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It’s a fact of life: Yoongi sleeps badly. A few hours a night at best, when he’s truly lucky. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, really. He does, but he also lives with shadows in the corners of his mind, deadlines, looming over his head and too many indescribable demons keeping him awake. And it’s been that way forever, bad enough that sometimes he crashes and sleeps for twelve hours straight and he doesn’t dream, and nothing and no one can wake him up.
Sometimes, he thinks that’s why he chose music, why he chose the piano. But that’s a goddamn joke, because he never chose anything. The piano chose him, not the other way around. It was when he was too small to even be able to climb on the piano bench by himself, chubby legs dangling as he tried to push up into it and whining until his mom helped him. Pudgy fingers slamming on the keys as he laughed, delighted. He never had a choice, it was one of these things, written in the stars, decided for him from the get-go.
And that’s how it all combines to this: 2 in the morning, 22 years old, and Yoongi’s still in school, the hallway outside of his rehearsal room painted a watery yellow by the overhead lights. It’s quiet, because he’s not playing, fingers massaging fingers to work out kinks and cramps out of them. The atmosphere feels oppressive, without the music, the air suffocating, and Yoongi hates it. He usually likes silence, it helps him work out beats and melodies, set up the music in his head until it makes sense, until it tells a story he wants to tell, until he understands it and he stops twisting his mind into impossible shapes to try and fit the music, instead of the other way around.
But right now, it feels weird. There’s an odd quality to it, and then he gets it, he gets why: it’s not silence. There’s sound, coming from somewhere beyond his hallway, and Yoongi follows it, like a dog following a smell, the music becoming more concrete, twinkling notes, a voice wavering above them, echoing in the space, like whoever’s playing and singing is doing it in a dance room and not a music room, which is stupid, they have rooms designed for these things for a reason, and yet.
He turns the corner, and here it is. The door to one of the smaller dance practice rooms is open, and the music has crystallized into something that makes sense, now, less of a noise and more of an actual song. It’s a weird one, because it has no major key, but Yoongi’s ears lead him forward anyway, keep him right here as he listens, silently. The guy’s back is to him and obviously, he’s way too lost in his song to notice someone’s watching, so Yoongi does a lot of that. Broad shoulders covered in a fuzzy looking pink jumper, the kind that looks to be so soft to the touch it’s like petting a bunny rabbit. Funny looking, long fingers wrapped around a mic he holds by the side of his head when he’s not singing into it, and Yoongi wonders what they’d look like on piano keys.
;;
Yoongi goes home at 3 in the morning and almost breaks his leg stepping over Namjoon’s shoes in his entryway. Whatever, at least it means there’s a bunch of beers in the fridge, and one of his best friends snoring on his couch means that he’s not drooling on his textbooks in the library again, burning the candle at both ends. At least he’s getting some proper rest, and Yoongi’s couch is ridiculously comfortable, for a shitty looking piece of furniture they got from a second-hand store.
The snores echo through the apartment as Yoongi silently makes his way to the kitchen and pops open a beer with the heel of his hand and the kitchen counter. He leans back against the wall by the window, looking at Seoul in the night, neon lights highlighting his face, cars driving past, tyres making faint wet sounds in the rain.
He doesn’t think about the singer and his pink jumper.
;;
“Do you have a blanket?”
Pink-jumper guy turns around, and Yoongi realizes it’s the first time he’s ever seen his face. Today, pink-jumper guy is not wearing a pink-jumper, but a baby blue one. He’s also in school well past midnight for the second time, and he’s still rehearsing the same song. It’s funny, because Yoongi is still rehearsing the same piece, too.
Pink jumper guy has huge, dark eyes, pretty, full pink lips, and his sweeping bangs look made for fingers to run through. He is, on all accounts, way too pretty to be real, and that’s even excluding the shoulders and the height and the thighs. Hell, even his eyebrows are nice.
