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Yoongi’s Christmases have never been anything special.
Last year, for instance, he’d just watched Tazza: the High Rollers for the fifty-sixth time and washed it down with too much Ardbeg Corryvreckan. It still won out over his childhood holidays, though, whatever that says about his family.
It doesn’t help that he’s been single for most of the Christmases he’s spent in Seoul, so the fact that it’s more of a couples’ holiday than anything else has only ever compounded his disinterest.
This year, though—
This year is going to be good.
For once, Yoongi actually has someone incredible to spend it with, and that someone is leaning hard into the spirit of the holiday.
It’d be borderline exhausting if it wasn’t so cute.
-
studiopersona: this is your friendly daily countdown
studiopersona: 9 days until christmas
studiopersona: almost a week!
studiopersona: and guess what else
glossamer: wait, wait, don’t tell me.
glossamer: it’s our 100-day anniversary in 9 days, too.
studiopersona: YES
studiopersona: how perfect is that though seriously
studiopersona: it’s like fate
glossamer: :)
glossamer: you are both very sweet and very susceptible to crossing your wires wrt sentimentality and destiny.
studiopersona: sue me
studipersona: i’m just excited to celebrate you
studiopersona: and us
studiopersona: and how much i love you
glossamer: stop making me blush in class.
glossamer: i’m putting my phone on do not disturb.
glossamer: fuck, i can’t wait to kiss you when i get home.
studiopersona: you’ll have to if i put up mistletoe………… thinking thoughts……………
glossamer: you’re just saying that to make me admit that i’d kiss you whether there was mistletoe or not.
studiopersona: love you so much baby
-
“So,” Namjoon says over eggs and rice one morning, exactly seven days out. “Christmas.”
“Mm,” Yoongi says, upper-lip pout hugging the rim of his coffee cup.
“You have the day off from classes, don’t you?”
That's enough to pull a smile even in Yoongi's drowsy state. “Yeah,” he says. “Thank God.”
Namjoon nods, dusting his hands off on his pajama pants once he finishes seasoning his eggs. “I might have to go in for this kids’ event at the library,” he says, “but it wouldn’t be for the whole day or anything. I'm thinking one of the student workers might cover me, actually, if I say I have plans.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively.
Yoongi hears the question there, the fishhook of a promise waiting to be made. He stretches his blanket-lined hand across the table to brush Namjoon's, his ever-silent request for Namjoon to initiate contact. “Do you have plans?”
“We have plans, don’t play coy,” Namjoon says, grinning. “Only I haven’t made them yet. But I will. We’ll have the most romantic day of our lives, so I hope you’re ready to start liking holidays.”
“Aish, you’re so full of shit, Kim Namjoon.”
“I am not, you’ll see.”
“Sure, sure.”
“You’ll see.”
-
The event at the library is, as Namjoon describes it during the commercial breaks of their weekly drama installment, a Christmas craft fair for the children of SNU faculty members.
“We've ordered all the books and the paper and stuff for coloring,” Namjoon says, glancing at the muted television to see if their show has come back on yet. It hasn’t. “I'm still kind of nervous about getting, like, fifty tiny chairs delivered by Christmas. And gingerbread houses. And making all these fake presents and stuff.”
Yoongi tucks himself up closer to Namjoon's side, knees resting against Namjoon’s thighs under their shared blanket. “Sounds like a lot of work,” he says.
“It will be,” he says, “but it’ll get done.”
“Better done than perfect, right?”
“Yeah.” Namjoon rests a hand on Yoongi’s thigh, gently massaging, slowly inching up higher. “And then,” he says, voice low and inviting, “we’ll have the rest of the day to—”
“Show’s back on.”
“Oh, shit.”
