Chapter Text
"why do you look sad? "
"nothing, love." he says it's nothing but the bile in his stomach rises, the boy can feel the others suffocating restlessness in the air. Both of them know he's lying, but he doesn't push further and asks if the other wants coffee hoping it would ease the other. He hands a warm mug after making coffee even after he declined.
"tastes different, what'd you add? " now focusing on his coffee while drinking it.
" nothing much just some ginger and cinnamon, to confuse your brain from all that stress you are keeping to yourself"
"okay I'll tell you…"
"go on " slowly encouraging him to spill what's troubling him from the past hour since he got here.
"yoongi i need to break up with you"
and just like that he shatters.
__
Hoseok did not expect to see him again, definitely not after what he had done. He was sitting there in the corner behind the counter , frowning at his phone. He wanted to walk away, but he couldn't. Taeyoung, his son, wanted to visit this new shop for so long and he needed his coffee. He did not want his son asking him a million questions about why they left the shop when they finally got the time to go , not this early not without his coffee.
So he does the only thing he could, quietly order his coffee and a little pastry for his son and take it to go so that they can move out the shop without letting the man know they were ever there.
"appa why can't we eat here? we're not late anyway" this pulls him out of his head.
"appa I want to eat here " he says while shaking his hand , hoseok knows this look ,this is when taeyoung wants what he wants, hoseok is thankful he doesn't throw tantrums all the time so he usually gives him what he wants when he throws tantrums like this, because they're mostly reasonable and hoseok has a hard time saying no to him .
hoseok is blessed with a kid who has a deep understanding and doesn't pry in places where he does not need to be in.
He starts panicking because he doesn't not want to capture the attention of yoongi in the corner, and tries to make his son understand why they can't eat here by telling him that it's getting late.
" my teacher told me that if you lie you'd grow your nose like pinocchio, appa I don't want you to have a long nose" he says tearing up. he stands in front of his son bending down to his eye level and says
"youngie appa won't grow his nose,my little baby we just need to-"
"Jung Hoseok? "
Hoseok stands up right and freezes, he could recognise that voice it was yoongi's. He wants to run. Hoseok hates confrontation and feels like he wants to disappear but yoongi is already running towards him at his maximum speed.
For being shorter than the average male population, yoongi was always pretty athletic ,he was in a basketball club and regularly ran last time hoseok knew him.
it didn't take a genius to know yoongi was going to jump at him.
Hoseok is so confused he stands in his place and yoongi jumps on him .
They both fall to the ground. Hoseok's ass takes all the impact, and he winces with pain, yoongi is on top of him and looks like he's ready to punch him.
"where the fuck have you been all these years?"
yoongi's face turns into a painful expression tearing up. He punches hoseok's chest ,the punches don't even hurt seeing yoongi like this hurts in his chest.
____
yoongi loves having hoseok over at his house . He mostly spends his time at yoongi’s house because he still lives with his parents and doesn't want yoongi to see them, at least that's what hoseok tells him . yoongi's house is their comfort place, it is a small studio apartment with one bedroom ,on the quiet side of town. He comes over all the time to spend time with yoongi.
This time they're on the rooftop , hoseok wanted to watch the sunset because he likes the sun too much and because yoongi liked the stars too much, he said that he'd stay until the stars came out.
they end up lying down on the floor of the rooftop holding hands.
The sun is setting, leaving the sky in a beautiful mixture of purples, yellows, oranges, and pinks. The sky is so pretty, yoongi feels so happy, all his senses are heightened ,the sound of hoseok humming, the touch of hoseok's hands, the smell of the evening air, the sight of the sky. it makes yoongi feel more than usual, it makes him feel like he's floating.
everything is still but his heart is beating fast. The sound of his heartbeat mixed with hoseok's gentle voice, the colors of the sky bleeding together to become beautiful, the faint smell of vanilla from hoseok's shampoo , he's even positive he can taste this feeling of all his senses blurring making him believe he can fly. At this moment he realises that he is in love with hoseok.
he looks at hoseok who's looking at the sky with his beautiful round eyes he is awe of everything. he has this strong urge to kiss him it may be because of his blurred senses giving him the high of feeling like he's in the sky. He doesn't notice but he's crying all these feelings that he's feeling together is making his brain all fuzzy and his vision blurred .
hoseok sees his tears , holds his face with both his hands and gently kisses his nose. "was it worth coming with me here?" he asks, and yoongi nods with a smile . yoongi hugs hoseok and cries into this hoodie.
they stay like that until the stars come out and it's time for hoseok to go.
