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Namjoon is so focused on not being nervous that he almost misses his stop.
“Sorry!” he says to the unfortunate young woman sitting in the seat beside him, “Sorry, can I just…?”
The young woman looks up from the match-three game she’s playing, ready to glare at him, and then— her eyes flick to his hair, his glasses, the blue silk scarf he’s wound around his neck, and his fashionably cut grey wool coat. Yes, Namjoon dressed up, but not for her, and the scrutiny makes him blush.
“Sorry,” he says again, as the doors open, “I really have to—”
“Oh, yes, of course,” the woman says, swinging her legs to the side.
“Thank you,” Namjoon says, putting his whole heart in the words, and nearly trips over his feet in his haste to make it outside. He hopes this isn’t a harbinger of how his night will go. So far it isn’t off to an auspicious start.
“Poor Namjoon and Yoongi, relegated to once again being… third wheels? Fourth wheels?” Seokjin frowned, glaring between Namjoon and Yoongi as if they should be able to read his mind and voice his thoughts for him. His cheeks were flushed with a combination of beer and joy, one hand holding Jungkook’s under the bar’s tall table, Hoseok listing sideways against him. “What do you even call it if you’re the two single people tagging along when a couple and a throuple are having a double date?”
“Boring?” Jimin suggested, briefly turning away from being lost in Taehyung’s eyes.
“Square,” Taehyung corrected, sliding his hand through Jimin’s hair with a dreamy sigh.
“Sad,” Jungkook snickered, earning him a trio of bright giggles and one of Seokjin’s windshield-wiper laughs.
Yoongi closed his eyes in resignation. One upside to Hoseok’s dance group being hired as backup dancers for some rising starlet’s month-and-a-half long tour was that during that tour the amount of references to his and Namjoon’s status as singles at group outings had been practically non-existent. Seokjin and Taehyung had been too busy focusing on their own tragic separations to worry about anyone else’s relationships.
“I thought we agreed that—”
“You know that people are—”
Yoongi grinned and opened his eyes to find Namjoon already grinning back. He had to look away quickly — eye contact was uncomfortable at the best of times, but especially bad when it came to Namjoon — but the warmth stayed with him.
“Ugh, gross, they’re doing it again,” whined Jimin, his words almost lost under Seokjin’s grumbled, “You don’t have to give us the speech, I can practically recite it by now!”
“Well then you shouldn’t have said anything!” Yoongi told him in his sternest school-principal voice.
“Actions have consequences!” Namjoon agreed, playing the role of vice-principal. The words filled Yoongi with a familiar rush of energy, the same heady joy he got whenever he and Namjoon teamed up to win an argument. He fought not to smile. It would spoil the effect.
Seokjin sighed, every inch the petulant teenager. “Well so-orry for being invested in your happiness!”
“Relationships aren’t a guarantee of—”
“It is possible to be—”
“Fine!” Seokjin threw his free hand in the air. “Fine, fine, I give up. I’ll stop.”
Yoongi kept his stern-school-principal expression firmly in place while he and Namjoon exchanged a set of understated good-work-sir-good-work-sir-our-work-here-is-done nods. It was surprisingly hard. He could see Namjoon’s dimples fighting to peek out.
“I am telling you,” Hoseok said into the silence that followed, “They should just date each other!”
Somewhere in the background Yoongi heard Jungkook, Jimin, and Taehyung whining hyung while Seokjin demanded do you want a lecture? and Hoseok protested well you are the one who started it! but he hardly heard them. He was still looking at Namjoon, or, more specifically, the spark of mischief he’d seen flicker to life in Namjoon’s eyes. It echoed the one that he could feel burning bright in his own heart.
After over a decade of friendship, he and Namjoon knew each other well enough that they didn’t need words to communicate the most important things, and what was causing chaos, if not important?
“Us dating would not solve the issue of you leaning into archaic standards of what a fulfilled human being looks like!” Namjoon told them all in his lecturing voice. “Those are biases that you will need to do the work to exorcise on your own.”
