#insert intense screaming here

Pairing:Kim Taehyung / Reader.

Genre:Seam Traveller AU / Semi-Soulmates AU.

Summary: Your locomotion is not that of a normal human being, rather it is to the extent of physically being able to transport from one place to another. Normally, your ‘seams’ slip you into locations that you are familiar with, but when you unexpectedly happen upon the apartment of Kim Taehyung in Seoul, South Korea – your ability that you have always deemed a curse begins to feel more like a blessing in disguise.

Count: 21,883 words.

Note: There is a smut scene at 15.12.2017 – it is not necessary to read if that stuff does not sit well with you, but you must read the final paragraph. Full sentences that are expressed in italics are indicators that they are being spoken in Korean. I sweated blood and tears for this fic I hope you can taste the salt when you read every single sentence.

09.02.2017 → V1

It is not uncommon for you to blink, and suddenly find yourself elsewhere.

The novel you were reading beneath afternoon summer light, bleeding gold across inky sentences, no longer weighs lightly in your palms. The grocery store aisles with their shelves of generic cereal brands and biscuits no longer demand to be bought beneath fluorescent lighting but instead become rows upon rows of old paperback novels about intangible love. The cracked plaster of your bedroom ceiling you were watching through sleep-heavy eyes opens up into an endless blanket of navy blue, speckled with the silver freckles of the stars, thick strands of grass nestled against your shoulder blades instead of the crisp sheets of your bed.

The places that you end up are familiar, comforting, always the same. The library downtown is a frequent location, the museum in the next suburb over, the meadow you always visited as a child to bring your fantasies to life. The slips occur at peculiar times, most often when you are stressed or exhausted down to the marrow of your bones, but sometimes when you least expect. You can never decide whether it is worse at night or day, because the darkness brings an eerie tension to the creaking swings in the park and the rusting slippery slide, and the light brings an anxious bite to the bookstore bustling with bodies that have not a clue of those who can unintentionally bend the physics of existence and suddenly materialise in locations they know better than the back of their own hand.

Mostly, it is simply annoying, never of any kind of benefit. Your feet just cannot maintain their solidity on the ground they stand upon, and such a matter has branched back into your family tree for generations. It can be controlled, but it takes years to master such a refined art, and it can even be stopped entirely, yet such a happening is a rarity that has only graced your great great grandfather.

Tonight is not unusual to any other. You pull back the sheets, feel the lethargy crawl out of the cotton and beneath your skin, dragging you down, down, encouraging you onto the mattress until a familiar tingle itches up your spine. And you think no, no, not now when you are in nothing but a flimsy silk nightdress, when all you want to do is allow the blissful lull of dreams to take you under, but you have never been one to have a say in this. Not yet, at least.

The shift is a rippling wave rolling over your body, except in that wave are a thousand needles, pricking at your bones like crackling electricity, taking you apart, reforming you elsewhere. The first time, which occurred at the age of fourteen, hurt like absolute hell, but now it is more a dull ache if you can refer such a thing to being quite literally pulled into pieces and remade. You stopped counting the number of times you have slipped through the seams once you no longer had enough fingers, toes, to tick off. And with every jump, the sensations became more bearable.

This, though, is the first time that you have leapt through a seam that takes you across mighty expanses of land and seas, spitting you out into an apartment too small for the objects that cluster within.

You land, ungraciously, upon an unmade bed that homes no presence of warmth, no recent frequency of another being. At first, you heave a weighted sigh of relief, thankful that your body has not decided to drop you onto a hardwood table or a biting gravel road, especially in the sparse garment that you wear. Usually, the slips are gentle, but often they can be frenzied and quite literally just spit you wherever you can be disposed of. Akin to a fickle woman who rushes around her apartment, throwing this and that in place since she is already five minutes late to her date, the seams will slip and slide between the extremities of a smooth sailing ride or a close range gunshot, messy and catastrophic but you cannot damn well help it.

Then, the confusion, edging on the skirts of panic, starts to make itself known in an unease beneath your skin. Because one, although you are always, always taken to places of familiarity, you can swear on your life that you have never once been in this apartment before, and two, you are absolutely positive that we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. It hints in the compact walls, the faint, yet distinct aroma of Asian cuisine that drifts through the slot open window, the paperback books upon books that are creased and bookmarked on the bedside table amongst stained coffee mugs, all inked in an alphabet that your pen does not understand, nor know of at all.

Tentatively, you shuffle across the mattress until your bare soles meet the floorboards, the touch alike stepping on ice, and it is only then that you truly register how absolutely freezing the entire place is. In a feeble attempt to bring heat back to your blood, you firmly rub your palms up and down your exposed arms, approaching the window and peering through the parted curtains to the street below. It bustles with a warm, conversational ambience, makeshift markets lining the sidewalks and concocting the delicious aromas that make your tongue tingle, all manned by Asian men and women who are cloaked in thick coats and long pants, scarves tucked in loops around their necks.

It is then, that you realise that it is not just the apartment that is cold, but also the temperature outside as well. A kind of bite that cannot be conjured by an odd, stormy summer night, one that wraps tightly around your bones in a chill that makes your entire body quake and quiver.

No, no. Which can only mean that it is winter.

And suddenly, the confusion is completely and utterly swallowed by the panic, an anxiety that roots deep in your stomach because not only has the seam slipped you into an unknown apartment, but it has stretched across continents, oceans, to welcome you into an entirely different country.

“Holyshit!”You gasp, clasping your hand over your mouth, eyes widening because this is real, this is not a dream, it is well and truly occurring right here and now and you need to go, go go. Desperately, you try to will yourself to be taken back home, squeezing your eyes shut and thinking about nothing but your bed, your desk, the walls of your very own room. But no matter how hard you try, the situation of where you are continues to creep back up on you like a monster waiting beneath the bed, demanding to be known, revealed and explored.

Maybe. You distressingly think. Maybe I am too cold.

So, with a mental apology to whoever resides within this apartment that unsuspectingly lures women who can jump through space, you quickly pad over to the small walk-in wardrobe that is nestled in the same wall as what appears to be the entrance to a bathroom. In comparison to the unruly apartment, you discover that the clothing hanging on the racks is surprisingly tasteful with labels that are far beyond your price range, some items reaching into the triple figures, all menswear in suits and ties, coats, the occasional baggy slacks. Avoiding anything drastically expensive, you settle on a forest green jumper that hangs to your mid-thigh and a pair of sports shorts that brush past your knees – looking completely ridiculous, but it was better than your nightdress that welcomed that teeth of winter to take your skin for the kill.

