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By the time Seokjin finds Yoongi, it’s already too late. The once perfectly dry and dapper suit that Yoongi’s currently donning for this particular black tie occasion is soaked through in what looks suspiciously like champagne. An inference that is only confirmed when Seokjin’s eyes land on you where you stand twenty feet away, a damningly empty champagne flute clutched between your perfectly manicured fingers.
Dabbing delicately at his friend’s once white shirt with a wad of napkins, Seokjin smirks. This game of cat and mouse that his friend seems so intent on playing despite the ever repeating negative result may be getting old but it has yet to become dull, at least from a spectator’s point of view. “Trouble in paradise?” Seokjin’s grin only widens when Yoongi stops worrying at a spot on his lapel to send him a glare.
“I guess.” Despite his frown, Yoongi’s tone is still painfully wistful, longing where it curls around his words. Even though he smells like a distillery, he’s still got one thing and one thing only at the forefront of his mind: you. “Thought she’d be a little less inclined to cause a scene at her cousin’s wedding but I guess I was wrong about that too.”
Seokjin just laughs. “This is ___ we’re talking about.” Brow furrowing, he casts another wary glance in your direction. “What did you say that got her so riled up anyway?”
“Oh, you know,” Yoongi sighs. “The usual. Asked her to let me take her out sometime after work. Anywhere she wants. Promised to show her a good time and take extra good care of her too.” There’s a pregnant pause, broken only after Seokjin shoots him a knowing look. “May have also slipped in a line or two about how cute our kids would be,” Yoongi admits.
“Jesus.” Seokjin whistles low under his breath. “I’m surprised all she did was dump champagne on you.” He’s seen you do worse for a lot less. Several times.
“Yeah?” That same longing look crosses Yoongi’s features again. “You think she’s warming up to me?” At that, Seokjin just lets out a humorless chuckle. It’s a looping cycle at this point, with small variations perhaps but always the same ending.
Because despite the fact that Yoongi’s made it abundantly clear that he more than has the hots for you, you refuse to give him a second glance if it’s not masked under the pretense of a glare so cold he’s surprised the room hasn’t frozen over. And he may be a resilient guy, but under normal circumstances, that alone would be more than enough to stop him dead in his tracks. He’s not the type to push where he’s not wanted.
But these are not normal circumstances. And they haven’t been, not since that night almost a year ago.
“Taehyung?” Your voice is rough around the edges where it filters through the speaker of Yoongi’s cell phone that he answered as a force of habit more than anything. A glance at his bedside clock tells him it’s just past one in the morning. On a Thursday. “Taehyung, are you there?” you try again and this time Yoongi is able to pinpoint exactly why your voice sounds different. You’re crying.
“Uh, no.” He manages through the revelation, trying to keep a level head despite both the all-consuming exhaustion that turns his limbs to lead and the knowledge that you’re out there somewhere, upset and quite possibly alone. “This is, uh—it’s me. Yoongi.”
“Oh.” Your voice is impossibly smaller and it breaks him just a little bit. He’s not sure what to do, how to proceed. He wonders why you didn’t call Jimin. He knows you’re still together because he’s been asking around since he met you a handful of months ago and the answer has yet to change. It’s also why your caller ID appeared as ten digits instead of a name. Yoongi knows what he wants but also has enough common sense and respect to not try anything when you’re with someone else.
Besides, he’s a patient guy and waiting isn’t the worst thing in the world. He may not know much but he knows he wants to get this one right. It’s a few moments before you speak again and he’s debating whether or not he should just end the call, let you get back to who you were actually trying to contact when the muffled sound of your voice stops him dead in his tracks. “Can you come pick me up?” His heart nearly stops where it beats in his chest.
Because what on earth could possibly have you so worked up that you’re asking a friend of a friend to come get you in the middle of the night? Reading his silence as hesitation, you are quick to amend. “Never mind. Don’t worry about it, Yoongi. I’ll just try calling Tae ag—”
“Where are you?”
