It's the same shit.

The exact same shit as before.

Chemicals. Chemistry. Bland white tables. Taehyung. Jeongguk. Hands.

Only, a few things have changed. Not much, but just enough to the point where if you paid attention, you'd notice.

It's in the little things.

The same bitch of a teacher as before, a lady with a hard set frown who's really just doing her job. Jeongguk keeps this in the back of his mind, but he still feels annoyance whenever her long, drawn out words fill his ears and make him nearly pass out onto the surface in front of him.

There's a few things that keep him awake.

The first one being, if he fails this next chemistry test, he's quite literally screwed. It feels like ages ago but it was just last week when he sat in this very seat and made a mess of the chemicals he was instructed to pour, earning him and Taehyung a blaring F as a lab grade. Taehyung wasn't mad at him, although he probably should've been.

That's the other thing keeping him awake.

The hands that used to seem so far away, close enough to touch but not realistically touchable, not actually there in the ways that mattered- but they are now. The left one drags a thumb over the back of Jeongguk's knuckle from where their hands rest under the table, on top of Taehyung's thigh.

And it's really in the little things.

In the way just that, barely anything, a touch that's hardly even noticeable, only to Jeongguk who's consciousness directly focuses on the warmth, is able to keep Jeongguk's hands from shaking. Is able to keep emotions and chemicals alike from overflowing, from spilling all over the table and giving Jeongguk an even worse grade to worry about. Potientally making Taehyung almost slightly mad.

Also the chemicals in front of them aren't pink, they're something else. It's a singular beaker with some shit Jeongguk and Taehyung had to mix into it earlier. Jeongguk doesn't have the strength in him to figure out what, but when he pours starch into it and the glass colors blue, he thinks he knows why. Why the colors changed.

Because everything changes.

It's never instantaneous, like the chemicals lie and try to tell you. It isn't just pouring one section of a person into another and then watching as they change colors, become a new substance entirely.

It's gradual. You long for something to happen, for the bland white to be washed away by a bright blue or a sage green, and then suddenly you look up and realize you've been that color all along. You just needed the contrast of another color to help you realize.

It's a bad analogy. Comparing chemicals to Jeongguk and Taehyung. To Jeongguk specifically.

But it's the only one he can think of, so he thinks it's a pretty damn good one if it sort of helps him at least try to wrap his head around this chemistry bullshit, because Taehyung's eyes are landing on his fingers, clearly waiting for him to write an answer down on the lab sheet between them.

Jeongguk has deja vu.

"Gguk."

Fuck, he has deja vu.

"Gguk."

It comes in the form of fingers leaving their spot from being wrapped around his own, and he internally curses because what comes next is really gonna make him reminisce. To the old colors he saw himself as. To when his fingers still shook.

"Gguk, are you gonna-"

"Yeah, I'm working on it."

This time is tone isn't piercing, doesn't make Taehyung's eyes widen or voice drop in shock. Because even though Taehyung's saying his name, he's not saying it like he's a porcelain doll. He's just checking on him.

Taehyung hums, the sound spreading out over Jeongguk's shoulder along with the rush of air that follows, and god, Jeongguk feels like the definition of deja vu considering how long he accidentally finds himself staring at Taehyung's fingertips drumming on the table. He really shouldn't have zoned out like that, but it's hard not to.

It's almost even worse now. Before, it was all his imagination, scenarios conjured up by his touch deprived and in love mind that begged for Taehyung to do both. Touch him, and love him.

But now, he knows. How they feel when they skim the curve of his waist, fit into the dip and then squeeze above a hip bone. How it feels when they hold his face between them, when they brush along his upper thigh in public situations. Ones that call for subtlety. Like right now.

Because, Taehyung said it before. He knows too. How much Jeongguk loves to stare, when in reality he can just reach out and touch. So Taehyung does it for him. Just barely traces near the pocket of his jeans, settles a bit when he notices it gets Jeongguk's hands to stop shaking. It's distracting, but definitely a good distracting.

Jeongguk's still just staring at the blue, the beaker in front of him. There's something he's supposed to measure, but he kind of forgets what, and all he can really think about is the slight weight on his leg, the way he can feel the hand through his clothing.

And he really doesn't have deja vu anymore. It's the same shit as before, but it's also entirely different, and it's not in the little things, it's in everything. In the way Jeongguk feels, in the way Taehyung does too. In the way they touch.

