Work Text:
Yoongi had been suspicious from the very beginning.
Things had been going well—he woke up before his alarm (which is already a feat in itself) without feeling like he wants to throw something at the wall (preferably his phone with its annoying alarm tone that he had set to make sure that he wakes up to turn it off, but it’s expensive and he doesn’t have any money, so he doesn’t) and got a call from an entertainment company that’s already made quite a name for itself in the industry, saying that they would like to hire him to produce the title track of their new rookie group. Not to mention that Namjoon left him a string of excited texts, saying that the sample CD they’ve submitted to Big Hit got good feedback and that Bang Shihyuk wants them to come over to the company to talk about a job offer for a permanent position as a producer in the company.
Things were suspiciously looking up after a series of failures at his side jobs and failed attempts to produce a song good enough to catapult their names into the top of the industry, but even when Yoongi felt like there was something lurking at the bottom of the surface, he accepts it all with a small, albeit hesitant smile, the excitement building up inside of him. Things are probably just looking up now since it’s been such a mess last time, he reasons to himself, towelling his hair dry. In Taehyung’s concise but accurate explanation, good shit for bad shit.
It’s not until Taehyung comes knocking on the door of his apartment awfully early for their supposed meet up time when he realizes that something is up.
“Is there something wrong?” he asks, eyes squinting up at Taehyung who lets himself in despite not receiving any explicit invitation from Yoongi. It’s not like he visits Yoongi often, just that he’s always acted comfortable around Yoongi (somehow, Yoongi doesn’t mind it much). He’s grown used to Taehyung suddenly showing up at his apartment at god-awful hours in the morning: sometimes to ask for a place to stay because his roommate didn’t have the decency to inform him before sexiling him, sometimes to ask for help with composition homework, and sometimes he’s just…there. During those times, he doesn’t say why he wanted to stay over, just gives Yoongi a big, goofy smile like there’s some secret he wants Yoongi to figure out for himself. Yoongi keeps on berating him about it but still lets him in.
Yoongi always believed that there was a reason to everything—that someone acts this way and that because of a given set of factors. With Taehyung, however, he’s learned not to ask.
“It’s nothing hyung, don’t be so paranoid.” Taehyung laughs, but it’s a little too loud and even when Yoongi hasn’t known Taehyung for a long time, most of Taehyung’s expressions were easy to read and he knows that something is definitely up.
Taehyung pushes past him and he manages to close the door shut before Taehyung grabs him by the hand and asks him to sit down on his own ratty couch. He notices that the back of Taehyung’s hair is sticking up and his shirt is rumpled, as if he put on the most first wearable things he saw on the floor even if they haven’t been ironed yet and rushed to meet Yoongi (knowing Taehyung, the likelihood of this happening is high). He crosses his arms over his chest to stop himself from wanting to reach out and pat down Taehyung’s hair.
“This is my place, you know.” He says, but without bite, and Taehyung grins. He’s commonly teased by his friends as grouchy because it takes time for him to ease around people, with them mistaking his wariness as snobbishness. It’s hard to trust someone nowadays and he’s just trying to be cautious, but people list him down right away as standoffish and cold when he’s just trying to weigh whether they’re trustworthy or not.
The first time he met Taehyung, wearing a stupidly orange jacket and equally bright orange hair, handing out flyers with a big smile on his face, the voice inside Yoongi’s head screamed for him to run. People who smiled a lot tended to be: a) pretentious; b) completely psychotic killers; c) filled with so much energy, you should never trust them around you because they might break something. But he had no choice but to stay still and hand out his own set of flyers while donning his own stupidly bright neon green jacket and doing his best not to let the smile on his face slip even when only a few people are accepting the flyers that he’s been handing out.
But Taehyung had a way, of course. He said himself that people think he’s dumb because of his odd questions and oddly-timed answers and his occasional stuttering and mispronouncing, but Yoongi knows he’s smart—too smart for his own good and for Yoongi’s well-being, apparently—because he always finds ways to do things his way and make them work. Like, for example, making Yoongi’s life miserable (not really, most especially not in the literal sense, but Yoongi liked to be dramatic).
Somehow, at the end of the day, Taehyung had managed to get his phone number and a promise to look for other part-time jobs with him to fill in his vacant time during the weekends, when he wasn’t producing.
And somehow, at the end of the day, Yoongi had thought, maybe Taehyung, with his stupid orange jacket and his equally bright orange hair and stupidly huge grin, isn’t all that bad.
And maybe, Yoongi thinks, that’s how he quickly wormed his way into Yoongi’s life (and heart), and this time, his apartment.
