#joonmin

It wasn’t until he was halfway to the airport that he remembered how afraid he is of flying. The last time he was anywhere near a plane, he had nearly had a panic attack thinking about all the ways he might die between Korea and Europe.

This time was a little different. This time, instead of worrying about how he might fall out of the sky, Jimin spent every minute of his eleven-and-a-half hour flight thinking about how many people were going to kill him if he didn’t.

If he was going to run away, he probably should’ve gone straight home, back to his family and his half-dead orchid and the sky that, even now, is probably rolling with rain clouds. Instead, he had stepped off the plane in Seoul and boarded the first bus he’d laid eyes on: a longline shuttle to the Goyang Flower Festival at Ilsan Lake Park.

He’d ended up here, alone, in a city he had never been to with no idea where he might be going next.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes again.

from: TAEHYUNGIE <3 PARK JIMINIE LOVE OF MY LIFE LIFELONG SOULMATE I WILL NEVER FIND ANOTHER

Tell Jungkookie to stop drinking my pear juice or I’m kicking him out

JIMINNNNNNNN

Um hello sir?? Why does your find my friends say you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?

???? Are you on a plane??? You hate planes

Hey babe It’s been like twelve hours You okay?

What’s in Ilsan????????

Call me when you can, okay? Just wanna make sure you’re safe <3

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to him. On the contrary, Kim Taehyung is probably the only person on the planet that would listen to him have a mental breakdown and not judge any of his poor life decisions. He’d probably say something stupid, like damn, when I said get out of your comfort zone I meant fuck Tom Holland, not flee the country, and then Jimin would probably laugh through his tears and get on the train and go back to London where he belongs.

The problem is that Taehyung is so good at convincing him that he is brave enough to go after what he wants, and the truth of the matter is that Jimin has absolutely no idea what that might be.

It goes like this:

Jimin wore a hole through his toe shoes sometime near sundown yesterday. It wasn’t a big deal; he sewed ribbons into a new pair for half of an hour and beat them against the barre for the other. He put them on and broke them in until he couldn’t feel the difference between cardboard and bone.

It goes like this:

Jimin is tired of breaking new things as a means to an end. He is tired of waking up, alone in his bed, and wondering where all his housemates have gone. He is tired of calling his mother at 7PM every Friday and saying, I love it here, I can’t imagine coming home, and then letting himself into an empty studio until it is almost a full truth, until he is too tired to feel the hollow blackness ringing like a gong in his chest.

It goes like this:

For his eighteenth birthday, Jungkook dragged them all to a sensory deprivation centre. Yoongi-hyung made a joke about how he was already living in one and Jin had whined for a full ten minutes about wrinkles in his skin, but in the end they had each gone in, one after the other.

He hadn’t thought much of it at first. The lady at the front desk said something about how falling asleep is normal, just embrace it, and so Jimin had gone into this whole thing with the full intention of taking a nice, relaxing nap.

And then the lights had gone out, and the door had sealed, and Jimin was all alone. Really alone, in a way he hasn’t been since Taehyung stepped through the door of his eighth grade homeroom, since Tae dragged his stupid kid cousin to the park with him one summer, since Jimin fucked up a coin drop so badly that Hobi-hyung had laughed himself into next week.

The thing about drifting into a void is that there is nothing in it to distract you from yourself, nothing to smooth over all the ugly parts of a living body, all the pieces that everyone is too polite to acknowledge.

There was nothing to hide the gurgling of his tummy or the squelch in his throat, the bubble of air that slipped from his diaphragm, sliding upwards until it squeaked itself out. There was no mirror to show him he was fine, no sneaker soles to keep him grounded. There was only him, and his brain, and thoughts like am I doing this right is this how it’s supposed to feel did I do it wrong am I doing it wrong what if I am wrong I am wrong, I am wrong, I am wrong, until he was thrashing in the water, flinging his hands against the closed door and screaming into the silence, tumbling out of the chamber into Jin-hyung’s arms in near hysteria.

Some days, Jimin can still hear the pulse in his ears, can hear his own voice echoing from the blackness back to him.

Some days, Jimin finds himself frozen in time, watching the world turn around him and wondering why he cannot muster the momentum to turn with it.

Evidently, today is one of those days. Today, a group of teens is racing up and down the water bank, shrieking with laughter as they pretend to shove each other into the lake. Today, a father balances his son on his shoulders, tilting him from side to side like a swooping airplane. Jimin sees the child laughing, sees the wife scolding him through a poorly suppressed smile, sees his own reflection in the water and wonders why he does not smile along.

Everywhere he looks, there are people soaked in the vibrancy of their own small universes, and suddenly the afternoon serenity of the glass lake is shattering like a lightless mirror, dragging him under the surface and pressing down against his windpipe in fists of white smoke.

The problem is he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The problem is that he is tired of never being enough, of breaking in over and over and over again, of spinning in place and never stopping, never resting, never finding peace.

He gasps for breath, clawing at the neckline of his thin sweatshirt, and he can’t breathe, can’t see, cannot exist here, cannot be enough.

Someone screams. Faintly in the distance, Jimin can hear the sound of a crashing tide, can feel the ground beneath him pounding with an urgency that matches the dizzy buzzing in his front teeth, can taste the salt on his lips and tongue as he sobs violently into his shaking hands.

It’s alright, it’s okay, you’re not alone, you’re right here with me, it’s alright, it’s okay, don’t worry, I’m here—

“Hey, you gotta slow down,” someone murmurs into his ear. When did his hands leave his face? “It’s alright, you’re okay, I’m here,” the voice echoes distantly, keeping up a soothing stream of chatter as he chokes wetly on a ragged breath. “Slow down, sweetheart, you’re okay, I promise, you’re not alone, it’s going to be okay.”

He gasps for air.

In.

Out.

Again.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Gradually, the storm eases. The screaming stops.

In.

Out.

Slower, slowly this time.

In.

Out.

Breathe.

His heart slows down to a drizzle instead of a hailstorm, and Jimin comes back to himself in pieces like a mountain peak at dawn.

“Are you okay?” The boy’s fingers are wet where they’re pressed against his cheeks. Jimin’s face is cold as they fall away, but he doesn’t have the energy to do much more than shiver.

“Yeah,” his throat feels raw. He shifts to sit properly on the hard ground, barely registering the way the broken skin under his knees prickles and stings as he lifts away from the sharp gravel.

He expects questions. He expects the boy to get up and walk away, to ask if he needs to borrow his phone, to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder and tell him to take care on his way home.

Instead, the boy pulls off his black baseball cap (his hair falls over his eyes in soft waves of chestnut and coal, and Jimin’s breath is still busy spinning like a wind chime in his hollow chest) and plops it onto Jimin’s head, pulling the brim down slightly so that it shadows his bloodshot eyes and cherry nose.

The boy then grabs Jimin by the elbows and draws him gently to his feet (Jimin comes face to face with a clavicle and the junction of a neck and shoulder, and it occurs to him how small he is, how small his panic must be in the grand scheme of the moving universe), grinning down at him with a cheery smile that washes away the embarrassment of his episode entirely.

“Do you want to disappear with me?”

—

—

The air in Ilsan is sweet. It lingers on his tongue, rolling down his throat in waves of citrus and honey as they meander down the forest path. Although the glaring sun has given way to a patchwork of heavy clouds, the bright sky that stretches overhead seems limitless, undisturbed by the glow of satellites or the roar of passing airplanes. Jimin tips his head upwards, examining the horizon that blurs green and grey above the treeline.

The company isn’t half bad either— Kim Namjoon, the boy had said. His skin is warm where it touches his own, his elbow brushing gently against Jimin’s upper arm with every step. He smells faintly like sweat and aftershave and the kind of soft freshness that lingers in the air just after a long rain.

They walk quietly, picking their way over fallen brambles and wildflowers that have strayed from the safety of their clustered brethren.

“Do you have somewhere to be?” Namjoon’s low voice breaks through the murmur of birds somewhere overhead.

Home. Seoul. The UK. There’s still enough time to catch a late flight back to London, to get a good night’s sleep before his technical conditioning class, to blame it all on nerves and exhaustion and a momentary lapse in judgment.

“No,” he answers firmly, the word floating past his ears and into the thicket of trees with a decisiveness that surprises him. “No, I don’t.”

If Namjoon notices Jimin’s slight hesitation, he doesn’t show it. “Good,” he grins, sliding his large palm into his own to draw him off the path.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have followed a stranger into the woods, but despite the very real danger of getting murdered in the middle of nowhere, he cannot find it in himself to be afraid.

"Because we're here."

Here turns out to be a giant oak tree in the middle of a natural clearing. It’s gargantuan, so tall it seems to burst out from beneath the moss that blankets its thick roots, towering above their heads in a shower of long branches and wide green leaves.

“Wow,” Jimin breathes.

“Wow,” Namjoon agrees. He releases Jimin’s fingers to clasp his hands to his chest, bowing deeply to the giant oak as if he were greeting an important elder. “Jimin-ssi, meet Lady Amany. Lady Amany, this is my new friend, Park Jimin-ssi.”

“She has a name?” Jimin isn’t sure if this guy is weird or adorable. So far, it’s a little bit of both.

“Lady Amany. I read it in a book once, when I was really little,” Namjoon explains, crouching down to get a better look at a line of aphids that dot the green stems of a few tall weeds. “It was about a young girl who lived on the moon.”

The forest is moist and warm, pale sunlight falling across his skin in sheets. He watches Namjoon’s t-shirt stretch over the planes of his back, following the calm rise and fall of his breathing as best he can. “Tell me?”

Namjoon’s back twists as he glances up in surprise, his kind eyes widening against the silver light. “Really?” Jimin just hums, fiddling with a callous on his palm.

“Well, once upon a time there was a girl named Amany. Every night, when the moon returned to earth, she would sit and listen to the wishes of the people below her. Wishes for success, for the health of family members, for promises of love and happiness and prosperity. And every night, she would cry, and her tears became the stars that scattered across the night sky. Because the truth was, Lady Amany had no powers at all. She could not grant their wishes, even if people kept begging for her help.”

“That’s… incredibly sad,” Jimin murmurs softly, crouching down next to him and nearly losing his balance on a patch of wet soil. Namjoon catches him before he can fall, his large hand snaking out to press soundly against the dip in his small waist, and Jimin isn’t sure if he’s imagining the way his warm fingers linger on the sliver of skin between the hem of his t-shirt and the waistband of his shorts.

And then he’s gone again, retreating back to the safety of his own knees as he remains bent over them. He turns to the side, shifting to face Jimin as well as he can, his cheek pressed to the palm of his hand. “What is?”

Jimin keeps his chin pillowed on his forearms, rocking back in his crouch to sit more comfortably on his heels. “The fact that she spent her whole life giving in to the wishes of others. Everyone thought she was a goddess, that she could do anything or be anyone.” Tears prick harshly at the corners of his eyes, but he is tired and warm and too full of sunlight to cry, so he keeps his eyes wide open, staring straight ahead at the thick trunk of the oak tree. “They must’ve thought she was the most powerful person in the universe, when the truth was she was trapped on the moon, all alone, and all she could do was let people down.”

The oak tree is getting blurrier by the minute.

“Would you like to hear how the story ends, Jimin-ssi?” Namjoon’s voice is gentle.

“Yes,” he whispers hoarsely.

“Well, Lady Amany felt so discouraged one night that she wanted to give up altogether. She laid on her back as the sun rose, watching as the stars she had cried were erased from the sky, one by one, and she made her first wish to the moon that had been her home as long as she could remember. She asked desperately if there was a reason that she had been born here, if there was a reason she was allowed to stay even when she was unable to help anyone at all. And for the first time in her long life, the moon answered.

‘You have been a blessing all this time,’ the moon told her. ‘Even while you feel like you have not changed a single thing.’

‘How?’ Lady Amany sobbed into her hands. ‘I cannot make the sick healthy. I cannot give money to the poor. I cannot make dreams come true or nightmares disappear. How am I a blessing if I cannot grant the wishes that are made to me?’

‘You give them hope,’ the moon said. ‘You listen to their wishes and allow them to feel seen and heard, even on the darkest nights when you are their only confidant. You give them the courage to make their own dreams come true, to make even the ones who are sick and poor feel as if they are doing the best they can do.’”

Jimin doesn’t know what to say. He stares with wide eyes, his heart thudding loudly in his chest, but Namjoon’s velvety voice pierces the roaring in his ears with all the ease of a soap bubble popping.

“You see, Lady Amany forgot the most important thing: that people make wishes based on dreams, and people have expectations based on the hope that they will exceed them someday. And sometimes, dreams are not about the wishes that we make in the dead of night, but rather how they give us the motivation to move forward even under the spotlight of morning.”

Namjoon’s voice trails off. He studies Jimin carefully, his dark eyes roving over Jimin’s small face as if searching for an answer to a question he does not dare to ask. Jimin doesn’t blame him. It’s not every day that you find a stranger having a panic attack and decide to take them to your secret place in the woods.

This day just keeps getting weirder.

