The boy is sitting at his usual spot in the coffee shop. He always spends his breaks here, Yoongi knows that.

He noticed it, he didn’t ask his co-workers nor does he pay any extra attention to him.

The boy is spending his breaks here because he is terrified of school. Yoongi knows that, too. And he doesn’t stalk the boy, he just noticed the way his hands tremble a little before packing his books away and walking out of the door, politely nodding to Yoongi, or not Yoongi, whoever is working the counter that time. So usually Yoongi.

The boy never orders coffee, Yoongi noticed and that is why the trembling hands worry him. You don’t get shaky hands from hot chocolate or lemon tea.
And Yoongi didn’t ask for this barista-ing, either, he is okay with washing up, it just happens to work for everyone else if Yoongi cashiers between one and one thirty and Namjoon said that watching people will inspire him. So he’s doing this just for his colleagues and his music, not because he likes to watch the boy with the purple hair and the yellow glasses study.

He wishes he could do something to make him feel better, and he does try by adding a little more cream to the hot chocolate he orders or giving him an extra biscuit.

But it’s not that Yoongi likes him more than other customers, the boy is a regular and Yoongi is just a good person.

◦◦◦

‘How is your mixtape going?’ Namjoon asks one evening when they’re sitting next to each other in their pub. Not the best neighborhood, but both grew up in worse and the beer was cheap and kind of okay.

‘It’s going.’

Namjoon pats him on the back the Namjoon-way (trying to comfort him but actually breaking his spine) while Yoongi is already focusing his attention at the corner of the room where some teenagers are dancing.

‘Maybe the watching-people thing isn’t yours, maybe you need to find something else, for yourself.’

‘It’s okay.’

But actually, all that he has been able to write in the last few days is a bunch of crap.

Everything he’s writing he’s sure he’s heard before, read before or seen before. Some idol group, some English rapper – they all had the same ideas already and Yoongi hates being comparable to others.

‘I just have to sort my thoughts is all.’

Namjoon nods. Yoongi thinks he sees a head full of purple hair in the dancing crowd over there, but he isn’t sure and he tries to forget it again.

◦◦◦

Yoongi really likes rain, he likes the melancholia of it and the coffee shop’s roof was built so that the raindrops run down on the windows, just like how it’s supposed to be.

He knows he’ll be able to write something good today and he feels gooey and happy, so he makes a little more coffee for a girl that looks like she needs more than she can afford and hurries for a man that seems like he needs to rush somewhere and he enjoys the illusion that he isn’t just giving purple-haired boys that wear yellow glasses extra treatments.

‘How can I help you?’ Yoongi smiles and his smile widens when he sees that it’s The Boy.

‘Cinnamon hot chocolate with cream, lemon tea or are we feeling adventurous today?’

The boy smiles weakly and whispers his order, his voice sounds hoarse and like speaking hurts, but Yoongi understands him.

‘Sit down, you look exhausted,’ he says softly. ‘I’ll bring it over.’

The boy smiles thankfully and he sits down on a table for two next to the window, pulling a book out of his bag. He doesn’t look at the book again, though, just holds it tight and leans his head against the glass.

He has a scratch on his cheek that wasn’t there yesterday, but Yoongi doesn’t think too much about it. Maybe he ran against a wall, or it was an itch he scratched, something like that.

He fills the cup a little more than he should, as usual, and walks over to set it down in front of the boy. He sniffles when he sees Yoongi and tries to wipe away the tears in his eyes, but Yoongi already noticed.

‘Hey,’ he says and reaches for his wrist, without thinking too much. He takes a napkin and puts it in his hand.

◦◦◦

It’s easy, somehow, the words are running out of his head faster than he can write them down and he smiles wider than Namjoon when he realizes how much it actually is.

‘Can I see?’ Namjoon asks one day but Yoongi clutches his notebook tight to his chest and shakes his head.

