Work Text:
“What the fuck is that smell?”
Taehyung doesn’t hear the little comment, not when he’s too busy tending to the vacuum filter and making sure that all his precious wastewater is sucked down into the conical flask that labelled ‘TAETAE’. A clothes peg is perched atop his nose. He breathes in and out through his mouth, but the smell still wafts in, lingers on his tongue like a bitter pill.
Someone clears their throat. He turns around and comes face to face with a mildly pissed off Min Yoongi - though, to be fair, that’s his default expression to begin with - and flashes a grin.
“Hyung!” Taehyung chirps. He turns back to make sure that yes, everything’s been filtered through, before unclipping the clip from his nose. “What are you doing in the lab?”
Yoongi’s a graduate student, just like Taehyung; but unlike Taehyung, who is here to make sure he gets that certificate with ‘Dr Kim Taehyung, PhD’ scribbled across in beautiful cursive script, Yoongi is the resident admin boy, here to earn his keep while majoring in Music Production. Or something. Taehyung isn’t really sure. Right now, though, his hyung’s little nose is scrunched up and his brows furrowed.
“I can smell whatever you’re on from outside,” Yoongi says. “It’s making my coffee taste funny.”
“I’m not on anything, except the intellectual high that is science.”
Yoongi brushes past him and heads toward the source of the stench, a giant plastic container hidden behind one of the benches. He leans in a little nearer before blanching, gagging and finally stepping back.
“Explain yourself.”
Taehyung grins. “It’s my thesis! I’m using algae to filter nitrates, nitrites, phosphates and ammonia from wastewater by using a combination of blue and red light.”
“Wastewater?”
“Yeah, I just came back from collecting my first batch. That’s why it smells a little weird.” He looks down at his very first sample of wastewater, all ready to be home to a colony of algae for the next two weeks. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
“And Namjoon approved it?” He gives Taehyung an incredulous look. “Does he even know what his precious lab smells like now?”
“Namjoon will approve anything if you use big words.” Taehyung shrugs. “And no.”
Yoongi finally gives up and pinches his nose. When he speaks, it’s with a nasal voice that Taehyung tucks away in the back of his mind, something to hold over his head in the future. “Anyway, there’s a new intern coming in and he’s being assigned to you, so don’t scare him off.”
“Ah, fresh meat.” He detaches the vacuum pump and transfers the contents of TAETAE into a proper beaker. “What year is he?”
“Freshman, Bio major.” Yoongi frowns. “Looks like you’re well-equipped to scare him off already, though.”
“Don’t worry, I’m quite a likeable person. In fact, I’m full of beryllium, gold and titanium.”
Jeon Jeongguk is fresh-faced and doe-eyed. He reminds Taehyung of a golden retriever puppy that his family used to own - a little thing whose name he’s long forgotten - until it wandered off one day and never came back.
“Hello, I’m Kim Taehyung!” he greets. He’s stolen some deodorant from the lab assistant, Hoseok, and sprayed it around the lab in a valiant attempt to make the place smell a little more presentable. Namjoon still gagged when he stepped in, though, but Taehyung is convinced that it’s the thought that counts. “Biochem senior and your very knowledgeable senpai-slash-mentor.”
But Jeon Jeongguk stands up, and the broad expanse of his shoulders and the way he fills out the lab coat does not escape Taehyung. (Who looks good in a lab coat? Jeon Jeongguk, apparently. Life is unfair.) He nods to himself. He’s always appreciated anatomy.
“Jeon Jeongguk,” the boy replies. His voice is smoother than Taehyung expected, and having had three whole minutes to examine his facial structure, Taehyung concludes that Jeongguk’s face, too, is very nice to look at. Who knew they made freshmen like these nowadays? “Bio major.”
“Research?”
“No, medicine.” He gives a small smile. “I want to go into cardiology.”
Taehyung gives a knowing look. It’s his first time as a mentor, but he’s caught glimpses of science majors toiling out their lab attachments before, and it’s always the med school hopefuls that end up hating experimental work the most. Stints at labs like these end up as a mere line on their CVs, something extra to beef up their resume.
“Alright, so this is what you’ll be doing.” He goes straight to the point, details every last step of his experiment down to the size of beakers that Jeongguk should be using. To his credit, the freshman nods and listens and takes down notes.
Twenty minutes, a lab tour and three different mind maps later, he’s finally done.
“Any questions?” Taehyung asks.
Jeongguk frowns a little, plays at his lip with his front teeth. But Taehyung can already feel the enthusiasm bubbling up, a sort of excitement that comes with being the ultimate senpai. (Excluding actual PhD students, but he discounts them. Just because.) And especially when his kouhai is someone like Jeongguk, because the boy actually seems like a decent person with ambition and work ethic and he’s kind on the eyes, and, really, nothing gets any better than that.
“What do you need me to do?” Jeongguk smiles, one that doesn’t shake at the edges, not like the previous one. “I have the rest of the afternoon free, so…”
It’s already four-thirty pm. If Jeongguk didn’t have the rest of the day free, Taehyung would personally march up to the Dean and have a nice, long talk about burdening science majors with unfair working hours. (It’s something he’s been daydreaming about for a very long time.)
“We can filter wastewater for tomorrow’s experiment,” he says. He gets up from the stool that his butt has been glued to for the past half hour. “It’ll be the first trial run tomorrow.”
“Okay, Taehyung-ssi.”
“Call me hyung,” he smiles, grabbing the empty containers on the floor, each a hefty five liters. “And remember to bring your nose plugs tomorrow.”
“And deodorant,” Jeongguk nods. He takes hold of a few containers, too, and follows Taehyung out to the back.
A few meters away from the back exit is a storeroom, this dingy, dark little thing that’s squished between the outer walls of their lab and the edge of a drain. When Taehyung opens the door, a nasty stench immediately attacks his nostrils and he swears he can feel his nose hairs burning off. He’s pretty sure he hears Jeongguk gag.
Rows upon rows of wastewater lining the shelves of the storeroom, a colour from every end of the spectrum. Black, brown, green, red, grey; heck, even blue. Maybe his next project should be on the composition of wastewater from different parts of campus. That would be fun.
“This is where we store the unfiltered wastewater,” he says. It’s no easy feat trying to talk while holding your breath. “Grab two.”
Jeongguk nods, face slowly turning blue.
The two high-tail it out of there with seconds to spare. The sound of the door slamming, of hinges creaking and concrete hitting concrete, masks the sound of their rapid inhales, lungs desperately trying to fill themselves with fresh air. Even the seemingly composed (so far, at least) Jeongguk is bent over, chest heaving.
And Taehyung starts laughing. It’s full-on laughter, the kind that makes his eyes tear up and his face go red and his stomach hurt and, god, why is this even funny? His arms still strain with the weight of carrying ten, twenty kilograms worth of what is literally shit water; common sense tells him he should seriously consider trying to calm down, but it’s something that barely registers in the laughter-induced fog.
“Uh, hyung,” Jeongguk says. He places his own containers on the ground and walks toward Taehyung, both arms reached out to try and get the elder to calm the fuck down. “I think you need to be more careful with that.”
But Taehyung continues laughing, and the laughs only subside when he makes a slight misstep. The two containers he’s barely holding on to crash to the ground, contents spilling all over Jeongguk’s lab coat.
Taehyung blanches. He watches as the intern scrunches up his nose and covers up his mouth with both hands.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jeongguk swears. He tears the lab coat off his body, but it’s too late; the dark, shit-coloured stain on the dirty labcoat has spread to his own clothes, a pale grey jumper that’s gradually turning black. Who knew Doctor Boy had such a potty mouth? “Ah, fuck.”
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” Taehyung says, the moment he snaps out of being completely shocked. He immediately rights the containers, making sure no more shit water leaks onto anyone - or anything - else. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
He steers Jeongguk into the lab, leaving the wastewater behind. The boy seems to have no fight left in him.
“We have an emergency shower!” Taehyung announces, suddenly remembering the one saving grace that is to befall anyone should there ever be chemical fires. “I don’t have any clothes for you to change into, though.”