It’s a long time before either of them speak. They just crouch there, completely still, listening to the forest as it returns to the possession of the wildlife and the trees. They crouch there, watching as the plants seemed to speak to one another in little fluttering bursts of petals and brushing leaves. The only indications of their presence are the sounds of their soft breathing and the comfortable band of familiarity that seems to bridge the space between them, tying them together with the intimacy of two strangers who have somehow found peace in one another, even when the whole universe is crashing down around them.

And then the moment breaks, and Jimin rises to his feet, brushing away the imaginary dust that has settled on his scabbing knees. He clasps both hands to his heart and turns to the tree, bowing long and low with a quiet, sincere reverence. “It’s nice to meet you, Lady Amany-nim,” he says softly. “I’m Park Jimin. Please take care of me.”

Namjoon chuckles, and his laughter echoes into the forest with the birds’ song.

—

—

SUMMER

Yoongi-hyung has a new roommate. Jungkook’s voice echoes faintly in his ears, but it’s hard to remember the details of Jungkook’s rambling when there is scalding coffee dripping down your shirt and Kim Namjoon is freaking out in the doorway.

“I’m so sorry! I’m such a klutz, I just came out of the room so fast and I wasn’t looking and I didn’t know you were standing there,” Namjoon babbles, pressing the t-shirt in his hands into Jimin’s abdomen in a desperate attempt to pat him dry.

The t-shirt.

In his hands.

Jimin registers that the other boy is entirely shirtless right as Namjoon leans down to swipe at the coffee on Jimin’s bare thighs. There is about a half mile of smooth caramel skin shoved into his line of vision, Namjoon is crowding him against the doorframe in his frantic dismay, and Jimin would think he was dreaming if it weren’t for the fact that his leg still burns like hell.

He thinks he says something like, it’s okay, it was an accident, but what comes out of his mouth is probably more like, “Uh-oh kay yeah.” As it is, he’s just grateful his ceramic coffee tumbler hasn’t shattered all over Jin-hyung’s nice wood floor.

“Holy shit, Namjoon, what did you do?” Jin comes out of his bedroom just in time to save Jimin from his misery. “Jimin-ah, are you okay?”

The answer is a resounding absolutely the fuck not, because Kim Namjoon is in Jin-hyung’s apartment and he is shirtless and Jimin should’ve washed his hair this morning instead of stuffing his face with too much French toast—

“I was looking for Taehyung,” he says instead.

“He ran out to the bakery across the street,” Jin sighs, picking up the coffee cup still lolling around on the floor and plucking Namjoon’s shirt deftly from his outstretched hands. “Well, now that you’ve met,” he says, breaking through the silence with his high, swooping laugh, “Jiminie, this is Kim Namjoon, my old roommate from back in the day and—yah, I guess you’re my new roommate again!” he jokes, whacking Namjoon’s shoulder in glee. Namjoon groans, but he’s laughing, belly-deep and hearty right before Jimin’s eyes. “Namjoon, this is Park Jimin, Taehyungie’s best friend.”

“Ah, yes. Taehyungie,” Namjoon says knowingly, snickering at the blush that threatens to rise in his hyung’s bread cheeks. “Nice to meet you, Jimin-ssi.”

And just like that, the excitement thrumming in Jimin’s bloodstream evaporates. It’s like Namjoon has just pressed a candle to a snowbank, the lit wick sputtering for a moment before it hisses and dies out.

The fond warmth in Namjoon’s eyes is gone, and so is his gentle forest boy, traded for this stranger with a polite smile and unwelcoming hands.

He nearly says something stupid, like why are you acting like you don’t know me, but then he sees Namjoon’s white knuckles clutched tightly at his side, sees how his gaze does not meet his own, sees the tense set of his sharp jaw behind his cheery smile, and in the end all he can say is, “It’s nice to meet you, Namjoon-ssi. I hope we’ll get along.”

—

—

“What an absolute fucking asshole,” Taehyung fumes, throwing a kernel of popcorn at the wall. It bounces off Ed Sheeran’s face and rolls harmlessly onto the bed.

“Yah, every time you eat in my room I find crumbs in my bed for a week,” Jimin complains, pushing the kernel onto the floor with his socked foot.

It’s been a full eighteen days since Kim Namjoon quite literally crashed his way back into his life, and Jimin is still having trouble reconciling the boy in the forest with the newest perpetrator of their (somewhat) organized chaos. This Namjoon is less spring rainfall and more winter storm; this Namjoon is the youngest elder in a room full of hyungs, cheerful and mischievous in a way that most burgeoning adults never get to be.

The moments in which Jimin is able to catch a glimpse of the Namjoon he knows are speckled into the silence of the days, when Taehyung peels himself from Jimin’s side to disappear in the direction of Jin’s room (judging by the amused glances flitting about the room he’s certain everyone knows anyway), or when Yoongi raises his arms in a full body stretch, his head tipped back, groaning all the while—and then he slips into the comfortable familiarity of being who you are when no one else is watching. His brows soften, his full lips part (sometimes his tongue edges the backs of his teeth as if he were posing the answer to his own question), and there is a mindful solemnity that settles in the dimple at his left cheek, an underlying tension that always siphons from the laughter still lingering in the air.

“I can't believe he pretended not to know you,” Tae shoves another handful of kettle corn into his mouth, chewing furiously with his mouth wide open. He looks a lot like a cow Jimin saw at a petting zoo one time, except Tae is arguably cuter, with big brown eyes and a mountain of fluffy hair. "You guys had a meet-cute straight out of a fucking movie, and instead of admitting that you're probably the love of his life he decides he'd rather be alone forever.”

Taehyung is, of course, the only person on earth that knows what happened the day Jimin came home. He had tracked Jimin’s phone right up until the moment it had showed up on his street, throwing open his apartment door before Jimin could even ring the bell.

 Jimin shrugs half-heartedly, slouching further down his pillow to lean his head on Tae’s thin shoulder. “I’m basically a perfect stranger. We never actually went out, you know.”

“No, you just had one magical forest adventure that was more romantic than all of my past dates combined." Taehyung says sarcastically.

"That's because your taste in men is shit. Just date Jin-hyung already and put us out of our misery.” He dodges the incoming shower of popcorn with a snicker. “We met once four months ago and didn't exchange contact info or agree to keep in touch. You can hardly blame him for not remembering what I look like.”

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “How many Park Jimins do you think there are in this world?” he demands.

Jimin raises an eyebrow. “Probably more than you think.”

“I still think he’s going to wake up one day and realize you’re the one that got away,” Tae insists. “Look, I like Namjoon, but you know he could literally pull the sun chariot across the sky and I’d still take your side.”

Jimin pinches his cheek, snuggling further into his shoulder. “I know,” he says fondly, reaching over to snag a handful of kettle corn. “But I’m not going to fight him because he forgot about me. It probably wasn’t on purpose, anyway.”

Tae frowns doubtfully, “I’ll tell Jungkookie to ready the body bag.” And then, before Jimin can say anything else, “Hey, Jimin-ah.”

He hums, poking at the moles on Tae’s upper arm, tracing lines into his tan skin until he’s drawn a long face there.

“Are you okay, Jimin-ah? Really, though.”

He’s not okay. That much is clear, because Jimin sleeps less in a forty-eight hour period than most ants do in a year. It’s become routine at this point, that Jungkook takes double portions so he can offer bites off his plate that Jimin is too polite to refuse, that Taehyung stocks the drawers with chamomile and the cupboards with coffee, that the hyungs keep their phones switched on, ready on stand-by at all hours of the day.

It’s a twenty-four-seven Park Jimin Watch, and while Jimin is touched that his friends think he is worth watching out for, part of him wants to crawl out of his fucking skin every time someone looks in his direction.

He’s not okay, but he’s trying. He gets up in the mornings and makes himself presentable, showers at night, brushes his hair. He does his skincare routine and dresses like he cares, makes sure he is so pretty that who he is on the surface is all anyone will notice when they look at him.

The thing is that Park Jimin has always been liked by the people around him, and that is nearly entirely due to the fact that he is very good at being who people want him to be. It’s easy to be liked, as long as he doesn’t laugh too hard or frown too much or talk about what’s going on in the cyclone inside his head.

Are you okay, Park Jiminie?

“Yeah,” he answers, as easy as breathing, and no one ever has the heart to disagree.

—

—

A month and a half after he is reunited with Kim Namjoon, Jimin is smashing a slice of cake right into his stupid dimpled face.

“Why are your traditions always so violent?” Namjoon shouts through a mouthful of buttercream frosting. He's laughing, swiping bits of sponge cake from his cheeks with the pads of his calloused fingers. To the side, Jin and Jungkook are shrieking with peals of unbridled laughter, chasing each other up and down with cakes poised at the ready.

“Because we are passionate about good luck," Jimin retorts, dropping the paper plate on to the table to take another swig of his drink. He doesn’t bother to wipe his hands, effectively smearing the glass neck of his Corona in cake and globs of pink frosting. It leaves a sweet aftertaste in his mouth, coating his tongue in vanilla and lime, and Jimin isn’t sure if it’s the corona talking but Namjoon’s laughter sweetens alongside every sip.

“Doesn’t the birthday boy usually get to decide what will bring him luck?" Namjoon's eyes are sparkling with mirth.

His gaze lingers on Jimin’s face, even as Yoongi passes him a wad of clean napkins, even as Hobi drags Yoongi away by the back of his collar, crowing something about another shot and too many unused glasses.

“The birthday boy should be grateful he has friends that love him enough to throw him an awesome party,” Taehyung cuts in, draping himself over Namjoon’s back to steal another bite of his hyung’s cake.

“You are literally holding your own plate,” Namjoon complains, but he scoops an extra bit of frosting into Taehyung’s boxy smile, watches the younger boy wobble back to the group with a fond shake of the head, and Jimin is warm; he is soft and bubbly from the inside out.

Namjoon offers Jimin the next bite, holding out his fork with a steady hand that does nothing to betray the shine of drink in his chocolate eyes. And Jimin, for all that he is chaotic and flamboyant in the easy company of his chosen family, is hyperaware of the gleeful sting of Taehyung’s eyes on his neck, of the distant hum of the rooftop lamplight that illuminates his every expression in a warm yellow glow.

He closes his lips around the outstretched fork, and he doesn’t pretend to miss the way Namjoon’s breath hitches infinitesimally in his throat as he pulls away.

“You owe me another slice of cake,” Namjoon’s voice is a low hum that rumbles up the narrow column of his spine. He drifts closer, dabbing at the inside of Jimin’s wrist with the corner of his crumpled napkin. It’s so saturated with cake and frosting that it only serves to smear the sticky mess further into his skin, but Namjoon’s big hand is gripping his waist and his smile is sugary sweet and slathered in the joy of this eternal summer night, and Jimin cannot bring himself to care, not when Namjoon’s pink tongue has poked out of the side of his mouth to hover somewhere just above his eye line.

“It’ll cost you,” he murmurs, watching the neckline of Namjoon’s cotton shirt quiver under his shaky exhale. He wonders if that is sweet, too, wonders if Namjoon still tastes like rain and sweat and early spring morning, wonders if he pressed his lips to the mole on his neck he could feel how fast his heart is fluttering.

Namjoon isn’t even pretending to clean him up anymore, the napkin stilling in his palm. He wraps his long fingers around Jimin’s slender forearm, the barest pressure, and holds it there. “I’m sure I can afford it. What’s your price?”

“I’ll have you know I’m expensive,” Jimin informs him.

Namjoon grins teasingly. “So are my services as a park ranger, and I gave those to you for free.”

The easy smile slips from his face.

If there were ever a moment in time when Park Jimin felt like an idiot, it would be here, inches from the precipice of a tentative possibility, toeing the line between a reckless decision and his pride. If there were ever a moment in time when Park Jimin felt like an idiot, it would be upon the realization that Kim Namjoon remembers exactly who he is, and he just doesn’t care, doesn’t care about him at all.

He can pinpoint the exact moment when Namjoon realizes he’s fucked up, because he freezes, his eyes widening as they fix themselves on Jimin’s stony expression. “Look, I—”

Jimin pulls his wrist stiffly from his grasp, steps back to a more appropriate distance for two relatively new acquaintances with mutual friends.

“Jimin—”

He doesn’t hear the rest of that sentence. He’s already walking away.

—

—

Jimin has never thought of himself as a pushover. His mother calls it being more stubborn than old rice in the pot, but Jimin prefers to think of himself as having an outstanding tenacity for sticking to his choices. It is, after all, a characteristic tied directly to his ability to stay motivated in the face of great adversity, mostly due to the fact that he hates losing more than anything else on the planet.

That being said, Jimin thinks he has the right to be upset with Kim Namjoon.

It’s too bad that no one but Tae seems inclined to agree with him.

“Don’t you think you’re being a bit unreasonable?” Hobi asks, carding his long fingers through Jimin’s fluffy hair. He’s had a headache all day, and it’s made him so grumpy that Jungkook had called in reinforcements on his way to his boxing club. He feels a little bad about taking up so much of their time, but it’s nice, sometimes, on days like this when he doesn’t want to be alone. “You’d think he was the dictator of your impoverished country.”

