Chapter Text
Taehyung was a year and nine months old when Jungkook was born. Taehyung’s mom remembered him wrapping his arms around her neck, grin stretching from ear to ear, eyes sparkling with a knowledge that it seemed she did not have. It unsettled her a little, the certainty of his expression, the fierceness of his joy.
He’d been restless for days, fussing and fidgeting and sobbing. What Taehyung’s mother didn’t know was that Jungkook’s birthing process was a complicated one, that when Taehyung first pushed his plate of food away and cried like the world was going to end, it almost did.
Unlike Taehyung, Taehyung’s mom couldn’t feel that something had gone very wrong. Jungkook had tumbled in his mom’s belly, his spine pressed into his mom’s spine, and each push forward scraped their vertebrae against each other. The pain was agonizing and the labor lasted for days.
But when Jungkook let out a cry of life and his mom was stabilized, Taehyung finally calmed with days long tears still fresh on his face. He’d been letting out a long sob when he stopped abruptly, hiccupping and gasping in bursts to try and draw breath into his exhausted lungs.
The pain was over, Jungkook was here in the world, and everything was okay.
After he stopped crying, Taehyung had looked at his mom with a cognition that frightened her, smiled with a triumph that confused her, and wrapped his arms around her neck. Laying his head on her shoulder, Taehyung took a deep breath with his tiny chest and fell into a deep sleep.
Taehyung’s mom never forgot the look on his face that day.
After the day Jungkook was born, Taehyung never gave his mom any trouble if he could help it. He ate most of his vegetables (he ate most things that weren’t green, and the habit wouldn't break even into his adult life), didn’t fight with any of his playmates, went to sleep when he was supposed to (tried to go to sleep when he was supposed to), and always told her he loved her.
My little Taehyungie is so well behaved, his mom would say to her friends, and bewildered, they always had to agree.
On his first day of school, Taehyung took her face in his little hands and said, “Don’t worry, mama, I won’t be gone for long.” And of the two of them, she was the one that ended up crying.
The first time Taehyung met Jungkook, he was in a small blue bundle in a crib. They were in different cities in different parts of the country, but Taehyung was lying in a crib, too, so he could see Jungkook with just a turn of his head. He didn’t have to be in a similar physical position or environment in order to see Jungkook, this was just one of the more convenient situations where the two babies could be in each other’s company.
Jungkook didn’t do much, he just ate and slept and slept and ate for weeks and weeks and weeks. Until Taehyung would get bored of just watching Jungkook’s mom burp him. Sometimes Jungkook would accidentally throw up his food, though, and that was always fun. Taehyung would be in the middle of helping his mom, taking his sippy cup to the sink (dropping every the other cup that was too heavy to carry) and suddenly he’d stop where he was standing and look up. Jungkook’s mom was taller than Taehyung’s mom, so when she had Jungkook placed over her shoulder, Taehyung had to look up high, almost as high as at his dad, in order to see Jungkook.
The first time Jungkook burped milk down the back of his mom’s shirt, Taehyung had squealed delightedly, clapping in his high chair. But when he’d reached out to touch the trail of milk, he found that he couldn’t. He wasn’t in a big enough chair to get to Jungkook’s mom’s shoulder. So he cried for his dad, making grabby hands in his direction so that he would pick him up.
When he was high up enough to reach out and finally touch Jungkook’s vomit, his hand went through Jungkook’s mom’s shoulder to land on Jungkook’s chest instead.
Taehyung had sniffed once, disappointment bringing him to the verge of tears, when Jungkook hiccuped and looked at him. His eyes were wide, his mouth was hanging open, there was a trail of vomit down his chin, and it was the first time Jungkook really saw Taehyung.
Jungkook smiled for the first time since he was born. Taehyung forgot all about his disappointment as he giggled and smiled back.
Taehyung and Jungkook tended to like a lot of the same things. Taehyung’s mom often sang him to sleep, and there was one song in particular that always made him cry. Taehyung would smile at her through his tears and blink slowly, enchanted, as he listened.
It had a similar effect on Jungkook. Any time Jungkook was fussy and Taehyung’s mom would happen to sing that song, he would freeze and just look at her, staring quietly right until she finished.
