Chapter Text
Floors. Floors are good. There’s something about floors that seems to attract people in the throws of existential crises. Perhaps it is because they are sturdy. Solid. Everything else could be spinning out of control, but floors are always there, existing to hold you up.
The floor of Min Yoongi’s studio-cum-bedroom has seen more than its fair share of its owner’s face pressed into its surface. The cool wood under his cheek soothes him, the firmness good on his aching back. This way, he doesn’t have to look at his desk, the keyboard, the stacks of notebooks and loose papers, the silent recording equipment. It’s not that he’s a stranger to music coming slowly. It’s just that this particular slump has been going on for a while. Notes sound discordant to his ears. His mind shrinks away from forcing a path through the blockade, shoving the idleness aside until something somewhere slots together right. What if nothing ever does again? What would he have then?
Yoongi knows this is just his depression talking. He knows that eventually, after hours and days of coaxing and trying, something will catch. A note will follow another, and he will have the ghost, the bare bones of a melody. But it’s just so. Damn. Hard. The waiting. The keeping the faith. Sometimes, he can’t do it. He just wants to leave it all behind, disappear into the waiting night. Sometimes, he is sure all that will be left of him would amount to nothing more than an exhaled breath of air, hanging around for a second and gone forever.
The room spins. Time spins with it, and all Yoongi has on his side are the sturdy, dependable floorboards, his only friend in these shifting sands.
The door swings open without warning.
“Yoongi-yah? Did you want-- wait, where are--oh. Oh, Yoongi.”
The voice doesn’t say, “Again?” It doesn’t really have to. His brother comes padding into the room, softly-softly like their father in the middle of the night when his insomnia is flaring up and he can’t stay still, but doesn’t want to wake the house. Junki isn’t much taller than him, but he always feels broad and steady to Yoongi. Like the floor, even if maybe a little bit more distant, but that’s Yoongi’s fault. He’s the one who has been pulling away for longer than he likes to think about. Being back in Daegu, living in the family house again-- he feels enough like a failure already, and it seems like everything is rubbing him the wrong way these days.
At least Junki isn’t interested in shoving all of Yoongi’s mistakes back in his face. Instead, he sits down, then stretches so his back fits the floorboards at Yoongi’s side.
“Is it bad?” he says. He means, is it as bad as it used to get when Yoongi was eighteen and falling through the cracks of life. That’s another thing his family doesn’t really talk about, because they all dread the thought that things might get like that again. But Yoongi’s okay. He takes his medication, he walks outside, he’s holding down a job at the local grocery store. Sure, he has a degree he isn’t using for anything but propping up his books on the shelf, but he’s managing. He’s coping.
“It’s fine,” Yoongi sighs, and feels Junki relaxing slowly next to him. And he is. He’s talking, he’s being around people. It’s just that, everything seems so pointless if he can’t even make music.
Junki sighs, too. It seems to come up from his toes. Yoongi knows his brother is frustrated that there isn’t anything he can do; he can’t physically drag Yoongi out of this headspace. Junki has his own demons to deal with.
“Listen,” Junki says. “Mom and Dad aren’t coming home until late. Wanna help me make dinner?”
Yoongi shrugs. It’s better than nothing. And he’s always liked helping out in the kitchen, and watching Junki work. His brother has a way with tools, wields knives and chopsticks like weapons in a graceful dance of intent and creation.
Also, he’d consent to pretty much anything if it means not lying on this floor for another minute.
Jinki grins when Yoongi groans and sits up, climbing to his feet and offering a hand to help Yoongi stand. Yoongi takes it, weary to his bones, but it’s still nice to have someone want to help, however they go about it.
The brothers walk into the kitchen silently, before Junki prods Yoongi into putting on one of his mixes, and they both roll up their sleeves. Cooking is therapeutic in a way that music hasn’t been for a long time. Junki, in his last semester of culinary school in Seoul and back in Daegu for a last break before his life gets taken over by finals, is so assured and comfortable in the space between the counters and the stove, that Yoongi feels the calmness transfer into him as they keep working. Junki is more rigid than him, has wholly embraced the Western tradition his school preaches.
Yoongi has always liked to experiment, to mix the food of his childhood into the convenience-focused food prep of his college years. Junki may frown and wrinkle his nose, but Yoongi doesn’t pay him the least mind, mixing a marinade that is his preferred order at their local barbeque joint and slathering it liberally over Junki’s steak, dashing some of the spices into the fries and steamed vegetables their family enjoys when they’re making something quick to eat during the week. It’s worth it to see Junki’s face when he tries the food, then tries to pretend he isn’t impressed. Yoongi laughs for the first time all day, and he feels light, so light and happy in a simple way that has evaded him for years.
“You know, a friend of mine was telling me the other day about this exchange program he’s looking into, with a culinary institute in France,” Junki says in that off-hand way he has when he’s being completely serious but doesn’t want to tip Yoongi off. Too late; Yoongi has been tipped since he was seven. “It’s not degree-length or particularly fancy, but it’s pretty comprehensive. It’s not as expensive as a full Cordon Bleu course would be, either. You should apply, if you’re not moving back to Seoul yet.”
Yoongi snorts. “Me? The kid who can’t follow instructions and fights with all his teachers?”
Junki rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me that crap, you can focus like a laser when you want to. You like cooking, right? Anyway, it’ll pass the time, and you seem like you need a break from all of this. What’s better than swanning around Paris for a year? I know you have some money saved up, and we’ll help, you know we will.”
Yoongi stays quiet. He’s surprised, really, when his reaction isn’t to immediately tell Junki to shove it, he’s gonna keep his focus on music, he can make it, damn it. Maybe it’s life, wearing him down. Maybe it’s the reality of how difficult it is, breaking into the industry.
