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joonary · 4 years

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maybe so (i.) | myg

↳ summary: when yoongi asks you on one fake date to save him from family embarrassment, he really isn’t expecting you to say yes. or to the next one. or to come with him on the goddamn trip back home for spring break. either you’re a really good liar, or maybe, just maybe this was growing to become more than what it was.

alternatively: how do you fake date someone you’re already in love with without being obvious about how you feel?

↳ genre: fluff; humor; fake dating au; min yoongi x reader

↳ rating: pg-13

↳ warnings: light alcohol consumption; mention of food poisoning; petty family drama (and resounding self-deprecation and spite); i’m pretty sure that’s it for this chapter

↳ word count: 13k

↳ a/n: this fic may have been giving me brain damage for three weeks straight, but it’s my baby so that’s okay. this is quite possibly the most self-indulgent thing that i’ve ever written but enjoy! if you’re looking for music to listen to accompanying this fic, i highly recommend the entirety of niki’s wanna take this downtown ep, as it inspired various aspects of this fic! stay safe and wash your hands!!!!

↳ PART ONE | PART TWO (finale)

If Yoongi’s current reality were categorized into a film genre on Netflix, it would most definitely be a drama. One of those overly-exaggerated, cheesy Korean dramas that his younger sister was terminally addicted to watching, sans the whirlwind romance that makes all of the tribulations worth it.

For starters, Min Yoongi is running late to his own impromptu family birthday dinner, which definitely was not even his fault. He did not have control over the impulsivity of his headass of a roommate, Park Jimin, and he definitely didn’t anticipate that aforementioned headass would impulse dye his hair hot pink and subsequently clog the only bathroom sink in their shared apartment from further use. How he managed to do that was a mystery for another day.

Yoongi did, however, have control over the accidental twenty-minutes-turned-

three-hour-long nap he took. It happened like this: he got back to the apartment after class around 10AM, then received a text from Jimin forewarning him that a plumber was coming at 11 to fix the sink. After that ordeal was finished, Yoongi flopped down on the couch and decided to take a quick nap under the warrant that he deserved it for having to deal with Park fucking Jimin every single day of the week. Also because he drank a little too much at dinner with Jungkook and Hoseok last night and was awarded with a headache in the morning as a shitty consolation trophy, but that detail wasn't important.

The only thing remotely important right now was Yoongi’s untied left shoe that was holding onto his foot for dear life as he sprints down the entrance stairway into the web of the metro system. He’s certain he looks downright comedical with the way he hurriedly scans his card and busts ass to get to the train platform. Perhaps if he were an anime character, he’d have those white dashes around him to denote that he was moving at a near-inhuman speed.

The train shouldn’t take more than twenty-five minutes to get to Koreatown despite it being on the other side of the city, but then again, Yoongi should know better than to think that luck was ever in his favor. There was a delay, for God knows what reason, that fills Yoongi with dread from where he stands with his hand hooked around the railing as the notification passes through the intercom.

Was it straight two blocks then make a left? Or was it left two blocks then a right turn? God, he really should have at least looked it up on Google Maps during the train ride—it would have at least lessened his rapidly increasing stupidity stats, albeit by a fractional amount. He stopped to ask a girl for directions, and even though she gave him the easiest route to the kbbq restaurant in question, she scanned his disheveled state with a look of mild confusion and maybe a hint of concern. Oh well. It’s not like he was going to be seeing her around any time soon.

When Yoongi gets to the front of the restaurant, he knows he’s in the right place, not just because of the gigantic sign that says HOME KBBQ across it in fluorescent blue lighting, but because of the familiar head of brown hair that belonged to none other than his lanky dork of a younger brother. Namjoon hasn’t yet noticed his brother’s arrival, much less acknowledged it, far too occupied in the contents of his phone screen.

Yoongi’s manic wheezing seems to have finally caught the younger boy’s attention, causing his gaze to snap away from the screen and a wide dimpled grin to spread across his face. “Hyung! Happy late birthday!”

Yoongi’s still too busy trying to catch his breath, resting his hands on his knees like the heathen he is, no matter how many people tell him specifically not to do so when out of breath. “Thanks. Is Mom mad I’m late?”

The grin on Namjoon’s face doesn’t falter. “Oh, everyone’s pissed. That’s why they made me wait out here for you haha. But it’s okay because you’re here now! Wipe the drool off the corner of your mouth though.” He slaps Yoongi’s shoulder in the annoying-younger-sibling-way before walking past him to hold open the door.

“After you, birthday boy.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Look who decided to show up,” his mother says with an exaggerated sigh as Yoongi appears, Namjoon following immediately behind. He’s guilty, definitely, but getting called out immediately doesn’t exactly make him feel any better about it.

A “nice to see you” or “wow! I haven’t seen you since winter break nearly three months ago!” would have sufficed, perhaps even a belated birthday wish like Namjoon, he thinks to himself, but who was he kidding, this was his family he was dealing with. No such thing as civil salutations existed as far as the Mins were concerned.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, to which he gets no response. The rest of the table’s greetings all ring in that same tone of general disappointment and agitation, despite the “Happy Birthdays” that are said monotonously by each family member as he goes around the table to greet them. (Except for his cousin Seokjin, who actually stands up and gives him a pseudo-bro hug and a tacky Hallmark birthday card.)

There’s a grand total of nine people at the table: from the seats on Yoongi’s left all the way around to his right sits Ryujin, Seokjin and his girlfriend, his father, Namjoon, his grandmother, his maternal aunt and uncle (otherwise known as Seokjin’s parents), and his mother. And with himself makes ten. The tables at this restaurant are homey to the point where it’s suffocating, everyone’s elbows practically touching one another’s.

Regardless, everyone resumes eating, the conversation stirring up once again when Ryujin mentions how much she absolutely despises her AP Microeconomics teacher and everyone in the class. “That’s life,” their aunt speaks, warning tone in her voice. “You can’t expect to learn in an environment that you enjoy being in. That’s how you get lazy.” Yoongi disagrees silently.

Here’s the thing: Yoongi was never very fond of his aunt Kim Eunjung, and quite frankly, the feeling was not one-sided. She thought that Yoongi was too stubborn and indecisive to ever amount to any form of success in his life. Yoongi thought she was sickeningly traditional to the point where she was practically breathing down the necks of the entire second generation of the family (there’s a reason why Seokjin is the way he is, unfortunately). It was like a symbiotic relationship of general disdain masked by familial politeness.

Apparently she could fucking read minds too, because the second Yoongi’s disdainful thoughts formulate in his head, she’s already looking at him with a direct attack ready. Yoongi acts indifferent to what he knows is about to come, taking a sip of his water through the provided paper straw.

“What about you? You’re so skinny, Yoongi,” she points out with a wrinkle of her nose, sounding more annoyed than genuinely concerned about his health. “Do you even eat anything?”

“Yoongi, I’ve been telling you to stop skipping meals,” his mom points out, disappointment ringing through the way her metal chopsticks clang against her rice bowl. “We don’t pay for your dorm and meal plan for you to only eat one bowl of cereal every three days. That doesn’t count as eating.” Will his parents ever let him live down the fact that there’s an agreement between them and him for them to pay for his tuition? No. Never.

“I eat,” he replies earnestly, but nobody’s fooled. He can’t say that either of them are wrong on this argument. The last thing he recalls eating was a granola bar that Jimin had tons of stashed in their shared room. And that was, like, at four in the morning yesterday.

His dad lets out a heavy guffaw from across the table, patting Namjoon on the shoulder in a manner that makes the boy almost choke on his samgyeopsal. “Keep that up and you’ll never get a girlfriend. Isn’t that the new thing? Aren’t girls into the ‘swole’ guys these days, huh Ryujinnie?” he adds, turning to Yoongi’s sister.