Jeongguk’s face turns red, probably from anger. (Taehyung has a bad habit of making people angry, it seems.) Then he just sighs and the look of utter resignation makes Taehyung’s heart clench because, fuck, he feels guilty, feels a million times worse than that one time he accidentally took Namjoon’s sample out of the centrifuge with only an hour left to go.
“Can I just go home?” Jeongguk asks. He just sounds… defeated. “And shower?”
Taehyung can’t even meet his eyes. The boy is barely taller than him - and he might have more muscle, but he’s barely intimidating - but right now, Taehyung just feels small and tiny and he wants to crawl into a hole and hibernate for a very, very long time.
And so he nods, out of guilt and pity and genuine remorse, and can’t bear to watch as the boy gathers his things and walks out the door, down the hallway, the stench of shit water creating a natural path through the sea of people.
Jeongguk is seriously reconsidering his decision to major in Biology. His first week started off swimmingly, but the second saw a sudden flood of coursework, extra readings, really fucking confusing journals and a practical where he accidentally squirted sheep’s blood onto his professor’s face. And the lab attachment.
He’s always been rather good with practical work; good with his hands, more so than his brain. (He’s still not very sure why he wants to go to med school, though. He needs to rethink his priorities.) So the lab attachment was not too much of a concern at first.
When he meets Taehyung, there are two thoughts that run through his mind:
a) this boy is pretty, how is he older than me?, and;
b) it’s always the prettiest ones that are the weirdest.
The second turns out to be very true, he finds, when Taehyung briefs him on his project regarding his ‘algae babies’ and using them to filter shit water, does it with the enthusiasm of a five-year old boy talking about Lego.
And then he learns a whole host of things he’s never been taught to do. Collecting wastewater from actual sewage tanks, counting algae manually with just his eyes and a bipolar microscope - fuck, he should have gone for Law instead.
But Taehyung turns out to be painfully nice and eccentric and passionate, all rolled up into one package with a shock of purple hair and a handsome face; and so, Jeongguk starts to think that, hey, this might not be all that bad. That is, until a laughing spiel and a weak grip leads to him being doused in what is literally shit water. The smell is horrible but not as painful as the realisation that sets in as soon as he exits the lab, not even daring to look at Taehyung as he leaves.
He has a date with Soojung, the girl in all his classes with the long hair and pretty smile and sweet words. She was the only one that laughed out loud when he sprayed sheep’s blood onto their professor, the only one who bothered to lend him a pencil in their very first lecture. And he really does not want to fuck this up.
He trudges back to his dorm and finds that his path today is particularly clear. (He knows that it’s because he smells like poop, but it’s not something he wants to think about.) Even after his shower, he still smells like the dirty socks that Jimin (his lucky roommate) always leaves lying around after dance practice.
But he really, really does not want to fuck this up.
So he steals a bit of the cologne that Jimin’s left on the bathroom countertop, a small bottle that doesn’t have a name but contains some sort of thick, red liquid. (Red is his favourite colour, you see. The colour of manliness and blood and passion.) He sprays it on his wrists, on his neck, twirls around a bit to make sure every last inch of his poop-smelling self is shrouded in nice-smelling red mist, only to find that he now smells like a deranged mix of strawberries and old gym socks.
He sighs. It’s too late anyway.
And his date turns out to be horrible. The moment he enters, she lets out an inhumane sound - soft, but inhumane nonetheless - from her throat and scrunches her pretty face up and gives him the evil eye. Though she tries to cover it up for the first half of the date, he can tell that she’s at her limit already.
“Do you have B.O.?” she asks.
This is it, she’s snapped, Jeongguk thinks. But he can’t give her a straight answer, not when he can’t move out of shock and everyone else, even the servers and host, is staring at them.
She gives him a placating smile, the kind that says ‘I know what I need in a man, and body odour is not it’, before getting up and leaving him with the check. He refuses to meet the server’s eyes when he foots the bill.
When he gets back, he takes another shower and collapses onto the bed, ignoring Jimin’s cries of “What the fuck is that smell?”. Second weeks really, really suck.
The lab smells nauseatingly sterile and clean, like someone’s covered the whole thing in ethanol twice over before giving it a final coat of bleach. And even though Jeongguk knows he should be grateful that it doesn’t smell like shit, the fact that it took him two days and a lot of teasing on Jimin’s part to get rid of the stink is still fresh in his mind. He still enters with a right mind to be positive, to be a kind dongsaeng, though, because he tries not to be a douche.
“Hi Jeongguk!” Taehyung greets. “Come have some fun while we wait for the spectrophotometer to work its magic.”
He’s got his lab goggles on and his hair is sticking up this way and that, giant rubber gloves on his hands. His smile is embarrassingly rectangular, Jeongguk thinks.
He nods. As much as he appreciates the elder’s efforts to be nice and all, he can’t quite shake off the feeling that the shit water hadn’t been an accident. And he hates himself for it. He knows it’s illogical to assume everyone is out to get him, but the shadow of someone trailing after him, of the odds forever being not in his favour, constantly looms.
He grabs a pair of goggles for himself and watches as Taehyung pours some dark grey powder - magnesium? - into a small crater that’s been dug out in the center of a block of dry ice. Then he quickly covers it up with the other half of the solid block of carbon dioxide, only for the entire thing to explode, and Jeongguk literally sees fireworks.
Taehyung takes his goggles off and grins. “See? This is why I take Biochem, not just Bio.”
And Jeongguk can’t help but crack a smile. Maybe that would work.
But the good mood doesn’t last. He has a bad habit of being infuriatingly snarky whenever he’s just come off from a bad experience, or any experience that leaves a sour taste in his mouth.
The meanness slips out slowly and gradually, trickles in like the first droplets of rain after a week’s worth of cloudy skies.
“Do you think there’s too much here?” Taehyung asks. He lifts the beaker up to the light and swirls it around, inspects the freshly-filtered wastewater.
“You’re supposed to be the senior here.”
The reply slips out a little too smoothly, too quick and slick for Jeongguk to catch it. And he knows it stings, can tell from the way Taehyung’s face falls, the way his eyebrows droop and his mouth drops open just slightly; the next moment, though, all his features are right back into place.
That’s not the only time, either. The next time this happens, it’s only two days later, and the two are hauling containers from the storeroom back to the lab.
“Is that too heavy for you?” Taehyung looks pointedly at the four containers that Jeongguk is carrying. “Might be a little much.”
“It certainly is for you, isn’t it?”
Jeongguk wants to slap himself. He knows it’s snarky and mean and dickish and rude, but he can’t seem to filter his thoughts. He sees Namjoon, their supervisor, frowning at him in the back; but all this while, he says nothing, not when Taehyung keeps his own mouth shut and his smile in place.
He tries to make up for this extra level of meanness by doing his best to be sickeningly nice and helpful and all things good whenever his mouth isn’t trying to betray him. He makes an extra effort to filter as much wastewater as possible (he’s become very familiar with the vacuum pump), he stays back during lunch breaks to look after the AlTae (he still can’t believe that Taehyung would name his algae), he does all the cleaning up while Taehyung returns their lab coats to the rack (he’s been borrowing one of Taehyung’s old labcoats, and it has some very suspicious stains on it).
It’s eleven thirty-three on a Saturday morning, and Jeongguk stumbles back home smelling like poop. This time, it’s not because someone has spilled poop water on him, but because he’d finally accompanied Taehyung on his regular pilgrimage to the sewage tanks and stupidly forgot to bring a change of clothes.
Jimin’s on the couch, legs splayed across the coffee table while his hands playing with someone’s hair; said someone lies horizontally across the couch, limbs dangling off the arm rest and head in Jimin’s lap, eyes closed but nose scrunched up.
“Jeongguk, please take a bath,” Jimin says. He immediately slaps one hand over his boy toy’s nose and the other over his own. “You smell like death.”
The boy sits up - Jeongguk swears he hears Jimin let out a pathetic whine - and Jeongguk finally notices the head of pink hair, the sort of light, bubblegum pink he associates with fairy tales and cupcakes.
