Chapter Text
Monday mornings are pretty universally hated, and Yoongi knew that, but he was still fairly certain that out of nearly eight billion people in the world, he hated Monday mornings the most. Not in that automatic, socially-conditioned way where people confuse hating their boss or hating their career for hating Monday mornings, either. No, Yoongi hated Monday mornings for very specific, unpleasant reasons.
“Good morning, grumpy-kitty hyung,” Hoseok sang, knocking softly at Yoongi’s bedroom door as he let himself in. “It’s 6:00am, are you ready?”
“I told you to stop calling me that,” Yoongi grumbled in reply, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, “but I’m as ready as I ever am, I guess.” He groaned at the feeling of his stiff muscles aching in protest as he sat up and shuffled himself out of the blankets onto the edge of the bed. Knowing that it would make things go more smoothly, he tucked one foot under his butt to stretch the quad muscles of that thigh. Wincing at the initial burn, he felt the muscle loosen and the ache slowly eased. Satisfied, he righted himself and put both feet back onto the floor.
Hoseok took a seat beside him, humming to himself as he uncapped the needle on the syringe he held in one hand to pierce the rubbery top of the small bottle he held in the other. Mondays were Yoongi’s designated weekly injection day, and although it had been eight years, he still dreaded it every time. Needles had always freaked him out, so he was eternally grateful that his best friend took over injection duties years ago. After walking into Yoongi’s bedroom one day to find him on the verge of a panic attack while attempting to give himself his shot, Hoseok had immediately taken the syringe out of Yoongi’s hand, pulled up an intramuscular injection tutorial video on YouTube, and Yoongi had never been more thankful for a person’s existence in his entire life.
“Did Joon make coffee?” Yoongi asked hopefully, watching as his best friend carefully filled the syringe to the mark before gingerly pulling the tip of the needle back out.
“Maybe,” Hoseok replied, “I didn’t check.” A comfortable silence fell over them as he sat the bottle down on Yoongi’s bedside table, holding the syringe needle-up and flicking his finger against the side a few times to make sure all the air had escaped. One hand reached over to shove the hem of Yoongi’s basketball shorts just a bit higher up his thigh, then he stabbed the needle in quickly before Yoongi had time to get nervous and tense up. Finally, after slowly pressing down on the plunger and pulling the needle back out, Hoseok added, “He was running late, so he might have skipped it. I’m actually pretty sure I heard him sneaking back into the house just before everyone got up, so I guess his date with what’s-her-name—”
“Jihyo,” Yoongi interrupted him to supply.
“—Jihyo, yes,” Hoseok grinned, “thank you—his date with Jihyo must have gone well.” He capped the needle and sat it down next to the bottle on Yoongi’s bedside table, hesitated, then asked in an equally upbeat tone, “You said you had a date last night, too, didn’t you? With the cute veterinarian from Tinder?”
Yoongi nodded, but didn’t say anything, choosing instead to busy himself with opening a band-aid and carefully putting it on his thigh over the spot where his friend had just injected him. He rubbed a deep circle over the spot with his thumb, knowing that if he skipped it, the muscle in his leg would ache for days.
“Well, how’d it go?” Hoseok tried again. The cheerfulness in his voice sounded a touch forced, and Yoongi knew that meant he was worried but trying to be optimistic. Yoongi hated making Hoseok worry, so he spilled right away.
“It didn’t,” he awkwardly replied. “Go, I mean.” With a heavy sigh, he managed to make eye contact with his best friend for just a moment before dropping his gaze to his hands. “She, uhm… she never showed up, never replied when I texted her to check in, unmatched me on the app… She totally ghosted me at the last minute.” Hoseok’s face screwed itself up in confused indignation, so he added, “Honestly, Hobi, it’s fine, I’m… I’m used to it, people realizing what they’re signing up for and getting freaked out and bailing before it becomes real. It sucks, but I kind of saw this one coming.”
“And why is that?” Hoseok asked. He knew that Yoongi knew that he knew the answer to that question already, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to coax Yoongi into saying it anyhow—specifically to argue him back out of it. They’d had this exchange dozens of times over the years, but Hoseok remained as patient about it as always.
“Because she’s straight, and I’m…” Yoongi trailed off, shrugging and gesturing vaguely around himself instead of finishing his thought out loud. He didn’t really have the energy to properly argue, not before coffee.
“You’re… a guy,” Hoseok filled in matter-of-factly, “a man. So, if that’s the issue, then she’s an idiot.”
It was entirely too early to let their usual back-and-forth play out, and the sooner this conversation ended the sooner he could go find a cup of coffee, so Yoongi just nodded quietly and let it drop, waving Hoseok out of the room so he could start getting ready for the day. Once he’d showered and scraped himself into something that he felt was passable enough as human to drag himself to work, Yoongi slipped out the front door and pulled on his headphones.
The weekly injection ritual wasn’t the only reason that Yoongi hated Monday mornings, just the earliest-occurring one of the day. Coming in at a close second place: all of his friends were busy on Monday mornings. Namjoon taught a philosophy class at the university, Hoseok taught a dance class at a nearby studio, and Seokjin’s agent usually had auditions and meetings scheduled for him starting bright and early.