____
soulmates
a widely celebrated happening.
you get a soulmate after the age 23 ,when you touch your soulmate flowers bloom. If you're in a crowd and you touch your soulmate for the first time, flowers bloom . If you don't know who your soulmate is in the crowd, people will make way to find them no matter how busy. videos of people finding each other's soul mates go up every day . Though they can remain platonic with their soul mates, people are still eager
to find that one person for them. if your soulmate dies then you get a new soulmate. Sometimes people have two or more soulmates. Sometimes the flowers bloom on the ground, sometimes they bloom where the soulmate first touches.
it's a very widely celebrated thing everyday someone gains a soulmate.
and hoseok doesn't want one ,because he already has too much on his hands, he has to take care of his child, do his work as a teacher, take care of his students asking him for help in his extra hours and getting to know someone is not what he needs .
when he was young he would imagine what his soulmate was like and all the different ways he would meet them.
So many scenarios but he did not imagine this one when yoongi was punching his chest, flowers started to bloom through his shirt , there were small flowers blooming on the others' knuckles. Everyone at the shop was shocked when yoongi jumped on him but now they pulled out their phones with smiles and started filming this interaction to put it up on all different kinds of websites to call them cute or soulmate goals for the next week.
hoseok was shocked , hoseok's kid was shocked, the staff at the coffee shop were shocked, yoongi saw the flowers blooming and cried even more.
___
The biggest flaw in hoseok was that he loved too much. he loved too much for his own self. He loved too much to contain the love in his body. He loved too much and still kept going.
He loved yoongi he really did, but he could not tell yoongi about his engagement with somebody else. he was so sure he would handle it one his own
and go back to him .
His mother forced him to get married to Sooyoung ,a childhood family friend, his mother was so sure that she would be his soulmate. Both of them did not like this arrangement and tried to resist but all they got was ignorance and were brushed off. Even Sooyoung wanted to cut ties but could not support herself on her own without her parent's money.
hoseok even considered running away but then he still loved his family and it would hurt to leave them.
he considered running away to yoongi to stay with him all his life to love him forever.
He often dreamed to escape his reality,but the past three years he didn't need to because yoongi made his life like he's living in a dream . He didn't need to visit his daydreams. But now, even his dreams are not enough to keep him sane. He's struggling to find the thin line between what he's feeling and dreaming, struggling to live in reality and struggling to find his dreamland. hoseok hates confrontation and would not address his own struggles and he simply loses himself.
He gets married against his will.
____
"drop him off at school today?"
sooyoung is on the phone with namjoon asks him to drop off.
"just because I'm his uncle doesn't mean I will do that"
"are you telling me that you don't want to drop off your nephew at school?" she asks teasingly because she knows that he loves to spend time with his little nephew.
"hmph okay but just because I'm doing this doesn't mean you'll tell me just before I gotta drop him to school. Tell me the day before."
namjoon drops and picks him up from school, he spends his time at namjoons house till hoseok finishes his work and then he drops him off.
namjoon loves spending time with his nephew, he reads him stories, he talks to him about all the things he learnt at school and teaches him more, maybe that's why he knows more for a kid his age. hoseok knows taeyoung gets his maturity and knowledge from namjoon. He teaches him so much, hoseok and sooyoung could never be more grateful.
taeyoung is a loved child, he has so many people around him who love him. He has hoseok, sooyoung, jiwoo(sooyoung's soulmate) and namjoon. four people to take care of him as his own parents. He took in jiwoo as one of his mothers even though sooyoung birthed him. Four of them were so happy the day he called her his mother. Namjoon however wanted to remain as hoseok's friend and uncle to taeyoung.
____
yoongi takes hoseok to the back of the shop, which is mostly the kitchen and then turns towards a corner where there's a little cabin, which looks like an office, yoongi opens the door and lets hoseok in first . After he closes the door there's a knock, taeyoung comes running towards his father, he tells him that he followed hoseok in but yoongi closed the door before he could enter.
