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Taehyung isn't a delinquent, no matter what the prissy, stuck up goody two-shoes idiots at his school whisper furiously in the hallways whenever they see him strolling up to school in his leather jacket and improper leather boots.
If anyone bothered to look it up, they'd find that Taehyung ranks easily somewhere in the top twenty students on any given exam, across the board.
Taehyung just isn't interested in kowtowing to the mindless procedures of institutionalized academia, is all.
He's unmotivated, not stupid (rather the opposite, given that his brain tends to work faster than most of his peers'), and just because he drives a motorcycle to school doesn't suddenly make him some kind of lawless heathen.
And yeah, perhaps he's been known to smoke a cigarette or two out by the back wall of the school; and maybe he skips class occasionally, but that's only because class is mind-numbingly boring, and he gets good grades anyway so who really cares?
Taehyung just doesn't care to wear the proper blazer, it's frumpy and ugly and he'd rather eat dirt than suck up to the teachers like every other kid in his class.
He couldn't care less what Ms. Shin thinks of his attire, or his hair, or his piercings, or his general demeanor.
He cares least of all what those elitist, snobby "model student" types think of him.
His own class president has been harping on his back for months, now, droning on and on about what a bad example he's setting for the younger students.
Taehyung only rolls his eyes at Park Jimin's incessant berating, and shoves past him with a rough knock to the shoulder.
Boys like Jimin - shoes shined and tie perfectly fitted against his neck, notes pristine and reputation even more so - make Taehyung want to puke.
One week, Taehyung's beloved motorcycle has to go into the shop for maintenance and repairs.
It means he's stuck taking the train, which generally, he loathes, given that there's just too many people crammed into too small a place.
So Taehyung's sitting grumpily shoved into a seat one morning, arms crossed and broody and in an altogether unpleasant mood, when he sees him.
Sitting across from him to the left, knees pressed neatly together to prop up a heavy textbook, collar ironed and pressed, and the perfect mold of the kinds of boys Taehyung hates, except.
The boy is... pretty.
Alabaster skin warmed by the sunlight, hair tucked behind one dainty ear, and wide, doe-eyes tucked safely behind a pair of glasses drooping low on his button nose.
Taehyung watches as the glasses slip lower, and- fuck- the boy wrinkles his nose to push it back up, and mother of everything holy, Taehyung swears his heart nearly burst right out of his chest.
Taehyung stares.
Jaw slack, lips parted, eyes anything but bored for the first time in years, as he drinks in the sight of this boy and his magical, wiggling little nose.
The boy's lips move as he reads quietly aloud to himself, finger sliding along the row of text in his book.
Taehyung watches, transfixed, as a lock of hair falls from behind the boy's ear and into his face, and never has he felt such a pressing urge as this sudden desire to go and tuck the boy's hair behind his ear for him.
Taehyung isn't sure what he's bewildered by more: the fact that this boy exists, or the fact that he's so inexplicably fascinated by him, or the fact that Taehyung's so enamored with, of all things, a nose.
Taehyung's so caught up watching this boy read and wrinkle his nose and generally, exist, that he nearly misses his stop.
In fact, the only reason that he remembers to get off, is because the boy gets off on the stop, too, and Taehyung's attention is momentarily startled.
And someone out there must be looking out for Taehyung today, because lo and behold: the boy seems to be a student at Taehyung's school.
Taehyung isn't following him, he swears, it's just that the boy just happens to be walking a few paces in front of him for the entire way.
They're very nearly at the school gates, when Taehyung's personal nightmare and demon incarnate ruins everything:
Park Jimin, bounding up to the pretty boy and throwing a cheerful arm around his shoulders, with a far too chirpy "Jungkook!"
Fuck.
Of course Park Jimin is friends with him.
Of fucking course.
(But then, Taehyung isn't all mad, considering he now knows the name of the beautiful boy from the train.)
Taehyung continues to take the train for the rest of the week.
Each morning when he boards the train, he finds Jungkook there, propped daintily in his customary seat with some form of schoolwork open on his lap.
And Taehyung goes and takes his seat, across from him.
And against the backdrop of the faint murmurs of the passengers, the rhythmic clatter of the train against the tracks, and the flashes of sunlight slipping through the windows interspersed with scenery, Taehyung steals little glances at the boy with ironed cuffs and shined shoes.
And once they're at their stop, Taehyung will stroll lazily behind Jungkook, hands tucked into his pockets as he watches the way Jungkook walks the path to school, sometimes reading a book, and sometimes deep in thought, but always tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear.
