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Yoongi flexed his hands, placing them in his lap to quiet the urge to chew into his cuticles - the one that he always fought in situations such as these. He tracked your movements from where he sat at your small dining room table as you added dark loose leaves to the steeping bowl. A soft peal of thunder interrupted the silence amid the steady patter of rainfall. He hoped the tea was decaffeinated, though he was sure it wasn't. You returned to the table with a lovely little gongfu teapot, matching cups, and a small carafe of cream. You filled the cups, handing one to Yoongi, and he thanked you quietly with a slight bow.
"Do you take it with anything?" you asked, as you poured a bit of cream into yours.
Yoongi shook his head and waved a hand as he raised the small cup of deep, fragrant amber liquid to his lips. The first sip was a little too hot, scalding the tip of his tongue, but even so it was robust and earthy and comforting.
"What sort of tea is this," he asked, regarding the contents of the cup curiously as he stooped to draw in the aroma through his nose.
"It's Kenyan black tea," you remarked with a little smile, taking another sip of your own before placing the cup down in front of you, both of your hands encircling its warmth as your eyes raised up to his.
Yoongi's chest constricted a bit. It threw him off balance, the way you just looked right at him. It wasn't a scrutinizing gaze, or an expectant one - in fact, it was rather soft and warm, he thought - but it was steady, and receptive and thoughtful to the point of being keen. Yoongi couldn't remember ever having been looked at that way. Or maybe he had just forgotten what it felt like to be looked at without a specific sort of anticipation that accompanied his level of acclaim. He blinked and took another sip of his tea.
"I'm sorry about your friend," you remarked quietly, and in a way that said that you really were quite sorry.
Yoongi hummed.
"He was very fond of you," he said with a small sigh that he let out like a breath he'd been holding through his nose.
You tilted your head to the side, lifting an inquisitive brow. Yoongi glanced over at his sweater, soaked and dripping all over your hearth rug as it hung on a little drying rack near the crackling fire. The cold October rain poured down in torrents outside the front window of the small apartment.
Monsoon season had been particularly brutal this year, stretching into the later months as flash floods stole homes and businesses and lives. And then in September a downed plane, lost to the East Sea in a storm, had shaken the nation. Shaken the world. Seven had become six - six and a tiny cherry tree sapling in Seoul Memorial Park.
Yoongi had showed up at your little cafe on a Friday evening not knowing where else to go. He had been sitting in his studio, trying to work away the regrets and the anguish. Trying to dull the twist of the dagger now residing in his heart by just pressing on with what he knew. And maybe it would have worked, maybe he could have locked his sorrows outside on the unwelcome mat if he hadn't been in that very fucking place when picked up the call to Jin's shaking voice four weeks ago. So he tried and tried and tried and tried until tears splashed down onto his mixing board and he shut off his equipment and stumbled out into the night.
Yoongi's car had taken him to the little café where he and Namjoon had regularly met, for three years, until that June. What he would have done when he got there, he wasn't sure. He never got the chance to find out. When he trudged through the goddamned rain that had begun to pour down as soon as he parked the car, it had been only to pull on a door that wouldn't open - the dim, warm glow from within framing a sign in the window that had been flipped to "Closed". He had pressed himself up against the building, his cable-knit sweater already soaked, as he felt his chest constrict at the thought of driving back under the conditions. He couldn't. He had fumbled for his phone only to realize that his jacket wasn't the only thing he had left in his studio when he had rushed out in a desperate haze of grief. Yoongi had sagged against the wooden siding, tilting his head back helplessly as the familiar grip of anxiety began to tighten like a hand at this throat.
"Sir, I'm sorry, we're cl- are you alright?"
Your voice, though soft, had startled him, coming suddenly with your presence at the door. He had blinked the moisture from his lashes, recognizing you instantly, a fresh wave of emotions hitting him at the sight of your familiar features. You had taken in his wide, pain-stricken eyes and trembling chapped lips as he stood dripping by the door and reached for his arm, guiding him into the dry warmth of the small establishment. You had offered him shelter and the use of your phone only for him to discover there were no ride shares in the vicinity. You had insisted that he get warm and dry at your place, just down the street, and Yoongi had uncharacteristically agreed.
He had helped you close down the café in relative silence, and held your umbrella over the two of you as you had walked back to your small second-story apartment. Once inside you had taken his sweater, leaving him a bit self-conscious in his damp white undershirt and jeans. As you were asking him if you could make him a cup of tea you had realized that you had never introduced yourself. Yoongi had politely said that after seeing you so often it was nice to finally know your name, and you had responded with an air of confession that you already knew his - everyone did, after all - but that it was nice to meet him just the same.
Now you were sitting across the table with that look on your face that made him want to bare his soul as he struggled for the words he should, in fact, say to you now.
"Namjoon was half in love with you, I think," Yoongi murmured with a small wry smile.
You blinked in surprise, though he wasn't sure how you could have missed it. Over the last several years he had been meeting his friend at your coffee shop, Namjoon had spent most of his time sneaking less than clandestine glances at you, knocking over anything and everything when you ventured too near, and making remarks concerning the things he wondered about you in the middle of entirely unrelated conversations. Yoongi had told him in exasperation a dozen times to just talk to you. Namjoon had always dismissed him, insisting that he was waiting for the right moment. Yoongi had thought to himself that if the right moment was one where he hadn't just spilled coffee all over something, that it would very likely never arrive.
