#4: team players (the meddling kids remix) (for staygame)
Title: Team Players (The Meddling Kids Remix)
Fandom: Bangtan
Pairing(s)/Focus: Taehyung/Hoseok (Jimin and Yoongi-centric)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 3600
Work remixed: Team Up by staygame
Summary: Taehyung and Hoseok are a) completely in love with each other, and b) too stupid to ever actually realize it. Thankfully they have two best friends sort of willing to come to their rescue.
Notes: Thanks as always to my betas, and to staygame for the amazing original fic.
Yoongi shoves the fliers into Hoseok’s hands before he has the chance to protest. “Congratulations,” he says, “we’re this year’s scapegoats.”
Hoseok looks from the fliers to Yoongi. “I thought it was Namjoon’s turn.”
“It was Namjoon’s turn last year,” Yoongi says, “and the year before that, and the year before that, and now it’s time for us ‘to actually do something for the team’.”
Hoseok frowns. Yoongi takes the opportunity to bundle more fliers into his arms. “I thought we were doing something for the team. By being on the team.”
Yoongi shrugs and begins to walk towards the quad. “Honestly,” he says over his shoulder, as Hoseok continues to blink at him, “I don’t think Namjoon will be proud of us until we’ve fractured our skulls on the pitch. Literally die for the game, or whatever.”
Namjoon was the one who recruited the both of them for the university’s football club, almost three years to the day. Three years of five AM drills and neverending shin splints later, it’s their turn to lure innocents to the slaughter.
They locate their table, which looks comparatively lacking in between the art club’s brightly colored macramé and the student government booth, whose members are trading candy for pledges to vote. Yoongi carefully tapes up Seokjin’s handmade sign (‘SIGN UP FOR THE FOOTBALL CLUB NOW!!’) and slumps into a folding chair, his work done.
“All we need is the sign,” Yoongi says, sensing Hoseok’s silent incredulity. He pulls his beanie down over his eyes. “Nobody can resist a handmade sign.”
Three people come by in the next hour: their faculty advisor, who tells them to please return the folding chairs this time, a confused freshman who thinks they’re the foosball club, and a girl who ends up just being in line for the student government’s candy bribes.
“What’s our goal?” asks Hoseok despairingly.
“Uh.” Yoongi looks down at the sheet Namjoon gave him. It says “a million sign ups woo!’ “Two?”
“Alright.” Hoseok stands up. Yoongi tilts his head up, watching his teammate with moderate interest. Hoseok takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and bellows: “Hey!”
Everybody in the nearby vicinity looks at him. Hoseok scans them, and then picks out, in Yoongi’s opinion, the scrawniest one of the lot. The kid, locking eyes with Hoseok, looks wildly caught off-guard. Hoseok motions at him wildly, and the kid approaches with the hesitation of a newborn deer.
“Hey,” Hoseok begins, smile stretched wide and eyes a little manic, “how would you feel about playing football?”
“There you go,” Hoseok says five minutes later, as the kid (Taehyung, Yoongi reminds himself, Taehyung from Daegu) walks away, flier clutched in his hands like a life raft. “Two freshmen for Namjoon.”
Yoongi looks at the kid, Taehyung, as he wanders through the quad. Tall, check; boney, check; kind of goofy, check; exactly Hoseok’s type, check. Hoseok is watching Taehyung wander through the quad with that little smile he always gets. Yoongi snorts. Typical.
“I doubt he’ll show up,” Yoongi says, just to puncture Hoseok’s happy attitude.
“Nah,” Hoseok says confidently, “he’ll show.”
“Bet he sucks,” Yoongi mutters, settling the beanie back over his eyes.
“You suck,” Hoseok says half-heartedly, although Yoongi can hear that his best friend is smiling.
Taehyung, to Yoongi’s surprise and Hoseok’s delight, turns up. Taehyung also, to Hoseok’s surprise and Yoongi’s delight, sucks.
“I mean,” Yoongi corrects himself, wincing as Taehyung gives him a wounded look, “you don’t suck.” He leans down to help the freshman off the pitch, where he’s just fallen for the third time since they started practice. “You’re just, uh. You’re rusty.” Taehyung smiles now, kind of goofy and a little bit too earnest.
Taehyung’s tag-along ends up being a lot better. His name, he says, is Park Jimin, and he’s a better forward than Yoongi by a mile.
“Did you play in high school?” Yoongi asks, impressed, as Namjoon calls for a break.
“Yeah,” Jimin says, wiping the sweat from his forehead, “when I was a kid I always told Taehyungie that I was gonna end up on the national team someday.” He grins. “I decided on psych instead.”
They run drills for another half an hour until Namjoon decides they’ve had enough. Yoongi and Hoseok wander over to the new recruits - Taehyung lies in the grass, looking exhausted. Jimin crouches over him, poking him in the cheeks until Taehyung manages to swat him away. Yoongi watches the two of them, the easy laughter and easier touches, and wonders.
“We’re heading out now,” Jimin says. We. Yoongi glances at Hoseok.
