Work Text:
It was a dark and stormy night…
That’s Edward Bulwer-Lytton, you plagiarizing asshole.
Seokjin glanced out the window, catching a streak of lightning as it hit its mark. He reworded his opening line. The night was pitch-black and it was raining hard.
Awesome. Real fucking original, he thought. The Worst Literary Arts Student on the Planet Award goes to… Seokjin groaned and deleted what he’d typed out on his laptop.
Some nights were like this. He had a little free time as well as the motivation and inspiration to write. His shared college dorm room was impeccably spotless for once (read: the ugly, puke green, matted and hopefully coffee-stained shag carpet could actually be seen, which was truly a miracle due to his roommate’s chronic depression and his own ADHD). His desk was distraction free and there was a warm cup of mint medley tea resting on the corner of it.
Supposedly, this herbal blend helped improve concentration, according to his friend Namjoon, who had given it to him just because. Namjoon was thoughtful that way, always giving him random helpful gifts like that organizer to keep better track of what assignments were due when and those fidget toys so he had something to do with his hands during their long, dreadfully boring classes.
Seokjin was fresh out of the shower and had put on his coziest flannel pajamas. Yoongi had gone to sleep early because he had an early morning music theory class, but he was bundled up under his comforter so Seokjin could keep their light on while he stayed up working on his story. The consistent pattering of rain against his bedroom window created such wonderful white noise and the occasional flash of lightning granted him the best possible ambiance to write a mystery thriller in.
Everything was perfect.
The only problem was that Seokjin had let way too many ideas build up in his mind since he last had a moment to type them out and organize them. He had too many characters and plot lines and settings in his brain fighting to be written about at once. So, because he had too many things he wanted to write about right then, that of course meant he wouldn’t be able to write about anything at all because he didn’t know how to even begin piecing the project he wanted to work on together or how to make all of these characters and plot points relevant to a single story. Where did he start? Whose perspective should this story be told in? How exactly would the murderer get away with it for so long before they were caught? How would they eventually be caught?
He knew how this would go. He would get overwhelmed and be stuck in this decision paralysis for the next few hours until he was too tired to write or until all of his motivation drained or until his attention shifted elsewhere. Whichever came first. The latter was most likely. He’d probably start researching the few homicide methods he was indecisively juggling between having his antagonist use (narcotics or suffocation) and then fall down internet rabbit hole after rabbit hole.
He kind of wished Yoongi was awake to bounce ideas off of. That always helped his writing process. He would tell his roommate all the ideas he had and, God bless Min Yoongi for listening, really listening to him even though the things he said very rarely made a whole lot of sense and usually came out sounding very jumbled even to himself. Yoongi somehow could always ask just the right questions to make everything become comprehensible and click together. He’d give his input and help Seokjin create an outline that he could more easily follow. And Seokjin really loved that, spending that time being creative and feeling understood by this other boy, who, in just the two short years they’d spent rooming together in college, had so easily become his closest friend. He thought that this was a pleasant distraction for Yoongi too. It was something that got him out of his head and instead engaged him in Seokjin's fictitious worlds.
He thought about the first day they’d met, how unsure and apprehensive Yoongi had seemed about him. Maybe he had come on just a little too strong. Okay. Maybe he came on way too strong, way too bubbly and over the top, but, in his defense, he was nervous and he just really wanted his new roommate to like him! Because how fucking long would his college experience be if the person he lived with didn’t?
“You talk a lot,” Yoongi told him after he’d started rambling about why he was enrolled in the literary arts program, going on and on about the high school teacher that believed in him and his writing enough to push him to pursue further education, even though his grades were never the best and studying was one of the most difficult things in the world for him. Which was after Seokjin started talking to him about his family and how much he was going to miss them, but how glad he still was to have this new sense of independence and time away to mature. Which was after Seokjin told him about how long his train ride to the university was and about the friend he’d made out of this sweet kid named Taehyung who (made a mistake and) sat next to him on the trip. “And you’re very loud.” He seemed annoyed and Seokjin winced. That wasn’t the first time someone had said that to him.