“Did he shoot your best gal? Or break both of your legs?” Yoongi snickers, peeling the last of the skin off his tangerine. It joins the pile of orange strips stacked neatly in a heap on the coffee table—Yoongi undresses tangerines almost as fast as he can eat them.

“Why do you always pull your references from a thirties mob film?” Yoongi shrugs through his gummy smile, stuffing the remnants of the tangerine into his mouth before starting on another one. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you guys to accept that I don’t get along with Kim Namjoon,” he complains. “He’s not the fucking Dalai Lama.”

“Jimin, we’re talking about a guy that literally spent thirteen hours looking for the neighbour’s cat after it escaped from his house. The only explanation for this level of hostility would be if he got possessed by the devil and desecrated your entire family.”

“It’s worse, actually,” he grumbles. They’re being way more dramatic than he is, which goes to show just how lost in Namjoon’s proverbial sauce they are. “We met like three months ago and he’s pretending not to know me. Who even does that? How the fuck are you supposed to make friends if they just decide to pretend you don’t exist?”

“Are you sure?” Hobi frowns. “He would’ve told me if you’d met.”

“No, I’m totally not, I’m making this all up so you think I’m the Wicked Witch of the West,” Jimin retorts sarcastically, throwing his arms into the air in exasperation.

“Jimin-ah,” Yoongi says reproachfully.

“Sorry,” he mutters, crossing his wrists back over his eyes. The pain in his head has gotten exponentially worse, a bad combination of stress and lack of sleep making his temples throb in time with his heartbeat. His skin is dry and dull today, the headache making it nearly impossible for him to follow through with his usual three-step skincare routine.

The world spins a little as Hobi shifts in his seat, Jimin’s head lolling with the rise and fall of the cushion beneath him.

“Is it possible that you guys met very briefly and he genuinely doesn’t remember?” Hobi asks gently, scratching at Jimin’s scalp in a soothing gesture.

(His hair is misbehaving today, refusing to fall around his eyes the way he’d wanted no matter how long he’d stood in the bathroom fiddling with it.

The nice thing about his hyungs is they never seem to care how he looks. It’s nice to be comfortable, once in a while.)

“I don’t think so. I mean, I met him the day I came home,” Jimin shrugs as nonchalantly as he can, given the fact that his lower body is dangling over the side of his couch and Hobi’s hand is still buried in his hair. He cracks his eyes open just in time to see his hyungs exchange wary glances.

They’ve never really talked about the day he ran away; a series of events Taehyung has kindly dubbed Jimin’s New Life, Bitches Not Welcome.

All they know is he showed up on the doorstep of Taehyung and Jungkook’s apartment at a quarter to midnight with a duffel bag over his shoulder, the collar of his shirt stained with dry tears and the soles of his sneakers caked inexplicably in mud and damp leaves. All they know is that he moved into the apartment shortly thereafter, that he walked the long way to his new classes just to avoid the performing arts department on the east side of campus.

All they know is he received a letter confirming his withdrawal from the London Academy of Contemporary Performing Arts a few weeks later, and that nobody but Taehyung heard a word from him for nearly four days.

Yoongi’s voice breaks through the silence first. “You went to Ilsan?”

“It just kind of happened,” Jimin grits his teeth, well aware that his body language betrays the nonchalance of his tone. “We met and I had a meltdown in public and then he introduced himself and I came home and we never talked about it again. It wasn’t a big deal.”

It is a big deal, at least to him, and they all know it.  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude,” Hobi reasons carefully. “Maybe he just thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“Or maybe he was embarrassed to see me again,” Jimin says bitterly.

“Jimin-ah, you know he isn’t like that,” Yoongi chides gently. “Just talk to him like an adult.”

“I’m not an adult.”

“You’re twenty-two years old, you can have a damn conversation with your hyung.”

“I don’t call him hyung,” Jimin says petulantly.

“Park Jimin.”

“Fine.”

—

—

He doesn’t talk to Namjoon about it. In fact, he doesn’t talk to Namjoon at all, much to the displeasure of his friends.

“You’re going to have to stop avoiding him at some point, hyung,” Jungkook reasons, smoothing the spatula over another glob of pink frosting. Jimin has to physically restrain himself from punching him in the shoulder—he’d shown him how to ice a cake no more than fifteen minutes ago and Jungkook’s technique is already flawless, the cheeky little shit.

“I’m not avoiding him.” He’s mixing up another batch of buttercream with maybe a little too much force, but hey, nobody’s ever been mad at a very homogenous frosting.

The preparation for Jin’s Event-of-the-Month party is well underway. Hobi has stocked his fridge with enough liquor to drown a whale (he chugged the rest of the milk to make room for it and then spent an hour trapped in his own bathroom, moaning about how he isn’t usually so lactose intolerant). Taehyung and Namjoon had laughed themselves to near tears, cackling at the banner above the dining room table that proudly displays Jungkook’s loopy handwriting:

Happy “you found a white hair and threw a tantrum for six days until Yoongi revealed he had a hair chalk disaster in the bathroom” Party!

It’s even better than last month’s, which was Jungkook’s (Happy “that mole on your chin turned out to be week-old chocolate”), or the month before, which was Jin’s again (Happy “the modelling agency that scouted you was legit this time and not a front for a shady MLM”).

The first Event-of-the-Month Party Jimin ever attended was his own: Happy “escaping from those elitist snobs and coming home to the people who love you” (it’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for him. Jimin had nearly choked up at the gesture). When he asked why the group as a whole insisted on throwing parties that had nothing to do with anything, Jin had only scoffed.

“Well we can’t have a birthday every month, Jiminie, some of us are doubled up,” he said, as if it were obvious.

Yoongi nodded sagely, “He’s right. And we can’t keep adding people to the group chat until we have a birthday every month. Can you imagine the chaos?”

“We’d never make any real decisions,” Hobi added sadly, shaking his head.

“Right,” Jimin echoed slowly. He’s lucky Taehyung is his best friend in the world, or he would’ve thought he was losing his mind.

“—he sat across from you at dinner the other day and you nearly choked to death on the amount of chicken you shovelled into your face,” Jungkook deadpans, bringing Jimin back to the present moment with a start.

“I was hungry.”

“I’m right.”

“You’re not.”

“Hyung.” There it is: Jungkook’s signature bunny stare. Jimin stares down at the mixing bowl in his hands, carefully adding a few drops of blue food colouring before taking up the whisk again. He ignores the prickling sensation of Jungkook’s doe eyes boring into the side of his head for all of twenty seconds before he cracks, dropping the whisk back into the bowl with a metallic clatter.

”What am I supposed to say, Kook? Hey, sorry I’ve been a dick to you because the first time we met actually meant a lot to me and you dropped me like a hot sack of garbage?”

The side of Jungkook’s mouth tugs up in gentle amusement. “I was thinking more along the lines of hey, but whatever works for you, hyung.”

“You’re a little shit.”

“You love me more every day,” he sings, dodging the spoonful of blue frosting that whips past his head with a cackle.

“I hate you.”

Jungkook drops a kiss to the side of his hair, bumping his shoulder in silent truce. “It would make me very happy if you forgave him, “ he says quietly. “He’s been tutoring me in Contemporary Literature this semester and he’s one of Yoongi-hyung’s best friends, so—he’s really nice, hyung. I promise.”

I know, Jimin wants to say, I know he’s really nice. That’s the problem, but he only sighs. He ruffles Jungkook’s hair, smoothing back his fluffy bangs with practiced fingers, and then nudges him in the direction of the unfinished cake. “Wash your hands first,” he nags, poking his back with a pointy index finger.

Jungkook grins knowingly. “Yes hyung,” he laughs, “Anything you say.”

—

—

Jimin wanders into Yoongi’s class early one evening, balancing his laptop and textbooks in one hand and the biggest cup of coffee he can manage in the other.

Yoongi, while easily the grumbliest of his hyungs, is generous with his time and patience in a way that has his dongsaengs doting on his every request. For example, Jimin has deemed himself Yoongi’s designated coffee delivery boy at least twice a week, so long as Yoongi helps him through the convoluted hell that is Advanced Music Theory.

It’s a symbiotic relationship, one that keeps Yoongi sane and caffeinated and Jimin’s GPA high enough that his parents keep quiet about why he’s in Seoul at all.

As usual, Yoongi is slumped over his desk in the front of the lecture hall, his head bobbing sleepily against his chest. He looks so snuggly, wrapped up in his orange sweater and curly black hair that Jimin can’t help himself.

from: Jimin-Sssiiiii Image.jpg

from: J-kAYYYYYYY JKSAFLSDLSNFLKSDFN SOFT SOFT BOI IM SO SOFT PLS WHY IS HE A FUCKIGN CAT I JUST WANNA BITE HIS CHEEKS

from: Jimin-Sssiiiii Your boyfriend is fucking sleeping in class and this is all you have to say lmao

from: J-kAYYYYYYY Not my boyfriend God I fucking wish Look at him Soft meow I’m so fucking soft I hate him I’m so sick of him

from: Jimin-Sssiiiii You’re a fucking mess

“Namjoon-seonbae!” a tall guy calls over the bustle of the lecture hall, startling Jimin away from his phone long enough to realize that students are spilling around him in the doorway trying to get out.

“Sorry,” he mumbles to no one in particular, bowing his head in flushed embarrassment. He ducks out of the way and hurries over the Yoongi, who at this point is blinking blearily at the papers in his hands like he’s trying to decipher a stack of runes.

“Hyung,” he calls, slipping the coffee into his outstretched hand.

“I made the horrible mistake of promising to wait for the golden boy,” Yoongi groans, by way of greeting. “Thanks, Jiminie.”

Jimin’s brow furrows. He’s no expert on the list of job expectations for a TA, but he’s pretty sure it doesn't include being swarmed by confused students after a class they don’t actually TA for. “Isn’t he supposed to have office hours, or something?”

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Last year, a group of students got so desperate that they camped outside of our apartment for a week straight. Jin-hyung couldn’t even go to the grocery store without getting mobbed by half the acting department.” Okay, he’s only been at this school for all of one semester, but he knows for a fact that’s a violation of at least four or five rules in the code of conduct. “Sorry, Jiminie,” Yoongi sighs again, “We might have to wait a bit. Did you leave your notes at home?”

This would be a great time to leave. It would be a great time to say, hyung, I’m going to head home and grab my notes, come by my place when you’re done, and walk out the door without looking back. He’s exhausted, anyway. He has an English Literacy paper to write and a Business Marketing presentation to prepare for, and every fibre of his being is screaming for a strong drink and thirteen hours of sleep.

Now is the perfect time for Jimin to extract himself from the situation, to leave this room exactly as he was when he arrived.

Instead, he plops into the empty seat next to Yoongi’s and pretends not to stare at Namjoon’s every move.

Namjoon in the classroom is different than Jimin thought he’d be.

On an average day, Kim Namjoon towers over Jimin’s small frame with a quiet certainty only found in the kind of people who are determined to see the world as it fits in the palm of their hand. He reminds Jimin somewhat of a preschool teacher, all fond amusement and dimpled smiles, dicking around with Hobi and Jungkook like he isn’t a fully grown man with a genius level IQ.

For someone who was confident enough to set off sixteen fireworks in the deep end of an empty pool that one time they all got drunk and thought raiding a party supply store was a hilarious Thursday-night activity, Kim Namjoon the Teaching Assistant is both distant and familiar in a way Jimin hadn’t expected.

It’s not just the brushed hair or the clean-shaven jaw, the thin sweater over a dress shirt that has been pushed up to his elbows like he’s preparing to wade into war (and jesus, Jimin does not have the mental capacity to dissect whether or not that kind of thing is working for him right now). It’s in the way he holds himself, tall and strong, his shoulders rolled back with the easy conviction of knowing what the world needs from you today and knowing just how to give it.

It’s in the fact that Namjoon’s eyes in the classroom look a lot like his did in the mirror at the academy, his ribs pulled up and in, turning and turning on the straightest knee. He looks like he knows how it feels, spotting on a single point and never truly seeing it.

It’s in the fact that he doesn’t stop smiling, the corner of his mouth stretched like a hamstring on the brink of overuse, kindness glazing over until Jimin cannot see much Namjoon behind his eyes at all.

He watches him chip away at himself in incremental pieces, and he thinks about how thin he must have to stretch to wrap those pieces into something that looks almost whole again.

Jimin thinks he feels something soften inside him a little bit.

Just a little at a time.

—

—

AUTUMN

It doesn’t rain in Seoul as often as it does in Busan, but what Seoul lacks in frequency it makes up for in gusto.

Jimin is used to it by now, to the creaking pipes and the rattling windowpanes and the leak in the ceiling fan that has Jungkook sleeping in Tae’s dry bed at least three times a month. It’s different, but he likes it. The rain in Seoul is more tidal wave than rolling shoreline, but the sound of the water pattering against the street outside is enough to make Jimin feel at home.

Jimin has always liked the rain.

He’d probably like it a lot more if he wasn’t soaking wet and cowering outside Jin and Yoongi’s apartment building like a cat trapped in the shower.

