Archive of Our Own

Jimin is just six years old when he gets his first tooth.

Or his toof, as Taehyung - his best friend since forever - calls it. 

Jimin has tried to correct him that it’s a tooth but it doesn’t really stick, because Taehyung is also six years old, and he meets the teacher extra after school for help with his ‘th’ sounds, so he can’t really help it.

But that’s okay - Jimin likes the way Taehyung talks.

Jimin likes everything about Taehyung. 

He has since the day they met, or at least that’s what his mom tells him. Jimin can’t really remember all that much about it - being tiny and all - but his mom says even when he and Taehyung were just little babies in diapers they were best friends. And Jimin’s mom likes Taehyung’s mom, and Jimin loves Taehyung. 

Taehyung has cool race car toys that he lets Jimin play with, and he loves the same adventure games that Jimin does, and overall they’re the perfect match. Taehyung’s mom calls them two peas in a pod. Jimin thinks Taehyung’s smile is probably bigger than anyone else’s in the whole world. 

The day that Jimin first shows him his tooth, they’re sitting out together in the patch of grass between where their two driveways meet. Their spot . 

Taehyung and Jimin’s families have lived next door to each other ever since Taehyung was two years old, when his mom and dad moved to the neighborhood. Their houses are mirrored, so the driveways are next to each other, and the space between has come to serve exclusively as their playtime spot, as long as they promise to be careful and watch out for cars. 

And Jimin is six and a big boy, so he’s very good at being careful.

Sometime’s Jihyun - Jimin’s baby brother - has to sit with them too, because he’s still a baby and doesn’t have any best friends yet. But not today. Today he’s on the back porch with Jimin’s mom, because Jimin has news for Taehyung. News that would go over the head of stupid little babies who don’t know anything about big kid stuff like this. 

They sit together on the little patch of clover-leaf between the driveways, up close to one another, knees touching, as Jimin pokes into his own mouth, baring his teeth so Taehyung can get a good look inside. 

“It looks pointy,” Taehyung says in awe, leaning in close to inspect Jimin’s mouth where the new little tooth has poked through the gum, where his old baby tooth used to be. 

Taehyung has curly hair that flops over his forehead when he leans forward - Jimin wishes his mom let him grow his own hair out like that, but she keeps it short.

“It is,” Jimin agrees, reaching his own finger into his mouth to touch around just like his mom told him exactly not to do. “It’s a lille ‘it ‘unny ‘eelin’,” he says around his finger. 

Taehyung scooches in closer so he too can jab his finger in, and Jimin moves his own over to the side so that Taehyung can get a good feel on the tooth. It’s not like it’s the first time Taehyung has done this - it probably isn’t even the first time today. Jimin’s mom always tells him that he and Taehyung are gross boys for how they act sometimes, but Jimin doesn’t care - he thinks Taehyung is awesome. 

“Wow,” Taehyung whispers, leaning back and retracting his fingers after he’s sufficiently poked around Jimin’s mouth. He wipes his fingers on the mesh of his shorts and leans back on his heels. “You’re like - a big kid now.”

“Mhm,” Jimin agrees, taking out his own finger as well and wiping it on his own shorts to copy Taehyung’s motion. His mom tells him not to do that too, sometimes, but it looks so cool when Taehyung does it. “Mom says this means I have to start going to afterschool club soon.”

Jimin doesn’t know much about afterschool club, he just knows it’s special - not everyone gets to go. You only get to go once you’re big. 

“Woah,” Taehyung whispers, at the same moment reaching into his pocket to pull out the little bag of jelly beans he keeps there. He offers some to Jimin and then shoves a whole bunch into his own mouth, and Jimin giggles as the jelly gets lodged in the gaps of Taehyung’s baby teeth. 

Taehyung gets distracted - that’s one thing Jimin knows about Taehyung. They’re best friends, and one best friend responsibility is knowing that sometimes Taehyung will just stop listening. 

Just like he does right now, suddenly focused on the grass below - where he’s probably looking for a four leaf clover. He does that a lot, even though he’s never actually found one. 

His dad told him they were lucky, and Taehyung wants to be lucky really bad.

But that’s okay - Jimin doesn’t mind. As Taehyung chews and trails his fingers around in the grass, Jimin sticks his own finger back into his mouth to rub at the little nub poking its way out to the right of his front teeth. It’s a little sore and super sharp and it means he gets to be all grown up soon. 

This is Jimin’s first tooth, and he’s so excited. 

-----

Jimin is almost six and a half years old when he gets his second tooth. 

It’s just as sharp and pointy as the first one, but it pokes a little longer out - jutting out over his bottom lip in a way that makes him look funny, lopsided. 

His mom tsks the first time she notices it, squishing his cheeks between her palms and tilting his head up towards the light to get a better look.

“Jimin-ah really, stop fussing around,” she says as he struggles in her hold. She rubs at his little tooth with her index finger and frowns. “It’s a little long on the left, but mommy will teach you how to fix it, okay?” 

Jimin scrunches up his face. 

“Fix what, mom?” he whines, still trying to pull back. “It’s my tooth. I want to look at it.”

His mom huffs in annoyance, throwing her hands up in the air and stepping back from him. 

“Well, go on then,” she sighs, helping him pull the little stepping stool over to the counter so he can see over the edge and into the mirror. “You’ll only be able to do this for so long, you know.”

“I know , momma,” he huffs, peeking over the lip to get a good look at his new tooth. It flashes in the lamplight and looks so cool - sparkly. He tilts his head from side to side to look at it from different angles. Even now, he can already see how he looks a little different. “So cool, ” he whispers, resisting the urge to poke at the tooth with his fingers. He’ll wait until his mom leaves. 

His mom leans down over his shoulder, her hands rubbing at his shoulders lightly, and he can feel her smiling as she leans forward to kiss his cheek. 

“You look so handsome, my sweet boy,” she tussles his hair lightly, and then grips his cheek again, moving his head around to change the angle. She clicks her tongue, “we’ll really need to get that fixed though, baby. You can’t go to school like that - it’s not polite.” 

Jimin whines again, shaking her hand loose to push himself closer to his reflection in the mirror. He can feel her huff of breath as she tuts, smoothing down the creases on his overshirt. He opens his mouth a bit more so he can see both of the teeth at the same time - the way they shimmer in the bathroom light, flexing and wiggling around when he pokes them with his tongue. 

He knows from his mom that he can move them without his tongue if he thinks hard enough, but he doesn’t know how yet. 

And right now he doesn’t care. 

He spins around quickly, his mom leaning back to hold his shoulders before he can topple off the stool. She’s still looking at his tooth with a pinched expression, and it’s clear that she wants to scold him further - but Jimin can’t care about that right now. 

He’s buzzing.

He bounces on the balls of his feet, and his mom huffs a laugh as she smooths his hair over his forehead - scrunches her nose fondly at his antics. 

“Can I go see Taehyungie?” he pleads, reaching out his own hands to squish her cheeks as she did to him before. His mom puffs out her mouth in response, making a silly face that has him giggling through his request. “I want to show him!”

She holds his wrists with her hands, gently prying them from her face so she can speak normally, and keeps them gathered at his chest, still giggling. 

“You can go see him,” she smiles, leaning forward and rubbing her nose against his own, Jimin squinting with his smile to nuzzle back - he loves when she does that - and then she pulls back to look him in the eyes with a serious expression. “But you know the rules, right baby?” 

Jimin does know the rules, and he nods firmly, squeezing her fingertips to make sure she believes him. He’s big now, he’s not a baby. Unlike Jihyun, he gets to know the family secrets like how Jimin’s mom has even bigger teeth than Jimin has, and how one day he’ll have them too - but not for a while. 

The big rule is that - at least while his teeth are still small - he can show them, but he needs to be extra careful that they don’t move and wiggle. It’s top secret.

It’s super hard to keep them in place, but Jimin is big - he can handle it no problem. 

His mom says that Taehyung probably won’t have his same teeth, and that’s okay - but Jimin isn’t allowed to be mean about it. He isn’t allowed to tell Taehyung things that might make him upset. Which Jimin thinks is silly because he’d never be mean to Taehyung - but his mom says it’s important to know, just in case. 

And Jimin’s mom knows everything , so he hooks his pinky with hers and double promises that he won’t show Taehyung how long his teeth can get - that he’ll be on his best behavior. 

His mom smiles and helps him to hop off the stool, and he’s out the door within the moment, already scrambling down the hall while she yells after him to mind his manners. 

Jimin fumbles at the door with his shoes, his tongue roaming all the while over his new tooth - wiggling it back and forth and back and forth. 

Taehyung will be so excited.

Jimin sprints across the yard quickly, his feet tumbling over one another as he gets to the fence that separates their houses at the back. He can see Taehyung sitting on the stoop behind his house, a coloring book in his lap and a colored pencil in his hand. He has a popsicle in his other hand, the juice smeared across his cheek messily, like always, because Taehyung likes mess.

“Taehyungie!” Jimin shouts, running over to the little gate and pulling it open to launch himself across the grass. “Look! Look!” 

Taehyung looks up from his book, dropping the pencil onto the ground and sticking the popsicle into his smiling mouth again as he waits for Jimin to get close enough. 

One thing about Taehyung is that he’s lazy . Jimin hears Taehyung’s dad say that to him sometimes, when he won’t clean up his toys or forgets to do his chores. But Jimin’s mom says it’s rude to say that about your friends - that it’s not nice that Taehyung’s dad says it at all - so Jimin doesn’t say that, and runs all the way up to Taehyung where he waits on the stoop. Jimin doesn’t mind anyway, he can make up the distance easy, because he can run fast enough for the both of them.

“Look,” Jimin huffs once he’s close enough. He pushes a finger to his own face, poking at the little tooth that peeps over his bottom lip. “Taehyungie, I got my second one!” He’s careful to keep the tooth from wiggling too much as he does. The other one wiggles all the time now, which his mom says is normal. 

Taehyung pops the popsicle out of his mouth and gapes, standing up to shove his face closely into Jimin’s own. 

“Woah,” he whispers, bringing his hand up to poke into Jimin’s smiling mouth without a second thought. It tastes faintly like popsicle and dirt and crayon and Jimin wrinkles up his nose but doesn’t complain. Once Taehyung has retracted his fingers, Jimin beams widely again. 

“It came in just this morning. Cool right?” 

“Wow,” Taehyung smiles, pulling the popsicle back up for a lick. And then he thinks about it for a second and his face twists up and he stomps his foot with a whine. 

“Not fair!” he says with a pout that isn’t all that effective with juice smeared all across his face. “My teeth haven’t even fallen out yet and you get two big ones already? That’s not fair.”

Jimin purses his lips and cocks his head to the side - the motion a little difficult with the way his new tooth pokes into the skin of his bottom lip.
“Maybe you’ll get them soon? My mom said first grade.” 

Jimin doesn’t know if that’s the right thing to say, but his mom has told him that he’s not allowed to tell Taehyung he might not get them at all - so Jimin thinks it’s okay to lie a little, if it makes him feel better. 

But it doesn’t seem to, because Taehyung scrunches his face up further at this - his thinking face - and he goes a little quiet. After a few seconds he shrugs again and pouts down at the grass, kicking his foot a little. 

And Jimin scrunches his face and fiddles with his tooth with his fingers, trying not to be sad that Taehyung isn’t as excited for his news as Jimin thought he would be. 

The thing about Taehyung is he gets jealous easily, too. Jimin’s mom says it’s because Taehyung doesn’t have any siblings like Jimin does, and he doesn’t have to share all the time. Sometimes he gets fussy and Jimin just has to wait him out until he feels better and is ready to play again. Sometimes it takes a while, but Jimin’s mom says he’s great at waiting. 

So Jimin shifts from side to side as Taehyung thinks, and he fiddles with his tooth, feeling how it twists around between his fingers. 

Taehyung lets the popsicle hang by his side and Jimin watches as some of the juice drips onto the grass. 

Normally, Jimin would give him a big hug like he does Jihyun when he gets whiny, but Taehyung doesn’t really like hugs when he’s upset, so Jimin stands and waits. He thinks of things he could say to make Taehyung feel better, but he can already tell from the way Taehyung scrunches his brow that this fit won’t last long. Jimin is too old for fits - he thinks - but Taehyung still has them sometimes. 

Jimin has them too, but not as often - because Jimin is big now, and fits are for babies like Jihyun. 

But Taehyung isn’t a baby. He doesn’t cry like Jihyun does - he just needs to get upset for a little bit. And after a few minutes he can see Taehyung relaxing his eyebrows and looking less sullen than before, and Jimin knows it’ll be okay to talk again. 

Jimin is an expert in Taehyung, just like Taehyung is an expert in Jimin. Jimin’s mom says so. 

“Can I have a lick of your popsicle?” he asks, ducking down to try to catch Taehyung’s eye. He makes a silly face to make him feel better, sucking his new tooth into the fold of his tongue and smiling big.

And Taehyung, never one to hold a grudge for very long, can’t help the smile that fights at his still-pouted lips, and within the moment he holds out the popsicle to share. 

Taehyung has problems sharing sometimes, but never with Jimin. 

-------

Jimin is eight years old when he first disappears from the mirror. 

He’s brushing his teeth before his first day of third grade and he can tell that there’s foam all over his face - because there always is, and he can feel it. But when he looks up to the mirror to check, there’s no evidence to speak of. Because there’s no evidence at all. He can see straight through where he used to be, right back towards the towel rack behind him. 

Even when he waves his hand around - nothing . He’s gone.

Which is so. Cool.

“Momma!” he yells through his toothpaste, spitting quickly into the sink to rid himself of the excess froth. “Momma come look!” 

He can hear her coming before he sees her, her feet lightly padding along as she wanders towards the bath. He takes the time to wipe off the rest of the foam from his face on the sleeve of his jumper while he waits, leaning side to side to see if maybe his shadow will still show even if he won’t anymore. 

His mom rounds the corner and immediately huffs a breath, smacking Jimin lightly upside the head and scolding him for ruining his sleeve. 

“Mom, look,” he whines, stomping his foot for emphasis and yanking her further into the bathroom so he can point at the mirror where he’s supposed to be. “I’m vanished.”

Jimin’s mom coos and smoothes down his hair as they both stare into the mirror where the towel rack hangs behind them. 

“Oh my sweet baby, all grown up,” she laughs, kissing the top of his head and crouching down beside him on the tile. “Soon enough you’ll be too big for your baby fangs, and what will we do then, hm?”

“ Mom ,” he whines, dragging out the syllable as he struggles to pull out of her hold. 

He’s been looking forward to the day he disappears since forever. His mom told him that it usually only happens once you hit puberty, but the Parks are historically early bloomers. He knows his Papa disappeared when he was six . 

He also knows that it won’t last, though. Your first vanishing only happens for a little bit, and until he actually goes through puberty, he’ll be stuck fading back and forth in the mirror as his body adjusts. Even now, he can already see the way his fingers are starting to reappear in the reflection before him, and it won’t be long before he’s fully reappeared. 

But that doesn’t make it any less cool. 

“Can I call Taehyung?” he asks hopefully, staring at his mom with big pleading eyes as she continues to fuss with his hair and tuts over the stain on his uniform sleeve. 

Jimin knows that Taehyung is probably getting ready too - his dad makes him get up extra early on school days to make his own lunch, so he might be busy. But Jimin can’t wait until the walk to school to talk to him. He’s practically bubbling with energy and excitement - needs to let it out somehow or he thinks he might pop .

His mom levels her gaze and raises her eyebrows and he already knows her answer, but he pulls out his biggest pout anyway.
“ Please,” he whines before she can open her mouth. “Please, please, please? I promise I won’t tell him, I swear!” 

His mom looks anything but convinced as he whines. She smoothes back his hair and continues her fussing, fangs poking out over her lips in a clear show of displeasure with his attitude. They only come out when she’s getting ready for a lecture and Jimin doesn’t want a lecture he just wants to call his friend. 

“Please, mommy, please?” he juts out his lip and makes his eyes real big like he knows looks cute even though he’s maybe a little bit too old for it. He reaches out his little pinky in her line of sight. “I promise, promise! I’ll follow the rules, honest!” 

At eight years old, Jimin is old enough now to know that Taehyung isn’t like him. He isn’t an Outlier. Taehyung won’t disappear, and he’ll never have fangs and he doesn’t go to after school classes on Thursdays to meet with the clan. There’s a whole list of things he’s not allowed to tell Taehyung, and it makes him feel a little sad because he wants to tell Taehyung everything , but it’s never stopped them from being best friends. 

He for sure won’t tell Taehyung about his vanishing, but just talking to him at all will be enough. 

Jimin’s mom huffs a breath, blowing air up that flutters the bangs on her forehead in the way Jimin knows means she’s not happy, but she won’t say no, either. 