“You guys are coming back on Tuesday, right?” Hoseok asks, a bit too quickly. He says it to Jimin, but his eyes are fixed on Taehyung. Yoongi wants to elbow him, dude, be cool, but he doubts Hoseok could ever actually be cool even if he was trying.
Taehyung looks up at Hoseok. “Of course we’ll be back,” he says immediately. Hoseok visibly relaxes. Taehyung’s cheeks flush a dull pink. Yoongi thinks, idiots.
“So,” he says casually, “Taehyung.”
“I will end your life,” Hoseok says, not looking up from his textbook.
Yoongi grins, but says nothing.
The next few weeks pass by in a blur of syllabuses and shin splints. Hoseok’s momentary crush is forgotten as Namjoon whips them into shape: by the end of most practices they’re too exhausted to talk, let alone flirt. Taehyung definitely has some hero-worship going on, but Hoseok just laughs and pats him on the head, and doesn’t seem to notice that the younger boy continues to stare as he walks away.
It's a few weeks before their first game that Yoongi starts to worry. Taehyung’s crush hasn't gone away - if anything, it's gotten worse. And Hoseok, whatever he might say, definitely does change when Taehyung’s around. Yoongi sets up a beautiful pass, only for Hoseok reflexively kick the ball in the opposite direction as Taehyung rushes past. Hoseok drifts off in the middle of strategy sessions to watch Taehyung take a particularly elongated and ab-exposing stretch. Hoseok won't stop texting Yoongi about the funniest shit Taehyung did yesterday at practice, did he see?
Yoongi should have seen this coming - Taehyung looks really good in athletic shorts - but he didn't think it would get this far without Hoseok doing anything about it.
“Just tell him,” Yoongi says in exasperation after the fifth Taehyung story that week.
“Tell him what?” Hoseok asks, and has the gall to look confused.
"Taehyung played saxophone," Jimin tells Yoongi. They wound up in the same Abnormal Psych lecture - Jimin’s taking it for his major, Yoongi, because it was this or Modern Dance with Seokjin, and Yoongi has some dignity. “His lungs should be a lot better, but he’s an idiot.” He says this as though brain-to-lung correlation is common medical knowledge.
Yoongi looks at Jimin out of the corner of his eye. "You guys close?"
Jimin shrugs, opening his laptop as the professor walks in. "He's been my best friend since middle school. I like him." He sounds fond, which Yoongi likes. Still - his gaze lingers, and Jimin looks at him with a start. "No, God, no, not like that," he says, waving his hands around wildly. He pauses mid-wave. "- Are you?" He looks at Yoongi half-curiously, half-suspiciously.
"Not me," Yoongi mutters, opening his own laptop. Jimin looks at him curiously, but whatever questions he has are silenced by the start of lecture. He continues to stare at Yoongi, though, who rolls his eyes.
Yoongi reaches into his bag and pulls out his phone. Under his desk he flips it open to his photos. He scrolls quickly past today’s bathroom mirror selfies, and pulls up creepshots he took last practice for future ‘embarrassing Hosek’ endeavors. He zooms in on Hoseok reaching out to wipe the sweat from the nape of Taehyung’s neck, and shows it to Jimin. Jimin looks at it, and then at Yoongi. Yoongi raises his eyebrows.
“You’re kind of a creep, hyung,” Jimin whispers loudly. The person behind them coughs again, very pointedly.
They spend the next five practices watching Taehyung not get any better, and Hoseok not get any less horny.
“Taehyungie keeps telling me about how great Hoseok hyung is,” Jimin tells Yoongi, as they watch Taehyung trip over his own boots. “Every night. While I’m trying to sleep.”
Yoongi sighs, watching Hoseok give up a pass in his rush to help Taehyung up. “I don’t get it, Hoseok usually isn’t this - oblivious. Well,” he amends, “he usually is. But it’s never this embarrassing.”
“They just need to say it,” Jimin says, frustrated, “otherwise they’re gonna get so frustrated they explode or quit and we lose every single game.”
Yoongi frowns. “I mean, we’ll probably lose anyway.”
“Maybe,” Jimin says, ignoring Yoongi’s gloomy expression, “they just need a little help.” He looks thoughtful, which is kind of scary. “Hey, hyung. Give me your number.”
Yoongi looks at him. “Uh,” he says, “I’m flattered, Park, but I’m not into underclassmen.”
Jimin gives him a look that can only be described as scathing. “No, hyung,” he says, “it’s for best friend solidarity. We’re gonna need it, if we’re gonna hook them up.”
Yoongi continues to stare at him. “Uh.”
“Come on,” Jimin says, “Hoseok hyung is your best friend, right?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says slowly.
“Well,” Jimin says, “Taehyung is mine. He’s dumb and helpless but he’s my best friend and I can’t let him down. If he likes Hoseok I’m gonna do whatever I can to make him happy.” He looks at Yoongi. “Wouldn’t you?”
In that moment Yoongi can’t really do anything other than nod.
Jimin beams at him, satisfied as a cat, and takes Yoongi’s phone.
Yoongi thinks he kind of likes Park Jimin.
