Yoongiversal~

YOU

You wake with Taehyung’s arm and leg draped over you. His breath tickles the back of your neck and you close your eyes again, smiling to yourself. It’s a soft moment filled with so much promise. You don’t remember when you fell asleep, but as your brain slowly wakes you begin to remember bits and pieces of the night before.

You think about the last time that you woke up in a man’s arms.

Yoongi had slept holding you after your kiss. You had woken up and thought about waking him with kisses up and down the arms that held you tight to his body, but then he had rolled over, leaving you feeling empty and cold. He made the decision for you.

You had hoped, foolishly, that when Yoongi finally wokeup, he would text you and ask where you were. That he would tell you that he liked having you in his bed and that he had been hoping to kiss you good morning.

But no such text had happened; instead what followed had made you feel even more empty, lonely, and cold than the small action of rolling over had.

You thought about doing the same with Taehyung. Leaving him with a note telling him that you had a good time last night and that you wanted to do it again, but he had other ideas. Instead of rolling over, he pulls you to him with a moan as his hand searches for yours and quietly laces your fingers together.

You feel his breath against your neck as another small moan slips out of him and against your skin.

“G’morning,” he mumbles and then slowly, his leg falls off of you as his arms stay put.

It surprises you how much you enjoyed having him draped over you. How you enjoyed being that close to him and for him to be that comfortable with you. You don’t want to think about how scary that is and how certain people you know would tell you that being comfortable so quickly is a red flag. They were wrong though. They had to be wrong, right? Or was that another red flag as well?

“Morning,” you greet him back.

A thought takes you and suddenly you feel trapped.

You never think you look good in the morning. You don’t know why you agreed to stay over. No, you asked to stay over. You’re a fool. You definitely do not feel sexy even though you want to. Even though your whole body loves being pressed up against him. Loves the way that his arms feel wrapped around you, his fingers laced in yours. It’s only your brain worrying: the stupid anxiety that popped up when you were a teenager and wove itself around the already blooming fatphobic standards of society persists, even like this.

“Can I make you coffee?” he asks in almost a whisper, his breath warm against your neck. You feel him move a little behind you, his hair tickling your ear lightly before he presses a kiss on your neck.

You’re silent, lost in your head, waves of insecurities overwhelming you, despite your body wanting to just marvel in the feel of his lips and fingers again. The last time that you stayed in a romantic partner’s bed was Jimin, and to quiet those voices you initiated sex; it wasn’t really what you wanted to do but he wanted you and that desire made you feel warm and wanted. You could still remember the feeling of disappointment and regret as you watched him leave the room, leaving you all alone in his bed.

Perhaps that was why you hadn’t stayed with Yoongi to see him wake.

“Are you okay?” his voice is deep now.

“What?”

“Are you okay? You’re quiet and tense,” he comments and you release a breath that you weren’t aware that you were holding.

He moves, pushing himself up onto his hand and releases yours.

“Seriously, are you okay? I’m sorry if I did something last night that you weren’t comfortable with,” he starts and you hate the fact that your throat feels tight. You haven’t rolled onto your back to look at him properly, frozen with insecurity that you’re not going to be as beautiful now that your makeup is a day old, your mascara probably smeared.

“I’m fine,” you lie, but you know that he’s going to catch you.

He’s quiet for a moment and then he slowly pulls you onto your back. You close your eyes as he looks down at you.

“Hey,” he whispers, his thumb drawing soft lines onto your shoulder. “If you regret doing what we did last night, we can take it slower. I–”

You shake your head, cutting him off.

“It’s not that. I don’t regret anything that we did,” you pause and take a deep breath, opening your eyes to look at him. He looks beautiful even with sleep holding on under his eyes and across his lips. “I don’t really feel…” you have to tell him. “I don’t like the way I look in the mornings,” you finally say, your gaze drifting past him onto the opposite wall.

He’s quiet for a moment and you think that maybe he agrees with you, but then you see his hand move, and he brings his thumb to your cheek, wiping under your eye.

“I think you’re more beautiful than yesterday,” he says as he smiles down at you and you finally look at him.

He nods and then slowly he leans down, and you know he’s going to kiss you.

“I have morning breath,” you whisper, conscious of the fact that he’s now very close to you.

He makes a disgusted face and pulls back, “Oh! Well then,” and shakes his head before he laughs and leans down. “I don’t care,” he whispers before he kisses you softly. It doesn’t progress past a beautifully chaste kiss, but it still has your heart beating wildly in your chest, echoing through your body and filling your ears.

