Archive of Our Own ^beta

You meet Min Yoongi when you're little more than six years old.
Well, meet might not be the right word.

Min Yoongi was the pianist's son. If you were to be entirely accurate, you didn't meet Yoongi for a few years after you first saw him that day when you were six. You still remember how he had strolled in behind his mom, not holding her hand or anything, pulling up a chair from the closet to sit beside Mrs. Min as she pulled sheet music from the folders in her bag and set them up, quickly playing warmups as your class of ballerinas-in-training stretched quietly and on your own. You still remember how silent he had been, not even looking in your class' direction even if he was around your age and couldn't be having too much fun just sitting there watching his mom play the piano.

You wish you could remember a little more from that day; that first day that you ever saw Min Yoongi. Maybe you would be able to catch things that would prepare you for what he was doing to you now.
Or maybe you were always meant to be unprepared.

It's as you're taking your slippers off that Sira leans over from her place on the floor next to you.
"Y/N," she says, in one of those whispers that's actually too loud to be a whisper. You look up, raising a brow silently. "I dare you to go talk to Mrs. Min's son."
You chuckle, looking back down at your fingers untying the strings. "You mean Yoongi?"

Yeah, not many of the girls really know that Mrs. Min's kid has a name. It's kind of sad, you think sometimes. But then again, didn't he do that to himself by never, and you mean never talking to any of you? It has been a few years, dozens of recitals, and hundreds of ballet classes, and he still hasn't said a word.

"Yeah, Yoongi," Sira says quickly. "I think you should go talk to him. Like, just to see if he actually talks."
"You think he doesn't talk? What are you, deaf? He talks to his mom every day as they're walking out." you scoff, but you're more entertained than annoyed. Sira frowns, so you make up for your comment by sighing and shooting her a smile. "Sure, Sira. I'll go talk to him, if that's what you want."
"Good!" she pipes, brightening instantly. "Go now, before they leave!"

You nod, finally pulling off your slippers and replacing them with flip-flops as you pick up your bag and make your way over to the piano in the corner, noting the way that Yoongi turns his body away from the girls all getting ready to leave, facing only the piano. Mrs. Min has stood and is talking to your teacher, so he's alone. He reaches out, like he's planning to touch the keys, just skim his fingertips over them, but you interrupt.

"Hey," you call out simply.
Yoongi whips around, his usually expressionless face full of surprise. Only briefly, though, since he quickly reverts back to that stony look. He just tilts his head, not really replying to your little greeting.
"Yoongi, right?" you say, starting to doubt if this was a good idea. You can see in the mirrors that Sira is not so subtly watching, though, so you just smile a little and wait for Yoongi's reply.
"...Yeah," he says, then starts to turn back to the piano.
"So why do you come to ballet with Mrs. Min?"
Yoongi stills, then sighs, turning back over shoulders to give you a now clearly annoyed look. "It's not really your business."
You're surprised, and you guess it must show on your face, because Yoongi opens his mouth to talk again, maybe to apologize, maybe to tell you to leave. But you don't find out, because you cut him off with a rushed and quiet "Sorry to bother you, then," and pivot on your heel, passing Mrs. Min as she walks back to her son and you walk back to Sira.

"How'd it go?" your friend asks as you promptly grab her arm and practically drag her out of the room, bowing and waving a goodbye to your teacher.
You shake your head in response.

You're nine years old. You wish you hadn't tried to talk to Min Yoongi. He's a lot meaner than his mom.

You've been on pointe for a couple weeks now, but you still get a rush of adrenaline, a shining kind of thrill as you lace them up that nothing compares to. They hurt, God, they hurt so bad. Your toes are all squished up, black from bruises, and your heels were raw and bled a couple days ago from your tights ripping along the seam line of the pointe shoe. It's okay, though, because you've been dancing since you were six-ish years old, and after six years of preparation, you finally feel like an actual ballerina.

You accidentally catch Min Yoongi's eye as you walk into the dance studio with Sira and your new friend Kana who just moved from Japan. You quickly look down, avoiding him like you have been for the past three years. It's not really hard, since he still doesn't talk.

You and your two friends sit, tying up your shoes and beginning to stretch all within a few minutes.

Everything is going well, you've gone through your rises, rolling your feet, échappés, relevés, enchainement de relevés, all of the warmups and basics that you've been relearning with your point shoes in mind. It's only when all the girls of the class are going across the floor doing sauté arabesques that it happens.

One moment you're in the air, gracefully having pushed yourself off the ground and gone into an extended and well-executed form (you know it is because while you try not to be narcissistic, your teacher feeds you a lot of compliments in comparison to the others, although she makes sure to contrast them with the harshest criticisms)- and the next, you're landing and the most terrible pain is shooting up through your ankle. You know it's not just your shoes by the way that you immediately crumple to the floor, your ankle turned to the side in a way that you know it definitely should not be. The piano music has stopped, you realize.

"What are you doing, Y/N? Get up," the sharp voice of your teacher snaps, and trying to shake your shock at the constant and now almost electric pain that's spread down your already throbbing foot and leg off, you press your palms against the floor and push yourself up, but almost the same second that you stand, you cry out in pain and tumble forward, just barely catching yourself from smacking your face into the floor. You're on your hands and knees, but you don't care about how embarrassing it is, because it's the first time you've ever had something hurt so bad.

"Everyone off the floor," you hear your teacher say, and quickly she adds, "Now. And be quiet."

You're holding your tears in as your teacher strides over to you and hoists you up carefully, slinging your arm around her waist to support you as she walks you over to the door, resting you against the wall as she pinches her nose, trying to calm herself down as she takes in your red eyes that are blinking profusely, and the way that you're holding your left ankle up so that it doesn't touch the floor.

"Does it hurt?" your teacher asks, and you nod, hands shaking. It hurts a lot, actually. You think bitterly. But she definitely doesn't want to hear that.
Your teacher sighs, nodding to herself. "Go to the nurse. Come back if she says that you can dance in the next hour, go home if she says you can't."
You nod again, feebly, and reach to open the door, wondering if she'll risk letting you limp all the way to the nurse's office alone. After all, if you fall one more time, you don't think you'd be able to to get up without help.

Your teacher rests her hand over yours on the handle, telling you wordlessly that she doesn't actually want to risk that, and looks at the class. You can practically hear her thinking that she doesn't want to give any of them up to help, especially not Sira or Kana, who are also some of the best dancers in the class. Then, to your instant dismay, your teacher's gaze slides over to the boy sitting by his mom the piano as he always does, and she speaks without hesitation.
"Mr. Min, would you care to accompany Y/N to the nurse? I'm afraid she won't make it there alone."

Min Yoongi stands without so much as a word of complaint, and nods to his mother quickly before walking over to you and slipping his arm under yours so that you're resting most of your weight on him. You see the girls' jaws drop in the mirrors, but as soon as Yoongi seems to have you settled, your teacher claps and tells everyone to get back into lines, giving the cue to Mrs. Min to start at the beginning of the sauté music.

It's silent as you hobble down the hall with Min Yoongi's help and you regret that day that you tried to talk to him. Maybe then this wouldn't be such an awkward and painful experience. Actually, it'd be painful no matter what because of your ankle. But it might be less painful, is the point.

"Are you okay?"

You stop out of shock as you hear Yoongi speak to you.

"What?" you say, looking at him with wide eyes. That was a weird answer, even you can admit that, and Yoongi seems to think the same as he cocks his head.
"What do you mean, 'what'?"
You shake your head. "Nothing. I'm fine. I was just surprised."
"If you're fine, why am I walking you to the nurse?" Yoongi deadpans. "And why were you surprised?"
You prompt him to keep walking by taking a step with your good foot, and he catches on as you reply. "I meant... I don't know. I think my ankle is twisted. And I was surprised because you don't talk."

Oh. Whoops. That was kind of harsh to say to his face.

"...That's fair."
That answer surprises you, and you look over again, although you don't make him stop this time. "You agree?" you ask.
"It would be pretty ignorant not to agree," Yoongi says simply. "I know that I don't talk much."
"You're talking to me now, though." you comment, almost in spite of the occurrence of three years ago.
"Do you want to walk all the way to the nurse's without talking?" he says sarcastically. You almost laugh. Is Min Yoongi funny? Maybe he is.
"Why don't you talk much?" you ask, just because you're curious.
Yoongi shrugs. "You're all always dancing or stretching or talking to each other, and you're all girls."
"But what about after we finish? You just stare at the piano." you realize you sound a little condescending, so you add on, "Just what I've noticed."
Yoongi shakes his head. "You're just a kid. You don't understand."
You frown, narrowing your eyes. "Whatever. You're a kid too- you don't have to pretend to be all philosophical or whatever."
"I'm older than you." Yoongi states with a somewhat victorious smirk.
"How the heck would you know that?" you exclaim.

You turn a corner before Yoongi answers.

"Because everyone in your class is eleven or twelve, and I'm thirteen."
You roll your eyes dramatically. "One year doesn't make me a kid and you not a kid."
"Yes it does," Yoongi insists.
"Psshhhhh," you roll your eyes again, and Yoongi rolls his.
"We're almost there, anyway." he mutters.

You enter the nurse's office expecting at least some kind of receptionist to ask you what happened, but all you find is a boy with an expression similar to your own in pain look sitting alone on one of the waiting chairs. He glances up as most people do when someone enters a room, looks away in disinterest, and almost like something clicked in his head, snaps back up with a smile.

"Yoongi!" he exclaims, sitting up, and immediately sitting back with a groan when his foot touches the ground.
"Jimin," Yoongi acknowledges with less enthusiasm than the Jimin guy spoke with. "Did you mess up your foot?"
Jimin nods, that pained look returning to his face. "Yeah, we were doing tour jetés and I landed badly."
"Same," you comment with a sympathetic smile. "Well, not on a tour jeté, but,"
"Oh, sorry," Jimin says bashfully. "Didn't really notice you. What's your name?"
"Y/N," you say with a grimace that was supposed to be a smile.
"Where the hell is the nurse?" Yoongi grumbles, and you give him a pointed look at his use of a swear word.
"Who knows?" Jimin shrugs. "I've been here for like, half an hour."
"Then you should sit down," Yoongi says to you, already walking you over to the chair next to Jimin. He gently helps you into the seat with care towards your ankle, which you're a little surprised by because of how sarcastic he was earlier.
"Are you going to stay here?" Jimin asks Yoongi with a hopeful look. You wonder if they're close, or if Jimin just idolizes the stone-faced boy that's standing across from you two.
Yoongi shrugs. "I should probably go back."
Jimin shrugs with an understanding smile. "See you tomorrow, then!"

Yoongi nods, then nods at you, and strolls out.

"How do you know Yoongi?" you ask as soon as said boy was out of the room.
Jimin smiles a cute smile. "He's my neighbor."
"Oh," you say. "Cool."
"What about you?"
"He's been following his mom to my class for six years." you explain, and Jimin nods in understanding.
"I heard that he does that," he says. "So what class are you in?"
"Upper division B," you reply.
"Oh, me too!" Jimin exclaims with excitement. "But boys, obviously,"
"Obviously," you laugh and agree. You like Jimin, you decide, but at that moment the nurse walks in with a yelp of shock as she sees the two of you.

She inspects Jimin's foot first, and he comes back out to tell you he has a broken toe, which should heal in 4 to 6 weeks if he stays off of it. You smile and wish him good luck when his mom comes to pick him up.

You, instead, have a sprained ankle, and the nurse advises you to go to a doctor as soon as possible.
The pain of your ankle doesn't compare to being told by the doctor that your mom brings you to with haste that you'll lose almost all of the strength in your left ankle, meaning the pointe shoes you worked so hard to wear are once again in the distance.

You see Jimin at school on the Monday after your fall, and even though he's with a friend, he waves bye and bounds over as quickly as he can with a splint on his toe.
"Y/N!" he says, then notices that you're on crutches, and your eyes are red and watery like you've been crying. Which you have been. "Oh, geez... Are you okay?"
"Do I look okay?" you snap, irritable because of the frustration over not being able to dance.
Jimin winces, and you sigh, feeling sorry already.
"Ah, I'm sorry Jimin, I'm just... if I don't heal really well there are chances that I might not be able to dance on pointe ever again."
His jaw drops. "You're kidding," he says.
You shake your head. "Nope,"
"Wow," Jimin says in awe. "I'm so sorry!"
You don't want to say it, because it's not okay, but you'll console him. "It's okay."
"Did you tell Yoongi?" he asks, and you frown.
"Why would I tell Yoongi?"
Jimin rubs the back of his head, smiling. "Um, I thought you guys were friends, so..."
"Not really," you say, shrugging. "He's just Mrs. Min's son."
"Oh, okay then," says Jimin, then looks at his watch to check the time. "Well, gotta get to class. See you later, Y/N!"
"Bye," you wave as he skips off with a noticeable limp.

You sigh, spotting Kana and deciding to try and catch up with her before you head to first hour.

"Why are you here?"

You look to your right to see Min Yoongi settling down into the same criss-cross position that you were in against the studio wall.
"If I come and watch them, then I'll be able to memorize everything that I miss." you explain, although you know you don't sound as motivated as you should with that kind of statement.
Yoongi scoffs. "What's the point of that if you're not actually doing anything?"
You hesitate to reply. "...I just... I have to make sure I can come back," you mutter, and you see Yoongi frown out of the corner of your eye.
"What do you mean?" he asks, scrunching his face up.
You stare at the girls going row by row across the floor in their chaînés across the floor, most of them wobbling while on pointe. "My ligaments tore really bad, I guess. My ankle's going to be weak and stiff for the rest of my life."
"Oh," says Yoongi. "That... that sucks."

You don't know why, but you laugh. "Yeah, it sucks."
Once again, in your peripherals, you see Yoongi's expression.
He cracks a smile.

"You were talking to Min Yoongi today," Sira comments with a little smirk as you wait for her to finish undoing her shoes. "I saw, so don't pretend like it didn't happen."
"Yeah, what about it?" you say, a little defensively.
Sira laughs. "You said you'd never talk to him again after how he embarrassed you!"
You flush at her reference to your past with Yoongi. "Well, we were just kids then, and I think he doesn't even remember, so there's that,"
"Whatever," your friend says, still humored. "Tell me if you ever find out why he's always here,"
You nod, then glance over in Yoongi's direction. He's back by the piano like always, putting away Mrs. Min's sheet music dutifully. Maybe Min Yoongi really isn't so bad.

