"Yeah, I sent the demo over last week, so if you didn't get it then it's because you didn't open your email," Yoongi said, annoyed, as he explained for the third time that he'd already sent his work in. "It's been sitting in your inbox for six days. Why don't you open up your laptop and get back to me once you've listened to it." Yoongi hung up the phone, frustrated but pulsing with the excitement of mild anger. He knew he probably shouldn't speak to his producer like that, but he knew that everyone in the company more or less thought of him as an angry artist-in-distress type, so he didn't see why he should hold back.

After college, he'd ended up composing background soundtracks. It wasn't exactly what he'd wanted to do, but he enjoyed it enough. There was something about music that he just couldn't walk away from, so even if it didn't make him rich or famous, he kept composing. One of his tracks had been in a car commercial recently. He should have felt happy about that – it was a pretty big deal for their small studio, and his producer had sent over a bottle of champagne (along with a heavier check than normal) – but he felt shitty. A car commercial? It felt so fake. He felt like a sell-out, and he wasn't sure why. It wasn't like he'd fallen from a higher ledge – he'd always been at the bottom of the industry. This had been a good break for him.

And yet.

He only composed instrumental tracks, which his producer had told him time and again were extremely limiting. If he didn't add a vocal line and lyrics, then nobody big would ever pick up the song. The only people that popularized instrumentals were the EDM crowd, and that was a line Yoongi had vowed never to cross (again).

He didn't know why he'd never been compelled to write something with vocals. Just never found the right singer, he guessed.

His last demo had been a set of tracks for a documentary. He'd had to watch the whole documentary first to get a feel for what he wanted the music to match; it'd been a three-hour-long film on the eroding mountains in some region. Yoongi had heard about erosion before during a ten-minute discussion in 5th grade science, and he quickly realized that the ten-minute version had covered pretty much all he'd never needed to know.

He'd still done the demo though, which had required re-watching segments of the film over and over again to see how the music lined up. All in all, he'd probably watched twenty or thirty hours of eroding mountains.

If he never saw a mountain again, it would be too soon.

He was hoping the demo would be accepted with few requests for revision because if he had to majorly rework any of the tracks, then he'd have to go back and watch the whole damn thing over again.

Of course, he wouldn't hear about revisions if the documentary crew didn't get his demo because his producer didn't check his inbox.

Yoongi probably could have worked for a bigger, more prestigious studio – his tracks were rather good despite what they were being used for – but he sort of liked how things were. His studio basically let him do what he wanted, so long as their clients were satisfied. Yoongi had worked for two studios prior to his current one and had promptly been kicked out after he'd "refused to accept criticism of his work" and "progressed with his vision over the clients' interests."

Here, he just had deadlines, and they let him meet the deadlines however he wanted.

Except in one case, where he'd read "appalling" instead of "appealing" on the documentation and had taken the track in an entirely different (and not at all acceptable) direction.

He'd had a few requests for revision then.

But all things considered, life was going pretty well for Yoongi. He had his own place; he'd lived with Hoseok and Jimin throughout college, and after graduating, he'd lived with Jimin for a few years. But Jimin had moved out two – three? – years ago, and since Yoongi had enough money coming in, he'd just kept the apartment. That way, if one of his brothers wanted to visit, they could stay in the guest room. Speaking of...

"Jungkook," Yoongi called out loudly in vain. He'd turned the office into a soundproof studio, which meant that he had to physically get up whenever he needed something. With a long groan, followed by a few cracks along his spine as he twisted his torso, he got up from his chair and walked over to the door. The chair had wheels so in truth, he could have rolled over before getting up, but he liked getting exercise. Just those three steps to the door, though. Anything more was out of the question.

He pulled open the door, poking his head out. "Hey. You."

Jungkook looked up from where he was sitting on the futon. He'd somehow managed to collect every pillow and blanket in Yoongi's living room – there were a lot because hard surfaces felt painful against his bony frame – and burrow into them all. Microwave was sitting on the floor in front of him, and he looked over at Yoongi with the dog's best approximation of a smile before thumping his tail against the ground several times.

Jungkook looked down quickly, pawing through the blankets before finding the remote and pausing the TV. "Hey, hyung. I just found this movie on your table – it's on mountains, I think? But it's like, completely silent. It's really weird."

Yoongi just stared at Jungkook before shaking his head. "How long have you been watching that?"

"Just a few-" Jungkook began as he checked the time on his phone screen before his mouth made a small o in surprise. "Oh wow, it's been three whole hours. It just went by so fast."

"Yeah, maybe the first time but not the subsequent ten," Yoongi said, trying to hold back on the urge to go over and toss the TV out the window. But he didn't, because that sounded like too much work. The TV was heavy. And he wasn't sure that the windows even unlocked. He'd never tried. For all he knew, what he thought was a window was really just a square on the wall painted to look like the outside. "Whatever, I was just checking to see if you wanted to do something for dinner. It's like six- shit, it's like nine o'clock. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, I sort of tried. I knocked on the door for ten minutes then sent you like twenty text messages. Then I found this movie on mountains and I got distracted."

Microwave gave a soft bark, and Jungkook looked down, patting his head with a tsk.

"I'm sorry, you're right, we got distracted."

Yoongi glanced down at his phone to see approximately twenty notifications from several hours ago. "Shit, sorry. I didn't look at my phone."

"It's fine, I wasn't that hungry earlier but I could definitely eat now," Jungkook said with a grin, and Yoongi groaned because he knew that grin meant Jungkook was about to cost him a lot of money.

"Fine fine," he grumbled unhappily, but he smiled down at his phone as he slipped it back into his pocket. "What should we get?"

"Fried chicken, and a lot of it," Jungkook suggested immediately, which Yoongi took to mean that he'd been thinking about it for a while. Probably trying to figure out how to get the most money out of Yoongi. He was a devious little brother.

And yet he and Yoongi had grown close for no specific reason. They worked well together. Jungkook wasn't one to get offended over small comments, which was great since Yoongi was generally an offensive person to be around. Jungkook was broke, Yoongi had money. Other things like that. They just balanced out.

"Fine, but you're ordering," Yoongi gave in easily. He was hungry too, after all. "I hate ordering food on the phone."

"Why's that?" Jungkook asked with a laugh as he pulled up a menu on his phone.

"Because- they always ask you so many questions," Yoongi said, feeling flustered just at the thought of ordering. "I never know what they're going to ask so I can't prepare an answer. Then I'm just rambling on the line and sounding like an idiot. I swear, I can hear them laughing at me."

"Hyung, they literally ask like 3 questions – carryout or delivery, the order, and how you want to pay."

"And your address," Yoongi argued. "If you say delivery."

"Okay so four questions. Hyung, are you actually shy?" Jungkook asked, laughing, and Yoongi flushed.

"I'm not shy! I just don't like people. And questions. And people questioning me."

"Uh huh."

"I'm not shy!"

--

published 05/27/20 (mm/dd/yy)