Work Text:
The first time Taehyung sees him, he actually didn’t mean to.
He is seated in Café Bastant with an open-faced melted cheese sandwich staring up at him and an English to Norwegian dictionary sitting by his elbow. His head is buried into the pages of his Moleskine journal as he scribbles away mindlessly, and it shows through his phrases and gibberish grammar. A heavy Canon camera hangs on his neck—it’s chafing his skin—but he refuses to put it down because he found that Norway is a diamond in the rough, and there is always a treasure chest waiting to be opened every time he turns at a street.
Taehyung is working on a book—it’s his last one before he ends the contract with Kim Namjoon, the owner of the rookie publishing company KN Press with the determination of a cow under the summer heat. He’s won the Independent Publisher of the Year a couple of years back, and when Taehyung heard about him, he was adamant that he was the right person to speak to. Two New York Times Bestsellers later and quite a few awards, Taehyung was well on his way to finishing off his five year contract.
But there’s a problem.
Being a writer, he relies on inspiration and motivation, and he feels like he’s lacking one of those. He knows he’s lacking one of those, which is why his notebook is filled with crossed out sentences instead of paragraphs of coherent thoughts running continuously on paper. His pen is slowly running out of ink.
So he sighs, frustrated, and lifts his head up to crack his neck and his joints. His meal is still untouched, and the cheese is slowly reverting back into it solid form. He resolves to take a bite, but the bell from the front door rings and Taehyung cannot help but look.
He stares shamelessly.
A jet-black-haired boy walks in with his tresses wind-swept to the side. His cheeks are rosy and slightly glimmering under the warm lights of the café. A baby blue wool sweater hung on his torso perfectly while his legs adorned a pair of tight jeans. Taehyung’s gaze follows him as he walks up to the counter, and reading the movement of his lips he probably asked for an espresso, and one of those honey-glazed donuts that graced Bastant’s glass serving trays.
No, Taehyung isn’t attracted, but the stranger seems to be the type of person that you just cannot look away from no matter what you do.
And that’s how Taehyung decides to slide his hands towards his camera and picks it up to align it with his eyes. The initial image is blurry, but with a gentle turn of the zoom ring, the lad finds himself completely enthralled by the image that he’s looking at. He captures the stranger in the middle of a smile, with crinkle-framed eyes directed towards the ground.
He stares at it day and night for the rest of the week.
The second time Taehyung sees him, he’s searching for inspiration.
Taehyung is leaning against the master handiwork of hundred thousands of slaves from the Qin Dynasty of China’s bloody history. He’s flipping through the pictures he’s taken in his new SD card, seeing as the one he used in Norway is now full and secured in the pocket of his camera bag. A notebook is tucked under his arm, and though it’s majestically cold, he could feel his armpits sweating—after all, he has walked a few miles since a couple of hours ago, and now the sun was set forty-five degrees from his right. He finds it ridiculous that even if it is only nine in the damn morning, the Great Wall of China is crowded and suffocating.
He sighs when he reaches the end of his hundred-and-twenty-two pictures from the past couple of days in Beijing and tilts his head up and rests it against the cobbled stones. His eyes are closed as he feels the cold air blow meekly against his cheek, and he ignores the chatters from all around him. People came and went in front of him all while he was still and resting his wobbling legs. Two minutes and a couple of seconds later, he opens his eyes.
His eyes are mocking him.
It feels like time has stopped, and everything around him is fading into a blur. There is a familiar head in front of him, looking into the same direction as he was. The boy is looking far into the forest below China’s wonder with his hands tucked into his grey pivot hoodie. The words “Nike Air” are tattooed along the sleeve of his under-apparel, and his joggers are lose, but Taehyung knows that this is the same guy from Bastant.
Quietly, he slips his notebook from under his arm and placed it between his legs before cradling his gadget in his hands and photographed the stranger yet again. A soft click followed his action, and Taehyung squints down at the screen to look at the photo. It’s serene, and before he knows it he’s smiling and looking out into the trees that are sprawled out below him. The birds and chirping and the leaves are glistening brightly, and Taehyung chuckles because he found what he was searching for.
