6:11 p.m.

"What's wrong with your toilet again?"

Yoongi ambled through Jimin's minimalist apartment, taking in all the expensive decor and natural lighting. Jimin must have a healthy paycheck. Yoongi's apartment, haphazard and mismatched, looked nothing like the clear cut aesthetic of a neat, white subway tile kitchen he was coming upon.

It wasn't that things were necessarily back to normal between them, but Yoongi had decided there was nothing he could do to make Jimin want him too. If Jimin said he was in a relationship, all he could do was accept that.

It still hurt a little, though. A lot.

But dampened as his spirits were, he still had a soft heart for him. Which means he would still do almost anything to see him, including plunging his toilet.

Yes, Jimin invited him over to fix his toilet, and yes, he was actually here to oblige. The logic didn't check out in his mind but then again the bar was on the floor and crushes were never logical. It was all emotion, and these were the habits of his heart. It's always hard to say no when you're falling for someone it feels like summer in the middle of winter.

Fuck.

"Nothing's wrong with the toilet, 바보." Jimin replied from the kitchen area. Yoongi stopped sightseeing to look back at his friend with great irritation etched onto his features.

"야, then why'd you--!"

Turning around, he was met with the sight of Jimin carefully walking a little blue cookie crumb birthday cake into the living room. His mouth fell open.

"Happy birthday!" Said the younger, "I baked it from scratch for you, even food colored it so it would match your hair. The inside is a little purple though, because the batter was originally pink. Do you like strawberry shortcake?"

Yoongi's mouth curved, agape,  as he reached for some of the icing but his hand quickly retracted.

"Almonds?"

"No!" Jimin said, obviously offended, "I just wanted to make you something for your birthday, stupid cunt."

"Oh," Yoongi's face softened, "Oh."

His hands brushed against Jimin's when he took the cake from him and moved it to the table to be cut. While his sweet tooth watered at the sight of the pretty blue bake, Jimin retreated to the kitchen to get a cake knife and plates and forks.

"So, just how old are you today, you big fat fucking geezer?"

"Twenty seven. And to be honest, I don't even remember telling you my birthday," Yoongi accepted the plate and fork from Jimin.

"You don't have to remember. I do." He shrugged, "And honestly, it was against my will. But you probably don't remember because that was just one little microcosm in the pile of annoying things you do on a daily basis."

Jimin put his hands on his hips then jumped, "Oh! Forgot the candles. Give me a second."

Yoongi let him go back to the kitchen to find some spare candles so he could continue familiarizing himself with the apartment. He looked observantly at the pictures from his chair-- and Jimin had a lot of them. His entire life scattered itself around his home, static memories on walls and accent tables. Yoongi was most drawn to those sitting on the shelves of Jimin's grand, white bookshelf.

Perhaps his favorite of them all was a photograph of a young Jimin, no older than four or five, with rosy red cheeks in a backpack, polo, and slack shorts, standing next to a man in the same uniform, standing in front of a Kochon Elementary. Jimin's mouth was open and his eyes shut, permanently stuck in a silent wail. The man's too. Yoongi exhaled through his nose amusedly.

He could imagine the sound the cry made when it shocked passersby, like the woman in the background side-eyeing him over her shoulder. He thought of what Jimin's dad was like. Goofy, definitely. Anyone brazen enough to wear his son's uniform to school with him and make fun of their child's crying was his kind of company.

He and Mr. Park might get along.

"Sorry, I don't have twenty seven candles. How about five?" Jimin cut in, reentering the dining room with more than just candles, "I mean, you act like a five year old most of the time anyway."

His only reply was Yoongi's distracted, dramatic coo. Jimin's brows came together as he approached the elder, swirling a glass of wine, coming close enough to see the photo he had taken off the shelf.

"What?"

"Baby Min Min," Yoongi sang with a smile, allowing Jimin to see the photograph, "Is this your appa?"

"No. Halpoji."

"Really?"

"We have bad eyesight but we age like wine."

"Must be why you still have your baby face."

"It's funny because looking at that picture," Jimin pursed his lips, "Looking at that picture, you would never know that he's mentally ill."

Yoongi didn't seem phased by the new knowledge; his eyes stayed trained on the photograph just as before, "He is?"

"Yeah. It's worse now that he's older. Practically mad now."

"Must have been rough. Watching him decline like that."

"It still is, in some ways, but you know." Jimin sighs, "I really miss that old fool."

Yoongi smirked, putting down the photo.

"I can see why."

His hands picked up another photo by impulse, as if summoned to behold it by some gravitational force. In this one, Jimin was in a Colonel Sanders costume with a bucket in his hand, making a silly face next to a slightly taller boy dressed as Ronald McDonald who made a kissy face to him. It made Yoongi smile.

