Work Text:
The walk from the park where they held Jimin’s “surprise” birthday party is a full twenty minutes but Jimin is still giggling at the smear of cake down the side of Yoongi’s face, courtesy of him, when they walk through the door. He laughs harder at Yoongi’s weak scowl that fails to hide the smile he’s fighting when Jimin leans in to kiss off some of the frosting.
Yoongi nudges Jimin away and shuffles towards the bathroom, grumbling on his way, but Jimin catches sight of a grin when he turns the corner.
It’s not longer before he’s back, sinking with Jimin into the big, old oversized chair they scavenged in lieu of a couch, and Jimin is teasing him quietly with obnoxious pokes to his ribs, asking where his present is.
He’s joking, he gave Yoongi a strict directive to not buy him anything, considering they’re collectively saving to buy a house. Unexpectedly, Yoongi’s expression turns serious and he climbs over the arm of the chair and reappears moments later with a leather book.
Jimin fights half-heartedly over the gift, following Yoongi around their tiny apartment to remind him of the no-gifts rule, until Yoongi finally sighs heavily, calls him ungrateful and promises that he didn’t spend any money on it. Placated, Jimin drops onto the edge of their bed, the book in his lap, and opens the cover.
1.
“This is so rude,” Jimin whines, staring down at the first page and praying it’s not an entire set of insults. He’s not one to complain about gifts - even the one’s he doesn’t like - but if Yoongi gave him a burn book for his birthday he might have to break up with him or, at the very least, remain mad for at least a week.
“It’s true,” Yoongi mumbles from behind Jimin. As soon as Jimin sat on the edge of the bed, Yoongi curled up, just out of sight. Jimin can feel light tugs at the back of his shirt, Yoongi playing with the hem, one of the nervous habits he’s developed since they’ve started dating. Jimin got annoyed with him once, but, Yoongi said something about it calmed him down, and now Jimin barely notices. He repeats the words from the page, “You were an ugly baby.”
Jimin brushes his fingers over the old, worn photo, taken of him as a newborn, and down over the messy writing, arguing, “I’m hot.”
“Sure,” Yoongi agrees, mildly, “Now. You weren’t when you were straight out of the womb.”
Huffing in annoyance, Jimin reaches behind him to flick Yoongi’s knee. Yoongi returns the gesture against his tailbone. Turning to give him a dirty look, he’s met with a quizzical one, “Are you actually mad that I don’t think a newborn baby is hot? That’s a little messed up, Jimin.”
Yoongi sounds like he’s scolding Jimin, and Jimin almost accuses him of ruining his birthday, but Yoongi taps his hip lightly and gestures for him to go on, so Jimin decides to hold his opinion until the end.
2.
Jimin’s judgment of his appearance has varied wildly throughout his life. From year to year, day to day. Sometimes he recognizes, objectively, that he’s pretty cute. Other days he picks at the skin over his stomach and pokes at his round cheeks and ruffles up his hair and squints at the mirror thinking he could look better. On a lot of those days, Yoongi will happen to make the most casual, off-handed comment about beautiful he looks. Even as Jimin’s self esteem jumps between highs and lows, the words always ease his worry and boost his confidence.
No matter how he feels about himself, it is an undeniable fact that he was an adorable baby.
The second page has a picture carefully fixed in the exact middle, a faded polaroid of Jimin on his second birthday with an adult sized party hat slipping down over his face and covering everything but a big, happy smile.
Under this one reads: “Getting cuter every day~”
3.
Jimin laughs as soon as he turns to the third picture. He doesn’t recognize it - or remember the moment. Jihoon is sobbing, in the photo, and Jimin has wide, wet eyes fixated on a pile of smashed cake at their feet. Between Jihoon and Jimin is Yoongi, so much smaller than Jimin can imagine him being, a solemn look on his face, his arms resting across both Jihoon and Jimin’s shoulders.
“When did this happen?” He asks, tilting the book up so Yoongi can see from where he peaks around Jimin’s hip.
“Your third birthday. You and Jihoon were trying to sneak a piece of cake before dinner and knocked it off the table,” Yoongi explains. It only makes Jimin’s laughter louder. He would expect nothing else from his best friend and him, especially that young.
4.
