All Yoongi wants is closure. To know how he sees him. He likes him, and if circumstances were different, if he was different then he would want to be his and no one else’s.

But Yoongi's not different. He is sad, ruined and tired of living. He is anxious, cautious and petrified of things that don't make sense to him. He pretends he is confident, but he avoids mirrors, skips meals, and cries when he tries on clothes.

He is broken, and Jimin is refreshingly happy and optimistic. And he would ruin that, not on purpose but that is how their story would end.

Jimin would wake up one day and look in the mirror and wonder how he became the person staring back at him. It will happen slowly, and neither of them will realize until it’s too late.

Yoongi is toxic, and he refuses to change him. Jimin makes him forget how much he hates himself. Yoongi can’t lose him, He doesn’t want to make him cold.

Yoongi doesn’t want to have the conversation where he has to explain to him that he is not who Jimin sees him as. That he is very good at disguising who he is when he's alone.

Yoongi is the kind of boy who loves to wear floods because he can’t afford a new pair of jeans. He can’t look Jimin in the eye, not until he asks him out after months of close to borderline stalking. Sweaty palms, a crack in his voice. Don’t say no, because he knows Jimin wants to. Yoongi knows Jimin’s friends are snickering about it in some corner but he also knows that Jimin likes the way he is kind and gentle and quite even if he won’t admit it, even he was introduced to Jimin’s parents as a friend for the first five months of their relationship. Jimin is real, and he is here, and Yoongi is asking him to dinner from behind a greasy mop of hair. Yes, Jimin says, he will go.

Yoongi loves to pick Jimin up late in a car with chipped paint, but apologies fall off his tongue like rain from the sky. Genuine apologies. He takes him to a place way off the grid, some total dive. Jimin orders the pasta carbonara, and Yoongi smiles with all of his teeth when Jimin tells him it’s the best damn food he ever had. Jimin says sweet things, funny things and Yoongi forget that he’s weirdo boy. Lonely boy. Sad boy. When Yoongi says he likes him, has liked him for so long now, Jimin tells him he might be starting to feel the same way. Might. But when Jimin kisses him, just barely ing kisses him, his insides scream at the sudden rightness.

Jimin asks him why he never talks about his family, and Yoongi tells him all of the gory details. The fighting. The drinking. The divorce. And Jimin holds him until he forgets where Jimin’s limbs end and his begin. Eventually, into the skin of his neck, Jimin will tell him that he loves him. Yoongi won’t say it back, but he’ll pull Jimin close. He loses his shirt somehow then the rest of his clothes and then his mind. It’s painful and awkward and wonderful before it becomes something more. Much more. And when Jimin let himself relax, arching into Yoongi’s touch, it’s very nearly everything.

Jimin wasn’t a sunrise, he wasn’t a beautiful piece in a museum, he wasn’t the ocean on the first warm day of the year, but somehow Yoongi couldn’t take his eyes off him. Jimin's eyes weren’t like the sky in the morning but rather like a galaxy and all its stars. Jimin's smile didn’t remind him of warmth, it reminded him that there was good in this world, and maybe all of it was only inside of Jimin. The way Jimin looked at him didn’t only make him feel loved, it made Yoongi want to push everyone else that ever looked at him away because they weren’t worth it when Jimin wasn't there. Jimin wasn’t a sunrise. He wasn’t a beautiful piece in a museum. He wasn’t the ocean. Jimin was everything— the whole universe in one person.

Yoongi is an idiot, he knows. He pushes Jimin aside when he needs space. He let him break without trying to fit him back into place like a puzzle. And when everything falls apart, Jimin is the only thing he knows how to destroy. He with dark eyes and bad hair and the strongest arms is supposed to stay by Jimin’s side through anything but he asked him to leave, rip Jimin’s hands from his waist and edges him towards the door, Jimin goes. Even though Yoongi wishes he wouldn’t. Even though he doesn’t know why he is doing this. Jimin goes. Because Jimin knows that the Yoongi who loves him is kind and gentle and quite, but he is an idiot.

Yoongi sat on the rooftop floor with broken stars in his eyes and burnt promises on his tongue, and he told him, “Your life would be so much easier without me.” So Jimin sat by his side, close enough that their arms and hips and legs touched, and he said, “But not better.”

"Do you regret it?”

“What?“

“I don’t know.“ Jimin's voice shook. “Everything.”

Yoongi was quiet for a long moment. Heat flooded Jimin's cheeks. He opened his mouth to tell him to forget he asked, but finally Yoongi said, “Just because we didn’t work out doesn’t mean you weren’t the best thing that ever happened to me. Because you were.”

"Yeah,“ Jimin said with glistening eyes. "You, too.

“I don’t think we were supposed to love each other,” Yoongi said.

“But we did, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi said. A draft rolled through the sky, and Jimin's scent flooded him. For a long while, as long as he possibly could, he held his breath, keeping him there within his veins. Flour and warm bread and honey, it was like flipping through an old photo book and hearing a song his parents listened to before he knew how to walk away. Comfortable, familiar, and then all at once, frightening because it used to be his. Because he’d give anything to have it back. “Always will, I think,” The wind faded, and he let himself breath again, air untouched by Jimin's skin. Pale, quiet air.

“Stuff like that doesn’t just disappear, you know?” Jimin said.

And he knew. Of course, he knew. When Yoongi looks back at him, sweaty palms, a nervous crack in his voice, he still remembers everything. Jimin called him sweetheart and babe when he was feeling especially affectionate and his full name when he is angry. And even though it’s over, Jimin will be the only boy who holds Yoongi’s heart in his hands, feels it beat and breath without possession or power but a reverence he still struggles to understand.

Do you ever wonder what might have happened?” Yoongi asked and Jimin lifted his eyes to him. "If we’d given it another shot, you mean?“ 

For a moment, Jimin was silent. The ring on his finger felt heavy as if its only job was to tether him to the ground. He traced the diamond and nodded. “Yeah, of course.”

“Me, too,” Yoongi said. “All the time.”

But neither one moved and regret quickly shimmied itself into space between them. Because even though the words should change everything, all they did was settle into the pits of their stomachs and remind them of what they could never have.

Yoongi presses against the idea of love like gravity pull him to earth. And he’ll bury himself in Jimin's warmth, but only for now. For the night.

Everything about them was electric. From the moment they met, it was like falling through the sky. Topsy turvy and clutching hands and flipping stomachs. They touched each other like they might never have another night, tip-toeing around words like forever. They only understood this moment, that moment. Here, now. But they called it love, and those moments never drifted too far.

Electric. Late nights and lonely souls that smoked with them in silence and skin that screamed for more and more and more. But mouths that screamed, too. At one another because Jimin looked at him for too long, and commitment was a word Yoongi never understood. Screaming for more and more and more. More than this and that and here and now. Blood rushing from their hearts to their heads as they fell and fell and fell through the sky. Love, they called it. As if a four letter word could keep them from crashing. But it took them a long time to realize that love isn’t falling. Or crashing. Or electric. It isn’t uncertainty and pain and being so scared Yoongi forget why he jumped in the first place. No, love isn’t falling at all; it's landing.