Yoongi asks them to sit down on the chair in front of the desk meant for the guest. yoongi sits on his and takes out few tissues and starts wiping his face
"I'm sorry for creating a scene"
hoseok doesn't say anything, cause he's spiraling about what he would say so that he doesn't make it awkward .
"hoseok stop making it awkward "
"I'm trying " he finally breathes out. His son recognises his father's anxiousness and reaches for his hand to comfort him.
" okay, do you want some coffee to ease your nerves? " yoongi says getting up , making his way towards the door.
"yes please " he says, his nerves are on fire, he is overthinking everything single little thing right now. his son feels his panic and holds his hand tighter, with all his strength, this helps hoseok ease his nerves a bit because his son is trying with all his might to comfort him and he's just spiralling.
He feels bad that his son had to experience all that happened in front of the shop. He feels bad that he ruined his son's chance of visiting the shop and trying something that he wanted. Now he can never get anything from yoongi because of the guilt eating him up.
He thinks back to what happens after the flowers bloom .
It was quite weird, yoongi was crying and touched the flowers and they disappeared, this made hoseok curious so he touched the other's hands from where the flowers bloomed and they disappeared.
Everyone around them let out a chorus of oo's and ah's while all this happened, everyone was shocked they usually plucked the flowers out.
Few people pressed the flowers, or made resin necklaces out of them, first blooms were popular jewelry or important possessions for many people, and it was rare for people to witness someone's first blooms disappear when touched. people who got it on camera started uploading it on social platforms.
yoongi stopped crying when he realized he was still sitting on hoseok and got up from on top of him. He pulled hoseok up from the ground and started pulling him towards the back of the counter, now they're here.
"here" yoongi says, putting down the coffee on the desk.
"hi little one" yoongi greets taeyoung, he sets a plate with a pastry on it in front of his chair. The boy looks back at his father as if he's asking his permission. hoseok nods.
"hi" he says shyly looking down
"come on, sit here so he can drink coffee without spilling, I brought this little treat for you ,I didn't know what you'd like so I got this, I hope you like it " yoongi says with a smile , and extends his hand to taeyoung to take it. He again looks back at his father's face, he nods this time with a smile and silently encourages him to take his hand .
taeyoung takes his hand, yoongi guides him to his chair and lifts him gently to set him on the chair.
hoseok is endeared by the scene that took place in front of him. The interaction between the two was just so cute he couldn't help smiling, all his nerves ease.
he takes a sip from the cup and he's taken back to yoongi's room six years ago, the day he had broken up with him. the coffee tastes the same, how he missed this taste though he had it only once before everything went to hell. He lets a lone tear slip from his eye, and quickly wipes it away.
yoongi is standing in a corner leaning into the wall and looking at taeyoung enjoying his pastry.
"glad you liked it," he says, breaking the silence that had settled in the room.
"loved it " taeyoung replies with a smile, he has bits of pastry on his cheeks and he looks so cute .
"hoseok, what is the plan now? "
" what plan? "
" Okay, I need to have one day to myself to think this situation over, please come back here tomorrow at any time, and please don't avoid me anymore. I promise I won't make it awkward if you don't "
"okay"
" I'm Taeyoung " his son cuts the tension. "I'm five, what is your name, tall friend? "
"friend? " hoseok says, raising a brow. taeyoung is not so open to people usually and is very shy, so this is unusual.
"he gave me a pastry" taeyoung shrugs and returns to eating, hoseok smiles because taeyoung loves food and obviously he would like yoongi because he gave him something he liked.
"I didn't introduce myself, didn't i?" he lets out a sigh . " hi taeyoung, im yoongi. i make coffee for a living and I like daisies."
"so you like making coffee so much that you make it for other people everyday? "
"um yeah something like that "
"that's so cool, i also want to learn how to make coffee, appa drinks a lot of it though it's bitter , I don't understand why he likes it but I want to make it for appa daily too"
"youngie, you're still too tinie to make coffee, after you grow more than a little bean sprout , you can learn how to make coffee. "
"appa, I'm not a bean " taeyoung says, he gets down the chair now that he's done eating, he gets the plate, walks up to yoongi and says " mr. yoongi where do I keep the plate?"
