Work Text:
The material needed to be pulled tight in order to hook each eye. Yoongi was careful about how he stretched it. This seemed much tighter than he imagined it would be. He knew he got the right size for Jimin; he’d done research to make sure this would be safe, but still, he worried. Especially when Jimin expelled the air from his lungs to try to make it easier for him to do the clasps. “Isn’t it kind of hard to breathe in these things? They just seem so constricting.”
“They’re supposed to compress my chest, hyung. That’s literally what they’re for.”
Yoongi rolled his eyes. He knew that. “But you’re still meant to be able to breathe normally.”
“I can, don’t worry.” Jimin smiled reassuringly as Yoongi finished with the last hook and then leaned forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for helping me with this. The doctor says the cast can come off in about six weeks, so until then, I’m kind of useless with fine motor skills that require two hands.”
Yoongi instinctively looked down at Jimin’s wrist at the mention of the cast. The younger man broke it at Yoongi’s nephew’s birthday party yesterday afternoon. It was Yoongi’s fault. He didn’t believe Jimin could do a backflip on his brother’s trampoline when he boastfully claimed he could, so Yoongi challenged him. Yoongi was right, but that was something he could no longer take pride in as soon as Jimin let out a cry of pain, landing horribly wrong trying to catch himself with his hand. If Yoongi just said he believed him, Jimin wouldn't have gotten hurt trying to competitively prove to him he could do it. He felt awful.
“It’s a long time,” Jimin continued. “Are you sure this won’t be an inconvenience for you? Because I don’t have to wear the binder.”
“You’re more comfortable when you wear it and I want you to feel good about yourself, babe. You’re never an inconvenience to me,” Yoongi hated when Jimin said stuff like that, always having to ask whether he was a burden. The answer was always no. Yoongi has never once thought of Jimin as an inconvenience or a burden. He loved him, would do anything for him, and he would remind him of this as often as he needed to in order to make it stick. “Besides,” he gestured to Jimin’s hand with a nod. “This is my fault. Helping you put on and take off your binder is the very least I can do.”
“Actually, it was my fault. I was the one who needed to go and show off. Man, I ended up looking really stupid, huh?” He laughed a little, huffily. “And I stole attention from your nephew at his own party by embarrassing myself. Yikes.”
“He turned two. He won’t remember not having been the center of attention.”
“Still, what an impression I probably left on your family, huh?”
“You did leave quite an impression on them,” Yoongi agreed with a fond smile. Before Jimin broke his hand and they had to leave in a rush to the ER, Yoongi’s family had been eating Jimin up. His parents, brother, and sister-in-law had already met him a few times before, back when they thought he was a woman. They loved him then, and they thankfully still loved him just as much now that he was out as trans. Yoongi’s extended family hadn’t met him before though, and Jimin was really nervous for the whole week leading up to the event that things wouldn’t go well. He worried that there would be some sort of confrontation. Yoongi tried to assure him that his family was fairly open minded. At the very least, he knew they would respect his boyfriend’s identity, even if they didn’t fully understand.
As expected, Yoongi’s aunts were infatuated by Jimin and thought he was the cutest, most pleasant thing. They kept pinching his full cheeks while Yoongi’s uncles asked him all sorts of questions about himself. Yoongi’s grandfather elbowed him jokingly, asking what such a good looking young man was doing with his grandson. “He got his looks from his father, who got them from me, you know. I’m not sure how we somehow got lucky enough to end up with people so out of our ballpark.” He glanced lovingly at his wife beside him, and she hit his arm gently with an, ‘Oh, stop that.’
Yoongi rolled his eyes fondly at his grandfather’s teasing. “It’s league, harabeoji. The expression is ‘out of our league,’” he corrected him.
“For whatever my opinion is worth, I think you passed very handsome traits down to Yoongi hyung,” Jimin said, and Yoongi’s grandmother cooed at him.
“Well, take a good, long look at me, because this is your boyfriend’s future,” his grandfather did a little spin to show his body off, putting most of his weight on his cane as he did. “He’s in his glory days now, but one day, he’ll be a saggy, little old man like me with erectile dysfunction.”
