Work Text:
Jimin's reputation has seen better days.
Here he is, standing in the middle of the hallway at four in the morning, path illuminated by dim lights that do nothing except cast an artificial spotlight over his sorry self. His heart catches in his throat. The light flickers overhead. One hand tucked into his coat and the other one frozen in the air as a handful of condom packets tumbles out of his pocket and lands, a lewd rustle of plastic on the ground. The boy in front of him, just as small as he is and pale as winter, staring at him with an open mouth and raised eyebrows.
"I swear, I didn't steal them!" he yelps. He crouches down to scoop up all the condoms and stuffs them back into his coat, hoping that his dignity is still intact. It's just his luck that the corners still peek out mockingly from the pocket. "They were giving them out for free!"
Taehyung had tipped him off that their new university's health center was basically a free-for-all condom castle and one of the reasons why he could sleep around and not panic every time someone so much as touched his dick. True to his nature as a shrewd opportunist, Jimin took the bait and snuck out to the center in the middle of the night, making sure to avoid any and all human interaction.
He chalks this up to bad luck. Just as he sinks to a new low and is about to escape with an undamaged ego, he ends up staring his neighbour of two weeks right in the face. He's barely seen this boy exit his room but he recognises the head of mint green hair, the same one that sneaks out for coffee on Friday nights when the pantry is supposed to be closed, lip-syncing to lyrics when he thinks no one is around.
And now, said neighbour stares at him with a thoroughly suspicious look that screams 'I don't believe you': eyes narrowed, head bowed and brows raised.
"Okay," the boy says hesitantly.
"No, really," Jimin insists. He plucks one out, grabs the boy's hand—pleasantly warm even though it's the middle of October—and shoves the packet into the center of his palm (in hindsight, it was probably a bad idea, but Jimin's brain isn't working). "Here, you can have one."
A blush creeps up from Yoongi neck all the way to his ears. Shit, he's cute . "Um, thank you?"
"No worries!" Jimin beams even though his heart is hammering against his chest and he wants a hole to open up right now and swallow him so that he can drown in embarrassment. "I'll see you around!"
"Yoongi-hyung, have you gotten the coffee yet?" someone calls out, just as he is about to leave. An unfamiliar face peeks out from behind one of the doors, the room right across from his own. "This paper's not gonna finish itself, you know."
"Patience is a virtue, Hoseok," Yoongi replies. Then he turns back to Jimin. "Sorry. My roommate's a little rude."
"It's fine," Jimin says. "If you don't mind, could you not tell anyone about this ?" He bites his lip and gestures to the condoms in his pocket and the empty space between them.
"We'll see," he replies cryptically. Just as he looks as if he is about to turn tail and leave, a smirk stretches across thin lips and a phone is whipped out and Jimin is temporarily blinded by the flash of a photo being taken.
He watches as Yoongi dashes down the hallway and toward the pantry, still reeling for more reasons than one.
"I didn't steal the condoms!" Jimin insists. He's downright pouting now and his dignity is at the bottom of Min Yoongi's pretentious, Doc Martens-clad feet, as crushed and battered as his nonexistent reputation.
"I totally believe you."
"Then why are you blackmailing me?"
He looks at Jimin with a blank expression and points toward the pile of clothes in the basket. There's way too much for a single basket. Everything is overflowing and Jimin can barely stand the stench. "Off you go. Laundry's not going to do itself."
"Why does it smell so bad?" Jimin mumbles, as he walks out the door.
"Hoseok's a dancer!"
He mutters obscenities under his breath as he heads toward the laundry room.
Two days ago, he had received a message from an unknown number and a photograph of him standing stock still and stunned with a pile of condoms in his coat. Dim lights hid half of his face but it was still painfully obvious that yes, that was Park Jimin, Condom Thief Extraordinaire. It came with a simple caption: 3pm, radio room 3 .
And so he treaded lightly and headed to the stipulated location at the stipulated time, only to be met face to face with a head of mint green hair, face down on a messy desk strewn about with papers and files and wires, headphones still tucked around his neck and spine hunched over in an unnatural position.
Jimin cleared his throat. The figure stirred, but didn't wake up.
"Um, Yoongi-hyung?" It came out as a squeak and Jimin was about to poke Yoongi's cheek or do something equally embarrassing just as he jolted upright. "I'm Park Jimin. You sent me a message?"
"Park Jimin?" He stretched his arms above his head and yawned, a sliver of collarbone peeking out of his hoodie. Eyes still half-hooded from sleep but undoubtedly unimpressed. "The condom guy? Short kid from next door?"
"I'm not short, we're practically the same height!" He barely stopped himself from stomping his foot. That sort of shit only works in movies. "But, yes. You sent me a photo. Uh. Yeah."
Something set off in Yoongi's head and he sat up straight.
"I'm Min Yoongi, and I have a proposition for you."
"Park Jimin," he replied hesitantly. Whatever that was he's hearing in the other's voice, it didn't sound good, not at all.
"You become my personal servant, or I release the photo to the school newspaper."
What the fuck?
"What the fuck?" Jimin exclaimed, voice squeaking and eyes widening and seriously, what the fuck . He took in Min Yoongi sitting there with his stupidly pretty hair and stupidly pretty face, a smirk playing on his lips even as his eyes drilled lifelessly into Jimin's own. There wasn't any malice, not that Jimin could tell, but it's still ridiculously stupid anyway. What the actual fuck. "That's not a proposition, that's blackmail."
"Semantics," Yoongi said. He stared at Jimin with blank eyes. Swivelled around and opened up the laptop before scooting over to the synthesiser at the corner of the room. "Get me some coffee. I've been awake for twenty-four hours and my brain's about to burst."
"No," Jimin replied. He narrowed his eyes. He steadied his voice—firm, assertive, the same voice he uses to tell Taehyung to get his damn socks off Jimin's bed. "No. I am not your personal servant."
Yoongi shot him a look bordering on pity and then turned back around, as if he had never heard Jimin at all. "Multi-tasking is not for the weak and caffeine-deprived."
"Did you even hear me?" His voice was getting higher because fuck this he's not about to let some grumpy grandpa with a caffeine addiction ruin his college life. "I'm not getting you coffee. I'm not getting you anything. I don't belong to you."
"No, you don't," Yoongi said, not even bothering to look up from his laptop. "But that photograph does."
"Go ahead and send it to the school paper, see if I care," Jimin huffed. He folded his arms and pressed them against his chest, stood with his feet firm on the ground. Yes, this is good. Intimidate your enemies.
But if there's any one thing Jimin was good at, it's faking bravado in the face of panic, and when he saw Yoongi actually reach out for his phone, key in the password and swipe over to his photos, he leapt forward with a war cry. Hands lashed out to grab at the older boy's thin wrists for a mere second before they're snatched out of his grip. Yoongi glared at him and held the phone close to his chest.
Jimin jumped back immediately and wrung his hands together, embarrassed and sheepish at his sudden outburst.
"S-sorry," Jimin stuttered. He started inching backward. "I'll go get you that coffee."
"You do that."
Over the past two days, he's come to realise that Yoongi really is as grumpy as he looks. On occasion he would catch the barest glimpse of a smile or a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, the same one that appeared when he snapped that photo, but most of the time Yoongi's face would be a calm, blank veneer. And even though Yoongi had branded him his 'personal servant', he has thankfully not done much other than get him coffee, return his library books and, now, do his laundry.
He still doesn't forgive him, though, and he shows it in snide remarks and constantly reasserting that no, Park Jimin Does Not Steal Condoms. He just needs to find some way to get rid of that photo and he'll be rid of this stupid, ludicrous arrangement.
If he'd woken up to the same text from someone else, preferably someone with a smokin' hot body and sizzling sex appeal, Jimin would be out of his bed in seconds. Too bad it's not. He turns over and sees that it's only four in the morning; Taehyung's still asleep, Jeongguk's body draped horizontally at the foot of his bed, laptop still lying open on Taehyung's stomach.
He groans and gets up anyway, making sure not to step on the strange spherical things on the ground. Note to self: tell his roommate not to bring weird things into the dorm.
"Too fuckin' early," he mumbles, satoori slipping out. He pulls on a sweater before heading across the hall.
Two knocks later, the door creaks open and Yoongi's head pops out. He looks way too awake. "Morning, Jimin."
"Why did you call me over?" Jimin whines. He steps in and collapses onto the bed, which is way too warm and inviting and he's about to fall asleep in a pile of marshmallows when someone grabs him and pulls him back up. "Let me sleep, it's five . Servants are still people." Then he looks around and sees that the room is empty except for the two of them. "Where's Hoseok-hyung?"
