kicks ✓ || namgi || k.th

043: cuddle

chapter 43: cuddle
location: rapid city, south dakota

"Do you think they've figured it out yet?" Yoongi asked as they were driving the next day.

It was a horrible, rainy day, and therefore nobody was in the mood to do anything fun. Hoseok was taking a nap in the back, Jungkook, Seokjin, and Jimin were playing cards, and Taehyung and Sara were...God knew what they were doing, but Namjoon couldn't see them in the rear view mirror.

"I don't think so. Do you?"

"I think Jimin might have figured it out. But we know his story, too. So I know he won't go telling everybody else what's up." Yoongi's eyes trailed, watching the South Dakota landscape through the rain. There were mountains in the distance, not as tall as others he had seen but still standing out against the dark sky. It felt like they were watching his every move.

The mountains rolled on for miles and miles. The only signs Yoongi saw were for strange names. Crow Creek. Rosebud. Pine Ridge. Yoongi pulled out Hoseok's map and grabbed a flashlight to see by. Those were the names of Native American reservations, but the Rand McNally map didn't have more information than that. Was that a place where 'Indians' still lived? Yoongi conjured up images of Thanksgiving and feathers and other such things he had been taught at Columbia, things that probably weren't true.

There was a lot about the world that wasn't actually true. He made a note to ask Namjoon to look up what a "Native American reservation" was when they got to the nearest computer. Yoongi wasn't really good at the Internet; he preferred to be composing, rather than dealing with pages and people. His Agust D website, a long time ago, had been a simple template. If he was going to look something up on an Internet encyclopedia, he would have to have Namjoon do it for him.

"You know," he whispered.

"Hmm?"

"America isn't the paradise everybody makes it out to be. You come here, expecting to make your dreams come true, and to work as hard as you need to to make that a reality. But actually? It's like the bar is set twice or three times as high for people who aren't from here. It didn't feel that way at Columbia, because people from all over the world live in New York City. We're all trying to make it. But the white people with money, they sit in their fancy high-rises and they watch the rest of us duke it out. It makes me sick."

Namjoon paused for a moment, and then, "I have that power and prestige. Just mostly in Korea. Here, I have to talk to the right people, wear the right clothes, act a certain way, and my English has to be flawless. And even then, there are people who call me nasty words behind my back. There is no room for a Korean man in a white man's world. I wonder if my grandfather understood that, a long time ago."

"I feel bad."

"We can't fix it, Yoongi. We try to fix it and we get caught."

"I wish we could. Like -- here's something I don't understand. The map is saying there are Native American reservations around here. What does that even mean? I thought what they called Indians were a thing of the past."

Namjoon shook his head. Even he didn't know. "I'll have to look it up."

"Can you? I can't make heads or tails of computers."

"I know." Namjoon stuck his tongue out. "The computers go so fast here, Randa!"

"God damn." Yoongi shoved Namjoon in the shoulder, not wanting to interrupt his driving. "Shut up and drive."

Rapid City was a tourist town, not far from the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. Despite its small size, there were shops and small attractions everywhere, and it was very easy to find a hotel. The purple van blended right in with five other nearly identical purple vans, owned by church groups and summer school programs traveling to see Mount Rushmore.

"Should we go see Mount Rushmore?" Jungkook asked, ready to whip out his Duke Blue notebook.

Hoseok pulled up the Rand McNally map, seeing if it said anything about the iconic attraction. "It's the faces of four presidents carved into a mountainside. The carving is said to promote American ideals, so yeah, I guess if we want something American, we should go see it. Do you think we can blend in?"

"No offense," Yoongi muttered, "I'm kind of over carvings of white people in mountains that probably weren't theirs to carve into anyway."

Jungkook put his notebook away. "Oh."

"Yeah, it's an overpriced nowheresville," Sara quipped up from the back. "Reminds me of the Liberty Bell. Ugh! We can skip it."

Luckily the gang made their way over to a Holiday Inn with an indoor pool. Sara took care of the reservation, putting it under her name and producing the money. She was so calm and collected that the front desk didn't even ask for her ID. The boys ran upstairs, changed into swim trunks that they had bought, and spent hours in the pool area until their fingers turned into prunes. There had been a "Best Cannonball" competition, then they started a chicken fight with Jimin on Jungkook's shoulders and Yoongi on Namjoon's shoulders. In the end, the pool had closed early due to complaints about "grown men rough-housing."

"Someone is gonna report us," Taehyung whined as he gathered up everybody's towels, putting them in the bin to be washed. "Seven Asian men yelling in a language that's not English? We weren't thinking, guys."

"Yeah, except there was a group of twenty people from Hong Kong taking up the buffet earlier," Seokjin said. "We still have to breathe."

With that, they changed, quickly showered, and retired for the night. Namjoon woke up at four in the morning to find Yoongi at the hotel desk, light on, writing something on a piece of paper. "What are you doing?"

"Writing music."

"Really?" Namjoon looked over Yoongi's shoulder, but all he could see were some lines and symbols that he could not recognize. "Doesn't look like it to me."

"Oh, I just got some ideas for a melody down in my head, and I wanted to write them down. It could be years before I put them on a piano, but when I am sitting in front of a piano again, I'll be ready."

Namjoon put his hands on Yoongi's shoulders, massaging them lightly. "Is that why you called your piano your first love in all of your liner notes?"

Yoongi found himself blushing. "I mean...kind of? At first, it was, but then it had the double meaning of being both the piano and Randa -- and you."

Namjoon couldn't afford to kiss Yoongi with Hoseok sleeping right across from him. Instead, he brought his mouth to Yoongi's ear level and did the next best thing, whispering words that made Yoongi cry for the rest of the night.

"I love you."