(Maybe it’s just time, passing and passing, four am and sitting in his chair staring at the wall, feeling its flow around him, sucking him up to spin out of place into its maelstrom, never to be seen again; the knowing that this will happen over and over again until something gives.)
But this picture Junki is painting for him--he doesn’t hate it.
Junki doesn’t belabor the point. He looks just as surprised as Yoongi is that he isn’t getting his ass chewed out, and isn’t looking to push his luck. This is nice, peaceful in a way that Yoongi’s composing sessions haven’t been for too long. And when his parents come home, Yoongi gets to watch the surprise and pleasure on their faces to find dinner waiting for them, and then the shock at how good it is. Their father looks between Junki and Yoongi, eyes lingering on his younger son like he knows something they don’t. He smiles, soft like midnight footsteps but very much present, and the force of satisfied joy that bursts in Yoongi’s chest at seeing it is pretty shocking.
He likes making people happy, always has. For so many years, their family has fought and argued, trying to steer Yoongi to a safer path, attempting to avoid the misery that mires him now. Yoongi had dug in his heels, and stubbornly pushed forward, and got his way. He got fantastic grades, got noticed by his professors, got recitals and his music picked up by a couple of studios, a night club. But it’s been so much more difficult than he could have ever imagined; and even through the success, always, the worry, the panic. The niggling voice in the back of his head that tells him, you don’t belong. You aren’t good enough. You’re just lucky.
This, now. This is simple. Good food makes people happy. Cooking means he isn’t curled up in a ball on the seat of his chair, terror clawing at his throat, that it’s going to come back, the black cloud of despair, and this time, Yoongi won’t be able to escape it. This time, he’ll know all those things it says are true, and he’ll sink, never to see the light again.
He won’t know it for a while, but that night, he makes a choice.
---
It’s probably good that he didn’t expect culinary school to be easy, because it extremely very much isn’t. He made it through the application process, but the Western superiority complex is as insidious as it is baffling. Sure, Yoongi is in school to learn French cuisine, but some of his teachers seem to think it's the only food worth consuming. The barely-hidden sneers at the way he looks different, sounds different, fighting both language and comprehension, are ever-present. His flavour choices are criticised and ridiculed, he gets the ‘go open a KBBQ’ line on the daily. He shocks himself with how those only fire him up, solidify his determination to be seen, be understood, show those stuck-up instructors that this quiet Korean kid can blow all of them and their stagnating palates out of the water. The Min kids have never backed down from a challenge, and it isn’t going to start now, with him.
So he swallows his pride and tells himself, just get through this. Get the certificate. Then you can do whatever the fuck you want, and no two-bit loser is going to stop you from getting that bread. They want bland? He’ll give them bland. They want technique? He’s got it coming out of his ears, after so many years of being bossed around by his mom growing up. They want him to cut the attitude?
Well, that is somewhat easier said than done. Min Yoongi is not known for his mild manners and vapid smile, but he does his best. He smiles sweetly while he composes diss track after diss track in the back of his mind. If anything, his inspiration has picked itself the hell up from that floor, dusted itself off, and is mad as hell and ready to throw hands. He composes as he works, writes it down in scribbles in lunch breaks and between shifts at the diner he finds looking for cooks one day on his way home from the academy.
It’s hard work, and he is permanently exhausted, but he feels like he’s on fire, mind alive like he hasn’t felt since before he left Daegu behind. He cooks and writes, and writes and cooks, and sleeps, sometimes, curled up in a small ball in the middle of his small bed, waking up to the smell of coffee from the little bakery downstairs from his rented room and his mother’s proud smile on their weekly video calls. Junki officially moved out of the family home a couple months ago, into a new place closer to his work in Seoul, which made a lot of sense considering his hours. Yoongi simultaneously misses him and feels closer to him than he ever has before. They sneak texts when they can, Junki complaining about his new boss and coaching Yoongi how to get on the good side of his lecturer in sauces. And it’s good.
But then it gets better.
Yoongi is so tired, he’s doing his Walking Dead impersonation on his way out of the molecular gastronomy lab, when he becomes aware of this guy waiting at the elevator with him. Yoongi barely notices him out of the corner of his eye, but something tells him to look again, and damn, those are some thighs. The guy shifts forward to stab at the button again with a scowl, and the way he moves makes Yoongi’s mouth drop open. Fluid, like water, even when he’s obviously pissed. And then he hears him bitch under his breath in Korean, and Yoongi couldn’t stop himself if he tried.
“I don’t think that’s gonna make it do what you want it to do,” he says--slurs, mostly, but it gets the reaction he wanted--the guy starts and turns to look at him with eyes narrowed and then wide, as he takes in Yoongi’s everything.
“It’s so slow,” he bursts out, adorably petulant, and Yoongi can’t help his lips twitching, the involuntary noise of amusement.
(Once he gets to know Jimin better, he’s going to remember that moment and wonder just how close Jimin had been to kicking the elevator doors in frustration, because the kid has a temper on him that Yoongi won’t be making the mistake of egging on again.)
“In a hurry?” Yoongi asks. It’s the end of the day, and honestly all he can think about is his bed, but here this guy is, looking ready to mow down a mountain. “I’m Min Yoongi, by the way.”
The guy deflates, turning to look at him fully, eyes lingering on the bags under Yoongi’s eyes. “Park Jimin.”
“Nice to meet you, Jimin-ssi.” He half-bows, then remembers they shake hands here. But Jimin doesn’t seem bothered, just bows back. What a nice Korean boy, he can hear his mother saying in the back of his head.
Jimin runs his hand through his hair, letting it flop back dejectedly. “I’m supposed to meet my friend -” he looks at his watch and panic skitters over his features “- ten minutes ago, fuck. Fucking lecturers who love the sound of their own voices too much, why are they all over this school?” He eyes the elevator again with violence in his eyes. Wisely, it chooses to arrive exactly that second.