Not that any of this was a problem all on its own—Yoongi loved watching his friends thrive. They had been a tightly-knit pack for ages, roommates for the past six years, inseparable since university. The three of them had been there for Yoongi through his rockiest times, Hoseok especially.
But a few years back, Yoongi bought out the record store they all worked at part-time and loved. The (now-former) owner wanted to close it and retire once he turned 70, but the idea of seeing it shut down broke Yoongi’s heart, so he worked out a deal and took over the shop. This meant that his friends were now also his employees—his only employees—and as a result, it always fell upon Yoongi to open the store alone on Monday mornings. If he didn’t know with the absolute certainty that can only come from sharing a house and physically seeing them depart to their actual, legitimate, really-for-real obligations with his own two eyes, he’d have sworn they were conspiring together, making it up just to mess with him and deprive him of his precious sleep.
‘Business owners have to make sacrifices, hyung,’ Namjoon once teased him after he’d pouted into his coffee. ‘It’s the price you pay for being able to boss us around at work.’
Since Monday mornings were also delivery truck days, that meant putting away the weekly new inventory shipment by himself, checking in and shelving the incoming merchandise while juggling his usual tasks like ringing up customers and answering the phone. By the time Seokjin and Namjoon rolled in around lunchtime, Yoongi was always starving and exhausted.
“I’m gonna go devour the biggest bowl of ramyeon I can find,” he told them, trying to keep the morning’s frustration from leaking into his voice. “Please don’t call me before I get back unless the building is literally burning down.”
“Okay, boss,” Seokjin replied with a salute, picking up a stack of albums that needed to be reshelved, “you got it.”
On his way toward the door, however, Yoongi felt a gentle tug at the elbow of his cardigan.
“Excuse me,” a voice came from behind him, light and almost musical, that stopped him in his tracks. “You’re the owner, right?” As Yoongi turned around, he glanced up to meet the roundest, shiniest set of doe eyes he’d ever seen. A young man was looking at him expectantly, chewing on a small silver hoop that pierced the side of his lip. He was taller than Yoongi, with a black undercut and an angelic face.
His resolve to flee the building for a while faltered, and in spite of himself, whatever excuse he’d started coming up with to brush the stranger off died in his mouth before it crossed his lips.
“Y-yeah,” he managed to reply, blushing as he heard his voice crack and come out in a pitchy rasp. Clearing his throat, he tried again, “Yes, hi, I’m Yoongi. Can I help you with something?”
“I was hoping to sell some records,” the stranger said, dropping Yoongi’s elbow to flap the stack of LPs under his other arm like a chicken wing. “Could you tell me how much I can get for these?”
Truthfully, this was a task that anyone in the shop could have done. Namjoon and Seokjin had been buying used records from customers since before Yoongi had taken ownership of the business, and either of them could have priced out an estimate for this guy on the spot. But something in his belly wouldn’t let Yoongi leave, and he found himself saying, “Yeah, absolutely,” before he even realized what was happening.
Mr Handsome Customer had pretty decent taste in music, Yoongi thought, based on what he was trying to sell. There were a handful of fairly common but great albums, like Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica or Epik High’s sleepless in _____, but a few that took Yoongi by surprise as well, like—
“A signed copy of Go by Jónsi?” Yoongi practically yelped, whipping his gaze up quizzically at the customer. “He only took his tour to North America and Europe, and that was back in like, 2010… Dude, where did you get this?”
“My noona was obsessed with the band he’s in,” the man explained, the corner of his mouth pulling up into something like a wistful smile. “She went to university abroad in the United States, and my family made a trip out there to see her, so she brought me with her to that show. I was 13, I think? We got lucky and managed to get our records signed after the concert by waiting around the tour bus afterward.” He laughed a little, then added, “I didn’t speak any English, never heard of him or his band before that night, but it was a lot of fun. He was super nice.”
“Then why are you selling it?” Yoongi blurted out, fingers brushing lightly over the cover near the side where ‘For small friend JK: Takk fyrir allt! Jónsi” was scrawled in thin black marker.
“Oh, uh-uhm,” the man stammered, blushing and looking uncomfortable in a way that made Yoongi immediately regret asking. “I mean, I need the money… and I don’t actually listen to it or anything, I was just keeping it around for, like, sentimental reasons, y’know, a souvenir that reminded me of that day with my noona.” He was avoiding eye contact and the tips of his ears were getting steadily redder as he went on. “But we don’t, uh… my family and I don’t really talk anymore. So… I guess that, uhm, I don’t need it… for that. Honestly, it’s probably better if I just get rid of it.”
