ineedanepiphany | (no subject)

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He doesn't actually know what to say to Yoongi, isn't exactly sure how to even say it to himself. It's scary to talk about but of the six of them, he think Yoongi has a better idea of who he is than most. They're the closest in age and, Seokjin thinks, Yoongi is one of the most observant of them all. Seokjin, though intensely private, isn't a stone.

He has his giveaways, just like anyone else. He just wishes they weren't tells to such big, uncomfortable secrets. If he could just conform, it would be easier, but he stupidly has to inject hope where it doesn't belong. Sometimes he sees the way Jimin's eyes linger on Hoseok, his mouth pursing when they talk about their noona at their studio. He shouldn't encourage that. He also shouldn't talk about his future and leave the gender of his partner undecided. It's just that not doing that feels like too much of a lie, when he can't even talk about it.

Waiting for Yoongi to arrive, Seokjin fidgets. He makes hot water for tea, peruses the fridge, gets out a bag of crackers and then puts it back and takes it out again. He should offer a snack, after all.

He just waits, uncomfortably, for that knock on the door.

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"Not gay," Seokjin corrects, his throat constricted. "Bisexual." It's an identity he's had a lot of opportunities to come to terms with. Or, at least, he had, back in America. Back in Seoul, back under the careful eye of his father's expectations and media scrutiny that's ready to pounce on any crack in a chaebol's armor, he'd carefully and methodically returned to the Seokjin he played before. He's friendly, polite, and distant from any potential scandal.

Yoongi's face is hard to read but Seojin's had practice and he can see the micro emotions that his friend won't speak.

"I don't do anything about it here though."

Yoongi flushes, heart racing, and he wants it to stop immediately. It's not like it bothers him that Seokjin is bisexual. He doesn't want to do anything that might give him the impression that it does. If anything, he wants to ask him why he doesn't do anything about it, but he doesn't think he needs to. It's not like he does anything with his own feelings. He can't judge Jin for holding back.

"It's hard to do anything here," he says instead. It makes him nervous. It's hard not to fear that even talking about this comes too close to outing himself, hard not to want to now that Jin's opened himself up to him. They're the same. The idea of it makes his palms sweat, anxiety spiking, but he seizes on it all the same. Under the panic, there's a current of relief. "But you're telling me now. Which is good, but why?"

Seokjin feels like a stalling car when Yoongi asks that question and suddenly he's afraid that he's read the jokes wrong and there's nothing kindred about their situations at all. He's made a mistake and maybe Yoongi doesn't hate him but he'll be angry for Seokin's presumptions. His stomach drops out from inside of him and he nervously grips the edge of the table.

"The way you were joking around with me last night," he says, heart racing. "I thought..." Seokjin almost wants to give up, to somehow cancel this without further conversation. Wishes he could go back and undo this moment. His vision goes dark at the edges, like a tunnel, but Seokjin makes himself breathe. He can't run away from this. Another breath and the tunnel opens back up.

"I wondered if you made the same kind of jokes because you aren't straight. Like me."

"Oh," Yoongi says, a weak, fluttering sound, and for a moment, he feels like he might pass out. If Seokjin has seen through him... Well, it's not like he was particularly trying to hide from the others. He also just thought they'd read it as jokes and nothing else, the kind of thing any friend might tease about. It seemed like a safe way to express himself without actually coming out. But if Jin guessed, the others might have, too.

That's fine, he tells himself, it's okay. They don't care. They don't care about Taehyung; they won't care about him or Jin.

"I'm not," he says, cheeks burning, a little strangled. He could lie about it, but he doesn't want to, not to Jin. The idea of even trying to deny it turns his stomach, though he knows he will if anyone outside of their circle ever asks. "Straight. I'm not... I'm bisexual, too." It comes out in a rush, his heart aching, though it's stupid. Jin just came out to him. He's not going to judge.

Yoongi still might be dying right now, though.

He closes his eyes, forces a deep breath. "I've never said it before."

Jin flinches and finds that he doesn't really feel better for Yoongi having said it. His friend looks, if anything, resigned and Seokjin thinks he'd almost prefer anger, hot-tempered denial. It would all be better than how raw he looks.

