Bond Made in Hell || A TAEJIN STORY || Arranged Marriage

49

Jin

It's late at night when Taehyung joins me on the rooftop.

It's a Sunday evening, close to dusk. The power went out three hours ago and I didn't like the idea of skulking around miserably in a dark cold house, so I came up here to get some fresh air and peace.

I was feeling peaceful. More peaceful than I'd ever felt in the past few weeks. As I draped myself over the rooftop balcony and stared into the night sky, littered with thousands of stars, I felt extraordinarily peaceful.

My head was clear, and my shoulders felt lighter. So much lighter. I only continued to stare at the stars, bright and twinkling, focusing on the way they shone like sequins in the black fabric of the sky. Twinkle, fade, twinkle, fade. They looked like fireflies, incandescent in the dark night.

The door that led to the rooftop opened with a small, squeaky sound, but I did not look back. I knew who it would be, and yet my heart could not but flutter involuntarily in my chest. My hands gripped the railing a little tighter, and I lifted my chin up, shut my eyes and tried to ignore Taehyung's presence as he came to stand beside me.

I waited for him to speak, but he never did. I opened my eyes slowly, and he was simply standing there beside me, looking out into the same sky, his eyes gazing at the same stars. His lips were slightly parted as he did so. He looked like a child, curious to explore the universe and its secrets. I could not help but smile as I saw him.

'Haven't you ever seen the night sky before?'

'Of course I have,' Taehyung replies, his eyes not leaving the sky. 'It's just....the sky is so wonderfully clear tonight. And I can actually smell the air- it smells fresh. And clean. Like...butterflies. And cotton candy.'

'Really?' I sniff hard. 'I don't smell any of those. No butterflies. What else do you smell?'

Taehyung angles his head towards mine, and I can't help dropping my eyes for a second before meeting his own once more. 'I smell....strawberries, and candles, and soap. I smell you.'

I laugh, even though it comes out a little high-pitched. 'You sound so very ridiculous when you say that.'

'Oh, do I?' Taehyung smiles- his boxy smile. My heart skips a small beat- a very, very small beat. 'You do smell pretty good, though.' 

'Yeah, whatev- hey, what are you doing?'

'What do you mean, what am I doing?' Taehyung says, nonchalantly, as he puts his curly head atop my broad shoulder and begins rubbing his face all over the smooth fabric, purring like a kitten. 'I'm smelling you.'

'More like marking your territory,' I roll my eyes and try to stifle a laugh as his hair tickles the back of my chin. 'Get off, ugh. You're tickling me.'

'Am I?' Taehyung raises his face to look properly into mine, and I can feel my eyes flicker elsewhere yet again. Why is it so very hard for me to meet his eyes? 'Are you ticklish?'

'Yes....?'

'Wrong answer-' and then he's tickling me all over, my chest and my neck and my arms and everywhere he can lay his hands on, and I'm squealing like a little kid and trying to get him off me. We fight, parry, stumble and eventually collapse on the tarmac, rolling over and over until we come to rest and I finally manage to push Taehyung off me. 

'What do you think you were doing?' I glare at him, even though I'm too tired to get properly angry.

'What do you think I was doing?' The bright spark is back in his eyes, and I sigh. He really remind me of a kid sometimes- the way he never gets tired. 'I wanna do it again, as a matter of fact.'