Jimin gets in with a relieved exhale, jamming his thumb into the ground level button. “He won’t be mad,” he seems to be compelled to explain. “Tae is late all the time. I just don’t like to be.”
He says it in a way that hides something darker, a curl of anxiety that Yoongi knows all too well. ‘Be stronger, be faster, be better’--the mantra running through his head on any given day. Looks like Jimin internalised a good deal of that, too. Yoongi wonders how long he’s been here. Did he come with family, or alone? Does he have anyone waiting for him at home?
The doors open again, and Jimin is out in a flash. Then, to Yoongi’s surprise, he stops and grins back at him over his shoulder. It’s… devastating, actually.
“Come on. Tae will like you.”
Yoongi privately has some doubts, but it turns out that ‘Tae’ is another very nice (very cute) Korean boy who smiles beatifically at Jimin and hugs him so hard, he lifts him off the ground.
“And what kept you, darling?” he says, in a lower voice than Yoongi was expecting, and it’s. A lot.
Tae hums at Jimin’s snarled “Deschamps”, then hums again when Jimin introduces the two of them. Tae--short for Taehyung--is a hospitality major like Jimin, and Yoongi soon finds out has a way of whittling out information while smiling innocently in a way that is a little frightening. Within two minutes of meeting him, they’re both calling him “hyung” and asking if he wants to get some food with them, and, well. Who is Yoongi to refuse? Besides. Junki keeps saying he needs more friends, and it’ll be good to have a comeback for once.
They hole up in a tiny bistro that Taehyung apparently discovered within two hours of arriving in Paris some months ago. The food is outstanding, but the company is better. Jimin and Taehyung seem entirely unselfconscious about sharing their life stories with a man they have just met. Perhaps it’s the camaraderie of finding a compatriot so far away from home, the pressure cooker release valve of speaking their own language and comparing experiences in this strange land. Yoongi hasn’t ever felt anything like it before, this urge to open up, to welcome another person into his life. When he mulls over it later, he thinks it’s probably common among expats to form intense relationships at the drop of a hat with someone else who understands intrinsically what they’re going through. Jimin and Taehyung seem like such good kids, though, that Yoongi thinks they might have become friends anyway, even if they had met back in Korea.
Taehyung is an artist at heart, camera surgically attached to his hand that whole afternoon, taking picture after picture. Yoongi fancies he’s documenting their lives in this brief moment of time, and it makes his heart warm up to him all the faster. The way he looks at Jimin, even when Jimin isn’t paying attention, is also a balm to Yoongi’s bruised self--the obvious adoration in Taehyung’s eyes something that makes Yoongi smile with true contentment. Jimin--Yoongi's first impression proves to be correct--is a dancer, and in his few spare hours, he haunts the modern ballet studios scattered around Paris, nurturing his own soul while his head mulls over business lessons and accounting formulas.
They’re two gentle souls lost in this vast, shimmering city, who have somehow found Yoongi when he most needed it. It’s no wonder the three of them soon become inseparable.
---
As he claws his way through training, Yoongi frequently wonders if he could have done this even two years ago. He remembers the hell of senior year, the constant pit of darkness yawning under his feet, the neverending refrain of ‘useless’, ‘never good enough’, ‘failing, failing, failing’. The way he questioned everything purporting to be ‘real’. Clinging to sound as a way to assure himself he existed, he observed and perceived. It was good, manipulating notes and tones and frequencies, a way to influence and affect his personal reality in a way that was also perceivable by others, proof of his own being here. The subjective nature of experience was a lifeboat in the maelstrom of shared objectivity. He only knew he was real when other people listened to his work. Any feedback was proof of its tangible nature; that he, too, was an object in the collective experience.
Things got better; the darkness receded. With it came the understanding that this was no way to live. Really, Yoongi? ‘I make music, so I exist?’ Bit dramatic, don’t you think? He supposes being able to laugh at himself is progress. In any case, he sensed the barriers to motion, the safety that he had for so long cultivated, becoming ever more restrictive, suffocating rather than engulfing. The need to move, to walk, run, fly--it wouldn’t leave him alone, stifled under the rigidity of expectation, of allocating degrees of value that came ever short of pure appreciation.
Food is similar, and yet profoundly different at the same time. The immediacy of relief, the instant positive feedback loop, the way satisfaction of desire made a person pliant, warm, open, worries set aside in favour of caring and nurturing the physical self--this is what now galvanises Yoongi to keep pushing, reach higher, strive to please ever better.
Which is not to say that training isn’t still trying to kill him. Mindless repetition of technique, the drumming of muscle memory into fingers and wrists, the subjugation of taste buds to a commonly (and commercially) accepted Westernised standard--all of it rubs Yoongi entirely the wrong way. Intellectually, he understands why he has to learn these things. Standardised testing is unfortunately still a thing, a way to measure pass or fail of accomplishment. It’s just as suffocating as his previous degree. Too late, Yoongi finally understands that organised education just makes him miserable. He isn’t cut out for contorting himself into pretzels just to please The Man. Too late, because he has already become invested, stubbornness engaged, conscience enraged at the restrictions. He started, so he will damn well finish--and then. Then, he’ll breathe.
Besides, you’ve got to know the rules if you want to find out exactly how to break them.
Taehyung and Jimin help a lot. The student test kitchens are open and accessible 24/7 because of the nature of the program, and because culinary excellence takes obscene amounts of practice. Jimin once compared it to drilling new choreography into his limbs, and he’s not wrong. But even perfectionists need to eat, and Yoongi will be damned if he cooks another chicken kiev or bland hollandaise to ladle over poached eggs.
