Work Text:
There is a certain kind of pain that stems from seeing something too beautiful. It’s the sort of pain that comes with something out of your reach yet so close to you, close enough for you to experience but impossible to capture, impossible to describe. You can’t hold onto it- you see it and it’s gone, fleeting, evanescent.
That’s how Jimin feels when he sees Yoongi.
He doesn’t realize it at first. At first, Yoongi is just another visitor, and Jimin loves visitors. Loves the way they gaze at his art with awe, fingers hovering over paintings they fear touching, as if they are priceless, loves the reactions clear on their faces. I did that, he thinks, when their faces change.
But Yoongi is not quite like the others. He asks for Hoseok, who hasn’t arrived yet, and then he stands in front of one of Jimin’s latest paintings, a punching bag hanging in a worn down boxing gym. He stares at it for so long, blank expression, that Jimin fidgets. He can’t focus on his current project, too caught up in waiting for Yoongi’s reaction; of course, he hasn’t been able to focus for days, but that’s another matter.
Jimin inches to the edge of his seat when Yoongi’s gaze flickers in his direction.
“Sad,” Yoongi says, gesturing to the lonely gym.
A few people have commented on that particular work, but no one has ever called it sad.
Yoongi heads to a long window overlooking the patio outside their studio, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Cool if I smoke in here?”
It isn’t, because Hoseok hates the smell, but Jimin finds himself nodding. Yoongi shakes the box at him, eyebrow raised.
“No, thanks.”
Jimin returns to his work, struggling with the balance of colors, soft breaths and the scent of smoke the only reminder of Yoongi’s presence. It’s been like this for days, this struggle, this lack of inspiration. Weeks he has spent in the studio trying to create something and leaving with nothing. Ideas bounce around in his head and Byulyi’s commission awaits completion but nothing comes out right, if it comes out at all.
Some time passes before he looks to Yoongi, but when he does, he sucks in a sharp breath. Yoongi leans on the wall by the window, head turned to gaze out. His jaw is a sharp line, the tendons in his neck apparent. Strands of messy blond hair fall into his lidded eyes. He brings the cigarette to his lips and inhales. His eyes drift shut, lashes playing across smooth skin, and he exhales. Smoke curls around his lips and dances among flecks of dust in the air, catching the sunlight that bathes him. Shadows move across his face but the light brushes the edges of his body like a halo.
Yoongi is so beautiful it hurts.
Without a second thought, Jimin pulls a sketchbook into his lap, pencil flying in a desperate attempt to capture the scene before him. Yoongi moves, the illusion shattered, but the image is imprinted on the back of Jimin’s eyelids.
So immersed in the drawing, Jimin doesn’t notice Yoongi approach him on light steps until he is standing right in front of him, hands in his pockets. He raises his eyebrows at the sketch, and Jimin fumbles his pencil, cheeks heating up.
“Oh—the lighting was good.” He tries to sound less embarrassed than he feels as he flicks his gaze up to hold Yoongi’s. Yoongi looks away first.
“The boxing gym. That’s yours?” Jimin nods. “They’re both sad.”
Jimin glances at his sketch and then at his painting. “Nobody’s said that before.”
“You used to box.”
It isn’t a question. “Yeah.”
“But you don’t anymore.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so.”
Yoongi retreats to a rickety, paint-splattered chair by the door, and Jimin returns to his sketch, more than a little unsettled. How does he know so much, just from one painting? It’s been a long time since Jimin boxed, a long time since he talked to anyone about it. Sometimes if he closes his eyes he can still feel the thud of a hard punching bag beneath his wrapped fists, can still hear the squeak of his shoes on a cement floor, feel the sweat drip into his eyes. These days his fists close around paintbrushes.
Once he starts drawing again, his unsettlement over Yoongi’s words and presence disappears. Every now and then, he glances over at Yoongi, to capture the slope of his nose or the curve of his bow-shaped lips. Yoongi doesn’t look up when Jimin does, but each time he shifts and fidgets and Jimin knows he is well aware of the attention.
It’s been too long since he felt satisfied about a piece of his art, but he’s happy with this one. He props the sketchbook on his easel so he can examine it, lips quirked in a slight smile. Yoongi watches him, but as soon as Jimin catches him he looks away immediately, a light dusting of pink across his cheeks.
“I finished. See?”
Jimin brings him the sketch, grinning. Yoongi stares up at him, looking a little dazed, until Jimin shakes the sketchbook to catch his attention. He takes it, and now he looks a little awed.
“Is this what I look like?”
“To me.”
The door opens. Hoseok enters, sweatshirt half-on and in the middle of a frazzled hello.
“Yoongi, I’m so sorry I’m late-”
Jimin snatches the sketchbook back as Hoseok approaches.
“Good, you already met? Did you draw something new, Jimin?”
“No. I tried. But no.” Jimin returns to the other side of the studio, hiding his book under a pile of papers. Hoseok knows how long Jimin has been trapped in this artistic rut. That it took a boy with delicate features smoking by the window to inspire him feels too strange to admit.
Yoongi raises his eyebrows at him, but all he says is, “What the fuck took you so long, Hoseok?”
“Taehyung left the door open and the cat got out and we were running all over the building looking for him and this old lady started yelling at us and-”
“Okay, okay. Can I just have Jin’s painting? I have to go.”
Hoseok fetches the piece he has been working on for the past month and hands it to Yoongi with a proud smile. “Here you go. Tell Jin I had to take a few liberties with his request, but it’s basically what he wanted.”
“Are you coming to the studio later? Namjoon finished his verse.”
Jimin pretends like he’s busy organizing his pencils and not listening in to their conversation. If Yoongi knew Namjoon then he must have been a rapper, too.
“I’ll be there.”
Yoongi pauses in the doorway and directs his next question to Jimin. “Do you take commissions?”
Jimin pauses, blinking, surprised. “I do.”
