Unwrapping Taehyung

Chapter Three

Jungkook

NAMJOON, Namjoon, Namjoon. It was clear he was up to something, putting me and Taehyung together as party planners. Interesting move, oh sensei of the bizarre.

Since I'd moved into the BTS house, I'd only seen Taehyung in passing. So I was all for the chance to find out more about him. But I really, truly, especially hated the idea of planning a party. It made old childhood traumas rise up, like bad takeout does the next day.

My dad was a tenured professor in phycology at NYU. He wrote a few well-respected books so he could finagle gigs as a 'visiting lecturer' basically at any university he wanted to for a year or two at a stretch. My parents loved to travel so that's what we did. My mom had a private therapy business, which she managed over skype. She had people so seriously addicted to their weekly session with her that they didn't care where she lived. It seemed 'tell me about your childhood' was the type of sympathetic bullshit that worked just as well over webcam.

My parents loved entertaining people they thought were their intellectual peers or fabulously rich or had something else that made them 'extraordinary'. 'He's an extraordinary individual' was my mothers highest compliment. When I was younger, I'd either be shipped off to a babysitter or I'd be introduced to my parents' guests and then allowed to go to my room. After I hit my official teens, though, my parents expected me to 'act like an adult' and mingle with said people. Sometimes it was cool. I met the president of France once. He was very... French. His eighteen-year-old-daughter wanted to bone me. I think I was fifteen at the time. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Now that I was on my own at college, I didn't mind attending parties, as long as I could lounge against the wall, chat with people I actually liked and take off whenever I felt like it. But planning one, hosting it... Yeah, it was an echo of my parents' life, a Deja Vu that sent icy fingers of panic down my spine.

So I did what I had to do to take my mind off my fear. I took advantage of the situation.

I walked by Taehyung's room and figured he'd returned from bitching to his brother because his door was closed and there was a light on underneath. I knocked then immediately opened the door. Taehyung looked up at me in surprise. He was sitting at the head of his bed, and he'd changed into gray sweat shorts and a loose Pittsburgh Steelers jersey. There was a blue Steelers baseball cap turned backward on his head. And there was a rather large stuffed bunny sitting behind him. Aww... that's so cute. But, wait! Why does the bad boy have a stuffed bunny?

The mystery of K.T...

5. He was sitting crossed-legged on his bed with bare legs and feet - I'm not sure why I wouldn't expect a big, tough-looking dude to sit like that, but, like so much about Taehyung, it just seemed a little off. Ya know. To yoga-like or something.

6. There was a very large, very soft looking and overly cute stuffed bunny sitting on his bed - WTF am I even supposed to do with that information. Is it his? Was it a gift? Does it belong to his girlfriend? Does he even have a girlfriend? Was it a gift from his girlfriend?

7. He didn't seem to care that I just walked in on him cuddled up with a giant PINK bunny - Yup. The bunny was pink. The image they projected was forever burned into my memory. It's just so fucking cute, I can't even...

"What?" he said.

I annoyingly said nothing, but I sat down at the foot of his bed, folding my legs in a mirror of his. And there we sat, him at the head of the bed and me at the foot of it, cross-legged, staring at each other.

"You're going to drive me crazy, aren't you?" Taehyung said.

"'Crazy' is an ambiguous term with no clinical meaning and its insulting to mental health patients. Can you be more specific?"