“Dad, please never say the word ‘swole’ ever again.”

Eunjung looks amused as well, but if the quirk in her brow was any indication, it’s not because she thinks that her brother-in-law’s attempts to use millennial terminology is amusing. Oh no, this was much worse.

“Our Yoongi? With a girlfriend? It’s hard to believe that’s even possible considering how he is. Especially with his hair dyed that horrible red color.” Eunjung’s words are just backhanded enough not to be rude—perhaps even enough so to be played off as a joke, yet the implication of them holds such malice that it hurts a Yoongi’s pride a little.

You see, there’s an uncanny valley that sits right between “Yoongi disagreeing with his family members because they’re wrong and their viewpoint is scalding and narrow-minded” and “Yoongi disagreeing with his family members because he’s young, dumb, and needs to be taught a life lesson out of this”.

Yoongi doesn’t know where he is on that spectrum at all right now, but quite frankly he doesn’t care right now. As the saying goes: pride comes before the fall.

“Actually, I do.” Wait, what?

Yoongi has absolutely no idea where that came from. He was never a compulsive liar, save for when playing Uno with his friends, but still, he’s never told a lie of this caliber before. In front of half his family, no less. Even though it’s a solid lie, he can’t help but feel triumphed by the shock that falls across the table. It doesn’t last long, questions beginning to roll in.

“What?”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“No way!” (That one comes from Ryujin, to absolutely nobody’s surprise.)

But Eunjung’s question is the only one that Yoongi chooses to answer. “How long have you had this girlfriend of yours?”

“Five months.” There’s no rhyme or reason to his answer—it was legitimately the first number to come to mind.

Eunjung laughs exaggeratedly, head thrown back and eyes wiping away faux-tears, as if this new finding wasn’t believable in any way, shape, or form. The sheer condescension makes Yoongi’s blood boil, despite the fact that, you know, she was right. “So what you’re saying is that you’ve been in a serious relationship for almost half a year and you just decided not to tell anyone?”

“Yes,” he answers, refusing to break eye contact.

“And why is that, hm?” she pries, and Yoongi tells himself that she’s only being especially pretentious tonight because she’s beyond drunk. It’s the only thing conclusion he can conjure up to prevent himself from saying anything so disrespectful that he’d get disowned by the entirety of his family, cursed for the next four decades, and not to mention, dishonor on his cow.

“I just… didn’t wanna jinx it. I didn’t want to bring her around everyone too soon in case things went south and it became awkward for all of us,” he explains, a little scared of how easily the lie comes out of his mouth. The grave he’s digging himself only gets deeper, but Yoongi feels like his hands are glued to the shovel at this point.

Eunjung looks surprisingly satisfied with his answer, but there’s no way she wouldn’t be able to find something to interject, something else about him that she could nit-pick at. That’s just not her. Her mouth quirks up at the corner, as if Yoongi has just read her mind. “When are we going to meet her?”

However, she doesn’t get the chance to hear the boy’s answer, as Yoongi’s mother finally deems it time to put an end to the interrogation she had just witnessed her eldest son go through. “Unnie, I haven’t even heard about this girl before. We need more time to just let this sink in. Besides, it’s getting late, and we both know we all have a long way home from here.” Despite just saving Yoongi’s ass from the impending trial, his mother shoots him a small glare in reference to his late attendance despite being geographically closest to the damn restaurant in the first place. That’s motherly love for you.

After a ten minute debacle starting and ending with Seokjin insisting that he picks up the tab, everyone finally leaves the restaurant—and the conversation—behind.

Waving off his relatives goodbye, the only ones left congregating outside the restaurant alongside Yoongi are his siblings and his parents.

Yoongi walks them to their car, where the SUV sits parked aside a meter that’s already run past its two-hour time by forty minutes. Had the dinner really gone on for that long?

“Hyung, don’t leave yet,” Namjoon says, holding up his hands as if he were a crossing guard as a preventative measure in case his brother decided to just take off. “I got you a birthday present.” He tugs at the door the instant his dad unlocks it with the telltale click and flash of lights inside. It’s not like Yoongi could just scram anyways, despite the fact that it seemed incredibly appealing with the way this evening went.

So he watches as Namjoon fumbles and nearly hits him in the face with the door, pulling out a small and poorly-wrapped box that’s no bigger than the size of his palm. Yoongi can only imagine the laugh that the younger boy had with himself whilst wrapping such a small box as neatly as he could muster.

Ryujin rounds the back of the car, plopping a significantly larger (and much, much better wrapped) box into his arms as well. “You don’t have to open them right now,” she declares, and Yoongi isn’t sure if it’s for his benefit or her’s. She probably has hours of AP homework waiting for her on top of the hour and a half car ride home.

“Thank you,” he replies as he tugs them both into a stiff hug. Being genuinely affectionate towards his siblings will never not be awkward for him to do. Does he love them? Sure. But can he say it out loud, or express it in any way that wasn’t him just silently caring for them or downright insulting them? Absolutely not. And it wasn’t one of those I’m-edgy-and-hate-letting-people-know-I-care sort of things. That just wasn’t how having siblings worked.

He hugs his parents goodbye before they too get into the car, with yet another thank you for dinner and a promise that he’ll make time to visit soon. And that’s the end of the wildest birthday dinner I’ve ever had in my twenty-two years of life, he thinks to himself, more in disbelief than with mirth as he begins to turn to leave in the direction of the metro station.

“Yoongi.” He stops and turns back slowly, like the voice of his mother would stab straight through him if he made any sudden moves. “Yes?”

Window rolled down, the head of black hair belonging to his mother juts out enough for her to lean forward and speak to him. “Your girlfriend. When were you planning on telling us?”

“Oh,” he says with a swallow. It wasn’t over yet.

It takes him a little longer to think of a response, now that this is when his words will actually count and error will not get lost in the initial shock. He contemplates what his reasoning would be had this been real and not just a spite-fueled fabrication.

(He also contemplates coming clean, but decides against it simply because of how embarrassing and downright pathetic it would sound coming out of his mouth, not to mention the fact that he did so just to get everyone off his back about it. Yoongi’s pride > integrity—apparently that was the moral of tonight’s story.)

“I swear, I was going to tell you guys soon. But we both agreed that winter break might’ve been a little bit too soon for her to meet you, and same with me for her family. And then the beginning of this semester has just been really rough on both of us; in fact, we’ve barely spent any time together at all. And I don’t know, I thought maybe we were starting to lose interest in each other or something.”

It’s a very plausible sob story—despite Yoongi’s distaste for forcing sympathy—and although his mother generally hates it when he complains about how “difficult” his life is as the average middle-class student at a decent university, she accepts it. Thank every unknown deity out there that she does, because Yoongi doesn’t think he could pull any more false information out of his ass for the rest of his life.

“But do you still want to be with her?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, and if any of his friends were here right now, they’d probably burst out laughing at the fact that there literally is no “her” and this entire thing is just on-the-spot bullshit that he’s spouting out like a water fountain. The thought makes Yoongi kind of want to die of embarrassment. “I do.”

Now that he thinks of it, this is actually perfect. You know, since all he had to do now was make up a break-up story in a couple weeks and the whole thing will blow over. Sure, he’ll have to face the scrutiny of fucking up his “relationship” for a while, but—

“So we should meet her then.” What.

“What?”

His mom is unaware of the panic in his eyes, the flush in his face looking more like a side effect of the cold and the pure unadulterated fear in his eyes masked by the dim street lights above him.

