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“I’m sorry.”
The voice falls from familiar lips—lips he’s seen a million times, kissed a thousand, ten thousand. He could map out every crease, every line, every kind of smile that’s graced them; could tell you just how sweet they taste after a sip of peach soju bought with fake ID’s and shared on the beach at midnight; can picture the exact way they form around drowsy I love you’s painted in the early morning light.
“I don’t think we’ve met before.”
He’s older, this time. There are lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time Taehyung saw him, thin-rimmed glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose and black hair combed neatly off of his forehead, but he smiles—albeit apologetically—and Taehyung would recognize that crooked-toothed grin anywhere.
At least, he thinks, trying to mask some of the bitter taste building up at the back of his throat, now he finally has confirmation that Park Jimin will age gracefully.
“No, I—I’m sorry,” Taehyung rushes out, tearing his eyes from Jimin’s lips, focusing them instead on the cracked pavement beneath his shoes. He hopes the waver of his voice isn’t too obvious, even though he knows it is. “I must have mixed you up with someone I used to know. You, um, look a lot like him. My bad.”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Jimin, now smiling in earnest, at least until his eyes fall onto the watch on his wrist. “Shit. Sorry, but I have somewhere to be, um…”
He trails off, and Taehyung hates this feeling. Hates knowing that Jimin is staring at him, waiting for a name, waiting to unwittingly confirm what Taehyung had guessed the moment he’d asked a familiar face if they’d met before and was met with nothing but a confused stare.
Park Jimin, love of his life—lives—truly has no idea who he is.
“Taehyung,” he provides, still avoiding direct eye contact. “Kim Taehyung.”
He doesn’t have to ask for a name in return. He already knows.
“Taehyung-ssi,” and Jimin’s smile falls a bit, not quite reaching his eyes anymore. His glasses slip further down his nose and he pushes them up with a finger before half-bowing. “I’m running late to meet somebody, sorry, but I hope you find your friend.”
Jimin turns around with a half-hearted wave and Taehyung can’t even bring himself to return it.
“Maybe next lifetime,” Taehyung answers to the empty air where Jimin used to be. He watches his back disappear down the sidewalk, crossing the street at the next intersection and pausing to look left, right, then left again as another body—smaller, longer hair—pushes into his side.
He averts his eyes before Jimin bends his neck to kiss her, trudges down the sidewalk with his eyes focused once more on his shoes so he doesn’t have to watch Jimin slide his fingers between hers and walk down the busy pathway with her tucked close to his side, asking about each other’s days in soft, familiar tones. Like he and Taehyung used to.
The only thing worse than a life where Taehyung doesn’t meet Jimin is one where he looks right into his eyes and walks away.
Taehyung only looks back up from the sidewalk when another body collides with his own side, and even then, it’s only for long enough to see a pair of pursed lips over a single dark mole.
“What the hell was that about, hyung?” Jeongguk asks, shoving Taehyung’s shoulder enough to nearly jostle him into a passing light pole, never aware of his own strength. “You just bolted. Thought you were gonna eat that guy for a second. He piss you off or something?”
Taehyung doesn’t reply, just shoves Jeongguk back and veers left, down the back alley leading to his apartment building. He could just go around the front like anyone else, but if there’s anything he feels less like dealing with right now, after watching Park Jimin leave him behind, it’s a busy lobby full of people who will only stare as he trudges past.
Also not when Jeon Jeongguk is following him down the alleyway, complaining incessantly about Taehyung leaving him on his own while he tried to work up the courage to talk to one of his cute coworkers who was waiting outside of the corner store.
They reach Taehyung’s fire escape quickly enough. Jeongguk squawks a complaint, something about the two of them getting too old to hop up the back way all the time, as if he’s not two years Taehyung’s junior and at least twice as active as he is.
“Who said you were even invited up?” Taehyung tries, one foot placed at the base of the ladder, his voice flatter than usual but still inflected enough that Jeongguk knows he’s not trying to be an asshole, not really. He raises and eyebrow and Jeongguk cracks a grin, throwing a rude hand gesture in Taehyung’s direction as he turns around and heads back the way they came.
“I know when I’m not wanted,” Jeongguk calls over his shoulder. He pauses for a moment, stares at Taehyung with furrowed eyebrows. “Don’t beat yourself up about that guy, hyung.”
The answer is quick, sharp. Taehyung doesn’t feel like being reminded. “I’m not beating myself up over him.”
“You’ve been smacking the back of your head into that ladder since you put your foot on it.”
When he’s gone, Taehyung climbs the rest of the way up to his third-story apartment and rests for a moment on the balcony, staring ahead at the dull bricks of the adjacent building, trying to forget the last hour of his life.
(A lie, of course—Taehyung would never let himself forget a single thing about Park Jimin.)
--
It’s a different world every time.
Kim Taehyung first laid eyes on Park Jimin in the middle of a open market so long ago that the exact date has gone fuzzy in his head, but never the memory itself. Lifetimes later, he can still remember standing at his grandmother’s fruit stall, eight years old and barely higher than her waist, and watching a boy with a stick of candy poking out of the sunniest smile he’d ever seen. One of Jimin’s hands had been firmly tucked into his mother’s, the other dragging fingers across his grandmother’s display of apples, bright pink and stacked high into a pyramid in the middle of her least-rickety table.
He’d been so distracted by the boy’s smile that he only noticed the pyramid toppling over when an apple smacked him square in the forehead and a frantic Jimin dropped his candy in the dirt to catch him before Taehyung could hit the ground.
It was a Moment, prestigious enough to capitalize the word in his head forever. Taehyung had opened his eyes and blinked his way through a throbbing headache to see dark hair and round cheeks silhouetted in the sunlight, and even though they’d just been kids then, he’d known somewhere deep inside of his heart that Park Jimin would be something special to him for a long time.
He hadn’t known then that “a long time” meant three lifetimes, thirty-four years, and counting.
--
He may not see him again, but Taehyung doesn’t—can’t—stop thinking about Jimin. Not this one, not any of the others.
Jeongguk worries over him the way someone two years his younger shouldn’t have to. Even when Taehyung insists that he’s fine and it doesn’t come out quite as strained as usual, still Jeongguk will barge into his building with wild plans to recreate their waning youth. Remember when we used to get drunk and play golf with beer cans in the empty lot by the mini mart, hyung? Remember when we took the train all the way to Yeosu and had to miss work the next day because we didn’t have enough money to get back?
Taehyung remembers. He does, and he insists so, but he also remembers a boy with small hands, soft cheeks, and even softer lips.
Those lips forming around the “I don’t think we’ve met before” that’s plagued his mind for years. Those hands waving goodbye while Taehyung watched him go.
Jeongguk gives up at some point, Taehyung’s not quite sure when it is because the years start to run together. Gets a promotion because Jeon Jeongguk is good at almost everything. Settles down with a woman he doesn’t love in that way because Jeon Jeongguk is good at almost everything.
It’s after years that Taehyung gets a letter in the mail, his name and address spelled out in familiar writing that almost makes him drop everything else in his hands on the mailroom floor. A woman with an oversized package in her hands sends him a worried look that Taehyung shrugs off in favor of rushing back to his apartment, too wired to wait for the elevator and taking the steps two at a time despite his protesting knees.
