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“What colour did you say this was supposed to be again, hyung?” Yoongi nervously grabs the box of hair dye from the shelf, scanning the back as Seokjin — hair coated in dye and sectioned with butterfly clips — sits upright in the stool they had propped up in the bathroom. His spine straightens in alarm as he notes the concern in Yoongi’s voice.
“Seafoam green, why?” His eyes are wide, searching Yoongi’s face for an answer. There’s no mirror in here. They had managed to break it sometime last week, when a rather miscalculated indoor drunken baseball pitch from Seokjin at the encouragement of an equally inebriated Yoongi had gone sideways.
“Oh,” Yoongi says, voice small. His gloved hands are covered with dye, a brush in one hand, the cusp of his sanity in the other. “Hyung, there’s a slight problem.”
“...What.” Seokjin whips around, almost sending a butterfly clip flying from his head. His tone of voice is eerily similar to how he had reacted the morning after The Mirror Incident, where Yoongi had woken up incredibly hungover and to the sound of Seokjin shrieking at the sight of the gaping void on the bathroom wall.
“You said seafoam green...and I’m definitely seeing the dye foam up, but it’s...well.” Yoongi bites his lower lip, surveying Seokjin’s head in front of him.
His very saturated, very orange head.
“It’s certainly not green.”
Seokjin blinks.
Yoongi blinks.
Then Seokjin grabs the box off the shelf himself, frenzied eyes taking in the words plastered onto it. It provides neither of them any resolve, as the bold typography reads SEAFOAM GREEN with a misleading sense of confidence.
“Yoongi,” Seokjin gulps. “If my hair isn’t green… if it isn’t the sexy shade of a freshly painted wall in a suburban housewife’s bungalow…” he sucks in a sharp inhale, eyes wide as pennies as they stare at Yoongi like some kind of jilted soapbox star. “Then what colour is it?”
“I mean,” Yoongi starts, staring back at Seokjin. “I never said that it couldn’t be interpreted as the shade you wanted — ”
Seokjin perks up, a wave of relief visibly flooding his body. “Okay. Alright. That’s good. You should’ve led with that.”
“—if you were to close one eye...or two. And then turn around altogether, pack up, move to Nebraska or some other place in the middle of nowhere, and then not look at it at all. Then this shade of orange would definitely be somewhere on the spectrum of seafoam green, for sure.” Yoongi finishes, as Seokjin groans and thrusts his Cheeto-hued head into his hands in anguish.
Yoongi awkwardly tries to comfort Seokjin by patting his head using the dye brush, feeling slightly like he was basting a nuclear-coloured steak.
“What do we do, Yoongi,” Seokjin whines, the words seeming to sink into his palms and coming out in a jarble of frustration. “I don’t even know where Nebula—”
“Nebraska,” Yoongi corrects softly.
“Right. Nucleus or whatever. I don’t wanna move there. I also can’t, because I have a shoot this Thursday.” Seokjin sighs, shoulders deflating. “A shoot for my modeling portfolio that could literally make or break my career.” He grimaces, and Yoongi can physically feel the worry exuding from his body. “Right now, break sounds a lot more fitting.”
“It’s not horrible, hyung. It’s just a little bit eccentric.” Yoongi pulls up another stool from the corner of the bathroom and drags it so that he can plop himself in front of Seokjin. “Besides, isn’t that what the whole modeling industry likes anyways? Eccentricity?”
Seokjin shrugs. “I guess, but literally who is walking around with orange hair? There’s nothing to set eccentric precedence at all, Yoongi. They’re just gonna think I’m a loser.”
Yoongi bites his lip in thought, before he leans in and brushes Seokjin’s hair back. He watches as excess dye transfers from Seokjin’s head to the plastic coating of his gloves, bright hues of orange sliding onto the shiny sheen.
“Then we can be losers together.” With that, Yoongi runs the dye-soaked glove through his own hair, bright streaks of orange leaving citrus patches among his jet black hair.
“Damn....” Seokjin whistles. “Min Yoongi, that was metal as hell. You didn’t have to go that hard.” There’s an amused smile on Seokjin’s face now, traces of his former agitation starting to wick away. “I think I love you.”