Instead of a picture of Jimin, he’s surprised to see a long note and the cutest image he’s seen, possibly in his life.
Above it, he reads, ‘You were on a trip for this birthday, so we didn’t celebrate with you, but look at how cute I was when you were four’.
Yoongi isn’t wrong. It’s of both Yoongi and Jihoon, the brothers in matching t-shirts. He can’t tell from the background where they are, but Yoongi is standing directly behind Jihoon, the younger visibly leaning back against his brother. They’re at the perfect height for Yoongi’s chin to rest on Jihoon’s head.
In the photo, he’s wearing a wide, toothy grin. Jimin has vague memories of it, the expression, but he didn’t see it for so many years. As they got older, Yoongi grew more and more reserved and Jimin was lucky to get those shy, private smiles Yoongi seemed to reserve just for him.
He sees them more, now, sometimes, but Yoongi still tries to hide them behind his hand or in the crook of Jimin’s neck.
It’s only the fourth page of the heavy book, but, Jimin thinks it’s his favorite.
5.
The fifth is another silly one. Jimin actually remembers this too, he thinks maybe even the exact moment the photo is taken.
He and Jihoon are standing across from each other in a ball pit, Jimin’s arm pulled back, caught just before he throws, his target clearly Jihoon. Personally, he remembers Yoongi being with them, can envision the moment he accidentally beamed Yoongi in the eye with a plastic ball and Yoongi swearing he was okay even as his face was swelling and tears were escaping down his cheeks perfectly, but he’s harder to find in the picture. Jimin has to look closely at the center, where Yoongi’s face is just barely visible, emerging from the sea of balls, his body completely hidden.
“You look like a demon,” Jimin comments. Yoongi doesn’t move to see, this time, he already knows which one Jimin is viewing.
“Yeah,” he agrees, pinching the exposed skin where Jimin’s shirt rode up from his fidgeting, “That was a good day.”
“I nearly took out your eye,” Jimin reminds him, sounding incredulous.
“A good day,” Yoongi repeats, a teasing edge to his tone, but he means It.
6.
Jimin’s startled again when the format changes on the sixth page. Instead of a single, centered photo, he finds two photos glued to opposite corners.
The first is old, obvious both by the young boys in the image and the wear and tear on the object. The second is newer, and even though Jimin doesn’t recognize the event, he can see the grainy quality that identifies it as a phone shot, and he recognizes the men in the photo.
The first is from his sixth birthday, and he has no memory of that exact moment, but he remembers having a great time at the zoo and becoming exhausted an hour before anyone was ready to leave. The picture must have been taken by his parents, unbeknown to the subjects. In it, Yoongi and Jimin are seen from behind. Jimin is draped over Yoongi’s back, Yoongi’s arms locked tight around his knees. The way Jimin is slumped, and the visible half of his face, show that he’s asleep.
The second is far more recent, maybe three months old. Jimin has no idea who took it, but he can see himself, slumped against Yoongi’s side. He is obviously asleep, and the look that Yoongi is giving him is unmistakably fond.
He’s seen the same expression, awake and in person, a few times, but it’s somehow more special to see it when Yoongi knows he can’t.
7.
The next page offers a familiar sight. Jimin, with Jihoon and Yoongi on either side, is grinning at the camera, Jihoon holding a peace sign over his mouth - he lost three teeth when they were seven and kept it covered for an entire month - while Yoongi gives a half-hearted smile and a little wave. They’re squished into a booth at a restaurant, a wide array of food in front of them.
There’s nothing that special about the photo. Jimin’s pretty sure they have plenty more in the box his parents keep.
What is special is the caption. In little characters, written as small as possible while still being legible, a telltale sign that Yoongi was embarrassed while writing, reading, 'you still smile just like you did when you were a kid. like the sun coming out on a cloudy day’.
8.
Jimin needs to have a talk with his and Yoongi’s parents about when it is and isn’t appropriate to photograph someone, flipping the page to another one in which he is asleep.
He’ll let this one go, though, looking at himself, a birthday crown still haphazardly clinging to his messy hair, sandwiched between Jihoon, who is, for some reason Jimin cannot recall, fully covered in glitter, and Yoongi, who has only a thin line of red glitter across his jaw. All three of them are asleep, this time, cuddled together in a small pile of pillows on the hardwood floor of Yoongi’s bedroom.
