Work Text:
“Forget it,” Yoongi mumbles out of the corner of his mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that.
“I mean, we’ve been dancing around it for a few months now,” Seokjin says, grinning wide. “If you didn’t crack anytime soon I was about to sit you down and make us talk about our feelings.”
Panic bubbles in Yoongi’s chest, a familiar searing feeling as acid reflux hits, gas in the back of his throat making him burp in quick succession as he hopes that he won’t throw up at the same time.
“Hey, Yoongi, you okay?” Seokjin says, crossing the ground between them in two quick strides to rub a hand comfortingly up and down Yoongi’s back.
“No, I’m fucking terrified,” Yoongi manages to bite out when he feels like he has his gut under control. He stalks off into his bedroom, all too aware that Seokjin is following him. It’s not like he can stop Seokjin anyway.
“What are you afraid of?” Seokjin asks, low and gentle.
Yoongi can’t stand it, the way that Seokjin is looking at him. It makes his skin crawl. It’s too intimate. Seokjin already knows too much about him, knows his every facial expression and he can’t be sure what Seokjin is able to glean right now. He turns around to face the wall, scrubbing a hand through his hair in frustration before turning around again. He doesn’t dare look Seokjin in the eye, slumping to the floor instead to glare fixedly at the carpet.
Seokjin slides down to sit across from him. Even with his head down, hair forming a protective barrier between him and Seokjin, Yoongi can feel the soft warmth of his gaze filtering through.
It’s like a dam bursts inside Yoongi’s chest, letting loose a torrent of words he never thought he’d be able to say out loud.
“I’m fucking scared of everything,” Yoongi says, too loudly into the silence between them. He looks up, wild eyed at Seokjin as he worries away at the little tufts of cheap carpeting. “Relationships are scary. Love is fucking terrifying.”
At the mention of love, Seokjin smiles at him, lips curling up as his eyes crinkle at the corners. The laugh lines around his eyes deepen, signs of a life well enjoyed that he dramatically decries as the early onset of crow’s feet. Yoongi helplessly watches him smile, so enthralled that he forgets what he’s saying.
“Yoongi, love isn’t terrifying. It’s a wonderful experience if you let it happen to you,” Seokjin says. He slides his hand over slowly, bridging the gap between them to gently hold one of Yoongi’s hands. Yoongi’s hand stills at the warmth, forgetting to rip up the carpet.
Yoongi has held hands with Seokjin a thousand times before. A million times before. Seokjin’s hand is as familiar as his own. The raised scar on his index finger from an errant knife wedges itself between his index and middle finger like it always does. Seokjin’s hand is warm and dry against his suddenly cold, clammy, nervous hands. He wants nothing more to raise his hands to his mouth, to worry a hangnail or two into a bloody mess that’ll sting well into the next week. Almost as if he can sense what Yoongi is thinking — and at this point, maybe he can, Yoongi thinks hysterically to himself — Seokjin tightens his grip, placing his other hand on top of Yoongi’s.
It’s too much. He jerks his hand away, grimacing at Seokjin apologetically. Seokjin, the saint that he is, keeps smiling at him. He reaches out again, hand held palm up in invitation. Yoongi hesitates before reaching out to link pinkies.
“Love is…” Yoongi tries to organize his thoughts. He looks down at the carpet again, where it shading slightly different because he’s been picking at it. “This is so stupid. My job is to make words make sense, to communicate effectively but I can’t use the one thing I’m good at in my own fucking life.”
“It’s because this is something that matters to you,” Seokin says, laughing. “You think that it’s easier because it’s something that affects you personally?”
Surprised, Yoongi looks up at him. Seokjin is smiling, but there’s something off-kilter about it. Looking closer, he sees that Seokjin is nervous. His smile is in danger of slipping off, the hand holding his trembling finely with the effort to not crush Yoongi’s hand into a pulp. Yoongi huffs a laugh, shaking his head. He takes Seokjin’s hand more securely in his, interlacing their fingers together. Gratefully, Seokjin squeezes tight before rubbing his thumb soothingly over the back of Yoongi’s hand.
“Didn’t know it’s hard for you too,” Yoongi mumbles in apology.
“I’ve loved you for a long time. I’ve had time to come to terms with it,” Seokjin says. “I can’t say that it’s easy sitting here with you, but I love you. I want to help you.”
