[ A/N: Y'all, this song ruined me, and suddenly in under two hours this story was born (and I wrote it instead of cleaning or packing, yay!). 
Honestly, can Jimin just, like, not. :))))))

 

 

Trigger warning - implied homophobia and implied self-harm

 

The implied homophobia refers to Jimin's friends/family rejecting him coming out, and Taehyung later admitting it freaked him out; the implied self-harm is mentioned very briefly in regards to Jimin reacting to a break-up. Please bear these in mind and look out for yourselves! If any of you think I need to tag anything else, please let me know!]

 

 

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It was an odd sensation, watching the person you loved falling for someone else.

 

It didn’t happen suddenly. Instead, Park Jimin watched as, over a span of months, Kim Taehyung – his best friend, partner in crime, soulmate – progressed in his relationship with Jeon Jeongguk. It didn’t break him, because it was obvious to him how it would all play out. He had smiled as Taehyung told him about the colleagues at his new job, had noticed the focus on one particular co-worker long before Taehyung did, and had been there through every step – encouraging. His smile didn’t waver. Not when anyone was looking.

 

(In private, in the safety of his own home – only his now, as Taehyung had moved in with Jeongguk – he let the tears well up behind closed eyelids. They rarely fell, but they were there – fogging his sight and stinging the back of his throat.)

 

So, no, it didn’t happen suddenly, and it didn’t break him, but it came close. There were days where he thought it would. There were days where everything felt like it was going too fast, and he was being left in the dust.

 

(In private, he stopped living. Sank into his bubble and put his life on pause. Clutched to what he had left. Held onto the present until the future snuck up on him.)

 

 

 

It had started when they were children.

 

Taehyung’s family had moved to Busan and, in the middle of the school year, at ten years old, Taehyung barrelled into Jimin’s life. They had been friends, and then not, a lot in their youth. Their first argument, that very first year, still sat heavy in Jimin’s chest whenever he thought about it. Which, considering it was over a decade ago at this point, happened far too often. Words too sharp not to scar.

 

Taehyung had told him that nobody liked him – that his friends weren’t really his friends – that he was controlling and manipulative and that people were too scared to be honest with him – that people only kept him around because he had the best games. Jimin had told him to go back to Daegu – that he didn’t belong here – didn’t fit – told him to leave. In the history of their friendship, it had been a small fight about big things. Taehyung had always felt like an outsider, like he had nowhere to belong. Jimin still didn’t believe anyone could want him, and that he would be discarded the moment he stopped being useful.

 

Even then, at such a young age, they’d both known each other’s weak points.

 

Even then, the thought of losing Taehyung terrified Jimin in a way he couldn’t understand. He apologised. They moved on. Jimin ignored the relief he felt at being able to see Taehyung smile again.

 

When they were thirteen, Taehyung got a girlfriend. They were cute together, Jimin thought. She was this cool older girl from a couple grades above them at a different school. They were good together, Jimin thought. Their entire friend group at that time had crushed on her, and Taehyung revelled in their envy. Jimin was jealous, too. Taehyung, his best friend, sometimes got annoyed at Jimin for looking at them – wanting to keep her to himself – and Jimin was honest when he promised Taehyung he didn’t want her.

 

When they were fourteen, Jimin cried to Taehyung over the phone about liking boys. Taehyung did his best to be supportive, but he didn’t know what to say, he said.

 

(Years later, he would admit to Jimin it had freaked him out – remnants of homophobia sliding up his throat from his upbringing – and Jimin would pretend he hadn’t noticed.)

 

Still fourteen, Jimin had come out to his parents, his friends, and with a cutting response turned tail and pretended he never had. Steps back. He pretended to like girls, even to himself, until he was sixteen.

 

At sixteen, Taehyung was desperately treading water. His family situation had never been amazing – he lived with his grandmother for his early years because of his parents’ work, and then when he moved with them to Busan and left his grandmother behind it had been like living with strangers, he said. Jimin was close to his family – little mattered more to him – so he didn’t get it, really, though he tried to. At fifteen, Taehyung’s mum got ill. She passed away on New Year’s Eve, the day after Taehyung’s sixteenth birthday. So, at sixteen, Taehyung was drowning.

