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Every great story has a beginning, middle, and ending – not necessarily in that order. - Phil Kaye, 'Beginning, Middle & End'
Yoongi made it big. Jimin always said he would, said the way he can mould words and music to craft worlds and stories is something way too special to be overlooked, even if it does take a while for them to reach the right ears. But Yoongi made it really, really big. Bigger than either of them ever expected. So big, Jimin hasn’t seen Yoongi in nearly a year.
Yoongi contacts Jimin every so often – text messages that probably cost more than the clothes on Jimin’s back, emails that are short and rushed, littered with spelling mistakes but still somehow able to carry the same poetic articulation Yoongi has had since he was 12 years old. Back when Yoongi barely knew the meaning of the word ‘articulation’ and yet, with his prominent lisp that had him slurring around words that were foreign on his tongue, he still had the audacity to pester Jimin about it 3 times a day for 2 weeks.
‘Your articulation’, Yoongi would say, ‘is terrible. You should articulate better.’
‘Are you going to beat every new word you learn to death like this?’ Jimin had asked. The look Yoongi had given had been the definition of bitter, and Jimin smiled back with all the happiness in the world.
Yoongi made it big, just like Jimin always said he would. He’s written songs with the greatest names in Korean music, and he’s internationally recognized despite the language barrier – something revolutionary, and Yoongi, his Yoongi is leading that revolution – and paving the way for everyone else. He built a bridge out of words and beats. Yoongi made his dream come true because he wouldn’t have lived any other way and Jimin couldn’t possibly be more proud of him. But Jimin also misses Yoongi more than he thought possible to miss anything. He misses Yoongi like when he left, on a cold February morning with an entourage 10 foot away, he took a part of Jimin with him. An important part of Jimin, too, like an arm or leg or one of his lungs – Jimin can survive without it, but it’s just not the same.
Sometimes Jimin really misses being about to take a deep breath of December air and not feel the sharp sting of missing.
Jimin is the first person Yoongi tells, even before his own parents. He finds himself outside Jimin’s house at 10pm on a Thursday, needing to see him and tell him right now; he couldn’t wait until he sees him next. He couldn’t even wait until morning. Yoongi tried to hold out, he really did, but his skin itched with a desperate need to spill his guts on Jimin’s bedroom floor and have Jimin tell him it was ok anyway. His skin itched for comfort and truth; something that he knows Jimin will give him.
His hands sweat as he types out a text – ‘I’m outside, can we go for a walk?’ which was just code for ‘we need to talk’ – and restlessly paces the pavement outside as he waits for Jimin to emerge. Yoongi has shades on and his cap pulled down and it’s dark, but he knows how ravenous fans can be. They could identify him by nothing the back of his head if they wanted to see him bad enough. He really doesn’t want to be disturbed tonight. He has a lot of itches that need scratching.
When Jimin finally comes out, Yoongi takes him to his favourite place in the town they live (or rather, Jimin lives and Yoongi used to live. He can’t remember the last time he’s spent more than a few days in his hometown, and even then he’s always being pestered for autographs or photos. Yoongi misses having a place to call home, because his current residence is various hotel rooms and the back of his company’s van which aren’t places he thinks about when he’s homesick). It’s a place that Jimin would visit on bad days when he misses Yoongi more than usual, a place that becomes theirs despite only ever visiting it together once before.
Yoongi sits down next to the riverbank and waits for Jimin to join him before he starts speaking. The air is uneasy even to Yoongi, who has trouble picking up on those types of things. But they’ve known each other nearly 10 years and Yoongi probably knows Jimin better than he knows himself, so he knows when Jimin is uncomfortable. He laughs for no reason and has a habit of rubbing at his thighs.
Jimin finally sits himself down, after a while of indecisive standing. He realizes how beautiful it is tonight; the way the moonlight ricochets off of the water’s surface, making it seem like there’s two night skies instead of just one, but Jimin has a hard time truly appreciating it when it feels like there is cotton stuck in his throat.
“They want me to rap in English,” is what Yoongi starts with. It seems like the easiest thing to say, and so that’s what he says first. ‘We can’t just dive in,’ he thinks, ‘we have to acclimatise to the water first’.
