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Kim Taehyung is five years old when he meets Park Jimin for the first time.
They’re on the playground and the shorter boy tries to use the swings on his own, but his legs don’t really meet the ground and he keeps kicking his legs to no avail.
“I can push you!” Taehyung says to him and instead of accepting his help Park Jimin stares at him with big eyes before jumping off the swing and running away.
Taehyung wants to be his friend.
He meets him again two days later and again Jimin is trying to use the swings on his own.
Taehyung runs up to him, abandoning his dinosaur action figures in the sand. “Hi!”
Jimin jumps at his greeting and looks up at him.
“Don’t run away! I wanna play with you!” Jimin freezes and looks like a deer caught in the headlight, but he does stay.
Taehyung gives him a wide smile and steps up to him. “Can I push you and then you push me?” He asks and the other boy nods hesitantly.
“Cool! I’m TaeTae, what’s your name?”
“J-Jimin…” He whispers and Taehyung’s grin widens.
“Can I call you Jiminie? How old are you? Do you live close by? What grade are you in?”
Jimin stares at him, overwhelmed by the rapid questions and he stammers something that Taehyung doesn’t really understand. But it’s okay, he’ll have time to learn everything about Jimin with time since they’re friends now.
They play together and Jimin mainly stays quiet, even when it’s time for Taehyung to go.
Taehyung waves his hand and turns to run to his mom when a hand by his sleeve holds him back. He turns around and looks down to find Jimin’s fingers grasping his shirt.
“Bye bye, TaeTae,” Jimin whispers with his round cheeks flushed like the strawberries him mom picked with him last month and Taehyung thought it looked pretty.
Taehyung was six years old when he knew, for sure, Park Jimin was his best friend in the whole wide world.
They would go to the same elementary school and be in the same class and they planned to sit next to each other and to get matching bags because it would be cool.
“Everyone needs to know we’re together, Jiminie!”
Jimin grins widely at him and he takes Taehyung’s hand to lead them to the swings and since they are bigger now they don’t really need to push each other, but they still do.
“It’s because you’re not big yet, Jiminie!”
“I am so!”
“Not as big as me!”
“I’m older though… I’m almost your hyung.” Jimin pouts and Taehyung stops the swing with his legs to stand up and turn to his best friend. He reaches out and smushes his cheeks which he loves the most.
“But you’re not!”
Jimin pulls his face back and Taehyung thinks Jimin looks cute like this. He really, really, really likes Park Jiminie. His poppa said that he really, really likes his mommy too which is why they got married so they would stay together. Taehyung thinks he wants to stay together with Jimin too.
“Jimin!” Taehyung almost yells and Jimin jumps at his loud voice. “Will you marry me when you’re big?”
Jimin blushes and kicks away some sand, playing with his fingers.
“I guess.”
Taehyung is six years old when he has his first fight with Jimin.
“You always decide what we play! I can never decide!” Jimin complains and crosses his arms in front of his chest, his lower lip pushing out and a prominent frown on his forehead.
“That’s because I know what’s the most fun!”
“That’s not true! You’re stupid!”
Taehyung gasps and without thinking he pushes Jimin so the other boy falls onto the ground. Instant regret fills him when he sees Jimin shocked face that quickly turns into hurt and eventually tears start to pool in his eyes.
Jimin starts crying and Taehyung falls to his knees to hug him.
“I’m sorry!! Jiminie, I’m so sorry! I will never do that again, I’m wrong!” Jimin continues to cry and Taehyung keeps his arms wrapped around him, pulling him even closer. “You’re right, I’m stupid! Stupid TaeTae!”
Two small hands grab his shirt and Jimin shakes his head against Taehyung’s chest. “No, you’re not.”
“Let’s never fight, ever again!!”
They do fight, almost every other day. But they always make up and it’s okay.
Taehyung is eight when his parents give him a new bike for his birthday and he rides it to and from school every day. Jimin always sits behind him, his arms wrapped tightly around him as they roll down the hill.
During the summer they use their allowance to get popsicles and they sit on their swings to eat and talk and complain.
“Mrs Lee is a dumby… and mean,” Taehyung says and Jimin nods in agreement because their math teacher really is a dumby and pretty mean.
“Jiminie,” Taehyung suddenly says with a serious tone and Jimin turns to him. “I bet you, you can’t put the entire popsicle in your mouth.” Jimin bets that he can and it ends up with him almost choking, two popsicles in the sand and Taehyung laughing and hitting Jimin’s back.