Park Jimin (school)
hi hyung! just wanted to let you know that taehyung just got back from a jog. i think it was his first ever!! he says that seokjin hyung told him it would be good practice. he looks like a really excited puppy, it's gross!! ok just wanted to let you know, bye!
yoongi hyung
Christ.
I just told Hoseok about it (not the dog part, just the jogging part) and he looked like he was going to cry.
Christ
There then begins a campaign of relentless psychological warfare. At least, that’s what Jimin, who is really enthusiastic about their psych class, calls it. (Jimin, Yoongi is learning, is cute and bright and has a terrifying capacity for getting into trouble. They’re getting along great.)
Mostly Jimin just snaps Yoongi 'candid' pictures of Taehyung eating/sleeping/undressing, and Yoongi makes sure to 'casually' open them in front of Hoseok as much as possible. It doesn't work as well as they had hoped. Hoseok complains about Jimin not accepting his friend request yet, while Taehyung gets really paranoid about locking his door when he's sleeping.
"Maybe Taehyung doesn't know Hoseok hyung likes guys?" Jimin suggests, so Yoongi starts making a point of talking about all of Hoseok's old crushes as loud as he can near Taehyung (which has the double bonus of making Hoseok’s face go angry-scrunchy). When it finally gets through to Taehyung, though, he just seems even more shy, and now Hoseok avoids standing next to Yoongi lest he announce even more of his old masturbatory fodder to the public.
"Maybe they don't spend enough time alone?" Yoongi says, so Jimin offhandedly mentions that Taehyung is having a hard time with his Macro paper, and could really use a study buddy. Hoseok is off towards the library in a flash, but when Yoongi sees him later he just looks dejected: "I forgot that I actually don't know anything about macroeconomics."
“Maybe you two stop whispering by the goal post and actually play the game,” Namjoon bellows, so Yoongi chucks the football straight at his head.
Their first game comes and passes without so much as a 'maybe I like you'. They play well enough - Jimin scores his first goal, and Yoongi and Seokjin hug him so hard he complains that his ribs hurt - but Hoseok and Taehyung end the game with a two-second ‘friends and teammates and nothing more!’ hug. Yoongi and Jimin both scowl as Hoseok gently wipes mud from Taehyung's cheek, and then pats him on the head.
“This is never going to work,” Jimin says in desolation.
Taehyung gazes up at Hoseok. Hoseok gazes down at Taehyung. They shake each other’s hands.
“I’m going to quit football and then quit school,” Yoongi says. Jimin makes a small noise of agreement.
Promoting Hoseok to schedule special ‘after hour’ lessons with Taehyung (‘for the good of the team!’) doesn’t do it. Turning on the steam shower and then hustling everyone else, including a protesting Seokjin, out of the locker room doesn’t do it. Making Taehyung play ‘marry fuck kill, Hoseok, Hoseok, Hoseok’ doesn’t do it. And so, as everything else fails, they get drunk.
“Yeah,” says Yoongi earnestly, “I really think it would be good for team bonding. Or something.”
“You’ve never cared about team bonding in your life,” says Namjoon accusingly.
“I said ‘or something’.”
They go to this little hole in the wall Yoongi’s knows, good enough to make the trip off campus, lax enough in safety regulations to never check IDs. Jimin latches on to Seokjin and Yoongi wheedles Namjoon into sitting next to him by promising to let him talk about the Premier League as much as he wants. Taehyung and Hoseok, left alone, sit next to each other, knees very deliberately apart by a few centimeters. Jimin and Yoongi exchange glances, and grin at each other.
“This is going to work,” Yoongi texts him under the table, one shot in.
“taehyung can’t handle his liquor at all,” Jimin texts back, two shots in.
“Wow, this is really strong,” Yoongi texts back, three shots in.
“are they kissing???” Jimin texts back, four shots in.
“Oh, fuck,” Yoongi texts back, five shots in.
Taehyung, drunker by far than anybody else in the bar, is staring at Hoseok as though he’s just been slapped. Hoseok, eyes wide and cheeks red, holds Taehyung at arms length, although it looks as though it’s taking all of his strength to do so. Yoongi’s heart aches at his best friend’s expression, and he can’t tell whether or not it’s the alcohol or some small vestige of feelings he didn’t know he still had.
“Oh fuck,” Jimin mutters, standing up and hurrying towards the desolate, drunk Taehyung. “Oh fuck, oh fuck- Here, give him to me,” he orders, grabbing Taehyung from Hoseok, who looks as though he’s just been struck.
“Wow,” Seokjin says, watching Jimin bundle a swaying Taehyung into a cab, “I thought Hoseok really liked Taehyung.”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says, as Hoseok buries his head into his hands, “so did I.”
Noon the next day, Hoseok and Namjoon are still asleep, face down on the couch and drooling on each other's shirts. Yoongi rolls onto his back and squints up at his cellphone screen, trying to type through his burgeoning hangover. He fires off a quick text to Seokjin ('please please please please PLEASE get namjoon out of my apartment') and then, grimacing, texts Jimin.
Park Jimin (school)
Well we fucked that up
He lets his head loll back onto the carpet and shuts his eyes tight. If he breathes very quietly, he thinks, maybe he'll stop altogether.
