From the river to the sea

“Oh…fuck, that was good.” Gojo Satoya hisses, pulling out of you with the loudest squelch. 

You could feel the slick driiiibblin’ down your inner thighs. And he’s gnawing down on his pinkish lower lip- wishing to hear the music as he surges upwards n’ swirls that even pinker tip around your entrance.

Around and around.

You’re shaking as he does so, and he’s only pulling your hips further down against his. 

“Just a little more f’me, baby.” Long fingers tightening at your waist, Satoya ruts his toned torso off of the bed. His pale lashes flutter at the sensation of you trying to clench, gracing you with such a smug smile that you’ve grown to both love and get irritated by.

You’re been riding him for what seemed like hours by now- and you’re that half his fraternity brothers were ready to break down the door with noise complaints.

Then again, they were likely used to this.

Because Gojo Satoya was always just so insatiable with you.

It’s been a few months since you’d been fucking Satoya - just an on and off little rendezvous that had started one night at one of his own parties. One of the many, many parties you’d dragged your roommates to. 

Delta Jujutsu Pi was known for them. And according to the (many—you’d long since learned not to underestimate his popularity) personal recounts and Instagram stories, one minute you’d been challenging the frat president to beer pong but with vodka- and the next you both had been pressed against the mansion’s wall. Lips on each other’s. 

When you’d woken up the next morning, it was to a pounding headache and Satoya’s steady heartbeat. Arm cushioned underneath your head. Leg thrown over his waist.

No clothes.

The two of you had gasped- straight into a kiss which tasted faintly like last night’s berry punch bowl.

And what was meant to be a one-night stand turned into exchanging numbers, turned into meeting up the next weekend, turned into hanging out several times a week and meeting each other’s friends, turned into a long and dragged out…something of which a ‘relationship’ was not something you’d use to describe it. It was many things but not that.

It was like the thick and cloying sweetness of the punch bowl that night, but also the bitter taste of vodka-jealousy that shot through whenever Satoya winked back at someone else.

You knew you had no right to be jealous- it’s not as if the two of you were anything committed. No expectations. No strings attached, right? 

But then again, that didn’t stop the lines from blurring. It didn’t stop you from going out on dates with other men in retaliation, and it didn’t stop him from blowing your phone up all night whenever you did. You always did unmute him by the end of those nights, however, if only to complain about your latest date. 

It didn’t stop him from throwing those parties he was notorious for and inviting everyone he knew and their sister- flirtations galore. But it also didn’t stop him from coming right back to you—time and time again, no matter how much you blocked and swore at him.

Didn’t stop a single thing.

Throughout it all, you’d say that the only silver lining was getting to know Gojo Satoru more in-depth. 

Of course, knowing that the two were related, you’d coaxed his number out of Satoya to convince Satoru to tutor you. Which, expectedly, had turned into more of a friendship—one that was only sweetened by how openly you gawked at the man during your tutoring sessions.

That was your introduction to both brothers- worlds apart from one another.

The magnetic and heart-racing Gojo Satoya, the shy and studious Gojo Satoru. The older one by two minutes and the younger one. 

The messy one and the one who’d been here to witness just how messy the latter was.

In more ways than one.

Eventually, Satoya was drawing the cutest lil’ hearts against your clit. That blushing tip of his cock moving ‘round and ‘round that sensitive spot, he hums at the smears of sheen he’s making—“Maybe we should go again…”

“Maybe you should let me go to class now.” You’re countering back.

His smile grows wider, “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Toya-” Your breath hitches, n’ you’re pushing back on his toned chest. It was just so defined from all those hours he spent at practice, and you’re taking more than a bit of pleasure feeling his pectorals. “-make me miss one of Professor Yaga’s lectures again and I’ll be referring him to you.”

Satoya shudders. “That man hates me.”

“Can’t imagine why…” You thought of all the classes he’d missed for matches- and perhaps being a loudmouth doesn’t help, either.

With the haunting thought of Yaga in his mind, Satoya lets you extract yourself from his arms and head to the bathroom to freshen up. By the time you’re heading back, he’d already tied-off the condom and chucked it in the bin, in the process of pulling on his fraternity-merchandise boxers (why did they even make those?)

He’s jumping in bed with you once you’re laying back down. Tugging his arms ‘round you—no one would ever believe it, but Gojo Satoya was a cuddler after sex.

The white-haired man whispers about everything and nothing as you two relax.

“Oh yeah- that reminds me.” He hums at some point, lifting his head up just a little from the crook of your neck. “I’m having a party this weekend, you should come.”

“This weekend?” It wasn’t a surprise that the frat was throwing yet another rager- and Satoya didn’t really have to ask you, either. He knew that you’d show up anyway. More of a formality than anything, as if he wouldn’t just sulk in a corner if you didn’t end up coming- before taking over the dance floor once Kendrick Lamar came on, of course.

Satoya nods sluggishly, the room still thick with sex.

But you’re turning to face him with a raised brow. “Like- this weekend?” He’s climbing up onto his elbows in confusion at your tone. “Toya, it’s Valentine’s weekend.”

“Oh.”

“You seriously didn’t know?”

“Oh.” 

He runs a hand through his rumpled white hair. “So that’s why chicks n’ bros have been giving me chocolate all week- and here I thought I just got extra handsome.”

He pauses.

“Have I gotten extra hands-”

“Satoya.”

“Alright alright.” Satoya raises his hands in surrender, letting his head fall back onto the pink-cased pillows. “So uh…”

It was obvious when he didn’t know what to do with what you were throwing - hints often didn’t work on Gojo Satoya. Which was interesting to find out, because you’d always assumed that Satoru would be the oblivious one (and to a large extent, he was). But a sheer lack of committed relationships and an overt surplus of flirtations meant Satoya wouldn’t understand a hint even if you banged him upside the head with one—he’d merely look up at the sky and wonder whether it was hailing. 

Though that’s not to say that he wasn’t intelligent - certainly not, you’ve witnessed his pre-tournament planning, the way he’d lead your university team, the NBA drafter that reportedly had an eye on him, how he managed good scores on most exams despite rarely attending class. 

No, Gojo Satoya was just…so good at giving hints that it seemed to have balanced out by not being to receive them—yours, at least. Strangely enough, he seemed to never get your subtlety. 

All but yours.

As if he couldn’t see, as if he saw but couldn’t believe.

And so you sigh. “No- no, that’s my mistake. I just assumed we’d be doing something for Valentine’s Day.” 

“…Girl, the party?”

“Nevermind.”

And as Satoya launches into yet another monologue - about his most recent training regiment and the upcoming frat rush - you’re reaching over to the bedside cabinet. Grabbing your phone, it takes a few taps for you to interrupt the white-haired man-

“Actually, Toya—” Catching his attention. “I might not be able to make it to the party. Or at least not all of it.”

He sits up urgently, “Huh? But why-”

“Plans.” 

“With what bastard-”

“That bastard is your brother.” And as his jaw drops, you’re turning your phone screen to flash the conversation at him. Satoya’s blue eyes narrow as he reads onwards-

You: psssssssst

Nerd-jo (Gojo brother #2): ?

You: do you have any plans for valentine’s day?

You: wanna hang out?

Nerd-jo (Gojo brother #2): ???!!!11??1!111!!??!?!

Nerd-jo (Gojo brother #2): My apologies.

Nerd-jo (Gojo brother #2): Typo.

Nerd-jo (Gojo brother #2): But yes, I would be delighted to spend time with you.

Just about the gist of it-

“—and I haven’t spent time with Satoru in a bit now so-” You were saying—and he knows, by the way. These days, Satoya had been intentionally meeting you during times he knew that his busybody brother was free from the clutches of his damn books. Just like he knew that Satoru had been meeting you during the times that Satoya had been out from practice.

‘Tutoring’ his ass- tutoring didn’t mean Satoru needed to have you over. To his apartment.

To the place mere feet away from where he knew his brother stuffed a hoodie you’d left behind underneath his pillow.

Fucking tutoring-

“Sure thing. Have fun.” Metal in his tone. Metal in his gaze locked in on you—he’s pushing your phone down to the mattress and leaning over to kiss you. Tongue piercing scraping the edge of your lips- “But just know that I’ll be a hell of a lot more fun than my brother.”

.

.

.

It’s Valentine’s Day when the sudden slam! thunders across the library.

Gojo Satoya with chest puffed out in his letterman jacket, with his forearm banged down on one of the tables. He leans over the polished mahogany and stares straight into the eyes of a man that looked like his mirror image.

White hair.

Blue eyes.

Those same unfairly pretty features- one of which was twisted into a scowl. And the other—nothing but cool indifference.

Gojo Satoru arches a stark white brow and meets his brother’s eyes. “Can I help you?”

“You can help me by fucking off-” Satoya spits. And had they been anyone else, then the gapes and gasps and stares - even the stray camera that was peeking out - would have unnerved them. But the Gojo twins were used to the attention by now.

The only difference was that where one basked in it, the other shunned away from it.

And though the tips of Satoru’s ears flush bright red—he never was the type to back down from his brother. Satoru’s jaw clenches, “Though you may be known for such philandering proclivities, I can assure you that I am not much the same.”

“And I can assure you that my fist will meet your ugly face-”

“We have the same face.”

“-if you don’t call off that date you have with my girl.” Satoya pants out. Breathless with fury. 

Though there was a smile on his face- and he has the audacity to turn and wave - to fucking wave - at some of the gawking on-lookers. Shooting that charming Gojo smile that was bound to make them think this was an act of brotherly jest.

It makes the other man perk up. 

“Whose girl?” Satoru asks. 

Satoya freezes. “Huh?”

But his younger brother cocks his head, almost as though he’d just found the answer to a particularly tricky question. “Whose girl?”

The frat president rears back. Without warning, he reaches out and grasps at the lapels of the other’s stupid Star Wars hoodies—“You heard what I said.” Glower permanent on his face, “You’re smart. Figure it out.”

Satoru narrows his eyes, glaring at the man through his glasses. “Don’t have enough of a brain to figure it out yourself?”

“I’ll tell you what I do have…” Smile wicked. Leaning into whisper, “And it’s something that you won’t stick in her even in your wildest fuckin’ dreams-”

“You fucking-”

“Ahem.”

A cough.

Not the annoying, grating voice of his brother (thought both the brothers).

But rather…something sweeter. Softer. Stern in a way that made both their cocks prick up just a tad-

They’re snapping their heads over to stare at you—you with your eyes narrowed, and your foot tapping. They both feel a lurch in their stomach as they wonder just how long you’d been standing there - just how much you’d heard.

They both gulp.

Your gaze takes its time travelling up the vision before you: the older brother with his fingers dug into the other’s hoodie, the younger brother with his fists clenched as though he was about to punch the other. Both their forearms pop with veins that decorate their muscles- even Satoru with his bulky frame covered in his soft clothes. “Gojo Satoya…” 

The man in question plasters a smile across his face, “Yes, baby?”

“Let go of him-”

His fingers unclench.

Satoru is slumping onto his chair.

Satoya turns around and starts walking to you in an instant- “Baby, what are you doing here~?”

“Tutoring, because someone made me miss another one of Yaga’s classes.” Holding up your bag in emphasis, and at least Satoya has the decency to look sheepish. 

“Aw, you know m’sorry about that.” He answers, sounding utterly unapologetic.

“Right…” Not that you believed him a single bit. Your narrowed gaze drifts past him and ends up resting on the slightly-ruffled man sitting at the table. “What are you even doing here? I didn’t think you knew the way to the library.”

“Hey!”

In the slight distance, Satoru stifles a laugh.

Satoya whips behind to glare at him- before turning back to you. “Just ah- you know, extending the invite to my party tonight.” And before you could interrogate him on why exactly an invitation constituted of having one’s hand at one’s brother’s throat—he’s turning to the little audience you’d gathered and yelling out. “And you fuckers are invited as well.”

The cheers are drowning out your questions.

“Toya- what-”

“Mmmm—” Before you’re getting cut off by his mouth on yours. Tongue piercing cold. “That new lip gloss of yours tastes good, baby.”

But how strange it was that once he’s breaking away from the slightly-heated kiss, you find Satoya’s eyes on none other than his own brother. Staring at the expressionless man as he claims your lips as his own.

His own.

Satoya leaves the library with a smack on your ass. 

And you’re left off-kilter by the whole ordeal, wobbling on weakened legs to the chair opposite Gojo Satoru. Head down. Books open. Fingers twitching ever-so-slightly. There was a strange air about him, as unpiercing as concrete, that reminded you of however Satoru was when he was taking a particularly tough exam. He doesn’t meet your eyes as you take your seat before him, pulling out your books, your laptop, your excuses.

The chair screeches much too loud in the awed library. 

“Honestly, I don’t know what’s the matter with him.” You’re sighing, “He’s been strange all week.”

Satoru doesn’t answer, but you continue.

“And he knows that I have that thing with you tonight- he knows that but he still keeps insisting I go to that damn party.”

He still doesn’t say a word.

“I’m not going, of course.” You start to open one of your notebooks, “I promised I’d spend time with you, Satoru. It’s just so calming to be with you—”

In his peripheral vision, he can see you start to rub your temples. And he can’t help but jolt—he would never make you feel like that.

And maybe that’s what makes Gojo Satoru lurch up from his seat and kiss you.

Kiss you.

Soft.

Fleeting.

Barely even a graze- his face burns the prettiest sunset pink. Hot enough that he’s sure steam emerges from his parietal bone, that his eyes tear up, that he feels feverish. Something inexplicable bubbles up from all the way deeeep within his core, and it expels as a few wobbly apologies murmured against your lips.

Before you’re grabbing ahold of his chin n’ tugging him to you.

“Th-that was my first kiss…” He whispers.

You smile.

.

.

.

Gojo Satoya’s party would be in full swing by now.

You’ve found that they usually peaked after midnight, with most of the fraternities joining and the music concocting into one booming heartbeat. The pulse of youth. It shook the walls of the Delta Jujutsu Pi mansion, it seeped into your very circulatory system and left Satoya’s parties addictive—it would have you in his bed by the end of the night, without fail.

But time spent with Satoru was the exact opposite.

In the best way.

Even sitting next to Gojo Satoru had his warmth seeping into every particle of your being, and it left you buzzing with his soothing energy. Like dipping into a hot spring. Like taking a loooong nap during a scalding summer.

It was the same relaxing sort of feeling after a sip of wine. 

Like you could speak about anything and everything with him. Like you could make as many mistakes in his presence as you liked. And it wouldn’t matter—he would still wobble out that familiar, crooked smile. 

It seemed as though the more of those stern, sterile layers you cracked through- the more you wanted to surge through even more. With much more gusto than Satoru would argue that you put in during your tutoring sessions, you admit (but what he doesn’t know is that you might just…organize a few more than you actually needed). Just a few more.

Just to see him.

And Satoru was smart, you had a nagging feeling that he knew. But he let you stumble your way through your notes anyway.

He left you drunk on the proximity of him, while his brother left you exhilarated.

You suppose you had Satoya to thank for that.

Because he was the only reason you actually encountered Satoru. Just one encounter before you’d actually bothered him into giving his phone number, prompting your tutoring sessions.

Before, you’d only seen Satoru in a blur of white hair n’ Pokemon hoodies- racing about from class to class.

He was always the first - both to class, and to the top of the grades list.

The stark opposite of his brother, who’d gotten into Tokyo Jujutsu University on a basketball scholarship. Satoru had three papers published under Nature, several student lectures under his belt, and a dorm lined with more trophies than atomic specks of dust. It was also agreed-upon by most in the department that he’d been picked personally by JAXA to work there the second he graduated.

And you’d always assumed that the man would be the uptight type - most people with so many accomplishments would be so. Though his brother, Satoya, with his equally impressive athletic accolades—it’d still been a surprise to find that Gojo Satoru was rather…shy.

He’d blushed furiously the first time he’d met you - in the unfortunate circumstance of walking inside Satoya’s room without knocking. Right when his brother had his head between your legs.

Though Satoya had laughed himself hoarse, it’d taken you forty-five minutes to get the bespectacled man to stop apologizing to you. And then only five to convince him that no- you weren’t dating his brother.

You remember the glare that Satoru had leveled at him then, pushing up his bangs to help it. “Figures.” He’d scoffed, whilst Satoya had calmed down just enough to stop his snickers. “He wouldn’t have been able to woo you like that anyway-”

“Woo? Woo—telling me about wooing-” Satoya had dramatically flailed into Satoru’s arms then, hand at his chest. “Dost thou knoweth anything about bagging the baddie? And here I thoughteth thou wast a virgin-”

“Sh-shut up—!” He’d thrown Satoya off, eyes flickering urgently between you and his brother. And it wasn’t long before the last you’re seeing of the blushing, babbling mess of Satoru was a stomp towards the door.

The slam of it.

Before it’s opened again just a crack-

“And in Shakespearean terms, I would technically be a maiden!”

You giggle just thinking about it.

And it makes the man in question look over with a quirked brow, sweater matching the same shade of pastel pink that he blushes. “S-sorry, I’m probably boring you-”

“Not at all.” You’re cutting him off in an instant. Fervently shaking your head, you join Satoru down upon his bedroom floor—carefully avoiding the blocks and pinches of Lego that were scattered around him like a blood spatter. It had been a slow, almost strangely sensual night - he’d invited you to his apartment where he’d cooked dinner for you.

A traditional Japanese course of dishes that he’d learned from his mother, he told you. Topped off ice cream homemade through the principle of freezing point depression.

He’d planned to make a strawberry shortcake, he said. But it seems in his frenzy to make everything perfect, he’d lost track of time and ended up with sweet-smelling char—sure, you’d come over to hangout with Satoru before. But to hangout on Valentine’s Day…

This was territory uncharted for Gojo Satoru.

Hell, he’d had his first kiss just the other day.

And so you’d been led inside his apartment- now a wonderland of the sweetest fairy lights and crooning tunes playing from one corner of the space. There, Satoru was the perfect gentleman—giving his arm out to walk you the mere few meters to the decorated dining table, tucking in your chair, plating his creations for you. 

Made just how you liked them. How did he even remember?

It was a wonder to Satoru himself how he didn’t bumble or trip over his own two feet. And before long, the two of you had finished dinner and numerous conversations- carrying them over inside his bedroom.

Where he’d…pulled out a brand-new Lego set and gotten to work on it.

You’d found it more interesting to watch him - that focused furrow between his brows, the way his tongue stuck out ever-so-slightly - from the foot of his mattress. Unable to catch a glimpse of the box before Gojo stuffed it underneath his bed, you were only left to wonder just what it was he was building with so many reds and pinks.

He’s staring up at you unsurely now, and you insist. “I wanna see you build this, Satoru.”

“Are you sure?” He lets the long green spindle drop from his hands. Tugging down on the thick sleeves of his sweater, “I know that Toya has his party tonight and I p-promise I won’t be upset if you wanted to go there instead, y’know?”

“But I decided I’d spend Valentine’s Day with you.” You insist, “And spend Valentine’s Day with you—I will. I don’t need any party.”

“But-”

“Satoru.”

He’s giggling shyly to himself. 

He takes the half-built piece of Lego in his hand and gets back to work on it—and you find yourself inching even closer to him. Knees pressing against crossed knees. Shoulders against shoulders. 

“What are you building, by the way?” You ask. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lego pieces like that…”

Concentrating on the miniature pieces through his ivory bangs. “You’ll see, sweetheart.”

And you don’t know whether it’s the smile on his lips, the dimple at the end of his grin, or that little pet name he’d given you—sweetheart—that made your heart race. Feeling your heart flip in that small but noticeable way it did whenever Satoya was around. Both of them? Whatever will you do with yourself.

It isn’t long before Satoru’s Legos start to form a clearer picture, and he’s working nimbly with the pieces.

In just a few minutes he has his body hunched- partially obscuring your view from the final touches to his creation. And soon enough, he’s pushing his glasses up his nosebridge, leaning back and thrusting out a bouquet of the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen. Plumes of rose and red and creamy white.

Little ferns on the side. Little hearts in the centers of his daisies. 

He flushes fever-red as you take them from him. “F-for you.”

Satoru’s tone breaks at his confession.

“Satoru, they’re…” You’re breathless. The tip of your finger runs down the delicate petals that he’d spent time assembling, “I-I don’t even know what to say.”

“It’s for you.” He repeats, slightly firmer this time. “It was always for you.”

You’re snapping your head up to meet his determined blue eyes. So intense that they almost sparkled- “What do you…”

“Everything I do is for you—and that’s hard when I’ve always…” Satoru cuts himself off short. Slightly shaking his head, “But you deserve better than him.”

“Satoya?”

“Yes—” Breathed out as if he’d been wanting to say this for forever. “It’s hard when you look at my brother like…that- and I know that this isn’t my place. I know that this isn’t right of me to say. I know that this is selfish of me to request, but if you could just see…”

“See?”

“See that you deserve better than him.” His hands clasp your own around the ever-lasting stems. “And that- this isn’t fair of me to tell you let alone ask…but if you could just see that I—”

“What- that yer fucking shit at confessions?”

But of course, who else would it be but Gojo Satoya?

Pushing Satoru’s bedroom door further open and waltzing into the space- his towering frame almost seemed too large for the small space, almost left you breathless. Even though you knew that there wasn’t much of a height difference between the two-

Satoya’s hand on your wrist is instant. He bends down to meet eye-level with his brother on the floor, “Honestly, little brother, I would’ve had more respect for you if I’d walked in here and you were fuckin’ my girl right now.” He tugs you to his chest. “But here you got to her before me.”

“Feels good to be first, older brother.”

Suddenly they’re both on their feet - and so are you. Pressed between them—attempting to push away the two brothers from each other. From Satoya spitting, “That was supposed to be me giving those flowers to her- you knew. You fucking knew-”

“You thought she’d wait around forever?” Satoru crosses his arms. “And what were you doing on Valentine’s Day, huh?”

“Oh, grow up-”

“You grow up. While you were throwing one of your damn parties I-”

“I cancelled that damn party.”

That makes everyone pause.

And Satoya continues. He was looking right at you now- “You think there’d be anything to celebrate if you aren’t there beside me?” 

And you can’t help but notice that there’s something slightly more…tender in Satoya’s tone. Something slightly more vulnerable- almost broken. There’s a sincerity in his eyes that makes him look younger, and it makes you squirm.

Something that Satoru’s sharp eyes pinpoint instantly- and he’s reaching out to tug you to him. This time being wrenched from his brother’s grasp and to you, “You can’t do that- you can’t just barge in here and try to disrupt what I’ve been wanting to do for so long—”

“And you think I haven’t?”

“What makes you think-”

“I knew her first-”

“I knew I loved her longer-”

“I know I loved her better-”

Satoru hisses. Pointing an accusing finger at the other man, “Says the man without the balls to even confess.” 

“Says the damn virgin who only wishes he could touch her.” Satoya’s voice grows louder. He takes a step closer, and Satoru doesn’t back down. “Don’t act so high and mighty when you and I both know about the hoodie underneath-”

“Don’t you fucking dare-”

“Can you both shut the fuck up?!”

Your exasperated tone breaks through the argument- leaving the room ringing with silence thereafter.

And so you finally say your piece—“You guys…” Massaging your throbbing temples, the Lego bouquet was still in your hands- and you’re just now realizing that the t-shirt you’d been wearing was Satoya’s. Both of them on you. Around you. “How about we solve this like the civilized adults that we are?”

Satoya scoffs, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. “Tch- yeah, and how do you suppose that?”

“Though I’d be more than happy to hear you out, sweetheart, I can’t promise to conduct myself according to such methodology.”

And so you tell them.

And the silence after is deafening—

“You want us to what-”

“Anatomically, is that even-”

“No way.” Satoya stabs a finger at his brother. “I don’t wanna see this fucker’s two-inch-”

“Mine’s likely bigger than yours-”

“Fucking right-”

“Want to bet?”

It’s only a few minutes later before both brothers have their hands on you- have their mouths dragging down your neck. From the front, from behind. One of them kissing down your spine. One of them nibblin’ on your collarbone—and you can only flutter your eyes closed and fucking moan at the sensation.

Two hot, needy mouths on you.

All over you.

Someone - it must be Satoru - leans his head down and captures your mouth as his own. He lavishes the soft edge of his tongue between your wettened crevice, and gaaasps as you’re opening your mouth for him.

Clearly never having kissed anyone so deeply- anyone like this at all—he whimpers as he’s shyly meeting your tastebuds with his. “S-sweetheart-”

“Oh, lemme show ya how it’s done.” Physically pushing his brother away with a hand on his face- Satoya cranes his neck from behind you. A hand clasping your throat and tuggin’ you to meet his ravenous lips—“This is how you kiss a girl.”

And before he’s smoochin’ you, he purses his lips and spits a great dollop of saliva that falls gently into your maw. 

Sloppy.

Satoya barely spends the time wipin’ the excess splatter away before he’s roughly shoving his tongue inside. Swirling his textured tastebuds across every single inch of you—letting his curvaceous tip tickle the back of your throat. 

Whenever Satoya kissed you, it almost felt as if he was fucking you with his tongue.

Again and again. And his wet muscle scrapes the sides of your mouth as he’s jostling it back and forth- leaving you weak in the knees.

