what is love? - myg (drabble)
pairing: min yoongi x female reader
genre: best friends to lovers au
warning: none
authors note: i have been writing a lot of jjk stuff and i swear i love all 7 members so i’m determined to put out all my works with all members to prove it 😩😩😩 enjoy this work that i started in october 💀
-
“yoongi, what is love?” you ask him. his body physically freezes, his muscles visibly tense with the random question. you felt bad for asking, thinking you might’ve upset him in some way, when, in reality, it was the furthest from the truth.
“why do you ask?” he refutes, trying to purposely derail the conversation away from him as best as he could.
you and yoongi were nestled in the warmth of his studio: him currently working on a project and you working on a project of your own. you were a writer, a published and successful one at that, and you found that a lot of your novels have come from motivation from within your own life. scenarios that played out differently had YOU done something differently. your life wasn’t nearly as interesting as the characters you created, but you wished that the things you’ve conjured up for each person had actually happened to you.
you were a hopeless romantic, and it seemed to be a viral curse that came with being an author of certain genres (your mind instantly wandered to all the penelope douglas novels you’ve binge read overnight). you have written out beautiful stories about finding love in the most curious of places. however, you’ve never experienced it for yourself.
or maybe you have and you don’t really care to admit that you have fallen under the “best friends to lovers” trope you always lean to when you plan out your stories.
you loved yoongi, simple as that.
but what is it to him?
“i’m trying to gather a male’s perspective of love and you’re the only male i trust. plus, you have such a poetic way with words, with you being a lyricist and all, that maybe you could give me something to use,” you state. it was true, you were currently tackling a new project. you have never written a story where the male has fallen in love before the female.
you’ve seen many dramas with it but you wanted something different but familiar in a sense. it wasn’t like you to ask for help, usually entrapping yourself in your office space at home for weeks at a time. usually it would be yoongi who would stop by every day to assure you’ve showered and eaten at some point. hell, he’s even wrestled you to a flat surface of some sort and forced your eyes shut just so you could get some type of rest.
“and you think i’ve been in love before?” he asks incredulously. you roll your eyes and then narrow them at him, hinting the fact that you know he has.
and he has.
he’s told you all about his first love: the piano. he wrote an entire song about it. although that wasn’t the type of love you were going for, love is love. you needed something to get you out of this writer’s block you were quicksanded into.
“what about first love? a song about your literal first love?” you chide, folding your legs underneath you to sit on them.
“it was about a piano,” he lied, snorting in response.
yes, he lied. to the world and especially, to you.
first love was never about his piano. well.. not entirely. sure, his first passion was the piano. but his first love? it was you. it still is. it always will be.
you and yoongi have achieved the good ol’ “childhood bestfriends” badge when you guys met at a ripe age of 6. you had moved in from the states and were forced to integrate into a korean-speaking classroom. you were shy and reserved, opting to play alone. yoongi noticed you and he also noticed the way the kids started to belittle your ethnic differences. he found you amusing. not in a childlike sense, but in a fatuation kind of way. he found your differences to be a breath of fresh air, staring at you to drink in as much as he could. it took all the courage in the world to speak to you at last, hoping you didn’t revert back into yourself, isolating away completely.
but he should’ve known better. when you first noticed him approaching you, you offered a gentle smile. you offered the first exchange of words, initiating a conversation. yoongi and you played together all day, basking in each others presence. yoongi couldn’t wait for the day to end so it could be tomorrow and he could see you all over again.
when he asked his mother why he was always so excited to see you, she jokingly told him it was young love. when he still felt this way a decade later, he knew it was more than that.
he loved you in a way he couldn’t describe with words. yoongi had always been an “actions speak louder than words” kind of guy. but you were a linguist. you valued words more than actions. so he tried to love you in your own language and wrote first love.
he didn’t think much of the song other than as an outlet. he told his members he wasn’t even considering to use the song as his solo piece for the album. but the more he listened to it, the more he couldn’t deny how good it felt to hear his voice say all that he wanted. he wanted nothing more than to show you it. and he did.
