thrashff

[thrashff]

Independent Contractor

Min Yoongi aka Agust D

Doesn’t play well with others. Likes guns, knives, fast bikes, and leaving chaos in his wake.

[Read the fanfic on Ao3 here.]

All images used in this board belong to their rightful owners.

[thrashff]

This is how it happens.

Title: This is how it happens.

Word Count: 5,454

Synposis: Jung Hoseok's life, and everything in between.

Pairings: Hoseok/named female OCs, YoonMinHopeKook love square (??) and a dash of OT7 brotherhood

Warnings: Mature for (very) mild cursing, minor character death, substance abuse, and a lot of angst

Setting: Run Era madness, a soulmate timer AU and koi no yokan concept with a twist

A/N: I’m baaaaack! Sort of. 

Dedicated to @chamabolmanhae! I’m two months late with your birthday present, but thank you for always kicking my ass and getting me to write again.

That said, I sat on this for days and wrote it out in a rush so feel free to come yell at me. I love you, Hoseok and I love you Bangtan. What have I done.

In another life, this is how it happens.

On the morning of Jung Hoseok’s 16th birthday, he wakes up to the timer on his wrist starting to count down.

What he should feel is elated—even in a world where everyone (almost. everyone?) has their timers appear at some point, numbers a digital, violent red the color of fresh blood signaling the amount of time before one is supposed to meet their soulmate—having yours start at 16 is practically unheard of. There are stories of people’s timers starting in their 50s, 60s, even a couple of cases of people going through their whole lives with their other halves missing only to lay on their deathbeds to have the countdown finally start. A week, a day, maybe even scant seconds that they never get to see because their hearts are no longer strong enough to keep waiting.

So when Jung Hoseok wakes up on the morning of his 16th birthday, an unpredicted cold snap making the February air frigid even in the stuffy confines of the orphanage dorm, the branches of the tree outside the window brittle to the point that a strong gust of wind will break them off, what he should feel is elated—but no one warned him that having your timer appear hurts.

When Jung Hoseok wakes up, he is screaming. This should have been his first warning that things don’t always go the way you expect them to. The way you want them to. The way you hope.

Hoseok screams, and he wakes up everyone in the room. As he sobs in the tiny kitchen, one that is in no way equipped to handle the demands of feeding a house full of twenty-five orphans of every age, the people who run it congratulate him. As he cradles his aching wrist, stabs of pain still shooting up his arm and straight to his chest, the younger kids all pushing and shoving to get a better look at the numbers, barely visible over the angry red of his skin, he wonders why having a soulmate hurts.

He wonders what he or she will be like. If they are the same age. If they will like dancing as much as he does, if they listen to the same music. If they will look at him with pity or with understanding for his lot in life, deposited at an orphanage by a mother that considered him a burden but he still holds out hope will return; too old for adoption and too young to be on his own. He wonders and hopes, fiercely, naïvely, if his soulmate will be his new home.

It isn’t until three years later when he finds out. Three years and an unceremonious exit from the orphanage later, when he is living with a boy named Kim Namjoon in an abandoned train car on a stretch of unused tracks, putting food on the table by busking in Hongdae and Namjoon’s occasional tattoo clientele.

All things considered, he’s lucky to have met Namjoon. When they’d met on the wrong side of early morning, Hoseok exhausted and defeated behind a club in Itaewon where he’d thought no one would mind if he would just sit for a couple of hours and gain a little reprieve from two straight days of wandering with nowhere to go, Namjoon had had no reason to take him in. No reason for him to share the tiny home he’d carved out on the fringes of a city with no room for the likes of them.

Sure, there were things that Hoseok has had to turn a blind eye to, like Namjoon’s well under-the-radar business of tattooing over timers, illegal in a day and age when the government uses them as a way to keep people in line. When timers are vaulted, valued. Paired mates are considered first-class citizens—tax breaks, more opportunities for work, the works—because paired mates are submissive, docile. They want for nothing more as a completed set. After all, how can you rally and rise against an oppressive system when you have everything you could ever want tied to you, bound to you for life?

But on the other side of it there are those whose timers have yet to start, like Namjoon. There are those whose timers have begun their countdown but refuse to submit themselves to the hands of fate, like Namjoon’s friend Yoongi; who believe that love is more than red numbers on your wrist. That it should be a person’s choice who to love and live with—not the seemingly random process of selection that no one, not even the best scientists in the world, have been able to figure out.

Because of course, of course there are horror stories. Good people who are bound to bad ones. People who follow the rules their entire lives, who celebrate when their timers start and wait for the numbers to tick down with bated breath only to be disappointed. Only to suffer, sometimes die, at the hands of people they are told are their better halves.

On the day that Hoseok’s timer starts to count down from hours to mere minutes, Hoseok is walking. Namjoon tells him that he should, that wherever he is when the red lights finally stop shifting and stay steady at 000:00:00, whatever unearthly light powering them finally bleeding out to leave those zeros tattooed on his wrist forever, a sign, ideally, of nothing but better things to come, that Hoseok’s soulmate will find him. That fate will take care of the details. That Hoseok will know, somehow, where to go and what to do.

But with minutes left, Hoseok’s feet don’t know where to take him. He wants to run, wants to go back to the train car where Namjoon and Yoongi are waiting, to ask Yoongi how he keeps his timer glitching at 546:23:58. To ask Namjoon if he knows what will happen when his timer ticks from 000:03:23 and no one finds him. If it will hurt, physically or spiritually, if no one does.

All of Hoseok’s questions come back to him, all of the hope-fueled musings that he’s never voiced to his jaded companions. Will they be pretty? Will they be kind? Will they have a home to offer me? Will they love me? Will I be enough?

000:00:12

Hoseok learns that the answer to all of the above is yes.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Jung Hoseok, all 19 years of him and his gangly limbs and the stress-induced smattering of teenage acne on his cheeks, meets Kang Nayeon outside of a record store in Hongdae. She is 22 years old, fresh out of college and living on her own, a stranger in a city she’s never known but whose language she had grown up with. She is beautiful and she is kind, and when they meet Hoseok expects fireworks but feels like he is underwater instead. Not in the push-and-pull kind of way that he imagines tides must feel like because he hasn’t been to the ocean yet, but in the way that being submerged in a warm bath must feel, like that one time Yoongi had sold a song and treated him and Namjoon to a day spa. Comforting and warm, with the promise of coming out cleaner than he’d been coming in.

On the day when his timer blinks 000:00:00, the red numbers settling, permanent on his skin, he learns that Kang Nayeon listens to Dynamic Duo, that she can’t dance but wishes that she could. That she’s allergic to shellfish and can’t stand spicy food, that she loves dogs and all things soft and fluffy. Nayeon cries over every movie—she likes horror the least and animated ones the best—and maybe most importantly than the compendium of all these tiny tidbits and maybe useless facts: she looks at Hoseok like he’s the sun.

That first day ends too soon, Hoseok untangling himself from her comfortable limbs on her comfortable couch in her comfortable apartment that smells like pine cleaner and fresh laundry. With anyone else the skinship would be strange but they’re soulmates, after all, and the physicality of them falling into each other like they do is nothing more than the gravitational pull of two halves finally becoming whole.

It’s hard, for Hoseok to leave now that he has her. Now that they have each other. Nayeon feels it too, the wrongness of distance now that fate has allowed them to be together. She asks Hoseok to stay the night, so Hoseok stays. For the next week, Hoseok stays and doesn’t leave, cocooned in happiness, this all too beautiful bubble of completion. They learn more about each other, they learn everything about each other. She watches him dance on the streets, her face beaming with he’s mine, and Hoseok tucks her into bed, his heart full of I’m hers.

But the thing about bubbles is that they burst, and it isn’t until the following week, when Hoseok moves his meager collection of worldly possessions from the train car and into her apartment, that she tells him the truth. That she is sick, and there’s nothing she nor Hoseok, nor the slew of world-renowned doctors that her parents in the United States have found, can do about it. It’s only been a week, but Hoseok learns the most important thing about Nayeon:

He isn’t allowed to keep her.

Eight months later (eight entire months of Nayeon refusing chemotherapy, of Hoseok watching his other half slowly wither away, of holding her brittle bones and bruised skin so close to his chest so that he can memorize how she feels in his arms) and Nayeon’s body is sent back to her family. In the way of all transitory, fleeting life experiences, the last eight months have been beautiful, and Hoseok wants to feel lucky. Wants to, but understandably has a difficult time accomplishing it.

Saying goodbye to her body, nothing but an empty shell now of the girl he had loved, the girl who had made him finally whole, is easier than the goodbyes they bid in her hospital bed. Hoseok unleashes a seemingly endless supply of tears and snot that he is unashamed to show her, to drown her in, because this is not how the story goes. This is not the Happily Ever After that either of them deserve.

“Who says I didn’t end my life Happily Ever After?” Nayeon asks him, letting him hold the birdlike bones of her hand hard enough to bruise. (One last time.) Not that it had mattered then, not anymore. The pain would be over soon for her, and Hoseok was no where near cruel enough to point out that it would only begin for him. Nayeon doesn’t even cry. Instead she smiles. (One last time.)

The other thing that no one had told Hoseok about soulmates is this: how to live after you’ve lost them.

“Chase the sunshine,” Nayeon tells him. For parting words, final ones, they make sense to no one else but the two of them. Nayeon loves (loved) the summer, always said that sunshine made her feel healthy and clean. She’d called Hoseok her sunshine in turn, that his smiles and enthusiasm for life even in the face of it ending were her endless season.

Not that Hoseok had a choice. He’d showered her with as much love and life as he could, rending his own self empty just to keep both of them from going under the swell of sadness in both their souls.

Hoseok hopes that wherever she is now is bright and sunny, full of life and the season she loves (loved). Wonders if she’s waiting for him. Wonders if she isn’t the only one who died that day in the hospital.

It isn’t until a month later, thirty days that Hoseok spends catatonic on the spare futon in the train car having crawling back to his friends, the only family he knows, with his tail between his legs and more broken than he looks on the outside, that he musters up the courage to return to the apartment. Nayeon’s family has been kind enough to let him keep should he want it.

He doesn’t. Doesn’t know if he can live in rooms where he still expects to see her curled up on the couch watching Pixar films or singing off-key to G.D. in the kitchen. But he comes back because in the time he’s spent away, Namjoon has made a new friend in the form of another lost boy named Kim Taehyung, and Yoongi has adopted a dongsaeng in the form of a wide-eyed boy named Jeon Jeongguk, and for some reason another man named Kim Seokjin has joined their motley crew of outcasts, too handsome and too put-together to really look like he fits in but at the same time too fragile to be anywhere else.

See, Kim Seokjin’s timer has also run out. The red zeroes on his skin have settled, sunk in, permanent, just like Hoseok’s, and Hoseok knows, even after all this time, that it’s no work of Namjoon’s. Namjoon’s, whose timer still hasn’t appeared, and neither has Taehyung’s or Jeongguk’s. Yoongi’s is static, eternally in glitch either by force of his fucked up fate or sheer stubbornness on the musician’s part, so Hoseok knows Seokjin’s soulmate isn’t one of them, and he spends far too much time on the tracks to have one waiting for him somewhere.

(It’s one of the few things Hoseok now knows about soulmates: time apart is painful. Tenfold, when they are gone.)

Even though Hoseok doesn’t ask, he knows. Understands the sadness behind Seokjin’s eyes, the brokenness he hides under the pressed collared shirts and perfectly-coiffed hair. Hoseok doesn’t ask because he knows and he understands completely, so when Seokjin tells him he needs to get out of bed and get clean clothes from the apartment, he goes. Because Seokjin knows. Seokjin has survived, and Hoseok knows that Nayeon would want the same for him.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Hoseok returns to the apartment where he’d lived an all-to-brief life with his soulmate Kang Nayeon and finds her left-over painkillers in the bathroom cabinet. He packs his things, allowing himself to keep a single framed photo of them together, and lugs the bags into the living room where Yoongi and Jeongguk are fawning over the entertainment system and Seokjin is sitting politely on the edge of the couch. Namjoon is digging through the bookcase even though there’s barely anything on it, and Taehyung is blinking wide-eyed at the room, the demand to know why Hoseok would prefer a cramped train car over a nice, clean apartment on the tip of his tongue.

“If you aren’t going to stay here you might as well rent the place out,” Yoongi grunts, flopping onto the couch and kicking his booted feet up on the coffee table. His heels are muddy and Hoseok should tell him off, but it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.

“Sell it,” Hoseok says, tracing Yoongi’s gaze back to the entertainment system. “Sell everything.” Everything is in his name now, after all, and dead people don’t miss things. They don’t anything, period. “I don’t care.”

And it’s wrong for Hoseok not to care. So very, very wrong, but none of it matters anymore. Nayeon is gone, the apartment is his but he doesn’t want it, and Hoseok is too fuzzy from the painkillers he’d taken while no one was watching to have any of it touch him in the way that they should.

“Okay,” Namjoon says, dimpled grin behind the lollipop stick in his mouth. Hoseok came back and he was in the middle of trying to quit smoking, so he’s always talking around candy these days. Hoseok’s happy for him. Is glad for the reminder that life goes on, that his friends are changing.

Hoseok could do with a little bit of change. Could do with a lot of it. What he needs is them to be loud and raucous, for their lives to be big enough to fill up the void that his soulmate has left behind.

He needs and he wants, still, but he doesn’t know what, exactly. Wanting Nayeon is a dead end, and death just another. The pills help. They blur the edges until they almost fill the gaps. They help Hoseok pretend that the life that had upended to make room for his other half still fits. They help the curb the growing emptiness, they help fill the chasm.

They use the money to rent a house. On the wrong side of town, still, dilapidated and run down, but it’s not like any of them would fit in any other kind of place but this. (It’s not like any of them would with in with anyone else but each other.) Namjoon continues to work out of the train car because now he doesn’t have to shit where he eats, and Yoongi and Jeongguk move in from wherever the hell they had been staying. Jeongguk looks at the house, still too small for the four of them, like it’s a palace, so Hoseok doesn’t bother asking what kind of hole Yoongi had dragged him out from. They’ve all got demons, pasts that are best left behind all of them. A group of lost boys just trying to get to the end of the day, except at least now they have somewhere to come home to.

Hoseok thinks it’s the only good thing to come out of losing Nayeon. Considers it her way of helping him, still, by letting him be with the only people who give him a semblance of the kind of comfort and sense of belonging that she had given him.

Seokjin, always working behind the scenes, does his best to make the house feel like more than four walls and a place to sleep. Slowly, Seokjin fills the place with furniture and pots and pans and most nights with the smell of freshly cooked food, and the few times he’s sober Hoseok wonders where Seokjin’s money comes from. If Seokjin works. How he pays the bills for his own empty apartment, neglected with how much time he spends with them.

Most days it doesn’t matter how much Seokjin cleans up, really, even though Hoseok appreciates the effort, because Taehyung is always over, spray painting walls and leaving a mess in his wake. A mirror image of the chaos inside all of them, buzzing with violence that they learn resides within his own home. It’s refreshing, and Hoseok falls in love with all of them in a way that he would have bet money on his inability to, not after being paired and all-too-quickly unpaired, but he loves them. No one understands except Seokjin, and even at four in the morning when they’re the only two awake, Hoseok numb and high out of his mind and Seokjin’s eyes dark and haunted, they don’t talk about it.

They don’t talk about it, because there really isn’t much to say. They’re all angry, all broken, fallen through the cracks in a system that doesn’t even see people like them. What is there to say except fuck it? What is there to be, really, but this?

In the end it’s Yoongi who finds him. Yoongi, the angriest out of all of them, hair dyed a radioactive green after losing a bet with Jeongguk. Jeongguk, who has started to look at the hyung that had dragged him out of hell and given him a home with them with the same kind of eyes that Hoseok had seen Nayeon through. (It’s the only reason he knows what those eyes are even supposed to look like.) Yoongi, who is oblivious to it all, too concerned with how his timer has finally started ticking again, whose wrist still bears the marks of him trying to scratch the now-days off in a drunken rage.

It’s Yoongi who finds Hoseok, ditched cigarette burning feebly in the sink, voice like smoke as he tries and fails to wake him from his bed in the bathtub.

In Hoseok’s defense, he hadn’t actively been trying to drown himself. He’d collapsed somewhere along the Han (going where?) and had woken up at home (how had he ended up back here?) aching with emptiness like he always does these days. He’d taken a couple more pills and gotten himself into a bath, desperate for the same comfort he’d felt on the day he’d met his soulmate; that easy submersion, senses stretching past his skin into oblivion.

Yoongi finds Hoseok and Yoongi screams for Seokjin, who drives them to a hospital that Hoseok spends the next week comatose in. The whole time a boy screams in the bed next to his, his wrists carved up from his own nails as he pulls against his restraints, again and again and again like clockwork, like a metronome, and it’s the sound of complete and utter agony that drags Hoseok from the other side of the river Styx and back into the land of the living.

Jimin. The boy’s name is Park Jimin, and he becomes the seventh addition to their family.

Hoseok likes Jimin. He’s…something else. One second his eyes are happy little crescent moons on the milky white sky of his face, and the next he is screaming, screaming, screaming. Hoseok likes Jimin, because he gets it—how easy it is to switch from one to the other, to ride that in-between. The boys like Jimin, too, because while they don’t understand the switch as well as Hoseok does, they all have a need to protect. So when Hoseok takes Jimin and gives him a home, Jimin becomes theirs, too. To have and to hurt, to love and to destroy.

It’s Jimin, with his easy smile and hair-trigger, who gets Hoseok back into dancing again. For Jimin, the dance studio is the only place he can stay himself for longer than a couple of hours at a time. For Hoseok, it’s the only place where he can move quickly enough that the face that stares back at him in the mirror looks less like a stranger.

Weeks pass, months. Hoseok stops asking Yoongi what he’s doing watching them in the studio. Stops asking where the hell Jeongguk is. Stops asking what happened when his timer ran down.

Hoseok thinks he knows, but Jimin, who keeps his wrists and his scars and his own red zeroes covered up by the sleeves of his sweater, looks at him the way Jeongguk looks at Yoongi. The way Yoongi looks at Jimin. Hungry, and desperate, and angry.  And Hoseok is still getting used to feeling so much so soon that he doesn’t want to touch that hive of bees with a ten-foot pole.

Hoseok is allergic to bee stings. Hoseok is allergic to feeling anything.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Namjoon comes home with Taehyung under his arm, nothing more than a broken baby bird under Namjoon’s equally broken wings, and for a second Hoseok thinks that a spray paint can must have exploded on him again before the red that stains the boy’s arms and chest registers as what it is: blood.

Namjoon comes home with Taehyung under his arm, and Taehyung is covered in blood.

This is different from the days that Jeongguk comes back with his face and knuckles nothing but open nerve-endings, from the nights they have to hold Jimin down to keep him from hurting himself too badly. This time the blood isn’t Taehyung’s own, even though it might as well be for all the life that’s already bled out of his eyes.

A day after the mess is sorted out by the police, a day after Taehyung says goodbye to the sister he’d sacrificed himself to protect, Taehyung moves into the house. He moves into the same room as Namjoon, because Namjoon has the same blood on his hands. Namjoon vibrates at the same wavelength, speaks the same language of weighted silence and necessary violence that Taehyung has learned overnight. Hoseok moves out of the room and into Jeongguk’s, which probably isn’t the best idea because Jeongguk has his own ways of coping that clash with the new ones, better ones, healthy ones that Hoseok is trying to get into the habit of, but it’s better than the alternative.

It’s better than the poor kid having first row seats to the Yoongi Pining Show, featuring Jimin Pining for Hoseok.

It’s a mess. A goddamn mess, and Seokjin, the only house of cards left standing in a room full of jokers, valiantly tries to pull their frayed ends back together.

The beach is as cold and as empty as it is in Hoseok’s dreams. The beach Seokjin takes them to looks like it’s never once felt the hands of summer, the kiss of the sun. It’s desolate and echoing—the entire shoreline might as well be one they’d find under the waves instead of running parallel to it, but Taehyung is singing and he is running, his long limbs a blur of motion through the air. Jimin’s smile is sincere, and he hasn’t once turned it to Hoseok the entire time, which Hoseok wants to take as a good thing. Namjoon is dancing, is trying to, valiantly; Seokjin’s trashy, shameless pop music his backing track as it fries the speakers of the pick-up truck. Jeongguk is quiet, he always is these days, and goes missing for a bit until Yoongi returns with him in tow, both with the same secret smiles that had been missing since the day Jeongguk punched him and Yoongi had broken the only mirror left in the house.

The beach Seokjin takes them to looks like it’s never once felt the hands of summer, and Hoseok loves it. His friends are loud, their lives and their beings big enough to fill up the empty space left in his, and when Jeongguk and Taehyung dunk him under the water, Yoongi screams, still a little traumatized, and Hoseok laughs and holds the water in his throat until it burns. When he comes up, Yoongi and Seokjin are in the water, the only two people who understand; whose brains are still sharp enough to fear, whose hearts are still big enough to hurt for him. Hoseok laughs again, maybe the first real one in years, and he coughs up saltwater and eight months of Nayeon and two years of missing her.

When Hoseok comes up and Namjoon wraps his battered leather jacket around his shoulders and Jimin places his red beanie on Hoseok’s head, Hoseok leaves the hurt and the ache and the pain and the longing in the ocean—a sacrifice to the gods of tide and timing, a final goodbye to summer and all the good things in it.

When they are camped out in their favorite lot behind the house a couple of hours later, Yoongi builds a bonfire to help Hoseok get rid of the remaining chill left in his bones. They’ve left the ocean behind them, as well as trashed a restaurant like the uncouth, uncultured, malcontent misfits that they are, and Hoseok likes to think that they’ve also dropped some baggage in their wake.

In another life, this is how it happens.

A week after their trip to the beach, Seokjin goes missing. Jeongguk is inconsolable, and not even a crowbar can pry Taehyung from Namjoon’s side. Yoongi and Jimin are sitting side by side on the couch, both buzzing with the need to break, but they’re holding onto each other’s hands in a way that Hoseok can see both their timers, their tattoos set to zeros.

About time, Hoseok thinks, through the Seokjin-sized hole in his vision. About time, he thinks, through the Seokjin-sized hole in his heart.

About time. It’s a funny thing, and it’s Taehyung, with his voice broken and his lips chapped, a boy when he’d met them but a man now with a lifetime’s worth of regrets, who points it out to the room at large.

“Hyung,” says Kim Taehyung. “Hyung, your wrist.”

Hoseok looks down and his first impossible thought is that it doesn’t hurt this time. Hoseok looks down, and the red numbers on his wrist are lit up like the bonfire, like the stars behind his eyes back when the pills had made everything simultaneously better and so much worse, like the sun setting over the shore, burning everything its light touched.

About time: it’s a funny thing.

Hoseok’s world comes crumbling down because Seokjin is the last lynchpin holding them all together. He’s disappeared without a trace, and without him Namjoon retreats back to his train car, Yoongi and Jimin vanish, Jeongguk dissolves back into the shadows he came from, and Taehyung goes back to what’s left of his other family.

Seokjin takes every picture and video he’d taken with him, and without those it’s easy to pretend that he’d never existed. Seokjin, with his windshield wiper of a laugh, with his broken hands struggling to cook them fresh meals, with those dark, dark eyes that carried the weight of a thousand lifetimes lived, is gone. All Hoseok is left with is an empty house full of broken things, paint and blood staining the walls, and an unbelievable, improbable, impossible countdown on his wrist that should feel like death coming.

Hoseok knows all about death. Has seen it, lived it, brought himself back from its clutches more than once, so when the miracle of his timer blinking with a new countdown happens, Hoseok knows that it should feel like death. Should feel like another ending, because his life is full of those. He is surrounded by it on all fronts in the form of the cigarette butts Yoongi leaves in the ashtray on the coffee table, the legs of it broken by one of Jimin’s fits and put together by his spit, duct tape and prayers. In the form of Taehyung’s last piece of work on the inside of the front door, a dark, nameless thing with wings that should have stayed in his nightmares but he’s brought to life with no heed for how his housemates will feel about it. In the water rings of Seokjin’s cups of tea on wood of the kitchen counter, in Namjoon’s forgotten sketches still taped to the living room walls. In the bomber jacket, a birthday present from Yoongi that Jeongguk probably couldn’t bear to bring with him, still hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.

It should feel like death but in the wake of so many other things ending, Hoseok (fiercely, naïvely, blindly) hopes, and that takes root in the cavern of his chest.

Will they be pretty? Will they be kind? Will they have a home to offer me? Will they love me? Will I be enough?

Will I get to keep them, this time?

In another life, this is how it happens.

Jung Hoseok is 23 years old and he has lived through a thousand heartbreaks. He has stared death in the face and lost his soulmate to it; he has stared death in the face and come back to tell his tale. He has been left behind by everyone who has ever mattered to him, but still, he is stronger than even he himself gives him credit for because he is still trying. He has been called sunshine by the most important people in his life, has been loved to the ends of the earth and back around by a group of lost boys who loved each other so much that they couldn’t bear the weight of it. He has been battered, bruised and left broken, and he is alone in a house full of ghosts.

But none of this matters to Na Ri, because she’s in the middle of a game of hide and seek with her nephew when the timer on her wrist blinks to life. None of this matters to Na Ri, because she has lived 22 years on this Earth and given up hope that she is one of the lucky ones blessed with another half.

None of this matters, because Na Ri screams when her timer blinks to life, not with pain but with joy. She cries not with hurt but with relief.

Because when the timer on her wrist blinks to life, it reads 000:29:38, and it means that her soulmate is finally ready to meet her.

[thrashff]

ok let me get straight to the point. i love your fics?????? like, waayyy too much. that latest chapter was bomb af, making me feel all these emotions, man. honestly, i wish ur fic had more views & kudos, and im literally recommending to ur work to every army friend ik. i hope u take care of urself & im looking forward to more of ur writings! love you!

I LOVE YOU ANON!!!!!!

It’s literally been ages since I’ve been on here because I’ve basically been living either in my fic or on ao3 so this is SUCH a nice welcome back??? Like I’m legit speechless. I hope you come back and get to see this because I want to hug you.

Thank you so much!! My fics may not get much traffic and that’s okay. I’m super happy to hear that it resonates with a few people and honestly, that’s more than enough to keep me writing. I love you. Thank you again :3

I hope you have an awesome day/week/year/lifetime you’re so kind omg

[thrashff]

HELLO i've been reading ur works on ao3 and i just came here to tell you that those pieces of art make me emotionally unstable. i'm too shy to reveal myself so im just gonna keep on watching and fangirl from afar. i love u and i hope u have a great day ahead of u

HELLO ANON!! <3

I’m so sorry -- I just checked Tumblr for the first time in weeks! But holy crap I’m so touched that you followed me all the way here from ao3?? *sends you virtual hugs*

The last thing I want is for you to feel emotionally unstable and I’m so, so sorry :( Please don’t be shy and message me anytime! I LOVE YOU ANON thank you for being so kind and I hope you have a wonderful, Bangtan-filled day ahead of you! :*

[thrashff]

Min Yoongi x Sam Lee (OC) mood board

Read 30 Days of Therapy [here]

[thrashff]

30 Days of Therapy

Pairing: Min Yoongi x OC (female)

Synopsis: Min Yoongi has a lot of issues, but doesn’t everyone? Fortunately for him, it only takes thirty days of therapy to fall back in love with the world—and maybe even a girl while he’s at it.

Warnings: Depression, angst, anxiety, dissociation, depersonalization disorder—basically a lot of mental health issues and coping mechanisms and everyone tries to deal as best as they can. If you’re triggered by any of this, please please please don’t read this. Also, cursing.

Word Count: 20k (ish, please don’t hate me)

A/N: Istg this wasn’t meant to be so long -___-; I was possessed, possessed I tell you!

Disclaimers: Canon compliant, takes place around October 2017. I know that the official schedule says they’ll be in Japan and Taiwan, but this is a fanfic. Let’s suspend reality for bit, yeah?

The words at the beginning of each segment are from Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby. Plot has nothing to do with the novel, but they touch on a few of the same themes. Apart from that nothing really, except the quotes felt like they fit.

Enjoyyy~ <3

#ProtectMinYoongi

[“We’re the culture that cried wolf.”]

Day 0

Anger fucking management.

Yoongi has turned the idea over and over in his head countless times and it still doesn’t sit well with him. He doesn’t even have anger management issues; what he does have an issue with is stupid fucking Jungkook thinking it was a good idea to bait him into a game of chase by taking one of his external hard drives as hostage.

How was Yoongi supposed to know that pushing that chair out of his way would break the entire mirrored wall of the dance studio? He wasn’t, that’s how. Because it had been an accident—one of those freak of nature things that tended to just happen as an accumulation of bad luck and maybe even worse karma, which Yoongi was now of the personal belief he had a lot of.

But, of course, no one had believed him. Nope, not Yoongi; not the moody, unstable problem child in their already strange pseudo-family. If it had been Namjoon no one would have batted an eyelash, instead saying something about the “god of destruction” fondly and letting it slide. If it had been any of the maknaes, people would have petted them on the head and sent them off with a stern warning. Of course, Seokjin would never break anything he could see his own reflection in, and Hoseok was far too superstitious to be anything but careful around mirrors. That left practically everyone thinking the worst of him, sending him to a month-long crash course in anger fucking management.

The mere idea makes him angrier than Jungkook’s stupid stunt.

[“Until you deal with your real personal issues, you’ll never be able to control yourself.”]

Day 1

A long week later, their crazy schedule finally winds down enough to be adjusted. Enough to free up most of his evenings from 8-10PM for 30 days of therapy that he’s 100% sure he doesn’t even need. But still, here he is, trudging into the function room of a university office building on a Thursday night he could be spending at the Genius Lab instead, black facemask over his nose and mouth and bucket hat pulled low over his eyes, Manager Sejin frowning as he trails after him.

Yoongi tries to soothe himself with the fact that he’s lucky to have talked himself out of one-on-one sessions. Yoongi would dance, wear make-up, preen in front of the cameras, put on animal ears fans brought him—hell, he would even make a fool of himself on national television; but the one thing he would not do was talk about his feelings to a stranger for two hours every night.

Group therapy wouldn’t be so bad, he tries to convince himself, albeit a little half-heartedly, as he walks through the empty halls, leather shoes clacking on the polished linoleum. At least he won’t be the only problematic one in the room—if his problems are even that bad to begin with. For fuck’s sake, doesn’t everyone have issues?

He lets out a little scoff at yet another double standard that it seemed only applied to him, pausing right in front of the double doors with “Dr. Kim Yejun” taped on the front. He takes a deep breath to steel himself and finally pushes them open. Thirty days. It’ll be over before he knows it.