The door’s barely been shut when Taehyung finally rips the envelope open to a neat cardstock note full of that same handwriting. If he lets himself, he can almost smell the lifetime-old scent of vanilla and sandalwood.
Taehyung (Taehyung-ssi? Taehyung-ah? Never mind),
I’m not entirely sure I know why I’m writing this. I guess because nobody I know will understand this except for you, and I don’t know if I can keep it bottled up inside for however long I have left of this life.
I had the weirdest feeling when we ran into each other that day years back. Like I should have known exactly who you were looking for when you said I looked like someone you knew. Does that make sense? I feel like I’ve been off-kilter for so long because of it. Apparently it’s obvious because Dawon (my wife… I know what you’re thinking) noticed. Poked fun at me for days.
It’s taken me so long to realize what the feeling meant. One day last week I woke up from a dream that felt too real, because suddenly I could clearly picture myself as a child in a place that certainly isn’t one I’ve visited in this life, with you fallen in my lap and apples all around us. And then there was me and you sitting on a dock by the ocean of a town I’d never seen. And then there was me, bleeding in your arms in the middle of a battlefield. That part wasn’t my favorite.
And then there was you, 25 years ago, asking if we’d met before, and this time I wanted to say, “Obviously, you idiot, we’ve been in love for three lifetimes. Long time no see.”
I don’t know. I don’t know what I hope to achieve with this. I feel selfish; I am being selfish. I just want you to know that I know who you are now, and I’m sorry, and I hope life works out better for us next time around.
Yours (this life, next life, always),
Jimin
P.S. If you’re wondering how I got your address, your friend Jeongguk is very kind and very worried about you.
The paper falls from Taehyung’s trembling fingers. It hits the floor soundlessly, tucked under the edge of the torn envelope. There’s no return address.
Jimin never remembers first; it’s always been the fact that’s plagued their lives together. Because Taehyung had looked at a boy standing by the seaside two lifetimes ago and seen a chubby-cheeked toddler with candy stains around his mouth. Because the Taehyung of the last life had purposely put himself in danger to protect a boy who had no idea who he was until, with his last breath, he whispered, “Long time no see, Taehyungie.”
It’s always too late. When Jimin remembers Taehyung, remembers who they were, there’s no hope for them. The first time was a high fever when Jimin was twenty-three, the second a drowning when he was sixteen, the third—
The letter on the floor is a time bomb that’s already exploded. Jimin’s got a wife, probably kids and grandkids by now. He spoke of Taehyung in the future tense, not with a meet me now but a next time around.
Taehyung—exhausted, miserable—lets his aging body slump against the back of the apartment door.
There’s no point in fighting it. The universe has spoken: another lifetime wasted.
A crash alerts Taehyung that the middle of the night maybe isn’t the best time to aimlessly wander the streets. A chill runs down his spine, sweat beading up at the base of his hairline. His hands fist beneath the too-long sleeves of his coat, an instinct he’s never been able to shake because what if—
“Jesus fucking Christ, Namjoon, you’ve owned this place for how long and you still forget that there are three steps from the back door?”
“Shut up, I’m frazzled. Aren’t you supposed to be injured, anyway? Quit talking.”
“Me being injured doesn’t stop you from being the clumsiest piece of shit I’ve ever—”
“Shh.”
The voices stop, and suddenly the street is plunged into silence again. Taehyung, body flattened against the side of an adjacent building, lets out a breath that’s a touch too loud.
“Shit. Yoongi, did you hear that?”
“Listen, if you need me to fight someone, my hand’s kind of out of commission, but I’ll do it.”
“No, you won’t. Hello? Who’s out there?”
Taehyung shuts his eyes tight. Maybe if he’s good enough at pretending he’s not there, the voices will go away.
“Listen, we closed up an hour ago. We’ll be open tomorrow night at 5, but if you really need a fix, there’s a bar three blocks down that’s open ‘til sunrise.”
There are footsteps now, closer and closer, and Taehyung steels himself. Says a silent prayer to whoever’s listening. Says a silent apology to the Jimin he’s yet to meet in this lifetime.
“For real…?”
They stop in front of him and he’s slow to open his eyes, but the gruffer voice of the two comes from lower than he’d expected it to. He’s stared in the face by a scrawny man with bleached hair and an amused sort of scowl on his face. One of his hands is rested on a skinny hip, the other cradled awkwardly at his side, knuckles painted with dried blood.
“You really thought closing your eyes would stop us from seeing you.”
A nervous laugh escapes Taehyung’s lips. The man—Yoongi, from the pieces of conversation he’d picked up—laughs as well, and it almost seems genuine. The other man steps to his side, eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. He’s wearing a crisp suit and his hair is styled perfectly out of his face, other than the single strand dangling in the middle of his forehead. Namjoon.
Namjoon’s smile is somewhat calming. He puts a hand on Taehyung’s tensed shoulder and says, “Look, kid, I don’t even think you’re old enough to even legally go into a bar, so scratch the pub advice.”
“I’m twenty-two,” are the first idiotic words to slip out of Taehyung’s mouth. Yoongi snorts into his good hand, and Namjoon just grins.
“Okay, Mr. Twenty-Two. Name’s Namjoon Kim. I own this place.” He gestures upwards, at the lighted sign that’s now turned off but is just illuminated enough in the moonlight for Taehyung to make out Joon’s Bar & Pub in twisted cursive letters. “Why are you wandering the streets at two in the morning?”
“…Nightmare,” is the best answer he can come up with. It had been one of the usual four rotating ones, this time the one with Jimin and his bike plummeting off of the pier between their houses. He clears his throat, shaking his head of the image, and tacks on, “I usually play piano to calm myself down, but my neighbors get pissy when I make noise past midnight. So I took a walk.”
There’s a look exchanged between Namjoon and Yoongi that Taehyung can’t parse: Namjoon bobs his eyebrows up and down, Yoongi shrugs and huffs; Namjoon nudges Yoongi, Yoongi scowls at his injured hand.
“Hey,” Namjoon says, glancing up from Yoongi to Taehyung with the kind of smile Taehyung would expect from a salesperson. “What’s your name?”
“…Taehyung. Taehyung Kim.”
“Kim brothers,” Yoongi snorts. He reaches his good hand out, large and calloused. “Yoongi Min. Joon’s gonna ask you if you’re looking for a job.”
“What the hell, Yoongi,” Namjoon snaps, rubbing his temples. He looks over his palm to cast a sheepish look in Taehyung’s direction. “But he’s not wrong. How long have you been playing piano?”
Taehyung makes a show of counting on his fingers, more comfortable now that he can see desperation building in Namjoon’s eyes. He manages a smile. “Nineteen years,” he says.
Yoongi stares at him, blank and unnerving. “You good?”
Now, Taehyung cracks a full grin, smug. “I’m in the grad program at Juilliard.”
“Jesus,” Namjoon stage-whispers to Yoongi, wide-eyed. “When you’re healed, you’re fired.”
“Fuck you.”
Namjoon clears his throat, shoving Yoongi aside so he can face Taehyung fully. “Listen. We’re kind of a piano bar and my idiot in-house pianist”—he shoves Yoongi again for good measure—“got in a fight tonight and messed up his hand for the time being. It’s a temp job, but if we like you enough, who knows what’ll happen later on. You in?”