“Meet her,” she replies, like it’s that simple. Well, it is, when you have an actual girlfriend to make these plans with. “Next Wednesday night your father and I don’t have anything planned. If you’re both trying to make things work, the only thing you can do is take the next step.”

“I… guess you’re right. We’ll try to make it.” Oh God, what was he supposed to do now?

“Trying isn’t enough, Yoongi,” his mother warns. It’s something that he already knows from years of her ingraining it into his brain—starting with when he missed a note during his first piano recital, to when he didn’t make the varsity basketball team as a freshman in high school, to when he didn’t get into the university his parents wanted him to, to now. He knows it, yet that damn barrier between doing his best and succeeding has always been nearly impossible for him to break through.

“Relationships take work. All things do. You have to be there.” She’s undeniably correct, and Yoongi is positively screwed. Then she waves her hand at him the way that you would when an insect comes too close and you’d like it to go away. “Go home, Yoongi. It’s getting late.” It’s been getting late, he thinks to himself. You’re the one who prolonged this conversation.

“Okay,” is what he says instead. “Drive safe. Text me when you get home.” It’s something he always tells her to do, but she never does.

“Speaking of,” she adds. Yoongi fidgets, feet are starting to go numb from standing in the cold. “Can you come home tomorrow to drop off your car? Ryujin finally got her permit and she needs to start practicing for her driver’s test. You don’t even drive that often anyways, and it’s not like Namjoon has any skills or even a car for her to borrow.”

(“Ouch,” Namjoon cries indignantly as ever from the back seat.)

“Okay,” he agrees again, no ifs, buts, or whys to add to it. Yoongi takes really good care of his 2013 Honda Civic, and it’s really fucking hard for him to entrust his younger sister with it considering that she lacks experience and could very easily destroy its current near-perfect condition that he’s prided himself in maintaining. But Yoongi complies, because he’s already given his mother enough aneurysms this evening for a decade, and he didn’t need to add this to the list of reasons why he’s a pain in her ass.

“Mhm,” she offers with a tight-lipped smile to accommodate it. “Go home.” Again, it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t already settled into the dinky and stiff leather seats of the red-line train back to his campus. She rolls up the window without a formal goodbye.

His dad starts the engine back up again, the car finally pulling it out of its place on the curb. If Yoongi squints, he can see the vague outline of Namjoon giving him a wave from the tinted window of the back seat.

Min Yoongi is incomprehensibly, impetuously, and irrevocably stupid. And those were only the words starting with ‘i’.

If he were writing a lab report, that would be his claim, and his data that follows would be taken directly from the events of tonight. Granted, you could probably pull half a million other moments of idiotic embarrassment from any period of time in his life, but this incident genuinely takes the cake.

And so Yoongi does what anyone does at the first instance of trouble: he messages his best friend.

(No, not Jimin. He’s already out cold by the time that Yoongi gets back to their apartment anyways, and even if he were awake, he would most definitely not be the first person he’d turn to for advice.)

[12:54am] yoongi: wake up

[12:54am] yoongi: we have a problem

[read 12:55am]

He’s in the middle of typing out another message—something blithe and bitter because it’s been well over eight minutes since she’s read his message and still hasn’t responded—when his screen is suddenly taken over by an abhorrent low-angle meme image of none other than Kang Seulgi herself, the message on the screen happily reading out, “seulgi 🥳 would like to FaceTime…”.

Unfortunately for Yoongi, his heathen of a best friend preferred FaceTime over any other medium of digital communication. Sure, it was a good option for long-winded stories or for when he’s alone and face-to-face communication seems appealing. But at its worst, it was inconvenient when he was a) trying to be discreet about who he was talking to or the contents of the conversation, or b) when he was too damn tired to actually speak, leaving typing using only his thumbs to be the more appealing approach.

(Not that either of those were an issue right now; he was definitely alone and was too adrenaline-induced to even get to his threshold of exhaustion.)

When Yoongi begrudgingly accepts the FaceTime call, he is immediately greeted with the sight of Seulgi’s sheet mask-clad face, dark hair tucked back into a bun behind her Kakao Friends Ryan headband. There’s no greetings, no preface to the scolding that she’s already ready to deliver. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “It’s Friday. That’s self care night.”

Yoongi glances at the time glowing in the upper corner of his screen. “Technically it’s Saturday. And what happened to ‘Sundays are self-care nights’ and ‘Wednesdays are also self-care nights’?”

“Fuck off. Not everybody can get perfect skin just by inhaling particles in the air the way that you do.”

“It’s called drinking water, Seulgi.” She rolls her eyes.

Yoongi sighs, feeling the need to fidget. He drags his hand through his maroon-tinted hair—a bad habit that he attributes to being roommates with Jimin for far too long and unintentionally picking up his shitty quirks.

“So are you gonna tell me what happened, or is this just another self-wallowing party where I just sit here and watch? C’mon, I could be doing a hundred other things right now than seeing you sulk, à la Twitch streamer,” Seulgi comments annoyingly, leaning unsettlingly close to the camera until her eyes took up a vast majority of Yoongi’s phone screen.

Yoongi takes a breath. “Okay, so at dinner I accidentally told my parents that I have a girlfriend and have had one since November of last year because they kept clowning me over being undateable. Then they asked why I haven’t even mentioned her at all before, so now they wanna meet her next week. I’m so fucked, what do I do now?” Holy shit, that sounds a lot worse when you say it out loud.

Knowing Seulgi for well over ten years of his life makes Yoongi damn-near telekinetic when it comes to gauging how she would react to any information presented to her. This notion is only reinforced by the way that she, as expected, lets out a painful-sounding wheeze and doubles over laughing (at least, to the best of her ability, as the sheet mask on her face is inhibiting the full range of emotion she has to show). “Stop! This isn’t supposed to be funny! I am your best friend in an embarrassingly real crisis!”

“What I wanna know,” Seulgi lets out between fits of laughter. “Is how you even managed to convince anyone of that. We all know you’re a shitty liar, and your romantic history isn’t even existent enough for that story to be backed up. Plus your family can read people like their skulls are made of glass. They’re terrifying.”

Yoongi ticks. “Fuck off, I’m a good actor. If I weren’t already majoring in architecture, I would probably have a lead role in a K-Drama by now.”

Seulgi composes herself enough to roll her eyes. “Yeah, because your performance as the fifth dwarf in the fourth grade production of Snow White was absolutely phenomenal.”

“Look,” Yoongi says, leaning closer. “You know how adament my family is when it comes to making plans with them—there’s no way I’m getting out of this. It’s only one date, but, I mean, it’s not like I have people lined up in my contact list for the spot of a believable date.”

Seulgi fans at her face, the acidity of her face mask starting to sting. “That’s very true,” she muses. The confirmation doesn’t help whatsoever. “And it’s not like you can bring me, because they already know me and hate me on top of that. There has to be some girl that we’re close enough friends with to ask her, right? Hey—how about Soojin?”

“Uh, you mean the one that asked for my number at the beginning of the semester, then proceeded to ghost me when I texted her to study for midterms together? Yeah, no.”

Seulgi opens her mouth again. “And don’t suggest Sihyeon next, because you know how bad that blind date went and I am not doing that again,” Yoongi warns. She closes her mouth. There’s a daft silence as both are left contemplating.

There’s still Y/N, Yoongi reminds himself, but it’s a thought he does not want to bring to light, especially to Seulgi.

There were a plethora of different adjectives that Yoongi could use to describe you, but even using just that as a measure to describe you didn't seem to be able to do you any justice. You were witty and charming in all the best ways, and you were one of the only people Yoongi has ever met that was capable of making him tongue-tied. Sure, you were friends and you actually talked quite frequently, but that still didn’t stop his brain from turning into putty at every interaction. To put it shortly, Yoongi had a fat crush on you.