[“The story behind the story.”]

Yi Jihoon is six foot five and built like a brick wall, broad shouldered and barrel-chested, but he’s already in tears as he introduces himself and explains that he hadn’t meant to trash that bar when he caught his girlfriend cheating on him. He’s a good person, honest. He can’t even remember the incident, blacking out with rage. That doesn’t count, does it?

Nae Minjun looks like a rat and is just as twitchy, all of 19 years old and constantly flicking his fingers over a battered, gunmetal Zippo lighter that has seen better days; flick, flare, snap. He’s in therapy because he’d thought breaking into a garbage dump and starting a 25-foot bonfire there had been a good idea. He also doesn’t look the least bit repentant about it.

Dong Gunwoo looks like an average, middle-aged, stressed-out businessman, still dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit from the office. Indispensable to his company, they’re sending him to therapy because no one is willing to work with him thanks to his tendency towards violent outbursts over the smallest infractions.

Sam Lee is the only girl in the group. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties, same as Yoongi, but in South Korea it’s always hard to tell. When it’s her turn to introduce herself, she merely shrugs and tells them she’s here to make the rest of them look sane and normal in comparison. Yoongi smirks behind his facemask at that. Dr. Kim doesn’t look entertained.

Then there’s Yoongi, the idol with the “unhealthy coping mechanisms.” Manager Sejin cuts in then; they won’t mind signing this non-disclosure agreement, would they? Of course not. A standard contract, they can spare ten minutes to read through it. Yoongi is fine. Yoongi is normal. He’s just been under a lot of pressure lately and is eager to learn how to deal with his feelings in a healthy manner.

Yoongi doesn’t know why he had even bothered to speak at all. His management team would take care of it. He’s already half hoping that Manager Sejin will attend all of his sessions with him.

By the time all the documents were signed (it took Minjun three attempts before he gave back a copy that wasn’t burnt at the edges) and Dr. Kim had finished his introduction speech on how anger was normal, healthy emotion, forty-five minutes had passed and they were allowed to take a twenty minute break.

Yoongi stands, stretching his sore legs (the new DNA choreography was no joke). Interrupts Manager Sejin and Dr. Kim’s hushed conversation to ask if the perimeter is safe, if he can step outside for some fresh air. Manager Sejin nods—no, he doesn’t need to take security, they’re the only ones in the building. Yoongi bows, taking his hat off and slicking his silver-blue hair away from his forehead. A quick glance around the room tells him Jihoon is attacking the stale donuts with a vengeance, Gunwoo is talking heatedly to someone on the phone, and that Minjun and the Lee girl have disappeared.

He sighs and makes his way to the exit, pulling his facemask down to take in a couple of deep lungfulls of the crisp fall air, the feel of it enough to calm the constant stream of complaints he’s muttering in his head. He loves this time of year—leaves changing, the world slowing down to make way for winter, the scent of cold heavy on the air.

Although he doesn’t quite remember it smelling so sweet and… pungent?

He scrunches his nose, frowning, already following the odd smell. He turns the corner of the building to find Lee leaning against the chain link fence lining the building’s perimeter, her hands shoved into the pockets of an oversized knit cardigan the color of snot, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She raises an eyebrow at him, and Yoongi stops in his tracks. Of course he isn’t used to the smell of cigarettes—none of the Bangtan boys smoke them. And if anyone on the production team does, they do a good job of hiding it.

He makes a face. “Those are bad for you,” he tells her bluntly.

She laughs, and it’s an odd sound that stays ringing in his ears afterwards; somewhere between a chortle and a cough and a bark all at the same time. He doesn’t know if he likes it or hates it. “You could say that about anything,” she points out. Her hair is ragged at the ends and several different shades of brown under a black bowler hat; heavy vintage eyeglasses on the tip of her nose, catching the lamplight.

Yoongi decides she could be pretty, if he squinted a bit and looked past the baggy clothes. They weren’t even oversized in a fashionable way—she looked like she had gotten dressed in the dark in a thrift store that carried nothing but the worst of the 90s.

“Besides,” she continues, seemingly oblivious to his scrutiny, the unkind thoughts in his head. “We’re all here because we’re bad for society. Don’t fit the status quo. Measured and found lacking. What’s one more bad habit they need to fix?”

Her tone is balanced, even. Like she’s telling him something she’s said a million times before. Yoongi can tell—he’s used to reading from a script.

He probably shouldn’t, but the smell of the smoke she’s exhaling smells sweet to him and he walks over, leaning on the fence and mimicking her posture. Lord help him, but it’s nice to be around someone who isn’t falling all over herself, asking to take a selca together. Someone who isn’t perfectly polished, the way everyone is these days. She isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, but he finds he doesn’t quite mind. Neither is he.

Lee just watches him from the corner of her eye, smoking her cigarette in silence.

“So what are you really in for?” he finally asks, unnerved by the quiet. His studio is always full of music and home is always filled with people. There are always so many things to do and not enough hours in a day to get them done and he tries and fails to remember the last time he’s simply stood and done nothing—not even speak.

She lights another cigarette, taking a deep drag. They both watch the smoke dance in the heavy air for a few moments, until Yoongi chances a glance at her face. Her expression is almost entertained, as if he had made a joke that only she was in on. “Like I said, I’m here to make the rest of you look good.”

He snorts and turns back to watching the empty concrete parking lot in front of them. “Yeah, like you’re worse off than the sociopath or the pyromaniac.”

“Everyone has problems,” she laughs. “You’re only here because you forgot to be perfect for five minutes and actually let yourself feel something.”

Yoongi starts at that. He’s used to being the one doing the psychoanalyzing, not the other way around. If anything, he had expected it to come from Dr. Kim—not one of his fellow fuck-ups. He won’t admit it, but she’s right. It had felt good to throw that chair out of his way, to hear glass breaking; it had felt even better to chase Jungkook down like prey, a growl in his throat and his limbs pumping to chase after him. The thrill had been different from being on stage, which was all carefully calculated and choreographed down to the twitch of his lips and the movement of every finger, but it had been a thrill nonetheless. It had been the first honest thing he’d done instead of said in ages.

He’s so deep in thought that he doesn’t notice she’s been watching his expression change, his emotions dancing on his face in a way that he isn’t used to showing around people, especially strangers.

She laughs again, starling him. That odd, barking laugh that slides into the empty space between their bodies like a bridge, like something familiar and warm and alien all at the same time. She ditches her cigarette butt and crushes it under a booted heel.

“Weird, isn’t it, when you realize being alive and feeling alive are two different things?”

She pushes her glasses back up her nose, throws him one last look over her shoulder as she makes her way back towards the doors.

“See you inside, popstar.” She says the last word in English, her accent clean without any hint of Korean.

Yoongi stares after her, wondering why his heartbeat is suddenly loud in his ears.

[“The story of how we met. How we got here.”]

Jungkook is the one to pull the door open when the van returns to pick them up. Grinning wide from ear to ear, slightly oversized front teeth prominent, an apology in his eyes.

“Hello, hyung! I’m here to treat you to dinner!” he greets, leaving Yoongi with no other option.

The older boy narrows his eyes at him, but he’s too spent to give him a full-on glare. “You’re a little shit, you know that?” He hasn’t quite forgiven Jungkook yet, but after spending two awkward hours opening up to a bunch of strangers, he has to admit he was glad to see a friendly face. Even if it does belong to the person who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

Jimin’s head appears over Jungkook’s shoulder, eyes wide. “Was it that bad, hyung?”

Yoongi glances behind him, watching as the rest of the group filters out into the night. Dr. Kim is standing in front of the doors talking to a still sobbing Jihoon, Minjun is sitting on the steps on his phone, fire flaring between his fingers every few seconds, Gunwoo is powerwalking to his parked sedan and Lee is leaning against a pillar, already smoking another cigarette. Watching him.

Manager Sejin places a hand on the small of his back, urging him to continue on towards the van. Two people from his security detail trails after them.

Yoongi shakes his head, irrationally annoyed all over again at all the fuss the situation has caused. He pushes Jungkook’s head back inside the car with one hand. “It’s fine,” he huffs. “But if you’re treating, I want lamb skewers.”

Jungkook’s smile returns, and he lets out a little sigh of relief at Yoongi’s lack of threats as he makes room for the new passengers. “Sure, hyung. All the lamb skewers you want.”

Yoongi tries to listen to him and Jimin’s conversation, but his chest is tight and he can’t help thinking back to Lee’s words. Mostly because they don’t make any sense. What the hell had she been talking about? He is alive, therefore he feels alive. Doesn’t he?

[“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.”]

Day 5

“I listened to your music,” Lee tells him, sitting cross-legged on a concrete parking block behind the building.

It’s a Wednesday evening, and over the last couple of sessions it’s become a habit, him following her out back and keeping her company as she smokes. Yoongi likes habits, likes patterns. He finds comfort in knowing that when they take a break, he’ll be able to follow her out back and stand or sit in companionable silence for twenty minutes out of a normally hectic day—starts looking forward to it, even. The quiet is strange, but a good kind of strange. Like an empty house full of old memories.

In any case, it’s a welcome reprieve from always being ushered from one thing to another.

Her dogeared, worn copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby is sitting heavy in his jacket pocket. He’s already halfway through since she lent it to him over the weekend, despite it not being translated into Korean. She hadn’t said a word when she’d tossed it to him on Friday night, simply smirked and disappeared into the evening.

He pulls himself from thoughts of dead people on television laugh tracks and how unreasonably small that makes him feel. He stares down at her, slightly surprised by the admission.

Lee isn’t normal. Well, none of them in the group are, per se; it’s why they’re all there to begin with. But she’s a different kind of not normal. She has a strange, roundabout way of saying things, if she even bothers to talk at all. Instead she minds her own business, keeps her nose stuck in a book and smokes cigarettes the way other people breathe oxygen.

And if he thinks he’s plagued with indifference, Lee takes it to a whole other level. It isn’t that she doesn’t care about a lot of things, the way Yoongi more often than not found himself unable to—it’s that she cares about the strangest things to almost an obsessive extent. Over the course of their sessions everyone has opened up about their pasts and personal histories, thanks to the sharing segments led by Dr. Kim—even Yoongi. But Lee would sit there and talk passionately about a book or a movie that had been, in her words, transformative. The manipulation had been so subtle that not even Dr. Kim had caught on yet. She would talk about things she likes, not about herself or who she was. Never about that.

Yoongi should have found it exhausting, should have considered it unfair that he was playing by the rules and she was playing a completely different game. Instead he’d found it entertaining.

Most importantly, she has no idea who or what BTS even is. His pride had felt a little rankled when he realized she wasn’t just trying to be cool; that she really had never heard of them. But he was mostly just relieved. It’s nice to have someone who doesn’t expect anything from him, not even small talk.

“Yeah?” he finally mumbles into the collar of his jacket. He stops himself from asking for her opinion, reminds himself that she’s still virtually a stranger. Her opinion doesn’t matter; their position on the charts does. That mentally settled, he doesn’t know why he’s still watching for her reaction.

She nods thoughtfully, taking a drag of her cigarette. “You have a habit of using your name in your verses.”

The observation startles half a laugh from him, his eyes going wide. “I do. Huh.”

She smirks, still staring at the side of the building like there’s a message hidden in the concrete cracks. “It’s… cute.” She scrunches up her nose, and Yoongi pokes her shoulder with his knee in retaliation. ‘Cute’ wasn’t his favorite word. “No, really!” she says, almost defensively, pushing his leg away with one hand as she glances up at him. It’s the first time they’ve made physical contact, but the moment goes by unremarked upon. “It’s like, if you say your name enough times, people will remember it. Remember you. It’s very subtle conditioning. I’m impressed.”

He shakes his head, fringe falling into his eyes. “Nah. My name just rhymes with a lot of things,” he admits, the corners of his mouth tugging into a small smile.

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?” He reaches a hand to the back of his neck, stretching out a kink there. He’s tired, and when he’s tired he’s distracted. He doesn’t know why she’s so talkative tonight but doesn’t complain. He thinks it might be because he enjoys the sound of her voice, but that would be weird, so maybe he just enjoys a conversation that has nothing to do with work. Yeah, that sounded about right.

“Being three people at once,” she huffs, pulling herself to her feet and turning to face him, shoulder propped against the fence he’s leaning on. It’s the first time he pays attention to her face, and he realizes he’s never seen her wearing make-up before. Her raggedy hair is pulled into a knot on top of her head, cat-eyed liner behind thick frames, artificial blush coloring her cheeks. Almost pretty, he thinks absently, but not quite. He’s used to being around idols, after all.

“What do you mean?” he prompts, unable to stop an eyebrow from going up.

“Min Yoongi, Suga, Agust D,” she rattles off, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “Which is the real you?”

He scoffs, staring up at the clear, cloudless night sky. “Different versions, same person—just like everybody else. You adapt depending on who you’re talking to, and I adapt depending on the situation.”

“Nah,” she says, staring up as well, as if she’s looking for whatever’s gotten his attention. “I’m only ever just me. It’s exhausting.” She gives a heavy, dramatic sigh. “You have it so easy, being a popstar.”

A muscle in his jaw ticks in annoyance. “Stop calling me that. I’m a rapper.”

“You’re a rapper in a seven-strong boy group that performs choreographed dances to the squeals of teenage girls. You’re a rapper and a popstar,” she corrects. He can hear the smirk in her voice, can feel his hackles raising at the mocking tone he swears he hears there.

He huffs, crosses his arms in front of his chest. Feels his face twitch with annoyance. “Thanks for clearing that up for me. And here I was, having a mild existential crisis over it.”

She laughs, and he wonders if the sound has become the third person in their conversations because she’s the only one who ever does it. “Pleasure to be of service.”

“Do you get off on psychoanalyzing everyone you come into contact with? Or should I feel special?” he asks, knowing he’s being short with her but not caring. Something about the whole conversation is just rubbing him the wrong way. He isn’t out here for her candor, he’s out here for the silence. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

Suddenly he hates her, just a little, for not understanding. For not picking up on his tone and understanding that he doesn’t want to talk about it. For taking a sudden step into the space he wants from her.

Suddenly he hates her, just a little, because he doesn’t know which is worse: her silence or her opinion.

She scrunches up her nose again, making her glasses slide to the end of it. It annoys him, how she doesn’t adjust them immediately, like a normal person would. “Nah, just you.” And she’s grinning like it’s meant to be a compliment instead of slightly creepy.

“It’s fascinating,” she continues, a hint of excitement coloring her normally flat tone. “How much you must go through in a day. At what point do you push back? At what point are you like, stop, I don’t want to be this product anymore, I want to be a person again. How does it feel to be part of mass brainwashing? Perpetuating this impossible standard of being? Have you ever over-compartmentalized to the point that you lose track of the boxes, like you’ve lost against a street magician’s sleight of hand?”

Yoongi’s fists clench at his sides, his limbs shaking as she speaks. She’s rambling. Rambling as if he isn’t standing right there, listening to her talk about him like a specimen under a microscope. As if she’s known him for more than six days, as if she knows anything about how much he’s sacrificed to get to where he is. Who did she think she was, to pass judgment like this? To even talk about him when she had no idea who he even was two days ago?

“You don’t know shit,” he hisses, cutting her off. She turns to him, open-mouthed. He doesn’t realize that he’s looking that closely, but he can see that her pupils are blown, eating up what’s left of the brown in her eyes. “You don’t know fuckall about me, so don’t talk about it like you do.”

“I wasn’t talking about you,” she responds, voice low but still clear as a bell between them. “Just, you know, the idea of you.” She waves a hand through the air distractedly, as if that were sufficient explanation.

“I’m not an idea!”

“Everyone’s a concept.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Invention.”

“Look, Lee.” He spits her name like a curse. “I don’t know where you get off, but if you’re going through some weird bullshit existentialist crisis, don’t pawn it off by psychoanalyzing me.”

She hunches her shoulders as he takes an angry step towards her, a look of hurt passing over her eyes. She shakes her head. “I just-” She glances at the corner of the book, poking out of his jacket pocket. “I thought you got it. My mistake.”

Without another word she rushes back inside, leaving him shaking with anger, his heart thudding painfully in his chest.

What the fuck had just happened?

[“We’re all of us haunted and haunting.”]

Day 6

It isn’t until Yoongi is lying in bed that night, starting at his ceiling in the dark and replying their strange argument over in his head, that he realizes he might maybe understand what she was trying to say. He’s tired—so tired that the last thing he wants to think about is conditioning and concepts and the capitalist machine he’s found himself a cog in, but here he is, thinking about it. All because some strange, possibly insane girl had said it was fascinating. That he was fascinating. Like all of it wasn’t just how things were, like they meant something more than plain old reality.

Sure, his reality was very different from a lot of other people’s. But he had worked hard for this. Any recognition at all was better than where he was seven years ago, physically, emotionally, artistically. He loves it, every crazy, impossible, unreal minute of it. What was she seeing that he couldn’t?

Sure, half of it is a construct, but isn’t that a given in the entertainment industry? With media in general?

And yeah, if he’s being honest with himself the line between Yoongi and Suga has been getting blurrier and blurrier with each passing day, but doesn’t that just lend authenticity to the stage persona? Suga had been his idea to begin with, a way to cope with having to market a polished, desirable version of himself instead of just, well, himself.

Suga is just Yoongi on overdrive. Suga is confident, self-assured; he doesn’t have time to listen to haters and their criticism, doesn’t care if they thought he was a sell-out. Suga hits his marks 110%, never misses a cue, mugs for the cameras and makes good music. Suga is consistent. Suga had struggled, beaten his demons. Suga’s better now. The best. Suga has the fans, the recognition, the spotlight. Suga knows who he was, what he stands for.

And Yoongi is….

His train of thought stalls, careens to a full stop. Who is he these days? Where the fuck were the lines drawn anymore? Are they still even there?

He knows Suga’s story by heart because it’s his; the underground rapper from Daegu who starved and worked his ass off for his dream and made it big despite it all. But thanks to the years of constant exposure, he realizes that the little things that make him Yoongi—how he curls up into a ball to sleep, his habit of biting his pens whenever he writes, the way he slips into satoori when he isn’t paying attention, every mannerism and every detail that make up who he is—somewhere along the line, all of those things have become Suga’s characteristics instead of his.

What is left of Yoongi? Suddenly something inside of him snaps, like a twig in a flame, and he understands. Suddenly, he gets it, what she had been trying to say in her weird, roundabout way. Being three people at once, she’d said. People expect certain things from two of the personas, Suga and Agust D. But does anyone really expect anything from Yoongi anymore?

Maybe the boys? They do, after all, know him best after all these years. It’s a dance as meticulously choreographed and practiced as any of their stages, coexistence and dealing with everyone’s individual quirks. But Yoongi is just Yoongi—boring, broken, and a little bit battered by life. It’s why Suga and Agust D were created in the first place, because people don’t want to know about him at all.

They don’t want normal, they don’t want real. Nobody wants average. They want him magnified by a hundred, the kind of gigantic presence to be expected from an idol. Hell, even his problems are always blown out of proportion, from how he deals with his depression to his sexual preferences.

Except her. Maybe. All she’d asked was which version was real, as if there was no possible way all three could thrive, let alone exist, in one body. She’d wanted to know about Yoongi himself. Not about Suga or Agust D.

The thought is slightly terrifying.

Almost as terrifying as it is frustrating, because he isn’t sure he can answer the question. Suga and Agust D had taken up so much of his time, so much of who he was, that he isn’t sure there’s much left outside of it all. And that’s okay, isn’t it? It’s not like he even really cares about much beyond his career anyway—why would she?

Yoongi doesn’t want to think about why, he’s just trying to survive what and how. Trying to balance where and when without failing everyone around him, without losing sight of his goals. Trying to stay in form without burning himself out. He doesn’t need to understand how he’s keeping his shit together—the only thing that matters is that he does.

He doesn’t want to understand at all, he just wants to be.

Which version of himself, he isn’t sure. He tells himself it doesn’t really matter to anyone else but him in any case.

No one but him and, apparently, the weird girl in his therapy group.

He groans and rubs both hands over his face, knowing that his thoughts are circling back and if he doesn’t stop them now, they’ll keep wearing him down until he wants to scream. A cursory glance at the alarm clock, glowing an eerie green on his bedside, tells him he’s been thinking for two hours straight now, leaving just four left before he needs to be up for a full day of shooting.

He scowls. He doesn’t need to be thinking about this shit. He just needs to play nice, keep his head down, clear therapy and things will go back to normal. Normal, where thoughts like this don’t keep him up until the wee hours of the morning. Normal, where he isn’t constantly daydreaming about running until his heart wants to beat out of his chest, laughing like there aren’t cameras trained on him at all times, screaming until his throat is sore.

He grabs a pillow and burrows his face in it. If he wants normal, the answer is simple. He needs to stay away from Lee.

[“The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch.”]

“How’s therapy going?”

Yoongi looks up to find Hoseok standing over him, a small, mellow smile on his face in contrast to his usual hundred watt one. Yoongi grunts, continues his futile attempt at trying to stretch and touch his toes without pulling a muscle.

“Eloquent, as usual,” the taller boy quips, dropping down and spreading his legs, soles propped against Yoongi’s as he takes his teammate’s hands and pulls him towards him to help stretch him out. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

“You sound like Jimin,” Yoongi complains, slightly breathless from being bent over. “It’s not. The doctor’s nice. He makes sense, anyway.”

“How are the other people in the group?” Hoseok asks, starting to go into his own stretching routine.

Yoongi shouldn’t feel annoyed, really. He knows Hoseok is just checking in, being a good friend and seeing how he’s doing, but after tossing and turning the entire night with thoughts of before and after and who and what going through his head, the last thing he wants to think about is going back to therapy that evening.

“Mental,” Yoongi decides, satisfied with it as the most accurate word to describe them, the entire situation. They have about half an hour left before rehearsals start, so he kills the time by telling Hoseok about Jihoon, laughs at ever being driven that insane over a girl, how Jimin should take it easy with flirting with fans before he falls for one. About Gunwoo, unable to filter his own mouth, and they laugh about how thank god Taehyung has learned. About Minjun setting fire to everything he touches, how Yoongi is getting a little paranoid and now wants to keep matches away from Jungkook, since they’re about the same age.

He doesn’t tell him about Lee. He doesn’t feel ready to talk about her just yet, doesn’t know where to even begin explaining what she’s like and how she’d sent his brain into overdrive. He’s closest to the rap line out of the entire group; there’s no need to worry Hoseok, who has a tendency to fret about the smallest things.

“Is it helping?” Hoseok asks, rising to jump up and down on the balls of his feet.

“Helping what?” Yoongi mumbles, getting onto his own in a much less energetic fashion.

“All the talking you must be doing.” Hoseok looks around the rehearsal space distractedly. “You won’t admit it but you’ve been kind of distant, hyung. Like you haven’t been all here lately.”

Yoongi scoffs at that, pulls his facemask back over his mouth. “I’ve been here the whole time, Hobi. And it’s not like I’m going to spill my life story to a room full of strangers.”

“But it’s so liberating!” At the confused look in his teammate’s eyes, Hoseok begins to laugh awkwardly. Yoongi remembers then, that the younger man has been to dark places, too. “You’ve never done that? Just sat next to someone and unloaded whatever was bothering you? It’s liberating. You walk away one problem lighter and they’ll just think you’re a weirdo.”

“You are a weirdo,” Yoongi deadpans, but Hoseok sees the fondness in his eyes when he says it and just grins.

“We’re all mad here,” he cackles, then claps a heavy hand on Yoongi’s shoulder, making the slighter man stumble forward a step. “All I’m saying is, try talking. If you’re going to be there, then be there. Don’t just sit around waiting for it to be over. We miss you. We want you back. A hundred and ten percent.” He flashes him another grin then saunters off to join Seokjin and Namjoon in the corner, acting like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb of feelings on his teammate.

Yoongi stares after him. Takes a deep breath, lets it out. Repeats this four more times before he’s calm enough to move, before he manages to make Hoseok’s words small enough to slip into the box in his head clearly labelled “Think About Later”.

The camera crew is entering, adjusting their lens and already the maknaes are preening in front of them. He shakes his head, clearing the leftover cobwebs, finally moving to join them. He doesn’t have time for this, he reminds himself. No time for thought, no time for an existentialist crisis. That could wait. It could all wait.

[“In a world where vows are worthless. Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.”]

Lee is late. She’s late and it’s strange because every time Yoongi has come in for a session, she’s already sitting in the back, her nose in a book. She’s late and she slides into the room, rubber soles squeaking on the flooring in a way that has him cringing, fifteen whole minutes after they reconvene after break. She mumbles an apology to Dr. Kim, plops herself down in a chair and doesn’t even bother pushing the hood of her army green jacket from her head.

Yoongi rolls his eyes. If the label can move their entire schedule around to make time for these sessions, surely she can manage to at least be on time. He’s tired and he’s hungry and in the foulest mood he can remember being in. And because she wasn’t there, he hadn’t been able to spend the break outdoors. Sure, he could have walked out on his own, but she was part of the ritual. Her and her cigarette smoke and her awkward, borderline offensive presence.

Sure, he promised himself he’d stay away from her, but he was supposed to do it first, goddammit, not the other way around.

Yoongi hates her for being late. For making him wonder if anything bad had happened to her. For making him worry that something had.

He hates her for making him feel more than he already has to.

“As I was saying,” Dr. Kim continues. “I want to see how you’re able to relate and communicate to the people around you, so we’re going to split off into pairs. No pressure, just a regular conversation. Start off by telling your partner three things about yourself that they don’t know yet, then you can talk about anything else from there. At the end I want you to tell the rest of the group what you’ve learned about them.”

He folds his arms, cupping his chin between his thumb and index finger as he considers them. “Let’s make this easy, yes? We’ll divide by peer group. Minjun, with me. Jihoon with Gunwoo, and Yoongi with Lee. You have thirty minutes.”

Yoongi opens his mouth to complain, but Dr. Kim’s back is already turned, making a beeline for Minjun’s scrawny form.

He scowls, glaring at Lee from across the room. She hasn’t moved, hasn’t even looked up from playing with the frayed sleeves of her jacket. What the hell is she waiting for? He isn’t going to get up and go to her.

The sound of a throat clearing draws his attention, and Dr. Kim is staring at him pointedly. Yoongi sighs and gets up, dragging his feet and his chair towards the other end of the room.

“Hey.”

Lee finally looks up, her face bare and pale and a little green around the edges, odd and small under that ridiculous hood. “Hey back.”

Yoongi drops his chair, sits down with the back between his legs as he folds his elbows on it. “Are you going to take this seriously?” he asks her tiredly, trying to overcome his overwhelming need to take a nap.

“I don’t know, are you?”

His head snaps up at that, grey-black eyes taking in the challenge on her face. The rest of her looks ill, like she dragged herself out of bed to be here, but her eyes are still alight with something he can’t quite pinpoint. Well, now he was awake at least.

“I don’t like you,” he tells her bluntly, unmindful and uncaring of how the words will cut her. “There, that’s one thing you didn’t know about me.”

If she’s surprised by the information, she doesn’t show it. It’s a little heartless, even for Yoongi, but he can’t help but want to lash out, especially when she’s just staring at him. Like the words don’t hurt. Like she’d actually expected them. Yoongi doesn’t like the idea that he’s predictable.

Finally, she opens her mouth. “I’m on medication,” she admits, her voice subdued and distant, as if her mind is somewhere else. Suddenly her eyes are everywhere but him, but he can’t stop looking. “They, um, kind of make everything feel fuzzy, so it calms me down. But I tend to say stupid shit when I’m on it. Ask stupid questions. All the wrong things.” Her fingers continue to pick at her sleeves as she speaks. “I know that sounds like a copout, but I just started new ones this month and I’ve been trying to get used to them.” She meets his eyes then, finally. “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”

Yoongi just stares at her, unsure what to say, tongue shoved into his cheek as he bites down on it, trying to think.

“I was out of line,” she continues, sparing him from a response for the time being. “I have no idea what your life is like. No idea what you’re like. I was just, um, guessing. And I’m sorry,” she repeats, eyes downcast, her voice getting fainter as she goes on. “It’s stupid, but my brain makes up stories whenever I see something interesting and last night I just… you’re interesting and I got carried away and I’m sorry.”

His eyes narrow, studying her to see if he can tell if she’s telling the truth. She’s fidgety, that much is certain. Her eyes keep darting from one thing to another, as if she can’t focus on one thing for too long. Her lips are pale and there’s still that odd intensity in her eyes that wasn’t there the night before. It’s also the most words she’s spoken to him combined.

“Are you on them now?”

She laughs, and for the first time he’s glad to hear it. Doesn’t realize he maybe even missed it, a little, since last night. “No. No, I- um, I didn’t take them this morning so things are….” She gestures tiredly in front of her before bringing her hand up to massage the bridge of her nose. “Everything’s a little loud. A little, um, much. Do you know what I mean?”

“Not really,” he admits. He has no idea what being on medication for anything was like outside of the strict regimen of vitamins and minerals their nutritionist has them on, except that they were supposed to make someone better, or at least something to that effect. Yeah, he’d gone to see a doctor as a teenager, but all he’d done then was talk. He still has no idea what he’s supposed to say, how he’s supposed to react, so he says the first thing he can think of.

“But I liked it better when you weren’t saying sorry every five seconds.”

It was meant to be a joke, but instead she cringes, hunching in on herself under the oversized clothes. “Yeah. Yeah, that happens when I’m actually, like, all here.” She gestures at herself awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“Stop,” he groans, holding up a hand. He thought he would know how to deal with her, but now that she was like this, he was back to where he started: clueless and slightly annoyed. He chews on the corner of his mouth, trying to think. “It’s fine.” And it was. “You just have a weird way of asking questions, you know?” Because she did.

She smirks a little at that and taps her temple with her index finger. “It’s the voices. Can’t think with all of them sometimes.” His eyes go wide, and she giggles. Actually giggles, like a normal girl would. “Kidding,” she says quickly. “No voices. At least, not yet.”

He manages a small smile, then. God, this was so strange. “You’re kind of a mindfuck.”

She nods, eyes back to scanning the room. “I’ve been told. By countless mental health professionals, actually.”

“I figured it out,” he tells her, the words tumbling free before he can stop himself. She tilts her head at him, a question on her face. “Your question, I mean. I think I figured it out, anyway.” He shifts his weight, awkwardly casting his eyes around the room.

“I asked quite a few yesterday. And everything’s…”

“Much?” he suggests.

“Much,” she agrees. “Right now, at least. Which question?”