He finishes a chapter in less than three weeks.
The third time Taehyung sees him, it’s shady.
Literally, because his eyes are framed with Gucci eyebags and so he decided to wear his sunglasses in the covered market in the middle of Gumaca’s town proper. For the past three days, he’s experienced a zap of muse and has stupidly decided to write for those days straight with only twenty-minute powernaps in between six-hour writing sessions to keep his mind sane. Now, his brain is threatening to explode, and he is sure that his veins are throbbing in there like wild animals in the forest. Not to mention it’s hot—sweat is covering his sideburns and making his electric red hair stick to his forehead like it’s been superglued there. He needs something cold.
He stops in front of a humble stand by the outskirts of the market when he makes out something colorful (but shaded) being sold in plastic cups. It’s multiple layers of shit at the bottom, a helluva lot of ice, some milk, and what seems to be some purple jam and a slice of flan at the top. Taehyung is not aware of what it could be, but he buys one anyway.
The only problem is, they can’t understand him.
“Trenta.” The tenant tells him, and his mind whirls into a frenzy because what the fuck is a trenta.
“Excuse me?” He asks with brows furrowed down. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“Trenta, kasi.” She repeats, and this time her face contorts into an annoyed expression. “’Yano ‘tong batang ‘to—“
“She says the amount is thirty.”
Taehyung whirls around. His heart stops thumping heavily against his ribcage as he feels gratitude towards the stranger, but his words stop short from spilling from his lips when his eyes land on the same doe eyes that he saw a few months ago in a café in Bryggen, and it’s crinkled by the sides just like he remembers. The only difference is—
--he’s smiling at him.
And, well, his shades are making him look a tad darker than before.
“Oh.” Taehyung says simply, hand digging into his pocket to find the exact amount. He finds it, gives it to the lady (who was staring at him with an unamused look), and retrieves his refreshment. He can’t bring himself to look back as he mumbles, “Thanks, I guess.”
Through his peripherals, he sees he stranger manage a shrug. His usual long-sleeved ensembles are now replaced with something on the shorter side—a slightly tight-fitting red and white striped singlet hung from his broad shoulders, and a pair of red khaki shorts. His hair is still parted from the side, a little messy because of the wind blowing from the outside, but Taehyung decides that it fits his teenage vibe, and that he likes it. The stranger doesn’t say another word as he passes him, and suddenly one cup of cold refreshment isn’t enough to cool his heating body down. A throng of elephants are unleashed within his stomach, and the word soulmate pops into his head.
He’s not too quick to backpedal.
He pulls another three all-nighters with the help of the City Coast’s coffee and writes another four chapters.
The fourth time Taehyung sees him, he swears he’s an angel.
Three and a half months after his Philippine trip, he’s walking through Angkor Wat, and quite literally wheezing because he’s totally out of breath. While he was one of the people who signed a petition to stop Elephant Riding around the place, he wishes that there would be some sort of replacement, because you cannot expect tourists to walk one whole day through an active landmine area. That would be insane.
At two thirty three in the afternoon, his legs start to feel wobbly and his water ran out a couple of hours ago. He deeply regrets not being able to sleep more than eight hours the previous night because Namjoon had sent him an all-caps email, telling him to hurry the fuck up because your readers are going gaga. He forces himself to finish the last two chapters, but while nearing towards the finish, his brain stops working.
So he hauls his ass out to Siem Reap where apparently, you can reflect while looking through hundreds and hundreds of trees and the temple complex right in the middle of it all, but Taehyung cannot help but wish he’s back at his hotel instead, lounging around in nothing but suede boxer shorts while blasting out Trot versions of his favorite songs. He’s tired out of his mind.
Which is why—you can’t blame him—he almost topples to the ground, only to be swooped up by a strong grip on his arm that certainly cut off his blood flow.
Taehyung practically chokes on air when he sees who it is.
He’s looking down at him with a worried expression, glassy, chocolate hues staring down at him like he’d just blown his head off. Taehyung’s eyes squint because the sun is directly above them, but also because he’s pale as fuck that it makes him look like he’s the sun.