The thing is, Taehyung could use the extra money. Student aide only goes so far, and rent’s sucked up most of the minimum wage he makes at his crappy deli counter job. He needs a new keyboard. He needs better food than dollar store ramen and end-of-the-night leftovers from work. He needs to see different sides of the city because Park Jimin isn’t about to walk into a tiny mom and pop deli with a C from the health department any time soon.
Yoongi, noticing the gears turning behind Taehyung’s eyes, leans in and says, “Fights don’t happen often. That often. Someone was just being an asshole to the bartender tonight. Your pretty-boy face is gonna be fine.”
Taehyung blinks at him once, then over to Namjoon. He says, “Yeah, I’m in,” on an exhale, and Namjoon just about loses his footing, he looks so relieved. Yoongi smiles, close-mouthed, and almost extends his injured hand for a high five before thinking better of it.
“Awesome!” Namjoon nearly squeals. He clears his throat, pitches his voice back down to its previous rumble. “I mean, nice. Awesome. We’re open Thursday to Monday, 5 to midnight, but I’ll need you here at 3 o’clock tomorrow for some onboarding stuff, orientation, what have you. That sound good?”
“As long as this isn’t an elaborate ruse to kill the poor, innocent grad student you met in an alleyway.”
Yoongi chokes on a laugh, Namjoon’s eyes go a touch too wide.
“No, no, Jesus, no,” he trips over his words. “I’m just desperate. I gotta take this idiot”—Yoongi digs a sharp elbow into Namjoon’s side—“to the closest emergency room right now as it is, and I’m just… It’s been a long night.”
He bids Taehyung goodnight with a smile and a litany of thank yous, dragging a protesting Yoongi back out to the street with him so they can continue to bicker.
“I don’t need to go to the emergency room. I can just ice it. I’m fine.”
“You’ve got at least two broken knuckles and your middle finger is leaning so far to the side that it looks like you’re crossing your fingers.”
“Goddamnit. That finger’s useful.”
“I don’t know why you’re always defending him. He’s perfectly capable of fending for himself, but I swear you’d break your neck for him.”
“You don’t get it, Joon. Just… never mind.”
Taehyung wanders back to his apartment in silence, but this time, it’s nerves and excitement that keep him up all night.
--
He’s outside of the bar again at 2:55 the next afternoon. It looks different in daylight, not quite so foreboding. The sign above the door is colorful, full of hand-painted music notes behind the fluorescent lettering, and the outside of the building is a deep purple that stands out easily from the rest of the grey buildings surrounding.
The door’s locked, but when Taehyung knocks twice, a man not much older than himself peeks through the frosted glass, smiles, and unlocks it quickly.
“You must be Taehyung!” he says brightly, barely giving Taehyung enough time to get inside before he’s pulling him in for a tight hug. “Namjoon was about to have a heart attack last night, holy crap are we lucky that he just so happened to run into a Juilliard student.”
When he pulls away, there’s a poorly concealed black eye under some thick makeup gracing his face. Taehyung can only think of Namjoon and Yoongi last night.
I don’t know why you’re always defending him.
“Fate,” Taehyung says, hoping to hell and back it doesn’t come out as sarcastically as he means it. He and fate have always had a messed up relationship.
“Anyway, I’m Hoseok!” the guy says, grinning. Even with the black eye, he’s got a sunny smile that gives Taehyung the same sort of calm Namjoon’s had. “The rest of the staff are in the breakroom, let me show you back.”
Hoseok leads him behind the bar, through a door between the refrigerator and grill that leads to a small, dimly-lit room. There’s a TV in one corner; a long table along the opposite wall with a coffee maker, microwave, and toaster; and in the center, a larger table where Namjoon, Yoongi—fingers taped together with medical tape and a splint on the middle one , and one other person with their back to the door. When Hoseok chirps a greeting, the person turns around and smiles; she’s cute, long hair framing smiling eyes and dimpled cheeks. Taehyung manages a smile back as Hoseok ushers him to one of four empty chairs before taking another—next to Yoongi’s—for himself.
“That everyone?” Yoongi asks, looking not at the table but at Hoseok next to him.
“Almost,” says Namjoon. “Wendy’s got midterms, so I gave her the week off to get some rest, and—”
“I’m not late, I’m not late, I’m not late, it’s 2:59, I’m not late!”
The breakroom door bursts open, the person behind it doubled over and panting into their knees. Taehyung peers over the dimpled girl’s shoulder, but all he can see is dark brown hair and a jean jacket, the person’s shoulders heaving beneath it.
“Wow, and here I thought you were in shape,” the girl next to Taehyung says with a laugh that crinkles her nose.
“Shut up, Wheein,” the person in the doorway pants, dusting off their pants. They stretch their shoulders out slowly before finally standing up straight, and Taehyung’s heart falls right into his stomach.
Standing in front of the door, a thin film of sweat shining on his forehead and breathing heavily, is Park Jimin.
There’s nothing poetic about his entrance into this life, no sun silhouetting him, no ocean breeze blowing his hair off of his suntanned face. He’s panting and sweating and there’s eyeliner smudged across his right temple, but Taehyung—this time just as much as the others—loves him instantly.
“Nice of you to join us,” Namjoon greets, dimples dotting his amused smile. Luckily, he hasn’t caught onto the fact that Taehyung’s concentration has been lost entirely, caught now on the boy circling the table to take the open seat directly across from him.
“I’m not late,” Jimin repeats again, pouting. He shrugs off his jacket, and any semblance of an attention span Taehyung might have had left is out the window when he reveals a black short-sleeved button-up clinging to his chest and biceps.
It’s hard to be poetic when the Jimin of this life is this hot.
In fact, it’s hard to do anything at all until he realizes everyone in the room—including Jimin—is staring at him. Taehyung could have been zoning out for seconds or minutes, he’s not quite sure, but Yoongi’s laughing so hard behind his bandaged hand that he’s now leaning on Hoseok for support.
“Wow,” says Jimin (and Taehyung files it away in the back of his mind: first thing Jimin’s said to me this lifetime), “you missed your entire introduction there, bud.”
Taehyung’s eyes go wide and Wheein nudges him, winks, and repeats, “You’re Taehyung Kim, you’re filling in for Yoongi until his hand’s better.”
“Nice to meet me,” Taehyung says distractedly, and spends the rest of the meeting in a daze.
It’s an hour or so later, after filling out some paperwork and copying down both his school and deli schedules for Namjoon, that Hoseok announces it’s time to start setting up for opening. He nudges Yoongi closer and closer to the exit—“you need rest”—despite his complaints, telling Namjoon he’ll be back in a second to help once he realizes it’ll take much more than gentle wheedling. Namjoon gives him a thumbs up, and he and Wheein start setting chairs up around the tables, which leaves…
Jimin, staring across the table at Taehyung with an indecipherable look on his face.
“So.”
Taehyung meets his eyes, finally. “So?”