“You technically only asked one.” He can’t help but smile then, and her eyes suddenly look present, as if she’s finally able to focus on one thing and he’s it. It makes him feel a little special, because he likes to think she’s focused on Yoongi—not Suga or Agust D.

“Yeah?”

There challenge is clear and Yoongi feels his blood warm, rising to meet it. “Yeah.” She leans back into her chair, one leg bent and the other stretched out in the space between them, hanging on to his every word. “You wanted to know if I was still whole.”

“Whole,” she repeats, as if she’s tasting the word on her tongue for the first time.

“Whole.” He nods, unable to keep from smirking at the little victory. “I haven’t figured out the answer. But when I do, I’ll let you know.”

She grins, finally reaching up to fix her crooked glasses. “That sounds promising.”

“I don’t make any I can’t keep.”

“Three.”

“Mn?”

“That’s three things already.” She holds up three fingers again. “You don’t like me, you figured out the question, and you don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Only two are true.”

“The truth is subjective.”

He should feel guilty, still, but he’s pretty sure she means that he’s forgiven so he nods, leaning his cheek on his arm as they settle into the conversation more comfortably, awkward apologies out of the way. “What’s your version of it, then?”

“My life is boring,” she laughs.

“I highly doubt that,” he says, contradicting the almost-compliment with a roll of his eyes. “C’mon, hit me with your best shot.”

“Was that a Pat Benetar reference?”

“No, it was a BTS joke. Bulletproof?” She blinks, and he sighs. “My comedic genius is wasted on you. Who’s Pat Benetar?”

Her eyes go wide. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You’re not allowed to judge me, Miss I-Don’t-Listen-To-Min-Suga-Rap-Genius.”

“Is being a fangirl a prerequisite to being your friend?”

“We’re friends now?”

“God, I know right. Never bet against the universe.”

They stare blankly at each other for ten seconds before cracking a smile simultaneously. Yoongi knows he’s doing that thing again where his upper lip curls too far in, is using the smile that shows his entire upper row of front teeth and gums. He hardly uses it these days, but for some reason right now it seems appropriate.

“Go on,” he says. And she starts talking.

The rest of the session passes by with relative ease. He learns that Lee is a year older than him (“No, I’m not calling you noona”) and that she lives with two other girls in an apartment downtown. She grew up in the States, but moved to Korea when her parents cut her off. It was the cheapest flight somewhere far away, she explains. Now she works as a freelance translator. No contact with family, a handful of friends. Her time is mostly spent with books and music because according to her, “art is easier to deal with than other people.” Korea isn’t exactly the best place for someone with mental health issues, she adds.

Her life makes Yoongi feel sad for her, just a little, because it sounds so small compared to his, but her self-deprecating humor about it is enough to chase the feeling away.

He tells her about his own life, what growing up full-fledged Korean is like. About Daegu and how the world hadn’t made any sense until he first heard hiphop—how music is still the only language he can understand, can communicate in, even now. About his childhood piano teacher, and how he had such a huge crush on her (“Are you sure you don’t want to call me noona?”). About his failed attempt to learn to beatbox when he was fifteen. His family, and how good it felt to finally prove them wrong. About finally being able to bridge the gap and have them back, even though nowadays he could only manage to see them twice a year. About his new family, the people who have had his back when it’s really mattered.

About how fame was just another uphill battle, but at least this time he had people pushing him towards the top instead of dragging him down.

She smiles at that. “You’re good with words,” she tells him. The first compliment, and she doesn’t try to buffer it. Gives it freely, making his mouth turn upwards.

He shakes his head, brushing it off. “I fight with a pen, not a sword. I damn well better be good with them, or I’m screwed.”

He never was one for false modesty.

[“This is the arms race of sound. You don’t win with a lot of treble.”]

Day 7

When he finds himself three compositions deep in the studio later that night (rather, early that morning), he realizes it’s the most alive he’s felt in weeks. That it’s the most himself he’s felt in even longer.

He wonders if this is what it feels like, to be seen.

[“Even absolute corruption has its perks.”]

Day 11

Yoongi likes habits, likes patterns. He finds comfort in knowing that when they take a break, he’ll follow Lee out to the back of the building and keep her company while she smokes. He likes knowing that when he makes a snide, sarcastic comment, Lee will just laugh at him, never taking it personally. Likes knowing that when he isn’t in the mood to talk, Lee will fill the space between them with talk of art and music and life, things that have nothing to do with his reality. Likes knowing that he can be himself without having to explain, without having to make who he is palatable. Likes not having to sell an amped up version of himself. Likes being Yoongi. Just Yoongi.

He likes knowing that the fire in her eyes still hasn’t dimmed, that her pupils haven’t been blown in days. Likes thinking that maybe it has a little to do with him.

For twenty minutes out of his normally hectic day, he has this. Cigarette smoke and a strange girl sitting next to him on a pile of dead lives in an empty parking lot. The conversation is strange. Her presence is strange. How he’s been feeling lately is strange, but a good kind of strange. Like waking up in the house he grew up in with the furniture all rearranged, ready for him to make new memories in it.

In any case, it’s a welcome reprieve from always being ushered from one thing to another. He’s happy to be in one place instead of in between.

[“No detail is too minor to note.”]

Day 12

“Someone looks happy today,” Jimin muses, smirking at Yoongi as he sits beside him at their make-shift lunch table.

“We’re at MNET. I don’t see any long faces here, do you?” Seokjin jokes, elbowing Jungkook in the ribs.

Yoongi doesn’t bother rolling his eyes at his teammates, simply returns to his bowl of noodles.

“No, I agree! Hyung was really good at rehearsals earlier, too!” Taehyung quips, talking around a mouthful of his own food. That, Yoongi quirks an eyebrow at, and Taehyung takes a nervous swallow. “Not that hyung isn’t always good at rehearsals!” he corrects himself quickly.

“Energy,” Hoseok jokes in English, eyes going comically wide.

“He’s been coming home before 2AM, too,” Seokjin realizes, his pert pink lips pursing into a small “o” of surprise. “And he hasn’t threatened anyone in a couple of days!”

“Speak for yourselves,” Jungkook mumbles. “He told me he’d string me upside down by my pinky toes if I used his body wash again.”

Everyone laughs at that.

“You are, as always, the exception to the rule, Jeon Jungkookie,” Yoongi tells him, snapping his chopsticks threateningly in the air between them.

“The last couple of songs you sent over were really good, Suga,” Namjoon tells him, voice low. “Have you been insfired lately?” The taller, gangly man chortles at his own joke, but even Seokjin, sitting next to him, shakes his head and pats him consolingly on the knee when no one else reacts.

“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” Yoongi deadpans, reaching over for another piece of chicken.

“Yah, hyung has returned!” Hoseok lifts himself out of his chair into a dramatic pose, waving his bowl in the air. Jungkook and Taehyung chuckle, both their cheeks puffed up like chipmunks.

“Maybe we should all start going to therapy,” Namjoon jokes. Yoongi coughs, food going down the wrong pipe, and Jimin pats him on the back, quietly sliding a bottle of water in front of him.

It isn’t out of the ordinary, the whole scenario. It was normal for them to tease each other, but right then Jimin’s thoughtfulness, Namjoon and Taehyung’s compliments, Seokjin and Hoseok’s insight and concern—hell, even Jungkook’s reluctant acceptance, is overwhelming, and he can feel the emotion start to lodge in his throat.

He swipes the bottle hurriedly from the table, guzzling it down as he tilts his head back, willing the tears to retreat to where they came from.

“Poor thing,” Seokjin whispers to Namjoon as they all return to their meals and other topics of conversation.

“Eh?” Namjoon asks, oblivious to anything but his meal. Seokjin rolls his eyes and wordlessly hands him a napkin.

“Yoongi-ah,” he explains patiently, voice thrown low to avoid being overheard. “We should do something nice for him. Cheer him up. He doesn’t even need to be in that class, but he’s doing it anyway.”

Namjoon nods, realization dawning in his eyes. “Yeah, family dinner or something. Great idea, hyung.”

Seokjin smiles to himself. “I know.”

[“I need to rebel against myself. It’s the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear.”]

“Yah, Lee.”

Yoongi jogs after her, catching up with her halfway down the main entry hall of the building. She takes out one of her headphones, pushes her glasses up her nose and pauses midstride, a now-familiar half-smirk on the corner of her mouth as she regards him.

“Yoongi. What is it?” she asks in English.

“Stop showing off,” Yoongi huffs at her, and they fall into step together the rest of the way.

He’s almost halfway through the classes, now, and the first night the studio trusts him enough to attend without security or an escort from the management team. It’s a strange sort of relief—he hadn’t appreciated being treated like a child, and it was mortifying that they knew him well enough to know he would skip them if no one was paying attention.

Granted, a car was still being sent to pick him up and take him back to the dorm, but he supposed he had a little time until then.

They push through the main doors, and Yoongi hands her back her copy of Lullaby. She accepts it with an incline of her head, sliding it into the pocket of her jacket. The days were getting even colder now. He loved it.

“Did you like it?” she asks him, already sliding another cigarette from her pack and putting in between painted lips the color of dried blood. Yoongi doesn’t realize he’s staring. “Yoongi,” she says, both eyebrows going up. “Earth to Min Yoongi,” she repeats in English, waving a hand in front of his face.

Yoongi automatically reaches up and grabs her wrist, catching it in midmotion. His hold is a little rougher than he intends, used to roughhousing with other boys, but her face just breaks into a grin, canines bared.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, realizing what he’s done and dropping her hand gracelessly. As usual, she doesn’t seem to mind and merely tucks it back in her pocket, fishing around for her lighter. “Anyway.” He huffs a warm breath into the cold air, watching it dance before ultimately dissipating. “It was confusing.”

“Was it because of the English?”

“I’m not that bad at it,” he says, a little too defensively, and she chuckles, clearly waiting for him to continue. “I didn’t know who was who for most of it.”

“Kind of a metaphor for life, though, don’t you think?” she quips in what he refers to as her Wise Mage voice in his head. “Do you wanna talk about it? Or if you have Friday night plans, that’s cool, too.”

He thinks quickly, glossing over their schedule in his head. He owes Namjoon a verse for a song, but that could wait until the following afternoon and they aren’t due to shoot until Sunday, so he shakes his head. “Yeah, I do.” He catches sight of a van pulling up into the driveway, knows it’s his ride. “Want to talk about it, I mean. There’s a coffee shop near our dorm. Let’s go.”

Her laughter follows him down the steps, and he pauses right before climbing into the car.

“It’s cute how you assume I’m going to follow you everywhere.”

He smirks, turning to find her right behind him despite her words, watching as she tucks her unsmoked cigarette behind an ear. “You’re already here, aren’t you?” She shrugs, scrunching her nose at him. “Might as well.”

She huffs a breath, glancing back at the building behind them where Dr. Kim is watching them from the open doors. “Yeah. Yeah, might as well,” she mumbles.

He rolls his eyes, grabs the front of her jacket and pulls her into the van after him, surprising a series of giggles and half-hearted complaints from her. He decides he likes this sound more than her laugh. Likes her more when she’s off her meds than on them, even if it means she’s just as sarcastic and snide and moody and melodramatic as he is. The driver slides the door shut and she twists to face him, smacking him lightly on the shoulder.

“Min Yoongi! I never had you pegged for a kidnapper!”

“I have been practicing the culling song in my head,” he grins, code-switching.

She merely rolls her eyes at him, and they spend the rest of the ride talking about Streator and the morality of murder, the curse of power, and the strength of media. They’re both too engrossed in the debate (Yoongi, of course, in on Streator’s side, but Lee is adamant that he’s an unreliable narrator—that that was the entire point) to notice when they finally pull up to the back of his building.

“We die a thousand deaths a day,” Lee is saying. “But just because you can doesn’t mean-”

Yoongi never finds out the end of her sentence, because just then the van door slides open to reveal Taehyung beaming his signature rectangular smile at them.

“Surprise, hyung! I came to pick you—oh!” The younger boy falters, brow furrowing as he tilts his head at Lee. “Hello! We didn’t know you had a friend with you!”

Yoongi frowns and leans over Lee at the mention of ‘we’ to find Jungkook behind Taehyung, a surprised, wide-eyed expression on his face. “What are you idiots doing?” he complains.

“Seokjin-hyung made us family dinner!” Taehyung explains, the first to overcome his initial surprise. “Hello, I’m V!” he says to Lee, taking a step back to let her slide out of the van.

Lee bows, a look of pained awkwardness clear on her face as she took in the strangely dressed man in front of her. “Hi, I’m Sam Lee.”

“Are you a friend of Suga’s?” Jungkook blurts out, seemingly unable to stop himself. When Lee’s gaze lands on him he takes an automatic step behind Taehyung, using the older boy to shield him.

“She’s my groupmate from therapy,” Yoongi explains, still confused as to what the fuck was happening as he joined them.

“You never mentioned her!” Taehyung says excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he grinned at the unfamiliar girl.

“You never asked,” Yoongi deadpans, glancing at Lee to find a look of subdued amusement on her face. “We were just going to grab coffee-”

“But Seokjin-hyung made dinner!” Taehyung complains.

“Who gets coffee at 10PM,” Jungkook mutters under his breath, and Yoongi glares at him.

“I do, that’s who.”

“We have coffee upstairs! It’s Bangtan dinner, hyung, and it’s for you. You can’t not go!”

“It’s fine,” Lee says quickly, catching sight of the pained look on Yoongi’s face. “We can talk about the book another time.”

“But I dragged you all the way here, and the car just left.” Yoongi gestures at the space the van had just vacated, looking apologetic.

“Join us!” Taehyung suggests, puppy-dog eyes in full force. “We don’t have company often, but any friend of Suga-hyung’s is a friend of Bangtan’s!”

Lee scratches awkwardly at the back of her neck, eyelids fluttering closed as if she was willing herself elsewhere. Yoongi’s heart clenched painfully in his chest, this being the first time he had ever seen her around other people. She had been doing better and better throughout the week, but if their conversations about it were anything to go by, the two maknaes’ presence was undoubtedly overwhelming for her. He felt fully responsible, guilty, even, for putting her in this position.

He forgets to wonder why he’s so invested.

“It’s fine,” he says quickly, wanting to spare her. “I can help you get a cab and-”

“It’s fine,” Lee echoes, interrupting him. “It’s fine,” she says again, a little more forcefully. A little more resolved. “I can take a bus,” she informs them, attempting a reassuring smile that, sadly, came out as more of a grimace that was mirrored clearly on Jungkook’s face as he watched her.

Yoongi snaps at that, grabbing her arm and pulling her aside. “I’m not letting you commute home this late at night.”

“It’s fine,” she says again, looking a little dazed at the steel undertone to his words. “I’ve done it a million times before, it’s really not a big deal.”

“It is to me,” Yoongi tells her, finally releasing his grip on her arm as he mentally ran through his options. He really should have thought things out before dragging her across town. He can’t help but think that this was why it was so hard to have friends outside of his career. “Can you stay for 30 minutes? Just long enough to eat. Then I’ll ride a cab home with you. Or I can ask Manager Sejin for a car and drive you myself. Just….” He runs a hand through his hair. “Just give me a little time to figure something out, yeah?”

“But it’s Bangtan dinner,” she mumbles, looking unsure at what that was supposed to mean but still understanding that it was important. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not,” he snaps, glaring at her. “Don’t do it. Don’t hide. Not now.”

She smirks a little at that, the corner of her mouth curling. He shouldn’t feel so relieved at the sight of it, but he does. “I won’t if you won’t.”

“Might as well,” he responds, the clench in his chest loosening the tiniest bit at the resolve in her eyes.

“Might as well,” she echoes, staring blankly at him as he slid the cigarette behind her ear free and tucked it back into her jacket pocket.

“Come on,” Taehyung calls, his patience seemingly at an end as he shoved Jungkook playfully towards the building. “Seokjin’s been cooking since 8 o’clock, and I’m starving.”

“Yah,” Yoongi complains, glaring at their backs. “We’ll be up in a second.” He turns back to her, an eyebrow quirked up in question. “Thirty minutes. You only have to deal with them for thirty minutes and I promise I’ll get you home,” he repeats, more to soothe himself than her.

She nods. “Try not to sing the culling song over dinner,” she jokes.

Yoongi laughs. The first real laugh she’s able to startle out of him, and finally, the smile on her face reaches her eyes at the sound.

“I’ll do my best. But no guarantees.”

[“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?”]

“We have a guest!” Taehyung announces, almost tripping over himself as he stumbles out of his sandals in the doorway. “Attention!” he calls, cupping his hands around his mouth to magnify the sound. “Make yourselves decent, we have a guest!”

Hoseok pokes his head out of his bedroom, bare shoulder visible from the doorway. “Eh? What do you mean, a guest?”

“Suga-hyung has a friend,” Jungkook informs him, pushing past Taehyung, a look of panic on his face as he scans the living room for anything embarrassing his teammates had left out in the open. “Put a shirt on, hurry!”

Hoseok gives a little squeak and disappears back into his room just as Jimin emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, bare chest glistening with drops of water as he runs a towel through his hair. “What are you talking about?” he asks Taehyung, laughter bubbling around his words. “Hyung doesn’t have any friends…does he?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jiminie,” Namjoon chides, having overheard the loud conversation. He tosses Jimin a shirt as he passes him. “Of course Suga has friends. We just… haven’t met them?”

“This one’s from therapy,” Taehyung singsongs, throwing himself into an armchair and propping his bare feet up on the coffee table. “She’s cute, too!”

Jungkook makes a face, shoving books back onto shelves. “Sort of.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jimin asks curiously, slipping the proffered shirt over his head and dumping his towel back in his bedroom. “What does she look like?”

“Don’t be mean, Kookie,” Taehyung frowns, kicking a leg out at the younger boy as he walks past. “She looks like a cat,” he tells Jimin.

The blonde’s eyebrows draw together. “But Suga doesn’t like cats.”

The clatter of pans and plates echoes through the apartment, coupled with an exasperated groan from Seokjin in the kitchen. “Namjoonie, I know you mean well but I swear to god if you don’t get out of my kitchen I’m going to-”

“Okay, okay!” Namjoon emerges from the kitchen doorway, pouting as he holds both palms up in surrender. “Yah, you try to help someone…” he mumbles, plopping onto the couch and hugging a throw pillow to his stomach. “Everyone, be nice. And Jungkook, stop trying to tidy up. You’re making me dizzy.”

Jungkook slams the closet door closed, having just pushed a pile of dirty laundry in it. “But it’s a girl, hyung!” he whines, looking far younger than his twenty years.

“Is she a fan?” Hoseok asks, finally joining them fully clothed.

Taehyung shrugs. “Maybe?”

Hoseok hums, taking a seat on the couch next to Namjoon. “He didn’t mention a girl in his therapy group.”

“Maybe he wanted to keep her all to himself,” Jimin points out, waggling his eyebrows.

“None of that,” Seokjin chastises, finally emerging from the kitchen to set a pot of stew down at the table. “If Yoongi has a friend over, then we’re all going to be on our best behavior.”

“Yes, mom,” Taehyung, Jimin, Hoseok and Jungkook respond in unison.

“Thank you,” Namjoon mouths, sharing a look of mutual exasperation with Seokjin.

There’s a warning knock at the front door, and Yoongi’s husky drawl filters through. “All of you better have clothes on,” he says. Another few seconds, and the door opens slowly. “Thank god,” Yoongi sighs, eyes travelling over each of his members as if mentally approving of their state of dress. “Everyone, this is Sam Lee. She’s in my therapy group. Lee, this is, uh, everyone.”

Namjoon, ever the leader, is the first to rise to his feet, cheeks already dimpling as Yoongi moves out of the doorway to let her inside. Automatically, everyone crowds behind him. “Two, three. Bangtan! Hello, we are Bangtan Sonyeondan!” they say in unison, giving their customary bow and greeting.

Yoongi’s heart warms at the sight, however unnecessary he feels it is. He glances at Lee, who’s just staring at them, looking shy of overwhelmed.

“I’m Kim Namjoon,” their leader introduces, extending a hand for her to shake.

“I’m J-Hope!” Hoseok beams next, flashing her a wink.

“I’m Park Jimin!” the dancer says, eyes already in crescents as he shoots Yoongi a smirk.

“Jungkook,” their youngest mumbles, giving a small wave from the other end of the living room.

“I’m Jin,” Seokjin introduces, smiling warmly at her. “Now get out of your coats and out of the doorway! The food is getting cold!” he calls over his shoulder, already bustling back towards the kitchen.

“He’s our mom,” Taehyung whispers conspirationally to Lee, smiling vacantly as he follows his teammates to the dining area.

“Nice to meet you all?” Lee says to their retreating backs, voice faint.

“You okay?” Yoongi asks her, slipping his coat off and leaning over her to hang it on his peg.

She seems startled by the question, but nods after a few seconds. “Uh, do I have to take this off?” she gestures at her jacket, and Yoongi realizes he’s never seen her without her oversized layers.

“It’s warm inside,” he points out, eyes narrowing at her. “What do you have on under it?”

“Clothes,” she responds. “Never mind, it’s fine.” At the incredulous look on his face, she shoves him in the shoulder. “It’s fine,” she repeats.

“You’ve said that twenty times in the last fifteen minutes,” Yoongi teases, watching her slip off the jacket. He’s a little surprised to find that she’s actually… attractive, underneath it. She’s wearing a black and white striped sweater dress, still two sizes too large for her frame, but it manages to drape nicely over the curves he hadn’t realized she’d been hiding the whole time. The way her black jeans hug her legs also doesn’t go unnoticed. It wasn’t a body that belonged to an idol, just…it belonged to a normal girl. Same as the countless other coordi-noonas they worked with on a daily basis. Still, Yoongi can’t help but stare.

“Help me,” Lee pleads, jolting him from his thoughts. “I didn’t catch everyone’s names.”

He laughs again at that, remembering that she had no idea who Bangtan was. He fills her in quietly on their short walk to the dining table, entertained at the odd situation. “Namjoon is the tall one with dimples. He’s a rapper. Likes to read. Seokjin is the eldest. Singer. Likes to cook. Jimin, the blonde one. Dancer. Don’t listen to anything he says. Hoseok, or J-Hope, but we call him Hobi. The one with the red hair. Dancer and rapper, occasional ray of sunshine. Taehyung, you met him downstairs. Singer. Don’t listen to anything he says either. Jungkook, official pain in my ass. Singer, dancer, rapper, golden child.”

She nods, looking a little green around the edges as they finally reached the table. Two empty seats were sandwiched on the far side, with Seokjin on one end and Hoseok on the other. Yoongi shoots Seokjin a grateful look at the obvious manipulation of their usual places, which the older boy just smiles knowingly at in return.

“Let’s eat!” Jimin cheers as the two finally settle in.

“Ready to be entertained?” Yoongi mumbles to her, and she shoots him an amused look.

“Everything looks delicious,” Lee says politely to Seokjin, who beams.

“It tastes better than it looks,” he winks, ladling food onto her plate.

“Except the rice,” Taehyung announces, making a face. “Who made the rice?”

“I did,” Namjoon says meekly, looking pale as he stares down at the bowl.

“How on Earth do you screw up rice?” Hoseok laughs.

“Namjoon, how many times to I have to tell you to stay out of my kitchen?” Seokjin complains, waving a spoon threateningly across the table.

Yoongi rolls his eyes at the display. Bangtan dinners were usually loud and chaotic, but it was clear that everyone was making an effort just by the fact that no one, not even Jimin, was on their phones. He makes a mental note to do something nice for all of them the following day. Maybe order breakfast or something.

He had to admit to himself that it was strange seeing all of his teammates around a new person without cameras pointed at them. At this point in their careers, slipping into the personas was almost second-nature, but after getting up before dawn to film and a dance practice shoved into their usual dinner hours, he was sure that they were all too exhausted to put up much of an act.

So when Namjoon starts asking Lee about her hobbies and the two start discussing their favorite books, Yoongi knows he’s genuinely enjoying the conversation. When Lee automatically gets up to help with the dishes after dinner, heaping compliments onto Seokjin, Yoongi knows their eldest is completely enamored with her. When she asks Taehyung what kind of music he listens to as they dry dishes and the two start belting out in unison to a Western song he doesn’t know, he knows that Taehyung will be asking to have her over again soon.

As they settle into the living room for tea and coffee and Lee asks Hoseok to show her videos of him dancing, Hoseok flushes but gives in, appreciating the interest shown in one of his passions. After watching the trailer for Boy Meets Evil, she admits that she’s never seen a BTS music video before, the team eagerly complies, to Yoongi’s inexplicable disdain.

When the first words out of her mouth when they show her Blood Sweat & Tears is “Park Jimin!”, he knows that Jimin’s going to be gloating about it for the next three days. And when Jungkook’s phone rings and she asks if he plays Overwatch (how she had been able to recognize the otherwise generic crescendo of notes, Yoongi has no idea), Jungkook spends ten entire minutes gushing to her about his favorite game—a complete 360 turn from the distance he had kept from her all throughout dinner.

But most surprising of all is Lee herself. She’s good at reading people, that much Yoongi could admit, but she isn’t that good. Not good enough to skillfully charm the pants off all his teammates without them even realizing it. He feels a bit cheated, if he’s being honest with himself; if he had known she would do this well around new people, he wouldn’t have bothered acting so concerned.

He feels like he had wasted precious energy making her feel comfortable when she was clearly getting along with everybody better than anyone else in recent memory. Why do I even bother, he thinks as he makes his way to the door to receive the car keys to a black sedan that Manager Sejin had sent over for his use. It’s only when he returns to the living room and finds her in the middle of the couch surrounded by six men avidly watching her go pink at their music video for Dope that he realizes just how inexplicably annoyed he is by the entire situation.

“How is this allowed on television!” she exclaims, the most emotional he’s ever seen her as she presses her sweaterpaws to her face, watching the first dance break. “Oh my god,” she breathes in English as Hoseok, dressed as a racecar driver, jumps on screen. “This is lewd! No, this is just outright rude. How are you not walking around with R ratings on your foreheads?”

“We should use that as a line in the next cypher,” Namjoon jokes, passing his bag of chips to Taehyung, who happily munched on them as he sat on the floor.

“There’s hip thrusting!” Lee cries, still fully immersed in the video, looking close to tears as she completely covers her face with her hands. “I could have lived my entire life without this torture,” she whimpers.

“Is it bad?” Jimin, ever anxious about their performances, asks worriedly from beside her.

Lee finally emerges from behind her hands, looking at him incredulously. “Park Jimin, you wash your mouth out with soap.” When the blonde simply blinks at her, she realizes she had slipped into English again and translates to Korean, explaining the phrase. “It is the farthest thing from bad!” she continues. “It’s just....” She finally looks around the room, at all of them watching her intently, and Yoongi can see her physically fight for composure. “It’s…very good. Very, very good. I feel kind of ashamed now, that I hadn’t heard about you guys sooner,” she admits, looking genuinely sorry for the fact.

“We’re happy to introduce you to the awesomeness that is Bangtan Sonyeondan!” Taehyung quips. “Does anyone else find it strange to introduce ourselves to someone?” he whispers loudly, leaning over to Jungkook.

“Your ego is getting to your head, V,” Jungkook laughs, pushing the other boy’s weight off him.

“We’re glad you like our music, Lee,” Seokjin grins, patting the back of her hand soothingly.

“Wait until we make you listen to RapMon’s Expensive Girl,” Hoseok grins. Namjoon promptly throws a pillow square at his face.

“None of that, or I’m asking for an earlier deadline for your mixtape,” their leader warns, which prompts a tirade of complaints from Hoseok about him abusing his power.

“I thought you said you listened to our music?” Yoongi asks, more than a little fed up as he knees Jimin out of the way to take a seat on the couch next to her.

“I listened to Agust D and your songs for Suran,” Lee replies, picking up on his bad mood. “And, um, War of Hormone, I think. I’m sorry?”

“Tch,” he huffs, turning back to face the television. He doesn’t know why he’s gone from feeling warm and fuzzy about the situation to being outright aggravated. He wants her to listen to his music. He was proud of his career. He just hadn’t counted on her listening to BTS in front of all of them, with matching music videos to boot. Hadn’t counted on how awkward it would make him feel, how hungry for validation. How hurt that she hadn’t paid him a bit of attention or a single compliment when she had given them generously to everyone else.

Besides, she was here to talk to him. He already had to share everything else with everyone, did he really have to share her too?

“Is Suga-hyung your bias?” Jimin asks playfully, leaning around Yoongi to look at Lee.

“Bias?” the girl repeats, looking clueless.

Namjoon rolls his eyes just as Seokjin shoots Jimin a look of warning. “It’s a kpop fandom thing,” he explains patiently. “Like, out of a group, who your favorite is. It’s nonsense, really. You aren’t required to have one. Hell, you aren’t even required to be ARMY just because we’re friends now.” Lee’s expression doesn’t change, so he explains their fanbase, the fondness in his tone evident.

“It’s Suga-hyung,” Taehyung whispers loudly again to Jungkook as Lee asks Namjoon about he deals with being the leader even though he isn’t the eldest. “I bet you 50,000 won on it.”

“Deal,” Jungkook replies immediately. “My money’s on Hobi-hyung.”

“Behave, you two,” Seokjin reprimands, throwing a pillow at the pair. “Besides, it’s clearly me,” he adds, settling back beside Lee and stealing her attention from Namjoon with a wink.

“Why is no one betting on me?” Jimin demands with a pout.

Lee turns to him, looking a little lost in the conversation. “Well, Jin is the main dancer,” she says carefully. Everyone stares at her open-mouth for a few seconds before bursting out laughing.

“Oh my god,” Hoseok wheezes in English. “My heart!” he exclaims, falling on top of Jimin, who had slid to the floor in his fit of laughter.

Lee just blinks at Yoongi. “Did I say something wrong?”

He rolls his eyes and wearily gets to his feet. “Enough fun and games. I’m taking Lee home now. Say goodbye.”

“Boo!” Taehyung complains, throwing a handful of chips at him. “Can’t you guys stay a little longer?” he whines. “I haven’t even gotten to show noona my tie collection!”

“I’m sure Yoongi-ah will bring Lee over again,” Seokjin says, ever the mediator. He blows her a kiss as she gets to her feet after Yoongi. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Sam Lee! Let’s eat again soon!”

She gives each of them a deep bow in turn. “Thank you for having me over, Bangtan Sonyeondan,” she says seriously. “And thank you for sharing your work!”

Hoseok flashes her a sappy smile from the floor. “Does everyone else feel warm and fuzzy? I do.”

Lee turns pink, and Yoongi tugs at her sleeve, jiggling the car keys in front of her face. “Let’s go,” he repeats.

