White Balance (Render Me Breathless), for causeitsred
Title: White Balance (Render Me Breathless)
Recipient: causeitsred
Pairing (or character): Suga, Jimin, Suga/Jin friendship.
Rating: PG
Summary: Yoongi brings his camera along to the event without thinking much about it, but Jimin really is too cute to resist photographing. (Alternate-reality where Yoongi becomes a Jimin fansite master.)
Notes: Dear recipient, thank you so much for the lovely prompts, all of which I absolutely adored and had a hard time choosing from! I hope I’ve done this justice. I have some notes for this fic which I will add on at the end, so please read them if you’d like :)
Yoongi doesn't pay much attention to them when he catches wind of the new 2013 debut. Bighit starts by introducing Bangtan Boys as the next big thing, and Yoongi honestly isn't too impressed by the predebut immodesty, especially not from kids with the name Bulletproof Boyscouts, when their name is finally confirmed, though he does get his share of laughter when he has the time to check in on the logs posted prior to their debut.
It’s hard to keep track of who’s singing what when Yoongi has grades to keep up so he can pass his university classes, and when it once hurt to be apart from his family and friends in Daegu, Seoul is full of bright colors and people who sparkle more than the city lights. Idols get younger and younger with each passing year, but the older Yoongi gets, the more time he spends away from the mixer he once bought when he was fresh out of highschool and more time in the university dark room where he processes the photographs for his college assignments.
Still, Yoongi finds himself immersed in BTS’ first few teasers when they hit YouTube. He backpedals at first when he finds out that the one carrying most of the main vocal lines in their first music video is four years younger than he is, but he takes a breath and continues watching, the thought of his own dreams when he was younger making him both calm and the tiniest bit bitter at the same time. They’re good, Yoongi notes, better or at least more memorable than the rest of the countless debuts of the year, and with the way that the trailers and music video introduces them, Yoongi finds himself matching names to faces considerably effortlessly.
Out of all of them, Jimin is the one that ends up intriguing Yoongi the most, looking the youngest out of all of them what with the fullness of his cheeks. Yoongi had originally looked past him to concentrate on the other members in the music video, but after watching the dance break in No More Dream, Jimin’s every move seems sharper and more fluid, and Yoongi has to admit that he’s a good dancer, and his higher register stands out in his group where rap takes up the main body of their music.
Yoongi ends up setting a cut of the final chorus as his phone alarm, and spends the next few mornings waking up to Jimin’s ad-libs.
…
Yoongi buys 2 Cool 4 Skool one afternoon after spending a few hours in his usual dark room, when his eyes are still adjusting to the light of the world outside his university building. He gets a fansign raffle ticket from Youngpoong with his purchase, expected of a group that’s still new to the industry that needs to hold events to gather more attention and more fans, but what he doesn’t expect is to find that his ticket is one out of the hundred or so people that would be admitted to actual event itself.
He’s on the train back to his tiny studio apartment a few days later when he finds out about his admittance to the fansign by phone, when a Youngpoong employee contacts him through the number he’d left with a reminder to check the store’s website for confirmation of the venue, date, and time of the event. When he finally hangs up, Yoongi sits, slumped and unbelieving in his seat for a moment before he picks up his phone again to check the Youngpoong website, where, sure enough, his raffle ticket number is listed along with his name.
When the train pulls into Hoeryong station, Yoongi almost forgets to get off and catch his transfer to Uljeongbu, too busy checking his class schedule to make sure that he has the afternoon free on the date listed on the website.
…
The day of the fansign arrives and Yoongi feels nothing but awkward when he reaches Ilsan. Girls of all ages are practically swarm around the store entrance, and though they all seem calm organized, lined up and ready for the event to start, the chatter in the air seems to settle heavy in Yoongi’s chest whenever he takes a breath. It’s mid-June and the temperature in Seoul is reaching new heights, but Yoongi keeps his beanie on and is grateful for the sun so that he can keep his sunglasses on while he quietly surveys the waiting crowd, armed with smartphones and tablets. It’s when he spots a group of people holding DSLRs that he moves closer to the storefront, and when the girls notice him approaching, he finds himself suddenly surrounded by what he then realizes are fansite masters.
The girls seem to take to Yoongi, who feebly holds up his ticket as an explanation of why he’s there at all. It’s after he tells them that he’s there as a fan that they all seem to calm down, one of them even lending him a microfibre cloth to wipe down his own camera and another two of them engaging him in conversation about what aperture settings they should use when Yoongi lets slip that he studies photography. It’s overwhelming, but the girls seem nice enough, and Yoongi lets his guard down around them until the master of What U Do speaks up amidst the chatter.
“So, who are you here for?”
Yoongi nearly chokes a little on his own spit. “Sorry?” he attempts, unsure of what he’s being asked.
She continues to stare at him, and it’s TripleLove’s master that explains things to him right before Yoongi starts to contemplate whether it would be rude to flee from someone who’s technically a stranger. “She’s asking who you are here to photograph. For example, I’m here for V, Jungkook and Jimin. I think we’re all just curious as to why you decided to bring your camera along if you’re just a casual fan?”
“Ah...” Yoongi starts, contemplative. He hadn’t actually come to photograph anyone in particular, but with so many eyes on him, he feels pressured to answer, so he states the first name that comes to mind. “I’m here for Jimin?”
There’s a pause for a moment right before the girls start up again, nodding and whispering to each other. TripleLove is about to talk to him again when a staff member calls out to the crown and motions for them to start forming proper lines into the store as the event is about to start. The atmosphere gets louder and Yoongi feels safer now that the attention is off of him, and he gets in line with the other girls and tries to be as unnoticeable as possible. He feels a tap on his shoulder right before he walks into the store, and a random fan calls out to him. “I hope to see your photos online later, oppa!”
Yoongi nods a little, though doubtful that she could have seen him through the crowd, and adjusts his camera settings to suit the light of the venue.
Meeting BTS is less stressful and overwhelming than Yoongi expects, and the fans are well behaved and full of nothing but praise for the boys. Yoongi takes multiple shots of all of the members as he moves along in the line, his album carefully wedged between his arm and his side, but as he takes shot after shot, he finds himself lingering more and more on Jimin than he’d previously expected.
Not the visual, but the charm of Bangtan. Yoongi has seen fans call Jimin charming countless times on the messageboards and on Big Hit’s official YouTube account, but it’s when Yoongi sees him in person for the first time that he really finds Jimin just… cute. His smile lights up his face in a way that makes his eyes crinkle, and the bags under his eyes, still there despite a coat of foundation that Yoongi can clearly see, are more endearing than they are there as proof of Jimin’s lack of sleep. Yoongi hadn’t noticed Jimin much pre-debut, but seeing him in real life makes Yoongi approve of his role in the group, because he does feel charmed by the kid.
Yoongi goes through the first few members at the table fairly quickly, at a loss of anything to say to them personally considering he doesn’t know their personalities well enough at this point to say more than his greetings and shake their hands when they express their happiness at having a male fan. It’s when he steps in front of Jimin that Yoongi actually puts his vocal chords to better use than for mindless ‘hello’s and ‘thank you’s.
“Ah,” Jimin says, staring at him curiously. His cheeks look rounder than ever in the lighting of the bookstore, and in his mind, Yoongi is reminded of the hamster he once kept as a pet when he was a child in Daegu. Yoongi mumbles a greeting but Jimin continues to stare until Taehyung slides Yoongi’s album over for him to sign, and only then do Jimin’s eyes drop down to the table before him.
Jimin hums as he flips from Taehyung’s page in the photobook to his own page, scribbling on a big ‘TO’ at the top left corner before he peeks up at Yoongi again. “You’re… my hyung, right?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi replies, as casually as possible, because he’s been staring at Jimin’s small hands and fingers fumble with the photobook pages with far more interest than he honestly should be having for a person’s short-but very cute-fingers. His brain tries to catch up with his mouth in time to give Jimin a multi-syllabled answer. “I’m your hyung,” he confirms, and Jimin let’s out a short, “Ah!” right before he writes the character out along with an exclamation mark before signing his name underneath it with a nod. Jimin takes care in writing his signature, and Yoongi knows he’s in the fresh stages of finding a fitting signature from the way that Jimin looks overly concentrated in the strokes of his marker.
“Did you think I was younger than you?” Yoongi asks, and Jimin looks at him with wide eyes, as if startled, and lets out a laugh that Yoongi can only call incredibly, but charmingly, awkward.
“No, no, hyung, it’s just that…” Yoongi raises an eyebrow at him, going for menacing but probably coming off as comical because Jimin only laughs harder. “It’s just that… you don’t seem very tall for a hyung.” Yoongi swears he could have picked up his album and smacked Jimin over the head for that comment if he was just a cute underclassman, but instead he’s Park Jimin, charm of BTS, and Yoongi maintains his composure though his hand twitches from where it’s clutching at his camera strap.