He nods thoughtfully, says goodbye, and leaves.
Hoseok turns to Jimin curiously. “Did he like your work that much?”
“Everybody loves my work,” Jimin teases, but he’s curious, too. And a little hopeful. He finds himself, for some reason, wishing Yoongi will come back and commission him. “How do you know him?”
“You know how I’ve been rapping with some guys at the music studio down the street? He’s one of them. Real good, pretty popular underground.”
Jimin wants to ask if he’ll ever come back, wants to ask if he can come to the studio with Hoseok tonight, because it’s been so long since he drew something he likes and he’s not sure how Yoongi managed to inspire him like that but he wants to know if it might happen again. Even though he knows it’s just a fluke. Sure, he can draw today, but tomorrow he will be back to normal. That’s happened a few times lately. He finds inspiration for a day, creates something and likes it, but the next morning he wakes up and loathes it. Before he knows it, he has torn it to pieces and buried it in the trash.
All his optimism from before vanishes as quickly as it came. He trashes everything he makes for the rest of the night.
-
Jimin goes home to an empty apartment, heavy silence, and a slight chill. He has lived alone for three months now but sometimes he still expects to come back to Jungkook sprawled across the floor playing video games on their small TV. It’s better this way, logically speaking, better that there aren’t two boys sharing a tiny apartment where the bedroom, kitchen, and living room are condensed into one space and two mattresses take up all the room there is. There’s only one mattress now, and even enough space for a couch.
But Jimin hates being alone. It’s hard to sleep without Jungkook’s quiet snores filling the room. The apartment is painfully small, but with only Jimin to fill it, it’s far too large.
He lays back on his bed, kicking off his shoes, and stares at the ceiling. He’s pretty sure he has paint on his face, but he doesn’t feel like moving. He’s tired to the bone, but he doesn’t feel like sleeping. He should close his eyes but he can’t. So he traces the cracks and water stains in the ceiling and wonders what Yoongi’s voice would sound like, low and rough from smoking, rapping into a quiet room. What would he look like, framed by the shifting lights and shadows of a small stage in a dark club, a snapback tugging his light hair, his delicate face scrunched up in concentration? He wants to see it, but he can’t. He can’t, so he grabs his colored pencils and paper and draws it instead.
-
Jimin doesn’t see him for three weeks and two days. He knows because those are three weeks and two days where he throws everything he makes into the garbage. Once he hates a watercolor he makes so much that he sets it on fire on the patio outside the art studio, watches it burn to nothing with a sort of sick satisfaction.
“Jimin, you have a commission to work on. You’ve got to stop trashing everything you make,” Hoseok tells him after that particular incident. “Stop giving up.”
But Jimin is tired. He is so tired and he can’t sleep and now he’s regretting deciding to be an artist, and regretting convincing Jungkook to take that high school equivalency test and apply to college. Regretting it because even though it’s better this way, better for Jungkook to have stability and a future that doesn’t involve a leaking apartment building that smells like weed and working extra jobs and instant noodles for dinner every night, Jimin has always been a little selfish, and he’s lonely.
Most of all, he regrets quitting boxing. Even though that wasn’t in his control, not really. But some days Jimin feels like everything is in his control, and by default everything that goes wrong is his fault, too.
Sometimes Yoongi’s voice echoes in his head, when things are particularly quiet; sad, he had called it, even though there’s nothing sad about that painting except for the way Jimin felt when he made it.
Contrary to Jimin’s expectations, they do meet again, late one evening when Yoongi stops by the studio not long after Jimin returns from one of his day jobs at a coffee shop.
“Hoseok will be here in a minute.”
“I was—looking for you, actually.”
“Me?” He had tried to stifle the brief surge of something he had felt when Yoongi walked in, but now he can’t push it away. His heart thuds undeniably.
“You said you take commissions.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you paint me something? I’ll pay whatever.”
“What do you want?” He shouldn’t be taking on another commission, not now when his artist’s block is so deep, but his mouth moves before his brain catches up.
“A basketball court.”
He waits, but Yoongi says no more. “That’s it?”
“Kind of like the punching bag one.” He gestures to it, propped up against the wall, and Jimin is surprised he liked so much a painting Jimin did spontaneously, just for himself.
“What medium do you want it in?” When Yoongi looks confused, he elaborates, “Oil, watercolor, acrylic-”
“Oh, uh, you choose.”
“It can take up to four months.”
“That’s fine.”
He hesitates before the question he really wants to ask. “Do you play basketball?”
“Used to.”
He says it the same way Jimin does when someone says do you box? Jimin wants to know more but it isn’t his place to ask.
“I need a picture,” he says instead. “Of you playing basketball.”
“What?” Yoongi lights a cigarette, frowning. “I don’t want to be in the painting.”
“I know. I need it for inspiration.”
Yoongi looks skeptical, but he nods. “I’ll bring one tomorrow.”
“Bring what?” Hoseok comes upon them so suddenly they both jump. He slings his arm around Yoongi then wrinkles his nose. “Quit smoking in here.”
“Sorry,” Yoongi says, but he doesn’t put his cigarette out.
“Oh, let me get you the commission contract.”
“Yoongi, you’re commissioning Jimin?” Hoseok’s voice changes, less cheery, as Jimin fetches the contract and a pen.
“Turn around.” Yoongi presses the form against Hoseok’s back and starts to fill it out.
“I can get you a book to lean on-” Jimin starts, but Yoongi cuts him off.
“Nah, this is good.” His gaze flickers to meet Jimin’s, smirking slightly.
Jimin grins back, the big one that turns his eyes into crescents that he’s embarrassed about because everyone calls it cute. Yoongi’s smirk falters, and he looks away.
Hoseok gently grabs Jimin’s wrist before he can walk away. “Jiminie, are you sure you should be taking commissions right now?” Hoseok’s got on that comforting tone, the one Jimin hates because it makes him feel weak and vulnerable and like it’s okay to cry even when it isn’t.
