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Taehyung sits high and mighty in the lifeguard chair and closes his eyes for just a second, allowing himself to soak in the sun’s warmth. He can wax poetry about how it wraps around him like a thick wool blanket on a biting winter’s night, but really, he feels like a microwaved hot pocket. Maybe closing his eyes would make the grueling hours trickle by just the slightest bit faster.
He opens his eyes just as quickly as he had closed them though because people are idiots and would get themselves in trouble one way or another, making his job just that much harder.
As a certified lifeguard (and someone who is bound by law to give CPR to someone in need of it, gross), he’s not going to be letting anyone drown on his watch, at least not until pay day. The rent isn’t going to pay itself, and his stuck-up of a roommate certainly isn’t going to either.
Park Jimin is a fucking freeloader, and the day Taehyung kicks him out of the apartment is the day he finally cuts off all the toxic people in his life. It doesn’t matter that Jimin is his so-called best friend and platonic soulmate, it’s each man for himself in any area concerning money.
Taehyung tells himself this, but here he is, raking in dough to make sure his other half was fed well with premium ramen packages.
The beach that he’s at isn’t particularly stunning or breathtaking, but the people certainly are.
Prime example: him.
He’s not completely full of himself, no, but he does realize that the girls who had set up their towels right next to his post had done it with purpose. They would sneak glances at him every now and then and he would be lying if he said he didn’t like all of the attention he was receiving today.
Swimming for a ridiculous amount of hours this summer has toned up every part of his body, including his shoulders that used to be embarrassingly narrower than they are now. His muscles don’t ripple with every movement, but the veins on his arms and hands have become more prominent, and he’s heard that that’s a killer for the ladies.
His naturally tan skin has become even tanner, making him seem to glow even under the shittiest of lightings. He never would have thought that anyone would be able to look good in their laptop’s reflection at the crack of dawn, but he seems to be constantly surprising himself.
Taehyung’s seen many people throughout the entire summer, here at the beach. Girls with hourglass-shaped figures and guys that belong in Calvin Klein advertisements come and go, yet none of them had caught his eye.
What does catches his eye, however, is a body floating facedown far from the shore. His heart skips a beat at someone actually drowning while he was on duty. He’s too young to go to jail for negligible duty.
After some time of squinting at the unmoving figure, Taehyung raises the binoculars around his neck to his eyes and observes more carefully.
Seeing as how the person— who he’s presuming to be a man unless their bikini top had gotten lost— hasn’t moved a single inch, Taehyung hurriedly casts aside the binoculars and climbs down from the lifeguard chair. He breaks out into the sprint, the uncomfortable feeling of hot sand underneath his bare feet driving him to increase his speed, and he doesn’t stop until he’s knees-deep in the water.
People scurry out of the way for him thankfully, children being picked up and ushered away by their parents in the shallow water. He would’ve hated to have to use the whistle around his neck right now. It’s passed off to the next lifeguard on duty and that’s just gross.
He jumps to propel himself forward and glides through the water, swimming as quickly as he can while making sure his kicking feet doesn’t knock out some poor kid in the face.
The water is definitely refreshing seeing as how he’s been half-naked in the sun’s hot rays since nine o’clock this morning, but there’s no time to enjoy how cool the water is against his skin when he has a life to save.
He quickly reaches the motionless body that’s just drifting facedown in the water, arms spread wide like a snow angel. He stays afloat by kicking his feet and propelling himself up in the water. Taehyung does a semi-doggy paddle over to the side of the body to try to hook his arm around the person’s neck and drag them ashore.
Swimming with one arm while carrying another adult is certainly difficult, but it’s an accomplishable task. He’s practiced with mannequins and he swears that only two of them had gotten lost and drifted out to the deep dark sea.
Taking in a deep breath before he subjects himself to the heroic task of saving another human being, Taehyung is then able to calm himself down.
The second his arm hooks underneath the person’s neck and touches their bare skin, the person who he thought had been unconscious suddenly flips over and grabs his arm frantically, accidentally kneeing his inner thigh in the process.
Taehyung’s eyes widen at the narrow miss and thanks all of the gods watching over him today that he can live one more day with a functioning penis.