When you're finally able to walk without being perpetually afraid, you go to ballet as you have been for the past month and a half and ever so carefully go through all the warmups and basics with the rest of the class, off pointe. You see your teacher shoot you nervous looks the entire time, but when you're able to get through the half of the class that you're allowed by the doctor to be a part of safely, she nods with a smidge of respect. You're happy- even if your ankle still stings a little when you land jumps or stop turns too hard.

Yoongi finds you as you're taking your slippers, not pointe shoes, off- Kana and Sira are off on the other side of the room because Jung Jaeeun wanted to ask them something.

"You know you're a dumbass, right?" he says blatantly, and you look up at where he's standing above you with a similarly blatantly annoyed expression.
"Don't call me that," you snap, pursing your lips.
"Fine," Yoongi says, inhales dramatically, and goes on. "You know you're a whole idiot, right?"
"Enlighten me, Min Yoongi," you sigh. "Why am I an idiot?"
"Oh, come on," he scoffs, like he often does. "I know that literally just yesterday was six weeks from the day you broke your ankle. Is it really a good idea to be dancing on it already?"
You laugh in a very fake way at him. Like 'ha ha ha.' out loud. "Well, Min Yoongi, my doctor said that I'm allowed, as long as I'm careful. Are you smarter than my doctor? Do you know more about ankles than him? Are you secretly and ankle doctor, Min Yoongi?"
"...You're obnoxious," Yoongi says after a few seconds, and just as you're about to huff another annoyed response, he spins and walks back to the piano.

You're thirteen when Park Jimin first invites you to sit with his friends at lunch.

Believe it or not, since Kana has become a part of your own little friend group, you've never had a day where all of your friends have been gone from school. But it's a new school year, and somehow, Sira's family isn't back from vacation yet, Kana went to Japan for the week because it's her grandma's birthday, Yuyeon has some sort of flu, and Jihye is doing extra work for your math teacher to bring up her grade.
So you're alone at the lunch table for five that you've been sitting at for your entire school career.

But Jimin, who you only ever saw that one time the Monday after you broke your ankle, shows up out of nowhere with his cute smile and asks you if you want to sit with his friends for the day.
You say yes, mostly because you have too much pride to be alone. But maybe also because you did say you like Jimin, and you wouldn't mind getting closer to him.

Imagine your surprise when Jimin leads you to a table that includes Min Yoongi.

"You go here?" you ask as you sit down in the seat next to him, Jimin on your other side.
Yoongi scoffs. "Duh." he says, like that should have been something you already knew.
"Everyone, this is Y/N," Jimin introduces you to the other people sitting at the table.
"I'm Taehyung, nice to meet you," says the one on Jimin's left. He's really tan and pretty handsome, too. You bow your head politely.
"I'm Jungkook," the one next to Taehyung says, and you know right away that he's the youngest. He's cute, he has this mop of dark hair and a nervous look and a quiet tone to his voice. You nod to him with a light smile.
"Hoseok, glad to meet you!" pipes up the one beside Yoongi, in the last spot. He shakes your hand, which is weird, but you go with it because he has a good energy.
"Thank you for letting me sit here," you say, and you really are grateful that you don't have to sit alone.
"We've always had an empty seat," Hoseok says with a kind smile.

The same situation happens the next day, and the next, and after those three days, it almost feels weird to sit with Jihye and Kana instead of those five boys.

"We'll be starting pas de deux today," your teacher says, and while the other girls cheer and quietly chat about how excited they are that this day has finally come, your heart sinks. The number one requirement to practice and perform a pas de deux is to be secure on pointe- meaning, not what you are. It's been almost two years since your fall, but the near two months of not dancing and the six months of being off pointe after that took a toll on your ability compared to the rest of the girls in your class. You have moments where you come off pointe far too early, and you often sauté too low out of fear of your landing. Your teacher even considered dropping you a level earlier in the year when you couldn't bring yourself to try a grande jeté while wearing your pointe shoes.
You wonder if you'll even be allowed a partner today.

To your surprise, though, as soon as the boys file into your studio (supposedly you have the better one), your teacher asks if there's anyone you know in the boys' class, so that you will be less nervous while dancing on pointe. You glance at all the faces, not recognizing a single one, up until your eyes settle on a cute smile and crinkly eyes.

"I know Park Jimin," you say with a grin, and so Jimin becomes your pas de deux partner.

You sit with Jimin and Yoongi and their friends once or twice a week nowadays. You're not really sure why, since your friends are pretty much always around. You guess that you just like them- Hoseok is a great mood maker, Taehyung is funny in a weird way, Jungkook is actually extremely strange once he opens up. You do end up becoming closer with Jimin, especially now that you dance together with him for about two hours a week. Maybe even so close that other people start to notice.

One day where you happen to be sitting with the boys, you tell an apparently very funny joke, and in his laughter, Jimin slings his arm over your shoulders, laughing into the sleeve of your shirt as he holds onto you. You don't catch it right away, but a few pairs of eyes are looking at where your friend is clinging onto you.

"You two are pretty touchy recently, huh?" Taehyung jokes as he gestures to Jimin's arm. He'd stopped laughing a few seconds ago, but hadn't pulled away yet.
At Taehyung's comment, though, Jimin flushes and practically jumps away from you. "No! I just- you know I hold onto people when I laugh!"
"We're dance partners, so he's used to touching me. It's not weird." you supplement, shrugging as you eat yogurt.
"Oh, so our Jiminie has his hands on Y/N's waist a lot?" Hoseok teases, and both he and Taehyung burst into laughter, Jungkook into quieter chuckles, when Jimin immediately starts denying it, whining that they don't get it.
You don't laugh because you don't want Jimin to feel bad. Yoongi doesn't laugh either, so you guess he's thinking the same.

You never end up catching the way Yoongi rolled his eyes when Jimin's arm slung around you in the first place.

Up and up and, up and up, and one two three and down!

“Good,” your teacher comments with a smile as your foot hits the floor after a successful fouetté series. A few cheers from the girls sitting down in the back accompany her comment. You let a smile drift briefly across your face before you rise from your stop and glissade to the back, passing Jimin as he begins his turn series that will travel in a circle around the studio.

You wait until he finishes, when the cheers from the boys rise as he lands comfortably from the last turn, and then approach from the corner, extending your leg behind you and coming up onto the tip of your shoe, repeating until you pop up and turn, his hand grazing your waist and then your hands until you pull back, Mrs. Min’s music bringing your body with it as you go on.

You do the final triple turn, Jimin lifts you into the air, and as he sets you down and clutches onto your hand with desperation, you sweep your other hand up, and throw your head back, your spine in a deep arch as the last note of the piano rings out.

Louder cheers erupt from your class, and you and Jimin hold the pose for a counted out five seconds until you relax and stand, bowing quickly to your classmates for thanks before turning to your teachers for critiques.

“It was good,” Jimin’s teacher says with a smile. “But of course, it needs a lot of work. Y/N, you look deathly afraid during those balances en pointe. Jimin, anytime you put your hands on her, I can see that you’re nervous.”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, but nod in understanding. Balancing on your bad foot, which is what you have to do for a solid 24 counts, is very nerve-wracking. But you’ll get over it, because you have to.

“Yes, exactly,” your teacher agrees. “We’ll continue with that in about thirty minutes. For now, take a break.”

You share a relieved look with Jimin, bow to your teachers, and then hurry off the floor as your teacher calls forward Sira, Kana, Jaein, and Minji to work on their cygnet pas de quatre. Jimin’s teacher takes the rest of the class, your faux corps de ballet, out to one of the other studios.

“You’ve healed well,” Yoongi comments as he settles a little uncoordinatedly next to you and Jimin against the wall. You laugh at his clumsiness behind your hand, and he shoots you a dirty look but doesn’t comment.
“Thanks,” you say simply.

You have to admit, you are and you have been surprised that you and Jimin were picked to play the roles of Odette/Odile and Siegfried in your ballet school’s Middle-Upper Division production of Swan Lake. Mostly because of your injury, but also because you were fairly sure that Sira and her partner were better technically than you and Jimin. Supposedly you two had some sort of chemistry according to your teacher, which made you better connected while dancing. You just went with it, accepting this as an opportunity to push yourself past your fears about your ankle and insecurities about your role in the show.

Yoongi shakes his head at the one word answer and pats your hair, or as much as he can when you have a ballet bun in.
You yelp and swat his hand away. “Are you stupid? These take a lot of time to put in!”
“Big deal,” Yoongi says sarcastically, and you open your mouth to reply, but instead-

“Yoongi,” Jimin says, leaning over you to talk to the person in question. “Are you going to piano lessons after school tomorrow?”

Wait, Yoongi actually plays the piano? This is news to you! You thought he just… his mom plays, obviously, but…
Wow.

“Yes,” Yoongi deadpans. “Like I do every single day after school.”
Jimin shrugs with a smile. “I figured. I just thought I’d ask, since Y/N and I are going out for boba tea after school tomorrow and I thought you might want to tag along.”

You almost whip your head towards Jimin and ask him what the heck he’s talking about, but you’re kind of curious about why he even said that and of course, what Yoongi thinks about it.

Yoongi stiffens a little, his head cocking when he matches gazes Jimin. They just look at each other for a moment, and you start to feel invisible until Yoongi finally talks.

“Have fun,” he says without an ounce of enthusiasm, and stands up, just barely looking over his shoulder and nodding towards you before walking back to the piano.

You frown and face Jimin, ready to ask him what that was all about, but he talks first.

“Sorry I didn’t mention it before- but would you like that? To go get tea after school tomorrow?”
You think about your schedule and if you have anything to do, but you don’t, so you nod. “Sure, that sounds good.”
“Great,” says Jimin, a smile breaking out on his face. “Don’t bring money, by the way. Since I invited you, I’ll pay.”
“Okay!” you say, significantly more excited now that it’s going to be not only a hangout with Jimin, but also an opportunity for free drinks.

“Are you dating Park Jimin?” Sira asks one day as the two of you are walking home from school.

You stop, head tilting as you think over her question. Are you dating Park Jimin? Ever since that first boba tea outing, you’ve started hanging out with him, Taehyung, Jungkook, Hoseok, and Yoongi pretty often, and sometimes it’s just you and Jimin. You like him a lot, you like his cute eye smile and how he’s always nice to you. You like that he’s conscious of your nerves about your ankle while you dance with him, and how he sends you playful looks while you’re running through your choreography.
But then again, as much as you like Jimin, you’ve heard that wanting to date someone, otherwise known as having a crush on them, involves butterflies in the stomach, being nervous around them, and having an urge to kiss them. And those three things don’t really apply to how you feel about Jimin. He’s a good friend, but no, you decide. You are not, and you probably will not ever be, dating Jimin.

“Nope,” you say to Sira, beginning to walk again. She skips to catch up with you, groaning.
“Seriously? You two look so cute together, though!”
“So?” you say, shooting her an unimpressed look. “He’s my friend.”
“Y/N!” Sira whines, dragging your name out. “I really think the two of you should date! Can’t you imagine the main roles in our production actually being together? It’d be perfect!”

Yeah, that would be pretty cute, to be honest. Just not involving you and Jimin.

“Sorry,” you say without an ounce of apology in your tone. You shoot Sira an encouraging smile. “How about you make that ballet couple you and Taegeun?”
Sira pouts at the mention of her own pas de deux class partner. “You know it’s not like that with him.”
“It’s not like that with Jimin, either,” you retort, and your friend skulks.

“Whatever,” she says pointedly. “I bet you’ll end up with him someday.”

You press the black eyeshadow onto your eyelids, sweeping it back and forth to blend it out a little before dipping it back in to add more. Your teacher and the costumer always tell you that your makeup isn’t dark enough for stage performances, but you won’t have that problem now with how much you’re putting on.

The chatter of the other girls is loud around you, everyone excited about the performance that will start in just about an hour. You, on the other hand, are practically shaking in anxiety. Actually, forget the practically, the black on your eye accidentally goes too far down because of the way your fingers holding the brush are trembling.
You wish you could say that you’re totally confident about this show- you wish that you could be talking with Sira and Kana about how ready you are to get out there and dance. But you purposely sat away from them, because you can feel anxiety building up in the pit of your stomach that’s threatening to spill over as tears. You just breathe as you put makeup on, knowing that all your fears over your ankle that won’t be bandaged for extra support and whether you and Jimin are good enough and passionate enough in your roles will go away once you get through your first act.

“Hey,”

You look with more focus than your almost robotic motions of putting makeup on at the mirror to find Min Yoongi standing behind you, hands in the pockets of his dress pants. You take in his appearance, finding that his usually unkept dark hair has been swept to either side of his face and he’s wearing clothes that aren’t just an unironed school uniform or a hoodie and jeans.

“Hi,” you reply simply as he sits down next to you, picking up a palette you have sitting on the top of your makeup bag and fiddling with it.
“You’re nervous,” Yoongi comments, and you’re a little surprised at how he knew without even asking you first.
“Yup,” you say, deciding that agreeing is easier than trying to convince him that he’s wrong. Especially when he’s clearly not.
Yoongi looks at you, with a sympathetic smile that you don’t see often on him. “Y/N,” he says, and puts his hand on your head, ignoring as always the bun atop your head. “I promise that you’ll be fine. Your ankle is going to be fine, Jimin will be fine, and if you’re ever nervous, just find me in the audience.”

You don’t know why, but all you want to say is that if you see Yoongi in the audience you’ll only become more nervous.

“Okay,” you say instead, in a small voice.
“Really, Y/N,” Yoongi insists, patting your head to get you to look at him. His eyes are serious. “Don’t ruin it for yourself. Just dance. It’ll be okay.”
“Okay,” you repeat, this time giving him a tiny smile to show that you mean it. Yoongi nods once, then moves to stand, giving a final pat to your head before he turns and walks away, his only goodbye the wave over his shoulder that he often replaces words with.

Not even five seconds after Yoongi has left the studio (now that you think about it, how did he even get in?), Sira and Kana are sliding into the spaces beside you with a ferocity that scares you.

“Are you dating Min Yoongi?” are the first words out of Sira’s mouth, and you resist the natural urge to smack her on the back of the head to knock some sense into her.
“No, I’m not,” you say bitterly. “Can I not have friends that talk to me before a show?”
“I don’t know, Y/N, that head pat thing looked pretty suspicious to me,” says Kana, and you gape at the betrayal by your Japanese friend. How does she even know the word suspicious?

“Seriously, guys,” you say, shaking your head as you pick up a bigger brush and start putting blush on across your cheeks. “I’m not even that close with Yoongi.”
“Yeah, you’re much closer with Jimin, huh?” Sira teases and sends you a wink that has you cringing.

Kana and Sira erupt into laughter after you just roll your eyes.