It starts as a small rebellion, in the way that those things usually do. He adds chilli seeds to the fettuccine alfredo. Garlic and sesame oil to perfectly roasted chicken breasts. Soy sauce and gochujang to the marinade for the grilled salmon. Knife noodles to soup instead of vermicelli. Ten pm dinners become a standing arrangement; Jimin’s face starts looking less wan, and Taehyung begins to resemble a man rather than a dilapidated scarecrow. They joke--“Yoongi-hyung, you should open a restaurant! People will queue to eat your food!” “Seriously, hyung, my brain tells me that if I eat another dumpling, I may actually explode, but my mouth is like, ‘are you a coward, Kim Taehyung?!’ And I am no coward, so I will eat it.”
Yoongi graduates, exhaustedly crawling across the finishing line while his family flies in to celebrate with him. Jimin claps like a seal; Taehyung cries; Junki meets the two of them and immediately starts using duckling metaphors. His mother meets them, and looks at Yoongi proudly, like he’s doing something right. His father shares their grandmother’s recipe for japchae with Yoongi alone, causing Junki to sulk explosively. It’s a good day.
Yoongi takes a job as a line cook in a fusion restaurant in Montmartre, immediately losing track of time. Nights and days make no sense to him; the only indication of change is how frequently Tae and Jimin accost him after work to drag him back to their place to cook and drink and sleep. Yoongi is pretty sure they’re the only reason he retains even a tentative grip on his sanity, not to mention reality. His brain is mush; he can’t even keep a plant alive.
Sometime later (he wears sweaters now, not t-shirts, when he drags himself out of his small studio, so he feels pretty safe in assuming a few months have passed), he begins to resurface from that quagmire, too. He finds himself with brain cells to spare as he works to prep his station, and then fill the orders flying in. Is it really necessary to use spaghetti rather than glass noodles? Why not use soybean paste instead of tomato puree? He makes a face at the innocent boeuf bourguignon, wishing for a whiff of kimchi. Fusion restaurant it may be, but it’s still playing it far too safe for Yoongi’s taste, chafing at the bit to be let loose to explore and innovate the tired classics.
At home, in his own tiny yet pin-neat kitchen, he feels like he can breathe again, like a straightjacket has been unlaced from around his torso. All those half-thought ideas come pouring out, and he cooks and cooks, dish after dish reminding him of home with every breath--a place inbetween, much like he is, two cultures flowing and mixing like watercolours on a blank sheet of parchment.
Out of it all, something new and strange emerges, a mirror to himself. It works, is the thing. The balance wobbles and then holds, the flavours harmonise in a way that makes him a little misty-eyed at times. As if preternaturally aware of when Yoongi is in a creating mood, his two shadows never fail to materialise. And it’s still a joke, but the forty-eleventh time Tae says, “I’m serious, hyung, what will it take for you to ditch your job and do this full time?”, and Jimin nods a little too fast and says, “I’ll help! I can be your restaurant manager! Tae can be the host! We’ve talked about it!”--well, Yoongi still laughs it off, but he also starts thinking about it as something more than platitudes and flattery. A space to be himself, to share his passion with people of discerning palates and tastes.
He lets himself buy into the dream--his own shop in Seoul, run how he likes it, no one to tell him not to do things his way. It’s the dream that keeps him going, through promotion to sous chef, through a stint of head chef when his boss takes a couple months off to give birth and get her new kid settled into the world. Despite himself, he dares to imagine, to draft plans and layouts in the spare few minutes he takes to rest his feet after shift. He notices himself humming a new melody, something jaunty and cute, a little sweet, like a young woman’s cheerful smile, a cheesy, flirty wink. He tries and fails to fight the rising hope that this could actually work.
He also feels like he has learned all he can from Paris. He longs to be back in his own country, craves the streets and ever-present noise of Seoul, a heart that beats in tune with his. If he’s serious about this dream, then it’s possible that it’s time to pack up and go home, give it a real shot. It would mean leaving Jimin and Taehyung behind, but they’re only a semester or so away from finishing their programs, and from the uptick of reminiscing about home, Yoongi thinks he’s safe in assuming that they aren’t likely to decide to stick around for longer than absolutely necessary.
It’s an emotional goodbye. It makes Yoongi want to crawl back into his shell and slam the door on the world, but neither of the kids would let him. Taehyung point-blank demands that Yoongi keeps both of them updated on his progress, even pulls up a calendar to plan their own departure and return to the homeland. Jimin grabs hold of Yoongi’s shirt and shakes him softly, explaining in no uncertain terms that Yoongi is absolutely not getting rid of them that easily and when they leave, they’re coming back to him, and they’re going to make his (theirs, now) dream a reality even if they have to drag him kicking and screaming along.
Yoongi forbids them from coming to see him off at the airport. You can guess how well that goes. So yeah, it’s emotional, alright. Yoongi gets choked up, Jimin cries, Taehyung wraps the two of them in his 181 cm long wingspan (they measured, they were drunk, it was a thing, don’t ask) and holds them tightly together, like he could erase the coming distance by sheer force of will.
Yoongi leaves, and wonders if their friendship would still hold up without the glue of a foreign city to solidify the bond. Of course, he should never have doubted their resolve, and before he even knows it, he’s picking the two of them from Incheon Airport in his tiny but practical car, relishing the sound of their laughter.
But making the dream into reality is easier said than done. Despite the kids’ dedicated, enthusiastic help drawing up the business plan, and Jimin’s occult mastery of numbers and projections, Yoongi walks out of bank after bank with nothing to show for it other than an even more sizeable chip on his shoulder and bitterness surging in his mouth at the sound of “Collateral, Min Yoongi-ssi. You just don’t have enough to bring to the table.” It’s a little (a lot) soul-destroying. This is why Yoongi mistrusts dreams--they trick you into wanting, and hoping, and it kills something inside you when they meet the harsh, implacable reality of the real world.
