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“What are you looking at?” Taehyung is asking, but Jeongguk is unable to collect his words in time. He only just barely gathers himself, his thoughts together and looks away from the other.
You, he wishes to say. “Nothing,” he answers instead, fingers gripping minutely tighter onto the edge of the counter he leans against, and the kitchen feels smaller.
Taehyung regards him oddly, silent, taking in Jeongguk’s strung up stance, his uneven breathing, yet he offers nothing. There’s a certain tension in the air which fails to dispel, and it makes it just a little harder to breathe. To look Jeongguk in the eye and ask him, repeat himself, shake the truth out of him.
To ask, what’s wrong?
To ask, what did I do wrong?
“Is there a problem?” He forces out instead, wringing his fingers together before him as he copies Jeongguk’s stance. The other’s eyes settle on the length of Taehyung’s fingers, their nimbleness, it’s a nervous tick of his.
Avoiding eye contact— Taehyung hates the fact that he’s the one making him anxious, and with each ticking second, a knot grows within his stomach, coiling tighter and tighter and tighter—
“He’s gonna propose today,” Jeongguk blurts out, Taehyung’s surprised one meeting his fleeting one, eyes everywhere, never settling. “He’s gonna propose to you today, and—” His adam’s apple bobs visibly, arms tensing as he struggles to swallow past the bitterness lodged in his throat.
The thought of it, of Taehyung’s beautiful ring finger adorned by a stranger’s jewellery does not settle well with him, and he finds himself growing warier with each moment. Taehyung has always been rather skilled at sniffing out Jeongguk’s worries and mollifying them with comforting words of his own, as a best friend should be. What’s worrisome is that he seems to have failed this time, and the burden that Jeongguk carries is too large to mitigate.
It’s become a part of him now, like a parasite chipping away at him.
But it’s okay.
“And I need you to say no.”
It’s okay because it’s Taehyung.
Taehyung, Taehyung, Taehyung.
The other’s exhale is shaky as he tries to digest what has just been divulged to him, because it was supposed to be a fucking surprise. There was supposed to be wine, and laughter, and kisses and Jeongguk is supposed to be happy for him.
It occurs to Taehyung exceedingly fast that that is not the case, and he can’t help but feel cheated. Guilty, even.
“Jeongguk,” he questions in a quiet tone, the sound of it weak in the space shared between which Jeongguk soon closes with long strides. “Jeongguk, why—”
Said man cradles Taehyung’s hands in his own delicately, fragilely as if handling glass, runs the pads of his thumbs over his knuckles and he’s too close, too close, too close.
Like this, with his frame trembling ever so lightly and head ducked, cheeks flushed, Taehyung has never witnessed him so vulnerable. Never has Jeongguk given himself up so easily to take apart, but here, at this very moment, he presents himself like an open book and Taehyung is the flame which flickers and burns him.
“Don’t ask me why,” he whispers, he begs, but follows it up with no excuse. His eyes bore into Taehyung’s intensely now, hair gathering and curling into strands due to light perspiration, and his cheeks shine underneath the minimal lighting.
Like this, so close to him, Taehyung thinks Jeongguk is beautiful.
“Just— you need to say no. Don’t marry him.”
Don’t marry him, he says, with such conviction in his voice that it feels more like a command than a request. A soft plead, so uncharacteristic of him to beg that it takes Taehyung back.
Way, way, way back.
Back to when Jeongguk wasn’t able to tower over him, cage him in like so. When they were more or less strangers, and Taehyung was merely a passerby in his childlike eyes.
He’d grabbed onto his wrist then, tiny, chubby fingers pressing into Taehyung’s veiny skin.
“Can you check if they’re gone?” He’d implored, tucked away into a corner, shaking.
Taehyung had scared away his bullies then, but now—
Now, he thinks he finds terror hidden away in Jeongguk’s clouded over, glistening eyes and it’s become apparent to him that he seems to have become the bully.
“Please.” He grasps tighter onto Taehyung’s hands, linking their fingers together and they fit tighter now. Better now, and Taehyung cannot recall the last time Jeongguk allowed for him to get so close to him, a consolation which has him reaching out for the other desperately— to salvage whatever is left of their friendship.
“Okay,” he concedes, a betrayal, because Taehyung should not be placing a dying friendship before love, yet he is. He should not be feeling his heart thunder within its confines either, but love is a fickle thing. “Okay, I won’t.”
Jeongguk’s forehead coming to rest against his shoulder in a resigned sigh is all the comfort he needs.