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“You don’t understand,” Jimin exasperates, throwing his upper half over the counter and trying his best at puppy eyes. He’ll never be as good as Taehyung but, at the same time, would Taehyung be able to fight against another Taehyung at puppy eyes? “I need that book for my final in two weeks. It’s one of the course’s core readings.”
Taehyung rolls his eyes from where he’s seated on a spinning chair. He makes himself twirl around before rolling away from the computer to in front of Jimin. He throws his feet up onto the table, beside an empty Starbucks Frappuccino cup, and Jimin wonders in the back of his head if he’s really allowed to do that. It can’t be too professional of him as evening librarian. “You say that like you’re going to study. Everyone knows you’re a procrastinator and won’t open the book until the day before, at least.”
Jimin whines at the back of his throat and stamps his feet a little in frustration, however useless when Taehyung can’t even see his lower body. “But I need this book. I’m going to fail my whole semester if I don’t get at least a passing grade on the test, and I don’t even want to think about what my parents would say if I come back over the holidays, claim I’ve failed my first year in college and ask for a new laptop for Christmas. They’d execute me on the spot.” He pouts. Tries his best at puppy eyes again.
Taehyung flaps around a hand in his face making him back up. He sits up in his chair and rolls over to the computer again, hands flying over the keyboard noisily in the almost empty library. “Don’t exaggerate. Why are you talking like your parents are from some ancient era? They’d probably just tell you to try harder and then bake you cookies,” his fingers stop over the keyboard and then, “Hey, can you tell your mum to ship over some of them before we leave for back home? I want to eat them again soon.”
He narrows his eyes at his so-called best friend and huffs. “What makes you think she’s gonna do that if I’m about to head home anyways?”
“Obviously,” Taehyung says without looking at him, mouse clicking around his screen. At this point, Jimin doesn’t even know if he’s just pretending to be busy so he doesn’t have to look at his puppy eyes. Maybe they’re working on him. “Because she loves me and therefore would love to indulge me with some of her famous cookies.”
Jimin glares at the side of Taehyung’s head and crosses his arms over his chest. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Are you going to get me a box of Mama Park’s cookies before I leave for the holidays or not?” he counters smoothly.
“It’s rude to not answer questions.”
Taehyung sighs and turns to face him. “The book’s been out since last Monday. We’ve turned it into a short-term loan book because of finals week, so it was meant to be returned this Monday,” he winces as if it hurts to say it out loud. “It’s overdue by five days.”
Jimin remains still for a second. And then three. And then a whole minute.
Taehyung’s looking at him weirdly and waves a hand in his face, “Hey, Jimbo, you okay?”
Like a switch, Jimin falls onto the counter with a heavy thud, attracting the attention of one lonely student standing beside the printer. “What am I gonna do, Taehyung?” he cries into his jumper’s sleeve, muffling the loudness lest it echo in the quiet library. “I really can’t fail this exam,” he whispers quietly, eyes wide and pleading.
Taehyung lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know how else I can help you, except send a warning e-mail mentioning their library account is closed until they return the book. But I’m guessing whoever it is probably doesn’t care about the warning and might be just hoarding the book for the same final, perhaps.”
“No, no, no,” Jimin pushes himself up from the counter, closes his eyes and wills his brain to think at nine in the evening on a Friday. He could be thinking about the burger he was going to get on the way back home with extra cheese, for a night in watching whatever sitcom is on TV, but no. He’s in the library trying to find a way to get this monster of a book on entertainment business. (That fucker is over 400 pages). “Okay,” he says seriously, nodding at himself when he comes up with an idea. Now, he just has to find a way to convince Taehyung to give it to him. “Okay. I need a name.”
“Um,” Taehyung furrows his brows, looks up at him curiously and maybe with a hint of nervousness. “What do you mean a name?” Then, he gasps and leans close, looking to the sides on alert before whispering, “You’re not going to hire a hitman to kill a student in order to extract this textbook, right?” He throws his hands in the air, pushing himself back and spinning in his chair before he stops himself and looks at Jimin in the eye. “It’s just a textbook!” he whisper-shouts.
