Chapter Text
Yoongi thinks of letting his phone ring until it dies down, but he can’t go through with it.
“Fun night, hyung?”
“Ah, Taehyungie.” Yoongi picks at the bedsheets. “Sorry, I just got caught up with someone. An old friend.”
“Hmm. Jiminie disappeared too. Is he with you?”
“Uh, no. No, I couldn’t find him.”
“He hasn’t texted.”
“Mm.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? You always get so mad at us for making the staff wait.”
“Ah. Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Its fine, we left you both behind anyway, but I guess you can just buy me dinner for the trouble.”
“I promise.”
“Okay, well. Glad to hear you’re in one piece.” Yoongi winces at what they’re both not saying. “I need to head out to a shoot.”
“Good luck today.”
“Thanks hyung. And I’m free on Wednesday!”
“Hmm, sounds good,” Yoongi says, but Tae has already hung up.
He sighs and checks his other notifications.
✨ International Pop-K Sensation Sunshine Rainbow Traditional Transfer USB Hub Shrimp BTS ✨ is silent. Which is odd in itself; there’s not even a photo from Joon. He has the niggling feeling that someone knows. If not the other six, maybe someone who was in the bathroom? Someone saw. The universe saw. Why the fuck did he do it? The game was fine, they’d been playing it for more than a decade, Jimin slipping in and out of reach, and it was never serious. Just chemistry born of familiarity.
Yoongi runs his fingertips along the tiny lines on his bottom lip, feeling for something to pick at, and thinks of the HYBE market research department leaks. He’d been at home that weekend. For two whole days before anything hit the presses his phone was going off with hurried calls and capslocked texts – some in English – as the entire company machinery swung into pre-emptive action, telling him not to talk to anybody (he'd scoffed at why anyone would ask).
And then he saw the ship lists.
Just that white square open on a document viewer on his phone. His name and Jimin’s. In some sort of top ten. Caught. Yoongi tore through everything he could find online, every twitter thread and gossip forum, his hands flying over the laptop keyboard with muscle memory of trawling internet dirt as a trainee, and then as a newly-debuted, broke idol.
If he kept himself busy, he could start to see the weird pattern emerge. What the fans saw. What the executive board was more than okay seeing. Corporate approval.
The feeling prickled down his spine, like being touched by this doppelgänger, this SUGA, who was also walking his fingers up Jimin’s neck with his other hand, and Yoongi felt like he was seeing double. Triple.
He thought of texting Jimin like can you believe this shit, but a small fear stopped him.
He could believe this shit, actually.
It might as well be real. It is real. Billions of won in advertising revenue made it very real. The Korea travel campaign, him and Jimin in a set done up to look like a cozy living room, a bar, a windy cliffside. Jimin turning in the makeup chair to say, “I swear I’m becoming allergic to garlic. I have about thirty minutes before I need to run for the bathroom.”
Yoongi laughing, saying, “They revoke your citizenship for that, you know. I just saw someone from the Ministry of Interior on set.”
“They didn’t take Jin hyung’s!”
“But he is the Face of Korea. You, er…”, Yoongi dodging Jimin’s playful kick.
They shot until late at night, first the living room, then the sunset, then the bar.
Jimin saying “This is so unfair, your ass looks better than mine, hyung. Please don’t ever wear pants like these again if I’m around. I should have a word with the stylist, I’ve a reputation to uphold.”
Yoongi clicking his teeth at Jimin, cheeky under the noise of the DP and the focus pullers around them telling them to get to their previous marks. Jimin winding an arm through his at the end of the day as they staggered to their separate cars, his tired, (apparently) gassy, smile turned on Yoongi.
All while someone on the 9th floor of the HYBE building was drawing up a slideshow on why Jimin and Yoongi should be arm in arm on a late March evening for greater shareholder value.
He closed all the tabs on his browser one by one when all the fight went out of him.
Yoongi tried not to drink alone these days, but he’d rattled about in his cabinet until he pulled out a bottle of whisky still three-fourths full and poured it down himself over the next few hours, until it was time to go to sleep if he wanted to have any hope of making it to the office.
