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Yoongi's permanent seat in Seokjin's restaurant is right in the middle of the room, under the extravagant chandelier Seokjin paid a fortune for.
Seokjin brings the microphone up to his mouth when Yoongi presses the final key of the piano.
"And that was, as I'm sure all of you already know, the love of my life. A round of applause for the genius Min Yoongi!"
The room fills up with sounds of claps and cheers and Yoongi covers his face with both of his hands, but Seokjin can still see him grinning like an idiot. Yoongi somehow manages to gather his wits and stands up, bows and walks towards the counter where Seokjin is leaning against it.
"Seokjin, when will you stop embarrassing me like that?" He says without any bite in his voice, fighting the imminent smile on his lips.
Seokjin pokes Yoongi's cheek with a finger and grins, "It's not even embarrassment at this point, everyone already thinks you're my boyfriend."
"Which is not true." Yoongi steps closer and Seokjin wraps him in a hug, rubbing his hands up and down Yoongi's back.
"Trust me, they get a kick out of it. Romance always sells." He speaks into his hair, "You feeling alright tonight?"
Yoongi reaches up and tickles him. Seokjin yelps in surprise before breaking into a chuckle. His fingers still hover over Yoongi's waist when the latter looks up at him. This close, Seokjin can separate each of his eyelashes, long, delicate, holding Seokjin's sanity in them. Yoongi steps back, parts from the embrace, Seokjin misses the warmth immediately.
"I'm tired, as usual. Guess I'm going to head back home."
Seokjin presses his thumbs on Yoongi's eyebrows and Yoongi closes his eyes and hums. The lights from above the counter leave sprinkles of blushes on Yoongi's face.
"Want me to drive you home?"
Yoongi shakes his head.
"I brought my car."
Seokjin rakes his fingers through Yoongi's hair and lightly massages his scalp. Yoongi, humming even more contently now, looks like he'll fall asleep standing up, here and now.
"Make sure you actually sleep and don't stay up working again."
Yoongi reaches up and grabs Seokjin's wrists. "Stop doing that or I'll fall asleep right here."
Seokjin winks just as Yoongi opens his eyes.
"You know I wouldn't mind that."
Yoongi grins and shakes his head, turns and walks away, "Goodnight, Seokjin."
Seokjin stops him by their held hand, "Wait."
Yoongi turns back and arches an eyebrow. Seokjin tugs him closer and unwraps his own grey scarf and wraps it properly around Yoongi's neck, covering down to his chest, so the cold air doesn't affect him when he goes out.
"There, the scarf is warm already. This will keep you safe and alive in this harsh world."
Yoongi rolls his eyes, "Oh, what would I do without you?" He turns away for the second time.
"Probably starve to death."
"Bye."
"Freeze yourself into the abyss."
"I'm leaving."
"Never have a good night's sleep."
"Goodnight, Seokjin."
"Come back to me soon, my love!"
It's their usual dynamic, Seokjin romancing Yoongi and Yoongi pretending as though he's not at least a little endeared by him. It works for them.
Hoseok tries to be a silent observer, he really does, but sometimes even he can't help but be curious.
"Seokjin-ssi, are you actually dating Yoongi-ssi?" He asks one day while shelving the glass bottles.
"What? No." Seokjin replies quickly, "We're just really good friends."
Taehyung chooses that moment to appear through the back door, quirks a suspicious eyebrow, "Is that why you were kissing him in the kitchen the other night?"
Hoseok fights a grin, "You're really going to keep denying after that accusation?"
"It's true," Seokjin frowns, "But there's nothing romantic about it, we're comfortable together. It's normal for friends to kiss each other without having ulterior motives."
"No, it's not."
"Do you want me to kiss you and prove it to you, Seokie?"
"We're not even friends."
"You keep saying that to yourself."
It's true, there really isn't anything more than friendship between Yoongi and him. Sure, they kiss sometimes when one of them is feeling bluer than usual but it's a purely platonic thing. Taehyung caught one of those instances, took it out of context and completely misinterpreted it.
Kissing is a universal form of affection which isn't meant to be romantic or sexual in the first place. If they choose to comfort each other this way in times of need, then who are people to judge them? It works for them, it's all that matters.