Yoongi can hear his laugh verging on hysterical and he fights to tamp it down.
“I’ve always admired that about you,” Yoongi says. “Everyone thinks that I’m the strong one, the brave one out of the two of us for pursing an alternative lifestyle. For not talking to my parents for years, for finding professional fulfillment in something other than the traditional workforce. But you know what? That’s not being strong. Not in a way that really matters.”
Seokjin makes a small noise in the back of his throat in dissent, hand tightening reflexively. He stays silent, maybe sensing that Yoongi needs to talk it out.
“It’s not bravery,” Yoongi continues. “It’s cowardice. It’s an inability to put any more effort than I have to into my interpersonal relationships. To make my parents understand, to find meaning and relationships in a workplace. All my friends are friends of yours or friends of those friends. I always thought I was okay with that, but it’s because I can’t bother to take the first step in any kind of relationship. I have to have people work hard to get through every single barrier I put up like it’s some kind of fucking prize to be my friend.”
Yoongi starts picking at the carpet again with his free hand. He needs to occupy himself, too agitated to sit still and needing something so he doesn’t make the mistake of looking at Seokjin. He doesn’t want to see the pity in Seokjin’s eyes.
“But you? You’re great at social relationships. You can lead the way, make everyone pay attention to you and like you. You have great personal relationships with everyone that you talk to and for each person that passes by you. You have a kind word for everyone you meet.”
Yoongi sighs, feeling the sharp, twisting pain of his heart crumpling in on itself. “YOu don’t deserve me. You deserve so much more than a misanthrope who’s too afraid of commitment to even admit that he’s been in love with you for the last four years—”
Realizing his mistake, Yoongi clamps his mouth shut, breath whistling heavy through his nose.
To his right, Seokjin inhales, sharp. He drops Yoongi’s hand. Flexing his fingers, Yoongi tries not to think about how he immediately misses the warmth and weight of Seokjin’s hand in his.
He doesn’t have time to think about it for too long because Seokjin grabs Yoongi’s face, cradling it carefully between his palms like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Seokjin makes Yoongi look him in the eye, looking unmoored for the first time since the conversation started.
“Yoongi,” Seokjin says slowly. He doesn’t let Yoongi look away, doesn’t let him escape the way that he’s boring holes directly into Yoongi’s skull. Yoongi, are you telling me that you’ve been in love with me for four years?”
“It’s not something I really thought about until recently. It’s just,” Yoongi gestures helplessly. “It what I was saying before. I was jealous of you going out with other people. I kept turning down people who would ask me out on dates without a second thought, without even stopping to think why the rejection was instinctual. I didn’t need anyone else. I didn’t need anyone else, just you here with me.”
Seokjin laughs, choked up and shaky. “You know, that might be considered creepily possessive from an outside perspective.”
“Didn’t know you were considered an outsider, hyung,” Yoongi says. The staring is getting to be too much. He tilts his head briefly into Seokjin’s palm, cheek tingling as he gently disengages and goes back to staring at the floor.
“See, this is why you deserve someone better,” Yoongi mutters to the floor. “Can’t even keep eye contact with you when it’s most important. Can’t even do that, let alone take the leap.”
Seokjin snorts, shifting his weight until he’s leaning back on his hands. Yoongi knows he’s deliberately widening the physical distance between them, letting him breathe. He’s always so quietly thoughtful like that, so considerate. Yoongi’s heart stutters at how comfortably intimate the gesture is, how easily Seokjin fits into his life.
“What’s the leap, Yoongi?”
“Hm?”
“You said that you can’t keep eye contact with me, which, by the way, you’re wrong about. Let alone take the leap,” Seokjin says patiently. “What’s the leap?”
“Oh,” Yoongi says lamely.
The sun is setting, slanting through the blinds, brilliantly golden pinks and purples that wash the room in warm color. Yoongi looks out the window, frowning as he chews at his lip.
“Hyung, when did we meet?” Yoongi asks rhetorically. “Roommates freshman year in college? It’s been what, nine years since then?”
“Yeah,” Seokjin agrees. “Nine years of being friends.”