“You smell like shit,” the boy says. “Kind of familiar, too.”
Well, not fairy tales and cupcakes, then.
“You can thank my crazy ass lab mentor.”
As much as Jeongguk respects Namjoon and Hoseok and Taehyung and everyone else in the lab, he doesn’t appreciate coming back smelling like sludge for the second time in two weeks.
“Wait, what?” Jimin yelps. He tilts his head to a side. “You have a lab mentor?”
“Yeah, you would have noticed if you hadn’t been busy dirtying all our kitchen countertops with your butt-print and condom wrappers.”
“Shut up, maknae.” Jimin glares at him. “Anyway, does your mentor happen to be called Kim Taehyung?”
Jeongguk nods. The pink-haired boy starts laughing too.
He finds out that Jimin and Taehyung are childhood friends (“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jeongguk whines, which is followed by a “We’ve known each other for two months, Jeongguk!”) and that Yoongi is actually the elusive Suga behind the disorganised filing system and constantly depleting coffee supply.
The whole time, Jeongguk has to resist the urge to smack Jimin silly because he feels sort of cheated, even if there really was no good reason for Jimin to tell him anything. Something tugs at his heart whenever Jimin sings Taehyung’s name like an old, familiar tune. It’s oddly similar to (but not quite the same as) the same thing that makes Yoongi reach over and tangle Jimin’s fingers through his even while side-eyeing Jeongguk for his temporary body odour.
Taehyung can’t tell if his kouhai is warming up to him or not. Jeongguk is the perfect intern seven out of ten times, always ready to help and asking surprisingly insightful questions (like “Won’t the spectrophotometer be affected by the other particles inside?”, to which Taehyung answers, “Probably.”). The rest of the time, he drops super snarky remarks that just sound wrong coming out of a mouth like that.
And Taehyung does his best to be the most supportive, caring and wise mentor ever. (Not just in his own words. Hoseok can confirm the sheer amount of effort he’s put in.) He brings Jeongguk a cafe latte from that one coffee shop down the street every morning, leaves little post-it notes of encouragement on the boy’s binder, and only doles out criticism when it’s constructive and truly needed.
But Jeongguk rarely even smiles - as hot as the brooding, solemn face looks on him, Taehyung finds it much nicer when a rare grin stretches across his face - and the fact that the boy is always eager to learn and to help doesn’t make up for the fact that no, he seems to have only two default expressions: neutrality and pure snark.
Taehyung knows he fucked up the first day. He’s never been one for denial, shies away from false truths and cover-ups as much as he does from people who tell him to keep quiet; but surely, no one holds a grudge for this long, right?
Britney Spears’ ‘Work Bitch’ blasts through the room. He hears Jimin’s sigh in his head before it even reaches his ears. “What is it? Is it your little dongsaeng again?”
“Yes! He’s super rude.” He flops down onto his bed, phone still held to his ear. “Okay, not most of the time, but when it comes out, it’s like, bam! I sort of get it, you know, I spilled poopy sludge on him the first time we met, but still. He holds a serious grudge, I swear. He gives these snide little remarks and then I’m like-” He makes a face, clenches his fists in an expression of utter rage and helplessness. “The worst part is, I find him cute? Not just in a ‘let me pinch your adorable cheeks’ way, but also a ‘let me push you up against this benchtop and swap saliva’ kind of way? Why? Why, why?”
“You need an intervention.”
“No, I need sleep,” he says. He rolls over. “And a way to get my degree without having to deal with attractive interns.”
Jimin suggests that they spend lunch together, and so, they do. Instead of alternating lunch breaks so that someone will always be present to look after the AlTae colonies, breeding peacefully in their controlled environments full of nutritious wastewater, they bribe Hoseok into taking care of the samples, and spend their hour-long lunch breaks with each other’s company.
Taehyung is excited. He finds himself drumming off-rhythm beats on the benchtops and shimmying to the tune of non-existent music in the hours leading up to lunchtime.
“Where are we going, hyung?”
“Hm,” Taehyung says. “Where’ve you been eating all this while?”
“I usually just go to Tesco for a sandwich, or I steal food from my roommate at the quad.”
“You poor thing.” He pats Jeongguk’s head, even though the boy is taller than him and it feels a little awkward having to reach all the way up. “Let me get you some real food.”
They head to a small stall. Taehyung would call it a diner, but it hardly qualifies as one; it serves only hot dogs, with the typical condiments, but at a price that is easy on the wallet.
“Hi Maggie!” he greets. “Two Full Monties please!”
Maggie grunts in response, throws him a sour look that he brushes off. He returns to their table with two hot dogs the size of his face and a little more, topped with ketchup and mustard and pickles on the side.
Jeongguk raises a brow. “She didn’t like you very much.”
“No, no, everyone here loves me,” he reassures. “She’s just having a rough day.”
“Really?”
“No.” He pushes Jeongguk’s hot dog toward him. “I came here every day last summer and customised my order every single time. She still hates me for that.”
He laughs, a surprisingly high-pitched sound that makes Taehyung smile. It’s warm, makes his chest feel all full and fuzzy. Sort of like the feeling you get after being awarded a chocolate chip cookie for scoring the highest on a test, except much, much nicer.
“Coffee?” Taehyung asks, once they’ve polished off their plates and Maggie’s started giving them the evil eye again.
Jeongguk gives him a look. “At one in the afternoon?”
“Caffeine is my drug of choice. Along with science.” Taehyung feels immense pride as he says this, does it while putting a fist to his chest. “Espresso!”
“Eh.” Jeongguk gives a little shrug. “I like cappucinos.”
He stops in his tracks, the sudden brake almost causing the two to collide into each other. He turns toward the intern, jaw dropping open and eyes wide.
“But I brought you cafe latte all this while… Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’m not particularly picky about my coffee, you know?” He wrinkles his nose. Taehyung really wants to reach out a pinch it, but because he has an obscene amount of self-control, he doesn’t. “I prefer tea, anyway.”
“That’s blasphemous.” He speeds up, walking away from Jeongguk before whipping his head back and shouting, “Go get your own caffeine fix, you hot leaf juice lover!”
Monday turns into Tuesday, and Tuesday turns into Wednesday, and all of them are filled with Jeongguk. Taehyung can’t tell you where they went out and on what day, because all the days have somehow meshed together into one blurry mess, a blurry mess that makes his heart swell whenever he thinks about them. Their days and lunchtimes are filled with AlTae, with vacuum pumps and conical flasks and “Namjoon, get your samples out of my centrifuge!”, with conversations and laughter and a strange emotion that makes his head spin and his chest clench.
He notices that Jeongguk laughs more on their little lunchtime outings. His shoulders aren’t as tense, the lines on his forehead disappear. The more he smiles and grins and laughs, the more he looks his age. But even as Jeongguk’s expressions become more commonplace, Taehyung still gets a little winded, still feels the wind knocked out of him whenever Jeongguk’s eyes crinkle, whenever he throws his head back and laughs so loud that his stomach aches.
He learns that Jeongguk is kind of really, really dumb. For being a Bio major with dreams of med school, he does a lot of stupid shit that makes even Namjoon - with his tendency to break anything with a single touch, even a fridge - shake his head.
Jeongguk will accidentally hit the table with his shin while trying to sit down, or pull the chair out just a little too far and fall on his ass, or try to unlock that ratty old bicycle he’s parked outside the lab, only to realise that it wasn’t his.
Taehyung thinks it’s a bit of an oxymoron; how can someone who is genuinely interested in how the spectrophotometer works, or in the mitochondrial functions of algae, be incapable of differentiating hot water from cold?
But even the most inane mistakes are painfully endearing, and with each passing day, he can feel his own heart swelling just a little bit more, the hole in his chest he never knew was there filling up faster and faster. He’s got an inkling of what this feeling is, but he’s not sure - doesn’t want to be sure, not when he can’t confirm everything with a hypothesis and an experiment and a full-fledged report.