“It’ll be fine.”
“Jimin,” he says, more seriously.
“Is something wrong?” Yoongi pauses, nearly at the end of the contract, and glances between them.
“Nothing.” Jimin tries to sound cheery but then Hoseok eyes him and his composure breaks a little. He frowns at his feet, wrist still trapped in Hoseok’s grasp.
“Jimin hasn’t drawn anything he likes in months. He’s been throwing everything he makes away.”
“Hoseok.”
“I’m sorry, Jimin, but I don’t think you should take another commission.”
“Did you throw that sketch away, too?”
Jimin knows exactly what Yoongi is talking about. He can’t bear to lie. “No.”
“What sketch?” Hoseok says. “Jimin, you made something and kept it?”
He would lie but it’s too late and Hoseok won’t stop until he sees it. So Jimin brings him the sketch of Yoongi by the window, and Hoseok stares at it for a long time before speaking.
“It’s good, Jiminie. Really good. Are you over your slump?”
And before Jimin can stop him, he’s flipped to the next page, to the colored drawing of Yoongi on stage. The one that was supposed to stay a secret from everyone. Jimin grabs the book but it’s too late. They’ve already seen it. He feels the blush spread across his cheeks.
“Was that me, too?” Yoongi says.
“I—Hoseok said you were a rapper—so I just-” He’s not supposed to be flustered. He’s usually the one doing the flustering.
“You said you haven’t been able to draw anything.” Hoseok’s tone is a little accusatory.
“I haven’t. I can’t. This was just one day. I haven’t done anything since.” He looks everywhere but at them.
“Maybe Yoongi’s your muse.” Hoseok grins, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
Jimin rubs the back of his neck, chuckling. “Maybe.”
There’s a stain of pink on Yoongi’s cheeks again. “Shut up, Hoseok. So can I commission you or not?”
“You can.”
Yoongi scrawls a messy signature on the contract and Jimin breathes something like a sigh. The weight of another piece that he may or may not be able to create already presses down on his shoulders, but this time it’s mixed in with a tinge of excitement.
-
As promised, Yoongi shows up the next day with a picture. It’s a good one, clearly old; there’s still baby fat on Yoongi’s cheeks, and his hair is dark and short. He’s in the middle of a shot, feet hovering above the ground, hands outstretched, basketball flying from his fingertips.
“It’s perfect.”
“So, four months?”
“At the latest.”
“Do you do a lot of commissions?”
“I’ve done a fair amount.”
Yoongi fidgets, glancing around, and Jimin gets the idea that he’s stalling, looking for something to say. So Jimin asks him to look at his art and tell him which ones are his favorites to get a sense for what he wants out of his commission. Jimin doesn’t really need to, because Yoongi was so straightforward about what he wanted, but he wants Yoongi to stay. They both stall, for a while, until Yoongi has to leave and Jimin has to work.
“You can come check on the piece in a month. I’ll call you if it’s coming along faster.”
“Can I—can I come watch you work some time? I mean, it’s fine if that makes you uncomfortable, I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to be on your ass to make sure you’re doing it right or anything, I’m just-”
“Sure.”
“What?” He looks surprised. “Really?”
“Come whenever.” He never lets clients watch him work because that can create problems, but Jimin has already proven that when it comes to Yoongi he’s an idiot.
“All right.” Yoongi smiles. “I will.”
-
He starts Yoongi’s commission, but he has trouble again. Byulyi has been calling to find out when she can come in and look at her commission, but Jimin has nothing to show for his days of work. He can’t stop thinking about his drawings of Yoongi and how well they turned out.
One day when he and Hoseok are closing the studio, he asks, “Are you going to the music studio now?”
“After I grab some takeout for everyone. Why?”
“Can I come watch? I’ll pay for takeout, my treat.”
Hoseok narrows his eyes suspiciously. “You’ve never asked to come before.”
“I just feel like watching. Don’t wanna go home.”
“Aren’t you tired? You worked all day and then came straight here. It’s almost midnight.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Is this because of Yoongi?” Hoseok is never shy about getting to the point.
“What? No!” Jimin splutters.
“Jimin.”
He sighs. “I can’t draw again. But I drew him. I just want to know if it’s a fluke or not.”
“I was kidding about that muse thing, you know.”
“It’s not that.”
“Don’t get caught up depending on someone other than yourself for inspiration. Trust me, that never ends well.”
“I won’t. I swear.”
“Fine. But I want fried chicken and beer.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Jimin salutes.
They buy the food and head to a small studio in the nearby music building. It sports a tiny recording booth and plenty of equipment, large monitors and busy soundboards. Yoongi and Namjoon are huddled together, so deep in conversation they don’t even notice the others enter. Jimin has met Namjoon a few times before, at Hoseok’s home and when he stops by the art studio every now and again.
“Look who’s here!” Hoseok shouts. “With a shit ton of fried chicken and beer.”
He pushes Jimin forward just as they look up. Namjoon smiles. Yoongi’s eyes register surprise.
“Jimin!” Namjoon exclaims, getting up to greet him. “What brings you here?”
Yoongi is still looking at him, and for a strange, silly moment he wishes he was in something more stylish than an oversized sweater and ripped jeans. He is almost one hundred percent sure there’s paint in his hair, too.
Yoongi takes a bag of food from him. “Nice to see you, Jimin, but I’m more concerned about the chicken.”
Jimin laughs. “Me, too.”
After they eat, Jimin perches on a rather tattered couch in the corner of the room, sketchbook resting on his knees. For a while he just listens to them work, debating lyrics and sound progressions. Occasionally someone will turn to him and ask his opinion on a particular line or beat. Yoongi is a perfectionist. Even when the others are satisfied he will persist, at least when it comes to his own parts.