“And you might say that we’ve become best friends? You’ve seen me do a bunch of stupid shit. Like the time I tried to date Tae and two months later he told me it was nice but he was in love with Jimin,” Yoongi says, grimacing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that miserable before or since then,” Seokjin laughs. “Seeing you drunk at 11 am has to be one of my top favorite times that Min Yoongi was an absolute mess.”
“The point is,” Yoongi says loudly. “What the fuck is the point I’m trying to make? I’m just trying to say that you’ve seen me in the worst situations. You make junbok jook for me when I’m sick. You have haejang gook ready when I’m hungover. You even let me cry on you during my twice yearly cry sessions, no matter how hard I try to shut you out. You know all about my therapy sessions and the fact that I don’t have a regular sleep schedule and that I don’t put my socks in the laundry.”
Seokjin unfolds a leg, poking delicately at Yoongi’s kneecap with his big toe. “A very winning summary of your worst qualities, though I can’t help noticing that you don’t say anything about your inability to wash dishes.”
Snorting, Yoongi shoves halfheartedly at Seokjin’s foot. “That’s because I do the dishes fine,” he lies, deadpan.
His hand settles on the delicate arch of Seokjin’s foot, just for the sake of contact. It settles him, comforting and grounding him as he tries to get his next thoughts together. It’s vitally important that he get this right, that he doesn’t screw it up.
“You know more about me than any other person in the world. Probably more than my own parents, who I haven’t let interact with me for more than two hours at a time every nine months. So it would be a no brainer to fall in love with you, to beg you not to date other people, to turn what we already have into something deeper, something more,” Yoongi says in a rush.
Seokjin makes a small noise in assent, voice catching.
“But being in love is messy. It’s scary. You have to make yourself so devastatingly vulnerable. Not just physically, even though there’s that too. How do I let someone into my heart like that? Let them root around and excavate a comfortable place, to shelter in my heart when every second of the day I’m terrified that it’ll end? Worse yet, that I end up hating that someone? That in a few years, I’ll wake up and find out that I’m not in love, that what I was feeling was a poor imitation? You don’t deserve that. You don’t deserve someone that doesn’t even know if he’s capable of the kind of deep, intimate, overwhelming outpouring of love that you deserve.”
Yoongi trails off, heart pounding in his ears. He feels like he’s run a marathon, but all he’s done is confess to his best friend, the person he’s been in love with for years, that he doesn’t think he’s capable of the kind of love that Seokjin deserves. Just that.
“So that’s why I haven’t told you,” he finishes lamely. “Because you deserve something better.”
The silence stretches, so thick with tension that Yoongi thinks he could take a chef’s knife and slice it neatly in two. He doesn’t dare look in Seokjin’s direction. He’ll probably have the carpet pattern imprinted deep in his brain for the rest of his life.
“Yoongi-yah,” Seokjin says finally.
Yoongi closes his eyes. He squeezes them shut tight against the softness, the overwhelming love and faint laughter oozing from Seokjin.
“Yoongi-ssi, will you look at me?” Seokjin asks, half lilting amusement, half uncertain longing.
There’s no way that Seokjin should be allowed to sound anything less than one hundred percent sure of himself at all times. At the very least, Yoongi shouldn’t be the one to make him feel like that, ever. Yoongi snaps his head up to look at. When he locks eyes with Seokjin, he’s transfixed, a deer in the headlights. He can’t move as Seokjin carefully scoots his way over to Yoongi’s side, inch by careful inch. Slowly, torturously, Seokjin wraps his arms around Yoongi, bringing him to rest against Seokjin’s chest in the loose circle of his long arms.
“I let you say your bit, so now you have to listen to me, ok?” Seokjin says. His voice vibrates through his chest, a comforting low rumble that has Yoongi relaxing into Seokjin despite himself.
Yoongi nods silently.
“You’re wrong, you know,” Seokjin says conversationally.
Despite his promise to be quiet just seconds ago, Yoongi twists around, protesting noise bubbling up in his throat. He tries to look up at Seokjin, but Seokjin tightens his arms around Yoongi, not letting him move.
“What did I just say?” Seokjin scolds him gently. “Did you say that you weren’t going to talk, yes or no?”'
“Yes,” Yoongi mumbles.
“And did you interrupt me, yes or no?”
“Yeah, hyung,” Yoongi says.
“So don’t I deserve an apology?” Seokjin says mock indignantly.