“I’m never doing any of your bets! They dumb! Just like you, Kim Taehyung!”
“They’re not!”
“Are too!”
“Are not!”
Jimin always agrees to Taehyung’s bets after all.
Taehyung is ten the first time he sees Jimin punch someone.
The two boys laughed at Taehyung when he was singing and dancing on their way from school. They called him weird and hurtful names and Taehyung became quiet. He is looking at the ground when he feels Jimin’s hand grabbing his.
“Shut up!” Jimin tells them and Taehyung gasps because Jimin didn’t really cuss.
The two bullies crowd then and they keep calling Taehyung a weirdo and Taehyung watches Jimin get really angry because Jimin always gets angry really easily. His mom says Jimin has ‘a temper sometimes.’
“I said shut up!”
“Or what Dwarf Jimin?”
And then Jimin punches him. Taehyung’s mouth falls open and Jimin grabs his hand again and they run away together and they don’t stop until they’re sure they got far enough.
“Jiminie, you’re gonna get in trouble for that!”
Jimin looks down to his hand and his knuckles that probably hurt. He just shrugs. “I don’t care. I hate them. Only I can call you dumb, and stupid, and weird.”
“But I am weird, right?” Taehyung bites his lips.
Jimin put his hand on Taehyung’s shoulder and looks at him with a serious face. “You are, but that’s why I like you.”
Taehyung is twelve when he thinks that Park Jimin is the most beautiful person he has ever seen.
They’re sitting on their swings again and Jimin is laughing at a story Taehyung tells him from when he visited his grandparents over the chuseok holidays.
He missed Jimin every day and the second he came back he ran to Jimin and the two of them went out to their playground.
Jimin laughs with his entire being. His cheeks scrunch up, his eyes become thin slits and his body moves with his laughter. His giggle is loud and sounds like bells ringing and Taehyung wants to believe it’s just for him.
They have to go back too soon, but at night Taehyung sneaks out and walks down to Jimin’s house and like in those movies his mom and sister like to watch, Taehyung throws little stones at his best friend’s window.
It takes more than twenty minutes until a sleepy Jimin appears by his window, his black hair ruffled and his eyes half-open. Taehyung motions for him to come out and, of course, he does.
They walk together and at some point Taehyung takes his hand.
He brought a blanket with him and he puts it onto the sand next to the swings and the two of them lie down.
In Seoul you can’t really see the stars, but Taehyung imagines that they are still there and maybe just shy from all the artificial lights around them.
They point to the few they can see and name them until Jimin points to the full moon.
“That one’s TaeTae,” Jimin says with a giggle and Taehyung looks at him in surprise.
“Why?”
Jimin just shrugs. “Just because.”
They fall asleep for a bit and wake up when the sun starts to rise. They quickly pick up their stuff and both run back home.
Jimin’s house comes up first and Taehyung holds Jimin back by his hand before he can sneak back inside.
“Jimin,” Taehyung whispers and Jimin starts because Taehyung hardly calls him by his usual name. “Let’s stay together for a long time, okay?”
Later, when Taehyung is back in his room he looks through his book shelf until he finds the little encyclopedia about the universe his father got him and he looks up the moon.
It says the moon orbits around the earth and if TaeTae is the moon, then Jiminie must be his world.
Teahyung is fourteen when a girl gives him a confession in a letter and he is confused because he doesn’t know what to do with it.
The other boys in class gets excited and Jimin stays quiet, but still smiles at him and Taehyung instantly knows it’s fake.
Taehyung was never interested in girls. He knows he should be, but he never was and he thought it would just come later. At some point. Maybe.
After school, Taehyung rides them down to the convenience store and they get ramen because it’s a really cold November day and the two of them huddle together while eating from their steaming cups.
“Are you gonna accept?” Jimin eventually asks and he must have sat on that question for hours.
Taehyung stops eating and looks up to the cloudy sky. “Nah.”
Jimin looks surprised and before he can ask why, Taehyung moves his chopsticks into Jimin’s cup to steal some of his noodles even though they’re both eating the same flavor. “I don’t really wanna.” I don’t need to, he wants to say, but doesn’t.
Jimin sulks at his lost noodles and moves his cup a bit further away. “Okay… if you’re sure.”
They eat up and instead of walking to the playground, decide to go home. Taehyung wants to stop Jimin from going inside, but he doesn’t and only waves him goodbye before cycling away.
