Chapter Text
After they finally met, it seemed like Yoongi saw Jimin and Hoseok everywhere at work. Seokjin gave all of the boys of Tomorrow By Together a break to go spend a week at home with their families and fully recover from their illness, so Yoongi wasn't as busy and spent more time exploring the different places he could sit down with his laptop and try to refresh his creativity with new locations.
His favorite was the roof. When Hoseok said he was often on the roof once when they met he didn't realize that the roof was basically a garden. Apparently Hoseok and Jimin (and the boys when they were here) did yoga in the garden before going to the dance studio for the hard work. Yoongi often sat at one of the benches or the stone chess table that he used as a desk instead of a chess board.
It was a rare day he wasn't working and instead had brought his coffee and a book to have a break that Jimin and Hoseok plopped down on either side of him on the bench and gave him twin devious looks. He frowned. "Can I help you?" he asked them.
Hoseok grinned evilly. "Jiminnie told me that you're Namjoonie's ex boyfriend."
Yoongi's stomach clenched and went cold with anxiety. "Oh?" he asked, turning his head to Jimin, eyebrow raising.
Jimin's smirk was downright villianous. "Moni-hyung said you dated when you were really young."
"Please tell me you still have embarrassing photos!" Hoseok cheered, looking positively gleeful.
Yoongi relaxed immediately. They didn't know about him. He wasn't being targeted by transphobes - not that he thought the two of them that way before, but he couldn't be too careful - he just had a friend and partner of his ex who wanted to know what he was like as a kid. Yoongi laughed in relief and hoped they bought it as surprise. "Unfortunately not on my phone. I may somewhere at home have some old photos but none I can show you now." At their disappointed faces he smirked and winked. "Ask him about the time he got a perm."
Both of them looked at him as if he had handed him bars of gold, they were so gleeful. "Oh. My. God." Jimin whispered.
"A perm!" Hoseok crowed, then barked out loud laughter, clapping his hands that Yoongi noticed were manicured with rainbow gels. He figured he was with safe people, but the rainbow manicure did comfort him some. "So what was he like? When did you guys date? How did you meet?" Hoseok badgered excitedly.
Yoongi smiled and shook his head. "Unfortunately you will have to ask him all that. I'm not comfortable telling his friends about our relationship if he's not comfortable with you knowing," he said diplomatically.
"Oh you're kind too!" Jimin gave him the most fucking adorable wide-eyed look. "I mean I figured you were, cause the babies love you so much," he said, waving an adorably tiny hand. Yoongi was seriously too queer to be around Jimin, frankly. It was distracting how beautiful and sweet and adorable he was. "But it's nice to know Namjoonie-hyung's ex still respects him that much."
"Yeah my exes are all trash," Hoseok said bluntly.
Yoongi couldn't help but smile. "Namjoon and I didn't split up for any bad reasons so it's not like there's resentment," he said, allowing them a small glimpse of the truth. "Put it this way, we were dumb kids with big feelings who just started growing up into different people."
Hoseok and Jimin both seemed to get him. "Yeah, I never had that but it's definitely believable Namjoon would."
"Yeah, Moni-hyung is so smart and sweet that he wouldn't hurt someone if he fell out of love with them," he agreed. He smiled. "I love just listening to him talk because Namjoonie is just a good person and I am lucky I met him."
Yoongi could see nothing but affection in Jimin's pretty eyes, and he smiled to himself at the thought of how it was good Namjoon had someone who really respected him that way. (Even though he felt an odd hollowness he couldn't explain somewhere behind his diaphram. Maybe he was drinking too much coffee.)
Yoongi didn't see the way Hoseok was looking between him and Jimin with shrewd eyes and a purse of his lips that made dimples show as he examined the two of them while they talked about Namjoon.
~
Hoseok barged into Namjoon's studio and beamed when he saw Namjoon startle and close a manga and stuff it behind his screen, staring at the screen instead as if he was hard at work. "You were slacking!" Hoseok accused, going over to sit in the second chair and spin around, cackling. "I knew it!"
"Psh, was not!" Namjoon argued, turning to face him. "Anyway, you ever heard of knocking?"
Hoseok crossed his arms, smirking at him. He swung back and forth, leaned back in the seat. "Does Yoongi know you're not dating Jimin?" he asked without hesitation, deciding to rip the bandaid off.
Namjoon startled and knocked over a pen cup that was on the other end of the desk somehow (magic powers of destruction, Jimin said) in his turn to Hoseok's way. "Excuse me?!"
Hoseok grinned. "I just noticed something. We've been chatting in passing, and on the roof when he was talking to us, he seemed to indicate he believes Jimin was looking for dirt on his boyfriend from his boyfriend's ex."
Namjoon blushed and spluttered. "That's just- I- But Jimin's Jimin!" He shuddered comically. "It would be like dating a confusingly attractive cousin or something."
"You became best friends because you guys had sex," Hoseok countered, and Namjoon groaned.
"I so regret telling you that."
"You told me because we almost had sex-"
"Hobi!" Namjoon whined, sliding down in his chair and covering his face like a whiny brat instead of the second-in-command of a record label. Hoseok smiled fondly at the memory. They clicked the first time they met and talked for hours and drank quite a lot and briefly considered having sex to see if they were compatible that way, too. Instead they spotted Jimin taking his pants off in public and went to go stop him before they got banned from that gay bar. After sobering up they laughed it off and settled as being friends instead.
"Eh, I should've tried it when I had a chance," Hoseok joked, winking as he exageratedly stared down at Namjoon's crotch, just to fuck with him and make him cross his legs. It worked.