“And besides,” Yoongi said, recognizing his cue, heart hammering in his chest in anticipation of their friends’ reaction. “We’re already dating.”
Outside the bus is cold and damp, the air undecided if it wants to be full of mist or rain. Namjoon turns his collar up against the wind and hunkers further into his coat, shoving his hands deep in his pockets as he hurries along the sidewalk glistening in the streetlights. He’s never been to the barbeque restaurant he’s trying to find before, and even with Naver’s expert guidance up on the screen of his phone he’s worried he’s going to miss it.
There’s no way he’ll arrive on time — the minutes he’d spent dithering over which shoes to wear have taken care of that — but there’s a difference between being late and being late.
It took a few minutes for the yelling to die down enough that Yoongi could distinguish actual words among the noise. Yoongi spent them very carefully not looking at Namjoon, just in case he lost control of his carefully straight face. Only when their friends had finally exhausted themselves did he dare to glance over to check for the silent go ahead. It was there. He smiled, internally, and went.
He answered Seokjin’s question first. “Last Saturday. You know that light sculpture thing that Namjoon’s been talking about forever? Well after the week he’d had—”
“I still think Park Daehoon should have been fired for incompetence,” Taehyung says darkly.
“—I thought he could do with some cheering up, so I suggested we could go look at it.”
“And after the week hyung’d had I thought he should maybe eat food that wasn’t instant ramen,” Namjoon said. “So I told him he could buy me barbeque first.”
Even with Naver’s help Namjoon almost misses the place, recommended by a friend of Yoongi’s for both its proximity to the light sculptures they were going to see, and the cheapness of the food and drink. He probably would have missed it if it weren’t for the familiar figure standing outside, bundled up in a big coat, bigger scarf, and toque pulled down over his head until only his eyes were visible.
“You know it’s still November, right?” Namjoon asks, as he slows to a halt. “Not the middle of January?”
“And you know we’re planning to walk outside beside a large body of water in the middle of the night to stare at a bunch of lights?” Yoongi grumbles in reply, stomping towards the restaurant’s entrance. “And unlike you, some of us aren’t perpetual heat sources.”
“If you put on some more muscle—”
“I don’t need more muscle,” Yoongi tells him firmly, yanking on the door. It hesitates before opening. Namjoon doesn’t comment. Yoongi glares back at him regardless, but still gestures for him to go through first. “I need better weather, or less insane friends.”
“The light sculptures were your idea,” Namjoon reminds him as he walks past.
“Yeah, well, Park Daehoon really should have been fired for incompetence.”
Yoongi picked up the thread of the story easily. “I didn’t really think much of it, but Namjoon was all dressed up—”
The table cooed (except Hoseok, who cackled so hard he had to learn on Seokjin for support lest he fall off his stool) as Namjoon blushed.
“— and he’d done his hair, and—”
“Hyung was wearing his fancy shirt,” Namjoon cut in, drawing the attention to himself. His pronouncement elicited a delighted bark of laughter from Seokjin, and shriek from Hoseok. “You know, that shiny dark blue one? And one of his necklaces, and he was so bossy about the barbeque.”
“I am not bossy about barbeque,” Yoongi sniffs as he starts grilling. “I just like not getting food poisoning.”
Namjoon grins. He’d tried picking up the tongs, just to see what would happen, and Yoongi had actually slapped his hand, saying no! like he was disciplining a puppy. “You are absolutely bossy, you care more about food poisoning than an equitable division of labour!”
“I’m paying, I get to grill.”
They aren’t the only ones in the restaurant. Groups of twos, threes, and fours surround them, while a group of — seven? eight? — takes up most of the back corner and also most of the air. Namjoon doesn’t mind. It’s nice that the place has some atmosphere to it, and something to fill the occasional pauses in his and Yoongi’s conversation.
The pauses are unusual. Normally Namjoon and Yoongi don’t have pauses in their conversation, or if they do they’re just pauses, not pauses, like the one they’re actively sitting in. If it goes on much longer it might even turn into an awkward silence, and when was the last time he and Yoongi had had one of those?