For five minutes more, you sit upon the edge of the bed in the partial darkness, eyes closed, focusing on home but gradually, with every passing second, losing more and more hope. Not even a shiver outside of the icy atmosphere has made itself present, no prick of thin needles, no weightlessness of existing without a physical form. The slip, it seems, wishes for you to stay a while, and you know that under all circumstances, you certainly cannot stay much longer within this apartment because god knows who it belongs to and when they will be arriving home.

Lacking concern on an appropriate appearance, you roll on black socks and slide your feet into a pair of sheepskin boots that are at least five sizes too big, running your fingers through your tangled hair before exiting the bedroom and searching for the front door. The living space is not much bigger than the sleeping quarters, with the dining area, kitchen, and lounge space all squeezed into one, overlapping in places, but it holds a warmth of homeliness that almost makes you wish to stay. But rather, you spot the entrance down a short hallway that is lined with shoes from leather patent oxfords to battered black and white converse, careful to not disturb the order as you edge past them in the dark, eyes on the orange light that filters through the frosted glass above the doorway, a nervousness at abandoning the security of this apartment for the streets of this foreign land beginning to stir about your heart.

But as you reach for the door handle, there is a soft jingle, and then it is twisting open on its own accord.

For a moment, you cannot entirely register what is happening, nor reconcile the man that stands before you with his slender fingers still curled around the doorknob, staring with what appears to be an expression of bewilderment that most certainly resembles your own. With the hallway light of the apartment complex shining directly behind him, yet completely exposing you, it is difficult to make out any certain features other than the fact that he is built like a slender tree, tall, yet still having an aura of girth about him in the broad set of his shoulders. Faintly, you can make out large, almond shaped eyes, cheekbones made harsher by the shadows, honey blonde hair that is ruffled with a day of outings, plush lips that are parted in surprise, confusion, awe. Alike a deer in headlights, all you can find yourself capable of doing is becoming a taut statue of human muscle and flesh, silent, frightened.

The stranger, and supposedly the owner of the home you accidentally landed within, flicks on a light beside the doorway, washing the both of you in a yellow glow that reveals himself entirely and has you struck with wonder. The backlight and shadows had not done him any justice, for now, he is suddenly transformed into a marvellous beauty that leaves you amazed and frankly – almost thankful that out of all the potential homes your seam had to place you within, that it was his very own, if not for the fact that you were still scared out of your rational thought, heart racing a mile a minute, almost breaking through your ribs and escaping your chest altogether.

“What are you doing in my apartment?”

His voice is a deep crushed velvet, cloaking your skin in a language that you cannot decipher, vowels and consonants completely and utterly foreign to your hearing. Unknowing what to do, you gape, close your mouth, and then gape again, a mute goldfish of fear and desperation, of please, please just take me home. But your body does not quake and shiver, and your feet remain grounded, so all you can do is stare blankly at the mystery man of a world galaxies apart from your own and pray that he does not skin you down to the bone for invading. Your only solace is that his face remains passive as if he is beyond used to being exposed to the unusual.

“My English is terrible, I apologise,” He speaks again, and you can almost cry at the sound of your native tongue flicking in your ears. His voice still sounds so lovely, massaging into your skin with a gentle warmth, a little unsure in its capabilities with an accent tinging the edges. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

You blink, lips forming a perfect circle and oh. “I-If I tell you, you won’t believe me.”

“Given that I have not thrown you out yet, I’m sure you can trust that I’ll probably believe whatever story you have to say,” And when he smiles, it looks painfully familiar, tucked in between dusty memories that were deemed insignificant until now. You card through the mental pages, yet he hides himself well.

But first things first. “Where am I? What country are we in?”

His smile appears to fade in the slightest, suddenly a little wary. “Seoul, South Korea.”

South. Fucking. Korea.

For an instant, an overwhelming surge of giddiness shoots from your toes to your nose, tickling beneath your skin and you have to clasp your palms over your lips to suffocate the disbelieving laughter. The unknown man watches on, still standing in the doorway of his own home at the unusual girl who is finally getting her bearings on the fact that she has travelled across oceans within the blink of an eye, the smile remaining to colour the corners of his mouth because he is just as incredulous at the sight of a foreign being giggling to herself inside his flat, and by the way–

“My clothes?”

His voice, laced with muted humour, snaps you back into the situation at hand and you look down at the haphazard pairing of garments that you wear, flushing a brilliant rosy colour because you suppose you have been caught redhanded. Dropping your hands back to your sides, you stare up at him apologetically.

“I-I didn’t want to take them,” You murmur with hesitance, reaching into the pocket of the sports shorts where your silk nightdress had been stuffed. Unabashedly, you hold the flimsy, and to the conservative person, erotic item up for him to see as if to say how could I simply stay warm in such a thing? “But where I came from, it is still summertime so this was all that I was wearing when I arrived. It is absolutely freezing here.”

“Arrived?”

Oh.

Gathering the silk back into the pocket, your brows pull into a slight frown. “If you truly want an explanation, I think you might need to, um, sit down. It could take us a while.”

Although the man yawns like a feline, dark eyes squinting shut, he takes a step closer so that he is within the flat, shutting the door and unwinding the chestnut coloured scarf draped over his shoulders before delivering another smile that remains to hone familiarity within your subconscious.

“I have time.”

And so he fills up the kettle and sets it to boil, laying out teacups and bringing you a soft blanket to wrap around your legs. The strangers does not change out of his long coat and slim, charcoal trousers, appearing very prim and proper in comparison to you, but he does not seem to mind, ignoring the ever present burn that simmers on your cheeks at the sudden awareness of your own sloppy appearance. Once the tea has been made, he brings the porcelain cups over to the dimly lit dining table, placing one before you and then settling into the chair directly across the stretch of wood. Absently, you watch the steam curl in spirals from the cherry red liquid until he is breaking the silence.

“What is your name?”

Flicking your gaze back up to him, you cannot help but be struck again at how placidly beautiful he is. “It’s Y/N.”

“Ah, it sounds beautiful. Y/N.” It truly does sound lovely on the tip of his tongue, and you wish to swim in his delighted grin that uncannily resembles a box. “I’m Kim Taehyung. Pleased to meet you.”

