Chapter Text
they claim yoongi’s softer now. shyer, base introversion no longer twisted into a cold facade. yoongi can’t say they’re wrong, but as he looks back on the years of turmoil he’d endured, he can’t help but wonder if they knew just how much violence it took to be this gentle.
they say success changes a person for the worse. there’s truth to that — he thinks of a younger yoongi, greed and ambition made to fit in his palms until he can’t tell which is which, until their jagged edges cut into the skin of his hands and he bleeds. but there’s a certain obsession society has around making martyrs. that maybe there’s a lesson to be had, a blessing to his sufferings. a beauty out of pain. the vincent van goghs of the world.
yoongi avoids thinking about those days if he can help it. thrust into such punishing circumstances for a slim chance of success, playing an inequitable hand that’s been dealt to the best he’s capable of. and he wasn’t — wasn’t, until he trades pieces of himself to feed that desperation. it’s his lifeline as much as it is harm, hunger and desperation and spite all warped into a harsher shade of motivation. it’s draining bottles of alcohol like a salve down his throat, ropes that corrode skin in their haste to keep yoongi afloat. on the darkest of days it warps music into a guillotine, yoongi too unaware of even himself to recognise it’s his hand on the rope. still, music took him back like an old friend, tender hands wrapped around his bruised ones. loosens the noose in yoongi’s throat and guides him back home like soft dim street lamps.
so really, yoongi can’t completely deny it either. maybe he’d been wrung out enough for success to feel like reprieve instead of temptation, like a soothing balm to a burn. his palm opens to gratitude, to contentment, and for all the cuts it left on him he’s glad it did away with chip pieces of greed and left his love for music intact.
the stage sees him as someone street-roughened. surly, unapologetic. and yoongi can’t deny it, having that knack of taking his trauma in bare hands and fuelling a fire with it, vengeful and blazing bright even at the cost of charred hands. he remembers the bitter taste of blood in the back of his mouth, the way his mouth learns to shape his vowels harsher, the weight of his voice coarse as sandpaper and the spit of his syllables crude. how he’d gnawed and chewed until his nail beds bled, fingers rough from all those part-time jobs. those very same calloused fingers held his own heart too, forcing it to beat. it’s all he remembers, working to the bone of his crushed shoulder, hanging on willpower as frayed as his cartilage.
yoongi had to put all that anguish and anger and despair to good use somewhere before it swallowed him whole. it’s a frenzied emotion, volatile and dangerous, but it’s what kept him going. playing the role of someone stronger than he is to trick himself and the world, that visceral need to be seen and heard and make damn sure all that pain is worth it. it has to be worth it, otherwise he’d have suffered for nothing.
the world sees him like that. strong-willed and assertive, confidence stemmed from a self-assuredness. someone who wants power and dominance, who calls the shots and lives by his own rules and his own hands. someone physically, mentally bigger, someone larger than life. they fit him in these rugged labels like stuffing a box that’s already full, rearranging pieces of him until they meet expectations.
there’s a voice in yoongi that wants to say— i did not want to be any of these. all i wanted was to be held.
but what doesn’t make it past yoongi’s teeth, the world remains oblivious to.
he thinks about being five years old again, doe-eyed and socked feet padding up to his mother in their quaint little living room, a soft pout devastatingly natural to the shape of his mouth even then. the world wakes up with him, sunlight filtering into the room in slants and catching dust motes floating lazily in the air. he’s small enough for his mother to pick him up, curled on her lap on her rocking chair. here, the angle’s just right for the warmth of the light to touch his skin. it’s as comforting as her hand carding through his hair, combing through the cowlicks until yoongi’s eyes slowly slip shut again. “just one more hour,” she’d murmur. the tranquility that tugged at yoongi’s lids were a welcomed weight.
those were his favourite days, those lazy mornings. yoongi thinks that’s the first time he’d felt so safe. secure. happy.
that’s when he feels most like himself.
he gets slivers of it from his music. they give him an entirely different sort of fulfilment, to see it resonate with his fans. he gets it more with his recent songs, more introspective and truer to himself, storytelling that’s wiser and more articulate without compromising that unfailing sort of honesty. there’s a certain self-possession to them that gives yoongi more relief to tell than his past songs: those were guttural and gritty, painful in the way hangnails are.
it’s at his calmest, his gentlest, that he feels most like himself. yoongi thinks that maybe he wasn’t shaped to be softer by all that pressure. maybe he’d always been like that, and he’s only just returning to baseline.
his mother, though they’ve perfectly reconciled, had never held him like that again. yoongi’s heads taller than she is after all, but yoongi thinks even if she offers, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. wouldn’t know how to accept it.
