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Yoongi should have known that things would turn out like this. He should have known at the bar when Jimin pulled him close by the collar of his shirt and grinded their hips together on the middle of the dance floor. He should have known when later, under a canvas of sparkling stars, he’d curled his arms around Yoongi’s shoulders and opened his mouth against the pale expanse of Yoongi’s throat.
He was naive to have thought that things wouldn’t turn out like this.
Like this, with Jimin standing in his doorway, wearing little more than an oversized t-shirt and a faux-innocent, wide-eyed expression on his face. He’s artfully disheveled in the way only someone who looks like Park Jimin can pull off, his blond hair askew in all the right places, his clavicle exposed teasingly, his thighs on display.
He waits to be invited in because, in the end he’s still Jiminie—polite and cautious and sweet.
But as soon as Yoongi leans up on his elbows and murmurs, “C’mere,” he’s shuffling forward and crawling across the sheets of Yoongi’s bed like a predatory cat, all traces of sweetness gone from his expression.
He straddles Yoongi and leans down to kiss him, kiss him like he hasn’t had the chance to kiss him yet. But Yoongi curls his hands around Jimin’s upper arms, holding him at bay.
He must be insane.
“Wait, Jiminie.”
Jimin’s eyes flicker. “What?”
He scoots back far enough that Yoongi can sit up, and then they’re chest-to-chest and closer than Yoongi can probably handle right now.
“We need to talk.”
Jimin tilts his head, fingers fluttering over the collar of Yoongi’s sleep shirt. With a coy peek through his lashes and a bite of his bottom lip that causes Yoongi’s brain to glitch out, he whispers, “Do we have to?”
Yoongi swallows as his heart rate ratchets up.
“Yeah,” he croaks out, hands finding Jimin’s narrow waist just above the curve of his hips, “yeah, we do.”
a few days earlier
It’s warm on the coast, but in the kind of way that’s pleasant, that feels like the sun is washing over your skin and bathing you in its embrace.
Even so, Yoongi isn’t a fan of the beach. Not the ones back home and not the ones here, either, 5000 miles away from home. It’s too sandy, too salty. He always ends up sunburnt and sticky afterward, finding sand in places it has no business being.
But maybe he’s just… approached it wrong all these years. Maybe the key to enjoying the beach is having Park Jimin, bright and lovely, by his side.
“Come on, just a little further,” Jimin coaxes, gingerly pulling Yoongi through the water with two steady hands on his bare waist.
“You said that five meters back,” Yoongi grumbles.
Still, he allows himself to be tugged onward because he likes the feel of Jimin’s fingers pressing into his skin.
They’re in pretty deep by now and Jimin takes another step backward but he stumbles, expression scrunching up in discomfort and grip tightening around Yoongi’s torso. Yoongi reaches out instinctively, curls his arm around Jimin’s waist to steady him.
That’s probably his first mistake.
Because now they’re much closer than they were before. Their chests press together, damp and sticky from sand and saltwater.
“Are you okay?” Yoongi asks.
Jimin’s hands slide up from his waist to wrap around Yoongi’s shoulders, dripping seawater down Yoongi’s arms and back. His lashes flutter against his cheeks, which have turned cotton candy sweet, and he’s close enough that Yoongi can count all of the freckles dusted across his nose.
“Now I am,” he says. His voice is soft, so soft that it’s nearly carried away by the crashing waves, but his words are punctuated by the pressure of his fingers at Yoongi’s nape, threading through the short strands of hair on the back of his neck. “Thanks for catching me, hyung.”
Against his better judgement, Yoongi tightens his hold around Jimin’s waist, presses him a little closer.
That’s probably his second mistake.
Their gazes catch.
Something sharp, dangerous, flashes through Jimin’s eyes. He looks like he wants to say something but the sound of Seokjin’s voice nearby cuts through the moment and he loses his chance.
Slowly, arduously, they untangle themselves, put an appropriate amount of distance between them, but the tension—crackling, sizzling, sticks to them like sand for the rest of the afternoon.
💫
Jimin curls his arms around Yoongi’s neck, toying with the short hair at his nape. He’s still seated in Yoongi’s lap, as comfortable as though the spot is made just for him. And maybe it is. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
Yoongi slides his hand to the small of Jimin’s back, watches as Jimin’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down. He’s figured out by now that for all of Jimin’s flirting, he still gets a bit nervous around Yoongi. It’s endearing.
“Have you given any thought to what I said earlier?” Yoongi asks.
Jimin tugs gently on a strand of Yoongi’s hair and levels a soft smile in his direction. In the dark, with the moon’s blue gaze peering in through the window, he looks as though he’s been spun from starlight itself.