At that, you laugh, which appears to make him light up that much more. “The pleasure is all mine.”

And just like that, you lay your trust on the table for this Kim Taehyung who strikes familiarity within you, yet for reasons unknown, to observe and attempt to understand. You tell him everything. From how the ability to slip through the seams in space has stretched centuries beyond your lifetime, a ribbon that has woven itself through the generations upon generations of your family, but only tying in knots around the hearts of a select, destined few – you being one of them – to the fact that it can take decades to control its sporadic occurrence unless luck is on your side and it gradually releases you from its treacherous clutches, to the general relativity of the seam slips and how that makes your visit to his apartment, thousands of miles beyond your own home, such an irregularity, a flaw in the metaphorical system that is travelling, jumping, leaping through the construct of physics from one destination to another.

“So basically, it is like– Ah. I cannot think of the English word for it.” Taehyung frowns, rubbing at his jaw in concentration, but you already know.

You take a sip of your lukewarm tea. “Teleportation.”

“Yes! Teleportation.” He says it as one would say eureka! – full of gusto and with an affirmative clap of his broad palm against the table. “That is … Amazing. A gift.”

When you laugh, his cheeks tinge a soft rose shade. “A curse, more like it, since I have no control over when it happens. I mean, right before I arrived here, I was getting into bed, on the verge of sleep. It is disorienting, especially because it targets you when you are vulnerable.”

“I think it is, uh, fascinating.” You like the way that his brows pinch together when he searches for a word, eyes flicking back and forth, distant, as though the letters are strung up in the air before him to sift through. Then, his gaze drifts back to you, and you cannot help the delightful warmth that envelops your limbs at the weight of it. “Beautiful, in the way that your feet simply cannot stay grounded to one place. They strive for somewhere new, different.”

With your fingertip, you circle the rim of your teacup, a meek smile pulling at the corners of your lips as your words draw up a familiar memory, one with your grandfather on the back porch, coated in streams of sunlight, watermelon crunching between teeth. “I always wonder if they are searching for something, or trying to take me back to my childhood.”

“Maybe they are looking for someone to make them stay.”

When Taehyung speaks those words, mirth plays around his eyes, honesty softening his features, and you cannot help but look away, feeling your heart start to pick up at an erratic pace that you are certainly sure, with the silence that envelops the apartment, he can hear. Truly, it was something you had always wondered too, whether the seams were trying to slip you into the life of another, quite literally throwing you to the nearest body of warmth. That was how many of the seam slipping generations before you found love, after all.

Determined on changing the subject, to be free of his dark chocolate eyes that threaten to drown you, you scrabble about your mind for the second question that has been nagging at your subconscious. “I-I know this might sound strange, but I swear I have heard your name before. I think I must have, for me to be brought here since the seams will only take me to places that hold familiarity.”

At that, Taehyung seems to falter, blanking, looking down so that his tousled fringe obscures the beautiful irises that were drinking you in as easily as the tea. A small sigh heaves from his shoulders, fingertips drumming against the underside of the table.

“Well, I don’t mean to sound … Conceited? But I am very famous in South Korea.” The words sound unsure, skittering across the wood in barely a mumble. “I am a singer. But lately, I have been starring in a lot of dramas and other television shows, some that are broadcasted worldwide. That might have been where you saw me or heard my name.”

The way he talks about it is like a heavy burden that sinks ships into the depths of dark oceans, that swallows light and only provides aeons of black oblivion. It seems to hook into his bones and drag him down, down, and you wonder, for somebody who must have the world at his feet with such fame, how he could experience such a feeling, a distaste for the career path that he walks.

“I see. Well, I must say, you were relatively calm when you opened the door to find me.” You say as an attempt to lighten the unexpectedly tense atmosphere, smiling into your teacup before taking a sip. The floral taste soothes wondrous flavours over your tongue. “If it were me coming into my flat to find a complete stranger, I probably would have panicked and called the authorities.”

“That is the unfortunate thing about fame, I’m used to coming home to unfamiliar people searching through my things. The guards are normally always paying attention to who comes and goes downstairs, but some people manage to slip past.” Taehyung says it with an exhausted lilt, tugging at a string of sympathy within you. But then he creates that smile again, directly at you, the kind that lights fires and holds sunlight and you feel yourself getting warmer. “But you’re the first foreigner, and you looked so dazed and confused. I thought maybe you had moved in as a neighbour and accidentally taken the wrong keys – that was until I saw you wearing my clothes.”

And when you laugh with him, you feel it, the sensation of losing your footing, a vibration that tickles up your limbs and has you placing the empty teacup upon the table. When you do so, the porcelain clatters, and his curious gaze seems to understand why. A particularly harsh wave of needlelike pricks across your skin has you wincing.

“Taehyung, it’s time for me to go.”

There is a fleeting hint of something that crosses his expression at your words, akin to disappointment, despondency, stirring a masochistic kind of happiness within you because you are almost glad that he wants you to stay. Desperately, you wish to do so too, wanting to learn everything about his life between the lines, the hastily scrawled notes in the bookmarks, penned down in the ink of his existence.

“Will you come back?” He says, and the words are laced with so much hope that you cannot bear to deny him, to give him any kind of answer that translates to no.

In a stretch of bravery, you reach your hand across the table, and in an air of ease, he takes it with a gentle squeeze. His fingers are much longer than your own, the knuckles curling around your palm, almost swallowing it up whole and you find yourself thinking how uncanny it is that they fit so beautifully together, jigsaw pieces that match perfectly.

“I hope so.” And that is all you can give him, but he appears to deem it enough with the smile that lights up on his lips, that curves his eyes and god, you beg that this was not an accident, an unexpected fault that was never supposed to happen. Taehyung smooths his thumb across your skin, and you shiver.

“I hope so too.”

They are the final words that you hear him speak before you open your eyes and find yourself falling, landing upon the creased sea of your own bedsheets, face to face with the cracked plaster of your ceiling once more, patiently awaiting your arrival in the shadows.

The trembles in your bones take longer to settle this time, and you wonder if that is due to the distance, or maybe the fact that Kim Taehyung has already tucked his heart right beside your own and deemed the spaces between your ribs a place for it to call home.

When you look down, you realise that you are still wearing his clothes.

“Oh,” You breathe, smoothing your palm down the front of the green material, sighing when it lifts the aroma of his cologne into your senses.