9.
Yoongi is the focus of this picture, Jimin hidden by the angle. Once again, someone didn’t think to move to a better position before taking the photo, so it’s only of Yoongi’s back. Around him, there’s a thin pair of arms squeezing tightly. The way Yoongi’s shoulders are set, it looks as if he’s hugging Jimin back. Next to them, in the photo, is an opened gift but the contents are obscured by ripped paper.
Beneath it, 'your mom really does take pictures of everything’ is written.
10.
The caption, this time scrawled in purple ink, catches Jimin’s eye first. It reads, 'where your whole career began’. It’s hard to tell, just from the photo, what exactly was occurring at the time it was taken, but Jimin remembers.
From what he can see, a blurry Jihoon is holding a CD player above his head. Jimin is mid-dance move, and the only static person is Yoongi, laughing at them from a few feet away. What he remembers is Jihoon immediately plugging in the player Yoongi gave Jimin, putting in a CD and holding it up for them to listen to like they saw in an old romantic movie. Jimin had offered a sad attempt at copying the break dancing he’d seen on the music award shows, until Jihoon got too into it, accidentally yanked the chord out of the outlet, tripped and smashed the player just twenty minutes after Jimin had received it.
11.
It seems as if Yoongi had tried to limit himself to moments he was involved in, but as Jimin’s life progressed, Yoongi became less and less significant in the decade between when he was an important member of Jimin and Jihoon best friendship until he was Jimin’s boyfriend, fake then real.
Now that Jimin knows why Yoongi slinked out of his life, he feels guilty looking at him and Jihoon giving the camera a thumbs up from either side of a gaudy cake - the year they let Jihoon decorate it himself - while Yoongi is cut off in the back of the frame.
“Sorry we never talked to you,” Jimin apologizes, years too late.
Yoongi flicks his thigh, snorting softly at the unnecessary statement, “Thanks for starting again.”
12.
Another polaroid is set in the middle of the page, half of the frame completely black. At the edge, where the camera wasn’t blocked, Jimin can be seen, mouth open in a yell, waving wildly.
“Is this when you walked in front of the camera?” Jimin asks.
“Yeah. You were mad at me about that for weeks,” Jimin wants to argue, but he did complain about Yoongi trying to ruin his birthday party for at least a few days.
“Hey,” Jimin teases, “If you wanted to be in the picture, all you had to do was ask.”
“It was an accident!”
13.
Jimin recognizes the scene in the blurry photo immediately. He’s barely distinguishable, mid-fall. The colors of his body and clothes smudge together, a red streak flying towards him from the edge of the frame.
As annoyed as he was with Yoongi for physically throwing his gift at him, just as his mother was lining up the shot, ruining another photo, it’s one of his favorites. His mom took it at the perfect time, and even before he was friends with - or dating - Yoongi, he loved the silly photo.
It was a pretty good gift, too.
14.
Unlike the others, there’s no clear evidence of this being Jimin’s fourteenth birthday.
Yoongi and Jimin at hunched over a pile of books together, Yoongi pointing at something in the textbook directly in front of Jimin, a pen hanging out of Jimin’s mouth.
It’s clear in his mind, but Yoongi’s caption could remind him if it wasn’t, 'remember when you got so nervous about an exam you forgot your own birthday’.
15.
Jimin’s fifteenth birthday brings another surprising image.
It’s easy to discern what’s happening, Jimin’s face masked by the edge of a toilet seat, his body curled over the bowl.
'No one knows I took this’, the page says, 'but remember when you bet yourself you could eat an entire ice cream cake’.
“You’re a jerk,” Jimin decides, even as he laughs at himself and the memory.
16.
For Jimin’s sixteenth birthday, despite the cooling temperatures of the month, Jihoon and Jimin decided they should celebrate with what they incorrectly named the 'World’s Biggest Waterballoon Fight’.
A group of Jimin’s friends came. He asked his and Jihoon’s partents to participate, but all four of them declined. Jihoon suggested they ask Yoongi too, but Jimin thought it better they don’t.
Of course, it was Yoongi’s house, his yard far bigger than Jimin’s, making it kind of impossible to not invite the older boy to his party.
