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An Experiment | Idol Min Yoongi x OC Fic

Synopsis: Mrs Min is persistent, she wants her son to get serious about dating and takes the matchmaking process in our own hands. Min Yoongi doesn't think he has the time or the space for a relationship, but it all changes after a few annoying texts from his mother and an elevator ride.

Genre: Idol Yoongi AU, FLUFF, a lot of FLUFF, boyfriend Yoongi, some smut, two people trying to figure out their feelings for each other. Art curator OC, it's just a lot of fluff with some smut because I am terribly single.

Word Count: 25K+

AOC Link: here

Link to Epilogue: here

"Mom, I don't want you intervening in my dating life anymore!" Yoongi's voice carries down the hallway the moment his phone buzzes with yet another contact saved under a name like Park Soomin - nice girl, works in finance, very pretty ♥. He stares at it for a long second before tossing the phone onto his bed. "I don't want you to help me find a girlfriend. I don't have time for a girlfriend."

He yanks open his closet and pulls out the last of the clothes he needs to pack, draping them over his arm with the practiced efficiency of someone who has lived out of suitcases for the better part of a decade. New York. Weeks of back-to-back schedules, press runs, radio slots, and performances and his mother was out here playing matchmaker like he was a man of leisure.

"I'm sure they're all great," he continues, softer now, more tired than annoyed. He means it, genuinely. It's never about the girls. "I just don't have the time." He pads out of the bedroom, heading toward the living room where he'd heard her shuffling around not twenty minutes ago, the familiar sound of her rearranging things that didn't need rearranging.

But the room is empty. Yoongi stops in the doorway, a dress shirt still folded over his forearm, and looks around. The television is off. Her reading glasses are sitting on the arm of the sofa. A half-drunk cup of tea steams quietly on the coffee table.

He blinks. "…Mom?"

He walks further in, checking the kitchen, empty, then their bedroom. Nothing. He stands very still for a moment and replays the last several minutes in his head. The bedroom, the closet, the hallway rant. Had she even been home? Had he just been pouring his heart out to an apartment?

He drags a hand through his hair and exhales slowly through his nose. His phone buzzes again on the bed, distant but audible. Probably another one.

Her phone rings for a while before she picks up, “Where are you?” Yoongi speaks to the phone as he continues packing. "I'm at the Lee's place." Her voice is bright, unbothered, the voice of a woman who has done nothing wrong in her entire life. "Their daughter is visiting. You should come over." A brief pause, then, as though it's a perfectly reasonable addendum: "Now."

Yoongi stops folding. "Their daughter," he repeats. "She's very sweet. She works in the arts world too, works as-" "Mom." He sets the shirt down. "I leave for the airport in twenty minutes"

"It won't take long, just come and say hello, what is twenty minutes-" "Why are you even there?" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "You went to the Lee's just… did you plan this? Did you leave so I couldn't argue with you in person?"

The pause that follows is a fraction too long. "Their daughter got some amazing desserts from Spain" she says finally, with great dignity. He laughs before he can stop himself, a short, disbelieving exhale and sits down on the edge of the bed amidst the half-packed chaos. "I'm not coming over."

"Just to say hello -" "I'm not coming over, I'm going to New York, and when I come back we are having a real conversation about this." He stands again, reaching for the shirt. "Enjoy the desserts"

"She has a very nice smile, so beautiful, perfect height for you" "Bye, Mom, I’ll see you in two weeks" He hangs up. Stares at the open closet for exactly three seconds, then gets back to packing. His phone buzzes again, information for the Lee’s daughter, like he’s really convinced by the hard sell his mother gave.

The elevator dings and slides open, and Yoongi steps in without looking up, wheeling his carry-on in front of him. He adjusts his mask, tugs his beanie down a little further, and stares at the floor numbers like they owe him something. He does not notice, at first, that he is not alone.

She's standing in the corner with her coat half-buttoned and her bag hiked up on one shoulder, the posture of someone who had also left a situation slightly faster than was polite. She'd walked into her parents' living room an hour ago expecting a quiet visit and had instead been subjected to an unsolicited slideshow. Her mother and Mrs. Min, two women who clearly missed their calling as matchmakers, had walked her through approximately twenty photographs. Career highlights, candid shots, one that looked suspiciously like a press photo with the watermark cropped out.

So she recognizes him from a maternal ambush conducted over barley tea and the good plates. She says nothing at first. The doors slide shut.

"Congratulations on the album," she says, pleasantly, the way you'd say it to a colleague in a lift. "My mother played me three songs from it this morning. Without warning."

That gets him, his head turns. Not just the sideways glance he'd given her when she shifted her bag a proper turn, eyes finding her face with something between confusion and alertness. The look of a man trying to locate the context.

"She what?" "The one with the soft intro," ___ continues, thinking back. "She said it proved you were sensitive. I think that was meant to sell me on you."

There’s complete silence from Yoongi’s side, he just stares at her. She can only see his eyes above the mask but it's enough she watches the exact moment the pieces assemble themselves.

"The daughter," he says slowly. "You're ___ Lee?" he recalls from the last contact information his mother sent. "And you're the son" She tilts her head. "Twenty pictures, by the way. I counted."

He makes a sound that isn't quite a word, more of a groan. His hand moves to the back of his neck. "I'm so sorry," he says, and he means it with his whole chest.

"It's fine." She smiles, and there's no edge in it, just genuine amusement. "Honestly the album part was good. I'd have preferred to find it on my own terms but-" she lifts one shoulder, "-here we are."

"Well, great to meet you." She steps out of the elevator first, one hand coming up absently to tuck a piece of her bob behind her ear before it falls back against her jaw anyway. Her coat is oversized, something vintage-feeling in a warm camel tone.

"I saw you guys in concert in 2019 and now we're being set up." She glances back at him with a grin that's more amused than anything else, fingers brushing through her bob again, a quick, unconscious sweep. "Funny how life works."

Yoongi follows her out into the basement, and for a moment he just looks at her. The way she says it, not starstruck, not awkward, just stating a fact, like it's a mildly interesting observation about the weather, catches him somewhere off guard.

He's used to two kinds of reactions. The overwhelmed kind, and the overcorrected kind, people who perform so hard at being normal around him that it becomes its own thing. She is neither. She's just standing there in her excellent coat, bag slouched on one shoulder, apparently entirely comfortable with the absurdity of the situation in a way that he, who has been mentally managing this airport run since Tuesday, is decidedly not.

"I'm sorry about my mother," he says again, because it warrants repeating. "You've said that already." "It deserves two apologies."

She laughs at that a real one, quick and unguarded, her hand going up to push her hair back from her face. It falls forward again immediately. She doesn't seem to mind. "She means well. They both do."

"I didn't know any of this was happening," he says, and he needs that on the record somehow. "I found out when she sent me your contact details. I was in the middle of packing."

"My mother sent me a voice memo," ___ offers. "Forty seconds. Very thorough." He closes his eyes briefly. "What did she-" he starts, then stops. "Actually, I don't want to know."

"She called you a great catch." ___ says it with complete neutrality, like she's reading from a grocery list. "Said you're the perfect husband material." A small pause. She tilts her head. "She mentioned the cooking specifically. Twice."

Yoongi stares at the concrete floor of the basement parking lot and says nothing for a moment. "The cooking," he repeats. "She seemed very proud of it."

"I made her one birthday dinner-" "Apparently it was very good." ___ is visibly enjoying this now, just slightly, the corner of her mouth giving her away.

He looks up at the ceiling. "I have to go to New York," he says in the tone of a man who has never wanted to board a flight more in his life. ___ laughs, warm and bright in the dim parking lot. "Go," she says, waving a hand. "Your perfect husband reputation is safe with me."

"Please forget everything she told you." "Absolutely not." She hoists her bag up and turns toward the exit, one hand ruffling to find her car keys "Have a good flight, Yoongi-si."

She disappears around the corner, still smiling.

His manager is at his elbow. "The car's ready." "Yeah." Yoongi watches her go for just a beat longer than necessary, the camel coat disappearing around the corner. "Yeah, okay."

The private lounge is quiet in the way airports never quite manage to be anywhere else — insulated, dim, the chaos of Incheon existing somewhere beyond the frosted glass. Their bags are lined up near the door. Someone has already claimed the couch. There's coffee on the table that Yoongi is already on his second cup of.

He sits down, sets his phone face down out of habit, and looks around at the others.

"Are your mothers also aggressively trying to set you up with someone," he says, with the careful delivery of a man who has been sitting on this all morning, "or is something wrong with mine?"

Namjoon looks up from his phone slowly, the way you look up when you want to assess the energy of a room before committing to a response. Jimin, who has been reorganizing his carry-on for the past ten minutes, stops and looks up. "What happened?"

"She left the apartment," Yoongi says. "While I was in my room packing, I thought she was in the living room… I was talking, going on and on-" he gestures vaguely, "-and she was already gone. At the neighbor's place."

"Doing what?" Hoseok asks. "Setting me up." He says it flatly. "Their daughter was there too. She sent me her contact details before I even knew any of it was happening. Then called me and told me to come over." He pauses.

"What did she do to sell you?" Seokjin asks, because he knows how mothers operate and he wants the full picture. "Apparently she played her our music." Yoongi stares into his coffee. "To prove I was sensitive. And she told her I could cook."

"She said I was the perfect husband," Yoongi continues, with the energy of a man reading from a police report. "To a stranger. That she had never met before."

"To be fair," Hoseok starts. Yoongi looks at him, Hoseok closes his mouth knowing when to not fan the flames.

"And then," Yoongi says, "I ran into her. The girl. In the elevator on the way down."

The lounge goes very still. "The girl your mother set you up with?" Namjoon says slowly.

"In your elevator." "Yes." "She was just, there?" "Apparently she left early too." He wraps both hands around his cup. "She must have been flustered by the set up too."

Then Taehyung, who has been sitting in the armchair with his chin in his hand and the expression of someone watching a very satisfying drama, asks the only question that matters.

"Was she cute?" Yoongi opens his mouth, closes it, looks down at his coffee, sets it down, picks it back up, like he doesn’t know what to say or what to do with his hands.

"We're boarding soon," a manager says. “Let’s get going” but none of the members move, waiting for Yoongi’s answer

“Hyung!!" Jimin says, slowly, the way you speak to someone who has already given themselves away. “We should go, board" Yoongi offers as he stands up.

"Was she cute?" Taehyung repeats. "She was- " Yoongi stops to clear his throat, "It was a thirty second elevator ride."

"That's not a no," Hoseok observes. "That's not what I-" He picks up his coffee again even though he's not drinking it, just to have something to do with his hands. "She was normal. She was a normal person. Can we drop it."

"He's flustered," Jimin says to Namjoon, delighted. "I'm not flustered, I'm tired, there's a difference-" "Hyung." Taehyung is grinning now, fully, without shame. "Just say she was pretty."

Yoongi stands up, reaches for his carry-on, and says nothing. Which is, somehow, the loudest answer in the room.

Every month’s second Friday dinners with Sunhee and Wonik are non-negotiable. They have been, for years, the kind of standing plan that survives busy seasons, travel schedules, and the general chaos of three people who probably have no business being as close as they are given how differently their lives run.

They're halfway through the meal when ___ sets down her chopsticks. "I want to tell you guys something," she says, "but you need to swear on your life and mine that you won't overreact."

Wonik looks up. "That is the single most alarming way to begin a sentence." "Swear first." "I'm not swearing on anything until I know the category of information I'm dealing with," Wonik says reasonably. "Is this a work thing, a family thing, or a-"

"Swear." Sunhee is already sitting up straighter. She has the posture of someone whose instincts are firing. "I swear," she says immediately. "Wonik, swear."

"Fine, I swear, I swear." "Okay." ___ picks up her glass, takes a sip, sets it down. "My mother set me up this morning. With the son of her friend Mrs. Min."

Sunhee's chopsticks hit her bowl, the sound is very loud in the small restaurant. "Say the full name," Sunhee says, in a voice that is very carefully controlled. "Say his full name out loud right now."

"Sunhee-" "___." Her eyes are very wide. "Say. The name."

___ looks at her. "Min Yoongi." Sunhee puts both hands flat on the table.

"I met him in the elevator," ___ continues, talking over whatever is happening on Sunhee's face, "for about thirty seconds. It was fine, he was normal, we were equally mortified because his mother had already sent him my contact details-"

"What about you?" Wonik asks. "Did you get his number?" "No." ___ shakes her head. "I mean…he's. You know how famous he is. That's not really something you just-" she gestures vaguely. "I have his mother's number. That's it."

"You have his mother's number," Wonik repeats. "She put it in my phone herself. Before I could leave." "Resourceful woman," Wonik says, almost admiringly.

"You were in an elevator," Sunhee says slowly, still processing, "with Min Yoongi." "For thirty seconds, yes-" "Of BTS."

"Sunhee-" "SUGA!" "I need you to not do that-" "How are you this calm right now? How are you sitting there like that?"

"Because it was thirty seconds in a basement parking lot and then he left for the airport," "Did he seem interested?" Wonik asks, cutting straight through it.

___ opens her mouth and closes it, well she couldn’t see much of his face other than the eyes, and his eyes were more irritated at his mother than interested, "He apologized twice for his mother."

"That's not what I asked," Wonik says. The table is quiet for a second. "He watched me walk away," ___ says finally, very casually, into her drink.

Sunhee makes a sound that is not words, close to a manic laugh. "You said you wouldn't overreact," ___ reminds her.

"I SWORE I WOULDN'T OVERREACT, I DIDN'T SAY I WOULDN'T HAVE FEELINGS-" "Same thing" ___ says with an incredulous laugh as she downs her shot of soju.

"It is absolutely not the same thing!" Sunhee shouts as she downs her drink. Wonik refills everyone's glass quietly, the expression of someone who knew from the word swear that it was going to be a long dinner.

Yoongi thinks about ___ the way he thinks about songs that aren't ready yet, circling it, not touching it, waiting to see if it still feels like something after enough time has passed.

It does. The contact has been sitting in his phone since the morning he left for the airport. ___ Lee. His mother had sent it with a string of hearts he had not acknowledged. He'd told himself he saved it by accident. He'd told himself a lot of things.

He's in the back of a car heading to some schedule. His life is mostly cars heading to schedules, he's come to understand, when he opens the contact and stares at it for long enough that the city outside the window blurs entirely. It's the jacket that does it in the end, or that's what he tells himself.

He picks up his phone, puts it down and picks it back up.

Yoongi: Where did you get the jacket you were wearing?

___ is in Hong Kong, sitting cross legged on her hotel bed with client notes open on her laptop, when her phone buzzes. Unknown number, she frowns at it slightly.

