Summary:
Jimin and Taehyung had only one rule: Don't fall in love. Taehyung promptly broke that rule.
—
" Q uick, pretend you're in love with me."
That's how it started. Taehyung didn't need a mirror to know that in the following hour, he looked like a complete moron. Rapid-blinking eyes, slack-jawed mouth, elaborately meaningless gestures, and generally feeling completely caught in the way both physically and metaphorically. It was too crowded, too loud, too dark and too bright all at once inside of Seokjin's house. He didn't know why Seokjin kept hosting parties when he was just going to spend the whole time making out and committing all sorts of sins with Namjoon in his room anyways. Probably because he was rich and it gave him an excuse to make an obscene amount of food and buy an even more obscene amount of alcohol.
Jimin adored it. The blaring music that shook the windows, the dancing that that encouraged, and the attention that that encouraged others to give him.
Taehyung hated these parties. Well, he used to adore them as much as Jimin, walking around laughing like a maniac, making a hundred friends in one night. But that was before he had fallen in love. With his best friend. With Jimin.
Since then, parties had become a miserable affair for Taehyung. He spent most of his time with his back in a corner, Jimin acting like a boomerang going back and forth between him and the dance floor and God knows where with an array of strange suitors. This resulted in Taehyung drinking a proportionately obscene amount of alcohol to the supply available every time Jimin brought him to another one of these affairs. He had tried backing off once Jimin had pointed out his baby beer belly ("Tofu!"), but he was always driven back to it. He had managed to get dragged into sloppy makeout sessions with even sloppier girls. Despite his intoxicated state, he somehow always managed to be distracted. With every movement and touch, with every press of skin and lips and hair and bodies, it only served to remind Taehyung that every last one of those girls wasn't Jimin. That Jimin was somewhere else with some one else doing something else.
The only thing that made this self-destructive spiral even moderately okay was that Taehyung could pride himself in going home with Jimin every night, even if Jimin's lips were swollen and his pupils blown wide by the time they got there. He spent every last one of those nights bent over Jimin's toilet, Jimin always there with a cool rag and Netflix to get them both through the night. Taehyung, amongst the sick and general grossness, would be so intensely in love with Jimin that it caused his heart to hurt. He would curl up under the blanket with him, wishing Jimin would have taken a shower to take the smell of whichever him of the night off, but underneath the smell of the party was something so primitively Jimin that Taehyung couldn't help but turn his nose to the crook of Jimin's neck and breathe deeply. Inevitably, Taehyung fell asleep first, and woke up tangled up with Jimin, who would wake up with a smile on his lips and a giggle in his voice, and Taehyung's heart would break all over again.
There were rules in their relationship. Ever since the beginning of high school, they constantly said they were boundless, would even reach for each others' crotches to prove a point. Taehyung just had to go and fall for him. To think of it, that was really the only rule: Don't fall in love. All the other little rules were just addendums to it, falling under the same umbrella.
Jimin had sworn off ever falling again after destroying himself over a boy named Jungkook, otherwise known as his Great Gay Awakening. Taehyung didn't blame Jungkook, most of the pain Jimin dealt with was self inflicted. He set his expectations too high and wouldn't accept that it would hurt after he jumped off of them. He also wouldn't accept himself for who he was. All this piling up on him when Taehyung had been right beside him willing to share the burden. After Jimin stopped killing himself and finally came out, other boys came sniffing, namingly one of the older dancers, Hoseok, at Jimin's dance studio. However, Jimin batted back any advances of romance with those beautiful eyelashes of his and an easy smile, and somehow no one felt bad about being turned down by him. Hoseok even became a fun third wheel to their friendship, and Taehyung's closest friend beside Jimin. This all didn't stop Jimin from having physical relations with random boys he met at parties--it was all physical, no emotions. That was the rule.
