Chapter Text
The first date doesn’t go well.
Or, Namjoon backtracks, objectively it goes okay. Maybe more than a little. At first. Hyunwoo is also in his early twenties and met Taehyung through Hoseok’s dance troupe. He has dyed brown hair and droopy eyes. When Namjoon first saw him across the milk tea place, which was starting to fill up with people in the late afternoon, he’d fought the temptation to turn around and walk out, intimidated by Hyunwoo’s good looks. Now, he’s grateful that he resisted the impulse; Hyunwoo is sitting across him laughing at something Namjoon says that he doesn’t even think is that funny.
This is encouraging to Namjoon, who is used to anxiously watching people’s faces for signs that they’re starting to get annoyed or bored. It’s encouraging enough that as Namjoon tells Hyunwoo about something that happened at a frat party last year, Namjoon gesticulates—enough to hit a passing waitress’ tray and for her to dump a handful of half-empty milk tea cups onto the floor beside Hyunwoo. There’s now a piece of brown sugar boba that’s sticking to the toe of Hyunwoo’s previously white, immaculate sneaker.
Hyunwoo and Namjoon look at each other, frozen at first, until Hyunwoo begins to chuckle and to bend over to help the waitress, who’s equal parts flustered and annoyed. In his head, Namjoon almost hears the exasperated laughter of his friends, who often fondly rescue him from the aftermaths of his clumsiness; but none of them are here now, just a Hyunwoo who’s clearly trying to make the best of a bad situation and the waitress who seems like she’s one stupid customer away from quitting her part-time job. Namjoon can’t apologize enough to the both of them, and Hyunwoo shrugs it off and assures him, but the date already feels a little ruined beyond repair.
Hyunwoo messages him a couple of days later, and Namjoon doesn’t say anything about seeing him again—just takes the chance to say sorry again for the sneakers.
***
The second date goes better.
Namjoon feels a little more prepared for it. Agreeing to the date with Hyunwoo had been something of a spontaneous thing, brought about by Taehyung’s badgering and some of Namjoon’s Sunday-night loneliness. Agreeing to the date with Hyejin gives him enough leadtime—almost a week—to prepare.
It’s good timing that a few days before, a jacket that he and Taehyung had ordered online arrives. Taehyung has been on what seems to be a lifelong quest to make Namjoon dress in more fashionable clothing, but this time it’s clothing that Namjoon actually likes. It’s a well-fitting bomber jacket, which makes Namjoon seem more put together than he really is, but it has a tiger’s face on the back, which seems to appeal both to Taehyung’s sense of high fashion and Namjoon’s love of fauna in general. He brushes his hair back, switches his glasses for the clear contacts that Tae and Jimin seem convinced he should wear, and feels surprisingly at ease when he walks out the door to meet his friends before the date.
The thing is, it’s completely slipped his mind that Yoongi might be there. It’s a first for him, after several years of planning around Yoongi’s presence at each group hangout, since they were in university and the few years after. It’s Yoongi who first meets his gaze when Namjoon walks up to their group of friends by the river. Despite the bright, clear skies and sunny weather, Yoongi is wearing his usual dark oversized clothes and ripped black jeans. Namjoon wants to look away but he forces himself to raise a hand in greeting; as usual it’s Yoongi who actually looks away, to tell Seokjin that Namjoon has arrived.
They don’t usually do such outdoorsy activities, but Jeongguk saw a Youtube video of a kid doing rollerblade tricks a few weeks ago and has been convinced that he and Jimin should give it a try. The rest of them agreed to come in support and Seokjin decided to make an afternoon of it, bringing snacks and cut up watermelon, saying they all needed a break outdoors anyway, specially Yoongi who’s paler than ever. Namjoon would normally join them, as rollerblading is one of the few physical activities he doesn’t mess up, but then Hyejin has said she’s only available today, so he’s already explained in the group chat that he’s not staying long.