Namjoon would , for sure. Maybe Yoongi does like the boy. Maybe he likes him, because the ten pages he wrote over the last few days are about lemon tea, about dancing, about boys with sad eyes and sunny smiles, confusing jokes and feelings.

He can’t upload this. Suga doesn’t do love songs, he raps about hate and toxic friendships, he disses, he doesn’t do a full four minute song about some purple haired dude just because he sticks around in his workplace a lot.

◦◦◦

That is, until he stops sticking around a lot. Or at all, actually and Yoongi misses him from the first day and somehow, even when the sun shines, his days aren’t sunny anymore (dude, Namjoon said, chill, Namjoon said, but Yoongi felt like he deserved his melodramatic forty minutes a day.)

Yoongi and him never exchanged names, because there was never time for something like that when you have so much to talk about.

Why exchange names when you can exchange stories about people, about friends, about music.

Yoongi misses preparing hot chocolate or lemon tea at one pm. He misses the boy’s eyes and how they light up behind his huge glasses when he talks about things only he understands.

He laughs along anyways, because he is happy when the boy is.

Maybe he does like him, Namjoon says, but Yoongi knows that he likes him a lot.
It’s ridiculous how worried Yoongi is on the third day that passes without the boy stopping by.

It’s ridiculous how glad Yoongi feels when the door chimes again at one and lemon-tea-or-cinnamon-hot-chocolate-boy walks in.

He knows it’s him by the tip-tap his doc martens make on the wooden floor. It’s different than anyone else’s steps. He waves at Yoongi cheerfully and mouths ‘Lemon’ at him. Yoongi winks and has the tea ready when he reaches the counter.

‘On the house,’ he says.

The boy gives him his big smile and thanks him.

And he doesn’t go to his usual table at the window that day, he leans against the counter next to Yoongi and he talks about his school trip.

There’s something special about way he talks, Yoongi thinks, as a writer you notice how everyone has their own speech pattern and he likes this boy’s the most. He likes his tiny stutter sometimes when he’s nervous. He likes how his voice pitches when he’s excited about something and he speaks fast when it’s something that makes him sad. He likes when he mixes up words and sentences until they barely make sense at all anymore, but Yoongi still understands.

When the boy leaves for his classes, Yoongi feels that he knows more about him, again, although he has no idea what his name is.

I’ll ask him tomorrow.

There’s this ugly, nagging feeling when the boy leaves with a last wave at Yoongi and the feeling makes him wish the boy didn’t have to go to school.

◦◦◦

‘Yoongi?’

Yoongi raises his head and stares at Namjoon.

‘Huh?’

‘Who is he?’

He slams a pillow into his roommate’s face and falls back asleep.

◦◦◦

Yoongi dreams of his ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriend, he dreams of their first meetings, he dreams of everyone he knows, everyone that he’s ever hooked up and everyone that’s ever tried to flirt with him.

The boy he met, whatever his name is—lemon-tea-or-cinnamon-hot-chocolate-boy—he is so different. He sometimes is fascinated by Yoongi’s hair and touches it without a proper reason. Yoongi lets him, because somehow it’s not uncomfortable and his fingers aren’t sticky and he doesn’t pull it on accident. He likes touching Yoongi, he sometimes takes the cords of his hoodie and plays with them while talking or draws flowers and pictures on his hands with a ballpoint pen, as if he doesn’t notice the goosebumps it’s giving him.

Yoongi dreams of how he saw him dancing in that pub weeks ago. He was sure that the boy wasn’t allowed to be in a pub, when he’s still in high school. He thinks of how he dances, ignoring people that tried to grind on him and all alone, as if he was there without anyone.

He dances like he’s lost in the music, not like he’s trying to ually harass someone’s eyes with obscene hip s or body rolls that he copies from idols.

He just dances.

Yoongi probably paid more attention back then than what he likes to admit.

◦◦◦

Namjoon is an and he gives Yoongi a CD with love songs for his birthday, as if he’s trying to . Both know though, that Yoongi is hopelessly in love and that Yoongi has a certain weakness for kitschy stuff and purple haired boys are only maybe the reason for that.