There was a thick pause once he had stopped talking, and Yoongi wanted to let the floor swallow him.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Yoongi apologized. He set the record down and kept shuffling through the customer’s stack, humming in approval every now and then but too embarrassed to try talking to “small friend JK” again. After doing some quick math in his head (and then rounding up pretty generously), he pulled a notepad over from across the countertop and scribbled down a number. “Here, bring this and your records to the really tall guy with purple hair back there,” he instructed, handing him the page he tore from the notepad and pointing across the shop at Namjoon. “He’ll take down your information and ring you out to buy these records off you. And uhm…” he hesitated for a moment, quirking an eyebrow at the customer.
“Sorry, yes?” the man asked quietly, looking back up to meet Yoongi’s eyes but seeming like he was still lost in thought.
“I’m really sorry to hear that things fell out between you and your noona. If it’s any consolation, my family and I don’t talk anymore, either.” With that, he offered Jungkook a nod and small, sympathetic smile before walking away.
As soon as he was out the door, Yoongi pulled his phone from his back pocket and sent a text to Namjoon: “Hold the Jónsi record from that kid for me. Do not put it on the sales floor.”
--
When he walked back in after his lunch break, Yoongi’s eye was caught by Namjoon’s. “Hyung,” his friend greeted him, “I put the record you asked about on your desk. Good find, are you keeping it for yourself?”
Occasionally, when something particularly rare or catered to Yoongi’s taste came into the shop, he’d buy it from the customer for his private collection rather than reselling it. This was not one of those times, but he also couldn’t quite explain what it was that he intended to do with the album. Yoongi couldn’t say much beyond how sad it made him feel to learn why the kid was selling it, so he just shrugged and said, “Something like that, Joon.”
Namjoon eyed him suspiciously. After a beat, he said, “Was the fact that he sold you a signed album the reason his cash-out total was so high? I didn’t know you were into Icelandic indie pop like that.”
Before a reply could gather itself together in his brain, Yoongi was interrupted by Seokjin suppressing a snort and trying to keep a laugh out of his voice as he said, “Yes, Joon-ah, I’m sure it was the novelty factor of his special album and absolutely not that he looked like a beautiful lost little puppy that tugged on Yoongichi’s wallet’s heart-strings.” He and Namjoon exchanged a glance, then shifted their gazes to Yoongi.
“Fuck you both,” he replied flatly, turning to leave the sales floor. “I’m going to do some paperwork.”
This drew a delighted cackle out of Seokjin, who crowed, “You hear that, Joon-ah? He said it was both!”
Without turning back around to face them, Yoongi flipped them each a middle finger and continued into his office, the sound of their teasing cut off by his door swinging shut. As promised, the Jónsi album was perched on his desk, serving as a paperweight for the avalanche of invoices and receipts stacked in front of his monitor. He eyed the writing scrawled on the cover again, lingering over ‘small friend JK’ with an involuntary twist at the corner of his mouth.
A couple of hours passed in relative peace, and Yoongi was grateful to get his accounting done without one of his employees having to interrupt him to speak to a customer or fix a problem. Letting out a long, relieved breath, he switched off his monitor and pushed back in his chair, ready to wander back out to the sales floor to see how things were going. The shop was steady but not crowded, just the way Yoongi liked it. Up at the registers, Namjoon and Seokjin were huddled around Namjoon’s phone wearing a matched set of expressions that looked an awful lot like the one Hoseok wore when Yoongi told him about—
“Hyung, what the fuck,” Namjoon said as soon as he looked up to see Yoongi standing there, but his voice had no edge to it. Instead, he sounded almost soothing. “Hobi just told me about your date ghosting you last night. I’m so sorry.”
With a heavy sigh, Yoongi replied, “Really, guys, it’s fine. I mean,” he corrected himself, raising his hands defensively as his two friends both sucked in a breath and looked about to protest the same way Hoseok had that morning, “I know it isn’t fine, but like… it is what it is. What else am I supposed to expect at this point?”
“Hyung,” Namjoon replied sharply, “don’t say that.”
“Dating is a nightmare for everyone,” Yoongi grumbled, “people who aren’t transgender get ghosted all the time, too, I know… but usually they at least meet the person once first. Most of the people I’ve matched with chickened out before even seeing my face ‘IRL’,” he said the acronym in English with air quotes. Seokjin opened his mouth to say something, but Yoongi didn’t let him. “Honestly, I think this little Tinder experiment was a flop. I don’t need to try getting back into dating. My self-esteem can’t take it.”
Quietly, Namjoon said, “Okay hyung,” and let it drop.
--
Jeon Jungkook knew that it was an unpopular opinion, but his favorite time of the week was Monday mornings. It was his last semester of grad school, and somehow, he had managed to arrange his schedule so that his first class of the week wasn’t until 2:00pm on Monday afternoons. This meant that he often spent the first half of that day either in a coffee shop doing the last of his weekend’s homework tasks, wandering along the Han River sipping an iced coffee and taking photos, or window shopping for things that he daydreamed of having but couldn’t really afford (yet).