In his defence, he was one hundred percent certain that it wasn’t going to rain when he left the house this morning. In his defence, he had walked the eight blocks to his first class without spotting a single rain cloud.

It’s only on the evening walk home that he realizes just how well and truly he has fucked himself.

It starts with the tarmac, the smell of the city rising off the pavement in waves. He thinks, huh, rain, and breathes it in as deeply as he can, lets the cool air settle in his belly like a long drink of water.

It starts with thunder, a tremor in the distance that raises the soft hair at the base of his neck. He thinks, uh oh, rain, and starts to march a little faster. The bag slung across his shoulder is heavy this evening, weighed down by the impending doom of exam season, but his feet stay light, skipping along the squares of sidewalk until he feels like flying.

It starts with, oh no, fucking rain, and suddenly the sky is splitting in two, and Jimin is tearing past the crosswalk sign, sprinting the three blocks to his hyungs’ apartment before his four hundred dollar textbooks can lose any more resale value.

There’s only one person he can call. Jin, Jungkook, and Yoongi are in class. Taehyung is in the studio, probably moaning about the sculpture midterm that he has yet to start but will undoubtedly blow out of the water. Hobi-hyung teaches hip hop on Wednesdays, and there’s no way in hell Jimin is going anywhere near the dance centre with all its prying eyes.

His only other option is to wait it out, shivering under the damp weight of his thin fleece and sweatpants. He’s thankful, at least, that it’s warmer than it should be at this time of the year— even if his dark hair is plastered to his forehead, rainwater dripping mercilessly down the back of his neck.

He sneezes so hard he thinks he can hear his lecture notes rattling around in his skull, English vocabulary bouncing against his eardrums in a disjointed cacophony.

He takes it back. It’s fucking freezing out here.

OUTGOING CALL: Kim Namjoon

“Hello?”

He doesn’t know why Namjoon’s voice on the line surprises him so much, but he nearly tosses his phone into a nearby storm drain. “Hi,” he squeaks. “Um, sorry to bother you, but is there any chance you’re home right now?”

—

—

Namjoon’s room looks like a filler episode of Hoarders.

“Sorry for the mess,” the older boy sniffles in the hallway. Jimin emerges a moment later in a clean hoodie and a pair of sweatpants so long he’s had to roll them at the cuffs, sidestepping the fucking mountain of laundry that’s been hastily shoved against the side of Namjoon’s wooden dresser.

“It’s okay,” Jimin says politely, still towelling the rainwater out of his damp hair. He eyes the garbage bag of used tissues by the bed, the cold bowl of soup on the desk, the curtains that have been pulled over the window for so long that the dust has begun to make a graveyard of the light peeking through.

Everything about Namjoon’s bedroom screams absolutely overwhelmed.

And then, because Jimin might be upset with him but he’s not a fucking monster, he asks, “Are you okay, Namjoon-ssi?”

“Yeah!” It comes out a little too quickly, a little too forced, and Namjoon winces, bracing his arm against the wall in an attempt to look casual.

It takes Jimin all of one second to realize he’s trying not to fall over.

“Are you supposed to be in class today?” he asks suspiciously.

Namjoon smiles again, his cheeks tight and his eyes dull, and Jimin hates it. “Oh, yeah. I think I’ve got a bit of a cold, so Jin-hyung made me stay home. You know how it is,” he tries to chuckle but sneezes violently instead, folded over and paper-like in the doorway.

Worry flutters through him, quick and sharp, and he reaches out to steady Namjoon before he becomes a witness to a homicide. Death by overachieving. “Okay, back to bed for you, sir,” he mutters, grabbing him by the shoulders to steer him back into the room. He drops the towel onto the pile of laundry as he passes, making a mental note to scold Namjoon about it once he’s feeling better.

“You should dry your hair,” Namjoon protests weakly, but he’s already climbing under the covers, shuffling around for a moment before he settles. He allows Jimin to tuck him in like a baby koala, his eyes scrunching shut in a way that makes Jimin want to protect him from every harsh thing in the universe. “You’re going to get sick, Jiminie.”

He pretends the term of endearment doesn’t feel like a kick to the ribs. “I am not going to get sick,” he says sternly, pressing the back of his small hand to Namjoon’s forehead. He’s burning up, so much so that it’s a wonder he got out of bed at all. “You’re so busy worrying about other people that you’re literally two seconds away from your deathbed.”

That earns him a laugh. It’s small, barely a chuckle, but it’s bright and whole and loosens an ache in Jimin’s chest he hadn’t realized was there. “I’m only,” he coughs, “One year older than you.”

“That’s seven in dog years,” Jimin retorts lightly, tying up the bag of used tissues and throwing it into the corner next to the laundry. “Hyung,” it feels weird to speak so casually, but he just touched a bag full of this guy’s snot so he thinks he can forgo the pleasantries, “You should learn to say no to people when you get overwhelmed.”

The dimple on Namjoon’s left cheek deepens just a tad. “I’m not overwhelmed.”

“Sure,” Jimin says flatly. “And I’m not standing in your Shrek swamp right now trying to keep you alive.”

“Exactly,” Namjoon breaks into another coughing fit, rolling away from Jimin to face the wall until it subsides. Jimin rubs small, soothing circles into the palisade of his back until he feels it melt away, until Namjoon softens like clay under his searching fingertips.

“Don’t you think you’re spreading yourself a little thin? You’re not superman, you know,” he chides gently.

“Of course not,” Namjoon scoffs lightly. “I’m not nearly cool enough for that.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, he knows, but there’s something murky and brown in the way he says it, something like mud kicked up in a riverbank, leeches and calloused toes all turned around underwater.

I’m not nearly cool enough, he says, and Jimin cannot even begin to explain how much he disagrees.

“I think you’re plenty cool,” he says softly, and he wishes Namjoon would hear how sincere he is, how there is not even a sliver of him that is saying it for the sake of being kind.

If he squints hard enough, he thinks he can see the moment when Namjoon almost believes him.

Instead, the older boy reaches out his large hand to close his fingers around his wrist, and suddenly they are not two awkward acquaintances who do not know who they are to each other when everyone else is watching. Suddenly they are just as they were, Jimin and Namjoon, falling apart one at a time with only the quiet to hear them.

He allows himself to be drawn onto the bed, curled around a warm body with his fingers buried in a halo of dark hair. The rain continues to batter against the window panes in a steady rhythm, a smooth, hollow pattern that lulls the panic to rest in his chest.

“What would you be, if you could do anything you wanted?” Namjoon asks a little while later, his stuffy nose rendering his voice thick and buttery around the edges.

If he could do anything he wanted?

He’d fly to New York and convince every gallery in existence that his best friend is worth a shot.

He’d make a bunch of money and pay off his parents' mortgage, put them up somewhere nice and comfortable where they wouldn’t have to worry about him ever again.

He’d dance, probably, and he’d make sure that no one could ever see him do it.

Jimin thinks for a moment, feels the way his voice resonates through Namjoon’s ear pillowed on his chest. “Just me, I guess,” he says finally. “I’d be someone who knows what they want, who they want to be, and I wouldn’t worry about whether or not who I want to be is the right thing to do.”

Namjoon exhales, his body relaxing further against his own. “That’s a good answer.”

And then, because he’s feeling brave and he’s waited too long and this is maybe the only chance he will ever get to ask again, Jimin says, “Hey, hyung?”

“Yeah?” Namjoon hums, absentmindedly dragging his pointer finger in gentle circles against his thigh.

“Why did you pretend not to know me?”

Namjoon’s hand doesn’t so much as stutter, and Jimin gets the feeling he’s been waiting for him to ask for a long time. “To be honest with you, I panicked,” Namjoon admits. “That day, when I met you—let’s just say I wasn’t in Ilsan by coincidence. I just didn’t want anyone else to know.”

Jimin bites his lip, rolling the flesh tentatively over his bottom teeth. “You weren’t, like, embarrassed to have met me or anything?”

The hand stills. “Is that what you thought?”

“A little bit,” he confesses.

“Jimin, no,” Namjoon twines his fingers firmly through his own, twisting his neck around until he meets Jimin’s eyes head-on. “It had nothing to do with you. Jin-hyung and Hobi—even Yoongi-hyung doesn’t know how often I need to disappear. The city… I feel like it gets smaller every day, you know? I can’t breathe, sometimes, and I—"

“—I know,” Jimin interrupts before he can spiral, scratching gently at the base of his neck as if to give him a physical reminder that he is not alone. “I know exactly what you mean.”

It seems like he has more to say, though, and Jimin knows Namjoon isn’t the type to ask a question without good reason. “What about you, then? Would you do music?”

He’s seen the Book. They all have. Namjoon’s Book, stuffed to the brim with lyrics and time signatures and more harmonies than Yoongi would know what to do with, shoved with careful hands into the deepest recesses of Namjoon’s leather book bag.

Of all the dirty little secrets one could have, Jimin thinks Namjoon’s darkest is a sacred thing.

“I would love to,” the wistfulness in his tone is answer enough. “But we both know it would never work out.”

He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t think that at all. “You don’t think music could get you by in life?”

“I think loving something isn’t always enough to make it work.” It’s a simple admission, but it pulls the breath like a thread from his lungs, coiling through the moisture in the air until Jimin can almost see the apology shimmering over the bed like a blanket.

“Do you ever think about just running away?” Namjoon asks, so quietly Jimin might have missed it if he hadn’t felt his back rumbling beneath his fingertips.

Every day. “You know I do.”

“Do you ever think about not coming back?” Something about the gravity of his tone makes Jimin pause, the pads of his lithe fingers crawling upwards to soothe the clammy skin above the neckline of his t-shirt. Namjoon sighs, letting his head fall back into the palm of Jimin’s hand, heavy and warm despite the bitterness of the afternoon sky.

“Sometimes,” Jimin admits, letting the air whoosh out of his lungs all at once. “Sometimes I think about how much easier it would be if no one had to put with me anymore,” Namjoon anchors his fingers around the slim curve of his hip, presses his chest flush to the stretch of his clothed stomach, and Jimin lets the steady calm of their bodies meeting bleed through him like ink to water. “But then I think about Taehyungie, and how he cries sometimes when he’s homesick, or Jin-hyung, and how he forgets to eat because he’s busy taking care of everybody else, or—well, you,” he says, and Namjoon’s gentle grip tightens around him like a slowly drowning sailor, “And us, talking about this right now, and then I think maybe sometimes it’s okay to be selfish about it.”

It's quiet in the apartment.

“That’s a good answer,” Namjoon repeats softly.

Jimin can’t see his face right now, but he can tell he’s smiling.

—

—

There’s nothing going on between him and Kim Namjoon.

No matter how many suggestive texts Tae has sent him, wiggling his eyebrows over the screen of his phone, Jimin refuses to take the bait.

“You’re burning it, hyung.”

“I’m not.”

“Right there! It’s burning!”

“Jung Hoseok, I swear to god, if you do not get out of my kitchen right now I will throw your Lady Gaga posters into the fucking garbage disposal,” Jin snaps, waving the kitchen tongs in the air and sending droplets of hot oil spattering across the glass stovetop.

“Yah!” Hobi shrieks, although it’s unclear whether his distress is due to the threat or the fact that he nearly just became the most well-cooked thing in Jin’s kitchen, “Those posters are signed, you heathen!”

“Never a dull day with those two,” Yoongi hums, unbothered in his seat at the marble island. He stabs another piece of steak with his fork, bringing it to his lips to blow the steam away before feeding it to Taehyung, who is deeply invested in an animated conversation to focus on his meal.

“I’m just saying, a fortress on the side of an active volcano would be practically impermeable to ground attacks,” Taehyung explains clearly, squeezing Jungkook’s wrist with long fingers to emphasize his point.

“But that’s because it’s in a volcano,” Jungkook argues. He pauses to accept a piece of steak from Yoongi’s fork, dropping a quick kiss to the inside of his wrist in thanks. The older boy flushes a sharp, violent red, biting back the bashful smile on his lips (as if he and Jungkook hadn’t spent the entirety of Hobi’s last house party piss-drunk and publicly sucking face in an armchair only meant for one). “What are you going to do, sweep the lava out of the foyer every morning? You can’t waste your own resources just because it ups your defence.”

“Jimin-ssi, what do you think?” Taehyung leans more heavily into his side, dropping his chin onto his shoulder and drumming against his thigh with quick fingertips.

“That’s so not fair,” Jungkook complains loudly. He wipes away the meat juice dribbling down his chin with the back of his hand. Somehow his mouth is full of steak again, his brow furrowed with the effort of talking without spewing out little bits of meat all over the counter. “Hyung has been your best friend for like ten years, he always takes your side!”

“Jiminie is a fair and impartial judge,” Taehyung defends, puffing out his chest indignantly. He taps his leg again, “Jimin-ah, what’s better? A lair on the ocean or a lair in a volcano?”