Such is the case on a bleak day in March, as far from Spring as if it was still December, when Yoongi trudges along a violently ugly carpet towards the elevator leaving the corporate clients department of this particular branch. Despite himself (and all of Jimin’s pep-talk), his head is hanging low, shoulders weighed with disappointment and creeping despair. How many more times could he do this, without changing any factors on his part? Where could he possibly find more money to put towards loan security? His car is wonderfully useful, but barely worth much, and his family’s home is out of the question, no matter how confident he is of success. His shiny shoes barely make a mark on the floor as he puts one foot in front of the other, eyes heavy with fatigue and the insomnia that has been stealthily taking over his nights. He can’t let his depression win; not yet, no matter how difficult it has been to get through days of late. He isn’t completely out of options, there are still a few places to try. Perhaps he should look into private investors, not that he’d know where to start--
It was inevitable, really, that he would run into someone head-on, distracted as he is with dark thoughts. He splutters apologies as he bounces off a very firm chest, papers flying like kites all around them.
“I am so sorry,” the other man says in a high, distressed voice. “I am so unbelievably clumsy, here, let me help you.” He crouches down, long arms easily collecting the stray papers from around them.
“No, it’s my fault,” Yoongi insists, face hot with embarrassment. “I was distracted, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
The stranger makes a doubtful noise, deftly snatching the folder with the business proposal and opening it to stack the pages inside. He really is rather attractive, in an absentminded professor kind of way. He looks to be around Yoongi’s age, clothes neat and minimalist--a button-down, a pair of trousers perhaps a little tighter than Yoongi’s flustered awareness needs. They make his thighs look edible, that’s for sure. His hands are almost as big as Yoongi’s own, long dextrous fingers holding a page for him to read, paused in the act of tidying them away.
Is he reading Yoongi’s proposal? Is that rude? Should Yoongi be offended? Though, he has shared it with what feels like half the city already. One more person doesn’t really make a difference, does it? He clears his throat, unsure of what he should do. The stranger looks up, pins him in place with a pair of dark, lively, intelligent eyes behind slim black frames. Yoongi watches them blink, returning to the moment, then widen.
“Oh my god, I’m being unforgivably rude, I apologise. Again. I shouldn’t be prying, these are private. I’m so sorry.”
Yoongi shrugs, thrown (not just physically this time). “It’s okay?” he hazards. “It’s nothing much, certainly the bank didn’t seem to think so.”
The stranger winces. “Here for a loan? They’re tough customers in this department”
“Yeah,” Yoongi sighs, dejected. “You too?” Perhaps they could commiserate. Yoongi sure can use a friendly ear to unload to.
The stranger blinks. “Me?” Pointing at himself in a way that makes Yoongi snort.
“Yeah, you. No luck either?”
“For a… loan? Ah, um, no, that’s not… I was just in to talk to my portfolio manager. It’s nothing too dire.”
“Oh.” Well. That about rounds off the conversation, strange as this interaction has been, so he should--
“About these.” Slim fingers holding the papers up. “Are you proposing significant asset collateral to offset the investment?”
Yoongi really, really hates that word. He rubs the back of his neck, frustrated and showing it.
“Not according to the bank, I’m not.”
“Ah.” The stranger pats his lower lip with a finger. It’s an odd gesture, and it draws Yoongi’s eyes to a generous pink mouth. Is it possible he’s being hit on? He has somewhat of a reputation for being dense about these things, according to the kids. If it is that, it’s one of the strangest interactions he’s ever had.
“Have you thought of acquiring a silent partner?” the man says, drawing him out of his distraction with those pretty lips. It’s also possible that Yoongi needs to get laid already, if he is getting this flustered by one cute guy.
“I’ve thought about it,” Yoongi drawls, wincing. “Haven’t the first idea how to go about finding one.”
The stranger smiles. He has dimples. Yoongi blinks, completely disarmed.
“Well, that seems to have taken care of itself, huh? Now, can I take you to lunch? I’d like to discuss the venture further.”
---
“Um. What just happened?” Jimin asks plaintively from where he’s curled up like a pretzel in the corner of Yoongi’s couch.
Beside him, Yoongi is sitting with his legs stretched out over the floor, staring at the ceiling. “Don’t ask me,” he mumbles. He still has no indication that the past six hours weren’t a manifestation of a fevered dream.
Tae, busily flitting around the kitchen cleaning up after Yoongi’s impromptu cooking spree, pops his head around the corner and looks at the two of them with narrowed eyes.
“I googled him. He’s for real.”
‘He’ is Kim Namjoon, vunderkind extraordinaire, and apparently one of the richest people in South Korea. Turns out, when Yoongi trips into people, he doesn’t do it by half.
“And he wants to--”
“Finance your restaurant, yes. I think it was your grandma’s japchae that sealed the deal, personally.”
Jimin sends Tae a look, then Yoongi a slightly less vexed one. “You did kind of woo him with food, hyung.”
Five and a half hours ago, when Yoongi had first left the bank with a hot stranger striding confidently by his side, he’d thought the most that would happen would be spending an hour with someone nice to look at, talking about Yoongi’s failure of a business sense. They’d gone to a hole-in-the-wall noodle shop nearby, where the food had been decent, but “I can do better,” Yoongi had sniffed. He wasn’t being a snob. He just knew that the food had nothing on his family’s recipes, and he could prove it, so he said so.
Namjoon looked at him calmly, and replied, “So why don’t you?”
Which is how they found themselves at Yoongi’s place, which had already been invaded by two starving young men loitering around to be fed and hear how Yoongi’s meeting went. Fortunately, Yoongi’s pantry is small but thoroughly stocked, and the family recipe makes enough for half a dozen people (so, a hungry Namjoon then, is what Yoongi discovers). At first bite, Namjoon had looked shocked, then awed. Enchanted and enchanting, Yoongi thought to himself, then pinched his own hip as punishment.