"Some underground battle camp thing." Well, that's a pity. The first time he came over, Hoseok greeted him with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm and apologised for Yoongi's horrid behaviour. He was hoping the smiley hyung could persuade Yoongi to let Jimin go back. "Anyway. I'm working on something, and you need to help me out."
"I don't need to," Jimin points out. "And anyway, I don't do Economics. I know nothing about raking in the dough."
"Firstly, don't use that phrase ever again." Yoongi shoots him a look. "Secondly, it's not Economics. It's just a track I'm working on, and I need some sample vocals. Usually I'd make Hoseok do it, but as you can see, he's not here."
"So I'm just a lowly substitute?" Jimin gasps, putting his hand to his chest as he pretends to be offended.
"Yes," Yoongi deadpans.
"My voice isn't that good though," he tries to reason, "and I just woke up too, it'll be hoarse and cracky and not nice."
"Doesn't matter. As long as you can hold a note, which I know you can, because you always sing every time you sort out the whites from the colours."
"I've done that twice ," Jimin points out.
But he scuttles over to the front of the room anyway. Yoongi's laptop is perched on a desk overrun with too many papers, a midi keyboard taking up more than half the space. Without thinking, Jimin bends down and rests his head on Yoongi's shoulder—for a moment, he freezes, because in the two weeks he's known Yoongi he has never known him to be one for any form of contact whatsoever; but when there's no reaction, he relaxes and lets his chin dig into the thin flesh of his hyung's shoulder—to peer at the funny little programme that's popped up.
"Okay, so," Yoongi starts, and with him so close, Jimin can feel the husky voice down to the very bone. He might be imagining things, but Yoongi's voice sounds lower and softer than usual. He gestures toward the microphone at the side. "You just need to sing a bunch of lyrics."
"I can do that," Jimin says. He's handed a bunch of papers and at first he wonders why Yoongi is making him sing lyrics from some textbook, before flipping it over and finding messy scrawls strewn across the back. "These?"
"Yeah, just the parts in green."
Everything else in black sings of frustration, and even without hearing the actual track he can already feel it, the honesty and rawness embedded in those words. But he doesn't have time to dwell on them. Yoongi hums the melody—a low, rough voice that isn't particularly suited for ballads but strikes the heart nonetheless—and Jimin follows suit. A while later, he's got the melody down.
"Ok, that's good," Yoongi nods and hands Jimin the microphone. "Now just do what you did. Same tempo and everything."
" Ni kkumeul ttaraga like breaker, buseojindaedo oh better; ni kkumeul ttaraga like breaker, muneojindaedo oh, dwiro daranajima never ," he sings into the microphone. But even as he does so, he can hear the shakiness and hoarseness and he already knows it's not good. He hasn't sang in a long time.
"Try again," Yoongi prods. "It's fine. It's just a demo anyway."
And so he does. He sings again and again and by the time they're done, the morning light has already begun to peek through the window. As patient as Yoongi has been, Jimin is mentally and physically exhausted, and they've only gotten less than a minute's worth of recording.
"That's enough," Yoongi says. "Thanks, Jimin."
"No worries," he replies, yawning. He collapses onto Yoongi's bed and groans in relief as his back hits soft sheets and a huge pile of pillows. "I'm your personal servant, right?"
The last thing he hears before falling asleep is an almost imperceptible "Of course" and of someone lightly covering his body with a blanket and tucking it under his chin.
"Have you ever considered doing Vocals?" Yoongi asks absently, tapping away on his laptop.
Jimin looks up from his position, hunched over the desk as he attempts to make the poor table at least slightly representable. Seriously, every time he cleans the room, he returns the next day just to find it even messier than before. "Uh, no?"
"Why do you keep singing, then?"
" You were the one who told me to sing as I'm cleaning," Jimin points out, slightly miffed. "As if I'm Cinderella or something."
"Well, you do have a decent voice," Yoongi nods. "And Cinderella would never have stolen condoms."
Jimin throws him a deadpan look that he returns with the barest hint of a smirk.
"What do you actually major in, anyway?" Yoongi asks, setting aside his laptop. He takes off his beanie and runs his fingers through the matted hair. Yoongi has really nice hands, Jimin muses. Slightly larger given his small frame, with long, slender fingers that look like they could glide across a piano with ease, unlike his own stubby ones.
"Dance," Jimin says, as he tries to sort out textbooks from notebooks. "But I'm trying to fulfill my requirements that I put off in freshman year."
"Stats?"
"Calculus," Jimin sighs. He drops to the ground for a break. "And Philosophy, for my Humanities requirement."
"You sound like a masochist," Yoongi points out. He can't find it in himself to deny it.
It's been a couple of weeks since he's started literally slaving away for Yoongi, and it hasn't been as bad as he had expected. He had been all ready to do shit like cleaning up after one night stands or bringing him lunch every day (which would not actually be that bad, considering their classes are in the adjacent buildings) but all Yoongi has done so far is made him do menial tasks like getting coffee or cleaning his room; for the laundry, he even does it with his own, so it's not that much of a chore.
Work is starting to pile up, though; finals are nearing and they have a showcase on Christmas week, and it's starting to take its toll. He feels it in the way he wants to stay in bed a little longer every time the morning alarm jolts him awake, the way he almost has to drag himself to practice every evening. Then again, he did make the decision to do all of.... whatever this is. Maybe he really is a masochist.
"Take a break," Yoongi says. "I won't let you lie on my bed, but you can use the Hoseok's. I don't think he'll mind."
"You don't think?" Jimin raises a brow, but crawls toward Hoseok's bed anyway, because the dancer—who doesn't major in Dance yet has somehow managed to win every single underground competition of his entire college career thus far—has allowed Jimin to crash in his bed a grand total of four times now. "What about you?"
"Me?"
"What do you major in?"
Yoongi tenses. "Economics."
"Not Music?" Jimin asks, leaning back onto the bed and looking to the side to look at Yoongi, shoulders still frozen in place.
"No, it's just a hobby," Yoongi mutters, turning away.
"I thought you love music," Jimin says. The beds are near enough that if he just stretches a little, he would hit Yoongi's shins with his own feet, and he is increasingly tempted to do that with each passing second. "Why don't you do music instead?"
"I do love music, I just don't major in it," Yoongi spits, frustrated. Beneath all the consonants and vowels, something bubbles and grows hot and angry. He finally meets Jimin's eyes with a glare. "Okay, now you gotta shut up and rest."
"I don't have to do anything," Jimin replies defiantly. But he knows well enough that Yoongi doesn't want to breach this topic, whatever it's supposed to be, so he drops his head to the pillow. The more he rests, though, the more his responsibilities start to haunt him. "Hey, hyung."
"Yeah?"
"What do you do when you're overwhelmed and you have a lot of things to do but you just kinda... not want to do them?"
"You suck it up and do it," Yoongi says. "Life's not a bed of roses, kid."
"I'm not a kid," Jimin frowns. Then he sighs. "I guess so, huh. Just gotta push through it all."
"That's life."
"And that's deep," Jimin replies. "I thought I'm the one taking Philosophy?"
"..."
A thought pops into his head. "Hey, hyung."
"Yeah, Jimin?" Yoongi says with an exaggerated sigh, though it is underlined with what Jimin suspects is a smile.
"Will you come to our Christmas showcase?" Jimin asks. "It's on the 20th. All the Dance majors are putting up performances. I mean, if you're free, of course," he hurriedly adds.
"I don't know, I don't really watch dance."
"Come on, pleeaaaase," Jimin pleads, looking at Yoongi with the most adorable face he can muster. It's never okay for him to do aegyo but this is just barely breaching that line. "It will be really good, I promise!"
"Okay, okay. I'll be there. I'll drag Hoseok too," Yoongi laughs. He turns his head to meet Jimin's gaze with his own and grins. "Wanna go get ice cream? Hyung's treat."
At this, Jimin breaks out into a grin. For all his prickly exterior and seemingly no-fucks-given attitude, Yoongi is surprisingly nice, and the way his pulse goes a little faster each time the elder flashes a smile is just a bonus.
"Park Jimin," Taehyung says solemnly, as Jimin pushes the door open at one in the morning, all ready to collapse onto bed. "Do you have something to tell us?"
He is just really, really tired. Between preparing for the upcoming showcase, rushing out his assignments and running errands at increasingly odd hours for Yoongi (who the hell needs mouthwash at three in the morning?), his body is seriously being pushed to its limits. He's taken to either camping out at the library, stealing naps between paragraphs about the history of ballet, or sleeping on the couch in Radio Room 3, only to be woken up every hour to go on coffee runs for a certain someone.
