Seulgi’s been getting annoyed a lot recently.

Usually it’s the little things that get to her: a soccer game replacing her usual weekday drama, running out of milk for her cereal at the dorm, or not receiving a text she’s been expecting. She’s never been the type to let petty things like these affect her (otherwise she would have already exploded in the seven years she’d been through worse), but lately it seems like just about anything can get under her skin.

Vending machines in ten minutes.

Lately, it’s Park Jimin.

“A text, seriously?”

Five words that don’t even form an actual sentence, and the first she’s received in three days—of course she’s going to be annoyed. No, more than annoyed. She was absolutely pissed off, livid—

“Why are you smiling so widely?” Seungwan asks, taking a peek at her phone from over her shoulder. “Vending machines in ten…oh.” She smirks. “So he’s back at it again?”

Seulgi nods, feeling her cheeks go warm.

Aside from being annoyed, she’s also been feeling giddy lately. It happens in small bursts of excitement: their manager buying (and actually letting them eat) ice cream, a touching fan letter, or receiving a text or call when she least expects it. There’s a warm feeling that spreads throughout her chest, like coffee on a winter night.

On some days, the annoyance feels a lot heavier; other days, the excitement washes it away. Today, they come in equal measures. She might as well be bipolar at this point, Seulgi thinks.

Seungwan breaks through her thoughts with a poke to her shoulder. “So are you going or what?”

Seulgi hums pensively before tossing her phone onto the couch space beside her. “Probably not.”

“Wow.” The smaller girl settles down beside her, grabbing Seulgi’s phone and waving it around. “So are we just going to pretend that your face didn’t light up like a Christmas tree when you read his text? Why don’t you want to go?”

“Well it’s not like he specifically told me to go there. He hasn’t texted for days, who knows if he just sent it to me by accident?” Seulgi answers, looking down right after.

That was obviously a failed (and embarrassing) attempt at not sounding petty and she’s sure Seungwan knows it, because the girl laughs so loud that the other members and stylists across the room turn to stare at her. They only stop when she throws them a sheepish grin over her shoulder.

“Kang Seulgi!” She half-scolds, half-teases when she turns back to her. “Are you really still bitter about him not texting you for two days? The poor boy was probably working himself to the bone while practicing for their comeback. What matters is that his first text is basically saying he misses and wants to meet up with you!”

“Three days. He didn’t text for three days.” Seulgi mumbles. Trust Seungwan to be the one who knocks some sense and guilt into her. Still, she wasn’t going to let it go that easily. “And the text barely tells me anything! He just gave me a place and time.”

“Isn’t it more heart-fluttering that way, though? Vending machines in ten minutes,” Seungwan reads, wiggling her eyebrows and mimicking Jimin’s voice. Seulgi can’t help it—a giggle slips out. “Don’t lie! Your heart totally fluttered then, didn’t it? It’ll be even better when you actually see him. Now go! I’ll cover for you.”

“I think I’m good here, thanks.”

Seungwan clicks her tongue like a disapproving mother, a thing she only ever does when the two youngest members start misbehaving. “Oh quit being such a baby, Seul. This'll be a win-win for everyone! You can finally stop with your push and pull, and the rest of us won't have to be in the middle of that weird tension you two always have going on.” She gives Seulgi a gentle shove for good measure. “If you keep him waiting there, other idols are probably going to come approach him. Female idols, as usual.”

That gets Seulgi out of her seat. She grabs her phone and blanket. “I’m going.”

There’s a pat on her behind as she leaves. “Atta girl.”

---

Seulgi finds Jimin slumped against the side of one of the vending machines, his hair bright enough to have caught her eye as she turned the corner. Before the thought of turning back even crosses her mind, their eyes meet.

“Hi.” He says softly, almost timidly, while smiling at her.

“Hi,” Seulgi echoes as she crosses the space between them.

There’s an odd kind of silence that follows when she reaches him, somehow comfortable but shy. It’s been so long since they were face to face like this that Seulgi’s gotten used to just hearing his voice or seeing him through her phone screen—and that was before the three-day drought. Now that he’s actually here in front of her, she doesn’t quite know what to do.

“It’s, uh, it’s been a while.” She stutters out, narrowly avoiding saying she missed him (which she’s thankful for, because she’s not sure whether the kind of relationship they’re in right now warrants that; Seulgi hates the possibility that it might not.) She tries to think of other things to say, but the long monologue she’d been preparing while walking has long been forgotten. So instead, she settles for, “Have you eaten?”

