"I found love where it wasn't supposed to be."

~A.R

༺═──────────────═༻

Jimin presses his coat tighter against him as he crosses the street, eyes on the prize. It's been 2 weeks with no contact from Yoongi, and seeing Taehyung the day before reminded him that perhaps that wasn't quite normal.

The last they spoke, he hadn't let on that something was wrong, but his emotions changed with the tides. He'd get a look in his eyes in the middle of a conversation that told Jimin to stop talking and let him sulk, while at other times, it seemed as though he forgot the very thing that held him back from loving just a little harder.

It was these subtle changes in the air that Jimin grew accustomed to, yet none of his sensors had gone off, and that's what worries him now.

Even after running every little thing he did that day through his mind, what could he have done differently? It's not like Yoongi to be so upset about something he did as to ghost him for a whole week, but whatever he did, he wants to make up for it through any means necessary. It's not often someone like him appears in his life and stays.

The climb up to the 3rd floor is arduous, but once he arrives, nothing compares to the feeling of staring at Yoongi's door. So close, yet so far apart, blocked off by a little slab of wood.

He's rehearsed the different paths of conversation in his head a thousand times, but when he notices the scratch in the corner of the door, the one he caused when the heel of his boot accidentally scuffed the paint, everything goes blank. The fact that Yoongi is right there scares the shit out of him. The fact that he's even here makes him want to turn back around to his house, where the comfort of familiarity will envelope him in sleep for another day.

But somehow, he knows he has to do this for himself. The itch in his brain just won't go away.

Gathering what's left of his courage, Jimin knocks 3 times, no urgency in its spacing but none of the playfulness he usually endows in them, either. No response. He knocks again, this time demanding, maybe a little pleading. But still, the door is unmoving and silent, the peephole staring at him snootily.

Groaning softly, Jimin steps away from the door, hands in his pockets. Is Yoongi even home? Maybe he should call him and tell him he's at his apartment, and that way he won't have an excuse to not come to the door.
No, that's desperate, he thinks, and I'd rather kill myself than look desperate.

His hand grazes the spare key to Yoongi's apartment.

But then again...

He takes it out casually and flips it over in his hands, turning it this way and that to catch the light of the lamps outside. It's the temptation and the certain deviousness of it that holds him back.

Wouldn't it be an invasion of privacy or something? he asks himself, but from the way he instinctively cranes his head around the corner to make sure no one's around, the question doesn't really come from a moral place in his heart. Once he confirms that the coast is clear, he snatches up the key before he changes his mind.

A little peek around the place won't hurt anyone, right? 

Jimin puts the key in the doorknob, and it gives no resistance as it swings open into the abyss of darkness. He takes one last look to his right before stepping in.

The interior looks the same as he last saw it: clean dishes on the rack, cardboard boxes still half-empty (he swore he'd go through all of them at some point), laundry in a pile in the middle of the living room, but the little differences throw him off, most worth noting being the thin film of dust coating every surface. The place looks like no one's occupied it in weeks.

Jimin approaches the table to swipe his finger across it, and when it comes away with ashy grey, he scrunches his nose in disgust and wipes it on his pant leg. He knows how Yoongi likes his things nice and organized so he can see every item he has without having to dig for it. He'd never leave the house like this unless he was in a hurry, but even then, it would have to be something that just couldn't wait.

He saunters around the living room some more, then goes into the kitchen to open the fridge on a whim. There's almost nothing in there except for some leftovers, and by the smell, it seems like it went bad a while ago.
Taking it out, he walks over to the trash can and opens it to find it half full. Not suspicious on its own, but something worth noting as he throws the container away. Everything is slowly starting to feel off, like going through an abandoned amusement park. There should be life here. Yoongi should've found him by now and asked him just what the hell he thought he was doing in his apartment.

Shit, Jimin thinks, looking around at the mess before him, not gonna find anything like this, am I?

Just as he's about to turn the other way, a note on the kitchen counter catches his attention. Pale white against beige. Why didn't he see it before? He would've thought it blank if he didn't recognize his name at the top, and his breath hitches in his throat, too stubborn to swallow down.

He doesn't want to read it, because the worst-case scenarios in his head prepared him for this moment. He wants to leave and continue living in the fantasy that he'll call back tomorrow or maybe the day after that, yet his body compels him forward to pick the note up gingerly like a mother would their only child. His heart roars in his ears as he scans the paper.

Jimin,
I'm sorry. Don't hate me.

-Yoongi

The note feels so heavy in his hands, yet it floats away like a piece of dust carried on the back of eager birds waiting to siphon off his sorrows bit by bit. His head is spinning, yet he doesn't have the energy to take a seat. He feels his eyes glaze over with tears.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. Disgust sticks to his skin and shames him for caring so much, for being desperate enough to break and enter into his boyfriend's (not your boyfriend anymore you idiot) apartment to find the solution to their relationship. Hot embarrassment floods his cheeks as he thinks about Yoongi solemnly scrawling that note on the page, just knowing Jimin would get curious enough to come over.

Why does he always fall for the blonds in leather?

Before he knows it, Jimin's knees are sagging to the floor, sapped of the determination they once held, and all that he's left with is the presence of his own patheticness and the glorious expanse of nothing before him.

Nothing makes sense over his mounting headache. Why would he leave everything here, especially in such haste? Didn't he have the decency to break up with him beforehand?
He could be staying at someone's place for all I know, Jimin thinks bitterly. I don't have to know everything about him, after all.

Jimin supposes he never knew anything about him. Every personal question he'd ask would be avoided or answered in half-hearted one-liners until he learned to stop. They'd talk about other things, of course, though some things he suspects Yoongi only pretended to like so that Jimin wouldn't feel insecure.

He thought—silly of him looking back at it now— that he was breaking Yoongi down somehow, as if, by the end of all this, he would have bloomed into the butterfly he was always meant to be. The perfect man to prove he could be the one for somebody without having to be somebody.

Jimin doesn't lift his head when he hears the arrhythmic scrapes against the window, nor when the wind cackles at the nocturnal birds coming out to hunt. Instead, he memorizes the grooves of the wooden floor, counting them one by one until he has to start over when he loses his place.

Life doth taste the sweetest upon the lips of those who ride the wind, yet those who observe from afar only catch the salt of tears.

༺═──────────────═༻

안녕 여러분! I'm sorry this chapter
was so sad... what do you guys think
happened to Yoongi? Let me know!

QOTD: what's your fav genre of music?

In honor of my new collab, (link in
bio hehe) I thought this would be the perfect question. I like alternative and electronic the best, but I'm also a big fan of some mindless pop.

Until next time, happy reading!

Love,
Haneul