(— he thinks of that night, cheeks frozen in the harsh winter night and fist flushed in the knuckles by the cold, curled tight around the scarf hand-knitted by his mother. sees her unmoving silhouette as yoongi’s made to leave home, figure growing smaller with each step. all he wants is to be stopped. tugged and held like he’s five again, before he starts a chapter of his life without them.
if he knew any better then maybe he would’ve seen the slump of her shoulders, the weight of a mother’s love that went lost somewhere in translation in its journey towards yoongi. a desperate palm on the laboured heaves of her chest, just to keep her heart from tumbling out and chasing after him —)
but the last time yoongi’s held like that, made to feel small and safe again — it didn’t end too well.
what they don’t tell you is rejection comes most often from a place of love. it’s a special kind of pain, levels above everything else.
it hurts, because it matters most.
he’s met them all. is familiar with the feeling everytime, the tell-tale plummeting in his stomach like the twist of a wrenched fist, like the sensation of his heart free-falling. he’d met it in the way his father rips pages and pages of painstakingly written lyrics in his battered old notebook, that waning scrap of desperation within him he’d taken with clumsy hands and called ambition snuffed under the heavy thump of his foot. he’d met it in the way his mother stood by, heart falling to pieces but never quite following through with her yearning while he takes off from home. from his parents to friends to faceless music producers, he knows what it’s like to be rejected.
and then sometimes, sometimes rejection takes shape of everything yoongi had ever longed for. promises to make yoongi’s most faraway dreams come true, aching vulnerabilities that resided in the limbo between sleep and consciousness drawn to surface by a smile as sweet as it is dangerous, by palms that warmed winter nights and eyes that beckoned yoongi over. yoongi’s hopeless to it. clutches his heart in shy, haphazard hands to offer it whole.
this one’s the cruelest of them all, for the way it strings yoongi along and takes all of him. for the way it pretends, before it rends through him until he’s hollowed out at the core.
because this one meets yoongi for all he is, yoongi at his realest and his most raw, and deems him unworthy bargaining his love for.
he’s forced those days somewhere deep inside him not even he knows how to reach. sometimes it resurfaces anyway, patches of sensory recall in his subconscious.
they’re always the same flashbacks. yoongi remembers being held like he’d weighed nothing, curled up on him and feeling boneless. well-loved and protected and precious. remembers the dual sensation of his mind floating but his limbs melting, thoughts blissfuly quiescent and senses narrowed down to the heat of being held so closely. this one feeds yoongi sweet nothings and tells yoongi how pretty you are, and you need to eat more baby, you’re so small.
but ah, you fit in my lap so well like this. makes me want to keep you here.
those very same hands throw yoongi away like he’s worth nothing.
all those words, spills and spills of sweet lies to keep yoongi needing, to keep him complacent. the way he’d sunk into yoongi’s most well-kept secrets, his most shameful wants and needs and uses them to get what he wants, to keep yoongi a fool. maybe he’d never believed anything he uttered to yoongi. maybe they were never true.
all of yoongi, like old clothes balled into the back of a closet. nothing but a guilty secret, a tick in the curiosity box before the final nail of marriage, of a picket-fence family. hands that once held yoongi’s in both of his soon brushed him away like a man rejecting sin, fingers that now slipped a ring on more delicate fingers. a gaze that flitted away from him like palms tossing off hot coals. attention devoted, to his beautiful bride.
and god, she’s beautiful. graceful and slender, more delicate than yoongi will ever be. charming, and confident and seductive and kind. the perfect match for him, in all the ways.
he’d never quite come to terms with this one. every new relationship feels over before it’s even started, the promise of commitment like a pit drop in his gut, a simmering liquid churning in his gut never quite reaching a boil. yoongi wonders, everytime, when it’ll overflow.
