Chapter Text
Five years earlier
The dark leather couch dips uncomfortably beneath him. The sound echoes in his ears, making it feel like he’s taking up much more space than he’d originally intended. The wall clock on his left ticks down to 9:30AM.
Dr. Kim is running late for her appointment, the receptionist had said, but you can wait in her office because she’s expecting you and it shouldn’t be longer than a few minutes, she’d gone on to say.
Yoongi would hightail out of here if he could but Hoseok is waiting for him outside in the car, ready to turn him back to the direction of the office, eyebrows raised, a silent challenge that Yoongi would begrudgingly concede to anyway.
So, Yoongi sits, hands pressed against the cool, smooth surface underneath, foot tapping restlessly. He crosses his arms.
It’s ten minutes past the time they’d agreed on when the door opens and closes softly. Yoongi can hear the scuff of shoes on the carpeted floor, some bustling behind the desk.
Hyojin leisurely places her things on her table before setting her bag down on the chair.
“So,” She starts, her voice coming up enthused, and like she’s happy to see him.
Yoongi leans back further in his seat, tightens the way his arms are folded over himself, lifting an eyebrow up at her inability to let go of the smalltalk when they both know how this is going to go.
“Right. Alright. To the point. How’s the arm doing, Min-sshi?”
Yoongi had been dead set on disliking Dr. Kim Hyojin from the start, but as these things go, his apprehension around her wanes eventually. She really isn’t so bad and she’s always been quick on the uptake. But to say that out loud? Over his dead body.
“S’fine,” Yoongi shrugs.
Hyojin smiles, jots it down on Yoongi’s record, writes like he’d said more than a word and a half.
His file is a fat stack of papers attached to a gray clipboard. There’s a cat sticker that Hyojin had put on the right-hand corner of it on their second session, telling him that she’d received a set that day from a friend and that it had reminded her of Yoongi.
“What’re you writing this time?”
“Just notes.” Hyojin answers without looking up.
This is probably true, but also a gross under reporting of the facts. There’s probably more to it and Yoongi can probably find out what else is going in his file if he’d just ask, but he decides to stay quiet. Maybe if he didn’t care enough it wouldn’t even matter in the first place.
“How’s the medicine treating you? Getting along?”
Yoongi thinks back to the three weeks he spent adjusting to Lexapro and that other one that was supposed to help him sleep at night. He wasn’t fond of it, and had to call to say so because it kept him groggy even after he’d woken up. She’d recommended to cut the pill and take half doses until they saw each other again.
“Same-same,” He rests his arm against the seat. “The one at night still makes me sleepy in the morning.”
Hyojin taps her pen thoughtfully on the clipboard. Murmurs a small, “That won’t do,” as she looks over her notes. He yawns to punctuate his earlier statement.
“We could move you to Prodin, I suppose. Take anything else out and just take that in the mornings only. But make sure you’re awake for it. Can’t have you taking it in the afternoon. It’ll be like a poorly timed sugar rush and you’ll have trouble sleeping at night. Would that be alright for you?”
Yoongi lifts his gaze from his scuffed boots, the carpeted floor, to her eyes, peering at him curiously from behind her rimless glasses.
Hyojin is a nice person. Attentive. Good at her job. Yoongi used to come in twice every two weeks, and then just once now every three. She was quick to spot his discomfort, and didn't force him into a faux sense of closeness.
She had peeled back the layers without feigning any camaraderie between them, which Yoongi had greatly appreciated but would never thank her for, probably. He liked that she looked at him, not like a puzzle piece, but just a person with hang-ups, who needed to be told how to deal with them. Who was scared to open up but wanted to be listened to all the same.
“Yeah, I don’t mind.” Yoongi shrugs. “Does that mean frequent visits again?”
She shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t have to. You can just text me your updates, if anything significant comes up. Otherwise, you’re fine to show up again next month.”
She gives her notes a once over again.
Okay, Yoongi thinks, I’ll bite.
“What was I talking about last time? I don’t remember.”
She smiles a little at that, uncapping a bottle of coffee she’d brought with her, she takes a sip and sets it down on the side table, next some strange little beaver bird statues which Yoongi finds oddly comforting to look at sometimes.
She takes another bottle out of her bag and offers it to him.
“Thanks,” Yoongi mutters as he takes it anyway. The door to her clinic says no food and drinks allowed inside; he can’t say he dislikes this about her.
“Mm, I believe we left off about that ex of yours.”
“Right.” Yoongi twists the bottle cap, and brings the drink to his lips, taking a small sip. “That ex of mine.”
He doesn’t remember how she’d needled that information out of him, but it’s there now. She didn’t need her notes to remind him—though, if he were to recall, she hadn’t been writing when he was talking about it either.
“Oh, come to think of it...could you tell me a bit more about how you two met? You’ve talked about what it was like during, and how you felt but, maybe leading up to that? If you’re fine to—”
“It’s fine.” He says quickly, before he can change his mind.
He takes a cursory glance at the clock which lets him know that there’s about 54 minutes left to the end of his session today. He heaves a sigh and takes another drink before speaking.
“My friends introduced me to him. He was nice. Like all my friends. I figured, it couldn’t hurt and it wouldn’t be so bad because they were all good people so they probably kept the same company. I wasn’t wrong about that. He was a good person. He loved me very much and that was clear. My friends...were very happy for me. The first two months were pure bliss.”
If he thinks far back enough, he can remember the feeling, identifying it but not a single memory to make it anymore tangible.
Hyojin sets down her clipboard on her lap and leans back against the chair as she takes the information in. She drinks from her bottle of coffee too.