“Well then, welcome to your home.” Taehyung says, sitting down beside Yoongi when the latter plops himself down on the couch, leaning back and making himself comfortable.
“What do you want?” Yoongi drawls, letting his Daegu accent peek through to make him seem intimidating and authoritative in front of Taehyung. But Taehyung grins instead, not the slightest bit fazed.
“You won’t believe this hyung, but I got us a job! They pay a whole lot compared to the other jobs we’ve gotten, and we only need to be there for three hours!”
Yoongi could, in a figurative sense, smell blood in the water even before he knows what would happen. It’s one of the skills that helped him survive in Seoul from when he left his home at seventeen with only a few clothes in his bag, enough money in his pocket to last him for a month, and a dream that’s bigger than the world itself. Which is why he makes a face right away with what Taehyung had said, growing even more suspicious as Taehyung punctuates his sentence with a smile. “Are you sure that’s legitimate?”
“Nothing could get as legitimate as this, hyung.” Taehyung stretches and yawns, raising his arms over his head and Yoongi gets momentarily distracted by his shirt riding up and letting a sliver of skin show. Taehyung pats his stomach and gives it a light scratch. “The family that hired us is rich.”
“But is it legal?” Yoongi prods, eyes snapping back to focus on Taehyung’s face. Except it’s kind of hard to focus when he’s smacking his lips together, blinking sleepily.
Taehyung blinks hard a few times, before looking back at Yoongi, looking more awake. “Hyung, what do you take me for? Of course it’s legal.” He scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “I said they’re a rich family, not a mafia.”
“Safe?”
“We’re not gonna go skydiving or something, hyung. There is, in no way, we’ll die on this job.”
Yoongi nods, considering it despite his inhibitions. He needed the money, of course, and Taehyung did say that the pay was good. Passing up the opportunity would possibly end up in such a big loss for him.
Besides, what could happen?
A lot of things could happen, as it turns out.
Taehyung saying that there was no way for them to die on the job was a huge fucking lie. Yoongi learns this a little too late, already in the event venue. It was quite a large venue for a kid’s party: a whole auditorium that could rival the size of the auditorium in the university that Yoongi had gone to. Unlike the one in his university though, this one had children screaming, and most unfortunate about it was that those screaming children were surrounding him. Beside him, Taehyung gives an excited yelp and high fives one of the kids who yelled “frog!” and pointed at him in his frog costume.
“I fucking hate kids,” Yoongi grumbles, crossing his arms when some of the other kids divert their attention to him and start tugging at the lower part of his cow costume. He doesn’t even like cows—he hates dairy—and yet here he is, wearing the stupidest cow costume ever, getting flocked around by kids who believe Taehyung’s bullshit introduction that they’re friends from the farm who came to visit.
One of the kids—a little girl with bucked teeth and a really bright smile—tugs at the sleeve of his costume and looks up at him with shining eyes. “Mister cow, can I hug you?”
And…well, okay, maybe Yoongi didn’t completely mean it when he said he “fucking hates kids”—he hates how they’re all noisy and cry easily and have unlimited amounts of energy in their bodies that no adult could possibly keep up with, not to mention that they have the tendency to get into trouble twenty times out of ten, but he doesn’t really hate them, per se. Especially when they’re looking up at him, hopeful, awed, and just the right bit of excited.
Yoongi leans down and simply makes a face when she squeals before hugging him, but somehow their touching moment turns into a complete mess when the other kids try to grab on to him, a competition bearing out of wanting to hug him.
From amidst the confusion and the rowdiness, Yoongi could still hear Taehyung’s voice. “You don’t, obviously.” He laughs, but then it’s cut off by a distressed squawk that Yoongi assumes is because the kids also started to manhandle him too.
“Karma Taehyung, karma.” Yoongi laughs, but the sound is quickly aborted when he feels a kid tugging at his hair.
“Hip hop is dead.” Yoongi announces once their part for the kids’ party has ended (Yoongi wouldn’t even want to think about it again, but he had to do a little dance with Taehyung onstage for the kids’ enjoyment. He wanted to die then and there, embarrassment creeping on to his face while he did a little jig as Taehyung sang happy birthday, but he did accept the job, so he had to completely do it), wiping his face up with whatever part of the unzipped costume he can grab on to, the rest of it pooling over his still costume-clad thighs. He sneezes because of the material, but that doesn’t stop him from wiping away all of the sweat on his face and neck. Beside him, Taehyung has his legs propped up on a vacant chair, mouth open and a dazed look in his eyes as he leans back into the chair. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
That seems to make Taehyung snap out of his daze, because he moves to sit comfortably, leaning against the arm of his chair so he could look at Yoongi at a better angle. “No hyung, hip hop is thriving.” He says confidently that it has Yoongi scoffing. “Besides, I didn’t talk you into this, I told you how much we’ll be receiving and you said yes right away.” He points out, and Yoongi just hates it how much he’s right.