-
studiopersona: hey
glossamer: hi.
studiopersona: tell me something
studiopersona: are you really actually excited about this xmas/100 days thing
studiopersona: because i obviously am but i don’t want you to feel like you have to pretend for me
glossamer: of course i am.
glossamer: well, i guess i’m tentatively excited.
glossamer: it means a lot to me that you’re putting things together.
glossamer: i’m just not really sure what to expect.
studiopersona: okay good
studiopersona: trust me, i’m not planning anything you’d hate
studiopersona: no big crowds or public declarations of love or anything
glossamer: good.
studiopersona: i know you, baby
studiopersona: don’t worry
studiopersona: i know you’re not like
studiopersona: a holidays person
studiopersona: or whatever
glossamer: honestly, i think i’d be a holidays person if i’d felt good about spending them with the people i was around before.
glossamer: significant others, family, whoever.
studiopersona: really?
studiopersona: huh
glossamer: i mean, i like the idea of curling up with people you love and building traditions together, that part of it.
glossamer: i’m just not particularly nostalgic about it because i haven’t ever really had that.
studiopersona: yet
glossamer: :)
-
In the days since discussing his historic distaste for the holidays, Yoongi’s become quietly attached to the idea of this one. He wants to let himself believe that he deserves this, a day without work, without worry, but he’s not quite there yet. He doesn’t even really know what a day like that would look like, not for someone like him; there’s something inherently unattainable about the snow-covered opening scenes from heavy-handed holiday movies, something that inspires what Yoongi considers to be a healthy sense of skepticism. Is it even possible for real people to have moments like that?
Do real people, normal people, ever actually get to feel pure, unadulterated joy?
(Is it stupid to hope for it anyway, even if Yoongi’s pretty sure the answer is no?)
“The last thing’s booked,” Namjoon says, pocketing his phone as he comes out of his bedroom. “I think we’re all set.”
Yoongi's heart skips a beat. He tries to school his face back to neutral just in case Namjoon’s talking about something else, as if he’s talked about anything else but Christmas for over a week. As far as Yoongi can tell, Namjoon’s coming off a week or more of battling his ever-present insecurity around messing things up. It’s easy to empathize with him; Yoongi’s had his fair share of insecurities dig themselves out into the open over the course of their relationship, and the vulnerability of it is both as anxiety-inducing as it is healing.
Ever since Yoongi had been introduced to Namjoon’s friends, he’d noticed how openly they teased him about his clumsiness, and it’s evident that Namjoon takes it too much to heart, that he frets about some inherent lack of care seeping into other things, intangible things, the stuff of life and love. Truth be told, Yoongi has seen Namjoon’s penchant for mishaps in action before — namely with regards to the fate of the dishwasher, the coffee maker, the front door keypad — but he’s never seen it with anything that matters.
He’s never seen it with them.
It’s okay if Namjoon’s friends don’t know that, in the end, because Yoongi knows it, and he trusts Namjoon.
He’ll just have to keep showing him that until he believes it, just like Namjoon has done for him so many times.
“It’s kind of an all-day thing,” Namjoon’s saying as Yoongi fades back into paying attention, “with — before you say it — a nap built in around noon.”
Yoongi sits up straight, hope blossoming in his gut, surer this time. “Wait, you got the day off? for sure?”
Namjoon just spreads his arms wide, grinning.
It’s like some kind of time-release bomb going off: in an instant, just with that quick confirmation, Yoongi’s launching himself up off the couch and into Namjoon’s arms, exclaiming, dreaming of the little things: subtly flirting across the table at some fancy restaurant in Gangnam (even though neither of them could likely afford it), holding hands with him as they peruse a charming holiday market (even though, on paper, Yoongi would say that he dislikes the pressure of public displays of affection), and coming back home to steaming drinks, a drawn-out tandem bath, and a little bit of—
“Look,” Namjoon says, turning his phone around to show Yoongi the screen. “I got us tickets to go ice skating.”
“Joon-ah, we’ll make fools of ourselves out there and you know it,” Yoongi says, giddy anyway.
“It's romantic, though,” Namjoon says, and Yoongi has to agree. “I've always wanted to do it with someone, so — if you’ll just humor me, I'll let you pick dinner.”
