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taeheyhey · 6 years ago

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Close to Normal (Finale)

Chapter 22 - Little Star

Taehyung x Reader - 2.7K words

A/N - Well then...here it is! It's honestly been so lovely to post this story here. I'm so thankful for the support and the nice comments and likes. I've been so happy that I've got to know some unbelievably kind and warm people through posting it, and I really hope you like the next stories I put out there. I'm hoping to spend a lot of my free time this Christmas catching up with some of the requests I've had. If you are not familiar with the song Little Star by Standing Egg (which I'm sure a lot of you are), please check out the links below. I really feel like knowing/hearing the song adds to this chapter.

Standing Egg - Little Star

Taehyung - Little Star (Cover) (Credit to Bangtan Taehyung)

Anyway...let's get on with it!! Please enjoy!

One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~ Ten ~ Eleven ~ Twelve ~ Thirteen ~ Fourteen ~ Fifteen ~ Sixteen ~ Seventeen ~ Eighteen ~ Nineteen ~ Twenty ~ Twenty-One ~ Twenty-Two

Needless to say, it was not the beginning of The Notebook.

Wholly bewildered and strangely apprehensive, you felt your eyes begin to prick with hot tears as the three words on the screen dissolved in to blackness. As the strumming sound continued to fill the large empty room, you felt rather than heard the soothing strains of the song you had tried so hard to bring to your mind for the past three months, the music all at once as familiar to you as if you had heard it every day.

You turned in your seat, looking over your left shoulder and then your right, rather redundantly as you knew you hadn’t heard anyone enter. You returned your attention to the large screen in front of you just in time to have the wind knocked out of you by the scene you were faced with.

It wasn’t the young man from the pictures with the perfectly applied make up and precisely tousled hair in a whole spectrum of colours. It was the beautiful bare face of the boy you had found yourself falling for – hard – some months earlier. It was the face you had seen almost every night when you had closed your eyes to sleep and the one that, for that brief, blissful moment before you were fully awake, you imagined yourself waking up to.

And he was staring in to the camera with eyes so large and a gaze so intense that you could have sworn he was looking right at you at that very moment. He flicked his eyes up to somewhere at the top of the screen after what felt like minutes of him staring in to your soul in silence.

The soft sound of the acoustic guitar which had caused nervous energy to course through you the moment it commenced played on in the background as you continued to be transfixed by the perfection of Taehyung’s face.

It was so jarring to see him so clearly before you after all these months. After your brief foray in to sleuthing to find out more about him, you hadn’t been able to bring yourself to look at the plethora of photographs and videos on the internet. There was no way that those images, moving or otherwise, would do justice to the kind and free-spirited soul who had captured your heart completely. You needed to be able to remember him how you had seen him. Your funny, shy, chivalrous and effortlessly handsome Taehyung. Yours.

“Geurae,” was all he said before nodding briefly with a small smile and beginning to sing along to the music, which was now being played through the speakers on his phone rather than dubbed over the top of the footage. The lyrics of the song had been translated at the bottom of the video, and you found yourself torn between wanting to understood the words he sang so beautifully; and the need to look only at him.

Close your eyes and listen carefully to my story

Before my story ends, you will dream

Little star tonight

All night, I will watch over you

The sound of his voice instantly transported you back to that night he had come to you and held you close to him on the roof, surrounded by blankets and an all encompassing feeling of belonging and contentment.

When I first met you, it was truly eye-blinding

When I first saw your smile, I felt like I had the whole world

Little star tonight

All night, I will watch over you

Your eyes were drawn to the green enamel pendant which lay against his chest between the unbuttoned collar of his navy blue striped pyjamas, and your hand flew to it’s red counterpart hanging around your own neck involuntarily as you remained mesmerized by his deep voice. As he sang lyrics declaring that he’d watch over you, he lifted his own long fingers to grip at the tiger shape as though consciously mirroring your actions.

When I see you fast asleep in my arms

I can’t take my eyes off you for a second

You’re so pretty – I feel like my breath will stop

How can I fall asleep?

You huffed out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, wanting so desperately to reach out to the young man on the screen who was so blatantly struggling to hold back tears, as you felt the first of your own fall on to your cheek.

