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2014 | Skool Luv Affair Keyboard Talk
‘I would give up…I might observe from far away, not fighting or stopping it.’ - Seokjin
‘I’ll observe what others do, and watch for a chance. I pour everything into someone I love.’ - Taehyung
They all listened to each other’s answers on this particular question. Taehyung was watching and listening with rapt attention. In fact, it wasn’t a rare thing to give each other hell if they caught one another stumbling on their words or divulging something on a broadcast that could leave them several week’s or month’s worth of laughing material.
Just last month, Namjoon had dropped Seokjin’s diligently prepared omelette on his way to serve everyone’s breakfast. Taehyung clearly remembered watching both his hyungs’ reactions with poorly disguised amusement. Even Jimin and Hoseok couldn’t stop themselves from cackling at Seokjin’s red-eared, flush-faced ranting, while Namjoon ducked his head the whole time he was cleaning up splattered egg bits and shards of ceramic on their dorm room floor. Consequently, Namjoon didn’t deny the months of them calling him by his ‘Disaster God’ nickname.
This time, however, listening to each boy answer the question about how they’d handle liking the same girl didn’t move him in the mischievous way he assumed it would. He couldn’t blame any of his bandmates for being blunt, sincere and genuinely themselves. No one beat around the proverbial bush. They even commended Taehyung for answering with a heart-thumping line of ‘pouring all his love’ into his partner. Seokjin chuckled at the prospect of their fans imagining themselves as this so-called partner.
Even more surprising was Taehyung finding himself not in the teasing mood about his eldest hyung. He almost did, but, with a few moments of opening and closing his mouth like a gaping fish out of water, he gave up on saying anything at all.
I would give up…not fighting or stopping it.
He paid close attention to them all, and that’s possibly why Seokjin’s words hadn’t left him since the interviews at the recording studio.
I would give up.
It was Seokjin’s habit of repetitive blinking and the quiet, conservative choice of words that hadn’t left him either. It made Taehyung uneasy. Seokjin, the college boy, with his good-looks and persistent politeness was a known thing, a sometimes distracting thing when they all first met. He personally didn't have a hyung as mature or quite like Seokjin before. But these words—Seokjin’s answer to the question—made Taehyung feel uneasy in a way that was more than distracting.
‘Yah,’ Seokjin startles him from his thoughts, and Taehyung is pulled back to the fact that it’s been hours since their interview filming and they’re on laundry duty. He continues, ‘Is everything alright? Here, let hyung do it.’
Taehyung allows him to fold the pillowcase he was uselessly holding.
‘Erm,’ he pauses and then, after a beat, he can’t help but blurt out his next words. ‘What you said earlier—do you really just let things go that easily, hyung?’
Seokjin’s brows furrow so that a tiny crease forms between them. ‘What?’ He says, looking completely puzzled.
‘What you said during filming.’
‘What did I say?’
‘That you’d give up.’
It dawns on the elder, eyes widening slightly and then they instantly revert back to focusing on the folding of towels and linens before them. As if it were never there. Taehyung can’t explain why this starts to make him uneasy too.
Sure, after living with all the boys for a little over a year, he’s grown to pick up on everyone’s habits—Hoseok’s cleanliness, Namjoon’s other clumsy tendencies, Jungkook’s timidness, to name a few.
Seokjin’s…
He’s not sure what habit this is. Seokjin, he realizes, is sometimes hard on himself. He’s heard him practising in the middle of the night when a dance routine hadn’t gone exactly his way. He’s heard him speaking to his mom in soft, dulcet tones when Taehyung thinks he’s trying to appease her about not being able to visit as often as he’s promised. It’s the same tone he’s used with Jungkook, asking him to join his family for the weekends when it’s clear that the youngest is more withdrawn than usual, brooding over his faraway family. It’s the very same tone he’s used on Taehyung when he gets misty-eyed about his own family. These are the habits he knows of. This other thing though…
I would give up.
‘You spoke so sincerely, hyung, about giving up on someone you might like if we all liked them too,’ Taehyung finally says.
Seokjin closes his eyes briefly, and, upon opening them, he lets out a low chuckle. ‘You made me worry. Is that all?’
Scandalized, he retorts, ‘Hyung, you can’t give up so easily.’
‘Sure I can. It’s Bangtan over some silly crush.’
‘What if it’s the love of your life?’
‘Our life isn’t some rom-com. Besides, what if she isn’t? Would it be worth our friendship?’
‘Why can’t you have both?’