 

Jimin was the first person he told. They had cried together, sat under Jimin’s staircase, and had fallen asleep wrapped up in each other. Jimin had decided then that he would do everything he could to make sure Taehyung never cried like that again. But.

 

But.

 

At sixteen, Taehyung and his girlfriend broke up. She was nineteen, and it was noticeably uncomfortable. Taehyung’s dad had liked her, liked her family. Her family liked his family.

 

(Years later, he would admit to Jimin it felt like he was being groomed – and that, for a large portion of their relationship, he’d kept it going to keep his mum happy.)

 

At sixteen, Taehyung’s girlfriend reached out to Jimin. She claimed she loved Taehyung. To this day, Jimin couldn’t decide if he had believed her or not. He’d told her quietly, for the first time to anyone, that he did too. An odd bond between them had grown, of sorts, over their mutual unrequited love.

 

At sixteen, Taehyung stopped talking to Jimin.

 

Jimin would always remember their last conversation – Taehyung, livid on the phone at 2 o’clock in the morning – Jimin, begging him to have this conversation later, in person, so he wouldn’t wake his family. Taehyung hung up, and they never spoke about it. The next day at school, his entire friend group had ostracised him. He didn’t know why. He could guess, but no one ever told him. No one let him defend himself.

 

(Years later, no one would tell him. He was too anxious to defend himself.)

 

He tried to reach out – tried to call, text, tried to catch Taehyung, any of them, after class – but he may as well have been invisible. Taehyung met him, once, to return his trainers. He wouldn’t even look at him. Jimin had watched him spin on his heels and march to school. He stood, frozen in place, trainers clutched to his chest, for five minutes so Taehyung wouldn’t have to walk with him. He was late to school.

 

(Years later, he alluded to Taehyung that this event had messed him up more than anything else in his younger years. That this event had confirmed his fears – that he was expendable, and no one wanted him, just tolerated him whilst he was useful. He dated a girl briefly later on that year, someone he could maybe see himself with if he had to, and when she didn’t want him either carved “unlovable” into his thighs. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want her, not really. He just wanted to be wanted.)

 

He graduated without breathing a word to Taehyung. Kept his distance from most people, to be honest, except for a string of girlfriends who made him feel wanted for a while.

 

When he moved away from home for university, that string became boyfriends. A small truth, told to himself finally. Something he could be honest about, now that no one knew him. He made transitory friends who he had no intention of keeping in contact with after they all moved out of student accommodation, no intention of socialising with outside of class hours. He kept his head down, and his bed occupied. He lost his ity in the first week of classes, to someone he couldn’t remember the name of. He didn’t regret it, per se. If ever had the potential of meaning something to him, that potential had left long ago.

 

(Years later, it still wouldn’t mean anything to him – but he would wish it did.)

 

 

 

It had started when they were children, and by the time Jimin was twenty he was running into Taehyung in a shop back home during the holidays. He tried to leave, but Taehyung beckoned him over and just like that they were friends again. Jimin didn’t ask why, or what had changed, because he didn’t want to risk it. He’d watched Taehyung from afar at school, his feelings staying painfully strong, and had only really started to get over him when university had put miles between them. But now they were here, in the same space, and Taehyung was smiling at him and Jimin wanted – craved the human connection he’d been depriving himself of.

 

They spent most of their summer together, and it was too easy to slip back into their old dynamic – except now they were older, more mature, and warier of each other’s boundaries. Jimin told himself it would be different this time.

 

And it was. The friendship they grew from that fateful meeting was so much healthier than anything Jimin could have hoped for. It truly seemed as if nothing could shake it. Even Taehyung befriending Jimin’s ex, a certain Min Yoongi (one of the few who’d actually meant something), didn’t make them falter. Instead, Yoongi had become better friends with them both – bringing his newer boyfriend, one Jung Hoseok, and their friends Kim Namjoon and Kim Seokjin – another couple – into the fold. Suddenly, Jimin had friends – real friends, who he wanted to keep in his life – something he’d forgotten the feeling of. It was overwhelming. He did his best to be there for everyone, at all times, needing to be needed. Taehyung scolded him, worrying he was stretching himself too thin, so Jimin made sure he didn’t see him suffer under the weight of it all at any point. Around Taehyung, he would be his brightest self. The others at times – saying Taehyung brought out the best in him – and Jimin played along, pretending being around Taehyung just made him inherently happy.

