Shotgun Dreams - MYG
Summary: He would give you everything if he could. He'd pluck the starts form the sky for you to hold just so he could see them dazzle your eye. You gave everything up, used your trust fund to build the life that you both have now, and got married in a courthouse instead of a chapel. Yoongi wishes he could give you more than what this life with him offers.
Genre: Established Relationship, slice of life, Fluff, very little angst.
Word Count: 7k
masterlist
Notes: A bit late, but happy birthday to the loml, the man, the legend, Min Yoongi. I almost didn't write this omg, I'm so busy with other projects and life (I got a part-time job!!) but I always make time for my pookie! I hope you have all been well!! p.s i proof read this like once T^T sorry for any mistakes in there <3
Yoongi lays awake in the dark, staring up at the ceiling with a heavy sleepiness that comes from sleeping for too long and still not getting enough rest. The weight of you curled against his side is a comfort, a warmth that makes him sigh into your hair as he shifts to press a kiss to the crown of your head.
The sun hasn’t risen yet, but through the thin curtains he could see the very beginning of dawn. A pale light in the distance as the sun makes its sure ascent. It’s far too early, but he knows your alarm would go off in a couple of minutes, and you’d drag your tired self up and out of bed and downstairs to prepare for the day.
Yoongi loves this life, and he loves you more than anything.
The air in the bedroom had a certain type of stillness, held in the suspended animation of the hour before dawn. Yoongi’s eyes tracked the slow crawl of shadows across the ceiling, his mind busy mapping the geometry of your lives, piece by piece, as he did every morning.
The weight of you, curled against his side, is the only thing keeping him tethered to the bed. Your breathing is soft, rhythmic, and entirely trusting. The kind of trust that makes his chest ache, a sharp, dull throb that he’d long since learned to live with. He adjusts his arm, his calloused palm lingering against the back of your head, his fingers tracing the curve of your hair. He thinks of the sprawling, estate you’d left behind, and then he looks at the thin, peeling wallpaper of the bedroom you both shared.
When you’d walked into his life, you hadn’t been an heiress to him. You were just a girl with a tired smile and a heart that felt like it was breaking under the weight of expectations. And when you’d handed him that stack of savings, your father’s future for you, converted into a down payment on this rotting, charming, middle-of-nowhere wreck; he’d felt the crushing gravity of it. That was nearly three years ago now. He’d stayed with you despite your father’s disapproval, and you'd hidden it for two years. When you were tired of your father trying to set you up with this young socialite elite and that, you’d left.
It wasn’t a pretty sight; your mother had begged you to stay, crying and clutching her silk handkerchief that they’d make it work with whatever you chose. Your father cursed Yoongi’s name to hell and back three times over; you’d packed what you could into a single suitcase, hopped into his mustang and never looked back.
He’d spent months on his knees in the backroom, turning that derelict storage space into a mechanic’s shop, his hands raw from prying up rusted floorboards and wrestling with corroded pipes. He’d done it because he was terrified. If he worked hard enough, if he fixed every leaky faucet and every grinding gear, maybe he could trick the universe into letting you stay here. Maybe he could make up for the fact that he was a nobody, a mechanic with nothing but a set of wrenches to his name, while you were the daughter of a man who could buy and sell the town you were currently hiding in.
He moves silently, untangling himself from the warmth of the sheets and you with the practiced grace of a man who didn’t want to wake the only good thing that had ever happened to him.
Downstairs, the diner was a cavern of cooling air and the faint, lingering scent of last night’s coffee. He moves through the darkness like a ghost, his boots making no sound on the worn linoleum. His gaze landed on the industrial-sized coffee maker, a temperamental piece of junk he’d spent three weekends re-wiring. It had a habit of clogging, a low-frequency hum that signaled it was about to give out.
Without thinking, he reached for the toolbox he always kept tucked beneath the counter, pulling out a screwdriver with his name etched into the handle in faded permanent marker. He kneels, the concrete floor cool against his shins, and went to work. He tightens a loose intake valve and flushes the draining system; his brow furrowed in concentration.
If he fixed this now, you wouldn’t have to fiddle with it when you stumbled down at six. You’d just hit the button, and the coffee would brew, and you’d have one less thing to worry about.