"I'm sorry," he says, his hands still death gripping the edge of the table. "I shouldn't have said anything." Yoongi isn't ready and now he's been selfish in forcing him to come out. When Yoongi exhales, Seokjin risks a glance at his face and he can't read what shape it's taken but he doesn't feel good.

"You're the first person I've told in all of Korea."

Yoongi shakes his head, emphatic, before he can figure out his words. The last thing he wants is Seokjin's pity or for him to feel bad he said anything. He should get to be out, even if only with one person. The whole thing has just seemed so ridiculously impossible to Yoongi for so long that he hasn't really considered it an option for himself.

If Jin hadn't said anything, he's not sure when he ever would have done so himself. If he would have.

"You're the first person I've told in the world," he says, trying to affect a wryness he doesn't currently feel. "It's okay." That, at least, he means. "Once my heart stops trying to climb out of my mouth. I'm fine, sorry."

Edited 2018-12-06 07:19 (UTC)

Yoongi's reassurances make him feel somehow worse. He's only telling Seokjin because he started this and they could both have stayed in painful, hidden safety. Seokjin sort of wishes, still, that he could undo it except that he can feel it in his heart. Even through the fear and the nervousness, it feels less constricted.

"Don't be sorry," he says. "You didn't have to tell me and I shouldn't have said it like that." Shouldn't have and yet he's so relieved. He's told someone and he's also not alone.

Yoongi shakes his head. "I don't want to lie," he says. "Not if I don't have to." There are times when he has to. He can never tell his father, would never want anyone outside of their circle to know. Not while he's still in high school at least. Maybe once he goes to university, things might be a little different, but he hardly dares to imagine that.

Here, though, at least, for however long he's in Jin's apartment, he doesn't have to lie, even by omission. It's still frightening, but the fact of that is slowly sinking in.

Someone sees him and it's okay. Nothing has broken. He's still breathing.

"Do you think the others know? About us?"

"I don't either," he says. The problem is that it's become second nature to the point that if his father asks him a straightforward instinct, Seokjin's answer is still to blunt the truth in some way. Sometimes he feels as if he doesn't know how to be straightforward anymore. Definitely, he doesn't know how to be straight. The joke is bad enough that he doesn't say it out loud, just smiles to himself.

As to Yoongi's question, Seokjin can only shrug. "I think if someone were to guess, it'd be Taehyung. And since he hasn't said anything..." He'd wager they're still safe. "I can tell you for sure Namjoon probably doesn't know. But only because he's so busy meditating on the universe, he misses what's in front of him."

Yoongi rolls his eyes, huffing out a laugh. "Sounds right," he admits. His next instinct is to ask if Seokjin thinks Jungkook might have guessed, but he decides against it. He doesn't want to make it clear where his affections lie. Besides, if Jungkook notices, then their piano lessons will probably end, so he can only assume the other boy hasn't yet guessed. At least if Taehyung figures it out, he won't be bothered by the information.

He's quiet for a few long moments, leaning against the table, finally buckling down to rest his head on his arms. "I don't want to hide from them either," he says. "I just... don't really know how not to." It's not like he has any hang-ups about whether or not he's morally in the right here, but everyone else around him might disagree, and he's gotten so used to hiding, he wouldn't know how to start to be out.

Seokjin takes some rice crackers off the plate and sets them onto the table in front of him but it's more for the sake of having something to rearrange and worry about than to eat. One by one, he switches them around like a game of three-card Monte, unsure of what he's trying to find or who's being tricked.

"I don't either. I've lived my whole life keeping up appearances." He's learned to smile like he means it, to laugh like he's genuinely pleased, to cover up mild distress with blown out drama. Anything but the truth.

It's a gift, Yoongi thinks, a token of a trust he maybe doesn't deserve, that Seokjin is talking to him at all. He's not blind. He can see the way that smile falters sometimes or the falseness of it, the way Jin goes through the motions in a manner larger than life. It's not that his friend is false or a liar; he just hides. Yoongi can't fault him for that when he hides, too. The fact that he's been able to cut through that somehow and get to this moment means a lot.

"I don't..." He shrugs. "I don't really think they'd be upset or anything. Not our friends. Other people, but not them. But sometimes... I just worry anyway." That they would care, or else that it would change things somehow, the dynamics of the group shifting subtly as they change how they behave around him.

