mall elves | yoonmin

december 4th.

"Hey. Hey, Mr. Grinch."

Yoongi slowly comes to as he hears someone's loud voice calling to him, and he feels like he's hungover when his eyelids ascend and light barges into view.

"Ebenezer Scrooge!"

Right now his vision only shows him the floor and the surface of a table with a few unopened Hot Wheels toys on it, but he doesn't have to see the owner of that voice to know who it is.

"If you could move your bowling ball of a head, that'd be great," Jimin announces at an unnecessary volume just inches away from Yoongi's ear, and he grunts, shifting as he feels what he's pretty sure is a finger poking him in the neck.

He raises his head and blinks groggily, and a blurry image of Jimin forms above. The dramatic blonde is hovering over him, hands on his hips as if he has something to be upset about. If he were more awake, Yoongi would be pissed. "What d'you want?" he mumbles, not possessing the energy to be rude.

"For you to get off those name tags," Jimin orders. "I'm supposed to hand them out to kids, but I can't if you won't move the hell over."

Yoongi just yawns and rubs his eyes. "Damn, you're in a bad mood today. It's like your pants are too tight or something," he jokes, grinning tiredly to himself.

Jimin clenches his fists at his sides as he realizes what he's talking about. "I wouldn't be teasing me right now. You were sleeping on the job," he shoots back, reaching over and yanking the name tags out from under Yoongi's chest, all the while trying not to touch him. "And I'm not gonna tell Namjoon. I'm trying to be nice."

This makes Yoongi chuckle, bitterly enough that Jimin thinks calling him the Grinch was appropriate.

"Doesn't matter, sugar plum. Joon's known me longer than you, so I don't think he'd be too pleased to hear you were bullying me on my break," he expresses, his face sinking into the glare of someone who's been unfairly denied sleep, and that's the moment that Jimin realizes he fucked up.

He freezes, because once again, Yoongi's gotten the best of him. Yup. Any way you look at it, I'm the one in the wrong here.

Goddamnit.

"Whatever," he hisses back after a pause, a little embarrassed but trying to recover. "You don't need my help fucking up. You'll probably sleep until six on your own."

"That's fantastic, Jimin. Why are you still here?"

Jimin smiles. "You're right. I'm leaving," he announces, turning his back on him and throwing a peace sign as he walks away.

Yoongi chuckles. What an asshole.

If he were more naive than he is, Yoongi may have thought that if he avoided Jimin, at least for the rest of the day, things would just be fine. But since he isn't, he does get the feeling that somehow, the blonde will find a way to haunt him even from afar. And it turns out, he's right.

As the day goes on, he starts to notice that everyone seems to be avoiding him. And not just avoiding eye contact, or avoiding getting within a foot of him. People are escaping from him like their life depends on it.

There's one instance soon after his break is over in which he's walking down an aisle, and he sees Taehyung - who will literally chat anyone's ear off - appear at the end, starting to walk towards him until he realizes who's there and turns all the way back around to duck out of the aisle just so he can get away from him.

And Yoongi's not sure exactly what happened, but he's got a pretty damn good guess whose fault it is.

So, that freezing, cloudy afternoon as he's restocking a shelf of Legos, he makes a decision.

If Park Jimin wants to play this game, then fine.

Because there's about to be two players.