Jimin’s smile grows at that, his eyes forming their usual crescent moons. Suddenly he seems more at ease, more confident, as he puts one hand on his chest like he’s been shot. “We haven’t seen each other in weeks and that’s what you want to ask me? I’m a little disappointed now.”

“I—what?” Seulgi asks, dumbfounded. Here he is, casually flirting with her like he hadn’t just disappeared off the face of the earth three days ago (which isn’t exactly true, because she saw updates about him on twitter that only served to make her miss him more) without a single text nor call. Really, she deserves to be even just the teensiest bit mad. But she’s not.

If she’s being completely honest, even the annoyance that was building up inside her on the way there vanished the moment she saw him. Maybe it was the bright, incredibly pink hair or the way his whole face lit up, the same way hers probably did, when he saw her. Maybe it was the bags under his eyes and the fatigue so evident on his face that just pulled at her heartstrings. Whatever the case, Seungwan was right: seeing him in person again is ten, no, a hundred times better than just reading a text or video-calling.

“Hello? Earth to Seulgi?” Jimin calls out as he pulls her out of her thoughts with a tug on her hands. “Don’t space out on me now, we’ve still got so much to do before the show starts.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” She asks, fully knowing where this conversation could lead to and catching Jimin off-guard with her sudden change in tone.

He doesn’t seem too surprised, though; flirting is a two-way street, after all, and they’ve travelled down this road one too many times before. “Like, you know, catching up…and stuff.”

“And stuff?” Seulgi raises her eyebrow, to which he responds with a groan. 

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, though?” Seulgi pouts. She hates acting cute, but it’s a small price to pay for seeing Jimin all riled up like this with his eyes darting from her eyes to her lips and back so quickly she would’ve missed the move if she wasn’t already expecting it. “Saying something is different from showing it.”

“Seulgi…” Jimin warns. She hadn’t even noticed his hands let go of hers until she felt them wrap around her waist.

Uh oh.

Seulgi knows she’s tiptoeing on the borders of dangerous territory right now. Their flirtatious little banters have only ever ended as just that: banter. Words that leave them with bright red cheeks and sometimes, when one of them feels daring enough to push past the boundaries of their comfort zone, a little hot and bothered. Things would never go beyond that; she doesn’t think either of them minds, anyway.

(Calling and texting each other almost every day, asking if the other’s eaten, and worrying if they haven’t. Flirting and holding hands and hugging—but never anything more. It’s weird, their relationship. She’s not quite sure how to describe it.

Friends moonlighting as lovers, or something like that.)

She reaches a hand out to play with his hair. It really is ridiculously pink, more so in real life than in the pictures he sent when he got it done. She twirls a strand around her finger, gently, for fear that it might break off from the damage done by all the bleach and hair dye. “You got it re-done,” she mumbles, more to herself than to him.

 “Yeah,” Jimin answers, just as distracted. His fingers ghost over the top of the blanket wrapped around her waist. “I think I have to get it re-dyed again, though, after promotions. Keeping the pink in is doing too much damage.”

“Hmm, that’s good,” she says.

Seulgi wonders if the mounting tension feels as heavy to him as it does to her. The air around them is so thick with it that she can’t even come up with a better reply to what he said. But what exactly were they talking about anyway? At this point, everything they say feels like an attempt to cool down the burning heat between them.

(None of it is working.)

Seulgi tears her eyes away him to focus on the black surface of the vending machine Jimin is—was leaning on. He had straightened up without her even realizing, probably around the time his hands settled themselves around her waist. She really should be paying more attention; just being here, practically hidden away from view in the shadows cast by the vending machines, is compromising enough for the two of them. They don’t need things to escalate any further than this.

Although, maybe what they need is different from what they want. Maybe she’s wrong and neither of them is really content with just this. Maybe the reason they’re stuck somewhere between platonic and romantic is because bringing up the actual topic would be too awkward for them, like they’re long past the stage of defining what ever this thing they have is that it would almost be embarrassing to backtrack.

But Seulgi doesn’t have time to entertain maybes right now, let alone what ifs. Partly because maybes don’t exist for idols like them, especially relationship maybes, but mostly because, currently, there are voices coming from the end of the hallway and approaching footsteps and all of a sudden she doesn’t even have time to think as she and Jimin share a look of pure panic.