Although the heat that simmers in your bedroom, a stark comparison to the shivers that had rattled you back in Taehyung’s apartment, you cannot bring yourself to peel off the sweater, only kicking off the shorts before curling up against the mattress. Your sleep is dreamless, maybe because what had occurred on this evening of winter and summer, of here and there, you lived something much greater than your imagination could ever think to conjure.

When you awake the morning after, you see him again over breakfast, mouth full with half-chewed cereal, forefinger pressing the channel button on the television remote as you aimlessly surf for something that is no less than boring.

You have to backtrack, as it is the split second before you change the channel again that you see his familiar face, sitting on an entertainment panel and smiling the brilliantly mind-blowing grin that pours elation into your heart. Mesmerised, you ignore the subtitles that stream along the lower portion of the screen, simply analysing his ethereal features, how beautiful his deep baritone sounds when it strings around his native tongue, and how almost unfamiliar his demeanour appears in comparison to the man whose apartment you happened upon last night, a thin facade that barely veils the truth beneath.

You decide you like the Taehyung who channelled warmth into your hand and whispered hopes across the dining table than the one who seems to strain his smile through the pixels on the screen, and you hope to every entity in this universe that the one staring at the camera with lifeless eyes, indirectly at you lounged on your sofa, is not the only version you will see ever again.

22.02.2017 → V2

The second time you meet Taehyung, it sounds like he is fucking the life out of somebody.

To be frank, he most definitely is. And you certainly disturb that by misjudging your balance – due to your current state of mind not necessarily being strait-lace as a result of the Sunday family barbeque you were at only moments ago, fourth mimosa in hand – toppling into the glass cabinet-come-pantry that is propped up in his kitchen. Nothing shatters, thankfully, but you certainly make a clatter that encourages the squeaking bed to still, the heated moans to die out into a silence that stirs sickly in the depths of your stomach, choking at your throat until he quickly emerges from the room and closes the door behind him.

Taehyung, you finalise in that moment, is truly so and utterly gorgeous – no matter the situation. Sex softens his limbs, lust glimmering in the beads of sweat that slip down the golden expanse of his torso, cock straining harshly, neglected, against low hanging cotton briefs, lips swollen and bright red. And god, you wish it were you in that bed with him instead, your hands that created the beautiful honey storm of his mussed hair.

“Bad time?” You whisper with a lazy smile, hands behind your back, and the corners of his mouth colour with the hint of one. He looks sleepy, eyes drooping, digging his fingertips into the left, trying to pull himself out of the daze of sex.

“Maybe– No, yeah. I hadn’t–“ He lazily waves his hand about, leaving the rest of his words to interpretation, and you nod with a fluster, understanding. It is difficult not to when you find yourself flicking your gaze southward every other second.

Taehyung seems to notice your constant wandering eyes, his own appraising your simple outfit of a black shirt styled as a dress, how easily he could slide the cotton up your lovely thighs and have what lays between for himself. Maybe that is just the desire talking, or maybe he is already dipping his feet into waters that he has not tread within in too long. Nonetheless, he all but forgets the girl that he left tangled in his sheets with the gardenia tattoo that runs vines of ink up her spine, eyes settling hungry, desperate, on you, until the door behind him is jostling open with a rush of curiosity that soon falls into sheer disgust, betrayal.

“Who is this?” The girl demands, wearing what appears to be his shirt, and although you cannot understand her, you can tell by the twisted look that pulls at her features that she is livid. She looks between the two of you, eyes widening with every passing moment. “Seriously, what the fuck is this, Taehyung?”

When you shrink back at her sudden lash of words, Taehyung snaps into action and turns to face her, his expression completely blank. “I can’t explain, Irene. I don’t want to, either.”

“What do you mean you can’t explain? How the fuck did she get in here?” Irene shouts with a newborn vivacity, her cheeks flaring brightly, but Taehyung is unfazed. She was just another girl, another number in his cellphone, another fuck available on call.

“I think you need to go,” Taehyung mutters quietly, but with enough venom that you see the girl recoil whatever spitfire she had left back into her lungs, swallowing hard before storming into his room. It only takes less than ten seconds for her to remerge, a coat in place, a purse tucked underneath her arm and a glare burning holes through you before she breezes past Taehyung, who looks almost bored.

“Don’t call me again, asshole.”

And then, the door slams with a finality that he welcomes wholeheartedly.

You feel like you have landed straight in the middle of a drama episode, the idea, not at all helped by your tipsiness, having you smacking a palm over your lips to hold in the laughter. Taehyung, with his firm expression, immediately softens at the sight of you, a rueful grin lifting his cheeks as you try to conjure a sentence.

“God, that was awkward! I am so sorry.”

But he understands, running a hand down his face before pushing it back through his hair, making the honey strands stick up even more wildly. “It’s fine. You can’t help it.”

For a moment, the pair of you stare at one another in silence, drinking in the sight of the other after weeks of separation. There were a multitude of times that you thought maybe, just maybe, you were truly never going to see him in the flesh ever again, and so it takes everything in you to not touch him, embrace him. After all, you are merely no more than acquaintances, even if he knows the greatest secret that rules your life. One of the very few outside of your family to learn and understand the reality of you.

Yet already, the connection between you runs so much deeper, layers beneath layers of trust, all based around the promise of returning to him. It fuels the yearning of wishing to learn about every little detail of him, the finer dust that coats his existence, all the more.

The smile has not left his face, his voice splitting the silence. “You came back.”

“Indeed I did,” You reply, almost sheepish in the way that you look down at your feet, the intensity at which he watches you practically unbearable. It hunts beneath skin, seeking answers to questions that you know nothing of.

“Couldn’t get enough of me, hm?” He winks, and you cannot help the laughter that surfaces once more, the playful charm of his tone igniting a pure joy within you that nobody else on the earth has made you feel.

Though before you can reply, Taehyung rolls his shoulders back, golden skin stretching rather nicely over the muscle of his abdominals, pectorals, bringing your laughter to a definitive halt, entranced by the captivating move before he drags his feet over to the sofa tucked in the corner of the living space to slouch down. If he did not have your attention before, he certainly does now with the way that he sits, knees spread apart, hunching himself into his torso with a hand lazily scratching at a bicep, the outline of his dick so plainly evident against his underwear and you are still trying to figure out whether the heat that flushes your cheeks is due to the alcohol or the laughter or your sudden spark of lust, a flame that has never been lit by another. That form of intimacy is too risky for a traveller, for somebody who can barely keep themselves grounded as it is.