“Before that, I’d already been toying with the idea of going to therapy. Getting help. Whatever. I know I needed it. My friends knew I needed it. But I guess I got distracted? Those first few months were really good and I held off without meaning to. It wasn’t his fault. I thought everything that had ever made me sad and dislike who I was—that all went away because of this one person and,” He laughs, despite himself, a twinge of bitterness coloring his tone, “Boy was I wrong.”
“How so?” She tilts her head.
“Old habits die hard. I smoked more, stressing out about how to be a good lover, smoked more stressing out about school and my parents’ expectations, slept less because I needed to stay busy otherwise I’d think about all these things on top of the other. Eventually, I lashed out at him. At my friends too. I got so mad because I thought they’d put me in this situation—things were too good to be true and I was right, because it all started unraveling and I couldn’t stop it. I ran off for a bit. Didn’t go home, just stayed somewhere else. With a close relative.”
“Ah, I see.” This time, Yoongi waits for her to speak. “Well, You did say everyone else was happy for you and you did say he loved you very, very much but, was that how you felt? Were you happy for you? Did you love him? Not even just as much but at all?”
Yoongi can’t help it. He barks out a laugh, and shakes his head, he shields his mouth with the one hand holding his coffee bottle. “Oh, it’s tough questions today, huh?”
“Only for those who can take it. Well?”
Yoongi pauses for a beat. Licks his lips as he considers his answer to that.
“No.” He tells her, finally. Decisively. “I wasn’t happy for myself. I went along with it because I thought it was right. Went along ‘cause it made people around me feel good. He was a great person, he was kind but I didn’t love him. Felt more like he was doting on me, like he was there to babysit and make sure I got to fuck, eat well, and keep at basic hygiene.”
“Ah, the pinnacle of romance.”
“I was in trouble, but I didn’t need a relationship. I didn’t need to be doted on. I needed a therapist. And to be alone.”
“Well, good on you for finally figuring that out.” She grins at him and he allows himself the space to smile a little at the thought.
“So we broke up. Actually—he ended it, because he could feel it by then, probably. I was starting to think about all of it as an obligation and I’m sure he hated being treated like that. Still, I was torn up about it in the end.”
“A breakup’s a breakup. Hurts like a bitch either way,” She shrugs, like it’s obvious. And maybe it is.
“But that’s not the part where I start going to therapy and looking out for myself. I just knew I needed time and to get away. So I left. By the tail end of that last relationship, I got into hard drugs. When we broke it off, I got into that and indiscriminate fucking. And then I stopped thinking about myself altogether, maybe at all. And then I...”
His next breath is a slight shudder at the memory, touching his arm, still healing. It feels like eons ago and just yesterday at the same time and it still made him feel a physical ache in his chest when he remembers that he was that kind of person at one point, that he wouldn’t be able to take it back.
“Anyway. It was my friend Hoseok, who finally tracked me down in some dingy apartment. Still in the city. I looked so bad. Around that time I stopped looking at mirrors, so I didn’t know but he just—I can’t forget the expression on his face when saw me. Took me down to the nearest hospital to get the drugs pumped out of my system, and called my mom, asking for help. Hobi and I yelled at each other in the hospital room, and then my mom and I yelled at each other an hour later.”
He leans his head back on the couch’s backrest. Closes his eyes. “You know, I didn’t like who I was then. I still don’t even like me very much now. But I remember feeling some sense of pride in the terrible decisions I was making for myself. I couldn’t let that go for a long time. But eventually I relented, I guess. Rehab begrudgingly and so on. Now I’m here.”
“Took me—what,” He goes on to say, “Three tries? Two therapists, a psychiatrist that kept insisting I needed anxiety meds which only made me sleepier and not want to move.”
“Now you’re here.”
He nods at that.
“Well. Whenever you’re ready to go into why you don’t feel so hot about yourself, we can talk about that. For now, we can just go over how your relationship with yourself informs your relationship with other people.”
“Sounds scary,” Yoongi admits. “But like a plan.”
“I’m guessing you aren’t actively trying to date? How are you and your friends?”
“Ugh, no. I’ve had enough. They aren’t even trying to set me up anymore because they feel bad about that last one, even though they shouldn’t.”
“Had enough completely or for now?”
Yoongi mulls over the question. Wonders briefly why it’s relevant, but takes the bait anyway.
“...For now, I think. I—” He sighs again. “Don’t hate romance. It’s weird. And sometimes I think about it too hard, but I don’t hate the feeling while I’m in it. I just—I just doubt there’s a person out there who’d like me. I don’t even like myself so—”
“Oh, c’mon. I’m sure there’s at least one person out there.” She laughs a little, which is welcomed. He’d rather not have her look at him pitying. He’d saw his hand off instead.
“Yeah? After what, I tell them I tried to jump? Or went on a bender? It’s a miracle I don’t have STDs to spread around yet.”
Hyojin sighs. She caps her drink. Yoongi looks at the clock which reads 10 to the end of their session for today. He thinks, good riddance because he was starting to think too hard about himself, his loneliness, his future or lack thereof.
But she smiles gently as she pulls out her prescription pad and the receipt she has to fill out for him. She clicks her pen first, and then tells him,
“You know, Yoongi. It may not be soon, but I’m fairly sure one day someone’s going to look at you like you’re the sun, and someone’s going to want to be around you not because they feel like they have to take care of you, or look after you, or make sure you’re fucked, fed well, and tucked into bed every night. But just because. They’ll want you and it doesn’t have to make sense, or look pretty. And they’re going to feel as cared for by you, because you’ll be ready to give that much, and you’re going to love them, and look at them too like they’re made out of sunshine and rainbows and shit—you’re not going to hate it. And they’ll love you, Yoongi—not because they think you’re perfect, or even that you’re everything to them, but they’ll do it because you try, because they know you always will.”