And for that reason precisely, there was no way he could ask you to fake date him.

Wait. It had grown oddly quiet, the sound of Seulgi’s voice no longer being white noise to Yoongi’s muddy thoughts. He directs his focus back to the FaceTime screen, only to be greeted by a cheshire cat-like grin decorating the girl’s face. He had no idea what she’d been rambling about while he was thinking, but after ten years of friendship, Yoongi has become classically conditioned enough to know that the smile plastered across her face was not a good sign.

“Easy solution. Ask Y/N,” she says, like it’s the easiest damn thing in the world. But she knows. While Yoongi refused to tell her anything directly, Seulgi could tell from the way he got nervous around you that the way he saw you was more than just platonic. The only downfall was that you were completely oblivious to how he felt, making every interaction between the two of you almost painful to watch. Seulgi really wonders most days if she was just born to be a magnet for dumbasses.

“...which Y/N?” he asks, stalling for time, as if he meets someone named Y/N—as if he meets someone like you—every goddamn day. Seulgi doesn’t spare him much more than a few seconds. “You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

“No,” Yoongi protests. “I can’t do that—”

“Why not?” She doesn’t need the answer to know she’s won. Checkmate, bitch.

“Dude, I swear these face masks never fit over my gigantic forehead, how do you do this all the time—oh! Hey Yoongi!”

How could Yoongi possibly forget that you and Seulgi were roommates? You pad across the room towards Seulgi’s desk, leaning down with a wave, a face mask identical to Seulgi’s covering your own face (all due respect to Seulgi, but Yoongi thinks you look a hell of a lot cuter with it on than she does).

“Hey!” he responds, and immediately regrets it because he sounds a hell of a lot more enthusiastic than he does on a regular day.

“Perfect timing, because Yoongi was just about to ask you something!” Seulgi says as she clasps her hands together innocently, you know, like the shithead she is. Because if there was anyone who loved to exploit Yoongi for all of his weaknesses (especially when it came to you), it was his own goddamn best friend.

“Oh really?” you ask, attentively looking towards the camera with a slight tilt of your head. “What’s up?”

Yoongi’s mouth runs dry. Now what?

Your face softens as you catch onto the unexpectedness that flashes in his eyes. “Hey, it’s fine if you don’t wanna talk right now. You can tell me tomorrow at Jungkook’s, right? I’m gonna go make coffee, so you and Seulgi can go back to talking about whatever it is you were talking about. Hah.” The laugh you tack onto the end feels a little forced.

“See you tomorrow,” he mumbles, looking down.

Seulgi watches as you leave, only turning back around once she’s certain that you’ve left the room. “You are so whipped.”

“Am not!” Yoongi whines, despite the fact that she was very much right. “You put me on the spot! I didn’t even plan on what I was going to say!”

“You and your plans my ass!” she exclaims. “You’re a total chicken!” Yoongi scrambles to turn down his phone’s volume to prevent waking up his roommate.

“All I’m saying is that if you’re not ever planning on asking her out on a real date, then you might as well just play pretend, right?” Seulgi acknowledges. “Isn’t that easier and, like, not to mention, an opportunity for you guys to get closer? I mean, it’s not like I’m an expert on this kind of stuff. After all, I'm just a girl, who also happens to have experience with asking girls out.”

Yoongi considers his options. Yes, pretending to date someone is probably a lot easier than actually asking someone out formally. Yes, this would be an opportunity for you and him to be closer as friends (emphasis on friends), and not to mention a horrible debacle for you two to look back on five or six years and think “Damn, remember that time when you and me fake dated because you lied to your parents! That was quite the time to be alive!”. Yes, he did like you, and he wanted to be closer to you, but this was probably not the best way to go about that.

Plus there was one factor that was unavoidable and, up until this point, not considered: Yoongi is a shitty liar. It’s up for debate on whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing considering it was you, someone who he very much currently had feelings for, and the fact that the entire relationship would be fabricated, meaning more lies. And there’s the fact that doing so would require you to meet his parents. He’d have to have less than two-fifths of a brain cell to not know that that would be asking too much of you. Yoongi’s on the verge of flatlining.

“No,” Yoongi decides, sealing his fate. “It’s a stupid idea and we are definitely not going to go through with it.”

This was a stupid idea, yet here Yoongi was, decidedly going through with it.

Here’s the thing: Yoongi genuinely did not believe there was an abundance of things that were even remotely dateable about himself—sure, he can build Ikea furniture decently, he’s an architecture major (great for impressing parents), and he has too many damn hoodies and t-shirts to let people borrow without even realizing if they ever give it back. But other than that, nothing. At least, not enough for him to be deemed Boyfriend Material or whatever.

On top of that, he’s worried about what you’d say when he asks. Would you laugh at him? Outright reject him? No, that wasn’t you—you were more likely to say yes out of pity and hate every second of it without letting him know. Oh God, that was so much worse.

You two are friends, he reminds himself. It can’t possibly be that embarrassing or outlandish to ask to fake a date as a friendly favor, not when you’ve probably seen each other at rock bottom at least nine times within the span of your friendship. Logistically speaking, that reasoning would make sense, had there not been the glaringly palpable fact that he already had feelings for you. If he hasn’t had the nerve to legitimately ask you out yet, what would make this any easier? Yoongi hates this plan more and more the longer he is left alone to think about it.

This wasn’t just a stupid idea. This was a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad idea.

It’s currently ten minutes past six, and he was supposed to be at Jungkook’s apartment nearly forty-five minutes ago. Instead, he’s still very much at his own dorm, waiting for Jimin to finish taking a damn shower, sitting at his desk and watching some cat compilation that showed up on his Instagram feed.

If there was one thing that Min Yoongi was aware of, it was knowing exactly when his friends were planning something. All it took was a panicked look across the room, or a nervous laugh, or one too many reminders for Yoongi to be at A Very Specific Location at a Very Specific Time.

Added to the fact that his birthday had just passed, it doesn’t take Yoongi long to connect the dots.

Even if he weren’t perceptive enough to catch any of those signals, he knows that Jimin is never late for an event. In fact, he was constantly on Yoongi’s ass about his punctuality—it was one of the few things that they regularly squabble over as roommates. So when Yoongi is actually ready to leave, but exits the bathroom only to be greeted with the sight of Jimin sprawled out on his bed, still in his raggedy pajamas and definitely not ready to leave, his eyes narrow with suspicion.

“Weren’t we supposed to be there almost an hour ago?”

Jimin shrugs with wide eyes, but it is for naught—the exaggeration of his nonchalance clearly shows that yes, they were definitely supposed to be at Jungkook’s place an hour ago, and yes, there was definitely a reason behind why he was stalling. He was never that great of an actor.

But Yoongi plays along, because there’s something so strange yet so fucking endearing about the extent of effort that his friends put forth when it comes to things like this. He knows how much they genuinely care about him, since there've been far too many instances where he’s been on the delivering end of a surprise birthday party for someone else—they all get an adrenaline rush from planning and executing, and there’s never any feeling of obligation that comes with doing so. A total light switch from the way that his actual family celebrated his birthday with him.

So when they finally leave their room nearly an hour and a half later than they were supposed to, Yoongi doesn’t comment on the obviousness of his friends’ scheme. He teases Jimin for being a trainwreck of a person, even for a college student, but beyond that, he pretends he has no idea what awaits him at Jungkook’s flat.

Yoongi feels like he should be surprised by the chaos already unfolding the second he opens the door, but then again this was his friends that we’re talking about.

“Jungkook, I swear to God you’re stupider than that huge ass moth that keeps hitting the window!”

