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Jimin doesn’t feel like dying very often and truthfully, he kind of does want to right now. Shutting his eyes and collapsing in the middle of the college campus sounded like the best idea ever, except whenever he tried to let his eyelids drop all he sees is the image of that hauntingly beautiful face looking back at him. A wave of shame washes over him as he tries not to think about how terrible hearing “sorry, I’m not interested, but thank you, I’m extremely flattered” sounded, said in the voice that made him freak out yet revel in the beauty of it.
Jimin had spent half of his earnings from last month on the flowers and card (custom made, Jimin had insisted) on a crush he’d had for a solid three months and mustering up the courage to go up front to him and confess wasn’t the easiest for Jimin (counting all the times he’d had to walk up to the nearest wall and almost smashed his face into it out of anxiety) and when he’d finally did, it was on Valentine’s day, of all days possible.
Jimin wished he could walk three steps without being blocked by a couple making out or giving heart eyes to each other. He takes out his frustration
on kicking every can he sees on the street (which isn't a lot, because there aren't that many poor single people out on Valentine's day having beer on their own out of cans).
He manages to wander southwards to the city square where markets are located. To talk about impeccable timing, a Valentine's day fest was being held there (for couples! the neon pink sign glaring at Jimin seems to shout gleefully). All Jimin wants is for the stupid ribbons attached at every stall to strangle him.
Jimin really, really doesn't know what he's trying to do to himself by walking down the street filled with heart decorations and cheerful laughter from couples.
---
He thinks he's trying to kill himself, coincidentally so since he didn't know what came over himself to keep walking down the stupid street with couples smooching and sharing food purchased from one of the shops, and Jimin just walks down the pink-filled aisle kicking at every candy floss stick and used ice cream cup (he prefers not to think about how much smooching was done over these things).
Something Jimin absolutely hates about being in his current situation is how his attempts to tune out his surroundings are continuously failing. He’s plugged in his earphones, listening to nothing, yet every time he tries shutting his eyes the image of rejection burns into the back of his eyelids. It's painful and Jimin would rather deal with his obnoxiously loud environment and murder himself slowly in the process. Yet he feels like the sparkly banners are mocking his entire existence; what kind of freshly-rejected soul would wander around in a Valentine’s day market?
Jimin hurries out of the nauseating atmosphere he (voluntarily, and stupidly) walked into, not even stopping to increase his food-wrapper-and-used-cup-kick-count.
---
The cold air stings Jimin’s cheeks and he doesn’t realize that the market had been slightly warmer than the rest of the (albeit) much emptier street. He assumed that all the other single (and perhaps, rejected) people were moping at home, perhaps treating themselves to a nice evening of ice cream and some rom-com to make themselves feel slightly better about spending this day alone.
The idea appeals to Jimin’s slightly crushed heart yet his mind tells him to keep walking, passing all three possible roads that could lead back to his apartment. His feet are moving of their own accord, leading him to nowhere but Jimin is certain that somewhere is where he would get lost in.
---
The frost is starting to bite at Jimin’s lips and ear tips when Jimin hears the quiet strumming of Taeyang’s Eyes, Nose, Lips across the street and looks up. Cursing at the odd snowing in the middle of February, he manages to pick up his half frozen feet and wander towards the source of the warm music.
He’s rubbing at his pink nose and huddled up in his worst scarf when he sees a man with midnight blue hair strumming a guitar on the side of the pavement, contentedly humming along to the song. Jimin pauses and takes in his surroundings; he's wandered to a slightly more crowded area of town and he notices the guitar guy has a small audience leaning against the fencing that surrounded the frozen lake.
The song ends and good looking guitar man picks up the pace with Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, and the small crowd perks up slightly, with some people singing along and couples swaying along to the beat. Jimin finds himself getting into the groove of the song, singing along to the chorus and bobbing his head and smiling as best as he could with his entirely numb face.
He's quite sure mysterious guitar guy with good song choices made eye contact with him, but he isn't too sure.
The small audience crowding around the guitarist turns into a slightly bigger, livelier one as the song progresses and the occasional clink of coins in the man’s guitar case could be heard over the mass impromptu singing session he’d gathered.
Hot guitar guy ends the song with the last note and the crowd bursts into applause, cheers and whistles. The pleasant atmosphere doesn’t last for long though, for the crowd disperses slowly during the pause between the songs, but Jimin remains, slightly overwhelmed by the previous song and also a little less frozen up, leaning against the equally cold fence.
Jimin wants to simply leave his remaining five dollars in the guitar case sitting three meters away from him and walk away to get a little more lost, but he doesn't know what force is keeping him back, glueing him to the gaudy green fence. Extremely Hot guitar guy begins on a new song, this one unfamiliar to Jimin but he listens along, somehow enjoying the melody.