“So apparently this leaves me to give you the grand tour.” Jimin stands up, leaving his jacket on the chair. When Taehyung doesn’t immediately stand up as well, he gestures to follow him with a tilt of his head. “This is the breakroom. It’s kind of shitty. The TV doesn’t work, but it doesn’t matter anyway because most nights it’s too loud to actually hear it. The toaster’s gonna burn everything, we never actually use the coffee pot because Hoseok’s got a better one behind the bar, but the microwave’s solid.”
Taehyung’s eyes follow Jimin’s fingers with every item he points out between the breakroom, the bar, the dining floor. They’re just as small as they always have been, if not a little more calloused and beat up, and an assortment of silver rings decorate each finger, glimmering in the low light.
“…Aaand this is the piano. I’m pretty sure I cleaned all of Yoongi’s blood off of it last night, but if you see something, I already showed you where the bleach and bar rags are.” Jimin nods to himself, purses his thick lips, and stares out at the floor. There’s quiet between them, the only sounds being Hoseok placing lines of glasses behind the bar and Namjoon helping Wheein fix a squeaking barstool, until Jimin blows a quiet stream of breath out. “So, Juilliard. What are you doing taking a job in a rundown hole like this?”
Taehyung laughs under his breath. “I’m broke. Scholarship pays for school, financial aid covers some household expenses, but I live on ramen and deli meat, and I find most of my laundromat change on the ground.”
Jimin snorts. He sits himself down on the piano bench, and though he doesn’t say anything out loud, the glance he sends Taehyung is enough to make him sit next to him. “Welcome to New York.”
It’s hard to not just stare at Jimin all the time when Taehyung’s inner monologue is just it’s Jimin it’s Jimin he’s here he’s here on repeat, but Taehyung gives into the urge just for a moment, to watch Jimin’s profile as the boy stares ahead: the straight line of his nose, the curl of his plush lips when he laughs at Namjoon stumbling over the leg of a chair.
“Thanks,” and his eyes focus on Jimin’s nametag, just for the formality of it, for a moment before he can feel his eyebrows furrow on their own accord, “…James?”
“Yes…?” Jimin’s eyes shoot over to Taehyung, narrowed. “I mean, it’s Jimin, but no one could pronounce it when I moved here, so I started going by James in, like, second grade.”
“Jimin’s not hard to pronounce.”
“Tell that to my first grade teacher who always said gym-een.”
Their eyes meet, and they share a soft laugh. If Taehyung wasn’t so convinced it was a trick of the dim bar lighting, he’d swear Jimin’s cheeks flush pink.
“I like Jimin, for what it’s worth,” says Taehyung, making the understatement of the year.
“Thanks,” Jimin murmurs back, covering the bottom half of his face with his hands like he’s hiding the evidence of his blush. He stands up quickly, removing one hand from his cheeks only to dust off his pants. “I’m, um. Going to go get my apron. We open in fifteen but you don’t have to start playing for an hour or so, so you can shadow Namjoon or Hoseok, or—I don’t know. Good luck, Taehyung.”
--
The night goes as well as a first night on the job can. Certainly better than Taehyung’s first night at the deli, when he very nearly sliced off the pad of a finger and spent most of the night trying to tame his nausea while breathing in the thick smell of cured meat all night.
Yoongi left him a stack of sheet music—crowd favorites and some quieter pieces to start and finish the night with—and it’s easy enough for Taehyung to lose himself in it. The tip jar at the front of the stage gets a respectable amount of bills throughout the night, enough that Taehyung’s actually considering getting something that’s not off of the dollar menu for lunch the next day. Hoseok and Wheein cheer for him after Namjoon escorts the last patron out of the bar at closing, and Taehyung buries his head in his arms, embarrassed, his forehead playing a discordant set of notes when he leans down.
“You did well,” Namjoon greets him as he steps back inside. “Don’t tell Yoongi, but you made ‘Piano Man’ way more fun than he usually—”
“I hate you,” says Yoongi, pushing through the door with an extra set of keys in his hand. Namjoon groans; Hoseok shouts for him to go back home and sleep from across the bar. Yoongi ignores them both and looks to Taehyung as he slides of the piano bench. “But Hoseok called me. Said you were doing good. So, like, good job and stuff.”
“Go home,” Namjoon snaps at him.
“Relax, I’m here to walk back with Hoseok. I don’t trust people after last night.”
“I’m fine,” Hoseok insists. “You’re the one who’s under doctor’s orders to move your hand as little as possible.”
“He’s got the right idea, though,” Namjoon interjects. Yoongi points in his direction, still smugly looking at Hoseok. “You two walk back together, I’ll drive Wheein to the subway station, and Jimin?”
The breakroom door slowly budges open and Jimin sticks his head out, leaning his chin on the broomstick in his hand. “Yep?”
“Taehyung’s apartment is on your route home. Walk with him tonight.”
Jimin’s smile is soft, shy, but when Taehyung meets his eyes across the bar, he suddenly can’t wait to head back home.
--
“I mean, I’m just a little bit convinced that Namjoon’s on a mission to hire every Korean in Brooklyn,” Jimin says around the straw in his milkshake. A midnight McDonald’s run hadn’t been in the initial plan, but they’d both made good tips and Taehyung wanted to prolong his time with Jimin as much as possible. “If your name was, like, Charlie or something, I think he’d’ve been like, ‘Juilliard? Actually, we’re not looking to hire right now,’ you know?”
Taehyung stabs his spoon through one of the strawberries in his cup of soft serve, chuckling. “What about the girl who wasn’t there? Wendy?”
“Seungwan,” Jimin corrects him. “I mean, Wendy’s her given name, but her family calls her Seungwan. They visit sometimes when they’re in town.”
“Namjoon calls you Jimin, though?”
“They all do. Wendy calls me James sometimes because she likes to joke about being the only one with an English name.”
“You know a lot about your coworkers.”
“I like people,” Jimin says, smiling. His cheeks are a little less round this time around, but still enough so that they bunch up when a genuine smile tugs at his lips. Taehyung’s mesmerized, can’t help but smile back. “I want to be a teacher, I think. The money’s not great, but I’d be happy.”
Taehyung has the urge to wipe the smear of chocolate milkshake off of Jimin’s lower lip. He refrains. “What do you want to teach?”
They’ve had this conversation before, in more lives that one. Jimin always wants to be a teacher, but the subject always changes. First it was biology, then English, then history.
Always wants to be, never gets to be. Taehyung hopes that the last Jimin at least got to do it. Hopes this Jimin gets to do it.
“Dance,” Jimin says, and his eyes positively light up. He’s walking backwards now, turned around so he can face Taehyung full-on, arms waving his milkshake wildly about while he talks. “Oh god, I’d love to teach dance for a living. Just being in the studio puts me in a good mood. I begged to take dance classes before I moved to America, but my parents kept saying no because we were just gonna come here soon, y’know? So I waited until we settled in, took a modern dance class, and fell in love.”
His face falls, just a bit, into a more nervous smile. “Why am I saying all this? Why am I talking so much? Tell me to shut up.”
“I like listening to you talk,” Taehyung says honestly. He’s spent so much time not hearing his voice that he could listen to Jimin talk for the rest of this lifetime. For a thousand more lifetimes. “Why don’t you dance at the bar? Namjoon said you guys have guest dancers every once in a while.”