“See?” He scoffs at his younger brother. “Gotta kiss her till she’s stupid.”

“How uncouth.” Satoru pushes his glasses up. “Let me try.”

And then the other twin takes over- how dizzying it was to have a man with the same features, but with such different mannerisms. Satoya relentlessly leaves half-moon nail marks on your skin when he sets you free, but Satoru leans in and cups your face like a delicacy—even as his brother scoffs at the act.

“She likes being fucked dirty, lemme tell you.”

Satoya’s lewd remark is lost to the way that Satoru purses his pretty plump lips and spits—

More like drools.

A lecherous stream of spittle that ends up fallin’ onto your tastebuds- and he watches with widened eyes as you take it all in. All of it. Throat bobbing as it hits every orifice, Satoru feels it deep down in his cock once you tilt your head back and swallow-

Looking straight into both their eyes as you do.

“O-oh my-”

“Fuck.”

“I think m’gonna cum just from that.”

Satoya looks at Satoru, and they exchange a silent conversation with their gaze. Both murky blue-eyed and narrowed down at you- you’re given absolutely no warning before you’re being scooped up in a tangle of their strong arms. Satoya on your waist. Satoru cushioning your head.

They’re sprawling you out on Satoru’s bed and barely letting you hit the second bounce before they’re on you-

“Let me.”

“I hardly think that’s-”

“And which one of us does this pretty pussy like better?” Satoya pretends to cup his ear and listen - not to you, not to his brother. He’s listening to the drenched in-betweens of your legs, where if you press your thighs together then it lets out a faint squelch! “Exactly.”

Grumbling, Satoru decides to let Satoya have the bed space between your thighs.

The mattress dips where you needed them the most, and you’re feeling hot breath against your cunt. Scorching. Simmering. Taking your attention for the slightest second before you peer up at Satoru- smiling at the pouty man.

Wordlessly, you’re beckoning him with your hand.

And he seems to startle- before following your every word. Your every action. Your every syllable.

Gojo Satoru thinks he would kill a man just to have you look at him like this—always. 

With your lashes fluttering up at him as he nears, with your fingertips eager to touch him- it feels like torture as soon as he’s near enough for you to play with his drawstrings. Your fingers curving into the soft cotton of his sweatpants, your palm skidding down the looooong cylindrical print of his dick. It was just so long and thick that it made you gape.

That it made your mouth water.

That it made your digits dip just below the hemline of Satoru’s grey sweatpants-

And Satoya - gruff at the attention you were drowning his brother in - decides to then drown himself in your wet pussy—he’s like a man starved. Barely leaving enough time to shove apart your legs, barely leaving enough time to push your panties to the side-

In fact, he doesn’t push your panties to the side before licking up your entrance.

Feeling for that cute vertical line of your slit through the drenched fabric. Satoya was lapping and tuggin’ apart both the underwear and your pussylips.

Lavishing just a flick of attention down your clit before he dives into your role.

Rough. Ruthless.

Rarely wasting a single second- rarely even waiting for you to accommodate his size. He just flops his lengthy muscle between your thickened folds, licking up the first few inches of your channel, before reaching back n’ fucking you in hard, rapid thrusts.

Again and again.

He’s pressing the silver orb of his piercing into every tender lil’ spot inside you.

And though Gojo Satoya was the mean type in bed, never have you known him to be this…greedy.

“S-sweetheart—” You didn’t even realize that you’d been momentarily rendered stunned by the sheer primal streeeeetch between your legs. Not until Satoru’s gasping tone permeates the air, and he’s jerking his hips up cutely. “Sweetheart, please-”

“Heh.” Satoya snickers into your cunt. The vibrations are zapping forces of electricity right up your spine-

Satoru ignores him. “I need you.” He confesses—and the sheer desperation in his voice is enough to make you buck, and to make Satoya grumble in annoyance. The older brother uses one hand to latch onto your pretty hips, roughly draggin’ you right back down onto the creaky bedsprings. That ancient furniture protests as you’re being pinned down.

And so does Satoru-

But Satoya’s cutting him off, “I don’t care what you do- but do not fuckin’ move her from my mouth.” His frigid tongue piercing sticking against the top of your clit and making you squuuuuirm. “I haven’t eaten all night.”

And your clouded mind is almost about to ask what he means-

Before he’s slitherin’ his tongue back down and flickering in and out of your hole- sliding across every hidden inch of you. Letting his prominent nose crush up against your nub.

“And this pussy’s always so tasty—”

“Fuh-fuck—!” It’s Satoru that breaks the lecherous slurps n’ squelches this time- through the cacophony, his voice rings out so prettily. Because just then you’d properly pulled down his sweatpants and taken the nerdy man’s thiiiiick, throbbing cock in your hands.

Your lips part.

Long. Rock-hard.

So hard, in fact, that this might as well have been the first time in his life that Gojo Satoru has ever been hard. It feels as though he was buuuuuurning up all the way from his globular red tip, splurgin’ out wads of precum that coat a sheen down your wrist. Gliding down to your elbow.

Actually- it wasn’t just sappy precum. It was globular beads of gleaming white that are escaping n’ escaping out of him the second you’re touching him.

Pretty round balls flinching. Every part of him was just the most innocent pink.

He throws his head back as he empties out volume after volume of his seed- so much in just a few seconds. Though not as much as he would like to, because in a split-second, Satoru reaches his hand down and plugs his leaking hole up with a thumb. 

“Awww…” You’re pouting in disappointment. The excess of his cum drivels down your arm, creating patterns between your fingers.

He looks down at the sight of your voice and- fuck, he can’t handle it. He’s looking away. 

Satoru can’t help but whimper. “Fuck, don’t say that. I th-think m’gonna cum again—”

“Already?” Satoya scoffs.

“Shut up.” Satoru bites back. And he might have all the endurance he needs to last all night with a textbook and his notes in front of him, but the studious man was now fighting for his life—whispering formulas underneath his breath just to bate his impending high again. So close. “Euler’s method of sequence consists of…”

But the more you’re feeling him, the harder Satoru grows.

He lays out heavily across your palm, the girth of his erection making you falter. A heft to him that makes you clench ‘round Satoya’s mouth—and the other man can’t help but grunt. He leaves a man spank! on top of your clit that leaves you squealing. “Are you focusing on me or my brother, baby?”

Barely managing to gurgle out, “B-both?”

By now you’d wrapped your fingers around Satoru’s swollen cock- giving his bulging tip slow n’ steady pumps. He chases your hand with rhythmic bucks.

But Satoya wasn’t done just yet-

After a single slide of his piercing, you’re feeling yet another slap. Rudely smearing his fingertips ‘round your clit- “Hmmm, I don’t think that’s good enough. Isn’t that right, Satoru?”

“Sh-shit—” Satoru shivers at the feeling of eyes on him. “I believe that’s right-”

“Mhmm—”

“W-what do you…” And it leaves your head dizzy to register just how fast the two brothers had gone from fighting to friends—to toying with your body together. They were meeting eyes and briefly nodding.

And it’s the last thing you’re seeing before Satoru tucks a hand underneath your chin and tilts your gaze up to his. “Forgive my disrespect, sweetheart.”

He wraps his larger fingers ‘round your own dominant hand- the one that’d been jerking off his cock. And with it all nice n’ tight, Satoru squeezes your hand at his base and starts thrusting—rutting. Like an animal in heat, he’s fucking the circular space your hand made as if he wishes it was your cunt.

“But the one you should be focusing on is me.”

Throwing a jealous look down at his grinning brother- mouth all glowing with slick. The bespectacled man tuts and reaches down to sneak his free hand underneath your t-shirt.

Dipping underneath your bra and directly groping your tits-

“Heh, look at you.” Satoya rolls his half-lidded eyes—already looking so murky with the juices of your pussy. More n’ more of it dripping down his chin as he’s thrashing his pierced tongue between your pussylips- faster n’ faster.

And the thing about Satoya was that he didn’t care if it made you squirm.

He didn’t care if it left your body restless.

He didn’t care- in fact, it was all the better if he could overstimulate you with only a few sloppy strokes. And with both Gojo twins - one babble away 

Suddenly, you’re swearing that the circular metal of his piercing was hittin’ straight into one of your best spots. G-spot throbbing with pressure- and it’s making you plant your feet onto the edge of the mattress and buck-

And get draaaagged back down by Satoya’s ruthless hands. Stuck to you like adhesive. 

“You seriously think I’d let my dinner escape so easily?” He asks, more to himself. His rasping tone makes a primal part of you open up, and the frat president giggles at just how much wetter you’re getting. “Awwww, look how much wetter she’s getting f’me.”

Peeking up at his brother and watching him flinch. Possessive, possessive.

Satoru pinches your right nipple. Capturing where you were softest between two fingers, he teases that peak. “There is not enough evidence for that conclusion.” 

And Satoya has to admit that he feels your cunt glistenin’ even more at Satoru’s ministrations. “I don’t do any of that science shit-”

“You don’t do anything-”

“Except eat my girl out goooooood.” Dipping his tongue in and out—this time, Satoya was expanding his tastebuds and showin’ off the sheer layers of your juices that stuck to him. He always did have an incredible length to him, shovelling properly in, in, in. “Jealous?”

Satoru shivers as the crown tip of your thumb rubs down his cockhead’s slit. “N-no, because her mind’s on me anyways-”

“You fuckin’ wish.”

You almost forgot just how competitive the two could be - united in ruining you, but breaking apart at the very seams. It both bothered and turned them on to think about havin’ to drag your attention away from the other man, to think about accelerating their pace until it was nothing but a blur—Satoru’s cock clasped between your fingertips, Satoya’s tongue dipping in and out of your hole.

Fishing out so many ribbony wires of slick that it’s formulating a puddle down below. He just knew your pussy so well, and Satoru just had this utter need to him that was-

“It’s me that you want, right?” Satoru leans down to hush against the shell of your ear- his scorching hot breath setting your entire body alight. “It’s-”

“Now that’s just playing dirty.” In retaliation, Satoya slaps your clit one more—and it makes you see stars. Just because that makes your fist tighten around his brother’s cock, he lands at least three more sharp spanks before lashin’ his tongue piercing against your clit once more. A few more times as if to soothe the sting, “Didn’t know you had it in you, Satoru.”

“Oh, please…” Satoru looks away. “That’s why she should’ve been with me from the start-”

“Now that’s pushing it.”

Two more direct slams of his fingertips against your cunt- that part of you felt just as raw as your walls by this point. 

You’re bucking up against the dampened sheets- “Please- oh…”

“What’s that?”

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“I th-think I’m gonna-”

“Shush, baby.” To your shock, Satoya shushes you both. Right before you could finish your sentence- he merely lugs his gaze back down to admire your pretty pussy

And you were almost sure you were hallucinating, because there was no way, there could be absolutely no way…but Gojo Satoya was fucking your cunt with his mouth and nodding along to every noise he produces.

Humming at the slurps, affirming at the squelches.

Almost as though he was in deep conversation with your soppin’ wet core, Satoya licks a few more times up your crevice. Before he’s finally looking up with a faux-apologetic grin, “Sorry- she’s chatty today. My pussy says she’s about to cum.”

Your jaw drops-

“Toya, you’re fucking filthy.”

He slips his metallic piercing against the roof of your cunt, thud-thud-thud—! Probing in so deep as if to say that he knows he is- and his brother bucks up even harder into your soft palm. So needy. “Th-that’s not possible.” Satoru gasps out, pushing his condensation-filled glasses further up his nose. “According to my research, there is no linguistic nature of the genitalia-”

“This is why yer a fuckin’ virgin.” Satoya rolls his hazy eyes. 

Before you know it, the older of the two brothers leans upwards and bites his canines around your clit. That throbbing nub was stuck between his perfect lips- he counts a few heartbeats from your cunt, before wrenching his mouth back. Murmuring deep into your pussy—“Watch and learn as I make her cum, little brother. She’ll be thinking of me as I make her cum.”

“Sh-shit, Toya…” 

Blue eyes meet bespectacled blue eyes- and Satoru’s gaze narrows. “She’ll cum because of me.” His fingers - so honed from all his sharp note-taking - finds it easy to twist n’ turn your nipples in all the ways you liked.

He was alternating between both, flickering his thumb around your soft areolas.

“That’s the spirit.” Satoya says, almost talking down. “But m’doing it first-”

“I disagree-”

“At least use her mouth.” Muffling against your pussylips, Satoya’s mouth opens up so wiiiiiide to engulf every part of your dripping wet cunt. Like Satoru, he was following an alternating method that has his textured tastebuds hittin’ the inside of your channel one second, and counting the throbs of your clit the next. 

Satoya raises an unimpressed brow, “Well? What’re you waiting for? I told you she’s a dirty girl-”

“Shut up, m’not delaying…” Though he was. He really, really was. Satoru hesitates - not because he didn’t want to—fuck, how he wanted to.

How he really, really wanted to.

But he’s on his sixtieth formula by now and already about to explode- already dribblin’ out milky wads of precum. It was growing thicker and more incessant by the second, and Satoru could feel himself trembling, he could feel his heavy balls start to clench—

And yet that smug look on his brother’s face is enough to spur him into action.

Satoru jerks his hips just a little too hard on purpose- and all it takes is the tiniest glide between your puckered lips for him to shatter.

Into all sorts of zillions of pieces. Into looooong ribbony wires of cum that dribble down like a waterfall from the agitated red divot at his tip.

It’s letting out all sorts of lecherous noises as he cums—and soon enough your vision’s flooded with white. Just the most gleaming layers of his ivory sap that drench you, and at this point you can’t quite worry about it getting everywhere n’ all into your hair- because Satoya’s quirking his tongue just right to make you cum.

To tip you over the edge.

Those waves of pleasure break across every inch of your being- leaving your limbs trembling. Toes curling. Spine arching - making it all the more easy for Satoya to grab your hips in one hand and make you rut against him. He’s lashin’ out thorough strokes against every inch of your clit, the tip of his tastebuds resting teasingly on your clit.

Feeling for just how much your hole quivers for him- and you’re quiverin’ away just enough, Satoya fucks you through the peaks of your high. Peak after peak.

His younger brother elongates those white-hot whizzes of pleasure by twisting your nipples. Toying. They were just so sensitive after so much contact, making you shake into him.

Your tongue sticks out to taste more of his salted caramel seed.

And your head clouds with raw carnal pleasure, “P-please, it feels so good—” Lips wobbling, both brothers lean in to see which name you’re ending your sentence off with. “-Gojo.”

They’re sharing looks with each other.

And then they’re looking at you.

“Now now, we can’t have that.” Satoya croons.

“If that was a question during our practice tests, sweetheart, you’d get zero marks.” Satoru breathes out, finally having caught his breath. Though he still slightly trembled with the aftershocks of his orgasm, swirlin’ the roundness of his cockhead down your mouth—“Shit.”

He pulls away before he cums yet again.

“Newton’s first law of gravity…”

“Fuckin’ virgin.” Satoya repeats. “Pussydrunk from just- hah, that-”

“I beg your pardon-”

“Pussydrunk from just that-” He’s spankin’ down on your clit with his tongue- “Isn’t that right, baby? He should be more like- mmpf, me—” Struggling to get through the constant thrashes of his tongue, the way his jaw unhinges further. “Should be more in control-”

“Fuck-” Fucking his pierced tongue back into your struggling channel - it makes you gasp.

“Should be more—fuck, nonchalant. Heh.”

“Toya, again-”

“Should be more…mmmm.”

And it’s then that you’re realizing that Gojo Satoya wasn’t planning to finish his sentence - he wasn’t planning to even pull away. He was further reaching between your legs and gasping as he fucked your cunt with his mouth again and again and again-

“Move.”

When pushing doesn’t work, Satoru grabs ahold of Satoya’s hair and wrenches the man away from your pussy—fuck. You could feel yourself growing unfairly wetter at the surprising forcefulness to the nerdy man.

Before long, Satoya’s been pushed aside whilst the bespectacled twin fits himself between your legs. 

Satoya raises a brow as if waiting-

One impatient tick that turns into something of impressive nature—because without warning, Satoru spits. Messy, just like his twin had. 

“I have to wash him off.” He murmurs, watching the line of spit fall vertically down your slit. Before he lurches his face into your cunt soooo far deep that you’re sure he wouldn’t be able to breathe. And he’s eating you out like he doesn’t need to.

Doesn’t care to.

White brows furrowing, a moan cracks at the back of his throat. Fingers tightening. Blue eyes going wide. There’s an electric current that runs through Satoru’s body- like the first taste of your treacly pussy had him seeing heaven itself.

Those pearly gates were openin’ up wide for him—and so were your legs.

And it’s on pure animal instinct that he jerks himself even closer. Unfastening his maw, he’s sloshin’ his wet muscle inside again and again.

And again and again.

His first time tasting pussy, and he was gone already.

The length of Satoru’s tongue was about as incredible as Satoya’s, though slightly less flexible. But it was that lumbering inexperience of his that made his entrances feel so good - constant, with no rhyme or reason other than sticking inside so sloppily that it made your eyes roll to the back of your head.

“I need to…oh.” Satoru gasps out into your pussy. Grabbing your quivering flesh even tighter- “I need to—ngh, fuck.”

“Need to what, Toru?” You’re asking in that pretty voice of yours.

And it’s damn near enough to make him cum again- urging his body to rut against yours. “I need- fuck. I need to r-remember my studies…”

“Your studies?”

“Hah- you studied?” Satoya snickers out from somewhere above you. “Nerd.”

It gives you a good jolt to realize that he’d somehow walked right up to where your body was laid, making the bed creak once he rests his thick kneecaps against the mattress. The area beside your head dips as the older brother inches closer—

Satoru nods belatedly at your question. “I r-read about this during one of my…long and lonely nights.” Peering up at you through his long lashes, something unreadable in his eyes. “Fucked my cock raw learning about how I’d make you feel good.”

Rutting. Humping the mattress.

“I read about it in medical journals- I even read about it on sex forums.” He pants out, “And I—I fucking took notes…” Looking around his room as though to grab them right now. “But now, I just can’t remember…”

Plastering those slick lips of his against your entrance—and then whimpering as he pulls away- for but a mere second before he lands back down. A few more open-mouthed kisses prior to the entire sequence repeating. 

Like he was struggling not to lose himself to your cunt.

Like he was struggling not to kiss n’ kiss his swollen mouth against your pussy - you were just too addictive. He was fighting with himself to actually wrench away from your sloppy hole n’ clear his head. The valedictorian was stumped.

He stares down intensely at your drivelling pussy, his glasses frames crushing against your folds.

Pouting against your clit at this little dilemma- meanwhile Satoya comments something about how it was a miracle that Satoru found the clit in the first place.

“Pussy so good ya can’t even think.” The older twin is tittering down at you.

And it’s the last thing you’re hearing—before suddenly whatever noises erupted in your throat are being fuuuucked back down.

With a singular stripe of his rotund cockhead. Thick and aching.

Pounding away at the back of your neck. In those brief moments that you’d been distracted, the other brother had tugged down his ripped jeans and boxers. Bearing your lips with his thickening tip - from up-close, it seemed as though Satoru might actually have been longer.

But Satoya was heeeefty and fat enough that he always left your thighs pressing together.

That flared tip of his glistens in the dim light, it perfectly illuminated the patterns of his veins. So many of them coverin’ the circumference and length of him, whirling their way ‘round and ‘round and—and now you were feeling those very same patterns indent in the back of your throat.

The nerd was longer while the frat boy was thicker.

Satoya pulls his hips back and leaves you gasping- “Heh…”

Just to watch how you’re ruined on his fat fuckin’ cock.

You’re barely blinking before suddenly Satoya’s hounding figure finds itself climbing properly onto the bed- with each of his incredibly thick legs straddling your face. Muscles flexing whilst Satoya crushes you between his thighs and fucks that pretty mouth of yours.

With harsh, humpin’ thwacks! of his tannish cockhead. He tastes like a slightly sweeter version of his brother, you feel sinful admitting - and that wonderous part of your brain thinks that it might be because of Satoya’s better diet as an athlete-

Thwack! Thwack!

“Oi—” He’s slammin’ the rounded edge of his tip down on your tongue. One hand on your chin to gape your jaw wide enough for him, “Don’t zone out w’me, baby.”

“I wasn’t…” You mumble stubbornly.

“Yeah, right.” Satoya snickers. He’s then back to bumpin’ away his swollen cockhead at your throat- reaching for that lil’ dangly thing that he always loved to play with. 

It was just obscene how much your lips were stretching and gaping around his thick size.

Smearing your pretty lipstick down his shaft—shit, he might just get that shit tattooed on his cock. Decorating every solid inch of him with the looooong sensual fucks he was planting into your dewy wet mouth. “See that?” Satoya calls over his shoulder, “My girl was fuckin’ bored with you eating her out.”

“Erm- actually—”

“Shut up and do yer job.”

Satoru pushes his thick glasses up his nose- “Fuck off.” Pretending he doesn’t hear his brother’s chuckles. And you have to realize that Gojo Satoru wasn’t the valedictorian for no reason - he was nothing if not determined. And if he was an academic weapon, then surely he could be a weapon between your legs, too?

Somehow, he’s so pussydrunk that he whispers this between your legs. Almost as if a promise to your pussy.

And right—there was another reason he was valedictorian.

He had a damn good memory.

“Th-the Gräfenberg spot is typically located on the anterior vaginal walls.” He’s rattling off- now removing his greedy mouth (but only with a few extra kisses) to reach up with shivering fingers. Satoru’s slender fingertips pry apart your swollen folds, pressin’ inwards sensually. 

“Oh—” You’re gasping as much as you could - though it was so difficult with Satoya’s cock stuffing your orifice.

And Satoru gapes at the quivers of your pussy- “About two to three inches up the mucosa, it’s part of the prostate system that—” The rest of his sentence gets swallowed up by Satoya grabbing either side of your sweaty head and using it as leverage. Digging his neat nails into your skin, he ruts down into you like he’s furious-

“And has a theorized structure of vascular networks causing sexual stimulation.” He rasps out, mouth now moved to gulp at your pretty clit. Satoru watches his brother fuck your poor maw- and his two fingers start matching his pace. Meeting it.

Hard and frenzied.

You’re feeling one prod at the back of your throat, and then another into the deepest depths of your cunt.

Velvety walls clamping down on Satoru’s digits as though trying to memorize him in there—his pretty fingertips. Souring every inch of you. Faster and faster, he gets more ravenous to find that gooey spot inside that he knows would make you feel good-

“Need any help, little brother?”

Satoru scowls, “Never.”

“Heh, alright.” Satoya responds, “But just know that m’not going easy on my girl.”

“I’m not going easy on my girl, either.”

And then it happens- all in one go.

Satoya bottoms out until your nose presses against the curls of white at his base.

Satoru pumps his fingers into your throbbing g-spot.

And he realizes by the way you’re clenching.

Immediately. He jerks his nimble fingers back and thrashes in just a few more times- targeting that one bundle of nerves. And perhaps it’s in their genetics, because both Satoru and Satoya are able to aim every movement to perfectly strike that spot.

That round, throbbing spot.

He’s scrapin’ his fingertips on the wettened area of it—“I found it…” Breathless, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “I really found it- it’s right here—” Demonstrating by making a long slide down that sweet spot, “Right on this part of the adventitia that has this little- fuck.”

“Ngh—fuck, that feels good.” You’re muffling out between gasps. Satoya’s furiously hard cockhead hittin’ your throat once more. He fills you up with both his dollops of pre and his inches-

“Tch, beginner’s luck.” Satoya scoffs. “Now, the real challenge is getting that pretty pussy to cum- you see, I’m her favorite so-”

“Uh-huh.” Satoru nods - not at his brother. But down at your pussy—“Really? Because she says I’m her favorite now.”

“D’you copy during your exams, too?”

“Are you a sore loser during your games, too?”

With barbed words exchanged from both sides, they’re both toying with your pretty body. So cute and overstimulated like this- so it’s no surprise that with only a few more strokes of Satoru’s fingers, and with a few more thrusts of Satoya’s cock, you’re falling apart all over again.

All because of them.

Push after push.

Rub after rub.

Fucking you through the riotous peaks of your orgasm.

Since this was your second in a short amount of time, they were sharper n’ more unpredictable than before. 

The only thing you can do is lean back into the rickety mattress and take everything you’re given, those bursts of pleasure turning nearly unbearable every time Satoru bruises your pretty g-spot. Memorized its place. Studied it.

Digging past your elastic walls like he’d go even deeper if he could. He wonders how much further till your womb…

Meanwhile Satoya reaches behind him to slap your poor, puckered nipples. 

They were ripe after his brother’s groping earlier, and all the other man has to do is spank you around a little to make your body writhe. “P-please-”

“Awww, don’t cry, my poor baby.” Satoya’s roughened fingertips then move to wipe your tears. Gently dragging his knobbled tips down the side of your wet face- “How’re you gonna suck my cock if you’re crying?”

At this, your jaw drops. And Satoru can’t help but startle out a laugh—“You’re a fucking animal, you know that?”

“I know.”

“Be nice.”

“Nah.”