It was a small thing. An insignificant thing. But it was all he had to offer. Look, he thought, staring at the valve. Look at how hard I’m trying to keep the world from breaking for you. He tightened the screw, his jaw set, his heart heavy with the secret fear that one day, the machinery of your lives would stop running, and you’d finally realize that he was just a man with a rag and a wrench, and you’d look for the exit. He’d wake up and find the simple gold band of your wedding ring on the dresser and empty spaces where the pieces of you lived.
But for now, he just turns the valve, checks the pressure, and stands up, his knees popping in the quiet room. He wipes his hands on his jeans, leaving a fresh streak of dark oil against the denim, and listens to the silence of the house.
The coffee machine hisses a familiar, rhythmic protest that Yoongi has grown to recognize as clearly as his own heartbeat. Once the dark, rich scent begins to drift through the stagnant air of the diner, he wipes his hands on his trousers and turns to the tables.
He moves with a quiet, efficient grace, unstacking the heavy wooden chairs and setting them down with deliberate care. Thud. Thud. Thud. The sound echoes against the linoleum, marking the rhythm of his own internal monologue.
His gaze sweeps over the room, the faded checkerboard floor, the menu board he’d handwritten in chalk, the front door that still needs a bit of a shove to lock properly. To anyone else, it is a roadside relic that has seen better decades. To him, it is a museum of his own inadequacy.
Every time his hand brushes the back of a chair, he sees a phantom image of a different life. Not the one you both have, but the one he should have provided. He remembers the day you both stood in the sterile, fluorescent-lit office of a city courthouse. The smell of industrial floor wax, the bored clerk who didn’t even look up from her crossword puzzle as she stamped the papers.
There was no white lace, no chapel bells, no sea of flowers that you deserved to walk through. Just the two of you, nervous and vibrating with the adrenaline of a getaway, signing your names on a document that tethered you to a man who, by every metric that mattered to your father, is a failure.
He grips the back of a chair, his knuckles turning white. He stole you from a world where you were a princess and brought you to a place where you have to wrestle with a stubborn espresso machine and wake up before the sun to pay the electricity bill. The sheer, suffocating weight of it hits him again; the guilt that is as much a part of his morning routine as the coffee is.
Yoongi would give you everything if he could. He’d pluck the stars from the sky for you told hold just so he could see them dazzle your eye. You gave everything up, used your trust fund to build the life you both have now. Yoongi wishes he could give you much more than what this life with him offers.
He remembers the way you smiled at him in that courthouse, though. You were wearing a simple dress, your hair tucked behind your ears, and you didn’t look at the lack of grandeur. You looked at him like he was the only thing in the world worth tethering yourself to.
He sets the final chair down with a sharp clack.
A courthouse wedding, he thinks, a bitter taste rising in his throat. You have never said it, never hinted at it, but he knows. He knows that for all your talk about being happy, you must have wondered, at least once, what it would have been like to have a day that belonged only to you. A day that wasn’t paved with the jagged edges of a secret elopement.
He is the one who drove the car that carried you away from your father’s golden cage, but sometimes, in the quiet of the morning, he wonders if he is actually the one who built a different kind of prison; one made of grease, diner shifts, and the constant, aching fear that eventually, you will wake up and realize the fairytale wasn’t supposed to end in a mechanic’s shop.
He stands there for a long moment, watching the horizon grow brighter, waiting for the sound of your footsteps on the stairs, terrified and relieved all at once to see you.
Yoongi jumps when your arms suddenly wrap around his waist. You press your cheek against his shoulder blade.
All his thoughts melt away, fading into the background of this moment where he’s tethered to you, and you’re tethered to the ground to keep him there. Yoongi turns in the circle of your arms, cupping your cheeks in his palms and bending his head to press a kiss to your lips.
You giggle against his mouth and Yoongi can’t help his smile.
“Good morning, husband.” You murmur, smiling sleepily still, but smiling, nonetheless.
“Good morning, wife.” Yoongi smiles, swaying you both a little.
You squint at him in the pale morning light, the corners of your mouth tugging downwards, “You’re thinking too much again.”