And now, with his self-proclaimed best friend standing in front of him, arms folded and lips pursed, he is so, so tempted to just throw in the towel. To tell him everything that's happened and say yes, there is a reason why Jimin has disappeared for two weeks.
"I—" he starts, but he can't. Not just because he runs the risk of this hanging over his head for the rest of his life, but because it isn't actually that bad. It's not just Yoongi, he guesses; it's more so being broken down in the practice room, staring at the blinking cursor on a blank document, more so than having to choose between decaf and regular. Sure, he doesn't get much sleep, but he doesn't want to drag anyone else into his own problems, problems that he's created himself.
"Yes?" Taehyung prompts, leaning forward. Jeongguk raises his brows from his position on the bed, lying on his stomach with his face propped up in his hands.
"Nothing," Jimin sighs. He takes off his coat and collapses onto his bed, catching the slight wince on Taehyung's face. He narrows his eyes. "Have you guys been using my bed?"
"No, totally not," Jeongguk says, just as Taehyung nods and breaks down in laughter. Jimin leaps off the bed, cringing, and throws a pillow at the two of them.
Jimin groans. "I'm going over to Yoongi-hyung's."
"Yoongi-hyung?" Jeongguk perks up. "He's in Economics, isn't he?"
"Ooh, so Jiminnie has really gotten a boyfriend?" Taehyung coos, grinning.
"What? Who's Yoongi-hyung?" Jimin says to no one in particular, already grabbing his coat and heading out. Hoseok is probably in today but that's no matter, he's always nice enough to let Jimin camp on his bed since Yoongi has a thing about anyone other than himself lying on his and the one time Jimin tried, Yoongi glared at him so hard he swore his eyebrows burnt off. "I'm going off now, see you idiots later."
He scoots over to the room opposite his own and waits for a minute, just to make sure Taehyung and Jeongguk are safely back inside, before rapping on the door twice. When there's no answer, he fiddles with the knob only to find that the door opens easily, and steps inside.
"Hyung?" Jimin asks, squinting. It's kind of hard to see anything. The room is completely dark save for the dim, yellow glow of a bedside lamp.
Yoongi's bed is empty, but the lump on Hoseok's jerks and a head of black hair peeks out.
"Jimin?" Hoseok asks groggily.
"Yeah, it's me," Jimin says. "Is Yoongi-hyung around? I was thinking I could crash, but if he's not—"
"Ah, no, he's not." Hoseok's voice sounds strangely detached, a complete one-eighty from the usual enthusiasm he carries around with him like it's his job. "He has some, uh, stuff, to sort out."
"Oh. Okay." A pause. "Is he alright?"
"I hope so," Hoseok sighs. He knits his brows together. "If you really need him, he's in the radio room." Then he looks at Jimin again, an indecipherable look on his face, and tilts his head to the side. "You know what? I think you should go. Talk to him."
Jimin stills. "What? Why?"
"You're looking for him anyway, right?" Hoseok points out groggily, rubbing at his eyes and giving a loud yawn. Jimin frowns. Well, yes, that might be true, but for all the time they've spent together, he is still kind of wary of the moody senior.
"Why don't you go?" Jimin insists. "You're closer to him too."
"You think I haven't tried?" Hoseok scoffs, burrowing back under the covers. Then he pokes his head out again, a serious expression on his face. "I really think you should go look for him."
"What's going on with Yoongi-hyung?"
"You can find out yourself. But I think he'll tell you in time," Hoseok frowns. "Don't ask him about it tonight. I think he just needs someone by his side right now."
Jimin sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat. He's always been a pacifist. He doesn't like conflicts or taking sides, he prefers peace and compromise over anything else. Sure, he often lends a listening ear or swaddles his friends in hugs when they need it, but there's always a tendency to pull away just a bit. To not get involved, to stand aside, because the slightest hint of discord terrifies him immensely.
But he heads over anyway, because it's Yoongi. It's grumpy old Min Yoongi who blackmails him one second and then treats him to shaved ice the next, who grins until his eyes disappear into lines and walks Jimin through making guide vocals. This is the least he could do.
It's Radio Room 3 again. The walk to the AV wing is quiet and the hallway even more so. Jimin pushes open the door without knocking, the light that filters out from the gap beneath the door a telltale sign of life.
"Yoongi-hyung?" Jimin asks. "Can I crash?"
Usually, whenever Jimin heads to the Radio Room with the expectation of finding Yoongi, the elder would be hunched over his computer, not even bothering to turn around because he's got his headphones in and a track to finish. Usually, Jimin would pat Yoongi's head twice before dashing away to dodge a strike to the arm.
But now, Yoongi is draped across the couch, head smack in the center of a cushion while his legs hang off to the side. He stares unblinkingly up at the ceiling and he would look perfectly relaxed, if it were not for the stark clench of his fists and the bite of his lip.
Jimin steps forward hesitantly. He hasn't seen Yoongi like this before, and he doesn't know how to react. He only knows kind words and warm hugs and they come from the bottom of his heart—they really, really do—but even he knows that they're sometimes not enough.
"Jimin," Yoongi says. His voice is rough and cracked, like it has been run over again and again. He turns his head to the side and looks at Jimin, face blank. "You can lie here."
"Is there enough space?" Jimin asks.
There's no answer, but he doesn't really need one. He leaves his coat at the side and perches on the chair tentatively, at first, before digging his back into the seat and pulling Yoongi's head into his lap. He bites back a yelp of surprise when Yoongi complies wordlessly, eyes closing when Jimin's fingers circle around his scalp and briefly graze his neck. His heart is racing a mile a minute, he swears, from the way that Yoongi just slightly leans into his touch and sighs, chest heaving in tandem with his exhales.
"I won't ask, but," Jimin starts, not quite knowing how to bring this up, "if you want to talk, you can talk to me. Hoseok-hyung kinda said you weren't feeling well and had things to sort out and I was gonna crash your place at first because my ex-best friend is being a total dick —"
"Slow down," Yoongi says, a smile ghosting over his lips. Jimin thinks it's genuine. "It's alright. I might tell you one day. Not today, though."
"Okay," Jimin breathes. He tilts his head back and looks up at the ceiling—there really isn't anything special about it, why did Yoongi keep staring at it?—and tries to calm his nerves. Why the hell is he getting nervous just talking to Yoongi? He digs his fingers further into Yoongi's hair, combing through the strands, dry from bleach and hair dye. "Then I'll just... stay here, I guess. If that's okay with you."
"It is," Yoongi hums, closing his eyes. He reaches a hand up to grab at Jimin's other hand, the one that had been hovering awkwardly beside Yoongi's neck, and brings it to his head to join the one that was already there. "Let's sleep, Jiminnie."
His hyung looks so pretty and peaceful like this, Jimin thinks. Eyelids fluttering closed, mouth ever so barely open. He still feels oddly nervous but it's kind of nice, he guesses, the warmth of another body so close to his—the warmth of Yoongi , no less—and he smiles to himself, his own eyes falling shut.
Jimin makes past the showcase without collapsing, all the way to 20th December, and he's rewarded with a pat on the back from his dance instructor once he troops off backstage, still winded on happiness and fatigue. The song was a remix of a traditional Christmas song that he'd listened to so many times that it still rung at the back of his head, and he'd tried his best to infuse hip hop and contemporary elements into it. On stage, he'd noticed a wide rectangular grin, large doe eyes and right in his periphery, a fluff of mint green hair.
"Park Jimin, rising star of Busan," Taehyung greets with a flourish, once the showcase is completely over. He bends down and swathes Jimin in a giant hug before shoving a bouquet into his hands. "You were amazing!"
"You did good, hyung," Jeongguk nods. Jimin narrows his eyes and waits for the inevitable jibe and to his surprise, it doesn't— "Should've done the choreo with the heels though."
The smack to Jeongguk's head is a well-deserved one, if he does say so himself.
"Jimin!" someone calls out, a screech cutting through the thick crowd. Hoseok makes his way over and grins. "Great job! I never knew you did hip hop too, I thought all the Dance majors here focused on modern."
"Nah, I like to be a bit different," Jimin jokes. He tries as subtly as possible to peer around and brightens up immediately when he notices Yoongi. "Hyung!"
"Ah, Jiminnie," Yoongi greets. There's a small smile playing on his lips, like he notices that Hoseok and Taehyung and Jeongguk have all got their eyes on him, as he reaches a hand up and ruffles Jimin's hair, fingers threading through the strands easily. Jimin scrunches his nose at the action. "Good job."