And to your surprise, Satoru isn’t reprimanding him anymore - he’s simply peeking up and taking pleasure in the sight of you havin’ every inch of your mouth ruined. Until your lips were swollen. Until your nose tingled at the scratch of his unruly white happy trail—and Satoya himself can’t help but trek his left hand down and piiiiiinch your nostrils closed. Still shoveling his cck at a frenzied pace. 

Just to watch you squirm.

Satoru hums something interested.

And pinches your clit—

You think you might be shattering into your third high of the night, your fourth.

Either way, all you know is that a few seconds have passed by the time you’re blinking your hazy eyes open again - cunt sensitive, throat shot - and staring down at the vision of Satoru and Satoya who’ve regrouped themselves to the foot of the bed now.

They’d both climbed aboard now, and it dipped with pressure. 

It’s as if you were seeing double. 

You stare wide-eyed at the men who looked so-very alike: their mouths swollen n’ dripping with your slick, their cocks dripping with their own.

Messy white hair.

Glazed blue eyes.

It was impossible to pick which one was more handsome- both so attractive in two completely different ways. Both so attractive even when they were…playing rock-paper-scissors?

“Rock-”

“Paper-”

“Scissors-”

“Shoot-”

“I win.” 

Satoru holds up the paper in retaliation to Satoya’s rock—and the other man looked as though he could so-very-conveniently punch the other man with it. Satoya’s brows furrow, eyes flickering over from his brother to you. “I’m sorry, baby. Your Toya tried-”

“Hey-”

But the other man is merely sighing as he finds himself thrown next to you, taking off his jacket and coaxing you into his big arms. And how could you deny?

Satoya was chiselled until it was almost unfair- how could a man in real life possibly look this good? It was almost Herculean in nature, with the most luscious pecs and abs that could go on for daaaaays—there was a natural attractiveness to them that drew your eyes. And you could already feel your mouth watering at the thought of being wrapped up in him- which, of course, makes the older twin flex up at Satoru. 

Despite cumming in your mouth moments prior, Satoya was rock-hard. Just the slightest cap of creamy white covering his mushroomy tip.

One that he’s swiping on his thumb and reaching up to press between your lips. “Drink up, now.” He’s cooing down at you, pushing in the rest of the remnant sap across your face. Gojo Satoya had left a mess. “Yer gonna need it with this fucker-”

“Oh.” At Satoru’s protests, you turn to him. “But I think he’ll do great- won’t you, Toru?”

Satoya looks at you incredulously, “Baby, he’s a virgin—you think he’ll be able to fuck you like he deserves-”

“I fear it has slipped your mind that I’m right here-”

“And he talks like that.”

Satoru pushes those glasses of his - now lacquered in a layer of your sweet, sweet sap - up his nose. For perhaps the first time tonight, he’s speaking out in an even tone. “Spread her legs f’me, big brother.”

“Eugh, get away from me.”

“I’m going to punch you.”

“Tch—” Satoya scoffs- but makes to rest his hands on your legs. He’s easily maneuvering you to sit against that toned chest you loved so much - your back against his front, your head falling back against his collarbone.

Practically a full nelson.

Both sets of his fingers dig against the flesh of your inner thighs- wrenching those trembly limbs open. And you’re helping him do so with a whimper- “Not too eager now, baby.” Satoya hums against your ear, “Satoru here’s gonna fuck you. And after that…this pretty pussy’s gonna be happy to feel me.”

As Satoru settles himself between your legs, Satoya’s hands dip higher and higher. The curvature of his fingertips tracing patterns across your sizzlin’ skin, he’s just about to reach between your pussylips and press on your clit when-

“Satoya.” Satoru’s voice sounds huskier than ever. 

The sudden change in tone is what makes you turn your head- but it’s the sight of him that makes you keep your head tilted. 

Satoru had tugged off his soft sweater by now—and what was underneath that soft sweater was anything but…Nearly as chiselled as his older brother, Satoru cocks his head to the side and watches your reaction.

Watches you gawk at the fine lines of his defined muscles, the way his biceps flexed as he throws his sweater off to the side. Toned pecs. A firm v-line.

Now, you’d always assumed that Gojo Satoru was the somewhat lanky type- perhaps somewhere in the middle? He was tall and broad, but those loose clothes of his made it hard to determine anything other than the fact that he had really good shoulders. What an utter shock to realize that he had more than just good shoulders-

“It’s my N-New Year’s Resolution.” Satoru’s voice pipes up, this time in the softer, more familiar tone that you knew was his. You’re ripping your eyes away from his body (quite the difficult task) to meet his shy gaze. “I’ve been working out.”

Your jaw drops, “But it’s still February?”

“Genetics.” Satoya pipes up from behind you. Looking at Satoru- “And unfortunately we are related.”

“Shut it.” It seems that Satoru’s brash side only ever came out when he was with his brother - and he’s narrowing his blue peripherals at your core. “And spread my girl’s legs wider. I won’t fit between them otherwise.”

“Aye aye, captain.” 

It’s not long before your hamstrings are being stretched as far apart as they’d go—and the burning pleasure in your limbs are almost as satisfying as the one between your legs. The one at your very dewy pussy that squelches as Satoru perks his hips closer.

One hand guiding his thick tip, the other pressing down on your right thigh.

“Fuck.” He gasps once his furious, red cockhead slides between your pussylips- just a few liiingering slides uuuuuup and down.

Satoru’s head falls forward. His body arches into yours.

He’s letting out a slew of curses every time he’s ruttin’ his hips against yours- not even properly fucking you, just sandwiching his thickened shaft between your pussylips. Feeling the way your sodden lips were swallowing him up—clenching. 

Your hole wanted him so badly.

“Fuck fuck fuck-” the feeling of your inner mucosa. Satoru stumbles across his movements, properly positioning his tip now to actually push inside your entrance. There’s a line of drool gliding down the corner of his mouth. “Fuck.”

Over a million words in the English language, over 500,000 words in Japanese. Over 370,000 words in Modern Chinese, over 40,000 words in Classical Latin, and over 10,000 words in Swahili - and that’s not counting the languages that he wasn’t fluent in.

An abundance of words, and yet he can’t truly describe what he’s feeling when he first enters your pussy. 

A sudden shiver scatters goosebumps across his body, and he’s straining his arm against your legs—you swear you could almost hear the slurp! of his precum emptying straight onto your pussylips. Inside. The sensation of feeling a pussy - your pussy - for the first time was almost too much for the inexperienced man, and he’s bucking.

He’s humping.

Probin’ aside your pussylips and stretching out your entrance into a wiiiiide ‘oh’. Though his brother might have been thicker than him, Satoru himself wasn’t exactly slender.

Though smooth n’ curved in just the way that let him slip inside—

“Fuck- you’ve taken my virginity.” He’s acting like an animal. “Quantum Field Theory—” A slurring sentence leaving him with every single thrust, it almost sounded as though he was drunk. “Electromagnetism-” He’s reaching so deeply inside of you with his curvaceous pink tip, just the crowned edge of his cock that was aiming to claim every spot inside you. Every hidden spot. “Fluid dynamics- Navier–Stokes equation is the application of F = ma to fluids-”

“I have another fluid dynamic for ya…heh.” Satoya grubs against the side of your temple. With a burst of scorched laughter, he’s leaning himself back against the mattress - and taking you right along with him.

And Satoru can’t help but chase your cunt with feral need.

Barely letting Satoya rest before he’s takin’ over your slick entrance to swirl n’ swirl his tip inside. Mazing inside. Mouth watering as his older twin rests his hands underneath your thighs and peeeels your legs even further to their sides.

It makes you squeal as you feel a sudden splosh! escape from your quivering cunt. “O-oh—now that’s just unfair.”

“Unfair?” Satoya scoffs. “What’s unfair is this fucker cumming early.”

“Huh?” Satoru cranes his head to look down at wherever nonsense- oh.

Oh…he really had cum early.

Creamy white sap froths your entrance like icing. Gluing against either side of your thighs, dribbling down the line of your slit. Every time that he’s lurching his cock in just an inch, a splurge of it glazes his rude cockhead and trickles down his shaft. From there, it looked as though your cunt was wearing the prettiest gloss upon your folds- and Gojo Satoru would definitely agree. 

And it’s only then that the realization hits - to both you and the utterly pussydrunk Gojo Satoru - that he’d cum just from feeling your pussy.

Sometime during the first touch up your slit, n’ the first time he had thrusted—and of course, what else is one to do but admire their handiwork? What else is one to do but reel their hips back just a little and thrust and thrust—

Making Satoya giggle at the sheer force. He’s being pushed back against the damn headboard with every single sodden thrust into you- “Easy there, little brother.”

“Fuck off. Ejaculation is simply a natural process of the urethral meatus in response to stimulation- so what?”

“I’m just saying…” And with a single flick of his thumb, Satoya has your clit pulsing between his fingertips. “Keep going like that and yer gonna wear yourself out before you can ruin her—”

“Wh-what do you mean?” At this, Satoru looks up through his thick bangs.

“Cheh, didn’t yer damn research tell you this?”

And you’re watching the exchange like a tennis match - except you might just be the ball.

“S’not just fucking her like a madman.” Satoya lectures. As if to prove his point, he’s drawin’ a cute heart on top of your sensitive nub and making you shrill—then looking up at Satoru as if to say ‘see? “You’ve gotta know when to- fuck, toy with her pussy. You’ve gotta know when to drive her so wild with pleasure that she can take your cock properly- bottomed-out yet?”

Satoru looks down. “Not yet.”

Satoya nods, looking more serious than you’ve ever seen him—except maybe when he was in the middle of some basketball tournament. The finals. Rubbin’ on your clit loooooong and slow- “Mmm, now try fucking this pretty pussy fast.”

“Mhm.”

And he does—fuck, he does.

The contrast between the frat president’s fingers on your clit - and the nerd’s cock between your trembling legs - was almost too much to handle. Your poor brain muddles up, and you’re bucking up into him—“Toru—Toya. Fuck.”

“See?” Satoya grins.

Satoru nods with an even wider grin.

“Now try going slow.”

This time, Satoya goes frenzied on top of your clit whilst Satoru’s fucking you in hard, thorough thrusts. Solid. Sudden. They were ones designed to reach the very back of your cunt, and you’re feeling the slamming pressure of each one in your throat- 

Just trying to fit himself inside—

“Her- her epithelium, I can feel her stretching so much-”

After a few more minutes of this, Satoru’s hearing your cunt stutter out the loudest, most lecherous slurp! yet…

And he’s staring down with his half-lidded blue eyes to realize that he’d just bottomed-out. For the very first time in his life.

For the very first time, point-blank.

Bulging peripherals rolling to the back of his head, he swears he feels heaven in the way your sopping wet walls squeezed all of him. Every ridge and curve and even the rare vein—just a single clench more n’ he’s gonna start cumming deep into your womb.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, “Fuh-fuck.”

“I know, right?” Satoya muses from behind you. You’re whimpering as he lets go of your clit to reach a palm up- and Satoru meets the high-five with only slight wariness. 

“Right on.”

And then it’s both of their urges to pleasure you.

Both working together. Both trying to one-up each other—before Satoya plants a loud smack! on top of your swollen folds.

And that will usually have Satoru startling at the sheer noise- gaping at how that only made you feel wetter ‘round his cock. “She really is a dirty fuckin’ girl…”

“Told you.”

Satoya’s thick fingertips travel from circling your clit to juuuuust a little further down, down, down. There, he teases your pussylips a little - rubbed raw from all the contact you’ve had tonight - down to your asscheeks.

Perfect and pretty.

Satoya gives them a little smack! before proceeding to spread them apart.

“Don’t tell me you’re…” Satoru sounds reproachful, but you could see the slight twitch of his lips.

“And so what?” The other twin plasters his lips to your temple, “If my pussy’s been taken over by my brother—then at least gimme that other cute hole, baby.”

Satoru shrugs, “As long as that thing isn’t touching me- eugh.”

You’re nodding, “Please-” Staring up into their two beautiful faces - one in front, one behind. “I want you both.”

“Dirty girl.” Satoya hums.

“Dirty girl.” Satoru agrees. “Can’t get enough of the Gojo twins, can you?”

You’re shaking your head.

Satoru smushes your cheeks together with one of his hands, tilting your face up to his. “Say it f’me, sweetheart?”

“I c-can’t…get enough—” And if you were in any other state right now, then you might just’ve been embarrassed at how whiny you sounded. “-of the Gojo…oh.”

And at that very moment, you feel Satoya’s thick, rounded cockhead pierce through your other hole.

It starts off slow—almost soothing. Just the silken globe of his erection, that mushroomy tip that passes through with little to no resistance - your body was always so pliant with Gojo Satoya. He takes pride in that fact.

But then comes…the rest of him.

How sinful that the more thicker of the twins was going into through your asshole- you could feel the tightness of your rim struggling to accommodate him. Feeling his prominent veins rub up against tender spots inside that you had no idea even existed, feeling his raw thickness inch inside and leave you sobbing.

“Oh my god—” You’re keening out at the feeling of Satoya easing inside. “T-Toya—”

And hearing you scream out his brother’s name- well, Satoru couldn’t fall too far behind, right? He was always the first in class, the first in the Physics Department, the first of the twins to pound your pretty pussy tonight - and he’s taking advantage of the fact. 

He’s planting his heels down on the rickety mattress and shovelling.

Letting the reddened, swollen tip of his cock maze inside as if a searchlight aiming to find your most tender spots.

And perhaps it was muscle memory from earlier, perhaps it was sheer carnal nature—but it takes only one or two strokes for Satoru to probe deep inside and locate your g-spot. To ready his gluttonous tip and press a passionate welcome smooch against it.

You’re jolting as though struck by a million volts of electricity. “Toru—” 

Like music to his ears, Satoru looks smugly down at his brothers. To which Satoya merely rolls his eyes and spreads his capped knees- in a single second, he’s arching his hips off the dampened mattress and puuuuushing that throbbing cock of his between your ass cheeks. 

Bottoming out.

With both twins fully stuffed inside you - and with both twins reachin’ for the sweetest nerves inside - it’s no surprise that you find yourself sobbing out of pleasure.

Overstimulated on their lengths already.

You’re throwing your head back and babbling- “Toru—Toya.” Repeating their first names as though you were a broken record player, that in itself being one with one very favorite syllable: To. “To- fuck…To—” 

Two simultaneous whacks! into your deepest depths leave you scrambling to pick up your thoughts. And your ability to speak.

“To—”

You’re arching against Satoya’s ripped front, and you press right into Satoru’s toned chest. Stuck in-between two brothers who just couldn’t seem to get enough of you—and they’re sharing a wide-eyed look with one another that doesn’t go unnoticed.

You flit your own teary gaze between the two, attempting to figure out what it meant.

And they always do say that some twins have telepathic abilities, don’t they?

Perhaps that’s what’s happening right now- because both unspoken and at the exact same time, Satoru and Satoya are recoiling their hips backwards.

Then returning with the hardest, most honed ruts.

Barely even hammering inside- just pure, carnal half-thrusts given just to drive you wild.

Thrust after thrust.

Probe after probe.

They don’t wait for one another, merely trusting that the other will catch up. And they don’t back down, either—every rugged hit pushed into your depths only seems to spur the other brother into reciprocating that strike twofold.

They’re learning the power of teamwork through your pussy?!

Satoru snags his flared tip on the crevice of your g-spot, whilst Satoya spends his time pummeling your ass. He was stretching you out in ways you don’t think you’ve ever been stretched out before - anal wasn’t something you did with him. And now…now he’s groaning at those cute clenches of your walls as though he was slowly falling in love with them.

The rugged texture of his thumb matching n’ contrasting with whatever calculated pace that Satoru was drilling into you. The bespectacled man has no shame reachin’ one of his thumbs down and swirling it in the excess leaks of his cum, collecting it all onto his fingerpad, he forces it between your pussylips and back into your hole.

Not a single drop wasted.

Satoru raises his cum-glazed fingertips up to his own mouth- and sucks.

“And ya call me the filthy one?” Satoya snickers.

“Aren’t you?”

“You’re a secret freak, weirdo-”

“Says the public freak.” Satoru flickers his eyes down to admire your cunt- he couldn’t believe that it’d taken this long since he managed to have you. To taste you. To feel you. 

But now that he had you clenchin’ around his swollen shaft like this, and now that he had your pussylips coated in all his cum, Satoru knows he needs to have you again. He needs to love on you with his cock like this again—he’s sure he’d die if he didn’t. He’s sure of it. 

And that damn brother of his-

“I know yer cursing me out mentally.” Satoya’s voice echoes through the heady bedroom. His grip grows more possessive underneath your thighs, and that blushin’ red tip of his even more ravenous to activate your nerves. There was a reason that the two of you had continued a…somethingship for so long. 

And one of the main reasons being that he just had so much chemistry with your body. That he’s leaving you breathless, like you left Satoya every single fucking moment he was with you. “Ya get this look on your face- jealous I could have her first, huh?”

“Doesn’t matter what’s first—” Satoru grunts. Pampering your gooey depths with a dollop of precum, “It matters who’s last.”

“Yeah, and that’s gonna be me-”

“That’ll be me-”

“Yeah, right.” Satoya starts—and in your hazy mind, you’re registering that they were about to start fighting again. But how could you bring yourself to stop them- when they’re shattering every coherent thought in your brain with their bludgeoning cocks. Faster and faster. How long can a truce really last? “A virgin that doesn’t know her pussy as well as I do-”

“And which one of us is- ngh, making her feel good with her pussy now?”

“You think you’re even half as good as me?” Satoya sounds condescending. “Man, I hate to break it to ya- but you’re just for tonight. I’m gonna be there for her every night—”

“Every night until she gets a boyfriend, that is.” Satoru cocks his head with a dimpled smile. “Me.”

“She’s out of your league, nerd.”

“She’s out of yours, too-”

“Boys.” It’s with the most significant effort - every single ounce of will in your body, actually - that you’re managing to keep your voice steady. And both men turn their matching blue eyes to meet your half-lidded gaze. 

Just so botched from all the times you’d been crying out in bliss tonight. It sounds scratchy once you say- “Just sh-shut up and make me—”

“Fuckin’ cum.”

“Reach your orgasm.”

They already know the answer before you utter it.

And it doesn’t take much for them to work in a frenzied rhythm on your cunt n’ your ass - staking their claim before the other. It was dizzying to be sandwiched between them. Because they’re probing into your every sweet spot, they’re dragging across your slick channels, they’re furrowing their brows to concentrate before they themselves cum—and before long, they’re pushing you straight into your nth high of the night.

Cumming.

It takes over you swift and flashing - you think you see stars dance before your very vision. Toes curling. Body arching into them.

There weren’t as many peaks during this orgasm as you had during your last few. And it isn’t long before feeling those zaps of electricity taper off- leaving your mouth babbling, and your throat hatching in sobs.

Again and again.

Satoru and Satoya fuck you through the brief tremors of your high—their dual tips entering both your channels. No doubt that your poor g-spot n’ clit were bruised by their touching by now. Stirrin’ about your insides, pumping out heeeeeaving hot messes of cum straight into your womb and deepest insides - it sloshes about as you’re bucking.

Fucking back into both of them.

The wads of their ropey seed stick to your every nook and cranny, creating a sheen between your legs that splatters all over. So much more than you ever thought possible for you to fit - because both of them had so much stored up.

Both of them had so many pangs of pleasure that could only be achieved by ruttin’ into your glossy wet pussy. Long and hard. Hot and cloying to your insides. They were the best orgasms of their entire life.

All because of you.

Filled to the brims until those brims couldn’t handle it anymore. Globular tips only fucking those leaking wads even deeper. Creamy with sap n’ droooooling out all those glazing wads into your deepest innards- even the slightest movements make you feel the splashes inside of you.

The most lecherous sounds escape you as they finally finish off their incredible waves of bliss. Balls finished clenching and sucked all dry—

Satoya’s peering down at the mess they’ve made of you, “Next round, I want her pretty pussy- but you’ve gotta wash that nasty stuff out.”

“Oh, fuck off-”

“And we’re taking turns.”

“Taking turns on what—?”

It’s a voice you’ve never heard before, then again, it’s not a voice you register as completely unfamiliar—there was something about it. Something about the pitch of it. Something about the lilting words. Something about that sort of rich voice that both the Gojo twins shared

And so some part of you hears the connection before you see it.

Before an exact clone of the twins above n’ below you on the bed walks through those bedroom doors. 

White hair.

Blue eyes.

Those exact pretty features that made people stop on the roads, hoping for a second glance.

Except…this Gojo donned a sort of cowboy hat on his head - his button-up snug and revealing a sturdy build. His boots polished till they gleamed, and his arms all tanned—sun-kissed. It really did suit the two bouquets of flowers in his hands. If Satoru was spring, Satoya was summer, then he would be autumn - how he reminded you of the sturdiness of fall trees and the warmth of seasonal pumpkin beverages. The scent. The sight. 

His jaw drops.

And so does yours- “Th-there’s another one of you—?” You’re shrilling between the two twins- no, you suppose they’d be triplets now?! 

Satoya shrugs, “Multiple too many.”

“Multiple- so how many are there really…” And then you shake your head, almost fearful to hear the answer. “Why didn’t you tell anyone-”

“To be quite frank, it’s simply that no one asked.” Satoru answers this time.

Meanwhile, their brother lingers awkwardly at the door—he’d turned away respectfully as soon as he realized what he was seeing. Though he doesn’t make a move to re-enter the living room, torn between actually making that escape and wondering whether he was actually hallucinating or not—

That is, until you’re beckoning him over.

Within the next few minutes, Gojo Satohiro has his back leaned against the wooden headboard n’ you between his legs. Your back turned to him, your cunt swallowed up his eeeeven thicker red cock in the most lecherous swerves, bumps, and grinds.

Reverse cowgirl.

“Giddy uuuuup, girlie.” Satohiro coos as he juuuust perks his hips and ends up stroking your g-spot - the fastest one to find it. His bulbous mushroom tip finds permanent residence smoochin’ away at that tight spot. “C’mon- just a little harder now. You got this.”

“I’m- I’m trying—” Thighs aching. Moaning. 

And he’s punishing you with a sudden spank of calloused fingertips- right where your right ass cheek was still sore from all the contact with Satoya. “Not trying hard ‘nough for me, sugar.”

His slight country accent (was that Kansai?) made your cunt grow even wetter- and the oldest of the Gojo brothers could feel it—

“Let me treat the lady.”

Maybe that’s why, before long, he’s pushing you down head-first into the pillows. Fingers planting yet another slap to your ass cheeks, cock bludgeoning away- in control now, Satohiro had the penchant to alternate between torturous slow paces n’ fast speeds that left you moooooaning—

Grabbing at Satoru’s pillows for dear life-

You’re ending up slipping your hand underneath. Pulling out something soft and…warm and…familar.

“What the hell is my h-hoodie doing here?”

The two other men seated - boxers-on and five feet apart from one another - in one corner of the room jolt—and all eyes fall upon Satoru.

At least, all eyes except Satohiro’s.

He tugs the fabric out of your hand and loops it around your eyes like a blindfold.

“Hey girlie, how ‘bout we take turns fucking you n’ you try to guess which one’s which?”

A/N. JSDJHSDDJH I just had to-

His hands have stopped shaking.

He's finally managed to get the shakes from the adrenaline down, and it is only then that his eyes catch the room—which is, objectively, insane.

A full music room in someone's grandparents' house, because this is Greenwich Village and rich people furnish their spare rooms the way normal people furnish Pinterest boards: aspirationally and with zero fiscal accountability.

But his hands. They're steady now. Resting on his thighs where he's sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor with his back against a leather armchair.

Steady.

Three minutes ago they weren't.

Hobi's next to him, legs extended, ankles crossed, leaning back on his palms in that way he has where every position looks like a magazine spread.

Dance Studio Owner Relaxes After Preventing Friend From Committing Aggravated Assault At Costume Party. Shot on location.

The music room is small. Wood-paneled. A baby grand piano in the corner with a dust cloth draped over it like a ghost that gave up. Bookshelves full of vinyl—actual vinyl, organized by what looks like decade, which Jungkook is trying very hard not to get up and inspect because if he starts flipping through some dead rich guy's record collection right now he'll lose the next forty minutes trying to find a Mayer one and also the last remaining thread of whatever emotional processing he's supposed to be doing.

There's a cello propped in a stand by the window. A violin case on the shelf. Framed photos of someone shaking hands with Yo-Yo Ma.

And on the wall, between two sconces that look like they belong in a cathedral—

A fucking Fender Stratocaster.

Sunburst finish. Not new—played, lived-in, the kind of wear that comes from hands, not neglect. The frets show use. The pickguard has a faint scratch pattern near the bridge that tells him someone used to strum hard and slightly too low.

Whoever owned this loved it. Loved it the way you can only love an instrument that's been your primary method of saying the things your mouth won't.

He hasn't looked away from it since they walked in.

"So," Hobi says. Casual. "John Mayer or Hendrix?"

"What?"

"If you could only listen to one for the rest of your life."

"That's—" He tears his eyes from the Strat. "That's not even a fair question. Those are completely different—"

"It's absolutely a fair question. I ask every musician I meet. It's diagnostic."

"Diagnostic of what?"

"Of who you are as a person." Hobi counts on his fingers. "Hendrix people are chaos agents. They want to burn the building down and build something new in the ashes. Mayer people want to sit on the porch of the building and write a song about how the light hits it at 6pm."

