a yoongi x childhood best friends to lovers story [ongoing]
chef!yoongi x korean!f!doctor!reader | mdni 18+
cw: fluff, angst, smut, reader is korean for story's sake, warnings stated in each chapter no matter what
synopsis »» Your friendship always made sense to you and those around you. It wasn’t difficult when both your parents grew up together as best friends too. Your moms always used to refer to your friendship as being written in the stars, whereas your dads believed it impossible for you two, being girl and boy, to be best friends. Your mothers constantly remind them how wrong they’ve been to believe that.
you like because, you love despite part nine [together] - myg | mdni 18+
together
chef!yoongi x korean!f!doctor!reader | mdni 18+
summary »» Your friendship always made sense to you and those around you. It wasn’t difficult when both your parents grew up together as best friends too. Your moms always used to refer to your friendship as being written in the stars, whereas your dads believed it impossible for you two, being girl and boy, to be best friends. Your mothers constantly remind them how wrong they’ve been to believe that. Or were they?
cw »» sweet words, SMUT, oral sex m to f, unprotected sex (please wrap it before you tap it, don't be like these two), p in v, fingering, kissing, teasing (our girl is cheeky), two anxious friends figuring out dating, lots of tenderness, let me know if I missed anything
wc »» 8.2k
author’s note »» HIII...I'm back? I'm so sorry it took so long, but life really wasn't nice to me and it's still a work in progress but I have a laptop and I managed to somewhat re-write the chapter again so, here I am. I really hope you enjoy! :D
Pants and gasps are all that bounces off the walls of Yoongi’s kitchen that morning.
And then there’s you, clinging to the counter like your life depended on it because for some reason, Yoongi made it his mission to make you orgasm first thing in the morning.
One leg draped over his shoulder, left hand tugging at his hair and one of his hands gently slid up beneath the hem of his shirt, the one you’re wearing, pushing it gently out of the way as he made slow work of his mouth against you.
The morning light was barely spilling through the curtains, casting the kitchen in a warm, golden glow when your fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee as you steadied yourself – the memory of last night still stealing your breath. The way he’d touched you, the way he whispered against your skin like every part of you mattered. Like he had been waiting his whole life to hold you like that.
So, imagine your surprise when Yoongi had sauntered in, the soft shuffle of his feet across the floor pulling you back in – hair tousled, eyes still heavy with sleep but brighter than you’ve seen them recently. It wasn’t long before his eyes danced up and down your figure, taking you in for a moment standing there in his shirt, legs bare and mug in hand. You recognized the quick quirk of his lazy, crooked smile – the one that always made your heart stutter.
And then, he beelined to you, hands warm and sure when he gripped your hips and eased you back against the counter, nudging your knees apart as he sunk to his knees.
“Yoongi—”
“Let me,” he murmured, voice rough with want but edged in tenderness.
And that’s how twenty minutes later you stood still at the counter, Yoongi on his knees with his head buried between your legs.
His hands steady your hips as his mouth finds you again and again, tasting you like he’s starved for it, like he’s been dreaming of this — of you — and now he gets to make the dream real.
You gasp, head tipping back, the forgotten coffee cooling on the counter behind you. His mouth moves with purpose and patience, drawing out every shiver, every breathless sound, until you’re clinging to him, body arching toward his mouth, his name falling from your lips in a broken whisper.
His tongue is gentle at your core, lapping at the wetness of your arousal and goodness – fuck – you are wet. Your skin is flush from his ministrations, his hands keeping you steady and unmoving – stopping you from any kind of pulling away. And he was a tease too, taking you to the edge and sucking on your clit to the point of your head tilting all the way back before pulling back only to stare at you from his position, eyes dark with desire and pride. And when you met his eyes glaring, he’d gently lean forward to kiss the inside of your thigh before using two fingers to push inside of you and using his mouth on your clit – this time his eyes remained on you.
And when he finally tips you over the edge, you feel it everywhere, deep and consuming, leaving you weak and boneless. Your legs give out, sliding down to the floor where he catches you, arms wrapping around you as you laugh — soft and dazed, disbelieving.
“Oh my god, Yoongi…” You bury your face in his neck, the grin on your lips impossible to hide. “You’re my best friend.”
He just smiles against your skin, kissing your temple, heart pounding in time with yours. Like he’s been waiting forever for this. And now you’re his.
You’re still catching your breath, limbs tangled with his on the kitchen floor, the soft morning light wrapping around you both like a secret. Your heart is racing, but it’s slowing now, lulled by the steady thump of his beneath your ear where your head rests against his chest.
Yoongi’s fingers trace lazy shapes along your spine, his other hand gently tucking a piece of your hair behind your ear. He shifts just enough to tilt your face up to his, his dark eyes soft and fond as they drink you in.
“You’re incredible,” he murmurs, lips ghosting over your forehead, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. His breath is warm, his voice thick with wonder, as if he still can’t believe this is real.
You giggle, still dizzy, still tingling everywhere he touched you. “I can taste myself on you,” you whisper, cheeks heating as you grin, the kind of grin you can’t stop, the kind that comes from being loved like this — so deeply, so completely.