The lighting is blue and soft around you and Jimin, the music being played just underneath you in the pit stringing along till the very end as you turn en pointe with your leg extended behind you, Jimin holding your hand and waist to balance as he walks around you, eyes set on yours. You can see the smile and the relief in them, the emotions he has to keep under control in the shape of a just barely there smile on his face for the sake of the performance.

Finally, the curtains close in front of you two, and you basically collapse into Jimin’s arms, the pain in your left ankle unbearable after balancing for so long on it just seconds ago. He supports you without questions, and laces his arm through yours to help you limp quickly off the stage and on a stool, a stagehand (some girl from school who needed volunteer hours) handing you a bottle of water right away.

“Good job,” Jimin whispers as the curtains open again and your classmates in the corps go out to bow first. You smile at him, pressing the back of your hand to your forehead to try and get rid of sweat.
“You too,” you say, and it feels like not even a minute passes before Jimin is ushered towards the stage, and after him, you- the prima ballerina of your class.

You feel a little stupid, bowing deeply and smiling gratefully at the crowd like you’re some sort of famous ballerina who danced nothing less than perfection tonight. But you forget that- you force yourself to just enjoy the bright lights and the fact that you are that “prima ballerina” of one of the most prestigious ballet academies in the country.

Jimin joins you just like your teacher planned, taking your hand for another deep bow, and then everyone is bowing together, all smiles and laughter and relief.

Your teachers say a few words about how hard all of you have worked for this performance, thank you and thank the parents, and bid everyone a goodnight with directions to the lobby of the auditorium hall.

You take your time getting to the changing rooms to get out of your tutu (it makes you feel professional, but it’s also itchy and tight and not very comfortable) and undo the shoes that wound you so much. You put on a much more casual outfit, a hoodie and leggings with flip-flops, but you can’t find the energy to take out your ballet bun or take off your makeup, so you just head out to the lobby.

You should have expected the immediate assault from Sira as you walk into the lobby, but somehow, you did not, and are now gasping for air as she strangles you in an impossibly tight hug.

“You did so good!” your friend exclaims, squeezing the life out of you.
“Thanks, you too!” you manage to say back, and, satisfied, she lets you go with a brilliant smile.
“Our parents are over there, I told them I’d find you.”

Your mom has tears in her eyes. “Our sweetheart’s first big show! I’m so proud! Did you see her do those turns?” she brags a little to Sira’s parents, and your families being very close, they just nod and laugh, knowing your mom tends to get very into things like this.
“Good job, pumpkin,” your dad says with a smile, pinching your cheek. You open your mouth to say thanks, but suddenly there’s an arm slung around your shoulders and you hear the light tone of Jimin’s voice in your ear.

“Isn’t our Y/N just great? She’s the best partner, I swear!” he pipes to your parents, who have become familiar with him over the past few months.
Your dad raises his eyebrows. “I’m sure she is, but you can keep your hands off my daughter outside of practice, son.”

Jimin recoils like he’d been hit, and when you turn over your shoulder you see him blushing furiously and holding his cheeks in his hands, a passive looking Min Yoongi behind him, hands still in his pockets.

“He’s joking, Jimin,” you chuckle, but your friend can’t seem to recover from his shame.
“Hey, have you seen Taegeun anywhere? I want to say bye to him, since we won’t have practice for a week.” Sira directs toward Jimin. You know she’s really just trying to distract him from the embarrassment he’s just gone through, and you see it working as he scrunches his face up in thought.
“Ummm, I think he’s over there,” Jimin points. “Here, I’ll show you.”

He waves a goodbye to you as he drags Sira and her parents off to find her partner, leaving you and yours facing Min Yoongi.

“And who’s this young man?” your dad asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Min Yoongi, sir.” Yoongi bows respectfully. “My mother is the pianist for Y/N’s class, and I sometimes accompany her, so that’s how your daughter and I are friends.”

Psshhh, sometimes. More like every single freakin’ day.

“Oh, you’re the one who helped Y/N when she twisted her ankle, right?” your mom exclaims, and when Yoongi nods, she envelopes him in a tight hug. “Thank you so much, Yoongi, I was so worried when she told me it happened while dancing, that teacher of hers can be so harsh, I thought she might’ve had to deal with it alone!”
“It was nothing,” Yoongi says, and you laugh at the way his cheeks are heating up after being hugged by your mother. He rubs the back of his neck nervously when she lets him go, mussing his styled hair.
“Does that mean you know piano too, since your mom plays?” your mom asks, trying to make conversation.
Yoongi nods. “I’ve been playing since I was a kid,” he says.
“Teach Y/N sometime, will you? All she cares about is dance, I wish she’d have some other hobbies,” your mom shoots you a look at that, and you roll your eyes.
“Sure,” Yoongi says before you can dispute the idea.

Your eyes widen, jaw dropping. Min Yoongi, who has never even touched a piano in front of you, would teach you how to play it?

“I’ll hold the both of you to that, then,” your mom says. “Starting next school year, I expect lessons from Mr. Min Yoongi once a week or every other.”
“Got it,” says Yoongi with a nod.
You whine. “Don’t I have a say in this?”
“No,” says your mom, and then smiles at Yoongi. “Well it was nice to meet you, sweetie. We have to get going now, do you need a ride home?”
Yoongi shakes his head. “I live by Jimin, so I’m going with him.”
Your mom nods, you exchange goodbyes with Yoongi, wave bye to Sira and Jimin from the door, hug Kana quickly since she’s nearby, and then the performance becomes the past.

It’s the last week of summer before the school year will start, and you’re sitting on your porch with a blanket wrapped around you and Sira as you sob into each others’ arms.

Your best friend and closest confidant since that very first day of ballet class when you were six, and now she’s moving away.

Sira tells you her dad got a really good job offer up north, and that the whole family has to move in order for him to take it. She tried to make it better by telling you that it’s only a four-hour drive, and that anytime you have a week-long break from school either of you could stay with each other during it.
It doesn’t make it better, though, since now Kana will be your only friend at dance, and Sira’s empty spot at the lunch table will feel strange. You already know it.

So during that last week, you spend every second together- Sira staying at your house while her parents pack and get everything ready to make the move up north the Sunday before your first day.

You cry when she leaves.
The next day, it feels weird to walk to school alone.

“No, like this,” Yoongi says, shifting your fingers over one space each.

It’s your first lesson with him, and you already hate it. You’re good at dancing- you don’t know why your mom insisted that you actually follow through on this piano thing with Yoongi. Plus, he’s not that patient while teaching you. You know it’s because pressing the keys and making music is natural to him, especially after hearing him freestyle a tune in the first ten minutes of the lesson, but it’s frustrating.

“Are you sure?” you ask, checking the sheet music he’s put in front of you. You can’t really read that, either. You used to be able to when you were a kid, but the bass clef thing really doesn’t make sense? Why can’t all the notes just have the same names?

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Now play that chord.”

You sigh and do as he said, pressing down the keys, only it makes a jarring noise from the upper register, and the both of you wince. Yoongi wordlessly shifts your pinky over one key, and presses down atop your fingers with his own hands, the chord coming out harmonic and sweet sounding this time.

“That’s C major,” Yoongi tells you. “You’ll hear that one a lot in pop music.”

He tries to explain the concept of major and minor chords, and why the notes have both letter names and somehow numbers which correspond to scales, but the scales can start from any letter name, and why one has 1-3-5 and sounds happy but the other one has 1-3-5 and sounds sad-
Frankly, you don’t understand any of it, and by the end of the hour Yoongi promised your mom would be teaching time, you’re practically ripping your hair out.

“We’re done,” you snap as soon as the clock turns to five. Yoongi turns to you, eyebrows raised.
“Don’t you want to run through the information one more time before we go?”
“I really don’t,” you say bitterly, and push the bench of the piano away from it so you can stand, Yoongi following you with an unreadable expression.
“Did you not enjoy playing?” he asks you, and for the first time in your entire, and you mean your entire friendship with Yoongi, he looks a little hurt.

You bite your lip- somehow understanding right away that nothing means as much to Yoongi as playing the piano does. If you tell him now that you hate the thing that makes him the happiest, you don’t know what his reaction will be.

“I…” you begin, trying to plan out your next sentence. “Next time, can you just start a little simpler? I don’t know what you’re talking about when you talk about chords and scales and triads or whatever.”

And for the first time ever, Yoongi doesn’t make some sort of sarcastic remark. Instead, he gives you a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay,” he says. “Sorry if I went too fast.”
You shake your head. “It’s fine.”

You can’t believe you just subjected yourself to the commitment of learning to play piano with Yoongi for the entire year just to spare his hurt feelings. And yet, seeing his smile when he sits down as you’re walking out of the practice room and starts playing his own harder material, makes it feel worth it.

You don’t know exactly when it happens, but a few months after school starts, you stop sitting with your usual friends at lunch. Sira’s absence from the group makes you realize that among Kana, Jihye, and Yuyeon, you only really like Kana, and that makes it hard to sit through their materialistic conversations about nothing every single day. It bothers Kana, too, you can tell, and so eventually, the two of you just start sitting with another group of friends.

The table is crowded- like, way too crowded. But Jimin tells you there’s no way you and your now closest friend will be sitting alone together at lunch. He urges Jungkook and Taehyung to squeeze in a little closer, and Hoseok offers to go sit with his friends Namjoon and Seokjin instead, and somehow there’s room for you and Kana. She fits in between Taehyung and Jungkook, and you sit across from her by Jimin and Yoongi.

Kana and Taehyung hit it off, especially since he speaks a little Japanese, and she finds it really funny when he says things in an accidental mix of languages.

The six of you become your own little frankenstein friend group at some point, Jungkook the youngest among you and Yoongi the oldest. Kana’s parents are often away on business trips to Japan, so you all end up at her house for hours and hours on the weekends, doing nothing, but doing nothing together.

You still miss Sira, though. She doesn’t come visit, even when you know she has a week off.
You hope she was just busy.

Yoongi gets his license on a cold day in mid-March soon after he turns sixteen. He doesn’t want to go far, just take you out on a day trip downtown to hang out without the pressure of figuring out how to get a ride home. Your parents are a little skeptical, since you are in fact fifteen and therefore younger than him, and they know the kind of trouble two teenagers can get into, but Jimin offers to come along via text with your mom (why they have each other’s numbers you don’t know) and they relax, saying that you can go.

Jimin’s in the passenger seat when Yoongi pulls up to your house, and even though you scowl at him, he shrugs with a grin and tells you that you should have asked to be picked up first.

“You’re such a little shit, you know,” you say bitterly as you get into the backseat, kicking your sandals off so you can pull your legs up in a criss-cross position.
“Don’t use that kind of language,” Yoongi scolds, and you nearly break out into laughter.
Jimin actually does. “What? Like half your vocabulary is swear words, but Y/N can’t say ‘shit’?”
Yoongi rolls his eyes. “She doesn’t need to be like me, at all.”
You’re about to bring this to an argumentative point, but Jimin turns around to face you and starts talking about the production you’re working on now- Giselle.

It’s one of your favorite ballets, and now that you and Jimin have finally been bumped up to the highest Upper Division performance group, you’ll be performing it for two weeks straight, four shows a week. You and Jimin play Giselle and Albrecht for half of the shows, and Kana and Taegeun, Sira’s old partner, play them for the other two.

“Oh, yeah, Sira!” Jimin pipes up at the mention of Taegeun and his old pas de deux partner, your old best friend. “Have you kept in touch with her?”
Your mood dampens a little. “No… not really. She told me she stopped dancing a few weeks ago, and that was the first time we’ve talked since she called for five minutes on Christmas.”
“She stopped dancing?” Jimin’s jaw drops. “You’re kidding. She was so good!”
“I know,” you say, shrugging. You look out the window at the passing landscape, not feeling the eyes watching you through the rearview mirror, the hand that almost comes off the wheel to pat your head and comfort you.
“Not all friendships last forever,” Yoongi says, and you snap your eyes to him, but he seems focused on the road. “Don’t beat yourself up over it if she can’t make time to continue your relationship.”
“I guess you’re right,” you mutter. Would yours and Yoongi’s friendship last forever? Would yours and Jimin’s?
The thought occupies you as Yoongi and Jimin started talking about something Jimin’s parents said the other day.

“Ah!” you gasp a few hours after the three of you arrived downtown. It’s starting to get dark and you know your parents will want you home soon, but you just remembered.
“What?” Yoongi asks, a quizzical expression on his face.
“I’m going to some fancy dinner thing for the literature club- I was supposed to get a dress,” you smack your forehead, shocked at how you’d forgotten.

“Well, you can get one now,” Jimin said, unsure of why you had a tiny outburst about this.
You rolled your eyes. “There is seriously not enough time for that right now,”
Jimin was about to ask why, you could pretty much see his brain getting ready to send the word to his lips, but Yoongi speaks first.

“Let’s go, quickly. There’s a dress shop down the street.”

You’re surprised that he seems to know that easily and without doubt, but you just nod and start at a fast pace down the street, knowing you have to allot time to search for a few dresses, try them on, pay, walk back to the car, and then drive home.

Just like you expected, as you walk into the store (it’s called Fuyoki’s, simply enough. You wonder if the owner is Japanese.) your dad texts you, a brief message telling you to be home before nine thirty.

“Hello,” you greet the lady behind the counter, and she smiles, greeting you in return, only to frown in confusion when two young men walk in behind you.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” the employee asks you, and you tell her you have a fancy dinner to attend. She nods, bringing you over to a section labelled ‘juniors’ with a variety of colors, fabrics, shapes, sizes, everything. You resist the urge to faint on purpose in order to escape what is about to be a dress-shopping nightmare.

“What color do you want?” Yoongi asks, and you shrug. “Wear white, then.”
“White?” you ask. “Won’t that look like I’m getting married?”
“Not unless you plan on wearing a ballgown,” Yoongi retorts sarcastically.
You sigh in defeat, knowing that he does make a good point, and out of nowhere Jimin pops up from the aisle across from you and Yoongi with three dresses in his arms.

“Try these on, please!” he says, holding them up for you to see. None of them really look like your style, but you agree because you don’t really care if it matches your style as long as it looks nice and isn’t wildly expensive.
“Those aren’t white,” Yoongi says in a weird tone of voice. It almost sounds… annoyed?
“Why would they need to be white?” Jimin asks. He must not have been listening to your conversation.
“You’re looking for a white piece?” the saleswoman asks, coming up from behind you. You shrug with a quiet ‘sure’, and she smiles, getting to work and pulling out three dresses that you don’t have time to examine before you’re shoved into a dressing room, Jimin throwing over his choices with a ‘don’t forget these!’.