Irene stands in the kitchen with her hands on her hips as she looks down at Jungkook, stance a perfect mirror to every mother when scolding their child. Jungkook is on the floor, rubbing paper towels across the linoleum and staining them in a red substance that looks suspiciously like spicy ramen sauce. If Yoongi strains his neck a little, he can see that you and Hoseok are also helping with the damage control, although you’re both laughing far more than you are cleaning.

“First the three cakes, now this,” Seulgi mutters. Her hair is tucked into a shittily thrown up bun and there’s frosting smudged on her cheek.

“There goes my two dollars,” Taehyung wails, like it’s the end of the world. For a college kid like him, it practically was. He turns his head as he buries his face in his hands dramatically, but at the gesture, he notices Yoongi and Jimin’s arrival, and it’s like a light switch is flicked. He screams in that loud, booming, excited voice of his.

In two seconds flat, Taehyung is already tackling them both in a bone crushing hug, while the rest of the group shouts out a chorus of “who’s here?” and even a “wait, we ordered pizza too?” from Hoseok. He gets a not-so-gentle smack on the shoulder in lieu of a response.

There’s a hush that falls over the room, like they’re all waiting for someone to do something.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOONGI!” Hoseok is the first to shout it, but he’s soon joined in by the rest of the group halfway through the first word. Jimin and Taehyung each take hold of Yoongi’s arms and drag him forward towards the kitchen island where his friends are all gathered.

There’s three cakes on the table: one that’s neatly frosted and has pretty red strawberries thrown in a pattern over the top (by the looks of it, it’s from the bakery inside H-Mart), a whole sheet cake from Costco that’s nothing but solid white frosting, and one that’s certainly… something. It’s significantly smaller than the other two, and it’s a mess of frosting and fruits on top of it. Suddenly Seulgi’s earlier words start to make sense (not to mention, the frosting on you and Seulgi’s cheeks matches the shade of the one that decorates the last cake).

You pull up a chair for him to sit at. “Something tells me this wasn’t on purpose?” he asks with a grin, and you roll your eyes fondly.

“Apparently none of us know what it means to stick to a plan. Also we’re all mad at Hobi and Jungkook for taking you out to dinner on your actual birthday, but failing to invite the rest of us.”

Yoongi pulls a smile as he watches you lean over and light the candles sitting on top of the cakes (yes, all three of them). He’s surprised that there aren’t over twenty candles on the cake, considering that it was something that his friends have done before.

When they sing happy birthday to him, it’s comedically off-key—with the exception of Jungkook, because he’s, you know, Jungkook—and Yoongi can do nothing but watch with fond eyes at his friends. Don’t be mistaken though—that doesn’t mean he actually knows where to look when people are singing it to him, because who is good at that?

And when Yoongi blows out the candles, he honestly isn’t sure what he’s even got to wish for. Perhaps enough money to clear his tuition debt. Or the ability to survive the accidental fake-dating mess he got himself into.

But Yoongi settles for the one thing that he wishes for every time he’s given the opportunity, from throwing pennies into fountains to stars in the sky that fall when he’s lucky enough to see them to the candles sitting on the cake(s) in front of him: Happiness—or at the very least, contentedness—with where he is in life. Tomorrow, ten years down the line, whenever it decides to come. And maybe, just maybe he wants to find his soulmate sometime soon. (It’s sappy, he knows it. Perhaps he spends a bit too much time with Jungkook these days. Sue him.)

Yoongi doesn’t think about his wish afterwards though—he never does, because even he knows it’s better to focus on what’s in front of him than to dwell on an intangible wish he made over a strawberry-covered pastry. Especially when the thing that’s in front of him is an intense tag-team game of Scrabble, commentated by none other than Jung Hoseok himself.

You’ve picked Yoongi as your partner, and he pretends that it doesn’t make his heart swell a little bit. He leans over your shoulder to look at the rack that sits in front of you both, but he can’t pick a single word that could come out of the seven letters present.

Your face is twisted in deep concentration as you stare at your shared tiles. If Yoongi didn’t know any better, he’d think you were a finalist at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and not in Jungkook’s living room in a shitty Scrabble game against equally illiterate college kids.

“Do you think ‘dipshit’ is an acceptable Scrabble word?”

Hoseok’s already taking out his phone to google it before Yoongi stops him. “Jimin almost threw his chem textbook at me last week when I called him one. It definitely should count as a real word.”

“You’re a fucking snitch, Yoongi,” Jimin hisses in response. Laughing, you put the seven-letter word down on the board. Jimin begrudgingly totals up the points.

It’s ten minutes to midnight when Yoongi finally drags himself to the kitchen and away from all the noise of the living room. His throat hurts, not only from the alcohol, but from all the screaming that inevitably came from doing anything remotely competitive with his friends (especially when Hoseok busted out his switch to play Mario Kart).

He prays that Jungkook even has water, and not just chocolate milk and soju filling his fridge to maximum capacity.

“This party is boring, do you wanna leave together?” you ask smoothly as you appear beside him, delivering an entirely not-painful punch to his arm as you smile.

“W-what?” Yoongi chokes on his water.

Your cheeks suddenly flare up at his reaction (cutely, might he add). “Ah! I was talking about that one meme. Y’know, the one where you’re supposed to respond by saying ‘this is my birthday party…’. Yeah, that was it. Didn’t mean to, uh, imply anything.”

Right. “Oh, haha. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that,” he replies with a laugh. Quite frankly, he has no idea what meme you’re even talking about (he doesn’t keep up with Twitter much these days).

“Also I came here to apologize.” Huh?

“For what?” Yoongi asks, meeting your eyes. You avert them instantly, looking down at your socks.

“Last night—I really didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation like that. I mean, I’m guessing it was something serious? Since you didn’t wanna say what was happening and then neither did Seulgi once she hung up. So, uh, sorry if I came across as nosy.”

“Oh,” Yoongi responds. “No—no, that’s definitely not what happened, don’t apologize. Actually, uh, I was gonna ask you something.” Now or never, he reminds himself. You look up at him, innocent expectancy in your eyes.

Yoongi closes his eyes, short enough to be considered a blink, but also long enough for him to anticipate his impending death that he wishes for in order to rid himself of his own embarrassment. It never comes.

“I… need your help with something.” It’s too cryptic of an answer, but it’s a start. He continues, despite the embarrassment that rises in his cheeks in the form of a pink flush. “I accidentally lied to half my family about having a girlfriend, and now they all want to meet her even though I’m literally single as fuck and now I don’t know what to do. Do you—do you want to cometodinnerwithmenextweek?”

You blink back up at him, like it’s taking a couple seconds for your brain to process this new information. Because wow, talk about a mouthful. Oh fuck. You don’t have an answer, and Min Yoongi is this close to saying “fuck it” and moving to Antartica where he’d die a slow and painless death, withering away in subzero temperatures until his skin turns blue instead of being right here right now.

What he doesn’t expect is for you to start laughing.

It’s not a mean laugh. It’s not one where it’s blatantly obvious that you think this is a prank on his part and you’re just laughing to fill space, or where you’re condescending him because you think he’s pathetic. It’s a laugh that shows that no matter how outlandish and horrible-sounding of a predicament this is, you believe him. “Please tell me you’re being serious. Please. I might cry if you aren’t.”

Yoongi cracks a smile with you. “Trust me, I couldn’t make this shit up even if I wanted to.”

“This is the kind of thing you only see in movies, y’know?” You muse, still laughing. “I can’t believe you actually did this to yourself. This is, like, real.”

“Please don’t remind me of how much of an idiot I am,” Yoongi whines, before realizing that you’ve managed to avoid giving him a definitive answer still. “So… is that a yes? No? Maybe so?”