Yoongi shrugs, an attempt to nonchalantly veil the fact that his ears were burning. “You think, or you know? ”
Seokjin cocks his citrusy head to the side, dramatically pretending to be in deep thought. “I think...that I know...that I love you.” With that, he nods, a bright u -shaped smile forming in satisfaction with his answer.
“Well, in that case...I think that I know that I love you too.” Yoongi smiles softly, shaking his head as if wondering how he ended up with a boyfriend that was one parts annoying, two parts adorable. “Since I helped you do your hair, think you can do me a favour and finish mine?” Yoongi leans to the side, picking up the bowl of dye and all the needed components from the shelf, gently placing it in Seokjin’s hands.
Seokjin grins, eyes looking at Yoongi with a tender expression. It’s sweet, but Yoongi has to bite back laughter at the sight of Seokjin’s fiery head, clips strewn every which way and making him look like some kind of mad scientist.
“For the record, I don’t wanna move to Nebraska either,” Yoongi says, as Seokjin starts to brush the colour onto his head. “I heard that you can’t really grow citrus fruits there because of their climate.”
Seokjin nods in agreement with way too much fervour for someone who had never heard of Nebraska until about five minutes ago. “That would suck. No tangerines for you, Yoongi-chi.” He brushes a flyaway strand of Yoongi’s hair away, endearingly crooked fingers pushing it back. “You would be stuck in a house in the middle of nowhere, where you think the walls are gonna be seafoam green but are actually orange, but you wouldn’t even have any real oranges. What a nightmare.”
Yoongi groans at the thought as Seokjin laughs, continuing to sweep bright hues of orange onto Yoongi’s black hair. His infectious giggle is a lot sweeter than any fruit could be, carrying bright bursts of sunshine and a settled happiness that explodes against Yoongi’s ears.
“You know where there are a lot of tangerines, though?” Seokjin asks, sectioning Yoongi’s bangs and dipping the brush back into the dye.
“Jeju? Seoul? The kitchen?” Yoongi entertains Seokjin’s question, comfortably settling onto the stool and stretching to rest his leg on Seokjin’s across from him.
“Wrong.” Seokjin makes a buzzer noise, laughing as he admires his handiwork so far. “The answer is the bathroom.”
Yoongi raises an eyebrow. “You’re going to make a joke about how this dye fiasco has made us the tangerines, aren’t you.”
Seokjin pulls his lips into a deep pout, and Yoongi just knows that he’d cross his arms in mock protest if his hands weren’t occupied. “You have to admit it’s funny, Yoongi. Packs a lot of zest, if I may.”
“Disgusting.”
“Why? Do I need better pick up limes?”
Yoongi groans. “Why do you even have to pick me up, we’ve been dating for years.”
“You have a point there. I’m so relieved that our romantic peelings are mutual.” Seokjin’s laugh screeches against the walls of their tiny bathroom, similar to the sound of glass being cleaned (not that either of them have heard that sound since their mirror broke).
“You know what, maybe I’ll get up and move to Nebraska alone and shave my head there instead.”
“Okay, okay, fine.” Seokjin stops his one-sided guffawing as he puts the dye brush down and presses his head to Yoongi’s, their ridiculously orange heads looking like a fruit basket. “I have one more thing to say, but it’s not a joke.”
“Fine, but if it’s another stupid pun, I know exactly where both my passport and my razor are.”
Seokjin shakes his head, butterfly clips bobbing as he does so. “Nah. This one’s from the bottom of my heart.” And with that, he leans in and plants a gentle kiss on Yoongi’s lips, soft and sweet like the plush core of a tangerine.
“Thanks for making me feel better, Yoongi. I love you.”
Yoongi blushes. “You don’t think you know that you love me this time?”
“No. It’s just plain and simple, Yoongi. I love you.”
With words this saccharine, Yoongi thinks that he would never need another fruit in his life, as long as he had Seokjin.
Pressing a kiss in return to Seokjin’s cheek, Yoongi sighs in bliss. “I love you, too.”