“Fine Jimin, you can call him,” she begins, and Jimin is hopping towards the door before she can even finish the sentence. He doesn’t make it far, a claw in the back of his sweater snagging him before he can leave the bathroom. 

“I am not finished speaking, Mr. Disappear,” she says, tugging him back and turning him around to face her. She eyes him sternly, and Jimin fidgets from foot to foot, eager to leave the room as soon as possible, but old enough to know better than to cross her. His mom grips his shoulders gently to stop his shuffling. “You can call Taehyungie, but you need to be extra careful now.” 

Jimin nods resolutely, before she finishes the sentence. He knows he needs to be careful. He’s learned by now how to keep his fangs tucked in, and how to make sure they stay that way. After school classes have helped him learn to control them more easily, but baby fangs can be tricky. His friend in the clan, Jungkook, only recently got his fangs, and Jimin teases him on end about the fact that his still wiggle around nonstop. Which his mom says is a little mean, because Jungkook is still a baby . 

But the point is he can control them now, and Taehyung has never asked - not since the first few months when they came in. Jimin knows how to keep secrets, and he can keep his vanishing secret too. He’s sure of it. 

Jimin’s mom doesn’t seem as sure, and she furrows her brow at his response. 

“I know you’re careful baby,” she says, petting the side of his face as she so often does. “But you’re growing up, and things like this can be harder to hide. I just want to be sure you’re safe.”

Jimin stops nodding - tries not to fidget. He puffs out his chest as big as he can go, until his mom smiles. 

“I’m big, mom. I got this!” he asserts. And as if to prove his point wrong, he looks over her shoulder and watches as his face reappears in the mirror - fangs extended and all from his little show of bravery. He pulls them back in as fast as he can and hopes she hasn’t noticed, but her face when he looks back says she has. 

“I know, you’re very big,” she agrees, petting his hair back once more before resting her hands more firmly on his shoulders. “But, you’re still my little baby, and I worry. You have to keep things like this away from Taehyung. It would hurt him to know.” 

She says this with a pointed look, and Jimin gulps. He would never hurt Taehyung. Never.  

They’re best friends. Jimin loves Taehyung.

“I know, mommy,” he says, putting on his most serious face and his own hand on her shoulder, and ignores the way she raises an eyebrow in response because this is serious . “No fangs, no nothing! Taehyungie is safe with me!”

Jimin may or may not know that he is very cute and he may use this to his advantage. 

His mom breaks a smile, her fangs extending over her lower lip like they do sometimes for reasons he doesn’t really understand yet. 

“Alright then,” she says wryly, “Well what are you waiting for, then? Go call him!”

Jimin is out the door before she can even finish the command. 

-----

Jimin is nine years old and over at Taehyung’s for dinner when he learns what garlic is.

Well, he knows what it is. Jimin isn’t stupid. He knows there are things he’s definitely, absolutely, under no circumstances allowed to eat, and he knows that garlic is one of them. His mom has explained to him that garlic and the Park’s do not mix, and Jimin knows when his mom means business. 

But the thing is that Taehyung’s family cooks really differently from Jimin’s own. Taehyung’s grandma loves spices and flavor and all the things that Jimin’s mom is a bit scared to tussle with. 

And Jimin loves his mom’s food, don’t get him wrong - even if her eggs are a little wet and she doesn’t really understand the concept of flavor, considering she never eats the food herself - but Taehyung’s grandma’s food is so good. He can never pass up the opportunity to try it, even when he knows to heed his mom’s warnings about being extra careful. 

So when he goes over on a Tuesday night to join them for dinner and Grandma Kim sets a plate of spaghetti noodles and crispy bread in front of him, he digs in without thinking. 

And it’s so tasty, so he asks for seconds, even before he’s finished his own first helping. 

“Always such an eater,” Grandma Kim says in response to his request, happy to place another scoop on his plate alongside more bread. 

Taehyung laughs at this, his big boxy smile on display as Jimin digs his fork into the noodles. 

“Jiminie can always eat,” he laughs, as he toys with his own cut up noodles - because Taehyung doesn’t like the stringiness and pasta isn’t his favorite meal. “At school yesterday he ate a whole pizza.”

Jimin smiles big at that, because yeah! He did!  

Taehyung’s mom snickers at the outburst, patting Taehyung’s head lightly and motioning for him to go back to his dinner. Taehyung hates having his hair patted, and scowls at the feeling, but jabs his fork back into his plate nonetheless. 

“Well, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung’s dad says after a bite of his own. “You’re more than welcome to eat as much as you want here. Plenty of pasta to go around, considering Taehyungie certainly won’t be finishing his own.” 

He says this with a pointed stare in Taehyung’s direction, and Jimin pouts his lips because he doesn’t like when Taehyung’s dad pokes fun. It never comes off as nice as when his own mom does it. Feels mean. If Taehyung notices, he pretends he doesn’t. 

“It’s all really, really good,” Jimin says loudly to Taehyung’s grandma to swivel the attention off Taehyung’s eating and back to his own. He’s always been hungry enough to eat for the both of them - and he doesn’t want Taehyung’s dad to get mad like he does sometimes. 

Taehyung’s parents fight a lot, and Jimin’s mom says it’s why Grandma Kim lives with them. 

“Well, thank you Jiminie,” she says kindly, smiling in his direction while patting Taehyung’s shoulder in a way he does like. “Does your mother ever make you garlic bread at home? I’ll have to give her the recipe.”

And no, Jimin’s mom doesn’t make him garlic bread. 

Because Jimin has never had garlic before, his mom doesn’t even keep it in the house. Because on the list of things that he is absolutely, positively, one hundred percent not allowed to eat, garlic is on the tippy top. 

And Jimin has now just eaten not one but two pieces of it. Apparently.

If Jimin’s eyes could pop out of his head they would, but he’s a big kid now and he keeps his composure , as his mom would say. So instead of freaking out - like he definitely wants to do, if the itchiness under his fangs is anything to go by - he puts on his biggest smile and assures her that, yes, his mom makes that all the time and then excuses himself from the table with the apology of a tummy ache. 

And then he calls his mom, and asks if he can maybe come home a little early. 

And then he freaks out. 

He races home in a panic, his eyes welling with tears like a baby as he goes, fangs digging into his bottom lip because he has a whole lot of trouble controlling them when he gets overwhelmed and right now they want out. 

Jimin’s mom opens the door for him smiling and then - once she sees his face - ushers him into the house with a worried brow. Jihyun peeks out from behind her legs as she helps to pull Jimin’s sneakers off and him into her arms, like she did when he was still just a baby. And Jimin clutches hard into her sweater and bursts into tears. 

Jimin struggles to even form a sentence through his watery eyes and snot and heaving sobs, hugging desperately to his mom’s chest. Because he’s going to die and it’s all his fault and he didn’t even get to tell Taehyung where he was going because he was so scared. And his mom hugs him close in the entryway and pets down his hair, and he can feel Jihyunnie hugging his waist to try to help, in the only way a six year old knows how. 

And Jimin cries and cries, unable to stop as he thinks about how stupid he was. How he doesn’t want to die, when he hasn’t even gotten his big fangs yet. How it’s not fair. 

Jimin’s mom holds him through it, whispering calming words in his ear and rocking him back and forth gently. And finally, after what feels like a million minutes, Jimin calms down enough that his sobs turn into sniffles, but he doesn’t let go of her sweater no matter what and his mom doesn’t make him. 

She pats his back and lets him cry it out until he feels better. 

And after a few minutes he does, but that doesn’t make sense. 

“Mommy, I’m going to die.” he whispers into her neck, fangs still wobbling against his lip from his fit. But he has to tell her, because she told him not to eat garlic and he did it anyway. The worst, most awful, terrible thing he could have done, and now he’s going to have to leave his mom and Jihyun just like his Papa did. 

He feels the tears bubbling over again as he says it, but he pulls back from her sweater and dashes at them with his sleeve - determined to be a big kid. 

But then he looks into her eyes and he can just tell that she’s trying not to laugh - her lips pursed tightly in that way they always are when she can’t take him seriously. And this is serious! 

“Don’t laugh!” he whines, feeling his fangs extend at his outburst, poking over his lip and giving his speech a slight lisp. “It’s not funny, it’s true!”

At this his mom does laugh, and Jimin feels the tears bubbling up again and he holds back another hiccup of a sob in his throat - flushed and embarrassed and scared that she doesn’t believe him.

She notices her mistake quickly though, wiping tenderly at his waterline before any more tears can fall. 

“Ah, baby no, no, I’m sorry,” she says soothingly, smoothing his hair back, and cupping his cheek. “It’s okay sweetie, I won’t laugh. See?” 

She makes her face very serious with the statement, furrowing her brow and pouting her lips, making sure to keep her fangs retracted. Jimin almost can’t help the smile that creeps over his lips at how stony her expression is, but he fights it down, not quite done with his tantrum. 

“Now,” she says calmly, wrapping her arms around his back. “Tell me why my son is going to die, when just twenty minutes ago he was having a great time at his best friend’s house, hm?” 

Jimin can’t meet her eyes, licking his tongue over his protruding fang as he stares at the ground. 

“I ate garlic,” he whispers to the floor, and when she doesn’t reply immediately, continues, “So, I’m going to die.” 

Jimin’s mom doesn’t reply for a few seconds, and Jimin doesn’t dare look up, just presses himself into her chest for comfort. That is - of course - until he feels her laughing again , and he yanks back in betrayal to see her snickering, eyes pinched closed, a hand pressed up against her forehead. 

“I’m serious!” he whines, stamping his foot for good measure. “A whole bunch of it!” 

“Jimin-ah,” she says through her snickers, now practically doubled over against his shoulder. “You aren’t going to die. I promise.”

Jimin gapes, unsure what to do with this information as his mom finally calms down. He dabs at his eyes with his sweater sleeve again, and then tucks the fabric under his fang in a way that makes him feel less antsy, chewing lightly at the knitting. 

“You promise?” he whispers around the fabric, still unsure. 

His mom tucks his hair behind his ear, tugging the sleeve out of his mouth with a tut.

“Well, you said you ate a whole bunch right?” 

Jimin nods glumly. 

“Well if you ate a whole bunch and you were going to die, don’t you think you’d have done it by now?” She asks seriously, ducking her head down so she can meet his eyes where he still stares at the floor. 

Jimin creases his eyebrows and purses his lips in uncertainty because he doesn’t feel dead, and his mom has never been wrong before. But it doesn’t make sense.

“But,” he says slowly, peeping to look her in the eye and then back down at his hands where they curl in his jumper. “But you said that I should never eat garlic. You said it’s tippy top of the list. We’re ‘llergic.” 

His mom smiles, tutting up his chin with her finger so he looks her in the eyes again. 

“Allergic,” she corrects, “And that’s true, you shouldn’t. But that’s when you’re grown up honey - not now. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you worry like that.”

He takes this information in for a second, mulling it over in his mind. 

“So I’m not gonna die?” he asks quietly, just to confirm again because he still isn’t sure he believes it. 

“No,” she says firmly. “You might get a little tummy ache later, if you really did eat a whole bunch ,” she smiles, “but you most definitely will not be dying. I would never let that happen. Okay?”

Jimin bites his lip, his fangs finally retracting back where they belong, now that he’s calmed down. After a second of thought he nods his head in agreement. 

“Hyung won’t die?” Jihyun pipes up, from where he still hasn’t let go of Jimin’s waist this whole time - his face pressed into Jimin’s back as hard as he can manage. 

His mom tugs his little fingers loose, dragging him around so he tucks up into her arms alongside Jimin. 

“No,” she confirms. “Nobody is dying.” 

Jihyun seems pleased by this assessment, happy to tuck his face into their mom’s neck and cuddle in now that his big brother is safe. 

“But,” she continues, looking Jimin in the eye, “It’s good that you knew to worry honey. Sometimes things happen that we can’t control, and this time it was okay, but sometimes it won’t be. When you’re older you really won’t be able to eat garlic - but I promise, you won’t want to.”

She leans in, tugging the boys in close so she can whisper conspiratively,

“It stinks! ” 

Jimin can’t fight the giggle that bubbles up at that, laughing into her collarbone as she mimes sticking out her tongue and pinching up her face at the supposed smell. 

“It didn’t smell bad to me ,” he says through his laughter. 

“Well that’s because you’re still little,” she says knowingly, “When you’re older that changes. But for now? A little garlic is A-Okay.” 

Jimin nods in agreement, letting himself be coddled a while longer - even if he does disagree with being little . Jimin is a big kid now - he has the fangs to prove it. But sometimes it’s nice to cuddle up with his mom and let her make everything better. 

Hours later, once everything has calmed down, Jimin calls Taehyung up from the landline in the kitchen and apologizes for leaving dinner in a hurry. 

“That’s okay,” Taehyung says from the other end of the line, waving through the kitchen window at Jimin from his own kitchen landline. He’s in his jammies now, and he still has toothpaste all over his mouth from where he clearly didn’t do a good job cleaning up. “Grandma felt bad that you got sick, though.”

“I’m sorry,” Jimin mumbles again, returning with his own wave to keep time with Taehyung’s. “I’ve never had garlic bread before. I lied to your grandma. I’m sorry for that too.” 

Looking through the windowpane, he can see Taehyung snicker before he hears it over the phone as well. 

“That’s okay - I hate trying new stuff,” Taehyung says, which Jimin already knows. 

“But hey! We have it all the time!” Taehyung continues excitedly, “You can come over and try it again tomorrow!” 

Jimin watches as their hands move in sync across from one another and thinks this over to himself. He knows the rules about what he’s absolutely definitely, for sure, not supposed to eat, but his mom did say it would be okay. 

And it was so tasty. 

He shoots Taehyung a sneaky smile from across the way.

“Yeah!” 

When Jimin comes home smelling like garlic for the next week, Jimin’s mom is livid , but nobody dies, so it’s okay. 

-----

Jimin is ten years old when his mom starts making him drink one tablespoon of blood with dinner every night to “get him ready,” but Jimin doesn’t like it very much. 

He’s still too young to really crave it like he will one day, once he gets his grown-up fangs, and it mostly just tastes slimy and gross. And it’s his mom’s blood too, which is double gross. But she says it’s really important that he tries, so every night he has to practice biting her wrist with his nubby baby fangs that aren’t good for much else than barely pinching the skin. His mom says it’s important practice though, and she’s never been wrong before. 

Luckily, though, he gets to skip it when Taehyung comes over, and Taehyung comes over a lot . This year they’re in the same class at school for the first time since kindergarten, and they’re determined to make the most of it. They sit side by side in the classroom (and stay extra quiet to make sure their teacher doesn’t ever even think of separating them), and they play together during recess, and after school they do their homework together too, because Taehyung’s mom has to work late a lot and his grandma can’t always be home to watch him. 

Taehyung comes over in the afternoons to hang out with Jimin and Jihyun and their mom, and she makes them afterschool snacks and helps with their homework and it’s awesome. And some days, if Jimin is super lucky, Taehyung stays over for dinner too, because his mom calls to ask if Jimin’s mom doesn’t mind, and Jimin’s mom says it’s no problem. 

Because Jimin’s mom is always happy to help out, and she’s very fond of Taehyung, and Jimin loves Taehyung.

Jimin’s mom cooks them dinner tonight as they lie on the ground finishing their math problems for the evening - Jimin leaning over every once in a while to fix something on Taehyung’s paper. Taehyung isn’t great at math, but Jimin has always been good enough at it for the both of them. 

Taehyung huffs a breath once the final problem is finished, and rolls over onto his back to stare at the ceiling afterwards. He leaves the papers and notes strewn about behind him as he does, so Jimin collects and stacks them neatly, and then joins Taehyung on the floor, immediately reaching out to loop their fingers together. 

Taehyung has been quiet today, which isn’t really new - he’s often quiet. But more quiet than usual, and Jimin holds his hand tightly as he thinks. He can hear his mom in the kitchen speaking with Jihyun - probably teaching him how to cook, because he’s been learning to help more now that he’s gotten his first fang. 

“Mom says Daddy’s leaving,” Taehyung says softly, suddenly, not looking over at Jimin the whole while. His brow is furrowed as he stares upward, his lips pursed. 

Jimin rolls over so he can tip his chin onto Taehyung’s shoulder, and wraps his arm across his chest in the way he knows Taehyung doesn’t mind - doesn’t constrain him too much, 

“Where’s he going?” Jimin mumbles into his sweater, and Taehyung shrugs, jostling him as he does. 

“She said he probably won’t be back for a while,” Taehyung says after a moment. “Maybe never.”

Jimin purses his lips at this news, glancing down at where Taehyung has crumpled a loose paper in his fist, scrunching his fingers intermittently in a way that betrays his stony expression. 

Taehyung is mad. 