“I have my key,” he says to Namjoon. “Don’t stay up.”

“Oooh,” Jimin singsongs, already climbing over Hoseok to stare after them, bellydown on the floor with his chin cradled in both palms. “Drive safe, Suga-hyung!”

Yoongi just rolls his eyes, tossing Lee’s jacket at her as he slips into his own. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles.

“Sorry that took longer than thirty minutes,” he tells her as they stand in opposite corners of the lift. “You looked like you enjoyed yourself, though.”

She nods absently, playing with the zipper pull of her jacket. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to talk more about Lullaby,” she offers, sounding genuinely repentant. “But you really don’t have to drive me-”

“It’s fine,” he grunts, feeling a bit mollified with her apology.

“Did Namjoon mean that?” Lee finally asks him as they buckle their seatbelts.

“What?” He doesn’t even bother to look at her as he backs out of the parking space.

“That we’re all friends.”

He glances at her then, at the wistful look she has in her eyes as she stares through the windshield. Not knowing what to say, he just shrugs and continues to pull out of the lot.

“Yoongi,” she says, her hand reaching out to rest on his on the gearshift, fingertips light as they brush the back of it. “Are we friends? I mean, I know I joked about it but….” She trails off, looking nervous. “I really want to be.”

It’s funny to him how the countless small touches they’ve exchanged before pale in comparison to this one. The first one he’s ever really paid attention to, because of the way it manages to dissolve the rest of the tension and annoyance in his body at their evening. One touch and a handful of words, and he’s gone all soft like, like some sort of… soft thing.

“Yeah,” he manages to croak, pulling his eyes away from her and back onto traffic. She hums, taking her hand back.

“Good. That’s good.”

We die a thousand deaths a day, she had said. Yoongi suddenly feels like he’s dying one of them.

[“Anymore, no one’s mind is their own.”]

Day 16

He wishes they would stop talking about her.

It’s been a week, almost, and none of them will shut up about her.

Of course Yoongi knows she’s cool. Different. Innocent, even. Appreciates that she’s so far removed from their lives and how much of a relief that is. As much as he loves the recognition they’ve received with this comeback, it was still nice to be able to take a step back and not be Bangtan, even for a little bit out of every day. Hell, even Namjoon’s girlfriend had been a fan before they’d met. So had Jungkook’s, if the little brat’s bragging was to be believed. Meeting Lee had been such a novel experience for everyone, and he tried his best not to fault them for it, but she was his. His friend. His reprieve.

Not theirs.

It doesn’t help him focus, either, when Hoseok keeps asking questions about her that he doesn’t know the answers to, or when Seokjin asks when she’s coming back over for dinner. He doesn’t know. Doesn’t want her back at their dorm, wants to keep her separate from that aspect of his life.

He’s glad that Lee never brings them up. Goes back to their routine without a second thought. Back to arguing about paradigm shifts and artist motivations and whatever the hell else she usually babbled on about. Back to the cold fall air, the smell of cigarettes and laughing that strange, barking laugh of hers. Back to looking at Yoongi like he’s the only thing she can focus on, to reaching for his arm as they walk outside like he’s the only thing keeping her tethered.

Back to making him feel like he’s wholly himself and not a construct like she had asked all those days ago.

Back to being his.

[“We’re landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time.”]

Day 18

“When was the last time you felt alive?”

Yoongi looks up from his half-hearted attempt at writing lyrics in his notebook, finds her sitting right in front of him, her knees touching his. Half her face is hidden by a laughably oversized knit scarf, her glasses pushed to the top of her head, deep-set brown eyes watching him.

Dr. Kim had been talking about impulse control just ten minutes prior, about taking a few seconds to consider their actions before going through with them. Yoongi already knows all about that. About biting his tongue and reigning in his sharpness, simultaneously dulling the most unappealing aspects of himself to something everyone could love. About modulating his voice just so to make an entire arena of people erupt in cheers. All about how to use every muscle in his body to convey the right message, how to curb his impulses and stay in line.

Yoongi knows all about control. There was virtually nothing Dr. Kim could teach him in regards to that.

So when Lee asks about feeling alive he can’t help but feel a little confused at the question, at the niggling feeling in the back of his head that they’ve had this conversation before.

He slowly takes the pen out of his mouth and returns the cap. Closes his notebook and rests his chin in his hand, an elbow propped on his knee. Meets her gaze full on, tongue poking at the inside of his cheek. “I literally sweat a gallon on the floor of the dance studio this afternoon. Does a heart rate of 195 count as feeling alive?” he asks her sarcastically, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

“Yeah, but did you have fun?” she huffs, reaching out and attempting to flick him on the nose.

He dodges expertly, sending her a half-hearted scowl. “Dancing is fun.”

“Work isn’t fun,” she insists. He usually hates when she refers to what he does during the day as ‘work’, even if she’s technically right. He doesn’t have much outside of his career, but he likes it that way.

“My work is fun. Just because you hate yours doesn’t mean I have to.”

“When you get paid to do what you love, doesn’t it make you love it less?”

He pretends to consider the idea for a moment before giving her a flat “no,” already uncapping his pen to write the words down before they run away from him again.

“I’m serious, Yoongi,” she complains, sliding his notebook quickly from him and hugging it to her chest as hostage for his attention. “When was the last time you had fun for the hell of it? When was the last time you took a break?”

“I have fun every day,” he snaps, trying to grab his notebook back but she just scrambles out of his reach. “Have you ever seen an episode of Run BTS?”

“Work doesn’t count.”

“Work always counts.”

“You’re impossible.” She finally tosses his notebook back into his lap, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t you want to take a break?”

He rolls his eyes at her. “It’s a Monday night and I can’t exactly go out to middle of Gangnam to do what, karaoke?”

“Okay, I’m going to let your outright insult of the great Korean past time that is karaoke slide.” She tucks another cigarette between her lips, lighting it expertly with a single smooth motion. “But why can’t you? Do you have to go back to the studio?” she asks, smoke trailing around the question.

He watches, wondering if he’ll ever get not be mesmerized by the sight. “Not really, but I’m not in the mood to play nice with fans.”

“Right. That,” she agrees with a little twist of her mouth. He laughs then, at the fact that she’s treating his being an idol as a secondary thing. Like the very real possibility of getting mobbed by sasaeng fans was a small inconvenience. “Well, we don’t have to go out to have fun.”

“Why aren’t you letting this go?” he whines, tossing his head back and shifting his weight to both arms as he leans back on them.

“Because I need to get out of my head for a bit, Yoongi,” she answers seriously.

He pulls his head back upright at that, tilting it questioningly at her. “Everything okay?”

She shrugs, visibly shrinking into her parka. “Yeah. It’s fine. It’s just….” She slides her glasses on with a swift nod of her head, lets out another puff of smoke. “I just want to do something fun.”

“Okay, you’re no longer allowed to say ‘it’s fine’. You say it so often the words have lost all meaning,” he reprimands, and she makes a face at him. “What do you feel like doing?”

A grin spreads slowly across her face then, and Yoongi feels his heart drop into his stomach. He doesn’t like the look of it. It looks like trouble, and trouble is the one thing, apart from going out in public, that he was definitely not in the mood for.

“How do you feel about going for a drive?”

[“The voice says, maybe you don’t go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don’t do. The things you don’t finish.”]

An hour and some skillful manipulation later, Yoongi’s behind the wheel of a car, driving to the edge of the city. Lee’s suggestion to go for a drive had been reasonable, more so than the other possible requests he had feared, so he hadn’t hesitated to agree.

He tells himself that this was what friends did—give and take. He had relented because that was what they were. Friends. Not because he wanted her to feel better or anything like that. Not like he wanted to do something that would make her happy.

Her phone is plugged in to the stereo as she leans out of the window with her eyes closed, her brown hair whipping across her face as she sings under her breath to a Miso song, an already half-empty bottle of soju on her lap. It’s a small thing, insignificant in the grander scheme of things, but Yoongi finds that he likes this. Likes driving in the middle of the night towards nowhere with nothing but the road and music to occupy his thoughts. Likes the heat of a little alcohol in his system, enough to keep him relaxed without making everything fuzzy. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t done this before.

“If you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?” she asks, breaking the comfortable silence they’ve found themselves in.

He glances at her, finds that she’s leaning on her arm as she smiles absently at him. He straightens his shoulders the tiniest bit under her gaze. “Play a sold-out arena,” he jokes, taking a random exit off the highway.

“Yah, you impossible thing, Min Yoongi,” she complains with a drunken giggle. “I forget that you’re famous, sometimes.”

“Good,” he responds, voice a little huskier than usual as he swipes the bottle from her lap and takes a sip.

“Good? It’s not a blow to your ego that I’m not part of the Min Suga fan club?” she teases.

He chuckles, blindly handing her back the bottle and watching her take a swig from the corner of his eye. “You’re a member of the Min Yoongi fanclub. That’s enough for me.”

“Of course!” she quips sarcastically. “Not that you’re greedy or anything, mister A to the G to the U to the STD.”

“Mister? That sounds nice. Say it again,” he grins.

“Mister Min Yoongi,” she sings to the tune of whatever song was playing. “Good with rap but sings way off-key!”

He laughs, the alcohol bubbling in his system. “Yah, I might just have to kick you out of the club for that.”

“Oh god, anything but that!” she says dramatically, rolling her eyes. “Where the hell are you taking us?” she asks, turning her face back towards the window.

“No idea,” he shrugs. “You said drive and I’m driving.”

“I love this,” she sighs dreamily a few minutes later, eyes fluttering shut against the wind. “Hey Yoongi, have you ever been in love?” she asks absentmindedly, sticking a hand out and waving it along the air current.

The question takes him aback for a second, makes him glance at her with his brow furrowed in confusion as he tries to think through his buzz. “Once. Maybe. I don’t know. Can you really call it love at fourteen?”

“Puppy love,” she giggles in English.

It’s unchartered territory for the both of them. He doesn’t know how she can still look so relaxed when he suddenly feels cold from the fall air whipping at them through the open windows. They’d talked about a multitude of other things over the last three weeks, but never their relationships. He’s always been guarded about it, used to prying eyes and overeager journalists that would jump on the slightest slip of the tongue, but he knows she isn’t fishing. Knows that she’s asking to get to know him better. He tries to calm down by reminding himself that relationships were a big deal to most people. Most people but him.

He absently wonders if there’s something wrong with him in that aspect.

“Have you?” he manages to ask, thinking it only polite to turn the question back at her if she had brought it up.

“All the time,” she admits, still smiling absently out the window. “It’s silly but I fall in love with the strangest things. The way light hits puddles of gasoline on asphalt. The way a stranger will coo over a baby in a stroller. The way someone mixes their sugar into their coffee….” Her voice trails off abruptly, as if she had wanted to say something else afterwards, but he lets it slide.

“That sounds exhausting,” he tells her, because it does. “How can you fall in love with everything all the time?”

“Because it’s easier than falling in love with just one thing,” she laughs, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She finally turns to face him, tucking her knees up to her chest. Takes another sip of soju, handing it over to him automatically afterwards. He drains the bottle, finds that the heat of it going down is soothing, almost as much as the sound of her voice. “Besides, don’t you think the world needs more of it?”

“The world can burn,” he tells her. “As long as I can make music, I don’t care if it burns.”

“Then you’re in love, too, Yoongi. Just with a thing instead of a person.”

There’s her Wise Mage voice again. He can almost feel the knowing smile on her face as she says it, as if she’s figured out some hitherto unknown secret of the universe and is imparting it on him. As if she’s figured it all out and is letting him in for the ride.

The roads are empty in front of them, nothing but streetlights and the occasional car zooming past in the other direction. He slows the car down a bit, chancing a glance at her. “How can you even tell?” he wonders out loud.

“That you’re in love?” He hums in the affirmative, and she turns, angling her shoulders back towards the window. “You just do, I guess. I mean, it’s never like in the movies, right? Not everyone gets love at first sight, or a great love for the ages. It just is, like it’s been there the whole time. Maybe one day you wake up and just know, you know?” She laughs at herself then. “I’m not making any sense am I?”

“A little, I guess,” he offers kindly. “I just… I’ve never been so I have absolutely zero input on this topic.”

“Don’t worry, Yoongi,” she grins, reaching a hand out to rub him on the arm soothingly. “You’ll meet a gorgeous girl someday and fall head over heels. Probably another idol, or a musician whose work you love. You’ll get married and have a billion babies and ride happily ever after off into the sunset.”

He cracks a wry smirk at that. He had to admit that he’d never thought about it much outside of having to write a verse for a love song, but watching a couple of dramas and romantic comedies had been enough inspiration then. How she had pictured it just didn’t sound like anything he wants, and he tells her so. “She can burn, too. I don’t want to end up with an idol. Or with a million babies. How the hell am I supposed to pay for college?”

She laughs as he finally pulls the car over into a dirt parking lot lined by trees. “You say that now, but when it happens you won’t have a choice.”

He reaches over her, grabbing an unopened bottle of soju at her feet and cracking it open with a relieved sigh. “There’s always a choice,” he corrects absentmindedly, downing half of it in one gulp.

“That’s true,” she relents, and he cocks an eyebrow at her.

“Did you just let me win an argument?”

“We were arguing?”

“Aren’t we always?” He rolls his eyes exasperatedly at her, and she giggles, swiping the bottle from him and taking a sip.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“It’s dark out.”

“Scared?”

He hopes she doesn’t see him gulp. “You wish.”

She grins and unbuckles her seatbelt, and in the next moment Yoongi finds himself trailing after her as she picks her way haphazardly down a dirt path through the trees, humming another song he doesn’t know under her breath, puffs of warm air trailing from their mouths as they trudge along.

It isn’t snowing, and Yoongi thanks his lucky stars for the fact as much as he damns them, because it’s cold enough out in the woods to feel like it is.

“Yah, Lee,” he calls after a few miles, pausing and propping his palms on his knees to catch his breath, a stitch in his side and the cold November air too crisp in his lungs, eating up the buzz he had managed to build on the drive over. “Hold on,” he wheezes, hating himself for getting roped into a fucking hike. He hates exercise, hates the outdoors. Hell, right now he even hates that their short trek is worth it, with moonlight filtering in through the gaps in the leaves to leave puddles of silver on the ground, making the layer of frost on the trees look like glass, crunching with every movement.

She skips back towards him, smiling down at the clutch of fallen leaves she’s collected, each the size of her face. “Look at these, aren’t they beautiful?” she calls over, holding them out proudly. The contented smile on her face quickly disappears as she takes in the way his hands are shaking, the way his lower lip is quivering, and the leaves flutter to the ground around her as she comes running.

“Jesus Christ, Yoongi,” she complains. “You’re freezing.” Without a second thought she loops her ridiculous scarf over him, tucking his hands into the pockets of her parka and covering them with her own, thumbs running over his knuckles.

“I t-told you it was dark out,” he complains, voice muffled under the fabric.

“You didn’t tell me you were so sensitive against the cold,” she reprimands, unzipping both their outer layers and taking a step closer. He leans automatically into her warmth, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Suh-says thuh girl who lives in juh-jackets,” he stammers out, and he can see her roll her eyes.

“We’re guh-oing to get eaten by a wuh-wild animal,” he continues to whine, tucking his head further into the scarf while simultaneously using his hands to pull her into him, hungry for the warmth that feels like it’s coming off her in waves. “The great muh-Min Yoongi, brought down by a bear. I hope it’s Kumamon.”

“That would make for a great headline,” she agrees, humoring him as she adjusts the scarf between them. “I can see it now: Popstar dies of mascot attack in Seoul.”

He just grunts at her, hands fisting in the fabric of her pocket, and her hands move to his back, rubbing small circles into it. He’s never realized how small she is until now. What was she, five one? Five foot two? Whatever her height is, she’s tiny and hot as a furnace as she stands against him, the top of her head barely reaching his chin as she rubs her hands up and down and around, warm breath tickling his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. He really should have dressed warmer, but it’s not like he’d known they were going to end up in the middle of nowhere.

“Is this okay?” she asks after a few moments. “Are you feeling better?”

Yoongi reminds himself that this indeed was okay. This was what friends did, right? They dragged each other out on drunken hikes in the middle of the night and used each other’s body heat to stay alive. The thought is so ridiculous he wants to laugh, but his face freezes against the wind that chooses that precise moment to pick up. He slouches further into the scarf just as she tilts her head up, temple resting against his cheek. He wonders if she has a fever, if he does and that’s why it feels so surreal to have her standing so close to him.

His reality was fucked up, in his opinion. Wasn’t he just hot and sweaty not that many hours ago, halfway to unconsciousness on the floor of the dance studio? Then he was sitting bored out of his mind, listening to Dr. Kim drone on in their therapy session, then tipsy as he drove mindlessly towards nowhere in particular. A couple more hours and he would be warm and blessedly in bed, and tomorrow he would be back in the studio, finishing the track he started the night before.

But for now… for now he’s standing in unfamiliar woods with nothing but shafts of moonlight glowing placidly on the path before him, regrettably sober in face of the cold as he considers the very real possibility that he’s going to freeze his ass off. That is, if a bear doesn’t get to them first.

Lee shifts, and he abandons the train of paranoid thought, comes crashing back to the present. The present, where he has her pressed against him, all warmth and curves and the smell of cigarette smoke and soju, rubbing life back into his torso. Where they’re just Lee and Yoongi, standing in the middle of the goddamn woods, her humming again under her breath.

Maybe reality isn’t so bad, he concedes.

He finally groans, sick of the mental battle he had just waged with himself for no reason. Be present, Hoseok had told him the other week. Like he had a choice when his present was currently freezing cold.

“If you tell me you’re falling in love with this, too, I might just have to leave you here,” he tries to joke, his jaw finally warming up enough to talk.

She laughs at that, her breath trailing across his collarbone like a caress. “Maybe,” she rasps. “But just a little bit.”

[“No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have your own way.”]

Day 25

Since their failed attempt at having a “fun night out,” Yoongi’s been paying more attention. More attention to the way more leaves are turning brown, to the way the tree behind the university building is getting more and more bare by the day. To his teammates and their unique ways of navigating through their strange world, how they slip in and out of their stage personas with ease and without giving up too much of who they are. To the way he reacts to certain stressors and how he deals with them without forfeiting his honesty with himself. To how proud he is of himself for the countless small victories he now manages in a day.

More attention to Minjun, who’s finally stopped carrying his lighter around. To Jihoon, who can finally get through a session without sobbing. To Gunwoo, who looks as stressed as ever but at least has stopped bringing his phone into the room.

To Lee, who’s the same except not. Who is, apparently, a human furnace under the oversized clothes. Who still wears the same vintage glasses, still wears lipstick the color of dried blood on Wednesdays and Wednesdays only, still smokes cigarettes like they’re the secret to a long and happy life.

Lee, who until now hasn’t caught up to the reality that he’s an idol. Who still treats him like a person instead of a popstar, like what he does is a job and like he’s whole and sane and normal underneath it all. Like he’s Yoongi. Like that’s all that matters.

And Yoongi… Yoongi is the same except not. He’s still moody and anxious and part of him still hates the stage as much as he loves it. Still as conflicted about his life and his art and still plagued with the same insecurities that have been hounding him since he had been old enough to want this life. Still Suga and Agust D and a member of Bangtan and a son and a friend and a brother. Still just as hard on himself and on his work. Still working just as fast and just as ruthlessly as the rest of them to keep the dream going.

But he’s paying more attention now. Was making more of an effort to be present. Was preening more in front of the cameras and fans as the rest, cracking more jokes and giving more input instead of letting the label make all the decisions. He’s fighting again, for the first time in what’s felt like years. To make the music he wants to, to say the things he wants to, to be the person he wants to.

He thinks he understands what Hoseok was telling him, then. What Lee has probably been teaching him this whole time. To fall in love with everything, every moment, instead of being a by-stander. To be present, no matter how overwhelming it is, no matter how much he wants to shy away from it for fear of people seeing through the façade.

He’s being Yoongi again. And for the first time, he doesn’t feel the least bit sorry about it.

[“Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.”]

Day 28

“Hello, Mr. Min. Take a seat.”

Yoongi bows a greeting towards Dr. Kim as he slips into his office, does as he’s told on the worn brown leather sofa across him.

The office looks and smells the way he expects it to, the way he’s seen on countless movies and shows; a desk on one end, a sofa pushed up against the wall, the doctor sitting on an armchair across the coffee table. It smells like old books and potpourri, and he fidgets awkwardly in his seat, wondering why he’s so nervous for their first and hopefully only one-on-one session.

Dr. Kim smiles reassuringly at him, as though he knows it will help put him at ease. It does. He doesn’t know why but it does, and he allows himself to relax a little, slouching onto the couch cushions.

“How are you doing today?”

“Good,” he answers automatically. “Thank you for asking.”

The older man hums and nods at that, as though he had expected the answer, turning to look at what Yoongi assumes is his file in his hands. “I see here you were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder when you were fifteen. How are you doing with that?”

“Good.” Yoongi winces at the repetition. Tries again. “I mean, I still have bad days, but I’m dealing with it better.”

“You have,” Dr. Kim assures him. “We’ve made leaps and bounds over the course of our sessions.” He peers at him over his glasses then, and Yoongi feels like the man is looking straight through him instead of at him. “To be perfectly honest I was apprehensive about putting you into group therapy. I wasn’t sure you would be able to open up around other people, progress with them, but your management was adamant about it. I take it you had a lot to do with that?”

Yoongi swallows, breaking eye contact awkwardly. “I’m not good with talking about feelings,” he admits gruffly, eyes squinting to read the titles on the bookshelf.

“Because you have a lot of them?” Dr. Kim infers, and Yoongi nods meekly at his accuracy. “The sessions aren’t so much about anger management than they are about impulse control, as I hope you’ve learned.”

Yoongi nods. “Figured that out the first day. The people in the group aren’t exactly… violent. Well, except for Jihoon, but that was a fluke.”

“And neither are you,” Dr. Kim says, glancing down at the file again. “The incident with one of your band mates… Jeon Jungkook?”

He leans forward, then, elbows on his knees as he rubs a hand tiredly over his face. “That was a fluke too,” he states, hating the way his voice sounds like it’s pleading with him. “We punk each other all the time. Kookie just went a little too far and I might have reacted a little too… strongly.”

“That’s all well and good, but it still got you here. Do you understand why your management had to send you to therapy?”

“Because I’m the most unstable out of everyone,” he says automatically. At the sight of Dr. Kim’s eyebrow going up, he clears his throat. “I mean, I tend to keep a lot in. I told you, I’m not good with talking about feelings.”

“Your bandmates said as much, when they came in.”

It’s Yoongi’s turn for his eyebrow to go up.

Dr. Kim just smiles. “Your friends Kim Namjoon and Jung Hoseok came in before you started therapy. They gave me a little more background about you, a better idea of who you are and how you’d been doing before all this. Out of concern, you understand. There is, after all, only so much doctors can infer from a patient. Talking to their friends and family always gives us a better picture.”

“They….” Yoongi’s eyes dart around, unable to focus on any one thing in particular but unwilling to meet the other man’s eyes just then. Still trying to wrap his head around the fact that two of his teammates had taken time out of their impossible schedule to look out for him. “I can’t believe they did that,” he finally admits, shoulders hunching.

“Are you surprised?”

He barks a laugh. “Yeah. Fuck yeah I’m surprised. What did they say?”

Dr. Kim leans back in the armchair, elbows on the armrests as he steeples his fingers together. “Just that you hadn’t been your normal self lately. That they felt a little hurt that you didn’t feel you could talk to them, but that they were glad you were going to get the chance to in therapy.”

Yoongi shakes his head, muttering under his breath. “Idiots.”

“Far from, Mr. Min. Mr. Kim and Mr. Jung were simply acting out of concern. It’s very reassuring to know that you have a good support system behind you. I don’t see why you’re reacting to this with anger. Could you explain why?”

Yoongi just keeps shaking his head, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “It’s just… they know better. They know I’ll go to them when I really need to.”

“Ah, but Mr. Min, the key here is turning to people before you need to. Before the pressure builds up and another unsavory incident occurs. You mentioned before that music is your primary outlet for your emotions?”

Yoongi nods. “I don’t know if you listen to rap, Dr. Kim, but it’s very aggressive. It’s been the best way to deal with my anger and anxiety. At least, that I’ve found.”

Dr. Kim just hums again. “I’ve listened to your music, Mr. Min. You’re very transparent with your lyrics. Far more transparent, in fact, than you are in person.”

“I told you, I’m not good with-”

“Talking about feelings, yes. But you understand, at least as an artist, how important communication is?”

“Of course,” Yoongi scoffs. “Words are the backbone to everything I am.”

“Communication isn’t just words, Mr. Min. A message can be relayed without a single word being said.”

“Look.” He leans forward again, dipping his head down and wrapping his hands around the back of his neck, already exhausted by the conversation. “I know there’s a lot of shit wrong with me. That I don’t exactly deal with things the way I should. That I go from happy and hyper one minute and quiet and reclusive the next. It’s just how I am, how I’ve always been. I’ve been trying, listening to all your advice, but I can’t change that.”

“Nor does anyone want you to.” He finally looks up, finds a look of mild surprise on the doctor’s face. “Mr. Min, I’m not going to suggest that you see a psychiatrist and go on a cocktail of medications just to pursue a state of ‘normal’ that doesn’t exist. Everyone has their quirks, their individual personalities. You’re here because you were unhappy, and unhappiness is just as much an impulse as anger. Some people have a tendency towards it, like a default. Does this sound like this applies to you?”

His brow furrows, mulling it over in his head. He had to admit it was as accurate as he had ever heard anyone else describe it to him. And it was true—he did tend towards dissatisfaction and unhappiness as a default. No matter how many goals of his he achieves, part of him is still always waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to wake up and the dream to disappear into the cold light of morning, to find himself back on the streets with nothing to his name. No matter how happy he finds himself, he knows it won’t last—that it could all be ripped away from him the next second before he could even scream for the universe not to.

“Impulse control, Mr. Min.” Dr. Kim’s voice says, pulling him from his thoughts. “In your case, it might call for a paradigm shift. To make a conscious effort towards happiness or contentment instead of away from it.”

Paradigm shift, there were those words again. Wasn’t Lee just talking about that last week?

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Mr. Min.”

Yoongi startles, finally managing to pull his gaze back onto his doctor who’s looking at him with his eyebrows drawn together in concern. He wants to laugh, for some unknowable reason. His heart feels like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces bouncing around in a box in his chest. He wants to dump them all on the coffee table in front of him, to find the corners and put the damn thing back together again.

“I need to talk myself into happiness instead of away from it, is what you’re saying,” he hazards, and the doctor’s face finally breaks into a smile.

“You are a writer, after all, Mr. Min. I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

He laughs, and the sincerity in it would have been startling if he wasn’t feeling so relieved. If he closes his eyes he can almost imagine the edges of the puzzle lining up, the pieces falling into their proper places.

“Good talk, doc. Thanks.”

“No, Mr. Min. Thank you.”

[“So just relax and enjoy the ride.”]

Day 30

“Last day, huh?”

If Lee’s smile is a little watered down tonight, he can understand. He doesn’t know how many meetings the rest of them have left, but he’s free now. No more uncomfortable sharing sessions, no more unsolicited advice that he’s heard a million times before, no more inconveniencing his entire team to make time for therapy.

Sure, he’d started therapy without believing he needed to, but he was also smart enough to admit it had helped. It’s why he still has Dr. Kim’s calling card in his wallet. Just in case.

Then it hits him: no more therapy means no more Lee. No more routine. No more twenty minute breaks behind the building. No more cigarette smoke. No more huddling together against the crisp winter wind. No more faux philosophical conversations about life and love that neither of them took too seriously anyway.

He wonders if she’s going to miss him as much as he already misses her. If that’s why she’s smiling so sadly, brown eyes watching him like she’s memorizing the way he stands, the way he breathes. If his own smile looks just as sad as he does the same to her.

“Last day,” he agrees, pushing the front doors open and letting them out into the late evening.

Now that he’s present, he can’t help but notice the way the glow of the streetlamps has turned the world a warm amber, the way the lights from passing cars glint and reflect off the glass windows of the building, the sheen of moisture on the concrete sidewalk from the short fall of rain while they had been indoors.

The way Lee looks in the middle of it all, chewing her lipstick off as her eyes scan the road uncertainly, looking for the car that will take him away from her for good.

He doesn’t know when he changed his mind about her, but he has. She’s still weird and possibly insane, just as unstable and unpredictable as he is. She looks exactly the same as when he’d met her all those weeks ago. There was still nothing special about her, nothing that screamed or called for attention. Just another girl with a strange way of looking at the world and an even stranger way of talking about it, but while he hadn’t even considered her pretty then, he realizes that she’s the most wonderful thing he’s seen all day. The most wonderful part about every day that’s come before this.

The thought crystalizes in his chest, fragile and firm and sharp around the edges, but it was his. She was his. And she was one routine he suddenly found himself unwilling to break.

“Do you want-”

“Give me your-”

They stare at each other, blinking in surprise as they catch themselves blurting things out at the same time. He grins, and it’s the one that shows all his teeth. The one that he only uses when he’s truly entertained by something. The one that only slips out when he’s truly happy.

“You go first,” he tells her.

She smirks, fingers already tucking a cigarette between lips that are patchy from where she’s bitten off her make-up. “Do you want to exchange numbers?”

“I was about to ask you to give me yours,” he admits, handing his phone over.

She lets out a stream of smoke into the cold night air, smiling as she takes it and saves her number. “See you around, Min Yoongi.”

“See you, Sam Lee.”

He’s halfway home when he realizes she’s saved herself as ‘Your Biggest Fan’. Halfway home, but already feeling like he’s there.

[thrashff]

Hey Thrash, I actually sent that anon a few days back, don't know why it came off anon by maybe my fingers clicked something. Just wanted to say I read your fic within the day and it's soooo good!! Honestly I'm so happy I found your fic while surfing the Namjoon tag. Do you have a main blog I can follow too?

Hello, you wonderful person, you!

I really have no words for how great it feels to hear that you like my little fic! I’m a little behind on Part 11 (because I was severely bias wrecked by Yoongi last week) but rest assured that I’ll be back with some Namjoon goodness soon! :)

Also, I only got back on Tumblr to share my ramblings, but I am on Twitter! My handle is  @ThrashFF! 