Only, by not technically inviting Yoongi, Yoongi hadn’t known, and when he turned the corner into the backyard at the worst possible moment, Jimin, one hundred percent by accident, beamed him with three consecutive balloons.
Someone – everyone – had snapped pictures of the resulting scene: a soaking wet Yoongi holding Jimin in a head lock.
17.
It’s strange, how often Jimin starts to regret the years he spent distanced from Yoongi. He tips back and forth between thinking it was all timing – they wouldn’t have ended up together any earlier or later – and believing, knowing Yoongi as well as he does now, it would’ve been impossible for him not to fall in love. It feels like wasted time, sometimes, the lengthy period in which they were not friends. He can’t even remember, anymore, why he and Jihoon had been talking so much shit about Yoongi the day that Yoongi cites as his reason for backing off. If only Yoongi hadn’t heard, Jimin wonders, what anniversary might they be celebrating now.
Yoongi usually tells him not to worry about him, nudges him back towards the timing being better, claiming he wouldn’t have confessed or accepted a confession until Jimin was an adult anyways.
Jimin still feels like he missed out on something amazing, understanding how quietly caring and sweet Yoongi is in every facet of his life.
Even now, looking at his favorite picture of him and Jihoon, Yoongi absent not only from the photo but the event itself, he thinks one of the best days of his life could’ve improved with Yoongi’s presence. He doesn’t dwell on it, staring for a little too long at Jihoon and him, seventeen, on a ride at the first amusement park Jimin visited with enthusiastic smiles and arms raised up mid-ride. Instead, he appreciates that Yoongi’s here now, and that he knows and remembers all of Jimin’s favorite things just for moments like these.
18.
Jimin knows now that Yoongi disappeared out of his life towards the end of high school due to the start of his late night shifts, but at the time he was just vaguely aware of something out of place. He didn’t talk to Yoongi often, other than to occasionally ask him questions and sometimes get help with homework and their yearly, usually violent birthday interactions, but he was still a constant presence in the background. Not close enough for Jimin to really, actively notice when it was gone, but enough that things felt off.
It’s clearer, looking back and looking at photos of Yoongi slowly backing into the shadows of his life. He still loves the eighteenth page, too, a picture of Jimin looking shocked at the actual mountain of gifts that Jihoon presented him with (thirty nine out of forty three were actually empty boxes), but it’s weird to think about how much has changed in ten years.
19.
Jihoon is at the forefront of the self-taken photo, his mouth curved into a disgusted sneer. Behind him, carefully framed, are Jimin and Yoongi kissing sweetly at the foot of the stairs.
In his note, Yoongi defends him, 'to be fair to jihoon, you did just say that I was your present that year’.
“You thought it was so cute that I called you my present,” Jimin claims, nudging Yoongi’s chest with his elbow.
“I still think it’s cute,” Yoongi mumbles, sounding a little sleepy, “But I don’t blame Jihoon for thinking you’re cheesy.”
Jimin doesn’t respond, but gestures with the book as if to point out Yoongi is the real cheesy one, between them, before turning the page.
20.
Another two photo page. In the first, Jimin is holding two shots over his head, mouth open as if he’s screaming, and there’s a few empty glasses already littering the table. Next to him, Yoongi is rolling his eyes with that little fond smile he has whenever he’s trying - and failing - to pretend that Jimin annoys him. It was the day Jimin finally reached legal drinking age, and his friends took him out and told him they’d pay for every drink he wanted.
The second is the aftermath of consuming a ridiculous amount of free alcohol without understanding the limits of the human body. Jimin is slumped in their booth, the empty glasses multiplied. His cheeks are flushed and when he leans in close to inspect the image, he thinks there’s drool on his chin. On either side of him are Yoongi and Hoseok, pulling silly faces in the selfie they take with him.
21.
One of Jimin’s selfies is taped to the page, with a little caption reading, 'the things I do for you…’. In the picture, Yoongi is covered in a layer of pillows and blankets, topped with Jimin. Jimin is holding his phone, pouting at the camera, but the way it’s framed, his and Yoongi’s hands, entwined over the barrier of pillows, are visible.