“Yah,” Yoongi calls out to him, after a staff member has prodded at Jimin to hurry up to prevent him from holding up the line. Jimin is looking everywhere but Yoongi, but he looks up when Yoongi calls, “I’m definitely taller than you, Park Jimin.” To which Jimin smiles sheepishly at him before he looks down again when another album is passed to him to sign.
Yoongi goes home that night to search for BTS’ profiles, and he definitely does not fistpump when he finds out that he is, in fact, taller than Jimin.
…
“One centimeter,” is the first thing out of his mouth when Yoongi sees Jimin next.
Jimin, who has just passed a towel back to a staff member after towelling the sweat away from his neck, looks up in surprise. He seems shocked to see Yoongi, and for a moment Yoongi curses himself for thinking that Jimin would remember him from the last fansign, but his thoughts are cut off by Jimin letting out his awkward laughter again. “Hi, hyung,” he greets, once again writing down the strokes carefully on Yoongi’s second copy of 2 Cool for Skool, “One centimeter what?”
“You’re one centimeter shorter than me-that is, I’m one centimeter taller than you.” Yoongi says, smug, and as he watches Jimin’s eyes crinkle as he smiles Yoongi knows that Jimin remembers their last encounter now. “Ah, hyung,” Jimin whines, and from his place across the table, Yoongi thinks he sees Jimin scribble on a few stars next to his signature on Yoongi’s second photobook. Yoongi doesn’t actually know what he’s going to do with two copies of the same album, but he for some reason, he felt an obligation to tell Jimin that he is, in fact, taller than him.
“One centimeter is just one centimeter, and I may be short, but that doesn’t make you tall you know?” Yoongi can here the smugness in his voice and just about resists the urge to snort loudly in Jimin’s face. Instead, Yoongi shrugs and smirks. “I’m still taller than you, and that’s what counts. And hey, that’s ‘hyung’ to you,” Yoongi replies, and his satisfaction only increases more when Jimin grumbles out the honorific before handing Yoongi’s album to Jungkook and thanking Yoongi for coming again.
It’s when Yoongi gets home that evening that he sees +1cm hyung written in silver marker on his album photobook, Jimin’s smeared fingerprints at the edges of the page, that he makes a mental note to tell Jimin his name next time.
…
Yoongi doesn’t think much about meeting Bangtan and his encounters with Jimin for a while after that, but one night he winds up softly chanting along to the fanchants to No More Dream when watching Music Bank that he realises he’s in deeper than expected. The lines and repeated words come naturally, and Yoongi has never looked up when and what to chant online before, so the realization comes as a surprise.
He’s typed “how to know you are a fan of an idol gro” into NAVER before he closes his laptop and texts his cousin in Daegu to mail him back his original copy of 2 Cool 4 Skool, purely for, collector’s purposes, of course. Yoongi is suddenly hit by short memories of meeting Bangtan’s fansite masters that first fanmeeting at Youngpoong, and the one fan that had wanted him to upload his photos from the fanmeeting. It’s then that he flips open his laptop again and does a quick search of Bangtan fansite directories, looking at their logos and site names before he plugs in his memory card and makes a decision.
…
Baby-Ji ends up being hosted on tistory because it’s the only blogging platform that Yoongi knows enough of to use. It’s only after staring at the blank URL box on the registration form for over half an hour that Yoongi settles on the name for his fansite. Baby-G is a popular watch brand in Korea, affordable and known by almost everyone thanks to SNSD, with colors and designs released either striking or classic, but ultimately charming. Once Yoongi thinks of the name he can’t put it down fast enough, tired of thinking of witty lines and English phrases that look good on photos but are pretty much scrambled nonsense in his mind, and it only takes him a few more seconds to list Ji-Shock as his admin name, hitting the enter key quickly before he backs out and his photos of Bangtan-well, of mainly Jimin, if Yoongi were to be finally and almost painfully honest with himself-go to waste and that one fan who had asked him ever so nicely to upload the photos will have to live forever without seeing them.
Yoongi spends more hours that night coming up with splash pages on Photoshop and basic rules to add to the main page, going through other sites like ADDICTION and Soulmate for inspiration, and scrolling through YouTube’s to compile a playlist of songs for future use as fancam background music. It’s when he finally, finally, shuts his laptop at three in the morning, flops on with and a random snapback over his face to shield him from the streetlamps outside his building that he considers how deep he’s in and how he really should be spending more time on his more… academic photography.
The next day, Yoongi wakes up at noon, and the first thing he does is to pull up tistory again and add a ‘TIPS&TRIX’ page to the-his, Yoongi thinks, and mentally facepalms at what he’s gotten himself into-fansite. If he’s going to be doing this fansite master thing on the side, seriously or otherwise, the very least he can do is to talk to people and other photographers and exchange tips on white balance and ISO settings while he’s at it.
…
The first photo he posts ends up being a phone-made collage of both of Jimin’s signed pages of both of his photobooks, after his cousin has sent his album back in the mail complete with a note commanding Yoongi to treat her to lunch in exchange for the postage fees. The only caption he leaves is a “ㅡㅡ Jimin-ah…”, with arrows pointing at Jimin’s doodled stars and jab at Yoongi’s height, and he shares the photo to Twitter using his new account. Yoongi sits in front of his laptop for a moment after he’s uploaded the photo with his first tweet before he searches for a few of the fansites’ masters that he recalls interacting with at that first fansign, before he mentions them in his tweets along with a short line of introduction.
+1CM hyung @JI_SHOCK93
hi, this is that camera oppa from the youngpoong event! please support BABY-JI ^0^
Yoongi cringes a little at his emoticon, but it seems fitting and looks infinitely more friendly as compared to the plain text he’d typed out without it. He scrolls through a few different fansites after that, and though he wants to roll his eyes at the countless lines of crying and laughing abbreviations, Yoongi knows that these are what makes fans fans-and fansite masters, for that matter. There’s a large amount of personal investment involved, emotionally and physically, and Yoongi is sure he doesn’t even have half of what it takes to produce a regularly updated fansite, not when most of the girls devote so much of their time and effort into taking and sharing fan media with the rest of the fans who can’t. It’s something worth respecting, and while Yoongi isn’t about to start guffawing or bawling in his tweets, he almost see his deadpan squint emoticon being used often in the future, considering how incredulous he feels towards Jimin on pretty much a daily basis.
At this point of time, Yoongi can foresee ”ㅡㅡ” becoming a trademark of his in the days to come.
…
“You’ve lost it.”
It’s the first thing Seokjin says to him after not seeing Yoongi for close to three weeks. Yoongi knows it’s been a little over two weeks since they’ve grabbed coffee together in between their busy college schedules, because the last time he’d met up with Seokjin was the day before he’d set up Baby-Ji-not that he’s been keeping track of how many days his fansite has been open at all, of course.
Yoongi did smile at the coincidence when his Twitter follower count hit 150 on the 15th day since Baby-Ji’s opening, though there’s no way in hell he’s about to tell Seokjin this any time soon. He settles for a greeting instead.
“Hi, hyung, no time no see, hyung, I’m fine, thank you so much for asking, and you?”
Seokjin only sighs at him and aims a kick under the table at the chair opposite him, which squeaks across the cafe floor just the right distance for Yoongi to squeeze in comfortably across from him. Sometimes Yoongi thinks they’ve known each other too long, and Seokjin moving Yoongi’s camera on the table to a safe position against the wall and away from his coffee is a clear sign of spending too much time together, though the feeling of familiarity settles comfortably in his bones. It’s only after Seokjin has ordered for Yoongi that he looks over at Seokjin’s iPad. “You’re on a fansite?”
Seokjin rolls his eyes at him. “I’m on your fansite, you fanboy.”
“I’m not the one with a three-year-old Beast song as my ringtone and message tone.”
“Maybe not, but at least I don’t have an eighteen year-old crooning at me every morning as my alarm.” Seokjin replies, before turning the tablet over. Yoongi’s splashpage is much too large for the screen. All he can see is parts of Jimin’s bared arms and the ball-chain necklace hanging around his neck down to his chest, so Yoongi drags a finger down the screen to look at Jimin’s face. Man, the lighting and the angle of his shots on that day were perfect. “I really need to make this site more mobile friendly,” Yoongi mumbles, mostly to himself. Seokjin is too busy thanking the waitress for bringing over Yoongi’s cuppuccino. “And for the record, Jimin is nineteen.”
Seokjin snorts. “Not yet he isn’t.” He pushes the mug towards Yoongi, who frowns at Seokjin before picking it up and smirking at him.
“Who’s the fanboy now?”