“That’s good,” Jimin says, not understanding the sombre air when there’s good news. Yoongi always wanted to break into the international market. “It’s good, right?”
“Yeah, it’s great,” Yoongi says, but his voice doesn’t agree. “If I can get to a level of fluency where I can replicate my flow in English, Def Jam said they’d be interested in signing me for at least one full English album.”
Jimin knows that’s good news, so he’s even more confused about the depressed look on Yoongi’s face.
“That’s amazing, Yoongi. But why do you-”
“I’m moving to America, Jimin,” Yoongi blurts, because Jimin’s naiveté is making this infinitely harder and it’s killing him a little bit, “and I don’t know when I’m coming back.”
The silence that follows is heavy and everlasting. Yoongi wonders where the river would take him if he jumped in and let his body be washed away by the current.
“They said that my speech is good, but that the level of fluency I need in order to even begin to rap in English is not something that can be achieved over here,” when Jimin doesn’t respond, Yoongi carries on with his explanation because the silence is suffocating. “They said the only way I could achieve that level of fluency is if I’m surrounded in it constantly, and the only way I can do that is if I live in an English speaking country.”
Yoongi has, for probably the first time in his life, run out of words. So he patiently waits for Jimin’s.
“I always told you you’d make it big,” is what Jimin says. Yoongi doesn’t mean to laugh at the way Jimin’s voice cracks, but he has to do something to stop himself from crying.
The last time they see each other before Yoongi leaves for America, Jimin promises to wait for him no matter how long that may be. Yoongi is flattered, and kisses Jimin against his better judgements, because there is only so much time and Yoongi’s selfish enough to not wait for the day their timelines match up well enough to be able to do this again. But he isn’t selfish enough to make Jimin wait for that day too. The moment he gets on the plane he’s leaving this country indefinitely and Jimin is Yoongi’s favourite shirt that he never has the opportunity to wear. He hopes someone will wear it soon, because it is too beautiful to be kept in the wardrobe.
Yoongi spends the whole journey to the airport praying Jimin isn’t stupid enough to love him, and hoping he isn’t stupid enough to love Jimin back.
American air smells nothing like Korean air. That’s the first thing Yoongi notices the first time he steps on to American soil. The second is that there are at least a hundred fans waiting for him to walk out of arrivals. The third is how oppressively small he feels at that exact moment.
Yoongi doesn’t notice Jimin’s absence, because Jimin’s absence isn’t something that’s necessarily noticed. You don’t notice every breath you take, or every time your heart beats, and Jimin’s absence was along those lines; it was perpetual and ongoing, and is only really noticed when thought about. Yoongi chooses not to think about it, but for some reason he has become hyperaware of his breathing patterns, and both of those things are very hard to ignore.
There are fans waiting for him at the hotel too, but his ability to stay hospitable has drastically lessened since the airport which forces him to slip through the crowd as quickly and quietly as possible. They’re chanting his name but Yoongi can’t help but feel like ‘butcher’ is the better word. None of them were pronouncing it properly and he hates himself for hating them for it. They were there for him; it was his name they were chanting, not someone else’s. They didn’t have to do that. Yoongi reasons with himself that it isn’t anything personal, it’s just that none of the voices said his name with the beautiful and stupid Busan twang Jimin had.
The hotel room he’s staying in is too big for one person. He feels even smaller than he did earlier. When he feels like this, Yoongi likes to make himself feel bigger, but the only people he knows that shorter than him are his mom and Jimin, neither of which are here with him to make him feel big enough to face the world. To help him regain control.
He’s already homesick.
He wants to call, but it’s the middle of the night in Korea and Yoongi knows the value of a good night’s sleep. He doesn’t think he’ll be getting one tonight, but that doesn’t mean he should deprive others of theirs.
Yoongi spends the night writing in a yellow notepad, one like he’d seen in the American movies he’d watched back home. They’re not words that will ever see the light of day, but Yoongi writes until his wrist and mind pulsate and beg him to stop. The sky is black but outside is bright thanks to the city lights. He can see only one star and his mind immediately wonders back to Jimin’s voice and Jimin’s smile and Jimin’s laugh. It's then that Yoongi gives up trying to ignore how much he misses Jimin. It’s like trying to ignore a rotten tooth; it’s getting worse and the problem isn’t going away.