At one point Namjoon snaps, “If you keep changing your verse you’ll never finish.”
Yoongi answers in a voice laced with deep frustration, “It’s not good enough.”
As much as they are serious, they laugh over silly things, like when Hoseok insists on making car engine noises halfway through his verse, or when Namjoon mentions Converse at the start of his. It’s the first time Jimin sees Yoongi laugh like that, so openly. He’s just as silly as the other two, joking and dancing and grinning. He goes from intense to carefree in seconds. So that’s what Jimin draws, two side-by-side sketches, one of Yoongi laughing and one of his brow furrowed, leaning over the soundboard.
It comes so easy that Jimin almost forgets he had artist’s block to begin with.
They take a break to eat more chicken, and while Namjoon and Hoseok engage in a lively debate about recent girl group dances, Yoongi sits by Jimin. As usual, he catches a glimpse of the sketch before Jimin can hide it.
“Why do you always draw me?” His tone is curious rather than accusatory.
“I don’t know. Maybe you really are my muse.” Yoongi snorts, but he’s flushing, so Jimin grins and scoots closer, nudging him. “What, are you embarrassed?”
“Shut up, brat.”
Jimin giggles. They sit in comfortable silence for a time before Yoongi breaks it, voice low.
“I don’t get it. There’s not much about me worth drawing.”
“That’s not true.” Jimin surprises them both with the vehemence in his tone. He can’t explain why it makes him so upset, just that it does. “I haven’t made anything I liked for months, you know. Months. I had to ask for an extension on a commission. I’ve never done that before. I only got away with it because Byulyi knows me. I’ve had no inspiration, no creativity. I feel like an empty well. It’s tiring. But because of you I’ve finally been inspired. I don’t know why, but. Obviously there’s a lot about you worth drawing.”
Yoongi doesn’t look convinced. But he says, “I understand it. That struggle. I’ve been working on the same verse for three months. Namjoon and Hoseok are about ready to kill me, I think. But it’s like no matter what I write, it’s never good enough.”
“Exactly.”
They share a smile of understanding. Jimin feels a little lighter.
“You guys are getting awfully cozy over there,” Hoseok says, startling them. He and Namjoon are both staring.
Jimin presses closer to Yoongi, slinging his arm through Yoongi’s. “You got a problem?”
Yoongi pushes his head away in mock disgust. “Get off me.”
Jimin scrunches up his face until Yoongi laughs.
They leave soon after, when Hoseok ruffles Jimin’s hair and says he’s got to get the little one home, and Jimin threatens to fight him because Yoongi’s only like one centimeter taller, why am I a kid?
They’re standing at the bus stop, the only ones there since it’s so late, when Hoseok puts an arm around Jimin’s shoulders and says, “You and Yoongi seem to be getting along.”
“Shut up.”
“He’s cute, right?”
Jimin nudges an elbow into Hoseok’s stomach, who wiggles his eyebrows. “What are you trying to say?”
“He’s not straight, if that’s what you are wondering.”
He is. “I’m not.”
Hoseok pinches his cheeks. “Look at little blushing Jiminie.”
“I’m going to kill you.” He shoves Hoseok away, miming a few punches, but he’s laughing.
-
He can’t sleep that night, as always. He lies on the thin mattress searching for shapes among the cracks in his ceiling like they’re clouds. At some point he picks up his phone without realizing he has made the decision, fingers hovering over the call button. It’s so late it’s basically morning but he knows Jungkook is awake. The phone rings so long he starts to think he’s wrong, but then Jungkook’s laughing voice answers.
“What’s up, Jimin?”
“Kookie.” His voice shakes a little at the end, but Jungkook doesn’t notice.
“Hey, you should come visit-” Something crashes in the background and someone laughs through the thrum of loud music. Jungkook yells and someone yells back.
“Am I bothering you?”
“Of course not.” But then he’s yelling something again, and Jimin sighs. “Actually, I’m just at a party right now, so I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
Jungkook hangs up in the middle of saying goodbye. Jimin should be happy that Jungkook is doing well, but instead he feels empty, hollow. He rolls over and stares at the couch where Jungkook’s bed used to be, and if he loses himself enough he’s sure he can hear his voice. Jiminie, wake up. You had a nightmare. Come over here?
He’s had a lot of nightmares since he stopped boxing. But there’s no one to wake him up and comfort him when he has them anymore, so he just doesn’t sleep.
-
Yoongi comes to visit as promised, and after a few teasing comments, Hoseok takes his work to the patio, leaving them alone. Yoongi watches Jimin finger paint a night sky on a large canvas, hopping this way and that in his paint-splattered overalls. He smokes while he does, leaning against the wall.
“Is that your other commission?” he finally says.
“Byulyi wants two people counting stars. It’s a gift for her girlfriend. I’m doing the sky first.”
“I thought only five-year-olds finger paint.”
Jimin snorts. “Well, I’m clearly not a five-year-old.”
“I don’t know about that. You’re pretty small.”
“Hey!” Jimin comes for him, holding up his paint-covered hands. “I’m only like a centimeter shorter than you.”
“Touch me and I’ll kill you, Park Jimin.”
So of course Jimin swipes a finger across Yoongi’s cheek, leaving behind a smear of yellow paint. Yoongi pulls him into a headlock in retaliation. He smells like cigarettes and soap, his laugh close to Jimin’s ear.
When Yoongi lets him go, Jimin says, “You have a nice laugh.”
Yoongi’s smile fades. He clears his throat, lights up his second cigarette. “Thanks.”
Jimin goes back to work. It’s easier with Yoongi there. He was getting somewhere before but now he can see it so clearly—two shadows lying on the grass, hands behind their heads, a halo of fuzzy starlight around them. He’s hyperaware of Yoongi’s presence, every move he makes, every puff of smoke, but it isn’t distracting. Instead, he works even better.