On a particularly hard teething day for Taehyung—his last set of molars coming in—neither of the babies could calm down. Taehyung was irritable and uncharacteristically grumpy, and Jungkook couldn’t stop crying. So Taehyung’s mom gave him a cup of cold water, rubbed his gums, chilled his teething toy for him and let him gnaw on it as she began to sing for him. Taehyung had settled immediately, irritability easing, and Jungkook had stopped crying.
Nobody could see the two babies together, but they had lain side by side and quietly listened to Taehyung’s mom sing their favorite song for them.
Taehyung and Jungkook were as similar as they were different.
They both had excitable energy, which was expected in toddlers, but excessive in this pair. Because of Taehyung, Jungkook had skipped the crawling stage of his development and immediately started trying to walk. He would always watch Taehyung running and jumping and climbing things, and it made Jungkook want to do the same. But Jungkook was too eager, his mind and body not quite ready, so Taehyung always kept an arm around him whenever he would stand up and start trying to walk.
To Jungkook's parents, it just looked like Jungkook had incredibly good balance, advanced for a kid his age. When Jungkook inevitably fell over, it was with Taehyung beside him, going down with him; but soon enough, Jungkook got the hang of his balance and his legs.
He followed Taehyung around everywhere he could.
That complicated things.
When Jungkook used to lay on his front and watch Taehyung play around, his mother never took real note of his wandering eyes or general distractibility. She chalked it up to the equivalent of baby chatter; directionless, focused on nothing in particular. But when Jungkook tried to follow Taehyung around physically, he would sometimes run into doors that weren’t in front of Taehyung, or trip over something that was on the floor at Jungkook's feet but not on the floor at Taehyung’s feet.
Neither of them could control when, why, or for how long they visited each other or shared certain things. They were just babies, and the forces driving them most of the time were need and curiosity. The need for food, the need for shelter, the need for warmth, the need to be taken care of, the need to grow, the need for one another's presence. Curiosity about the world around them and about each other.
But when their respective parents observed their child run into doors at full speed, or engage with them one second and become completely unresponsive the next, they got worried.
Jungkook’s mom took him to see an eye doctor, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. Taehyung’s mom took him to get blood tests and screenings, but the doctor said he was one of the healthiest babies she had ever examined. Their parents were worried and confused—countless doctor’s visits all gave Taehyung and Jungkook clean bills of health—but eventually, each set of parents just accepted what appeared to be absentmindedness as a part of each child's personality.
Taehyung was usually more immersed in Jungkook's world than his own.
Taehyung was an only child, but Jungkook had an older brother to play with. Taehyung was terribly fond of him. Part of it was that Jungkook’s older brother did things like blow raspberries on Jungkook's tummy and make him laugh a lot. (One of Taehyung's favorite things was when Jungkook laughed. Peekaboo usually did the trick: Taehyung making a funny expression whenever his hands separated to show his face. When Jungkook had only been a few months old and didn't understand object permanence, he would cry every time he thought Taehyung had disappeared. By now, though, he knew to wait just a little longer. Taehyung would always come back).
And part of it was that Taehyung could feel Jungkook's love for his brother as if it came from Taehyung's own heart. In a way, that's exactly how it worked. They shared not only external experiences (like being able to see each other's parents) but internal experiences (Taehyung being able to feel Jungkook's love for his brother) with each other, too.
As their personalities developed, their respective characteristics manifested themselves alongside one another like stems of a vine. Taehyung was stubborn. He didn’t like certain kinds of foods—he was absolutely adamant—and he was absolutely charming in the way that he got out of eating them.
See, Taehyung didn’t want to upset his mom but he also really really didn’t like vegetables. Most kids his age threw their plate away or threw tantrums, but Taehyung wrapped his arms around his mom’s neck and feigned sleep instead. It was obvious: his eyes weren’t fully closed and his mom could see him peeking at her to check if his rouse had worked.
Every single time, she let him believe that it did. He was so small, you see, so sweet-looking. Taehyung’s mom just loved any and all excuses to hold him in her arms. So it worked out for everybody; Taehyung didn't have to eat the loathed vegetables, and his mom got to cuddle her favorite bundle of joy.
Besides, she found alternative ways to incorporate vital nutrition into Taehyung’s diet without him noticing.