"It's still scary," Seokjin says. It's a tight, quick summary of everything they've said and can't yet say. Knowing that his friends don't have a problem with the idea of bisexuality in the abstract is one thing. It's another to actually put them on the spot and see how they react when they have to share the room with one.

And when a person is as obsessed with appearances as he is? Seokjin spends a lot of time thinking about, worrying over those scenarios.

"I was scared to tell you."

Yoongi can't fault him for that either or, for once, take it as any kind of reflection of himself. He was just terrified to say the words, even with Seokjin already out and suspecting. Saying it into the void, hoping for the best, that must have been frightening as fuck. Yoongi's pretty sure he's not brave enough to do something like that.

"Well, I know now," he says. "That's something, right?" And Seokjin knows about him. There's one person in the world who knows his secret and he doesn't have to be alone with it anymore. It's going to take some getting used to, but he thinks — hopes — this is a good thing.

Seokjin nods and lets himself exhale the breath he feels like he's been holding with his entire soul. "It's a big something." He risks putting an arm around Yoongi, hugging his friend sideways.

The opposite is also true for Yoongi. Now Seokjin knows. Now he's not alone with that.

"I did actually ask you over to study if you wanted but..." But who cares now. "Want to have something delivered and find a stupid drama to watch?"

The responsible thing to do would be to study, of course. But after all of this, Yoongi is feeling a little drained, and the idea of just relaxing for a while is too appealing to resist.

"Yeah," he says, nodding, "that sounds good. What do you want to get?" Truthfully, though he wouldn't say as much, he actually enjoys stupid dramas. Sometimes when he's down, the mindless predictability of them is all he can handle watching.

"Pasta," he says, because difficult and emotional confessions require carbohydrates that have been overwrought with cheese. It's got to be a law somewhere, right? "With mm. Some kind of meat. I want beef maybe?" It goes unspoken that he can afford it. And he feels guilty enough about this whole thing to treat Yoongi.

"What drama should we watch?"

"That sounds really good," Yoongi says. He can't even bring himself to feel bad about taking advantage of Seokjin's generosity. He wouldn't offer if he couldn't afford it, and, anyway, Yoongi knows there's no point in arguing that it's unnecessary. "Let's do that. Um..." He shakes his head, shrugs. "I don't know what to watch. Something lighter." He doesn't need something overly serious right now. Some kind of ridiculous romance sounds about perfect.

"Rooftop Prince?" Seokjin proposes. "Strong Girl Boon-Jong? Shut Up! Flower Boy Band?" The last one is a tease. The whole Flower series of dramas seemed largely designed to focus on eye candy rather than anything of actual consequence but, well, they both like men. So why not?

Yoongi scoffs at the last offering. It's not like any of the dramas have much in the way of substance, but right now, he needs something he can be a little more invested in. Cute guys will only go so far in keeping his mind from wandering too much. "Let's do Strong Girl," he says. "Are we making the food or ordering?"

When he says we, of course, he mostly means Jin. One of these days, maybe he'll make Jin teach him how to cook, but he doubts he'd be any good at it.

"Ordering," he says. Now that the worst of the confessions is done with, Seokjin feels light enough to return to his usual levels of drama. "I'm too emotional to cook!" To make a point of how emotional he is, Seokjin grabs a cracker off the plate and steps back to the couch, dropping into its plush embrace like a doll.

He lounges there for a moment before rolling over to find his television remote so he can find the promised drama.

Yoongi rolls his eyes, but he's smiling even so. Seokjin's dramatics may verge on too much now and then, but right now, there's a certain relief in the levity that comes with them. They're okay. He has to keep telling himself that, because it feels a little like the sky should have come crashing down just because they said the words aloud, but it won't. Every passing moment that proves true, he feels a little lighter.

"I wouldn't want your feelings to compromise the food," he says wryly. "So that's for the best."

"Come here," Seokjin says, making room in his sprawl for Yoongi to join him, even lean on him. They've curled together before, the warmth between them entirely platonic. Why should it be any different now? Seokjin would be a little heartbroken, honestly, if that was the thing to change.

"Let's do Mr. Pizza. They have pasta and fries and everything. What do you want?" Seokjin has already made his case for pasta but if they do this chain, they'll have options.

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