Thank you again, beautiful! I hope you have an amazing day! <3 <3 <3

[thrashff]

I love you fanfic P.A.!!! Only a few chapters in and I cant wait for the next chapter!! Hope you're well :)

I’m literally squealing right now oh dear *hides behind her hands*

Honestly though, I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! I kind of started writing with no real plan in mind so I’m just letting the story take me where it wants to go. Will be uploading the next chapter this week! THANK YOU thank you thank you for the support! I hope you’re doing well, too! :)

[thrashff]

project support bts creators is go! if you get this message it's because someone thinks you make beautiful content. tag some of your favorite bts gif/gfx/edit/icon/fic/art makers below and pass it on. spread the love ❤️

Oh wow! Thank you so much, lovely anon! I haven’t been in the fandom (really, like 3 weeks since I started listening to BTS) or back on Tumblr (really, like 2 weeks and three days before I started writing fics) long enough to be able to name 10, but here are some of my favorite writers that you should definitely, definitely check out! Give them a follow and show them some love!

+ @hey-bazooka

+ @bagelswrites

+ @kpopfanfictrash

+ @oppamansae

<3 <3 <3

[thrashff]

Thrash Masterlist

Hi everyone! So I just realized maybe it would be good to keep a masterlist of everything I’ve written so far and will in the future because I honestly have no intentions of stopping anytime soon hihihi. Here goes!

Series:

P.A. (Personal Assistant) - Namjoon x Reader AU (WIP)

Warnings: Slight Jimin love triangle, cursing, failed attempts at fluff and eventual smut (maybe?)

[ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 ]

One Shots:

Commercial Break - Yoongi x Reader (P.A. AU)

Warnings: Cursing, smut

[Link]

Comeback - a BTS Imagine, the night before the Love Yourself Comeback

Warnings: Cursing, feeeeeeels

[Link]

30 Days of Therapy - Yoongi x OC (canon)

Warnings: Mental health issues, cursing

[Link]

[thrashff]

Official Post

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Please do not apply when applications are closed. If you do, your application will be discarded immediately and you must re-apply when they are open.

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To Apply:

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Thank you for applying and we hope to talk soon!

[thrashff]

Comeback

Word count: 4,300~

A/N: So my friends and I were feeling particularly soft after Yoongi’s post on fancafe, wondering how all the boys must be feeling right now. One of them asked me to write this drabble about the night before their comeback and this is what happened. If you like it then please give @putsugaonme some love on Twitter, and if not then I claim full responsibility on @thrashff! :)

Arranged out of order so it might be a little confusing, but the real sequence is Seokjin, Hoseok, Jungkook, Jimin, Taehyung, Namjoon, then Yoongi.

Warnings: Cursing, slightly (hopefully not!) OOC and might (hopefully yes!) leave you feeling soft as well :3

Taehyung

Storm clouds. They’re all Tae can think about as he stares at the ceiling, the quiet ticking of the clock on his bedside the only thing keeping him grounded because he swears to god if it wasn’t for that sound, that small, stupid, inconsequential sound rushing to keep time with his heartbeat, the storm clouds in his head would have swallowed him whole by now. They’re there every time he closes his eyes to blink; fat, purple-gray monsters roiling over a violent, green-black ocean, their colors bleeding together like a fresh bruise, crackling with so much unshed possibility that he can feel the surge right down to his fingertips, to his toes, to the fucking ends of his fucking hair.

Tick. Thump. Crackle. Tick. Thump. Crackle.

He’s been in this position before, and those same damn storm clouds have always kept him company. Like fucking harbingers of doom, but instead of four horsemen he gets an entire army ushering in the apocalypse. He figures to anyone else they would seem pretty menacing—a threat, even, but Tae just licks his lips, the corner of his mouth quirking into a small smile as he welcomes them into his head and down his chest, spreading through the rest of his limbs like medicine, like poison, like lifeblood. They rush through him, descending like a heavy woolen blanket on his skin. The whisper of fabric on flesh, is it time?

Storm clouds. They’re all Tae can think about, and his entire being vibrates with the electricity from them, with all that unshed possibility.

The clock beside him stops ticking, and in the awful, awful silence Tae’s heart whoops and soars. He swings his legs out of bed, socked feet sparking with static as they touch the carpet. Is it time? The storm clouds roll over in his stomach, thunder, demand. Isittimeisittimeisittimeisittimeisit—

A knock on the door, and Tae’s face breaks into a grin. It was time.

Seokjin

Seokjin doesn’t know how many times he’s played the Bowser In The Sky boss level on Super Mario 64, but he’s played it on every night before a comeback and like hell he wasn’t going to play it tonight. As he steers Mario off a tilting platform and onto another block, effectively avoiding a Piranha Plant in the process, a small part of his brain reminds him that he should be worried that the house was so quiet, that the great room was empty and where the hell is everyone?

The thought is so distracting that he misses his jump from one spinning disc to the next, and he stares at the screen of his DS in disbelief for a few (okay, a lot of) long moments. He finally sighs and shuts it, tossing it onto the cushions like it had offended his mother, rubbing at his face tiredly with one hand. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep, the last time any of them had gotten proper rest at all for that matter, but he doubts it’s going to happen tonight.

The evenings before a comeback were always like this. Everyone would go their separate ways, thinking that they could deal with their nerves and feelings on their own: Namjoon would retreat into his bedroom and listen to music on his headphones so loudly sometimes Jin worried he would go deaf, Hoseok would saunter into the garage and return two hours later covered in sweat, Taehyung would go catatonic in his bed for an hour before flitting from room to room like the freaking Tasmanian Devil come to life, Jungkook would be on his cellphone watching videos of himself as some weird method to self-soothe, Jimin would work out until he injured himself or broke something (sometimes both), and Yoongi would pace tracks into the hardwood of his bedroom floor until he eventually exhausted himself into a near-catatonic state. Eventually, though, each member would find their way here, to the great room where Seokjin was, where Seokjin always was, ready with a joke to lighten the mood.

There were a lot of things he didn’t understand about his housemates in general, owing primarily to the fact that they were all slightly insane, slightly evil musical geniuses, but he especially didn’t understand why they worked themselves up to the point of breaking before a comeback. It wasn’t that he himself was possessed of any supernatural ability to remain calm in a stressful situation; it was just that Jin wasn’t scared. He was nervous, sure, but he was nervous every day that he was with BTS. He was nervous for concerts and performances, photoshoots and hell, even guestings and interviews, but he wasn’t worried when it came to releasing new music because he had the utmost faith that whatever they had come up with was the best version of itself it could possibly be. How could it be anything but, with how much love and devotion each of them had poured into it?

Sure, there would be people who would love it and people who would hate it, but none of that mattered to him. He was happy when people liked it, sure. He loved being able to use his platform to express himself, loved the journey he was on with his Bangtan brothers and every member of ARMY, but all of it paled in comparison to how ridiculously proud he was to be part of the whole machine. He was proud of the way Yoongi obsessively wrote music into the wee hours of the morning, the way Namjoon fretted over every arrangement, how Hoseok would practice the same move hundreds of times before he was satisfied with it, how Taehyung would spend hours digging through the internet for music that would inspire them, the way Jimin would work so hard to keep himself strong because he loved them so much he didn’t want to disappoint them, and how Jungkook worked twice as hard as every one of them to prove himself worthy of his role in a family and in a life that he still had trouble accepting as his.

So Seokjin was content and happy and the farthest thing from scared because he had Bangtan by his side. Everything else was just a bonus.

He leans back into the couch cushions, propping his Mario-slippered feet on the coffee table. He eyes the clock on the wall across from him and waits for his brothers to return.

Jimin

It wasn’t his fault, Jimin thinks as he stares at Jin’s favorite frying pan in his hands. Formerly favorite, he corrects himself. Former frying pan. The handle had melted clean off the rest of it where it was supposed to be attached to the actual pan, because how the hell was he supposed to know you weren’t supposed to pre-heat a frying pan to 350 degrees and that it only applied to ovens?

Jimin sighs, dumping the slightly twisted pieces of metal and plastic into a bottom cabinet, wondering if he could get it to Hoseok to fix before Jin found out and gutted him like a fish. The thought makes him shudder, and he pouts at his reflection on the granite countertop. It wasn’t his fault, he thinks again. All he wanted was a goddamn cookie and to decorate it with the ice cream sprinkles Namjoon had brought home the week before, to take a picture of it and send it to ARMY to reassure them that he was fine, that they were fine, because sugar and sweets made everything better and Jimin was absolutely screwed if he wasn’t going to be fine instead of the mess of feelings he really was right now, raw and bare like an exposed nerve ending.

Because, frankly, Jimin wasn’t good with feelings. Jimin wasn’t good at a lot of things, if he was being perfectly honest with himself, but he was good at working them off in the gym and dancing from his demons instead of with them. Right now he was too tired to work out and too wired to dance with Hoseok and too much of everything, really, to do anything but stand like an idiot in their big, empty kitchen and want, with every fiber of his being, a stupid cookie to shove into his mouth.

He wanders from the kitchen like a lost puppy, unsure where his feet are taking him until he reaches Jungkook’s door. Jungkookie would understand, wouldn’t he? Jimin nervously fingers the ARMY necklace around his neck, chewing on his lip, before shaking his head and continuing down the hallway. He wouldn’t know what to say to him anyway, because sometimes words weren’t enough, couldn’t possibly be enough to explain how badly he needed a hug, how he felt like there were butterflies the size of Boeing 747 airplanes in his stomach and that they were threatening to lurch up his body and escape into the hallway like ashes from a fire, staining everything they touched with soot and fear and maybe the dirtiest thing of all, failure.

Namjoon

The house is full. It’s an odd realization, but it’s the first time in weeks that Namjoon feels like it is in every sense of the word. The analogy is so cliché he almost kicks himself for it, but it’s exactly what it feels like: a pot that’s about to boil over—like Jin forgot to tilt the lid on a pot of noodles and all that starch was coming to the surface, bubbling over and flooding out the fire below it, effectively ruining dinner to a chorus of Does this mean we can get takeaway from Taehyung and I’ll eat it if no one else will from Jungkook and Jesus fucking Christ, Jin-hyung from Yoongi like he could do any better.

If he closes his eyes he feels like he can almost imagine where each member is in the house—like if he reaches for the wall or the floor he can tell just by the vibrations what music Hoseok is dancing his nerves out to, if it’s Jungkook or Taehyung that’s winning their videogame, if Jin is on the couch on his DS or his iPad, how many push-ups Jimin has done to work off his excess energy, if Yoongi has broken anything in his room yet from the stress.

Leadermon, he thinks wryly, face screwing up at the role that had always and probably would always make him uncomfortable. He hadn’t asked for it, yes, of the personal belief that if anyone should be the leader, it should be Yoongi with his proclivity for creative curse words and magical ability to keep even Taehyung in line with just a glare. But after all these years Namjoon had grown into the role to the point that he couldn’t even think about himself without thinking of everyone else in this full-to-the-brim goddamn house. Between the stress and tension and hope and heartbreak and fucking love he wonders how any of them even fit, if they’ve somehow mastered this virtual game of Tetris and the lines at the bottom just continue to disappear, like only an act of God is even allowing them any room to breathe above it all.

He rips off his headphones, the cacophony of bass and treble and how in the hell does that growl even come from Tae echoing in his ears as he abandons his attempt at a nap for a bad job and makes his way to the great room.

Leader, he thinks with each echoing thump of his clumsy feet on the stairs as he hurtles down them. He was their fucking leader and right now the guilt over thinking he could leave them alone on the night before a comeback and nap, of all the impossible, improbable things, instead of be with them is making his stomach twist.

He reaches Taehyung’s door first, and to his surprise the maknae is already standing there, his arm outstretched for the doorknob if only Namjoon hadn’t gotten to it first, the slightly unhinged and manic glint in his eyes sending an involuntary shiver of fear down Namjoon’s spine.

“Is it time,” Tae asks, his voice sounding like it was coming from everywhere but his mouth, and Namjoon nods his head, dislodging the thought as an auditory hallucination from how much sleep he hasn’t been able to get.

“C’mon, let’s get the rest of the boys.”

For some reason, with V at his back, he starts to feel like Dante descending into hell.

Jungkook

Whatever the fuck Hobi is doing, Jungkook wishes he would keep it down because it sounds like he’s dropping hundred pound weights onto a concrete floor in an empty room. He regrets, not for the first time, calling dibs on the first-floor bedroom closest to the garage. At the time, it had been a purely knee-jerk reaction born of convenience: closest to the garage, closest to bed. He hadn’t, however, anticipated Hoseok turning part of said garage into a practice space, or that being next to a big, empty room would send the strangest sounds throughout his.

A loud bump is followed by what sounds like cymbals crashing, but none of that made any sense because Hobi’s space was literally empty and where in the world would he even get a drumset in the middle of the night?

The sound of flesh hitting cement echoes through the wall, and Jungkook decides that he’s just about had enough. While he typically let his hyungs have the run of the house and do whatever they wanted, he wasn’t having it tonight, couldn’t have any of it tonight. All Jungkook wanted was some peace and quiet and maybe even a little room to think about how just when he was getting the hang of things, it was all going to change again, leaving him the only upright thing in a topsy-turvy world. He just wanted to be prepared. Jungkook liked being prepared. He didn’t like being caught off guard and he didn’t like not knowing what he was supposed to do or say and he especially didn’t like not knowing what the hell was going to happen now.

Yeah, he was the youngest, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get tired. It didn’t mean he was as secure as his hyungs in what they were doing, as confident in moving about the world they had created for themselves. It wasn’t his fault that these things came easy for him; they asked him to sing and he sung, to dance and he danced, to rap and he rapped. Seokjin would probably berate him for his hubris, but that was the way it was and so that was the way Jungkook regarded them. He hadn’t fit in in the normal world, where these things came by through hard work and practice. Jungkook was used to trying something a couple of times before getting the hang of it, and if Jin or Yoongi or Tae called him conceited for it and gave him shit then he supposed they could—they were his hyungs and he wasn’t in any position to tell them otherwise.

All of those things came easy for him, but the one thing Jungkook struggled with, the one thing that he could never get the hang of no matter how hard he worked or how much he practiced, was being part of Bangtan. He hadn’t fit in with the outside world, and so to find a place, a home, with six other impossibly talented and skilled men who were all older than him was just something that he couldn’t believe, couldn’t get used to, couldn’t get the hang of. Even on good days he always felt like he had one foot in and one foot out, constantly wondering in the back of his mind what he would be doing, what he could be doing, if he wasn’t with Bangtan.

He had realized over the course of his first year that there was a difference between being good at something and wanting to be good at something. He just so happened to be good at these things and so he did them, and this was the only thing it made sense to be. But being around all of them had infected him with their impossible work ethic and passion, and over time he had learned to love it, all of it, this life and the music and the fans and performing just as much if not more than they did. They had taken care of him, helped him grow, turned him into the man he now was. He worked hard to be worthy. How could he not?

But then he would watch them develop a new skill or discover a new talent and wonder how in the world he was supposed to keep up, if he even could keep up, worried that he had already given the extent of his abilities, unraveled too soon, reached his limit, shown his full potential and now, this, this is where it stops. This is where it would end, and his hyungs would leap even farther ahead and leave him behind.

He groans and flips over to his stomach, burying his face into his pillow and shoving another over the back of his head as Hoseok’s noise turns into a steady thump that makes his walls vibrate.

He just wanted to be prepared, and here was this whole other chapter waiting to be turned and all Jungkook wanted was to slow time down and maybe even press pause if he could, just to breathe and remind himself that he could do this, that there was nothing to be scared of, that his hyungs were right outside his door, waiting for him.

Hoseok

Hoseok isn’t sure if the screaming is coming from inside his head or from somewhere inside the house, but he hopes that whoever or whatever it’s coming from is okay, especially if it’s coming from him. He hasn’t slept in days, only pretended, running on fumes and pasting a brittle smile on his face that has started to look fake, even to him.

J-Hope, they named him, and he always tried his best to live up to it. The past week had been hectic, chaotic even, and he hadn’t been able to help the extra surge of energy it had given him as they flitted like bees from one thing to the next, the possibilities seemingly endless of whether this flower or that would bear more nectar, plant more seeds, bear more fruit. It wasn’t Hoseok’s fault that he was easily (read: a lot) excitable, that he could tap into a reserve of seemingly superhuman energy and drive that more often than not left him feeling barely human after. It was only by sheer force of cheerfulness and well-timed jokes that he even managed to get away with his obsessive-compulsive behavior, when everything had to be perfect and wonderful and happy and okay, because if it wasn’t he would feel like he hadn’t been enough, wasn’t good enough. That he could possibly let everyone down.

He turns up the volume on the television he’s stashed away in his practice space, trying to drown out his own thoughts with the horror movie on the screen. Nobody ever came here except Jimin anyway, and even then he would just sit at Hoseok’s feet and watch him watch other things, quietly decompressing before inevitably asking if he had any sweets or how to do that move he pulled the other day at practice. Hoseok never minded, just glad that he could be this for the other boy because it reminded him that he was still Hobi, that somehow maybe the sum of his parts still equaled to more than just the music or the dance or the photo or, god help them all, the job and the persona itself.

The edges of his vision start to blur, and he wonders if it’s the television or reality before he gets to his feet and does a couple of jumping jacks. It’s no good and his eyes are somehow more tired than the rest of him, how is that even possible, and he decides it’s probably time to head inside and check if everyone has filed into the great room the way they always do; Yoongi managing to look murderous and all of twelve years old at the same time, Taehyung manic and still strangely serene, Jin expectant and relaxed, Namjoon anxious but trying valiantly to be calm, Jimin on the verge of tears but still fighting, Kookie vacant but resigned.

Their faces flash through his head like scenes from the flip-books he used to love as a kid, and for the first time all week he finally feels a strange sense of peace wash over him at the thought of them waiting for him. He takes a deep breath and flashes the first real smile at his reflection in the dead TV screen, steeling himself.

It was comeback time.

Yoongi

Yoongi is the last, as usual, to make his way to the great room, having already broken his newest computer mouse in a fit of frustration by throwing it at the wall. The damn thing just wasn’t working, would any of this even work, what if they hated it, what if it flopped, why did he even feel so goddamn fucking responsible when that was Namjoon’s area of expertise, all fueling the fire in the pit of his stomach that was slowly burning away all of the carefully-placed walls he had built to keep it contained. There was just so much pressure both inside and outside of him that maybe it was the only thing even keeping him whole right now, but he swears to god one wrong word from Tae or one eyeroll from Jungkook and he was going to kill them, he really was.

He needed Seokjin. He needed Seokjin to make a stupid, corny-ass joke to poke fun at and Jimin to make fun of and Taehyung to do something ridiculous and for Jungkook to accept it and play along and for Hobi to hold him and for Namjoon to tell him it was going to be okay and he hated it with every fiber of his being because he hated needing things the way he so desperately needed his bandmates right now.

He hated comebacks, he hated the chaos, he hated the gimmicks and he hated and he hated and he hated almost as much as he loved, because that was the only reason he was doing it; because he loved what he was doing and he loved that he was doing it with them and he loved writing music and he loved performing and godfuckingdammit did anyone in the history of the universe ever love anything more than he did right now—he swears to god he’s going to explode with the sheer force of it running through his veins that if he doesn’t hit something soon he’s going to spontaneously combust.

The first thing he sees is Taehyung with his legs wrapped around Jungkook’s pink-tinged face in a headlock, and the younger boy is somehow breathing and yelling for Tae to let him go at the same time, a feat if Yoongi ever saw one. Jimin is on his stomach, lying on the floor watching them, his eyes slightly desperate when they meet Yoongi’s as he steps into the doorway. Namjoon and Hoseok are on the couch with Seokjin between them, looking for all the world like a poly-amorous couple watching over their dysfunctional brood, except Jin is egging on Tae and Hobi is trying to get Jungkook to listen to him and you idiot, angle your arms behind his knee and push up if you want to live.

Yoongi shakes his head at the tableau, making his way to the armchair that no one else is ever allowed to sit in for fear of a cruel and usual death. He collapses into it, letting out a long breath and already feeling more stable just by being around actual, living people, like maybe his jaw won’t fall off from how hard he’s been grinding his teeth and maybe he’ll even get through tonight without reading every comment before the sun starts to bleed its way into his bedroom.

Namjoon catches his eye, and he shrugs at the question he finds there. Are you okay?, like any of them were on these nights. He can’t stop the growl that escapes him then, and instantly Taehyung stops laughing and Jungkook stops struggling and Jimin is on his feet and Seokjin is fishing for the candy he always keeps in his pockets and Namjoon’s wrist is sprained but he’s still reaching for him with it and Hoseok’s arms are already around him and fuck.

From seven individual men they turn into a tangle of limbs and tears and there’s a lollipop already sticking out of Jimin’s mouth how in the world as they all try to angle their lanky bodies, trying to find a spot on, beside, or around him as they hold him. He’s left wondering where in the world the wetness on his cheeks has come from, where did the pressure that was keeping him together go.

But then Taehyung is laughing, mumbling something about storm clouds under his breath, and Hoseok’s smile is like sunshine peeking out from behind clouds on a winter day and Yoongi has Jungkook in his arms with Namjoon wrapped around his shoulders and Jimin’s face is on his knee and Jin is complaining about someone’s elbow in his face and there are so many tears and laughter and Yoongi breathes for the first time since they started planning this comeback. Yoongi breathes and Taehyung sings and Namjoon smiles and Seokjin laughs and Jimin tries to hide his tears and Hoseok is burying his face in someone’s shoulder and Jungkook is looking at everyone like they’re a fucking revelation.

Eventually they disentangle from each other, returning to their own bodies. Yoongi breathes and realizes it was never the pressure that was keeping him together but this. Always, above all, this.

[thrashff]

Commercial Break

Title: Commercial Break

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader (P.A. AU)

(You can check out the first chapter of P.A. here!)

Word Count: 7,000~

Synopsis: You and Min Yoongi have been best friends since you were kids, and freshman year of college finds him camping out in your tiny apartment, working on his demo as you work and go to classes. Maybe it’s the heat, but you start talking about regrets, and how he wants to take away one of yours.

A/N: I’m not even done with P.A. but BestFriend!Yoongi was killing me and swerving my bias! *sobs* I couldn’t help myself! Their banter pretty much writes itself, and I really love Soft! and DirtyTalking!Yoongi. My first attempt at smut in a very long time, so comments would be appreciated. My inbox is open for requests! Please enjoy!

It’s a hot summer evening that finds you sprawled on the floor of your tiny dorm room, slowly melting into the floor, lost in your thoughts as your eyes follow the rotations of the ceiling fan above you.

“Yah,” Yoongi, your best friend since childhood, complains, stepping out of the shower in just his boxers, running a towel through his hair and startling you into losing count. “How is it possible that I just got out of the bath and I’m already sweating? The sun isn’t even out anymore and it still feels like noon!”

You brush off your annoyance and start again. “We’re going to die,” you sigh.

You see him move from the corner of your eye as he takes a seat on the floor next to you. “What are you doing on the floor? You look like a corpse.”

“I wish I was. Now be quiet, I’m trying to absorb the coolness of the earth,” you respond.

“This room is on the fifth floor,” he points out.

“Close enough,” you mutter.

“Also, the core of the earth is actually, like, scorching hot, so what you’re doing is counterproductive,” he says, sounding like a total swot.

You growl and glance at him, an insult on the tip of your tongue, but instead you smack him in the knee, shielding your eyes with the back of your other hand. “For fuck’s sake, Yoongs, put on a shirt! Your whiteness is blinding!”

“It’s too hot to wear a shirt,” he complains, leaning back on his arms. The action causes the muscles of his torso to flex, showing off his collarbone, and you groan at the sight and rub your face. You love him like a brother, you really do, but you hate when he walks around the apartment like this. It had been getting harder and harder for you to mediate the little boy you knew to the man you were suddenly seeing, and it was making you uncomfortable.

“What time are you going to cook dinner?” he asks.

“There’s instant noodles in the cupboard and leftover pizza in the fridge. Take your pick,” you tell him, waving a hand towards your tiny kitchen.

He kicks you in the leg. “It’s too hot for noodles. I want real food,” he whines.

You sit up and glare at him, blowing the fringe out of your face and failing because your hair is stuck to your sweaty forehead. “We’re too broke for real food, Yoongs. Eat what’s here or starve, dealer’s choice.”

He sighs. “This is pathetic. I don’t know how things got so bad.” He tosses his head back, closing his eyes. “Everything after high school was supposed to be fun, you know? Not you and me starving in a tiny dorm room.”

You reach out and touch his knee, rubbing small circles into it to comfort him. “It hasn’t even been a year since we left, Yoong. Things will get better, you’ll see.”

He blinks at you, expression, as usual, completely blank. “I know, I know. I just… I wish things were different.”

“Low is the man who knows not how great a gift the present is,” you reprimand, wagging your finger at him.

“Who said that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“The great and powerful me,” you grin. At his poker face, you let out a noise of complaint. “Oh come on, Yoongs. Regrets, wishing shit was different. It doesn’t change anything.” With anyone else, this choice of conversation would alarm you, but you’re so used to his moodiness and his brain’s ability to jump from one thing to another without preamble that almost nothing strikes you as weird anymore.

“So no matter what we could have done, we would still end up here, sweating to death, poor as dirt?” he says sarcastically.

“Yes, but at least we’re young and beautiful. Our corpses will be the envy of all the other dead.”

He laughs and kicks at your leg playfully again. “You are such a ray of fucking sunshine.”

“Speaking of sunshine, turn off the lights will you? I feel like it’s just making the room hotter,”

Yoongi stands to comply, and you move to sit on the double bed you share, thumbing through your phone. He joins you, using the light of your phone to navigate through your shared and extremely cluttered space, before flopping against the pillows and reaching out to draw random patterns on your back. “Whatcha doin?” he sing-songs lazily.

“AHA!” you exclaim in triumph, finally choosing a playlist. Tycho filters through the speakers by your bedside, and you toss your phone aside. With your screen off, the only source of light left is the ambient light of the city outside. “See, doesn’t the room feel colder already?”

Yoongi seems to consider it for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, you’re right. The lights helped.”

You smirk at him even though you can barely see his face in the dim, thinking that having the lights off served the double purpose of cooling the room and sparing you from having to look at him half-naked. You scuttle over until you’re next to him on the bed. You bully a pillow away from him and lie back, your shoulders pressed together but still careful not to get too close to him because of the heat.

“Hey Yoongs, what’s your biggest fear?”

“This. Right here, right now, being stuck in this room with you for the rest of our meaningless lives,” he deadpans, and you nudge him in the shoulder.

“You’re no fun. C’mon, indulge me.”

“You are so weird. Are you on your period?” You punch him in the arm, and he yelps and reaches up to massage the spot. “Oh, sorry, that’s right, you’re a fucking sociopath even when you’re not on it, getting off on people’s fear and shit. My mistake.”

You sigh. “I hate you,” you mutter, shifting to your side to face him, squinting your eyes to adjust to the lack of light. “It’s just… I was in psych class this morning and we were discussing how people reveal their true selves during situations of extreme duress. Like, during a terrorist attack, for example.” At this point, Yoongi turns and faces you, folding an arm under his head. You chew on your lip for a moment before you continue. “Some people stand up and fight, while other people crumble. Some people revel in the chaos, and others band together.

“I was just wondering how I would react in that situation, is all. Like, in a situation where I’m scared to death. If I would fight or flee.”

“Y/N,” Yoongi says quietly, and you look up to meet his eyes, obsidian orbs oddly luminous in the half-light. “You’ve been in situations that have scared you to death. I think you’ve safely proven that you would fight,”

You let out an incoherent grumble at his words. “That’s different. What happened was an accident. I’m talking about, I dunno, a situation that’s someone else’s fault. Like, if you were stuck on a plane that’s about to crash or something.”

“Has the heat gotten to your head?” he asks seriously, leaning over and pressing a hand to your forehead to check your temperature.

“Blame something else for the way I am, Min Yoongi. I dare you,” you growl. You smile with satisfaction when he rolls his eyes and pulls his hand away.

“I just don’t get the difference, Y/N,” he insists, shaking his head at you. “Your accident was also out of your control. But okay,” he sighs. “I’ll play. If I were stuck on a plane that’s about to crash… well, there’s really nothing I could do, right? I’d probably jump out. At least that way I die on my own terms, and not in fear.”

You nod, accepting his answer. “Would you wanna call anyone one last time?”

“I’d call my mom and dad. Talk to Min Holy.”

You laugh and nudge him in the shoulder. “You would spend your last call listening to your dog bark?”

He chuckles. “Hey, you asked and that’s my answer. Who would you call?”

“You, probably,” you admit. “My parents would be fine, you know? They’d get over my death.”

He leans over and starts to poke you hard in the ribs. “And you think I wouldn’t, huh? You think you’re that important to me, you punk?”

“No,” you laugh, slapping his hands away. You finally grab his wrist and hold it tightly, pinning it against your side. “No, you idiot. I just meant, well, I wouldn’t want you to be sad, that’s all. Hearing your voice would make me brave. Help me prepare for the inevitable.”

He hums, considering your answer. “Would you have any regrets?” he asks you.

“Wow, you’re really stuck on this regret stuff, aren’t you?”

He makes a face. “No. I mean, yeah. I guess.”

“Are you regretting leaving home?” you prod gently, voice low.

He shakes his head almost automatically. “No, not at all. I just, I wonder if I should have gone to school like you. Gone for the whole shebang: class, friends, parties. All that normal crap.”

“Instead you’re stuck living with me off instant noodles. I can see where you feel like your life has gone terribly wrong,” you comment dryly, and he pinches your waist with the hand that’s pinned to your side.

“You’re such a drama queen,” he accuses. “But sometimes I see you and I get jealous,” he admits, an edge to his voice you haven’t heard very often. “I wonder what it would feel like to be normal, to want something other than music. Like, who I would be if I didn’t have this fucking need to make music, to make it big.”

“You’re too smart for school; it would bore the life out of you,” you tell him adamantly. “Besides, normal is different from mediocre, which is everything you’re not. Whatever the circumstances, you’d still be Min Yoongi. I think that’s the great part about it. That you get to choose to be this version of yourself.”

“I guess,” he relents. “How about you?” He taps you with the hand now wrapped around your ribs, and the action makes you feel smaller for some reason. “Any regrets? Like taking me in and letting me mooch off you?”

“Of course not,” you snap, glaring at him. “I would have gone crazy by now if you weren’t here.”

“Cute,” he complains, scrunching his nose at you.

You sigh, pushing your face into your pillow. “I guess my only regret is losing it to my ex.”

“Ah, He Who Must Not Be Named,” he nods sagely.

“He isn’t Lord Voldemort,” you laugh.

“He’s evil, isn’t he?” he counters.

You bite your lip. “It wasn’t that. It’s just… girls are different, okay? We dream about our first times, how we hope it will be. I know romance is a foreign concept to you, but it does exist for other people.”

