Chapter Text
Living with a couple is weird. Being best friends with both sides of a couple is weird already, but literally living with them is something else still. Taehyung manages because he’s been there for all of it, saw them tiptoe around each other, throw wistful gazes the other’s way when they thought they weren’t looking, and he thinks he might have actually lost it had they not gotten together at a certain point. He can only take so much of Yoongi’s grouchy brooding and Jin’s panic baking at the same time. And when Kim Taehyung starts saying no to Kim Seokjin’s infamous shrill pink muffins that are at least seventy-five percent sugar, you know something’s wrong.
So they got together, while all three of them were sharing this apartment. Taehyung’s happy for them. Jin sold his bed and moved all his stuff into Yoongi’s room, their version of moving in together when they were in fact already housemates, and so they had a spare room they could finally turn into a living room. They didn’t have one before and Taehyung likes it, almost as much as he likes them both, though not quite.
One day, they all sat down together and tried to calculate apartment prices. Both Seokjin and Yoongi still go to college, and Taehyung works two jobs that pay just enough, rent is high in Seoul and the wave of new students snatching up apartments from under their noses never dies down. They went through their possibilities, thought about looking for a new, smaller place for Taehyung and keeping the current apartment for the couple, thought about looking for two new places altogether, went through real estate agency’s homepages and then through suspicious looking private offers, and they made a decision.
They were staying. All three of them. They worked out together, still, Taehyung never complained about Seokjin or Yoongi at all, and both of them loved him too, they’ve been friends since the very moment Taehyung came to this city, and it’s simply the smartest choice, financially speaking.
“Good,” Yoongi had said, his eyes on Taehyung. “I’m not sure I could have stomached the thought of letting you live alone somewhere.”
And that was the moment Taehyung knew that, in a way, he was fucking doomed.
Seokjin and Yoongi are a curious pair. They’re Yoongi muttering quiet things to himself and Seokjin giggling loudly about them. They’re Yoongi in all black, with his leather jacket and barely an inch of his face visible, and Seokjin next to him in a soft looking pastel pink coat. They’re Seokjin making stupid jokes and Yoongi rolling his eyes at him, then immediately making a differently stupid joke right back at him. They’re both of them being big children in their own ways and trying to figure out adult life together, while also sounding like a pair of grandpas that have been married for eighty years and raised three generations together, if not more.
And it’s that last part, that makes Taehyung’s life a little bit exhausting sometimes.
Taehyung loves his family. They raised him well and they love him and he loves them back, and he loved living with them, too, but he was also happy to move out from home. Leave Daegu for the big city, be his own person, make new friends and find out how living without his parents was supposed to work. He was excited about it, and to an extent he still is, still enjoys living here and finding out new things about life every day.
Only now it feels like he’s living with his parents again. With his other parents. It feels like Taehyung has two pairs of parents now and only left one to live with the other instead. He’s always appreciated Jin cooking for them and even teaching Taehyung some stuff, he liked the way all three of them threw their laundry together instead of going through convoluted plans of who is allowed to use the washing machine at what point in time. He appreciated Yoongi’s life advice after having gone through “some shit” (Yoongi’s words, always), back when it was all just normal stuff between friends.
But now it’s Jin calling him to dinner and Taehyung having to sit at the dining table in their beautiful living room and listen to him and Yoongi tell each other about their days, staring intently at his food as to not disturb the loving gazes they send each other before they both turn their heads eerily simultaneously to ask him about his day. It’s Jin knocking at his door asking him if he has any laundry and then just barging in and picking Taehyung’s clothes up himself before Taehyung can remind him of what he’s doing (in Jin’s defense, whenever Taehyung does that, he always looks really bemused with himself and a little ashamed and backs off). It’s Yoongi literally attempting to talk to him about car insurance when none of them even own a damn car.
And the way they look at him... That’s the actual worst part. They both look at Taehyung like he’s their son and they raised him so well, and -- well, no, the real actual worst part is that, if he’s completely honest with himself, Taehyung does kind of enjoy it a little, sometimes.