“Maybe he’s like my Papa?” Jimin whispers after a few seconds of pause, the only noise coming from where his mom and Jihyun putter around the kitchen. It feels strange to hear them now, as if they shouldn’t be moving around like normal when clearly something’s very wrong. But Jimin doesn’t really understand what it is. “He’s dead.”

This doesn’t help, like Jimin thinks it will. Instead Taehyung’s face crumples and he turns his head away from Jimin altogether before he can see him cry. But Jimin can tell, because Jimin can always tell. Taehyung lets him keep his arm around his chest though, because Taehyung wouldn’t ever try to pull away from Jimin entirely. 

“My dad isn’t dead,” he says harshly after a moment, in a way they don’t ever talk to each other, really. “He’s just not coming back.” 

And Jimin holds on tighter, because he doesn’t really understand, but he can tell that there’s not much more he can do. 

He’s only ten, after all. 

That night Jimin doesn’t feel as lucky when they eat dinner together, and Taehyung keeps his eyes glued down to the kitchen table. And he feels even less lucky, when Taehyung goes home with his head still down, and he hears his mom on the phone with Taehyung’s mom - talking about them.

And later on, long after dinner has ended and Jimin has gotten into his pajamas and brushed his teeth, he waits for his mom to come in for his nightly feeding.

He toys all the while with his fangs, wiggling them left and right where they’re loose. Soon he’ll lose them completely, and his big ones will grow in - his mom says. 

When his mom comes in to give him her wrist, he bites down without a fuss. 

Because Jimin supposes that maybe having to drink a little bit of blood every once in a while isn’t the worst problem he could have. 

-----

Jimin is twelve years old when he vanishes from the mirror completely , and it happens at the worst possible time. 

Taehyung is sleeping over tonight, his eyes bright and his smile wide at the prospect. Taehyung has been extra happy recently, his teachers finally letting him move up into the advanced classes after a year of “deliberation.” 

Jimin has never really understood what there is to deliberate - Taehyung is one of the smartest people he knows. It’s a no-brainer that he should get to be in the honors classes with Jimin. But finally their middle school has decided to agree with him, and this year for eighth grade Taehyung will get to be back in Jimin’s classes again. 

It’s the last night of summer vacation, and Taehyung’s grandma and Jimin’s mom have permitted a sleepover at Jimin’s house to celebrate, something Jimin’s mom rarely allows. 

To make up for it, Jimin has had to take his feeding earlier, before Taehyung could come over, and the copper taste lingers on his mouth even now, hours later. But it’s worth it, because it’s always worth it, to hang out with Taehyung. 

They stand together now in their pajamas, brushing their teeth in the bathroom and jostling for room at the sink. Taehyung has foam spread all over his chin and even some in the ends of his hair, in a way that’s just very Taehyung. Jimin himself is better at brushing his teeth without the mess now, especially because he needs to work hard to brush the underside of his fangs without Taehyung noticing. 

After Taehyung has deemed his teeth successfully brushed, and his chin successfully covered in toothpaste, he leans down to spit in the sink first. And that’s when it happens. 

Jimin doesn’t really notice it at first, when his reflection disappears from the mirror in front of himself - while Taehyung’s head is still ducked down, now drinking directly from the tap to wash out his mouth. It’s been happening intermittently ever since that first time when he was eight, and usually if he thinks hard enough he can bring it back within a few seconds. So Jimin squeezes his eyes shut tight in concentration, and when he opens them he fully expects to see himself in the mirror once more. 

It’s a bit shocking when he doesn’t, the mirror showing just the top of Taehyung’s hair, and the towel rack behind them. 

Jimin startles and tries again quickly. And when that doesn’t work, he tries again. And then again. And again. 

And then Taehyung is leaning back from the sink, wiping at his mouth with the back of his sleeve and standing up - and Jimin can’t do anything except the first thing that comes to mind. 

He shoves Taehyung’s head back down into the sink. 

“What the heck!” Taehyung shouts in alarm, gripping the sides of the sink basin tightly as Jimin holds him down. There’s no water, so it’s not dangerous at all, but Taehyung - the big baby he is - acts like Jimin has pushed him directly into the deep end with the way he splutters for air. “Let go!” 

Jimin, who now doesn’t have the use of his arms, opts to spit his toothbrush out onto the floor in panic. He can clean it later, once he figures out what to do now.  

In all honesty, it’s amazing that Taehyung has never noticed before that Jimin doesn’t always have a reflection. They’ve been in the bathroom together on more than one occasion when this has happened, but he certainly can’t explain it away as a minor hallucination when it’s been over two minutes and Jimin is still very much missing from the mirror. 

“Just,” Jimin spits out the lingering toothpaste in his mouth into the sink beside Taehyung’s head, and Taehyung makes a noise of absolute disgust. “Just hold on! There’s a bug!” 

“Why does my head need to be in the sink for a bug ,” Taehyung whines, now working to pry Jimin’s hands from his hair, as his efforts to push up from the sink have proven useless. 

“It’s a big bug!” Jimin stresses hurriedly. “Huge! Massive! You can’t see it - way too scary!” 

Taehyung whines again, kicking his feet backward to try to dislodge Jimin from his position. 

“I’m not scared! Let me up!” 

“No!” Jimin looks at the mirror again, but there’s no luck. He’s gone for good. 

It makes sense, his thirteenth birthday is coming up, after all. His mom had warned him about this, and the clan has been prepping his age group hastily for the upcoming changes. But Jimin had still, perhaps naively, thought he had a bit more time. 

Turns out, nope. 

“Mom!” he shouts over the sound of Taehyung struggling. Even though Taehyung is now taller than him by a good bit, Jimin is still stronger - and right now he’s very glad for that. “Mom, there’s a bug .” 

He hopes she understands what he means, time is of the essence here. After a few seconds, he hears a bit of shuffling from the living room and then her footsteps padding towards them.

“You’re twelve years old and you can’t kill a bug?” She asks from around the corner, and then after a moment she pokes her way into the bathroom, her robe tied loosely and her eyebrow raised in perturbed confusion. She eyes the situation hesitantly, as if she’d really prefer not to be a part of it. “Want to explain why Taehyungie’s head is in the sink, Jimin-ah? And why is your toothbrush on the floor?”

“Yeah, Jimin-ah,” Taehyung shouts, still struggling against the porcelain. “Why is Taehyungie in the sink!” 

“Mom, there’s a bug ,” he stresses again, glancing frantically between her eyes and the mirror, where he's still conspicuously absent. Jimin’s mom furrows her brow but doesn’t seem to get it and he huffs loudly, annoyed. “A bug on the mirror?” 

It finally clicks, and her eyebrows reach her hairline as she stares at the reflection and then where Taehyung is still pinned down. 

“Oh,” she shouts, running in quickly to help hold Taehyung’s head down in the sink. “A huge bug! Terrible! Taehyung, keep your head down. This is awful!” 

Jimin stares at her now in horror, as they both hold Taehyung down, no plan whatsoever to speak of. It’s not like she shows up in the mirror either. So now what? 

“Keep your head down, Taehyungie,” She says as she looks around desperately, clearly stalling for a plan to come to mind. 

“What’s going on!” he shouts back, panic now creeping into his voice as they keep him down, and Jimin feels awful because if there’s one thing Taehyung hates, it's being held down. But desperate times call for desperate measures. “Is it big? Is it a spider?”

“It’s like a tarantula!” Jimin says back in panic, and his mom stares at him like he’s a moron, her brow furrowing as she questions how she could raise such an idiot for a son. Which is perhaps not unreasonable, considering in what world would there be a tarantula in this climate. In their house. 

Jimin shrugs his shoulders helplessly, because what else was he supposed to say!

“A tarantula?” Taehyung squeaks, and redoubles his efforts to escape. “Let me out! Why are we all in here with a tarantula! Why am I in the sink!”

Jimin sees it in her eyes the moment his mom gets a plan, and it couldn’t come a moment too soon. He doesn’t know how much longer he could keep Taehyung down there without repercussions. 

“Jihyun-ah!” she yells out. “Could you please come to the bathroom, honey? Mommy needs your help for a second!” 

And Jimin doesn’t really know how bringing another invisible person into the room is really going to help the situation but sure - why not. 

After a moment Jihyun putters in, his glasses skewed on his face as his eyes dart between the members of the situation at hand. 

“Uh,” he says quietly. 

“Baby, could you come here a moment? Just need you to hold Taehyungie here for a second while me and Jiminie kill that big bug okay?” 

“No! Don’t hold Taehyungie!” Taehyung yells back in confusion. “Taehyungie doesn’t want to be in the sink anymore!” 

Jihyun looks confused, but walks in anyway, and Jimin breathes a sigh of relief when he realizes why. Because Jihyun is still nine years old, and he’s disappeared a couple times now, but he’s really good at controlling it. He almost never vanishes unless he wants to - usually when it inconveniences Jimin the most. But right now, he shows up in the mirror just as he should, and with a quick glance of confirmation to their mom, he grips tight to Taehyung’s hair and holds him down. 

“Perfect! Just like that!” Jimin’s mom smiles, and Jihyun smiles back, though he definitely has no idea what’s going on. “Okay Taehyungie, just a couple more seconds and then you can come up again, alright?” 

“No!” 

Jimin’s mom ignores his complaint and looks between her sons seriously. 

“One, two, three. Okay?” 

And Jihyun looks confused, but Jimin understands. So when she counts again he jumps back, scrambling backwards out into the hallway where he won’t be within range of the mirror. She follows quickly, leaving only nine-year old Jihyun to hold Taehyung’s head down in the sink - no match for Taehyung. 

Within seconds he’s back up - eyes wild and frantic as he looks around.
“Where’s the tarantula?” Taehyung yelps, terrified, booking it out into the hallway with Jimin and his mom - clearly ready to leave Jihyun to fend for himself. “What happened? Did you get it?” He cowers behind Jimin in the door, hugging tightly to the sleeve of his pajamas. 

“Yeah, we got it. It’s okay Taehyung,” Jimin says quickly, turning around to pull Taehyung into a big hug. “Sorry about the sink.” 

Taehyung grumbles, opting to hug Jimin tighter instead of dignifying that apology with any response. 

Jihyun, for all his confusion, stands in the bathroom alone and quirks an eyebrow. 

“There was a tarantula?” he asks with wide eyes and a smile that says he finds this idea much more cool than at all scary. 

Jimin isn’t allowed to brush his teeth with Taehyung anymore, after that. 

-----

Jimin is thirteen years old when he finally, finally, gets his adult fangs - and it’s so much more embarrassing than anyone told him it would be. 

It’s not as though Jimin doesn’t see it coming - when the baby fangs fall out. It’s embarrassing enough as it is to have to walk around his middle school with big gaps in his teeth, but that’s expected. He’d seen the way Yoongi and Seokjin, two older members of the clan, had done the same a few years before, and they’d prepared him thoroughly for how to best hide it, so his classmates won’t notice so much during the interim before the new ones come in. 

So Jimin’s ready for that; what he surely isn’t ready for is when the new fangs do come in and they’re crooked. 

And they’re not crooked like how his left baby fang was, poking out just a little too long over his lip. No, no, it’s infinitely worse, in a way that any budding thirteen year old dreads. His mom takes one look at him when he wakes up to the new fang growth and her face says it all. Jimin may not be able to look in the mirror to check for himself, but he can certainly feel it - the way the left tooth tilts forward out past the jut of his lip. It’s angled all wrong. And the next day, when the right one comes in much the same way, his fate is absolutely sealed. 

Braces. 

Worse. 

Fang braces. 

Jimin sits in the orthodontist's chair as he stares at the ceiling and wonders what he ever did to deserve such a fate as this - worse than death, arguably. 

He’ll have to wear them for six months, the clan doctor says. There’s no getting around it - no other option, believe him, he checked. They don’t make Invisalign for fangs. 

He’s stuck with the metal ones, fit across the front of his teeth in an effort to drag them back into place so they fill in correctly. And what's worse? Even when he gets them off, he’ll have to wear a retainer to keep them from getting messed up again.  

Jimin is thirteen and way too old to cry, but he definitely thinks about it when they pinch his jaw around to get everything in place. 

Three hours later, he gets home with a sore mouth and an even sorer ego, because Jihyun spends the whole car ride making fun of him for it, despite their mom’s orders to knock it off. All Jimin wants to do is curl himself into bed afterwards, upset and feeling bruised all over and wishing that he could do anything else but go to school the next day. 

But when they pull into the driveway, Taehyung is already waiting for him in the patch of grass between the driveways - looking for four leaf clovers like he always does. And Jimin sinks down further into his seat because right now the last thing he wants is to see anyone - for anyone to see him like this. 

Taehyung stands up the moment he hears the tires crunching up the drive, and Jimin knows that any hope of avoiding his attention is lost. Not that there was really much to begin with at all - avoiding Taehyung isn’t even in the realm of possibility. They’re practically psychically linked, with the way they hang off one another.

He steps out of the car and Taehyung is in his face in an instant, his own face pressed up close, fingers already reaching up to pry at Jimin’s firmly closed lips. 

“Show me!” he smiles, tugging at Jimin’s bottom lip purposefully, not even waiting long enough for Jimin to close the door to the car behind him, so Jihyun has to shove him from behind to get them out of the way. 

“Move it, sharktooth,” Jihyun sneers as he leaps out from behind them and towards the house, ignoring their mother’s scolding because Jihyun is eleven now and certifiably annoying . 

Jimin keeps his lips firmly clamped together and shakes his head in stubborn refusal, forehead pinched in irritation. 

Taehyung only laughs at his sour expression, making Jimin even less inclined to open his mouth. 

“C’mon,” Taehyung laughs, boxing Jimin in against the car so he can pinch his bottom lip and tug. “It can’t be that bad!” 

Jimin bats his hand away, and then covers his mouth with his hands to delay any further attempts by Taehyung. Because it is that bad. Jimin went to an orthodontist in the clan, one with experience in fang dentistry, and he’d seen the photos on the walls of kids like him with metal all across their smiles. It looked horrible , and Jimin can’t see himself in the mirror, but with the way Jihyun’s been bullying him he knows his are just as bad, if not worse. 

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I am not!” Jimin asserts from behind his hands, dodging back and forth as Taehyung tries to get a grip on his forearms still. “It’s so bad!” 

Jimin’s mom huffs from the doorway, keys dangling from her hands as the boys bicker. 

“Jiminie, come inside soon, we need to go through the supplies the doctor gave you for cleaning,” she says over her shoulder as she unlocks the door and heads inside. 

“I will, mom,” he shouts back, and Taehyung takes the opportunity of his momentary distraction to pry his hands down. Jimin isn’t fast enough to stop him, and Taehyung holds them in place so he can’t yank them back up.

He leans in close so their noses brush, expression steadfast. 

“Open your mouth.” 

Jimin scrunches his nose up and butts his head forward, knocking Taehyung back, but only for a second. 

“No.” he mumbles with his lips as closed as he can keep them, Taehyung pushing back into his space with a boxy smile and complete disregard for his escape attempts.

“Open it.”

“Mm-mm.” 

“As your best friend, I should get to see! You’re being ridiculous.” 

Jimin sticks out his tongue, careful to keep his lips pressed to his teeth to avoid Taehyung seeing anything - which backfires a little, because the braces are still sensitive, and they cut into the skin of his gums. But sacrifices must be made for the sake of his dignity. 

He doesn’t care if it’s fair or not. It’s his mouth and his ugly teeth and if he wants to keep them just to himself then that’s his business.

Finally, after immense back and forth, Taehyung relents, rolling his eyes and stepping back. Jimin readjusts his shirt where it’s gone wrinkled, and scuffs his shoe in the gravel - trying to appear nonchalant while he keeps his lips sealed tight. He wants to lick his teeth like he did when he was little, to feel better - but he can’t because of the metal. 

It sucks . 

Everything sucks. 

Jimin glares down at the ground, feeling sad and upset and flushed - embarrassed that he’s embarrassed, and Taehyung hovers beside him pouting too, because Taehyung historically hates being told no. 

It’s quiet between them for a second, Jimin just wanting to go inside and curl up and feel sorry for himself. Taehyung bounces on his toes nearby, clearly having finally caught on to just how bad of a bad mood Jimin’s in. 

And then Taehyung ducks his head down so he can stare up goofily into Jimin’s face. 

“Do you want to come over for a sleepover tonight?” he asks, changing the subject suddenly, in the way Taehyung’s always been wont to do. His brain spins a mile a minute, Jimin knows. “You can come around after dinner - Grandma says.” 

And Jimin knows that that isn’t what Grandma said, because Jimin always gets a dinner invite. But Taehyung has always been more perceptive than people give him credit for and Jimin knows when he’s being given an out - so he doesn’t have to embarrass himself through his first metal-mouthed meal. 