Only Taehyung should know about the date, but with the sly and speculative way Jimin’s looking at his outfit, Namjoon is a hundred percent sure that Jimin must now know, too. He shoots Taehyung an exasperated look and is given an unapologetic grin in return. Jeongguk, who’s holding onto Taehyung’s waist as they skate around a bench, catches the exchange. “Are you sure you’re not staying, Namjoon-hyung?” he asks. “We’re all thinking of going out for chicken and beer later.”
“Ah, no,” Namjoon says, aware that his face is doing something frozen and awkward. “I’m going to—going to meet a friend in a bit.” Jeongguk looks him up and down and says nothing; Hoseok and Seokjin exchange a glance, but not a word is said about how they’re surprised that Namjoon has friends outside of their group, since he hasn’t had any in the years since he graduated. Seokjin pats his arm kindly and Hoseok hands him a fork with a triangle of watermelon speared at the end.
Something prickles at the back of his neck while he sits, watching the youngest three make a giggling choo-choo train on skates. He turns his head a little and, sure enough, Yoongi’s looking at him.
There’s the initial thrill of making eye contact before he’s flustered, looking away; and then there’s the sinking feeling that Yoongi must be looking at him because his outfit is weird today. Namjoon blinks down at his trousers, the old khaki ones Taehyung hates the most because they’re too loose everywhere and have an old paint stain on the back pocket, and feels himself flush instantly with shame. He’d been so focused on picking a nice jacket that he hadn’t changed his pants. But there’s no time to go home and change—he’s supposed to be meeting Hyejin at Sip and Gogh (a frustratingly named paint by numbers cafe) in fifteen minutes. Hopefully if he sits down quickly enough she won’t notice the state of his trousers.
He’s always been a little frumpy and awkward. Certainly nothing like the men Yoongi goes out with, who are either gruffly cool or terribly suave. But Namjoon wants to think that, with the effort he put into his looks today, he might look like he’s enough for someone else. Hyejin told Taehyung that she thinks Namjoon is cute and that she likes a track he produced for Hoseok’s dance class. She must not know how rarely Namjoon gets complimented on anything ever. He prays that he won’t embarrass himself with his clumsiness. He resolves on asking for a (much less breakable) tumbler for the wine instead of a wine glass. He wishes for the tenth time in five minutes that he’d changed his trousers.
When he leaves the river, he can feel Yoongi’s eyes on him, and tries not to feel so deflated.
***
It goes well. Hyejin has strawberry blond hair and pouts when she says “뭐”. Namjoon can feel himself getting shy, responses getting shorter because he feels unbearably awkward in front of her easy bubbliness. But Hyejin draws him out, laughs in so unguarded a way that something in him begins to loosen and before he knows it they’re clinking glasses and talking about a class they both took in university.
Hyejin is two years his junior and is doing an internship under a locally famous fashion designer. She tells him that she likes the tiger on his jacket, and mercifully doesn’t seem to notice his pants. She’s dressed in pastel colors, and after they first sat down Namjoon had stared at her for a few seconds before blurting out that her sweater is the exact color of the axolotl at the aquarium a few blocks down. She had looked at him, flushed pink, and burst out laughing. (At least Namjoon was able to stop himself from telling her about different reasons for different axolotl colors.) She seemed to have taken it for the compliment that it was and now, after Namjoon’s flustered apologies and a glass of wine each, they’re deep in conversation. Hyejin’s work is interesting to Namjoon, who can’t imagine working in an industry so heavily focused on physical appearances. He tells her as much, and she seems surprised.
“Have you never considered modeling?” she asks. “It was actually one of the first things I thought about you in school. You’re very tall, and you have really good body proportions,” she adds, then seems to realize what she’s just said. “I mean—speaking from a professional point of view,” she says quickly, fidgeting with her glass. But Namjoon’s actually a little too confused and her last words startle a laugh out of him.
“Me?” he says, still giggling a little. “I don’t think I’m well suited for that.” He uses the words “not well suited”, when what he means is “I’d get kicked out of the building if I showed up at a photoshoot.”