It’s a Thursday afternoon. The sky has darkened over, thick clouds hanging in the air, the threat of rain looming over. The wind beats loud and strong against the glass walls of the cafe, but the high-pitched wail of the oncoming storm is lost amidst the loud chatter and the smell of coffee.
“No, really,” Jeongguk insists. “I’m not kidding.”
Taehyung scoffs. “As if a straight-laced doctor-to-be like Jeon Jeongguk would get a tattoo.”
He glares at Taehyung. “You asked for it.”
Jeongguk shrugs off his jacket, reveals the red jumper with sleeves that fall down past his fingers and caresses the pads of his thumbs. Taehyung tries to ignore how cute he looks, drowning in the giant shirt. Then Jeongguk pushes up his left sleeve, rolls it all the way up to the shoulder, and Taehyung can’t help but let a “Holy shit!” slip out.
It’s not large or eye-catching, a black-and-white design barely larger than his palm. But it’s intricate and well-done, that much is for sure; the lines of the dragon and dark and bold, yet the scales have been painted so finely and precisely that each one looks just a little different from the next. The dragon swallows its own tail, forming a perfectly round circle.
“It represents the cyclic nature of life,” Jeongguk says.
But as beautiful as the tattoo is, Taehyung can’t help but notice the way his arms strain against the bunched-up fabric, can’t help but notice the slight veins that stand out and shift just so whenever Jeongguk shifts his arm. His throat dries and he actually swallows a couple of times and fuck, when did it get so hot and why are his lips so dry?
(Where does Jeongguk even find the time to work out? Taehyung wants to slam his fist on the table, because Jeongguk is getting ruder by the second.)
This, combined with the oddly appropriate tattoo, helps Taehyung finally diagnose what the fuck is going on with his stomach and chest and everything else whenever Jeongguk looks his way, whenever Jeongguk smiles at him, whenever Jeongguk gives that sheepish (and slightly smug) look and hands him a shot of espresso.
Some have smiles that light up the room, some have smiles that light up the world; but Taehyung’s smile, Jeongguk thinks, with its hilariously boxy shape and tendency to take over his entire face, is none of those. And yet, Jeongguk can’t help but feel his heart flutter whenever his mentor’s mouth stretches into a grin, whenever his large eyes narrow into little half-moons.
But Taehyung is still a little (very) strange. Jeongguk supposes it is part of the whole ‘mad scientist’ aesthetic that he seems to be gunning for, the random experiments and strange facts that come shooting out of his mouth at a mile a minute.
“Do you know what was my yearbook message?”
Taehyung leans against one of the benchtops, twirling his goggles around a finger. Jeongguk looks up from their data log.
“I’m so interested,” Jeongguk deadpans.
Taehyung knows him well enough by now, though, and he merely ruffles his rude little dongsaeng’s hair.
“Flourine, uranium, carbon, potassium, bismuth, technetium, helium, sulfur, germanium, thulium, oxygen, neon, yttrium.”
It takes Jeongguk four and a half seconds to get it, but when he does, he hits his elbow on the desktop from laughing so hard.
“You’re horny as fuck,” Jimin says. Even over the phone, Taehyung can see his best friend’s - now ex-best friend - judgy face.
“I’m not,” he insists. “I’m just… lowkey thirsty.”
He and Jeongguk are practically a pair now, coming and going as a set. They take turns buying each other drinks from the coffee shop (though Taehyung still refuses to get him tea, because, yuck) and they still go out to lunch together and even if Jeongguk still manages to be a snarky asshole on occasion, at least he’s toned it down a notch.
He gives out his once-rare smiles like candy on Halloween and the sarcastic remarks start to sound more like friendly teasing. But there’s a little something missing, like the walls he’d erected eons ago are still standing tall and strong and unrelenting.
“You know it’s not a good idea to get too attached, right?”
“…I know.”
“I’ve heard things about him,” Jimin says. “As much as he is a good person and a good intern, I’m not sure how good of a boyfriend he will be.”
Taehyung doesn’t have an answer to that.
“It’s a department retreat!”
Jeongguk scrunches his nose. The two of them are standing in front of Namjoon’s place, and this is definitely not a department retreat. People are falling over each other on the lawn, limbs flailing about. There’s loud house music coming through the doors, the smell of sweat and soju clings in the air. Someone shoves past them and almost spills alcohol onto Jeongguk’s boots.
“Fine,” Taehyung sighs. “It’s a lame-ass party.”
“Why is half the school here?”
“Between Namjoon the Materials Science PhD student and Seokjin the Drama major, they know everyone. Trust me on that.”
It takes only one whole minute before they spot someone throwing up into the bushes, but by then, they’re already halfway across the front lawn, halfway done with their valiant journey to the entrance. No time to back out now.
Jeongguk doesn’t recognise half the people here, not when he’s spent all his free time either at dance or at the lab. And the unfamiliar faces coupled with the thick stench of sex, drugs and rock and roll, makes him want to go home, right now. Instead, he does the next most logical thing, follows behind Taehyung like an obedient child and clinging on to the hem of the elder’s shirt.
The music is loud and jarring. He doesn’t know how it’s possible for it to be so hard to fucking see when lights are flashing everywhere, in every colour possible, but it is, and he stumbles more than once.
Everyone is here though - Hoseok’s busting out his moves on the dance floor, Namjoon stumbles around in a tipsy haze while Seokjin trails after him and makes sure nothing gets broken, Yoongi and Jimin lounge on the couch in a corner.
Jeongguk sighs. He supposes he has no excuse to leave now, not when he actually knows people who are here. And so he merely stays behind Taehyung, makes sure he doesn’t lose the only other person he knows.
At some point or another, they end up in a circle with about ten others, seated on the ground in one of the second-floor bedrooms. Some song or another is threatening to pound through the door, but it’s closed, and the music is muffled enough that they can actually hear each other’s words without having to shout.
“Alright, so this is how it goes,” Seokjin says. He holds a coin between his thumb and index finger, holds it up to the light so that everyone can see. “The person to your left will whisper to you a question, and within three seconds, you have to say the answer out loud. Then you flip a coin, and if it lands on heads, you will need to tell everyone what the question was. If it lands on tails, you don’t have to tell us, but you’ll need to take a shot.”
Jeongguk groans, but everyone else lets out a cheer. He’s pretty sure it’s because they’re lightly buzzed and easily pleased.
And he is neither of those, especially since he’s notoriously horrible at holding his liquor. A single beer sends his had spinning and his mind blank, and he wakes up the next day with no recollection of what the hell happened the night before. (He usually ends up relying on shady Facebook photos to decode the night’s events, which really just reveals how pathetic he is.)
One by one, they go around the circle. The answer that comes out of people’s mouths is usually someone’s name or a sheepy nod accompanied by a blush. And whenever the question is revealed, it is unsurprisingly sexual. More than a few giggles and wolf-whistles are heard.
Yet, by some stroke of luck, he manages to avoid the shittiest questions. (It’s probably because Taehyung is to his left and knows that if he asks a shitty question, Jeongguk will sneak cinnamon into his morning coffee.) He even manages to avoid taking shots.
But Taehyung isn’t so lucky, and Jeongguk can’t help but laugh at his hyung’s misfortune. He ends up with questions like “Who do you think has the biggest dick?” and “If you had to be tied up by someone, who would it be?”, courtesy of Park Jimin. (Answers being ‘G-Dragon’ and ‘Harry Houdini’ respectively, of course.)
They’re on their fifth bottle of soju when Jeongguk realises he has lost track of time. At this point, Taehyung’s cheeks are tinted bright red and the smile on his face is a permanent one, body flip-flopping here and there for a minute or two before splaying himself across Jeongguk’s lap.
“Jeonggukkie!”
His legs jerk on reflex, knee popping up to strike Taehyung in the stomach; and though his hyung lets out a loud “Umpf!”, Taehyung readjusts himself anyway, skull resting against Jeongguk’s denim-clad thigh, hair falling into the space between his legs.
“YES!” Namjoon declares, words slurred. He punches his fist into the air and tightens his lips, puts on a solemn front.
He flips the coin, and it lands on heads.
