Work Text:
“You two seem suspicious,” Hoseok squints, eyes flitting from Yoongi to Taehyung and back, like he’s plaintively watching an ongoing badminton match. It’s just so likely of him to go sniffing around when he sees something, because he doesn’t like secrets, especially if it’s there, hidden in plain view but no one would care to tell him what it is about. Taehyung knows this, of course—even when Hoseok was Yoongi’s friend first, it wasn’t like he didn’t worm his way in to Yoongi’s friend group the way Yoongi’s found himself a spot in the lives of Taehyung’s friends (and also, of course, in Taehyung’s heart).
But what would he tell Hoseok anyway, when his setup with Yoongi was something that wasn’t a secret—something that had been made clear for the both of them, boundaries set ever since the beginning but blurring along somewhere in the middle of the time when they started acting like they were in a relationship but only had “friends” for a label, up until now, when they’re fucking each other on the regular? “Are you—?”
“No.” Taehyung says, quietly, and he could feel Yoongi looking at him, eyes raking at his face, as if he could touch him just by looking. Yoongi snorts, but it sounds a little too late—a little too premeditated—that Taehyung feels like he kind of wants to take what he said back.
But he couldn’t, and Yoongi doesn’t say anything to correct him—doesn’t make a move to tell him that they’ll talk it out later—so he keeps quiet about it.
“Geez, I haven’t even asked anything yet. But okay, suit yourselves.” Hoseok shrugs, and although Taehyung knows that Hoseok doesn’t believe any of it, he doesn’t push. Taehyung’s just really thankful that even when Hoseok hates things being hidden from him, he is still considerate, more than anything. “I’ll just get some drinks. You guys want any?”
“Soda.” Taehyung says automatically, the same time Yoongi says no. Hoseok shrugs, saying that he’ll be right back and that the two of them should watch over his seat before the others arrive and steal the spot he claimed first before standing up to order at the counter.
“Do you…have something on your mind right now?” Yoongi asks, and for a moment, Taehyung just stares at him. It’s weird to hear that coming out of Yoongi’s mouth when he’s told Taehyung that he’s not really good at dealing with feelings. It’s even weirder especially, when Taehyung hears concern interlacing in his voice.
“Taehyung, why are you being so hard on yourself?” Comes the familiar lilt of concern in Jimin’s voice in his mind from the time Taehyung had told him about being fwbs with Yoongi. And Taehyung knows he should just ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach of knowing that Jimin’s right again and that he should just have left things as they were before they got into this complicated setup of trying not to catch feelings even when they’re practically doing things that normal couples do.
Taehyung shrugs, as if it didn’t matter, when it really did. “Nah. Not really.” There’s a look that passes in Yoongi’s eyes as if he’s this close to not believing Taehyung, but then he hums and leans back in his chair, letting his arm rest on the back of Taehyung’s chair.
And it was good that he didn’t notice, of course—that just meant that Taehyung wouldn’t have to deal with any confrontations. If there’s something Taehyung was really good at, it was pretending—pretending not to mind; pretending to be okay; pretending not to be in love with Yoongi.
He knows he’s just one of the logs in a history of something that never really mattered to Yoongi, but sometimes—when he feels Yoongi look at him differently, when he notices Yoongi holding his hand a little longer than necessary, when Yoongi kisses him like he means to tear off the band-aids covering up the wounds on Taehyung’s heart that he himself has inflicted so he could sew them shut, when he snuggles into Taehyung because he knows just how much Taehyung loves to cuddle after sex—Taehyung lets himself believe it at least mattered, even just a little bit.