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taehyung clings to his clothes like cigarette smoke. like a ghost of something unspeakable. jimin goes to bed and all he can smell is vanilla. taehyung’s vanilla because no one else could possibly do vanilla better than him.
jimin falls asleep wanting.
-
the thing about taehyung is, he’s warm. not warm like a space heater but warm like the sun. jimin feels it in his palms for hours after they stop holding hands. it heats up his bones like a day at the beach. taehyung’s so relentlessly warm that jimin thinks he must want to set him on fire.
so jimin burns.
he coats himself in gasoline and burns for taehyung every day they’re together, hoping; needing taehyung to see. to see the boy on fire next to him. but jimin burns so damn long and so damn quiet that taehyung doesn’t notice. so jimin watches the flames burn his insides into something twisted.
it probably started when they were too young to really care about what it meant to like boys and too small to see over the tall grass in jimin’s backyard.
“kim taehyung.”
the boy standing on the other side of the monkey bars is small, smaller than jimin. his skin is tan and his cheeks are flushed with the excitement of recess. he has this look in his eyes, like he already knows everything there is to know about jimin and he’s about to move on to something more interesting.
he doesn’t, though, he marches right under the monkey bars and leans in close, like he’s about to divulge the secrets of the universe right there on the playground.
jimin is enthralled.
“that’s my name, you know. i didn’t even know you could introduce yourself like that until last night. i saw it on my mom’s movie. this guy just walked in and said his name, then gave everyone this look like—bam! sorry if i scared you.”
kim taehyung’s breath smells like he just ate about two hundred different kinds of candy and his voice is at the same volume it was from the other side of the monkey bars. jimin wants him to talk forever.
and just like this, jimin wants. he longs for taehyung, seven year-old heart pounding insistently in his ribcage, telling him never to let go of this boy in front of him. he’s too young to quite know what it means, but what he does know like an itch at the back of his head, is that it’s unspeakable, this want. so he doesn’t say anything except, “i’m park jimin,” and taehyung gives him a boxy grin with missing teeth and candy breath.
-
somewhere between the monkey bars and high school, taehyung stops being smaller than jimin.
he grows lanky and tall first, then starts to fill in the rest. his shoulders broaden, but his frame stays lean. his collarbones sharpen underneath the same tan, honey skin. he grows his hair long in front of his eyes and then dyes it lavender, asking jimin what he thinks with an immoveable boxy grin.
jimin says he looks like a fairy prince, because he does.
(jimin thinks a lot of things about taehyung, but all of them are unspeakable.)
taehyung’s eyes stay the same, warm and bright and shining, like he’s always thinking of lovely things.
and so when jimin’s sitting in the dark with him nine years after the monkey bars, he’s a little bit lost. because taehyung’s eyes are not as bright, they’re scared and shaky and suddenly taehyung is smaller than jimin again, wrapped up in an oversized sweater and holding onto his hands as if for dear life.
and he says something that jimin had never quite let himself consider, something he’d thought was unspeakable.
“i think i like boys.”
“ok.” jimin’s voice isn’t quite his own.
-
he does get another chance at me too; he gets a chance every time they’re together. but the syllables get all stuck in his teeth like old gum, and his tongue is frozen solid in his mouth, and taehyung is so fucking beautiful, looking at him curiously with lovely lovely thoughts, and it’s unspeakable.
taehyung sort of knows, jimin thinks. maybe he doesn’t consciously know it as concrete fact, but he definitely could know.
something a little bit sad passes over his face every time the words die in jimin’s mouth, and taehyung definitely could almost maybe very nearly see the long-burning boy on fire next to him.
but it passes, and taehyung takes his hand and presses his warmth into jimin’s palm, and continues talking about the difference between strawberry and raspberry ice cream.
jimin aches.
-
his last chance at me too comes once again in the soft warmth of darkness, in taehyung’s room where everything smells of vanilla.
“jimin?” taehyung’s voice is low and soft and careful, like jimin will run away if he speaks too loudly. he’s sort of right.
“you know how i like boys, right?” and jimin aches. there’s no one else in the world but taehyung and jimin, in the dark where everything smells of vanilla.
“yeah,” his voice isn’t quite his own.
“well,” and it’s barely a whisper on taehyung’s tongue, a secret that only they can know.
“i think i like boys. but mostly just you.”
jimin thinks he might be dreaming.
but taehyung’s fingers grow tighter around his, if it’s even possible, and his voice rumbles right through jimin’s bones like he’s standing next to the speakers at a concert.
jimin wets his lips, and his tongue isn’t frozen and there’s no more gum in his teeth.
“me too.” jimin’s voice is his own.
there’s a small, almost inaudible gasp, and then there are tears and lips and teeth and tongue all over his face, soothing and gentle, and jimin stops aching. taehyung finally puts the fire out and it’s replaced by electricity everywhere taehyung’s lips are, by honey skin and long fingers.
taehyung tastes like vanilla, too.