"give it to me , little one.I'll take care of it ", yoongi takes the plate with a smile ,and sets it on the table that he was leaning on.
hoseok quickly finishes his coffee and asks "how much were these two? "
"oh don't worry, it's on the house "
"yoongi, you can't give stuff for free just because of what happened today. besides what would your boss think? " hoseok starts removing his purse to dig out money.
"no, I don't think he would mind, " yoongi says and shrugs.
"no no no no yoongi, I can't take it for free. it's my first time here "
"even more reason to get it on the house, and it's okay hoseok, next time you come, you pay then, okay? "
"but- "
"no buts hoseok, and aren't y'all getting late for his school . it's almost nine o'clock ."
hoseok looks at his watch and panics, his son had never been late before. He gets up picking up his tote bag, picking up his son's bag, making him wear it,trying to run along with his son out of that place .
it was a rush,during the whole thing , yoongi was calm and asked to hold taeyoung hand to walk him out.
"thank you for visiting, little one. you made me very happy today. " he says while walking them out into the front of the shop.
" Thank you too Mr yoongi, I like you too. I will visit again" once they reach the door, taeyoung leaves yoongi's hand and reaches for hoseok and they speed walk their way to school. they reach there before nine, because the school was close to the shop but hoseok loves having mini heart attacks when things aren't done right.
his son waves yelling bye and runs off into school.
____
"sooyoungie " hoseok whines and puts his head on her lap, the moment he arrives at her house.
"why are you whining now? your students asked something you couldn't answer again?" sooyoung asks teasingly while stroking his hair away from his eyes.
hoseok goes back to whining sounds.
"oh! hi hosoekie" jiwoo walks in holding a bowl full of ice cream.
he looks at her and says "jiwoo" and starts whining sounds again.
"you gonna say anything or i'm gonna push you off my lap "
"no no " he starts pouting. jisoo puts the bowl of icecream in his hands so that she can lift hoseok’s legs and sit on the couch without dropping the bowl.
After sitting, she puts hoseok's legs on her lap, makes grabby hands motion to the bowl in his hand "gimme".
hoseok makes more whining noises.
"you gonna tell us what's troubling you?" jiwoo asks, eating ice-cream.
hoseok stops whining and rips off the band-aid
"i met my soulmate "
This resulted in sooyoung pushing his head off her lap while jiwoo pushed his feet down and choked on her ice cream,"WHAT" they both said at the same time. He's on the floor and his ass hurts more than before, his ass can only take so much pain.
"and he's also my ex" hoseok takes the ice cream form jisoo and starts eating it while he's sitting on the floor.
"want to tell us how you met him? " sooyoung asks pulling him up on the couch.
"I took youngie to that new coffee shop ,you the one that he wanted to go, I forgot what it was called though "
"I think it was The Rose " sooyoung says
"no, that one is a different one, he's talking about The Warm Cold?" jiwoo adds.
"I forgot what it was called honestly, so many things happened in the morning " hoseok is just sadly eating the ice cream.
"What happened after you took youngie there ? " jiwoo asks and takes the ice cream away from him.
"Well , I saw him sitting in the corner on his phone behind the counter, I think he's a staff there, I don't know. I didn't want him to notice me and I wanted to walk out of the shop but then youngie wanted to go there for such a long time so I tried to order to take on the way but youngie wanted to eat there and almost had a meltdown. in between all that commotion yoongi saw me , ran and jumped on me and started crying punching my chest and then the flowers bloomed. " he sighs and takes the ice cream away from jiwoo who was so close to completing it.
"where are they? the first blooms? "
"they disappeared, then he took us to this office kind of thing at the back of the shop. He gave youngie a pastry and became friends so fast."
"It's a bummer that they disappeared, imagine the jewelry that would come out of it " jiwoo says with sparkly eyes. She loves to make handmade jewelry and has a very small business of making first bloom jewelry, she loves her work a lot.
"jiwoo he even asked me to come back tomorrow, " he says as he scrapes the ice cream bowl clean of its contents .
"hoseokie please don't avoid him and go. also did you discuss with him where you both will be staying for the next month?"
Another thing about soulmates is that they can't leave around you for a month. Otherwise, flowers will bloom for every single place.The longer you're away in this one month period, the most flowers grow, they even grow through your skin. They are rumored to have a small sharp pain in the starting but end up even majorly injuring your body from growing too much. it leaves a mess of a human being.
