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* . °•★|•°∵ ∵°•|☆•° . *
It’s stupid. It’s completely stupid but Taehyung can’t help the way the knots in his stomach tighten in their dark cage. ‘We’re just friends here,’ he has to remind himself, again and again and again. ‘Old friends who meet on the occasional weekend.’
And it’s not exactly false, is it? That’s what he and Jimin are supposed to be. That’s what the world will remember them as. Nothing less than childhood best friends, but not more either. Taehyung knows that it's for their own safety, for the safety of Jimin's family, of the order of their country, but he can’t help but long for more people to know their reality, if only to be in love and to be in love freely. And when he’s upset and lonely, he can’t help but wonder if Jimin wants it just as much as he does too.
They can’t be together, not publicly, not privately either, it would be frowned upon for a prince to be with a commoner, for Jimin to be seen with a person who isn’t highborn, a person unlike himself. With the war on the horizon, it’s ugliest peak looming over them, it would be considered selfish for Jimin to not use the opportunity for a political alliance of some sort at the very least. It's the only rule that Jimin's parents, and more importantly, Taehyung's King and Queen have insisted on.
But the jealousy still flares up at times like this, when young lords and ladies try their luck with him, sometimes coyly fluttering their lashes at him, begging Taehyung when he’s at their gatherings with their eyes to put in a good word for them with Jimin. He hates it. Hates not being able to hook an arm around Jimin, hates not peppering kisses all over the man’s cheeks, hates not being able to bask in the glory of his lover’s attention when strangers glance at them.
It's been years since they first sealed their relationship, years since Jimin promised Taehyung that one day, no matter how long it took for that day to come, they'd walk down the altar together. They had been young then, unaware of the hurdles that would line their path. Now, Taehyung considers it a great privilege that he and Jimin are still allowed to meet.
For that, he is thankful. There's has been a romance, aeons in the making. Taehyung loves Jimin, and has loved him for longer than he’s known what love is. He's loved Jimin since the young prince was still carrying baby fat and jumping on and around the plush sofas of the country house.
Taehyung has loved him through endless summers and endless falls as they grew out of picture books and into thick manuscripts about the constitution and the land the prince’s older brother would one day take over. The land that Jimin serves before all else. The only land that Taehyung knew for a long, long time.
He doesn't remember the time before he knew the feeling of lavishing in Jimin's arms, a time before they learnt each other’s quirks, falling apart and then putting each other back again; a time before they first uttered the three words in the silent company of the lakes they’d bathe in.
The... sanctions on them hadn't always been so strict. There was a time, when they were young and still not beaten down to their world worn selves when Taehyung had been given a choice (an ultimatum if either of them are being honest), to remain Jimin’s friend and keep his dreams, or leave behind his aspirations to be by the side of his lover.
It was a sacrifice, one neither of them would have been able to live with. Jimin would have never gotten over the guilt of not letting Taehyung share his symphonies and his painted canvases with the world; and Taehyung wouldn’t have known what to do with himself if he had nothing to work toward, nothing to build himself up to in the ornate corridors of the Park family’s many palaces. It had been a choice they had made then, it's a choice that Taehyung doesn’t regret except in brief moments like this.
He’s grateful, of course, for the royal family’s patronage of his work, and their blindness to how often he pulls Jimin away from the court and to the manicured gardens of the country, where they can curl into each other in the sleepy hours of dawn, and pirouette their way through their meals, and host the select few friends they have that won’t let the tales of their kisses make inlets into teatime gossip.
But sometimes, just sometimes, when he has to put up with nights like these, of fake courtesy to snobbish nobles whose lips curl into a sneer when they see the lowborn boy who managed to make friends with one of the beloved princes, the sadness comes creeping in. Jimin is constantly surrounded by the finest of the fine, the bravest of the brave. Unfair, his mind screams at him. Jimin loves you, the rational part of his mind says.