Taehyung is sixteen when Jimin calls him to the playground at three am via text. He was up anyway, watching anime because they were on school holidays and he was allowed to stay up as long as he wanted to.
He sneaks out, his parents and siblings in deep sleep and meets Jimin by the swings.
Jimin looks nervous and Taehyung doesn’t say anything and just waits for him to come out with whatever he wants to say.
Jimin idly swings back and forth before turning his eyes to Taehyung, his head leaning by the chain of his swing.
“TaeTae,” he whispers and Taehyung almost jumps because it seems so loud and the air feels cold and hot and something is about to happen, but he doesn’t know what. “TaeTae, we said we would stay together for a long time, right? That we would grow old together? Like, grandpas.”
Taehyung nods; his hands are sweaty.
“Taehyung.”
Taehyung closes his eyes because his name never sounded better before. Taheyung closes his eyes and he misses Jimin’s tongue running over his lip in nervousness. Misses his features illuminates in nothing but the dim streetlights and the moon.
“Taehyung, I want to stay with you… forever.”
Taehyung opens his eyes and he meets Jimin’s. Jimin looks terrified and Taehyung knows he wants to say more, or say something else, but they always understood each other.
“Yeah… me too.”
Taehyung is sixteen and during that night, on that abandoned and empty playground, their playground, he leans over and kisses his forever friend for the first time.
Jimin smiles against him.
Taehyung is eighteen when they fight about their furniture.
“I told you not to throw away the manual!”
“It’s fucking Ikea, how hard can it be?”
“It’s not working!”
They give up and that night sleep on the mattress in the otherwise empty room of their first apartment. There are boxes around them and Taehyung set up a single lamp and some fairy lights.
The window his open and the noises of the busy streets and muffled voices filter in.
Taehyung looks over to Jimin, takes in his curves and his spotless skin in the golden light.
“What?” Jimin asks when he catches Taehyung staring.
“You’re dumb,” Taehyung says with a grin and Jimin kicks him. Taehyung laughs and rolls over to start the wrestling war which ends with him losing because Jimin’s dancer thighs are a force to reckon with.
“I let you win anyway,“ Taehyung lies and Jimin giggles and leans down to kiss him.
“You’re a liar, Kim Taehyung.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
Taehyung is twenty-four when they out in the park, close to their playground.
Jimin is reading a book and Taehyung is cycling around him with his bike.
The two of them make eye contact every now and then, but Jimin just shakes his head with a smile before turning back to his book. Taehyung’s eyes stay on him because his Park Jiminie is so beautiful.
“Do you know why I’m going around in circles?” Taehyung asks and Jimin hums, his eyes staying on his book. “Because the Earth is round.” And TaeTae is the moon and it orbits around the earth.
Jimin looks up to him and gives him a skeptic smile. “You’re really weird… that’s why I like you.”
Taehyung rides closer to him and plucks the book from Jimin’s hand before speeding away. He hears Jimin yelling out his name and he looks back to see Jimin run after him.
Taehyung grins widely.
Jimin catches up to him, pulls at his bike to make him stop. He reaches out and reaches for his book, but Taehyung pulls it back to get Jimin closer to him.
“Park Jiminie,” he whispers as he stares down to Jimin who stops trying to get his book back and stills. “Let’s go to the swings.”
They leave Taehyung’s bike behind and walk to the swings. It’s already the early evening so the playground is empty when they sit down.
Taehyung takes Jimin’s hand, his hand big enough to engulf Jimin’s and he loves it.
“Remember when I asked you to marry me when you're big?”
Jimin doesn’t answer, but Taehyung knows he’s listening because Jimin is squeezing his hand.
“I mean you never really got big-“
“Kim Taehyung, I swear to god-“
“But you know… we could still do that.”
They look at each other and eventually Jimin snorts and starts laughing, throwing his head back and Taehyung would be offended if Jimin wasn’t so cute when he laughed.
“You really suck, TaeTae.”
“Yeah, well-“
“But… I guess, ‘we could still do that.’”
Taehyung’s breath gets stuck in his throat and he grins widely. He stands up and tackles Jimin, making him fall off the swing and the bath fall into the sand.
“What the fuck, Taehyu-“
“I love you!!”
“Get off me!”
“You’re finally gonna be my bride!”
“I most certainly will not-“
“My beautiful Park Jiminie, my world!”
“Oh my fucking god.”
It doesn’t really matter how old Kim Taehyung and Park Jimin are.
Taehyung doesn’t really care because he can be with his forever friend.