“I think just the right amount, thank you.”
You pull away from him with a soft laugh, and Yoongi follows you like he’s caught on a line as you round the counter. You push the single swinging door to the back kitchen, stopping to tie your hair back and put a hairnet on.
Yoongi helps you gather things for the morning breakfast rush. It’s only after six, but seven-thirty would come soon enough. You work quietly for a moment; Yoongi sets out a crate of eggs and fresh seasonings and puts the bread you made last night on the warming rack. He grabs mugs for both of you and walks out to the front to fill them with coffee.
“I fixed the coffee machine again.” Yoongi says, coming back into the kitchen. He reaches over to stop you cracking another egg into a large silver bowl and presses one of the mugs into your hand. “I’ll see about getting a new one next week.”
It’s a little promise. He’d rather you not have to struggle with things more than you have already. He watches as you set the metal whisk aside, and the way the overhead lights shine like little orbs in the reflection of your eyes, and his heart swells. Full of adoration and pain all at once, you take a sip of the coffee and then purse your lips at him.
“There’s nothing wrong with that one.” you huff, looking at him as though he’d told you he’s gonna throw your favorite book out. The steam from your cup swirls upwards and disappears.
“There’s a lot wrong with it, actually.” Yoongi snorts and puts up a hand, “Drainage is shit, it takes forever to heat up, and if you aren’t careful, it heats up too much...”
He wags a finger at you, "I can go on."
“That’s part of its charm.” You say defiantly, and then you shake your head, “It’s fine.”
Yoongi sighs, but he’s not in the mood to argue with you about it, so he resigns himself to bringing it up when you’re half-asleep tomorrow. You’d agree with him then. You had a habit of holding onto old things... at least some things.
Yoongi takes time to chop up a bundle of chives and onions so you wouldn’t have to, letting you tie his hair back and tuck a hairnet over his hair with a smile. You heat up the grill, spread oil along the flattop, and shimmy back over to the stainless-steel table to lean against it.
“We don’t have donuts today. Carter’s sick, so no sweet treats for anyone.” You heave the big bowl of whisked eggs over to the counter near the grill, “Are you busy today?”
“No.” Yoongi hums, “No clients today, so I'm all yours.”
It’s been a year and a half of building this routine. You work the diner; Yoongi helps when he has free days, otherwise he’s buried under someone’s hood. This life isn’t anything grand, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything, and he knows you wouldn’t either. Despite his concerns.
The transition from the kitchen to the floor is a practiced dance. You wipe your hands on your apron, leaving a faint streak of white flour across the dark fabric, and head toward the swinging door. Yoongi watches you go, his eyes tracking the way you move before he turns his attention back to the grill. He needs to have the hash browns crisp and the eggs perfect before the doors open, so he settles into the rhythm of the kitchen.
He can hear you out in the dining area; the soft clink of glass as you arrange the sandwich showcase, and the register drawer being pulled open, and the hum of the old radio you both insist on leaving on. He doesn‘t need to see you to know exactly where you are.
A few minutes later, you pop your head back into the kitchen. “The coffee is good,” you call out, checking the clock on the wall. “And the showcase is officially stocked. Are you almost ready back here?”
Yoongi flips a row of bacon with a flick of his wrist. “Two minutes. I just need to get these hash browns plated.”
“Perfect,” you say. You grab a stack of menus from the counter and head back out to the floor, your voice trailing off as you start tidying the condiment bottles.
He loves this part of the day. He plates the breakfast specials for the warmer, ensuring every garnish is placed exactly how he knows you like it. When he pushes the service window open, he sees you already moving to the front door to flip the sign.
The day begins in earnest. It‘s a blur of orders and banter, the kind that doesn’t require much thought because you have been doing it for so long.
When a customer orders a side of sourdough, you don’t even have to look at the ticket; you just shout, “Sourdough for table four!” before Yoongi has even finished plating the eggs. He has the bread toasted and on the pass before you have even finished pouring the customer‘s water.
“You‘re fast today,” you murmur, passing him a stack of dirty dishes as you grab the next set of orders.
“You‘re just slow,” he teases, though he brushes his arm against yours as he takes the plates.