Jungkook didn’t have any such problems. He ate whatever was fed to him, and astonished, his mom always said Wow, my Jungkookie is so well behaved. Only when it came to eating, though. Jungkook did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and it was hell trying to keep up with him. He and Taehyung were both hard headed, but where Taehyung used charm to get what he wanted out of his parents, Jungkook got what he wanted because he didn't give his parents any other choice. He was incredibly cute and they were incredibly powerless against him.
Taehyung and Jungkook would often help each other either consciously, or by each simply being present beside the other.
Taehyung was afraid of the dark, but it was fine. Jungkook had glow-in-the-dark stars all over the ceiling in his bedroom, and Taehyung could stare at them for as long as it took for him to fall asleep. It was a peculiar transition for his parents to witness. Before Jungkook was born, Taehyung used to cry for his parents the moment they left him alone in his crib and he would wake up in a fit several times a night, wanting to be held. But then one night, they closed the door, bracing themselves for the inevitable sound of Taehyung crying for them, and instead they heard nothing. They walked back into the room to find Taehyung fast asleep, and when it happened again and again, they concluded that he was finally growing up and learning to sleep by himself.
When Jungkook was going through his own teething period and couldn't eat or sleep, Taehyung rubbed his tummy and petted his hair for him for as long as he could manage before he tired out and fell asleep. Taehyung was the main reason Jungkook got through the pain; because where Jungkook's parents got tired or couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong, Taehyung always knew and Taehyung never stopped trying to soothe him.
When Taehyung was around the age of four and had gotten a better command of his speech, he told everyone that he could about Jungkook.
Talk softer, Jungkook doesn’t like it, he said once when his parents had their friends over and the noise was at booming levels. His parents and their friends all humored him; Okay, Tae, tell Jungkook we’re sorry. So he turned to Jungkook—who had wiped his tears and gotten back to trying to climb the staircase—and said just that.
Over the next year, Taehyung’s parents got well acquainted with his friend Jungkook. Jungkook likes mama’s voice, Taehyung would say, and his mom would tell Taehyung to tell Jungkook thank you for her. His mom had read about imaginary friends: how they were a harmless part of a child’s growth that aided with imagination, and how they sometimes served as an outlet for thoughts or feelings that the child didn’t want to express themselves. Taehyung was an only child, so it made sense for him to create a playmate.
Jungkook is tired, Taehyung would say, and his mom would take that as a cue to put him to bed. And Taehyung, sharing Jungkook's exhaustion, would go right to sleep. Other times it was confusing; Taehyung would say that Jungkook wanted to watch a cartoon on television, but when his dad put it on, he would go off and do something else. And when Taehyung's dad would go to change the channel, Taehyung would get upset with him because Jungkook was watching that. For the most part though, Taehyung's parents did their best to accept their son's imaginary best friend as part of Taehyung's life.
Taehyung didn't see quite the same acceptance when he started going to school. Taehyung introduced Jungkook to his classmates, like he introduced Jungkook to everyone, and they didn't acknowledge him, opting to call Taehyung weird instead. Taehyung wasn't bothered, though. He'd already noticed that Jungkook's family never acknowledged him, even when Taehyung was right beside Jungkook. And it wasn't like he could touch anything that existed where Jungkook was except for Jungkook himself.
But he knew that Jungkook was real. He could feel him with every breath he took. And he introduced everyone he met to Jungkook because he wanted them to know how important he was to Taehyung.
So when Taehyung saw his teacher get the look in her eye that people did when they didn't believe him about Jungkook, he didn't mind it. And when she encouraged him to make friends with the rest of his class, too, he did so happily. When it was nap time, though, and he didn't want to go to sleep, Taehyung just left his body to visit Jungkook and talked to him about everything he'd learned that day.
Jungkook couldn't speak as well as Taehyung could yet. For example, Taehyung could say Nice to meet you, my name is Taehyung, like how Taehyung’s mom had taught him, but all Jungkook ever said was Taehyung's name over and over. Taehyung especially loved Jungkook's little pout when he said hyung, but Taehyung absolutely adored everything about Jungkook as it was.