Jimin narrows his eyes into a glare. “You,” he says, pointing a finger at Taehyung and forgetting all his manners. “Are the worst best friend and have to stop watching all those crime documentaries on Netflix.” He continues to glare as Taehyung’s lips stretch into a smile and chuckles to himself. Drama students are The Worst. “I want a name to the student who is hoarding the precious textbook I’m going to need for my last final.” And then, because he hopes it’ll work its magic, he tackles on, “If I pass it, I may as well ask my mum to ship some of her cookies before the holidays as a reward for my good grades.”
Taehyung sits in silence for a few moments, seeming like he’s just looking straight through Jimin and his words have floated into thin air. Then, out of nowhere, he turns his head to the screen and says, “Min Yoongi, says he’s from the Music school.”
Jimin leans over the counter and grabs a post-it note and a pen before jotting the information down. He waves the yellow square in front of Taehyung, arching an eyebrow in question to confirm the spelling. He waits for a nod and then leans over again to press a sloppy kiss against Taehyung’s forehead. “Pleasure doing business with you, Taehyungie,” he grins before walking backwards towards the front door of the library with a pep in his step. “See you tomorrow!”
Min Yoongi, it turns out, is hard to track down.
Students in the Music school tend to be all over social media, advertising their music and whatnot, but Jimin’s spent the whole evening scrolling through usernames, but none mention any relation with music nor his university.
He gives up at two in the morning, plugging his phone to charge forcefully before rolling around with anger simmering through his veins. He’s going to have to think of another strategy to track this guy down. In his anger though, as he shuts his eyes and wills his mind to sleep, all his ideas somehow end in throwing himself over this student, tackling said student to the ground and demanding the textbook.
Before he’s even aware of himself however, or rather how embarrassing all of his potential scenarios would be, he’s already peacefully asleep.
🌞
The next morning, he wakes up late enough that all he has time for before heading to Jungkook’s room is to wash his face and brush his teeth.
He throws on a random oversized jumper over his pyjamas and treads down the carpeted hallway in his socks to five doors down, where Jungkook resides.
When he knocks on the door, Taehyung’s already pulling the door open in a rush before jumping back to his seat in front of the sofa and grabbing his remote again.
“I was opening the door! Could you not have waited to knock me down?” Taehyung whines, throwing his head back onto the sofa as Jungkook cackles with an undertone of evilness.
“Sucks for you, sucker.”
“Wow, you’re so great at comebacks, Jungkookie,” Jimin mumbles as he crawls onto the sofa behind them and lays down, propping Taehyung’s head on his chest.
“You look tired,” Jungkook says, forgoing the insult and stating the obvious.
“I hope,” he pauses for a loud yawn, making Jungkook yawn a few seconds later, “You have coffee ready.”
“Lucky for you,” Jungkook grins, “I do not.”
“How in the hell is that lucky for me.”
“Look at it this way,” Jungkook hums, turning to look back at the television, as he and Taehyung select new characters to fight. Jimin looks at the screen and observes how Jungkook selects the same one he always does and Taehyung scrolls through the list. “It means you have to go outside if you want coffee, meaning you’re going to get a breath of fresh air that will hopefully wake you up enough, so that you don’t get knocked down in a nanosecond by me when it’s your turn to play.”
“How do you know it’s not going to be me playing against Jimin?” Taehyung grumbles, and Jimin thinks he sounds too awake for a person who probably went to sleep at the same time as him. His shift at the library ended at midnight.
Jimin groans, throwing his arms over the arm of the sofa and stretching on it. “I don’t want to walk,” he whines. “It would also mean I’m going to have to get dressed if I’m going to go out and face people.”
Jungkook pauses the game, probably to not let Taehyung get the same privilege he did when he was AFR (away from remote). Taehyung grumbles about unfairness as Jungkook turns to glare at him. “Are you saying we’re not people?”