"Those aren't the only two options."

"They're the only two that matter for this exercise."

"What if I say both?"

"Then you're a coward and I lose respect for you."

Jungkook snorts. Picks at a thread on the knee of his costume. The Ghostface robe pools around him like he's some kind of haunted monk who chose vibes over doctrine.

"Mayer."

"Knew it."

"You didn't know it."

"I absolutely knew it. You're a porch guy. You want the thing to be beautiful and precise and a little bit heartbreaking. Hendrix guys want the thing to be loud."

"Mayer can be loud."

"Mayer is loud the way a thunderstorm is loud. Hendrix is loud the way a car crash is loud. Different energy."

He's right. Annoyingly, thoroughly right, in the way Hobi is always right about things that shouldn't be in his area of expertise but somehow are because the man treats every domain of human knowledge like a dance floor—just walks onto it and starts moving and somehow it works.

Jungkook looks at the guitar again.

"The Trio stuff is what got me," he says. "Not the solo albums. The live Trio recordings. 'Where the Light Is.' The way he strips everything back and it's just—guitar and rhythm and this... conversation happening between his hands and the instrument. No production. No tricks. Just the thing itself."

"That's the porch," Hobi says.

"That's the porch," Jungkook agrees.

Silence. Good silence.

Then Hobi does the thing.

"Why'd you stop playing?"

Jungkook's fingers go still on the thread.

"You used to play all the time, man. At Tae's, remember? You had the acoustic with you. Played for like two hours straight on his fire escape. Couldn't get you to stop."

He remembers. Tae's old walkup. Before the whole shape of their friend group had solidified into what it is now.

Jungkook would show up with the guitar because he'd been playing at campus that afternoon between classes—couldn't play at home, obviously, because home was Mia's apartment and the guitar was noise at home—so he'd carry it around like an organ donor, playing wherever she wasn't.

Practice rooms at NYU. Taehyung's fire escape. The back corner of Blueline on slow afternoons.

Anywhere that wasn't the Upper East Side.

Anywhere she couldn't hear it and say 'do you have to do that right now?'

"And then one day it was just—gone." Hobi tilts his head. "Like someone unplugged you or something, man."

The thread is still between his fingers. He doesn't pull it. Doesn't move.

He could give the easy version.

Got busy, different priorities, you know how it goes.

Hobi would accept it. That's his whole thing—holds the door open and waits for you to walk through on your own time.

"Mia said it was noise."

Not the easy version, then.

Hobi purses his lips together.

"She—" He clears his throat.

Something shifts in his chest. Maybe the stone. The one he's been carrying so long it feels like an organ.

"She used to say it was a distraction. That I spent more time with the guitar than with her. Which—I mean, some days, yeah. Probably. Because playing was the only part of my day that still felt like—"

Like what?

Like himself. Like the version of himself that existed before the debt and the phone calls at 2AM and the birthday that wasn't a birthday and the night his mother cried because she believed something that never happened.

He doesn't say any of that.

He says: "She wanted me to sell my equipment. To prove I was serious about us."

The words lodge in his throat before he can release them.

"And I did. Most of it. Sold the amp first. Then the pedals. Kept the acoustic for a while because I thought—maybe if I just played quieter. If I did it when she wasn't around. If I made myself—"

His jaw works.

"She found out I was still playing. Said I was sneaking around. Like playing guitar in an empty apartment was the same as—"

Stops. Swallows.

"Anyway. Sold the acoustic too. After that."

The room is very quiet after that.

It sucks.

It sucks because there's a whole building full of people being twenty-something and careless and alive, and here he is on a music room floor telling Hoseok about the time he let someone convince him that the best part of himself was an inconvenience.

"She got what she wanted, I guess. I stopped playing. And then we broke up and I just—didn't start again. Couldn't pick one up without hearing her in my head telling me it was a waste of time."

He exhales.

"Which is—fun. Super fun."

"Real fun," Hobi says.

But there is no humor in it. Just some sort of echo. Holding the word so Jungkook doesn't have to carry it alone.

Quiet settles once more.

Hobi isn't looking at him—looking at the ceiling, at the Yo-Yo Ma photo, at his own hands—giving him room the way you give a patient space in a hospital floor.

"Is that why you switched?"

Jungkook blinks. "What?"

"Majors. You started in music production, right? Tae mentioned it once. And then you moved to film." Hobi says it evenly. No charge. Like he's confirming directions, not opening a wound. "Was that her too?"

The question sits there for a few beats before Jungkook finally nods.

Doesn't elaborate. Can feel the edge of something in his chest—the place where this conversation becomes a different conversation, a worse one, the one where he has to explain that it wasn't just the guitar.

It was the major and the friends and the way he dressed and the amount of time he spent on his art and the food he ate and the way he breathed, probably, if she'd figured out how to critique that too.

The conversation where he has to say 'she took everything apart, piece by piece, so slowly I didn't notice until there was nothing left' and then sit with the fact that he let it happen.

He allowed it to happen.

Even after he'd seen it happen before through his own eyes.

He doesn't want to go there.

His jaw tightens. Fingers press into his own knee. He can feel the rehearsed cheerfulness loading—some joke about film school, some deflection about Tarantino or aspect ratios—

Hobi stands up.

Doesn't push. Doesn't probe. Doesn't say 'you should talk about this' or any of the things that are probably true and absolutely not what he needs to hear right now.

Just walks to the wall. Reaches up. Lifts the Strat off its hooks with both hands—careful, respectful, the way you handle something that belongs to someone who isn't here to say yes—and carries it back.

Holds it out.

"Hobi."

"Just hold it."

"That's not ours."

"We're borrowing it. Tessa said the music room was open. That includes the instruments."

"That's a vintage Strat."

"And you're a guy who hasn't played enough. Seems like a match."

The guitar hangs there. Sunburst. Scratched pickguard. Someone's love, left on a wall.

His hand comes up before his brain clears it.

The neck slides into his palm and his fingers close around it and—

Oh.

The weight. The specific, exact, irreplaceable weight of a guitar in his hands.

Six strings and a body and a neck that fits against his forearm like it was measured for him, and his left hand moves to the frets on autopilot—memory from ten thousand hours that Mia couldn't erase no matter how many amps she made him sell—and his right hand finds the strings and he brushes them. Just once. Unamplified, barely audible, a whisper of harmonic vibration that travels through the wood into his chest.

His eyes close.

Fuck, he missed this.

Not like missing a hobby. Not like 'oh yeah, used to do that, should get back to it'.

Missing it like a limb. Like a language he used to dream in. Like the one thing that always made sense when nothing else did—not his family, not Mia, not the mess of his own head—just hands on strings and the sound that came out being exactly the thing he meant to say.

Opens his eyes. Looks at Hobi.

"There's an amp." Nods toward the corner. Small Fender combo, tucked beside the piano bench. "Can you plug me in?"

Hobi grins—the real one, not the redirect grin from the garden—and he's already moving, pulling the cable from its coil, flicking the power switch.

Jungkook plugs in the jack. Adjusts the volume. Tests a chord—open G, ringing, full—and the amp translates it into something that pushes against the walls and makes the wood paneling vibrate.

His chest expands. Actually physically expands, like his lungs figured out how to work again.

"I've been getting back into it, actually." He adjusts the tuning peg on the high E. Slightly flat. "At the apartment. Yoongi can vouch for it. He's been bitching through the wall for a month."

"Doesn't Yoongi bitch about pretty much everything except for hiking and music?"

"Yeah, but this bitching is specific. This is targeted complaints about my chord voicings at 11PM. Which means he's listening. Which means I'm playing good enough for him to notice."

"That is the most roundabout progress metric I've ever heard."

"The Yoongi Scale. If he's annoyed, you're on track."

Hobi laughs. Real, warm, settling back against the armchair while the amp sits between them patient and waiting.

Jungkook's left hand moves up the neck. Third fret. Index finger on the G string. Ring finger stretches to the B.

Doesn't think about what he's going to play. Just lets his hands go where they want.

The cleanest four-chord structure in the history of pop music, and his fingers know it the way they know the shape of a coffee mug, the way they know the frets on his own guitar back at the apartment, fog evaporating through rust and disuse and settling into something that doesn't feel rusty at all.

Feels like coming home to a house he forgot he still had a key to.

"Wait—" Hobi sits forward. "Is that Coldplay?"

"Yeah." Jungkook grins. Keeps playing. His right hand finds a picking pattern—the one from the acoustic version, not the album. "Their guitar work doesn't get enough credit, man. Everyone talks about the vocals and the production but the actual guitar lines—especially the early stuff—the chords are basic but the voicings are so specific. Like, the way Buckland uses the delay to create these layers—"

He shifts to the verse progression. Adds the delay-echo pattern, approximating it with his picking hand since there's no pedal.

"—see, that? That shimmer? That's not reverb, that's rhythmic delay. Dotted eighth notes. He's basically playing a duet with himself. The original note and the echo become two different melodic lines happening at once."

"You're nerding out."

"Appreciate me educating you, man."

"You are fully, completely nerding out right now and your face is doing the thing."

"I don't have a thing."

"The thing where your eyes get big and you start talking with your hands except you can't because you're holding a guitar so your eyebrows are doing all the work. That thing."

Jungkook's eyebrows, which are in fact doing an unreasonable amount of work, attempt to settle into something neutral.

They don't quite make it.

He doesn't care.

Because the Strat is singing under his hands and the amp is warm and the room is humming and his fingers remember every single shape and his chest feels wider than it has in months.

Maybe longer. Maybe since before.

He cycles back to the chorus. G, D, C.

Yellow.

He's always liked this song. Can't even remember when he first heard it—it's one of those songs that exists in the background of being alive, like it was already playing when you showed up and never really stopped. In grocery stores and Uber rides and the credits of some movie he can't name.

The kind of song you don't choose, it just—lives in you.

He played it for Mia once.

Early on. Before things got bad—or before he realized things were bad, which isn't the same thing but felt like it at the time. Sat on the edge of her bed with the acoustic and played the whole thing start to finish because he'd been practicing the fingerpicking pattern for weeks and he wanted to show her, wanted to share the one thing that made his chest feel bigger instead of smaller.

She listened. Or—sat there while sound happened near her. Which isn't the same thing either.

When he finished she said 'I don't get it'.

It wasn't really mean, nor cruel. It was simply... blank.

Almost as if he'd shown her a card trick and she couldn't figure out why he expected her to be impressed.

«The lyrics don't even make sense. What does 'your skin and bones turn into something beautiful' even mean? And why is everything yellow? It's a weird color to write a song about. If he wanted to be romantic he should've picked red or something.»

And Jungkook had sat there with the guitar still warm in his lap and thought—it's not about the color. It's not about any of the words, individually.

It's about how they sound together.

How the melody makes the language into something that means more than its parts.

How yellow isn't a color in the song, it's a feeling—warmth, and light, and the specific shade of being so full of something you can't name that the only word big enough to hold it is a color.

He didn't say any of that. Said 'yeah, you're probably right' and put the guitar away and never played it for her again.

Doesn't tell Hobi any of this.

Just plays.

And it feels good. Playing it. Right now, in this room, on this guitar. He doesn't know why. Doesn't interrogate it.

"The opening is the best part," he says, already shifting up the neck. "Everyone remembers the chorus but the but the way it comes back around—listen—"

He moves to the higher register. The melody climbs. Fingers stretching for the voicings—Em, D, C, and then back down—and the notes ring out clean and full and something about the sound in this wood-paneled room, the way it bounces off the shelves and the piano dust cloth and—

Sounds right.

Just. Sounds right.

His throat hums. The melody rises in his chest before it reaches his mouth—that feeling, the one where a song is sitting right behind your teeth and all you have to do is open up and let it out.

"Look at the stars."

Quiet. Almost nothing. More breath than voice.

"Look how they shine for you."

Louder now. Finding it. The shape of the words settling into the shape of the notes like something that was always supposed to be there.

"And everything you do."

He doesn't sound like Chris Martin. Doesn't try to. His voice is lower, rougher, slightly raw in a way that the studio version isn't—the sound of someone singing because the song asked him to, not because an audience is listening.

Hobi is still.

"Yeah, they were all yellow."

The chord rings out. Sustains. Fills the room and holds there—a single, shimmering, fading note that doesn't want to die.

He lets it.

Watches his own hands on the strings. Steady.

Not shaking. Not even a little.

"Shit," Hobi says softly. "Yeah. Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Just—okay. You're back." A breath. "That's all. You're back."

Jungkook looks at him. At the room. At the Strat in his lap.

Doesn't know why his eyes sting.

Allergies, probably. Old house. Dust on the piano cloth.

The door opens.

He stops. Hands flat on the strings. Killing the vibration.

A reflex so deeply wired it happens before he even sees who's there—the automatic silencing of sound when a door opens, because doors opening used to mean 'put the guitar down' and that's old code he's still debugging.

Taehyung is in the doorway. Pinstripe rumpled. Pocket square clinging on through sheer willpower. Drawn-on mustache smudged, giving him less Gomez Addams and more 'guy who fell asleep on a newspaper'.

And behind him—

You.

You with red eyes and makeup wrecked and eyeliner tracked down your cheeks in dark smudges that Jimin is absolutely going to grieve. Gold shimmer smeared across your cheekbones like a craft aisle casualty. The snake cuff is still there. The chain belt. The corset.

Same costume, different girl wearing it than an hour ago.

Something tightens behind his sternum.

Taehyung's face splits open before Jungkook can process the rest.

"Was that you?"

Sheepish isn't a setting Jungkook wears well. But he can feel it on his face: the half-grin, the slight duck, the hand rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah."

"Dude." Taehyung crosses the room in three strides, grinning so wide the smudged mustache lifts on both sides. "It's been so long since I've heard you play. Like—years. That sounded incredible."

"It hasn't been that long." He adjusts the Strat in his lap. "Yoongi's heard me plenty. Through the wall. Loudly and against his will."

"It's true."

Your voice. From the doorway.

You're leaning against the frame. Arms crossed. One foot in, one foot out.

Plausible deniability in both directions—your default stance in any room you haven't committed to yet.

"He plays at like eleven PM on a Tuesday and Yoongi bangs on the wall and then he plays louder and then Yoongi bangs harder and then Griffin starts yelling and it's a whole production."

Taehyung turns around. Looks at you. Back at Jungkook. Back at you.

"Wait—you've heard him play?"

Like you just told him you've witnessed a solar eclipse. Like Jungkook playing guitar in his own apartment with you on the other side of a shared wall is classified intel.

Your eyebrows lift. "...Yeah?"

Said like 'obviously'. Like you genuinely don't understand why this is a question.

Tae looks at him. He sees the processing frown, the one where information he had doesn't match information he just got.

Jungkook shrugs. "I've been getting back into it. Recently. She lives with me, so—"

Beat.

"I mean. In the apartment. Same apartment. That's—yeah."

Eloquence. Peak performance. A master class in language from a man holding a borrowed Stratocaster in a Ghostface robe.

"How recently?" Taehyung asks.

"Couple months?"

"Couple months?" Tae's voice pitches. "You've been playing again for a couple months and you didn't—"

"Tae, I just started picking it up at night. When I couldn't sleep. It wasn't an announcement situation."

"You could've told me."

"Tae."

"I'm just saying."

"And I'm just saying it was small. I wanted it small for a while."

Taehyung reads that. He's always been good at reading the things Jungkook doesn't say—since before Mia, since high school, since the era of guitar riffs and avoidant shrugs that Tae just learned the translation for.

"Okay." Softer. "Yeah. I get that."

A beat.

"It sounded really good, though."

"Thanks, man."

You've moved further into the room. Not all the way—migrated from the doorframe to the cello stand, close enough to be present, far enough to bolt.

Your fingers trace the edge of the cello's scroll with absent curiosity.

"So what was the song?" you ask.

"Coldplay."

"Coldplay." You make a face. Not a bad one—the face of someone forming an opinion in real time. "Like, Coldplay Coldplay? 'Fix You,' stadium tour, your-dad's-favorite-band Coldplay?"

"'Yellow,' actually."

"Huh." You tip your head. "That's their best one."

He blinks. "You think?"

"Yeah. The early stuff before they went all—"

You make a gesture that somehow communicates an entire artistic trajectory from Parachutes to Music of the Spheres. Both hands. A facial expression he's never seen before but immediately understands.

"It's the only one that still sounds like a band in a room. Everything after got so big. 'Yellow' is just a guy with a guitar who feels too much."

A guy with a guitar who feels too much.

Huh.

"Most people say 'Fix You,'" he says.

"Most people are wrong."

"Most people think 'The Scientist' is their peak."

"Most people also think Subway is a reasonable lunch option. Most people can't be trusted."

He grins. Can't help it. Doesn't try.

"What's your issue with Subway?"

"My issue with Subway is that it's bread-flavored depression served by someone who hates you, and I refuse to elaborate further."

"That's a strong stance on a sandwich chain."

"All my stances on sandwich chains are strong. That's what separates me from animals."

Hobi's head is moving between you two. Back and forth. Back and forth. He catches it in his peripheral—the look on Hobi's face isn't suspicion. It's closer to surprise. The pleasant kind. Like he expected you two to be oil and water and instead walked into... whatever this is.

The thing where you quote each other's rhythms and volley insults that land like inside jokes.

"Play something," you say.

"I was playing. You interrupted."

"We enhanced your audience. You went from one to three. That's a two hundred percent increase. You're welcome."

"That's not how percentages—it's three hundred—never mind." He adjusts the guitar. "Requests?"

"Surprise me."

"Dangerous thing to say to a man with a Stratocaster."

"I live with you and your 11PM concerts. Nothing you do with a guitar surprises me anymore."

He plays the opening riff to 'Wonderwall.'

Your face goes through six stages of disgust in approximately 1.4 seconds.

"Get out."

"Today is gonna be the day—"

"Get OUT."

"That they're gonna throw it back to you—"

"I'm going to break that guitar over your head. That is a vintage instrument and I'm willing to sacrifice it."

He's laughing too hard to keep playing. The riff collapses into a mess of muted strings and his own wheezing, and Hobi's gone—full-body, head-back, the silent dying kind—and Taehyung is watching with something that's softened slightly from vigilance into... huh.

Not quite warmth. Not yet. But the guard dog sat down.

Tae's phone buzzes. He pulls it out. Reads the screen.

"Shit—Irika." He holds the phone up like it's evidence. "She's looking for me. Apparently the Morticia wig is 'doing something' and she needs me."

He looks at Jungkook. Holds his gaze for a beat longer than the sentence requires.

"You good?"

It's not really about the guitar.

"Yeah, man. I'm good."

Taehyung nods. Glances at you—brief, assessing, not unfriendly but not warm either, and then he's gone. Pinstripes disappearing through the doorway, phone already at his ear, voice dropping into the specific low register he only uses for Irika.

And then it's three.

Him, Hobi, and you.

It feels—

Good. It feels good. Like the right number of people in the right size room with the right amount of noise, which is almost none.

He plays something, just chords now. Open shapes, ringing, cycling through a progression that doesn't belong to any song. Just sound. Just the Strat filling the room with warmth because it can and he's letting it.

"Okay," Hobi says, slapping his knees and standing. "I'm getting drinks. Actual drinks. Not whatever chemical weapon I made earlier—"

"Your drink was attempted murder," Jungkook says.

"It was festive. It had food coloring."

"The food coloring was the least of its crimes."

"I'm getting water. And maybe beer. You want beer?" He points at Jungkook. Then at you. "Beer? Water? Both?"

"Beer," Jungkook says.

"Whatever's open," you say, and your voice is still doing the raw thing but it's steadier now. More you.

"Two beers and a water. Back in five." Hobi's already at the door, already in motion. "Don't let him play 'Wonderwall' again. I know his tricks."

"Noted," you say.

The door clicks shut.

And then it's two.

He keeps playing. Soft. Nothing specific. Just his fingers and the strings and the sound filling the space between you that's smaller now, denser, without Hobi's brightness to dilute it.

You've sat down next to him, knees pulled up, skirt draped. Close enough to the amp that you'd feel it vibrate through the floor.

He lets the last chord ring out and fade. Sets the guitar down across his lap. Pulls out his phone—automatic, reflex, the thing his hands do when they stop doing something else. Screen on. Thumb swiping before his brain catches up with what his muscle memory just opened.

His feed loads—the grid, the blacks and greys, the shadow-heavy compositions—and before his brain can even register the difference—

"Huh?"

He looks up. You've tilted your head. Eyes on his phone—not leaning in, not craning, just the casual glance of someone who happened to look over at the exact wrong moment.

"That's not your feed, is it?"

Oh.

Oh, shit.

"Yeah, it is."

He switches accounts. Locks the phone. Pockets it. Three movements, clean, fast.

"Just looks different because I—reorganized. The grid. New layout."

"You reorganized your Instagram grid."

"Yeah."

"You."

"Me."

"Jeon Jungkook. Reorganized his Instagram grid. The same Jeon Jungkook whose apartment room looks like a frat house had a seizure."

"My room is curated—"

"Your room has a protein shake stain on the ceiling and you told me it was 'abstract art.'"

"It is abstract art. It's a Jackson Pollock."

"It's whey protein and negligence."

"Agree to disagree."

You squint at him. Not suspiciously—more like amused. Like you know there's something there but it's small and harmless and not worth the dig when you're sitting on a floor in a wrecked costume with mascara on your face and the night you've had.

Your eyes drift back to the cello.

Interest shelved.

Not deleted—he knows you, you don't delete, you file things for later retrieval at the most inconvenient possible moment—but shelved.

Good enough.

He looks at you.

Now that the phone's away and it's just you and the amp and the few inches of hardwood between his knee and yours.

Your eyes are swollen. Not a lot. Just enough that the liner smudges underneath look heavier, and the gold shimmer Irya swept across your cheekbones has been redistributed by tears into uneven streaks, and there's a mascara track on your left cheek that you clearly tried to wipe and only succeeded in smearing.

"You okay?"

He says it to the guitar. To the frets. To his own fingers resting on the strings.

Not to your face, because your face is doing something that makes his chest tight and he doesn't have the bandwidth for that and eye contact simultaneously.

You look at him. He can feel it.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"Okay."

A beat. Two.

"Your eyes are red."

"I'm high. We're all high. You literally watched me eat two brownies."

"That's not baked red." He lifts his gaze from the frets. Meets yours. "That's been-crying red. Different color. Different puffiness pattern. Baked red goes in the whites. Crying red goes around the edges."

"Did you just say puffiness pattern?"

"I'm a film major. I notice faces."

"You can't just use that excuse for everything."

"I'm just saying. You've been crying. And not in a subtle way. Like—it's pretty visible. From across the room. Possibly from space. NASA could probably—"

You swat his arm.

Open-palmed. Quick. The kind that's more exclamation point than assault.

He chuckles. Rocks slightly with the impact, more from dramatics than force.

"I'm just saying," he repeats, quieter now. "Anyone can tell."

"Great. Fantastic. Love that for me."

"Your mascara's doing a whole thing."

"I know it's doing a thing."

"It's migrated. Like a bird. It started on your eyes and now it's—" He gestures vaguely at the lower half of your face.

"I am going to actually break that guitar—"

"Okay, okay."

He sets the Strat down carefully—lowering it into the open case on the floor with the gentleness of someone putting a baby to bed, because it's a vintage instrument and he has respect even if he has no tact—and shifts so he's facing you

He pulls the sleeve of the Ghostface robe over his hand. Makes a fist inside the fabric so the cuff stretches over his knuckles—cheap polyester, Spirit Halloween's finest—and brings it to your face.

You look at the ground.

Not at him.

At the hardwood between your knees, at the dust in the grout line, at anything that isn't the guy who's currently dabbing at your mascara with a serial killer costume like it's a washcloth.

He's gentle about it. Doesn't think about being gentle—just is, the same way he's gentle with Griffin when the little idiot gets something stuck in his fur.

The sleeve drags soft across your cheekbone. The mascara smears more than it lifts, but it's something.

It's less.

Your eyes stay down.

He switches to the other side. Same slow drag. The dark crescent beneath your left eye fades to a smudge, and beneath it your skin is warm and slightly swollen and he's not—

He's cleaning mascara. That's it. A service. Public decency.

"There." He drops his hand. Sleeve still bunched. "Less disaster. More... controlled disaster."

You don't respond.

Which is—fine. That's fine.

He drops the sleeve back into place and shifts on his legs and tries to look anywhere that isn't the side of your face because the side of your face is doing something he doesn't have the emotional language for.

Your lashes. The smear of gold on your cheekbone that he didn't get all the way off. The shape of your mouth when it's not saying anything sarcastic.

Amp hum. Floorboards. The specific not-quite-silence of a music room at 1AM.

Then—

"It's a good song."

Quiet. Out of nowhere.

He glances at you. "What?"

"The one you were playing. Earlier."

"Oh." Beat. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

You don't look at him. You're looking at your own hands. Rolling one of the loose gold chains from your hair between your fingers like it owes you something.

"It's stupid."

He waits. Doesn't push. His right leg is falling asleep but he's not about to shift and risk turning this into A Thing.

A breath. You exhale it slow, through your nose, and it comes out more like a sigh than anything else.