When he rereads what he wrote, he realizes every word had been about Jimin anyway.
Jimin fell in love with Yoongi on a Wednesday.
They were at summer school but it was too hot to concentrate on anything other than how hot it was. On the other side of the playground, Jimin watched his fellow 14 year olds run around with various balls, ignoring the blistering sun beating them in favour of much needed stress relief. Jimin wishes Yoongi would join them because the only time Yoongi looked happier than when he had a basketball in his hand was when he had a microphone in his hand, but Jimin didn’t feel like starting an impromptu rap battle in the school playground.
Instead, Yoongi was curled around an English book – one that was way more advanced than what they were doing in class, because Yoongi was way more advanced than anyone in their class – making grumbly noises every so often. Jimin watches him squint down at the words, like the problem was with his eyes, not his understanding.
“Do you need to do that now?” Jimin sighs, having to squint across at Yoongi despite sitting in the shade. “You’re miles ahead of the game anyway.”
“I’m not doing it for the game,” Yoongi says back, tearing his eyes away from the page to squint at Jimin like he was now the foreign thing Yoongi had to figure out, “I’m doing it because I want to.”
“Ok, but it’s hot and we’ve been working all day. Give your brain a rest. It’s gonna implode if you work it any harder.”
Yoongi frowns, but closes the book anyway.
The following silence drags. The whole day had dragged and lunch was no different, apparently. Nor were his conversations with Yoongi. Jimin decides not think anymore and so lies down on the warm concrete, waiting for the bell to sound and force him back into a stuffy classroom for the next few hours. Education is important, he knows, but so is regulating the proper body temperature.
He can feel Yoongi’s eyes on him even though his own are closed. It’s a habit Yoongi has had as long as Jimin had known him; Yoongi doesn’t really understand how his gaze can make people comfortable despite many explanations from various people, so Jimin grew to adapt to Yoongi’s curious eyes watching him for prolonged periods of time.
“You know,” Yoongi begins, “I’ve known you for a few years now and I still haven’t figured you out yet. You’re kind of like a Japanese puzzle box; every time I figure out one part of you, you reveal yet another puzzle.”
“Only you could come up with such a poetic way to call someone annoying.”
“Are you offended?”
“No.”
“Good. I wasn’t calling you annoying, you’re just…” Yoongi pauses and Jimin knows he’s searching his brain for the right thing to say, “an anomaly.”
“You don’t know enough people to consider my behaviour an anomaly.”
“Now I’m the one who’s offended.”
“Why do you think I’m so complicated?”
Yoongi stops to think about his next words carefully.
“Because when I look at you, I can’t help but see beautiful, hand crafted porcelain tea pot in a world full of plastic cups and I’ve yet to figure out why.”
They stare at each other. Yoongi looks on like he doesn’t know the gravity of his own words. Jimin doesn’t doubt that he doesn’t.
Yoongi then returns to his English book and Jimin doesn’t comment on it. He’s too distracted by the way his heart is running wild in his chest. He looks up to the bright blue sky because he doesn’t want to look at Yoongi anymore, and tries to concentrate on nothing but the way the sweat trickles down his neck.
Jimin’s half asleep with his head in his workbook. It’s both too late and too early to be awake, but finals are coming and there aren’t nearly enough hours in the day.
He hasn’t had time to miss Yoongi lately. He’s been way too busy; he has classes and homework and studying occupying almost all of his time, and when he has spare time, he’s eating or sleeping. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss Yoongi, it just means he doesn’t have the time to be dwelling on it anymore. It’s good, really. The pining was unhealthy and immature. After all, Yoongi is off living his dream, and now Jimin was here working his ass off to achieve his own. It’s good. They’re good.
It’s lonely, though. Jimin has friends, good friends, but they’re not Yoongi. No one could ever be Yoongi, but he can’t let that stop him from befriending new people. New doesn’t mean bad. He just wishes he had the person he could split his soul open in front of. It's starting to get stuffy inside his own head.
Jimin, as usual, has the radio playing an English station quietly as he studies. He hates silence more than anything but if he has the TV on he just ends up watching it and if he has a Korean radio station playing he finds himself writing down whatever lyrics are being sung instead of his notes, so the English station is a perfect compromise. He can play it in the background to break the silence but he didn’t understand enough for it to distract him from what he was doing. If they play a song he knows well, he’ll find himself singing the chorus in poorly pronounced English, but that’s the extent of it.
