Chapter Text
Hiraeth (n) - homesickness for a home you can’t return to, or a home that never was
The sound of footsteps on marble echo as Seokjin walks through the halls. He winces at the sound, trying to make his steps as light as possible, but it’s nearly impossible for a man of his height and build to walk completely soundless, especially on marble tiles.
Well, unless he finally decides to follow his childhood dream of becoming a ninja. But that didn’t look like it would be coming true anytime soon.
As he walks, Seokjin tries to look around as little as possible. Something about this part of the mansion gave him chills. Maybe it’s the strange stillness in the air, the silence that is deafening in his emptiness. Maybe it is the grey curtains, letting in little to no light, making the beautiful hallway, with its gleaming paintings and statues seem as desolate as a graveyard. Or maybe it is the man he’s here to see.
He reaches his destination, a seemingly unassuming mahogany door, and pauses in front of it. He stands outside for a second, trying to steel his mind for the upcoming ordeal. It’ll be alright, he tries to convince himself, trying to ignore his sweaty hands and his heart slowly beating faster and faster. He raises his palm, and hesitates for a second, before finally knocking on the door.
For one tense second there is a deafening silence, and Seokjin’s lungs feel as though they are about to suffocate. Finally, a grunt sounds from beyond the door, and Seokjin takes that as permission to enter. He opens the door, trying not to wince at the cool steel of the doorknob against his sweaty palm.
The room inside is a quintessential study, with bookshelves lining the walls in every direction. There is a sofa to his right, a coffee table with a potted plant in front of it. On his left is a cupboard filled with various antiques and other valuable things, and stacks of books lying on the floor. In the middle of the room, there is a large brown desk, books and journals covering half the surface, with a laptop in the corner.
Sprawled in the armchair behind the desk is a man of short stature with a lazy look on his face, his cold dark eyes meeting Seokjin’s own. He is wearing an old t-shirt and, Seokjin guessed as he couldn’t see the man’s legs, sweatpants underneath, not an uncommon outfit for him. Despite his unassuming exterior, most people wouldn’t be fooled by the sleepy expression and the state of his clothes.
Sure, they haven’t experienced the way his words could cut into your soul and leave it nothing but broken shards of glass that would pierce you again and again, the way Seokjin has. But they probably do know that this is Min Yoongi, CEO of the famous Min Corporation, one of the most powerful companies in South Korea. And they know that Min Yoongi was ruthless, willing to succeed and achieve his goals at any cost.
Seokjin swallows, trying not to hunch his shoulders and appear as small as he felt, standing under Yoongi’s glacial gaze. He shivers at the cold temperature in the room ( of course Yoongi would keep his study as cold as his heart is) and pulls his sleeves down with his fingers, seeking warmth from the light pink sweater he was wearing. He doesn’t miss Yoongi’s disapproving gaze roaming up and down said sweater, but he honestly can’t bring himself to care.
He has already given Yoongi everything at this point, his soul, his tears, his happiness. Seokjin honestly thinks that if he lets go of what little freedom he has left in this household, he might be lost forever.
“Was there a reason you called me?” Seokjin asks, looking Yoongi in the eye.
“No, I just called you here for the shits and giggles. Seeing your face gives me so much joy”, The other man says in a deadpan tone, leaning back further into his armchair.
Once upon a time, Seokjin might have warned him that if he leaned back too far, he would fall. Now, he couldn’t help but hope the other man toppled to the ground. And that the books on the desk fell on his head.
“You didn’t answer my question”, Seokjin says with an unimpressed look on his face, trying to seem more confident than he really was.
Yoongi’s eyes narrow at him, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he reaches into one of the drawers in his desk, and pulls out a grey envelope. He carefully opens the envelope and takes out a grey card, handing it to Seokjin. Seokjin couldn’t help but notice that he purposefully kept his fingers as far away from Seokjin’s as possible.
He thinks my touch is that disgusting, Seokjin thinks with sad amusement.
The card has an intricate leaf design on it, and two very familiar insignias on it that gives Seokjin a hint to what this is about. Sure enough, when he opens the envelope, he sees the words “You are cordially invited to the wedding of...”