The wet coffee stirrer that gets thrown at him barely gets evaded due to Yoongi’s lightning quick reflexes, and not because Seokjin’s aim has improved drastically over the course of their friendship. “I just looked him up to see what your fuss was all about,” Seokjin says, as seriously as Yoongi supposes he can manage, not that that really is very serious because this is Seokjin, and Yoongi can hardly talk to him with a straight-face on sometimes. “But really though, Yoongi, not only is he two years younger than you but he isn’t even…”
“Isn’t even?” Yoongi motions at him to continue with one hand, though he doesn’t look up at Seokjin in favor of taking a large sip out of his mug.
Seokjin flicks him in the forehead. “He isn’t really your type, is he?”
Now that makes Yoongi put down his coffee. He stares at Seokjin with an eyebrow raised. “You think Jimin isn’t my type? That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Not worried, just confused, ok-”
“I’m laughing at you, ok, just so you know, I’m laughing at you on the inside, hyung, I’m just not laughing outwardly because I’m finding this so hilarious that I’ve been rendered speechless by your interest in my fansite.”
“Now is not the time to be pulling photography jokes on me, Min Yoongi-”
Yoongi blows a bubble into his cappuccino froth in defiance and Seokjin snatches his iPad back to the safety of his arms. Yoongi doesn’t know what to say, really, but the words are out of his mouth before he can even think too much about them, “He’s cute, ok.”
Seokjin blinks at him. “He’s cute?”
“Yeah.”
Yoongi gets two blinks this time. “You’ve decided to open a fansite for this kid and all you can say about him is that he’s cute?” Seokjin half screeches, and flicks his fingers across his iPad to zoom in on Jimin’s face. It’s a very cute face, from what Yoongi can see, puffy eyebags and fluffy bangs peeking out from under his snapback.
Yoongi’s just a little infatuated, in an incomprehensible way, even to himself.
“He’s just,” Yoongi waves his hand around, trying to find the words to say what he feels without sounding like a smitten teenager, with his other hand he sloshes his coffee around, as if willing his mind to swirl a little faster before Seokjin tries to put words in his mouth. “He’s just. Charming, ok?”
Seokjin doesn’t seem satisfied, if him taking away Yoongi’s coffee and setting it aside so he isn’t distracted from explaining more is any indication of his dissatisfaction. “So charming that you’d go to countless fansites in Seoul to see him and photograph him?”
“So charming that I’m even going to Daegu to see him this weekend.” Yoongi replies, tone light and non-committal. Seokjin is on him in the matter of seconds it takes him to comprehend just what Yoongi has said, brows furrowing in confusion right before his eyes widen.
“Min Yoongi, You told me to book that train ticket for you because you wanted to visit your parents!”
…
The truth is, Yoongi does board his train the next day with the intention of going and see his parents. He has a long weekend, and it’s been a while since he’s visited his family-it’s just a coincidence that BTS is going to be in Daegu too, or so Yoongi reassures Seokjin through KakaoTalk, considering he’d run from the cafe as fast as his legs could carry him before Seokjin had been ready to fling his own coffee at him.
Seokjin’s messages come in a torrent of pings, and Yoongi has to mute the conversation thread before the older ladies in the same carriage start giving him more looks than necessary and get him kicked off the train. He taps out a quick thx 4 coffee, will reimburse u, see u when im back in seoul and a few animated stickers of hearts and curly ‘goodbye’s before stuffing the phone back into his pocket and pulls down the hood of his sweatshirt over his eyes. Yoongi feels the phone vibrate in his pocket, and it’s probably an annoyed Seokjin calling him to give him a piece of his mind, but the buzzing only lulls him to sleep.
…
Jimin looks legitimately surprised to see him, eyes as wide as they can go and crinkling in the corners when he smiles at Yoongi. He’s got a military patterned snapback on his head and something like ten bracelets adorning both of his wrists, with a twisted bandana curled around one. Yoongi looks from the table where his third album is in Jimin’s hands all the way up to where Jimin is supporting a slight flush on his cheeks and once again wonders out of everyone in BTS, why Jimin had to be the one to reel him in like a starving fish.
“Hi, hyung!” Jimin greets him cheerfully, and his cheeks grow round, eyes curving almost as if to match his smile. He really is so… disarmingly cute that Yoongi wants to claw at his own eyes just to stop himself from seeing Jimin and reacting like a preteen with a crush instead of a 20 year-old college student.
A 20 year-old who is also a photography major who moonlights as a fansite master with an account named JI-SHOCK, Yoongi reminds himself, his own smile almost slipping into scowl before he catches himself before Jimin’s smile starts to falter. “Hey, Jiminie.”
Jimin’s resulting beam is megawatt, and Yoongi presses his nails into his palms and decides that clawing at the insides of his hands is a much better and less vision impairing option than clawing at his face.
“Hyung,” Jimin greets him again, voice sweet and a little bit smug, “You came all the way to Daegu to see me?” He’s turning the pages of Yoongi’s photobook much too slowly, going through the other members’ pages as if the album was his own. A staff member taps on Jimin’s shoulder before Yoongi has a chance to offer selling the album to him at a premium price, autographs and all. Jimin nods a little towards the girl, hair flipping a little to the side when he does so, and Yoongi is so temporarily fixated on Jimin’s bangs that he almost forgets to reply.
“I’m from Daegu, kid, I just study in Seoul. You’re the one that came all the way to see me, more like.”
If anything, Jimin’s cheeks just turn redder, deepening the flush already on his face, but Yoongi knows better than to think that Jimin is going to let the conversation end there. “Ah, in that case, hyung, I should be the one getting your autograph!” He says, and finally flips to his own page of the photobook. He peers up at Yoongi, and Yoongi clenches his fists tighter because no one close to Jimin’s age should even be allowed to be this cute.
“You don’t even know my name,” Yoongi teases, and Jimin’s eyes pretty much disappear with the force the wide smile that has spread across his face. Yoongi feels warmth settle into him, and he knows he can’t blame it on the summer heat because he’s been in the bookstore for hours before the event even started. Jimin just looks straight up at him with one hand poised above Yoongi’s album with a marker in hand. “You should tell me your name so I can write it down then, hyung. I personally would like to remember the names of all my fansite masters, and I can’t call you One Centimeter Hyung forever.”
Yoongi is sure his nails are breaking skin at this point. “It’s Yoongi. You can call me Yoongi. Yoongi hyung.” He has to cough mid-sentence to clear the tightness in his throat, but his voice still catches at the end of the honorific. It’s one thing to be happy to take photos of Jimin, but knowing that Jimin remembers who he is and knows that he mans one of Jimin’s own fansites is a whole different ballgame. Yoongi honestly doesn’t know how other fansites deal with it-meeting famous people isn’t uncommon in the slightest when you spend so much time in Seoul, but Yoongi feels like the last month has been a pretty surreal one considering how much his fan status has changed since then.
“Yoongi hyung from Daegu,” Jimin repeats almost dutifully, now staring down at the album and scribbling over the page, and by the time Yoongi snaps out of it, Jimin has finished signing, fingers flipping through the pages swiftly before he settles on Hoseok’s page and slides it over to him. Jimin is a good kid, Yoongi thinks-knows, even-but seeing him being helpful to his members in tiny ways is always reassuring and proof that Jimin is really just a sweet boy at heart. “Will you be here the next time we come to Daegu?”
Jimin’s tone is smug. He’s sweet boy with a love for attention, clearly. Yoongi just rolls his eyes at him and tries to keep the embarrassment off of his face. “I’ll be in Daegu whenever you come around, yeah.”
“You promise?” Yoongi can hardly believe it when Jimin lifts his pinky and raises it up to him, but he links their pinkies together anyway and tries his hardest not to smile.
“If you come to Daegu and I’m not here, I’ll make it up to you with a present next time.”
Jimin’s smile could light up the entire room.
Yoongi is back in Seoul before he gets the chance to look over his third album thoroughly. Jungkook’s handwriting is neat as always, Taehyung has drawn him what seems to be a tiny lion, but it’s Jimin’s page that causes Yoongi to pause.
To Yoongi hyung, Jimin has written, and his script is rounded and boyish, but it’s what else he’s added on that causes Yoongi to sigh before he smiles to himself.
He makes “aka still-not-that-tall hyung☆ (from Daegu)” his Twitter name that night itself.
…
Yoongi sees Jimin a few more times after that, in between actual photography projects and school work. The first time he sees Jimin flash his abs up close at a music show, he has to stop himself from laughing out loud as a natural shocked reflex as opposed to the many screaming fans surrounding him, but they’re honestly all in the same sinking boat on the path of adoring Jimin, and Yoongi can’t ignore the way that his neck feels hot under his collar.
Apart from going to events, Yoongie posts thankful screenshots of his follower increases on Twitter when he starts to reach the thousands, and uploads funny pictures of Jimin to commemorate his “follower milestones”. There are pictures of Jimin with his shirts ripped, Jimin peeking shyly out from under his snapback, Jimin being squished into a hug by Taehyung, Jimin in multiple outfits that Yoongi thinks are more suited for people who want to live their lives as fashion terrorists. Yoongi links them all with equal lines of laughter and crying emoticons, and as they go into the colder months, he holds conversations with Sunshine and ParkJamJam about how Jimin’s scarves are probably longer than Jimin’s entire person and more fit for mummification than they are for keeping your neck warm.
