, and Taehyung doesn’t say anything else.
That. That’s the kind of quiet that this is.
If it wasn’t the two of them, Jimin doesn’t think he’d be able to feel it, the way that Taehyung has been ever so slightly withdrawn, since that night. It’s not any one thing – it would be easier if it was – as much as it’s this persistent, unsettling undercurrent of- of weird, of off. Awareness of each other as an extra person rather than an extension of the self, the way they’ve been as long as Jimin can remember.
The tangled, too-heavy knot of tension in Jimin’s stomach hasn’t been this bad in years. Not since he was a teenager lying about how many meals he had in a day.
It’s not like it was then. Jimin refuses. It’s him and Taehyung, Jimin-and-Tae, and whatever this is, this dreadful quiet lurking at the edges of their days, it’s nothing compared to the two of them, so Jimin fixes it. Jimin is going to fix it.
They’ve never written songs the way they are now. This pace, the kind of pace Namjoon and Yoongi will only stumble into once every couple of years, when the inspiration strikes. They record themselves, tinny-quality demos on their phones, and the sound of their voices together almost makes Jimin believe in Taehyung’s angels, in some kind of higher power. For almost a week, Jimin falls asleep listening to the almost-a-waltz sounding track they make; one night, Taehyung taps Jimin’s earphone, so Jimin gives it to him, and they both fall asleep to the same lullaby, one headphone each.
How could you want more than this, Jimin thinks, watching Taehyung’s face slack with sleep. He can just barely hear the song, from this close, lyrics indistinguishable. In his sleep, in a dream, Taehyung’s lips turn down, not quite a frown.
Fix it, Jimin.
Jimin tries to be extra sweet, because he’s better at sweet than almost anyone. “Taehyung-ah,” he says, “look what we got for dinner, look at this!” He cups the dish with both hands, makes a big show of inhaling and closing his eyes, pleased.
“Cute,” Taehyung tells him, and his eyes crinkle when he gives a boxy smile, and then like when they’re on camera, he visibly catches himself – no, Jimin thinks, no no no, don’t – and his smile doesn’t fade, he lays a hand on the back of Jimin’s neck, but it’s just for a moment, tinged with something like melancholy, and then he’s retreating back to himself.
He feels far away.
Jimin doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.
The nights aren’t cold, not quite yet, but they’re getting closer, whispers of autumn in the air. Tonight, the chill is more pronounced than it’s been, so Jimin steals an especially cozy pair of Taehyung’s sweatpants, and one of his hoodies, which he’s fairly certain that Taehyung stole from Namjoon, which is okay, because Jimin knows for a fact that Namjoon borrowed it from Jin five years ago and never remembered to give it back, which is sort of funny, because based on the style, Jimin is maybe ninety percent sure that Jin stole it from Jungkook in the first place.
Jimin sits for a long time, out on the deck in his too-big, stolen-stolen clothes, staring at his phone.
Jimin is happy for them, and that sounds like a lie even in his own head, which is bad. That’s not being a good friend.
Jimin thumbs open the keyboard, and stares at that, too, without typing anything.
Far away. Everyone Jimin loves is going so far from him.
Jimin closes his eyes, a lump in his throat, when Taehyung pads up behind him and drapes himself over Jimin’s back, wordless. And even that- it’s as easy as physical contact has ever been between the two of them, Taehyung’s arms looped around Jimin’s stomach and Jimin’s coming up to hold them in place, and still, still, Jimin feels like he’s touching Taehyung through a curtain, just translucent enough to make him blurry. He can feel Taehyung being- if not sad, if not guarded, exactly, then careful. Careful, of all things, with Jimin.
Taehyung hasn’t suggested a new relationship word for them, not since their date.
“Did you run out of ideas?” Jimin asks, turning in Taehyung’s arms so they can face each other.
“Never mind,” Jimin says, after a moment, because things are fine, he needs things to be fine.
Jimin’s breath falters.
He looks into Taehyung’s eyes, reaching out so they can talk to each other silently the way they do, and there’s just- quiet.
Jimin can’t tell what Taehyung is thinking. There’s one terrifying moment of opacity, a white-noise signal in the silent eye contact where they’ve always been able to have their most secret conversations, and then Jimin drops Taehyung’s gaze.
“Are you coming to bed?” Taehyung asks, and Jimin catches his breath, shakes his head after only a moment’s too long of a pause.
“I’m going to stay up for a while,” he says.
Taehyung nods. He gives Jimin a smile, small, and as he lets go of Jimin’s hips, Jimin catches his hand and kisses it.
Taehyung’s smile gets a little more real, and he ducks in to kiss Jimin properly, to touch the tips of their noses together. Jimin stays bent in close, presses his forehead to Taehyung’s and squeezes his eyes shut. Please don’t go from me, he thinks. Not you too.
Taehyung breathes out, almost a sigh. It sounds sad. Jimin doesn’t know if it’s a response to the silent conversation or not. Jimin wants to meet his eyes again, to make Taehyung tell him what he did so that Jimin can fix it and then whatever’s been made scared between them can come back and be okay again; except what if Jimin looks and Taehyung is unreadable again, what if he’s gone from Jimin again? What then?
So Jimin keeps his eyes shut and lets Taehyung go inside, leaving him to the quiet of the sea.
The ironic part, maybe, is that it should be a happy day, the day when everything goes wrong.
Taehyung’s cross-legged in one of the chairs, smaller than Jimin, so Jimin leans against him, automatically resting his chin on Taehyung’s shoulder as he presses play. It takes Jimin a few moments to place what he’s hearing – it’s their demo, their ‘half of me’ song from weeks ago, the one they sent to Yoongi, and their Yoongi-hyung has done what he always does, which is take building blocks and make them into something amazing. He’s added a simple piano track in the background, strings building up from nothing, somehow managing to sound exactly how Jimin imagined the song and ten thousand times better, all at once. His own voice layers smoothly with Taehyung’s, a duet in the truest sense of the word.
“Oh,” Jimin breathes, softly, as the last harmony fades into nothing over a twinkling smattering of high notes. When Taehyung turns and meets his eyes, his smile is just as gentle, just as struck by this thing they’ve made together.
“We sound good together,” Taehyung says, simple, and Jimin doesn’t know when they started holding hands – they fall into it unthinkingly, as natural as breathing – but he squeezes Taehyung’s fingers, nods wordlessly. For that one still moment, the echoes of their voices singing a love song still disappearing into the air, it’s good. Just good, as normal and them as they’ve been in days and days, and then the moment ends.
And Jimin sort of just- freezes.
Taehyung’s talking like they were making an album. Taehyung is talking like these songs they’ve been making are the kinds of songs they’re going to show people, and Jimin’s brain just sort of- it stays on that realization, scratched-record style, because all at once it’s like he’s looking at Taehyung from across a gulf, from across an entire ocean, because how, how could Taehyung think that a reasonable course of action when the entire world is looking for proof that the group they’ve dedicated half their lives to is over is to release music