Okay, yeah, he loves them. He loves them both a lot. He just wishes they could baby him a little less.
“Tae,” Seokjin chants as he bustles into the living room, where Taehyung is curled up on the couch playing Nintendogs. “Taetaetae. Look at this.” He’s half laughing, half serious when Taehyung looks up and his eyes dart from Jin’s face down to the phone screen he’s shoving in his face. “I found a job offer for you.”
Taehyung frowns. “I don’t need you looking for job offers for me,” he starts, because he’s a grown man and can do that himself, but Jin just continues pushing his phone closer and closer to Taehyung’s face.
“Just read it. Please. Yoongi’s losing it.”
That probably just means Yoongi grinned at it for more than five seconds. Sighing a little deeper than necessary, Taehyung takes the phone from Jin’s hand and taps the screen to see the text on display.
m, 24, Certified IT Guy™, looking for talented actor willing to play my ex boyfriend in front of my friends. might get ugly. will pay you generously + hourly. hobby actors fine, just needs to be convincing. if you message me with something homophobic i Will hack you.
Taehyung stares at the ad blankly for a solid ten seconds. He reads it again, carefully, trying to make sense of it when he hears the unmistakable sound of Yoongi scuffling over their living room floor in his slippers, hopping to a stop next to his boyfriend.
“Are you reading it?” Yoongi asks with something horrifyingly close to glee in his voice, and when Taehyung doesn’t respond after barely a millisecond, he turns to Jin. “Is he reading it?”
“He’s reading it,” Jin confirms. And then, Yoongi giggles, which is something Taehyung still hasn’t gotten used to, even after four years of tight friendship. He looks up from Jin’s phone to shoot Yoongi a glance instead, brows furrowed in mock sorrow.
“Who does that?” Yoongi just says when he catches his gaze, still looking thoroughly entertained. “Who puts an ad up for shit like this, who even invents ex boyfriends in the first place? Like, this guy is going all out for this, and he’s some, you know, weird, dingy hacker dude…”
“You need to take the offer,” Seokjin states, hands clasped together like he’s pleading with him, “just so you can tell us what he looks like.”
“He’s probably,” Yoongi’s wheezing a bit now, and quickly clears his throat to sound cool and unaffected again, “he’s probably living in his mom’s basement, covered head to toe in Cheeto dust. Might get ugly. I’m sure it will. I’m sure it already is--”
“Yoongi,” Seokjin says, scandalized, even though there’s a laugh in his eyes and in the back of his throat. Taehyung sighs.
“You two are horrible,” he says calmly. Once more, he skims over the ad, and shrugs. “Maybe I’ll do it. Maybe he’s nice--”
“Someone who uses the trademark meme in an ad,” Yoongi starts, but Taehyung just continues speaking a little louder.
“--and he obviously needs help. He wouldn’t be putting out an actual ad and offering reallife money otherwise. I’m not sure how many people will actually feel up to the task, what with the whole thing being kind of gay. Ex gay, I guess, but still gay. He’s brave to even put this up in the first place.”
“Or stupid,” Yoongi ventures.
Seokjin shushes him gently before turning back to Taehyung with a much softer expression than before. “He put a phone number under there, I don’t know if you’ve seen. Honestly I guess it would be a nice exercise for your acting experience? I mean, it’s not exactly something you can put in your résumé for future jobs, but, still. You haven’t been acting much, I know you miss it.”
Taehyung smiles at him, but before he can say anything, Yoongi, too, reverts fully to his gently worried dad expression. “If he wants to meet up, though, do it somewhere public. And make him send you a pic first, and make him prove that it’s recent and actually him.”
“Oh my god, Yoongi--”
“And if he invites you to his house too quickly, don’t--”
“--I’m not five!”
“And if he’s being creepy, you call us and we’ll intimidate him,” Yoongi ends with his arms crossed in front of his chest.
Taehyung squints at him with sheer childish spite. “If I want someone to intimidate him, I’ll call Jungkook,” he says, but Yoongi already fakes a gasp before he even finishes talking.