“No way,” Jimin snorts. “I spend enough time getting ogled at by pushy strangers there as it is, dancing for them would just make it worse.”
“How so?”
“Modern dance doesn’t generally… require as much clothing. Um. As other kinds of dance.”
The mental picture is… intriguing. Taehyung’s seen Jimin in various stages of undress before, but this Jimin has that chest and those arms…
Be normal, Taehyung, he chastises himself. This one doesn’t know you yet.
Yet.
“God, TMI again. Please change the subject. Talk about yourself. I’m… Hoseok gave me a couple free tequila shots and I get mouthy when I’m tipsy.”
“I think about being a teacher, too, sometimes,” Taehyung says. Jimin’s still walking backwards, now sipping intently at his drink while he watches. “Everyone says it’s a waste of Juilliard, because I’d rather teach at a school in a lower-income area instead of some fancy academy or whatever. But I grew up poor. I’m still poor. I worked a paper route all throughout middle school and high school to afford piano classes, and the instructor would always change because nobody wanted to work in my neighborhood. No one really cared. I would.”
He doesn’t realize that his eyes have welled up, nor that his body has stopped outside of his apartment building on autopilot, until a hot tear slides down his cheek, immediately followed by the soft brush of Jimin’s thumb. Their faces are so close that he can see the streetlights reflected in Jimin’s eyes, coming closer and closer until—
“I don’t do one-night stands,” Jimin whispers, barely a space between their lips. God, he misses those lips. It’s been two lifetimes since he’s kissed Jimin and he’s aching for it, but he won’t push. Won’t do anything Jimin doesn’t want to do.
“Neither do I,” Taehyung breathes back, resting a hand on Jimin’s lower back. Jimin steps closer, curls his left arm around Taehyung’s back as well, shake dangling from his fingers. “You’re really beautiful.”
“S-so are you, and I—I really don’t do one-night stands. I—I don’t want that. I just…” A sharp inhale, and the metal of Jimin’s rings is cool against Taehyung’s skin with every brush down his cheek. The corner of his mouth turns up in a half-smile. “What is it about you, huh? I’ve never met you before tonight, but something about you is just… familiar.”
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Taehyung thinks, but this is… This is good. He can work with familiar; no Jimin’s ever told him that he felt familiar before. The next step past feeling familiar is actually being familiar, and if he can get to that point before it’s too late this time…
Maybe they won’t have to keep trying. Maybe he’ll get to live the rest of this life with a Jimin who knows exactly who they are and what they’ve been through together, and that’ll be it. No more lives wading through seas of people until he finds a Jimin who only remembers him on his dying breath. Just one perfect, happy life. One last long time no see.
“I’m not going to kiss you,” Jimin says with a step back, and it doesn’t sting too badly. Not as bad as expected, because there’s something else hidden behind it, Taehyung can feel it. Jimin smiles, close-mouthed, and nods partially to Taehyung, but mostly to himself. “I’m not going to kiss you, but I am going to hug you goodbye, go home, and tomorrow I’m going to ride the subway to work and have butterflies in my stomach at the thought of seeing you again.”
It takes effort to manage a comfortable hug with McDonald’s cups in their hands, so they end up tossed in the trashcan outside of Taehyung’s apartment building, and as hard as Jimin presses himself into Taehyung’s arms, Taehyung holds him back just as tightly.
--
Jimin kisses him a week later.
It’s a Saturday night, and Namjoon’s got a guest DJ booked, so Taehyung’s less of a pianist tonight and more of an errand boy. He spends most of his night helping Hoseok mix drinks, reading furiously from a recipe book whenever a customer asks for something he has no idea how to make (which is nearly everything), but occasionally he’ll catch Wheein with more drinks on her tray than she can carry, or Wendy and Jimin looking harried as their tables get more and more drunk, meaning they’re getting flirted with more and more shamelessly, and he’ll swoop in with a perfected bitch face and escort them outside.
They’re all breathing heavily when the night ends and the lights come back on—enough so that Yoongi can’t help but mock them when he arrives to walk Hoseok home.
“Didn’t know you guys were running a marathon tonight,” he snorts, and the endless cycle of him, Hoseok, and Namjoon bickering fades into familiar background noise when Jimin sidles up to the bar Taehyung’s been sitting on since he and Hoseok finished the dishes.
“Hey,” he says, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked despite the late hour. “Thanks for being our savior. I thought that guy wasn’t gonna stop asking Wendy and I to dance with him.”
Taehyung grins down at him as Jimin steps directly into his personal space, standing between his spread legs. “You mean a threesome with a sweaty, middle-aged dude isn’t your idea of fun?”
“Shut up,” Jimin giggles. “I was being sincere and you decide to be gross in return. Rude.”
“It was no big deal. I’ve got a good bitch glare.”
It’s not the most romantic note to start a kiss on, but Jimin pushes onto his tiptoes anyway, and Taehyung’s all too happy to oblige, sliding his arms over Jimin’s shoulders and pulling him closer.
“You’ve got a good everything, I’m pretty sure,” Jimin mumbles against his lips, and he presses a soft kiss to them.
It’s not long—not that it has the chance to be long, the way Hoseok starts whooping and hollering before the kiss can get anywhere past a lingering peck, but Taehyung feels warmed all the way to his toes. He ignores Hoseok shouting and slides a hand under Jimin’s chin to kiss him again, lips slotted together haphazardly because they’re both smiling too hard into it to actually kiss properly.
“Good luck, maybe,” Taehyung murmurs between kisses, and he actually means it this time. Maybe the universe is smiling down on him after four lifetimes of terrible luck. He unwraps one arm from him and traces it down Jimin’s shoulder until their fingers lock together. “Come back to my apartment?”
Jimin stills, craning his head back to look Taehyung in the face. “I don’t—I still don’t want—”
“I know,” Taehyung whispers. “No fine print, no strings attached. Just you and me drinking tea and talking until the sun comes up because neither of us have school or work tomorrow and I want an excuse to look at you longer.”
“Oh.” Jimin presses a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “Change tea to milkshakes and I’m in.”
--
They drink milkshakes under a blanket on Taehyung’s ratty old couch, Taehyung noting that one seems to defeat the purpose of the other and Jimin ignoring him in favor of burrowing into the blanket and demanding that Taehyung recount the night he met Namjoon and Yoongi in its entirety.
“I wasn’t late to the meeting, but I was late to the full story,” is his excuse, so Taehyung launches into it. How he couldn’t sleep so he started wandering, how he’d initially thought he was going to get murdered until a scrawny guy with a catlike face and a broken hand laughed right in his face. Jimin gives his full, rapt attention, oohing and ahhing and laughing in all the right places between mouthfuls of ice cream.
“Nightmares, though?” he asks when the story’s all finished, and Taehyung’s almost amused that of any part of the story to latch onto, he chooses the two-second mention of a nightmare. “Do those happen a lot?”
“Less, lately,” Taehyung says with a shrug. Less since you. “I used to get them a lot, though.”
Jimin frowns. “What are they about?”
“C’mon, that’s not a fun conversation. Let’s get back to kissing.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me,” Jimin assures him, pressing a ghost of a kiss to Taehyung’s temple. “It’s just an instinct. My brother used to have nightmares when we were little and I’d have him tell me all about them so I could turn them around and twist them into good things.”