Yoongi chuckles low, the sound vibrating against your skin. “Good,” he says, lips brushing yours again, slow and lingering, letting you taste what he gave you. The kiss deepens, sweet but messy, both of you smiling into it between soft gasps and quiet laughter, like you’re both drunk on the morning, on each other.
Your fingers find their way into his hair again, tugging gently as you kiss him back, savoring the way he feels, the way he tastes, the way his mouth moves with yours like he belongs there — like he always has.
When you finally part for air, foreheads resting together, he sighs, thumb tracing your cheek. “I don’t ever want to stop kissing you.”
“Then don’t,” you whisper, voice trembling with happiness.
And so he doesn’t — pressing his lips to yours again, slow and sweet, while the world outside your kitchen window keeps turning, but in here, it’s just you and him, wrapped up in something that feels endless.
Yoongi locks eyes with you, unable to stop himself, “We need to talk about that ‘best friend’ stuff…”
It makes you laugh, “Grab me coffee?”
He snorts, “Wow…”
“Yoongi…I need coffee. An orgasm is really nice and welcomed anytime but I want my coffee…”
He leans in, stealing a peck that turns into a kiss, “Coffee, coming in…” he reluctantly stands up with a grunt as you watch him get you a fresh mug. When he sits himself down next to you this time, you take the mug from him and he looks at you taking a careful sip of the dark liquid. He hums, satisfied as you glance at him.
“So, what about that ‘best friend’ stuff?”
Yoongi rubs the back of his neck, “Well, is that all that is?”
Silence hangs heavy for a moment.
Because yes, he confessed and you did so right back too. But in the heat of everything, did that truth remain or was it fear-induced confessions that were suddenly taken back.
“Did you mean what you said yesterday?” you ask, your voice quieter than you want it to be. “That you’re in love with me?”
Yoongi looks at you for a moment, like he’s trying to figure out which part of the question hurts him more — that you asked, or that you sound afraid of the answer.
His palm finds your cheek, warm and gentle, and he draws you closer.
His eyes search yours for doubt.
You don’t find any in his.
Because Yoongi has always been sure of you. Of everything when it comes to you.
Even now.
“I did,” he says. “I do.” His thumb brushes over your cheekbone. “I mean it. I’m in love with you.”
His voice is so calm, so steady, it might have unsettled you if you didn’t know him so well.
But you do.
“For how long?”
Yoongi lets out a heavy sigh, like the answer has been sitting inside his chest for years and has only just now been given permission to breathe.
“I should probably say an embarrassing amount of time,” he admits. “But I’m not embarrassed by how long I’ve loved you.”
The words settle deep in your ribcage.
“I’m more embarrassed by how long it took me to finally admit it.”
You feel him watching you as you try to process it.
It should shock you. It should make you rethink every look, every touch, every quiet moment shared over years of friendship.
But it doesn’t.
Because there has always been love between you and Yoongi. A deep, familiar kind of love. The kind you trusted without ever needing to name it.
It simply never occurred to you that it could become this.
That one day you’d be sitting here after a morning spent tangled up with your very best friend, hearing him confess that he’s in love with you.
And knowing, with a terrifying kind of certainty, that you feel the same.
You remember the first time it might have crossed your mind that you liked him. Long before the dinner that changed everything. Back in high school, of course, because apparently your heart had always been dramatic.
But it had been a crush then.
Simple. Small. Innocent.
Unlike now.
There is no innocence left here. Not after this morning. Not after the way he touched you, kissed you, looked at you like you were something he had spent years wanting and was still afraid to hold too tightly.
Now, it’s real.
Love in its barest form. Honest. Vulnerable. A little frightening.
Beautiful, too.
Yoongi had always loved you. You knew that. But somewhere between last night and this morning, the definition changed.
And somehow, what you thought would scare you…
doesn’t.
“There’s nothing wrong with how long it took,” you say softly. “I mean, I don’t think we would’ve worked back then.”
“No?”
You inhale, trying to gather the right words. “Well… yes and no. It’s more complicated than that, but…”
You let the sentence trail off.
Yoongi doesn’t push. His hand slips from your cheek to your thigh, his fingers tracing the small scar there with absentminded tenderness.
“I like us now,” he says.
The smile breaks across your face before you can stop it.
You bite your lip and glance away, trying to hide it, but Yoongi catches your hand and tugs gently until you look back at him.
He’s watching you carefully. Softly. Like he doesn’t want to miss a single thing.
Your eyes meet.
And before you can overthink it, you lean in and kiss him.
Quickly.
A peck. Barely there.
But when you start to pull away, his free hand slides to the back of your head, keeping you close. His mouth finds yours again, slower this time, deeper, parting your lips with the kind of patience that makes your whole body go warm.
You whimper into him.
And Yoongi kisses you like he’s been waiting years to hear it.
A whimper.
Apparently, that’s something you do now.
Whimper when you’re kissed.
Or maybe that’s just a Yoongi thing.
You put your mug down on the floor without looking, too distracted by the way his mouth moves against yours, by the warmth of his hands drawing you closer. You shift toward him, letting your knees settle on either side of his hips until you’re straddling him, close enough that there’s no space left to pretend this is anything other than exactly what it is.
Want.
Mutual, obvious, breath-stealing want.
Both of you reach between your bodies at the same time.
You freeze.
