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At ten years old, Jimin discovers that love is a boy with a boxy grin.
A boy with the biggest heart, who takes him under his wing when he's friendless and alone at school because he'd been Taehyung's neighbor for years and it's his first time going to a school that isn't at home with his mum. A boy who chooses to hang out with him when he could have hung out with anyone he wanted.
A boy he'd fought another for, even though the boy he'd challenged was much bigger and in the end he'd lost pathetically, because no one gets to Taehyung without going through Jimin first.
A boy who sits with him, their knees touching as they pored over picture books, whose eyes sparkled like stars when he saw something in particular that he liked.
A boy who matters more than anything to Jimin even before he knew what it meant.
At ten years old, Jimin discovers that love is pale yellow petals blocking his throat, burning, painful. He wakes his parents up one night with tears in his eyes and sobs lodged in his throat, barely able to speak for the petals that fill his mouth. Little yellow buds sprouting in his ribcage.
Jimin is too young for anything, for making decisions, for explanations, but he tries so hard to understand why. Why the doctor had to remove something from his chest that was making it ache and making him vomit out yellow petals that hurt his throat, and though they think he is too young to understand, he has an inkling.
What Jimin doesn't understand is why it hurts so badly and why it could quite possibly kill him when all he did was give his heart to Taehyung.
At ten years old Jimin understands that his feelings are ones he treasures, and he fights.
He fights until he can barely sleep; barely breathe for the petals clogging his system.
He fights until the boy he is fighting for is crying for him, scared of losing him even though he already had all of him. And that's when Jimin understands that he has to give it up if he wants Taehyung to smile for him, if he wants to still be around Taehyung.
Because Jimin is too young but he understands difference and how he loves Taehyung differently – different from the way he knows Taehyung loves him.
-
When Jimin wakes up after - groggy but his body so much better than it has been for weeks – and he staggers at the weight of an empty heart. He feels the scar below his collarbone as he looks in the mirror and he feels nothing.
When he sees Taehyung again he realizes that the other boy no longer shines like the sun, and he looks for anything yellow to remind him, to please remind him because the yellow petals are gone and that means Taehyung is nothing to him, and he desperately does not want that, please, please.
He ends up with a plastic bag of sunny bath bombs that he stuffs into his pockets, and when he returns to school he submerges the boys' bathroom just to see Taehyung stand in a pool of so many shades of yellow, chasing and chasing feelings that were uprooted.
-
At seventeen years old, Jimin sees it coming.
Taehyung is a magnet - always had been since he was young. Everyone wants to be Taehyung's friend, and many times Jimin wonders why the other boy keeps choosing him (sometimes he hopes, but he is careful) when so many others want his attention. Because Taehyung at seventeen is already a work of art - his voice a deep dark chocolate and his hair dyed copper, so soft it falls onto his eyes in gentle waves, and Jimin wants so much.
So much more than all the other people who want Taehyung put together. Jimin wants.
But he excels in not minding it, instead preens in the attention that Taehyung gives him.
Unfortunately it also means that Taehyung drags him to any and every social event he is invited to, and everyone is made to understand that there is no Taehyung without Jimin, and no Jimin without Taehyung.
The first pre-finals party and Taehyung already knows Jimin's going with him.
-
Jimin watches Taehyung as he downs shot after shot, careful to ensure that the other buy doesn't trip or hurt or humiliate himself. It's a wonder Taehyung's still standing - barely, even - because he's had about ten shots and smells like a margarita blender. He can hardly walk to Jimin, almost trips several times if not for Jimin steadying him.
Taehyung wraps an arm around Jimin's shoulders, alcohol laughter permeating the other's nostrils.
"Jiminie," he slurs. "Chimchim, my Jiminie." and maybe Jimin feels his heart soar at being Taehyung's - drunk Taehyung who chattered nonsense pissed and confessed his love to every leaf and petal and stone, who woke up forgetful - but still.
Taehyung laughs in his face and the stench of tequila is overwhelming but Jimin is laughing because Taehyung's laughter is contagious, and they are giggling as Taehyung drags the other to where everyone's dancing. Tries to dance with him but the crush of bodies around them meant they were barely swaying side to side and Taehyung's face was right there. Jimin tries to avoid it but Taehyung is staring at him in a drunken haze and Jimin in all his sobriety can only try to look anywhere else, ending up with Taehyung's breath on his cheeks, his forehead, his nose.