“Don’t give me that look,” Yoongi warns, crossing his arms over his chest. Taehyung snorts rather unattractively, raising his eyebrows and making a face at Yoongi. Yoongi knows that he should be laughing at the face Taehyung’s face right now, except he’s distracted by the sweat trailing down Taehyung’s neck and disappearing into his shirt right after it passes the jut of his collarbones.
Taehyung pushes his fringe back and runs his fingers through his hair, licking at his lips absent-mindedly as he shakes the wetness out of his hair. With Taehyung like this, Yoongi feels even much more miserable sitting right next to him and having to suffer through all of this agony.
This is just a normal occurrence for them, supposedly: either Taehyung or Yoongi looks for a part-time job, and they tell the other so they can go work together. It’s been like that for more than a few months between them that they’ve fallen into routine and things aren’t as completely awkward as their first meeting. And really, Yoongi should be used to Taehyung’s presence and how clingy he can be and how goddamned attractive he is with so little effort, like when he does little things absent-mindedly, but here’s the thing: Yoongi may have a little crush on Taehyung.
As it turns out, in his categorical list of people who smiled a lot, Taehyung was one of those people who were filled with so much energy and could never be trusted because they might end up breaking something.
In this case, Taehyung has, always had the tendency to break Yoongi’s heart, even when he didn’t mean it (most of the time though, Yoongi’s just making it up in his head. Even though he couldn’t bring himself to admit it out loud, Taehyung’s just too hot he could already hear the metaphorical shattering of his heart into pieces).
“You gotta admit though, you enjoyed out there. I saw it in your eyes, hyung.” Teahyung says, leaning forward and resting his elbows against his thighs, mirroring Yoongi’s pose. Their faces are only a few inches apart and Taehyung’s eyes are shining. Yoongi looks at his annoyingly perfect nose, eyes then darting to his cheeks, before settling at the spot just below Taehyung’s eyes. For some reason unbeknownst to mankind, he can’t afford to look Taehyung in the eyes right now even when he’s completely used to lying—mastered it to a skilful art form, even, that he could grab excuses out of thin air and thread together stories with them.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Yoongi snorts. “Those kids were screaming and pulling at me, I didn’t enjoy a single thing.”
Taehyung lowers his gaze so that he’s meeting Yoongi’s eyes, and Yoongi startles just a little bit, if the tiny jump of his shoulders is enough of an indication to that (Yoongi hopes that Taehyung didn’t notice, but maybe he did—after all Taehyung had some weird radar that made him find out about a lot of things even when nobody tells him). “Don’t lie, hyung.”
He lets out a particularly loud exhale when Yoongi refuses to budge, and air hits Yoongi’s face. Yoongi blinks. “God Taehyung, keep your bad breath to yourself.” He says, waving away the recesses of Taehyung’s breath in front of his face and pretending to be disgusted even when Taehyung’s breath didn’t smell the tiniest bit bad.
“You know hyung, nothing bad will happen to you if you become honest with your feelings. At least sometimes.” Taehyung shakes his head, his still wet fringe falling back to cover his forehead. “It doesn’t hurt to be honest about how you feel. And I know you’re honest when it comes to a lot of other things, but I just wish that you should be more honest with how you feel.”
“I’m honest,” Yoongi says, but he just sounds like a whiny child.
“It’s not that hard, hyung,” Taehyung continues as if he hadn’t heard Yoongi. He reaches out to brush away the fringe from Yoongi’s eyes, and Yoongi blinks slowly, letting his eyelids flutter shut a bit longer as he savors the feeling of Taehyung’s skin on his. When he opens his eyes, Taehyung is looking at him in an unfamiliar sort of way that he couldn’t identify what it exactly is. “It’s like this: I think you’re really cute and really nice. But you’re thinking so hard about your feelings and I know you’re still weighing things in your mind, but I want you to go out on a date with me.” He finishes in one breath, and Yoongi blinks, trying to analyze the pieces of Taehyung’s words together.
Taehyung stares at him, panting lightly after he’s finished his sudden speech, hand still hovering over Yoongi’s forehead, the tips of his fingers ghosting over Yoongi’s skin. The red dusting Taehyung’s cheeks match the heat Yoongi feels creeping up on his cheeks as the realization of what Taehyung had said starts to sink in to his brain. “Did you just seriously use this melodramatic opportunity to ask me out on a date?”
