly, and from their brief interaction, Taehyung had gathered that Hoseok had a bright and outgoing personality which made him a pretty unlikely candidate for his note-writer. Taehyung tries to imagine the man starting an interaction in the round-about way Taehyung had experienced and finds it difficult.
The man seems more the type to holler his requests from across the street, or maybe run over and join in.
The second line on the paper holds another name he recognises: ‘Min Yoongi’ - a third-year photography major who often kept to himself. Taehyung had run into him a few times over the years; the first time being at the other man’s end-of-year exhibition during Taehyung’s first year, and all the subsequent times after when they had briefly crossed paths in the studio.
Yoongi seems an even unlikelier candidate than Hoseok. The man is quiet, yes, and he seemed nice enough, but Taehyung suspects that the man’s quietness was more preference, rather than the result of true bashfulness. Yoongi also doesn’t seem to be the type to own pastel-toned, animal print stationary. However, Taehyung acknowledges that seeing someone from a distance two or three times over the course of several years does not a solid personality profile make, so he doesn’t rule the older man out just yet.
Then, there is the third name. The name Taehyung had never heard of: ‘Kim Namjoon’. Taehyung doesn't know anything about Kim Namjoon, other than the fact that the man might have nice handwriting, and potentially good taste in music if, indeed, he is the one who had sent Taehyung the note.
Later that night, when Taehyung is stuck in the studio on campus and elbows-deep in papier mâché pulp, he finds himself wondering if he’d missed any Jimin-delivered missives. He really hopes that the first message had been a precursor to many more.
He hopes his note-sender won’t get discouraged if Jimin ends up returning with his request unopened because Taehyung hadn’t been home to receive them. The thought is almost enough to tempt Taehyung into packing up and making his way home. It is a momentary urge, and Taehyung shakes himself out of it. A single note and he's already getting invested.
The sky outside suddenly lightens in a flash of lighting. Taehyung glances out the window seconds before the skies open up and it starts pouring with rain. Out of the corner of his eye, there's a quick movement and he looks down just in time to see a soaked through figure sprint into the awning of the art building for cover.
Taehyung’s studio is on the third floor, so he can’t see directly under the awning but he can see enough of the street below to know that the figure doesn’t re-emerge after several long minutes. So, he makes an educated guess and figures that the poor soul must be stuck behind the deluge of rainfall. Ever the good samaritan, he wipes his hands down on his apron, grabs one of the leftover umbrellas from the umbrella bins, and makes his way down to the building entrance.
As suspected, there is a man still stood there. His arms are wrapped tight around his middle and he’s staring gloomily into the middle distance to where the rain is still pouring down. Taehyung reaches the door just in time to see the tall man’s face settle into a determined expression, like he’s decided to brave through the last 200 metres of rain and damn the consequences, in order to get to the bus stop.
“I would advise against it,” Taehyung chuckles as he approaches. The taller man leaps about a foot into the air. He swivels around, and Taehyung manages to take in his features in the next flash of lighting. The man has a small, heart-shaped face, kind eyes framed by thick-rimmed glasses and, Taehyung notices as the man flails for balance, long, gangly limbs. His hair is heavy and hanging into his eyes as a result of the rain.
Cute, is Taehyung’s first thought when the taller man clutches his folders to his chest like a shield. His second thought is that the man looks vaguely familiar, but Taehyung is having trouble placing him — he’s never been good with faces. The shorter man waits to see if his companion is planning on saying anything in return, but when the silence stretches, Taehyung holds out the handheld umbrella in the space between them in offering and explains, “I saw you from the studio. Thought you might be able to use this.”
The other man’s eyes flicker from Taehyung’s hand, to the umbrella in it, to his face and then finally back down to his hand again.
“I —” the vaguely familiar stranger eventually begins, and then he seems to get stuck. The man bites his bottom lip and Taehyung thinks he can see the shadow of a dimple. He wants to poke it.