Taehyung turns as well, catching onto nothing previously and only what just came out of Jungkook’s mouth. “We’re not people?” he asks with a furrow of his eyebrows and a head tilt.
Jimin glares right back at Jungkook, “I’m saying people who would not care that am in pyjamas and some socks I found over my towel rack.”
“Why do you have socks on your towel rack?”
“Irrelevant,” Jungkook brushes off, patting Taehyung’s knee. Jimin looks at how his hand lingers over his thigh. “Go borrow my slides and coat, put on a face mask if you want. No one’s going to care, it’s all going to be students at the Starbucks on campus anyway. Some might probably even be in last night’s clothes and hungover. You don’t look any worse than them.”
Jimin ignores the jab at his appearance and throws his legs over Jungkook, standing up forcefully in between the two, making Jungkook’s hand slip away from Taehyung’s thigh. Jimin thinks it’s a good comeback in retaliation to his comment. He stalks towards Jungkook’s coat rack to tug on a padded coat with a large hood and fits his feet into slides that are two sizes too big.
“Please get me a vanilla bean Frappuccino,” Taehyung hollers just as Jimin opens the door, even if they can’t be more than five feet apart. Jungkook’s room is not that big. “Pretty please.”
“Get me an iced caramel macchiato!” Jungkook screams in the same volume, as Jimin grumbles and wills the door to close quicker. It’s annoying that he can’t slam the door shut because it’s one of those heavy doors that close by themselves. “I let you borrow my clothes to look decent!” Jungkook manages to holler, so loudly, that Jimin can hear it as he waits for the lift.
The door shuts with a click just as the lift dings open.
When Jimin arrives at the Starbucks on campus, there’s not much of a queue, which he’s thankful for. He waits behind a short girl with a plaid hoodie he thinks is kind of cool and tugs the hood of the coat closer to his face.
There’re a few students milling about the store, some typing away on keyboards, while others are – just as Jungkook mentioned – probably in last night’s clothes nursing a terrible hangover. Their heads are on the table, all on one table in a group, in clothes way too eccentric for one in the afternoon. There’re too many cups of coffee on the table for just three people.
When it’s his turn, he orders Taehyung and Jungkook’s drinks – in the smallest size, for revenge – while he orders himself a large extra hot americano. He pays for it with his card, before he shuffles in the large slides towards an empty table close to the pick-up area.
Jimin shuts his eyes, props his chin on his hand and settles away from the brightness of the store. Amidst his sleepiness, he almost misses what one of the baristas has called out. Almost.
“Large iced americano for Yoongi!” the barista calls, “Large iced americano for Yoongi!”
Jimin glares as the barista places the drink on the counter, no one coming to pick it up. As he glares, his eyes slowly become unfocused. So much so, that when he comes to, he sees the back of a hoodie that states PLAYERS CLUB and a head of dark shiny smooth hair that walks out of the store, iced americano having disappeared in his hand.
🌝
To say that Jimin’s desperate is perhaps an understatement. Because, he’s more than desperate.
Which is how he finds himself at the front doors of the Music school at nine in the morning on Monday, sitting at the bench just outside. It’s an understatement, because by sitting here, he’s assuming four things:
- The Yoongi at the Starbucks on Saturday is the same Min Yoongi that has his (the library’s) textbook and is not returning it.
- Min Yoongi has class on Mondays – hopefully mornings, so that Jimin doesn’t waste his entire day and students start to think he’s weird.
- Min Yoongi will be wearing the same hoodie as he wore on Saturday – which is assuming that assumption number one is, again, true.
- Min Yoongi is the only student who has dark, shiny, smooth hair in the entire Music department.
Taehyung had thought it was a funny idea. Jungkook had thought it was the stupidest idea.
There was no way Jimin could have found another strategy.
So, here he is. At nine in the morning, on a Monday – a day which he does not have classes on, thus would have been able to sleep until noon – laying down on a bench outside the Music school.