Grumbling, Yoongi thumps his back against Seokjin’s chest ungracefully. Seokjin just laughs, setting his chin on top of Yoongi’s head. He concentrates on the way his hair flutters as Seokjin breathes, waiting for him to make himself comfortable.
“Like I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, you’re not weak,” Seokjin says. “I’m not stronger than you. We’re just good at different things. That’s why we work so well, hmm?”
“You’re not a coward. You’re the farthest person from a coward that I’ve ever met. One of the most inspiring things I’ve ever witnessed is when you stood your ground against your parents and told them that you wouldn’t be joining the workforce immediately. That you’d be freelancing, pursing your passion until you make it. And look at you now. One of the youngest, hottest songwriters of the decade. Everyone in the industry is watching your meteoric rise to success,” Seokjin says, kissing the top of his head.
Yoongi melts under the praise, under the kiss that Seokjin so carefully bestows on him. He relaxes even further, melting bonelessly.
“What you say you admire about me, my easy facility with acquaintances and strangers, my stable office job, is sometimes what I hate most about myself, you know?” Seokjin says thoughtfully.
Making a small inquiring noise, Yoongi leans back to look upside down at Seokjin, who makes a face as he looks down at him. Their lips are so close Yoongi can feel Seokjin’s breath fan across his cheek and his pulse quickens, stomach tightening in anticipation and anxiety. He knows the moment that Seokjin realizes, sees his eyes widen comically before he gently pushes Yoongi’s head down.
“Stop distracting me, brat,” Seokjin says. “I’m trying to make my words make sense too.”
Yoongi rests his hand on Seokjin’s wrist, feeling the fluttering throb of his pulse. Seokjin is still nervous, though he’s hiding it much better now that he has the chance to speak. He’s always been like this, slightly more comfortable in front of a crowd, easily slipping into a silly, too loud, just vulnerable enough veneer that doesn’t encourage people looking too hard to find out who the real Seokjin is.
“I wish I could be more like you, sometimes. You know exactly what you want in life and you won’t stop until you reach your goal. Me? I’m kind of coasting along on my good looks and my basic competency at whatever I do. Everything’s just good enough. But my god Yoongi, when I see what you’re doing, I’m inspired to do better. When I see you working late into the night, I want to quit my dumb finance job. I want to take all the money I’ve saved and open up a store. I want to drop everything and run off into the sunset, going wherever my feet take me.” Seokjin takes a deep breath. “Funny, isn’t it, that we both want the qualities that we like the least?”
Yoongi’s been listening very carefully. It’s what he promised Seokjin he would do, let him have his time to speak. But his head is spinning, dizzy with the effort to understand what Seokjin is saying. He’s proud? He’s envious of how standoffish Yoongi is, unable to make more than a few friends every few years?
He can feel something in his chest tilting askew, just enough that Seokjin’s warm acceptance can bathe over his soul, worming its way in to nestle comfortably against his breastbone.
“You underestimate your capacity for love,” Seokjin says, poking him gently in the side.
Yoongi squirms reflexively, even though it doesn’t tickle.
“Your capacity for love is so big and I see it every day. Look at how you take care of Holly. You think anyone else can treat Holly better than you can? He’s the sweetest, smartest dog in the world and he takes after his father. Who cooks dinner and waits up for me to come home after a shitty day at work and listens to me complain about my stupid coworkers? Who lets me drag him out to whatever social function I want to attend with minimal fussing and perfect manners, even though I know I’ll be in for an earful when we come home?” Seokjin punctuates each question with a gentle kiss to Yoongi’s forehead, his ears, his cheeks, the nape of his neck.
Yoongi wants to protest. It’s just a way to pay back the best roommate that he could ask for, by being less of a misanthrope for just a few hours a day or by being a decent human being. That doesn’t mean that he has the capacity to love. By the time Seokjin is planting the last kiss on his neck, Yoongi feels cold, shaking as he tries to regain control of himself. It’s the way he compensates, trying to withstand the outpouring of love that Seokjin is lavishing on him. He wishes he wouldn’t do it, that he could let himself relax and soak in the naked affection.
“You still with me?” Seokjin murmurs in his ear. He tightens his hold around Yoongi, like he’s trying to transfer all the warmth from his body to Yoongi’s. “I haven’t finished my piece yet.”
