Fire On Fire [TK]

(9) On the outside

"And all the cool kids did their own thing
I was on the outside always looking in
Yeah, I was there but I wasn't
They never really cared if I wasn't"

❀

- Jk -

Jeongguk sat on the swing feeling the cool breeze ruffle his hair. The last light of the sun was slowly dissipating into the purple hues of the night. He sipped on the bottle of banana milk, head resting on the chain of the swing.

There was a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night's.

His eyes went to a trio of kids a few feet away from him. Two among them walked hand in hand on the path, busy chattering and laughing, the third walked slightly behind them, hands in his pockets, and eyes looking longingly towards the other two.

It made his gut pinch. This is exactly how had been feeling ever since Park Jimin had come to live with them in the dorm.

The day Namjoon got the call that another person would be joining them, Jeongguk had felt the jitters all over his body. He had become comfortable in the dorm with the four current occupants. Yoongi was hardly home, only to probably sleep, Namjoon rarely crossed personal boundaries, occasionally sitting down with Jeongguk and coaxing some updates about his life out of him, Hoseok's glares kept Jeongguk in line and his schedule kept Jeongguk punctual and Taehyung.. was Taehyung.

He was loud, chatty, and jumpy on good days and reserved and buttoned up on others. He kept barging into Jeongguk's personal space, knocking over the walls around him. He was annoying, in short. But there lay an unknown depth to him, which drew Jeongguk in.

Surprisingly, he had begun to seek Taehyung's presence out of his own will. He looked for him when he entered the studio, waited for him to ask Jeongguk to practice with him, turned to his bunk before sleeping, whispering a soft goodnight and a smile.

But the arrival of Park Jimin turned everything upside down. Up until now, Jeongguk and Taehyung remained the youngest, which meant they were automatically paired for most things. They were considered a unit. They had become ridiculously good friends, which Jeongguk didn't think could ever happen but Taehyung was such a sun that every flower wished to flock towards it. But
Jimin was the same age as Taehyung, which meant now Jeongguk was hanging on the loose end of this equation. He saw the tranquility in Taehyung's eyes when he was absorbed in a conversation with Jimin.

And they went to the same school.

Jeongguk did not fare with such luck.

Taehyung had been constantly glued to this Jimin boy for the past three weeks. He felt like an outsider in their own friendship.

It was infuriating, to say the least.

Taehyung was his only friend of them all. The only one Jeongguk felt comfort with. The others had become a system of support of Jeongguk but nobody felt like a friend to him more than Taehyung.

Jeongguk had been struggling to stay afloat and Taehyung was the only one who had managed to haul him up, give him stability, and shower him with compliments when he least expected them.

Competitiveness was the maknae's fatal flaw. He wanted to be good at everything, ahead of everyone and did not hesitate to work twice as hard to achieve it. But Taehyung grounded him, he was the fuse to his wiring, preventing him from burnout. He had made him understand that it was okay, it was okay to fail sometimes, fall down, and make mistakes, and it did not make him any less worthy.