You crease your brows slightly, still an endeared smile faint on your cheeks. “Maybe so? What would that even entail in this type of situation?”

Yoongi grimaces. “I have no idea. Force of habit.”

“You talk like a suburban dad,” you snort. “But to answer your question, yes. I’m all in.”

Yoongi releases a breath he hadn’t known that he had been holding. He leans back against the kitchen counter, body turning lax now that the weight of his stress over the past twenty-four hours was now freed from his body.

“Also it’s just one date,” Yoongi adds, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Or, like, a few weeks max. I have a whole plan and everything, so it should blow over soon and we can just move on from there. You don’t have to, like, blow my parents out of the water or anything.”

“What if I want to though?” What the fuck.

“Why?” Yoongi asks. It’s not meant to come out rude, and you don’t take it that way. It’s just such a brutal and difficult task, and it’s not particularly one that he would recommend to anyone to partake in. After all, it was something he had no choice but to succumb to, for the past twenty-two years of his life.

“I want them to like me,” you state simply. “Even if it’s just a fake date or whatever, we’re still friends so the circumstances aren’t that different. Your parents should still at least know me, right?”

It is so much different. Because if you get his parents to like you, and they will, you’ll become a semi-permanent fixture in his life, and that sounds like a specific type of torture catered towards people who would rather keep their feelings under wraps instead of actually doing something about them. A very Yoongi-specific kind of torture.

“That… makes sense,” Yoongi supposes. He’s not sure how applicable that sentiment is in your life, but it wasn’t exactly shared with his family, considering he doesn’t date and the only friends of Yoongi’s that his parents have ever met are Seulgi and Hoseok. “But I’m warning you, they aren’t exactly easy to impress.”

“Are you saying you don’t think I’m capable of impressing them?”

“No! Not at all,” he backtracks. “They’re just really high-strung—actually, it’s my mom who’s mostly like that. Not my dad so much. I just don’t want you to feel hurt if they’re… cold towards you. Especially since you’re supposed to be my girlfriend too.” He trails off at the end, and he swears that he sees your cheeks redden at the label.

You shake it off with a smile. “Don’t worry, I can take a little criticism. Just text me when and where and I’ll be there. You still have my number, right?”

“Yeah.” He pauses momentarily. “Wait, I don’t, actually. I got a new phone a couple months ago and I lost all my contacts.” Yoongi can’t believe that he forgot to ask for your number again. This is what he gets for having the group chat muted.

You click your tongue. “Can’t believe it’s been months and you never once thought to text me.” There’s a smile playing on your face when you say it though. It’s not like you two even text at all outside of your group chat. “I’ll just call it right now so you can add my number faster.”

He reads across his contact on your phone, as you press the call button.

“Why does my name have the moon emoji next to it?” he questions with a tilt of his head. It’s cute, he thinks and it makes his chest feel funny knowing that there had to be some sort of conscious reasoning behind it. (For once, object permanence doesn’t feel so bad.)

“Not sure, actually.” You offer a small shrug and a smile. “Just reminds me of you, ‘s all.”

Yoongi blinks. There’s a slight pause before he swipes at his phone screen to create a new contact for your own phone number. “Well if that’s the case, I’m gonna have to put the sun emoji next to your name then,” he concedes. God, when did he get so cheesy?

You smile, and it makes Yoongi’s chest warm with content. Something inside tells him that maybe, just maybe, this plan wouldn’t turn out so bad after all.

Yoongi swears he sees Seulgi shoot up a thumbs-up gesture as she passes the kitchen, though he isn’t sure if it was directed towards himself or to you.

You and Yoongi are not best friends, but you’re not complete strangers. You’re in a weird state of limbo, where you see each other often enough to be close, but never together outside of a group setting enough for it to be anything more than that. At the very least, you’re beyond that stage where you aren’t sure whether to refer to one another as “someone I know” as opposed to “my friend” when each other’s names come up in conversation.

But it is enough, Yoongi thinks—hopes, too. You’re smart, and sweet, and convincing, and a hundred other traits that Yoongi adores, and he thinks that it’d be a goddamn fluke of nature if his parents end up not liking you. But then that’s just another reason for Yoongi to fall for you, another reason that he’ll never be able to get over you, even once this single fake date is over.

His phone buzzes from his pocket.

[4:56pm] y/n ☀️: on a scale of 1-10 how formal am i supposed to dress

[4:56pm] y/n ☀️: like from typical cute first date outfit to daisy buchanan status what do i wear

[4:58pm] yoongi: you are putting so much effort into this date i admire your grit but quite frankly im intimidated

[4:58pm] yoongi: if it helps tho im wearing a button up shirt and black jeans so like…. maybe three on your scale

[4:58pm] yoongi: nothing too much, yk

[4:59pm] y/n ☀️: i’m meeting your parents of course i have to put effort in :(

[4:59pm] y/n ☀️: oh for fucks sake yoongi thats practically a TEN i need to go change

You’re cute, he thinks. It’s something he’s always thought—even that day that you two met, despite the fact that the details are hazy and you barely spoke more than ten words to each other—but the thought crosses his mind more and more frequently the more you’re around.

He can feel the anticipation rising in his throat as he makes the walk from his dorm building to yours. It rises and rises the closer he gets, like a tidal wave that’s building up to its crescendo before it crashes down. It’s not a bad metaphor to match his whole situation, actually. Part of him is afraid he might sweat through his dress shirt, even with the winter air that nips at his exposed skin in the slightest.

And when you finally step out, he feels like all the air in his lungs is knocked out of him again.

“Hey Yoongi,” you breathe out.

“Hi. You look—really nice, Y/N. You’re beautiful.” Your eyes shine like the moon.

“Look!” You say excitedly. “The dress has pockets, too!” You stick your hands into said pockets as proof of their existence.

“Hey—are you okay?” you ask, reaching up to straighten out the collar of his button-up shirt. The proximity makes him nauseous—in the best way possible, of course. “You look like a ghost. A cute ghost, don’t worry,” you add, noticing his sharp inhale. The reassurance doesn’t help.

“Just nervous,” he mumbles when you pull away.

“Same,” you hum in agreement, but you slip your hand into his. You stay like that the entire walk from your dorm to the bus stop.

“So what got you in this kind of situation in the first place? I mean, I know you lied to your parents, but like, why?” You tilt your head, and Yoongi finds the gesture uncharacteristically cute considering you were psychoanalyzing him in the back of a bus full of other people.

Yoongi wets his lips. Why was he doing this?

“You know what’s funny?” You nod but don’t offer more commentary, and so he continues. “Even though I made this whole plan out of spite for them, a small and incredibly horrible part of me knows that subconsciously, I’m also doing this to impress them.” It’s not funny at all, actually—he backtracks as he realizes what he’s saying is literally contradicting himself. “That doesn’t make any sense, huh?”

“No, I definitely get that,” you say however, the intonation of your words expressing just how much of these double-standards were likely a solidarity among you two.

“Also my parents think I spend too much time with Seulgi and that’s why I can’t get a girlfriend.”

You both laugh at that. While both of you knew and were fond of Seulgi at her best, you’ve both also seen her at her worst. As in, her boldy arguing back with that professor who had disregarded her by way of a two-sentence-long email, or her never being shy of expressing how much she hates men. She wasn’t a bad person for these traits, of course, but those impressions that were given don’t quite rub parents as “oh yeah, I love that my child is constantly spending time with you. Come to dinner soon, okay?”.

“So basically you did all this just so they wouldn’t nag you about it anymore?”

“Essentially, yeah.”

“It’s a very Yoongi thing to do. I like it.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Yoongi asks with a raise of his eyebrows.