“About how you love me?” Jimin says, and the words hang in the air, suspended between them like they don’t hold an entire microcosm of Yoongi’s heart in them.
Yoongi’s breath stutters. He swallows and Jimin tracks the movement.
“Yeah,” he breathes out. “Yeah, that.”
Jimin curls a small hand against Yoongi’s cheek, tilting his head as he admits, “Hyung, I’ve been in love with you since I was 12 years old, before I even knew what being in love was.” His shyness peeks out in the form of pink dusted over his cheeks, a slight tremble of his bottom lip. But he soldiers on. “So, have I thought about what you said? Of course I have.”
“And?” Yoongi murmurs, unable to keep himself from leaning in just a little. “What is it that you want, Jimin-ah?”
Jimin meets him halfway, squeezes his legs against Yoongi’s hips. “I want you.”
a few days earlier
“I want you—” says a honeyed voice, pillow lips against the shell of Yoongi’s ear. His heart skips a beat. “—to dance with me.”
The jasmine scent of Jimin’s cologne floats around him as Jimin hugs him from behind, presses his chest to Yoongi’s back and his cheek to Yoongi’s cheek.
“Come dance with me, Yoongi hyung,” Jimin says.
And Yoongi only has so much restraint. So, he nods.
The whole patio is a dancefloor, lit up in a yellow glow under fairy lights and warmed by heating lamps. It isn’t crowded, the music is soft and sensual. In the distance, they can hear the crashing of waves on the shore.
Heart racing, Yoongi allows himself to be pulled to the center of the dancefloor, allows Jimin to sidle up against him, press their bodies flush.
If someone had told Yoongi at the start of their trip that he’d be spending the duration of it quietly flirting with his best friend’s younger brother, he’d have laughed.
Because Jimin is beautiful and sexy and lovely, but Jimin is off-limits and Yoongi has always abided by that unspoken rule.
Not that Hoseok would ever keep Jimin from doing exactly as he wants, or warn any of his friends against getting involved with his brother. He recognizes that they’re all adults and that Jimin would kick his ass if Hoseok ever tried to dictate his love life.
Just that Yoongi has always valued the stability of their friendship above anything going on in his pants.
But he thinks maybe he’s hit his upper limit this time.
Maybe Jimin grinding against him, his back to Yoongi’s chest in an ironic reversal of how they’d been just moments ago, is the end of the road for him.
Jimin is solid and smooth under his fingertips, the slinky top he’s wearing only long enough to hide his belly button when his arms are down. But right now it’s on full display as he reaches up behind him to curl a hand around the back of Yoongi’s neck.
Yoongi can’t think about anything beyond how perfectly Jimin’s ass fits against him, how if he just slides his hand a little higher or a little lower he’ll be putting on a show for everyone around them.
“Hyung,” Jimin says, turning to the side to look at Yoongi.
He’s hot, so hot, burning up under his collar, his cheeks must be ablaze. And Jimin’s pretty, so pretty, with his full lips and bright eyes. With his soft hands and silky voice.
Distantly, Yoongi hears himself croak out an acknowledgement.
“Let’s—Let’s get out of here,” Jimin breathes.
Saying yes is probably his third mistake.
💫
“I want to hear you say it,” Yoongi whispers, bringing Jimin closer.
Jimin presses the words to Yoongi’s lips. “I love you.”
Yoongi kisses him deep, feels Jimin arch into him as his hands find the dimples in his lower back and push their hips together. Jimin curls his legs around Yoongi, locking his ankles together behind his back.
The night air is dreamlike, cast in blues and purples, with only the sounds of the ocean and their low voices cutting through it.
“Again,” Yoongi breathes.
He slips his fingers under Jimin’s sleep shirt, finally touching him exactly as he wants to. Jimin’s skin is hot, a cherry sweet flush creeping down his throat, beneath his collar. Yoongi pulls his shirt off so he can see for himself exactly what Jimin looks like under his touch.
“I love you,” whispers Jimin.
He moans as Yoongi’s mouth finds his chest, as his hands dip lower, lower down his back.
He’s glorious.
The sound of his pretty voice gasping Yoongi’s name curls around them in a pink-colored haze.
yesterday
Pink.
Pink lips. Pink cheeks.
It’s all Yoongi can focus on.
With three whiskey sours sloshing around inside of his brain and the buzz of four beers warming his chest, Yoongi can hardly remember the abrupt left turn his life has taken in the last couple of days.
But the evidence stands before him in the form of tinkling laughter and a smile that feels like sunlight personified.