Jimin’s birthday comes around, and Yoongi uploads and creates 10 splashpages on Baby-Ji in celebration. He also ends up pitching in with the other fansites in a joint project to buy Jimin a pair of shoes, and the feeling is great when he notices Jimin wearing them in a broadcast of Music Core early on in November, the satisfaction making him share screenshots on Twitter with ILIKEIT and ZERONINE so that they can all leave their own tweets of smiling faces and excitement. November means that Yoongi has less time to spend on attending events due to finals and shitty weather, but he torrents performances while he sleeps and watches them the next morning with as much of a mind as he can when he’s brushing his teeth and pulling on his pants at the same time in order to not be late for revision sessions and recap class.
It’s when his finals are over and his next train ticket to Daegu is booked that Yoongi first feels the pain, a week before BTS is bound for their Japanese showcase. He manages to sleep after downing some painkillers, but when he wakes up it’s to pain so sharp in his lower abdomen that he can barely pull himself out of bed in order to reach his phone to call Seokjin, right before he throws up into the trashcan by his desk with Seokjin still on the line. In the end, Seokjin has to argue his way into Yoongi’s apartment and continues bitching about his landlord even when the two of them are en route to the hospital, Seokjin’s arm over Yoongi’s shoulders and Yoongi pitched into his side, consumed by pain and swearing under his breath.
Appendicitis, the doctor tells him, after he’s been tucked into a hospital bed, given meds and a saline drip. Seokjin eyes him warily from one corner of the room. He was the one who had to step out and call Yoongi’s mother to let her know about Yoongi’s condition prior to the doctor’s diagnosis, and even doped up on painkillers, Yoongi could hear his mother’s frantic satoori-laced shrieking from inside the ward when Seokjin was out in the corridor. An appendectomy is really messing up with his plans of sweet, academically free bliss, not to mention his scheduled trip back to Daegu. Yoongi can only tiredly nod at his doctor a few times, mind already buzzing slowly with thoughts on what to get Jimin the next time he sees him in order to shut him about about his broken Daegu promise.
Right before he can drop off due to exhaustion, Yoongi points one finger lazily at Seokjin and tells him to go back to Yoongi’s apartment. He needs his phone first and foremost in a situation like this, and his demand is slurred, tongue thick in his mouth, but short.
The last image Yoongi sees before he succumbs to sleep is Seokjin’s mouth dropping open like a fish out of water.
…
still-not-that-tall-hyung☆ (from Daegu) @JI_SHOCK93
i’m sorry to say this, but BABY-JI has to go on hiatus for a while ㅠㅠㅠ
still-not-that-tall-hyung☆ (from Daegu) @JI_SHOCK93
Jimin-ah ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ hyung is sorry, but he needs to go for an appendectomy OTL
Yoongi only manages to tweet those two times before his operation, and it’s only a month after the appendectomy that the doctors give him the okay to go home, after complications and an inflammation that left Yoongi sore and cranky, and his daily doses of antibiotics increasing his lethargy tenfold. Even at home, Yoongi can’t bring himself to do anything other than lie in bed and watch Gag Concert and reruns of the end of year music programmes he’d missed due to getting his stupid appendix removed.
When he’s done catching up with everything and downloading awards shows to his laptop, Yoongi finally pulls open his browser to log onto Twitter and Baby-Ji. His mentions are a mess of links to pictures and videos, crying and hearts, along with a few tweets from other fansites telling him to get better soon. When he gets onto Baby-Ji, however, he finds one message posted to the ‘from.JIMIN’ message board.
The message is short but sweet, a simple one telling the fans to keep warm in winter and stay healthy, with a thank you at the end for all the support BTS has received since debut. For the first time in weeks, Yoongi feels a happy flutter in his gut instead of slow spreading pain. He’s about to close out from the fansite and tweet when he sees the tiny ‘2’ hovering over his master account’s inbox.
Yoongi hyung☆ I saw from your tweets that you're unwell! Get well faster and see me soon, ok? Heal well this winter ><
Now this message sends a warm flush down Yoongi’s body, and he’s about to fling himself gently back onto his bed and smother himself with a pillow when he remembers that there were two messages from Jimin in his inbox.
And hyung, don’t forget about our promise~ I know my birthday is over but I know you weren’t in Daegu and I still want my presents ^^
Yoongi laughs so hard he thinks he’s going to split his stitches, because for all that Jimin is a good kid, he’s still a huge brat.
…
The next time Yoongi gets to see Jimin ends up being on a snow day. Seoul has been freezing for over a month, but BTS is only just coming back from their overseas promotions, and no matter how much Yoongi wants to stay in, he takes the train to the airport to wait for them in the arrival hall, armed with his camera bag and the paper bag of presents for Jimin. It’s so cold that Yoongi slips two hot packs into his back pockets and sits on them throughout the ride without a care in the world except to keep his body warm.
By the time he reaches Gimpo, there’s already a small crowd of fansite masters and their cameras set up and ready for when BTS step into the terminal. Yoongi goes up to the ones he’s most familiar with, and he gets a few pats on his shoulders and happy smiles as a welcome back of sorts. It’s easy for him to approach them now when they know each other and are there for the same purpose. Yoongi finds a spot and settles down to wait, taking his camera out from his bag and getting ready.
There’s a gasp from somewhere beside him, and that’s when the chorus of names and calls of “Oppa!” start up. When Yoongi looks up, he sees the boys enter with their luggage and carts, and Yoongi tugs his beanie down to flatten his bangs and make sure it doesn’t fall off his head when everyone starts heading towards BTS with their presents and cameras in hand.
Jimin is easy to spot, and even easier to gain the attention of, probably thanks to the fluorescent green beanie that Yoongi has chosen to wear. Jimin looks good, though a little tired, but his eyes seem to light up when he sees the fans waiting for them. When his eyes move across the crowd, Jimin seems to spot Yoongi, and the flush Jimin carries on his face from the cold air deepens into a real blush. Yoongi feels a squirming in his stomach and tries to blame them on phantom itches from his now-removed stitches, though he knows very well he’s lying to himself, and Yoongi’s hands shake a little when he films Jimin pushing his cart along. Jimin really is so annoyingly cute and distractingly charming that Yoongi can hardly deal with even thinking about him.
Yoongi pushes forwards to hand Jimin his paper bag when he passes, and it’s been such a long time since Yoongi has seen Jimin’s smile up-close that he’s sure his own face must just mirror the wide grin on Jimin’s. “Thanks, hyung. It’s good to see you well.” Jimin tells him, and he hangs the bag around his wrist like a bracelet in order to not lose it in the small crowd surrounding them. Yoongi is glad he taped the opening shut with a self-printed Baby-Ji sticker.
“Good job over the past month, Jiminie,” Yoongi mumbles, and Jimin’s sheepish laugh is enough to calm Yoongi’s nerves after not being out at an event for such a while, his smile as bright as ever, and Yoongi can do nothing but smile back and wave as the boys get into their car and drive off.
…
Yoongi sets about editing the photos and one fancam that he’d managed to get at the airport when he gets home that night after meeting Seokjin for dinner and paying him back everything he still owed from the year before. When he re-watches the footage that he took, he notices that Jimin looks the tiniest bit shorter than normal, which is a good thing, Yoongi supposes, considering all he’d given Jimin as a Sorry-I-Broke-Our-Promise gift is a pair custom printed fabric pockets with Jimin’s face on them to put hot packs in, and a pair of insoles that add only a couple of centimeters to your height.
When Yoongi thinks about it, the insoles probably aren’t the best idea, because two added centimeters on Jimin would make him one centimeter taller than Yoongi, but Yoongi thinks he can live with his own shortness if it made Jimin feel better by artificially making himself taller with Yoongi’s gifted insoles. He can imagine Jimin’s teasing voice and awkward laughter the next time they meet at an event, and the thought alone makes Yoongi feel warm despite the cold, and makes him anticipate BTS’ next round of promotions even more.
For now, Yoongi is content to edit the photos and videos he’s taken, even finds the perfect song about shortness and flat shoes to use as background music for his fancam. For now, Yoongi is happy to wait for next time.
More Notes:
- Recipient, thank you so much for your lovely prompts once again ♥ I hope we can be friends after the exchange is over!
- The song Yoongi wants to use in the fancam is Flat Shoes by Crucial Star. (Lyrics)
- Specific dates of events this is based around: 130629, 130706, 130728, 131212, 140108.
- Fansites mentioned: ADDICTION, Soulmate, ILIKEIT, JAMJAM, Sunshine, and ZERONINE, as well as the no longer active What U Do and TripleLove.