The hotel room transitioned to another scene, and the song Taehyung had been singing continued to play – along with the translation of the lyrics – as it did so, the audio expertly edited and entirely seamless. You clasped your hand over your mouth to muffle the guffaw that had begun to burst forth at the sight before you. Seven men standing in a glaringly white room, each of them sporting a pastel-pink, spotted headband, all sticking out at wildly varying angles, but with an equal level of absurdity vastly at odds with the soporific music.

Two of the young men were instantly recognisable to you as Taehyung and Jimin, the latter of which had dyed his hair a rather alarming shade of pink not too dissimilar to the colour of the antennae-like bow standing to attention atop his head. The other members were more or less evenly split in to three not looking too sure about the fluffy accessory; and the remaining two seeming to be enjoying it a tad too much.

It was obvious that the group of men surrounding Taehyung were his band mates. You had seen them in some of the photos you had found, although truth be told you hadn’t paid that much attention to them at the time, so flummoxed had you been by your then recent discovery about Taehyung’s occupation.

It was clear they were playing some sort of game, but the rules of it and the words being spoken were dubbed over with the music, not that you would have understood them anyway. Taehyung seemed to be repeatedly failing at whatever the objective was, and Jimin – who didn’t stray far from his side for a second – kept leaning over and pushing Taehyung’s lips up in to a smile in what might have appeared to be a consolatory manner.

You touched your fingers to your lips and thought about Hannah doing the very same thing to you those few nights earlier. Was it related to all this – whatever this was – somehow?

Before you were able to think about it for too long, the scene changed once again. This time, the footage was shaky and whoever was operating the camera zoomed in and out a little until the lens focused correctly on their chosen subject.

My love, my everything, my angel from heaven

My two eyes, my world – you stole them all

Little star tonight

All night, I will watch over you

Taehyung was lay back on what you assumed to be his bed holding his phone up in front of his face, and as the camera zoomed in further, he did the same on his phone screen, evidently unaware that he was being filmed. As the lens refocused your breath caught in your throat as you recognised the photo on his handset as being the one he had taken of you. He stroked is thumb across the image of your face and looked so forlorn that your felt your heart lurch towards him as the tears began to spill more readily on to your cheeks.

Another scene change, this time transitioning to a photograph, an image Taehyung had clearly taken of himself that night on the rooftop of the bar, as you recognised your city’s skyline lit up in the far background of the shot. He was smiling broadly in a perfect rectangle, his free hand raised up beside his scrunched up eyes in a peace sign, the very picture of happiness. There was a caption across the picture:

그녀는 훌륭하다

For a moment you cursed yourself for not acting on your whim to learn Korean, however you needn’t have worried as the foreign letters melted away until they were replaced with the English translation.

She is wonderful

As the still image faded, it was replaced with another rooftop scene, although this time it was Taehyung perched on a stool, a pink fleece blanket draped around his shoulders. To his left another of the members sat, a pale brown acoustic guitar balanced across his crossed legs, continuing to play the song in another seamless transition as Taehyung carried on singing along.

My love tonight

All night, I will watch over you

Forever, I will watch over you

When the song had ended, the man playing the guitar walked over to Taehyung and placed a hand on his shoulder, before offering him a comforting smile and carrying the instrument away by the neck until he exited the frame.

Once again it seemed that Taehyung was unaware that the camera was still rolling and he slouched a little on the high stool but remained seated. He lifted his head to somewhere above the camera, speaking directly to the person operating the device, and you were thankful for the subtitles which persisted along the bottom of the screen.

“Did you get it? Did it sound good?" Taehyung’s eyes were huge and full of concern as he awaited a response from the invisible cameraman.

The voice answered in a placatory tone. “I got it, hyung. She’s going to love it.”

On screen Taehyung sighed and dropped his head to gaze at his hands which were rested in his lap. “I hope so Jungkook-ah. I miss her.”

And with that the short film ended.

The lights shone in the theatre once more and you blinked your eyes in protest to the sudden brightness in the room, which caused further unshed tears to fall on to your cheeks.

You suddenly had an awful lot of questions.

He missed you? Had he been trying to reach out to you all this time? On a scale of one-to-one-hundred, just how much of a stubborn idiot had you been?

As you allowed your vision to adjust your attention was suddenly pulled to the end of the row you were sitting on. Expecting it to be Hannah, you turned in your seat to ask her for an explanation as to what on earth you had just seen and how she was involved in it.