A few years back, when he and Gunwoo broke up, a small voice answers, when you thought that maybe—
Namjoon desperately tears himself away from the thought. “Did Holly like the sweater you bought for him?”
“Yes!” Yoongi says brightly, with only the barest edge of— relief? Maybe he’s noticed the pauses too. “He loves it for walks, mom and dad sent me some pictures this morning, want—”
“Absolutely,” Namjoon says, relieved. If they’re talking about Holly then Namjoon can’t be thinking about the shiny, dark blue shirt Yoongi’s wearing, with his sleeves rolled up to avoid the grease, and with the top couple buttons popped open to reveal a thin silver necklace and the dip between his collar bones.
“Hyung kept trying to make me eat all the best cuts—”
There was a general outcry from their audience. Yoongi had to grin and duck his head. He knew that the others thought it wasn’t really fair of him to always give the choicest bits of meat away, but it made him happy to know his friends were eating well.
“So I retaliated by making sure that I paid for our tteokboki and bungeoppang.”
“Yoongi!” Seokjin gaped, putting a hand flat on his chest while Hoseok wheezed beside him. “You let Namjoon pay for something on a date?”
“Let is a strong word,” Yoongi grumbled, playing up the part. “It’s not my fault if he’s a bully, and not above using all that muscle to physically move me out of the way.”
“Yah!” Yoongi protests as Namjoon, holding him off with one outstretched arm, slaps the required bills down on the metal counter of the food stall. “Yah! Yah, Kim Namjoon, what are you—”
“I’m paying,” Namjoon says, looking pointedly at the bemused tteokboki seller. He’d been smart about it — he’d figured that Yoongi would try something, so he’d pulled the money out of his wallet the second he’d caught sight of the stall. Yoongi, the amateur, hadn’t, and now he was paying the price.
“But I—”
“Here.” Namjoon hands him the cup of tteokboki (they’d decided to split one, still full from their supper) and one of the wooden skewers. “If you don’t eat it fast it’s going to go cold. Thank you!” he adds with a faint bow to the tteokboki seller. “Hope you have a good night!”
Yoongi’s tteokboki hunger strike at the injustice of not having been allowed to pay lasts all of three seconds after Namjoon takes his first bite. After that the two of them pass the cup back and forth easily while they walk towards the section of the Han river park where the light sculptures are purported to be. Namjoon grins into his scarf, and doesn’t even care when he gets some of the sauce on one of his gloves.
“Thanks mom, but these are just from a Daiso,” he laughs when Yoongi starts lecturing him about stain removal techniques. “You know how fast I lose them, I can always buy another pair.”
“Waste not, want not,” Yoongi says, in such a perfect imitation of Namjoon’s mother that Namjoon’s blood momentarily runs cold, and then, “Oh, look! Bungeoppang!”
This time Namjoon actually has to pick Yoongi up to make his point about who is buying. “Put me down!” Yoongi tells him, slapping the arm Namjoon hooked around his waist to move him out of the way. “Put me down, I’m the hyung, I’m—”
“Too late!” Namjoon says happily, making sure to leave a tip for the now-possibly-traumatised teen holding out the bungeoppang for them to take. “Money’s already left my hand!” He grabs the bungeoppang he bought and hands one to a still-fuming Yoongi. “C’mon hyung, a festival of lights awaits us!”
“Then we got to the light sculptures, and they were pretty cool, just like in the article I saw, and—”
“Wait.” Jimin’s eyes were narrow as he looked between Namjoon and Yoongi. “You’re telling me that you went to some light sculpture extravaganza by a river and Namjoon-hyung said not one word about the meaning of Art to any of us the whole week? Not one picture made it onto Instagram?”
Yoongi felt his blood run cold. He looked at Namjoon, but Namjoon was already shrugging, and looking at the table. The blush was back on his cheeks. “You getting back from the tour was more interesting—” Hoseok interrupted with a scoff of disbelief. “— and it was… nice, having it only be the two of us who knew. I mean, obviously we’d be telling people eventually, but, you know.”