“You —” the taller man tries to continue, and then probably finds that that wasn't what he wanted to say either because he presses his lips together and stops himself for a second time. A drop of rainwater drips off his nose and the man's eyes widen as if suddenly reminded of his soaked-through state. "Oh god," he breathes, running his fingers over his hair as if trying to tidy up his appearance.
“I can see the bus coming,” Taehyung cuts in gently and more than halfway to hopelessly endeared. He gestures at the bus rounding the corner with the butt of the umbrella and then his hand is suddenly enveloped in a pair that feels as large as his own.
“Umbrella. Thank you,” the man in blurts. Then, realising that he is holding Taehyung’s hand between his, the taller man snatches his hands back so forcefully he stumbles back out into the rain, “I’ve got...that’s my bus.”
“Yes, it is,” Taehyung agrees, dazed.
The man shoots off.
"Wait!”
He tries to call out after him when he’s recovered from the man’s abrupt departure, but his voice is drowned out by the sound of the rain. The warmth of the other man’s palms still lingers, but more importantly…
“The umbrella,” Taehyung calls again, louder this time, holding the object up. He sees the man stutter to a halt in the distance so Taehyung is sure that he’s heard him, but the man doesn’t turn back around. Before Taehyung can say anything else, the taller man runs the rest of the distance to the bus stop, slipping and sliding the whole way. Then, he hops into the bus and is gone.
Taehyung arrives back home at a time close to one in the morning and finds that needn’t have worried about Jimin at all. Against all odds, the tricoloured cat had somehow managed to find his way inside Taehyung’s room and was blissfully snoozing away on top of his pillow. This time, he has a thin piece of notepaper the colour of sea foam wrapped around his forepaw like a makeshift cast.
Taehyung lets out a happy breath and finds that he’s disproportionately relieved that the confirmation that the previous message wasn't a one-off after all.
When he closes the door completely and kicks off his boots, Jimin cracks open one eye to watch his progress across the room. The steady rumble of his purrs is cut off abruptly when Taehyung gets close enough for the cat to register that the man is still dripping from the storm outside.
Once Taehyung is changed and deemed to be dry enough for the feline's standards, Jimin stretches up. He stands on his hind legs, kneads his paws onto the loose t-shirt covering Taehyung’s chest until the man relents and picks him up. The cat obligingly allows Taehyung to gently peel at the cellophane holding the note around his forepaw in its cylindrical shape and Jimin tucks his face into the man’s neck before falling back asleep.
Using the hand that is not petting the friendly cat’s fur down, Taehyung carefully unrolls his latest missive.
Thank you for the song the other day, the message starts, it was lovely, as usual. If you are still taking requests, could you sing That Person Back Then by Sim Soo Bong? It really is a song for a rainy day.
I hope you didn’t get caught up in the rain, and that you are warm. Jimin makes for a very effective hot water bottle if you allow him to sleep in your bed (but once you let him in, he'll never agree to sleep anywhere else).
Taehyung smiles and uses his thumb to trace over the latest note’s final words. The brief bit of personality hurriedly etched onto paper had almost been scribbled out, judging from the dark lines of ink punctuating the end of the sentence. He imagines that the writer had debated over the addition, sat back and worried that it would somehow be crossing a line and he laughs, a comforting warmth spreading through him.
For a moment Taehyung considers writing a quick note back in order to ask some questions of his own, or to reassure their sender that the messages were being well-received. Then, he thinks of how awkward it would be to explain if one of the uninvolved homeowners across the street come across his message first, and he immediately gives the idea up.
There is, of course, the obvious way to signal his approval. Carefully depositing Jimin back onto his pillow, Taehyung gets up. He leans his weight into the space next to his half-open window, and he begins to sing.
He finds himself hoping that his mystery listener is feeling even a fraction of the warmth they had given him and he sings a little louder to make sure that his voice can be heard over the sound of the rain.
During his English lecture later in the week, Taehyung comes across someone who looks very familiar. The man sitting in a corner of the room has his head deeply buried in a book, but from what Taehyung can see, he’s all leg and all arm. Like a noodle.