She says as she writes up a new prescription for Yoongi. Fluoxetine 20mg, every morning after breakfast. Three weeks. He’s thankful that she isn’t looking at him, at the incredulous look on his face, mixed in with the slightest indication of being vaguely touched by the sentiment.
“Here you go,” She hands him the prescription and his receipt for today’s session.
“See you in three weeks?”
Yoongi shakes his head, folds up the papers he’s just been handed and shoves it into his bag. He gets up, shoulders it and nods a little, says, “See you in three weeks, Dr. Kim.”
Present day
Yoongi hasn’t thought about his last therapy session in a long time. He hasn’t needed to go back, and he’s been off his medication for about a year now, though he supposes he wouldn’t mind having it in clutch, on days when it was harder to roll out of bed in the morning.
He’s thinking about this as he clears out his old bedroom. The unit was never tiny, but it had just gotten small for him at some point and he wanted a change of pace. Live farther from the university, too, so he’s packing up.
There are books piled up in a box, and he’s sorting through his desk—checking to see what needs to be thrown out by this time and not.
There’s a knock on the door to his bedroom and Jeongguk pops in for a bit, surveying the bare bones version of the place.
“Where do you want these? I found them in a drawer. They’re empty so I was going to assume you want them thrown but maybe you want a picture so you remember what brand you got?” He asks, tilting his head a little with a small smile.
He’d volunteered to help after finding out about the move completely by accident. Yoongi hadn’t intended to tell anyone until he was done packing up and settling in, but for some reason, he welcomes the company from someone he’d unexpectedly gotten close to.
Jeongguk is holding up two boxes of dye. Mint green, one reads; the other, tangerine summer.
He smiles at the memory, unbidden.
“Hold them out for me,” He tells him. Jeongguk does as told and Yoongi whips out his phone, steadies his hand to focus and snaps a picture of the boxes. “All good now, thanks.”
Jeongguk nods and moves back to the living room, presumably to throw it out in the trash pile they’d set up there.
He pulls up his phone, and KKT, navigates to a familiar chat window. It’s been silent for a couple of days now because Yoongi’s been busy with the move. Jimin had said it would be his first week of school again, but different this time. Somehow, Jimin as a preschool teacher made a lot of sense.
He sends him the photo he’d just taken, captions it off in a message with a quick “remember this lol?”
It’s 1:20PM, so Jimin should just be wrapping up and probably wouldn’t get to respond until later, if he decides to at all.
His phone dings unexpectedly, not even two minutes later, as he’s about to pocket it again. When Yoongi checks, it’s a sticker of a chick laughing, and nothing more.
He smiles at it for a moment and sets it aside. He and Jeongguk still have a lot of shit to go through today and they need to haul ass if they want to get done before the season changes.
Two years later
“Is this stupid?” Hoseok worries at his lower lip. He’s pacing around inside a hotel room. It’s not especially fancy. Just some cute little garden/forest-side place. It’s the height of spring, almost a year exactly after he’d moved out of his old apartment, and Yoongi can only think about his pollen allergy and then everything else after that.
“I mean—we can’t even really get—”
“I thought you talked this through?” Yoongi raises his eyebrows. He wonders if his suit is getting rumpled because of how long he’s spent seated on one of the couches in the room, watching Hoseok walk back and forth to the wide double windows, to the dresser, to the bed, to the couch in front of Yoongi and all around again, barefoot but suited up as well.
White looks good on him. The way his hair is swept to stay away from his face suits him. He is radiant, handsome, and panicked.
“Yeah, I know but—”
“Cold feet?”
“Yeah. A little.”
A pause.
“Actually, a lot.”
Yoongi sighs, fondly.
“Not because I’m doubting whether I actually want to spend the rest of my life with this one guy, but like—you know. People talk.”
Yoongi chuckles a little at that, stands up and puts an arm around Hoseok’s shoulders. They can see the venue from here. The quaint garden setup where their friends are bustling about getting everything ready. Seokjin is commandeering the appetizer display, Jeongguk is doing some heavy lifting in a white undershirt and dress pants. Taehyung is trying not to ogle at his boyfriend so hard as he goes over some notes with Namjoon on a seat by the arch. Those are presumably their vows.
“So what if people talk? Fuck them. Don’t listen.”
Hoseok laughs at that. “You sounded like Jin, just for a bit there.”
“Well,” Yoongi shrugs, “He did say the same exact thing to me for a whole ‘nother reason. Verbatim, too.”
Hoseok nods. Leans into his side hug as he watches their friends, the staff, the few people they’ve invited to celebrate the occasion with them. Few is a bit relative, all things considered, but they’d worked on the guest list together and determined it was something to be proud of.
It had been Hoseok’s family’s idea to do something like this. Hoseok, lover of parties and get togethers, had shot the idea down at first, thinking it over the top for two people who couldn’t really get married.
Namjoon’s parents liked the thought of a small celebration too.
“I’m not worried I’ll eat my words later on, I’m just—”
“I know, what people think can be daunting,” Yoongi starts, squeezing his shoulders. “But I’m 100% sure Namjoon-ah’s going to hold your hand through it all. It won’t even matter because that’s all you’ll be able to think about. I’m sure Seokjin’s has a couple of words for people who think they have something to say about it either. So, fuck them. This is your day. This is your celebration to have. We’re all here because we’re celebrating how super fucking happy we are that you got together and plan to stay together forever and ever.”
Hoseok breathes out his first sigh of relief. Takes another one, that’s bracing and grounding altogether.
“Yoongi, thanks.” He tells him, impossibly genuine as Hoseok is. “You’ve really come a long way to be giving me advice on love like this.” He laughs, finally. Shaking in Yoongi’s arm. Yoongi rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling a little. He can feel it on himself.
