Bulletproof

3b. Josie

She watches with a heavy heart as Taehyung stares out the window, soap-gloved hands and dishes abruptly forgotten. His back is hunched, and his shoulders have never looked so slumped.

When she can't bear to continue staring at his crestfallen figure, she rises silently from the table and wraps her arms around his stomach, burying her face in his soft shirt.

"Tae?" she whispers.

"Hmm?" he asks softly in response.

"I hate seeing you like this..."

He turns his head to smile down at her weakly. "I'm okay."

"Taehyung, you know I hate lies."

She inhales deeply to take in the comforting woodsy smell of him. The muscles in his back flex beneath her body as he chuckles shallowly.

"Wish I could sneak something past you," he rumbles in his deep voice.

"You're pretty terrible at telling lies and keeping secrets."

His voice is barely a whisper, "That means I'm going to die over there, doesn't it?"

"Please don't say that, baby."

"I thought you didn't want me to lie."

Someone clears their throat from the other side of the kitchen.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Taehyung's mother says softly. "But I'm planning to head to the store in about an hour. Did you..." There is a pain evident in her eyes that only a mother could know and bear. "If you start packing now and you're missing something I can pick it up when I go, okay?"

All of them know there's nothing she can buy that he can take with him, but they let Ms. Kim hang on to the idea that there is one last thing she can do for her son, one last thing she can provide for him before he is lost to the world of war. She smiles sadly and stifles a sigh.

"Here, leave this alone," Tae's mom says, waving her hands to shoo them from the counter. "Go ahead and get started. I'll take care of these."

Taehyung flicks suds off his hands and dries them mechanically on the red and white-striped towel resting on the counter beside the sink.

With her hand on his back, Josie steers him upstairs slowly. She tells herself he's not going to die, but he feels dead in her arms already.

Damn the draft, and damn the war.

He opens the door to his room without enthusiasm, a notable contrast from the way he would fling the wooden panel back when the two of them would stumble in, giggling, after blurry red nights drenched in wine.

"Do you remember," he whispers, eyes locked on the bed before them, "when you slept in my arms for the first time? Right there?"

"Of course, Tae." She traces invisible circles against the skin of his hand. "And I can't wait to do it for years to come. I can't wait to do it for forever."

He twists around to look at her with glassy tears lining his eyes. "What would you do if forever didn't come?"

She shakes her head and hides her face in his chest, breathing unevenly. He squeezes his arms around her shoulders. "I'm sorry," he says. He places a hand under her chin to guide her eyes to his and smiles in a sincere attempt to improve her mood. "Let's just start packing together, okay?"

They begin opening drawers and rifling through stacks of folded shirts. She rubs the fabric of each in between her fingers, taking in the texture of what she considers to be him.