No hello. No name. No context whatsoever. Just that, from a number she doesn't recognize, as if the conversation had already been happening somewhere she wasn't aware of.

___: Who is this?

His response comes quickly, even if it’s pretty late in New York, mostly because he had been on his phone watching something when he couldn’t sleep. Yoongi immediately sits up, realizing what he’s done, just asked about a jacket without introducing himself, of course she’s skeptical.

Yoongi: from the elevator

She stares at that for a second. Then it lands, all of it at once, the basement parking lot, the beanie, the mask, the carry-on, their mother’s voice doing their best to convince her.

She puts her laptop to the side, the client notes can be taken care of later in the day.

___: It's vintage. There's no link I can send you

She has a ghost of a smile as she helpfully types.

___: I can lend it to you

___: No you’re rich rich, buy it from me

In New York, Yoongi reads that last message and something in his face does a thing he's glad nobody is around to see. He is not good at whatever this is, that’s what he’s realizing.

Yoongi: How much

___ reads that and laughs, a real one, sudden enough that it surprises her. She pushes her hair back and looks at the ceiling for a second.

___: I'll think about it

In New York, Yoongi chuckles as he turns around in bed, a real laugh, like he’s amused, like he wants to talk more, like he’s fascinated.

Yoongi: Take your time

He puts the phone on his chest and stares at the ceiling of his hotel room, the city humming its endless New York hum somewhere beyond the glass, and he thinks that this is perhaps the most words he has willingly initiated with someone new in a very long time.

He also thinks that I'll think about it is not a no. He falls asleep twenty minutes later with the phone still in his hand, which has not happened in recent memory either.

___ thinks about that for a moment. The hour it must have been in New York. The fact that he had her number this whole time, sitting there, and this is what finally made him use it. A jacket. An excuse so thin it was practically transparent and he'd sent it anyway.

She wasn't even looking, she rarely is when she finds the best things. She'd ducked into the thrift shop on a whim, killing twenty minutes between a gallery visit and a lunch she was already slightly late for, and there it was. Black leather, clean lines, interesting hardware on the collar. The kind of jacket that looks like it has a history without looking tired.

___ takes the mirror selfie without thinking much about it. One hand holding the phone up, the other shoved in the jacket pocket, her hair slightly disheveled from pulling it on. She looks at it for approximately one second to confirm it's not blurry.

___: Tan will wash you out a bit

___: How about something like this?

She sends the message with the image as she’s already buying the jacket, something in her telling her that she just needs to get this today.

Yoongi is somewhere over the Pacific, when the flight's wifi finally decides to cooperate. His phone loads a backlog of messages and he's scrolling through them automatically, half asleep, when he sees her name.

He sits up as the picture loads. The jacket is perfect. He knows it immediately, the same way he knows when a song is working, something just settles.He stares at the photo for longer than necessary.

In the seat beside him Namjoon is reading, headphones on, entirely in his own world. Across the aisle Jimin is asleep, nobody is watching as he smiles at his phone like an idiot. He makes no effort to mask the smile as he types back.

Yoongi: I like it

Yoongi: Where are you?

Her reply doesn’t come instantly, it comes as he’s being driven home from a long flight, trying to stay up to fight the jet lag.

___: Hongkong for the Art Basel event

___: I was there, now I am at the airport, waiting for my cab to pick me up

___: Do you like it?

Yoongi doesn’t stop to contemplate as he types, Jimin looking at him suspiciously as he does so with a faint smile.

Yoongi: Yes

___: Good, then you can pick it up from my studio when you’re free

He reads that once and then again.

A studio. She has a gallery. She was at Art Basel. He turns that over quietly, this small new piece of her that just landed without ceremony in the middle of his exhausted morning, offered the same way she offers everything, casually, like it costs her nothing, like she isn't handing him a reason to see her again wrapped in a sentence about a jacket.

He's smiling again as he mutters, "I think I've done something stupid," he mutters, to nobody in particular, to the window, to the general concept of his own decision making.

"Yes," Jimin says from approximately four centimeters away, "flirting via jacket is stupid." A beat. "It's also very you." Yoongi turns to look at him. Jimin is gazing out the window with the serene expression of someone who has absolutely been reading every message off the bright screen this entire time and feels no guilt about it whatsoever.

Yoongi: I can come by monday morning if that works for you

Yoongi: Send me the address

He locks his phone for a brief second before it buzzes again.

___: Perfect, but don’t come in too early, I’m useless before 10

Yoongi: I’ll be there by 11 then

Yoongi puts his phone in his jacket pocket and closes his eyes, the city still moving outside, home getting closer. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't particularly try to.

___ spends a bit longer getting dressed that morning, which is not the case on a monday morning when she doesn’t have any clients to meet, she doesn’t even go into work on a monday most weeks. She straightens the pale white dress one last time when she drops her handbag and goes around switching on the studio lights.

“Where are you off too? I thought you didn’t have any schedule” his mother asks as he continues to fix his hair, “Just some work came up, I’ll be back by dinner” he announces as he tries on three different pairs of glasses, landing on the same dainty one’s he’s been wearing for weeks now.

Yoongi is there quicker than imagined, parking the Mercedes quietly as he puts on a mask on, he doesn’t know who all are going to be there, and he’d much rather not have this visit becoming a bigger deal than it needs to be. The studio is located in a quaint neighbourhood, plants all around the glass door entrance as he walks up, coffees hand, he didn’t want to show up empty handed.

The door announces him, not a bell exactly, just the particular sound of glass and marble connecting, his footsteps suddenly loud and deliberate in the quiet of the space. He slows instinctively. His sunglasses are on his head, pushed up to get a proper look, and his eyes move around the room the way they do when he enters somewhere new, taking inventory, settling, trying to understand a space before the space understands him.

"You're early." He turns.

She's coming from the back of the gallery, and he stops. Not visibly, not in any way she'd necessarily catch, but something in him just pauses for a moment and takes inventory of her the same way he did with the room.

The dress is pale linen, short, simple in the way that only works when someone has a very good eye for what suits them. Her hair is pinned away from her face today. She looks entirely at ease in the space, the way people look at ease in places they've built for themselves.

And then he notices the tattoos. He doesn't stare. He notices, the way he notices the jacket, the coat, the glasses she isn't wearing today and darts his eyes away

"Traffic was light," he says. She glances at the carrier in his hand and one brow lifts slightly. "That's more than one coffee."

“Uh yeah, I didn’t know how you take your coffee, there’s an iced americano, hot latte and an iced latte” he explains and ___ smiles, picking up the hot latte for herself. “Thank you” she murmurs and he hums to himself, picking up the americano for himself.

“So, this is my uncle’s gallery, I’ve been working with him for god, ten years now” ___ explains as she walks a few steps ahead of him, showing him around, he hums every once in a while, he’s not very talkative, as she’s noticed.

He does the mental math quietly. She would have been young when she started, almost 20.

"We work with private collectors mostly. Finding them legacy pieces, introducing them to new artists, hosting shows sometimes." She pauses in front of a series of smaller works along the eastern wall, studying them for a second like she's seeing them for the first time. "It's quite fun, actually. Every collection is different. Every collector is different." A small smile. "Some of them are insane, but in the best way."

He looks at the series she's stopped at. Three pieces, related but not matching, a conversation between them rather than a repetition. "How do you find the artists," he says.

She turns, slightly surprised, not that he spoke, but at the specificity of it. Most people ask about the collectors. "Everywhere." She leans against the wall beside the series, arms crossing loosely, the tattoos catching the track lighting. "Art fairs. Studio visits. Sometimes someone sends me something and I can't stop thinking about it." She tilts her head. "Sometimes I find them in thrift shops in Hong Kong."

He looks at her then, and there it is again, that sideways almost-eye-contact, landing just adjacent to direct. The corner of his mouth does something small.

She pushes off the wall and keeps moving. He follows, hands in pockets, in no hurry, taking everything in.

"Your uncle started it?" he asks, after a moment. "Mmhm. Thirty years ago, almost." She stops at a large photograph mounted simply, no frame. "He took me to my first auction when I was nine. I didn't understand any of it." She pauses. "But it did flame the fascination inside me”

He looks at the photograph. Then at her, briefly, the way he does, quick, considered, like he's filing something away.

Yoongi’s phone is vibrating in his pocket, he knows that it’s his manager checking if he’s on the way to practice. They’re currently in the beautiful backyard, what Yoongi’s leart is that this used to be ___’s grandparents home before it was turned into a gallery. She’s on the other end of the bench as she places her empty coffee cup down.

“Anything that caught your eye in there?” ___ asks and he briefly looks at her before he looks away, his eyes falling on her red heels, quite high for a monday.

“A few things” he confesses with a faint smile as he looks around, at anything but her. “I’m not cultured enough to understand art so haven’t bought much as of late” he offers more, he knows that she’s been the one leading the conversation, he doesn’t want her to think that he’s not listening.

"I don't think people need to be cultured to understand art," she says. "There's art in almost everything." She says it without any weight to it, not a lecture, just a thing she actually believes.

He looks back down. At the floor, at the middle distance, briefly at her hands where they rest against her knee, the tattoos more visible from here, something intricate in the design, leaves or maybe something older than that, he can't quite tell without looking properly and he's not going to look properly.

She's in the middle of saying something about the artist, a story beginning to take shape, her hands moving slightly the way they do when she's getting to the good part of something when his phone rings.

Loud with no respect for the moment whatsoever. He pulls it out and silences it immediately, the name on the screen requires no explanation. He closes his eyes for approximately one second.

“You need to leave don’t you?” ___ asks as she stands up, “I do, we have a tour starting in two weeks” Yoongi offers as she leads them back in, her heel slipping in some mud before he catches her briefly.

“Thank you” she murmurs, steading herself as she fixes her posture, all he does is softly smile as he drops his hand from her arm.

“So, the jacket, it’s a vintage Ralph Lauren jacket” ___ speaks as she appears from her office, a bag in her hands. “Thank you, I don’t think I own any vintage pieces” Yoongi shares as she hands him the bag, their fingers brushing just for a second.

“Um, how much-” “Please, no, consider it a gift” ___ says with a soft smile, the smile that is making Yoongi late for practice. He holds the bag and looks at it and then looks at her. She can see him trying to find another angle on this and coming up short.

“We have a few concerts in Goyang, you should come,” Yoongi suggests and she presses her lips together like she’s thinking long and hard about it. “You got me a jacket, let me get you concert tickets, our come by rarely” he brags a bit, trying to sell her on this.

“Sure, but can I get a plus one on that?” ___ asks knowing full well Sunhee would quit on the friendship if she doesn’t get him a ticket. The plus one confuses him, like there’s someone already in the picture and she catches that confusion almost immediately.

“My friend, she’s a huge fan, she wasn’t able to get tickets” she says and he huffs, not quite a laugh but adjacent to one and looks away, and she watches him do it with the ghost of a smile that she doesn't bother hiding because he isn't looking at her anyway.

“Of course, I’ll text you the details?” he asks as he mentally prepares himself to leave. "Thank you," she says. "I really enjoyed the 2019 concert." She turns one of her rings, slowly, around her finger. Then another. He glances at her hands briefly. "And Sunhee fainted, which in this situation I think counts as a good sign."

He looks up at that. "She fainted?" "Briefly. She was fine." ___ pause, looking up at him "Mostly fine." The almost-laugh again, slightly more this time. He looks away before it becomes anything. "Okay." He takes a small step toward the door. "I'll see you. I really, really need to go."

He still doesn't turn around, she notices. "Yes, please." There's warmth in it, no edge. "You're a busy man, Yoongi-si." He turns then, just slightly, and there's something in his expression that she hasn't seen yet, something a little looser than his usual careful composure.

"Let's just -" he starts, stops and tries again. "We should talk informally. I'm not that strict, and not that much older than you"

She looks at him. He looks somewhere adjacent to her, the way he does, the tips of his ears faintly pink in the studio light, and she realizes with some delight that this small thing, dropping the formality, asking for it plainly, has cost him something, not much.

She tilts her head. "Okay," she says simply, no teasing. She gives him that much.

He nods once, like something has been settled. "I'll text you," he says.

"Go," she says. He is almost jogging out of the gallery. The glass door swings shut behind him and she stays exactly where she is for a moment, rings still warm from where she'd been turning them, the studio quiet around her.

Yoongi’s mother has made something good, as promised. The table is full and warm and she is asking about his week with the particular casualness of someone who has decided not to ask about anything specific, which means she is asking about everything specific indirectly.

He answers in the usual way. Fine, busy, yes he ate properly in New York. No he doesn't need her to call his manager about the schedule. His phone is face down beside his bowl.

He picks it up, checks it once, puts it back down. His mother says something about his aunt. He nods. She says something about the weather this weekend. He nods again.

His phone buzzes twice in quick succession. Then once more when he finally turns it over.

___: So I see you sunday?

___: I have to meet this client in Dubai and I fly in late afternoon on saturday, can I come to the stadium with a suitcase?

___: Can’t do saturday because Sunhee has a scheduled c-section for a patient

He reads them once, then again. He's smiling at his phone before he's decided to, the particular involuntary kind, and he catches it and schools his expression back to neutral approximately one second too late.

His mother is looking at him. "What," he says. "Nothing," she says, in exactly the tone she used that morning about the glasses. She turns back to her food with the serenity of a woman who has already won something and knows it.

They've been texting for two weeks now. Properly, not just the jacket, not just small talk, but the kind of texts that start about one thing and end up somewhere else entirely an hour later. She's funny over text in the same way she is in person, dry and quick, and she asks him questions that are more specific than people usually bother with.

He'd much rather call her. He knows that about himself already, that he'd rather hear her voice than read the words, that a call would be easier and faster and better in almost every practical sense. He's not ready to call her yet. He's not entirely sure what that means but he knows it's true.

Yoongi: I’ll have someone from the team meet you, they’ll take care of everything

Yoongi: Your friend is an OB-GYN?

___: Yes, she’s also my doctor, and will be for free for the rest of my life so I gotta treat her right. Also because I love her

He reads that and something about it lands warmly, the easy way she says it without any performance in it. He's about to type back when , "Have you reached out to any of the girls I sent you?"

He looks up, his mother is across the table, expression pleasant, chopsticks down, in the posture of someone who has been waiting for a natural opening and has decided this is it.

"No," he says. "None of them?" "None of them." She considers this with the gravity of a woman receiving disappointing quarterly results. "There was a very nice one, works in finance, you said you wanted someone independent"

"Mom." "And the architect, you didn't even look at her profile-"

"I looked." "For how long?" He doesn't answer that. She sighs with her entire body. "The concerts are this week?"