He blinks owlishly at Yoongi. “Do I - no, why would I have a blanket?”
“Because there’s usually some in the piano rooms hallway but right now there’s none, and I saw someone walk by earlier, and there’s only the two of us on this floor right now.”
“I didn’t take your blanket. Why do you need a blanket anyway, are you cold? I have an extra hoodie in my bag -”
Yoongi holds his hands up, covered up by his own oversized, black hoodie. “No, it’s not for me, it’s for the piano.”
The guy blinks again. “Pianos get cold?”
Yoongi nods. “Pianos get cold.”
;;
Which is how Yoongi finds himself with Seokjin sitting on the shitty couch in his rehearsal room. They introduced themselves while searching for the blankets, because apparently Seokjin had to see to understand how pianos get cold, and they find them in Jungkook’s rehearsal room because Jungkook is a hoarder. Yoongi only takes one - he’s not an asshole - but he takes the biggest one.
And now he’s carefully swaddling his piano, while Seokjin watches.
“So if you don’t do this, it goes out of tune?”
“Yep,” Yoongi replies from underneath the piano, tying a knot with dexterous fingers.
“Hmm,” he hears from the couch, and that sound is mildly worrying so Yoongi’s head pop out, between the keys and the bench.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, be careful down there. What would happen if the piano fell on you?”
Yoongi looks straight at Seokjin. Seokjin looks straight at Yoongi.
“Don’t you dare,” Yoongi says, very very softly. His lips are in a straight line, his eyes in a firing line just above the seat of the piano bench. For a second, he thinks Seokjin is going to back off, and then:
“You would... B-flat!” Seokjin says, and then he bursts out laughing, with this loud, windscreen-wiper laugh that should be anything but attractive, and yet.
;;
Sometimes the music swells and sometimes the music crashes. Sometimes it booms, and sometimes it tiptoes. Sometimes it laughs and sometimes it cries, and sometimes Yoongi wants to laugh along with it and sometimes he wants to scream.
Today is a day where he wants to cry. It’s not because of the music, or the emotion of it, it’s because nothing’s working quite right. He asked for three shots in his latte this morning and he can tell there’s only two. He forgot and skipped lunch entirely. There are five missed calls from Hoseok on his phone. But, most importantly, he can’t make this piece work. It’s like his fingers refuse, or maybe it’s the music itself. He sees, reads, understands the melody written on his score, but it’s like all these semiquavers are laughing at him, and his fingers trip over themselves, and he wants to cry.
Maybe he’s just hungry. Maybe he needs a break, maybe he needs to call Hoseok back and plan some kind of dinner catch-up, where he can eat his body weight in steak and noodles. But he’s not someone that gives up, even when it would be the more responsible thing to do, and so he doesn’t take a break, he doesn’t eat, he doesn’t call Hoseok back.
He’ll get this piece to submit if it kills him.
;;
“You ever think it’s too much? That you go too far?”
Yoongi shakes his head, chewing on his cold noodles thoughtfully, even if his physical response is immediate. He’s taut, tense, and he reaches out to wrap a hand around a piano leg, like he’s worried it’ll be taken away from him. Like Seokjin would take it from him.
“I always think I don’t go far enough.”
Even when he hates it, he can’t stay away. He relaxes in increments, looking at Seokjin over his food.
“Even when nothing works, when I can’t put two notes together… It’s here. It’s here for me. It’s never given up on me. It’s everything I had, for a long time.”
Seokjin’s smile is bright, and it makes his eyes disappear, and Yoongi’s heart cracks a little to make space for this sight, let the light of it in.
“But not anymore,” Seokjin says, before slurping more noodles. Yoongi smirks.
“Not anymore.”
;;
His apartment’s like his music room; neat, tidy, full of music, and it bears the scars of his friends’ lives melding with his own. Sometimes, Yoongi wonders how he’s ended up with people constantly coming in and out of his space like it’s their own, completely comfortable through all of Yoongi’s moods, even the worst ones.