Then Yoongi huffs a laugh, and the sound breaks something nervous and fluttering loose inside you. You drop your forehead against his, laughing too, your breath mingling with his.
“Sorry,” you murmur.
His hands still at your waist.
“Don’t,” he says, voice low but amused. “Don’t ever apologize for wanting me.”
Your cheeks warm instantly under his gaze, but you lift your chin anyway.
“Oh,” you say, trying and failing to sound composed. “Okay. Then I’m not sorry for wanting you.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Only for a moment.
Then Yoongi closes the distance again, kissing you softer this time, slower. Like he’s answering you without words. Like he wants you to feel how much he means it.
His hand slips lower, careful and patient, stopping just short of where you ache for him most.
He pulls back enough to look at you.
“Can I?”
Your breath catches.
His hand is still between you, warm against the inside of your thigh, and the question alone sends heat rushing through you. You shift slightly in his lap, not on purpose exactly, but enough that his eyes darken.
“Mhm,” you manage, nodding.
But he doesn’t move.
Of course he doesn’t.
Because this is Yoongi.
Because he’ll tease you, kiss you senseless, make you forget your own name — but he won’t take a single thing you haven’t clearly given him.
You blink yourself out of the haze.
“Oh,” you breathe, almost laughing at yourself. “Yes. Yes, please.”
His mouth curves.
“Please?”
Your face burns. Fully, horribly, tomato-level red.
“Yoongi.”
His grin deepens, but his eyes stay soft.
You swallow, your hands curling against his shoulders.
“Just…” Your voice comes out smaller than expected, but not uncertain. Never uncertain. “Touch me.”
For a second, all he does is look at you.
Then he kisses the corner of your mouth, gentle enough to undo you.
“Okay,” he whispers.
And somehow, that one word feels more intimate than anything else.
Two of his fingers slip inside of you, a soft gasp heard as you arch your back and bite your bottom lip. When they’re buried deep inside, you begin rolling your hips against them and glance down to the space between you. He’s not moving his hand at all and when you look at him, he’s watching you move over him.
“Yoongi…” you whine.
“Mhm?”
“Please?”
He’s controlling his breathing, voice rough, “I like watching you…”
You grab his shoulders, seeking more of him as your hips roll over his fingers, “Yoongi…”
Your begging goes straight through him and down to his groin, now hard as a rock. He can hardly imagine that this is his life now.
You. Him. Together like this.
Your eyes shut when he pulls them out, earning himself a sigh from you, “Really?”
But he’s not done touching you. He reaches between you two and when you realize what he’s doing, you reach down to help. A tangle of hands manage to lower his sweatpants low enough so you can sink on him and just like that, a smile stretches on your lips and your hips move.
Yoongi watches you carefully, pulling your face down to his and kissing you gently, keeping you held tight against his body while you search for more friction, more of him. It’s all warmth and wetness, sweat on your bodies as your shirts begin to cling to skin.
It’s not frantic. Things between you rarely ever are.
And that’s how you hoped it would be between Yoongi and you if there was ever a chance of this – whatever this was – happening. Slow. Steady.
Tender.
And even though both of you felt the spark and passion rising with every roll of your hips or with every kiss or touch, you never felt like there was any particular rush to achieve the climax.
When you come undone, your body goes limp against his chest and he holds you to him, one arm across your back and the other at the underside of your thigh. Your heart is hammering in your chest and you bet Yoongi probably feels it.
His back is against the lower kitchen cabinets, one arm wrapped around your waist, the other resting loosely over your thigh.
You’re still in his lap.
Still close.
Too close, maybe, if either of you were capable of feeling embarrassed right now. But you aren’t. Not really. Not with his heartbeat steady beneath your palm and his breath still warm against your skin.
The kitchen is quiet around you, almost comically normal in comparison. The mug you abandoned sits somewhere nearby on the floor. One of the cabinet handles presses awkwardly into Yoongi’s shoulder, but he doesn’t complain. He just keeps holding you like moving would be the greater discomfort.
When you finally lift your head, his eyes are already on you.
His voice comes out hoarse.
“You okay?”
It’s such a simple question, but the way he asks it makes your chest ache. Soft. Careful. Like he’s checking for more than just your body. Like he needs to know your heart made it through, too.
You breathe out a quiet laugh, your fingers brushing against the collar of his shirt.
“I’m great.”
His expression loosens, relief flickering through the tenderness already there.
“Yeah?”
You nod, smiling before you can stop yourself.
“Yeah.”
For a moment, neither of you says anything.
Your body still feels warm and heavy, your thoughts slow around the edges. Everything is quiet except for your breathing, the faint hum of the refrigerator, the small sounds of him shifting beneath you to hold you better.
It should feel ridiculous, sitting half-dressed on the kitchen floor with your best friend — your best friend, who is no longer only that — pressed against the cabinets like this.
And maybe it is ridiculous.
But it’s also perfect.
Your hands rise to his face, palms settling gently against his cheeks. Yoongi’s eyes soften immediately, and he leans into your touch like he’s been waiting for it.
You kiss him.
Not with urgency this time. Not with all the hunger that got you here.
Just softly.
Because you can.
Because he’s here beneath you, solid and warm and looking at you like you’re something precious.
When you pull back, he stays close. His nose brushes yours, his hands smoothing slowly over your back.