he’d had a string of tries. his longest relationship was by far the most calloused of them all. everything that led up to the end was overshadowed by it, yoongi only remembering his boyfriend’s very palpable aversion the moment he’d gained weight after a shoulder surgery. yoongi had never been one to gain weight easily; at least not in the past. he’s used to the deadly combination of working himself to the bone on an overactive metabolism, used to depression taking a toll on his appetite, the lack of hunger often reaching extremities that seokjin hyung had been appalled at. he’d been used to concerned remarks from the people who’d stuck around, used to being easy enough to move around at their will.
but he’d been in a better place then. he’d only just started enjoying the simple luxuries of food, and with the side-effects of water retention due to his surgery and the lack of means to exercise, he’d taken on pounds.
he hadn’t known it would show. show enough for his boyfriend’s interest to drain like sand in an hourglass — slowly but steadily, these weighted prolonged minutes of an inevitable end yoongi’s forced to feel every second of.
he didn’t feel pretty then. didn’t feel small or easily held like he’d been promised, didn’t feel easily handled. easily kept; kept safe like he wanted to so desperately be. shameful wants that hide themselves in the cages of yoongi’s ribs, unmet and untended to, until the pressure mounts and takes space from his lungs.
yoongi had quickly shed the extra weight, but it was too late. yoongi was forever ruined to him. maybe to himself, too.
yoongi is a fraud. yoongi is pathetic. shameless, in the way he wants to be things he isn’t.
others merely had different projections of yoongi, first dates that fizzed to a stop once their lack of compatibility became apparent. others were what sometimes kept yoongi up at nights for their what-ifs. but it’s a small mercy, not having to play the part of disappointment, leaving instead as a sweet unfulfilled memory. they hurt the least yet ache the most, the ones that didn’t end in rejection just because they weren’t given a chance to. yoongi fishes out the most desirable parts in him, handing out superficial versions of himself like he’s one those free samples at a mall people barely spare a glance at.
to tease their curiosity, until he’s deemed worthy enough to revisit. trying to paint a better picture of what’s really torn inside just to feel deserving of attention. that maybe, in another world, they’d have the potential to love him for who he is. see him the way yoongi so desperately wants to be seen.
these were the ones that often ended in slow deaths, in abandoned tests of patience. yoongi thinks of them and wonders if they would see him like that. thinks some more and concludes, with a wry sort of resignation, that they probably wouldn’t. maybe they would’ve been forced to, just to appease yoongi. pretended.
they say love doesn’t work out when you’re not being true to yourself, but here is min yoongi’s grand conundrum: yoongi thinks of what he wants to be, and how it makes him happy — but what he wants to be simply isn’t who he is. the truth presents itself coldly, flippant in its unforgivingness, but there’s no two ways about it.
and so yoongi thinks maybe there was some critical error by the universe, that this sort of love just isn’t meant for him. like a broken code that’s being forced to work.
he tells his friends he’s grown disillusioned by relationships. that the absence of it no longer left a hole in his life. blind dates turn to hook-ups and then those give into one-night stands. the gratification may be short-lived, the validation sugar-coated, but yoongi has learned to settle for scraps.
he thinks if he says it enough then maybe he’ll trick himself into believing it too. buys bottles of forget and drinks it all — because if respite and denial are found in the bottom of shot glasses, then yoongi will take it.
so when kim taehyung first comes into the picture, yoongi doesn’t worry. there’s no need to. someone like kim taehyung would never want someone like min yoongi.
yoongi’s first impression of taehyung is vague. he’s introduced as seokjin’s younger cousin who, just like yoongi, had hopped to seoul from daegu in the hopes of making it big. yoongi had barely mustered up enough energy to make it, body catching up with exhaustion from meeting ends meet and juggling four jobs at a time, system crash-falling from a recede in adrenaline. but then seokjin says taehyung listens to his tracks on soundcloud, and that’s enough to force through his sluggish bubble and grit through his social anxiety. taehyung’s scrawny, with awkward limbs he’s clearly still growing into, ears and grins that stretched too wide for his face to fit properly. his voice is deeper than he expects from a face so boyish, but there’s that tinge of innocence that belies his youth.
and that was that, really. but yoongi gets a boost from the validation anyway, enough to tide him over for long after they met, longer than yoongi’s memory even remembers taehyung.
and then years later, taehyung shatters that impression.
yoongi’s first meeting with taehyung is through the screen of his galaxy s3 ultra. taehyung’s trending on twitter, and the first article yoongi clicks on shows two things:
one, headlines that read: ACTOR KIM TAEHYUNG, SPOTTED ON A DATE WITH CO-STAR?