Jeongguk catches his eye from down below, and he waves up at him, gesturing for him to come down now, too. Flailing his arms about trying to tell Yoongi (probably) that Seokjin is on his way up to be the one to hold Hoseok through pre-wedding jitters this time.
“You good here?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I think he said Jin’s on his way,” Hoseok squints down at their friends. “I could be wrong.”
At that, Yoongi laughs again, is about to go in and ruffle his hair out of habit but stops just short and gives him another hug instead. “Alright. I’ll see you down there, later, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Hoseok smiles. He shoos him away towards the door. “Go now, I’ll see you!”
Yoongi exits into the hallway.
He actually does need to make a mad dash for the garden, because what Jeongguk had been trying to tell him was that something was up with the sound system and they didn’t know what to do about it. He just hadn’t said as much in case Hoseok took it as a sign from the deities that today wasn’t meant to be or something like that.
His mind is going a mile a minute today. Maybe the jittery, bright feelings are contagious, but it leaves a prickling sensation in his skin. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it’s spread throughout his system. It’s on his mind until he rounds the corner to the exit, and literally bumps into someone as he goes.
“Ow,” The person clutches at their forehead, and Yoongi holds onto his own shoulder. He’s about to tell them to please watch where they’re going next time (politely! He might add), when he looks up and sees who it is.
Yoongi’s lips are dry, his throat a little now too. He wonders how long he’s stood there agape, but it’s probably just been like a fraction of a second that somehow drags on as his brain tries to catch up with its surroundings.
“Park Jimin,” He says, hoping no one’s going to point out the number of layered implications in his voice.
“Hyung!” Jimin exclaims. Eyes just as wide, skin just as flushed. And then, rushing to wrap his arms around his torso, he calls out again, “Hyung!”
Yoongi laughs, feeling the air get knocked out of his system by the hug.
“How have you been?” He asks, patting him on the back of his head, still a little breathless.
They haven’t let go of each other, and Jimin is speaking into his neck when he says, he’s fine, thank you.
When they finally extricate from one another, Yoongi is still holding onto his arms, and Jimin is still looking at him with a big, silly grin on his face.
“I...Seokjin-hyung told me to head on up to say hi to Hobi.” Jimin tells him, and it suddenly dawns on Yoongi that he actually has somewhere to be and that they’re starting in some 30-40 minutes from now. The prickling intensifies. The air feels electric.
“Oh, he should be up soon too. I have to head down and help out with logistics.”
“Right,” Jimin laughs. “We’ll catch up later?”
Yoongi’s brain is buzzing. Yoongi is about to agree to that. Jimin takes a quick half step forward, just close enough for their knees to almost knock and Yoongi doesn’t realize he’s held his breath until he lets it go. Jimin’s hands are on the haphazardly done knot on his tie.
“Can’t have the best man walking around like that,” Jimin tuts, smiling as he undoes it. Yoongi hears the slide of the fabric ringing in his ears as Jimin rights it under the collar of his suit, aligning, lifting and smoothing out. He can feel Jimin’s deft fingers looping the fabric into itself properly, and pulling it up cleanly.
The very action gives Yoongi a sense of dejavu for a moment that’s never happened. Vaguely, for something he might have wished for so long ago.
“Thanks,” He tells him, a little breathlessly.
Jimin pats his handiwork, takes a step back in the direction of the hallway leading to the elevators going up.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” Jimin tells him.
Yoongi nods, walking towards the exit, facing him. He gives him his thumbs up. “I’ll see you when it starts!” He calls out as Jimin waves, ducking into another hallway himself.
The ceremony starts without a hitch.
Well, almost.
Someone at the company they’d hired for the sound system sent broken speakers mistakenly (which they’d apologized profusely for, offering to give them a discount at first and then a full refund after they got Seokjin and then Yoongi on the phone).
There were luckily a few they could borrow from the hotel, not that they needed a lot because the ceremony was relatively small. Just a couple of other friends and the couple’s families. Jeongguk watches as people chatter amongst themselves.
The program, which they’d all, for some reason, weighed in on was going to be different than your typical ceremony.
Namjoon and Hoseok would be coming in from either side of the arch, because no one was going to walk down the aisle and they would meet half-way in the middle. Neither of their families were especially religious, but Hoseok’s dad was into talking as much as his son was, so he would facilitate. Lead into the speeches from friends and family and eventually to the vows they’d written to one another. Their own public pinky promise, Taehyung had told him.
Jeongguk couldn’t imagine it.
He’d attended weddings as a kid and they all kind of blurred together in his mind. More traditional ones at shrines, more Catholic ones at churches, more modern ones at swankier hotels. Nothing like this. He’s not sure he likes it yet, but it’s bound to be one of the more memorable ones, at least.
Hoseok’s sister is speaking into the mic this time, reminiscing about Hobi’s childhood and how he’s always been a good little brother, probably an even greater friend. Jeongguk’s mind is wandering a little by now, not one for these winded speeches, though well-meaning as they are, he will acknowledge. Would Jimin want something like this? Yoongi? What about Taehyung?
“What about me?” Taehyung whispers, slotting their fingers together.
He only realizes they were twitching a little when Taehyung rubs the inside of his hand with his thumb.
“Huh?” Jeongguk blinks, confused at first and then sheepish, caught not paying attention to the ceremony, and then even more embarrassed, realizing that he’d said the question out loud.
“Oh fuck,” He mutters, a little loudly, and Seokjin turns around in his seat to throw him a look. Taehyung tries to hide his snicker behind a hand, but his amusement doesn’t dissipate even after Seokjins turns back around to sneeze into a handkerchief melodramatically.
