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It’s sometime in winter when Taehyung decides to fuck around in a rock pool. He’s stripped down to his boxers, looking left and right for any bystanders (even though it’s the dead of night and nobody in their right mind would come out to such dark waters), before dipping his toes into the surface. Even a brief skim has him reeling back with goosebumps dotting his skin.
“Oh man,” he says aloud. His words come in puffs of white and he’d keep talking to marvel at it, but he’s too cold.
Taehyung takes a deep breath and puts his whole foot in, then his calf, then his thigh. His other leg follows and suddenly he’s waist-deep in numbing cold water. He’s standing on the inner-edge of the pool, where there is a raised platform, before stepping forward and dropping off into a dark abyss. He sinks in the water.
He doesn’t even know how to swim.
Jungkook hates everything to do with the land. Especially Land Walkers. He hates their disgusting sticks of meat and mini sticks of meat protruding from some sort of ugly stump. He hates the hot season when all of the ghastly fools are wearing prints louder than their drunken brass tones.
He steers right clear of them, his curse preventing him from even enjoying the sun on his face lest he sees a Land Walker and falls head over tail for them. If he does find one to fall in love with, he’ll be forced to forget about them. His curse is to not fall in love with a Land Walker and he doesn’t plan to anyway.
It’s night time. He’s sitting by a rock pool sometime in the dead of winter. His breath comes in short puffs and he exhales slowly, watching the flumes twist around each other before disappearing. A soft splash makes his eyes snap to the water. There’s a boy, submerged from the ribs down. Jungkook blinks and watches him shiver.
A Land Walker. A Land Walker in his own private rock pool that was supposedly hidden from human eyes.
The boy moves his arms around tentatively, the water separating and coming back together seamlessly. Jungkook has never been transfixed by water as he is now. There’s a flash of silvery-purple, and Jungkook momentarily thinks he’s actually a merman and he’s finally whipping out his tail, but it’s actually a head of hair and suddenly he’s breathless.
“That’s a merperson’s colour.” The words are stilted and confused and Jungkook just doesn’t know what to make of the boy and his mermaid hair. His heart is wild, as if a school of fish have swum through it.
He repeats it, indignantly, loudly, curiously. His company doesn’t seem hear, his eyes transfixed on the slightest ripples his breathing makes. Jungkook watches him.
The boy takes a step further into the pool and no longer can Jungkook wonder about his hair as there’s none to look at anyway. He’s submerged in the water, presumably doing something unwise, and Jungkook just squints at the ripples he’s made.
He doubts he can swim. He sighs into the cold air and scrunches his nose in slight annoyance.
Jungkook doesn’t know what makes him even think about the human probably floundering in the water, struggling wildly and losing energy quick. He doesn’t know what makes him gracefully lean forwards until only his head is in the water. His hair fans out around him, elegant and pretty.
The boy isn’t even panicking. His eyes are open, his body relaxed; he floats delicately. He isn’t moving at all, his limbs stuck tight to his body, and he should be sinking if he’s a Land Walker. But he isn’t. His eyes track the water around him, but what can he see in this thick dark? They make eye contact.
Jungkook doesn’t believe for a second this boy – this absurd, mermaid haired boy – will die in his pool or even planned to. He opens his mouth to speak.
“Come out now.” Bubbles, but the boy understands somehow. Jungkook lifts his head from the water, his silver-lilac hair a mini waterfall.
The boy makes his way back to the inner ledge of the pool.
“What’s your name?” Jungkook asks him.
“Taehyung.” His voice is deep – a man’s. Jungkook shivers.
“Listen, I don’t know what you were doing here but –”
“Are you a mermaid?” Taehyung interjects rudely.
“I – yeah, I mean my tail –”
“Because you look half angelfish,” Taehyung interjects, staring at him through the dark. Jungkook feels his eyes somewhere near where Taehyung assumes is his eyes.
“– gives it away...” Jungkook trails off, stunned into silence. Half angelfish?
“Amazing, huh?” Taehyung heaves himself back onto land, shaking the water off his body to the best he can while Jungkook starts to sputter indignantly, “Me, I mean.”
