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It was late. Ridiculously late. Yoongi had showed up on your doorstep almost an hour ago, exhausted but wanting to hang out for at least a little bit before you both passed out. It had been almost a week since you’d seen him last, and you’d be lying if you said that it wasn’t nice to have him with you, even if it was three in the morning and you could barely keep your eyes open.
He’d wanted to watch the newest episode of your favorite sci-fi/fantasy series, and you didn’t have the heart to tell him that you’d watched it without him, days ago when it first came out. You’d cuddled up together on your bed, snug under the covers and warm in his arms, your head on his chest as you fought sleep. Yoongi himself had been quiet for a while, though you weren’t sure if it was because he was as tired as you were, or if he was really that invested in the space cowboy and his tiny wizard son.
You sighed and snuggled further into him, recognizing that the end of the episode was coming soon. Yoongi’s arm tightened around you. So he wasn’t quite asleep yet. You felt him yawn, felt the rise of his chest as he inhaled deeply, felt him shake his head in an attempt to ward off the sleep. He groped for the remote as soon as the end credits started to run, turning off the tv and dropping the remote on the side table before pulling you somehow closer. His legs tangled with yours as he got comfortable, nuzzling ever so gently into your hair.
“‘Night, jagi, ” he mumbled, the gravel of sleep already starting to take hold of his voice. “I love you.”
You froze, your brain the equivalent of radio static “Oh,” was the only thing you could manage. “‘Night.”
He didn’t react, but mentally, you slapped yourself. What the everloving fuck was wrong with you?
You fell asleep listening to his heartbeat, with a sour taste in your mouth and three words stuck in your throat.
When you woke up the next morning, you were immediately struck by how soft the surface under your head was. Without even opening your eyes, you could tell you’d been given an actual pillow sometime throughout the night instead of the boyfriend-shaped one you’d fallen asleep with. Blindly, you reached out, groping around the side of the bed to try to find him–perhaps he’d just rolled away–but no luck. You cracked open an eye, immediately regretting the action with the invasion of light through the barely open curtains, and confirmed: no Yoongi.
You groaned, allowing yourself a moment to wallow.
Oh . Who the fuck responds to someone saying ‘I love you’ for the first time with oh ? Especially an I love you from the person that you most absolutely, desperately, unabashedly wanted to hear it from. You loved him, too. Or, at least, you thought you did. Six hours ago, though, apparently, your vocal chords decided they wanted to have a think about it.
You couldn’t have dreamed of a more perfect partner than Yoongi. You had been nervous at first, what with the fact that he was world-famous and you were, well, very much not that. And sure, he was busy. His schedule was hectic and he was constantly going, but he chose to hang out with you. Like, willingly . He’d made a shared Google Calendar so he could make sure he was spending time with you. In the beginning, you’d thought that maybe he would come around every once in a while, that maybe you were just a bit of a fun–hopefully not temporary–reprieve from his life that he would indulge in whenever he happened to have a spare five minutes.
Instead, he would drop his keys into the bowl by your front door and collapse onto the couch with you, his arm around your shoulders, and watch a few hours of television before crawling into bed and falling asleep with your arm firmly around his middle. He sought you out, through text and video chat and phone calls, as often as he could. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind now that he actually wanted to be with you.
And, god , you wanted to hang out with him, too. You loved hanging out with him, craved it, never wanted to stop hanging out with him. You’d known him for a grand total of less than a year, and yet he was your best friend, your closest confidante, the person you turned to when you needed comfort, or a shoulder, or just a joke. He was… everything .
And yet ‘ oh .’
You groaned, kicking your legs angrily for a moment, before forcing yourself to stand. Normally, you’d talk through something like this with Yoongi–he’d seen plenty of your dumb, stupid brain shit by now. But it was more complicated now that the issue involved him. It didn’t matter, though, because he wasn’t even here. Rarely did you go to sleep with him and wake up with him there. He was far too busy. This, it seemed, was just business as normal, as usual.
But as you tugged a hoodie over your body and you trudged your way out of your bedroom and into the kitchen, a presence forced you to pause in the doorway. There, in your kitchen, leaning with his forearms on the counter, was Yoongi. His hair was a mess, with strands sticking this way and that, and he looked like he’d barely slept. But he was there.
You inhaled sharply and briefly considered making an about-face and retreating right back into your room, but he looked up almost immediately and you were caught. His eyes fell back to his phone–you presumed he was scrolling through the news. The less he said, the smaller you felt, and suddenly, you were nervous.
“You’re still here,” you noted, attempting to sound nonchalant despite the pit quickly forming in your stomach. You watched him carefully as you opened the fridge, pulling out a small can of orange juice. You couldn’t tell if he was mad–you’d never seen him actually mad before, so you weren’t really sure what that looked like. “I thought you worked today?”
“I don’t have to be there until one. Do you want breakfast?”
“Oh!” The monster, back for a second round of massacring your relationship. “Uh… sure.”
He nodded, and you moved out of the way, easily swapping places with him so he could open your fridge. It wasn’t the first time Yoongi had cooked for you in your own kitchen, but it was the first time it was… weird . Not uncomfortable necessarily, but weird. You slid into one of the stools at your counter, the tiny bar allowing you to watch Yoongi as he busied himself with pulling ingredients out of the fridge.
Long minutes passed in silence, every one seeming to stretch ad infinitum, and the longer you stared at his back, the more you felt like you had to say something .
“Hey, so listen,” you said softly, playing with the tab of your orange juice can. He hummed, signaling that he was listening, but he didn’t turn around. You weren’t sure if that was good or bad. “About last night…”
“I get it.” Carefully, he chopped green onions, the quiet thwack, thwack, thwack doing nothing to soothe your nerves. “Don’t feel like you have to say it, too. I don’t mind if you take your time.”