When he walks into his apartment, at 4 am on a Sunday after a full night of rehearsing, he can barely move his fingers, and he almost trips on a pair of shoes that are way too big to belong to him, again, and he curses softly as he walks through the entryway, only to find Namjoon curled up on his couch, a thin blanket over him.
He sighs, and grabs the comforter that lives in his hallway cupboard for moments like these, draping it over Namjoon’s sleeping form. Namjoon, who becomes even more of a curled up lump in the added warmth, snuffling a little. Yoongi smiles. Whatever Namjoon’s here for, it can wait until the morning.
;;
“You like him,” Hoseok says, matter-of-fact. Yoongi thumbs through the music score he’s just been handed, reading through it without looking up at Hoseok as he speaks.
“Who?” he replies easily, like he doesn’t know what Hoseok means, like he’s a little dumb. Mainly, it’s because he doesn’t want to think about it too hard. He knows he likes Seokjin, but if he thinks about it too hard, he starts wanting to write songs for Seokjin, about Seokjin. Songs that go through the scales like crashing waves, like Seokjin’s laughter, songs that end in twinkling notes, like the light in his eyes.
So, yeah. He doesn’t want to think about it too much.
Hoseok rolls his eyes. Yoongi doesn’t look, but he can tell.
“Don’t play dumb. You know it won’t hurt you to admit it, right?”
Yoongi hums. “Hmm, I’m in touch with my feelings, thanks. I just don’t want to admit it to you.”
;;
Falling in love is not something Yoongi does anymore. He’s got one love, and that’s his piano. He lives and breathes music, to an extent that he can’t love anything else.
Only then, he falls in love again.
;;
The first time they kiss, it’s on a blustery, grey kind of day. Wind is whipping Seokjin’s hair against his face and Yoongi holds onto his hat as he sways forward and Seokjin leans down and it seems to make sense, just like that. Their lips meet, Yoongi pulls his hat off in his haste to curl his fingers in Seokjin’s hoodie, and Seokjin brute forces his way closer, sliding his arms around Yoongi and crushing them together. Yoongi exhales a little sound when they break apart, his legs feeling weak.
Seokjin kisses like he laughs, loud and overpowering, and the taste of his chapstick is sticking to Yoongi’s own lips so much he has to smack them a couple times. He wants more already, he wants to climb Seokjin and kiss him more, a million times more, twist his fingers in Seokjin’s hair and hear how he moans
“Take me home,” Seokjin says, firm, and Yoongi doesn’t even have time to ask yours or mine? because they’re in the no-man’s land of campus between their apartment, before Seokjin is already pulling him along by the wrist towards his own.
;;
He doesn’t mean to, but sometimes, Yoongi loses himself so much in the music he doesn’t realize he’s missing entire swathes of time. He opens a score when the sun is high up in the sky, and the next time he looks away, it’s deep in the night. He’s used to this, he’s used to walking home at 3 am and eat cold noodles standing by the fridge and crash into beds with his jeans barely unbuttoned. He’s used to it, and he likes to think it’s part of his process.
Meeting Seokjin disrupts his process. Seokjin insists on getting enough sleep, so that Yoongi doesn’t act like a grumpy zombie-like imitation of a grandpa, and Seokjin makes sure Yoongi eats by asking him out on dates that, obviously, Yoongi is not going to say no to, he does have a brain. And eyes.
Seokjin puts face masks on Yoongi to help with his puffy eyes and dark circles, Seokjin loans Yoongi his pink hoodies, and Seokjin brings Yoongi snacks when he’s rehearsing. He sits on the couch in Yoongi’s rehearsal space and talks about his day and makes bad puns, windshield-wiper laugh distorting the notes coming out of Yoongi’s piano.
Yoongi thinks, maybe he can get used to having a new process.
;;
Seokjin is giving Yoongi a look, that kind of look that says I know what you’re up to, but I might let you get away with it, and Yoongi looks back, as innocent as he can.