“I can’t believe anyone would be fool enough not to invest in you,” he’d said through a mouthful of noodles, thereby earning himself Jimin and Taehyung’s immediate favour.
“This is magical,” he’d said later, or that’s what Yoongi inferred he meant, because his mouth had been full of steaming hotteok at the time. Tae had beamed at him, and before Yoongi could stop them, they were regaling Namjoon with Yoongi’s life story while Yoongi blushed and blushed and busied himself by the oven so he could blame it on the heat.
Namjoon, it turns out, had his fingers in many, many pies, including a few dozen charity projects that were the only way he could live with having so much money in his bank account. Some of his investments were in the music industry, some were in green energy. He absolutely had enough left over to fund an aspiring chef who could cook like this, he said. Then he’d saved all of their numbers into his phone, been given a hug by Jimin, and left with a promise to come back for breakfast tomorrow morning.
And so here they sit, trying to process, and mostly failing (at least, Yoongi is. Is this real? Is he actually getting what he wanted out of life, this time? Can he trust this astounding good fortune? Can he trust Namjoon to be what he said he is, just like that?)
“Says here he made his money from app development,” Taehyung says, scrolling on his phone. “Holy shit, he’s the guy who came up with singhappy.”
Yoongi sits up, temporarily distracted from his existential angst. “What?” he demands. “Are you serious?? Namjoon is Moonchild Inc.?”
“Yup,” Taehyung says, relishing Yoongi’s shock. Which is fair, Yoongi guesses, because he’s waxed lyrical about that app enough to bore them both to sleep. It’s a subversive genius, is what it is. It’s a platform for unsigned underground artists to set up shows, upload their music, make connections with other creative types, make money out of their music without forking out huge percentages of their income on promoters and agents. It has single-handedly revolutionised the independent music industry in the mere two years since it’s been live. Yoongi is not-so-secretly obsessed with it; he even has an account, though he isn’t uploading much right now, with everything else going on. It actually got him sharing his music again. He has seen his name bandied around in a way that would have made him deliriously excited five years ago, and even now it’s nothing to sneer at.
He can’t believe he got to meet one of his idols, and he’d had absolutely no idea it was happening.
“So that made him some bank, and then… oh my god.”
“What, what??” Jimin demands, climbing up to sit on the back of the sofa so he could grab Taehyung’s shoulder and shake it. “Tell meeee!”
Taehyung looks up, eyes wild. “That asshole only went and launched the Persona grants.”
Jimin’s jaw drops. Hell, Yoongi’s jaw drops. He knows both Jimin and Taehyung have been agonising over applying for the program for encouraging relationships between the sciences and arts, affectionately referred to as the PERSoNA grants. The grants have resulted in some of the most fascinating research papers Yoongi has read--not to mention the collaborative projects making waves in a whole variety of disciplines.
Jimin and Taehyung stare at each other. Then, as one, they turn to stare at Yoongi.
“Are you actually like, Midas or something?” Taehyung asks. “No, wait, that doesn’t make sense. Namjoon would be Midas, but you threw yourself at him without knowing who he was, so what does that make you?”
“I did not ‘throw myself’ at him, Kim Taehyung,” Yoongi grumbles weakly. Which is broadly speaking true, but he takes Taehyung’s point--this is the most extraordinary piece of luck to land in his lap of late.
All told, he is kind of intimidated. The Namjoon he met was just a guy, kind and unassuming, certainly not some entitled, privileged billionaire asshat. And now Yoongi has found out that same young man is responsible for at least two of the most important social innovations of the last decade. So he’s ridiculously smart, and looks like a sexy beanstalk, and is no stranger to social responsibility. What the hell is Yoongi supposed to do with this information?
Make breakfast, apparently. He gets up extra early and puts soup broth on the hob, makes rice and spends far too long shaping it into little white bees with dark stripes of seaweed. He fries eggs in the shape of flowers with stalks made of chopped spring onions. He isn’t sure exactly why he is putting in so much effort, but it makes him feel better, more in control.
Soon enough, the kids arrive with fresh coffee from the bakery by their apartment, which they know is Yoongi’s favourite brew. They’ve made an effort too, not a ripped patch to be seen on either of them. The three of them are quiet as food cooks and the table is set, and jump out of their skins when the doorbell buzzes promptly at eight.
Namjoon turns up in mom jeans and a yellow hoodie. They’re nice, clean and taken care of, but they are totally normal person clothes. Namjoon’s eyes go wide at the sight of breakfast; he grins delightedly at everyone before sitting in the chair left open for him, with the least chipped mug and the plate with the pretty willow leaves pattern that had once been part of a set before Yoongi had found it in an out of the way vintage shop.
“Thank you for the meal, I will eat well,” he sing-songs, and digs in, and it’s distressingly charming. It’s throwing Yoongi for a loop; the kids keep exchanging startled glances.
Namjoon is a good eater: enthusiastic, appreciative. Despite himself, Yoongi relaxes, familiar endorphins flooding his brain. And so it goes. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop--through Namjoon and Jimin talking numbers, and Taehyung shyly producing some signage and branding he’s apparently been secretly working on all this time. Yoongi is so touched, he has to excuse himself to the fridge so he doesn’t cry at the table. They ask him about interior design, and what he wants the space to look like, how many tables he thinks they could handle, the specific things he wants in the kitchen. It’s easy, and exciting, and they all get caught up in it.
“This is my favourite part of a new project,” Namjoon sighs happily. “I like being involved, but most people prefer it when I’m hands off.”
Yoongi squints at him. “Uh, you’re the money? Shouldn’t they let you veto stuff?”
