(p.s. thank you for subscribes and comments! and, you guys know that these will be all stand-alone one-shots right?)

[~997w; cliché, overused plot of high school au that I apparently am too much comfortable writing about.]

Jimin just wants somebody to love. Life would be much easier if he doesn’t choose to fall, head over heel, to the ice frozen cold of a basketball player two years his senior.

“You are so pathetic,” Jungkook has said in between the sips of his apple juice. “You should learn to let go.”

“Yes, let it go!” quips Kim Taehyung, nodding fervently, eyes lighting up as he thinks of something. “Let it go because he’s practically ice cold frozen? You geddit? Let it go – because he’s frozen?

Jimin smacks his best friend’s head. “That’s lame. Shut up.”

Taehyung blubbers on how it is not lame at all and Jimin tunes him out over Jungkook’s snickers. No time should be spared on the lame entirety of Kim Taehyung when Min Yoongi is dribbling lightly two floor down at the old basketball court at the back of the school, providing much more entertainment for his lunch than his friends could ever.

“Maybe I should join the basketball club.”

To this, Jungkook actually splutters off his apple juice. Taehyung proceeds to thump his back like Jungkook has chocked on a bone.

“Park Jimin, do you even know how to dribble?” Jungkook asks incredulously.

Jimin fidgets, lips turning pouty. “It could not be that hard. I am always quick in picking something up.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes as he swats at Taehyung to stop smacking his back. “Basketball is not maths.”

Jimin wants to argue that he has not planned to tackle basketball like he wins in mathematics, and reminds Jungkook that if Jimin has not been excelling in mathematics, Jungkook would not stand a chance to actually get into high school, and he should mind his words if he wants Jimin to continue to help him through another three years – but he also knows Jungkook has a point.

He has read a couple volumes of Taehyung’s collection of Slam Dunk before but none of the complicated rules really stick in, and he doesn’t know how to dribble; he doesn’t even play those basketball throwing games in arcades – but he is getting desperate.

Min Yoongi is graduating next spring and Jimin has less than a year to make the senior at least know his existence.

“Maybe they have courses for beginners,” Jimin muses, spelling out the desperation in neon colours but these are just Jungkook and Taehyung, anyway – all inhibitions have long been wiped off by their years of friendship.

“Or maybe you should just find someone else to have a crush on,” Jungkook counters. “You just wants to find a boyfriend, it’s your high school goal or something. There are plenty of choice, it doesn’t have to be him. Hoseok-hyung from my dance club is nice. I can introduce you.”

Jungkook offering help is as rare as four-leaved clovers, that Jimin actually feels like, wow, is he really that pathetic. True, it doesn’t have to be Yoongi. Yoongi is out of reach, anyway; a third year who walks around with his stoic expression as a default, with few select friends that are all up to par with his position as the captain of school basketball team. The first time Jimin has let it out that he has a crush on the Min Yoongi, Jungkook and Taehyung has laughed for a total fifteen minutes before proceeding to tell Jimin that they don’t match at all, that they are like oil and water, moon and sun, and hip hop and ballad and whatever epitomes of opposite they have managed to think of.

That is where they don’t understand.

Min Yoongi intrigues Jimin.

All his life, Jimin has been around the people like him, like Jungkook, and like Taehyung – who laugh at the silliest thing, who do the silliest of things, who live off being silly. Yoongi, on the other hand, moves with such graceful airs around him. Jimin has seen him grin, yes, and chuckles at the things his friends are saying, when they pass at the hallway.

Jimin often wonders what would make Yoongi really smiles, because he thinks Yoongi would have the most beautiful eye smile there is. At night, before he goes to sleep, he imagines how to make Yoongi laugh – out loud.

“Or maybe,” Taehyung finally stops munching after his third burger. “Maybe you could try another way to get his attention.”

“Like what?” Jimin asks suspiciously; Taehyung is not as ruthless as Jungkook but much more reckless and deserves all the suspicion in the world.

Taehyung stuffs the last of his burger into his mouth and let the wrapping crumples into his fist. Jimin misses the way Jungkook hides his snicker when Taehyung pulls him up, eyes bewildered in confusion.

So confused that he doesn’t realize that Taehyung is sliding the window open, and Jungkook’s snicker has notched up to a merry giggle – and the next thing he knows, Taehyung is yelling down to Yoongi.

“Min Yoongi-sunbaenim!”

That surely catches the senior’s attention, for he is looking up now, to them, and that’s when Jimin’s fight-or-flight instinct come kicking in, favouring the latter, but Taehyung has an iron grip on his upper arm.

“This is my friend Park Jimin! He likes you and he knows nothing about basketball and he is wondering if he can comes down and you can teach him a thing or two?”

Jimin is so close to pushing Taehyung down, if only Yoongi is not there. He also considers jumping down, but then Yoongi is there.

“Come down, then!”

That should not be coming from Yoongi, because Yoongi should not be asking him to come down – but Jimin could pick Yoongi’s voice out among the hallway’s noise every single time, and there is no mistake in it.

Taehyung nudges him excitedly, but it’s the slight yet noticeable upturn on Yoongi’s thin lips that give strength into Jimin’s otherwise wobbly legs.

Yoongi is smiling, amidst Taehyung and Jimin’s laughs, Yoongi is actually smiling, at him and because of him, and Jimin thinks of it as a good start as he races down the nearest stairs, not without hurling threats to Taehyung, a thanks hidden somewhere in the string of names he calls his best friend.