"Hey, Jeongguk?" Taehyung's voice is careful, and the grip on Jeongguk's thigh tightens ever so slightly when he hums in response, "are you sure you've got it?"

"What are you implying?" Jeongguk answers out of the side of his mouth, refusing to look at Taehyung, because if he does he'll probably see that same concerned expression that makes him melt, but this time there's no reason to be concerned at all. He wants him to know that. Without having to melt, of course.

Taehyung shakes his head quickly, clearly surprised by what he said, "I'm not implying anything, I know you know how to do it. It's just, you've been staring at the iodine solution for five minutes now and," he pauses for a second, seemingly thinks, and then Jeongguk can hear the smile as it rises from beside him, "should I take my hand off of your thigh?"

"No," Jeongguk answers a bit too quickly and a bit too loudly, so that a few of the students around them swivel in their seats to stare. He ignores the stares, because Kim Taehyung's hand is currently grabbing his thigh like it's a stress ball, so the stares are completely totally irrelevant.

He breathes in deep, also ignores the shake of his lungs because it's not a bad shake, just a shake, "one teaspoon of starch. Iodine's a light blue color."

Taehyung's hand squeezes one last time, and then leaves altogether. Jeongguk's chest collapses, but it quickly builds itself back up again when he watches the very same hand wrap around a pencil and start writing the answer on their paper. Taehyung probably knew the answer before Jeongguk said anything, but Jeongguk's glad he gave him time to figure it out for himself.

"You got it," Taehyung beams, places the pencil down on the table where it nearly rolls off the side. Jeongguk catches it just in time, exhales freely. Finds himself staring at his own hands, the way they look around the pencil, and how it's not quite the same as Taehyung's. Although, hands are just hands. It's really more of who they belong to.

Jeongguk tries to focus. He really does. It's nearly impossible, because Taehyung's hand reassumes it's position of being permanently embedded into the denim coating Jeongguk's thigh.

That's probably an exaggeration. The thing is, it doesn't feel like an exaggeration to Jeongguk, not when it's quite literally all he can think about when he's supposed  to be redeeming Taehyung's intellect in the eyes of their teacher.

Part of him wants to call himself stupid. For not being able to form a single coherent thought.

But he knows that he's not.

He couldn't be.

There's no way, not when someone as honest as Taehyung told him everything he was never able to recognize about himself. Not when even he's formed a new outlook on his thought process, knowing that just because it's a bit different than the standard person doesn't mean he's stupid.

He supposes a part of him will always think that way, but it's okay. And he thinks that's the most important lesson he's ever learned. That it's okay to feel stupid sometimes. It doesn't mean you are, it just means you're human. Jeongguk also thinks that the revelation of humanity and stupidity going hand in hand but simultaneously being opposites is part of what makes him so smart.

Maybe he'll tell Taehyung about it later.

Just not right now. Now would be a bad time.

"Hey babe?"

Jeongguk almost sighs, because that's a corny name to call someone, but he also feels like sighing because he really doesn't mind the nickname. Because he's just as corny as Taehyung is, if not more, and Taehyung's fingers move back and forth, soothing yet somehow mildly sexual.

"Yeah?" His voice is high pitched, and he really doesn't say anything about him being corny, because he's been staring at the blue beaker in front of him for almost five minutes now, so he doesn't really have much room to talk, or mock about anything.

The hand stops moving, just applies a slight grounding pressure, makes Jeongguk's vision nearly spot up, in a good way, of course, "you okay?"

Right. He should really do the work. They both depend on it to graduate high school. Not really, but sort of, inherently. He should let his mind wander another time, not right now.

"Just peachy," he mumbles, and then actually focuses, stares at the blue so intensely that he's surprised he doesn't start to see Taehyung in it, until he kind of does, and that's almost frightening, that he can literally see Taehyung in anything. Anything. A good frightening. Because everything's good in Jeongguk-land right now.

Taehyung looks unconvinced. His eyebrow quirks and his mouth opens like he's about to say something, but then Jeongguk interrupts, "one tablespoon of starch, a bit darker of a blue than before."

His mouth stays open for a second. Jeongguk looks at the curve of his mouth, the mesmerizing pink. His mind goes to how they feel when they touch his own, when his tongue pokes out from between them and turns Jeongguk's own lips pink. His neck pink.

Then it closes. Taehyung mumbles, "right," and the hand leaves Jeongguk's leg. He's mildly thankful. It was starting to get impossible to focus on anything with the mixture of the lips and the hands, the Taehyung.