“Hmm?” Jimin answers distractedly. He’d tuned out of the supervillain debate a while ago, too busy watching Kim Namjoon with a mixture of disbelief and complete horror. Namjoon has abandoned his steak to wander over to the fridge, rooting through the sea of glass Tupperware (Jimin is reminded of a very large racoon he saw in the alleyway behind their apartment building one time) to emerge with the biggest jar of smooth peanut butter Jimin has ever seen. He watches in morbid fascination as Namjoon grabs a cereal bowl and a spoon from one of the upper cabinets, scoops three heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter into it, and tosses the utensil unceremoniously into the sink with a clatter. He then returns to his seat with the bowl of peanut butter, the open jar left forgotten on the counter and the cabinet door swinging freely on its hinges.

“Yah, Namjoon, clean up after yourself!” Jin shouts exasperatedly from the stove. “Is this a restaurant? Are we in a hotel? Honestly, when I live with you I can’t tell if I’m your mom or your maid,” he prattles on, grumbling to himself as he slices the last steak that’s been resting on the cutting board into manageable strips. “Yoongi and I should’ve moved in with Hobi instead of you, at least he likes to keep his place clean—”

“Sorry hyung, but no can do,” Hobi interrupts cheerfully, screwing the lid back onto the peanut butter and pushing the cabinet door closed. “I finally found a place I can afford by myself, there is no way I’m sharing with any of you barbarians.”

“And to think I invited you all for dinner,” Jin sobs in mock hurt, clutching at his chest with a clenched fist, “Only for you to forsake me so!”

“Why do you keep your peanut butter in the fridge?” Jungkook wonders aloud, all thoughts of evil volcanoes long-forgotten amidst the pandemonium.

“Why are you eating peanut butter with your fingers?!” Jimin bursts out, throwing his hands wildly into the air (it’s a testament to their many years of friendship that Taehyung leans away just in time to avoid being smacked in the face). He watches, scandalized, as Namjoon scoops up another glob of peanut butter with his thumb and middle finger and brings them to his full lips, sucking them clean with a loud smacking sound and making an absolute mess of his dimpled cheeks and angular chin.

“I really enjoy peanut butter,” Namjoon blinks slowly, bewildered by the storm of chaos that has risen up in the wake of his peanut butter anarchy.

“Right, but why aren’t you using a utensil?” Jimin insists, pressing his palms into the cold marble and balancing his sternum along the edge of the countertop to get a better look into the bowl. “You know, one of those things specifically invented so that people wouldn’t have to eat with their hands? Like a spoon? Or a fork? Remember those?” If his mother only knew—if he had tried this at home she would’ve had a heart attack on the spot.

Behind him, Taehyung and Jungkook are scarfing down the remnants of Namjoon’s abandoned steak like a pair of starved hyenas. Yoongi, ever the good sport, is cutting the meat into smaller pieces like a frazzled single father trying to feed his toddlers at a family reunion.

“Oh, that,” Namjoon laughs, and his whole body beams with the effort, all scrunched eyes and wide mouth and cherub cheeks that dimple with the hearty rise and fall of his broad chest. It’s a joyful sound, golden with the untouched serenity of a Spring morning, and Jimin—

Jimin is lost, tumbling over the edge of a cliff without a parachute.

He thinks, briefly, that he wouldn’t mind cleaning up peanut butter messes for maybe the rest of his life.

“I used to eat so much peanut butter I made myself sick, so I decided to cut down to only three tablespoons a day,” Namjoon explains, mistaking his stunned silence for confusion. “I always eat it too fast, though, and then I get disappointed, so now I eat it with my fingers to make it last longer,” he laughs sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck with his clean hand.

“He’s like a little kid,” Hobi chimes in, wiping the island down with a wet cloth and passing Namjoon a handful of clean napkins. “You’d never know he was older than you, Jiminie; he requires supervision all day every day.”

“He broke the lamp we had in the living room,” Yoongi snickers, pointing to the empty spot on the floor next to the TV. “Tripped over the cord in broad daylight and shattered the bulb.”

“Then he spilled his tea all over the socket trying to clean it up!” Hobi chortles.

“Why wouldn’t you put down the tea before you cleaned the glass?” Jin scolds, pulling a ceramic dish full of roasted vegetables from the warming rack in the oven. “Namjoon-ah, you’ve got a 148 IQ but you’re still just a disaster waiting to happen.”

Namjoon’s face is flushed deep, shameful red, but he shakes his head good-naturedly at Hobi’s endless laughter, smears a little more peanut butter into the corners of his puckered lips, and Jimin is so busy studying the way Namjoon’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows that he forgets to be subtle about staring.

Namjoon makes eye contact before he can look away, and Jimin just. Stares. Cannot stop staring.

Jin coughs. Three things happen in consecutive order.

Firstly, Jimin slips off the seat of his bar stool and tumbles unceremoniously to the ground. He’s so mortified that he catches his bottom lip between his teeth, biting down so harshly as he hits the tile that his mouth fills with the copper taste of blood.

Secondly, the room erupts into chaos. Jungkook doubles over in his seat, clapping his hands and cackling with laughter over the sound of Yoongi’s bewildered, “What? What happened? Jimin-ah, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jimin mumbles, climbing back into his seat and burying himself into Tae’s shoulder until only his eyes and scarlet ears can be seen over the neckline of his (Namjoon’s) oversized hoodie.

(He’ll give it back eventually, he really will, but it’s warm and cozy and smells like rain and boy and aftershave, and he just couldn’t find it in himself to give it up.

It’s not forever. A couple days at most. Maybe a week. He would’ve given it back the next day if he’d been asked for it, but Namjoon has seen him wear it twice in the last week and hasn’t so much as blinked.

If that knowledge makes the little voice inside Jimin’s head more than ridiculously pleased, well. That’s nobody’s business but his own.)

Taehyung has the decency to rub his back despite his laughter, reaching over to pat his limbs and pinch his cheek gently to make sure he hasn’t bruised anything more than his pride.

The third thing that happens is that Namjoon does not look away, not even while the residual tumbling in Jimin’s stomach is pinned like a butterfly under the weight of his loaded stare.

Jimin can only stare back, the grip on his hoodie loosening until it slips from the peak of his chin, kitchen air snaking down his neck in icy fingers. He shivers, licking away the blood that has pooled along the seam of his pressed lips, something like satisfaction coiling low in his belly as Namjoon’s eyes dip to follow the path of his tongue.

The side of his mouth pulls up, just barely, his dimple deepening in the faintest of smirks, and Namjoon winks, raising a singular eyebrow at the blush that floods Jimin’s cheeks before he turns his attention back to the surrounding chatter.

“Anyway, the point is that Namjoon is a peanut butter monster and a toddler rolled into one,” Jin is saying, blatantly ignoring the way Taehyung is sneaking bits of meat off his plate.

“I see,” Jimin chokes out. His whole body is hot, his brain a scrambled mess of awkward pauses and bad pickup lines.

He’s pretty sure Kim Namjoon is outright flirting with him, and Jimin has no fucking idea how to handle it.

“I thought you were supposed to be perfect, Kim Namjoon,” Jimin wants to say he sounds normal, unaffected, but Jin’s lips are twitching and Hobi’s trying not to laugh, so he doesn’t think he’s being particularly successful.

He shoves steak in his mouth and wills the smoke alarm to go off right this minute.

“Oh, I am,” Namjoon answers calmly (Jimin’s eyes zero in on the subtle flush that creeps its way up the side of his neck, and he’s fine, he’s good, he isn’t trying not to combust out of his skin).“You don’t even know what you’re missing.”

(It’s not even Taehyung that brings it up this time. Jimin throws himself across Jungkook’s lap later that night and rants about Namjoon’s chipmunk cheeks for an hour.)

—

—

The first time Namjoon gets a non-birthday Event-of-the-Month, Taehyung cries for nearly an hour. Granted, it’s their fault they let him anywhere near the liquor—Taehyung’s blood is as needle-thin as his silhouette, and it takes anywhere between one and three drinks to turn him into an incoherent mess on the floor.

“Hyung, why don’t you cuddle me?” Tae sobs, flinging himself over the arm of the couch and nearly knocking the bottle out of the older boy’s hand. Yoongi, seated on the floor with Jungkook’s head lolling about his shoulder, snags it out of his hand before he has to take a Heineken shower fully dressed in his black hoodie and jeans.

“What do you mean, Taehyungie?” Tipsy Namjoon is as indulgent as ever, patting his dongsaeng on the head as if to prove he does, in fact, cuddle him. The card on the dining table behind him reads, Happy “you accidentally set your bed on fire but it didn’t even burn that bad” Party!

“You only love me when I’m sad,” Taehyung cries, rolling over onto his side and nearly falling off the back of the couch. Luckily for everyone in the room, Seokjin is there, scooping him up into his arms and settling him into his lap in an unoccupied armchair. Tae is drunk enough for the both of them, but the way Jin nearly stumbles into his seat proves that even the heaviest of weights cannot escape seven of Yoongi’s bomb shots unscathed.

“Namjoonie isn’t the cuddling type, babe,” Hobi says soothingly, but the flush creeping down his exposed neck betrays the steady timber of his voice. Hobi is just as gone as the rest of them.

“It’s true,” Jungkook pipes up, abandoning all pretense to swing both legs into Yoongi’s lap and slumping his full weight onto his hyung’s shoulder. “Last week I tried to put my head in his lap and he got so startled he pushed me off the couch.”

“One time the power went out in Ilsan and instead of sharing a bed with me he slept in the bathtub,” Jin deadpans.

“It was summer!”

“The tub was half the size of you.”

“Everything’s half the size of me,” Namjoon actually pouts, sliding down in his seat and pressing the long line of his thigh more firmly against Jimin, who is curled up against the arm of the couch and has way too much party punch in his bloodstream to properly contribute to the conversation.

Namjoon’s large hand curls around the back of Jimin’s calf, his long fingers pressing absentmindedly into the stiff muscle as he laughs.

“That’s fucking bullshit,” Jimin mumbles around the lip of his glass.

There’s a pause.

“What’s bullshit, Jiminie?” Namjoon asks carefully. His fingers still their ministrations on his calf long enough to slide upwards, resuming with soothing strokes in the crook of his bent knee.

“That hyung isn’t the cuddling type,” he shrugs, the pink liquid swirling about his glass nearly sloshing onto the rug. He takes a big sip to reduce the risk of spilling, squinting at his hand as he lowers it carefully back into his lap.

“What do you mean?” Hobi’s voice is warm, but there’s an undercurrent of amusement behind his patient smile.

“Look,” Jimin insists, his eyes comically wide, and then his fingers are skating past the thin skin of Namjoon’s wrist (and his pulse is going thumpthumpthump against his own), up into the dry crease of his warm palm. He laces their fingers together as he lifts his prize, gesturing at Namjoon with their clasped hands as he babbles, “Hyung is always touchy. He holds my hand when I’m sad and he gives nice hugs and he pats me on the head if I do a good job, right hyung?"

Yoongi is laughing so hard he chokes on his drink, pressing his forehead into Jungkook’s shoulder as he coughs violently.

“And how do you feel about that, Jimin-ssi?” Unfazed, Jungkook polishes off the last of Namjoon’s Heineken, holding his fist out like a microphone in grand fashion.

“I mean,” Jimin can’t stop giggling, leaning over Namjoon’s lap to press his lips to Jungkook’s closed fingers. He lowers his voice in a stage whisper that does nothing to shield his thoughts from the quiet room, “Have you seen his hands? I’d let him do anything.”

He doesn’t know exactly what Hobi put in the punch he made, but he’s pretty sure he saw him dump an entire bottle of Moscato into the bowl about three glasses ago. Seokjin sputters something intelligible, Taehyung’s lips at his neck completely forgotten in lieu of the chaos that has been unleashed upon the room. Jimin tilts his head to the side, draining the rest of his drink in one long sip before dropping the glass somewhere near Jungkook’s knee.

Somewhere deep inside the haze of fog that clouds his mind, Jimin hears a voice that sounds vaguely like himself screaming this might not be a good idea, but he pushes it away with a shake of his dark hair. It’s reading break and he’s surrounded by his chosen family, and the pleasant warmth that bubbles up inside his chest is seeping through every inch of him, pink and fizzy all the way to the tips of his toes. He feels good.

He moves to return to his usual seat, bracing his free hand against Namjoon’s thigh to push himself upright (and if his hand lingers on the way the hard muscle bunches up under his touch, well, that’s a problem for another day). It’s all going well until he makes the mistake of glancing up at Namjoon’s face.

Jimin has spent more time than he’d like to admit secretly observing the many nuances of Kim Namjoon, but he’s never seen that look before.

His friends are still talking, the pause of the earlier moment quickly dissolving into the usual chorus of bad jokes and shouting, but Jimin doesn’t hear a thing. He’s too focused on the tongue that protrudes from the inside of Namjoon’s cheek as he works his jaw, the crease of his pinched lips and his furrowed brow, the way something dark and hungry is swirling dangerously in those dragon eyes.

He looks like he wants to eat him alive.

Goosebumps break out along his arms, a tremor bursting from the nape of his neck and scurrying down his spine in a great hurry. He shivers so violently that it jostles their clasped hands, their fingers still intertwined on the couch between his bare thigh and the curve of Namjoon’s hip.