You roll your eyes, a smile tugging at your lips. “I‘m efficient. There is a difference.”
“Whatever you say.”
You both work in a seamless loop. When the rush hits, there is no need for instructions. He manages the heat and the timing, and you manage the flow of the room, handling the customers with a patience he knows he wouldn’t have. He watches you weave through the tables, laughing at a joke from an old regular, and he feels that familiar, steady thrum of satisfaction.
By midday, the rush tapers off into a slow, steady trickle. Yoongi finally has a moment to step out of the kitchen, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. You are at the counter, counting the mid-shift drawer, looking focused and calm.
“Hey,” he says, leaning against the doorframe.
You look up, your expression softening instantly. “Hey. You want a drink?”
“Just water,” he says. He walks over, standing behind you while you finish the count. He rests his chin on your shoulder, feeling the warmth of you through your apron. “We are doing okay today.”
“We are doing great,” you correct, closing the register with a soft click. You turn around, tucking your arms around his waist. “Are you sure you didn’t have any work to do today?”
“Yes.” he laughs, his voice dropping. “I‘m all yours until closing.”
You smile, and he knows that, even if the rest of the day is full of grease and long hours, as long as you are both in this building, everything is exactly where it needs to be.
By the time five rolls around, the customers have dwindled and the sun is starting to stretch it’s fingers along the gravel lot.
Yoongi is just reaching for the broom to sweep the front entrance when the crunch of tires on gravel breaks the silence.
It isn’t a local truck. It is a sleek, black sedan; the kind of machine that looks like a shark cutting through the dusty haze of your quiet town. It rolls to a stop right in front of the garage bay.
Yoongi stops, his hand tightening on the broom handle. “I thought we were done for the day...” he mutters, more to himself than to you.
“Maybe they just need a quick look?” you say, stepping up beside him and wiping your palms on your apron.
“I’ll go check.” He says, patting your hip and directing you out of his way.
Yoongi sets the broom aside and walks out to meet the car. He wipes his hands on a rag, his brow furrowing as the driver’s side door opens. A man in a sharp, charcoal suit steps out. He looks completely out of place, like a polished marble statue set down in a field of dry weeds. Yoongi eyes the man carefully, a sudden need for caution springs up in the back of his mind.
“We’re closed,” Yoongi says, his tone level.
The man in the suit adjusts his cuffs, his eyes scanning the garage with a strange, clinical interest. “I apologize for the intrusion. I’m just passing through, but the engine is making a sound. I was told this was the only shop for miles.”
Yoongi studies the sedan, then looks back at the man. “I can take a look…”
The man nods, his expression unreadable. “I only need a quick assessment.”
While Yoongi pops the hood and leans into the machinery, he catches the man glancing toward the diner. The man gestures toward the dark windows. “The diner? Is it still serving?”
Yoongi doesn’t look up from the engine block, though his grip on his wrench tightens. “We just locked up. But if you really want something, I suppose I can get you a sandwich and a drink. Just don’t expect a full menu.”
The man nods, his gaze lingering on the faded sign above the door. He remains silent while Yoongi works, his presence adding a strange, heavy tension to the quiet evening. It wasn’t long until he found the issue—a simple intake fault—and fixes it. He closes the hood and walks over to collect payment. The man pays in cash, offers a curt, polite nod, and slides back into the driver’s seat.
As the sedan pulls away, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake, Yoongi stands in the middle of the lot. He watches the taillights disappear until they are nothing but tiny red specks in the distance. He stands out there for a long moment, a prickle of unease in his mind.
Shaking his head, he turns and walks back toward the diner, wiping his hands clean of engine grime with a rag. He pauses at the door, taking a deep breath of the cooling air, and pushes inside to find you. The diner is quiet, the lights dimmed, and the scent of floor cleaner is already starting to replace the smell of the day’s grease. He catches your eye, and for a second, he considers mentioning the man in the suit. But then he sees you, hair a little wild, looking tired but content, and he stuffs the rag into his back pocket.
“Everything alright?” you ask, leaning against the counter as you finish wiping it down.
“Just a passerby,” Yoongi says, his voice steadying. “Car trouble. It’s handled.”