“Jungkookie and Jiminie are getting married?” He asks, glancing up at Yoongi, who is watching with a carefully neutral expression on his face.
A scowl appears on Yoongi’s face.
“Jungkook and Jimin”, he says, carefully emphasizing the names with a warning glance, “are getting married, yes. The wedding’s in one week.” Seokjin couldn’t help but scoff internally at his expression. He has known Jungkook since the younger boy was born but apparently nicknames are off-limits.
Seokjin stares at the card, reading through all the information on it. The actual wedding itself is in three weeks, but they have invited people a week early to have pre-celebrations with them and enjoy the resort. They are going to hold the wedding somewhere on a private resort, not unexpected for the multi-millionaires that they are.
Seokjin knows that there was no way Yoongi would let him go to the wedding. Yoongi generally hates him going anywhere with him but a wedding…
A wedding would make everything even worse, especially after what happened last time.
Seokjin thinks back to the drunken conversation he had with Jimin 7 years ago, where the other man had promised Seokjin that he could be the one to walk him down the aisle.
“You’re honestly more of my mom than my actual mom was”, Jimin had said with a flushed face and red cheeks, giggling into his drink. At the time, Seokjin had laughed too, the idea too absurd to even think about. Now, he realizes, he won’t even get to see Jimin walk down the aisle.
“Tell them I give them all my love on their wedding”, Seokjin says, placing the card back on the table with a sad smile on his face, and turning away to leave the room.
“You can tell them yourself”, Yoongi says brusquely. “You’re coming with me.”
Seokjin pauses with his hands on the doorknob, turning around in shock.
“You’re taking me with you?” He asks, surprised at the other man’s words. Yoongi generally tried to keep him as away from his family as possible.
“I don’t want you infecting their happiness with your…”, He had said after they had gotten married, leaving the ending of the sentence open, though the look of utter disgust on his face had said enough.
He’s especially protective over Jungkook, his younger half-brother, who is possibly one of the sweetest people Seokjin had ever met. Seokjin sometimes longs for the days when Jungkook would come up to him during dinner parties, with the cute little way he said ‘hyung’ and ask if he could help distract the elders while him and Taehyung pulled some sort of prank.
Of course, in those days, Yoongi had cutely called Seokjin hyung as well.
Yoongi sighs, his hands brushing through locks of black hair. Seokjin hated the fact that he immediately focuses on the strain of the muscles on his hand, how strong and large they are compared to Seokjin’s own, despite the fact that Seokjin has more than a couple of inches on Yoongi. He hates how after all these years, after all the hatred spat at him and constant belittling, he still finds Yoongi one of the most attractive men he had ever met.
“I didn’t want to take you along”, Yoongi says.
Wow, what a surprise, Seokjin thought, rolling his eyes.
“But”, he continues on, “This is a major event in Jungkook’s life, and explaining your absence for their entire wedding would be more problems than it’s worth. So pack your suitcases.” He pauses. “Don’t take too many though. It’s only two weeks.”
Seokjin nods absentmindedly, mood brightening up at the idea of seeing Jungkook and Jimin again after so long. He had seen them briefly when they had dropped in for a surprise visit last year, but Yoongi hadn’t let him talk for too long, not wanting his brother to invite Seokjin to any hangouts or ask any questions about why he had been absent at almost all family functions for the four years him and Yoongi had been married. He longingly thinks of his own little brother Taehyung with sadness. He hasn’t seen Taehyung in even longer, the younger man having gone to Canada to study abroad for the past few years.
“You waited until the week before the wedding to tell me this?” Seokjin asks, the thought suddenly occurring to him.
Yoongi snorts.
“It’s not like you had any upcoming plans”, he says sardonically, referencing how Seokjin has barely left the prison they called their mansion throughout the course of their marriage.
Seokjin glares at him but merely hums, choosing to ignore his remark.
