Chapter Text
"Fucking finally,” Taehyung breathes out. Mingled with cigarette smoke, his breath is a small white cloud. Yoongi watches it dissolve into the crisp autumn air. “Now me and Jimin can get married."
“Yah, you can't be saying these things." There's no real bite to Yoongi's voice, only dull exhaustion, but his wry smile is genuine.
“What? You know we were planning to, right before… Y’know.”
Namjoon’s parents were the ones who picked the repast venue, same as every time before. It's modest and unassuming. Namjoon would have hated it.
“Are you actually going to?" Yoongi asks, stubbing his cigarette out.
“Yeah. Not like… Not right now, but Jiminie has been looking up wedding agencies. Probably next spring.”
They stand in silence for a while, Yoongi content with watching Taehyung smoke for a while. He bummed a cig from Yoongi, his usual Parliament Blue, and while Yoongi always complains, he still always lets him.
“Let's go inside. It's cold."
“Uh-huh," Taehyung mumbles.
From the outside, the restaurant looks cozy. They already put up the Christmas decorations, green plastic branches framing the front door freckled with red ornaments and fairy lights.
“...Three years, huh? It feels like yesterday."
“Uh-huh."
“But it also feels like it's been ten years. It's weird."
“Yeah, grief is weird. It felt the same when halmeoni died.”
Yoongi doesn't have anything to say to that, so he doesn't, and then they're inside and he's too busy hanging up his coat to come up with a reply, and then they're back at the table and Jeongguk goads him into taking shots. It feels different than last year's anniversary, and even more different than the one before that.
Yoongi read somewhere that grief is like a ball rolling inside a box. It starts out big, constantly hitting the edges of the box, but it gets smaller over time. He doesn't know if his grief got smaller but it definitely feels more bearable now, and he can see Namjoon's parents talking to some auntie at the head of the table, smiling over a shared joke.
Corny as it sounds, today is a celebration of Namjoon's life, joyful instead of somber.
Three years. Time really does fly.