But you suppose there is a first for everything, especially with the liquid courage that surges through your veins and draws you towards the couch, taking a tentative seat beside him.

Taehyung, eyes still weighted with the pull of desire, gazes at your thighs, the way your dress has hiked itself up to reveal the smooth flesh further. His fingertips itch to touch you, especially with the naive flicker that skirts your gaze, though instead, he settles for words.

“Where were you? What were you doing?”

His timbre voice heartens the heat that spars within your chest, digs deep into your being. Although his demeanour, the sex that rolls from his skin in seas that skim at your irresolute shores, you presume that he has not a clue of what he is doing to you, what fervency he is drawing beneath your skin. When you barely, in the slightest, move closer to his side, his heavy stare immediately flicks back down to your legs, the tip of his tongue poking at the corner of his mouth.

Keyword – presume.

“On every second Sunday, in the summertime, my family gathers and we have a barbeque.” The words come out too softly, almost hesitant, giving away that your thoughts are far from such a meagre conversation. You try not to look down, rather, fixating on the lovely shape of his damp lips. It proves to be just as irremediable against the effulgent flames consuming you from the inside out. “We eat a lot, and we- Uh. We drink a lot.”

At that, Taehyung smiles in that sunshine kind of way, light pouring into the dimly lit flat and you hope to every entity that such a radiance does not reveal the dark haze that drifts about your gaze, the burn that simmers upon your cheeks.

An infinitely small part of you hopes that it does – that he catches on and sinks his teeth in your throat, predator on prey, hands wandering the land of your body.

Taehyung nudges your knee with his own, and its does more damage to your heart than it should, whisking it up in a carnal whirlwind. The smirk that plays on his lips is absolutely devilish. “I thought something felt a little… Different, about you.”

If anything, your cheeks burn brighter. “How so?”

“You seem a little intoxicated.”

“O-Oh,” is the only thing you manage to stammer before you start giggling, underlying his point in bold. As if he cannot help himself, he too starts to laugh – a deep, sensual tune of a strummed bass, humming around the apartment, entrancing you in its endearment. It is a moment like this, you discover with time, that is one of foreshadowing, the casual way in which you fall into the sound of one another like a check in the box of the many steps to this being something much more, bigger, than the two of you can handle, yet you take it by the reigns without any means. This comfortability, contentment, paving a path to a future you never once thought of, nonetheless considered.

But when Taehyung suddenly grunts in the middle of his laughter, winces, you raise your brows. “Everything okay?”

“Uh,” is all that he mumbles, shifting rather uncomfortably on the couch, strain pulling at his features, thinly veiled by mild embarrassment. “L-Like I said. Didn’t. Um…” And his eyes flitting down to his crotch is all the answer that you need.

All the push that you need to offer.

“Do you want me to help with that?”

Alike he were plainly slapped across the face, he stares at you with widened eyes, and it would almost be comical if not for the burning desire that consumes you entirely, the way that his expression falls into one of delighted, lascivious promise. Almost doubtful, he inclines his chin, a guide to bring you forward, lacing invisible ribbons around your wrists that draw you closer, closer, until you unsteadily slide onto his lap, bare skin to skin, thighs straddling either side of his own.

You feel him as if he has every inch of your body shaped to his own, not merely just your hips weighing down on his lap, his palms squeezing the tops of your thighs, thumbs brushing at the flesh, your own caressing his throat in such a way that his lips part invitingly. There, with the heat of his cock pressed to your thinly clothed centre, you watch one another with curiosity, a question that hangs silently between you, yet flares in iridescent neon. Do you want what I want?

Taehyung, in a movement you deem bold, but one that he knows well with too many women lost in the fabrics of his bedsheets, leans forward and closes his eyes to slits, long eyelashes colliding. When he dusts his lips up your throat, barely kissing, just the gentlest of touches, your bones turn to marble and you find yourself a statue. He halts.

“Have you done this before?”

You shudder when his whisper brushes along your jaw with the movement of his lips, featherlight. Right then and there, intoxicated by the proximity of him, you almost grit your teeth and lie. But Taehyung appears to be a man that sees truths like distress signals, the kind to dig his nails deep into the soils, unearth honesty in the dirt that stains his fingertips. He would exhume candour from your very soul, and so you bite your tongue until it bleeds, because bitter copper often tastes better than veracity.

“N-No. Too dicey.”

A small huff of a chuckle tickles your skin, and to your disdain and his reluctance, he pulls away, nearing only once more to place a delicate kiss upon your flushed cheek before resting your foreheads together. At this distance, you can see the streaks of caramel that coil around his iris, ambivalent in nature. Your heart stirs a frenzy when his broad palms leave your thighs, instead coming up to frame your face.

“Not like this, then.” The firm words circle the curve of your ear, the hint of a covenant underlying his tone, as if to say not yet, but not never.

And, in order to demonstrate his point, a vibration hums at the base of your spine, inching up, up. Your toes and fingertips tingle, lashes fluttering, limbs quivering like a leaf caught in the shivering breeze and he notices – you can tell by the way that his nails seem to dig a little into your skin, a silent demand to stay although you both know that there is no control over such a thing. Taehyung smiles, a small, empathetic twitch of his lips before they move.

“Come back again, okay?”

There is no room for denial.

“I promise.”

When you arrive home, the sky is beginning to blend with the evening, distant darkness looming upon the horizon as the sun progress in its descent. The strung fairy lights in the backyard have flickered to life, stars that glitter in the midway juncture of night and day, casting a soft ambience among the gentle chatter and laughter of your family. Meat sizzles on the barbecue, glasses clinking against the lips of wine bottles, and you rush to grab yourself a glass as a means to calm down from what nearly occurred on the other side of the world, but frail fingers curling around your wrist halt you in your path.

“Where did you go today?”

And the way that your grandfather stares at you with his crinkled, kind eyes is almost like he knows that you went someplace that you are still trying to understand, a place anew that you wish to be invited back to more than once, that becomes a familiarity to your seams. You smile, a hushed secret between the two of you, and the sensation of Taehyung’s lips ghosting along your jaw tingles in just the slightest as you speak.

“Somewhere I think that I am supposed to belong.”