You smile again, and Yoongi can feel his insides liquify like honey. “I dunno. Convoluted. Stubborn. Endearing. Seems like you, but you’re an enigma, Yoongi, so who knows.”

And somehow, that answer is more than enough.

The moment you’re in the restaurant, you’re hit with a whoosh of warm air, a stark contrast to that of the wind that billows throughout the streets. Revolving sushi bars are a good date location, Yoongi had been certain of that, but he doesn’t anticipate how crowded the restaurant would be. Luckily for him though, his parents were early, and it’s impossible not to spot them from their table as soon as you enter.

“Oh my God, I’m so nervous.”

Punctuating your words, you reach out and grab his hand in yours. Well now he’s nervous too, just for a completely different reason.

Yoongi waits with bated breath as his mother stares, like she’s looking for something in your face. Like there’s something about you that bleeds familiarity. She doesn’t say a word.

Then, you extend your hand. “Hi, I’m—”

“Y/N,” she finishes for you, rejecting your handshake in favor of pulling you into a taut hug. “It’s been quite a while, no? I’m a little surprised that we haven’t done this sooner, considering we’ve met before.” Her statement is simple, polite, and delivered with a smile, yet was so goddamn nerve-wracking to be in conversation with, which honestly wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when it came to his mother.

Even you look stunned at her announcement. “W-we have?” You pass a side glance to Yoongi, barely lasting two-fifteenths of a second because you don’t want his mother to think that even you had forgotten something that she apparently kept stored in her memory after all this time. That doesn’t make for a very good first impression. “Oh, that’s right! The family weekend during freshman year!”

Yoongi has no idea what either of you are talking about. Again, asking him to reach back through four years of memory was like asking him to find an origami crane inside a ten-story building full of shredded paper.

“Yep.” You look to Yoongi once you’ve shaken hands with his father. “When they were looking for your dorm, they ran into Seulgi and me and asked for directions.”

“Doesn’t surprise me that you met through Seulgi,” his dad starts as he pulls out the chair to sit down. “She’s quite the social butterfly, that girl.” Understatement of the century.

“We didn’t actually!” you say, and even Yoongi’s a little caught off guard. “We met at orientation, then we just kind of kept in contact after that. Seulgi being my roommate just meant that we saw each other more often, and we shared mostly the same friends. We’ve been friends for so long, ending up where we are today seemed like it was impossible all these years.”

It’s ridiculous how everything that’s being said is made up on the fly, yet somehow rings truth in it. It’s ridiculous—especially the way that all of it is true, save for the actual dating part, and it seems entirely plausible. It makes Yoongi wonder if alternate universe him ends up in this exact place too, just under different circumstances. If this was meant to be, if his own stupidity actually led him to his fate.

His mother nods. “Ah, friends first, relationship later. The best ones always start out that way.” You squeeze Yoongi’s hand under the table.

The rest of dinner runs fairly smoothly. His parents ask the typical questions that are to be expected when meeting The New Girlfriend—your major, future goals, how you started dating, things about your family.—you and him make shitty jokes, you all eat. You answer all of their questions easily, and it’s a wonder that you’re not even dating anyone for real. You’re awfully good at this. Yoongi thinks that he’ll have to ask about that sometime.

It’s all going surprisingly perfect. That is, until his mother throws a curveball into the conversation:

“You should definitely come home with Yoongi to visit during break!” What.

Either his mother really liked you, or the universe fucking hated his guts and wanted to prolong this fake dating thing as long as possible, just to see how much spicier that Yoongi’s life could get before he implodes. Maybe it was both.

He really isn’t expecting you to agree—after all, you had family to visit too, and surely you’d rather spend your break doing anything other than spending it with him and his family, right?

“I’d love to.” Uh.

Yoongi is a little concerned with your seeming enthusiasm to save his ass from family embarrassment. Maybe you were just really good at pretending (a better liar than Yoongi himself, not that there was much of a comparison there). Or maybe you’re playing up the excitement as a front, only for you to shut it down once you and him are alone, and he can give his parents some cheap excuse and it’ll be over. Yoongi doesn’t like that thought much either.

He manages to stop himself before he dwells on the unforeseen third possibility, the one where you like him just as much as he does you, and this whole thing was just an excuse to bring the two of you closer—you know, the most unrealistic of the three.

“You have to meet our other kids too—they’re absolute angels, unlike Yoongi here.” Yoongi can’t even get offended because he knows that his mother uses a plethora of words to describe his siblings, but “angels” was nowhere near one of them. He tries and fails to suppress a laugh.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” you laugh along, and the adoring glance you pass to Yoongi beside you nearly makes his heart stop from how real it looks. “Yoongi’s a real pain in the butt.”

His parents laugh, and it’s almost too much how well you seem to fit in with his family. In a perfect world, this would be his reality. Where you love him and he loves you, and his parents don’t hate you the way they seem to hate every decision that Yoongi makes for himself.

Yoongi picks up the tab at the end of the night. When his parents wave him and you goodbye at the bus stop when the bus arrives, Yoongi can’t help but feel like this entire night was a dream.

“Well,” you start with a laugh once you’ve taken your seats. “That was fun.”

“Yeah.” He has to agree. He had almost forgotten why he’d been so nervous in the first place. It felt so natural, being there with you.

You rest your head on his shoulder for the rest of the bus ride. Friends do that, right?

“Hey Y/N?” he asks, stopping you in your tracks, just before you go into your building.

“Hm?”

“Were you serious? About the spring break thing?”

“Of course I was.” Your reply is firm, but not in an offended or indignant manner. Like you’re simply stating a fact. “I wouldn’t have said so if I wasn’t, would I?”

Yoongi releases a breath he hadn’t known that he had been holding. Relief washes over him. “Why? Was that not okay?” you question, now looking a little worried.

“Of course it’s okay,�� Yoongi reassures. “I just figured that you probably had family to visit too, or you already had plans. It’s really not too big of a deal if you can’t go. Makes it easier to pretend we ended the relationship too.”

“Ah, I guess,” you reply, and there’s a detectable amount of reluctance in your voice. “I didn’t have plans for break anyways though, so that wasn’t an issue at all. It’s my parents’ anniversary that week too, so they’re probably gonna be vacationing somewhere without me. So yeah. Not a big deal.”

It’s the exact opposite of not a big deal. “Dude, I owe you for this. So much.”

“Nah,” you say. “Unless you’re willing to buy me the new Animal Crossing game, because if so, I won’t be opposed to that.”

Yoongi laughs at that, but he makes a mental note. “Deal.”

“So… see you in two weeks,” you say, a smile still prominent across your cheeks. You raise an eyebrow. “Or maybe sooner than that?”

It’s not a rhetorical statement. It’s a question, like it’s something that you want, something that you hope is going to happen. Oh, how he wants to kiss you right now. But he doesn’t, and instead he watches as you swipe your keycard for entrance to your dorm, and turn back to offer him a small wave to bid him goodnight.

Two weeks can feel like no time at all, or eons and then some, depending on how you look at it. Like if you have two weeks left before a scholarship application is due, it feels like you’ve got until the end of time, whereas if you have two weeks on a vacation, it would feel more like it lasts longer than a single blink of your eyes.

But this, this painful waiting between Yoongi’s next fake dating endeavor with you, feels like it belongs on an entirely different scale of its own.

You haven’t replied to his text. In fact, you haven’t even looked at it, even though it's been well over two days since they were sent. And like the dwelling and self-destructive creature he is, Yoongi rereads his message again and again, like he has the power to rearrange the words he had sent simply by staring at them.

