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yoongi didn't mean to watch seokjin sleep. but he'd been waken from the third anxiety dream that night and the pressure floods into his lungs and he swings his legs out of bed -- god it's so quiet, quiet without seokjin's steady inhale exhale from the dividers between their beds. he winces as the cold of the tile hits his feet, he’d been too good for socks that night, and opens the door, stepping out into the darkness of their hallway. everything feels so big here, and he feels inexplicably small -- he’s unused to the fact that he doesn't need to watch where he's going.
there are no misshapen ledges that he'll bump to, there's enough closet space to put all their shoes away, and jeongguk's bags can be kept safely on hangers. there's nothing to trip over. he pads his way down the hall and knocks on the third from the left -- dark solid wood. there is no reply. he cracks open the door and steps inside, blinking a bit at the brightness -- seokjin never closed his night curtains for some reason. he says he likes the light from outside, the orangey blue hues from street lamps and led displays, the occasional silver from the moon.
yoongi's shadow flits across the bed as he walks across the room, but hesitates before he lies down. the bed is big, he thinks, staring at seokjin's curled up form. the bed is almost half the size of their old dorms -- to have such space in modern day seoul is a luxury he never thought he'd have, but he does. he should be more glad, he thinks, a little ruefully, but he sits on the side of the bed and swings his feet on top. seokjin rolls over in his sleep, and yoongi finds himself just...looking.
it's so easy to look at seokjin. his beauty is kind, not fierce. it's welcoming, it's reassuring. at night, in sleep, his face is so lax it's almost comical, his lips slightly parted to let a little whoo of air go every time he breathes out. yoongi used to kick him for it when they'd slept almost next to each other. he'd throw plushies at seokjin's back and the man would close his mouth at once and the little whoo would fade into the ambient noise of the room. maybe that's why he can't sleep. the room is too quiet.
seokjin's perceptive, always is, it appears he's perceptive even in sleep because it doesn't take long for him to feel the eyes on him and he awakes slowly, rubbing his eyes, the little whoo disappearing as he sits up. "yoongi?" he asks, his voice hoarse. "what's wrong?"
there's nothing wrong, not really. anxiety dreams are as common as sleep itself, and there's nothing really pressing happening.
(but yoongi is lonely.)
(he's not often lonely.)
(maybe it comes with age, he reasons. maybe the older you get the lonelier you are.)
(maybe not.)
"nothing," says yoongi, he cocks his head at seokjin, who cocks his head back at him.
seokjin shuffles down the length of the bed and pats the empty side next to him. "come to bed," he says, so full of understanding yoongi nearly flinches. that's not what he had come here for.
"come on," seokjin encourages, and yoongi rolls his eyes but pulls aside the covers anyway, dropping his head onto seokjin's pillows. (they're softer than his, but seokjin has always liked soft things.) "there you go."
"it's too quiet," yoongi explains.
seokjin bites his lip. "i know," he says, and rubs the back of his head. sleep has always made him honest, yoongi thinks a little fondly. "i fell asleep to a white noise playlist. i've never needed a white noise playlist in my life."
"it's cause you don't have me typing away on my laptop while you're trying to sleep," yoongi snickers, and seokjin purses his lips, thoughtful.
"you know, that could be right," he says, and yoongi blinks, surprised. "i miss you."
and that's the kicker. the one thing yoongi hadn't been willing to admit -- because why would he miss seokjin? god, what purpose did it serve? he sees him every day, he's known him for seven years now, he doesn't need it, this sentiment of worrying, errant, missing.
yet he misses him.
"shouldn't have moved out," yoongi mutters. he stares at seokjin's ceiling. "should never have left."
"maybe," seokjin agrees. "come on," he gestures to the bed and to the room around them. "there's space for the both of us on this bed anyway. you can stay here."
"there'd be space for the both of us in your closet, hyung," yoongi says. "this place is huge."
"i'm not used to it," seokjin agrees. "i have closet space than i know what to do with."
"well, it just means we've gotten somewhere, right?"
"somewhere," says seokjin, the word so delicate on his tongue yoongi freezes. "I don't think this is where i pictured it. not you, either."
yoongi wants to say this is it. he's always wanted to be rich and successful and owning this kind of apartment is the epitome of it. it's his magnum opus. but he doesn't like to lie.
"maybe not," yoongi breathes. "i don't know."
"well," seokjin says, rolling over to smile at him. yoongi feels overwhelmed with the need to touch, bubbling up in his gut and setting forth, insistent in his fingertips. "maybe we can talk about it when it's not three in the morning."
yoongi exhales. seokjin continues smiling at him, hazy yet distinct in the orange-blue light of his room. he's not sure who moves first -- it's a damned lie, he knows he moved first, but he will take that and keep it tight within him -- but seokjin is closer now.
"yoongi," says seokjin, and it sounds like both a warning and a promise. "tomorrow, please."
everything is harder in the daytime, yoongi wants to say. words are obstructions in the daytime, barriers not building blocks.
but seokjin is a creature of the morning, and yoongi quietly respects that and bows his head. "sure, hyung," he says. "tomorrow."
