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It’s recess on a sunny day in April and the entire courtyard is jam-packed with children of varying ages, screaming and laughing just loud enough to wake up an entire neighbourhood. The supervising teachers watch on with fondness and poorly concealed apprehension as they chase each other around, occasionally stepping in to make sure nobody is at risk of hurting themselves and to put a stop on impromptu and all too frequent contests of ‘who can swing higher?’ before they end in bruises and regret. A pigtailed girl is trying to show off her pet worm to her less excited friends. A group of three are calling out a fourth for stepping out of line in hopscotch.
Small, chubby-cheeked and sporting his favourite baseball cap, Park Jimin sits on a picnic blanket next to his friends and impatiently waits for them to decide on their roles. They’d agreed on playing house—he and Seunghee had won two to one, while Taehyung was left grumbling about the fact that they never want to play anything else.
(Jimin supposes that’s true, but Taehyung gets a little annoying every time someone tells him he’s right—therefore, he says he’s not.)
If it were after him, he’d like to start playing right away, but—
“Why can’t Jimin be the mom?”
“Because,” Seunghee replies, looking a little miffed. “He’s a boy. I’m a girl, so I should be the mom.”
To Jimin, who doesn’t mind being the kid in the slightest, that makes more than enough sense. Taehyung however scrunches up his nose like he’s not entirely convinced.
“Yeah but, I don’t wanna marry you again. I wanna marry Jimin.”
Their friend scoffs, lips pouting. “Don’t be silly, you can’t marry Jimin.”
“Why not?”
“Cause you’re both boys.”
“So?” Taehyung asks, scratching his head and looking every bit as unimpressed as a six year old can manage.
“Two boys can’t marry each other, Tae Tae.”
“Why not?”
Seunghee doesn’t respond right away. Frowning, she finally settles on: “Cause it’s wrong.”
“Why?”
By that point, Jimin is watching their exchange back and forth like a referee for a tennis match (his father let him stay and watch one with him the month before; even with explanation, Jimin didn’t understand the whole point of it, and went back to his toy cars about five minutes later), gnawing on his bottom lip once he notices the disgruntled look on Seunghee’s face has turned into a full blown glare. Taehyung waits for her answer with a glimmer of curiosity in his eyes, partly obstructed by his too long fringe.
“It just is,” she bites out, folding her arms. Then adds, for good measure: “My mom said so.”
“But why?”
Angrily, Seunghee stands up. “It just is!” she exclaims, voice taking on a shriller note that leaves an unpleasant feeling in Jimin’s tummy.
Taehyung is silent for a bit, letting it all sink in. Being his best friend since before he knew how to count, Jimin is able to tell the difference between the blank look he makes when he’s thinking and the blank look he makes when their teacher is lecturing them and he’s not paying any attention—he takes great pride in this skill, in fact.
“That’s stupid,” the younger boy finally declares without an ounce of regret. From where he’s sitting, Jimin thinks he can see Seunghee’s nostrils flaring.
“You’re stupid!”
And with that, she throws a dog plushie—whom they’d affectionately named Fuzzy—right at Taehyung, slips her feet back into her shoes and storms off to the see-saws, where two girls were giggling unabashedly as each of them got lifted up.
Fuzzy bounces off Taehyung’s head and onto the blanket, close enough that he’s almost touching Jimin’s knees. While he picks him up, hugging the toy close to his chest, Jimin already feels something twisting at his heart and the tell-tale sting of tears in his eyes.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Tae,” he mumbles, though it comes out more like a whine.
“I just wanted to know why,” the other shrugs, looking in the general direction where Seunghee had gone.
Though he tries very hard, Jimin can’t hold back his sniffles, or the tears that start to trail down his cheeks one by one. Immediately, there are hands gripping him by the shoulder and his best friend’s worried face coming into view.
“Hey, don’t cry, Jiminie.”
“B—But,” he hiccups. “Seunghee’s mad at us now. What if she doesn’t want to be friends anymore?”
“Nah,” says Taehyung, wiping at Jimin’s tears with his thumbs and only succeeding in smearing a little mud over the elder’s face. “She’s just jelly ‘cause we’re getting married and she isn’t. You wanna marry me, right, Jiminie?”
Despite his mother’s constant reminders not to, Jimin wipes his nose off on the sleeve of his shirt. “Mhm,” he nods, tightening his grip on Fuzzy with his remaining hand. “You’re my best friend.”
“I’m your bestest friend,” a proud grin makes its way on Taehyung’s face. “So, when we’re older, we’re gonna have a biiiiiig wedding. And a huge cake just for us. Won’t that be fun?”
