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"Please, wait!"
Yoongi's never been the athletic one.
He's panting lightly as he runs (jogs) across the polished linoleum floor, tugging his face mask further up his nose. Men in business suits cast him looks as he skids through the revolving doors and speeds towards the double elevators, a tight hand on his leather jacket, head ducking down to avoid curious eyes.
God, city traffic will be the fucking end of him.
Thankfully, the elevator doors stay open, presumably because of whoever was holding the door inside. It spills white light into the lift lobby floor, as he skids round the wall, slowing down as he nears the halted doors.
He sucks in a breath, lungs rattling against his chest.
"Thank yo-"
It's only now that he looks up, shaking blond hair out of his eyes. (His heart beats harshly into his ribcage for a different reason, now.)
His breath falters in his throat, his lungs deciding to give up on him the very second -- his exhale clings on into the sides of his throat for dear life.
Six months, three weeks and two days later, he doesn't look like he's changed a bit.
(That's a lie. His hair's been dyed a steady black. His face a little thinner, wearing clothes Yoongi doesn't recognize. But his eyes, his eyes have stayed the same. Brown and deep and dark and -- and blank, Yoongi's suddenly reminded of the last time he'd looked at him.)
(Brown and deep and dark and blank. He hasn't changed, not one bit.)
"You can always take the next lift," he says. Eyes flickering down to his finger, pushed against the open button.
(God, his voice. Yoongi had always told him how much he loved his voice.)
As if in response to his words, the lift begins to beep, rhythmic and loud and cutting into his throat. Yoongi is silent, silent before his hand tightens around his bag and he steps into the lift, moving back until his spine hits the wall. (Jimin stays by the buttons, finger releasing from the metal as the doors begin to slide shut.)
The silence is deafening. Yoongi lets go of his breath, shaky and dissipating into the air between them.
He stares. (He can't help it, he'd never been able to stop staring.) Jimin stares down at his hands, trimmed black hair feathering over the back of his neck. There's a jacket draped over his shoulders, some overpriced brand that Yoongi skipped in the pages of airplane magazines.
Something lodges itself in his throat, and he tears his eyes away from the curve of his spine. (Fuck you, Min Yoongi. Not now, never now.)
He focuses on the door. Focuses on the time, the fact that he's two minutes late to his meeting with some producer from overboard. At his reflection in the metal, at his stupid leather jacket and the stupid brand printed into his jeans and his stupid fucking face mask. (He looks small, miniscule, sinking into the back wall of the lift.)
Overhead, a loud noise rocks the small space, metallic and harsh, spreading fingers over the metal.
It's silent for a moment, before everything stops.
Really, it's only the lift that's stopped. But that means that he's stuck, they're stuck, stuck in six months of radio silence and words they wished they could take back and this stupid fucking elevator, what the fuck --
A click, too loud in the saturated silence.
Everything goes dark.
"Fuck," is what he decides to say, the word shoved out of his mouth as everything finally comes to a still.
He doesn't get a reply. Shoving his hand into his pockets, he fumbles for his phone. (He doesn't realize his palms are trembling, not until he drops it and it makes a harsh noise against the silver floor.)
He breathes. "Jimin?"
(Jimin, Jimin had always been terrified of the dark. Perhaps odd for a twenty-two year-old, but he'd always hated it. Hated not being able to see him in the dark, hated going to sleep in their bed for two alone.)
(Yoongi, Yoongi had left him in the dark, anyway.)
"Jimin? I -- I'm right here, okay?" He says, in an attempt to dissuade his fears. He thinks about Jimin fearing him, even over the absence of light, and he has to take in a ragged breath to push back the ocean pooling in his eyes.
He hears Jimin make a noise, almost like a scoff. It comes out shaky, broken.
"Finally, huh? Should've told me all it took was a malfunctioning lift."
It hurts more than it should. (It's been six months. Yoongi wonders if it'll ever stop hurting.)
He presses his lips into a line and gets on his knees. Shuffling around a little, hands spreading against the cold, glossed tile until they contact the solid shape of his phone.
"This is so shit."
Jimin speaks up again -- voice weak, quiet in the absence of light. Yoongi can barely make out his silhouette, blinking to make shapes form out of black and blue.