Jungkook had a different experience when he started forming the language to tell people about Taehyung. His parents thought Taehyung was an imaginary friend, too, but they always changed the subject whenever Jungkook said his name in order to distract him. They also invited their friends over with their kids in hopes of training him out of the habit of creating fake friends by exposing him to real kids he could play with instead.
But it didn't work, none of them were as nice as Taehyung, and they weren't nearly as much fun. And it wasn't even that they were mean or boring; they just weren't Taehyung. Jungkook tried explaining to his parents that he just wanted to play with Taehyung, but they didn't listen to him.
Eventually, he just stopped talking to them about Taehyung altogether.
By the time he got to school, he was wary of people. He didn't want to tell anyone anything about Taehyung because nobody would listen to him. So he didn't.
When he was six, he made a really close friend at school. He was the first friend besides Taehyung that Jungkook felt completely at ease around. So he felt that it was safe to tell him about Taehyung.
My parents call him imaginary, Jungkook had said, but I know he's real. He's really nice and he likes you. Jungkook had smiled, remembering the excited way Taehyung had talked about this friend. Taehyung wasn't beside him right at that moment, but he planned on telling him later on.
At this point, they had figured out that they had to speak very quietly when they talked to each other so that their families didn't overhear and think they were talking to themselves. Taehyung's mom had bought him the pink tea set he'd wanted, and a lot of the time they talked to each other while pretending to have a conference with all of Taehyung's stuffed animals.
But Jungkook's friend had laughed at him. He told him that Jungkook was too old for imaginary friends; he told him that Jungkook was dumb for having fake friends, and then he ran off. Jungkook had cried the whole time he waited for his mom to pick him up. When Taehyung appeared by his side later as he cried into his pillow at home, Jungkook asked him if he was real. Taehyung said of course.
But the seed of doubt had been planted. And when Taehyung moved to pick Jungkook's hand up and place it on his arm to show him, his fingers moved right through Jungkook's hand.
Startled, Taehyung jerked back and doubt started to plant itself in his mind, too. For years, they had always been tangible to each other even if nothing else in each other's world's were. This sudden incorporeality jarred Taehyung so much that he blinked out of existence right before Jungkook's eyes, gasping in shock when he found himself back and sitting in his own bed.
He tried to reach out to Jungkook, but he couldn't. Because, as Jungkook had watched Taehyung disappear, so did a little bit of Jungkook's belief in him.
That was the beginning of how doubt frayed their bond.
Jungkook started to believe, more and more, that Taehyung was just a figure of his imagination. And the greater his doubts became, the less access they had to each other. Less visits, less talking, less everything. Taehyung tried to hold on, but the harder it was to see Jungkook as the years went on, the harder it became for him, too, to believe that Jungkook had ever been real in the first place.
By the time Jungkook was eleven, and Taehyung was thirteen, they hadn't communicated with each other in years. Their memories of each other were fuzzy, but anytime they remembered each other (remembered the period of time when their imaginary friend was their best friend) it was with echoes of affection and longing.
Taehyung and Jungkook's teenage years went in wildly different directions.
The more time that passed, the more Jungkook felt like he didn't belong with other boys. Especially in moments when they spoke about girls like they were conquests or the road to sexual gratification and nothing more. He didn't feel like he belonged with other people, either. He didn't feel like he belonged anywhere at all.
He was lonely. He felt a gaping emptiness inside himself, and he didn't know why it was there or how to get rid of it. He thought if maybe he got himself a girlfriend, it would go away.
So he did, and she was lovely, and he felt lonelier than ever.
He broke up with her about six months later. As he watched her cry, he promised himself that he would never lead someone on like that again. Because he'd had a feeling, when he first asked her out, that he was only fooling himself. And he confirmed why.
At seventeen, he kissed a boy for the first time in the abandoned gym, hours after a pep rally. It felt more right than the dozens of kisses he'd shared with his girlfriend. He realized that his attraction to boys wasn't going to go away like he'd been half expecting and half hoping for it to do.
Taehyung on the other hand, loved people. He loved getting to know them, he loved being surrounded by them, and they all loved him in return. He was invited to every party there ever was, regardless of what cliques of people were throwing them, and his contact list was an endless scrawl of names of people he knew down to their favorite types of toothpaste.
