i.

Jeon Jungkook is eight when he’s carrying a duffle bag filled with clothes and a towel and a toothbrush with toothpaste, standing outside his neighbour’s door, small hands clenching tightly to the bag that is about twice his size. He has to lift a leg up, shift his weight, and use the doorframe as support so the contents don’t spill out when he lets go of one hand to ring the doorbell.

A brown-haired boy swings the door back with a little too much force from the other side and grins. “Kookie, you’re here!”

Jeon Jungkook is eight when he has his first sleepover with Kim Taehyung.

The two of them go inside and it’s the most exciting thing the younger boy has ever experienced. Taehyung’s house is familiar—maybe even more familiar than his own considering how much time he spends there—and Jungkook knows exactly where everything is, knows that he can invite himself to take out food from the fridge or sprawl all his limbs out on the couch because their families have known each other long enough that there doesn’t need to be any forced politeness.

But he’s never been over at night, never got to see the stars from Taehyung’s window or have pillow fights under the moonlight. The two of them live only a house apart, but it’s not the same as visiting during the day, Jungkook thinks, it’s not the same.

Everything is more magical in the dark.

Ten o’clock is Taehyung bedtime and while Jungkook’s parents usually let him stay up for another hour, ten o’clock is also his bedtime today. They brush their teeth and wash their face, Jungkook giggling at the older boy when he tilts his head back and gurgles water in his mouth, accidentally swallowing before spitting out the water completely, and chokes. Taehyung pouts when Jungkook laughs harder and decides that the only acceptable revenge is to splash water on his friend.

The bathroom is (understandably) a mess when Taehyung’s mother comes to check up on them, almost slipping on the wet floor. It only makes the boys laugh more, and she ushers them out before they can make more mischief.

They change into their pajamas once they get to Taehyung’s bedroom, an extra pillow and blanket already prepared in advance for Jungkook. Taehyung’s mom comes back a few minutes later and stops abruptly in her tracks when she walks in the room.

“Cute,” she says, “you boys have matching pajamas.”

Jungkook, wearing a T-shirt with pandas on it, looks over at his friend to see that Taehyung’s own shirt has brown bears. Their eyes meet for a second and they both smile, like it’s a new secret that they share, and it kind of is, despite it being a mere coincidence.

Taehyung’s mom settles them down onto the bed and tucks them in, giving them each a kiss on the forehead, reminding Jungkook that if he needs anything at all, her room is just down the hall. The single bed is more than big enough to fit their small bodies and she smiles fondly as she turns the light off on her way out.

The two of them lie in silence for a while after that. It’s peaceful and sometime between listening to the older boy’s rhythmic breathing beside him and halfway drifting off into sleep, Jungkook finds that Taehyung’s fingers are intertwined with his own.

“Hey, Kookie? Are you awake?” Taehyung’s voice is far away. Jungkook shifts a little, mind not yet clearly focused.

He feels the older boy sit up and lean over to him when he doesn’t respond. “Wait, don’t tell me you actually fell asleep already?” There’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him.

Jungkook groans and opens one eye, rolling over onto his side. “What is it, Tae?”

“Don’t you know that the best part of sleepovers is not sleeping?” And Jungkook should’ve caught the mischievous glint in Taehyung’s eyes, he really should’ve, but it’s dark and he’s more tired than he expected to be, so he falls victim to Taehyung yanking his blanket out from under his arms.

 He’s fully awake now, competitive spirit riled up, and soon, they’re wrestling each other for the blanket. Their limbs are all over the place, on top of each other, kicking and grabbing, and at one point Jungkook gets a handful of Taehyung’s hair in his mouth.

“Ew,” the older boy laughs, retreating when Jungkook finally gets a hold of his blanket again, “you almost swallowed my hair. I’m going to have to wash it tomorrow.”

“You started it,” the younger boy sticks out his tongue.

They lie back down on their pillows and Taehyung hums, unable to deny that fact. “But maybe I should do something different this time, you know? Try something new.”