And Jimin has never and will never say no to a sleepover with Taehyung, no matter how upset and small and sad he feels. 

Taehyung is always willing to wait Jimin out - will always be there once he’s ready to smile again.

That night, Jimin and Taehyung curl up in Taehyung’s twin bed under the sheets together - after Jimin has struggled through hours of learning to chew around his braces and then clean them properly. 

The worst part, for sure, is that he still has to feed with them - it’s even more important now that he’s thirteen and his big changes are right around the corner. His mom won’t let him skip no matter what, and it hurts his gums to have to bite down around the metal. His fangs can’t extend and retract as easily like this, and although his dentist assures him that it won’t affect his ability to bite for real in the future, it makes it more than a little uncomfortable now. He misses how easy it was with his baby teeth, and he misses when he didn’t really need it. 

He hates having grown-up fangs. 

Taehyung has his flashlight propped up under the sheets so they can see one another, even though it’s hours after lights out now, and the boys were meant to be asleep a long time ago. 

Jimin has been tight-lipped all evening, opting to communicate in head shakes and nods with Teahyung’s family for fear of accidentally exposing his teeth - and Taehyung has been a good enough friend not to push the subject. 

But now as they lay down together preparing for sleep - after Taehyung has exhausted his arsenal of mindless chattering that doesn’t require Jimin’s contribution - he leans in real close again - trails his index finger up and down over Jimin’s nose like he sometimes used to do when they were still little kids. 

“Can I see now?” he prompts, snuggling close to cross their ankles together.

Jimin still feels embarrassed, and his teeth and gums still feel sore. He fiddles nervously with the hem of his sleep shirt, looking down cross-eyed at where Taehyung’s finger moves back and forth with a loose rhythm. 

If he had it his way, he wouldn’t show anyone ever. But Taehyung isn’t just anyone, he’s his best friend, and Jimin - no matter how hard he tries - has never been able to say no for long. 

So Jimin musters up all the courage he hasn’t had all weekend, and bares his teeth in the light of the flashlight for Taehyung to see. He doesn’t really know what it looks like - only has a faint idea from the way Jihyun meanly described it on the car ride back from the dentist - when everything was still completely red and swollen and gross-looking. 

But Taehyung doesn’t react like his mouth looks like any of those things. If anything, his eyes get big and shiny like they do sometimes when he’s really impressed. 

“Woah,” he whispers, lifting his fingers up to touch at the metal. He doesn’t press hard, aware from Jimin’s flinch backwards that the wires are still sensitive, but he pokes his fingers around just like he did when they were six years old. Just like he still does sometimes, though usually more for the purpose of antagonizing his friend than anything as innocent as this. 

And Jimin lets him, curling his lips up higher on his gums so that Taehyung has ample room to feel around. He keeps his teeth retracted in, like his mom and the clan have taught him to over the years - finally old enough not to run the risk of accidentally exposing them when his emotions run too high. 

Taehyung is quiet as he traces his index finger lightly over the bumps of his teeth and then pulls his fingers back altogether, letting Jimin finally close his mouth again - if he wants to. 

“They’re so sharp,” he says, tucking his hand down again so he can tangle his fingers with Jimin’s own. “You look badass - like a Power Ranger, or Robocop.”

Taehyung says this with his biggest smile - as though he truly believes it. He looks at Jimin like he’s never been cooler - like he can’t imagine anyone more impressive to have as best friend. 

And before he knows it, Jimin’s lips are splitting into the widest smile he’s managed since he got the news of his braces the weekend before. He just can’t help it - it’s hard not to smile with Taehyung around. He doesn’t have to worry about how it looks to him - Taehyung doesn’t care. Never would. 

And if Jimin feels his heart beat a little more quickly afterwards, it doesn’t bother him. Taehyung has always had that effect, because Jimin loves Taehyung.

-----

Jimin is fifteen years old when he stops being able to eat.

Human food, that is.

His appetite is insatiable, actually. It’s more what he’s able to eat, that’s changed. 

Things have sped up rapidly in the last few years - as one might expect it to when you have to go through not just one growth spurt but two. His mom has been stressed beyond her years dealing with Jimin’s growing pains and Jihyun being a pain in general - because he’s twelve now, and has taken to disappearing from the mirror whenever he feels like it just to mess with her. 

Jimin’s braces are gone - thank God - and his fangs are finally back to normal - but those are about the only things that are. 

He’s taller - for one - finally shooting up too big for his uniform, and needing new shoes more rapidly than his mom knows what to do with. He’s taller than her now even, which he knows makes her a little mad - even if it’s only by a few centimeters, because Jimin isn’t tall by any stretch of the imagination. Not like Taehyung - whose growth spurt has sent him towering above the rest of their tenth grade class. 

And now if he doesn’t remember to apply deodorant he smells really bad according to his mom, and he has to contend with the reality of stubble and how it never actually goes away, seemingly no matter how often he shaves. 

And then there’s the issue of his voice cracking at the worst possible times - and the fact that his little shit of a brother has taken to mocking him for it relentlessly, even though it’s not like he’s too far from it happening to him either!

Altogether, it’s a lot to contend with. 

But in addition to the changes that have come from puberty, Jimin has also had to come to grips with the ramifications of his Loose-Fang years, as they’re called in the clan. It’s the time where little fledglings stop relying on just their mothers blood, and they start learning how to become full-blooded feeders all on their own. 

The time when most of them learn to hunt. 

For Jimin, however, whose mom has always been a bit of a nut as far as the clan community is concerned, this means learning how to sink his fangs into the blood bags she keeps in the freezer from her job at the hospital. 

It’s all legal, she says. Purely, absolutely ethical, compared to the frenzied blood-sucking his friends from the clan-meetings get up to in the dead of night. 

And Jimin might feel embarrassed about that - the fact that he essentially drinks from juice boxes when he’s far past his years as a fledgling - but he’s fifteen and a self described mommas boy, and he’s never known it any other way. 

It’s either mom’s wrist or the bags in the Park household, and there is nothing more embarrassing than still drinking from your mom’s wrist after your grown-up fangs have come in. 

So the bags it is. 

Plus, Jimin’s never been one for violence, and he hates the idea of stalking people in the night - no matter how fun the older boys in the clan say it is. Jimin doesn’t care how much of a sissy it makes him look to Namjoon and Hoseok and the other boys in his age group - he thinks it’s gross. 

Especially because his best friend is a human, and what would that say about him? If he cuddled up with humans in the daytime just to suck them dry at night? The optics on that are terrible. He doesn’t care that lots of people do it - he won’t be one of them. 

The point is that Jimin has become no stranger to dipping his fangs into human blood for a snack - it kind of comes with the territory. Up until now though, he’s been able to split his meals between human food and blood whenever he wants. He could eat at Taehyung’s for dinner, and then come home for a midnight snack of O-negative and it all worked out just fine. 

But tonight, when he sits at Taehyung’s dinner table for supper while his mom works late - not garlic, he’s learned his lesson there - his nose wrinkles up at even the idea of putting Taehyung’s grandma’s cooking in his mouth. 

“Not hungry, tonight, Jiminie?” Grandma says as she passes the salad bowl towards him only for him to politely decline a serving. 

He’s stuck with only the bare minimum of what he could get away with putting on his plate - a cut of chicken and some carrots that he could only barely stomach bringing within close range at all. The idea of eating it turns his stomach tenfold. 

“It all looks great, Grandma Kim,” he says with a smile, but he knows it must come out a little bit forced because her expression dims slightly, and Jimin feels horrible for it. Grandma Kim always makes the best food - he’d hate for her to think he doesn’t like it. 

So before he can think twice, he stabs the chicken and shoves it into his mouth all in one bite to prove his point. And it tastes good, at first. For a second he thinks maybe he’s in the clear. 

Until he starts chewing, that is, and suddenly he might as well be eating sawdust. Whatever flavor there was at first has evaporated, broken down by his saliva before he could even think to enjoy it. 

That’s the thing about human food, it’s not just an actual issue of taste or anything like that, but purely a biological incompatibility. He’s meant to drink blood because, quite frankly, his body is way too powerful for anything less potent. It would break down in his mouth before ever even making it to his stomach. 

And Jimin admittedly doesn’t pay the best attention in his history lessons, so he couldn’t tell you exactly why that’s the case, but he knows enough to know it results in an innate aversion to the stuff once your adult fangs come in. Something to do with a change in biological chemistry that comes with growing up. 

Jimin knew it would happen eventually, but he wasn’t prepared for it to happen tonight.  

Before he can stop himself, he spits the chicken back onto his plate, spittle flying from his mouth as he coughs the bad taste from his tongue, eyes watering from the stomach-flipping feeling that comes with it. It’s all he can do not to retch to rid himself of the taste altogether. 

It’s disgusting and awful and he chugs his entire water glass and even that doesn’t fix the problem completely. 

But finally, after a few minutes of trying not to puke, he calms down from the queasiness enough to look up from his spit covered plate. 

And that’s when the mortification sets in. 

He has no idea how he must look - couldn’t check a mirror if he wanted to, anyway, but he can feel how hot his cheeks are, and there’s spit all over his chin and tear tracks down his cheeks and he can only imagine that it’s rough . 

And that’s pretty easily confirmed from the way Taehyung and his family are gaping at him from across the dinner table - mixed expressions of concern and clear disgust. Taehyung has half stood up from his own seat during the display, leaning over the table - face twisted in concern. He at least doesn’t look disgusted, but his mom definitely does, and Jimin has never been more embarrassed in his life. 

“Jiminie, are you okay?” Taehyung asks, eyes immensely wide, “Is the chicken gross?” He turns his attention to where his grandma has frozen in her seat, lips parted in clear bewilderment. “Grandma, what did you put in it?’

“No, no!” Jimin hastens to reply over Taehyung’s moral crusade in Jimin’s defense. “It’s not that. It’s really good, Grandma Kim, I swear! I just…” 

He has no idea what to say. There’s nothing he can say to explain what just happened. 

And the worst part is he can tell it’s not over. Because chugging all that water was apparently not the right call at all. He can feel it churning in his gut - a clear indicator of what’s about to happen next if he doesn’t move fast. 

So Jimin does the only thing he can think of - he bolts. 

He shoves his chair back and tears through the back door without a second thought, stomach gurgling violently the entire way. He only just makes it in time, just stepping onto the grass before the water and what little chicken he’d gotten down comes right back up and makes an appearance all over Taehyung’s grandma’s flower garden. 

He heaves and heaves, eyes tearing up as his body works vigorously to rid itself of the offending remnants of the meal. It’s so gross and he can feel that it’s up his nose and all over his face, and even when it’s finally over and he falls back to sit on the grass away from the scene, he doesn’t have anything to clean his face with except his sleeve, and then he feels worse.

He flops back on the grass and stares at the sky, unsure where to go from here. He’s sweaty and sticky and embarrassed and the last thing he wants to do is go back inside and face Taehyung’s family. They’ve known him since he was just a baby, so it’s definitely not the first time he’s embarrassed himself in front of them - but he has no idea what he’d say. 

He kind of wants to die of mortification, or maybe go home and cry. Neither are great options. 

Plus, he can’t go home, because the whole point of him eating at Taehyung’s in the first place was that his mom wouldn’t be home tonight. She had an overnight shift at the hospital, and Jihyun was at a sleepover with one of his classmates down the street. Going home will just result in him being home alone, and that doesn’t feel any better than being alone on the grass. 

So he opts to stay where he is, staring up dramatically at the daylight slipping from the sky overhead. Maybe if he stays here long enough he’ll just sink into the ground altogether and won’t have to face the embarrassment of what just happened. 

After a few minutes, he hears the slide of the glass door opening and clobbering footsteps down the stoop, and then Taehyung is flopping down beside him in the grass. 

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just lays down beside him staring at the sky. 

“Sorry,” Jimin whispers, when he feels the silence dragging on too long to ignore anymore. He turns his head to the side to find that Taehyung is already looking at him. 

Taehyung offers a little smile when he catches Jimin’s eye, reaching out his hand to the side to tangle their fingers together, tactfully ignoring the way they’re a little sticky with spit from Jimin’s episode. Taehyung has never cared about sticky fingers - though Jimin wouldn’t blame him if he did right now. Jimin feels disgusting.

“You feeling okay?” He says, ignoring Jimin’s apology. 

Jimin huffs a breath through his nose, turning his head back to look up at the sky again. It’s getting darker by the second. 

“I think you know the answer,” he grumbles, using his free hand to wipe across his jaw. It comes away wet and gross and he hates his life. 

Taehyung snickers beside him, and Jimin turns his head to the side again to meet his eyes. He glares and Taehyung snickers louder.
“You got your spit everywhere ,” Taehyung laughs, twisting onto his side so he can face Jimin more easily. “You should have seen mom’s face after you booked it. She looked like she wanted to vom.” 

Jimin groans, flopping his arm over his eyes and then making a noise of disgust when the sleeve is wet. It only causes Taehyung to laugh louder. 

“Ughhh,” he groans, “It’s so embarrassing!” He flops his arm down to his side and rolls over to mirror Taehyung, their hands still intertwined between them. “You have to tell your mom I’m sorry.” 

“Tell her yourself.”

“No. It’s too embarrassing,” Jimin says seriously. “I’m never coming over again.” 

Taehyung rolls his eyes, shakes his head to shift the bangs that have drifted over his eyes from their position. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t.” 

Taehyung shifts closer in the grass - shoves his face all up in Jimin’s business and then uses his free hand to squish Jimin’s cheeks together. 

“See you tomorrow, Jiminie,” he says again, this time using his hand to move Jimin’s head up and down in a forced nod of agreement. Jimin scowls in his grip, which only makes Taehyung laugh even louder with that big boxy grin of his. 

And Jimin can’t help it - he cracks a smile too. Because he’s still embarrassed and he feels disgusting, but there’s just something about Taehyung. His smiles are contagious, Jimin’s mom has always said. 

Jimin forces a pout for as long as he can, but eventually he devolves into giggles right alongside Taehyung. They laugh and swap anecdotes about how Jimin will move far away and Taehyung will track him down just to force him to apologize to his mom for ruining her tablecloth. And it’s silly and strange and so completely Taehyung and Jimin, and by the end of it Jimin doesn’t feel quite so awful about everything anymore. 

In a few minutes either his grandma or mom will come outside to check on them probably, and then later Jimin will have to go home to his mom to explain what happened. He’ll have to figure out how they’re going to hide his new lack of appetite, and he’ll need to talk to the clan about the paperwork for living as a full-fang in the human community. Because there is always paperwork for that kind of thing - as his mom has excessively warned him. 

But right now it’s just him and Taehyung, laughing in the wet grass - waiting for the sky to dim completely. 

And Jimin knows he’ll be back tomorrow. 

Couldn’t stay away if he tried.

-----

Jimin is sixteen years old and having to be invited in everywhere sucks . 

He doesn’t really know when he started needing the invite - his mom says it was probably within the last few months before his sixteenth birthday. She says that that’s when it started happening for his Papa, at least. At some point Outliers just stop being able to cross barriers without a formal invitation. 

It’s not exceedingly noticeable, for the most part, because it only happens on private property - and usually a welcome mat is enough to meet the criteria of an invitation. But it does come up sometimes. Like when Jihyun pulls up the freaking welcome mat on their doorstep and locks him out of the house because he thinks it’s funny.

Jimin doesn’t understand how that can be allowed, when it’s technically his house too - but go figure on the rules of etiquette with that one. 

And it comes up when he has to deliver groceries from his mom to the old lady across the street and she has trouble hearing the doorbell, or when he tries his hand at selling candy bars for extra cash, and finds that a foot-in-the-door policy only works when your body will allow you to put your foot in the door. 

It can be exceedingly frustrating, at times. But luckily for him, it doesn’t usually come up. Because Jimin is always invited into Taehyung’s house - and that’s where he spends most of his time anyway. So usually it’s not too big a deal. 

Or at least it wouldn’t be, if Taehyung weren’t acting like a huge baby right now. 

It had started during the school day, when Jimin had come around the corner towards their lockers and seen Taehyung pressed up against them by some older boy that Jimin didn’t recognize. 

Jimin knows that Taehyung gets picked on sometimes. People don’t get him, the way that Jimin does. He sometimes talks too loud or gets too quiet, and he’s never had a filter to speak of in his life, and he tends to wander into conversations he probably shouldn’t be a part of. Ever since they were little it’s been a bit of a problem. Taehyung just doesn’t always think in the same way that other people do, and sometimes people take advantage. Especially because Taehyung, at his core, is immensely sweet and naturally trusting. He walks around life with an open mind and big eyes and an even bigger heart, and Jimin loves him for it. 

But not everyone else does. 

And often the things that Taehyung does, that Jimin knows are endearing and just part of what make Taehyung Taehyung , come across as naive or gullible to those around them looking for someone to hurt - although both of those things he most certainly is not. 