The thing is, Jimin is used to being watched. He’s used to being observed at every angle, he’s learned to curve his body and change his tone by watching the expressions of the people around him. It’s a bad habit, but there are days when he searches for his reflection in the sheen of every window just to make sure he looks okay, that he isn’t giving anyone even the tiniest reason to judge him.

But right now? Right now, Jungkook could dump a bucket of mushroom soup over his head and he wouldn’t even bat an eye. Right now, Namjoon is looking at him like he is a burning star come to life.

It’s so intense that, for a moment, Jimin almost believes it.

—

—

WINTER

Jimin kind of hates the big lecture hall. It’s the newest addition to campus, meant to be a pillar of innovation amidst a slowly changing society (at least, that’s what the university bulletin published last winter), but the arched ceiling and wood tiles feel out of place amidst the sea of steel and glass that make up the rest of the humanities department.

He might be projecting, but he knows how the building must feel. He catches another student staring as he hovers near the door, raising his eyebrows tiredly until they blush and scurry away.

He gets it, he does. Every dance major at Seoul National University is dying to know what Park Jimin is doing here, of all places, selling his soul for a generic BA as if his lifetime of dance training has all but ceased to exist. He’s heard the rumours: that his Visa got revoked, that he got a girl pregnant (Jungkook had laughed so hard he snorted banana milk out of his nose), that he was expelled for pushing someone down the stairs in a fit of jealousy, that he was the one who got pushed down the stairs and was now recovering from post-traumatic amnesia. The gossip gets more and more ridiculous as time goes by, which is why Jimin has learned to stop eavesdropping for the sake of his own peace of mind.

He understands why everyone is curious. He just wishes they would stop staring.

“Jimin-ah,” Namjoon materializes out of the stream of students just as Jimin is about to throw his backpack at the wall to really make a scene.

“Hi,” he greets breathlessly, relief flooding through him at the familiar dimpled smile. He reaches out as Namjoon approaches, curling his fingers into the pocket of his open bomber jacket to draw him closer. As usual, Namjoon doesn’t bat an eye. He just tucks his phone into his back pocket, turning his body to welcome him properly as he enters his space.

“Hi,” Namjoon repeats, smiling. His hand comes up to cup the back of Jimin’s head for a moment, his thumb stroking the nape of his neck before it falls away. It’s brief, so quick that anyone watching might have missed it, but it’s enough to soothe the wave of anxiety that threatens to overwhelm him, pushing back the tide as quickly as it had come. The cool touch of Namjoon’s palm across his skin brings Jimin back to earth, drawing crisp air back into his lungs and reattaching his brain to his body. “Is Jungkookie done yet?”

“No,” Jimin answers, glaring at the door as if it might make Jungkook’s seminar come to an early end. “Did you eat already?” He asks, glancing up just in time to see the fond smile that creases the corners of his eyes.

“I was going to grab something after we study. Wanna come?”

“Only if it’s kimchi jjigae.”

Namjoon snorts, “The last time you ate spicy food you had stomach cramps all night.”

“It wasn’t that bad!” he protests indignantly.

“You looked like a Charmander trying to spit fire for the first time,” Namjoon teases, leaning in and pinching his cheeks with deft fingers.

“You have the references of a seven-year old degenerate,” Jimin sputters, smacking his stupidly hard stomach in a futile attempt to escape.

“Pokémon Ruby came out when I was eight, thank you very much,” Namjoon retorts.

Jimin twists out of his hold before he can do something stupid, like kiss him. “You’re such a fucking nerd,” he mutters, clamping down on the giddiness that has come to a rolling boil in the pit of his stomach. Namjoon only snickers, casually pushing his hair back like he has no idea what he’s doing to Jimin’s heart right now.

It’s nice to see him like this, Jimin decides, glancing up at him under the cover of his long eyelashes. When he’s not weighed down by the expectations of a successful future, Namjoon is just as childish as the rest of them, cracking bad jokes and laughing with a vibrancy that seems to tremble every blade of grass in sight.

If he could, Jimin thinks he would bottle this moment, would keep it tucked away in his pocket like a talisman. If he could, he’d keep it safe, would use it to brighten every one of Namjoon’s rainy days until even the dust was stained with a Crayola sunrise.

“Hey, Jiminie,” Namjoon starts thoughtfully, but he’s suddenly interrupted by a heavy hand that drops itself onto Jimin’s shoulder, jostling him with enough force to push Namjoon back a few steps.

“Park Jimin-nim!” The newcomer exclaims, “I knew it was you!”

Jimin wants to crawl into a corner and die.

The last time Yoo Kihyun saw him, he was piss drunk and naked in his bed, trying to wash away the crushing pain in his chest with a long chain of reckless decisions.

The last time he saw Kihyun, he was sneaking out of his apartment at six in the morning, tiptoeing around the sleeping body to make sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind.

The last time he and Kihyun saw each other, Namjoon lived in Ilsan and had no idea Jimin’s slew of one-night stands even existed.

“Kihyun-nim, it’s been a long time,” he says, plastering a smile on his face that he hopes is polite.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly leave me your phone number,” Kihyun teases. “Usually I’m the one that sneaks out, you know. It’s easier on my pride.”

“Right,” Jimin echoes. He’s hyper aware of Namjoon to his left, shifting slightly on the heels of his chunky sneakers. “I’m sorry about that,” he adds sincerely, because he does feel a little bad.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Kihyun shrugs him off good-naturedly, squeezing his shoulder one last time for good measure before he steps away. “I just came over to say hi. And to tell you that you’re welcome back any time,” he winks.

Jimin shakes his head, but his smile is a little more genuine now. “Don’t hold your breath,” he answers lightly, but Kihyun only laughs.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart. A year is a long time.” He waves cheerfully as he walks away, weaving through the crowd of students until he’s out of sight.

Yoo Kihyun is a nice guy, funny and kind and easy to get along with. He might’ve been exactly the kind of guy Jimin could fall for, if not for the fact that Kim Namjoon is standing beside him with a perfectly blank smile, both of his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

An unsure silence settles over them. For the first time in a long time, neither of them have any idea what to say.

Jimin isn’t stupid. They’re adults at an institution that romanticizes letting loose just as much as it does a well-rounded education, and they’ve both probably slept with more people than they’d be happy admitting to a pastor.

It’s not a problem. He isn’t ashamed of his body, nor the decisions he makes with it, and if this were any other friend he wouldn’t hesitate to openly discuss the circumstances of his post-homecoming hookup.

The problem is that Namjoon isn’t just a regular friend. The problem is that Namjoon resides somewhere in the space between friend and more, that he’s stretched so far into the planes of Jimin’s heart that he’s begun to bleed through the proverbial line in the sand.

The problem is that he’s grown so used to Namjoon’s fond attention that he doesn’t know how to breathe when it disappears.

“You and your friend seem pretty close, huh?” Namjoon’s tone is neutral, unbothered, but Jimin knows the clench of his jaw, the set of his spine, the forced scrunch of a dimple-less smile.

“Not really,” he shakes his head quickly. He shifts his stance towards the other boy, but Namjoon’s shoulders remain carefully turned away. “You know you guys are the only ones I can stand,” Jimin makes a silly face, but Namjoon doesn’t reach for him, and Jimin aches.

The other boy just hums quietly, “Yeah, I know.”

 “Hyung?” He should really shut up.

“Yeah, Jimin.”

He needs to stop talking. “Are you upset?”

And because Namjoon has always been able to see straight through him, he says, “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.

Jimin swallows hard. “Yeah.”

How are you supposed to apologize for hurting someone you have no business being able to hurt?

Jungkook can’t get out of his class fast enough.

—

—

When he was little, Jimin was afraid of the dark. He would lie awake for hours, pinned to the bed by the dread of an impending nightmare. It wasn't the nightmares that scared him, really. It was the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to stop it, that the wispy talons of the lengthening shadows could sink their claws into his skin no matter where he went or what he did in the predictable clarity of the waking world.

On nights like those, it was easier not to sleep at all. He just lay there, frozen in his bed until the morning came, until the sun tiptoed past the windowsill and the heavy hand of sleep came to drag him under at last.

He feels like that today, sitting on his bedroom floor with his ballet shoes cradled in his lap, the cuffs of his long sleeved tee soaked through with dark patches of snot and tears. He’s lucky Tae and Jungkook aren’t home—he’s been crying for the better part of an hour, and while he knows there are no two people more supportive than his best friends, they’ve never quite been able to understand the depth of his anguish. And it is anguish, for all that it is melodramatic and cliché. He can feel it in his body, this physical representation of a heartache. He feels it in the stiffness of his muscles and the tightness in his chest, in the simmering urge to move, trapped in his own head like a sideways hailstorm on a sunny day.

It feels like the aftermath of a murder, except he doesn’t know how to reconcile the thought of being both the weapon and the victim all at once.

The sound of his phone buzzing in his pocket breaks him out of his stupor long enough to answer it.

“Hey, Jimin-ah, Jungkookie asked to borrow some equipment so I’m just gonna drop it off before I head to class. He gave me his keys and everything but in case you were home I didn’t want to scare you,” Namjoon’s baritone voice filters smoothly down the line.

“Okay,” Jimin sniffs wetly. “I’m home, so just come in.”

The telltale huff and puff of Namjoon’s quick stride stutters at the sound. “Hold up, are you crying?”

Yes. “No,” Jimin wails.

“Jimin, you’re definitely crying. Why are you crying?” He sounds so concerned that it brings forth a fresh wave of tears, the flood rising at an alarming rate until it spills over the dam in Jimin’s composure.

“I’m not crying! You asked me if I’m crying which makes me cry but there’s no reason for me to be crying, so I’m not, okay?” He isn’t making any sense and he knows it, salty snot dribbling over the bow of his lip and into his parched mouth.

“Okay,” Namjoon agrees soothingly. On the other side of his apartment, Jimin can hear the sound of a key being fitted into the lock, of the bolt sliding open with a metallic clunk. He presses his phone quickly between his cheek and shoulder, swiping at his face as best he can with the sleeves of his shirt. There’s a quick patter of footsteps in the hallway, a heavy thud on the floor of Jungkook’s room across the hall, and then his bedroom door is swinging open and Namjoon’s arms are sliding around his shoulders, careful and stable and dry.

“I’m not crying,” Jimin repeats stubbornly, anchoring his forehead against the sturdy line of Namjoon’s collarbone and allowing his hyung’s arms to curl soundly around his back.

“Tell me why you’re not crying then, hmm?”

It’s always Namjoon that finds him when he can’t breathe, always Namjoon that seems to pore over life with the same kind of frantic scrutiny that simmers beneath his skin even while he’s sleeping. Jimin has always been a worrier—empathetic to a fault, his mother says. He cries over the little things, like children with scraped knees and heartbroken actors in bad movies. He cried for Jungkookie, when he broke his arm in three places falling off a halfpipe, and for Tae, when his grandmother passed away and he was inconsolable for months on end.

He cries for the sake of a lot of people, but Jimin makes it a point to never cry for himself. It feels selfish to wallow in your own problems, to drown in your own misery when there are so many people out there who have it much, much worse than he does. He’s lucky, he knows. Most people don’t have a Taehyung. Most people don’t have three hyungs and a Jungkookie, or a family that calls every month even after he threw all their dreams down the toilet in a bout of selfish insanity.

Most people don’t have Namjoon, smoothing his big hands over the swooping hunch of his spine, perfectly content to wait in silence until he’s ready to say what’s on his mind.

“I started dancing when I was four,” he mutters eventually, letting the steady thrum of Namjoon’s heartbeat against his forehead guide the pace of his breathing. “I was a really energetic kid, always getting into trouble, always making messes that my parents had to clean up. They thought putting me into as many activities as possible would take up some of my energy. And we lived in Busan, you know, we didn’t have a ton of money, but they made it work.”

He lets Namjoon’s hum of affirmation seep into his skin as he continues. “I saw this tape from the library, of this class of little girls performing a production of Sleeping Beauty. And that was it for me, I think. I was hooked. I couldn’t stop spinning around the house, begging my parents to put me into a ballet class. I said I would give up everything else for it, that I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” He laughs wetly, sitting up to wipe the remainder of the tears from his face and to stretch out the cramp in his aching back. Namjoon lets his arms fall away, scooting back to lean against the wall and, after a moment’s hesitation, tugs Jimin in after him. He goes easily, curling up between Namjoon’s knees like candle smoke to breeze, his shoulder pressed to his chest, his head tucked against the side of his jaw as if it were made to fit there.

“That still doesn’t explain why you were crying,” Namjoon reminds him, securing his arm more comfortably around his waist. Jimin is suddenly filled with a strange sense of déjà vu, of this skin and these hands and the lingering burn of panic in his chest, and while this time it is a different city, a different season, the breath of calm that washes over him is enough to send him straight back to Spring in Ilsan.

“I haven’t danced since the day I left,” he admits finally, inhaling the scent of rainwater and aftershave that drifts from Namjoon’s skin, soft and cozy against the harsh bite of the December chill. “What if I’m not good anymore? What if it’s not the same? I can’t remember what it’s like to dance without a goal in mind, or a routine to practice, or a person to worry about impressing.”