He had been especially looking forward to his Monday morning wander-about after the hell that had been his weekend. Jungkook didn’t date very much—between classes, labs, homework, and an internship, grad school just didn’t afford him the time—but after his friends Jimin and Taehyung badgered him for three solid weeks about it, he had finally agreed to go on a blind date with a guy from their office. Wanting to make a good first-date impression, he’d dipped into his savings to buy a new outfit and a pair of tickets to a Se So Neon concert, only for his date to text him some vague excuse after Jungkook had already been waiting for half an hour at the restaurant they’d agreed on. Humiliated, Jungkook had ordered himself a small meal, ate as quickly as possible, then fled.
Which is how he found himself standing in a record shop the following Monday, about a dozen LPs tucked under one arm, hoping to sell them and recoup his losses. He had stopped in once before with Taehyung, poking through the wares while his friend excitedly chatted about jazz musicians Jungkook had never heard of, and he remembered seeing a sign taped to the front register advertising the fact that they bought used vinyl for cash on the spot. It probably wouldn’t get him back as much as he had spent that weekend, but it was at least worth a try, right?
The shop was bustling with lunchtime shoppers, and at first Jungkook felt a bit lost as he glanced around trying to figure out who to talk to. But then recognition clicked as his eyes landed on a man walking up from the back toward the shop entrance—Jungkook was pretty sure that he was the guy who mentioned owning the shop while he rang out Taehyung’s purchase the last time he was here.
“Excuse me,” Jungkook said shyly, catching the man by the elbow as he walked past, “you’re the owner, right?”
His heart dropped when the man spun around with a decidedly annoyed look on his face, but to Jungkook’s relief, the look softened as soon as he began to reply. “Y-yeah,” the man said, his voice cracking a bit but then settling into something rumbling and deep after clearing his throat, “yes, hi, I’m Yoongi. Can I help you with something?”
‘Pretty,’ Jungkook thought. He was shorter than Jungkook, pale with sharp eyes and dark hair that curled around his ears. He looked a little older than Jungkook, probably in his late 20s or early 30s, and was dressed simply in torn-up jeans, a black tee, and a soft green cardigan. His voice and the way his hands moved over the records as he looked through them, occasionally making comments or asking a question, had Jungkook mesmerized, so when the man asked about an album that he was selling, Jungkook was as surprised as anyone when he immediately started word-vomiting an embarrassing sob story about his noona.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” the man apologized, red spreading quickly to his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He didn’t really speak again until he had finished looking through all of Jungkook’s albums, then had scribbled down some numbers on a notepad, directed him to someone else, and left. Jungkook was so busy being mortified and scolding himself that he missed what the man said as he was leaving.
“Hey,” Jungkook greeted the purple-haired employee the owner had pointed out, “uhm, your boss said to bring this to you with my records so you can cash me out.” The employee smiled warmly and took the slip of paper and stack of records from his hands, an eyebrow shooting up as he compared them. “I think,” Jungkook said nervously, “that I might have said something to piss him off?”
The employee (who, according to a badge around his neck, was named Namjoon) smirked and shifted his eyes from the paper, the stack of albums, and Jungkook a few times before replying, “I don’t think you pissed him off.”
“Are you sure?” Jungkook asked. “He left pretty fast, I’m sorry if… I don’t know…”
“Hyung works the morning shift alone on Mondays,” Namjoon replied reassuringly. “The only thing pissing him off right now is the fact that a bowl of ramyeon isn’t already being shoved into his face.”
Jungkook let out a laugh at that, nodding as he accepted the cash Namjoon had taken from the register. “Okay, if you’re sure. I uhm, I really dig the vibe of this shop, and my best friend is a huge fan of your jazz selection, so I would have been kind of disappointed if I had to avoid it for the rest of my life to hide my shame.”
--
A week later, Jungkook found himself back in the record shop. It was a little earlier in the day this time, because after he had relayed the story to Jimin and Taehyung, he couldn’t stop thinking about what the employee had said about the owner—that he was probably grumpy because he was working alone all morning and didn’t have a chance to eat. Once Jungkook had gotten home and counted the money he’d been given for his records, he realized that the reason the employee had seemed surprised by what was written on the paper was that Yoongi had asked Namjoon to pay him a lot more than he should have for what he’d brought in. Factoring those things together, Jungkook made a plan.
“Oh, you’re back.”
Jungkook turned around quickly to face the source of the voice, offering a shy smile to Yoongi as he walked up from behind the back counter. His dark hair was pulled back from his face in a sort of half-bun, drawing more attention to his eyes, and the effect of his sharp features contrasting with the fluffy black sweater he wore made Jungkook dizzy. “Yeah,” he managed, “I wanted to stop by and apologize.”
Yoongi gave him a confused look. “Apologize for what?” His eyes traveled from Jungkook’s face to the small bag and pair of cups he was holding, then back.
“Last week,” Jungkook replied, “when I came in and stopped you to look at my records, I didn’t know you were trying to leave for lunch. And then I blurted out all that awkward stuff about my family, and then you gave me like way too much money for the records, so I just…” He trailed off, feeling his cheeks warming, then shook the little bag. “I felt bad, and I wanted to try to make it up to you.”