“Oh,” Taehyung mumbles. Jimin’s fingers start to card through his hair and he keens into the touch, shutting his eyes slowly. Maybe, just maybe, if he talks about their other lives, Jimin will remember. “Well, there’s this one where my, uh… old friend. Yeah, an old friend and I are riding bikes on the pier by our houses. I call out J—um, I call out his name, and when he turns his head to look at me, his bike hits a hole in the wood, and he flips over the handlebars and drowns. I try to save him but the water’s too rough a-and I can’t find him and he—he—”
“Shh.” Jimin smooths a hand over his bangs, letting his fingers trace down Taehyung’s cheeks, catching stray tears. “Okay. I’m going off a dream interpretation book I read when I was, like, twelve, so bear with me here. Drowning dreams usually mean you’re overwhelmed, dreaming of someone else dying usually means you’re worried about them? I think? Have you talked to your friend lately?”
Taehyung blinks his teary eyes open and stares at Jimin from his chin’s resting place on his shoulder. “Y-yeah. He’s fine. He’s doing really well, a-at least I hope.”
“See? That’s good.” Jimin drops a kiss to his forehead. “The weirdest thing is that I feel like I’ve had a similar dream before? Except I’m the one who falls off the pier and I can’t see who it is that’s calling my name.”
He’s not expecting miracles, but god, it has to mean something, doesn’t it? That Jimin’s dreaming of things they’ve been through together? The last Jimin had written in his letter that the memories came to him like hyper-realistic dreams, hadn’t he?
But Jimin just shrugs and laughs under his breath, and the illusion is gone. “Weird, isn’t it? Maybe it’s just a common dream.”
“Maybe,” Taehyung echoes, and though his chest is a little heavier now, he lets Jimin talk and poke and prod him with questions all night until the sky is turning orange and pink through the cracks in the blinds and he falls asleep with his head pillowed on Taehyung’s chest.
And as Taehyung pulls Jimin closer and slips into a sleep of his own, he prays, to whatever force of fate is listening, “Please let me keep this one, please let me keep him.”
--
Six months.
They have six perfect months together.
Yoongi’s hand is healed after one, but Namjoon calls Taehyung into the breakroom on what’s supposed to be his last day filling in and offers him a deal: pianist on Yoongi’s nights off, waiter when he’s there. When Jimin hears he’d accepted, he showers him with kisses. Wheein and Wendy give him tight hugs, and Hoseok whispers a conspiratorial, “Jimin might have threatened to break Yoongi’s hand again if you didn’t stay,” in his ear that Jimin refuses to acknowledge.
Everything goes their way for a perfect six months: Taehyung starts his second semester of grad school, Jimin starts his final semester of undergrad at his community college. Taehyung’s parents visit him during winter break, fall in love with Jimin almost as much as Taehyung has, and leave him with more money and gifts that he necessarily feels right accepting but is grateful for anyway.
He fits in at the bar. It’s easy with them, and even though he sometimes misses parents from other lives and Jeongguk and Seokjin, who’d been his therapist for so long after Jimin drowned that he almost didn’t realize they’d become friends somewhere along the line, Jimin will kiss him better, or Yoongi will tell another story of an asshole customer, or Hoseok will cheer him on as he learns new drink recipes, and everything feels good for the first time in a long time.
He has Thursdays off of work now, because he’d managed to snag the last open spot in a seminar with a composer his mother used to listen to when he was a kid, but it let out at 9:00. Usually, he’ll check his phone before he gets on the bus back home to see if Jimin wants to come over after his shift, and that’s precisely what he stops to do on a Thursday in the middle of February, the week before their six month anniversary (it’s an odd milestone to celebrate, but Jimin loves people and celebration, and Taehyung loves Jimin).
But where his phone is usually graced with a text or two from his boyfriend, now the notification marks ten missed calls: five from Namjoon, two from Hoseok, and one each from Yoongi, Wheein, and Wendy. His texts are all a variation of I know you’re in class but if you happen to look at your phone please call one of us.
Frantically, Taehyung scrolls to his conversation with Jimin, but the last message is still from this evening, right before Jimin started his shift: have fun in class taetae, i love you!!! <3
With trembling fingers, Taehyung dials his voicemail password. Namjoon’s is the first message that starts playing.
“Taehyung, it’s Namjoon. I know you’re in class and I’m sorry for calling, but listen. There was a fight, and Jimin’s hurt bad, and I didn’t want you to have to find out from anyone but us. He’s on his way to Brooklyn Hospital Center now, please call when you get this so we know you’re okay.”
A loud beep. Taehyung’s heart thrums painfully in his chest.
“Tae, it’s me again. Wheein just closed the bar down early, so don’t head that way. Please meet us at the hospital, or call us, either way. Stay safe.”
Another beep. This time, Namjoon sounds more strained.
“Hey. They’ve got him in a room now. We’re—we’re all in the waiting room. Everyone’s here. His family’s coming. Please get here as soon as you can.”
Namjoon’s voice doesn’t follow the next beep but Yoongi’s, and that almost makes it worse.
“Taehyung, I’m so fucking sorry this is happening. I should’ve fucking stepped in when it got out of hand, but—fuck. Namjoon says to tell you that Jimin’s stable now. I—I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”
Taehyung hangs up before the next message can start playing. He dials Namjoon’s number in a fog, and he answers on the first ring.
“Taehyung, thank god.”
“Please tell me the messages got better after the fourth one, Joon, please.”
--
Jimin’s unconscious when Taehyung arrives at the hospital, but he’s allowed one visitor at a time. There’s a silent agreement among everyone that Taehyung gets to be that visitor for as long as he wants until Jimin’s family arrives in the morning.
His heartbeat’s throbbing in his ears the whole time Taehyung’s guided down the corridor by a nurse with sad eyes and fresh scrubs on. All he can hear is Namjoon’s voice breaking over the phone: Jimin was trying to break up a fight in the alley, but one of them had a knife, Taehyung.
The Jimin in the bed is small. Jimin’s always small, always half a head shorter than Taehyung, always petite in size but never in personality, every time they’ve ever met, but the Jimin in the hospital bed with bruises under his eyes and dried blood on his hospital gown is small. The same kind of small he was the first time Taehyung lost him, only much more peaceful this time, with machines doing his breathing for him.
Taehyung slumps more than sits in the chair next to his hospital bed. The tears he’s desperately fighting back threaten to fall, no matter how hard he tries. The second he touches Jimin’s hand, the first one spills over and the dam breaks.
“Please,” he whispers, bringing the cold hand to his lips and kissing it once, twice, fifteen times. “We’re supposed to move in together, remember? We’re gonna adopt a dog, and you’re supposed to tut at me when I want to name it Snoop Dogg, and I’m—I wanted to meet your family so bad because you love them so much, Jiminie, but not like this.”
He doesn’t know how long he sits in that chair, squeezing Jimin’s hand and letting the sobs overtake him, but he must nod off at one point, because when Taehyung next looks up, Hoseok’s frowning down at him, offering a bottled water and a paper cup of tea.
“Sorry,” Hoseok whispers. “Didn’t mean to wake you, but Joon was worried you’d get dehydrated and he and Yoongi are too busy drowning themselves in guilt to bother you.”
