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It’s dawn and sunset at the same time.
Jimin has seen it just a few times. The horizon fractioning in three: ocean, clear sky and clouds. So, as the day comes to its end, the sun falls out of the clouds, setting everything on fire just for a short while before it starts sinking in the ocean. If Jimin tilts his head it’s dawn, if he keeps it straight it’s sunset; if everything loses its meaning, it’s eternity.
All in all, it’s beautiful. The rich, burning colors belong to a different world, very different to Jimin’s cold one, full of blues and misty greens. He swirls his tail in the shallow waters of the sandbank where he’s sitting and watches the dots of sand catch some of the sunset light and become little explosions of gold dust.
Golden, Jimin has come to realize, is his favorite color. Golden brings a content peace to his soul, so often turbulent and enraged. For some reason, everything is golden in his dreams.
“Jiminie?”
The low voice brings a flutter of warmth to his heart. Time stops for a moment, if it was ever running.
“Yoongi.” The name comes out of Jimin’s lips as a way to settle himself in the moment.
Jimin is still a stranger to dream’s nature, but he has learned that they’re not as ethereal as they appear. At least not with Yoongi. The half-sandman is here with him. Somehow. The world around them is not real, yet it’s not entirely a mirage.
Jimin doesn’t turn around immediately, waiting for the tingle under his skin to settle. The traverse from unconsciousness to kind-of-consciousness always brings about a ticklish dizziness. It’s like forgetting a word you had on the tip of your tongue that was right there a second ago, but when your brain tries to look for it, it comes back infuriatingly blank.
Yoongi said it’s normal, that it’s just his brain partially waking up. Yoongi told him a lot of other things about neurobiology and rapid eye movement, but Jimin only got the main idea: it goes away as he becomes more and more aware of Yoongi’s presence. And aware of his presence he is.
Yoongi is right behind him, somewhere at his right, stepping into the water.
Jimin needs a moment before facing him. It’s not just the dreams, but also the half-sandman himself that makes a mess of Jimin’s head. Jimin is never ready to handle the inexplicable attraction that pulls him towards this man he barely knows and yet feels closer than anyone Jimin’s ever met.
He turns around finally, and his eyes find Yoongi’s. Maybe his brain does find a word after all, but Jimin can’t say it out loud, stars be damned.
“Hi.”
“You’re sad,” Yoongi answers. There’s a tiny frown on Yoongi’s brow, his golden eyes scrutinize Jimin curiously. It seems like Yoongi is always trying to figure him out. Jimin wishes he succeeds, Jimin himself has certainly failed his whole life. “This sunset is spectacular, and you’re here being sad? Unacceptable.”
The splash of water hits his face before he can even realize what’s happening. Were it anyone else, Jimin would have their hearts in his fist, but he can’t seem to mind this earthling’s disrespect when he giggles so cutely afterwards. A smile curls his lips and it widens until it’s a full grin as he sends a whole wave over Yoongi in retaliation.
“Hey!” Yoongi is pouting when his head breaks the surface again.
“You started,” Jimin sing-songs and swims closer to the other man to cup his cheeks in his hands and squeeze a little so his pout reaches unthinkable levels of adorableness—
Jimin take his hands off Yoongi’s face and swims away to deeper waters, shaking his head to clear it from all those ridiculous thoughts that fill it so easily when the sandman is in front of him.
Sweet Mother, Jimin, get a grip on yourself.
Stupid shit like that was what led him to this fate, he can’t let stupidity take control of his life again.
“So, where do you want to go tonight?” Yoongi asks, voice low in contrast with the soft swish of the water as he moves.
“Nowhere with an earthling” should be Jimin’s answer, but he can already feel his anger diluting at the prospect of stepping into the unknown with Yoongi.
I’m such an idiot.