Namjoon rolled his eyes. "Look, I doubt Yoongi thinks I'm dating Jimin." He snickered suddenly with a secretive smirk. "He probably would be surprised to discover I'm fully gay, given how he and I knew each other as kids." Hoseok frowned at that, but Namjoon didn't elaborate. "And besides, not to be too 'boss Namjoon', but gossiping at work is not a good idea," he said with a more serious look. "I know we're friends, but you guys don't know if Yoongi is okay with being gossiped about."
Hoseok smiled fondly. "You're so cool when you are professional. I feel like a proud auntie."
"Oh dear lord," Namjoon sighed heavily, but Hoseok just continued.
"Which also means tough shit thinking Jimin and I aren't spilling every ounce of tea we get with Taehyung," Hoseok said primly. "We are not the unofficial gay aunties of BigHit for nothing." He stood up and gave Namjoon a smile and propped his hands under his chin with a 'tink' sound, kicking his foot back innocently. "Good luck telling Jimin and TaeTae they can't gossip about their coworkers, tata!"
He snickered at Namjoons grumbling as he pulled the door shut behind him on his way out.
~
Namjoon couldn't stop thinking about what Hobi said. He wondered every time he interacted with Jimin if his actions seemed flirty or romantic. He asked Jimin if he made him uncomfortable and he just laughed. Looking at their interactions, he did share more physical touch with Jimin, but Jimin was very physically affectionate. It would be harder to not touch Jimin than touch him.
His obsession over whether people thought he was dating Jimin got so bad that when Yoongi knocked on his office door and came in to ask him a question about the technology in the recording booth, he blurted out, "Do people think I'm dating Jimin?"
Yoongi blinked at him and then lowered his tablet. "Uh. What?" he deadpanned, frowning in a frankly adorable fashion. Namjoon felt like slapping himself for multiple reasons now.
He settled in his chair and cleared his throat. "Yoongi-hyung, please take a seat and explain your question to me again." Instead, Yoongi gave him a single raised eyebrow that Namjoon vividly remembered meant, 'bitch, what the fuck?', but he did as invited to do.
"Weird Namjoon Freak out aside," Yoongi said, holding out the tablet. "Listen to this and tell me what to do with the equipment in there to fix it."
Namjoon took it and hit play and instantly he saw the lines. "Oh I think this is the limiter stuck on. See how the threshold is in the wrong place on here?"
Yoongi leaned in and frowned. "I didn't have the limiter set though?"
"Yeah, it gets stuck sometimes with our DAW settings. I don't know why, but the sound technician can fix it," Namjoon said, handing the tablet back. "But for now I can come show you where to find that setting."
They left Namjoon's studio and headed down to the recording studio. When they entered the booth, Namjoon took the chair, looking at the screen and all the knobs and sliders on the board. Yoongi stood beside him, arms crossed with a crooked grin as he leaned over the grand set up. "Sure is a hell of a lot different from GarageBand on a borrowed Macbook, huh, Joon-ah?"
Namjoon remembered their comically bad set-up in their Ikea wardrobe with a plastic stool for the MacBook and a pillow for whoever was recording to sit on while doing so in the cramped space that only Yoongi really fit in. "We had a cheap karaoke microphone that sometimes slipped into alien voice mid-rap," he said, remembering.
"Oh God," Yoongi laughed. He shook his head. "Remember the foot-fetish song?"
"It was about sneakers!" Namjoon argued instantly, ears turning red. It wasn't about feet, it was about shoes, but admittedly that was something he wrote while drunk and dreaming of buying brand name shoes.
Namjoon opened up the settings and showed Yoongi, who leaned over his shoulder to see. Namjoon was nearly hypnotized by the smell of Yoongi's scent of fresh laundry with a layer of masculine musk. He didn't remember anything smelling so good. He had to jerk his head back around from following Yoongi's collar to sniff. He shook his head and stood up abruptly. "Um, so yeah." He cleared his throat. "That's how it's done."
Yoongi gave him a concerned look. "Hey, Namjoon, I was just joking about the foot thing. I didn't mean to embarrass you or anything," he said so kindly that Namjoon felt like a dick for being weird.
"No, it's fine." He forced a smile. "Just weird memory, huh? That song definitely sounded like a demo song for FeetFinder," he said with an awkward laugh.
Yoongi smiled a bit sadly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make things weird. I know it's got to be awkward…. ya know." He gestured to himself. He leaned back against the board and leaned back on his hands in a way that made his forearms look far too appealing for Namjoon to deal with. Especially when the light in the room was shining on Yoongi's silky hair that was getting longer and shaggier in an attractive way. "I was being my comfort level friendly instead of checking on yours."
"No," Namjoon said, taking a steadying breath and then forcing all his confusing feelings down. "It's not that. It's just… embarrassing to think of how bad my old music was," he said, deciding on a truth at least. His old music had been cringe teenager shit. He shrugged. "Everybody is embarrassed by who they were at eighteen, right?"
Yoongi cringed dramatically. "God yeah, I basically kidnapped a minor instead of going to therapy, I'd say that was pretty fuckin' embarrassing."
The tension eased and Namjoon laughed. "Hey, you didn't kidnap me, I came willingly. It takes two stupid teens who needed serious therapy to do the stuff we did." Yoongi smiled fondly at him and Namjoon's stomach stirred at how familar that gaze was. He remembered it so well when those eyes belonged to his wife.
That thought knocked Namjoon out of his reverie and he turned his head to hide his expression of shock. "Well," he said, gesturing to the board. "It should work now, and you know how to change that setting yourself if it does it again in the future."
Yoongi took a deep breath and put his hands in his pockets, turning to the board. "Yeah, thanks. I hope to have the demos the kids recorded before they got sick finished for us to bring to Jin-hyung and see what he thinks about the songs so far."
"I can't wait," Namjoon said, giving Yoongi a nod in parting before leaving him to his work while he went to go try and sort out the strange things he was feeling today.