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”I swear, Taehyung, if you don’t stay with me the whole time, I will never trust you again!”
”Hyung, don’t worry, I won’t leave you. I will never leave you. I’m right here,” Taehyung said in his most calming tone, while placing his hands on Hobi’s shoulders and leaning his own forehead against his. ”Just breathe and concentrate on my face the whole time, okay? It will be over so fast, I promise.”
”Don’t start chatting with the guy or checking your phone either, promise me,” Hobi scolded, which would have made Taehyung nervous under any other circumstances, but he knew very well that it was just nerves talking.
Smiling easily at his older member, he felt good about getting a chance to take care of him for once instead of the other way around.
It was only fair really, that he should be the one to accompany Hobi and be his emotional support person, when the whole thing had been his idea to begin with.
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I all started in June 2020, when all seven members had pulled an all-nighter in front of the TV to watch their pre-recorded segments for “Dear Class of 2020” in context and nervously monitor reactions on social media at the same time.
No matter how hard they tried to stay focused on speeches and other segments by people they looked up to and felt honored to be associated with, it proved difficult for most of them to stay awake and make sense of constantly lagging subtitles at the same time.
Whispers turned into small talk, and small talk turned into deeper conversation about ARMY watching all over the world, canceled tour dates and wanting to go to America again as soon as possible.
One stray comment from Hobi about missing L.A. had quickly turned into a brotherly ribbing session of “L.A. Jay” and jokes about his solo trip overseas to shoot the music video for “Chicken Noodle Soup” the year before that.
Ever since that trip, his fellow members had made a game out of talking about this alter ego and all the things L.A. Jay would do that Hobi would never do, the more shocking and not-safe-for-media, the better.
“You know what, Hobi hyung,” Taehyung had said in the middle of a very sentimental, American segment which felt more like something out of a movie than anything they were familiar with in their own lives, “I think L.A. Jay needs to come out and play, for real. You know… Next time we go? You should do something that L.A. Jay would do. Just to celebrate that we’re back on tour, seeing ARMY again. Go a bit crazy, decide something now and just do it when we get there!”
“Oh yeah, like what? It’s not like I can do whatever I want without people finding out,” Hobi had replied, hastily adding that he would rather not get arrested or scarred for life by any of the activities that had been brought up so far that night.
“You could get your ears pierced!” Taehyung’s loud excitement had made even Namjoon turn away from the TV to see where things were going.
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Leaning back in the leather-upholstered chair, Hobi looked like he was quite upset with his past self for agreeing to something that seemed so distant and possible to forget or back out of at the time.
True, he had vowed never to get his ears pierced, but that promise was to himself.
A promise made to his members, in the name of the love they all felt for ARMY, in the name of the need to celebrate seeing them in concert again, would have to overrule the original promise.
Once Jimin had pointed out that the time between their final day in L.A. and the winter holiday show recordings back in Korea would be the perfect healing period, and Namjoon had worked together with staff members to find a discreet, upscale hair salon catering to celebrities wanting simple ear piercings, there really was no backing out.
Taehyung had asked their security guy to take a seat and attempt to look casual, instead of standing vigilant at the door, to remove the impression that he might try to tackle Hobi to the ground, should he decide to flee.
Just bros, doing bro stuff.
Just a couple of world-famous stars and their security hanging out in a luxury hair salon, casually getting some piercings.
WWLAJD, you know?
“What’s taking so long, what are we waiting for?” Hobi lifted his head again and looked nervously toward the front desk for the man who had greeted them upon arrival.
“Ah, he’s probably just loading the gun,” Taehyung answered absentmindedly, not realizing until he saw the wide-eyed horror on his hyung’s face what he had said.
“GUN?! No one said anything about a gun,” Hobi exclaimed, half-way out of the chair already before Taehyung could explain that he had been caught up in memories of the first time he got his own ears pierced, forgetting that places like the one they were currently in were unlikely to use a device like that.
Luckily, he managed to calm down the frightened little Hobi squirrel and explain his mistake before he changed his mind for the ninth time that day.