He could technically already be the Sun because Taehyung’s world revolves around hi—
“Are you okay?” The stranger cuts off his train of thoughts, and Taehyung can’t do anything but nod because oh my God, his voice is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. It’s smooth, innocent, with hints of childlike wonder grazing its timbre, and Taehyung is being drawn dangerously close.
Soulmates.
But he wills himself to stand by himself, dusting himself off even though he knows there’s nothing to dust off save for the goosebumps that peppered his skin underneath the black tee he’s wearing. The faint smell of cologne lingered in the air, and Taehyung realizes it’s the stranger’s scent because I don’t even wear cologne— and then the realization is, oh my God, I don’t wear cologne???
Taehyung pushes himself back into reality when he realizes that the boy is still waiting for his answer. It makes his heart melt when he sees that, somehow, despite not knowing him, the guy’s got a modest look of panic across his face. The elephants are alive in his stomach.
Soulmates.
“Yeah, I am.” He speaks after a few moments of silence. “Thanks again. Wow. You must be an angel or something.”
Taehyung didn’t even mean it to sound cheesy, but the way his deep voice reverberated made the other male smile from ear to ear, eyes crinkling up again, and Taehyung insists on convincing himself that his heart didn’t just perform a thousand somersaults in his chest.
“Well—“ The other party says, hand scratching the back of his head. “—I couldn’t exactly let you die. There are a lot of active landmines in this place.”
Taehyung merely nods. “Right.”
“It seems like you’re always in some sort of trouble when I see you.” He says to Taehyung, and Taehyung wants to laugh because he’s goddamn right—it’s just his luck that he’s always stuck in some mess when he comes along. “The next time I see you, you better not be dying, yeah?” Then he offers Taehyung another one of those bright bunny beams before he walks away, jogging to catch up with the rest of his tour group.
Taehyung’s speechless. A next time? Will there be a next time?
Soulmates.
He silently hopes there will be.
He finishes his book a day later.
The fifth time Taehyung sees him, his name is everywhere.
No, not his real name. Taehyung dislikes his birth name that he, without hesitation, chose V as a penname because it stands for victory, don’t judge me, Kim Namjoon.
Nal Gu-Hae-Jwo (or Save Me, if you think that’s way too many syllables) quickly rises up to the top tens of a lot of bookstores, including Barnes and Nobles, who sold out the book in a mere two days. People are tweeting about it, creating hashtags about how the book is one of the most heart-wrenching thing they’ve read, and news shows are dying to know the face behind the famous penname.
Taehyung’s keeps his emotions at bay.
“Kid—“ Namjoon tells him automatically when he walks into his office. “—you’re a genius. God can’t even create this kind of shit.”
Taehyung snorts. “I’m flattered.”
“No, no, I’m serious, Taehyung. Your name is plastered everywhere and people love it. People love the distant travelers theme kinda thing and they want more. Please tell me you’re thinking about extending the contract, because I’d love to sign you up again.”
The conversation goes on and on, with it ending with something along the lines of “I’ll think about it” and “but I want to take a break”. Namjoon lets him go with a huff, and Taehyung retires to the outside world.
Taehyung tugs on his bag strap a little tightly as the cold nips on his skin, and he’s pretty sure his snot has frozen up in his nose canals. The sky is a light shade of blue, although the sun’s setting and buildings left and right are starting to open up their night lights. While people are hailing taxis and boarding subways, Taehyung isn’t even quite sure where he wants to go, because home doesn’t really feel like home anymore since he’s been living out of his luggage for the past year or so. Then there’s the option of visiting his parents, but Christmas is in two days and flights are booked, so he crosses that off the list.
He stares at the sky and prays.
“Hey!”
Then his eyes fly open, because he swears to God, he’s hearing things.
“Hey!” There it is again, that marshmallow fluff timbre that he’s been itching to hear since his Cambodia trip, and while he actually prayed to hear him again, life couldn’t happen that fast, can it?
Of course it can.