 

(In private, he could admit it did make him happy – truly, utterly happy – and that almost made up for how much it hurt.)

 

Besides, he made Taehyung happy, and that meant the world to him. He was happy if Taehyung was, and he honestly meant that. Taehyung’s smile never failed to brighten his day, and he’d cling to the time they could spend together, especially as it got sparser and sparser as they continued down their different paths in life – Jimin studying in Seoul, and Taehyung back in Daegu. Everyone was everywhere, actually. They all met up maybe once a year, twice if they were lucky, but it was enough. It didn’t matter that, unlike the rest of them, Jimin didn’t really make friends where he was – just co-existed with people he didn’t mind. It didn’t matter, because Jimin knew that he was Taehyung’s most important person – and that was enough.

 

But.

 

Then Jeon Jeongguk became part of the picture.

 

Jimin couldn’t even say he disliked Jeongguk – they’d gotten close the moment Jimin saw how much he made Taehyung smile. So he smiled too, and talked Taehyung through any minor freak outs he had over their budding relationship. He helped him navigate through it all. Taehyung had told him multiple times they would have been doomed without him, and each time Jimin had tried not to hate himself for doing the right thing.

 

Taehyung had dated before, obviously. Jimin had witnessed it multiple times. He knew how to deal with it. But.

 

But.

 

But.

 

But Jeongguk was male. Jimin had settled himself into accepting he could never have Taehyung, because Taehyung liked girls and not boys. And that was fine. They had a platonic soulmate thing going, he was happy with that. If that was all he could have, then he was happy.

 

But Jeongguk was male, and that meant Taehyung liked girls and boys and not Jimin. And this, this was a harder pill to swallow. It was fine, though, because even if Taehyung liked boys, Jimin knew they weren’t in the same league. He wasn’t good enough for Taehyung, and that way okay – it wasn’t a slight against himself, really, when so few people were. Taehyung was perfect. Sure, he had flaws – Jimin wasn’t completely blind – but none of them detracted from how perfect he was. So it made sense, really, that he’d end up with someone so disarmingly and frustratingly amazing as Jeongguk. Honestly, when Jimin had first met him – at Taehyung’s birthday party before they’d been dating – he’d been a little smitten with the boy himself. He hadn’t tried anything – he knew when he’d be reaching for something outwith his grasp – but he’d pictured it, briefly, imagining Jeongguk being good to him in the way Taehyung would never be.

 

But then, of course, they were meant to go together. Jimin wasn’t meant to have that, and that was okay. He was still an important part of Taehyung’s life – they were living together, after all, Taehyung moving in with Jimin in Seoul after he’d graduated and gotten a job there. He still mattered.

 

But then Taehyung was moving out and in with Jeongguk, and that was okay too – because Jimin was still his best friend – still saw him regularly – still got dragged to third wheel on their dates.

 

But.

 

But then he had a front seat view as they fell seemingly more in love with each day, and he’d been watching before but this he struggled to stomach with his face still open and accepting.

 

(In private, he let himself clench his jaw and grit his teeth to fight the tears.)

 

But it was okay.

 

(Years later, he’d question whether letting Taehyung back into his life had been worth this.)

 

Taehyung was happy, and that made him happy. Jeongguk was good for him – Jeongguk made him happy – Jimin knew that – so it was okay.

 

Really, he just hadn’t had enough time to perfect his mask, yet. But he knew he could. He would work on it. When he felt more confident in it, when he knew Taehyung would forever be none the wiser, then he could relax. He could allow himself small pleasures. He could watch Taehyung smile and smile back. He could be his friend, his platonic soulmate, his (second) most important person.

 

But.

 

But right now, it wasn’t okay, he wasn’t okay, he was suddenly breaking and that was okay. In private, Jimin could admit that to himself. Years later, he’d no doubt reminisce about this very moment and he would be fine.

 

Taehyung was perfect, and he needed Jimin still, and he was happy – and that could make Jimin happy, he was sure. That should make him happy. If he kept pretending, eventually it would make him happy.