He moves to your side, taking the cloth from your hand. He doesn’t want to bring the outside world in here. He just wants to finish the cleaning, lock the doors, and be alone with you in the quiet that you both worked so hard to build.
Dinner is yesterday’s lunch, and you both spend most of the time at the coffee table that’s covered in invoices and bills and the sales book.
You’re picking at your food, and had said you weren’t feeling up to much eating so Yoongi didn’t press you.
“We gotta account for the new coffee machine.” He says, his voice breaking the heavy silence.
You glare at him over the rim of your juice cup, though there isn’t much heat in it. It’s a tired sort of defiance.
He looks over the frame of his glasses at you, with a raised.
“If you bring that up one more time.”
“You’re beating a dead horse, woman.” Yoongi shakes his head, sliding a pen behind his ear. “Thing’s gonna give out one of these days, and then you’re gonna look at me and say ‘so about that coffee machine…’”
Your toes press into his side, a blunt protest under the knitted blanket. He bats your foot away with a short, huffed laugh, but the humor doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
The night goes on without much fanfare. Once the totals are tallied and the bills are tucked into their respective folders, you curl against his side like a cat seeking heat. You doze off, your breathing shallow, leaving Yoongi left to his own devices in the dim lamp-light.
He thinks back to the man in the sedan, the way he looked at the diner like it was a curiosity under a microscope. It’s probably nothing. He shouldn’t dwell on it. It’s not like he kidnapped you; he didn’t force the pen into your hand at the courthouse. Though, he knows your father probably thinks differently. The memory of his face, frozen in a portrait of cold authority, swirled into a foreboding sense of doom at the back of his mind. He looks down at you, tucked securely under his arm, and sighs, forcing the thought into a locked box for another time.
An hour passes in a blur of heavy-lidded exhaustion. Yoongi’s eyes flutter open to the sensation of your soft thumb pressing firmly into the space between his eyebrows, trying to smooth out the tension he didn’t know he was wearing.
“What are you doing?” he murmurs, his voice gravelly as he stares up at you. There’s a matching furrow between your own brows.
“You looked troubled.” You say softly, your hand lingering. “What’s wrong?”
Yoongi hesitates. He looks at the room: the mismatched coasters, the rug that’s fraying at the edges, the scent of old wood and grease that never quite leaves the air. The guilt he usually keeps at a low simmer suddenly boils over.
“I was just thinking,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “About everything. You had a life where you never had to look at a bill. You had people to do that for you. And now… I’ve got you waking up at six to scrub a grill and worrying about a broken coffee machine in a town no one can find on a map. I feel like I took you away from everything you deserved, and I… I feel guilty, I guess.”
The distress comes off him in waves, thick and jagged. You don’t say anything at first; you just shift, moving with a quiet deliberateness until you plop yourself right into his lap.
“Don’t do that.” You say, cupping his cheeks in your hands. You smile at him, but it’s a watery thing, your eyes shimmering in the low light because you hate seeing him sink into himself like this. “I’m perfectly happy, Yoongi. I don’t secretly hate you, and I haven’t spent a single second wishing I’d made a different choice.”
He grumbles something, a low protest that comes out smooshed between his pouted lips as you press his cheeks together.
“I love you. So much. And I love this life.” You continue, your voice gaining strength. “Sure, I gotta wake up at six every day and you annoy me when you leave that dirty ass rag everywhere, but I wouldn’t give it up. Not if someone offered me the whole world. I would never give you up. I’m right where I want to be.”
Gently, you lean forward and kiss him. For a moment, the ghost of the man in the black sedan vanishes, and the heavy weight of the bills on the table feels as light as air.
He pulls you closer, burying his face in the crook of your neck, and finally, the furrow between his brows disappears. You both decide that sleeping on the couch isn’t the best idea and fumble your way to the bedroom.
The silence of the house is absolute until three in the morning, when the mattress shifts and the frantic, hollow sound of you retching in the bathroom breaks the peace. Yoongi is upright in a heartbeat.
He finds you slumped over the porcelain, your skin clammy and pale under the harsh vanity light. He holds your hair back with a steady hand, his other palm resting flat against your forehead. You aren’t running a fever; your skin is cool, almost cold, and his worry settles into the low, manageable thrum of a suspected stomach bug.