“I can’t believe you’d choose Jungkook’s broad build over my leather jacket.”
“Yoongi,” Jin puts a hand on Yoongi’s shoulder and regards him with something close to pity, “it’s the twenty-first century. Nobody’s intimidated by leather jackets anymore.”
Yoongi shoots him a glare and turns away with a quiet scoff about pink basecaps and intimidation techniques. “Just let me know what happens if you call Cheeto Dust, yeah?” he says as he stalks off towards their room.
“I will.” Taehyung is already scribbling down the number in the notepad function of his 3DS. “I’ll also ask for his name so you can stop calling him that right away.”
“He won’t,” Jin predicts, giving him another smile as he gets his phone back and slips it into the pocket of his jeans. “Good luck.”
Humming a thanks, Taehyung examines the number he wrote down while Seokjin also wanders off. It’s true, he hasn’t been acting much. He works part-time at a cinema, but his more important job is at a modeling agency where he gets the occasional job, but he hasn’t had any major breakthroughs yet, just small stuff. He acted there, once, for a TV ad for bottled water, which was lame and kind of embarrassing, but Taehyung has always been a theater kid. He used to do it in Daegu and he’s still part of a drama group here in Seoul, too, but they’re kind of in a draught thanks to their leaders constantly fighting over which piece to do next. But Taehyung still kind of dreams of this career, and it is, apparently, a paid acting job, if you will, so if he just thinks about it long enough, saying yes seems more and more like a reasonable choice.
He doesn’t end up calling him, but he texts the number late the next day, sitting on a stool behind the cinema counter while the waves of customers have momentarily subsided.
[21:19] you
hi! my friend showed me the ad you put up about the ex boyfriend thing. i dunno where you draw the line between hobby and professional, but ive been in a handful of plays and musicals and one cf, so i have non-stage acting experience too. id like to help you out if you havent found anyone else yet
He reads over the text several times before sending, then another few times afterwards. For a few minutes, his phone lies still in his hands. Taehyung hesitates, then his thumbs move over the touch screen again.
[21:21] you
also, im bi, if that helps
[21:22] unknown number
it does, actually. hey. i’m namjoon.
Taehyung smiles weakly. He can relate. He’s mostly been with Yoongi, Seokjin and Jungkook ever since he went to Seoul, and sure, he’s been in contact with straight people, really nice straight people too and a lot of them, mostly the ones his age, didn’t really mind his sexual orientation or that of his friends at all. It’s not like this city is some sort of homophobic hellhole all the time, but still, for some things, you just want to be on the safe side.
[21:24] you
:) kim taehyung
[21:26] namjoon
alright, kim taehyung, this whole thing is kind of hard to explain over text. would you be free to meet me some time this week? you can choose the place, i’m not trying to be creepy. i can send you a selfie, too.
Quickly, Taehyung puts his phone away when he hears the door to the cinema open and close again. He straightens himself up and puts on his smile while reserving a bunch of tickets for tomorrow evening for a group of giggly teenagers. Once they’re gone, Taehyung checks the time and figures he still has a while before the next big rush comes in, so he sits back down and thinks of something.
[21:31] you
selfie first. but write ‘bananarama’ on your palm and show it in the picture
He might have rolled his eyes at Yoongi’s warning, but it’s not like he was wrong. Taehyung isn’t about to let himself get catfished, and he doubts there are that many pictures of pretty men with the word bananarama written on their palm on Google image search, so he guesses he’s about to see Cheeto Dust’s real face, and palm.
Two minutes later, and wordlessly, the selfie comes, and Taehyung almost falls off his stool. He stares at it, then closes out of it and instinctively rushes to open his chat with Jin, already frantically types out the words ABORT MISSION HES REALLY PRETTY, but he ends up backspacing. Jin and Yoongi were mean, and he’s not going to tell them yet. He’s going to keep this one to himself for now. He’s going to open Namjoon’s chat again and answer him.