“What? I really think it’s a good look.”
It’s not. It’s not a good look. It’s one of these t-shirts that are made to look like it’s a suit, and the material is all shiny and tight and it’s most definitely not a good look, but Yoongi’s not the one going to this event and he’s in the mood to play.
He texts Jungkook, who’s also attending, asking for him to take as many pictures of Seokjin as he can, and Jungkook replies with a bunch of question marks, but agrees anyway. Seokjin sighs, runs his hands down his front a few times, mouth twisting as he looks in the mirror.
“I guess I can always distract them with my handsome face, right?”
The way Yoongi looks back at Seokjin is positively leery. He leans back on his hands on the bed, head tilted as he lets his eyes drift to the way Seokjin’s slacks fit against his ass and thighs. “Mmhmm. Sure. Yeah. With your face.”
;;
Yoongi never thought anything could surpass his love for the piano. And, truly, nothing really will; the piano, and music, will always hold such a place in his heart and in his life that he can’t imagine not devoting most of himself to it.
But. And it’s a big but - pardon the pun - Seokjin. Seokjin might come close, especially like this, when it’s the dead of night and he’s looking down at Yoongi with the moonlight sparkling in his eyes and his body becomes the most amazing instrument Yoongi’s ever touched.
Seokjin’s so goddamn beautiful Yoongi can’t help but be reverent when he touches him, as he learns how to help Seokjin make the most amazing of sounds. It’s nothing like his loud, brash, fond laughter; the sounds he makes as Yoongi pushes fingers into him are like a symphony in themselves. It starts slow, breathless gasps and low-voiced demands, and it builds into a crescendo of moans and groans and names said in vain as he sinks down onto Yoongi’s cock. As he moves, hips rolling, fingers digging into Yoongi’s chest, he grows louder and louder, an allegro made man. But obviously, to Yoongi, the best is always when Seokjin comes. It’s never twice the same, but it completes the music in his head every time, sometimes loud and explosive, something quiet and sated.
Seokjin reminds Yoongi of Brahms, when they go out and it’s late in the spring and the sun seems to halo him. He reminds Yoongi of Beethoven, when he loses himself in his work and seems to forget about everything else. There are days when Seokjin’s in a bad mood and all Yoongi can think about is Shostakovich.
But when it’s the two of them, like this, naked, sweaty, exchanging kisses and touches and secrets in the darkness of one of their bedrooms, Yoongi only thinks of Seokjin, and how they, together, make their very own music, for no one else to hear.
;;
“I like this one,” Seokjin says, his feet dangling off the side of the creaking shitty couch in Yoongi’s rehearsal space, his eyes closed, head tipped back. He looks weirdly comfortable and like - like he belongs right here, not that Yoongi’s thinking about that too much.
“Yeah?” he replies simply, as his fingers find the right notes, but he slows the pace of the piece even further, like he wants to play it longer so Seokjin can appreciate it some more.
He’s playing Debussy’s Clair De Lune, and it’s one he likes, too. He’s not working on an exam or a recital, just. Playing. Because this is his life and his blood and if he doesn’t he feels lost.
Seokjin hums. “Yeah. It’s romantic. Unlike you.”
Yoongi snorts, and then shifts, almost seamlessly going from Debussy to Rachmaninoff, going for an allegro appassionato prelude, fingers running over the keys at a speed that immediately heats him up, the effort suddenly a lot more pronounced. And then he goes back into Debussy, slowing himself down even as his body yearns for more.
Seokjin laughs. “Yeah. That was more like you.”
;;
“I think he’s really good for you,” Namjoon says around a mouthful of ramen, and Hoseok nods along. The table is littered with their plates - it’s Namjoon’s treat, too, because he got himself some cash collaborating with an up-and-coming hip-hop artist - and they’re celebrating.