Then he looks at you with so much tenderness it nearly overwhelms you all over again.
“I love you.”
The words are quiet, but they fill the whole kitchen.
They settle between the cabinets, against the tile, into every ordinary corner of the room until nothing about it feels ordinary anymore.
You huff the gentlest laugh, emotion swelling in your chest until it almost hurts. You lean your forehead against his and close your eyes.
“I love you, too.”
Yoongi exhales softly, like the words have undone him in a way nothing else could.
His arms tighten around you. Careful. Certain.
You sink into him, letting your face tuck against the side of his neck as he presses a slow kiss to your temple.
Everything still feels like too much.
Your heartbeat. His hands. The quiet kitchen. The mug on the floor. The warmth of his body beneath yours. The fact that this is Yoongi, and you are in his lap, and somehow the whole shape of your life has shifted while sitting against the cabinets.
But it’s a good kind of too much.
The kind that doesn’t ask you to run.
The kind that lets you stay.
And when Yoongi’s fingers trace softly along your spine, you know he’ll let you.
For as long as you want.
By midafternoon, the hospital had settled into its usual rhythm.
The low murmur of voices at the nurses’ station. The steady beeping of monitors from half-open rooms. The squeak of rubber soles against polished floors. Somewhere down the hall, a patient laughed at something a nurse said, the sound soft and brief before being swallowed by the fluorescent hum overhead.
It was all familiar. Ordinary.
Usually, that familiarity grounded you.
Today, it barely touched you at all.
You stood outside a patient’s room with a tablet in your hand, reading through the same set of labs for the third time and absorbing none of it. The numbers were there. The notes were there. Your own prior assessment was there, written in the careful, clinical language you knew as well as breathing.
But your mind kept slipping away.
Back to the kitchen floor.
Back to Yoongi sitting against the lower cabinets, his arms around you, his voice still rough when he asked if you were okay. Back to the warmth of his hands, the quiet press of his mouth to your temple, the way he had looked at you afterward — not uncertain, not afraid, but overwhelmed in the same gentle way you were.
Like something between you had finally been named, and neither of you knew what to do with the relief of it.
You blinked down at the screen.
The chart blurred for a second before coming back into focus.
It wasn’t that you didn’t want to work. Not exactly. You knew how to compartmentalize. You had spent years learning how to tuck exhaustion, fear, grief, hunger, and heartbreak neatly behind your ribs so you could walk into a room and be useful. Medicine demanded that kind of discipline. It trained it into you until focus became less of a choice and more of an instinct.
But this was different.
This was not grief or fear or exhaustion.
This was happiness.
Bright, impossible, inconvenient happiness.
And somehow it was the thing that made you useless.
You exhaled slowly and locked the tablet, letting it rest against your chest for a moment. The plastic edge pressed into your white coat. Your badge swung lightly against your ribs when you shifted, the photo on it a composed version of yourself you barely recognized right then.
That woman looked capable.
That woman looked like she knew exactly where she was and what she was doing.
You, meanwhile, were standing in the hallway of a hospital thinking about the way Min Yoongi had whispered, I love you, like it was not a confession anymore but a truth he was finally allowed to say out loud.
Your throat tightened.
You hated how easily the memory undid you. Hated and loved it, both at once.
Because it should have scared you more. The change. The risk. The fact that your best friend had become something else over the course of a night and a morning, and now every ordinary part of your life seemed altered by it. The hospital corridor. The tablet in your hands. The half-finished coffee going cold somewhere at the station.
Everything looked the same.
Nothing felt the same.
You unlocked the tablet again, determined this time.
Vitals. Labs. Imaging. Medication adjustments.
You forced yourself through each line slowly, clinging to the structure of it. The patient in room 412 had a fever trending down. White count improving. Pain better controlled overnight. You made a note to reassess after rounds, then paused with your thumb hovering over the screen as another memory surfaced without permission.
Yoongi’s forehead resting against yours.
His breath warming your lips.
The careful way he had held you, as if tenderness itself required concentration.
You closed your eyes for half a second.
Ridiculous.
Completely ridiculous.
You were a doctor. You had handled codes, emergencies, impossible conversations in quiet family rooms. You had told people terrible things and stayed steady through the breaking of them. You had learned to keep your voice even when there was blood on your shoes and panic in the air.
And yet one man with soft eyes and a hoarse voice had ruined your ability to read.
Your phone buzzed in your coat pocket.
The sound was small, almost swallowed by the corridor noise, but your body reacted before your mind caught up. Your hand was already reaching for it, already turning slightly away from the flow of people in the hall.
Yoongi.
Just his name on the screen was enough to make your chest warm.
You opened the message.
Yoong~ 🍊[3:38PM]:You eat yet?
Three words.
No mention of what had happened. No attempt to pull you back into the intensity of the morning. Just a simple question, ordinary enough that it should not have affected you the way it did.
But it did.
Because it was him.
Because love, apparently, could look like confession in the morning and concern by afternoon. It could sit on the kitchen floor with its heart exposed, then reappear hours later in the shape of a text asking whether you had remembered to feed yourself.
You stared at the message until your vision softened.
Then you typed back.
You [3:38PM]: I’m at work.
His reply came almost immediately.
