{bangtan; taehyung/jeongguk} time would only envy us [ii/iv]

[nikkumeul]

①

speculum

Time winds its way through years of reaping. They don't need to sleep, nor do they have corporeal bodies that grow weary throughout the day, so instead they wander the city together after long shifts and Jeongguk thinks about reaching out to hold Taehyung's hand and actually feeling it, the weight and life of it, in his own.

In the last weeks of his blindness, he'd stroked slow fingers down the ridges of Taehyung's face, his breath catching as Taehyung had held his without really knowing why. He will never give away his sight again, give away seeing every one of Taehyung's expressions flash across his face, but he wants it all - the puff of Taehyung's breath against his own face as he runs his hands down Taehyung's cheeks to the lines of his throat. Fifty years of watching from afar don't ache as much as these days do, Taehyung ambling beside him as the nights grow long and calm, but it's a good, solid ache.

"You're so quiet," Taehyung says one night. Jeongguk was already looking at him but he still doesn't see it coming when Taehyung turns to make eye contact.

"Am I?" Jeongguk asks.

"Yeah. You're looking at me with that face again," Taehyung says, releasing a shuddering exhale. "Like I'm going to leave."

Oh, do I? I just like looking at you.

"No," Jeongguk says instead. "You wouldn't leave me, would you?" He can't imagine it - the years are long and the passing spirits are ever so sad, but Taehyung changes his life as a reaper in ways Jeongguk never anticipated. He's never associated death with change until now. But simply having something to look forward to - someone to return to at the end of a long day - softens the hurt, and Namjoon once pointed out that it's even changed how Jeongguk does his reaping work. He's gentler now, lingering longer, not holding people's hands but staying close. Yes, Taehyung has made him softer, and his wings are growing in earnest, silky, glistening black.

"Of course not," Taehyung says, with a small smile. "Of course I wouldn't."

And so the months go by, marked by simple earthly constants like the turning of the seasons and the rhythm of the sun, rising and falling. It's quiet for Jeongguk now that Namjoon and Yoongi have moved on, and he's reminded of Jimin, of all people, when Seokjin passes away.

It's a quiet affair, concluding a long lifetime lived in full as he was deserved the first time around, and when Jeongguk visits his service, he finds it's an open casket event. Seokjin would've wanted it that way, his adult nephew says with a wry smile during his farewell speech. Jeongguk weaves his way undetected through the packed audience - family members, coworkers, friends - to linger by the casket; they'd made up his body the best they could, but it had been difficult enough to get his body back from abroad for a proper funeral service to begin with. The terror attack that took Seokjin's life had reapers working overtime, shuttling those who had passed to the afterlife and coming back only to cross the bridge with more shaken spirits. Getting wrenched out of your corporeal body is never easy.

"Even though Seokjin hyung was always busy, traveling around the world more often than not," his nephew is saying, the words choking up in his throat, "I know that he truly enjoyed what he did. Defense law is a thankless task most of the time, and I remember how it wore him down through the years, but he definitely cared about each of his clients. The - the attack was an unfair way to lose such a great man."

He saved a life though, Jeongguk wants to tell him. A child's life, well before their doomsday. Paradise will welcome him with open arms.

Spirits like Seokjin's, who die heroic during terrible circumstances, are judged immediately for Paradise. He will never have to reap a day in his afterlife. Jeongguk had only heard of Seokjin's deed through the grapevine, whatever word that passes between reapers that he and Taehyung occasionally come across, and hearing Seokjin's name as one of those who had been involved any rescue effort brought a dizzying rush of relief. One hundred less years of reaping only means one hundred less years between his and Jimin's reunion. After a second lifetime of Jimin watching one-sidedly and Seokjin waiting without even realizing why, their reunion is long overdue.

One of the law firm employees is takes the small podium next, current partner and one of Seokjin's many interns back in the day. As he was getting older, Seokjin had acted more as advisor than lawyer at the firm, but this particular case had taken him away from home. He'd stayed alone all these years, finding company in his co-workers and older brother's family, so there had been no partner or children to keep him from accepting the required travel.

"I hope there's someone waiting for him, wherever oppa's gone next," she says, and Jeongguk can see tears visibly shining in her eyes. Even though the service is held nearly half a year after the terror attack, once all the legal ramifications of retrieving the body were settled, their loss still feels raw and new. "I hope he lived his life with no regrets. I'll remember you, Kim Seokjin."