You put on Jimin’s choices first, and find that all of them are… well, ugly. On you, at least. Weirdly cut, weirdly… weird everything.

You try the white dresses the lady chose out, checking your phone and seeing that it’s already 8:15. That makes you hurry, throwing them on and off, disliking each choice as much as Jimin’s earlier ideas.

“Why don’t you come out and show us, dear?” the saleswoman asks.
“No thanks, I tried them all already and they weren’t my style,” you say back through the door.

Wow, great excuse after deciding you didn’t care if they were your style.

“I’ll pick some more for you,” she says back as if you didn’t just turn down six dresses.

You wait for a few moments in the dressing room, texting your dad that there is a chance you’ll be home late. And then there’s another white dress hitting you in the side of the face.

“Ah- what the hell?” you yelp as it falls from your face to the floor.
“Try that one on,” says Yoongi, which surprises you.

You don’t reply, but just hold the garment up in front of you. It’s pretty at first glance, a very simple cut but with an embroidered lace on the entire dress. It’ll fall about just above knee length, the collar landing right on the curve of your neck.
You like it.

And you like it when you put it on, too.

You hear the lady’s heels clicking outside the door, and guessing that she’s about to hand you her choices, you step out, hands rubbing up and down your arms a little nervously as the saleswoman stops and both Jimin and Yoongi set their eyes on you.
You start to feel a little self-conscious when the boys don’t say anything, but thankfully the lady smiles.

“You look darling in that one,” she says. “Would you like to try on anything else?”
You shake your head. “No, that’s okay. We’re on a time crunch.”

The employee nods, telling you that she’ll be at the checkout counter.
You whip around and head back in the dressing room, hoping that neither of the boys will comment on your appearance.
And yet you’re kind of hoping that Yoongi will like his dress choice on you.

Jimin goes the bathroom, and you and Yoongi go to pay. And then you realize that you didn’t look at the price tag. You realize this because the dress is an even one hundred dollars, which is clearly way overpriced. And you only have fifty left with you after your shopping today.

“Card or cash?” the saleswoman asks, and your face falls a little, gritting your teeth.
“I, um… I’ll have to…” you can see that she’s confused about why you’re stalling, and you’re about to just spit it out that you don’t have the money-
“Card,” says Yoongi, pulling out his wallet. You look at him with an insurmountable amount of shock as he takes out a flashy red debit card, his expression completely casual as if he pays for your clothing on the daily.
“Oh, how sweet of you to pay, are you two a couple?” the saleswoman asks with a smile as she takes Yoongi’s card. You’re in so much shock that you can’t speak, so Yoongi answers instead.
“Yup,” he says, and pats your head like he always does. You are… you are in medical shock, probably. The state of your mind as a visual would be a small room with white walls and floors, because you are so shocked at what is going on that your thoughts are blank.
“Is the young man in the restroom a friend, then?” the employee asks to be nice, clearly not noticing your state.
Yoongi chuckles. “Her brother,” he says.
“Ah,” says the woman, handing Yoongi back his card and the dress wrapped in a nice bag to you.

Jimin comes back right then, so you don’t have an opportunity to ask Yoongi why in God’s name he said that he’s your boyfriend and Jimin is your brother. You just assume it’s because he thought it was funny.

You sit in the passenger seat on the way back, almost falling asleep because of the chill music that Yoongi has playing in the car. You can hear him and Jimin talking, and the sound of Yoongi’s low and gravelly voice doesn’t help your sleepy urges.
You only force yourself to wake up a little when Yoongi drops Jimin off first, since now you’re alone in the car with him.

“Yoongi,” you say, and he tenses. Why?
“What?” he says back, not looking at you but rather in the rearview as he pulls out of Jimin’s driveway.
“Why’d you pay for my dress?” you ask, choosing to be straightforward.
Yoongi snorts. “Clearly you didn’t have money. Pay me back next time I see you.”

...Right.

“Why’d you tell her we’re dating?” you can’t keep yourself from asking as he gets back onto the road, somehow knowing the directions to your house by heart.
“Y/N,” he says, and you look at him, finding his eyes on you. You’re almost expecting him to tell you it’s because he wants to date you, you’re almost expecting him to put his hand atop your head like he always does and ask you to be his girlfriend.

“Don’t you think she’d find it weird for two random guys to come into a store with one girl and have one of the guys end up paying without an explanation? Doesn’t that seem kind of weird?”

You let out a breath you hadn’t noticed you were holding in, and look out the window instead.

“Yeah, that does sound kind of weird,” you agree just so that it doesn’t seem like you were expecting something else.

You sit in just the silence of the music playing for almost the entire rest of the way to your house, and only when you’re unbuckling your seatbelt does Yoongi speak again.

“By the way,” he says, and you glance over, catching one of those barely-there smiles. “You looked pretty in that dress.”
You avert your eyes, trying really hard to keep the smile off your face, and ultimately failing. “Thank you,” you say, grab your bags, and practically jump out of the car, since you can feel your cheeks heating up. Why that’s happening, you don’t really know. But you don’t want Min Yoongi to think you’re blushing because of him.

“Bye,” Yoongi calls from the car, sounding a little amused.
You don’t turn around as you walk up your driveway, thinking yourself a little clever when you raise your hand in that wave Yoongi does to you, just barely looking over your shoulder. You hear his quiet chuckle because you’re listening in for it.

He doesn’t drive away until you’re inside the house, at 9:28.

It’s the first summer without Sira, and you and your (pretty much best at this point) friend Akamine Kana, have been together the entire first week. Except for one day, when she was hanging out with her now boyfriend Kim Taehyung. But now she’s back at your house, doing nothing together.

“Kana,” you say, hanging off the edge of your bed and staring up at the ceiling.
She hums, sitting on your floor in her middle splits. A ballerina should always be stretching. Your teacher’s words ring in your head.
“How did you know that you liked Taehyung enough to date him?”

Your friend snaps up, her jaw dropping. “Is there someone that you like?”
You purse your lips. “I don’t really know, that’s why I’m asking you this question.”
“I guess… I just want to spend time with him, and I find him attractive, and he makes me happy. He’s funny and he’s concerned about me, and I have concerns about him.” Kana shrugs. “It’s not like I love Taehyung or anything, so I’m not sure how deep my relationship really runs.”

You think back to how you’d checked your phone this morning to find a text from Yoongi reading ’Excited about the extra week off ballet? Remember to stretch. We’ll hang out soon.’

“Kana,” you say, nervously, your voice shaking. What if she judges you? “Do you think Yoongi likes me at all?”

Your friend slides her feet together slowly, crossing them under her, and setting her naturally sharp and pointed eyes on you.

“Yoongi?” she asks, her soft voice contrasting those eyes.
You nod, chewing on your lip.
Kana tilts her head. “I think… I think it’s Jimin who likes you, Y/N.”

Your eyes are wide, and you twist your body to face her while sitting on your bed, mirroring Kana. “Jimin?” you ask, and she nods. “...Jimin?” you repeat, in disbelief.
“Why are you so surprised?” Kana asks, and it’s not the laughing tone that Sira would have used. Kana is confused, you know she is. She hasn’t really mastered those kinds of jokes in Korean yet.
“I just…” you trail off, running a hand through your hair. “I always thought Jimin was just a supportive close friend. Like my brother.”
“He doesn’t see you as a sister,” Kana states, looking down. You think she feels kind of bad for telling you, and suddenly you want to backtrack.
“Well, should I ask him?” you say, trying to hype her up so she can give you advice.
“Ask him… ask him if he likes you?”
You nod.
Kana looks iffy. “Is that a good idea? Maybe he’ll tell you himself when he’s ready.”
You shrug. “I guess that makes sense.”

A few moments pass in silence. You’re thinking.
You’re thinking about how whenever you’re in the passenger seat next to Yoongi, you remember how he paid for your dress, and how he told you that you looked pretty in it. When you’re sitting next to him at lunch and he rests his head on your shoulder because he’s sleepy, you think of all the texts he’s sent just to check up on you, and the way he takes a moment to pat your head and tell you to rest well at the end of every ballet practice. And when you’re sitting in Jimin’s room and you sometimes catch Yoongi’s eyes on you when Jimin sits close to you, you think of how he rests his hands on top of yours when he’s teaching you piano, and how on that day when he bought your dress, he told the saleswoman that Jimin is your brother.

You’re sorry for Jimin. You can already feel guilt starting to eat away at you, because no matter how much Jimin likes you, or how well he treats you, Yoongi is the person who gives you butterflies in your stomach.

“Up for ice cream?” Kana asks, breaking you out of your thoughts.
You smile, hopping off your bed. You’ll think about everything another time. “Sure.”

You don’t think you’ve felt as confused as you do right now.

You’re standing just outside of Yoongi’s door, after texting him just about a hundred times because you were supposed to have a piano lesson a week ago and he never showed up to the practice room- and he hasn’t answered you since.

You walked up to his door after asking Kana to bring you to his house (she’s older than you by a few months and just got her license). She’s waiting in her car just a couple dozen feet behind you, actually. And you’re standing on Yoongi’s doorstep, wondering why a man who’s at least a few years older than Yoongi with a stench of alcohol coming in waves off of him has answered the door.

“Who are you, kid?” the man asks, leaning forward into your face. You stumble back, a little afraid. Where is Yoongi- where is Mrs. Min? Who in the hell is this man?
“I- uhm, I’m Yoongi’s friend,” you say, but it doesn’t sound convincing. “Is he here?”
The man cocks an eyebrow. “Yoongi?
You frown. “Yes, Min Yoongi. He lives here. About this tall,” you hold up your hand. “Dark brown hair, really pale.”
The man laughs in your face, and his breath is revolting. “Ah, you mean Suga! He’s inside. Wanna come in, babydoll?”

You flinch at the nickname paired with his hand coming out to grab your arm, not having expected that. Behind you, you hear the car door slam shut and the sound of Kana’s clicking heels as she walks up the driveway. You pull your arm away from the man, taking a few steps back as your friend stands next to you, narrowing her sharp and intimidating eyes.

“Who are you?” Kana asks in a demanding tone.
“Kim Heejung,” the man says, and raises a brow once again. “You another friend of Suga?”
“He means Yoongi,” you explain quietly to Kana.
Kana frowns, turning to you. “I think we should go, Y/N. This seems strange. You can call Yoongi again tomorrow and reschedule the piano lesson.”
You shake your head. “It’s not just about the piano lesson. He never ignores me like this.”
“What, you think you’re his girl or something?” the man- Heejung- scoffs.
“No,” you snap. “Just- is Yoongi, or Suga or whatever, is he in there?”
Heejung rolls his eyes. “I asked if you wanted to go in.” and he steps aside.

Kana follows you closely as you walk inside, and immediately you are met with booming bass and a thick stench in the air that makes you cough. You’ve never actually been to Yoongi’s house before, and you just guess on where the living room is.

And when you find it, you find Yoongi, passed out on his couch, in pajamas, with mussed and dyed blonde hair that you’ve never seen. And four other people you’ve never met passing around a blunt, empty beer bottles strewn around the room.

You know there are teenagers like this, people who drink and smoke. You don’t really care- it’s their business and not yours. And it’s not like you haven’t downed a beer at Jimin’s house before. But Yoongi being passed out with strangers in his house, his mom missing, with smoke infiltrating everything, even your clothes, you’re mad.

You stalk towards the couch, ignoring the weird looks that the strangers give you, and start shaking Yoongi.

“Wake the hell up,” you snap at him as his bleary and unfocused eyes open. The rims of them are red, but you don’t think it’s because he’s been crying. When he seems to realize it’s you, Yoongi snaps up, grabbing onto the sleeve of your shirt and narrowing his eyes.
“What are you doing here, Y/N?” he says lowly, hand shaking a little. You shove it off, frustration rising up as you can tell that he’s just as high as everyone else.
“What the fuck is going on here?” you hiss, gesturing to the strangers on his carpet. Yoongi’s whole face scrunches up in anger when you swear, and he stands, catching your wrist.
“I told you not to fucking say shit like that,” he says, and you laugh.
“Right, cause I’m not meant to be ‘like you’, huh? Is this what you meant, Yoongi? Have you been smoking and drinking the whole week while I’ve been texting you? I thought something happened to you? Why the fuck are you doing this?”
Yoongi squeezes your wrist. “Stop talking like that, Y/N, and get the hell out of here, you don’t need to be around this shit.”
You throw his hand off you, feeling angrier than before. “Why? Am I too much of a good girl to be around you? Is this what you’re really like, Min Yoongi? You don’t want me seeing your true colors? Why not?”
“Get the fuck out, Y/N! It’s not your fucking business!” he shouts, and for a moment, his hand barely twitches and you think he’s going to hit you. You don’t know why- Yoongi has never been violent and you’ve never been hit like this, but his pissed tone and the situation makes you flinch back too noticeably to hide.

Yoongi sees, and you catch the regret that immediately flashes across his face, but Kana has already thrown her arm over your shoulders and is dragging you back the way you came.

“Y/N,” Yoongi says once, but he doesn’t try to stop you from leaving. He doesn’t even try to apologize.

You sit in Kana’s car after driving down the street, and all you can do is cry.

Yoongi doesn’t show up at lunch the Monday after you went to his house, and when Jimin wonders aloud about where he might be, you have to keep yourself from spilling about what happened.

“Is it his dad’s-” Taehyung starts, and before he can even finish talking, Jimin shoves him to the side, effectively silencing his friend. He whispers something to Taehyung that you can’t hear, so you just shrug it off.

As upset as you are, you know that Yoongi’ll get in huge trouble if it gets out that he’s been drinking underage and especially if it gets out about the marijuana. So you just shrug when Jimin asks if you know what happened to your mutual friend. Kana sends you an apologetic look.

You can’t deny your surprise when you and Kana walk into ballet, talking about a history assignment you have to do after practice ends, and Yoongi is seated at the piano rather than his mom. You freeze when you see him, and Kana promptly laces her arm under yours, guiding you to the side of the room where he won’t be able to see you as well, whispers something about “let’s just avoid him for now”.

You can feel his eyes on you as you stretch at the side of the room by the wall, you can feel him watching you every time you even shift your eyes in that general direction.

“Ladies,” your teacher says as you all stand and prepare for warmups on the barre. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that Mr. Min Yoongi is our pianist today rather than his mother. Mrs. Min is unfortunately in the hospital after a car accident, so I hope that you’ll all send Mr. Min a word of condolence.”

Your head snaps towards him when you hear about his mother, eyes wide while his head is down, staring at the keys of the piano. Why didn’t… why didn’t he tell you? Is that why he was doing what he was doing? To try and forget the pain of his mother’s suffering?