Jungkook has no idea what his friend is talking about anymore, but Taehyung always wants to try something new so he doesn’t dwell on it too much. His gaze wanders down to Taehyung’s leg, which is sticking out from under the sheets, now that his eyes have mostly adjusted to the dark.

He looks at the brown bears on the older boy’s pajamas, then back to the pandas on his own, and he soaks in the image, drowns in the familiarity of it all, before finally letting sleep take over him.

They match.

 

(The next day, Taehyung shows up at Jungkook’s house, beaming, hair a dull orange colour.

“Don’t you think it looks nice, Kookie? I’m trying something new!”

Needless to say, Jungkook is surprised at the sudden change. But he’s more surprised at just how good Taehyung looks with orange hair.)

 

ii.

Jeon Jungkook is eleven when he makes a bet with Kim Taehyung.

He comes home from school one day to find his friend seated on his living room floor, Wii console in hand. Jungkook drops his bag on the couch and stares at the older boy in disbelief, and although this isn’t exactly an unusual sight, he’s still astonished because how does Taehyung manage to get back to his house before he himself even arrives?

“How did you get in here?” He asks just that, slightly worried that his friend might’ve smashed a window before climbing in—it’s happened once before—but there aren’t any broken pieces of glass this time, thankfully.

Taehyung waves his worries away absentmindedly, eyes still focused to the screen. “I knocked and your mom let me in. Anyway, come here,” he pats the space beside him, motioning for Jungkook to join him. “I’ve been getting really good at this game lately,” he smirks, gaze flickering up at Jungkook for just a second. “I bet I can even beat you now, Kookie.”

Jeon Jungkook is eleven when he makes a bet with Kim Taehyung and he laughs because the game on the screen right now is Mario Kart and no one has ever beaten a serious Jungkook at Mario Kart.

“Are you sure, hyung?” He grabs a spare controller and sits down, cracking his knuckles. “I won’t go easy on you.” After all, he’s boss at this game if the countless hours he’s spent on it means anything, and he has a reputation to maintain, after all.

“Of course,” Taehyung replies easily.

They choose their characters, Jungkook going with Yoshi while Taehyung selects King Boo. Rainbow Road is agreed on as the stage, silence of complete concentration filling the room as the countdown starts. (Jungkook sees his mother in his peripheral vision, muttering something along the lines of Why can’t they be this focused when doing homework? but he keeps his attention on the game. Right now, he has priorities.)

The beginning of the race is relatively calm, with Jungkook starting off in fourth place and Taehyung somewhere behind him. It’s halfway through the first lap when he lets his guard down and Taehyung comes out of nowhere on a turn, drifting and knocking him off the course. Jungkook cries out in anguish as Yoshi falls into the void of the galaxy, his half of the screen going dark, and if he didn’t have to catch up to the other racers from seventh place, he would glare at his snickering friend.

“Told you I’ve improved,” the older boy brags. Jungkook grits his teeth. He vows to pay back Taehyung for that stunt.

Silence engulfs the room as Jungkook cracks his knuckles and gets to business. He passes by the NPC characters effortlessly and by the time the third lap starts, it’s just him and Taehyung in the lead. They send red shells after each other whenever they get the chance and shoot out green shells wildly because you can never really aim with those things. Banana peels litter the floor, bombs going off in the distance as other players desperately try to catch up in their final attempt to finish the race first.

Jungkook manages to get one last item before tailing Taehyung to the end, just a second behind, but it’s a second that could end up deciding his fate. Up ahead, the finish line comes into view and he smirks because this—this is what he’s been waiting for.

Without thinking twice, he uses his speed boast mushroom and zooms past King Boo at the last second, taking first place.

Beside him, Taehyung shrieks and throws his controller on the couch while making incoherent sounds of distraught. The image of Yoshi doing a little victory dance on the screen just may be the most satisfying thing Jungkook has ever seen in his life.