Of course, because Taehyung looks down the street and sees him again, waving at him with a bright smile that puffed his cheeks into adorable rolls. He’s jogging through the crowd of people, and stopping when he’s less than a meter away from Taehyung.
“Well, you’re certainly not in trouble right now.” He says first, and Taehyung feels a laugh bubbling from his chest. He is donned in a swamp-green cargo coat, and underneath is a thin white tee tucked into faded ripped jeans with a pair of fire-truck red suspenders clipped onto his trousers. His complexion is pale, much like Taehyung remembered, but there’s a tint of pink on both his cheeks, and the tip of his button nose is shining like Rudolph’s. Taehyung thinks he’s like a Ken doll, but more perfect.
“I’m not.” Taehyung confirms, stretching his arms out wide. “I’m perfectly fine, thanks for noticing.”
They both stand there for a while, looking at each other, and Taehyung takes the time to adore the youth that graces the other’s face, because he’s vibrant-looking despite the harsh, cold weather of Seoul, and amidst the frowning faces of working men and women, his smile is a flash of starlight in his dull night sky. Taehyung knows it might be too early to say these things, but he knows. He’s sure.
“It’s cold out.” He tells him as he nods his head to the direction behind him. “Wanna grab a cup of coffee or something?”
“No.” The other immediately says, and Taehyung’s boxy grin falls. It’s revived when the boy says, “I want hot chocolate.”
They retreat to the local café with grazing arms and smiling faces.
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope.”
Taehyung is smiling at Jeon Jeongguk’s reaction when he tells him that his tour was managed by Alpha Tourism, the same agency that apparently managed the other’s. They laughed at a couple of personal experiences they picked up from the year they had been travelling, and either one had started to feel a sense of comfort in each other’s presence. Phone numbers were even exchanged, and talk about which country they liked most was brought up as well.
“That’s amazing.” Jeongguk breathes out, quite fascinated, a smile gracing his lips. Taehyung notes that Jeongguk likes smiling, and Taehyung likes smiles on him. “We’re practically soulmates.”
The older lad, by two years, freezes midway while he’s bringing his mug up to his lips.
Soulmates.
The word has been playing over and over in his mind for a majestically long period of time that it had become a mantra during his worst days, because the world was like a constant. It only referred to one person, and one person only.
Jeon Jeongguk.
Yes, the guy whose name Taehyung didn’t even know the day before. The guy whose face he has been seeing for the past year. The guy who he suddenly dreamt of after their encounter in the market.
The guy that inspired his last book.
Taehyung didn’t quite realize it at first, but the novel that he wrote was literally a confession in three hundred pages and more. It was a confession from the heart, a promise that he’s always going to adore that lad from Bastant, no matter how far he is from him. But could it be that the universe was giving him a chance?
A chance at something he’s never had before?
“Do you have time?” Taehyung blurts so suddenly before he can stop himself, and Jeongguk’s eyes flicker to him.
“’Course, hyung.” He answers, a questioning look on his face, as if to say, ‘do you even need to ask’. “Why?”
Taehyung reaches out for his bag and opens it, digging around until he sees the familiar white book spine of his latest novel. It’s his own copy, and thank god he hasn’t written anything on it yet, so he pulls it out and hands it to Jeongguk, much to the latter’s confusion.
“Read it.” Taehyung clarifies. “It’s.. It’s for you. A gift.”
“Really?” Jeongguk accepts it with eyes bulging out of its sockets. “How did you even know we were going to see each other again?”
And there, Taehyung’s smile appears.
And now it was Jeongguk’s time to have elephants in his stomach.
“Soulmates, remember?”
Taehyung doesn’t talk to Jeongguk for more than a month.
Or maybe, Jeongguk doesn’t talk to Taehyung for more than a month.
Either way, neither of them made an effort to communicate, and Taehyung’s starting to feel like it’s his fault.
He scared him way.
He’s sitting on the couch of his messy apartment in nothing but a low-hanging tee and a striped pair of boxers. There are dirty clothes scattered around the floor, quite too many empty ramen cups on his coffee table, and the contents of his bag sprawled out by his foot. Song Joong Ki and Song Hye-Ko are on his television screen, googly-eyed over each other after seeing one another, again, in Urk.
