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In the past week, Jeongguk has driven his car around the suburbs every single night. And as he continues doing as such, he realizes he’s fallen into a specific routine.
Get into the car. Start driving aimlessly. Somehow end up on Taehyung’s old street. Cry a little. Drive back home.
When Jeongguk anticipated getting his license, he didn’t expect it to be like this. The irony of it all is that he didn’t think he’d be alone during these drives, though that’s quite literally what his license permits him to do.
Funny thing about routine, it’s synonymous with habit. Unfortunately for Jeongguk, his nightly drive is one of the worst habits he’s ever picked up, and since it is a habit, he just can’t stop. Even when he exits his house, keys in hand, and his heart screams at him to just go back inside, he brushes it off.
Tonight, Jeongguk finds himself thinking about Taehyung more than usual, if that’s even possible.
He passes red lights, stop signs, white cars, and front yards with tinier, less inconveniencing thoughts of Taehyung. Then, he passes the park they had their first date at, and then the movie theater where Taehyung asked him to be his boyfriend, and it all basically just goes downhill from there.
Jeongguk steers left onto what he thinks is a parking lot, eyes blurry as he tries to blink the liquid out of them. He parks, harshly shuts off the ignition, and practically slams his head onto the back of his seat, eyes now fluttering closed in hopes he can stop himself from crying in the middle of a—he opens his eyes again to see—Target parking lot.
It doesn’t work.
His emotions get the best of him in a split-second, and although it already feels as if his life has been terribly falling apart for the past two months, he thinks this must be the true breaking point. It’s even worse now that he has no Jimin or Yoongi by his side to stop him from completely drowning in his misery with their reassuring words and back rubs, since they’re unaware he’s gone out alone in the first place.
Jeongguk is just so, so hurt. Confused, too. Still confused. He’ll always be confused.
Ever since he (finally) got his driver’s license a week ago, he’s been using driving as a coping mechanism. It might sound silly, but so far, it’s been working. Well, at least he thinks it has. Because sure, he still imagines Taehyung laughing beside him at every stoplight, and hears Taehyung’s voice complaining about the traffic every time he finds himself stuck during rush hour, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Or, out of Jeongguk’s ordinary, he guesses. At least he’s not stuck at home, driving himself into wall by thinking about what could’ve been.
If only he could just stop seeing Taehyung’s face in his mind, how proud he was each time Jeongguk safely completed a drive around their town, how excited he was for Jeongguk to be able to drive to his house on his own, how happy he was whenever they counted down to the day Jeongguk would take his test. Maybe then, he wouldn’t feel as broken as he does now.
Jeongguk almost finds himself laughing at that thought. Broken is an understatement. Most of the time, you can fix something that is broken. You can do it yourself, or bring it to a person who has the tools to fix it. Jeongguk thinks he’s shattered into something irreparable. There’s not a single tool in the world that would be able to pick up the pieces of his heart and put them back together. If anything, instead of a tool, there’s a person that could help him. But that person’s no longer part of his life, at least physically, so Jeongguk thinks he should probably accept the fact that he’ll be this miserable forever.
Maybe he’s being dramatic, and he’s dwelled on this possibility many times, but the way Jeongguk felt—the way Jeongguk still feels about Taehyung is incomparable to anything he’s ever felt for anyone else. He thinks if he can find someone who makes him feel as special as Taehyung did, it’d be a miracle.
Keeping his eyes shut, Jeongguk gently brings a finger to his lips. He believes that if he tries hard enough, he might be able to pretend it’s Taehyung, teasing him the way he did every time Jeongguk begged for kisses. He can hear his voice cooing, can see his mouth shaped in that signature pout of his.
He snaps out of it and pulls his finger away from his mouth as though he’s been burned. He feels utterly pathetic. If someone were watching him right now, all they’d do is laugh at the pitiful sight.
Jeongguk sighs, then, and opens his eyes. Looks to his right side. No Taehyung to tell him he’s just daydreaming again. He doesn’t know why he still expects to be woken up from this state, as if he’s simply been caught in an awful nightmare.
It’s been two months. They say it takes three to get over a breakup. Jeongguk doesn’t know who “they” are, but he’s Googled so many breakup-related questions at this point that it doesn’t even matter. Jeongguk doesn’t believe it, either way. He’s sure it’ll take three years, or decades, to stop feeling like this. If that even happens at all.
With slightly shaky hands, Jeongguk wipes his tears away, grabs his phone, and scrolls through the dozens of notifications waiting for him to give them his attention. Three missed calls and 17 unread messages from Jimin, five unread messages from Yoongi, an email from Panera Bread, and—
That’s it.
Jeongguk needs to stop expecting more, or anything at all, from Taehyung.
The question of why? has been plaguing Jeongguk’s mind this whole time, and he’s still yet to come up with a reasonable answer. Neither Jimin nor Yoongi were able to find an answer for him, either, no matter how hard they tried.
Jeongguk couldn’t blame them. What reasonable answer is there when your boyfriend of two years breaks up with you without actually breaking up with you? What sense can you make of it? What do you do when your boyfriend of two years moves away with no warning, just changes his number, deactivates all social media, and acts like you never existed? Like you weren’t his?