the second shows a full photograph of said kim taehyung, and he looks — grown.
he’s handsome. stunningly handsome. disarming in the way lead actors in classic romantic pieces often are — like the mr. darcys of the movie screen. he’d grown into the natural masculinity of his features, brows dark and full and the ridges of them strong and defined. taehyung is all sharp, smooth lines, jaw strong and the bridge of his nose high. he’s set into a frown but yoongi thinks even without it he’d look intimidating — both from such imposing features and from how intense his gaze is, eyes dark and deep.
gone was the taehyung with the kid-like giggle. yoongi sees slivers of familiarity, but has a hard time assimilating the two versions together.
when namjoon drags his feet into the kitchen, it effectively reminds yoongi that taehyung is namjoon’s boyfriend’s cousin, and his boyfriend so happens to be seokjin, yoongi’s closest friend. yoongi hands him a coffee and turns his phone over, asks with a mild curiousity if he remembers taehyung.
namjoon blearily opens his mouth,and his next words changing the course of his life, because.
because by some cosmic intervention, taehyung is signing an album deal with the company namjoon is signed to. the company yoongi is signed to.
they officially meet two days later, yoongi unlocking his studio door and going face-to-face with the very kim taehyung. or rather chin-to-forehead, yoongi having to tilt his head slightly to meet eyes with taehyung. he’s more unreal in person, even dressed down and casual, and there’s recognition glittering his eyes as he smiles. it’s soft but warm and intimidating in its own way with how nervous it renders yoongi. his voice is made even deeper now, a honeyed baritone when he bows and says: yoongi hyung, it’s nice to see you again.
they do see each other again. and again, and again, because namjoon ends up involving yoongi in the album-making process. it starts professionally enough, yoongi working to get a handle of taehyung’s sound, tracing his music influences. it comes as zero surprise to yoongi when taehyung starts crooning to jazz blues and classic love songs, serenades that sound exactly like what the word romance should feel like. it’s fitting for old-school romantics, which is another devastating thing yoongi learns about taehyung. he’s a romantic through and through, eyes shut and a blissful smile on his lips, swaying to the melody like he’s dreaming of dancing with his love.
it fits his voice. something about the way he sounds, voice velvet-smooth and chesty at the same time, timbre full and deep and timeless that reminds yoongi of the likes of the greats. a voice, with that face, that could make anyone swoon.
the first time it’s just yoongi and taehyung, yoongi finds taehyung staring at him. his eyes are firmly fixed on him, unabashed but serene, chin propped on his palm and a casual smile playing on his lips. yoongi’s stomach flips, chest abuzz. that’s just the effect taehyung has — there’s something in his gaze that’s single-minded and devoted, even when it’s platonic.
yoongi panics and clears his throat, hand shooting to play what they’re working on. the instrumentals start to filter from the speakers. the notes are lilting, taehyung’s voice rich when he hums.
taehyung turns to him. “i like it. i like the feel of it.”
“it fits you.”
the song’s streaming into the bridge when a hand grasps yoongi’s chin, tipping it until he’s made to face taehyung. taehyung’s gentle with it, but it startles yoongi anyway, blinking unsteady and lips parted. taehyung’s fingers are long, long enough to span the entirety of yoongi’s neck like this. he knows taehyung feels the bob in his throat when he swallows.
taehyung draws his hand away, but yoongi stays where he’s tipped, the gears in his mind slow like it’s covered in honey. the smile on taehyung’s face is tentative, backlit like he’s keeping it in check, but his gaze is sure. unrelenting.
“long hair suits you, you know.” this time he reaches to tuck a lock behind yoongi’s ear and says, in a tone all too casual for the way it steals all the air from yoongi’s lungs, for how devastatingly it hits yoongi, “you look pretty.”
the effect is instantaneous — the shy curl of yoongi’s shoulders, cheeks warmed in a soft hazy blush. it’s lovely on him.
taehyung sees his straying gaze and thinks of the first time they met: how, despite the calm lull in yoongi’s voice, he’d never once maintained eye contact. it almost felt like a game of hunt, taehyung chasing after pretty elusive eyes, wanting to hold them down somehow. it’s endearing as it is attractive. shyness is pretty on yoongi.