They spend more time talking about Namjoon’s work then. Namjoon tries not to let it show that it’s become something of a subject that he likes to avoid. He’d started as a sound technician at a small production company and by the end of his first year had been recruited as a junior music producer. Work is steady and the benefits are decent. Recently Namjoon has been able to afford a new shelf for his plants and a replacement for his bike. He also knows that he’s lucky to immediately find work in an area in the same line as his degree, that allows him the creative challenges he’s always thought he needed.
But lately he’s been feeling stuck. Once he got recruited to production his seniors had been enthusiastic about his lyric-writing, had been hopeful that he could become credited as a lyricist for a track for one of the younger artists. But whatever fount of creativity he’d been drawing from since childhood seems to have dried up somehow.
Now Namjoon has come to dread the thought of writing in his notebook. It started as barely having anything to write on his Sunday morning park sessions, previously a time he’d dedicated to writing lyrics and poems. He’d attributed it to exhaustion, to just a bad day in a series of bad days. But weekend after weekend came with no change. Things spiraled soon enough that now he’s avoided the park, and his notebook, all together. Making his beats is slightly better, but only marginally. He’s been dreading that he’ll soon get a knock on his door to discuss his decreasing output.
None of this belongs in a conversation with Hyejin, who loves music, and who took music electives even when they were completely out of the scope of her program. She again compliments a track that he made for one of Hoseok’s dance classes at the lifestyle center a few months ago. He blushes and she laughs that his cheeks are the exact color of the wine. He hasn’t had a conversation this easygoing in a long while.
The date goes well. Even when she asks about Yoongi, who’s one of the most popular graduates of Namjoon’s program.
“Pardon?” he says.
“I asked Taehyung about him too,” she says while spreading cheese on a biscuit. “He says you guys are friends?”
“Oh,” he says. He touches the rim of his glass. “Yeah. Yes. We still hang out.”
***
The third date doesn’t have a chance to materialize for a while.
Taehyung, it seems, had been ready for things not to work out with Hyejin, and had lined up a potential date with a handsome part-time barista who’s doing a PhD in criminology. Where Taehyung meets such interesting people all the time is a mystery to Namjoon. At first he thinks about going on the date anyway, thinks of how interesting it must be to pick someone’s mind about criminology, since Namjoon himself normally consumes crime podcasts and true crime news with what is probably a morbid keenness.
But this interest, like his other interests, seems lately to have lost its shine. Namjoon thinks, too, of the awkwardness of starting again. Thinks of what he’d wear, thinks that he can’t possibly get away with using the tiger jacket to make a good impression again. Thinks with dread of having to fumble his way through yet another conversation with someone who’s out of his league. Thinks of having to bite his tongue lest he say something unforgivably awkward or weird again or ends up rambling for ten minutes about coral reefs until his date’s eyes glaze over. He ends up texting Taehyung, maybe next time.
Also, the thing is, he and Hyejin are still talking. Because he’s never had a real romantic relationship before and has virtually no dating experience, sometimes he can’t tell if they’re dating, but the content of their conversations seems mostly friendly.
She texts first, and it’s to send him a link to a Music Bank performance of a junior idol group, two of whose members are wearing something her boss designed. She’s excited, and it’s nice to talk to someone who’s excited about their work. He sends her a lot of encouraging Ryan emojis. When she’s able to reply, she sends him a photo of her dinner. It’s all very easygoing. They spend the next couple of weeks sending memes and a few texts back and forth. Surprisingly, Namjoon doesn’t feel pressured to reply, probably because Hyejin has long work hours and can’t chat for long, most days. They meet up once to get a quick coffee during a lunch hour when Hyejin has a photo shoot a couple of blocks down from Namjoon’s office building, and another time to get milk tea before Hyejin has to show up for a company dinner.
He doesn’t necessarily tell Taehyung any of this; doesn’t really think it’s worth telling. It’s Taehyung himself who brings it up over dinner at Hoseok’s.