Taehyung stills his face with hands that were big and warm, presses his forehead against Jimin's.
Settles his lips over the other's like they belonged there.
Licks into his mouth and Jimin can taste the alcohol and he has always been so, so careful but he only has so much self-control. He wraps his arms around Taehyung and kisses back, feels Taehyung's smile against his lips. Knows that tomorrow's Taehyung is a forgetful one, and he may not have been drunk earlier but he was drunk now, drunk on Taehyung and so much hope.
-
It is 5am and Jimin's left Taehyung snoring on the couch - he doesn't even know whose house they're in but he's in the bathroom when he feels a familiar itch in his throat and his chest and he understands. He understands.
-
Jimin doesn't fight this time. He is resigned and he just wants it over and done with but the buds have barely taken root so he has to wait.
Reacquaints himself to the ache in his chest, to the petals that clog his sink.
Pushes Taehyung away because he doesn't want him to know just how far gone Jimin is for him. He remembers the kiss again and again, lets it play over and over in his mind, making the chrysanthemums in his chest bloom and bloom and construct his ribcage and crush his lungs.
-
A heart emptied twice feels too light and Jimin is restless - doesn't know how to fill the Taehyung-sized void. Feels desperate for something, anything to get rid of the itch under his skin so he makes a whole lot of rash decisions. Decides to go far - farther than he ever has and maybe he was running away but he can't stay, not with the way his heart would bare itself to Taehyung - and Taehyung, with his heart as big as his big hands, did not have any room for Jimin.
-
When he comes home Taehyung is waiting for him and they end up playing the best prank ever, but seeing the other boy holding spheres of sunshine in his arms makes Jimin want to feel that constricting in his chest again, if only to see Taehyung glow with his love. But he is past that and when he tells Taehyung that he's going far and far away like it meant nothing, he relishes in the selfishness of maybe making Taehyung miss him and yearn for him the way Jimin’s only known how to do.
Except it backfires on him when the other boy turns desperate, turns to lies and prevarications to make him stay, uncertainly confessing when Jimin knows, with every petal he's ever spat out, that none of it is true. He hates himself for making Taehyung go this far, hates himself for hurting his best friend and choosing to leave him like this, but he has already begun and he can't stop, not when he's already started running away the moment he'd realized that Taehyung could kiss him with nothing in his heart.
-
Jimin is fine, alone in a foreign place. Is used to wandering about on his own and slowly finding his footing. He engrosses himself in fitting in and engrosses himself in not being Jimin from Busan.
It is easier because there are no traces of Taehyung there, but it is harder because he keeps searching.
-
At eighteen years old, Jimin has too much time.
Even though he’s only just started college, he doesn’t get the overwhelming feel of nerves over being a freshman – even course works aren’t too much and immersing himself in them makes him finish them too fast, leaving him with spare time.
He has too much time and he wanted it gone, wanted it to slip through his fingers like sand.
Wanted everything to blur by so fast that he forgets how to miss, forgets the too-many missed calls and unread messages flooding his phone.
-
Jimin meets Hoseok when he is crossing campus - too agitated to stay at his dorm or to study. Missing Taehyung so much that he can't keep still, remembering and remembering russet locks against his fingers. Wanting to be with him - college was for the both of them, together, the way it was when they'd started high school, because that's what best friends do, they share moments like these. He misses so much more than he wants.
Hoseok is dancing on the green, dancing alone and dancing like no-one was watching, but he had caught the eye of everyone around, and had quite unwittingly gained an audience. He danced like it was the only thing on his mind and before Jimin is aware of it he has walked up to the other, begging him to teach Jimin to dance like that.
Hoseok, or "Hobi, call me Hobi-hyung," is a couple years older than Jimin and belonged to an informal dance group with other boys all older than him - but they welcome him amiably and he ends up with his own group of friends in Seoul.