“Ro…man…ce?” Yoongi repeats, pitching his voice around to sound dumb. “Like, people from Rome?” You punch him in the chest, and he laughs. “Okay, okay. Romance, as in not the ancient civilization. What, like candle light and rose petals and shit?”

You shake your head, starting to get annoyed. “Why am I not surprised,” you mutter under your breath. “I’m talking about romance to someone whose first kiss was behind the dumpsters at school.”

“Hey!” he exclaims defensively. “She kissed me. I wanted something better for my first kiss too, you know!”

You giggle and pat him on the arm soothingly. “Okay, mister, whatever you say.”

“So…” he ventures after a few moments of silence. “How would you have wanted your first time to be like?”

You shrug. “No candles, because that’s a fire hazard, and rose petals would be weird. Like, what if they get into the wrong places?”

“Do you take nothing seriously?” he complains.

“Not even life,” you counter with a grin, and he nudges you again. “Okay, fine. I guess to just feel like the person actually cared about me, you know?”

He looks like he’s mulling this over in his head. “Did you, you know…?”

“Cum?” you blurt out, and to your surprise you see his neck flush.

“Yeah,” he admits, his voice sounding like he’s gotten something stuck in his throat.

You shake your head slowly. “It was so painful,” you confess. “I kind of just wanted it to end.”

“That’s depressing,” he says dryly. “He was a dick. I know you’ve heard this from me before but I do wish you had picked someone better. I would have wanted you to have good memories, you know? It’s a big deal.” He glances at you, then clears his throat and adds, “To some people. I guess.”

“Like you?” you hedge, and his ears turn red. “Who would you want your first time to be with?” you prod, swallowing your laughter.

He flips onto his back and stares at the ceiling, pulling his hand away from you. For a second you mourn the loss of the comfortable weight on your body and your brow furrows, but you banish the thought. All this talk about sex was just getting to you, you tell yourself.

“I don’t know. I think I’d want it to be with someone who genuinely cares about me, too. You know me, Y/N. I’d probably say and do all the wrong things afterwards, probably even during, so it would be nice if she didn’t stress me out about it. Someone who knows me well enough to understand how I am, and that I’m not good at expressing my feelings. It’s like, I shouldn’t have to constantly tell someone I love them. Isn’t once enough?”

“Careful, Yoongs, your dysfunction is showing,” you tease.

He glances at you and then rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean,” he mutters sullenly. “Sex is a natural thing. You should be comfortable with the person you’re doing it with—not self-conscious or insecure.”

You nod your agreement.

“I’d want it to be with someone who’s a friend first instead of a lover,” he concludes, finding the right words.

“What, like me?” you joke, and instantly regret the words coming out of your mouth as his shoulders stiffen next to you. You smack yourself mentally.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “Why not? I could do worse.”

At that, you sit up and grab the pillow you’re lying on to hit him in the face with it. “Excuse me, you should be so lucky!” you yell.

He laughs and grabs the pillow away from you, tucking it under his head. “Why are you so violent?” he demands. “Do you get off on hitting me?”

You huff and flop back down on the mattress, pillow-less, your arms crossed in front of your chest. “Because you’re an idiot and I’m the only one who keeps you in check. Everyone else might be too scared of you, Yoongi, but not me.”

“Really?” He props himself up on one elbow and looms over you, smirking. “You aren’t scared of me at all?”

You thrust your jaw out petulantly, meeting his gaze with a steely one of your own. “You’re as scrawny as a twig and you’re the color of snow. Tell me, who would be scared of that?” you say, poking a finger at him.

He gestures down at his shirtless torso, and you blush at the sight of his toned chest and abs. “Really? Judging by how red your face is, it looks like this does intimidate you, just a little.”

You reach out and push him hard in the shoulder, shoving his face away from yours, and he cackles. “And here I was, about to agree with you about losing your virginity to a friend!” you sigh dramatically. “Our first agreement, Yoongi. It would have been a milestone! You had to go and nip it in the bud with your big fat mo-”

The big fat mouth you’re complaining about suddenly finds its way to yours in a bruising kiss, stealing the breath from your lungs. Your eyes go wide, taking in the sight of your best friend, the boy you share your earliest memories with, his eyes closed as he presses his lips to yours. His hand reaches back up to that spot on your ribcage, cold through the thin tank top you’re wearing. A small part of your brain wonders why this doesn’t feel more strange, why it doesn’t feel like you’re kissing your brother like you always thought it would, but a second later he pulls away from you, the dry skin on his lower lip sticking to yours just a little, and he’s panting hot breath into your face like he’s just gone running.

The action has struck you dumb, and you gape at him like a fish. He finally opens his dark eyes, and the desire you see in them makes your thighs clench and your stomach flip.

“If you could do it over,” he says, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Would you?”

Without any hesitation, you nod.

“And would you want it to be with me?” he prompts, moving his hand up to caress your neck, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw.

You swallow the lump in your throat, wondering how he’s capable of this, of rendering you suddenly speechless and immobile, with the simple action of touching your skin. His eyes search your face, as if trying to memorize your expression, before finally resting on your parted lips, pink with the force of his kiss. His thumb moves and brushes over your lower lip lightly.

“Y/N,” he says, and you don’t think you’ve ever heard him say your name that way—with so much longing that it looks like it’s physically hurting him to say it. “We can’t take away the past and all the memories that come with it,” he says quietly. “But what if we could make new memories to replace the old ones?

“What if,” he gulps, and meets your eyes. “What if we could pretend?”

You finally find your voice and shake your head. “That’s such a cop out, Yoongi,” you say forcefully. “This, you and me-” you motion between your chest and his, mere inches apart, “has always been and will always be real. I don’t want to pretend anything.”

The tense expression on his face softens at that. “You know that I’m an atheist, right?”

You nod, unsure where he’s going with the sudden change in topic.

“But sometimes…” He caresses your cheek softly. “Sometimes you make me believe that god exists.”

Your chest hitches at his words, and unbidden tears spring to your eyes. “Yah, so fucking corny,” Yoongi complains, pulling away from you and sitting up, rubbing his own eyes with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Must have been possessed by a demon or something,”

You chuckle and sit up as well, automatically wrapping your arms around his shoulders from behind. “Well, that explains you kissing me,” you joke.

“Been wanting to do that for a while, actually,” he admits, laughing a little at himself. “Weird, right?”

“The weirdest,” you agree, pressing your face into the spot between his shoulder blades, basking in the coolness of his skin.

His hand finds yours, lacing your fingers together as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Was it weird for you?” he asks quietly, sounding insecure.

Your heart skips a little beat, and you shake your head slightly. “A little? I don’t know. I just-” You sigh, and feel a little thrill as he shivers at the feel of your warm breath. You mull the thought over in your head for a second. “We learned to walk together. Learned to talk together. For fuck’s sake, I think we probably even discovered porn together.”

He barks a laugh at that. “Holy shit, I remember that. Your dad wouldn’t allow me back into your house for a month. I think he even consulted with an exorcist about the ‘little demon boy who was corrupting his precious daughter’.”

You laugh, recalling the memory. “And he only eased off you when my mum pointed out that the magazines we found were his,” you add.

“Fucking classic,” he declares. Silence wraps over the both of you like a blanket again, before he eventually ventures, “You were saying?”

“Well, before I was so rudely interrupted,” you chuckle, and he pinches your arm lightly. “I guess because we’ve gone through so many firsts together, it makes sense to do this together, too? I don’t know, Yoongs,” you sigh. “Is this really what you want?” Am I really what you want? you ask mentally, squeezing your eyes shut as your arms involuntarily tighten around him.

He turns, then, maneuvering you gently so that you’re lying against the pillows, him kneeling between your knees with his elbows propped on either side of your head. “Yes,” he breathes, low voice brought even lower. He brings his face closer, nose touching yours. “Fuck, yes.”

Heat pools in your lower belly at the sound of his voice, at his proximity, at the thought of your handsome, stupid, evil best friend whom you love unconfuckingditionally actually telling you all this, at the sight of him on his knees in front of you.

“Kiss me,” you dare him, and he complies without a second thought.

Compared to the first, this kiss is gentle, soothing, like balm on your rattled nerves. The thoughts and doubt bouncing through your head are brought to a standstill and your body floats into the ether, where nothing exists except the here and now, the point of contact between you that slowly starts to burn like a supernova as his mouth begins to move against yours.

His tongue darts out and swipes against your upper lip, asking for permission, and you gasp a little in surprise at the action. He takes advantage and deepens the kiss, his soft tongue exploring your mouth tentatively. His mouth is cold, like the rest of him, and the contrast with the humidity in the room is so stark that you can’t help but want more. You respond as best you can, your arms reaching out and wrapping around his neck to pull him closer.

He groans as you fist a hand in his hair, and you’re distantly glad that you hadn’t been able to talk him into that haircut because when you dare sneak a peek at his face, he looks so fucking handsome with his fringe hanging in front of his eyes like that that it takes your breath away.

“Y/N,” he moans, shifting his weight to a single arm as the other inches down your torso, fingers light against the sliver of skin on your hips where your shirt has ridden up. “Fuck,” he whispers, voice husky as you press light kisses on his cheek and on his jaw. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

“Tell me,” you say, and he presses his hips into yours so you can feel the hard length of him against the inside of your thigh.

“Is this enough?” he taunts. You hum your approval, taking his face in your hands and guiding his lips back to yours, devouring the space between the both of you because how dare it exist right now?

His hand pushes your shirt up even higher, and as his hands splay across your stomach you muster up the courage to bring your hands to his body, fingertips light as they explore the crevices of his torso, the lines of his stomach and the broad expanse of his shoulders. Where did these muscles even come from?, you wonder. When did the boy I knew turn into a man?

His hips grind into yours, his member impossibly hard against your core, and you feel a rush of wetness against the fabric of your underwear. Your cheeks burn a little at the sensation, but he banishes the thought away when his hand lowers to your hip, tracing the line of your shorts against your thigh. His fingers press against your entrance, and you buck and moan, instinctively moving your hips against the pressure there.

He chuckles, smiling darkly at you. “Eager, are we, love?”

You want to shove his hand away in embarrassment, or at least snap a witty retort back at him, but his fingers are rubbing against you and all that escapes you is a little whimper. He lowers his head, pressing a kiss against the shell of your ear before tracing his tongue along the edge of it. “Are you wet for me, princess?” he asks you huskily. “Do you want my fingers in your tight, wet cunt?”

His rubs the base of his palm against you, and you gasp. It quickly turns into a laugh, however, as his words sink into your lust-addled brain. “Did you really just say ‘cunt’? Actually, scratch that, did you just call me princess?” you say incredulously, and he hangs his head, chuckling at himself. He doesn’t, however, stop his ministrations.

“You really know how to kill the mood, huh?” he retorts, his fingers pushing the fabric of your shorts and underwear aside.

“What are you—oh!” You gasp as he pushes a finger into you, his palm continuing to grind against your clit. He nips at your neck, biting it lightly before laving the spot with his tongue.

“You were saying?” he says against your skin, tasting the salt of your sweat there.

“Fuck,” you whisper, running your hands down his sides and pressing your thumbs against the bones of his hips. “Fuck, Yoongi,”

“Say my name again,” he demands, and you comply, moaning his name into his ear as you bite his earlobe. “Shit,” he groans, sliding another finger into you, stretching you out. You startle a bit, expecting it to hurt but all that you feel is shiver upon shiver of pleasure as he starts to pump them into you. “You’re so wet, Y/N. Is this all for me?”

In retaliation to his taunting you dip your head down and kiss his neck, none too gently leaving a vicious hickey on the side of it as your right hand reaches lower and grasps him through the thin fabric of his boxers. It’s his turn to buck his hips against your hand, and you smirk victoriously against his lips as they crash onto yours.

He suddenly pulls away and flips onto his back, taking you with him. His hand leaves your pussy and you whine a little at the loss of contact, but he pushes you away from his body so you’re kneeling with his hips between your legs. “Too many clothes,” he complains. “Take them off.”

Your eyes flash at the demand, and he moves further back against the headboard, folding his arms behind his head like the cocky bastard that he is. “Please, princess?” he adds mockingly.

Your glare melts into a look of desire as you take in how good he looks sitting there in the half-light, wearing nothing but a smirk and his boxers, eyes dark as he stares you down. It doesn’t take long, however, for your insecurity to catch up. You finger the bottom of your shirt self-consciously, staring down at your hands.

“Stop thinking,” he suddenly says, eyes concerned as he watches you. “You don’t owe me or anybody else perfection,” he tells you, reminding you that regardless of the absurd situation you’ve found yourselves in, he’s still your best friend. Your heart clenches at the fact that he’s putting aside his own desires at the moment to reassure you. “You’re breathtaking the way you are,” he says adamantly, his eyes raking over you hungrily before they harden again into an expression you’re more familiar with. “But if you tell anyone I said I think you’re pretty, I’ll gut you like a fish.”

You smile sappily. “You think I’m pretty?” you repeat, tone teasing.

“Tch,” he scoffs, looking away.

You don’t know why but his absolute trainwreck of a pep talk works, and you take a deep, bracing breath and manage to pull your shirt up over your head, leaning back on your haunches as you sit there in your bra and denim shorts, waiting for his approval.

His eyes dark back to you, gaze blazing with desire as he takes in the sight. “Off,” he says, licking his lips as he stares at your chest. You awkwardly comply, reaching back to fumble with the clasp. At your obvious struggle, he leans forward and reaches behind you, pressing kisses to your collarbone as he does so. Where did he learn to do this, you wonder as he deftly undoes it with a smooth snap of his fingers. His lips lower as he threads your arms out of the straps before leaving you completely to crumple the offending underwear into a ball and chucking it at the wall. You laugh and he grins, dipping his head down to the curve of a breast as his hands cup them. “Perfect,” he breathes quietly against your skin before he takes a nipple into his mouth, laving it with his tongue and nipping it slightly with his teeth.

You moan, threading your hands through his hair as you tilt your head back. He chuckles at the sound and turns his attention to the other breast, his thumb taking the place of his mouth on the one he just left, drawing circles around the pebbled nipple. He repeats the actions here: twirling his tongue around in lazy circles before nipping it with his teeth and blowing at it lightly.

He chances a glance up at you, and you take advantage of the break in contact to push at his shoulders, forcing him back against the headboard. You shimmy backwards off the mattress, undoing your shorts as you go and drop them onto the floor. You mentally thank yourself for wearing decent underwear. He watches you, not saying a thing, and you climb back onto the bed on your knees, reaching forward for the waistband of his boxers, swatting his hands away when he tries to stop you. You lean forward and press a hungry kiss to his lips before trailing them down his jaw, down his chest and stomach, before you pull his underwear down off his hips. He shifts to help you get them off his legs completely, and you bite your lip when you see him for the first time.

His cock is as white as the rest of him, and it’s much, much bigger than the last (and only) one you’ve seen. You swallow your gasp, but before he can over think himself into insecurity, you lean forward and press kisses into his hips, massaging with your tongue as you work your way downwards.

“Wait!” he gasps out as you grasp the base of him with your hand. You pause and look up at him. “Are you,” he says, his voice breaking. He clears his throat. “Are you sure about this, Y/N?”

For a second you consider it, telling him exactly what’s on your mind. How instead of fear and apprehension over what you’re doing, all you can feel is this overwhelming hunger, the need to be closer to him, devour him. How he was right, despite your earlier hesitation, and that nothing about this feels strained or contrived, only natural. It was natural to want him, his mouth, his hands, his body, his cock.

You smirk, and pull your fist up over him. He groans, his hips bucking into your hand. “Does that answer your question?” you mock, and he glares at you with something akin to admiration.

Your eyes not leaving his, you dip your head down and tentatively lick up the length of him. His eyes flutter shut, and he tosses his head back with another moan. Taking it as encouragement, you wrap your lips around his tip, tracing around the rim with your tongue and pushing along the underside of it to squeeze out his precum. He lets out a curse, and you aren’t sure if it’s directed at you or some deity, so you take more of him into your mouth, tensing your lips and sucking in your cheeks to wrap around his member more tightly. You move your mouth up and down, squeezing the base of his dick and pumping it in time with your mouth. Within a few minutes, it’s red and throbbing, all velvet-soft skin but rock hard in your mouth as you take more and more of him into it. It hits the back of your throat and you swallow, making him jolt upright with a curse, fisting his hands in your hair and guiding you into the motion once, twice and three more times.

He pulls you off him, eyes frenzied. “Fuck, Y/N, come here,” he whispers, pulling your face to his and kissing you hungrily, all gnashing teeth and tongue, before he practically tosses you onto your back. He moves quickly down your body, ripping your underwear as he takes them off.

You open your mouth to protest, but he pushes your knees apart with his hands and settles between them, immediately lowering his head to your crotch. “God!” you gasp as he thrusts two fingers into you with no warning.

“Thanks, but I’m Yoongi,” he says mockingly, twisting them inside you and pumping slightly.

You groan at his impertinence, unable to do anything other than fall backwards into the mattress. “Fuck,” you hiss through gritted teeth.

“Exactly what I plan to do to you, princess.” He uses the pet name again mockingly, but you can’t even get yourself together long enough to glare at him because he’s pulled his fingers out and is running his tongue over your slit and good god has anything else in your life ever felt this good?

For all that he acts like he’s god’s gift to man, you finally start to think it might be true with the way he’s flicking his tongue over your clit, alternating between massaging your lower lips and tracing circles on the skin around it. His fingers find their way inside you again, hooking backwards onto a spot that makes your toes curl and your eyes roll into the back of your head. He grabs your thighs and yanks you down the mattress so that your ass is resting on the very edge. He settles onto his knees and hooks your legs around his shoulders before setting back down to work. All the while, the coil inside of you continues to tighten. You reach down and grab his hair, grinding your hips into his face shamelessly, desperate for the coil to snap and release you from the torture. You’ve never been this turned on in your life. You start to feel the edges of your composure start to fray and you’re almost there, almost—

SMACK.

He pulls away and gives your ass a sharp slap, making you gasp and arch your back upwards. Your bleary eyes focus to find him towering over you, having stood up, and nudging you back towards the center of the bed. “Not yet, love,” he chastises, pressing light kisses on your shoulders and breasts as he settles you back on the pillows as his left hand grasps his dick, pumping it. He doesn’t look self-conscious in the least, and the sight of it makes your mouth water.

“Is this what you want?” he asks, dipping a finger back inside of you before circling it around your clit and spreading your juices all over your pussy. He kneels between your legs, looking like an arrogant sonnuvabitch. He watches your face as he quickly works you back up. You moan, and he unceremoniously shoves three fingers in you this time, stretching your cunt almost painfully. “Tell me,” he orders you.

You grab your breasts, pinching your nipples as you knead them. You get closer and closer to your release just by his hands, but you manage to gasp, “Please, Yoongi, I want you inside of me!”

He smirks and removes his hand, but before you can complain he pushes himself inside of you, buried to the hilt. The coil inside of you finally snaps like a whip, sending tongues of fire licking through your system. You cry out his name, practically sobbing as your walls convulse around him. You aren’t sure, but in the midst of the chaos in your body you hear him moan your own name like a prayer.

His elbows buckle and his chest falls onto yours. He grinds his hips harder into you, prolonging your pleasure, as he presses soft kisses on your neck and face. You bite painfully into his shoulder as you ride out your orgasm, feeling the waves of pleasure crash over you and take you under. Before they can ebb away completely, he starts to move his hips again—pulling himself out of you almost completely before thrusting back into you again, each time sending a jolt of pleasure through your system.

“I’m not going to last long,” he tells you quietly, his teeth gritted and his eyes squeezed shut.

You reach up and run a soothing hand through his hair as the other grips his hip, aiding his movements. “Come for me, Yoongi,” you whisper, tracing your tongue around the shell of his ear. “I want to feel you come inside of me,”

“Fuck,” he hisses, and all it takes is three more thrusts before you can feel him release inside of you, member twitching as he rides out his orgasm. “Fuck,” he says again, looking down at you lovingly. He presses lazy kisses all over your mouth and face, even over your eyelids, as you smile and bask in the afterglow.

He slowly pulls out of you, grunting as he launches himself off the bed and retrieving a towel from the bathroom. He wets it slightly from the tap before returning to clean you both off, totally unmindful of the fact that he does so stark naked. He climbs back into bed and settles you into his arms, your back to him as he holds you close. “You okay?” he asks, lazily running his fingertips up and down your arm.

You nod sleepily. “I am sorry, though,”

You can feel his body tense behind yours, and you hide your smirk in his arm. “You are?”

“Mm-hmm,” you nod, trying to inject sadness into your tone. “Now that I’ve taken your virginity, you’ll never be able to touch a unicorn again.”

He snorts. “Bitch, I am a fucking unicorn,” he says with so much conviction that all you can do is laugh.

Both of you settle back into your positions, basking in the comfort that the other offers, the motion of his hand on your arm soothing. You know that you should be freaking out, even just a little, over the fact that you’ve just slept with your best friend. You should probably feel like you’ve sold your soul to Satan himself for how mind-bendingly good it had been, but you find that you still feel the same—that nothing has changed.

Maybe it’s a little fucked, you think, being able to sleep with your best friend without any romantic inclinations—but what you have with Yoongi is so much more than that. He loves you, and you love him; without question, without expectation.

He pulls you from your reverie with a kiss to your temple and softly calling your name. You hum to let him know that you’re awake and listening, and he wraps his arm around your body, hugging you tightly. “Now will you make me dinner?” he asks sweetly.

You roll your eyes and sit up, whacking him in the chest. “What!” he demands, hands up to placate you. “Please? I’m still hungry!”

You laugh and shake your head at him. “You’re hopeless,” you say as you turn on the beside lamp and begin to reach for your clothes.

“I mean,” he continues, ignoring you and continuing to be completely unbothered about the fact that he was still naked. “You were delicious, but man cannot live on pussy alone, Y/N.”

“You’re incorrigible,” you state, holding up your torn underwear to prove your point. “But you do have a point.” You grab clean underwear and a shirt from the dresser, which so happens to be his, before throwing him clothes as well. “C’mon, let’s go hit the convenience store.”

He grins at you and gets dressed, and you ignore the way he watches you put your shorts back on.

“Hey, Y/N,” he says as you’re on your way out. You glance at him, pulling your hair into a bun. You take in his disheveled appearance, from the rats nest that his hair has turned into to the bright red hickey on his neck, and flush a little. “You look good in my shirt. You should start wearing them at home.”

“Let me guess, with nothing under?” you ask, rolling your eyes.

He smirks at you. “'Atta girl.”

You spend the rest of the walk to the convenience store telling him off for being such a big, fat, stinking pervert, but, as usual, he’s half plugged into his headphones and is mostly ignoring you. As he picks out what he wants to eat, you’re tempted to ask how he feels about what just happened, but he’s humming under his breath and there’s a small smile on his face that you’ve never seen before. As he badgers you for ice cream after your meal, you want to ask what happens now, what are you now—still best friends or is he expecting something else? But then he reaches forward and swipes some ice cream off your chin with his thumb, complaining about your terrible table manners, and you remember who it is you’re working yourself up about.

This is Min Yoongi, your best friend. Sure, you just slept together, but whatever happened now, the both of you would wing it. Unless it got bad or awkward, which it wouldn’t, the two of you were just back to normally scheduled programming.

[thrashff]

P.A. (Part 4)

Title: P.A. (Personal Assistant)

(Part 4/?)

Part 3 | Part 5

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader (AU)

Word count: 5,300~

Synopsis: Y/N is stuck in a dead-end job, conflicted between pursuing her music career as a producer and her social anxiety. In a tight spot for money, she takes on a new, well-paying job that she desperately needs as Personal Assistant to the cold and emotionally distant Namjoon, an up and coming rap artist. (Cameos from the rest of the Bangtan boys)

A/N: Hello! This chapter is a beast. We finally get to spend a day with RapMon, with a little fluff and Shakespeare in between :3

There’s something you’ve always liked about the rain, you think as you pop your umbrella open with a satisfying whoosh and click. Everyone else complains about getting wet, ruined shoes, or getting sick, but to you there’s something cathartic about the sky getting so heavy, like it’s taken some of the world’s sadness into it and is reflecting it back. You know that, eventually, after the storm, the world will come out cleaner for it. In between, you’re granted moments of silence and stillness, wherein the normally busy city slows to almost a stop to allow nature to run its course. When the world is almost rendered black and white—simpler, clearer, better.

You tilt your head back, allowing a few drops to fall on your face, and you relish in the cold sensation.

“Hey, Y/N. Have you gone crazy? Let’s go and get out of this shitty weather,”

You frown and return to reality—which at this moment is the wide set of Namjoon’s shoulders as he walks ahead of you down the street. You shake your head and quicken your pace to catch up with his far longer strides (Stupid tall people with their stupid long legs, you think). You don’t know what’s gotten into him today, refusing to have the company car pick him up and instead insisting that you teach him how to commute to the studios.

“You picked a great day not to take the car,” you point out, keeping your tone light and conversational as you fall into step beside him.

“And you picked a great route, with a great bus that broke down and left us in the middle of nowhere,” he responds, his voice devoid of emotion.

“We aren’t in the middle of nowhere,” you argue petulantly, realizing too late that you sound like a child. The corner of his lips quirk upwards, making it clear that he had also made the comparison in his head. You roll your eyes. “We’re only a couple of blocks from the studio. I walk this route every day to work.”

“Oh, you live close by,” he repeats, figuring out that it’s a hassle for you to even head to his place, which is across town, in the mornings because it’s more convenient for you to head straight to the studio.

“Yes,” Captain Obvious, you think, oblivious.

You both pick up the pace as the rain starts to fall harder around you, almost to the point where you can no longer hear each other over the crash of raindrops and you can feel your umbrellas buckling under the weight. “Shit,” you mutter under your breath. Namjoon flashes you an amused look, and you respond with a frown. This was so not the time to even look entertained.

“Come on,” you say, half-running now. “My apartment building is around the corner. We can wait this out there.” Just as you finish your sentence, a sudden gust of wind whips your umbrella out of your grasp. Namjoon makes to run after it, but you grab his arm and tug him forward. “Leave it!” you yell over the din. “Let’s go!”

He looks uncertain, so you grab his sleeve and tug him forward, noting that despite the fact that both of you are practically soaked, his other arm is still reaching forward, trying to keep both of you under his umbrella. You complain inwardly at the gentlemanly impulses that have seemingly come from nowhere, but breathe a sigh of relief as your building comes into view. You tug him through the doors, cursing whoever left the airconditioning on in the lobby as you shiver.

You fish your keys out of your bag and call his attention, motioning towards the elevators. He follows you quietly, and you make your way towards your apartment, fervently hoping that you hadn’t left anything embarrassing out in the open in your rush to work this morning.

“This is me,” you say unnecessarily, reaching your door. Your cold hands fumble slightly with the keys when Namjoon suddenly reaches out and grabs your wrist.

“You’re bleeding,” he points out.

“Oh.” You look down at your left hand, which is bleeding from a shallow cut. “Probably from the umbrella,” you shrug. He still doesn’t let go of your wrist, so you look up to meet his gaze.

He finally releases you and clears his throat. “You should, you know, clean that.”

“I will,” you respond, giving him curious look as you finally get your door open and step into the blessed warmth of your apartment. You kick off your shoes and your dripping wet jacket, unsticking your shirt uncomfortably from your body. You notice that he hasn’t followed you inside, and you roll your eyes at his propriety, wondering what manner of idiot waits for an invitation in a situation like this.

“Well?” you prompt. “What are you waiting for?”

He blinks at you. “I can just stay out here, or in the lobby. You’re a single woman.” You notice the slight flush to his cheeks. “It wouldn’t be proper for me to come inside.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” you grumble, reaching forward and grabbing the front of his shirt to pull him into your tiny apartment. “You’ll catch your death of cold out there, and Director Bang will have my head if anything happens to you. Now is not the time for your sexist, misogynist bullshit.”

He visibly bristles at the accusation and takes a step back as you try to push his jacket from his shoulders. “I am not a-”

“Besides,” you continue, talking over him as you try not to pay too much attention to how his body feels under your fingertips. “I’ve been at your place a million times—is that improper? No! So if those rules apply to you, then can very well apply to me!” you say heatedly, bullying him into finally taking his layers off until he’s left in just his t-shirt, jeans and bare feet.

“Get into the shower,” you grumble, pointing him in the direction of your bedroom as you make your way into the kitchen, picking up your wet clothes as you go. “There are clean towels in the cupboard, and I’m sure I have clothes here somewhere…”

Without a word he grabs your wrist, making you drop the pile of clothes you’re holding as he pulls you into the bedroom. You panic slightly, wondering if you had just welcomed a serial killer into your home, but he leads you straight into the bathroom, where the opens the tap and shoves your bleeding hand under a stream of cold water.

“Keep that there until the bleeding stops,” he instructs, opening your medicine cabinet and retrieving a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some gauze. He then turns off the tap and takes your hand delicately in his. “If you leave it uncleaned too long, the chances of tetanus increase,” he informs you.

“You’re making that up.”

He flashes you a stern look, and you realize you said it out loud and mentally kick yourself. “This is going to sting,” he says with a hint of satisfaction as he pours the hydrogen peroxide over your wound to clean it. You hiss, and he waits for the bubbling to stop before tapping your wrist with a long finger. “Open,” he says, and you relax your fingers, watching his spider-like hands move over your suddenly ungraceful, pudgy-looking one. He presses the gauze onto it, (“Now clench and hold that for a minute or two,”) wrapping his much larger hand around your fist. “There you go. I highly doubt you’ve had your tetanus shot, but unless you’re really unlucky, that should be fine.”

Your spine stiffens at his words. “Thank you,” you say dryly as you pull your hand from his and turn to leave the room. He looks like he’s about to protest, but you throw an overly sweet “Enjoy your shower!” at him and make your exit.

Namjoon sighs, unsure what he must have said to have that go so badly, and simply locks the bathroom door behind you.

You sigh as you finally hear the lock click, heading to the kitchen to fill the kettle with water for some tea and retrieving some noodles from your cupboard. You hear the shower turn on, and deem it safe to duck into your bedroom to do a quick sweep and see if things are acceptably in order. As much as you’d rather have him suffer his damp clothes, you set out a pair of brand new boxers that you keep around for when Yoongi sleeps over, as well as a pair of clean sweats and a sweater. You mentally pat yourself on the back for your penchant for men’s clothes, because it’s times like these when it comes in handy.

Namjoon finishes in the shower sooner than you expect, and you lower the chicken noodle soup you’re making down to a simmer as you pour water from the kettle into a mug and drop a tea bag into it. You can’t help but feel a little annoyed that the man can make anything look good, because he’s looking right at home in your favorite Star Wars sweater.