“You don’t even know him,” Yoongi replies flippantly, reaching out with his chopsticks for a piece of beef. He’s been with Seokjin a while now, he doesn’t know exactly how long, because he’s bad with time frames that are anything else than ‘the time between one concert and the next’, and he’s met Namjoon and Hoseok a couple of times. It’s usually been a bit awkward and hurried, or quiet and sleepy. So Namjoon can’t pretend.
“No, and whose fault is that, by the way? Why didn’t you invite him tonight?”
“You said you wanted to celebrate you, Namjoon-ah.”
“Point is, though, that you’re like… brighter, these days. He makes you happy, and that’s good,” Hoseok says pointedly, waving his chopsticks in Yoongi’s face, who bats them away, but he’s unable to help the way he smiles a little.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. What about your crush on that guy from your contemporary class, huh? What was his name again? Junhi? Johoon?”
Hoseok rolls his eyes. “Jimin. His name’s Jimin, and you know that, no need to be an ass just to deflect, hyung. It’s okay to be in love.”
Yoongi throws a piece of corn at Hoseok’s head, and Namjoon yelps.
“Not the food, guys!”
;;
They often find their way to each other in the late night, or the early morning. Yoongi will sit on the floor of Seokjin’s rehearsal room and eat tteokbokki that he got from the stall around the block, hot and spicy and perfect for 1AM as he listens to Seokjin sing ballads until his voice gets hoarse and his throat hurts. He makes him tea, with lemon and honey, when they get back to either one of their apartment, shuffling around in his socks and settling close on the couch afterwards.
Seokjin likes to come into Yoongi’s rehearsal space when he’s playing. He slips in with his broad shoulder taking too much space in the small room, and he sits on the couch and doesn’t say anything. Sometimes he sits on the bench next to Yoongi and tries to follow the movement of his fingers. He’s got long fingers himself, a good range, but they hurt quickly if he tries, his joints protesting. But he still does, sometimes, and afterwards Yoongi kisses the pads of his fingers and Seokjin laughs, but it sounds all soft and gooey and fond, and he never asks Yoongi to stop.
;;
When Yoongi finishes playing, he stops for a moment, breathing hard, just basking in the feeling of the work, a faint sheen of sweat over his brow. Only after a few moments does he crack a smile and opens his eyes, turning to his professor.
She clicks her tongue, her arms crossed over her chest. “You’ve gotten soft,” she says, and Yoongi’s smile falls as a dark pit opens in his stomach.
“You’re playing this like it’s a bagatelle, you’re all light and airy with it, you’re barely sweating. What gives?”
Yoongi has no answer. He thought - no. No, he’s not going to find himself excuses. He thinks back of the night before, feeding Seokjin rice balls until his cheek puffed up like a hamster and the dread in his stomach expands even wider.
“I’m sorry. I’ll work harder.”
“See that you do. Otherwise you may be putting your own future career at risk here, Mr. Min.”
;;
Yoongi wakes up one morning, encased in Jin’s arms, body still a little sore from the night before - Jin had been angry about some bullshit audition he had been forced to try, and subsequently get chewed up at, and Yoongi, all too willingly, had offered to change his mind. Which had resulted in Yoongi holding on to the headboard of Jin’s bed, biting into a pillow to keep from screaming out as Jin fucked him from behind, a bit rougher than they usually were.
Afterwards, he’d been sweet, taking care of Yoongi and pulling him into his arms, slotting their fingers together the way Yoongi liked best.
They’d fallen asleep like that, but now Yoongi was awake, it was early, and he had to get back to work. He disentangled himself from Seokjin, making a sympathetic face when Seokjin grumbled in his sleep, but then replaced Yoongi with a pillow, pushing his face into it.
God, but Yoongi really did love him. He leaned over and kissed the top of Seokjin’s head before putting on his clothes swiftly, silently, and then walked out without leaving a note, his mind preoccupied with music.