He tries to laugh. It comes out broken, catching in his throat.
He swallows, and turns his phone on. The light hurts his eyes for a second, almost blinding as he fumbles with the password and finds the flashlight.
Jimin is in the corner. Pressed against the wall, hand gripping the bars. Yoongi is met with the sight of his shoes, from where he crouches on the floor.
He trails his eyes up, something thick and sour creeping up his jaw. The light from his phone glints off the other's eyes, browns glimmering in the dark.
He can't recognize the expression on Jimin's face. It's blank and perhaps, perhaps the younger is trying to ice it cold but it's hurt, it swirls with hurt and fear and something else Yoongi can't place.
(He'd always been shit at reading people, but never Jimin.)
He stands, turning to the buttons by the door and using his phone to illuminate the phone number pressed into the metal, so he doesn't have to see Jimin watch him with that look in his eyes anymore. The dark-haired male shifts away to make space for him, as he types the numbers out and hits call.
"Hello?" His voice seems too loud for this silence. He clears his throat.
"We're -- we're stuck in the elevator. The lights are off, and it's -- stopped. How long would it take to --" he pauses, staring down at his shoes as the lady on the other side of the phone begins to rattle off a series of protocol.
"Twenty minutes," he croaks out, when he hangs up the phone and it falls back limply into his palm.
"Told you you should've taken the other lift," Jimin says wearily. Stares at a spot on the floor and fiddles with his fingers, linked over his lower stomach.
"But then you would've been in here alone," Yoongi blurts out.
Jimin's response hits him like cold water in the face.
"Wouldn't have been the first time," he mumbles. Chuckles humorlessly, raises a hand and runs it through his hair like he'd always used to.
Yoongi's chest twists. It stings, clawing blunt nails into his gut.
"I'm sorry."
Jimin purses his lips, exhaling through his nose. "I know."
It's silent again. Yoongi stands awkwardly in the middle of the lift until he decides to shuffle back, leaning against the opposite wall, hand moving to tear the black mask from his face.
It's Jimin who speaks up, after a while.
"How have you been?"
The question comes out quiet, hesitant. He's worrying at his bottom lip, plush and pink. (Yoongi can see it from where he stands. He exhales.)
"I don't know," he says honestly. (He doesn't. Half a year has passed by and Yoongi has been swept up in this whirlwind of everything he doesn't think he wants anymore.)
A noise leaves Jimin's throat. A breath, out his nose.
"Does your girlfriend treat you well?"
Yoongi's eyebrows wrinkle, and the other continues.
"You're lucky. Su-Ran's very pretty." He's staring at the ground as it says it, a tremor in his breath as he leans back into the wall.
"She's not my girlfriend," Yoongi blurts out. "We just -- worked on a song together. The reporters don't know shit."
Jimin's eyes pull from the tip of his shoe to meet his, flickering and luminescent in the light pooling from his phone. He stays silent, and so they both do, for a while.
"I've been shit," Jimin says finally. He shrugs with the sentence. (It feels like angry hands fisted in the collar of his shirt.) "Lost my job because I was taking too many days off."
"Oh," Yoongi breathes. Tightens his hand around the handlebar and swallows.
God -- he misses him so much.
Jimin stands in front of him, a mere metre or two between their stuttering chests but he's so far away. There's walls of silence and regret, built up in this small space of metal and rope -- and it hurts.
(Yoongi wonders if Jimin knows, knows that he still haunts his dreams at night.)
(He wonders, if Jimin will ever know how much he still hates himself for not loving him when he'd had the chance to.)
(Then, he wonders if he even cares, now.)
He wants to take Jimin's face in his hands. His shoulders in his arms, wants to feel the warmth of his skin against his palms.
(He can't, he'd lost that privilege that night.)
"I heard your song," Jimin says quietly. Slides his back down against the wall until he's sitting on the floor, knees pulled to his chest. Absentmindedly, Yoongi acknowledges the fact that he's probably going to lose the deal with the producer, if going by how tardy he is.
He crumples that thought up into a ball and throws it in the corner. It makes the metal clang, but he can't bring himself to care.
