bikers & beaches | tk ✓

❧30

❧ Beautiful and Real ❧

It honestly didn't feel real.

Maybe because of it all happening at night, hours before he crashed into bed, all of it felt like some dream too good to be true.

None of his friends seemed to have noticed him and Jeongguk either, so Taehyung double wondered if it had actually happened in the presence of their indifference.

He woke up blinking at the ceiling, staring at the blank slate like it would have the answers to his confusion, squinting to focus on a small speck on the surface. That speck looked a lot like a check mark— life telling him that maybe it was all actually happening.

He groaned and flipped over to shove his face in the pillow.

After they'd (maybe) talked and (maybe)— he reminded himself— kissed, Taehyung had just cuddled into Jeongguk side and sat with him for a while. Until the fire began to die and Hoseok was calling to them from the porch. Jeongguk had helped him up, hand on the small of his back while leading him towards the house.

He remembered feeling so giddy in that moment, like he was floating and his head was in the clouds. Breaching the collecting cotton candy of the sky and seeing nothing but the beautiful clearness of space above. Like breaking up out of storm clouds and seeing the serenity of sunlight panning over the tops of the dark clouds.

He was hovering near Jeongguk for the rest of the night, and same vice versa. It was small, subtle touches— the hand on his lower back, standing close enough to nudge their shoulders against one another. One moment Taehyung was sitting by him, the others circled around the patio beside them, and the next he had Jeongguk's hand on his thigh, playing with the few rings on the biker's hand.

He turned his head on the pillow, looking out past his canvases and to the balcony, the dull ocean just following the sunrise behind that.

His lips were stretched wide and up, teeth catching the bottom lip like smiling too hard would wake him up from the dream.

Taehyung really found it hard to believe. He honestly couldn't believe it. One night he was keeping his single streak of nineteen years going, and the next, it was knocked down to zero with a new title of taken.

And Jeongguk of all people. He almost burst out laughing knowing that the Taehyung he was before the summer would have knocked him out in hopes of putting sense into him. Hoseok had said Jeongguk was the exact opposite of everything he'd ever talked about wanting, and the guy was right.

But the person he'd always wanted was far from the person he needed. And the person he needed had become the only person he wanted.

He felt done for. Like Jeongguk would be the end of him.

Was it possible to fall that hard overnight?

Well, maybe he'd been putting little bits and pieces of the appreciation together from the day he learned Jeongguk had saved him, bits of appreciation that turned into fondness and the wish for friendship. Friendship of understanding one another, helping one another— tearing one another down only to bring each other up.

Bringing each other up with something much more deeply felt than he had with anyone else.

Yeah, Taehyung thought to himself, there was no way it was real.

And he nearly shrieked— would have woken up his best friend sleeping peacefully beside him— when a rock came flying over the balcony railing and banging against the glass door.

His wide eyes narrowed in seconds, hands ripping off the covers and letting his feet swing down to the floor hastily. His silent movement left Jimin undisturbed as he cracked open the door to slip out onto the balcony and keep as little noise of nature waft into the room as possible.