"What were you doing in this one?" He chuckled.

"Trick or treating. Paying homage to Shinee." Jimin grinned, resting his head on Yoongi's shoulder to get a glimpse of the old memento.

"Still? But you look about.... twenty one here."

"Society is just... pointless rules." Jimin shrugged before sipping.

"Profound."

"I don't explain my poetry often. But now that you've seen the last known picture from before I was a sarcastic fuck and how good I'd look with platinum hair," Jimin said as they went back to the table.. "Can we cut the cake?"

"No. You need to sing happy birthday first."

Imagine Yoongi's shock when what was just a playful, unserious request was actually fulfilled without a roll of the eyes, a scoff, or some sort of snappy one liner.

He sat and watched Jimin clap with a smile on his face, bopping side to side in the most adorable way. And Jimin's smile was so genuine it made flowers bloom in his stomach. So wide it spread into his near-shut eyes and floated across the space between them onto Yoongi's face.

"Happy birthday to you! 생일 축하합니다, Min Yoongi-형." He finished. He motioned for Yoongi to make a wish.

Yoongi stared into the orange flame and thought. Normally he wasn't one to make wishes. But Jimin wanted him to make one-- and he had something to wish for this time, and maybe it wouldn't actually come true but... Nevermind.

So the empty wish was wasted away by one swift breath. In spite of this, Jimin clapped.

"Thank you, Jimin. This was really sweet," Yoongi forced his smile down a notch.

"No, I wanna cut it," and he took the knife from the other. "Did I ever tell you my first job?"

"No."

"Used to host kids' birthday parties at Evergreen Park. Been cutting my own cakes ever since. Could go pro with this shit but the big leagues aren't ready for me." Yoongi carved out the cake the same way he'd been doing for eleven years.

"You'd be so easy to kill."

Yoongi stopped cutting and looked up at a giggly Jimin with a comedic confusion on his face that only inspired more laughter. If looks could talk, Yoongi's would say, "Motherfucker, what?"

"I'm just saying. All I'd have to do is put just a tiny little bit of almond extract in the cake batter because you're so quick to accept food from a stranger. Especially one who you know isn't all that fond of you." Jimin explained, grinning all the way. He dismissed the idea with his hand and continued to the still stuck Yoongi, "But yeah, there's no almonds in this. I don't like almond essence all that much."

Yoongi, too, dismissed the idea and nonchalantly plated a slice for Jimin. "You'd probably be hard to kill."

"What makes you think that?"

"You look like the kind of guy who likes being treated like a rag doll. Like someone who wants to just be--" and Yoongi put his hand around his own neck, mocking pleasure in the obnoxious way that anime girls do.

"Mmcht. Here we go," Jimin kissed his teeth.

"I match energy, Min Min. Don't fuck with me next time and I won't have any reason to fuck with you."

"If you really matched energy you would have left me alone all those times I asked."

"See, but you never really asked, did you babe?" Yoongi dug a fork into his own slice of cake, "You said a lot of mean shit, but never that you wanted to be left alone."

"It's called reading between the lines. Take a hint, dumbass."

"Reading's your job, not mine. I'm a chef." Yoongi almost took a bite, but put down his fork. "Would Gordon Ramsey approve of this cake?"

"I don't know. You're the chef, not me." Jimin narrowed his eyes then chewed.

"He wouldn't. But it's not his birthday, so I guess you don't have anything to worry about."

"You and Gordon Ramsey in the same room is a sight I'd like to see."

"He wouldn't stand a chance."

"Please. You're barely mean enough to fend me off."

"That's only 'cause you were persistent. You're like a fucking leech or something."

Funny you say that. I would love to suck you.

"Are you saying I'm a parasite?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

"So I'm a critically acclaimed dark comedy thriller film? Thanks, bro, I appreciate it."

"You're very welcome." Jimin smiled in his usual sardonic way, murmuring low enough that only he could hear, "Stupid bitch."

Yoongi dropped a little bit of cake into his lap by accident and looked around for a napkin, which, in spite of two trips to the kitchen, Jimin did not think to bring to the table. He scooped the blob of cake and icing from the hem of his black tee, leaving only a thin residue behind, and put the finger in his mouth.

"We should do that thing that Bong Joon-ho did with his Oscars," Yoongi remarked quickly.

"What do you mean?" Jimin replied. His brows raised so that his eyes were wide open and doll-like, his obliviousness painfully obvious.

"Huh? You said you wanna get matching Crocs with me?" Yoongi smirked, which Jimin clearly didn't like.

He smiled, taking in the sight of Jimin taking in the sight of Instagram. The younger sat back in his chair and scrolled through Instagram half-mindedly with his wine glass in hand. Even slouched and gross-looking, with kinda fucked up hair and greasy skin-- still cute.