He thinks about Taehyung, the way his eyes were already red and bruised by the time Jimin wrangled him into a cab. He thinks about Hoseok, the way he did lay his head on Yoongi’s shoulder for the rest of the night without saying a word. He thinks about Jimin, grinning excitedly at the thought of scheming with Yoongi.
His phone chirps almost instantly.
Park Jimin (school)
i’m really sorry hyung
yoongi hyung
It’s okay Jimin
I promise
Park Jimin (school)
:\
Yoongi feels sick to his stomach.
Hoseok won’t talk about what happened on Thursday. He locks himself in the room for the weekend, and won’t answer when Yoongi asks him what’s wrong. Yoongi doesn’t like it.
He and Taeyung talk before practice on Tuesday, and everything seems fine -- they run drills like normal, and Taehyung even gives Hoseok a high five after he successfully gets a cross. They don’t seem like anything other than teammates, like anything has passed between them besides friendship.
“I guess we should just give up,” Yoongi says. He’s managed, somehow, to drag himself to their psych lecture, despite the pounding headache and grim mood. Jimin, the bastard, looks more put together than he has any right to be.
“I guess.” Jimin rests his head in his hands, looking put out. “I thought this would be fun, you know? Make Taehyung fall in love. Get to tease him, a lot. Instead it’s just kind of sad.”
Yoongi frowns at Jimin’s expression. He feels guilty, suddenly, for the first time in this endeavor. He likes Jimin, genuinely, beyond matchmaking and stupid schemes. He doesn’t want to forget that.
He nudges Jimin in the arm, forcing himself to smile through the headache. “At least we have losing the match to look forward to,” he says, making a face. Jimin, to his relief, gives him a small smile.
“Yeah,” he says, tone a little brighter, “if we’re gonna fuck up we might as well shoot for two out of two.” Yoongi laughs outright at that, and their professor shoots him a dirty look.
Yoongi manages, somehow, to get Hoseok through the week and to game day. His best friend has become oddly quiet these last few days, and as much as Yoongi hated his daily Taehyung lamentations he finds himself dreading this silence even more.
They’re the first to the pitch that morning. Yoongi is wired on adrenaline and worry, watching Hoseok pace back and forth as they wait for the rest of the team to arrive. Yoongi wants to tell him something, anything - sorry we couldn’t pull this off for you - but he can’t even apologize when Hoseok has no idea what they’ve been doing.
“Heads up,” Hoseok yells. The ball goes sailing over Yoongi’s head, and he hears a muffled “ouch”. Seokjin rubs his head, glowering, as Namjoon and the other three snicker at their defender.
“What side are you playing for?” Seokjin picks up the ball and lobs it at Hoseok, who grins broadly and heads it at Jimin.
Half an hour into their practice the other team, the university’s girl’s squad, arrives. Namjoon drifts away to flirt-argue with their captain, and Jimin wanders over towards the sidelines to calm down the obviously nervous Taehyung. Yoongi and Hoseok continue to pass the ball between the two of them, falling into the same easy rhythm as always. As the clock ticks down, Yoongi catches Hoseok’s eyes drifting more and more often towards Taehyung, and feels twin threads of panic and hope coiling in his stomach.
He hesitates, and misses the next pass. Hoseok wrenches his gaze back towards Yoongi, and gives him an uncertain look. “What?” he says, voice carefully neutral.
“I just,” Hoseok says, and then pauses. “All that stuff you’ve said, this semester. About Taehyung. What happened last weekend… What would you do, if you were me?” He sounds lost, and it wrenches at something inside Yoongi.
“I’d do it, Hoseok,” he says, simply, earnestly. “I’d just tell him.”
Hoseok looks at him for a moment, and then, to Yoongi’s surprise, nods. “Yeah,” he says, almost to himself. “Yeah, alright.”
He gives Yoongi a smile, the kind that crinkles at his eyes, and walks towards Taehyung.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jimin says.
“What,” Namjoon says.
“Called it,” Seokjin says.
The ref has to blow his whistle three times before Hoseok and Taehyung break apart. Even then they can’t stop smiling.
After the game (0-2, the most unspectacular defeat in their history), Yoongi jogs over to Hoseok, still red from either the thrill of the game or the stunt he’s just pulled.
“You know,” he says, passing over a water bottle, “me and Jimin have been trying to get you to do that for weeks.”
Hoseok turns to look at him. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “I know.”
Yoongi stares at him. “What?”
Hoseok takes a swig of the water bottle, too nonchalant to be believed. “Yeah, Namjoon told me about it like a week before you started. I just figured I would see how long it took for you guys to give up. Hey Taehyung! Wait up!” he yells, and grins as the younger boy immediately turns red. “See you later!” Hoseok yells over his shoulder as he jogs towards his new boyfriend.
Yoongi stands there for a moment. “Motherfucker,” he says, after a very long pause. And yet, he can’t find it in himself to do anything but laugh, and smile, and laugh some more.
He and Jimin do, of course, immediately begin to pelt Namjoon with spare footballs. Seokjin joins in, just for fun. It’s a better kind of victory, in Yoongi’s personal opinion.