“We'd have to make a reservation,” Yoongi says tentatively. “since it’s Christmas. Everyone’ll be trying to do the exact same thing.”
“That can be arranged,” Namjoon says, grinning. “Just — tell me what you want. Dream big.”
Yoongi hums.
He thinks back to the image of himself at a fancy restaurant, maybe daring to lock ankles with Namjoon under the table, and it’s getting harder and harder to pass that vision up.
Maybe he doesn’t even need rose-filtered joy to make the holidays worthwhile; maybe he just needs something like this.
“It might be too expensive,” he says cautiously, “but there’s this fusion steakhouse that I’ve been — well, it’s not so much the food I’ve wanted to check out as it is the — they have this gigantic chandelier that’s supposed to have the most genuine crystals in a single light fixture in Seoul, and—”
“That’s the one, then,” Namjoon says. “Just text me the name.”
Yoongi smiles.
He’s gotten better over the past few months, he thinks, at letting Namjoon love him in this particular way, doing things for him that Yoongi would never think of bothering to do for himself. That’s the genuine, nuanced, human part of a love like this, he knows, the part that no made-for-television movie could capture.
So he says, “Okay,” and Namjoon beams.
“I was also thinking,” he says, already off to the races again, “we could have brunch at the charity cafe you like, too. And there’s — fuck, I want it all to be a secret so bad, but — okay, okay, I’ll leave the best part a secret. But — it’s gonna be amazing.”
“If there's that much going on, I'll definitely be taking advantage of the nap,” Yoongi says as a gentle warning, mouth turning up into a little grin. “So don't think I won't.”
“I know, I know.”
“And I want to take the train, I don’t want to drive back and forth all over the city on a national holiday—”
“I know, babe.”
Yoongi tilts his head, lets his heart warm at the sight of the man he loves in this genuine, nuanced, human sort of way.
“I can’t wait,” he says, and he means it.
-
“Sorry I'm late meeting you,” Namjoon says, voice crackling through the speaker. “It’s hard for me to know when the library’s gonna let me go lately with all the event prep and everything.”
“That’s okay,” Yoongi says. His phone screen’s absolutely frigid against his bare cheek, so he holds it out at a slight angle, huffing frosty little breaths up into the air, visible as the icy puffs escape from the corners of his face mask. “I only waited for a little while, I’m walking home from the train now.”
“I might be here for another ten or fifteen minutes and then I'll head your way,” Namjoon says. “I just want to talk to my supervisor about — you know, the day off.”
“Oh,” says Yoongi, shocked. He hopes that it isn’t too obvious. “What about — I thought you already had it?”
“My supervisor says that I'm good to go as long as we have coverage,” Namjoon says. “We’re just waiting to hear back from the student employee. I'm not sure if she’s asked off or not. If she hasn’t, we’re good to go, but if she has — I mean, as the project supervisor, I feel like I should—”
“Oh, yeah, no, of course,” Yoongi says quickly, biting his lip. This is unexpected, to say the least, but he trusts Namjoon, so he swallows past his worry and says, “You couldn’t just abandon — I mean, the show must go on, and everything.”
“Right,” Namjoon says, and sighs. “It'll be fine, baby. It’s just frustrating to have to jump through the hoops.”
“Mm,” Yoongi hums, cheeks growing warmer at the pet name, tugged out of his spiraling thoughts by the pleasing but almost embarrassing way it echoes all around him, as if the bustling crowd around him on the sidewalk could hear Namjoon’s deep voice calling him baby.
As if they could hear the most wonderful man in the whole wide world lay claim to someone as plain as Yoongi.
He likes it, that shivery, gut-deep feeling.
Maybe he’s not so averse to public displays of affection after all.
“Just you wait,” Namjoon says, deep caramel voice rumbling in his ear. “I'm gonna spoil the hell out of you.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Yoongi mumbles, but he smiles a little in spite of it all.
Namjoon has the best way of getting his hopes up, of feeling like a safe bet.
