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His shoulder is starting to hurt from the way he is lying on the classroom table, but he doesn’t care. With his eyes closed, he only cares about the sounds coming from the piano, the melody Yoongi is playing, the way he can imagine the older’s fingers touching the piano keys. It would be easy to open his eyes and look, he wouldn’t have to imagine it, he could watch the real thing. But he doesn’t want to. He just wants to focus on the music and in the way it always stirs something inside of him that makes him want to cry.
They always say that your home it’s supposed to be your safe space, the place you can be at ease and hide when everything is too much. The place you have people that will take care of you and will protect you, no matter what. He doesn’t know that feeling. Maybe before, long ago, with his mom. But not now, not with two strangers that couldn’t care less of his existence occupying the place, and his mom not knowing how to handle the situation. Not now when even his own room isn’t only his anymore.
Jungkook feels that here. He doesn’t know if you are supposed to find your safe place in an old unused classroom, but he does. It’s the only thing that makes him go through his days, actually, the promise of spending time in here. Sometimes with the hyungs; with Yoongi playing the piano while Hoseok and Jimin dance, with Namjoon and Seokjin discussing something while Taehyung tries to shut them up by plastering himself on Namjoon’s back. Other days being alone, when the hyungs have other things to do. He doesn’t mind, though. He likes those days too; the days when he lies there feeling the air coming from the window, when he touches random piano keys and makes sounds that don’t come close to the beautiful melodies Yoongi plays, the days when he stays there all afternoon doing homework and making up some excuse to arrive home late.
He doesn’t mind those days, but he likes it more when the hyungs are here too. He has never said it out loud and he doesn’t think he ever will because you are not supposed to think that way, but they feel a lot more like home than his own family.
Sometimes, like today, it’s only Yoongi and him in the classroom. He likes that Yoongi never tries to make him talk; he just lets Jungkook look at him in silence while he plays. Other times, he lets him sit beside him in the stool and tries to teach him some chords, even though they always end up laughing because Jungkook never seems to remember any note and ends up doing awful sounds.
He laughs a lot when Yoongi is around, he thinks.
It hasn’t been easy for Yoongi either. Jungkook remembers how, when they first discovered the classroom and saw that there was an old piano placed in one of the corners, Yoongi barely looked at it and, in the next days that they came there, he continued to look everywhere else but the piano. It was something very imperceptible, really easy to miss, but Jungkook is always in tune with Yoongi’s actions.
He doesn’t ask, obviously. They have this unspoken rule to not talk about their problems here, in their safe space. They never talk about their problems when they are together, really. They know that all of them have messed up lives and different issues, but that’s not the important thing when they are together. When they are together, they try to be carefree for once in their lives.
He knows that something was up with Yoongi and the piano. The older tried so much to not look but kept throwing nervous glances at it, with something in his eyes that looked so much like longing. The others fooled around with the instrument sometimes, but Yoongi didn’t go near it.
Days passed with the same dynamic until, one day, when all of them were busy playing some stupid game that someone came up with, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He turned his head very slowly to the side, careful so no one would notice, and saw Yoongi approaching the piano with hesitation. His walk was slow, so slow, like he was approaching a scared animal, until he was right in front of it and sat down in the stool as slowly as his walk had been. He did not press any key, like Jungkook had expected. Instead, he just ran his hands over the keys very lightly, careful to not make any sound, with what Jungkook could only identify as adoration in his eyes. He then felt like the scene was something very private and he shouldn’t be watching it, so he turned his head and checked that no one noticed Yoongi’s actions.
After that, on one of those afternoons when it was only Yoongi and him in the abandoned classroom, Jungkook got startled when a sound came from the piano. When he raised his head, he saw Yoongi sitting in the piano bench. He was not pressing random keys like all of them did to pass time. No, Yoongi was playing the piano, really playing it. A melody, a piece of music that sounded familiar to Jungkook, was coming from it. It was not perfect; Yoongi played wrong notes here and there, but it amazed Jungkook nonetheless. When he finished, Yoongi sat still with his eyes closed for a moment.