“That was cheap!” The older boy exclaims and Jungkook only laughs. “I want a rematch!”

“Nothing is cheap in Mario Kart, hyung, and no rematches. You know what you have to do now that you’ve lost the bet, right?”

Taehyung looks his friend in the eye. “Jeon Jungkook, you are a cruel, cruel human being.”

And a few minutes later, when Taehyung steps out of the shower with neon pink hair, Jungkook tries his best not to laugh too hard.

 

iii.

Jeon Jungkook is thirteen when he gets an urgent phone call from Taehyung’s mother.

As he races out his door, jacket half on, sprinting down the block to his friend’s house, a million scenarios are running through his mind. It’s true that he hasn’t seen much of the older boy recently, but it hadn’t occurred to him that something serious might have happened.

When he arrives, he’s expecting to see Taehyung with a broken leg, or Taehyung snuggled underneath his blanket refusing to get up, or even Taehyung with tears in his eyes, and maybe he’s going crazy thinking of all the things that could’ve happened.

The door to the bedroom is locked and Jungkook bangs on the wood like his life depends on it.

He hears a muffled voice from the other side. “Mom, I told you that I’ll go down to eat later.”

At the sound of his friend’s words, Jungkook relaxes a little because now he at knows that Taehyung is still alive and can talk just fine, but he doesn’t stop smashing his knuckles against the door. “Tae, it’s me. Let me in.”

There’s a moment of silence before he hears footsteps and the clicking of the lock.

Taehyung is in pajamas.

Jungkook launches himself onto the older boy, eyes examining his body for any sign of injuries. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Your mom said that you wouldn’t come out of your room and I ran over here as soon as I got back home and—wait,” he glances behind Taehyung to the laptop resting on the bed, “were you watching anime?”

“Um… yes?”

Jungkook stares at the screen and blinks. “Are you ing kidding me?”

“What?” Taehyung has the audacity to ask, sounding far too innocent than he has a right to be. Jungkook looks back up at the older boy and fights a strong urge to hurl his friend into the sun.

“I come running over after getting a call from your mom saying that you haven’t left your room for almost a week, thinking that you broke a bone or got depressed or something, and all that’s happened is that you got addicted to anime?” He runs a hand through his hair in frustration. Suddenly, the image of Naruto smiling pisses him off. “, hyung, what the ?”

“Hey, anime is good,” Taehyung grins, scooching over on his bed. “Want to watch an episode with me?”

And as much as Jungkook wants to stay mad at the older boy, how can he say no to that request? So even though Taehyung is already halfway through the series and Jungkook has no idea who the characters are or what the hell the plot is, he lies down beside his friend to watch the new episode. At some point, he feels Taehyung’s hands absentmindedly playing with his hair and something flutters inside his stomach. He doesn’t want to think about what this feeling means so he focuses all his attention on the laptop screen.

“Sasuke is an ,” Jungkook mutters. It doesn’t take him long to come to that conclusion about the dark-haired character even with his limited knowledge.

Taehyung nods; that’s really no question. “But him and Naruto kissed earlier on, you know,” the older boys says, cackling gleefully at Jungkook’s reaction to his words. “I ship them.”

“What—”

“Anyway,” Taehyung continues onto a different topic, leaving Jungkook confused and wait, what was that part about Naruto and Sasuke kissing, “have you noticed that all the main characters in anime have whacky hair colours? It’s like a criteria they have to fulfill or something; if someone has a normal hair colour then you know they’re not going to be important.”

Jungkook shrugs. “I guess so,” and he can’t really say much more than that because he hasn’t seen enough anime to make a solid claim.

“Yeah, so I bought this a few days ago,” Taehyung gets up to open his drawer and pulls out a box of hair dye. Jungkook leans in closer and sees that the colour is green. “If I dye my hair with this, maybe I’ll have a chance of becoming a main character in an anime!”

