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Taehyung doesn’t miss him, he insists.
He can’t drink coffee anymore because each inhale of the dark sweet liquid brings memories of weekend mornings spent curled up in bed with sunlight pouring through the drapes, legs and lips locked together, forehead pressed into collarbones, fingers carding through messy soft hair.
“The drapes are too thin,” Taehyung would always complain, which made Hoseok giggle because with the way his mouth was pressed against Taehyung’s throat, he could feel every vibration, every syllable echo through his lips.
“Maybe later,” he would say in his wonderful raw apple cinnamon crumble morning voice, and Taehyung would try to whine about how his answer was always maybe later but find himself thrown into another tickle fight instead.
Hoseok’s breath, no matter at what hour, even if he sloshed mouthwash around in his mouth for a minute, always smelled like coffee. Always.
But it’s not like Taehyung misses him. Not really.
Even though it’s like every second, every little chuckle and giggle and surprised squeak of laughter tears a little piece off of his heart and tosses it carelessly into a black hole of echoing once-constant happiness. Every smile, every flash of pearly white or crooked worn or metal-braced teeth eats away at his darkened conscience, silently screaming, reminding him of every chance he missed with the notion that there would always be another chance right around the corner.
And he finds himself tracing the raindrops running and merging and converging down the windows of the bus, creating new paths and reinforcing the old, like branches of coincidence and destiny and fate and before he knows it paths of his own life, trailblazes of lost chances and echoing happiness and lingering coffee breath are tracking down his cheeks, and he pulls his finger away from the cold glass full of pathways to wipe them away.
And there is always that one shirt, that one simple, creased white shirt hanging in the back of his closet, quietly taking up all his space. He’s not used to it hanging there – Hoseok always liked to steal it, so much that Taehyung would be surprised every time he opened his closet and saw the shirt there.
“You have like a bajillion white shirts, and the only one you ever wear is mine,” Taehyung complained. In hindsight, Taehyung realized he did a lot of complaining and Hoseok did a lot of smiling and shaking his head and rebuffing his complaint. That was how their relationship worked.
That was how their relationship broke.
That’s why Taehyung feels so cold when he lies in bed, if he’s in his bed and not on the floor where he forced Hoseok to sleep during one of their many fights. He would brush the pillow beside him and remember how he woke up in the middle of the night to Hoseok’s muffled crying and went back to sleep. Went back to sleep, when all Hoseok needed was his hand on his back and his mouth near his ear, muttering soft whispers of promises and inside jokes and reminders that he wasn’t alone.
He went back to sleep. And, in the morning, when he woke up again with the too-thin drapes letting in too much sunlight and the white shirt hanging in his closet again, he woke up alone.
Taehyung waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. And, when he couldn’t wait anymore, he stumbled in a drunken stupor to every part of the house, smelling Hoseok’s coffee scent and deodorant and cologne on every shirt in his closet, running his hands over the counter where Hoseok always smacked Taehyung away when he tried to eat one of the ingredients Hoseok was cooking with, burying his face in the drapes and the pillows and Hoseok’s favorite shirts and sobbing until he ran out of tears.
And now, one and a half fucking years later, Taehyung still hears the doorbell ring in every little sound outside his window and rushes downstairs to greet Hoseok, who would come in grumbling about the bad traffic or the idiot at his workplace. One and a half fucking years later, Taehyung still can’t stand the scent of coffee because he knew someone who woke his heart up better than any caffeinated drink ever had. One and a half fucking years later, and Taehyung always rushes inside when it rains because he knows he’s going to start crying.
It’s these little details that keep Hoseok in Taehyung’s world, one and a half years after he left.