Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was standing in front of his grandmother’s house, back in Daegu. All he could see for miles was the squat little house, with run-down yellow paint and an outdated wire fence. Beyond the yard was a vast nothing, soil dark as night, no streetlamps of any sort, none of the tall industrial looking buildings in the distance. In fact, there was nothing in the distance. No light pollution to block your view of the night sky. Only, there was no night sky. No stars, but Taehyung could distantly see all of the planets in our solar system. He could even see the looming size of Jupiter, her infamous red spot swirling at 1.3 times the width of earth. He can very faintly make out the silvery greens and blues of Uranus’ rings, standing tall and proud against the royal blue backdrop of it’s hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Taehyung peers into the starless sky, straining his eyes for a sign of Pluto, and he thinks he sees a faint outline of the dwarf planet, but he can’t really be sure. His attention is snapped back to his grandmother’s yard when he sees his beloved dog, Soonshim. He stumbles over himself in his eagerness to get closer, but when he nears, dear Soonshimmie starts barking and howling, only, it is not barks that erupt from her mouth, it’s… Spice Girls?

Taehyung is tugged back to reality, where he is currently laying in his twin sized bed in Seoul, still very tired and very disoriented. “What... the fuck?” He groaned, slinging an arm out of his blanket burrito and miraculously managing to hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. It’s no wonder he can’t shake ‘Wannabe’ by Spice out of his head, he practically knows it by heart now, and setting his alarm clock to blare it at maximum volume at 9 in the morning was probably the best decision of his life, second only to insisting that Jimin was to be his best friend for life in the second grade. “Jiminnnniiieeeee!!!” He shouts across their shared apartment, despite his best friend being one wall away and probably already awake. The lucky bastard had evening classes, but still woke up earlier than Taehyung every morning to study and 'soak up the sights and sounds of morning', he put it. To which Taehyung replied with a "Oh, you mean the lovely sight of your guy crush, Yoongi? And the intriguing sounds of sleepy grumbling over morning coffee? Wow, what an experience!" His arm had a nicely sized bruise that lasted for weeks.

“What the heck could you possibly want, Taehyung?” came Jimin’s exasperated response.

"I don't know what to wear... It's only my first week working at the library and I really don't feel like fucking it up but I also wanna wear my cream colored sweater and I'm not sure that I have any pants that go wit it and I'm just super nervous that I'm trying too hard but also I really wanna try cause the library is super nice but I think I'll just go with whatever, you know?." He shouts back, unwrapping himself from his sheets and fumbling through his drawer for a sweater and a decent pair of jeans. He lets out a small whine as he finds out that the only clean pair of jeans on hand are those goddamn light wash ones, definitely not his first choice to match his cream colored sweater. The temperature had recently dropped to below 50 degrees on a regular basis, and that meant that he could bust out his rather impressive sweater collection. He had exactly 47 to choose from, actually. Jimin had recently taken to stealing his sweaters, claiming "bad circulation" and "the winter season is upon us, Taehyungie!" Taehyung bought it, of course, like the sap he was. Nobody could resist Jimin's kicked puppy face.

Speaking of his best friend, Taehyung hadn't heard a sound other that his own attempts at dressing himself for quite some time. Not even the shuffling of papers, or his frustrated little stomps, and it unnerved him. There was always noise in the apartment, mostly coming from Taehyung himself, but that isn't the point. The point is, his best friend in the whole wide w o r l d could be kidnapped, dead, drugged, or could've had a massive heart attack and died. He was too young to die!

Taehyung buttoned his awful light wash jeans and furiously knocked on Jimin's door. "Jiminnie, are you there? Jiminnie don't die on me now, we need to see the new avengers movie! You have so much to live for! You're my bestest friend in the whole universe, and if you died, I would be forced to-" His ramblings were cut off when the bedroom door opened, revealing a bleary eyed Jimin, one sock scrunched up by his ankles, and the other one nowhere to be found, reveling his cute little toes.

"Tae, what are you even talking ab-" was all he got out before he was enveloped in a bone-crushing hug.

"Minnie, oh god you're alive! What did they do to you? Are you feeling sick? Have you grown ears and a tail? I thought you had a heart attack and straight up died on me," he paused, slowly releasing Jimin from his death grip, holding him at arm's length. "Jimin, if you ever do that to me again, I will not hesitate to kill you. For real this time."

"Tae? What are you talking about? I just fell asleep while studying, that's all. You worry over me so much," he said with a chuckle and a small smile. "wait, don't you have to be at the library like," He turned and checked his bedside clock. "Two minutes ago?"