The group chat was silent that night, he remembers. Yoongi had imagined the flavour of the silence to be embarrassment.
He got calls, of course. Hobi, annoyed from the studio in Los Angeles where he’s recording a mixtape, grousing over how Sihyuk hyung gave him the cold shoulder when he sold his HYBE stock, and who was laughing now? “I’m telling you, hyung, pull out. 2009, 2013, and now? I think this time its over for real.”
He could hear Hobi puttering about in his hotel room, saying thank you brightly to housekeeping, the sound of a door closing with an expensive click. “We didn’t go to all that trouble changing our contracts for more of this shit.” Hobi sighs with feeling. “Hanni called me crying, you know? The kids are all so upset. You could sell your stock, everyone would understand.”
Of course Hobi would worry for the juniors and not whether Yoongi’s homosexual pairing was an asset for HYBE. He knows his Yoongi hyung can take it, if he could take worse with the cameras popping in his face at the police station perp walk.
But for once Yoongi isn’t comforted by any of it.
It could be real.
Jimin’s silence was loud, and Yoongi worried about him as the autumn chill drew around Seoul. Worried about what Jimin was thinking. What he’d seen.
The text, when it came, was a relief and disappointment all at once.
Jiminie
hyung
[11:15 AM]
for once im really glad to be here
away
it doesn’t feel very important
[11:17 AM]
eat well, sleep well
[11:20 AM]
Jimin’s resignation sat like a cold fist in his stomach. And Yoongi threw away the furtive hope that this would be like a rock thrown onto a thin ice sheet, the cracks webbing outwards until someone noticed that he’d been stuck underwater.
When Jimin and Jungkook came home, there were too many people for Yoongi to surface.
The cheers, the flowers, the balloons, and confetti on the 19th floor, and then Jimin running a little from the door as soon as he spotted Yoongi, his body smacking hard into Yoongi’s as he wrapped himself around his hyung. There was not a shred of pretense in Jimin. It was Yoongi who was ashamed, holding in his deceit here in the big hall with all their staff’s eyes glued to them, and he let Jimin hug him for longer than usual.
Eleven days later, it was Yoongi, gathering all his things from his modest cubicle.
There was a small heap of cards and photocards next to his workstation, and he ignored them until lunchtime, because it felt embarrassing to be slacking off work even on his last mandated day. He formatted a column on the excel spreadsheet he had open and accidentally changed all the decimal values. Fuck.
Haein glanced at him over the top of her cubicle, whispering, “I have a sparkly silver marker, d’you want it?”
Yoongi had signed too many bits of paper with his face on it to really care either way, but she was so earnest, it seemed impossible to refuse. So he sat there for fifteen minutes, scrawling GOOD LUCK and TAKE CARE and ALL THE BEST over everything from a lunchbox lid to full glossy photocards. Sometimes there was a Post-It attached, requesting he make it out to someone’s daughter, friend, mom, and so on. There was even a selfie someone took with him in there, in which he looked, frankly, terrible, but he signed it with an inward sigh. To be fair all his colleagues were nice and reassuringly normal, startlingly unfamiliar with the machinations of anything but their in-laws.
He found that he didn’t mind it at all.
Afterwards, there was cake in the cafeteria. Someone gave Yoongi a bright orange paper cone with the word Congratulations spelled out in glittery silver letters, and he obligingly slid the sharp plastic cord over his chin and posed for pictures.
Someone from HR handled the giant strawberry sheet cake like a pro, cutting out slices with practiced ease, and Junho from Mechanical snagged Yoongi one with a giant realistic fondant strawberry in a bed of frosting and walked it over to him happily. He looked into Yoongi’s face like they were actually brothers, like they’d stay in touch, like Yoongi would remember to wish him on his birthday.
Reverse Cinderella: he was BTS SUGA again, already too big and too foreign for the name tag modestly declaring him an Min Yoon-Gi, Senior Manager, Wastewater Division. Too canny next to Junho’s simple eagerness.
He bowed to his colleagues, turned in his ID card, and got in his car and drove home from the Water Supply Project Division in Seongdong-gu for the very last time.