“Sorry.” Seokjin made the conscious effort to lower his voice because he realized then that it had in fact gotten quite loud. “It’s just that I’m excited to be here. I never thought I would be able to do this and honestly, I’m still not positive that I can, but I really want everything to go well. And I want people here to like me.”
“You’re off to a great start there,” Yoongi scoffed, not looking up at him at all as he unpacked the clothes from his suitcase into the drawers on his half of the small room, and it sounded so much like sarcasm so Seokjin just shut up entirely after that because he didn’t want to make things worse than they already were.
Luckily, Yoongi warmed up to him after many complaints that Seokjin got too riled up playing video games while he was trying to sleep and a lot of frustration over how many times he needed to remind Seokjin to do something simple and more irritation with Seokjin verbalizing sounds just to verbalize them and pacing just to pace and talking to himself out loud and always fidgeting.
They gained a better understanding of each other over time.
Yoongi, Seokjin learned eventually, also never thought he’d be going to college. He skated through high school doing less than the bare minimum, not because he wasn’t intelligent enough to do well, but because he just didn’t believe anything he did mattered. He never planned to make it past sixteen (and that shattered Seokjin’s heart to pieces when he heard this), but now that he somehow had… Yoongi wasn’t really sure what to do with his life. College was what most of his peers were doing after graduation so he thought it was as good a next move as any. He took some advice from a counselor and enrolled in a music education program.
“It made sense. I was always happiest as a kid sitting in front of a piano,” he shared one night, maybe three months after they first met, when Seokjin invited him to come along to their mutual friend, Hoseok’s party. He wasn’t up for leaving their dorm room though, so Seokjin threw him his own little introvert-friendly party. The quick run to the liquor store and hastily strung up toilet paper streamers was such a pathetic gesture, but it made Yoongi smile so it had to count as a win.
They sat on the gross, shaggy carpet, just the two of them, and drank together. For the first time, they had real, meaningful discussions that only got deeper and then played spin the bottle when they got to the bottom of one. Yoongi’s lips were chapped, but his tongue was smooth and felt nice against his own, Seokjin remembered so clearly even though his memory was usually shitty enough without the help of liquor. Though he was pretty sure his roommate didn’t remember kissing him at all by the time they both woke up with pounding headaches the next morning. He didn’t bother bringing it up because Yoongi wasn’t gay.
“I think music was what saved my life,” Yoongi confessed then. “It was an especially bad day and I wanted everything to stop. I’d fantasized about killing myself so many times and I was going to finally do it. But this song I liked came on the radio. God, this sounds so fucking stupid. A good song came on the radio and I put the blade away because I wanted to hear it again and now, well, I’m at least a little over a year clean.”
He pulled up the long sleeve of his shirt to show Seokjin the array of scars there. Most were horizontal. Some were thinner than others. Many were white and faded while others were pink and more prominent. None of them were fresh though. They were hard to look at. Seokjin kept thinking about how much pain a person must be in to do this to themselves and it hurt to imagine Yoongi at such a low point.
Yoongi pointed to some of the bubbly pink ones.“I slipped two Christmases ago after a rough family dinner. My dad can get loud and mean and he’s always had a lot of impact on my mental health.”
That was when Seokjin realized why the volume of his voice had been so off putting to Yoongi initially. He stored the fact away where he really hoped he wouldn’t lose it and decided he would put a thousand times the effort into staying at a reasonable decibel around Yoongi than he already had been.
“But I didn’t want to die then. I didn't. I just wanted to release some of that tension in my head, you know? So I think I really am doing better than I was.”
“I’m happy you’re still here.” Seokjin took his hand without thinking. Maybe it was the alcohol. “It’ll be really great to see what a difference you and your music will make in other teens' lives when you graduate,” he emphasized.