Taehyung hadn't come with him today. Even though Jeongguk had tried his best to coax Taehyung to accompany him with words like Death is sad for the living, but it's not sad for the dead, Taehyung refused.

It's too close for comfort, Taehyung said. I'm sorry, but I can't do it, Jeongguk. No more funerals for me if I can help it.

Jeongguk never attended his own funeral, and he wonders now what kind things people said about him, whether Taehyung had been able to speak onstage, bare his mourning to the public, or whether this was one emotion he could not wear on his sleeve. Maybe Jaekyung would've said something, too, after all those months as his advisor, watching his portfolio develop as his sight faded away. Mingyu probably would've swallowed down the complaints of Jeongguk leaving his dirty laundry everywhere in their apartment and mentioned their bonding moments over fried eggs, always sunny side up with runny yolks. He craves that atmosphere more so than the taste now - reapers have no need for food, but dueling Mingyu with their forks for the last bite of egg had been fun, precious in the way only mundane things can be.

It's a lovely ceremony, honoring a death that happened not one day earlier or later than the Deathday books dictated. Seokjin is in Paradise now. He will never have lack for anything, material or otherwise, ever again.

He returns to their usual rooftop when it's all over, stopping by the subway station to quietly escort a graduate student who had fallen to his death in the tracks. Or at least that was how the news stations were reporting it, but Jeongguk knows it was an orchestrated slip, and he's sorry to see the spirit go. Taking one's own life is no more easily taken in judgment than it is in life, but it's no fluke, just another death predicted and realized. Taehyung's not there, though, so Jeongguk visits the graveyard, knowing exactly where to find him.

"Hey," Jeongguk says, and Taehyung nearly tumbles off his own gravestone.

"Oh, you're done. How...how was it?" Taehyung says, straightening and drifting closer to Jeongguk in a way that has Jeongguk knowing he would be taking Jeongguk's hands if he could. He always would.

"It was good," Jeongguk says simply, and Taehyung seems almost soothed by the lack of detail Jeongguk has to offer. He takes spirits to the other side every day but still avoids talking about death, and Jeongguk can see how he'd struggle with it himself too if not for Jimin's candid companionship (though not always welcome) through his life. That Taehyung is here, at his own grave, must be difficult enough.

"She came by earlier today, but I missed her. Didn't get to hear what she had to say," Taehyung says, nodding at a fresh bouquet of sunflowers Jeongguk hadn't noticed when he first arrived.

Jeongguk frowns as he tries to think of the right sympathetic thing to say and wishes, not for the first time, that he could hold Taehyung through these moments instead. The first time Taehyung's baby daughter came by to visit him and Taehyung had been there alone coincidentally had been a day of radio silence on Jeongguk's end. After scouring the city long and hard, Jeongguk finally found Taehyung sitting right here, cheeks shining with the evidence of tear tracks, his gaze thousands of miles away.

"Hey, it's your shift at the hospital today," Jeongguk said carefully. "There's something clinging to life on an operating table and they're not supposed to survive."

"Oh, right," Taehyung said, looking up at Jeongguk in shock, as if he hadn't noticed Jeongguk approach him in the first place. "Sorry… I'll go take care of it."

He stood and began to head for the hospital on the other side of town, but Jeongguk hastened to put himself in Taehyung's path, just for a moment, wishing so desperately he could've caught onto Taehyung's hand and reeled him into his arms instead. "Babe, what happened?"

"I'll - I'll tell you after, I have to go," Taehyung said distractedly. Jeongguk had let him go helplessly, knowing he'd been the one to deliver Taehyung his task in the first place, but nearly a week had gone by before Taehyung could bring himself to talk about it. Since then, Taehyung had tried to come by his grave more often, in hopes of catching her, finding success mostly on holiday weekends and drinking in her words of her life without him. Stories for her appa she didn't even realize he was genuinely listening to. Those days, Jeongguk noticed, were slow growth days for Taehyung's wings.

"Well, you'll catch her next time," Jeongguk says reassuringly.

"No, it's okay," Taehyung says, and he gives Jeongguk a warm look. His eyes say so much these days, Jeongguk only hopes he's reading it all properly. "I don't mind it too much anymore,. Want to head out? I miss our roof."