"Thanks for coming, hyung," Jimin replies. It comes out a little soft for some reason, voice lilting. He points toward Taehyung, who has a giant shit-eating grin on his face, and Jeongguk, who's not any better off. "These are my idiot best friends, Taehyung and Jeongguk. Idiots, meet Yoongi-hyung and Hoseok-hyung."
"You must be Yoongi-hyung," Taehyung says, still grinning. "Nice hair."
"Nice eyebrows," Yoongi replies. A small smirk plays on his own mouth. He looks to Jimin again and smiles, gently this time.
"Merry Christmas!" Taehyung greets back, just as Jeongguk whips a party popper out of nowhere and pulls it, showering all of them in multi-coloured confetti. Hoseok yelps in surprise and jumps backward and Yoongi merely looks up at his bangs, gingerly picking out a bright red piece and flicking it in Taehyung's face.
"It's still early, Taehyung," Jimin says, threading his fingers through Yoongi's mint-green bangs and picking out a particularly large and garish piece to fling at Taehyung.
"It's always Christmas in December," Taehyung replies solemnly, "And my birthday!" he adds, just before jumping onto Jeongguk's back.
"Is he drunk?" Yoongi asks.
"Yes," Jeongguk replies without so much as blinking. "Jimin-hyung, we'll see you back at the dorms."
"Are you guys going back for break?" Jimin asks, once Jeongguk has plastered on the rare apologetic look and walked off. It officially starts the next day, when Jimin will pack his bags and troop home for seven grand days before throwing himself back into the whirlwind that is university. “Family dinners? Playing in the snow with kids?”
“You sound frighteningly domestic,” Yoongi remarks, just as Hoseok beams and gives two thumbs up.
“I'm heading back to Gwangju for a bit,” Hoseok says. He slings an arm around Yoongi's shoulders and the blond pulls a face. “But this one here's gonna coop himself up in the studio and rot.”
Jimin tilts his head at Yoongi, who's currently got a grimace painted on his face. “How come?”
“Eh. Things.”
A few seconds pass before a brilliant idea strikes him. “Do you want to come to my place for Christmas?” Jimin asks excitedly. He's practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, peers forward with what he hopes are sparkling, shiny, cannot-be-denied eyes. “It's in Busan! We have food! And mountains, and beaches!”
Uncertainty clouds over Yoongi's face and his eyes dart away, but after much prodding and bribing on Jimin's end (“Look, it's just one week, you barely do much in one week anyway given how you sleep more than you work,” Jimin rationalises, before being met with a “You brat—“) Yoongi finally gives in with a half-hearted shrug and a quirk of the lips. Jimin locks gazes with Hoseok and the elder sends him a wicked grin before they launch themselves onto Yoongi, still hunched over and pouting, swaddling him in a giant three-way hug that Jimin is convinced has cured him of senioritis once and for all.
When Jimin moved to Seoul, he'd left a part of himself back in Busan. He'd left behind the part that thrived off weekly family outings and home cooked dinners, the part that grabbed his younger cousins by their underarms and swung them around till they were all so dizzy they could hardly see straight. Surrounded by skyscrapers and noise, it was easy to forget about this part; but now that he's back in Busan, mountains and oceans leaving him with a muted silence, it comes rushing back.
“Oppa!” Jieun shouts, her little four-year old self waddling toward her cousin as fast as she can. Her arms stretch out and she jumps onto Jimin's leg, wrapping her legging-clad legs around Jimin's calf. “You're back!”
His heart surges with a familiar warmth as he lifts Jieun up and gives her a giant hug. “Jieunnie!” He holds her an arm's length away and laughs at how she waves her limbs around before settling her back down on the ground gently. He looks back at Yoongi, standing awkwardly in the doorway with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and half a grin on his face. “That's Yoongi-hyung, but you have to call him Yoongi-oppa, okay?”
Yoongi gives a small wave. Jieun places her left foot back in a starting position and crouches in a bit before letting out a war cry and charging toward him, latching onto his lower shin. “YOONGI-OPPA!”
Yoongi stills but doesn't jerk away. He gives his leg a small, experimental shake, but when he realises that this girl is not going to let go , he slowly pries her fingers away from his jeans. He looks up at Jimin, the uneasy smile on his face morphing into a full-blown one. “She's like a tiny, female, hyper version of you.”
There's a funny feeling in his chest, like someone's gripping it tight, but before he can do anything the rest of his family bursts into the living room and swathes them in hugs and kisses. Even Yoongi isn't spared.
“Everyone, this is Yoongi-hyung. Yoongi-hyung, this is everyone,” Jimin introduces, gesturing toward his family. The whole lot of them are here today, Christmas eve beckoning everyone with a single call—his parents, uncle, aunt, cousin, and grandparents.
His mother—he's almost forgotten how she looks, all narrow eyes and round cheeks, and he balks—walks up to them both and squeezes their arms. “So skinny,” she scolds. “You've got to eat more.”
He almost forgot about the part he left behind in Busan, but it comes flooding back the moment he sees the dinner table. They don't quite celebrate Christmas as it is usually done; instead, the older ones use it as an excuse for getting together and the younger ones, as an excuse for presents. But it's still somewhat festive, he thinks, as he runs his hands over the familiar checkered table cloth and almost drools at the spread of food.
“You guys really go all out, don't you?” Yoongi quips.
“The Parks don't half-ass things,” Jimin says, swelling with pride.
The table is practically overflowing with food, a single plate of kimbap perching precariously on the edge and almost falling right before Yoongi catches it with deft fingers. Jimin’s mother repeatedly places food on their plates, citing their matching noodle arms with a stern tut, and Jieun almost face-plants into the bowl—an actual bowl , what on earth—of bulgogi.
At midnight, they traipse downstairs to the living area. Jieun plants herself obediently by the bottom of the non-existent tree (replaced with a very nice, very cool bookshelf) and they plop themselves across the various couches scattered around the room.
“Give me a P! A! R! K!” Jimin’s aunt shouts, waving her empty bottle of vodka in the air.
“Shouldn’t you guys get that thing away from her?” Yoongi notes warily, eyeing the solid, translucent bottle grasped between manicured fingers.
Jimin laughs. “We traded it out for a plastic bottle before the dinner even began.”
The two of them manage to find a single, unclaimed loveseat in the corner of the room. It’s not that nice at all; the fabric is kinda coarse and itchy and Jimin swears it’s given him allergies before, and it’s the farthest away from the enticingly warm fireplace, but it’s cosy. Yoongi perches himself on the armrest before and Jimin pokes at his side again and again until he gives in and slides down right beside Jimin, both of them squishing into the single seat.
It’s too warm even though they’re so far from any proper source of heat, Jimin thinks, as he wiggles around a little—just to make more room for Yoongi, of course, it’s got nothing to do with the way his heart is racing or the blush that’s quickly rising on his cheeks.
He folds his legs back in, knees against his chest; but where the skin of his calf meets that of Yoongi’s thighs, a fire starts, slow at first and then quickly spreading to every corner of his body.
“Are you actually hot?” Yoongi asks incredulously, turning to face Jimin. The younger looks up with a start, only to be met with the sight of Yoongi’s collarbone, sharp and distinct and right in his face, what the fuck and hold on a hot second, are those beads of sweat?
“Speak for yourself,” Jimin scoffs half-heartedly. He reaches out a hand and slicks a finger across Yoongi’s collarbone—making sure to avoid commenting about the way Yoongi actually shivers —and presses a sweat-laden fingertip to Yoongi’s temple. “Who’s the one sweating here?”
“Your face looks like Taehyung just did a Picasso on it with exclusively red paint,” Yoongi deadpans, struggling to keep a grin off his face. It’s endearing enough the Jimin abandons all notions of a witty comeback and opts for beaming right back instead.
It happens on the bus ride back from Busan.
Winter break is nearing its end, and with that comes the ever-familiar crowded buses, queuing up for hours upon hours just to board a single bus. Every single ride is booked out and they just barely manage to get two tickets back to Seoul. And although it’s eleven in the morning, the bus station is a crowded, noisy square in the midst of silent buildings.
Yoongi’s eyes are wide open at the sight of just how many people he’s got to scuffle around with, feet rooted to the spot. But there’s no time for explanations—their bus has just arrived, and so Jimin hooks his arm into Yoongi’s and marches ahead, parting the crowd with his natural aura of Charisma and Alpha Male.
The ride is six hours long and Jimin is familiar with it, having taken the same route dozens of times, heading back to his dorm with gifts in hand each time. But Yoongi is not.
“First time on the Busan bus?” Jimin asks, nudging Yoongi with his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Yoongi says, peering out at the window to see hundreds of eyes staring back up at him, all waiting impatiently for the next bus back to the big city. “I’ve only ever taken the Daegu one once, when I left for Seoul.”