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“Does it still hurt?”
“A little bit, but don’t worry about it. Let’s just enjoy the moment before we have to go back, okay?”
“Okay… But really, Taehyung, I'm so sorry,” Hobi apologized for the nth time since kicking a still-growing bruise onto Taehyung’s shin while simultaneously crushing the fingers of his left hand back at the salon.
Said fingers were now wrapped around a fruit-flavored freeze pop to ease the pain and keep Taehyung as happy as a little kid on their beach walk.
Taehyung put the freeze pop to Hobi’s lips, half out of sheer habit, half just to end the apologies.
“Let me look at them again,” Taehyung mumbled while reaching up with his free hand to lift the brim of the large bucket hat pulled down over half of Hobi’s face, covering his newly-pierced ears.
A simple, round, titanium stud in each ear was hardly anything special to look at, but the fact that the ears belonged to his Hobi made them the most special piercings in the universe to Taehyung, and worthy of full-blown marveling.
“They look so good hyung, you did so well,” he praised, wrapping one arm around Hobi’s shoulders and squeezing his upper arm.
They both turned to face the ocean, Hobi closing his eyes and taking a few, relaxing breaths.
By the time he opened his eyes again and made a move to keep walking, Taehyung had fished a small box out of his pocket, holding it up in front of Hobi’s chest.
“What’s this?” Hobi looked surprised for a second, but then he grabbed the box with the biggest smile Taehyung had seen on his face all day. “For me?”
“I was going to save it until we got back, so you could get all of them at the same time…”
“All of them?”
Hobi examined the unopened box with curiosity.
“...but I want us to have this memory together, just the two of us, here on the beach.”
Taehyung motioned for Hobi to open the box, which he did with great care, to avoid anything valuable falling out in the sand.
Inside the unlabeled box, nestled inside white tissue paper, Hobi found not two, but one sparkly Chanel earring, of the kind Taehyung himself had worn so much a couple of years earlier.
Apart from being related to his own piercing adventure that day, Hobi had a hard time figuring out what the gift meant.
But then again, it was a gift from Taehyung, so it was easier to simply ask than to try to figure out the inner workings of his mind.
“It’s beautiful, thank you,” Hobi said with genuine appreciation in the midst of his confusion, “but what does it mean?”
Taehyung took a deep breath and launched into a longish, hard-to-follow explanation of how guilty he had felt about coming up with the piercing idea, even though he knew that Hobi would never go through with it just out of peer pressure, and how he had asked Jimin to help him think of a way to make it a positive experience.
“But you already made it a positive experience,” Hobi objected. “You held my hand, you talked me through it, you took me to the beach even after I kicked you…”
“Hyung, wait, let me explain the earring,” Taehyung interrupted. “As you can see, there’s only one earring. That’s because I’m keeping the other one.”
“This is your earring? But…”
“No, no but! It was Jimin’s idea, and all the members agreed that it was a good idea, so… You will get your gifts from the others at dinner tonight, and they’ll probably be upset that I ruined the surprise, but I just… It’s more special this way between us, you know?”
Hobi still did not fully get it, but he felt his heart swell with the idea of all of his members coming together to plan something just for him, not to mention the overwhelming affection he felt for his Tae baby right then and there.
He twisted his wrist slightly to let the setting sun catch in the exquisite stones, sun rays turning into brilliant glitter.
“We all picked a pair of our favorite earrings and put one of them in a box for you to have,” Taehyung explained, finally making sense. “You don’t have to wear them at the same time as one of us, or even wear them at all! But it’s like...a piece of each of us?”
Perhaps the tension from earlier that same day needed to be released, but that was hardly the full explanation for the way Hobi knocked the breath out of Taehyung the second he finished speaking, by slamming into him for a tear-filled hug.
It was not like Hobi at all, not in public, but there was no way Taehyung was letting go before he absolutely had to.
If two men who loved each other could not hug and cry a few tears together with a Californian beach sunset backdrop in this world, Taehyung would spend the rest of his life willing a better, softer world into existence.