"Okay," Jeongguk says. It's slow-going, but Jeongguk can tell Taehyung is trying, and each passing day brings them closer to the end of their reaper contracts.

They usually like to watch the sunset, but Seokjin's funeral service had run longer than daylight, and the stars wink overhead in the cool, clear night. "I'm glad she comes less often now," Taehyung says suddenly, and Jeongguk memorizes the easy, relaxed lines of Taehyung's face and hopes they'll last.

"Yeah?" Jeongguk says, so Taehyung knows he's listening.

"Yeah. I think her daughter is getting married soon. My - my granddaughter. Sujeong would've been so happy," Taehyung says. His wife hadn't chosen reaping when judgment had come, a quiet passing in exchange for no Paradise, and Taehyung hadn't seemed surprised when they'd found out from Sojin, who'd heard from Minah, who'd reaped her. Jeongguk imagines it sometimes, that slender figure crossing the bridge with Minah's gentle guidance, butterflies lighting her path.

"We - We could stop by the wedding if you really want to," Jeongguk says hesitantly, even though the thought of it unsettles him a bit. There is no timer set for an end when you’re dead. We have all the time in the world, Jimin told him once, that terrible, hollow look in his eyes, uncaring for the snow piling up softly on his slender shoulders. But it doesn't seem right to cast Death's shadow over such a beautiful day, to darken a celebration of new beginnings.

"No," Taehyung says, and the firm tone of his voice seems to surprise himself as well. "Oh, no, sorry, baby - I didn't mean it like that. But we don't need to go."

"Are you sure?" Jeongguk can't help but double-check.

Taehyung makes a little humming noise in the back of this throat, eyes so tender Jeongguk's quiet heart feels heavy in his chest under the weight of them. "I'm sure, Jeonggukie."

If Taehyung could stay with him through the long weeks of Jeongguk's encroaching blindness, then Jeongguk will be here every step of the way as Taehyung learns to let go of his family. He can't do it all - can't kiss his fingertips the way Taehyung had Jeongguk's when Jeongguk had traced the bow of his lips - but he never leaves Taehyung alone if he can help it. There will be plenty of time to touch when they get to Paradise. All the time in the world.

As the last traces of Taehyung's own passing clear up, Jeongguk's gone decades ago, their wings stretch and grow at their most rapid rate yet. He'd always remembered Yoongi's wings as threatening, even sinister, in life, but getting to know him with Namjoon's touch had improved the impression and banished the fear. Taehyung's wings, though, are the first pair Jeongguk's ever really found beautiful. They glisten in both sunlight and starshine, and arc gracefully over Taehyung's hooded head before drawing long, defined curves down to the ground, the very tip of his axial feathers brushing the earth. He trusts Taehyung's descriptions that his are much the same, but he doesn't think they could hold a candle to Taehyung's - the vibrancy of them, the way they tremble and Jeongguk can't help but wonder whether Taehyung will take flight.

Axial feathers mean full growth. Jeongguk's wings finish growing before Taehyung's, and Taehyung pouts about it petulantly for a few days while Jeongguk tries not to laugh as he coaxes Taehyung out of his bad mood.

"It's not fair, I was winning at first," Taehyung says, looking at Jeongguk's wings with such naked longing and none of the envy in his words.

"I didn't know it was a competition?" Jeongguk says, feeling the corners of his mouth sneak up in a smile. This is where he would reel Taehyung in for a kiss. This is where he would catch onto Taehyung's wrists, and feel him wriggle playfully as if to escape only for Jeongguk to slip his hands in Taehyung's and hold on tighter.

But he can't, not yet, so he drinks in Taehyung's laugh and the flare of his gorgeous wings and lets it be enough. For now.

The last day of Jeongguk's reaper contract is one of the quietest he's ever spent in the inner city, with only the butterflies for company as he escorts the final spirit of the day across the bridge - a child who had run away from the local orphanage, miserable with her own unwantedness, and collapsed in an alley from exhaustion and dehydration. She hadn't been found in time to be saved, so the earth was letting go of her.

"You're okay now," he says quietly, feeling her tighten her grip on his fingers fearfully at the sight of a hooded figure standing in the middle of the silvery fog at the end of the bridge. "No one will hurt you here."