Fandom: Bangtan
Pairing(s)/Focus: Taehyung/Hoseok (Jimin and Yoongi-centric)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 3600
Work remixed: Team Up by staygame
Summary: Taehyung and Hoseok are a) completely in love with each other, and b) too stupid to ever actually realize it. Thankfully they have two best friends sort of willing to come to their rescue.
Notes: Thanks as always to my betas, and to staygame for the amazing original fic.
Yoongi shoves the fliers into Hoseok’s hands before he has the chance to protest. “Congratulations,” he says, “we’re this year’s scapegoats.”
Hoseok looks from the fliers to Yoongi. “I thought it was Namjoon’s turn.”
“It was Namjoon’s turn last year,” Yoongi says, “and the year before that, and the year before that, and now it’s time for us ‘to actually do something for the team’.”
Hoseok frowns. Yoongi takes the opportunity to bundle more fliers into his arms. “I thought we were doing something for the team. By being on the team.”
Yoongi shrugs and begins to walk towards the quad. “Honestly,” he says over his shoulder, as Hoseok continues to blink at him, “I don’t think Namjoon will be proud of us until we’ve fractured our skulls on the pitch. Literally die for the game, or whatever.”
Namjoon was the one who recruited the both of them for the university’s football club, almost three years to the day. Three years of five AM drills and neverending shin splints later, it’s their turn to lure innocents to the slaughter.
They locate their table, which looks comparatively lacking in between the art club’s brightly colored macramé and the student government booth, whose members are trading candy for pledges to vote. Yoongi carefully tapes up Seokjin’s handmade sign (‘SIGN UP FOR THE FOOTBALL CLUB NOW!!’) and slumps into a folding chair, his work done.
“All we need is the sign,” Yoongi says, sensing Hoseok’s silent incredulity. He pulls his beanie down over his eyes. “Nobody can resist a handmade sign.”
Three people come by in the next hour: their faculty advisor, who tells them to please return the folding chairs this time, a confused freshman who thinks they’re the foosball club, and a girl who ends up just being in line for the student government’s candy bribes.
“What’s our goal?” asks Hoseok despairingly.
“Uh.” Yoongi looks down at the sheet Namjoon gave him. It says “a million sign ups woo!’ “Two?”
“Alright.” Hoseok stands up. Yoongi tilts his head up, watching his teammate with moderate interest. Hoseok takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and bellows: “Hey!”
Everybody in the nearby vicinity looks at him. Hoseok scans them, and then picks out, in Yoongi’s opinion, the scrawniest one of the lot. The kid, locking eyes with Hoseok, looks wildly caught off-guard. Hoseok motions at him wildly, and the kid approaches with the hesitation of a newborn deer.
“Hey,” Hoseok begins, smile stretched wide and eyes a little manic, “how would you feel about playing football?”
“There you go,” Hoseok says five minutes later, as the kid (Taehyung, Yoongi reminds himself, Taehyung from Daegu) walks away, flier clutched in his hands like a life raft. “Two freshmen for Namjoon.”
Yoongi looks at the kid, Taehyung, as he wanders through the quad. Tall, check; boney, check; kind of goofy, check; exactly Hoseok’s type, check. Hoseok is watching Taehyung wander through the quad with that little smile he always gets. Yoongi snorts. Typical.
“I doubt he’ll show up,” Yoongi says, just to puncture Hoseok’s happy attitude.
“Nah,” Hoseok says confidently, “he’ll show.”
“Bet he sucks,” Yoongi mutters, settling the beanie back over his eyes.
“You suck,” Hoseok says half-heartedly, although Yoongi can hear that his best friend is smiling.
Taehyung, to Yoongi’s surprise and Hoseok’s delight, turns up. Taehyung also, to Hoseok’s surprise and Yoongi’s delight, sucks.
“I mean,” Yoongi corrects himself, wincing as Taehyung gives him a wounded look, “you don’t suck.” He leans down to help the freshman off the pitch, where he’s just fallen for the third time since they started practice. “You’re just, uh. You’re rusty.” Taehyung smiles now, kind of goofy and a little bit too earnest.
Taehyung’s tag-along ends up being a lot better. His name, he says, is Park Jimin, and he’s a better forward than Yoongi by a mile.
“Did you play in high school?” Yoongi asks, impressed, as Namjoon calls for a break.
“Yeah,” Jimin says, wiping the sweat from his forehead, “when I was a kid I always told Taehyungie that I was gonna end up on the national team someday.” He grins. “I decided on psych instead.”
They run drills for another half an hour until Namjoon decides they’ve had enough. Yoongi and Hoseok wander over to the new recruits - Taehyung lies in the grass, looking exhausted. Jimin crouches over him, poking him in the cheeks until Taehyung manages to swat him away. Yoongi watches the two of them, the easy laughter and easier touches, and wonders.
“We’re heading out now,” Jimin says. We. Yoongi glances at Hoseok.
“You guys are coming back on Tuesday, right?” Hoseok asks, a bit too quickly. He says it to Jimin, but his eyes are fixed on Taehyung. Yoongi wants to elbow him, dude, be cool, but he doubts Hoseok could ever actually be cool even if he was trying.