"Thursday, Saturday, Sunday." "Which day can we come? Me, your dad and your aunt-" "Saturday," he says immediately with no hesitation whatsoever.

She blinks. "Saturday? Not Sunday?" "All the parents will be there on Saturday" Yoongi says this like it’s a sure think which he knows isn’t, but he’s going to have to plan it so that it is.

"Your aunt was hoping for Sunday" He picks up his chopsticks with great authority. "I’ll have to check, but I already have your tickets for Saturday”

“Okay, but what about the Lee’s daughter? Mrs. Lee said she's very busy with work, always travelling, very independent, the hair cut was a disappointment to the parents but she’s still such a pretty woman, and she’s short enough for you” “I’m not that short mom” “It’s my fault, I should have married a taller man” His mother says with complete sincerity and Yoongi stares at her.

"That's" he stops. "What does that have to do with " "Your father is a good man." She picks her chopsticks back up serenely. "But the height. I should have thought more carefully."

"Dad is right there." From the other end of the table, his father, who has been eating in peaceful silence through this entire conversation with the practised serenity of a man who checked out of these discussions some years ago, looks up briefly.

"She's not wrong," his father says. "Dad." "I'm just agreeing with your mother." "You're agreeing that you're too short"

"I'm agreeing that she should have thought more carefully." He goes back to his food. "Very different thing." Yoongi looks between them. His mother is eating with great satisfaction. His father has returned to his bowl.

___ hasn’t changed in a bar’s bathroom before, so this is a first as she slips herself in a black dress right from the airport. Her hair is not the best, but that’s the good part about having a bob, it doesn’t need a lot of styling. What does need help is her face.

“How do you have no makeup?” ___ asks with disappointment as she slides back onto the bar stool, she’s swapped the beer for hard liquor because the dress she packed doesn’t allow for a beer belly.

“I have chapstick, but it’s not hygienic to-” “I have like five lip products but nothing for my face, I need to start carrying around a cushion foundation or a tinted sunscreen or something” ___ says as she she downs her drink, third drink of the night and with the little amount of rest she’s had all week, she knows she’s going to be hitting a wall soon.

“___ are you nervous?” Sunhee finally asks as the food comes, it would be normal for Sunhee to be nervous, but ___ is never nervous. “I don’t know, I am mostly tired” ___ offers as she stuffs her face with the fries, food should help her. She’s about to speak up again when her phone buzzes loudly against the table.

Yoongi: I’ve forwarded your contact to my manager, he’ll find you and get you guys to your seats

Yoongi: I’ll see you after the concert

___: All the best for the concert, I’m sure it’s going to be great

She types as Sunhee pays the bill, ___ might be nervous but Sunhee is anxious to leave this pub and be at the venue as soon as she can

Yoongi: Thank you, I’ll see you soon

___ doesn’t have a change to respond back before her phone is already ringing. It’s all too quick from there, they barely find a cab to the event, which Sunhee spends meditating like she does before operating, this is as she says, a spiritual experience for her.

“Why am I the only one that drank?” ___ asks as they sit down in their seats, the massive crowd all around her leaves her awestruck for a second. “I am on call” Sunhee answers, her eyes wandering, her short answers give her away.

“Come on, chill out, we’re going to be having a lot of fun” ___’s just the right kind of drunk now, the four drinks when everything is amazing and all you can think about is a drunk cigarette. The crowd around her is the kind of happy that's collective and contagious and she can feel it getting into her bloodstream alongside the liquor.

"Sunhee, your hand is shaking." Sunhee looks down at her hand. Places it flat on her knee with great effort. “That's adrenaline," she says. "It's a physiological response, it doesn't mean-"

The lights drop all the sudden, Sunhee grips her arm so hard ___ loses circulation for a moment. The crowd becomes something else entirely, a single enormous sound, and ___ feels it before she hears it, in her chest, behind her eyes, somewhere wordless and immediate. She stops thinking about the cigarette immediately as the music starts playing.

Between the singing and dancing that ___ and Sunhee have been doing, they almost miss Sunhee’s phone going off. She reads the message and is immediately a different person, “My patient just went into labour” she announces to ___ as she’s picking up her bag.

“How’ll you get back?” ___ yells over the music, "I'll call a cab-" "Are you sure-"

"___." Sunhee stops for a second and looks at her properly for one second, the exit forgotten. Her expression does something warm and knowing and slightly unbearable. "Stay."

"I was going to stay-" "I mean after." She squeezes her hand once. "Stay after."

___ opens her mouth and closes it, not able to form any words at the moment. The crowd surges around them as the last few songs begin to play, enormous and bright, and Sunhee is already moving toward the exit, bag on her shoulder, phone to her ear, slipping through the crowd with the quiet efficiency of someone who has somewhere more important to be.

___ sees him, her eyes almost involuntarily finding him every now and then, smiles to herself seeing him so happy on stage, his cute mannerism that she’s finding too endearing. How the crowds cheer for them, the heart that they sing and dance with, this kind of passion could move anyone.

The final note ends, the roar that comes after is physical, a wall of sound, and the boys walk back out for their bow, all of them, together, the stage lights warm on them, and the crowd sends everything it has left toward the stage in one long unbroken wave.

___ stays seated as the people around her continue to gather their stuff and move around, ready to leave. She's not sure where to go or what the protocol is or whether there even is a protocol, the text that said see you after suddenly very present in her mind now that after is here.

She's still sitting when someone appears at the end of her row. Yoongi's Manager, the same one who met her outside the venue, was efficient and unhurried, with the quiet competence of someone who has done this exact thing many times.

"Ms. Lee." He nods once. "If you'll follow me."

She picks up her clutch and stands too quickly, smoothing her dress in one swift motion, she walks as she reapplies her lipstick, hoping this can mask the lack of makeup.

She follows him through the emptying stadium toward the back, the crowd thinning around her, the stage growing closer, the noise of the night shifting into something quieter and more specific the further in they go.

The hallway outside the green room is not what she expected, though she's not sure what she expected exactly. It's busy in the contained way of post-show logistics, staff moving with purpose, and people. Guests, she realizes, a few of them, recognizable faces standing in the particular way that recognizable people stand when they're in a space that isn't quite public, relaxed but not fully, aware but performing unawareness.

Jimin notices her first as they emerge from the resting room, having caught their breaths after the concerts and now ready to greet their guests. His eyes land on her and then move to Yoongi in the same second, quick and unnoticeable to anyone not watching for it. She catches it.

The group collectively greets a few people as ___ stands on the side, not wanting to be in people’s way when Yoongi stops right in front of her.

Still slightly out of breath, towel around his neck, water bottle in hand, his eyes find her sneakers first. They make her considerably shorter than him and she watches him register this, his gaze traveling up slowly before it finds her face.

"Hi," he says softly, a small smile spreading on his face, she’s about to say something when he pulls her by the arm, away, in another quiet room, away from the people.

"Oh my god, you guys were incredible. I think my throat actually hurts from how much I was cheering, which has never happened to me before in my life-" Yoongi sets his water bottle down and disappears behind a curtain at the far end of the room, changing, and she can see his silhouette moving and hear the quiet sounds of someone pulling off a jacket, a shirt, the efficient undressing of someone who just wants to be in normal clothes as quickly as possible.

"-the production, the stage is so massive, and the crowd, every one having the best times of their life, my hearts still beating like crazy, I can’t even imagine what yours is doing” she talks naturally, like a person who had a life altering experience and needs to share it. There’s a faint laughter from his end as he continues behind the curtain.

“Seriously, the scale of this is crazy, you guys were amazing” He says nothing for a moment. She can hear him pulling on something.

He's tired, she can hear it underneath the silence, the particular quality of exhaustion that has gone past the point of showing itself and become something quieter. He performed for three hours, he's been doing this for days and he's here, behind a curtain, listening to her talk about the lighting.

She stops talking suddenly, very aware of how much she’s rambled on, "Sorry," she says. "You're exhausted." “I want to hear everything you have to say ___” he speaks softly as he emerges from behind the curtain.

“I always have a lot to say Yoongi,” she stops, copying the same emphasis he just placed on her name, “You might get tired of how much I have to say” she continues as he stops by a table, dropping all the clothes he was just wearing now that he’s in a simple jeans and black shirt.

Yoongi isn’t just tired, he’s exhausted, exhausted enough to do what he’s done each night after a show, and rush home. But he simply takes a seat on the sofa opposite to hers, he wants to continue listening to her voice.

“Seriously, it was amazing, congratulations, I would have brought flowers or something if I didn’t directly come from the air-” “You have freckles around your nose, they’re um” Yoongi interrupts. It comes out before he's made a decision about it. The exhaustion, probably. The way tiredness removes the small delay between thinking and saying, the buffer he usually relies on.

The briefest pause where his senses catch up with his mouth and he considers his options and decides on honesty anyway. "Very pretty."

The silence between them is the particular kind that has too much in it to be comfortable and too much in it to break carelessly. “Your friend? I didn’t see her-” “Oh her patient went into labour so she had to rush out, but she caught most of the concert and is now probably prepping to deliver a baby”

“Oh” that’s all Yoongi can muster now that the buffer of a friend is gone, when Yoongi was imagining seeing her after the concert, he kept imagining the friend. “Yeah, but I should get going too, you must be tired”

“I am tired, but I can still drop you home?” Yoongi asks, knowing full well that he should have probably asked her for dinner, given the thin smile on her lips. “Please, I can find my way-” “There’s going to be a lot of traffic ___” Yoongi offers and she smiles briefly as he says her name again, the particular softness that he uses.

"It's late," she says. "Which is why there'll be traffic."

"Yoongi-" "My car is already outside." He says it simply. "It's not out of the way." She looks at him for a moment. He looks her straight in the eyes for a second, like he really means this and isn’t offering this out of some formality.

“You don’t know where I live” she says with a teasing tone as they both stay seated, not quite ready to move onto what comes next. “Today I learn your address then”

The car is quiet, not the uncomfortable kind, but the kind where neither of them knows what to say. None of them imagined the string of events that led to this, it almost makes Yoongi chuckle to himself as he thinks about how vehemently against this he was, his mother can’t know any of this yet. Not until he knows why he keeps reaching for his phone for her text back, why he saved her address without thinking about it, why he's sitting in a car at midnight when he should be in bed.

He doesn't know yet. He'd like to figure it out quietly, without his mother's involvement, which is the only way anything survives in its early stages.

“So, the tour, you guys must leave soon” ___ speaks up as they stop at a red light, the traffic is indeed awful. “Yes, Japan, then the US, Mexico, back to US and then back in Korea around mid June” Yoongi hears himself say it. All of it, laid out in sequence, the shape of the next several months suddenly made concrete in the quiet of the car.

Somewhere in the middle of the list he understands, clearly and exactly why he told his mother he didn't have time for a girlfriend. Why he'd meant it. Why it was true then and remains true now regardless of freckles or the jackets or the way she says his name.

He can't do this to someone. The disappearing, the timezone math, the months of existing primarily as a name on a phone screen. He knows what that looks like from the inside and he knows what it asks of the person on the other end and it's a lot. It's always been a lot.

"Mid June," she says quietly, doing the math the same way he just did. "Mid June," he confirms with a long exhale.

"Do you get used to it?" she asks. "The schedule."

He thinks about it for a few seconds, deciding on how honest he should be, "You get used to moving," he says. "You don't really get used to leaving."

The car stops at another light. Somewhere outside a group of people are spilling out of a restaurant, loud and warm on a Sunday night, and she watches them through the glass.

She’s almost thirty two, a gallery she loves, clients she's spent years building relationships with. A life that moves exactly the way she designed it to move. She doesn't need to complicate that. ___ knows this.

She can't quite bring herself to be realistic about this, even if she has been realistic about way less complications in the past.

"What are you thinking about," he says, he needs to know just what she’s thinking because he knows it can’t be good.

She glances at him, he's looking ahead at the road, not at her, but his attention is entirely on her answer. "The tour," she says. Which is true but not all of it.

He nods, something in his jaw shifts slightly, the way it does when he's decided not to say something.

"Yoongi." "Mm."

"It's a long time to be away." "It is," he says, simply with no argument, he knows there isn’t one.

The light turns green. "Do you…" she starts and stops to try again "Is there ever a point where it gets easier? The coming back. Picking things back up."

He's quiet for a moment. "Depends what you're picking back up," he says.

She looks at him. He's still looking at his hand now and the city lights are moving across his face in slow intervals and she thinks distantly that this is an unreasonable amount of person to have discovered in an elevator.

She looks back out her window. "I'm not twenty anymore," she says, mostly to herself.

"Neither am I." "I mean-" she turns her rings once. "I used to be better at not thinking ahead."

"What do you see?" he asks. "When you think ahead." She's quiet for a long moment, outside Seoul continues, indifferent and bright.

"A very long tour schedule," she says finally. He exhales through his nose. Not quite a laugh, almost a laugh like he’s had this discussion before, "Yeah, that’s just the first leg" he says quietly.

The car moves through the city and neither of them solves anything and somehow that's alright, the silence settling back around them like something they've agreed to for now, the kind of quiet that isn't an ending, just a pause.

The car stops outside her building and they both get out, the night air cool after the warmth of the car. She tilts her head back slightly to take in the street, familiar and quiet, and he falls into step beside her naturally, walking her to the entrance the way he'd stood up to walk her out of the green room.

They stop at the entrance. The streetlight catches everything, her hair, her rings, the white sneakers. He's still in his cap and mask pulled down, hands in his pockets, adjusting his cap without meaning to, forward, back, forward again.

Neither of them starts the conversation. She looks up at him and he looks somewhere just past her, and the comfortable quiet of the car has followed them out onto the pavement.

"I think we should go on a date," she says. He goes very still as his eyes find her.

"A real one." Even, practical, like she's proposing something with a clear agenda. "Before Japan. Before our rational sides catch up with us and decide this is a terrible idea." A beat. "An experiment. To find out if there's actually anything here before we decide there isn't."

He knows what he should say. He's been doing the math since the car, since she said mid June in the quiet way she said it. He knows what this looks like, the beginning of something, the successful experiment she's predicting, and he knows what comes after that too, what he'd be asking her to sign up for.

___ deserves someone who comes home on a regular basis. Yoongi knows this.

"You know it won't stop there," he says quietly. "If the experiment works."

"I know," she says. "The tour is-" "I know, Yoongi."

"I'm just saying you might-" "I know." She says it gently, firmly, the way she says things when she's already thought them through and doesn't need him to think them through on her behalf. "I'm aware of what I'm suggesting."

He looks at her for a long moment, the way she’s fidgeting with her rings, "Okay," he says.

"Okay?" "One dinner." He holds her gaze. "Before Japan."