(He'd lost the love of his life to that. To the stupid fucking part of him that dedicated all he had to work. He won't let it take anything else from him again.)
"I--"
"It wasn't just your fault, Yoongi."
Jimin's voice is fragile, his name like quiet fingertips on his tongue.
Yoongi, Yoongi hasn't let anyone see him cry -- not in months, but hearing his name on Jimin's lips feels like hands creeping down his throat, squeezing at his lungs.
"Even -- Even I had to admit that to myself," the dark-haired male says softly, cracks running across the surface of his voice. "We both fucked up."
Yoongi drops his phone down to the floor, backside down so the stream of light warms up the floor, and everything else goes dark again. He inhales, the air trembling down his windpipe, and raises hands to scrub at his eyes.
"What were we arguing about again?" He says weakly, after he manages to get his breathing in control and he thinks he can speak without the words getting clogged up in his throat. There's a huff of a laugh in his voice, sadder than any laugh should sound.
"I don't know," Jimin mumbles into the space beneath his kneecaps, raising his head to trace Yoongi's face in the dark. There's a melancholic lift of his lips, the hint of a sad, muted laugh in his voice. "Laundry, or something. Can't fucking remember."
Yoongi hates what they've become. Hates that it took city traffic and a shitty lift to get them to talk again, hates that they're sitting on the floor, in the dark. Hates that Jimin's right in front of him but he's still too far away, hates that Jimin's barely metres away and Yoongi misses him, so damn much. He hates that he's here instead of next to him, and he fucking hates that he can't say any of that out loud.
(The day Jimin had left, the day everything'd collapsed into itself like a house of cards and he'd cleared Yoongi's drawer of his things, Yoongi -- Yoongi had crumbled too.)
(He'd cried for hours. Sat on his too-big bed and threw his phone across the room, squeezed his lungs dry until he was choking on his breath, hands fisted in his own hair. It'd been stupid, perhaps, fucking stupid, that he'd thought it was better that way. That now, he wouldn't be able to hurt Jimin any longer.)
("That's stupid, hyung," Hoseok had cut in, a frown knitting his eyebrows together. "You two are good for each other. So good. What the fuck, that's the most ridiculous thing I've heard this year.")
(Yoongi, Yoongi had regretted not running after him, that night. It makes a home in his dreams every night, a stubborn phantom dragging nails down his neck.)
"I miss you," he says out loud. Pulls his legs to his chest with shaking arms, inhales and clings to his breath. "I miss you so fucking much, Minie."
His voice cracks on his name.
Jimin is silent. Yoongi can see him swallow from where he sits, black hair hanging into his face.
He keeps going, because he doesn't know what he can do anymore.
"It -- It hurts so fucking much I can't breathe, and I know -- I know that I caused this in the first place but --" he inhales around the growing lump in his throat. "Fuck. I love you so fucking much, I don't think I'll ever be able to stop -- and I know saying this won't change anything and you probably hate me and I fucking deserve it, but I--" he's shaking now, vines fisted into his chest and squeezing the breath out of his lungs. "I wish we weren't like this."
"You make me so -- selfish, y'know," he sniffs, voice wrecked as he pulls his hands to his face, fingers rubbing at his eyes. "I know you're better off without me, but --" he huffs out a choked laugh, face twisting in the dark as something squeezes in his gut again. "I'm sorry I want you back. I hope you -- I hope you find someone who loves you right, yeah?" He says, lips bitten raw, eyes ringed red.
His phone decides to ring, now, a notification about his low battery. "Fuck you," he says wetly at the device, face crumpling as he pulls his phone apart with trembling hands, leaving the phone uncased, battery warm against the floor.
It's silent, again. He can hear Jimin breathe, shaky and loud in the dark. The younger shoves a hand into his pocket, pulling his own phone out. (The same model, the same phonecase.) Light floods from it as he turns his flashlight settings on.
"You still love me?"
The question comes out in his quiet, wavering voice. Yoongi releases a breath, pulling his hands from his face and letting them hang miserably over his knees.
"Was I supposed to stop?"
His reply is almost incredulous.
