Work Text:
His hair falls golden.
It is almost an amber underneath these flashing lights, feathering down the back of his neck, where lightly-tanned skin meets the red of his suit. (Velveteen -- Yoongi'd run his fingertips over the material, half an hour before they'd all bundled themselves into the car and Jimin'd asked him, gleefully, how he looked.)
(Beautiful, perhaps, could not quite fit the figure tugging at his arm, now.)
It is Jimin, relaying something Seokjin had mumbled to Namjoon. (Then, Namjoon to Hoseok -- down the line, like playful students passing a message in class.) Yoongi snorts and Jimin is grinning back at him, crescent-eyed and soft.
They settle back into a silence (though, really, not at all a silence, with the overhead speakers thrumming with music from the next performer). Cameramen wander around in search of the next idol to put on the spot -- Yoongi finds himself wondering how it feels to be a solo performer at a show like this, cluttered with an abundance of knit groups. Lonely, perhaps. (He wouldn't be able to handle it, that's for sure.)
It's award show season -- only the start of it, yet Yoongi already finds himself dreading the next ones. Award shows are loud and bright (the fluorescent kind that hurts your eyes) and there are eyes, too many eyes. He fidgets in his seat and watches the next girlgroup take the stage.
(They'll make it through, though, he knows. They always do.)
They take home 7 awards. It might be a given now, to some, but it still feels -- after every time -- a bit like....flying. They don't expect anything, but yet they do -- it's an odd limbo of sorts, like the feeling you get when the car goes a little too high over a hump in the road and it dislodges your heart and sends it up into your throat.
People are whispering into each other, clapping hands and wandering eyes. Yoongi is vaguely aware of Taehyung's freshly, barely-damp cheeks and Namjoon pulling them all into a group hug. (Jimin's chin is firm, tender and nestled into his shoulder. It reminds him to breathe, for a moment, and simmer in the brightness that is them.)
They have memorised the way to the stage now. It is the seventh time, the same trail of newly-polished shoes up the shiny floor. The fans yell and wave and flicker in waves of white and blue. (And then it is off the stage, back to their seats, until it is their turn to perform.)
It passes by in a blur. It always does, and Yoongi has stopped trying to curl desperate fingers around something that doesn't want to be held. They are on the floor, the last of their song ebbing away into an uproar of noise. (The cameras turn, finally. They collapse, limbs loose, chests heaving.)
Backstage, it almost seems louder. Perhaps it is the white walls this time, bouncing back every word and every yell and every bit of bustle. They flood their dressing room, Namjoon keeping the back, and all promptly collapse onto the nearest sofa in sight.
Yoongi doesn't think he can feel his legs anymore. Hoseok's head droops onto his shoulder and he can't find the energy in him to push him off -- his hair's falling (a reddish auburn) into his face, sweat-matted -- Yoongi, Yoongi thinks he'd still be able to fall asleep right there all the same.
They flood twitter with photos -- seven awards (seven!) in one night, enough for every pair of hands. He smiles and poses and cradles gold in his palm, and by the time they step out of the building (masks pulled over bare faces) it is almost ten. The city is bright and the cameras that catch them on their way out are almost brighter.
(In the dark of the car, squeezed between warm breaths and empty air, Yoongi finds Jimin again.)
The ride back home is quiet. Namjoon snores up front, jostled into the seat next to Jeongguk -- Yoongi sleeps with smaller fingers tangled with his, hidden under jacket layers. The apartment is silent but they fill it up again like they always do, with tired groaning and shuffling feet.
"Do you ever feel like --" he's sat crosslegged, sinking into plain sheets. (Folding freshly-washed clothes on his bed, blond hair smelling of soap and warm water. "Like, everything's moving too fast?"
"Like," he clears his throat again. Frowns a little as he overlaps one of Yoongi's shirts into a square. "Like, I know nothing is permanent, but -- but it feels like suddenly, suddenly we're so high up and -- remember when we'd complain about how long our schedules are? It feels like, like now it all goes by in a flash or something like that." Jimin's voice is unquietening with his rambling, as he tosses the shirt into another pile of similarly-folded shirts. He breathes, suddenly, staring down at a pair of boxer shorts. (Probably Yoongi's. The words come out softer than he thinks Jimin himself expects.)
"I'm scared," he mumbles. Yoongi wants to reach over and smoothen the wrinkle between his brows with his finger. "It -- It all feels too fast and I don't want to, like --" he folds the shorts into some sort of shape, before unfolding it to do it again. "I don't want to lose you guys," he says finally, raising his head. (Exhaustation sinking into his eyes, making up the horizon splitting black into two.) "You. This."
It is quiet, for a moment. Seokjin's voice echoes down the hallway as he yells something, and soon Taehyung's yelling back in answer -- the TV in their living room hums, playing an old drama no one has the time to watch.
Yoongi's patting his thigh, then. Jimin melts into him in a second, like nature of habit -- cheek pressed to tender flesh, until Yoongi taps him so he can shift and ease him closer. (Arms draped over his front, circling around from the back as he huffs into golden hair.)
"If it makes you feel any better, I'm just as scared as you are," he admits. Jimin's eyes are shut and Yoongi takes the chance to trace his features with his fingers, smoothing over thinning cheeks and the concaves of his eyelids and the bump in the arch of his nose. "You got me, y'know?" He mumbles. Jimin opens his eyes again, tilting his chin up to blink at him. "I -- I think that, for me, it'll always be you. I don't think I'd ever, I'unno, let myself walk away from this." His breath falls quiet, a whisper against Jimin's forehead. "And we --" he clears his throat, now. Jimin's looking at him, again, like that -- at peace, tender in a way that rattles his windpipe.
