Chapter Text
It all started one music class in a summer many years ago.
It was one of those classes that overly anxious parents would send their toddlers to; classes that came with a hefty price tag and were not entirely necessary. However, Yoongi was eternally grateful that his parents had taken turns to drag him to it every Saturday afternoon. When he was three and due to attend his first music class, he had loathed the day more and more as it approached. But he never found it in him to throw a tantrum so that he could avoid going entirely. As per his parents’ wishes, Yoongi went every single Saturday, save for the rare times when he was sick.
Classes had started a few weeks before Yoongi first attended. He stuck out like a sore thumb being the only new kid, even if his mother was accompanying him. He stuck out even more because he was the only one with tears dampening his eyes. The teacher had him sit next to you. You had noticed his tears and patted him on the shoulder, saying “okay, okay” over and over until you knew he was indeed okay.
You didn’t say anything else to him till three lessons in. It was also around that time that Yoongi introduced himself to you at the urging of his mother, a mark that he was at least somewhat willing to continue attending the class.
His mother had become fast friends with yours through the weekly music class that the two of you shared. Soon, he was sharing his entire Saturday with you too. There was one Saturday that your mother had invited him to dinner, and it became routine for him the way seeing you in class was.
Yoongi quickly picked up what you liked, just from observing your habits when the two of you were together. How you enjoyed the sound of the piano more than any other instrument, even if your mother was a cellist by profession and it was the sound that comforted you the most. How you were infinitely attentive when there was a classical piece playing in the background, especially if it was a piece that you knew. How you were the happiest when you were singing your heart out and he softly joined your song.
It was precisely because Yoongi always kept such a close eye on you and your little mannerisms that the other kids at school – it doesn’t matter which school; all the other kids had the same assumption about the two of you – seemed to all think that the two of you were more than friends. You didn’t mind it. Yoongi minded even less. Even when the poorly disguised whispers in the background and the pointing of fingers became red paint splashed on his bike and death threats carved into both your desks, Yoongi kept up his nonchalance because you didn’t mind it. It escalated to the point where the boys who were more stocky in build would shove your heads into empty sacks of fertiliser that the school gardener had left lying around, and they’d beat the two of you up. The derogatory names rained down in greater quantities than the blows.
Even with your face swollen in patches of black and blue, you were always smiling at the end of it all. Yoongi would force a smile on his face too, just for you. If you could still smile, then so could he. It’s not like it cost him anything.
The two of you endured the bullying until the end of middle school came, even if you didn’t have to. You were from a more well-to-do family than he was, after all. Transferring to a more progressive school wouldn’t be an issue for you. Hell, even moving out of Korea to a more liberal country halfway across the planet wouldn’t be an issue. Even so, Yoongi hoped with all his might that it wouldn’t ever come to that.
The first time you had ridden home on his bike with your face looking like a plum, your mother had thrown Yoongi a suspicious look that melted when she noticed he was just as bruised as you were. Your mother had demanded to know who did it to the two of you. You shrugged it off with the same indifference with which you bore the beatings and the insults of your fellow students, as well as the dirty looks that even the teachers piled on you when they thought neither of you would notice.
Yoongi was there, holding your hand behind his back when your mother started yelling at you. His teeth clenched, he spat out an apology to your mother when she paused long enough for him to cut in. He fell to the floor in a low bow, his forehead against the cool marble. You had joined him, and it was enough for your mother to cease in her verbal lashing.
The next day, you let Yoongi know that your mother wanted to transfer you to some elitist middle school in the next town. He froze, pen mid-stroke. You noticed his reaction and smiled as you always did, with the solid reassurance that you wouldn’t be going anywhere if he wasn’t.
“Yoon-ah, I’d follow you to the ends of the earth. Don’t worry about it!”
And he took your word for it.
Indeed, you didn’t leave his side throughout middle school. No matter how your parents threatened to send you to some boarding school far, far away from all the abuse you were weathering to make good your promise, you endured. For your sake, he endured as well. Even when Yoongi willingly left home in Daegu for a high school in Seoul to chase his dreams, you followed him. Even when his parents stopped sending him his allowance because he was set on going to an arts university instead of Seoul National University, you moved out of your aunt’s place to an apartment that you eventually shared with him.
You sacrificed plenty to follow him as you promised one day a long time ago, when the two of you were still young and full of dreams. Yoongi could never stop the gratitude welling up in his chest when he brought to mind your sacrifices for his sake. And for your sake, he would do his best to make sure your dreams became reality.
When your classmates in university began sending that look that you both knew wouldn’t bring anything good, you smiled as you always did, taking him by the arm and walking to class as if everything was alright. That day, Yoongi swore on his life that he would protect your smile. The way you squeezed the hand he slipped in yours let him know that you okay with it, that you were okay with him.