- Big shoutout to mod. Thank you for being so understanding :)
Recipient: causeitsred
Pairing (or character): Suga, Jimin, Suga/Jin friendship.
Rating: PG
Summary: Yoongi brings his camera along to the event without thinking much about it, but Jimin really is too cute to resist photographing. (Alternate-reality where Yoongi becomes a Jimin fansite master.)
Notes: Dear recipient, thank you so much for the lovely prompts, all of which I absolutely adored and had a hard time choosing from! I hope I’ve done this justice. I have some notes for this fic which I will add on at the end, so please read them if you’d like :)
Yoongi doesn't pay much attention to them when he catches wind of the new 2013 debut. Bighit starts by introducing Bangtan Boys as the next big thing, and Yoongi honestly isn't too impressed by the predebut immodesty, especially not from kids with the name Bulletproof Boyscouts, when their name is finally confirmed, though he does get his share of laughter when he has the time to check in on the logs posted prior to their debut.
It’s hard to keep track of who’s singing what when Yoongi has grades to keep up so he can pass his university classes, and when it once hurt to be apart from his family and friends in Daegu, Seoul is full of bright colors and people who sparkle more than the city lights. Idols get younger and younger with each passing year, but the older Yoongi gets, the more time he spends away from the mixer he once bought when he was fresh out of highschool and more time in the university dark room where he processes the photographs for his college assignments.
Still, Yoongi finds himself immersed in BTS’ first few teasers when they hit YouTube. He backpedals at first when he finds out that the one carrying most of the main vocal lines in their first music video is four years younger than he is, but he takes a breath and continues watching, the thought of his own dreams when he was younger making him both calm and the tiniest bit bitter at the same time. They’re good, Yoongi notes, better or at least more memorable than the rest of the countless debuts of the year, and with the way that the trailers and music video introduces them, Yoongi finds himself matching names to faces considerably effortlessly.
Out of all of them, Jimin is the one that ends up intriguing Yoongi the most, looking the youngest out of all of them what with the fullness of his cheeks. Yoongi had originally looked past him to concentrate on the other members in the music video, but after watching the dance break in No More Dream, Jimin’s every move seems sharper and more fluid, and Yoongi has to admit that he’s a good dancer, and his higher register stands out in his group where rap takes up the main body of their music.
Yoongi ends up setting a cut of the final chorus as his phone alarm, and spends the next few mornings waking up to Jimin’s ad-libs.
…
Yoongi buys 2 Cool 4 Skool one afternoon after spending a few hours in his usual dark room, when his eyes are still adjusting to the light of the world outside his university building. He gets a fansign raffle ticket from Youngpoong with his purchase, expected of a group that’s still new to the industry that needs to hold events to gather more attention and more fans, but what he doesn’t expect is to find that his ticket is one out of the hundred or so people that would be admitted to actual event itself.
He’s on the train back to his tiny studio apartment a few days later when he finds out about his admittance to the fansign by phone, when a Youngpoong employee contacts him through the number he’d left with a reminder to check the store’s website for confirmation of the venue, date, and time of the event. When he finally hangs up, Yoongi sits, slumped and unbelieving in his seat for a moment before he picks up his phone again to check the Youngpoong website, where, sure enough, his raffle ticket number is listed along with his name.
When the train pulls into Hoeryong station, Yoongi almost forgets to get off and catch his transfer to Uljeongbu, too busy checking his class schedule to make sure that he has the afternoon free on the date listed on the website.
…
The day of the fansign arrives and Yoongi feels nothing but awkward when he reaches Ilsan. Girls of all ages are practically swarm around the store entrance, and though they all seem calm organized, lined up and ready for the event to start, the chatter in the air seems to settle heavy in Yoongi’s chest whenever he takes a breath. It’s mid-June and the temperature in Seoul is reaching new heights, but Yoongi keeps his beanie on and is grateful for the sun so that he can keep his sunglasses on while he quietly surveys the waiting crowd, armed with smartphones and tablets. It’s when he spots a group of people holding DSLRs that he moves closer to the storefront, and when the girls notice him approaching, he finds himself suddenly surrounded by what he then realizes are fansite masters.
The girls seem to take to Yoongi, who feebly holds up his ticket as an explanation of why he’s there at all. It’s after he tells them that he’s there as a fan that they all seem to calm down, one of them even lending him a microfibre cloth to wipe down his own camera and another two of them engaging him in conversation about what aperture settings they should use when Yoongi lets slip that he studies photography. It’s overwhelming, but the girls seem nice enough, and Yoongi lets his guard down around them until the master of What U Do speaks up amidst the chatter.
“So, who are you here for?”
Yoongi nearly chokes a little on his own spit. “Sorry?” he attempts, unsure of what he’s being asked.
She continues to stare at him, and it’s TripleLove’s master that explains things to him right before Yoongi starts to contemplate whether it would be rude to flee from someone who’s technically a stranger. “She’s asking who you are here to photograph. For example, I’m here for V, Jungkook and Jimin. I think we’re all just curious as to why you decided to bring your camera along if you’re just a casual fan?”
“Ah...” Yoongi starts, contemplative. He hadn’t actually come to photograph anyone in particular, but with so many eyes on him, he feels pressured to answer, so he states the first name that comes to mind. “I’m here for Jimin?”
There’s a pause for a moment right before the girls start up again, nodding and whispering to each other. TripleLove is about to talk to him again when a staff member calls out to the crown and motions for them to start forming proper lines into the store as the event is about to start. The atmosphere gets louder and Yoongi feels safer now that the attention is off of him, and he gets in line with the other girls and tries to be as unnoticeable as possible. He feels a tap on his shoulder right before he walks into the store, and a random fan calls out to him. “I hope to see your photos online later, oppa!”
Yoongi nods a little, though doubtful that she could have seen him through the crowd, and adjusts his camera settings to suit the light of the venue.
Meeting BTS is less stressful and overwhelming than Yoongi expects, and the fans are well behaved and full of nothing but praise for the boys. Yoongi takes multiple shots of all of the members as he moves along in the line, his album carefully wedged between his arm and his side, but as he takes shot after shot, he finds himself lingering more and more on Jimin than he’d previously expected.
Not the visual, but the charm of Bangtan. Yoongi has seen fans call Jimin charming countless times on the messageboards and on Big Hit’s official YouTube account, but it’s when Yoongi sees him in person for the first time that he really finds Jimin just… cute. His smile lights up his face in a way that makes his eyes crinkle, and the bags under his eyes, still there despite a coat of foundation that Yoongi can clearly see, are more endearing than they are there as proof of Jimin’s lack of sleep. Yoongi hadn’t noticed Jimin much pre-debut, but seeing him in real life makes Yoongi approve of his role in the group, because he does feel charmed by the kid.
Yoongi goes through the first few members at the table fairly quickly, at a loss of anything to say to them personally considering he doesn’t know their personalities well enough at this point to say more than his greetings and shake their hands when they express their happiness at having a male fan. It’s when he steps in front of Jimin that Yoongi actually puts his vocal chords to better use than for mindless ‘hello’s and ‘thank you’s.
“Ah,” Jimin says, staring at him curiously. His cheeks look rounder than ever in the lighting of the bookstore, and in his mind, Yoongi is reminded of the hamster he once kept as a pet when he was a child in Daegu. Yoongi mumbles a greeting but Jimin continues to stare until Taehyung slides Yoongi’s album over for him to sign, and only then do Jimin’s eyes drop down to the table before him.
Jimin hums as he flips from Taehyung’s page in the photobook to his own page, scribbling on a big ‘TO’ at the top left corner before he peeks up at Yoongi again. “You’re… my hyung, right?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi replies, as casually as possible, because he’s been staring at Jimin’s small hands and fingers fumble with the photobook pages with far more interest than he honestly should be having for a person’s short-but very cute-fingers. His brain tries to catch up with his mouth in time to give Jimin a multi-syllabled answer. “I’m your hyung,” he confirms, and Jimin let’s out a short, “Ah!” right before he writes the character out along with an exclamation mark before signing his name underneath it with a nod. Jimin takes care in writing his signature, and Yoongi knows he’s in the fresh stages of finding a fitting signature from the way that Jimin looks overly concentrated in the strokes of his marker.
“Did you think I was younger than you?” Yoongi asks, and Jimin looks at him with wide eyes, as if startled, and lets out a laugh that Yoongi can only call incredibly, but charmingly, awkward.
“No, no, hyung, it’s just that…” Yoongi raises an eyebrow at him, going for menacing but probably coming off as comical because Jimin only laughs harder. “It’s just that… you don’t seem very tall for a hyung.” Yoongi swears he could have picked up his album and smacked Jimin over the head for that comment if he was just a cute underclassman, but instead he’s Park Jimin, charm of BTS, and Yoongi maintains his composure though his hand twitches from where it’s clutching at his camera strap.