“Have you ever had sex in a public area?” he says solemnly. Jeongguk thinks his supervisor is way too drunk. And somewhere in the back of his head, he’s regretting not filming this down for some top grade blackmail material.
Namjoon turns and whispers a question into Taehyung’s ear. Taehyung lets out a loud giggle that lasts forever before shouting “Jeongguk!”, shouts it loud enough that the scent of alcohol wafts up into Jeongguk’s nose.
Jeongguk wants to groan. It’s the fifth time Taehyung’s answered something with his name and he can’t help but start to think that the elder’s doing this for shits and giggles. Taehyung just wants to see him squirm with curiosity, he’s sure.
The coin flips. It lands on tails.
Taehyung tilts his head up and flashes a wicked grin, one that makes Jeongguk think that he might be more sober than he’s letting on.
“Taehyung, tell me,” Jeongguk pleads. It almost comes out as a whine.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Taehyung says, shaking his head. This makes his strands of light brown hair scatter all over Jeongguk’s thigh, and he’s suddenly overcome with the urge to thread his fingers through them, maybe tug a little.
Taehyung gets up for a brief moment to take the shot of soju, finishing it off with a loud, exaggerated “Ah!”, supposedly to indicate how refreshing it was. (Jeongguk knows better. Soju is not refreshing.)
He then turns to Jeongguk. He keens forward, almost toppling onto the younger boy, but manages to latch onto Jeongguk’s shoulders and steady himself in time. The action makes Jeongguk’s whole body stiffen.
And then he whispers, “Who here would you give the grade-A suck?”
Taehyung pulls back to rest on his shins. His smile is innocent and wide, but his eyes - darkened over, hooded lids - are anything but. And when he darts out a tongue to wet his lips, Jeongguk feels a heat surge through his body and an overwhelming urge to gulp.
But he doesn’t have enough time, and so he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Taehyung!”
He claps his hands over his mouth and watches as the others laugh. He doesn’t dare to look at Taehyung, who’s speechless for once.
When the coin lands on tails, he obediently takes his obligatory shot of soju, wrinkling his nose at the fiery trail it leaves as it travels down his throat. A little tipsiness is nothing, not when the alternative is having everyone know who you’d rather get on your knees for - even if it was an answer spluttered out without much thought.
The rest of the game goes smoothly and rather uneventfully. At some point they’ve ended up on the couch, Jeongguk snuggling into the corner, head almost falling off the headrest. Taehyung’s made a temporary home on his lap once again, head lolling on his thigh, eyes shut; the rest of his lanky body is spread out across the length of the small couch, legs dangling off the edge. Jeongguk wants to get up and physically stop Taehyung’s legs from shaking every second, but he’s feeling too lazy and doesn’t want to move.
The party’s died down. They ended up taking a few more shots, and now, Jeongguk can really feel the effects of the alcohol - as small an amount as it was - kicking in, dulling his senses in some ways yet heightening them in others.
Like how he can barely hear the thrum of dubstep in the background, the chatter and noise and smoke; yet, he’s hyper-aware of Taehyung’s hair between his fingers, of his soft weight on Jeongguk’s thigh, of the way the light hits the angles of his face just so. He’s too aware of how the collar of Taehyung’s shirt is slipping off his shoulder, prominent collarbones on full display, of how his eyelashes are so long they caress the top of his cheeks.
He rubs the strands of hair between his fingers. And this is when the thought comes to him, accompanied by a small trill and adrenaline, the kind of feeling you get when you’re at the top of a cliff and you just have that urge to teeter off the edge. To make that jump.
And so he tugs.
Taehyung’s eyes don’t flash open - fortunately, since Jeongguk’s starting to second-guess his impulsive life choices - but his mouth falls open, and a low-pitched whine makes its way out of his throat.
Ah, fuck.
“Young one, why’s your face so red?” Seokjin asks.
Jeongguk didn’t even realise that he was near, and he splutters, feeling his face grow warmer as he does so. Being the understanding hyung that he is (not), Seokjin cackles, wiggles his eyebrows and pats Jeongguk’s back once, twice, before leaving.
Hanging out with each other is too easy. It’s like having the puzzle pieces fall right back into place, a comfortable presence falling into step beside you on your way to get the morning coffee. Even after lab hours, Taehyung finds himself automatically looking for his little kouhai.
Jeongguk’s a bit of a tough cookie though. He drops by the lab whenever he finishes lessons early and claims, “My algae need me!”, but Taehyung likes to think that it’s because he’s gotten as comfortable with Taehyung as Taehyung is with him.
When Taehyung’s waiting for the spectrometer to finish running their samples, he watches. He watches as Jeongguk hunches over the benchtop, worksheets scattered across the desk, pen sticking out of the corner of his mouth as his forehead creases in concentration.
And when Taehyung isn’t looking, when Taehyung is busy stacking the conical flasks according to size or digging through shelf upon shelf of files, Jeongguk’s eyes will follow his hyung as he dawdles about the lab. When Taehyung slumps onto the chair and begins spinning around, cursing his decision to go to major in Biochemistry and shouting “WHY DID I DO THIS?”, Jeongguk listens. He stifles a laugh, but he listens.
“Why are you coming over so often? I don’t want to see your ugly face any longer, Kim Taehyung.”
Jimin groans from where he is, stomach splayed across his boyfriend’s thighs. He buries his face into the couch, kicking his legs up and almost hitting Yoongi in the face.
Taehyung nods at Yoongi, who nods right back, and sticks a tongue out at his supposed best friend.
“Park Jimin, I just want to rekindle our burgeoning friendship,” Taehyung proclaims. He plops down onto the couch. “The flames of our inseparable bond!”
Jimin narrows his eyes. “Dude. You never leave the lab. But in the past two weeks, you’ve come over ten times. That’s more than in the past six months combined.”
“What can I say?” Taehyung shrugs. “I had a sudden urge to bond with my biffle.”
Yoongi chokes. Jimin just looks aghast.
“Besides, I still have bad memories of you sexiling me for Min Yoongi right here,” he points at the blond, who wears an amused smile on his face, “and so you should really think twice before telling me what to do. You owe me ten million friendship points.”
Jimin shakes his head and sighs.
“We both know why you’re here, Tae. Yoongi-hyung probably does too, you’re about as subtle as a brick,” he says. “You changed out of your lab coat and goggles for him and went for afternoon tea. That’s how I know you’re in too deep.”
Impromptu tutoring sessions have become an unofficial habit. Taehyung would go over to Jeongguk’s room - passing by a smirking Jimin on the way - and crouch over textbook upon textbook with the younger boy.
“Okay, so this is the mitochondria, and that’s the chlorophyll. They’re almost essentially the same,” Taehyung says, pointing at the colourful and complicated illustrations. It brings him back to his freshman days.
Jeongguk frowns, a look of unparalleled concentration on his face, eyes glued to the book. From this angle, Taehyung can see the sharp, strong jawline and straight nose and he swears, it makes his heart do backflips.
“Oh my god,” he says. The words escape like a whisper. He leans back into the chair and throws his hands into the air. “They’re my algae.”
Taehyung laughs, and all of a sudden, he wants to tuck Jeongguk into bed and tell him bedtime stories. How does someone go from brooding, smouldering hotness to puppy in one second?
The rest of the night is spent with many, many explanations and poring over the coursework that Jeongguk’s been given. Taehyung stops just once to think about why he’s doing this; but when he feels the warm weight of Jeongguk’s thigh against his, the way that he doesn’t move away when Taehyung’s hands go around his waist, curling into each other’s bodies as they give into the sweet lull of sleep, he figures it’s all worth it. Even if they’re just friends, it’s worth it.
The light is startlingly white. It gets brighter and brighter until it fills his entire field of vision and makes his eyes ache.
Jeongguk opens his eyes - and fuck, it’s hard - and he’s greeted with the scene of his grinning roommate, a clunky polaroid camera in his hands.