However, it’s also nine in the morning, and he’s a student with extreme sleep deprivation, so he finds himself dozing off until a hand on his shoulder is shaking him.
Immediately, as Jimin opens his eyes slowly and feels a breeze telling him he’s sleeping out in the open, he steps into defence mode and is ready to fight whoever has come to attack him. He squares his shoulders, curling his hands into fists and looking around him.
What he sees is a guy looking at him with mirth in his eyes and lips tugged slightly upwards. He lifts his hands up to explain he means no harm and just says, “I don’t think it’s safe to sleep out here.”
Jimin sighs a little in relief at not being mugged in broad daylight on campus, but he sits up and slides his backpack onto his shoulders. Maybe it was a dumb idea to idly sit around the Music school and wait for some deities up in the sky to lead him to one Min Yoongi. It was a futile attempt and a waste of a Monday morning.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jimin mumbles before sighing again. “Sorry, I was just waiting for someone and fell asleep, I guess.”
“Oh?” the guy says, and Jimin looks at how his hair flutters in the breeze. It looks smooth to touch. Shiny.
Jimin stands up, clears his throat and stares at the guy with bright eyes. “Sorry, do you happen to know Min Yoongi?” Perhaps all Music school students know each other. (Jimin only knows like three people by name in his degree).
Something flickers in the guy’s eyes and Jimin watches him shuffle his feet. “Why’re you looking for him?” he asks.
Jimin shrugs, doesn’t know how to say he stole a textbook from the library and I need it in a way that doesn’t make him sound too crazy to a complete stranger. “Just, you know,” he waves his hand around to stall time, “Need to talk to him about something.”
The stranger smiles and extends a hand in greeting, “Hello, nice to meet you, I’m Min Yoongi.”
“Um,” Jimin mumbles, a little gobsmacked and very embarrassed. He lifts his hand to shake Min Yoongi’s hand, “Nice to meet you? I’m Jimin.”
“So,” Yoongi says, hand still awkwardly shaking his. “You say you want to talk to me about something but, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think we’ve ever met before?”
“Well,” Jimin stammers, because this is not the way he’d been planning to meet him. He’d had a plan to storm up to him and demand he return the textbook, after he’d gathered up enough energy to confront the worst type of book loaner ever.
“Wait,” Yoongi stresses, and there’s a wrinkle between his eyebrows as he stops their hands from shaking and tugs on Jimin’s hand a little to pull him closer, “We didn’t fuck at Kim Seokjin’s party last Friday, did we?”
“What– No!” Jimin yelps, a blush appearing on his cheeks as he snatches his hand away. “No, not that,” he says a lot softer, mind unable to stray away from his hoodie last Saturday at Starbucks, PLAYERS CLUB displayed on the back, unable to stray away from the fact that he might have just come back from whatever one night stand he’d had the night before when he’d gone to pick up his iced americano. “I just… .”
Yoongi smiles, looking a little amused, but Jimin’s just a little embarrassed and can’t actually look at him in the eyes. Park Jimin has realised, in the short span of a few minutes, that Min Yoongi happens to be really handsome, and has a gummy smile that tints Jimin’s cheeks the more he thinks about it. “You just?”
Jimin gathers all his courage, hands in tight little fists, before releasing his fingers and exhaling slowly as he looks up. “The entertainment business textbook.”
A flash of confusion passes through Yoongi’s eyes and he leans back, face pensive, lips jut out in a little pout that Jimin does not find cute. “Entertainment business textbook?”
“From the library?” Jimin offers helpfully, he lifts his fingers and tries to show the thickness of the textbook with his thumb and index finger, “This big?”
Yoongi rakes his brain again before he seems to realise. “Ah! Yeah, I know which one,” his face contorts into one of confusion again, “What about it?”
Jimin, a little annoyed, and unable to hide the glare he unconsciously directs at Yoongi, deadpans, “You still have it.”
“Um,” Yoongi says, a little confused, a little scared. “Yes, I do?”