[10:03pm] yoongi: hey thanks for coming with me again tonight :) you’re the bee’s knees

[10:03pm] yoongi: pretty sure my parents love you more than they love me lmfao

Really? Did he really call you the bee’s knees? No wonder you were ghosting him, goddamnit.

But when two days go by without a single word from you, not just to Yoongi himself but to all of your mutual friends as well, Yoongi’s worry begins to kick in. What if you had some sort of family emergency? Or if you got kidnapped or something when you went for a walk?

“Is Y/N doing okay?” Yoongi says, skipping over even saying hello as soon as Seulgi picks up the call. He’s already begun chewing on his nail as he speaks, a horrible nervous habit that he promises himself again and again that he’ll break every time the new year rolls around, but never lasts longer than a week or two before picking it back up again.

“...Yeah, she’s fine,” Seulgi assures, albeit the pause she takes before speaking doesn’t offer much reassurance. “She’s just been a little sick with food poisoning the past couple days and been throwing up nonstop, but yeah! Totally fine in the Kang-slash-Y/L/N residence!” He can practically feel the grimace in Seulgi’s tone, implying that she was not, in fact, totally fine and she was undoubtedly the person who has had to deal with a sick Y/N for the past two days.

“Oh shit,” he mutters.

“Oh here she comes!—Hey Y/N, honey, do you wanna talk to Yoongi? He’s on the phone right now.”

“You don’t have to do that—” He begins. There’s a muffled screech of protest through the phone and static shuffling before you’re suddenly on the other end of the line. Then, there’s your voice. “Hi Yoongi.”

“Hey.” It’s silent for what feels like forever. “You doing okay?”

“Peachy,” you say. There’s another prolonged awkward silence. “Sorry about not responding to your messages.”

“‘S fine. Texts aren’t as important as your health is,” he replies softly. “Do you need me to bring anything? I was thinking of coming over in a little bit in case you guys did.”

“Oh my God, please don’t. We’re fine and thank you for offering, but I look like absolute shit. I’m gonna be embarrassed, even if you already know how bad it is. And I’m gross.” Yoongi laughs, and just like that, the tension in the room—or rather, through the landline—is gone.

“Got it,” he says, fondness coloring his voice as he moves to recline back onto his bed. He sinks into the duvet. He feels warm, both inside and out. “I’ll stay right here at home, I promise.”

Yoongi thinks he’d be willing to make you a thousand promises over and over if he gets to hear your laugh as soft and sweet as it is right now.

“We shouldn’t have gone to that sushi restaurant,” you muse.

“My fault for suggesting it,” Yoongi all but groans. “You should’ve picked the restaurant.”

“Guess that means we’ll have to try that again, huh?” You ask, and there’s a hint in your voice that tells Yoongi that the that that you are implying was probably not having dinner with his parents again. But he doesn’t assume, because the last thing he wants is to cause a fracture in this thing—this developing friendship—that’s slowly but surely budding between you two.

So instead, he takes the cynical route. “What, meeting my parents again? Hate to break it to you, but first impressions only happen once.”

And you, being you, take the opportunity to spell it out for him, albeit there’s a huff in your voice at his sarcasm. “No. Dinner. You ‘n me.”

“Yeah?” He asks, less for confirmation than it is out of surprise. “Where at?”

“Not sure,” you contemplate. Yoongi can hear you shifting around on the other end of the line, and he wonders if you’re settling down into bed the same way he is. He wonders if you’re as comfortable as he is right now. “We’ll figure it out.” Those

“On a scale of one to ten how formal am I supposed to dress?” Yoongi teases, the grin on his face so wide that his cheeks ache a little bit. He can’t help it though, not when it’s damn near impossible to be in your presence and not smile.

“Oh my God, shut up.”

“Okay, okay,” Yoongi laughs. “How about we both just show up in pajamas instead?”

“Not a bad idea,” you concede. Then, “Oh shit, Seulgi’s phone is about to die. See you soon.” Yoongi feels a pang of disappointment at your sudden need to depart. You also have a habit of saying that instead of a goodbye, Yoongi notices. “Promise?”

“I promise,” he assures, and again, you could probably ask him for a piece of the sky and he’d promise you that he’d have it in an hour. He supposes that Seulgi and Jimin were right—he was whipped.

There’s this adoring little grin playing out on his face that Yoongi knows you can’t see. Part of him wishes you could. “See you next time.”

Next time comes sooner than expected. It comes exactly four days later, in the form of dinner at some hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant past midnight that you told him that you’ve always loved going to since you were younger. There’s no button-up shirts, no dresses with pockets, no parents. In fact, you both show up in pajamas, true to Yoongi’s snarky comment.

(He had been dressed in nice-but-standard datewear, but you promptly forced him to change when he was greeted with the sight of you wearing Apeach pajamas when he picked you up from your dorm. “Nobody’s gonna care,” you assured him with a roll of your eyes as you pushed him back into his room. “It’s half past midnight and I know the family that owns the restaurant.”)

So there was that. As promised, there was good food, and Yoongi’s pretty sure he hasn’t laughed that hard with someone in an awfully long time. He likes spending time with you, he comes to realize, and in the back of his mind he wonders why you and him didn’t do this more often—just two friends and nothing more, just killing time together for the hell of it. You still give him butterflies like hell, but those nerves that prevented him from talking to you are now recycled into longing enthusiasm to be around you.

There was a brief moment where the owner—an older woman who you had referred to as your auntie (re: a somewhat-familiar friend of your parents) for the entirety of the night—had asked if you two were dating when she came by to refill your water cups. You had both exchanged an uncertain glance with one another, but in the end, you had refuted her claim. It’s nothing if not the truth, but there’s a pang of disappointment that finds its way up Yoongi’s throat when you say it. Nope, just friends.

She looks skeptical though, and she expresses as much with what she says next: “You kids nowadays don’t pay much attention to detail, do you?”

And that was that. Neither of you mention it again.

But here you are again, together, this time in the comfort of your dorm room.

You insisted he come over to help you pack—after all you’re leaving tomorrow morning. And like the lovesick fool he is, he can’t ever say no to you. When he arrives, Seulgi leaves, but not before shooting him a wink and stating “Don’t do anything I would or wouldn’t do!”. You usher her out of the door faster, looking flustered.

“Isn’t the weather supposed to be gloomy for all of next week?” You ask, hands on your hips as you look at the crammed wardrobe unit with a concentrated stare. There’s an awful lot of clothes in it, both yours and Seulgi’s, but Yoongi doesn’t comment on the mess.

He pulls up the weather app on his own phone. “Nope, it’s supposed to clear up after Saturday.”

At his okay, you pump your fist slightly in triumph. You lay out your outfits on the bed carefully, right next to where Yoongi sits. “What if your siblings hate me?” You wonder aloud, but there’s a hint of insecurity in your tone.

Yoongi shuts it down. “I promise you they won’t. Namjoon’s too occupied playing Pokemon Go all the damn time, and Ryujin—she’s funny and she loves rom-com K-dramas a little too much, but she’s probably the only tolerable high schooler that you’ll ever meet.”

You sit down beside him. “You’re close with them,” you conclude. “That’s cute.”

“I guess you could say that.” Yoongi rubs at the back of his neck. “I mean, the last time I’ve talked to either of them was nearly a month ago on my birthday, except for Namjoon sending me TikTok videos he thinks are funny every other day.”

“At least you have that,” you laugh, and yeah, Yoongi supposes that you’re right. “You’re the oldest, right?”

“Only by a couple years.”

“I bet they look up to you a lot though,” you muse.

“Probably not,” he snorts. “I’m, like, the antithesis of who they should be. But I’m glad that I have them around.” You nod in keen understanding.

Yoongi’s also glad that he has you. At the very least, until next time.