Characters: Taehyung x Reader
Words: 604
There are nights, although rare, when you arrive home from work to find Taehyung already sprawled on the loveseat, too-long limbs dangling off the edges, while Spirited Away screened on your television.
There are also nights when you come back to the smell of something burning in the corridor to your flat, the source of it being Taehyung trying to fix himself a meal of instant ramen.
(… Is he cooking noodles with a spatula?)
In the former situation, you would drape his favourite fleece blanket over him, because he says it smells like you and your shampoo, and turn down the lights but leave the movie on. Because from experience, you know Taehyung has an inborn Spirited Away sensor that alerts him whenever you try to turn it off thinking he might sleep better.
And in the latter, he would hear you at the door and rush out to meet you, defending himself with a barrage of apologies and ’I was too hungry to wait’ and ’I’ll clean the mess I swear!’ before you could even remove your second shoe. Your only answer is ushering him back to the couch and tucking him into his fleece blanket with the promise of your homemade carbonara recipe, because Taehyung likes eating noodles on Thursdays.
When you’re about to plate, he comes slithering to you asking for a bite, but backs down when you cluck your tongue. He settles for locking your waist between his arms, chin on your shoulder, sleepy voice mumbling out another baritone apology that settles in the bed of your ear, warm lips planting flowery kisses down your jaw until he finally, finally gets to the corner of your lips.
(He never kisses you when you’re cooking. Probably because he won’t stop himself and neither of you will ever get to eat.)
You eat dinner over the coffee table, and even though it is the thousandth time you’ve seen this movie with him, you react enthusiastically to his commentary, only musing inwardly that it is amazing how he says the same thing about the same scene every time he watches it.
Taehyung literally fights you to do the dishes, because he can’t get over how sorry he is that he’s making you cook the moment you get back from a long day. And you let him, because the exhaustion is indeed starting to cling to your feet.
When you come out of a much needed shower, he’s already in bed, blanket tangled at his feet while he scrolls through some material on his smartphone. But he puts everything aside for you once you join him, his limbs moving to drape over yours in an instant.
In the summer he would smell of sweat and the body soap you share.
(He has his own “men’s” one, but he stopped using it once he decided he likes the smell of yours much better and you like the smell of it on him.)
In the winter he would smell of gingerbread cookies and cocoa.
(Perhaps because he has spent too long eating fragrant air in the bakery across the street that you sent him to buy Christmas log cakes from half an hour ago. But least he came back with a cake.)
And when you adjust and align the symmetries of your bodies, fitting together like a two-piece puzzle, when the commotion of whatever type of day you both had led settles down into quiet breathing and the sound of your hearts beating to one rhythm, it is then that you decide there is no place like his embrace.
That there is no place like home.