In truth, he’s just about the only safe bet that Yoongi’s ever had.
-
Perhaps that’s why it hurts so much when Yoongi wakes up on the twenty-fifth alone.
He comes into consciousness fast when he realizes that the space beside him is cold, that Namjoon is no longer here.
Nearly frantic, he rolls over and checks his phone.
December twenty-fifth, nine forty-six in the morning.
No new notifications.
He slides out of bed and pads to the living room, the kitchen, the snowy balcony.
When he doesn’t find Namjoon anywhere, he shuffles over to the coffee maker and presses brew.
glossamer: did you not get the day off after all?
When the coffee maker eventually beeps, signaling a full pot, there’s still no response from Namjoon.
Well, Yoongi thinks. That’s that.
Even with Namjoon, in spite of all his goodness, Yoongi should have known better than to expect anything more from himself than the cards he’s always drawn.
He’s not sure what went wrong, exactly, or when; Yoongi thinks back to their conversation just last night, when Namjoon had been lying next to him in bed. He’d shown him the brunch menu for the cafe they were planning to go to, negotiated with him over what overpriced entrees they’d want to split.
They should have been seated there at a little table-for-two by now, gazing into each other’s eyes at the drifting snowflakes reflected there.
Instead, Yoongi sips his home-brewed black coffee in this chilly apartment all alone.
He hadn’t even heard Namjoon’s alarm go off.
-
glossamer: namjoon?
-
glossamer: i guess that’s enough of an answer.
glossamer: i’ll just expect you home at the normal time, then.
glossamer: have a good day at work.
-
studiopersona: shit i’m sorry i was going to wake you up to let you know but i know you don’t like being woken up and i panicked
studiopersona: i was running late and haven’t had a second to be on my phone since i left the house
studiopersona: boss called me in at like 8 am because the student worker’s still not here, can’t reach her, don’t know why
studiopersona: so i just have to set up the last few things because the night desk person last night didn’t end up finishing on time of fucking course
studiopersona: i’m taping up all these like christmas stars and everything at the speed of light bc the kids come in at 4
studiopersona: so fucking stressful
glossamer: sounds like it.
studiopersona: yeah
studiopersona: ugh this sucks
studiopersona: i’m so sorry baby
studiopersona: i hate that this happened but i’m gonna fix it don’t worry
studiopersona: i’m not sure how long i’ll have to stay but it probably won’t be the whole time as long as the student worker shows up at some point
studiopersona: okay boss is coming over i gotta get off my phone but stay warm!!!! make yourself some hot chocolate!!!!! love you!!!!!
glossamer: are we still going to be able to get dinner or something, maybe?
glossamer: oh.
glossamer: okay.
glossamer: i’ll talk to you later.
glossamer: i love you, too.
-
The hours tick by, and Yoongi begins to lose hope that anything will come of this day after all.
It’s all right, really, because he still has what really matters in the end. It’s the thought that counts, or so people say, and Namjoon always puts the work in, always keeps Yoongi’s best interests at the forefront of his mind, and that’s more than most people can confidently say that they have in another person.
Yoongi knows that.
It’s just that he would’ve liked—
Well, there’s no use in dwelling on it, Yoongi thinks, so he tries his best to set his jaw and box up that persistent near-tears feeling that catches in his throat whenever he swallows.
“Your dad,” Yoongi tells Moni, who’s begging for Yoongi’s reheated lunch of premade pork dumplings, “is a fucking idiot.”
Moni blinks up at him, focused only on the promise of puffy pork discs. Yoongi prods at one with his fingertip, testing the temperature of the meaty center.
“He's lucky I love him,” Yoongi tells the dog, gingerly setting a dumpling down on the tile floor. “I guess Christmas will be just me and you this year, huh?”
Moni's too focused on consuming his illicit human-food treat to respond meaningfully, but Yoongi doesn’t mind. He’s known this dog for a hundred days now, too, so nothing really surprises him anymore.