“You aged well, dear,” his wife complimented. “You’re just as good looking as ever. Still hot enough to turn a woman on.”
“Ooookay, thank you both!” Yoongi cringed, pulling Jimin away from the conversation with a sound of disgust as she added something about erectile dysfunction being irrelevant when there are such fine benefits to having removable dentures.
Jimin giggled. “Come on, it’s sweet. I hope we’ll still have a playful relationship like that when we’re old.”
Yoongi led his boyfriend over to get some cake, entertaining the idea of being old, with Jimin at his side, for the hundredth time as he served them both a slice. He gave Jimin a piece with a frosting flower and a ripe strawberry, knowing more than anything that he wanted exactly that, - a long, happy life with this man.
He wanted both the extraordinary and the mundane. He wanted to be there through every step of Jimin’s incredible journey, watching his transition and cheering him on the whole time. He wanted to do life with Jimin. Get a house. Take care of pets. Watch children play in the lawn, pack their lunches and help them onto the school bus every day, be frustrated as they become angsty teenagers and relieved as they settle into a stable adulthood. He wanted to spoil grandkids. He wanted both of them in rocking chairs on the porch, reading newspaper articles to each other through their bifocal glasses. Drinking a glass of wine together early in the morning, fully enjoying their retirement. Eating dinner together every night and talking with each other about their days for sixty-plus years. Growing and learning together always, supporting and loving each other for the rest of their days, just being…
“The cake is really sugary,” Yoongi noted and Jimin nodded, agreeing.
Yoongi’s younger cousins all thought Jimin was really cool too. They argued with each other for his attention, so Jimin tried to divide it among them fairly. They had been the most excited to watch Jimin do his flips and tricks on the trampoline, and were the most upset when Jimin messed up his backflip.
“They all loved you.”
“I’m glad. They were all really kind to me. It’s kinda weird, being surrounded by your supportive family after not having contact with my own for a few years,” Jimin mused, then backtracked. “Not weird in a bad way, obviously. It was nice that they were accepting. I just… I don’t know. I kept waiting for someone to react the same way my parents had, for one of your aunts to look at me on your arm in disgust and talk badly about our relationship or something. I expect people to treat me poorly, but I was really worried that me being trans would change how they treated you. I didn’t want to cause any waves for you and your family.”
“If a family member would treat me badly just for who I love, then they clearly don’t care very much about my happiness, do they? I wouldn’t have stayed very long at that party if someone there was unkind to you or transphobic. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. You’re very important to me, and I know my family saw that and was glad that I found someone as special as you.”
Jimin got this far away, empty look in his eyes, and Yoongi suspected he was thinking more about his parents, how he wished they’d reacted.
Pulling Jimin into his side and wrapping him in his arms, Yoongi reminded him, “You know you’re not alone, right? My family is yours now.”
This was along the same lines of what Yoongi’s mother had said to Jimin, referring to him as her son as she embraced him warmly in welcome at the beginning of the party. “You can call me eomma, you know. You’re family,” she’d said after Jimin respectfully and formally greeted her.
“I know, and believe me, I’m so, so grateful for that. Part of me just really wishes I hadn’t lost my own family. I miss them a lot sometimes. I’m bitter. I know it’s been years, but it still hurts.”
‘I understand,’ Yoongi was about to say, but he stopped himself, because he didn’t really, so he held Jimin tighter for a while. “Does it hurt as much as breaking your hand did?” he asked eventually, trying to lighten the mood a bit.
“Yeah. In a different, more achy way.” Jimin admitted, but did huff out small laugh though, as Yoongi hoped he would. “Breaking my hand hurt like a bitch though. Fuck. Still wasn’t nearly as painful as the damage done to my pride. So humiliating.” Jimin stood to continue getting dressed for the day, shrugging a loose shirt on over his binder.
“Just a warning, you will probably get teased for this for the rest of your life, but I promise, my cousins’ teasing is done from a place of endearment. I’ve still got plenty of things they won’t let me live down.”
“Like what?” Yoongi could tell Jimin needed to be further cheered up.