Seokjin gently puts the bag of containers full of food on the table when Yoongi is scribbling something on his papers in his studio. Namjoon is sitting right beside him and greets Seokjin with a silent bow. Seokjin smiles.
"Don't mind me. Pretend I'm not even here."
Namjoon complies, but Yoongi though, can't help but glance back at Seokjin every two minutes. Seokjin indulges him with a wink or two and Namjoon gives up after the sixteenth time. Not that Seokjin was counting.
"Yoongi hyung, I'll just, come back later to work on the melody."
Yoongi, to his credit, tries to look bummed, but the smile on his face is a dead give away. Namjoon chuckles.
"Yeah, yeah. Have fun with your boyfriend."
"He's not- "
"Thanks Namjoon, I've been saying that for years now." Seokjin cuts in.
Namjoon just chuckles and leaves.
Yoongi is bright pink when he swivels in his chair to face Seokjin. There are squiggly lines and circles on the computer screen that he doesn't understand.
"I brought food."
"How did you know?"
"Jimin texted me saying that you were working late again."
"That brat."
"Come on," Seokjin chuckles, "he's just looking out for you."
Yoongi bites his lips and nods, taking the bag of containers from the table.
"Let's share." He asks before unwrapping the foils, "I can't eat all of this alone."
"I already had dinner."
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did."
"You didn't because I said you didn't."
Seokjin laughs again, "You might be a nocturnal being, but I have a schedule to maintain, Yoongi-chi. I just came to drop these off, I'll leave now."
"But you've been here for a while. Can't you stay a little longer?"
"I'll see what I can do."
He grins as Seokjin stands up. Yoongi sits down and starts to gobble up the food.
Seokjin silently watches Yoongi eat, stares at the crown of his head, his fluffy, awry hair that pricks at his nape, at his fingers or, puckered lips or, moving jaws or, how the light hangs over his head like it was made to do just that.
He can't stop staring when he leans on the doorway with his shoulder, a little uncomfortably in the silence filled with Yoongi's quiet moans of contentment, with his temple pressed against the frame.
How he got so lucky to have Yoongi in his life, he could never figure out. But Yoongi told him that he had to "sacrifice the life of a royal prince" in the past life to have Seokjin in this one.
Yoongi's lips quirk upwards but he doesn't look up or stop eating when he asks, "Are you regretting that you refused to share the food?"
Seokjin grins, "You do realize I had the same dinner?"
"It's okay, you can admit it. Don't be shy."
"Okay, I'll admit it." Seokjin smiles mischievously. Two people from somewhere in the hallways is humming a song and the beautifully muffled voices can be heard from even here.
"Yes, go on."
He points a finger at Yoongi, "I love you."
Yoongi looks up, gulps a mouth full of food and grins, "I love you, too." He says before going back to eating.
Seokjin stands up straight, walks towards Yoongi and tries to smoothen the hair on his nape, to no avail. He settles for tucking a strand behind his ear and pressing a kiss on Yoongi's temple. "See you later."
"I'd return the kiss, but I'm eating." He quips without looking at Seokjin.
"If you weren't, I would have kissed you on the lips, jackass."
A week or two later when Seokjin locks all the windows and doors to his restaurant, Hoseok helping him with it, he sees Yoongi patiently waiting for him on the pavement. He takes the remaining keys from Hoseok and the latter greets Yoongi and leaves. Seokjin approaches him with a smile.
"To what do I finally owe the pleasure?"
Yoongi rolls his eyes.
"No, wait, don't tell me," Seokjin continues, putting a dramatic hand on his chest, mouth hanging open in pretence, "Did I forget to pay you for the show?"
"Don't be stupid." Yoongi dusts Seokjin's hair off, even though there probably wasn't anything to dust off in the first place, "You always forget to pay me for the shows."
Seokjin takes his hands in his and kisses his fingers, "Yet you keep coming back to me. Your fingers are so cold."
Yoongi stares at him for a moment, a leaf from the tree over their heads sways in the chill air and falls on the ground beside them. A car, or two, drives by, carefully, not to splash dirty water on the people waiting to cross the road.