yoongi’d stuttered out his protests, an embarrassed whine in his throat. it sets taehyung laughing and the moment recedes to a safe zone, but when yoongi’s alone later he can’t help but trace taehyung’s touch, the heat of his attention like a phantom memory. wonders what it’d be like to be desired by someone like taehyung.
yoongi starts to worry.
it’s just how taehyung is, he reasons. a heartthrob and a gentleman. that’s just how he is. seamlessly, handsomely charming; the james deans and marlon brandos of the world. people gravitate around him like satellite caught in orbit, still and at a trance. the world sits on his big palms, and when he stares nobody stands a chance: not the swooning fans, nor his leading ladies —
not yoongi.
it gets worse. or better, depending on which side of the fence you’re on. yoongi himself is swung back and forth that fence like it’s a match of table tennis.
it’s in the little things; it’s in the way taehyung notices his habits. ‘mm’s in gentle disapproval, a soft grumbled hum deep in his chest, when yoongi starts to absently chew at his nail-bed. he pulls yoongi’s thumb away from his mouth before the skin around it cracks, giving his hand a small squeeze. yoongi feels it like a squeeze to his heart.
there’s that one evening at the company rooftop, staff and artists alike setting up the grill for a barbecue. yoongi isn’t anticipating the breeze, clad only in a thin hoodie. he shivers, looking down as the cold seeps into even his socks. just as he’s about to tug at his sleeves taehyung is there, wordlessly sliding his slippers towards yoongi. he’s bare-foot.
he looks up to a watchful taehyung, head tilted and palms stuffed in the pockets of his slacks. the half-quirk of his lips when he’s being thanked turns yoongi into an instant casualty.
“you get cold easily, hyung.” it isn’t set in a question — taehyung is stating it.
yoongi only hums in response, shuffling into the offered slippers and suddenly conscious about the way he’s rubbing at his elbow.
taehyung’s gaze flicks to the motion, and then suddenly he’s stepping forward. the proximity forces yoongi to crane his chin up as large, warm hands pull him closer, almost close enough for the tip of yoongi’s nose to graze taehyung’s chest. they skim up and down yoongi’s arms, heat radiating from taehyung’s body in waves.
“is this better?” taehyung murmurs, and it’s devastating in the way yoongi instantly gives in, eyes fluttering out of volition. devastating, in the way taehyung holds so firmly, in the way the heat of his palms feels like he’s being warmed from the inside out. it’s toasty and all-consuming, the touch of it like taehyung’s splayed his palms against a fire and kept all its warmth in them.
yoongi thinks, distantly, that it’s exactly how he wants to be held.
it’s so soothing to yoongi’s senses he can barely bite back a sigh. barely hold down the urge to wrap all of taehyung around him and see how much warmer he can feel.
taehyung chuckles, looking as satisfied as yoongi feels. “feels nice?”
“mm. thank you. you’re warm.”
“ah.” the slant of his smile grows roguish, and when he winks the warmth in yoongi’s gut boils to a flame, chest alight with flutters. “i run hot.”
taehyung has to pull away eventually, called upon by jimin. he’s — an artist from the same company, but yoongi hadn’t made any conversation past polite greetings in the hallways until taehyung had come around. because taehyung and jimin are, to quote them, really, really close.
yoongi mourns the loss of his heat, feels all of that warmth receding, siphoning hands draining all of yoongi’s blood with it until he’s nothing but a husk of who he was.
hope is a restless thing that claws at your throat. yoongi would rather swallow his expectations.
but he wonders, as his eyes wander against his will, searching for taehyung like moth to a flame, if it’s too late.
as the days pass yoongi becomes more and more like a frantic game of see-saw, pulling away with soulless assurances of he’s just being nice, you’re just a friend, stop it, you’re just a hyung, before his heart pushes against reason and pleads, craves for it to be more, for every morsel of validation until yoongi feels starved and displaced out of his mind.
sometimes taehyung feeds into it. now that the production of songs are mostly complete they don’t see each other as often, but they text consistently. some nights yoongi forgets to reply, hyperfixated on his work and pulling all-nighters in the studio. sometimes it’s taehyung who replies late, whisked into early morning shoots or whatever his schedule has in store for him. but they wind up back to each other in the end, two orbiting planets revolving around each other.