"I used to listen to it when I was stressed. In high school. Like—if I had a big test coming up or whatever."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. My parents were really—"

You stop. Start again.

"I was a good kid. Like. Straight A-plus kid, the whole—" The gesture. The small one. The 'you know the type' gesture that compresses an entire childhood into a flick of the wrist. "Valedictorian track. My mom used to leave little notes on the fridge when report cards came out. 'We're so proud.' In this specific handwriting she saved for—I don't know. The handwriting was nice. It was always nice."

He nods. Doesn't say anything. Doesn't know what to say.

"And they were good parents, Rogue. Like. I want to be clear about that. They—" Another sigh. Smaller. "My dad got me this iPod when I was eleven. The pink mini one. The one that was really hard to get that year and I'd been asking for it for months and he just—showed up with it. And when the DS came out? I had it before anyone in my class had it. All my friends were obsessed. Like, the day it came out, he was in line. My dad stood in a line at a Best Buy for a Nintendo DS. For me."

A small laugh that isn't really a laugh.

"They were kind. I don't want to—this isn't that. I'm not trying to—"

You stop.

He watches your hand tighten on the gold chain.

"God, I sound so stupid."

"You don't."

"I do. I sound like a spoiled—I don't even know what I'm talking about. They were good. They were good parents. My mom packed my lunch until I was sixteen. She still sends me care packages. She sent me socks last month, Rogue, like—socks. Because she read online that students don't buy enough socks and she got worried."

Your voice is thinner.

"So I don't know why I'm—"

Don't know why you're what.

He wants to ask. Doesn't.

Because something about the way you're talking is familiar in a way he can't place.

The hedging. The qualifying. The 'they were good, though' said on loop like a defensive spell you keep casting in case someone accuses you of being ungrateful. He's—

He's done that. That's his thing. That's his move.

His jaw does something.

"Anyway. The song."

"The song."

"It just—it says 'look at the stars.' At the beginning. And when I was—when I would have a bad night, and there'd be a thunderstorm, and I'd be—" You wave a hand. "Spiraling, or whatever. I'd sit in the window seat in my room and play it on my CD player and there wouldn't even be stars. Obviously. It was storming. That's the whole—there were no stars."

A beat.

"But he kept saying it. 'Look how they shine for you.' Like they were still there."

You shrug. Small. Dismissive.

"I don't know. It made me feel less—" Stop. "Whatever. It's dumb. It's a Coldplay song, it's not—"

"It's not dumb."

"It's very dumb, Rogue."

"It's not."

Doesn't say it firm enough, maybe. Says it again.

"It's not."

You finally look at him.

And he wants to—he doesn't know.

He wants to fix something.

Wants to find the specific thing in what you just said that needs fixing and fix it.

He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek.

Thinks about his dad.

The handwriting thing.

His dad didn't have handwriting, his dad had a voice and fists.

But also—his dad wasn't all bad. That's the thing nobody ever tells you about the stuff that fucks you up.

His dad taught him how to ride a bike. His dad cried at his graduation. His dad—

"Some parents suck."

You blink.

"Some don't." He's looking at the amp. At the little red power light. Not at you. "Some are—in the middle. Most, probably. Most are in the middle. Doing okay at some of it and fucking up other parts of it and the parts they fuck up can still—"

Stops.

Tries again.

"You can have good parents who also got something wrong. Both can be true. That's not—that's not an ungrateful thing to say. That's just math."

Quiet.

"The socks don't cancel out the other stuff. That's not how it works."

You don't say anything.

He finally looks back at you and your eyes are wet in a way they weren't thirty seconds ago—not crying, just that full-right-to-the-edge thing—and he looks away again because he's not equipped.

He's not equipped for this.

Nobody gave him the manual.

"And the song isn't dumb." Clears his throat. "Chris Martin wrote it about his mom, I'm pretty sure. Or—I don't know, actually. I read something once. Point is if you sat in a window during a thunderstorm listening to it that's not—that's just a kid looking for something to hold onto. That's not a personality flaw."

You make a sound.

Something between a laugh and an exhale.

It gets caught somewhere in your throat.

"You don't have to be nice to me."

"I'm not being nice."

"You're being—"

"I'm stating facts. I'm a film major. I deal in facts."

"You really have to stop using that—"

"Shh."

Another one of those half-laughs. Quieter. Your shoulder moves against his.

Your eyes go back to the hardwood.

And then—

Your arm lifts. A small movement, barely a gesture. Your hand making that little sideways motion, a 'come here', a 'closer', the kind of signal that doesn't have language attached to it because language would make it something you'd have to own.

And his chest—

His chest does something that has nothing to do with the amp or the room or the cobwebs or the Yo-Yo Ma photograph.

Because he's seen this before.

After Emma's birthday. After the fight that wasn't really a fight and the sex that wasn't really makeup sex and the part after where you'd been sitting on the edge of the table with your legs dangling and your defenses down at a level he'd never seen—zero, flatline, the version of you that exists when you've been turned inside out and don't have the energy to flip back.

You'd put your forehead on his shoulder that night too. Just—dropped it there.

And he'd stood between your legs not knowing what the fuck to do with his hands or his face or the thing in his chest that felt like a fist opening, and then you'd lifted your arms like 'carry me' and he'd said 'you're not serious' and you'd just looked at him and yeah. You were serious.

You're always serious about the things that are not supposed to be serious.

You look like that now, too. Just as soft, just as stripped-back as then.

This version of you that he only seems to get when you've cried enough or cum hard enough that the walls are down and there's just—you. Underneath all of it.

Tired and real and not pretending.

And maybe that's why his chest grips over itself. Folds in half.

Because his defenses are somewhere on the floor next to the Strat and he doesn't know when he put them down but they're not on him anymore.

He scoots closer. Across the hardwood. Until his knee is touching your knee and the distance between you has been reduced to the width of a breath.

Your forehead drops against his shoulder.

He doesn't flinch, doesn't stiffen. Just absorbs the weight of it—your forehead against him, your breath coming uneven against his collarbone. The gold chains in your hair press into the side of his neck. One of the little snake earrings grazes his jaw.

Quiet.

The amp hums.

"I'm sorry." Muffled into his shoulder.

So small he almost misses it under the electrical drone of the Fender combo.

"For what?"

Your breath catches.

Releases.

"You were right about Jason."

His chest caves in.

Not triumph. Not satisfaction. Not the 'I told you so' he'd normally chamber and fire with a grin because Jungkook has never met a victory he couldn't be insufferable about—but none of that loads.

None of it even approaches the chamber.

Because being right about Jason means Jason did something.

And being right about Jason means you're sitting on a floor in a wrecked costume with mascara on your chin telling him he was right in a voice that sounds like it went through a paper shredder.

He doesn't want to be right about that.

He sighs.

Tips his head back to look at the ceiling. Same motion as when he was staring upwards with Tae an hour ago, back when the biggest problem in his life was whether a pumpkin looked like Willy Wonka and whether Willy Wonka was categorically attractive.

A smile. Small. Not for you. For the ceiling. For whatever cosmic algorithm decided that this is where the night would end up—him and you on a floor in a dead man's music room, your forehead on his shoulder, a borrowed Stratocaster cooling in its case beside you.

Doesn't say anything.

Doesn't say 'I know.' Doesn't say 'what happened.' Doesn't say 'I nearly put my fist through his face an hour ago and it took three people and a vintage electric guitar to stop me.'

Just lifts his hand.

Puts it on the back of your neck.

His fingers find the nape—right where your hair starts, where the gold chains have come loose and the strands are damp and the skin is warm.

And he lets his thumb move. Slowly. A small arc over the top knob of your spine. Back and forth.

You breathe out.

Shaky. Uneven. Settling.

And for some reason—for some reason he's not going to poke at or name or hold up to the light because doing that would require vocabulary he doesn't have and isn't sure exists—

It's okay.

Not fixed. Not resolved. Not the kind of okay where credits roll and someone's learned a lesson.

Just okay.

Most of Jungkook's ideas are stupid.

He's well aware of that fact.

It's practically a brand at this point.

Jeon Jungkook: serial architect of decisions that seem perfectly reasonable in the three-second window between impulse and execution and then reveal themselves, with humiliating clarity, to be catastrophically ill-advised approximately four seconds later.

Perfect example of this is that time he tried to make cold brew in a sock because the coffee shop was closed and he was desperate and Yoongi looked at him with the kind of disappointment that leaves a mark.

So he knows. He's self-aware enough for that.

What he is not self-aware enough for—what no amount of Dr. Liao or Tuesday afternoon processing sessions has equipped him to handle—is the ability to identify a stupid idea before it crosses the threshold from thought to action.

Which is how he ends up here.

The party's winding down. That liminal hour where the music's been turned from weapon to wallpaper and the survivors are scattered across the living room in various states of horizontal.

Somebody's asleep on the smaller couch with a cape over their face. The fog machine finally died about forty minutes ago and the room's been slowly clearing, the last wisps of theatrical haze dissolving into regular air that smells like spilled beer and burned-out jack-o-lantern.

He finds Jimin in the kitchen, standing there with a glass of water, leaning against the island, looking at the aftermath as if he were surveying a natural disaster he didn't cause but will somehow be expected to clean up.

"It's gonna be a whole day tomorrow, huh," Jimin says, nodding at the living room.

Streamers sagging. Solo cups colonizing every flat surface. One of the plastic spiders from the bookshelf has migrated to the floor and is lying there on its back like it had one too many and simply surrendered.

"The decorations alone," Jungkook agrees.

"The cobwebs. Those fake cobwebs are a nightmare to get off. They get into everything. It's gonna take three people and a lint roller."

"I'll help take 'em down."

Jimin shakes his head. "You put them up. It's only fair that the rest of us suffer through the removal."

"It's not a big deal."

"It kind of is." Jimin is not being pushy about it—that's the thing. There's no edge, he's simply standing there with his water, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his voice has that particular pitch that makes disagreeing with him feel like kicking a puppy. "You did a lot. Take a break. You deserve it."

"I'm fine."

"I know you're fine. I'm saying you don't have to be." Jimin's smile is small. "Let us handle cleanup. You've earned a night off from being the guy who does everything."

Huh.

That's not—not what Jungkook's used to.

Most people just let it go when he brushes something off. Yoongi would've grunted and said 'do whatever you want'. Taehyung would've insulted him and told him to fuck off with that. Hobi would've shrugged and redirected with a dance move or a question about something else.

But Jimin doesn't let it go.

Which, paradoxically, makes Jungkook want to stay in this kitchen more, not less.

He leans against the opposite counter.

"Alright," Jungkook says, but then, because he can't fully surrender, he adds, "but if anybody fucks up the ceiling streamers I'm holding you personally responsible."

"That's fair." There's a little laugh folded into the words. "I accept full liability."

Silence settles, and it's the comfortable kind (or close enough).

Jungkook takes a sip of water from a cup that may or may not be his. Jimin's standing there doing the cardigan thing, thumb running back and forth over the cuff like a worry stone, and it occurs to Jungkook that he doesn't actually know this person. Not really. Knows the outline—comp lit, library, does your eyeliner, sat on the bathroom floor with you earlier, defended him to you once even though Jungkook hadn't earned it.

Knows Jimin is yours. In the way that matters. Part of your life in a way Jungkook is only adjacent to.

And that used to not register. Used to be just furniture—background characters in the movie of someone else's life, not his.

Except now it does register. Because you're—

Whatever. You're his friend now. Or something. The label keeps shifting depending on who's asking and whether his brain cooperates. And your friends are—

He should probably know your friends.

"So," Jungkook says.

Great start. Pulitzer-worthy.

"Yoongi," he says.

Jimin's thumb stops on the cuff.

"Hm?" Jimin turns to look at him, and there it is—the microshift. Lips pressing together, not quite pursed, but held. Color climbing his neck and landing on his cheeks in real time like someone turned a dial.

Jungkook reads it immediately.

Oh.

Oh.

Okay. So that's—yeah. That's a thing.

He clears his throat. Adjusts. Pivots.

"He's a cool guy," Jungkook says. Nods once, firm, like he's delivering testimony. "He's a really cool guy. Like. You know."

Smooth. So smooth. He should teach a masterclass.

Jimin blinks. The blush is fully operational now, staining both cheeks, and he does this thing where he sort of laughs and exhales at the same time, shoulders dropping half an inch.

"Oh. Yeah." He nods back. Too many times. "Yeah, he's—he's great."

"Yeah."

Silence.

The worst kind of silence now. The one that's sort of loud because both people are thinking things they're not saying and the gap between those things and the actual air in the room is deafening.

Jungkook watches Jimin's fingers migrate from the cuff to the hem of his cardigan, then to each other, lacing and unlacing, and something about the fidgeting softens the awkwardness into something else.

Something that makes Jungkook want to fix it.

Not because he has to.

Because this guy—this soft, careful guy who sat on a tile floor with you—looks like he's one wrong word from imploding, and Jungkook knows what that feels like.

"Matter of fact," he says, leaning back against the counter, finding casual the way a drowning man finds a pool noodle, "there was this thing last Christmas. With Yoongi."

Jimin's fidgeting slows.

"Well like, the four of us, actually. You know. Me, Yoongi, Hobi, Tae. Holiday week. Nobody had anywhere to be, nobody had shit to do, so Yoongi goes—" Jungkook pitches his voice lower, flatter, does his best Yoongi monotone: "'We should go hiking.'"

Jimin's mouth twitches.

"And we're like—hiking? It's December. It's freezing. Tae is wearing loafers." Jungkook gestures with the water cup. "But Yoongi's got this whole thing about Bear Mountain. Says the trails are empty in winter, says the views are better when it's cold, says some shit about how the Hudson looks different when there's frost on it. And he's not wrong, but he's also—you know how he is. He frames it like he doesn't care, but he'd already looked up the train schedule."

Jimin laughs. Quiet, but real. The fidgeting's stopped entirely now.

"So we go. Five AM, Penn Station, four idiots with no hiking gear. Hobi's wearing Jordans. Jordans. On a mountain. Taehyung's got a vintage Carhartt that he keeps stopping to photograph instead of wearing. I'm the only one who brought water—one bottle, like that's enough for four grown men—and Yoongi's just..."

He pauses. Not for dramatic effect. Because the memory is sitting right there, fully formed, and it's—

It's a good one.

"Yoongi's walking ahead. Not fast, not showing off, just—quiet. You know how he gets quiet in a different way outside? Not the apartment quiet, where he's working or ignoring you. A different kind. Like he's actually there. Present. Paying attention to something that isn't a screen."

Jimins leaning forward slightly, and his face has gone still in a way that isn't bracing. More like—receiving. Open and careful and waiting.

"We get to the top and it's—I mean, it's just a view. River, trees, sky. Nothing you can't see on Google. But Yoongi pulls out his phone and records the sound. Not a photo. Not the view. Just stands there with his phone up, recording the wind coming off the water for like two straight minutes. Doesn't say anything. Doesn't show anybody. Just—" Jungkook mimes holding a phone up, "—captures it. Pockets it. Done."

He takes a sip of the maybe-his water.

"And then on the way down, Hobi's Jordan tears on a rock, and Hobi's freaking out about it, and Yoongi—without saying a word—takes off his own shoes and gives them to Hobi. Just. Hands them over. Walks the rest of the trail in his socks."

"In socks?"

"In socks. December. Frozen ground." Jungkook shakes his head. "We're all yelling at him—put your shoes back on, dude, you're gonna get frostbite!—and he just goes 'they're Jordans' like that explains everything. Like the hierarchy of footwear is a moral issue and he's made his ruling."

Jimin's laughing now. Not the quiet kind. The real kind—head ducking, shoulders shaking, the sound of it bright and unguarded in the dead kitchen.

"He didn't mention the socks thing afterward. Not once. Hobi tried to buy him replacement shoes for Christmas and Yoongi wouldn't let him. Said the socks were fine. Said his feet don't get cold." Jungkook pauses. Looks at Jimin directly. "His feet absolutely get cold. He wears two pairs of socks around the apartment from November to March. He's full of shit."

Jimin's laughter subsides into something quieter.

"That's..." Jimin starts, then trails off. His thumb finds the cardigan cuff again, but it's slower now. Thoughtful instead of nervous. "That sounds like him."

"It is him." Jungkook says it simply. Doesn't dress it up. "He won't tell you the stuff that matters about himself. He'll just do it and hope you notice. And if you don't notice, he'll never bring it up. Which is—I mean, it's annoying. It's terrible communication. I tell him that all the time."

Jimin's smile turns softer.

"But it's also—" Jungkook waves a hand vaguely, the way Yoongi does when he's avoiding a point. Catches himself doing it. Stops. "He's the kind of person who'll walk down a mountain in his socks for you and then pretend his feet don't get cold. That's just. You know. What he does."

He doesn't add for people he cares about. Doesn't need to.

The sentence is sitting right there in the space between them, fully assembled, and Jimin's the kind of person who'll see it without being shown.

A beat.

Jimin nods. Slow. Looking at his water glass like it contains answers.

"Thanks for telling me that," he says, and his voice is different now.

"Yeah." Jungkook clears his throat. Tips the water cup toward Jimin in something between a toast and a dismissal. "Don't tell him I told you any of that. He'll kill me."

"Noted." Jimin smiles. "Secret's safe."

"Good."

He leans against the opposite counter. Pulls his wallet from the back pocket of the costume pants he's got on under the robe—because the robe doesn't have pockets, which is a design flaw that Spirit Halloween should answer for.

Opens it. Not for any reason. Habit. The way some people check their phone when they're standing still, Jungkook checks his wallet.

Inventory. Cards, cash, the little things that accumulate in the billfold because he never cleans it out—a bodega receipt from last week, his MetroCard, the loyalty card for the coffee shop two blocks from campus that he keeps forgetting to stamp.

And tucked behind the cards, folded small—

His thumb grazes the edge of it.

He closes the wallet. Looks around the kitchen.

The junk drawer by the fridge is half-open. Inside: rubber bands, takeout menus, a screwdriver, and a pad of post-its. Yellow. Small. The cheap kind—not the branded ones, just the generic squares that come in a pack of twelve from the dollar store and end up in every junk drawer in every house in America.

He pulls one off the pad.

Jimin watches him do this with politeness and confusion.

"What are you—"

"Pen?"

"What?"

"Do you have a pen?"

Jimin blinks. Pats his chest. Touches the quill behind his ear—decorative, useless, ink-free. Then reaches into his back pocket and produces a regular ballpoint like a normal human being.

Jungkook takes it. Uncaps it with his teeth. Presses the post-it flat against the counter with his palm.

Writes.

Fast. Then stops. Pen hovering above the yellow square, tip a millimeter from the surface, like the next word is sitting right behind his teeth and he's deciding whether to let it out.

His jaw works. Once.

He writes.

Caps the pen. Clicks it against the counter once—a period at the end of an action—and then folds the edge of the post-it. A small fold. Just the right side, barely a centimeter, pressing the crease flat with his thumbnail.

Holds it out to Jimin.

Jimin looks at the post-it. Then at Jungkook. Then at the post-it again.

"Can you give this to her?" Casual. Or trying to be. The trying is doing more work than the casual. "When you see her."

"To—"

"Yeah."

Jimin takes the post-it. Holds it between his index and middle finger like a card in a magic trick, studying it with the focus of someone who's been handed a piece of evidence and isn't sure what trial it belongs to.

He doesn't unfold it. Doesn't read it. Just nods—slow, careful, a nod that contains about twelve questions he's choosing not to ask.

Because that's what Jimin does. He's starting to get his vibe.

Jimin lets things exist without demanding they explain themselves.

He gets why you like him.

"Okay," Jimin says.

"Thanks."

"You could just... give it to her yourself."

"Yeah." Jungkook takes the pen apart—cap off, cap on, cap off—the idle fidget of a man who has burned through his daily allocation of emotional vulnerability and is now running on fumes. "I could."

He doesn't elaborate. Jimin doesn't push.

The post-it disappears into the chest pocket of Jimin's cardigan, yellow edge just visible against the wool, and Jimin pats it once—a small, careful gesture, like he's tucking something valuable into a safe place even though he doesn't know what it is yet.

A beat passes.

Jungkook looks at the living room. At the wreckage. At the passed-out beards and the empty fog machine and the smashed pumpkin that Taehyung is definitely going to blame on him even though he saw the centurion kick it on the way out. At the string lights still going, amber and warm, giving the whole disaster a filter it doesn't deserve.

He yawns—big and full and theatrical, jaw cracking, arms going up, entire spine releasing—and comes out of it and slaps both hands down on the counter hard enough to rattle two solo cups and startle Jimin into a step back.

"Alright." Too loud. On purpose. The volume of a man who has just, by executive decision, closed a chapter. "Why is everyone so sour?"

Jimin blinks. "It's 2AM."

"Prime time." Already moving, already crossing back toward the living room, the Ghostface robe picking up air behind him like he thinks he's something. "Everything before this was a dress rehearsal. Drinking game. Right now. Whoever's still standing."

"That's like six people."

"Perfect number for a drinking game. Hoseok—HOSEOK—"

"He's going to ignore you," Jimin calls after him, something lighter in his voice than it was twenty minutes ago.

"I'm his favorite."

"You are categorically—"

"Categorically everyone's favorite, Jimin. It's a burden. It's a cross I carry." He's already crouching over the sleeping beard on the small couch, shaking the man's shoulder with the cheerful mercilessness of someone who has decided that suffering should be communal. "C'mon. Up."

A groan rises from the living room. Several. The collective protest of six people who already died once tonight and resent being asked to do it again.

Jungkook grins.

Stupid ideas are, after all, his specialty.

The drinking game was his idea. The Uno was Hobi's. The combination of the two is, in hindsight, a human rights violation.

The thing about drinking Uno is that it sounds simple, right? You play a card, you follow the rules, you drink when the game tells you to drink.

Except there are no official rules for drinking Uno because Uno is a children's game that was never meant to be combined with tequila, which means every single person at this table has a different understanding of how it works, and every single one of you is willing to die on their specific hill.

Way too many people around the coffee table. Cards fanned in hands. Drinks sweating on coasters because even shitfaced, Jungkook respects Tessa's grandmother's furniture.

Yeji's cross-legged on the floor, extremely focused, cards held close to her chest, eyes flicking between her hand and the discard pile with a concentration that suggests she's running probability calculations in real time. Her combat boots are off—somewhere between the third round and the fifth, she kicked them under the couch and declared them 'a disadvantage'—and she's sitting in mismatched socks, frock coat unbuttoned, wine-stained lace at her throat, looking like an aristocratic vampire who takes recreational card games as a personal referendum on her worth as a human being.

Which, knowing Yeji from what little of her he knows, she does.

Irya is next to her, pressed against her side. Eyes at approximately sixty percent operational capacity, the brownies having apparently entered their final form about an hour ago, because Irya's been smiling at her cards like they're friends she's happy to see rather than a strategic hand in a competitive drinking game. She's holding her cards backwards. Nobody's told her.

Yoongi is in the armchair—the man located the most comfortable seat in the room within four seconds of arriving and has not moved since. Claire's skull earring still dangling. Cards held in one hand, phone in the other, scrolling through something while playing.

Hobi's on the floor by the fireplace, legs folded, managing his hand with the same energy he manages everything—bright, organized, vaguely menacing. He's been winning quietly and consistently for three rounds, which is suspicious behavior from a man who claims he 'doesn't really play card games', at least from Jungkook's perspective.

Taehyung is to his left. Pinstripe jacket off now, sleeves rolled, the drawn-on mustache surviving through what can only be described as chemical adhesion or the will of God. He's seven drinks deep and playing Uno like it's something extremely important right now.

Irika, for her part, is curled into the other armchair in her black silk, legs tucked, watching the table with the measured interested of someone who literally evaluates arguments for a living. Jimin's between her and Yoongi, plays smart instead of loud, never more than four cards in hand.

And you.

You're across from him. Knees pulled up, cards balanced against your thighs, the Medusa skirt fanned out around you on the floor. Eyes still a little swollen. Liner still smudged. Gold shimmer still caught in your hair where the chains have mostly come loose.

But you're smiling.

Not the full thing. Not the one that rewrites your whole face and makes your eyes do that specific shape that he's catalogued without meaning to. Just the edge of one. The ghost of it. Enough that he knows the music room worked. The floor worked. Whatever happened between the amp and the hallway—it worked.

Good.

That's good.

His hands are steady now. Some hours ago, they weren't.

He's not thinking about that. He's thinking about the fact that he's holding eleven freaking cards, which is a personal issue, frankly, a staffing crisis, and somebody in this deck owes him an explanation.

He puts down a red seven. Takes a sip of his beer—tenth? eleventh? hard to say, the bottles have been circulating with the same frequency as the cards and at some point the counting became aspirational rather than mathematical.

The thing about drinking with Hobi and Tae is that it's not really drinking. It's endurance athletics.

The three of them have been putting away liquor at a pace that would hospitalize a civilian, and the only visible evidence is that Taehyung's laugh has gotten approximately fifteen percent louder and Hobi's dance moves during the shuffle have gotten approximately thirty percent more elaborate.

Jungkook himself feels pleasantly bulletproof in the way that only happens around the two-bottle mark—warm, steady, everything slightly funnier than it should be but nothing blurry.