"Was he?" you asked softly, breaking Yoongi from his reverie.
Your eyes were filled with a gentle sadness and a sweet reverence, and Yoongi thought to himself that any man could find joy in death if only he knew a pair of eyes would soften in such a way at his memory. He nodded slowly.
"I kept telling him to just approach you. He always said he was waiting for the right moment. It just goes to show that you shouldn't put off the things you want to do in life, no matter what they are," he remarked a bit bitterly.
Yoongi believed that life was what you made it - reality a product of the choices of billions that you weathered as best you could. He wasn't one to romanticize cause and effect. Namjoon, on the other hand, had always maintained that life was inexplicable, its beauties and its sorrows, and that what mattered was seeing the beauty, believing in it - living by it - even when it was nowhere to be found. It was one of the hundred ways in which his and Namjoon's ideologies deviated.
"You'll be pleased to hear, then, that we did speak," you smiled at him, taking another sip of your tea. Yoongi looked surprised. "I noticed you hadn't been there for several weeks, and I asked him where you were, if you were alright."
Yoongi's expression darkened, his lips pinching with emotion. You watched him quietly.
"We...I...." he strained to find words as he fought to keep his composure.
"He told me," you unburdened him.
His broken eyes found your compassionate ones. Namjoon had been honest with you when you asked. He had told you about their falling out. And then he had told you about everything else. You had sat with him during slow hours and listened.
"I could tell he wanted to talk about lots of things...but he always came back to the same subject."
Yoongi's gaze was glassy and his brow creased in question.
"You," you revealed with a sad smile.
Yoongi's face twisted in anguish and he let out a sob, dropping his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking. You let tears track down your own face as you set your cup aside and reached out to wrap your hands around the weeping stranger's wrists. When Yoongi finally looked up again his pretty face was a snotty mess and his eyes were puffy and red. He apologized and apologized, but secretly hoped you would never let go of his arms, lest he be washed away. You didn't let go until it was time to pour him another cup of tea. Then you asked him if he would like to hear the stories and to which he had agreed.
You moved in front of the fire with a thick flannel blanket and told him every one. And then, Yoongi told you more of his own.
There were a few more tears, but mostly laughter. Yoongi thought your laugh was like music and your smile was like sunshine. How was it that while he was wrapped up in trying to translate the world into beats and bars, Namjoon had always been seeing it? To Yoongi, you had been someone who made coffee and poured it into cups. To Namjoon, you had been a flower. One that he had stopped and regarded amidst the chaos of the turning world. Undoubtedly, you were one of the loveliest flowers, and Yoongi had missed this because he never stopped at all. It was what had got him where he was, to all he had achieved. But as his eyes traced the lines of your face, he considered what it had cost him. Maybe Namjoon had been right, maybe there was more.
"So he came often, then," Yoongi asked, looking over at where you sat beside him on the ground in front of the couch - a strangely intimate posture befitting the strangely intimate evening.
You nodded, eyes not leaving the fire.
"Every Thursday at three."
You knew he wanted the truth but there were things you would spare him. How his friend would glance up hopefully every time someone jingled the entry bell. How he would stare out the window searchingly from time to time.
Yoongi's head dipped, as he cast his eyes away from you. You nudged his knee with yours.
"He knew you would come."
"But I didn't," Yoongi murmured miserably.
"Oh, yes you did. You came tonight. You were always going to come and you did."
Yoongi looked at you, his eyes searching yours.
"I wish that was true," he responded in a gravelly whisper.
He wanted to take every bit of the earnestness in your face and seal it inside of him.
"Then it is," you whispered back, squeezing his knee over the blanket you shared. Yoongi was quiet for a long moment, trying to form words that wouldn't come.
"He was my member, I should have been there for him. I shouldn't have...have..."
"Yoongi," you interrupted him gravely, "He was your friend. And friends know each other's hearts, like he knew yours. He knew you would come. You were just...waiting for the right moment."
Tears spilled down his soft cheeks again as he regarded you. You looked so certain and he wanted to believe you. He did believe you, he found.
Like a religion.
Like a sacred vow.
Like the damned foolish hope of something he would choose to live by.
Like the man who had loved you.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The days had been growing longer and warming as the year unfurled with all its pageantry into spring, as it had five times since the year of the great rainfall.
It was nearly too warm for second layers and hot drinks. Yoongi still found himself starting every morning with a cup of Kenyan black tea.
He looked over the top of the little green hill, sighing as he felt you slip your hand into his, and leaning over to kiss you gently before you gestured behind you, smirking, with a tilt of your head to the bottom of the grassy knoll. Your husband turned to follow your gaze toward a little boy, still quite small for a three-year-old, squatting to closely examine a daffodil.
"Yah," Yoongi called affectionately over his shoulder, "You can smell the flowers on the way back, right now we're going to see someone. He's waiting for us."
The little boy struggled to the top on short legs and took Yoongi's other hand, looking up at him with your lovely eyes.
"Who, Appa? Who is waiting for us?"
Yoongi smiled softly as he looked toward the little cherry tree standing on its own at the far end of the memorial park. He checked his watch. It was three o'clock on a Thursday.
"A friend, little Namjoon-ah," he whispered, squeezing the tiny hand in his, "A friend."
Life was inexplicable, in its beauties and its sorrows. The beauty was what Yoongi looked for - but even when it was nowhere to be found, Yoongi chose to believe.
-Fin-