and taehyung is. he’s flirty. yoongi just can’t tell whether it’s by nature or by intention. taehyung seems to be unaffected when he does these things.
like the time yoongi’s stood outside namjoon’s door with his face shoved at his screen, too out of it to realise he’s blocking the entryway.
he doesn’t have time to process taehyung’s little scoff-sigh before he’s lifted off the floor, taehyung swiftly reversing their positions. yoongi’s returned to the ground in a split-second, taehyung already striding inside without sparing him a glance, but the gesture bowls yoongi off his feet anyway, breath winded at the casualness of their closeness.
or the time yoongi’s stuck on a certain part of the song, thumb and forefinger carelessly squeezing at the plump flesh of his bottom lip, finger sometimes tracing the shape of his mouth in thought while he’s trying to solve his conundrum. taehyung would clear his throat, lids raised imperceptibly when he’s caught. a light smirk tugs at his lips a second later, no longer sheepish, gaze flicking between yoongi’s eyes and mouth when yoongi asks him what’s up — nothing. you just look cute.
maybe that’s taehyung chase for validation in his own way, the part of the leading male part who always gets who he wants in the end thrust into his hands over and over again until it’s become second skin, bound to these expectations on who he’s set to be. maybe yoongi is just another objective.
but it feels blasphemous to assign something so malicious onto taehyung when he’s been nothing but nice. a sweet man, warm and attentive, and a heart that endlessly cares.
maybe it’s yoongi and his rose-tinted glass, wanting with such a desperate force he’d tricked himself into seeing things in him and taehyung that aren’t really there. it’s unfair to pin it on taehyung when yoongi’s simply being delusional.
it dawns on yoongi, how close jimin and taehyung truly are, when they’re invited to seokjin’s house for a drink. the first sight that greets yoongi, fingers tucked in to pull his shoe off, is jimin perched on taehyung’s lap. he’s a perfect fit there, looking warm and comfortable, nuzzled into taehyung’s neck while the latter has his arm slung over his back. the intimacy is strangely out of place, something yoongi himself would reserve for private. yoongi doesn’t miss the copious amounts of space on the couch either.
they’re not dating. both jimin and taehyung have made that clear, but that doesn’t stop the little oh that drops to a pit in his chest. like fading echoes bouncing against the walls of an empty room, all the warmth in him doused in a sweeping glance.
yoongi has been making a big deal out of nothing. he’d been nitpicking everything, fixating on those little moments between them, the hope in his chest with wings that tremble in pitiful eagerness, distorting taehyung’s intentions to appease itself. he’d been overestimating his place, putting value on something that held none.
how could the attention taehyung give him be any special when it pales compared to what taehyung gives jimin, someone he’s just friends with?
there’s so much more, once yoongi is hyper-aware of it. he finds himself tethered to taehyung like he’s a warm orange flame, instincts often spotting his presence before his brain even catches up.
he sees him picking an exhausted jimin up and off the floor after gruelling choreography with hoseok. he’d done it with such practised ease, their body languages in perfect synchronicity. sees him snatch jimin from behind and press him back to chest to tuck his chin on. sees his hands wind around jimin’s middle when they hug, often keeping jimin lodged in his arms even when they’re leaning away, like he’s not quite ready to give jimin up. sees how instantly he reacts when jimin falters in a dance, voice warm and coaxing the singer through bouts of self doubt. there’s so much in there, love and affection startlingly clear in the almond-set of his eyes.
something in yoongi’s chest gives out a cry when he sees them, something soft and pleading, like a bottle of yearning tipped into spilling until it’s drained numb and empty. yoongi’s lungs, used to its weight, feels displaced and unsteady without it, breaths heavy like it’s still carrying the brunt of his longing.
and maybe. maybe it is, even in its death.
because the very same night he sees them curled together taehyung ends up sitting next to yoongi for dinner, quietly dropping pieces of dakgalbi on yoongi’s plate when he sees him fiddling with his chopsticks, picking on his rice.
later, when yoongi’s drank himself heavy, mind floating away and senses pleasantly numbed, taehyung finds him alone and struggling to uncork the soju. gently probes yoongi’s hands away after a minute of yoongi’s mumbled grumbling, yoongi a gust of wind away from swaying. taehyung slinks his hands around yoongi, propping him up and onto the counter with surprisingly strong arms. yoongi’s dazed, too drunk-brained to process it whilst taehyung’s uncorking the bottle with ease. he hovers close after, toeing the loose space between yoongi’s thighs.