He'd grown his hair out over the years. He liked to have it up in messy buns or french braids and there were so many girls willing to play with his hair that he never really learned how to braid his hair himself.
Pretty much everybody had a crush on him.
Girls and boys and everyone outside or in between, and he kissed whoever he was attracted to, who was attracted to him. He had girlfriends and boyfriends and sometimes he had both, or more, at the same time. And for all his relationships and for all the people he knew and loved, he, like Jungkook, felt an unrelenting loneliness deep inside.
For all the genuine love he had for the people in his relationships, he could never shake the feeling that he was absolutely alone. And he always ended up being the first one to walk away, telling them that they didn't do anything wrong, that he was sorry, that he really did love them. He really did, too, he wasn't just using people to fill the void inside himself, but there always seemed to be a vital part of him reaching out that that nobody could seem to connect to.
He thought it was limited to just his relationships, but some of Taehyung's loneliest moments were when he was surrounded by people he knew on every side of him; the aloneness seeming to eat away at only him.
One day, Taehyung came to the conclusion that he was just built that way. He was built to feel alone no matter how much he cared for others or how many people he brought into his life. It was the hardest thing he'd had to accept about himself. He went to sleep crying that night.
As he slept, Taehyung dreamt about a boy that seemed very familiar but was a complete stranger in every way. He was tall, as tall as Taehyung, and his back had been facing him when Taehyung tentatively called out to him. When the boy turned, their eyes met, and Taehyung felt a rush of emotion consume him as he started sprinting towards him. The boy sprinted at him too, eyes wide in shock and wet with tears. Their arms were spread out as they ran, and they didn't slow down even when they were millimeters away from each other.
Taehyung expected to feel pain when they crashed into one another, but all there was were strong arms around him that mimicked his own steel grip. They fell to their knees, still holding on to each other, and Taehyung didn't know who started sobbing first, but his wails came from the deepest part of him he knew. They wept and grabbed harder at each other like they were trying to crush themselves as close to each other as was physically possible. Taehyung could feel the boy's rib cage and diaphragm and lungs and breath all shove against him as they both tried to breath somewhere in between the sobs wracking their bodies.
"I found you," Taehyung said, heart splintering and coalescing and splintering again. "I found you. I've missed you. I've missed you." Taehyung felt the pain in the center of his chest that had been growing wider and deeper for years finally alleviate. Instead of a dragging pain pulling his body in on itself, he felt warmth pulse out from the right where the pain used to be, and flood to his hands and feet and every other corner of his body. He closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around the boy's neck—the boy wrapping his arms around his waist just as hard—and breathed deeply; contently.
After staying like that a long while, Taehyung so lost in the boy's presence that he forgot what it meant to have ever felt lonely, the boy pulled back to look at him. He didn't remove his arms from around Taehyung's waist, and Taehyung didn't want him to. But when he stared at the boy, he didn't get a clear picture of what he looked like. All he saw was dark hair and red, teary eyes. Taehyung cupped his hands around the boy's face, a distant memory of big, round eyes pushing itself into his mind, and he leaned in to try to see him better. But still, a clear image of a face eluded him.
The boy nuzzled against his palm like a cat, and Taehyung pressed their foreheads together. Then Taehyung pulled back, opened his mouth, and woke up with his lips finishing the name Jungkook.
Taehyung blinked against the light streaming into his window through the curtains. His body was warm and free of the constant pain from the center of his chest that he'd felt for years. His cheeks felt wet. He couldn't remember what he'd dreamt about, but he wanted to go back to the dream. To the feeling of arms wrapped tight around him. He was in love, in that dream, and it was the first time in a long, long time that he'd felt a connection like that with another person.
As the day went on, however, the feeling faded, and all Taehyung had left was the reasoning that he'd come up with before he'd fallen asleep that night. That he just wasn't built to feel a connection like that with people, and what he craved was only a fantasy his mind had made up about how people could love each other.
Jungkook had woken from the dream with a similar amnesia, the only memory remaining the feeling of Taehyung's arms around him and a sense of having been deeply loved.
It left him determined to find that feeling, to try to expel his loneliness once and for all. He was a sophomore in college now, and comfortable enough with his sexuality and in safe enough environments that he considered dating.