He does. He really does. Taehyung knows. He's aware. He's just tired and he wants to melt into his lover, wants to forget the loud jibes at his position, wants to forget the reason why he wants to forget. It's complicated and it's making Taehyung sad and he wants to kiss Jimin but that’s obviously not going to happen as soon as he wants it to.
And so, Taehyung settles. settles for feeling the warmth of Jimin’s arms curl around his waist, for hearing the sweet whispers of “babe” and “my love”, and for being able to muffle his laughter in the crook of his prince’s neck, just on the weekends, and the holidays when no one bothers them. When they’re allowed to lose themselves in the golden haze of a time-tested love like theirs, soft and fragile but persistent and comforting.
And he hopes and prays that one day, one day, they’ll be able to walk down an aisle, Jimin’s shorter fingers intertwining with his longer ones, wrapped up in love, wrapped up in each other, in front of all the people that tried to take Jimin away from him, whether they knew it or not. An aisle leading up to the smiling faces of their loved ones, giving them their blessings.
Until then, he sits back down and with a polite smile to the duchess who gives him a wide smile of appeal as her eyes flicker over to Jimin’s as he approaches them. He bows to her and introduces her to his man, and perhaps only slightly enjoys the way that all throughout their conversation, Jimin glances at him, a besotted look overtaking his features, much like the one Taehyung is sure is mirrored on his own.
So yes, things aren’t easy, never were, for the two of them, but Taehyung thinks that if it was for Jimin, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do. If it meant simply trusting Jimin with his whole heart, well, Taehyung had handed it over to his lover a long time ago, and the promise he had reverently uttered against Jimin’s skin years had never been broken by the other man, and had never led him down a truly unhappy path.
He smiles softly at the thought, pouring all his affection into his gaze, his love into the air, and perhaps Jimin feels it too, because his own feelings seem to rain onto Taehyung, sink deep into his being, entrenched in every drop of blood that flows in his veins.
The clock strikes ten, the weekend is almost upon them now. Taehyung's heart dances at the prospect, a long weekend, an extra day to escape into the elusive freedom of their situation; a whole sunrise and a whole sunset, an entire starry night that he can marvel at with Jimin, watching as the moon rays illuminate his delicate face. ‘It’s worth it,’ he thinks. ‘He’s worth it.’
* . °•★|•°∵ ∵°•|☆•° . *
The night of the war comes after over a decade of drawn-out conflict. It’s still shorter than so many of the ones Taehyung had committed to memory in his school days, but ten years is a long time to go without being able to meet one of the people you love the most. Taehyung has grown up now. If Jimin led the war on the frontlines, then Taehyung likes to think he did his part in keeping the kingdom stable. He’s travelled to enemy territory multiple times, on the pretext of showcasing his art, to broker meetings of a peace council, to help lay the foundation of preventing the collapse of a kingdom as the fighting comes to an end.
None of those memories matter now though, not as he waits for Jimin by the old statue in the woods. The sunset sky is slightly pinker today, as if the sky is celebrating the peace with the lilac clouds drifting towards each other, like the sun and moon moving to kiss at an eclipse. Taehyung is normally not one to ignore such poetic happenings, but tonight even the constant exhaustion from his posture seems to have worn away.
The bundle of letters- only Taehyung’s favourites- sits snugly in his pocket, warmed up by the heat of his heart; Jimin’s words are close to the place which keeps them safer than any vault on the planet. Taehyung knows that things have changed now, that neither of them are the same person they were before Jimin left. The prince has seen death and devastation in front of his eyes more times than he can count. Taehyung knows from his letters that some nights he’s too scared to sleep and on some days, he feels like a part of his soul is lost forever.
Taehyung too knows far too much about escaping ambushes for it to be normal. Knows how to spy without being caught, knows how to twist words around in a way that makes him fear his own self sometimes. Taehyung lives with the reality of knowing that he has broken his promises to put only a fragment of hope above those he claims to love beyond compare.