It’s not unusual for them to play songs Jimin’s never heard of or doesn’t recognise. He doesn’t pay enough attention to what the presenter talks about anyway, so even if he hears a song he likes he usually doesn’t know who it is or what it’s called. And now was one of those moments; the radio presenters voice was just a dull drone in the background as he scribbles notes down, trying to fight his exhaustion. A song starts, though Jimin doesn’t pay much attention to it until a voice makes its way into Jimin’s head.
He recognises Yoongi’s voice instantly; Jimin knows it better than he knows his own voice, of course he would recognise it. But the unfamiliarly familiar voice makes him stop writing mid word, suddenly feeling panicky and unsettled. An odd sensation settles into Jimin’s gut. It’s the first time he’s heard Yoongi’s voice in months and he doesn’t understand a single word he’s saying. Jimin feels hysterical. Everything feels wrong. Yoongi sounds so angry and sad and Jimin doesn’t understand why; he literally cannot understand what Yoongi is telling the world, telling everyone but him. And for the first time in a long time, he feels the crippling distance between them like a chokehold.
The only words in the whole song Jimin understands is when Yoongi throws in a Korean line.
‘I tell the stars about you every night before I sleep’.
Jimin spends the night wondering who Yoongi is talking about.
Growing up, Yoongi didn’t have friends. He had a habit of saying things that upset other people without realizing; he never really understood social conventions, and so accidentally said mean things without intending to be mean. When a girl asked if him if he liked her hairband, he didn’t understand that he had to lie in order to preserve her feelings. The girl cried, which Yoongi didn’t understand, and their homeroom teacher told him what he said wasn’t very nice which Yoongi didn’t understand either, because she asked a question and Yoongi gave an answer. What niceness had to do with it was beyond him. The same thing happened again, when a few boys in his class asked if he wanted to play their new game with them. Yoongi declined, telling them the game was noisy and annoying. Then it was like history repeating itself, except the boys didn’t cry, they got angry and on the end of the same lecture he had gotten a week before, their teacher added ‘you should be more mindful of other people’s feelings, Yoongi’. Yoongi wasn’t actually sure what that meant, but he did try.
His trying was in vein, however, and over time the kids in his class learned to stay away from him. Everyone’s offense confused Yoongi, but them isolating him didn’t particularly bother him. He just spent his time inside reading (or with his headphones in, as he got older) rather than outside playing with everyone else. It wasn’t a big deal, seeing as though he didn’t like upsetting everyone and yet he always seemed to do it anyway. If this was the only way everyone could be happy, so be it. Yoongi wasn’t in a position to complain.
By the time Jimin come along, Yoongi was used to it. Years had passed and people had adjusted. People were polite to Yoongi and Yoongi had learned how to be polite back. People just didn’t stick around long enough to risk being insulted, which Yoongi also understood a little bit better now, too.
But Jimin… Jimin was new, so he didn’t know yet. He didn’t know he was supposed to keep Yoongi at arm’s length and only engage with him when he had to. And so Jimin – being Jimin, the new kid and young enough to not know better – saw a kid sitting by himself with his nose in a book and took it as an opportunity.
“How can you listen to music while you read?” Jimin asks as he pulls out one of the earbuds in Yoongi’s ears. Yoongi stares up at him, astonished, and Jimin continues. “I can never listen to music when I’m reading or working; I get distracted by the words in the song and they get mixed up with the words I’m reading and then I mess up and get frustrated.”
Yoongi’s shocked into silence for a long time, frowning and confused at the random conversation with a boy he’s never seen before, but he finally manages to articulate an answer after a few moments of flustering.
“It’s classical music. There are no words.”
Jimin looks shocked. “You listen to classical music?”
“I listen to a lot of music.”
“But isn’t classical for old people?”
“Not necessarily.”
“My grandfather used to listen to a lot of classical music. He would always play it and dance around, even when his hips got really bad. He always listened to this one guy… Brown? James Brown, I think that was his name. My grandfather never understood a word this James guy would sing, but he said it made him feel good, so he would play it for hours.”