Yoongi tests his self-imposed discipline every two seconds, and it’s almost funny that the sandman doesn’t even realize the battle he ignites inside Jimin. The battle between what he’s supposed to be and what he is, what he’s always been. A battle he loses every time, a battle he doesn’t even seem to be willing to fight.
Cold blood has never fitted him.
The lack of answer and the rising waves around them prompts Yoongi to speak: “I think I already got all the wet I can take for a night, so I’m up for, let’s say, um… A terrace table somewhere? Big chocolatey ice-cream. Mediterranean weather, you know? Dry. Low season, lots of people but not the rowdy type…” Yoongi keeps ranting about things Jimin doesn’t really understand, and his voice starts getting more and more distant.
Jimin turns around to see Yoongi walking down a long, narrow pier. A shore full of colorful constructions is materializing ahead.
“Yoongi, wait!” There you go, lost again.
Yoongi stops and turns to him, hands holding a shirt so big it could surely fit them both inside.
“We might as well satisfy my sweets cravings while you think where you wanna go. I can even make a fish flavored something for you.” Yoongi smiles, all gums and crinkled eyes, but he faces down shyly shortly after.
He always does the same. Every time Jimin’s heart is taking a dark turn, Yoongi comes up with something Jimin can’t refuse. He steps into Jimin’s cold bubble and turns everything golden.
His pretty lips pouting as he talks about earthling nonsense are a big part of it, too. But fuck, that’s not it, Jimin would smash his own head on a rock if possible. He should.
He won’t.
He swims towards the pier with a huff and pulls himself out of the water, his tail numbs as he wills it to dissolve into legs. He stands up on clumsy feet in front of Yoongi, and his breath stutters as the sandman circles him with his arms to put the shirt on his shoulders. Jimin is seconds away from taking the step that separates them, so he can bury himself in Yoongi’s warmth, but thankfully, Yoongi resumes his walking, turning his back to Jimin and giving him the chance to put his stupid head in order.
Following Yoongi is as much as he can indulge himself.
“Where’s this place?” He asks as the wood of the pier gives way to pavement.
Yoongi hums before answering, looking around with a little frown, fortunately ignorant of Jimin’s conflict. “Nowhere, really. I just put things together to maybe approach a beach town concept. What do you think?”
“Looks like the real deal,” Jimin nods. Yoongi usually asks for his opinion on the sceneries he creates, as if asking about a painting or something. Judging by what he’s seen so far, dream crafting is a whole art, or so Yoongi makes it seem. “I think I’d feel tempted to explore this town if I saw it.”
“I got the rebel merman’s seal of approval… Nice.” Yoongi looks back at him with a smirk on his lips and a triumphant swing of his fist. Jimin can’t help but laugh and push Yoongi’s shoulder lightly. “Come on, we better hurry and get a good table.”
Yoongi takes a turn left and starts climbing a forged iron spiral staircase that appears out of nowhere. Now that Jimin pays attention, there’s a whole bustling street full of faceless people around them. Jimin is sure none of it was there a second ago, but that’s how it is in their dreams.
The stairs lead to a small terrace, tall wooden boxes containing multicolored flowers mark the borders of the space, littered in small round tables and delicate looking chairs. Most of them are occupied by more faceless ghosts, except, of course, the one with the best view of the sunset sea.
“Look at that! We’re so lucky…” Yoongi walks towards the table quickly, dragging his feet slightly.
Jimin snorts as he sits in the chair Yoongi is offering. “As if you couldn’t actually make a whole new floor if we didn’t get a table.”
Yoongi shrugs. “That would make an excellent nightmare, though. Like those things that are not actually bad, just terribly infuriating.” Yoongi chuckles to himself as if enjoying the idea of creating something so frustrating.
Jimin snorts again, eyeing with suspicion the bowl full of brown puddle that appears in front of Yoongi in which he’s sinking a spoon and breaking a thin layer of chocolate. “You’re secretly evil, aren’t you?”