But he won’t look up to catch your eye while you’re looking at him, so you bite your lip and try to focus on dancing, rather than the way Min Yoongi’s pain somehow feels like your own.

Three weeks pass of Yoongi either not being at school, or sitting somewhere else at lunch. Three weeks of him playing the piano at ballet. Three weeks of you not knowing whether it would be the right decision to talk to him or rather just let him be, let him talk to you when he’s ready.
The problem with that option is that you’re unsure if Yoongi will ever be ready, because three weeks is a long time, and you’re a little tired of waiting.

You’re met with an opportunity nearing the end of those three weeks, the beginning of the fourth.

You get to ballet a solid twenty minutes before you usually do, to talk to your teacher about the auditions for the annual Upper Division production of the Nutcracker (since now you’re in the highest level of your academy and can actually dance in it if your audition goes well), and yet your teacher happens to be late on the one day that you’re early.

But Min Yoongi isn’t late- in fact, he’s the only one in the studio, and he doesn’t even seem to notice you when you walk in because of how immersed he is in the song he’s playing.

It’s a piece by Bach- you know because he’s played it at your lessons before. Dall’Ouverture n. 3 in Re maggiore per orchestra- transcribed for the piano. It’s a piece that has a strange mood, like it’s trying to be happy but it just can’t be, something is holding it back. There are moments of joy within the piece, though, and you watch Yoongi’s face as he plays them. He grimaces until the song transitions into more solemn notes and melodies, and then his expression relaxes.

You wait until it ends.

“Yoongi,” you say.

He looks up, and his eyes are no longer the kind of red that comes from smoking until you can’t anymore, they’re the kind of red that comes from night after night of tears.

“Are you okay?” you ask, because it’s the only thing you can think of.
He stares at you like he can’t understand the words that have just come out of your mouth, his bleached hair falling over his eyes.

“Wait for me after you finish practice,” is all he finally says. You want to reply, try to give him some sort of comfort, although you don’t really have ideas of what kind, but just then, your teacher strolls in, looking surprised to see you.

“Ah, Y/N! Is there a reason you’re here so early?”
You smile. “Yes, actually, I wanted to ask your opinion on if I have a shot at getting into the Nutcracker show…”

After practice ends, you untie your pointe shoes, do a quick cooldown stretch, put some sweatpants on over your tights and practice skirt, and walk over to the piano, where Yoongi is putting his music away.
He is quiet until he finishes completely, and stands with a sort of empty look that makes you wince internally.

“Let’s go sit in my car,” Yoongi tells you, and you nod, waving a goodbye to Kana and proceeding to follow Yoongi out of the studio and out of the building, into the parking lot.

His car is old and breaks down often, and you can spot it easily. He unlocks it from a few feet away, both of you silent all the while.
You can tell right away when you sit down in the passenger seat, putting your bag in between your feet, that he’s smoked in here too. The air doesn’t feel thick like it did in his house, but you can smell that almost burnt scent that’s familiar from that day.

“Sorry,” Yoongi mutters as he fiddles around with a few things on his side, probably trying to look busy as if you don’t already know that he’s not.
“It’s okay,” you quietly respond, and wait for him to talk.

You wait for a while.

“...I wish you hadn’t seen that,” Yoongi says after what feels like an eternity of silence.
You look over, and he’s staring at his folded hands. “Which part?” you ask, honestly wondering. Yoongi sighs, a frustrated tone evident in it.
“All of it. I wish you hadn’t seen those fucking people I don’t know and don’t care about, I wish you hadn’t had to breathe weed smoke just from walking into my house, I wish you hadn’t seen me when I’m like that.” he squeezes his eyes shut, leaning his head back and combing fingers through that dry, bleach blonde hair that somehow suits him.
“Tell me it’s because you were afraid for your mom,” you say, watching for his reaction. But he doesn’t react. “Tell me it’s because of that and I’ll forget it ever happened.”

That’s a lie. You’ll never forget Yoongi telling you to get the fuck out of his house, or how you expected him to hit you. You hate that you’ll never forget. But you want him to feel better.

“It was,” Yoongi says, and lets out a massive breath that sounds like relief to you. “I swear to God, Y/N, I swear on everything I have, before then I’ve only ever drank a couple times a month- I’d never done so much at one time, and I swear I’ll never do it again,”

He looks at you with eyes that look tired, and a face that’s asking you to forgive him.

“Okay,” is all you manage to say. Yoongi doesn’t look comforted, but for some reason, your heart feels heavy, too heavy to tell him that everything is fine and you forgive him, that you’ll forget about it for his sake.
“Are you sure?” he asks, and you nod. “Are you upset?”
You shake your head, a breathy laugh coming out without you even anticipating it. “Yoongi, it’s okay. I’m sorry that you felt like you had to do that instead of talking to someone about being stressed for your mom.”
He turns away from you, watching other people through the window. “I’m fucking scared, Y/N,” he says, his voice low and wavering. “She’s all I have left.”

It takes a moment, but you process what he’s said and realize something you should have noticed a long, long time ago.
Yoongi doesn’t have a father.
Regardless of if he passed away or simply isn’t around, you know there’s no way he’s a part of Yoongi’s life. You would have met or at least seen him by now if he was.

“Yoongi,” you say, but you’re not sure if you should continue. He’s shaking now, shoulders trembling and you know he must be crying. Which he hates to do, especially in front of others, he told you that once.

You change your mind on what you should say.

“I promise that she’s not all you have left,” you mumble, suddenly feeling shy with your words, looking away just as he turns to face you in clear surprise. “I know you must love your mom more than anything, and she’ll always be the most important person you have, but she’s not the only one who can be there for you.”
You’re waiting for him to reply, with anything, so you won’t feel so suffocated, awkward, nervous in the absolute silence of the car as the sky gets darker around the two of you. But he never does.
Instead, Yoongi leans over the console and throws an arm around you, drawing you sideways into his chest so that your head is resting against his shoulder. He sets his cheek atop your head, and the sound of his sniffles that come from trying to stop crying are so much louder when he’s this close to you.

Your heart is beating faster than it probably ever has before (except for maybe after those foutté series you detest so much)- your hands have started shaking because you’re so nervous. All you can do to try and calm your heart down is tell yourself over and over in your head that it’s not the right time to feel like this, and even if it was, Yoongi doesn’t think of you like you think of him. He can pull you over into his arms like it’s nothing because it’s nothing more than an act of a strong friendship.

“Thanks,” he says, his voice tired and gravelly.
You just hum in response.

But despite your conversation in Yoongi’s car, you somehow feel like he’s still so much more detached from you than he was before.
You wish things could go back to how they were.
You think it’s because he’s keeping secrets.
You hope they’re secrets that aren’t hurting him.

It’s nearing the end of the school year again, which means that you and Jimin are, as you have been for the past three years, rehearsing the two lead roles of your academy’s year-end ballet. This year is a little different, though, as your teacher has been having the two of you come in only once a week with the rest of the cast, and twice a week just the two of you and whoever is involved with your scenes that don’t involve more than three people, like when you’re “playing” with the nurse in scene 2 of Act I, or when Jimin and the two boys playing Mercutio and Benvolio have a pas de trois.
And especially, anytime you dance alone with Jimin.

You dance two major pas de deuxs, and it’s been stressed to you and Jimin that because you are playing Juliet and Romeo, you have to look like you’re in love. Every other critique you get is that you aren’t looking at him with enough longing, or you’re not drawing him close enough when he’s near, you don’t have enough fervor or desperation in your movements when he pulls away.
You find it difficult to act like you’re in love with Jimin when Yoongi is just across the studio floor. You know it’s just acting, it’s just ballet, but Kana’s words of ‘I think it’s Jimin who like you’ ring in your ears anytime Jimin rests his hand on your cheek for a little longer than he’s supposed to, or actually noses your neck in the scene of Romeo and Juliet’s marriage when your teacher said he could fake it.

You end a run through of the balcony scene, and you and Jimin are left on opposite sides of the studio after he has “run away”. You’re breathing hard, but you stay straight in good posture, composing your features to try and match the love you’re meant to be feeling. The last note of the piano finishes ringing out, and your teacher claps her hands together once.

“It was good,” she says, and for once she actually sounds content. “In fact, it was technically very strong, aside from the lifts, but I knew those would need a lot of work. It’s nice that you’re even doing them.” she turns to you as you finally relax, bending over and breathing hard. “Y/N,” she says, and you prepare yourself. “I don’t know how many times I need to tell you to imagine that you’re in love with Jimin. You have to, it isn’t an option. You must make the audience believe you’re enamored beyond belief- he’s doing a wonderful job, and you pale in comparison. You’re Juliet! It has to be believable!”
“I’m sorry,” you say, bowing your head in apology.
She scoffs. “Sorry doesn’t make your dancing any better. I want you and Jimin to confess your love for each other- act it out. Make me believe you want him. Now.”

You’re stunned by the request. Your eyes are wide, and you look over at Jimin, hoping his reaction is as unsettled as yours.
But he looks unfazed- in fact, he has a shy smile that brings Kana’s words back into your head. And as he’s walking over to you, slipping his hands into yours to hold them romantically, you can’t help but look over at Yoongi.

He’s sitting like he always does, like he has been since his mother has been recovering (although she’s out of the hospital now, she still hasn’t been coming to play for your class) with his immaculate posture and his fingers resting ever so weightlessly on the keys. His eyes are on you, though, his body tense. You can feel it, that tension. You can feel it from across the room.

“Y/N,” Jimin says, softly, bringing you back to what you’re meant to be doing. You look at him, his eyes different from Yoongi in that they tell you everything. Jimin isn’t stone like Yoongi, Jimin doesn’t hide his emotions away until they’re too much. “You’re everything to me. Your smile is what I look forward to, your laughter is music to me, your passion inspires me.”

You can hear the words in your head before he says them. His eyes, full of fear and uncertainty, but some kind of determination, tell you.
And you know that Jimin isn’t acting.

“I love you,” Jimin says, his voice barely a whisper.

Any other time you may have run. Or maybe you would have smiled sympathetically and told him that you appreciate his feelings, but don’t reciprocate them.
But now, all you can do is hope that Yoongi knows that while Jimin isn’t acting, you are.

“You’re my everything too,” you say to your friend, but he isn’t what you see. “I miss you when you’re not around, I miss you when you are. You… you drive me crazy. And I love you for it.” you tell the man in the corner, sitting by the piano. You feel a little bit like an idiot as you’re talking, because it’s definitely sappier and more ridiculous than anything you would ever actually say as a confession, but you’re just trying to impress your teacher and get this over with.
And then you remember you’re looking into Jimin’s eyes, and it’s Jimin who smiles, and it’s your teacher who claps excitedly, cooing about how good that was and for you to dance like that, and…
And it’s Yoongi who looks down, staring at the keys, not at you.

“Let’s run it again- Y/N, keep that emotion! You love him, he drives you crazy, you miss him even though he’s in front of you!” your teacher exclaims, gesturing for you and Jimin to return to your initial spots before the music starts. “Mr. Min, if you would start at measure 12, please,” she says, not even looking at Yoongi. But you look.

And as you dance with Jimin, his hands gliding over your waist and over the fabric of your skirt, your eyes keep shifting away from him, the longing in your movements not coming from your earlier “confession”, but from the way that Yoongi hasn’t untensed.
You can’t help but wonder if his stiffness means that maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that Yoongi doesn’t like the idea of you loving someone else.

It’s your opening night, and you’re nearly finished with the balcony pas de deux that you’ve worked so hard on. You’re breathing hard, nearly out of air completely as Jimin sets you with barely any weight down on your shoe, holding you up by the waist while you extend your other leg. He lifts you again, taking a few delicate steps back while slightly dipping you down as you sweep your arms over your head. It’s a hard move for him- since his height and yours while you’re on pointe are nearly equal. It’s hard, but he’s never done it wrong before.

You’re not even sure if this time he really did it wrong, but as Jimin sets you down again, he lets out a harsh exhale, and it’s not really the ease onto the one foot you’re meant to have.
Jimin lets you down with what feels like no support, and suddenly you’re twelve again, your ankle folding under your weight, a surprised yelp you can’t hold back escaping your lips as the pain strikes you, just the same as it did back then.

Your knees never hit the ground, though. Your hands don’t have to catch you.
Jimin catches you instead, and pulls you up into a bridal carry, turning swiftly and artistically as if that’s the choreography. But there’s still twenty or so seconds left of the movement, and you know he can’t stall for you forever.

“Put me down,” you whisper when your back is to the audience. Jimin doesn’t ask questions- he just gives you a worried look as he carefully sets you down on the foot that hasn’t just collapsed.

You delicately take the last few steps, wrapping your arm around Jimin’s as he kneels. You toss your head back in the dramatic fashion that you’ve been told is the right way, Jimin wrapping his arms around your waist and tugging you closer- closer, because you’re meant to be in love.
You’re not meant to be turning your face to the side so that the audience can’t see your tears of pain.
But you don’t stop until the lights dim, and the curtain closes, signaling the end of Act I.

Jimin picks you up and rushes off the stage as soon as he can, whispering that it’s okay, that you’re okay and that you’ll be fine. You stop crying pretty fast, remembering how embarrassing it is to cry in front of your classmates- but there are still tears on your cheeks and your nose is still stuffy. They’re all gathered around you as soon as Jimin sets you on a stool, though, asking in hushed voices if you fell.

“Stop it,” Jimin snaps quietly. “Go get ready, you’re on in a minute, aren’t you?”

Your teacher scrambles over as soon as he finishes talking, pushing him out of the way and shooing your classmates, repeating what Jimin had just said.

“Y/n!” she says in a panic, hands on your shoulder while you cradle your ankle in your lap, watching it swell under your tights. “What happened? Why did you fall?”
“I didn’t fall,” you say defensively, but it doesn’t sound very aggressive when you’re hiccuping through your words, blinking away tears that start rising again as you realize what this means.
“Your ankle, though,” your teacher says, her eyes falling to where your fingers are trembling as they lightly hold onto your foot. “Can you stand?”
You nod, hoping, praying that it isn’t bad.

Your teacher grabs onto your arm to give you some support, pulling you off the stool.
But just like last time, as soon as your injured foot hits the ground, you’re falling again, only barely being saved by Jimin for a second time as he hoists you up by the waist, his hands staying there even after you’re stable on the one foot.

Your teacher sighs, squeezing her shut and rubbing her forehead. You clutch onto Jimin with a deathly grip, knowing exactly what she’s going to say.