‘Aish, you’re greedy. Should I tell the girl that all of you slobber when you kiss, just so I increase my chances? Or that you’re all slobs at home. How many times have I told you not to wear your outside clothes on my bed?’ Seokjin really lets it go this time, his laughter starts to sound like that kind of squeaking, contagious quality that tends to get him laughing too.
Taehyung curls his smile inward. He tries again, ‘I’m serious, hyung. You can’t give up things that are important like that. You can’t when you—you’re so—you have so much to…give.’
This time, Seokjin allows a wide-eyed expression longer, his mouth twitches into a weak smile. An expression Taehyung recognizes as the elder’s way of being embarrassed. He even sports reddening ears. It makes Taehyung feel a funny stirring of something in his stomach.
‘I—forget it—I’m sorry,’ Taehyung apologizes, realizing what he’s said out loud, rubbing the back of his neck while he ducks his head low, not daring to meet Seokjin’s gaze.
There’s an uncomfortable silence between them for an expanse of time Taehyung can’t seem to measure. It makes him idly tug at the already folded bed sheets.
‘ Tch ,’ Seokjin finally breaches the drowning feeling of their silence. He sounds annoyed when he says, ‘Taehyung-ah, I told you to fold the fitted sheet this way.’
Their hands graze when Seokjin grabs another poor attempt at his folding. Keeping his gaze low, Taehyung reflexively clenches the hand that was grazed into a fist, and he feels annoyed now. He just wanted to cheer him up, he just wanted to make his hyung feel half as good as he felt when he lent him his clothes a while back, when he packed the wrong suitcase after a visit from his parent’s house and he was too embarrassed to ask anyone else, when he was overwhelmingly annoyed at everyone that day but more so at himself because of the mixup, which only made him even more homesick than he already was. He remembers that after he had come back huffing and puffing from a dinner out with Jimin, Seokjin had left him a few of his smallest hoodies and a pair of jeans he insisted he didn’t need right away on his bed.
Why couldn’t Seokjin see that he was trying to…this was not how he intended this conversation to go. He was never very good at expressing his thoughts for the others to fully understand him. He just wanted Seokjin to understand…
Oh. Oh .
That’s what this was about. That’s why he’s been feeling uneasy about this. Seokjin deserves to understand… to feel as terribly important as he makes everyone else feel.
‘Taehyung,’ Seokjin starts and Taehyung hasn’t lifted his eyeline yet, so he continues to implore in a pouty-sounding voice. ‘Taehyung, will you watch how I do it so you know how to do it?’
Finally, Taehyung finally lifts his gaze.
‘How does it look?’
Taehyung feels his stomach churn in a different way this time. His laughter explodes at the sight of his eldest hyung clothed in Yoongi’s black bed sheets which were made to look like a shawl and robe over his body. His eyes turn to roll into his eyelids, while he imitates No-Face with a hand outstretched toward him.
‘Hyung!’ He moans to sound annoyed but an instant grin stretches across his face as Seokjin pulls faces and imitates the dark spirit from their favourite movie.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s imitating this character after their midnight marathon of Miyazaki films after practice the other night, but he was caught off guard nonetheless.
Seokjin guffaws until Taehyung asks, ‘You’re ridiculous and you can never have a serious conversation, can you?’
Seokjin shrugs, the bedsheets billowing around his waist and falling off his head. This time though, he holds Taehyung’s gaze. He doesn’t say anything, but his smile isn’t weak. It’s firm and it’s reassuring.
Another silence fills between them. This time, Taehyung is only left grateful for it.
That is, until he finally feels like he’s in the teasing mood. ‘How could you tell the girl that I have slobbering lips when I kiss. How would you know? What if you’re the one with slobbering lips.’
Seokjin clicks his tongue and nudges him to look at his pout. His pouty lips say, ‘No one’s ever complained before.’
Taehyung bites down a giggle, shaking his head and gets back to properly folding this time. His eyes only drift to Seokjin’s lips a couple more times, wondering how many girls he’s kissed. Did they kiss open mouthed or close-lipped? He’s never asked the elder about how many girls he’s dated before. If he went to an all-boys school, did he ever…Taehyung physically shakes himself. Everyone has scolded him at least once for being too bold in asking questions and making ‘odd’ statements, so there was no way he’d spoil this pleasant quiet time with Seokjin.
In fact, he resigns to stealing one last glance to his lips, tucking away the fact that Seokjin lips redden as much as his ears even when they aren’t pouting. And he certainly doesn’t voice out the unbidden curiosity of what these faceless girls felt as they kissed those full lips.