Yoong~ 🍊[3:39PM]: Didn’t ask where you were.
A laugh rose in your chest, quiet and helpless. You pressed your lips together to hold it in, glancing down the hall as if someone might catch you being this embarrassingly affected by a message about lunch.
You [3:40PM]: I had coffee?
There was a pause.
Then:
Yoong~ 🍊[3:41PM]: That’s not food.
You could hear his voice so clearly that it ached.
The dry certainty of it. The mild scolding. The affection tucked underneath, unshowy and impossible to miss if you knew where to look.
And you did.
You knew him.
Maybe that was the part that overwhelmed you most. Not that he loved you, though that was still enough to make your heart stumble. Not even that you loved him back. But that the love had not arrived like a stranger. It had been there all along, threaded through years of knowing each other too well.
It had simply changed shape.
Your phone buzzed again.
Yoong~ 🍊[3:42PM]: Eat something. Please?
That please settled somewhere soft inside you.
You swallowed, your thumb hovering over the keyboard.
For a moment, you let yourself imagine him on the other end. Wherever he was now, phone in hand, probably pretending this was casual. Probably unaware that a simple message had made you stop in the middle of a hospital hallway and feel, absurdly, like crying.
Not from sadness.
From the fullness of it.
From the strange, tender relief of being loved in ways both enormous and small.
You typed.
You [3:44PM]: Bossy much?
His answer came back quickly.
Yoong~ 🍊[3:46PM]: Just eat, yeah? Please? Do I have to beg?
You typed back.
You [3:46PM]: Min Yoongi begging? I won’t say no 😉
You expected an answer. And the bubbles came, then went, then came again and then nothing.
This time, you did laugh.
Softly. Briefly. Enough that a passing nurse glanced at you with mild curiosity before continuing down the hall.
You locked your phone and slipped it back into your pocket, but the warmth remained. It followed you as you picked up the tablet again, as you stepped into the next patient’s room, as you smiled and introduced yourself with a steadiness that felt practiced but not false.
The work came back to you, slowly.
One detail at a time.
The patient’s voice. The numbers on the monitor. The cool metal of your stethoscope between your fingers. The questions you knew to ask. The answers you knew how to listen for.
You were still distracted. Still carrying the morning beneath your skin like a secret. Still aware, in some quiet part of yourself, that your life had tilted on its axis while sitting on the kitchen floor with Yoongi’s arms around you.
But the overwhelm had softened.
It was still there, yes.
In your chest. In your hands. In the almost-smile you had to keep biting back.
But it no longer felt like something pulling you away from yourself.
It felt like something waiting for you.
Something you could return to after rounds, after charting, after the long fluorescent hours of the day had finally ended.
A text in your pocket.
A man who loved you.
A home that would not feel the same when you walked back into it.
You bent over the chart, listening as your patient spoke, and nodded at the right moments. Your focus sharpened by degrees, the familiar rhythm of care gathering around you again.
Still, beneath it all, Yoongi stayed.
By the time your shift ended, the hospital had quieted into its late-night rhythm.
Not silence. Never that. There were still monitors sounding from behind half-closed doors, still soft voices at the nurses’ station, still the distant roll of wheels over linoleum. But the day’s urgency had thinned, leaving behind something dimmer and more tired, a kind of practiced hush that belonged only to hospitals after midnight.
You moved through it slowly.
Your body ached in places you had stopped naming hours ago. Your shoulders were stiff from tension, your feet sore inside shoes that had been comfortable at the beginning of the day and unforgivable by the end of it. Under the fluorescent lights, everything felt too bright and too far away.
You changed out of your coat, gathered your things, and checked your phone only once before leaving.
No new messages.
Still, his name lingered there from earlier, threaded through the day in small, ordinary ways.
Eat something.
Drink water.
You alive?
Nothing dramatic. Nothing that tried to pull you back into the morning. But that had almost made it worse. The simplicity of it. The way he had fit himself into the margins of your shift so easily, as if loving you had not disrupted him at all but merely given him somewhere new to place all the care he had already been carrying.
Outside, the air was cold enough to make you inhale sharply.
The staff entrance slid closed behind you with a quiet mechanical sound, sealing the hospital at your back. You stood for a moment beneath the harsh spill of light over the doors, your bag hanging from your shoulder, your thoughts slow and blurred with exhaustion.
Then you saw him.
Yoongi stood near the curb, leaning against his car with his hands in his jacket pockets. The streetlight above him softened the dark of his hair and cast the rest of him in shadow. He looked up as soon as you stepped outside, as though he had been watching the doors the entire time.
Something inside you shifted.
Not surprise, exactly. Some part of you had expected him, maybe, in the foolish hidden place where hope collected before you were ready to admit to it. But expectation did nothing to soften the sight of him there. Waiting. Quiet. Patient.
For you.
You stopped walking.
Across the short stretch of pavement, Yoongi straightened from the car.
Neither of you said anything.
It should have been easy. You had known him for years. You had greeted him in every possible state — half-asleep, irritated, laughing, crying, drunk on exhaustion, furious after bad days, bright with good ones. You had never needed to think about how to be around him.
But now the old ease had changed shape.
There was a tenderness between you that had not been there yesterday, or maybe it had been there all along and only now had become impossible to ignore. It made the space between you feel unfamiliar. Charged. Fragile in a way that frightened you because you wanted it so much.