Naturally, instead of typing something, Taehyung gets distracted by the selfie again as soon as he opens the message.
Namjoon is gorgeous. Taehyung has seen a fair share of special faces in his life, mostly thanks to the modeling and acting thing, but this one is quickly making its way to his top five. Maybe even top three. It doesn’t look like any other face he’s ever seen, but it does look like it belongs on the big screens and billboards Taehyung is trying to get his own face on. He thinks maybe it’s the eyebrows, or maybe the agonizingly full lips, might also be the artfully windswept, bleached hair. His eyes crinkle a little bit because he’s sporting a defeated little smile, probably because of the slightly ridiculous word scrawled on the palm of his hand (even the damn hand looks good), and Taehyung isn’t sure through the pixels, but he thinks the smile is putting dimples in his cheeks and he is about to have a heart attack.
When he realizes it’s been three minutes since he got the message, Taehyung finally snaps out of it and his fingers scramble over the screen to type.
[21:37] you
thanks! im free tomorrow. dunkin donuts up over myeongdong station around four?
[21:38] namjoon
sounds good. thank you so much, man. see you there.
He doesn’t ask for a selfie back, probably trying to keep up the not-creepy thing, which Taehyung appreciates, but he’s already convinced that Namjoon’s a good guy. It’ll be way easier to find each other if Namjoon also knows what he looks like, so after quickly scanning the doors for customers (still none to be seen), Taehyung takes a picture of himself. He’s really taken better selfies before and kind of wishes he could have taken more time with this, but if he gets caught taking selfies at work he’s going to have another thing coming. He looks remotely cute, anyway. Maybe not quite Namjoon’s league, but, fuck, he has to remind himself that that’s not where he’s trying to get in the first place. This is a job, not a blind date.
[21:38] you
here so u know who to look for c: cya tomorrow namjoon!
Nobody uses ‘cya’ anymore, Tae, get it together. Taehyung quickly locks his phone and shoves it back into his pants pocket. A job, not a blind date, he repeats to himself. And quite a job it’s going to be, having to pretend he’d break up with a face like Namjoon. At least this means it’ll be a challenge, he thinks, and who knows, maybe this guy is just an asshole.
Namjoon has been having one hell of a week.
He knows the internet. Of course he knows the damn internet, it’s like a second home to him. He knew, from the start, that he was going to get shit for this. He saw the shitstorm on the horizon, he was prepared for it to get brown and wet with chunks, and so it did.
It was still better than any other choice he’d had. Namjoon doesn’t have many friends -- that sounds sad, but it’s not. He has Hoseok and Jimin and that’s fine, that’s enough, he doesn’t have the social or emotional capacity to deal with more than two, especially with them being, well, the way they are. That’s why, a while ago, he made up a boyfriend instead of actually getting one when they told him to find someone, and that’s also why, now, he can’t just ask someone else from real life. He doesn’t know anyone. Nobody that Hoseok and Jimin don’t know, and especially nobody that would be up for the task at hand. And what else was he gonna do? Put it in the newspaper, where more old people than people his age would read it and he’d get even more shit for it? Believe it or not, for some things, the internet is still a safer space than outside, so he put it there.
Now, Namjoon is not a man of empty threats. Whenever someone messaged him just to be a dick about the blatant homosexuality in his ad, he didn’t let them get away unscathed. He’s been sending out viruses like chain mail in sixth grade. He came prepared for that, and as much as he still gets pissed off every single time, he can handle it.
But the internet isn’t always just mean, sometimes it’s also nothing but strange. On the first day, someone merely sent him a string of blurry, weirdly angled selfies, nothing else, and even as Namjoon -- desperate as he was -- tried messaging them, he didn’t get a response. Of course, numerous people also asked if he was going to have sex with them, then either stopped answering or called him names when Namjoon said no. That wasn’t what the ad was about. Besides, ex sex is bad, everyone knows that. On day four, someone asked if he was interested in buying forty-three lizards. Namjoon was kind of interested, but he forced himself to turn them down. A bunch of people called him without saying anything or just breathing into the line (good thing Namjoon isn’t planning on keeping this SIM card), and then two people messaged him who actually seemed interested. One stopped answering the next day though, the other one confessed that they were drunk when they texted and sort of sobered up and weren’t interested anymore. Which Namjoon doesn’t blame them for. It is, after all, a very weird job.