Flowers are pretty but they ache when they bloom .
There were people in the past who had even died from the grief of losing their soulmate. Few were even in the hospital for a long time because the bond had been cut off and the flowers left their bodies broken. many people don't take that chance and just live with their soulmates for a month and either stay as friends or go back to their old lives or they become partners and stay together until their last breath.
"no "
" sweetie ,maybe he called you tomorrow for that, " sooyoung says patting his head.
Suddenly, an alarm rings breaking the comfortable atmosphere.
" oh that's for me. honey, I've got to go back to work " sooyoung gets up, walks around kisses hoseok on the head and kisses jiwoo on the cheek and says
"I'll be back early today sweetheart, don't sleep without me "
they both tell her bye without moving from the couch.
"jiwoo " he says dragging out her name and lies down on the now empty space of the couch where sooyoung sat,
"hoseokie, it'll all be fine i mean it's awkward that he's your ex but I think. if you talk it out with him it'll turn out great? "
"jiwoo it's only that he's my ex. I broke up with him because I had to marry sooyoung ."
"oh "
" I just don't know how to act around him or what to say to him, after what I put him through. I loved him and he loved me but it's just so-" he covers his face and groans.
"hoseok, did he seem like he hated you in any possible way when he saw you first? "
" I don't know, he jumped at me and cried asking where I was all these years " he says ,throwing his hands up to the ceiling to leave them hanging in the air while he's lying down.
"Well I don't think he hates you, most probably misses you or did not like the way you left, but definitely not hate you. Just talk to him tomorrow and ask him how he feels."
"okay " he says and closes his eyes .
_____
"HOSEOK WHAT THE FUCK?????? " hoseok is speaking on the phone to namjoon.
"ouch Joon please have mercy for my ears"
"sorry sorry, check the trends seok"
"wait"
he's there, in today's trends he is trending along with yoongi , there's a video of yoongi sitting on top of him crying with flowers blooming from his chest and yoongi's hands . there are three trends in which he's there. 1 the normal soulmate one where it's trending number one every day, it's a video that trends of soulmates finding each other every other day. 2 it's about the disappearing flowers, it's rare that someone's first blooms disappear, so people get excited to see something they don't usually get to see. 3 it's about how cute they were together.
it's just been three hours since he found out yoongi was his soulmate. He can't be trending already, he can't let yoongi see it, namjoon already saw it and he feels like yoongi would have already seen it, he feels so embarrassed . For his own peace of mind he thinks for himself that yoongi doesn't have any social media.
"joon what do i do?? "
"what do you mean 'what do you do', and you found your soulmate and you didn't tell me. "
" I went to sooyoung and jiwoo's apartment to cry about it and you were busy. I also fell asleep, I just woke up half an hour back and I'm going home now . I was about to tell you once I reached.
"all these excuses "
"joon, it's yoongi "
"YOONGI???? "
"joon joon, my ears please "
"I'm so sorry, I haven't heard of yoongi in such a long time. what about him? Did you meet him or what? "
"Joon, he's my soulmate," hoseok slowly says .
"wait, so that person in the video was yoongi???? "
"yes"
"oh man can't wait to meet him again. I'm so happy for you seokie"
"joon you remember that he was the one I was with before I got married to sooyoungie right? "
there was a silence from the other end.
"i feel like crying. I really don't know what to do. He called me tomorrow to the shop, sooyoungie and jiwoo, they told me to go tomorrow but I don't know if I'll be able to talk to him again. "
"seokie I really can't tell you if it will all be okay tomorrow, but hey face it and get it over with instead of avoid it and run from all your life. and you also can't avoid him since you gotta stay with him for a month. don't run from him anymore seok, tell him. "
"I'll try joon, I'll try to"
That night staying away from yoongi , it ached .he grew a flower each hour either from his hands, legs but there was one that grew that made his chuckle, it grew on top of his head,he felt like a flower pot .
He had to pluck all of them the next morning, he thought alot about throwing them off but kept them in a drawer in his cupboard. He tried not to think about them . He has something else to worry about
He had to visit the coffee shop again.
_____
hoseok chose to be brave for once in his life and face his problems. After plucking the flowers, namjoon came to pick taeyoung from his house to take him to school.