You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder, suddenly aware of your hands, your mouth, the tiredness in your face.
Yoongi seemed no more certain than you were.
He looked at you for one long moment, his expression soft and unreadable. Then, as if deciding uncertainty had lasted long enough, he pushed away from the car and came toward you.
The sound of his footsteps was quiet against the pavement.
You stayed where you were.
By the time he reached you, your heart was beating too quickly for someone so tired. He stopped close, close enough that the warmth of him reached you despite the cold.
“Hey,” he said.
The word was barely more than breath.
“Hey,” you answered.
There it was again. That small, strange pause. The place where yesterday there would have been a joke, a casual touch, an easy complaint about your shift. The place where both of you seemed to be measuring what was allowed now, what had changed, what had always been waiting underneath.
Yoongi’s gaze flicked down to your mouth.
Your breath caught before you could stop it.
He noticed. Of course he did.
Something softened in his face then, and without saying anything more, he lifted a hand to your cheek.
His palm was warm.
He leaned in slowly enough that you could have moved away.
You didn’t.
His mouth touched yours in the gentlest kiss.
There was no urgency in it. No hunger. None of the desperation that had carried you through the morning. It was quieter than that. Softer. A careful press of lips beneath the hospital lights, as though he were greeting you in the only way that made sense now.
As though he had been waiting all day to say, without words, there you are.
Your eyes closed.
For a moment, the hospital fell away. The ache in your feet, the stiffness in your back, the weight of the shift, the hours spent holding yourself together for other people — all of it loosened beneath the warmth of his mouth.
When he pulled back, he stayed close.
His thumb brushed once over your cheek, so lightly you might have imagined it if you hadn’t felt the tenderness of it everywhere.
“You’re here,” you said.
It was not what you meant to say. It was too obvious, too small for the feeling crowding your chest.
But Yoongi only looked at you, his mouth curving faintly.
“I’m here.”
You swallowed.
“You didn’t have to be.”
“I know.”
That was all.
No explanation. No teasing. No attempt to make the moment smaller than it was.
He knew he did not have to come.
He had come anyway.
The realization settled into you slowly, almost painfully. After the long day, after the morning, after the confession that had changed the shape of everything, he was simply standing in front of you in the cold with his hand still near your face, looking at you as though showing up had been the easiest choice in the world.
Your eyes stung.
Yoongi saw it immediately.
His expression changed, concern moving through the softness.
“Hard shift?”
You nodded, blinking once.
“Long.”
He accepted the answer without asking for more than you could give. His hand dropped from your cheek, but only so he could reach for the bag on your shoulder.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s go home.”
Home.
The word should have been simple.
It was not.
You let him take the bag. Let his fingers brush yours. Let yourself follow him toward the car because you were too tired to pretend you did not need exactly this — his quiet, his steadiness, the careful way he slowed his steps to match yours.
At the passenger door, he opened it for you.
The interior of the car was warm, the faint scent of food lingering in the air. You paused before getting in, looking at him.
He looked almost embarrassed by your attention.
“I brought you something,” he said. “In case you didn’t eat.”
The day had left you too worn down for composure. The tenderness of it moved through you before you could guard against it.
“Yoongi.”
His eyes lifted to yours.
“What?”
You shook your head, because there was no simple way to say what it meant. That he had waited. That he had thought of you. That he had kissed you hello as though it was already something you were allowed to expect. That the ordinary care felt more intimate than anything else, because it did not ask to be witnessed. It simply existed.
“Nothing,” you whispered.
He seemed to understand anyway.
Or maybe he only decided not to make you explain.
He leaned in and pressed a kiss to your forehead. It lingered there, warm and quiet, and your eyes closed again without permission.
“Hi,” he murmured, belated and soft.
A tired laugh slipped out of you.
“Hi.”
When you sat down, your body sank into the seat with immediate gratitude. Yoongi set your bag at your feet, then reached across you for the seatbelt. His movements were careful, unhurried. The back of his hand brushed your shoulder as he pulled the belt across your chest and clicked it into place.
The gesture should not have undone you.
It nearly did.
Then he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
You watched him through the windshield, the hospital lights catching briefly on his face before he disappeared from view. A moment later, he settled into the seat beside you, bringing the cold in with him. The car door shut. The world narrowed to the soft hum of the engine, the warmth from the vents, the dim glow of the dashboard.
For the first time all day, no one needed anything from you.
No one was asking for answers. No one was waiting for you to be steady. No one was looking to you to decide what happened next.
Yoongi glanced over before pulling away from the curb.
“You okay?”
The question was familiar now.
Still careful.
Still his.
You turned your head against the seat to look at him. He was watching you with that quiet attention that made it impossible to lie and unnecessary to perform.
Your body was exhausted. Your heart was full. Everything still felt new enough to frighten you, tender enough to bruise.
But beneath all of it, there was warmth.
There was him.
You breathed out softly.
“Yeah,” you said. “I’m good.”
Yoongi held your gaze for another second, as if making sure. Then he nodded once and pulled away from the hospital.
You watched the building recede in the side mirror, bright and tireless against the dark. Your shift was over. The night stretched ahead, quiet and cold, and the food he had brought sat warm somewhere between you.