“It doesn’t fucking work like that.” Taehyung mumbles to himself, and for the umpteenth time he rolls his eyes and swallows the lump in his throat. No one, thank God, is here to witness his all time low as he continues to stream KDramas from his USB.
Taehyung’s a mess three episodes later, and there are tissues crumpled on his carpet when he hears a loud thud outside his apartment door. His ears perk up, and for a moment there are shadows of feet underneath his door, but it quickly goes away in about a second. His eyebrows furrow.
His heart gets the better of him, he realizes, when he’s dusting the salt off his shirt and standing up from the couch, seamlessly weaving through his maze of trash on the ground. He gets to the door and opens it, and he’s surprised to find that his book is sitting in front of him.
Well, his book. But with annotations.
Taehyung picks it up with wide eyes because different colored post-its are sticking out of the pages—some of them short, some of them long, but he can faintly see a few cut-off scribbles that heightened his curiosity.
Closing the door behind him, he hastily retreats to his couch and shoves all his things off of the couch, making himself comfortable on the cushions. With his feet propped up against the armrest, he turns the hardbound cover open and starts to read.
His heart skips a beat.
Thank you. - jjk
It’s Jeon Jeongguk, and Taehyung feels his lips stretching out into the smile that he reserved for him. The boxy kind, the one that makes him look like a complete child, the one that holds so much fondness over the younger lad. He’s quiet as he reads the book, but there are chuckles that slip out every now and then when he sees Jeongguk’s varicolored highlighters clumsily gracing his pages.
He was there, standing with a dog leash in one hand and the other in the pocket of his jacket that seemed to be three sizes bigger than him. Hyeonjoon’s never been one to think so much about boys, but he couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel like to be snuggled up in there with him.
tbh u should probably do this
“You’re crazy.” He shook his head at him, smiling ferociously to the ground.
I’m crazy for you.
“You’re absolutely insane.”
I probably am.
“You almost fell into a fucking landmine, you asshat.”
You saved me.
“You almost died.”
You resurrected me.
Oh thank god he didnt let him fall. Can you imagine how awful thatd be?
“I’m sorry, but I love you.” Hyeonjoon breathed out sharply. Jinwoo was staring at him with questioning eyes and twitching lips, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. “God, I love you so much that it hurts because I don’t even know if you feel the same way. I’ve always noticed you in a crowd—I mean, how could I not, you hair is fucking violet—anyway, I’ve always do, and it’s like you’re the center of my universe, and I could never know you feel the same way.”
Jinwoo was silent. Hyeonjoon could physically feel his mind reeling, trying to formulate even a sentence to tell him. “Joon,” He started, and Hyeonjoon’s attention totally reverts to him. “I don’t—I’m flattered, but I don’t get why you even remotely like me. I’m, well, me. I travel because it’s the only way I can run from my problems. I’m never going to be good enough for you, not when I can’t even face my own demons.”
There was a weight pushing down on Hyeonjoon’s chest, not because it seemed like rejection, but because he, Jinwoo, the precious person who never seemed to be anything but a guardian angel, kept on putting himself down. As each second passed, Hyeonjoon could feel his heart starting to burst at the seams, until finally he exploded.
He’s in Jinwoo’s face.
“Listen to me.” He sternly said, eyes burning with sincerity. “You’re you, and I understand that’s how you deal with things. But we all deal with things differently, Jin. I deal with my shit by writing it all out and distributing my work to millions of people across the globe. You deal with it by going around the world, maybe trying to find some sort of answer. And it’s fine. You’re not a coward. In fact, you’re far from it. You’re trying to seek for answers, and that’s farther than most people even do. And quite honestly, I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re ripped around the edges, or if you’re tattered and worn out, because I’m still going to be here whether you like it or not, and I’m going to fucking love you because you deserve all the damn love in the world.”
Jinwoo’s eyes, Hyeonjoon realized, are now glassy as they’re tear-stained. He’s gentle when he cups his Jinwoo’s warm cheeks, and for a moment he forgot that they were standing in the middle of a wintery Sunday afternoon.