“Yah,” Yoongi calls out to him, after a staff member has prodded at Jimin to hurry up to prevent him from holding up the line. Jimin is looking everywhere but Yoongi, but he looks up when Yoongi calls, “I’m definitely taller than you, Park Jimin.” To which Jimin smiles sheepishly at him before he looks down again when another album is passed to him to sign.
Yoongi goes home that night to search for BTS’ profiles, and he definitely does not fistpump when he finds out that he is, in fact, taller than Jimin.
…
“One centimeter,” is the first thing out of his mouth when Yoongi sees Jimin next.
Jimin, who has just passed a towel back to a staff member after towelling the sweat away from his neck, looks up in surprise. He seems shocked to see Yoongi, and for a moment Yoongi curses himself for thinking that Jimin would remember him from the last fansign, but his thoughts are cut off by Jimin letting out his awkward laughter again. “Hi, hyung,” he greets, once again writing down the strokes carefully on Yoongi’s second copy of 2 Cool for Skool, “One centimeter what?”
“You’re one centimeter shorter than me-that is, I’m one centimeter taller than you.” Yoongi says, smug, and as he watches Jimin’s eyes crinkle as he smiles Yoongi knows that Jimin remembers their last encounter now. “Ah, hyung,” Jimin whines, and from his place across the table, Yoongi thinks he sees Jimin scribble on a few stars next to his signature on Yoongi’s second photobook. Yoongi doesn’t actually know what he’s going to do with two copies of the same album, but he for some reason, he felt an obligation to tell Jimin that he is, in fact, taller than him.
“One centimeter is just one centimeter, and I may be short, but that doesn’t make you tall you know?” Yoongi can here the smugness in his voice and just about resists the urge to snort loudly in Jimin’s face. Instead, Yoongi shrugs and smirks. “I’m still taller than you, and that’s what counts. And hey, that’s ‘hyung’ to you,” Yoongi replies, and his satisfaction only increases more when Jimin grumbles out the honorific before handing Yoongi’s album to Jungkook and thanking Yoongi for coming again.
It’s when Yoongi gets home that evening that he sees +1cm hyung written in silver marker on his album photobook, Jimin’s smeared fingerprints at the edges of the page, that he makes a mental note to tell Jimin his name next time.
…
Yoongi doesn’t think much about meeting Bangtan and his encounters with Jimin for a while after that, but one night he winds up softly chanting along to the fanchants to No More Dream when watching Music Bank that he realises he’s in deeper than expected. The lines and repeated words come naturally, and Yoongi has never looked up when and what to chant online before, so the realization comes as a surprise.
He’s typed “how to know you are a fan of an idol gro” into NAVER before he closes his laptop and texts his cousin in Daegu to mail him back his original copy of 2 Cool 4 Skool, purely for, collector’s purposes, of course. Yoongi is suddenly hit by short memories of meeting Bangtan’s fansite masters that first fanmeeting at Youngpoong, and the one fan that had wanted him to upload his photos from the fanmeeting. It’s then that he flips open his laptop again and does a quick search of Bangtan fansite directories, looking at their logos and site names before he plugs in his memory card and makes a decision.
…
Baby-Ji ends up being hosted on tistory because it’s the only blogging platform that Yoongi knows enough of to use. It’s only after staring at the blank URL box on the registration form for over half an hour that Yoongi settles on the name for his fansite. Baby-G is a popular watch brand in Korea, affordable and known by almost everyone thanks to SNSD, with colors and designs released either striking or classic, but ultimately charming. Once Yoongi thinks of the name he can’t put it down fast enough, tired of thinking of witty lines and English phrases that look good on photos but are pretty much scrambled nonsense in his mind, and it only takes him a few more seconds to list Ji-Shock as his admin name, hitting the enter key quickly before he backs out and his photos of Bangtan-well, of mainly Jimin, if Yoongi were to be finally and almost painfully honest with himself-go to waste and that one fan who had asked him ever so nicely to upload the photos will have to live forever without seeing them.
Yoongi spends more hours that night coming up with splash pages on Photoshop and basic rules to add to the main page, going through other sites like ADDICTION and Soulmate for inspiration, and scrolling through YouTube’s to compile a playlist of songs for future use as fancam background music. It’s when he finally, finally, shuts his laptop at three in the morning, flops on with and a random snapback over his face to shield him from the streetlamps outside his building that he considers how deep he’s in and how he really should be spending more time on his more… academic photography.
The next day, Yoongi wakes up at noon, and the first thing he does is to pull up tistory again and add a ‘TIPS&TRIX’ page to the-his, Yoongi thinks, and mentally facepalms at what he’s gotten himself into-fansite. If he’s going to be doing this fansite master thing on the side, seriously or otherwise, the very least he can do is to talk to people and other photographers and exchange tips on white balance and ISO settings while he’s at it.
…
The first photo he posts ends up being a phone-made collage of both of Jimin’s signed pages of both of his photobooks, after his cousin has sent his album back in the mail complete with a note commanding Yoongi to treat her to lunch in exchange for the postage fees. The only caption he leaves is a “ㅡㅡ Jimin-ah…”, with arrows pointing at Jimin’s doodled stars and jab at Yoongi’s height, and he shares the photo to Twitter using his new account. Yoongi sits in front of his laptop for a moment after he’s uploaded the photo with his first tweet before he searches for a few of the fansites’ masters that he recalls interacting with at that first fansign, before he mentions them in his tweets along with a short line of introduction.
+1CM hyung @JI_SHOCK93
hi, this is that camera oppa from the youngpoong event! please support BABY-JI ^0^
Yoongi cringes a little at his emoticon, but it seems fitting and looks infinitely more friendly as compared to the plain text he’d typed out without it. He scrolls through a few different fansites after that, and though he wants to roll his eyes at the countless lines of crying and laughing abbreviations, Yoongi knows that these are what makes fans fans-and fansite masters, for that matter. There’s a large amount of personal investment involved, emotionally and physically, and Yoongi is sure he doesn’t even have half of what it takes to produce a regularly updated fansite, not when most of the girls devote so much of their time and effort into taking and sharing fan media with the rest of the fans who can’t. It’s something worth respecting, and while Yoongi isn’t about to start guffawing or bawling in his tweets, he almost see his deadpan squint emoticon being used often in the future, considering how incredulous he feels towards Jimin on pretty much a daily basis.
At this point of time, Yoongi can foresee ”ㅡㅡ” becoming a trademark of his in the days to come.
…
“You’ve lost it.”
It’s the first thing Seokjin says to him after not seeing Yoongi for close to three weeks. Yoongi knows it’s been a little over two weeks since they’ve grabbed coffee together in between their busy college schedules, because the last time he’d met up with Seokjin was the day before he’d set up Baby-Ji-not that he’s been keeping track of how many days his fansite has been open at all, of course.
Yoongi did smile at the coincidence when his Twitter follower count hit 150 on the 15th day since Baby-Ji’s opening, though there’s no way in hell he’s about to tell Seokjin this any time soon. He settles for a greeting instead.
“Hi, hyung, no time no see, hyung, I’m fine, thank you so much for asking, and you?”
Seokjin only sighs at him and aims a kick under the table at the chair opposite him, which squeaks across the cafe floor just the right distance for Yoongi to squeeze in comfortably across from him. Sometimes Yoongi thinks they’ve known each other too long, and Seokjin moving Yoongi’s camera on the table to a safe position against the wall and away from his coffee is a clear sign of spending too much time together, though the feeling of familiarity settles comfortably in his bones. It’s only after Seokjin has ordered for Yoongi that he looks over at Seokjin’s iPad. “You’re on a fansite?”
Seokjin rolls his eyes at him. “I’m on your fansite, you fanboy.”
“I’m not the one with a three-year-old Beast song as my ringtone and message tone.”
“Maybe not, but at least I don’t have an eighteen year-old crooning at me every morning as my alarm.” Seokjin replies, before turning the tablet over. Yoongi’s splashpage is much too large for the screen. All he can see is parts of Jimin’s bared arms and the ball-chain necklace hanging around his neck down to his chest, so Yoongi drags a finger down the screen to look at Jimin’s face. Man, the lighting and the angle of his shots on that day were perfect. “I really need to make this site more mobile friendly,” Yoongi mumbles, mostly to himself. Seokjin is too busy thanking the waitress for bringing over Yoongi’s cuppuccino. “And for the record, Jimin is nineteen.”
Seokjin snorts. “Not yet he isn’t.” He pushes the mug towards Yoongi, who frowns at Seokjin before picking it up and smirking at him.
“Who’s the fanboy now?”