But it wasn’t Hannah.

~~~

Taehyung had observed transfixed as you watched the short movie that Jungkook had edited together with the help of Namjoon and Yoongi. He was captivated by the way the light from the screen lit up your face in so many different colours, and how beautiful you looked as you reacted to just a small selection of the footage they had compiled for the video.

For as much as Taehyung wanted to help Jungkook with the film, if he had had his way it would have taken up hours rather than just a few short minutes. However he was surprised that he had not included at least some the numerous impromptu English lessons with Namjoon that had begun to take place with much greater frequency. Taehyung was proud of the progress he had made in the language and he would have been lying if he said he didn’t want to show it off to you a little. But as he saw the way your eyes were clearly welling up with tears and the smile that graced your face at some of the sillier content in the video, he realised he was right to trust the other members’ judgement.

Just to be able to see you with his own eyes was so wonderful he could barely believe it, even after the flight to get here – complete with all the usual complications and stresses that go hand in hand with air travel – and all the negotiating with Seong-min to get approval to leave the country, it still felt so dream-like that he was afraid he might wake up in his bed at any second.

So enraptured had you clearly been by the large screen before you, you hadn’t noticed him standing to one side of the theatre, half hidden in the shadows of one of the fire exits, and it was easy enough for him to move to the middle of the room without prematurely attracting your attention.

As the large room was illuminated once more and your eyes fell on him, he swore he felt his heart stop as you stood mutely to attention, your eyes wide and your mouth agape.

For a few moments you both remained motionless, Taehyung drinking in the image of you before him, and you standing in silence as you struggled to compute his presence.

You finally called out to him, his name a question on your lips. He smiled and nodded in response, waiting for you to come to him, frightened that you might run away should he make any sudden movements.

~~~

“Taehyung?” was all you could manage, your voice weak with emotion.

You felt elation and relief and a strange exhaustion all at once. For all your denial and avoidance of the truth of your feelings, you knew there was a part of you that was always anticipating and hoping for his return, and now he was standing in front of you, it was all you could do to not let yourself fall in to his arms that very instant.

It felt as though hours could have passed as you both stood still, terrified that he would vanish in to thin air – like so many of your dreams of him on waking – should you attempt to close the distance between you.

It wasn’t until he eventually spoke that you truly believed he was there.

All he said was your name and you closed your eyes to savour the moment, feeling fresh tears spring to your eyes in relief. You began to carefully make your way out of the row of seats and cursed Hannah for not advising you to sit nearer to the edge. You were positive you couldn’t have been cutting a particularly graceful figure as you gradually moved closer to Taehyung, moving nowhere near quickly enough for your liking.

Nor his it seemed, as he reached for you as you finally neared him, pulling you to stand close to him and cupping your face in both hands, and using his thumbs to wipe away the tears that were still stubbornly falling.

“Don’t cry, y/n,” he pleaded, dipping his head to look in to your eyes, his deep voice music to your ears after too long of being deprived of it. “Please don’t cry,” he said again.

You inhaled shakily and tried to steady your heartbeat even as it pounded relentlessly against your ribcage, gripping on to his biceps as you stared up at his face, still startling in it’s perfection even with worry etched across it.

He dropped a chaste kiss to your forehead and held you to him tightly, a deep sigh expanding his chest as he continued looking down at you. “I’m so sorry y/n, I missed you so much,” he said in a whisper before lowering his face towards yours, his eyes searching yours all the while.

“I missed you too,” you breathed, craning upwards to meet him.

~~~

As your lips met for the first time in what felt like forever, Taehyung’s heart felt so full he thought it might burst. For as hard a time as he had given himself for the way he had allowed all of this to play out, none of it seemed to matter as he felt you melt in to his touch at last.

He had seen and done many things in his life, much more than most people would ever get to, but the simple pleasure of feeling you in his arms at that moment was one of the most extraordinary things he could remember ever experiencing, and it would be many years until anything would even come close to bettering it.

There would be plenty of time for apologies and working out what the future might hold; how you each might work around the distance and circumstances currently throwing up obstacles in the path of your relationship. But for now, he kissed you slowly and deeply as though you each had all the time in the world, and – right at that moment – it truly felt to both of you as though that were true.

A/N - So...there it is!! I really really hope you liked it. Thank you for giving me so much of your time. Even though I have already posted this story elsewhere, I'm as nervous this time as I was before about the ending, so please reblog or leave a like or a reply if you enjoyed it and asks are always welcome/appreciated!

I really hope you stick around with me for more!! Thank you lovelies! ♥♥♥

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