Namjoon looks appalled, waving both arms around enough to nearly knock over his and Yoongi’s coffees, if Yoongi’s reflexes weren’t what they are. “No, no! I don’t want that! I’m really big on creative freedom! I just like that you ask my opinion like you really care!”
Namjoon is a big dork, and doesn’t take care of himself nearly as well as he should, is what Yoongi thinks. What he does is roll his eyes and nudge the rice bees closer to Namjoon’s plate, and asks him what his thoughts are on monochromatic design. Namjoon likes it, but Taehyung wades in and vetoes anything less than at least three solid colours and a whole bunch of shades. Yoongi opens his mouth, takes one look at Taehyung’s gimlet gaze, and closes it again. Sure. He can live with that.
“But I want a lot of light. Sconces. On walls. Chandeliers. Huge windows. Mirrors. That sort of thing.”
“‘Sconces’,” Jimin mouths, hiding the lower part of his face where Yoongi just knows he’s laughing at him.
“And columns. A lot of red. Hanged ceilings, with molding maybe? And a piano.”
“‘Piano’,” Taehyung mumbles as he writes it all down. “Fine. Done. I’ll make sure it doesn’t turn out looking like a vampire’s den.”
Yoongi squawks; Jimin cackles; Namjoon bleats a laugh that shouldn’t be as endearing as Yoongi finds it. He crosses his arms and juts out his chin. The three men smile at him indulgently, which is… new. But not bad. Not bad at all.
---
SUGA is Yoongi’s baby, but it might kill him before it’s ready to open. He’s just been banned from his own dining area until it’s finished, and so he’s on the warpath through the kitchen doors, still fuming. Okay, fine, so he ripped out a wall lamp, so what? It was U G L Y and it had no place in his restaurant. And the booths?? Vinyl??? Does he look like he’s a seventy-year-old leech? He looks over his shoulder, shuddering at the horrendous shade of arterial blood making the far wall look like it’s been sourced from the set of a horror movie. Absolutely none of this had been in the set of specs and design plans he and Namjoon had approved several weeks ago. He’s going to lose his damn mind, is what.
At least the self-obsessed yet obviously incompetent interior designer has been summarily sacked, Yoongi doesn’t care how popular he is or how much money people pay him. People are stupid. Yoongi is not.
“Hey,” Namjoon says, sticking his head through the door as Yoongi angrily chops onions and throws them in a pan of sizzling butter. Judging it safe, the rest of him follows, dressed today in a mouth-watering black suit that makes his legs look like they go on for miles.
“Namjoon,” Yoongi grits through his teeth, still busy trying to get his pulse to slow down. “Did you see the crime scene on the other side of that door?”
Namjoon winces, sliding onto one of the bar stools on the other side of the service counter, reserved for occasions when Yoongi wants company but also wants to work.
“Yeah, I did. I’m sure we can get that hole patched up just dandy--”
“I was talking about the design,” Yoongi snarls. He wraps a dish towel around a head of garlic and slams the heel of his hand over it, twice for good measure.
“Ah,” Namjoon says calmly. It infuriates Yoongi sometimes, how level-headed and serene Namjoon can be; but secretly, he’s grateful for it, especially when his blood pressure is this high and he isn’t sure he won’t murder the next person who makes an asinine suggestion.
He dices garlic in seething silence, scraping it in with the onions before taking some pleasure in stabbing a corkscrew through the neck of a bottle of white wine, twisting sharply and yanking it open to splash in the pan. The hiss and subsequent bubbling soothe some of his ire at last. Namjoon pays him no mind, busy on his phone running the world economy or whatever he does in his spare time.
Until he says, “Alright, I need you to be available at two pm tomorrow for a meeting. They’ll come to us, I want to see what they’ll make of your and Taehyung’s requirements.”
Yoongi looks up. “That was fast,” he says suspiciously.
Namjoon just smiles at him. “I had them in mind initially, but they were wrapping up a massive project and weren’t available last month. Happily, it looks like the work finished early. Oh, don’t make that face. They’re good, I promise.”
Privately, Yoongi is gonna reserve the right to be sceptical as fuck, after the recent disaster. But Namjoon hasn’t led him wrong thus far--even the entitled little shit of a designer had been recommended by one of Taehyung’s connections (whom he isn’t trusting again, Taehyung said, not for this kind of thing).
“Sure,” he says, looking up with a brief smile before reaching for the chicken he’d cut up and browned beforehand, adding it to the pan. Namjoon closes his eyes, leaning in to inhale. The dimples pop with the force of his delight.
“Love it when you make this dish,” he sighs.
“I know.” Just like that, Yoongi’s blood pressure is back to normal. His shoulders slump, and he braces himself on the counter as he waits for the meat to cook and the sauce to thicken. On the side, glass noodles soak in a bowl waiting to be tossed in.
All in all, it could be worse.
And briefly, Yoongi thinks it might be when, the next day, he walks into the salon to see a young--man? Maybe not. A young person, at any rate, with their hands on their hips, looking around with an unimpressed look on their face.
“What has even been happening here?” they mutter under their breath, unaware that they are no longer alone.
“Murder,” Yoongi advises. The person spins around, looking at him with wide eyes. “Okay, not murder,” he relents. “But only just.”
“Yeah, well, no jury would convict you,” they sniff, eyeing the wallpaper (wallpaper. Seriously. Yoongi should leave a scathing review on the awful designer’s instagram.) “And what is with these light fixtures?”
“Thank you!” Yoongi agrees loudly, throwing up his arms.
The person smirks, eyeing the hole in the wall. “I take it you’re the boss with the temper. I promise you, darling, you won’t be punching the walls when I’m done.”
Yoongi raises an eyebrow, but he finds that he is curiously unbothered by this person’s confidence. Maybe it’s the way they carry themselves; maybe it’s that Namjoon trusts them.