Yoongi is on his fourth cigarette when Jimin takes his next break. He’s scrawling lyrics into a small pocket journal. Jimin sits on the cement floor by Yoongi’s chair.
“For a new rap?”
“For the old one.”
“The one you can’t fix.”
“Yeah.”
He jots down a few more words then stops, taking a drag from his cigarette and leaning back. Jimin curls his arms around his knees and admires the way the shadows from the window play across Yoongi’s soft face. He wants to draw him. He always wants to draw him.
“You don’t always smoke this much, do you?”
“No.”
“Then why are you doing it now?”
Yoongi glances at him and away, running his hand through his hair, and just when Jimin thinks he won’t answer he says, “You make me nervous.”
-
The next time Yoongi visits, Jimin invites him home.
Jimin has just arrived to the studio from his friend’s art show. Still dressed in a suit and tie, he isn’t about to paint and only stops by for his sketchbook. Yoongi waits there already, talking to Hoseok. Jimin knows he looks good; he can see it in Yoongi’s eyes when Hoseok smacks his ass and says nice suit, asshole. But that’s not why he invites him over. He invites him over because Yoongi is sick.
It’s not terribly cold out, yet Yoongi is bundled in a beanie and scarf as long as he is tall, sniffling and rubbing his pink nose. He looks so adorably pathetic, huddled there sneezing, that Jimin can’t resist. He knows the perfect remedy for colds, and he also knows he has all the ingredients he needs for it at home. He can’t bear it when someone is in pain while he can help, so he asks Yoongi over for Park Jimin’s Special Fantastic Cold Remedy, you’ll be better in no time, promise!
They leave to Hoseok’s coos and snickers.
No one has come to Jimin’s apartment besides Hoseok in a long time. For a moment he runs around tossing clothes into the wardrobe and pushing shoes into corners. He looks at the place through Yoongi’s eyes, and it’s not impressive. Shabby carpeting, chipping paint, a leak in the ceiling. Tiny kitchen and tiny room all in one, his thin mattress, the small window.
“Sorry—um, it’s not much.”
“What are you sorry about? Don’t be an idiot.”
“Just let me change and I’ll get started, okay? Sit wherever.”
Jimin makes sure to start stripping his jacket and shirt before he even makes it to the bathroom. He comes out in a tank top and sweats to Yoongi sitting at the counter’s lone stool, wrapped in Jimin’s blanket.
“I’m sorry. I would turn the heat up, but I haven’t paid the bill, so. There isn’t any.”
“It’s okay,” Yoongi says, voice muffled in the blanket. “I hope you have another blanket because you probably shouldn’t use this one now.”
Jimin laughs and puts the tea to boil first, filling up a pot of water for the soup and setting it aside.
“Are the other burners broken?” Yoongi notices.
“They started going out last year, one by one.”
“I can fix those sometime, if you want.”
“Really?” Jimin spins around, eyes wide. “No way.”
“Sure.” He sniffs. “Can I smoke?”
“That probably isn’t very good for your throat right now.”
Yoongi shrugs and lights up anyway. Jimin finishes the herbal tea, his mom’s recipe, and when he turns to hand it to Yoongi, he bursts into laughter.
“What the fuck are you laughing at, Park Jimin?”
“You look so cute,” he giggles, and Yoongi does, bundled up with his delicate, pouty face and cigarette perched between his lips.
“Shut up, brat.”
Jimin fishes utensils out of the broken drawer, still giggling.
“I can fix that, too. Is everything here broken?”
“Pretty much. How come you know how to do all that?”
“My roommate is useless. If he looks at something wrong it’ll break.”
“And I thought I was bad.”
“How long have you lived alone?”
“Like, three months? I had a roommate before, but he left.”
“A roommate? In this little place? You must be happier alone.”
Jimin shrugs one shoulder, focused on the stove. “It’s lonelier.”
“Why did he leave?”
“He got a scholarship to university.” Jimin may be bitter about Jungkook leaving him, but he can’t help the note of pride in his voice. “He dropped out of high school a few years after I did, became an artist like me. But last year he took an equivalency test and did really well. So now he’s going to be a physical therapist.”
“He sounds like he’s got his life together. Did he give up on art?”
“He didn’t give up. He just decided to take the safer route.” The smarter route, perhaps. The route that didn’t involve working two shitty jobs to live in a shitty apartment and be an artist. Jimin pulls a homemade smoothie out of the fridge and leans on the counter across from Yoongi.
“You don’t look very happy about that.”
“I just miss him. It feels a little like being left behind.”
“If you could give up art and go to university, would you?”
Instinctively he says, “No.” But then he sighs. “I love art. I could never give it up. But—I don’t know if it’s worth all this.” He gestures around him. “My parents don’t think so.”
“They’re not happy with your decision?”
“They talk to me, like, once a year, so unhappy is an understatement.” He chugs half his smoothie in one go. “What about you? Is music worth it? Do your parents care?”
“Some days the answer is a confident yes, it’s so worth it. Some days I don’t know. And I’ve never been close to my parents, so they’re irrelevant.”
The soup has started to boil. Jimin stirs and pours a bowlful for Yoongi, placing it before him with a flourish. “Ta-da! Park Jimin’s Special Fantastic Cold Remedy.”
Yoongi gingerly tastes a spoonful. His eyebrows shoot up. “This is really good.”
“Of course it is. Did you doubt me?”
“You don’t really look like the cooking type.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he exclaims, faking offense. Yoongi rolls his eyes.
They sit quietly for a while. It used to be the same for Jimin, with art- some days a confident yes, some days I don’t know. But now it’s more like the good days are when he doesn’t know, and the normal days are an overflowing mass of confusion where he doesn’t know how he feels at all. But he tries not to think about that and revels in Yoongi’s presence because it’s so unbelievably relieving to not be alone, to have someone to eat with, to hear someone else’s breaths. It feels a little like nothing is impossible. Jimin is tired of being alone.