“Hyung,” he says while Namjoon is carefully unsticking two pieces of gimbap, “Are you and Hyejin still going out?”
Namjoon looks at him, confused. “What?”
“She posted about you on Instagram,” Taehyung says. He fishes out his phone from where Jimin has been playing some sort of Tetris game on it and scrolls for a bit. He shows Namjoon the screen from across the table. It’s Hyejin’s Instagram, and Namjoon sees the selca she must have taken with him after they got their boba. His beanie is pulled low over his forehead and he’s self-consciously making a finger-heart while she laughs. “A short break with Namjoon-oppa,” the caption says, followed by a drink emoji. He really is terribly unphotogenic.
“Oh,” is all he can say. “I didn’t know she had Instagram.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s you who doesn’t have Instagram,” Hoseok says in between loud slurps of stew. Namjoon feels a sudden rush of fondness; Hoseok has always eaten so noisily and enthusiastically. “You’ve been inactive for a while.”
“And even when you weren’t, you don’t really like to take selcas with us,” Jeongguk says, frowning, a little pouty. “You always offer to take the photo.”
“Yah, what’s this, are you dating someone?” Seokjin is carrying a refilled bowl of rice to the table before looking over Taehyung’s shoulder to peer at his phone. “I TAd for that girl’s class in junior year. Is she nice?”
Namjoon’s ears are burning. Unintentionally he catches Yoongi’s eye from the end of the table and feels doubly embarrassed. Yoongi, face blank, looks away and helps himself to more rice.
“She is, but we’re not dating,” Namjoon says lamely. The two pieces of gimbap have come unstuck, but he’s not really hungry anymore. “She’s—she’s my friend.”
“But she put you on her Instagram,” Jimin, resident social media expert, nods sagely. “That’s got to mean something. Look, the only other people she posts about are her girlfriends, and she has some group photos from work. Your selca is definitely a little couply.”
“Sorry to say this, Namjoon-ah,” Hoseok says gleefully, “I hate to break it to you, but it looks like you’re dating.”
“Shouldn’t I be the first to know that?” Namjoon asks, frustrated, gimbap forgotten.
“Knowing you, you’d probably be the last,” Seokjin says fondly. He ruffles Namjoon’s hair and Namjoon waves him off with an elbow. Yoongi doesn’t say a thing. Namjoon catches Taehyung’s eye, and Taehyung mouths I’m sorry.
“You’re all ridiculous,” he says, and thankfully, that’s the last of it for a while.
***
A week later, Namjoon has gone on exactly zero dates with Hyejin. It’s not exactly because he feels self-conscious about his friends’ remarks, or worries that Hyejin will misinterpret his friendliness for something else. Surprisingly, that’s the least of Namjoon’s worries.
In reality, he just hasn’t been feeling like doing much. The routine of waking up, watering his plants, going to work, then coming home to an empty apartment used to fill him with a kind of comfort. The quiet of the train ride home, the monotony of housework, the sound of his bicycle pedals squeaking on the weekends—all of it seemed like blank spaces that he could fill with his music and his thoughts, to satisfy the urge, quiet but abiding, to create something. But now when he tries to reach into that space in his mind, there’s nothing but grey static. He wakes up and it’s extraordinarily difficult to get himself out of bed. He has to try, because he’s always been annoyed by tardiness, but it takes a lot of effort.
One day he doesn’t even shower, just jabs a beanie onto his head and gets himself out the door with enough time to take a cab to work. He can’t quite describe what he’s feeling. The dishes on the sink pile up.
The embarrassment about his current state (of mind and of apartment) is what makes him refuse Seokjin’s visit on Friday night. Seokjin’s brother is getting married next week, and Namjoon and Seokjin are supposed to work on Seokjin’s best man speech together.