Taehyung firmly plants his feet a good distance in front of the man, hooks two of his thumbs into the straps of his bag and tilts his head in consideration. Those legs are definitely one of a kind. He admires them for a little bit longer and then follows the line of them up to a pair of gradually pinkening ears.
Eventually, the figure clears his throat and lowers down his book. The man catches sight of Taehyung and his tongue comes out to wet his lips.
“Hi?” he asks and Taehyung grins. He recognises the man’s face as the man who had been caught in the rain. He loves it when suspicions are proven right.
“It’s you!” Taehyung returns instead, excited and joyful. At the comment, the other man jumps and looks a little hunted.
“Depends what you what me for,” he seems to temporise, and then he smiles a little to himself like he’s made some great accomplishment. The man really does have dimples. They’re adorable. “Who do you...think I am?”
“The guy,” Taehyung replies, flailing a little. For some reason, the reply seems to put the other man on guard so Taehyung hurries to clarify, “the rain guy. The umbrella-bus stop guy.”
Umbrella guy is also, Taehyung realises too late, the one who makes all the hilarious comments under his breath whenever their English professor is being particularly onerous. And, somewhat more importantly, rain guy is the one guy who had signed up for the pilates classes held in the all-glass rooms on the second floor of the student union. The rooms that are in direct sight of the art studios.
Bus-stop-man, Taehyung slowly realises, is the reason why there is a stool next to the studio windows with an imprint of his ass almost permanently moulded into it from of all the time he had spent staring.
He knew those legs looked familiar. It had just taken him a while to place them because they weren’t encased in figure-hugging black leggings. Absent-mindedly, Taehyung also notes that they don’t lose any their appeal when encased in jeans. It is a delightful discovery, indeed.
It is also a lot to take in first thing in the morning, so Taehyung gives the cute-dimpled-long-legged man in front of him a quick nod before biding his retreat. He says, “well, I’m glad you got back okay,” and then hurriedly makes his way back to his seat before dimples could muster up a reply.
The English teacher comes in and makes an obnoxious comment thirty-minutes into the lesson. Hot-cheeky-lollipop-legs makes another dry observation under his breath and Taehyung breaths a quick giggle into his hands. He thinks the other man looks back, but Taehyung’s too busy feigning his innocence to confirm it.
Over the next month, Jimin and the notes attached to him continue to show up inside his room at irregularly spaced intervals. Sometimes, when he’s relieving the cat of his messages, Taehyung has half a mind to check on how the cat is so easily breaking into his room, but he figures he doesn’t have anything of value anyway, and he’d much rather receive his notes.
Today, Taehyung’s note is written on a sheet of paper the colour of periwinkle. When he reads it, his heart skips a beat.
It’s been a long week — the professors have been handing out assignments like candy and a group project is in the process of going up in flames. Could I request for something uplifting, please? Something to keep my spirits up. Anything you sing will be beautiful, of course, but I feel like if I hear you cheering me on, I’ll gain the strength to do anything ^^ .
Hope that wasn’t too forward of me. Have a wonderful night.
Could the mystery writer be, interested? Taehyung thinks, in him?
He is almost giddy at the thought.
Over the course of their one-sided correspondence, Taehyung has come to know that the man (he is sure the writer is a man now. The writer had once complained of bumping his head into one of the archways in the old classrooms and they were 1.80m high — some women were that tall, of course, but Taehyung thinks the probability is low enough for him to disregard the possibility altogether) possesses a keen sense of humour and is always polite. Today, he’s revealed that he might even be interested (?) in Taehyung himself.
Beyond charmed, Taehyung finds that he really wants to meet this person. He had hoped that the guy would eventually escalate, maybe scribble a down a phone number, maybe even a name to sign off the pieces of paper. However, if they keep going at the pace his suitor (?) has set, Taehyung is afraid that he’ll be turning grey before he gets his hands a set of initials, never mind a face-to-face encounter.
Decision made, he nods to himself.
“Tomorrow,” he says out loud, “I’m going to catch this guy tomorrow.”
He nods to Jimin who looks approving of the idea. Taehyung is aware that he is probably projecting.