He doesn't realize he's still staring, sort of blanked out, until Taehyung asks, "are you sure? You look kind of out of it."

Well, yeah.

It would be hard not to be. Inhumane almost, and as previously mentioned, Jeongguk's very human. Almost frighteningly so.

But right now everything's good.

They're almost done with the assignment. They'll leave this horrid building soon, go home and go to Jeongguk's this time. Probably won't end up with dicks being sucked atop kitchen counters, but that's not what matters. What really matters is that Taehyung said something about a date night, which is another one of the reasons Jeongguk can't focus. Excitement.

So he smiles. Ear to ear, the one Taehyung always makes a mental note of. That Jeongguk's smiled 22 times so far today, and Taehyung has been the reason for 15 of them. He plays a little game with himself, one he'll probably tell Jeongguk about soon, but just not now. Now he just changes the numbers from 22 to 23, from 15 to 16, and thinks that this may be his favorite smile yet.

It definitely convinces him, the smile.

"Yeah," Jeongguk finally looks away from the blue, the iodine, the chemicals that make a super shitty metaphor that Jeongguk thinks is less and less shitty the longer he contemplates it, and then looks into the brown. Into Taehyung. Into the pools of chocolate, the deep warmth that tastes sweet and makes Jeongguk feel exactly that.

"I'm good."

And he is. But Taehyung still asks one more time, just to make sure, but it's not like it's because he doesn't believe Jeongguk, because he does. He hangs off of his every word, hardly noticing when the class around him fades away into nothing, and he almost leans forward and kisses Jeongguk. Allows himself to fade away into everything.

"Are you sure you're sure?" It should seem annoying, but it's said with a lazy half smile from Taehyung's end this time, and Jeongguk definitely makes a mental note of it. The grin. Doesn't quite keep track of the number, of how many times Taehyung's displayed his teeth today, but he knows it's been a lot. Also knows that every time it's happened he still wants to lean forward and lick them. A strange, compulsive urge.

"Definitely," Jeongguk whispers, and he should probably calm down because if he leans any closer they'll be kissing, instead of this lovesick stare down dynamic that's currently taking place, and all the other people in the room are probably gagging at how caught up they look, but Jeongguk seriously doesn't fucking care, "just thinking."

Carefully, extremely carefully, Taehyung takes his thumb slowly reaches out, smooths a lock of hair behind Jeongguk's ear. The pad of his finger just barely touches his cheekbone, where Jeongguk likes to think it should take permanent residence, and then it leaves, goes back to Taehyung's side while he responds, "what about?"

Jeongguk looks into his eyes. Really, because there's no hair in the way anymore, since Taehyung moved it back, extinguished any obstacles. His lungs feel like they're behind, struggling to catch up, but that's only because of how it feels whenever Taehyung's hands get anywhere near his face. Seriously. Anywhere.

"You."

It comes out so easily, a cliche like that. A line Jeongguk's heard in thousands of movies, one he used himself just the other night. When asked what's bothering you, what's clouding your mind with illusions of stars peeking through layers of water, yellow flowers blooming in dry soil, and the answer is simple. The person in front of you. In Jeongguk's case, Taehyung.

But that's honestly all it is. Not a cliche, not a line. Just a simple answer to a simple question. Because Jeongguk is thinking about Taehyung. He hasn't stopped thinking about him for years, and he knows he never wants to.

That if thinking about Taehyung when someone says something a certain way brings him joy or humor, or if he thinks about him when he hears a certain word that he associates with love, with beauty, if it's involuntary, wired into Jeongguk's brain, that's totally okay with him.

It's totally okay that Taehyung's already wide smile grows, and he breaks eye contact to look around the room carefully. When he sees the lack of wandering eyes or attention pointed their way, he leans forward slowly, and his lips come into brief contact with Jeongguk's. Super brief. Like, two seconds and then its over, brief.

But it's the best two seconds of Jeongguk's day. When they meet, when his lips fit right into the spaces between and below Taehyung's, and the tips of their noses brush. When Taehyung gently cups his jaw, makes it so that even though the kiss is short, it's deep and blinding.

It's so blinding. The blue he'd thought was permanently engraved into his memory for how long he stared disappears, and is replaced by a multitude of colors, a multitude of images. It's all so pretty, leaves Jeongguk with closed eyes and parted lips even after Taehyung's pulled away, and Taehyung almost rushes back in, but they're in class. As always, time and place.

