Chapter Text
Taehyung walks into the dining hall.
It’s big, full of graffiti and weird art exhibitions like an old tv with a bunch of multicolored cables hanging from the ceiling and a huge vagina sculpture in the middle of the lunch tables that no one seems to want to acknowledge.
Taehyung sighs. He’s content.
Taehyung is seventeen and he just moved to the big city to go to school here. He chose this school specifically for their famously creative art programs. He’s going to study visual arts as well as photography and he is very excited for it.
He’s already made five friends, and it’s only the first day of school. He sees two of them waving at him.
He adjusts the strap of his brown leather duffle bag and walks over to them with a big smile on his face.
They’re sitting on the floor, like a lot of the other students here, on a wide cloth with paint on it. They look really cool, with their neon colored hair and their piercings.
They’re city kids, and Taehyung has the immediate urge to become as cool as them as soon as possible.
He sits down with them and they talk for a while. Her name is Sarah and she likes going clubbing downtown; his name is Karl and he has a crush on his dealer. They’re fun and nice and they compliment him on his earrings, and he laughs at their jokes even if he doesn’t get all of them.
He eats the pad thai he bought from the little fast food joint down the road from the dorms and they both munch on veggies and some hummus.
It’s exhilarating.
It’s really nothing, actually. He’s just eating lunch with two other kids, but it feels exhilarating. He’s seventeen, in the big city, about to be studying the arts. He’s living the life he’s been wanting to for two whole years at least.
After half an hour, Karl takes out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt’s front pocket. Immediately, Sarah starts brushing of crumbs off her dress and stands up. They’re going for a smoke, they say. Taehyung stands up as well.
Outside, there’s a collective of students sitting on the grass or on the pavement, all smoking and talking. Taehyung thinks they look so cool. Karl and Sarah light their cigarettes. Sarah offers him one with a smile. Taehyung takes it and puts it in between his lips. He’s done this once or twice, when he was drunk. This is not a big deal, he tells himself. Karl lights his smoke. Taehyung inhales. He hopes he looks as cool as they do right now.
They fall into easy conversation again, before Taehyung feels someone bump into him. Sarah takes his arm and moves him swiftly away from the front doors. The guy who bumped into him greets him with a big smile and apologizes warmly. He has a cigarette dangling from his lips and he asks politely for a lighter. While Sarah takes care of it, guiding the small flame of the lighter to the edge of the white stick, the guy’s eye open comically wide as he screams and starts running. He turns back in the middle of his fourth stride, yelling a sunny “Thanks for the light!!!” Sarah and Karl laugh. Taehyung hears her saying something about how he was cute. Taehyung isn’t paying attention to them anymore.
The guy screamed Yoongi. He screamed “Yoongi!”. The name. Yoongi. And right now, he’s sitting on the grass near Yoongi. Min Yoongi. His childhood friend. Who is sitting on the ground, his back resting on a tree, a little notebook in his hand, a pen in the other one. He’s smiling at the guy, he’s smiling and he’s tucking his chin on his chest, slightly, like he does when he’s shy. Taehyung knows this because it’s Yoongi and he’s known him all his life apart from maybe the last two years that he hasn’t seen him at all. He did stalk him on Facebook a couple times, but his profile was boring and deserted. He wasn’t ready for this Yoongi. Even from the distance, he can see he’s different from last time he saw him. His hair is longer, it goes down to his shoulders, and it’s white.
Something shoves him lightly and he realizes he must’ve had zoned out for a while because his friends are looking at him, concerned and his cigarette is almost halfway done, a chunk of ash threatening to fall onto the concrete any time now.
“You okay, bro? What’s wrong?”, Karl says.
“I know him.”, Taehyung says. He must sound like he’s crazy. He flicks the ash off his cigarette and takes a long drag. “I mean, the guy over there. With the long hair, white?”
“Yeah…”
“I know him. Like. He’s my childhood friend. It’s been a while, last time I saw him was two years ago.” He laughs, trying to sound casual. He doesn’t.
“Oh, cool. Well, you should go talk to him.” Sarah is smiling at him. She says it like it’s so simple.