Jungkook wants to debate that, but he says instead, “You can’t leave, I have things to ask you.”
“Watch me,” Taehyung teases, slipping on his clothes despite not being dry.
Once he’s done, he sticks out his tongue in the general vicinity of Jungkook and disappears into the night. Jungkook sucks in a tight breath.
Taehyung paints but only under some strange circumstances, as Jimin would put it. He can only paint in cold rooms with lots of shelves, a seat with embroidered cushions, and one lone marble next to his paintbrushes.
For when I grow bored of my paints and such, he flippantly replies when Jimin asks why.
For when I grow bored of my boring art, he says with a little smile, when Jimin buys him a whole packet of marbles only to realise he only wanted one.
For when I grow bored of painting the same fucking thing all the fucking time, he mumbles into his hand when he plays with the lone marble. Jimin is not there to ask why, as he is not allowed in the room when Taehyung paints.
Jimin gets to see the work drying though and he’s always the first one to say if this rendition of a sunset looks like a new one.
“Every day there’s a sunset, yes?” Taehyung pauses briefly for Jimin’s quick affirmation, “And every day it looks different, yes?”
“Of course,” Jimin is making breakfast for Taehyung and his starved artist mind.
“Then why can’t I make mine different? I make one every day, but they never look different,” he drips black paint all over Sunset Number Fifty-Nine.
“Well, I don’t think so,” Jimin hums lightly, looking back over his shoulder to glance at Taehyung before returning his attention to his omelette.
A pivotal point of his life was that one glance and with that one glance, it’s like the world has reset itself just for Taehyung to go.
The brief look is all Taehyung needs to start work on Sunset Number Sixty-Eight. He works hard to capture the warm tones of Jimin’s skin, the purple of his own hair, the constancy of Jimin’s love and support.
Because that’s what Jimin is to Taehyung – a sunset. Jimin wraps the day in a neat little bundle for Taehyung to carry to tomorrow so his hands are not full.
“I have to paint.” He runs to his room. Jimin nods him away, his smile curving up nicely, his eyes crinkling in such love and care for Taehyung that he can’t help but sob while he mixes his paints.
Sunset Number Sixty-Eight is different to all the other ones because while the others hang on the walls of the garage bare, it gets a thin black frame. Taehyung collapses onto the couch, exhausted.
“That looks different, Tae,” Jimin muses, nursing a quiet expression.
“Yeah. It looks like you,” Taehyung can hear Jimin’s smile from the way he can hear the plastic covering on the floor crinkle. From the way the couch sags next to him. From the way the quiet expression is no longer quiet but a raging storm in the middle of the sea.
If there is a raging storm in the middle of the sea and nobody is there to hear it, does it really have a sound? Yes, because –
“Tae’s here,” Taehyung smiles into the crook of Jimin’s elbow as he pulls him into an embrace. Taehyung is just a drowning pirate amidst the scattered wreckage of his lovely ship and the storm just doesn’t stop giving. He reckons he should stop taking.
The next time he sees Jungkook is the next time he visits the rock pool. It’s summer, the air still retaining humidity at night. No longer is every breath crisp and pretty.
Jungkook is sitting on a rock by the edge of the pool. He’s staring across the surface of the water, watching the sunlight catch on the ripples of the water.
“Angelfish!” Taehyung calls to him.
“I’m not half angelfish, Taehyung,” Jungkook mutters. He toys with some sphere in his hands. “Hey.”
“Uh, hey?” Taehyung says as he starts to strip. He slips into the water soundlessly, like a cat padding into a room.
“Can you put this thing on your chest?” Jungkook throws the sphere to Taehyung. He catches it clumsily, having to cage it in with his arms and torso.
Taehyung stares at it. Pearl-like, the size of a golf ball, warm. He doesn’t ask questions and places it on the skin above his heart. To his surprise, it melts into him, and burns. Taehyung gasps, clawing at the space where the orb once was.
He sits in the water to try and relieve himself of the heat, but it does nothing as it comes blazing from the inside of his body. It seems to pulsate, matching the tempo of his heart as the liquid fire moves from his chest to his fingertips, to the base of his skull, to his kneecaps with every beat.
