When does a relationship stop being exciting and turn into a burden? When does the person you want to see every day turn into someone you avoid? The affection you used to love turns into a burden you don’t want to feel. When does a lover turn into a parasite? Yoongi isn’t sure. Then again, he’s not sure of much these days.

 These final months of school, he loaths himself for jumping so quickly into a relationship he thought he wanted. “It’s better than being alone”, he thinks. “He’s kind of cute”, he thinks. “He’ll make the voices stop” The ones that linger in that back of his mind. They tell him he’s not good enough, not attractive enough, not interesting enough.

 Not enough.

 Not enough for him.

The person he tells himself he didn’t get into this relationship for when he knows he’s just lying to himself. He knows he joined this relationship to finally feel as though he was good enough, that he was loved, he just wanted someone to love and appreciate him, but he didn’t want this.

Their story is meant to be brief, no more than a few months together, that’s all they have, all he wanted.

Yoongi is not a romantic. Never claimed to be one. He calls him pumpkin, sugar, and sweetie and in return, Yoongi calls him nothing but names. Dork, loser – insults coated in affection he does not hold but that satisfy his lover. Because he is light, while Yoongi is the dark and they were never meant for each other he thinks, because Yoongi is too mean, too realistic, and he is too kind, too loving, too innocent.

But Yoongi isn’t cruel, he knows he deserves better. Knows he’ll be happier with someone who can love him and who isn’t afraid of affection. Someone who he didn’t start a relationship with under the agreement that this will be over in a few months, a pretense that you’re not good enough for me to wait for you, to fight for you. Because Yoongi is leaving, and he knows that no one can make him stay. Because Yoongi was never his to begin with, and perhaps it’s time for Yoongi to tell him. To explain the reason he joined this relationship. But to do so would kill him, Yoongi reasons, and he’s too good for Yoongi to tarnish. Too innocent for Yoongi to ruin his first love.

Yoongi can’t tell him, but he wants to. He hopes that he’ll be the one to leave him. That one day his lover will wake up and realize he can do so much better and he hopes that his lover will have the courage to end it. He thinks he does. After all, he’s everything Yoongi isn’t and Yoongi is a coward. Too scared to let go of someone who will never love him and too scared to accept the love of someone who does.

So he plays along, tries not to wince too hard when the affection becomes too much, doesn’t let himself show that he feels suffocated, that the voices never stopped, and he’s a great actor. His lover doesn’t suspect a thing.

So Yoongi will hold out for a few more months, until their choices tear them apart and Yoongi leaves for college, never to look back. Sometimes Yoongi wonders if perhaps he’s too old for the age he has, too cynical for a teenager. Other times he wonders if perhaps it’s him that is too young, too naïve, and too trusting.

Yoongi hopes that when he leaves, he doesn’t hurt him.

Because Jimin can never be Namjoon and Yoongi isn’t ready to accept that fact.