A silence settled over them as Yoongi seemed to be considering what he just said. “I mean,” he finally began, “you didn’t know I was leaving. It’s not like you were being an asshole,” he said, huffing a small laugh. “And I was being nosy, I asked you about something awkward, that’s not your fault either.” His eyes fell to the bag and cups again. “What’s that?”
“Breakfast?” Jungkook offered, stepping closer and placing them on the counter. He opened the bag and pulled out a pair of hotteok wrapped in parchment paper, then picked up one of the cups and handed them both over to Yoongi. “I guessed on the coffee—black Americano?”
The man looked at the hotteok and coffee, surprise briefly flashing across his face before quickly being schooled into something more neutral. “Actually, yeah,” Yoongi said quietly. “Thank you. You really didn’t have to do this,” he added, looking back up from his breakfast to meet Jungkook’s eye. He opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by a buzzer going off from the back room. “Shit, sorry, that’s the delivery truck.” He looked back over his shoulder anxiously, then said, “Thank you, I mean it,” before disappearing into his office.
--
The following week, Jungkook could have sworn that the gods of punctuality were against him. At the urging of Jimin and Taehyung, he once again planned to surprise Yoongi with breakfast, but getting from point A (his apartment) to point B (the café near Yoongi’s shop) to point C (Yoongi) was one obstacle after another.
First, the elevator in his building was down for maintenance, so Jungkook had to walk down seven flights of tenant-crowded stairs in order to leave. Then, the train was even more jam-packed than usual once it arrived to the station, so Jungkook decided to let the people who were trying to get to work or school go ahead of him, waiting through two more train arrivals before finally getting on himself. Once he got to the café, it had been twice as full as it had been the week before, so he stood in line for nearly forty minutes before getting his order. By the time he finally got to the record shop, it was jammed with customers.
Jungkook looked around, scanning for Yoongi among the crowd of people. The delivery truck had already come, judging by the stacks of cardboard boxes set here and there amongst the shelves of albums, some records already pulled out and sitting where Yoongi must have left them when he was interrupted by a customer and could no longer focus on putting them away. It was surprising that there were so many people shopping for vinyl on a Monday morning, but instead of getting annoyed, Jungkook kept scanning the shop for Yoongi’s face.
There—at the cash register, he appeared once a broad-backed ahjussi stepped aside to leave with his purchases. About a dozen customers still waited in line to be helped, and before Jungkook even had the chance to finish thinking, ‘He seems swamped,’ the shop phone started to ring as well. That annoyed look that Yoongi wore when Jungkook had first stopped him to look at his records made complete sense now. If this was what he put up with on a weekly basis, Jungkook was surprised he was keeping it together at all.
Without much thought, he drifted off to an area of the shop where several cardboard boxes sat unopened next to the shelves. With a quick glance around to make sure nobody was paying him much attention, he crouched next to a stack and set the coffees and bag of hotteok on the floor beside them. A small utility knife was perched on top of a box, so Jungkook picked it up and carefully slid it along the tape holding it shut. To his relief, the records inside were already marked with little price tags, so he pulled a few from the box and started putting them away. Over the next twenty minutes, he dutifully went through the first box of albums until each one was where Jungkook was pretty certain they belonged.
He threw a quick glance up to the cash register, but Yoongi was still surrounded by customers, punching buttons on the machine while also cradling the shop phone between his shoulder and ear, speaking into the phone as he rang purchases through. Jungkook crouched back down and opened another box.
About halfway through his third box, Jungkook’s watch gave a vibration and a small chirp, and he looked down to see that it was already almost noon. He had promised Taehyung that he would meet up with him to compare notes before heading to class, so he really needed to get going. He picked up the coffees and bag of hotteok, looked back up to the front of the shop, and sighed with relief to see that Yoongi had finally gotten through his line of customers.
“Hi,” he said brightly, trying to stuff down the bubble of anxiety that rose in his chest when Yoongi turned to see him with a look of surprise. “Uhm, I saw you were busy earlier, so I waited for things to slow down, but I think it might be cold now, I’m sorry.” Jungkook sheepishly thrust the hand holding the hotteok bag and one coffee cup out, blushing at the mark of further surprise that ghosted across Yoongi’s face. “Uhm, I can go get you fresh ones if you want.”
“No!” Yoongi exclaimed, which appeared to startle himself as much as it startled Jungkook. He blinked rapidly a couple of times, then reached out to take the cup and bag from Jungkook’s hand. “I mean, you don’t have to do that, this is… this is really nice. Thank you.”
It was quiet for a moment, then Jungkook realized that it was his turn to speak, but he had just been gazing stupidly at Yoongi instead. “You’re welcome.” He felt his ears going hot, then stuttered, “I g-gotta—I gotta go. Sorry,” before rushing out to leave.
--
“Wait wait wait,” Hoseok bellowed, chuckles erupting from his throat between words. He stirred the dish of tteokbokki in front of him with his chopsticks, then plucked one up and used it to gesture as he said, “He came back twice? Just to bring you snacks?”
“Breakfast,” Yoongi corrected, “but yeah.”