"Fuck you," Jimin is saying now, pulling his legs closer to him, shoulders beginning to tremble. It comes before any of them expects, a choked sob drawing from his throat, Yoongi's metaphorical fingertips dug into the noise. Yoongi thinks he might start crying again, too.
Fuck this, honestly. City traffic is the worst.
"You don't -- You don't get to come back and do this, Yoongi," Jimin says wetly, muffled into his palms. Yoongi wants to reach out, pull him into his arms, anything.
"I know," the elder replies, the words breaking in his throat. "I'm sorry."
His flashlight glints on the chain hanging from his neck.
"I -- I tried to hate you. Six months, Yoongi." He chokes, damp eyes meeting his in the dark. "I don't think I can."
Yoongi inhales. Dips a hand into his throat, pushes past the bloody mess in his chest. Wraps fingers around the pulsating organ that's fallen into his stomach, and pulls it back up, up to where it belongs. (In the curves of Jimin's palms.)
"Can we -- Can we try this again?"
Jimin moves a hand, pushing his hair back. The skin pulled around his cheeks is flushed a frantic crimson, bleeding into his lips, his nose, the space around his eyes.
"Tae's going to be so mad at me," he chokes out a laugh, weak against the roof of his mouth.
Yoongi's crawling over the floor before he knows it, abandoning his stupid phone on the floor and the stupid producers on the other side of the door.
He breathes.
"Is that a yes?"
"Last chance," Jimin sniffs, voice dropping to a quiet as Yoongi comes to a slow before him, rubbing the red from his own eyes.
His hands come to grasp Jimin's. (He'd always had the habit of holding his hands before he kissed him.) It's a touch he's missed for too long. It's startling, almost.
It looks -- right. They look right together.
He lifts a hand up, then both. Fingers curling around damp, reddened cheeks, trembling, as if holding glass.
It's almost scared. Hesitant, the press of rose-petal lips against Jimin's plush ones. Yoongi thinks he might stop breathing.
He pulls away.
"I love you," Jimin says wetly, honestly. His hands wrapped around Yoongi's wrists, moving to press into his shoulders, fisting in the fabric of his jacket. Yoongi's vision blurs. Jimin's pulling him back in, pushing his salt-stained mouth against his trembling lips.
Something swells behind his ribcage, full and saturated and bright, spilling amber out of his throat.
The lights overhead flicker on.
His eyelids lift, lift to trace the bridge of Jimin's nose, follow the flutter of his eyelashes. He's staring back at him now, black hair falling past his brows, reddened lips parted, something quiet and tender in the glimmer of his eyes.
The lift begins to shift with a creak, slow in dragging the two of them upwards once more.
"Where are you going?" He asks, mumbling as he presses his lips to the space above Jimin's eyes, his cheekbones, the dip of his cupid's bow.
"Job interview," Jimin answers, breath warm against his cheek as his fingers curl around the nape of his neck. Yoongi draws back, the pads of his thumbs rubbing the tear tracks running down his face dry.
"What a coincidence," he says, a huff of a laugh leaving his nose. "Me too." The corner of Jimin's lips curls upwards, softly.
The lift begins to slow again, as they reach Jimin's stop.
"You didn't change your number, right?" The younger asks, hands loosening around his shirt, eyes flickering across his face, brushing his blond hair back.
"No," Yoongi mumbles, exhaling as the lift dings and he moves to grab his phone again, a hand still tangled with Jimin's. They stand, and he's suddenly aware that they now both look like a mess, reddened eyes and tear-smeared cheeks and swollen cheeks.
He can't really bring himself to care.
"I'll call you," Jimin says now. Something hesitant flickers across his face, something that Yoongi wishes he could breathe away. "You better pick up, Min Yoongi."
"I will," the blond squeezes his hand, tender in bumping their foreheads together. The elevator doors swing open. "I promise."
(Yoongi will end up being the first to call, something soft and strong in his voice as he asks Jimin out, all over again.)
(Jimin will say yes, just like the first time.)
The black-haired male steps out of the elevator now, hand squeezing, untangling from his.
This time, Jimin leaves with tears dried, with a kiss for later.
(Six months, three weeks and two days later, Yoongi comes home.)