The walk between the train station and their school is a thousand steps.
Taehyung had counted it, once, when he noticed Jungkook doing the same. Eyes concentrated on his shined shoes, brow furrowed in concentration, lips mouthing along numbers as he takes each step.
And on this walk for the rest of the week, each time Jungkook pauses to delicately tuck his hair behind his ear, or looks up to smile at a chirping bird in a tree, or, once, when the wind blows and weaves stray petals into his shining hair, Taehyung falls a little in love.
It's like this, that in the thousand steps it takes to reach the school from the train station, that Taehyung learns to fall in love with the beautiful boy with a button nose and starry eyes.
All it takes, is a thousand steps.
When the week is up and his motorcycle is back from the shop, Taehyung doesn't stop taking the train.
He leaves his motorcycle at home and continues to make his way to the train station, and continues to steal little secret glances at the boy sitting across from him.
Jungkook has his head down and nose stuck in a book, as per usual on his morning rides on the train to school.
For the past year, his mornings have been routine and identical, consisting of quiet, soothing train rides spent doing schoolwork.
But in the past month, something has changed.
Something new.
Jungkook sneaks a glance upwards from his book, at the tall boy sprawled sleepily on the seat across from him, long limbs draped haphazardly across the leather and dark eyes peering out the window.
And then the boy shifts, and Jungkook hurries to look back down at his book, heart thumping wildly in his chest.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the open book for a few seconds more while his heart calms down, and when he's feeling brave, glances up again.
Their eyes meet.
Both widen, before darting quickly away.
Jungkook feels a flush rise on his cheeks, fingers curling tightly around the edges of his book. He swallows.
He peeks up again, and this time, the boy isn't looking back at him but out the window instead, his elbow propped on the seat and face tucked into a hand that conceals the lower half of it.
But Jungkook can see the furious red coloring his tanned cheeks, and fights a smile.
Another week passes, and this time, it's become a little game of sorts.
Of who can sneak a glance when the other isn't looking, and who can maintain a straight face while doing it.
Taehyung is losing, terribly.
He doesn't know what's happening, just that occasionally he'll look up for his usual stolen glance at the pretty boy, and find a pair of bright, glowing doe eyes fixed back on him in a way that makes his heart seize.
And Taehyung will hurriedly look away, embarrassed.
He glances up now out of the corner of his eyes, and finds Jungkook looking down at the book in his lap, a lock of hair slipping from behind his ear to cover his eyes.
And as Jungkook tucks it back, his eyes travel upwards-
-and lock with Taehyung's.
Jungkook's gaze darts away first, as the boy turns his face and pretends to look out the window.
But as Taehyung watches, awed and disbelieving, Jungkook's bites his lip on a smile that threatens to bloom, even as his eyes remain fixed on the passing scenery.
One morning, Jungkook gets up to get off at the appropriate stop, when he notices that the other boy is still sprawled across the seat.
He's asleep.
And Jungkook can't help but to venture closer, eyes mapping the face he's been sneaking glances at for a month.
The boy is handsome.
He's an upperclassman at the same school, Jungkook is rather sure, as he's seen the boy occasionally around campus.
Up close like this, Jungkook can finally read the small print on his uniform name tag: Kim Taehyung.
"Taehyung," he breathes quietly, mouthing the word.
He likes the way the word feels on his tongue.
Taehyung.
Jungkook reaches over, and gives his shoulder a gentle shake to wake him up. And then, again, when Taehyung remains asleep.
Taehyung jerks awake with a splutter and a dazed, confused expression that grows wide-eyed and stupefied when he takes in the sight of Jungkook standing over him.
Jungkook, heart thudding and cheeks feeling warm, gives him a tiny, amused smile, before hurrying out the train.
Taehyung stares after him with his jaw hanging open.
And then, he scrambles out after him.
He doesn't look where he's going, simply running in a frantic dash to try to catch up to the boy, so he's completely unprepared for when Jungkook abruptly stops.
Taehyung goes stumbling into him, their shoulders colliding and Jungkook catching himself a couple of steps forward.
Taehyung coughs, mortified, cheeks burning.
Jungkook, similarly blushing a furious red, sneaks a glance at him, before looking quickly away.
And like that, walking with an awkward space in between them, each stealing little sideways peeks whenever they can manage with cherry red cheeks, the two of them make it to school.
The next week, Taehyung falls asleep on the train again.
But this time, he doesn't wake up to Jungkook, waking him up, but rather the blare of the PA system, announcing the wrong station.