;;
“I haven’t seen you in a week,” is all Seokjin says, like it’s enough explanation, and Yoongi shrugs, never once looking away from his fingers on the piano, even though he’s not pressing on the keys anymore, no sound in the room apart from their breathing. Seokjin’s is coming faster than Yoongi’s.
“Recital coming up. Gotta rehearse.”
The pointed, pinched sigh that follows his words feels judgmental and annoyed and sad, all at once. He decides not to turn around again and see those feelings written on Seokjin’s face.
“I really hope you realize what you’ve got before it’s too late and you end up with nothing.”
He doesn’t let Yoongi reply, he just leaves, his words heavy in the air. Yoongi slams his hands down in a discordant bunch of notes, and it sounds like he feels.
;;
It’s when Seokjin doesn’t come to the recital that Yoongi knows he’s fucked up. That he’s fucked up big, big time.
;;
Yoongi gets drunk. He doesn’t get drunk all that often, actually, and tonight should be a night to celebrate, to be with his few friends and have fun in a crowded bar, maybe make out with Seokjin in a dark corner, floor sticky under their feet, but instead. Instead he’s getting drunk, alone, in his rehearsal room with the door locked and too much whiskey and his piano looking at him, like it’s mocking him.
Look what you gave up for me, it seems to say.
Yoongi, very slowly, deliberately, puts the bottle down on the floor. It falls to its side and spills a little where he didn’t close it well enough, and that’s when Yoongi notices that he tried to put it down on the sleeve of a hoodie, hanging from the side of the couch. A pink hoodie, now with a dark whiskey stain on the forearm. Seokjin’s.
Yoongi’s jaw clenches, but he stands, leaving the bottle on the floor, next to its stain and the sleeve of Seokjin’s hoodie. He walks to the piano, sits on the bench, and, despite the alcohol coursing through his veins, he starts playing.
He plays with every cell in his body. He plays tense, hunched over the keys, his fingers hurting, his mind hurting, his feelings pouring out of his hands, pushing the pace until he feels numb. He sweats on the keys and stumbles on some of the trills, stubbornly plays the same passage over and over until he’s got it right, drunk or not.
He can’t fail. He can’t be a failure.
He plays until he has cramps and his back hurts too much to stay sitting down. The sun has risen and he has no idea what time it is, and he aches, from head to toe. But he feels - he feels like he’s in focus again. Like, for a while, he’s let things go blurry, but now, he feels better.
That’s a lie. He feels like his heart is breaking and his chest is caving in. But he’ll get over it.
;;
“So,” Yoongi starts. It’s awkward. Seokjin’s fingers tap against the coffee shop table, tap tap tap. He doesn’t look angry, just… resigned. He nods.
“So.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s a start,” Seokjin replies, and Yoongi’s chest hurts a little more. Because he thinks, he thinks now, if he wanted it, he could grovel, and Seokjin would take him back. They could resume treating each other with shoulder rubs while watching old reruns of Queer Eye, and pretend they’re not the people they are.
But they are who they are.
“I - spiraled, a bit. And it made me realize… Seokjin, I can’t.”
There’s more he wants to say, right there. But he says I can’t, and then words get stuck in the back of his throat and he stops, looking up at Seokjin, feeling a little panicked. And Seokjin, well. He goes tense, like he understands, suddenly, that is not going to the way he expected it to.
“You can’t what?”
“I need to focus on the piano. I - I love you, Seokjinnie,” he says, and Seokjin’s face closes up, then, goes pinched, his lips thinning, like he knows exactly what Yoongi is about to say, and he might, after all. “But I love the piano more.”
It’s not exactly the truth. But Seokjin isn’t his career. Seokjin isn’t the choice he made when he very small, and that he stuck through with his whole life. Seokjin is new, and bright and beautiful and talented and Yoongi will miss him. But he’s not Yoongi’s first, and most sacred commitment.