"I'm scared," she whimpers, and Jeongguk startles and stares down at her, at her scruffy hair and too-thin face, drawn into lines of hardship too deep for any child to bear. He's never, ever had a spirit respond to his words before, much less one so young.

"Hey," he says, suddenly overwhelmingly curious. "Have you - seen anyone like that before?"

She looks up into his face, stares directly into it, with wide eyes so brown they're nearly black. "The death angels? I've seen them ever since they came to take Mama. You're one too."

"They took your mother?" Jeongguk repeats, and no sooner with the words out of his mouth are the images coalescing in his mind's eye, butterflies nearly covering the sickly woman's arms and hair as the two reapers approach - massive black wings filling the narrow bedroom, an outstretched hand. One of the hooded reapers turns to look down at the girl huddled at her mother's bedside, who stares up with open awe and fear, a butterfly lighting on her shoulder for a moment before it winks out into nothingness. No wonder she had taken his hand so easily, despite all the nursery tales warning against his very existence that he's had to overcome; he rarely reaps children and nearly forgot how difficult they can be.

But she can see him. She's just like how Jeongguk was in life.

"And now you're taking me," she says, and for all the sadness she so clearly felt about her mother's passing, she's matter-of-fact about her own. It's in the Deathday books, after all.

"Yes," Jeongguk says, and she lets him lead her the rest of the way across the bridge. He can see now that her fear is for the fog and the void beyond, not for the second reaper, and to his surprise, it's not sweet-faced Boram taking her hand, but Boa.

"I'll take her from here," Boa says, and the girl hesitantly puts her small hand in Boa's. She is no normal child, Jeon Jeongguk. There are great things in store for her.

Jeongguk squeezes her hand once before letting go, and she looks over her shoulder at him as Boa begins to lead her away. "Well passed, Lee Halla," he says softly, her searching gaze pulling the usually silent words from his lips.

He turns to cross back, pensive from his slightest brush past something clearly larger than any life he knows, only to find another hooded figure standing in the middle of the bridge - clearly waiting for him. "Jeon Jeongguk," says Yunho, and Jeongguk finds himself face-to-face with one of the oldest, most reputable reapers for their corner of the world. Rumors say he's lost count of how many centuries he's been reaping. Rumors say he was forever, irrevocably separated from his lover, and just chose to reap to the end of his days, or to the end of the world, whichever comes first.

Oh, fuck, Jeongguk thinks automatically. "Yes?" he says instead.

"A century and ten. Wings full grown. Your contract is complete, Jeon Jeongguk," Yunho says somberly, each word momentous and heavy. "You may now continue to Paradise."

Jung Yunho reaps reapers, Jeongguk realizes with a start. He remembers Yoongi's scathing words to Jimin - When will you ever grow wings and leave this half-life, Jimin? - and knows that he's finally paid his due. He's done what he needs to do here, all the inner city shifts and passed spirits under his guiding hand.

But Taehyung still has four decades left, and Jeongguk can't imagine a Paradise without him there. "I'll wait," Jeongguk says, his voice sounding thin and young in comparison to Yunho's ringing timber, but he's proud it doesn't shake. He wonders how Yoongi must've felt, standing in this exact place and thinking of Namjoon's remaining years, telling Yunho he couldn't move on yet.

Yunho looks at him for a long moment, before saying, "Very well. Take your usual shift tomorrow," and stepping aside for Jeongguk to pass.

So he does, mind clamoring, and finds Taehyung waiting for him at the end of the bridge - the strangest sight of a day of strangeness. All reapers can instinctively find their way to this channel between the worlds of the living and the dead, but Jeongguk knows Taehyung prefers to avoid it if he can. When their eyes meet, it's like something breaks across Taehyung's face, a stone falling into a clear pool and sending ripples out, and out, and out.

"You came back," Taehyung breathes, voice thick, as close as he can possibly be without touching Jeongguk.

"Of course I did," Jeongguk says. When they stand this closely, he can imagine having it again sometimes, the vibrancy and the warmth of Taehyung's body against his, the way Taehyung arched into his touches and Jeongguk swallowed down his whimpers like they were nectar.

Taehyung shakes his head, chokes up. "You came back to me."

"Of course I did," Jeongguk says again, no better words to describe this helplessness. "It wouldn't be Paradise without you there by my side."

