Chapter Text
They look tiny.
Well. They’re tall as fuck, so they don’t physically look that tiny. But they have baby faces and everything about them, other than height, screams “tiny”.
Yoongi doesn’t remember ever being that tiny, but then again, it’s been proven that Yoongi hasn’t changed at all in his appearance since their debut, so. Maybe he’s a bad example. He does remember the maknae line being that small. Maybe it does make sense that these kids are fresh rookies.
They also look kind of overwhelmed, and Yoongi can’t blame them for that. His own members are being a loud mess. Seokjin leads them into the waiting room with a loud “Yooooo!” and Namjoon follows behind, shouting and imitating some of Tomorrow X Together’s choreography. They’re still running on the post-concert adrenaline, and it’s fueled even more by how excited they are to see their new hubaes, and the result is chaos. Yoongi loves his boys and their energy helps him every day, and he loves that they goof around like they’re not international superstars, but the little kids look so overwhelmed.
The Tomorrow X Together kids. God, Bang PD-nim should just not be in charge of naming groups.
Yoongi tries to make Namjoon and Seokjin calm down, but there is just. No stopping them.
But it is exciting that they have company hubaes now. Yoongi doesn’t show it as much, but he’s just as excited by this as the rest of his members.
Except maybe Jungkook. Jungkook is more excited than literally anyone else.
“We’re not all here yet, wait a second,” Seokjin says when the little kids look like they’re about to greet them.
Hoseok arrives the next second, shouting, “T! X! T!” and going to give all the kids a high five. Jungkook follows his example, and proves that he truly is the most excited, by giving them all a handshake and a little bow.
Once they’ve all arrived, Tomorrow X Together do their greeting. Soobin leads them.
“One!”
“Dream!” the others chime in. “Hello, we are Tomorrow By Together!”
They do it so enthusiastically and so perfectly synchronized, with perfect 90 degree bows, and Yoongi remembers the days when they practiced their greeting to do it perfectly like that, too.
Now their greeting is a mess. They’ve been spending too much time in abroad recently, especially in America, so first they accidentally do the English version, and when they then correct themselves and do the Korean one, it seems far less organized than Tomorrow X Together’s.
“We’re from the same company, why do we have to do this?” Yoongi whines. Isn’t the lack of that kind of courtesy supposed to be one of the benefits of being from the same company (and that greeting was kind of embarrassing, when the little kids did theirs so well).
“That’s right!” Jungkook says, because he really, really wants to be close with their hubaes, and it’s adorable. “If you keep doing that, I’ll break your legs!”
“Let’s stop greeting each other like this,” Seokjin says. Tomorrow X Together still look very overwhelmed.
They all sit down and get the conversations going. The little kids seem to relax and loosen up very quickly once the manners and decorum bit is over with, and probably also from seeing how unintimidating BTS is as soon as they start opening their mouths. Which, this time, they do to discuss how Tomorrow X Together’s showcases have gone so far. Apparently they perform for 2.100 people at their showcases, which is a lot more than the crowds Bangtan used to perform for when they were rookies.
Yoongi is really proud that Tomorrow X Together can already receive this much luck, but he’s also very aware that a lot of it comes from his group’s popularity, and that the pressure of being their hubaes is real. They are the mega successful darlings of South Korea. Their hubaes have a lot more that they need to live up to, and a lot more pressure to succeed, than a lot of other groups have ever had.
That’s why Yoongi wants to be a good company sunbae. He wants to help these little kids and ease their burdens as much as he can.
Once their allotted time together starts drawing to a close (which includes them complaining that Tomorrow X Together were all warm and cozy while Bangtan themselves were freezing their asses off performing an outdoors concert, and Yoongi throws in a joke that the little kids should have been hanging from the lights instead), Tomorrow X Together show them a special event they’ve prepared to show their love and gratitude. It’s cringy, but in the good way. Yoongi is kind of dying on the couch, but it’s fine. He doesn’t really mean it when he tells them to please not. It’s sweet. And at least Jungkook is the one clearly overreacting, with the way he starts hitting a table behind the couch dramatically.