10.06.2017 → V22

Visiting Taehyung on that one fated night was no mistake, no flaw in the system that accidentally projected you too far. For if such a thing were true, you would not be going back there, over and over again, seeing him more often than you do the wilting wildflowers in the meadow, the worn spines of the library paperbacks. His smile becomes a regularity, his voice a constant, his mannerisms and language something that rubs off on your skin over four months of arriving, departing, feeling.

Four months is all that it takes for Taehyung to learn that you absolutely despise tomatoes in their natural form, but adore the taste when combined with sauces, soups, anything but the slimy texture that they take in their solid state. To learn that you are studying a bachelor of science, majoring in physics in order to grasp a deeper understanding about the way your body defies all that is supposed truth and fact. To learn that your grandfather has played a greater role in your life than your parents in the sense that neither of them honed the traveller gene, so he was the one to teach you all of the ropes, the necessities, the what to and to not dos. To learn that your friends are treasures, few in number, but enough to keep you content, to understand and trust the reason why you suddenly run out of the club and into the shadows of the alley, or spend longer than necessary in the change rooms, because if anyone were to bend down and look beneath the door, your feet would be nowhere to be seen. To learn that your favourite colour is blood orange and the time of day that you enjoy most is cloudy sunsets on the foreshore, where salt sticks to the roof of your mouth and the waves make love to the sand, the sun upon the horizon turning the clouds into mountains of violet, tangerine, rouge pink, reflecting onto the surface of the sea in an ethereal mirror of the sky. To learn that your time as a high school student was hell as a result of your curse, the slips and leaps occurring so often when you first started having them at the age of fourteen that you almost did not graduate, always running out in the middle of tests or not even arriving at school in the first place. To learn that, like him, you worked your absolute ass off to get where you are now in your life, college being a lot easier to maintain due to the spaced out attendance, the fact that you are older now, more experienced, able to understand.

Four months is all that it takes for you to learn that Taehyung started his career in a seven-member boy band that he is still close with, considers as brothers, to this very day. To learn that he adores children and all kinds of animals, anything, really, that he can hold and cuddle to his chest. To learn that he understands and speaks English so well because he lived in Canada for two years and, in fact, only moved back home to Seoul at the start of last year. To learn that although his sociable personality on television, he prefers to keep to himself, enjoys sitting out on his balcony with the plants and a light novel over spending time in the limelight. To learn that his singing voice is quite possibly the most beautiful thing you have ever had the blessing of hearing, like rivers of honey trickling across your skin, the goosebumps that raise from crackling firewood, humming deep into the core of your being, nestling into your bones and heart to stay for good. To learn that he frequently has nightmares that have him waking up screaming and breaking out in a cold sweat, that give him bruises beneath his eyes in a shade of lavender, the worse ones often forming a mild rash on his left wrist. To learn that he cannot, for the life of him, get along with people fuelled by arrogance, who cannot be open-minded to the world and what is occurring around them, refuse to embrace that there is so much more out there, not only on Earth, but in the entire galaxy that we have not a clue of.

The two of you learn and grow from one another, watering your leaves in newfound knowledge about your individual cultures and lifestyles. He shows you the proper way to hold a pair of chopsticks, while you teach him the correct way to use cutlery (you have not a clue of how he was doing it wrong the entire time while he was living in Canada, but apparently, he was never phased by it). He teaches you Korean phrases – he adores when you point out random items in his apartment and say “chaegjang” (bookcase) or “chimdae”(bed) – while you help refine his skill in your own native tongue, arriving one day to find he has bought an English dictionary and thesaurus for both of you to go through. You even play beer pong with just the two of you at his dining table, using a watered down beer that tastes like dirt, but after he sinks the ball into your third cup, you decide the flavour is sweeter when you share it with him.

Neither of you mention the night where your intoxicated fingers curled into the front of his shirt, his lustrous palms squeezing the muscle of your thighs and eliciting such a sensation within you that even to this day, you barely know how either of you managed to control yourselves. Whether the lack of addressing the matter is out of embarrassment, uncertainty, modesty, you are unsure. But it is a faraway thought, something that only shows its face when you are alone, late at night, thinking of a pair of lips that shape into a grin that resembles a box of sunlight.

By the third month, you are returning to him on a weekly basis, starting to count your trips to the other side of the world on the notepad that sits beside his desk calendar. One strike, one arrival. Twenty-one in total.

But when you sit on the balcony of his apartment on the morning of your twenty-second visit, relaxed against the white metal of an intricately designed chair made for gardens – though Taehyung has never really been one to follow the stereotypical constructs of general living – ankles crossed and the breeze tickling your cheeks, you peel back a layer of Taehyung that reveals more of the shadowed truth tucked beneath. Although he is seemingly an open book, the sentences are scrawled in a never-ending labyrinth and you are still running endless sprints to reach the centre.

Sometimes, you think he may never let you make it.

The foliage pressed up against the railing lessens the intensity of the sunlight, the final threads of spring evident in the flowers that blossom from their respective pot plants, the leaves of the curling vines a brilliant shade of green. A complete juxtaposition to home, where emerald is near its end, falling dead to be crunched beneath the soles of feet on footpaths, leaving the trees to be skeletons, stark and bare. Tea steams between your palms in a dainty porcelain cup, and it is one of the many things in life that you have learned Taehyung greatly indulges in. It is a beautiful day, not too warm, nor too chilly, perfect for you to arrive in a thin, long-sleeved floral dress that makes Taehyung grin all the brighter when you surprise him by suddenly barrelling into the small dining table, feet still tingling.

Although the professional wear that you met him in, you come to discover that he has a preference for casual, slack clothing in the form of loose canvas shirts and baggy trousers. If anything, it makes him more handsome, a natural state of his that you adore, and that you realise with time, you are the only one who gets to see. It is easy for the idol image to slip away and dissolve into thin air when his celebrity status does not reach your local news, the hot gossip in the magazines, only sighted in a rare episode of this or that, which airs on the international channel. In your eyes, he is not the famous Kim Taehyung, even if he remains to be a brilliant star that lights up your navy, midnight skies.

You keep your eyes trained on the small sparrow that flits about the gutters of the building on the opposite side of the street, swallowing your nerves. Hesitancy clings to your tongue, making you cringe when you speak.

“Can I ask you something?”

Taehyung sniffs, and you try to remain casual, taking another sip of the delightful, lukewarm liquid. Today, it is ginger. “Don’t tell me you want to make hoeddeokagain?”