"Jeongguk," Taehyung says. "Baby."

They're both quiet that night, and Jeongguk's unable to bring himself to tell Taehyung about Lee Halla; he still hasn't told Taehyung about growing up seeing Jimin everywhere, though he's mentioned Jimin simply in passing as a reaper who knew Yoongi and Namjoon as well and moved on to Paradise already. That there was no such sleep paralysis plaguing his sleep, but rather one of the death angels had come knocking. Something about walking alongside reapers even in life feels too strange, too unnerving, like if there's one secret he'll ever keep from Taehyung, this should be it.

Taehyung doesn't push it. As long as you can be by my side, and as long as you want to be, if it’s something that I should know, I will know. Instead, he wanders through his own thoughts for a night, and by the time the sun rises, he's back to his usual self - cheerfully waving farewell as he leaves for the nursing home.

By all means, it's another normal day, and the butterflies soon call Jeongguk away.

axial

As Taehyung's contract comes to an end, nearly paid in full, Taehyung grows more and more excited - like anticipating a birthday party, ready to celebrate yet another turn around the star they call the Sun. Except this is no birthday - his final Deathday anniversary, more accurately, and soon they'll have no need to tell time.

It makes Jeongguk nervous. After all these years, over a century and a half of reaping spirits, this all seems too good to be true, even though he's the one who has actually met Yunho between the two of them. Sometimes he thinks he imagined it, that face as old as time itself, the only one trusted to reap the reapers themselves.

"Come with me on my shifts?" Taehyung asks during his last week, so Jeongguk does, accompanying him to the nursing home and taking one wing of the building while Taehyung takes another. Shimmering, iridescent butterflies fill the halls reminiscent to the way they do in hospitals, flitting from the company of one reaper to another, and Jeongguk is reminded again that Taehyung sees them differently when he brings them up.

"There have been less of them, the little meteors," Taehyung says, holding a hand out and smiling when a butterfly lights upon his fingertips. They're on their way out at the end of the day, still close enough to the nursing home that the butterflies linger around them, and Jeongguk is tired but content, which is an unfamiliar feeling for him. After all this time, Taehyung is still showing him new things. "Ever since the Alzheimer treatments started. So many of the seniors have been getting well and going home, Jeonggukie."

"That's good," Jeongguk says warmly, Taehyung's joy contagious.

Taehyung looks up at him smiling, the glow from the butterflies on his shoulders illuminating his face with a soft, warm light. It's amazing, Jeongguk decides, how much times have changed - he still remembers the lurch in his chest, throat closing in silent panic, when he noticed the first butterfly on Taehyung's skin. Sitting there on the hickey Jeongguk had just left during their lovemaking, as if the blood rising to the surface of Taehyung's body called it there.

You always do that thing that cats do. Go really still and stare at nothing in particular.

He's here now. He's here, and his mind is quiet with the kind of peace you learn over years of practice. It's more than welcome after a lifetime of looking over his shoulder for reapers and butterflies.

"I love you," Jeongguk says suddenly, and watches, smitten, as Taehyung's expression is surprised then unbearably fond in seconds. He has no more photographs, no more portfolio, but he hopes that his hands, and mouth, will be enough soon.

"I love you, too," Taehyung says, "So much."

So they reap, and on the last day, for the last trip between life and death, Taehyung waits for him at the foot of the bridge, speaking to his final spirit in soothing murmurs until Jeongguk joins him. It's a startling image - Taehyung clasping the old, wrinkled man's hand in his own, his beautiful long fingers a stark contrast to the countless ridges and crevices bestowed by age, and Jeongguk wonders at the strangeness of this image presented from another world. He can see it, almost. Maybe those hands would've been his, holding Taehyung's in old age, taking him across the bridge and letting go for good.

But instead, Taehyung looks up as Jeongguk approaches and brightens at the sight of him, and Jeongguk simply falls in step with their idling, patient pace. His wings trail across the polished wood of the bridge where so many have treaded before, whispering in the quiet. Taehyung is and will always be better at this part than Jeongguk is, and the mist takes the spirit with a soft sigh.

They look at each other, Taehyung's eyes bright with excitement and something else that looks like silvery tears. Jeongguk almost wants to hold onto this moment, he looks so beautiful. "Ready?"

"Always," Jeongguk says, and they turn to face Yunho together.

③