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Taehyung talks nonsense into matters that made sense before he decided to butt in. Yoongi is convinced that the boy likes nothing better than to pick holes in anything lacking the fundamental flaw to give his ramblings credibility.
“It only happens because you move too fast, you gave yourself an electric shock,” Taehyung says matter of factly as Yoongi breaks out in spontaneous shivers.
“Says who?”
“Everybody.”
“You’re lying.”
“I don’t lie.”
It’s warm in the practice room and Taehyung’s expression is unreadable. Slack jawed and droopy eyed it's impossible to tell how seriously he wants people to take him, let alone how seriously he takes himself.
“Who told you then?”
Taehyung shrugs, “you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.”
Yoongi doesn’t want to believe him, but when they get back to the dorm he looks it up on line just to be sure.
Yoongi’s never really understood Seokjin’s enthusiasm for video games. He’s not opposed to the odd round of Mariokart when his hyeong is indulging in more than his fair share of whining about ‘the loneliness of a man in a flat full of boys’ but he’ll never understand the fascination with bright colours and things that go ‘bloop’.
And of course, it’s endlessly entertaining trying to explain the programming behind the game to him.
“Yoongi stop! You’re taking the magic out of everything,” Seokjin whines as Yoongi explains the basic principles governing the random number selection that dictates the outcome of each power up.
He grins as he takes the third corner, overtaking Seokjin’s Princess Peach, “so I suppose you don’t want me to go into any detail about how loops stop the race at the right time? About how the game is set up so that for as long as a certain piece of the coding returns a value less than three-“
“SHUT UP! They decide when to stop the race by themselves because they're decent, sporting folk,”
“Like hell they are! If the race didn't stop till these shits said it stopped then Waluigi wouldn’t stop racing till he came out in first place.”
“Oh please you're both being ridiculous,” Taehyung’s voice booms from the bedroom, “They stop the race after three laps because the aliens transmitting your brain waves to the machine are deeply superstitious and refuse to count up to four.”
Yoongi feels his jaw slacken in disbelief as he casts a long sideways glace in the direction of Taehyung’s voice, 'that whole ‘four is evil’ bullshit barely holds up outside China, what makes you think a bunch of aliens run computer games based on it?”
“Oh let him be,” Seokjin mutters, beaming happily as he swans over the finish line in first place.
There’s a book sitting conspicuously on the kitchen table: “An Elementary Guide To Birds!” complete with bright colour pictures and a friendly cartoon parrot on the front promising fun as well as education inside. Yoongi snorts, he remembers his mum trying to get him to read those kinds of books back when he was in primary school and first dipping his toes into the wide open ocean of rebellion – they were boring then and the school textbooks he received years later in secondary school (telling him exactly the same thing but with fewer fun cartoons) weren’t much better.
On the inside cover there’s a library list proclaiming the due date to be two weeks from today – a recent loan. Yoongi turns to the first page out of amusement more than anything else and is brought up rather short.
The page is covered – covered – with Taehyung’s handwriting. Not his everyday scribble, but the neat script he uses for fansigns and birthday cards, for when he really wants people to be able to understand what he’s saying.
There are no proteins involved in the construction of feathers, the smaller birds weave them for their bigger cousins. The smallest birds are so tiny that they don’t even need feathers. They’ve invisible to the naked eye don’t bother searching for them.
Birds actually use telekinesis to fly, they can only get a good lift when at least three other birds are mentally aiding them. These other birds must be of the same species to the bird lifted. When they fly, birds will often flap their wings to show everyone how happy they are that they have friends who let them fly.
The largest bird in the world is bright purple and lives at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Carefully, Yoongi closes the book and takes a step back. The local librarian isn't going to be too pleased when the book is returned in it’s new, ‘improved’ state, but he can’t help but grin at the thought of Year 2’s explaining to their parents that Greater Blackbacked Gulls can breathe in space.