Jungkook stares on impassively as Taehyung suffers through what he thinks is Hell.
“Wh – at did you gi – hi – ve me?” Taehyung heaves through his sentence, his tongue slow. He pants and fruitlessly paws at his chest.
Not an angelfish after all, Taehyung thinks in between parts of short panic.
“Don’t worry. It won’t last for any longer now,” as soon as Jungkook finishes his sentence, the heat is replaced by a soothing chill.
The orb pops unceremoniously out of his chest, plops into the water and Taehyung scoops it up. It is no longer a magnificent milky pearl colour, but an unnerving clear wine red. Jungkook exhales loudly.
“What does this mean?” Taehyung brings it close to his eye. A pretty colour. He turns around to stare at the sun through the orb.
“How’d you get that hair?” Jungkook asks.
Taehyung reaches up to comb through his damp hair, the water turning it into a mess of dark grey. “Born with it. What does the red mean?”
“It means you’re not a mermaid. But you’ve been born with such a lovely colour, I find it hard to think that you don’t have a single ounce of mermaid blood in you,” Jungkook shapes his words carefully and thoughtfully.
“Why does it matter?” Taehyung asks. They’re both lying on rocks on either side of the rock pool.
“I’m afraid if I fall in love with you, I’ll have to forget you,” Jungkook turns his head to Taehyung’s side of the pool, “and you seem like such a lovely person that I wouldn’t want to forget about.”
“Why would you need to forget me?” Taehyung turns his head to face Jungkook. They make eye contact that feels tangible in the gentle, delicate breeze.
“It’s my curse.” Just a whisper but it’s loud enough that Taehyung hears.
“That’s really fucking tragic,” Taehyung can’t help but blurt.
Jungkook laughs, loud and sincere, “I guess it is, Taehyung.”
They enjoy the warm sun without talking, the silence as light as the wind. They bask in each other’s company and feel things they can feel only when they are together. Taehyung dries under the sun while Jungkook warms under it and in this moment, they are content with each other.
Before long, the sun dips into the line of sea and Taehyung feels like he could paint this sunset tonight.
“This was good,” Taehyung says as he rises, his skin warm and gold. Jungkook stares. He has a habit of staring when Taehyung is the one he looks at.
“I’m Jungkook.”
“Hello,” Taehyung’s lips curve into an easy smile. He dusts off his shorts and dips his head slightly and slowly like the sun into a streak of blue. “After you.”
Jungkook understands, the Land Walker wishes to paint and have me as his muse. He waves goodbye and jumps into the pool. It’s deceptively big, most of it hidden by shadow. Jungkook is as beautiful in the water as he is lying on a rock and he steals Taehyung’s breath every time they look at each other.
Taehyung watches Jungkook swim away, his fins shining in the sun stained sea. He looks up at the sky and the blurry horizon, and imagines it on a canvas. He paints the scene later that night, cooped up in his little corner with his easel and his brush. He eats five slices of toast, fed by Jimin. Taehyung calls the finished work Sunset Number One Hundred and Eight, even though he’s only up to his ninety-fifth. Taehyung can imagine Jungkook jumping into the water, his tail strong and bold against the soft stains on the waves. He leaves it in the little space he uses for important work. The only other painting occupying the gap in between his bed and the wall is Sunset Number Sixty-Eight. The tips of Jungkook’s tail shine in his oil painting. He thinks of framing it.
In between bouts of fretting over his curse, he finds the time to fall in love with Taehyung. He loves him so much that he wishes the sky would stop raining, the moon stop hanging, just so the world would stop for a minute and let him love Taehyung without being afraid of losing him in his mind. Jungkook looks at Taehyung like he is the one who found how to make the sun into a fabric and drape it on his body.
“I’m my happiest when I’m with you.” Jungkook whispers to Taehyung under a wide ceiling of stars, months, months later. He points out constellations and Taehyung tries to follow his fingers but there are just too many damn stars.
They give the stars up for a heap of giggles and blind grabbing for the other’s hand.