Jimin’s hands clench into fists once more, “It’s overdue and I need it for a final.”
“Oh,” Yoongi says before, “Oh! Sorry! I’ve just been wrapped up in a lot of things and haven’t had the time to go to the library to return it.”
“Yeah, busy but still able to go to parties and have random one night stands with people you’re not even able to remember?” Jimin snaps back grumpily.
“Hey,” he says, before bumping his shoulder a little with Jimin’s to make him look up and away from their shoes. “I’m sorry, you can walk me to my place if you want? Then you can get it today, and just return it to the library whenever you’re finished on my behalf. I’m not going to need any library books this semester, so the penalty hold doesn’t bother me.”
Jimin juts his chin out. “And what makes you think I would accompany a total stranger to his,” he lifts his hands and makes some air quotes, “Place where potentially, I could get murdered?”
Yoongi chuckles, “I don’t know you well, but I think you may have to stop watching those crime documentaries on Netflix.”
Jimin needs to stop listening to Taehyung when he’s recounting the crime documentaries he’s watched on Netflix. “I don’t watch those.”
“Then, walk me home and get your textbook,” Yoongi grins at him, and it’s the gummy smile again, so Jimin has to let his eyes stray elsewhere before he makes himself trip over thin air and into Yoongi’s arms.
“Okay,” Jimin mumbles, still wary. “But I’m standing outside where people might still be able to hear me if I’m about to get murdered.”
Yoongi laughs out loud, eyes squeezed as he shakes and puts a hand on Jimin’s shoulder. He turns him in the right direction and gives him a little push above his backpack to encourage him to walk. “I’ve got two roommates, so they can protect you if anything. They’re probably home.”
“Two?” Jimin squeaks, stepping some feet away from Yoongi, but still going in the same direction. “What if they’re like, your accomplices and they’re there to like, knock me down as soon as I walk into your shared apartment, or wherever?” Jimin stops, and Yoongi stops with him, eyes still filled with mirth, like Jimin’s entire presence is amusing to him. “What if they’re the ones holding me down as you do whatever you’re gonna do to me behind closed doors?” Jimin mumbles, but still loud enough for Yoongi to hear, no matter the few feet between them.
“Jimin,” Yoongi says, and it’s the first time he’s ever said his name, and it sounds so nice coming out of his mouth, A shiver runs through his body that he attempts to settle. “I promise I’m not going to do anything bad. Just give you the textbook and that’s that.”
When Jimin looks at him again, Yoongi has a very soft smile and, in the sunlight, with the breeze making his fringe slightly brush over his brows, he looks completely harmless. “Okay, okay. I’m calm. You’re harmless,” Jimin says, more to himself than anything. Maybe he really needs to stop listening whenever Taehyung tells him about all the crime documentaries.
Yoongi grins, full gummy smile now, and steps closer until he’s right beside Jimin and wraps an arm around his shoulders as they continue to walk towards his place. “You’re quite funny, you know?”
Jimin sneaks a glare at him, Yoongi’s grin still plastered on his face as he retaliates his glare with a cheeky wink.
“And,” Yoongi proceeds as they reach a crossing and wait until the light turns green. “Not that you could care that much, but when I brought up the one night stand thing, it was a joke.”
Jimin turns his head to look at him, confusion written on his face. “That’s not a really good joke.”
“Maybe,” he says, shrugs his shoulders before tugging him a little as they walk across the street. “I just wanted to mention it. That like, I don’t fuck and forget. Or fuck while being drunk, for the matter.”
“Okay,” Jimin says, unsure how to respond. He doesn’t know why he needed to know that information. It’s not like they’re going to continue being friends. He’s just going to get the textbook, cram for his exam for two weeks straight, relax a few days and then pack his bags for the Christmas holidays. And yeah, maybe Yoongi has got a handsome face and a precious smile, but that doesn’t mean Jimin is interested. (He is.) He has no time to date anyway. (At least, not now.)