"I came here so that you can walk me home as a compensation." He finally breaks the silence.
"And I thought I'd be the one to get escorted." He tangles their fingers and puts them both in the pocket of his coat, mainly to warm Yoongi's hands.
"Yeah, you can keep dreaming and maybe one day it'll come true."
"Romance is truly dead."
Despite his complaints about how Seokjin walks too slow, or how he stops mid-street to revel in the quietness of the night, or how he keeps pulling Yoongi by his hand and twirls him around like a princess for no reason at all, Yoongi ends up walking Seokjin home.
Some of the streetlights lining the pavement in front of Seokjin's house flicker on and off because of the accumulated water around them. Seokjin points at the doorway with his chin.
"Want to come inside?"
Yoongi stares at the door for a second before looking back at Seokjin, "I'm heading back to the studio. I can't."
Seokjin frowns, "You practically live in that place these days."
"Yeah," Yoongi laughs, poking the ground with his shoe, "I keep a spare blanket, an entire supply of drinks and coffee to keep me afloat."
"You walked me all this way home only to go back there now?" Seokjin presses a thumb at the corner of Yoongi's lips just because he wants to.
"I don't get to see you that often anymore," he shrugs, "so, I thought I'd check up on you."
Something dangerously close to butterflies flutters in Seokjin's stomach and he hears the blood rush in his ears. The beat of his heart picks up a larger stick and practically drums on his chest.
This is unusual.
But before he can ponder more about the matters of his heart, he opens his mouth, to say something more familiar, more conventional for them. His thumb on his lips move down to his chin and he tips Yoongi's face upwards.
"Want me to kiss you?" He asks, as he always does.
Yoongi searches for something frantically on Seokjin's face, in his eyes, blinks a few times.
"Yes, yes, please. That'd be great."
Seokjin parts Yoongi's lips with his thumb and leans in to kiss him, softly, reassuringly, carefully; shallow but not too light, deep but not fathomless.
The way friends kiss, affectionately, but with a distance.
And it should have ended here, when Seokjin stops kissing Yoongi, when Yoongi opens his eyes, when Seokjin brings his hand back at his side, when Yoongi fumbles for words in his mouth and when Seokjin stares at his wet lips a few seconds longer than he generally does.
But it doesn't end here, because then, Yoongi finds the words he's been looking for.
"Want me to kiss you back?" He asks, as he never does, for an extra.
Seokjin doesn't even get to finish his agonizingly slow nod, because halfway through, Yoongi cups his face deftly and kisses him again.
And it's not like their usual kisses, like the one a few seconds before, no, it's much more intense, laced with intimacy unlike any of the times before. The type that would give Hoseok all the evidences he needs to back up his claim against them. The type that even transcends the boundaries of their fucked up notion of friendship.
Because Yoongi isn't kissing him with their shared, careful distance, he's kissing Seokjin fervently, impatiently, with his tongue hot inside his mouth. His head spins, hazily with Yoongi's unexpected ministrations. He lets out a whimper when Yoongi suddenly bites hard on his lips without any warning.
Yoongi immediately lets him go and jumps back.
"Shit, shit. I'm sorry, Seokjin. Are you okay?" He scrambles.
It takes Seokjin a few seconds to gather his wits. His head is a blurry mess, he is a blurry mess. Yoongi continues.
"I'm sorry, I got carried away." He looks guilty, "I guess, I just- "
"No, no, it's," Seokjin starts, "it's cool. I wasn't expecting that, is all."
Yoongi looks like he's about to dig a hole in the ground, dive in, and never come out again. "I just missed you. A lot. Sorry."
At this point, Seokjin's heart threatens to burst into confetti and scatter away. But he somehow manages to wrap Yoongi in a hug. The streetlights keep flickering around them, the cold breeze freezing them in place.
"Hey, no," he rubs his hands up and down Yoongi's back, "Don't apologize, it doesn't hurt." He steps back to cup his face, "I missed you, too."
And unlike the other times after a kiss, when Seokjin has trouble falling asleep at night, he blushes, covers his face in the pillow and muffles his screams like a teenager who just kissed his long time crush.