The problem is it looks that way, and it makes him an easy target.

It doesn’t really make sense to Jimin, because Taehyung actually does have quite a few friends at school. There’s no real explaining why high school bullies choose to pick on who they do. 

But as it stands it usually doesn’t matter, because Jimin might not be tall, but he is strong, and that tends to be enough to keep him and Taehyung safe from harassment. 

Or at least it is when Jimin’s around. He hadn’t realized that Taehyung might still get teased when he can’t be. 

And so when Jimin saw his friend’s lip tick down in the way it did when he was trying really hard not to cry out, Jimin got mad. 

Maybe he couldn’t always protect him when he wasn’t around, but he sure as shit could when he was. So he did - because that’s what best friends do . 

Jimin stormed up and pulled Taehyung out of harm's way and told off the bully like it was nobody’s business. It was a no-brainer - no big deal. It took like five seconds for the kid to get the hint that he probably wouldn’t win this one, and he left pretty easily after that. 

And Jimin had smiled smugly and looked over to Taehyung to make sure he was okay, expecting him to be grateful. After all, Jimin had helped him out. 

Except when he looked over he found that not only did Taehyung not look happy, he looked pissed . And that led to an hour of back and forth between them as they walked home - with Taehyung mad and obstinate, asserting that he had it handled, and Jimin upset because - no, he clearly didn’t. 

And then they got back home and Taehyung told him to leave him alone and stalked back towards his house. And Jimin had clenched his jaw and tried to chase after him, like he normally would, only to find that his feet couldn’t pass the property line. 

So that’s how Jimin finds himself now, hours later still, waiting petulantly on the strip of clover leaf between their driveways for Taehyung to reinstate his invitation. 

Taehyung has never not wanted Jimin there before. Jimin doesn’t want to go inside, in case Taehyung changes his mind again soon and he misses it. 

Jimin sits in the grass, hands trailing through the clover leaves, and he waits. 

The most confusing part is that Jimin doesn’t really understand why Taehyung was actually upset. 

He knows the reasons Taehyung gave - that he was mad that Jimin was always butting into things, and that he hated how Jimin always felt the need to swoop in and save him - but it didn’t really make sense. 

Jimin has always protected Taehyung - since as long as he can remember. It’s just how they are - how it’s always been. 

And Taehyung has never been upset about it before. 

Jimin stares down at his hands in the grass, sifting gently through. The clover patch here is denser now than it used to be when they were kids. It’s been a long time since they were little boys playing in the weeds between their parent’s driveways everyday. Jimin knows that Taehyung’s grandma is the only one who would ever care enough to weed it anymore, and her arthritis is too bad for that now. 

Plus, it would kill Taehyung if anyone ever took it away. 

Jimin searches now, as a way to kill time, for lucky ones. He’s always been better at finding them, though that’s never stopped Taehyung from trying. He’s spotted one within a few minutes, a single four-leafed clover nestled in amongst the bunch, and he pulls it out carefully - places it into the hem of his sweater. And then he looks for more. 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, hunting for clovers all on his own. He doesn’t really notice as the sun dips down below the horizon, or when the air gets a little chillier - too focused on the small pile he’s building in his lap. He must have at least ten now - all collected together, not for any real purpose other than to prove that he could find them. 

“If you have that many, you have to share them,” Taehyung says from above him, and Jimin startles, almost dropping his hem but holding tight before anything can spill out. 

He hadn’t heard Taehyung coming, but he’s here now - just a few feet away, standing slouched with his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t have his uniform on anymore, must have changed out the moment he got home like he always does. Taehyung has always hated the starchy collar. It’s something that’s never changed, not since he was a kid. 

And Jimin knows that, because they’re best friends, and he loves Taehyung. 

He knows everything about him - always has. It feels weird to think that maybe he doesn’t right now. 

He looks back down to the grass below - to where his fingers pinch around yet another four-leaf bud. He tugs it loose from the soil - adds it to the small collection in his hem. 

“Find them yourself, if you want them so bad,” he responds, refusing to look up. He’s still a little mad. He doesn’t like fighting with Taehyung. It doesn’t happen often, but it always leaves him feeling wrong beneath his skin - like even the universe is against the idea of them being at odds. 

Taehyung doesn’t reply for a second - seems to think this over, leaving Jimin to trail his fingers through the clover leaf. 

After a few seconds Jimin sees Taehyung’s shoes appear in his line of sight, and then Taehyung himself is sitting down in the grass beside him. His hands fiddle in the blades of grass.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Taehyung says, straight to the point. He’s never been one to talk around the things that bother him. Taehyung speaks when he’s sure. 

“It’s okay,” Jimin mumbles back without second thought, even though it kind of isn’t. He hates being scolded - Taehyung knows it. 

Taehyung hums, slides his hand beneath the clover leaves so they bunch up in lines between his fingers. He trails his palm around, creating loose patterns in his wake. 

Jimin knows Taehyung is waiting for him to say more - maybe to apologize himself, but Jimin doesn’t know what to apologize for. He didn’t do anything wrong. 

So they sit together in the patch, waiting in stilted silence as the sun goes down until it all but disappears. It’s colder now than it had been, and Jimin can feel goosebumps pebbling where his skin is bare. But he doesn’t make any move to go inside and retrieve a sweater. He supposes he could, now that Taehyung’s here - but it wouldn’t feel right, to leave things like this. Even if he’d be just coming right back.

“You know that sometimes you aren’t fair to me?” Taehyung says, after the stillness has dragged on long enough to prove that Jimin has no plans to fill it in. 

Jimin feels himself bristle at the statement, because that’s not right. 

“How is trying to help you not being fair?” he glances over to Taehyung, who meets his eyes. Jimin feels petulant asking it, feels like a kid in grown up’s clothing - especially looking at Taehyung, who doesn’t look the same. He looks grown up now. Mature enough for a conversation like this, when maybe Jimin isn’t. He also looks sad in a way that Jimin doesn’t really understand.

“That’s what friends do,” he says anyway. 

Taehyung nods to that - but Jimin can tell that it’s not in agreement. 

“It’s embarrassing,” Taehyung says softly, tugging his knees up to his chest so he can rest his chin across the top. “You always need to be there, and it’s embarrassing.”

“I don’t always,” Jimin starts, immediately on the defensive, but Taehyung cuts him off.
“You do,” he says with certainty, eyes fixed on the grass below. “You act like I’m some helpless little kid.” He pauses, shakes his head firmly. “I’m not.”

“I don’t think that way about you, Taehyungie.”

Taehyung shrugs to this. He curls up even tighter around his knees, releasing his hold with one arm to trail his fingers through the clover patch again. 

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But it makes me feel that way,” he flicks his eyes up to meet Jimin’s for a second before returning his gaze to the grass. “Sometimes. It feels like you think you know more than me - that you think you know how I feel better than I do.”

Jimin bites his lip. He doesn’t think he does that. Does he? He just knows Taehyung. He’s never had to question it before. He’s always been an expert. Just like Taehyung is an expert in all things Jimin. 

And his first instinct is to react - to turn it back around and argue with Taehyung that he’s wrong and that Jimin wouldn’t do that. But he doesn’t want to fight like that right now. 

Maybe it’s because he can see the way that Taehyung is struggling to bring this up at all - that it’s probably something he’s been sitting on for a while. And Jimin hates to think that he’s been hurting Taehyung over and over and just didn’t know, because he was too selfish to think about how his friend might feel about everything. 

He’s always felt like he’s just known what Taehyung would want, but maybe it’s been a long time since he’s actually asked. Maybe he’d just assumed that Taehyung liked Jimin being strong enough for the both of them.

Jimin looks down at the collection of clovers in his hem, and then up towards where Taehyung has begun shifting his gaze through the patch below them - trailing his fingers amidst the leaves, hoping to find a lucky one. It wouldn’t matter how many Jimin finds for him - Taehyung will never stop trying to find one himself. 

“I don’t want to always be the one being saved,” Taehyung mumbles, when Jimin has let the silence stretch on for too long in his consideration. It’s almost so low that Jimin can barely hear him. “I can be brave too. Not just you.” 

Jimin blinks down at the grass, feeling the beginning of tears stinging at his eyes - which is stupid, he has no reason to cry. Taehyung isn’t crying - sad as he sounds. Jimin has just always been an easy crier, it’s something they both know. But he hates it right now. He shouldn’t be the one this frustrated when clearly he’s the one who’s made his best friend feel small - making it all about himself again . When that’s the whole problem. 

“I’m sorry, Taehyungie,” he says quietly - wiggling his fang with his tongue just like he did when he was eight - a habit he’s supposed to have outgrown by now. “I didn’t mean to do that.” 

Taehyung shrugs again in response, continues trailing his fingers - maybe more for the feeling than any real attempt at searching at this point. 

And Jimin could continue on - he knows. He could apologize over and over, tell Taehyung he’ll never do it again and make promises that in all likelihood he couldn’t really keep - drag the conversation on for hours if he had to. 

But what would that solve right now? When Taehyung looks so small and sad, and Jimin feels raw and uncertain and awash. It wouldn’t fix it, and it’s not how they are - how they act together. He knows Taehyung wouldn’t actually want that - he’d just want the stiltedness fixed for now. 

And maybe the entire problem is that Jimin has these generalizations of “how they are” and how “ Taehyung is” in particular, but one step at a time. He won’t be able to make everything better right now in this instant. These sorts of things take time. But he can do what he hopes Taehyung would like. 

Everything else can come later. 

So Jimin rubs his stinging eyes before Taehyung can notice, and then he does the only thing he can think of. 

He rises onto his knees - looming over where Taehyung still has his head hanging low and fingers trailing through the weeds. Taehyung looks up at the motion - cocks his head in bewilderment. And then - just as Taehyung is opening his mouth, perhaps to ask what the hell Jimin is doing - Jimin fists the clovers from his hem and dumps the entire bunch directly into Taehyung’s hair. He makes sure to scruff them in so they get stuck in the tangles of his curls - sticking out at odd angles and guaranteed to leave Taehyung finding dirt in his hair for the week to follow.

And Taehyung is perplexed all the while - but he lets Jimin do it. And Jimin tries not to make any assumptions about why Taehyung does that, tries to unlearn that habit just a little. 

“I lied before,” Jimin says with far too much sweetness to be genuine, fiddling with one of the clovers so it tucks in behind Taehyung’s ear. He keeps his expression comically fond as he continues, “All the lucky clovers I find are for you anyway, baby .”

Jimin watches Taehyung’s face as he takes this in - the sudden shift from Jimin’s petulance five minutes ago. He watches as Taehyung seems to realize what’s happening here, what the scene is. 

And then his whole face is scrunching up in the cutest most Taehyung smile known to man, and he lunges forward - full body slamming into Jimin’s thighs and dragging him down into the dirt right alongside him. 

Jimin can’t help but think how much he loves that smile - how much he’d be willing to do to make sure it always comes back. 

He feels clovers of revenge pushed into his own hair and then Taehyung is laughing loudly through his own contributions to the scene, as they roll around through the clover patch - wrestling like kids. 

They stay that way, tousling around and laughing, until it’s later than either of them realize, and Taehyung’s grandma is calling out from the doorway asking where they are - if Jimin will be coming over for dinner. 

And then Taehyung is standing up with tears in his eyes from how big his grin is, and he holds out his hand for Jimin to take, and invites him inside for the evening. 

And Jimin follows him in, crossing the property line with ease.

Jimin knows that later they’ll have to discuss their fight more - that it’s not something that can be so easily resolved by roughhousing in the grass. But it’s a start. 

And Jimin finds that when he curls up with Taehyung in his bed that evening - perhaps too old to still be sharing, but completely unwilling to part with the habit - he can’t help but treasure the ways in which Taehyung lets him in. 

Gaining entry feels that much more meaningful after having lost the right, even briefly. 

He thinks perhaps he’ll start to ask for the invitation anyway, even though he knows he’ll always have it. Just for confirmation that it’s still there. 

-----

Jimin is seventeen years old when he starts having to contend with the fact that sunlight isn’t on his side anymore. 

It’s never exactly been his biggest friend to begin with, but it’s all the more obvious now, when he sits outside for longer than his SPF can last and his skin goes crisp within minutes. 

The nice thing is it heals quickly, just a few hours back in the shade can have him back to normal. He never has to deal with peeling skin and itchy sunburns like Taehyung might have to do. He’s built for resilience, after all. 

But it’s hard to explain to others why that is, without perhaps going into a little too much detail. 

So, when Taehyung asks and begs and pleads for a beach trip on their last free weekend before their senior year, Jimin has no choice but to deal with layers and layers of SPF slathered on by his mother unceremoniously in the bathroom. 

“Stay under the umbrella,” she orders for the fifteenth time in the last hour alone - uncapping the bottle to douse his face in more sunscreen than should be legally possible. “There are beach towels to wrap your legs in if you get too hot. And I put more sunscreen in the bag. Every forty minutes. Got it?” 

She smoothes the sunscreen over his brow and Jimin can just tell it’s not rubbed in. He has no way to confirm that, considering it’s been years since anyone in this family has seen their own reflection, but he has a feeling if he touched any part of his face right now the evidence would be quite obvious. 

“I got it, I know,” he whines, resulting in an immediate slap upside the head. Not particularly hard, but combined with his mom’s dead-eyed stare, he can tell she isn’t messing around. She’ll hit him harder if it means he’ll get it through his thick skull. 

“Take this seriously, Jimin-ah,” she says in warning, already moving to apply an additional layer to his collarbone which is under his shirt , which he is under strict orders not to remove anyway .

He tries to shake her off but to no avail: Ms. Park is a woman on a mission. And that mission is apparently to make her son as late to his beach trip as possible. 

“Mom,” he says, trying to match her level of serious eye contact. “I am taking this very seriously. I look five shades paler than I did in winter . Please let me go meet Taehyung. He only has the car for the afternoon.” 

He almost thinks it’s going to work. His mom appraises him for a second - looking him up and down. He thinks she can’t possibly find anything more to slather with sunscreen - he’s practically a walking preventative skin care advertisement at this point. Surely she can’t find more skin. Surely. 

“Jimin-ah, turn around. I need to do your back again.” 

“ Mom.”

Two hours later finds Jimin under the umbrella at the closest public beach to their small suburban town. Taehyung has borrowed his mom's car on the strict instruction that he return it without even a single scratch or “face unfathomable consequences, young man.” So they each have motherly trials and tribulations to contend with. But they’re determined not to let that stop them. 

It’s a beautiful day - their last day of freedom before their final year of high school. If Jimin thinks too hard about it, he thinks he might have an aneurysm. Taehyung, Jimin gets the feeling, is doing much the same - if his sheer dedication to making the most of today is anything to go by. 

Jimin buries his feet under the sand in the sunlight, working hard to keep his exposed skin under the shade of the umbrella. It’s the middle of the afternoon - the sun is high in the sky overhead. If there were ever a time of day that Jimin might be in genuine danger of shriveling up into a pile of dust, it might just be here and now. 

Not a cloud in the sky, UV index off the charts.

Good thing they’re at the beach, a notoriously shady locale. 

“Are you sure you can’t go swimming?” Taehyung whines, rolling over on the sand to stare pleadingly up at Jimin. Taehyung has forgone any semblance of keeping himself clean today. He hasn’t even laid down a towel - just fully accepts that there will be sand in his hair for the foreseeable future.

Jimin knows that, because Taehyung has employed this same strategy since they were five years old. And up until now, Jimin would be right there in the sand beside him. But unfortunately, times have changed - as have the stakes.

“Can’t,” he replies, using his toes to nudge sand towards Taehyung’s face where he lolls around. “Strict orders from Mama Park. No sun, no fun. Swimming monumentally off limits.”

Taehyung huffs a breath, ignoring as Jimin drags sand up his cheek with his toe and then shifts his foot back to move another pile onto the other side of his face as well. 

“But how would she know if you just dipped your toes in,” he argues, never one to be so easily swayed by rules as Jimin. “You can just reapply your medicine right after. How would she know?” 

Jimin has been lying to Taehyung for so long about his quirks that it doesn’t even register. The latest on the list of excuses has been a skin condition that he’s getting monitored, and a family history of skin cancer. Both of these things Taehyung has accepted at face value, because Taehyung knows Jimin’s mom and her idiosyncrasies just as well as Jimin does himself. 

In fact, Jimin is pretty sure that this explanation for his sun aversion might result in an actual dermatologist’s visit in the near future. Ever since Jihyun fell in the park and chipped his fang she’s been in a bit of a panic, and working in the hospital herself doesn’t help any. He’s pretty sure the only thing that’s stopped her from taking him so far is the fact that the clan doesn’t even have a registered Outlier-specific dermatologist. 

Yet. 