Taehyung cringes and lets it be visible on his face. He knows he can’t just go talk to him like that it’s Yoongi. But he so badly wants to. He feels like an overgrown puppy who’s just found his long-lost owner. This is weird. He shouldn’t be thinking of weird shit like this.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“Why not?” Karl looks mischievous. Oh no. He feels his cheeks get hot. His chest and his neck too.
“I…” He can’t help but let a smirk grow on his lips, he takes another long drag and lets the smoke come out of his nostrils.
“Last time we saw eachother we kissed.” He laughs again. This is fine, this is just fun and games. He’s definitely not about to die.
Yoongi doesn’t see him at first. He’s listening to Hoseok. The younger boy is excitedly trying to hype up Yoongi on their student radio show. Yoongi doesn’t know if he wants to do it again this year, and Hoseok knows that. He has a bunch of new ideas for music segments and wants him and Namjoon to let him rap on the show and-
And then Yoongi sees him.
But he still doesn’t recognize him.
He’s tall with long limbs. His hair is long and flat, frayed aesthetically in front of his eyes. His skin is golden and immaculate. He’s wearing a washed-out pair of jeans that looks way too good on him, a glittery silver camisole, that seems oddly feminine, and beaten up purple vans. He’s beautiful.
It's Taehyung.
Yoongi’s heart is immediately in his throat, beating a hundred miles an hour.
He’s walking towards them.
Yoongi doesn’t have a clue what Hoseok is saying anymore.
His cheeks disappeared. His jaw is looking sharp. His shoulders are wide. His legs are long.
He looks good. He looks damn fucking good. He’s in front on them now.
“Hey.”
Yoongi is going to die.
Taehyung is smiling at him.
“Hey!” Hoseok smiles back easily, friendly as ever.
Taehyung chuckles to Hoseok and turns back to Yoongi. Who still hasn’t said anything.
Yoongi swallows and coughs a bit. “Hey…” Yoongi tries his best to smile. It might’ve worked, because Taehyung eyes sparkle and his smile grows even bigger and wider and prettier.
Taehyung sits next to Yoongi and shoves him slightly with a strong arm.
Yoongi glances to the boy. They make a familiar eye contact. Full of warmth and softness.
Then Taehyung breaks into laughter and flings himself onto Yoongi.
Yoongi hears Hoseok gasp loudly.
“Who are you? How can you be so brave?” Hoseok’ s voice is already sounding dramatic.
“His name’s Taehyung-“
“What do you mean?” Taehyung mumble-screams into Yoongi’s neck. He tries to look at Hoseok and keep his death grip on Yoongi at the same time. The grass is tickling Yoongi’s ears, it’s annoying. Taehyung smells of lavender and ashes. It’s fits him oddly well.
“I’ve been trying to figure out if Yoongi will ever let me hug him for a year!!! And I still hadn’t figured out if he’d kill me or if he’d like it??? I’m so fucking jealous???” Hoseok is only kidding around, but Yoongi’s still embarrassed. This boy-
“Ok, Tae, get off me. I’m done.”
“No!!!!!!!”
“Tae-“
“We haven’t seen eachother for two whole years!!!!!”
“I know but-“
“Yoongi!!!!!!!!”
“Stop! Tae-“
“Is he tickling you?????? Are you ticklish???????? This is so awesome!!! Oh, my God!!!!!!!!!!”
“Urghhhhhhggghghhgggh”
Later, Taehyung is back in the dining hall, but up in the student radio studio. The whole room is filled with graffiti and eccentric posters. Taehyung’s pretty sure there’s an old sex doll stuck in the corner.
On the low ceiling, right on top of the mics, Taehyung notices some funny looking tags: “YG”, “HS” and “NJ”. Sitting on the main DJ’s chair, Yoongi catches him staring.
“Yoongi, Hoseok and Namjoon. We’re sort of a group here. People listen to our show a lot.”
Yoongi’s voice still sounds soft but pleasantly hoarse. If not a little deeper than it was before, a little lower and smoother. He drags his vowels lazily, and a faint lisp swirls prettily around his -s’s.