“When the time was right,” Yoongi said firmly trying to imply if you make Namjoon feel bad about this I will personally end you through his tone alone.
“Could’ve shared pictures without saying it was a date,” Jimin grumbled, but he was promptly shushed by a frantic Jungkook, a frowning Taehyung, and an incredulously laughing Hoseok and Seokjin. Yoongi was actually a bit worried about Hoseok — he couldn’t remember last time Hoseok had gone quite so red, and he certainly met the definition of wild around the eyes. When had he last inhaled? Yoongi couldn’t remember.
“I’ll post them later,” Namjoon said, shooting a smile in Yoongi’s direction. Yoongi forgot all about Hoseok. It was nice to be on the receiving end of that smile, right up until Namjoon added a conspiratorial wink. “Maybe if you’re persuasive enough I’ll even show you our selfie.”
“Isn’t it enough that I took four million pictures of you?” Yoongi complains, but there’s no heat to it. Namjoon grins and pulls Yoongi in tighter, so their faces, or Namjoon’s face, and Yoongi’s eyes, oversized scarf, and toque, both fit in the frame.
“I want at least one that has both of us,” Namjoon tells him, shifting his phone until his favourite of the light sculptures, a fanciful blue whale with a heart shaped out of the spray atop its head, is visible beside them. “Would you rather I ask someone else to take the picture for us?”
Yoongi is pressed so tight against him that Namjoon can feel him shiver, even through their layers of warmth. “Fine,” he says, smiling as Namjoon triggers the shutter. “But you have to take at least three, and I get to pick the best one.”
They end up taking six, and then a few more with the palm tree (the angle gives him a double chin, but he manages to capture Yoongi laughing) and the dog (Yoongi pretending to pet it in the background) and the very abstract whirl of light that puts Namjoon in mind of a monsoon, and Yoongi in mind of a wave, just as it’s about to break. By the end of it Namjoon is shivering, and not just from the cold.
Jungkook looked like there was nothing he wanted more than to ask about the pictures they’d taken, except to respect Namjoon and Yoongi’s decision to share the pictures only when they felt ready. Yoongi actually felt a little bad about it, until Jungkook asked, “And then did hyung walk you home? Was that when—”
Yoongi scoffed before Namjoon could even open his mouth. “Yah, who do you take me for? Seokjin?”
He got the laugh he was looking for, along with the outraged squawk from Seokjin, and a few seconds to watch Namjoon, laughing so hard his eyes turned into deep crescents. It was nice to make Namjoon laugh.
“Of course I walked him home, but it wasn’t too late yet, and it’d been a while since we went to The Mic, so—” The rest of his sentence was drowned out by a chorus of disappointment and disgust.
“Hey!” Namjoon said, louder than all of them, “The Mic is great!”
“Yeah, but not as a spot for a first date!” Hoseok groaned, shaking his head.
Yoongi… hadn’t known that. Yoongi would’ve loved to go somewhere like The Mic on a first date. Yoongi had used The Mic as a first date location before, and to judge by the guilty, defiant, stubborn expression on Namjoon’s face, Namjoon had, too.
Namjoon hadn’t been holding his breath, exactly, as they started to run out of things to do at the light sculptures, but he’d been hoping, and when Yoongi looked at him sidelong and said, so… The Mic? in careful, quiet invitation, the hope fluttered its wings.
They get a slightly-sticky high-top table in their usual section, towards the back but still with a good view of the stage. The bartender, Jihoon, nods at them when they come in, and their drinks are delivered almost before Yoongi is done unwrapping himself from his layers of warmth. Namjoon had forgotten Yoongi was wearing his dark blue going out shirt, and that silver necklace. He tries to forget it again, with absolutely no success.
Sundays at The Mic are a much lower-key affair than their Thursday through Saturday offerings — instead of a rotating cast of hip-hop or rock acts the stage holds only one artist, a young girl holding an amplified acoustic guitar. Both her guitar and her mic are hooked up to a loop pedal, and although she isn’t using it yet Namjoon is excited. Not only does it mean he functionally gets to watch a song written in front of his eyes, but Yoongi isn’t going to be able to resist providing commentary, and there’s nothing Namjoon loves as much as listening to Yoongi break down music.