They walk quietly, sometime between the corner gimbap shop and the 7 Eleven, Jimin shrugs Yoongi’s arm off of him and Yoongi, in return just smiles politely and offers him one of his airpods so they can listen to music together.
The music that Yoongi listens to, Jimin realises, is quite nice. It’s a guy – Jimin guesses Yoongi has his album on shuffle – who’s rapping, but the beat underneath it is somewhat more R&B rather than having a full-on underground feel. When he listens to a particular song he likes as they round a corner together, he asks Yoongi what song it is, and he almost misses the darkening of his cheeks before he pauses the music.
“It’s actually one of my songs,” Yoongi says sheepishly, before tugging him at the elbow so they’re standing in front of a glass door. He reaches for his keys in his back pocket and opens the door with a swipe of a card attached to his other keys.
“You rap?” Jimin asks, following him in as they wait for the lift together.
“Mhm,” Yoongi nods. “I’m a music student, aren’t I?”
Jimin furrows his brows, stepping into the lift when it arrives and watches as Yoongi presses the eighth floor. He realises then, that they’re not in typical student housing like him, Taehyung and Jungkook, but in a fancy apartment instead. “Why did you need a book for entertainment business, then?”
“I’m studying music business, to be able to manage my own stuff, and learn more in depth about what I need to go through in case I actually can’t do it myself. So I’m not signing things blindly and have some background to back up my reasonings. As a rapper and producer, I’m an artist, but my ultimate goal is to create my own recording label and have one of the best artist rosters ever, you know? Where they’re all free to creatively do what they want and aren’t restrained in any way to create their art and forms of expression.”
“Wow,” Jimin exhales, “That sounds really nice.”
“Yeah?” Yoongi smiles, and Jimin stares at the light tint that’s returned to his cheeks as the lift dings open on his floor.
“Yeah,” Jimin says and, this time, he smiles so wide that his eyes squeeze close and misses the way in which Yoongi’s heart so obviously skips a beat by the way he’s momentarily paralysed at the lift’s doors.
Jimin follows him down the hallway, sees cute doormats on the way that his student apartment doesn’t have, before he bumps into Yoongi’s back as he’s stopped in the middle of the hall. Confused, he looks up.
“Hang on a second,” Yoongi says, “How did you know where to find me? Or that it was me who had the textbook?” He narrows his eyes, “Are you sure you’re not the murderer? You have been talking about murder possibilities a whole lot,” he tackles on as an afterthought.
“What– No!” Jimin stammers, probably not very in favour of demonstrating he is not a criminal. “I got it from the library. My best friend works there, and I pulled some strings to get your student information.”
Yoongi’s eyes stay narrowed as they roam around Jimin’s face, probably assessing the situation and trying to figure out if he’s lying or not. After a few seconds, his face splits into a teasing grin, flicks Jimin’s earlobe and turns around to keep on walking towards his apartment. “I figured, I was just teasing. I like seeing you all flustered. It’s cute.”
Jimin feels his ears burn and his cheeks heat up, so he throws his hands over his cheeks to try and get rid of the red with his cold palms, before following behind.
Yoongi opens his door with his key and turns around as the door is half open. “Are you going to wait out here, then, or do you want to come in? It’s safe, I swear,” he says with a glint in his eye and a smile.
Jimin wants to maybe punch his face with a fist to get rid of that teasing smile, but maybe he also wants to punch his face with a kiss so he doesn’t have to look at his face. Contradictions. He shakes his thoughts out of his head and straightens up, “I’ll come in. But I want to mention,” he tries to threaten in a voice that is probably not threatening at all, “I have my best friend’s potential boyfriend on speed dial and he goes to the gym every day and does weights instead of cardio.”
“Potential boyfriend?” Yoongi asks, but still waves his hand in and opens the door wider as Jimin steps in beside him.