“It’s true. You’re not your best all the time. But neither am I. If I’ve seen you at your worst, then you’ve seen me at my worst, too. Jealous, vindictive, petty, prone to tears. And yet you’re still with me, still in love with me. Apparently for the last four years?” Seokjin sounds winded and indignant in the same breath. “We could have had this argument four years ago and we could have been dating this whole time?”
Yoongi protests half-heartedly. He’s trying not to think of the soft, slightly wet, dragging kisses that Seokjin is planting along the slope of his neck before resting his chin on Yoongi’s shoulder. It’s hard to concentrate through the haze of soft but insistent acceptance and understanding that Seokjin is blanketing him in.
“I don’t think I would’ve been ready for this four years ago,” Yoongi manages to get out. “Just got finished arguing with my parents and I was too sharp. Too brittle. I’d have been a worse boyfriend than I would be right now.”
“But you’re interested?” Seokjin asks in his ear. “You’d like that? To be boyfriends?”
Yoongi shudders. Seokjin is too close, too overwhelming as he tries to think with a clear head.
“Hyung please,” he says, darting out quick as a silverfish from Seokjin’s seductively gentle and welcoming arms. “I’m trying to have a rational conversation about why I would make a horrible romantic partner for anyone.”
Seokjin frowns, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yoongi.” For the first time, Seokjin sounds uncharacteristically serious.
Unwittingly, Yoongi looks at Seokjin. The light is fading. It paints Seokjin’s face in stripes, interspersed with darkness where the slats block the light. He can see the beautiful curve of Seokjin’s nose, part of his full lips curving up a tiny bit when he sees Yoongi looking back. His eyes are hidden, unreadable. Yoongi feels hunted.
“Yeah hyung,” he breathes out.
“Yoongi,” Seokjin says again, lips curving up just a little more. Not for the first time, Yoongi wonders what it would be like to feel such an abundance of pillowy warmth against his own lips.
Yoongi waits.
“You love me, right? When you strip everything else away — the fear, the anxiety, the lack of self-confidence — what you’re left with is that you love me. Right?”
Yoongi nods. “Yeah,” he says, voice cracking. Wincing, he clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah, Seokjin hyung. I love you.”
The slow spread of pure joy across Seokjin’s face makes Yoongi’s mouth go dry. His heart starts pounding faster, lips parting as he helplessly leans closer. It’s involuntary on his part, the way that a tree in a shady forest will lean and contort, doing anything to bask in the warmth and life-giving rays of the sun.
"And since you love me, you want the best for me, right? For me to be happy? You’d support all my decisions?” Seokjin continues, grinning widely.
“Of course,” Yoongi replies. “I mean, not unless you were trying to do something stupid. Like the cats. But yeah.”
Seokjin grins smugly, like he’s about to spring a trap. “Then you have to support my decision to love you and want you to be my boyfriend. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
Yoongi feels the trap close around him.
“Wait a minute,” he says, holding up a hand.
Seokjin surges forward, clinging to Yoongi like a squid. “No more waiting,” he says. “Love is scary, Yoongichi. I’m scared too. Maybe we can be less scared together.”
The logic is ridiculous, but then again, everything they’ve talked about for the last hour and a half is built on circular logic. Yoongi’s tired and he so desperately wants to let go, to feel the relief of tumbling headlong into love.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s be in love. What’s the worst that could happen? We break up, ruining one of the longest friendships I’ve ever had. We’ll have to share custody of Holly, argue as we tag all the furniture when we inevitably move out to our own shitty one bedroom apartments, never talk to each other again. Sounds great.” Yoongi’s voice rises as he works himself to the inevitable conclusion of their relationship before it begins.
Seokjin thumps his arm. “Hey, stop that.”
Yoongi shuts up, trying to relax into Seokjin’s tight hold.
“I guess we could try it out,” Yoongi says with bad grace. He tries to ignore the thrill in his heart, the infinitesimally tighter grip as Seokjin squeezes the life out of him.
“That’s all I want,” Seokjin says softly. “Just a chance. We can try it out, you know? Maybe it’ll stick, maybe it won’t. But we’ll never know until we try.”
Yoongi nods at the carpet, grinning.
“Yeah, we’ll never know.”