"goodnight," says seokjin.
"goodnight."
the silence -- if it had been bad in yoongi's room, it is worse now. it was almost like neither of them were breathing, like they knew what tomorrow meant, what quiet power they'd lent the word. everything was tomorrow for yoongi when it came to seokjin.
when was tomorrow today? when did he give the word the present and let himself live in it, proud and confident and utterly sure of what he's doing? yoongi has the utmost confidence in himself but when it came to this he felt like a boat on an unrelenting, stormy ocean.
seokjin makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. he says, "god, yoongi," and yoongi curls in on himself.
he wonders if this is the day he drowns. he's just a little boat, he thinks desperately. just a little boat looking for a steady captain.
(seokjin's going to tell him to leave, says the tiny part inside him he wishes never existed. seokjin's going to tell you to go.)
"come here," he says instead, and yoongi stuffs a corner of the blanket into his mouth because he nearly cries. instead he rolls over and seokjin's arms are open and yoongi's head is pillowed on his chest.
seokjin is warm and solid and real. he's alive. yoongi can hear his heartbeat beneath his ribs, feel his touch ghosting the back of his neck, smell the body soap he uses, the same one yoongi does. he feels so very, reassuringly present. because that's what seokjin does. he's present, in every moment he doesn't just exist he lives. he finds the good in everything and if he can't he'll tease it out some way -- coupled with an iron will and a strong constitution and it's no wonder the kim seokjin who'd very timidly declared he'd no clue how to sing had turned out this way.
seokjin shifts and cranes his neck and kisses the top of yoongi's head. "today," he decides. "is fine as well."
and yoongi drops his shoulders and crumples into the bed and says, "today, tomorrow, we've time," and seokjin laughs.
"true," he says, and yoongi's hands curl on his pyjama shirt. he's wearing ones with bright daisies printed all over them, a pair he'd gotten online that yoongi had laughed over for a solid hour. "time is fickle," he says. he plays with the ends of yoongi's hair.
"fickle," yoongi agrees. "but it passes. he sits up and looks at seokjin, wide-eyed and spread on the bed. his eyes are wide open.
yoongi kisses his nose and seokjin laughs and tugs him close until their chests are flush with one another. "i miss you," he says. "i missed your stupid typing and the way you'd leave your reading lamp on and the way you'd hum notes in your sleep."
yoongi tries not to turn red.
"i missed you and this," he gestures to the two of them. "this."
yoongi tries not to think about how he's been avoiding seokjin for a while now -- god, everything in yoongi builds. he bottles and he builds and this month everything was too far and he was too high off the ground and to think about liking seokjin in a way that he -- in the way that he does, would be akin to leaping off his tower.
(he'd never entertained the thought seokjin would catch him, but now that he thinks about it, of course he would. seokjin is quiet in his mannerisms and his love.)
"i'm sorry," yoongi says, and seokjin sits up too.
"don't --" he says. "don't apologise. you were scared. i am scared. it's important," seokjin decides, "to take care of who you are, too. if withdrawing meant you'd smile more, i'd go a week without you talking to me."
"only a week?" yoongi asks, eyebrows raised.
"well," seokjin shrugs his shoulders, grins an entirely too goofy grin for the situation. "i'm allowed to be a little selfish, right, yoongichi?"
yoongi blinks at him, then leans in -- heart pounding. he's done this before but it's seokjin -- and kisses him, chaste and quick. (it's a blushing bride's kiss.).
seokjin's smile does the thing where it spreads across his face and yoongi's heart swoops and does the thing where it somehow puts itself back together. they kiss again, and it -- it tastes a little, yoongi decides, exactly how you'd think three in the morning kisses taste like.
everything is a little blue and a little grainy, details foggy in his mind, blurred over by thin sheens of sleepiness, but it's -- it's surprisingly insistent in its desire to be remembered. he will, he promises. he will remember.
"you need to use lip balm," seokjin says, and yoongi smacks him with a nearby plushy and seokjin laughs, high and echoing in his too-big room.
(it's no longer too-big, though, is it? yoongi's presence is overwhelming, and the room is now just them two, the open curtains and the light of his led clock.)
"you," counters yoongi, pushing him back down onto the pillows. "need to go to sleep."
"we'll talk," seokjin promises. "tomorrow."
"okay," yoongi says. his lips still remember seokjin's -- he'll never let them forget. because the industry they work in is hard and more fickle than time, but it is his and yoongi will defend it, the same way he will defend this.
(what he shouldn't have, and not what he came for, but he's found it all the same.)
and he falls asleep when seokjin makes his first little whoo, the sound louder now that yoongi's head is right next to his. he gives seokjin a little poke and his mouth clamps right shut and yoongi smiles in delight as sleep steals in on little cat-feet and takes him away.
the apartment is too-big and the world yoongi finds himself in is too-big but there, he thinks, are always people who will make it just that little bit smaller for you. just that little bit more yoongi-sized in a very, very big outside.