Only for You (Taekook)
1
The boxes were everywhere.
Stacked against the walls, crowding the hallway, sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor like they owned the place.
Taehyung stood in the centre of the living room with a roll of tape in one hand.
He looked around the apartment.
Their apartment.A slow smile crept onto his face.
Taehyung
(calling out) Jack. Jack, where did you put the box with my brushes?
Taehyung
I labeled it clearly do not stack anything on top and I can already see something stacked on top.
jack
(from the bedroom, unbothered) It's fine, Tae.
Taehyung
It is not fine. Those are my good brushes.
jack
You have forty brushes.
Taehyung
I have thirty-seven brushes and every single one of them has feelings.
a laugh came from the bedroom.
then Jack appeared in the doorway, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, looking like someone who had packed zero boxes himself and was very comfortable with that fact
jack
Thirty-seven brushes.
Taehyung
Don't look at me like that.
jack
(grinning)I'm not looking at you like anything.
Taehyung
You're looking at me like I'm dramatic.
jack
I'm looking at you like you're you.
Taehyung threw the tape at him. Jack caught it without flinching, still grinning.
Taehyung turned back to the window before his own smile could get any wider.
The colony was quieter than the city centre — rows of residential buildings, a small market two streets down, trees lining the pavement that had already started turning amber at the tips.
Taehyung pressed his fingers against the glass.
Taehyung
💭We gonna live here now.
He had been an orphan for so long that the word home had always sat strangely in his mouth .
But standing here, in this small apartment with its south-facing window and its boxes full of his thirty-seven brushes, he thought maybe he was starting to understand it.
2
jack
(stand behind him) Good view.
jack
It's just an alley and a parking lot.
Taehyung
for me it's still beautiful.
Jack pressed a kiss to the top of his head and went back to pretending he was helping unpack.
Taehyung stayed at the window a little longer.
Downstairs, a woman was walking up the path toward the building entrance. She was somewhere in her mid-thirties.
She was carrying grocery bags and laughing at something on her phone.
Behind her, a step back and moving at the pace of someone who had somewhere better to be, was a boy.
Young. Nineteen, maybe twenty.
hands in his pockets, earphones in one ear. He was handsome. He looked up, just briefly, as if sensing eyes on him.
Taehyung stepped back from the window.
Taehyung
(to himself, quietly) Neighbours.
then he found his brush box behind the couch. Something was absolutely stacked on top of it.
He carried it to the corner of the living room and began carefully, methodically, checking every single one.
Jack found him an hour later cross-legged on the floor, a brush tucked behind each ear, completely at peace.
jack
finally you found them?
Taehyung
(without looking up) Thirty-six. I'm missing one.
jack
(sitting on the floor beside him) Of course you will.
They ordered takeout that night .They sat on the floor with the boxes pushed back against the walls and the city humming outside the window and ate noodles out of the container.
Taehyung
(reading the label on the container) It says medium spicy. This is not medium spicy. this is torture.
Taehyung looked at him. Jack was watching him with that easy expression he got sometimes — fond and a little lazy and entirely present.
Taehyung felt something settle in his chest.
Taehyung
(quietly) Are you happy? Here, I mean. With all of this.
jack
(without hesitation) Yeah. Of course.
Taehyung
You're not — you don't wish it was bigger, or closer to your office, or—
jack
I'm happy. Stop looking for the problem.
Taehyung nodded. He went back to his noodles.
3
After Jack had fallen asleep and the apartment had gone quiet, Taehyung sat on the window with his knees pulled up and his current novel open across his thighs.
The book was battered at the spine from being read three times. On the cover, in dramatic gold lettering: The Don's Only One.
He was on the chapter where the mafia boss finally finds the person he'd spent four years hunting across three countries.
Taehyung had read this chapter so many times he practically had it memorised. He read it again anyway.
Taehyung
He didn't say I love you. Men like him didn't say things like that.
Taehyung
He just looked at her the way a locked door looks when someone finally has the right key.
Taehyung
Like he'd been waiting. Like he'd always known she'd come.
Taehyung closed the book on his thumb and stared out at the parking lot.
The light was still on in the apartment directly across from theirs.
He could see the outline of someone moving around — the neighbour's unit, The boy from earlier, maybe.
He couldn't tell. He opened his book again.
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