“Yeah. They’re in love with each other and everyone knows it, except them.” He stops in the middle and observes his surroundings. There’s a lot of music equipment in one of the corners of the living room that is furthest from the door. It looks sort of cool. The rest is pretty basic, whites and blacks, and the bare minimum. Yoongi’s television is really big. Jimin thinks about what an experience it would be to watch one of those superhero movies that Jungkook likes on it.
“I see,” Yoongi says, encouraging Jimin to slip of his backpack by a dining table where he sets his own. Jimin thinks it’s unnecessary, because he’s only there for a textbook, but maybe it’s more of a polite thing for him. After, Yoongi presses a palm on his lower back and leads him to what Jimin assumes is his room. “Welcome to my very non-threatening room,” Yoongi grins widely as they step in.
Jimin rolls his eyes, “Are you just going to hold that over me forever now, or what?” he grumbles.
“If you’re planning on forever, I’m in.” At Jimin’s pointed glare, Yoongi laughs and walks towards a bookshelf in his room.
He takes his time to look around Yoongi’s room, even if he tells himself he’s not interested. He listens to Yoongi hum a little as he brushes his finger through the spines of his neatly lined-up textbooks. Jimin thinks Yoongi’s room has a much nicer feel than the almost-empty living room. It looks like it’s full of personality and liveliness. There’re a few snow globes piled on a shelf over his desk, which Jimin thinks is so not cute (it’s very cute), and has a few colourful plaid shirts piled up over the edge of his bed. Jimin pretends to think it’s also not cute to imagine Yoongi trying to figure out what shirt to wear before settling on the yellow sweatshirt he’s currently sporting.
“There,” Yoongi says suddenly, shaking Jimin out of his stupor. His eyes flick back to Yoongi to see him holding out a thick textbook, mirth in his eyes and Jimin thinks he might have been caught looking around in something that was not interest (it was). “You want any help walking back home? It’s pretty heavy. Don’t want you to hurt your little body walking back home.”
Jimin thinks he’s starting to glare at Yoongi a bit too much, but he can’t help it when almost everything that comes out of his mouth sounds teasing. “Were you just insulting my body?” Jimin huffs, takes the textbook and hugs it to his chest. It’s actually heavier than he expected, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. Doesn’t want to give Yoongi the satisfaction to be right.
“No,” he says, and Jimin can almost feel the way his eyes look him up and down, as if it was a light touch from head to toe. “It’s nice.”
“My body?” He sounds a little lost and confused.
Yoongi hums but doesn’t explain further. “Do you want something to drink before you leave?”
“Um,” Jimin says in a moment of blankness. “Sure. Some water?”
Yoongi nods, heading out of his bedroom and leaving Jimin just. There. By himself. He pushes Yoongi’s shirts further towards the wall to leave some space for him to sit on the bed. He sits carefully, almost as if he were afraid to wrinkle the duvet beneath him which, as an afterthought, Jimin thinks it’s ridiculous so he sinks further before opening the textbook to flick through it and make sure it’s still in good condition. Jimin’s always hated when he borrowed textbooks from the library and they were half-vandalised by a previous student with notes that were not helpful at all and just plain annoying. A slip of paper falls from it as he flicks through and onto Yoongi’s floor. He picks it up and reads the note in curiosity, just as Yoongi steps back in.
“Hey, look how funny,” Jimin says, not looking up from the note before he reads the note, “Call me for a date,” he snorts. Looking up finally and tilting his head at the way Yoongi looks a little red in the face. His eyes glint in mischief. “What, is this one your potential suitors? Who thought they’d leave you a message in a textbook?”
“Um,” Yoongi says, offering him the glass of water. “Did you not look at the back?”
“Huh?” Jimin says, twisting the note in his fingers as he takes a sip, before realising it had been a mistake and, embarrassingly spits the gulp of water he’d just taken back into the glass. “Um.”
Yoongi scratches the back of his neck, “Yeah.”
There’s a moment of awkwardness that lingers in the air before Jimin clears his throat. “I mean. No need to call, or well, for you to wait for my call.” Jimin feels a blush rise on his cheeks as he pointedly does not look at Yoongi nor does he take another sip of water. “You can just ask me now.”