“You’re asking me to get married, Jeon Jeongguk?” Taehyung whispers again, sound conspiratorially.
“Well, no,” Jeongguk answers, thoughtfully and Taehyung frowns at him.
“Good. It’s not like I wanted a wedding anyway.”
They’d broached the subject maybe one or twice in their now three-year relationship. By now, Jeongguk had no doubt in his mind that they’d all, somehow, be together one way or another into their old age. It didn’t matter how, or why, or where—he just knew they would. It was just a matter of living out those years before they got there.
“Mm, I don’t know,” Taehyung says, a glint in his eyes. Of mischief that Jeongguk couldn’t say he didn’t love about him.
“We could elope,” He suggests with a small laugh.
Taehyung accidentally lets out his own, a little louder—which earns them a couple of looks and a grin from the front, Namjoon and Hoseok themselves.
“Actually,” Taehyung nudges him after gesturing his mini-apology. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Jeongguk thinks about that, flushes at the thought of enjoying the idea too much—working hard until he can buy them plane tickets, finally buying the tickets and coming back to their place to show Taehyung and tell him they can finally get to it, whisking him away to a couple of countries they can spend some time in backpacking and taking thousands of photos and filling up albums they’ll look back on fondly when they’re all older. The ensuing chaos of their momentary radio silence and the small commotion over how they’re going to bring back souvenirs for all their friends.
Hoseok’s dad is talking into the mic, ushering the people out of the ceremony area into the other half of the garden, to the tables with chairs. Seokjin has left his seat to go back to making sure catering does their job right and—Jeongguk blinks a couple of times again, squinting into the small crowd and decidedly not finding Jimin. Or Yoongi for that matter.
“Huh,” He nods, feeling a smile he can only describe as a little dumb on his face.
A ceremony would suit Jimin, too. He thinks. Maybe bigger. Oh, he’d probably love to be shown off, wouldn’t he? He deserves as much anyway. A person would be a fool not to, and Jeongguk would be the first to be up in arms about it if he ended up with someone who thought it wasn’t worth the time and effort.
Taehyung nabs a whole bottle of wine from a server passing by—who ignores it anyway because he’s in a hurry. He pours one out to himself and then Jeongguk, his grin widening at the gesture.
He wonders why other weddings are so stuffy, when they can be like this instead, when they can be like the ones he’s busy picturing in his head right now as Taehyung drags him to their assigned table. There are a bunch of strangers, but Jeongguk finds he doesn’t mind with just Taehyung. Everyone will probably meet up again later in the week anyway, when things have calmed down a little, or maybe a bit later when Hoseok and Namjoon are back from their trip so they can properly welcome Jimin back to Seoul again.
“What are you thinking about?” Taehyung’s chin is in his hand, resting on the table. The other one is still holding Jeongguk’s, resting on his lap. People are bustling about, waiting to be served food, mostly family and other friends doting over the couple.
“I like weddings, I think.” Jeongguk concludes. He takes a sip of the wine.
“Yeah?” Taehyung asks, “D’you actually want one?”
Jeongguk shakes his head. Though he’s sure if he said yes, Taehyung would probably change his mind and do what he could to make it happen too, but that’s not what he means exactly.
“No, I just realized that I like it when I can watch my friends be stupid happy like that.” He grins a little. “Can you imagine Jiminie-hyung happy crying in front of so many people?”
Taehyung chuckles, squeezes his hand because he probably just pictured it. Probably saw it in his mind’s eye. Jimin on his own day. Somehow the thought of seeing him like that makes his heart clench too, and not in a bad way at all.
“Clear as day,” Taehyung nods.
“Don’t get me wrong though,” Jeongguk says after giving it some thought, “I’m probably gonna look just as dumb-happy when I come home with the plane tickets for you and me.” He blurts out in the end. It’s the day, he tells himself. Infectious happiness. Infectious optimism. He finds he doesn’t quite mind it all so much.
“Uh-huh,” Taehyung looks at him like he’s sizing up a challenge and Jeongguk really does love that look, the one where it seems as though he isn’t going to let him win, so it makes it all the more satisfying when he does. “We’ll see about that. Who gets the plane tickets for who first.”
Jeongguk laughs, raising his glass. Taehyung raises his own, clinking it with his, mirth evident in his pretty, pretty eyes.
Jeongguk’s mind moves from amused to I want to kiss him right now. So he does.
“Mmph—hey!”
“What?” Jeongguk asks, pouting already.
“We’re in pub—”
“I know.” Jeongguk tells him like it’s obvious.
He watches Taehyung whip his head around, looking for any passersby who care, who look admonishing, but he finds none. When they catch Hoseok’s eye it’s just him grinning at them and waving animatedly from where he’s standing next to Namjoon making light conversation with the Jung family.
“See?” He tells him.
Taehyung’s sigh of relief is palpable, but Jeongguk understands a little bit better now, all the anxiety around getting together, staying together, and just all this. In general. It’s been three years, after all. Sometimes it’s not so hard trying not to mind it, other times he’s petulant—asking questions and expecting answers.
“You’re so brave,” Taehyung observes, his flush isn’t as clear on his skin, but it’s easier to pick out by now. It only really happens when he’s being honest out loud.
“Just a little reckless.” Jeongguk shrugs, and then poking at him playfully, adds, “You love that about me though.”
“Ugh,” Taehyung shakes his head, putting both his hands on Jeongguk’s cheeks. “You’re right. I hate it, but you’re absolutely right.”
They spend the rest of the night next to each other, joined only by Seokjin well after dinner, going into the late night. He’s finally decided to take a well-deserved break from all his micromanaging. It’s probably a lot thanks to him that things are going as well as they are.