He helps you back to bed, tucking the duvet around your shoulders and pressing a lingering kiss to your temple. He stays awake for a while, watching the steady rise and fall of your chest until his own exhaustion pulls him under.
At six, the sky is a thin, watery grey when he peeks through the window to squint at it. He looks at you, still dead to the world, and decides then and there that he wouldn’t bother to open today. He isn’t letting you scrub a grill or haul crates of eggs while you’re feeling like this, and the thought of crawling back under the covers for an extra hour or two is the only thing making the early morning tolerable.
He heads downstairs into the dim, quiet diner. Yawning, he scratches at his tummy, rummaging around under the counter for something to write on and the roll of tape he knows is around here somewhere. He grabs a piece of cardstock and a thick marker, scrawling a quick "Closed Today" on it.
Tearing a piece of tape off the roll with his teeth, he’s in the middle of sticking the piece of cardboard against the glass door when the crunch of gravel shatters the morning quiet.
The black sedan from yesterday rolls into the lot, its headlights cutting through the light morning mist before dying out. Yoongi stands frozen, the half-taped sign fluttering against the door. He stares through the glass as the passenger side opens.
The man who steps out is a ghost of the titan Yoongi remembers. In the year and a half since the elopement, your father has aged a decade. The sharp, predatory edge of his posture is gone, replaced by a heavy, stoic exhaustion that makes his expensive overcoat look too large for his frame. He looks like a man who has spent every one of those eighteen months being eroded by a quiet, persistent regret.
Yoongi meets his gaze through the glass, his heart hammering against his ribs, a measure of raw worry tightening his throat. He doesn’t move to open the door until the older man raises a hand, a gesture that isn’t a command, but a plea.
“I didn’t come to cause any trouble,” your father says, his voice muffled by the glass but unmistakable in its defeat. “I only want to talk.”
A mug scrapes along the wood of a table, steaming and dark. Yoongi’s a bit miffed the coffee machine decided to be on its best behaviour this particular morning.
Your father’s eyes are elsewhere, looking at the tables and the floors, and the old-timey framed photos around.
He finally turns his gaze when Yoongi’s hand pulls away from the mug.
“Business is good, I hope?” He does sound rather hopeful, and Yoongi feels that hope bloom in his chest in equal measure. Hope that this would go quickly and your father could say what he came to say and leave.
“Yes.” Yoongi says curtly, far too much he realises, but your father doesn’t pay it mind. Yoongi had never disrespected this man. Even back then, he’d taken every harsh word spat at him and tucked it into his pockets and let them weigh him down. He let you handle it because you asked him not to give your father any more reasons. But as Yoongi sits here in front of him now, all the things he wanted to say back then bubbles up and dances on his tongue.
Your father stays quiet for a long moment, staring down into the coffee in front of him.
“What do you want?”
While it’s not exactly what Yoongi wanted to say, it would suffice to be the safest string of words in his head.
“I…” he sighs, turning to look out the window, “I didn’t come to make any trouble, or any demands.”
Yoongi stays quiet, giving him the moment he looked like he desperately needed to gather his thoughts.
“I wanted to apologize.” Your father says, and then, he looks away, somewhere to the side of Yoongi’s head. “I know I’m the last person you’d want to see first thing…”
Yoongi raises a brow, and then, leaning back into his chair he shakes his head, “I’m not the one you should apologize to.”
“I know. But you deserve one nonetheless.” He looks him right in the eyes now, the corners of his own eyes wrinkled by stress and time. “I practiced saying this so many times and now that I’m here…I don’t know what to say first.”
He takes a deep breath, “Back then, I said some things about you, your character and your worth. I spoke to you like you were a thief stealing my daughter instead of the man she chose to love.”
He looks down at his hands, which are wrapped tightly around the warm ceramic. “I let her walk away thinking I hated her. I let my own pride convince me that if she didn’t live the life I dictated, she didn’t deserve a father at all...”