And Jungkook must love Taehyung very much because –
“I just do.” Jungkook breathes into Taehyung’s skin under the bright milk moon, under the surface of the sea, under the sheets. Jungkook will always love Taehyung. Taehyung is his missing puzzle piece and he can forget what picture they make but he can’t forget the feeling of someone connected to him.
They start to date properly by going to art galleries, to aquariums –
(“Hey, hey, Jungkook,” Taehyung pokes him twice in the side.
“What?” Jungkook pushes his fingers away, hiding a smile.
“Are you a mermaid?”
“No.” It’s true because in this very moment, he isn’t. He’s just Jungkook at the aquarium with a man he loves.
“Because you look half angelfish!” Taehyung breaks out his boxy grin and Jungkook can’t help but smile back.)
They make so many memories in so many different places that Jungkook believes Leader won’t be able to erase all of them.
“It’s impossible,” he mutters to Taehyung when they walk to the rock pool.
“Maybe, but watch it happen anyway, Kookie,” Taehyung sounds sad but Jungkook doesn’t know how to make him happy.
It’s like his heart is trying to tear him apart.
“But he’s not full Land Walker!” Desperate.
“Well, he’s not full merman either, is he?” his father shoots back.
“My curse can’t do this. He’s not a Land Walker.” Desperate.
“Then what is he?” his mother asks quietly. She is sombre, her mind already mourning the memories her son is going to lose.
He’s silent, but it’s enough to tell his parents what he means to him but Jungkook wishes it was enough to save them both from the damned curse.
“The curse is starting tomorrow,” Jungkook says to Taehyung as he works on Sunset Number One Hundred and Three, “Let’s stop seeing each other.”
Taehyung doesn’t say anything, but Jungkook doesn’t need confirmation.
“Your curse is to forget your Land Walker lover,” Leader says with no spite in their voice, only sympathy for he had fallen in love with someone he had to leave, “Slowly. Every day you will encounter things you used to share with him and in time, you will forget who you associate them with. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” he says to the hall. The seats are filled with his family and friends, various other members of the Council, and lots of Taehyungs.
But he’s just seeing things. There isn’t a Taehyung anywhere near this place.
“I, as Leader of this clan of merpeople, use my power to put this curse into movement.” A light touch to his heart and a tap to his temple is all it takes for his love to unravel.
Leader steps away from Jungkook. The curse is activated, but Jungkook can still vividly remember the last time they kissed, the last time they were at the rock pool, the last time Taehyung painted for him.
He wonders when the memories start to grow fuzzy, then blurry, and finally, fade.
Jungkook wakes up the next day to a clear wine red orb next to his pillow. Taehyung. He stares at the stripe of paint on his bedside table. Taehyung. His eyes fly around the room as he tries to recognise every bit of Taehyung. He feels as if there’s already something he’s left out.
They fall out of contact. Taehyung goes on holidays with Jimin and Jungkook slowly forgets. He goes to sleep knowing he might forget why there’s a streak of paint on his bedside table. He dreads sleep.
Taehyung doesn’t know where to find Jungkook, he’s never been very good with water, so he just finally frames Sunset Number One Hundred and Eight. He scribbles something on the bottom edge and sends it to the art gallery him and Jungkook once frequented. Hopefully, Jungkook still thinks that he means something to a man with hair of a merman’s and will come.
Jimin looks on sadly but cheers him on anyway. He’s allowed in the room when Taehyung works so no longer is there a need for a lone little marble. They fill the silence with lovely words that Taehyung paints onto his canvas. Now, every Sunset looks different.
Months later, Jungkook visits an art gallery and stares at an oil painting with a bright spot in the middle and blue everywhere else and feels something like his heart breaking. He wonders what that means; that blotchy sunset and why he feels like he’s fallen in love with it.
There’s writing on the frame. Meet me where the sky bleeds into the sea. Just like in my paintings. Jungkook doesn’t know much about art and what techniques artists use to make an artwork come alive to the person viewing it, but he’s amazed at what this painting does to him.
He gives silent praise to the artist as this painting, Sunset Number One Hundred and Eight, feels like it was made for him.
“Good job,” Jungkook bends down to squint at the label, “Kim Taehyung, for making such an exceptional artwork. Made me feel something I thought I had forgotten the feeling of.”