It’s a stupid fear, he knows. It sounds like he’s just asking for attention, but the truth of the matter is that he spent every night in that studio trying to become someone who was good enough to be allowed to exist. The truth of the matter is that after all this time, he doesn’t know if he is enough when there’s no one around to tell him he is.

Namjoon’s voice rumbles thoughtfully under his cheek. “I think if you worry too much about how something will turn out, you’ll end up never doing it at all. That’s kind of the thing when it comes to passions, like art and music and film—no amount of absorbing culture could ever compare to creating it. And I think it would be a damn shame to give up on something that has the potential to make your life worth living just because you’re afraid of how it will turn out in the end.”

Jimin doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Namjoon pokes him gently in the side, jostling him further into the crook of his shoulder and his arm. “There’s no way to know, Jiminie. You just have to try. And if you try and you fail, that just means you have to try harder next time.”

He lets that thought crawl its way inside of him, lets it settle against the raw ache in his sternum until he can feel it in every breath he takes.

“Hey, Jimin-ah?”

“Mm?”

“Why did you quit?” It’s an innocent question, given the situation, but the absolute absurdity of it all breaks through the tenderness of the moment, and suddenly Jimin is tumbling over the edge into a fit of unbridled laughter. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Sorry, sorry,” he giggles, turning his face into Namjoon’s shoulder. It seems to work, some of the concerned tension easing from the muscled arm that bunches at his back. “Did you know you’re the very first person to ask me that?”

Namjoon blinks. “What?”

“Yeah,” Jimin snickers. “I’ve been home for over a year and everyone has been too afraid to upset me. I’m not mad about it,” he adds quickly, not wanting his hyung to get the wrong idea. “It’s just funny. It sounds so simple when you say it out loud.” Namjoon makes a noise that sounds something like affirmation.

“To be perfectly honest, I just realized I didn’t want to do it anymore. Not dance, of course,” he amends belatedly, “But comps and auditions and recitals and classes—it got to a point where I felt like a fraud.”

“I’m sure you worked hard,” Namjoon protests, but Jimin just shakes his head.

“I did, but it was just a means to an end. I had sponsors and teachers to satisfy, a scholarship I had to prove I deserved; not to mention justifying the thousands of dollars that my parents poured into my training while I was growing up. And I was nearly killing myself for it—waking up at dawn, taking three classes a day, cardio, endurance training, dieting even though I barely had the energy to get up in the morning—” he takes a deep breath, anchoring his heartbeat against the soothing hand that cards through the short hairs at the base of his neck. “I was dancing to win medals, not because I loved it, you know? And all the other students—they resented me for it. I’m sure to them, it looked easy,” he says bitterly, staring down at the knit cotton of Namjoon’s green sweater. “And then I woke up one morning and thought, hey, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life, and the next thing I knew I was packing my bags and getting on the next flight home.”

Namjoon’s long sigh ruffles Jimin’s hair, a solid thunk bouncing off the drywall above as the column of his throat stretches upright. “I get that,” he says, more to the ceiling than anything else, "Realizing that you’re on a one way track to the rest of your life, I mean.”

The resignation in his voice makes Jimin’s heart ache. He’s sure if he looked up now, he’d see the look that Namjoon reserves for nothing but the trees, something hollow and lonely creeping like tears from the sharp corners of his crescent eyes. “Sometimes I wonder,” Namjoon continues, so quietly that Jimin would’ve missed it, if not for the resounding echo of his throat pressed to his ear, “If this is all there is to it. If stealing minutes out of our own lives is all the happiness we’re supposed to get.”

“Did you ever come up with an answer?” Jimin’s voice is small and timid amidst the looming quiet.

Namjoon turns his cheek more firmly into his temple, and Jimin thinks that’s as close to an answer as he’s ever going to get.

—

—

He wakes up to a frantic pounding on the front door that rattles the dishware inside their cupboard homes. Someone rings the doorbell once, twice, and then resumes pounding on the door like they’re trying to engrave the imprint of their fist into the wood.

Jimin stumbles out of bed, fear and adrenaline tearing through his chest and forcing him fully awake. It’s only ten thirty and Taehyung isn’t home yet, not since he’d received a mysterious text he hadn’t let Jimin see and torn out of the house with a gleeful smile that honestly had Jimin concerned for his sanity.

He’d be a bit more concerned if Tae’s Find My Friends didn’t pinpoint his location at Jin’s apartment, but hey, who is he to judge?

“Jungkook! Taehyung! Jiminie, are you home? Jimin-ah!” Hobi’s voice is muffled behind the door. Jimin pulls it open just as Hobi goes to knock again, nearly punching him in the face with his raised fist.

“Hyung, what are you doing?”

“Jimin-ah, you haven’t seen Namjoonie today, have you?” Hobi asks frantically.

Something cold and still seeps into his veins. “No,” he says slowly, shaking his head. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t seen him in two days.” He’s never seen his hyung so worried, dark circles shadowing the pale skin of his eyes. “He had a meeting with the academic advisory council yesterday morning and Yoongi-hyung says he hasn’t been home since. He’s not at the studio or library and none of his professors have heard a word from him either. I thought maybe he might’ve talked to you.”

It’s so unlike Namjoon to fall off the face of the earth—he’s steadfast and reliable, the one person you can always count on to text you back no matter the time or place. “He didn’t say anything to you before he disappeared?” Hobi and Namjoon are usually attached at the hip, orbiting around each other in the same way that Jimin and Taehyung do, tied end to end by the same thread of intuition.

Hobi puckers his forehead between his brows, tugging absentmindedly at the thin chain around his neck. “He sent me a text saying he needed time to disappear, whatever that means.”

Jimin stumbles. “What did you say?”

“Huh?” Hobi looks like he’s about to burn a hole through the soles of his shoes from fidgeting.

Do you want to disappear with me?

Jimin sighs heavily, holding up a single finger to his hyung before darting back into his room. He nearly makes himself dizzy, scrambling through his closet to find a clean pair of jeans, his wallet, and his phone. He snags his earbuds from the charger on his nightstand and shoves them hastily into the pocket of Jungkook’s thickest hoodie.

“Tell Yoongi-hyung not to worry. I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he calls over his shoulder, pulling the hoodie over his head and nearly getting stuck in the sleeves. He relieves his keys from their hook by the door, jamming his feet haphazardly into his dirty sneakers.

“What? What are you doing?” Bewildered, Hobi follows his flurry of activity with wide eyes, stepping back into the apartment corridor as Jimin turns to lock the door behind him.

“I’m going to go get him,” Jimin says, grabbing Hobi’s elbow to guide him back towards the elevators. There is something akin to adrenaline buzzing in his veins, something equal parts gleeful and uncertain, teetering on the brink of a turning point.

He isn’t sure what it means, that he is seemingly the only person on the planet privy to Namjoon’s personal sanctuary, but Namjoon is missing and that right now is the only thing that matters.

“Trust me. I know exactly where he is.”

—

—

Lady Amany looks different at night. There is something fierce and reverent in the way she reaches for the glow of the waning moon, spattering Jimin’s view of the night sky with patches of wide, puckering leaves.

Namjoon looks different, too. Jimin finds him right where he knew he would, seated on the flat plane of a thick root with his knees curled in towards his chest. He looks small, eerily childlike in the way he cowers from the moonlight in the shadow of the big oak tree.

He doesn’t speak as Jimin approaches, not even to acknowledge the plastic convenience store bag that is dropped carefully at his side. He only raises his eyes from beneath the brim of his worn baseball cap, forcing his mouth upwards as far as it’ll go.

They’re the only two people awake in a five-mile radius, and Kim Namjoon is still smiling like there is nowhere on earth where he does not have to hide.

The wind shifts the leaves a little, moonlight slicing across the planes of his face in harsh lines of white and black. His heart clenches as he takes in the sunken brows, the sallow cheeks, the dim glow in Namjoon’s usually brilliant eyes.

Jimin is so furious he wants to scream.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that the most brilliant person he has ever met is cowering under the shadow of an oak tree like there is no one alive who will want him exactly as he is.

Jimin, standing in front of him in the middle of the goddamn night like he doesn’t have classes tomorrow, should be enough to prove him wrong.

It should be, but it isn’t, and he knows that there is nothing that can convince someone they are allowed to exist when they wake up every day and disagree.

He himself is proof enough of that.

It’s Namjoon who speaks first, peering up at Jimin with an expression too flimsy to fool him, and of course, the first words out of his stupid mouth are, “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or cry. He kind of does both, tears welling in his eyes until they soak through the swell of oxygen in his lungs. In the end, all that comes out is a series of soft, wet gurgles.

“Hey—” Namjoon reaches for him, but Jimin just slaps his hands away, dropping to his knees on the tree root and not giving a single shit about the dirt that cakes his favourite jeans.

He had a whole speech planned out, something about taking breaks and leaning on his support system whenever he needs to talk, and instead all he says is, “Next time, you better fucking take me with you.”

Namjoon blinks. “That’s… not what I thought you were going to say.” His voice is raspy with disuse, smooth baritone cracking over the dry ridges in his throat.

“You better take me with you,” Jimin repeats stubbornly, pulling the other boy’s faded fleece more firmly around him, as if maintaining physical contact will be enough to draw the sting of cold away from Namjoon’s big heart with his own two hands.

Even from this position, Jimin has to tip his head back to meet his eyes, wide and round despite the dark circles that highlight his exhaustion. “If you’re going to disappear again, you better not do it alone.”

Namjoon just stares. Slowly, so slowly, the faintest flicker of a real smile edges at his lips. “Okay,” he murmurs.

“Okay, what?” Jimin crosses his arms, pouting. This whole situation is weird and he probably shouldn’t be yelling at someone so fragile that they literally fled the city, but he knows stubborn-ass Kim Namjoon won’t accept his concern unless he shoves it down his throat, so. This is what he’s going to get.

Like he knows what he’s thinking, Namjoon’s smile only grows. “I promise to take you with me next time.”

“Okay then,” he huffs through his nose, somewhat mollified by the reappearance of Namjoon’s left dimple. He reaches into the bag at his feet and pulls out a pork bun, unwrapping the plastic before shoving it into his hyung’s hands. “Knowing you, you’ve been here all day,” he mutters, eyeing the stunned expression with pursed lips. “You need to eat.”

He moves then, sliding off his knees to sit beside him with his back to the thick trunk of the oak tree. Namjoon welcomes him into his space, the still-warm bun clutched in both hands. He shifts towards him like one of Tae’s dried bouquets, soft and vibrant and pressed to the very edges between the pages of an old history book.

They’re silent for a moment, drinking in the sounds of Namjoon munching and the forest nightlife all around them.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jimin asks, still staring off into the darkness.

Namjoon’s exhale is drawn-out and heavy, a sad sound that hangs in the air on the cusp of first frost. Jimin just waits, letting him gather his thoughts as he watches his breath curl up towards the December sky.

“It’s just—” he stops. Breathes for a moment. Loosens the corners of his mouth from the bolts of an unsteady scaffolding, lets the truth of it all flutter gently to the ground. “I do a lot of things, right? I tutor and I TA and I help hyung in the studio and I’m trying to do my masters even though I don’t really know if I’m even smart enough to do that.”

The feeling of wanting to punch him intensifies, but Jimin just sits there, letting the unease coil tighter until it is something small and compact in the pit of his stomach.

“And the thing is, I’m really happy to help out. I love tutoring and working with students and learning music production on the side makes me happier than anything else has in a really long time—”

“But?” Jimin prods gently.

“But sometimes I get tired. Like really tired, like I’m so tired at night I can’t even fall asleep because I’m thinking about all the things I have to do tomorrow. Sometimes I have dreams and I’m just, I don’t know, grading papers or running to class or working on the same track over and over again even though nothing ever falls into place.”

Namjoon rubs his palms over his face, pushing his hair roughly back from the crown of his forehead. “And I don’t ever want to say anything, you know, because that would make people like Jungkookie feel bad and I don’t ever want to make someone feel like they shouldn’t ask for help—” He’s talking faster and faster now, his voice spilling into the night air and soaking into the dirt at their feet. It’s like a string has been cut, something inky and sharp stuffed away in the back of his heart that has finally broken free.

“—and it makes me so happy that they trust me enough to come to me when they need it, but sometimes I’m so deep in the shit that I can’t even see where I’m going. Sometimes I just want people to leave me alone, to—I don’t know, take a nap or read a book that’s not for class or go on a fucking hike or something.” He punctuates the sentiment with one last exhale, quick and sharp, and then goes limp, lets the tension seep out of his shoulders like a week-old balloon.

It's a lot. It’s more about himself than Jimin has ever heard him say, even though the group spends more time in the Kim-Kim-Min apartment than they do in their own homes.

He thinks he gets it.

It’s not the same, of course, not in the slightest, but Jimin thinks he knows what it’s like to run so fast you leave yourself behind.

