"don't say you love me like that; like you're saying goodbye."
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in which yoongi and taehyung are ex-lovers who meet once again in tokyo, spending one last night together, learning how to both love and let go.
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a taegi short story; @springbts...
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Soon their ramen is served, piping hot and smelling delicious, warming them up inside.
Yoongi notes with satisfaction how Taehyung closes his eyes as he takes his first slurp. Oh my God, hyung, I get what you mean now, he had said with such wonder in his voice that Yoongi feels incredibly happy, for some reason. Like he's just shared a little secret, and now it's theirs to hold.
Yoongi and Taehyung talk between bites, and it's surprising how natural it all feels.
(As if they'd only separated for a short amount of time; as if they'd only said goodbye only to meet again the day after, maybe on another beach outing or a midnight grocery shopping endeavour or a casual night-in watching movies.
As if they'd casually picked up where they'd left off five years ago, and never stopped.)
Mostly they spend the better part of their meal talking about what they've done in their years apart, filling each other in on the gaps. It was almost too easy, the way they slipped back in to their normal rhythms of conversation. Like revisiting your childhood home or slipping into an old pair of oversized shirt or eating a warm, home-cooked meal.
They find that there's so much they want to talk about, little things that they'd seen or experienced that only the other would truly understand so they'd kept it close all these years, and only now are they breaking through gossamer and lips and old memories and they all seem to pour loose.
Taehyung talks a lot, more than Yoongi would've expected; about his new promotion just a week ago, how different he feels now to the first day he'd entered the company as a nervous new intern when he had managed to jam a printer and spill one and a half cup of coffee all within the span of an hour (I'd drank the other half, wasn't about to let good cappuccino go to waste).
About how he'd had to work twice as hard after that because of his younger age, in comparison to some of his older colleagues, and at this Yoongi mirrors Taehyung's earlier gesture, settling his milky white fingers over Taehyung's leather-clad arm and smiling at him tenderly, so tender Taehyung's cheeks are as rosy pink as his lips now, and Yoongi says see, you deserve this so much, Taehyung-ah, you worked hard for it.
You did so good, Taehyung-ah.
After a pause Taehyung squeezes Yoongi's hand and says thank you, voice deep with gratitude, and even after Yoongi changes the topic to Taehyung's little black ball of a pet dog and asks if Yeontan's potty-training is successful at last (no, Taehyung had sighed with all the pained angst of a weary old parent, Yeontan still pees with no topographical accuracy, as well as acquiring a new ability to bark precisely at six a.m every day), Taehyung's fingers do not let go as quickly as they did earlier.