But the dates always turned into casual hookups that he never called back. And the pattern kept repeating itself until he got really good at the sex part, but not so much the rest. It got bad enough senior year that a close friend of his eventually intervened after countless nights of Jungkook complaining to him about never liking anyone enough to be in a relationship with them. He set Jungkook up on a blind date, told him to keep his clothes on and get to know the fricking person, and sent him off.
And that's exactly what Jungkook did. The guy was funny, and just as weird as Jungkook was, so the first date turned into their fifth and sixth, and eventually, a seven year relationship. Jungkook loved him, not as deeply as he knew he was capable of, but enough to stay by his side for as long as he had. Until he cheated on Jungkook, and everything he'd understood for more than half a decade fell apart right in front of his eyes.
Jungkook drank himself unconscious the night he told his boyfriend to leave and never come back. He'd spent the day going over every moment of their relationship and wondering what exactly it was that he'd done wrong. What hadn't been enough. Maybe he could feel that Jungkook didn't love him as much as he should have. And if that was the case, it would have made their downfall all of Jungkook's fault.
Jungkook opened his eyes and knew there was someone with him here that knew. He walked forward, into the hazy landscape, and knew he was walking towards a person, even though he couldn't see them.
"It's you," a voice said, and Jungkook felt himself calm the second he heard it. The person was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Jungkook, and though he couldn't see a face, Jungkook was overcome by a rush of familiarity.
He'd been carrying a sadness with him with every step he took forward, and when he collapsed to his knees in front of the man, it was under the crushing weight of it. He fell forward, and when the man embraced him, Jungkook started crying so hard that both their bodies shook with the force of it.
Maybe the man was crying too.
"It hurts," Jungkook said, grabbing at his back and holding on as he wept. "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts." He had missed this person, and he was aching, and Jungkook didn't know if he was talking about the yearning and the loneliness or the heartbreak and the betrayal. It just hurt, everything hurt, and he was so tired of it hurting. The man pet his hair and rubbed his back, and it lasted a while.
It didn't fix anything, everything was still exactly the same, but Jungkook was okay. Jungkook knew that he would be okay.
He woke up the next day with a pounding headache behind his eyes and a fistful of cotton in his mouth. He showered, cleaned up the bottles of alcohol, and took the day off from work. For the first time in a long time, he felt at ease. He'd been cheated on, he was alone, but he wasn't lonely. And he knew what he wanted.
He picked up his laptop and started researching adoption agencies.
Taehyung woke from their shared dream beside a naked woman. As he blinked sleep out of his eyes, the memories of where he was, and with whom, flooded back. He turned onto his back, and she peeked down at him from between the papers in her hands.
"Morning sunshine," she said, and Taehyung cracked a smile at her. "There's coffee, so don't be afraid to have some before you fuck off, okay." There was no venom in her voice, just the nonchalance of casual conversation. Taehyung usually tried to "fuck off" before she woke up.
Today, he took the time to consider why he always came back.
And, leaning up to press a kiss to her shoulder, he said, "I think I'll stay."
She knew what he meant because Taehyung never stayed.
—
When Taehyung had his first daughter, he felt like he finally understood the reason he was put on this earth.
He quit his job and chose to become a stay at home dad. He decorated her room with glow-in-the-dark stars, but he kept her crib in his and his wife's bedroom so she wouldn't get lonely. By the time she was old enough to be okay with sleeping by herself, she had a little brother and another sister to keep her company.
One day, when they were all collapsed in the blanket fort Taehyung had made, his daughter asked him, "Papa? Do you believe in soulmates?"
And like her questions about why they couldn't adopt a dolphin or why oranges were orange, he took her question very seriously. But instead of answering truthfully like he usually did, he said, "Yes, kiddo."
To make up for the lie, he added, "For example, I was born to love you. And there are all kinds of soulmates in this world."
As she nodded and agreed with him, he found that he really did believe that.
In Jungkook's case, it took years, but he finally managed to adopt a girl and a boy as a single father. When he was finally approved, he'd immediately started decorating their room with every single toy they might ever need. And when he finally met them for the first time, he knew that he would love them forever.
Over the years, Jungkook found that of all the things he was good at, he was probably the best at loving his family.