He starts to wonder what’s so interesting, why is Jimin taking photos; then, he realises there’s something warm and oddly familiar pressed up against his body. In fact, Jeongguk’s arm is thrown over the other’s waist, hand coming to rest on a hip. Taehyung is curled in a foetal position, knees to chin, back pressed into Jeongguk’s chest. He can’t help but think that they fit like lock and key.
And then he looks at Jimin and his evil grin, and he feels his face heat up and a sudden adrenaline, surged on by the very high possibility of embarrassment, course through him.
He leaps out of bed, almost hitting Taehyung in the process, and notes that yes, he’s still fully clothed, thank god. Jimin’s still cackling, one hand waving the camera around tauntingly and the other doing some very fucked up version of jazz hands. Jeongguk vaguely registers Taehyung’s groans, groggy from being woken up, turning into full-blown laughter.
Jimin dashes off into a corner and this is his downfall. Jeongguk’s fast - he likes to think that he is lightning fast, thank you very much - and blocks him from escaping.
“Hand it over,” he spits.
But instead of passing him the polaroid like any good, decent person would, Jimin stashes it down his pants. Jeongguk eyes the action with the kind of disgust usually reserved for a bug he’s found in his shoe and a kind of reluctant respect for what could have been the only course of action, really. No way is he going to stick his hands down Jimin’s booty.
He’s seething, ready to launch himself at Jimin, but feels two arms wrap around his torso. The warmth is familiar and pulls him back into bed, landing on his back. When he looks up, he sees a bright smile and only vaguely registers the loud ‘click!’ in the background, followed by a blinding flash.
This must be what having a boyfriend is like, Jeongguk thinks.
He knows that Taehyung’s not actually his boyfriend. He’s his mentor and, if he were to be honest, a really, really good friend. But he’s always been a sucker for false hope, and so he allows himself the fantasy of pretense for a moment. (Or two.)
It’s strange. It’s a mix of easy, comfortable conversation and stares that are a little too intense, touches that linger a little too long.
Taehyung finds himself going over often. Not just to help Jeongguk out with his coursework (the poor boy still can’t figure out his Krebs cycle) or to relish in the company of a kouhai, but because being around Jeongguk makes him genuinely happy. Jeongguk makes him smile and makes him laugh until his sides hurt and makes his chest feel funny (a good kind of funny, of course), and that’s more than enough. Whenever they talk or laugh - heck, he just has to see Jeongguk, really - he feels his heart swell up with pride and admiration and something else.
And Jeongguk, he’s long past the point of admitting that he enjoys Taehyung’s company. Taehyung is a beam of sunshine, he learns, someone who carries the glow of optimism perhaps a bit too loudly. Don’t get him wrong - Jeongguk is still quite sure that his mentor’s not quite right in the head, a little quirky and a little weird. But it’s endearing. Whenever he makes an off-handed comment about something completely unrelated or spouts lyrical about metaphysics, Jeongguk finds himself smiling or latching on to the conversation.
It’s like a dance. A waltz, a salsa, whatever you want to call it. A dance - a game - of fleeting touches and skinship and something else.
When Taehyung popped over to Jeongguk’s place, he didn’t expect an eyeful of naked torso.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” he splutters. He just wanted to beat Jeongguk’s ass at Mario Kart and watch a documentary or two. He didn’t expect to see a stranger, half-naked and admittedly really, really attractive (not attractive as his dear kouhai, of course), towelling off and looking at him with a quirked brow.
“Who’s that?” Jeongguk calls out.
Taehyung watches as he walks nearer the door. Jeongguk is fully dressed, but his hair is mussed up (Bedhead!, the misbehaving voice in his head shouts) and his eyes are wide, large and round and confused.
“Uh, it’s alright, sorry to have disturbed you guys,” Taehyung rambles on. “Yeah, I’ll just go now, bye.”
As he turns on his heel and dashes off, he doesn’t dare risk a single glance back, even as he hears his name echoing through the hallway.
The next few weeks pass by in a blur. Taehyung feels like he’s suspended in amniotic fluid, floating through life in a thick haze.
“Cheer up, buttercup!” Hoseok says.
Taehyung tries to muster a smile but he knows it comes out as a grimace when Hoseok merely pats his head. He lets his head fall back onto the table with a loud bang, mulls over his sad life.
“Just let me wallow in self-pity,” he says, voice muffled against the wooden tabletop.
He really didn’t expect that Jeongguk would be attached. Sure, he didn’t ask, but none of the signs ever pointed to that. What kind of boyfriend would snuggle up in bed with another guy? A really bad one, that’s who.
But Taehyung is logical. His deductions could be totally wrong - Hot Shirtless Man could have been his cousin, or something - and so he wants to reserve judgement until he can talk to Jeongguk about it. (Because Kim Taehyung is logical and rational and does not jump to conclusions, no way.)
And yet, fate seems to be bent on making his life hell. Jeongguk’s away from the lab for an entire week for some fancy dance camp, the same one that Jimin’s at too. An entire week, tucked away in the comforts of a cushy little resort on Jeju-do, surrounded by fit, lithe athletes who share the same love for rhythmic body contortion and will inevitably whisk Jeongguk away into a life of thrill and Hot Shirtless People.
Taehyung groans. His life really sucks.
And his algae hate him, too. Several of his samples end up contaminated; all the spectrometer analyses are botched up, results entirely unreportable. Hoseok tries to assuade him that it’s not him - it’s the fact that there’s literally fifty-percent less manpower on the project, at least right now - but it doesn’t quite help. His samples are shit and he smells like shit and he feels like shit.
The worst part is, he can’t even gather up the courage to text Jeongguk.
“Do you want to go out for lunch?” Jeongguk asks, tilting his head to the side.
Taehyung looks at him and feels his heart hurt.
"No, I’ve got some stuff to finish up,” he replies, quiet and terse.
Jeongguk has already been back to the lab for a few days, but Taehyung still can’t quite muster the courage to ask him about the mysterious, shirtless man. He doesn’t know if he can handle the truth. And so, he adopts the best strategy ever: avoidance.
Something flashes across Jeongguk’s eyes; the next second, it’s gone, replaced with a calm, polite veneer eerily reminiscent of the first day he came to the lab. He shrugs and heads out, leaving his lab coat on the rack; he’s finally gotten his own, traded Taehyung’s old lab coat for a sparkling new one two days ago.
Taehyung sighs, drops into the seat, and stares at the bottle of concentrated hydrochloric acid, watches as the liquid swirls around behind the glass.
“You know you’re both idiots, right?”
He turns around and sees Namjoon, wearing a lab coat and a frown.
“Actually, right now, it’s just you,” he says. “But he’s an idiot for not asking you about it.”
“Go away, hyung,” he groans.
“Just tell him you want to lay tangent to his curves, or something.”
“He’s not even a Math major!” Taehyung exclaims. Namjoon wears a smug, self-satisfied look that Taehyung wants to wipe off his face with a slap or a punch. Preferably both. “And I can’t just go up to him and say ‘come on, lattice bond’! That’s so weird.”
“You are weird, though,” Namjoon points out. “In an endearing way, of course.”
“Let me stew in my own cowardice.”
“Wow, fancy word. Should have majored in English instead.”
And so Taehyung gets up, removes his gloves with a loud snap! and throws them in Namjoon’s face, before walking out to find a place where he can stew in his own cowardice in peace.
(The gloves were clean, of course. He’s not that mean.)
Surprisingly, Jeongguk is the one who speaks up first. After five whole days of monosyllabic answers and Taehyung’s staunch refusal to have a meal with him - though he still makes it a point to leave a cup of coffee on Jeongguk’s desk every morning - Jeongguk finally snaps.
Taehyung is alone in the lab, knees half-bent and peering into the fridge.
The next second, the fridge door slams shut and he jolts, jumping backward and landing onto a hard chest before jerking himself away.
He knows Jeongguk is taller and broader than him - he must, since the younger holds it over his head by wearing well-fitting shirts every single day - but the difference is truly stark like this. He presses his back into the cool surface of the fridge, fists clenched and knuckles white; Jeongguk looms over him, pinches his lower lip between his teeth, yet maintains a sort of firm resolution in his eyes.
Taehyung gulps.