then he just gazes at him, under the soft dark grey of the kitchen.
his attention is gentle but unwavering, straying knuckles skimming against the jut of yoongi’s cheek. the skin there is warm, softly flushed in a pretty, pretty blush. sinks his fingers in the long strands of yoongi’s hair, thumbing the slender curve of yoongi’s neck. but whatever he finds in yoongi, he backs away in the end.
taehyung hangs around him back at the living room. he seems content to stay, leaned back with his weight hanging on his palms when the conversation slows into the lull. the rest of the group segregates in natural groups of twos and threes, and there in the corner is taehyung—and—yoongi.
yoongi’s still too out of it, numb from a sleep-filled haze and remnants of alcohol clinging to his brain, to really feel the prick in his heart when he pictures it again: jimin perched on taehyung’s lap. there’s just that soft longing laying thick over the ache, a murmur in his heart. his eyes steadily slip, until a faint darkness starts to creep into the edges of his eyes and the last thing he sees is taehyung’s silhouette, the person curled on his lap vague and distorted enough for yoongi to imagine it’s him.
he’s asleep when taehyung tucks the blanket high up to his chin.
yoongi’s chest carries the longing even in its death, like the living carry the dead in urns. unable to let go.
the lowest blow hits yoongi during a meeting for taehyung’s music video. namjoon and yoongi are there as honourary guests, ready to give input if needed. jimin’s there too, grinning at yoongi and claiming he’s moral support.
taehyung brings forth the idea of having a male love interest in the video, sending a ripple in the room. a heated debate erupts, but taehyung’s resolve is as steely as his gaze when he puts his foot down and commits, body lax but stare leaving no room for argument. yoongi gives taehyung a small smile, a silent supportive gesture. taehyung subtly relaxes.
in the end the agents and the company staff alike have no choice but to fall in line. his manager even suggests for taehyung to choose someone who resembles his type. someone he can imagine falling for, something taehyung seems further excited by.
yoongi stills when taehyung insists it be someone from their company. he’s unpeeling the layers of it before he can stop himself, wondering if taehyung’s implying there’s someone here who’s his type.
yoongi’s heart traitorously sings, unable to repress how giddy it is at even the thought of being a choice. unable to deny himself of this want. this heavy, heavy humanness — yoongi daring to hope despite all his resistance.
taehyung’s gaze sweeps over him, deep warm eyes catching him. yoongi’s chest still in a held breath —
jimin.
they pick jimin.
the choices were between jimin and jeongguk.
yoongi’s face falls. he wasn’t even a choice.
okay. it’s no big deal. it’s just a music video. it’s not real. yoongi’s ninety-percent sure he would back out even if they’d asked.
but at the same time it’s so much more. or maybe it isn’t. maybe it’s both things at once — nothing to taehyung and everything to yoongi, childish as it is.
it’s in how flippant the implications are served to yoongi, like the utterance of jimin amplifies the weight of it once it reaches him. if not jimin, then jeongguk. if not jeongguk — then how many more, until yoongi? the list stretches on, spreads into an ocean-wide distance between yoongi and taehyung.
and yoongi feels it like a sick joke, like the universe is mocking at him — how dare he dream of more when he isn’t even a consideration for something hypothetical?yoongi feels denied of even dreaming. he has these wishful thoughts sometimes, lingering in an abandoned station of yoongi’s mind as sleep takes him away in a train. it was his only safe space. the only place he could pretend, entertain the what-ifs of it all.
now it feels denied of its existence, no longer in limbo of being a possibility.
when taehyung closes his eyes, none of it resembles yoongi.
nothing about yoongi makes taehyung dream of love.
and yoongi — yoongi dreams of them alone.
even at its most surface level it’s still a beatdown to yoongi’s confidence, knowing taehyung isn’t even physically attracted to him, let alone have any semblance of romantic or sexual desire for him.
yoongi looks nothing like jimin, from their faces down to their physique. yoongi looks even less like jeongguk.
and that was it really — yoongi had never been a choice. not back with his first love, nor to an ex-boyfriend, whose words of i wasn’t planning on getting you. i wanted your friend first – washed down yoongi like acid on skin, dissolving every inch of his flesh from the inside even when he’d slipped on a caustic smile and pretended it didn’t. never been one, never felt like one.
it feels like an underhanded rejection. he’s imagined what it’s like to be rejected tenfold, but there’s something unfeeling about receiving it through something make-believe.
the shame he feels is a flint to a spark until he’s searingly awash in it, flame like a branding iron to his throat and leaving blisters in its wake — yoongi wants to claw at it, nail at his arms and scratch himself out of his skin.
everything after unfolds like a film in an old VHS tape – faint, warped and muffled with static, like an abandoned building with terrible acoustics. a flurry of cheery voices, filtering in and out of his ears.