They take a picture together and then leave the little kids behind in their waiting room, with promises of keeping more in touch, to go get their makeup removed and change out of their concert clothes.
“That was fun,” Seokjin says as he sits down next to Yoongi.
“Seeing the hubaes? Yeah, that was fun,” Yoongi agrees, but Seokjin smirks at him, in a very worrying way.
“No, I meant the way you reacted to their special event. That was fun,” he says.
Yoongi rolls his eyes, but he thinks he might also be blushing. “Come on, it was kind of embarrassing,” he says. “Like Jimin-ah said, I appreciated it, but I also felt really embarrassed.”
“I didn’t feel embarrassed at all,” Seokjin says, and if he were anyone else, Yoongi would have called bullshit. But he’s actually pretty sure that Seokjin is raised above embarrassment and just doesn’t feel it anymore, with all the stupid shit he pulls unabashedly on camera (in the name of making the rest of them more comfortable, which, despite the second-hand embarrassment, is greatly appreciated).
“I’m not good with stuff like that,” is what Yoongi says instead of a retort.
“Oh, I know,” Seokjin says. Yoongi shoves him, which really only serves to make Seokjin laugh his squeaky, windshield wiper laugh. “Ah, but they were cute, didn’t you think?” Yoongi just nods. “They reminded me of us in our debut days.”
“Me too, though I don’t remember us ever being that small,” Yoongi says.
“We were, trust me,” Seokjin says, and yes, he would probably know better than anyone else, being the oldest.
“Maybe it’s just cause I haven’t changed much,” Yoongi says with a shrug.
“You really haven’t,” Seokjin agrees. “But the kids have all grown so much. it’s wild to think of how young they used to be.”
“You used to look like a baby too,” Yoongi reminds him, because Seokjin has grown just as much as the kids.
“Again, the only one who looks the same is you,” Seokjin reiterates with that kind of silly, mock patience of someone pretending to be running out of patience. It makes Yoongi chuckle. “And I’m not even sure if that’s a good thing!”
Yoongi shrugs. He doesn’t know either. Does it mean he looks young for his age now (maybe even too young, if he still looks like a kid at his age) or that he used to look old for his age back then? He doesn’t know, and honestly, he doesn’t care enough to spend a whole lot of his precious time thinking about it.
“It’s funny how the kids still look like kids to us now, but they also look so much older than they did back then,” is what he changes the subject to instead.
“It’s cause they’re the kids. They’ll always be our kids,” Seokjin says. “Or at least, they’ll always be my kid.” He reaches out to bump his fist against Yoongi’s shoulder. “You’ll always be my kid too.”
Yoongi gives him an affronted look.
“Excuse me, I am not a kid!” he protests. Seokjin just laughs at him again.
Maybe getting a reaction was the point of his comment, but Yoongi knows there’s also some truth to it. Seokjin has been looking out for them as the oldest hyung since their group was finalized all those years ago, and that’s always included looking out for Yoongi, even if he hasn’t needed it as much.
“It’ll be interesting to see Tomorrow By Together grow up,” Yoongi muses, before he can say any of that stuff out loud. That would be way too embarrassing. And Seokjin has seen him naked several times.
“It will,” Seokjin agrees with a nod. “You know only one of them is from the nineties? Yeonjunie is the oldest, and he’s from ’99. The others are all from the noughties.”
Yoongi stares at him. “That can’t be true,” he says. “They’d be babies.”
“People born in 2000 turn nineteen this year,” Seokjin points out, but Yoongi shakes his head.
“No, people born in 2000 are kids. Like, literally,” he says adamantly.
Seokjin raises an eyebrow.
“Shut up,” Yoongi mumbles. Math was never his strong suit, anyway, and neither was it Seokjin’s, so Seokjin isn’t really the best one to lecture him on math, he thinks.
“Age is but a number, right?” Seokjin says in a faux-sage voice.
“You would be the one to say that, ahjussi,” Yoongi says.
“Yah!” Seokjin shouts and punches Yoongi’s shoulder. He’s got a strong arm, so it hurts a little, but the laugh his outraged face gives Yoongi is well worth it.