Unfortunately, on Jimin’s twenty first birthday, he was sick. Sick enough that he wasn’t feeling up to a party, and even if he was, the word 'contagious’ scared everyone away from his apartment for a week.
Except Yoongi, who did start sleeping in a chair, but, didn’t move out.
They both knew that Yoongi hated nothing more than being sick, but Jimin appreciated his willingness to sit vaguely close to Jimin and occasionally reach out to pat his thigh before retracting his hand and immediately wipe it with a tissue.
They also both knew that, while Jimin loved physical affection all of the time, he especially wanted contact comfort while ill.
It was a hard compromise.
In the end, Yoongi consented to mild cuddling, but only with some sort of protection between them.
He still got sick four days later.
22.
“This is cute!” Jimin exclaims when he turns to page twenty two, shocked by the unfamiliar photo, “who took it?”
“Jihoon,” Yoongi replies, surprising Jimin further. Usually Jihoon complained about them being disgusting, and the only pictures he had of Jimin and Yoongi together were sneaked shots, them in the background while he pulled a face, similar to the one Yoongi chose for his nineteenth.
In it, instead of Jihoon taking an awkwardly angled selfie of himself, it’s a straight, candid shot of the couple from across the room. It’s in the midst of the party, everyone mingling, a variety of legs and arms and side profiles accidentally caught in the edges of the frame.
Yoongi and Jimin are secluded in the corner, though Jimin remembers their moment of privacy being a brief one. Wearing one of his rare, open expressions, Yoongi’s mouth is open wide in a laugh. He’s sitting down in a chair while Jimin is standing, leaning over to kiss the tip of Yoongi’s nose, the pink tiara that Hoseok brought him to identify him as the birthday boy slipping off his head.
Jimin’s never seen it before, but he’ll treasure it forever.
23.
Jimin’s twenty third birthday was an embarrassing one. He’d gone on for weeks about how he and Yoongi were old men now, after moving into their own shared apartment, paying bills and grocery shopping once a week and going to bed at nine, he didn’t need to have ridiculous parties for his birthday anyone.
Going on about celebrating like adults, he fully expected everyone to still throw him a surprise party, they way they did every year, ruining the 'surprise’.
And then they hadn’t, respecting Jimin’s wishes for the first time in his life. Yoongi had quickly caught on to how disappointed he was and called their friends and families over. It became the first year Jimin’s birthday party was an actual surprise, thirty people showing up to his small apartment with convenience store bought food and badly wrapped gifts while he was wearing nothing but old sweatpants and in the midst of brushing his teeth.
He knows there’s a lot of embarrassing pictures of him, most of them with toothpaste smeared on his chin and his brush hanging out of his mouth, from the night but, Yoongi chose a good one.
Instead of using pictures someone else took, Yoongi pulled one from an old instagram post. It was the morning on his birthday, while he and Yoongi were both awake but not ready to get out of bed. Yoongi is buried in blankets and Jimin is sprawled on top of them, his head resting on Yoongi’s ribcage. One of Yoongi’s hands snuck out to play with Jimin’s hair, his face half-hidden by the covers. Jmin took the selfie, his arms outstretched above them, capturing both his excited grin and Yoongi’s barely visible smile.
24.
Another candid follows the selfie. Jimin’s twenty fourth birthday party was just that. A party. They originally weren’t planning on having one, Yoongi a little too stressed out from work and Jimin worrying so heavily over finances he didn’t want to try and fund anything, especially something as unnecessary as a celebration for himself.
But, their friends refused the idea of a quiet night and showed up at nine at night with a ridiculous amount of alcohol.
The picture was taken by Jimin’s new second best friend, a boy he met at the cheap coffee shop two blocks away he started frequenting when the rent unexpectedly skyrocketed, named Taehyung. He’s a bubbly little thing, and in Jimin’s defense, he thinks towards the smattering of annoyed faces Yoongi drew in a border around the image, everything dumb Jimin did that night was entirely his idea. Mostly. Like, 70%.
Taehyung took the fall and allowed Jimin to convince Yoongi that the scene in the picture had been suggested by him, Jimin too drunk to realize he should say no, but in reality Jimin hadn’t had more than a shot and it was a definite part of the 30%.