Except maybe listening to him breaking down societal issues, Namjoon muses as he takes a sip from his beer, or talking about those fun facts he collects, or explaining why the writers of Their Only Heart seemed to lose their own plot half-way through the season, or—
Something knocks against Namjoon’s foot, hard. Namjoon comes back to himself, realises he’s been staring at Yoongi, and wonders if anyone would notice if he made a very aggressive beeline for the nearest exit. “Sorry,” he says, keeping his voice in the audible-to-those-at-the-table-but-not-beyond-it range. “I think I zoned out.”
“You think?” Yoongi chuckles, gently clinking their glasses together. His whisky glints darkly in the blue-green-purple lights bathing the audience as he brings his glass to his lips and swallows. Namjoon does not watch the way his throat works. “What were you thinking about?”
You, is the truest answer, but it might be too true for their current public environment, even if everyone around them seems engaged in the girl and her guitar, or the discussion happening at their own tables. He’s had a few other thoughts though, thoughts that he could share to test the waters. After all, Yoongi was wearing his dark blue shirt, and his silver necklace, and had suggested The Mic, even though it was a Sunday, even though they both had work in the morning.
Namjoon takes a steadying breath, and watches the way Yoongi’s eyes sharpen, then go round. The sight makes his pulse quicken, and the hope in his chest beat harder against his ribs. He thinks— he must be— if he just—
“Well after The Mic I walked Namjoon home,” Yoongi said, determinedly pushing past the judgement of his date-spot choices. It was probably time to wrap things up. “And that was it.”
There was a moment of silence before, once again, there was general outcry.
“That’s it?” Hoseok demanded, straightening out of his list against Seokjin’s shoulder.
“No kiss?!” Jungkook demanded from Seokjin’s other side. “But then how—”
“Of course there was a kiss!” Namjoon said hurriedly, shooting a glance at Yoongi. Yoongi shrugged his assent. He was happy to watch Namjoon field these questions. His chest felt too tight to speak. “We had a, you know, a moment outside my place, and then we k-k-kissed—” Namjoon had to pause to swallow after saying the word. Something in Yoongi’s stomach went molten. “And then we were dating.”
Jungkook wanted to know if they heard bells while all this was happening, and Jimin wanted more details about the kissing, and whether or not there was tongue, but Hoseok couldn’t seem to get past the kissing itself.
“It was a date,” Yoongi groused, when it became clear Namjoon was too flustered to say anything more. “What do you do on dates, play checkers?”
Hoseok glared down his nose at him. “I mean you apparently take people to The Mic on a first date, I don’t know if you really—”
“Checkers are fun!” Seokjin added, tapping the table for emphasis. “And you can make up rules for it, like—”
“Hyung!” Hoseok yelped, clamping a hand over Seokjin’s mouth. “Do not talk about—”
Taehyung held up his hand. “Guys, I—”
“Plus you said yourselves it wasn’t a date at first!” Jimin said, apparently oblivious to the fact that he had missed an opportunity to learn more about the myth of how, exactly, Jungkook and Seokjin had seduced Hoseok.
Taehyung frowned. “Guys? Hey, I—”
“And then it became one!” Jungkook said, before Namjoon or Yoongi could clarify, “Weren’t you paying attention?”
“Guys!” Taehyung yelled, finally succeeding at breaking into the conversation. “I have a question to ask!”
“You look nice tonight,” Namjoon says, before he can lose his nerve. He’s rewarded for his bravery in the way Yoongi’s eyes and mouth go round with surprise, like he can’t quite believe Namjoon dared say the words out loud. Emboldened, Namjoon presses on. “I, um, I like your shirt.”
Yoongi looks down at it as if he has to check which one he’s wearing. His cheeks are pink, and the movement makes his thin silver necklace sparkle. “I— ah— thanks. I’m glad, I—” He swallows, and brings one of his hands up to rub at the back of his neck. “And you, too. You look nice, I mean.”