He watched the sun lower itself to the ground in his side mirror and kept his phone face down.
Yoongi’s discharge was as anticlimactic as starting service had been, no rituals, no cameras, just a simple Weverse post telling the fans he was back again. The company was hypervigilant for bad press, as if there wasn’t always bad press, and treated Yoongi like he was some sort of ticking bomb, but he was grateful for a quiet re-entry.
When he unlocked the door it was evident his manager had been to his apartment. There were bouquets spread out over his kitchen island and his gaze lingered over the orchids trailing languid arms over the empty barstools. Yoongi sifted through the fluff of tissue and satiny gift bag handles until he found something he could drink.
With Taehyung and Jin off being professionally hot somewhere, Namjoon was already blowing up Yoongi’s phone being excessively apologetic over the fact that best they could manage that night was a seven-way video call with everyone talking over one another. Yoongi didn’t bother telling Namjoon what he should already know; that he was tired of putting on a face to meet the world, and there was nothing more comforting than a nice long phone call that he could be silent on.
Namjoon would get it.
Yoongi settled into the corner of his couch with the laptop perched on his calves and kept getting complaints from Jungkook that he was doing the old man thing of only showing his chin to the camera. He flipped Jungkook off.
“Hyung, hyung, did you get the cat?”
“That monstrosity sitting in my foyer? Taehyung-ah, have you heard of furries? I’m pretty sure that’s a fursuit.”
Namjoon clapped his hands with obnoxious glee.
“SHOW US!”
“Yeah, what’s a fursuit?”
“Oh my god. Bwi-ah, what the hell?”
“Hyung,” Namjoon slyly, “I think wearing it would open up your third eye.”
“Look between your buttcheeks, Joon-ah, your third eye is right there.”
Taehyung sulked loudly, “Hey my friend had to get it from the US, said it took the artist weeks to make it!”
Yoongi groaned. “Taehyungie, thanks, but…”
They all erupted into a cacophony when he slowly turned his laptop camera to reveal the shiny-eyed ginger cat suit crouched just past his entryway.
“Holy fuck.”
“Is that a mascot?”
“It’s so big, why is it so BIG!”
“I told you, it’s a fursuit.”
“Hold on, I’m googling that right now,” Jimin says, and he was silent for a long time until his mouth popped open in intrigued horror. “People have sex in those things.”
“Well, in modified versions of fursuits, yes, they’re too expensive to ruin with bodily fluids.”
Seokjin groaned, “Yoongichi, why do you know this?”
Jimin was still distracted, clearly still reading whatever tab he had opened to furries (noun.), his eyeballs flickering left-right, but he intoned, “Hyung’s figured out that the secret to an eternally perky butt is to never stop learning.”
“And not Botox? Oh please.”
“ANYWAY. It sucks that you guys aren’t in Seoul, or we could’ve gotten together and made him wear it to the club.”
“Well it isn’t Saturday yet,” Jungkook menaced, and Yoongi grinned quietly and typed his bank account number into the chat next to a cheque emoji.
“Ahhhhhjussi, you mean thing. You need to be reminded what fan service means.”
“I think what I’m hearing is a real bunch of haters.” Yoongi settled deeper into his couch with a smile. His phone dinged, and he reached for it lazily while the others kept talking, and he swiped up to see a cash transfer. There was a text with it.
Park Jimin sent you 4,000,000 KRW
fanservice fee: wear the ears, oppa 🥺👉 👈
Yoongi flushed from soles to scalp, and he whipped his head up to the boxes on his screen just in time to catch Jimin winking at him before he smoothly joined in whatever Jin was saying that had gotten Namjoon to hit his high-pitched register in outrage.
No one noticed.
oppa
Jimin was just riffing on Jungkook’s joke, then Yoongi’s joke, because Yoongi walked into that, didn’t he. It probably helped that Yoongi kept a straight face just like his other straight faces, because this too was just showbusiness. The feeling went away, bit by bit, after they hung up. And by the time he woke up the next morning to go to HYBE without a face mask on for the first time in a year to do a Weverse live, he’d almost forgotten what it had felt like.