The frown (which many people found off-putting and rude when it’s actually just Yoongi’s thinking face) doesn’t leave as he stares at the new boy, almost in disbelief.
“James Brown was a soul singer. Or funk, depending, but he definitely wasn’t a classical musician.”
“Oh? But I’m sure my grandfather said it was classical…”
Yoongi sighs, pulling out the other earbud and turning to look a little straighter at Jimin.
“Your grandfather didn’t happen to refer to James Brown’s music as ‘classic’, did he?”
Realization dawns on Jimin’s face in the form of a prolonged ‘ah’ and a large smile, one that makes his eyes disappear and reminds Yoongi of flowers. He doesn’t remember the last time someone outside of his family smiled at him like that.
“Ah, that’s what it was.”
Yoongi expects Jimin to leave after that, to be offended at being corrected and so run off to find new people to try and befriend but he doesn’t. Jimin pulls up a chair and sits with him, looking at him expectantly.
“So what’s classical music then?”
It’s a question Yoongi can’t and doesn’t want to ignore. After all, talking to Jimin is a lot nicer than spending his whole lunch alone, even if he’s a little loud for Yoongi’s taste.
(Yoongi brings it up at one point, belatedly realizing that that’s the kind of thing most people get offended by. He’s mad at himself for ruining the first chance for friendship he’s had in years before it even really happened but he’s also not surprised. He’s prepared for Jimin to say something or get up and walk away, but Jimin smiles, apologizes and says ‘your ears must be sensitive from the classical music, huh?’
Yoongi decides then, for some reason that is beyond his understanding, that he definitely likes listening Jimin’s voice more than he likes listening to Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor.)
Yoongi doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know the country or the town or if the room he’s in is a hotel room or a backstage room. He doesn’t know if he’s being prepped for a stage or a photo shoot. He doesn’t even know what time of day it is, all he really knows is that apart from his entourage, none of the people around him speak Korean or English. He also knows he really, really wants to go home. Actual home, not the lonely one bedroom apartment back in America he’d been given by his label.
The excitement of breaking into the Western market wore off very fast. TV interviews weren’t as fun as the ones back home but the fans were just as ruthless – a lot of the females tried to sleep with him and a lot of the males tried to slip him their mixtapes – but there was no name for the over-obsessive ones over here, they were just all fans. And he doesn't know all the customs because he's in a new country every other week so he just tries to keep his head down and stay out of the way, letting everyone do what they need to do. He raps when he’s told to rap, and that’s about the extent of his activities these days. Yoongi never thought it would be this way.
Yoongi doesn’t have a social life. He doesn’t have friends. The only time he goes out is due to contractual obligations, the rest of the time is spent sleeping or writing. He can’t remember the last time he spoke to his family or his friends. And Jimin. Jimin is a separate category because he’s not family but he doesn’t fit the definition of friend. Jimin is Jimin. He’s special; he always has been.
He wonders if he’ll even have any friends left if and when he gets home, though, because he didn’t have many in the first place and the few he did have would be well within their rights to have moved on with their lives with no regards to Yoongi. Yoongi has no right to begrudge them that either; it’s not like he’d been holding up his side of the friendship with any of them. He wonders if Jimin is waiting for him. It’s not like he’d been holding up his side of the bargain in that relationship (whatever that relationship is) either. He half wishes Jimin’s still waiting for him, half hopes Jimin has moved on and is happy without him. Yoongi really hopes Jimin isn’t suffering like he is, because if he misses Yoongi half as much as Yoongi misses him, then they’re both heartbroken and it’s all Yoongi’s fault.
They’re trying to pump a new album out while Yoongi’s on the road but his label refuse to put any of the songs Yoongi’s been writing lately on it. They keep telling him they’re all too depressing, that no one wants to listen to an album full of sad songs. That’s not what Suga’s image is. Yoongi tries to explain that it’s really hard to write happy songs when you’re fucking miserable, but they tell him he has six weeks. It’s their way of not saying that he doesn’t have a choice. He’s bound by contract to give them what they ask for. So he bullshits most of his album – something he thought he’d never do – and it gets released three months later.