He averted his gaze to a family photo on the wall. Jimin's halpoji, Appa, Jimin and another boy who looked like him-- a brother, it's likely.

"You have a lot of pictures in here."

"Eomma wouldn't let me leave home without them."

"Mm."

He looked Jimin up and down again, then to the picture of Halloween all those years ago on the shelf.

"That was him?"

"Ronald McDonald. That's your boyfriend, right?"

Jimin's lips tightened into a fine, fine line at the words. He'd been expecting Yoongi to catch on quickly, but it still caught him off guard.

"Yeah. That's him." He breathed.

Yoongi set the picture down in its right place on the bookshelf.

Yoongi didn't say anything. He waited for Jimin to look up at him again and when he finally did, there were big tears sitting in his eyes and a pinkness coming to his cheeks. He was right. Parks aged slowly. He still looked like a baby.

"No one knows I'm gay. "

He sniffled.

"Except Taehyung. And you."

His voice a mere crackle in the silence.

He swallowed and breathed to regain his composure, he didn't want to look weak. Yesterday, Yoongi was strong, even when he was hurt. Jimin was not. He envied him, in that sense.

He couldn't hold it all back.

He choked on the first sob trying to keep it in his throat; then twice was racked by the sound of his heavy heart, helplessly throwing his head back. This was the kind of cry that did not know what to do with itself nor its limbs. Jimin fell to pieces. The tears seemed to flow forever downward on a stream down his cheeks. The grief was pure.

Humiliated as he was, Jimin couldn't do much besides wipe and wipe and wipe his face with his rough cotton sleeves until the skin started to raw. And he felt terrible for leading Yoongi on, but worse for his audacity. Taehyung was still a part of him— he knew this. And yet he sat in Yoongi's face, sang him a happy birthday, like one who could not let others let go in peace. All he had to do was tell Yoongi the truth: he didn't know what he wanted. And Yoongi would leave.

But it's not like choosing would fix anything. Even if his mind was all made up, the underlying problems would remain. His loved ones did not love him, or all of him. They loved what they believed was right. An idea of a man. Not the real thing.

As he came down from the high of his lows, he wiped his face once more and met Yoongi's sympathetic gaze. Now he had no choice but to tell Yoongi, on his birthday, all the things that had been on his mind since what seemed to be the beginning of time.

Jimin started shakily, "He wants me to tell my parents and family about us. He's been pestering me about it since last month and we've been together since I was twenty two. I don't want to come out and get rejected over him, because what if things don't work out? No family." He repeated, "No family."

His watchful, fearful eye trained itself on Yoongi. Vulnerability never came easy.

Yoongi still hadn't said a thing.

But it was safe. So he continued.

"I get that he's tired of being my dirty secret, but... I already feel like I have nobody. Even with him I-I..." Yoongi watched the cry develop on his face, then the sob that shook him, "I feel so alone. Like I'm just this walking sinkhole that used to be a person, but now I just swallow everything that crosses paths with me. I don't keep people close, but I kept him close. All I have is him and my family and none of my friends from college talk to me anymore. It feels like there's nobody. And—"

His statement clipped itself short, as if by muscle memory. A stifled tongue, he had learned, was better. A sharp one was best. His own mouth, a scarecrow, to fend off his fears.

Yoongi had been meditating on Jimin's word vomit for a while now, but finally seemed to settle on some words. He cut another piece of cake and slid it carefully from cake knife to plate, pushing it to Jimin.

"I'm your friend."

You'll leave soon enough, he wanted to say.

Yoongi pulled Jimin's chair closer, drew his head into his chest, drew him closer by the small of his back. Jimin received the gesture eagerly, with no time in advance to feel flustered or embarrassed. It mattered only that a hand sat on his head, smoothing the hairs over and over, only quasi successful in soothing him. His eyes closed. When was the last time he had felt loved?

"There, there." Yoongi said, his voice low and hush, "Boys are stupid, I know."

He made no mention of the slow unwinding of tense muscles the longer he held him, which he knew Jimin would undo if he realized it was happening.

Jimin looked into the eyes of his friend, and in a futile effort to revive the good energy, said,

"You're not very good at comforting people."

To which he replied,

"Maybe you're just not very good at being comforted."

Jimin simpered and played with his slice of strawberry shortcake.

"I'm sorry. I know I messed your birthday up with my bad energy."

"You didn't mess anything up. I'm glad you trust me." Yoongi hummed. "Now. What's wrong with this toilet of yours again?"

Jimin laughed.

So as it turns out, Yoongi was not "very good" at comforting people.

"Very good" would be an understatement.