Yoongi studied him for a moment and Seokjin really couldn’t decipher what that look in his eyes was so he smiled a little awkwardly. Maybe he didn’t like to be touched. Seokjin let go of his hand.
The point was that, tolerance eventually became understanding. They learned how to compromise with each other, learned how to make each others' lives a little easier.
Yoongi helped Seokjin with studying. He broke large tasks into smaller, more manageable goals and then he sat with him as he did his work, encouraging him and holding him accountable because Namjoon sent Seokjin this article about the benefits of body doubling for neurodivergent people. He started keeping his reminders visual, putting sticky notes in obvious places where Seokjin was sure to see them or writing notes on his hand with Sharpie because when something was out of sight, it was out of mind for him. He set timers and alarms and helped him block his time since Seokjin so easily lost track of it. He helped him organize his scattered ideas and tried hard to stay patient with him.
Seokjin got frustrated with himself fairly often because he hated that he couldn’t ever keep his shit together. He hated that he put off folding his laundry for two weeks straight even though it took him only ten minutes to do once he finally got around to it and he hated that he came home from the grocery store with everything except the one thing he needed and hated that he couldn’t focus on something he really wanted to get done. He hated whenever he once again forgot something important like Namjoon’s birthday, which he knew was coming up and had been excited about for the entire week leading up to it because he would finally get to give Namjoon that special edition collection of H.P. Lovecraft's works that he got for him. He left the book in the fridge because he was holding it when he thought about making eggs and needed to set it down somewhere for what was only supposed to be a second. (How does one forget where they placed such a large book?)
Yoongi was surprisingly good at helping Seokjin be more compassionate and forgiving with himself. It was only surprising because he’d once been annoyed with him for doing these things too, but it was different when he realized that Seokjin also hated himself for the things he couldn’t help. Empathy was a lot stronger than irritation. He switched to reassurance mode. “I promise you, Namjoon didn’t care that you gave him his present a day late. He was just happy you thought of him at all and was thankful for a gift from you.”
“You think so?”
Yoongi gave him another look that was hard to decrypt. “Yeah, hyung. He loved your present.” It was like he wanted to say something different, but changed his mind.
And Seokjin tried to be helpful to Yoongi too. On days when Yoongi was in one of those states where he could barely bring himself to get out of bed even to take care of himself, Seokjin set reminders for himself to remind Yoongi to take his medication and drink water. He pushed Yoongi to take a shower when his hair started looking greasy or brush his teeth when his breath stank. He brought him food whenever he made some for himself because Yoongi didn’t always have the energy to make his own.
When Yoongi withdrew from the rest of their friends, Seokjin sat cross-legged on the end of his bed and updated him on the latest drama between Jimin and Jungkook. Even though Yoongi probably didn’t really care about the constantly on-and-off again couple’s latest quarrel, he still appreciated that Seokjin cared enough about him to keep him in the loop. Namjoon had a lot of friends that were majoring in music and education and, if Seokjin asked, he could get the notes from classes Yoongi missed to pass along to him. (Kind of like how, when Seokjin himself missed one of their shared classes, Namjoon had neatly written notes for him too, where he had all the important information highlighted so it would stand out and make studying easier for him. Though, Seokjin had never once asked him to do that for him. There was that thoughtfulness.)
And sometimes, Seokjin was successful in getting Yoongi out of the room for some fresh air and light exercise. “It’s a nice fall day. The leaves are so pretty, Yoongi-yah. Let’s go for a walk together around campus!” Yoongi grumbled in the moment, but later when he was feeling better, he always thanked Seokjin.
Even if they had a rocky start, Seokjin liked to think that it wasn’t an accident that the universe paired them together.
Thunder clapped and brought him out of his thoughts.
Oh. When had he opened a new tab and looked up how much a lethal dose of Scopolamine was? His browser prompted him to answer whether he wanted to use location services or not and he got irrationally worried that the authorities would come looking for him because of his sketchy searches so he just shut his laptop because it wasn’t like he would actually get any writing done that night anyway.