There was an inevitability between Jimin and Yoongi. It’d been there, bubbling underneath the surface ever since they met. It felt inevitable for them to meet and bond over the way Jimin’s confusing ‘classic’ and ‘classical’. It felt inevitable for them to become friends despite Jimin’s bright personality and Yoongi’s duller one. It felt inevitable for Jimin to fall in love with Yoongi too soon, and for Yoongi to fall in love with Jimin too late. Inevitable that Yoongi would leave and Jimin would be left behind. Inevitable that over time, they would both forget. Inevitable, inevitable, everything about them felt inevitable, like there was always something ominous waiting just beyond the horizon. Like they were in a constant state of the calm before a storm.
And thus it was inevitable for them to find each other again.
Yoongi is better dressed than when he left six years ago, but much more worse for wear. He’s thinner, too. He looks older in the way humans tend to age – his face a lot sharper with a 5 o’clock shadow on his jaw – but he also has a mature air about him that screams ‘I’ve been through some shit’. Jimin doesn’t doubt that he has. But it’s still his Min Yoongi standing there. It was unmistakable. Jimin doesn’t care how much they’ve changed, Yoongi is still Yoongi.
Jimin is wider, but not any taller. He was eighteen when Yoongi left, barely out of school with so much growing left to do. And Jimin had and Yoongi had missed it all; he’d bulked out and toned up. His face has thinned out and matured a little, though he still has the same baby face as a 24 year old that he did as an 11 year old. It’s nice to know that had never changed.
As shock wears off and excitement takes over, the same huge smile blooms like a flower on Jimin’s face. It’s a flower that grows nowhere else on earth but with Jimin, a flower he hoped everyday he would see growing on a field somewhere as he drove through European borders or desolate American highways. A flower he spent years writing into every notebook he owned.
Jimin’s arms hook effortlessly over Yoongi’s shoulders like they’d always been there, like no time had passed at all, clinging on so tight that the Yoongi six years ago is tutting and asking Jimin to let go. But the Yoongi six years later is clinging on just as tight because even after coming back to Korea, he’d still felt homesick and off balance and he’s beginning to understand why.
The world was never the same after Yoongi left, at least not for Jimin. It was like Yoongi took the sun with him when he went and so all of the days were just a little bit darker without him. Every day dragged like it did back all those summers ago when Yoongi accidentally showed Jimin what love was.
Jimin’s still not sure when Yoongi figured it out. He’s not sure if Yoongi really did figure it out, or whether the goodbye they substituted for a kiss was less to do with any feelings Yoongi had for Jimin and more to do with the semi-permanent separation they were forced into prematurely. Emotions are a funny thing and they can make people do even funnier things. The kiss might have just been Yoongi acting in the moment. Jimin is the only real friend Yoongi’s ever had so affectionate feelings are bound to develop. Besides, Yoongi was never the best at understanding social conventions; to him a kiss is just two sets of lips meeting. He doesn’t need to it as anything deeper than that. He probably doesn’t understand why a kiss has to be a romantic thing. He’d argue that it doesn’t need to be seen like that; a hug isn’t always a romantic thing, so why does a kiss have to be something only lovers can share?
Yeah, that sounds very like Yoongi.
Yoongi, on the other hand, is not stupid. He’s socially inept and has problems understanding why a lot of the things he says annoy other people, but he’s not that arrogant. Yoongi was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where his two parents loved each other his whole childhood. He’d seen them kiss; he knows what it means. Kisses aren’t something to just be shared with anyone like a hug or a handshake; kisses are special. He was very aware of that, and yet he kissed Jimin.
It’s not that Jimin isn’t special; it’s just that Yoongi had never considered Jimin to be that type of special. Jimin was his friend, he enjoyed spending time with him and being around him – he’d even hugged Jimin a few times – but he’d never thought about anything more than that. Yoongi had never looked at Jimin and wanted to kiss him until the day he left. Something about the thought of not being able to see his best friend every day awoke something dormant inside Yoongi’s mind; something powerful and consuming and very very real.
If Yoongi had the time, he’d worry about what that means.
Yoongi misses Jimin a lot but he’s never sure in which context. The context of the only person outside of his family to would put up with Yoongi? The context of best friend? The context of man he kissed?
So while Yoongi may have taken the sun when he left, Jimin kept Yoongi’s thoughts with him.