All the more reason to be curious about Kim Taehyung.
Namjoon checks his phone again, no new messages, and opens Taehyung’s selfie once more, just to make sure he’ll recognize him, of course. Either this guy has a bad phone camera or it’s just kind of blurry, but it’s enough to give him an idea about his face, at least. He looks cute, probably Namjoon’s age, maybe a little younger. That’s good. Fits his story and makes things less awkward. He’s also wearing a bright red shirt in the picture with a tiny glimpse of a name tag on his chest that makes him look like a Target employee. Only South Korea doesn’t have Target, so he must be working somewhere else. Which is good too. When he told Namjoon that he filmed a CF, Namjoon tried googling him, because he can’t have him be too popular or well-known. Hoseok or Jimin would find out and he’d get busted, but he didn’t really find anything about Kim Taehyung, and the fact that he apparently still works some sort of boring day job with ugly work clothes and name tags means he’s not some famous professional (yet).
All he really knows about Kim Taehyung, so far, is that he’s late. Four minutes and counting. That’s not much and Namjoon isn’t one to judge, but he came here early, so he’s been sitting here for a bit. His coffee is almost empty already and he’s taken one bite from his disgustingly sweet donut because it felt awkward to sit here and not eat it. But then it also felt awkward to sit here and eat it alone when he’s waiting for someone.
He’s pointlessly scrolling through Instagram (Hoseok has posted an extreme close-up of Jimin’s ear, what else is new) when the door opens and he looks up just in time to see dark brown hair and a pretty blue coat rush past towards the counter. The hair color fits, he thinks, but now he can only see the guy’s back and he’s not sure if Taehyung would just … go and order without looking around first. Without looking for him first.
He orders hot chocolate with whipped cream, two donuts, and a little plastic container with strawberries that Namjoon didn’t even know are sold here, and then he takes his tray and turns towards him, and Namjoon’s first thought is that Kim Taehyung needs to get a better phone camera.
It’s a wild thing between pretty and handsome. At first Namjoon thinks he’s wearing eyeliner (which would be perfectly cool), but he just seems to have really long, black lashes. His hair just barely falls into his eyes, big and round, and his entire face makes Namjoon feel like he’s looking at some sort of photoshopped movie poster. Only this is the real deal, obviously not photoshopped, which just seems kind of implausible? It’s too pretty to be true, but then there are broad shoulders in that coat, long legs in dark pants and slender fingers holding the edges of his tray, which is where the handsome part comes in to punch Namjoon square in the face.
“Hi. Hello,” Taehyung says, his voice cheerful but deep as he sits down across from Namjoon and puts his tray on the table with a happy smile. “Hi. Namjoon, right?”
“Yeah,” Namjoon says automatically, nodding with his eyes still glued to Taehyung’s face. Is that a mole on the tip of his nose? He must have drawn that on or something. This isn’t how faces are supposed to work. “Kim Namjoon.”
He realized, of course, that he’s never given Taehyung his last name. Now he has. Right now he’s ready to give him his house keys and credit card number.
“Ah, another Kim,” Taehyung laughs, or giggles, shoulders quaking softly as he does. “Well, it’s nice to meet you in person, Kim Namjoon. You haven’t been waiting long, have you? I missed my stop and had to walk back.”
He laughs again and Namjoon shakes his head, partly as an answer and partly to try and clear his mind somehow. Breakup. Ex boyfriend. He’s going to pay this guy to get yelled at by Jimin. He needs to focus.