It’s as if every nerve in Namjoon’s body ignites at once. He’s surprised he doesn’t start shining more brightly than the stage lights. “Oh,” he says, intelligently.
Yoongi looks up at him. The surprise has softened into something impossibly fond, and maybe, hopeful, too. “You did your hair. And you wore your dorky glasses, and your fancy scarf, and—”
Namjoon grins. “You—”
Yoongi cuts him off with a scowl. “I know where you got that scarf, Kim Namjoon.”
It’d been on display in the window of a shop they passed daily during their last term of university. Namjoon had always admired it, and had known that with how frequently he misplaced things like scarves, and hats, and gloves, he should never own anything so expensive. Yoongi had bought it for him as a graduation present.
“Well,” Namjoon says, blushing, and turning his attention to fiddling with the coasters that had come with his drink, “I thought it might be fun to put a bit of effort in tonight.”
That’s it. That’s all his cards on the table, every chip down, his— he knows there’s some kind of sports metaphor that Yoongi likes to use in this kind of situation but he can’t for the life of him remember what it is. A three pointer? Something about a buzzer? Regardless, the next move is Yoongi’s. All that’s left for Namjoon is to wait.
“Yeah,” Yoongi agrees, after a subjective eternity. At first Namjoon doesn’t believe he heard it — the word hardly more than a breath, it could’ve been his ears playing a trick on him — but then he feels the brush of Yoongi’s fingers as he reaches for— for the coaster? It must be for the coaster, because the alternative is…
Namjoon lets the coaster fall to the table, and lets Yoongi hook the pads of their fingertips together. Yoongi states at them for a brief second, as if surprised by his own daring, and then looks up at Namjoon. His smile is dazzling.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Taehyung’s expression was innocent, but in the calculated way that no one who knew him would ever trust. Yoongi felt a sense of foreboding start to replace the heat in his gut.
“You said last Saturday, right?” Taehyung asked. “But last Saturday, weren’t you complaining about being out of ramyeon?”
Taehyung was right. Yoongi had picked last Saturday because he’d been home that night, and he’d known Namjoon had been home, too (they’d been texting while Namjoon caught up on the last few episodes of Their Only Heart, and Yoongi could finally vent without having to worry about spoiling anything). He’d forgotten completely that Taehyung had been spamming him pictures of Yeontan, and that he’d accidentally sent Taehyung the message about ramyeon he’d meant to send to Namjoon.
Yoongi looked across the table at Namjoon, in case Namjoon had any ideas. Namjoon did not, and worse yet, his lip was starting to twitch. Yoongi looked away hurriedly, but the damage was done.
“I knew it,” Jimin yelled, as they burst out laughing. He jabbed his finger first at Namjoon, then at Yoongi, then back at Namjoon. “You guys made that whole thing up, didn’t you! You just wanted to screw with Hobi-hyung!”
“What?” Hoseok shrieked. He looked so shocked, like he hadn’t been the least bit skeptical of their story.
Yoongi looked from him to Namjoon, and caught his eye. They both laughed harder.
“But why?” Hoseok asked, still flabbergasted.
“Yeah, why?” Jungkook echoed, but he sounded a bit… hurt?
“We make up stuff all the time,” Yoongi said, hoping to take some of the sting out of Jungkook’s expression. It wasn’t the first time they’d come up with an elaborate story, not the furthest they’d let the story carry them.
“And we’re tired of all the jokes about us being single, or finding someone to date,” Namjoon added, the tail end of his giggle still in his voice. “You can’t blame us for wanting to have a bit of fun with it.”
“But it’s been years since either of you—”
“Hob-ah,” Yoongi sighed, suddenly tired. He knew how long it had been since he and Gunwoo broke up (well, since Gunwoo said this isn’t going to work, I deserve someone who loves me as much as I love them). He didn’t need the reminder.
“What?” Hoseok said on reflex, and then— “Oh. Aish, hyung, I’m sorry. I just— I want you to be happy.” He turned his contrite expression to Namjoon, whose smile had dropped off his face. “Both of you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi said, digging up a lopsided grin from somewhere. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Namjoon soften. “Yeah, we know.”
