Quite the pair, aren’t we?

Yoongi knows that 2AM is an ungodly hour to be trying to make music. Hell, it’s an ungodly hour to be anything but asleep, if you asked him.

Yet here he is, wide awake in his studio at precisely that time, listening to the same track over and over to the point that he thinks he might actually go insane. The fact that he’s already gotten Namjoon’s entire English rap memorized is probably an obvious enough sign that he should just give up, unless he wants to see if even Jungkook’s breathing patterns get committed into his damn memory. They probably already are.

He curses under his breath. Yoongi just wants to sleep. Maybe fall into a coma, if he’s desperate enough.

It’s not like he isn’t used to staying up late like this. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t gotten decent sleep since debuting—since training, even—but they just got back from touring and he had stupidly thought black coffee would fight off the jet lag and get him settled back into Korea’s time zone faster. It didn’t.

Now he’s wide awake at two o’clock in the ing morning when all he wants to do is get some shut eye, and even working in the studio like usual isn’t enough to keep the boredom at bay. The lack of sleep has pretty much erased all possibilities of coming up with any decent lyrics, so that means he’s stuck with absolutely nothing to do until the caffeine wears off.

(He’s convinced the world hates him.)

Yoongi reaches for his phone. Usually, when he can’t sleep and during the rare times when even making music fails to entertain him, he’d watch videos. Gag show clips, those foreign videos Jungkook always laughs at—he’d watch anything just to keep his mind occupied. Lately, though, he finds it taken over by something else entirely. Someone, actually.

He starts scrolling through his messages. It’s become a force of habit, looking for that someone in his contacts. Mom, Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Jung Hoseok—he pauses at the fifth one.

Kang Seulgi

She’s just above their manager now, and above the younger ones, too. Yoongi’s not quite sure how and when that happened. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t even remember the exact details of when they first met (just that Taehyung must’ve had something to do with it) or when they started getting close enough to exchange numbers and text and call. It just…happened. Now she’s his fifth most contacted person.

What a turn of events, he thinks, pressing his thumb to his phone screen.

The last text between them was sent four days ago. He had been telling her about his messed up body clock: how he’s sure he won’t be getting any sleep when they fly back and how he can practically feel the circles under his eyes getting bigger already. It wasn’t like he was hoping for a particular reply; he was expecting a little sympathy at most. She could’ve sent him a dog sticker that said ‘aww’ and he honestly wouldn’t have minded. The whole thing was just another excuse to talk to her, anyway.

Still, she replied with something straight out of his dreams:

just call me when you can’t sleep, then, the text read.

It came seconds—around fifteen, but who’s counting?—after he had sent her a whole paragraph of angry, sleep-related rants. Naturally, Yoongi found it hard to believe it was real. He still does.

His only conclusion is that she must’ve texted it back without thinking.

She couldn’t have known it would affect him like this. He hasn’t been that obvious, has he? The members all say he’d be the most obvious when it comes to relationships (not that he and Seulgi are in one), so he’s been putting in extra effort to look unaffected whenever his phone rings or when they meet backstage at music shows. It’s worked so far. Seokjin’s the only one who’s noticed anything, but they’re roommates so he would be surprised if the older boy hadn’t caught on at this point.

Seokjin didn’t have a lot of advice to give, anyway. He didn’t have any at all. (“I never thought the day you’d pine over a girl group member would come. I feel kind of relieved, somehow.”) But it did make Yoongi feel better, finally admitting it to someone. Up until then, the feeling of longing—pining, according to Seokjin—made his whole body feel heavy, like weights were attached to his limbs. It was almost lonely. Saying it out loud helped a lot.

Now all that’s left is admitting it to Kang Seulgi herself.

“Hah,” he scoffs into the empty studio, his free hand rubbing his chest in an attempt to ease the ache building inside him. How could he even think of doing such a thing? Pining for the rest of his life might be the lesser of two evils. Drinking ten cups of black coffee and not sleeping for a month or two would hurt less than the obvious, inevitable rejection, but maybe that’s just his pessimism talking.

Speaking of coffee, the damn caffeine still hasn’t worn off. He’s even more awake now than when he drank it, thoughts all melting into one another, nerves alive and tingling. Despite feeling like he’s been lost in his thoughts for over a decade, the reality is that it’s still only 2:09 AM and he’s still got nothing to do except to just call her already (which he really, really wants to do.)

And so, against his better judgment and before he can stop himself, he does.

She’s probably not even awake, Yoongi thinks as he listens with his thumb already poised over the screen, ready to end the call. Maybe he’ll only end up bothering her. Maybe she’ll get up hours from now, see the missed call, and think, what the ? Except she wouldn’t swear, not even in her head. Seulgi hates swearing. If she had it her way, swearing would be illegal. It’s ing adorable. Anyway—

He’s already listing down possible excuses in his head for later today when the ringing stops.

“Hello?”

Yoongi opens his mouth, then closes it again. He hadn’t expected her to pick up. Not at this hour, when everyone in Korea should be sleeping in bed. It’s two in the goddamn morning, for ’s sake.

“Hello?” She calls out again, louder this time. “Yoongi? You there?”

“Yeah!” He grimaces at how cheery he sounds for such a ridiculous hour, his own voice sounding foreign to his ears. He clears his throat. “Hi. Uh, why are you still up?”

There’s a shuffle on he