from a distance.
he emailed you the song (despite violating literally every lawful stipulation held against him by his company) and asked you for an honest review.
of course you loved it. you loved every piece of work that yoongi put out. you knew that his love language was actions, so when he spoke with words it never seized to amaze you with how much he actually wanted to say. and when you told him that, he felt his heart clench with absolute pride and joy.
he wanted to tell you the inspiration behind the song. my god, did he want to tell you. but he’s read your novels and he knows what your characters meant when they say “i could never confess for the fear of losing you is greater than the fear of never having loved you at all.” (btw, he nearly got that tattooed on him after he read the line in your first book because it was so painstakingly relatable.)
so when he glanced over to the keyboard nestled against the wall of his studio, he mustered up the best lie as humanly possible.
“it’s about my piano,” he told you. you furrowed your eyebrows in confusion, not quite understanding how in the hell this song was about an inanimate object but you shrugged and continued nonetheless.
needless to say, he changed the lyrics into the song it is today. to prevent further embarrassment than what he’d already endured. and he stuck with the story about his first love always being his piano. and he stuck with hiding and withholding his emotions from you.
“love is love, gi. i really just need some sort of inspiration. i feel like my head is going to burst,” you groan, your head rolling back from exhaustion. yoongi chuckled at your actions, spinning around to look at you. he noted the fact that you discarded your shoes, probably long ago. your glasses sat perched on the keyboard of your laptop, scattered sheets of paper overtaking the coffee table. you felt comfortable here, in his safe space. that made his heart race a bit, those small actions meaning more to him than you’ll ever know.
“well, what specifically did you want to know?” he asks, feeding into your curiosity. you heave a deep sigh before picking your head back up. you reach for your glasses, sliding them onto your face before you gather your notepad and pencil.
“how did you know you were in love?” you asked, scribbling down the question. yoongi grew silent, trying to pre-select the proper words to avoid detection.
“uhm… i guess it was when i realized how codependent i was. i couldn’t live, breath, eat or sleep without my piano. whenever i was away. i wished time would speed up so i could see it again. when i was playing, i felt like nothing else mattered. because nothing else did,” yoongi smiled, your face and the memories of your childhood floating in his head as he spoke. he could hear the scribbling of your pencil as you took note of what he said. he watched you with pure adoration.
he wanted to tell you. now would’ve been the perfectly romantic time to do so. but he wasn’t so sure how. he knew you needed words. but how do you tell a love story novelist the right words to explain how he felt? you have written every word in a million different ways to perfectly describe how a confession should go. an omission to how you would want it to go. how could he give that to you?
“if your piano was a girl, she would be the luckiest woman in the world,” you chuckle, a tinge of jealousy underlying in your tone. yoongi, ever the oblivious one, missed it. all he could hang onto was the fact that you said what you had said. you would only have to consider one lucky if it’s something you would want for yourself. did you want to be loved by him?
no, no, no. he couldn’t allow his mind to wander that way. he didn’t want to break his own heart by filling it up with unnecessary hope. but he had to know.
“what do you mean?” he asks, adding in a playful to chuckle to lighten the severity of the question.
it was do or die time for you. either you could be honest and tell him how you really felt, or you could cower away and continue to vicariously live through your characters. you wished you had more time to outweigh each outcome before making such a critical decision. but this wasn’t a novel and you weren’t fictional. this was real and you had to put on your big girl panties and make a choice. god, did you hope you weren’t making a consequential mistake.
“any woman would be lucky to be loved by you yoongi,” you shrug. further scribbling down your conversation onto your notepad.
“even you?” he asked. your eyes widened and the pencil slipped from your grip, a soft clattering sound echoing in the silence. was this happening? was this actually happening? are both of you really panicking at the moment?
“i mean, yeah of course. i’ve always told you i would be better off with you than with any of my shitty exes,” you joke. yes, a joke. that should ease the tension right? that should make the tension less palpable and the air less stiff.
“ya know, when i was first writing first love, i almost didn’t do it…” yoongi trails off. you furrow your eyebrows at the sudden topic change, but decided to roll with it.
