“Hyung, I want to see your face.”

Seokjin turns his head to Taehyung; the younger is spreading out his arms like wings with his eyes shut, incoherent melody is heard from his closed lips, and he shudders when the cold wave kisses his bare feet and tickles the gap between his toes. Taehyung then runs backward, his legs flailing to escape from the wave until he finally stops at a safe spot next to Seokjin.

“Then I’ll ask if they’ll let me take off your eye patches tomorrow,” Seokjin says while burying his feet ankle deep in the sand, seeking warmth.

“Oooh yes! Do that, ask them!” Taehyung exclaims, his arms now folded over his chest and Seokjin took the parka the younger discarded minutes ago from the ground. Taehyung mutters a thanks as Seokjin covers him with it.

“But Hyung, what I meant was: I want to see your face now.”

Seokjin laughs and drapes his arm over the younger’s shoulder. “Have you ever heard of patience, Taehyungie? Your surgery is just tomorrow. Less than 24 hours even.”

“Seokjin-hyung,” Taehyung calls again, his voice low and this time his head is turned to Seokjin. Cold hand reaches up to touch Seokjin’s chin and slides up to cup his cheek, startling him. Taehyung’s colorless eyes seems to be entrancing as they stare through Seokjin’s brown ones and Seokjin forgets how to breathe. “I want to see your face.”

It takes Seokjin a few seconds to process what the younger is saying before he finally nods. Taking Taehyung’s hand from his face, he guides him to take a seat in front of him while he also lowers himself to sit down.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Seokjin says.

Taehyung starts with trailing his fingers around Seokjin’s face, studying the contour of his feature and he hums as he feels the smooth surface, barely finding any small bumps and rough aftershave. He let out a small ‘tsk’ when his hand finds the older’s soft bangs and brushes it away from his face, continuing to make a trace on Seokjin’s forehead.

“Great forehead, yeah?” Seokjin comments proudly and Taehyun grins.

“A perfect size to draw on extra pair of eyes,” Taehyung blurts, which earns him a smack on the shoulder.

He then slides his hands to the sides, feeling the older’s ears that are tucked under his fringe and he pulls at them lightly, upon which Seokjin yelps lightly and laughs. A surprised expression is shown on the younger’s face as he his right hand finds the tiny metal ring perched on Seokjin’s left earlobe.

“I didn’t know you have piercings. Do you have more on other places?” Taehyung smiles, excited to learn the unknown bits of Seokjin he has yet to discover.

The older shrugs before realizing Taehyung can’t see it. “Figure it out yourself.”

So Taehyung does. Tracing his fingers back along Seokjin’s face, he tells himself to not miss and to pay full attention to any tiny details. Soon enough, he finds that 1) Seokjin has small, almost undetectable pimples decorating just at the edges of his thick and neat eyebrows; 2) his single eyelids hold very soft but tapered eyelashes, which reminds Taehyung of his little sister’s; 3) The eye bags under his eyes are rather well defined and although the older has told him that they were there since he was born, Taehyung makes a mental note to remind Seokjin to get more sleep.

The weather is getting colder as he trails his finger down Seokjin’s perfectly symmetrical nose. Taehyung’s hands are starting to feel numb when he reaches the cupid bow of the older’s upper lip and his senses are slowly fading from his fingertips. He scrunches his brows in an attempt to increase his concentration but his nerves are beginning to freeze and refuse to detect anything through his hands.

“Taehyung-ah,” Seokjin finally says, clasping the younger’s hands in his because they’re starting to shiver from the cold.  “Let’s go back? It’s getting dark and you’re shaking.”

Taehyung wants to say no because he’s not finished painting Seokjin’s face in his mind but his mouth doesn’t allow him to as it has also turned unmoving. So when the older grabs him by the wrist and guides him back to the car, he drags his feet on the sand to show his disapproval.

“Oh, come on. I don’t want you to freeze to death. Even your lips are turning blue,” Seokjin pleads when Taehyung refuses to get in the car.

Sulking is usually not his option to get the older’s attention. And it’s not that Taehyung chooses to stay in the awfully sharp weather, but he knows once they get in the car, the image of Seokjin will forever be unperfected in his head and somehow he has the feeling he won’t get another chance to do this again. Sure, tomorrow he’ll be able to finally see how Seokjin— how the world actually looks like, but being blind has always been a part of him and he wants to savor his last minutes by being blind—seeing and feeling his favorite everything in darkness, like how it has always been for him since forever. That’s why he asked Seokjin to take him to his favorite place, the beach; to feel the wind, to breathe in the smell of sea, to feel the sand under his feet, to hear the rippling waves and the chattering of seagulls because he knows nothing can replace how great it feels when those impressions are imprinted into memories in his mind.

Not being able to ‘see’ Seokjin entirely will be his failure because Seokjin has been his favorite person in his life and knowing how he looks like will give him some sort of an accomplishment for his blind self. It will be one of his treasured memories that he keeps safely right next to his heart.

“I’m not getting in,” Taehyung says finally after unfreezing his lips with his own breath. He clamps his hands under his armpit to warm them up.

“You can resume your discovery in the car where we can get warm.”

“No.” Not if I can’t see you in my favorite place.

Seokjin sighs at Taehyung’s persistence and lets him reach out to his lips again but the younger’s hands are still too frigid so Seokjin flinches at the touch. The wind is getting stronger and Seokjin is beginning to shiver which means Taehyung is getting awfully cold so he does the first thing his brain tells him.

The hands on Taehyung’s jaw are not as warm as minutes ago when he was directed to sit down on the sand. And when he opens his mouth to say that he’s giving up on staying out because he doesn’t want Seokjin to freeze any longer, he feels something soft pressing against his lips. His face instantly burns when his senses return, allowing him to feel the brushes of Seokjin’s eyelashes on his cheeks before he finally realizes the older is kissing him with his plump, full, and possibly pink (if he even knows how the color pink looks like) lips.

When Seokjin pulls away, his heart is thundering immensely in his chest, almost as if it’s breaking out of his ribcage and he turns deaf for a brief moment because the beat is blaring loud in his ears and Seokjin has to repeat what he says.

“Will you get in now?”

Taehyung only responds with a nod and enters the car with no words. He quickly gathers the pictures of Seokjin he has collected in his head and fits the last puzzle into place before Seokjin takes his seat behind the steering wheel.

“I told you I’m handsome,” Seokjin comments, to which Taehyung highly agrees.