Jimin doesn’t put it above her to make that happen. 

“If you want to be the one to explain to her why I get cancer and die, be my guest,” Jimin replies. He digs his toe in the sand and scoops a bit onto Taehyung’s chest as well. Taehyung seems all too pleased to serve as a human sand castle. He hums at the feeling in content.

“Pass,” he replies, opting to roll over onto his stomach, destroying all of Jimin’s hard work in the process. He leans on his elbows at the edge of the shade, kicking his legs in the air lazily. 

“Well, even if you can’t swim, that doesn’t mean I have to suffer,” he moves to stand up - shakes some sand from his hair so it purposefully lands on Jimin’s towel, no doubt. “Watch me, okay?” 

Jimin nods in agreement and leans back on his beach towel to stretch his legs as far as they can go before leaving the sanctity of the umbrella. He misses when he could enjoy the sun more. The beach isn’t quite as fun when you’re constrained to the shade. 

At this point in life he’s pretty much used to the changes. This is the last big one that he knows about, before the big one. His mom says if he’s anything like his Papa he’ll probably have his final change just around his eighteenth birthday. And so far he’s been pretty much on track, so there’s at least a few more months before he has to worry about it. It’s not really like he minds his quirks that much anymore, either. It used to frustrate him a little, when he was thirteen and angsty and wishing things could be simple, as they seemed like they were for Taehyung. 

But he’s kind of over it by now. He’s grown into his fangs and all that comes with them enough to understand that they make him who he is. He doesn’t know if he’d recognize himself without them, honestly. 

He hasn’t seen his reflection in years - he couldn’t tell you how it would look. 

Plus, he’s sort of come to learn that things for Taehyung weren’t always as easy as he’d thought they were. That’s what happens when you grow up, he guesses. 

Jimin looks out towards where Taehyung has taken off at a sprint towards the shoreline - gangly limbs tripping through the sand in his excess excitement. He’s going to get yelled at by the lifeguards - Jimin can see it already, the way they’re raising their whistles in preparation to call him back out of the water. Jimin can’t help but be endeared. 

He supposes, when he really thinks about it, the person he’d be without his fangs is exactly the person Taehyung sees. He doesn’t know about his fangs and maybe he never will - but he sticks by Jimin anyway. He likes the version he has, even if it isn’t the complete one. He always has, and hopefully he always will. 

Because Jimin loves Taehyung. 

And Jimin knows now, as he’s known for a while, that this love is something more than the childhood fascination he’d felt for the little boy who lived in the house next door - so different from Jimin and yet made perfectly to fit beside him on the clover patch between their driveways. This is a love that wraps around his heart, that makes him want Taehyung in all the ways he hoped he’d want someone one day. It’s different now, from the love built from curious fingers and dripping popsicle sticks. 

And yet, maybe it isn’t all that different, really. 

He’d often wondered, growing up, why he never had the interest in girls and boys that his classmates and clanmates always seemed to have. Why he didn’t spend his teenage years engrossed in infatuation - why it never even crossed his mind. He’d never thought of anyone that way - there was nobody out there that could compete with how he felt for Taehyung. And, in the end, that’s all it really took. 

He knows now that there was never a chance of there being anyone else. 

Jimin loves Taehyung simply - in the same way he’s always loved him. In the same way that Taehyung has always loved him back. There’s never been any monumental event that prompted a realization that he might be in love, simply, as well. In all honesty, he’s not sure he ever had anything to realize. 

He thinks that even when he was young he’d known - he just hadn’t had the words for it yet. 

It’s not a revelation, just a truth. 

Taehyung is splashing in the water now - hopping in and out between the wave patterns. It’s high tide, and Taehyung isn’t the bravest swimmer, so he keeps to the shoreline before the drop-off. Every once in a while he looks back to wave at Jimin - sends over the top air kisses and proclamations of undying love. All pronounced with boxy smiles and scrunched up cheeks - happiness personified, not a care in the world for the whistling lifeguards and irritated beachgoers in between them.

Taehyung has never been afraid of how people look at him. Jimin has never been able to look away. 

Jimin watches from the shade until Taehyung finally gets bored with the waves and opts to bury his legs in the wet sand a few feet from the waters edge. He’ll stay there for a while, but Jimin isn’t worried about him. Taehyung can handle himself. And even if he couldn’t - the lifeguards have proven throughout the afternoon that they certainly can. 

He leans back onto his towel and stares up at the spokes of the umbrella above. His feet are just barely poking out into the sun like this - but he’s been reapplying SPF consistently, so it’ll probably be okay. He thinks that enduring the wrath of his mother later will be worth it for the warmth of the sun on his ankles now. When he’s older he won’t even get this - he knows. The sunlight only gets harsher with age.

He doesn’t notice when he falls asleep, because you don’t really notice that sort of thing. One moment he’s counting the spokes of the umbrella, and the next there’s saltwater dripping onto his cheek from above - curls of hair tickling at the tip of his nose and cheeks. 

Jimin blinks his eyes open to see Taehyung’s face inches from his own. His head is cocked to the side, a suspicious smile on his lips. He has his forearms braced on either side of Jimin’s head on the towel, boxing him in. 

“Hi,” Taehyung says, that little smile growing wider as Jimin stretches his arms out above his head and blinks the sleep from his eyes - tries to drag himself back into the present. 

“Hi,” he mumbles, yawns, stretches again. Taehyung hasn’t shifted back at Jimin’s motion, opting to remain looming over Jimin on the beach towel. His hair drips steadily onto his cheek. “What time is it?” 

“About four thirty,” Taehyung says easily, shifts to make himself more comfortable. “Your mom’s going to kill you.” 

It takes Jimin’s mind a moment to catch up to that statement - why his mom might have anything to do with the current situation. And then he flexes his toes in the hot sand and he instantly remembers, jerking his knees up to protect his ailing feet - kneeing Taehyung’s stomach in the process. 

Taehyung devolves into laughter, rolling with the hit to fall into Jimin’s side on the towel. He’s still damp from the water - plasters himself to Jimin’s side anyway. 

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Jimin whines, reaching down to rub at his feet. He doesn’t need to look down to know he’s burnt to a crisp. There’s no SPF in the world that could protect him now. Even if his sunburn is healed by the time they return home, his mom will find a way to know about it. He’s never been all too great at hiding his guilt. 

“Oh, you just looked so peaceful, Jiminie,” Taehyung coos without any sincerity, smacking at Jimin’s cheek with his hand in the semblance of a caress. “I wouldn’t dream of waking you.”

Jimin rolls his eyes. 

“Right,” he huffs, doing little to dislodge Taehyung from where he dampens the towel below them. He becomes distracted by his foot again - rubs the toes of one along the arch of the other to test how severe the burn might be. 

Taehyung bursts into snickering laughter as he shifts in his position, hooks his leg over Jimin’s own to make himself more comfortable on the towel. And Jimin can’t even pretend to be mad, just adjusts himself so that the position of their bodies is as easy as falling into one another. They’ve had years of practice in twin beds making space to fit. 

Taehyung presses closer, laughter dying down as he tucks his chin over Jimin’s shoulder, trails his fingers up and down the length of Jimin’s arm, and it’s serene in the casual intimacy of it all. Jimin is comfortable, he thinks he could easily fall back asleep like this - curled into Taehyung’s warmth, irritated as he is about his newly reddened toes.

And in this moment Jimin could wonder - if he were planning to be obtuse. He could fall into the trap of mistaking Taehyung’s touch for friendship and childhood affection - could fret and worry about the meaning behind it all. He could worry that he feels differently now, and about the way that things are changing so rapidly around them. How they’re just seventeen years old, entering their final year of high school and any number of things could happen - how his big change is just around the corner. 

How there’s no way to be completely certain that Taehyung feels the same way that Jimin feels right now. 

But then Taehyung is leaning in ever closer, pressing his lips to the jut of Jimin’s shoulder in such a way that would be difficult to be confused - even though sharing kisses isn’t a novelty in their friendship by any stretch of the imagination. Because Jimin turns his head to meet Taehyung’s eyes and finds him staring back openly. Under the heated shade of the umbrella, with their legs twisted up and the breeze keeping their company quiet between them - it’s hard to believe this moment isn’t something specific. It’s hard to misunderstand this for friendly intent. 

And Jimin feels as though it isn’t something worth worrying over - this shared love, in its simplicity. Nothing defined, just Taehyung and Jimin along the shore together, enjoying the final stretches of their summer. 

He doesn’t mind the uncertainty right now. So he presses a kiss back - amidst the mass of Taehyung’s tangled dark hair, and they fall asleep like that - intertwined atop the sand. 

It’s not until hours later that Jimin and Taehyung leave the beach - with pink feet and even pinker cheeks. Jimin’s feet heal in the car ride home - he watches the skin rework itself together gradually, and the red slowly drains back to its prior paleness - but his blush never quite disappears. And Taehyung tangles their fingers together over the gearshift, and Jimin doesn’t worry. 

He doesn’t think he needs to wonder what it all means. He thinks he’s okay right where they are.

Jimin is in love with Taehyung. 

Sunlight may not be on his side, but Taehyung always will be. 

-----

Jimin is eighteen when, for the first time in his life, he wants to bite. 

More specifically, and this is important, Jimin is eighteen and he wants to bite Taehyung, and he’s never been more scared of something in his life. 

It’s not as though he didn’t know this would be a possibility - there was always a chance of things panning out this way. His mom has been preparing him for this day for years - they’ve run through all the options for how it might go down. He’s been ready. 

The final stage of maturation - the point of no return as it’s often called, for fledglings who’ve yet to understand that there was never really a point of return to begin with - is the day that instinct outweighs inhibition. When the thought of biting and hunting is no longer just a thrill, or a way to compete with other young members of the clan, but rather an innate desire unmatched. 

For Outliers like Jimin, the time when living in human society will become a final test of his resolve. 

He knows that both his parents went through this - every Outlier does - but he also knows that things were very different for his mom and papa than it might be for him. 

The fact is that nobody really knows how this will be for Jimin. There aren’t too many of his kind that grow up outside the confines of the clan territory - certainly none that he knows personally. 

For the most part, members of the clan have the benefit of growing up amidst the Outlier community. They learn to deal with the final factors of their maturation in the presence of others who have gone through it before, and there are measures in place to make sure everything goes smoothly and without risk. 

But by nature of his mom opting to live and raise her children within human society, Jimin has never really had such a safety net. Weekly classes can only help so much with the process - and those classes, Jimin has learned, his mom only agreed to after significant debate with higher ups in the leaders circle. If it were up to her, they’d be completely cut off - but the rules of the clan would never have allowed for that. 

And it’s not as though Jimin blames his mom at all for her choice - he’s old enough now to understand why she did it, and honestly he doesn’t think she was wrong to move them out. She’s never been secretive about her distaste for the way the clan handles certain topics. There are certain moral differences there - especially in regard to how the human feeder population is treated - something which played a heavy hand in her choice to leave the Outskirts with papa altogether. 

His mom claims that the clan is no place to raise children - no place for a family. She will never regret her choice.

And Jimin does understand that, although he doesn’t really know all the details of the situation - especially when it comes to everything that came after, in regards to papa’s death - his mom has always been relatively tight-lipped on the subject. But he knows that it’s all related in some way or another - why he and Jihyun experienced a bit of an alternative approach to maturation, and why his mom works as hard as she does to keep everything a secret. 

He understands enough now to know that it has to do with humans and their tendency to jump at any sign of standing out. It isn’t as though humans don’t know about them, as he’d once thought, but rather that human society becomes infinitely more dangerous when they know you’re there. And that his Papa had suffered for that. 

So all this to say, Jimin understands why she raised them the way that she did, and why she doesn’t really talk about it - but it’s definitely made this aspect of his maturation more complicated, for better or for worse. 

Because, in the end, most of his kind don’t live amongst the humans as equals. They don’t live all their lives with friends and coworkers and family all intertwined within the human community, only to one day turn around and want to eat them.

They don’t have to deal with one of those humans being their best friends. 

They certainly don’t have to contend with loving them. 

So Jimin had known that this could happen - that the first human he might want to bite might be Taehyung - but he kind of wishes it had been someone less important. 

Like the mailman, or something. 

Because it’s so much stronger than he ever could have anticipated it being - this sudden onslaught of hunger that he has. It’s like his entire brain has rewired to a singular focus in the span of a few days, and that focus is the blood that thrums beneath the encasement of Taehyung’s skin. He can’t distract from it. There’s nothing that has ever been more appealing. 

His stupid bat brain has latched onto the idea of biting Taehyung and now there’s literally nothing else he can think of to distract from it. 

To put it quite simply, he’s screwed . 

He knows, rationally, that the feeling will dim down over time - that’s what his mom says. That the first two weeks are absolute Hell - often marked by extreme cravings and impulses - but that afterwards it will get easier. He’ll learn to control it, this desire to feast, and one day things will return back to the way they were before. 

His mom has always told him that she’s only ever bitten one human in her life - in the short weeks after her own maturation - and although of course she enjoyed it - how could she not - she enjoyed her own principles more. So she controlled it. 

She worked exceptionally hard to keep her teeth clean, and drank solely from external sources, and then - once the urge had dimmed down - she fled. She moved to a human suburb, not too far from a human city, and she lived there for eighteen years and never bit again. Papa did too, though admittedly he didn’t make it quite as long. 

She’s always told him that she has complete faith he’ll be the same, and up until this point, Jimin had always believed her. 

But right now he doesn’t feel quite as sure. 

He’s sitting in his room, working to pack his things into his suitcase for an extended stay within the community. His mom might have had ultimate faith in him, but not everyone else did, and after significant meetings with the higher ups it was determined that Jimin would spend his final stage of maturation within the clan territory. 

His mom isn’t exactly happy to see him gone for two weeks, but even she had to admit that he might benefit from spending time with others in his same stage - those who could help to curb his impulses better than she might be able to. 

And Jimin knows it’s also a dual purpose, though his mom might never admit that, because the final stage can be scary, and she has Jihyun to think of as well. In all likelihood things will be fine, but there’s always a chance that Jimin goes rogue and hurts someone for real , and Jihyun is still too young to understand why, or what to do. He’s only fifteen - his biggest concern right now should be understanding how to wean himself off of human food, not how to stop his brother from accidentally killing their neighbor. 

So Jimin understands, and he’ll be spending the next two weeks bunking with other members of his age group. Namjoon and Hoseok, who have served as his closest friends from the community over the years, were more than happy to let him stay in their room for the big change. And although he has his own reservations regarding the clan, courtesy of his upbringing, he also can’t help but be a little excited by the prospect of a longer visit. He’s never really had the chance to get close with the members of his age group like everyone else, and classes after school once a week can’t really compare to actually growing up there. 

So everything is all set, and he’ll head out later today, once he’s done packing. 

The problem, however, is Taehyung has chosen to see him off on his big trip - stressing that they’ve never been apart for so long, and he wants to be there until the very last second before Jimin is off to ‘camp’.

And Jimin loves Taehyung so much and appreciates that sentiment and would never turn him down for the world. But all the love in the universe couldn’t counteract the fact that Jimin’s fangs are literally seconds from popping out of his skull at any second , and he can practically taste Taehyung’s blood if he lets his guard down. 

So Taehyung is sitting in the middle of Jimin’s floor watching him pack and flopping around and talking his ear off like Taehyung always does, and Jimin is doing everything in his power not to kill him. 

It’s only just begun - this desire to sink his teeth into Taehyung’s neck - and he already feels at the complete end of his rope. It’s just there and he wants to bite . He feels like a Victorian gentleman seeing ankles for the first time, the way his instincts go haywire at even the sight of Taehyung’s exposed jugular. It’s embarrassing.

And it’s not even sexy - he’s not dealing with regular teenage hormones here. He honestly thinks that might be easier to explain away than the fact that he genuinely just wants a snack. 

Only another hour. He only needs to last an hour before they leave for the Outskirts. He can make it. 

“Do you think you’ll learn underwater basket weaving while you’re there?” Taehyung asks from the floor, sprawled out limbs akimbo so as to take up as much space as possible, in a way that is immensely Taehyung and also immensely driving Jimin closer and closer to the edge with every passing second. 

It makes Jimin smile tightly as he struggles to shove another oversized sweatshirt into his bag. His fangs poke at the inside of his lip incessantly, despite how hard he works to keep them retracted. Taehyung smells so good. Which is a fact that makes Jimin queasy, because Taehyung is many things, but good smelling is honestly rarely one of them. Meaning his blood is what smells good, and Jimin is trying very hard not to think about that. 

“Can’t be sure,” he replies without commitment, finally finding a way to fit the jumper in and then moving onto his next item. He can feel sweat beading at the nape of his neck from how rigid he’s sitting just trying to appear like he isn’t thinking about eating his friend. 