But now, as Jimin slowly comes into view, his hair peeking through his hood, coat-tails flying in the wind of his speedy horse, all of those feel like much smaller obstacles to get past. It’s only when his eyes fill up with tears, that Taehyung realises how much of a distant dream ever seeing Jimin again had felt like for so long. There are parts of him that Taehyung had forgotten, parts that only now that he sees he can recall easily. There’s a gasp, a cry, all in Jimin’s voice- a cadence that a small corner of Taehyung’s heart had feared it would never be able to hear again.
But then, all of a sudden, Jimin stumbles forward, and Taehyung runs to catch him in his always-open arms, and there's a Jimin-sized void between them that's filled in a way it never has been. Their embrace is desperate, frantic, loving- a thousand different kinds of love- and Taehyung holds Jimin tight, burying his nose in the curve of his lover's neck, breathing him in.
"I missed you," Taehyung whispers into Jimin's ear. "I've missed you so much."
He reaches into the pocket of his jacket and thumbs the envelope that contains his reply to the letter Jimin sent months ago, littered with familiar endearments that Taehyung knows better in Jimin's handwriting than his voice in recent years.
"They didn't have anyone to take my reply to you and return without there being safety concerns." Jimin laughs. It's warm and still sort of raspy with crying. "Well, thank god I'm here now."
Tears roll down Taehyung's cheeks as he pulls Jimin tighter, holds him closer, fingers latched onto him in a way that begs the universe to never separate them again. Jimin brings his calloused hands up, cradling Taehyung's cheeks with tenderness.
"You're here now," Taehyung whispers through the sobs as Jimin presses kisses to his forehead, his eyelids, the curve of his jaw, tracing the tracks of tears that have already been shed.
"I'm here now," Jimin affirms. "I'm here now. Forever."
Taehyung leans in to press a kiss to Jimin's mouth. He doesn't know how to say the words, but he pours every inch of his feelings, good and bad, into it, laying himself bare for Jimin to hold, to keep for eternity. A sweet surrender to someone who he can trust in to reciprocate it in its entirety. Jimin tastes like the sun in winter and the soothing crests of ocean waves even though the sweat of battle. It reminds him of their first kiss in the woods, when he had tasted Jimin’s laughter like it was his own, and the dirt and the grass underneath them then, when everything was right with the world.
Everything feels right now, with Jimin pressed against him, his lips warm against his own, with Jimin holding him as tightly as he could possibly hold him, with his breath fanning across Taehyung’s cheek. Everything is right. Nothing will ever be wrong again. Taehyung refuses to let it.
"I love you," he breathes, closing his eyes as he buries his face back into Jimin’s neck, savouring Jimin’s scent, Jimin’s warmth, Jimin’s presence. “I always have, always will.”
"And I you, darling. Always, always." Jimin says, voice thick with emotion and so full of fondness that it makes Taehyung tear up again. "Forever and ever.”
“Forever and ever,” Taehyung confirms, tightening his hold on the other in silent agreement.
When they get back to Taehyung's house, small now, with all the wartime downsizing, but homely, they'll have to talk about everything. Taehyung will tell Jimin about the necklace his sister made for him when she thought she'd never see him again, and the reason why he can't walk without the slightest hint of a limp. Jimin will murmur the story behind every scar that's etched onto his body, and why he needs to know that everyone is home before he can fall asleep.
Maybe afterwards, they'll sit together and talk of nothing and everything, for hours. They'll hold each other so tightly, so close, that eventually even the smallest movement will leave both of them gasping for air. Maybe afterwards, they'll read or go for a walk in the newly-rebuilt city or meet their friends for a picnic in the forest. But no matter what happens today, tomorrow, or the day after that, Taehyung knows that everything will be alright.
Jimin will be there with him, to help him and be helped by him, to love him and to be loved by him. And under the quiet cover of the stars, with Jimin against him, smiling through their tears, telling him he loves him, Taehyung knows that he'd live through all the pain again, a hundred times, a thousand times, if it means that he gets to see Jimin happy and safe. Because Jimin is worth it. Because their love is worth everything.
* . °•★|•°∵ ∵°•|☆•° . *