“Well, I’ll have to find Kana. She’ll be dancing Juliet for the rest of the performance.” your teacher says, and it takes everything you have not to burst into tears. “Y/N, I’ll also find someone to take you to the ER.”

Right, you think to yourself, trying hopelessly to distract yourself as your teacher scurries off and Jimin sets you back down on the stool and kneels in front of you. Your parents couldn’t make it tonight. They had to go help your aunt move in nearby, and promised to come to the next show.

“Y/N,” Jimin says, in that quiet, nervous voice. The music is playing loudly around you, though, the sound of pointe shoes hitting the stage floor resonating along with it as Act II starts past the curtain. So really, he doesn’t need to whisper. “Y/N, I’m so sorry,” Jimin says, and you look at him, snapping back into reality.

His eyes are teary, his fingers holding onto your skirt tightly like he’s afraid to let go of you. He sucks his lower lip between his teeth every few seconds, turning them red.

“It’s not your fault,” you tell him, doing your best to smile even though now the tears are running down your face at full force. Jimin shakes his head violently.
“Yes it is,” he says, sounding ashamed. You can tell that he really believes that he’s the one who caused your injury, fully. “I dropped you. I had no strength left and I just dropped you- like an idiot, like a goddamn idiot.”
“You caught me too, though,” you say, trying to be a little lighthearted. “At least I didn’t fall on my face in front of the entire audience,”
Jimin looks at you without speaking for a few seconds, that same worried expression not leaving his face. Until finally, he cracks a smile, chuckles. You smile back, trying to lift his spirits since he has to go back out and dance.

And then, Jimin’s hands leave your skirt to instead hold onto your face. You’re a little surprised, given that it’s a pretty affectionate thing that he’s has never done with you before, aside from anything that’s choreographed while the two of you are dancing.

“Y/N,” he starts, face becoming solemn again. He takes a deep breath, and you tense a little, wondering what he’s going to say. “I need to tell you something. I need you to know that-”

“Y/N!”

Jimin is cut off, and both of you look left sharply as his hands slip off your face to see your teacher quickly walking towards you. And tailing her closely are Kana, who’s just exclaimed your name, and Min Yoongi.
Who else?

“Hey,” you say generally, not really addressing anyone in particular.

“Jimin, go with Kana and make sure she knows about any changes we’ve made that she doesn’t know about,” your teacher directs, and with a look of frustration, Jimin squeezes your hand once before standing and drawing your best friend and understudy away, speaking to her in a low voice that you can’t hear.

Yoongi is standing a little awkwardly to the side, looking around as if he doesn’t want to look at you. Your teacher rolls her eyes (a much more expressive action than her usual), and grabs his arm, dragging him over to you.

“You drive, yes? Good. Y/N’s parents aren’t here to take her to the emergency room, so you will instead. Call them on the way, please. And be careful with her ankle.” your teacher spouts without a single stop for breath, and promptly hurries off to where Jimin and Kana are standing, probably to reprimand them for not being productive enough before they need to go on.

Yoongi frowns at you, but silently slips one arm under your knees and the other under your arm, effectively picking you up the same way that Jimin did on stage. He lets out a huff of exertion as he settles your weight in his arms, though, which makes you chuckle to yourself.

“Are you laughing at me?” Yoongi asks with narrowed eyes, walking to the back exit off the wings of the stage. You can see the laughter in them, though, so you just smile as best as you can, slinging your other arm around his neck and interlacing your hands to support yourself a little better.

You walk out into the hall behind the stage, only to find various stagehands (still people from your school who need volunteer hours) milling about, doing nothing. They look at you with boredom, seemingly unfazed by a small man carrying a girl in full balcony-scene garb.

“Are you okay?” one girl you don’t recognize asks with the least interest that you’ve probably ever heard.
“Dandy,” you reply, ending up sounding a lot more bitterly sarcastic than you intended. She raises her brows, but Yoongi is already whisking you down the hall to the changing rooms, his brow furrowing the more you wince at the only increasing pain in your ankle.

You open the door to the changing room from Yoongi’s arms, and he doesn’t even seem to care that at any moment someone could walk in and see a boy in the girls’ room. He strolls right in and sets you down carefully on a chair in the corner, then steps away with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Again, Y/N?”

You raise your eyebrows, then frown immediately after. What does he mean, again? Why does he sound so aggravated, like you’re doing him a disservice?

“Again?” you ask simply, leaning forward.
Yoongi sighs deeply, and turns around. “Where're your normal clothes?”
“Folded in my bag in the studio,” you tell him, not in the mood to argue about why he didn’t answer your question.
He nods. “Stay in here, I’ll go grab it.”

Yoongi leaves, and you take the opportunity to wipe your fingers under your eyes to try and get the running mascara and remaining tears off of your face. You can only be thankful that you weren’t dancing Swan Lake, with that black smokey eye. You’d have been looking like a panda if that were the case.

The door opens and closes and Yoongi walks back in, taking out the hoodie, leggings, and flip-flops that you’d packed for after the show. He sets everything in your lap, ruffles your hair, and steps back.

“I’ll be outside while you change,” he tells you, and leaves without another word.

As you start pulling off your dress, you think about if it’s just you imagining the way that Yoongi almost seems mad at you. Part of you wants to believe he could just be upset over yours and Jimin’s ‘confessions’ the other day, but the more logical part of you reasons that he’s probably just annoyed that you’ve injured yourself once again, and once again he has to be the one to help you. He probably had stuff he was doing when your teacher forced him to come to your aid. Or maybe he had even been watching the ballet, and now would have to come again to finish watching it because of your injury.

You have your hoodie on, but you can’t take your tights off without first taking off your shoes. And you know it’s going to hurt- just like the last time.

You do the right foot first, since that’s the uninjured foot.
But the second your fingertips touch your left ankle, even barely pressing on it, you cry out in pain, yanking your hands away. You can’t do this. How are you going to do this?

“Y/N?” the door has swung open, Yoongi standing in the doorway, a worried expression etched into his features. “Is something wrong?”
“What do you think?” you snap, the pain blinding your reasonability in the moment. Yoongi doesn’t seem to be offended, though, and just walks over, observing the one shoe on the ground and the one on your foot.
“You can’t take your shoe off,” Yoongi says, not really asking. You’re biting back another round of tears, so you just nod, squeezing your eyes shut. “I’ll do it then,” he adds.
You don’t care to argue. You’re just trying desperately not to start crying again. You just want this to be over and done with- you want to get in the car and get to the doctor and get a splint or whatever you’ll need and call your parents and hug your mom and cry when you’re alone in your room. Not in front of Yoongi.

You’re barely paying attention to Yoongi,but you can feel how delicate he’s being. He barely touches the ribbons, barely tugs on them to unravel them. When he starts pulling the shoe off your foot, though, you can’t help but whimper, digging your nails into your palms to keep from actually crying out at him to stop.

“Are you okay?” Yoongi asks you, sitting back.
“Just fucking do it,” you mutter, turning your face away like it’ll actually help.
“Don’t swear,” he chides, but complies and without warning, pulls the shoe off in one incredibly painful go.

You screech instinctively, the tears running down your face once again.

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says quickly, grabbing onto your hands as you start looking for something better to hold onto as if having a grip on something will make the pain go away.
“Are you fucking crazy?” you gasp, teeth digging into the side of your cheek. Your ankle is throbbing, spikes of lighting shooting up and down through your foot. You hate Min Yoongi for doing this to you- God, you’re done with him. Your friendship is over after that.
“I thought it’d be better that way!” he blurts helplessly, but you just grit your teeth and hold onto his hands for dear life, waiting for the shock to subside.
“Fuck you,” you bite out, blinking tears out profusely.
Yoongi stills momentarily, his eyes shifting, but you’re too busy suffering to notice.

Once you’ve recovered enough to change the rest of your outfit, Yoongi helps you out of the room (yes, he turned around while you were changing. You made him stay inside in case you needed help again.) and mumbles something about getting you to the ER.

The walk to his car is quiet, the car ride itself is quiet (aside from you giving your mom a teary call), the waiting room is quiet when you walk in, and stays quiet. Your parents arrive just as the nurse comes out to call you in to see a doctor, and Yoongi’s goodbye to you is quiet too.

You wonder briefly why, but you’re preoccupied and in pain, and the thought slips away.

“How was the last show?” you ask Jimin as he walks with you to lunch. It’s the last day of school, and coincidentally last night was the last showing of Romeo and Juliet at your academy. Despite your curiosity about Kana’s dancing your role, you hadn’t been able to actually get up and go. Physically you could have, with little problem. But something hurt inside when you even thought about it. Maybe you just hadn’t wanted to consider not being in a ballet at all.

“It was good,” Jimin tells you, then puts a hand on your shoulder to stop you. “Here, I’ll carry your backpack.”
You roll your eyes but allow him to slip the bag over your shoulders while you precariously hold onto your crutches. It turns out that you had not sprained your ankle- you’d broken it.
“But obviously I would have rather been dancing with you.” Jimin adds, sending you a sweet smile as he ruffles your hair.
“Me too,” you say, sighing, and continue making your way to the lunch tables. “You can’t imagine how frustrating it is to be sitting at home, elevating your ankle and doing homework, when you should be on stage. I’ve never felt more useless in my life.”
Jimin sighs, and sweeps his hand over your hair again, then pinches your cheek. “I told you already. It wasn’t your fault. When are you going to listen, geez…”
You swat his hand away, needing to stop for a moment to readjust your crutches. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. I still felt useless. And I’m pretty sure Yoongi’s mad at me- he hasn’t talked to me since the night it happened.”
Jimin frowns. “Why would he be mad at you? All he had to do was take you to the hospital, right?”
You nod, and do your best to shrug (which isn’t a lot). “Yup. He seemed kind of mad that night, too, though. He didn’t answer any of my questions or anything, and-”

“Who didn’t answer your questions?”

You and Jimin both turn to see Kana taking a few quick steps to get in rhythm with your relatively slow pace.
Honestly, you hadn’t voiced your concerns about Yoongi to her for fear of her telling you that you should see if he might be smoking and drinking again. You hadn’t voiced them to Jimin yet because… well, you hadn’t really seen Jimin one on one much the past couple weeks. He had to perform every other weeknight and on Saturdays, plus he had been spending lunch in his teacher’s room helping clean up.

“Yoongi,” Jimin replies without hesitation. You resist the urge to roll your eyes. Can’t he tell you’re not dying to talk about this with everyone?

Kana frowns. “What does that mean, Y/N? Has Yoongi been ignoring you?”
Well, mom always said to just tell the truth. “Yup.”
Your friend scoffs. “Yoongi isn’t a very loyal friend, to be honest. It seems like he ditches you without warning from time to time.”
“Hey, he’s not like that,” Jimin defends. “Hasn’t Taehyung told you about his habits at all? He just has a tendency to distance himself when he’s stressed.”
“What does he have to be stressed about?” Kana shoots back, and as the person between them, you can feel the tension rising. “Mrs. Min has been out of the hospital and at home for months now, and I know she’s making money by creating scores- Taehyung told me that. Clearly, he’s been avoiding Y/N, so he’s not stressed by her injury like the rest of us are-”
“Please don’t act like you really know anything about Yoongi if you haven’t been told directly,” Jimin says sharply. It’s one of the few times you’ve heard him snap at people. “He’s just busy. His piano academy has been giving a lot of work lately, that’s what I’ve heard. Y/N, give him a few days and I’m sure everything will go back to normal.”

It feels like the kind of sentence to end a conversation, so you just nod and smile at Jimin, hoping to ease the tension a little.

Yoongi isn’t there at lunch that day.

You realize you haven’t had a piano lesson with Yoongi since that time before you caught him smoking in his house.
You realize this because he calls you, halfway through summer, muttering something about if you’ve been practicing your scales at all while you’re on break. You’re shocked to hear from him at all, so you just ask why he hasn’t been talking to you instead of answering his half-hearted question.

“It’s nothing big. Just work and taking care of Mom,” he tells you. Work? Since when does he work? And is his mom still sick? “Be at the practice room in an hour. We’ll start working on a new piece. I’m sure you could learn it by the end of the summer if you work hard.”

You show up to the practice room, but you’re not there to play piano. You decided over the course of this extended break that you really, really don’t like the piano, not because of the instrument itself but because you feel like a fool when you’re attempting to play it, despite not being that bad. Sitting in front of piano genius Min Yoongi while he judges you doesn’t help either.

“Where’s the practice book I gave you?” Yoongi asks as you walk into the practice room, him closing the door behind you since your hands are occupied with the crutches you’ve unfortunately had enough time to get used to.
“Wow, no ‘hey Y/N, how’s your ankle’?” you ask, rolling your eyes. You say it in a sarcastic tone, but there is a little part of you that isn’t sarcastic at all. Yoongi sighs as you sit on the piano bench, facing away from the keys and towards him who is still standing by the door.
“How’s your ankle, Y/N?”
“It’s not the same if you say it after I’ve reminded you,” you say, raising a brow. “Anyway, this’ll be the last piano lesson. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

Yoongi gives you an unamused look. “Your mom told me you can’t keep blowing it off.”
You narrow your eyes. “You’ve talked to my mom but you haven’t talked to me in two months?” he opens his mouth to reply, but suddenly you’re not just mildly annoyed, you’re upset- you’ve always thought of Yoongi as a close friend despite also liking him as more, and you figured that at the very least you were a close friend to him, too. But after barely talking for so, so long and the uninterested, bothered way that he’s treated you the few times you have talked, it doesn’t feel like that anymore. It feels like you’re not worth his time. “Do you even care about me at all?”

“Do I even care about you?” Yoongi replies, his own pointed eyes narrowing into a dangerous expression. “Are you really asking me that?”
“Yes, I am!” you snap, wishing you weren’t injured so you could stand up and look less like an angry child stuck on the bench. “What, does it not seem like a viable question to you, Yoongi? Have you just conveniently not noticed that you’ve been practically ignoring me since I broke my ankle, and even before that- I told you I wasn’t mad that you smoked and drank, I seriously wasn’t, and yet you rarely even texted me after that! Anytime we’ve talked in months has been because I said something first; I’m tired of it, Yoongi!” you exclaim, slamming your hand down on the bench beside you. “I’m tired of always feeling like I’m just your backup friend.”

If you hadn’t been looking away, watching birds land on the windowsill and chirp at each other in lieu of watching Yoongi, maybe you would have seen the emotions pass across his face, the emotions that spoke more than the words he proceeded to say right after.
But you weren’t looking at him.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Yoongi says, quietly and with little to his voice. “Maybe it’s better to just forget about me, then.”
You snap your head towards him, but he’s turned to the door, his hand already on the doorknob. “What do you mean?”
“Bye, Y/N,” he says simply, and all that follows is his soft footsteps and the sound of the door swinging shut behind him.