It was early Monday evening, and Yoongi was lounging in the living room with Hoseok, Namjoon, and Seokjin. They were mostly ignoring a k-drama on the TV while sharing a mountain of take-out that had been piled on the coffee table, catching each other up on their day. Yoongi had really only mentioned Jungkook’s return in passing, but his friends found that bit of his story far more interesting than anything else he reported about the day.
“Hyung, that’s so cuuuuute,” Hoseok squealed, shimmying in his seat as he popped the tteokbokki into his mouth.
“Shut up,” Yoongi grumbled around his own mouthful of food.
“If he comes back again, you have to ask him on a date,” Seokjin piped up. He tipped the mouth of his soju bottle in Yoongi’s direction, and said, “He obviously took a shine to you.”
“He did not take a shine to me,” Yoongi replied, eyes rolling to the ceiling. “He felt bad because I was so hangry when he first met me that he thought he pissed me off just by existing, then I stuck my nose in his business and made him feel super awkward. I don’t even know if he likes men.” He slurped another mouthful of jjajangmyeon, chewing and swallowing before adding, “Plus, the shop was such a shitshow when he came in today, it probably scared him off. He looked like a frightened bunny when he told me the hotteok and coffee were probably cold.”
Seokjin and Hoseok both laughed loudly at that, but Namjoon replied, “If he only came back because he felt bad, then why did he come back a second time?”
Yoongi huffed a sigh. “I don’t know, Joon-ah, but I’m pretty sure the kid thinks I’m a crabby bastard now, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“He’s not a kid,” Seokjin said, a mischievous glint in his eye. “I looked at his customer file after Namjoon and I were teasing you about him that first day; he’s 24.”
“I am not,” Yoongi replied, stabbing his chopsticks into his bowl and twisting up another tangle of jjajangmyeon, “trying to date right now. Remember?”
Hoseok made an affirming sound through his tteokbokki-stuffed mouth, swallowed, and said, “Okay, but—” at the same time that Seokjin let out a disgruntled noise and said, “But Yoongi-yah—” while Namjoon set down his bottle of soju and began with, “You can’t let—”
“Guys,” Yoongi said firmly. He lowered his chopsticks and fixed them each with a warning look.
--
When the following Monday came and went without a visit from Jungkook, Yoongi assumed that settled the matter. He appreciated that his friends just wanted the best for him, wanted him to be happy, but it was hard to get them to accept how tired he was of getting his hopes up only to have them trampled, over and over, for the same reasons. They tried so hard to understand how he felt, but how could they really grasp how it feels? Going on a few dates but ultimately parting ways because you don’t like the same hobbies or share the same goals isn’t the same as constantly being rejected for you, for your body, before you even have a chance to disagree about something as trivial as the best norebang spot in the neighborhood.
On Tuesday afternoon, Yoongi was kneeling in front of an end-cap, arranging a new display of R&B albums that had been recently released on vinyl. It was that sleepy period between lunch rush and evening rush, when most people were either back at work or picking up their kids from school, not shopping, so Yoongi took the opportunity to do some organizing around the store.
“Ah,” a voice came from behind him, “there you are.” Yoongi looked over his shoulder at a middle-aged woman standing behind him with a kind smile. “I was looking for another album by this group,” she went on, presenting Yoongi with her phone screen. “I came in yesterday morning and got this one for my daughter, and she liked it so much that I want to surprise her with another. The young man who helped me was so sweet, he knew so much about k-pop!”
“Young man?” Yoongi interrupted, confusion tingling at the tip of his brain. “Yesterday morning? You mean me?”
“No,” the woman laughed, “the new one. Taller, had some jewelry in his face.” Waving her hand dismissively, she said, “Anyway, I had no idea what I was doing, so please tell him I said thank you.”
Yoongi’s mind was spinning. He didn’t have any new employees, and while his friends were all taller than him, none of them had facial piercings. “Of course,” he said, trying to brush past the confusion and focus on his customer. “Uhm, well you’re in luck actually, because Le Sserafim just released a new EP.” He stood and led the woman over to the k-pop section, handing her the album he had in mind, going through the motions on auto-pilot while racking his brain.
‘Who is she talking about?? Seokjin-hyung and Namjoon were both in later yesterday afternoon, but she specifically said jewelry in his face…’ Yoongi was still baffled.
…Unless?
--
“Fiiiiiiiine,” Jungkook sighed into his phone, “you can come along this once. BUT,” he added quickly, raising his voice to be heard over the excited boom of Taehyung cheering on the other end of the line, “you have to swear not to say anything embarrassing, and you have to get here in the next ten minutes or I’m leaving without you.”
“He won’t even know I’m there,” Taehyung promised, and Jungkook could hear the cheeky smile in his voice.
“Hyung, I’m serious,” Jungkook replied, his tone heavy with warning. “I will pretend I don’t know you in a heartbeat.”
Cackling, Taehyung said, “I’ll see you in five,” then hung up.
When they walked into the record shop fifteen minutes later, it was surprisingly calm. At the cash register, Yoongi stood leaning against the counter and scrolling on his phone, casting quick glances up at the handful of people browsing here and there.