For a long time, Seokjin doesn’t say anything. He watches as the latte art in his drink turns into nothing but blotches of white and brown. His face, though. It goes through a lot of different emotions, before he settles on something, something a little broken, a lot sad. It’s not a look Yoongi ever wanted to witness, but now, he’s its cause.
“I get it,” Seokjin says, finally. And he sounds like he does, too. “I hate it, because I love you, too. But I get it. And I, I guess I could do with focusing on my music more, too.”
“Hyung, I’m sorry. It’s just. Our timing is really off. Things are going to start taking off for me when I graduate, and I’m probably going to have to move all over the place, depending on where I get jobs. And you, you’re so talented, you can’t let that go to waste. You’ll go so far.”
It’s serious, and sincere, and Seokjin seems to recognize that, because he nods. And he even smiles, as sad as it looks.
“Yeah. You just wait, I’m going to be on billboards.”
Yoongi smiles, too, and it looks just as heartbroken as he feels inside. “I can’t wait.”
;;
Yoongi was right, about what he told Seokjin. Like he was psychic, he predicted his career would take off after graduation, and that it does. He moves to London for a while, plays with the London Philharmonic, and then he gets a job in Sydney, and then Hong Kong. And then he starts touring, plays concerts all over the place, his name widely recognized in the classical world. He grows and grows and he doesn’t stop. Five years on, he shows no signs of stopping, despite his own weariness.
He gives interviews and he lets himself be guided through photoshoots where he leans against way too expensive pianos that he can’t even play, and he gets invitations to all the parties and there’s gossip about him, and his private life, the one that no one knows anything about. The reason why is simple - he doesn't have one. His private life is nonexistent, living out a suitcase as he does, going from venue to party to venue and never really remembering any names as he’s told them.
There’s one name he remembers: Kim Seokjin. He’s got a Google alert set up, tracking any news and movement. Currently, while Yoongi is touring the US, Seokjin is playing Seoul, on the first date of his world tour. As expected, as Yoongi said he would, Seokjin made it. He’s in a band and he’s successful and Yoongi hopes he’s happy.
He’s in Los Angeles, the morning before he’s to play his third and last night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, when he gets the newest alert, and his heart stutters a little. Seokjin’s in town, too, for a couple of days. He’s got a concert, and some teen award music show to attend.
Yoongi’s heart loses balance. He calls his assistant - a cute, bumbly, flower boy aspiring artist called Taehyung - to try and get him into that concert, and Taehyung, because he is exceptional and Yoongi is never, ever firing him, even gets him a backstage pass. It’s stupid. It’s stupid, and Yoongi probably shouldn’t go, it’ll just be embarrassing, but he can’t help himself. Two days later, he’s stepping into Staples Center, letting himself be guided to the VIP section, and for the occasion he’s wearing jeans and a bucket hat and he can’t help but wonder if he looks so different that Seokjin won’t recognize him.
He’s so nervous he could puke. He shouldn’t be nervous like this anymore, honestly, considering the life he leads. But he is, he’s so nervous he could puke, as he waits in the room where the artists are about to come in to talk to some press and other VIPs before going on stage, sitting on a couch trying to make himself very small.
Thankfully no one talks to him, and he lets the beer he was offered sweat condensation down on his fingertips, and he tries to think of what to say. There are so many things, and also there’s nothing that feels right. Not that any of it matters, anyway, because his mind goes blank when Seokjin walks into the room, made up, dressed up, glowing and sparkling and fucking incredible.
Yoongi almost drops his beer. His mouth goes dry. His eyes go wide. He doesn’t think Seokjin is going to look in his direction, but he does. He does, and he goes still, his eyes widening a fraction before he inhales sharply, lips parting. Yoongi, all of a sudden, is able to feel all of the micro-fissures that marred the deep of his heart forever, since they broke up, since he let go. He can feel them start to bleed again, but then, Seokjin steps forward, just as Yoongi stands up, and the rest of the room melts away.
“Hi.”