TAEKOOK / TIGER LILY

o4.

The next time didn't come as soon as Taehyung would have liked or expected. He'd assumed Jungkook would return the next night, so he'd tried to stay awake a little longer, tried to be ready. The boy didn't come. The night after that it was the same thing; Taehyung stayed up reading by candlelight, trying to pretend he actually cared about the characters. Jungkook didn't come.

Taehyung had fallen asleep vastly disappointed.

He'd woken up early, early enough to be out before Namjoon had started making preparations for breakfast. "Ah!" The man pretends to be scared by Taehyung's appearance, as he lays the table with a jug of apple juice, a basket of pain au chocolat, glasses and cutlery. "He has arisen." He groans out, in what Taehyung supposes is meant to be in imitation of Dracula, or Frankenstein. He's not sure.

He giggles nonetheless, his heart instantly feeling affable in the presence of his uncle, despite feeling rather empty for the past couple days. He needs to learn not attach all his happiness into one person; needs to learn that hope is for the losers, the gutter-dwellers. He shouldn't let his happiness depend on the kindness and excitement of one stranger.

"Hey." Seokjin greets, as he comes out of the large french doors, his sandal-clad feet pattering again the patio, a blue t-shirt hanging low from his broad shoulders. "Seeing as you're up," He starts, as soon as Taehyung smiles in his direction, "would you mind running to the end of the street? The milkman sometimes doesn't like to go all the way up the drive, so he leaves it at the gate."

Milkman! Taehyung thinks. It's odd for him to imagine people still get milk delivered to them, to their door, like an actual routine. He nods along happily at the idea, and his two uncles smile at him, as he makes his way down the long drive that leads to their mansion. He supposes, technically, it's not a mansion, but it is large and it is palatial, so he's fine to class it as such.

At the bottom of the gravel-soaked drive is a wooden gate, and, beyond the gate there's a street, a row of cobble-stone houses, cottages, small, but no less grand than the Kim's residence. It's a beautiful area.

The street is so quiet, which makes it so easy for Taehyung to make out the muffled slur of voices that wash over him the nearer he draws toward the rows of houses. It sounds like a deep rumble, just beyond the gate, tucked away in a place where Taehyung can't quite see, and it sounds serious at first.

Tentatively, he moves nearer, tries to make his footsteps as quiet as possible as he walks along the gravel; he's not sure why, but he's unfamiliar with the folk here, and he's not entirely sure whether he wants to interrupt the conversation. The crate of milk bottles is placed on top of one of the flat columns of the gate, so Taehyung finds it easy to snatch at it and move on.

Only, he doesn't quite get that far, because the sound of the serious voice melting into a twirling laugh is enough to make him freeze entirely. It's Jungkook's laugh for sure, and it's a lot closer to the gate than Taehyung had imagined.

His breath hitches and he ponders over going around to greet the boy, but, this swathe of insecurity fixes him in place; he's unsure why the boy hasn't visited him, and he doesn't want to seem clingy, to seem desperate. Perhaps Jungkook was just messing with him before, about seeing him again, perhaps he just wanted to befriend Taehyung enough to make him like him, to make him comfortable enough to get something from him.

The boy curses his stupid, pessimistic imagination.

With a bite of his lip, he makes a jutting crane of his neck and spies, just a few metres away, Jungkook stood beside a cottage, leaning against the wall that surrounds it, chattering to the person stood on the other side of it. The owner, presumably.