You hate crying, you hate being mad, you hate things that clog up your throat and your heart.
But you sit on the piano bench and cry, cry until twenty minutes later when Jimin shows up asking why you’re crying, why Yoongi texted him asking to pick you up, what happened.

You decide that if Yoongi wants you to forget him, you’ll try.

You miss Yoongi more fervently after your platonic breakup- in fact, you miss him so much that it hurts at every moment of everyday. It hurts you that you can no longer pick up your phone and text him, not because you deleted his number but because you know he’ll never reply. It hurts that you see him getting into his car after school but he won’t even look in your direction at lunch or throughout the day. It hurts that when you visit your ballet class towards the end of it to pick up Kana (you’re still not allowed to dance, even if it has been three months since your injury) Mrs. Min is back at the piano and Yoongi is nowhere to be seen.

You’ve been spending the last few weeks of your summer with Jimin and Kana, though usually not at the same time. You’ve gone on a few “double dates” with you and Jimin, and Kana and Taehyung, as the couples, even if you consistently deny being in a relationship with Jimin. It starts to feel less off, though, the way that Jimin gets more outright affectionate with you after he tells you he knows that Yoongi told you to forget about him. You can picture that day at ballet when he told you he loves you- even if he was supposed to have been acting- every time he ruffles your hair, pinches your cheek, smiles at you with that adorable eyesmile, hugs you when you leave his house.

It’s one of those days when you’re at his house, occasionally looking longingly out the window towards Yoongi’s house just nearby, when Jimin finally notices. You think he must have caught on that you miss Yoongi much, much earlier, but the little sigh you let out when you see the boy you’re thinking of everyday walk to his car is too obvious to ignore.

“Y/N,” Jimin says, and you look at him, eyes wide in question. He gives you a slightly downturned lip. “You’re thinking of Yoongi, aren’t you?”
You turn to him, teeth latching onto the inside of your cheek. You don’t say anything, but Jimin seems to understand.
“He’s… he’s okay, if you’re worried,” Jimin offers, and you just nod, eyes glancing anywhere but back out the window or directly at Jimin.
“Hey, Jimin,” you say, voice quiet. It for some reason feels like the right time to ask. “Why does Yoongi play the piano?”

It’s a moment of nothing, a strangely thick silence, before Jimin replies.

“You know Yoongi has no dad, right?” he asks, and you nod slowly, wondering where this is going. Jimin sighs. “Yoongi’s dad was a pianist too, just like his mom. They met in music school. Yoongi grew up around music, around pianos and composing and Chopin being played in the car on the way to kindergarten.

“I don’t really know all the details, just what his mom has told me and a few other things Yoongi has let slip, but basically, his dad left them when Yoongi was six. He’d been cheating, and the other woman was pregnant, so he left Yoongi and his mom. Yoongi told me he didn’t know whether the hate the piano because his dad had taught him how to play, or to love it because it was the only thing that reminded him of when his family was whole.

“That’s why he started coming to your ballet classes- his mom had nowhere else to take him after school. He always wanted to play the piano while he was there, but couldn’t because he shouldn’t have been there at all. That’s why he started getting tired and grumpy when we got a little older, because he was finally allowed to go to piano lessons and didn’t have to sit through weeks of ballet without playing. Anyway, that’s the story. He plays it now because he has no other plans for the future, so he figures he can just work hard to become a professional pianist.”

You feel like you should be surprised, but you’re just not. You think you’d realized there was some sort of backstory to Yoongi’s presence at your ballet classes and how secretive he had always been about piano.

“I see,” you say simply, not sure what else you should say.
“Why’d you ask?” Jimin questions, tilting his head. You shrug, a smile rising on your lips at how fluffy his hair looks.
“I guess I just miss him,” you say with a pensive tone, glancing back out the window only to find that both Yoongi and his car are gone.
“He misses you too,” Jimin says, but you shake your head with a bitter laugh.
“Jimin, if he missed me, he wouldn’t have told me our friendship is over in the first place.”

You can see this words of argument forming on Jimin’s lips, but he holds them back.

“Let’s watch a movie,” he says instead, and after getting up to shut the curtains and dim his bedroom, you curl up next to him on his bed, his laptop playing The Little Mermaid out loud. You let your head rest on Jimin’s shoulder, his warmth seeping into you.

You try to imagine feeling like you want Jimin instead of someone else.

Jimin texts you the last Friday before you have to go back to school, the message reading a simple Having a goodbye summer party tomorrow night, see you there?. You tilt your head at the message, not really ever knowing Jimin as the kind of person to host parties. Nonetheless, you text back a sure and ask what time you should get there. 7 ish?? he replies promptly.

You ask Kana if she’ll go with you, and she says she will right away.

“Have fun, be safe!” your mom calls to you as you step out the front door.
“I will!” you shout back as you close it and lock it. Not really sure why you wouldn’t be safe, considering it’s just Jimin’s house, but your parents have always been a little wary of any kind of party where lots of teenagers would be congregated.

Kana is waiting in her car just outside, and she sends you a bright smile as you get in, setting the little bag you brought on the floor in front of you.

“You look so pretty!” your friend comments, reaching over to brush a stray hair out of your face.
“It’s not too dressed up, right?” you ask, a little self-conscious. You weren’t in formal wear or anything, but you’d put on one of those velvet crop tops with your ripped jeans, and the out-there fabric was a lot for you compared to the usual school uniform or ballet clothes you wear. Not to mention how your mom had insisted you wear earrings and put your hair up to show them off. God. You cringe.

“No way,” says Kana, smiling as she drives down your street. “I bet Jimin will think you look pretty, too,” she adds teasingly. You wince internally but do your best to smile externally.
“Do you think Yoongi will be there?” you ask offhandedly, but Kana seems surprised, eyebrows shooting up. “What?”
“First of all, why are you asking me? Second, don’t think about Yoongi.” she tells you sternly, and you sigh, knowing she’s right. Kana has put up with all your moping over how much you miss Yoongi, despite you never outright saying that it’s because you have a massive, dumb as shit crush on him.

“Right,” you say, sighing quietly. You pull down the mirror to occupy yourself while Kana turns the radio on for the drive there.

The house looks a lot busier from the outside than you expected, and you suddenly remember that Jimin’s parents are away to visit his grandma an hour south. You can only pray that inside, the party doesn’t reflect one of those cliché American high school films with broken pots and red solo cups everywhere.

You and Kana walk up to the door, Kana craning her neck to try and look into the windows on the side of Jimin’s house, but smartly, he’s shut the curtains and locked the windows shut so as to prevent any snooping.
You knock, and just a few seconds later, Jungkook, who you remember still looking shy and cute the last time you saw him a few months ago, opens the door looking like… like he’s really, really grown up.

“Jungkook!” you exclaim, throwing your hands up in shock. “What… how?”
He smiles shyly, proving that it is in fact him, just a him who has apparently spent every day of summer break at the gym. “Hi Y/N, hi Kana,”
“Hello,” Kana says with a smile, and Jungkook steps aside to let you into the house.
“Jimin and Taehyung are in the living room,” he tells you, having to speak loudly since the music is a lot louder once the door is closed. Someone bumps into you as you’re about to reply, and you realize that while the house looks pretty clean, it’s just as crowded as one of those cliché movies.
“Thank you,” Kana replies for you, and grabs your wrist to make sure you stick together as you make your way through Jimin’s house.

The living room is where the speakers are; you’ve watched movies with Jimin on the couch before and the surround sound has caused many screams during horror nights.
Speaking of Jimin, he leaps up as soon as he sees you, closely followed by an always handsome Taehyung who slips his arm around Kana’s waist and presses a kiss to her cheek in greeting.

“Y/N!” Jimin says, grabbing your hands and shaking them excitedly. “You’re here!”
“Yes!” you reply loudly, leaning in closer so he can hear you. “Was it meant to be such a big party?”
“Sometimes things happen,” Jimin says vaguely, but he’s sporting that eyesmile and he’s tugging you to the floor where a game of cards is laid out. “Wanna play?”
You shake your head as the both of you sit down, you taking up the comfortable spot of leaning against Jimin’s side. “I’ll watch first,” you say only loud enough for him to hear. He smiles down at you, and circles his arm around your waist, drawing you closer as the other people playing the game get back into it.
You consider shifting slightly away from Jimin, but Yoongi’s words of ’Maybe it’s better to just forget about me then’ ring in your head, and so you settle into Jimin’s hold.

You and Jimin both get bored of the card game eventually, and end up sitting on the couch, your legs slung over his, head on his shoulder as he plays with your hair. He’s been really affectionate the whole night, but you’ve been forcing yourself to be open to it. It doesn’t bother you, it’s just that when Jimin’s fingers are brushing your baby hairs into place, you can shut your eyes and pretend like it’s Yoongi doing it instead, and you wish it wasn’t like that. You wish you could just be happy with Jimin.

“You look tired,” Jimin’s voice rings close to your ear- he’s talking in that low voice that sends chills down your spine, and you open your eyes to find him much closer than he usually dares to.
“I am, a little,” you say, which is the truth, because sitting in an environment where the noise begins to feel like quiet and someone is sitting with their warmth seeping into you- yeah, you got sleepy.

Jimin looks at you, his expression becoming unreadable. He ever so softly, ever so gently, places his hand so that he’s holding your face, and naturally, as though your body knew it before your mind did, your eyes are fluttering shut and Jimin’s lips are on yours.

He kisses you with a tenderness that tugs at your heartstrings, the delicate way that he presses his lips to yours over and over only strengthening that melancholy you have over your relationship with Jimin. You want to love him so bad- in fact, in this moment, it’s all you want, so that Jimin’s perfect kiss actually feels perfect, and not just like a replacement.

You want to clear the sadness from your mind, so you shift your weight and press even closer to him, wondering if thoughts of you are clouding his mind the way you’re begging your own mind to do with him. You tangle one of your hands into his hair, and he whimpers when you pull from the roots.

“Jesus fucking christ, will the two of you just go upstairs?”

You let go of Jimin hastily as Taehyung’s voice blares out over the rest of the party noise.
Looking in that direction, all of the people you’d been playing cards with are staring at you and Jimin, Kana standing out as she has such a proud smile on her face you’d think you’re her award-winning daughter or some shit.

“Do you want to?” Jimin asks you quietly, his hand having slipped from your face to grasp onto your free hand.
You barely consider it for a moment, and you hate that as much as the way you feel like you’re using Jimin to get over your feelings for Yoongi. Regardless, you whisper to Jimin that you’ll go up first without obviously turning to him, then announce that you’re going to the bathroom to the group, standing and promptly pushing through the crowded hallway.

You head upstairs, shaking your head at a couple who stumble into the bathroom next to Jimin’s room, making a mental note to let him know to check for anything… anything out of place in there tomorrow morning.

The door to Jimin’s bedroom is slightly ajar, and you frown at it as you take a few steps closer. You’re 100% sure that he would have closed it and maybe even locked it before the party started if he was expecting more than fifteen people to show up.

You shrug to yourself and push the door open, taking a step inside and nearly closing it before you stop in your tracks, embarrassment and shock and annoyance flooding your features as you realize that an intense makeout session is going on on Jimin’s bed.
Trying to be a good person and make sure that nobody hooks up on Jimin’s bed without his permission, you decide on not just skeeting the hell out and pretending like you didn’t just witness that, but instead on telling off the boy and girl making out.

“Hey,” you say sharply, leaning on the doorway to try and look cool. You open your mouth to go on, say something like ‘you shouldn’t be in here’, but as soon as the two of them detach lips, your mouth dries up and your throat closes and tears are welling up in your eyes all at once.

You can’t even manage his name in confirmation, because the dyed blonde hair, mussed from whoever that girl is’s hands, and the slant of his eyes lifted in surprise tell you all you need to know.

“Y/N,” he starts, and as soon as he says your name, the girl next to him whips around.

You think that there is no worse pain, really. You think in that moment, as Min Yoongi stares at you, and Sira scrambles off the bed, that you understand why heartbreak seems to hurt people more than anything else.

“Y/N, fuck, jesus, oh fuck, I can explain this, okay?” Sira says, all in one desperate breath. You force yourself to look at her, because if you look at Yoongi you don’t know what will happen to you.
“I don’t want an explanation,” you say, your voice coming out in breaths, weak and barely even there. You watch the space between Sira’s perfectly carved eyebrows rather than looking at her straight. “I’m sorry to have interrupted. I just wanted to tell you two not to... not to fuck in Jimin’s room.”
“Don’t say shit like that, Y/N,” Yoongi snaps, and you feel yourself beginning to crumble under the weight of his voice ringing in your head.

The image of him on the bed, your old best friend straddling him while his hands slipped up and down her sides, mouths pressed together- it’s staining the blankness of your mind, it’s repeating over and over again like a record you can’t take off. It’s burning you up, it’s stealing all your breath from your lungs. You hate this, you hate this more than how you hated yourself earlier, you hate this more than you hate not dancing, you hate this feeling more than you hate Min Yoongi right now.
And right now, you hate Min Yoongi.

You don’t know when he got here, but Jimin is in the room now, arm around your shoulder as you shake, trying desperately not to cry while you stare at the ground, tuning out Sira’s begging you to listen to her, ignoring how Yoongi stands up and tries to get you to pay attention to him.

“Just get the fuck out, Yoongi!” Jimin shouts eventually, and the grip you realize you have on his shirt gets tighter. You bury your face into his shoulder to avoid looking at Yoongi or Sira. “Clearly the two of you are upsetting her- just, just get the hell out, get out of the house.”
“Y/N, I’ll text you tomorrow, please don’t ignore me, please,” Sira tells you, desperation heavy in her tone as she reaches for your hand. You shake her touch off, waiting until you’re sure both her and Yoongi are out of the room and Jimin has shut the door.

You cry- you cry and cry and cry, and Jimin doesn’t ask why, he just lays down with you in his bed and pulls the cover up until you can draw yourself close to him for comfort, and he can hold you to try to make the pain go away.

You wake up the next morning to an empty bed, but the sound of Jimin’s humming from downstairs. After groggily walking to the bathroom (which is clean) and freshening yourself up, you head down to find him.

