20. Of Cigarettes and Slow Burns

Pairing: Yoonseul [Seulgi x Suga]

Inspiration: Officially Missing You | Tamia

(listen to it if you can while reading, it does make a difference)

Concept: Ordinary

"You don't even smoke," he heard her say faintly from across the room. 

Yoongi slowly lifted his eyes to see Seulgi looking back at him with a tired, almost lousy expression. She seemed like she was about to fall asleep by any minute now and he could understand: she was never good at fighting the heat. As soon as he opened the window to let the air inside the room, Seulgi decided it was the perfect time to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. It was summer, she didn't have anything else to do but to annoy him and he didn't mind. 

"If you want to kill us both with this intoxicated stick, it better be for a good reason."

"Artistic purposes," Yoongi mumbled as he continued to scribble down some words on an old sheet of paper. He wasn't even sure if he liked what he was writing, more dissatisfied with his work than he would admit, he continued to write until he would reach the limit of pure disgust and shame and throw the paper away along with his frivolous emotions. 

"Smoking has never been romantic," Seulgi claimed. "Except on Tumbler because lung cancer seems to be inspiring."

"Don't start quoting The Fault in our Stars now, please. Don't," he sighed. He saw it coming.

"It's a metaphor," she grinned.

He didn't find it funny, nor in the slightest entertaining but he let it slide because it was Seulgi and they were different. He couldn't change her, nor her terrible jokes and strange taste for dramatic novels and she couldn't change him nor his attraction for things that were bad for him like cigarettes and her own self.

"Have you decided which city you wanted to go to yet?" he asked her after a slight pause. Yoongi took the burning cigarette with his lean fingers, hesitated to put it between his lips as Seulgi watched him intently and decided to wait a bit more before inhaling the scent by putting it down again. It was wrong but he liked the scent of cigarettes burning, not exactly smoking. He knew how bad it was for him, Seulgi always told him the smoke was just as bad as directly smoking the cigarette but he couldn't help it. He was attracted to things that would kill him softly.

"I'm going where you are," Seulgi answered nonchalantly. "They said I can continue working not too far from here under some conditions but I can also request to work somewhere else." 

Seulgi was working in an art gallery as a museum technician during her studies of fine arts but she was promoted to curator as she finally finished her master's degree. Everyone in the village was proud of her and Yoongi was the first one to be ecstatic, especially when he knew how hard she worked to get where she was, but he also knew what this new job implied. He would see her even less than he already did, she would be too busy to come all the way here and phone calls would be the only way to stop feeling her absence. And he hated phone calls. If there was something he loved the most, it was her voice but he would never have enough of her through a machine.

It was obvious, he didn't need to ask.

"You can't just decide like that."

"Why is that?"

"You cannot make your decisions based on other people's decisions," Yoongi said. "It doesn't work like that. Just imagine, I know it might sound crazy but imagine you don't want what I want."

Seulgi blinked twice and pursed her lips before turning away to look at the sun setting in the tiny window of Yoongi's bedroom.

"We are individuals, we are born alone and we—"

"Yes,