In the meantime, there is the rest of tonight. Taehyung walks over to his bedroom window again. The curtains on the house on the other side of the street are drawn, but in the top left window, he sees the outline of a shadow hunched over what seems to be a desk. Taehyung imagines that it's his mysterious writer, hunched over a laptop, working away and waiting. Burning the midnight oil in hopes for a song.
Well, the guy has had a bad week and Taehyung has no intention of letting the man down. He leans harder into the window frame, thinks of the song that had gotten him through the time when his first completed project at university had been verbally ripped to pieces by his advisor, and starts to sing.
The melody is happy, hopeful and perfect for a soft moment of comfort.
The first notes of ‘Cheer Up’, ring in the quiet night.
The silhouette Taehyung sees at the curtains straightens up. It slumps to the side, like the man creating the shadow has rested their head against the window frame to press closer to the source of the sound.
The shadow cast on the curtains becomes smaller.
Taehyung hopes that the person is smiling.
Taehyung has a plan. Almost without fail, he will come home to Jimin making a home of his pillows after his digital art class. Today, however, he sends an email to his professor claiming to have caught a deathly cold, (but he’ll be well enough to attend the next class, yes, he promises), and he shuts himself inside his room in wait.
At first, Taehyung tries to pass the time with sketching but admits defeat after he fills his tenth page with anxious swirls. When the clock strikes seven that night, Taehyung is moments away from giving up on subtlety altogether. He’s picturing himself blazing over to the house next door to demand answers, when he hears a low muttering from somewhere below the vicinity of the tiny bathroom window he usually keeps open for ventilation.
The space is much too small for any human to fit through, it only lets in the smallest slivers of light, but now Taehyung is realising that it is probably the perfect size to fit adventurous and wayward animals of the feline persuasion.
Shaking his head to concentrate on the situation at hand, Taehyung holds his breath and tries to listen in. He creeps closer. After a moment, he realises that someone, most likely his mysterious song-requestor, is trying to strike a bargain with his tri-coloured friend.
“Jimin,” he hears, low and urgent, “ please. This will be the last time, I promise.”
Jimin’s answering mewl sounds doubtful even to Taehyung’s ears and he moves closer still to the source of the noise. The voice is unobtrusive, gentle and male. It isn’t Hoseok’s, nor is it Yoongi’s so it must belong to the house’s third occupant, the ‘Kim Namjoon’. He listens for the telltale sound of movement. He'll soon be able to put a face to the name. His heart pounds.
When Taehyung sees a tuff of white fur appear in the high window, Taehyung sprints down the stairs and out the front door. The door swings open at speed. Its heavy wooden frame slams into the brick wall with an alarming amount of noise and startles the life out of everyone within earshot.
“Holy shit,” the guy underneath his bathroom window hisses from where he had been giving Jimin a boost to reach the opening. His arms fly up as a result of his fright and as a consequence, Jimin is unceremoniously shoved through the space. He yowls his protest.
“Sorry!” the guy calls up to the cat and then he looks back at Taehyung, eyes wide. The guy is definitely not who Taehyung had expected.
The man trying to stuff a cat into his bathroom window is bendy-dimpled-pilates-hottie-with-legs-for-days. Taehyung thinks the sentence through three times in succession and it's still doesn't make any more sense. He thinks he’s being punk’d.
“I’m Kim Namjoon,” the man continues at Taehyung’s silence, words tumbling over each other. Pilates-hottie and Kim Namjoon are the same person. Taehyung thinks he might’ve slipped, brained himself rushing down the stairs earlier and now he’s having some kind of lucid dream. No-one gets this lucky. Jeongguk is going to find him later, mumbling to himself in a tangled heap at the foot of the stairs, and he is never going to let Taehyung live the moment down.
“I’m no one suspicious,” Namjoon (?!) persists, he’s got an adorable wrinkle of concentration forming between his brows. Taehyung wants to lick it. “I promise. I just. I didn’t think you were home. Oh god —” the taller man breaks himself off, and his eyes widen further, “that sounds so bad. I mean. I —”
Taehyung finally realises that the guy who he had been creepily watching from afar is tying himself into knots over the fact that he had been secretly sending him adorable little notes, and he hurriedly cuts in.