“I didn’t know you could play the piano,” Jungkook said.
“It’s, huh, it’s been a while.”
Jungkook didn’t ask why it had been a while, he didn’t ask why he hadn’t say anything when they discovered the classroom with the piano and he didn’t ask why it had taken so long for him to approach the instrument. It was not his place to ask.
“Will you teach me to play it?” he asked instead.
Yoongi looked at him, a hint of a smile in his face, Jungkook so familiar with the expression and nodded.
After that, he began to play when the others were in the room too, all of them amazed by Yoongi’s skills. He teaches some harmonies to Jungkook. He doesn’t know what happened with Yoongi and the piano, but it looked like finally they found peace with each other again.
He ends the memory and opens his eyes now to look at Yoongi play, in the exact position he had been imagining. When he plays, it looks like the piano and him are one, it feels like that is his place, where he should always be. Jungkook feels the urge to cry again.
He hears him play the song he plays the most. Jungkook thinks it’s a piece that it’s important to Yoongi, in a way he can’t grasp. When he is near the ending of the song, Jungkook gets up from the desks he had put together to lie down, walking to the stool to sit down beside Yoongi. The older doesn’t say anything, used to it with all the times Jungkook has done the same.
“Let’s see if today you finally remember the things we've been practicing the other days,” Yoongi says, faking annoyance. Jungkook knows it isn’t real.
“I remember hyung, the other day when I came here alone I practiced. Look.”
He presses the keys, the way he remembers Yoongi showing him. He must play the first few chords right because he sees Yoongi's proud expression when he looks at him between notes. It doesn’t take long for him to play the wrong keys and for Yoongi to sigh exasperated.
“Not like that, it was like this,” he says as he proceeds to show him again.
Jungkook doesn’t mind, he’d rather watch Yoongi play anyways. He really isn’t interested in playing piano; he asked Yoongi only because he wanted to spend time with him.
Yoongi is showing him the way he is supposed to play, but Jungkook doesn’t pay attention. Instead, he throws his head back and sings the notes Yoongi is playing in a silly way, moving his hands around like an orchestra director. It makes Yoongi snort. Jungkook feels the older shaking with laughter against him as he continues playing the piano and Jungkook doesn’t stop his actions.
He likes Yoongi’s laughter.
He likes when he is the one to make Yoongi laugh.
“Hyung, have you ever composed a melody yourself?”
Yoongi stills, the last notes he played echoing in the room. “Yeah,” he says, his voice barely a whisper that Jungkook wouldn't have catched if they weren’t so close.
“Show me?” Jungkook asks, hopeful.
“I don’t know if I remember, Jungkook, it really has been a long time,” Yoongi answers, not meeting his eyes.
“Try,” he says with a hopeful smile on his face.
Yoongi looks at him and his expression softens. Whatever Jungkook just did, it must have worked because, in the next moment, Yoongi starts to play something he has never heard him play before.
To any other person, maybe it would be a song like any other, but for Jungkook the song is so inexplicably Yoongi . It’s heartwarming but has a sad undertone to it, almost like nostalgia. Yoongi said it has been a long time, but his hands touch the keys without hesitation, like the notes are engraved in his brain, like even though he hasn’t played it in a long time, he has thought about it a lot.
Jungkook wants to close his eyes to focus on the music like he did before, but he can’t take his eyes off Yoongi. The urge to cry is there again, but this time accompanied by a tingling sensation in his stomach and a flutter in his heart. A sensation of safety expanding through his body.
When Yoongi finishes playing, he looks at Jungkook with a nervous expression. Right then, it’s like all rational thought has left Jungkook’s body and the feelings he has experienced when he heard Yoongi play his song take over him. He launches himself forward and presses his lips against Yoongi’s.
He thinks he surprises Yoongi as much as he surprises himself. Jungkook is taken aback by this revelation. He never thought his feelings for Yoongi were like that, never considered this possibility and, still, the moment his lips touch Yoongi’s is like everything falls into place, like he has found the last piece of a puzzle. It only lasts a few seconds, the time it takes Jungkook’s brain to catch up with what he has done. He pushes back and sees Yoongi’s shocked expression, his mouth hanging open, and Jungkook gets up before the older can say anything. He rushes to grab his backpack, bumping into something on his way, and leaves the room stuttering an apology.