Most of them are staying at the hotel tonight until tomorrow afternoon, so they let Namjoon and Hoseok mingle with the other guests. They’ve decided to head back upstairs, maybe play a game on the Switch he’d brought with him before bed.
“Hey,” Seokjin says around a slice of cake, dragging him out of his thoughts about whether they should start with Mario Kart or if he’d risk playing Overcooked with Seokjin tonight. When he gets a proper look at him, Jeongguk sees Seokjin squinting at the empty seats on their table. Two opposite them. “You guys know where Jimin and Yoongi went?”
Jeongguk scans through the few people they have around. Jinyoung and friends had already gone like an hour ago, though Jackson was still there. Namjoon and Hoseok were chatting with other friends at a table at the far end of the venue. Jeongguk hears only the indistinct chatter of people, a little toned down now that some guests have already gone.
He supposes, Yoongi and Jimin among them too, apparently.
“Oh boy,” Taehyung mutters, fishing his phone out of his pocket.
Jeongguk holds back his laughter as Seokjin launches off into a cake-filled tirade that starts with something like I don’t believe this, on the day of my baby Hoseokie’s wedding!
Taehyung’s calling and the first three tries don’t go through, which is no surprise.
It’s when Yoongi (instead) presumably picks up, and Seokjin is asking to be handed “the phone now, Taehyung,” and Taehyung is resolutely shielding him from the lecture of the century when Jeongguk decides (as he takes a swipe at the last piece of cake on Seokjin’s plate) that he, in fact, likes weddings after all and he’s looking forward to the next one.
“Is this alright?” Jimin asks.
He and Yoongi are walking down a well-lit street, on the same road as the hotel. There was supposed to be a barbecue restaurant a couple of blocks down.
“There was still food if you were still hungry, hyung.”
“From the happy couple themselves,” Yoongi informs him, producing a white envelope from his suit jacket with his name and Jimin’s written down in what looks like Namjoon’s hasty penmanship. Jimin smiles a little at that.
“Wow, kicked us out of their own wedding, huh?”
Yoongi chuckles, shrugging as they walk side by side. “We probably wouldn’t get to talk to them much—not until tomorrow. And even then, they’d probably be all googly eyes at one another. They—”
“Knew I was coming back today?”
“Yeah.” Yoongi concludes.
The air is cool for a spring night, but it’s still hot to be wearing suits out to dinner at a barbecue restaurant or walking to get there, for that matter. Jimin finds that it doesn’t really matter to him at all. The difference isn’t so stark between Busan and Seoul, but sometimes, at night, it’s clearer in the way the wind blows through his hometown and this city. They were oddly comforting in different ways.
The restaurant isn’t far, thankfully, but the staff do look at them for seconds too long when they enter, asking for a table for two decked out in black tie affair (Jimin reminds himself gently that he’s actually wearing a bow, and Yoongi decided to forego his tie sometime during dinner because it kept getting in the soup).
They find seats, order soju and two beers. They’re still full so they forego food altogether, but dumplings get served to their table anyway.
Jimin looks at the dish dubiously; Yoongi does the same.
“We didn’t order—” They both begin to say. They look up. The server just points to the two beers + one soju promo they had for free dumplings poster plastered to a nearby wall.
Yoongi runs a hand through his hair before uncapping the bottle and pulling the beer can tabs, handing one to Jimin.
“Hah,” He breathes out, holding out his beer can. Jimin toasts it dutifully, I know. Nostalgic. But doesn’t say it out loud.
“Was your flight delayed?”
Jimin nods as he takes a sip. “Yeah, I was panicking so hard, hyung! I thought I wouldn’t make it to the start of the ceremony.”
“Explains the running then.”
Yoongi takes a long swig of his drink, but doesn’t say anything after.
Jimin runs a finger around the edges of his beer can, not quite sure where to take this conversation.
It’s not as if they’d fallen completely out of touch over the years.
They spent all manner of special occasions apart, except for the one birthday party they threw Jimin—Yoongi, Hoseok, Taehyung, and Jeongguk showing up at his doorstep unannounced one autumn night. He’d been renting a place away from his childhood home, but nearby and while he let them stay with him, he still had a class to teach the next day, so they ended up having to wait a long time before he got back.
They spoke sparingly, but never long enough to forget obligatory greetings. Sometimes there were more regular updates for a couple of weeks at a time. Sometimes they’d bother calling to catch up, talk about their friends and what they were up to.
There were more difficult nights where it was harder to call, to reach out because what he had to say was ‘I miss you’ or ‘I want to go back’ or ‘I want to see you’ and ‘I wish I could be with you’; they’d circumnavigated that well enough for Jimin to only wonder if Yoongi might have ever thought the same at one point and not really think about too much eventually.
Looking at him now, awkwardly silent and probably wracking his brain for something to talk about, Jimin is still wondering how much has changed and how much hasn’t.
“Something on your mind?”
Jimin downs a quarter of the beer, sets it down and tells him, “Yeah. You.”
Yoongi’s cheeks color a little, either from how warm it is in the restaurant or the beer he’s been nursing.
“Am I jumping the gun?” Yoongi asks. He tips his drink back, finishing the last of it one gulp. “I told them a long time ago I didn’t want them to do anymore setups for me, this is technically one.”
Jimin finds himself laughing a little at that, pouring out soju for them both even if his own drink wasn’t finished.
“About that,” Jimin tells him, eyeing the envelope Yoongi had placed face down on the table. “I uhm, actually asked Hobi-hyung how I should go about asking you out, but I’d said I was afraid it would become awkward if you didn’t want to yet—or at all even, but I guess this was his way of helping me with that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure it would have been 100% awkward. But I,” He pauses to look down at his drink, maybe gather his thoughts, “I don’t think I would’ve been able to say no.”
There aren’t many diners tonight, Jimin observes.
