:Silver Lined Bones:

Chapter 2: The Departure 1

Summary:

Taehyung and his family are tasked to help Jungkook move out to Vanae, as arranged during last week's meeting. It all only partially go according to plan.

Notes:

Cw:

1) Brief anxiety attack.
Starts at "Taehyung is one step away from bolting out...", ends at = "Dahee must feel his discomfort because..."

Chapter Text

"No fucking way."

"Yes fucking damn way."

Jimin bursts into a loud, infuriating laughter, the sound resounding in Taehyung's head. Even after five minutes has passed, Jimin is still cackling, tears streaming down his face in a sight so ghastly that Taehyung closes his eyes to escape it. To Taehyung's happiness, Jimin's saliva must go down the wrong pipe because his hilarity is cut short by a strangled sound. Jimin erupts into a series of wet coughs and Taehyung secretly hopes that they may lead to a certain, long awaited death.

"By the Elders," Jimin breathlessly says after a while.

"Are you done already?"

Jimin barks out a ragged laugh before straightening his features into a playful severity. "I am now. I still had a bit of amusement in me."

Taehyung glowers at the sky from where he's laid down, he and Jimin loitering at their favorite hang out spot. It's buried inside Vanae's forest, on a short but deep cliff that overviews a river underneath. Taehyung adores this secluded place, one he and his best friend use as some sort of confessional to vent and rant about anything and everything.

Right now, however, he has half a mind to grab Jimin by the back of his shirt and toss him in the river. Jimin would easily survive. So Taehyung ponders on this for a moment before he's disrupted from his musing by the protagonist of it.

"I can't believe you agreed."

"You and I both. Mom told the Jeon family already, so it's set in stone. In scorching, blazing stones from Hell."

"When's the wedding?"

Taehyung shrugs. "I don't know. We're not even in the planning phase of it yet."

"But it's happening happening? As in, no backpedaling from this now?"

"Yeah..."

"Honestly," Jimin starts and drops on the ground next to Taehyung. "I thought you'd end up single for the rest of your life while still living at your parents' house. I could never imagine you in a relationship, let alone married."

"I am single. Just married. There's a subtlety there."

Taehyung isn't in denial.

He simply believes that, even if on the papers he will be wed to Amaris' Prince, he technically won't be in love with him and therefore will remain blissfully single until he finds a mate. Not that he wants to, but it could happen in some sort of dumb of luck.

Jimin peers at Taehyung in disbelief. "Do you not hear how nonsensical that subtlety is or what?"

"The marriage is... It's to bring assets. It's a duty. That doesn't mean I'm obliged to love the Prince aside from the moments where I'll have to pretend I do."

"Does the Prince think the same?"

"Who knows with him. He's as readable as a blank sheet of paper yet as malleable as a wet one. Pisses me off."