His tolerance was forged in freshman year dorm rooms and refined through keeping pace with Hobi at parties where the open bar was the only interesting thing happening.

It's a skill. A terrible skill. But a skill.

You put down a Draw Four.

He looks at it. Looks at you. You're already looking at him—that little anticipatory gleam, the one that says 'I know exactly what I just did and I'm enjoying it.'

He puts down another Draw Four. On top of yours. Blue.

Your mouth opens.

"You CANNOT do that—"

"Yes I can? It's literally the game."

"That is not the game. You can't stack Draw Fours, that's not a real rule—"

"It's the game for every single person who has ever played Uno in the history of the known universe—"

"I have played Uno—"

"It doesn't look like it."

Your eyes narrow. That specific narrow—the one that precedes either a devastating comeback or physical violence, and the odds on which are about fifty-fifty, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the coin flick.

"The official rules—"

"Oh, she's bringing out official rules. Citation needed. Peer-reviewed? APA format?"

"The official Mattel rules state that Draw Four cards cannot be stacked—"

"Mattel also made Barbie. Do you want to talk about their track record with realism, or—"

"You two," Yeji says.

Neither of you stops. He physically can't. There's a version of him that could, probably, but that guy's not here tonight.

"—because Barbie's Dream House doesn't have a mortgage and yet somehow she has a convertible—"

"—are you seriously bringing Barbie into an Uno dispute—"

"Shut up," Yeji says. Louder. Both hands flat on the table. "SHUT UP. I have two cards left. I need to concentrate. My brain is still spinning from that brownie and I cannot—I physically cannot—process your childish quarrel about Mattel while I'm trying to win."

Jungkook opens his mouth. Closes it. Decides, wisely, that correcting Yeji on her word choice while she's in this state would likely be the last decision he ever made.

You appear to reach the same conclusion at exactly the same time, because you close your mouth too and stare very hard at your cards.

"Uno," Irya says.

Bright. Cheerful. Like she's announcing a fun fact about butterflies.

Everyone looks at her.

She's holding four cards. Four. Fanned out in front of her face like a tiny decorative screen, one of them backwards, one of them definitely from a different card game because it has a picture of a horse on it and Jungkook is almost certain Uno doesn't have horses.

"Baby." Yeji. Gentle. The voice of a woman that is deeply in love. "You still have four cards. That's not how Uno works."

"But I said it," Irya says, as if the word itself was the whole point and the card count was a secondary concern.

"She has to drink a sip," Yoongi says from the armchair, not looking up from his phone.

"Full glass." Jungkook sits up. Because if this table is going to be governed, someone has to govern it. "False Uno is a full glass."

"Jungkook, stop making rules UP."

That's you. Immediate. Reflexive. Like you have a dedicated neural pathway specifically for detecting his bullshit—which, fine, flattering, that's real prime state—but also wrong, because he's not making rules up, he's legislating.

"I'm NOT making rules up. She said Uno at the wrong time. That's a penalty. That's regulation."

"That's not—okay, first of all, there is no 'regulation' in drunk Uno. Second of all, the actual false Uno penalty is that you only drink if someone calls you out before you when you have one card and forget to say it. She said it with four cards. That's just—wrong. It's not a penalty. It's just incorrect."

"So there's no consequence for being wrong? What's next, we kiss serial killers?"

"The consequence is that we all saw it happen and now we know she doesn't understand the game."

"Babe, I understand the game," Irya says, sounding genuinely hurt.

"Of course you do," Yeji soothes, patting her knee.

"I have a horse," Irya adds, holding up the non-Uno card with pride.

"You're a tyrant," Jungkook tells you, because the Irya situation has clearly reached a dead end and the Draw Four dispute needs resolution. "An authoritarian. A despot. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for living under this regime."

"The regime where we follow the actual rules?"

"The regime where one person decides what the rules are and the rest of us suffer."

"That's called playing a game correctly—"

"Jungkook." Taehyung. Flat. Zero patience. "Shut the fuck up and eat the four cards."

"I'm not eating—"

Taehyung reaches across, picks up Jungkook's glass—three-quarters full, tequila and something, who even knows anymore—and drains it. One long pull. Sets it down empty.

"There." Tae wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, the drawn-on mustache surviving the gesture through what is now clearly some form of dark magic. "Problem solved. Take the cards."

"You just drank my drink."

"Consider it conflict resolution."

"That was my tequila—"

"It was everyone's tequila. Tequila is communal."

"Tequila is explicitly not communal—"

"I'm with Y/N on this one."

Irika. Who, in case anybody forgot, is a judge. A private judge, technically, but the distinction is irrelevant when she deploys that tone—level, final, the vocal equivalent of a gavel coming down.

Every head turns.

Irika shrugs one shoulder. Adjusts the black silk of her Morticia dress. "Stacking Draw Fours isn't in the official ruleset. It's a house rule at best. If no house rule was established at the start of play, default rules apply. He draws four."

Silence.

"Well." Hobi spreads his hands. "The judge has spoken. Overruled, Jungkook."

"She's not—she's not a judge right now! She's Morticia Addams! There's no judicial authority vested in a Halloween costume—"

"I'm always a judge," Irika says. Mild. Terrifying.

"That's—okay, that's actually a little scary—"

"Take the cards," Yoongi says from behind his phone, not looking up. "You're holding up the game."

"I'm holding up the game? I'm the one trying to maintain competitive integrity—"

"You're the one making up rules because you're losing," Yoongi says.

"I'm not losing. I have a strategy."

He does not have a strategy. He has ten cards and momentum.

"Your strategy is yelling."

"My strategy is passion—"

"Jungkook." Hobi sets his cards down. Folds his hands. Assumes the posture of a man about to deliver a verdict of his own. "You have ten cards. Yoongi has three. I have four. You are, by every measurable metric, losing."

"Metrics are a social construct."

"That's not what social construct means," Yoongi says.

"Yoongi, I swear to god—"

"Okay, you know what?" Taehyung leans forward. Points at Hobi, then Yoongi. "Leave him alone. He's playing his way. It's creative."

Jungkook turns to him. Chest swelling.

His guy. His day one.

"Thank you."

"It's stupid-creative. But it's creative."

"I'll take it."

"Oh, here we go." Hobi rolls his eyes—theatrical, full rotation. "Here we go. The dynamic duo. Tae, you always do this."

"Do what?"

"This!" Hobi gestures between Taehyung and Jungkook with both hands. "He makes that face—the pouty face, the big eyes, the whole kicked-puppy act—and you fold. Every single time. Like clockwork."

He's not making a face.

Probably.

He can't see his own face, but the odds of it being pouty are low.

...Medium.

Whatever.

"I do not fold—"

"You fold like a lawn chair," Yoongi says. Still scrolling. "It's honestly impressive. He looks at you and your spine just—"

He makes a collapsing gesture with one hand. Doesn't look up from his phone while doing it, which makes it worse.

"I am not—my spine is fine—"

"Your spine is compromised," Hobi says. "By his face."

"That's insane—"

"Tae." Yoongi. Flat. "He once convinced you to drive to New Jersey at 3AM for a cheesesteak because he said please with his lower lip out. You drove to New Jersey."

"It was a good cheesesteak!"

"It was a Wawa."

"Wawa has great cheesesteaks—"

"It was a GAS STATION, Taehyung—"

"With GREAT CHEESESTEAKS—"

Jungkook is beaming. Not even trying to hide it.

For the record: it was a great cheesesteak, the lower lip was simply a strategic maneuver and he regrets absolutely nothing.

And then, across the table, you've given up on containing it—the laugh comes out open, unguarded, the kind that uses your shoulders and tips your head back, and the sound does something to the room.

Warms it. Fills it. Makes everything lighter by exactly the amount that matters.

Good.

He takes the four cards. Doesn't even care anymore.

Three rounds later, Yoongi wins.

Obviously.

He lays down his last card—a green reverse—with the energy of someone submitting a tax return. No celebration. No gloating. Just sets it on the pile, picks up his drink, takes a sip, and says "that's the game" the way you'd say 'it's raining' like it's a fact.

"How," Yeji says. She's staring at the discard pile like it personally betrayed her. "HOW. You were on your phone the entire time."

"Multitasking," Yoongi says.

"That's not multitasking, that's—witchcraft—"

"It's pattern recognition. The discard pile is predictable once you track color cycling and hold distribution." He takes another sip. "Also, Taehyung has a tell."

"I do NOT—"

"You tap your cards when you're about to play a Wild. Every time. Without fail."

Taehyung looks at his hands. Then at his cards. Then at his hands again, as if they've been operating independently and without his consent.

Jungkook makes a mental note to watch for the tap next round and then a second mental note that Yoongi definitely has been reading everyone at this table all night, himself included, and elects not to pursue that thought any further.

Jimin lays down a red two. Looks at his remaining card. Looks at the table.

"Uno."

Said quiet. Almost casual. But his posture shifts—straighter, alert, the way someone sits when they know the whole table is about to target them.

You play a red reverse.

The direction flips. Back to Jimin.

Which means Jimin has to play. Right now. On a red.

And Jungkook, who spends most of his waking life watching people for a living (or at least for a degree)—catches the flicker. The expression of a man who does not, in fact, have a red card.

And Jungkook would love to say he watched what happened next with the full weight of his professional attention.

But he didn't.

Because you're still holding the reverse card play with that little surprised-gloat thing, chin up—the one where you refuse to smile outright but the corners give you away—and his eyes go there instead.

Of course they do.

You set the trap, the trap worked, and now you're being insufferable about it in a register that's only visible directly across the table.

He's directly across the table. So.

Two seconds. Maybe three.

When he looks back, Jimin is laying down a red eight.

"That's the game," Jimin says, with a smile that's a degree too innocent.

Huh?

"WAIT." Hobi slams both palms on the table. "Wait wait wait. Did he just—"

"He won." Yoongi says with zero inflection.

"He won? He WON?! He was stuck! I saw that face! He did the face—the trapped face, the 'I don't have a red' face—and then OUT OF NOWHERE, red eight?"

"He had a red eight."

"He absolutely did not have a red eight, Min Yoongi, don't you dare—your hands literally moved across the table!"

"I was picking up my drink."

The drink is right there. On the coaster. Half-finished. Sweating gently. An alibi with condensation.

"You put your phone down." Hobi points at it, face down on the armrest now. "You put your PHONE down. You haven't put that phone down since we sat down. That's premeditation."

"Are you accusing me of rigging a card game." Yoongi looks at Hobi over the rim of his glass. The skull earring sways. His expression is the dictionary definition of unbothered. "At a Halloween party. In someone's grandparents' house."

"YES. That is exactly what I'm accusing you of."

"Interesting theory."

"It's not a theory! I have eyes! Nobody goes from 'trapped face' to the exact card they need unless—" his finger sways between them, "—someone passed him—"

"Sounds like luck to me," Jimin says.

"It does sound like luck," Yoongi agrees.

"You two are—" Hobi sputters. Points at one, then the other. "You're in cahoots. You're in open, blatant, shameless cahoots and I am being gaslit at a coffee table—"

"Cahoots is a strong word," Jimin says.

"Do you have a weaker one?"

"Coincidence."

"COINCIDENCE—"

"I think we should move on," Yoongi says, waving his hand off.

"I think you should be IMPRISONED—"

"Drama," Yoongi mumbles. "The performer's curse."

Hobi's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. He looks at Jungkook for backup. Jungkook raises both hands—palms out, staying clear, because getting between Hobi and Yoongi during an integrity dispute is how people disappear.

He catches your eye across the table.

You're smiling.

He looks at his cards.

Draws a green two. Puts it down.

Smiles.

His hands have stopped shaking.

He's finally managed to get the shakes from the adrenaline down, and it is only then that his eyes catch the room—which is, objectively, insane.

A full music room in someone's grandparents' house, because this is Greenwich Village and rich people furnish their spare rooms the way normal people furnish Pinterest boards: aspirationally and with zero fiscal accountability.

But his hands. They're steady now. Resting on his thighs where he's sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor with his back against a leather armchair.

Steady.

Three minutes ago they weren't.

Hobi's next to him, legs extended, ankles crossed, leaning back on his palms in that way he has where every position looks like a magazine spread.

Dance Studio Owner Relaxes After Preventing Friend From Committing Aggravated Assault At Costume Party. Shot on location.

The music room is small. Wood-paneled. A baby grand piano in the corner with a dust cloth draped over it like a ghost that gave up. Bookshelves full of vinyl—actual vinyl, organized by what looks like decade, which Jungkook is trying very hard not to get up and inspect because if he starts flipping through some dead rich guy's record collection right now he'll lose the next forty minutes trying to find a Mayer one and also the last remaining thread of whatever emotional processing he's supposed to be doing.

There's a cello propped in a stand by the window. A violin case on the shelf. Framed photos of someone shaking hands with Yo-Yo Ma.

And on the wall, between two sconces that look like they belong in a cathedral—

A fucking Fender Stratocaster.

Sunburst finish. Not new—played, lived-in, the kind of wear that comes from hands, not neglect. The frets show use. The pickguard has a faint scratch pattern near the bridge that tells him someone used to strum hard and slightly too low.

Whoever owned this loved it. Loved it the way you can only love an instrument that's been your primary method of saying the things your mouth won't.

He hasn't looked away from it since they walked in.

"So," Hobi says. Casual. "John Mayer or Hendrix?"

"What?"

"If you could only listen to one for the rest of your life."

"That's—" He tears his eyes from the Strat. "That's not even a fair question. Those are completely different—"

"It's absolutely a fair question. I ask every musician I meet. It's diagnostic."

"Diagnostic of what?"

"Of who you are as a person." Hobi counts on his fingers. "Hendrix people are chaos agents. They want to burn the building down and build something new in the ashes. Mayer people want to sit on the porch of the building and write a song about how the light hits it at 6pm."

"Those aren't the only two options."

"They're the only two that matter for this exercise."

"What if I say both?"

"Then you're a coward and I lose respect for you."

Jungkook snorts. Picks at a thread on the knee of his costume. The Ghostface robe pools around him like he's some kind of haunted monk who chose vibes over doctrine.

"Mayer."

"Knew it."

"You didn't know it."

"I absolutely knew it. You're a porch guy. You want the thing to be beautiful and precise and a little bit heartbreaking. Hendrix guys want the thing to be loud."

"Mayer can be loud."

"Mayer is loud the way a thunderstorm is loud. Hendrix is loud the way a car crash is loud. Different energy."

He's right. Annoyingly, thoroughly right, in the way Hobi is always right about things that shouldn't be in his area of expertise but somehow are because the man treats every domain of human knowledge like a dance floor—just walks onto it and starts moving and somehow it works.

Jungkook looks at the guitar again.

"The Trio stuff is what got me," he says. "Not the solo albums. The live Trio recordings. 'Where the Light Is.' The way he strips everything back and it's just—guitar and rhythm and this... conversation happening between his hands and the instrument. No production. No tricks. Just the thing itself."

"That's the porch," Hobi says.

"That's the porch," Jungkook agrees.

Silence. Good silence.

Then Hobi does the thing.

"Why'd you stop playing?"

Jungkook's fingers go still on the thread.

"You used to play all the time, man. At Tae's, remember? You had the acoustic with you. Played for like two hours straight on his fire escape. Couldn't get you to stop."

He remembers. Tae's old walkup. Before the whole shape of their friend group had solidified into what it is now.

Jungkook would show up with the guitar because he'd been playing at campus that afternoon between classes—couldn't play at home, obviously, because home was Mia's apartment and the guitar was noise at home—so he'd carry it around like an organ donor, playing wherever she wasn't.

Practice rooms at NYU. Taehyung's fire escape. The back corner of Blueline on slow afternoons.

Anywhere that wasn't the Upper East Side.

Anywhere she couldn't hear it and say 'do you have to do that right now?'

"And then one day it was just—gone." Hobi tilts his head. "Like someone unplugged you or something, man."

The thread is still between his fingers. He doesn't pull it. Doesn't move.

He could give the easy version.

Got busy, different priorities, you know how it goes.

Hobi would accept it. That's his whole thing—holds the door open and waits for you to walk through on your own time.

"Mia said it was noise."

Not the easy version, then.

Hobi purses his lips together.

"She—" He clears his throat.

Something shifts in his chest. Maybe the stone. The one he's been carrying so long it feels like an organ.

"She used to say it was a distraction. That I spent more time with the guitar than with her. Which—I mean, some days, yeah. Probably. Because playing was the only part of my day that still felt like—"

Like what?

Like himself. Like the version of himself that existed before the debt and the phone calls at 2AM and the birthday that wasn't a birthday and the night his mother cried because she believed something that never happened.

He doesn't say any of that.

He says: "She wanted me to sell my equipment. To prove I was serious about us."

The words lodge in his throat before he can release them.

"And I did. Most of it. Sold the amp first. Then the pedals. Kept the acoustic for a while because I thought—maybe if I just played quieter. If I did it when she wasn't around. If I made myself—"

His jaw works.

"She found out I was still playing. Said I was sneaking around. Like playing guitar in an empty apartment was the same as—"

Stops. Swallows.

"Anyway. Sold the acoustic too. After that."

The room is very quiet after that.

It sucks.

It sucks because there's a whole building full of people being twenty-something and careless and alive, and here he is on a music room floor telling Hoseok about the time he let someone convince him that the best part of himself was an inconvenience.

"She got what she wanted, I guess. I stopped playing. And then we broke up and I just—didn't start again. Couldn't pick one up without hearing her in my head telling me it was a waste of time."

He exhales.

"Which is—fun. Super fun."

"Real fun," Hobi says.

But there is no humor in it. Just some sort of echo. Holding the word so Jungkook doesn't have to carry it alone.

Quiet settles once more.

Hobi isn't looking at him—looking at the ceiling, at the Yo-Yo Ma photo, at his own hands—giving him room the way you give a patient space in a hospital floor.

"Is that why you switched?"

Jungkook blinks. "What?"

"Majors. You started in music production, right? Tae mentioned it once. And then you moved to film." Hobi says it evenly. No charge. Like he's confirming directions, not opening a wound. "Was that her too?"

The question sits there for a few beats before Jungkook finally nods.

Doesn't elaborate. Can feel the edge of something in his chest—the place where this conversation becomes a different conversation, a worse one, the one where he has to explain that it wasn't just the guitar.

It was the major and the friends and the way he dressed and the amount of time he spent on his art and the food he ate and the way he breathed, probably, if she'd figured out how to critique that too.

The conversation where he has to say 'she took everything apart, piece by piece, so slowly I didn't notice until there was nothing left' and then sit with the fact that he let it happen.

He allowed it to happen.

Even after he'd seen it happen before through his own eyes.

He doesn't want to go there.

His jaw tightens. Fingers press into his own knee. He can feel the rehearsed cheerfulness loading—some joke about film school, some deflection about Tarantino or aspect ratios—

Hobi stands up.

Doesn't push. Doesn't probe. Doesn't say 'you should talk about this' or any of the things that are probably true and absolutely not what he needs to hear right now.

Just walks to the wall. Reaches up. Lifts the Strat off its hooks with both hands—careful, respectful, the way you handle something that belongs to someone who isn't here to say yes—and carries it back.

Holds it out.

"Hobi."

"Just hold it."

"That's not ours."

"We're borrowing it. Tessa said the music room was open. That includes the instruments."

"That's a vintage Strat."

"And you're a guy who hasn't played enough. Seems like a match."

The guitar hangs there. Sunburst. Scratched pickguard. Someone's love, left on a wall.

His hand comes up before his brain clears it.

The neck slides into his palm and his fingers close around it and—

Oh.

The weight. The specific, exact, irreplaceable weight of a guitar in his hands.

Six strings and a body and a neck that fits against his forearm like it was measured for him, and his left hand moves to the frets on autopilot—memory from ten thousand hours that Mia couldn't erase no matter how many amps she made him sell—and his right hand finds the strings and he brushes them. Just once. Unamplified, barely audible, a whisper of harmonic vibration that travels through the wood into his chest.

His eyes close.

Fuck, he missed this.

Not like missing a hobby. Not like 'oh yeah, used to do that, should get back to it'.

Missing it like a limb. Like a language he used to dream in. Like the one thing that always made sense when nothing else did—not his family, not Mia, not the mess of his own head—just hands on strings and the sound that came out being exactly the thing he meant to say.

Opens his eyes. Looks at Hobi.

"There's an amp." Nods toward the corner. Small Fender combo, tucked beside the piano bench. "Can you plug me in?"

Hobi grins—the real one, not the redirect grin from the garden—and he's already moving, pulling the cable from its coil, flicking the power switch.

Jungkook plugs in the jack. Adjusts the volume. Tests a chord—open G, ringing, full—and the amp translates it into something that pushes against the walls and makes the wood paneling vibrate.

His chest expands. Actually physically expands, like his lungs figured out how to work again.

"I've been getting back into it, actually." He adjusts the tuning peg on the high E. Slightly flat. "At the apartment. Yoongi can vouch for it. He's been bitching through the wall for a month."

"Doesn't Yoongi bitch about pretty much everything except for hiking and music?"

"Yeah, but this bitching is specific. This is targeted complaints about my chord voicings at 11PM. Which means he's listening. Which means I'm playing good enough for him to notice."

"That is the most roundabout progress metric I've ever heard."

"The Yoongi Scale. If he's annoyed, you're on track."

Hobi laughs. Real, warm, settling back against the armchair while the amp sits between them patient and waiting.

Jungkook's left hand moves up the neck. Third fret. Index finger on the G string. Ring finger stretches to the B.

Doesn't think about what he's going to play. Just lets his hands go where they want.

The cleanest four-chord structure in the history of pop music, and his fingers know it the way they know the shape of a coffee mug, the way they know the frets on his own guitar back at the apartment, fog evaporating through rust and disuse and settling into something that doesn't feel rusty at all.

Feels like coming home to a house he forgot he still had a key to.

"Wait—" Hobi sits forward. "Is that Coldplay?"

"Yeah." Jungkook grins. Keeps playing. His right hand finds a picking pattern—the one from the acoustic version, not the album. "Their guitar work doesn't get enough credit, man. Everyone talks about the vocals and the production but the actual guitar lines—especially the early stuff—the chords are basic but the voicings are so specific. Like, the way Buckland uses the delay to create these layers—"

He shifts to the verse progression. Adds the delay-echo pattern, approximating it with his picking hand since there's no pedal.

"—see, that? That shimmer? That's not reverb, that's rhythmic delay. Dotted eighth notes. He's basically playing a duet with himself. The original note and the echo become two different melodic lines happening at once."

"You're nerding out."

"Appreciate me educating you, man."

"You are fully, completely nerding out right now and your face is doing the thing."

"I don't have a thing."

"The thing where your eyes get big and you start talking with your hands except you can't because you're holding a guitar so your eyebrows are doing all the work. That thing."

Jungkook's eyebrows, which are in fact doing an unreasonable amount of work, attempt to settle into something neutral.

They don't quite make it.

He doesn't care.

Because the Strat is singing under his hands and the amp is warm and the room is humming and his fingers remember every single shape and his chest feels wider than it has in months.

Maybe longer. Maybe since before.

He cycles back to the chorus. G, D, C.

Yellow.

He's always liked this song. Can't even remember when he first heard it—it's one of those songs that exists in the background of being alive, like it was already playing when you showed up and never really stopped. In grocery stores and Uber rides and the credits of some movie he can't name.

The kind of song you don't choose, it just—lives in you.

He played it for Mia once.

Early on. Before things got bad—or before he realized things were bad, which isn't the same thing but felt like it at the time. Sat on the edge of her bed with the acoustic and played the whole thing start to finish because he'd been practicing the fingerpicking pattern for weeks and he wanted to show her, wanted to share the one thing that made his chest feel bigger instead of smaller.

She listened. Or—sat there while sound happened near her. Which isn't the same thing either.

When he finished she said 'I don't get it'.

It wasn't really mean, nor cruel. It was simply... blank.

Almost as if he'd shown her a card trick and she couldn't figure out why he expected her to be impressed.

«The lyrics don't even make sense. What does 'your skin and bones turn into something beautiful' even mean? And why is everything yellow? It's a weird color to write a song about. If he wanted to be romantic he should've picked red or something.»

And Jungkook had sat there with the guitar still warm in his lap and thought—it's not about the color. It's not about any of the words, individually.

It's about how they sound together.

How the melody makes the language into something that means more than its parts.

How yellow isn't a color in the song, it's a feeling—warmth, and light, and the specific shade of being so full of something you can't name that the only word big enough to hold it is a color.

He didn't say any of that. Said 'yeah, you're probably right' and put the guitar away and never played it for her again.

Doesn't tell Hobi any of this.

Just plays.

And it feels good. Playing it. Right now, in this room, on this guitar. He doesn't know why. Doesn't interrogate it.

"The opening is the best part," he says, already shifting up the neck. "Everyone remembers the chorus but the but the way it comes back around—listen—"

He moves to the higher register. The melody climbs. Fingers stretching for the voicings—Em, D, C, and then back down—and the notes ring out clean and full and something about the sound in this wood-paneled room, the way it bounces off the shelves and the piano dust cloth and—

Sounds right.

Just. Sounds right.

