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Shadows kept appearing and disappearing next to heavily soot -ed grey walls. Distant sounds of some hushed and some loudly hurled words fading in and out somewhere along the street. Sounds of footsteps rushing up and down the rickety staircases of the apartments nearby.
With his long coat swishing in the night air, shoes falling onto the damp pavement, the young man crossed the street from where he has parked his mercedes with the older one following warily behind.
Jungkook breathed in the moist air. Combining the smell of the evening rain which has since long stopped and the exhaust fumes of the cars which steadily passed through the evening with something, almost uniquely pungent to the environment here.
He looked back at Taehyung who didn’t meet his eyes. If the older one was feeling the chills due to the night air in his sequined off shoulder crop top and skin tight dark ripped shorts, he didn’t show. Jungkook still made a mental note of asking him about it or maybe lending a coat.
They entered a café by the street side. A small bleak looking run down establishment with washed out paints. Dangling blue neon sign over it. Owner, a middle aged women gave them a once over and sighed before moving away somewhere to the back. Business owners and such gave wide berths to the usual gentry that roamed around this part of the town even during the day time. And it was late then. Late even for the standards of the area. Traffic has slowed down to a trickle.
They made way to a booth at the far right. Next to the window looking over the damp street. Jungkook waited for Taehyung to sit at the corner facing the front of the shop before carefully sitting down.
The moment he has anticipated, dreaded, dreamed of, all in equal measure was finally here. He has been waiting for this meeting for years after all. Desperately yearning more like. For eleven long years.
Thirty one years old Taehyung was different from the twenty years old Tae he has known. And loved. He was not the eighteen year old, wide eyed Jungkook himself.
Life has played them unfair all those years back and he has cursed and distanced himself from every god, every divinity, every nauseating noble lie sold in the name of fate over it. He has lived for one purpose. To do right by the one person who deserved it the most. And that person has eluded him for more than a decade now. But they are finally here.
Grown. With faces having lost their softness replaced with a weariness that was more prominent for their ages. Eyes having gone shadowed beneath. Concealer chipped at places where Taehyung has tried to hide it. Jungkook hasn’t. He doesn’t sleep well. And he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it either.
Most his eyes have shone in the past years was a week before now when he has finally been able to trace Taehyung to this place.
Taehyung taps his long fingers nervously on the edge of the table.
‘So…’, he starts with a smile looking over at Jungkook quickly and then at his fingers still tapping, ‘…you did become an idol then?’
‘Hyung..I..no.’
Answering to the little frown on the older one’s face, Jungkook continued staring directly at his wandering eyes and nervous demeanour, ‘I started a music production company of my own. Away from my father.’, at this their eyes meet briefly, ‘Away from his label.’
‘Oh..right. Nice. Looks like you are doing well.’, Taehyung gestures at his general appearance which despite his tired face seems comfortably well to do financially.
‘Yes..yes. Its going well.’
‘And how are you hyung?’
In his excitement to meet Taehyung, Jungkook barely noticed anything else other than his eyes the moment they met today. Beautiful as before. And yet they stared back at him from a face which has hardened into something of a mask he didn’t quite know what to make of. His heart beat a staccato rhythm he could distinctly hear at his first sight of his Taehyung after 11 years.
His extremities went numb from the sheer realization of them, here, after everything that happened all those years ago to the point of shaking before he caught himself up.
From the clothes, the cheap makeup, his chipped nails, hastly made hair bun, twitching fingers, wary demeanor and the place of their meeting, everything pointed to a conclusion he wasn’t sure he can voice out to even himself yet.
He wasn’t sure what he is expecting from the question exactly.