“Well, it’ll be nice to see them again after so long”, Seokjin says. There was no accusation in his tone but from the way Yoongi looks at him, he’s caught what the underlying meaning behind the statement. Yoongi doesn’t say anything in reply, simply gazing at him in the usual unnerving way he does.
Seokjin turns to leave, assuming that the conversation is over.
“Oh, and one last thing, Seokjin”, Yoongi says from behind him. Seokjin turns around to face the other man.
“If you do anything,
anything
, to ruin their wedding, I’ll fucking destroy you”, Yoongi says, his face completely and utterly serious.
-
(Min Yoongi is six years old when he decides that Kim Seokjin, heir to Kim Enterprises, is his soulmate. He’s not entirely sure what a soulmate is, but when he asked his mom, she had said that it’s a person you love more than the anyone else in the world, someone who can make you happy even you are sad, and make you feel things you never feel with anyone else. And that was how Yoongi felt with Seokjin.
Seokjin, even at seven, is one of the prettiest people Yoongi has ever seen, with his dark hair and almond-shaped eyes, and full pink lips. Yoongi can’t help but stare at him dumbfoundedly whenever he sees him.
“You know, Yoongichi, Seokjin usually says when this happens, eyes crinkled and a bright smile on his face, “If you keep your mouth open for too long you’re gonna catch flies!” Yoongi would inevitably turn red, and stutter his way through the following conversation, to the cooing of the older boy (and any adult who happened to witness this surprisingly common event).
Seokjin is like the sun, constantly brightening up the world around him with his light and his smiles. His laughter sounds like music to Yoongi’s ears, and it is this that leads to him to love music with all his heart and soul, that eventually persuades him to learn the piano, trying to find the perfect note that could encompass the sweetness of Seokjin’s laugh.
He never finds that note.)
Dinner that evening is cold and stiff as most of their interactions are. The fact that it is happening in the first place is a surprise. Generally, Yoongi tends to as far away from Seokjin as possible, going out of his way to stay late nights at work and come home long after Seokjin has gone to bed, or get dinner with his assistant or friends instead. Even when he is home, he tends to come down to the kitchen to make himself a plate before returning to his study or to his room.
However, this evening, Yoongi announces that they would be going over their plans for the wedding, leading to the current awkward conversation between them as they sit at a dinner table made to serve about 18 more guests than is currently present.
(“You know hyung”, Yoongi says conversationally, as they walk around the dining room, his hand in Seokjin’s own, “After we get married, we should have sex on this table.”
“Yah, so crude! This is where people eat, you pervert!” Seokjin scolds Yoongi.
“I can eat off of you, if you really want” Yoongi says teasingly. Seokjin pushes him in response, scolding him again, before looking around the room.
“Why this table specifically?” He asks.
“Isn’t that a newly married couple thing? Christening every surface of your home?” Yoongi says, laughing as he moves away from Seokjin’s next hit.
“Well, Seokjin says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully at Yoongi as he tilts his head towards that the hallway that led to the entrance hall and the grand staircase, “That’s a lot of surfaces to christen.”
Yoongi smirks.
“I’m sure we’ll eventually get through all of them.”
“Yoongi-ah!”)
Seokjin lets out a soft sigh as he brings a bite of the japchae they were currently eating to his mouth. He lets his eyes wander around the room as he ate, taking in the chandelier above them and the the large paintings with golden frames on the walls he has seen hundreds of times before, trying to avoid looking the man currently sitting aside from him as much as possible.
However, it seem as though said man wouldn’t let that happen.
“Are you even listening to me, Seokjin?” Yoongi says sharply, interrupting his thoughts.
“Of course, I am”, Seokjin says, keeping his eyes on the painting behind Yoongi. It is of his late mother, an elegant regal women, who Seokjin barely remembers from his childhood memories of visiting the Mins’. She looks just as majestic in the painting as she did in Seokjin’s memories.
“This is serious”, Yoongi growls, banging his fist on the table, causing the silverware to clatter and Seokjin to instinctively flinch. “I get that marriage means absolutely nothing to you, but I actually want Jungkook to have a good experience at his wedding.”
The good experience that I couldn’t have, he leaves unsaid.