For a second, he thinks he notices Jeongguk’s gaze flit down to his throat. But it’s gone and he is left with his heart hammering against his chest.
“What happened?” he asks. It’s a whine lined with frustration and anger and worry. It makes Taehyung want to reach out and pull him into his arms and tell him nothing is wrong, but he knows that would be a lie, and he’s always been an honest person. “What’s going on?”
“Jeongguk,” he sighs. He looks straight ahead in an attempt to avoid Jeongguk’s eyes, large and round and worried, but ends up staring right at the boy’s collarbones instead. “Please.”
“Why are you acting like this?” he presses, more insistent this time. He takes another step closer. “Did I do something wrong?”
And this is what makes Taehyung snap. This is what pulls the anxiousness from his face and replaces it with indignance and frustration and anger - if not at Jeongguk, then at himself.
Hell, Jeongguk didn’t even do anything wrong, and Taehyung knows that. He knows it all too well. He knows that it’s his own fault he decides to make assumptions and mull over things too much, that he takes things too personally and refuses to step forward and do the more logical, rational thing.
He can’t help it, and he knows it’s not a good excuse, but he really can’t. He can’t help the way his chest clenches up, the way his breath gets stuck in his throat, the way he flinches at the thought of confrontation.
But to have it flung in his face?
“Just go and hang out with your boyfriend,” he mutters, bitter. Even pissed off, he can’t bring himself to spit his words. He rolls the word ‘boyfriend’ over his tongue like it stings. “Just go.”
A frown appears on Jeongguk’s face and he wrinkles his nose, leans forward as if to inspect something on Taehyung’s face. He is much, much too close, less than a hand’s breadth away, and it makes Taehyung choke on air.
“Boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend, man-buddy, male companion,” Taehyung dismisses.
Then he sighs and stares at the ground, can’t bare to look at Jeongguk any longer, and realises, with a start, just how immature and childish he is acting. He’s supposed to be the older one here. And so he rights himself and makes sure his voice doesn’t waver.
“Sorry, I’m being a dick. Don’t listen to what I just said. You did nothing wrong, I’m just being a petty little shit who can’t even take care of algae properly. I hope you and your boyfriend are really, really happy because he’s quite hot, to be honest; good catch, really. I have nothing against you, seriously. I’ll still help you out with your coursework, but give me a few days to continue wallowing in self-pity for a bit. I will even provide very unfunny science jokes.”
He knows he’s rambling, talking at a mile a minute and hand gestures everywhere, but he can’t help it, even as he feels the words fly off his tongue.
“Hyung,” Jeongguk says, patient. “You have it all wrong.”
Then he laughs, laughs so hard he has to hold an arm out and press it against the fridge to support his body. He doubles over, one hand clenching his sides and the other propped up next to Taehyung’s face, caging them in. It soon becomes a high-pitched sound, one that is oddly adorable, and Taehyung would have joined in, were it not for the fact that he does not know what the hell is going on.
When Jeongguk’s laughter finally subsides, he lifts his pinky up to wipe away tears that line his eyelids. Taehyung squints at him suspiciously.
“Are you laughing at me?” he demands.
“Well, yes.” Jeongguk takes a step back and grins. “Because that was really funny. Me? A boyfriend? No one can put up with my… everything, really. Good one, hyung.”
I can, Taehyung thinks. I do.
Instead, he asks, “Who was that, then?”
“The guy at my place the other day?” At this, Taehyung nods and motions for Jeongguk to continue. “That was my group mate. The shittiest group mate ever, but he always brings free shit over. Beer, chips - well, that’s about it, really.”
“So you’re really not together?” Taehyung asks. He can’t help but feel like a heavy weight has been lifted off his shoulders, but another one has settled in, one of embarrassment.
“Hyung,” he says. “You’re the only one who doesn’t mind that I smell like shit and actually cares about mitochondrial anaerobic respiration.”
That’s a confession if Taehyung ever heard one, a three-way marriage between an overgrown man-child, a broke senior year student and science.
“Of course I am,” Taehyung quips.
Jeongguk smiles, and it’s one of those toothy ones that make his eyes curve into half-moons, that make his nose wrinkle.
Taehyung grins back and even he himself cannot believe how easy it is to go from upset and confused one second to smiling and happy the next. Then again, he shouldn’t really be surprised - after all, he has long since accepted the fact that he has a soft spot for Jeongguk.
For a while, life is good. Taehyung has not felt so comfortable in a long, long time. He doesn’t necessarily feel a shot of dopamine whenever he sees Jeongguk, but it’s more like a soft, soothing satisfaction that washes over him, the kind of feeling you get when you go home for the holidays and see that your parents have prepared your favourite dishes. The kind of feeling when you meet up with old friends over a beer, when you fall into bed after a day’s work, when you are home.
“Pass me the test tube, Jeonggukkie,” he calls out, one hand holding the pipette.
Jeongguk walks over, a box of test tubes in hand, and takes the pipette from Taehyung.
“I’ll do it, hyung,” he says.
He eyes the younger boy with suspicion. “You just don’t want to count algae, do you?”
The grin he flashes is so bright that Taehyung can’t even retort with a sarcastic remark.
It’s a Friday night, and they have been toiling away at the lab for more than four hours. The sun has set and flooded the sky a warm orange and deep navy - not that they would know, Taehyung thinks bitterly - and everyone has left. When they are finally done prepping the last sample for analysis, he shrugs off his lab coat and throws it at the rack, letting out a small cheer. (It lands on the floor. He tries to pick it up discreetly, but he swears he sees Jeongguk laughing.)
“Drinks! Let’s go!” he says, already halfway out the door.
Jeongguk comes out a minute later. “Where? Who? When?”
“Some bar, us - and the rest, I think Jimin’s already there - and now.”
Under the harsh, dim lights of the bar, Jeongguk is even more attractive, if that is even possible. He is decked out in a plain, oversized white shirt and tight, ripped jeans, but the simple ensemble is enough to draw more than a few eyes his way. At the stares, Taehyung feels his throat tighten up and sticks even closer to Jeongguk’s side, hip bumping into the other’s.
It’s only nine but the place is already packed to the brim, and the smell of sweat and soju is starting to get to him. Thankfully, though, they spot the rest in a few seconds.
“You made it!” someone exclaims. Taehyung turns around to source of the overly-exuberant voice and sees their resident lab assistant grinning at him. “I’m Hoseok! Hi friend!”
“I’m Taehyung!” he replies. They would be on the same wavelength if he wasn’t completely beat after a day at the lab, the longest they’ve had in a long while.
Yoongi pops up out of nowhere and pulls Hoseok back by the collar. “Ignore him, he’s drunk.”
“KIM TAEHYUNG!” Jimin screeches, arms opening wide and dashing toward his ex-best friend. “FRIEND!”
“And so is he,” Yoongi sighs.
Taehyung pats his shoulder comfortingly, feels Jeongguk tighten up beside him.
Understandably, both of them are dead tired after the day’s worth of work; Taehyung was in the lab from seven till eight, and Jeongguk had hopped over right after he finished his lessons. And so, while the rest go about busting their moves on the dance floor, with only a sober Seokjin making sure no one ends up making a fool of themselves, Jeongguk and Taehyung remain seated at the bar counter, nursing their drinks.
“I. Am. So. Tired,” Taehyung groans. He doesn’t know what he was thinking when he agreed to come out. He wants to be back in his room, preferably lying on his bed and not moving. He downs the shot. “What is life, Jeonggukkie? What is life?”
“Are you high on alcohol or exhaustion?” Jeongguk asks, voice incredulous.
“BOTH!” he shouts. The sudden spike of energy from alcohol coursing through his veins. He looks over at Jeongguk and notices that his glass is still suspiciously full. “Why aren’t you drinking?”
“Alcohol and I don’t really go well together,” Jeongguk explains. “I didn’t drink the other time, too.”
“Really? I didn’t notice,” Taehyung pouts.
“You were too drunk to notice,” Jeongguk says. Red colours the top of his cheeks for a moment and he clears his throat.
“Why did you buy a drink then?”