“Let me make you coffee,” he says against your lips, and you agree as he shifts off the bed, leaving you in it.

He stretches as you sit up and wipe at your face. You hear his neck crack and he releases a sigh.

_______

You leave his apartment with another kiss which tastes of coffee and a slightly stale pastry that he had brought home from the cafe. You missed Jungkook again, which you think Tae was a little happy about, but he tells you that he hopes the two of you will get to know each other. He also tells you that he’ll text you, just before he closes the door.

You walk down the hallway to the elevator. It’s then that you remember you had seen Yoongi texting, so you dig your phone out of your coat pocket to find that there isn’t a text, but a voice message instead.

You [11:24]: Hey, I just listened to your message. Can I come over in a few hours?

Your day is mixed with nerves about seeing Yoongi; you’re anxious about what he’s going to talk to you about, so you float through your morning with no response. Him on your mind, the worry that he’s going to tell you what you are afraid you want to hear from him. You don’t really expect him to text you back, you know that he likes to sleep in. He had said to come over in the evening, and still you know you won’t be able to relax until he responds.

Your phone buzzes in the grocery store, somewhere between the aisle that has strawberries packed into plastic boxes and where they keep the bags of tangerines.

Taehyung [13:03]: omg I am so sorry I haven’t texted. I was on this date with this incredible woman and the time just got away on me.

Had he meant to text you? Was that intended for someone else? You decide to test it out.

You [13:04]: Incredible?

Taehyung [13:04]: Incredible. Has a smile that really makes me weak in the knees.

You [13:05]: You might want to get that checked out. Just a smile? You might just have weak knees

Taehyung [13:05]: Nah. She’s just very talented

You couldn’t quite get rid of the feeling that something about him was too good to be true. You weren’t used to this kind of praise, and you didn’t know if you believed him or if he even believed himself.

Yoongi [13:05]: Hey! Can you come over in a few hours? I just woke up

Your heart races as you read his text. It feels like whiplash going from Taehyung praising you–no, you couldn’t think of it like that–complimenting you to Yoongi’s ask. He was going to talk about the kiss and you know what you want to hear from him. You want to hear that it wasn’t a mistake. That he wanted to keep kissing you. It hurts to know that and to think of Tae, his face so soft and so happy as he looked down at you in his bed that morning.

You put your phone away, feeling slightly overwhelmed, a basket full of snacks and a few much needed staples in your hand. You need to concentrate on grocery shopping and the few errands that you need to do before you could pay attention to the men in your life.

YOONGI

He runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back against his head and sighing as it falls back against his forehead. He stares at the phone in his hand.

You [11:24]: Hey, I just listened to your message. Can I come over in a few hours?

You just listened to his message.

He needs to put the phone down. He is torturing himself. He is making himself feel worse with the possibilities flying through his head. In the years that he’s known you, you have always been prompt with responding. You are not a fan of leaving people on read, or having notifications just sit there on your phone screen, taunting you like a list of to-dos.

He stares at the message. If you were just listening to it, that means two things: you were either too angry at him to listen to it when he had sent it, or you stayed the night at the kid’s place and were too busy to listen to it. He could be okay with the first; that meant that you gave yourself time to calm down and be in the right headspace; he respected that about you and how you could take that time. He did the same, or tried to. Most of the time he just fell into himself and didn’t let anyone in but calm would be achieved.

The other reason was taunting him. The kid was handsome, more so than himself, and you had given no signs that you were really that interested in him aside from the text asking if you should cancel your date. But that could have just been because you were unsure and you needed your friend.

Maybe he had messed everything up.

Maybe he shouldn’t invite you over.

Maybe everything would be better if he just swept it under the rug and let your friends just be.

A knock on his door slapped him back to reality and he sighed, “yeah”

“I’m going to go grocery shopping, you want in?” Jin asks as soon as the door is open.

He needs to get out of the house, he just isn’t sure if he has the energy to leave his bed. His mind is racing along a path that it hasn’t been on for quite some time. It isn’t a pleasant path, and he has been happy without seeing the scenery that has plagued his mind for years.

“Ya, I’ll come. Give me ten?” he says, voice rough.

Jin nods and closes the door.

He picks up the phone again and types out a message quickly, not wanting to ask the questions that are now racing through his mind faster than they should have been, given that he has no coffee in him.

Yoongi [13:05]: Hey! Can you come over in a few hours? I just woke up

Hey! Possibly too enthusiastic. Overkill to make it seem like he wasn’t taking steps further and further into anxiety.

His body feels heavy as he moves from his bed and walks over to his closet.