“.. -wo look good together.” “it’ll be easy to believe you’re in love with him.” “–of course. jimin was the obvious choice.”
taehyung catches him before he could slip out. tells him, with a nervous sort of grin, how excited he is.
“visit me for filming, hyung.”
yoongi smiles, strained thin under the weight, and wills his voice to steady.
“hyung will try.”
yoongi doesn’t visit.
he keeps up with taehyung’s updates in the group chat, likes his posts on social media. but he doesn’t visit.
he feels terrible about it, but he’s teetered to the edge as it is, unsure he has it in him to see taehyung and jimin together. god, that’s how far gone yoongi is over taehyung, the thought of seeing him in a romantic light for a music video enough to get his heart sinking. taehyung stops asking after the third time, their texts taking a backseat as he gets busier.
he sees taehyung three weeks after the meeting. yoongi doesn’t even get a warning, not expecting taehyung’s voice when he drags his house-slippered feet into seokjin’s living room. it’s like he’s seeing taehyung for the first time again, the sheer force hitting yoongi square in the chest.
he’s stuttered to a stop before his heart finally catches up with him, hammering in its chamber and adrenaline late to the party. yoongi stupidly thinks of metal detectors, the beeping growing incessant the closer and closer they get to gold. that’s what his heart’s doing, angling yoongi to his north-east where taehyung’s lounging.
he’s sat back against the cushion, head rested and the thick line of his neck tilted back. it’d be more distracting if taehyung wasn’t also —
stubbled. taehyung hasn’t shaved. yoongi thinks of his affinity for rope burns, the feeling of it scraping against his skin in heated moments. thinks of the rough graze of stubble burns against thighs—
stop! stop it, fiend.
“yoongi hyung.” taehyung smiles. “it’s been a while.”
yoongi swallows a wince, rubbing his nape.
“sorry, taehyung-ah. i got swept up with a project.” yoongi takes a seat next to him. he owes this to him at least, even when the longing in his heart stretches in opposing directions, unsure if it’s happy or hurting. “i kept up with everything though. did you enjoy the food truck i sent?”
“mm.” taehyung’s smile doesn’t linger this time, something yoongi isn’t used to. he’s impassive. “you were busy.”
“i was. well — busier than i should’ve been. scrapped half-finished songs because i couldn’t use them anymore. and then, well. i got inspired by something else.”
yoongi isn’t lying. he was never good at love songs, but they’d called on him achingly. yoongi was powerless to deny them.
they’ve stopped coming to yoongi ever since the meeting, the abandonment cruel and silent. yoongi’s since been imprisoned in themes of rejection and longing, of a dreamless love. of entrapment. chipped pieces of his heart he’d spun into fresh tracks — his feelings for kim taehyung a thousand sad compositions he could write.
taehyung is quiet for a long moment, staring intently at yoongi. he looks older like this. or maybe more mature, settled into his foundation. features wiped clean off expression, the set of his jaw hard. a man.
finally he sighs, lines of his body unwinding. his gaze relaxes, and yoongi can finally breathe. “i understand.” it’s a murmur, soft as it often is with yoongi. “i’m just clingy.”
an admission — the scrape of a blade on the wall yoongi’s built, plaster peeling.
taehyung’s hand shoots to yoongi’s lap, grip stopping him from picking at his nails. yoongi inhales sharply, hand falling limp. he feels dangerously suspended from the contact, the heat of taehyung’s palm splayed enough for the tips of his fingers to brush the inside of yoongi’s thigh.
so when taehyung asks, implores, insists yoongi come for their wrap-up dinner, the no, i can’t slithers out as a hopeless yes. yes, hyung will.
it earns him a smile, bright and warm. yoongi’s capitulation is inevitable.