“I’m not mad at them.” Taehyung accepts the tea and sets the water down with his school bag. “It’s not their fault. Bad things happen.”
“I’m sure they know, they’re just stubborn,” Hoseok says. “How’s he been doing?”
“I don’t know how to tell. He’s just been asleep.”
Hoseok manages a weak smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “So this is what it takes to get you to rest, huh, Park?”
Jimin doesn’t stir. Hoseok places a careful hand on his shoulder and squeezes.
“I’ll leave you for now. Wheein’s getting food if you want anything.”
“Not hungry,” Taehyung murmurs. “Thanks, though.”
“Try and get some more sleep, Taehyung. You need it too. We’ll be in the waiting room if you need anything at all.”
And with that, Hoseok is out of the room, leaving Taehyung to try and fall asleep again, a valiant but unsuccessful effort. The chair’s too stiff, the room’s too cold, and Jimin’s too unconscious beside him, so Taehyung settles on just tilting his head to the ceiling and closing his eyes, hoping that will be enough to entice his body to get some rest.
It’s all for naught, though, when he feels the hand tucked into his stir, because suddenly Taehyung is wide awake, back to staring at Jimin, whose eyes are now moving behind his lids like he’s having a bad dream.
“It’s okay,” Taehyung whispers against the cold skin of his hand. “Remember when you told me nightmares can mean good things? It’s okay, it’s okay.”
“Tae…hyung.”
He’d swear it was a trick of his mind if he didn’t see Jimin’s lips forming around his name. Taehyung squeezes Jimin’s palm, reaches his other hand out to smooth over his furrowed brows as Jimin slowly blinks himself awake.
“Hi, Jiminie,” Taehyung whispers to him. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
Jimin squeezes his hand back with what little strength he can manage.
“My Taehyung-ah,” he says, and Taehyung’s heart sinks.
This Jimin has never called him Taehyung-ah. This Jimin will call him Tae, Taehyungie, TaeTae, any cute variation of his name, but never once has he said Taehyung-ah.
“Please don’t,” Taehyung finds himself saying through a sob. “Please don’t say it.”
“It’s our thing, though, isn’t it?” Jimin rasps. “‘Long time no see’?”
“I know it is,” Taehyung cries, “but not yet, okay? Let’s keep going for a long time.”
Jimin ignores him. He keeps talking with strength that Taehyung wishes he’d save for something else. For living. “I’m sorry about last time. I wanted to see you so badly, but I was so sick. Writing that was one of the last lucid things I did before I lost my memory, Taehyung-ah. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t care, Jimin. I forgive you. I just want you to be here longer.”
“It’s no use, TaeTae.” Jimin frowns. “We know what it means when I remember.”
“But what if it’s different this time? You’ve never said I was familiar before this life, Jimin, you’ve never had dreams about our other lives.”
“I’ve also never been stabbed,” Jimin tries a dark laugh, but he hisses in pain when the wound in his side pulls. “I think I’d take drowning and dementia again over this.”
“Please.”
“I’ll find you next time, I swear I will.” Jimin’s eyes close, a serene smile slipping over his face. “I love you, Taehyung Kim.”
“I love you too, but please don’t—”
“Long time no see, Taehyung-ah.”
Taehyung can’t hear the heart monitor flat line over his own sobbing.
--
The funeral is a quiet, private affair. Just Jimin’s family, Taehyung and his parents, and everyone else from the bar, and though Taehyung tries to remain quiet, the second Jimin’s little brother, Jihyun, wraps him in a hug, he can’t stop crying. He’s been through this four times now and it never gets any easier, so he can’t fathom how Jihyun must be feeling, losing his brother weeks shy of his 21st birthday, or his parents, burying their firstborn.
The bar stays closed for weeks, until Namjoon can pull himself back together, and it reopens with a meticulously planned dance event that he’s dubbed the Jimin Park Memorial Recital, with all of the profits either going to Jimin’s family or to the hospital that cared for him in his final hours. It’s beautiful, though Taehyung chooses to watch most of it from the doorway of the breakroom, away from the crowd. His community college dance team performs pieces Jimin had choreographed himself, to songs he’d always told Taehyung about, and Yoongi ends the night by officially retiring Clair de Lune as his ending song, because that was Jimin’s favorite.
Taehyung walks home in a daze. He buys a milkshake but can’t bring himself to drink it, so he dumps it in the trashcan outside of his apartment building and climbs the stairs, one by one, until he’s back in his dark apartment and can sleep on the old couch under the blanket that still smells like Jimin.
Jihyun calls him in the middle of the night. It’s obvious he’s been crying by the waver of his voice. “Wheein livestreamed the recital for me.”
“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”
“Jimin could out-dance all of them.”
“He could.”
“Will it get easier, Taehyung?”
Taehyung brings the blanket to his nose and inhales. “Never. We just learn to hold him in our hearts and remember how lucky we were to have him, however short it was.”
It’s a different world every time.
The only constant in Kim Taehyung’s lives has been that Park Jimin is always there, somewhere along the way. He never remembers him, but Taehyung still carries the naïve hope inside of him that one day, someday, he will.
Everything else is transient. There have been no two lives that have contained a Jeongguk, or a Seokjin, or a Namjoon or Yoongi or Hoseok. He’s never had the same parents twice, only sometimes has siblings but never the same ones.
It’s predictable in that it isn’t predictable. Taehyung expects every single time to meet new faces and find new friends.
This time around, it’s different.
When he’s finally old enough to understand why it is that he’s got five Taehyungs worth of memories packed into his brain, Taehyung can’t help but notice that Kim Taekwon and Kim Minkyung are the same parents who helped him fill out Juilliard applications, and his siblings had been there, giggling behind their hands, as Taehyung fell off of his chair and into Jimin’s lap for the very first time.
So it shouldn’t come as a shock to him that when he opens the door to his dorm room on freshman move-in day, Kim Namjoon is standing on the other side.
“You must be Taehyung,” he says, extending a hand to shake. It’s hard to reconcile this Namjoon—with his bright purple hair, round glasses, and oversized pastel sweatshirt—with the suave, suited club owner of the last lifetime, but they’ve got the same deep voice and dimpled smile. Taehyung feels the same sort of calm he’d felt the first time they’d spoken when he goes to shake Namjoon’s hand and is pulled into a hug instead.
It shouldn’t be a surprise when Namjoon offers Taehyung a campus tour and they meet up with Yoongi and Hoseok, but Taehyung has to bite down on his smile when the two of them walk hand-in-hand across the quad to meet them in front of the library.
And it keeps happening: Wheein sits two rows in front of him during biology lecture. Wendy is leaving an English literature course when Taehyung shows up to his afternoon discussion group. He almost runs right into Jeongguk, who’s on a campus tour with his high school class, and he swears the boy’s eyes go wide when he sees him, but that could also be the fact that Taehyung nearly drops a history textbook on Jeongguk’s foot in shock.
He tries not to read too far into it, but it’s hard not to, when he’s never recognized a person other than Jimin before and suddenly he’s recognizing everyone.
--
The door opens with a loud bang, and Taehyung doesn’t have to look up from his computer to know that it’s the only person he and Namjoon know who has a. a key, and b. a penchant for dramatic entrances.