The servers at the restaurant have stopped ogling at the two suited men drinking beer and soju with a plate of free mandu they hadn’t touched yet. There’s a family on one table, a quiet group of friends in another at the far end. Another two people on a date and—
Hold on.
Another?
Yoongi’s phone rings and he goes to pick it up. He flashes the caller ID to Jimin, who sees that it’s Taehyung. He checks his own phone—seven missed calls from Taehyung, two from Jeongguk.
“I should have called you first!” Jimin hears Taehyung yell into the phone.
Yoongi chuckles behind his hand. His face is still pink to the tips of his ears, Jimin notices. His blush high on his cheeks. He finds himself staring as he fields questions about their whereabouts over the phone.
They’d met as adults so neither of them looked too different from the last time they saw each other. Sure, Jimin had filled out a little bit. There is considerably more meat and muscle on his thighs. Yoongi’s hair is a little bit longer. He is wearing his earrings again. His black hair sweeps nicely over his forehead, disheveled somewhat in their walk and all his fussing with it throughout the ceremony and their stay at the restaurant.
“Yah! Taehyung, why’d you give the phone to Jin?” He hears Yoongi loudly exclaim into the phone. Jimin tries to hide his laughter behind knocking back a shot.
Yoongi puts the phone away from his ear a few inches away, wincing.
“Are you both even coming back?!”
Jimin swears they flush at the same time at the question they can both clearly hear even if Seokjin isn’t on loud speaker. He wonders if he’s just imagining Jeongguk and Taehyung snickering and laughing in the background. He probably is.
“I am—we are. Don’t worry!” Yoongi grumbles into the phone.
He pauses for a moment, letting Seokjin speak.
“Yeah, yeah,” Yoongi shakes his head as he puts it back near his ear. Jimin can’t hear him anymore. His own phone flashes briefly with a notification from his KKT group chat with just Taehyung and Jeongguk. It’s a bunch of sparkling heart emojis.
He looks up at Yoongi, listening to Seokjin speak, an indignant but attentive expression on his features. Jimin blinks back at the message, and then back at Yoongi.
He and Yoongi lock eyes accidentally. It’s when Jimin decides not to reply for now and Yoongi takes what was maybe supposed to be a cursory glance at Jimin. Yoongi’s face breaks out into a small, private smile and Jimin finds himself mirroring it, biting his bottom lip so he doesn’t end up laughing out loud.
“Yes, yes. We’ll message—but we’ll be in later,” He starts to tell Seokjin, likely trying to get out of the call-slash-lecture now.
“Yes,” There’s some finality to his tone when he speaks, and then—
“Yes, hyung. On a date.” Yoongi says, still holding Jimin’s gaze.
For the first time that night, Jimin feels his heart come up in his throat, but still, something beating fast and beating hard in his chest. He closes his eyes, grip slackening around his cup.
Yoongi cuts the call, pocketing his phone.
“Date?” Jimin asks.
It’s so warm in here—but by now it’s probably the drinks and because Yoongi looks like Yoongi, still, after all these years, because he’d been buzzing with excitement at the idea of finally, finally letting himself come back and it feels like everything is different and not at the same time.
Yoongi glances at him again and panicked, holds his hands up motioning like he’s trying to erase the thought if that wouldn’t suit.
“If you’re uncomfortable with that Jimin-ah, I just—”
Jimin shakes his head. “No that’s—” He feels himself smiling, “It’s about time, I guess.”
Another year later
Jimin’s old apartment had been close to the university.
Jimin’s apartment after he’d moved back was a space shared with Jeongguk and Taehyung, for all of six months until he couldn’t take the PDA and running into them making out on the couch anymore. Then it was with Seokjin who’d insisted he take the spare room, who didn’t like to be alone for the first month of his breakup.
It was another six months, and then there was more moving.
This time, it’s a lot closer to the Sunny Days Kindergarten. Some 15-minute drive and just one stop away from the station nearest to the new place.
Jimin is unloading the last of his boxes from the car in the complex’s parking lot.
He toes off his shoes by the door, surveying the space.
A single bathroom attached to the bedroom, a study, living room near glass double doors, a nice little kitchen. Everything else is sparse. Neutral colors for the most part, although the curtains that cover the balcony are powder blue.
“Here, let me get that,” Yoongi pads into the room from the study, he’s already taking the one box from the two he’d carried from his car before Jimin can protest.
He looks comfortable in an oversized linen button down, sleeves rolled up, loose pants, and barefoot. Jimin almost feels overdressed in jeans and a dark shirt.
“Thanks,” Jimin finds himself saying, still taking the space in, and then, laughing a little, tells him, “You could have at least decorated, you know?”
“I did!” Yoongi counters.
He sets the box down on the coffee table. Jimin’s mind wanders a little to where he might’ve put the craft box with his teaching materials in it and whether Yoongi had that one, is surprised when Yoongi is back at his side to take the other one, nudging him a little when he tells him, “I just left space for you, is all.”
Jimin is about to nudge him back playfully, but is caught off guard by that for a moment. He recovers quickly, rolling his eyes and letting Yoongi take the box anyway.
Jimin shakes his head, remarks, “Yeah, like a looot of space.”
“I actually did put up some stuff, but they’re in the home office.” Yoongi starts to tell him. He’s already setting that one box next to the other one on the coffee table, leading him into the room he’s talking about.
“Thought we could go out to look for stuff to put in the common areas,” He shrugs a bit like he isn’t blushing. Jimin smiles a little, finding it cute. He goes to see Yoongi’s handiwork in the office.
Jimin finds that Yoongi wasn’t wrong about decorating there. A bit. Jimin doesn’t really need a home office like Yoongi does, but there’s shelf space in there for him. A small couch to nap on too just on the opposite end of where the desktop is set up.