Two blocks away from Jimin’s apartment is the ultimate answer. Slightly drunk and freezing cold to the touch from the way you’ve been standing out in the open, just letting the unrelenting rain pelt your skin until Yoongi drives up in a car that’s seen better days and wraps his jacket tight around your shoulders with a quiet rage simmering in his eyes. One that is quickly overcome with a gentle tenderness as he fights to keep his twitching fingertips at his sides instead of reaching to push your soaking strands of hair back from where they stick to your forehead.
In the end, he doesn’t even have to ask you what happened. He’s in the process of determining just how he should breach the subject on the drive back to his apartment when you blurt it out.
“He broke up with me.” You’re not crying anymore, but your throat is still raw from the sobs and the emotion that you’re trying hard to bury like the brave girl you are. “Said I was too much for him, that he didn’t want me anymore.” Yoongi’s heart breaks a little more at the way it sounds like you believe him.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Yoongi says, the pet name a slip of the tongue more than anything. All he knows is that the need to comfort you, to take away your pain, feels like the most natural thing in the world. All he knows is that he hates the way you’re curling into yourself in his passenger seat like you’re trying not to take up space. He wishes he could explain to you just how much he wants you there, that just having you in his car and in his life and in his heart would be more than enough for him. “That’s not—”
“Why doesn’t he love me?” Your eyes are wide, pleading and shimmering with unshed tears where your gaze matches his. Your lips are loosened from one too many drinks and your thoughts are dragging you down deep. “I love him.” It’s a miserable declaration, sad and dreary and so terribly true. “He’s enough for me.” Your next question is small. “Why doesn’t he want me? Why doesn’t anyone want me?”
Yoongi hadn’t been quite sure how to put it into words then, the way that your desperate fear all those months ago couldn’t have been further from the truth. Instead, he’d diverted from his previous course and driven you to a nearby park, pulled you out of his car with a hand on your waist and glassy eyes until you stumbled upon the small gazebo in the center, right next the pond.
He’d held you there, your head on his chest and his heart in your hands, for what felt like hours under the gloom of a rainy night. Just rocking you back and forth in his own brand of soothing, whispering sweet affirmations into your hair and infusing all the love he couldn’t give with words into the gentle care that he’d handled you with.
And the first time he’d asked you out—the next day, to be exact—you’d given him a real answer, a long winded explanation of how your breakup was too recent and wounds were too fresh to jump into something new.
Your increasingly creative answers have changed since then, but Yoongi’s feelings haven’t, a sentiment that is only spurred by the strong suspicion that yours have, no matter how adamantly you refuse to show it.
Because he still catches the gazes you send his way when you think he isn’t looking, still hears about the way you have no problem letting people down easy even though Jimin is hardly even an afterthought these days, still is privy to the way your closest friends talk about you and him like it’s a sure thing.
Because he can feel your eyes now, boring into the back of his head like he’s a complicated problem you can’t quite work out. He wishes you would let him show you just how simple he really is, just how easy things could be with him. Just how much he means it when he says he wants you, no ulterior motive in mind.
And when the ceremony of your cousin’s wedding is long finished and the reception is well underway, Yoongi will just have to take the tittering comments about how gorgeous the bride looked at face value. Because his gaze was trained squarely on you the entire time. He hopes that one day, you’ll be able to look at him too, and in the eye this time. Maybe even gift him with one of those gorgeous smiles he’s seen your friends draw out of you before.
But for now, he’ll be content with his confessions. He’s okay with rejection in the form of a glass of champagne emptied right over his head as long as you know that in his eyes, you have never been anything but wanted, anything but loved.
And when he sends you a text later that evening, he spells it out in simple and sincere terms just how beautiful he thought you’d looked in your bridesmaid’s dress. He can’t help but think that he’d gladly take a million glasses of champagne over the head when he reads your response, hoping against all odds that you know he more than meant every word.
Thank you, Yoongi.