“That’s not it at all!” You said it quickly, but as soon as it left your mouth, you knew it was true. He was Yoongi– your Yoongi– and having him around brought you more comfort than you could possibly say. In such a short time, he’d become something more than your best friend, more than your boyfriend. He’d become something akin to home , a soft, warm place to land when times were bad. “I… I just…” You sighed, eyes falling from his back to your hands on the counter in front of you. “I’m not sure how to do this. I’m not sure how to do relationships like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like… I don’t know.” When you looked up at him again, he was facing you, leaning back against the counter beside your stovetop. A perfectly chopped pile of green onions sat beside him on the cutting board. “I grew up surrounded by people who spent decades of their life with someone they didn’t love , let alone like .”
“Do you really think I’d string you along like that?”
“Well… no…”
“But?”
“It’s the sunk cost fallacy, right? Humans are just as susceptible to inertia as everything else. Things start off great, but slowly, they become good. And then fine. And then okay. And you’ve been together too long to just walk away. Dating again after so long is scary. And it’s not like things are actually bad. They aren’t great, but they aren’t bad. You don’t hate each other, so that’s a plus, right?”
“Sure, maybe, but-”
“-But then time passes, and you start to fight more and more, but that’s just what living with someone for 20 years is like, right? After a while, you get sick of each other, you’ve spent too much time together.” You spoke quickly. Now that you’d started, it was like a dam had broken, the thoughts flowing out of your mouth almost as soon as they formed, unceasing. “The heat just keeps getting turned up and up and up until before you know it, you’re a 75-year-old lobster boiling in his own pot of water, and there’s not much you can do except deal with it. You’ve been together so long, it’s the least you can do, right? Not much time left together. And you don’t hate each other, but you don’t particularly like each other either, and it’s scary to imagine the other not there, even if somewhere inside of you wishes it was someone else.”
Eventually, your mind stopped racing and you ran out of things to say. You hadn’t noticed it while you were talking–your focus had mostly been on the half-empty orange juice can in your hands–but Yoongi had left the spot across from you, moving around the breakfast bar so that he was nearly standing beside you. Deep brown eyes focused on you, curious, but not judging. He almost seemed sad, his brow a little furrowed as he silently listened.
“That’s quite a big thought.” His voice was soft, warm as honey and full of concern. “It’s tough. I’m sure that a lot of people do end up stuck in relationships like that. But–and feel free to correct me if you don’t agree–but when you get down to it, I think this happens most often to people who choose partners solely for maybe one or two good things.”
“Right.”
He was much closer now, his chest practically brushing against your shoulder. You could feel the heat of his body–or maybe you were imagining it, you weren’t quite sure. It was weird. If anyone else stood this close to you, you almost certainly would have felt your skin crawling. But with Yoongi, it was comforting.
“But by that logic,” carefully, he took your hands, pulling you off the stool so that you were standing in front of him, “I think that perhaps we don’t fall into that category.” His eyes flitted around your face, checking in with you silently before he said anything else.
“I just… don’t want us to end up like my parents,” you told him softly, reaching out and gently balling your hand in the softness of his t-shirt. “I don’t know if they started out loving each other, or how they got to where they are, but god, it sucked to be stuck between them and to constantly walk on eggshells.”
“That must have been hard.”
“I didn’t even realize that married couples could joke around and have fun until I met one of my professor’s husbands when I was in college.” You sighed, and Yoongi took a step closer, his arms carefully winding their way around you. “I don’t want to be 40 and realize that we fucked up somewhere along the way, you know?”
He nodded, brown eyes meeting yours. “Long relationships are hard,” he admitted, his thumbs drawing gentle circles into your back. “I’m not saying that things will always be perfect all the time. I don’t know what the future holds. But what I do know is that I love you. I don’t foresee that changing, but if it does, we will not become your parents. At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging, we know how to communicate. We argue, sure, but I don't know that I would consider you forcing me out of the studio at three in the morning to be a fight.”
"You're just stubborn," you mumble, tugging at the material of his shirt.
"I am." He laughed, placing a kiss on your forehead. "You're my best friend outside of Bangtan. I tell you everything.” You didn't mind being in second place behind the other members. As curmudgeonly as Yoongi could be about them, you knew they were brothers in all but blood. He continued. "I know you always have my back. I hope you know that goes both ways." You nodded, and he whispered a soft 'good'.
He fell silent, then, pulling you a little closer into a proper hug. His arms tightened around your waist, holding you firmly yet gently, as if he was afraid that you would slip out of his grasp at any moment. You hooked your chin over his shoulder, appreciating the warmth of him, of his actions, of his words. He was rarely like this, but somehow, he seemed to know what you needed. He swayed you gently back and forth, a soothing motion you weren’t even sure he was conscious of. And as you stood there in the kitchen, whatever Yoongi had been attempting to make for breakfast all but forgotten, it finally bubbled to the surface.
“I love you, too,” you whispered, squeezing him slightly. “I’m sorry my brain sucks sometimes.”
“All brains suck sometimes.” You felt him shrug, felt the rumble of his voice as he spoke. “And I know. You wouldn’t have had to say it. Your giant crush on me is not very subtle.”
You hummed. “Then I don’t need to say it again.”
Immediately, his grip on you tightened, holding you impossibly closer and shaking you back and forth. “No!” he whined. “That’s not what I meant!”
The two of you dissolved into giggles, the heaviness of the previous moments forgotten, the cloud of awkwardness entirely gone. You hummed as Yoongi pulled away, stealing a kiss from him as he let you go to resume cooking. As you watched him crack eggs into a skillet, you felt a little flutter in your stomach.
Perhaps, together, things would be okay.