He sees Yoongi’s record collection, pared down by a lot this time. He remembers hearing about that, and Yoongi just telling him the novelty had worn off after a while, and that if he kept everything, Jimin wouldn’t have anywhere to put all his other stuff in.
There are a couple of pictures on Yoongi’s desk.
There’s one photo with Yoongi, Namjoon, Hoseok, and Seokjin from way back; looks to be taken sometime in their first few years of university.
There’s another of them, this time with everyone, at Jimin’s graduation party-slash-pseudo-going-away-party.
There’s a photo of Jimin, Jeongguk, and Taehyung, and Hoseok on the beach he’d taken of just the four of them when they’d visited Busan that one time.
Jimin squints at a picture propped up by one of those small wooden block photo holders. The orientation tells him it was clearly taken by a phone. He walks closer to the desk, picks it up to scrutinize it better.
“When was this?” He breathes and if his voice is a little quiet, just a bit shaky, neither of them point it out.
Jimin thumbs over the photo, seeing himself with orange hair feels strange. Almost like an out of body experience — which maybe it really is, because he’s looking at an earlier iteration of himself in a way. In the photo, he’s wearing a blue apron, he’s wearing an old black sweater of Yoongi’s likely no longer among their possessions. In the photo, Jimin is whisking something in deep concentration, tongue sticking out.
“Yoongi, who took this?” Jimin flushes, embarrassment coloring his cheeks.
“I did.” Yoongi tells him, like he’s proud of it.
He takes the picture from Jimin, sets it back into the little rectangle block that was holding it up next to Yoongi’s monitor.
“I think you were making egg rolls that morning.”
“Jog my memory,” Jimin looks at him skeptically. He remembers like maybe one or two photos taken by Yoongi from their time “together”, and then some, even after that. Mostly with friends. He doesn’t remember this one for some reason.
“Mm, it was that day at the grocery store. You kept dumping random shit into the cart. You haggled your way to cheap pork belly and some chicken wings at the market.” Yoongi tells him, grinning a little.
Jimin blinks. When Yoongi moves in closer, still smiling at him and cupping his cheek, he wonders briefly, how the way his heart backflips in his chest is still a thing, even after all these years.
“I think I remember,” Jimin murmurs. “I made breakfast that day,” He recounts slowly.
“Made breakfast…left for my afternoon shift, right? Oh, was that uhm, that day you randomly sent me a photo of your clavicles.”
“Hey! Don’t ruin the moment, Jimin-ah!” Jimin laughs at that, leaning into his touch, closing his eyes.
“That day. You called that day.”
“I did.” Yoongi affirms.
“That day,” Yoongi goes on to say, “I was scared to say that, this,” he brushes his thumb over Jimin’s cheek, holding Jimin gently by the waist. He touches their foreheads together, warmth spreading between them as they become impossibly close again, finally. “This is what I wanted.”
“Thought I’d put it here to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.”
What hasn’t changed about Yoongi? Jimin thinks.
He still explains everything like they’re the most obvious things in the world. Like he’s not unraveling layers of feelings he’d kept under lock and key for a while now, or talking about difficult parts of their shared past.
But in between all that, so much has already shifted.
The certainty in his tone, a quiet conviction that Jimin knows he can count on this time.
“Funny coincidence,” Jimin tells him, “Pretty sure I realized I was in love with you that day.”
Yoongi lifts his head, Jimin opens his eyes. It’s quiet for all of three seconds before they both break out in laughter.
Jimin doesn’t quite understand how something can feel so familiar but leagues different altogether.
Maybe, it’s the way they still can’t keep their hands off each other.
Maybe, it’s that they don’t have to think too hard about how much they should be holding back anymore.
Maybe, it’s this place they’ve allowed themselves to inhibit together, and the space they’ve allowed each other to take up between the two of them.
Maybe, it’s in how Yoongi still holds him like if he lets go for one second he might slip away, like he can’t get enough, like he’s meant to do this, like he’d like to do this, for a very, very long time.
Maybe, it’s how getting together felt like meeting an old friend again. Over coffee. Finding out what’s changed slowly, and liking it still.
Maybe it was finally deciding that they couldn’t wait for better; that there was just now.
Maybe, it’s how, these days when Jimin looks at Yoongi, there is no heartache, no needle through, just the warmth spreading across his chest.
Just Jimin, and just Yoongi.
“Hey,” Yoongi calls out gently, dragging him out of his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”
Jimin smiles, leaning up to press his lips against Yoongi’s. “You.”
Yoongi frowns against him a little before returning it in earnest. “Uh-huh.”
“And what I should be replacing that ugly ass couch outside with.”
“Hey!”
Jimin laughs, closing in and wrapping his arms around Yoongi’s waist.
Another quiet moment passes between them. They still have boxes to sort through. Shopping to do. Rooms to fill. Clothes to unpack. Space to make. Things to talk about.
But he’s waited for quite some time now—he and Yoongi both, and Jimin supposes, they should at least let themselves bask in the moment, right?
“Jimin?”
There’s some hesitation this time, Jimin senses, but before he can bring it up, he feels a squeeze around his shoulders, and then it’s Yoongi sneaking a kiss in not long after.
“Jimin-ah,” Yoongi says his name, holds it like a prayer in his mouth, soft and just a little reverent in the way he speaks it. Like his name is safest there.
That, Jimin supposes, never changed.
“I know it’s a little late but,” Yoongi starts, “Welcome home.”
Jimin feels more laughter bubble up from his chest.
“Right,” Jimin can feel the smile on his own cheeks. It hurts almost. Except it really doesn’t. Not when he tells Yoongi, “I’m home.”