Beside you, Yoongi drove with one hand on the wheel.
After a while, his other hand found yours in the dark.
No hesitation this time.
You let your fingers close around his.
And for the first time all day, you stopped trying to hold yourself together.
The food Yoongi had brought was nothing elaborate, but it was warm, and that alone felt like a kind of mercy. You ate slowly at his small table, the exhaustion of the shift catching up to you all at once, turning your limbs heavy and your thoughts soft at the edges. Yoongi sat across from you without making a show of watching, though you knew he noticed every pause, every too-long blink, every time your hand stilled around your fork.
He asked about work in pieces. Never in a way that made you feel as though you had to gather yourself into something coherent before answering.
So you told him in pieces too.
A difficult patient. A consult that took too long. The way your feet had started aching three hours before your shift actually ended. A nurse who had made you laugh when you were too tired to do anything but lean against the counter and pretend the chart in your hand still made sense.
Yoongi listened the way he always did, with his quiet turned fully toward you.
Afterward, he handed you a towel and one of his shirts, saying only, “Shower’s yours,” before taking your plate to the sink.
The simplicity of it nearly broke you.
Not because it was grand. It wasn’t. That was the danger of it. The ordinary care. The way he had folded you into his space as if there had always been room for you there.
It was so you two.
Now, steam still clung faintly to your skin as you stood in the doorway of his bedroom.
The apartment was dim behind you, the bathroom light off, the hallway dark. Only the lamp beside his bed was on, casting the room in a soft amber glow. Outside the window, the city had gone mostly quiet. The occasional sweep of headlights passed over the wall and disappeared again.
Yoongi was already in bed, sitting against the pillows with the blanket pulled loosely over his lap. His hair was slightly damp, his face bare with tiredness. He looked up when you came in, and whatever ease you had managed to carry from the bathroom faltered beneath the gentleness of his attention.
You had been in this room before. The night before even.
That was the strange thing.
You had fallen asleep here after long nights and bad days, had woken to the smell of coffee from the kitchen, had borrowed clothes and never returned them.
There was nothing unfamiliar about Yoongi’s bedroom.
And yet you stood there in his shirt, bare-legged and newly shy, as if you had never crossed the threshold before.
He only watched you, his expression soft in a way that made your chest tighten.
You moved toward him slowly. The floor was cool under your feet, the hem of his shirt brushing against your thighs. When you reached the bed, you climbed onto it with careful hands and knees, the mattress dipping under your weight.
It felt absurd, being timid now.
After the kitchen floor. After the hospital curb. After his mouth against yours in the cold and his hand closing around yours in the dark of the car.
But this was different.
There was no urgency here to hide behind. No hunger strong enough to silence the nerves. No teasing, no interruption, no shift waiting to pull you away before either of you had to look too closely at what had happened.
There was only the quiet room.
Only Yoongi.
Only the fact that you wanted to crawl into his arms and were suddenly afraid of how much.
You stopped just close enough for him to reach you.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
His gaze moved over your face, not searching for reluctance exactly, but for something close to it. A shadow. A hesitation. Anything you might not say aloud. You knew that look. You had seen it earlier, and before that in a hundred other forms over the years. Yoongi had always known how to be careful with you.
The difference now was that it made you want to cry.
He lifted his hand.
Slowly.
His palm settled against your cheek, warm and steady, and your eyes closed before you could help it.
The breath he let out was quiet enough that you almost missed it.
Then his other hand came up too, cupping your face as if he needed both hands for the task of holding you there. His thumbs brushed softly along your cheeks. The touch was so gentle it hurt more than anything rougher could have.
You opened your eyes.
Yoongi was closer now, or maybe you had leaned in without realizing. His face was inches from yours, his expression stripped of all its usual restraint. There was want there, yes, but not the kind that frightened you. Not the kind that asked to be answered quickly.
This was quieter.
More careful.
More terrifying for it.
He drew you toward him, and you went.
Your hand found his chest as you settled against him, fingers spreading over the soft fabric of his shirt. Beneath your palm, his heartbeat was steady enough to comfort you and uneven enough to tell the truth.
He was nervous too. That realization steadied something in you.
Yoongi rested his forehead against yours.
Then his voice came low, almost rough from the hour.
“I want this.”
Your breath caught as his thumbs moved over your cheeks again, a slow, grounding touch.
“I want you,” he whispered. “However slow or careful we need to be…”
He paused.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“But I want you.”
The words settled into the room without disturbing its stillness.
You looked at him, unable for a moment to answer. Not because you didn’t know what to say, but because you knew too much. Because there were too many feelings crowding your chest at once, too much relief and fear and tenderness tangled together until speech felt clumsy.
He looked scared.
Not of you. Not of wanting you.
Of hurting what mattered.
Of reaching too quickly for something that had taken years to arrive.
You understood that fear because it lived in you too.
Your throat tightened. You lifted one hand from his chest and covered his where it rested against your cheek. Then you turned your face just enough to press a kiss into his palm.
Yoongi’s eyes softened.
“I want you too,” you said.
The words came out quietly, but they did not shake.
His breath left him slowly.
You leaned closer, your forehead brushing his again. “I don’t know how to do this,” you admitted. “Not yet. Not with us.”