“Me? Evil?” Instead of denying it, Yoongi just smirks, and Jimin feels the rhythm of his heart faltering. “What about you, though? I wonder how many ships you’ve sunk.”
“Pff, countless.” He shrugs a shoulder and fakes arrogance just to see Yoongi laughing silently, hunched shoulders shaking. “My song could turn a fierce sailor into a mumbling mess.”
After a while, Yoongi pushes a bowl with an icy green substance towards him and asks quietly, more seriously: “For real? You’ve sunk a ship?”
“Only on command,” Jimin answers equally quietly. “Actually, I was on the party that thought sinking ships was just throwing the garbage inside the house.”
Yoongi hums. “I’ve given people horrible nightmares because someone asked me to do it.”
“Your life was on the line, though. I was just trying to please an asshole.” Their eyes meet for a moment before they both look down and into their bowls.
It’s not a competition, but Jimin is far ahead in the guilt race. He puts a spoonful of sorbet in his mouth before bitterness rises too high on his throat. As soon as the taste hits his tongue, his eyes round in surprise and the past is forgotten. It’s lemon and something salty, tingling his tongue, unexpectedly delicious. He hums his delight and looks up to see Yoongi watching his reaction expectantly.
“Again, just the general idea of a ceviche…”
“It’s perfect,” Jimin assures him right before digging the spoon in the bowl again.
“Oh, o-okay.” Yoongi’s cheeks tint the faintest pink and he looks away to the darkening horizon. “When I first heard about fairy lights, I thought they were actual faeries.”
As Yoongi speaks, Jimin realizes that tiny little lights hang as a net above their heads, bathing the terrace with a soft golden glow.
Jimin has seen this kind of lights before. The cabins on Taemin’s ship had a set each. Seeing them here brings back memories, but it doesn’t make him full of rage like it would have a couple of weeks ago. He’s taken Yoongi’s advice dutifully, he’s letting go of feelings that only burden him. It’s not that hard, he thinks, not when Yoongi captivates his attention effortlessly, like right now that he is looking at the lights with a little smile on his lips and golden eyes sparkling beautifully. Just like that, fairy lights become the best invention earthlings have ever done.
Jimin lets out a tired sigh.
Catching himself going down that kind of stream of thought is triggering in a whole different level, but as days go by, he finds himself less paralyzed by fear and more curious about where it will lead him.
“I’ve never seen a faerie,” he sighs, just to say something, maybe to distract Yoongi from the weird mix of feelings in his chest.
“Me neither, not a real one at least.” Yoongi chuckles. “Real faeries never reveal themselves, so I guess Hoseok doesn’t count.”
“Hoseok is a faerie?” He always gets confused with earthling methods to classify magic. Merfolk taught him to distinguish between merfolk and earthling only.
“Kinda.” Yoongi shrugs and looks up at the lights again. “Anyways…” The lights fly free from the net and all around them like tiny specks of stardust. “Did you decide where to go?”
“This is nice enough.” He pokes the lights with the tip of his index finger and smiles as they burst into even tinier dots. “Oh!”
Something in the street catches his attention and he stands up, doubling over the flower boxes at the border to see better. The ghost flashed so quickly through the mass of his fellow ghosts, that Jimin barely remembers it was once there.
“What was that?” He looks back at Yoongi, expectant.
“What was what?” Yoongi tilts his head.
“One of the—” Yoongi’s hair is almost completely covered in light dust, Jimin wants to scatter it with his face. Focus. “D-down the street, it passed really quickly…” He’s trying so hard to focus but he doesn’t know what it was, and he can’t grasp the image as it slides out of his mind. “I can’t remember.”
“Picture it.”
Jimin closes his eyes and tries but… “I can’t.”
“Try.” Yoongi’s voice is only a whisper and it’s really close. Now Jimin’s head starts spinning for a whole different reason. Dreaming makes him feel so vulnerable sometimes, Yoongi makes him feel stripped of all his bullshit. It’s scary how easily he’d let himself go, Yoongi just has to ask. He doesn’t want to open his eyes, afraid of facing that cliff he’s about to jump off, but he’s losing his grasp on reality, this reality, and that’s even scarier.