She nods once, that's when he looks down.

The height difference from here, standing on the pavement, is… notable. He does the mental calculation of exactly what his mother said and feels the smile coming.

"What," she says immediately. "Nothing." He presses his lips together and fails entirely. "My mother said you were short enough for me."

She stares at him. "She said that."

"Among other things." "Short enough for you," she repeats.

"Her words, not mine" "And what do you think?" He looks down at her from the full, considerable distance of his height, cap crooked, mask around his chin, and says with complete straightness,

"I think she was right." She laughs brightly and he lets himself smile properly this time, all the way, and for a moment they're just two people standing outside a building at midnight laughing about height and mothers and the specific absurdity of how they got here.

She steps back and looks up at him one last time. "Goodnight, Yoongi." "Goodnight, ___."

She turns and goes inside, the door closing quietly behind her, he stands there a moment longer than he needs to. Reaches up and adjusts his cap.

Gets back in the car and looks at the ceiling for a long moment, the city moving quietly around him.

He knows how this goes. He knows himself well enough to know that one dinner won't be one dinner, that the experiment is going to tell them both exactly what she predicted it would, and that she said I'm aware of what I'm suggesting with the confidence of someone who has never actually done this before. Not with someone like him. Not with a schedule like his.

She'll be realistic about it eventually. Everyone is, eventually. He just hopes she is the anomaly in the experiment that his dating history has been.

"-so you just decided, so young, that music was your calling?" "I didn't decide anything." He turns his glass slightly on the table, a small rotation, thinking about how to explain it to someone who hasn't lived it. "It was more like…the decision had already been made somewhere and I was just catching up to it."

She rests her chin in her hand, elbow on the table, the way she settles in when she's properly interested in something. She's been doing it on and off all evening and he's stopped pretending not to notice. "That's how it feels with the work I love too," she says. "Like you didn't choose it so much as recognize it."

He looks at her. "Exactly that." The restaurant is quiet around them, the kind of quiet that Tuesday buys you, a handful of other tables, low light, no one paying attention to anyone else.

"Okay," she says, picking up her glass. "Worst part of the job. Honestly." He thinks about it and she waits, turning the stem of her glass between her fingers, patient.

"The losing yourself of it," he says. "Not in a dramatic way. Just…" he pauses. "You're performing a version of yourself for long enough and you start to lose track of where that version ends."

She's quiet for a moment. "Does it come back?" she asks. "The original version."

"I'm still figuring that out." She nods slowly, like she's filing that somewhere careful. Not with pity. He'd noticed pity immediately and she seems to know that.

"Your turn," he says. "People assume I do this because I come from money," she says, the same even tone she uses for everything. "That it's a hobby dressed up as a career. Something for a well bred woman" She pauses to take a sip of her wine. "I would have done this regardless of the money. The money just meant no one could stop me from starting early."

He nods. That he understands, the specificity of a thing choosing you rather than the other way around. She looks at him for a moment. Something shifts slightly in her expression, a decision being made.

"Can I ask you something personal?" she says. "We’ve been doing that for some time now" Yoongi notes with a light chuckle.

"More personal." He leans back slightly, arms loose. "Okay."

"Do you actually want this? Not the date, not…" she gestures between them. "In general. A person. Do you want one or do you like the idea of wanting one?"

The table goes quiet. He looks at her steadily and she looks back, unhurried, leaving the question exactly where she put it.

"That's a good question," he says. "I know."

He takes a sip of his wine as he prepares to talk, "I miss it," he says simply, like something admitted for the first time in a while, to someone actually listening. "Having a girlfriend. Having someone who… knows your schedule well enough to know when you're tired before you say it. Someone to call when something happens. Good or bad." He pauses. "Someone to just, be there."

She's quiet as she leans in, like she wants him to know she’s listening. "I've told myself that life makes it impossible," he continues. "And it's not untrue. It's hard, it's always been hard." He glances up at her. "But I think I've been using it as a reason not to try. Which is different from it actually being impossible."

"That's honest," she says. "You asked."

"I did." ___ says with a small smile. "Your turn. Same question."

She exhales softly, "Yes," she says, without hesitation, which means she's known it for a while. "I'm not complicated about it. I just want someone, I've always wanted someone." She turns her ring once. "I've just been spectacularly unlucky."

He looks at her., and then her glass, and then the residual of her lipstick on the glass, "Unlucky how?"

She laughs, short and genuine, the kind that comes from a story that has lost its sting and kept its absurdity. "The last person I was serious about decided to move to London for work and forgot to mention it until two weeks before he left." She picks up her fork. "Before that there was someone lovely in every way except that he was still in love with his ex. Which he also didn't mention."

"I have good instincts about art," she continues, "and terrible instincts about men. Which is a very specific combination of traits to be living with” He presses his lips together, like he’s trying to suppress a smile.

"You can laugh," she says. "I'm not laughing."

"You're doing the thing where you're not laughing." He looks away briefly and then back at her, the wine really helping him look at her, "I'm not laughing at you."

"I know." She sets her fork down. "It's tiring, mostly. Being caught off guard by people when you're not someone who gets caught off guard easily."

The table settles into a quiet with something real in it now. The lightness still underneath but something more honest sitting on top as their plates get cleared, signaling a clear end to their date, or at least their time at the restaurant.

"How's the experiment going," he says, after a moment as he quietly places his card in the bill book.

She looks at him, steady and warm. "Terribly," she says with a pleasant smile.

He smiles into his glass. "Yeah," he says. "Same." Yoongi reaches into his pocket for his mask as they step outside, pulling it up with the practiced ease of someone who has done it ten thousand times, adjusting it once.

The street is empty and still. Tuesday midnight belongs to no one in particular. "I'll walk you home," he says, naturally, already falling into step beside her. “It’s a long walk” ___ retorts as they walk, hands brushing every now and then.

“It’s a two minute walk ___” Yoongi offers plainly as he doesn’t move away. They fall into step together and talk as they walk, nothing important, nothing that needs to be, she says something about a show she's been meaning to see, he says something about a track he's been sitting on for weeks, small things, the kind of conversation that exists just to keep the evening going a little longer.

It’s all light and breezy till they reach a crossing, he reaches out and takes her hand. His hand just finds hers as they step off the curb, the way you do something you've been doing for years. Fingers wrapping around hers, already looking both ways, already moving.

She looks straight ahead, hoping her hair masks some of her blush. They cross, but he doesn't let go.

She doesn't say anything. Neither does he. They just keep walking, her hand in his, and she looks at the street ahead with the expression of someone being very deliberate about not smiling and not quite managing it.

He looks at the building and looks back at her. Her hand still in his, the evening sitting between them with nowhere left to go, he leaves for Japan tomorrow, the night air cool and still around them.

She tilts her head up at him. "Do you want to come up?" she says. "I have dessert. Ice cream" she says as she tries to tug her hand to gesture with her hand, which he doesn’t let go.

He's looking at her with the particular expression she's learning, the one that isn't quite a smile but is adjacent to one, the one that lives mostly in his eyes, quiet and certain and slightly devastating at close range.

"Ice cream," he repeats. "Yes."

"What kind?" "Does it matter?"

He considers this with complete seriousness. "Somewhat."

"Yoongi." "I'm asking a reasonable question-"

"Come upstairs and find out," she says, and turns toward the entrance, and this time he lets her hand go, only to hold the door open for her, which she walks through without looking back at him because her face is still doing the thing and she needs another three seconds before she can be a normal person again.

Her apartment is exactly what he would have guessed and nothing he was fully prepared for.

Organized chaos, the particular kind that has a system even if the system isn't immediately visible. Paintings leaning against the walls in clusters, some framed, some not, some wrapped in brown paper with labels in her handwriting. Books on every surface, some closed, some splayed open face down. Magazines stacked in a way that suggests they're referenced rather than decorative.

It's lived in. Genuinely, thoroughly lived in, and it suits her so precisely. They end up on the sofa without deciding to, the way they keep ending up places without deciding to. Her legs tucked under her, turned slightly toward him. Him at the other end, bowl in hand, looking at the painting propped against the wall directly across from them.

They talk. The ice cream disappears somewhere in the middle of a conversation that moves from her uncle to his producing to a collector in Geneva who cried when she found him a specific work he'd been searching for for eleven years. He tells her about what it feels like when a track finally becomes what it was supposed to be. She listens the way she always listens, fully, without waiting for her turn.

It's past one when his phone lights up on the cushion between them. Mom.

She sees it the same moment he does. He reaches for it. "Pick up her phone," she says sternly, the tone of teasing right there.

"I'm not -" "Do not cut your poor mother’s phone, she might be sick and worried" ___ adds dramatically and he huffs and picks up the call anyway.

"Mom." "Where are you?" She’s wide awake, unbothered by the hour. "You're never out this late, are you sick-" "I'm not sick-"

"Have you eaten?" "I had dinner" "With who-"

___ opens her mouth with that same teasing smile and his hand moves before he's decided to move it, swift, certain, palm covering her mouth completely, cutting off whatever she was about to contribute to this situation as he closes the distance between them.

She goes still as he keeps his eyes forward, continuing the phone call, entirely composed. "With a friend, Mom, I'll be home soon"

___ looks up at him over his hand. She very aware, in the specific silence of having nothing to say because there is a hand preventing her from saying it, of his hands. The size of them. The warmth. The way it covers most of her lower face with a kind of easy certainty that she is finding deeply inconvenient given the current context of a first date and his mother on the phone and her own heartbeat which has made a unilateral decision she hasn't approved.

"You sound strange," his mother says. "I'm fine."

"Which friend?" "Mom -" ___ raises her eyebrows at him. He finally looks at her, briefly, and whatever he sees makes him look immediately back at the painting on the wall across the room.

His hand stays and she stays still beneath it.

"Come home soon," his mother says. "Soon," he confirms. "Go to sleep"

He hangs up with a huff and neither of them moves. His hand is still there, warm against her face, and the apartment is very quiet around them, the painting on the wall offering no commentary whatsoever.

Slowly, with the careful deliberateness of someone making a considered decision, he lowers it. She looks up at him. He looks back at her, right beside her.

"You were going to say something," he says shyly as his hand comes to rub his neck.

"I was going to be helpful," she says. "You were going to be a problem." "Same thing," she says with a smile, and her hands come up without much deliberation and fix his hair which the sudden movement moved out of place.

He goes very still, not uncomfortable. Just, very still. The way he goes still when something catches him off guard in a way he wasn't prepared to be caught. Her hand drops back down, briefly touching his thigh when she leaves them.

He's looking at her now, properly, the full direct version he allows himself in small increments, and from this close it's a lot. “I didn't expect to have this much fun," he confesses, his voice quieterl, like he's admitting something he hadn't planned to. "Not that I doubted you, I just-" he pauses, choosing the words carefully the way he does, "I haven't been on a first date this good in a while."

He looks at her when he says it, waiting for her reaction with the particular stillness of someone who has said a true thing and is now at the mercy of what happens next.

"I know," she says, and there's warmth in it, no teasing yet, just the honest version first. "I was kind of rooting for you to be this brooding, nonchalant musician, actually. Would have made it all much easier."

"Easier," he repeats. "To not like you," she says simply, reaching for her glass of wine. "I had a whole plan. You'd be aloof and a little difficult and I'd think, well, lovely person, interesting work, not for me." She takes a sip. "Very clean. Very uncomplicated."

"I almost cancelled," he says, after a moment. She raises an eyebrow. "Not because-" he stops, tries again. "I almost talked myself out of it. On the way over." He turns his glass slightly on the table, the small rotation she's noticed he does when he's thinking. "I do that. Find the practical reason not to."

"What changed your mind?" she asks. He's quiet for a moment, looks at the table, at his glass, briefly at her hands where they rest near her wine. “I really liked the feeling of seeing you after the concert," he says. Simply, without dressing it up, the way he says true things when he's decided to say them. He pauses. "I kept thinking about it on the drive over and I couldn't find a practical reason that was bigger than that."

She looks at him for a moment, this careful, deliberate man who thinks before he speaks and means everything he says and had apparently spent an entire car ride arguing with himself about her and lost. "The feeling of seeing me," she repeats, softly.

"Yes," he says. He's looking at her now, noticing how she looks in these dim lights.

They talk for a while, about something and nothing in particular, the night settling into the easy rhythm that has become theirs without either of them formally deciding. She tells him about an artist she'd found earlier in the year, eccentric beyond what that word usually covers, a man who'd moved deep into the woods over concerns about wifi radiation and could only be reached by a forty minute hike up an unmarked trail. "I showed up in the wrong shoes," she says, gesturing at her feet like the memory is still personal. "He didn't apologize. Just handed me a cup of something that tasted like tea and started showing me the work." She pauses. "It was extraordinary. The work, not the tea, the tea made me sick."

He's smiling properly now, elbow on the sofa back, chin in his hand, watching her the way he watches things he finds genuinely interesting. "Did you sign him?"

"I'm working on it," she says. "He doesn't have a phone so it's mostly letters." A beat. "Actual letters. With stamps." He laughs, low and warm, and she tucks her feet further under her, satisfied.

He talks about tour, stories that surface easily now in the comfortable quiet of her living room, the way they don't always in interviews or in rooms full of people waiting for something quotable. A night in São Paulo where the rain came down so hard they could hear it over the speakers and the crowd stayed anyway, every single person, standing in it. The particular feeling, he says, quieter now, of standing in the wings before a show when everyone is there together, all seven of them, and the noise of the crowd coming through the walls like something alive.

"You miss them," she says, not a question. "It's different performing without all of them," he says simply. "It'll be good to be back."

She looks at him for a moment, the lamp throwing everything soft and warm, his profile against the dark of the window, the city quiet beyond the glass. She's been thinking about something, something which is a lot to ask on a first date, but asks anyway.

"How does it work?" she says. "A relationship. With you on tour." She says it evenly, no weight of accusation in it, just the genuine question, the one that has been sitting underneath the whole evening. "Practically. What does it actually look like?"

He's quiet for a moment, turning his glass slowly. "A lot of texts," he says. "Voice notes when there's time. Video calls that get cut short because of schedules." He pauses. "Having them fly out for tour dates, as often as I can, as much as they can" He looks at the glass, talking in hypotheticals.

“The hardest part isn't the being away," he continues. "It's not being there for the small things. The ordinary ones." He glances up at her briefly. "Someone has a bad day and you're in a different timezone and a text isn't the same as being there."

She's quiet for a moment, turning her ring. "No," she agrees. "It isn't."

"I'm not going to pretend it's easy," he says, and she can hear the care in it, the way he's choosing honesty over reassurance because he thinks she deserves the honest version. "It asks a lot of the other person."