Jimin falls silent at that. He’s good with eye-smiles and appropriately timed laughter, but bad with words. Instead, he reaches over to Yoongi’s jean-clad knee—the pants are ripped way too much, exposing pale skin even in winter ( for fashion , Yoongi defended)—and pats it lightly, pressing down into the hard jut of the kneecap with firm fingertips. It fits his hand just right.
Yoongi places his own palm over Jimin’s, squeezes and releases, and Jimin hopes he’s not imagining the way Yoongi’s thumb lightly caresses his own before falling away.
At some point, they fall asleep to the sound of sporadic honking noises (because traffic really, really sucks) and chatter from the other passengers, all desperate to get back to Seoul before the predicted snowstorm hits.
But light filters in through Jimin’s closed lids, orange and yellow and pink, and he blinks open tiredly. Fatigue weighs down on his bones. His limbs feel like lead and his neck is still sore and aching from straining at such an odd angle. He yawns, a little too loudly. Stretches his arms high above his head and hopes his pits don’t smell. Turns to his left and is temporarily blinded by the morning sun.
And when the harsh morning light has filtered away, leaving his field of vision in a light, blurry haze, he’s convinced that he’s in a dream. Everything is feathered, edges blurred and softened.
There’s a weight on his shoulder, it seems. He peers down only to see Yoongi’s head pressing into the crook between his neck and shoulder, forehead digging into the side of Jimin’s Adam’s apple and cheek pressing into his collarbone. His hair is bleached and dry and cracked but it still tickles all the same, falling into Jimin’s lips like a lost dream.
And his lashes—they’re short and stubby and stick straight, don’t sweep across Jimin’s skin like romance novels have promised, but they strike a chord within Jimin all the same. Because this is Yoongi, asleep and falling into Jimin like they’ve never been apart.
“Jiminnie?” Yoongi whispers hoarsely, peering up at Jimin, mouth falling open slightly. A small, pink tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, and something catches in Jimin’s throat.
It happens before either person knows what they’re doing. Yoongi leans up and Jimin leans down and it’s just a small peck (a meeting of lips, chapped and cracked by the winter) but it sends heat coursing through Jimin all the same. There’s no tongue, no fireworks—just a gentle, comfortable warmth in the midst of a freezing bus, the sound of light snoring and the thrum of an engine in the background.
Forever passes before they finally part. Jimin’s heart is still racing and his fingers are stiff and clammy (but not cold, how on earth?) and anticipation sets in his stomach. He can’t tell if it’s good or bad or in between, the feeling of jittery nerves right before a test or changing his hair colour, except this time it’s multiplied tenfold because he has just kissed Yoongi , of all people, holy fucking shit.
“Um, good morning?” Jimin manages, laughing weakly and pressing his fingertips to red lips.
“About fucking time,” Jeongguk says, throwing a broccoli plushie at Jimin the moment he enters the dorm, hand in hand with Yoongi.
The bus ride back was slightly awkward but filled with something pleasant hanging in the air between them. There were only a couple of hours left after that incident happened, and Jimin had shyly reached over to grasp Yoongi’s hand within his own; and to his surprise, the older boy hadn’t pulled away at all.
And so they’d gotten off the bus like that, fingers interlaced. Slight smiles on their faces, something unspoken hanging in the air.
“Is that…” Jimin squints, letting go of Yoongi’s hand—he misses the warmth already—to rush forward and peer at the sheets. “A dinosaur condom?”
“For my Tae-rex!” Taehyung cackles. Jimin grimaces and launches himself at his very, very rude roommate with all the ferocity he can muster after a six hour-long ride.
“Kim Taehyung!” Jimin screeches, grabbing Taehyung in a chokehold as Jeongguk and Yoongi watch from the side, amusement lining their faces. “ Did you have sex on my bed? ”
Cue a shit-eating grin. “Maaaaaaaaybe.”
Jimin’s just about to wrap his hands around Taehyung’s neck again when Yoongi’s hand tightens around his own, a small squeeze that lasts less than a second. And he immediately relaxes, falls backward just a little bit into Yoongi, eyes still narrowed in suspicion.
At some point, Hoseok pokes his head into the room and greets them with an exuberant “WELCOME BACK, LOVEBIRDS!” (which Yoongi promptly responds with a harsh flick against the dancer’s forehead) and they troop off to town for drinks.
It’s a Friday night. The downtown area is always crowded on a Friday night, even when half the university students are still curled up in bed back home, nursing hot chocolate and kisses from doting parents.
Jimin breathes. As much as he misses the taste of salty air on his tongue and the somehow clearer skies of Busan, there is something about the city that invigorates him. Maybe it’s the busker on the street corner who’s playing an acoustic version of the latest Big Bang song, or the group of clearly underaged students trying to bargain their way into a club. The lights of the city never turn off. There’s always something going on, and tonight is no different.
They walk down the streets, still sober but drunk on city lights and Friday nights.
Jimin lightly presses himself against Yoongi’s side with each step and meets little resistance, finds that he is able to fold into the elder’s slim, soft body with ease.
He doesn't really know what to make of that though. They'd let go of their hands the moment they step foot on campus, warmth still tingling on cold fingertips. It's almost like a game. A game of stolen touches; a graze of the arm, a sudden blinding smile.
The others don't say anything either. Taehyung at most gives him a very exaggerated eyebrow wiggle, and Hoseok quirks a knowing smile at the way he latches onto Yoongi’s words, but that's it. It seems that, for once, his friends are not trying to play matchmaker.
He meets Yoongi’s other friends, too, a tall guy named Namjoon and his similarly tall roommate, Seokjin. (He didn’t realise Yoongi had such a wide social circle, and when he expresses this thought, he’s met with a loud smack to the back of his head, followed by a gentle ruffle of his hair.)
Yoongi describes Namjoon as a genius who flourishes in the studio and on the stage, but also to make sure “never ask him to make you coffee”, to which Namjoon grins cheekily, thin eyes curling upward. Seokjin, on the other hand, is a picture of elegance and grace up until Jimin catches sight of him wolfing down an entire bowl of tteokbokki, sauce and all, in seventeen seconds flat.
“Soju?” Namjoon asks, once they've settled down into the smoky BBQ restaurant.
“Not for Jeonggukkie, he's still a kid,” Taehyung coos, patting said kid lightly on the cheek.
“I turned legal three months ago,” Jeongguk deadpans.
Yoongi nudges Jimin, elbow digging into the ridge of his abdomen. “What about you?"
“I think I've had enough soju over the holidays, thank you.”
Yoongi shrugs. “More for me then.” He looks to Namjoon, who's doing a headcount of who wants what drinks. (Everyone else is getting soju except for Namjoon himself, who opts for beer instead because he “has no taste”.) “Joon-ah, get me a soju.”
The nickname tugs at something in Jimin. Never mind that he's also heard Hoseok and Seokjin call the potential genius ‘Joon-ah’—hearing such a term of familiarity (endearment?) roll off Yoongi’s tongue so naturally sends a sharp spike of displeasure down Jimin’s spine. It's strange, unfamiliar. He's never felt so unpleasant before, and it doesn't feel nice, feels like he's poisoning his body with the way his stomach curls in on itself, but he can't help it, and that is the strangest thing.
“Hanwoo, please!” Namjoon calls out, and Seokjin has to fight tooth and nail to prevent the younger from trying to cook the meat himself.
“He destroys everything,” Yoongi points out, just as the two roommates are caught in a tug-of-war with a pair of tongs. “Even two thousand dollar grills.”
Spicy kimchi and freshly grilled meat taste like a godsend in the middle of the freezing Seoul winter. For the others, it seems, the slide of soju down throats and into stomachs is also pleasantly warm, and by the end of the meal, everyone’s faces are flushed a pleasant red.
The light dust of pink across the top of Yoongi’s cheeks look particularly lovely, Jimin thinks.
At some point, they break off. Taehyung and Jeongguk end up splayed across a park bench, filming dubsmashes and giggling like schoolchildren. Namjoon is surprisingly sober (“Probably because he had beer instead, that wimp,” Yoongi scoffs.) but begins waxing lyrical about autonomy and free will anyway. Seokjin and Hoseok begin doing a cover of It G Ma in the middle of the road.
Yoongi’s head lolls onto Jimin’s shoulder. He turns his face into Jimin’s neck, and when he speaks, his lips move against skin. “Let’s get back.”
“What about everyone else?” Jimin asks, trying desperately to keep down the furious blush rising from his neck.
“Hoseok always takes care of everyone,” Yoongi replies nonchalantly, as if he weren’t literally mouthing at Jimin’s neck . “His eomma side comes out when he’s been sufficiently boozed up.”