Yoongi’s body aches. His throat feels raw and the bed feels cold around him. He stretches out, groaning as much as his tender throat allows, before going lax in the middle of the mattress.
The curtains are closed but Yoongi can see how hard the sun is trying to penetrate into his quiet little bubble. It must be late morning. He’s surprised he hasn’t been woken yet. He lays there in silence, thinking about how the bed feels too big for just Yoongi’s thin body. All this space isn’t needed for just one person.
He starts to think about Jimin, then. Jimin could take up some of the extra space Yoongi doesn’t need. He could make Yoongi feel less small and more warm. He could make this big bed feel like home. Jimin could make anywhere feel like home; it was a talent of his. One that Yoongi never appreciated until it was taken away from him. Or rather until he was taken away from it.
He slowly wakes himself up, taking long blinks as he adjusts to being conscious again. The room around him is horribly unfamiliar, a far cry from Jimin’s dingy old bedroom at his parents where Yoongi spent so much time. That place became his second home. This place feels like it’s a million miles away from there, with its big windows that are currently hidden by long floor length curtains, large oak framed bed and original artwork mounted on the walls. Who’s, Yoongi doesn’t know. It looks expensive though. Even the bed sheets feel expensive, though they’re a little stiff for Yoongi’s taste. Jimin always loved stiff bed sheets.
Yoongi finally wills himself out of bed and pads his way through the quiet house and into the kitchen. The radio’s playing quietly on an American station that always used to play in his manager’s car in the US. He’d know that annoying jingle anywhere.
“What’s for breakfast, Chef Jimin?” Yoongi asks playfully, loving the way Jimin jumps slightly at Yoongi’s voice.
“I didn’t hear you get up,” Jimin smiles, stirring whatever’s on the stove. “I’m making seaweed soup.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“I know but you being home is still something that needs to be celebrated. Plus there’s kimbap – store bought but the thought still counts – porridge and noodles.”
“Why are you going to all this trouble?” Yoongi asks as he sits at the counter in Jimin’s unfamiliar kitchen. His chest begins to constrict in an odd but not uncomfortable way.
“Because you’ve been eating American food for years, all full of fat and God knows what else, so you need some proper food inside of you,” Jimin insists, barely looking up for more than a few seconds. “You should visit your parents later, I’m sure they want to see you. Oh and-”
“You still talk too much.” Yoongi interrupts, watching familiar flower smile grow on Jimin’s face.
“And you still say things anyone else would find rude.”
“It’s nice to know you haven’t changed.”
“I have. And so have you. No one lives six years of their life without changing, Yoongi,” Yoongi has a horrible feeling in his gut, like he’s about to get the ‘I’ve moved on’ speech he’d been dreading since he left, “but at least now we have all the time in the world to figure each other out.”
And just like that all the weight’s gone. All the weight Yoongi had been carrying around for years is gone with just some well-placed words and Jimin’s smile. Why does that not surprise him.
“I’m supposed to be the one who’s good with words.”
“I’ve been working on my articulation while you’ve been gone. Had to impress you when you got home.”
Home. Yeah, Yoongi guesses this is home.
The day is normal. They eat breakfast, get dressed, spend time with Yoongi’s parents and come home. They watch TV and order take out because they don’t have to be anywhere, at least not right now, so they decide to make the world cater to them. Just for today.
It’s beautifully mundane and a part of Yoongi wishes it wouldn’t end.
That night, when Yoongi can’t sleep, he looks up into the sky, at the hundreds of stars dotted across the night and thinks about how, back in America, he would wish on them that this day would come, where he could be home and have everything feel right. He would tell them about Jimin and home and about the bibimbap from the place near his old school. He used to ask them to watch over Jimin for him, and make sure he’s doing ok.
Tonight, Yoongi thanks them for helping him out so much, explains that he might not need to talk to them so much now that he’s here to keep an eye on Jimin himself, but they’re still important to him. They’ve been the only consistent thing in his life all these years, and he’ll never forget it. And in the years to come, he’ll talk to them whenever he feels sad because the stars always listen.
Yoongi goes back inside and slips into bed – a warm bed with an extra body and no extra space, a bed that’s not his own but the only place he wants to be – and sleeps.