The younger boy blinks, too shocked to even form a reply. He is thirteen when he realizes that Taehyung has officially taken his obsession too far, but he doesn’t make a move to stop him.

“Go for it, hyung,” Jungkook encourages, and what are best friends for if not to watch the other suffer a little bit?

 

iv.

Jeon Jungkook is fifteen when he is assigned to a desk near the back of the classroom.

It’s the ideal spot for someone like him, really, because hiding behind rows of other students means that the teacher won’t call on him as often and he can take quick naps without making it seem suspicious. He’s been hoping for an opportunity like this since the beginning of the year and it’s great, he thinks, except—

—except when the teacher writes on the chalkboard at the front of the classroom, small scribbles of notes about something that’s probably not all too important in the long run, Jungkook finds that the letters look fuzzy. They seem distort in front in front of him, edges blending in with each other, of characters blurring into the next, and he squints to get a better view but the words still aren’t legible.

Immediately, he knows that he’s been spending too much time watching anime with Taehyung. Binge watching the entire season of Naruto in hopes that he’d see Naruto and Sasuke kiss again (they don’t) couldn’t have been good for his eyes.

So when he comes back to school a week later with black, thick-rimmed, chunky glasses that are just slightly too big for his face, he thinks that the issue is resolved. He can see the board from his seat at the back and that’s what people do when their eyes are damaged, right? Going to the doctors and getting his prescription checked so that he can see again is normal, although he admits that maybe he should’ve spent a few more minutes picking out a pair of more attractive glasses.

But in high school, people notice changes. Jungkook can feel eyes on him all the way from his locker to his first period class, stares prickling the back of his neck and they don’t stop until the end of the day, the end of the week. Snickers become the sound of his nightmares and although no one comes up to him to say anything directly, he knows that rumours are spreading and going to school has never been so hard.

Then, one day, it shifts.

“Did you see—”

“He’s always been a bit strange…”

“Is that even appropriate—?”

“—white hair—”

When lunch rolls around, Jungkook makes his way to the usual spot in the cafeteria and places his tray down on the table. He can still feel the stares but they’re focused on the boy sitting in front of him this time.

“Hyung,” the younger boy starts and has to pause to properly form the sentence, “why did you…” He gestures vaguely at the soft sheet of snow on Taehyung’s head.

Taehyung blinks and grins. “Oh this?” He says nonchalantly, like this isn’t what the entire school has been talking about for the past few hours. “What do you think? Doesn’t it make me look like an angel?”

There’s a prolonged silence as Jungkook can only look at his friend with the most dumbfounded expression on his face, before Taehyung comes over to sling an arm around the younger boy and continues, “I’m your guardian angel, Kookie!”

Jungkook eventually just nods and accepts it—because that’s what you have to do sometimes when Taehyung makes out-of-this-world exclamations: just accept it. But then he thinks back to how the mockery toward his thick-rimmed glasses have stopped since the older boy dyed his hair and—okay, maybe Taehyung is a little like a guardian angel after all.

 

v.

Jeon Jungkook is twenty, a college student in his second year, when he takes a nostalgia trip back to their younger days. He’s sprawled across Taehyung’s bed, flipping through old yearbooks because exams are coming up and naturally, they’re both trying to put off studying for as long as possible.

Jungkook visibly cringes at their photos. “I can’t believe I agreed to dying my hair bright red for picture day with you.”

“I like it,” Taehyung says firmly.

The younger boy frowns. “You do? The colour didn’t even come out properly.”

Taehyung just grins and ruffles Jungkook’s hair. “Yeah, but we matched.”

Jungkook looks back at the pictures and thinks about all the laughs they’ve shared and how their friendship has truly grown over the past years and yeah—yeah, maybe that’s what really matters in the end.

“You’re right,” he says cheekily, “at least I didn’t have to look like I had ketchup splattered all over my head by myself.”

 

vi.

There is a story behind every time Taehyung dyed his hair and Jungkook is proud to say that he knows every single one.