He gets lost in the music for a moment and he feels like that damn rejection a couple hours ago wasn't that bad at all. He does still blame the guy from being exceptionally good looking and charming, though.
And then he realizes the guitar guy was staring at him for the entirety of the song. They hold eye contact for a good five seconds until guitar guy blinks and turns back to his guitar, and Jimin lets out a breath he doesn't know he'd been holding.
---
It's been three songs since the Very Awkward eye contact and Jimin is fiddling with his phone, scrolling through whatever was on twitter just to keep himself occupied (and to keep himself from staring at Guitarist Guy any more) but he realizes his stupid, frozen thumbs weren't doing their job and staying immobile.
Jimin realizes he's lost before he knows it, all while leaning against the same ugly old fence in grass green. Jimin’s lost in how the guitarist’s eyebrows furrow whenever his phone blinks at the side, how he shakes out nonexistent snow crystals out of his blue hair, how his fingers glide over the guitar strings.
And then he thinks to himself, what was rejection if the real prize was in front of him right now?
---
Min Yoongi thinks that sitting out in the freezing weather with his guitar and coffee is the best way to spend his Valentine’s Day, or maybe not.
He didn’t choose to be alone and neither did he decide to freeze his ass off voluntarily. But he knew he had to, had to take a moment to melt into the sounds of the crowd and find his inspiration again. “That book isn’t going to write itself,” his editor had said curtly to him over the phone. He just wants to punch his editor in the face and force him into the nasty cold weather outside.
As much as Yoongi didn’t want to look like an illegal street busker he wound up looking like one because of all the layers he was bundled under. And of all days, none of his nice scarves were clean (yet he only has himself to blame for never doing the laundry) and he ended up leaving the house in one of his gaudy, bright yellow scarves Namjoon had gotten him for Christmas (why that man is one of Korea’s most prized models yet had such bad fashion sense, he doesn’t know).
Yoongi immediately notices the small scatter of people subtly crowding around him and shrinks further into his horrible-looking scarf and starts on another song. He does notice the woman who had been standing at the same spot nearly directly opposite him for over an hour and with tears sliding down her face slowly. When they make eye contact, he is met with a shaky, watery smile he returns.
He tries not to attract attention to himself by not paying attention to the small crowd, but he can't help but notice the pink-haired man who'd been standing at the same spot for a while with a wistful smile on his face, staring into the distance.
And he makes the wrong decision (or maybe, the right one) by looking at him for a little too long. The eye contact that passes between them is filled with Too Much Awkwardness and a slight buzz of electricity, and Yoongi gulps and returns to his guitar.
He decides on a regular, popular jam and strums the first few chords. It doesn't take long for a crowd to start forming, and all Yoongi can think to himself is, “god dammit” at the people slowly filing into the gaps of the crowd.
He does get a bunch of money from it though, and he isn't sorry for not telling them he wasn’t even a basker at all.
--
It’s three songs later and the crowd finally disperses, save the pink-headed dude (still leaning in the same spot on the fence) when Yoongi decides to throw in some instrumental bits of some original tracks he messed around while trying to find a cure to his seemingly endless writer’s block. He lets his fingers find the chords on his guitar, for he winds up looking at the guy in the yellow scarf, lips parted from the cold and staring into the distance.
Yoongi feels compelled to dive into bits and pieces of poetry about how the sky is clear and spring arrives when he keeps looking at him.
He thinks he just found his new muse, or kinda.
--
Jimin is shaken out of his daze when he feels the gaze of another upon him. It’s the Too Attractive guitarist yet again, and all he wants to do now is look away to stop the buzzing in his head but before he can do that, a voice calls out, “Hey, you’ve kinda been standing over there for a while now, so uh, you-”
Jimin realizes that the guy he’s been staring at for the past thirty minutes is actually talking to him, and before his dumb brain processes anything he stammers, “I have fallen from a tree and fallen from the sky, but I think the best fall was falling in love with you?”
And then Jimin wants to smash his face into the wall because he can’t believe he just said that and Embarrassed himself in front of Outrageously Beautiful dude.
And the next thing that happens, Jimin can’t believe his eyes (or ears, or nose, or any of his senses) because he’s standing up and walking towards Jimin who Publicly Embarrassed himself, shaking his bangs out of his eyes, and grins at him.
Jimin feels like he’s about to spontaneously combust.
--
Yoongi leaves the freezing park smiling like an idiot with a phone number scrawled on his guitar case and a date scored for next Monday, while Jimin leaves with the memory of a gorgeous dark blue-haired man and forgets about his dumb crush with the same date on Monday.
You could say they're both so whipped for each other, because they definitely are.