The rose petals in Jimin’s cheeks unfurl into blossoms of the reddest red the harder he laughs and it’s as he tilts his head a little more toward Taehyung that Yoongi sees it: a splotch of purple spiderwebbing across the creamy skin of his throat, reaching with delicate tendrils up the side of his neck. It takes the shape of a mistake—pretty and formed by temptation.
It shouldn’t have happened the way it did.
There’s an unspoken understanding among their group as to who the culprit is, who painted the love bite across Jimin’s neck, but Yoongi knows he won’t be called out for it.
He’s not sure if that makes him feel any better.
Jimin curls a wayward strand of hair behind his ear, fingers brushing over the hickey in the process, and his gaze finds Yoongi’s across the table. He smirks as if he knows exactly what’s going through Yoongi’s mind.
Yoongi swallows down a shot of tequila, tries not to think about the slide of Jimin’s skin against his, the warmth of Jimin’s mouth, the tenderness of Jimin’s touch.
It’s impossible.
💫
Resisting Jimin is impossible. How Yoongi had ever thought he could is beyond him. He’d been an utter fool.
They kiss again, open-mouthed, as if trying to devour one another. It’s the pain of waiting all these years manifesting in the form of messy desperation.
They’ve kissed a lot this week, in different places, in different ways. But not like they’ve wanted to. Not like this.
Jimin rolls his hips forward, eliciting a groan from Yoongi. He does it a second time, and then a third and fourth, seeking friction as his need grows.
“Again,” Yoongi murmurs, drunk on the sweetness of the confession as Jimin whispers it straight into his soul.
He drags his lips across the hot skin of Jimin’s bare shoulder, his clavicles, his sternum, anywhere he can reach.
The heat is intense, scorching him from the inside, but it’s addictive. He knows the feeling of Jimin’s skin under his fingertips, the burn of Jimin’s kisses, the way he blooms and the way he pulls Yoongi apart at the seams. But he’s never felt as real as this—never engulfed Yoongi so completely.
“I love you,” Jimin kisses against his throat. He nips at the skin and then salves over it with his tongue, wide and flat across the length of Yoongi’s neck. “I love you.”
A moan wracks through Yoongi. He lowers Jimin onto his back, pulls away only long enough to yank off his own t-shirt. Yoongi settles himself between Jimin’s legs, fingers skirting along the waistband of Jimin’s barely-there sleep shorts.
“Jimin-ah…”
Their gazes catch in the blue darkness and Yoongi loses his breath at the beauty laid out beneath him. Jimin is the purest form of magnificence, debauched and marked up, lips swollen and skin glowing, but flawless, always flawless.
“I want you,” Jimin whines, biting down on his lip when Yoongi’s fingers slip under the fabric of his shorts. He sucks in a sharp breath at the feeling of Yoongi’s hand on him, moans, “Hyung, please.”
And Yoongi would do anything for him, anything.
Like this, they fill the emptiness of night with whispered promises and quietly blooming love as the ocean and the moon bear witness to their unraveling.
earlier today
Jimin finds him on the porch in the empty space of time between lunch and dinner, when everyone is doing different things in different parts of the rental house.
Yoongi’s leaning against the railing, staring out at the dying sun beyond the horizon. The sky is painted in a mix of pinks and blues and purples as it stands on the precipice of dusk. A quiet moon, barely visible for now, lies in wait for night to usher her in.
“Hyung.”
He turns at the sound of Jimin’s sweet voice, finds him standing in the doorway of the house on the verge of stepping out onto the porch. His expression betrays his hesitance as he fiddles with the hem of his linen shirt. His blond hair sweeps across his forehead, tousled by the weak seaside wind.
“C’mere,” Yoongi urges, leaning back against the railing.
Jimin steps closer, stops just within reach. “Are you mad at me?”
There’s something about the way he says it, eyes big and lips pouted—so very Jimin—that makes Yoongi’s insides turn warm. He offers a small smile but it quickly vanishes when his gaze zeroes in on the fading love bite on Jimin’s neck.
“No, I’m not mad at you,” Yoongi says with a sigh.
He reaches out to brush his thumb over the greenish mark marring Jimin’s otherwise perfect skin. There are other, similar marks, he knows, littered across Jimin’s chest and thighs. He fights back a blush at the thought of them.
“But you do have something on your mind,” Jimin points out, curling one small hand around Yoongi’s wrist. “Something that’s been eating you up inside the last couple of days.” He shuffles closer, until he’s standing between Yoongi’s legs, and Yoongi doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jimin look so vulnerable. “Do… Do you regret it?”
It. Sleeping together.
Them.
Yoongi shakes his head, quick to stop Jimin’s train of thought.
