"Morning grumpy~!" Yoongi groans when he hears Handong sing out from the kitchen.
He rubbed his eyes and let out a kitty-like yawn as he just sat in bed for a moment to wake up.
"Yoongi!" he hears Handing call out.
"Hmm," he hums out in response.
"I got coffee!"
Hearing that, Yoongi jumps out of bed and runs to the kitchen where he sees Handong smirking at him. There was a bag with breakfast food on the counter, their beverages right next to it.
"You up now?" she asks, Yoongi nodding his head. "Good, now go wash up and we can eat breakfast."
✮
Yoongi and Handong sat next to each other at the island counter as they ate their breakfast from McDonald's.
"So what have you been doing now that promotions are over?" Handong inquires.
"Nothing much," he replies with a mouthful of hash brown in his mouth. "Just been doing what I've always been doing."
"So you've been at the studio."
"Exactly."
Handong only shakes her head, "You work too much."
"You may think that, but I really don't mind at all," Yoongi says. "Plus, I don't work every single time I head to the studio. I do other things."
The way Yoongi sees it, his job wasn't a job to him. He sees it as just his passion, and he has fun with it. Just like Hoseok, his studio had become his comfort place. The most comfortable place that became his second home, and he never thought of it as a workplace. Even when he has no work to do, he's always go back to the Genuis Lab to relax. Sometimes to just zone out, sometimes to just listen to music. A healing spot, a go-to resting place.
"Besides," Yoongi says. "You're the one who works too much," he tells her.
"Not as much as before," she replies. "I started hanging out with my friends more after your promotions ended. It's healing."
"You and Namjoon haven't hung out in a while too, right?" she asks.
"He's been busy with preparing for his next album," Yoongi answers.
"What about Hoseok?"
Suddenly the greasy taste of of his hash brown turned bitter in Yoongi's mouth. These days he doesn't have anyone to hang out with. Not even Hoseok, who he hasn't contacted since the music show.
And Yoongi wants to believe he's overthinking things, he always does. But it's hard to believe that when it's so obvious Hoseok was avoiding him back there.
They both felt the tension in the air grow thicker as Handong's waiting for Yoongi to answer her question.
"What about him?" Yoongi asked.
Handong frowns at him. "You both started promotions around the same time. He should be on break by now, right?"
"I don't know," Yoongi shrugs it off.
"Are things okay between you two?" she carefully asks.
"I don't know," he shrugs again. "I just- we haven't really talked in a while."
"At the music show when they were announcing the winners, he wouldn't even look at me," Yoongi explains. "I even tried to talk to him, but he just walked off stage before I could approach him."
"Really?" Handong gives him a surprised look. "And you have no clue as to why he's avoiding you?"
"No," he shakes his head.
"We're friends, but he never put in the effort to stay friends," he continues in a bitter tone. "Makes me think that he was just using me to get closer to Namjoon. Well at least he got what he wanted."
"That's not true and you know it," Handong quickly tells him. "Even though you don't know what's going on with him, the best you can do is to just talk to him. You don't want your friendship to end like this without even talking to each other, don't you?"
"Thanks Handong, but I don't wanna talk to him," Yoongi crosses his arms stubbornly. "If he doesn't want to be friends with me, then fine."
"And what makes you think he doesn't want be friends with you?" Handong questions.
"Don't know, don't care," Yoongi shrugs it off as crumbles up the wrapper and throws it into the paper bag.
✮
"I think I made a grave mistake."
"And I've made several," Soonyoung proudly states. "But please tell me, what is this grave mistake that keeps you from sleeping late at night?"
"How'd you know I've been having trouble sleeping?" Hoseok inquires.
"Obviously the eye bags," he points out.
"Gee, thanks," Hoseok rolls his eyes at his friend. "And no, the cause of sleep deprivation is from stress... which is partly because of my problem and many other things."
"Aww," Soonyoung frowns sadly at him, switching his tone into big brother mode. "Alright, putting jokes aside, what's going on?"
"So do you remember the guy I've been thinking about lately?" Hoseok asked.
"I remember," he nods.
"Well, I realized that I do like him," continued Hoseok. "Like genuinely, actually, for-realsies."
"For-realsies," Soonyoung echos.
"But because of my career..." Hoseok trails off.