Yoongi is nearly done with his soup when he gets a text that causes his face to scrunch with irritation. “Fuck you, too,” he says to his phone.
“Everything okay?”
“My fucking useless roommate is bringing home a girl again and told me not to come back tonight. Fucking asshole.”
“Ouch. Does he do that a lot?”
“All the time. I’m going to kick his ass to the curb. He knows I’m sick. Couldn’t he have kept it in his pants for, like, two days?”
“You can stay here tonight, if you want.” As usual, Jimin’s speaking before his brain can catch up.
Yoongi’s gaze flickers up to hold his, and there’s a certain tension in the air that wasn’t there before. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”
“Sure it is,” Jimin says, acting like he’s oblivious to the other meaning behind Yoongi’s words. “It doesn’t look like there’s enough room, but there is. I can sleep on the couch.” He leans forward slightly without even realizing it, cocking his head. “Come on.”
Yoongi holds his eyes for another quiet moment before he nods. “All right.”
-
Jimin has trouble falling asleep. He always does, but tonight it’s different. Tonight it’s because he can hear Yoongi breathe and move and he’s so on edge because there’s a foot between them, maybe. Yoongi can’t sleep either; Jimin knows from the sounds of restless movements.
It’s so late Jimin is afraid to check the time when Yoongi speaks.
“Jimin?”
“Yeah?”
“You awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it really easier for you to draw because of me?”
Jimin smiles. Yoongi is awfully caught up on this muse thing. “I can’t draw but then I see you and I want to. I’m inspired. Even my other commission, it’s easier for me to work on now because. Well. I’m sort of imagining one of the silhouettes as you.” And the other as himself, but he doesn’t say that. “I don’t know why. When you come to the studio, I get my work done so much easier. It’s been ages since I drew anything I like. The last thing was the painting of my boxing gym.”
Yoongi is so quiet that Jimin is afraid he’s finally weirded him out, but then he says, “Why did you stop boxing?”
Jimin closes his eyes briefly. Jimin. Sometimes he can still hear his trainer’s voice say his name, encouraging to frustrated and eventually, frightened. His fists still feel the phantom punching bag graze against them. “I got injured. My ankle. Couldn’t walk for months. It’s fine now, for normal everyday stuff. But if I try to train like that again I’ll destroy it.” He shifts to his side so he can look at Yoongi, who does the same. “I was pretty good. I could have made it to the Olympics.”
“Now you’re an artist.”
“Now I’m an artist.”
“You dropped out of school after your injury?”
“I was a sophomore when it happened. Was pretty depressed for a while. Art helped me through it. So halfway through junior year I decided to become an artist.”
“Big decision.”
“I’d always sort of thought about dropping out for boxing. And I never planned on going to university because I wanted to box. So it wasn’t such a stretch. But my parents, oh, they were mad. I ran away.”
“Do you miss them?”
“They’re still my parents.” He had gone to see them again, a few months after he ran away, but his father had turned him away. What kind of son abandons his family? His mom talks to him now, sometimes, but he hasn’t heard from his dad since. “Do you miss yours?”
“Honestly? Not really.”
“So why did you quit basketball?”
“I’m too short.”
“There are short basketball players.”
“Yeah, but you have to be really good. And I’m not.”
“So now you’re a rapper.”
“I always wanted to do music, produce and rap and shit. Too bad I’m not all that good at that, either.”
“Hoseok says you’re amazing. People love you.”
“Hoseok is a liar.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then don’t.”
Jimin leans over the edge of the sofa to look at him, troubled. There is something awfully self-deprecating about Yoongi’s tone, and he doesn’t like it. “Can I hear you rap some time?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Not worth it.”
“Yoongi.”
“Jimin.”
“You don’t think much of yourself, do you?”
“Go to sleep and stop bothering me.” He turns his back. Jimin’s stomach clenches with hurt, but after a moment Yoongi whispers, “Don’t worry about me.”
But Jimin’s a worrier, and he doesn’t sleep easy.
-
After that it’s like a dam has been blown over. Jimin meets Yoongi almost every day; he comes to the studio or his apartment or the coffee shop when he’s getting off work. They even go to an art show together. They talk about everything and anything and Jimin grows so accustomed to Yoongi’s company that he forgets what it had felt like to be so alone. He doesn’t even miss Jungkook anymore—at least, not with the same crippling intensity as before.
And he draws—oh, how he draws. He draws Yoongi leaning over a cup of coffee, Yoongi reclining on his couch, Yoongi resting his head on his counter, Yoongi writing lyrics and Yoongi rapping and Yoongi, Yoongi, Yoongi. He finishes Byulyi’s commission and treats Yoongi to dinner with the pay, because without Yoongi he never would have gotten it. He’s well on his way with Yoongi’s basketball court painting, too.
Hoseok watches the art studio fill with artistic depictions of Yoongi and his teasing turns to concern before long.
“Jimin, you know this muse thing isn’t real, right?” he says one day.
“I’m not an idiot,” Jimin answers, but he knows he’s the biggest idiot around.
He’s always been attracted to Yoongi, that much is obvious, but slowly it turns into something more. It starts with Jimin thinking about Yoongi all the time, when everything reminds him of Yoongi, when he misses him the little time they aren’t together. But that’s just how it starts. It escalates when Yoongi’s smile makes Jimin’s knees weak and his touch gives him butterflies and he dreams about Yoongi’s pink lips. He’s watching Yoongi laugh one night when it hits him, the realization that he’s so far gone already.
And Jimin isn’t one to hide how he feels, so he tells him later, when they’re alone in the studio and Yoongi is so overwhelming Jimin’s heart aches.
“Yoongi, I like you.”
Yoongi’s not really listening. He waves it off with a, “Yeah, well, I hate you.”