Taehyung blinked once. Twice. "Oh shit, Jimin, buddy, you're right. Who the hell applies for a job and then forgets to show up only a week in?" He rushes out, all in a single breath. He then turns on his heel and almost sprints to the doorway, where his shoes are conveniently stacked in a pile behind the door so that whenever you enter their apartment, the door only swings open about halfway. It really makes bringing in groceries a hassle. And also finding a matching pair of shoes in the pile is a monstrous task, an undertaking in itself, really.

"You. You're 'that' guy who applies for a job and then promptly doesn't show up, Tae. Because you're too busy thinking I've had some type of organ failure to even concentrate on getting dressed." Jimin wrinkled his nose in distaste at his friend's choice of outfit. "Well, dressed properly that is."

"I'm choosing to ignore that last remark," Taehyung said, finishing the knot on the laces of his shoes. "But only because I'm late, and not because I can't think of a good comeback to defend my totally dope outfit. I happen to like this color combo," He lied, standing up and giving Jimin a half-hearted glare before stepping out the door.

Chapter Text

Taehyung only ended up being twelve minutes late to work. Suck that, Jimin.

Actually, he only would’ve been eleven minutes late if he hadn’t sprinted past the library doors in his rush, and was forced to double back after he realized that he was in the athletics wing of campus. He always thought it was strange to have the library and cafeteria right next to the athletics wing but hey, who could complain after he’s seen that many ripped guys right next to where he works? Nobody, that's who.

He eventually burst through the double doors, making quite the entrance in the hushed atmosphere of the library. The only thing that would’ve made it more impactful was if he was holding a bottle of red mountain dew in his hand. Unfortunately, he was in college, and that meant only one thing: the only thing he could afford was tap water and 79 cent cup noodles from the convenience store. That he had to walk to. Because a car would cost him about two years of spicy noodles and he was not about to give up his precious spicy noodles for anything less than a Bugatti.

So, chest heaving, with a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead, he signed in at the front desk, earning a small glare from the other library assistant, Min Yoongi. The smaller male was actually quite soft, but he was also really fond of his quiet time, meaning anyone who interrupted it had just signed themselves up to a very slow death. He hesitated to tell Jimin about that soft part because Jimin would probably think that he had a chance with Mr. Eyebags. Taehyung would do all he could to protect his little cinnamon roll from Min Yoongi. He wasn’t a bad guy or anything, but he would taint Jimin’s pure heart with pg-13 movies and black coffee.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Taehyung panted, throwing Yoongi his award-winning smile in hopes that he wouldn’t find spiders in his sheets tonight, or ashes in place of his sweaters in the morning. That would be a real tragedy. Good thing he majored in music, not chemistry. Or arson. Definitely not arson, Taehyung is convinced that he’s completely capable. Only about 16% of arsonists are actually convicted, his mind helpfully supplies. He takes a look at Yoongi, and decides that yes, he could definitely get away with arson if he actually tried hard enough. He's not even sure if you can major in arson, but if anyone found a way to do it, Yoongi would definitely be the guy that did.

To avoid further incrimination, he busied himself with the book cart, which was probably the most mundane and boring job on the entire planet, but at least it got noodles on the table. All he had to do was read the labels on the spine of the books and put them back in their rightful place. Sometimes, he would get sidetracked though, and end up reading a few chapters of the books that had the big fancy lettering that took up half the page, and whose titles were usually so long that they were practically entire novels in themselves. That was how you could tell that a book was really interesting. He got sidetracked so often, that a normally 30-minute long task took about an hour and a half. But at least he was a reliable worker, unlike Yoongi, who naps for half the time and simply checks books out the rest. But he would never tell Yoongi that, lest he wakes up one morning with his eyebrows shaved. It would be a real shame since his eyebrows were really one of his proudest features.

After ambling along with the book cart for a good hour and a half, he returns to the front desk, where Yoongi lay with his head propped up by a hand on his chin, and a pen in his right hand, making small marks across a blank sheet of paper with lyrics written across it. Well, maybe lyrics wasn't the correct word, since most of the paper was actually filled with scribbled out thoughts and the occasional side note, most of which read “fuck this” and “fuck Professor Chang” and “think of the children”. Taehyung decided not to pry any further. He’s had enough insight into Yoongi’s ‘creative process’ to last him two weeks. Which around that time, he would probably decide to snoop around in Min’s journal again. He was curious, sue him. on second thought, don’t do that, he thought. I have a family to provide for. All three of my stomachs... and even Jimin sometimes.

He smiled at the thought of his innocent and charming best friend, and stepped into the back room to kill some time reading Skullduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy. He was always a sucker for the intricate cover art that always tells of a good read, he muses, thumb flipping the page.