"You're not allowed to date," Soonyoung finished his sentence. "Isn't there a temporary dating ban on your contract?"
"Yeah, 5 years." Hoseok nodded. "But there's still so many reasons why I can't date. The controversies, the backlash, time management. I'm already busy, how can I even date when I have a career to focus on. Plus, my manager was like 'your fame is rising gradually, so be careful of the things you say and do'."
Soonyoung smiles a bit at Hoseok's deep voice impression of his manager.
"So the problem is that you want to date this guy, but you're afraid of the consequences if you do try to pursue a relationship?" Soonyoung inquired. "And you said you doubt you'll do anything."
"I know, I know, but that's not the only problem," Hoseok chuckles humorlessly.
"Oh Jesus, there's more," Soonyoung says in a Sykkuno tone.
"I've been avoiding him too," Hoseok adds.
"WHAT!?" Soonyoung shrieks, making Hoseok wince. "YOU'VE BEEN AVOIDING HIM!?WHY!?"
"Because," Hoseok groans. "As I told you before, my manager said I have to be careful of what I do and say. I've been hanging around this guy too much. So much, that people speculated that we're dating. It even caught the media's attention."
Soonyoung furrows his brows, before gasping out loud with the realization. "Hold on! You like-"
"SHHH!" Hoseok quickly slammed his hand over Soonyoung's mouth to shut him the fuck up. "You don't gotta announce it to the whole world- EW!"
Hoseok quickly retracted his hand when he feels Soonyoung lick.
"Dude, that's gross," he gagged. "COVID."
"COVID doesn't exist in this universe," Soonyoung reminds Hoseok.
"Oh yeah you're right," he nods. "But it's still gross."
"Anywho," Soonyoung clears his throat. "So you've been avoiding Suga because of the media? Have you at least texted each other?"
"No," he shakes his head. "The last text I got from him was a couple weeks ago after he said he liked my new song-"
"Wait," Soonyoung cuts him off. "Did you tell him that you had to stop hanging out till all the rumors die down?"
Hoseok paused, hesitantly shaking his head.
"Oh, Hoseok you idiot," Soonyoung gives him a disappointed head shake. "Why didn't you tell him?"
"Because-" Hoseok stopped mid sentence.
Why did he do this?
Why couldn't he just tell Yoongi that they had to stop hanging out together too much?
Obviously because I wanted to add angst to this book, but also because Hoseok thought it'd be good for him and his feelings to not tell him anything.
"You should have told him," Soonyoung scolds him. "Now he's gonna get the wrong idea that you were ghosting him."
Hoseok's eyes widened, "Holy shit, he really is gonna get the wrong idea."
"Yeah," Soonyoung nodded his head. "You gotta tell him what's going on before it gets worse and you start drifting apart, then Suga's gonna be off to military service and you'll be separated, and it'll will be too late to tell him how you feel because he'll find someone else he loves and marry them."
"You're scaring me Soonyoung."
"That's the point Hoseok," Soonyoung grabs him by the shoulder. "I told you, if you think you're gonna regret it in the future, then do it. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
"Yeah, you're right," Hoseok nods, chewing on his bottom lip. "Now that I think about it from his point of view, he probably thinks I'm an asshole."
From being like best-friends to not talking since they last saw each other at Inkigayo, and that didn't end well.
Too bad I missed the opportunity to call it Kinkygayo.
But that's besides the point. Point is, Hoseok was too focused on his career and reputation that he completely forgot about Yoongi's feelings.
"No, you can still try to fix this," Soonyoung reassured him.
"How?"
Soonyoung gave Hoseok a crazy look, "Wait, have you always been this dumb?"
"Excuse me?"
"Obviously you have to tell him the reason why you stopped talking," Soonyoung groans out. "Have you never watched any romance movies- no do you have any common sense?"
"Jeez," Hoseok frowned at Soonyoung. "I did not ask to be attacked like this."
But Soonyoung's right. Hoseok's gonna talk to Yoongi, and try to make things right again. Then they can go back to the way things were before.
And maybe Hoseok can confess his feelings too while he's at it.
Scratch that, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. Or should we?
Author note:
I've been working on the bonus chapter for Your Melody, and that's been more of a priority than Dethroned's next chapter (which I haven't even wrote yet). So look forward to that i guess, don't know when it's coming out lol