“Well, you are really coherent for someone who’s had eight shots.”
“What can I say?” Yoongi pries himself away from Jimin and looks up, grinning mischievously. “I eat alcohol for breakfast.”
“Okay, I take that back.” Jimin turns away and hopes he can blame his red face on the winter chill. He looks toward Seokjin and Hoseok and shouts, “Guys, Yoongi-hyung and I are getting back first.”
“Alright, stay safe!” Seokjin calls out, waving both arms in the air maniacally.
“Yeah, STAY SAFE!” Taehyung shouts from his belly-down position on the bench. “WINK WINK!”
“Oh my god,” Jimin groans. He hooks his arm into Yoongi’s and pulls them both away from the complete fiasco that is Kim Taehyung. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jimin wakes up in the morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. If he wanted to, he could definitely run a marathon, or fight something. Or whatever. But there’s something warm—soft in some places, hard in others—clinging to his body and try as he might, he can’t pry it away. He doesn’t particularly want to either, he thinks, as he buries himself further into the fluffy pillow behind his head and, in doing so, presses closer to whatever that is wrapped around his body.
“Mm, Jiminie?” someone groans, voice low and raspy.
Jimin’s eyes snap open and they dart down, only to see a head of fluffy mint green hair and a smooth expanse of pale skin, stretched across neck and collarbone and a tiny, miniscule sliver of soft stomach.
Yoongi blinks wearily up at him for a couple of seconds before noticing that he was currently coiled around Jimin’s very naked abdomen.
“Yah!” he yelps, moving away and backing into the headboard. “What’s going on?”
“Good morning, hyung,” Jimin yawns, stretching his arms above his head. He notices, with a bit of glee, that Yoongi’s eyes follow the motion. “You were drunk and clingy.”
“Yeah, but why are you naked ?”
“I sleep without a shirt,” Jimin replies. Then he realises the implication of Yoongi’s words and blushes. “Nothing happened!”
“How can I trust that you didn’t take advantage of my inebriated self?” Yoongi scoffs, though there is a playful smile playing on his lips. “I am innocent and vulnerable.”
“Innocent my ass,” Jimin retorts back, laughing. “I wanted to sleep on the couch but you were stubborn. I didn’t realise you slept with a teddy bear every night.”
“I don’t!” Yoongi insists, cheeks pink. “I just have a really comfortable bolster.”
There’s a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue, Jimin is sure of it, but before he can unleash his newfound wit, the door bursts open and a very loud, very wet Kim Taehyung leaps at him.
Sleeve-clad arms wrap around his waist and it would be funny, maybe even endearing, if not for the fact that his friend is sopping wet . Dampness seeps into his own clothes and into his skin and everywhere else, really, before someone finally has the sense to pull Taehyung off of him.
Yoongi has Taehyung’s arms hooked into his own, gently pulling him back, an amused expression on his face. Taehyung just looks manic.
“Sorry!” Jeongguk shouts, running in through the door and panting. “I tried to stop him.”
“What happened?” Yoongi asks, just as Jimin bristles and makes toward the still-goofily grinning Taehyung, plotting his revenge.
“He drank three mocha frappucinos,” Jeongguk whispers hesitantly, before wincing. “Triple shot.”
Yoongi bursts out laughing, hard enough that there’s hardly any wind left in him, and he lets go of Taehyung, who tumbles to the ground and starts laughing too. It’s the happiest—is this happiness, Jimin wonders—he’s ever seen Yoongi, still half-dazed from sleep but coherent enough, conscious enough to banter with Jimin and hold Taehyung back and laugh .
“Hold on, are you guys together?”
Taehyung quirks his head at Jeongguk, who’d asked the question innocently, and immediately launches himself at the younger boy, who falls with a war cry. Well, at least there’s that.
It goes well, sort of. Everything is a little tentative with them. There is still the condom thing that he knows Yoongi can lord over his head at any given moment, but at this point it has become more of a running joke than anything else, and he is thankful for that.
Yet, it’s still slow. Days pass with studio sleepovers (waking up in familiar arms in the freezing, heater-less studio) and soft, chaste kisses that feel like a butterfly’s touch—light, fleeting, and if it were not for the blush on Yoongi’s cheeks, he would have believed that his mind had conjured it up.
They haven’t talked about it. It’s not that Jimin doesn’t want to—he does, he really does, he wants to lay everything out in the open—but there hasn’t been time nor opportunity. Each time he attempts to broach the subject, someone would interrupt (maybe Namjoon with a thought out loud or Hoseok with a loud laugh) or Yoongi would simply, deftly redirect the conversation. As if talking about the way they are dancing, side-stepping and jumping about, wasn’t going to do any harm.
He finds Yoongi one night, hunched over the studio desk as usual. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his eyes stare unblinkingly at the computer screen.
“Why do you spend so much time on music?” Jimin asks.
He plops himself onto the chair next to Yoongi’s and runs his eyes over the older boy’s face—still pale, but slightly sun-kissed from the group’s weekend escapade to the countryside. But with red, watery eyes, the veins slightly visible beneath clear whites.
Yoongi removes his headphones and turns to look at Jimin. Jimin knows he’s heard the question.
“Why don’t you just become a Music major instead?” Jimin asks.
It’s something he’s been thinking about for a while now. Seeing Yoongi constantly with his notebook, scribbling down lyrics, glued to his computer screen with the programme running in the background, going over beats with Namjoon; and then coming back to reality, a day of Statistics and Quantitative Methods classes that hang his college GPA as a carrot.
At first, it hadn’t been his place to say anything. He’d asked, sure, like any other friend would, but it hadn’t been his place to go up to Yoongi and say look here, I think you can be happier and here is how .
Now, though. Now he’s closer. At least he likes to think he’s closer, inching ever closer to whoever this elusive Min Yoongi is. He likes to pretend he has somehow wormed his way into Yoongi’s life via misplaced condoms and mutual friends and a shared love for music. And this, he thinks, is how he can make Yoongi happier.
Yoongi turns to him. Slowly, as if in slow motion.
“You know—” Jimin starts. Hesitantly, treading the waters. “—it’s important to do what you like, what you want, and not what others want? I mean, practicality is important and all that but what use is being realistic when you’re not enjoying what you do?” He looks away from Yoongi’s steel-eyed gaze. Stares at his shoes and bites his lower lip until he feels blood draw. “I—just—as a friend—” at this word, he pauses, “I think you would be happier. If you took Music instead. If you do what you want.”
“Jimin,” Yoongi says. He breathes. Closes his eyes and inhales, exhales. When he opens them again, Jimin wants to shrink away. “It’s not that easy.”
“Hyung, you’re already twenty-two.” Jimin bites his lip and scoots back a little bit because Yoongi’s gaze pierces and penetrates and makes his heart shiver. “You can make your own choices, you know. If it’s what you like then I think—” He swallows. “—I think you should go for it.”
Yoongi steels his gaze, hardens his eyes. “What do you think you’re trying to do, Jimin?”
“I’m just trying—”
“Look,” he lashes out. “You think you know best, but you don’t, alright?” His voice rises with anger, an oncoming wave. “It’s not as easy as you think it is. Nothing is as easy as you think it is. You think I don’t want to do music?” He laughs harshly, the sound cold and hollow. “Of course I want to do music. I love music. But my parents don’t.”
“Maybe if you just talk to them—”
“You’re really naive, aren’t you?” Yoongi gives Jimin an incredulous look, and it sends Jimin’s heart sinking to the bottom of his stomach. He wants to curl up into a ball, crawl into a hole. “You do know that you’re fucking lucky, right? That your parents support what you do.” Yoongi’s fist clenches into a ball and knuckles scrape across the hard wooden top of the desk. “Mine don’t. My parents don’t. They want me to do Economics and, you know what? I understand that. I understand why, and I’m not in a position to say no to them just because I want to do something I like, because all they want is for me to be happy.”
There’s nothing else Jimin can say. Words that he can’t decipher are stuck in his throat, and he can’t choke them out no matter how hard he tries. It grates on his nerves and he can’t do anything but fall silent, heart dropping and body slumping into the chair along with it.
He looks at Yoongi. The elder is downright fuming, there’s no other word for it. His chest is heaving, his eyes are drawn into narrow slits, his brows are knitted together like the world owes him a living.
“I’m sorry,” Jimin says, voice miniscule.