“It’s Friday and you guys are studying,” Hoseok laments, draping himself over the pile of unfolded laundry at the foot of Namjoon’s bed. His hair—copper this time—fans out around his head, exposing frowning eyebrows. “Joonie, Taehyungie, entertain me.”
“I have two essays due Monday morning,” Namjoon answers idly, kicking a crumpled t-shirt with the toe of his left foot so it falls over Hoseok’s face. “Make your boyfriend entertain you.”
“He had an 8:00 this morning and he’s napping so he won’t be exhausted tonight,” Hoseok whines. “Taehyungie, what’s your excuse?”
Taehyung blinks at his computer screen. “I’m… not playing video games, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s a Friday afternoon and you’re playing video games.”
“…Yes?” Taehyung throws out. “What’s tonight, anyway?”
Hoseok sits up, bouncing in place on Namjoon’s bed like he’d been waiting for someone to ask him that very question. “A friend from the drama department’s having a housewarming party tonight and we’re going. And by ‘we,’ I mean all of us.”
Namjoon sighs and shuts his laptop lid. “Do we know them?”
“Nope!” Hoseok beams. “But he’s cool and you’ll probably think he’s hot, and there’s a cute kid in the dance department who keeps asking me if I know of a Kim Taehyung, so I’m not letting you skip this.”
“Two essays,” Namjoon reiterates.
“I just bought this game,” Taehyung tries. “And I’m—”
“‘Not looking to date anyone,’ we get it, blah, blah,” parrots Hoseok. “But you’re going because your wonderful hyung told his friend you’d be there and I’m not taking no for an answer. From either of you.”
--
“Oppa, is your friend going to be okay?”
The thing about Taehyung’s alcohol tolerance in this life is that it… doesn’t exist. He’s drank once in his eighteen years, and it was just a glass of champagne at his cousin’s wedding, so when Hoseok handed him a cup of something that tasted like a blue raspberry popsicle melted in nail polish remover when they walked into the party, he had no idea what he was in for.
The fact that he feels lightheaded three sips in is probably not the greatest sign. He hands it off to Namjoon, who’s sitting on the other side of the loveseat, and crinkles his nose at the lingering taste in his mouth.
“Taehyung’s fine,” Namjoon answers the girl Taehyung can’t see with his eyes shut and head tipped back against the seat. “He’s just not used to drinking.”
“Are you sure? My mom’s a nurse, I could—”
“I’m full of existential dread,” Taehyung cuts her off, not sounding quite drunk but definitely less coherent than his already slurred Daegu accent. “And-slash-or waiting for my soulmate. Take your pick.”
“Cute,” he hears the girl whisper under her breath. “If you’re not feeling well later on, you can look for me, Taehyung-ssi! My name’s Miyoung.”
“Oh my god,” Namjoon chuckles when, presumably, Miyoung is gone. “Only you could make a girl think ‘I’m full of existential dread’ is a pickup line.”
Taehyung opens his eyes. “I have a cute face and everyone thinks everything I say is a joke.”
“Everything you say is usually a joke.”
“Shh.” Taehyung presses a clumsy finger over Namjoon’s lips to shush him. “Not you, too.”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
There’s silence between them—other than the quiet music playing from the speaker in the middle of the living room and the hum of chatter—for a few minutes before Namjoon speaks again.
“So, soulmate, huh?”
“You’re not my soulmate, Namjoon-hyung.”
Blunt but… not untrue. Taehyung may or may not be into the idea of soulmates, but if he were, it would be Park Jimin, every time.
“I know that,” Namjoon snorts, and Taehyung follows his line of vision to the kitchen, where Hoseok is talking to a tall boy with choppy bangs, who looks suspiciously like—
Kim Seokjin.
Kim Seokjin has decided to make his appearance in this life, too, and Namjoon apparently has the hots for him.
“You have the hots for Kim Seokjin.”
Namjoon throws his hands over Taehyung’s mouth as soon as the words are out of it. “What! Shut up! His name’s Seokjin? You know him?”
Well, not this Seokjin, but.
“I know… of him.”
Loose with alcohol, Namjoon releases his hands from Taehyung’s mouth and points a threatening finger in his face instead. “I passed him every day walking back from my theatre history class last year and I only liked going to that class because every day I got to walk past a literal Disney prince. Fuck. You tell him any of this and I will fight you even though I’m kind of a pacifist.”
“I don’t know why you don’t just go out there and talk to him,” Taehyung reasons. “Hoseok invited you here to try and hook you up, anyway.”
“Because I’m trying to retain some semblance of dignity, which will be impossible to do if I talk to him when Hoseok’s there.”
“Problem solved!”
Hoseok, naturally, materializes out of nowhere, this time with Yoongi at his side. They’re both smirking knowingly down at Namjoon and Taehyung. They’d be cute if they didn’t look so evil.
“Seokjin, who is very handsome and very single and very much missing a Namjoon-shaped puzzle piece in his heart, just so happens to be alone in the kitchen right now.”
Yoongi—small and scrawny Yoongi—somehow catapults all six-foot-something of Namjoon up off of the loveseat and shoves him towards the kitchen. Taehyung can already see his ears turning red from behind, and they match the flush of Seokjin’s cheeks when he catches his eye suspiciously well.
“And as for you,” Hoseok says, now turning to Taehyung, who’s half expecting Hoseok to shove Miyoung or some other random party guest onto his lap. He opens his mouth to finish his sentence, but is cut off when the front door slams open with a loud crash that has Seokjin shouting undignified things from the kitchen.
“Kim Taehyung!” a voice bellows from the entryway.
But it’s not just a voice.
It’s the voice.
“Ah,” Yoongi chuckles, leaning into Hoseok’s side with a knowing grin. “Look who’s just in time.”
Suddenly, Taehyung’s as sober as he’s ever been, rising to his feet to look over Yoongi’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of what he’s been looking for—who he’s been looking for—for the last eighteen years, the last five lifetimes.
This Jimin’s got sandy blonde hair sticking out of a grey beanie, thick-rimmed glasses worn over his eyes, the same crooked smile Taehyung’s loved for as long as he can remember, and he’s running towards him quickly enough that Taehyung barely has time to catch him as he leaps into his arms.
“Hi,” Jimin whispers, smiling so wide that his cheeks—his cheeks, his face, his smile, Jimin, Jimin, Jimin—bunch up the way Taehyung’s always been so enamored with. “I promised you that I’d find you, didn’t I?”
“You did.” And this time it’s Taehyung’s turn to say it, barely a whisper, nose brushing the tip of Jimin’s, “Long time no see, Jimin-ah.”
When they kiss, it feels like fate’s finally chosen a side, and it’s decided to work with them rather than against them for once. This time, Jimin’s lips taste like forever.
“Hi,” Jimin repeats, pulling from the kiss to press his forehead softly against Taehyung’s. They’re blind to the rest of the party around them, the ogling from strangers and obnoxious hooting and hollering from friends. “Sorry for dying on you a billion times.”
Taehyung grins against his mouth, lands a peck to Jimin’s smile. “Just stay with me this time, okay?”
“For the rest of this life, if you’ll have me.”
He wouldn’t have it any other way.