“Do the clothes fit you alright?” you ask, handing him the mug and trying not to grimace at the squish-squelch sounds you make when you move.

“The pants are a little tight, but you’re really small so I’m surprised they fit me at all.” He accepts the mug with a nod of thanks.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure there’s more than enough room in them to fit everything,” you say snidely. “I’m going to hit the shower. Would you mind watching the soup?” He nods, not noticing the implied insult and instead looking curiously around your small apartment. You suppress a small growl at the circumstances that led to you having one of your least favorite people in your personal space, and try to think about your paycheck instead. “Make yourself at home,” you manage though gritted teeth, and close your bedroom door behind you with a resolute thud.

Namjoon settles his mug on your coffee table as he moves around the room, taking in the titles on the overflowing floor to ceiling bookcase on one of the walls. He wonders how someone who arranges everything for him alphabetically can personally live so untidily herself. He shakes his head at the walking contradiction that is you.

He quietly admires the art prints you have framed, and smiles at the pictures you have displayed of you throughout the years; as a child at a picnic with your parents, under a Christmas tree opening gifts, with Yoongi making silly faces in front of your high school (confirming his theory that you two were indeed friends despite doing your best to hide it at work), smiling at the camera in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, of you at a party with your college friends.

He takes out his phone and snaps photos of them before reaching the desk you have tucked in the corner, noting the monitors, microphone and keyboard you have set up with surprise. He studies it for a bit, realizing that there’s no other explanation for the set up than the fact that you make music, too. He files the information away, but decides not to ask you about it.

When you finally get out of your shower and into a pair of leggings and your second favorite sweater, you find him in front of your record player, browsing through your vinyl collection as Al Green croons through the room. Your small, two-person dining table is already set, with two bowls of soup set out. Part of you knows you should be paying attention to all of these details, to the compendium of these small, seemingly insignificant things, the small miracle that nothing is broken and everything is in place—instead, you’re standing in your doorway with your hair dripping onto your shoulders, watching the bane of the last two months of your existence tapping his foot along to the music with a smile on his face, looking the most relaxed you’ve ever seen him.

“Loving you forever, whatever the weather, even when times are bad, happy or sad,” he sings, painfully off-pitch.

You chuckle, and he straightens immediately from his position on the floor at the sound, not having noticed you walk into the room. You shake your head as you make your way over, taking a seat on the rug next to him and thumbing through your records. “You have the lyrics wrong,” you inform him.

“I know,” he says, a touch too defensively. “It seemed fitting, is all. You know, with the rain.” He gestures towards the window, where the rain is still pouring down in sheets.

You hum your agreement, the hot shower having done wonders for your mood.

“Your hair is wet,” he suddenly chides, taking the towel in your hands and shifting to his knees. He wraps the towel around your head and starts drying your hair. Your spine stiffens as he does so, but you quickly relax into the gesture, trying not to think too much about how it could be considered friendly. Intimate, even.

“I called the studio,” he supplies as he pauses to check his handiwork. He smiles, blessing you with the sight of his dimples, and hands you back your towel. “There you go, your hair is dry,” he informs you. “You look like a lion, but your hair is dry.”

You flush, mumbling a small “thank you” as you hurriedly pull your hair into a bun. You go back to looking for a record to play instead of watching his hands as they reach for his mug of tea. His stupid, stupid hands. Why do they have to be so nice? you wonder.

“I told them where I am and that I felt bad for whoever had to drive through this weather, so they gave us the day off,” he continues. “I don’t think a lot of people made it into the office at all,”

“Probably not,” you murmur, and finally find the album you’re looking for. You lean across and lift the needle, deftly replacing the Al Green vinyl with MF Doom’s Special Herbs Vol. 1.

You both sit quietly for a minute, with Namjoon finally giving in and nodding his head in time to the music. “This is tight,” he says, a touch of excitement you’ve never heard before coloring his tone. “Who is this?”

You hand him the album jacket, which he peruses with enthusiasm. “C’mon,” you say after a minute of watching the childlike wonder in his eyes. “The soup is going to get cold,”

“Hmm?” he says, blinking up at you. “Oh, right,” He places the jacket on the coffee table and follows you to the table, muttering under his breath, his right hand moving in the air in time to the music as he takes a seat.

You roll your eyes as you pour glasses of water. “You can write verses in your head while you’re eating,” you chide.

He stops and flushes pink again. “You know, you don’t look it, but you’re actually pretty motherly.”

“Were you born with the ability to make such backhanded compliments, or is it a skill you had to practice?” you deadpan, the words coming out before you can stop them. He turns a deeper shade of pink, and you feel heat prickle its way up your neck. You twirl some noodles around your chopsticks, refusing to meet his gaze. You mutter a quick sorry, knowing you just crossed a line. You know that being fed up with his odd alternating between warm and cold to you today is no excuse for being disrespectful.

A tense silence falls between you, with nothing but the music and the sound of the rain echoing around the room. You finally work up the courage to look up, and to your surprise he’s leaning backwards in his chair, one hand in his pocket and the other in front of his face, where he’s biting his thumb, his face pale as he studies you.

For a strange, absurd moment, you think of Shakespeare, and before you can stop yourself, you say out loud, “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”

His mouth twitches, and he meets your eyes. Your stomach lurches at the deep pools of brown you find there, and he responds, “No, lady. I do not bite my thumb at you, lady, but I bite my thumb.”

“Draw, if you be a man,” you grin.

He seems to take it as a challenge, because something shifts behinds his eyes. Resolve, hardening. A beat, and he says, “Now I understand why Yoongi warned me to be careful with you.”

“Careful with me?” you repeat, your brow furrowing in confusion.

“At dinner the other night,” he explains, and you file the information away for later consideration. You knew that they were working on music together, but you hadn’t known that they were hanging out as friends outside of the studio. “He said that with the schedule getting tighter and tighter, you’re bound to get more…” His eyes dart around, as if he’s trying to find the right word. “Tense,” he decides, “because you don’t handle stress well.”

“I handle stress just fine,” you argue, turning back to your soup.

“He also said you were stubborn.”

You sigh. “Finish your food,” you tell him, your earlier annoyance dissolving. He surprisingly concedes, smiling to himself.

“So, Shakespeare, huh?” he says as he rises to bring his plate to the sink.

“Let me do that!” You grab your dishes and wave him away. He shrugs and makes his way over to the living room, going back to looking through your vinyl collection.

“I’m more of a Dante fan myself,” he confesses. “Shakespeare’s love stories are just so, well, tragic I guess,”

“That’s the beauty of it though, isn’t it?” you point out. “That love is doomed to failure.”

“What do you mean?” he asks you as you finish the washing and dry your hands. He leans back on the couch and you smile at how good he looks there, sitting in the middle of your tiny, chaotic apartment with its overflowing shelves and dusty knickknacks, before catching yourself and reminding yourself that you work for him.

You take a seat on the computer chair in front of your desk, your back to him as you peruse your shelves. You quickly find your copy of Romeo and Juliet and hold it up. “Take this, for example,” you begin. “Most people think that it’s a tragic love story, but it’s actually a tragedy of haste. Romeo goes from pining over another girl to falling in love with Juliet at first sight, and days later they’re both dead.”

“Grim, but okay, continue,” he says, crossing his long legs into a more comfortable position.

“Both children are caught in the crossfire between an ages-old family grudge—can you imagine what it must have been like to grow up with that? Not being able to choose who to talk to, or what to do. It’s no surprise that they’re both desperate for something they can control—somewhere they belong that’s fully theirs, that no one else can touch.

“So they fling themselves at each other, driven by their need to be loved, that they don’t even pause to consider that maybe they aren’t compatible. That maybe Romeo will hate how much time Juliet takes to get ready, or that Juliet will get annoyed at how much Romeo drinks.”

“You do have to take into account the context,” he points out. “When Shakespeare wrote his plays, people didn’t tend to live long lives. Most people couldn’t afford to wait a decade before getting married.”

“You miss the point, though,” you respond as you return the book to its place on the shelf. “He makes it clear that no matter how short-lived or how badly love ends, it’s still something beautiful while it lasts. The impermanence itself makes it beautiful. Dante writes about the same thing. Love that moves the sun and other stars,”

“Yes, but Dante isn’t referencing romantic love. He elevates it, positions it as worship, as belief, as religion,” Namjoon argues. “Maybe it’s only romantic love is doomed to failure.”

“And passion for art isn’t the same way? How many great artists kill themselves, driven to madness because of their craft? How many waste away, a shadow of their potential, pining after the muse?” you counter. “Who, more often than not, takes the form of a partner. Yoko Ono, John Lennon. Pattie Boyd, Eric Clapton. The list goes on.”

“Throwing yourself into your craft is still safer than laying yourself bare to another human being,” he says adamantly, and you laugh at his statement.

“What are you talking about?” you demand. “You’re an artist, and you’re going to be an icon soon. You lay yourself bare to anyone and everyone.”

To your surprise, the stubborn set of his jaw disappears and his eyes crinkle into a smile. “Well, when you put it like that, I think I might have to seriously reconsider my career choices.”

You shake your head, smiling, even though you’re reeling from keeping up with his crazy mood shifts and topics of conversation.

“It’s nice,” he says, out of nowhere.

“What is?”

“Arguing with you.”

“Thank you…?”

He laughs, really laughs, at the pained expression on your face, and the sound echoes through your chest, warming your skin more than the soup could. “I just meant it’s nice not to have to talk about music, you know?” He glances at your music collection and chuckles. “Though I’m sure we could talk about that, too.”

You hum and cross your arms over your stomach. “Wow, and here I was, starting to think you were a robot,” you joke.

“I get about 8 hours a week where I turn into a real, live boy,” he smirks at you.

You laugh, recognizing the reference, and pretend to check the time on a watch you aren’t wearing. “Well then, Pinocchio. I’m guessing we have about 6 and a half more hours before you turn back into a blockhead. What would you like to do?”

He bites his lip, thinking. “I don’t suppose you have any good movies?”

“Of course I do,” you say, but you know him well enough to know that that isn’t really how he wants to spend the next couple of hours waiting for the rain to die down. “But I have your hard drive,” you inform him. “You’re welcome to use the desktop to do some work, since I know you left your laptop at the studio.”

The relief in his eyes is evident, and his entire body twitches forward, as if eager to kick you off the computer chair and start working. “No shit?”

You laugh at the look on his face and get up to retrieve it from your bag. “No shit,” you affirm. You plug it in and set up your desktop on a guest account. “Knock yourself out,” you say, vacating the chair.

“Best P.A. ever,” he states, sighing in relief as he slides into your computer chair after retrieving his own headphones and plugging them in.

You clear your throat, blushing at the statement as you take a seat on the floor and set up your own laptop on the coffee table. “Er, just let me know if you need anything.” You look up to him smiling at you, his headphones half-on, and for a few seconds you have a difficult time mediating this version of him with the cold, unfeeling jerk you’ve been exposed to almost every day for the last two months.

The rest of the morning passes with both of you doing your own work in quiet companionship. You automatically hand him another mug of tea and a notebook when you notice his body language getting more and more agitated, but otherwise the both of you ignore each other until around 1PM, when you deem it time for a late lunch, which both of you agree should be some stir-fried rice and beef soup.

He offers to help you in the kitchen, but you quickly discover that he can barely hold a knife properly, and politely offer him an out. He flashes you a look of gratitude and you tease that it isn’t a wonder that his contract specified a P.A., because otherwise he would probably starve to death.

“Most likely,” he agrees, looking slightly abashed as he settles back at the desk. “My mother was the one who put that in, actually. Probably for that exact reason,” he says over his shoulder before returning to his notes.

The two of you dig in to lunch a few minutes later, indian-seated on your living room floor, making light conversation about nothing in particular. He finishes his food and inclines his head towards you, patting his stomach in satisfaction. “That was good, I’m so full!”

“You’re welcome,” you laugh, accepting the statement as his way of saying thank you, but as you move to take his bowl, he catches your wrist and takes your own from you.

“Please, let me. I already feel like a terrible guest, taking over your computer and everything.”

You swallow, your throat suddenly dry at his touch, but all you can do is nod meekly and mentally cross your fingers. He grins at you and makes his way to the kitchen. It isn’t long, however, before the sound of breaking china echoes through the apartment. You glance over, unsurprised, at him looking mortified as he stands in front of the sink. You get up and retrieve your dustpan while he stammers his apologies.

“It was an accident, I’m so sorry, I’ll replace the dishes, I-”

You offer him a small smile, knowing something was bound to break in your apartment eventually with him in it. “I was thinking of switching to plastic plates anyway,” you joke. “Don’t worry about it,” you reassure him, but he chews on his lower lip, looking at you worriedly, until you usher him back out of your kitchen, bossily insisting he get back to work.

Once your kitchen is back to it’s usual state (sans a bowl and a couple of glasses), you go back to your laptop and stare at it blankly before you realize that you’re done with everything you need accomplished for the rest of the week. You glance at Namjoon, who’s writing into the notebook you gave him, eyebrows drawn together in concentration, worrying his lower lip red.

You hesitate for only a second, deeming him sufficiently distracted to work on something for leisure, before pulling up Ableton and starting to work on a new beat. You get so engrossed in what you’re doing, however—building a song around a sample, which this time is Crazy by Gnarls Barkley—that you don’t notice that you’ve starting singing the hook under your breath, or that Namjoon has stood up from the desk and settled himself on the couch behind you, quietly watching you work.

You’re almost done with the frame when he startles the hell out of you by speaking.

“What are you working on?”

You feel like you jump about a foot in the air, ripping your headphones off as you spin to face him.

“Can I hear it?”

You stutter for a few moments before regaining enough composure to tell him that it’s nothing, just you messing around.

“Let’s hear it,” he insists.

You’re halfway to shutting your laptop when he reaches out and touches your hand to stop you (he’s really got to stop doing that, you think).

“C’mon,” he says. “Please?”

It’s the first time you’ve ever heard him use the word, and for some reason your stupid, traitorous brain imagines him adding “baby” to the end of the request that you hesitate. He takes it for consent and pushes your screen back open, pulling your headphones out of the port and deftly navigating through the software to play the track from the beginning.

You grab a pillow from the couch next to him and hold it close to your chest, admitting defeat and preparing yourself for the worst, but to your surprise, he starts bobbing his head to the beat before excitedly retrieving the notebook he’s been writing in. He settles next to you on the floor, nudging your knee slightly with his (WHAT IS WITH ALL THIS CASUAL TOUCHING, you scream in your head), and starts mouthing a verse under his breath.

“This is perfect,” he says. “Do you mind if I…?”

Rendered speechless, you shake your head as he plugs the microphone in and starts recording.

He waits for the intro to dip into a verse before starting. “Uh, baby I don’t know if you got plans tonight but you got my imagination taking flight...”

You bite your lip watching him work and tweak the verses as he goes along, letting out little cries of frustration that make you laugh when he messes up. You make suggestions here and there, but on the whole you like what he’s written for once because for the first time he isn’t talking about wanting to get into a girl’s pants but instead making a connection.

Before long you find yourself tweaking things here and there to adjust to the verses he declares he’s happy with and lay them on top of the track. You get so engrossed in what you’re doing that you don’t notice he’s begun to watch you with a different look in his eyes—almost like admiration.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, after you both agree to add a reverb to the outro.

“Hmm?” you say distractedly.

“Why didn’t you tell me you make music?”

You glance up at him, slightly annoyed that he’s trying to make conversation while you’re working on something. “You never asked,” you answer simply, and he smiles.

“Fair enough,” he replies. “Can I ask you something else?” he continues after a beat.

You sigh and mutter an irritated “hold on” while you settle on a level you’re happy with. “Okay,” you say, automatically saving the file. “What is it?”

“Do you want to take a break?” He scratches the back of his neck, looking awkward. “My legs are cramping from sitting on the floor,” he explains.

You laugh and agree, closing your laptop. You feel slightly disappointed that he’s abandoned the track you’re working on, but quickly brush it off. “It’s still raining outside though,” you point out as you watch him rise and follow suit. “What did you have in mind?”

He glances around your apartment, and his gaze settles on your Wii—the only gaming console you have in the house. “Wanna play bowling?” he suggests.

Your game of bowling quickly devolves into fits of laughter as you realize how absolutely terrible he is at it. Gracefully admitting his crushing defeat, he suggests you try watching a movie instead.

“What are you in the mood for?” you calm down long enough to ask him.

He plops onto your couch, resting an arm across the back of it. “I don’t know. What’s your favorite film?”

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” you answer automatically.

“At least you’re consistent with the tragic love stories,” he laughs. “Go for it.”

Slightly embarrassed, you settle on the couch next to him and pull up the movie. “Want some popcorn?” you ask him as Jim Carrey’s character comes into frame.

“I can make it,” he offers, moving to stand before your hand reaches out and grabs his arm in panic.

“No, really. Stay where you are,” you tell him. “I’d prefer my kitchen in one piece.”

Instead of being offended at your jab, he rolls his eyes. “Fine, but you’re gonna miss the best part,” pointing at the screen as the character runs through the train station.

You laugh. “What are you talking about? The best part’s yet to come.”

To Be Continued

[thrashff]

P.A. (Part 3)

Title: P.A. (Personal Assistant)

(Part 3/?)

Part 2 | Part 4

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader (AU)

Word count: 3,200~

Synopsis: Y/N is stuck in a dead-end job, conflicted between pursuing her music career as a producer and her social anxiety. In a tight spot for money, she takes on a new, well-paying job that she desperately needs as Personal Assistant to the cold and emotionally distant Namjoon, an up and coming rap artist. (Cameos from the rest of the Bangtan boys)

A/N: Did anyone want some more BestFriend!Yoongi? Some shirtless Namjoon? No? Just me? Okay then.

It’s Saturday night, and you and Yoongi have decided to stay in.

“You’re late,” he accuses as you enter his apartment with your copy of the key.

You roll your eyes and drop the boxes of pizza on the kitchen counter. “I forgot to bring his Majesty Namjoon his meals for tomorrow.” You shrug off your jacket and hang it on the peg behind the door, kicking off your boots at the same time. “You know, you can have pizza delivered instead of making me go get it.”

“Pizza delivery always leaves some of the toppings on the box cover,” he complains. “Bring it over, will you?”

You roll your eyes and grab the boxes, bringing them with you to the living room, where he’s playing a video game. “You’re a lazy asshole.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he responds, not even removing his eyes from the screen.

“Just reminding you, in case I haven’t said it today.” 

You open a box and take a slice, holding it in front of his face so that he can take a bite before taking one of your own. Using this method, the both of you eat through the first pizza as you quietly watch him play. Afterwards you get up to get your drinks, slipping a straw into his so he can drink without having to pause, and you stretch out on the sofa, resting your head on his lap as you browse your social media accounts.

“How was your first week?” Yoongi finally asks, having reached a checkpoint.

You glance at the screen to check his progress, and then shrug. “He’s an ice king and kind of harsh,” you confess. “But a job is a job, and he could be worse, I guess.”

“It’s funny,” he says, finally putting the controller down and opening the second box. “He’s only like that around you. I mean, he’s a perfectionist in the studio and pretty authoritative, but he’s a total goofball during down time,”

“Wait,” you say, pulling yourself up into a seated position. “You’ve been working with him?”

“Yeah,” he answers, mouth full of food. “I was ahead of schedule on my EP, and he asked me to produce one of the songs on the album.”

“And you like working with him?” you ask incredulously, and your best friend looks at you weirdly, nodding slowly. “Ugh!” you complain, whacking him in the arm with one of the throw pillows. “He’s an automaton! He’s not human! And all he raps about are chicks and how big his dick is!”

“Freedom of speech,” he says, dodging your attack. “What’s your point?”

You glare at him. “You’re supposed to be on my side, you know,”

“Yoongi is only on Yoongi’s side. Do you not know this yet?” he points out.

“You’re terrible and I hate you,” you tell him—something that is quickly becoming a mantra. You hope that if you say it enough times he’ll disappear, like an evil spirit or a bad dream.

“Stop pouting,” he complains. “It was just an observation.”

You hold the pillow you used to smack him close to your chest. “Maybe he just doesn’t like me,” you mumble into the fabric.

Yoongi nods enthusiastically. “That’s probably it. You are butt fucking ugly. Maybe he doesn’t like your face.”

You snap and jump on him, digging a knee into his ribcage and wrestling him down. “My face is a work of art, you asshole! I’ll show you ‘butt fucking ugly’!”

He raises his fingers in a cross at you, twisting to get off the couch and away. “Y/N! Don’t come near me, you animal! You haven’t gotten your rabies shot yet! Get back! Get back!”

You bare your teeth at him in a snarl, and chase him around the apartment until you both collapse on the bed in laughter. The quick game of cat and mouse leaves both of you panting, and he closes his eyes, blinding reaching out and patting the closest body part he can reach—which just so happens to be your face.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. Someday they’ll invent technology that will make you as pretty as me,” he tries to say soothingly.

You make a face and stick your tongue out, making him quickly retract his offending appendage. “Yeah, and when that day comes, I’ll have to apologize to the entire population.”

“Why do you hate me so much?” he whines, maneuvering so that he’s lying next to you. He loops an arm around yours, curling slightly to embrace it like a pillow. His chin settles into the crook of your shoulder, and you automatically tilt your head so that your own chin rests on top of his. “All I do is tell you the truth.”

“Sometimes I just… sometimes I don’t wanna hear it, Suga,” you say wearily, reverting to your childhood nickname for him.

He swings a leg over yours, knowing the weight comforts you. A comfortable silence stretches between you, until he quietly says, “Jimin asked me why you dance so well.”

You blink at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean for him to find out,” you say.

“I know, Ducky.” It’s an annoying nickname, brought on in high school when he likened your dancing to a duck’s waddle, but it’s grown on you over the years. A hand reaches up and tugs at a lock of your hair. “How’s your back?”

“I still get shooting pains when I’m standing too long,” you answer honestly. “But it didn’t hurt after dancing with Jimin, so maybe it’s getting used to movement again.”

“You should dance more often,” he states.

“And you should write better verses.”

“You should get plastic surgery.”

“You should brush your teeth.”

“You should give me a massage.”

“You should stop drinking so much.”

“You should admit you find Namjoon attractive.”

“You should SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

You aren’t an idiot, you remind yourself in the days that follow. Of course Namjoon is attractive. Every girl in the building is probably already part of his fanclub, and he naturally commands the attention of every room he enters no matter who’s already in it. He’s tall and lean and exceptionally handsome in an off-kilter kind of way—the kind of face and presence that’s difficult to forget even if you try. More often than not you even find yourself jealous of his sense of style, admiring the way he puts his outfits together and complaining to yourself that God just really isn’t fair.

But more than his physical appearance and in spite of yourself, you start to pay more attention to how he interacts with everyone else in the studio. You notice that he always makes the receptionist in the front office laugh when he greets her in the morning, and that he gives the security guard in the lobby a special handshake whenever he sees him. He grows close to Director Bang very quickly, and the other producers he’s consulted with all seem to respect him.

You also notice that he breaks almost everything he comes into contact with—everything from doorknobs to his own glasses, like he doesn’t realize his own strength, or like he lowkey gets excited so easily that his usually graceful movements become brash.

Even when you’re busy, you find yourself noting even his smaller habits, like how he chews on his bottom lip when he’s anxious, or that he subconsciously wears thumb holes into all of his sweaters. In fact, the only time you don’t watch him is during the times you can’t—when he’s holed up in the studio working, or when he leaves to go home.

Yoongi reports, even though you never really ask, that his album is coming together quickly. Whenever he brings up your “boss,” you stare at him blankly to make it clear that you don’t care and simply return to whatever it was you were doing before he started talking.

The days breeze by, and you fall into a comfortable routine. It gets to the point where you can tell what kind of tea he needs in the mornings just by how he’s dressed—he wears black or grey when he’s frustrated or bored, so you give him White Peony to help soothe his nerves; accents of color (usually pink) when he’s in a good mood, so you give him Tie Guan Yin to help keep help sustain it; earth tones when he’s in a fit of melancholy, so you make him Earl Grey to help ground him.

You begin to read his body language and mood shifts so well that he’s stopped telling you what to get him for lunch, and actually allows you to choose for him. He’s as cold and dismissive to you as ever, but over time and continued exposure, you both begin to ease into each other’s presence like it’s a natural part of your day. He slowly begins to trust you more, giving you more and more responsibility in the planning of his debut, and things finally begin to look up.

“Namjoon,” you call, swiping the keycard that lets you into his apartment. “I’m here!”

A quick look around shows you that he isn’t in the kitchen or living room, so you sigh and set down the bag of food on the counter.

“Namjoon?” you call again, slipping your bag off your shoulder and hanging it on the peg he’s assigned you.

“I’m in here!” he calls from the bedroom-turned-home-studio, and you sigh and swipe the extra-large chai latte he requested from the kitchen and make your way over.

“Fuck!” you exclaim, freezing in the doorway at the sight of him standing shirtless in front of his closet. Your mouth falls open in shock, and you gape at him stupidly for a few seconds, trying and failing not to stare at his abs or perfectly toned arms.

“What do you think you’re doing, Y/N?” he exclaims, his voice an octave higher than normal as he pulls the shirt he’s holding closer to his chest, as though to protect his dignity.

The question finally forces you from your shocked state, and your hand automatically snaps up to cover your now-shut eyes with a painful whack. “Ouch!” you complain, rubbing your forehead as you shove his drink in front of you blindly. “When you called I thought you meant you wanted me to bring this to you!” you explain in a rush, feeling your cheeks burn.

Against your will your knees lock together awkwardly, as though it will help alleviate the sudden pool of tension in your lower belly. It’s been a while since you’ve had sex, granted, but holy sex-cuts, seeing a man’s body shouldn’t have this effect on you, let alone his. He’s your boss, you berate yourself furiously. What if he fires you for this?

You hear the rustle of fabric, and sense him walking across the carpeted floor in socked feet closer to you. He takes the drink from you, his fingers grazing yours ever-so-slightly. “I’m decent now,” he informs you, having seemingly recovered from his initial surprise, and you drop your hand but keep your eyes on the floor.

“Sorry,” you mumble before you turn around and march out of the doorway and back to the kitchen, where you place his breakfast burrito on a plate and set it on the counter with his usual condiments. He isn’t far behind you, sipping his drink, looking completely unflustered. If anything, he now looks mildly entertained by your reaction.

“I have those mood boards you wanted me to print,” you tell him as he takes a seat on the barstool across from you.

He nods. “Could you set them up in the living room? I want to see them laid out by concept.”

You mumble an affirmative and head into the adjoining room, glad for the slight reprieve from his presence, if only to collect yourself and will your cheeks to stop burning. You set up the boards as he requested, all possible pegs for his album. He finishes his breakfast quickly and joins you, studying them intently.

“What do you think?” he suddenly asks, making you startle. It’s the first time he’s ever asked you for your opinion, and you blink at him slowly, wondering how, after a very long month, he still manages to surprise you.

You chew on the inside of your cheek, considering how honestly you should answer him before deciding fuck it, the worst he can do is dismiss your opinion, seeing as how you just survived seeing him shirtless and managed to keep your job.

“Well,” you begin tentatively, and point to the first set of pegs. “This one clearly thrives on a lot of old-school hiphop references, but is it really relevant now? I mean, most of the people who listen to your music probably aren’t even old enough to know what you’re referencing, or that it’s meant to be an homage,”

You glance at him, but he’s just nodding, a hand in the pocket of his jeans as he presses the edge of his paper coffee cup to his mouth. “Go on,” he hums.

You turn to the second set and shake your head. “This one is the complete opposite, like someone took a grade schooler’s idea of the year 2000 and wrapped it in tin foil. And I don’t mean in a cool, TLC circa No Scrubs kind of way,”

“Too much Sisqo, not enough Tupac?” he jokes, and it surprises a genuine laugh from you.

“I don’t think anyone but him can rock the metallic silver lipstick, no offense,” you return, and he chuckles.

“And the last one?” he prompts.

“It’s pretty,” you say, after a few moments.

“Pretty?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow.

You grimace. “Yeah, but that’s all it is. It’s missing something, an edge. Something that makes it more than just aesthetically pleasing.” Your eyes dart back to him, all black fabric and lean lines in the soft morning sun filtering in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. “What are you planning to call your album, anyway?”

He returns your gaze, and you straighten your posture at the scrutinizing look in his eyes. “Rap Monster,” he finally answers.

“Rap Monster?” you repeat.

“Yeah, you know, because I am a rap monster. My old StormSound handle used to be ‘rapmon’,” he explains.

Your brain spasms, unable to come up with a reply to that. Instead you say, “Then what these concepts is missing is grit. None of them have that feral, street-smart quality that your verses have.”

“You’ve listened to my songs?”

You shrug, crossing your arms in front of your chest protectively because something about the question suddenly seems too personal. “Just your informal online releases, not a lot of what you’ve been working on for the debut,” you admit. Unable to stop yourself, you add, “I’m more than just a pretty face, you know,” in what you hope is a joking manner, remembering what he told Yoongi and Director Bang the first time you met.

All he says is “hmm,” and you try to brush off your annoyance at his nonchalance.

“So what you’re saying is it should be gritty,” he confirms.

“I’m suggesting,” you say carefully, “that it should be an honest visual representation of the music. All the best hiphop albums have been about things that are real—sex, love, politics, struggle and strife. None of these-” you gesture at the boards. “-reflect any of those things. They don’t reflect your music, and they don’t reflect who you are.”

“Who I am?” he repeats.

“When you started out, how did you imagine yourself as an artist?” you ask him.

He chuckles at that, and runs a hand through his hair, turning away from you. You try not to stare at his throat as he takes another sip of his drink, mulling over the question.

“To be honest, I’ve been dreaming about making it big since I was 9 years old. I imagined myself walking everywhere with a giant spotlight on me, finally standing out of the crowd. Special, you know? Worthy.” He says the last part in a low voice; so low that you can barely hear him, as if he expects you to make fun of him.

Surprising yourself, you don’t make a comment about it being vain. His words are so sincere and the expression on his face is so painfully fucking human that it makes your chest contract.

“Then the album art should be exactly that,” you nod.

He lets out a bark of sudden laughter and turns abruptly back to face you, his eyes widening at the resolute expression on your face. His surprise at your words doesn’t last long, because he quickly schools his features into a neutral expression and takes a long sip of his drink. “I’ll think about it,” he finally says. “Make sure the samples I asked for are loaded onto the blue hard drive at Studio C. I’ll be in at 11.”

Recognizing the dismissal, you nod and make your way to the front door, retrieving your bag as you go. You’re halfway out when he calls out to you again.

