daybreak | yoonmin

may 20th.

11:02 p.m.

They climbed the corridor of stairs leading from the entryway to the wooden front door of the home. Yoongi's voice bounced off the walls, only to be caught amidst the reverberating waves of hip hop that shook through each surface on every side them.

"You'll be fine. I like you, so they'll like you."

"You sure they won't think I'm a cold prick?" 

"... Well, no. But we go forward." 

Yoongi smiled, and the door swung open. 

"Mandem ah come bearing gifts. Frankencense, myrrh," said the buzzed-cut man who answered in a booming London accent, "and tequila! "

The man accepted their bottle of pure agave tequila and pulled Yoongi in for a hug-- the kind that included an audible smack on the back with his free hand. Jimin let out a chuckle, not sure what to do with the breath in his lungs or his now empty hands. 

Normally, he was pretty quiet in social settings. He never cared to speak much to people he didn't already speak to. But this wasn't like that. He decided from the moment that Yoongi had invited him to his friends' get-together, that this was more important, more stressful somehow.

Their voices had been audible, but their words and laughter unintelligible all this time. Jimin only began paying attention when Yoongi tore his attention away from his friend to rest his hand on his shoulder. 

"Oh, um," He said, in a by the way kind of way, "This is Jimin."

Jimin hardly had time to think about the platonic implications of the gesture when the man shifted his eyes to him. He smirked, a little more playfully than Jimin was comfortable with because what was that about?

"Ah, you're Jimin. From the train station." The man said, his voice now stripped of the whimsical accent. 

"Yeah, that's me." 

Jimin's thoughts fired, clinging onto any information that would help him push the conversation. He vaguely remembered the time that Yoongi showed him this man's Instagram-- the way he was in awe of what was apparently the major black-to-blond hair transformation that stood before him now. What was his name? Ah! "And you're Namjoon from..."

"Middle school."

Namjoon turned to lead them into the space, guiding them toward a kitchen island where he resumed drinking a dark liquor. Yoongi, no stranger to the space, began pouring two glasses of something that started out clear and slowly turned a ruby red. 

Jimin surveyed the room: a lanky man with a pornstache and what he assumed was a Wasian girl stood by the entryway, a dark-skinned man in blacked out sunglasses playing Uno with two people who looked identical to him, a fluffy cat wisping around his feet with its tail, and some guy in a beanie already making himself a plate. That's what he could see without his glasses, of course.

"And that's Hoseok from Zara," Namjoon nodded his head into the apartment toward another man, one who piled his plate full of noodles.

"I used to work there before I started culinary school," Yoongi mentioned without looking back at Jimin. Then he darted his eyes around at what couldn't be anymore than seven other people there yet. In acknowledgment of the dissonance between the bass of the beat and the calmness in the room, he asked Namjoon, "When did you get here?" 

"Too fucking long ago. Naya told me to be here at 10."

"You forgot she runs on POC time? You fall for this every time," Yoongi sipped.