So instead he presses an even smaller kiss onto Jeongguk's nose. It's more of a peck than a kiss, and it's sickening how sweet it is, almost like cotton candy dipped in caramel that would make Jeongguk throw up for days.

Funny how even something disgusting, something horrible like vomit makes Jeongguk think of Taehyung, and the way he held him after he'd done the terrible thing. The way he can make even the most bitter things turn into sugar, turn into the way Jeongguk had felt that night. When Taehyung pulled him out of his head and gave him a hug, showed him his own brain and all the good things about it.

Jeongguk's eyes flutter open, and it's the slowest thing they've ever done. He feels the hand on his jaw, the imprint of warm lips on two parts of his face, and then he also feels it as they leave, and everything picks up speed again. Taehyung motions towards the chemistry experiment, and Jeongguk has to come back down from his sugar high, face reality and where they are.

"What about me?" Taehyung talks, makes Jeongguk regain a faint sense of normalcy. He shakes his head, tries to forget the distracting touch, and then looks back at the blue, the bright blue that almost seems brand new after the mind numbing way Taehyung made him feel.

Jeongguk smirks a bit, drops a bit more starch into the mixture with careful fingers, "not much. Just that if you don't shut up soon we might get detention again-"

Taehyung bursts out laughing, makes a couple people look at them, and it seems like people are always looking at them, but none of their eyes matter. How could they be significant when Jeongguk knows the way it feels to have Taehyung look at him, and vice versa? Their looks are painfully unimportant, especially right now when Taehyung lightly hits the table with a loose fist, makes pride swell in Jeongguk's heart at how big he made his smile.

"Well, we wouldn't want to have that would we-"

"No, actually Taehyung. You said something about date night and I really want to have an actual date-"

"Relax," the hand goes back to his thigh, shuts him up and leaves them both just smiling at each other, Jeongguk's teasing and disdainful, and Taehyung's happy and calm, content, "you make a point. I'll shut up. Just do your measurements baby."

Jeongguk smiles at him, ignores the way his stomach flips at the pet name, and then does exactly that. His measurements. Because Taehyung's right, and he's smart, but even sometimes he doesn't have the best intuition. He needs Jeongguk to remind him of things like strict teachers and potentially life altering plans.

They don't talk anymore. Jeongguk concentrates, and occasionally Taehyung will say something, but that's only when he can't help it.

Can't help the urge to talk when he's with the one he loves. The urge to tell him how pretty he looks when he concentrates, or how good he's doing with this chemistry lab as compared to their last one.

And that's because, it's the exact same shit, but everything's different.

They're different.

Jeongguk knew a lot before, but he knows even more now. Like how Taehyung's hands feel, how comforting they can be, how comforting his voice is when it whispers in your ear, how it feels to wake up next to him, how it feels to be his. As corny as it sounds.

But he also knows more about himself too. Like how it's okay to be insecure, and it's okay to have doubts as long as you don't let them consume you, because that's the stupidest thing a person can do. Allow the bad things about the world to distract you from the beautiful, from the things that are uncertain only because you haven't dove deeper into them, tried to make sense out of them, because that in itself is beautiful.

And he feels so many things. He feels smart, beautiful, loved, content in knowing Taehyung feels the same way.

But most of all, he just feels Taehyung.

He feels the big hand, the blue veins and the long fingers, as they slowly trace a heart onto Jeongguk's thigh. He probably thought Jeongguk wouldn't notice or make out the shape, but he did, and he does.

He notices everything when it comes to Taehyung.

Because Taehyung notices everything when it comes to him. Every mood swing, every question he wants to ask but doesn't, every facial expression that doesn't look nearly as happy as Taehyung wishes it did, but it still looks fucking beautiful.

Because Jeon Jeongguk is smart, and beautiful.

And that's all Taehyung really needs to know. He just happens to know everything else after having been best friends for ten years.

A long time.

But they have more ahead of them. More cuddling, more nose kisses, more bad jokes, more tv show analysis's, more chemistry classes until the chemistry classes turn into graduation, and more classes at different schools, schools that have nothing to do with the way Jeongguk and Taehyung feel, because that'll never change.

But that's looking into the future.

For now, they have date night. They have each other, and they have hearts on thighs, and blues in beakers.

And that's more than enough.

Jeongguk knows it.

-

idk if this ending was good but omg im actually crying for fear of making this too long im just gonna say i love this book and if you read it i love you.