Previously Namjoon had asked, doubtfully, why Seokjin would need any help when he’s always expressed himself just fine; but Seokjin seems quite serious about the best man speech, seems genuinely worried that his usual bag of dad jokes and backhanded compliments won’t quite get the point across on the most important day of his brother’s life. Seokjin wheedles him into accepting by telling him that he’ll bring kalguksu, which are unfortunately Namjoon’s weakness. On Friday morning, daunted by the thought of vacuuming and sweeping up the dead leaves on the floor of his apartment, Namjoon texts Seokjin if they can meet up somewhere else, and Seokjin tells him that they can meet at Seokjin’s apartment at six.
The thing is, Namjoon is perfectly aware that Seokjin and Yoongi live together. He should be, after he had helped Seokjin pick out a rubber mat for the bathroom and some frames for the hallway. But for years now he hasn’t been to the apartment unless all of their other friends are around, which is why the information doesn’t quite register until he’s standing in the doorway and Yoongi, looking confused, is staring right back at him.
“Yoongi-hyung,” he says, the sound rushing in his ears.
“Namjoon,” Yoongi says right back, still unmoving from the doorway. There was a time when he used to call Namjoon Joon-ah.
“I’m supposed to meet Seokjin-hyung,” he says. As if it explains anything at all, he lifts up his notebook; Yoongi just nods at it, seeming like he doesn’t quite see it.
“He’s not here yet,” Yoongi says, finally moving from the door. As they walk down the hallway, Namjoon looks at Yoongi’s outfit, a grey sweater and jeans. He always looks so compact and put-together, even when he’s just at home. Namjoon thinks of the way he didn’t even wash his hair this morning. When they turn into the kitchen, where Yoongi seems to have been cooking, Namjoon catches a glimpse of the silver and black jewelry on his hyung’s neck and ears, and feels something in his stomach tighten, and some other parts of him deflate uselessly. Yoongi always looks like that—looks effortlessly good, so distant and coolly beautiful. Namjoon always looks like he’s trying too hard.
It’s only then that Namjoon notices that his phone has been pinging with Seokjin’s frantic apologies. Caught up at work,he says miserably to Namjoon. I’m so sorry. One of the hoobaes misplaced a few million won worth of ingredients and they’re doing a paper chase. I can’t leave until the head chef leaves. Namjoon feels the telltale sign of his fingers tingling, a sure sign that he’s about to panic, when another message comes in.
I made the kalguksu this morning though, can you ask Yoongi to take it out of the fridge?
Yoongi is staring at Namjoon, who’s standing uselessly at the threshold, blinking desperately at his phone as if he can use it to summon Seokjin-hyung.
“Let me guess,” Yoongi says dryly. “Trouble in the kitchens?”
“Missing ingredients,” Namjoon says nonsensically, swallowing. “I should probably go. He’s not sure what time he gets to go home.”
Yoongi’s phone pings where it’s sitting on the counter and Yoongi squints at it while putting on an oven mitt.
“He messaged me about the kalguksu,” he says. “Hold on a minute, I’ll heat it up.”
The tingling feeling has spread to the back of Namjoon’s neck and he feels almost frantic with embarrassment. “You don’t have to do that,” he says, fighting the urge to put himself in front of the refrigerator. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” The past few minutes are already the longest he’s been alone with Yoongi for years. He can’t imagine to what further embarrassments he’ll subject his hyung if he stays any longer.
Yoongi sighs. “You forget, he has his next tux fitting tomorrow night,” and they both wince. Last week, Seokjin spammed the group chat with irritated selcas of himself at his first fitting for his best man outfit. Namjoon thinks he has a vague understanding of how weddings work, but for the life of him he can’t understand why the bride would insist on all-fuchsia suits for the groom’s party.
Crouched in front of the fridge, Yoongi tosses Namjoon a glance over his shoulder. “You should stay,” he says. “I’ve just been cooking, myself. Just samgyeopsal and gyeranmari though, for dinner tonight and tomorrow’s lunch. Let me just finish the eggs, I’ve been making more than enough.”