From what he can see around all of the splashing that the person is causing with his other hand, it’s a boy somewhere around his age wearing purple goggles that are a bit too tight. He’s kinda ugly if Taehyung were being completely honest.
Taehyung screams, ”Ow! Let go!”
The grip is strong enough to bruise and Taehyung swears that it’s not tears forming at the corners of his eyes in this moment. They might be though because the other boy is splashing like his fucking life is depending on it and Taehyung’s eyeballs feel like they had just been doused with a gallon of seawater.
Taehyung understands that the boy might not know how to swim and is just freaking out, trying to cling onto him and breathe, but all Taehyung wants to do is get the both of them back to safety.
Is cooperation too much to ask for?
“Not today, you son of a bitch!” The other boy screams and Taehyung stops to ponder about what a nice voice the lunatic has before the air in his lungs are knocked out as he receives a deadly blow to the chest. Taehyung has never hated his job so much before.
Staggering back in the water, Taehyung somehow manages to grip onto the boy’s swimming trunks between his toes.
Wanting to just get the whole thing done with and over, Taehyung doesn’t let the attack throw him off, and instead puts even more effort into reaching forward to grab the boy whose head is down in the water from having Taehyung aggressively pulling on his trunks.
Taehyung thinks that perhaps the boy had drank enough seawater and is actually unconscious this time when he successfully gains hold around his neck.
Not even two seconds before Taehyung starts swimming back, one arm around the boy, that Taehyung feels movement coming from the stranger and is promptly knocked out.
Jeongguk floats with his arms widespread as he looks at the sand in search of a sand dollar.
Though they’re pretty rare to find— he had already made a bet with Seokjin that if anyone were to find a sand dollar today, it’d be him. His firstborn child is up for grabs, and at this rate, it’d probably take him another five years to find. Seokjin already slapped on the purple goggles for him, pulled way too tight, so Jeongguk’s not giving up just yet.
He’s out far enough so that there won’t be any disapproving parents or whiny children annoying him or invading his personal space. Out here, he’s safe from harassing girls and the envious stares of other guys too, he thinks smugly to himself.
He’s just minding his own goddamn business when he feels someone wrap their arm around his neck in a definite attempt to choke him.
Having taken years of Taekwondo as a child, Jeongguk would not go down without a fight.
He flips himself over and kicks his leg everywhere in an attempt to do as much damage as possible.
Jeongguk grips onto the stranger’s wrist with an iron grip and splashes water everywhere to cause a big enough distraction so that he can do a flying kick off of them and propel himself back to the shore, screaming, “Not today, you son of a bitch!”
He thinks he’s escaped from the perpetrator, but the thought lasts for exactly 0.37 seconds as he’s being pulled backwards by his trunks with such immense force he’s surprised they haven’t already came off. Then his head is underwater.
For once, he’s glad for the gag purchase of the damn ugly purple goggles because despite cutting off the blood circulation in his face, they actually allow him to see his attacker’s body underwater as he’s being hauled off by the neck. Jeongguk tricks the other into thinking that he’s won before promptly swinging his leg so that the side of his foot connects with the other’s head.
Jeongguk’s sure that the dude’s knocked out cold. Anyone without a skull of titanium is sure to pass out from a strong kick like that. It wasn’t enough to do any permanent brain damage— Jeongguk doesn’t have the money to spare for a lawsuit or medical bills— but just enough that death grip on his neck has finally loosened.
His head immerges from the water and he’s glad for the burning oxygen that floods his lungs again in short, rapid bursts. Jeongguk toys with the thought of swimming off and leaving the other guy here to die, but he decides to show mercy on the stranger that wanted to choke him for god knows what reason. He swims back to shore with the stranger in toll, not understanding how lifeguards do this on the daily when Jeongguk’s lungs feel like they’re about to give out from the exertion already.
There’s commotion around him as he drags the— that is a very nice stomach, wow— boy seemingly around his age onto shore, hoping that his back isn’t being scraped by the pink and white seashells that dot the sand. Jeongguk gets onto his knees and gets a closer look at the stranger, heart nearly stopping as he does so.
He’s starting to think that dying at the hands of someone this beautiful isn’t bad at all. Honey skin and symmetrical facial features framed by strong eyebrows.