The two of you graduated with flying colours. You tried your hand at a graduate degree to complement your bachelor’s before leaving it behind for your place as a sopranist in a performing arts company that frequented the Seoul Arts Center, and he found his among the orchestra that was your backbone. It was all perfect.
You shone on stage, and he was glad to be the one playing the piano for you.
“You have such great synergy with Yoongi. It’s like he was born to be your accompanist,” the production director said, after your final rehearsal for your first starring role in an opera that opened the following night.
You smiled and took the handshake the production director offered you with a firm “Thank you, sir. But Yoongi is my pianist, not my accompanist. His place is beside me and not behind me.”
The production director’s smile faltered at the sternness of your tone. You kept up your smile, releasing his hand. Yoongi felt his heart swell at your words.
And that was how he landed a permanent seat as the pianist in the Seoul Arts Center’s Opera Theater. He received some sneers from the other members of the orchestra, saying that he was a permanent fixture on the piano bench only because of you. He didn’t mind because they didn’t matter. Besides, Yoongi received as much praise for his contribution as you did. Their snide comments were baseless, and everyone knew it.
It was all good for a long while after that. His parents started talking to him again, starting up conversation that had long since run dry by asking about you, about your career. Since it was you, his lips fell open with praises.
His brother and his mother even came for the opening night of Julien, seated behind your parents who were always there for your opening nights even when you weren’t cast as the lead.
“I didn’t think that you’d be doing Louise’s part, dear,” your mother said, when both your families got together for a meal after the show.
“Why not? My scream could crack a glass,” you joked.
Yoongi just listened to the banter between you and your mother, familiar with the way she enjoyed poking at the high pitch of your voice and the way you liked to say that it was a weapon in disguise. He noticed how his own mother fell into a contemplative trance when your mother said that you were cast in a woman’s part for Julien. He chose to ignore it, since she didn’t say anything about it.
Until the next time he went home to Daegu, that was. It was the first time he’s been home since he packed as much as he could into a borrowed duffel bag exactly two days after receiving his acceptance letter from the high school he applied to in secret.
“Louise is a woman’s name, correct?” his mother asked.
Yoongi didn’t bother looking up from the first dinner he was sitting down to with his own family, and nodded.
“Then why did Y/N sing that part? Y/N is a man.”
“Because Y/N is the best sopranist they have,” he said.
“Surely there were female sopranists who could do it instead of Y/N.”
“They’re busy with another performance. Lalla-Roukh. It’s on at a different theatre at the same time as Julien.”
“I always knew something was off about the Lees’ boy. He always had an overly effeminate manner about him,” his father said, as though stating facts that were as true as the fact that the sun rose from the east and set in the west.
Yoongi’s grip on his chopsticks tightened, shovelling the noodles into his mouth with enough force that there was a sound as his chopsticks clanked against his teeth. He slurped on his noodles noisily, in favour of ignoring the pointed looks his father was sending his way.
“Son. If you have something to say, say it. You’re a man, aren’t you? Don’t sulk like a child.”
He swallowed the last of the noodles, put his chopsticks down and met his father’s eyes head-on.
“Y/N might seem feminine, but he’s the manliest man I know.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” Yoongi said, resolute.
That night, his father had thrown him out of his house, saying that he will not have a son who willingly associated himself with ‘unnatural men’. Yoongi let his father heave him over the threshold, past the front door and out onto the side of the street. From the outside, he saw his mother tugging on his father’s arm. They were yelling, but he couldn’t make out the words. When his mother pulled the curtains shut, the look on her face was all he needed to know that that they were fighting about him – and that his mother had lost. Everything that belonged to him was out by the side of the street by midnight. Yoongi took it all in stride. He even called a moving company the next morning to pick everything up and have it shipped to Seoul for him.
You were already helping him unpack when he arrived at your apartment – no, this was his home now. You smiled, as if you knew what had happened back in Daegu. Yoongi thought that you might have misunderstood, that you thought his parents had finally accepted that their son had been mooching off you and were okay with him continuing to live off your family’s fortune. You didn’t ask. He didn’t say anything.
It was only when you asked to sleep beside him that night under the pretence of having bad dreams that he realised that you knew what happened. He only wished it wasn’t his father who had brought the news to you.
Yoongi slept like a log in your arms, despite everything that led up to that precious moment. And he was grateful for it.
He awoke with a start in the middle of the night from a sharp pain in his chest. Something was lodged in his chest and he knocked against his breastbone to coerce whatever it was out. Yoongi stuck a finger down his throat and indeed something shot out to fall into the sink.
He prodded at the dark, wet mass and picked it up to examine it when he failed to identify exactly what it was. Under the light of a lamp on the kitchen island, he felt his throat constrict for an entirely new reason.
Min Yoongi has hanahaki.