His throat hums. The melody rises in his chest before it reaches his mouth—that feeling, the one where a song is sitting right behind your teeth and all you have to do is open up and let it out.

"Look at the stars."

Quiet. Almost nothing. More breath than voice.

"Look how they shine for you."

Louder now. Finding it. The shape of the words settling into the shape of the notes like something that was always supposed to be there.

"And everything you do."

He doesn't sound like Chris Martin. Doesn't try to. His voice is lower, rougher, slightly raw in a way that the studio version isn't—the sound of someone singing because the song asked him to, not because an audience is listening.

Hobi is still.

"Yeah, they were all yellow."

The chord rings out. Sustains. Fills the room and holds there—a single, shimmering, fading note that doesn't want to die.

He lets it.

Watches his own hands on the strings. Steady.

Not shaking. Not even a little.

"Shit," Hobi says softly. "Yeah. Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Just—okay. You're back." A breath. "That's all. You're back."

Jungkook looks at him. At the room. At the Strat in his lap.

Doesn't know why his eyes sting.

Allergies, probably. Old house. Dust on the piano cloth.

The door opens.

He stops. Hands flat on the strings. Killing the vibration.

A reflex so deeply wired it happens before he even sees who's there—the automatic silencing of sound when a door opens, because doors opening used to mean 'put the guitar down' and that's old code he's still debugging.

Taehyung is in the doorway. Pinstripe rumpled. Pocket square clinging on through sheer willpower. Drawn-on mustache smudged, giving him less Gomez Addams and more 'guy who fell asleep on a newspaper'.

And behind him—

You.

You with red eyes and makeup wrecked and eyeliner tracked down your cheeks in dark smudges that Jimin is absolutely going to grieve. Gold shimmer smeared across your cheekbones like a craft aisle casualty. The snake cuff is still there. The chain belt. The corset.

Same costume, different girl wearing it than an hour ago.

Something tightens behind his sternum.

Taehyung's face splits open before Jungkook can process the rest.

"Was that you?"

Sheepish isn't a setting Jungkook wears well. But he can feel it on his face: the half-grin, the slight duck, the hand rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah."

"Dude." Taehyung crosses the room in three strides, grinning so wide the smudged mustache lifts on both sides. "It's been so long since I've heard you play. Like—years. That sounded incredible."

"It hasn't been that long." He adjusts the Strat in his lap. "Yoongi's heard me plenty. Through the wall. Loudly and against his will."

"It's true."

Your voice. From the doorway.

You're leaning against the frame. Arms crossed. One foot in, one foot out.

Plausible deniability in both directions—your default stance in any room you haven't committed to yet.

"He plays at like eleven PM on a Tuesday and Yoongi bangs on the wall and then he plays louder and then Yoongi bangs harder and then Griffin starts yelling and it's a whole production."

Taehyung turns around. Looks at you. Back at Jungkook. Back at you.

"Wait—you've heard him play?"

Like you just told him you've witnessed a solar eclipse. Like Jungkook playing guitar in his own apartment with you on the other side of a shared wall is classified intel.

Your eyebrows lift. "...Yeah?"

Said like 'obviously'. Like you genuinely don't understand why this is a question.

Tae looks at him. He sees the processing frown, the one where information he had doesn't match information he just got.

Jungkook shrugs. "I've been getting back into it. Recently. She lives with me, so—"

Beat.

"I mean. In the apartment. Same apartment. That's—yeah."

Eloquence. Peak performance. A master class in language from a man holding a borrowed Stratocaster in a Ghostface robe.

"How recently?" Taehyung asks.

"Couple months?"

"Couple months?" Tae's voice pitches. "You've been playing again for a couple months and you didn't—"

"Tae, I just started picking it up at night. When I couldn't sleep. It wasn't an announcement situation."

"You could've told me."

"Tae."

"I'm just saying."

"And I'm just saying it was small. I wanted it small for a while."

Taehyung reads that. He's always been good at reading the things Jungkook doesn't say—since before Mia, since high school, since the era of guitar riffs and avoidant shrugs that Tae just learned the translation for.

"Okay." Softer. "Yeah. I get that."

A beat.

"It sounded really good, though."

"Thanks, man."

You've moved further into the room. Not all the way—migrated from the doorframe to the cello stand, close enough to be present, far enough to bolt.

Your fingers trace the edge of the cello's scroll with absent curiosity.

"So what was the song?" you ask.

"Coldplay."

"Coldplay." You make a face. Not a bad one—the face of someone forming an opinion in real time. "Like, Coldplay Coldplay? 'Fix You,' stadium tour, your-dad's-favorite-band Coldplay?"

"'Yellow,' actually."

"Huh." You tip your head. "That's their best one."

He blinks. "You think?"

"Yeah. The early stuff before they went all—"

You make a gesture that somehow communicates an entire artistic trajectory from Parachutes to Music of the Spheres. Both hands. A facial expression he's never seen before but immediately understands.

"It's the only one that still sounds like a band in a room. Everything after got so big. 'Yellow' is just a guy with a guitar who feels too much."

A guy with a guitar who feels too much.

Huh.

"Most people say 'Fix You,'" he says.

"Most people are wrong."

"Most people think 'The Scientist' is their peak."

"Most people also think Subway is a reasonable lunch option. Most people can't be trusted."

He grins. Can't help it. Doesn't try.

"What's your issue with Subway?"

"My issue with Subway is that it's bread-flavored depression served by someone who hates you, and I refuse to elaborate further."

"That's a strong stance on a sandwich chain."

"All my stances on sandwich chains are strong. That's what separates me from animals."

Hobi's head is moving between you two. Back and forth. Back and forth. He catches it in his peripheral—the look on Hobi's face isn't suspicion. It's closer to surprise. The pleasant kind. Like he expected you two to be oil and water and instead walked into... whatever this is.

The thing where you quote each other's rhythms and volley insults that land like inside jokes.

"Play something," you say.

"I was playing. You interrupted."

"We enhanced your audience. You went from one to three. That's a two hundred percent increase. You're welcome."

"That's not how percentages—it's three hundred—never mind." He adjusts the guitar. "Requests?"

"Surprise me."

"Dangerous thing to say to a man with a Stratocaster."

"I live with you and your 11PM concerts. Nothing you do with a guitar surprises me anymore."

He plays the opening riff to 'Wonderwall.'

Your face goes through six stages of disgust in approximately 1.4 seconds.

"Get out."

"Today is gonna be the day—"

"Get OUT."

"That they're gonna throw it back to you—"

"I'm going to break that guitar over your head. That is a vintage instrument and I'm willing to sacrifice it."

He's laughing too hard to keep playing. The riff collapses into a mess of muted strings and his own wheezing, and Hobi's gone—full-body, head-back, the silent dying kind—and Taehyung is watching with something that's softened slightly from vigilance into... huh.

Not quite warmth. Not yet. But the guard dog sat down.

Tae's phone buzzes. He pulls it out. Reads the screen.

"Shit—Irika." He holds the phone up like it's evidence. "She's looking for me. Apparently the Morticia wig is 'doing something' and she needs me."

He looks at Jungkook. Holds his gaze for a beat longer than the sentence requires.

"You good?"

It's not really about the guitar.

"Yeah, man. I'm good."

Taehyung nods. Glances at you—brief, assessing, not unfriendly but not warm either, and then he's gone. Pinstripes disappearing through the doorway, phone already at his ear, voice dropping into the specific low register he only uses for Irika.

And then it's three.

Him, Hobi, and you.

It feels—

Good. It feels good. Like the right number of people in the right size room with the right amount of noise, which is almost none.

He plays something, just chords now. Open shapes, ringing, cycling through a progression that doesn't belong to any song. Just sound. Just the Strat filling the room with warmth because it can and he's letting it.

"Okay," Hobi says, slapping his knees and standing. "I'm getting drinks. Actual drinks. Not whatever chemical weapon I made earlier—"

"Your drink was attempted murder," Jungkook says.

"It was festive. It had food coloring."

"The food coloring was the least of its crimes."

"I'm getting water. And maybe beer. You want beer?" He points at Jungkook. Then at you. "Beer? Water? Both?"

"Beer," Jungkook says.

"Whatever's open," you say, and your voice is still doing the raw thing but it's steadier now. More you.

"Two beers and a water. Back in five." Hobi's already at the door, already in motion. "Don't let him play 'Wonderwall' again. I know his tricks."

"Noted," you say.

The door clicks shut.

And then it's two.

He keeps playing. Soft. Nothing specific. Just his fingers and the strings and the sound filling the space between you that's smaller now, denser, without Hobi's brightness to dilute it.

You've sat down next to him, knees pulled up, skirt draped. Close enough to the amp that you'd feel it vibrate through the floor.

He lets the last chord ring out and fade. Sets the guitar down across his lap. Pulls out his phone—automatic, reflex, the thing his hands do when they stop doing something else. Screen on. Thumb swiping before his brain catches up with what his muscle memory just opened.

His feed loads—the grid, the blacks and greys, the shadow-heavy compositions—and before his brain can even register the difference—

"Huh?"

He looks up. You've tilted your head. Eyes on his phone—not leaning in, not craning, just the casual glance of someone who happened to look over at the exact wrong moment.

"That's not your feed, is it?"

Oh.

Oh, shit.

"Yeah, it is."

He switches accounts. Locks the phone. Pockets it. Three movements, clean, fast.

"Just looks different because I—reorganized. The grid. New layout."

"You reorganized your Instagram grid."

"Yeah."

"You."

"Me."

"Jeon Jungkook. Reorganized his Instagram grid. The same Jeon Jungkook whose apartment room looks like a frat house had a seizure."

"My room is curated—"

"Your room has a protein shake stain on the ceiling and you told me it was 'abstract art.'"

"It is abstract art. It's a Jackson Pollock."

"It's whey protein and negligence."

"Agree to disagree."

You squint at him. Not suspiciously—more like amused. Like you know there's something there but it's small and harmless and not worth the dig when you're sitting on a floor in a wrecked costume with mascara on your face and the night you've had.

Your eyes drift back to the cello.

Interest shelved.

Not deleted—he knows you, you don't delete, you file things for later retrieval at the most inconvenient possible moment—but shelved.

Good enough.

He looks at you.

Now that the phone's away and it's just you and the amp and the few inches of hardwood between his knee and yours.

Your eyes are swollen. Not a lot. Just enough that the liner smudges underneath look heavier, and the gold shimmer Irya swept across your cheekbones has been redistributed by tears into uneven streaks, and there's a mascara track on your left cheek that you clearly tried to wipe and only succeeded in smearing.

"You okay?"

He says it to the guitar. To the frets. To his own fingers resting on the strings.

Not to your face, because your face is doing something that makes his chest tight and he doesn't have the bandwidth for that and eye contact simultaneously.

You look at him. He can feel it.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"Okay."

A beat. Two.

"Your eyes are red."

"I'm high. We're all high. You literally watched me eat two brownies."

"That's not baked red." He lifts his gaze from the frets. Meets yours. "That's been-crying red. Different color. Different puffiness pattern. Baked red goes in the whites. Crying red goes around the edges."

"Did you just say puffiness pattern?"

"I'm a film major. I notice faces."

"You can't just use that excuse for everything."

"I'm just saying. You've been crying. And not in a subtle way. Like—it's pretty visible. From across the room. Possibly from space. NASA could probably—"

You swat his arm.

Open-palmed. Quick. The kind that's more exclamation point than assault.

He chuckles. Rocks slightly with the impact, more from dramatics than force.

"I'm just saying," he repeats, quieter now. "Anyone can tell."

"Great. Fantastic. Love that for me."

"Your mascara's doing a whole thing."

"I know it's doing a thing."

"It's migrated. Like a bird. It started on your eyes and now it's—" He gestures vaguely at the lower half of your face.

"I am going to actually break that guitar—"

"Okay, okay."

He sets the Strat down carefully—lowering it into the open case on the floor with the gentleness of someone putting a baby to bed, because it's a vintage instrument and he has respect even if he has no tact—and shifts so he's facing you

He pulls the sleeve of the Ghostface robe over his hand. Makes a fist inside the fabric so the cuff stretches over his knuckles—cheap polyester, Spirit Halloween's finest—and brings it to your face.

You look at the ground.

Not at him.

At the hardwood between your knees, at the dust in the grout line, at anything that isn't the guy who's currently dabbing at your mascara with a serial killer costume like it's a washcloth.

He's gentle about it. Doesn't think about being gentle—just is, the same way he's gentle with Griffin when the little idiot gets something stuck in his fur.

The sleeve drags soft across your cheekbone. The mascara smears more than it lifts, but it's something.

It's less.

Your eyes stay down.

He switches to the other side. Same slow drag. The dark crescent beneath your left eye fades to a smudge, and beneath it your skin is warm and slightly swollen and he's not—

He's cleaning mascara. That's it. A service. Public decency.

"There." He drops his hand. Sleeve still bunched. "Less disaster. More... controlled disaster."

You don't respond.

Which is—fine. That's fine.

He drops the sleeve back into place and shifts on his legs and tries to look anywhere that isn't the side of your face because the side of your face is doing something he doesn't have the emotional language for.

Your lashes. The smear of gold on your cheekbone that he didn't get all the way off. The shape of your mouth when it's not saying anything sarcastic.

Amp hum. Floorboards. The specific not-quite-silence of a music room at 1AM.

Then—

"It's a good song."

Quiet. Out of nowhere.

He glances at you. "What?"

"The one you were playing. Earlier."

"Oh." Beat. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

You don't look at him. You're looking at your own hands. Rolling one of the loose gold chains from your hair between your fingers like it owes you something.

"It's stupid."

He waits. Doesn't push. His right leg is falling asleep but he's not about to shift and risk turning this into A Thing.

A breath. You exhale it slow, through your nose, and it comes out more like a sigh than anything else.

"I used to listen to it when I was stressed. In high school. Like—if I had a big test coming up or whatever."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. My parents were really—"

You stop. Start again.

"I was a good kid. Like. Straight A-plus kid, the whole—" The gesture. The small one. The 'you know the type' gesture that compresses an entire childhood into a flick of the wrist. "Valedictorian track. My mom used to leave little notes on the fridge when report cards came out. 'We're so proud.' In this specific handwriting she saved for—I don't know. The handwriting was nice. It was always nice."

He nods. Doesn't say anything. Doesn't know what to say.

"And they were good parents, Rogue. Like. I want to be clear about that. They—" Another sigh. Smaller. "My dad got me this iPod when I was eleven. The pink mini one. The one that was really hard to get that year and I'd been asking for it for months and he just—showed up with it. And when the DS came out? I had it before anyone in my class had it. All my friends were obsessed. Like, the day it came out, he was in line. My dad stood in a line at a Best Buy for a Nintendo DS. For me."

A small laugh that isn't really a laugh.

"They were kind. I don't want to—this isn't that. I'm not trying to—"

You stop.

He watches your hand tighten on the gold chain.

"God, I sound so stupid."

"You don't."

"I do. I sound like a spoiled—I don't even know what I'm talking about. They were good. They were good parents. My mom packed my lunch until I was sixteen. She still sends me care packages. She sent me socks last month, Rogue, like—socks. Because she read online that students don't buy enough socks and she got worried."

Your voice is thinner.

"So I don't know why I'm—"

Don't know why you're what.

He wants to ask. Doesn't.

Because something about the way you're talking is familiar in a way he can't place.

The hedging. The qualifying. The 'they were good, though' said on loop like a defensive spell you keep casting in case someone accuses you of being ungrateful. He's—

He's done that. That's his thing. That's his move.

His jaw does something.

"Anyway. The song."

"The song."

"It just—it says 'look at the stars.' At the beginning. And when I was—when I would have a bad night, and there'd be a thunderstorm, and I'd be—" You wave a hand. "Spiraling, or whatever. I'd sit in the window seat in my room and play it on my CD player and there wouldn't even be stars. Obviously. It was storming. That's the whole—there were no stars."

A beat.

"But he kept saying it. 'Look how they shine for you.' Like they were still there."

You shrug. Small. Dismissive.

"I don't know. It made me feel less—" Stop. "Whatever. It's dumb. It's a Coldplay song, it's not—"

"It's not dumb."

"It's very dumb, Rogue."

"It's not."

Doesn't say it firm enough, maybe. Says it again.

"It's not."

You finally look at him.

And he wants to—he doesn't know.

He wants to fix something.

Wants to find the specific thing in what you just said that needs fixing and fix it.

He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek.

Thinks about his dad.

The handwriting thing.

His dad didn't have handwriting, his dad had a voice and fists.

But also—his dad wasn't all bad. That's the thing nobody ever tells you about the stuff that fucks you up.

His dad taught him how to ride a bike. His dad cried at his graduation. His dad—

"Some parents suck."

You blink.

"Some don't." He's looking at the amp. At the little red power light. Not at you. "Some are—in the middle. Most, probably. Most are in the middle. Doing okay at some of it and fucking up other parts of it and the parts they fuck up can still—"

Stops.

Tries again.

"You can have good parents who also got something wrong. Both can be true. That's not—that's not an ungrateful thing to say. That's just math."

Quiet.

"The socks don't cancel out the other stuff. That's not how it works."

You don't say anything.

He finally looks back at you and your eyes are wet in a way they weren't thirty seconds ago—not crying, just that full-right-to-the-edge thing—and he looks away again because he's not equipped.

He's not equipped for this.

Nobody gave him the manual.

"And the song isn't dumb." Clears his throat. "Chris Martin wrote it about his mom, I'm pretty sure. Or—I don't know, actually. I read something once. Point is if you sat in a window during a thunderstorm listening to it that's not—that's just a kid looking for something to hold onto. That's not a personality flaw."

You make a sound.

Something between a laugh and an exhale.

It gets caught somewhere in your throat.

"You don't have to be nice to me."

"I'm not being nice."

"You're being—"

"I'm stating facts. I'm a film major. I deal in facts."

"You really have to stop using that—"

"Shh."

Another one of those half-laughs. Quieter. Your shoulder moves against his.

Your eyes go back to the hardwood.

And then—

Your arm lifts. A small movement, barely a gesture. Your hand making that little sideways motion, a 'come here', a 'closer', the kind of signal that doesn't have language attached to it because language would make it something you'd have to own.

And his chest—

His chest does something that has nothing to do with the amp or the room or the cobwebs or the Yo-Yo Ma photograph.

Because he's seen this before.

After Emma's birthday. After the fight that wasn't really a fight and the sex that wasn't really makeup sex and the part after where you'd been sitting on the edge of the table with your legs dangling and your defenses down at a level he'd never seen—zero, flatline, the version of you that exists when you've been turned inside out and don't have the energy to flip back.

You'd put your forehead on his shoulder that night too. Just—dropped it there.

And he'd stood between your legs not knowing what the fuck to do with his hands or his face or the thing in his chest that felt like a fist opening, and then you'd lifted your arms like 'carry me' and he'd said 'you're not serious' and you'd just looked at him and yeah. You were serious.

You're always serious about the things that are not supposed to be serious.

You look like that now, too. Just as soft, just as stripped-back as then.

This version of you that he only seems to get when you've cried enough or cum hard enough that the walls are down and there's just—you. Underneath all of it.

Tired and real and not pretending.

And maybe that's why his chest grips over itself. Folds in half.

Because his defenses are somewhere on the floor next to the Strat and he doesn't know when he put them down but they're not on him anymore.

He scoots closer. Across the hardwood. Until his knee is touching your knee and the distance between you has been reduced to the width of a breath.

Your forehead drops against his shoulder.

He doesn't flinch, doesn't stiffen. Just absorbs the weight of it—your forehead against him, your breath coming uneven against his collarbone. The gold chains in your hair press into the side of his neck. One of the little snake earrings grazes his jaw.

Quiet.

The amp hums.

"I'm sorry." Muffled into his shoulder.

So small he almost misses it under the electrical drone of the Fender combo.

"For what?"

Your breath catches.

Releases.

"You were right about Jason."

His chest caves in.

Not triumph. Not satisfaction. Not the 'I told you so' he'd normally chamber and fire with a grin because Jungkook has never met a victory he couldn't be insufferable about—but none of that loads.

None of it even approaches the chamber.

Because being right about Jason means Jason did something.

And being right about Jason means you're sitting on a floor in a wrecked costume with mascara on your chin telling him he was right in a voice that sounds like it went through a paper shredder.

He doesn't want to be right about that.

He sighs.

Tips his head back to look at the ceiling. Same motion as when he was staring upwards with Tae an hour ago, back when the biggest problem in his life was whether a pumpkin looked like Willy Wonka and whether Willy Wonka was categorically attractive.

A smile. Small. Not for you. For the ceiling. For whatever cosmic algorithm decided that this is where the night would end up—him and you on a floor in a dead man's music room, your forehead on his shoulder, a borrowed Stratocaster cooling in its case beside you.

Doesn't say anything.

Doesn't say 'I know.' Doesn't say 'what happened.' Doesn't say 'I nearly put my fist through his face an hour ago and it took three people and a vintage electric guitar to stop me.'

Just lifts his hand.

Puts it on the back of your neck.

His fingers find the nape—right where your hair starts, where the gold chains have come loose and the strands are damp and the skin is warm.

And he lets his thumb move. Slowly. A small arc over the top knob of your spine. Back and forth.

You breathe out.

Shaky. Uneven. Settling.

And for some reason—for some reason he's not going to poke at or name or hold up to the light because doing that would require vocabulary he doesn't have and isn't sure exists—

It's okay.

Not fixed. Not resolved. Not the kind of okay where credits roll and someone's learned a lesson.

Just okay.

Most of Jungkook's ideas are stupid.

He's well aware of that fact.

It's practically a brand at this point.

Jeon Jungkook: serial architect of decisions that seem perfectly reasonable in the three-second window between impulse and execution and then reveal themselves, with humiliating clarity, to be catastrophically ill-advised approximately four seconds later.

Perfect example of this is that time he tried to make cold brew in a sock because the coffee shop was closed and he was desperate and Yoongi looked at him with the kind of disappointment that leaves a mark.

So he knows. He's self-aware enough for that.

What he is not self-aware enough for—what no amount of Dr. Liao or Tuesday afternoon processing sessions has equipped him to handle—is the ability to identify a stupid idea before it crosses the threshold from thought to action.

Which is how he ends up here.

The party's winding down. That liminal hour where the music's been turned from weapon to wallpaper and the survivors are scattered across the living room in various states of horizontal.

Somebody's asleep on the smaller couch with a cape over their face. The fog machine finally died about forty minutes ago and the room's been slowly clearing, the last wisps of theatrical haze dissolving into regular air that smells like spilled beer and burned-out jack-o-lantern.

He finds Jimin in the kitchen, standing there with a glass of water, leaning against the island, looking at the aftermath as if he were surveying a natural disaster he didn't cause but will somehow be expected to clean up.

"It's gonna be a whole day tomorrow, huh," Jimin says, nodding at the living room.

Streamers sagging. Solo cups colonizing every flat surface. One of the plastic spiders from the bookshelf has migrated to the floor and is lying there on its back like it had one too many and simply surrendered.

"The decorations alone," Jungkook agrees.

"The cobwebs. Those fake cobwebs are a nightmare to get off. They get into everything. It's gonna take three people and a lint roller."

"I'll help take 'em down."

Jimin shakes his head. "You put them up. It's only fair that the rest of us suffer through the removal."

"It's not a big deal."

"It kind of is." Jimin is not being pushy about it—that's the thing. There's no edge, he's simply standing there with his water, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his voice has that particular pitch that makes disagreeing with him feel like kicking a puppy. "You did a lot. Take a break. You deserve it."

"I'm fine."

"I know you're fine. I'm saying you don't have to be." Jimin's smile is small. "Let us handle cleanup. You've earned a night off from being the guy who does everything."

Huh.

That's not—not what Jungkook's used to.

Most people just let it go when he brushes something off. Yoongi would've grunted and said 'do whatever you want'. Taehyung would've insulted him and told him to fuck off with that. Hobi would've shrugged and redirected with a dance move or a question about something else.

But Jimin doesn't let it go.

Which, paradoxically, makes Jungkook want to stay in this kitchen more, not less.

He leans against the opposite counter.

"Alright," Jungkook says, but then, because he can't fully surrender, he adds, "but if anybody fucks up the ceiling streamers I'm holding you personally responsible."

"That's fair." There's a little laugh folded into the words. "I accept full liability."

Silence settles, and it's the comfortable kind (or close enough).

Jungkook takes a sip of water from a cup that may or may not be his. Jimin's standing there doing the cardigan thing, thumb running back and forth over the cuff like a worry stone, and it occurs to Jungkook that he doesn't actually know this person. Not really. Knows the outline—comp lit, library, does your eyeliner, sat on the bathroom floor with you earlier, defended him to you once even though Jungkook hadn't earned it.

Knows Jimin is yours. In the way that matters. Part of your life in a way Jungkook is only adjacent to.

And that used to not register. Used to be just furniture—background characters in the movie of someone else's life, not his.

Except now it does register. Because you're—

Whatever. You're his friend now. Or something. The label keeps shifting depending on who's asking and whether his brain cooperates. And your friends are—

He should probably know your friends.

"So," Jungkook says.

Great start. Pulitzer-worthy.

"Yoongi," he says.