Almost choking on your tea, you sputter into the cup. “No, oh my god. Definitely no.”

The both of you would have thought making pancakes was an easy task, except you drastically proved yourselves wrong last month by accidentally confusing the salt to be the pot of sugar, and ultimately leaving thehoeddeok to burn near black on the griddle after becoming distracted by a song on the radio that Taehyung insisted – although he always says it was you, in fact – that you both dance to. No amount of cinnamon and honey could have saved such a disaster.

“Tell me, then. I am, as you Westerners say, all ears.”

Although you laugh, the nerves start to resurface, demanding to be known. So the only thing you can possibly do is command to his word – tell him.

“Don’t get me wrong when I say that I adore your apartment–” You tug at a thread that hangs loose at the hem of your dress, chewing the inside of your cheek– “But I thought, with your fame, that you would be walking on marble floors and have a mansion entrance guarded by real life tigers, y’know?”

Bringing a standstill to your fretting fingers, his own curl around your knuckles, and when you stray your eyes from the small bird that still flutters about, you discover that he is not looking at you. A sigh silently shudders from between your lips.

“So I guess what I am saying is… Why don’t you? Why do you prefer it here?”

Stretches of silence pass, an unnerving quiet made less tense by the commotion of the street below, the gentle singing of the birds. Your only relief is found in the matter that he still holds your hand, thumb grazing over the tops of your knuckles.

“I think,” Taehyung begins, unravelling your balled up fist so he can study your nails, chipped and imperfect. “I don’t live in a place like that because that’s what everyone expects. They all… Envisage me owning a great, luxurious home in Gangnam-gu, a place so large that it holds more space than life.” As if deeply entranced by the design of your cracked cuticles, he inspects them closer, voice lowering to a murmur. “So I live here because it is quiet and homely. Rarely anybody finds me, and heavy lawsuits get involved if my personal address is publicly spread, which nobody can afford to face since I have not wasted all of that money on granite countertops and– Hold on, real tigers? What kind of cruel person do you think I am?”

When he speaks the final sentence with a cheeky smirk, your stiff posture relaxes into a gentle chuckle, and he at long last looks up at you, wanting to catch sight of your smile, luminescent in the golden rays of the sun that filter through the foliage. His answer deems your suspicions correct, since his apartment is just so helplessly and wholeheartedly Taehyung in its homing of unusual figurines and sculptures that he attains on his adventures to markets, in the furniture from the cream couch to the emerald gramophone that ceases to match anything else in the room, in its cosiness and love that tucks between the floorboards and seeps through the wall plaster. You could see his television personality residing in an impressive manor – but Taehyung, the genuine, real man that you have grown to know and understand, blends with his apartment as if he were made of the coasters stacked upon on the coffee table and the magnets that tack loose leaflets and notes to the fridge.

“True, this place is very you,” You mumble, noticing how much larger, longer his fingers are that wrap around your own. He has made a habit out of holding your hand, something that, at first, had rose petals dusting your cheeks until it became so normal that you barely think twice about it. “I think that may be why I like it so much.”

“That’s good,” Taehyung nods, the smile only faint on the corners of his lips now. “I don’t want people to befriend me, love me, because of my fame.”

The way the words casually fall from his tongue is like an afterthought, yet the true meaning suddenly chills you to the bone, heavy lead that weighs down on your heart out of sympathy. It truly must be so difficult to be in such a situation, never knowing if the man at that bar buys you a drink out of friendliness or out of hopes for a much greater repayment, or if the girl that scrawls her number on your palm has interest or dollar signs shining in her eyes. The pair of you, although experiencing drastically polar opposite circumstances, are more alike than you both realise – isolated by matters that neither of you can help, living in a world viewed through a kaleidoscope, rather than the clear lenses of others. Like a moth to a flame, it selfishly draws you closer to him because he understands, and nobody that you have met outside of your family has sat in the same perspective as you before.

The air suddenly feels too thick, an uncomfortable tension settling on your skin until you decidedly shrug it off. “Well, I guess it’s not every day that you get so lucky to have a random girl who has not a clue of your social status suddenly appear in your apartment, wearing your clothes.”

“More like an incredibly cute girl.”

Although his lungs produce the language of his native tongue, you manage to grab onto one of the words, fluttering warmth in your chest and probably on your cheeks as well – but Taehyung is long used to your bashful blushing. He finds it absolutely endearing.

Raising a brow at him, you playfully dig your nails into the skin of his palm. “Did you just call me cute?”

He winces at that sharp stabs and then grins like a wolf.

“Maybe your Korean is worse than we thought.”

29.09.2017 → V53

If this is what falling in love feels like, then you have leapt from the edge of that cliff, your body weightless in the stretches of air that separate you from the oceans below, never reaching the waves, an eternal drop as the distance grows greater and greater.

It was never really something that you ever considered. Love was a faraway land that your feet never reached, at least, not until you learned to control their sporadic ways of travelling. So when you began to feel butterfly wings stir within your chest from the day Taehyung started to embrace you upon your arrival, sweeping you into his arms and murmuring a gentle what took you so long? into the strands of your hair, you began to figure that maybe, on a feeble limb of hope, he may possibly feel the same way about you too.

Arriving today is much the same, except your seam glides you right into the bathroom, bracing your palms on the vanity before you manage to slip on the wet tiles. Droplets of perspiration still stream down the glass of the shower, and you urgently tame your mind to not think about Taehyung and his golden skin, glistening from the cold water that barely manages to soothe the humidity of Seoul, even near the end of summer. It is only then that you reconcile the thick coat that you wear, groaning and desperately trying to roll the fabric off of your already sweating skin, trying not to think too hard about the plastic bags overflowing with food and house supplies that you had just abandoned in the parking lot of the supermarket back where morning was still rising.

“You’re not a burglar, right?”

At his distant shout, you huff and roll your eyes before escorting yourself out of the bathroom, draping your coat over his desk chair and then poking your head into the living space. The familiar pang of lightheadedness overwhelms you at the sight of him, as usual, golden hair already dry and slightly curling in the heat, a loose white shirt draping from his shoulders, denim blue shorts slack on his hips. When he spots you, the dazzling box grin is revealed, completely blinding you before he is making his way over, enveloping your smaller frame into his body and giving you a tight squeeze that feels better than home.

Taehyung rocks you side to side, humour lilting his tone. “What took you so long?”