"It asks a lot of both people," she says. He looks at her then. "You'd be the one leaving," she continues. "That's not nothing either." He holds her gaze for a moment, something shifting slightly in his expression, like she's said something he hadn't expected to be said. "No," he says quietly. "It's not."

It’s about three am when Yoongi yawns for the first time, ___ chuckles as she stands up, they’ve talked for a while, they could keep going, but he also leaves for the tour tomorrow.

“What time do you leave tomorrow?” ___ asks as she walks over to the kitchen and refills her glass, “Around 7 pm” Yoongi says as he checks his watch, very aware of the time. He stands up, swiftly putting on his jacket.

“I should go, we both have stuff in the morning” He says as he stands awkwardly, he isn’t sure how to say goodbye, or if he even wants to.

“Yeah…yeah we do” The silence that follows is different from the ones before. He shifts slightly, hands sliding into his pockets, then out again, like he can’t quite decide what to do with them.

He’s not usually like this, but there’s something about this, about her, that’s throwing off his usual rhythm.

“Tonight was…” he starts, then stops, he exhales lightly, glancing away for a second before meeting her eyes again. “A successful experiment” ___ adds as she walks over, stopping just a few steps away from him.

“___,” he starts again, quicker this time, like if he hesitates he won’t say it at all. “I’d like to see you again.”

The words land between them, steady but unpolished, so painfully honest. “My life is complicated,” he continues, glancing at her briefly before looking back, like he’s choosing not to hide behind anything. “But I feel like we’ve got something good.”

He pauses there, watching her, trying to read her before he goes any further. He continues quietly, “something real”

For a second, she just looks at him, and then her smile grows. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she admits, closing the small distance between them.

Now they’re close, closer than before, close enough that she can see the growing blush on his face, “Because I was about to say the same thing.”

That catches him off guard, just slightly, his expression shifting to relief and something more warm. “Good,” he says, softer now.

“You know,” she adds lightly, her voice dropping just a little, “for an experiment, this went pretty well.”

“Mm.” “Almost like we should repeat it.”

That earns the faintest hint of a smile from him. “I was planning on it.”

Her eyes flick briefly to his lips before returning to his eyes, the movement subtle and quick, but not quick enough to escape him, and in that fleeting moment something in him settles, something quiet but certain, like a decision finally catching up to a feeling he’s been circling all night.

His hand lifts again, more deliberate this time, coming to rest at her waist, fingers curling slightly as if he’s grounding himself, or maybe holding onto the moment just a little longer, like he’s aware of how easily it could slip past them if he rushes it.

He doesn’t rush, and he doesn’t overthink it either, which for him is saying something, because there’s usually a pause, a calculation, a reason to hold back, but not now.

He stops just short of her, close enough that the space between them feels intentional rather than hesitant, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath, to give her the chance to pull away if she wants to, to change her mind, to set the boundary before he crosses it.

But she doesn’t, instead, she closes that last bit of distance herself, leaning in just slightly, just enough to meet him halfway, and that’s all the confirmation he needs.

When he kisses her, it’s softer than expected, not because he’s unsure, but because he’s choosing to be careful with it, choosing to let it build rather than take, and there’s something in that restraint that makes it feel more intentional, more real.

Her hand comes up almost immediately, pressing lightly against his chest, not to stop him but to steady herself, or maybe to feel something tangible in the middle of everything that suddenly feels a little too charged, a little too new.

And that’s what shifts it, that simple contact. It deepens the kiss, not dramatically, not all at once, but enough to change it from something tentative into something that lingers, something that holds, something that neither of them seems in a hurry to end.

___ didn’t know how to feel when Yoongi sent her the flight tickets. She isn’t even sure if they’re in a relationship, how does one qualify this as a relationship when it went from a phenomenal first date to flying across continents for the second one.

They’ve been constantly in touch with each other, texting, calling, even video calling a few rare times, each sending pictures from their day, and usually ___ would have classified this as something too difficult for 31 and moved on, but he’s just charmed her. His soft laughter, sending her flowers to the gallery, song samples that he genuinely wants her thoughts on.

She's found herself laughing into her phone more than she has in recent memory. While she drives to work and he's somewhere between cities, still half asleep, voice low and unhurried. While he eats dinner and she scrapes together a lunch at her desk, their schedules overlapping in whatever small window the timezones allow. The video call where he talked her through using a power drill for twenty minutes with the focused patience of someone who genuinely could not rest until she could hang the paintings in her living room.

___ pushes all the doubts aside as she moves through the airport, it’s still early morning and a significant amount at the San Francisco airport. ___ spots Mr Shin right away, Yoongi’s manager standing there with a warm smile as he waves his hands to greet her.

"Morning, Ms. Lee." He's quick, stepping forward to take her bag before she's even fully registered the intention. "How was the flight? Did you eat?" "I'm fine, really-" but the bag is already gone, and he's already moving, and she has learned enough about the people in Yoongi's orbit to know that efficiency is a personality trait they share collectively. She falls into step beside him.

The car is black, tinted, parked just beyond the terminal in the kind of spot that suggests someone made a phone call. Mr. Shin rounds the front of it and she follows, and that's when she sees him.

Yoongi is standing on the far side of the car, away from the flow of arrivals, away from the small clusters of people watching the arrivals gate. He's in a cap and a mask, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, she isn’t sure if he’s smiling, but his eyes light up for sure.

She stops for just a second. Then she keeps walking and he straightens slightly, the way he does when he's trying to look like he wasn't just waiting, and she would tease him about it if her own face wasn't currently doing something she'd prefer it didn't.

"Hi," she says, stopping in front of him. "Hi." His eyes move over her briefly, the way they do, quick and considered. “Long flight?" Yoongi asks, almost instinctively taking the massive handbag from her hand, their fingers brush, the simple touch is enough to wake him up.

“Yeah, there was so much turbulence, I didn’t get a minute's sleep” ___ shares as they stand a few steps away from each other, none of them ready to be bold this morning. “How do you look this beautiful after fourteen hours of no sleep?” Yoongi comments, a compliment filled with genuine curiosity.

___ blinks once. Then she breaks into that familiar laughter, the real one, sudden and unguarded, her hand coming up to hit his arm softly. "That's not-" she starts, still laughing, shaking her head. "You can't just say things like that."

"I'm just asking," he says, and he's smiling now too, the full version, the one that takes over his whole face when he's not paying attention to stopping it. "You're not just asking, you're-" she gestures vaguely at him, at the general situation, at whatever this is, and he watches her do it with quiet satisfaction.

“Mr Min, we’re ready to leave” Mr Shin speaks before he gets into the driver seat, they’re in the car quickly, ___ is the first to yawn then Yoongi when she laughs again, there isn’t much being said, both of them just glad to be in each other’s presence.

“Is there anything specific you want to do before you fly to LA?” Yoongi asks after three complete minutes of silence, he has five days before their dates in Stanford, but ___ has combined this trip with some work trip.

“Golden gate bridge for sure, lots of coffee” ___ talks as she looks ahead at the GPS, it’s going to be thirty minutes till they reach the hotel, “and eat all the food we can in Chinatown” she turns to face him, Yoongi is currently taking very serious mental notes, hoping he remembers this all.

"Everything," she adds, because she means it. "Dim sum, noodles, everything." "Everything," he repeats, solemnly, like he's committing it to memory.

The city slides past in the early grey light, the fog sitting low over everything, soft and unhurried. ___'s exhausted in the particular way that crosses the point of feeling like exhaustion and becomes something closer to weightlessness, the fourteen hours and the turbulence and the airport and the adrenaline all catching up at once now that she's finally still.

He's warm beside her, warm and solid and here, actually here, not a voice through a speaker or a name on a screen, and she is tired enough and brave enough that when her head tips sideways and finds his shoulder.

“Is this the shoulder with the surgery?” ___ snaps out of it, lifting her head slightly just to confirm things. Yoongi is still for a second, "No," he murmurs. His arm comes around her, slow and easy, like it's the most natural thing, settling at her back with a gentleness that she feels all the way through the exhaustion.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Yoongi shares a few moments later, knowing she’s fully awake. “Even more glad that you can stay a month” he murmurs softly into her hair as his hand gently rubs her shoulder. Her hand finds the fabric of his hoodie, fingers curling lightly against it, too tired to talk. Yoongi rests his cheek gently against the top of her head and looks at the road ahead with the expression of a man who is trying very hard not to think about how much he already doesn't want this month to end.

___ feels like a zombie dragging herself, barely awake yet fully awake, full of food, desserts and coffee that they kept stuffing each other with. Yoongi walks back to the park bench, water in hand and he too feels like he’s ready to call quits on the day even if it’s only 6 pm yet.

“You don’t look too well, do you have a fever?” Yoongi asks as he hands her the bottle, wiping his hand against his jeans before checking her temperature. ___ almost immediately falls into his touch, her eyes closing, her whole body leaning slightly into his hand like she's been needing to rest against something for a while now and this is close enough.

"I am just-" she starts, then stops, organizing her words with some effort. "I can see how much you've planned, I know you looked things up and I know you had the whole route figured out and I genuinely loved today, all of it, the food and all of it-" she opens her eyes and looks at him, earnest despite the exhaustion, "-but can we just go back to the hotel and sleep." A pause. "You should stay out," she adds, because she means it, "get some air, do something, I just really really need to crash."

He looks at her for a long moment. His hand has moved from her forehead to the back of her neck, resting there lightly, and she hasn't moved away from it. “Let me call a car, we can go to that restaurant some other time” he whispers mostly to himself as ___ sighs with relief, going back to resting against the bench back.

“I promise I’ll be a lot more fun tomorrow morning, I just need to sleep” ___ mumbles and Yoongi can’t help but be fascinated by this new side to her, the extremely exhausted that makes her whiny. "Why didn't you say anything sooner?" he asks, looking at her sideways, and his arm comes around her naturally, his hand finding her far shoulder and drawing her back toward him, her head settling against him with the ease of something practiced.

"I hadn't seen you in so long," she says finally, her voice quiet and honest, the filter that exhaustion removes making everything simpler. "I didn't want to waste time sleeping."

He goes still, not visibly, not in any way she'd catch in the state she's in, but something in him just stops for a moment and sits with that. “Please just tell me the next time you’re too tired” Yoongi pleads as a car rolls in, hoping it’s theirs.

"Come on," he says gently, standing and bringing her with him, his hand steady at her back. She goes without complaint, leaning into his side, and he keeps his arm around her as they walk toward the car, her steps slow and his matching them without thinking about it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to eat anything? Room service? Have food picked up?” Yoongi talks as he swipes the key card, “I can’t, I feel nauseous already” ___ answers with great delay as she picks up the pace, walking up to it but struggling to open it.

“Need any help?” Yoongi asks and ___ simply nods walking to the washroom, she is optimizing the time, going straight to washing up while Yoongi finds her pyjamas. He helps her out, wiping her face that she left damp, helping her remove her rings and watch, and is almost fascinated by the speed in which she gets into bed.

Yoongi slips into bed approximately twenty minutes later, hoping she’s already asleep and it seems to be true until she stirs towards him. “I am so sorry” ___ mumbles and Yoongi’s eyebrows knit as she moves even closer, or he does, Yoongi’s not sure.

“___ you flew across continents for me, you’re allowed to be tired” Yoongi speaks softly, pushing some of her hair behind her ear. “I know, it’s just that I thought we’d be having sex and instead we’re falling asleep at 6 pm” she speaks against his arm and something in his chest does a complicated thing and he presses his lips together and looks at the ceiling for a moment, and the laugh that comes out of him is low and quiet and completely helpless, the kind that sneaks up on him.

“We have an entire month” Yoongi reassures her, he isn’t sure what the move is, this is technically their second date, but he also wants to cuddle her, maybe even kiss her if he could be just a bit braver. “I counted, and with your work and mine, we only have 17 days together”

He pulls her in, properly, his arm coming around her, and she goes without stirring, fitting against him with the ease of something that has been doing this for years instead of days.

"Seventeen days is a lot," he says softly, into her hair. She makes a small sound, almost agreement, almost already dreaming. “We can still have a lot of fun, just tell me the next time you’re tired like this" he says, quieter now, his head leaning down but ___ seems to be fast asleep against his chest.

Yoongi has rules about this sort of thing. No sleeping in the same bed before the fifth date. No inviting someone on tour before you're actually together. No cuddling before, he looks down at her, well.

He looks back at the ceiling. The rules were built for a specific kind of situation. A careful, sensible situation where feelings arrived in an orderly fashion. The rules had not accounted for ___ specifically, which in retrospect was a significant oversight in the design.

He exhales slowly, a bit scared of how much he’s already feeling but also very excited but it all, no one has been like her, she’s truly the anomaly to the experiment.

“Come here, we should take pictures together as well” ___ gestures towards Yoongi who turns towards his security personnel with her phone. She’s banned pictures on his samsung, something about them just not looking right. Yoongi jogs beside her, the sun peaking through the golden gate bridge, the soft morning glow on her face, he can’t help but smile.

“You look very pretty in the morning” Yoongi compliments her, posing awkwardly beside each other. “You think I look pretty after a 14 hour flight, I don’t trust you” ___ teases as she shifts closer, the security guard continuing to take pictures.

“Well you’re always pretty to me,” Yoongi continues nonchalantly, like this is the most natural thing in the world, ___’s blush growing deeper. “Am I just that, arm candy Yoongi-si?” ___ teases as she looks up at him.

“Well that, also you're so terrifyingly confident and smart, so kind,” Yoongi says, his fingers intertwining with hers. “Wow, I’m arm candy for BTS’s Suga, I’ve finally made it in life” ___ jokes, mostly because she doesn’t want to process the other compliments he gave her.

"Okay," the security guard calls out, "I think I got some good ones." "Thank you," ___ calls back, and her voice only wavers slightly. Yoongi squeezes her hand once, still not looking at her, and starts back down the path, pulling her gently with him, away from the rocky terrain, his grip sure and unhurried.

“So, you fly to LA tomorrow morning?” Yoongi confirms as he drys his hair, he finds ___ staring at her phone intently, like she’s overanalysing something. “___?” he calls her again, walking closer. Yoongi sees her shuffling through the pictures from the golden gate bridge, stuck at one particular one where he’s looking at her instead of facing forward.

He sits down on the edge of the bed beside her. She looks up at him, then at the photo, then back at him. "What are we?" she asks. Not confrontational, not loaded, just genuinely asking, the way she asks things she actually wants answered.

He looks at her with the expression of someone who finds the question slightly puzzling. "What do you mean?" "I mean-" she gestures between them, "us. This. What is this."