“Oh shit,” Taehyung hissed into his ear, “you weren’t kidding, he’s gorgeous.”
“Shut up,” Jungkook hissed back, smacking his shoulder. The movement finally caught Yoongi’s attention, whose face shifted from an expression of surprise, to something pensive, before settling back on professional neutrality. A nervous shudder swept through Jungkook’s system, but he pushed a smile onto his face as they walked over.
“Good morning,” Yoongi greeted them. He nodded politely at Taehyung, then looked at Jungkook quizzically, arms crossed over his chest. “I had a very interesting conversation with a customer on Tuesday. It seems that I need to add you to my payroll?”
Feeling his face grow hot, Jungkook dropped his eyes to his feet. “I can explain.”
“Please do,” Yoongi replied, and when Jungkook looked back up at him, he was relieved to find a look of confused amusement on his face, not anger.
“I came in to bring you hotteok and coffee,” Jungkook began, and to his horror he could feel the blush on his cheeks and ears only get deeper, “but you were really busy again, and I didn’t want to be a pest while you were working, and uhm, then like, this really nice lady thought I worked here and started asking me questions about k-pop girl groups, so I just…” He looked back up at Yoongi, “I’m sorry, was she mad? Did her daughter hate the album I suggested?”
Smirking, Yoongi shook his head. “Quite the contrary,” he replied, “she came back in the next day, full of compliments about my new hire and wanting to purchase more albums by the group you recommended. To say I was confused would be,” he paused for a moment, his lip quirking up again, “a bit of an understatement.”
As they were speaking, Taehyung had slowly brought a hand up to his mouth, but it did nothing to hide the sound of deep chuckles bubbling up from his chest. “You pretended to work here,” he asked Jungkook incredulously, “and you left that part out of the story?”
Mortified, Jungkook turned to him and smacked his chest, which made Yoongi start laughing, too. “I didn’t pretend anything!” he insisted. “She assumed I work here and I just—"
“Why did she assume you work here?” Yoongi cut him off, arching a brow at him expectantly.
“I may have,” Jungkook admitted, face reaching critical levels of crimson, “been shelving new inventory when she saw me.” He turned back to a now-openly-laughing Taehyung and smacked him on the chest again, which only made him laugh harder.
“You were…” Yoongi repeated, sounding very lost. He squinted at Jungkook, asking, “I’m sorry, you were doing what when she saw you?” Before Jungkook could reply, he held up a hand and frowned, then followed up with, “Why did my customers see you that morning but I didn’t?”
“Yoongi-ssi, you had so many people in line and the phone kept ringing,” Jungkook replied, desperately trying not to sound as pathetic as he felt in that moment, “so I figured you didn’t need someone else to bother you, you needed… less work to do.”
At that, Yoongi’s expression softened. “JK,” he said quietly, “that’s really… you’re very thoughtful.” He paused for a moment, looking like he was turning something over in his mind, then asked, “Did you do that the week before, too? Seokjin-hyung mentioned being surprised by how much inventory I’ve been getting shelved before he and Namjoon get in lately. Was that… was that you? Is that the real reason the coffee and hotteok were cold?”
‘If there was a loving and merciful god,’ Jungkook thought, ‘it would disintegrate me here on the spot.’
“Yes,” he said.
Yoongi pressed his lips together into a line and nodded, crossing his arms back over his chest. “So… you’re free on Monday mornings every week then?”
“My first class isn’t until 2:00pm,” Jungkook replied, nodding.
“I can start you at 11,000 won per hour,” Yoongi said. “We open at 9:00am but I typically get in around 7:00am, is that too early for you?”
Jungkook opened his mouth to reply, then realized what was happening. “Are you offering me a job?”
Yoongi huffed out another laugh, a sound Jungkook was quickly growing very fond of. “JK, you’ve been working here for the last two weeks. I’m offering to start paying you to do it.” Jungkook hesitated, and Yoongi glanced at his empty hands. “No breakfast today?”
“Oh,” Jungkook said, feeling like his stomach was dropping through to the floor as he, too, looked down at his empty hands. “Shit, sorry, no.” He glanced at Taehyung, then back to Yoongi. “I got distracted by someone deciding to tag along at the last minute.”
Thankfully, Yoongi just looked even more amused at this. “You really don’t have to keep bringing me food, you know. I was just giving you a hard time.”
Later, as they walked back to Jungkook’s apartment, Taehyung asked, “Why does he keep calling you JK? I haven’t heard anyone use that nickname since we were teenagers.”
He thought about it for a moment, then the lightbulb went off, “I never introduced myself,” Jungkook replied, smacking his forehead. “He probably read it on the album I sold him, it was signed to me when I was like 13.”
Taehyung fixed him with an incredulous look. “You never actually told him your name?”
Jungkook flailed his arms out dramatically. “Did you see that man’s face? Do you know how incredibly gay I am? What are you expecting from me?!”
--
“Let me get this straight,” Seokjin said, “because lord knows this is the only straight thing about this situation—”
Namjoon and Yoongi just groaned in unison.