He picked up his tea and took a sip. It was cool now. Damn. This always happened. He would make himself a nice warm drink and set it down somewhere and either completely forget about it or just lose track of how much time passed while he either got absorbed in a task or zoned out like he just had.
The rain was still pelting against the window with heavy thuds. Seokjin couldn’t remember the last time it’d stormed this hard when he’d had an evening in to just enjoy it. He sighed and then stilled because just under the sound of rain pounding against glass was a softer, more familiar sound. He swiveled in his desk chair to face Yoongi’s bed.
He thought Yoongi was sleeping, but apparently that wasn’t the case. The comforter was still drawn up over his head, but under it, the other boy was doing that thing where he was trying (and failing) to cry silently. Shaky breaths followed by choked exhales.
“Yoongi?” The noises stopped completely, but Seokjin didn’t get an answer. He scooted his chair across the room and put a careful hand on what he assumed would be Yoongi’s shoulder because judging from from the shape of the blanket, he was curled up on his side. “Yoongi. You’re crying?” It was supposed to be a question, but it didn’t come out sounding like one. “What’s wrong?”
The shoulder under Seokjin’s hand lifted as Yoongi shrugged.
“How many times do I have to tell you that you don’t need to hide this? Can you come out of there so we can maybe talk a little?”
Reluctantly, the comforter peeled away from Yoongi’s head. He was facing the wall and didn’t bother to turn to face Seokjin, which was typical. He didn’t like how red his face got when he cried and really didn’t like others seeing.
“Good. I bet it’s a little easier to breathe like this, yeah?”
Yoongi nodded.
“What’s wrong?” Seokjin tried again.
“Nothing,” Yoongi said. There were times that he meant it when he said nothing was wrong. Sometimes, he just felt overwhelmingly despaired for seemingly no reason and on those days, all Seokjin could offer was company because he didn’t want Yoongi to feel so alone in what he was going through. Tonight though, nothing was a lie and it didn’t sound at all convincing.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Yoongi repeated stubbornly, but then, there was another flicker of lightning followed by the thick crack of thunder and he visibly flinched.
Oh. Come to think of it, had Seokjin ever been around Yoongi during a storm like this? He thought he’d come to know Min Yoongi pretty well by now, but this was new. “Are you... afraid?”
Yoongi burrowed a little deeper back into his comforter. “Are you judging me?”
“Why would I?”
“'Cause it’s such a childish fear. What kind of weak ass adult is afraid of a little storm?” He laughed a bit at himself, though it sounded so empty, and Seokjin frowned when he added, “It’s embarrassing.”
“I’m not judging you and I don’t think it’s embarrassing,” he assured.
More thunder sounded from outside and Yoongi was shaking.
“It’s the thunder then?” Seokjin asked, though he was pretty sure it was safe to assume.
Another nod. “It... sounds like a belt.”
Oh, fuck. Loud noises scared Yoongi and he had a mean father. Seokjin put two and two together and came to a very devastating conclusion. “God, Yoongi. Shit, what do you need right now?”
Seokjin was about to ask again when Yoongi didn’t reply for a while, but then he did respond in such a soft voice that Seokjin barely even heard him. “Do you think you could maybe just… like, hold me? I know, that’s so dumb and weird, but I just want to feel safe, hyung.”
“It’s not dumb or weird to me. Have you met me? I’m the king of being dumb and weird,” Seokjin joked, trying to make Yoongi feel less awkward about what he’d asked for and maybe lighten the mood, but he didn’t think it helped much. He had a different helpful idea though. “One sec.”
He was sure the comforter had been doing very little to block out the sounds of the storm, so he rolled himself back to his desk, opened the top drawer, and pulled out the wireless, soundproof headphones he used for optimal gaming and porn watching experiences. Hopefully, these would be more effective. He handed them to Yoongi who accepted them gratefully and opened up his blanket cocoon to invite Seokjin in.
