TAEGI SMUTS [ᵃᵒ3]

PART 2 - Easier To Hold On To The Things That Tie You To The Ground

Part 1 of the ; The Things You Hope For series .

Ao3 by : onthistangent

Summary :

I wish things were different. But I can’t. This isn’t—this isn’t me.

Taehyung wished Yoongi would yell at him, or something, anything.

Instead, Yoongi gave him a defeated-looking little shrug and a resigned nod, collected his things and left.

Taehyung thought he’d feel relieved afterwards, but instead he felt burned and shattered, like a satellite dropped from orbit.

But it was for the best.

What was going on between him and Yoongi, it was never meant to happen.

It was one drunken mistake leading to another drunken mistake, followed by a series of mistakes with no alcohol involved, until one morning Taehyung woke up with his nose buried in the slightly overgrown buzz cut at the nape of Yoongi’s neck and realized that Yoongi had a favorite mug at his apartment.

It was never supposed to be like that.

It was never supposed to be anything.

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or; it takes Taehyung an embarrassingly long time to realize certain things about himself.

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The morning is cold, one of those chilly ones declaring that spring has decided to postpone its arrival just a bit more.

Taehyung stands by the kitchen window and bobs a teabag in his mug up and down, up and down, in a repeated mechanical motion while he watches the small slice of the park he can see just beyond the building across the street.

Something about the color of the light this morning makes everything feel faded, like the scenery is a remnant of the past, a whisper of something that used to be.

It makes him think about things that used to be. Some of them good, some of them bad and some of them wistful, painful, scary—sometimes all at once because nothing in life is ever clear-cut and easy to categorize under one simple label.

The automated motion of Taehyung’s hand on the string of his teabag stops when the floor by the bedroom door creaks behind him.

It does that whenever someone steps on a certain spot right by the threshold, and over time, Taehyung has started to step over the part of the floor that makes the noise. Hyejeong never bothers, so even though her footsteps are light, Taehyung knows she’s awake and on the move.

“Morning.” Hyejeong says, her voice sleepy and the word garbled around a yawn.

Taehyung glances over his shoulder, hums a reply under his breath, then goes back to his tea and the faded cityscape outside.

There’s a wistful kind of air clinging to him on this particular chilly morning—like a persistent thought he can’t shake.

Hyejeong comes to press a lingering kiss between his t-shirt covered shoulder blades, wrapping her arms around him in a hug. Taehyung relaxes into the touch, accustomed to how slender her arms feel around his stomach.

“I loaded the coffee machine ready for you.” Taehyung says, careful not to jostle the tea mug in his hands as he turns his head to the side so he can spy her messed-up hair where she’s leaning into him.

“You just need to flick it on.”

Hyejeong’s lips spread into a smile against the fabric of his shirt.