Taehyung looks up at Hoseok. “Of course we’ll be back,” he says immediately. Hoseok visibly relaxes. Taehyung’s cheeks flush a dull pink. Yoongi thinks, idiots.
“So,” he says casually, “Taehyung.”
“I will end your life,” Hoseok says, not looking up from his textbook.
Yoongi grins, but says nothing.
The next few weeks pass by in a blur of syllabuses and shin splints. Hoseok’s momentary crush is forgotten as Namjoon whips them into shape: by the end of most practices they’re too exhausted to talk, let alone flirt. Taehyung definitely has some hero-worship going on, but Hoseok just laughs and pats him on the head, and doesn’t seem to notice that the younger boy continues to stare as he walks away.
It's a few weeks before their first game that Yoongi starts to worry. Taehyung’s crush hasn't gone away - if anything, it's gotten worse. And Hoseok, whatever he might say, definitely does change when Taehyung’s around. Yoongi sets up a beautiful pass, only for Hoseok reflexively kick the ball in the opposite direction as Taehyung rushes past. Hoseok drifts off in the middle of strategy sessions to watch Taehyung take a particularly elongated and ab-exposing stretch. Hoseok won't stop texting Yoongi about the funniest shit Taehyung did yesterday at practice, did he see?
Yoongi should have seen this coming - Taehyung looks really good in athletic shorts - but he didn't think it would get this far without Hoseok doing anything about it.
“Just tell him,” Yoongi says in exasperation after the fifth Taehyung story that week.
“Tell him what?” Hoseok asks, and has the gall to look confused.
"Taehyung played saxophone," Jimin tells Yoongi. They wound up in the same Abnormal Psych lecture - Jimin’s taking it for his major, Yoongi, because it was this or Modern Dance with Seokjin, and Yoongi has some dignity. “His lungs should be a lot better, but he’s an idiot.” He says this as though brain-to-lung correlation is common medical knowledge.
Yoongi looks at Jimin out of the corner of his eye. "You guys close?"
Jimin shrugs, opening his laptop as the professor walks in. "He's been my best friend since middle school. I like him." He sounds fond, which Yoongi likes. Still - his gaze lingers, and Jimin looks at him with a start. "No, God, no, not like that," he says, waving his hands around wildly. He pauses mid-wave. "- Are you?" He looks at Yoongi half-curiously, half-suspiciously.
"Not me," Yoongi mutters, opening his own laptop. Jimin looks at him curiously, but whatever questions he has are silenced by the start of lecture. He continues to stare at Yoongi, though, who rolls his eyes.
Yoongi reaches into his bag and pulls out his phone. Under his desk he flips it open to his photos. He scrolls quickly past today’s bathroom mirror selfies, and pulls up creepshots he took last practice for future ‘embarrassing Hosek’ endeavors. He zooms in on Hoseok reaching out to wipe the sweat from the nape of Taehyung’s neck, and shows it to Jimin. Jimin looks at it, and then at Yoongi. Yoongi raises his eyebrows.
“You’re kind of a creep, hyung,” Jimin whispers loudly. The person behind them coughs again, very pointedly.
They spend the next five practices watching Taehyung not get any better, and Hoseok not get any less horny.
“Taehyungie keeps telling me about how great Hoseok hyung is,” Jimin tells Yoongi, as they watch Taehyung trip over his own boots. “Every night. While I’m trying to sleep.”
Yoongi sighs, watching Hoseok give up a pass in his rush to help Taehyung up. “I don’t get it, Hoseok usually isn’t this - oblivious. Well,” he amends, “he usually is. But it’s never this embarrassing.”
“They just need to say it,” Jimin says, frustrated, “otherwise they’re gonna get so frustrated they explode or quit and we lose every single game.”
Yoongi frowns. “I mean, we’ll probably lose anyway.”
“Maybe,” Jimin says, ignoring Yoongi’s gloomy expression, “they just need a little help.” He looks thoughtful, which is kind of scary. “Hey, hyung. Give me your number.”
Yoongi looks at him. “Uh,” he says, “I’m flattered, Park, but I’m not into underclassmen.”
Jimin gives him a look that can only be described as scathing. “No, hyung,” he says, “it’s for best friend solidarity. We’re gonna need it, if we’re gonna hook them up.”
Yoongi continues to stare at him. “Uh.”
“Come on,” Jimin says, “Hoseok hyung is your best friend, right?”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says slowly.
“Well,” Jimin says, “Taehyung is mine. He’s dumb and helpless but he’s my best friend and I can’t let him down. If he likes Hoseok I’m gonna do whatever I can to make him happy.” He looks at Yoongi. “Wouldn’t you?”
In that moment Yoongi can’t really do anything other than nod.
Jimin beams at him, satisfied as a cat, and takes Yoongi’s phone.
Yoongi thinks he kind of likes Park Jimin.
Park Jimin (school)
hi hyung! just wanted to let you know that taehyung just got back from a jog. i think it was his first ever!! he says that seokjin hyung told him it would be good practice. he looks like a really excited puppy, it's gross!! ok just wanted to let you know, bye!
yoongi hyung
Christ.