In the photo, Jimin is straddling Yoongi’s chest, Yoongi asleep on the bed with his laptop one sudden move away from slipping off the edge. Yoongi’s eyes are closed, his mouth hanging open unattractively, and Jimin is caught scrawling across his skin with a black marker. There is – of course – a dick drawn on his forehead, already, and Jimin is focused on his next masterpiece, a carefully written love note right on Yoongi’s cheek.
Jimin, to Yoongi, pretends it was a drunken mistake, but to everyone else, he stands strong on his position that it was hilarious. He doesn’t apologize for this one.
25.
Jimin quietly compliments Yoongi on the nice mix of sweet and silly, getting nothing but a soft grunt in response, as he flips away from the funny candid to one of his favorite selfies.
Every birthday (his, Yoongi’s and usually Jihoons, plus holidays and their anniversaries, including the day they moved in together) Jimin demands that everyone involved join him for a picture so they can look back and measure their growth.
“Bet you’re happy I do it now,” Jimin jokes, without context. Yoongi just tells him to shut up.
Usually, Yoongi complains that they do it enough, or that he’s looked the same since he was nineteen, or that Jimin hasn’t changed at all since they took the last one a month before. No matter his excuse, he still smiles (or, at least, doesn’t look too unhappy) and poses with Jimin.
Out of every celebratory picture Jimin has forced Yoongi to take with him, his twenty fifth birthday is the best. Yoongi had argued and whined, as he always did, until finally standing behind Jimin and grimacing. Just as Jimin got the angle perfect, and shifted his finger down to press the capture, Yoongi brightened significantly, pulled Jimin closer by his waist and leaned over his shoulder to kiss his cheek.
The sudden movement made it come out sloppy, their bodies a little blurred at the edges and Jimin’s perfected 'camera smile’ ruined by shock. But, with the corner of Yoongi’s mouth pulled up in a little smirk even as his lips pressed against Jimin’s skin and his arms curled around Jimin’s waist, it was too perfect to retake.
26.
Jimin immediately notices that page twenty six is not actually a photo from his birthday.
Yoongi is tucked against Jimin’s side, Jimin holding him close and kissing his temple. His eyes are closed, but Yoongi is looking at the camera with the brightest grin he’s even had. They’re dressed formally, in nice, pressed tuxedos, but Jimin’s is ruffled and wrinkled. Both of them hold up their left hands, Jimin’s displayed over Yoongi’s shoulder while Yoongi’s ring and pinky fingers are sticking out in a peace sign. Matching silver bands sit on their ring ringers.
A longer caption is written on this page, 'I know it wasn’t your birthday (it was December 2nd) but I thought this was more important’.
“It was more important,” Jimin agrees quickly, turning to fully look at Yoongi, who looks as if he started napping.
“What?” He asks, not opening his eyes.
“Our wedding. Us. It’s more important than any birthday. Every birthday.”
“Shut up,” Yoongi mumbles, “You’re so embarrassing.”
Jimin flicks his cheek lightly, muttering about Yoongi being the embarrassing one as he returns to the last couple pages of his birthday gift.
27.
Jimin decides he loves the pictures he’s never seen before even more than the ones that are long time favorites.
After years of throwing parties at their small apartment, they decided to switch settings in the unseasonably nice October afternoon and went to the nearby park instead. It had been a fun party, everyone bringing homemade picnics that were swapped and shared among the entire group. Rather than inviting anyone who wanted to come, they made it a more intimate affair, only Jimin’s family and closest friends attending.
Towards the end of the evening, just as the sun was getting ready to set, Jimin found a swing a little ways away from the party. He hadn’t been on one since he was a kid, and Yoongi’s half-hearted complaints that they were responsible adults were weak against Jimin’s pout when he asked Yoongi to push him.
Someone must have noticed they snuck off and come to find them. The picture shows both of them, Jimin’s legs stretched as he flies towards the sky. Yoongi’s arms are still out from the push that caused it. Both of them are laughing, happy and free, neither of them paying any attention to their surroundings or the photographer.
28.
The final page offers no image, only a note.
'Jiminnie, happy birthday. Year after year, I’ve watched you become a more amazing person. You’ve always been the best one I know. I hope that you have many more happy birthdays, and that you choose to spend all of them with me.’