Yoongi doesn’t offer a nod or a comforting word; he simply sits there, an immovable witness to the older man’s unraveling. He thinks of the nights he spent holding you while you cried in your sleep, and the way you’d flinch whenever a car that looked too much like your father’s drove past the diner.
Despite everything that was said and done that day, you loved your father and that never changed.
“It took me a long, long time to come to terms with the fact that separating you both would’ve done more harm than good.” He says this a little more to himself, his index finger scratching at a sticker a kid put on there weeks ago. “Funny thing about being a parent…you raise a child one way and you plan their whole lives in your head because you want what’s best for them. Some of us forget that they’re people too.”
He sighs, and continues, “we try to make them do what we want while forgetting they can think for themselves and the life you made might not be suited for them.
I’m truly sorry, about back then. I only wanted what I thought was best for her, though, that isn’t an excuse. I wouldn’t blame you if you cursed me and told me to leave, it’s far less than I deserve.”
It’s quiet for a long moment. Yoongi turned his head to stare out the window with a frown to gather his thoughts. There’s so much he wants to say back, the petty part of him is sticking out his tongue and saying, ‘We made it anyway’.
Looking at your father, who’d gone back to staring at his coffee, his face so hopeful and he knows that if you were sitting next to him with the same measure of hope this would be much harder. For your sake alone, Yoongi sighs.
“How did you find here?” He asks because he needs to know before anything else happens. He watches your father’s expression carefully.
“Oh, my assistant was passing through here yesterday.” He says and then, “I realize how it may have looked. It was just a coincidence that he found you here, I promise.”
He doesn’t seem to be lying, the earnest, hopefully expression remains.
“She’s upstairs.” Yoongi says softly, “She’s not feeling well today.”
“It isn’t serious, is it?”
Yoongi shakes his head, “just a bug, I think.”
Your father relaxes a bit, and the tension slowly eases out of the room. The sun finally made it’s way up, indifferent to this morning’s happenings, it streaks golden and bright across the table tops and the faded checkered flooring. It makes the gray in your father’s hair and beard more prominent, but his eyes looks less troubled in the light.
“Thank you.” He says, sounding like he was three seconds away from crying him a river, “Thank you for taking care of her.”
“It’s all I’ve ever done.” Yoongi says evenly, and then takes a deep breath, “Thank you... for apologizing.”
Your father nods, looking relieved and exhausted all at once.
There’s a sudden creak from the floorboards upstairs, and then, the sound of hurried footsteps and then you’re stumbling into the room.
“Yoongi!” your voice cracks, breaking into a laugh that sounds a bit tearful, “Its not a bug! I’m not sick.”
You’re waving something white you clutch in your hand with a sort of frantic energy, looking like you’ve been awake for all of ten minutes—hair a beautiful mess, still looking a little sick from last night, but smiling.
“I’m—” The brightness of your smile fades just a bit, as your eyes dart from Yoongi to your father sitting opposite him. It fades completely as you stand there in the threshold of the doorway. You’re staring at your father but Yoongi’s heart’s in his throat and beating a samba staring at the little stick that’s quite obviously a pregnancy test.
Yoongi is on his feet before he can even think, his chair screeching against the linoleum. His eyes dart from the pregnancy test in your hand to your father’s face, and then back again. He feels a dizzying, electric jolt through his veins; a realization that hits him with a force that sends his heart back to his chest where it should be. But the joy is immediately crowded out by the sight of you, frozen in place. You turn your gaze to him, staring with a swirl of emotions he can’t decipher right now.
Your father stands up slowly, his movements stiff and uncertain. His eyes are locked on the small object in your hand, the implication of those two lines sinking into his expression like ink into water. He looks at you, not as the rebellious daughter who fled in the night, but as a woman, a wife, and now, a mother to be; you’re all trying to process the same things at once.
Yoongi had stepped into the kitchen, giving you enough room to speak to your father privately but also staying close enough should you need him. He left the swinging door propped open a couple inches, and could hear the murmur of conversation between you and your father.
He’d busied himself with scrubbing a stray pot that really didn’t need the extra attention, just to keep himself from combusting on the spot. The pregnancy test he’d taken from you lays on the steel prep table like a neon sign hot on the back of his neck. He’d spent a good ten minutes just staring at the thing.