“Me neither,” he said.
There was no hesitation in it.
A tired laugh escaped you, fragile and small, and the corner of his mouth lifted in answer.
“But I don’t want to go back,” he added.
Something in your chest ached.
“No,” you whispered. “Neither do I.”
His arms came around you then, drawing you into him with careful certainty. You let yourself fold against his chest, your face finding the familiar place near his neck. His shirt was soft beneath your cheek. His hand moved to the back of your head, fingers slipping gently into your damp hair.
For a while, nothing happened.
No more declarations. No rush toward anything else. No attempt to turn the quiet into something louder.
Only the bed beneath you, the blanket pulled slowly over your legs, the warmth of him surrounding you. And somehow, that was what undid you most.
The stillness.
The permission to stay inside it.
All day, you had held yourself together. Through patients and charts and fluorescent light. Through exhaustion. Through wanting him in the back of your mind while your hands did careful, necessary work. Through the shock of seeing him outside the hospital and the softness of his kiss under the lights.
Here, in his bed, with his hand moving slowly along your back, there was nothing left to perform.
No one needed you to be steady.
So you weren’t.
Your fingers curled lightly in his shirt.
“I’m scared,” you said after a while.
Yoongi’s hand paused only for a second before continuing.
“I know.”
You closed your eyes.
“Are you?”
“Yeah.”
The answer was immediate, and somehow that comforted you more than certainty would have.
You shifted enough to look up at him.
He met your eyes in the dim light. “You matter too much for me not to be.”
The words were quiet, almost simple.
They landed heavily anyway.
You reached up and brushed his hair away from his forehead, your fingers lingering there. The old familiarity rose beneath the newness, steady and unmistakable. He was still Yoongi. Still the person whose silence had never felt empty. Still the person who noticed when you forgot to eat, who showed up without needing to be asked, who knew how to sit beside your fear without trying to pry it open.
Maybe that was why this did not feel like losing what you had.
Maybe it felt like discovering how much more it could hold.
You leaned in and kissed him slowly.
Because you could now.
Because you wanted him to know you meant it too.
Yoongi kissed you back with the same careful softness, one hand cradling the back of your head while the other rested warm at your waist. He kissed you like there was time. Like the two of you did not have to solve every fear before morning.
When you pulled away, you stayed close enough for your breath to mix with his.
“We can go slow,” you whispered.
His eyes searched yours.
“Yeah?”
You nodded.
“But stay.”
The word left you smaller than intended.
Yoongi’s expression changed, something in it opening so completely that you had to look down for a second.
His hand found your chin and tilted your face back to him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
You believed him.
Not because it was simple. It wasn’t. Tomorrow would come with questions. With hesitation. With the strange work of learning how to be this new thing without breaking the old one. There would be moments that felt awkward, moments that scared you, moments where one of you would reach for the other and not know what to call it yet.
But tonight, there was his bed.
His hands.
His heartbeat beneath your palm.
Tonight, there was the quiet weight of his promise and the warmth of his body beside yours.
You settled back against him as he drew the blanket over both of you. The room seemed to exhale around you. Outside, a car passed and faded. Somewhere in the apartment, the pipes shifted softly in the walls.
Yoongi’s fingers traced slow, absent patterns along your arm.
Little by little, your body gave in to the exhaustion it had been holding back. Your breathing evened out. Your thoughts loosened. The last thing you felt before sleep began to gather at the edges of you was his mouth pressing gently to your forehead.
“I want this,” he whispered again.
Softer this time.
Like a truth he was letting himself keep.
You turned closer into him, your hand resting over his heart.
“So do I,” you murmured.
And just like that, you felt secure in the fact that Yoongi and you were going to be just fine.
As long as you were together.
author’s note »» PART NINE! I am so glad for those of you who have stuck around, waiting for this. I don't have an exact date of when I am gonna post the next one but I am hoping to be back to posting weekly or bi-weekly but I am back, wanting to finish this story up because I missed it! ENJOY!
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So, I found a laptop and while I think my next chapter is forever lost...I have begun re-writing it...so, bare with me...but a new chapter of « you like because, you love despite » is coming!!!!
I have been gone for a long while here and I'm so sorry. Life kinda got rough and when I thought I got a breather, it got rough again. Why does the world run on money, I'd love to know. But the last straw came about a month ago when my laptop broke and became absolutely obsolete. Meaning, like the idiot I am, I did not save the 11 pages for my next chapter for my most recent story.
So, I've hit a bit of a breaking point. I WILL be continuing "You like because, you love despite" eventually, once I've emotionally and mentally recovered from the loss of my next chapter and gathered the courage and inspiration for it again because BTS is back, Yoongi is back, and I'm too freaking excited.
In the meantime, while I'm trying to obtain a new laptop I am using my phone to write or using the library computers 😅 and I will be exploring other things to write as I try to see if I had saved any progress anywhere on my hard drive or somewhere else (I am crossing my fingers).
So, that's the update for now but fear not, I am gonna start to re-write the lost chapter in the hopes to be able to post it!
Thank you for all the support and the love on THE NIGHT SHIFT and YOU LIKE BECAUSE, YOU LOVE DESPITE, I would not be getting inspired to continue and come back if it weren't for all of you 🧡