“Text them and ask them about our karaoke outing. They’ll send you a video of me giving the performance of a lifetime. It’s too bad I was so shitfaced drunk, because I probably wouldn’t have gotten booed off the stage if I remembered any of the words to the song, or if I hadn’t started dancing so suggestively.”
“Oh, my god. I do need to see that.” Letting himself get distracted from the task at hand and dropping the pants he had pulled from his bottom dresser drawer onto the floor, Jimin sat back down on the edge of the mattress, grabbing his phone off the nightstand to text one of Yoongi’s older cousins immediately. It was only a few minutes later when he got a video sent back to him.
In the video, a much younger, red-faced Yoongi began singing as Jimin pushed play. ‘Uh huh, listen boy. My first love story…’ He was crying from laughter by the time he finished watching Yoongi slur badly along to Girls’ Generation’s Gee, grinding against the mic stand and pulling ridiculous moves that were probably an attempt at twerking, but looked a lot more like Yoongi just bending over to stick his ass in the air and wiggling it back and forth for his little audience of bar flies. The cousin filming was dying with laughter and the footage was shaky as a result.
And Yoongi didn’t even care how ashamed he was of this night, because Jimin, too, was complaining about his cheeks hurting from laughing so much and his wet eyes weren’t from sadness. Yoongi would so gladly let Jimin see every embarrassing moment of his life if it cheered him up like this. “I hope that puts you breaking your hand into perspective. Nothing is worse than having blackmail material like this looming over your head.”
“You’re right. This is a lot worse. I’m keeping this video forever.”
“Awesome,” Yoongi drawled sarcastically, but truthfully, he didn’t care one bit. He hoped Jimin did keep this video forever and he hoped he watched it frequently, whenever he needed a laugh. God, he wanted nothing more than for this boy to always be wearing a smile and to never know pain again. If only he could guarantee such a thing, make such a vow to protect Jimin from anything that could cause him harm. Lord knows, Jimin has had more than his fair share of hurt, and Yoongi hated that such a sweet person had to go through so much.
If only the rest of the world could see what he did when they looked at Jimin. If only Jimin’s family knew exactly what they were missing out on. Yoongi would never understand how his parents could be okay with missing out on witnessing their son transform into the stunning young man he was today. How could a parent miss such an important time in their child’s life and not feel like shit for it? How could they turn their back on their child and abandon them when all that child needed most was love and support and acceptance? How could they? Yoongi wasn’t a parent himself yet, but he couldn’t even fathom the hatred in the hearts of Jimin’s parents. He couldn’t imagine ever hating his kid for being gay or trans or whatever else. It made him angry and bitter too, vicariously for Jimin.
Jimin groaned as he caught sight of the time on the alarm clock on the bedside table. “Ugh. As much as I’d like to sit here replaying this video all morning, I should get moving.” He got up again, continuing in his endeavor to get ready for work.
“Is there anything else you need help with in here, or can I go make you a quick breakfast?” Yoongi watched in amusement as Jimin placed his packer into his boxers and shimmied, one-handedly, into a pair of pants.
“I’ll be okay. Scrambled eggs and sausage please, hyung. You’re the greatest!”
“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Yoongi muttered and carried himself to the kitchen to start on their breakfast. It was technically Jimin’s turn to cook, but Yoongi didn’t want him to struggle more than necessary. This was how things were. When one of them was going through something, the other would help ease the load to prevent any overwhelm or stress.
Two weeks ago, Yoongi, burned out from work and a little down in the dumps, had no energy whatsoever for any chores. Jimin had carried most of the weight during that time. Things weren’t always 50/50 for them. Though they aimed to split any efforts and burdens evenly, this wasn’t always realistic. Sometimes, one of them could only offer 25%, and the other had to pick up the slack to carry the remaining 75%. And this was okay. They traded off; they both were there for each other when they were needed and both were appreciative of the other’s extra help. This was what made a relationship a partnership.
As he pushed eggs around in their pan, Yoongi continued to fantasize about the future, about a lifetime with Jimin. It was one of his favorite things to think about lately.