Jeongguk slaps the stranger on the face with the back of his hand because he might be hot, but he did try to kill him. No shame in being a little rough. “Dude, wake up.”
Jeongguk really wants to leave the crowd to deal with this mess, but then a short, angry person is threading themselves through the crowd, shouting, “Coming through!” He doesn’t have to turn around to tell that it’s Seokjin, so he opts to stare a bit longer at the unconscious stranger, too out of breath to do anything but pant and let his eyes wander a bit. Are those eyelashes real?
Seokjin somehow manages to get rid of the crowd, laughing obnoxiously loudly and shouting, “Oh, kids these days! They’re just playing around. Isn’t that right, Jeongguk? Wow, look at that seagull over there!”
People seem disappointed at the lack of drama and loss of a life, mumbling to each other before finally dispersing and conducting in their beach activities once more.
Jeongguk does whip his head around at a neck breaking speed, though, when he hears Seokjin stage-whispers, “The fuck did you do to the lifeguard?”
“Lifeguard?” Jeongguk echoes. He examines the boy and sees the tell-tale whistle around the other’s neck. Red trunks. “Oh, lifeguard.”
Things seem to make a bit more sense now. The lifeguard must have thought that he was drowning and freaking out about not being able to swim, trying to bring him back to safety.
A loud intake of air can be heard before a head collides with his and Jeongguk falls back onto the side, clutching his forehead with both hands in pain. “Fuck, you—”
“Yeah, I’m not staying to see your ass get beat.” Seokjin sighs, like Jeongguk had taken years off his life, and turns tail to leave.
The lifeguard had sat up immediately upon regaining consciousness, banging his head against Jeongguk’s in the process. He glares at Jeongguk, pointing an accusatory finger as well. “No, you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you! I was just trying to save you from drowning and you knocked me out!” The lifeguard shrieks and Jeongguk belatedly takes in how much more beautiful the person before him is when in motion, despite his flailing arms and weak attempts of swatting Jeongguk.
“You choked me!”
“You nearly kicked my family jewels!”
“Well, you nearly took off my trunks!”
“Because you were struggling too much!”
“I thought you were going to kill me!”
“My job is to save you! I’m a lifeguard!”
The ridiculousness of the situation hits them all at once and they’re left laughing and gasping for air, sand in their trunks and the tide lapping at their feet every so often.
Jeongguk smiles sheepishly and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I thought you were trying to abduct me while I was in the middle of a sand dollar hunt.” The honesty— or the smile, Jeongguk knows how potent his smile can be— seems to placate the lifeguard who nods slowly in understanding.
“Sand dollar, you say?” He asks in a chirpy voice and Jeongguk can almost forget how they both nearly ended each other’s lives today.
“My friend promised me free bulgogi if I found one today. If I didn’t I’d have to give him my first newborn,” Jeongguk explains, not realizing how dumb it sounded until the words had already left his mouth. He looks down at a cracked seashell in embarrassment, eyes tracing the pattern of its ridges as a distraction from what must be a judgmental look.
“I can’t promise you that things will be the same after the loss of a child,” the lifeguard says slowly, and Jeongguk looks up because perhaps not all hope has been lost just yet. “But they sell bulgogi at the shack over there. And my shift is ending in two minutes and all that knocking-at-death’s-door is making me really hungry.” Is this going where Jeongguk hopes that it’s going? Jeongguk hopes it’s going where he thinks it’s going. The lifeguard, smiling a bit shyly, asks “Wanna?” and Jeongguk nods too fast for his own liking.
Taehyung doesn’t care about looks.
They’re a requirement for a good hook-up, but he only sees beauty as a huge bonus in relationships. The boy before him, who introduced himself as Jeon Jeongguk, is not the best looking person at the beach. Taehyung really wouldn’t have spared him a second glance in a crowd, to be very honest. His body is to die for, Taehyung’ll admit that, but his face is less than average.
Taehyung has a good feeling about him and wants to get to know him better though, despite having his head nearly split open by him earlier. Jeongguk has jet-black hair that becomes extra fluffy as it’s drying in the beaming sun. His face is squished together by the goggles that he’s still wearing and his eyes are slanting strangely, but Taehyung is too focused on the cute laughs that spill past his lips ever so often.