“You’ll say yes?” Yoongi asks. “I’m not very good with rejection, if I’m being honest.”
At this, Jimin tilts his head up and looks at him curiously. “Really? You sound very confident. And I’ve only known you for like, not even a few hours.”
Yoongi shrugs. There’s another moment of silence.
Jimin clears his throat again and sighs. “But I’ll say yes,” he mumbles, feels the tip of his ears burn. “So, you don’t have to worry about rejection.”
When he looks up, Yoongi’s face is back to a massive gummy smile, and he steps forward before kneeling before Jimin, his two palms atop Jimin’s knees. “Are you free this Friday?”
Jimin furrows his brows. “I was asking for this textbook because I have a final next week. Next Friday.” He twists his face into something that he hopes looks apologetic.
He shivers at the way Yoongi’s palms rub at his knees. “It’s okay. I can wait until after your test next Friday. Take you out then?”
“Okay,” Jimin smiles.
“Okay.” They stay quiet for a while, just looking at each other, and Jimin thinks it was dumb to think he could resist Yoongi when he’d first saw him when he sat up from that bench and the sun had shone just right onto Yoongi’s face. “Do you want to study together maybe? I have a test next Monday, too. We can hang out at the library maybe this Friday, instead.”
“You were going to take me out even though you had a test?”
“Yeah, I don’t need much time to study for tests, usually.” He shrugs, and Jimin nudges his shoulder lightly in annoyance.
“I’m jealous. But okay.”
“Okay,” Yoongi grins.
🌝
Jimin would only come to realise, a little too late, when he steps into the library Friday evening after his late class with Yoongi, cheeks flushed as they hold hands, that Taehyung’s library shift also happens to be Friday nights.
“Oh my God!” Taehyung yelps from the counter as Jimin and Yoongi enter, and Jimin’s head snaps in alert straight at him.
He glares as Yoongi looks in confusion. The head of the library shushes at Taehyung and he shrinks a little at the outburst before he follows Yoongi and Jimin with his eyes as they walk towards an empty table in the corner.
Jimin makes the stupid decision to look at his best friend again on the counter as Yoongi settles in, taking books and notebooks out of his backpack. Taehyung wiggles his eyebrows, makes a few lewd gestures that make Jimin turn even redder and he flicks his middle finger before hiding his hand as soon as Yoongi looks up.
“You okay?” he grins, pen at his hand and looking really cute with his eyeglasses on (Jimin has allowed himself to call him cute now. But only in his head.)
“Peachy,” Jimin smiles in return, bending down to take out his own things, the heavy textbook already on the table as Yoongi had offered as soon as he’d met him at the door of Jimin’s class to carry it himself and ‘lift some weight of his shoulders, you must’ve worked hard today’. He watches his phone buzz in his backpack and looks at the locked screen.
20:37
Taehyungie
Please don’t have sex
20:37
Taehyungie
This is a public space
20:38
Taehyungie
I know you have a kink
He looks up and finds Taehyung already looking at him with a smirk, wiggling his eyebrows again. Jimin huffs a little and flips his notebook open to a blank page.
He taps Yoongi’s ankle with his foot. “Do you happen to have a permanent marker?”
Yoongi lifts an eyebrow in question but decides not to question it, before rummaging in his pencil case and offering him one.
“Thank you.”
“What’s it for?”
Jimin doesn’t reply, just writes on the blank page in big fat letters I WILL KILL YOU, KIM TAEHYUNG, rips the page and crumbles it into a ball before he throws it towards the library counter and, sadly, Taehyung catches it before it can hit him in the head.
He looks at Yoongi as he hands him back the permanent marker, plasters an innocent smile. Yoongi’s eyebrow is still raised in question. “Thought you weren’t a criminal?”
Jimin places his hand on Yoongi’s forearms and taps at it. “He deserves it.”