All Jeongguk’s friends could do was give him their shoulders to cry on and arms to bury himself in. If Jeongguk’s being honest, at times, he feels sorry for them. They’ve shown him nothing but their unconditional love and support during the whole ordeal, but regardless, he’s definitely been bothering them with all the moping around he does. And they knew Taehyung, were even his friends before they were Jeongguk’s, but Jeongguk knows they still don’t quite get how he feels.
How could Jeongguk ever love someone else? How could Jeongguk even fathom the thought of giving his all to someone who isn’t Kim Taehyung? He knows his friends expect him to move on. Even if they don’t tell him as such, he knows. He gets it. But if they really understood even a fraction of how Jeongguk feels about Taehyung. they wouldn’t be so eager to help him get over it.
Moreover, he wonders if this has affected Taehyung, too. Wonders if Taehyung agonizes over the memories he has of Jeongguk. Hopes that he hasn’t already moved on, hands that used to be reserved for holding Jeongguk around some other guy at a club. It might be cruel, but any possibility of Taehyung being okay while Jeongguk is in the depths of despair is too much for the younger to even imagine.
Naturally, there are times where Jeongguk believes it’s his fault. Especially during the first few days after Taehyung left, Jeongguk told himself that he should’ve done better. That he should’ve shown Taehyung how much he loves him more. But how could he have done that any more than he already had? The endless questions confuse Jeongguk so much. If he could turn back time just to figure out what incited Taehyung’s rash decision, he’d do it in a heartbeat. Over anything else.
Still staring at his phone, Jeongguk switches from the Messages to the Music app, scrolling a bit until he finds the songs Taehyung wrote for him. The ones he helped him download onto his phone after their first anniversary.
While Jeongguk previously used to listen to the songs during almost every waking moment of his daily life, he hasn’t been able to for a while. “Might accidentally start bawling my eyes out in the middle of one and crash my car,” he had joked to Yoongi one time. (Yoongi didn’t laugh.)
Perhaps this is what Jeongguk needs to move on. He can start here, with the remnants he has left of Taehyung’s voice.
He takes a deep breath, clicks the “to my love” album, and presses play.
Just as he expected, Jeongguk feels the tears come right back as soon as Taehyung begins to sing. It’s a voice he hasn’t heard in what feels like a lifetime, and despite having all of his songs saved onto his phone and laptop, something about this moment makes Jeongguk feel as if it’ll be the last time he can find the courage to listen.
The lyrics are familiar to him, and maybe too familiar for comfort. They’re embedded into his mind more than the songs he’s grown up listening to. In fact, he remembers, he was thinking of getting a line or two tattooed onto his arm at one point.
“That way, I’d have a piece of you with me no matter where I go,” Jeongguk had explained as Taehyung traced the area of his arm he had in mind. He had kissed it after and looked at Jeongguk with what seemed like stars in his eyes.
“Which lyric?” Taehyung asked, voice soft.
“Hmmm,” Jeongguk pondered for a moment. Then, he grinned and planted a kiss onto Taehyung’s nose. “The one about forever.”
It’s silly for Jeongguk to remember that moment now as he sobs over the music, his body trembling with no one to hold him. Not anymore.
The pain he feels is mental, he knows, but why does it feel like every limb in his body is on the verge of giving out? He’s never experienced this type of hurt before, but Taehyung has always been responsible for a lot of his firsts.
Forever, he thinks, then laughs bitterly. Forever.
They weren’t perfect together, Jeongguk knows. Of course they weren’t. They had their ups and downs, just as any other couple would, but the downs would never last more than a few days.
That’s one of the many things Jeongguk loved about Taehyung. Regardless of who was in the right or wrong during an argument, Taehyung would always be willing to hear Jeongguk out, and vice versa, and everything would be okay again, just like that.
In essence, Taehyung loved Jeongguk. This is what Jeongguk knows for certain. He loved him through music, through the way he’d always pull Jeongguk impossibly closer in the middle of the night, through late-night drives where he’d give Jeongguk all the encouragement he needed. Taehyung loved Jeongguk through his eyes, the way they’d shimmer every time they touched. He loved Jeongguk through his hands, when he’d gently brush Jeongguk’s hair away from his face.
Love is funny in that way. There’s no one way of showing it, and Taehyung proved that fact through every possible method he could’ve managed.
So maybe Taehyung doesn’t love Jeongguk now, but he did at one point, and it’s enough to make Jeongguk think his more-than-dejected feelings are, at the very least, a little valid. And it gives him the foolish hope that maybe, one day, Taehyung will come back to him.
However, as Jeongguk starts his car up again and begins to drive back home, he can’t help but think about the lies Taehyung told him. More specifically, the lie about forever.
If Taehyung wanted Jeongguk forever, why is Jeongguk driving alone as he approaches his street? Why, when he passes what used to be his house, is there a “For Sale” sign staring at him instead of a handsome boy with a bright smile? Jeongguk wants to ask Taehyung these questions and so many more. He wants to know if he meant what he wrote in his songs about Jeongguk. He wants to ask if he still thinks about Jeongguk. He wants to tell him he still loves him. So fucking much, that it hurts.
For now, though, and for however long it takes Taehyung to reach out again, Jeongguk’s questions are left unanswered, and his heart, along with his passenger seat, is left empty.