He needs to call his therapist. It has been too long since he last saw her, and he can feel the same tingle and pull that he always feels before he begins to spiral. He makes a mental list of things he needs to do for his mental health, before you come over later, while simultaneously making a list of the groceries that he knows the house needs. One of them is going to get forgotten.

“Y/N is going to come over later, do you think you could be out of the house for a bit?” he asks Jin as he gets into the driver’s seat of his car.

“Everything okay?” Jin asks.

Yoongi shrugs and starts the car.

It takes two blocks before he can say the thing out loud. He knows he needs to say it out loud at least once before he says it to you. Jin is the perfect person to listen, though he has a feeling that he may have told Hobi the night before.

“I think I’m in love with her,” he says, eyes on the road not daring to look at his friend.

Jin nods. “Are you going to tell her?”

He clenches his jaw at the thought. Sobriety is making this all feel like too much. His thoughts feel like they are flowing too easily. They shouldn’t be able to infiltrate all the little spaces.

“It might be good to tell her,” the older man says.

“Yeah.”

“Seriously, it will be good because you’ve had this will-they won’t-they thing going on for a few months now, and it is something else to be around.” Jin smiles to himself and Yoongi shakes his head at the teasing, a small flat smile playing on his face.

The store feels crowded. Too many people walking by him, too many conversations to overhear.

The day has gone too fast and too slow all at the same time. It isn’t a surprise given how he knows his mind works. After nearly thirty years of living in his head, he has it all mapped out.He knows what book to pull from the shelf so he can see all the other books topple, knows which ones to support and give attention to.

He feels like he has pulled the wrong book and all of the shelves are toppling over like dominoes. Yet, he moves around the world like he knows he needs to do. Tomorrow he will schedule an appointment with his therapist.

YOU

Your hand freezes at the doorbell.

Your heart is beating unnaturally fast and you pull your pants up; you should have worn a belt. You checked your appearance four times before you left the house. You don’t know how many times you checked your eye makeup in the rearview mirror, but you’re certain you checked it at every red light between your house and Yoongi’s.

Taking a deep breath, you press the button and wait. You can’t remember the last time that you rang the doorbell; normally, you would’ve just walked right into his house and announced yourself, but this time, it feels like you should. A week apart and everything feels new, like you’re walking on the worst terrain imaginable.

He opens the door. It’s a quick moment before he realizes it’s you, and not someone else.

“Oh, hey, why did you ring the bell?” he asks, his brow pinched.

You shrug. “I don’t know. Felt like I should have, given the last week,” you say back and he nods. His face seems to relax, but you’ve seen that look before, and there is a tinge of hurt behind it.

You step into the house and close the door as he starts down the hallway, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. You watch him as you toe off your shoes. You’ve missed him. Even just watching his back lets something ignite in you that had gone dark in the last week. You want to hug him, feel him against you again and smell his cologne.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks as he stops a few feet away and turns to look at you. His eyes are locked on you, and you see it more now: he’s sad. There’s something going on and worry begins to build within you.

You should ask for a drink, water, a beer, something, but instead, you say, “A hug.”

He pauses, fully prepared to get you something to drink, but you watch as the smallest of smiles slips across his face. He takes a few steps toward you, meeting you in the middle of the hallway and you wrap your arms around his waist.

Yes. You missed him.

Your body relaxes, all tension slipping out of you as you breathe in his scent. Your eyes close and you can feel him slip into the same state.

You hold each other for a few moments, your breathing syncs, and your whole body screams to stay here with him, to stay in his arms and forget the entire world.

It’s a wonderful state to be in. Everything from the past two weeks falls away and it’s just you and Yoongi again. The way that it should be. Thoughts pass like speeding cars. You think about how he kissed you. Confessed that he was jealous. How it felt to sleep in his arms and how he has always been there. How you have always been there for him happily and willingly.

A thought screeches to a halt and blares its horn at you, reminding you that you are here for a purpose. He wants to talk to you about something; and as he slowly releases his arms from around you, the thought and its accompanying fleet of feelings barrel toward you at an alarming rate.

“Do you want a drink?” he asks.

You sigh as you hear yourself say, “No. What did you want to talk about?”

He stops on his way to the kitchen and turns around to look at you. “Already?”

“Yoongi, if you make me wait, I’m going to run a million different scenarios in my head and I don't want to do that. It isn’t fair to me,” you say, proud of yourself for saying it, because you’re going to be a mess if you don’t hear what he wants to say to you. You know you are.

“Yeah, uh, okay,” he mumbles his words of agreement as if he’s not quite certain on what to say..

