The Broken Dancer

The Weight of Light

Morning doesn't creep into the room - it floods it. Light pours through the uncurtained windows in broad, careless strokes, hitting the pale walls, the floorboards, the half-folded blanket at the edge of the sofa. It feels indecent somehow, the brightness - as if the world forgot to dim itself out of respect for the recently unshackled.

Jimin lies still for a long time, eyes open, trying to convince himself he's not dreaming. The air smells faintly of sea salt and coffee that's been left on too long. There's a low hum of distant traffic, someone laughing on the street below, and the cry of a gull so sharp it cuts through his chest.

It's all so normal that it feels wrong. His body doesn't know what to do with it. He moves slowly, barefoot on the wooden floor, half expecting to feel the cold linoleum of a backstage dressing room beneath him. He reaches for the wall instinctively, as though a camera lens might still be watching.

Yoongi is in the kitchen. Or what passes for one - a narrow counter, a chipped mug, the world's loudest kettle. He's standing in a slant of sunlight, hair sticking up in a way that would have horrified his manager. He looks over when Jimin appears, and something fragile flickers in his face - relief, disbelief, love held carefully behind a tired smile.

"Coffee?" he asks, already knowing the answer.

Jimin nods, hesitating at the doorway like a guest. Yoongi pours him a cup. The coffee is far too strong, burnt at the edges, but it's the first thing Jimin's been handed that wasn't ordered. He takes it anyway, both hands wrapped around the warmth.

They eat quietly - bread, fruit, something Yoongi found at the corner shop before dawn. Every sound feels magnified. The scrape of the knife against the plate. The ticking of an unseen clock. The muffled pulse of a car radio outside.

Jimin flinches once when someone laughs too loudly in the street. He looks down, ashamed of it.

Yoongi says nothing, only reaches across the table and brushes his knuckles against Jimin's wrist - a light, grounding touch. Jimin startles, then stills. The warmth spreads slow as recognition.

He dares a look up. Yoongi's gaze is steady, unhurried, the kind that waits rather than demands. For a second, the world narrows to the space between them - two cups of coffee cooling, a thread of sunlight cutting across the table, and the memory of every moment they weren't allowed to touch.

"It's so loud when nobody's watching," Jimin murmurs at last, half to himself.

Yoongi tilts his head. "That's what living sounds like."

Jimin exhales, the faintest tremor in his breath. "It's too much."

"I know." Yoongi's voice is rough, tender around the edges. "But you'll get used to it. I'll help you."

There's a silence then - not the heavy kind that used to hang between them when words were forbidden, but a softer, breathing kind. Jimin looks at Yoongi's hands, the faint scars on his knuckles, the way they still shake slightly from sleepless nights and held-in fear. He reaches out and covers one with his own.

The touch is small - tentative, almost fragile - but it's the kind of contact that rewires everything. Jimin's fingers tremble against his skin, and Yoongi lets his thumb move in slow circles, grounding him, promising without language that this is real, this is safe, this is now.

When Jimin finally smiles - hesitant, exhausted, and luminous all at once - Yoongi leans in just enough for their foreheads to touch. No urgency. Just the quiet miracle of proximity.

"Too bright?" Yoongi whispers.

Jimin shakes his head faintly. "Maybe not enough yet."

The moment stretches, sunlight pooling around them like something newly earned. The clock ticks on. Outside, the world keeps moving, indifferent and alive. Inside the small kitchen, time stands still long enough for them to remember what gentleness feels like.