“You’re the one who’s been sending me the song requests?” he asks, perhaps a little redundantly.
While his brain is still running circles over how very lucky he is, Jimin has managed to turn himself around. The cat hops straight off the bathroom window and deposits himself into Taehyung’s arms. Taehyung catches him absentmindedly.
Namjoon reaches for the cat — most likely aiming to remove the incriminating strip of paper, this time spiralled neatly along Jimin’s collar — but Jimin is most definitely still holding a grudge over the recent window incident. He hisses at the man meanly.
The taller man shoots the cat in Taehyung’s arms a hurt look and Jimin turns up his nose but he goes back to his default low purring.
“Yes,” Namjoon eventually confesses, red to the tips of his ears, “we have English together and I live across the street. You tried to lend me an umbrella once. At the art department. After my pilates class. I haven’t been stalking you, I swear.”
“I remember,” Taehyung reassures. He thinks he might know where this is going, but he’s also wary because maybe Namjoon’s spotted him from the window during his classes and is trying to tell him that he knows.
“It’s just,” the taller man blurts again and he lets out a gusty sigh, “you have a really nice voice. Do you do anything with it? Professionally. I mean. Me and the boys,” here, he indicates to his shared house, “we dabble in music on the side, and there’s this song that I think will suit your voice really well.”
“You’ve been...” Taehyung begins hesitantly, taking the words in, “you mean you’ve been forcibly attaching notes and then yeeting your cat into my bathroom window in hopes that I’d...sing you some guides?”
Taehyung must admit he’s a little disappointed. Also, a lot confused.
“Yes,” Namjoon blurts, and then he jerkily shakes his head. This encounter is not going the way Taehyung had expected at all. “No. I mean. You also make really beautiful art.”
Taehyung clutches Jimin to him tighter, a little hurt. “So you've been doing this to try to get me to draw you guys some cover art?”
“No!” Namjoon protests, visibly distressed. He drops his gaze and lets out a frustrated breath, “wait. I mean, if you ever wanted to either of those two things, it’d be an honour. Obviously. Sorry, apparently I really suck at this but about your art, I kind of saw your final year project? The one with all the photographs displayed with different mediums? The one you labelled as Scenery, I think?” Taehyung nods, it’s the project he had his fight with his advisor over.
As if gaining strength from being able to speak more of his mind, older man continues, a touch more enthusiastically, “And it was incredible, so I’ve been following your work ever since. And then you showed up in my English lectures and wow, you’re absolutely gorgeous. So I’ve been looking for a way to...let you know. I’ve been trying to think of a way to do so for something close to a year, then Jimin broke into your house and Hoseok said you had moved into the house across the street, and I heard you singing and I just…”
“You started requesting trot songs as a way to tell me you think I’m...pretty?” Taehyung interrupts. He's even more confused now, but at least he’s no longer hurting. Taehyung leans back, opens up his stance. He cocks a challenging eyebrow, teasing.
Namjoon seems to pick up on the change of mood and he immediately raises his head to give a sheepish smile. “Well, I was eventually going to ask you if you would be interested in hanging out. At the cinema. Or the museum. Or the park. Anywhere, really.”
“Kim Namjoon,” Taehyung laughs, delighted, “were you trying to use trot music to seduce me into a date?”
“What answer do I need to give for you, for you to let me take you out?” Namjoon asks, open and honest. Taehyung finds that his cheeks are hurting from smiling too hard. The man standing in front of him is deadly.
“The truthful one, hyung,” he replies, stepping forward into Namjoon’s space. Namjoon looks delighted.
“I was, you know,” the other man breathes, his eyes flit all over Taehyung’s face like he’s having trouble believing his luck as well, “I was working a long con, because I was determined to get you to say ‘yes’, eventually.”
Three years later, Taehyung comes home after a long day at the gallery and finds Jimin curled up on his side of the bed with what looks to be a small felt box attached to his collar.