"I'm your boyfriend," he says, simply, with complete confidence, the way he'd say something obvious, like the name of a street or the time of a flight. Then he tilts his head slightly, reading her face. "Was that not clear?"

She stares at him, “___ I begged you to join me for the tour, why would I do that? I didn't think we were dating?” Yoongi speaks, the towel coming up to her hair to dry it instead. “So, you’ve not brought girls around when they were just a fling?” ___ deflects again, teasing now that she’s gotten the answer she’s wanted.

“No” he says, flatly, no elaboration, the kind of no that closes a door completely. He keeps drying her hair, unbothered, and she lets him, looking up at him from where she's sitting, close enough now to see everything his face is doing in the quiet of the room.

“Did you really think we were a fling or something, what’s it called now?” Yoongi stops to think for a second, “A situationship?” his amused tone is not helping the laughter escaping ___, her falling flat on the bed.

“You grandpa, how do you know what that even is?” “Jungkook’s love live is complicated” Yoongi answers, pulling her up, but ___ just pulls him with her. She reaches up and pushes his damp hair back from his forehead, slow and deliberate, and he stays completely still beneath it, watching her, and when she doesn't move her hand away he turns his head slightly into it, just barely, just enough.

The kiss starts soft and then doesn't stay that way, his hand finding her waist, pulling her closer with the quiet certainty of someone who has wanted to do this all day and has run out of reasons not to. She goes willingly, her fingers curling into his shirt, unbuttoning his shirt almost immediately as his hands wander, his fingers running the length of her thighs, stopping just to pull her back up.

“Hey, you can’t do that” ___ complaints as Yoongi successfully makes her stand up, they have dinner reservations with the members in less than thirty minutes. “What? I didn’t do anything?” Yoongi answers with great restraint, knowing exactly what he just pulled.

“You know exactly what you just did Mr Min” ___ whines, going back to getting ready, very slowly putting on each piece of jewellery. “I kinda like being called Mr Min” Yoongi confesses as he watches her though the mirror, and the devious smile that immediately graces her lips scares him a bit.

“Oh, do you Mr. Min?” ___ teases turning around, her blouse coming off in one swift motion. She's looking at him with the expression of a woman who has just evened a score and knows it, perfectly composed, completely unbothered.

He looks at her, at the blouse on the floor, at her as she snaps off her bra in one swift motion, just standing there in a mini-skirt. "That's not fair," Yoongi mutters weakly, his eyes trailing all over her, clearly losing this as ___ pushes him back onto the bed.

"Isn't it?" she says pleasantly, her hands moving quickly to unbutton his trousers. “How about, for the little move you pulled earlier, I just do this for a second and get dressed again?” ___’s voice is low as her hands rub against his bulge.

“That’s just mean” Yoongi whines, propping himself against his arm, completely helpless to her whims as her soft hands wander, pulling his briefs low, “No what’s meaner is you pulling away after making me think you’re going to finger me” ___ complaints as Yoongi lets out a soft moan, her hand rubbing down his length.

“I am so sorry okay, but please keep going” Yoongi barely gets the words out as ___ gently kisses his tip. “Now what should we do, should I suck your dick or should we get dressed for dinner?” ___ knows they’re not making dinner when Yoongi moans a quiet please.

Yoongi’s phone is going off on the nightstand, as Yoongi pulls ___ back to the bed, she’s spent far too much time on her knees and he needs to be inside her. “Darling you are so wet already” Yoongi murmurs in her ears as his nimble fingers rub in a circle. “Stop fucking teasing me” ___ whines, pushing his fingers inside her.

___’s breathless, so close to climax as Yoongi’s fingers keep going in a steady motion, no matter how much she wants, he refuses to pick up the pace, taking his sweet time. His phone rings just as ___ is shaking in his arms, the waves of orgasm sending shockwaves through her but Yoongi just keeps going.

Yoongi sighs with frustration as his phone rings once again, “Stay quiet, just for a minute” Yoongi mumbles, his fingers still going as ___ kisses his neck just to keep quiet. “Jimin-ah, we can’t make it, ___’s sick” Yoongi talks with a devious smile on his lips as ___ takes a sharp breath.

“Hyung be better with the excuses at least,” Jimin teases and Yoongi chuckles, “I swear, she’s not well, she’s been in bed all evening” Yoongi talks and ___ lightly bites his neck, so close once again.

“Alright, if she’s sick, I hope she feels better” Jimin talks and all Yoongi does is hum as he ends the call. “You’re going to leave a hickey” Yoongi complains but ___ just cradles in his lap, facing him now, quickly putting on a condom.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have stopped to pick up a call” ___ continues biting where she was as Yoongi thrusts inside her, the motion sending her in a frenzy as he just keeps going, slow and soft. “Maybe you shouldn’t have taken off your top” Yoongi teases, steadying her in his arms, the glow on her face, how her hair keeps sticking everywhere, he could get used to this view.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have teased-” ___ stops talking as Yoongi picks up the pace, arching back with pleasure, Yoongi’s takes a sharp breath, “Are you close, I am so-” Yoongi nods, biting her lower lip, kissing her rapidly as they orgasm. ___’s limbs give out, both of them falling back into bed.

She reaches up and traces the line of his jaw lightly, just because she can, just because she's allowed to now, and he closes his eyes briefly beneath it. “I don’t think I can walk Mr Min” ___ teases, pulling the sheets over herself. “You are beautiful” Yoongi notes as he turns to face her, her cheeks still flush as they both continue to catch their breaths.

“So are you” ___’s voice is uncharacteristically shy as he pulls the sheet even higher, “I am beautiful?” Yoongi teases, his breath finally even. “Yes, you’re also so buff, where did those arms come from?” ___ talks, running a hand over her heart, trying to calm herself down.

“Are you okay? Just give me a few seconds and I’ll get you some water” Yoongi mumbles, tucking her hair away, it’s gotten significantly longer since the first time he saw her, reaching her shoulders now. “I am fine, but you were great, really” ___ talks, shuffling closer till she’s firmly resting against his chest.

“And you are so evil, but also so amazing, taking off your top and we just derail our evening like this” Yoongi talks and he can feel her laughing before he hears it. He pauses and looks down at the top of her head. "I had a plan for this evening," he continues..

She tilts her chin up to look at him, her eyes still warm with laughter, her cheek pressed against his chest. "Was this better than the plan?"

He meets her eyes. Looks away and looks back. "Don't," he says. "Was it?" "You're so smug," he tells her.

"Yoongi-si" "Significantly better than the plan," he admits, quietly, which is the most she's going to get and she knows it and takes it anyway, her smile pressing into his chest as she settles back down. His hand keeps moving at her back, slow and easy.

___ goes around the apartment, picking up after herself. She really needs a cleaning lady or move because the mess around her apartment has only grown over the last six months. Her job’s always involved some travel, with a boyfriend on tour she’s been away even more and she doesn’t even remember the last time she was in the guest room.

___’s also cleaning because Yoongi is finally going to be back at home for a month, and the last time he was here he spent half the time helping her clean. She dials his number as she moves through laundry, but when the call doesn’t go through she just assumes he’s flying home, the last concert before the break was yesterday morning.

Yoongi: I’ve sent a few desserts your home as consolation for not being there to celebrate your birthday tonight, he should be there in 20ish minutes

Yoongi: Are you even home?

___: I am home, I’m not feeling the best and my apartment needed some TLC

___: You didn’t have to send anything, you’ll be here tomorrow anyway

Yoongi: Not feeling well? Oh, the first week of the month… you absolutely need desserts

___: Are you tracking my period?

___: It’s kinda cute but I don’t think I ever told you that explicitly?

Yoongi: We started fighting around the same day each month and I connected the dots

___: Are you saying that I pick pointless fights around my birthday? Because that’s rude

Yoongi: Darling, last month we fought about if a window should be opened or not and then you cried when I very gently explained why it needs to be opened for airflow

___: This feels like we’re fighting about a fight, am I that irrational on my period?

Yoongi: I don’t care, all those hormonal changes and pain would make anyone irrational

Yoongi: Just rest till the desserts arrive, I kinda like organizing your mess

___: It’s not my mess, it’s organized chaos

Yoongi: An organized mess where I can’t find the salt in the kitchen

___: okay, it’s a mess

___ goes back to cleaning when her phone doesn’t buzz for a while, Yoongi must have gotten busy with something, so does she as he hauls her laundry over the sofa. She’s mid-folding when the bell rings, for a woman living alone she should have checked through the peephole before swinging the door open.

But she’s kinda glad she didn’t, because the sheer surprise she feels at the view of her boyfriend standing outside with flowers and his carry-on dropped to his feet. “Surprise!” he musters up all his energy for that, engulfing her in a tight hug as he finally takes a deep breath.

“Oh my god, I thought you were flying tomorrow?” ___ talks into his jacket, momentarily lifting her face, only to be hugged tighter. “I didn’t want to arrive tomorrow and be groggy and tired on your birthday” Yoongi talks into her hair, taking a long whiff of her hair.

“So you flew directly after the concert?” “Who cares about the logistics, the important thing is that I am here” Yoongi talks as he finally detaches, taking a long look at her as he smiles widely. ___ intertwines their hands, leading him in and giving him approximately two seconds to drop all his stuff before she holds his face, it’s been too long since they’ve kissed.

"I missed you so-" she says between kisses, soft and unhurried, her thumbs against his jaw, "-so much, and I love you so so much and you're like the best boyfriend ever-"

He makes a sound against her mouth that is warm and amused and tired all at once, his hands finding her waist, pulling her closer with the ease of something practiced, and she can feel him smiling into the kiss which makes her smile too, which makes kissing considerably more difficult and neither of them minds.

"Best boyfriend ever," he repeats, pulling back just enough to look at her, his eyes barely open from exhaustion, red rimmed from the flight and the concert and the night in between. "I also did a bunch of shopping for you at duty free. Does that get me any brownie points?” Yoongi asks his eyes trailing down the white dress she always wears just at home.

His eyes trail down the white dress she always wears at home, the one he's come to associate with her off days, her genuinely-at-rest days, the version of her that exists only in her own apartment with no clients to see and nowhere to be.

"Honey, baby, sugar plum buttercup-" she takes his face in her hands again, very seriously, "-that gets you so many brownie points, but you have got to stop spending so much money on me." She pushes her hair out of her face with one hand, still not used to the new cut, the layers falling everywhere, doing whatever they want.

"Why?" Yoongi says. He pouts, she's too busy dealing with the direct effect of it. "I have too much money to spend in a lifetime. I should spoil my girlfriend after being away for so long."

"Yoongi-" "Six weeks," he says. "Six weeks, one day, and-" he checks some internal calculation, "-about fourteen hours."

She stares at him. "You counted." "I'm just saying the math supports the duty free shopping." He reaches up and pushes the layered hair from her face himself, tucking it behind her ear the way he always does, watching it fall forward again immediately. His hand stays at her jaw. "I like the haircut."

"It does whatever it wants," she says, slightly mournfully. "I know." He tucks it back again, pointlessly. "I like it." She looks at him, at the exhaustion and the pout and the hand at her jaw and the duty free bags presumably somewhere in the carry-on she hasn't let him unpack yet, and she thinks that she has been thoroughly swooned by a man who is barely conscious.

"You're impossible," she says. "I love you” Yoongi states simply, the same way he did earlier this year in Paris. He just blurted it out one morning while leaving for rehearsal, never making a big deal out of it, like it was the most natural thing for him to say.

“Are you sure that you want to go on a trip before the last leg of the tour? You’ll be exhausted from travelling by then?” ___ talks through her airpod, her phone still somewhere in her purse as she continues to get the gallery ready for an event.

“We haven’t just gone on a vacation just for us, it’s always been us trying to piece together a few days between the tour, that’s not a real vacation” Yoongi retorts as he sits down to get ready for the first Bangkok show. “There must be somewhere you want to go?” He continues already having shortlisted a few options.

“Oh this client last week was telling me about this amazing Maldives resort he went to, it’s so beautiful and private” ___ talks, fixing a few frames that still need to be put up. “He? Are you sure he was telling or was he offering?” Yoongi teases and ___ sighs. “I work in art, Yoongi,” ___ says. “Do you know how many men have tried to flirt with me by explaining private islands?”

He huffs out a laugh, the one that always sounds slightly disbelieving, like amusement caught him off guard. She can picture it immediately despite not being able to see him, head tipped back slightly in the makeup chair, phone balanced in one hand while someone fixes his hair.

“And?” he asks. “And what?” “Did the resort at least look nice?”

“Oh, unbelievable.” She bends to pick up a stack of exhibition cards from the floor. “White sand. Crystal water. Villas with pools bigger than my apartment.”

“See?” he says immediately. “You want to go.” She smiles despite how much they shouldn’t do this. “I want to sleep,” she corrects. “You’ll be exhausted, I’ll probably have three openings back to back by then, and we’ll spend the entire trip unconscious.”

“You know,” he says after a moment, quieter now as the backstage noise fades slightly, “I think I miss you best when I’m tired.” Her hands still briefly over the stack of cards.

It’s such a Yoongi sentence, not dramatic or casual. Just honest in that careful devastating way he has. “What does that even mean,” she asks softly.

“I don’t know.” She hears movement, fabric shifting, maybe him leaning back in the chair. “When I’m busy I can ignore it because everything’s moving all the time. Schedules, rehearsals, flights. But when I get tired enough that my brain finally shuts up a little…” A pause. “You’re kind of the first thing I look for.”

“Honey you can’t just say stuff like that when I miss you like crazy” ___ speaks softly, all she wants is to see him, feel him, she’s just been missing him. Something in his chest pulls tight in that quiet painful way longing sometimes does when it lands at the wrong time of day.

“Yesterday I was walking back home and all these couples were out,” she continues, absentmindedly straightening a stack of gallery brochures as she talks. “Getting dinner, holding hands, arguing about where to go, normal boring couple things.” A small laugh escapes her. “And I just kept wishing you were there.”

He looks down at the floor for a second. There’s always a specific kind of helplessness that comes with tour. He’s learned to live with it, mostly. The missing, the leaving, the constant temporary nature of things.

“What would we have been doing?” he asks quietly. She smiles immediately at the question, hearing what it really is beneath it.

“Probably arguing.” “About?”

“You refusing to let me smoke.” “You shouldn’t smoke.”

“You sound eighty years old.” “You cough for three business days afterward.”

“That’s not the point.” She walks toward the back office, lowering her voice instinctively once she’s away from the staff. “Maybe we’d stop for tteokbokki.”

“You always want tteokbokki at night.” “Because it tastes better at night.”

“That’s scientifically untrue.” She laughs softly, and he feels some invisible tension in himself ease at the sound. “And then,” she continues, settling into the fantasy now, “you’d insist on walking me home even though your place is in the opposite direction.”