He avoids Yoongi the next few days. Well, he does not avoid him entirely because he doesn’t stop coming to the classroom, but luckily for him, there’s always someone else. He feels Yoongi’s eyes on him sometimes, but he doesn’t even look at him and neither does he sit with him at the piano.
He thinks a lot about that new piece of information and its meaning these days. He likes Yoongi, like really likes him. Jungkook is surprised he hasn’t realized before, the signals being right before his eyes; the way he always looks to spend more time with him, the way his chest feels full when the older smiles. He experiences that with the other hyungs too, but with Yoongi it’s like that feeling is amplified. He doesn’t know if Yoongi returns his feelings, though. He knows that the other is always watching out for him, protecting him in any way he can, but Jungkook thinks it’s not in a brotherly way in his entirety.
They end up going to the sea a few days later, Taehyung or Seokjin suggesting it. They come here often to spend the afternoon and, on other occasions like today, they spend the night too. They fool around at the beach all afternoon, doing races and stupid competitions and recording videos, like they always do.
When the sun is starting to set and it all becomes too much for Jungkook, he goes to sit alone a little far from the others to see the sky get dark. It does not take long for Jungkook to hear footsteps coming his way. Jungkook knows who it is even before he sits in the sand next to him.
“Seems like it will be a cold night,” Yoongi says.
“Seokjin hyung grabbed blankets for everyone.”
Yoongi hums and they stay silent for a moment. Jungkook draws anxiously in the sand with his fingers, waiting.
“Why did you kiss me the other day?”
There it is. Jungkook knew it was coming. It’s one of the things he likes the most about Yoongi; he likes his bluntness, the way he doesn’t beat around the bush and just asks what he wants to know. And still, he always still manages to be careful with his words.
“Because I wanted to. I still want to, if you let me,” he says, determined.
Yoongi sighs and starts to play with his lighter like he always does when he is deep in thought or troubled with something. Jungkook doesn’t look at him, too nervous of what his response will be.
“You don’t want to come close to me, Jungkook. People get hurt when they do,” Yoongi says.
That makes a spark of anger ignite inside Jungkook.
“People are always telling me what I have to do and what I’m supposed to want, people in school and people in my family. I have my own will, you know? I know what I want, you don’t get to choose, it’s my decision. And I want to be with you,” he turns to look at Yoongi’s eyes now. “And I’m already close to you, as a friend. I could get hurt like that too. Sometimes we hurt people, even if it is unintentionally, and you can’t live your life avoiding that,” Jungkook says determined, looking directly at Yoongi. He blows at the flame of Yoongi’s lighter to make a point, even though he doesn’t know what is that point exactly.
Yoongi holds his gaze, his eyes roaming around Jungkook’s face, like he is looking for something. Whatever it is that he is looking for, he seems to find it because, after a while, his face softens, a hint of a smile on his lips.
“And what do you want, exactly?” Yoongi asks, carefully.
“I want to be with you, if you feel the same” he says, bluntly.
“Okay,” Yoongi says.
Jungkook doesn’t react, at first, not expecting the words that come out from Yoongi’s mouth. When he understands the meaning of those words, he is sure his face must show a shocked expression. “What?”
“I said I want to be with you too,” he answers. Then, Yoongi pushes himself on his knees, facing Jungkook, and brings his hand to Jungkook’s face, his thumb caressing his cheek. He begins to move forward very slowly, his face being closer and closer to Jungkook’s with each passing moment. It reminds Jungkook of the first day he approached the piano.
He thinks he is going to kiss him, but the older just presses his lips very briefly to the corner of his mouth, a touch so careful and gentle that Jungkook thinks it’s a lot better than a kiss. “I said okay, but we’ll take it slow.”
Jungkook can’t help the grin that breaks into his face, a smile that is mirrored by Yoongi the next moment.
Slow doesn’t sound bad.