Chapter Text
There was one thing that Taehyung had never understood since he worked with the other guys.
He had signed a contract with clauses and restrictions, a contract that all the Idols, without exception, male or female that he was, had had in their hands. He had been fine with pretending that he had never had occasional flings, he had been less fine with not being able to be seen around with a female friend who immediately cried foul; it wasn't completely clear to him why it was forbidden to grow just a minimum of a beard, but that too had gone well, like all the other unwritten things.
But what he never really understood was why panic ensued whenever he told one of the members that he loved them. And even more, when the direct interested party of these words was Jimin.
Jimin represented his universe of him: he was his best friend, his brother, his soulmate, his refuge. Jimin was the other half of him, it had been clear from the first moment they had shown up in the old dormitory of the first Big Hit headquarters, where they had shared a room too small for seven people. Jimin was the one who most of all represented the word 'home', because if Jimin was there, Taehyung never felt alone, even when they weren't talking to each other, even when they were busy doing something separately, even when Jimin-ah flew to Busan and he to Daegu to visit the family. Be that as it may, Jimin was there, and that was enough.
So, what reason did everyone have to get anxious if he occasionally said 'I love you'? In short, it was them, everyone knew what kind of bond united them since school.It was their time as trainees, they had both just moved to Seoul and ended up in the same high school.
At the time, Tae was a rowdy kid who hadn't struggled to make friends, while Jimin, who had always had some problems with his body, was a chubby little guy who Taehyung felt was teased a little too often by some bloody asshole students.
Their friendship was born like this, between a "wake up Taehyung, we'll be late for school" and a "thanks, Tae, but I'll manage by myself".
Jimin was too good for this world and Taehyung understood that right away. However, it was not uncommon for the parties to reverse.
After the debut, some fans, not really fans, started saying that V was the most useless member of the group. At the fansing, Tae had been rejected more than once and this had hurt his self-esteem. And it was difficult for Taehyung to feel inadequate. Jimin had always seen him as very sure of himself, but after only three years of knowing him he realized he still knew little about Tae's sensitive side. That's why Jimin had decided to always stay close to him, to give him the support the other needed when he failed. To take care of him like Tae had during school. For love him.
But Jimin, unlike his best friend, didn't notice how the other kids or the staff or the managers reacted to the risky "Jimin-ah, I like you the most."
It didn't mean anything. Most of the people and colleagues, then, laughed at it and so did Jimin. Of course she wasn't laughing at Taehyung, she knew how important feelings were to him, and how spontaneous and genuine he was in expressing them. She did it the same way with the others: once, in front of the cameras, she said she loved Yoongi too. Why if Tae told their hyung did it have to be different than how she told him? The meaning of that "saranghae" was the same for Yoongi, for Jungkook, Seokjin, Namjoon or Hobi...right?
Yes, it could have been like this, or it could have been that no one had yet seriously thought about the fact that that 'good' could be translated into something else. And the first ones who hadn't seriously thought about it were just Jimin and Taehyung.