Taehyung sits up with a jerk, eyes wide.
He looks across the seat where Jungkook usually is, and the other boy is gone.
Shit.
He'd missed his stop.
Fuck.
Taehyung hurries to stand, the notebook he'd had resting on his lap falling haphazardly to the ground.
With a curse, he bends down to pick it up, and freezes when he sees a little scrap of paper sticking out.
He picks both up together, turning the little scrap over-
And gaping, eyes wide, at the little note scrawled inside.
"Hi.
I'm Jungkook, the one you sit across from on the train. I'm not sure if this is super weird, but if it's not... Would you like to have lunch with me today? Under the big tree behind the greenhouse.
Sincerely,
Jungkook."
Taehyung gapes at it for so long, and in such shock, (and in such adoration at the way he's signed a little note with 'Sincerely'), that he misses it when the train pulls out of the station, and begins rattling towards the next one.
Shit.
It takes Taehyung hours to make it to school.
He ends up nearly three stops past where he ought to be, and just barely manages to make it to school in time for lunch. (In fact, if he hadn't received this note, he'd have likely just skipped school altogether that day).
It's already ten minutes into lunch by the time he arrives to campus, and he dashes like a madman right through the gates and directly to the big tree behind the greenhouse.
He sees Jungkook sitting there in the shade, a sandwich in one hand and a book in the other.
Jungkook looks up just as someone skids to a wild, frantic stop right in front of him, startled and confused.
The confusion melts away into something like amusement and a bit of thrill, then, when he sees who it is.
It's Taehyung.
He bites down on a growing smile, lowering his book.
Taehyung is bent over, hands braced on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Jungkook fights down a giggle.
Taehyung looks up, then, cheeks flushed from the run and the heat and something else, and-
"You didn't wake me up."
Jungkook laughs, his own blush mirroring Taehyung's own, the sound brighter than anything Taehyung's ever heard.
Taehyung's lips stretch into a breathless grin.
Taehyung fell in love in a thousand steps.
He'd seen the way Jungkook's eyes sparkled under the morning sun like something ethereal and enchanting and precious, like someone who saw loveliness in every mundane aspect of the world, in those thousand steps.
It's in those same thousand steps, that Taehyung stays in love, and falls deeper into it, each and every day.
Taehyung learns, in those thousand steps, that the art of learning how to love someone is an experience even better than the falling, for you get to do it with them.
In those thousand steps, now, Taehyung gets to hold Jungkook's hand and watch those sparkling eyes look at him, with the same delight they'd looked at the world that had made Taehyung fall in love to begin with.
He gets to talk to Jungkook, and hear the way the boy rambles on and on about nothing and everything and he can be chattering about the most inane, senseless things, and Taehyung will drink in every word like the most fascinating thought in the world.
He gets to press his thumb against the tip of the magical, wiggling nose, and has the privilege of watching as it wrinkles in response just for him, as Jungkook's lips tug into a too-wide smile that pulls one on his own lips in response.
And at times, he gets to watch Jungkook walk ahead the way he'd done for months, except now, Jungkook will stop and wait for him every few feet, turning around to throw him a bright smile that steals Taehyung's breath away and call his name in a way that makes Taehyung run up.
He gets to learn every inch of that mysterious mind of the boy who had caught him staring on the train and had turned away with a bitten smile, of the mind that stuns Taehyung with its depth and thoughtfulness and is as beautiful as the boy himself.
He gets to fit himself along Jungkook's back and wrap him in his arms, and learn the way his heartbeat feels when Taehyung presses his hand right against his chest, and learn the way that Jungkook likes to be held best - just like that, his head tucked in under Taehyung's chin.
But the best thing of all, is that he gets to watch Jungkook fall in love with him, right back, in those same thousand steps.
Watches, as Jungkook takes one step, and another, and turn to look at him with growing affection and wonder in his eyes like Taehyung's.
Watches, as Jungkook learns to reach for Taehyung's hand and to lean up to kiss him with bright red cheeks and to fit himself in Taehyung's arms first, as though he belongs there (he does).
That he gets to feel the privileged luxury of Jungkook smiling at him with all the love Taehyung feels for him in his own chest, of Jungkook laughing at him in a way he never laughs for anyone else, of Jungkook making Taehyung a better person just by being.
In a thousand steps, Taehyung met a boy, and he fell in love.
In the same thousand steps, the boy falls in love with him right back.
And in those same thousand steps, they learn how to love each other, together.