“Yoongi…”
There’s a gentle touch on his temple and the world stops spinning out of control.
“Was this it?”
He opens his eyes to see that their surroundings have changed: the street is now devoid of people, night is fully set, and the specks of fairy lights have multiplied countlessly, as if stars were floating around them. It’s breathtaking, but… A ring dissipates the solemnity. Yoongi is riding the thing he saw, a metallic structure mounted on two thin wheels. There’s some kind of chain system Yoongi actions with his feet that moves the thing swiftly forward with a rattling sound. Yoongi rings the bell again.
“Yes… What’s that?” He watches Yoongi’s legs moving to give more impulse to the vehicle.
“A silly little thing earthlings created,” Yoongi is drawing circles around him, a little smirk on his lips. “They’re called bicycles.”
“C-can you stop? I’m getting dizzy.” He was trying to follow Yoongi with his eyes, but now a frown has set on his face, and his arms are crossed in front of his chest. There’s something about Yoongi in the bicycle that’s ticking him off.
“Sorry.” Yoongi stops in front of him and throws him an apologetic smile.
Perhaps what bothers Jimin is the fact that seeing usually sluggish Yoongi moving around so much, back straightened and broad shoulders spread casts a light over the half-sandman Jimin refuses to acknowledge.
“Do you wanna try?” The arched eyebrow is a challenge Jimin can’t decline, but he soon wishes he would have.
Riding a bike proves to be harder than expected. At least for him.
After his… fuck, he’s not even counting at this point, but he’s fallen many times. After the tenth probably, he deemed himself incapable of riding a bike. As soon as he tries to coordinate his feet to move one after the other in circles, “you just have to follow the pedals movement”, he loses it. It’s ridiculous. He manages two cycles and then loses it and goes down inevitably.
“I can’t believe it.” Yoongi laughs silently. “You suck.”
“Yoongi!” He whines from the floor frowning up at the sandman, whose silly smile turns again into chuckles.
“Stop pouting, the cuteness overload will wake me up.” Yoongi’s pink cheeks tell him he’s only half joking.
He shrinks a little on himself and mumbles: “I don’t like bicycles.”
“You say that just because you can’t ride them.” Yoongi gets down his bike and crouches in front of him, shaking his head disapprovingly.
“Don’t be mean.” He looks at the half-sandman through his eyelashes.
Yoongi sucks in a breath. “Shit,” he grunts. “Seriously, stop being so cute, unless you want me to pinch your cheeks.”
“No!” He covers his cheeks with his hands and squeezes just a little, knowing full well how that makes him look. He giggles when Yoongi lets out a tired sigh and stands up heavily.
“Come on. Lucky for you, I’m here to do the pedaling.” Yoongi mounts the bike again and waits for Jimin to stand up. He pats the bar that connects the seat and the handlebars.
“What? You want me to sit there?” Jimin stands up and eyes the bar warily.
“Come on!”
He does, against his better judgement, he does, and soon finds himself caged by Yoongi’s arms as he steers the bike straight and starts pedaling it into movement. Jimin grabs the handlebars not to fall, fingers brushing Yoongi’s inevitably, tingling at the contact.
“Careful with your feet,” the half-sandman’s voice is delivered right into his ear, his warm breath brushes Jimin’s cheek.
Well, fuck, Jimin thinks, utterly and maddeningly surrounded by Yoongi’s warmth and tiny specks of light, he can’t bring himself to hate it. Golden, everything is golden. A chill breeze hits his heated cheeks and ruffles his hair back as they gain speed. There’s a tingling flutter at the bottom of his stomach that makes him chirp a giggle, and he feels more than sees Yoongi’s smile. He lets his head rest on the sandman’s shoulder, so be it.
He’s so screwed.