They dance for fun whenever they can, but Jimin finds that he has an affinity for it, and he dances and he practices time away, feels it fly by as he sweats through choreographies, practicing with Hobi-hyung until they're so tired they end up passing out on the studio floor more often than not.
-
Jimin thinks that maybe he should be used to it by now, but wasn't it unfair to already be so far away but to still fall?
It is his nineteenth birthday and he only remembers because he is in the studio practicing when Seokjin and Namjoon walk in with a cake - Jin is complaining that he made it all on his own, but Namjoon says he helped, "If cracking eggs in a bowl and cracking the bowl counts as help," Seokjin huffs, while Hobi and Yoongi hold back laughter before they all stop the bickering and sing him a happy birthday. Jimin is so ridiculously touched - he feels so treasured and his heart is too full he almost cries.
Then he cries anyway because he remembers that he'd always spend his birthday with his Taehyungie and this is his first time not doing that, and he suddenly misses the other boy so much and so keenly he ends up crying into his birthday cake, staring at the tawny flames of the candles and thinking of only one boy.
And if later, he coughs up a single yellow petal and holds it in the palm of his hand - he is in the bathroom, sounds of his hyungs messing about outside - well, no one was to know.
-
Jimin is only a little over a year into university and so far away but he is there again, with a sink clogged with yellow petals, a too familiar ache in his chest and a too familiar burning down his throat. Since it'd been a while, he'd hoped that he was finally over it, or that maybe Taehyung... but the proof was everywhere in his dorm room - pernicious pieces of yellow.
He is sick of the knife, sick of the scars that litter his chest and remind him that he will fall and fall and fall, but only on his own.
He is almost twenty when he gets his third scar, too close to his heart.
Jimin thinks that maybe he won't survive another.
-
Twenty sees Jimin back in Busan for a short visit, and nothing feels like it's changed, but he is here and he feels Taehyung in every nook and every cranny of his hometown even though Taehyung isn't there. Because Jimin is a coward and he'd ensured it - had asked Taehyung's mom first. Made absolute sure. Because Jimin is a coward who doesn't know how to face his best friend, and he leaves a package with Taehyung's mom, hastily scribbles a note - a too carefree note that apologizes for missing him and hoping he makes good use of the too many bath bombs Jimin got him, entranced by the countless shades of yellow that painted every memory he had of Taehyung - and he was too scared, too scared to see Taehyung without it if he saw him now.
Jimin returns to Seoul dreaming of Taehyung bathed in sunlight, the way his copper hair had glittered the last time he'd seen him three years ago. He ends up bleaching his hair and seeing yellow and gold locks ease a knot in his chest.
-
On the year Jin-hyung graduates, Hoseok gets them to join a dance competition. It is for fun, as always, but there is a competitive spirit that takes over him and Jimin, and they drill the other three until choreographies are perfect and after every practice they feel as though their arms and legs are about to fall off.
On the day of the competition they are more than ready and when Jimin dances, he thinks of Taehyung and there is no ache in his chest. He thinks of tan skin and big hands as he moves, his head filled with boxy laughter.
They end up winning first place and Jimin's first thought is to call Taehyung to tell him.
(He doesn't.)
-
When Jimin finally goes back to Busan, he is no longer a child, no longer a teenager, no longer a young adult.
He believes he is over running away.
The first time in four years that he sees Taehyung, his stomach does flips and swoops but it doesn’t hurt and Jimin's never known love without hurt and he's thrown off guard.
Twenty-two year old Taehyung had jaws that could cut glass, his hair a natural, chestnut brown. Jimin thinks Taehyung has never shined as bright as he did then and he is terrified, feels the farthest than he'd been than when he was in Seoul because he feels the distance all the more keenly now, when he is so sure that he would not be allowed back into Taehyung's life.
But the other boy had a heart the size of a mountain and he welcomes Jimin with open arms and it is so much more than Jimin knows he deserves and he knows that maybe they'll talk about it, but he fits himself into Taehyung's embrace and feels more at peace than he'd ever been and cannot bear to pull away.
-
Taehyung makes him stay at his apartment while Jimin looks for his own place, refusing to let Jimin stay anywhere else,
"No, Chimchim, there's no way you're going to stay at some motel when I've got a perfectly alright place here!"