I just told Hoseok about it (not the dog part, just the jogging part) and he looked like he was going to cry.
Christ
There then begins a campaign of relentless psychological warfare. At least, that’s what Jimin, who is really enthusiastic about their psych class, calls it. (Jimin, Yoongi is learning, is cute and bright and has a terrifying capacity for getting into trouble. They’re getting along great.)
Mostly Jimin just snaps Yoongi 'candid' pictures of Taehyung eating/sleeping/undressing, and Yoongi makes sure to 'casually' open them in front of Hoseok as much as possible. It doesn't work as well as they had hoped. Hoseok complains about Jimin not accepting his friend request yet, while Taehyung gets really paranoid about locking his door when he's sleeping.
"Maybe Taehyung doesn't know Hoseok hyung likes guys?" Jimin suggests, so Yoongi starts making a point of talking about all of Hoseok's old crushes as loud as he can near Taehyung (which has the double bonus of making Hoseok’s face go angry-scrunchy). When it finally gets through to Taehyung, though, he just seems even more shy, and now Hoseok avoids standing next to Yoongi lest he announce even more of his old masturbatory fodder to the public.
"Maybe they don't spend enough time alone?" Yoongi says, so Jimin offhandedly mentions that Taehyung is having a hard time with his Macro paper, and could really use a study buddy. Hoseok is off towards the library in a flash, but when Yoongi sees him later he just looks dejected: "I forgot that I actually don't know anything about macroeconomics."
“Maybe you two stop whispering by the goal post and actually play the game,” Namjoon bellows, so Yoongi chucks the football straight at his head.
Their first game comes and passes without so much as a 'maybe I like you'. They play well enough - Jimin scores his first goal, and Yoongi and Seokjin hug him so hard he complains that his ribs hurt - but Hoseok and Taehyung end the game with a two-second ‘friends and teammates and nothing more!’ hug. Yoongi and Jimin both scowl as Hoseok gently wipes mud from Taehyung's cheek, and then pats him on the head.
“This is never going to work,” Jimin says in desolation.
Taehyung gazes up at Hoseok. Hoseok gazes down at Taehyung. They shake each other’s hands.
“I’m going to quit football and then quit school,” Yoongi says. Jimin makes a small noise of agreement.
Promoting Hoseok to schedule special ‘after hour’ lessons with Taehyung (‘for the good of the team!’) doesn’t do it. Turning on the steam shower and then hustling everyone else, including a protesting Seokjin, out of the locker room doesn’t do it. Making Taehyung play ‘marry fuck kill, Hoseok, Hoseok, Hoseok’ doesn’t do it. And so, as everything else fails, they get drunk.
“Yeah,” says Yoongi earnestly, “I really think it would be good for team bonding. Or something.”
“You’ve never cared about team bonding in your life,” says Namjoon accusingly.
“I said ‘or something’.”
They go to this little hole in the wall Yoongi’s knows, good enough to make the trip off campus, lax enough in safety regulations to never check IDs. Jimin latches on to Seokjin and Yoongi wheedles Namjoon into sitting next to him by promising to let him talk about the Premier League as much as he wants. Taehyung and Hoseok, left alone, sit next to each other, knees very deliberately apart by a few centimeters. Jimin and Yoongi exchange glances, and grin at each other.
“This is going to work,” Yoongi texts him under the table, one shot in.
“taehyung can’t handle his liquor at all,” Jimin texts back, two shots in.
“Wow, this is really strong,” Yoongi texts back, three shots in.
“are they kissing???” Jimin texts back, four shots in.
“Oh, fuck,” Yoongi texts back, five shots in.
Taehyung, drunker by far than anybody else in the bar, is staring at Hoseok as though he’s just been slapped. Hoseok, eyes wide and cheeks red, holds Taehyung at arms length, although it looks as though it’s taking all of his strength to do so. Yoongi’s heart aches at his best friend’s expression, and he can’t tell whether or not it’s the alcohol or some small vestige of feelings he didn’t know he still had.
“Oh fuck,” Jimin mutters, standing up and hurrying towards the desolate, drunk Taehyung. “Oh fuck, oh fuck- Here, give him to me,” he orders, grabbing Taehyung from Hoseok, who looks as though he’s just been struck.
“Wow,” Seokjin says, watching Jimin bundle a swaying Taehyung into a cab, “I thought Hoseok really liked Taehyung.”
“Yeah,” Yoongi says, as Hoseok buries his head into his hands, “so did I.”
Noon the next day, Hoseok and Namjoon are still asleep, face down on the couch and drooling on each other's shirts. Yoongi rolls onto his back and squints up at his cellphone screen, trying to type through his burgeoning hangover. He fires off a quick text to Seokjin ('please please please please PLEASE get namjoon out of my apartment') and then, grimacing, texts Jimin.
Park Jimin (school)
Well we fucked that up
He lets his head loll back onto the carpet and shuts his eyes tight. If he breathes very quietly, he thinks, maybe he'll stop altogether.