“But we’ll still lay off the single talk, right guys?” Seokjin said, holding out his hand with his pinkie raised.
The others raised their pinkies too, Jungkook with a petulant huff, Taehyung still smug at having figured out their bullshitting. Linking all seven pinkies together was difficult but not impossible, and the humour of the moment dispelled the last of the awkward atmosphere lingering at the table. Not for the first time Yoongi found himself profoundly grateful for his friends.
They leave The Mic just before midnight, after the girl with the guitar and the loop pedal wraps up. Their breath hangs in the air as they walk, their hands shoved deep in their coat pockets, their elbows brushing. The occasional gust of wind bites at Namjoon’s ears, cuts through the fabric of his pants. Still, he matches his pace to Yoongi’s, and doesn’t comment on the fact that Yoongi’s amble seems even slower than usual.
Their conversation comes in fits and starts, and covers a wide range of topics: the stores they’re walking past, an anecdote from their workplace, an opinion on a book they’ve both read, yet another opinion about Their Only Heart, and how Lee Baekgi’s character was completely assassinated, and how it was clear he had infinity times more chemistry with the other male lead than with his official love interest. It’s the kind of conversation Namjoon loves for its familiarity, the ebb and flow as comfortable as his favourite grey track pants. It’s also the kind of conversation that doesn’t take the entirety of Namjoon’s concentration, which can be both a blessing, and a curse.
At present he’s definitely cursing — as much as he agrees with Yoongi’s impassioned speech it’s hard to stay completely focused when his mind keeps drifting back to the events of the evening, the events he’s been trying not to dwell on. They’d unfolded almost exactly as they had in the story he and Yoongi had told their friends, thanks largely to the fact that he and apparently Yoongi had done their best to make it so.
Yoongi had worn the shirt and necklace Namjoon mentioned on purpose, and noticed that Namjoon had dressed up and done his hair. Yoongi had let him pay for their street food, and had taken some cute selfies, and had suggested The Mic and now was walking Namjoon home. Yoongi had reached for his hand, had hooked their fingertips together in public. He hadn’t let go until Jihoon had appeared with their next round of drinks, which were apparently on the house, and delivered with a wink.
Namjoon sneaks a look at Yoongi’s animated expression, still describing the sins of the showrunners, and can’t help but smile. There’s one thing left from the story they’d told their friends that they haven’t done yet, and here, at the end of the night, he finally starts to believe it might actually happen.
Yoongi tuned out of the skincare conversation after three minutes. He knew that the others had multi step routines that they followed, but he’d never felt the need for anything more than a face wash and moisturizer, and so had never bothered learning about ceramides, or serums, or whatever else they were talking about. He was more interested in Namjoon, who’d hardly said a word after their seven way pinkie swear, and what might be happening in Namjoon’s head.
As if he felt Yoongi’s attention shift Namjoon looked up, a wry smile on his face. In a low voice, he asked, “Is it weird to feel jealous of the fake us?”
Yoongi didn’t need to ask for clarification. He’d been wondering the same thing. “I don’t think so. It sounds like they had a lot of fun.”
“Yeah,” Namjoon said, the word turning into a sigh at the end. He picked up the beer mat in front of him and started shredding it into pieces. “I really did want to see the light sculptures.”
It was as good an opening as Yoongi was likely to get. “Want to go tomorrow night?” He unlocked his phone to show the article he’d been reading, announcing the exhibit’s imminent departure. “It looks like they aren’t packing it up until Monday, so if you do…”
“I thought it was already gone!” Namjoon said, squinting down at the screen and scrolling through it a bit. “This is great, thanks hyung.”
Yoongi chewed on his lip and refused to give up hope. Sometimes Namjoon took a while to pick up on anything more subtle than a flashing neon sign.
His patience was rewarded seconds later — he could practically see the lightbulb flick on over Namjoon’s head. His heart hammered in his chest as Namjoon shifted in his seat, then leaned toward him over the table to ask, in a conspiratorial whisper, “Do you want to go for barbeque first?”