“I would.” “I know.” Her voice gentles around the words. “That’s the problem.”

The thing about Yoongi is that he loves in practical ways first. Walking someone home. Buying three coffees because he doesn’t know which one they like. Remembering flight times. Sending weather screenshots. Calling managers to make impossible schedules work. But distance makes practical love difficult.

Distance leaves him with words instead, and he’s still learning what to do with those. “I miss you too,” he says finally, the sentence low and steady and entirely unprotected. “More than I thought I would.”

___ leans back against the desk behind her, eyes closing briefly. “Come home soon,” she murmurs.

There’s a long pause on his end, “I’m trying,” he says quietly, and she can hear the exhaustion underneath it now, the real one he saves mostly for her. “I think if I stay away from you much longer I’m going to start doing irrational things.”

She smiles immediately. “Like?” Another pause, she can practically hear him debating whether to say it.

“Looking at apartments closer to your gallery.” Her breath catches before she can stop it. Yoongi rubs his arm, not knowing if he’s said something utterly stupid, “Something for us maybe, I’ve just made one search” he continues honestly and ___ can’t help the tears welling in her eyes.

On the other end Yoongi immediately notices the quiet stretching too long. “Hey,” he says softly, sitting up properly now. “I didn’t mean it like-” He rubs at the back of his neck, suddenly uncertain. “I’m not trying to pressure you or anything, I thought it’d be easier if I was closer to your gallery and then-”

He stops himself, he’s rambling. Which she’s realizing is rare enough from him that it almost makes her cry harder. “It was stupid,” he says quickly, already retreating from the admission. “Forget I said anything.”

___ lets out a wet laugh despite herself, shaking her head immediately even though he can’t see it.

“No,” she says quietly. “No, don’t do that.” He goes still. There’s noise around him again now, staff moving in and out, someone asking about wardrobe changes, but he’s listening to her so fully it’s almost tangible through the phone.

“I just…” She exhales shakily, pressing the heel of her hand briefly against her eyes. “You caught me off guard.”

“With the apartment thing?” “Yes, Yoongi, with the apartment thing,” she says with a laugh threaded through the emotion now. “You can’t casually mention moving in together while I’m actively suffering from how much I miss you”

He thinks about all the versions of them that exist lately only in transition. Her half asleep face on facetime at two in the morning while he’s eating room service in another timezone. Her voice breaking apart through bad hotel wifi. Him landing in Seoul already calculating how many hours they get before one of them leaves again.

This, exactly, was why he didn’t want a girlfriend. Not because he didn’t want love. Because he knew what happened when love had to survive logistics. Because somewhere deep down he understood that eventually another person would have to start structuring their loneliness around his schedule.

He drags a hand slowly over his mouth. “I used to think,” he talks carefully, “that if I never let myself really build something serious then maybe I could avoid doing this to someone.” A small humorless laugh escapes him. “Very logical solution. Very emotionally healthy.”

“Yoongi…” “No, it’s true.” He rubs at his arm absently now, exhaustion making him honest in that dangerous way it always does. “I know what this life feels like from the inside. I know how disappointing it can be sometimes.” His jaw shifts slightly. “Missing birthdays. Leaving dinners early. Watching someone you love get used to being alone.”

The gallery office suddenly feels too small around her. Because she can hear it now beneath everything he’s saying. Not fear of commitment, but the fear of becoming absent.

“I remember telling my mother I didn’t have time for a girlfriend,” he says quietly, a faint disbelieving smile touching his voice now. “And I meant it. I really did.” He pauses. “I think I thought wanting someone badly enough would just make the impossible parts hurt more.”

“And does it?” she asks softly. The room goes quiet on his end for a moment. “Yes,” he says honestly. Then, after a beat, “But not having you hurts more.”

The tears come properly then, silent and immediate. ___ presses her hand harder against her eyes, breathing out a shaky laugh because of course this is happening on a Thursday afternoon between exhibition setups.

“I have to do math before I can even talk to you.” A wet laugh escapes ___. “Do you know how romantic it is calculating if your boyfriend is conscious?” That finally pulls a real laugh out of him, tired and warm and aching around the edges.

But she hears it fade quickly, because they’re both thinking the same thing now. How much work this is. How much wanting each other has become an active sustained effort. “That’s the part I didn’t expect,” Yoongi says after a while, quieter now. “How easy it would be to keep choosing you anyway.”

___’s hand almost absentmindedly plays with the pendant Yoongi got her for her birthday, “Yoongi,” she says softly. “Mm?” “I love you.” The words leave her gently.

On the other end of the line he goes completely still. ___ keeps turning the pendant slowly between her fingers, eyes fixed on nothing now. “I love you when I’m exhausted and irritated and calculating timezones,” she admits quietly. “I love you when I’m angry at tour for taking you away from me.” A shaky breath leaves her. “I love you even when this feels impossible sometimes.”

His chest aches so sharply it almost feels like fear, not of her loving him. Of how badly he loves her back. Because Yoongi has spent most of his adult life believing love had to fit around ambition carefully or it would break beneath it. That eventually someone would ask him to choose.

“I think,” she says softly, almost smiling through the tears now, “that’s how I know it’s real.”

He lowers his head briefly, eyes shut, he wishes she were here so badly it physically hurts. Wishes he could pull her into his lap and bury his face into her neck and stay there until this terrible restless homesick feeling finally settled.

“You can’t say that right before I go on stage,” he says finally, voice rougher now. A soft laugh escapes her immediately. “I love you too, I love you in hotel rooms,” he murmurs. “In airports. Half asleep. Fully stressed. I love you enough that I catch myself looking for things to bring back for you in every country now.” A faint breath of a laugh. “Which is deeply embarrassing.”

Her eyes close tightly. “And I think…” He pauses, searching for the words carefully now because he wants to get this right. “I think loving you stopped feeling temporary a long time ago.” That one nearly undoes her completely.

“Hyung? Are you okay?” Jimin asks as they are once again leaving the airport, Yoongi quietly mumbles a no as they shuffle inside the car. “It’s been an exhausting tour, ___ and I had this big fight last week about something so stupid and god am I tired” Yoongi confesses as the car moves around the highway.

“What happened?” Jimin asks quietly. Yoongi lets out a humorless breath through his nose. “She fell asleep waiting for my call.” Jimin winces immediately. “Ouch.” “Yeah.”

“I know this life is hard,” he says after a while. “I knew it before we started dating. I just…” He laughs once bitterly under his breath. “I think I underestimated what it feels like when the person waiting for you is someone you actually can’t stand disappointing.”

Jimin watches him carefully for a moment. Yoongi has always carried guilt strangely. Quietly. Internally. Like he believes if he absorbs enough of it himself nobody else will have to. “I hate this part,” Yoongi murmurs eventually. “The feeling that no matter how hard I try, eventually my schedule still wins.”

“Hyung,” he says softly, “you know what’s different though?” Yoongi glances at him tiredly. “You’re talking like someone who’s trying to keep her.” Jimin shrugs lightly. “Not someone looking for a way out.”

They’re quiet for the rest of the ride, Yoongi contemplating how he’s going to make it up to her, what he’s going to say. He almost dozes off till he’s being gently shrugged by Jimin, something about them being there.

Yoongi steadies his bag as Jimin nudges his rib cage, hard. “___?” Yoongi can make her out of just her shadow as she leans against a car, they had discussed this a few weeks ago, he just didn’t expect her to be here after whatever yesterday was.

“What are you doing here?” She shrugs one shoulder lightly, though her eyes are already glassy in the parking lot lights.

“I wasn't going to show up just because we fought?” Something inside him breaks instantly at how simple she makes it sound. Yoongi looks down briefly, jaw tightening hard enough that she realizes suddenly he’s trying very seriously not to cry.

“You shouldn’t have driven this late,” he murmurs instead because it’s safer than saying what he actually wants to say right now. “You shouldn’t have fought with me from another continent,” she replies softly.

That finally pulls a real breathless laugh out of him and then neither of them can really hold the distance anymore. Yoongi drops his bag carelessly onto the pavement just as she reaches him, and the second his arms wrap around her he exhales so deeply it almost sounds painful. Like his body’s been waiting to do that for days.

“I don’t want to say sorry because stuff like that might happen again and I can’t lie to you” Yoongi speaks truthfully. “I know,” she says quietly.

Yoongi’s expression shifts faintly at that, like he wasn’t entirely expecting this. “I just…” He exhales shakily, forehead dropping briefly against hers now. “I need you to know I’m never not trying.” His voice lowers. “Even when I get it wrong.”

“You know what the worst part is?” she murmurs softly. “What?” “I wasn’t even angry because of the phone call.” His hands tighten around her waist slightly. “I was angry because I missed you so much already.” A weak laugh escapes her. “And then I had to miss you disappointed too.”

Because that’s exactly what yesterday felt like, not conflict, longing with nowhere to go. Yoongi presses his forehead harder against hers, eyes closing briefly. “I hate that you cry because of me.” “You also make me very happy because of you,” she whispers immediately.

“That grammar was terrible.” “I’m emotional.” A tired laugh slips out of him then, quieter now, warmer. God, he missed this too. The way she can pull him back toward something lighter before he disappears too far into guilt.

“Now kiss and make up,” Jimin calls as he walks backwards toward his building entrance, duffel bag hanging off one shoulder. “I can’t take brooding Yoongi hyung anymore. He’s been unbearable all week.”

Yoongi sighs deeply without even looking at him. “Please go inside.” “I’m serious,” Jimin says, grinning now. “He kept staring out the van window like a divorced father.” ___ laughs against Yoongi’s shoulder immediately, the sound finally pulling a reluctant smile onto his face too.

“And he snapped at me because I asked if he wanted ramyeon.” “You asked me three times.”

“Because you looked emotionally unwell.” Yoongi shakes his head tiredly as Jimin snickers to himself. “Anyway,” Jimin says, swiping the card to the building gate, “fix him please”

Then a softer, fond voice follows, “You look better already, hyung.” And with that he disappears inside, leaving the two of them alone again beneath the parking lot lights. The silence settles differently now.

___ brushes her thumb lightly beneath his eye before speaking quietly. “Your parents are still on vacation, right?” He nods once slowly. “They left for Jeju yesterday, come home with me,” he says quietly. Yoongi’s hand slides up slowly into her hair, fingers curling gently at the base of her neck before he pulls her toward him and kisses her like he’s been hungry for her.

His mouth soft against hers as he exhales shakily into the kiss, shoulders finally loosening beneath her hands for what feels like the first time since he landed. “You know,” he murmurs softly, voice rough with exhaustion and affection both, “I think this is the longest week of my life.”

She smiles faintly, brushing her nose against his. “Good thing you’re home now.” His eyes close briefly at that. Home, not Seoul, not the apartment, her.

And maybe that’s the thing that feels different tonight. Not just relief. Not just surviving another stretch of distance. The tour is over. For the first time in months there isn’t another flight looming somewhere ahead of them. No countdown ticking quietly in the background. No rehearsals stealing entire weeks before they can properly settle into each other again. Their first anniversary is in two weeks.

“You’ve been living like this all this time, what do you need a walk in closet for?” ___ complains as she walks around the dimly lit closet, admiring his watch collection. “Come on, lets go to bed” Yoongi whines from behind her, his arms loosely wrapped around her, he’s been clingy like this since they got inside the apartment.

“I have a meeting set with a realtor next week, you sure you still want to live with me, I never put away my laundry” ___ speaks as they finally slip into bed. Yoongi turns toward her immediately.

There’s barely a second of hesitation before he moves closer automatically, arm sliding around her waist underneath the blankets until she’s tucked against his chest like that’s where she’s been sleeping forever. “I’ve seen your apartment,” he murmurs sleepily into her hair. “It’s a mess”

She gasps softly. “That is unbelievably rude.” “You own a chair entirely dedicated to clothes.”

“It’s an organizational system.” “It’s a fabric mountain.” ___ laughs under her breath as he presses a lazy kiss against her shoulder.

“Are you sure about moving in together? We might not tour this year but there might be times when I’m still away?” Yoongi asks as he trails kisses downward. “Yes I am sure” ___ replies confidently as Yoongi bites her boob, knowing exactly where this is going.

“Aren’t you tired?” ___ investigates as Yoongi mumbles a no, removing her slip dress in one go. She doesn’t get an answer. What she does get is Yoongi softly biting her nipple as she arches back. “Another perk of living together, we can have sex any time we want, anywhere we want” Yoongi says as his hand fondles her soft breast, the other hand trailing south.

“We can do it against the glass like we did in Maldives,” she murmurs. That finally pulls a real reaction out of him.

Yoongi groans softly into her skin, forehead dropping briefly against her chest like the memory alone exhausted him all over again. “You almost killed me that night.”

“You were very enthusiastic.” “You wore that bikini on purpose.” A faint smug smile appears on her face. “Maybe.” He looks up at her then, hair messy, eyes dark and sleepy and impossibly affectionate all at once.

Yoongi shuffles around the kitchen looking for a snack, all the fridge has is leftovers and fruit. He settles on an apple as he continues to wash it for a little too long, too lazy to do the whole peeling and cutting thing.

___: Why’d you leave this morning in such a hurry? Waking up all by myself is no fun

His phone pings and he stops mid-way, typing a response immediately, a ghost of a smile appearing the second her name appears. He exhales softly through his nose, drying his hand absently against his shirt as he types back.

Yoongi: I told you, my dad had a doctors appointment, he won’t tell but he wanted me there

Yoongi: I am sorry, I can make up by coming over tonight and not leaving in the morning

___: I have a thing, might not come home

Yoongi: What thing?

___: Work thing

Yoongi: That’s very vague, but okay, I’ll see you on Saturday then? Can we go shopping?

“Who are you talking to smiling like that?” his mother shouts from the other end of the living room, startling him, almost into dropping his phone. It’s been a year and he’s successfully kept a lid on this relationship, the less she knows the better.

“No one, the guys are being funny in the group chat? Where are you off too?” he asks as his mother continues putting on her earrings.

“It’s the Lee’s 40th wedding anniversary and I thought I might bring them something, and ___ is going to be there” he stills not very noticeably, “I just love her,” his mother continues, completely unaware, stepping back into the kitchen to grab the baked goods she ordered earlier. “Too bad you never went out with her.”

He almost chokes on his own breath, covering it with a cough. “…Yeah,” he mutters, because what else is he supposed to say to that?

But his mind is already moving. So, ___ is in the same building as him and didn’t even tell him, is this why she won’t be coming home tonight? The wheels in his brain are going, a smirk almost appearing, “Maybe I also come with you, I was pretty rude last time when I didn’t visit them?”

