surprise! ^^

(it's my personal wish to put up a special chapter when the story reaches 50 subscribers so thank you!)

They say love is contagious – Jimin thinks perhaps it’s true.

Because when Jongin comes home with giddy skips in his steps and gleeful smile that could light up the whole town, Jimin could literally feel overwhelming emotion seeping into his heart, pulling the corners into a grin without further instruction from his brain.

(What brain knows about such thing as love, anyway?)

“HE SAID YES!” Jongin hollers, his voice trembles in excitement as he slumps Jimin down on the couch. “HE SAID YES, KYUNGSOO – HE – WE ARE BOYFRIENDS NOW!”

Jimin rubs his arms affectionately. “Congratulations! I told you to just confess, right? There’s no way he would say no to you.”

Not when Jimin has caught Kyungsoo staring at Jongin more than few times before, but Jimin knows better not to say anything beforehand.

Jongin nods, a look of realization clouds him for a while.

“We are boyfriends now…” he repeats, sounding as if he couldn’t believe himself. “I am dating Kyungsoo…”

Jimin laughs – Jongin looks so much like a lost puppy; it’s cute. “Yes, yes. Now go call your boyfriend and tells him you’re home already. He’ll worry himself sick if you don’t do that soon.”

Jongin leaps off the couch at once, panic stricken as he scrambles for his phone. “That’s right!” Jimin is granted a sheepish grin as Jongin makes his way to his room. “Good night, Jimin.”

“Good night, hyung.”

Jongin’s door is shut with a snap after a moment but Jimin’s smile is not slipping until much later because if there’s anything Jimin is good at for these two years, it’s being happy for other people.

Jimin has a confusing dream that night – he is staring at a cherry blossom tree in bloom, watching the pale petals twirl in the air by the spring breeze and there is a figure of a boy, indistinct but strangely familiar, leaning on the tree as his black, slightly curly hair dances along the wind. The tree reminds Jimin greatly of a big one at the back of his high school, but the balcony he is standing at smells sterile if anything – and silent with hushed whispers of adults instead of teenagers’ screams and shouts.

The dream is hazy and blurred in his mind when Jimin wakes up, but it gives him a longing feeling deep in the pit of his heart; the first but not unpleasant, he decides as he prepares for the day ahead.

(The longing feeling is perhaps responsible for the impromptu action of shoving the napkin pinned on his desk board into his jeans before leaving for work – but Jimin is not too sure; it could be just his conscious.

The longing feeling most probably is not the one driving him to call the number Sharpie-d on the napkin during lunch; it must be the sight of Jongin grabbing Kyungsoo’s hand to go out for a meal somewhere, leaving Jimin to eat alone for the first time.)

There are fifteen times he feels like hanging up while waiting for the call to be answered – Jimin has counted.

“Hello,” Yoongi’s voice sounds haste in apology, and cautious and curious at the same time, perhaps at the unknown number appearing on his screen.

“Hello, Yoongi-hyung,” Jimin is surprised at how his voice manages to come out clear when his heart is actually going twice the usual rate. “It’s Jimin.”

(“It’s your favourite Jiminnie.”)

There is a pause but Jimin knows Yoongi is still there because he can hear a slightly sharp intake of air on the line. He takes the time to wonder if Yoongi is even still expecting his call; it has been two years, after all. Perhaps he’s already seeing someone else, perhaps he has forgotten about Jimin at all, perhaps –

“Jiminnie.”

Perhaps he is still waiting.

“Is it okay to talk now?” Jimin treads the path carefully, berating himself on his lack of plan because he has no idea of what to say next. He should have just texted him instead.

“I’m on duty, but it’s lunch so it’s alright,” Yoongi makes it sound so casual Jimin is getting envious on how calm he is. “Though I can’t talk for long.”

“Then, I’ll just call la-”

 “I’ll be done at 5, though; so what about some coffee?”

Jimin should have not worried about anything.

(Yoongi is the kind of hyung that takes the wheel in every situations, after all – even when it’s Jimin’s feelings involved.

Especially when it’s Jimin’s feelings involved.)

Jimin has not been properly acquainted with Yoongi for around six years – four years of absence after Yoongi’s graduation and a brief stint when Taehyung was hospitalised before another two years of no contact – but when Yoongi enters the café in hurried long strides, his natural good look turning heads without much effort, Jimin feels like it hasn’t been that long.

“I’m sorry, there’s a last minute check-out – did you wait for long?”

Jimin gives out a smile and shakes his head, thinking how this is very much like a date when it is far from it.

A waitress comes to take their order; Jimin a latte, and a double shot espresso for Yoongi.

“I’ve been on-call since yesterday,” Yoongi explains when Jimin raises an eyebrow at his choice of drink. “I need that much caffeine to safely drive home.”

Yoongi says it so casually like it doesn’t matter much but Jimin is appalled.

“You should have said it,” he says, guilt striking, instant and pretty intense while at it. “We could meet some other time.”

“Do you think I would want to wait another day?”

That silences Jimin, taking away any words planned, any thoughts in his mind. It reminds him that it’s him who has agreed on this meeting, it’s him who has called Yoongi on a whim, it’s him who has had Yoongi waiting for two years.

