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Even before they’d started dating, Taehyung had hardly ever been separated from him; whether by curling around him like a particularly affectionate octopus, or by pressing his cheek to Jungkook’s for no reason than to feel the warmth of his skin.
Perhaps that, more than anything, should have clued Jungkook in as to Taehyung’s feelings earlier.
(He’d been a little preoccupied, however, trying not to have a heart attack each time Taehyung’s hands found their ways to his skin and left scorching trails in their wake.)
When they start dating, then, Jungkook is almost never without Taehyung’s tactile, overwhelming, adoring affection at all times.
A hand curled absentmindedly in his hair while they watch movies, tangled inextricably together. A hand cupped around the back of his neck, with a weight that feels grounding - that feels like Taehyung is /there/, with him, in a way that makes Jungkook lean in to the touch like it’s an instinctive response ingrained into his very soul. A finger, drawing idle patterns across his arm; a hand resting on his cheek, splayed across his lower back, curled firmly around his inner thigh.
Even when they’re in the middle of a fight.
Taehyung is driving, the outline of his jaw made visible by the way his teeth are no doubt clenched, in the way they are when he’s frustrated.
He has one hand on the steering wheel, even though Jungkook has asked repeatedly they pull over if they’re going to fight-
-and the other, wrapped around Jungkook’s thigh, where it’d been sliding idly, softly, up and down from before they’d begun this stupid argument.
The ministrations don’t stop, even when their voices rise in pitch, even when Jungkook rolls his eyes and Taehyung purses his lips. Jungkook feels that comforting weight draped over his leg even while he mutters irritably and gesticulates in the way he does when he’s peeved.
Feels that weight, stroking his leg, as Taehyung replies in tense, clipped words right back.
It’s this, that had made Jungkook realize, the first time, that he loved Taehyung.
This overwhelming sense of gentle affection the boy carries, even when he’s angry or upset. Like all couples, they go through their healthy share of fights.
It’d been two months into their relationship, when they got into their first disagreement about something trivial or the other. And as they’d stood, arguing heatedly in the courtyard of Jungkook’s apartment complex in the middle of the night, Jungkook had shivered at the cool breeze.
Taehyung, mid-word in his irritated spiel, had paused abruptly. Had roughly pulled off his jacket to wrap around Jungkook’s shoulders, before resuming his argument without batting an eye. And Jungkook had stood there, lips parted, eyes wide, at the boy who’d painstakingly wrapped Jungkook in his own jacket, mid-argument, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and thought-
Oh. I love him.
It’s the same now.
Jungkook, simmering with irritation in the middle of their current fight, arms crossed tightly to his chest, nonetheless feels Taehyung’s hand wrapped gently, softly, around his inner thigh like a soothing, grounding weight.
And even as Taehyung argues with him, his hand remains there, like an ever present reminder for Jungkook even in the middle of a heated fight—
That they’ll be alright. Obviously.
Because a love like this - where the love you feel for the other person never quite goes away, even when you’re arguing heatedly with the urge to yank your own hair out with frustration at that person - such that your hand remains on their skin like an affectionate brand-
-is one that’s destined to last.