“Nah, it’s only been, like, five minutes,” he lies, because the other five minutes he spent sitting here feeling nervous were his own fault, not Taehyung’s. “It’s fine. I’m glad you’re here at all.” Taehyung grins at him as he takes a huge bite from one of his donuts and Namjoon clears his throat, figuring it’s time to bite the bullet and tell him what brought them here. “So…” he starts, smartly. Taehyung watches him curiously over his food. “Just, first things first, nothing’s set in stone yet. You’re free to walk out, I won’t stop you. Once you agree, I’d be thankful if you could stay and stick to it, just for the sake of simplicity, but it’s not like I can force you.” Donut between his teeth again, Taehyung nods slowly. “Okay. Now, this whole thing started sometime last year when my phenomenal friends kept bugging me to find a boyfriend. Like, they were hellbent. It was a disaster. You should have seen the blind dates they set me up on, it was basically tiptoeing on the edge of really fucking tragic. So, to make them stop, I made someone up. Told them I found a guy and was dating him, and everything was perfect. Only, as I guess numerous dramas should have taught me, that kind of shit doesn’t usually work. They wanted to meet him, they kept asking questions, I was running out of answers, so I faked a breakup.”
Technically, Namjoon expected him to laugh at this part, but Taehyung just nods enthusiastically like this entire thing was the most reasonable way to go. Namjoon guesses it was the opposite. Still is. But that has never stopped him before.
Either way, Taehyung takes a sip from his hot chocolate and still watches Namjoon over the rim of his mug, like this is the most captivating story he’s ever heard. Namjoon finds it a little bit unsettling, but mostly kind of adorable. “That’s not yet where you come in, though,” he continues. “That was a little over three months ago. You’d think this whole thing would be over with the breakup, but the fact of the matter is I’m a fucking idiot,” Taehyung giggles into his donut, his eyes never leaving Namjoon’s face, “and kept bringing it up. Because I’m also a hermit. An idiotic hermit. See, my friends, they keep wanting to drag me outside and get me to go places with them, and I’m just, not in the mood most of the time. But I feel bad turning them down for no reason so I kept using this dubious ex boyfriend as an excuse. At first I was too bummed out to leave the house, then I kind of kept saying that I’m scared to run into him wherever we go and I don’t want to see him.”
Namjoon takes a deep breath. He reaches for his cup and sips the sad remains of his coffee, which tastes a little bit like cold cough syrup now, so he regrets that as much as he regrets everything else right now, thank you very much.
“So with my friends being the way they are,” he says, picking at his donut, “they’re now planning this whole intervention. They want me and my ex to meet up, with them, so they can mediate and shit like that, and they want us to talk it out, so they can force me to party again. That’s where you come in. If you want to.”
Taehyung gives him a lenient smile and nods over his food. “Sounds good so far,” he says, which Namjoon thinks is putting it very politely. “So it's just going to be this one meeting with them, if I understood that correctly?”
Slowly, Namjoon nods, then he ends up shaking his head. “Yeah. Well, technically. The thing is, you can never know with these two. They're, uh, special. I love them, but they're really somethin’ else. So I’d prefer if you could plan for a little more, just in case.”
His mug halfway to his face, Taehyung smiles at him now with something that looks more like he's fighting back a grin. “You all sound like a very mature group of friends.”
Namjoon can feel his ears heat up almost instantly. He's not embarrassed by Hoseok and Jimin when he's actually with them, he loves them too much for that, but sitting here all alone talking about the shit he gets up to because of them does feel a tiny bit humiliating now. Taehyung’s face does end up breaking into that grin and he laughs, raising one hand off his hot chocolate and waving it around.
“It's fine, it's fine,” he says. “One time my friends and I went all out staging a gay three-way Las Vegas wedding for a Facebook prank. In our apartment, I mean. Had the whole place look like Vegas and almost got evicted.” He seems to find that funny, giggling again while Namjoon still blinks at him a little dumbfounded. After another sip, Taehyung licks his lips and says, “I have no problem planning for more meetings as your horrible ex boyfriend. I mean, you're the one who promised to pay me.”