“Do you know any carols, Moni?” he asks, lifting his own dumpling with his chopsticks and inspecting it. “I'm sure you have a wonderful singing voice.”
Moni lets out a sharp bark, then, possibly a demand for another dumpling.
More likely, though, Yoongi thinks, it’s the beginning of some little canine Christmas hymn.
-
“Baby, I’m so sorry,” Namjoon blurts as soon as Yoongi picks up his call.
It's 2:08 pm.
Yoongi would be assuming the worst about the state of their evening plans if he hadn’t already settled into that assumption hours ago. He's in Namjoon’s bed again now, willing to let sleep take him at the nearest opportunity.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, small and quiet. “She didn’t come in, I guess? The student worker?”
Namjoon hesitates. “You’re mad, aren’t you?” he says, and he sounds not quite broken yet, but fissuring, crackling under the pressure of uncertainty, of his persistent anxiety around this exact kind of underperformance.
“I'm not mad, Joon.”
And he’s not, not really.
“Well, you’re upset. Or sad, or something. I would be if I were you.” Namjoon adjusts his phone, sending scratchy static down the line. “You’re allowed to be mad at me, you know. Especially for something like this. I get it.”
“It's fine,” Yoongi insists, voice half-lost in the thick comforter that’s bunched all the way up to his chin. “I'm — I'm not much of a holiday person anyway.”
The line goes quiet.
Namjoon doesn’t say anything for a long, long time, and when he does speak, it’s colorless.
“Listen,” he says. “I only have, like, two minutes left on my break, but — I wanted to tell you — I want to make it up to you.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Yoongi says, and he does believe that, even if it hurts anyway. “Your boss called you into your job, that’s not — you didn’t have a choice.”
“That’s way too charitable for—”
Yoongi tucks his feet up under the comforter, too, scrunching his toes inside his knitted socks. “It's fine, Joon. really.”
“I still have three hours until the event’s over,” Namjoon says, and he sounds so regretful that it hurts to hear. “And then there’s — clean-up and everything.”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says, heart sinking further into the depths of his insides, as if it could bury itself any lower.
“So — we’re not gonna make that dinner reservation after all.”
“Not a chance,” Yoongi says breezily.
“But — babe, don’t give up on me yet,” Namjoon says, a little desperate. “I meant what I said. I really — I really do want to do this right.”
Yoongi purses his lips, runs his tongue along his upper teeth. “Okay,” he says, “sure.”
“It’s our first Christmas together and I want to make it special, I really—”
“I'll just,” Yoongi says, sucking in a chilly breath, “see you when you get home, then, and we can — go from there.”
“Okay,” Namjoon says, like he’s been given the world.
He hesitates.
“Please don’t give up on me,” he says again, and Yoongi bites his lip.
“I won't,” he says. I could never. “I'll see you later.”
When Namjoon hangs up, Yoongi just falls back onto the pillows.
He doesn’t let himself cry.
It's just Christmas, after all.
Nothing special.
-
Hours later, Yoongi wakes to the insistent buzz of the doorbell.
When he answers the door, still in his crewneck and sweatpants, he’s a bit taken aback.
Namjoon is standing there, red roses in one hand, a cardboard-packaged cake in the other, and despite his penchant for ruining things, it looks like he hasn’t dropped any of it yet. What’s more, he has Holly's leash wrapped around his hand, and the little poodle is already leaping up on Yoongi’s leg, pawing at his sweatpants and staring up at him with those imploring black eyes.
“Yoongi,” Namjoon says, out of breath from the stairs, maybe, or the cold, or the exhilaration of being in love. “Happy — everything. Happy one hundredth day. Merry Christmas, baby.”
Yoongi stays silent, mostly out of mild bewilderment, and steps aside to let him in. Namjoon arranges his gifts carefully on the coffee table, sending Holly free to tussle with Moni on the rug, but then—
He turns, and he pulls Yoongi close, and under the weight of the last few hours, Yoongi just melts.
Namjoon, like always, holds him steady. Even steeping in his own shame, he doesn’t shrink away.