Even though he was a bit of a persona non grata right now, HYBE ate him alive in the week that followed. His manager Kyooyung looked even more harried than Yoongi felt.
“Ah, I just…work better like this, Yoongi-ssi,” he confessed in response to Yoongi quizzing him about his odd love for physically printing out Yoongi’s group and individual schedules into a sheaf of papers that flapped about as he accompanied Yoongi from one meeting to another.
“Even though they keep changing the schedules?”
Kyooyung gestured to all these fucking markers and highlighters that rattled in his stylish crossbody bag and Yoongi nodded with understanding.
Everyone needs a method because this was madness. It felt like 2023 all over again, seeing the other members only long enough to sit in makeup chairs together and click a few selfies before they were being ushered places separately. BTS was back, and Yoongi was feeling it in his knees.
Actually it was worse, in some ways, without the frenzy of D-Day and the tour that cocooned him in his own solipsism for a while, and Yoongi was aware of being a little diminished, a lot older and no spryer. Everyone was aggressively dieting, and it was hard for the guys eating once a day again after three square meals in the army. Yoongi hadn’t even been to his injector in a while and his makeup artist was ruthless, peering at Yoongi’s forehead critically as he lifted the skin a little with the wooden end of a makeup brush.
You have to check out a little to survive, Yoongi told himself, which is probably how he landed in this mess.
The club, at last, the only proper reunion they all got, exactly a week after his discharge.
The maknaes, only bigger and stronger and louder, masking their tiredness with noise, trooping into Yoongi’s living room on that fateful night and chivvying him to hurry hurry get dressed hyung – is that seriously what you’re wearing to the club– where’s that jacket I gave you – all of them a single energetic superorganism overflowing with I’m-so-sexy confidence and Yoongi shuffling along in his slippers behind them -
Taehyung draped over Jungkook who's draped over Yoongi's closet, Jimin giggling as he raided Yoongi’s booze cupboard, because he and the others have already been drinking since their late, late lunch -
And then.
Well.
He should get out of bed probably.
He checks the time on his phone and winces at how late it is. Thank god he didn’t have any schedules before lunch today, even though Kyooyung’s texted him a helpful reminder for this evening.
Kyooyung Manager
Yoongi-ssi I’ll send the car over an hour early
It’ll be you and Jin-ssi
[11:15 AM]
remember they need to do the fittings before 5
[11:17 AM]
Me
👍 👍
[12:03 PM]
“Heard you gave your handlers the slip last night, Yoongichi,” Jin crows as soon as the car door slides open. He’s in full Gucci, Yoongi notices, a deep jewel blue shirt that he seems to be very into these days, but it’s the little ombre Louis Vuitton bag tucked into the side of Jin’s car seat that makes Yoongi smile. “Ah, man of Mysterious Silence, I see, Yoongichi.”
Yoongi doesn’t correct him, and Jin tilts his sunglasses down to look at Yoongi over the tops of them. Seokjin’s eyes are sharper than his tongue, but mercifully he says nothing. Yoongi manages to nap on the drive there, partly out of some leftover exhaustion from last night and partly from the kind of anxiety that makes him want to never wake up. Jin is still fiddling around on his phone when they pull into the basement parking, and he gives Yoongi’s sneakers a little kick to wake him up.
Yoongi’s tries to empty his mind of the flood of panic that overtakes him as he follows Jin and the staff, keeping his eyes a little unfocused on the little charm that swings from Jin’s handle strap. In the elevator, Seokjin gives him a softer kick as if to ask, hey, seriously, you okay?
Yoongi draws in a deep breath to answer, but he’s interrupted by the ding of their arrival.
Jin pushes forward, distracted by the hubbub on the floor.
Dread grows big and loud in Yoongi’s chest as they walk up to the door of the styling room, and he feels it pushing out all the breath in his lungs, because he has no practice for this, no words that he’s tried out in a any world when he hooked up with his friend-brother-business partner so he can have them at hand when he looks across the mirrored, brightly lit wardrobe room and into the whites of Jimin’s eyes.