He’s quiet for a moment before he rubs a hand through his hair and then over the fronts of his jeans. He’s nervous, these are actions he does when he’s nervous. You try to regulate your heart rate as it threatens to speed and catch up to his nerves.

“Yoongi, it’s okay, whatever it is will be–” you start, but he cuts you off.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he says as he looks up from the floor and right at you. In the distance, you can see the tidal wave that threatens to sweep you both up off your feet and away together, but you’re not sure it will take you to the same place.

“You think,” you say the two words that you know he added just because he’s nervous, and yet your brain hung onto them until they slipped down and rested on your tongue, only to be spoken between the two of you.

The wave gets closer.

He shakes his head and sighs, “No. I mean, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it meant when I got jealous and how, uh, perfect it was, to, uh–” He stumbles over his words as his nervous energy takes over the room.

You stand still. You know that you should say something, do something. Your body wants to hug him again; hold him until he’s calmed down, but there is something holding you back. A cord you have never noticed before tugs at your gut, led by a part of you that remains a mystery. You are about to fight against the tension of the cord when he speaks.

“I need a drink.”

Your mouth falls open as you watch him walk into the kitchen. You slowly move to stand behind the stool you sat in a week earlier watching him and Jin cook. You miss that night. You miss the normalcy of it.

You watch as he grabs a glass and his nearly empty bottle of whiskey. He pours himself a large amount and takes a sip, releasing a small groan that you know now smells of the booze he’s drunk and not like him. Or, perhaps he always smells of booze or some sort of substance. Your body tenses as he takes another sip and then another before finally releasing a sigh of contentment.

“You always need a drink when you’re going to talk to me, do you know that?” you ask even though the realization has just hit you.

“What?” he asks as he looks up from his glass.

The cord that is wrapped around your heart and leading to him tugs in his direction while the cord around your gut pulls you in the direction of the door.

You sigh. Tears are already stinging your eyes and your throat feels raw and tense, like you’ve swallowed a sour candy.

“Every time you want to tell me something or let me in, you have to have a drink.” You don’t want to cry. Crying always feels like you’re taking away from your point, like the person you’re talking to is going to concentrate on that, and not on the words that you are saying. You try your hardest not to cry, despite the tears being just there.

“That can’t be true,” he argues as he puts his glass down. There is still a bar and a stool between the two of you, and the distance feels immeasurable and necessary. If he gets closer you’re going to crumble, and you need to maintain the thoughts that are now showing themselves. It’s as if you have binders of examples that you’ve written down throughout the years of your friendship, some part of you waiting for the day when you are ready to see all of his red flags as they are.

“It is,” you say with a nod. “It’s like you can’t open up to me while I open up to you all the time.” The sentence turns a page and there it is the realization that breaks your heart. “You know more about me than I know about you,” you say and there it is, the wave crashing over the both of you. The crash breaks both of your hearts at the same time.

You watch through teary eyes as his face falls. His lips part at the same time as his shoulders drop.

“What do you love about me, Yoongi?” you ask as you wipe away a falling tear. Fucking tears! “And I mean what is it that makes you think you’re in love with me? Is it because I’m there for you and encourage you? Or is it because you see me?”

“Trin,” he starts, leaving your nickname hanging in the air before he moves around the bar and reaches out to take your hand.

“I’m serious. What do you love about me?” You don’t look at him as you speak. Instead you look at your hands wrapped in each other. His fingers are holding yours tightly; the ring you bought him feels cold against your skin.

His silence feels like a stab. Or perhaps it’s a knife working away at the cord around your heart.

You want to leave.

You nod as the silence continues.

“Get back to me when you know the reason but until then I can’t see you.” You shake your head, “Actually, I can’t see you until you’re able to be vulnerable with me while sober. Because I deserve someone who is able to be vulnerable with me in every relationship in my life.”

Tears are spilling down your cheeks and you slowly slip your hand out of his and wipe at your cheeks. There is pride mixed in with your tears. Proud of yourself for telling him what you know you deserve, pride that you’ve recognized it; and yet the pride stings with each tear that burns your eyes.

“Y/N,” your name falls from his lips, and you want to fall into his arms.

Instead, you shake your head.

“I have to go,” you say and turn your back to him.

He doesn’t walk after you.

He doesn’t move and you hate how a large part of you wants him to. Wants the dramatics that accompany such an act. This isn’t a movie though, this is real life and it hurts even more.

Taehyung [19:23]: Thinking of you.

Taehyung [19:23]: I don’t care if that’s too forward. You’re on my mind today.

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