Jimin's thumb stops on the cuff.

"Hm?" Jimin turns to look at him, and there it is—the microshift. Lips pressing together, not quite pursed, but held. Color climbing his neck and landing on his cheeks in real time like someone turned a dial.

Jungkook reads it immediately.

Oh.

Oh.

Okay. So that's—yeah. That's a thing.

He clears his throat. Adjusts. Pivots.

"He's a cool guy," Jungkook says. Nods once, firm, like he's delivering testimony. "He's a really cool guy. Like. You know."

Smooth. So smooth. He should teach a masterclass.

Jimin blinks. The blush is fully operational now, staining both cheeks, and he does this thing where he sort of laughs and exhales at the same time, shoulders dropping half an inch.

"Oh. Yeah." He nods back. Too many times. "Yeah, he's—he's great."

"Yeah."

Silence.

The worst kind of silence now. The one that's sort of loud because both people are thinking things they're not saying and the gap between those things and the actual air in the room is deafening.

Jungkook watches Jimin's fingers migrate from the cuff to the hem of his cardigan, then to each other, lacing and unlacing, and something about the fidgeting softens the awkwardness into something else.

Something that makes Jungkook want to fix it.

Not because he has to.

Because this guy—this soft, careful guy who sat on a tile floor with you—looks like he's one wrong word from imploding, and Jungkook knows what that feels like.

"Matter of fact," he says, leaning back against the counter, finding casual the way a drowning man finds a pool noodle, "there was this thing last Christmas. With Yoongi."

Jimin's fidgeting slows.

"Well like, the four of us, actually. You know. Me, Yoongi, Hobi, Tae. Holiday week. Nobody had anywhere to be, nobody had shit to do, so Yoongi goes—" Jungkook pitches his voice lower, flatter, does his best Yoongi monotone: "'We should go hiking.'"

Jimin's mouth twitches.

"And we're like—hiking? It's December. It's freezing. Tae is wearing loafers." Jungkook gestures with the water cup. "But Yoongi's got this whole thing about Bear Mountain. Says the trails are empty in winter, says the views are better when it's cold, says some shit about how the Hudson looks different when there's frost on it. And he's not wrong, but he's also—you know how he is. He frames it like he doesn't care, but he'd already looked up the train schedule."

Jimin laughs. Quiet, but real. The fidgeting's stopped entirely now.

"So we go. Five AM, Penn Station, four idiots with no hiking gear. Hobi's wearing Jordans. Jordans. On a mountain. Taehyung's got a vintage Carhartt that he keeps stopping to photograph instead of wearing. I'm the only one who brought water—one bottle, like that's enough for four grown men—and Yoongi's just..."

He pauses. Not for dramatic effect. Because the memory is sitting right there, fully formed, and it's—

It's a good one.

"Yoongi's walking ahead. Not fast, not showing off, just—quiet. You know how he gets quiet in a different way outside? Not the apartment quiet, where he's working or ignoring you. A different kind. Like he's actually there. Present. Paying attention to something that isn't a screen."

Jimins leaning forward slightly, and his face has gone still in a way that isn't bracing. More like—receiving. Open and careful and waiting.

"We get to the top and it's—I mean, it's just a view. River, trees, sky. Nothing you can't see on Google. But Yoongi pulls out his phone and records the sound. Not a photo. Not the view. Just stands there with his phone up, recording the wind coming off the water for like two straight minutes. Doesn't say anything. Doesn't show anybody. Just—" Jungkook mimes holding a phone up, "—captures it. Pockets it. Done."

He takes a sip of the maybe-his water.

"And then on the way down, Hobi's Jordan tears on a rock, and Hobi's freaking out about it, and Yoongi—without saying a word—takes off his own shoes and gives them to Hobi. Just. Hands them over. Walks the rest of the trail in his socks."

"In socks?"

"In socks. December. Frozen ground." Jungkook shakes his head. "We're all yelling at him—put your shoes back on, dude, you're gonna get frostbite!—and he just goes 'they're Jordans' like that explains everything. Like the hierarchy of footwear is a moral issue and he's made his ruling."

Jimin's laughing now. Not the quiet kind. The real kind—head ducking, shoulders shaking, the sound of it bright and unguarded in the dead kitchen.

"He didn't mention the socks thing afterward. Not once. Hobi tried to buy him replacement shoes for Christmas and Yoongi wouldn't let him. Said the socks were fine. Said his feet don't get cold." Jungkook pauses. Looks at Jimin directly. "His feet absolutely get cold. He wears two pairs of socks around the apartment from November to March. He's full of shit."

Jimin's laughter subsides into something quieter.

"That's..." Jimin starts, then trails off. His thumb finds the cardigan cuff again, but it's slower now. Thoughtful instead of nervous. "That sounds like him."

"It is him." Jungkook says it simply. Doesn't dress it up. "He won't tell you the stuff that matters about himself. He'll just do it and hope you notice. And if you don't notice, he'll never bring it up. Which is—I mean, it's annoying. It's terrible communication. I tell him that all the time."

Jimin's smile turns softer.

"But it's also—" Jungkook waves a hand vaguely, the way Yoongi does when he's avoiding a point. Catches himself doing it. Stops. "He's the kind of person who'll walk down a mountain in his socks for you and then pretend his feet don't get cold. That's just. You know. What he does."

He doesn't add for people he cares about. Doesn't need to.

The sentence is sitting right there in the space between them, fully assembled, and Jimin's the kind of person who'll see it without being shown.

A beat.

Jimin nods. Slow. Looking at his water glass like it contains answers.

"Thanks for telling me that," he says, and his voice is different now.

"Yeah." Jungkook clears his throat. Tips the water cup toward Jimin in something between a toast and a dismissal. "Don't tell him I told you any of that. He'll kill me."

"Noted." Jimin smiles. "Secret's safe."

"Good."

He leans against the opposite counter. Pulls his wallet from the back pocket of the costume pants he's got on under the robe—because the robe doesn't have pockets, which is a design flaw that Spirit Halloween should answer for.

Opens it. Not for any reason. Habit. The way some people check their phone when they're standing still, Jungkook checks his wallet.

Inventory. Cards, cash, the little things that accumulate in the billfold because he never cleans it out—a bodega receipt from last week, his MetroCard, the loyalty card for the coffee shop two blocks from campus that he keeps forgetting to stamp.

And tucked behind the cards, folded small—

His thumb grazes the edge of it.

He closes the wallet. Looks around the kitchen.

The junk drawer by the fridge is half-open. Inside: rubber bands, takeout menus, a screwdriver, and a pad of post-its. Yellow. Small. The cheap kind—not the branded ones, just the generic squares that come in a pack of twelve from the dollar store and end up in every junk drawer in every house in America.

He pulls one off the pad.

Jimin watches him do this with politeness and confusion.

"What are you—"

"Pen?"

"What?"

"Do you have a pen?"

Jimin blinks. Pats his chest. Touches the quill behind his ear—decorative, useless, ink-free. Then reaches into his back pocket and produces a regular ballpoint like a normal human being.

Jungkook takes it. Uncaps it with his teeth. Presses the post-it flat against the counter with his palm.

Writes.

Fast. Then stops. Pen hovering above the yellow square, tip a millimeter from the surface, like the next word is sitting right behind his teeth and he's deciding whether to let it out.

His jaw works. Once.

He writes.

Caps the pen. Clicks it against the counter once—a period at the end of an action—and then folds the edge of the post-it. A small fold. Just the right side, barely a centimeter, pressing the crease flat with his thumbnail.

Holds it out to Jimin.

Jimin looks at the post-it. Then at Jungkook. Then at the post-it again.

"Can you give this to her?" Casual. Or trying to be. The trying is doing more work than the casual. "When you see her."

"To—"

"Yeah."

Jimin takes the post-it. Holds it between his index and middle finger like a card in a magic trick, studying it with the focus of someone who's been handed a piece of evidence and isn't sure what trial it belongs to.

He doesn't unfold it. Doesn't read it. Just nods—slow, careful, a nod that contains about twelve questions he's choosing not to ask.

Because that's what Jimin does. He's starting to get his vibe.

Jimin lets things exist without demanding they explain themselves.

He gets why you like him.

"Okay," Jimin says.

"Thanks."

"You could just... give it to her yourself."

"Yeah." Jungkook takes the pen apart—cap off, cap on, cap off—the idle fidget of a man who has burned through his daily allocation of emotional vulnerability and is now running on fumes. "I could."

He doesn't elaborate. Jimin doesn't push.

The post-it disappears into the chest pocket of Jimin's cardigan, yellow edge just visible against the wool, and Jimin pats it once—a small, careful gesture, like he's tucking something valuable into a safe place even though he doesn't know what it is yet.

A beat passes.

Jungkook looks at the living room. At the wreckage. At the passed-out beards and the empty fog machine and the smashed pumpkin that Taehyung is definitely going to blame on him even though he saw the centurion kick it on the way out. At the string lights still going, amber and warm, giving the whole disaster a filter it doesn't deserve.

He yawns—big and full and theatrical, jaw cracking, arms going up, entire spine releasing—and comes out of it and slaps both hands down on the counter hard enough to rattle two solo cups and startle Jimin into a step back.

"Alright." Too loud. On purpose. The volume of a man who has just, by executive decision, closed a chapter. "Why is everyone so sour?"

Jimin blinks. "It's 2AM."

"Prime time." Already moving, already crossing back toward the living room, the Ghostface robe picking up air behind him like he thinks he's something. "Everything before this was a dress rehearsal. Drinking game. Right now. Whoever's still standing."

"That's like six people."

"Perfect number for a drinking game. Hoseok—HOSEOK—"

"He's going to ignore you," Jimin calls after him, something lighter in his voice than it was twenty minutes ago.

"I'm his favorite."

"You are categorically—"

"Categorically everyone's favorite, Jimin. It's a burden. It's a cross I carry." He's already crouching over the sleeping beard on the small couch, shaking the man's shoulder with the cheerful mercilessness of someone who has decided that suffering should be communal. "C'mon. Up."

A groan rises from the living room. Several. The collective protest of six people who already died once tonight and resent being asked to do it again.

Jungkook grins.

Stupid ideas are, after all, his specialty.

The drinking game was his idea. The Uno was Hobi's. The combination of the two is, in hindsight, a human rights violation.

The thing about drinking Uno is that it sounds simple, right? You play a card, you follow the rules, you drink when the game tells you to drink.

Except there are no official rules for drinking Uno because Uno is a children's game that was never meant to be combined with tequila, which means every single person at this table has a different understanding of how it works, and every single one of you is willing to die on their specific hill.

Way too many people around the coffee table. Cards fanned in hands. Drinks sweating on coasters because even shitfaced, Jungkook respects Tessa's grandmother's furniture.

Yeji's cross-legged on the floor, extremely focused, cards held close to her chest, eyes flicking between her hand and the discard pile with a concentration that suggests she's running probability calculations in real time. Her combat boots are off—somewhere between the third round and the fifth, she kicked them under the couch and declared them 'a disadvantage'—and she's sitting in mismatched socks, frock coat unbuttoned, wine-stained lace at her throat, looking like an aristocratic vampire who takes recreational card games as a personal referendum on her worth as a human being.

Which, knowing Yeji from what little of her he knows, she does.

Irya is next to her, pressed against her side. Eyes at approximately sixty percent operational capacity, the brownies having apparently entered their final form about an hour ago, because Irya's been smiling at her cards like they're friends she's happy to see rather than a strategic hand in a competitive drinking game. She's holding her cards backwards. Nobody's told her.

Yoongi is in the armchair—the man located the most comfortable seat in the room within four seconds of arriving and has not moved since. Claire's skull earring still dangling. Cards held in one hand, phone in the other, scrolling through something while playing.

Hobi's on the floor by the fireplace, legs folded, managing his hand with the same energy he manages everything—bright, organized, vaguely menacing. He's been winning quietly and consistently for three rounds, which is suspicious behavior from a man who claims he 'doesn't really play card games', at least from Jungkook's perspective.

Taehyung is to his left. Pinstripe jacket off now, sleeves rolled, the drawn-on mustache surviving through what can only be described as chemical adhesion or the will of God. He's seven drinks deep and playing Uno like it's something extremely important right now.

Irika, for her part, is curled into the other armchair in her black silk, legs tucked, watching the table with the measured interested of someone who literally evaluates arguments for a living. Jimin's between her and Yoongi, plays smart instead of loud, never more than four cards in hand.

And you.

You're across from him. Knees pulled up, cards balanced against your thighs, the Medusa skirt fanned out around you on the floor. Eyes still a little swollen. Liner still smudged. Gold shimmer still caught in your hair where the chains have mostly come loose.

But you're smiling.

Not the full thing. Not the one that rewrites your whole face and makes your eyes do that specific shape that he's catalogued without meaning to. Just the edge of one. The ghost of it. Enough that he knows the music room worked. The floor worked. Whatever happened between the amp and the hallway—it worked.

Good.

That's good.

His hands are steady now. Some hours ago, they weren't.

He's not thinking about that. He's thinking about the fact that he's holding eleven freaking cards, which is a personal issue, frankly, a staffing crisis, and somebody in this deck owes him an explanation.

He puts down a red seven. Takes a sip of his beer—tenth? eleventh? hard to say, the bottles have been circulating with the same frequency as the cards and at some point the counting became aspirational rather than mathematical.

The thing about drinking with Hobi and Tae is that it's not really drinking. It's endurance athletics.

The three of them have been putting away liquor at a pace that would hospitalize a civilian, and the only visible evidence is that Taehyung's laugh has gotten approximately fifteen percent louder and Hobi's dance moves during the shuffle have gotten approximately thirty percent more elaborate.

Jungkook himself feels pleasantly bulletproof in the way that only happens around the two-bottle mark—warm, steady, everything slightly funnier than it should be but nothing blurry.

His tolerance was forged in freshman year dorm rooms and refined through keeping pace with Hobi at parties where the open bar was the only interesting thing happening.

It's a skill. A terrible skill. But a skill.

You put down a Draw Four.

He looks at it. Looks at you. You're already looking at him—that little anticipatory gleam, the one that says 'I know exactly what I just did and I'm enjoying it.'

He puts down another Draw Four. On top of yours. Blue.

Your mouth opens.

"You CANNOT do that—"

"Yes I can? It's literally the game."

"That is not the game. You can't stack Draw Fours, that's not a real rule—"

"It's the game for every single person who has ever played Uno in the history of the known universe—"

"I have played Uno—"

"It doesn't look like it."

Your eyes narrow. That specific narrow—the one that precedes either a devastating comeback or physical violence, and the odds on which are about fifty-fifty, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the coin flick.

"The official rules—"

"Oh, she's bringing out official rules. Citation needed. Peer-reviewed? APA format?"

"The official Mattel rules state that Draw Four cards cannot be stacked—"

"Mattel also made Barbie. Do you want to talk about their track record with realism, or—"

"You two," Yeji says.

Neither of you stops. He physically can't. There's a version of him that could, probably, but that guy's not here tonight.

"—because Barbie's Dream House doesn't have a mortgage and yet somehow she has a convertible—"

"—are you seriously bringing Barbie into an Uno dispute—"

"Shut up," Yeji says. Louder. Both hands flat on the table. "SHUT UP. I have two cards left. I need to concentrate. My brain is still spinning from that brownie and I cannot—I physically cannot—process your childish quarrel about Mattel while I'm trying to win."

Jungkook opens his mouth. Closes it. Decides, wisely, that correcting Yeji on her word choice while she's in this state would likely be the last decision he ever made.

You appear to reach the same conclusion at exactly the same time, because you close your mouth too and stare very hard at your cards.

"Uno," Irya says.

Bright. Cheerful. Like she's announcing a fun fact about butterflies.

Everyone looks at her.

She's holding four cards. Four. Fanned out in front of her face like a tiny decorative screen, one of them backwards, one of them definitely from a different card game because it has a picture of a horse on it and Jungkook is almost certain Uno doesn't have horses.

"Baby." Yeji. Gentle. The voice of a woman that is deeply in love. "You still have four cards. That's not how Uno works."

"But I said it," Irya says, as if the word itself was the whole point and the card count was a secondary concern.

"She has to drink a sip," Yoongi says from the armchair, not looking up from his phone.

"Full glass." Jungkook sits up. Because if this table is going to be governed, someone has to govern it. "False Uno is a full glass."

"Jungkook, stop making rules UP."

That's you. Immediate. Reflexive. Like you have a dedicated neural pathway specifically for detecting his bullshit—which, fine, flattering, that's real prime state—but also wrong, because he's not making rules up, he's legislating.

"I'm NOT making rules up. She said Uno at the wrong time. That's a penalty. That's regulation."

"That's not—okay, first of all, there is no 'regulation' in drunk Uno. Second of all, the actual false Uno penalty is that you only drink if someone calls you out before you when you have one card and forget to say it. She said it with four cards. That's just—wrong. It's not a penalty. It's just incorrect."

"So there's no consequence for being wrong? What's next, we kiss serial killers?"

"The consequence is that we all saw it happen and now we know she doesn't understand the game."

"Babe, I understand the game," Irya says, sounding genuinely hurt.

"Of course you do," Yeji soothes, patting her knee.

"I have a horse," Irya adds, holding up the non-Uno card with pride.

"You're a tyrant," Jungkook tells you, because the Irya situation has clearly reached a dead end and the Draw Four dispute needs resolution. "An authoritarian. A despot. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for living under this regime."

"The regime where we follow the actual rules?"

"The regime where one person decides what the rules are and the rest of us suffer."

"That's called playing a game correctly—"

"Jungkook." Taehyung. Flat. Zero patience. "Shut the fuck up and eat the four cards."

"I'm not eating—"

Taehyung reaches across, picks up Jungkook's glass—three-quarters full, tequila and something, who even knows anymore—and drains it. One long pull. Sets it down empty.

"There." Tae wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, the drawn-on mustache surviving the gesture through what is now clearly some form of dark magic. "Problem solved. Take the cards."

"You just drank my drink."

"Consider it conflict resolution."

"That was my tequila—"

"It was everyone's tequila. Tequila is communal."

"Tequila is explicitly not communal—"

"I'm with Y/N on this one."

Irika. Who, in case anybody forgot, is a judge. A private judge, technically, but the distinction is irrelevant when she deploys that tone—level, final, the vocal equivalent of a gavel coming down.

Every head turns.

Irika shrugs one shoulder. Adjusts the black silk of her Morticia dress. "Stacking Draw Fours isn't in the official ruleset. It's a house rule at best. If no house rule was established at the start of play, default rules apply. He draws four."

Silence.

"Well." Hobi spreads his hands. "The judge has spoken. Overruled, Jungkook."

"She's not—she's not a judge right now! She's Morticia Addams! There's no judicial authority vested in a Halloween costume—"

"I'm always a judge," Irika says. Mild. Terrifying.

"That's—okay, that's actually a little scary—"

"Take the cards," Yoongi says from behind his phone, not looking up. "You're holding up the game."

"I'm holding up the game? I'm the one trying to maintain competitive integrity—"

"You're the one making up rules because you're losing," Yoongi says.

"I'm not losing. I have a strategy."

He does not have a strategy. He has ten cards and momentum.

"Your strategy is yelling."

"My strategy is passion—"

"Jungkook." Hobi sets his cards down. Folds his hands. Assumes the posture of a man about to deliver a verdict of his own. "You have ten cards. Yoongi has three. I have four. You are, by every measurable metric, losing."

"Metrics are a social construct."

"That's not what social construct means," Yoongi says.

"Yoongi, I swear to god—"

"Okay, you know what?" Taehyung leans forward. Points at Hobi, then Yoongi. "Leave him alone. He's playing his way. It's creative."

Jungkook turns to him. Chest swelling.

His guy. His day one.

"Thank you."

"It's stupid-creative. But it's creative."

"I'll take it."

"Oh, here we go." Hobi rolls his eyes—theatrical, full rotation. "Here we go. The dynamic duo. Tae, you always do this."

"Do what?"

"This!" Hobi gestures between Taehyung and Jungkook with both hands. "He makes that face—the pouty face, the big eyes, the whole kicked-puppy act—and you fold. Every single time. Like clockwork."

He's not making a face.

Probably.

He can't see his own face, but the odds of it being pouty are low.

...Medium.

Whatever.

"I do not fold—"

"You fold like a lawn chair," Yoongi says. Still scrolling. "It's honestly impressive. He looks at you and your spine just—"

He makes a collapsing gesture with one hand. Doesn't look up from his phone while doing it, which makes it worse.

"I am not—my spine is fine—"

"Your spine is compromised," Hobi says. "By his face."

"That's insane—"

"Tae." Yoongi. Flat. "He once convinced you to drive to New Jersey at 3AM for a cheesesteak because he said please with his lower lip out. You drove to New Jersey."

"It was a good cheesesteak!"

"It was a Wawa."

"Wawa has great cheesesteaks—"

"It was a GAS STATION, Taehyung—"

"With GREAT CHEESESTEAKS—"

Jungkook is beaming. Not even trying to hide it.

For the record: it was a great cheesesteak, the lower lip was simply a strategic maneuver and he regrets absolutely nothing.

And then, across the table, you've given up on containing it—the laugh comes out open, unguarded, the kind that uses your shoulders and tips your head back, and the sound does something to the room.

Warms it. Fills it. Makes everything lighter by exactly the amount that matters.

Good.

He takes the four cards. Doesn't even care anymore.

Three rounds later, Yoongi wins.

Obviously.

He lays down his last card—a green reverse—with the energy of someone submitting a tax return. No celebration. No gloating. Just sets it on the pile, picks up his drink, takes a sip, and says "that's the game" the way you'd say 'it's raining' like it's a fact.

"How," Yeji says. She's staring at the discard pile like it personally betrayed her. "HOW. You were on your phone the entire time."

"Multitasking," Yoongi says.

"That's not multitasking, that's—witchcraft—"

"It's pattern recognition. The discard pile is predictable once you track color cycling and hold distribution." He takes another sip. "Also, Taehyung has a tell."

"I do NOT—"

"You tap your cards when you're about to play a Wild. Every time. Without fail."

Taehyung looks at his hands. Then at his cards. Then at his hands again, as if they've been operating independently and without his consent.

Jungkook makes a mental note to watch for the tap next round and then a second mental note that Yoongi definitely has been reading everyone at this table all night, himself included, and elects not to pursue that thought any further.

Jimin lays down a red two. Looks at his remaining card. Looks at the table.

"Uno."

Said quiet. Almost casual. But his posture shifts—straighter, alert, the way someone sits when they know the whole table is about to target them.

You play a red reverse.

The direction flips. Back to Jimin.

Which means Jimin has to play. Right now. On a red.

And Jungkook, who spends most of his waking life watching people for a living (or at least for a degree)—catches the flicker. The expression of a man who does not, in fact, have a red card.

And Jungkook would love to say he watched what happened next with the full weight of his professional attention.

But he didn't.

Because you're still holding the reverse card play with that little surprised-gloat thing, chin up—the one where you refuse to smile outright but the corners give you away—and his eyes go there instead.

Of course they do.

You set the trap, the trap worked, and now you're being insufferable about it in a register that's only visible directly across the table.

He's directly across the table. So.

Two seconds. Maybe three.

When he looks back, Jimin is laying down a red eight.

"That's the game," Jimin says, with a smile that's a degree too innocent.

Huh?

"WAIT." Hobi slams both palms on the table. "Wait wait wait. Did he just—"

"He won." Yoongi says with zero inflection.

"He won? He WON?! He was stuck! I saw that face! He did the face—the trapped face, the 'I don't have a red' face—and then OUT OF NOWHERE, red eight?"

"He had a red eight."

"He absolutely did not have a red eight, Min Yoongi, don't you dare—your hands literally moved across the table!"

"I was picking up my drink."

The drink is right there. On the coaster. Half-finished. Sweating gently. An alibi with condensation.

"You put your phone down." Hobi points at it, face down on the armrest now. "You put your PHONE down. You haven't put that phone down since we sat down. That's premeditation."

"Are you accusing me of rigging a card game." Yoongi looks at Hobi over the rim of his glass. The skull earring sways. His expression is the dictionary definition of unbothered. "At a Halloween party. In someone's grandparents' house."

"YES. That is exactly what I'm accusing you of."

"Interesting theory."

"It's not a theory! I have eyes! Nobody goes from 'trapped face' to the exact card they need unless—" his finger sways between them, "—someone passed him—"

"Sounds like luck to me," Jimin says.

"It does sound like luck," Yoongi agrees.

"You two are—" Hobi sputters. Points at one, then the other. "You're in cahoots. You're in open, blatant, shameless cahoots and I am being gaslit at a coffee table—"

"Cahoots is a strong word," Jimin says.

"Do you have a weaker one?"

"Coincidence."

"COINCIDENCE—"

"I think we should move on," Yoongi says, waving his hand off.

"I think you should be IMPRISONED—"

"Drama," Yoongi mumbles. "The performer's curse."

Hobi's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. He looks at Jungkook for backup. Jungkook raises both hands—palms out, staying clear, because getting between Hobi and Yoongi during an integrity dispute is how people disappear.

He catches your eye across the table.

You're smiling.

He looks at his cards.

Draws a green two. Puts it down.

Smiles.