“You ever wonder why leaves go red in the autumn?” Yoongi asks the rest of Bangtan Sonyeondan as they trudge through the seasonal winds to another day of backbreaking dance and vocal coaching.
Hoseok rolls his eyes, “maybe they saw Jungkook’s jacket and decided they liked the colour? I dunno, they just go red.”
“Well they don’t just go red,” Taehyung cuts in, bounding up between them and hooking an arm painfully tightly around each of their necks, “they were supposed to be red all along, like the Queen Of Hearts wanted, but the gardeners got the wrong colour. They’re painting them red now before she decides to cut off their heads.”
“That’s the single dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” grumbles Hoseok as he disentangles himself from Taehyung’s long arms.
“Yeah,” Yoongi ducks out of a potential headlock, “if she’s a Queen she must be rich, why doesn’t she just pay for more trees?”
Hoseok stares at him like he’s gone mad, “yeah, that’s what was wrong with that sentence; the Queen of freaking Hearts’ finances. Jesus you two are as bad as each other.”
Later that day, Namjoon will give a long and details explanation detailing exactly what happens to leaves to turn them red in autumn. It will be filled with words that Yoongi doesn’t really understand – chloroplast, carotene, xanthophyll – and Yoongi will decide that he likes Taehyung’s version better.
“You don’t need to be scared of the dark hyeong,” Taehyung whispers as he and Yoongi huddle around the only torch in the flat.
Yoongi glowers, he hates power cuts. He hates the dark in general, but he’s particularly unamused by there being no light available to him when there really should be light. He has decided that it is entirely unfair of the universe to keep him accustomed to twenty four seven lighting only to take it away from him at the cruellest of times, like pretty much anytime after the sun goes down.
Hoseok and Seokjin are only too aware of Yoongi’s phobia, it’s nothing short of embarrassing the way they coddle him when the lights so much as flicker, but Seokjin and Hoseok aren’t here tonight and with everyone else out of the house it had been a good ten minutes before Taehyung had thought to check that he was ok.
Yoongi was not ok. He had been curled up under a dining room chair whimpering to himself, but luckily Taehyung doesn’t judge.
“Really though, the dark just wants to be your friend.”
“I’m not in the mood for one of your stories right now Tae.”
“They’re not stories!” Taehyung doesn’t look particularly wounded, just confused that Yoongi could fail to grasp something as immutably simple as the world according to his thought process, “really the dark just misses you. It’s sad that you always sleep through it and it wants to give you a hug to say it’s sorry for whatever it did wrong. It doesn’t understand that humans can’t photosynthesise at night so they need to go to sleep.”
Taehyung looks as convinced as ever as he talks his way through his method for befriending the dark. Yoongi’s almost positive that he’s only doing it to cheer him up, but there’s a hard edge to Taehyung’s conviction that always keeps him guessing.
“I don’t want to be hugged by the dark,” Yoongi announces flatly.
“Oh. Can I hug you instead then?”
Yoongi shrugs like he doesn’t care, but feels his pulse slow with relief when Taehyung wraps him up in his unfairly long limbs and doesn’t let go till Jimin finds them asleep on the kitchen floor at 2am.
“So why is it that flowers all have different colours? Why aren’t they all the same?”
“Because every flower blooms for a different bee and no two bees want the same thing.”
“Where do bad jokes go when they die?”
“To the logic factory to be recycled as advice no one will listen to”
“If you just kept heading north forever, wouldn’t you wind up going south?”
“No way! The polar bears redirect you when you get ten miles from the north pole; the real one that is. You never notice it though because the human brain can’t process the kind of corkscrew shapes they use to do it, you’d just be walking forever.”
“In ten years’ time will you remember this conversation.”
“Probably not, but if you want me to I will.”
“Have you ever lied to me?”
“Never”
“So why are you holding my hand?”
“Because I like you. Honestly hyeong, I like you a lot.”
“You ever gonna let go?
“Not a chance.”
“Good.”