When a couple of days pass without any word from Yoongi, no texts or calls, and he doesn't even show up on Saturday's music night, Seokjin finds himself knocking on the door to his studio on a Sunday morning.
The door opens to reveal a disheveled Min Yoongi, eyes red, puffy and half closed. Seokjin raises an eyebrow at him, Yoongi raises two back.
"What are you doing here?" He asks as he steps aside to make way for Seokjin to enter. The studio table is littered with empty and half empty bottles of drinks, coffee cups and packs of instant ramen. The couch on the corner is half covered with a blanket, and where a pillow should be, rests Seokjin's woollen grey scarf.
"It's cold outside." Seokjin sits on Yoongi's chair, and swivels around to face him. Yoongi looks confused.
"And?"
"I came here to take my scarf back."
Realization dawns on Yoongi and he rubs his hand on his neck, searching for something on the floor. Seokjin ducks his head to make eye contact with him, but Yoongi just avoids his eyes.
"Yoongi?"
"Okay, fine, I'll admit. I've been using it as a pillow." He throws his hands up.
Seokjin bites his lip to fight back a smile. "But, why?" He asks because a pillow or a cushion isn't that hard to come by. Or, he could have just brought one from home. The scarf just looks uncomfor-
"Because it smells like you," Yoongi answers, "and it helps me fall asleep."
Seokjin wants to jump and run and wrap Yoongi in his arms. Yoongi walks to the couch and picks the scarf up.
"But I can't return it to you like this." He carefully folds it and walks back, "I'll wash it and then give it back."
Seokjin reaches up to take it from his hands, "It's fine, really- "
Yoongi yanks it away from Seokjin's reach.
"No." He stands awkwardly in front of Seokjin and looks at him, "You should come back later for it."
It's just a scarf, but it's not about the scarf.
Seokjin stands up, grabs Yoongi's face and kisses him without asking. Yoongi sighs into it, tucks Seokjin's hair behind his ears.
Seokjin stops kissing him and presses their foreheads together. "Since you admitted to a crime, I'll confess to one too."
"Hm?"
"I love you."
Yoongi chuckles.
"I love you, too."
When they part and Seokjin is almost outside, he lingers near the door, uncomfortably, for a second or two before turning back, "If you miss another show, I'll never pay you for it."
"You never do." Yoongi cracks a smile.
"Come tonight." Seokjin asks, rests his temple on the door frame, "You don't have to play, but you need to get out of this place sometimes, clear your head. We'll just have dinner."
"I- "
"Don't even think of refusing, you'll be banned from my restaurant forever if you do."
Yoongi bursts into a heady chuckle, crosses his arms, "That way you can never embarrass me in front of your regulars, it's probably a good thing."
"Yoongi."
"It's a date."
But Yoongi plays, he plays one of his older original pieces on the piano, one he calls 'I Need You'. Seokjin knows because he was there when he was making it, back in their early twenties. He takes a photo on his phone, of Yoongi playing the keys, the chandelier hanging from above, the people on the restaurant staring at him from their tables like lovesick puppies, their food forgotten. When he zooms in on it, he can see a slight upward quirk on Yoongi's lips.
Hoseok pokes his shoulder from behind, "Stop smiling like that while looking at a picture of your boyfriend, and actually ask him out or I will. He's literally walking to you now."
Hoseok disappears again after that, Seokjin looks ahead again to see Yoongi smiling at him like a creep. The sound of glasses clinking together slowly picks up across the room.
"What was Hoseok saying?" He asks when he tangles his fingers with Seokjin's.
"Something about asking you out or something."
"Tell you what, I agree with him. I think you should ask me out, too. At least as a payment for playing your favourite song."
"But you're already my boyfriend." Seokjin ruffles his hair and Yoongi frowns.
"I'm literally not."
"Honestly, ask anyone in this room."
"No- "
"Hey, Jungkook-ssi," Seokjin looks behind Yoongi and addresses the tatted man sitting the closest to them, a loyal customer who Seokjin is sure had a crush on him at some point or other during his regular visits. He turns Yoongi around to face the man and hugs him from the back, "Do you know who this man is?"
Jungkook doesn't waste a single second and grins, raises his glass of wine.
"The love of your life."