His heart is still hammering against his ribs like it’s trying to escape. A baby. The thought is so massive it feels like it might crack his chest wide open. He looks down at his hands, the faint scar across his knuckle from a slipped wrench that one time, and he feels a dizzying surge of protectiveness. He thinks of the drafty window in the bedroom and the way the heater groans in the winter. He needs to fix those. He needs to fix everything.
He hears a choked, wet sob from the booth, and his muscles coil, his grip tightening on the sponge. He almost drops it to go to you, to pull you back into the safety of his arms, but then he hears your father’s voice: soft, broken, and devoid of the steel that used to define it.
Yoongi exhales slowly, forcing his shoulders to drop. He stays where he is. Through the gap in the door, he watches the silhouette of your head dip as you wipe your eyes.
You’ve been crying for the better part of five minutes, the kind of tears that have been bottled up for a year and a half. But then, he sees the shift; your shoulders relax, and a small, watery smile breaks across your face. The kind of smile you only wear when a weight has been lifted.
After about twenty minutes of him finding things to do in the kitchen, which was really nothing more than him just standing around and staring at the florescent lights.
He hears the chair drag along the floor, and your father stands to pull you into a hug. A signal that the heaviest part of the conversation was over, and he walks back through the door.
The diner feels smaller, more intimate than it did an hour ago. The morning light has fully claimed the room, warming the vinyl of the booths and turning the old coffee stains on the floor into amber-colored spots.
Your father is already standing, smoothing the front of his coat. He looks smaller, his shoulders rounded in a way that suggests he’s finally putting down the burden he’s been carrying. When he sees Yoongi, he doesn’t look away, but there is a hesitancy in his posture that wasn’t there before.
You’re standing beside him, still clutching that small, plastic stick like it’s a lifeline, your face flushed and damp from crying. You look toward Yoongi, and your eyes soften with a relief that makes the air in his lungs feel lighter.
“I shouldn’t keep you,” your father says, his voice quiet. He gestures vaguely at your midsection. “This is… this is a day for you two.”
He shifts his weight, his gaze dropping to the floor before coming back to rest on Yoongi. “If you’d allow it,” he starts, then stops, searching for the words. “I would like to be involved. In your lives. In the life of my grandchild. And, Yoongi, I would like to get to know you better. I know I have no right to ask that of you, not after everything, but I would like to try.”
Yoongi stands there, his hands shoved deep into his pockets to hide the slight tremor in his fingers. He looks at you, and you’re nodding, a fresh tear tracking through the faint flush on your cheek. He looks back at your father, seeing the genuine, raw uncertainty in the man’s eyes.
“I think I can do that.” Yoongi says, his voice steady.
Your father lets out a shaky, relieved breath. He reaches out, and for a moment, he looks like he might hesitate, but then he pulls you into one last, lingering hug. You bury your face in his coat, your shoulders shaking with a few final soft sobs.
“I’ll bring your mother,” your father promises, his voice muffled against your hair. “Next time. I’ll bring her.”
He pulls away, gives Yoongi a curt, respectful nod, and heads for the door. The bell above the entrance jingles a bright, cheerful sound that punctuates the silence as he steps out into the morning.
Yoongi walks over to you, the distance between you vanishing in two steps. He reaches out, carefully pulling you against him. You lean into his chest, your hands bunching up his tee-shirt, and he rests his chin on top of your head.
The diner is perfectly still. The coffee machine is finally silent, the morning rush is a world away, and the heavy, suffocating anxiety that had been dogging Yoongi’s footsteps for eighteen months is finally gone. He holds you tighter, feeling the solid, living warmth of you against him.
“You okay?” he murmurs into your hair.
You look up at him, your smile bright and shaky, and you nod. “I’m perfect.”
Yoongi leans down, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, and then he looks out the window at the empty gravel lot. The sun is high, and the day is wide open. He takes your hand, interlacing his calloused fingers with yours, and leads you away from the tables, ready to start this new, quiet life that started on a shotgun dream.
This life may not be anything grand; you both struggle and have to pay bills like everybody else, but it’s something Yoongi would never give up.
tagging: @dontstoptime @jhinnnn