Seokjin finally meets Yoongi’s furious eyes.
“Jungkook’s like a little brother to me. Of course I want him to have a great wedding”, He says, putting his chopsticks down with a sigh.
Yoongi’s eyes narrow at his words but he apparently chooses not to comment. Instead, he continues on.
“Anyways, during the wedding, we need to make sure that Jungkook and Jimin don’t find anything amiss about us”, Yoongi says.
“So basically, we have to pretend to actually like each other”, Seokjin surmises.
“Not just like each other, love each other”, Yoongi says, emphasizing the word love. “Jungkook and Jimin see us as role models of sorts for their relationship, and I don’t want that to change in the next few weeks.”
Role models. Seokjin snorts. He wonders what Jungkook and Jimin will think if they find out that him and Yoongi barely speak to each other anymore, how they have separate rooms in separate wings of their house despite being a so-called happily married couple.
He wonders how they’ll react to finding out that Yoongi hasn’t kissed him since the barely-there peck on the lips given on their wedding day, how after giving said kiss, Yoongi had looked like he wanted to cleanse himself of any filth he might have received from Seokjin.
Seokjin finds a strange vindication at the fact that in order to appear to be a happily married couple, Yoongi would have to touch him and hug him and maybe even kiss him. Somewhere in his touch-starved, lonely soul, he actually hopes for it.
Seokjin nods, and picks up his chopsticks again to take a bite of his food. It’s by their cook, Yoongi having declared long ago that he refused to eat any food that Seokjin made.
(Sometimes, Seokjin would make a dish or two anyway, and watch in satisfaction later at night when Yoongi nearly gobbled down the whole thing.)
“We’ll pretend to be so in love, we’ll put Romeo and Juliet to shame”, Seokjin says fake-cheerily, the expression feeling strange and unfamiliar on his face. He hasn’t smiled in so long, that even fake smiling has become foreign to him, who had once been unable to go more than a minute without breaking out into a smile.
( “Your smile is my favorite thing about you”, a different Min Yoongi had said to a different Kim Seokjin a long, long time ago.)
Yoongi’s mouth doesn’t even twitch at Seokjin’s attempted joke, not that he expected it to. If there was one person who smiles less than Seokjin nowadays, it’s Yoongi.
(“You’re the only person who can make him truly smile, you know”, Jungkook had said to Seokjin, a fond smile on his face).
“It’s not as simple as it sounds, you know”, Yoongi says, glancing down at his plate.
Seokjin can’t help but feel the need to reassure him, despite knowing the other man wouldn’t appreciate it in the slightest.
“It’ll be fine, Yoongi”, Seokjin murmurs, “They won’t be able to tell a thing.”
Yoongi meets his eyes and nods, a surprisingly cordial acknowledgement of his words, though Seokjin knows that’s only because they’re discussing Jungkook and Jimin.
-
Later that night, Seokjin lies awake in his bed, thoughts of the wedding on his mind.
He wonders what Yoongi’s family will think of seeing him after so long. He wonders what his own family will think. There’s no chance of seeing his parents, them having been long dead, but Taehyung might be at the wedding. He was Jungkook’s old best friend after all. Then again, last Seokjin had heard, the two had had a major fallout, so Tae might not be there after all. He hopes they made up, if only for the chance to see his happy-go-lucky younger brother again.
Seokjin shivers at the cold, tucking the comforter around him further, and tries to sleep, tossing and turning in the bed for a few minutes.
This was his routine every night, lay awake until it’s almost dawn, before finally falling asleep sometime around 3 or 4 AM. He wakes up three hours later at 7. Sure, he didn’t have to go through this nightly routine, since he had pills for his insomnia, but he hates the groggy feeling of waking up from them, as well as the idea of making himself vulnerable for so long.
Aish, if only I had a warm body to wrap myself around…
It’s a useless thought, Yoongi would never agree to sleep with him, despite knowing of his sleeping problems.
As for someone else…
No, there’s no use in going down that road.
Speaking of other people …
He can’t help but wonder if he was going to be at the wedding.