“I was trying to be honest,” Taehyung shrugs, belatedly realizing that his hand is still there and retracting it. Even if he was trying to be nonchalant about it, Yoongi could still see the traces of a blush on his cheeks. Yoongi tilts his head involuntarily, chasing the warmth, but he leans back right away, clearing his throat. He could feel his cheeks burning, but thankfully, Taehyung doesn’t comment on it.
“I am honest,” Yoongi reiterates with a huff. “It’s just that there are some things that you can’t just broadcast to the world. I’m not as confident as you are, Taehyung.”
Taehyung laughs and pinches Yoongi’s cheek, making Yoongi yelp in surprise. “Hey, you punk!”
Taehyung’s expression softens, and he touches Yoongi’s cheek lightly. The noise of protest dies down in Yoongi’s throat. “I’m not confident, hyung, I’m really not. I just act like I am.” He strokes Yoongi’s cheek with his thumb, and Yoongi’s dumbfounded by the gesture. Taehyung does things sometimes—like grab his hand instead of just his wrist when he wants to show Yoongi something or drag him off to somewhere, and then holds on a little longer than necessary; or call him in the middle of the night to share his thoughts on random topics that were kind of similar to Namjoon’s late-night philosophical musings but were more out-of-this-world; or hug him from behind and hook his chin against his shoulder even when he complains that it’s too hot and Taehyung’s too sweaty—and he just lets go of them, not wanting to misread Taehyung’s actions and misunderstand his intentions. Taehyung was a nice and clingy friend to everyone—he could’ve just been anyone, and Taehyung would probably still have treated him the same way. “A good friend of mine once told me that if you act young, you’ll start to look young. So maybe I thought if I acted confident, I’d look much more confident.”
“So it’s effective then, that advice?” Yoongi’s voice sounds smaller to his ears, but he couldn’t help it with Taehyung looking at him like that.
“Of course.”
Yoongi clears his throat. If Taehyung said it worked for him, then maybe it’ll work with Yoongi too. “You know, if you keep doing that, I might just want to kiss you.” He says, before he chickens out and takes it back.
Taehyung’s hand on his cheek stills, and Yoongi is afraid that he might have read into things wrong, his brain working at an incredible speed to find an excuse to pull off so that things won’t be awkward, but then Taehyung smiles, and it feels different. Somehow, Yoongi might call it hope. “Do you, really?”
“Why would I lie?” he challenges.
“I don’t know hyung, last time you told me you didn’t like beef and gave me more of your servings, but then I found out that you liked it a lot.” Taehyung’s eyes dart down to his lips, and Yoongi finds himself absently licking at his bottom lip.
“We were on a budget.”
This time Taehyung pinches his nose lightly, making him guffaw. “And did you do that to earn brownie points?”
“Maybe.” Yoongi scrunches his nose. “But it was mostly because you looked like a dejected puppy staring down at your empty bowl because you could eat five more servings of that thing.”
“Mmm,” Taehyung pouts, sliding his hand down Yoongi’s jaw, letting his fingers trace Yoongi’s jawline. “I thought you were going to kiss me?”
Yoongi presses his lips together. Taehyung is such a huge fucking tease. “I said I might want to.”
“Oh?” Taehyung cocks an eyebrow, leaning his head to the side. “Then why aren’t you doing that now?”
With an annoyed huff of breath, Yoongi wraps his hand around the back of Taehyung’s neck and pulls him forward, catching him by the lips. He feels Taehyung’s arms loop around his neck, and it’s all the encouragement he needs to keep kissing Taehyung.
The kiss wasn’t, by all means, perfect—Yoongi’s lip crashed against Taehyung’s teeth instead of his lips at first, and their noses keep bumping into each other as they try to find the perfect angle to kiss. And yet he couldn’t seem to stop kissing Taehyung, as if his lips were an addictive drug that he only had a taste of now and couldn’t stop asking for more.
When they finally pull apart to breathe, they’re both panting hard. Taehyung’s lips are swollen red and the back of his hair is sticking up, and although he couldn’t see his own reflection, Yoongi couldn’t say he was in a better position. “We should’ve done this sooner.”
“No way!” Taehyung laughs, chasing his lips for a chaste peck on the lips. “Did you want to traumatize those kids?”
“Maybe not.” He says, smiling when Taehyung kisses him again. And again, and again.
Maybe this day wasn’t perfect, but he was in a good mood and he didn’t want it to be ruined.
“Oh yeah, by the way, one of the parents told me they’d want to invite us to their kid’s birthday party next month. You wanna give it a go?”
Yoongi gives Taehyung a dead-eyed stare. Maybe he spoke too soon.