“No. I mean, I like you.”
Jimin knows when the understanding dawns upon him because Yoongi’s face freezes into a mask of indifference. He looks up. “What?” He says it too quietly.
“I like you. A lot. A lot a lot.”
Yoongi’s face doesn’t change. Jimin’s stomach churns because he knows what’s coming, knows this was a mistake. He’s expecting a rejection, a mean one or maybe even a gentle one, but he certainly isn’t expecting Yoongi to say, “No, you don’t.”
Now it’s Jimin’s turn to be shocked. He gapes for a second. “What do you mean I don’t?”
“You don’t like me. You’re only saying that because I helped you get over your artist’s block.”
“I think I know my own feelings.” He’s starting to get upset. A rejection is one thing, but this?
“You’re trying to keep me around so you can keep drawing, that’s all.”
“That’s not true. I don’t need you for my art. That’s not why I like you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Yoongi’s tone cuts. “Then why am I the only thing you draw?”
“Because you’re beautiful.” Jimin’s voice breaks a little. “Yoongi-”
Yoongi stands, grabbing his bag. He lights a cigarette with trembling fingers. “I don’t appreciate being used, Jimin.”
“I’m not using you!” Jimin cries, stepping towards him.
Yoongi makes a beeline for the door, Jimin following, calling for him.
“Yoongi, wait-” He catches the studio door before it swings closed behind Yoongi, following him into the hall. Hoseok is entering the building, but Yoongi shoves past him without a word. “Wait, just listen to me-” There are tears in his voice.
Yoongi stops at the door. “Fuck off, Jimin.”
“Yoongi.” Now he’s crying, really crying, like he cried the first time he slept alone after Jungkook left. But Yoongi lets the door fall shut between them.
And Jimin is sinking to the ground, sobs tearing from his throat, because he’s forgotten how much it hurts to be left behind and he thought he knew but he didn’t quite realize just how much he liked Yoongi until now. But the worst part is the accusation, the idea that Yoongi could possibly think Jimin would use him, that he trusts him so little.
“Jimin, what the hell happened?” Hoseok wraps him in his embrace. Jimin leans against him, muffling his sobs against Hoseok’s shoulder.
“He’s gone,” Jimin says, and he says it again and again and again like a mantra because a part of him knows Yoongi isn’t coming back and Jimin has been left behind once more.
-
Yoongi doesn’t answer calls or texts or messages sent through Hoseok. He doesn’t come around anymore, and it’s like he’s dropped off the face of the planet. Just as suddenly as he had come into his life, Yoongi is gone. Jimin’s apartment is empty again, empty and quiet and lonely. It hurts even more than the first time, when Jungkook left him behind. Jimin doesn’t go home much. Stays out until he’s so dead tired he comes back and falls asleep with his clothes on.
He can’t draw anymore. I don’t appreciate being used. He wasn’t using Yoongi, he wasn’t, but now he can’t draw again and he starts to doubt himself.
Even Hoseok says, one day, “Maybe he’s right. Maybe you only like him because he helps you draw.”
He’s so furious he slaps Hoseok’s hand away from where it rests on his shoulder and snaps, “I know how I feel. I know why I like him.” Guilt fills him at Hoseok’s expression, and he pulls him back. “I’m sorry, I just—I know it’s not because of the muse thing.”
“Then prove it. To him, to yourself. Create something without him.”
“I can’t. I’ve tried so hard, but I can’t.”
“Figure out why. Find out what’s causing this block.”
So he thinks and thinks and comes up with nothing. He starts to wonder if art was ever what he really wanted to do, if he’s even chosen the right path. Boxing had been his true dream, art secondary. Maybe it would have been better to go to college like his parents wanted. He’s obviously no good at art.
Three weeks after his confession to Yoongi, he gets a call from his mother, the first one in months. She invites him to lunch. He agrees, though he’s not really sure he wants to meet her, not when she will ask if work is going well and this time he’ll be lying when he says yes. That’s what she expects, him to be poor and unhappy, that’s how they said he would end up. See, what did I tell you? That’s what she’ll say. But he’s never actually been unhappy, not like this, not until Jungkook left.
He dresses well when he meets her in a nice restaurant on a day he gets off early from work. They don’t greet each other warmly, exactly, but it isn’t cold, either. Jimin asks the obligatory questions—how have you been, how’s dad, how’s the business—and she does the same. Eventually she asks how Jungkook is doing.
He opens his mouth with the full intention of lying because no good can come of telling her his roommate gave up art to go to college, but somehow what comes out instead is the truth. “He left. Got into university on scholarship.”
“What is he studying?”
“Exercise science.” She nods approvingly and normally Jimin ignores that sort of thing but lately he is sick and tired of everything so he says, “Don’t look at me like that. I know you think that’s what I should be doing too.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
His mother sighs, swirling her drink in its glass. “You’ve always wanted to be an artist. I know that.”
Jimin leans back, defeated, finding it hard to look her in the eyes. “A boxer,” he murmurs. “I always wanted to be a boxer.”
“You can have more than one dream, Jimin.” When he doesn’t answer, she says, “When you were three years old you told me, Mama, I wanna be a drawer. You used to draw on every surface you found. Boxing came later, you know. You can have more than one dream.”
“You don’t even want me to be an artist.”
“I’ve been—I’ve been thinking. Jimin, you have to understand where we were coming from. You were still recovering from your injury. We had hopes for you, dreams. With boxing your future was planned out, and to have that taken away—we were worried. About your future. And then out of nowhere you announce you’re dropping out to be an artist, no plan, no stability. You could have at least gone to university, but you threw everything away. We were scared.”
“You didn’t talk to me for a year after I left, even though I tried.”
“You disobeyed us.”
“So? I’m still your son. I was seventeen.”
“All I’m saying is, we were upset because we wanted you to be safe. Secure. Happy.”