Hoseok went to buy some coffee at the student café.
Yoongi fiddles on the console and the computer for a while. Taehyung keeps watching him.
Yoongi’s hands move so elegantly, with a lot of purpose. Taehyung admires the veins popping out attractively, his bones moving under his slightly bruised, pale skin. He seems to bite his nails, a habit he didn’t have two years ago.
Yoongi puts on a song. It rumbles through the room, the bass is dark, some clear strings sketching out a melody, a nasal voice starts rapping on the beat.
“So, you smoking cigarettes, now?”
Yoongi’s not looking at him. Still clicking away on the computer. He doesn’t sound condescending or anything. Maybe just a little surprised.
“Not really. Why?”
“Smelled it on you earlier.”
Taehyung doesn’t know what to say. He feels a bit silly. Like he’s admitting to his big brother things he was not allowed to do. He doesn’t like it. He tries to sound more confident.
“Yeah well, I usually just smoke when I’m drunk. But one of my friend offered earlier. That’s all.”
Yoongi doesn’t say anything back, eyes on his screen. He nods gently.
The silence is sort of comfortable, but Taehyung feels a spark there. Maybe it’s just nervousness on his side, but he feels some tension, some giddiness.
He knows Yoongi has trouble with conversation sometimes.
Taehyung keeps inspecting Yoongi profile.
In the dim lights of the studio, his features seem even sharper. Taehyung had forgot how damn pretty Yoongi was, all catlike eyes and pouty pink lips and cute little button nose. He’s alluring and a bit peculiar looking. His hair is so long, going a little past his shoulders, and so white, with messy dark roots and some weird yellow mixed in between.
He’s so engrossed in Yoongi’s lovely face that he almost misses it.
The first gloomy notes, the white noise sounds, Bugs Bunny’s eerie voice, all of it bleeding droopily into the thick air of the small room.
Then Kendrick starts his first verse.
Taehyung slowly drags his eyes away from Yoongi, who’s looking like he’s waiting for something. He’s stopped toying with the computer now. Taehyung watches the video that’s playing on the screen.
Bugs Bunny with a space gun and 90’s kids eating cereals.
Old memories fill Taehyung with so much of…something.
Something like cold air and smoke.
Something like strong hands and humid sighs.
Something like a secret.
Something like a goodbye kiss, a long time ago.
Taehyung swallows audibly. He feels adrenaline coursing through his veins like icy fire. He feels his heart beating with anticipation. This must mean something. Yoongi remembers. This is his way of saying, this is his way of showing him-
Yoongi turns to him, a movement almost languid, almost imperceptible. His eyes look wider, almost scared. Taehyung opens his mouth to say something, anything-
And exactly as the beat drop Hoseok crashes in loudly.
“AND I RUN IT, BRAHBRAHBRAHBRAH, I RUN IT, BRAHBRAHBRAHBRAH!!!!!!!”
Hoseok’s scrunching up his features in his usual “stank face”, that Yoongi has seen too many times now. The door slams on the wall behind him, as he swaggers in the room with broad gestures, his whole body moving with the harsh beat, making his own obnoxious sounds effects along the way.
And Yoongi’s not mad.
He loves Hoseok, he truly does. He loves how loud he is, and he doesn’t know anyone that can make him laugh as hard as his best friend does.
So, he laughs. He laughs and screams the lyrics with Hoseok.
It’s not like he was expecting anything to happen. He laughs.
He gets up and starts dancing. He must look ridiculous, but he doesn’t care right now.
He laughs, and Hoseok laughs and he takes a glimpse at Taehyung.
He’s still standing on the side, his back to the wall. He looks a bit stricken. The lighting is bad, but Yoongi thinks his cheeks might be a shade darker than they were outside.
They make eye-contact. They smile at eachother. An understanding. A sheepish one. A small beat.
And Taehyung laughs.
---
From outside the studio, in the dining hall, Kendrick Lamar’s Cartoons and Cereals is playing.
A student looks up to the radio room, she smirks to herself.
Through the dirty opaque glass, she sees three boys jumping and dancing hysterically together.
“Welcome to Uni” she whispers to herself.