“No, I don’t, Jimin-ah. Never,” he says firmly. “That’s not it.”
“Then, what is it?” Jimin asks. His voice is small, uncharacteristically nervous. “Talk to me… please?”
Yoongi drops his arm to take both of Jimin’s hands in his. He stares down at them, at how much smaller Jimin’s hands are, at how their fingers twine perfectly together.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he admits. “I wanted to do this right but somehow it all ended up backwards.”
“Yoongi hyung…”
“I’m in love with you,” Yoongi tells him—simple, clean, no fuss. He clears his throat as his vision grows blurry. “I’ve been in love with you for a really long time, Jimin-ah.”
It’s not grand or earth-shattering, but the confession leaves Yoongi winded and worn, as though he’s torn a piece of his soul out of his body and offered it up to the boy in front of him.
He feels more than hears Jimin’s sharp intake of breath in the way his hands tighten around Yoongi’s.
“I love you and I don’t know what to do anymore,” Yoongi continues, finally mustering the courage to look up again.
He’s startled to find tears welling up in Jimin’s eyes. They flow over and run down his cheeks, the highs of which have blossomed a deep pink. Even still, he’s beautiful.
“Hyung, you love me?” he asks, soft and sweet.
Yoongi feels wetness on his own cheeks as he nods. “So, so much.”
Jimin’s expression crumples at this and his fingers begin to tremble in Yoongi’s grasp. A little panicked, Yoongi reaches up to cup his cheek.
“Don’t cry, Jiminie,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
But that only makes Jimin cry harder.
“Pabo hyung, why are you sorry?” he whines. “Don’t be sorry for loving me.”
As fondness wells up in his chest, Yoongi brings Jimin’s hand up to his lips and leaves a featherlight kiss on his knuckles.
“Okay, okay, you’re right,” he soothes.
After a moment, as his tears have begun to abate, Jimin asks again, “You really love me?”
Yoongi nods, smiling. “Yeah.”
“Oh.” The warmth in Jimin’s cheeks, so pretty and pink, spreads up to his ears as Yoongi’s confession seems to finally sink in.
“I love you and... I want to be with you, Jimin-ah,” Yoongi goes on more seriously, hoping the conviction he feels in his heart is evident in his voice. “Really be with you. I don’t think I have the strength to just fuck around or be a vacation fling. But... I need to be sure you want that, too, or this’ll never work.”
The words visibly strike a chord within Jimin, who curls in on himself. He nods at Yoongi, determination finding its way into his eyes.
“You don’t—You don’t have to decide anything right now,” Yoongi assures him. The last thing he wants is to scare Jimin off by backing him into a corner. “Take some time to think about it, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”
Jimin looks, for a moment, like he wants to argue. Then, his shoulders sag and his head bobs up and down again.
Yoongi strokes the apple of his cheek briefly, searching his face for any sign of the answer he wants. But Jimin’s expression is hard to read and Yoongi isn’t sure he’s ready to confront the truth just yet.
With a sigh, he pulls away, only to be tugged back toward Jimin again in the next second.
“Hyung.” His voice is imploring. “Can you kiss me, just one more time?”
When it comes to Jimin, it doesn’t take much for the crumbling walls of Yoongi’s self-restraint to fall away entirely.
He cups Jimin’s face in his hands and closes the distance between them to lock their lips together. It’s a bruising kiss—one that steals Yoongi’s breath away in an instant. They kiss like it’s the last time they’ll ever get to do it, like they need to memorize this feeling before it’s lost forever.
And the worst part is that Jimin is a damn good kisser. He gives back as good as he gets, sliding his fingers into Yoongi’s hair and opening his mouth wider, pushing closer.
But soon, the ache in Yoongi’s heart begins to grow deeper and deeper and the acrid taste of a mistake seeps into the kiss. So, before he falls too deep to crawl back out, before the mistake spirals into something he can no longer control, Yoongi tears himself away. He sidesteps Jimin and quickly rushes into the house without a backward glance.
💫
It’s only much later, when they’ve come down from the high of lovemaking, when both of them are soft with sleep and their kisses have turned languid and slow, when Jimin has pressed his love into every inch of Yoongi’s skin, that Yoongi finally allows himself to breathe.
He decides he’s done counting his mistakes, that loving Jimin could never be the wrong thing to do. That maybe the foundation of their friendship won’t crumble under the weight of his love, that maybe it’ll grow stronger because of it.
“I love you,” he murmurs, kissing the crown of Jimin’s head.
Jimin pecks his sternum. “Say it again.”
Yoongi’s heart feels full to bursting as he repeats himself, “I love you, Jimin-ah.”
“Again, again,” Jimin implores softly.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”