"I actually meant that I was going to stay at my parents' Taehyungie” the nickname feels almost alien to his mouth, but he is with Taehyung and he is happy in too many ways.
"Noooo, you've gotta stay with me, stay with meeeeee Jiminie" the brunet whines and Jimin has never said no to Taehyung.
-
When Jimin sees Taehyung's tiny balcony garden overflowing with cream and gold and tawny yellow, he thinks of how beautiful it is, especially with Taehyung crouched, watering and delicately touching petals, the way he'd always in Jimin's chest.
-
When Jimin meets Jeongguk, he is a jealous mess. Envious of how easy the two are together, of how much Jeongguk had of Taehyung while Jimin had none. Jealous of how Jimin might've had Taehyung's first kiss but how Jeongguk had the rest.
He feels jealousy he has no right to and he tamps it down, because he had been the one to leave and he should, if anything, be grateful that Taehyung had not been alone.
But Jeongguk is the sweetest and pretty soon Jimin is too fond of him, he and Taehyung and Jimin end up becoming close, an addition to Taehyung and his twosome friendship.
-
Sometimes Jimin catches Taehyung staring, feels the weight of it and the things he has kept secret, things he has yet to tell the other.
He thinks of how running away had once meant only distance and silence, but how now it was avoiding Taehyung's eyes and engaging in jovial banter.
-
At twenty-three years old, Jimin feels his rib cage collapse with the weight of his mistakes.
He and Jeongguk are teasing Taehyung relentlessly, and even though Jimin is almost sure it would just hurt him, he teases Taehyung because it makes the brunet laugh, and Jimin wanted his brain seared with square smiles.
"So has he texted you yet?" Jeongguk quips, and Taehyung groans, flopping onto his bed, ignoring him.
"Come on, Taetae," Jimin coos, "there's no need to be shy about it,"
"He's only just asked for my number, you dumbasses," Taehyung mutters, and Jimin cheers while Jeongguk whoops, and then adds "better be careful then, hyung, don't want you spitting out petals all over my bed again,"
And he laughs with Taehyung.
Jimin's giggling is cut short and his head feels too light, there is a knot in his throat and in his chest and he feels everything belatedly, like he was watching from a step back.
Taehyung is too calm about it and when Jeongguk goes home, the first thing Jimin blurts out is-
"I didn't know you had the Hanahaki,"
And even saying it out loud makes Jimin's throat catch, makes him maybe want to sob out loud, because he thinks he maybe understands, but all that understanding does is crush his ribs and make it hard to breathe, makes his running away a heavier crime on his shoulders.
He cannot look at Taehyung. He thinks of all the scars on his chest and he cannot bear to think of Taehyung having his own.
"Well, to be fair, you weren't there," Taehyung was still too calm, "and it was ages ago."
Jimin wasn't being fair. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You weren't there."
Jimin is full to bursting but he doesn't know how to apologize, doesn't know how to start,
"You know I would have come back if I knew, you know I would," and for the first time in his life Taehyung's eyes harden at him, angry, sarcastic, saying words that sting but are less than what Jimin should've gotten.
But when he finally says it, finally admits that it was because of Jimin, that Jimin was why he'd had flowers bloom in his chest, blocking his lungs - Jimin cannot hold back the sob from his throat.
Taehyung's eyes are wet, he still sounds angry but less - more frustrated, more desperate. He talks about yellow and yellow and yellow, and how much he loves Jimin, and how he knows Jimin loves him. Apologies and apologies and Jimin is overwhelmed with how much he'd been running away but how much Taehyung accepts, how he is accepting him now, and the three words he'd only ever stored in the garden of his chest - removing and removing because he was a scared boy-
Taehyung is talking over him but he still whispers:
"I love you," and
"I love you," and
"I love you."
-
There is a heaviness removed when Jimin's palms are over Taehyung's chest, mapping his unmarred skin.
"Even when I didn't deserve it, you loved me."
At this, Jimin laughs at Taehyung and kisses the wetness from his eyes, but Taehyung clasps his wrists and whispers against his lips, mouths promises under the covers.
He makes his love bloom purple on Jimin's skin.