“You saved me.” Hyeonjoon continued to speak. “You saved me when I needed saving most. You saved me when I didn’t even know I needed it. You gave me inspiration, the will to go on, and most of all you saved me from myself. And for that, you’re absolutely out-of-this-world wonderful.”
Flip to the end.
And so he does. Taehyung skips everything else and flips to the last page, only to find a folded envelope neatly tucked in with his name on it. His heart flutters yet again when he sees Jeongguk’s handwriting at the back, along with a smiley face and a quick doodle of a flower. He giggles.
His fingers are nimble when he opens the sealed envelope, and just one glimpse of the contents makes his insides heat up. Taehyung is confused, because there is a plane ticket to Paris, France with his name on it, and he isn’t sure what to do with it. He silently thanks the heavens when there is a note attached at the back.
“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying,” It says, “then meet me at Incheon, in gate three.”
Jeon Jeongguk isn’t exactly sure what to expect after dropping off Taehyung’s book in front of his place, because he could have totally read this all wrong.
All along, he’s seen Taehyung. In Bryggen, in Jinshanling, in the Philippines, in Cambodia, and right here in Seoul. The first two times he does, he thinks it’s a mere coincidence, but afterwards he realizes that maybe the world was trying to tell him something.
So he did not hesitate to approach him when he saw that he was having a hard time understanding the Filipino dialect back in Gumaca, and for the first time in a very long time he felt something tugging at the pit of his stomach, and while he wanted to ignore it, he simply couldn’t. Because for the next three weeks, the guy was all that he could think about, and it’s absolutely bananas because he did not even attempt to talk to him, much less does he know anything about the redhead.
In fact, right up until they had a discussion in Seoul, Jeongguk did not know shit about Taehyung, but there’s always that incessant pull in his stomach like a magnet to the other lad, and Jeongguk didn’t have the heart to ignore it.
He’s done running away.
So when he reads Taehyung’s book (of course he wrote the damn book), tears fell and his heart mended quicker than it was broken. Before he realized what he was doing, he’s already had his credit card and laptop out with Google Chrome on Korean Air’s website, purchasing two tickets to Paris because, well, it’s the City of Love. What more could anyone want? He dropped the book and the ticket off at his place (courtesy of Kim Namjoon—he visited KN Press and the man was ecstatic to hear about his plan because Jesus Christ, finally, that kid needs to get laid) without any idea how shit would go down.
Jeongguk is now at gate three, quite a few minutes left before he boards the plane. Compared to last month, the airport isn’t too packed, and yet he can’t see Taehyung anywhere. His heart drops to his stomach, and he realizes that maybe he was wrong. Maybe the book wasn’t a confession, and maybe this is a one-sided thing. He’s desolate and frowning until there’s a loud shriek from the other side of the airport, and furious running steps following it.
“Jeon Jeongguk!” It screams in an immensely low timbre, and Jeongguk looks ridiculous with his expression of disbelief, because he’s seeing Kim Taehyung, running towards him and quite out of breath. His running strides are long, and Jeongguk admires the way his newly colored hair (this time it’s fucking pink, and it looks like cotton candy) bobbing around like a mop. Taehyung stops running when he’s sure he’s going to collide with Jeongguk, which he actually does, and it sends him into fits of giggles when his weight collapses on top of Jeongguk, pushing them down to the cushioned seats.
“What the fuck,” Jeongguk chortles, and he pulls Taehyung in by the cheeks. His huge hands are warm against Taehyung’s colder ones while the pads of his thumbs graze against his gentle skin. “You’re fucking crazy.” He breathes out before nuzzling his nose onto the other’s.
“I’m crazy?” Taehyung calls out in disbelief, looking at him like he grew two heads. “You’re crazy. How did you even fucking know I’d show up?”
I didn’t, he wanted to tell him, but deep down inside I hoped you would.
But those words never slipped out of his mouth, because he’s more sure now than he was a few minutes ago about Taehyung, and there was only one valid answer to his happy traveler’s question.
“Soulmates, remember?”