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In the end, it wasn’t his choice.
People had made speculations, picked apart lyrics or jokes he’d made in interviews, but he couldn’t say it, hadn’t said it. And then…
Yoongi was curled under the blanket on his bed, his phone in one hand, scrolling through the thousands of Twitter posts that mentioned him and feeling smaller by the minute. Seokjin had gotten up and left the room about a half an hour earlier. The others would be getting up too.
The arguments going on online about him were making him nauseous. All over one picture, one picture that had gotten out, one picture of him with another guy. They’d see it too. It would be impossible not to. They were all being tagged in the mess currently going on on Social Media.
He could almost disregard the hatred coming from a small part of these people, and the names they were calling him. But there was a bigger part, too, that were arguing vehemently that it wasn’t possible and that the picture was obviously fake.
It wasn’t.
He hadn’t planned on coming out anytime soon. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever wanted to. Too much of his personal life, of him, was on display due to the nature of the job he’d chosen. But what was he supposed to do now?
He dropped his phone and put his hands to his face. What was he supposed to do? He tensed even further as he thought about it, as he thought about how his more immediate concern should be the six other people scattered around the apartment.
He could hear them moving around, heard Taehyung shout at Jungkook over something and he was hiding, he realized, because he hadn’t told them either. He was much more worried about that.
Finally…finally, he uncurled himself and sat up. He felt impossibly stiff after being tense for so long and when he stood, his legs hurt worse than the times they were on a deadline and had to learn way too many dances in much too short of time.
It took him an inordinate amount of time to get up and move to the door. He may have been stalling. His phone went off several more times, notifications from people he was actually following, and he almost ignored it, because that would hurt worse, wouldn’t it? He might end up back under the covers.
He couldn’t seem to help himself though. There were six of interest, and Yoongi hadn’t cried yet. He’d managed not to despite some of the nastier messages he’d received but now, in that moment, he thought he might.
The messages were all short, simple, not confirming or denying anything. Just…all of them, one after another expressing the sentiment that they were behind him, no matter what. They would probably fuel some rumors, maybe make the argument going on worse but they also made his knees less weak and gave him the courage to open the door and walk out of his room.
They were all there, at the table that had been set with food already. There was an empty place between Namjoon and Hobi and Yoongi blinked several times because of how well they knew him. They looked up when he entered, and he almost stopped short.
“Morning,” he mumbled, forcing himself to move. A chorus of the same greeting followed as Yoongi slid into the seat saved for him. Yoongi relaxed some a few seconds later when the conversation resumed that they had been having before, an argument about what they should do with the half day off they had.
A hand, Namjoon’s, squeezed his knee under the table, one of Hobi’s arms was slung across the back of his chair and more of the tension left him. There were still things. Things like how BigHit was going to react. Yoongi had purposely avoided those messages so far and he wondered briefly if Namjoon had spoken to them yet. And what about when the arguing ended on social media? What would people say then?
But…
“You think so, right, hyung?” Jungkook said suddenly, looking right at him to get his opinion on the newest of the utterly inane arguments he liked to have with Jin.
But…right now, he was okay. “I think you’re both idiots,” he answered, aware that his expression betrayed him, especially when Jungkook couldn’t do anything other than grin at him. Jin sputtered about him being disrespectful but he was fighting a smile as well.
Okay. He let out a breath, leaning just slightly into Namjoon. He’d be okay.