He thinks about the only other time he’s seen Kim Namjoon like this, soft in the middle and crumbling at every edge. “What would you be, if you could do anything you wanted?” he asks carefully. He braces himself for a smile, for something along the lines of I am doing everything I want to do and I just don’t have time to do it. It’s a lot. He wouldn’t blame him.

Instead, Namjoon shrugs his shoulders and breathes another sigh, folding his hands over at his chest and mumbling, “Wouldn’t a stadium tour be nice?”

He’s not laughing at him. He’s not, but the spark of joy that ignites in his chest has the laughter bubbling out of him before he can stop it. “I think you could make it,” he chortles. For a moment he thinks he might have hurt his feelings, but Namjoon gets it. He can see the understanding in his eyes.

“Yeah?” Namjoon mirrors him, gold dust and crystalline with delight. “You think?”

“I can see it,” Jimin confirms. “World tour, t-shirt cannons, screaming fangirls breaking into your tour bus after a show. The life of a rock star.”

“Those screaming girls are going to be pretty disappointed, huh?” Namjoon winks, snickering.

“Fanboys, then.” He’s grinning so hard his cheeks hurt.

“Nah,” Namjoon shakes his head. “Just one.”

He’s looking at the sky, but Jimin thinks his cheeks are pinker than usual in the blue moonlight.

Maybe it’s the quiet, but the warmth that seeps through him doesn’t make him stutter at all. “You could travel the world,” he says softly.

Namjoon bites his lip. “That’s kind of the thing.”

Wait. “The thing?”

Namjoon’s smile is slowly fading, some of the stress returning to his posture. He stares down at his hands. “The thing that happened. That I was going to tell you guys about when I got home.”

He doesn’t like where this is going. “Tell me, then.”

“Okay, so—” he inhales once, long and deep. Exhales. Repeats. “The thing is that there’s an exchange program. For the Dean’s choice. They pick an exemplary student to go abroad to the UK—it’s Cambridge this year, I’m pretty sure—and they get to stay on scholarship for three semesters. It’s all inclusive—airfare, meal plans, dorms, the works.”

“They want you to go.” It’s not a question.

“Yeah.” Namjoon’s hum of affirmation is barely audible over the sound of the bun wrapper crinkling in his pocket.

He isn’t sure when Namjoon became such a vital pillar of his everyday routine, but the idea of existing without his presence nearby has Jimin’s heart twisting painfully in his chest. But this is Namjoon’s thing, and Namjoon’s life, and what Jimin wants should never be a relevant factor in choosing the path of someone else’s happiness. “Do you want to go?” He keeps his voice carefully neutral, pulling his knees to his chest and staring down at the rubber soles of his shoes.

The forest is very cold tonight.

“I don’t know,” Namjoon murmurs, and if they hadn’t been sitting nearly cheek-to-cheek Jimin might’ve sworn he was crying. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m so grateful that they chose me, and—and I earned it,” he seems loathe to say the words, something like guilt spilling into his tone at the self-praise. “I know I worked hard this year, and I earned it. But— but I—”

“But you don’t want to go,” Jimin says quietly.

The air rushes from Namjoon’s chest in a gust that rustles the dry leaves at his feet. “I don’t want to go.” He chews on his lower lip, his hand curling absentmindedly around the curve of Jimin’s ankle, two fingers slipping into his sock as if to anchor himself there. “Jin-hyung would say I’m being ridiculous.”

“Jin-hyung is literally in bed with Taehyungie as we speak, I don’t think he has the right to preach about our life choices.” That earns him a wry grin, Namjoon’s loud snort rippling like water through the tension in the air.

“It’s the kind of opportunity I’m never going to get again,” Namjoon says slowly, crossing his free hand over his lap to rest against Jimin’s bent knee. “But if I go for a year I’ll have to leave my studio, and my music, and my friends, and—”

And you.

Namjoon’s grip tightens against his ankle. The fingers at Jimin’s knee crawl upwards, searching for purchase at the soft skin of his wrist, and Jimin’s heart squeezes so tightly in his chest it’s a wonder he’s still alive at all.

“A scholarship could change your life,” Jimin offers weakly, trying not to choke on the sudden dryness that coats his tongue.

“I have a life here,” Namjoon counters. “I just moved into Jin-hyung and Yoongi-hyung’s apartment. I love the campus. I have a routine that I like and I’m…”

He doesn’t quite say happy, but Jimin understands what he’s trying to say. “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

“I think so,” Namjoon says slowly. “Although it took me two whole days as an escaped convict to figure it out.” Jimin giggles, an open-mouthed chiming that spills freely over the dark smudge of the treeline.

Namjoon hesitates again, so Jimin just waits, smoothing his thumb over the back of Namjoon’s hand in time to the murmuring of the wind. “Does that make me ungrateful?”

“Maybe,” Jimin answers truthfully. He fumbles with the cuff of Namjoon’s fleece, comforted by the weight of his arm across his lap. They may as well be full-on cuddling at this point, twisted up in each other like the straddled roots of a pine tree. “But it means you’re being true to yourself, and that’s the only thing that matters in the end.”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? That being the best at what you do is not the same as being happy. That maybe trying to be happy is as close to happy as anyone is ever going to get.

He isn’t ready to dance again, but maybe someday he will be, and maybe someday Namjoon will be in England and he will be here, and maybe that’s how it was supposed to be all along.

“Someday, then,” Namjoon murmurs the words to himself like a promise.

“Someday,” Jimin agrees, nodding hard. “You’re going to get there.”

It is perhaps only by the grace of the universe that Jimin finds himself here once again. Here, in a forest clearing he didn’t think he would be able to find on his own. Here, in the arms of a boy who may just be as lost as Jimin is, who has somehow borne witness to so many ugly parts of him and yet still shows no sign of disappointment. Here he is strangely at peace, even though the moon is faintly waning, even though he can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears with all the force of a rolling drum.

It might be because Kim Namjoon is perhaps the only person on the planet from which Jimin has nothing to hide, which is ironic, since there are so many things he wants to tell him but has never been brave enough to say.

Namjoon said to try and fail, right?

“Hey, hyung?” Try and fail. He’s surging forward before Namjoon can answer, pressing his lips soundly to the dimple in his cheek before he can talk himself out of it.

And then he waits. And waits. Namjoon looks like he’s short-circuiting, his synapses firing in rapid succession, trying to find a justifiable explanation and finding none. He blinks at Jimin, the exposed whites of his eyes a stark contrast to the shadows that map his face. 

His voice, when he finds it, is wondrous. “Did you just kiss me?” he asks, prodding at the spot with the tips of his fingers like he isn’t sure if he’s dreaming.

He’s so adorable Jimin doesn’t even feel embarrassed about it. He just giggles, reaching out to poke the spot himself. “Maybe I did,” he teases. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Well,” Namjoon squares his shoulders like he’s trying to present a thesis, and this isn’t the kind of situation where you’re supposed to coo at someone, but Jimin is so fond and so bubbly inside he almost does it anyway. “I guess I should tell you I’m kind of in love with you, Park Jimin. You’re kind of the coolest person I’ve ever met.”

He doesn’t think you’re supposed to snort, either, but he does it anyway. “I wholeheartedly disagree, Kim Namjoon-ssi. You’ve known yourself your whole life.”

He wants to kiss that other dimple, so he does, and there’s not a trophy on earth that could make him feel as euphoric as he does when Namjoon blushes the colour of a ripe plum.

“I’m kind of in love with you, too, actually. More than kind of. Kind of a lot, but I don’t know how to tell you I like every single thing about you without accidentally scaring you away.” It’s rushed and awkward and for once in his life he doesn’t know if what he’s saying is something Namjoon wants to hear, but he does it anyway.

“You stood in my Shrek swamp, remember? I don’t think there’s anything you could do to scare me away.” Namjoon smiles and smiles and the whole world is bathed in gold.

They sit there smiling stupidly at each other, two idiots in love trying to figure out if this is the kind of thing that happiness is made of.

He thinks the answer might be yes.

“Hey, Jimin-ah?”

He bites his lip. Something shifts. 

Namjoon’s gaze drifts downwards, and for the first time in so, so long, Jimin doesn’t push his hair behind his ear. He doesn’t smooth the wrinkles in his jacket, he doesn’t search for his reflection in the trees.

Namjoon’s breath ghosts over his face, his nose brushing the high curve of his cheekbone, and Jimin could get drunk on this, on the lush pink of his mouth, on the cleft of his bottom lip, on the way he smells like soy sauce and sugar and Yoongi’s fabric softener, on the little freckle just below his left eye.

There’s a little bread crumb in the corner of Namjoon’s mouth and he doesn’t care, not when Namjoon is touching his face so gently, not when he’s drawing impossibly closer, not when he’s pressing his full lips to his, tender and hungry and home.

Namjoon kisses like a summer storm slowly building; light, gentle, and then deeper every time. His mouth is soft and slightly chapped, and Jimin’s nose is kind of runny from being out in the winter air, but none of that matters. 

He threads his fingers into Namjoon’s hair, tugging at the strands until he tumbles into him with a little grunt of surprise. The ache of wanting flares like a bonfire in his chest, and then Namjoon is coaxing his lips open and his tongue is sweeping against the roof of his mouth, and the whine he makes in the back of his throat as Jimin nibbles on his bottom lip is nothing short of unholy.

He practically crawls into Namjoon’s lap, anchoring one hand on his broad shoulder and sliding the other past the bulk of his open jacket. He searches, fingertips splayed out against his chest until he can feel his heartbeat thundering through the layers of muscle and skin, racing frantically in time to the sound of his own blood roaring in his ears.

It's a long time before either of them come up for air, dizzy and gasping into the freefall, tumbling recklessly off the peak of a long-suffering climb. He presses a final kiss once, twice to the bow of his puckered mouth, and then pulls reluctantly away.

Namjoon nearly knocks their foreheads together in an attempt to keep him close, but neither of them seem to mind. They rest their foreheads together until the heaving of their breaths has slowed to the rhythm of a shoreline. “You still owe me a tour of this forest, Park Ranger Kim,” he teases, delighting in the burst of laughter that erupts from Namjoon’s chest, joyful and unrestrained in the first blush of morning.

“I thought we established that my services are expensive,” Namjoon shoots back, cradling his face between his palms like a treasure. He looks at him like he is something wholly marvellous, inside and out, and for once Jimin thinks he believes it.

For the first time in so, so long, it feels like the whole world is watching and Jimin does not care one bit. He lets the monumental weight of this moment, small and unseen as it may be in the scope of the moving universe, push him in steady rotation with the rest of the world.

It smells like Spring.

"Do you remember?" He rasped, clearing his throat so she would understand him, "Eomma, do you remember, I promised to tell you first?"

"What are you talking about?"

"That I would tell you first when it happens.", he said. When, not if, because Namjoon had always known he would fall in love eventually, had always been full of love, he wanted to share, "When I fall in love with someone."

"Oh, honey.", she replied, and her voice was becoming even, relaxed again, "You did promise."

"I'm falling. All the time. I'm falling right now, Eomma.", He whispered into the phone, "And I've never been so scared before."

"Joon-ah, you don't have to be scared. Love is nothing to be afraid of."

Namjoon thought she lies. Meeting his father when she was a teenager, and it had been kind of easy for them. Still does think she lies. Love is the scariest thing he ever experienced, even more terrifying than death threats.

"Does she know about your feelings? Does she love you as well?"

She. She. She.

He wanted to scream and laugh. Of course, she. He never told his parents, after all, how should his mother know?

Namjoon swallowed hard, could hear it clicking in his throat, and he was so utterly scared. But he remembered the walk through the woods with Jimin, side by side, and the other man dancing on his way up the hill. Only followed by a camera team, and still felt kind of alone with him. He remembered Jimin's confused and then embarrassed face when he realized he'd forgotten his bag on the bus because he had been too busy talking with Jeongguk about Misun and the ongoing championship and had to walk back to retrieve it. He remembered the feeling of Jimin's hands in his own, the trains rattling under him, and his stupid act to be interested in his rings, even though everyone knew Namjoon only wanted to hold Jimin's hands in his. And he didn't want to back out, didn't want to lie, because Namjoon wasn't ashamed of his love.

"No.," licking his dry lips, trying to summon some courage, "No, he doesn't love me back. I'm falling alone."

There was a sharp intake of breath and then a soft sob, "Oh."

And for several heartbeats, Namjoon felt like he did the wrong thing. Like he shouldn't have told her. You cannot outrun traditions and old believes. Outrun what's in people's mind for generations, and maybe, he misunderstood his parent's open-mindedness, but then she whispered, "Oh my baby, Joon-ah. Eomma loves you so much, do you know that? I'm so incredibly proud of you. You don't have to be scared of telling me about falling in love, no matter with whom. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression."

And Namjoon cried, sobbed so heartbrokenly, clutching his phone to not miss one word, that Seokjin was knocking at the bathroom door, asking worried if he was alright. And yeah, yeah, he was more than alright.

"You don't have to be sorry, Eomma. I wasn't ready to tell."

"I'm so relieved.", His mother told him, hiccuping with every word, and Namjoon wanted to laugh because it's the same sound his sister did when she was crying as a child, "I'm so relieved you are telling me. Who is it then?"