Or, ‘ friend’ might not be quite the word - but Jimin and Taehyung haven’t exactly figured out what they are to one another, yet. There’s been a few lingering glances and moments shared between the two of them, but nothing completely defined. 

To be honest, Jimin hasn’t really had time to worry about it. There’s been a lot of other stuff on his plate recently if you would believe it, and he thinks it might be for the best to keep things undefined for now. He thinks he should maybe get through the next two weeks before he tries to put his mouth anywhere near Taehyung. 

Plus, as much as he doesn’t want to be, he’s nervous. 

His mom has warned him about what a relationship with a human might mean for him. She loves Taehyung, and apparently even from the beginning she’d known what they might become to each other, but that doesn’t make it any easier. He’ll have to come clean one day, he thinks, if they decide to commit to something for real. 

And that’s a scary thought - telling a human. 

Don’t get him wrong - he thinks he can do it. He and his mom have discussed it - albeit awkwardly, and primarily talking around the subject more than actually about it - but they have. She’s said he can tell Taehyung the truth if he feels like he needs to, but he shouldn’t do it if he isn’t sure. It isn’t something he could ever take back.

Jimin doesn’t think there would ever be a reason that he’d want to take it back, or that Taehyung would hurt him in the way they hurt his Papa, which he knows is his mom’s fear - but it’s still a nagging thought. 

There’s always risk.

And Jimin can’t help but worry about how angry Taehyung might be, to learn he’s been lied to his whole life. Jimin doesn’t think he’d know what to do if Taehyung hated him for it. Or worse, if Taehyung was scared of him. 

It’s a small town. People talk. Jimin doesn’t know what Taehyung’s family’s stance on the Outlier communities is - It’s never been a subject that Jimin’s mom has ever let them discuss.

Jimin is dreading the possibilities. He thinks he might put it off for as long as physically possible.

Taehyung rolls over onto his side, propping his head onto his hand so that he can face Jimin more steadily. Jimin flits his eyes up and then staunchly back to his suitcase. From this new position, Taehyung has his neck fully stretched on display. It’s unnervingly distracting. Jimin thinks he might actually be shaking from the tension of keeping his fangs retracted. 

“Do you think you’ll meet a lot of people at camp?” Taehyung asks, curious. Jimin loves Taehyung but he really has no idea how he isn’t questioning the fact that this ‘camp’ Jimin is supposedly going to is occurring midway through the school year. 

He shrugs, folds his underwear into the bag, steadies his breathing to reply. 

“Not a lot, no? I know most of them already from the weekly programs.” 

He has a little trouble keeping his suitcase organized. He wonders if there’s time to maybe repack the entire thing - checks the time on his watch and decides there probably is. Forty five minutes until he has to meet his mom at the car. He starts pulling things back out to re-sort. 

Taehyung is quiet as he does - looks deep in thought when Jimin glances up again to see what he’s up to. 

“Why?” he prompts. His fangs feel cutting on the inside of his lips as he speaks. He hopes his stomach doesn’t growl. God these two weeks could not end fast enough. 

“No reason,” Taehyung shrugs, fiddles from where he can reach with the little tags on the end of Jimin’s bag. “Just don’t want anyone to take my place.”

Jimin smirks, rolls his eyes a little at this. As if something like that could ever happen. Jimin’s been smitten since fifteen - everyone knows it. 

“Yeah, that’ll happen.” 

“You don’t know!” Taehyung whines, rolling dramatically on the floor, “maybe you’ll fit in way better there and never come back. Maybe you’ll ditch me forever.” 

Jimin peaks up from where he’s begun sorting his clothing into neat piles to transition back into his suitcase. He doesn’t like how skittish Taehyung sounds all of a sudden. He hadn’t sounded like that earlier in the day, before he’d found out how soon Jimin would be leaving. 

He’d been primed that Jimin would have to go eventually, but the actual details of the trip had to be planned at the last minute - considering nobody had known exactly when Jimin’s teeth were going to decide that blood bags didn’t cut it anymore.

“That would never happen, Taehyungie,” Jimin assures. “You’re my best friend. Who else is going to bother me nonstop, if not you?” 

Taehyung smiles crookedly at this, smug, and Jimin grins back - can’t help it. Until, that is, he feels his left fang, the one that always gives him trouble, poking just a little bit too far over his bottom teeth. He snaps his mouth shut and hopes to God Taehyung didn’t notice. 

Just a little longer. Two weeks.

He just needs to make it two weeks. And forty-two minutes, now. 

He can feel his blood thrumming in his ears, being this close to Taehyung for this long. 

He checks his watch - forty-one minutes. He’s got this .

He returns his focus to packing - tries to keep the conversation light with Taehyung as he works. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk, but his gums are aching and he feels like he could crawl out of his skin at any moment. He’s never felt like this before - the way he needs to fight his body nonstop just to keep his fangs at bay.

Luckily for him, Taehyung has always been one to easily carry a conversation between them. Jimin has a tendency to get a little bit in his own head, but Taehyung isn’t like that. They transition naturally into easy topics - things they can do together once Jimin returns, and which teachers are giving them the worst trouble as college application season approaches. 

Jimin is grateful for the distraction of it all, feels his teeth retract a little as Taehyung thinks aloud about how his dad’s parent contribution might mess up his college applications. It’s easier to feel normal while focusing on problems that are real and normal, rather than problems like your jaw attempting to unhinge itself against your will. 

Taehyung chatters on, and Jimin packs his bags and then, before they both know it, it’s ten minutes to when he has to leave, so Taehyung helps Jimin to lug his bags down to the car outside. 

It’s a long drive to get to the Outskirts. Most of the community classes take place only thirty minutes from Jimin’s house, on the edge of the Outlier territory, but this will be further in. Jimin will need to travel to the actual living quarters, which are a bit more out of the way of human society. It takes longer to get there, and he knows his mom is fretting significantly about leaving Jihyun home alone for so long. 

Everyone’s a little bit on edge today.

He thinks if not for his insatiable bloodlust, he’d take comfort in the fact that Taehyung is here to see him off. There’s normally nothing that puts him more at ease. Understandably, this isn’t really the case right now , but Jimin thinks he’s been doing a pretty okay job of appearing calm, cool, and collected - all things considered. 

If Taehyung would stop flexing his neck he thinks he might not have any problems at all, actually. 

“What are you looking for?” Jimin can’t help but whine as he shoves his backpack into the footwell of the front passenger seat. He doesn’t really need to ask, he can see just fine that Taehyung has finished his own task of placing the suitcase into the trunk and moved on to searching for lucky clovers. 

Which is typical, but his shirt is slipping down his collarbone from the position and Jimin still has nine minutes before his mom will come out to start the car. 

On some level, he really really wishes she was a worse mom and wasn’t giving them time to say goodbye before they leave. He thinks that, just this once, she could stand to be a bit more of a helicopter parent - if only to save him from his own wayward fangs. But instead she’s really dragging out these last few minutes - she said 5pm and she meant it . 

Jimin shuts the door and leans back against the car to watch as Taehyung begins hunting through the patch between their driveways. It’s okay - he can do this. He’s so strong - he’s been preparing his whole life for this. 

“Clovers,” Taehyung mumbles, nudging his toe through the patch idly. “Gonna find you one before you go - for the road.” 

Jimin checks his watch as the shirt slips a little lower when he leans forward to get a better look at the weeds below.
It’s fine, eight minutes, everything’s fine. 

Taehyung pokes around through the clover patch for a few minutes before he leans down and pulls one up. Jimin would assume it was a lucky one - if he didn’t know Taehyung as well as he does. 

So he isn’t the least bit surprised when a moment later Taehyung approaches him beside the car and presses two two-leaf clovers twisted together into Jimin’s waiting palm. Jimin can’t help but smile at the act - although he has to work infinitely harder to keep his fangs concealed with Taehyung as close as he is. 

He can practically taste him. Seven minutes - it’s okay, It’s fine. 

Well it would be, except Taehyung doesn’t step back after depositing his gift - instead opting to remain close by. He keeps his palm wrapped around Jimin’s own, surrounding the clover leaf from all sides, and smiles at Jimin almost shyly - demure maybe, might be the word. His hair’s been getting longer recently - tumbles artfully over his forehead. He reaches forward with his free hand and takes Jimin’s other hand as well, so they stand close together against his mom’s Hyundai Elantra. 

It’s a very intimate position, one that Jimin would spend more time thinking about - maybe even enjoying - if his brain wasn’t literally melting at his proximity to Taehyung’s neck. He’d like to think he might take better note of Taehyung’s expression, if his eyes weren’t firmly locked onto a few inches lower, where his pulse point throbs. 

Oh dear God. 

Taehyung is saying something, Jimin thinks - he’s pretty sure. But it’s all a bit fuzzy. 

Truthfully he has trouble focusing on anything outside of the way the blood pumps steadily at Taehyung’s neck - strong and rapid. Jimin feels his own breathing pick up in response, as if matching the pace of Taehyung’s beating heart. From this far away he can feel the resonance of it pounding against his ribcage.

He wants to check his watch to see how many minutes are left but he can’t because Taehyung still has his hand in his grasp and it would be rude to take it back just to check his watch. Jimin feels like there’s mud slogging through his skull, making everything murky and slow. His entire world has narrowed down to the way Taehyung’s Adam’s apple bobs as he talks. 

Jimin can’t hear a single thing he’s saying. He can feel his grasp around the clover growing sweatier and he wants to lean in and his fangs are extending and, oh my God, he can’t do this. 

“Jimin?” Taehyung’s voice breaks through the thrum of his own pulse and Jimin blinks to see that Taehyung has dipped his head down a little to be within his line of sight. It helps to distract him from the grip of his own impulses - somewhat - now that he can’t directly see Taehyung’s neck in front of him. 

Although he can still hear the blood pulsing through his veins, but he supposes he’ll have to be happy with any win he can get. 

He blinks his eyes hurriedly, tries to rid himself of the foggy feeling from before. Taehyung looks concerned, and Jimin really doesn’t want that. He only has a few minutes before he has to go - he’d rather not leave on weird terms. And he’s pretty certain that having what essentially looks like a panic attack and then dipping out for two weeks might give off the wrong impression. 

“Sorry,” Jimin laughs in a way he hopes sounds casual - squeezes at Taehyung’s palms for emphasis. “Sorry, I just got distracted. You were saying something?”

Taehyung furrows his brow, not looking all too convinced by Jimin’s dismissal. 

“Yeah, I - um,” he squeezes Jimin’s hands back, and Jimin does all he can to keep his gaze trained on Taehyung’s face as Taehyung searches for the right words to say. 

Jimin thinks his mistake before was looking at Taehyung’s neck, so he just won’t do that again. And then in no time his mom will come out and he’ll leave for two weeks and when he comes back he’ll be normal again and maybe he can kiss Taehyung without wanting to rip his throat out . 

Yeah. For sure. 

“Jimin,” Taehyung continues after a second of collecting his thoughts, and Jimin retrains his gaze from where it was already wandering down to Taehyung’s neck. 

Shit. 

“We tell each other everything, right?” Taehyung asks, and Jimin steadies his gaze in focus. Taehyung looks nervous - why does Taehyung look nervous? 

“Yeah?” he replies, trying to catch up. His fangs are still pushing at his gums from the proximity, and he doesn’t think his brain is working all that well. 

Shouldn’t his mom be out here by now? What’s taking her so long?

“So, we should tell each other,” Taehyung says seriously, shifts closer still to look Jimin more directly in the eyes. “Big things. We should tell each other big things.” 

Jimin blinks rapidly, tries not to jump to any conclusions about what the Hell Taehyung is on about right now. He shifts a little against the car, uses Taehyung’s hands in his own to keep his balance - one palm still gripping the twisted clovers. 

“Uh, yeah?” he replies eloquently, “Of course.”

Taehyung nods at this, keeps his eye contact steady in a way that would kind of freak Jimin out if it was anyone else. Personal space has really never been Taehyung’s thing. 

“Right, so um,” he stalls, seeming to look around to steel his resolve for whatever it is he’s trying to say. Jimin wishes he could steel his resolve without throwing his neck around. “Wow, this is more awkward than I thought it would be.” 

Jimin retrains his gaze, he’s still not totally sure of what’s going on, and it’s hard to juggle trying to keep up with Taehyung while also trying not to sink his fangs directly into his neck. 

“What’s awkward?” Jimin says in confusion, risking a glance towards the door to see if his mom is making an appearance yet. This conversation is really testing his limits for his first day as a Full-Fang. Does she really need to prepare Jihyun this much? They’ll be gone for a few hours maximum. Surely he can handle this on his own - surely her other son is in greater need of motherly doting right now. Surely. 

“Well, maybe awkward isn’t the word?” Taehyung says, starting to swing their hands loosely between them. “But, I just. I thought it was pretty obvious, and it felt like the right time? And then I said it and then you just... locked up.” 

He shrugs at this last sentence, swings their hands together some more, and Jimin tries everything in his power to understand what Taehyung is talking about. Nothing he’s said is making sense, but it must be about something Taehyung said while Jimin was having his little freak out moment. Something big that had Taehyung worried. 

Taehyung looks immensely nervous. 

About something to with Jimin. 

Oh.

Oh.

Oh no. 

Jimin’s eyes widen when he realizes because oh no. Oh no, no, no, no. No, this can’t be happening right now. He thought he had more time. Jimin may not know everything but he can see the way Taehyung is looking at him, and he can put two and two together. The timing, the optics - there’s only one conclusion. There’s only one reason Taehyung would look so nervous - stressed even. Scared? 

Definitely scared.

Taehyung knows , and he’s scared . Jimin feels like his worst nightmare is unfolding right before his eyes. He knew he should have hid it better, but how do you hide the fact that you suddenly want to eat people . Nobody prepared him for this - nobody taught him what to do. He was supposed to go to the Outlier territory and get this whole thing fixed before this ever happened and now he can’t and Taehyung will hate him and Oh God . 

Taehyung must notice Jimin’s sudden stress, because he holds on more tightly to his immensely sweaty hands - ducks down again to try to steady their eye contact. 

“Jimin, are you really that nervous to talk about it? I’ve known for years, I mean. I thought you did too.”

And Jimin is stuck on loop in his head - he can’t even begin to unpack that - doesn’t understand what Taehyung means, can’t really even say he’s listening anymore. Because he can already tell what the conclusion of this conversation is going to be - where it all leads. Taehyung knows. Jimin doesn’t know how, but he knows - he has to. He figured it out and now he’s scared of Jimin. He hates him, maybe. Jimin doesn’t know if that last part is actually true - his anxiety might be getting the better of him here, but the point stands. 

Jimin is starting to feel like he might pass out any second. The headrush is returning and his skin feels clammy and Taehyung is just looking at him like he needs an answer.

He flounders, his lips parting over and over but he has no idea how to respond. He has no idea how to react, what to even say. He’d expected this conversation one day - but not now. Not when he has only a couple of minutes left before his mom walks out the door and corrals him away for two weeks. 

He can’t come clean about wanting to suck Taehyung’s blood and then leave . How the hell is he supposed to handle this situation? 

His own pulse is skyrocketing and his breathing is heavy and Taehyung is waiting for a response because he knows. He knows about Jimin. He knows he’s a- 

“I love you.” 

And then Jimin pauses in his downward spiral, rather suddenly actually - just stares in complete confusion at the pivot in conversation. It’s like ice water thrown over his entire body.

Taehyung is standing there with a pinched expression - deadset. He has Jimin’s hands in his grasp - the little interwoven clovers still tucked in between their fingers, and he squeezes them almost harshly. And maybe Jimin shouldn’t feel grounded by that - because Taehyung honestly looks a little upset while he says it - but he does. Because Taehyung is still here, holding his hands - he doesn’t hate him. 

He loves him. 

And Jimin loves Taehyung. 

It’s enough to slow down his pulse back to a normal level, bring him back to reality and away from his haze of fear and dread. 

“I love you,” Taehyung says again, steadier than the first - not in any rush to get it out - no longer fighting against Jimin’s impending panic attack. He nods his head, mostly to himself, but never breaking eye contact with Jimin where they stand pressed against his mom’s car. “I’m in love with you, Park Jimin. I didn’t want to wait anymore - to tell you.” 

And Jimin is still buzzing - his heart is pounding for different reasons than before. The complete rush of adrenaline from his momentary fear. He almost wants to laugh at himself for his overreaction, because of course Taehyung would choose this moment - just seconds before Jimin has to leave - to propose an impromptu love confession. 

It wouldn’t be Taehyung to do it any other way. 

And Jimin is a complete moron, for thinking it might be anything else - for not trusting Taehyung in this instant. For thinking the worst of him, when Taehyung was just trying for a sweet moment together. 

