Perplexing Simplicities

episode⓻

Yoongi liked to drive in silence. Every once in a while, he'd turn on some quiet music when he was alone but today... Today he had Namjoon to fill that silence.

Namjoon had called Jin a few hours before he was supposed to meet him, panicking over what he should wear. Jin had laughed and guided him to finally land on a pair of whitewashed ripped jeans and a loose white dress shirt.

He looked great. Yoongi had told him he looked great. But Namjoon was having a lot of doubts. Which at this particular moment meant lots of sighing and twitching and rambling.

"When I was in middle school Yoongi... Yoongi I had this friend. We... We were so close. We hung out every day, he would always be laughing and fooling around in class and passing notes and getting in trouble..."

Namjoon was speaking very shakily and quickly but he paused to glance at Yoongi. He'd told Yoongi parts of this story. It always ended in a "Nothing" or "huh, it's not that important" or sometimes, "I was probably wrong".

Yoongi always let him tell as much as he could and dropped it when he stopped. He knew it was hard for Namjoon to bring up his childhood and his identity struggles. But when it came to Namjoon's freak-outs about Jin or anything to do with questioning his sexuality, it always came back to this story.

"Yoongi..." he continued. "We were so close, that one day, he held my hand... and asked if he could marry me..."

Yoongi's eyes widened. He'd never heard this far. He could feel Namjoon looking at him.

"...In front of my parents."

Shit.

"They... they uh, pulled me out of the school because of that."

Namjoon looked away from Yoongi and down to his hands. "I never saw him again."

Yoongi groaned and dropped a hand from the steering wheel, letting it find Namjoon's.

"Namjoon, it wasn't your faul-"

"I told him it was his fault."

The silence in the car could not have been more powerful in that moment.

"I said..." Namjoon's voice broke a little and Yoongi could feel him holding back the tears. "I said that maybe if he was straight, then we could still be friends."

He took a deep, shaky breath, and dropped Yoongi's hand only to bury his head in his hands. 

"I said that to him in front of my parents."

Yoongi drove in silence for a while before pulling the car over on the side of the road. It took him a moment to find the right words.

"Namjoon-ah... you won't hurt him." Taking a long breath, he stroked Namjoon's back.

"You are a different person now, and you could never hurt him."

Namjoon finally sat up, slowly and Yoongi could see his eyes were red and glistening.

"You don't know that. A-And I don't know..." he took a long, sad breath "if I trust myself..."

Yoongi shook his head. "I do. I know you and I trust you. Because Jin is not the same. And you care about him too much to ever be the cause of his pain."

Namjoon bit his lip a little. "But-"

Namjoon's phone buzzed.

It was Jin.

"But nothing. We're gonna be late. And that, that will hurt him."

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