“This beautiful man has been bringing you coffee and pastries every week like clockwork,” Seokjin continued, “and when he shows up to your shop empty-handed because he was sooooo flustered about his bestie wanting to check out the hot older business owner he’s been crushing on that he forgot to get the coffee and pastries, you offered him a job instead of a date?”
Yoongi groaned again, louder this time. “Well, when you put it like that…”
“Hyung,” Namjoon said carefully, “it really does sound like this guy might be into you. He was secretly working in your shop for free, just to be nice. Nobody likes capitalism that much.”
Heaving a profound sigh, Yoongi admitted, “I think you might be right.”
“Who’s right?” Hoseok asked, walking into the living room through the front door. He dropped his duffle bag next to the couch and toed off his sneakers. “What did I miss?”
“Yoongi-chi’s admirer is the reason the Monday morning shipments have been getting put away so fast,” Seokjin replied, “because he’s been sneaking in and taking care of the new stock while our boss is swamped with customers.”
“Oh my god,” Hoseok gasped, then he turned to clutch both of Yoongi’s hands in his own. “When is the wedding?”
Wrenching his hands away and then pelting him with a throw pillow, a blushing Yoongi hollered, “Shut up!”
--
“You seem so young to own a shop like this,” Jungkook observed the following Monday, focusing on Yoongi’s hands as they deftly fingered through stacks of won. The two of them were standing at the cash register, counting the drawer to make sure it was balanced before they opened. “You can’t be that much older than me. How did you end up here?”
After a pause, Yoongi replied, “The four of us worked here part-time while we were in university, but the owner was kind of like a second father to me. When he wanted to retire, I realized I could use my business degree to keep his legacy going, so we worked out a deal.” He finished counting the cash in his hands and slid it into place in the drawer. “It was important to me, since he looked after me like I was his own son after my family disowned me.”
Jungkook was nodding along when the weight of Yoongi’s words settled in his ear. “Oh, Yoongi-ssi, I’m so sorry.” He fidgeted with his lip ring for a moment before adding, “My noona that I told you about, sometimes she still talks to me from time to time, but when I came out as gay to my family, my parents stopped speaking to me entirely.”
Yoongi’s head snapped up at that, and Jungkook felt something sharp in his gaze. “You’re gay?” An unreadable expression crossed Yoongi’s face, and Jungkook’s heart gave an anxious thud. “Like… gay-gay?”
“Y-yeah, is that… is that not okay?” Jungkook frowned, a sinking feeling starting to envelop him. Now that he was having this conversation out loud, it dawned on him that he had sort of just assumed that Yoongi was queer based on vibes alone, but maybe he had horribly misjudged.
Seeming to realize how severe he must have sounded, Yoongi visibly shook himself out. “No no no,” he said quickly, “sorry, that came out wrong. I mean,” he added in a rush, “I’m bisexual, this is a safe space.” He cleared his throat and said quietly, “I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“I get that a lot,” Jungkook replied warily.
Sliding the cash drawer shut, Yoongi opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, then asked, “Your noona still talks to you sometimes? That’s good at least, right?”
“Yeah,” Jungkook said. He slipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, anxiety suddenly making him hyperaware that he had no idea what to do with his hands. “She’s a lot older than me, though, uhm, she was 14 when I was born, so we don’t really have a lot in common, we didn’t really grow up together.” He could feel the verbal diarrhea starting to bubble up again, cursing himself but unable to stop the rush of words coming out. “I was kind of a surprise for my parents, they were in their 40s when I came along so they were like, almost 60 when I told them I’m gay, and that was almost a decade ago, so like, really, I mean, if you think about it, I shouldn’t have been so surprised when they flipped out on me.”
Yoongi looked at him wordlessly, like he was deciding whether to comment or not, but Jungkook’s mouth kept going.
“Taehyung-hyung’s parents were like, super cool though, uhm, they were really pissed when they found out and sort of unofficially adopted me. I thought Mr Kim was going to drag my dad out into the street and murder him when he found out he said they wished they had aborted me like they’d originally planned.”
“Jesus,” Yoongi hissed.
Jungkook’s ears caught up to his mouth; a moment later, his brain joined the conversation as well. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I… I should literally never speak.”
After a beat, Yoongi said, “My parents and my hyung called me an abomination, so… I get it.” They exchanged a look, and when Yoongi quirked up the corner of his mouth into a knowing smile, Jungkook felt less like he had just humiliated himself in front of his crush and more like they were in some shared secret club. “I’m glad your hyung’s family had your back,” he went on. “Is Taehyung-ssi also gay?”
“No,” Jungkook answered, relieved for the shift of topic. “Everyone always seems surprised when they meet us, though, and find out that I’m the gay one and that Taehyung-hyung is straight. His family are just very kind people, and we’ve been best friends since we were little, so I think they’re protective of me.”
A beat passed, then: “Straight?” Yoongi asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow.
“He’s an artist,” Jungkook replied, as if that were all the explanation needed.