“Taehyung should be here in a minute, and we’ll talk through the design--I’m sorry, what is your name?”
“Oh!” The person says with a surprised chuckle. “That’s right! I’m Hobi. My pronouns are they/them.” They tap at a badge on the lapel of their casual jacket.
“I’m Yoongi,” Yoongi says, shaking Hobi’s hand. “Just he/him for me.”
Hobi smiles, and it’s bright like a beam of unfiltered light. Yoongi likes light in general, and there’s something about this person that shines.
Taehyung skips through the door with a loud “Hi, I’m here!” and they get down to business.
---
Yoongi will give it to both Hobi and Namjoon--when they’re in, they’re in. Things happen fast, once Hobi gets involved, and it’s all of impeccable quality and taste levels. Within a fortnight, the space is transformed. It’s open, airy, feeling like it’s twice as big than it actually is. Workers buzz around like busy bees, repainting all the walls and swapping around the accent colours under Hobi’s eagle eye and Taehyung’s grudging agreement. Yoongi, feeling redundant for the time being, holes himself up with his new staff to work on the menu. Every day at lunchtime, a huge table is set up for all the workers and various and sundry involved in the project, and Yoongi taste-tests every single dish several times, until he’s sure he’s got it perfect. Some are simple, five ingredients or less. Some are elaborate and take three people to put together. All is, per general consensus, absolutely delicious.
Yoongi’s confidence grows daily, as he and Jimin negotiate with suppliers, as he and the others trawl the fresh produce market together, teaching Namjoon about seasonal vegetables and gently teasing him about his cluelessness for where food really comes from. Even Hobi knows more, through their adventures in becoming vegetarian, and then vegan. It’s nice. It makes Yoongi happy, to be surrounded by this group, even as he watches them be engrossed in each other in a way that doesn’t include him. He (metaphorically) shrugs to himself and focuses on the restaurant, the reason they’re all here together. It’s more than enough.
SUGA opens its doors in October, as the leaves are turning and the air grows fresh and cool. It has generated quite a buzz in the past month, some of it coming from Namjoon’s name and reputation as an investor attached to the project, and some of it from the small but tangible connections that Yoongi and the Mins have made in the culinary world through the years. Yoongi is more nervous than he has ever been about anything else, even his music. It’s just… there’s a lot riding on this. A lot of people who depend on him for their livelihoods now. It’s a responsibility that he hadn’t internalised until it’s the night before and he is pacing in his apartment, swallowing down panic. What if it fails? What if he fails? What if he isn’t good enough, or innovative enough, or knowledgeable enough; what if people don’t like his food after all, what if he gets bad reviews and no one comes, what if, what if?
His buzzer goes. He isn’t expecting anyone, but he’s too anxious to just ignore it.
“Delivery for Min Yoongi,” a bored voice says.
“I didn’t order anything?” Yoongi tries, confused.
“Look, man, says here the delivery is for Min Yoongi, it’s all paid for, just open the door so I can hand it over and go, yeah?”
On autopilot, Yoongi does as asked. A teenager barely out of high school rounds the corner on his third floor stairwell carrying a massive brown paper bag in both arms.
“Hope you’re hungry,” the kid says, accepting the couple bills of tip that Yoongi hands over and jogging back down the stairs.
The bag is warm, smells good, garlicky and greasy. Yoongi’s stomach rumbles; he remembers that he’d forgotten to eat today, too nervous to stay in one place, walking around and around inspecting every last nook and cranny of the restaurant, listening with half an ear as Taehyung instructed the waitstaff and quizzed them on the menu.
The buzzer doesn’t go this time before his front door opens, the beep of his lock and loud voices announcing the kids, Namjoon and Hobi inviting themselves into his living room.
“Did the food get here? Oh good, I’m starving.” Taehyung unceremoniously divests him of the bag, spreading its contents out on his coffee table and settling in to munch.
It’s easier to just go with it, Yoongi has learned long ago, so he does. It’s melting his anxiety away despite himself, listening to the others bicker and reach across each other, comfortable as if they’ve been doing it for years. It’s nice. Yoongi has never had a friend group like this before, it’s always been him by himself, and later the kids that kind of latched on and never left. He looks at them now, surprised to note just how much they’ve grown. Taehyung finally fits his bones, liquid and settled in a way that makes Yoongi fiercely glad. So, too, is Jimin, this kid who used to agonise over choices and decisions, constantly checking himself, what he said, the way he acted--now laughing unreservedly, comfortable in his body, and more importantly, in his mind, his self.
“Listen,” Yoongi hears himself say, horrified at how emotional he sounds. He ducks his head, plays with the fraying hem of his sweatshirt. “Uh, thanks for sticking around. It--I, I appreciate it a lot.” God, he’s so, so bad at this, it’s pathetic. This is the worst.
The silence barely settles for a second before it’s shattered by loud coos and yelps as Taehyung elbows his way through the others to reach Yoongi and wrap himself around him like the overbearing octopus he is.
“We love you, hyung,” he yells, in time for Jimin to close the circle from the other side and squeeze hard enough for Yoongi’s ribs to bend. Jimin’s chin digs into Yoongi’s shoulder obnoxiously, but he’s also rolling his eyes and telling Yoongi to shut the fuck up, as if they ever would have left for any reason. Yoongi doesn’t cry much as a rule, but this is one of the exceptions, even with Namjoon and Hobi watching them with soft looks on their faces.
“It’s been a privilege, Min Yoongi,” Namjoon says, and fuck, that’s it, Yoongi’s bawling.
“You’re not helping,” he sniffs, but Namjoon looks so fond, and Hobi is launching themselves at the tangle of people and demanding to be let in on the hug, and yeah, okay. Yoongi will allow it, just this once.