“Yeah, but,” Jimin frowns in confusion. “Seunghee said we can’t.”
Scoffing, Taehyung makes a dismissive sort of gesture with his hand. “Jimin, she’s a girl. They’re gross and have cooties, what do they know?”
Jimin’s about to say that last week he’d claimed she was the only girl immune to cooties, and also that if Seunghee’s mother—an adult—had told her they can’t get married, then it’s probably right, but Taehyung’s already dragging him off the picnic blanket and towards the swing set.
“C’mon, let’s play on the swings. I’ll push you so you can go higher.”
All becomes forgotten, and Jimin spends the remainder of recess pretending he can fly, with Taehyung laughing and cheering him on the entire time.
Now older and—so he likes to think—wiser, Jimin looks back on that memory with a fond smile. Back then, even if he did think into the future for more than just what he would eat during the next lunch break, he would have never been able to predict the rest of his and Taehyung’s story. That they’d continue to be together over the years; that their friendship would hold strong even after graduation; that at one point it would become something else, by means of a New Year’s kiss and some awkward confessions whispered through peals of laughter; that their relationship would end up a frequent topic of interest among their acquaintances.
(“You two have known each other since you were little? That’s so cute. You don’t hear a lot of stories like this nowadays.”)
He never would have guessed it led to this point: he’s fresh out of college, happily and irrevocably in love with his best friend, and about to do something potentially stupid but also incredibly exciting, as things usually are when he’s around Taehyung.
This isn’t the way he would have liked for this to happen. The ideal scenario would include a candlelit dinner at a restaurant they normally can’t afford, some well-chosen words and the ring that Jimin is still saving up for. The reality is that he and Taehyung are sitting on a bench in their favourite park, surrounded by trees and the occasional screaming children, eating ice-cream to cool off from the sweltering heat.
Or, at least Taehyung is, since Jimin’s finished his a long time ago and now there is nothing to distract him from shamelessly staring at his boyfriend with so much fondness that he thinks his heart is about to implode.
Which is what leads to him asking: “Hey Tae,” the younger turns to him, eyebrow raised, “do you remember back when we were kids and Seunghee told us we can’t get married?”
Taehyung continues to look at him a bit strangely, tongue still sticking out to lick at the bar of ice cream, before it seems to dawn on him. “Oh yeah,” he chuckles. “She was so annoyed she didn’t share her crayons with me for a week after that. Cruel thing to do to a six year old.”
He looks like he’s about to say something else, but Jimin cuts him off before he can lose his nerve. “Do you still mean what you said back then?”
Head titled to the side, Taehyung considers this for a moment. “That I think it’s stupid that two guys can’t marry each other?” then, sarcastically: “I don’t know Jimin, I mean, it’s not like I’m openly pansexual, dating another guy and I support LGBT rights or something—“
“That’s not what I mean.” He takes in a deep breath. “About us getting married—do you still want to get married? Big wedding and a cake, that’s what you said.”
If there’s sweat rolling off his skin, he’s not sure anymore if it’s because of the heat or because of the way Taehyung is staring at him, jaw slack and mouth ajar. Jimin, an expert in deciphering Taehyung’s many blank looks, is not sure if he’s ever seen that one before.
“If I can make that happen one day, would you marry me?” he presses on after another moment of silence, apprehensively waiting for a reaction.
Slowly, Taehyung opens and closes his mouth. “You… Park Jimin, are you asking me to marry you?”
“Maybe,” says Jimin, a knot forming at the base of his neck. “Yes.”
Sheepishly, he looks down at his hands, at the way he’s wringing them together to calm his nerves, at the way they’re already shaking, at the countless rings that adorn his fingers, then back at Taehyung. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get on one knee—or that I didn’t get you a ring, for that matter. Shit, this isn’t even how I wanted it to go.”
He laughs, and it sounds all kinds of awkward and choked off. “It should be better than this, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and you know how terrible I am at keeping things from you.”
Even so, after Jimin waits for a moment, for two, for a few more, Taehyung remains uncharacteristically silent, staring at him through windswept bangs with that unreadable look on his face. The ice-cream he’s holding has already begun melting, dripping down the stick and onto his fingers.
“Taehyung…”
There should have been two possible outcomes to this:
One: Taehyung gives him a wide, toothy grin and says yes in that off-hand manner of his, the one where he tacks on a scoff and something like ‘Duh, Chims. Why’d you even ask?’
Two: to his disappointment, Taehyung sighs and waves off the question saying it’s not the right time, that they’ve both barely finished college and Jimin doesn’t even have a stable job yet. To which Jimin says it doesn’t have to be right away, that he’s going to try harder, that they don’t have to do it if Taehyung doesn’t feel ready, and they’ll talk it out until they reach a compromise. He doesn’t want to consider the alternative.