‘I’m Suga,’ he mutters but Namjoon laughs.

Because both know that Yoongi’s creative break, as he calls it, is not because he’s Suga.

‘Have you never written about your feelings before?’

‘You know my songs.’

Seokjin rolls his eyes at him.

‘I don’t mean your songs.’

‘Oh.’

‘Have you never written a love letter to your favorite teacher?’

‘Ew, get lost.’

Yoongi figures he needs to channel this stupid distraction that is lemon-tea-or-cinnamon-hot-chocolate-boy by writing about it, too, so he can get back to writing the real, Suga-worthy songs for his mixtape. He’s just bad at writing about it; he just doesn’t have any experience. He never really cared for anyone like that and he never really tried to write anything like that before, Suga or Yoongi.

Everything he writes still looks the same, everything he thinks of feels like it’s a snippet from some other song.

‘Feelings are .’

Namjoon snickers.

◦◦◦

‘Taehyung?’

The boy looks up and smiles.

‘You know my name?’

Yoongi sits down and puts a hand to his mouth.

‘You told me drunk, Monday,’ he whispers.

Taehyung buries his face in his hands. Yoongi reaches for his wrist and tugs a little, but he doesn’t pull his hands away because he doesn’t want to embarrass Taehyung even more.

‘I'm sorry.’

Yoongi should be working, but the shop is empty and that one other customer is handled by his coworker already, and he thinks that this is more important.

‘What else did I tell you?’

Taehyung takes his hands from his face and looks Yoongi in the eyes now, ‘I think I told you that I’m the weird kid, huh?’

Yoongi swallows.

‘I don’t think you’re weird.’

Taehyung laughs but it sounds bitter and Yoongi doesn’t like it at all, he’s smiling but it’s all nasty rain and piercing hail in his eyes and nothing like sunshine. ‘If you’re weird, I like you weird.’

‘That’s why I’m rather here during break. I’m not actually allowed to leave the school, but it’s not like anyone cares about where I am.’

He shrugs, but he looks sad and this conversation is heading into the wrong direction, because Taehyung’s lip is starting to shake like his hands and it’s raining, now, too.

Like the first time they talked, Yoongi thinks.

‘I care,’ he whispers and he can’t believe that he is actually saying this. But it’s true. He cares a lot. And he always misses Taehyung when he’s not here.

‘You know, I’m not the most popular,’ Taehyung mutters and it’s this other side of him, the side that Yoongi thinks Taehyung shows when he feels the most vulnerable. The ‘I don’t care’ side of him.

Yoongi takes Taehyung’s hand and rubs circles across the back of his hand, like Taehyung had done with him.

‘I know what you mean,’ he says. He knows it, because he’s been watching people and he’s reading them like books now. He knows it because Taehyung gets drunk in bars on his own, he spends his breaks in coffee shops, he starts to cry quietly when he’s usually chirpy and cheerful, because he grips a little too tightly on Yoongi’s hand.

‘I like everything about you,’ Yoongi says.

Taehyung’s eyes widen and he looks a little taken aback. And also a bit like a puppy.

‘What—’ He looks confused and a little hurt when Yoongi interrupts him. Please, please don’t reject me I spend too much time thinking about you.

‘Go on a date with me.’

The boy stares at him, hurt now not only in his wide eyes but across his entire face.

‘Are you making fun of me? Yoongi I…’

Taehyung tries to pull his hand out of Yoongi’s grip.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Yoongi mutters, thinking of his song.

The song that’s saved onto his hard drive, an external drive, a USB Stick and a CD so he won’t ever lose it. This silly song that he made for Taehyung. The silly, horrible song he made for Taehyung, that’s never going to be good enough because the lyrics are cheesy and because nothing will ever be good enough for him. Yoongi knows though, that Taehyung will be happy and if he thinks that it’s awful, he will still act like it’s the best song ever.

Because he always made Yoongi feel like he’s a thousand stars.