It was hoseok's turn but he begged namjoon to drop him off because he wanted to face yoongi alone today,he didn't want his son to see how much of a coward he was.
He walked up into the coffee shop with all the confidence he never had all these years.He reads the big bold letters ‘Starshine’.
He dressed nice to help him get into character. He walks with confidence bleeding from his steps making people give way as he goes by, all way to counter.
"good morning" he greets the boy behind the counter with a smile.
"good morning sir" the boy seemed dazed as he looked at him. 'damn confidence really makes people waver ' he thought to himself.
"can I speak to Min Yoongi? "
"yes yes, may I ask what your name is? " the boy stutters out,he looks like he's panicking.
"Jung Hoseok "
"oh ,he's in the back in his office, you can go in ,do you know the way? "
"yes I do know the way"
The boy opened the counter door to allow hoseok behind the counter and let him go through a door into the back where the kitchen is located and to a small corner in the right ,there is an office where yoongi is standing looking at papers.
“hey" Hoseok opens the door slightly.
"hi"
"come in, sit "
"do you want some coffee? "
"okay" he says as he sits.
Hoseok feels like he has drained all his confidence by now . He knows yoongi would go out like yesterday, that's why he agrees to the coffee offer, so he can do some deep breathing exercises to gain his confidence back.
yoongi comes back surprisingly early and puts his coffee on the table.
"I wanted to speak to you "
"I know"
"oh god I don't know how to say this "
"it's okay take your time" he says, but he's very nervous about what yoongi was going to talk to him about.
"our past, please don't get awkward because of our past, I know you broke up with me but if you don't make it awkward ,we can survive the next month smoothly. I won't even get in your way after this month. I'll go back to my life and leave you to yours, if that's what you want. also I'm sorry about yesterday, i was just shocked to see you. "
"yoongi, I may have done stupid things in the past because that's what felt right for me but i ended up drowning in the sorrows that came along with the bad decisions. I'll try to make it as non awkward as possible,and it's not really my place to forgive you after how I left you those years back. I'm so sorry for that, and I know the sorry won't solve anything but I don't know how else to fix it. "
he starts drinking the coffee now that's not hot.
"where will we stay? "
"you work only here or any other place? "
"only here"
"okay my house, I have a kid to take care of and tons of school work, I can't move somewhere else now"
"I'll try to pack by today and move tomorrow?"
"'so fast? "
"the flowers are growing every hour I'm away from you, now that you're near there are none but they keep growing and I keep plucking."
"you know there was a flower that grew on my head, it was so funny. I felt like a flower pot " he says laughing.
This makes yoongi laugh a bit .
Hoseok eyes fall on the clock and he's late again.
he gulps his coffee down and gets up "yoongi I'm late again"
"it all has to do with the coffee shop being on another realm as people say, makes them forget the time or something "
yoongi leads him to the front of the shop, and sends hoseok off who's running down the street. It makes yoongi laugh.
yoongi has much more things to do, he has to pack.
He takes a day off and asks his staff to help him out.
____
"maybe we love the moon so much because we only have one
maybe it's the way it shines
we love her so much,
she always gives from controlling the waves, bringing life on earth, sharing her beautiful light with us
always giving and never takes
I read in a book that if the earth stopped rotating, the moon would use its power and rotate the earth.
the moon loves us and the earth so much that she moves along with us throughout the year
that's why I love the moon
she deserves that love
I respect her so much
if I was in her place I would not be able to do that, I would have dropped off the grid and bounced off into the universe "
they are lying down on the roof and looking at a full moon. yoongi feels like hoseok can't get any prettier than this. moonlight falling on his face, he's glowing under this blue light. yoongi feels like he's floating again.
He loves hoseok now more than ever. He loves hoseok glowing in the sinking sunlight and the rising moonlight . He loves him,he knows it's just been a few months but he doesn't care. hoseok is ever so beautiful right now and looking at him with his shiny eyes reflecting the light falling on them. yoongi feels like he could fly again, his body is running on autopilot .
He leans in very slightly unsure of how hoseok feels , but hoseok closes the gap between them and kisses yoongi. It wasn't heated or fast , it was slow and gentle just like how he feels when he looks at the sky full of stars.
They break away to look at the stars until it's time for hoseok to go.
Again.