The drinks come just in time to spare them some excuse for the stillness but between sips of the velvety coffee, Jimin could see for the first time of the day that Yoongi is tense. If his light but erratic drumming his fingers are doing on the table doesn’t give it away, it’s the way his lips is set straight and thin. Jimin remembers the look back when they were standing by for a match back in high school, he remembers how much he had wanted to hold the hand and pull the corners of the lips into a smile.

“How are you coping? They say the first two years are the hardest.”

Jimin couldn’t help but to be startled by the sudden question that seems to come from nowhere but he then realizes Yoongi’s eyes lingering on his left ring finger. He curls the fingers into a fist out of instinct – when there is no reason at all to hide the silver ring.

“Just fine, I guess.” Yes, just fine, because there’s nothing wrong with just fine. Crying yourselves to sleep every other night because you missed your dead boyfriend should be considered just fine, right? It is to Jimin, anyway. “You are sounding so much like a doctor now, hyung.”

Yoongi pulls a face. “I am a doctor – a fully qualified one now that I’ve completed my housemanship.”

“Oh,” Jimin marvels on the new information. “You’ve decided on a field, then?”

“Yeah, I’m taking paediatrics.”

Now, that surprises Jimin. The Yoongi he knows was casual and laid back at most, played around to certain limit but strictly drew a line on nonsense – he couldn’t really see such Yoongi dealing with kids. But perhaps the latter is a changed man now; Jimin would not know.

“That’s…”He struggles to find something inoffensive. “…surprising.”

Yoongi gives out a chuckle that sounds so familiar Jimin might have heard it all his life.

“I know,” the older man admits. “But I surprisingly did well at the department during the rotation. My supervisors say I have it in me to engage myself with the kids but I really think it’s just because I scare them into taking their meds.”

Jimin laughs at the thought and that’s when he catches himself and realizes that this is how it is supposed to be between them, catching up with easy banters of their daily lives. He wonders if they have reunited in a different situation – maybe in one where Taehyung were not died from cancer, and Yoongi were not his doctor and Jimin were simply seeing Yoongi as a senior from school he had a silly crush on.

(The odds, sadly, are not in Jimin’s favour.)

Jimin calls it a day when the sun has started to take a nice dip into the horizon, leaving a trail of orange glory that injects some recurring ache into his heart. He waives Yoongi’s offer to send him, insisting the doctor to return home and rest as soon as possible instead.

“Don’t feel bad about it,” Yoongi tells him for nth time of the day even though he knows Jimin would not have a word of it. “I still can get a full eight hours of sleep if I want to.”

“If you want to,” Jimin repeats, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, if I want to,” Yoongi nods to confirm. He stalls for a while, enjoying the annoyed look on Jimin’s face – one of those imprinted on the back of his mind, along with teasing club members’ merry faces. “Can I see you again?”

That catches Jimin off guard; the thought surprisingly has not re-entered his mind since the conversation flowed earlier – what would happen after today?

What is really there for them, anyway?

Jimin figures out that the beaten pavement won’t give him answers so he looks up, and his eyes catch the rays directly that he has to squint – there’s a flash of a merry, warm smile but when he opens his eyes, Yoongi is still expecting without one.

“Call me,” his voice sounds foreign to his ears but it also sounds so sure it surprises him. “When you’re not too busy; on your day-offs or something.”  

And Yoongi’s face breaks into such a smile that is almost as merry, and almost as warm.

“What about tonight, then?” Yoongi is back to his natural element, the nerve dissipating away. “It’s my night-off.”

Jimin scowls. “If you call tonight I won’t answer. Sleep.”

Yoongi laughs and reaches out to mess up Jimin’s hair.

“I get it.”

(“I got you.”)

That night Jimin finds himself scrolling on Taehyung’s abandoned Instagram. He starts from the first photo and realizes that despite the lack of his own face in the photos, Taehyung related almost everything to him in one way or another – and he tries to remember what’s behind those captions.

He fails to recall some but it reminds him how much Taehyung had loved him all over again.

universe;

let’s keep going forever

i have only you

Jimin stops for a while at the photo, raking his mind for any memory about it. He can’t recollect where that was, or what occasion it was on but he remembers perfectly how he turns around after the shot only to have Taehyung burying his nose onto the crook of his neck, a mass of orange hair blurring his sight.

He remembers laughing at the cheesiness of the caption when he saw it in his Instagram feed, he remembers posting a photo in response, captioned with ‘let’s keep going for the rest of our lives’.

He remembers how much in love they were – he was.

(He comes to remember a certain doctor and how perhaps he wants to be that much in love again.)

y ending is y but if anyone reads Another Step Forward they will understand how overwhelming are the photos Taehyung posted for me - the scenery are exactly what i wrote for the first paragraph of Another Step Forward!

speaking of Another Step Forward, i actually want to write some kid!baekhyun and parents!yoonmin but i'm like, 2 subs short lol 

(shameless author-nim is shameless)

hope you like this one, anyway - and thanks, thanks a lot for reading, subscribing and upvoting! xD