“why? it’s such a good song. it’s actually one of my favorite songs written by you,” you confess. this makes yoongi smile to himself.
“it wasn’t about a piano at first. it was about a girl i had learned to fall in love with over time,” yoongi says, absentmindedly speaking out loud. you clung to his words, hoping that it didn’t lead to heartache in the end.
“her love language differs from mine greatly. she prefers words over actions. she needs them. and not words of validation because she practices self validation in her own way, which only makes me love her more. but the kind of words she prefers are poetic ones, ones where metaphors show the extravagance of its significance. she basks in the way words warm her spirit and her soul. she prefers words like alluring and pulchritudinous over cute and beautiful. but that doesn’t mean beautiful doesn’t make her heart race. i don’t even know how to spell pulchritudinous,” yoongi chuckles softly. you were teared up at this point, the tears dancing on your waterline as they wait for the right moment to fall uninterrupted.
“and god i hope she loves me back. i’ve built up some sense of hope because she knows my love language is the opposite of hers. she shows she cares for me in the way that she silently sits next to me in the mornings as i mull over my day. i know she always has a million questions but she lets me sit and stew in my emotions before communicating in the way that we do. it’s the way that she keeps me company from a distance. because even though i value alone time, i prefer being alone with her. while she does her thing and i do mine. it’s the way she knows i love acts of service. whether that be her grocery shopping for me or cooking the food itself. or when she knows how tired i get that cleaning my room is the lowest priority on my list but she still comes to my house and cleans my room for me so i can just go straight to sleep. i know she’s a linguist and words are her entire being and way of life. but when she loves me with her actions, in a language i understand and value, it makes me want to read the god damn dictionary just so i can shower her in whatever words she loves most.”
my god you’ve never cried this much. the tears couldn’t stop, even if you begged them to. you were so overwhelmed with love for this man that you didn’t know what to do with yourself.
“i’ve never really thought to tell her. despite my showering her in her love language, i could never find the proper words to say to explain how i felt at the time. then she wrote her first book. i remember she stayed up all night stressing about the outcome. and when she finished and she published it, i remember feeling this overwhelming joy for her. i felt so proud of her and the story itself. i stood in line when it first came out and was the first one to buy it. i think i finished the book in a span of two hours. and then i read it again and again and i still read it now, even after all this time. i read it so i could get the same feeling i did when i read my favorite line,” yoongi continues.
“what was your favorite line?” you sob. yoongi smiled at you and pulled himself closer to, sitting on the opposite side of the table.
“actually, there’s two. the first one was ‘i could never confess for the fear of losing you is greater than the fear of never having loved you at all.’ it resonated so well with me because i loved her so fucking much. she was the only person in the world that i wanted around me all the time. everyone always says that its better to have loved and lost than better to have never loved at all. but they’re so fucking wrong. because although loving her would be the greatest privilege known to man, the fear of losing her is so much greater because i would rather die than to not have her in my life,” he murmurs, fingers fiddling with one another. you gulp in anticipation, clinging onto every second that passes between you two.
“and the second quote?” you ask hesitantly.
“the second quote? it’s from her first book too. the girl finally confesses to the guy and the guy says to her ‘i have never known a love greater than yours for it has taught me the power of loving myself by loving you’. you have made me a better man. a better artist. a better friend, yn. and if i'm alone in this, tell me now. because, god, i love you," yoongi breathes out. it felt as all time has stopped and that the world was frozen. and for you, that would be alright because then you would get to be here with him, forever.
“have i ever left you alone when you needed me most?” you reply. and to yoongi, that was better than anything you could’ve ever said. because you haven’t. even when the darkness of the night demanded it’s attention and imposed loneliness, you were the light that cut through it all, insisting that your presence was brighter than any light the moon could’ve casted. and what did that mean? yoongi didn’t need anything else. he didn’t need the loneliness and he didn’t need to ever be alone. he had you. and it seemed to him that you were saying that he always will.
and to him? well.. isn’t that what love was?