“Good morning,” Jimin pipes as you slide into a stool in front of the island in the kitchen. “I’m making pancakes,”
“Yum,” you say, with little enthusiasm. You still feel heavy and sad inside, and can’t find the energy to even pretend to be happy.
“Y/N,” Jimin says, a lot more solemn than just a moment ago. “You have to tell me why you were so upset last night.”
You stare at him for a moment, knowing he’s right. “...I should probably get home,” you say instead, getting ready to stand, but Jimin is faster.
“I already called your mom and told her you got sick and that I had you sleep in the guest bedroom.” his face softens. “I just want to understand. I promise nothing will hurt me as bad as whatever is hurting you right now.”
“You’re such a fucking angel,” you whisper, looking down at your hands on the counter.
“What?”
“Nothing,” you say. “Jimin, I-” your voice cracks as the image from last night starts up again in your head, and you start to get choked up again. “I don’t know how to explain this.”
“You could start with why seeing Sira and Yoongi kissing upset you so much,” he supplies gently.

You sigh. Well, it upsets you for a lot of reasons, one of them being that Sira has ignored you for an entire year basically, maybe even more, but she showed up to a party to make out with Min Yoongi-!

“I think I love Min Yoongi,” you tell Jimin, your voice breaking during his name. Jimin’s expression doesn’t change, but tears start running down your face anyway. “I’m sorry Jimin, I’m so sorry, I wish it were you, God, I wish it were you instead,”

Jimin is still for much longer than he has ever been. He seems to be deep in his thoughts, but you’re so busy sobbing to yourself, head and heart throbbing, that you don’t notice how long it is before he even talks.

“I think you should go talk to Yoongi,” Jimin says, his voice feather-light, but not in the gentle, kind way he was speaking before. It reminds you of how you felt last night, of how you spoke last night when you talked to Sira. Light not because of kindness, but because the feeling of emptiness that sinks in after pain makes it hard to say anything at all.

“What?” you manage, drawing in short and gasping breaths as you try to stabilize yourself. You know Jimin is hurting too, and you don’t want to be selfish and just keep crying.
“I’ll bring you home. Once you feel better, I think you should go talk to Yoongi.” Jimin continues, looking at the clock above the oven and not at you.
“Why?” you ask, shaking your head disbelievingly. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me, Jimin, I-”
“You’re wrong about that,” he cuts you off. “I’m sorry I wasn’t entirely truthful with you. I guess I thought if he gave you up I’d have a chance.”

The words process in your head, but you don’t know how to understand them. Jimin wouldn’t lie to you… right? What could he have even lied about?

“I’ll walk home,” you tell him, standing and slinging your bag over your shoulder. You grab your phone, walking as fast as you can to the front door without running.
“No, Y/N, you don’t have to do that-”
“I need time to think,” you say, effectively silencing him. You turn as you open the door, catching Jimin’s eye. For the first time since you told him your feelings towards Yoongi, you see pain flash across his features. It’s almost enough to make you drop everything and tell him you’ll forget about Yoongi if Jimin promises he’ll make you forget about him.
It’s not enough, though, because the longing you have for Min Yoongi is stronger than reason.

“Bye, Jimin,” you say, and the door closes behind you.

Min Yoongi was just the pianist's son. If you’re to be entirely accurate, you didn't meet Yoongi for a few years after you first saw him that day when you were six. You still remember how he had strolled in behind his mom, not holding her hand or anything, pulling up a chair from the closet to sit beside Mrs. Min as she pulled sheet music from the folders in her bag and set them up, quickly playing warmups as your class of ballerinas-in-training stretched quietly and on your own. You still remember how silent he had been, not even looking in your class' direction even if he was around your age and couldn't be having too much fun just sitting there watching his mom play the piano.
You wish you could remember a little more from that day; that first day that you ever saw Min Yoongi. Maybe you would be able to catch things that would prepare you for what he was doing to you now.
Or maybe you were always meant to be unprepared.

You feel a weird sense of déja vu, standing in front of Min Yoongi’s door with a put of nerves in your stomach. It’s eleven at night, way past your curfew, but you snuck out specifically because you’ve been thinking about what Jimin told you to do the entire day.
You didn’t even ask Kana for her advice on the matter, figuring this is something you need to decide for yourself.

You fidget nervously after you knock, hearing some sort of grumbling from inside near the door.

“Who the hell is here at ele-”

Yoongi stops as soon as he looks up and sees your face, watching him carefully.

“Hello,” you say.
Yoongi looks at you, cocking his head, raising an eyebrow. He waits a moment before responding. “...Y/N.”

Yoongi takes you out to his backyard, where you sit on a bench in the grass as he grabs the two of you bottles of water to drink from while you talk. It was wordless, the understanding of what needed to be said between you. You and Yoongi have always been like that when it’s necessary- you just get it with each other.

He comes back and sits down with a grunt of exertion, and you chuckle to yourself, wondering how he hasn’t changed at all over the years. He looks over at the sound, but doesn’t say anything, prompting you to be the one to talk first.

“I slept at Jimin’s house,” you begin, and Yoongi immediately lets out what sounds like a hiss of annoyance, although you’re not really sure you have a word for that. “What?”
“God, Y/N, are you blind? That kid has been in love with you for so long, don’t lead him on if you don’t feel the same way.”
In a moment of vengeance, you smoothly reply, “How do you know I don’t feel the same way?”

Yoongi’s head snaps towards you with a speed you didn’t think was possible for him. His eyes narrow at you. “What did you say?”
“Nothing that’s true,” you mutter, shaking your head as you look down. “He knows I don’t love him. I told him that this morning.”
Yoongi lets out a breath, sounding almost like he’s relieved, until he tenses up. “The two of you didn’t... you didn’t, did you?”
“Are you asking if I had sex with Jimin?” you ask, scoffing. Yoongi seems too rigid to confirm. “No, we didn’t. I was too busy crying, anyway.”
“...Good.”
“How is that good? Would you have cared, either way? Or were you not about to fuck Sira in Jimin’s bed when I walked in?” you say sharply, the sadness from the entire day starting to bubble up as frustration.
Yoongi runs a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots as he lets out a groan. “You really are blind, then.”
“Enlighten me then, Min Yoongi,” you mutter, looking away from him, feeling so far away from him even though he’s sitting right next to you.

“I… ah, fuck,” Yoongi mumbles. “Y/N, look at me.”
You refuse, keeping your head sharply turned away from him. You just want some sort of excuse that you can believe, something, anything.

But instead, Yoongi’s cold hand has wrapped around your wrist, and as he pulls you to face him, his forehead is pressed to yours, his eyes closing softly, your mind blanks of any thoughts, because Yoongi is no longer far away from you.
Yoongi is kissing you, and it feels like symphonies are playing between you, it feels like your brain is dancing to the rhythm of his lips, and it feels like his cold hands are searing your skin with energy.

He pulls away much too soon, draws himself from you, but with a hesitance that shows he doesn’t want to.

“I love you,” he says, in a breathless and nervous way that you’ve never heard him speak in.
You can’t find words to match what he’s just said, your mind is still running on a treadmill where you can’t leave- this feels like it’s come from left field.

“What?” you say, no other word coming to mind. Yoongi’s face pales even more than it’s already milky tone and he shifts away from you.
“What do you mean, ‘what’?”
You open and close your mouth a few times until you feel like you can think again. “I mean… I mean that… can you just explain how that happened?”
Yoongi gives you a confused look. “How I love you?”
“Yeah,” you say, motioning for him to continue.
He looks like he’s about to protest, but ends up sighing and giving in. “There’s not a lot to explain. You were the only one out of that whole class of girls I got dragged to every day that made an effort to talk to me. When you started hanging out with our group of friends more I took a liking to you, and I realized it was a crush that day when Jimin was all smug about taking you to get boba tea or some shit.” he scoffed.
“Wait, Jimin was smug about that?” you laugh as Yoongi nods, rolling his eyes. “But I didn’t even know it was like that...”
“Whatever,” says Yoongi. “I liked you after that. And that… I just… I guess it got stronger and stronger and I did stupid shit like take you around wherever you wanted to go and pay for your clothes and buy you food and take care of you after ballet.” he sighs, glancing away. “I’m sure Jimin told you, but my dad left when I was a kid, and after that, the idea of being in love just scared the shit out of me, so I started pushing you away, especially after my mom got in the accident and was sick afterward. I figured you wouldn’t want to put up with that. And then Sira texted me like six months ago asking me to check up on you since she felt too awkward about it after how long you two didn’t talk and we ended up texting all the time and she said… she said she wanted to come down to see you and somehow she ended up drunk and asking me to makeout with her and then you walked in.” he blurts out, talking so fast you can barely understand.

“Oh,” you say, chewing the inside of your cheek. “That makes sense, I guess.”
Yoongi groans, throwing his head back. “Can you stop reacting like that? You’re stressing me out.”
“How else am I supposed to react?” you ask quizzically, squinting at Yoongi.
He rolls his eyes, meeting your gaze. “I don’t know, maybe you could just tell me whether or not you feel the same way about me.”
Your eyes widen, taking a second, before you start with hiccup-y chuckles of amusement. “Are you serious?”
“Y/N!” Yoongi grumbles, shoving you to the side. “Stop it.”
“I’m sorry,” you say, smiling up at him. “I just thought it was really obvious that I feel the same.”

“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Good.”

“So are we dating now?” Yoongi asks, cocking his head.
“Shouldn’t you ask me out if you’re planning on that?” you tease, and he rolls his eyes.
“Do want to go out, Y/N?”

The words bring a light, happy feeling to your bones, the pain from the past day and the longing from the past few weeks evaporating. It’s something you’ve wanted to hear Yoongi say for so long- just that simple sentence.

“Yeah,” you reply, breathless. “Let’s do that, Min Yoongi.”

You bow deeply to the audience, rising up from where you’d knelt and drawn your hands to your chest. It’s so extra, and so dramatic, but that’s what your teacher told you to do.

Jimin comes over, smiling at you with a kindness that has never faded, not since that very first day you met him. The two of you grasp hands, bowing together as the rest of the cast joins you on stage, the audience continuing to clap.

“Good job,” Jimin whispers as the curtains close, and you grin.
“You too.”

You call your mom after you change out of your tutu and pointe shoes, listening to her complain about she couldn’t believe she had missed the final show of your academy’s Le Corsaire. You just laugh and promise her it’s okay, you only happened to be playing the main role tonight anyway, since Kana had to fly to Japan for her brother’s wedding yesterday night. It was pure luck that you’d had the chance to sit in on ballet classes and memorize choreography, and it was more pure luck that you were able to dance it despite your slow recovery from the broken ankle last year.

The lobby is crowded, but just like that first show of Swan Lake from all those years ago, Sira bounds up to you, a beautiful smile painted on her face.

“You did so amazing! I can’t believe that was last minute, geez! Really, it looked professional!” she babbles, gripping your fingers and leading you through the crowd as you laugh.
“Thanks, Sira, I’m glad you could come down and watch,” you tell her honestly. Visiting each other as frequently as you have been able to throughout the last ten months has rekindled your friendship, and you remember everytime you see her why it hurt you so much that she had faded out of your life for those couple years.

“Of course! Makes me wish I’d been more stubborn about not quitting ballet,” she says regretfully, her smile becoming more nostalgic.
“If only we could turn back time,” you agree, shrugging.

The two of you come to an opening nearby the doors, and a familiar frame stands awkwardly, eyes watching his phone so as to avoid social contact with anyone else in the lobby.
Sira smiles knowingly, turning to face you and squeezing your hands in hers. “I’ll you tomorrow?” she says like a question, and you nod.
“Of course. Have fun with Taegeun!” you tease, knowing she’s met up with her old dance partner a few times during her weekend visits.
She smacks your arm and scurries away, leaving you to approach that awkward man by the doors.

“Hey,” you say, intertwining your fingers with Yoongi’s free hand. He looks up, a gentle smile spreading on his face when he realizes it’s you. “Did you like your graduation present?”
“I would have come anyway, you know that right?” he raises a brow, and you roll your eyes.
“But I paid for it! Which obviously makes it so much better.” you tug on his other hand, prompting him to put his phone in his pocket and slip his other hand around your waist.
“It was great. I was really nervous for your ankle the whole time, though.” he says, swaying you gently from side to side as if there was music playing and you totally weren’t surrounded by people. You just go with it though, used to how music is always playing in Yoongi’s head.
“Me too,” you admit, sighing. “But it was all okay! Jimin was really careful.”
“That kid should keep his hands at a safe distance,” Yoongi grumbles at the sound of your partner’s name.
You laugh. “Jealous much? It’s not like he can help it.”
“Call me jealous, I don’t care. He’s not over you yet.” Yoongi shakes his head. “I keep telling him to just find some girl to rebound with…”
“He’s too nice for that,” you say, looking to the right where you see Jimin talking with Taegeun and Sira. “He’s okay, though. He wouldn’t have wanted to dance with me tonight if he wasn’t okay.”
“You’re right.” Yoongi says, nodding. “Anyway, I brought you flowers, but they’re in the car.”
“That’s cute,” you say, smiling. “Thank you.”
“Don’t make it weird,” Yoongi warns, and you laugh. “It’s just cause I’m leaving next week.” He starts leading you out the doors, you turning to wave goodbye quickly to Sira.
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” you groan. “College is such a bitch- why can’t you go when the semester starts?”
“Who knows?” Yoongi shrugs. “I just know that means you’re spending every second of the next week with me.”
“...Fine.”
“Stop,” Yoongi says, shoving you, and you laugh.
“I love you!” you shout into the empty parking lot, throwing your joined hands up in the air.
“Jesus, Y/N, don’t do that!” he hushes you, but the feeling of joy you’re getting is so overwhelming and great that you feel the need to tell the whole world, the whole universe, how much you love Min Yoongi.
“I love you, Min Yoongi!” you repeat, laughing wildly as you drag him around in a half-dance on the way to his car.
He starts laughing, that wide gummy smile that you have the privilege to see every day lifting your spirits even higher.
“Try it!” you encourage him, swinging your hands up in the air again. “I love you!” you shout in demonstration. “Just like that.”
“I love you!” he shouts, laughing again as soon as the words leave his lips. “I love you!”
“Me too!” you shout back, ending up right behind his car.

Yoongi laughs as he laces his free hand in your hair, yours wrapping around the back of his neck as he kisses you, the warm feeling of contentment spreading through you, so much so that you can practically hear the piece Yoongi played for you yesterday, Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin, despite the only sound around the two of you the whistling of the wind.

“I love you,” Yoongi whispers once more as he pulls apart, resting his forehead on yours.
“I love you too,” you respond.

You think, honestly, being unprepared is the best thing.
Being unprepared for your piano boy led you to him.
And standing there in an empty parking lot as he kisses you, you realize there’s nothing you want more than just that.