“Hyung,” Taehyung calls out, voice shaky. He scoops an affronted Jimin up and cradles him close to his chest. The younger man then walks back out to the living room, which is where he finds Namjoon. The taller man is shifting from foot to foot, visibly nervous.
“Namjoonie-hyung,” Taehyung threatens, trying to be scolding but he’s smiling too hard for it. He detaches the velvet box from Jimin’s collar and runs his fingers over the box’s smooth texture. Jimin jumps out of his arms and contents himself with making infinity loops around his feet.
“Hyung,” Taehyung chides again, “if I open this box, and I find what I think I’m going to find in here, we are going to have words. We've talked about not making Jimin your carrier pigeon.”
Despite his words, his heart is still in his throat. Taehyung opens the box up and finds a piece of paper slotted into the ring cavity. The paper is of heavy stock and is the colour of ivory. Slowly, he unfolds it.
My heart is burning up
I can’t live without you (1)
The paper says, and Taehyung makes a confused noise. He recognises the words as part of Love Me, Love Me Not ’s lyrics and for a terrible second, he thinks this whole set up had been Namjoon just making another song request for old time's sake and his heart drops to the vicinity of his knees.
Taehyung thinks he'd somehow misunderstood, and the disappointment is crushing. At the peripherals of his vision, he sees Namjoon shift a little closer.
When Taehyung catches his eye, Namjoon's lips quirk up into a shy smile.
Then, he pulls another box out of his pocket and gets down on one knee.
Even later in the night, in the comfort of their bed, the reality of what had just happened catches up to him and Taehyung can’t help but laugh into their pillows.
“Taehyung,” Namjoon whines, voice rough. From the way he shoves at Taehyung’s shoulder in protest, Taehyung can tell that the other man’s muscles are still loose and liquid for their activities earlier on. At the observation, Taehyung finds himself laughing a little more.
“Tae,” Namjoon complains again, but in the light of the moon, Taehyung can see that the other man is smiling. “Why are you laughing?”
“I can’t believe you proposed to me using trot music,” he snorts and Taehyung can see that Namjoon is trying his best to keep a straight face but the older man dissolves into giggles within seconds. Taehyung’s heart swells with love. “God, I think you might be the only one who loves trot more than I do.”
At that, Namjoon, oddly, looks a little guilty.
“Can I make a confession?” Namjoon whispers into the night when they’ve both calmed and Taehyung nods.
"Of course."
“Actually, I...I’d never listened to trot before I started writing you those notes,” the older man says all at once like he’d had to work himself up to make the confession. “I just started searching up recommendation lists on Naver and then I just. Streamed the titles that sounded interesting until I came across the ones that I thought would suit your voice.”
“What,” the younger man gapes and he shoots up into sitting. Namjoon’s cheeks are flushed and Taehyung starts laughing again just by observing how apprehensive the other man is. “Why?”
“I wanted to be different,” Namjoon confesses, rueful. Then, he pulls the younger man back down like he can't bear for them to be apart. When they’re finally level, the older man places a hand to the back of Taehyung’s neck and reels him in. “You’re so gorgeous, I thought you had to be getting asked out left and right. I wanted to be memorable.”
Taehyung catches Namjoon’s eyes and feels warm all over.
“You were definitely memorable, alright,” he murmurs, quietly teasing. One day he'll tell Namjoon that the man had caught his eye long before his letters, but not just yet.
Taehyung feels the press of the kiss that had been coming long before their lips touch. Namjoon's still staring so very gently into his eyes and the younger man can read the desire writ clear across them. He leans forward, willing the moment to come a little faster. Namjoon makes a noise low and hungry in his throat before he moves to close the distance.
“Also,” Namjoon continues, long, luxurious minutes later. His voice is husky. Taehyung can barely remember what they had been talking about, “I was working a long con.”
The older man slides a hand down the length of Taehyung arm and tangles their fingers together. Their new rings clink against each other, the sound as distinct as wedding bells in the still and silent room.
“I was determined to get you to say ‘yes’, eventually.”