The wet coffee stirrer that gets thrown at him barely gets evaded due to Yoongi’s lightning quick reflexes, and not because Seokjin’s aim has improved drastically over the course of their friendship. “I just looked him up to see what your fuss was all about,” Seokjin says, as seriously as Yoongi supposes he can manage, not that that really is very serious because this is Seokjin, and Yoongi can hardly talk to him with a straight-face on sometimes. “But really though, Yoongi, not only is he two years younger than you but he isn’t even…”
“Isn’t even?” Yoongi motions at him to continue with one hand, though he doesn’t look up at Seokjin in favor of taking a large sip out of his mug.
Seokjin flicks him in the forehead. “He isn’t really your type, is he?”
Now that makes Yoongi put down his coffee. He stares at Seokjin with an eyebrow raised. “You think Jimin isn’t my type? That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Not worried, just confused, ok-”
“I’m laughing at you, ok, just so you know, I’m laughing at you on the inside, hyung, I’m just not laughing outwardly because I’m finding this so hilarious that I’ve been rendered speechless by your interest in my fansite.”
“Now is not the time to be pulling photography jokes on me, Min Yoongi-”
Yoongi blows a bubble into his cappuccino froth in defiance and Seokjin snatches his iPad back to the safety of his arms. Yoongi doesn’t know what to say, really, but the words are out of his mouth before he can even think too much about them, “He’s cute, ok.”
Seokjin blinks at him. “He’s cute?”
“Yeah.”
Yoongi gets two blinks this time. “You’ve decided to open a fansite for this kid and all you can say about him is that he’s cute?” Seokjin half screeches, and flicks his fingers across his iPad to zoom in on Jimin’s face. It’s a very cute face, from what Yoongi can see, puffy eyebags and fluffy bangs peeking out from under his snapback.
Yoongi’s just a little infatuated, in an incomprehensible way, even to himself.
“He’s just,” Yoongi waves his hand around, trying to find the words to say what he feels without sounding like a smitten teenager, with his other hand he sloshes his coffee around, as if willing his mind to swirl a little faster before Seokjin tries to put words in his mouth. “He’s just. Charming, ok?”
Seokjin doesn’t seem satisfied, if him taking away Yoongi’s coffee and setting it aside so he isn’t distracted from explaining more is any indication of his dissatisfaction. “So charming that you’d go to countless fansites in Seoul to see him and photograph him?”
“So charming that I’m even going to Daegu to see him this weekend.” Yoongi replies, tone light and non-committal. Seokjin is on him in the matter of seconds it takes him to comprehend just what Yoongi has said, brows furrowing in confusion right before his eyes widen.
“Min Yoongi, You told me to book that train ticket for you because you wanted to visit your parents!”
…
The truth is, Yoongi does board his train the next day with the intention of going and see his parents. He has a long weekend, and it’s been a while since he’s visited his family-it’s just a coincidence that BTS is going to be in Daegu too, or so Yoongi reassures Seokjin through KakaoTalk, considering he’d run from the cafe as fast as his legs could carry him before Seokjin had been ready to fling his own coffee at him.
Seokjin’s messages come in a torrent of pings, and Yoongi has to mute the conversation thread before the older ladies in the same carriage start giving him more looks than necessary and get him kicked off the train. He taps out a quick thx 4 coffee, will reimburse u, see u when im back in seoul and a few animated stickers of hearts and curly ‘goodbye’s before stuffing the phone back into his pocket and pulls down the hood of his sweatshirt over his eyes. Yoongi feels the phone vibrate in his pocket, and it’s probably an annoyed Seokjin calling him to give him a piece of his mind, but the buzzing only lulls him to sleep.
…
Jimin looks legitimately surprised to see him, eyes as wide as they can go and crinkling in the corners when he smiles at Yoongi. He’s got a military patterned snapback on his head and something like ten bracelets adorning both of his wrists, with a twisted bandana curled around one. Yoongi looks from the table where his third album is in Jimin’s hands all the way up to where Jimin is supporting a slight flush on his cheeks and once again wonders out of everyone in BTS, why Jimin had to be the one to reel him in like a starving fish.
“Hi, hyung!” Jimin greets him cheerfully, and his cheeks grow round, eyes curving almost as if to match his smile. He really is so… disarmingly cute that Yoongi wants to claw at his own eyes just to stop himself from seeing Jimin and reacting like a preteen with a crush instead of a 20 year-old college student.
A 20 year-old who is also a photography major who moonlights as a fansite master with an account named JI-SHOCK, Yoongi reminds himself, his own smile almost slipping into scowl before he catches himself before Jimin’s smile starts to falter. “Hey, Jiminie.”
Jimin’s resulting beam is megawatt, and Yoongi presses his nails into his palms and decides that clawing at the insides of his hands is a much better and less vision impairing option than clawing at his face.
“Hyung,” Jimin greets him again, voice sweet and a little bit smug, “You came all the way to Daegu to see me?” He’s turning the pages of Yoongi’s photobook much too slowly, going through the other members’ pages as if the album was his own. A staff member taps on Jimin’s shoulder before Yoongi has a chance to offer selling the album to him at a premium price, autographs and all. Jimin nods a little towards the girl, hair flipping a little to the side when he does so, and Yoongi is so temporarily fixated on Jimin’s bangs that he almost forgets to reply.
“I’m from Daegu, kid, I just study in Seoul. You’re the one that came all the way to see me, more like.”
If anything, Jimin’s cheeks just turn redder, deepening the flush already on his face, but Yoongi knows better than to think that Jimin is going to let the conversation end there. “Ah, in that case, hyung, I should be the one getting your autograph!” He says, and finally flips to his own page of the photobook. He peers up at Yoongi, and Yoongi clenches his fists tighter because no one close to Jimin’s age should even be allowed to be this cute.
“You don’t even know my name,” Yoongi teases, and Jimin’s eyes pretty much disappear with the force the wide smile that has spread across his face. Yoongi feels warmth settle into him, and he knows he can’t blame it on the summer heat because he’s been in the bookstore for hours before the event even started. Jimin just looks straight up at him with one hand poised above Yoongi’s album with a marker in hand. “You should tell me your name so I can write it down then, hyung. I personally would like to remember the names of all my fansite masters, and I can’t call you One Centimeter Hyung forever.”
Yoongi is sure his nails are breaking skin at this point. “It’s Yoongi. You can call me Yoongi. Yoongi hyung.” He has to cough mid-sentence to clear the tightness in his throat, but his voice still catches at the end of the honorific. It’s one thing to be happy to take photos of Jimin, but knowing that Jimin remembers who he is and knows that he mans one of Jimin’s own fansites is a whole different ballgame. Yoongi honestly doesn’t know how other fansites deal with it-meeting famous people isn’t uncommon in the slightest when you spend so much time in Seoul, but Yoongi feels like the last month has been a pretty surreal one considering how much his fan status has changed since then.
“Yoongi hyung from Daegu,” Jimin repeats almost dutifully, now staring down at the album and scribbling over the page, and by the time Yoongi snaps out of it, Jimin has finished signing, fingers flipping through the pages swiftly before he settles on Hoseok’s page and slides it over to him. Jimin is a good kid, Yoongi thinks-knows, even-but seeing him being helpful to his members in tiny ways is always reassuring and proof that Jimin is really just a sweet boy at heart. “Will you be here the next time we come to Daegu?”
Jimin’s tone is smug. He’s sweet boy with a love for attention, clearly. Yoongi just rolls his eyes at him and tries to keep the embarrassment off of his face. “I’ll be in Daegu whenever you come around, yeah.”
“You promise?” Yoongi can hardly believe it when Jimin lifts his pinky and raises it up to him, but he links their pinkies together anyway and tries his hardest not to smile.
“If you come to Daegu and I’m not here, I’ll make it up to you with a present next time.”
Jimin’s smile could light up the entire room.
Yoongi is back in Seoul before he gets the chance to look over his third album thoroughly. Jungkook’s handwriting is neat as always, Taehyung has drawn him what seems to be a tiny lion, but it’s Jimin’s page that causes Yoongi to pause.
To Yoongi hyung, Jimin has written, and his script is rounded and boyish, but it’s what else he’s added on that causes Yoongi to sigh before he smiles to himself.
He makes “aka still-not-that-tall hyung☆ (from Daegu)” his Twitter name that night itself.
…
Yoongi sees Jimin a few more times after that, in between actual photography projects and school work. The first time he sees Jimin flash his abs up close at a music show, he has to stop himself from laughing out loud as a natural shocked reflex as opposed to the many screaming fans surrounding him, but they’re honestly all in the same sinking boat on the path of adoring Jimin, and Yoongi can’t ignore the way that his neck feels hot under his collar.
Apart from going to events, Yoongie posts thankful screenshots of his follower increases on Twitter when he starts to reach the thousands, and uploads funny pictures of Jimin to commemorate his “follower milestones”. There are pictures of Jimin with his shirts ripped, Jimin peeking shyly out from under his snapback, Jimin being squished into a hug by Taehyung, Jimin in multiple outfits that Yoongi thinks are more suited for people who want to live their lives as fashion terrorists. Yoongi links them all with equal lines of laughter and crying emoticons, and as they go into the colder months, he holds conversations with Sunshine and ParkJamJam about how Jimin’s scarves are probably longer than Jimin’s entire person and more fit for mummification than they are for keeping your neck warm.