“I missed you,” Yoongi chokes out, and Namjoon’s hand spasms a little on the small of his back, tugs him tighter against him. “I was — I don’t want to be upset, but I am, just a little, I’m sorry, I — I know I said I didn’t care about this stuff, but I—”
“Of course you care,” Namjoon mutters. “It’s not stupid to care. God, fuck, you have no idea how sorry I am.”
“Don’t want to be mad at you,” Yoongi whispers, not willing to let Namjoon see his tears. “So I won’t be. I’m not. I’m just — sad.”
“Yoongi—”
“Just let me not be mad, Joon-ah, you don’t want me to be mad at you, do you?”
“No, no, it’s just—” He sighs. “Can I tell you something?”
Yoongi shrugs, burrowing closer, seeking refuge in the folds of Namjoon’s wool coat.
“I know it’s only our hundredth day, but I already know that I want to spend the rest of my life earning your trust over and over again,” Namjoon says, hushed and serious in his recitation of what must have been half-rehearsed on the walk here, “your trust and your love and — your belief in me, and in us — and I want — I want to start over again every day, building on the last one, because I’ll never be done. I’ll never be done with you, Yoongi.”
Yoongi breathes deeply, in and out, calming himself with the scent of winter embedded into warm wool. He lets his tears trickle down his face and make themselves invisible amongst the melting snowflakes on the shoulder of Namjoon’s coat.
“I want you to know,” Namjoon says, “that I’ll never give up when things don’t work out the first time — plans or bigger things or whatever, and — I — I want you to know that I—”
“I know,” Yoongi mutters, “I already know,” and Namjoon just tucks him closer.
“I went to the market,” he says quietly. “On the way here from getting Holly at your apartment. I wanted to have the whole family here, you know, and I wanted to make you a better meal than we would’ve had at that overpriced restaurant anyway. We can go look at the chandelier some other time.”
Yoongi steps back just enough to regard him with a small smile. “We both know I'm the chef between the two of us, Namjoon.”
“I know, but I want to try. I want to do this for you.”
“It's your kitchen, then,” Yoongi says, and he only has to step in twice to stop something from burning or boiling over.
Still, it feels like symbiosis rather than sympathy.
-
Yoongi warms up in Namjoon’s space just as the spices do in the pan. He hovers over the stovetop and laughs wildly as Namjoon hugs him around the waist and drags him away time and time again, always managing to duck back in again behind Namjoon’s back.
The sun has long set, but there’s light everywhere in here, in this little home that Namjoon’s made, the one that he lets Yoongi root himself down in, too.
It even feels like home, music playing from Namjoon’s phone, the makings of a hot meal sizzling and popping on the stove, and the dogs running about wreaking manageable havoc.
It’s not home, of course; home is Yoongi’s little shoebox of an apartment in Hongdae.
But if the word didn’t mean what it meant, if it wasn’t literal, if it could be distilled instead into its emotional palette rather than its structural reality—
This would be it, Yoongi knows. Namjoon’s orbit, wherever that might be.
He’s lucky, he muses, that he knows it.
It could be so easy to pass this off as something extra, something fleeting, to let it sink below the froth of worry that blankets most of his days as a harried, stretched-thin music student. Others, he supposes, might call Namjoon a college boyfriend, a cuffing-season companion. If Yoongi were any other man, he might be like them, too preoccupied with work or school or the future to take stock of the now.
But he’s not.
He knows what this is.
It's the good old days, right now, right here. It’s the man he loves, the man he’d be lucky to love until they’re both soil for bonsais.
It’s Namjoon and Yoongi, Yoongi and Namjoon.
One hundred days together today.
-
“I hope this is okay,” Namjoon whispers once the food is laid out on the table. He tugs Yoongi close, flour dusted down their aprons, flowers blooming brightly in their chests. “I hope this is — I know it’s not what you were excited for.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Yoongi says, cheek pressed to Namjoon’s collarbone.