He thankfully reacts quicker than she does and, in one swift motion, he has her with her back pressed against the side of the vending machine, their positions switched. He puts a finger to her lips—don’t make a sound—and starts to move from their hiding place. Jimin stops at the last minute, though, and Seulgi can only blink as he places a quick kiss on her forehead before he steps out completely.

“Jimin!” A female voice immediately calls. She recognizes it as one of the boys’ stylists. “There you are! The show’s about to start and we still have to style your hair, what’re you doing all the way here?”

“I, uh, was just thirsty so I went out,” he clumsily answers, hand rubbing his nape. “That’s all.”

“Oh, well okay then.”

A long pause. “So where is it?” another stylist asks.

“Where’s what?”

“The drink from the vending machine. I thought you were thirsty?”

“Oh,” Jimin says. Seulgi can practically see the lost look on his face. “Oh. I…I—no cash! I just realized that I don’t have any cash with me, so I’ll probably just drink from Tae’s water…or die of dehydration or something ha-ha.”

Oh my god. Seulgi has to bite her lips to keep herself from laughing. How is it possible that he’s even worse than her when it comes to lying? It’s both endearing and embarrassing to have to listen to him come up with an excuse, like, she doesn’t know if she wants to clamp a hand over or squish his cheeks. Maybe both.

“An-y-way, we should, um, go back now, right?”

“I guess we should, now that we’ve found you.” One of the women says. It’s obvious from her tone that they’re not at all buying whatever it is Jimin’s awkwardly trying to sell them. Who would, honestly? “Ah, wait, what’s that over there? By the vending machine. A towel?”

Seulgi freezes, looks down to see that her blanket had fallen from her waist to her feet, a part of it peeking out from where she’s hiding. It must’ve come off when Jimin had spun her around without either of them noticing.

Oops.

She contemplates just kicking the damn thing, but the stylists would definitely notice. Maybe she should just make a run for it? No, the hallway leads to a dead end; she’d have to pass by the others and she’s pretty sure she’s not fast enough to go by without them recognizing who she is (plus red velvet’s stylist does have a knack for choosing the most absurd, eye-catching stage costumes.)

Jimin’s loud voice stops her mid-thought. “It’s mine!”

“It is?”

The stylists are definitely not convinced, but Jimin kneels down and grabs her blanket anyway. “Yup. I must’ve dropped it without realizing. Silly me.”

“Since when did you start carrying blankets around?”

“Since recently,” he answers right away. Seulgi sees him glance at her direction before he turns back with a small smile she can’t quite read. “This…this is a special blanket. My absolute favorite, too. Definitely can’t lose this, you know?”

“Jimin…“ one of them says warily.

But Jimin just flashes them a grin and puts his arms around their shoulders. “Well what are we still standing here for? Let’s go back and get my hair styled!” 

“But—“

“C’mon! Off we go!”

The protests of the stylist eventually get softer and softer, until Jimin has successfully dragged them out of earshot and away from her. Still, Seulgi doesn’t move from her place. On one hand, she absolutely can’t believe Jimin managed to pull that off, albeit barely. His lies were so bad, the only plausible reason she can think of as to why the stylists dropped the subject is because Jimin is just that cute. The pink hair definitely helped—it made him look extra adorable. There’s nothing that proves otherwise.

On the other hand…on the other hand, did Jimin really just refer to her as a blanket?

“Ah, really…” Seulgi mumbles, but there’s a familiar warmth that blooms on her cheeks. Special, absolute favorite, can’t lose—whose heart wouldn’t flutter at those words? She still has no clue what their relationship is, but it’s gotten clearer. It somehow feels like they’ve taken a step forward. It’s a small one, a baby step even, but it’s progress, she thinks.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket. She smiles when she sees who the text is from, and rolls her eyes once she reads what it actually says. “So annoying.”

(From: pjm

I hope you’re not expecting this blanket back anytime soon.)

And that's it! Ahh, I'm such seulmin trash and I just wanted to write a cute oneshot of them being in a some, so forgive me if this isn't all that great. I actually don't know where I was going with this, but I hope I can make better seulmin (or seulgi x another bts member) oneshots next time. Please comment any suggestions or what you thought of this hehe.