"And we'll always be here, y'know? Like -- Like, yeah, who knows what will happen -- but we'll be with you every bit of the way. With each other. And, and I think that -- maybe it's a fear that humans might never find a way out of, losing love, but I think -- this was all something beautiful. We -- We did something great, we made something beautiful and I think -- I don't know, I think even at the end of it all, I'd feel grateful the most, y'know?" He'd closed his eyes somewhere along those lines, and he doesn't notice until he opens them and Jimin's warm, dark irises are staring back. "I'm thankful I found you guys," he breathes. "I'm thankful I found you."
There is something in the blond's gaze -- something glazed over his eyes when he blinks, when he stares up at the ceiling and at Yoongi.
"I love you," he says. Soft lips moving against the planes of his shoulder, a quiet flicker of his lashes. (It is all he says, but it is enough to toss Yoongi's heart against the walls of his chest.)
It isn't -- it isn't like he hasn't said it before. Open affection is what Jimin does best, and it's almost normal for him to throw the words around -- yet, yet it's the first time he'd said it since -- well, since Yoongi had dipped fingers between his ribcage and laid out the mess of cadmium he'd been hiding behind his chest out for him.
Yoongi's shifting, now. Leaning down to press fingers into the tender flesh of Jimin's cheek, pressing his mouth to his -- Jimin's hands languid, warm as they curl into his hips, dipping fingers beneath the fabric of his shirt. It's slow, raw -- honest, it's honest in the way Jimin's lips move with his, in the way he sighs into his mouth, tongues dripping honey onto wrinkled bedsheets.
"Yoongi," Jimin almost breathes his name -- hands pulling, pulling at the warmth of Yoongi's person, until they both tip over and it's spilling, all of it, into his skin. Yoongi can't find it in himself to correct him of the honorative. (He likes it better this way, he thinks. His name, bare, staining his lover's tongue.)
The clothes are a mess again, dryer-run and smelling of laundry detergent, cotton against shifting sheets. Jimin is breathing, now, arms pushed up Yoongi's back, lashes fluttering against raised cheekbones -- almost, almost as if no distance would be close enough. (Gasping against the warmth of his mouth -- legs shifting, pressing closer.)
"Jimin," he groans. Quiet, earthy baritone a huff against his skin. (The younger's lips pressed to his cheek, to his neck.) He is sure that his skin has already flushed a crimson underneath these ceiling lights, but he opens his eyes and Jimin, Jimin is all but a similar image. "Want you," he whispers, pink trickling into the apples of his cheeks. (Yoongi, Yoongi's head spins.)
"You got me," Yoongi repeats. Presses the words into tender skin, moving down the planes of his neck, his shoulders, his chest. Lets his eyes droop and rubs quiet circles into the blond's hips. "M'all yours."
His hair falls golden. Splattered across his pillow, face pressed into the soft cushion, as if to hide his face. (Yoongi moves back up -- tilts his head towards him, bumping their foreheads together to get Jimin to look at him.) "I love you," he mumbles through butterfly kisses pressed to his temple, to his nose, to the gentle dip of his cupid's bow. (Jimin seems to grow redder, glimmering eyes hooded as he huffs a soft laugh against his cheek.)
They work like -- like the planets in the sky, Yoongi thinks now. Like how the moon twists circles around the sun, perhaps -- some odd, uncalculated pull. Jimin gasps, rushes gentle fingers into russet curls and Yoongi thinks he might melt, might disintegrate into a pile of crinkled sheets and half-folded laundry.
Yoongi, Yoongi knows it without a single word. Slow, they go slow but it's all they ever needed. (Jimin's nose buried into the dips in his shoulder, breathless cries muffled by pale skin.) He falls apart in his grasp and Yoongi thinks he might too, he really might as well with the warmth of Jimin's mouth and the stuttered rise and fall of his chest and the overwhelming rush of rocking waves. Somewhere in between the tv falls silent and the house turns dark but there is them, Jimin's hands in his hair, Yoongi gasping into tender skin, god, god --
He catches him just as he falls. Yoongi would trust him with his life -- Jimin, Jimin runs smaller hands down his back -- breathing in soft pants, hanging in strings from the ceiling. They're both sweaty and sticky and really, kind of gross right now, but for the moment they are two planets in embrace, and for tonight, that is enough.
"I'm so tired," Yoongi speaks up suddenly. (A huff into the younger's shoulder.) "Why did we choose today, out of literally any other --"
"Shut up," Jimin is laughing, soft and throaty as he lands a soft smack to his bare back. "You need to get up so I can too, y'know."
A pause. Yoongi's dark eyes droop as he runs gentle fingers along the blond's neck, releasing a tired, tender breath. "Nah."
Jimin scoffs. (It's soft, sounding more like a laugh.) He inhales and pulls Yoongi in with it, sighing as they both roll over -- he ends up sprawled over his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his ribcage beneath his cheek.
"I love you," he repeats again. It's quieter this time, mumbled as he plays with a lock of reddish-brown hair with his index finger.
"You said that already," Yoongi says. Jimin rolls his eyes -- god, he's so beautiful -- and nudges his nose into his chest with a huff. "Too bad for you, hyung," he yawns. "I'm gonna say it again."
Yoongi snatches the words up, says them so Jimin doesn't have to. His fingers thread through gold silk and Jimin's pushing up again, their noses bumping messily as his lips meet rose petal again. ("Who knew Min Yoongi could be a sap?" Jimin says. Laughs, soft and almost embarrassed, suddenly, when said male peppers kisses down his cheek.)
The house is dark. Their clothes are still lying around and outside, a car honks into the night. Jimin's hair falls cadmium, sprawled over his chest and dipping into the corners of his ribcage. (Yoongi, Yoongi drinks him up like warm water in a winter's night and he thinks, thinks that he wants to stay here for a long time.)