“How safe could I have been, out there alone?”
“I’m not trying to argue. Let me finish.”
He slumps further, staring at his hands.
“I only want you to be happy, Jimin. And if art makes you happy, then so be it.”
Suddenly he feels like crying.
“Are you-” she says, hesitantly, “Are you happy?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, honestly, unable to fight a tear that slips out.
His mother reaches out to take his hand.
“I don’t know—I don’t know if I made the right decision.” And as he says it he understands how deeply this doubt has been affecting him.
That’s been it all along. Ever since seeing Jungkook change his mind and go off to college he has questioned himself, wondering if he even has what it takes to be an artist, if he’s any good, if it’s worth it. He can’t draw because he doesn’t know if he should. He’s known it, has actively questioned himself, but now it seems so clear. Of course he can’t draw. He doesn’t know what to do with his life.
“I can’t give you an answer. A few years ago I would have said no, you didn’t. But it’s your place to decide if it’s right or not.”
“I’ve had trouble creating anything worthwhile for months.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about art. But I know you’re not the kind of person who gives up. Even if things are hard now, you chose to be an artist for a reason. Trust yourself. Keep trying. Maybe it isn’t the right decision, but then again, maybe it is. All you can do is your best.”
Things won’t be magically okay between him and his mother after that. The fact that he disobeyed her and she abandoned him doesn’t go away. But it’s a little better, at least, it’s a start. He knows she’s trying, and he’s willing to try, too.
Her words don’t make his doubt disappear, nor does it suddenly become easier to go on with art. But it helps, and it makes him think, and maybe now that he understands himself a little more, he can start to get better.
He doesn’t go home that evening—he goes to the studio, picks up a brush, and starts to paint.
-
The knock on the studio door is quiet, hesitant. Jimin, who is alone, calls out for the visitor to enter without looking up from his painting. When he finally does, he sees Yoongi, stepping carefully through Jimin’s side of the studio, staring at the new works adorning the walls and the floor and various easels with wide eyes.
“Yoongi,” he breathes, stepping toward him.
Yoongi freezes, then he nods. “Jimin. You’ve been busy.” He gestures toward the new art; not a single visible work is of him.
“I—yeah.” Jimin waits, barely daring to breathe, unable to believe that Yoongi stands there before him. He’s terrified of scaring him away so he just waits.
Yoongi shuffles his feet awkwardly for a moment before jumping and pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Uh—here. The rest of the money I owe you. Hoseok dropped the commission off yesterday.”
“Oh.”
When Jimin doesn’t reach out to take it, Yoongi places it on a table, wiping his hands on his jeans then stuffing them into his pockets. He’s clearly nervous, and normally he lights up the second he walks into the studio, but today there are no cigarettes in sight. “I—I really—it was perfect. Exactly what I wanted.”
“I’m glad.” Jimin doesn’t want to hope, but Yoongi could have sent the money through Hoseok and he didn’t. Instead, he’s here, he’s here and he’s talking to him and he likes the painting and Jimin can’t quite breathe right.
“It was sad. Like the first one. More, even.”
“Yeah, well.” Jimin rubs his head. “I wasn’t in the best place when I was working on it.”
“And now?”
Jimin shrugs, but as soon as he speaks he knows he means it. “Better.”
“I saw the back, too.”
Jimin’s hands are shaking a little so he puts down the brush he’s holding. “Yeah?”
He didn’t think Yoongi would ever see it, ever look carefully enough to find the tiny sorry scrawled on the back of the canvas.
“Do you remember the verse I’ve been working on for months, the one I wouldn’t finish?”
“I remember.”
“Well, I finished it. A week ago.” Yoongi seems to shrink into himself, staring at his feet, his voice low. “I finished it thinking about you.”
Jimin doesn’t answer. He can’t. His mind is full of white noise.
“I’m sorry I accused you of using me. I didn’t get it, then. I finished the song because of you, not because of some weird coincidence or because you were my muse or anything stupid like that. You make me feel. You make me inspired. So I know you didn’t start liking me because I helped you with art—it’s the other way around, right?”
“Right.” They take a step toward each other at the same time, and stop. “I figured it out. Why I had artist’s block. I figured it out and I’m okay now—well, not okay, that’ll take time. But better. And I’ve been making all these things, and they aren’t you, so obviously it’s not like you thought-”
“I know, Jimin.” His voice is gentle.
“-but I made this. I couldn’t help it.” He pulls a painting out from behind another one, and it’s Yoongi's face in color, an explosion of flowers behind his head.
Yoongi comes to stand behind him, silent for a long while before he reaches out to brush his fingers delicately along the rendition of his face.
“You know,” he murmurs. “I couldn’t believe it. That someone like you could possibly like me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at you. Look at me.”
“I am. I have been. You’re beautiful.”
Yoongi smiles, but it’s tired. “I’ve never thought much of myself. Coach said I could stick with basketball if I tried, even though I’m short. But I quit because I didn’t think I was good enough. I wouldn’t finish the song because I thought everything I wrote was shit. When you said you liked me, it seemed like the only plausible explanation was that you were using me, or you were confused because I was your muse. Not because you really felt anything for me.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“That’s what Hoseok said. He kept coming by, you know, to talk about you. To tell me about how one time you said I had the prettiest eyes you’d ever seen, and another time that no one could make you laugh as much as me. To tell me how you’d cried after I left. To tell me when you first sketched and kept something that had nothing to do with me.”
“He’s a good friend.”
“Let’s start over.” Yoongi turns to face Jimin. He’s still smiling and Jimin is blinded again, just like he was the first time he realized Yoongi was so beautiful it hurt. Only this time it doesn’t hurt. “Hi. I’m Min Yoongi, I’m an idiot, and I really, really fucking like you.”
Jimin laughs.
“Hi, Yoongi. I’m Park Jimin, and you’re not my muse.”