“When?” she asks almost absentmindedly, forgetting that afternoon completely. “The time you tried to, you know what, I am going to change, wait for me”

Yoongi scrambles around, picking out a soft blue shirt and tucking it in almost instinctively. He fixes his hair next, more carefully than he’ll admit, adjusting it once, then again, like he’s trying to make it look like he didn’t try at all.

“Why do you even want to come, you’re usually not interested in my friends at all?” his mother questions from outside his room, watching him contemplate between two belts.

“That’s not true, you remember when I sent flowers for your friend Mrs Song?” “You didn’t send them, I did” she retorts almost immediately, “Well, I paid for them” he shoots back, not missing a beat.

He tightens the belt, exhaling softly through his nose before grabbing his watch, fastening it around his wrist with a little more care than usual. “I’m just being polite,” he adds, tone deliberately casual, like this is nothing out of the ordinary. “You said it yourself, I was rude last time.”

His mother leans against the doorframe now, watching him more closely. “You didn’t care about being rude last time.” “Well, as I grow older, I am trying to be a better person, come on” he walks right past her, she nods her head in confusion but decides to go along with it anyway.

Yoongi wouldn’t admit it, but he’s nervous. Things have been going well, too well. They move in together in a month, all their free time is being spent decorating their new home. The next natural steps would be to meet the parents, something he’s never done. “Stop fidgeting” his dad comments as he continues to fiddle around with his collar, the shirt suddenly suffocating him.

Yoongi spends the entire elevator ride thinking of what he’s going to say, which isn’t a long time to prepare for something this monumental. What exactly is he supposed to say? Hello, surprise, I’ve secretly been dating your daughter for over a year and we accidentally bought an apartment together?

His mother rings the bell before he can spiral further. The door swings open almost immediately, to his relief it’s ___. For one beautiful second her face lights up instinctively at the sight of him. Then she notices his parents standing there and immediately freezes.

“Oh! Hi, um” ___ stammers, fixing her hair the best she can as she tugs the sweater, well his sweater to be accurate that she stole just last week. “Hi, how are you ___, we just wanted to stop by with some treats before your parents leave for Europe” Mrs Min adds and ___ nods quickly, recovering with impressive speed considering she is currently trying to piece together why he’s here.

“Right, yes, come in,” she says, stepping aside quickly. “Mom and dad are inside.” Yoongi walks past her carefully, close enough to catch the tiny glare she shoots him under her breath.

“Ah, you made it!” Mrs. Lee says cheerfully as she appears from the kitchen carrying coffee cups.

Mr. Lee follows behind her with Yoongi’s father, already mid-conversation about travel routes and airport timing.

For a few blessed minutes, things settle.

Coffee is poured. Pastries are unpacked. The parents fall naturally into conversation around the dining table while Yoongi hovers awkwardly near the kitchen island pretending he isn’t hyperaware of every movement ___ makes.

“I’ve also made some sandwiches, let me just bring those out” ___ adds as she stands up, wanting a few minutes just to herself. “Oh, I’ll help” Yoongi adds and all the heads turn to him, none of them expecting this.

“It’s not much Yoongi-si, I’ll just be a few moments” ___ argues with a tight smile, hoping no one in this room catches onto this tension. “Oh I’m sure my mother’s told you what a great cook I am, I can help” Yoongi can’t help but tease, knowing this is going to cost him later.

“What is with these two?” Mrs Min murmurs to Mrs Lee as the two walk into kitchen, “Maybe he’s interested now, too bad she already has a boyfriend” Mrs Lee comments as they continue to sip on their coffee.

“She has a boyfriend?” Mrs Min asks with shock, she has secretly been hoping for her son to come to his senses all this time. “Well, she hasn’t told me explicitly, but she went to a vacation to Maldives and that’s such a couples destination” Mrs Lee adds and the wheels in Mrs Min’s head are finally going.

“When was she in Maldives?” “Early January I think, she didn’t even send us any pictures-” “Yoongi was in Maldives early January” Mrs. Lee blinks.

Mrs. Min blinks back, silence.

“Oh my god.” “OH MY GOD SHE’S WEARING HIS SWEATER THAT I GOT HIM FOR CHRISTMAS” Mrs Min yells as she rapidly walks towards the kitchen. The closer they get, the quieter they become. Because suddenly they’re not entering casually anymore.

They’re investigating and then they stop dead in the doorway. ___ is standing close enough to Yoongi that their bodies almost touch, fingers gently smoothing down the collar of his shirt while Yoongi looks at her with an expression his mother has never seen him wear before.

Soft and completely gone for her. Like the entire world narrowed down to the woman fixing his clothes in the kitchen.

“Oh.” The word slips out of Mrs. Lee before she can stop it. The couple freeze instantly. ___’s hand is still resting lightly against Yoongi’s chest.

Yoongi turns first and unfortunately, instead of looking guilty, he looks caught in the exact way a man does when he’s deeply in love and interrupted mid-moment. Which is somehow more incriminating.

“How long has this been going on?” Mrs Min asks softly, not entirely believing what she’s seeing. ___ immediately drops her hand from Yoongi’s collar like she’s been burned.

Yoongi exhales slowly, knowing he needs to take the lead in this situation, “A year and a half” he answers, his hand coming up to ___’s waist like he’s trying to tell it all with a show but ___ swats his hands immediately, like she can still talk her way out of this.

There’s silence and immediately there are questions, lots of them. “A YEAR AND A HALF” “Why didn’t you tell us” “Is this why you’ve been working late” “Is this why we couldn’t come to the Paris show?”

Mrs. Min’s eyes widened further somehow. “Oh my god, you traveled to see him during the tour?”

“No..well sometimes-” “How many times?” Mrs. Lee gasps. ___ looks ready to faint.

Yoongi, meanwhile, has reached the point of surrender where he almost finds this funny. “Enough that she has airline status now,” he says honestly.

“Min Yoongi!” ___ hisses in horror. “What? We’re already caught.” “That does not mean volunteer information!”

From the dining room, both fathers have fully abandoned pretending not to listen and are now standing in the doorway too. Mr. Min crosses his arms slowly. “I knew something was going on when he wanted me to check documents to buy an apartment”

The interrogation moves from the kitchen hallway to the dining room because ___ can’t keep standing without feeling like she’s about to faint and Yoongi wanted everyone to eat the sandwiches she made.

“When were you going to tell us that you’re moving in together, after you had children?” Mrs Min asks her son incredulously, she’s still in shock from this all, happy nonetheless. “What you aren’t engaged are you?” Mrs Lee asks as she rapidly reaches for ___’s hand.

“I wouldn’t ask ___ to marry me without speaking to her parents first,” Yoongi says immediately. The room quiets slightly at the seriousness in his tone. Because despite the chaos, despite the interrogation and the absolute catastrophe of this reveal, he means that sincerely.

Across the table, Mr. Lee watches him carefully now and for maybe the first time all afternoon, Yoongi feels genuinely nervous. “I’m not irresponsible,” he says quieter now, gaze flicking briefly toward ___ before returning to her parents. “I know how serious this is.”

___ looks at him softly for a second. Because beneath all the teasing and disaster and accidental exposure, that’s the thing about Yoongi, once he loves someone, he becomes frighteningly earnest about protecting the future around them.

Mrs. Min’s eyes narrow suddenly, too suddenly. “Wait.” Every person at the table goes still. “You said you wouldn’t ask without speaking to the parents first.” She points at him slowly. “Not that you haven’t thought about it.”

Yoongi makes the catastrophic mistake of glancing at ___ for half a second. And unfortunately that alone is enough.

Mrs. Lee gasps loudly. “Oh my god.” ___ blinks between them in confusion. “What?” Mrs. Min sits forward immediately. “You’ve thought about marriage.”

“We’re in a happy long term relationship, of course we have” “Do you have a ring?” his mother throws that question like a grenade in the middle of the dining room. ___ turns toward him so fast she nearly knocks over her water glass.

Yoongi suddenly regrets every decision that led him here. Because the thing is, he does have a ring. Hidden badly, according to Namjoon. Carefully and thoughtfully selected over weeks because once the idea entered his head, it never really left again.

“No,” he says too quickly. Mrs. Min narrows her eyes instantly. “That was suspicious.” “I don’t have it with me.” The second the words leave his mouth, he knows he’s doomed.

“YOU HAVE A RING?” both mothers shriek simultaneously.

___ just stares at him, like her brain genuinely stopped functioning for a second. Yoongi rubs a hand down his face slowly. “Well,” Mr. Min says calmly, sounding deeply entertained now, “this escalated quickly.”

“You bought a ring?” ___ asks finally, voice small in a way that completely destroys him. And suddenly all the teasing leaves the room a little. “We talked about it, we were on the same page about marriage?” Yoongi turns, like he needs to talk about it urgently.

“We did, I just didn’t expect you to actually buy a ring” The vulnerability in her voice hits him square in the chest. Because he understands what she means, not disbelief in them. Disbelief in how real this all suddenly sounds out loud.

Yoongi shifts slightly closer to her instinctively. “I wasn’t trying to pressure you,” he says lower now, like he’s forgotten there are four other people listening. “I just saw it and…” He exhales softly. “It felt right.”

___ looks at him for a long second. “They bought an apartment,” Mr. Lee mutters. “The married couple part was already implied.” “That’s true,” Mr. Min agrees.

“Is there a date on your mind?” Mrs Min asks quietly and that earns another dramatic gasp from Mrs Lee. “Okay,” ___ says finally, standing abruptly before this spirals into someone discussing grandchildren. “I think this is enough for today. Mom, dad, you both need to leave for the airport soon.” Then toward Yoongi’s parents, polite despite the emotional destruction currently occurring in the dining room, “Mrs. and Mr. Min, the desserts were delicious, and I do love your son, so I hope today won’t leave the wrong impression on your minds.”

“Yoongi and I are leaving because apparently we need to have a conversation.” That finally gets his attention fully. Yoongi blinks up at her once. “Do we?”

“Yes.” “Am I in trouble?” “You will be if you don’t get moving” ___ speaks with a smile but Yoongi knows better by now and stands up immediately. She’s quiet as they close the door behind them and it’s right at that moment when Yoongi’s phone rings.

He declines it and ___ sighs as she presses the elevator button with no clear plan on where they’re actually going to talk. Yoongi groans softly this time before answering. “Hi.”

There’s a pause, then his entire expression changes. “Oh.” ___ looks over immediately. “Our mattress is going to be there in a few minutes, they need someone to let them in” Yoongi continues and ___ simply hands him her car keys, knowing where they’re going.

“Oh, hi… that room,” ___ says quickly, pointing them toward the bedroom. They nod and disappear down the hallway carrying it carefully while Yoongi steps aside to answer yet another phone call.

Apparently every single thing related to this apartment needs attention today. “Yes, Tuesday is fine,” he says distractedly into the phone while pacing slowly near the windows. “Yes please early in the day, I’m busy post afternoon”

___ watches him for a second. It still catches her off guard sometimes, this version of him. Not a massively successful musician. Not the exhausted version surviving airports and tour schedules. Just… her boyfriend trying to do everything right with their apartment.

The mattress gets assembled surprisingly quickly considering it took them nearly three weeks to choose one. “So, the sofa will be here on the tuesday so we’ll have enough of a ready home to move in, rest we can tackle once we’re here” Yoongi adds as ___ gets them some water from the fridge, they might not be living here, but they still have a fully stacked kitchen already.

“And I’ve booked a moving company for your place for Sunday, I’ll be there too-” Yoongi continues and ___ shuts him up with a soft kiss. All the tension from today just melts as he helplessly kisses her, his hands all over her till they settle under the sweater.

“You stupid idiot” ___ pulls back just to say that but Yoongi only smiles as he pulls her even closer. “Did you really buy a ring?” she continues and Yoongi sighs, resting his forehead against hers. “I swear my mother, can we not make a big deal out of this, it’s not happening that soon, I want us to live together first and you weren’t supposed to find out like this” he explains which only makes ___ laugh more.

“Is it beautiful? It’s not too flashy is it? I know you have money but big diamonds don’t suit me” ___ teases and he groans gripping her waist even tighter. “Darling I know what you like, can we just please drop this?” Yoongi pleads and ___ nods knowing when to give up.

“I didn’t think I’d be doing this with you after our first date, I really wanted to see you again but I wasn’t sure it would work” ___ confesses as she moves around, finally getting the water she wanted. “I really wanted to see you again,” she admits. “But I honestly wasn’t sure it would work.”

Yoongi’s brows lift slightly. “Really?” He watches her carefully now as she hands him a glass of water before continuing.

“And then you kissed me like that,” she says, pointing at him accusingly now, “and just left.” Yoongi looks entirely unapologetic. “I had an early flight.” “You kissed me after the best first date and just left and it felt like a romcom for a few hours till you didn’t text me for 12 hours”

“I was trying to seem calm.” That actually makes her laugh. Because if there’s one thing she knows now, it’s that Yoongi has never once been calm about her. “I was still dazed from the date and the kiss and I was all confused and and I um, was so surprised and I hated that I had to leave even if I really wanted to tour” Yoongi confesses and ___ smiles from the other side of the counter.

“I for a very long time believed that this all, a girlfriend, living together, the eventual stuff, planning a life with someone wasn’t in my books and for the longest time I was okay with it” The apartment falls quiet around them. Suddenly he looks younger somehow. Not physically, emotionally, like she’s catching a glimpse of the version of him that spent years convincing himself wanting less from life was safer.

“You just thought loving someone would mean losing parts of yourself.” That catches him off guard.

Because unfortunately she’s right. Yoongi looks down briefly, jaw tightening faintly like he’s still a little uncomfortable being understood this clearly. “Yes,” he admits quietly. “And honestly…” A tiny breath leaves him, almost amused at himself now. “I didn’t expect you to be this stubborn.”

___ smiles faintly. “Excuse me?” “We fought,” he continues, stepping closer again like he physically can’t stay far from her for long anymore. “A lot sometimes. Especially in the beginning.” His hands slide back around her waist naturally. “But you always treated the problems like they were against us.” He pauses, gaze steady on hers now. “Not us against each other.”

Something soft flickers across her expression immediately, because that mattered more to him than she probably realized.

“So, shall we break in the new mattress, take a nap?” ___ jokes and Yoongi chuckles holds her from the behind. “Is this us now, napping? So painfully domestic” he says, his warm hands back under the sweater.

“What’s more tragic is that I really want to nap” Yoongi confesses nuzzling his head into her shoulder. “Honey, we can do whatever we want, nap, look at vacuums, argue if we really want a piano in the living room” ___ teases and Yoongi laughs thinking back to the major vacuum selection fight.

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