“I was worried,” Namjoon says, “because obviously I promised you something that I didn't deliver. But also because — I always worry about that, you know? I worry that — I sort of have a way of fucking things up. And I’ve never been, you know, serious enough with someone that I was this scared of fucking things up, but I’ve — I was so scared today, Yoongi.” He hesitates. “Honestly, I've been scared for months.”
“Seriously, Joon—”
“No, listen. I just figured it was only a matter of time until I did something wrong, said the wrong thing, whatever. Broke everything into little tiny pieces. And then I wouldn’t have you, and we wouldn’t have this, and — I wanted to prove to you so bad that I wasn’t like that, that I wasn’t the kind of guy who was willing to fuck things up with you. But today was just so—”
“Out of your control, is what it was.”
“But it shouldn’t have been,” Namjoon says, frustrated. “I should have figured it out.”
“It couldn't have been, though,” Yoongi says, level, leaning back just enough to glance up at him. “And you did figure it out.” He rubs his hand up and down where it rests on Namjoon’s mid-back, tucking himself close to his chest again. “This is nice.”
“But it’s not what we planned,” Namjoon whispers. “You wanted the restaurant with the steak and the cool light fixture.”
“This is what I wanted the most,” Yoongi tells him, and he only really realizes it now, now that they’ve plated up this meal that could never be made by anyone else, served anywhere else. “I thought I was sad about — not having plans anymore, but I wasn't. I was sad about — not being able to have something like this with you, or — spending time together. I was sad about it just being like any other day.”
“You said before that you wanted traditions,” Namjoon muses, thumbing Yoongi’s pink knuckles, hand in warm, warm hand. “You told me — that you wanted to build something with somebody, to have things to celebrate, to just — make holidays mean something, right?”
“I guess so,” Yoongi says. “Yeah.”
“Then I want this to be one of those,” Namjoon says. “Not — me fucking everything up, obviously. But — every year, us. This. Sitting together and making the most out of things, no matter how. Coming home to each other, no matter what.”
Yoongi smiles a little. “I'm not actually mad at you, Namjoon, you don’t have to be such a sap.”
“No, no, I'm building up to something, baby.”
Yoongi looks up, feels Namjoon tighten the hold on his hand.
“Yah, spit it out then,” Yoongi says, stomach starting to churn.
“I got you a gift,” Namjoon tells him, all at once, in a rush. “It's just about the one thing I didn't manage to tell you about all week long. And thank God, because it’s the one thing that, no matter what, this whole timing thing wasn’t going to ruin.”
Yoongi watches with rapidly compounding anxiety as Namjoon produces something from his trouser pocket and places it on the table in front of them.
A little black box.
“Oh my God,” Yoongi says, all on a sharp inhale.
Namjoon says nothing, so without a conversational barrier to hit, Yoongi’s stream of consciousness tumbles out of his mouth before he can stop it.
“Don’t — don’t you fucking do this to me. Namjoon, I'll cry, stop it.”
Namjoon grins. “It's not a ring,” he says, and Yoongi breathes, breathes and sits back, just a little. Namjoon’s eyes glint, teasing. “That’s for next year.”
“Yah, Kim Namjoon—”
“Open it,” Namjoon says, soft.
“You have to let go of my hand.”
“No, I don't.”
“Fine.”
With a little exaggerated flair of struggle, Yoongi snaps the box open one-handed.
Inside, there’s a key.
“You don’t have to say yes,” Namjoon starts.
“Namjoon—”
“I just think,” Namjoon says, “that you’re my other half. Not that we’re the same person, or, like, twin souls or whatever. I want to be clear about what I mean.” He shifts in his seat, holds Yoongi’s eyeline. “What I mean is — we’re different people, but we’re people that work so well together that it’d be unfathomable to let you walk out that door without the promise of coming back home. You’re the person I need in my life to complement it and, more importantly, you’re the person I want in my life to love and to be loved by, and—”
“Joon-ah, I—”
“—and I want this to last for a long time,” Namjoon says. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I want this hundredth day to feel fucking insignificant once we’re down the road even further. Obviously it’ll never be meaningless, I just mean — I want there to be two hundred, you know, five thousand, twenty thousand days together.”