Jimin’s birthday comes around, and Yoongi uploads and creates 10 splashpages on Baby-Ji in celebration. He also ends up pitching in with the other fansites in a joint project to buy Jimin a pair of shoes, and the feeling is great when he notices Jimin wearing them in a broadcast of Music Core early on in November, the satisfaction making him share screenshots on Twitter with ILIKEIT and ZERONINE so that they can all leave their own tweets of smiling faces and excitement. November means that Yoongi has less time to spend on attending events due to finals and shitty weather, but he torrents performances while he sleeps and watches them the next morning with as much of a mind as he can when he’s brushing his teeth and pulling on his pants at the same time in order to not be late for revision sessions and recap class.
It’s when his finals are over and his next train ticket to Daegu is booked that Yoongi first feels the pain, a week before BTS is bound for their Japanese showcase. He manages to sleep after downing some painkillers, but when he wakes up it’s to pain so sharp in his lower abdomen that he can barely pull himself out of bed in order to reach his phone to call Seokjin, right before he throws up into the trashcan by his desk with Seokjin still on the line. In the end, Seokjin has to argue his way into Yoongi’s apartment and continues bitching about his landlord even when the two of them are en route to the hospital, Seokjin’s arm over Yoongi’s shoulders and Yoongi pitched into his side, consumed by pain and swearing under his breath.
Appendicitis, the doctor tells him, after he’s been tucked into a hospital bed, given meds and a saline drip. Seokjin eyes him warily from one corner of the room. He was the one who had to step out and call Yoongi’s mother to let her know about Yoongi’s condition prior to the doctor’s diagnosis, and even doped up on painkillers, Yoongi could hear his mother’s frantic satoori-laced shrieking from inside the ward when Seokjin was out in the corridor. An appendectomy is really messing up with his plans of sweet, academically free bliss, not to mention his scheduled trip back to Daegu. Yoongi can only tiredly nod at his doctor a few times, mind already buzzing slowly with thoughts on what to get Jimin the next time he sees him in order to shut him about about his broken Daegu promise.
Right before he can drop off due to exhaustion, Yoongi points one finger lazily at Seokjin and tells him to go back to Yoongi’s apartment. He needs his phone first and foremost in a situation like this, and his demand is slurred, tongue thick in his mouth, but short.
The last image Yoongi sees before he succumbs to sleep is Seokjin’s mouth dropping open like a fish out of water.
…
still-not-that-tall-hyung☆ (from Daegu) @JI_SHOCK93
i’m sorry to say this, but BABY-JI has to go on hiatus for a while ㅠㅠㅠ
still-not-that-tall-hyung☆ (from Daegu) @JI_SHOCK93
Jimin-ah ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ hyung is sorry, but he needs to go for an appendectomy OTL
Yoongi only manages to tweet those two times before his operation, and it’s only a month after the appendectomy that the doctors give him the okay to go home, after complications and an inflammation that left Yoongi sore and cranky, and his daily doses of antibiotics increasing his lethargy tenfold. Even at home, Yoongi can’t bring himself to do anything other than lie in bed and watch Gag Concert and reruns of the end of year music programmes he’d missed due to getting his stupid appendix removed.
When he’s done catching up with everything and downloading awards shows to his laptop, Yoongi finally pulls open his browser to log onto Twitter and Baby-Ji. His mentions are a mess of links to pictures and videos, crying and hearts, along with a few tweets from other fansites telling him to get better soon. When he gets onto Baby-Ji, however, he finds one message posted to the ‘from.JIMIN’ message board.
The message is short but sweet, a simple one telling the fans to keep warm in winter and stay healthy, with a thank you at the end for all the support BTS has received since debut. For the first time in weeks, Yoongi feels a happy flutter in his gut instead of slow spreading pain. He’s about to close out from the fansite and tweet when he sees the tiny ‘2’ hovering over his master account’s inbox.
Yoongi hyung☆ I saw from your tweets that you're unwell! Get well faster and see me soon, ok? Heal well this winter ><
Now this message sends a warm flush down Yoongi’s body, and he’s about to fling himself gently back onto his bed and smother himself with a pillow when he remembers that there were two messages from Jimin in his inbox.
And hyung, don’t forget about our promise~ I know my birthday is over but I know you weren’t in Daegu and I still want my presents ^^
Yoongi laughs so hard he thinks he’s going to split his stitches, because for all that Jimin is a good kid, he’s still a huge brat.
…
The next time Yoongi gets to see Jimin ends up being on a snow day. Seoul has been freezing for over a month, but BTS is only just coming back from their overseas promotions, and no matter how much Yoongi wants to stay in, he takes the train to the airport to wait for them in the arrival hall, armed with his camera bag and the paper bag of presents for Jimin. It’s so cold that Yoongi slips two hot packs into his back pockets and sits on them throughout the ride without a care in the world except to keep his body warm.
By the time he reaches Gimpo, there’s already a small crowd of fansite masters and their cameras set up and ready for when BTS step into the terminal. Yoongi goes up to the ones he’s most familiar with, and he gets a few pats on his shoulders and happy smiles as a welcome back of sorts. It’s easy for him to approach them now when they know each other and are there for the same purpose. Yoongi finds a spot and settles down to wait, taking his camera out from his bag and getting ready.
There’s a gasp from somewhere beside him, and that’s when the chorus of names and calls of “Oppa!” start up. When Yoongi looks up, he sees the boys enter with their luggage and carts, and Yoongi tugs his beanie down to flatten his bangs and make sure it doesn’t fall off his head when everyone starts heading towards BTS with their presents and cameras in hand.
Jimin is easy to spot, and even easier to gain the attention of, probably thanks to the fluorescent green beanie that Yoongi has chosen to wear. Jimin looks good, though a little tired, but his eyes seem to light up when he sees the fans waiting for them. When his eyes move across the crowd, Jimin seems to spot Yoongi, and the flush Jimin carries on his face from the cold air deepens into a real blush. Yoongi feels a squirming in his stomach and tries to blame them on phantom itches from his now-removed stitches, though he knows very well he’s lying to himself, and Yoongi’s hands shake a little when he films Jimin pushing his cart along. Jimin really is so annoyingly cute and distractingly charming that Yoongi can hardly deal with even thinking about him.
Yoongi pushes forwards to hand Jimin his paper bag when he passes, and it’s been such a long time since Yoongi has seen Jimin’s smile up-close that he’s sure his own face must just mirror the wide grin on Jimin’s. “Thanks, hyung. It’s good to see you well.” Jimin tells him, and he hangs the bag around his wrist like a bracelet in order to not lose it in the small crowd surrounding them. Yoongi is glad he taped the opening shut with a self-printed Baby-Ji sticker.
“Good job over the past month, Jiminie,” Yoongi mumbles, and Jimin’s sheepish laugh is enough to calm Yoongi’s nerves after not being out at an event for such a while, his smile as bright as ever, and Yoongi can do nothing but smile back and wave as the boys get into their car and drive off.
…
Yoongi sets about editing the photos and one fancam that he’d managed to get at the airport when he gets home that night after meeting Seokjin for dinner and paying him back everything he still owed from the year before. When he re-watches the footage that he took, he notices that Jimin looks the tiniest bit shorter than normal, which is a good thing, Yoongi supposes, considering all he’d given Jimin as a Sorry-I-Broke-Our-Promise gift is a pair custom printed fabric pockets with Jimin’s face on them to put hot packs in, and a pair of insoles that add only a couple of centimeters to your height.
When Yoongi thinks about it, the insoles probably aren’t the best idea, because two added centimeters on Jimin would make him one centimeter taller than Yoongi, but Yoongi thinks he can live with his own shortness if it made Jimin feel better by artificially making himself taller with Yoongi’s gifted insoles. He can imagine Jimin’s teasing voice and awkward laughter the next time they meet at an event, and the thought alone makes Yoongi feel warm despite the cold, and makes him anticipate BTS’ next round of promotions even more.
For now, Yoongi is content to edit the photos and videos he’s taken, even finds the perfect song about shortness and flat shoes to use as background music for his fancam. For now, Yoongi is happy to wait for next time.
More Notes:
- Recipient, thank you so much for your lovely prompts once again ♥ I hope we can be friends after the exchange is over!
- The song Yoongi wants to use in the fancam is Flat Shoes by Crucial Star. (Lyrics)
- Specific dates of events this is based around: 130629, 130706, 130728, 131212, 140108.
- Fansites mentioned: ADDICTION, Soulmate, ILIKEIT, JAMJAM, Sunshine, and ZERONINE, as well as the no longer active What U Do and TripleLove.
- Big shoutout to mod. Thank you for being so understanding :)