“I don’t want to put you out,” Namjoon says, when what he means is, I don’t think you really want to be alone with me. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
Nonsense, Yoongi’s sarcastic, judging look seems to say. Before Namjoon knows it he’s being pushed into a chair and Yoongi is glowering at him as if to say that if Namjoon doesn’t pick up his chopsticks to eat, there will be consequences. He turns to the stove to finish up the eggs and Namjoon watches the long line of his back, the curve of his spine.
Sometimes, Namjoon regrets confessing.
Namjoon has never been blessed with an abundance of self-esteem. But when they first met he thought that he and Yoongi had a lot in common, and the latter didn’t seem to dislike Namjoon; and so a part of him—not a large part—had hoped, years ago, that Yoongi might give him a chance and that he’d work his way from there.
They’d been friends, once. If you ask anybody else they might say that Namjoon and Yoongi are still friends now; after all, they’re part of the same large group of seven boys who eat out together, play Mario Kart together, eat Seokjin-hyung’s food together, and very occasionally go out clubbing together, to everyone else’s delight and Namjoon’s secret terror. Sometimes he and Yoongi may even be found sitting next to each other, if Namjoon hasn’t earlier schemed his way into sitting elsewhere. Sometimes they even speak about music equipment, or how things are different and the same at their respective music companies. They still have each other’s numbers, are still in the same chaotic group chat. They’re friends. A little. Maybe.
But in Namjoon’s first year in college and Yoongi’s second, Namjoon used to be able to barge into Yoongi’s dorm and bemoan getting assigned to a lab partner who was not only lazy but who smeared gochujang onto their common lab exercise book. He used to fall asleep on the floor reading his coursework while Yoongi worked on his own music; Namjoon had once asked Yoongi to keep the headphones off so he could listen, too, and Yoongi had refused at first until one day, without looking at Namjoon or remarking in any way, Yoongi had unplugged his beat-up headphones and Namjoon heard the beginnings of a mixtape taking shape. He had become infatuated with Yoongi’s mind, Yoongi who was quiet and mostly kept to himself, but whose music spoke of a deep introspection, of rage and ambition and loneliness and the occasional burning joy. Where Namjoon laid himself bare all the time, Yoongi was closed off and slow to warm up, but that made getting to know him more rewarding—each slow smile and rough laugh was hard won.
There were 2 AM jaunts to their favorite food stall two blocks away. There were visits to used book stores, arguments about rap and music, very occasional trips into local bars to hear up and coming indie bands and rapper duos. Once they event went to a spoken word open mic with Jimin and Taehyung, an experience regretted by everyone involved, except Taehyung who had spent the evening in overwhelmed tears.
Namjoon once knew Yoongi’s coffee order enough to get it on his own. Once, Yoongi kept an extra pair of slippers at his dorm big enough for Namjoon’s gigantic feet, even though neither of them ever mentioned that they were for him.
Then Namjoon, in the spring of his second year, ruined everything.
He tells himself that regrets are moot, and that for Yoongi to know that he was loved—so loved, so admired and adored—was an end in itself. But sometimes he thinks: if he hadn’t said anything, he and Yoongi could be sitting at this table laughing comfortably or talking about music or books or the dozens of things Namjoon once imagined they have in common. If he hadn’t said anything, he could have loved Yoongi in silence more closely. As it is, he keeps having to teach himself to swallow and breathe, to keep the mess of his embarrassed feelings from spilling over. It’s awkward to the point of physical pain.
Yoongi is quiet, too. Namjoon keeps his eyes on the food, tries to keep the sound to a minimum while slurping the noodles. Honestly, the gyeranmari is the most perfect one he’s ever seen, and sometimes he can’t tell if he thinks it’s good because it’s good, or because Yoongi made it.
Namjoon finishes the food right away and makes his excuses, tells Yoongi he’ll text Seokjin about writing the best man speech a different time, even when Yoongi says he should stay and watch TV while waiting for their hyung to get home. Bad enough that Yoongi has had to cook for Namjoon; he wouldn’t want to waste any more of Yoongi’s time.
Maybe if he hadn’t confessed, Yoongi would still be his friend.