“Because if you were the only one drinking, it would look really weird.”
At this, Taehyung can’t help but feel his heart flutter. There’s an inexplicable urge to reach out and thread his fingers through Jeongguk’s, the long, callused ones that wrap themselves around the curve of the glass. He wants to map out every vein, every crevice.
And all of a sudden, he is warm; so, so warm.
He looks away, and that’s a bad idea, because his eyes land on the boy’s collarbones. The gigantic shirt means there’s a gigantic collar, one that almost slips off the side and reveals prominent collarbones, prominent enough that he could drink water out of them if he wanted to. He licks his lips. He traces Jeongguk’s jawline next, the sharp, strong bend of the jaw, the smooth skin that he wants to run his hands over. The light hits everything just right.
His stomach tightens. His heart hammers against his chest. It’s unfair, really, how he’s the only one who feels this way. Really, really unfair.
The wind strikes the glass, whistling into the night.
This is what Jeongguk wakes up to, wakes up with a start from an odd, dreamless sleep. He hears the rattling of the window panes and the soft call of the breeze, the gentle pitter-patter of a drizzle.
On any other night, he would curl back into bed, fold himself back into a foetal position and burrow into the blankets. (After all, everyone knows that rainy nights are made for sleeping.) But this night is different. A few hours before - maybe more than a few, Jeongguk doesn’t keep track, can’t keep track - he was studying with Taehyung, and they had proceeded to fall asleep.
He stares at the ceiling, eyes open and unblinking for what seems like an eternity.
When he rolls over, he sees that Taehyung is staring at him too. Their legs are not quite tangled together, just pressed up against each other, and the warmth of another person’s body feels a little like home. He can barely make out the other’s face. The moon may be bright out but moonlight is hardly enough when you have a face like Taehyung’s, one that deserves not just the moon, but the sun and the stars, too.
Though he can barely see a thing, can only see the light glint of Taehyung’s eyes, his heart feels like it’s about to jump out of his chest anyway. And when Taehyung closes his eyes, leans forward and nuzzles his shoulder, he swears, his heart is bursting.
“What are we?” he asks.
Jeongguk is straightforward, and Jeongguk needs answers. He needs answers, not the constant dancing and the cryptic, intense looks and fleeting touches. Not the impromptu sleepovers and impossibly bright grins and morning coffees.
The elder lifts his head up, just barely, and gulps audibly.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. It’s soft, restrained, like the words could break any moment. When he speaks again, his voice is strangled. “I don’t know. I really, really like you, Jeonggukkie. You’re one of my best friends. I like the way you laugh, I like the way you make me laugh, I like the way you’re always on time and actually clean the lab coats and drink the morning coffee even though you prefer hot leaf juice. I like that we’re friends. Come on, lattice bond, right?”
He lets out a choked laugh.
“I don’t know. I’ve never actually been in a relationship, you know. Just quick hook-ups on the side. Jimin has always tried to set me up on dates but I’m not good enough and I always end up running away, just running away. I don’t know if I’m scared or if I’m inadequate or if I’m both and, fuck, I’ve never even had feelings before. Like those primary school crushes everyone is supposed to get? Nothing. I thought I was a robot, incapable of any emotions, only capable of being the ‘weird one’.
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Jeonggukkie. I don’t know.”
The whole time, Jeongguk listens. He listens and listens, even as his voice breaks, makes sure to nod and caress the bumps and ridges of Taehyung’s knuckles with the pads of his fingers so he knows that yes, Jeongguk is here, that he is listening.
A moment of daring propels him forward just so, such that their foreheads press together. He closes his eyes and breathes - inhale, exhale - and he can feel Taehyung’s breath against his, warm and rhythmic and everything he never knew he needed. Their legs curl together under the sheets, limbs tangling together.
They have never felt more vulnerable. They have never felt more exposed, but they have never felt less alone either. And despite it all - the way the rain clatters against the windows, the way Taehyung’s heart hurts in more ways than one, the way Jeongguk’s words are stuck in his throat - just knowing that the other is right there, a warmth slowly, steadily and surely spreads throughout his body, down to the very bone.
“I AM DONE!” Taehyung screams, quickly printing out the very last set of data and throwing his hands into the air. He shoves the stack of papers in Jeongguk’s face. “I AM DONE!”
Admittedly, his results are less than stellar. It was to be expected, though. Any sort of experimental work comes with many human errors, most of them imperceptible until the final analyses are out, but for all the ups and downs of the whole process, the results are still surprisingly publishable.
“Congratulations, Taehyung!” Hoseok says, ending off with a loud cheer.
“Good job,” Namjoon says, nodding. “Look forward to seeing you in grad school.”
Taehyung eyes his supervisor with distaste. “Don’t ruin my moment.”
“You do know that you still have to finish up your report, right?”
“Don’t ruin my moment,” he snaps.
Jeongguk starts laughing, almost collapses into Taehyung’s side. (If there is one thing he has learnt, it is that when the boy laughs, he laughs hard.)
He wrinkles his nose at the younger boy, still recovering from the fit of laughter.
“Just wait till you get into med school. See who’s laughing then.”
At night, they head to Namjoon’s place. It looks markedly different without a hundred people crowding the place; he can actually see the floor, and it is not very clean at all.
“To good grades and money!” Taehyung proclaims, raising his can of beer into the air. No one else follows. He eyes them all with derision. “Killjoys.”
The rest of the night is spent with good friends (somewhat; whenever Taehyung catches Jimin’s smug little smirk, he seriously debates stripping him of his title of Best Friend), good food (fine, it’s just beer and nachos. But everyone loves beer and nachos.) and kicking everyone else’s ass at Mario Kart (except Seokjin, because he is crazy good at Mario Kart).
Even Jeongguk manages to finish an entire can without collapsing, and merely ends up with sporadic, high-pitched hiccups and reddening cheeks.
At some point, they give in to fatigue and alcohol-induced numbness, a documentary on Arctic penguins playing on the television. (“Penguins are interesting as fuck,” Taehyung declared.) It is a little strange, he has to admit; seven grown men spread across multiple couches, fast asleep, flightless birds squeaking in the background.
Hoseok is curled into a ball on the sole armchair, Yoongi is lying on Jimin’s lap with the younger’s fingers threaded through his hair, Namjoon has fallen asleep on Seokjin’s shoulder.
As for Taehyung, well, he’s curled up in the corner of the sofa, back pressed into Jeongguk’s chest, the younger’s arms wrapped around his torso. He can feel the boy’s every breath, the rhythmic inhales and exhales as his chest rises and falls. He feels his eyelids grow heavier as the world goes out of focus.
“Hey, Tae?”
Jeongguk’s voice is a soft whisper, lips a butterfly’s touch against the shell of his ear.
“What is it?” he asks.
He presses himself further into Jeongguk’s embrace, turns his head around to burrow his head into the crook of the boy’s neck.
“I like you.”
Taehyung turns around, adjusting his body such that he straddles Jeongguk’s thighs. He looks up through long eyelashes, eyes ridiculously large and wide and shining, and he smiles. He smiles, that stupid rectangular, boxy grin, and wraps his arms around Jeongguk even tighter, presses their bodies together.
Jeongguk’s heart clenches.
How can someone be so beautiful?
“I know,” Taehyung says. And his voice is just as soft, if not softer, than Jeongguk’s, the low baritone humming through both their bodies. He places his lips on the slope between Jeongguk’s neck and shoulder; softly, gently, light as a feather but with the weight of the world. “Me too.”
He knows this is rash, this is impulsive, and this was never in his ten-year plan. This is everything he never expected, a surprise that was thrown right in his face and morphed into something much, much more, something that leaves stars in his eyes and butterflies in his stomach.
He still doesn’t know a lot - it might be love, it might not - but fuck it. Just this once, he will take a leap of faith.
“This wasn’t quite what you expected, was it?”
They look at each other, the boy they never really wanted and definitely didn’t deserve.
“Yeah.” Their fingers interlock together, digits pressing firmly against the other’s. And they smile. “But it’s all I need.”