“And Y/N?”

“Yes, Namjoon?” you respond, turning around, your hand on the knob, ready to leave.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, but even though his expression looks indifferent, the corners of his eyes are crinkled up, and you know that he’s smiling inside.

Your limbs go numb at the sight, and all you can do is nod.

You let out a long breath when you finally find yourself alone in the elevator, a stupid smile on your face and feeling, surprisingly enough, like your first actual conversation wasn’t a complete disaster.

The camaraderie between you and Namjoon, unfortunately, doesn’t last long. Within a few days he’s back to being an actual, real-life monster instead of a rapping one; berating you for imaginary infractions and acting disappointed with every decision you make. Your reserve of patience is quickly running dry, and even though you hate bitching about things, you find yourself ranting to Yoongi more and more often.

Even though he just shakes his head at you and ignores you for the most part, you feel better for having gotten it off your chest. You also find yourself sneaking into the dance studios more and more often, finding that the only healthy way you can vent out your frustration is through dance.

Saltwater is the cure for everything, you think, remembering one of your favorite quotes. Sweat, tears, and the sea.

Sadly, a visit to the beach was unimaginable on your schedule, and the only tears you want to see are of Namjoon’s suffering, so you start to dance harder and harder, pushing your body to do things you’ve been afraid to try since the doctors declared you physically fit again.

The only bright side to the situation is that thanks to the income that being Namjoon’s babysitter affords you, you’re finally able to pay off your loan from your parents and are even able to take classes again. And because you’re always looking for ways to work off stress, you find yourself writing and making more music than before.

On the day that you do your weekly groceries and can afford food healthier than instant noodles, you feel so overwhelmed you want to cry.

It’s the first time in years that you finally feel like your life is back on track.

To Be Continued

[thrashff]

P.A. (Part 2)

Title: P.A. (Personal Assistant)

(Part 2/?)

Part 1 | Part 3 

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader (AU)

Word count: 3,200~

Synopsis: Y/N is stuck in a dead-end job, conflicted between pursuing her music career as a producer and her social anxiety. In a tight spot for money, she takes on a new, well-paying job that she desperately needs as Personal Assistant to the cold and emotionally distant Namjoon, an up and coming rap artist. (Cameos from the rest of the Bangtan Boys)

A/N: Hello! Finally, we meet Namjoon! Also a little Jimin because I can’t help myself :3

You grimace as you catch your reflection in the mirrors that decorate the elevator. You had been up late last night at Jin’s apartment downtown, going through your clothes and putting them together so you would look “decent” (in Yoongi’s words) for your first week on the job. The shadows under your eyes look like they have a life of their own, but you have to admit, thanks to Jin’s help (and hilarious commentary), you were actually dressed like a responsible adult for once.

It’s been two weeks since your best friend managed to convince you to take this job as some new rap act’s personal tour guide/assistant/whatever, and while the idea of babysitting a diva isn’t one that appeals to you, it pays well enough to turn the tides—at least for a while. Leaving your clerk job hadn’t posed much of a problem—no one in the office had even bothered learning your name, even after months of working there.

The elevator dings, signaling your arrival at Yoongi’s floor and startling you from your thoughts. He meets you at the elevator bay and automatically hands you a cup of iced coffee, just the way you like it. “You look like shit,” he points out. “But at least you look like a human being.”

“I would have gotten more sleep if you hadn’t bailed on me last night,” you point out matter-of-factly.

He shrugs. “Had to work late. Slept in the studio.” The wrinkles in his shirt show you that he isn’t lying. “Jin did a good job,” he says as he takes a sip from his own mug of coffee. “Are you ready for your first day?”

You straighten your shoulders and down half your coffee in one gulp. “I’m in fucking heels, Yoong. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” you respond.

“Don’t worry, Director Bang likes you. Even if you fuck up, I’m sure we can still hand him your demo,” he jokes.

“You’re terrible and I hate you,” you state.

The elevator dings, signaling the topmost floor, where the directors had their offices.

“Good luck, panda eyes.”

“I hope you get a papercut, fu-… Hello, Director Bang! Good morning!” You drop into a deep a bow as you can muster without losing your balance in the godforsaken heels Jin picked out for you.

Yoongi chuckles behind his hand, and it takes all your self-control not to smack him then and there. You paste on the biggest smile you can muster as the label’s creative director nods at you.

“Ah, Y/N! Nice to see you again!” He shakes your hand as you cross the reception area to greet him. “You’re early, I like that! That shows you have good work ethic!”

Yoongi clears his throat, and you toss him the most withering glare you can get away with while the older man isn’t looking. “Thank you, sir,” you manage to say sweetly.

“Well, come on, let’s meet Namjoon.” He motions for you to follow him back into the elevator, and the two of you follow obediently.

Yoongi and the Director manage to make small talk about work on the way, with you nodding and smiling at the appropriate intervals. All the while, you can’t shake the coiling tightness in your stomach, like that feeling of climbing up a rollercoaster and knowing it’s about to drop you abruptly. As the three of you maneuver through the hallways of recording booths and studios, you suddenly can’t help the chill up your spine—the feeling that tells you something big in your life is about to happen and you can’t stop it, even though you can’t tell if it’s going to change you for better or worse.

You take another casual sip of your coffee to help you swallow the dryness in your throat. The Director stops at the studio at the very end of the hall, the largest in the building, built more like a small amphitheater to accommodate orchestra ensembles or choirs. You make your way inside, with Yoongi and The Director leading the way, to find the booth filled with a catchy beat filtering in through the speakers. A man is standing in the “aquarium,” or the place where the artists play. He’s bent over his laptop as he tweaks the beat, the hood of his oversized jacket pulled over his head. Faint mumbling can be heard from the microphone in front of him.

The Director strides over to the console and pushes a button, allowing him to be heard in the aquarium. “Ahem,” he starts, so as not to surprise his newest talent. “Hello, Namjoon. We’re here with Min Yoongi and Y/N.”

The man abruptly taps a button on his laptop and the beat stops. He turns around and your breath hitches in your chest. His eyes crinkle into a smile, and you feel your heart plummet into his dimples. “Hello, Director Bang,” He takes off his headphones and pushes his hood back, revealing a head of purple-tinged gray hair under a black bandanna, and wide eyes that wouldn’t look out of place on a manga character.

You exchange a quick glance with Yoongi, who gives you the smallest shrug of his shoulders. It’s enough to signal that you both agree—this guy doesn’t look like a rapper at all. You do concede, mentally, that at least he has a nice speaking voice.

“Ah,” Namjoon says, scratching the back of his neck. “I was actually just making a beat. It was bugging me on the ride over here, I hope you don’t mind that I made myself at home in the studio.”

“Oh, no worries Namjoon. Please, carry on. Show us what you’re working on.”

You’re glad that Yoongi’s fringe has gotten a bit long, because at least it’s hiding the eyebrow you’re sure has gone up. You try to keep your expression neutral as the music restarts. Director Bang makes himself comfortable on one of the chairs, as does Yoongi, steepling his fingers together as he leans forward on his elbows. This leaves you to lean against a wall instead of taking a seat on the couch, wanting to see how the good this new guy was.

His head starts to bob as he leaves his laptop and walks up to the mic so that he’s facing the booth. He fishes out his phone and presumably opens a file to start reading from it. For the next two minutes, he drops verses about catching a girl’s eye in the middle of the club. You catch Yoongi nodding in time to the beat, his mouth moving in silent anticipation of the other rapper’s rhymes. Director Bang has his standard, neutral expression on his face so you can’t tell what he’s thinking, so instead you focus on quelling your urge to reach towards the console and start mixing his beat properly.

You had done your research, of course. All of this Namjoon’s past releases had to do with romance, or asserting dominance. It wasn’t quite to your tastes, but you figure that has nothing to do with you doing your job anyway. You could be objective enough about it to admit that he was good at word play, at didn’t play into the pitfalls that so many other young rappers did.

Finally, Namjoon ends the track and makes his way out of the aquarium, running a hand through his hair. “Hello, thank you for waiting,” he says formally. He extends a hand towards Yoongi, inclining his head. “My name is Kim Namjoon, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Yoongi opens his mouth to respond, but Namjoon beats him to it.

“You’re Min Yoongi, aka Agust D. You’ve been rapping since you were in 6th grade, and have been on the underground scene since they startled letting you in the clubs.” The other boy smirks a bit at the flabbergasted look on Yoongi’s face. “I know all about you. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Yoongi finally shakes off his surprise and takes Namjoon’s hand, giving it a single, firm shake. “Same,” he says. He looks at you then, meeting your eye. You push off from the wall you’re leaning against and discreetly wipe the sweat off your palms. “This is Y/N. She’ll be your personal assistant, starting today.”

You bow slightly, hoping your smile looks sincere, but Namjoon barely looks at you, let alone extends a hand to shake. “Hello,” he says distractedly, turning to Director Bang. “Director, would it be alright if I had her stock the apartment with groceries? I would appreciate having a home cooked meal once in a while. She can cook, can’t she?”

She is right here, you think furiously. Yoongi glances at you, shaking his head slightly. Not a battle you want to fight right now, he says with a look. You take a deep breath and exhale, quietly trying to calm yourself down as the Director and Namjoon speak.

“Y/N will be available to you from 8AM to 6PM, but if you would like you can give her a list of errands you would like her to do, as well as preferences for your rider and such. She also has access to your expense account,” Director Bang explained. “Other than that she will be taking care of mediating between our marketing and PR departments for the debut, and basically anything that has to do with the business end so you can focus on the music.”

At this point Namjoon glances back at you, giving you a quick once over that brings unexpected heat to your cheeks. “I’ll send you my list of groceries, so you can go ahead and do that while we get to work here,” he says dismissively.

You narrow your eyes at him, disliking him so much that you know the next six months are going to be long and difficult. “Yes, sir,” you respond in a tone that has his gaze snapping back to you in mild surprise. You mime a mock curtsy and bow towards the Director and Yoongi. “I’ll see myself out. Director, Yoongi.”

On your way out you hear Namjoon say quietly to Director Bang, “Sir, I had requested someone who was easy on the eyes, but this one…” before the soundproof door shuts.

This leaves you so angry that you punch the elevator button so hard it opens a cut on your knuckles. A small part of you only worries that you’ve broken something in the building, while the rest of you couldn’t care less.

Over the course of the next week, you quickly learn and get accustomed to Namjoon’s preferences, like how he likes to have his apples sliced and how he prefers tea to coffee. He gives you a detailed list of his favorite recipes, leading you to believe that he’s either a control freak or obsessive-compulsive. He spends three hours teaching you how he likes to keep things in order at his home, which makes you glad that he’s staying in a swanky serviced apartment, because at least you don’t have to do any cleaning.

You used to think that boys were a lot simpler than girls, but Namjoon is completely different from any of the boys you’ve known. He likes to have his shirts folded a certain way, and his sweaters in another, completely different method. You learn which specific clothes need to be hung in the closet when he coldly informs you that you’ve ruined one of his favorite shirts. You aren’t allowed to throw anything out because he scribbles lyrics on everything, even the backs of old receipts, so you quickly figure out a filing system for them. In another universe you figure it might be endearing, but in this one it's just shy of impossible.

He also isn’t afraid to have you do things even though you’re a girl, like cleaning his sneakers or running across town to buy lunch at a restaurant that he found on the internet.

It’s on one such errand that you find yourself kicking off your heels and swearing under your breath as you massage your aching soles, taking a break after delivering his lunch at the studio. Fuck it, you think as you trudge barefoot to the cafeteria to make yourself another cup of coffee and hopefully have a quiet lunch without him sending you back upstairs for forgetting his dipping sauce or some such other ridiculousness.

None of this was your actual job, you complain to yourself. You were supposed to be sitting in meetings with marketing, planning the debut schedule and the artist showcase, calling stations, setting up interviews. Not playing personal slave.

It's a rainy day, and you’re slightly damp from running through the downpour. You lose yourself in thoughts of how to get away with killing him as you sit by the window and stir your coffee, when suddenly Jimin slides into the seat across from you, smiling warmly.

“Hi, Y/N!”

Startled, you jump and almost spill your coffee all over the table, but he quickly reaches out and tips it back upright. You smile. Dancer’s reflexes.

“Hello, Jimin. How are you?” you say mildly, glad to see a friendly face after the stressful week you’ve had.

He looks a bit surprised that you’re actually welcoming him, but takes it as a good sign. “I’m good! I’ve missed your face!” He begins to unwrap his sandwich, seemingly unmindful of the way said face is turning pink. “How have you been? I know you’ve been here every day this week, but I can never seem to catch you!”

“Yes, well,” you give your lunch a particularly vicious poke with your chopsticks. “Namjoon has been keeping me busy.”

“Is he the new rap act? Haven’t met him. He hasn’t been to the dance studios,” Jimin tells you as he makes quick work of his sandwich. “Hey, do you listen to Aminé?”

The two of you spend the next fifteen minutes pleasantly talking about music and exchanging recommendations, and you find yourself having fun despite yourself.

“You know, you really should get out of those wet clothes or you’ll get sick,” Jimin points out.

This guy is so sweet it’s giving you a toothache, but you shrug. “I don’t have extra clothes.”

“I have a shirt that shouldn’t be too big on you,” Jimin offers.

You stop yourself from raising an eyebrow. Jimin is so lean, built like the classical dancer that he is, that you want to point out his clothes might even be too small for you. Before you can say anything, however, he’s already on his feet, tugging you onto yours and leading you towards the main dance studio.

It’s a large practice space, with wooden floors walls covered in mirrors. The wall with the door leading outside is stark white, as is the ceiling. Music is playing on hidden speakers, despite no one being in the room at the time. Jimin shoots you a sheepish look, making it obvious that he had been the one to leave the sound system on before he left for lunch. You shake your head at him teasingly. You don’t notice that he still hasn’t let go of your hand.

“Wait here,” he says as you drop your bag and heels onto the floor, taking in the space. “I’d invite you to change in the showers here, but-” He pinches his nose and makes a face. “Dancers can get sweaty and stinky.”

You smile, deciding not to tell him that you know all about what dancers are like. Instead you nod, and he flashes you another grin before he disappears into the locker room. You walk closer towards the far wall, watching how your reflection moves. It’s been too long since you’ve been in a room like this.

The opening notes to one of your favorite songs starts playing, and before you can help yourself you’re already moving along to CRW’s cover of Electric Feel. Your limbs go through motions that you haven’t done in what feels like a lifetime. You abandon watching yourself in the mirror and close your eyes, letting yourself feel the music and move.

“Standing there with nothing on, she gonna teach me how to swim,” you mouth, voice barely above a whisper, and immediately startle as a warm hand places itself tentatively on your waist. Your eyes snap open to find Jimin behind you.

“Don’t stop,” he whispers into your ear, his eyes moving towards your reflection. Your gaze follows his, and he nudges you softly with his hand, urging you to start dancing again.

Relenting, you spin away from him. “Turn me on with your electric feel,” you pick up, gesturing him towards you with a crook of your finger, swinging your hips out.

“I said ooh girl,” he nods, closing the space between you.

“Shock me like an electric eel,” you laugh, suddenly feeling warmer than you did a few seconds ago.

“Baby girl,” he mouths, his gaze darkening as he smirks at you and quickly turns you so your back is pressed into his chest.

“Turn me on with your electric feel,” you finish breathlessly.

The both of you move in time to the music, watching each other in the mirrors as you dance in tandem. You decide to show off during the next verse and do some freestyle contemporary floor work and gymnastics mixed with a few hiphop moves, and he falls back, watching you appreciatively before cutting in during the chorus, doing some isolations and vogue moves, and doing something completely ridiculous with his hips when the beat drops again, and you burst out laughing at his antics.

He runs at you, a look of amused surprise on his face as he places his hands back around your waist, pushing at you playfully. “Hey, that isn’t very nice! I didn’t laugh at you!” he complains.

You prop your hands on your knees, bending over to catch your breath. Without realizing it, this brings your forehead directly onto his chest. You heave with laughter. “Oh my god, Jimin, you’re definitely something else!” you tease.

His hand reaches out and gently tilts your chin up to face him, and you look up to find that same heated expression on his face. “So are you,” he says quietly.

You startle, realizing how close your faces are and take a few awkward steps back. “I meant out of this world, like an alien,” you joke awkwardly, placing a hand on your hip and fanning your face with the other.

His smile dampens, but before he can say anything, your phone starts ringing and you automatically rush towards your purse to answer it.

Of course, you think, rolling your eyes at the name on the screen. Leave it to Namjoon to ruin a nice moment. Regardless, you pick up to his voice, completely devoid of any warmth, reminding you to pick his blazer up from the drycleaners for his dinner meeting that night. You respond in the affirmative and click off, sliding your phone back into your bag.

“That’s Namjoon. I have to go run an errand,” you explain to Jimin, slipping back into your heels. “This was, uh, fun. Thanks,” you tell him, turning towards the door.

“Y/N, hold on,” he calls, jogging to catch up with you.

You turn, your shoulders tense, wondering what he wants. Instead, he approaches you with a hand outstretched, holding one of his shirts. “Here you go,” he says kindly. “You can just give it back to me next time.”

You accept it, nodding your thanks. “I’ll wash it, don’t worry.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it! I didn’t know you could dance like that, you know. I mean, we’ve danced at clubs but that was-”

“Nothing, really, just stuff I saw on tv,” you interrupt. “I really have to go Jimin, but thank you again.” You flash him one last smile and speedwalk towards the elevator bay. As comfortable as you were talking to Jimin alone and dancing together, there are just some conversations you’d rather not have, especially when they brought up such uncomfortable memories.

To Be Continued

[thrashff]

P.A.

Title: P.A. (Personal Assistant)

(Part 1/?)

Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Part Ten

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader (AU)

Word count: 2,700~

Synopsis: Y/N is stuck in a dead-end job, conflicted between pursuing her music career as a producer and her social anxiety. In a tight spot for money, she takes on a new, well-paying job that she desperately needs as Personal Assistant to the cold and emotionally distant Namjoon, an up and coming rap artist. (Cameos from the rest of the Bangtan boys)

A/N: Hello! I’m very, very new to this, so comments and suggestions would be appreciated! I got the idea in to my head and my brain refused to let it go, so this will be a multi-parter, seeing where it will take me. (Very) slow burn, attempted fluff, alternate character histories, and eventual smut, maybe! I hope you guys enjoy!

It had been a long day, and it wasn’t showing any signs of getting better anytime soon. You stare gloomily at the cheap wall clock hanging on the greige wall of your cubicle, wishing fervently for 5PM to arrive faster. What feels like an eternity later, the second hand finally moves, and you shove your fist into your mouth to stifle the loud groan that escapes you.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. You had done everything right—gotten top marks in high school, finished your college degree, hit the pavement the second you graduated looking for a job. Unfortunately, it was a more cut-throat world than you anticipated, and the only job you could find was as a clerk’s assistant. The pay was bad and the hours were worse, but it was enough to keep you fed and in your tiny studio apartment. You figure things could be a lot worse.

You take a deep breath and square your shoulders, pulling the next stack of files closer to you. If you’re going to be stuck here for another four hours, you might as well get some work done.

Like clockwork, your cellphone rings at exactly 7PM, more or less halfway through your commute home. You startle awake on the bus, automatically clicking the control button on your headphones to answer the call, and a familiar voice greets you.

“Oy, Y/N, are you there?”

“Yes, Yoongi, I’m here,” you mumble, rubbing sleep from your eyes.

“You useless lump, you fell asleep on the train again didn’t you?”

You roll your eyes as you fish your phone out of your pocket, even though you know your best friend can’t see you. “I was watching The Art of Rhyme last night, fuckface. I wasn’t doing what you do.”

He chuckles, the sound low and threatening to anyone else but you. “Which would be what, exactly?”

A dangerous smile dances on your lips and you lower your voice to a whisper so that no one else on the train can hear you say, “Jack off every night to demented clown porn.”

The jibe is enough to startle a laugh from him, forcing him to drop his default pretense of being scary. “YAH, you’re so depraved!” Yoongi exclaims, so loudly that it hurts your ears.

You chuckle, taking an earbud out and massaging your ear. “Probably, but do you have to be so loud? It hurts my ears,” you complain.

“Serves you right, pervert.”

“What do you want, Yoongi?” you sigh, thumbing quickly through the (lack of) notifications on your phone.

“I have a proposition for you,” he says, and you can hear the smirk in his voice. Not for the first time, you wonder what life would be like without a sadist for a best friend.

“No, I will not have sex with you, no matter how desperate for money I get,” you deadpan, rising from your seat as you near your stop. The old lady next to you sends you a judgmental glare, and you flash her your canines in response.

Yoongi groans. “Do you have to be so gross all the time?”

“Do you?”

“You are such a child,” he scolds. “Come out to Roots tonight, I have a prospective job for you.”

Noting the change in his tone, you know that there isn’t room for you to argue, no matter how badly you want to collapse into bed and sleep for the next twelve hours. You merely grunt in response.

“Good. And dress nicely, will you? Don’t embarrass me.”

You make a sound of protest, but he’s already clicked off the call. You feel your face flush as you rush off the bus and onto the sidewalk. Nice? And what the hell does he mean, embarrass him!?

After making yourself some kimchi fried rice (and stowing some in a container to give to Yoongi), you hop into the shower and try to wash off your stress. You do the math in your head and realize that unless you find some other way to supplement your income, you’re going to burn through the last of the loan you took from your parents and you won’t be able to meet your rent.

You sigh as you dry your hair. You suppose that whatever Yoongi has in mind, you’ll just have to take it. You slip into a pair of torn black denims and an old, oversized Thrasher shirt, tie your hair into a high ponytail and slip into a pair of Vans, hoping that whatever it is won’t force you to sell anything you aren’t willing to part with, like your dignity.

You arrive at Roots, an underground dancehall club in the middle of the city, a little past 9PM. Sung Min, the bouncer, recognizes you and lets you into the club without a word, and you wink at him as the people waiting in line groan and complain loudly. It pays to have friends in the right places, you think as you elbow past the crowd to your usual table in the back, cordoned off by heavy black drapes.

Yoongi is already sitting in the center of the booth, sprawled out like the prince that he is, flocked, as usual, by Jin, the owner of the club, and Jimin. The nods at you as you join them, and almost automatically, a drink is placed in front of you.

Jimin grins and greets you enthusiastically, while Jin gives you a more subdued nod of his head in greeting. You can tell he’s already thinking of a corny dad joke to tell you. You smile at them and take a long sip of your drink.

“Long time no see, Y/N! What have you been up to?” Jimin starts.

You shrug. As kind as Yoongi’s music friends have always been to you, you find social interactions exhausting and you’re already wishing you were back at home. In the back of your mind, you make plans to do more digging for new samples when you get home, even as you reply to him.

“The usual,” you respond noncommittally.

Undeterred, Jimin flashes you a grin, and you wonder how so much sunshine can fit in a single person. “You look really nice!” he compliments, and you grimace, hiding your flush behind another sip of your drink.

“Let her be, Jimin,” Yoongi says, smirking at your discomfort. Jin excuses himself and disappears into the crowd, and you automatically take his seat on the couch next to your best friend, tiredly resting your head on his shoulder. Automatically, his arm wraps around you and you bask in the comfort that gives you for a few moments.

“So,” he begins.

You sigh. “What?”

“Shots?”

There’s a glint in his eye that lets you know he’s had a rough day, so as much as you want to decline, you give in to your best friend since childhood and merely groan. “Fine,” you relent. “It’s Friday anyway.”

As if on cue, Jin returns with a waiter in tow, who’s holding a bottle of expensive tequila and a tray of shot glasses, salt, and slices of lemon. “I bet I’ll have you all under the table by midnight,” he jokes.

The three of you let out a chorus of boos at him, yelling out your own bets. Surrounded by their efforts at cheering up both you and Yoongi, you start to relax for the first time in weeks. Twelve shot glasses filled to the brim despite there only being four of you, but you all rise automatically and raise one each in a toast.

“To good health!” Jin announces.

“To great love!” Jimin cheers, and you shake the feeling that he was looking directly at you when he says it.

“To better sex!” Yoongi says, making Jimin flush and Jin punch him in the arm playfully from across the table.

“To excellent friends!” you laugh, and each of you takes three shots consecutively. It’s going to be a fun night, you think, as the alcohol burns through you like a fever.

You take turns dancing with all the boys, even Jin as he awkwardly whips out the most ridiculous moves with you. Yoongi rants about his long day at the label as he spins you around the dance floor, the alcohol having loosened his tongue considerably.

He had been recruited by a big company the year after high school, thanks to his quickly spreading reputation as an underground rapper in your hometown. Being so young in the industry, a lot of executives had tried to take advantage of him, forcing him to mature a lot faster. His brutally honest and straight-forward personality had helped, and you like to think that him staying friends with you had kept him grounded. You were the only one left from his “old life” who still treated him like a normal person and knew him best out of anyone else, even the fellow artists that he now worked daily with. You both had a lot in common—reserved on the surface, but goofy and caring only to those who had earned your trust.

But because he was getting more and more popular by the day, he confessed that he was afraid he was growing harder and colder, and that he had been feeling more and more commodified, like aspects of his personality were being packaged and sold off. People copping his style, copying his flow. You shake your head and give him the advice he already knows but needs to hear. You remind him that he’s human, and that it’s normal to feel the way he does; to use his music as an outlet, to make the most of his platform to reach out to people who are feeling the same way. To share what makes him special and help other people find what works for them. “That’s your gift, after all,” you remind him, and he tugs affectionately on your ponytail in response.

Selfishly, you use his struggles to validate your own decisions. This is why you don’t want any part of the music industry, you tell yourself. You don’t belong in that world. A smaller voice in the back of your head tells you, because you aren’t strong enough to survive.

Feeling better, Yoongi slings his arm around you and you both make your way to the bar for more shots. Jin is behind it, talking to one of the bartenders, while Jimin is off to one side already being chatted up by a small group of girls. He gives you a small wave when he catches your eye, and you give him a smile in return.

Yoongi notices the exchange, and flashes you a knowing look. “He’s in love with you, you know,”

You snort, unladylike. “He doesn’t know me,”

He chortles. “True. If he knew you, he’d be running in the other direction,”

You give him a swift kick to the shin, and he grimaces and clutches it. “Yow! If you injure me, woman, you’ll have hell to pay!”

“Try me, shuga bakemono,”

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Seriously though,” he says as he stumbles onto a barstool and massages his calf. “You should fix that before it goes too far,”

“What do you want me to do?” you ask miserably. “I don’t even know what he sees in me; I’m not that pretty.”

“You have gained weight since taking that office job,” he points out. “And you’re really bad at make-up and clothes.”

You snap your fingers sharply in front of his face. “Focus!”

He tilts his head at you, studying your frowning face. “You’re not that disgusting, I guess,” he finally allows. “But Jimin is soft. He’s one of the biggest marshmallows I know. I don’t want to see him hurt or disappointed.”

You sigh and take another shot. “Neither do I. He’s a cinnamon roll.” You glance at Jimin from the corner of your eye and admire the way the light catches in his eyes, the line of his jaw and the way his biceps tug at the fabric of his sleeves. You lick your lips and swallow the lump in your throat, shaking the image from your head. “But I have bigger problems.”

You take a seat on the barstool next to Yoongi and tell him about your current financial situation. “Which brings me to this: What job prospect were you talking about?”

Yoongi takes a deep swig of his beer (he’s the only person you know who can drink liquor and beer without getting sick), and unexpectedly takes your hand in his, lacing his fingers with yours. He only does so when he’s about to give you bad news, so you hold your breath and steel yourself for whatever he has to say.

“How badly do you want a well-paying job?” he asks. You simply blink at him, and he rolls his eyes. “Okay, wrong question. Would you take a well-paying job even if it’s in the music industry?”

You try to pull your hand out of his, but his grip is too strong. You glare at him, seething. “Yoongi, you know that I can’t-”

He presses a finger to your lips to stop your rant before you get too carried away. “Hush, Y/N. I don’t mean as an artist.” Even though you’re more than talented enough, he says with his eyes. “They’re bringing a new rapper in and apparently, part of his contract is a personal assistant. He’ll be in the city for the next six months recording his debut, and he wants someone local to help him acclimate or something.”

He moves his hand to your cheek once he’s sure that you aren’t going to have a meltdown at the prospect. “It will pay more than enough for you to be able to stay in your shitty apartment, pay your parents back, and maybe even buy that controller you’ve always wanted.”

You bite your lip, considering the possibilities of a decent paycheck, even if it’s just for a couple of months. Your eyes meet his, and you know that you can trust him not to put you in a difficult situation. He’s always wanted what’s best for you, and you would trust him with your life.

“And Jimin?” you prompt. He flashes you a quizzical look, and you lean a little bit more into the hand on your face for comfort. “Does he think this is a good idea? Can he vouch for this new guy and tell me that he isn’t an asshole?”

“He’s all for whatever brings you to the studios more often,” Yoongi responds dryly. “But as far as I can tell, the new guy is around our age-” Young, you translate in your head. “-and he’s all business. Director Bang was saying that he comes across pretty cold and aloof, comes from a well-off background, so I don’t think he’ll be difficult to deal with.”

You keep chewing on your lip, considering all the pros and cons to the situation, but a slow smile spreads across Yoongi’s face as he watches you. You sigh, defeated. You both knew you would say yes, if only for the money. “Fine,” you agree uselessly. “I’ll do it.”

He pinches your cheek. “Atta girl.”

“See, this is why people always mistake you two for a couple,” Jin points out, an eyebrow raised at your intertwined hands and Yoongi’s hand on your face.

The other boy flushes and pushes you away brusquely. “Gross,” he mumbles as you cackle.

“Oh, c’mon Yoongi! This is the perfect time to confess!” you goad him.

Jin hides his smirk behind his glass as he takes a sip. “Yeah, Yoongi, anything to want to tell us about your feelings for Y/N?”

“Disgust. Apathy. Nausea.” the older boy deadpans, leaning forward and swiping the drink from Jin’s hand and downing it in one gulp. “Can we go now? I’m hungry.”

“We can go to that barbeque place you like,” Jin suggests.

“What about Jimin?” Yoongi asks.

Jin glances at their friend, who has already been pulled onto the dancefloor by the group of girls he’d met at the bar. “I think he’ll be fine tonight.” He signals one of the waiters to tell Jimin where they went just in case, and leaves a bottle for him and his new friends before the three of you set out.

“By the way,” you say thirty minutes later as you dig into your midnight meal. “What’s the guy’s name?”

Yoongi stops shoving food into his mouth long enough to answer you. “Kim Namjoon.”

To Be Continued