The entrance to Namjoon’s apartment is off a side street, with a small alcove protecting the vestibule from the worst of the winds. Yoongi has dropped Namjoon off there countless times, and joined him in going up to his apartment countless other times, and still, Namjoon feels butterflies unfurl a million tiny wings in his stomach as it comes into sight. If he wants— he has to— and things have to be perfect if—
“Joon-ah?”
Apparently at some point Namjoon’s nervous worries had hi-jacked his legs. He’s stopped walking entirely, standing in the middle of the sidewalk and staring at Yoongi’s winter proof bulk a few feet ahead of him. Even with only his eyes, and the tip of his nose, visible Namjoon can read Yoongi’s confusion, and worry.
“Sorry,” he says, hurrying forward, glad they still haven’t had their first snow. This way there’s no chance he slips on ice, or slush. “I just got distracted.”
“So you forgot to keep walking?”
Yoongi’s tone is teasing, and Namjoon can’t see his smile even though he can hear it, and suddenly that feels like a tragedy, or maybe an injustice, Namjoon seems to be losing some of his vocabulary. He can’t help himself — he reaches out, slow enough that Yoongi can step back, or tell him to stop, and when neither thing happens he tugs Yoongi’s scarf down. Yoongi is smiling, beaming, really, and all the butterflies in Namjoon’s stomach take flight at once.
“Does this count as a moment?” he whispers, sure that— yes, there’s Yoongi’s laugh, and there’s Yoongi tipping his head back, and the space between them disappearing as Yoongi goes up on his toes and throws his arms around Namjoon’s neck, and Namjoon is bending down while his arms slip under Yoongi’s, and around his back, and—
Fireworks. The loudest most triumphant swell of music Namjoon has ever heard. That feeling of jumping into a pool, after his feet have left the ground and before he’s hit the water. Standing at the top of mountain and taking in the distant horizon and knowing, with absolute certainty, that he is nothing but one tiny point in the universe, but a point comprised of pure joy.
He’s painting when they break apart — had he remembered to breathe? — and his cheeks are damp and it might just be a trick of the light but he thinks Yoongi’s eyes might be glistening, too.
“Definitely a moment,” Yoongi says, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Oh good,” Namjoon says, leaning in to steal a second kiss. “I was hoping we were.”
The tail end of his words are muffled by another kiss, and another follows fast on its heels, and they probably would’ve kept kissing if it weren’t for the sudden rumble of a car engine just around the corner. They both jump, teeth clacking together, then dissolve into laughter, clutching each other’s arms.
“Listen,” Namjoon says as he starts to catch his breath, “Listen, I know in the story you went home after the kissing, but what if—”
“Yes,” Yoongi says, before Namjoon can even finish, “Yes, but I get to have a shower before we start talking, okay? A hot shower, or at least tea, I’m so cold.”
Namjoon’s heart swells. “Of course,” he says, “But hyung, before that, you have to know, I—”
“Me too,” Yoongi says, cutting him off as his cheeks turn a deeper red. “Yah, Namjoon-ah, it’s not fair to say things like that in public.”
“But I didn’t say anything! You didn’t even let me finish!” Namjoon protests.
“But I’m not wrong about what it was going to be, am I?”
I like you, Namjoon was going to say, and then a bunch of other embarrassing things like thank you for helping me grow into the kind of person who can tell you that even though it’s terrifying, and I’m glad we’re here, now, and I’m excited to see how we grow together.
And he can see it, in Yoongi’s eyes. Yoongi knew what Namjoon was going to say because he was going to say it too, and probably will, once they’re inside, and warm, and curled up tight on Namjoon’s bed, since Namjoon’s apartment doesn’t have space for a couch, and okay, fine, it’s not really fair to say all that in public.
“No,” Namjoon grins. “You’re not.”
“Good,” Yoongi says with a sniff. “Now, put that muscle to work and get us inside. I want to kiss you without all these layers in the way.”
“Yes, hyung,” Namjoon says, and reaches obediently for the door.