He thinks about Taehyung, the way his eyes were already red and bruised by the time Jimin wrangled him into a cab. He thinks about Hoseok, the way he did lay his head on Yoongi’s shoulder for the rest of the night without saying a word. He thinks about Jimin, grinning excitedly at the thought of scheming with Yoongi.
His phone chirps almost instantly.
Park Jimin (school)
i’m really sorry hyung
yoongi hyung
It’s okay Jimin
I promise
Park Jimin (school)
:\
Yoongi feels sick to his stomach.
Hoseok won’t talk about what happened on Thursday. He locks himself in the room for the weekend, and won’t answer when Yoongi asks him what’s wrong. Yoongi doesn’t like it.
He and Taeyung talk before practice on Tuesday, and everything seems fine -- they run drills like normal, and Taehyung even gives Hoseok a high five after he successfully gets a cross. They don’t seem like anything other than teammates, like anything has passed between them besides friendship.
“I guess we should just give up,” Yoongi says. He’s managed, somehow, to drag himself to their psych lecture, despite the pounding headache and grim mood. Jimin, the bastard, looks more put together than he has any right to be.
“I guess.” Jimin rests his head in his hands, looking put out. “I thought this would be fun, you know? Make Taehyung fall in love. Get to tease him, a lot. Instead it’s just kind of sad.”
Yoongi frowns at Jimin’s expression. He feels guilty, suddenly, for the first time in this endeavor. He likes Jimin, genuinely, beyond matchmaking and stupid schemes. He doesn’t want to forget that.
He nudges Jimin in the arm, forcing himself to smile through the headache. “At least we have losing the match to look forward to,” he says, making a face. Jimin, to his relief, gives him a small smile.
“Yeah,” he says, tone a little brighter, “if we’re gonna fuck up we might as well shoot for two out of two.” Yoongi laughs outright at that, and their professor shoots him a dirty look.
Yoongi manages, somehow, to get Hoseok through the week and to game day. His best friend has become oddly quiet these last few days, and as much as Yoongi hated his daily Taehyung lamentations he finds himself dreading this silence even more.
They’re the first to the pitch that morning. Yoongi is wired on adrenaline and worry, watching Hoseok pace back and forth as they wait for the rest of the team to arrive. Yoongi wants to tell him something, anything - sorry we couldn’t pull this off for you - but he can’t even apologize when Hoseok has no idea what they’ve been doing.
“Heads up,” Hoseok yells. The ball goes sailing over Yoongi’s head, and he hears a muffled “ouch”. Seokjin rubs his head, glowering, as Namjoon and the other three snicker at their defender.
“What side are you playing for?” Seokjin picks up the ball and lobs it at Hoseok, who grins broadly and heads it at Jimin.
Half an hour into their practice the other team, the university’s girl’s squad, arrives. Namjoon drifts away to flirt-argue with their captain, and Jimin wanders over towards the sidelines to calm down the obviously nervous Taehyung. Yoongi and Hoseok continue to pass the ball between the two of them, falling into the same easy rhythm as always. As the clock ticks down, Yoongi catches Hoseok’s eyes drifting more and more often towards Taehyung, and feels twin threads of panic and hope coiling in his stomach.
He hesitates, and misses the next pass. Hoseok wrenches his gaze back towards Yoongi, and gives him an uncertain look. “What?” he says, voice carefully neutral.
“I just,” Hoseok says, and then pauses. “All that stuff you’ve said, this semester. About Taehyung. What happened last weekend… What would you do, if you were me?” He sounds lost, and it wrenches at something inside Yoongi.
“I’d do it, Hoseok,” he says, simply, earnestly. “I’d just tell him.”
Hoseok looks at him for a moment, and then, to Yoongi’s surprise, nods. “Yeah,” he says, almost to himself. “Yeah, alright.”
He gives Yoongi a smile, the kind that crinkles at his eyes, and walks towards Taehyung.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jimin says.
“What,” Namjoon says.
“Called it,” Seokjin says.
The ref has to blow his whistle three times before Hoseok and Taehyung break apart. Even then they can’t stop smiling.
After the game (0-2, the most unspectacular defeat in their history), Yoongi jogs over to Hoseok, still red from either the thrill of the game or the stunt he’s just pulled.
“You know,” he says, passing over a water bottle, “me and Jimin have been trying to get you to do that for weeks.”
Hoseok turns to look at him. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “I know.”
Yoongi stares at him. “What?”
Hoseok takes a swig of the water bottle, too nonchalant to be believed. “Yeah, Namjoon told me about it like a week before you started. I just figured I would see how long it took for you guys to give up. Hey Taehyung! Wait up!” he yells, and grins as the younger boy immediately turns red. “See you later!” Hoseok yells over his shoulder as he jogs towards his new boyfriend.
Yoongi stands there for a moment. “Motherfucker,” he says, after a very long pause. And yet, he can’t find it in himself to do anything but laugh, and smile, and laugh some more.
He and Jimin do, of course, immediately begin to pelt Namjoon with spare footballs. Seokjin joins in, just for fun. It’s a better kind of victory, in Yoongi’s personal opinion.