He feels a strange fondness take captive of his heart and it’s ridiculous because they’ve been talking for roughly six minutes, but Jeongguk is doing this weird crab dance before entering the multi-purpose food, beverages, lotions, swimsuits, and souvenir-selling shack located on the busy side of the beach, and Taehyung has to stop himself from making weeping sounds because this it it. This is going to be the summer romance fling he’s been wanting after watching The Notebook, he just knows it.
Taehyung didn’t bring his wallet with him, but he rattles his order anyways and winks at Yoongi behind the counter, promising to finally pay him back that weekend. “No shirt, no service.”
“It’s a beach.”
Yoongi scoffs and makes a disgusted face at him, but ends up giving him extra fries and a complimentary soda anyways. Taehyung brings the tray of food to the table that Jeongguk had chosen and sits down on the high wooden stool.
He sets the napkins on one side, rips open the ketchup packages and squirts them out, rearranges the food so that it’s easily accessible to both parties, takes a thoughtful sip from the soda, offers it to Jeongguk and—
Taehyung, honest to god, almost falls off the stool and knocks over all the food with him in the process when he realizes that the goggles are no longer on Jeongguk’s face, but situated somewhere on the table instead.
Jeon Jeongguk is fucking Hot. Like, 11/10 would fuck. Like, Taehyung would totally fuck right here and now. Like—
Taehyung chokes on the soda that he had just been about to finish swallowing, pounding his fist on his chest, cheeks flushed, and wheezes, “What the fuck?” Those may be his very last words and Taehyung’s glad to die with the sight of an angel in front of him, a true beauty, Adonis himself, the cusp of what could have been a blossoming romance.
Jeongguk yelps— he’s fucking adorable, Taehyung ponders with his last dying thought, the fist that’s about to break his ribcage not really doing much— and stands up to run to the other side of the table, hand coming down in steady, hard slaps to Taehyung’s bare back.
Taehyung’s heart feels like it’s been rattled, not because of the skin on skin contact, but because Jeongguk is underestimating his own strength and the smacks make Taehyung’s soul want to leave his body. He manages to un-choke, tear tracks drying on his face moments later.
Jeongguk pops a fry into his mouth before sucking the salt grains off his finger. With one raised eyebrow, he asks, “What was that all about?”
Taehyung tears his eyes away from the other’s pink lips that had momentarily been wrapped around his finger and gulps. “It went down the wrong chute, I guess.”
“You looked like you saw a ghost,” Jeongguk states bluntly, doe-eyes blinking back at him and Taehyung wants to die all over again.
“Correction: I saw you without the goggles disfiguring your beautiful face.”
Jeongguk nearly spits out the bulgogi that he had been inhaling, glad that it didn’t go down the wrong pipe like it had for Taehyung. “What.”
“You’re fucking hot and I can’t believe you kept that from me!” Taehyung shouts, but not loudly enough that strangers could over hear and become curious about the course that the conversation was taking. Just with enough zeal in it that it’s mistaken as anger.
“I didn’t mean to keep anything from you?” Jeongguk responds in a highly-distressed tone, almost panicky like he was afraid Taehyung would get up and leave.
Taehyung finds it— the small pout, the fluffy hair, everything— endearing about Jeongguk and laughs, a loud and genuine one that bubbles from his lungs. “Ah, you’re adorable,” he coos and reaches across the table to boop Jeongguk on the nose.
A delicate boop that has his nose scrunching. Pink dust the tips of his ears and Jeongguk stuffs more food into his mouth, muttering, “I’m not adorable.”
“Adorable says what,” Taehyung says too fast to be comprehensive, the words and syllables all jumbling together.
“What?”
“Ha! Got you.”
“You’re insufferable.” Jeongguk shakes his head in disbelief. He slurps up the noodles before reminiscing. “I should have left you in the water to be claimed by the sharks.”
“But then you wouldn’t have gotten to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“I didn’t.”
“Maybe you should’ve,” Taehyung says teasingly, dumb smile on his face.
Jeongguk blushes and throws a fry at him.