“It has only been two days,” You mildly comment, though you understand. Even an hour without him is starting to feel like years have passed.

Chuckling, Taehyung leans back to look down at you, mirth swallowing his beautiful, dark eyes and you swear that underneath their gaze, you would abide by any of his words. You would murder a small village for him if he asked you to do so while staring at you like that. Speaking figuratively, of course.

“Two days too long,” He chimes, and if anything, his grin spreads wider. “Hey, so I have an idea–“

But suddenly, you can no longer take it, pressing your palms against his chest and pushing yourself away from him. Something akin to worry, concern, glances across his features until you are speaking words that have him absolutely cackling.

“I’m sorry but it is so fucking hot – Oh my god, you were suffocating me. I am going to die from moving from one temperature extremity to the next!”

Through his laughter, the kind that normally fills you with waterfalls elation, Taehyung gasps. “Y-Your face … It’s so hilarious when y-you’re mad.” And then, regaining some of his stability, he wipes at his eyes, trying not to sputter at the way you dramatically fan your face. “There is a dress hanging up next to the coats, go put that on.”

Stumbling out a thank you, your feet cannot carry you to his wardrobe quick enough, instantly finding the white fabric and yanking it from the hanger. Taehyung, still chuckling to himself, returns to the living room for your privacy while you change, not even having the chance to notice how pretty the garment is until you have urgently peeled off your jeans and sweater and adorned the material on your figure. He had taken to buying you clothes within a month of you arriving, realising that your seasons were completely opposite, so you would either arrive boiling hot or freezing your toes off. Spring and autumn are a period of peace that accustom to your not too heavy, but not too light selection of fashion. Tying your hair up into a loose bun, you heave a sigh of exasperation at how ridiculously humid the place feels, almost missing the ice that clings to the air back home before Taehyung calls out are you ready?

Placing your clothes with the coat, you drag your feet out of the bedroom, collapsing onto the cream sofa beside Taehyung. He hands you a glass of water after appreciatively eyeing the dress he picked out and you gulp it down within three seconds, not missing the impressed expression that holds his features before they soften into humble excitement.

“So, my plan.” He waggles his eyebrows, and you raise your own to the ceiling as a means to let him continue on. “I know we haven’t tried it yet, and I know you’re concerned about doing so. But I was kind of wondering if, um–“ The hesitancy that skirts his voice has you unnerved, wondering what he could possibly be thinking of until– “You want to come outside to the markets with me?”

Oh.

Taehyung was right, the idea of leaving his flat over the past seven months was a concept that had restless fear knotting in your stomach. You itched to see the outside world of his city, yet it was too risky, too troublesome with your situation of being the living embodiment of a spontaneous disappearing act, unassisted by the fact that he has a face known by the majority of the South Korean population, which will garner even a greater crowd of attention that you most certainly do not need.

“I mean you don’t have to,” He quickly says after your silent pause, rubbing the back of his neck and pulling a face. “But it’s dark out, so if anything were to, uh, happen – nobody would really see? Actually, forget it. I’m sorry, it is such a stupid idea–“

“Like a date?”

Your abrupt words make his jaw go slack, gaping at you in sheer surprise before he smacks his lips shut. A tiny, delighted smirk forms soon after. “If you want it to be, I guess?”

“Okay, let’s go then,” You shrug with a smile, trying to be indifferent, but your fingers quiver and shake, not with the need to escape but with the desperation to be right here, right now, about to experience this with him.

And you are not sure if he notices the tremble of your knuckles, but he takes your hands anyway, squeezing them reassuringly with a grin that sears light and adoration through your heart, repeating your words.

“Let’s go.”

Seoul, you discover, is breathtakingly beautiful.

The view that you had from Taehyung’s apartment never really did the city any justice. Truly, it displayed how busy the streets could get, how lively the stalls that lined the road once a month could become, but viewing the scenery from above could never entirely compare to the feeling of being immersed within it.

The air is much better outside, not as dense, cramped like it was within the apartment. You feel like you can truly breathe through the summer heat out here, exhilaration pumping through your veins as Taehyung takes you through the apartment building, holding your hand once you get into the elevator and never letting it go, not even when you reach the markets that create volume and a warm ambience down by the Han River. As a means to distort his identity, he wears a black cotton face mask that you decide suits him, makes his large, almond eyes all the more expressive as he chatters about each stall, teaches you about the ingredients in the many delicious foods, delights when you try on the traditional hanbok with a skirt in a beautiful shade of rose. It matches your cheeks, he idly comments, and as if to prove his point, they flush all the more fiercely.

After dining on kogi mandu, the most delicious dumplings to have ever graced your tastebuds, the pair of you simply stroll along, enjoying the amiable atmosphere, interlaced hands swinging between you. A few curious glances are made in your general direction at the man who, although his mask, still attains an extraordinarily attractive quality about him, that most likely rises a question of familiarity within their thoughts, but they do not make any comment, no means to interrupt your ‘date’.

When the rows of stalls start to thin out, Taehyung gently squeezes your hand, voice muffled by the mask, yet you can see the smile in his eyes. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s phenomenal,” You murmur, eyes wandering around the vibrant atmosphere, mouth watering at the delicious concoction of street market flavours and aromas. “I am falling in love with it, I may just have to pack up my stuff and move here.”

“I would like that,” He hums, nudging at your shoulder and erupting a fresh wave of joy within you, learning that he adores your presence just as much as you do with his own. But then, he starts to guide you closer to the river, seating you both at a park bench that looms in solitude within the pale light of the moon, the glowing edge of the markets. “My parents would always bring me here as a child. There was a Japanese vendor back then, so we would buy takoyaki and eat it by the river – me, with my banana milk, and my parents with their tiny glasses soju. It was long before I started auditioning for entertainment companies, sometimes I wonder where I would be if I had never received the encouragement from them to do so.”

The way that Taehyung talks about his parents is so heartwarming, fond, that you cannot help but ask him. “Do they still live in the city?”

And like the flick of a switch, his eyes harden to ice, and you feel regret suddenly drop like lead into your stomach. The kind of uncertain fear that happens when you think you are close with someone, but cross an invisible barrier that you had not a clue they put up between you.

“No, they don’t,” are the only words that Taehyung mutters, glassed eyes distantly watching the moonlight shimmer on the surface of the river.

In a moment of bravery, biting your nerves at the jugul