“No homo,” he tried again to make Yoongi smile before he put the headphones on and it worked that time. He saw the wonderful lift of Yoongi's cheek, even if he couldn't see the smile itself.
What was a little spooning between bros? Seokjin really wished he could say he was surprised by how nice it felt to have Yoongi curled up in his arms, his back pressing against his chest so close that Seokjin could feel every breath he took. He’d thought about it before though, how well he and Yoongi, this smaller boy, would fit together. Sure. He just never pictured him cuddling Yoongi in the context of Yoongi being terrified of thunder and him only providing physical comfort. He also could acknowledge that those other scenarios weren’t realistic and never clung to them. Yoongi was straight. And this, being able to offer him some comfort when he needed it, was more than good enough.
Seokjin held Yoongi for a few hours. That was how long the storm lasted. At one point he was sure that Yoongi really had fallen asleep and at another point, he thought he himself might drift off to dreamland. But during the way too early hours of the morning, the rain died down and Seokjin was still awake when it did.
He sat up a little and saw that he was right. Yoongi was asleep and that made him happy. As gently as he could, he untangled himself from his roommate, tucked Yoongi back in under his covers so he would stay warm, and crawled into his own bed.
He wanted to get some shut eye in what little time was left before his nine a.m. class, but awful thoughts about this new Yoongi lore he’d unlocked kept him from doing so.
…Or maybe he had managed to get some sleep, even if it wasn’t nearly enough to function, because Yoongi woke him up (much earlier than Seokjin would have preferred), saying he wanted to eat breakfast with him before he had to leave for his class.
“You look like shit,” he said bluntly when Seokjin sat down on one of the two folding chairs they had set up at a tiny card table. Yoongi slid him his bowl of cereal. “Sorry I kept you up.”
“Don’t be. You know I’m always here for you.” He brought a spoonful to his mouth, chewed, and promptly realized just how bored he really was with cereal, which was one of his and Yoongi’s broke, lazy college student meals that they ate way too often. He didn’t have much of an appetite for it anymore, but wasting it wasn’t an option.
“Yeah, well, thank you for last night, hyung.”
“Don’t mention it, Yoongi-yah.” They didn’t have to mention this - the time Seokjin cuddled Yoongi to bed, - just like Seokjin never mentioned the time Yoongi suggested spin the bottle and kissed him. The gay shit that happened in the dorm, stayed in the dorm as far as Seokjin was concerned.
And Yoongi seemed more than content with this because he changed the topic. “Namjoon texted me asking if you were free later today. I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you, but I know you don’t like surprises.” It was true. For as impulsive as Seokjin was, he didn’t like it when others sprung impromptu plans on him. “He wants to take you to dinner.”
That was strange. “Why wouldn’t he just text me to ask if I was free? Why does dinner need to be a big surprise?”
Yoongi sighed and there was one of those looks again. What the fuck did those eyes mean? Seokjin wished for the hundredth time that he knew. “You’re actually that oblivious, aren’t you?”
“Oblivious to what?” Seokjin shoved another spoonful of bland cereal in his mouth.
“The fact that he’s in love with you? I’m pretty sure this is like, a date,” Yoongi clarified and was suddenly wearing the milk and chewed Cornflakes that Seokjin accidently spewed all over him. He made a disgusted face, but he kind of deserved it for suggesting such a silly thing. Of course Seokjin would laugh.
Because what the hell? He knew he was dumb, but just how dumb did Yoongi believe he was? “Namjoon isn’t in love with me.” Namjoon was just a friend who he spent a lot of time with and who paid attention to him and his needs and who liked to give him thoughtful gifts for no reason. “Don’t be stupid.”
Grabbing a paper towel to wipe the milk off of himself with, Yoongi shook his head. “Huh. You really can’t tell when someone has feelings for you. Go to dinner if you don't believe me. If he asks you to be his boyfriend, you owe me cash.”