“Oh, yeah, about that,” Namjoon says and clears his throat. Talking money is weird. “All in all I still don’t think you’ll be spending too much time on this, so to still make it worth it, I figured fifty thousand Won an hour are the least I can do.”
Taehyung’s eyes go very wide. “Dude, holy shit,” he says, and Namjoon almost laughs about how candid this guy seems to be. “I’m in. I’m so in. Where are you IT Guy-ing at, NASA?”
Snorting softly, Namjoon chooses not to answer that, not yet anyway. “You sure?” he says. “Don’t you wanna hear first how I’m gonna need you to play this guy, and stuff? I did give my friends a certain idea of what he’s like and why we didn’t work out, I want you to be sure you can do it.”
“Eh,” Taehyung waves a hand around, sending a soft cloud of sugar through the air. “Not to toot myself, but I’m pretty sure I can play anything.”
Namjoon’s pretty sure it’s Not to toot my own horn, but alright.
“I mean, you’re right though,” says Taehyung. “I need to know either way. So, what am I like?”
“Well, you were charming at first, of course,” Namjoon says, laughing a little as Taehyung settles back against his seat with his mug of hot chocolate, looking concentrated as if he’s already trying to get into the role. “You’re a college student, just a year younger than me, and you just casually started hitting on me while we were both in line to get coffee one day. So we started dating pretty quickly, we were head over heels, et cetera.” Namjoon clears his throat quietly, watching Taehyung intently for the next part. “I, um -- we broke up because I saw you kiss another guy when I was coming to pick you up from a party. But, I also later told them that you didn’t like my dog and got annoyed when I kept wanting to go on stargazing dates.”
Taehyung seemed to be perfectly fine with the cheating part, but now he has his free hand splayed over his chest with a bewildered sort of expression. Namjoon quirks a brow at him.
“You still alright with this?”
Taehyung looks at his mug. “I love dogs,” he says softly. He takes a sip and closes his eyes, and when he speaks again it’s nasal and arrogant, letting Namjoon know he’s trying something out here. “But I guess they’re loud and always make a mess and your dog probably didn’t like me first so it’s honestly not my fault anyway. Also stars are far away and thus irrelevant or something, and man, I was just doing that guy a favor. I can’t help it when everyone’s so into me.”
He opens one eye to peek over at Namjoon, which, fuck, is really cute, and Namjoon shoots him a broad grin. “Well, I think I found the right guy,” he says, but the grin fades again quickly. “Just, I need you to remember this: they’re gonna hate you. If you think you can act like you’re an ass that’s great and I appreciate it, but my friends will be furious if you say something like that to them. I mean, it’s kind of the point of this whole thing so I personally don’t mind, but you need to be prepared for that.”
Taehyung leans forward again to rip a piece off his second donut and shove it into his mouth with a soft frown. “They’re not, like,” he says with his mouth full, “gonna beat me up or anything, right?”
“No, no,” Namjoon says quickly. “They don’t get physical. They might act like they would, but they don’t. I promise you that much. They’ll just get loud and mean and, like, protective, you know.”
After having swallowed his piece of donut, Taehyung grins, and Namjoon suddenly feels like he’s looking directly at a sunrise. It makes Taehyung’s eyes crinkly and small, and his mouth sort of rectangular, and it has got to be one of the most honest looking smiles he’s ever seen. “That’s cute!” Taehyung says. “It’s fine. I can deal with it. It’s not like I’ll ever see them again, and I’m glad you have good friends like that.”
It’s weird, Namjoon will think later, when they part ways with the promise of staying in touch until Namjoon figures out a set date with Hoseok and Jimin to get this nightmare rolling. It’s weird how sure Taehyung seems to be of things, be it his own acting abilities or his safety with two people he’s never met before in his life. It’s weird how sure he is that he’ll never see them or Namjoon again once this whole thing is over, but still seems to be genuinely happy for him because his friends look out for him. Maybe that is the weirdest part. How Taehyung seems to care about him while, in the same breath, reminding him that they’re not supposed to cross paths after this.