Jimin breathes out heavily, resituates his grip in Taehyung’s hands - lets the clover leaf hang in the balance between their sweaty palms as he dips his head forward to lean against Taehyung’s shoulder. He swings one of their joined hands down so that he can let go - pulls Taehyung into himself as easily as fitting together when they were kids squeezing onto Taehyung’s twin bed. 

And Taehyung brings his now-free hand around Jimin’s shoulder to pull him closer, so they stand as intimately together as Jimin’s driveway will allow. 

“Please say something,” Taehyung whispers, tucking his nose into the crown of Jimin’s hair. “You can’t leave a guy hanging like this, right before you have to leave.” 

Jimin laughs, turns his head so he can tuck his face into the dip of Taehyung’s neck - and then immediately realizes his mistake. Because this moment is everything he ever wanted, but there are still other issues at hand. Issues completely exacerbated by positioning his teeth mere inches from Taehyung’s jugular.

Idiot. 

He pulls back quickly - tries as hard as he can not to let onto the fact that his bat brain impulses might be acting up again. He thinks he should consider himself immensely fortunate for how this conversation has actually gone. A love confession he can work with. A love confession - unnecessary as it is - is fine. He shouldn’t push his luck by tempting his fangs. 

So he leans back - enough to get a better look at Taehyung’s face - and rests his palm against Taehyung’s soft cheek. 

Taehyung, who warms in the sun of the driveway, looking naturally windswept as always beneath the soft curls of his hair - his cheeks pink, his eyes bright. Jimin can’t imagine why he would have ever been nervous to what Jimin would say - Jimin has been smitten for years. 

Everyone knows it. 

Jimin thinks it’s absurd that Taehyung might not have. 

“Kim Taehyungie,” he says finally, his voice strained still from his very recent panic. He pets his cheek, rests his hand at the nape of his neck and ignores the way his pulse hums beneath his fingertips. “I love you, too. So much.” 

And the smile on Taehyung’s lips would be worth one hundred close calls - hours upon hours of fighting against his impulses. Jimin might be coming upon one of the most stressful times in his life, hiding secrets larger than most eighteen year olds should ever have to contend with, but he would do it forever, if it meant seeing Taehyung smile like this - pleased, glowing. There is very little he wouldn’t do.

Jimin has never been so in love - so positively endeared to someone.

And if this were a love story - if this were a story from the fairy tales - Jimin would lean in now, press his lips to Taehyung’s in the way he’s been dreaming of for probably years. He’d melt into Taehyung’s touch, hold him close and never let go. He wouldn’t have to contend with keeping his fangs retracted and his impulses curbed - things would simply fall into place. 

But, of course, Jimin’s life is very often far from picture perfect, and Jimin’s fangs are harder to control now than they’ve ever been before, and it’s five PM. 

And Jimin’s mom is at the door, keys jangling. She’s calling out, telling him they need to leave - that there might be traffic on the way, gives her apologies to Taehyung for stealing his friend, and promises he’ll be back soon. 

And Jimin can’t do much more in this moment than press his lips to Taehyung’s cheek, where they remain half hidden from her view behind the hood of the car. 

He can’t risk much more than this. 

But when he pulls back he sees the warmth reflected in Taehyung’s eyes - the way he can’t control the blush to his cheeks, and Jimin thinks to himself that this is enough for now. 

He loves Taehyung - and Taehyung loves him. It’s as simple as that. 

Taehyung says his goodbyes to Jimin and his mom, the blush remaining high on the apples of his cheeks. He watches from the clover patch as they pile into the car, and as they drive down the road. And through it all he waves, and through the rear window Jimin waves back - just as they did when they were eight years old, standing on opposite sides of their kitchen windows. 

And when he can no longer see Taehyung, he spins back around - settles himself in for the ride. He clutches the twisted clovers in his hands for good luck - spins them between his fingertips - and just knows that things will be alright. 

He’d like to bite Taehyung, but more than anything he thinks he’d like to kiss him. 

-----

Jimin is eighteen years old (and two weeks) when he returns home to his family, to Taehyung, as an adult. And he returns with clean fangs.

It isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination - but he does it. He curbs his impulses and survives temptation and returns with a clean bill of health, passing marks - a license to live amongst the humans. His mom is more proud of him than she’s ever been. 

Jihyun mocks him for it relentlessly - but Jimin knows he’s proud too. Jimin is proud of himself - to have followed well in his papa’s footprints. 

And Taehyung is happy to have him back - hugs him tight to his chest the moment he sees him, refuses to let him go - but he isn’t proud. He has no reason to be. He doesn’t know what Jimin’s been through. 

And Jimin thinks that maybe it’s time he does. 

Because Jimin returns not only with clean teeth, but with a clearer head than he had during his departure - and a bit of regret if he’s honest.

He feels silly and a little ashamed, for the way he and Taehyung left things off - for how frightened he’d felt at the prospect of Taehyung finding out about his fangs before Jimin was ready to tell him. He let himself get too within his own head - let his fears get in the way. 

And he’s realized now, after having been so far away from his best friend for so long, that he never wants to be put in that position again. 

He doesn’t want the big reveal to be in a state of panic - said in fear. He wants it to be a moment like he’d always imagined - maybe romantic, even. It shouldn’t be something that causes stress and confusion and upset. 

It should be him revealing a part of himself to Taehyung that he’s never seen before. It should be special - good. Taehyung deserves all the special moments in the world, Jimin thinks. 

And honestly, no matter what he wants, above all this confession is for the benefit of Taehyung, no one else. Jimin can’t waste time worrying about his own fate, about his own possible heartbreak if things go wrong. He needs to be strong for Taehyung - has to prioritize his safety and feelings. 

He’s spent these last weeks doing more thinking than he’s done in a while and he’s come to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter what Taehyung’s reaction is - if he hates him or he’s scared of him or he just needs some time to adjust - he deserves to know. 

If he wants to move things forward, and he does , Jimin needs to share the truth. 

And as nervous as that thought still makes him, he loves Taehyung, and Taehyung loves him. Things will be okay. 

So on the night that Jimin returns from his stint in the Outskirts, he sits with Taehyung in the clover patch, their knees pressed together, and he decides to tell him everything. 

It’s a cool night tonight - late October will do that - and the clover patch isn’t really all that comfortable to sit in, nearly frosted over with the impending brisk of winter, so Taehyung and Jimin are huddled as tightly as possible. They have clasped hands in between them, a single set of twisted clovers in their grasp - it’s as intimate a place for them as anything ever could be. 

Jimin had considered elsewhere, had thought of going inside for warmth, but Taehyung had asked to sit between their driveways, and Jimin has never been one to deny him anything. 

It’s good - here - sitting pressed up close with Taehyung, no longer worrying about the buzzing under his skin. He feels back to normal, mostly, just as his mom said he would. His fangs are retracted inside his gums where they belong, even as he can feel the blood thrumming beneath Taehyung’s skin. 

It’s easy to ignore. 

Taehyung raises their clasped hands to his mouth to blow on their skin - warming them up where their skin has gone raw and chapped from the cold. Jimin doesn’t feel the cold, so he just enjoys the feeling of Taehyung’s warm breath on his hands. 

They’ve been sitting here for an hour now, mainly just enjoying the last of the nights when they might be able to sit here without freezing. Taehyung has been rambling nervously in a way that Jimin can only find endearing. It’s clear he’s excited that Jimin is back - has said more than once how much he missed him - and he’s eager to pick up where they left off. But he’s also still Taehyung, and he doesn’t know how to broach the subject, so he chatters on about all that Jimin’s missed in the last two weeks. 

And during all this Jimin hasn’t been able to lessen his smile. He can’t stop the way his cheeks scrunch up and his eyes squint, he’s sure he hasn’t stopped blushing since Taehyung took his hands in his own when they sat down. Taehyung just looks so lovely like this, in the dawning moonlight - talking a mile a minute and flicking his too-long hair out of his eyes. 

Jimin has never been so in love. 

Despite his nervousness - his anxiety - he thinks it’s worth it, for the way Taehyung fits so easily in his hands. 

“I found a clover while you were gone, you know,” Taehyung says at the end of his long chatter. He looks so smug as he says it, as if Jimin has been doubting his ability to do so. “I gave it to Grandma to keep - she has it in a little flowerpot by the kitchen window.” 

Of course she does, Jimin thinks he would do the same. He’s never doubted Taehyung’s ability to find one, and he won’t pretend he isn’t proud - because Taehyung so clearly is. He has this air about him as if nothing has ever been so impressive, chin tilted just a hint smugly. 

It’s a look that has Jimin tipping forward in his laughter. He hugs Taehyung tightly across their knees as he congratulates him for his work well done and Taehyung hugs back just as strongly. Jimin can’t think of an easier moment to tell him than now - when luck is literally on their side. 

So after a moment he leans back and unclasps a single hand to reach forward for Taehyung’s cheek, where it rests perfectly in his palm - made to fit. And Taehyung stops his rambling easily, leans into Jimin’s hand with a smile - scrunches his face in joy. 

Jimin is so in love. 

They sit in silence for just a moment like that, Taehyung looking in his eyes with warmth. He’s never seen his own reflection in Taehyung’s eyes - he doesn’t have one anymore - but he can only imagine he’d look just as smitten as he feels right now. 

The wind is brisk, ruffles Taehyung’s hair lightly as the moment slips by, and Jimin decides to say his truth before he loses his courage. 

“Taehyungie,” he whispers into the wind, and Taehyung blinks, nods to Jimin that he’s listening. Jimin breathes deeply. “I have to tell you something.” He pauses to steady himself and then, “Something important.” 

And Taehyung could look nervous at this, at something said so seriously, so suddenly in the night, but he doesn’t. Instead he blinks again, smiles with that same warmth as before, not even a little afraid of what Jimin might have to say.

“Okay,” he says, raises his own hand to cup Jimin’s along his cheek. “What is it?”

Jimin breathes shakily, feeling nervous but trying not to be, because this will be one of the most important things he ever says - and he doesn’t want his voice to waver when he does. 

“You know there are,” he pauses, glances downward to regroup for a second, grateful that Taehyung lets him - doesn’t rush. 

He squeezes his palm and Jimin smiles, nods again and then looks up into his eyes. 

“There are things about me, weird things,” Jimin starts again, more confidently this time. “I don’t know how much you’ve noticed. But we - my mom and Jihyun and I - we aren’t normal. We’ve never been.” 

Taehyung doesn’t react much, but his eyes widen slightly at this - as if he hadn’t really expected this to be the way the conversation went, but he doesn’t look upset yet - which Jimin takes a good sign to continue. 

He licks at the back of his fang, where it protrudes slightly now as he lets it extend. Not all the way, but enough that he’s sure it’s visible. His heart races at the action. It’s been years since Taehyung has seen one of his fangs, they’re larger than his baby ones - deadlier. 

“I love you so much, Taehyung-ah,” he says as they extend slowly out of his gums, watches for any change in Taehyung’s expression. “You deserve to know about me - I don’t want to hide anything from you anymore.”

He can tell when Taehyung notices the change - when his gaze dips down to Jimin’s mouth and away from his eyes. His lips part subtly - just the slightest amount, but enough to confirm that he’s seen them. Jimin’s mom has told him they glitter in the moonlight - it must be quite the sight. 

Taehyung doesn’t say anything for a moment - just stares with widened eyes and parted lips at where Jimin’s fangs have now extended to their full length, they nudge over his lower lip even with his teeth bared - long and razor sharp. And then he looks back up to Jimin’s eyes, and Jimin prepares for the worst - steels himself for fear or hatred or anything . He’s determined to be strong here. 

He’s strong enough for the both of them. He always has been. 

He always will be, even if Taehyung ends up hating him for it. 

Instead though, Jimin watches as Taehyung’s surprised expression widens out into the largest smile in his arsenal. His eyes glitter in the way they do when he’s really impressed. 

“They’re so sharp now,” he says in wonder, taking his hand from his own cheek to reach out, as Jimin sits stock still in anticipation. 

And then Taehyung sticks his finger right into Jimin’s mouth - not a worry in the world. They may be older now, but Taehyung is still Taehyung - they’re still gross boys. And Jimin lets him, because Jimin is still Jimin, and he would never deny him for the world. 

He sits in pleasant surprise, and a bit of shock, as Taehyung trails his finger up and down Jimin’s left fang - touching lightly at the tip without so much pressure as to cut himself. It’s a little gross - Taehyung’s fingers still taste of dirt and rainwater from the clovers below - but Jimin lets him poke around to his heart's content - doesn’t mind at all that it feels a little funny. 

He feels flooded with relief that Taehyung is still here with him - that Taehyung doesn’t care. 

“I still remember when they were small,” Taehyung says after a few moments of wonder, retracts his fingers to wipe them along the edge of his pants. He places his hand back along Jimin’s cheek - pets lightly at the soft skin under his eye. “I never knew they’d be this long. It suits you.” 

Jimin blinks at this in confusion, at the idea that Taehyung remembers. He shouldn’t, by all accounts. He hasn’t seen them in years - not since they’d just grown in, before he could keep them tucked away.

“You remember?” he whispers back, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. He’s sure it bleeds in, but he can’t help it. Of every possible outcome, he hadn’t expected this one. 

Taehyung twists his lips in a wry smile, as if he thinks it’s silly that Jimin might have thought otherwise. Maybe it was, Jimin doesn’t know. 

“Jiminie,” he says, tilting his head to the side - his bangs falling loosely over his eyes. “If this is you telling me that you’re a vampire - I’ve always known.”

Jimin blinks quickly, his heartbeat picking up speed at even the idea. It’s not the same as his sheer panic from before, when he’d worried that Taehyung had found out, but it raises lightly in time. His lips part wider-still in surprise, fangs resting lightly on his bottom lip in such a way that makes Taehyung chuckle - returns his finger to the tip of the left fang just for a moment. 

“You can’t think I didn’t notice,” Taehyung smiles, dragging Jimin closer by his jaw until they rest a mere inches apart. “Jimin, I can only hallucinate so many times - you haven’t had a reflection in years, and I don’t know if you know this, but your fangs sometimes pop out a little when you laugh too hard. It’s cute - I like them.” 

Jimin can’t reply, just sits stunned as Taehyung shares this moment with him, flips the confession on its head. He thinks he could stand to be a bit upset at the way Taehyung calls him a vampire - a tasteless word for his kind - one primarily used in hate, but Jimin can’t find it in himself right now. Of course it’s the only word Taehyung might know for him - there’s no reason he’d know the right words. 

What matters is the way he says it, not with vitriol, but so tenderly, as if he’s nothing but impressed by who Jimin is - happy to finally be let in on the secret, though in truth he’s known the whole time. 

Jimin finds that he can do nothing but smile in return - feels tears welling at his lashline in relief. Of all the possible outcomes, he’d never imagined one so sweet. 

But he supposes he never should have worried. 

In all the ways that Taehyung is different - in the way he laughs too loud, or gets too quiet, and gets distracted by clover patches - none of it has ever mattered to Jimin. It’s never factored in, the way that Taehyung used to have a lisp or still sometimes gets into fits when he’s upset. It’s never mattered. Because for all the ways that Taehyung stands out, Jimin loves him tenfold. He’s only ever treated them as the best things - the things that make Taehyung Taehyung . 

There was never any reason to think that Taehyung might not feel the same. 

Who Jimin is, what Jimin is, has never mattered. 

Taehyung loves Jimin - he always has, and he always will. 

Jimin ignores the tears in his eyes, ignores the way that Taehyung wipes at them with his thumb, in favor of leaning in the rest of the way - closes the gap between them. 

They share their first kiss in the tender moonlight of the clover patch - the wind rustling their hair, and the cold etching its way into Taehyung’s hands. 

Their knees press up against one another, and the angle is weird, and Jimin’s fangs get in the way, but it doesn’t matter. 

All that matters is Jimin and Taehyung, together, still clutching their lucky twisted clovers. 

------

Jimin is eighteen years old when he graduates high school, with Taehyung at his side.

Jihyun and his mother sit in the crowd, decked out in layers of sunscreen and wide-brimmed hats and everything they might need to withstand the early summer heat. Taehyung’s mom and grandma sit beside them, and they cheer louder than anything else when Taehyung crosses the stage - Jimin only a few names behind him. 

It’s in no way the most exciting day of their lives. It’s hot and sweaty, and Jimin feels disgusting beneath his robes - can tell he’s burning even under all his sunscreen. There have been better days, there will be better days - but this one is still important. 

It’s important in the way that Taehyung and Jimin hold hands for their photos, whisper jokes to one another as the day drags on. They never leave each other’s side, not for a moment - made to fit beside one another. 

And later, once the sun sets, they’ll borrow Taehyung’s mom’s car and drive to the Outskirts, where Jimin will introduce Taehyung to his friends from the clan for the first time - mesh his worlds. 

And he’s never been more excited.