“Twenty thousand days is over fifty years, Namjoon,” Yoongi mumbles.
“I know,” Namjoon says, and that’s that.
Yoongi flushes, lets his gums peek out at the corners of his mouth as he grins. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
Namjoon can’t help but beam brightly back. “So — I wanted to ask.”
Just then, Yoongi feels Namjoon’s ankle press against his under the table.
Just like his vision, only this isn’t some randomly-generated interior of a restaurant.
“Would you and Holly be willing to move in? Here? With me?”
This is home, if he wants it to be.
Yoongi tries to hide his ever-growing grin behind his fist, but Namjoon just laughs and tugs it away. He doesn’t let go of his wrist, though. “Baby,” he says, prompting.
“I don't know, Namjoon, I'd have to ask Holly,” Yoongi teases, not meeting his eyes for fear of the tears spilling over, mock-struggling against Namjoon’s hold. “I don't even know if he and Moni get along.”
Pointedly, they both glance over to where Holly and Moni are curled up together on the floor by the space heater, snoozing in tandem.
“Yoongi-yah,” Namjoon presses. “Baby.”
“Yes,” Yoongi says, positively beaming. “Yes, okay, fine.”
-
“You know,” Yoongi says once they, too, are curled up on the floor by the space heater, the dogs having bounded off into the bedroom. The Christmas tree that Namjoon’s had up for weeks blinks mutedly in the corner. “I really thought I'd have to sit here all alone all night.”
“Poor baby,” Namjoon says, tugging him closer, noting the familiar put-on pout in Yoongi’s voice.
“I asked Moni to sing Christmas carols with me, that’s how lonely I was.”
“Oh? And what did he say?”
“He didn't say anything.”
“No?” Namjoon presses a kiss to the side of Yoongi’s head, nose buried in his soft hair. “Well, I can't sing, but you can put some on, baby.”
Yoongi grins, tucks his chin so that Namjoon can’t see. “I don’t actually want to sing,” he says. “I was just bluffing.”
“You were so desperate to sing carols that you were willing to enlist my dog,” Namjoon says, patient as the cake cut up on the counter, warm as the space heater they’re curled beside. He reaches for his phone and casts a Christmas playlist to the television, settling back beside Yoongi with a hum. The swell of sound reaches somewhere deep inside Yoongi, his back halfway pressed against Namjoon’s firm chest.
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining.
There are no stars visible from here, from the seventeenth floor of this impossibly-tall building in the center of Seoul. There wasn’t really a good vantage point from which to see the stars back in Daegu either; perhaps that’s why Yoongi never felt as though he had anything to guide him as he navigated the crueler tunnels of the world. He’d never had anything to follow, had instead just run headlong into the horizon, hands tied behind his back. But it had led him here, and he had found Namjoon, somehow.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining ‘til he appeared, and—
Until then, everything worth having — recognition and exposure, a place in the music program, the respect of his family — had come at a great price. Yoongi’s never had anything like this, no love like this before, no home like this before, and now this home is theirs. For once, Yoongi hadn’t had to break in through the back and grind his way to a sense of relative stability.
This time, he has a key to the front door.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices — for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
It takes his breath away still, the miracle of what they have.
Oh, fall on your knees.
They do kneel, there on the little rug blanketing the space-heater hearth, and the world shrinks to just the two of them, held safe in each other’s arms, finally, finally.
How incredible it is, how unlikely, to be loved like this.
Oh, hear the angels’ voices.
“No mistletoe after all, huh?” Yoongi says.
“Don’t need it,” Namjoon tells him.
Yoongi just grins.
“I love you,” Namjoon says, his mouth moving somewhere above Yoongi’s right ear. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Yoongi whispers back, leaning up for a kiss.
Oh, night.
“Let's get some sleep?”
Divine.