He really is sorry. He means well, he swears by it, he fucking swears by it, and oh god, he should have just tread gently, he should have just taken note of the way Yoongi bristled whenever he mentioned classes, he should have fucking waited because he doesn’t know Yoongi as well and he never will and all this has done is made Yoongi upset and angry and he wishes, he just wishes —
“It’s okay,” Yoongi replies. The words still carry the undercurrent of something boiling underneath, waiting to erupt; but it has been quelled down for now, and the consonants and vowels merely tremble rather than shake. “You don’t understand. It’s a good thing that you don’t understand.”
Jimin isn’t a fast learner. He’s not like Taehyung, who picks things up with a snap of his fingers, or Jeongguk, who simply excels at almost anything he tries. It takes him time and effort and hard work.
But he’s quick enough to catch that the only thing he can do now is to tread lightly, to wait. To sit back and let Yoongi’s anger sizzle down.
It takes a lot to rile the elder up, he has learnt. He might act irritable and grumpy twenty-four seven but in reality, it takes much to get his veins boiling, and for some reason or another, Jimin has done it. And all it has resulted in is Yoongi marching out of the studio, throwing his headphones on the ground—he never throws his headphones on the ground, not ever—as he leaves, slamming the door and swearing, the loud “Fuck!” muffled by the shut door.
Yoongi doesn’t seek Jimin out in the next week or so, not even to do Yoongi’s laundry. (And Yoongi has a lot of dirty laundry. Jimin cringes at the thought of his clothes rotting away in a corner of the room for a whole seven days.)
Jimin trudges from class to class with the help of Taehyung and Jeongguk and Hoseok and well, basically everyone else except for Yoongi, and though he is forever grateful that he has a group of supportive—and, at times, dubiously supportive—friends, it’s just not the same without a pale, mint-haired boy ordering him around for fun. It’s not the same without Yoongi dragging him to the studio at odd hours, drool still seeping out the corner of his mouth, eyes half-lidded.
He misses it. He misses the early mornings and late nights, the casual wave of a condom packet that makes him flush all the way to his ears. He misses Yoongi.
“Hey, Jimin, do you wanna go for dinner in town?” Hoseok asks.
He hears the secondary question lying beneath it: do you want to do something, anything? and he knows that Hoseok was probably the only one capable of asking this without coming off as patronising or condescending. Hoseok is always all smiles and even as he tiptoes, he doesn’t handle others like porcelain. He handles them like friends.
“Alright, sure,” Jimin agrees carelessly, too busy drowning himself in his latest assignment for Music Theory class because that’s the only thing he knows how to do nowadays. “Anything.”
“Yoongi-hyung will be coming too,” Hoseok says, and he leaves the room before Jimin can say anything else.
It’s a simple affair. Just a group of friends hanging out on a weekend like any other, the sights and sounds of downtown masquerading as background music to their night out. It’s seven of them again, but it’s slightly different—even as Jeongguk teases Seokjin about his age (“Already post-grad, huh?” “Shut up, fetus.”) and Namjoon accidentally stumbles over nothing, there is a certain tension in the air. It is thick—thick enough to slice through with a knife, and it hangs between them like a lost ghost.
“So,” Taehyung says, slightly stiff, yet still managing to muster a smile. “Where are we going for dinner?”
They end up at the new sushi place that has opened down the road, helmed by a very tall, very imposing Japanese man whose arms are covered in tattoos, colours and lines that swirl about his biceps and forearms. As they enter, he bows, presenting a shaved head to the group.
“This place seems legit,” Hoseok whistles lowly.
Halfway through their third order of tamago sushi, Jimin realises with a start that it has all been a set-up. He’s sandwiched between the polished walls and Yoongi’s side (when Seokjin had nudged him toward the seat and then shoved Yoongi right in, Jimin’s heart clenched) and each time he so much as shifts a millimetre, he bumps into Yoongi. Elbows into his ribcage, light apologies under his breath. Each time, he thinks he can feel Yoongi tense up, but he doesn’t dare turn to look.
“It’s kinda squeezy,” Yoongi huffs, grumpy as ever. He still looks good, Jimin thinks. His skin is still perfect and his upper lip juts out just a little bit—and errant thought runs past, that he has felt those lips against his before—but his face is pale and ashy, his eyes tired.
“Deal with it, gramps,” Jeongguk hoots. It’s a moment of bravado, fuelled by sake, that is quickly quelled by the sharp look he receives and the way Taehyung slaps his hand over Jeongguk’s mouth.
“You brat, what are you—”
Jimin looks around: most everyone else has left already, only himself, Yoongi, Jeongguk and Taehyung left sitting around the table (thinking back, their excuses really were pulled out of their ass. There is no way Namjoon would ever sign up for a cooking class). Jeongguk is too busy being a little shit and Taehyung too busy trying to control him, and there’s no one else around to stop Yoongi from going off on the maknae.
Oh, fuck this.
Yoongi’s already making to stand up, hands braced against the edge of the table, eyes narrowed.
“Hyung, please,” Jimin says softly. He’s the only one who hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol, and it seems like the liquid fire flowing through Yoongi’s veins is burning in more ways than one.
The elder doesn’t stop. He clenches his fists, knuckles turning white, a low hiss escaping from his mouth.
“You have to calm down,” Jimin pleads, even as Jeongguk and Taehyung are slowly backing away because even boozed up, they know a threat when they see one. (And there is one indeed; it comes in the form of a panther-like Min Yoongi, crouched and ready to attack, because that tension right there has been building up for hours, for days.)
But it all falls on deaf ears, because next thing he knows, Yoongi stands up, pushing the table away from himself as he does so. The scrape of the table against the wooden floors is loud and grating and it sends Jeongguk and Taehyung leaping backward, eyes wide and lips pursed.
“Yoongi-hyung,” Jimin whispers.
He reaches upward and wraps his fingers, short as they are, around Yoongi’s wrist. Presses his fingers into the soft skin right underneath Yoongi’s palm and tightens and tries to ignore the way his own pulse matches the steadily increasing beat under his fingertips.
The vein straining against Yoongi’s neck, a cool blue stark against white skin, slowly fades away. His shoulders relax, the lines of his face soften.
“Guys, we’ll see you back at the dorms,” Jimin says. And before rationality can set in, he grabs Yoongi’s hand and tugs both of them out of the restaurant.
The dorms are quiet on a Friday night, quiet enough that their footfalls on the dirty corridor tiles echo throughout the hall.
At some point between the exit of the restaurant and the quad in front of their dorms, the alcohol had really begun seeping through Yoongi’s system, dusting his cheeks a pale pink and rendering his limbs into a jelly-like mess. Now, Jimin has one of Yoongi’s noodly arms slung over his own shoulders. An arm wraps around Yoongi’s waist to stop him from falling the fuck over and faceplanting into the cold hard ground.
“Come on, Yoongi,” Jimin grunts, as he pulls Yoongi up the last flight of steps. His hyung’s a lightweight, he realises, the flush spreading steadily across his face and down his neck and below his collar, dips into where his chest begins and—
“Yah, where’s the ‘hyung’?” Yoongi narrows his eyes and wrinkles his nose. It’s more cute than anything. Jimin stifles a laugh and guides Yoongi along, pulling both of them into his dorm, kicking at the empty pizza delivery boxes on the ground. “Anyway, as I was saying, holy fucking shit is is this Jihoon person annoying. I mean, I know he’s a really cool underground rapper or whatever and I admit his beats are pretty sick, but I can only take this many fur coats before I need to, I don’t know, go sign up to be a PETA spokesperson or something.”
Yoongi is a lot looser when he’s drunk, Jimin realises. His body is looser, more relaxed, the permanent tension in his shoulders temporarily gone, stumbling about like he has forgotten left from right. His mouth is looser—Jimin has heard Yoongi talk more in the past twenty minutes than he has in the past two weeks.
“Of course, hyung,” Jimin replies dismissively, not really taking in Yoongi’s words so much as he takes in the way his mouth moves. Lips thin but pouty, curling in and flattening out with each syllable. Ingrains the way they shape each word into his mind and imagines those same lips, ghosting over his skin—
“Are you even listening to me?” Yoongi actually pouts and slumps down onto the bed, arms spread-eagle and staring up at the ceiling. “This is important, you know, life lessons for when you gotta deal with obnoxious Music majors, like they know shit about the world.”
“Hyung, you’re drunk,” Jimin says.
He pulls at Yoongi’s very red cheek, both to make a point and also because this would probably be the only time he’s able to do so without dying a very painful death. Yoongi snaps back upright immediately, slapping Jimin’s hand away with a soft hiss.
The sight of Yoongi like this is one he tattoos into his mind. Shirt halfway slipping off, hair dishevelled like he’s just got out of bed, cheeks as pink as his lips, limbs curled into himself like a hedgehog. Jimin takes Yoongi in—all of him, from the hastily-put-together outfit to the messy hair to the quintessential ‘I Am Drunk’ look—eyes raking over again and again.