He also doesn’t consider possibility number three, in which Jimin gets the breath knocked out of him—literally—when Taehyung envelops him in a bone-crushing hug and buries his face into the crook of his neck.
“You’re stupid, you know?” he feels him utter the words against his shoulder, voice coming out muffled. “I don’t need you to get on one knee or get me a freaking ring or some fancy romantic dinner shit. You know me better than that,” he pauses. “And if you thought, even for a moment, that I’d say no, then you’re the absolute biggest idiot on Earth. A humongous one.”
Jimin, though he’s just been called the absolute biggest idiot on Earth—a humongous one—can’t help but relax at the sound of this, shoulders drooping and all the tension he’s built up during their conversation fading to nothing.
“Yeah, I meant what I said,” Taehyung continues, sighing into the fabric of his shirt. “Big wedding and a cake. We’ll make it happen together.”
“We will.”
They stay like that, just holding onto each other in silence—then, there’s a sniffle. Several sniffles.
Baffled, Jimin freezes for a total of three seconds before the corners of his mouth twitch upwards and, unable to keep the wonder (and a twisted sort of delight) out of his voice, he asks: “Taehyung… Kim Taehyung, are you crying right now?”
There’s the resounding smack of a hand against his back; Jimin holds back a wince.
“You wish,” his fiancé scoffs, voice thick and sounding very much like he was crying. “I’m surprised you aren’t since you’re usually the first one to blubber like a baby about anything, cry-baby Jiminie.”
In spite of his words, Taehyung’s arms wrap even tighter around his torso, like he’s not planning on letting go anytime soon, and Jimin—Jimin, with a grown man attached to him, under the sun and a whopping 35 degrees temperature, feels more comfortable than he’s ever been in his entire life. Also, kind of like he wants to cry, just a little bit.
Suddenly, he does feel something dripping down, though not on his cheeks. Face scrunching up in confusion, he disentangles himself from Taehyung (the younger makes a sound that’s caught between a whine and a grunt) and feels down his back—groaning when his hand comes back sticky and covered in chocolate.
“Tae, my shirt.”
Taehyung, a little red around the eyes, scoffs at this. “Your shirt? How about my ice-cream?”
Sure enough, the ice-cream he’d been snacking on had been reduced to a single, pathetic little wooden stick with chocolate smeared all over its surface and on Taehyung’s fingers (and Jimin’s, along with his shirt).
He can’t help but roll his eyes. “Like I couldn’t buy you another one.”
“Oh Jiminie,” the other tut-tuts, popping the stick in his mouth and pulling it out clear of any left-over ice-cream “you are buying me another one. It’s the least you could do for making me cry on the day of my engagement.”
It’s Jimin’s turn to be smug. “So you admit you cried.”
“I admit to nothing.”
Even as he says this, Taehyung’s eyes have their usual mischievous gleam, and the hint of a smile is playing at his lips. His hair is sticking up in every direction, in dire need of a haircut, there are holes at the collar and the hem of his t-shirt, and a few spots on his cheek from a recent breakout—Jimin is pretty sure that he can’t get more perfect than this.
“Okay, okay,” he feigns a defeated sigh. “I’ll buy you another ice-cream,” and fondly, with a smile that probably makes him look embarrassingly love-struck: “I’ll buy you all the ice cream in the world if you want.”
Predictably, Taehyung flicks him on the forehead.
“Man, you’re cheesy. We have a big wedding to save up for, remember?” but reluctantly adds: “Though I wouldn’t say no to a pint of cookies and cream.”
“Then we’ll get that and some things for dinner from the supermarket.”
Following Taehyung’s lead, Jimin stands up—cringing when he feels his shirt uncomfortably sticking to his skin.
“After I change out of this,” he pulls at the back of his shirt, uselessly. “How can something that’s so good when it goes in you feel absolutely disgusting when it goes on you? I’ve never felt like I need a shower more in my entire life.”
And he really should have kept quiet, because the next thing that comes out of the other man’s mouth is:
“I could try to lick it off you if you want.”
Instantly, like someone’s flipped a switch, Jimin’s face goes warm and most likely bright red. He has to look around them for signs that a small child or a disapproving old lady could have overheard him before he turns on Taehyung with a glare.
“Tae, we’re in public.”
“Y’know, some people find that kin—“
“Oh my God, don’t finish that sentence.”
Taehyung’s laughter echoes around the park, loud and obnoxious as ever. Though it earns them a few dirty looks here and there, Jimin’s heart swells with affection and he thinks he could live with hearing that sound over and over again for the rest of his life.