Because this is Yoongi, but Yoongi hasn’t talked to him in a long time. He doesn’t keep track of the days because he misses Yoongi, and each day that passes by without Yoongi is like a day spent without your favourite sweater, the warmth and comfort that usually lingers now gone. He doesn’t keep track of the days because it puts a number to his failure to maintain even a normal relationship, his failure to make Yoongi happy, and fuck if that doesn’t hurt.
Jimin can’t help it. He starts laughing, and once he starts he really, really can’t stop. He dissolves into a fit of giggles, high-pitched and continuous and by the time he realises what a mess he is, his laughs have become jerky staccatos and he’s not breathing any longer, he’s gulping , trying to swallow all he can while keeping his tears at bay and something crawls up his throat—
“Sorry,” Jimin manages out between stuttered breaths and hiccups. He brings the back of his hand up to his eyes, just in case, and when he removes it, it’s only slightly damp. “I’m just—I just think I’m tired, I’m sorry, I think we’re both tired. You should rest up, you’re gonna feel hungover in the morning.”
There’s a pregnant pause. The air is stagnant. Their breaths hang in the air, thin yet deafening.
“Why are you so nice to me?” Yoongi asks. His voice is small, nothing like the loud, husky slurring of a few minutes ago. He looks at Jimin as he says this, head tilted to a side, brows knitted in genuine curiosity. “Why are you so nice to me, when I’ve been rude and unreasonable and a dick?”
Yoongi’s eyes are soft but they pierce through Jimin’s anyway, and he has to look down. He can’t answer without looking down, and the words fly out of his mouth before he can stop them.
“Because you make me happy.”
He expects Yoongi to laugh mockingly and dismiss it as a bad joke. He expects Yoongi to blow up and storm out in drunken rage. What he doesn’t expect is a contemplative Yoongi, one that bites at his lower lip and stares at Jimin for longer than necessary, as if he trying to take Jimin apart and make him whole all at once.
“I talked to my dad last night,” Yoongi says out of nowhere, and this—this, Jimin definitely doesn’t expect.
The flush has more or less drained from Yoongi’s face and the tension, that stiffness of the neck, has returned. Yet, his gaze is steel as he trains it on Jimin.
“I told him I wanted to do music, not Economics.” He closes his eyes. “He got angry. It’s not like I didn’t expect it, I really did, but I was hoping… I’m still hoping, I guess.” He fiddles with his fingers. Cracks each knuckle. “I get it, though. Why they want me to do something that will pay the bills. We weren’t exactly poor but my parents had to work their way up—they had to fight their way up, and it took a lot of time and a lot of effort, but they did it, so that we could have a better life. An easier life.” Lets out a breath. “They just want the same for me. And you can’t blame your parents for wanting their child to do well, can you?”
Jimin wants to answer. He wants to say something. But there’s a reason why he fumbles around with words, has always been better at showing than telling, and right now, his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth.
“We fought,” Yoongi says lifelessly, as if stating a mere fact. “He shouted at me over the phone and threatened to cut off my allowance. He told me that it was a good thing I didn’t visit during Christmas, otherwise I’d have spread my ‘unorthodox ideas’ to the rest of the family.”
Something clenches around Jimin’s heart and tethers it to rock-bottom. The sinking feeling in his chest is strange—he’s never felt something like it, much less because of another person, but here he is, heart heavy because of Min Yoongi. He wants to take back those words from the other night. He wants to take them back and erase them because now he knows that they have done nothing but eaten away at the doubts that had already been swirling around Yoongi’s mind, unleashed a tide of something that had been unfurling under the surface between Yoongi and his parents and, by extension, everyone else.
And Yoongi—Yoongi looks small. Tiny, miniscule, drowning in his shirt and dwarfed by the relatively large bed. He’s curled into himself, head bowed down and knees knocking against his chin, fingers interlaced around his shins.
“Hyung,” Jimin whispers, scooting over on all fours until he is right in front of Yoongi, his own knees digging into the bedsheets as he sits back on his heels. “Yoongi-hyung. I can’t say it’ll be alright, it’s not my place to say it and I can’t predict anything and I’m really, really bad with words, but… we’re here, if you ever need us.” Yoongi looks up and Jimin’s heart skips a beat. “If you ever need me.”
Yoongi is impossibly close. He’s close enough that Jimin can count each eyelash and, if he really wants to, reach out to scoot his fingers across Yoongi’s brow bone and down the slope of his nose and into the small dip of his cupid’s bow.
“Why do I make you happy?”
“I don’t know,” Jimin admits, reluctantly leaning backward and away from Yoongi. “You’re kinda mean sometimes and grumpy and prickly and irritable and insensitive.” He bites his lip. “But you’re kind. You’re a nice person, you’d do anything for the people you care about, you don’t mind me pestering you every other second even though I’m as annoying as a seven year-old on Halloween.”
The light hits Yoongi’s face and casts a shadow across the planes of his cheekbones, almost makes his skin glow in the dark. Then, his mouth stretches into a smile—slow at first, then sudden and wide, wide enough that it reveals his gums and his eyes curl into thin crescents.
“You make me happy too,” Yoongi says, a little dopily.
Jimin’s pulse races but he quells it down. Tries to, at least. “Is that the alcohol talking?”
“Nah,” Yoongi replies, still grinning. He leans forward and rests his forehead against Jimin’s. “And this definitely isn’t the alcohol either,” he breathes against Jimin, right before he presses their lips together.
Like everything else in life, it takes time. Yoongi takes time, Jimin takes time. And their relationship built off of free condoms and blackmail takes time, too. A relationship that has evolved into one of hand-holding and kisses—soft ones, hard ones, biting-at-each-other-like-we-need-it ones—and nights tucked away in the comfort of each other’s arms, drowning out the world with the other’s breaths.
“About fucking time!” Taehyung hoots, when they walk to their weekly group dinner hand in hand, sides pressed up against each other. Then he narrows his eyes. “Is it for real, this time?”
Everyone else looks at them—Hoseok’s eyes are gleaming, Jeongguk holds a gaze of polite but eager curiosity, Namjoon has his narrowed in quiet contemplation and Jin simply looks expectant and very, very slightly smug.
“Well, yeah.” Jimin is the one who answers but Yoongi is the one who lifts their joined hands up, fingers locked together, stroking a thumb over the back of Jimin’s hand as he does so. “It is.”
It’s taken a long fucking time. It’s taken misunderstandings and petty dealings and late nights in the studio, unnecessary angst and Christmas dinners and long, dreary bus rides across Korea. It’s taken how many months, Jimin has lost count. How many nights of sleep lost, lost to tossing and turning about in his bed as he frets over Yoongi and the way he clams up and withdraws.
It’s taken a long time, but now they’re here. They’re here and they’re together, and Jimin doesn’t really know where this will go. But when he thinks about the way his name sounds on Yoongi’s lips—how Yoongi troops into his dance studio every other night with his favourite bowl of ramen, the small sounds escaping from Yoongi’s mouth when he’s thrusting into Jimin on those late nights when it is just the two of them and an empty room and dim lights, Yoongi’s fingers curling perfectly into his own—he thinks it doesn’t really matter.
Jimin’s reputation has never really existed to begin with, if he thinks about it.
Here he is, standing in the middle of a mostly empty corridor on a Wednesday night. Everyone else is asleep and the doors are shut and really, there should be no good reason why he is sneaking about the hallway, dressed in an all-black ensemble, all ready to rob a bank. There should be no good reason why he presses up against the walls and tiptoes instead of walks, creeping his way across the hallway.
“What are you doing, Park Jimin?”
The voice is low and husky and familiar, the same voice he has carved into his heart time and time again. Yoongi’s head peeks out from behind his door, only half-awake, sleep clinging to his voice.
Jimin darts over and closes the door, careful not to disturb a sleeping Hoseok.
“I swear, I didn’t steal them,” Jimin whispers hurriedly. He digs a hand into the pocket of his coat and fishes out a few packets, the lewd rustle making him cringe. “The health center was giving them out.”
“ Ramen -flavoured condoms?”
“Well, yeah.” Jimin shrugs, and he is glad for the dark lighting because holy shit his face must be on fire right now. “They were free.”
“I got some too, actually,” Yoongi admits, grinning sheepishly.
He rummages through an open drawer for a while before brandishing a couple of condom packets in his hand—and unlike Jimin, who can hide his blush under the cover of the dark, Yoongi’s embarrassment spreads furious and fast across his face. The next second, though, his grin turns into a smirk, eyes glinting with intent.
“Wanna try them out?”